SINS

In the second fiction to appear here by noted Filipino writer JosÇ (Three Filipino Women, 1992), the sordid deathbed confession of a local tycoon is as much a portrait of a corrupt and sinful society as a personal mea culpa. Near death, Don Carlos Cobello decides to tell his life story as ``a form of expiation, perhaps, or atonement.'' A mestizo who can trace his lineage back to Castille, a sugar baron, and to a member of the Filipino elite, Carlos has lived a privileged life: His inherited wealth enabled him to indulge both his interests and his appetites. His business acumen made him politically powerful, and his generosity to the government was rewarded by an ambassadorship. But this glittering life is, on closer examination, tawdry and sad. Though scrupulously attentive to details of place and time, Cobello is really concerned with setting down his sexual history, which in its self-absorption, greed, and corruption is a metaphor for the behavior of the Filipino elite, who suppress the population and squander national resources while amassing great personal fortunes. At age 14, he became his older sister Corito's lover—a relationship that endured for the rest of his life; next he seduced a young servant, Severina, whom the family then dismissed, and by high school, a period that coincided with the Japanese Occupation, he was enjoying the women in the brothel his father owned. His business achievements are secondary to his recollections of seductions, local and international, but money doesn't buy everything: The daughter born to Corito is sickly, he himself is syphilitic, and Delfin, a son Severina apparently bore to him, is more interested in helping the poor than in running the family business. Ultimately unrepentant, our sinner blames fate or witchcraft, not himself, for his sins. More a carefully drawn up rap sheet for a whole class than one rather tawdry sinner, but on its own terms illuminating and certainly heartfelt.