Rosario de Guzman Lingat's stories of women and desire

The Locked Door and Other Stories by Rosario de Guzman Lingat, translated from Tagalog by Soledad S. Reyes (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017)

For years translator Soledad S. Reyes had been curating the literary production of Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997): three novels translated into English, numerous essays on the writer, a critical biography, and critical editions of novels and anthologies of stories in Tagalog. Her latest contribution was a selection and translation of stories from Lingat's prodigious body of work. In her introduction to her translation, Reyes said that "the role played by the female protagonist" was her overriding criterion in assembling the anthology. At the height of her literary powers, Lingat was suddenly afflicted by the "Bartleby syndrome", a sickness of writers first described in Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas. She just stopped writing and became a full time housewife.

Lingat's career flowered in the 1960s and 1970s, but even at the height of her popularity, this lovely and highly accomplished woman remained shy and reticent, toiled hard at her stories in between chores as a mother and wife. Indeed, she had no room of her own into which she could withdraw to perfect her craft. Instead, she savored the few precious moments when, having done the cooking and the laundry and having tucked the children in bed, she could be by herself and lose herself in her inner world. She abruptly turned her back on her writing career when she felt that she was no longer getting the professional respect that she deserved.

Reyes's resuscitation of interest into the works of Lingat was commendable. In 2013 alone she came out with translations of three major novels of the writer: The Cloak of God, The Death of Summer, and What Now, Ricky? The present collection of 16 short stories was culled from two anthologies: Si Juan Beterano at Iba Pang Kuwento (1996) and Sa Bukangliwayway ng Isang Kalayaan at Iba Pang Kuwento (2003).

The female protagonists in The Locked Door and Other Stories were either harboring a secret or trying to uncover one. They were either victims of a crime or a witness to one. The stories began calmly but atmospherically, progressing in a silent arc, and terminating in an epiphany, a surprise revelation, or a cathartic ending. In "Estero", for example, a perfect setting was chosen to dramatize a woman's sexual awakening.

To get to their house, she had to cross a wooden bridge that spanned the foul-smelling estero, with its fetid, black, thick water swarming with mosquitoes and other ugly denizens skittering on the surface and plunging into the murky depth. She would cover her nose with a handkerchief as she passed the bridge, enough to bring on the rude catcalls and taunts from the good-for-nothing habitués who, like the mosquitoes and other slimy creatures inhabiting the estero, had entwined themselves around the edges and on the planks of the bridge.

That was such an efficient paragraph to start a story. The few words were not wasted in a story devoted to the main character Sidra's tentative steps to "plunge" into forbidden desire, here crudely represented by the estero. Even the figures of the bystanders in the wooden bridge metamorphosed into the image of mosquitoes and slimy creatures in the background. Sidra, who developed an attraction to Brando, one of the "good-for-nothing habitués", could not decide if she would allow herself to be swayed by her feelings. Even if she was tempted to succumb to the advances made by Brando, she kept her cold distance even as she made signals that she was interested in him. Her grandmother, who lived with her, "drummed into her head, since her childhood, that she must never go to the estero, and not even look at it."

"Bad people live there," her grandmother said. "Women of ill-repute. If I had not been born here and if I had not expressed my wish to die here, we would have packed up and abandoned this place. These people are not from here. One morning, the estero was crawling with those makeshift shanties that seemed to have mushroomed overnight."

After dousing cold water on Brando's overt sexual invitations, Sidra decided one evening to visit Brando's shanty along the dirty estero, only to discover Brando was with another woman. She instantly fled the scene.

Her world crumbled. She shivered uncontrollably. Her whole body had retreated even before her mind made any decision. Breathing heavily, she swiftly took off, blood rushing to her face ...

Back in her room she made a sudden discovery: "It dawned on her that she had lost her slippers, as she hastily fled the shanty and her feet had been smeared with the fetid, foul-smelling mud from the estero."

The elliptical arc of the story was hardly representative of Lingat's style. In this story, however, the dirty setting of the estero functioned as an effective metaphor and image of Sidra's descent into the erotic.

The "locked door" of the title story was another representation of hidden desire. But the image was shrouded in horror and mystery. Like skeletons in the closet, the family secrets contained in the locked door were damaging, precisely because there literally was a skeleton in the closet! In an old country house, two spinsters and their father lived were visited by the brother and son who just married. The wife, walking around the spacious house, was bound to discover an ancient crime in the hidden corners and locked doors. The story was almost a variation of old Gothic novels.

