Ilustrado Part 3

But Dominador is like a bull. He pushes Antonio off with his powerful arms. With a press of the b.u.t.ton, the villain unsheathes his switchblade. "I'm going to stick this in your gut," he growls, "and turn you on like a tap." Our hero reaches to draw his trusty pistol, but doesn't. It wouldn't be fair. Dominador sneers. "Where's your big gun?" he says. Antonio smiles. "Here in my pants," he replies. "But I don't take it out for ugly pigs like you." He a.s.sumes a kung fu stance and motions Dominador closer. His opponent closes in, slicing the air between them.

-from Manila Noir Manila Noir (page 57), by Crispin Salvador (page 57), by Crispin Salvador *

I pa.s.s the night at a cheap pension near the Manila airport. My flight to Bacolod leaves early tomorrow.

The traffic was too heavy to venture farther. I sat in the back of a taxi as it inched along a cordon of traffic cones, across the broad highway from a wall of fire swallowing blocks of shanties. Black shades of men and their hulking machines moved and s.h.i.+mmered against the backdrop of wrestling yellows and reds and oranges. In places, spires of brilliant blue leaped and twirled and fell and s.h.i.+fted colors. The taxi driver and I sat transfixed, our faces pressed to the warm windows. "Two more blasts," said the Bombo Radyo announcer, in his rapid-fire Tagalog, "at the duty-free store outside Ninoy Aquino International Airport have resulted in fires spreading to nearby residences. Let us hope, my friends, and let us pray, that the rains will aid the brave firefighters in their heroic task."

A couple of times when Crispin went on about his exile being heroic, I began to wonder. What was it really that kept him from returning to Manila? I even asked him once, and he said living abroad was harder. That it took more guts to be an international writer. But there was always a lack of conviction in his voice. A defensiveness. Could it be that he had just grown too soft for a city such as this, a place possessed by a very different balance? Here, need blurs the line between good and bad, and a constant promise of random violence sticks like humidity down your back. Wholly different from the zeitgeist lining the Western world, with its own chaos given order by mult.i.tudes of films and television shows, explained into our communal understanding by op-ed pieces and panel discussions and the neatness of stories linked infinitely to each other online. Had Crispin grown to love the mythology too much, the way Emma Bovary loved romances? Like a hermit with a credit card and a telephone, Crispin sat back and dismissed what was happening outside his door. "The beggars have changed, but the lash goes on," he said, "and armchair guerrillas have taken to the jungles of cybers.p.a.ce. Everything's now so Hollywood, the world is lopsided. No wonder it revolves."

I disagreed. Maybe because I was younger and post-postcolonial, I knew that even if it rotated askew, it was still one world. When a b.u.t.terfly flapped its wings in Chile, a child soldier killed for the first time in Chad, a sale was made on Amazon.com, and a book arrived in two days to divulge the urgencies outside our lives. Sure, having moved from Manila to New York, I saw that the global village had made it, ironically, easier for me and my friends to continue with our lives unhindered: tuning out on iPods made in China; heeding the urgings to revitalize the economy by shopping; attending rallies only if we didn't miss too many cla.s.ses, because a compet.i.tive job market or student loans stood like chaperones beside our consciences. But we also took fervid stances on issues burning up the blogs, even if engaged from the safety of our homes, our windows wrapped in plastic and duct tape. My friends and those like us monitored Fox News constantly, trying to understand the hypocrisy of the enemy, relis.h.i.+ng our feelings of superiority before changing the channel to search for whatever subjectivity we found most satiating. Sure, we abandoned the Philippines, inhabited Manhattan, and claimed the deserted nighttime streets, always in an incredulous state of self-congratulation for what we would one day do. Sure, we went out constantly, driven by our fear of either missing out or dying lonely or simply growing old. Sure, we sat in Alphabet City bars, amid juke box music and cigarette smoke, sucking down PBRs and arm-wrestling each other in debates on homeland security and human rights in a country that still wouldn't give us green cards. Sure, each night we staggered home, unfired, unglazed, already broken without knowing it. But at least we were trying.

