Blood and bones

Last Good Friday, I looked back on childhood summers spent with my cousins in Pampanga, where I first saw men dressed like the Nazareno de Quiapo, walking barefoot in the hot streets toting oversized crosses. Then there were the magdarame, who repeatedly hit their soon-bloodied backs with makeshift whips in an effort to share in Christ’s sufferings and atone for their sins that year. Pasyon chants could be heard all around town 24/7, and my only regret is that I was never brought to see an actual crucifixion.

Later in life, I took college theology courses that provided me an intellectual take on scripture and tradition but didn’t make me devout. A number of years in a Benedictine monastery gave me the opportunity to go through all the Holy Week rituals that I never experienced as a child because my family was often at the beach from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday.

I don’t know why I remembered the late Asuncion “Sony” Lopez Bantug last Holy Week. Was it because, when she was of school age, Sony kept her ancestry from her classmates and teachers as if it were a dark scandalous secret? She was, after all, the granddaughter of Narcisa Rizal and, by extension, the grandniece of Jose Rizal. Sony recounted her childhood fear of being discovered: Being related to the national hero, she felt that she had to live up to everyone’s expectations and be outstanding in school. She just wanted to play and enjoy her childhood. While nobody expected her to be shot at the Luneta like her granduncle, she wanted to have a life.

In time, however, Sony became the family storyteller and historian. Her biography of Rizal won special mention in the prewar Rizal biography contest. Her manuscript was bested by those of Rafael Palma and Carlos Quirino, and saw print only in 1982. When I met her in 1990, she advised me to write about “Lolo Jose” with affection rather than with textbook reverence. As father of the nation, after all, Rizal is our Lolo Jose.

Over a series of visits, lunches and meriendas, Sony would reminisce so far back that she sometimes broke down and tearfully recited poems memorized as a child. As her recollections came flooding back, I would jot them down, trying to catch everything before they vanished again from where they came.

It was not until later that I discovered that she had kept diaries for over half a century. Neatly written in her own hand, on ruled grade-school notebooks, they were a primary source for the historian. I knew which bedside cabinet she kept them in but I was never allowed to read them. “One day,” she promised me, “one day I will let you see them, but not just yet.”

That day never came. Once, during one of her long annual trips to the United States to visit her grandchildren, one of the maids took the initiative to surprise the señora by giving her musty bedroom a much-needed spring-cleaning and makeover.

Everything was cleared out, and the first to go into the basura, of course, were Sony’s notebooks. She returned home to find the bedroom spic-and-span, her prized notebooks forever gone. When she confronted the maid, the polite reply she got was that her notebooks were useless because they were filled with writing: “Walang silbi na po, señora, puno na po ng sulat lahat nang notebook nyo!”

If you think that’s bad enough, here’s another. Preserved in the Lopez Museum is a piña handkerchief that was allegedly given by Rizal to one of his sisters on his way to execution in Bagumbayan on the morning of Dec. 30, 1896. It is not the handkerchief I am looking for, because there is a story about one of Rizal’s eight sisters going to the spot where he fell and reverently soaking what remained of the hero’s blood onto piña handkerchiefs (distributed to each member of the family) as a grim reminder of their brother’s sacrifice.

None of these blood-stained handkerchiefs seem to be extant, but I was told by one Rizal relative that the family had one that fit the description. When I asked to see it, an old servant of the family came triumphantly carrying a freshly laundered, starched and pressed handkerchief. She proudly declared that she had meticulously washed off the stain and laid the handkerchief to bleach under the sun: “Matindi po ang mantsa nyan. Pinagtiyagaan ko po kahapon, ikinula ko pa.”

So if the urban legend is true, then the last traces of Rizal’s blood, perfect for cloning and DNA testing, literally went down the drain with detergent and bleach.

History records a similar hunt for relics of Christ’s passion and death: There are splinters from the cross, spines from the crown of thorns, nails, and even traces of blood. As a historian who has spent a lifetime tracing Rizal’s footsteps, the blood-stained handkerchiefs of urban legend mark my own search for a different Holy Grail. Fortunately, we know that Rizal’s remains are buried under his monument at the Luneta and a piece from his backbone is displayed in Fort Santiago. This relic has been so treated and bleached that it resembles a pebble or a piece of dead coral that you would ignore if you saw it on the ground. Yet if you examine it closely, you will notice that it is chipped on the side where the bullet struck and snuffed out his life.

Someday this morbid relic should be interred with the rest of Rizal’s remains under his monument. We should allow this piece of Rizal, forgive the pun, to rest in peace.

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