Les Mis AU - "Mga Anakpawis" PART 5
9. Bishop Myriel
In this rewrite, Bishop Myriel is "Reverend Alberto Bienvenido Ramirez", a priest of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, commonly known as the Philippine Independent Church, or Aglipayan Church. He has a reputation for ministering to rural Filipino communities, and many of the people he has reached out to include prisoners, former Huks, and landless farmers. Valdes encountered him during the time after the Huk pardon saw him released from prison, homeless and blacklisted per the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957, while attempting to break into his house unarmed due to his clothes already beginning to tear and due to his lack of food or water, using his old tactical skills he learned as a rebel, only to find the old priest before encountering any valuables.
Reverend Ramirez calmly talked Valdes down from robbing him and turned their encounter into an opportunity to reach out to the man and hopefully understand him, first by assuring him that he is not his enemy and that what he sees in Valdes, he has seen in the eyes of so many men he has encountered before - i.e. he recognizes a former Huk fighter when he sees one. Valdes, already visibly irritated, lashed out explaining that he (the Reverend) doesn't know who he is, explained that he's here to take what he needs to survive, law be damned, and demanded that he move out of the way right now if he doesn't want trouble - tears in his eyes, in an almost pleading manner. The old Reverend then goes to his drawer and passes Valdes a set of new, clean, clothes, and urges him to use his shower as needed, telling him the clothes he just handed him are his now and that he can use them. He then goes to his cooker, places some oil, eggs, and corned beef in the pan, and begins frying them.
After Valdes returns with his new clothes, the Reverend puts the cooked food on two plates, passes one to him, and then brings to the table a pot of leftover rice off its stove, urging the man to eat with him. He brings two glasses of water and passes one to him. Valdes is initially silent, non-responsive, and utterly dumbfounded at what has been done for him, and the Reverend simply tells him to eat, gently assuring him that there are no strings attached and that it's for him. Valdes at first, after hesitating, begins eating fast, like a man who hasn't eaten in days, but quickly slows down after nervously glancing at Ramirez, who does not judge him for any of it. Over the meal, between moments of silence, he asks Valdes his name, then about what brought him to such a place like his, to which Valdes, after initial hesitation, slowly opens up (but not totally and immediately, as he spoke in euphemisms and minimal details, even if the Reverend, being a smart man, could read the subtext) about his life - his life on his farm with his wife and son, their brutal murder by the Japanese, his rescue and recruitment by the HUKBALAHAP, then his imprisonment, pardon, release, and homelessness, which was what led him to try to rob him, for which he apologized and then thanked the priest for his act of charity. He then asked the Reverend why, despite having several opportunities to do so in the last hour or so, never considered calling the police on him during his break-in.Reverend Ramirez calmly talked Valdes down from robbing him and turned their encounter into an opportunity to reach out to the man and hopefully understand him, first by assuring him that he is not his enemy and that what he sees in Valdes, he has seen in the eyes of so many men he has encountered before - i.e. he recognizes a former Huk fighter when he sees one. Valdes, already visibly irritated, lashed out explaining that he (the Reverend) doesn't know who he is, explained that he's here to take what he needs to survive, law be damned, and demanded that he move out of the way right now if he doesn't want trouble - tears in his eyes, in an almost pleading manner. The old Reverend then goes to his drawer and passes Valdes a set of new, clean, clothes, and urges him to use his shower as needed, telling him the clothes he just handed him are his now and that he can use them. He then goes to his cooker, places some oil, eggs, and corned beef in the pan, and begins cooking them.
Ramirez, after a brief pause, replies that he sees in Valdes a man whose past had purpose, giving him tools to help fight injustice and inequality. He urged him, however, not to lose sight of why he fought in the first place and not to misuse those tools for cynical, self-serving, or destructive aims that come at the expense of other people, reminding him that no one is ever truly alone. As the old church hymn goes, "[w]alang sinuman ang nabubuhay para sa sarili lamang, at wala ring sinuman ang namamatay para sa sarili lamang."
Valdes responds that belief in the power of collective action was what landed him in trouble in the first place, that the Huks are no more, and that life and recent history have taught him that there is no revolution and no future to look up to, only the pain and emptiness of the present.
