by John Sayles
“Why now?”
Scipio smiled. “Because you’re the best liar in Manila.”
He had hoped they would need his talents as a linguist. Zambal, Tagalog, Spanish, Latin, English from his year in Hongkong, even a bit of Cantonese, all these valuable as the revolt proceeded through its stages. But lying—
“They want me to be a spy?”
“For now. We each serve in our own way.”
Diosdado had guessed for some time that his best friend was a member of the Katipunan, but Scipio would never admit it. “I am a patriot,” he would say, lifting an eyebrow, whenever Diosdado asked to be sponsored into the Brotherhood, “but not a suicide.”
“What do I do?”
“Tonight at the Zorilla,” said Scipio, smiling, and then was gone.
But at intermission, the apple successfully bolted from son Walter’s head and Tell imprisoned by the haughty Gessler, Scipio has still not appeared. Diosdado shuffles downstairs in the throng, shoulder to shoulder with a butcher of a militar, a uniformed capitán de cazadores whistling the rousing call to arms that closed the first act.
“Elíxer para el alma,” says the Spaniard, smiling and catching his eye, and Diosdado muses that if the oppressors do in fact have souls, then music must be good for them.
He follows the university boys across the street for buñuelos and chocolate and talk of music, theater, women, all the things young irresponsible students should be preoccupied with, the militares at the next table laughing a little too loudly as always and both groups pretending to ignore the fact that there is a revolution in progress not so far from Manila, that in a few months, a year at the most, they may be trying to kill those other hijos de puta.
“I wonder how many will stay, after it is done?” says Kokoy, careful as always to remain vague, in public places, about the exact nature of it.
“The ones from Madrid or Barcelona will go home,” says Epifánio Cojuanco, who has spent a year studying piano in Spain. “But some of those places, in the bleak mountains—why would you bother?”
“They’ll have to give up their privileges, of course.” This from Kokoy, who has a manservant who waits outside the classroom door in case his dueño should desire anything.
“I long for the day,” says Hilario Ibañez. “To breathe our own sweet air again, to walk unburdened on our own fertile soil, among free men.”
They can rhapsodize about independence for hours, his friends, but Kokoy is too rich and Epifánio too timid and Hilario a poet doomed to unwittingly plagiarize Dr. Rizal’s literary work, from which he no doubt conjured the image of the infernal machine, for the rest of his days. And he, Diosdado Concepción, is still waiting for the call—
“To a better day,” says Epifánio, and they touch their cups together. It is Scipio’s favorite toast, Scipio who has not yet appeared, most often invoked at a café table like this one, surrounded by Spanish soldiers, looking like any other group of Filipino dandies in white suits and straw skimmers. “A un día mejor!” Scipio will say, raising his glass, and then down the throat, all of them smiling with their secret knowledge.
Until this afternoon it has seemed only naughty.
The bell sounds and they hurry back and stand just inside the doors to witness the re-entrance of the damas, their fans fluttering in a myriad of gown-matching colors, the students dizzied by passing waves of perfume, and then there is the dress they are waiting for, the dress that has the great fortune to caress the body of Ninfa Benavides, a whisper of organza the color of ripe guayaba, with a border of translucent French lace and a cameo brooch nestled between her artfully displayed twin doves of nubility.
“If the fakirs are correct and one revisits this earth in different forms,” sighs Hilario Ibañez, “I would end my life now to come back as that cameo.”
Ninfa, whose father is the Policarpio Benavides who supplies fresh beef to the Spanish army and can destroy men’s lives with a word in the proper official’s ear, whose aunt is the renowned Sister María de la Coronación de Espinas who teaches music and deportment at Santa Isabel, Ninfa carries herself like what she is, a jewel of the nation. There are so many peninsulares seeking her hand, or merely her interest, as well as the countless criollos and filipinos ilustrados, that some nights the crowd under her balcony erupts into terrible rows that warrant the militia being called to action. The rumor, for Diosdado has never been privileged to speak with her, is that she is as intelligent as her father is ruthless, and can puncture a man’s soul with a single flecha irónica. In his reveries it is Ninfa, stepping regally from her landau and catching his eye to say, with a half-secret smile, “You, campesino, belong here. And if you work hard, if you study the minds of men and learn to turn them to your will, you may some day be worthy of me.”
