John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“This is one baryo ,” he shouts gleefully, “that the Americans will not get to destroy. Sígame, hermano! ”

Bayani hurls his torches into the hottest part of the fire blowing toward them, then turns and strides again into the black smoke. Diosdado fights the urge to shout an order to him, any order, before holstering his pistol and hurrying after.

He holds his breath and runs till they fall out of the smoke, coughing, eyes streaming with tears, into what is left of the mercado. Only charred bamboo uprights are left where the stalls once stood — shops gutted and roofless, a pile of cocoanuts blackened and cracked and oozing, chickens crisped in a cage no longer hanging, bundles dropped by the fleeing residents burst open and littering the street. Diosdado has been to Tondo only once when it wasn’t burning, a long drunken night in a rented calesa with Scipio and Hilario Ibañez from Santo Tomás, Hilario who wanted to achieve in epic verse what Dr. Rizal had in prose, improvising stanzas about the true soul of the nation residing in this hodgepodge of narrow, blighted streets along the fetid Canal de la Reina as its residents sullenly spit and muttered and moved aside to let their carriage pass. Bayani seems to know it, though, leading Diosdado at a trot through the smoldering maze till they reach the swampland to the north of the colonia , flattening themselves in the cogon grass to let a platoon of fire-addled yanquis , volunteers by their uniform, hustle by. They catch their breath, then struggle wordlessly through the bamboo thickets and mires and tangling brush, fat embers blown over their heads and settling in the tops of the cabonegro palms to glow like fireflies. They hear noises to the left, Bayani pausing to call in Tagalog and answered with a curse. It is Kalaw and Rafi Agapito, blackened with soot, and the four of them continue for an hour before anyone speaks.

“Did you see any of the others?” Diosdado asks when they stop to rest, Bayani scouting ahead.

“Once or twice in the fire,” says Kalaw. “There were so many people running. And I saw the sargento.” He lowers his voice as if Bayani might be near. “He was in front of a liquor warehouse he set fire to.”

“Drinking.”

Kalaw shrugs. “It would be a sin to let it all go to waste.”

“I saw Ninong Carangal get shot.” Agapito has a sandal off, poking at his bleeding foot. The bamboo poles towering over their heads knock together in the early-morning breeze, and there is distant gunfire. “He ran out with an ax to cut the fire hose and the Americans saw him and shot him dead.”

Sargento Bayani reappears and squats by them, his manner completely sober now, calculating. “Our battalion is just ahead at Balintawak, but there’s trouble.”

“ Yanquis ?” asks Agapito, wincing as he pulls his sandal back on.

“Worse. Filipinos.”

They step out of the bamboo forest to find four companies of Caviteños seated on the ground by the side of the road, disarmed and under guard, while Colonel Román tries to convince General Luna it is a poor idea to fire a bullet into the skull of their capitán.

“He’ll be punished, he’ll be made an example,” says Paco Román, his long criollo face tight with apprehension, speaking as calmly as possible. “But not here, General, please. Not now.”

Luna’s men, rifles leveled at the Caviteños on four sides, look more frightened than the sitting troops. Diosdado and his survivors halt a few yards away, Kalaw and Rafi Agapito looking from officer to officer with anxious incomprehension as the Ilocano general and the kneeling capitán argue in Spanish.

“There is a gap in our line of attack,” says Luna, spitting his words. “I need to reinforce it.”

“My men will go nowhere unless I lead them,” says Capitán Janolino, so Spanish-looking his friends call him Pedrong Kastila, his voice strained but his gaze steady.

“I’ll have them all shot!”

“Whatever you do,” says Janolino, “it is not as my commanding officer.”

There is a battle raging to the west of them, rifle fire steady and deep from the Springfields of the yanquis , higher and more ragged from the British Mitfords and captured Mausers of their own troops, and suddenly the whistle of shells overhead and the solid whump! as they reach their killing ground in the Binondo cemetery.

Luna gives the capitán’s head a final shove with his pistol and then lowers it to his side. Luna stood firm throughout the day at Caloocan, exposed to the murderous fire, running forward to protect the wounded till they could be carried away, coolly sighting and firing his pistol as if it was one of his target-shooting exhibitions. It was thrilling to fight beside such a leader, and then, as the church was shelled to ruins and the rice fields plowed with explosions and the yanqui horde advanced, it was suicidal — General Luna determined to fight to his death and expecting the same of the men around him.

“Take a company,” he barks to Colonel Román, “and march these traitors to Malolos.”

He turns then, and there is fury in his eyes as he discovers the torch-men.

“Who are you people?”

Diosdado salutes. “Incendiary squad , mi general . One dead, seven unaccounted for.”

“Tondo?”

“Tondo is burning. Santa Cruz and San Nicolas are burning.”

“There are two hundred of our people entrenched by the bridge, waiting for the yanquis ,” adds Sergeant Bayani. “And all the chinos have gone to hide in their embassy.”

Luna grunts. Behind him one hundred forty scowling Caviteños are rousted to their feet and herded into formation.

“Grab a weapon and join us,” orders the general, jerking his head toward the stacks of rifles Janolino’s companies are leaving behind. “There are plenty to choose from.”

The officer walks rather casually before the others. He doesn’t look Spanish. They march out of the trees, parallel to the abandoned building, till the Spaniard gestures and the prisoners, four of them, are halted and told to face the stone wall. The prisoners are all dark-skinned men, in motley combinations of clothing. Insurgents. The officer draws his sword as the firing squad, four soldiers, fix their man in place with a hand on the left shoulder, then step back five paces. The officer runs across in front of them and stands parallel to their row, then brings his sword down. A crackling volley from the four rifles — smoke fills the air, and the insurgents drop to the ground.

Harry looks over to Mr. Heise, who nods and steps away from the Beast.

“You can get up now!” Harry calls, and the sprawled insurgents roll slowly to their knees, grinning at each other and at their executioners.

“That’s it for today,” says Mr. Heise to Harry. “We can pull the film back at the shop.”

Harry signals to a pair of the colored boys and they come trotting over from the wall, swatting dust off their clothes.

“I hold my breaf just like you tole me to,” says Zeke, smiling.

“You looked perfect, all of you.” Harry nods to the wagon. “Time to pack the instrument up.”

He supervises as the boys lift the heavy camera on the carry-boards they have rigged up and stagger back to hoist it onto the wagon bed. Stempl back at the shop is the one who started calling it the Beast, though never if the Wizard is close enough to read their lips. No wonder that Paley’s mission to Cuba was a fiasco. With the camera weighing as much and requiring far more maintenance than a field-artillery piece he managed only a few shots of swimming mules and one scene of a very small horse suffering under the enormous General Shafter before rain fouled the apparatus and tropical disease forced his return.