Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco

Author:Miguel Syjuco
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Literary, Murder, Filipino, Mystery & Detective, English Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors, Family Life, Fiction, Fiction - General, Murder - Investigation, Investigation, Experimental fiction, Authors, General, Domestic fiction
ISBN: 9780374174781
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-04-27T08:31:03.298000+00:00

6

Lena, Narcisito, our parents, and I returned to Manila from Bacolod to find a vision of the week after Armageddon. Our house was one of the few left standing on our street. Many of our neighbors had been killed. Every family was diminished by at least one. In all, an estimated one hundred thousand civilians died in the liberation of the city.

Parting this sea of sadness one morning, in rode Tito Jason, honking, victoriously, the horn of a battered jeep. He was alive! So very alive. He had changed since that New Year’s Eve when he disappeared suddenly. His shiny sidearm, his skin glowing like new leather, his voice loud and happy, were defiance itself among all the death. Many a night I would sit with him after dinner as he relished his Camels on the veranda, in retreat from the family noise inside to which he was no longer accustomed. He told me stories of life as a guerrilla. My favorite was how during the liberation of the city he had served as a guide to the Second Battalion of the U.S. 148th Infantry Regiment, and they happened upon the buildings of the Balintawak Brewing Company. My uncle laughed until he was almost crying when he recounted how he and the others had swum and danced in the knee-high beer, filling their canteens and helmets with the ice-cold stuff that flowed freely from vats the retreating Japs had sabotaged. If he was in a good mood, Tito Jason would show me his bullet-wound scars shaped like war medals. When I asked the right questions, he shared with me his ideas for what makes a man good and a good man better. It was from him that I first learned about communist ideals. I was nearly ten and fancied myself close to manhood. I had never heard anything like what he had to say.

He later returned to the jungle to fight again with the Huk army, this time against a different enemy than the Japanese—the bourgeoisie that the departing Americans had left in power. And despite his second sudden departure, I did not feel abandoned. Tito Jason was my hero. My young imagination certainly turned him into far more than he ever was, but perhaps such things do not matter. When news came that he was shot by government forces in an ambush in Tarlac, my grief at his martyr’s death enshrined him as my onyx idol. I’ve always wondered if my father knew about the attack beforehand.

—from Autoplagiarist (page 1088), by Crispin Salvador

*

Cousin Bobby was cleared of all wrongdoing in the rape case, but after several brushes with the law he now finds himself in court again. This time for importing pirated adult DVDs.

Judge: “It’s frustrating. Two years later and here we are, together again in this courtroom?!”

Erning, seated behind his cousin, jumps to his feet: “Objection, your honor! Mr. Judge, is not my cousin’s fault you have not been promoted!”

*

Sadie goes to her room to freshen up and I use the guest bathroom downstairs.

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