In "The Diary of a Woman", sexual desire was once again upended when one man who raped a woman after knocking her unconscious, discovered, upon reading her diary, that she was infected by HIV by her former lover. Irony was such a potent tool in the stories.

With horror-stricken eyes, he stared at the woman on the bed. Her eyes were open. Her sorrowful gaze was fixed on him.

"We chose the manner of our death, Darmo. We should die happy!"

But not all desires in the stories were repressed and not all cruel expression of desires were rewarded with death-like chagrin. In "The Nocturnal Delights of Mrs. Javelosa", the protagonist experienced an alternative form of sexual liberation from her night swimming in the open sea, her only way of coping with the transgressions of her philandering husband. It was perhaps the very image of freedom and empowerment that Lingat's women characters were striving for.

The night was humid. Even the wind wafted by the ocean was warm. The sounds of the ocean intoned a supplication. The night surrounding her was in deep, uninterrupted sleep.

She stirred, removed her slippers, took off her robe and left her thin nightgown on the swing. The warmth of the wind caressed her body and she felt a sense of liberation. She took some steps, unhurriedly, and bared her lovely nakedness to the shimmering light from the moon.

The wet sand was cold, but the water kissing her feet was warm. The stars twinkled at the waves madly racing to graze her feet. She followed the dancing bubbles as the waves rapturously rose and ebbed, as if desperate to possess her. She succumbed to the waves passionately devouring her body, and reveled in their rhythmical cadence. The caressing touch that overpowered her was blissfully warm and it drove away the groaning sound of the universe.

Amid the groaning sound of the universe, Mrs. Javelosa, like Lingat's other women characters, navigated and "soldiered on" in life, according to the translator, "armed only with a strength and resolve that flow from within". Soledad S. Reyes in fact gave a very cogent introduction and thematic analysis to the collection she meticulously assembled and translated. She was spot on in saying that "Lingat's world is inhabited by characters whose fierce struggles takes place in their world. whose pain is rooted in their own personal errors of judgment and inability to understand their own place in a definite community". The conflicts in her characters' inner world only served to heighten the images and surfaces constituting their outer world.

Women in Translation Month: Novels from the Philippines

Women in Translation (WIT) Month, celebrated every August, is an opportunity to take stock of one's reading habits and focus on the women. I once made a survey of novels translated from Philippine languages. The list has since grown (see Annex below). This post enumerates the Filipina novelists who were already translated. So far, their number could only be counted by the fingers of two hands.

First, some general statistics:

• To date, a total of 23 novels were translated from Spanish or a Philippine language into English. 
• Majority of the English translations (and retranslations)—86% (20 out of 23 novels)—appeared only in the last 10 years (2006-2016).
• All English translations save for the two José Rizal novels (91%) were published and distributed in the Philippines. Hence, they can only be accessed by a small readership. The novels of Rizal are available in Penguin Classics edition. A very limited number (3 or 4) are available in a digital format (Kindle or Kobo).
• Looking at the publication year in original language, 10 of the novels were published in original language between 1885 to 1947, eight of them appeared after the war (1960-1975), and only five (21%) were by contemporary novelists (1991-2013). 
• Only four languages were represented: nine were translated from Tagalog/Filipino; six from Spanish; and four apiece from Cebuano and Hiligaynon.

Gender-related statistics:

• Of the 23 translations into English, nine (39%) are by women novelists.
• The 23 translated novels were written by 15 individuals, only four (26%) of whom were women.
• About 60% of the "primary and latest" translators were women.  
• Of the nine novels by women, seven (77%) were translated by women. 
• The novels by women were translated mainly from Tagalog (4), Cebuano (3), and Hiligaynon (2). None were translated from Spanish.

9 TRANSLATED NOVELS BY WOMEN WRITERS FROM THE PHILIPPINES

Magdalena G. Jalandoni (1891-1978)

1. Juanita Cruz, tr. Ofelia Ledesma Jalandoni (University of the Philippines Press, 2006). 

2. The Lady in the Market, tr. Edward D. Defensor (U.P. College of Iloilo, 1976). 

Jalandoni was a very prolific female writer in Hiligaynon language. She also wrote in other languages and was considered a proponent of feminism. I recently bought a copy of Juanita Cruz, translated by her niece. The Lady in the Market was out of print and only available in libraries.

Austregelina Espina-Moore (1919-2000)

3. Ang Inahan ni Mila (Mila's Mother), tr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu (National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2008).

4. Diin May Punoan sa Arbol (Where a Fire Tree Grows), tr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu (USC Press, 2010). 