Around that time the Philippines was listed by Western governments as a terrorist hot spot, though many Filipinos scoffed. Asphyxiating a poor country's vital tourist industry because a handful of Muslim rebels are playing hide-and-seek in the southern jungles of Jolo is like warning tourists not to visit Disneyland because of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Crispin not only ridiculed the warning, dismissing it with the air of having seen it all before, but he also shrugged off the ubiquitous stories of quashed coups and extralegal killings that we in the know recognize as the more pressing, if less sensational, concerns.

And I forgave him that. Even if I thought he was running away from something by living abroad. Maybe I excused him because he was a man who'd already made many a stand, perhaps one too many, and it was now the era for people like me to step up. Or maybe I admired him because he had graduated into a different role. When Crispin spoke about his writing, he wielded adroitly a life sharpened by learning, defending a ferocious belief that merely being in touch with today is limited, even juvenile-in the way that this morning's newspaper is revealed as tonight's fish-and-chips wrapping when works like One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude or, indeed, or, indeed, Autoplagiarist Autoplagiarist are picked off the shelf. A man with battered hands is shown to be a craftsman only when he puts them to work. are picked off the shelf. A man with battered hands is shown to be a craftsman only when he puts them to work.

Yes, I gave him that. Because TBA TBA was supposed to reach for more than a thousand young Turks like me ever could. But when the bombings reached the cities, when our relatives at home were afraid to go to the malls, then Crispin's indifference really disappointed. We the young are necessarily impatient with our elders' patience. How are they so serene when they have so much less time than we do? I hoped Crispin would have looked in the mirror one morning and said: You obsolete old b.a.s.t.a.r.d. And that would have spurred him to a final a.s.sault. But that time I questioned him about the toothlessness of exile, he paused, then replied: What can one do? was supposed to reach for more than a thousand young Turks like me ever could. But when the bombings reached the cities, when our relatives at home were afraid to go to the malls, then Crispin's indifference really disappointed. We the young are necessarily impatient with our elders' patience. How are they so serene when they have so much less time than we do? I hoped Crispin would have looked in the mirror one morning and said: You obsolete old b.a.s.t.a.r.d. And that would have spurred him to a final a.s.sault. But that time I questioned him about the toothlessness of exile, he paused, then replied: What can one do?

The scent of fire is pleasant. It wafts into my room at the pension, through the vent of the gargling air-conditioner unit. Despite myself, I enjoy it. The odor of burned homes, chilled by Freon, is wintry, like Vancouver memories of s'mores and campfire stories. I still can't sleep. Two c.o.c.kroaches climb the far wall, their antennae waving at each other. A drunk unheroic tenor belts Vita Nova love songs from the karaoke bar downstairs. I sit in bed, read my notes, and prepare tomorrow's questions for Crispin's sister, Lena. Later, the silence after closing time uncovers the cries of sirens still blazing in the distance. Thunder sunders all. Wind pelts rain on the jalousie windows with such force it sounds like a riot.

I sleep.

I'm on an island in the middle of nowhere. The tiny house is gathering dust. I watch it collect on the surfaces, on the objects. A red fedora. A gramophone. A framed photo of a little girl at First Communion with her parents. On the beach, I listen for a boat. The sea is reticent and raucous. How could I have never learned to swim in something so beautiful? Bangs of typewriter keys resound through the window. I rush back in and see an Underwood with paper in it. I search the house again, growing desperate with each successive pa.s.s. It's been four days, I know. I doze in and out, unable to sleep, but trying desperately for some sense of normalcy. It's getting hard to inhale, as if my breath is slowly evaporating. I stumble up to suck, in vain, at the faucet attached to a plastic drum in the kitchen. When I bang the drum it makes a noise like a bell underwater. I lie down again, then have to rush outside to vomit. I lie down once more, then run out to s.h.i.+t diarrhea. I stagger to the bed, my heart pounding, and pain a new regularity in my head. I can almost feel my kidneys ache. One imagines strange things sometimes. My blood, I somehow know, is becoming more acidic. Hypovolemic shock. I heard the term on a medical TV drama. My blood is pulling moisture from my body tissue, from my brain. Knowing what is happening doesn't mean you can do anything to stop it. The bedsheets are icy. Visions play with my mind. I'm raising an infant child in the air, tossing her up so that she'll giggle with joy. I'm leaning out a car window and looking up as fireworks bloom and wilt. I'm waiting in line outside a museum, shaking my head at the inane conversation of tourists. I'm helping Madison sew name tags on the clothes of her grandfather the night before he is put in a home. I'm holding a phone receiver against my cheek, listening to the tone, looking at the familiar numbers on the old piece of paper in my hand. When the sun rises over the island, my throat feels like it has shut. With a panic like realizing your mother has left you in the supermarket, I know I am going to die.

