State of War

by Ninotchka Rosca

  Because she was quiet save for a command snarled now and then at the servants, who were all efficient in any case under the Chinese- Malay girl’s supervision, she managed to afflict Lucas Carlos with guilt. He wriggled in his chair, avoided her eyes, and struck pompous poses of attention whenever someone mentioned a business possibility. He never listened, of course, knowing the peculiar frenzy that was war’s immediate aftermath. Besides which, though he himself made as much profit out of the six-inch vial of the explosion, he couldn’t believe that a three hundred per cent return on investment—the most quoted figure—was possible. All he wanted to do was to preside over dinner, smell the moistness of the estero, rid himself of the suffocating embrace of Maya’s eyes, tell his stories, and be Don Carlos Lucas de Villaverde.

  Hans Zangroniz had two doctorates, one from Munich, the other from Zurich, and since Carlos Lucas repeated this wondrous fact as often as he was able, the German chemist came to be addressed as Senor Doctor Doctor. When he first heard the title, Carlos Lucas had grown livid, embarrassed by the ignorance of his countrymen. He had tried to explain that x number of doctorates still amounted to only one titular doctor but his foreman, an eighteen-year-old pure Malay, had merely inclined his head and said that a man was entitled to what he was entitled and since the Senor Aleman claimed two certificates, then he was a doctor twice over. Where was the harm in giving a man his just due? Thus, the thirty-five-year-old Hans who had sailed to the East to make his fortune suffered for his overeducation. When he took his constitutional in the morning, walking by the estero, in his black frock coat, hat, and swagger stick, adults and children alike hailed him as Senor Doctor Doctor.

  He had spent nearly all his youth as apprentice in an apothecary shop in Munich, reading chemistry and alchemy, and experimenting with all kinds of liquids in his effort to discover the secret of the philosopher’s stone. It never occurred to him that he was Europe’s last believer in the myth; his poverty, the stringent diet of black bread and eggs which formed his only pleasure, would not allow him to abandon his fantasy. Finally, on his thirtieth birthday, when the shop mistress he had courted for ten years turned down his suit, fatally (he thought) wounding his heart, he had taken stock of his situation. For the next four years, he saved ruthlessly, to the level of stuffing his shirt and shoes with rags at wintertime, so he could have the fare to sail to the East. He had heard of instant fortunes made, of power and respect suddenly earned. More than this, he had heard of the strange exuberance of the elements in the tropics —a strangeness which resembled the bruited but never defined qualities of the philosopher’s stone. Thus it was that he disembarked at the port of Manila one April morning of blistering heat. Having found a rooming house, he placed an advertisement in El Diario and hadn’t even been surprised when his own landlord came to call. For he had taken lodgings at one of the four city blocks owned by Don Carlos Lucas de Villaverde— blocks of two- to three-story white wooden houses of grace with fluted iron balconies overhanging the estero. All on the outside, though, Hans Zangroniz would tell himself, for the old crone Maya had had partitions built within partitions and rented out the cubbyhole rooms to the itinerants who swarmed to Manila in the wake of wars upon wars: prostitutes, students, dockworkers, and even a lanky American.

  Hans’s guttural Spanish, two certificates (forged), and melancholia so affected Carlos Lucas that he had apologized for the boarding house, offered Hans both a partnership in the gin business and the hospitality of his home. Hans pretended to hesitate so that Carlos was forced to press him, inviting him on the spot to have dinner at the distillery and waiting impatiently for the German to gather his vials and don his frock coat.

  That same fortuitous afternoon, in the midst of her shuffling among rows of bottles, upended baskets, sheets of paper, cans of paint, and all the litter of the distillery which had spilled over to a makeshift shed swallowing her front yard, Maya de Villaverde caught a sepulchral vision of two men in long brown robes coming down the road. The sudden thump in her chest lured her first into believing that Death’s angels had come for her but, in the next instant, she understood that her heartbeats were merely the resonance of memory, for the two were Capuchin monks trodding along in their cowls, skirts, and sandals. They stopped at the gate and waited until their presence was noticed by the workers who, as one, rose and queued to kiss the hands of the two priests. Maya had to tuck her chin to her chest to hide the smirk she couldn’t suppress; the two had accepted the obeisance with a mix of divinity and arrogance.

