Charlson Ong:The Execution

It was raining the morning of the execution. I remember how brackish and crimson was the sky.
God had sliced open the sun, spilling its innards, carving out its heart. That sun had never seemed
the same to me ever since. The cold air scraped the insides of my lungs and chilled my nape. It was
the first dawn I had awakened to. The first time to witness the pained violent birthing of light.

The man's true identity escaped his persecutors---known to all of us as Gan So, but Lim Seng
according to his papers---thus, another poor chap to be remembered in ignominy till the end of time
as the only dope dealer to be publicly executed in the Philippines, all for having sold his name to
another, Strange, though how most Chinamen look alike on television.

We had no color television back then. The rest of the world outside home, family, and school was so
much black and white for us kids. I remember my younger brother Ricky, not yet five then,
screaming his tonsils out that they'd shot Father. Ricky had bounded up from in front of the
television set where he was watching the first-ever live coverage of a Philippine musketry. Our
cousin Mikey had convinced Ricky that the plump man in a light-hued Banlon shirt, whose swollen,
blindfolded head dropped to his chest after the rifles facing him barked and a dozen murky spots
were impaled upon his body, was Father.

Ricky screamed as I trudged through the door and Mother began slapping Mikey, almost fifteen
then, an adopted son of Mother's sister. Ricky wasn't crying though, he must have thought Father
was enjoying himself inside some television cowboy shootout. It was I, coming home alone, leaving
Father behind at the military camp where they carried out the musketry---crying, begging for Father
to come home with me as I, an untravelled nine year-old, hardly knew the way home; and he
yelling, screaming at me to go home and leave him be---who rushed headlong for Mother, burying
my head on her lap. "He's not coming home, Mother. He's never coming home again."

"He will, Mario, of course, he will."

And so he did. I don't remember whether it was a day or a week later. I remember Ricky jumping
with joy. He had forgotten about the shooting; he thought Father had returned from one of his
occasional trips to Cebu where he sold most of our imported textiles. Ricky asked for his present
while Mother remained sad and silent. I remember thinking she'd never be happy again. She had
prayed so hard for Father never again to return. "Have you eaten?" I remember her asking him. He
didn't answer her. He never answered many of her questions since.

The dawn of the execution I was awakened by my parents' voices. "This is what you want, isn't it?
Isn't it?" Father spoke as if a knife grated against his throat. "Stop this foolishness, Hilario." Mother
screamed at Father, calling him Hilario---after her own Father. It will be many years later before I
realized that that had never been his true name.

"It's barely four o'clock," she pleaded, "let the boy sleep, Dios mio."

Father had promised the night before to take me to watch the musketry. Mother had registered her
perfunctory protest, but couldn't tell just then how serious Father was. She thought he was merely
spewing some black humor over dinner while I'd never been more excited in my life.

Father was shocked the day the military picked up Gan. His residence and store were located in a
textile enclave some three blocks from .our place. A middle-class textile merchant, Gan belonged to
the same merchants' association as Father, and the two were casual acquaintances. There had been
previous rumors about Gan's clandestine "sidelines," but by the large, he was considered a fatuous
man who had neither the brains nor guts to make half as much money as he boasted having. He was
often quick, though, to offer the help of his "connections" in high places to any respectable
Chinaman in need. Months before his arrest Gan had dropped by our store for an afternoon chat
with Father and some friends and had intimated that martial law was soon to be declared. I was too
young then to understand the word except that it was upon everyone's lips. Students and workers'
demonstrations occurred almost daily. I'd more than once seen some of our neighbors locking up in
panic amid rumors that rioteers were poised to loot Chinatown.

Martial Law. The word bred as much anticipation as a much-awaited James Bond flick. And then it
came. September 21, 1972. Classes suspended. No newspapers. Nothing on radio or television.
The city still as midnight morgue. Later the presidential spokesman appeared on television---to
confirm the rumors. So this was it. We'd have to do without Voyage to the Bottom of the Seas and
Combat for the rest of our days.

