John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“A well-placed infernal device,” says Hilario Ibañez, eyeing a phalanx of Spaniards talking rather more loudly than the orchestra within, “would do the nation a great deal of good.” Hilario is a poet and given to morbid flights of imagination.

Diosdado shakes his head. “And destroy the best along with the worst?”

He is careful to always seem the conciliator in public, the gradualist in questions of politics. A debater who can argue either side of a question, moderate in opinion and passion. It is a role he is beginning to despise.

Kokoy flicks the butt of his cigarette to the ground, sighs wearily. “We’re needed inside, gentlemen.”

They move, careful to maintain an air of indifference, to the back of the balcony where the smoke from the oil lamps in the chandeliers collects, with the scattered rainbow of young beauties below them and time for a quick flurry of tsismis concerning the romantic lives of the performers, the Italians (or the French, for that matter) eugenically destined for scandal, with the conduttore turning to count empty seats and the Manila fire department, opera lovers all, standing at the top of the main aisle, doors flung open behind them with the hose in hand and ready for service. The ushers shoo the little street girls selling roses and gardenias out of the building and the din of Filipino society in full flower begins to abate and then there is applause as the curtain is drawn and the first notes cut the air. Diosdado smiles to himself, thinking of how he loves it all, loves it as only a boy raised on cockfights and the occasional scabrous traveling puppet show can, a haciendero ’s son from the wild coast of Zambales who spent his first year in the great city pretending he had seen it all, that he was not impressed, that he, provincial imposter, belonged there. And usually at this point, lights dimmed to hide him from his cohorts, he would let his guard down and allow the singers to carry him to Paris or Thessaly or ancient Egypt.

Tonight it is the Tell , in a mercifully abridged version, the audience silenced immediately by the stirring overture, lederhosen and dirndls barely able to disguise the uncomfortable parallels with the present situation — a despotic government, an insurrection in the bundoks , blood feuds complicating the political situation, love and honor—

But tonight the music is only background to his own drama.

“They want you,” said Scipio.

This in the Jesuit library, with the late-day sun slanting through the windows and the other colegios absorbed, unsuspecting, in their texts. Diosdado felt the building move a little, as it did during the medium-sized tremors common within the Intramuros.

“Why now?”

Scipio smiled. “Because you’re the best liar in Manila.”

He had hoped they would need his talents as a linguist. Zambal, Tagalog, Spanish, Latin, English from his year in Hongkong, even a bit of Cantonese, all these valuable as the revolt proceeded through its stages. But lying—

“They want me to be a spy?”

“For now. We each serve in our own way.”

Diosdado had guessed for some time that his best friend was a member of the Katipunan, but Scipio would never admit it. “ I am a patriot ,” he would say, lifting an eyebrow, whenever Diosdado asked to be sponsored into the Brotherhood, “ but not a suicide .”

“What do I do?”

“Tonight at the Zorilla,” said Scipio, smiling, and then was gone.

But at intermission, the apple successfully bolted from son Walter’s head and Tell imprisoned by the haughty Gessler, Scipio has still not appeared. Diosdado shuffles downstairs in the throng, shoulder to shoulder with a butcher of a militar , a uniformed capitán de cazadores whistling the rousing call to arms that closed the first act.

“ Elíxer para el alma ,” says the Spaniard, smiling and catching his eye, and Diosdado muses that if the oppressors do in fact have souls, then music must be good for them.

He follows the university boys across the street for buñuelos and chocolate and talk of music, theater, women, all the things young irresponsible students should be preoccupied with, the militares at the next table laughing a little too loudly as always and both groups pretending to ignore the fact that there is a revolution in progress not so far from Manila, that in a few months, a year at the most, they may be trying to kill those other hijos de puta .

“I wonder how many will stay, after it is done?” says Kokoy, careful as always to remain vague, in public places, about the exact nature of it.

“The ones from Madrid or Barcelona will go home,” says Epifánio Cojuanco, who has spent a year studying piano in Spain. “But some of those places, in the bleak mountains — why would you bother?”

“They’ll have to give up their privileges, of course.” This from Kokoy, who has a manservant who waits outside the classroom door in case his dueño should desire anything.

“I long for the day,” says Hilario Ibañez. “To breathe our own sweet air again, to walk unburdened on our own fertile soil, among free men.”

They can rhapsodize about independence for hours, his friends, but Kokoy is too rich and Epifánio too timid and Hilario a poet doomed to unwittingly plagiarize Dr. Rizal’s literary work, from which he no doubt conjured the image of the infernal machine, for the rest of his days. And he, Diosdado Concepción, is still waiting for the call—

“To a better day,” says Epifánio, and they touch their cups together. It is Scipio’s favorite toast, Scipio who has not yet appeared, most often invoked at a café table like this one, surrounded by Spanish soldiers, looking like any other group of Filipino dandies in white suits and straw skimmers. “ A un día mejor! ” Scipio will say, raising his glass, and then down the throat, all of them smiling with their secret knowledge.

Until this afternoon it has seemed only naughty.

The bell sounds and they hurry back and stand just inside the doors to witness the re-entrance of the damas , their fans fluttering in a myriad of gown-matching colors, the students dizzied by passing waves of perfume, and then there is the dress they are waiting for, the dress that has the great fortune to caress the body of Ninfa Benavides, a whisper of organza the color of ripe guayaba , with a border of translucent French lace and a cameo brooch nestled between her artfully displayed twin doves of nubility.

“If the fakirs are correct and one revisits this earth in different forms,” sighs Hilario Ibañez, “I would end my life now to come back as that cameo.”

Ninfa, whose father is the Policarpio Benavides who supplies fresh beef to the Spanish army and can destroy men’s lives with a word in the proper official’s ear, whose aunt is the renowned Sister María de la Coronación de Espinas who teaches music and deportment at Santa Isabel, Ninfa carries herself like what she is, a jewel of the nation. There are so many peninsulares seeking her hand, or merely her interest, as well as the countless criollos and filipinos ilustrados , that some nights the crowd under her balcony erupts into terrible rows that warrant the militia being called to action. The rumor, for Diosdado has never been privileged to speak with her, is that she is as intelligent as her father is ruthless, and can puncture a man’s soul with a single flecha irónica. In his reveries it is Ninfa, stepping regally from her landau and catching his eye to say, with a half-secret smile, “You, campesino , belong here. And if you work hard, if you study the minds of men and learn to turn them to your will, you may some day be worthy of me.”