“Far too rich for your blood, muchacho,” says Scipio as she passes. He is there suddenly, watching Ninfa with his own private smile. “Follow me.”
The coach ride is not a long one. Diosdado tries to guess at the turns and distances with his eyes covered, Scipio silent beside him. Padre Peregrino, his favorite of the Jesuits, is a firm believer in mystery.
“We have been created to inquire, to reason,” he tells his students. “To strive to understand the workings of the Universe. But mystery, doubt, the blind flight into the unknown—these are the elements of Faith.”
The coach stops. Diosdado can hear water lapping, smell the tang of a filth-choked estero. Somewhere near the Pasig, maybe the northern corner of San Nicholas. Scipio takes him by the arm, helps him from the coach, and leads him inside.
“Kneel.”
A voice he doesn’t recognize. Diosdado kneels.
The blindfold is pulled off and he opens his eyes.
It is a small room with dark mahogany walls. On a low table, providing the only light, flickers a votive candle. Before it are laid a revolver, a bolo knife, and a human skull.
“Who is this,” asks the tallest of the hooded men, in Tagalog, “who disturbs the works of the Temple?”
“One who wishes to see the True Light,” says Diosdado in what he hopes is a strong, confident voice, “and to be worthy to become a Son of the Country.”
“Think well and decide—can you comply with all its duties?”
Diosdado allows the smallest of pauses to signal that he is, in fact, considering the weight of this decision. Padre Peregrino always chides him in the confessional for announcing his remorse too quickly.
“I can.”
“In what state was our beloved Fatherland when the Spaniard first trod upon its soil?”
“We were as children,” says Diosdado, “free, but living in ignorance.” He was the shining light of his First Communion, the Bishop posing the Catechism questions to him in Spanish, and Diosdado, at nine, answering by rote but with a semblance of understanding.
“In what condition do we now live?”
“Now we have the Light of Knowledge, but remain enslaved.”
“And what shall be our future?”
“We shall live as free men, equal among the many nations.”
His father believes that this is worse than heresy, it is stupidity. “Do you fight the sun?” he will shout during their arguments. “Do you fight the rain? You accept them, you use them, without them your crops will not grow. So it is with the Spanish.”
His father who kneels in church every Sunday grinding his teeth while the friar drones on, who drinks imported wine with the governor and hides a third of his earnings at tax time. His father who calls bribes “seed money” and Chinese “yellow monkeys.” His father who is a secret Freemason, initiated in a secret rite much like this one, who crippled a man in a duel of honor but will not lift a finger for the Tagalog Republic.
One of the other hooded men takes the bolo and, stepping behind Diosdado, reaches around to hold the sharp blade against the base of his throat. Another lifts the revolver and presses the barrel to his forehead.
“Do you know, Brother, what these arms represent?�
�� asks the tallest man, the hermano terrible in the hooded red robe. “These are the arms with which the Society punishes those who betray its secrets. If at this moment the Society should require your life, would you give it?”
“I would,” says Diosdado, and is glad he is kneeling. Scipio has rehearsed him in the entire litany, but actually saying the words, knowing that irrevocable actions will follow them, this sends awe tingling through him like the Holy Sacraments never have. A small gong is struck. Candlelight, flickering on the wall behind the small table, illuminates a portrait of the martyred Dr. Rizal. Was he a secret member as well, as the tsismis has it, or have they only borrowed his image to add weight to the ceremony?
“The sound of the bell is the sound of you leaving your former life and entering the Society, where you will see the True Light. Your body must be given a visible sign that you are a Brother in the Society—can you endure the hot iron?”
“I can.”