Father was disturbed but silent. He began doing calligraphy with his ink and brush---the first time
he'd done so since the hours awaiting Ricky's birthing five years before. Sheet upon sheet of delicate
black swirls and thin, fine strokes---like the insides of a cell nucleus I discovered a few years later
peering for the first time through the ocular of an electron microscope in chemistry class. These were
verses, lines of vaguely remembered texts. The white morn is rising/ o lady so lovely and bright/
why am I consumed with grief... That one was from the 3,000 year-old Book of Odes, according to
Uncle Soo, Father's cousin. My own Chinese language education ended after the fifth grade and I
could barely write my own name, much less recognize poetry.

Father scribbled as a man possessed, leaving his calligraphy scattered all over the place. And I,
already the archivist back then, hopeful that something of immense value had been written---as
scrolls from Mainland China which were reputed to cost a fortune---collected them as rare insect
droppings.

Why should tension---or is it anger?---cause Father to plumb his memory for verse, for history, for
the wisdom of his ancients? Was it his way of detaching himself much as others turn to dope or
alcohol? His way of numbing his senses to the here and now? That he, a son of Han, was beyond the
madness of the huanna? A mere "stranger in a strange land"?

The following day our closest of kin gathered at our place. Fear, though muted, lingered. Martial
Law. What could such a declaration have meant other than that the old rules no longer held?
Patronage earned through years, decades of gift-giving and bribery discounted overnight. Martial
Law. Soldiers marching down the streets, commandeering cars, demanding supplies from
storeowner-s. Stories, anecdotes of the Great War, of civil strife in China way back when, of coup
d'etats in Indonesia and anti-Chinese riots elsewhere crowded out the reasoned thought of
businessmen. And yet, this could be our very salvation, Father said. Order must be restored, the
radicals stopped. No one, at least, would storm Chinatown. The new rulers could be reasoned with
he insisted. Hadn't the huanna always yielded to a hardy gesture and a bottle of beer? The day when
money becomes mute "in this country is when we'll be in trouble," they all agreed. What's more the
horse, the Chinese euphemism for Marcos, since the first syllable of his name transliterated into
Chinese becomes the character for horse---was a good friend of the Chinese. In fact, he had loads of
Chinese blood. His mother, someone reiterated, was half-Chinese. And he himself, according to
Chinatown lore, was actually sired by a rich Chinaman. "These could be the best times for us,"
someone whispered. And so good cheer returned to the gathering with Father finally setting the
mahjong table and tragedy, had seemed a million miles away.

They picked him up at dawn. A sudden swoop that none of his government contacts was able to
warn him of. Father was distraught. "What now?" He asked Yu Tek, president of the textile
merchants' association, who'd called for a luncheon meeting at the Grand Restaurant. Father had
allowed me to tag along.

"We've got nothing to do with him," Yu answered. "At least I don't."

Father's voice cut through the screen of cigarette smoke clouding the gathering. "How can you say
that?"

"He's a criminal, a dope dealer. He deserves whatever he gets."

"He's just a small fry. You know the guy. You're related."

That seemed to have caught Yu by surprise and he teetered for an instant as if ducking a phantom
punch. "Quite distant," he quipped. But Father kept pressing: "... he's just a bit player in this thing.
Fronting for big shots. For those connections."

"Who told him to fool around with those people? He played with fire and burned himself."

"And how about the time he saved you from that smuggling rap? He wasn't such a big fool then,
was he?"

"Watch your mouth, Lim." Yu Tek, himself a large man with a granite face, was a foot away from
grabbing Father by the neck before cooler heads intervened. "I'll say what I please, Yu Tek." Father
had never been so furious. "Many of you here have been helped by that man) criminal or not. All of
us have had our share of shady deals. The laws what you can get away with in this country. Gan's
not a bright or brave man. He does what he has to, to get by, but he's never turned down anyone in
need. Now he's in trouble, should we sit by and watch him hang?"

An unnerving silence settled upon the crowd even as I munched on the roasted peanuts served as
appetizer. Yu Tek, who'd calmed down somewhat, broke I the silence. "It's not that we don't care,
old Lim. But these aren't normal times. Martial Law. Can't you understand that? They can pick up
anyone, anyone... without charges, without anything, and not all your millions can bail you out."

