Filipinas Mag

What I really wanted to see were the dungeons.

This past December when I visited Fort Santiago in Manila, I was in the midst of writing a novel set in 18th-century Philippines where the protagonist was imprisoned in the historic fort.

My sister had married an Irishman the day before, his family came all the way from Ireland, and we had taken it upon ourselves to show them around. Some of our Irish guests wanted to linger at the gift shops, which I had little interest in.

“Can we meet back here in an hour?” I suggested.

My uncle frowned. “We should take our Irish visitors around, give them a personal tour,” he said.

Marie came to my rescue. “How about if we meet back here in 45 minutes?” she said. I agreed enthusiastically, and took off on my own.

My uncle need not have worried about our Irish visitors. Fort Santiago had signs explaining most things.

My previous visit was on a June afternoon in 1996. I remember crowds and lines and running into people at every corner. This last time, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon—except for some families, several couples, and a few guests trickling in for wedding receptions set up on the lawn, the caterers looking up worriedly at the stormy sky—the place was relatively empty. I was struck by the fort’s cleanliness and its spruced-up look, and wondered if it was because it was December 30, Rizal Day.

The fort made me think of a baseball plate, with its five entrances, or baluartes. One of them provided the escape hatch for Lieutenant Governor-General Simon de Anda when the Spanish lost Manila for a few years to the British. In my mind, I pictured a boat sneaking through the small gate under the cover of darkness.

Built in the 17th century, Fort Santiago provided protection between Manila Bay and the Spanish settlement of Intramuros, which literally means “within the walls”.

Luning B. Ira, in her sumptuous coffee-table tome “Streets of Manila,” writes evocatively: “There are two of Intramuros. One is a spot on the map and exists in space, an area defined by the moss-grown ruins of what was once a medieval city. The other exists in time, a romanticized, fabled, long-ago capital full of stone churches and stone houses ‘built like sumptuous palaces’ along precisely laid cobblestone streets; an Iberian citadel, its banners fluttering in the sun-streaked Manila sky, peerless in memory.”

The reconstructed fort captures a romantic slice of that era.

My first stop was the imposing main gate that overlooked a moat. Fort Santiago derived its name from Spain’s patron saint James, Slayer of Moors (Santiago Matamoros), whose wooden relief is depicted on the elaborate arch.

I got there just as a newlywed couple wrapped up their photo shoot, the bride gliding dreamily in a lovely vintage gown toward a waiting horse carriage. Past the gate I glimpsed the Plaza Armas, the fort’s main square, and to the north of it, the Dulaang Rajah Soliman, a theater.

I stopped at the Rizal Shrine, the memorial to the Philippine national hero, but to my surprise, the room which depicts the last night before his execution was closed off to the public. I could only peek through darkened hallways past a rope and made out a scene of a man sitting at a candle-lit table.

Later, I reached the site where he was executed. The footsteps tracing Jose Rizal’s death march glowed in bright yellow paint. The cheerful footsteps disconcerted me, but I understood why; for Rizal Day, the fort administrators wanted to put their best foot forward.

Finally, I reached the dungeons.

To get to them, I had to go down a flight of steps onto a cramped landing, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. Stone stained with age and moisture bolstered the walls. Like the Rizal Shrine, the dungeons were off-limits to the public, blocked by a wrought-iron gate.
I peered past the gate and made out something—a mannequin?—sitting on a bench. In researching my novel, I read about prisoners drowning in the fort’s dungeons when the Pasig River rose during storms. I imagined their desperation and terror in their underground coffins.

Whispers of ghosts floated to me as I stood on the grated dungeon skylights.

A breeze whistled through the leaves of the shade trees above. I wondered if that was the sound that the prisoners woke to day in and day out, or if the rough noises of a military garrison drowned out that simple melody.

I looked at my watch and gasped. I had spent far too much time at the dungeons. By the designated time, I was running down the road to meet my party.

From the fort, we took a cliff-notes tour of Intramuros in a carriage pulled by a spunky little horse named Johnny-boy. Before long, we were back in Fort Santiago and rushed off to check out the Coconut Palace at Roxas Boulevard before it closed.

Our Fort Santiago stop had gone by far too quickly. But for me, it was enough. I saw the dungeons. And I will remember the experience for a long, long time.

Jewel Punzalan Allen, a frequent contributor to Filipinas, also writes fiction. You can read her essays on life, liberty, and her pursuit of ha-pink-ness on her blog, http://pink-ink-pink.blogspot.com.