by John Sayles
Before Jehovah’s awful throne
Ye nations bow with sacred joy
Know that the Lord is God alone
He can create, He can destroy
—sing the uniformed marchers, the horns behind them flat and loud, swinging four abreast onto the big street—
His sovereign power, without our aid
Made us of clay, and formed us men
And when, like wandering sheep we strayed
He brought us to the fold again!
A phalanx of no-hopers slump behind the ranks, only a few of them clapping in time with the bass drum. A big olive-skinned man in a long coat and bowler hat brings up the rear, walking with his hands in his pockets. He sees Hod watching.
“Soup, soap, and salvation,” he says, nodding forward to the marching Army.
“Don’t know about soap or salvation,” says Hod, “but I haven’t eaten all day.”
“They got their barracks just up here, with a kitchen attached. Yesterday it was beef stew.”
Hod falls in with the man, an Indian from Wisconsin who says he’s called Big Ten.
“I got an Indin name too,” he says, and then makes a sound with lots of parts to it.
“What’s that mean?”
“Walks Far—” he deadpans, “—But Would Sooner Ride.”
Major Tannenbaum, in charge of divine inspiration while they wolf down their day-old bread and Scotch broth, is the scourge of demon rum.
“It is the weakness, the craving for libation that has dragged you to this depth,” he booms, striding back and forth in front of the benches in the damp basement commissary. “The hop and the grape are seeds of the Devil, and their essence his liquid fire. Satan is a deceiver who goes by many a name. Gin is his name, whiskey is his name, beer is his name—”
“Poor bastard wants a drink so bad he can taste it,” mutters Big Ten to Hod as they empty their tins. “Lot of these gospel sharks used to swim in the stuff.”
“—rum is his name, schnapps is his name—”
“He’s getting soused just saying the kinds.”
“—and wine—wine is his name, present even at the Papist Holy Com-munion—”
“You trying to get to the goldfields?” asks Hod.
“Hell no. Just trying to keep my head above water. But the only thing I got going in this town is I’m not a Chinaman.”
“The Devil floats in on a sea of alcohol,” says Major Tannenbaum, “captures your soul, and sails away.”
“How bout you?”
Hod can feel the Indian studying the cuts around his eyes, the bruises on his cheeks. The rest of the men enduring the sermon are a beat-looking lot, red-nosed and palsy-handed, the walking wounded slurping barley soup under a smoke-darkened banner that reads JOIN THE RANKS OF THE SAVED. Hard to say just when the older fellas’ lives went off the tracks, thinks Hod, but the younger ones don’t look much different than him.
Tannenbaum shakes his fist in the air. “He who renounces drink renounces Satan!”
“I’m not a Chinaman either,” says Hod, and wipes the bowl clean with the last of his bread.
PERISHABLE
If the coolies are curious about Diosdado they don’t show it. There are four of them who have bribed their way on board, squatting around the light of an oil lamp in a tiny clearing in the hanging forest of bananas in the hold, rolling dice on a jute sack and sing-songing in a Cantonese dialect it is nearly impossible for him to make out. Something about what they’ll do when back in their villages, what big men they’ll be. Diosdado is relieved to note the amounts they are gaming for are small, none of them likely to lose too much of their hard-earned contract pay on the quick voyage home.
The freighter rolls heavily, and Diosdado feels, for the hundredth time on this trip, as if he will be violently ill.
The hold smells of coal dust, ripening bananas, and, he imagines, his own foul stench. Somehow the photographs of the execution appeared in Manila sooner than Scipio had promised and Diosdado was forced to spend a night and a day on the river hiding beneath a pile of zacate on a stinking lancha till he was finally transferred, stuffed into a packing crate, to the hold of the banana boat. It was dark, of course, and surprisingly cold, and though his muscles cramped and his imagination grew morbid and he wet himself more than once, he obeyed his instructions not to try to break his way out of the crate. Hours in the close air of the wooden tomb before the jolt of the engine as they got under way and then, seemingly, more long hours of sickening pitch and roll.