 

5. House of Cards, tr. Hope Sabanpan-Yu (National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2013).

Austregelina Espina-Moore (aka Lina Espina-Moore) wrote several novels in Cebuano and three novels in English: House of the Lotus; A Lion in the House; The Honey, the Locusts. I have already read the three translations above and will probably post about them in this blog. They are all available from the Cebuano Studies Center.

Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997)

6. The Death of Summer, tr. Soledad S. Reyes (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2013)

7. What Now, Ricky?, tr. Soledad S. Reyes (Anvil Publishing, 2013) 

8. The Cloak of God, tr. Soledad S. Reyes. (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2013)

Lingat's novelistic voice was one of the most profound during the Marcos dictatorship. What Now, Ricky? [review] recently won for its translator Soledad S. Reyes the triennial award A.L. Becker Southeast Asian Literature in Translation Prize (yes, there's such an award). Reyes also wrote a biography of the writer, Rosario de Guzman Lingat, 1924–1997: The Burden of Self and History. An article by Reyes about Lingat's fiction can be read here (pdf).

Of the three translated novels, the best is probably The Cloak of God [review], which I also read in its original Tagalog.

Luna Sicat Cleto (1967-    )   

9. Typewriter Altar, tr. Marne L. Kilates (University of the Philippines Press, 2016)

Luna Sicat Cleto is the only contemporary Filipina novelist translated to date. The original work, Makinilyang Altar, appeared back in 2002. She also produced a second novel, Mga Prodigal (The Prodigals). Translator Marne L. Kilates is a poet and a seasoned translator of poems, notably the multiple poetry collections of Rio Alma.

I started reading it though I'm not sure if I can finish it within the month, let alone post something about it. Based on the first chapter alone, I believe this is worth translating and reading.


Women in Translation Month is initiated by Biblibio.



ANNEX. PHILIPPINE NOVELS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION (AS OF 21 AUGUST 2016). 
NOTE: THE UPDATED LIST WILL BE UPLOADED HERE (EXCEL FILE).

No.	Title	Author	Gender	Translator	Gender of Latest Primary Translator	Original Language	Pub. Year of Original	Pub. Year of Latest English Translation
1	The Golden Dagger	Antonio G. Sempio	Male	Soledad S. Reyes	Female	Tagalog	1933	2016
2	La Oveja de Nathán (Nathan's Sheep)	Antonio M. Abad	Male	Lourdes Castrillo Brillantes	Female	Spanish	1928	2013
3	Ang Inahan ni Mila (Mila's Mother)	Austregelina Espina-Moore	Female	Hope Sabanpan-Yu	Female	Cebuano	1969-1970	2008
4	Diin May Punoan sa Arbol (Where a Fire Tree Grows)	Austregelina Espina-Moore	Female	Hope Sabanpan-Yu	Female	Cebuano	1960	2010
5	House of Cards	Austregelina Espina-Moore	Female	Hope Sabanpan-Yu	Female	Cebuano	1973	2013
6	Fort: A Novel	Buenaventura S. Medina	Male	Buenaventura S. Medina	Male	Tagalog	1991	2006
7	Eight Muses of the Fall	Edgar Calabia Samar	Male	Mikael de Lara Co & Sasha Martinez	Male	Tagalog (Filipino)	2008	2013
8	El Folk-Lore Filipino [vol. 1 of 2]	Isabelo de los Reyes	Male	Salud C. Dizon & Maria Elinora Peralta-Imson	Female	Spanish	1889 [vol. 1]; 1890 [vol. 2]	1994
9	Ang Diablo sa Filipinas ayon sa nasasabi sa mga casulatan luma sa Kastila	Isabelo de los Reyes	Male	Benedict Anderson, Carlos Sardiña Galache, & Ramon Guillermo	Male	Spanish	1886	2014
10	Noli Me Tangere	José Rizal	Male	various	Male	Spanish	1887	2006
11	El Filibusterismo	José Rizal	Male	various	Male	Spanish	1891	2011
12	Orosa-Nakpil, Malate	Louie Mar A. Gangcuangco	Male	Carla Mae Sioson & Louie Mar Gangcuangco	Female	Tagalog (Filipino)	2006	2009
13	Typewriter Altar	Luna Sicat Cleto	Female	Marne L. Kilates	Male	Tagalog (Filipino)	2002	2016
14	The Gold in Makiling	Macario Pineda	Male	Soledad S. Reyes	Female	Tagalog	1947	2012
15	The Lady in the Market	Magdalena G. Jalandoni	Female	Edward D. Defensor	Male	Hiligaynon	1935	1976
16	Juanita Cruz	Magdalena Gonzaga Jalandoni	Female	Ofelia Ledesma Jalandoni	Female	Hiligaynon	1966	2006
17	Nínay	Pedro Alejandro Paterno	Male	E. F. du Fresne	Male	Spanish	1885	1907
18	Margosatubig: The Story of Salagunting	Ramon L. Muzones	Male	Edward D. Defensor [1979]; Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava [2012]	Female	Hiligaynon	1946	2012
19	Shri-Bishaya	Ramon Muzones	Male	Maria Cecilia Locsin-Nava	Female	Hiligaynon	1969	2016
20	What Now, Ricky?	Rosario de Guzman Lingat	Female	Soledad S. Reyes	Female	Tagalog	1971	2013
21	The Cloak of God	Rosario de Guzman Lingat	Female	Soledad S. Reyes	Female	Tagalog	1975	2013
22	The Death of Summer	Rosario de Guzman Lingat	Female	Soledad S. Reyes	Female	Tagalog	1969	2013
23	Driftwood on Dry Land	T. S. Sungkit Jr.	Male	T. S. Sungkit Jr.	Male	Cebuano	unpub.	2013