I wake up. It is the accepting moment of a dying night, just before dawn, just before the roosters have awakened. I can't believe I've remembered my dream. I lie in bed and try to recall it before it slips away. It must be the jet lag. Morning arrives, slowly, then noisily. The c.o.c.kroaches, in their wisdom, have fled.

The boy had always been quickly on his way to becoming a character misled by his own good intentions and a.s.surances of self, and perhaps interesting in that way.

And so, this is where he is declared our protagonist. The dramatic angle to his story begins with recurring images of him fidgeting in his own silence, in deserted subway stations, in cla.s.srooms surrounded by schoolmates, in a forenoon queue at MoMA. You can see in his face he is searching, hoping to dispel those things that nettle and diminish him, finding purpose in the conceit of himself as a modern-day member of the il.u.s.trados-a potentiality owned by every expatriate today, a precedent granted by those first Enlightened Ones of the late nineteenth century. Those young Filipino bodhisattvas had returned home from abroad to dedicate their perfumed bodies, mellifluous rhetoric, Latinate ideas, and tailored educations to the ultimate cause. Revolution. Many dying of bullets, some of inextricable exile, others subsumed and mellowed and then forgotten, more than a few later learning, with surprising facility, to live with enforced compromise. What's the difference between them and him and all the other peripatetics, except that the ancestors had already returned? His thick, furled intentions and rolled-up plans would also be shaken out to flap alongside our national flag, one day. So he waited, just as they did, collecting himself into integrity, just as they had, antic.i.p.ating the final magnetism of native sh.o.r.es. Latinate ideas, and tailored educations to the ultimate cause. Revolution. Many dying of bullets, some of inextricable exile, others subsumed and mellowed and then forgotten, more than a few later learning, with surprising facility, to live with enforced compromise. What's the difference between them and him and all the other peripatetics, except that the ancestors had already returned? His thick, furled intentions and rolled-up plans would also be shaken out to flap alongside our national flag, one day. So he waited, just as they did, collecting himself into integrity, just as they had, antic.i.p.ating the final magnetism of native sh.o.r.es.

Now, having come home, we see him, our patriotic protagonist, sitting in bed, wondering, Where are the trumpets?

When Cristo isn't in his quarters, writing on the special lap desk he designed and built with springs and pads to allow him to work on any mode of transport, he sits and stares at the sea, pus.h.i.+ng away the thoughts of his murdered father, his mutilated mother, and his abused sister. This ocean is said to pacify the deserving-he thinks, trying for the bravery of a smile-and I am hopeful.

If he looks hard enough, he can see land on the horizon. But when he blinks, it disappears. He's never as close as he hopes.

-from The Enlightened The Enlightened (page 92), by Crispin Salvador (page 92), by Crispin Salvador *

Apparently I had been Crispin's only friend. Lena rang me very late one night, to my surprise. It was hours after I fought with Madison, who had stormed out dramatically. When I picked up the phone, I was expecting my girlfriend's voice, grated by tears, and I answered sternly. I startled Lena. She kept repeating herself. Her sentences were tinged with a British-school accent long blended into the blocky lilt of a life spent in Bacolod. She asked me to go through Crispin's things-sending home what was significant, taking from what was left anything that interested me, and donating or discarding the rest. What could I have said?

The task proved daunting. There was a lot of stuff. Yet I came to enjoy the work, hoping to understand his life from the artifacts left behind. I was now free to pick leisurely through his possessions, to recline and relax on his chairs, to make tea without asking permission, to open windows. There were no longer secrets hidden by drawers, darkened corners, closed books, doors. The resulting oddity left me curious and angry and exceedingly depressed. It reminded me of stretching like a starfish in the very middle of the bed those nights Madison stayed out late to spite me. But at least the morning would bring her back.

