Blood of Jose Rizal

Abstract

Blood of Jose Rizal Brian Ascalon Roley (bio) I want to tell my daughter Bina, You are a great-great-grandniece of Jose Rizal, poet, novelist, revolutionary, martyr, a surgeon in Europe and a linguist in nineteen languages living and three dead – ancient Sanskrit and Greek and Latin – and he had six mistresses in six different countries the portraits of whom you can see in many restaurants in Old Manila, and you will see his name on every main street and on the side of every jeepney. This is your heritage. Your heritage is an ancient and schooled tradition. In my childhood we girls spoke Spanish in the home and in the school with the quick flavor of Old Castile. We had money then to send our daughters to finishing school in Salamanca. The men studied medicine in Padua, physics at Oxford, art in France. Then we had money, and we squandered it. Jose Rizal had no children so you by way of his sister Fernanda are as true an heir to his tradition as any. When you were a child I took you to the monument to his greatness, the former Spanish colonial Fort Santiago, and you saw the Rizal museum where they had put up a family chart of his descendants, outside an old stone soldiers' barracks, and you excitedly pointed to where your name is written there. Yet now you are here and married to this American man and living in a dilapidated farmhouse in Illinois. I cannot understand this. Also in our tradition is a noble and ancient Catholic Church and my understanding has always been that the wife is in charge of her children's spiritual growth. This man says he is a Christian, and it is nice how he spends much time with your children, but I can't understand this place you call a church. When I first walked inside, on that first Sunday I came to live with you and your 'Christian' husband, as he so often calls himself, the first thing I saw was not a great mosaic, not a statute of the Blessed Mother, not even a humble carving of one of the ancient saints – no, the first thing I noticed was that at the place where the ceiling meets [End Page 91] the wall there is a crack and from this I could discern that it was dry wall. You could see the plaster beneath the thin layer of paint. It smelled of new carpet. The hall was thick with these farm people, many wearing jeans, and in the hall of prayer I saw no altar nor crucifix but merely a simple wooden cross, before which some young people set their guitars and microphones and a drumset and began playing 'Christian music.' This went on for half an hour. I kept waiting for the service to begin – for the Creeds or prayers – but I finally realized that this was their service. I have listened to Georgian Chants in monasteries in Italy, and even Eastern chants deep in the heart of Russia, and I can tell you this was not what I expected. You will forgive me if I tell you I was disappointed when the minister finally came on stage; this man with his ill fitted suit, broad shoulders, and hickish hair cut short over the ears and let long in back, gave one the impression that he was a shoe salesman, though he did seem friendly. I would like to tell my daughter that her husband was curt with me the other day. But of course I cannot say this. It is best if I do not. I have tried not to be an ungrateful guest and this is his farm, I know, and these are his children – but I do not see that I did anything wrong, and it has always been my understanding the mother's family is the one which provides guidance on religion. My daughter's husband, this man, he came to me yesterday when I was on the porch in the morning in prayer. It was early and the sun not yet risen although the air was warm and thick. But a breeze...