A sadness crossed Father's face. For a moment I thought his face had folded in. But he turned to
me almost imploringly. "So what do we do?" He sighed and for an instant it seemed it was me he
was asking.
"Wait." Yu Tek's voice was clear and grounded.

"We're not sure what they want. It could just be a little scare tactic, a show. We have to be patient
and do what we can silently."

"Why him? Why Gan?" Father's voice began to break. "They arrest one Chinese and all of
Chinatown's condemned."

Yu exploded: "Now, don't talk that way, Lim. This is no time for senseless, irresponsible talk. I called
you here to tell you that everything will be all right. My people have assured me."

"Your people," Father was never more disturbed.

"My contacts. Reliable, credible friends... close to the very top." Yu swallowed hard. I thought then
the peanuts had stuck to his windpipe. "They want us to lie low on the smuggling and illegal stuff
for the meantime. Just till things settle."

"I still say we have to do something fast. We have to send a signal...that he's not being abandoned."

"Don't do anything foolish, Lim. We don't know who he is involved with. Right now it's everyone
for himself."
Gan's place had been padlocked by the military and his family had reportedly been moved out
oftown by relatives. The Gan family association refused to involve itself in the affair and Father had
sought in vain an audience with leaders of the federation of local Chinese chambers of commerce
who must have suspected what Father was up to. I remember his first fight with Mother over the
affair. He'd been quite upset by everyone's noninvolvement and was beginning to think up wild
schemes including a media campaign which was getting on Mother's nerves.

"I'm seeing the ambassador tomorrow. This is illegal. He is a Chinese citizen, they can't hold him
without bail."

"Stop this, Hilario. What are you trying to prove? Even his own relatives are lying low."

"Is this justice? He is being persecuted less for committing a crime than for being Chinese. He isn't
alone in this. They know that."

"We don't know that. They won't act without proof."

"Proof? What proof? This is how it starts. This is always the way it starts."

"What are you talking about?"

"Before we know it, they'll be hauling in half of Chinatown."

"You're mad. You've been reading too much and watching too many movies."

"Mad? How many thousands did they kill in Indonesia?"

"Enough of this, people might begin to suspect you."

"I'm well within my rights."

"You are an alien yourself."

"I was born in this country. My children were born in this country."

"What has that man ever done for you, anyway? He wouldn't even extend you a 30-day credit line
for his silk when supplies run low."

"I'm forty years old, I can do anything I damn please."

"I don't care what you do with yourself, but don't ever put my children in any kind of danger."

Father never got to see the Chinese ambassador. The Philippines, as many countries then, still
recognized Taiwan as the Republic of China. But US President Nixon had visited Mainland China
and it was but a mattter of time before the United Nations switched recognition to the People's
Republic. The Chinese in the country foresaw that the Philippines would eventually recognize the
Mainland government in lieu of Taipei and many suspected that the Taiwanese envoy back then
found himself in a delicate situation. The affair was officially tagged a "domestic" Philippine matter.

Father did manage, however, to visit Gan inside his cell. Father was weeping that night as he related
to us how badly mangled Gan's face was all bloated and scarred. The man, according to Father, was
little more than a zombie, his spirit worse off than his body.

Mother was poised to explode. I could sense how fed up she was with the whole thing but seeing
how distraught Father was, she calmed down and placed a rosary in Father's hands. That was the
first time I saw her make such a gesture. Mother, a Tagalog descended from Sulayman, or so she
claims, is a devout, convent-bred Catholic. Father, for his part, would occasionally light a joss stick
at my grandparents "altar"---they'd passed away a few years before I was born&---but Other than
that, he displayed little religiosity. Yet, I remember how he hung on to those beads as if his very
existence rested upon them.

"Pray for him," she whispered.

Father visited Gan a few more times, stretching Mother's patience and Christian compassion to the
very limit. It was before his last visit, when he thought of taking me along, when Mother really
erupted. I'd wanted to see Can for myself. Father had drawn such a harrowing portrait of the
prisoner---a hail, hardy windbag of a man reduced to muteness. He had refused counsel and turned
away other visitors. The only thing Gan would say to those around him was that his family was safe
and would be well cared for. Finally, he refused baptism and confession before death. Years later,
however, Gan would be granted a place of honor in the Taoist temple to which he had contributed
quite a sum.