There were hundreds of books in Crispin's apartment. Shelves covered every wall. He used to call his library his akas.h.i.+c akas.h.i.+c-Sanskrit, he'd said, for an unending library containing the totality of information. Included, on their own shelf, were scores of his notebooks in the orange suede covers he'd ordered specially from a workshop in an alleyway off the Arno. On the bottom shelf in the living room was his sizable record collection. I leafed through and put on Chuck Berry, to disperse the limitless silence. He sang about going down to the Club Nitty Gritty.

I walked through Crispin's study as if I were in a museum. Atop his desk: a typewriter, the letters worn off its keys; a Bohemiancrystal decanter, filled with water; a matching gla.s.s beside it, fruit flies floating dead on its surface; an ashtray holding his forlorn pipe-meerschaum, stinking of Cherry Cavendish.

That was when I searched the place for The Bridges Ablaze. The Bridges Ablaze. I found nothing. I did, however, discover a receipt for a large package he had sent to a post office box near the Hundred Islands, in the Philippines. It was dated the morning before he died. I found nothing. I did, however, discover a receipt for a large package he had sent to a post office box near the Hundred Islands, in the Philippines. It was dated the morning before he died.

On a table in a corner was Crispin's chess set, our game still on it. I made my move: rook to king-four. Check.

The boy watches the scene slide past. The homes are all ruined, charred a black so deep it is as if it were always inevitable. Men and women and children sift through the wet rubble, hopelessly, their legs and arms sapped of color. Our angry protagonist wants to go out and help, but what can he do but get in their way? In traffic ahead, the long-haired soldiers lounging on the back of the armored personnel carrier pay no mind. Their rifles are propped between their legs. Those men already know all they need to know.

I forgot to mention what happened last night behind the pension where I stayed.

I was tired and lugged my suitcase, hand-carry, laptop bag, and orthopedic pillow through the rain, only to find the front door locked. I went around back to a desolate parking area. In the darkness, I heard, then saw, a young police officer in uniform, shoving two small street children against each other. The kids were in a daze. One clutched the telltale stuff: a bit of cardboard, Rugby adhesive blobbed on it, wrapped in a National Bookstore plastic bag. Both children had sampaguita leis around their necks, the evening's unsold wares. The policeman was knocking the two kids together repeatedly, like two hands clapping. When they fell, he grabbed them by the waists of their shorts and pulled them up roughly. He was growing increasingly agitated. He rifled through their pockets, looking for their day's earnings.

I put down my luggage and my pillow, already formulating what I would say. I was going to mention my surname, tell him who my grandparents are. He would stop, slack-jawed, quietly fuming, but stop nonetheless. I was going to demand his name and precinct and threaten to report him to Senator Bansamoro.

But what would have been the point? Sometimes you can't help but wonder, in the grand scheme of things, if kids like those are better off never having been born. And any cop who'd steal from street urchins is liable to shoot me in a second.

I carefully picked up my pillow and luggage, and quietly went through the back entrance of the pension. Inside, the electric fans mounted on the walls squawked.

I forgot to mention it.

INTERVIEWER:.

What then was meant when you wrote: "Translation kills so that an other may live. Manila is untranslatable." Were you able to address this, and how?

CS:.

I meant you can't bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello. The shopping mall, the urinal, the discotheque. I'm hardly speaking in metaphor. It's the most impermeable of cities. How does one convey all that? If one writes about its tropical logic, its familial loyalties, its bitter aftertaste of Spanish colonialism, readers wonder: Is this a Magical Realist? So one writes of the gilded oligarchs and the reporters with open hands and the underpaid officers in military fatigues, the authority of money and press badges and rifles distinguis.h.i.+ng them as neither good nor bad, only unsatiated and dangerous. And readers wonder: Is this Africa? How do we fly from someone else's pigeonhole? We haven't. We must. And to do that, we have to figure out how to properly translate ourselves. Let me tell you how I think we can do it.

