PHILIPPINE LITERATURE – FINALS – LESSON I ( From State of War – by: Ninotchka Rosca )

I INTRODUCTION

It was described as a political novel that recreated the diverse culture of the Philippines
through the presentation of an allegorical Philippine history. It was a narrative description
of the effects of colonialism to the Filipino’s national identity. It shows women continuing
their struggle in years of colonization against generations of rape, violence and oppression.
It also traced the ancestry of the principal characters during the Spanish and American
colonialism in the Philippines. The personal memories of the main characters were a
recollection of a “state of war” in the Philippines during Marcos’s regime that failed to
become a true revolution.

II INSTRUCTION

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to understand and appreciate the content
of the whole novel. You are given activities to answer. This is done so that you can grasp the
literary concepts better.

III LESSON PROPER

A. Presentation of the Lesson

An endless festival amidst an endless war is the central image of this novel about
the Philippines of the Marcos era, a time of brutality, treachery and betrayed passion.

B. Discussion/Explanation of the Lesson

Twelve hours after sailing from Manila, the ship dropped anchor three miles off the
island of K________, one of the thousand or so odd-shaped and odd-sized isles and islets
dotting the Central Philippine Sea. Adrian Banyaga, who had watched down define the
island with disconcerting swiftness, was roused from his contemplation of its rather
drab waterfront by a volley of laughter in the ship’s lounge. Turning from the bay windows,
he saw Eliza Hansen at one of the tables, cheerfully rolling down the sleeves of her camisa
de chino, the cotton man’s undershirt which, with blue jeans and blue sneakers, had
become casual costumes for young adults in the last two or three years. Around her, a
dozen men and women laughed, gesturing with admiration at her truly magnificent
dusky olive arms. She had just bested, it seemed, the last female to challenge her at
arm wrestling and was inordinately pleased with herself, her laughter spilling in little
bubbles from the mouth as her eyes darted among the faces about her the tip of her
tounge now and then licking her underlip. Two tables away, in an identical costume,
and with right cheek leaning on a loosely clenched fist, her elbow on the table, sat
Anna Villaverde. Adrian blinked his tired eyes. Were it not for their color, the two women
could have been twins. But where Eliza was of that rare fortuitous sienna skin, accidentally
bred by a mingling of Caucasian and Malay blood; Anna was fair, of a golden tint that
testified to an indefinable mixing of Chinese, Malay and other strange bloods. A true child
of the Philippine archipelago.

There were other differences as well. Although her reputation did not go beyond
the fifty or so top businessmen in the country. Eliza was acknowledged to be a useful
acquaintance, by virtue of a backdoor alliance with an equally obscure colonel who
control the head of state’s calendar and the traffic of documents in and out of the said
leader’s office. Anna, on the other hand, was among the powerless of the powerless,
even her daily movement subject to military audit, by virtue of certain entries in her dossier
folders at the military headquarters. Her vulnerability, Adrian thought had marked her.
Even now, as the other’s laughter and raucous words broke about her, Anna remained
quiet, her dace without expression. She merely nodded when Eliza mockingly flexing her
biceps , threw her a boastful look. She had been watchful, quiet, the whole night – a
still point in the boil of noise and mirth that constantly erupted about Eliza. She had been
that way as the ship had moved, with terrific noise, from the mouth of Manila Bay and
across an oily, black sea, while on the deck, under a giant canvas awning, the ship’s band
had tuned up into an endless stream of dance music and the passengers, rushing up from
the cabins below, had crowned and jammed every inch of the deck, their bodies swaying
to the music.

Eliza, tiring of the dancing, had indulged in one silly whim after another. For a few
hours, she had held court at one end of the dance space, a dinner napkin about the curls
of her brown, shoulder-length hair. She had been the Swami then, or “Her Royal
Swaminess,” as he’d insisted, grabbing hands and peering into the palms of men and
women, promising outrageous fates and fortunes. Anna had stood behind her, throwing
in a suggestion or two as Eliza had pretended to read this or that palm line. Not even
a smile had crossed her face. By the time Eliza had metamorphosed into Rosie and
Wrestler, both Anna and Adrian were red-eyed and wrung out by fatigue. But dutifully,
they had stayed by Eliza as she collected her inevitable retinue. By then, Adrian had given
up on seeing Anna laugh. It was his peculiar fate, he had thought, to be accompanied to the
Festival by two fairy-tale women. The laughing princess and the princess who could not
laugh. He had wondered vaguely if anyone, anywhere in the world, had ever created a
story for the two. Or for the three of them – for there was no doubting his own role as
fairy-tale prince. Perhaps, the Festival would weave it for them, he told himself wryly.