"Well cared for... well cared for..." Father kept mumbling the words to himself as though some
magic incantation, "He's taking the rap for all of them."
"For whom, pa?"

Father turned and stared at me for a long while before laying his hands on my shoulders, gripping
them so tightly I thought they'd crack. "We're leaving," he quipped and walked to his room before I
could respond.

And soon enough, he asked Mother to prepare our passports. Passports. Even at nine I knew
passports meant airplanes and flying off somewhere and my mind ran wild.

Mother, of course, knew better than to get excited. And then he asked her---and this was something
I'd understand only a decade later---to marry him. Marry him? My parents were never married until
the mid-'70s after Father was granted Filipino citizenship along with tens of thousands of ethnic
Chinese by presidential decree. Earlier in life he'd applied for naturalization, but the lawyer he
contacted wanted a fortune and Father didn't think it worth the money and effort. It was enough for
him to register his business and property under Mother's name. But Mother had refused to marry
him until he became a citizen because she didn't want questions cropping up later in our lives
concerning the status of us children.

For fourteen years, I was officially fatherless. I signed my name Mario Valderama skipping over the
"middle initials" in test questionnaires and the like. It was only during second year high school when
Lim was finally appended to my name. After ten years of being among the last ones marked during
roll call, I couldn't right away get used to hearing my name pop up in midstream. "Lim. Lim? Lim?"
I heard the alien sound travel the length of our classroom in search of an object. And since I had by
then transferred to the Ateneo, minority status finally caught up with me. Lim. The name just
wouldn't grow on me. For a while I continued signing my papers and books as Mario Valderama,
keeping them away from Father, of course. He wouldn't have cared a whit, though, what on earth I
called myself then.

Mixed marriages weren't looked upon with much favor then but Father began spreading the word
of their marriage around, embarrassing most of our relatives but none more than Mother. He even
talked of a church wedding complete with invitations and reception until Mother demanded a stop
to it, screaming her lungs out the night the military tribunal sentenced Gan to death.

"This thing is driving you mad. You don't want to marry me, you want to destroy everything we've
worked for."

"Destroy? I'm trying to save my children... before it's too late."

No, Mother was adamant. There would be no marriage at least until he became a citizen. "They're
my children, too," she said. But Father wanted our birth certificates: "They're my children and they
will carry my name." Father said he was going to change our papers and acquire passports and visas
and we were going to leave this mad country before it was too late. Too late, he kept insisting. "Too
late for what?" I remember wanting to ask him. But all hell had broken loose inside our household
that night and Mother, her face distorted by anger, had struck him before locking herself up inside
in their room. Before that Father had said: "Who do you think you are? You are not my wife, you
will never be my wife. You're the collateral mortgaged to me by that drunkard father of yours and
he's forgotten to redeem you ever since."
Father didn't get to alter our birth certificates then; neither did he ever acquire passports for us to fly
anywhere. My parents never fought again. I don't remember them ever speaking to each other with
any real passion since. Father never forgave the Philippine government for what he believed was the
unjust execution of Gan; neither did he forgive the local community leaders or the Nationalist
Chinese government for having "abandoned" the man. For all his desperate efforts in behalf of Gan
during those last few weeks. I don't think Father believed in his heart that the man would actually
be shot. If we were in Malaysia, perhaps, or Indonesia, such a thing could happen. But this was, after
all, a "Christian land." "The huanna here are different," he'd often say, "They're Christians." Father
spoke the words as though it were, in his heart, synonymous with lannang---how the Chinese in the
Philippines call each other.

Father was never baptized because he could not understand the basic tenets of the faith and he was
never one to accept blindly. Still, he held a feast for our entire neighborhood when Ricky and I were
baptized and he'd told me more than once how fortunate we were to be born here rather than
elsewhere. When I'd tell him of anti-Chinese persecutions in the last century, he'd shrug and say: "It
happens everywhere; at least, they're Christians here." He would even accompany us to Sunday
Mass and, of course, when they still spoke a lot to each other, Mother called him Hilario.

