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from stomach cancer in 1919, he sent Renato, twelve at the time, to fetch a priest, and his sick room was soon occupied by the upper crust of Manila. He received the sacred viaticum, the
extremaunción,
and the plenary indulgence for the time of death. When he had finished, his children approached him one at a time.
    â€œYou don’t understand anything about death,” he told Manuel II, who was holding a toy.
    â€œThis one is undefinable,” he said about Wilfredo, who would become perhaps the greatest playwright in the Pacific. “God will take care of you, my son.”
    He called Renato closer.
    â€œYou, being the eldest, must be like the father of your younger brothers,” he said.
    He blessed them all, and the visitors in his room began to weep. He spoke softly of the Virgin Mary and then died. His wife was sosick with grief that she would wear black every day for the remaining thirty-nine years of her life.
    Renato helped his mother and aunts raise his brothers. His father left the family a ten-thousand-peso insurance policy, two cars, the house, and all his possessions, but because the children were all minors, their mother could not spend any money without permission from the family’s lawyer. She eventually sold both cars, moved her children into a rental flat, and rented their large home to Americans. She kept her sons fed off the monthly rental income.
    The boys attended the Ateneo de Manila, inside the walls of the Spanish city of Intramuros, where they sang in the chorus in lieu of paying tuition. All but Renato, whose high school and college were paid for by Dr. Gregorio Singian, a famous surgeon. It was the Jesuit priests at the Ateneo who introduced him to Joey.
    It wasn’t long before she had shortened his name to Rene. They took long strolls together down the Escolta, in the thick and warm evenings. He fell hard for her. He liked what he called her snub nose, which turned up ever so slightly, and her high cheeks. She carried herself gracefully but could also be a clown.
    They married on April 21, 1934. He was twenty-six and she was just sixteen and they moved into a lovely home on Florida Street in the Ermita district of Manila. His studies and hospital work kept him away from home, busy as he was on the ward at St. Paul’s Hospital in the old walled city of Intramuros. But the job afforded them a long and sleek Buick, a driver, and two live-in maids.
    Less than two years after their marriage, Joey learned she was pregnant. Rene was now a doctor, so Joey began to plan for a home birth. On November 6, 1936, she gave birth to a baby girl, and they named her Cynthia. She had big brown eyes and dark chestnut hair and beautiful white skin. Joey thought the child took after her own mother, who was Spanish. Even as a baby, Cynthia was full of unpredictable humor and kept her parents laughing.
    Joey fell in love with the baby, the only child she would have. The only child she would have to give away.

 4 
SIRENS
    G eneral MacArthur could see the Rock from his favorite balcony, which opened off the dining room. The jungle-covered island of Corregidor rose from the sea in the shape of a tadpole. At roughly one and a half miles wide and two and a half miles long, it was the largest of the four fortified islands planted in the mouth of Manila Bay, and it was divided into three defensive shelves: Topside, Middleside, and Bottomside, the low center of the island. Administrative offices were located Topside. Barracks and living quarters were on Middleside. And Bottomside held the cold storage installations, Filipino barracks, warehouses, the shop area, the power plant, and the docks. Beyond Bottomside rose Malinta Hill, reaching an elevation of four hundred feet above sea level. Inside the belly of the hill was an extensive tunnel system. A small landing field occupied the tail of the island, farther to the east.
    If the United States and the underprepared Filipino army stood any