The definitive title was unfair, of course. The Philippines, with its seven thousand
one hundred islands, held an uncountable numbers of festival throughout the year – from
the May parade of flowers and women to St. Claire’s seed dance to women, to the tree-
walk of the residents of a small barrio in Laguna Province. To the evening fire dance of the
mountain people. But such was the power of the ceremonies at K____, on the
windward side of the island; that whenever festivals were mentioned, K____ sprang
readily to the mind. Perhaps because the festival here was a singular evocation of victory
in a country of too many defeats. Or perhaps because the first celebration went beyond
the memory of the grandfather of the grandfather of the oldest grandfather at K_____
which made it no one’s and yet everyone’s personal history. Perhaps – No matter. This
year, when Adrian Banyaga, Eliza Hansen and Anna Villaverde boarded a ship for the
Festival, they had known they were joining a pilgrimage of a quarter of a million of men
and women.

A sharp cry from Eliza. She had risen to her feet and was fumbling with the straps of
her waist pouch. With a slight lift of her chin, Anna indicated the sea outside the lounge
windows; and Adrian turning, saw three flat-bottom boats crest a wave, sink, only to
hover into view once more. The World War II relics were coming to ferry the passengers
to the island whose harbor was too hollow for the ship. Already, the lounge was emptying
as men and women made for the doorway. Adrian felt his pockets: he had his wallet, his
keys and his toothbrush – all he would need for the island where, during the Festival, every
house door was flung open, every room available for the pilgrim.

There was the minor confusion of boarding the ferry-boats. He and the women missed
the first two, such was the crush on the deck, but they manage to make the last one,
backing into it from the rope ladders down which they were guided by the sunburnedsailors
who skillfully soothed tremulous women and challenge the men into deft passage. Powered
by a sluggish-sounding engine, the boat veered at sea and headed for the island. As it rose
with each sea wave, the boat gave the passengers a glimpse of K_____ : its single drab pier
thrusting into the sea from a low, gray cement building and the crescent spread of white
sand that horned an abrupt pile of rocks at one end of the island and thinned into a white
line at the other, directly below a sudden crag which bore the weight of a grass bearded
tower which seemed to tremble with the groan of a two-hundred-year-old warning bell.

Beyond this was the Festival and the town proper had arrayed itself for it. Multicolored
paper buntings had been strung overhead, straddling roads and the gaps between house
roofs; while at every street corner bamboo stalls had been set up and piled high with
necklaces of boars’ teeth, death masks, spears and shields, red, blue and green skulls, and
hittled bamboo whistles on leather thongs. Each intersection was guarded by a panoply of
bamboo, studded with nipa fronds and flowers – red hibiscus, white sampaguitas and
jasmine, red and orange daisies, sheaves of white St. Joseph’s Cane flowers, and pink
tendrils of cadena de amor. In the midst of riot of this equatorial hues and smells, the
townspeople walked, themselves arrayed in palm fronds, flowers, leathers and seashells.
The men’s bare chests and the women’s faces and arms were coated with an oily mixture of
soot and the juice of an achuete seeds – hallucinatory masks whose black and red strips
rippled and writhed in the liquid light of amber sun as the crowd pranced, hopped and
undulated to the alternating fast and low rhythm of pagan drums whose beat seemed
both distant and near, coming now from one end of the main plaza, now from the sky
overhead, now from the central kiosk, and then again from the side streets radiating to the
town’s center.

