Chapter 18
Taklin's Grief
Taklin's hand turned cold sending chills around his body as if a bucket full of ice water was doused all over him reading the wire from his mother informing the tragedy befalling recently on the family - the untimely death of his father.
"An accident! Most unlikely involving not just one, two but three in succession," he protested seething with anger in disbelief. "Don't force yourself on the issue dragging the weight of the whole world upon your shoulder buddy," his alter ego echoed reminiscent of the Beatle's Hey Jude.
"Why not indeed. I haven't even learned the circumstances surrounding such mystery," he explained regaining normal composure. Who knows some crazy guys would like to destroy his preparation for his fast-approaching PMA graduation? Went over the wire probing the date it was sent. The same message couched in very simple terms: Come immediately father died. Burial on Friday, the sixteenth. Mama.
It's real. Speechless. Like spaghetti, Taklin felt slowly dropping to the ground on bended knees the weight of the whole world as if pushing him down draining all his energy, hatred included.
Throughout his life, he could hardly recall any incident involving his father engaged in extremities like heavy drinking or whetting his appetite with excessive food which is gluttony practiced by jackals. Alright, he drinks but this is mere during special occasions only. He knows the tastes of his father. Whether it is lacsoy, Gigaquit Rhum, Som of Surigao City, Basi, Marca Demoño, or lambanog of Southern Tagalog, potent drink from fermented nipa sap whatever to cognac, gin, tonic, Johnny Walker – all this to whet his taste bud in many socialization and fellowships. But again, not to test his limit nor push himself beyond endurance. "Drink a little wine with a merry heart, a passage from the book of Psalm" always reminded him of advice given by his father inculcating among others moderation, and temperance. Such virtue was particularly helpful in maintaining his sanity extending even beyond drink or food but most importantly, in sports and studies.
The sad news however late this afternoon, didn't reconcile with all these pieces of advice. Thus, making him uncomfortable going nuts establishing the missing nexus of the incident. Speculations seeped in. Maybe his father had serious problems prompting him drinking him that much and whirling suffered complications leading to a heart attack. Maybe his friends' generosity over hard liquor was too irresistible to refuse. This then was possibly the reason he accidentally slipped away plunging himself under bedrocks inflicting severe damage and causing his death. A fleeting picture of his father with a severe concussion, contusion, and abrasion of the torso, head, and breadbasket rendering his face a bloody mess sends a tremor down his backbone.
"But how many percentages of probability the death of his father goes this way?"
He didn't know.
There were other angles to consider like motives, who did it, and how the murder is if it is a murder in cold blood was done? How about the weapons used? Was it a club, a hammer, rock, an ax, a bottle, or a gun? It could not also be a farfetched idea that ptomaine solution might have been laced in the menu or surreptitiously dropped in the Rhum abundantly during that drinking spree.
Tilting his head backward staring at the ceiling he thought that maybe it's also God's will to claim his father back to where he rightfully belongs. Like all mortals, he must have been selected to take needed rest and security up there to give way to others.
Breathing deeply, Taklin found it difficult to accept the loss of a father especially since graduation from PMA was fast approaching. But what could he do, the incident was part of life's journey?
"Like the life of religious, military life is also threading road less traveled. Same road leading towards Calvary," he cleared himself.
"Yes," given the death of his father, the thought was at the back of his mind.
This is what he also recalled from Driarco telling him the real essence of life and what service is all about - a vindication to the weight of the cross, heavy indeed to carry let alone to bear.
Military history and other relevant subjects have been Taklin's favorite subjects. Eschatology, a subject he took from the seminary he finds engrossing is not that far. Of course, Creative Writing has been there but facing the immediacy of time, and how to manage it, has been the real challenge. Not that he received an excellent mark on this subject but rather of the didactic dimension it provides. As a dreamer, talking about death and its concomitant psychological impact enabled him to encounter reality meeting face to face ultimate truth that man's life doesn't end when he's six feet under the ground. It is only a beginning as life transforms itself through this special growth that is death taking place.
