The vestry of the parish church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ormoc City was a beehive of ecclesiastical activity, or rather, the preparation for it. The sacristan mayor, a stocky man of about thirty with a balding pate who responded to the name of Ka Medes was all over a frightened-looking teen-ager dressed in an altar boy’s surplice. He was berating him for something involving the location of hosts. Evidently the boy had misplaced them.
The priests were starting to arrive. There would be twelve of them, barring any last minute arrivals. Perhaps more would come, lured by the largess promised by the Madame.
The Seminarian took this all in with slight bemusement. To see the priests practically salivating at the amount of stipends they would receive from the First Lady seemed to him slightly scandalous. He himself was excited at the prospect of President Ferdinand and First Lady Imelda Marcos gracing the Te Deum mass on this the Charter Day celebration of Ormoc City. He had been asked to assist at mass. The Bishop of Palo, the Most Reverend Pablo Porvida, would be the main celebrant. The Seminarian would be handling the plate of wine and water and assist in serving communion to the two most important persons of the land. It was not every day that he would be at the altar with the president and his glamourous wife. The Leytenos, particularly the Taclobanons, worshipped the powerful couple. After all, Imelda belonged to one of the most prominent clans of Tacloban, the Romualdezes, and had spent her early years studying in the city. Moreover, Ferdinand Marcos’ accomplishments in the second year of Martial Law had already been trumpeted with great acclaim, most notably by the government-run Daily Express. The great, winding bridge that linked Leyte and Samar islands across the San Juanico Strait was one of these accomplishments. While at the seminary the previous December, he had participated in a long run from Palo to the site of the bridge in Baras, a distance of twenty-five kilometers. The bridge had just been finished but not yet inaugurated. The runners were permitted to run across the length of the S-shaped bridge from Leyte over into Samar. As he paused to take his breath at the highest part of the span, his eyes embraced a breaking dawn that cast a soft, pearly light over the waters of the straits. In the state he was in, blood pumping furiously through his veins from the long run, he felt an exhilarating sense of joy pulsing through his body. Things were definitely looking up for the Philippines under this charismatic and strong-willed leader. DISIPLINA AND KAILANGAN! boomed the billboards that had sprung up after the declaration of Martial Law. The Seminarian was glad to be living in these times. Just two years previously, the air had been sullied with the threats of a communist insurgency that was fed by thevociferous mouths of leftists students from the UP and other elite schools of Manila. The real prospect of an armed conflict was pushed forward by the actions of the rebel chiefs Commanders Dante and Luis Taruc. The response from the rebels had been predictable: MAKIBAKA HUWAG MATAKOT! He was dimly aware that army and rebels had clashed in parts of the islands. He had read of skirmishes in the hinterlands of Samar, the island whose shadowy green hulk loomed across the bridge. Marcos had said he had no choice but impose Martial Law. He had to stabilize things and set the country on a course to security, prosperity and order. The Seminarian agreed with him.
It was with these thoughts that the Seminarian donned a surplice over his cassock and assisted the priests with their vestments. The Bishop had not yet stepped into the vestry. He was still in the rectory having breakfast with the parish priest, Father Raquinto. The Seminarian knew the routine. The procedure would be for Ferdinand and Imelda to arrive at church and take their place on special pre-dieus set at the foot of the altar. The Bishop, accompanied by his retinue of servers and priests, the Seminarian among them, would be led by an altar boy bearing a tall cross. Another altar boy would bring up the rearwaving a censer. They would march up the middle aisle of the church. The Bishop would sprinkle the congregation with holy water while the choir sang the entrance song. Mass would be said and then, intoning the Te Deum, the Bishop would walk around the church sprinkling holy water on the assembled worshippers once again. In all of this, the Marcoses would be mute spectators. No words were needed from them. Their mere presence would be all that was needed to convey to everyone the tremendous significance of the occasion.
Ormocanons seemed eager to forget the last time that Imelda Marcos came into their city. It had been before the declaration of Martial Law. She was there to campaign for her husband’s re-election as president. Marcos was the standard bearer of the Nacionalista Party. His allies had gathered at the town plaza beside City Hall to give him a rousing welcome. But the opposition Liberal Party. whose presidential candidate was the Cebuano Sergio Osmena Jr, had other ideas. Just as Imelda started to sing her trademark political wooing song “Dahil sa Iyo”, with that thin tremulous lyric soprano that served her well as a winning candidate in the 1953 Miss Manila contest, opposition trouble makers started banging pots and pans and yelled at her: “Go Home, Imelda! Go home, Marcos! Get out of Ormoc!” Imelda, humiliated and close to tears was not deterred and plowed on until she finished the song. Her supporters gave her a standing ovation, the loudness of their cheers and applause shaming the interrupters into quitting. In retrospect, it was a blip, a minor distraction in a rowdy presidential campaign that had been marked by more serious incidents such as intimidation and murders. But the damage had been done. Ormoc would be forever associated in the minds of some to antipathy to the Marcoses. Now, as the de facto most powerful woman in the Philippines, unhindered by any notion of constitutional forbearance, Imelda would make her presence felt again in the city that once spurned her. The Seminarian wondered what would be on her mind now. Was she thinking of revenge or perhaps a desire to inflict one on the Ormocanos? Indeed he was surprised to learn that she even consented to visit Ormoc at all. For, aside from that incident at the Ormoc plaza and although the Ormocanons were Leytenos, this did not mean that they automatically worshipped Imelda. She was Waray. Ormocanons were Cebuano-speaking. A high mountain range separated two halves of Leyte, each with their own distinctive dialects and cultures. The Warays of Leyte looked northwards, towards Samar and Manila. The Leytenos of Ormoc looked Southwards, towards Bohol , Cebu and Negros. Imelda sprang from the Romualdez clan of Tacloban and Manila. Ormoc had their Gardizabals and Alentanos. As a city enriched by the sugar industry, the sympathies of the Ormocanos lay much closer to the Osmenas of Cebu and the Lopezes and Locsins of Bacolod and Ilo-ilo. Despite the fact that Fernando Lopez was Marcos' vice-president, the sugar barons of Negros looked upon the Marcoses with disdain and wished they would go away. It would perhaps be assumed that the sugar hacenderos of Ormoc shared the same feelings toward the Marcoses. The force of political events would even out whatever hostility there was in Ormoc towards them.