The rites were simple. In the first celebration, a local chieftain had ordered a parade of
his warriors and those of his allies who had helped carry the battle one morning at the edge
of time. Though he had himself long gone on to death, here were his warriors still, dressed
more gaudily with the artifice of the intervening centuries though they did their
march now not in the open fields of K____ but through the paved and dust roads of the
town, between desultory houses bleached by sea wind and sun, to the town’s boundaries
and back again, winding their way to the plaza whose northern end was held down by the
church, a massive construction of stone and wood whose baroque façade had been so
eroded by the elements one could no longer tell whether the saint or Arjuna’s army were
carved there: and whose southern side was weighed down by the townhall which, as
though to challenge the church’s prominence, was set on a raised cement promenade with
wide terrace steps though the structure itself was hulking and squatting, its portico columns
disproportionately massive, images of a dream. Adrian thought as he steered the two
women through a crowd already drunk despite the early hour.

Hand and hand, the three wove their way through the Festival amidst the restless
mass of bodies. They came upon a flock of transvestites who ambled along calmly, as though
taking the sea air. They wore indecent gowns of peacock colors, silver and gold sandals, and
their shoulders were draped with lace shawls. They eyed the crowd haughtily, swinging their
crocheted handbags and paper fans. Eliza’s mouth dropped open at the sight. In such a
disguise, she thought, man-woman, woman-man, one could live safely in illusions and avoid
confrontations.

The mortals followed – the blue denim crowd, visitors who owed no allegiance to any
tribe and were themselves designated the invaders. Though the label had been whimsically
adapted from a television series, it was accurate, for the great mass of the crowd were as
alien as it could be. There were the Japanese, the Chinese, the Caucasian, the urbanite with
his short-focusing eyes and pallid discontent. They walked quickly, with self-assurance, and
it took a while before the drums subdued and merged them with the town’s rhythm.

Of the three, Eliza was the first to be snared by the Festival. Her arm was hooked by a
young man waving a bottle of rum, shrieking with laughter and Eliza ran off with him, half
dancing to the drum’s four-four beat. The crowd swallowed them quickly. Adrian’s finger
tightened about Anna’s hand and he bent his head closer to her ear, telling her not to break
loose, as it would be impossible to find her again. No problem, Anna murmured back; she
could then be a member of the lost tribe.

He did not find that funny and glanced at her face to see if her words meant anything.
But a woman, blond strings of hair flying about her head, whirled out of a wall of bodies,
dragging two men after her. Adrian tagged on Anna’s hand pulling her away and the woman,
body and limbs jerking in separate movement, stood in a cleared space while the two men
her dancing had snatched from the crowd circled her; they slipped through the windmill
slashing off her arms; their fingers dug into her flesh. She arched her back, offering them
their torso and, shrieking, went on dancing. The two closed in on her.
 A voice called out Adrian’s name and he barely managed to catch a wineskin which
seemed to have appeared in the air. He unstopped it, held it aloft, and squeezing with both
hands, let the wine spurt into his mouth. His throat worked as he swallowed while a half-
dozen men broke from the crowd and circled him. They began counting out as Adrian drank.
Wine spilled from the corners of his mouth , down his chin and throat, and painted lilacs on
his white T-shirt. Applause rang out-thinly, at first; then, in rhythm as the seconds count went
up to thirty, Arriba, letranil a man bellowed. Adrian choked. The wine spewed from his lips to
the ground. Hands snatched the wineskin away and the group swerved, abandoning them for
the next contender.

“Idiot,” Adrian muttered, wiping his mouth with his hand. “It was the wrong school.”

“Did it matter?” Anna asked lightly. But when Adrian held out his hand, she stepped
away.

Embarrassed, he clutched at his shirt front, lifting the cloth from his skin. “Mother-mine,
I have purple blood,” he said. “I’m royally dead. Yecch, it’s sticky.”

“Not quite dead,” Anna said, watching as he stripped off the shirt and tied it like a
turban about his head. His cheeks were flushed from the wine. “Never mind,” she went on,
after a while, “you’re still the handsomest man around.”

To confirm her words, wolf whistles shrilled out and Adrian grinned sheepishly at three
girls who had stopped to look at him. He struck a pose, arms akimbo. Anna shook her head,
took another step back as though to examine him fully, and bumped against the man behind
her. She was about to apologize when the man extended his hand palm up.

“It’s quite simple,” he said. “Four-four beat and we’ll go around the plaza.”