The sword and pistol are withdrawn and his shirt pulled open, and the tip of an iron crucifix, searing hot, is pressed to a point on his right breast and held there a moment. He smells burned flesh.
“Reflect that you are no longer Master of your body. It belongs now to the Society.”
Educated young men have been leaving the university and taking to the hinterlands. Nothing as important as this will happen again in his lifetime. To not be part of it, to sit idly to one side, uncommitted, is unthinkable.
“This I accept,” says Diosdado.
“Then welcome, Brother!” The inductor and others pull down their hoods and step forward to embrace him. Diosdado recognizes the inductor as a young man who was only a year ahead of him at the Ateneo, a young man already a capitán in the rebellion, with famous battles to his name.
“Thank you, Brothers. I will try to be worthy.”
“There is only the signing left,” says one of the others, in Spanish now. “Your arm, please?”
He holds out his arm and the man cuts a slit in the crook of his elbow, then hands him a quill pen as the other, who Diosdado has seen reporting at charity events for the Correo de Ultramar, lays the articles out on the table.
He dips the point of the quill in the pooling blood and writes his name. It takes quite a while, Diosdado Concepción. They must not keep these, he thinks—what a bounty for the guardia if their agents discovered a pile of initiation documents. He finishes his signature and looks up. He is a member of a secret society, an imposter still, but an imposter for Liberty.
“Have you chosen your code name, Brother?”
Padre Peregrino’s lesson that day was the Arcadian story of beautiful Io, so lusted after by Zeus that he transformed her into a cow, hoping to hide her from the jealous wrath of his wife Hera. Hera discovered the ruse and set the hero Argus Panoptes, who possessed at least an extra set of eyes on the back of his head, if not a hundred of them spread over his body, to watch over the herd and warn her if Zeus approached. The Padre is a great lover of mythology, drawing, with his Jesuit wit, moral lessons from the pagan stories.
“Your name, Brother?” asks the tallest of the hooded men, the hero of Paombong. They are all watching Diosdado now, who stands with a thread of blood dripping off his fingertips to the polished floor.
“I am Argus,” he tells them. “He who sees all.”
SKAGUAY
Hod is working on the wagon road three miles out of Skaguay, felling trees and dragging logs through the mud with a chain rig, when a dude strolls up with the road boss.
“That’s the one,” says the road boss.
The dude, checked sack suit, street shoes and the only straw boater Hod has seen since coming north, cocks his head and speaks loud enough for Hod to hear over the chopping and whipsawing and cursing of laborers.
“I expected a larger man.”
But he continues to watch Hod work, a little dude smile on his face, smoking three cigarettes and dancing out of the way as trees are felled, as logs are dragged and dropped on the corduroy road, and is waiting when the shift ends.
“Niles Manigault,” he says, offering a soft hand and smiling. “And you are?”
“Brackenridge.”
“Splendid. May I ask, Mr. Brackenridge, if you are a practitioner of the fistic arts?”
The words make no sense at first. Hod rolls his shoulders, feeling the chafe marks where the chain cut in. “I fought a couple guys. In Montana.”
“Montana.”
“Three fights. With other miners.”
Niles Manigault nods, considering, then taps Hod on the chest with his finger. “No matter. The lure of ample recompense should outweigh any lack of experience.”
“You offering me a job?”
The young man has a markedly Southern accent and a very neatly brushed moustache. “A business opportunity, yes.” He indicates the hodgepodge of felled trees around them. “Something of a step up for you, I would imagine.”
“What I have to do?”
They walk back toward town over the roadbed that has already been laid, Hod with his ax over his shoulder, the dude trying not to sink his street shoes too deep in the muck.
“You’ll need to absorb a certain amount of punishment,” says Niles Mani-gault, smiling. “And, if able, to deal some out.”
An older colored man with a pushed-in face sits in a battered wagon pointed toward town.
“Our barouche,” says Manigault, gesturing for Hod to get in. Hod climbs onto the bed while the dude sits up front by the drayman, and they begin to thump home over the logs, passing the other road workers slogging back through the mud, lugging their tools over their shoulders. “This is our new pugilist, Smokey,” says the dude. “What do you think?”
