An Explosion (an attempt to translate Padre's "Isang Pasabog")

A friend of mine shared a link to a blog entry by Fr. Ferriols narrating a story of Christmas during the onset of World War II in the Philippines. The link to that blog is here: Isang Pagsabog.

Father Ferriols--or Padre for us, his students--is such a charismatic figure in the Philosophy department of the Ateneo de Manila University. He had so many stories and ideas to tell. His students try to collect these anecdotes which he intentionally or unintentionally spill out.

It's written in Tagalog... and a bit 'messy'--in true Padre-Ferriols-the-philosopher-style. Padre consciously tried to write and teach in Tagalog to summon the nuances of the language to Filipino readers/students. Thus, it's a bit of a challenge for non-native Tagalog speakers/readers to digest. 

But the short prose is really interesting both in history and its religious wit. Thus for the benefit of non-Tagalog speakers (and even Tagalog speakers who have a hard time reading his blog entry), I try my best to render a 'faithful translation' in English. Of course, I took the liberty of adding some 'editorial enhancements' to the narrative to fix the seemingly disjointed narrative flow (philosophers seem to have disjointed sense of narrative time that they don't make good story tellers sometimes).

So here goes nothin'.

----

An Explosion
by Padre Roque Ferriols

A solemn mass was held on the 8th of December, 1941 at Novaliches for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God. After the mass, the novices worked on the refectory where while we were toiling through the cutleries, plates, chairs, and broom, rumours have been circulating amongst us that the Japanese has just bombed Pearl Harbour.

I have no idea what or where Pearl Harbour is and why the Japanese would stir up a commotion, but the schedule now says LUDI[1], so we all went to the basketball court.

It was quite fortunate that while at the court, Father Socius happened to passed by. One of us took the opportunity to ask that which we all have been asking at the back of our heads.

"Will there be war?" he asked.

Father Socius can only reply that it's not yet clear.

The clock moved; and according to my schedule it's NATANDUM[2].

Some of us went to the swimming pool where we enjoyed the cold air drawn by the northeast monsoon.

As we were enjoying the cold draft of wind from Siberia, Brother Manuductor came rushing down the stairs towards us. He advised us to hurry to the conference room where Father Socius will be making an announcement.

Father Socius announced that not only was Pearl Harbour bombed, but also that the Japanese forces had started bombing Aparri, Camp John Hay, Clark Field, Davao, and other parts of the Philippines.

We all fell silent.

It dawned on us that we're now in a time of war--a time where we cannot anticipate what will happen.

Father Socius instructed us to write letters to our family; and so I wrote to Papang, Mamang, Piti, and Nene. I told them to to pray for each other since we do not know if we'll ever see each each other again.

I think I wrote in such a grim and heavy spirit that the mood rubbed into the letter that when Father Socius read it, he advised me to rewrite it instead. I did as I was told... although I cannot help but feel fear and terror the likes of which I never experienced until then in my life.

Night time in Novaliches was really awesome. Since the lights were all turned off, you'll notice the fireflies flying about and blinking through the dark.

Brother Alingal caught one of the fireflies and placed it in his cope's chest pocket. Many us followed suit for we noticed that the light generated by the firefly is visible through our garbs and thus kept us from bumping against each other.

Daytime at Novaliches was best that Christmas day. The heavens were so blue and the leaves of the poinsettia were flaring red.

But it was at the height of noon when we sighted the Japanese airplanes flying over the horizon. The planes sounded like bees; and no sooner, they were now flying over our heads and towards the direction of Manila. Moments later, we then heard the most deafening and dreadful of sounds from the capital. Those were the sound of bombs exploding.

That day, our superiors thought of using camouflage to hide our Novice house. So we tried to make "paint" out of red clay. Red clay is common in Novaliches. So we justed mixed it with water to make the "paint."

There were people designated to layover the "paint" on the exterior of our house. Others were designated to cut some tree branches and to place those atop our roof.

Although these were cleverly designed to hide the Novice house from the Japanese soldiers, I do not know if these really served their purpose. The Japanese forces had already set foot on Luzon. Many of us were just hoping the Filipino and American troops will be able to stop them.

But we continued with our preparations for the pasko rorate caeli desuper... noli timere... this will be a 'pasko' together with Jesus. And nobody will be able to stop us from our joyful anticipation.[3]


[1] Latin, play time. In Ancient Roman times, done for the entertainment of the Emperor and usually during religious festivities.
[2] Latin, to swim.
[3] Fr. Ferriols was playing on words here. Pasko in Tagalog means Christmas. But in ancient Greek, it originally meant to suffer. He then attaches this to the Advent Prose taken from the Latin Vulgate (Isaiah 45:8), "rorate caeli desuper" (which translates "Drop down ye heavens from above.") "Noli timere" may have come also from the same book (Isaiah 41:14) where it translates, "Don't be afraid." He seems to be toying with language here in referring to both the notion of the joyous anticipation of Christ's birth commemorated during Christmas and the courageous anticipation of suffering brought about by the air bombings of World War II.