Authors: Miguel Syjuco
—from the 1976 essay
“
Socrates Dissatisfied,” by Crispin Salvador
*
The estate, dubbed Swanee by Salvador’s grandparents, Cristo Patricio Salvador and Maria Clara Lupas, lies seven and a half miles
from Bacolod, the major city on the island split by the provinces of Negros Occidental on the northwest and Negros Oriental on the southeast. The plantation fits snugly between Talisay and Silay and sits at the very beginning of the very first foothill that precedes Mount Mandalagan. For three generations, due to the intermittent reliability of the unsealed roads and the heavy traffic of carts drawn by water buffalo and the cane-laden trucks, the estate seemed more isolated than it does today. The beach, however, not far by horseback or bicycle on a path that leads straight from their front door, presented another world for the Salvador children—a rocky curve of white sand giving on to susurrating waves. In the summer, the water was so clear the aquatic life seemed suspended in air—galaxies of sea urchins, rainbows of anemones, clouds of fish. During the rainy season, due to runoff from the denuded mountains and foothills, the water became murky enough to present a mystery and a sense of foreboding. On every corner of Swanee, on months with the blustery Habagat, the air would smell of sea; and when the Amihan blew, the wind carried the scent of syrup from the Horno Mejor sugar mill.
Swanee is the center of five sugar plantations carved out by the clan after the land was sold to the elder Salvador at a rock-bottom price by Gobernadorcillo Bernardino de los Santos in January of 1890. Each of the five plots—on New Year’s Day 1905 named Swanee, Kissimmee, Mamie, Clementine, and Susanna—was given to one of the five Salvador sons, though by the time Crispin was an adult two had been sold to in-laws from the Lupas clan. Atop the hill overlooking the five estates is the manor Salvador’s grandfather Cristo had built entirely of coconut timber. In its courtyard is an old Spanish-era tower that served, in turn, as a lighthouse, parish belfry, hermitage, and sniper lookout. During Salvador’s childhood, it was the private perch of the white-crowned patriarch, who had filled it with books, celestial charts, rifles, bird cages, and shiny brass telescopes. From there, the elder Salvador, a widower since 1925, would observe the operations of his sugar mill and his children’s plantations, spending hours squinting through the eyepiece of his big reflecting scope to watch each family’s comings, goings, and odd hobbies, sending unheeded instructions and baseless
remonstrations by carrier pigeon. Even approaching his deathbed, Cristo insisted on managing affairs, having a quartet of burly maids (he called them “pallbearers”) carry him on a cot to the mill each Monday.
—from the biography in progress,
Crispin Salvador:
Eight Lives Lived
, by Miguel Syjuco
*
Come to think of it, I was not surprised when Crispin asked me to be his research assistant. There’d been a shift along the way. He began to address me with the Filipino familiarity “pare,” the way we do old compatriots. Sometimes he was even playful with it, perverting the soft “pah-reh” by pronouncing it as would an American GI on shore leave, with the hard consonants and overly elongated final syllable—“pair-ree.” This sudden casualness made all the difference.
Around that time, Madison and I were speaking seriously about moving to Africa—to help build houses for Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity, or work with the Peace Corps in Swaziland. It was her grand plan. She was convinced it would be to her benefit in her eventual application for a master’s at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She thought it would also serve my writing well for me to witness some, as she said, “real suffering.” As if I’d not grown up in the Philippines. As if I’d not been through the slums and dying farmland on my grandparents’ campaign trails. Africa, however, was a really big commitment. I didn’t want to give up everything I had in New York to find myself dumped in the middle of the sub-Saharan continent after she left me for some Wagner-singing German archaeologist with a big shovel.
I knew Crispin was working on
TBA
and I wanted to help. I gently hinted to him that I either needed a job or would have to leave New York. I of course made it clear that I much preferred to work for my country (which is what Crispin always considered writing about the Philippines to be). With a show of benevolence, he made me an offer. I accepted, even though sudden apprehension rose up inside me regarding our developing relationship—a dandy
with few friends, estranged from his family, solicitous toward me, never had children. It wasn’t anything overt. But why his interest? I suppose it spoke as much of my own insecurities about my abilities and personality as it did my perception of his liberal, meticulous ways. I was disappointed when he didn’t let me work on
TBA
at all, instead relegating me to assisting in his class work.
To make Crispin aware of the boundaries of our friendship, I often spoke of Madison. About, for example, how upset she was that we weren’t leaving, about her behavior after she wrote her e-mails declining the African opportunities. The hour of our planned departure to the heart of darkness had come and gone. To make it up to her I’d cooked a romantic tofurkey dinner. We ate in silence. Then, after watching the season finale of
Survivor
, which I’d thoughtfully taped for her on our old VHS recorder, Madison blew up. Crispin listened kindly to such stories, though he declined to offer any advice.
I eventually decided he was more avuncular than pederastic. At times he was even fatherly, which made me officially feel sorry for him. He would have been a good father. At least I think so. He seemed to understand my thirst for those obscure things that I didn’t yet possess as part of me. The things that mattered in the grand scheme. You see, Grapes had always been all about the details, results, recognition. I was surprised to discover that Crispin possessed a gentle tolerance, though only after he convinced himself of his faith in you. He was kind in the way only the ungenerous can be. As we became closer, my opinion, while not usually accepted as correct, was increasingly solicited. And dogsbodying for him wasn’t difficult, even if he often asked me to do tasks like shine his wingtips or trim his bonsai trees.