The negro casts a quick look back at Hod.
“He gonna beat Choynski,” he says, turning his attention to the slat-ribbed nag pulling the wagon, “he best carry that ax into the ring with him.”
The new docks have pulled all the action from Dyea here to Skaguay, and the town has more false-fronted wood buildings than tents now, new structures being thrown up on every block of the grid the original claim jumpers laid out, the frozen-mud streets swarming with new arrivals in a hurry to reach the Pass and merchants and buncos hustling to pick them clean before they get there. There are dogs everywhere, dogs too small or stubborn or weak or vicious to be useful pulling sleds on the trail, dogs of all shapes and sizes formed into packs that fight over slops thrown on the street or over territory or just for the mean dog delight of it. A half-dozen of them crowd around barking and snapping as Smokey guides the wagon past the little brewery, then scamper away when it’s clear there is nothing worth eating or killing. Hod and Manigault climb down onto the board sidewalk that runs in front of the buildings and tents, weaving around stampeders and drunks and the tame Russian bear doing tricks and a hatless, startle-eyed wild man predicting that the usurers, whoremongers, and worshippers of the Golden Idol who rush about ignoring him will soon be cast into a lake of fire.
“Any idea how much you weigh?” asks Niles Manigault.
“A sight less than when I got here,” says Hod, and then the dude pulls him down onto Holly Street.
He has passed Jeff Smith’s Parlor several times, but prefers the big dance halls on Broadway or Clancy’s on Trail Street. All the resorts are pretty much the same, dedicated to separating a man from what’s in his poke as quick as possible, but some do it with a lighter touch. Smith turns out to be another Southerner, a bearded, dark-haired, dark-eyed man in a big-brimmed wideawake hat, leaning back with elbows propped on the bar and one bootheel hooked over the brass rail.
“You’re not a boxer,” he says, looking Hod up and down.
“Never claimed to be,” Hod tells him. Manigault takes a seat on a stool, the bartender laying a short whiskey in front of him. “I just been in a fight or two.”
“And how did you fare?”
“Held my own.”
A half-dozen other men drift close around him, watching with appra
ising eyes. Smith has a soft voice and a friendly manner.
“Take your shirt off,” he says. “We’ll have a look.”
Hod hesitates, then begins to peel the layers, draping his work-grimed clothes over the bar counter. They are paying six a day on the wagon road, good wages on the Outside, but prices in Skaguay leave nothing much to show for it, and on every corner there are a dozen busted stampeders ready to work for coffee and johnnycakes. When Hod is down to his skin, Niles Manigault puts in a word.
“Devereaux says he’s the strongest of the lot out there, best stamina, most stubborn—”
Jeff Smith raises a hand to silence him, steps close to lock eyes with Hod.
“Young man,” he says, smiling, “how would you like to earn an easy one hundred dollars?”
The fight is only a few hours away, and Niles explains that it will be necessary to meet with his opponent first.
“Merely a formality,” he says as he and Smith lead Hod, struggling back into his clothes, across the muck on Broadway. “Our previous champion being indisposed—”
“Stiff as a plank,” says Smith. “Passed out drunk in a snowdrift last night and froze to death.”
“—you are something of a last-moment replacement. They need to be reassured that you’re no ringer.”
“I never even had gloves on.”
“We’ll do the talking in here, son,” says Smith, stepping into the Pack Train Restaurant.
The manager is an older man with a face like boiled ham. Choynski, trim and curly haired, is sawing at a steak.
“Where’d you get this dub?” says the manager, flicking his eyes over Hod.
“The north country breeds fighting men,” answers Niles Manigault. “This lad has bested all comers in the region—”
The fighter sits back to look at Hod. “You ever been in the rope arena, young man?”
“He is neither a seasoned professional nor a mere chopping block,” Niles intercedes. “A raw talent, you might say.”