For society-page journalists, they looked a little rough. They were thugs in black rayon pants and short-sleeve white shirts, no oily manners, no attention to fashion that one associated with columnists devoted to showcasing the lifestyles of the rich. Is this my memory now playing tricks on me? Was the one wearing dark sunglasses really scoping out the place? Or were they just journalists, bored with Gumboc away, and needing to fill the pages with something: the ambitious architecture of my cousin’s house or perhaps the excesses of the upper classes, people who could afford not only one burial for their departed loved ones but as many as they felt like, while the poor of Manila’s crisis of grief was quickly followed by another: the problem of how to pay for the funeral of their gunned-down dead.

XIII

XIII

I had moved a chair up to the second floor of my aunt’s house and set it on the balcony because here I could catch a breeze and smoke—and also get my texts. It was the most peaceful place in the house. The ghost of my tito Iñigo kept the servants away, and even his namesake would not cross the room to the balcony but rather would stand on the threshold, quivering from his nose to the tip of his tail before retreating down the stairs. I was fine with my uncle’s company, though, because even if he was lurking by the mirror, he had little to say. From my perch above New Manila, I could track the endless stream of shouting vendors that sold fresh tofu, ice cream, balut, and pan de sal. The rag dealers had their own call, as did those looking for old bottles and newspapers. It all seemed part of one big song, occasionally joined by a crowing rooster or a backfiring tricycle or the grind and clang of my aunt’s gate being opened and shut. From here, I could see it all.

I was leafing through Carl William Seidenadel’s seminal work, The First Grammar of the Language Spoken by the Bontoc Igorot. The book was a record of Bontoc speakers telling stories, with a literal transcript that was awkward but captured the voice of the long-ago storyteller. This account was of the Battle of Caloocan and covered how the largely Tagalog-speaking insurrectos had tricked the Bontoc into joining the fight, telling them that they were to perform as dancers in Manila. But the charade was soon exposed, the Bontoc unarmed, underfed, and in the line of fire.

At the Battle of Caloocan, the Americans had held steady, knowing that if they waited, the Filipinos would summon all the troops they could from wherever they might find them, including Bontoc. After that, conveniently assembled, the Filipinos would be decisively crushed in one swift maneuver.