"Unless the grain of wheat shall fall on the ground and dies. It shall remain single wheat and not brings life," he recalled one of the songs composed by the Jesuits normally sang during Lent. He too shared Fr. Driarco's appreciation with German theologian Paul Tillich and eschatologist Kubler Ross Khan both having scholarly treatises on the subject.
Ms. Khan reminds him that whether he likes it or not he too just like any other animals on this planet of apes would also degenerate or simply vanished away like any dust in the thin air. As an offshoot, the sense of immediacy and urgency eschatology provides so overwhelmed him making his every move exciting as if boarding the last trip.
"Time is our hope, time is our security, time is our destiny and time is the mirror in which we see eternity," he refreshed with much gusto from one of his readings of the beauty that is life. Tillich's association of death with the rest of creation on the other hand so enthralled him. "Did the earth not move, birds chirped, rocks split when Christ died and resurrected?" he synthesized Tillich's work.
"This business again of reflection. But never mind at least it helps gives fleeting contentment," the thought playing at the back of his mind eschatology pre-occupying his subconscious.
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"Lord I commend his spirit and make his soul whiter than snow," he uttered repeatedly after regaining his serenity. Going inside the chapel, he concentrated his eyes on the hanging crucifix. Save for the staccato sound of the typewriter upstairs in Gen. Superintendent room's, the silence inside the chapel was deafening. Occasionally, the sparrows in the ceiling chirped identifying their sorrow and anxiety of Taklin.
Two things ran into his mind: if his father died from the accident, then someone must have deliberately handed that accident to him on a silver platter. Treachery if not a completely plain conspiracy. Something must be done as the damage might have been great and there's no way to rectify it except to pin down the culprit and present him to the bar of justice. The homework is difficult obviously for Taklin. But there's no other way to deter similar crimes than checking it himself. And yes, the first thing to do is to go home and attend his father's burial.
Looking at his wrist watch it was ten o'clock in the evening. He must have been engrossed with his reflection in the chapel that he did not notice the passage of time.
"I can still catch up on the first trip for Caticlan three hours from now," he uttered. Taking the motorized Banca with outrigger at Malay passing the famous Boracay Island would then take him to Osigan Island. Two hours more he would already be in his house.
"And what a sight to behold," he told himself while preparing his things in his rug pack.
"Kindly hand this letter to Gen. early tomorrow," he said to Nonoy, his Ilonggo classmate from Janiuay, Iloilo.
"Anything wrong Taklin? Why left the dormitory this ungodly hour?"
"Nothing to worry about buddy. Remember that's the way it is. Life is only lived once anyway in this world," he answered about how to accept the death of his Dad bothering his mind. The thought of his Dad living life to the fullest and making the best of every opportunity that presented itself consoled him.
"You're right buddy. Death is a great leveler. It is certain and necessary as tax is to the government. Besides, there's no other way for man to go than to go back to his roots, an act of surrender of his invincibility to Him who created everything before going up to where he spiritually belongs," Nonoy shared.
"Beautiful."
"How you said given death as inevitable any mortals passed and experienced, I feel something is holding you accepting your father's death?" Nonoy ventured with reservation.
"Well you see I have an inkling that Dad did not die naturally," he answered feeding his good friend's curiosity all the more.
"Some fishermen early this morning found dad's dead body floating at San Luis by the sea. And in his body were marks of severe beatings. Three ribs of the torso were dislocated. You see I never recalled any incident of my father passing that cliff dead of the night. What for? What did he do there anyway late in the evening? Maybe his body was dragged by those who perpetrated the crime already dead and bingo, thrown away to those bedrocks by the sea with only the sound of the waves, the stillness of the night, and course their laughter as mute witnesses," Taklin stopped for emphasis while taking enough air for himself to breath.