He seized her left wrist and before she could say anything, they had speared through
the crowd to the middle of the road. The man paused, head flung back, one arm held out,
fingertips barely touching her shoulder. Then they took off, diving into the rhythm of the
drums, shoulders and feet marking time as they danced down the length of the road toward
the church. Instinctively, her feet found their niche in the drumbeats, she was hardly conscious
of the intricate pattern they wove on the asphalt, a pattern of small steps and halts – one -
two – three, one – two – three, one – two – three – while the young man twirled on his toes
and danced to her right, to her left, behind her, in front of her like a moth circling a flame lick.
She had the disquieting thought she was dancing the pattern of her life and though the young
man followed his own choreography, somehow they managed to keep in step, obeying the
drums. It was a long journey; dancers joined in, breaking loose from the line of onlookers, only
to drop back again. Some by the stream of dancing men and women they rounded the corner
and passed in front of the church where they overlooked a formation of warriors. They
threaded through the ranks of barechested, g-stringed, and painted men who, true to the
to the code of braves, ignored their presence. To amuse herself, Anna played catch with the
tribe’s pennant, jumping to touch the red and blue crepe paper ribbons wriggling in the air.
One of the warriors smiled at her and she was suddenly afraid.
 “My love!” her partner called out panting “You dance well. Let me take you back before
I collapse.”

She shook her head, shot away from the hand he held out, and crossed the street. She
walked aimlessly, wedging herself through clusters of men and women who, lost in their own
festivals, sang, danced, and labored to get drunk. She looked back once and saw she had lost
her partner. Still, she spent another quarter-hour in wandering through the crowd before she
leaped over the foot-high cement ledge that separated the plaza’s lawn from the sidewalk.
On the grass, exhausted dancers lay like scythed stalks. They called out, their hands languidly
waving. “Come,” they said, “don’t be a stranger.’ But she ignored them and went on walking,
circling back and forth, drawing closer to the kiosk that stood white and inviolate at the
plaza’s center. Abruptly, as though on a sudden whim, she turned and mounted the kiosk’s
broad steps.

After the sunlight, she found the interior dim. She blinked rapidly, forcing her eyes to
adjust. But a hand had already her wrist; she was being drawn deeper into the room.

“Easy, wasn’t it?” The voice was Rafael’s. “I thought you would take longer to break
away.”

“You saw me?”

“Here, there, everywhere.” He shook his head. “You are stubborn. You aren’t supposed
to be here.” She squatted down and gestured for her to follow.

“Let’s not argue,” she said, tucking in her legs yogi fashion. “I hadn’t known about your
plans when I made mine. Have yours changed?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“I had hoped otherwise.” She rubbed her hands together, trying to warm them. “But
why are you here? If I can’t be here, why are you here?”

“To warn idiots like you. We hadn’t anticipated that some of us, of our kind, would
be attending the festival. Fortunately, you tipped us off.”

“How many are here?”

“Fifty!” He spat the words out. “Innocent souls. A man here, a woman there, a
couple. . . It was too late to chase after them in the city. So here I am, a reception of one.”

“And what are you – here now?” She nearly smiled as she asked. She had known him
as a priest, a traffic policeman, a professor, a pickpocket.

“Fisherman,” she said promptly. Leaning forward, he added that the Commander was
expected at the Festival, on its last day. He would address the crowd.

Anna shivered. “I have to confess I’m scared,” she said.

“If it’s any comfort, so am I,” Rafael said. “And if it will make you feel better; he is here.”
 She was silent. After a while she nodded. “I feel better – yes – and yet, I don’t. Where
will it be?”

“At the stage. One of the posts is hollow. The gift lies within, timed to the second. A
few minutes’ allowance for the crowd which would slow down the vehicle. It won’t stop,
though. It never does. As you know, the commander is a madman for punctuality.”

“I wish it were simpler,” she said. “Any message for me – from . . . .?”

“Not yet. But why don’t you make for the other side of the island? There are friendly
fisher folk there. They’ll take you to the next island, turn you over to other friends who’ll
take you to the third island where you can catch a plane for Manila. You can be home by
evening.”

“I came with friends.”

“Rot. They’ll be safe. They won’t go near the stage.”

“Should I warn them?”

He made an incredulous sound. She shrugged.

“Then I have to stay.”

A pause. Then he shrugged. “Suit yourself. But remember who you are, what you are.
You’re in no position to be generous.” He began to unfold his body but changed his mind just
as quickly. “Do me a favor. When things begin to happen, head for the other side of the island.
The pier here will be secured at once. No possibilities there at all. So head for the other side.
No, no; cancel that. Better yet, make for the cemetery, just beyond the town, away from the
sea. Stay there until I come to you. Be there alone.”