Gan's death murdered everything Father ever believed about his adopted land. "Where are your
Christians now?" I could imagine Yu Tek, grinning his toothless grin, asking hapless Father who
could only sigh, "Things are different now." Yes, quite different. "Times have changed," Father's
friends kept telling him, urging him to desist from helping Gan.

Lim Bien-So had always been different. As a boy, he wandered far into the streets and homes of the
huanna, learning their curious tongue, watching their strange ways. He'd insisted on going to
college even as his peers began plying the trades and businesses of their fathers. And what did all
that modern education earn him? A huanna woman he insisted on taking to wife despite threats of
being disowned. She was the daughter of a former huanna hacendero who drank away his fortune.
The woman had offered her services as payment for her father's debt to the Chinese family and he
fell in love with her. He called it love even as the old people insisted it was huanna sorcery. He
packed his bags, an only son leaving the Lim household until grandfather said, "Yes, but you cannot
marry her, you cannot eat with us, you live in the bodega." And when Grandma made her wash the
toilets, Mother had stormed out of the house. And when Father found out, he raised his voice
against Grandma for the first time in their lives. Grandma was so furious she left home for over a
week, joining her band of septuagenarians casino-hopping from Roxas Boulevard to Angeles,
Pampanga, until she got food poisoning in some provincial hotel. Grandma survived but her liver
was severely damaged and she hemorrhaged to death within a year. My parents moved out of
grandfather's house after that but Grandpa passed away within three years and they moved back in
to continue the family's textile trade.

All these I pierced together from snatches of family history occasionally divulged by our relatives.
Perhaps, saving Gan would've allowed Father to atone for the deaths of his parents---deaths that he
might have always felt guilty for. He had to prove to everyone, but mostly to himself, that the
huanna were truly just and gentle people, incapable of public execution; that despite the media
theatrics, Gan would eventually be spared, forgiven, sentenced to hard labor, for life. Yes,
forgiveness---for hadn't Christ himself forgiven his enemies? A totally alien and absurd notion yet
packing such mysterious power.
Gan's death released the ghosts of my grandparents. They returned to mock Father's blindness. The
huanna were alike everywhere, the Chinese were always expendable. In the end, wealth was no
guarantee. And he, Lim Bien-So had believed in the huanna---had in fact become one of them in the
eyes of his elders---had taken to wife a brown woman and sired her children, their children. And his
children will forever be strangers to him, will share his meal, his home, his bed, but will always be
peering at him from out of the corner of their eyes, spying his foreign ways, his "crimes against the
people," laughing at the Chinaman being shot for selling dope to huanna children. Father was a
haunted man.

In 1975 when the government granted automatic citizenship to aliens born and raised in the country,
Father was quite eligible but refused to apply. It was Mother who worked at it until his name finally
appeared in the list of new citizens published in the dailies. My parents then brought me and Ricky
to City Hall where a judge married them while we witnessed. Mother had wanted a simple church
wedding but Father refused to be baptized---just like old Gan, I remember thinking, and fear
squeezed my innards then. It had taken Father a while to come home after the execution, enough
time for anything to happen. The old people often warn against loitering in places where death had
recently occurred---hospital rooms, accident sites---lest the aggrieved soul of the newly-dead
captured one's body. Was it possible?

A few days before Gan's execution Yu Tek had dropped by our place to see Father. People had
gotten wind of Father's efforts in support of Gan, and Mother, sick with worry, had asked Yu to talk
Father out of his wildest schemes---including gathering ten thousand protest signatures and sending
a manifesto to the United Nations. Father had edited a Manila-based Chinese daily sometime ago
and Was capable of mounting such moves.

"It's all over, Lim, there's nothing we can do," Yu spoke to Father inside his study, within earshot of
us children.

"He's still alive."

"A new order is being born and either we cooperate or perish. That is always how it has been with
us."

"Why did you come here?"

"Your actions can affect all of us, Lim. I beseech you to let things follow their natural course."

"Natural course? And this is natural? I take full responsibility for my actions."

"There are times when we have to accept certain inconveniences for a greater good. You are much
more learned than I, I don't have to teach you about history and the ways of the world."

"And his death is a mere inconvenience?"

"Gan did some rather terrible things, we must admit."

