Account on Twice Blessed by Ninotchka Rosca

Author’s Background

CHAPTER 1:

Logophile’s Journal:

Rigodon de honor
Quadrille
Titter Laugh in a quiet or nervous way
Tots Young children
Toot Whistle
Fanfaronade Empty boasting
Disgorge To pour out
Nonpartisan Impartial
Ragamuffins A child dressed in rags and usually dirty and poor
Bodice The upper part of the dress
Alta Sociedad
Denizens Inhabitant
Pulchritude Physical comeliness
Chagrin Feeling of frustratedness
Intransigence Stubbornness

Idiomatic Expression:

 Ball of mirrors spinning on its axis

 Rubbed elbows

Quotables:

Plot:

 The novel begun with an enumeration of endless problems inherent with organizing a
presidential inauguration, even with the battalion of servants
 Characters where introduced through this inauguration that although responsibilities were
divided aptly, an affair such as the presidential inauguration is still a complicated affair.
 Katerina Gloriosa – (twin sister of Hector Basbas) in charge of the reception invitations (to be
surrounded by those who please her)
 Hector Basbas (twin-brother of Katerina Gloriosa) – official functions and functionaries
o “Not a matter of whom one likes, but who one can use”
 Armand – physical requirements (Luneta Park Stage)
 The three and Teresa Tikloptuhod (childhood friend and official confidante of Katerina) – hover
over the entire preparations like a hawk surveying the landscape, ever vigilant about details
 Issues:
o Will the moon be properly full or to send aloft propeller planes will be necessary to huff-
puff the dark clouds away?
o Should the music stop as Katerina slide-steps down the staircase for fanfaronade of her
entrance? And if so how will the dancers of the rigodon do the traditional salute without
music?
o Nails
o Katerina wants everything just right, perfect, symmetrical. She has a mania for harmony,
order
 This presidential inauguration kept Katerina in anxiety three days after the Commission on
Elections announced the final vote count and proclaimed the triumph of Hector Basbas
o His bathroom, his twin’s San Juan residence with its artificially adobe walls were filled
up with well-wishers
 Town Mayor decreed a holiday – discreetly by citing allegedly scholarly findings at the Dead Sea
(which was half a globe away, unverified for the cynics however for town’s namesake and
spiritual patron – it shall be celebrated, St. John was beheaded in November and not in
summertime per the church calendar) – an excuse for his desire to pander and his need to
appear to the inauguration
 Matrimonia Basbas also came – least liked cousin, Grand Matriarch of the clan, unmarried, wore
a pink dress stitched by seamstresses of the courturier Romero, splotched with water ruining
the bodice of her dress
o She was known to be as flat as a wall
 Matrimonia Basbas went to the inauguration even with a ruined dress smelling like the canal
waters
 Katerina hypocritically affirmed that no matter how she looked she was always welcome
o Even though she was being pushed towards the main reception all the time without
being offered with a towel or mirror to repair her ruined toilette
 Katerina went at the upper-floor landing with the rosary of pearls (each bead is the size of a
man’s thumbnail, Hail Marys pure white, Our Fathers bruised blue and Crucifix a hefty 22-karat
gold of at least 4 inches. Katerina watched Matrimonia’s discomfiture as men and women
sidestepped away from her pleasantries. This gave Katerina so much pleasure.
o For Matrimonia is the cousin who, many years ago, lent her shoes of the oldest pair –
repaired too many times, for the Queen’s Waltz as the Lantern Queen of the Women’s
school they both studied at.
o As she danced the waltz, the soles came loose and punctuated “The Blue Danube” with
a flap-flap
 o Katerina’s partner who is the most eligible only son of the sugar baron, bowed his head
with humiliation as giggles about Katerina’s shoes started to become thin squeals of
laughter.
o A misstep. Katerina stumbled and fell heavily against her partner while the partner
landed on his butt that he saw the black tongues sticking out from underneath
Katerina’s white shoes.
o However, her partner went back up to finish the dance after whispering to her ears
“patay-gutom”
o Feeling trembled and frightened, Katerina allowed him to twirl her and turn her as he
desired. When the last note of waltz kicked in, the partner bowed with irony and
disappeared from her life forever.
 Teresa Tikloptuhod was further introduced to be of no childhood friend. Katerina was already 32
and Teresa was 24 when they met.
o Teresa spent his 5 years at the Provincial Governor’s or her father’s house, having been
finished at the Women’s School.
o No one pursued her because she was
 Legendary for being hard-headed
 Known for being down-right ugly, dark, thin, scraggy-boned, awkward, flat-
nosed and slit-eyed
 Thus, tagged as “Black Beauty”
 A total turn-off for ambitious young men of the rising tobacco-and-garlic clans
 Not fit for RACIAL IMPROVEMENT as she is not qualified to be a wife for
establishing connections and breeding children
o She has
 two sisters who got married before her though they are to wait for her
 remained contented being beside her dad at his political events
 addiction to puffing on foot-long hand-rolled cigars
 continued the unbroken line of matriarchs smoke problems
 impressed her father with her cold-bloodedness that too bad she’s a female.
She could have been head of the family
 been using tarot cards; they have 13-14 year-old servants
 been a calculus whiz at age 8 and not great at arts of how to walk, sit, talk –
How to Carry Yourself; How to be provocative without appearing to be
provocative; small talk and what to serve with it; how to manage maids and
assorted help; organize your life
 been excelling in math, geometry, trigonometry, and algebra
 asked by the dean to get her physical paraphernalia checked if she was really a
female.
 The meeting of the two was illustrated when she was reminiscing all of those while opening the
tarot cards and suddenly hearing a jeep engine, a woman in black came to talk with them
o The woman in black said she was on her way to God or Bhutan, whichever crossed her
path first. While one soldier opens a suitcase, she added she’s the twin sister of the
Senate President