“But what about - ?”

“The well-fed pig?” He spat the words out. “If you keep thinking of that being as a
well-fed pig, you won’t have so many problems. And if you keep in mind what you are, who
you are, you won’t even have a well-fed pig to worry about.”

“That’s not fair,” she said fiercely.

“So what is?” He rose now, not looking at her, and threw the rest of his words over
his shoulder. “The cemetery. Remember.”

He walked away quickly. She did not try to stop him; she knew he would know where
and how to contact her – if she was needed. She waited, forcing herself to breathe slowly,
calmly, giving him the time he needed to disappear. It was cool inside the kiosk and odd that,
despite the crowds on the lawn and the streets, no one came. Even the drums were muted.
She glanced at the ceiling’s arch; the kiosk was obviously quite old. Perhaps, its stones had
been glued together with egg whites. The Spaniards had favored such masonry.

She chose to leave by the southern door, sighing as she did so at the scene before her.
The town plaza was a riot of confusion with walls of bodies blocking a view of the roads
jammed by the parade and dancers. The sun, a white blur in the blue, cloudless sky was
relentless. She blinked her eyes. She caught a flash of olive green; a soldier, barely glimpsed
between the crowd and the dark bole of an acasia tree. She sighed again, wondering how
much longer the war would go on – this elusive – almost illusory war that was everywhere
and yet was nowhere. By some quirk of fate. She had managed to thrust herself right into it.
Somewhere, sometime, she had committed to what had seemed to be proper action and
that was it. All it had taken and all it would take. And the vow she had made, while still a
vague child, that she would never,never be involved in any war, whosoever war, was broken.
All it had taken was the conviction that she knew what had to be done and that she would
do it. That was all.

She cut across the lawn, shifting the pouch tied to the waist to a more comfortable
position. Voices rose about her, calling, offering wine and food and companionship. It was a
rule of the Festival that no one should be left by himself to laze away. She accepted a
cigarette from a young man stretched out on the grass and as she smoked, scanned the
shifting mass of bodies beyond the trees fringing the plaza. There were no uniforms as far as
she could see. Perhaps, it had been a stray soldier, assigned to the stand and savoring the
celebration.

“Don’t sigh too much,” the young man said to her. He patted the grass beside him,
asking her to lie down.

She shook her head but squatted down anyway. “I have to find my friends,” she said.

“Can’t I get to know you?”

She snorted. “If you did, you wouldn’t like me.”

He made a doubting sound. “Are you a whore?” he asked happily. “A party girl? A
tourist?”

She cut through his words and rose to her feet. “A widow,” she said abruptly. “With
a widow’s woes.”

“I love the way you say that,” he said but she was already walking away.

A ball of anger tightened in her. That wasn’t if at all, not at all, she scolded herself. A
widow in the archipelago had freedom equal to a whore and more respectability. That hadn’t
started it – but how it began, how it happened, no one could answer. The drums, which
answered all questions, merely laughed. It must have been a stranger, they said. A man who
one day raised his head from whatever work he was doing and said he had enough. Of the
price of salt, perhaps, the cost of rice, or, maybe, of the five perpetually agape mouths of his
family. Or of this or that. No matter. One morning, seven thousand one hundred islands awoke
with an ominous roar and the festival began.

The mountain warriors heard it the day three lowland merchants, pleading the cost of
fuel, tried to take away their cabbage harvest for a song. G-strings flapping in a ravine wind,
the warriors took counsel with one another and chose one able-bodied youth to deal with the
merchants. The young man in turn called on his sworn brothers and, together, they
 decapitated the traders with machetes while the others rolled cabbages down cliff edges
and wished the worms the good fortune of eating.

The youth stuck the merchant’s heads on their spear points and danced back to
their village, an impromptu about death and celebration on their lips. Along the way, they
gathered the orange blossoms of the fire trees and wove victory wreaths while the village
gongs announced the coming of the rituals feast that would mark the end of peace. The
little thunder of the gongs smashed against the mountainside, bounced on itself, and rolled
down to the sea edge where the fishermen, sitting before their evening meal, heard and
deciphered the message. Their eyes grew wary.