"But why is he being singled out? Why a military trial? And why all this publicity making him out
as the devil's incarnate? I bet you they'll even shoot him live before the television cameras."
"You know the answers, Lim. You know. Anyway, my contacts assure me that this has nothing to do
with how the rest of the community is to be treated."

"They're intimidating us. They're exacting loyalty from us. He's being executed because it is
convenient for them. Gan happens to be a safe criminal to execute. They're putting on a show using
a real-life victim."

"I didn't come here to argue. But listen, Marcos will be recognizing the Mainland in a couple of
years. They will have to find an acceptable solution to the problem of the Chinese-Filipinos. There is
a very strong chance the government will grant citizenship to most of us by decree. No senators or
Congressmen in the way. No need to bribe crooks and lawyers. One signature and he saves us a
fortune."

"And this is your greater good?"

"Your wife asked me to talk sense into you, Lim. You, of all people should appreciate a citizenship
grant. You don't have a single centavo to your name, man. And once that woman gets fed up with
your madness she's gonna leave you a stinking pauper."

I remember how the preceding silence seemed an eternity. Yu Tek appeared weighed down by some
invisible load as he emerged from Father's study. He sort of scurried out of the house without
bothering to say goodbye to any of us. It was the last we'd ever see of the man.

II

Many things disappeared from our lives after the execution. Among them, the laughter of my
parents. Father's deep, full-throated guffaw---the laughter of men who have never met death nor
thought it possible for themselves---was never again heard. Everything he was to me before the
execution faded into a blur. I think of him often as an imploded human black hole, so dense, from
which no flicker of emotion escaped yet sucking in so much of the lives of those about him.

The only thing I can recall distinctly about Father was the way he looked that dawn of the execution.
His voice, desperate and defeated, awakened me: "Get up, Ah Beng"---he never called me
Mario---"we're going." And I could hear a feverish flight of feet upon the stairs as Mother chased
after him. "No, Bien-So," she screamed---it was the only time I heard her call his Chinese
name---"Don't do this... he's only a boy, he doesn't understand." Father reminded me of how our
rabid chow dog, Tiger, appeared the day the man from the city pound came to take him away. I
jumped out of the bed unsure whether to rush to Mother's side and hide behind her or to get
dressed fast enough to escape that fervid scene. My excitement had been drowned by the confusion
and hysteria of my parents and I felt my lungs congested as water oozed from my nose and eyes.

What? What was it that I did not understand; A man was to be shot and I'd be there to watch. Most
people go through a lifetime without witnessing a single live killing. I'd have something to boast
about to my classmates for many school years to come. Yet how my mother wept and pleaded with
Father to leave me be. My heart was torn. I knew it would be take a terrible evil for Mother to weep
for me as she did. But why? Why did Father insist on taking me with him? Perhaps it was I, I to be
executed. And something in me shivered at the madness. Weeks earlier we took up the story of
Abraham and Isaac in religion class. Did God appear to Father and order him to take me to the stake
and be shot in lieu of Gan? I began weeping myself until he held on to me with such terrifying
strength I thought he'd hit me. "Stop it," he said.

"Today you must become a man."

I don't remember becoming a man that day. Mother succeeded in stalling us and we arrived too late
to catch the musketry. We were walking down the road leading from the camp gate to the execution
site when the shots rang out, stabbing the early morning with such finality they seemed to signal the
end of some ancient agony. But no sounds of joy or triumph ensued, only another worldly silence
and something began throbbing along my spine. We walked on, though, and I wasn't sure by then
where we were headed as the possibility of my own sacrifice began burning the inside of my face.

"They have shot him, Pa," my voice quivered in the half-light, but he was deaf to all else save some
inner voice urging him onward. Onward! Until he met the first wave of witnesses coming our way.
Their faces, masked by the dim, looked haunted. Blood now seemed to pour forth from the dying
sun, wounding the earth, the trees, the faceless strangers meeting us.

"Is it over?" Father asked an old woman---her head draped by embroidered veil, clutching a prayer
book as if she'd just been to church---in a strange tone and manner I'd never before heard. Years
later, I guessed he was trying to disguise himself. But what for? Did he fear to be found out? Did it
shame him to come watch a countryman's execution? Did he begin to despise himself for betraying
Can? For having been betrayed. by someone, something that will forever be beyond me?