Favorite books 2015

My reading choices lately had been pretty much insular. For various reasons, I became interested in local (Philippine) literature in English and Tagalog. There's a very practical reason for this. The books were simply what's readily available and accessible to me in bookshops. Also, the postcolonial and postwar orientation of the books I've sampled was of great interest to me. I managed to make good headway on my two reading lists: the best Philippine novels of the last century and Filipino novels in English translation.

A subjective and flawed exercise, this singling out of books. Yet the obligatory post is quite enjoyable to write, if only to relive each specific reading experience, the beautiful flaws and obvious artifice of a well-made fiction. I selected eight novels as favorites this year. My only complaint about them is their ugly covers.

I probably have not read a finer Philippine novel in English in But for the Lovers by Wilfrido D. Nolledo. First published in 1970, it became extinct until miraculously resurrected in 1994 by Dalkey Archive Press. It is a fountainhead of creativity [not in any Ayn Rand sense, God forbid]. Surreal and savage scenes are interspersed with scenes of great hilarity and profundity. The large, multi-national cast of characters floats in a state of dreaming, half-waking, or in-between. The wartime set-pieces unravel in magical fashion. It's a powerful work of postcolonial perversity. Hyperbole does not give it justice.

After attending a party in a garden among socialites, the executive assistant of Imelda Marcos visited her estranged father. They argued about politics and the hot issues of the day. The father is a fervent critic of Marcos, the daughter does not care. In the end, both will be implicated in the New Society.

Linda Ty-Casper is perhaps the best living novelist from the Philippines, the one most deserving of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. (F. Sionil José -- the supposedly best bet of this country -- simply does not cut it for me.) She had a rather cruel vision of failed history in A Small Party in a Garden (1988). In this short novel, the intersection of domestic personal conflicts with fractured official histories is narrated with uncompromising irony. In one unpleasant episode in the novel, historical forces, military and male, simply shatter and belittle any human effort for decency. A political novel that slaps the face of anyone who kept silent (i.e., almost everyone) during the Marcos regime.

The Hand of the Enemy (1962), the only novel written by Kerima Polotan, is a postwar novel of social corruption that anticipated the political stagnation during the years of dictatorship under Marcos. Herself a Marcos crony, Polotan is redeemed not by the probity of her characters but by their failings. There is an almost metaphysical representation of chance fate as the enemy, whose iron hand is a specter not to be trifled with. And yet the shadow of a false prophet leading his followers to perdition haunts these pages, like the would-be dictator. And like Linda Ty-Casper, the ardent anti-Marcos, Polotan the Marcos sympathizer makes palpable a very human, and evil, design in the institution of marriage and in the political structure of government.

The Cloak of God (1975) is the best of the three novels by Rosario de Guzman Lingat finally brought into English in recent years by her indefatigable translator and champion Soledad S. Reyes. Like The Hand of the Enemy, it analyzes corruption and degradation of spirit through its duplicitous main character, Felino Paras, a theater actor who accidentally became a religious leader. It has a parable-like quality in its treatment of religion as a source of salvation for the gullible masses, easily manipulated by the perfect performance of an actor who secretly lived in sinfulness and depravity. Maestro Felino perpetrated a massive fraud by brilliantly playing a double life, by naturally acting out the role of a religious leader. It is a role the artist is born to play. Wearing the cloak of God is the character's, as well as the novel's, performative act. And in the second act of the play, she will again subvert her own performance by switching roles and switching genres.