Upending their boats on the beach, the fishermen abandoned the sea. A melancholic
wind blew through towns and rolled inland. Milk disappeared; piles of tomatoes, lettuce, and
eggplants putrefied in to a liquid mess at railroad stations as the farmers, unable to pay the cost
of transport, abandoned their produce.

In the midst of this disturbance, the Noble and Ever Loyal City of Manila, hemmed in by
the Magellanic and Chinese seas, lay lost in its dream. So long as the city was at rest, nothing
could be wrong. Wise men knew this and one such bureaucrat, feeling the dogs of desperation
skulking at the city’s boundaries spent a sleepless night pondering whether or not to raise the
cost of public transportation. He tried to soften the blow by decreeing that the fare should be
be computed, on a graduated basis, by the mile. Thus, his conscience eased, he congratulated
himself for making it possible for his countrymen to deal with the terrible increase in oil prices
and went to sleep.

Alas, distance was reckoned in kilometers. And alas, he could rectify the error took off
for Europe to try for a cure of his headaches at Lourdes. Such a simple mistake – which
blossomed rapidly into monstrosity as fistfight s broke out amidst yelled mathematics. How
much from Quiapo to Diliman, from Cubao to Diliman, and from Cubao to Quiapo? From the
boulevard to the market, from the city hall to the cemetery, and from the cemetery to
everywhere? Such a simple error – and yet, along with innumerable other acts of stupidity, it
became the final insult in a long string of insults. The man in the street, walking about and
scribbling sums furiously with his pencil, sulked and pouted and seethed and remembered all
the small grievances of his life which, taken singly, were tolerable enough but when added
up –

Some son-of-a-goat had better do something, a bus driver said. A passenger heard
and, upon getting off the bus, picked up a stone and hurled it toward the road. To his delight,
a barrage of stones and empty bottles followed his virgin throw. In five minutes flat, the
boulevard was stubbled with rocks, pebbles, concrete chunks, stones and broken glass. Now
the schoolchildren dumping their books, joined in filling their satchels with ammunition. By
early evening, the main avenues were barricaded and a few thousand men and women
warded of the night chill with a bonfire of buses.

Anna and her husband, Manolo Montreal, were eating mooncakes at the intersection
of Quezon Boulevard and Recto Avenue when a half-dozen military trucks came careening
down the road, screeched to a halt, and disgorged soldiers. The two forgot that mooncakes
were mandatory when one was young and newly married. They watched enthralled as the
soldiers formed groups, fanned out, and disappeared into the side alleys of downtown Manila
while a force of maybe two hundred lined up across the boulevard turned their faces to the
distant bonfires. Another hundred positioned themselves behind garbage bins, parked cars, and
lampposts. At 10 p.m. the order to fire was given. A wind blew through the silence that
followed the command. In Anna’s hand, the mooncakes shriveled to pellets as M-16s, 45s,
tear-gas canisters, and grenades brought an unexpected New Year’s Eve to the city. The first
body to stretch out on the cement cried out for the wrath of God.

Through Molotov flames, pillbox fumes, and pools of blood and oil, the soldiers marched
forward, step by step. With precision learned from the firing range they pumped bullets into
the crania of young men and women betrayed by burning vehicles. By this time, Anna and
Manolo had dashed up a building’s fire escape ladder and from its safety watched the
impossible war. Amazing, Manolo said over and over again, they’re fighting back. Amazing.

And creating music all the way, Anna wanted to reply – for there it was, over the
contrapuntal of gunshot and the whoomph of tear-gas canisters, the delicate shattering of
glass as the crowd retreated, smashing display windows of unaffordable merchandise. They
scattered, regrouped, gave way and regained lost ground, dragged out the wounded and the
dead, crawled through debris to hurl pillboxes with their makeshift shrapnel of nails and
glass shards, and yelled from time to time, in bitter humor, at the soldiers. Surrender now, they
shrieked in half a dozen language, we are the people! Hearing this, Manolo burst into laughter
though tears were streaking down his cheeks and Anna’s nostrils dilated, savoring the words
along with the smell of roasted corn for this was October, the time to eat corn still sizzling from
the red-eyed coals fanned by iron-haired women squatting at street corners, war or no war.