John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

Somebody has to shovel the coal. To feed the engine. Mr. Clawson said as much when he left for the Thalian with the others. “Drew,” he said, “you got to mind the fire while we gone.”

Milsap perches on his stool setting type as Colonel Waddell speaks in the great Hall and the others rally outside. He can hear the Red Shirts through the window as his fingers fly over the keyboard, shouting and singing and shooting off their pistols, celebrating tomorrow’s great victory. When he ducked his head out before, he could see flaming barrels of tar on the street corner, could smell sweet pork cooking. But somebody has to set the front page of the Messenger , Special Morning Election Edition, somebody has to ensure that the lightning bolt of truth, hurled before a yearning public, will be properly spelled and spaced.

Milsap has filled the hoppers with italics, and the words quicken his heart as they fall into line—

Rise ye sons of Carolina!

The clandestine pamphleteers of the Revolution must have felt this way, peeling Tom Paine’s seditious manifesto off the blocks—

Proud Caucasians one and all;

Be not deaf to love’s appealing—

Hear your wives and daughters call;

That Milsap has neither wife nor daughter does not lessen the chill that rises up his back as he commits the phrases to metal—

See their blanched and anxious faces

Note their frail but lovely forms;

Slender, pale girls with arms thin as broomsticks, eyes pleading as they submit, horrified as they stare the Nameless Crime in its brutal visage, breasts heaving, thrilled—

No. No. Horrified. Milsap strikes the keys and the matrices rattle down the slides, lining up like soldiers for a volley—

Rise, defend their spotless virtue

With your strong and manly arms!

Diosdado is here because of the uniform. The one that has not been torn or stained in his few desultory engagements with the disheartened Spanish, nor in the weeks of guiding his mongrel company from post to post facing the American defenses north of the Pasig.

“If you’ve still got a decent uniform,” said Scipio, passing close to the front in white linen and straw boater, “I can get you on for the Congress.”

So he stands here at attention beneath a bamboo arch, borrowed sword raised in salute to the delegates as they file past from the train station nearly a mile away. It is all nipa in Malolos, roof panels woven here sold throughout the island, nipa huts strung along either side of the narrow main road, lined now with excited citizens eager to greet and evaluate their representatives.

These great men, perspiring in full evening dress, pause now and then to lift their silk top hats and acknowledge the throng, wiping their brows with dazzling handkerchiefs. There are not nearly enough carriages. The Banda Pasig, up ahead at the massive stone church, are pumping out Alerta Katipunan! , though that old secret society of workers and peasants, wellspring of the people’s revolution, has recently been dissolved by General Aguinaldo.

The entire Philippines is now the only Katipunan , read his decree, published in both Spanish and Tagalog, the real Katipunan, where all are united in saving the Mother Country from the depths of slavery .

A cunning piece of diplomacy, thinks Diosdado, standing at attention, eyes forward, sweat rolling down his face. Certainly none of these gentlemen parading before him were in the original organization, their cédulas torn with Bonifacio’s at Pugad Lawin, nor did they rise up valiantly in ’96 to battle the oppressors. Most have not been elected by the regions they represent, regions they may never have set foot in, but have been appointed by the Supremo to impress the yanquis and the ruling powers of Europe, reassuring them that the new republic will be administered by educated men, men of means and culture.

Here, riding in an open calesa , is the lawyer Pedro Paterno, who after his role in brokering the truce of Biak na Bato petitioned his well-connected Spanish supporters to have himself made “at least a Duke” of Castile, with the position “valued in dollars so that the common Filipino will not hold it in contempt.” Paterno who made his best efforts to rally those Filipinos to the cause of Spain, certainly his Mother Country, when the Americans declared war on her.

And here is Don Felipe Calderón y Roca, grandson of a Spanish friar, who balked at recognizing the Revolutionary Government and decries those who “cater to the ignorant masses” who have shed their blood to make this day possible, with Buencamino just behind him, only a month ago jailed for intriguing with the Spaniards, now strolling at the head of a gaggle of his minions.

One of whom is Scipio Castillero.

Scipio, in a swallowtail coat he never wore to the theater, favors Diosdado with his customary smirk and a discrete nod as he passes, and now the sun is almost unbearable, the dust stirred up by this herd of strolling dignitaries thick in his nose, the Banda Pasig, playing an overwrought version of Jocelynang Baliwag , perceptibly out of tune.

Two local kasamas have camped behind him, men in their forties who look sixty, missing teeth and, in the case of the taller, several fingers.

“So who are they,” asks the shorter, whose name is Eulalio, “these men in the tall hats?”

“ Ilustrados ,” replies Zacharias of the severed digits. “Men who know things.”

“And what do they know?”

“For one thing,” Zacharias states confidently, “they can speak kastila .”

“But if we have defeated the kastila themselves, if they are banished to their home across the seas, why would we speak their language?”

“Because it is the language of learning,” explains the taller man. “When Padre Fulgencio stole the last five hectares of field from you, in what language did he read the legal decree?”

“ Kastila ,” Eulalio concedes.

“And when he gives his sermon to admonish us on Sunday, what does he speak?”

“ Kastila , again. After speaking that other one for Mass.”

“That is called Latin. The language God uses to speak to His angels.”

“I’ve never understood why the padre does this before us, we who are no angels,” says Eulalio, “when he can speak our language passably well.”

“To remind you of your ignorance,” Zacharias explains. “And to take advantage of you. What is the point of knowledge if you can’t use it to prevail over others? Look at this one—”

It is the fiery Ilocano newspaperman Antonio Luna, tricked out in a general’s regalia, strutting down the center of the road at the side of Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera. A strange and symbolic pair, thinks Diosdado, though comrades from their wild indios bravos days in Paris and Madrid — Luna’s brother Juan, the celebrated painter, very pointedly shot his wife and mother-in-law, Pardo de Tavera’s sister and mother, to death in a jealous rage.

“There are only ten, maybe a dozen families who matter in this country,” Scipio likes to say, “eternally bound by blood and commerce.”

The last of the pedestrian delegates pass. The kasamas and many of the other spectators drift toward the Barasoain Church. Diosdado holds his pose till his arms begin to tremble, then eases the sun-heated blade back into its scabbard and allows himself to look around.

The honor guard is mostly infantrymen, privates favored with footwear and intact rayadillo uniforms, troops who no doubt fought for the Spanish at some point, with junior officers like himself spaced at the bamboo arches for decoration. Capitán Janolino, charged with the detail, hurries down the line with an aide.