-from a 1988 interview in The Paris Review The Paris Review *

The morning flight to Bacolod leaves in fifty-five minutes and I'm still stuck in traffic. The taxi driver keeps looking back at the wreckage and going on about the fire. He says that before the bodies were collected, the place smelled like roast suckling pig, a scent so delicious that he vomited until he thought he would faint. The traffic light seems frozen on red. In the open back of an armored personnel carrier in front of us, a dozen soldiers sit. Dressed in combat fatigues, all but one wear their hair long around their shoulders. They slouch lackadaisically, dark ropy arms thrown back idly, elbows propped up behind them on the truck's railings. Automatic rifles held between their knees look like p.e.n.i.s sheath gourds of New Guinean warriors.

These are different from the surrept.i.tious-faced troops regularly transported from bases around Metro Manila. These are special-ops, distinguished by their ways and miens, fully armed and battle ready. Strangely obtrusive. Patient. They smoke cigarettes and wrap T-s.h.i.+rts around their necks for protection from the sun. Their sergeant reads today's paper. The tabloid headline asks, over two lines: "Philippines First Corp: Hero or Villain?" The photograph below is of the company's fireworks and munitions factory on the Pasig River, taken from the opposite bank. Large pipes above the waterline spew viscous gray sludge lacquered in a spectrum of colors.

A soldier spots me staring. He nudges his seatmates. They all stare back. The sergeant lowers his newspaper and looks at me. I turn my eyes to the embroidered Playboy Playboy symbol on the back of the taxi driver's headrest. The men laugh. symbol on the back of the taxi driver's headrest. The men laugh.

Erning Isip, in hand a newly minted degree from AMA Computer College, visits his cousin Bobby in Daly City, California. Silicon Valley, Erning knows, is only a bus ride away. Bobby is a male nurse at one of the hospitals and has to go to work every day. At first he leaves Erning at home with a box of cornflakes and the TV on, so that Erning has something to eat and can improve his poor English. After a week of staying home, Erning tells his cousin: "Pinsan, saw.a.n.g sawa na'ko sa cornplayks" (Cousin, I'm tired of cornflakes). So Bobby shows him the local diner and instructs him to tell the waitress that he'll have an "apple pie and coffee." Erning repeats it as best he can: "Affle fie end copee." He practices it all morning: "Affle fie end copee. Affle fie end copee."

That afternoon, Erning bravely ventures to the diner. The waitress approaches his table. "Whaddya want?" she asks. Shocked and nearly lost for words, Erning stammers: "Affle fie end copee." The waitress leaves, much to his consternation and relief. A minute or so later, she brings him a slice of apple pie and a cup of coffee. Erning is flushed with accomplishment.

After a week of going to the diner, having the waitress accost him with "Whaddya want?" and eating apple pie and drinking coffee, Erning is feeling quite cosmopolitan. Before Cousin Bobby leaves for the hospital, Erning tells him: "Pinsan, saw.a.n.g sawa na'ko sa affle fie end copee" (Cousin, I'm tired of apple pie and coffee). So Bobby tells him to order a "Cheeseburger, medium rare, with a large c.o.ke, no ice." He's very specific about ordering no ice, to get more refres.h.i.+ng beverage for his money. Erning gamely practices his new English phrase in front of the mirror. "Chisborger, midyum rayr, end large c.o.k, no iys." He practices all morning: "Chisborger, midyum rayr, end large c.o.k, no iys." When lunchtime comes around, he makes his way to the diner. Under his breath, he turns the phrase into a jolly song. "Chisborger, midyum rayr, end large c.o.k, no iys."

Erning sees the waitress come toward his table. He holds his breath. "h.e.l.lo again, honey," the waitress tells him, unexpectedly. "What can I get you?"

Erning blurts out: "Affle fie copee! Affle fie copee!"

Beside the chess set in Crispin's study stood a large metal filing cabinet. Forcing it open, nearly cutting myself in the process, I found: a photo alb.u.m, cameras, binders filled with negatives and contact prints, boxes of a.s.sorted black-and-whites and oversaturated coloreds (artful nudes, scenes of markets and nightlife, traditional wood-and-stone Visayan manors, old friends from the Cinco Bravos debating and drinking in smoky bars, a series of stark duotones of the annual flagellants and crucifixions in Pampanga).