"Yes," the old one nodded her white-veiled head and the shadow of her face---so old, so very old---
made me quite sad. I remember thinking I'd never see an older face. "He did not suffer much," she
quipped, "not as much as my son."

"Your son?"

"He was an addict. Let us pray for both their souls," she whispered and moved on.

Father stopped and let go of my hand, bowing his head in silence for what seemed an eternity. My
bowels began to stir as his silence became deafening. Was he in tears? Was he in terrible pain? A
mass of crimsoned humanity now headed toward us. Father looked up and screwed his face. I
panicked, remembering the time he caught a thief trying to break into our store. He had stared so
hard at the guy and lunged at him with such ferocity it took three men to stop Father from pounding
his fallen prey to death. And just as I thought Father would attack the crowd, he dropped his head
and whispered: "Go home."

"Go home, son," he repeated.

"Yes, let's go home, pa," I said but he seemed planted on the pavement.

"Go," he repeated---strong and intolerant.

"By myself?"
He was silent.

"But I don't know how go get home by myself."

He exploded, "When will you ever grow up?" And the fear snagged within me, I heard my spine
snap. "I can't, pa."

"Go," he screamed at me so vehemently the others started noticing. "Go, leave me alone," he yelled
as I began running. "I can't do anything for you anymore. Get out of my life. Go away."

I managed to find my way back home. Running away in tears from the camp I could all but make
out the figure of the stooped man in gray jacket amid the gathering humanity every time I looked
back. In the distance, he appeared to me as an ancient tree heavy with branches, drowned in its own
swollen roots. I guess Father stayed behind to pay his last respects to Gan's remains or perhaps
help oversee the final arrangements. Rumor had it that a giant pearl was stuffed inside Gan's
mouth to light his way through the dark valley of death. Another version had the musketeers
prying open his death-clamped jaws to extract the jewel. Still another recalled the magic spear Taoist
monks buried beside Can to secure his place in the afterlife and guarantee vengeance against his
persecutors in his next incarnation. I never mentioned Can or anything remotely related to the man
ever since. In fact we never did talk again about anything substantial. It seemed all at once we had
so little to share.

Father never tried changing our names or citizenships. Since then, he didn't bother much with us. It
was Mother who handled every detail of our existence, She kept the business afloat even as Father
was forever milking dry previous deals, living off our dwindling reserves, sinking deeper into
oblivion. When at Grade Six I wanted to transfer to the Ateneo from the Catholic Chinese school I'd
been since kindergarten and escape the increasingly difficult Chinese language subjects, Mother
insisted that I tell Father. I summoned enough guts to approach him inside his study and mumbled:
"I'm tranferring to Ateneo, pa." He looked at me as if accosted by some class stranger hefore
responding. "Tell your Mother."

Through the years, even the Amoy dialect, which I believed to be my first tongue, had grown
distant. Without Father to converse with I nearly forgot every word of it. I'd occasionally try to
brush up on my Chinese by speaking to the neighbors or our relatives but they often gave up after
the third round of exchange. I often wandered whether things would have been different if not for
the execution. Was it the death of Gan or was it something else, something more essential that
doomed us as a family? Happy families are alike in the memories they share, unhappy families are
unlike in the questions that haunt them.

III

Five hours ago, I dropped by the hospital to be with Father, It was my turn to look after him after
Mother had spent two straight days at his bedside since his confinement following a second cardiac
arrest. Father was in and out of hospitals so often in the past years they began to grow on me. His
troubles started four years ago when his blood sugar and cholesterol levels began rising
dangerously. Alcohol and excess were at last taking their toll. Since then, he lost a kidney, his right
leg, his left eyesight, suffered a collapsed liver, monthly dialysis, and two heart attacks. I'd offered
him one of my kidneys for all the years of silence, for us at last to share something---but he refused;
he denied me even that.

The night before they lopped off his leg over a year ago, I stared hard at his glaucomic eyes for the
first time in over & decade. I wanted to catch signs of regret for his having refused my kidney, for
spurning my desperate gesture, for so many lost years between us; but only a blankness stared back.
They tied his arms and legs to his bed anticipating the sudden hysteria that possessed him about an
hour before the scheduled amputation.