"Any witnesses and shreds of evidence to support your judgment?" Nonoy asked.
"Yes, I have one tough guy who could speak out. One member of the choir in the province came all the way bringing to me that bad news. Rico knew who was my father's companions in that drinking spree. There were James, Jun, Prado, and seven others. All familiar thugs of an incumbent mayor who have been doing dirty work for the Mayor. Surprisingly, they are roaming around still scot-free."
The conspiracy was delivered clean late that evening around 10 pm at Coleram. The place is not yet energized reason why it was very dark. Rico was on his way back home after attending fellowship at the parish when a big thud split the stillness of the night. Taking cover standing behind a big acacia tree, twenty meters away from where the cliff was, he heard perpetrators of crime celebrating their feat with give-me-five gestures. There's no mistake about it. They were James et al celebrating the feat. Why? Because tossed to and fro back to the beach by big waves dead!"
"Wow! What an almost perfect crime. Killing behind the cover of darkness," Nonoy snapped.
"You're right and Mr. Hercule Poirot should be summoned to conduct the post-mortem."
"Why are there no other effective law enforcers in the area?"
"Not really. There are. But you know when the Highest Executive of the municipality is implicated in the incident, then it's nonsense involving the services of local police unless, of course, you'd like the succeeding investigation to die its natural death or make it all the more doubly suspicious. Remember how the discovery of the mystery of the death of Hitler and Eva Braun was unearthed many decades later than when they committed suicide on April 30, 1945, down the bunker."
"What do you mean? Are you saying that some crazy guys refuted the veracity of that historic claim?"
"Must read fiction buddy, books that would make you crazy never mind undocumented ones. You're right. The quartet of Rex Foster, an American architect studying 1000 designs during the Nazi Regime, Mr. Nicholas Kirvov, Russian Museum curator, Ms. Tovah Lovaine, journalist and secret agent of Israel's Massad Intelligence and one Ms. Emily Ascroft, a scholar and researcher writing on the autobiography of Hitler averred the insufficiency of that claim. True that they excavated from the bunker the bodies of the Fuhrer and Ms. Braun after the victory of the Russians but they were not the original Hitler and his wife Eva. They were bodies of their doubles!"
"Gee, I'm hearing you right," Nonoy remarked astonished, asking further what happened to the originals.
"Of course, Hitler was dead but that was after three decades later. That means around the middle of 1970s in the seventh secret, a subterranean city under Berlin which Hitler holed out after his alleged suicide on 1945."
"Magnificent and very terrific. But what in the world has this to do with your search for Mr. Hercule Poirot?"
"Well, had the quartet not avail the services of Israel's Massad Intelligence group in the heart of Berlin who arms for arms and man for man could defy resurgence of Neo-fascists in Germany, the whole world would have not known or solved the riddle on that April 30, 1945."
"Incredible!"
"To be a fiction, one that only comes from the fertile imagination of Irving Wallace," Driarco readily satisfied the benefit of Nonoy's doubt.
"You almost got me, buddy," Nonoy said blowing a whistle.
"Forget it. Fiction or non-fiction, there's no harm in learning the wisdom from the quartet. And for all you know sometimes great books, those that are scholarly produced more often than not are too close to being real as fiction. I remember a certain Mr. Gerald Green who wrote Holocaust. It's so far one of the best pieces of literature I read on how ruthless Nazis were towards the Jews. A diary, an interview with those who survived the gas chamber, and the personal experience of the author himself led to the completion of that book. It was not bad at all 'cause the rest of the world was further informed on the anatomy of Hitler's terror."
