Roman: Enemy of the State (1)

(This is the first of a two-part short story I wrote some three years ago. It’s a narrative non-fiction although the names have been changed for obvious reasons.)

ROMAN woke up tied to a wooden chair in a dark room with only a solitary bulb swaying ominously overhead—hanging by a thin wire—that made an annoying squeaking racket. He has been doused with pail of water. His rib cage sore.

“Who is your leader, your Party officer,” asked a gravelly baritone voice. He tried to open his mouth but before words could come out, like whiplash, a lead pipe hit him right smack his temple. Roman instantly lost consciousness.

When he came into, a woman was sitting beside him. She began removing his pants and underwear. The woman cupped and stroked Roman’s testicles while she teasingly licked his earlobes. Despite the ringing pain in his head, Roman began to have an erection.

Suddenly, a man emerged from behind the woman. With a red-hot tie-wire in hand, the man shoved it into Roman’s engorged member. His toes cringed at the burning sensation that seemed to radiate to his gut.

Not satisfied, the heavy-set man wiggled the tie-wire while still plunged into Roman’s genitals. At the same time, the woman kept on nibbling his earlobes and kissing him down to his nape.

Although they were just as fast as his eyes could blink, the flashbacks are still eerily vivid.

Promising future Roman, born in the summer of 1958, is the youngest of six siblings. They lived a modest but comfortable life in Mako, Davao del Norte. He idolized his father—a Filipino US Navy ensign. He first tried to apply at the Philippine Military Academy but standing at 5’2”, he was not accepted. Not to be discouraged easily, Roman enrolled at the University of Mindanao and took up Bachelor of Science in Criminology.

“Yes, studying to be a law enforcer is very different from the distinguished naval career my father had. But studying to be a police officer was my second-best choice,” he said.

Roman also had the knack for the visual arts. He soon became known throughout the campus for his sketches and charcoal portraits. His awkward hard-pressed strokes slowly flourished into graceful yet definite strokes. He tried even harder when one of his professors told him his talent would be a defining edge if he seriously considered a career in law enforcement.

During semestral breaks, Roman would go home to his hometown. There he would regale his manongs and manangs with stories of his life at the university, from the girl he nearly courted but got busted trying to amusing anecdotes of his favorite absent-minded professor in Spanish class.

Rude awakening On Sept. 21, 1972, Roman watched intently on their boarding house’s wood-encased Radiowealth television as President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos announced Proclamation 1081, placing the entire country under Martial Law. At 17 years old, he could not understand why many students at the university started protesting in the streets. Roman liked how the President of the Bagong Lipunan (New Society) took the mounting civil unrest under firm control with one decisive move. He liked the discipline Martial Law commanded.

Roman was reviewing for an exam at night when his roommate—Carlo—told him they had forgotten to buy a coil of mosquito killer early in the afternoon. Not wanting to be disturbed, Roman hissed at Carlo to go out and buy it himself.

Engrossed with his notes, Roman lost track of the time. But when his bedside clock chimed twelve times, he suddenly realized Carlo had still not turned in—looking at the empty bunk bed below him.

Weeks past when Roman received news of a decomposing body—badly mutilated—was found in a dumpster under the Bankerohan Bridge. It was his friend Carlo.

Carlo’s gruesome and senseless death nagged at Roman’s conscience. “I could not understand why my friend was killed so brutally when there was a Martial Law in effect to protect the people from hoodlums and gangsters,” Roman recalled.

Higher learning One day he found a note in between the pages in one of his textbooks.

“If you want to make sense out of the brutal killing of Carlo, join us at the university gym, under the bleachers this afternoon at 3pm. Come alone,” the note reads.

“Perhaps this is the secret organization Carlo was into. Then again, maybe this is just some prank,” Roman recalled adding that he went to attend the meeting anyway.

There, he met five students and after a momentary awkward silence, they introduced themselves, one after another—name (surnames were never said), course major and age—in that particular order.

Roman learned from the group that Carlo, like them, was a member of the Kabataang Makabayan. It was to be, he said, his first “collective” in the underground movement.

He learned a lot from these encounters. He learned that what he thought was a brilliant law to discipline the country’s political dissenters was in reality stifling his very existence as a person.

Slowly but surely, Roman started to form—for him—a novel view of the world, people and institutions. Roman had been reborn. He was reborn with an aggressive dissident wit.

Serve the people His first “deployment” was in the rolling hills and dimly-lit rainforests of Afga—Southeastern tip of Agusan del Norte province. Roman was tasked to guide the political consciousness of combatants of the New People’s Army’s—armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines—Cesar Cayon Command—a generic company of Guerilla Front 4A.

Twice every month, he would discuss the fine points and importance of the “people’s protracted war,” and the strategy of “surrounding the cities on the countryside.” Roman had proven to his comrades his apt diligence in practicing the revolution’s “3-8-7” iron discipline and his stern yet warm rapport with his comrades.

In the boondocks, Roman developed a new skill. He found that he also had the knack for pistols. He drew fast and shoot straight. And because of his athletic body, was agile to execute rolls and summersaults.

Soon enough, he was not only tasked to be the company’s “political officer,” Roman was given “special missions.” Whenever the people in the community complained about an abusive CHDF (Civilian Home Defense Force)—Roman was sent to deliver the “people’s justice.”

In three years time, he became a member of the NPA’s elite partisan unit—the Sparrow Unit. Just like in Filipino B-movies, Roman recalled, they would engage “corrupt” policemen in a shootout even in the middle of a busy junction in the city at broad daylight.

Roman, now a battle-tested ideologue, was deployed in a relatively “liberated” Agdao district of Davao City—infamously known then as “Nicaragdao”—a take on the equally embattled South American nation, Nicaragua. (to be continued on Thursday)