Nation, we must consider deeply: Isn't the President justified in his attempt to extend his tenure? He is, after all, forgoing a comfortable retirement for the good of the country. In 1998, when the Supreme Court upheld his bid to run an extra term (validating his argument that the s.h.i.+ft from V.P. to President was thrust upon him-we can recall him as "reluctant but ready"), the public protestations were legally repudiated. And what followed were years of stability. Now is little different. And still the opposition wrap themselves in the banner of democracy. Salvos of accusations are omnipresent in any presidency (people die, policies falter, thieves will steal until they are caught) and a parliament of the streets undermines the fabric of our const.i.tutional republic. As his motto goes: Don't change horses in midstream! Full speed ahead, often, is the bravest option, even if not the perfect one. For in democratic politics, there can be no perfection.

-from an editorial in The Philippine Sun The Philippine Sun, December 2, 2002 *

Salvador's father's father was the son of Capitan Cristobal Salvador de Veracruz, a Spanish garrison officer who emigrated to the Philippines from Alburquerque in the province of Badajoz, in the region of Extremadura-an area from which came many great Spanish explorers, including Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizarro, Pedro de Alvarado, and Pedro de Valdivia. (The Capitan's own father was the famous Extremaduran matador El Narciso Splendido, mortally gored in Ronda in 1846.) A near-fatal bout with pneumonia on the journey to Las Islas Filipinas in 1860 left the twenty-five-year-old Capitan with a phobia of extended sea voyages. He would never return to his homeland.

After a brief posting at Fort Santiago in Intramuros, the walled city of Manila, the Capitan was transferred to duties on Negros Island, a position almost certainly more desirable to a soldier with agricultural roots. In 1865, after being discharged from active service following a crushed t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e inflicted during a riding mishap, the Capitan quickly married a local mestiza beauty named Severina "Stevie" Moreno, whose American mother had emigrated to the Visayas from Brookline, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1849, after marrying the globetrotting Catalan-born Visayan s.h.i.+pping magnate Patricio Moreno i Monzo.

The Capitan and his young bride settled easily into the privileged life of the new Spanish gentry. In 1868, they had a son, whom they named, after their respective fathers, Cristobal Narciso Patricio Salvador. They nicknamed him Cristo. In the succeeding years they also had a daughter, Paz Isabel. The frugal Capitan invested his savings and officer's pension in a textile factory and a farm for cattle, and they both yielded a modest fortune. In the 1870s, when fabric imported from Manchester flooded the market and killed the thriving Iloilo textile industry, the Capitan stubbornly held on, giving up his looms in 1874, rather too belatedly. He then devoted himself wholly to his small holdings of land across the Guimaras Strait, breeding, for stud, bulls of the highest quality.

Some years after young Cristo left for Madrid to join his peers in receiving an education, the Capitan faded into a historical footnote, hacked to death by his own drovers during an uprising in 1894; his wife and daughter succ.u.mbed to wounds and infection some weeks after. The three were buried in the nearby San Sebastian Cathedral (the coral-stone church their contributions helped build). Cristo did not arrive from Europe in time for their funeral. Their pa.s.sing bequeathed him land and respect. He was then all alone in a new life, except for a dark family secret, of which everyone in good society knew.

-from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador: Crispin Salvador: Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco *

Dominador's face is fierce. His teeth, filed into points, make him look like a wolf. Antonio points and tells him: "Ay, punyeta! Look behind you!" Dominador just laughs. "The oldest trick in the book," he says. Antonio replies: "Not in this book," then jumps off the overpa.s.s and into the water. When Antonio surfaces, he sees eight policemen chasing Dominador. His nemesis, however, is surprisingly quick for a man of his bulk. "I'll get him in a following chapter," Antonio mutters before diving, lest the fuzz spot him.

-from Manila Noir Manila Noir (page 58), by Crispin Salvador (page 58), by Crispin Salvador *

I guess what I miss most about Madison is our unique breed of pa.s.sion.

