I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Wait." Yu Tek's voice was clear and grounded.

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

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

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

"Your people," Father was never more disturbed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What are you talking about?"

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

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

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

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

"I'm well within my rights."

"You are an alien yourself."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pray for him," she whispered.

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

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

"For whom, pa?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, Mother was adamant. There would be no marriage at least until he became a citizen. "They're my children, too," she said. But Father wanted our birth certificates: "They're my children and they will carry my name." Father said he was going to change our papers and acquire passports and visas and we were going to leave this mad country before it was too late. Too late, he kept insisting. "Too late for what?" I remember wanting to ask him. But all hell had broken loose inside our household that night and Mother, her face distorted by anger, had struck him before locking herself up inside in their room. Before that Father had said: "Who do you think you are? You are not my wife, you will never be my wife. You're the collateral mortgaged to me by that drunkard father of yours and he's forgotten to redeem you ever since."

Father didn't get to alter our birth certificates then; neither did he ever acquire passports for us to fly anywhere. My parents never fought again. I don't remember them ever speaking to each other with any real passion since. Father never forgave the Philippine government for what he believed was the unjust execution of Gan; neither did he forgive the local community leaders or the Nationalist Chinese government for having "abandoned" the man. For all his desperate efforts in behalf of Gan during those last few weeks. I don't think Father believed in his heart that the man would actually be shot. If we were in Malaysia, perhaps, or Indonesia, such a thing could happen. But this was, after all, a "Christian land." "The huanna here are different," he'd often say, "They're Christians." Father spoke the words as though it were, in his heart, synonymous with lannang---how the Chinese in the Philippines call each other.

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

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

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

All these I pierced together from snatches of family history occasionally divulged by our relatives. Perhaps, saving Gan would've allowed Father to atone for the deaths of his parents---deaths that he might have always felt guilty for. He had to prove to everyone, but mostly to himself, that the huanna were truly just and gentle people, incapable of public execution; that despite the media theatrics, Gan would eventually be spared, forgiven, sentenced to hard labor, for life. Yes, forgiveness---for hadn't Christ himself forgiven his enemies? A totally alien and absurd notion yet packing such mysterious power.

Gan's death released the ghosts of my grandparents. They returned to mock Father's blindness. The huanna were alike everywhere, the Chinese were always expendable. In the end, wealth was no guarantee. And he, Lim Bien-So had believed in the huanna---had in fact become one of them in the eyes of his elders---had taken to wife a brown woman and sired her children, their children. And his children will forever be strangers to him, will share his meal, his home, his bed, but will always be peering at him from out of the corner of their eyes, spying his foreign ways, his "crimes against the people," laughing at the Chinaman being shot for selling dope to huanna children. Father was a haunted man.

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

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

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

"He's still alive."

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

"Why did you come here?"

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

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

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

"And his death is a mere inconvenience?"

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

"But why is he being singled out? Why a military trial? And why all this publicity making him out as the devil's incarnate? I bet you they'll even shoot him live before the television cameras."

"You know the answers, Lim. You know. Anyway, my contacts assure me that this has nothing to do with how the rest of the community is to be treated."

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

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

"And this is your greater good?"

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

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

II

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

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

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

"Today you must become a man."

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

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

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

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

"Your son?"

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

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

"Go home, son," he repeated.

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

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

"By myself?"

He was silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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