  But they had indeed come for her, the foreman said, and Maya eyed them shrewdly, wondering how to deal with this unexpected honor. She gave orders for the main doors to be opened and for refreshments to be prepared while she retired to her bedroom. Her maid came running and tucked her into a gown so that half an hour later she appeared in the living room as Dona Maya de Villaverde, neck bent by the weight of emeralds. The two priests, shocked by the mirage, put down their cups of cocoa and forgot to chew pastillas. Maya had the satisfaction of having her hand kissed by the two. She waved them to their seats rather casually and arranged herself on the sofa.

  They were Father Don Jose Saavedra and Father Don Luis Rigo --officials of the Capuchin order. Father Luis was younger and thus had the responsibility of conversation. He asked after the health of Maya’s body and soul, inquired about her confessor, and professed astonishment that such an illustrious lady should, like any ordinary mortal, line up at the confessional box of any neighborhood church. Indeed, they, the clergy, had been remiss. He offered his and Father Jose’s services, promising to include the Binondo house in their calendar of calls, crammed as that was, for nothing was better for a lady’s soul than the shared solitude of an afternoon with her confessor.

  As he spoke, Maya and the older friar studied each other. His bird-beak nose, burning eyes, and thin rose-lips reassured her immediately. She was prepared to bet her emeralds he came from Madrid. She knew everything about Capuchins who came from Madrid. She closed her ears to Father Luis, who had insulted her by speaking in her language -- an unforgivable error in judgment. Lazily, noting their empty cups, she stretched her hand out for the small bell that would summon a servant, but at that moment Father Jose chose to speak, lisping all his sibilants and confirming her suspicions as to his origins and his shrewdness. He used Spanish.

  “The Capuchin Order is renowned for its austereness, its discipline, its vows of chastity and poverty, its missionary zeal,” he said in a voice of sorrow. “We have many brothers and sisters in heathen lands who suffer unspeakable deprivations for the sake of a harvest of souls. We take the Lord’s way.”

  “And the Lord has looked upon you with favor,” she replied, wondering what was to come next.

  “We have loved these islands—far more than the Yanquis who now seek to take apart what we have put together.”

  She shifted uneasily beneath the weight of her skirt. Sedition laws were still in effect and the norte americanos had no scruples about exiling to Guam anyone remotely suspected. But it was obvious that Father Jose was waiting for an answer. She felt around in her head, tried out and discarded several statements, and finally sighed. “The Yanquis,” she said, “will be Yanquis.”

  The priest smiled. “Our collection grows leaner each day . . .”

  She raised a hand. “For that, you’ll have to apply to my son -- as befits the head of the household.”She couldn’t help her disappointment. Alms! That was all they wanted?

  “We will, in due time—but think of it this way, Dona Maya. You may give us a tithe but that will only go so far. Our needs are immense . . .”

  “Even though you’re poor.”

  “Exactly. And what we want is some assurance that we will be enabled to have a steady source of income.”

  She rang the bell, picking it up abruptly in the spurt of anger that possessed her. She already knew what was to come. “Bring cocoa!” she barked at the maid, and thus managed to diffuse her temper.

  Father Jose was
a true fanatic and would not let himself be distracted even by hot cocoa. He leaned forward, bracing an arm on his right knee, and aimed his eyes at Maya.

  “The collection box has given us enough to buy a share in your business. As you know, we have a small brewery which had been doing well until . . . well, gin is stronger and cheaper and all the peons want is to knock themselves silly as quickly as possible.”

  “I do not discuss business. My son . . .”

  “Perhaps the senora would like to think it over,” Father Luis interposed. “Meanwhile, there is the matter—the greater matter—of her soul to attend to. My lady, have you considered burial within the cathedral?”

  “We’re honorable people, Father,” Maya rebuked him. “It wouldn’t matter where we’re buried. The site would neither add to nor subtract from our honor.”