"What's the point?" I asked Mother as they pumped loads of sedatives into his bloated veins while
he ranted and threatened to pull off the bedposts. Should we have let him keep his leg and what was
left of his wits, allowing the blood sugar to finish him off bit by bit?

"We do what must be done," she answered, staring at me with those hard, unforgiving eyes. And I
remembered having prayed for them to inject just more than enough downers to allow him final
sleep.

And now I was alone with him. In the dim I thought I saw him move. The green pulse on his ECG
monitor made a quick leap and fell back to its measured rhythm. I moved closer, peering at him. He
reeked of decay; the stench of alcohol, nicotine, and insulin had stuck to him like a second skin---a
diseased aura. And then, he was shaking violently. I thought of calling for the doctors, but feared for
what they might pump into him. Father tried moving his nostrils. Those wires must have been
causing such awful Irritation as he kept pointing to them with his free finger while struggling in
vain to untie his hands. Father bit his tongue during the attack and they were too scared for him to
utter a sound. With much effort, though, he was able to pull his hands together over his stomach. I
tried pacifying him but a coldness stung my hands as I touched his arm.

"No, Father, you're making it harder. Stop."

With his right index finger, he began sketching some visible figure on his left palm. I froze. With
Mother, he would ask for a pen and paper whenever he wanted to convey anything and Mother
could do nothing but oblige to keep him from flailing those arms. He tried writing English words,
but the effort was too much and the pain probably wiped out all but his deepest memories of
language. He then wrote singular Chinese characters---"live, forgive, pain, pray"---which were
translated by my aunt Mei Lu, Father's cousin. And the two women could all but keep from
weeping as Father reached out from deep within his pain. If he only reached out earlier, I thought,
much earlier, we might have all been saved.
I searched my mind for traces of the Chinese language, but only a blankness blinded my mind's eye.

"I can't read it, pa, I can't." I whispered into his ears and turned away. But he was adamant. He
stared into my tearful eyes and begged for mercy. He knew I understood. "Death," he wrote inkless
upon his palm. "Death," he insisted. "No, Father," I murmured. But he kept at it until I thought his
palm would bleed the word. Why only now, Father? Why only now? If you hadn't died on me so
long ago, had you brought me home that morning or perhaps taken me to see the corpse, things
might have been different. If there were much more between us than this desperate muteness, I
might be able to save you. Now, after all this time, how can I do this for you?

"Death." "Death," he scratched on---delirious, pleading, desperate as the morning he snatched me

from sleep to witness an execution that would change our lives (a stranger's death for all the trouble
it caused). I was hearing in my mind's ear his terrible refrain: "This is what you want? Isn't it? Isn't
it?" And Mother, the power gone from her words, begging him to let me be. Why? Why those words
of disdain from him? Had Mother not pleaded with him to stop?

I gently tugged at his sheets and untied his right hand. I held on to his callous, dry hand and he
clasped mine with what must have been his remaining strength. He nodded. I took his hand and
placed it upon the respirator tubes. He took a deep, powerful breath and I withdrew my hand.
Father took another breath, rested a while and slowly removed the tubes from his nostrils, laying
them upon his chest. He took another breath of tubeless, adulterated hospital room air, closed his
eyes painfully, and a softness overcame his face so long stretched taut by pain and anger. I touched
his hand and felt its warmth. I knew I had to leave. I'd done my part.

When the nurse checked on him an hour later it was all over. She tried frantically to clear herself
from any blame. The doctors gave Father a few more weeks to live but could not, of course, be
definite about it. They also gave him a few weeks after his attack some two years ago. Mother was
hysterical: "How can you be so careless, Mario? Didn't you stay with him? How can you let this
happen?"

I left the deathroom, fearful of having my body ensnared, and slipped out to the veranda. Dusk was
getting in and blood had again spilled across the horizon---the blood, perhaps, of birds charred by
speeding jets or of tortured souls escaping limbo for heaven. In the distance I thought I heard a burst
of gunfire after which silence settled upon the earth. There was the sound of weeping in the air and
the smell of rain. A lightness suffused my heart. My Father was dead.