We shared the daily papers religiously. Debated politics. Recycled. Always bought a little something-a Gray's Papaya hot dog, a hot cup of joe-for the b.u.ms panhandling on the cold sidewalks. We even boycotted China. We were among the first of everyone we knew to do so. After much debate, we'd reached the consensus not to shop at 99-cent stores; morality, Madison had said, comes at a price. We weren't going to watch the Beijing Olympics, either-a plan she'd hatched for an event still years in the future. Not even the opening or closing ceremonies, which was something that really bothered me; won't it be enough to hurt the sponsors by turning off the TV during the ads? What about the deserving athletes? I complained, on several occasions, about friends and colleagues who did business in China; Madison, quiet, let me speak, exploding only once, in the host's guest bathroom, and accusing me of referring to her ex-boyfriend, a rich Chinese-American real-estate developer now based in Shanghai. Together, however, Madison and I moaned about how CNN had stopped calling it Communist China, except during negative news stories about lost American jobs or consumer safety violations. At parties I'd hear Madison ask people: What about Tiananmen? Falun Gong? Censors.h.i.+p? Endangered species decimated for quack medicine? I'd be on the other side of the room, saying: Tibet really should be freed, the IOC should use their leverage while they still can. The Panchen Lama is a tragic figure. Don't get me started on their backing the junta in Burma.

China: one of the many, perhaps arbitrary, causes that incited communal indignation in the two of us. Part of a list that included SUV drivers, unchecked capitalism, fur wearers, people who spit in public, and the plight of Palestinians. Obsessions that fused us together in our private spiral of frustrated, but very n.o.ble, negativity.

At the airport, two ladies in line wait to check in their golf bags: "Oh my Lord, I heard he's so handsome," says the short woman with the big hair.

"I don't believe!" says the tall one wearing fake Gucci from head to foot.

"Oh yes, like a matinee idol. Like a young Fernando V. Estregan, but with great pecs. Why can't I have security guards who look like him?"

"They say he's like a modern-day Limahong. But more of a Robin Hood! They say he made some money as an overseas worker in Saudi, came home, and invested it, but was a victim of another one of those pyramid schemes. They say he might be the one behind all the bombings. But I don't believe. He just wants to get back at the Changco couple."

"I know! Imagine? Out of love! His love made him totally loko!"

The Gucci girl retrieves from her bag one of those glitzy local celebrity magazines. She holds it up reverently. On the cover is a hazy headshot of a dark and handsome man in a blue security guard's uniform. Something in his bearing is exceedingly dignified. Something in his epaulettes and shotgun slung over his shoulder. In his badge polished to a proud s.h.i.+ne. In his unruly brush of black hair uncowed by the caps security guards are forced to wear. He looks authoritative. His eyes stare out as if he's been expecting all his life a chance at something larger than what he has.

"Oh my Lord," says Gucci girl. "Yum."

"And what a n.o.ble name! Wigberto Lakandula!"

Our curious protagonist-eyes closed as the plane takes flight for Bacolod, the thrum of the engines a gruff sedative-bows his head to the persistence of jet lag. In his dream he is typing a pa.s.sage. Or maybe someone else is typing it. He can't be sure. It's only hands that he sees. The letters collect. "You must make a choice. It will be difficult. You have to take sides. You cannot sit on the sidelines. If you do, you are a deserter. No man is an island, isthmus, atoll, continent, or hemisphere. Everything to the west is yours, everything to the east is theirs. Whatever they may say, your story is truly your own. You have a responsibility to it, the way a father has to a child. d.a.m.n your detractors, your hurt-faced family. They can't take it away from you, just because they feature in it. They lay no rightful claim. They've already laid claim to their lives. Too late! It's been done. What's yours is yours, theirs is theirs. Nothing to be done, Pozzo. You can't wait for them to die, because the dead must be respected. Truly, what epiphany will force you to a decision? Riches and fame? Fireworks? A great flood? A riot? A river aflame? Yet another death? A choice must be made. Independence or duty. Love or freedom. Poor little rich boy. A father must take credit for his child, but never a child for his father."

