The Fireflies of Guiuan

By Carlos Cortés

Shortly after joining Aguinaldo’s army as a young medic, José R. Lugay greets his country’s independence from Spain with bright dreams of the future. He marries his childhood sweetheart. Only a few months later, the dogs of war rip his dreams to tatters. A harrowing year with the defenders in the Philippine-American War follows. After the war is lost, he spends five years seeking lucrative employment as a doctor in Manila, without much success. Did his refusal to pledge allegiance to the new colonizer affect his prospects? He accepts a post as a country doctor in Guiuan, Samar, a remote town in the country’s most depressed province. Ten years of a hardscrabble life there seem about to be followed by ten more. Then the Warays choose him to fill one of Samar’s three seats in the country’s House of Representatives. His return to Manila as a distinguished Congressman must be the peak of his career, but two terms as a legislator leave him wondering if it isn’t actually a diversion from his true calling. Should he stay in the House, or run for the Senate, or become the eminent Manila doctor he had once aspired to be?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796078817

Carlos Cortés

Carlos Cortés y Basa has worked as a radio disc jockey, a newspaper stringer, a shampoo salesman, a pizza delivery boy, a forklift operator, an airline ground employee, and a call center agent. His previous books are a novel, Longitude, published by the University of the Philippines Press in Diliman, Quezon City, and a short story collection, Lassitude, published by Anvil Publishing in Pasig City. The latter won a National Book Award in the Philippines. His short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies in the Philippines. A graduate of the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, he has attended the writers’ workshops at Silliman University in Dumaguete, and at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. He lives in Mandaue in Cebu.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

He wanted a skeleton. It didn’t have to be whole, or intact, or in one piece. It didn’t have to be an articulated skeleton. Just a complete one, all 206 of its bones accounted for, even if a few had fallen off. Most of his medical school classmates wanted skeletons of their own, too. How marvelous it would be, some of them had wistfully sighed, to have a skeleton at home, or in the closet, to perform homework on. Such talk was, of course, mere youthful bravado. None of them would have the wherewithal to procure one. He, however, now had the opportunity.

He had been alerted to the possibility of abstracting one from the local cemetery. Talk to Basyo, was the word. He made his way there with a neighbor, Rafaela, who knew the cemetery caretaker. The man’s name was Gervasio. Unshod, unshaven, eyes haunted, clothing soiled, the sepulturero looked quite the storybook ghoul. Rafaela did the talking. After a tense parley, the munificent offer of sixteen pesos was reluctantly accepted. For that paltry sum the body snatcher would either remove a corpse that was due for interment, or dig up a buried one. The medical school student promised to have the money ready in two days.

When they returned a couple of days later, Basyo sheepishly confessed that he could not go through with the deal. He had been about to take a cadaver when the friar curate suddenly appeared. It was the death anniversary of some old priest and the friar, bearing flowers and candles, had come to honor his confrère’s memory. The caretaker had narrowly evaded being caught in flagrante delicto.

All that Gervasio would permit now was a choice of bones from the ossuary. The medical student scrounged up a femur, a tibia, a humerus, some phalanges, some ribs, and a spine. He gave the sepulturero a token amount, two pesos, then whispered that if he couldn’t have a skeleton, a good skull would do quite nicely.

A week later, Basyo delivered. The caretaker came to the house lugging a sack. On the way there, to anyone who asked what was in it, he had merrily replied "It’s a langka—a jackfruit."

In the backyard Gervasio untied the mouth of the sack, then took out a skull. All of its flesh, muscles, and tendons had been flensed away, but it still had most of its hair. The wavy chestnut tresses, parted in the center, shaved up the sides, and clippered at the back, would in life have been set off by a handlebar moustache. In death, lips and moustache gone, teeth exposed, the skull seemed to be grinning wickedly at them. Some of the cranium’s features—eye orbits nearly rectangular, nasal spine pinched and narrow, jaw orthognathous, index dolicocephalic—suggested it was Caucasoid. The student wondered if it was a Spanish friar’s. He fought off the impulse to ask about its provenance.