I couldn't readily decide which of the two novels by Tsushima Yūko I read this year to include in this list. Woman Running in the Mountains (1980) almost edged out Child of Fortune (1978) in terms of which mystified me the more. But the two are sister novels, both majestically translated by Geraldine Harcourt. There's a continuity in their themes and preoccupations. Both are portraits of an unwed, expecting woman in Japan, circa 1970s. The delicate progression of scenes in these novels reveals a portrait of an immediate family and a society almost unfit for bringing up children. Through challenges in their work stations and family relations, Tsushima's protagonists discovered small personal triumphs against personal doubts and insecurities. Her almost realist narratives are deepened by tensions arising from a wayward metaphor or a stray scene, a simple recollection or a brutal dream. Tsushima is a fixture in this blog and for good reasons.

All the Conspirators (1998) is Carlos Bulosan's posthumous detective novel, published 42 years after the author's death after being discovered among his papers. It exposes the deplorable actions of persons who collaborated with the Japanese enemy during the war and who betrayed their country and fellowmen in exchange for wealth and comfort during the Japanese occupation. This entertaining novel is accessible, full of action, and a fast read. But on the serious side, it provides a damning portrait of traitorous characters who sold out their souls by informing on freedom fighters. They are always waiting in the wings, these frigging collaborators.

And then there's this infamous 1915 Kafka story of magical transformation, Ang Metamorposis, in a recent Filipino translation. This is magical transformation in a cruel, terrifying way. The pathetic and noble struggle of Gregor Samsa against unjust power structures at work and in society is a reflection of the continuing class struggles of wage workers. A Marxist interpretation of the Kafkaesque may be inevitable, especially as it dramatizes how capitalism reduces the nuclear family to financial relations.


That's it for the year round up. Been a great year for badass reading.

The Cloak of God

The Cloak of God by Rosario de Guzman Lingat, tr. Soledad S. Reyes (De La Salle University Publishing House, 2013)


The novels of Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997) were finally available locally in English thanks in large part to translator Soledad S. Reyes's championing of her literary outputs. Except for young adult novelist Ceres S.C. Alabado, Lingat happened to be the only female novelist with works translated from a Philippine language.
 
The production of local novels in the Philippines was rather poor in showing. In the 20th century, only 637 novels were published in the country: 365 novels written in Filipino, 95 translated to Filipino, and 177 saw print in English. The list was compiled in Bibliography of Filipino Novels, 1901-2000 (2011) by Patricia May B. Jurilla. I do not know the male to female novel production ratio, but the discrepancy could easily be assumed.

So far, from the 365 Filipino novels of the last century, only five were translated into English, mostly very recently, three of them Reyes's translations of Lingat's novels. This was a measly 1.4% of Filipino-to-English translation rate. In a nation of non-readers and readers-who-would-rather-read-English-bestsellers, this of course was not surprising. The market for translations was minuscule.

Lingat's novels, published in the 1960s and '70s, offered a historical glimpse into the social, political, and economic forces before and during the Martial Law years. Of her three novels translated in English – Kung Wala na ang Tag-araw (1969), Ano Ngayon, Ricky? (1971), and Ang Balabal ng Diyos (1975) – the latter perhaps provided the most oblique and powerful diagnosis of social chaos and confusion of the times, the artful culmination of the personal struggles of the anti-hero in The Death of Summer and the political activist in What Now, Ricky? It brought a tragicomical representation of mass uncertainty and delusion through the adventures of a failed theater actor (Felino Paras) who suddenly found himself revered, then venerated, as a religious prophet. It was all the more notable for being a novel of self-consciousness artistry, teeming with conscious character-actors "acting out roles created by a writer".

Felino was a reluctant prophet, at first. He acted out the part of a prophet of doom in order to avoid being found out as a criminal. He cribbed his lines from a play he was auditioning for and that he failed to get. He transformed his handsome features into that of a man of extreme piety and instantly realized he stumbled upon a mine when goods and donations from believers started pouring in.

But at what cost? His freedom and privacy were invaded. He could no longer keep to himself and freely go to bars and womanize.

Those vampires! There was no way they would leave him alone! They would not stop pursuing him! ...

He was being observed by all these people. They kept watch of his every move; they were waiting for that salvation they mistakenly believed he was praying for. These fanatics gripped by irrational terror!

Despite the stress and hassle his newfound calling gave him, he kept at it for purely material reasons. He acted out the part and continued to amass wealth from gullible people. He accidentally started a religious cult, with mostly agreeable ramifications.