“Just in time,” said the captain, holding his nose when the lid was pried off. “This one’s already ripe.”
Diosdado sits on his damp, half-filled sack of belongings on the floor of the hold, swallowing constantly to try to control his stomach, which seems to be climbing up into his gorge. The huge stems of pale-green bananas tied to the overhead rails swing in unison with each roll of the freighter. He shuts his eyes tightly and tries to imagine something else, something not pitching or rolling, something planted in the unmoving earth.
It is mango time in Zambales.
By now the first of the crop will be ripe, half the tree bearing each season, or trees bearing on both sides and then “sleeping” for a year. His mother used to put him in shirts that were already stained with the juice to go out and play, the fruit surrendering, stem snapping easily when they were truly ripe and they’d grab some of the drops that had been bruised and compromised by insects and hurl them up into the mass above, trying to catch whatever pristine ones fell before they hit the ground. Insects in the air, sugar bees that hadn’t been seen since the clusters of little yellow-brown flowers had clothed the trees, and the harvesters working their sunkits from morning to late noon, the sweetest time to pick, probing the long bamboo poles till another plump fruit dropped into the sack fastened at the end. If they were feeling lazy they’d only swipe some from the huge baskets covered with jute cloth where the fruit to be sold locally was left to finish, waving away the bees and grabbing and running, the boys, bellies tight with fruit, always happy to be with Diosdado because his father was king here and they couldn’t be punished until later. They’d use their knives to peel the skin back then suck the flesh off all around, down to the hueso, fingers sticking together till they were wet with the juice of the next one.
“You see how they grow,” Don Nicasio would always point out when they passed a tree where the carabao were allowed to ripen on the stem. “See how they are red on the side that faces the sun and yellow on the side that faces the tree?”
“Yes, Father,” Diosdado would say, mango-colored at the fingertips and with a mancha the shape of Luzon on the front of his shirt. “I see it.”
“This is how we must be in life. We must adjust ourselves to what we are facing.”
And that is Don Nicasio. A drinker of imported Madeira, a backslapper to governors and priests, deferential to anyone with ties to what he reverently toasts as “nuestra gran Madre al otro lado de las mares,” though when he crossed those seas to visit the Great Mother they thought he was a chino and refused to seat him in fine restaurants unless he was the guest of a peninsular distinguido. He has many such patrons, though, Spaniards who he has helped make wealthy in the islands and is helping still, a scientist with crops, a genius at trade—maybe this is the chino in him—and an able hand at cards or billiards.
By the time of the Katipunero uprising they were having their arguments—actually only one long argument, interrupted when Diosdado went off to the Ateneo, and resumed whenever he returned on a visit.
“I’m sending you to school to study the Spanish,” Don Nicasio would growl, “not to play around with filibusteros. If you want to get yourself killed you can do it without wasting my money.”
“But our country—”
“Country? What is it called on the map? Las Filipinas—a group of islands named after a Spanish king. There was no country before they came and there is not one now, only bands of wild men fighting other wild men for t
he right to remain ignorant.”
He had been Diosdado’s hero once, the man who knew things, who moved in the world, the man the poor of San Epifanio and its environs came to for help, meekly, hat brims twisted in their hands as they muttered their requests, barely able to meet his eyes. A generous man, a man who advanced pay to those who needed it, who paid for the most elaborate mass on holy days. The Concepcións had their own pew reserved at the front left of the church, his mother God-struck after her second son, Diosdado’s brother, died in infancy, rocking slightly and murmuring the Rosary throughout, the carved ebony beads draped over her fingers, Don Nicasio erect and motionless, watched and admired but seemingly oblivious to the others standing crowded behind him. Diosdado imagined his father’s talks with God as hearty affairs over cigars and brandy, ending with Don Nicasio’s habitual firm handshake and meeting of the eye.
“So—we understand each other?”