The sepulturero lovingly washed the skull, then propped it up where it was hidden from view but exposed to sunlight. When he returned several days later, it had been bleached as white as alabaster. The student was especially pleased that the fragile ethmoid bone was in pristine condition. Basyo asked for twelve pesos. Such a fine specimen, the student knew, would be a bargain at twenty. He paid him sixteen.

CHAPTER 1

Casa Grande

There was no good way to tell his father he was enlisting. Papa was in Manila, very far away. A distance greater than the sum of its miles. In point of fact, only a short haul from Cavite. But between them lay no man’s land.

Two years on, the conflict still smoldered. The partisans took no prisoners. Enemy soldiers, when they surrendered, were summarily disarmed, then released. It was that kind of war.

The tide had turned when Kapitan Miong returned from exile. Victory at last seemed within grasp. Very gracious indeed of Commodore Dewey to have a ship fetch Kapitan Miong from Hongkong and whisk him down to Cavite, as if to say Here you are, won’t you please get on with your revolution? Get on he did, and victory after victory was his. June, July, and then August passed by in martial splendor as Spanish positions fell like dominoes. Dewey’s destruction of Montojo’s fleet in Manila Bay seemed anticlimactic.

From his father’s house in San Roque to Maximo Inocencio’s mansion on Calle Arsenal in Cavite Puerto was about half a mile. A pleasant walk early on a Thursday morning. The house was where Kapitan Miong had gone into hiding two years ago. A month later, the ringleaders of the revolution, Don Maximo at 62 the oldest among them, had been executed by the government. They were now known as the Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite. The Spaniards had confiscated Don Maximo’s house. While Kapitan Miong was in exile, his men had won it back. Back from exile, Kapitan Miong had established his headquarters in Don Maximo’s house. The Kapitan was not a military rank, but a political one. The man had once been gobernadorcillo capitan municipal of Cavite el viejo.

In the mansion’s drawing room he found a score of young men milling about. All trying to look languid, with none of them quite succeeding. He was sure every single one of them was as uptight as he was. Each would be summoned in his turn by the Corporal who stood by a closed door. He wondered how many officers were there waiting to interview the applicants in the inner sanctum. Very likely a couple of captains, with the head of the panel a major or a lieutenant colonel.

They’ll be issuing us Mausers, said a lad sprawled on a rattan sofa, a recent graduate of the Ateneo de Manila by the look of him.

So you hope, said another young man in a corner chaise longue. I’d prefer the Mauser myself, but I think we’re more likely to get the Remington Rolling Block rifle. They’ve captured a lot of Remingtons from the Spaniards. This one looked familiar. A face from the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. A fellow alumnus.

The Remington’s not bad at all, conceded the Atenista, with its .43 caliber bullet. But it has a muzzle velocity of only 1,300 feet per second.

While the Mauser spits out its bullet at 1,900 feet per second, said the Letranista. Much more stopping power. Even if it’s only chambered in .28 caliber.

Rizal’s firing squad had eight of our compatriots armed with Remingtons. Behind them, eight Spaniards with Mausers, ready to shoot them in case they wouldn’t fire on Rizal, said the Atenista. I’d love to nail a Spaniard with a Mauser. Now, that would be poetic justice.

Make sure it’s loaded with live bullets, said the Letranista. Seven of the eight Remingtons in that firing squad had blanks.

The two of them spoke the fluent Spanish of his own social class, and he was sure his fellow Letranista recognized his face, so he waded into the conversation.

I thought the Spaniards were done for. They’ve lost a number of garrisons in the past two years, and they lost the Battle of Manila Bay two weeks ago.

They’re still hoping for reinforcements from Spain, said the Atenista.

Which reinforcements were diverted to Cuba, said the Letranista. Where they will face both the Cubans and the Americans.

Looks like we’ll be in for a lot of mopping-up operations, the Atenista said.

Should be a short campaign, with the Americans on our side. We’ll be independent very soon.

I have my misgivings about American help, the Letranista said. I fear it might be a double-edged sword. The temptation to colonize us might prove too strong to resist.

They won’t do that, said the Atenista. It’s against their traditions, as Rizal said in that essay of his.

He knew the essay was The Philippines a Century Hence but didn’t want to butt in while the Atenista was going on.