Ramirez assures him that even if the Huks are indeed gone, that it does not mean that the struggle for a brighter future is over. He says that he sees in Valdes not evil, but a conflicted man in a system that rewards injustice, who could have the potential to begin again and continue fighting for something better. He says, however, that Valdes has to make that choice. After they finish their meal, the Reverend gives Valdes his own emergency kit which he had in store for awhile and kept to prepare for times of crises - a rucksack containing a surplus Huk rebellion-era Philippine Army ration pack (many of these were left behind after the war and Philippine independence), two sets of extra clothes, some sanitizing alcohol, bandages, and a small amount of money - all things from his own belongings (he would have used this kit in his time of crisis, but it was the only one he had and he gave it away - internally, he justified this because to him, you can replace items easily, but you can never replace people, especially not in the same way as objects), and urges him to use them to start over, and to remember that his fight isn't over, but it must change form. He bids the man farewell, and wishes him peace.
Like how Bishop Myriel is named after a real person, François-Melchior-Charles-Bienvenu de Miollis, the Reverend is named after Alberto Baldovino Ramento, a former Aglipayan supreme bishop who served as the IFI Diocesian Bishop of Tarlac and worked as a human rights defender.
BONUS DETAIL:
When Valdes opens the rucksack, he finds something at the bottom that the Reverend failed to mention. It's a small booklet containing 365 days worth of prayers and Bible verses that the Reverend accidentally left in there (the emergency kit was his, after all, and he simply forgot that it was there, considering he owns many religious books in his home). When Valdes finds it at the bottom of the bag, he opens it and the first page he reads happens to have James 1:27 on it. Remember that Valdes is not exactly the most devout or religious person, so it does not have that much meaning to him, at least at first.
"Ang dalisay na relihion at walang dungis sa harapan ng ating Dios at Ama ay ito, dalawin ang mga ulila at mga babaing bao sa kanilang kapighatian, at pagingatang walang dungis ang kaniyang sarili sa sanglibutan." - Santiago 1:27
("Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." - James 1:27) If that sounds very similar to what he ends up doing for Leonor and Hiraya, well... EXTRA BONUS NOTE:
Earlier, when I said that Valdes was not usually religious, I should clarify what that means. Back when he was still an ordinary farmer, decades after the US took over from Spain and converted old feudal arrangements into capitalist ones, he was like most other Filipino farmers - keeping his head down, trying to survive every day, and trusting that God would take care of the rest. World War II certainly disrupted that (the Japanese butchered his village, killing his wife and son in the process, and he had to bury his own family himself), and finding himself with the Huks (among whom a fraction were still practicing Christians, even while working with a socialist guerilla movement whose leadership contained a lot militant atheists - in real life, following his capture, Luis Taruc later on admitted that in hindsight, he was a "Christian democratic socialist" all along rather than an outright militant atheist like many communists of the time) granted him a sense of meaning and hope that life on earth could be better and that there was someone out there looking out for the little man. And then the rebellion failed and he had to pick up the scraps - put into a rut where he felt like he was abandoned by all the powers that be - on earth, as in heaven. Which is why when he is in Reverend Ramirez' midst on that fateful night of the failed robbery, he tells the Aglipayan priest he is in conversation with at first, before he reaches out to the poor man who just broke into his home, that belief in collective action and in a God above who looked out for men like him was what ruined him and put him in his current position (because the Huks lost).
After Valdes finds the prayer book accidentally left by the Reverend left behind in the rucksack, he does not become ultra devout, not overnight, not at all. He might not be the person who regularly goes to mass or knows doctrine by heart. But every day, he prays in private, in times of doubt or uncertainty. His practice of his faith is not in formal worship, but in acts of service, and not always done with faith-related motivations in mind.
In a way, Valdes is a parable of the Good Samaritan constantly playing on loop. First for himself, then for his union comrades, then for Leonor, then for Hiraya, then for Mari, then for her family.
In a way, his prayers are those of an agnostic - he doesn't know if there is a God out there or a heaven above. But there is an earth right now and people supposedly made in that God's image living in it.
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