The writer Greg Brillantes died age 92 on a Friday, the last weekend of September, as a severe tropical storm was heading straight to the central islands of the archipelago. His second daughter Cecilia, perhaps named after the patron saint of music, was surely coming home after many years based
stateside. Chi, that was her nickname, was a student of mine at UP Manila 40 years ago, in English I with her block of rowdy occupational therapy majors. In class sometimes her father was mentioned, author of ‘Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro,’ a staple in any syllabus introducing college students to literature and other literary forms, a tale of the country doctor whose son teaches him a thing or two about faith.
It wasn’t until after the first EDSA revolution that I got to work closely with Greg B., as he had once written his name in my pocket directory (***9507), when he was editorial consultant for Midweek magazine for six years, and I was among the staff writers. Of course I’d read his work before, aside from the aforementioned faith, love and time, such as ‘The Distance to Andromeda,’ which made you never look at the night sky the same way again. Or ‘The Cries of Children on an April Afternoon in the Year 1957,’ which was an ode to adolescence in the province of Tarlac, although written in prose.
Greg B also edited The Manila Review, a martial law era literary journal that came out more or less quarterly, where I first read Erwin Castillo’s ‘The Watch of La Diane,’ as well as a sheaf of poems by the teenage poet Diana Gamalinda, who drowned in Vigan in 1978. The review was also where I saw mind-blowing illustrations by the likes of Red Mansueto.
In Midweek the hours were lax, meaning irregular, so long as the issue was put to bed on at least a weekly basis. Greg B was usually behind his desk in the afternoons, wrestling with copy of the writers and columnists, the blue pencil eventually rendering the poor edited copy like a Rorschach test, which made you pity the poor encoder who had to manually put in all the corrections and transpositions in the rewritten article.
He was hard of hearing and cupped his hand to his ear if he couldn’t hear what you were saying, and sometimes totally misheard you so that you had to raise your voice and repeat whatever you needed to say to him, ending with a few guffaws from both sides. Also you should have seen him when he was deep at work, sometimes shaking his head and muttering the ritual ‘tsk, tsk, tsk,’ looking at copy from a certain angle so light would fall on it the right way, before applying his editing pen as if he were doodling or doing a spot cartoon.
After hours there was time for some beer, sometimes in the old gutted building bedside the office on A. Roces avenue, Quezon City, or else a short drive or taxi ride away to Davao Inihaw on Timog, where the inihaw na panga and sisig were quite the treat after not such a hard day’s work.
It was at Midweek where we first developed a sort of journalist routine, learned the ropes of the trade, out of town coverage and tightrope deadlines, especially since the magazine’s editor in chief was Pete Lacaba, who taught us all the basics of days of disquiet, nights of rage.
Greg B drove an old model Mercedes-Benz that might have seen better days, the backseat filled with books he would occasionally give away to young writers, and near the dashboard a pile of cassettes that included ol’ blue eyes.
Before Midweek closed down with the exit of the first Aquino administration, Greg had gone on a central American sojourn following the death of his mom, which coincided with political upheavals in Nicaragua and other parts of the region, and the essays written at the time later formed the main section of a book of essays, traversing most of the continent by bus, train or foot and recording his adventures in drafts written in long hand.
After Midweek it was on to Graphic magazine where Pete already was, as well the National Artist Nick Joaquin, the Cabangon Chua publication along Pasong Tamo and dela Rosa that spawned its own counterculture. Greg also had a regular column in the Times Journal, the title of which I forget, but it was in the manner of Nick’s ‘Small beer.’
At the turn of the millennium I asked Greg to contribute an essay for a special supplement of The STAR, sort of like to beat the projected 2K bug, and he delivered in spades, recalling his fledgling years at the Ateneo along Padre Faura just after the Pacific War, as an FOB (fresh off the bus or Benz) provinciano
from Tarlac, and his corps commander at ROTC was a fellow named Max Soliven, who was described unflatteringly as strutting around with his sword, or words to that effect.
When I handed him his writer’s fee in the early months of year 2000 we met at Sionil Jose’s bookshop Solidaridad also on Faura, after much shouting and repeated phrases on phone to set the appointment, and he was as usual in his element among books, as calm as any browser. He invited me to lunch at anearby eatery, on the second floor of which he said there used to be a girl’s dorm, where he and his batchmates at the Ateneo visited on weekends, maybe with an impromptu serenade in mind.
In the 2010s I saw less of him, except for a Midweek reunion at Teacher’s Village in the house of one of the magazine’s staff writers Tezza Parel, where I brought a bottle of Capt. Morgan spiced rum which he was hard-put to part with, until I drove him and other staff home to Sta. Mesa Heights, the dog Juanito no longer around, but he wouldn’t let us leave without giving us a couple of books however yet unread somewhere in the apartment.
Or else in New Manila at the house of fellow writer Ben Bautista, dinners with Pete and Krup Yuson washed down with single malt while in the lanai works of Bautista’s bosom buddy Chabet kept watch over us.
In Baguio of course I bought his collected short stories to shore up a weather beaten, dog-eared copy of The Apollo Centennial, still bedside, while Chi finally is home from Houston to join her two sisters and mom, the distance to Sta. Mesa Heights hardly measured by the words of a great writer who taught us much.