The long corridors of the Philippine Congress building were dark and empty one recent evening as an elegant gray-haired woman walked toward a lighted room, carrying a bottle of red wine and a treat of grilled pigs' ears.

Security guards sat at a little table playing chess. Inside wearing a bright red T-shirt was her husband, Satur Ocampo, a congressman and arguably the most charismatic Communist revolutionary in the country.

"I don't like this building," said the woman, Bobbie Malay, who was also a prominent revolutionary in her day. "Don't you hate it? It's like a mausoleum. It swallows you up."

But it is also a legal sanctuary, where Mr. Ocampo has spent his days and nights for more than a month. His wife visits him most evenings.

Following a coup attempt in February that he says he had no part in, the government put his name on an arrest list, along with those of five other leftist leaders who hold seats in Congress. If he leaves the refuge of the legislative building, where the speaker has guaranteed him immunity, he could find himself in jail.

It wasn't supposed to come to this.

After more than three decades of marriage and revolution, Mr. Ocampo, 67, and Ms. Malay, 66, find themselves here, in a congressman's office of all places, more or less back where they started.

Their marriage-on-the-run has endured and their ideological fervor seems as fresh as ever. But the communist revolution to which they devoted their lives never happened; only their struggle remains.

"It had become a life of commitment," Mr. Ocampo said, a numbing procession of safe houses, jail, safe houses and jail again. "For as long as there is space for me to carry on, I carry on."

Mr. Ocampo and Ms. Malay were among the early, passionate members of a revolutionary movement that gained momentum under the martial law rule of President Ferdinand Marcos, but has stumbled along inconclusively in recent years.

In a sign of the stagnation of the conflict, even the charges Mr. Ocampo now faces appear to be a resurrection of a rebellion case filed against him in 1976.

Five years ago, in a change of policy, the government invited its enemies to join mainstream politics. Mr. Ocampo, who had already begun talking with his wife about retiring from political activism, felt an obligation to run for Congress.

Now the government appears to have changed its mind again, linking the leftist congressmen to the right-wing coup attempt. Perhaps having hung on just a bit too long, longer than most of his contemporaries, Mr. Ocampo appears to be trapped again in the revolutionary struggle that consumed his life.

"What with the viciousness that they are going after us," he said, "if we get them to drop the case we'll be free, but we'll be vulnerable to physical attack. If we go to prison, we'll be safe. And I'll grow old in jail."

For the moment, and perhaps until his term ends next year, Mr. Ocampo finds himself in the strangest of the many safe houses that have been his serial home.

By day he is on the floor of Congress, a fit, well-barbered man who looks much younger than his age, wearing a neatly pressed white Philippine dress shirt.

Late at night he pulls a folding mattress, sheets and pillow from behind his desk and joins four congressmen also facing charges, grouped together for safety in the office of the House speaker. One other leftist congressman was arrested outside the building and is in jail.

Mr. Ocampo has already been in prison twice.

"It's not as bad as before," said his wife, and there was a pop as she pulled the cork from her bottle of red wine. "You know, he was tortured the first time around." The second time, in 1989, husband and wife were captured together and were jailed together in relative comfort for three years.

Then came an interlude when, as if there had never been a revolutionary movement, Mr. Ocampo returned to his first career as a newspaper columnist and protest organizer, while Ms. Malay rose to head the journalism department at the University of the Philippines.

"We like gray areas, don't we, in the Philippines," she said. "The left doesn't like gray areas. These are black-and-white people trying to move in gray areas. And we are paying the price."

She poured the wine into coffee mugs. "This time he's not even detained, supposedly," she said. "Isn't that weird?"

Mr. Ocampo's desk was piled high with legal documents from the cases being brought against him, and some key evidence seemed bizarrely slapdash, as if an insult had been intended.

The only witness linking the six legislators to an alleged military coup plotter, according to a prosecution affidavit, is a manicurist who said he saw them greet each other at a farm. The affidavit said the manicurist recognized the congressmen from television.

In fact, Mr. Ocampo said, he was preparing at that moment to address a congressional session and can be seen there on videotape. But he has few illusions that his case will be decided on the evidence — though the government says it will show that he is linked to violent movements on both the right and the left. He and his wife have grown used to losing their battles.

Not long ago at a protest march, Ms. Malay said, a fellow revolutionary from the early years said it was a pity that after all this time, not even a small victory had been won.

"I thought, I've come around to believing that it never ends," Ms. Malay said. "It never ends. Sometimes I think of it like, the horizon keeps receding, you know. Every inch forward has to be fought for."

Perhaps, she said, being a revolutionary is an end in itself, a personal struggle rather than a public one.

"If it's going to be like that," she said she told her friend, "maybe we should find our joy in fighting. You know? Since it's going to be like that."

Ms. Malay retired from her university job several years ago. She is, for the first time, a homebody, and her focus is on the husband and children from whom she was separated for much of her life underground.

"At this point, I know it's not just going to take a few radicals to change things," she said. "I think what matters is to have good and decent people helping each other along, you know, just that."

As for changing the world, she said: "Maybe it's not our job any more. Our kids have to figure it out themselves."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company