There are boat horns now, distinguishable over the engine thrum and the constant drumming of the pump pistons, and Diosdado hopes it means they are entering the harbor. The coolies roll up their possessions and tie them into bundles, still talking excitedly. Even if they have hundreds of miles yet to travel, they are going home. Diosdado is going only to a certain spot in the foreign city, to wait for someone to come and give him a clue about what the rest of his life will be. The word must have reached Zambales by now, his mother on her knees praying for his safety and his soul, while Don Nicasio paces and curses, asking the heavens to explain how he could have fathered an idiot and a criminal.
“You’ll be back in no time,” smiled Scipio, helping him throw together his most essential belongings on the evening when the photographs appeared, pasted over government notices and decrees on walls throughout the Intra-muros. “Once the Americans declare war—”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then you’ll have to develop a taste for congee and carp.”
It was meant as a joke, but there are men, dozens of them, who have never been able to return, scattered around the world, pleading in their letters for news of progress, for any scrap of hope. And most of these are wealthy, with bank accounts and families who have the means to visit them in exile. Diosdado has only the one good set of clothes in his sack, with letters from the Committee to the Junta, coded in Tagalog, sewn in the lining of the jacket, and the little pile of silver Scipio passed on with the forged cédula and verbal contact instructions for his arrival.
The name on the cédula is José Corpus—born in Tarlac, four years older than Diosdado. The photo is his, though, cropped to conceal the school fencing uniform he was wearing when it was taken. There will be Spanish agents looking for that face when the passenger ships dock, standing by British authorities keen on preventing troublemakers from entering the Crown Colony. The hum of the engine changes pitch. One of the coolies appears beside him, poking his shoulder, and leads him through a maze of bananas back to the packing crate. He speaks in pidgin Tagalog, indicating that Diosdado has to crawl back in.
José Corpus, he thinks as the lid is placed over and pounded shut. Scipio must have known about this part.
The wooden lid is only inches from Diosdado’s nose. He is nobody in here, nothing, a tiny spark of consciousness shut off from the living world. Voices outside, movement, men shouting in Cantonese, and several times his crate is banged by workers hauling stems of bananas away, one even standing on top of it for a moment, the boards creaking. Diosdado tries to breathe evenly, to will his heartbeat slower. He doesn’t feel nauseous anymore, he feels—lost.
When the crate is lifted he is smashed onto his left side at first, then his feet go up almost vertically and the top of his head bears all his weight, sides of the crate cracking against the ladder and the hatch. He has been flipped onto his face by the time the crate is dropped roughly on what he guesses is the dock, one elbow twisted awkwardly under his ribs, listening with a mounting sense of terror at the bang of another crate being piled on top of his, then another—
“Reflect that you are no longer Master of your body,” he thinks. “It belongs now to the Society.” Unless the Society has marked the outside of this crate and are on their way, or whatever is supposed to be inside it is meant to be pulled out very soon, he will die in here. Diosdado has imagined dying for the cause, leading a throng of loyal followers in a charge over a corpse-strewn battlefield, uttering last words that will be engraved in marble, but not this. Not this helpless nothing.
Only time, which is not even time in the dark, nothing to mark its passing. Diosdado manages to wiggle into a slightly more comfortable position, maybe even sleeps. It is hard to tell. What sounds he hears are muffled, distant. He can breathe, for the moment. He tries whispering the Rosary to fill the void, the words coming back in their familiar rhythm—the Pater Noster followed by ten Ave Marias and a Gloria Patri to complete each decade, then contemplation of one of the Mysteries before launching into the next. There are Joyful Mysteries, Sorrowful Mysteries, and Glorious Mysteries to choose from. Diosdado chooses to contemplate the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, a Mystery whose fruit is the virtues of purity and obedience.
