Angelito, Eman and Hammy. Why can’t I seem to forget them? I never had a deep connection with them. They came and then quietly vanished from my life but somehow they still linger in my mind even now like ectoplasmic presences. They never greatly influenced my life. Or did they?
Angelito Ladores was a classmate in elementary school. We simply called him Ladores. He was the oddball in our class, who always received the cane from my teacher, Mr. Tuano. He often did something in class that got the teacher’s ire. He did not have a head nor an inclination for academics.
He might have been unruly and wily but he was not a bully. Tough and brave, he did not shirk from a fight. One time our teacher got so exasperated with him and another classmate that she allowed them to have a boxing bout right inside the classroom. As I remember it, the fight was stopped after a few exchange of blows and declared a draw by the teacher when the rest of us got too noisy.
I didn’t know why but he gravitated towards me. He somehow found out where I lived. He would drop by and we would play jolens and other games, or go downtown to visit the homes of other classmates. He never mentioned anything about his parents, and come to think of it now, he did not seem to be eager to go home.
One afternoon after class, out in an open field, I joined a boisterous group of classmates in a game that consisted of throwing dry mud against another group. In the melee, a clump of mud as hard as stone hit me on the forehead. Blood gushed from my head and Ladores came rushing, picked me up and accompanied me to the school clinic where the doctor staunched the flow of blood and treated me. That wound has left an embossed scar just above my left eye and I remember Ladores whenever I look at it.
There were other adventures and escapades. One time he and two other classmates came to hour house to fetch me. He led us to the vast sugarcane field at the edge of the town and we had a jolly time uprooting sugarcane and relishing the sweet juice. But then from afar, the plantation supervisor saw us and chased us. We could hear him threatening to tie us up and whip us. We got scared and ran away and hid among the tall cane stalks but we could hear his frightful voice from afar. Good thing he did not catch us. But the chase traumatized me and my other classmates for days. We never talked about that incident after. I told myself I’ve had enough of Angelito’s adventures.
But one morning, our neighbor came to our house and told me to come to their house just nearby. When I got there, I was surprised to see Angelito, sipping a cup of coffee. It was the house of a childless old couple, Imang Mereng and Apung Duque who took pity on him and gave him shelter for the night. Sheepishly, he told me he ran away from home the night before and he was too shy to knock at the door of our home. He instead went to our neighbor’s home. Was he bullied at home? I never got to find out. As I was just an immature adolescent then, it never occurred to me to ask such questions.
That same day, Angelito left our neighbor’s house and never showed up again in class. I don’t think he even attended our elementary grade graduation. His name is not even brought up during the few class reunions I have attended. Where have you gone, Angelito Ladores?
Later in college, I got to meet Eman. It was in one of the elective classes of the Communication Arts course at the Ateneo in 1970 or 1971. I remember him as someone with a quiet demeanor, always with a half-smile, sporting a long hair and wearing an olive fatigue jacket. Sometimes he would be present and many times he would be absent. He spoke rarely in class but when he did, he spoke with an orotund voice, betraying a little provinciano lilt in his accent.
I used to see some of his poems in the college literary folio, where I also contributed a few atrocious poems of my own.
I never encountered him again after that semester. It was only later that I found out that Eman was an honor student from grade school to high school and won a full scholarship at Ateneo. Considered a budding literary genius, he was an award-winning poet, a UP lecturer, a fictionist, an essayist, a playwright and a magazine illustrator, among his many talents.
He died a most cruel inhumane death, as told in the book, Six Young Filipino Martyrs. His killer, as ordered by a sergeant of the Philippine Constabulary (now the Philippine National Police), “put a gun in Eman’s mouth and pulled the trigger, sending the bullet crashing through the back of his skull. As he fell, a second bullet was fired into his chest.”
The killer and other soldiers then tied a rope around Eman’s body and dragged it like a cow along a craggy road in Balaag, Tucaan, in the Davao area and buried it in a shallow mass grave. Reading this, all I could think of was a line from the gospel: no greater love than a man giveth his life for others. To me, Eman did not really belong to that small class of ours, for he belonged to a special class of bright socially motivated young Filipino leaders who were all cut down in the prime of their lives fighting to make a change.
In that same class was Agustin S. whom we informally knew as “Hammy.” He came from an old rich family from Iloilo. We were worlds apart because he lived in Forbes Park while I was just staying in an old decrepit boarding house. He drove a car to school, a Renault, if my memory serves me right. What my classmates and I liked about him was he never had that air of superiority or elitism that is typical of people from his privileged class.
Hammy was the favorite of our teachers not because of his family background (but maybe it was also a factor) but because he could carry an intelligent discourse with them, much to my delight because I got to be enlightened by those lively repartees and exchanges.
In our film subjects, Hammy spoke about films and directors we never heard about. He was eclectic in his taste. He would even watch local movies which most of us looked down on. One day he would give us his personal take on Antonioni and Fellini and the next day he would expound on the classic films of Gerry de Leon and Gregorio Fernandez, as well as the soft-core movies of Ruben Abalos. He opened my eyes to the splendor of the production design of Chinese films, which were then being ignored by local film buffs.
I lost touched with Hammy after college but one day we bumped into each other in a video editing outfit. He seemed relieved to see me and immediately asked for my help to translate the script for a TV documentary he was doing about Filipino movies. Being an Ilonggo, Tagalog was his Achilles heel. But I was glad to do it. But after that, I never ran into him again. He was always somewhere in Europe, promoting local films. He appeared to be well connected with film circles in Cannes, Venice and other film festival capitals. Then one day, I learned about his passing, due to complications from chronic diabetes.
I have forgotten the faces of many former classmates but in the case of Angelito, Eman, and Hammy, I can still conjure up their faces as clearly and vividly now as when I was with them years ago. As a tributary memorial to them, let me leave this excerpt from one of my old poems kept in the drawer:
Thanks for the meries of friends made,
With whom I once shared a space in time.
I sense what the poet said
There is always a hidden significance
In any encounter with a being, thing or place.
Indeed, I must have packed along something of value
When I met a few special souls from long ago.