Remembering Mang Ben

On his 100th birthday (March 22), I remember some of the numerous moments I shared with Bienvenido N. Santos, my literary father.

In San Francisco in December 1975, I attended one of the discussion sessions of the annual convention of the Modern Language Association of America. Seated beside me was an American scholar named Frank Chin. I told Chin that one of the chapters in a book he co-edited, entitled “Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian-American Writers” (1974), had been plagiarized from an article written by Santos in “Brown Heritage” (1967).

Although he did not know me at that time, I had written Santos earlier about the intellectual theft. He had replied by asking me to get in touch with Antonio Manuud, the editor of Brown Heritage. Since I had no idea where Manuud was (apparently, he was living in New York at that time), that was the end of our correspondence.

Who should walk into the San Francisco room but Santos? I recognized him through his photographs. During a break, I took Chin and brought him to Santos.

“Mister Santos,” I said, “I am Isagani Cruz and this is Frank Chin, one of the editors of Aiiieeeee.”

Santos said to me, “I remember your letter.” Then Chin started talking to him, and I quietly left the pair to iron out their problem. What struck me then was that Santos did not show any anger. In fact, I don’t think he ever did anything about the plagiarism. I would have sued the book’s editors and publisher, getting a share of the thousands of dollars that book earned in royalties.

I became close to Santos and started calling him Mang Ben, when he would escape the harsh Midwest winter by staying over the Christmas holidays as International Writer-in-Residence at De La Salle University. Being then head of the Department of Literature, I was his official host.

Once, we were stuck in traffic on the way to a meeting. I was driving and he was my only passenger. To pass the time, we played a literary game. I would recite the first line of a poem, he would recite the second, I would recite the third, and so on. Invariably, I would forget a line and he would then continue reciting the rest of the poem. We must have gone through more than a dozen poems, and he always won. In fact, when it was his turn to choose the poem, I often just conceded the point to him.

The third moment I remember came much later, after I had given a number of public lectures and even taught a graduate seminar on his works. I had also become quite busy with various professional organizations.

I finally got the courage to show him a chapter of a novel I had started to write.

I appended a note, “Should I continue?”

After reading it, he wrote me, “Drop everything and just write your novel.”

That was the one piece of advice from Mang Ben that I did not heed. I continued teaching, writing (everything but a novel), administrating, organizing, giving speeches, even joining the government. In 2005, I retired from De La Salle University on the excuse that I wanted to write my novel, but I was immediately unretired and ended up doing much more work than I did before I turned 60. Instead of just teaching at De La Salle University, I ended up working (happily, I must say) for Far Eastern University, Ateneo de Manila University, University of Santo Tomas, CHED, DepEd, and various organizations, not to mention De La Salle University itself (which understandably would not hear of me working for others but not for my home for almost 30 years).

I was to reap the whirlwind of not heeding Mang Ben’s advice just last week, when my heart finally almost gave up and I had to be wheeled into the ICU of St. Luke’s Global. Fortunately, it was St. Luke’s Global, which performs miracles routinely, and as I write this column, I am still confined in a regular hospital room, but very much alive.

Knowing how much of a workaholic I am, my doctor has warned me that she will put me under house arrest for weeks after discharge. Maybe Mang Ben will get what he wanted, after all. Maybe, but I would not bet my life on it.