Things were different now. Everything was calm. The rebels were in retreat in the hills. That was what the Daily Express told the Seminarian and everybody else who read it.
The Bishop finally arrived at the vestry. The priests, seminarians and altar boys rushed to bow and kiss his ring, a two-carat pigeon-blood Burmese ruby given to him by Mrs. Marcos. The bishop had none of the corpulence that was associated with ecclesiastical types like him. He had a slender build and moved his hands in a way that indicated sanctity, gentleness and femininity in subtle measures.
“Good morning, everybody,” the Bishop's tenor greeted the assembled priests. "Good morning, excellency," the priests murmured back in response. The Seminarian and his other colleagues helped him put on his splendid gold-lined chasuble. It was made of the finest pina cloth, personally hand-embroidered by an ex-Benedictine monk in Manila. They placed a splendid gold and silver mitre on his head. Somebody handed him his Bishop’s crook, a filigreed silver crozier that was rumored to have been fashioned in Damascus, a magnificent gift, once again, of Imelda.
The other priests, their faces marked by anticipation and doubtless by the prospect of the two thousand pesos promised each of them stood at attention, ready for action.
At that moment, they heard the sound of enthusiastic applause ringing through the church. Father Raquinto, the parish priest, went to check the commotion and rushed back, flushed with excitement.
“The President and First Lady are here!” He made his way back into the church again, presumably to lead the Marcoses to their pre-dieus. An altar boy, the same one who was upbraided by the sacristan for mislaying the hosts, walked in front bearing a long cross. Two other seminarians followed, followed by the concelebrating priests. Bishop Porvida brought up the rear, trailed by seminarians from Palo. Medes the sacristantook command of the final position in the procession, waving the heavy censer. They went outside the rectory, turned right at the outside wall of the church, then re-entered again from the front door. The choir sang as the Bishop's entourage marched towards the altar. Having gained the altar, the Bishop paused briefly in front of the kneeling Marcoses. The Marcoses stood up to kiss his pigeon-blood ruby ring. There was a twinkle of approval in Imelda's eyes when she saw the ring. The Bishop gave her an indulgent and thankful smile. Medes the sacristan mayor faced the congregation and solemnly swung the censer towards them. The aromatic smell of incense filled the church. It was a fragrance redolent of all that was sacred and ceremonial in Catholic pageantry. The pungent smoke of coal-burnt sap that had been milked from the trunk of desert trees in driest Arabia brought visions of saints, angels and heaven into the minds of devout Filipinos. The fact that incense was first used to mask the smell of rotting animal sacrifices in the temples in the east, or that the huge swinging braziers in the cathedrals of Europe were set in place to sweeten the smell of hordes of unwashed worshippers may understandably have escaped them. Still, it was a wonder that the sap had found its way into a church set in a land of monsoons and coconut trees thousands of kilometers away. Here upon this land, a rigorous kind of political regimen had been imposed by the two sponsors of today’s religious ritual. There were great expectations as well as anxieties curling around with the smoke, resonating in the echoes of the hymns sung by the choir.
The Seminarian looked over from where he stood behind the Bishop. He was just a a few steps away from the predieus where the rulers knelt. To the Seminarian, they did not look particularly remarkable this morning - he in his barong Tagalog, she in her Lourdes-white, surely couturier-designed gown. A blank, faintly bored, expression played on their faces. A dispassionate observer could have assigned whatever intentions or designs they cared to make on them,
The Seminarian did notice one thing.
Ferdinand Marcos' face looked pale and yellowish, as if it had a touch of jaundice. Was he sick? he wondered. He stared at the president’s nape, so near to him as to be within his grasp and so open and vulnerable to the elements. Idly he thought how easy it would be to plunge the point of a knife into it. For a brief moment, the thought fascinated him and then, horrified, he quickly expelled it from his mind. If adultery can be said to already occur when a man gazes at another man’s wife with lust, then to him murder was only at a slight remove from the thought, however idly spun. of actually killing another man, let alone the President of the Philippines. It was wrong and sinful to think of it, regardless of who was the recipient of such imaginary blood-letting.
Sit Nomen Domini Benedictum, intoned the Bishop, he with the pigeon-blood ruby ring and the crozier stamped from Damascene silver.
Amen, replied the Seminarian together with the congregation, his whole being engulfed in a wave of sanctity, patriotism and remorse.
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