As Cuba goes, so go these islands, continued the Atenista. "And Spain is bound to lose Cuba, especially now that the Americans have joined the fray. Their battle cry is ‘Remember the Maine!’. They’ll wrest Cuba from Spain, then leave it as an independent country."

And they’ll help us, too?

Yes, I’m sure they will. It’s why Dewey had Magdalo brought back.

He remembered that Kapitan Miong’s nom de guerre was Magdalo, in honor of Mary Magdalene.

Rizal thought they wouldn’t colonize us, said the Letranista, but he warned that they might. If only to forestall another country from doing so. Germany, for instance. Or Britain. Everybody’s colonizing countries left and right. The Americans will want to jump on the bandwagon.

McKinley doesn’t want wars of conquest. He said so in his inaugural address last year. He doesn’t want territorial aggression. He said peace is better than war in almost every way.

He used the word ‘almost’?

Well, yes, I think he did.

"Consummate politician. That’s a loophole big enough to sail the USS Olympia through."

"Loophole or lupara, I don’t think he’ll sail through it. I really think the Americans will merely help us clear out the Spaniards, after which they’ll hand over to our people. When the war is over, El Caudillo will abolish this Dictatorial Government and replace it with a Republic."

Would that it were so straightforward. What if the Americans don’t leave? What if they declare sovereignty?

That was something to consider. He thought about the Western European countries carving up Asia, Africa, South America. A vast area for debate. He decided to steer the talk back to guns.

Any chance we’ll get the Krag-Jorgensen 30.06? He pronounced it the Spanish way, Krag-Horgensen treinte punto cero seis.

You mean the Krag-Yorgensen thirty aught six, said the Atenista, enunciating the English words in an exaggerated accent. That’s how the Americans say it.

Oh, I see, he said. "Well, when Kapitan Miong arrived from Hongkong last May, he brought in a load of cargo from that ship, the USS McCulloch. I hear it was mostly guns and ammunition. They must have thrown in a few Krags."

Gifts from Commodore Dewey, I bet, said the Letranista. Must have been feeling generous."

Rear Admiral Dewey now, the Atenista said. "Promoted after he took out Montojo’s fleet. And they got 2,000 rifles delivered by the USS Petrel, but I don’t know if any of those were Krags."

I would love to have the Krag, said the Letranista. Its smokeless powder gives the bullet a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second.

And it has a five-round magazine, said the Atenista, integral with the receiver. Not a box magazine loaded with a stripper clip.

Say, put in the Letranista, what kind of a yokel from the sticks are you if you’re still calling him Kapitan Miong? He’s a Generalissimo. He’s the Supreme Commander of the Army. And he’ll soon be El Señor Presidente.

Oh, I’m sure it’s all right, said the Atenista. Yokels from the sticks are still allowed to call him Kapitan Miong. Just as long as they’re from Cavite.

So, how this is going to play out? asked the Letranista, a mischievous look in his eye.

No idea, said the Atenista with a sly wink. "How is it going to play out?"

Well, those who call him Señor Presidente will be issued Mausers. Those who address him as Heneral Miong will get Remingtons. But there’s a special kind of rifle reserved only for those who still call him Kapitan Miong.

"And what might that be? The Krag-whore-gensen? Treinte punto cero seis?"

No.

The Letranista paused for effect.

The Murata rifle.

As the sala broke out in laughter, the Corporal emerged from the door and called out: Lugay!

CHAPTER 2

Nombramiento

The smell of cigar smoke hit him like an oracán. The Corporal closed the door, leaving him standing before an officer seated at a desk. Stenciled on the man’s sewn-on cloth nameplate was Francisco. On his shoulder boards were the insignia of a Brigadier General. Francisco was a common first name, but only last names were stenciled on nameplates. That meant this was a rare case of a first name being suborned into duty as a surname. Not very usual but not unknown: Antonio, Luis, and Ramón, for instance, were all in use here and there as surnames.

Gen. Francisco did not look up, but went on studying the dossier before him. On the desk was a humidor, and beside it the Alhambra Corona box the cigars had come in. Handmade in Manila from tobacco grown in the Cagayan Valley, the same brand Lugay’s father smoked. His Papa always said it was as good as any cigar from Cuba. A full minute elapsed before the General looked up.

Have a seat.

He tapped ash into an ivory ashtray. José Lugay y Raquelsantos. Born in 1874. So you’re 24 years old?

