The Beggar

The heavy traffic swelling along EDSA stirred up the beggar beneath the flight of the Malibay overpass. Yawning, he stretched up. He checked his belongings, a tattered backpack and a striped-blue plastic bag containing empty plastic bottles of mineral water, energy drinks, and soft drink cans. They were there beside him. No one would ever touch things owned by a fellow as soiled as the beggar except another beggar like him.

He looked familiar to me. I had seen him the other day in that same place. To ascertain my presumption, and though where he had been was not really my path, I purposely passed by him to give a going over his sullied face.

Upon taking a closer look at him, I recalled someone in my Barangay. I refreshed the attic of my memory. The farmer, I thought. No. The fisherman maybe. Not still. The guard? I closed my eyes and remembered. Yes, he was the mayor’s bodyguard. But how come he was too old now? I’d just seen him last year before I left town to look for a job here in Manila. He seemed more years older. Maybe ten or fifteen? Perhaps he was not the bodyguard. Just looked like him.

He gazed up at me and lamely got to his feet. He touched my arms. His hands were rough. Dirt smeared my arms. “Coins for food, please,” he begged.

I dug out a 20-peso bill from my pocket and offered him.

“I know you,” he said, eyes squinting at me. “I know you,” he repeated.

Most beggars lose sanity due to lack of food and proper dwelling. I thought he was one of them.

“I know you, I’m sure of it.” He looked down at the bricks where he had lain the whole night. He contemplated and looked back at me. “Yes, you’re that guy.” He nodded a few times, satisfied with his certainty.

“Where did you see me?” I asked.

“In San Isidro, Bicol,” he snapped.

I reckoned he was not insane. He was telling the truth. He knew my original place.

“Yeah,” I said, “I saw you back there. Many times.” But the truth was I’d only seen him four times including that day. “You were the mayor’s bodyguard, right?”

He nodded remorsefully.

“What happened to you? Why did you end up like this?” I asked compassionately.

“He ruined me.” He gritted his teeth.

“The mayor?” I asked to be sure.

“Yes.” He looked about as if taking all in and returned to me. “You know, I knew all his monkey business in the government. I knew how corrupt his administration was. I was one of his bodyguards. I knew how he fooled the town officials. He compromised with them to obtain the budget from the town folks,” he explained well enough.

“Yeah, I know that.” I assented to him, though I really did not know if what he said had proof.

I wondered why his tone seemed it happened a very long time ago. I knew the mayor, whom he had been working for, was still the mayor of San Isidro.

“I knew everything, even the first plan he took to own half of the town’s budget. He fired me for no reason and pacified my family. He threatened to kill my family if I say something against him or his cronies.

“I went to the Ombudsman in Quezon City to ask assistance in filing a case of corruption against him. I couldn’t bear what they’d been doing. They were making the town folks poorer.” He sighed and glanced at the turtle-moving vehicles.

“I talked to my lawyer, a public attorney. He said my evidence was weak and that it was impossible to convict the mayor with it. I was disappointed. I regretted I had made a complaint. Everybody told me I couldn’t put the mayor into jail.

“That time, I was not in the village, my wife and my only son got killed. They said the burglars ransacked our house and murdered them. But I didn’t believe in their story.” He paused and shook his head in grief. “I know the bastard masterminded it. I knew him. If he wanted to kill an enemy in politics, he could do it as easily as he wanted it to happen.”

I doubted his story. I never heard of a wife and her son murdered in San Isidro. I’d been calling my wife, but she did not mention a similar crime that took place there. I could not say he was insane, though. His speech was thoughtful and his way of interaction was normal.

“So when did it happen, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.

“Twenty years ago,” he declared.

His answer confused me. Twenty years ago I was a high school lad, and he was already the mayor’s bodyguard? Twenty years ago the mayor was still a town councilor. To get away from the confusion I felt, I asked him. “Can you tell me the exact date they were murdered?”

“August 31, 2002,” he said in a stiff voice.

I was a little bit shocked. That day I was talking to him was August 28, the year 2002. I could not put away the idea that what he was telling was nonsense and mere fantasy. When I tried to leave him, he went on talking.

“I came here to find a job but the grief and the desire for vengeance wouldn’t let me. Thinking of my wife and son all the time made me crazy. So I ended up begging.”

“How many years you’ve been like this?” I said as I forgot to resume my flight.

“Twenty years?” he knitted. “Yes, twenty tiresome years.”

I stole a glance at his wrinkled and dark face and thought he really was the bodyguard.

“Last week a group of physicians, or whatever they are, I don’t know, helped me. They cured the grief and guilt I had in me for twenty years.

“You see,” he continued, “they injected me in here,” he presented his right wrist and I saw a fresh needle scar. “And they put me inside a chamber.” He demonstrated the size of the chamber with his dirty arms, “this wide and that length. They said the process would cure me.” He stared at the bus which had just wheeled through. “I haven’t known that curing of grief and guilt goes that way. Time has really passed me a lot.” He grimaced.

Now I was eager to listen more. “What happened next?”

“I fell asleep inside the chamber. When I woke up, I was in a grassy land in UPLB Laguna. And I felt different. The term is,” he looked up, “rejuvenated.” He raised his hands up as if to praise a deity.

“I took the bus. The conductor kicked me out. The bastard learned I did not have a ticket.” He chuckled. “I had trailed the road until I got here.” He looked about as if counting the passing vehicles. “It seems this place has not changed even a little. I was here in 2004. The same Pasay City back then.”

I was astonished but I did not show it to him. “What do you think this year is?”

He grinned. “You’re ridiculous.” He laughed raucously. “Of course, this is 2022.”

I laughed too but at the oddity of his statement. I concluded that he was a little bit crazy because of his answer. I looked at my watch. I was going to be late for work. I bade him adieu but thought of coming back and talk nonsense with him again.

The beggar’s tale lingered in my thoughts all throughout that day. After work, I called up my wife and asked her about the mayor’s bodyguard who looked like a beggar. At midnight, she called me back to tell me that he had gone to the Ombudsman in Quezon City in the NCR a week ago.

The next day was August 29. It was two days before his wife and his son were to be murdered, according to his story. I brooded about it and could not sleep. What if it would really happen? I thought.

I resolved to take a vacation leave on my job in the morning and went home to my wife.

Upon arriving in San Isidro, I headed first to where the bodyguard’s family lived. A worried and weary wife and a skinny kid welcomed me in a small ramshackle hut. She told me about her husband’s dilemma with the mayor and that they had been receiving death threats from an anonymous person since her husband left for the Ombudsman. I did not tell her about the beggar and the crime that was going to happen to them the following day. But I urged them to leave the village and go after her husband in Quezon City.

It was against the clock. At dawn I took them to my house and before the sunlight could make out on the horizon, I fetched them with my wife to Lucena City. Then, we rode on a train bound for Manila City.

My wife was afraid for us to be involved and so she advised me to leave them when we get there. We indeed left them in a restaurant in Manila City. They could make it to Quezon City.

Before my wife and I went to my apartment, I asked my wife to join me for a stroll along EDSA Pasay, from Rotonda to Magallanes. I told her I wanted her to make familiar with the place. I did not tell her about the beggar, who was actually the reason of our promenade. We walked past the overpasses, crossed the avenue, and visited food chain stores where beggars usually hunt for leftovers, but I did not see him anymore.

The beggar was gone.