"Getting the culprit is a very tall order. It would have been good if I could collar him so I could blow his brain into bits and pieces. True, there's no way to resurrect Dad back to life the way Jesus did to Lazarus. But if I could only pin down the perpetrators of the heinous crime and crucified them at least my place would be clean from garbage – salvaging, summary execution, am hamletting, and evacuation. For how many more Juan de la Cruzes would be charged against the wall and killed. You see, true what my friend Driarco in the province observed., there's something wrong happening to our country my friend. We are entering an Era of Paradox and ironies. Men these days surprisingly know more about making guns and bullets than creating an atmosphere of lasting peace. No wonder indeed the entire country is on fire prompting the rest to go up in the hills living there with the birds and the bees raising arms against the duly constituted authorities."
Nonoy couldn't help himself but empathize with his good friend Taklin. He too shared the predicament but accepted the excesses of civil strife having survived sound and unscathed. Lately, he was told by his mother that San Rosario was the subject of a military operation.
'The scene was that bad fear and trembling his once peaceful municipality,' he remembered an anecdote his mother told him when she earlier visited him.
"The area was so calm. Almost all one hundred twenty households evacuated to nearby villages otherwise they would have been unwanted casualties too in the crossfire." The casualties were peacefully and orderly buried there, remembering local parlance attributing temporary cessation of hostility after each encounter. On the other hand, he too wondered what compels the other group in staging that mid-day ambush wasting precious lives young and old alike in the process.
"Who's not bothered with the ongoing internal strife," Nonoy also thought. Ambush becoming a fad of the time, sporadic incidents erupting just everywhere, who could not be confused anyway. Recalling then an ambush, he saw a hammer turned upside down after it was burned by the rebels killing all military troopers inside. The medico-legal and embalmers have had their day full retrieving dead bodies trapped inside the vehicle completely a picture of savage destruction. Disfigured faces, intestines protruding out from heavily burned bellies, bodies turned charcoal black from fire and smoke flesh dangling still all over from main bones, blood stinking aggravating the already purged smell of decomposing cadavers, Nonoy reeled what his naked eyes saw from that incident.
"Now tell me if a war between and among Filipinos is not ugly," the notion from his subconscious asked him. To think that another series of ambushes happened in his beloved municipality practically made him sick.
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"You're leaving for the province tonight," Nonoy told Taklin who was putting in a couple of books in his rucksack.
"Yap. Can't wait to spend away time," he told while putting several hardbound books in a bag.
"Just want to be sure I have something to read on in case my stay in the province would be extended. It's an old book but probably Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and five volumes of Lifetimes' Civil War, Communist Rebellion, and World War II would be enough."
Laying down in bed and putting his hands on the back of his head, Nonoy resumed: "Very crazy indeed. I don't know when would this war ends."
"For as long as a man craves for victory, I believe he would continue waging war. And that is a lot of non-sense," Taklin griped too. A brief silence ensued. His friend was right it's everybody's business to help put this quarrel among Filipinos to rest. Freedom and enough air to breathe should be the bottom line of it all. True that winning the war is an additional feather on the cap for the strong but defeat on the part of the vanquished encourages more freedom. And when freedom is granted after defeat, man does not take arms anymore or so, he thought recalling part of the sentiment of Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag. But the war is between and among Filipinos, not Russians, the thought playing at the back of his mind.
"And if I may further ask. What do you think in Christ's name was the motive of the killing," Nonoy disturbed?
"I'm afraid I could only conjecture one . . . politics. My father you know was staging a comeback. This probably fanned the fire of renewed killing in the province."
"He was you know an epitome of an ideal public servant. He knows how to delineate business from morality, integrity, and service from politics… He rose from the ranks and started serving his people as Barangay Captain before being elected as councilor and soon rose to become a Mayor practically spending roughly twenty-five long years of clean public service. . That's eight straight terms of office until he resigned as a protest to the abuses perpetrated by Marcos and his men in the province.
"Very difficult decision."
"But decisive one because there was no other alternative left than to give way to Devil."
"At the expense of the voting population,"
"Hmm, not really. The people would always be there with you wherever you go. On the contrary, while it is true that his resignation caused trouble among the people, it at least taught them how important democracy is as a system."
"Sometimes misleading."