As the days passed, the news spread fast. It reached the whole city and spread to the provinces. The end of the world was at hand! Darkness would engulf the earth and there would be rains of fire...

Felino's ministry grew, spilling over into the countryside. Churches were constructed to honor the True Faith. His charismatic presence, "a man standing erect, with eyes that radiated power, a role he had now learned to play to perfection, each opportunity for the faithful to listen to the full baritone voice", became most sought after. "He evoked fear and diffidence and inspired admiration and respect. Most of all, he was loved."

The novelist played the prophet's character to perfection. The salient role of religion in life was explored with irony and spontaneous comedy. The scenes were to the point; the dialogues were crisply delivered; the comedy of manners, of situations, of an anti-hero was inextricably linked to his accidental fate, and faith.

The Cloak of God was a very possible inspiration or influence to Himala (Miracle), a 1982 popular and critically acclaimed hit (cult) movie about a faith healer in a barrio. There were obvious parallelisms in how religious life took center stage in a needful society, and how the cult of art was manifest in the cult of religion and celebrity.

"But, is it true? Is it true that the end is near? That darkness will engulf the earth and there will be rains of fire?"

"You heard what I said last night."

The old man was gasping for breath; his knees were getting weaker.

"What do those people want from me, Mang Asyas?"

"They'd like to speak with you. Your prophecy has spread like wildfire." Felino's gaze was unwavering. "They'd like to know if salvation is impossible."

Felino was smiling inwardly, extremely pleased with himself. He raised his eyes and examined the ceiling so as not to let the old man get an inkling of this wave of pleasure coursing through his veins. Words plucked out of Gonzalo's [the playwright's] drama, which was never staged, raced through his mind.

And he said, "Compassion is shown to those who truly believe. Salvation is found only in True Faith."

"How is this to be?"

Felino's eyes were glued to the dark corner of his room. How? The script of that mean-spirited Gonzalo did not say how!

The question was repeated. "How, sir?"

Felino lowered his eyes and looked grief-stricken. "I do not know how." It was an honest answer. "Leave me, Mang Asyas. I am preoccupied with my personal problems."

Since Felino played his role to perfection, providing the precise modulation of voice, dignity, and bearing as befits a preacher, who really could say he was a false prophet? In his seamlessly improvised speeches and sermons, in his sincere posture and imposture, who really could judge him?

One is tempted to ask, what kind of society breeds a perfect prophet in their midst? What hidden social arrangements and mores could allow new faith to take root, could compel a passionate and devoted following? Pertinent questions, the answers to which provide strong indicators of social imbalances in unjust, post-colonial regimes.

The final act of the novel was a shocker. The matter of fact comedy suddenly switched genre, into mind-bender speculative fiction or high-strung science fiction. Lingat manufactured values and meanings using the art of modern, self-parodying novel, as if to rattle and shake the devoutness of one's faith in fiction, to measure the depths of satire. She took to a higher level the implications of what it really meant to wear the mantle of God. Her outrageous plot lines would test the capacity of fiction to stupefy, to enact miracles that willingly defy mannered, realist fiction.

What Now, Ricky?

What Now, Ricky? by Rosario de Guzman Lingat, trans. Soledad S. Reyes (Anvil, 2013)


In a famous scene in José Rizal's nationalist novel Noli Me Tangere (1887), the educated protagonist Juan Crisostomo Ibarra was on the run from Spanish authorities and being aided by the mysterious boatman known as Elias. The two were aboard a boat on a lake, planning Ibarra's course of action to evade the authorities. They recalled their previous debate a month ago. Ibarra was then sympathetic to the colonizers. Now he had reversed his position.

“I wish to disillusion you, sir, and save you from a sad future. Recall that night when I talked to you in this same banka [boat] under the light of this same moon, not a month ago. Then you were happy, the plea of the unfortunates did not touch you; you disdained their complaints because they were the complaints of criminals; you paid more attention to their enemies, and in spite of my arguments and petitions, you placed yourself on the side of their oppressors. On you then depended whether I should turn criminal or allow myself to be killed in order to carry out a sacred pledge, but God has not permitted this because the old chief of the outlaws is dead. A month has hardly passed and you think otherwise.”

