Rizal and ‘Miss K’

The last time I checked, Internet sources listed nine women romantically linked to Jose Rizal. Three of the names on the list are familiar to everyone: Leonor Rivera, O Sei-san and Josephine Bracken; the rest are obscure to all but those primed for a Quiz Bee: Segunda Katigbak, Leonor Valenzuela, Consuelo Ortiga y Rey, Gertrude Beckett, Suzanne Jacoby and Nellie Boustead. These nine names appear in the standard Rizal biographies with their photos, but our hero’s writings betray a handful whose names are lost to history: a woman he courted who lived east of Calamba, another he surprised in the forest while she was chasing butterflies, even a prostitute in Vienna who provides the missing link in the urban legend that made Rizal the father of Adolf Hitler.

Only nine loves of Rizal? When he sailed for Europe in May 1882, he recorded his feelings in a diary where we find this listing:

“Leonores, Dolores, Ursulas, Felipas, Vicentas, Margaritas, and others: Other loves will hold your attention and soon you will forget the traveler. I’ll return, but I’ll find myself alone, because those who used to smile at me will save their charms for others more fortunate. And in the meantime I fly after my vain idea, a false illusion, perhaps. May I find my family intact and afterward die of happiness!”

Since the names are plural, not singular, plus “and others” suggests more loves than we can ever know. “Leonores” supports his reputation among his Ateneo classmates as “Doble Leonor” (for Leonor Rivera, who signed her love letters “Taimis,” and Leonor Valenzuela or “Orang,” a nickname my mischievous students insist is short for “orangutan”). A list of Rizal’s loves is like the “Catalogue Aria” (Madamina, il catalogo e questo) from Act I of Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni,” where the number of conquests are counted as: Italy, 600 women; Germany, 231; France, 100; Turkey, 91; and Spain, 1,003!

Dolores, Ursula, Felipa, Vicenta and Margarita, when added to the known nine loves, make 14. Add the three nameless women to make 17. Surely there is more, but documentation bears only a dozen, three of whom he was serious enough to marry: Leonor, Nellie and Josefina. My count is 13 because I have found the woman he loved above all else but could never marry. Clue: It is a real person, not his country.

Since my book “Rizal Without the Overcoat” was first published in 1990, my publisher has held on to my promise to deliver the definitive work on the 13 women. This remains unpublished because research remains incomplete. When did Segunda Katigbak marry Manuel Luz? When did Leonor Rivera marry Charles Henry Kipping? When did they pass away? Where are they buried? I have visited many cemeteries for research following the advice of the late E. Arsenio Manuel and Esteban de Ocampo, who stressed the importance of copying dates of birth and death off tombstones. All these women had a life before and after Rizal, but the material has proven very elusive.

Self-revelation in Rizal is rare, much of it in his “Memorias de un estudiante de Manila.” Here we see a brooding, self-conscious adolescent different from the Hero of marble and bronze whose long shadow Filipinos know only too well. Chapter VI is my students’ favorite for the details of his first love, a failed courtship of a 14-year-old “virginal, attractive, and engaging” girl named Segunda Katigbak, referred to as “K or “Miss K,” who made him blush on sight. She was a boarding student at the Colegio de la Concordia where his sisters and his future fiancée Leonor Rivera also studied. He visited regularly and recorded every emotion, sometimes even snippets of conversation:

“I don’t remember how our conversation began, but I do remember that she asked me what flowers I liked best. I told her that I liked all, but that I preferred the white and the black ones. She told me that she liked the white and pink ones and she became pensive; but later she added: ‘Yes, I also like the black ones.’

“I kept quiet.

“‘Have you a sweetheart?’ she asked me after a moment of silence.

“‘No,’ I replied, ‘I never thought of having one because I know well that no one would pay attention to me, especially the beautiful ones.’

“‘Why, is it possible? You deceive yourself! Do you want me to get you one?’

“‘Thanks, Miss,’ I told her, ‘but I don’t want to bother you.’ I remembered at that moment that she would marry her uncle the following December, and then I asked her: ‘Do you go back to your town in December?’

“‘No,’ she answered me dryly.

“‘They say that in your town a very big feast will be celebrated in which you will take an important part and it is possible that it will not be held without your attendance.’

“‘No,’ she replied and she smiled. ‘My parents want me to go home but I should not like to do so, for I wish to stay in college for five years more.’

“Little by little I was imbibing the sweetest poison of love as the conversation continued. Her glances were terrible for their sweetness and expressiveness. Her voice was so sonorous that a certain fascination accompanied all her movements. From time to time a languid ray penetrated my heart and I felt something that was unknown to me until then.”

To reread Rizal beyond the “Noli” and the “Fili” is to find a real person hidden under the textbook hero, a man who lived and loved well.

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