"When you see only the externals. But not when you study what makes democracy works."
Nonoy was consigned as the willing listener to the unsolicited talk of his good friend.
"If we could only practice democracy, I don't think there is still any need to ask the government for more. Know what I mean? Look who's in direct control of the country's resources? It's Marcos and his cronies – Benedicto, Enrile, Cuenca, the military, and other Alibaba and a bunch of thieves. Not surprising for people to rise in arms against the government because their cause, our cause if you wish, is valid."
"Common buddy tells me if there's democracy existing and I'll tell you none. The U.P. professor in a way was right claiming what we do have are pretenses of being a democratic country."
"No trickle-down of resources to the masses."
"Definitely yes. With graft and corruption, immoralities, civil war, and what have you, how would democracy survive? No and never. I'm not pessimistic about the disorder and chaos going on in the country. It's just a big loss of our resources – time and money – building democracy and destroying it ourselves. How long would we allow this situation to last? So much suffering has been experienced by the people. And who suffers most? The silent majority – the babies, the children's mothers, and other members of the family – becoming the latest addition to the long list of casualties we don't know when would be the end and who would be the last.
"In war, Ninoy wrote later, there are no victors only victims."
"That's the hard truth. But that's the way how fighting shows its ugly head. Even if we delved into the trend of the first two world wars, the bottom line has been that way. It's the civilians, those in the middle who received the worst beating, a fact corroborated by two World Wars and still counting we have seen and witnessed."
Taklin's adrenalin seemed to be oozing still no indication of being intellectually drained gauging from his interesting free-wheeling brainstorming on the subject. Nonoy still buried himself on the bed listening to his good friend.
"We're of course part of that long list of casualties. But this incident should not be taken as an excuse to remain silent. There's no time allowing this sound silence too deafening or it would blow right before our faces allowing the mayor and his henchmen to perpetuate their abuses unabated. This is a mistake each one could not afford to commit if we are really to build and practice democracy. I'm not surprised if Papa met his untimely death this early. With the election fast approaching, the Mayor has no other valid ground to be elected than to clean his backyard. Papa you know has been resolute in restoring peace and order exacting vengeance through the power of ballots from the people he once served."
"What if the Mayor is reelected?"
"By the people or by his money expressed through the barrel of a gun."
"Either way? But my faith in Filipino voters has been restored. Ergo, most unlikely .... "
"Unless he would be moving heaven and earth using his gold, goons, and guns ...." Nonoy interjected.
"Not at all I suppose. Not all Juan de la Cruzes are that dumb I guess unless they give way to bad politics."
"However, if the Mayor gets the mandate of the people. Fine and I would personally congratulate him. That's the best gift one receives from God up there. So be it."
"But if he got it through the power of the bullets, this is a different story and there would be chaos.," an impending remark from Taklin.
"That is unacceptable unless we don't respect the mandate of the people. The verdict of the people should be accepted hands down because the true will of the people is sacredly emanating from above. And if by bullets, holy cow, the people have all reasons to speak out their minds through recall election as required by law. Taklin stoop up and face the mirror and ran a comb on his healthy hair.
"Quite funny buddy," Nonoy remarked.
"A circus coming to town almost with the birds and bees casting their votes."
"Dead included. May your Tatay rest in peace buddy."
"When you have time, I hope you could drop by at the province and witness the legacy left by Tatay – orderly zoning, complete educational facilities including a library that boast of complete reading materials, recreation, and other vertical projects to include excellent sports complex to name a few."
"A man who practices what he preaches. May his tribe left further increase and fill the world with love as the song puts it."
Tapping his right shoulder and then gently gripping it, Taklin finally bid him goodbye. "This is the time of mourning not of inquiry," he reminded himself.
"God bless you, buddy," Nonoy responded his resonant voice echoing in the dormitory as Taklin began to walk in haste sound of shoes tip-toeing the concrete pavement gradually decreased until darkness finally engulfed him outside.
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