John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“We’re sending you into the field,” Scipio told him in Cavite. “Very soon, when we are in power, the people will want their leaders to be men who bore arms against the Spaniards, men of action.” Scipio, never a weapon in his hand, has moved up in the hierarchy, though he will never tell Diosdado his official title.

Diosdado had expected to rejoin the Supremo’s staff, Pepito Leyba at one side of their diminutive leader and himself at the other, translating, rewriting proclamations in a more confident Spanish, offering his opinion when asked. He had a detailed scenario worked out in which Ninfa Benavides, looking up at him contritely in the rags of one of her fabulous gowns, begged for his intercession to save her collaborationist father from the wrath of the Philippine Republic. She was so very grateful—

“This is because of my accent,” he said to Scipio at the time, hurt. “Because I’m not a Tagalo, much less a Caviteño.”

His friend did not deny it. “This will be good for you,” he shrugged. “Believe me. Just avoid being shot.”

Diosdado has no training, of course, but there doesn’t seem to be much to it. Setting a good example, being a model of character for the men, explaining the importance of doing one’s duty and not leaving in the middle of an engagement to deal with problems at home. The uniform — he had the foresight to have a pair made in Hongkong before he left — does half the job. When he caught the men looting the hacienda , Diosdado made them replace everything that was not of immediate use in the military campaign, and put Sargento Ramos in charge of making certain the goods taken were shared equally.

“We are soldiers of the Filipino Republic,” he reminds them constantly, “not a gang of tulisanes .”

There is only an alferez under a smaller, improvised white flag on the other side of the breastworks.

“My comandante wishes to hear your terms,” he tells them.

“You will leave your arms and ammunition stacked, neatly, in the church,” says Diosdado. “You will form ranks and march out fifty yards on the road to San Fernando and halt. There I will accept your surrender.”

“Stacked neatly,” echoes Bayani, mocking, and Diosdado shoots him a look.

“And there will be no reprisals?”

“You will be treated with the consideration due to fellow soldiers.”

The alferez looks uneasily to Bayani, then back to Diosdado.

“We are starving.”

Diosdado nods. He wanted to ask the men to save some of the merienda , but realized it would never be enough to feed the garrison.

“There is food in Malolos,” he says. “You will be taken there to join your defeated comrades.”

He has no idea if there is sufficient food for them in Malolos, only that that is where prisoners are to be sent. The alferez nods and offers him a salute. “I will inform my comandante .”

“There is no reason to make them feel ashamed,” he says to the sargento on their way back to the men.

“Of course not. We may shoot them, cut their throats, hack them to bits, but we wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.”

The ideal is to keep the best of the Spanish — learning, culture, a certain code of honorable behavior — and jettison all that is base and hypocritical. The friars will have to go, of course, though the Jesuits might be allowed to remain if their political inclinations can be discouraged. The native clergy will do well in the villages, but for the ilustrado class a more elevated approach to Heaven will be required. Sadly, there are aspects of the Filipino temperament, shortcomings, brought into sharp relief by a character like this Bayani—

The Spanish begin to come out of the plaza. They are trying to stay in ranks, but the men sent ahead to make a gap in the breastworks are weak and struggle with the spiky mass of aroma bush and a few men collapse while they are waiting. It is thirst, really, Diosdado knows, no well dug within the garrison’s fortifications and his own people tearing down the bamboo acueducto that fed the town from the hillside stream, and finally the alferez appears beside a tall, emaciated comandante , leading the men who can walk, maybe sixty of them, out onto the San Fernando road. Before they left for this outpost, no doubt, these soldiers knelt in their ranks before the Arzobispo in Manila, receiving his blessing and swearing before God that they would never surrender the sacred banner of their nation. Bayani sends two squads of the men who have rifles to quickly flank them, worried about their reaction when they discover how few of their tormentors are present. Diosdado steps up to the tall officer, who salutes him.

“I am Comandante Ramón Asturias y Famy,” he says. “We are at your mercy.”

“We will take you first to the stream,” Diosdado tells him. “And then on to Malolos. Are there wounded left behind?”

“Perhaps a dozen. Sick, not wounded.” The officer looks Diosdado over. He is glad that the uniform fits him well, that he has managed to keep it nearly spotless during the siege. “May I inquire about your training?” asks the comandante .

It seems a strange, if not presumptuous question for a prisoner of war to put forth. Diosdado wonders if he should reveal his inexperience, even to a man unlikely to resume arms against the Cause. Filipino forces will be at the outskirts of Manila soon, circling the final gem of the crown, and the troops inside the Walled City must be made to believe they are outmanned, outgunned, outgeneraled—

“I believe he is very well trained in philosophy,” Bayani interjects, an innocent look on his face, “with an interest in the Classics.”

It is cruel, yes, and Diosdado wonders how he knows. He has not spoken to anyone in the platoon of his education. Asturias y Famy is weeping.

“A university boy,” he says, tears making channels in the grime on his cheeks. The Spaniards have not bathed for a week. “I am surrendering to a fucking university boy.”

After the swim they stop at the Iolani Palace for a picnic. President Dole came aboard looking like Father Christmas with his long white beard and invited the whole sorry bunch of them from the China— Colorado Volunteers and the 8th Infantry and the Utah Battery and the engineers and the hospital people, everybody but the damn mascot goat — and now they’re breathing air heavy with the smell of flowers and spread out at long, long tables set on the grass under the trees with plates and utensils and cloth napkins for what they call a loo-wow. Hod still has water trapped in his ears from the surf, the bottoms of his feet scraped by coral. There were Kanakas riding the waves in on their wooden boards, men and women wearing almost nothing at all, but they disappeared quick once the beach was mobbed by the sickly-skinned, boat-dopey soldiers, peeling their uniforms off to give themselves up to the sea water. Only Big Ten chose not to go in, sitting on the shore with all his uniform still on, even his boots.

“My people will row on top of the water all day and all night,” he says, “but swimming is for fishes.”

Hod thinks it’s so the others won’t see how dark he is all over.

The food is hard to believe and just keeps coming. The local Americans, celebrating the Annexation Bill just passed in Congress, have roasted a whole herd of pigs down in holes in the ground, serving up steaming chunks from them wrapped in palm leaves, and then there are crabs and fish and chickens and yams and huge sweet potatoes and pineapples that never been in a can and bread and cocoanut milk and the best coffee Hod has ever tasted and dates and cocoanut pudding and something called alligator pears that Big Ten at first tries to eat without peeling the hide off. Inside they are light green and creamy and nutty tasting and you eat them with Worcestershire sauce. Everybody eats twice as much as they can hold, the food on the trip so far just pitiful, salthorse and sea biscuit, and no reason to think it will improve for the rest of the way. Three days into the voyage they let some carrier pigeons loose up top, supposed to fly with their messages back to San Francisco.