There were no cigars or brandy when he was off to the Ateneo for his first semester and Don Nicasio wanted him to know about women. Specifically the ones who could be found at Doña Hilaria’s parlor, who were clean and honest and well-trained if not well-bred. Diosdado, a priest’s boy but no stranger to how animals reproduced on the hacienda, fought, cheeks burning, to hide his shock. If his father knew such things, he must have “relieved himself ” on his trips alone to Manila, and very likely in similar establishments in Hongkong, Macao, Madrid, and Yokohama before and after he was bound in Holy Matrimony.
“Young men,” said Don Nicasio, sending him on his way, “are driven by Nature. Fighting Nature leads to religious fanaticism and nervous disorder. Giving in to it without reservation is decadence. An accommodation must be made.”
Doña Hilaria charged four pesos per accommodation and allowed you to amass a debt, within reason, on that and on liquor consumed in her parlor.
“I give all my new boys the same lecture,” she explained the first time Diosdado ventured there, with Romeo Mabayag and Bobong Antuñez. “When you have reached your credit limit, you must pay within the month or my representative will visit your parents with a detailed accounting.”
They did not argue much on his few visits home. His grades remained satisfactory—well above average, in fact—and he asked polite questions when Don Nicasio offered insights on the operation of his modest empire. Diosdado allowed Trini, who had served at the table since before he was born, to cut ripe mangos into bite-sized pieces for her beloved Dadong and present them with a dash of lime juice. His mother related to him the plot of the latest Carlota Brame novel she had read and informed him that she prayed daily for his soul, but gave no indication that she knew just what peril it was in.
“Philosophy, languages, the history of ancient Greece—these are all fine things to know, I am certain,” said his father, who always claimed to have been educated “at the University of Saint Survival.” “But a few more practical subjects would not be unwelcome.”
“The Jesuits’ aim is to develop the man,” Diosdado replied, carefully draining his voice of all irony, “not his ability to become wealthy.”
“Easy for a priest to say, with what they get away with.”
“Jesús, María, y José,” his mother ejaculated, her reflexive response to Don Nicasio’s criticism of the church or its minions.
“I’m only saying the Lord has provided very well for them on these islands. The rest of us have to scratch for what we eat.”
Diosdado was polite and remote on these visits, and his father, who was not stupid, knew that something had changed between them.
“Now there is a sensible young man,” he announced when General Aguinaldo and the Junta accepted the Spaniards’ financial inducement to go into exile. “Get the indios to die for you, then esc
ape with the treasure.”
At the station in Tarlac, after the last visit, he took Diosdado’s arm to draw him near and look deep into his eyes. “These are dangerous times, mi hijo,” he said. “You must step carefully.”
“I know, Father.”
“So,” said Don Nicasio, laying a thick hand on his shoulder, “we understand each other?”
Scraping and banging of wood above him. Diosdado says another Ave Maria. The man who finally flips over the crate and levers it open is Chinese and does not even speak Cantonese, only hissing and flapping his arms for Diosdado to hurry, and then scurrying away into the night.
It is hard for Diosdado to straighten his legs at first, to stand. He is not on the dock but on a barge loaded with similar crates anchored nearly a hundred yards out from the shore, several shabby-looking sampans and junks and smaller boats floating in between. It is very quiet, perhaps a curfew in effect, in which case he has to find a new place to hide very quickly. He looks around for the man who freed him—gone. There are some electric lights lining the Praya, and only a few gas lamps still shining, scattered up the slopes that back the city. It must be very late. Diosdado brings his knees up and down several times to get the blood back into his legs, then ties his sack to the back of his belt and starts for the shore, stepping as carefully as he can from boat to boat, the flimsier craft threatening to slide out from under his feet as he makes each transfer, grabbing on to anything he can for balance and trying to look as if this is his usual route, something normal. He stops, crouching in one very tippy rowboat, to rest and to rehearse his lies, both the ones the Committee has given him and the ones he has invented on the journey. José Corpus, if anybody inquires, is here in the Colony pursuing business opportunities, hoping to find buyers for the iron ore from his home province. He is in between residences at the moment—is there a clean, relatively inexpensive commercial hotel he should know about? And right at the moment he has to get to the dock without drowning.