Cristo was not alone. His father the Capitan, a devout Catholic, had sired a child outside the marriage in the early 1860s. Though no doc.u.mentation exists, family mythology shamefully insists that the story is fact. The Capitan's illegitimate son-Cristo's half brother-became a Recollect friar, Fray Augustino Salvador, who, it was said, in turn impregnated, in the confessional, the fourteen-year-old Sita Reyes, daughter of Bacolod's roaming knife sharpener, Joselito, famous for his baritone voice that sang out beautifully as he lugged his whetstone wheel from street to street. Sita was disowned and gave birth in a hospice. When the nuns took the baby from her arms to raise him, out of sin, in Iloilo's Orphanage of San Lazaro, Sita's faculties twisted irreversibly. She was d.a.m.ned to wandering the streets of Bacolod, searching for her child and threatening to take any un-watched baby as her own, as if a character from the books of Rizal. Under the tutelage of the nuns, Sita's son grew to become Respeto Reyes, the powerful Ilonggo politician who would challenge the Capitan's own grandchild, Junior, at every turn of his career. The legend is generously helped along by Reyes himself, who successfully manufactured a cult of personality as a true Visayan patriot: an orphan, of the people, against the Spanish-descended hegemony, beyond the reach of Americans. Among the Salvadors, however, the story was always avoided and, when mentioned, met with wry and condescending smiles. Junior, however, was more vehement: whenever faced with the gossip, he liked to declare, "The Salvador family would never breed a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

-from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador: Crispin Salvador: Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco *

Overheard in the airplane: "... and of course, due to that, they're in real trouble," one man says behind me. "You can cover up your environmental sins locally. But as soon as the world media gets involved, the government gets egg on its face."

"Tell it to the marines!" says the other man. "Nothing will come of it, believe you me. Remember when they blew up their asbestos plant? Acquittal! The judge even ordered the insurance company to pay."

"But how can there be no consequences now now? There was a front-page story in the Asian edition of Time Time magazine. And those World Warden environmentalists are stirring trouble." magazine. And those World Warden environmentalists are stirring trouble."

"Nothing will come of it. Remember '91? PhilFirst Timber's illegal logging and the landslide in Ormoc? More than two thousand dead. What happened then? Scot-free! Changco even made made money. As he said at the last Elite Club meeting-" money. As he said at the last Elite Club meeting-"

"I wasn't there. I had business in Hong Kong. You should have seen her. Almost six feet tall, Russian blondie. Pink nipples, Jake! Pink. No bigger than a peso coin-"

"At the Elite Club, Dingdong tells the audience: the Chinese character for crisis is the same one for opportunity."

"I don't read Chinese."

"Well, it's true. I told him after, 'D.D., that may be so, but in Filipino there's only one word for success: cashmoney.' We had a good laugh at that one. I mean, come on: two thousandplus washed into the sea. What happened to D.D.? PhilFirst Funerals made a killing-"

"Haha!"

"PhilFirst Construction developed those pastel houses. PhilFirst Homes sold them. PhilFirst Holdings posted record profits that quarter. Now there's a PhilFirst SuperMall, where the bodies were piled."

"You know the company slogan. 'There's no stopping progress.'"

"Go ahead. Sell your stock. To me! D.D. has Estregan's ear."

"More like his b.a.l.l.s. But what about when Bansamoro has Estregan's head? I'll bet PhilFirst will slump."

"Game! A weekend at Tagaytay Highlands. We'll stay in my chalet and play two rounds. Then have a Kobe steak dinner. We'll even open the Petrus."

"And if you win?"

"We take your chopper to your beach house. You bring the girls. But not that one with the bleached hair. I prefer the charming student from AMA. We'll help pay her tuition."

I had lunch at La Perle d'Bacolod City. Spent time at a lonely Internet cafe. Still no response from I even went through my spam in box, but found only the typical c.r.a.p. Then I went and sat under a tree in the Public Plaza while studying my Lonely Planet Lonely Planet guidebook. guidebook.

I didn't have to look hard to recognize the city of Crispin's early stories: the groves of ancient acacias with wide branches, the grand old bishop's palace and San Sebastian Cathedral, the stone gazebo with spires and beveled dedications to Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn-crumbling landmarks standing valiantly among belching vehicles, spitting pedestrians in Fubu sleeveless s.h.i.+rts, signs hawking cell-phone credits, saccharine radio hits remixed to techno beats, the flashy lights of Lupas Landcorp's Bacolod Plaza Mall. The neocla.s.sical Provincial Capitol building-now the Sugar Museum-was where Crispin used to play on the steps while waiting for his father, under the watchful eyes of Gorio, the equestrian-booted and capped chauffeur. It now houses an array of sugar plantation artifacts and a bequeathed toy collection.