“You’re right, Elias, but man is a creature of circumstances! Then I was blind, annoyed—what did I know? Now misfortune has torn the bandage from my eyes; the solitude and misery of my prison have taught me; now I see the horrible cancer which feeds upon this society, which clutches its flesh, and which demands a violent rooting out. They have opened my eyes, they have made me see the sore, and they force me to be a criminal! Since they wish it, I will be a filibuster, a real filibuster, I mean. I will call together all the unfortunates, all who feel a heart beat in their breasts, all those who were sending you to me. No, I will not be a criminal, never is he such who fights for his native land, but quite the reverse! We, during three centuries, have extended them our hands, we have asked love of them, we have yearned to call them brothers, and how do they answer us? With insults and jests, denying us even the chance character of human beings. There is no God, there is no hope, there is no humanity; there is nothing but the right of might!” Ibarra was nervous, his whole body trembled. [The Social Cancer (1912), trans. Charles Derbyshire, emphasis added]

A similar awakening was experienced by Ricardo Mendoza (Ricky), the young idealistic activist in the novel Ano Ngayon, Ricky? (1971) by Rosario de Guzman Lingat (1924-1997). This time, however, the oppressors were not only foreigners but fellow Filipinos as well. And the social cancer was not colonialism from foreign power but corruption in government, the shameless impunity being enjoyed by politicos and oligarchs, and the caciques and neo-caciques in Philippine society. Near the end of novel, Ricky confronted the rich, educated man who represented the powerful preying on the blood of youth to advance their perverted cause:

"You knew that your paid assassin was a killer? What was his mission? To sacrifice the dead bodies of activists who desired to change the nation for your glory and honor? And prepare the path leading to your taking over of power? That has always been your goal. You became greedy for power which you first tasted when you were a senator. ... Your family and friends and you yourself were involved in grave scandals when you were in power; you feared exposure and humiliation. Instead of waiting to be exposed for what you really were, you wisely got out of politics. ... But the hunger for power, once in the blood, remains to eat up the innards of an insatiable man. ..."

...

"Don't you dare deny what I said, and once again make a fool out of me. The music is over ... You will never again make me dance to your tune. My eyes have been opened. You and [your assassin], two individuals at the opposite ends of life's pole, who ordinarily could not find any common ground, became one because you shared one goal. Self-interest! Personal gain secured in different ways. ..." [What Now, Ricky?, trans. Soledad S. Reyes, emphasis added]

The translator's comprehensive introduction – so comprehensive it should have been an afterword – rightly situated the novel within the tradition of the protest novel that originated from Rizal's Noli Me Tangere. A similar cancer that afflicted the country in Rizal's time also afflicted it in Lingat's time in the 60s and 70s. And it also afflicts it till now. It even afflicted those who hunger for power, a malignant disease eating up "the innards of an insatiable man".

Lingat's novel proposed electoral reforms, not bloody revolution, as a viable solution to the ills of society. The novel's epigraph said as much about how a nation's leaders were only a reflection of the greater society that elected them in the first place.

In a nation that creates

its own Government

by choosing the best

in the populace and clothing them

with power, its Government

is its own mirror.

The novel's backdrop was the First Quarter Storm in 1970, a period of unrest where students and laborers were violently dispersed by the police during demonstrations. Ricky was one of the popular student leaders. His “nagging doubts” and “bitterness” were all locked up inside him.

He exuded bravado, like most young men. He espoused beliefs and convictions all his own. He knew how to laugh, and he liked it when he was called Pogi, and he stood out as a colorful campus figure in the university, and very few suspected of the smoldering anger underneath a happy-go-lucky façade.

“What are the demonstrators fighting for?” Ricky was asked. The burning issues of the day: “Social Justice, Land Reform … [and] the rights of the Filipinos killed in American [military] bases.” Ricky was a respected student leader. His alliance was not part of the leftist segment of the demonstrating groups.

"We don't work with them [Philippine Youths]. They have communist leanings. Our group does not share their beliefs. We want change to bring about real freedom, not to hand over our country to another nation."

The communist ideology of the left as a separate nation incompatible to the current one was an idea present in the writings of other Filipino novelists, particularly in those of National Artists like Lazaro Francisco and F. Sionil José. The latter was quite vocal about it.

Two ongoing rebellions, one communist and the other secessionist [in southern Philippines], have cost us billions and thousands of lives. If the communists win – and I know they won't – they will rule just as badly because they are Filipinos hostage to barnacled habits of mind, to ethnicity.

