The finger

The finger in Venancio Jakosalem Fernandez’s right hand was paralyzed to the extent that it could not bend. It was frozen straight with its last joint bent down rather stiffly. So that he seemed to be giving everyone, the whole world even, perpetually and most emphatically, “the finger”.

“The finger” came to him in the course of the war. He served with the guerrillas doing surveillance for the Americans. He was manning an observation post noting down Japanese troop movement when his patrol was attacked by the Japanese. As he recounted, a Japanese officer attacked him with a sword and chopped the finger almost clean through as he ran for his life.

He counted himself quite lucky to have lived through the whole ordeal. But after everything he was suspected by his fellow guerrillas of collaborating with the Japanese. For how else could he have survived? The finger would heal. And yet, understandably, the emotional totality of it must have affected Venancio most profoundly. All the more ironic that those guerrillas who suspected him of betrayal were his own close cousins and neighbors. He never claimed veteran’s pay. It seemed almost as if he gave this particular aspect and chapter of his life including certainly all his former comrades, “the finger”.

Which was just as well. The war when it came to Dumanjug affected everyone one way or the other. One was either guerrilla or collaborator. Either position or suspected position was fraught with danger. The core truth was that everyone was just trying to survive the war as best they could and by whatever means. Few understood exactly why the war came here at all. Even fewer still understood what was at stake beyond their own lives.

What they knew was that it was safer for boys of fighting age to go off to the hills or to some distant island to wait out the war. Which was why Venancio’s wife, Consuelo, was left alone to watch over her sickly mother, Concepcion through the course of the war. Only a few women and elderly were left in town to watch over houses and any family belongings of value. These ostensibly could and would be taken away by the Japanese. Everyone lived by meager means. Rice and corn were hardly available in the markets. They survived mostly on vegetables like yams, cassava and landang, the local tapioca.

And yet, Consuelo recounts that when they first entered town, the Japanese were quite friendly and even courteous to everyone. It was only towards the end of the war when they were losing ground almost everywhere in the Pacific that they committed those atrocities  still spoken of now. And indeed, it was then that they felt the true horror of it.

Consuelo remembers most especially one terrifying night towards war’s end. She recounts how dark it was and how they locked themselves inside their homes with all their windows closed. No light was left burning inside. Outside they could hear voices and intermittent gunfire. The Japanese were rumored to be leaving and yet with this also came rumors of families being executed by guerrillas for collaborating with the enemy.

And then in the dead of night came a hushed knocking at their door, someone moaning and whispering for help. He sounded Japanese although she could not be certain. Consuelo had to decide whether to let him in or not. She was too terrified to even make a sound as that would reveal they were inside the house. What she remembered clearly was only the moral quandary. Should she have helped? Or was she right to pretend they were not even there; like   digging a hole in the ground and then to lie in it playing dead? It was only in the light of the next day when she finally opened the door. She found only a dried-up pool of blood, easily  washed away. With it the war disappeared for her.

The Hollywood version of the war always makes a clear distinction between good and evil. Venancio and Consuelo also had stories like that. And yet their children know that when they remembered it truly they remembered it quite differently. A strange sad look came across their faces. Such a look as if to say, there are parts of these stories which are secrets you will never hear from me. And then other parts too painful we might as well give them the finger and forget.