  “Still . . .”

  But the two priests acknowledged that the courtship of Maya would be long and tedious. Indeed, all three of them realized this as the maid came in to replenish the cups. Maya consented to take a biscuit, catching as she did so the amused glance that passed between the priests.

  Hans Zangroniz, therefore, was no less than a disaster when he arrived with Carlos Lucas that twilight. For the first time, mother and son had a real quarrel.

  “Your partner? Why couldn’t I be your partner?” she screamed.

  But Carlos Lucas was adamant. He would not hear of his decision being questioned. “He’s got two doctorates from the best European schools. His classmates were princes and dukes. They consulted him about state matters. .

  “So why isn’t he a prime minister? Your partner? What about the Capuchins?”

  “They will not buy into my business. They will not come near me again.” The again slipped out before he could be aware of it. Enraged by his own indiscretion, he knocked down her St. Anthony statue. “I might agree to buy into their business. Or better yet—better yet, I’ll brew my own beer and bankrupt them.”

  “Sssh. Careful with your mouth. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  “I will brew a better beer. Hans, with his two doctorates, will find a formula so impeccable those Capuchins will pull their cowls over their heads in shame. I will have a better beer. I will, I will, I will. And I’ll call it Lucifer. Hah! After all, we won the Revolution.”

  He would repeat that to Hans. “We won the Revolution—in a manner of speaking… It was one of those things which defied satisfactory evaluation, as Carlos Lucas explained. “We won and yet—”

  “Victory is always relative,” was Hans’s only answer but that was enough to send Carlos Lucas into paroxysms of respect for the German’s wisdom. The statement took its place among his many set opinions about life in general—so much so that he would declare everything to be relative, thus antedating his own descendants in modernity.

  But it took time for him to reach this equanimity. As with men of his generation, made conscious of their own mortality by the advent of middle age, Carlos Lucas became enamored of the past, tracing and retracing in his mind the maze of history and his own biography. He had had no part in the Revolution, as he told everyone, nor in the wars that followed, except through the Four Roses Gin. But he was attuned enough to the country’s life to understand the sudden fervor that gripped everyone when all the young men from Europe who had agreed to the Spanish governor-general’s request for a truce returned from Hong Kong, yelling once more about a Republic. This time, not only eight provinces took to guns and the hills but seemingly the entire seven thousand one hundred islands and, for one celebratory year, New Year’s Eve went on and on with the boom of cannons, the clip-clop of horses, the ping and bang of muskets, and a confetti of newspapers and manifestoes done on the run, a printing press traveling by train from one battlefield to another. Noise and words for a whole year. Meanwhile, Commodore George Dewey had smashed the Spanish fleet at the Manila harbor and the city itself flew the American flag.

  “Everyone was noble,” Carlos Lucas said. He would add though that he discovered the futility of it all the day he escorted a shipment of Four Roses Gin to Tarlac where three prior deliveries had disappeared. There, the old sugarcane train whose tracks run through blighted fields was halted by two dozen peons carrying rifles and Carlos Lucas was taken out of the coach he had had attached to the locomotive and marched half a kilometer to a hut.

  Carlos Lucas made the sign of the cross and declared himself dead. The men were sacadas—migrant workers who, before this war, moved from plantation to plantation, doing the muscle-wrenching labor of cutting sugarcane, hoisting bundles on their shoulders, and carrying them to the cargo trains which sputtered and clanked away, heading for the sugar mills. They had no homes, and were accompanied in their nomadic lives by their wives and children, their cooking pots and blankets—all of which they deposited in the lean-tos and makeshift barracks provided each planting and harvest time by the plantation owners. They were a mysterious lot, Carlos Lucas admitted; they lived in the most terrible poverty and had no affiliation to anyone save their own clan. For that matter, since they owned nothing but the most basic necessities, they had little attachment to their lives as well.