*
As the cane fields blur along the road to Swanee, my mind goes to my mother. She was born near here, and so was I. In a way, I’m like a salmon coming home to spawn, at a point of origin so alien it feels like my birth certificate was false. But with very little imagination, I can see the sort of life she had, for Bacolod is a place of constancies. That must be reassuring to those who live and die here.
My life’s own only constant has been the secondhand memories of her and Dad, filed inside me like vintage postcards in a curio shop. Wish we were with you, the messages on the back would have said, scrawled in an obsolete style of longhand. What passes for my roots are old moments I did not witness, memorialized in mirrored frames on my grandmother’s baby grand piano. Mom in Venice, smoking a cigarette while leaning on the rail of a vaporetto; on that trip she’d spent too much on antique masks and she and Dad had fought—he knew he’d been vicious, and went secretly back to the shop to buy her the most expensive one. My father at a massive rally, standing on one of those dilapidated tractors donated by U.S. aid agencies, his head back and arms spread wide like the
Oblation
statue at the University of the Philippines—the eve of his first election victory, a young man at the cusp of his dreams. Both my parents dancing a waltz at a wedding in the garden of an ancestral home somewhere on this island, Dad whispering something in her ear, Mom pulling him close and laughing as the crowd behind them watched—this is how I best like to remember my parents.
This place, too, is where two of Crispin’s lives began. The first, his birth. The second, his independence. It was 1975, a year made for those romantic tragedies distrusted by the moneyed, loved honestly by the poor, and watched guiltily by the middle class when seen in soap-opera melodramas: Bacolod families tottering on the brink, squabbling like dogs over a carcass, suddenly renewing their faith in God, waiting for the market to right as if they were dancers looking to the sky for rain.
It’s an intriguing scene: Sugar, like mountains of gold dust, filling bathtubs, ballrooms, garages, pelota courts. Junior standing at the front door, screaming that any discussion of his marital indiscretions only hurts Leonora more. Crispin turning his back, hefting his suitcase onto his shoulder and setting out toward the dusty road away from Swanee, his father having refused to let anyone drive his son to town. The windowpanes trimmed with plastic holly, a painted plywood Santa and Rudolph on the roof. Narcisito and Lena peeking like children from an upstairs window, faces twisted and wetted by their impotence. Crispin’s receding figure wrin
kling in the yellow heat, pausing to look one last time at his siblings, his childhood paradise, the swimming pool brimmed with sugar, the now empty doorway where nobody else had stood to see him off.
That’s when the family started to fall to pieces.
From Marcel Avellaneda’s blog, “The Burley Raconteur,” December 2, 2002:
And the latest scuttlebutt. The President’s speech yesterday to members of the Combined Military Forces at Fort Bonifacio was disrupted when twenty-six hecklers were arrested and charged with “scandal” and “alarm.” They were mauled by crowds as they were brought into the precinct office, though none suffered significant injuries. Read the full story in Ricardo Roxas IV’s blog, My Daily Vitamins,
here
.
In other news, the President’s Unanimity walk was again nixed this morning due to the unseasonal typhoon conditions. Politicians and dignitaries waited for rain to subside while photographers snapped them yawning, texting, picking their teeth, and looking at the sky. This is the twelfth Unanimity procession canceled. It has tongues wagging that while the President’s national Unanimity party does include powerful lackeys and cronies, even God and Mother Nature have cast their lot with members of GLOO.
Speaking of GLOO, there has been much comment from members of the GLorious OppOsition party, particularly from Senator Nuredin Bansamoro, admonishing the wagging tongues for hyping up threats of an imminent coup. Bansamoro, looking self-assured and presidentiable, said “a coup is only likely if launched by the government as a diversionary tactic.” He also said that “a house divided upon itself is like a mental patient” and “any armed conflict would further discourage Ikea from opening shop.” This from a man who is alleged to have made his fortune as the mastermind behind the kidnapping fad of the last decade. Read
the full insider’s story in Cece Cebu’s Syutukil blog. Also catch the funny, unauthorized photographs of pols milling about looking at rain clouds in Bayani-ako’s
Bayan Bayani
.
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*
Confidently ascertaining the facts of Salvador’s childhood is impossible. His own autobiography is famously at odds with his father’s much-read reminiscences, which were serialized in 1993 in
The Philippine Gazette
and later made into the PhilFirstTV Channel mini-series,
Confessions of a Statesman: The True-to-Life Story of Narciso “Junior” Salvador
.
According to
Autoplagiarist
and other sources, Crispin Salvador’s childhood was almost entirely devoid of his father’s affection, yet absolutely filled with his father’s politics. He was, after all, the golden child of Junior Salvador, and before young Crispin could speak or toddle he was already branded “the future president for a future nation.” In the era between the Philippine-American War and the Second World War, such effusive patriotism was not uncommon; in addition to the timeless jockeying for position and influence, there abounded, in many circles, a persistent preoccupation with independence. In those years, the young Salvador children rarely saw their father, whose position in the Philippine Legislature required his presence in Manila; his burgeoning rivalry with the fiery nationalist Respeto Reyes took all his attention.