The real revolution has to start first in the mind and its wellsprings are not in Mao or Marx. It is in our history, in Mabini, in Rizal whose writing inspired the revolution of 1896. [This I Believe—Gleanings From a Life in Literature, p. 16]

For Sionil José, oligarchy is the social disease that is tearing the flesh of the nation. He was not one to shy away from violence to rid the country of the greedy and corrupt elite. In his novel Mass, also set during the First Quarter Storm, his main character Pepe Samson killed a homosexual cacique figure in the end, a man responsible for the disappearance of activists and whose name, Puneta, was emblematic of the curse of the land. This was after Pepe was detained and tortured by the authorities. There was in the the killing of one villain, who stood for the rest of his kind – as a synecdochic or representational figure – an imposition of justice, a righting of wrong. Pepe made good the promise given in the epigraph to Mass.

They lied to us in their newspapers, in the books they wrote for us to memorize in school, in their honeyed speeches when they courted our votes, They lied to us because they did not want us to rise from the dungheap to confront them. We know the truth now; we have finally emptied our minds of their lies, discovered their corruption and our weaknesses as well. But this truth as perceived by us is not enough. Truth is, above all, justice. With determination then, and cunning and violence, we must destroy them for only after doing so will we really be free.

This was supposedly an excerpt from "Memo to Youth", an essay Pepe himself wrote for a writing contest, without at first believing in its message, but later fully subscribing to it when he experienced a "final liberation" after killing "with determination ... and cunning and violence" the villain. This was hard to fault. But taken literally, Sionil José's solution may be hard to implement. There's just too many of the greedy elite that wiping them out would constitute a genocide!

Sionil José, further, ran the trouble of being betrayed by his sexual politics in relation to the nature of evil in his fiction. In Ermita, the eponymous female lead hired someone to practically castrate her gay or bisexual uncle, in retaliation for the latter's lascivious and cruel treatment of her. The uncle also happened to be a landlord who enriched himself at the expense of other lowly peasants. Despite the agreeable elimination of the caciques, the sexual orientation he chose for the villains in his novels was problematic. His lumping of caciquism (as a form of moral turpitude) with that of homosexuality was a sorry choice. It betrayed Sionil José's non-progressive views on homosexuality, while also somehow failing to recognize the patriarchal background of caciquism.

It was notable that in Lingat's novel, the rich villain believed in the necessity of violence ("No change is possible without blood being shed."). Bloody revolution, right of might, use of force. The justification for violence was ever present but their application was always in question. The moral and ethical ways to pursue moral and ethical imperatives continued to haunt nationalist idealists and reformers. In What Now, Ricky?, the same "right of might" that Ibarra proposed to Elias was presented as an option that should be considered only as a last resort. This "pacifist" idea was voiced out by Ricky's friend, Tony, a character who evolved from a poor and vulnerable provinciano at the start of the novel to someone more aware of his surroundings, someone whose eyes have also been opened through education and close observation of society.

History is replete with examples of glorious revolutions tragically ending with the leaders themselves conspiring to destroy each other to seize power. Look at the French Revolution, at our own revolution [1896 Philippine Revolution]. And even now, for each victorious moment, contrasting claims are made by different groups to reap the reward and honor. No, Ricky. War should be the last option, and only after everything else has been exhausted.

If for Sionil José complete freedom consisted of "destroying" the greedy elite, for Lingat freedom consisted of the people wisely exercising their right to vote. The denial of that right was also the denial of human happiness, of one's "rightful legacy". To fully enjoy that freedom, everybody is duty-bound to defend the right of suffrage. Ricky and Tony's understanding that reforms in the election system could be a solution had its own caveat. There was, then and now, a need to produce a lineup of "candidates who are morally upright and credible". But these species of candidates are a rare breed in Philippine politics.

So what, Ricky? – a question that could be a more idiomatic rendering of the title. Outside the novel, the full answer has yet to be worked out. The nation is still reeling from entrenched oligarchy before and since the Marcos regime. From the unbroken succession of trapos and epals – corrupt, inept, mediocre, douche leaders in Philippine government. Wake up, electorate, wake up!

What Now, Ricky? was one of the three novels of Lingat translated by Soledad S. Reyes and released last year. The other two, The Cloak of God and The End of Summer, both from De La Salle University Publishing House, were supposedly less political in subject but no less significant for delineating postwar socieconomic pressures on Philippine society. Reyes was probably the most logical translator of Lingat, having earlier written literary analyses of the writer’s works. She also wrote the biography of the novelist, Rosario de Guzaman Lingat (1924-1997): The Burden of Self and History. She was thus not merely the writer's translator but her champion, in the same manner her translation of The Gold in Makiling by Macario Pineda appeared after her literary studies of the writer.

Philippine literature needs more translators and champions to bring out to a wider audience substantive literary works of fiction in vernacular language like the novels of Lingat. More eye-opening works, more works that can shatter deep-seated apathy.