  They walked stooped and with knees slightly bent, as though a load remained on their shoulders. But they were frighteningly polite, their eyes flickering in the customary way of peasants confronted by authority. As the leader—an extremely young man, a boy almost—parlayed with Carlos Lucas over the gin, the men waited, their gnarled fingers restless on their weapons. Carlos Lucas noted this with his peripheral vision and, sweating in his white summer suit, streaked gray by the coal-burning train engine, he gave himself up for dead once more. “I must have died a half-dozen times in two hours,” he said later.

  “Don Carlos,” the leader said, “we do not wish to steal. We’re peasants. We don’t steal; we earn our living on this earth. You must understand the extreme need that forced us to confiscate your property. In the name of the Revolution.”

  Carlos Lucas nodded. He glanced at the others and this time noticed, with amazement, that all the sights had been removed from their rifles. But the leader was speaking again and he had to pay attention.

  “We do not drink gin,” the leader was saying. “We’ve had tragedy with it. Some men who went on three-, four-day drinking binges woke up blind. Sober but blind. So we have issued orders for the gin to be treated purely as ordnance.”

  “My gin had nothing to do with that!” Don Carlos shouted.

  The leader studied him for what seemed to be an eternity. Don Carlos gave himself up for dead once more.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” the leader said after a while. There was a perceptible easing of tension in the hut. Carlos Lucas breathed. “In any case, what we take from you is accounted for. We cannot pay now—”

  “No need, no need,” Carlos sputtered. “My contribution—I didn’t know—the Revolution …

  “But we can pay in due time,” the leader stressed. “We will give you an eighth of this plantation once we’ve taken it over, as soon as it belongs to us. Legally, after the war.”

  “But the owners—”

  “There are no owners. We fight for the land, Don Carlos—and it will be ours. We’re stockpiling the gin; we need it to burn the enemies’ camps.”

  “We already won. The Republic has been declared.”

  “The Yanquis are still here. They’re as long-nosed as the Castilians. And they speak to sugar barons. We want the land. It will be ours.” Carlos Lucas was given a piece of paper on which some town scribe had written the promise of an eighth of Hacienda Concepcion to him at the termination of the Revolution. The leader had made an X at the bottom, witnessed by two lawyers.

  “We held pistols to their heads,” the leader said, causing his men to smile. “They kept insisting it wasn’t legal. Satan, what is legal in this world? You will send us more gin.”

  Carlos Lucas nodded. A shipment or two, perhaps watered down, he thought, though that would be compromising his pri
de in his product. The leader gestured; the negotiations were over and Carlos Lucas was alive. Two men approached and seized his forearms. Lord, they had fingers of iron. On impulse, he turned to the one on his right and asked:

  “Where are the sights on your rifles?”“

  “We took them off,” the man replied. “They made us cross-eyed.”

  They were doomed. He knew it instantly, he said to Hans; doomed by their own passion and ignorance. Back in Manila, he had gone through the Revolution’s documents and newspapers. Nothing there about land, nothing about the distribution of land; nothing but the setting up of a government which would allow locals to hold office. “Lord,” he told Hans, “the leaders fought for one reason; the foot soldiers for another. A mess. I knew it!” Then a Yanqui shot and killed one of the Revolution’s soldiers.

  One morning, Carlos Lucas, coming down the wide stone steps that led from the upper main doors to the ground, was struck by the tremulous quality of the air, by the light that seemed to lend an opaqueness to things so that, for a moment, he was sure he had walked from the house right into a dream. He felt he could, had he wished it, push a fist right through walls, through trees, or even churn the sky that leaned so near clouds threatened to snag themselves on his hair. The distillery was already humming but the soft clink of glass, as the women corked and labeled bottles, echoed and re-echoed through that molten air. He had a sense of event—something was happening, had indeed already happened and there was nothing more to be done. He was seized by a desire to weep. Dazed, he braced a hand against one of the shed’s posts and looked around. Everything was normal, except for his foreman’s absence, and he couldn’t see small Juan who tended the fires and Angelito who took care of the debris and . . .

  “Where are the men?” he thundered at the nearest girl.

  She lifted a face of mourning to his eyes. “We’re at war again, patron.”

  “Holy—! With whom, this time?”