I’m 23, sir. My birthday’s in October.

Oh, yes, of course, how silly of me, the General said, running his finger up the file to the line he wanted. Born on the 23rd of October, it says here. And today’s only the 25th of August.

Lugay waved cigar smoke away from his eyes.

How are you related to Claro Lugay?

He’s my father.

I knew it. You look just like him when he was your age. And how is Don Claro these days? Still spending more time in Manila than in Cavite?

Everybody knew each other in Cavite, and everybody knew Claro Lugay had remarried a few years after the death of his first wife. The second wife lived in a nice house in Manila, and his Papa spent more time there than in his own house in Cavite.

"He’s fine, por la gracia de Diós. More of a Manileño now, I suppose. I stayed there, too, in my stepmother’s house, when I was attending medical school in Manila."

Gen. Francisco puffed on the cigar, blew a smoke ring. What are the five kinds of wounds?

What was this, a trick question? Even secondary school students knew the answers. Abrasions, he said. Avulsions. Lacerations. Incisions. And punctures.

Excellent. Abrasion, avulsion, I could never remember which is which. But then, wounds are wounds.

He leaned forward. You mentioned medical school. Have you finished that course?

"Yes, I have, sir. I had grades of sobresaliente in my major subjects."

Congratulations. So, does that mean you should now be addressed as Dr. Lugay?

"Oh, no, sir. Not until I’ve passed the examenes de grado before the Tribunal."

And when are you facing the Tribunal?

The next one’s scheduled for March of next year, sir. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to meet the examination fees.

Gen. Francisco put the file aside. You came here today to enlist as a soldier?

Yes, sir.

Why do you want to be a soldier?

I feel it’s my duty, sir. I must fight for my country.

"We’ve been at war for well nigh two years now. I gather you wanted to finish medical school first? And now that you have six months or so before the examenes de grado, you’ve decided to volunteer for this Army?"

Precisely, sir.

"You don’t need to review for the examenes? You must be a very bright student."

I’ll review after the war, sir.

Assuming you survive it, of course. Your optimism is commendable. Have you ever fired a gun?

No, sir.

Think you could learn how?

Oh, I’m sure I could, sir. Line up the target in my sights, pull the trigger—that should be within my competence, sir.

You young bucks are all the same. You all want to join the Army just so you can twirl a rifle around your finger, don’t you? And maybe even fire it once in a while?

I can only speak for myself, sir, but I’d be very careful with my rifle.

Or your sidearm. What kind of pistol would you prefer?

No idea, sir. I really know nothing about guns.

A Colt revolver, maybe. A six-shooter that you’d wear on a holster at your hip. You already have the moustache for it. Clap a cowboy hat on your head, and you’d look just like Wyatt Earp.

Maybe more like Doc Holliday, sir.

Why didn’t you apply to be a medic?

"I thought about it, sir, and I do want to be a medic, but I know a medic has to be an M.D., and that I am not. Not until I pass the examenes de grado."

A medic is always an M.D.? In which army?

In all the armies I’ve heard of, sir.

In the Spanish Army?

Yes, sir.

In the American Army? In the German Army?

Yes, sir. And in the British Army. The French Army, too.

Did it occur to you that Don Emilio is not only the President of this Dictatorial Government but also the Commander-In-Chief of this Revolutionary Army?

Yes, of course he is, sir, but what of it? He can’t bestow the M.D. degree on me.

No, he cannot, but he can do better than that.

Lugay waited.

He can sign a piece of paper that will authorize you to be a medic in this Army even before you have earned your M.D.

Oh, I’m sure he can, sir, but why would he do that?

Because I’ll recommend that he do so.

Well…words fail me, sir. I don’t know what to say.

We badly need medics. All those lads out there will make fine gun-toting soldiers, but you’re the only medical school graduate among our applicants. We think you’ll be more useful as a medic.

Many thanks, sir.

Will you take the job if Don Emilio signs that piece of paper?

Oh, yes, gladly. But I do have one question, sir.

What’s that?

I’m not questioning your competence, sir, General is a very high rank, but wouldn’t it be only proper for such a recommendation to be made by a doctor?

"Oh, but I am a doctor."