Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“I will convert you,” he enthused. Turning to Father and me, and of course to Tia Antonia, then to all the maids and house help gathered around us, he added, “All of you, all of you.”

The woman was silent, but on her face was the most beatific smile I had ever seen — her mouth was aglow. So my Tio Benito became a Christian — of that much I was sure. Although I doubted if his hortatory rhetoric could move as much as an inch any of the people who listened to him, I was sure that the woman with him had some uncanny power of conversion, for it was she who did it and no one else. She married Tio Benito, and though I am not very positive about what Tio Benito said about not eating dinardaraan because it is cooked in blood, of this I am certain: In our town, it used to be fashionable for the very rich to have as many gold teeth as they could afford. Tio Benito’s wife had all her upper teeth in gold, and that, in itself, was enough proof to Christians and pagans alike that she was, indeed, a very wealthy woman.

Nothing pleased Grandfather more than Tio Benito’s wedding; he once said that only a woman could tie my uncle down to Rosales and banish once and for all the itch that had sent him drifting to alien lands. Now that Tio Benito had settled down, the old man was at peace because all his children were where he wanted them: within his reach should the time come for him to die.

The wedding was celebrated in Carmay; in the mud-packed yard of Grandfather’s house, the tenants built a long shed roofed with coconut leaves and fenced with old bamboo fish traps. Here the entire village gathered to feast on three carabaos , two cows, and half a dozen pigs. The wedding ceremony itself, in the absence of a chapel of the new sect in Rosales, was performed in Grandfather’s living room, which was decorated by Cousin Marcelo with sprays of papaya blossoms and palmetto fronds. Many members of the sect arrived in a fleet of caretelas , and while their minister ranted and flung his hands to the roof, the women sang and cried. Grandfather made it clear, however, that he was not now going to stop enjoying dinardaraan or tolerate any attempt of the newly weds to interfere with his bucolic peace and the future of his soul.

Even before the china used at the feast was dry, Grandfather told Tio Benito to pack his overcoat and his thick, dark suits and, like a good husband, follow his wife to her home three towns away. It would have been ideal if Tio Benito and his wife lived with the old man, but Grandfather valued his independence and isolation. “Since your grandmother died,” he once said, “I have lived alone and I like it that way.” Nevertheless, he followed Father’s advice and kept a handyman, not to serve him but to see to it that in his twilight he did no unnecessary work that could cut his days still shorter.

Two days before Christmas, Grandfather came to the house; the helper who kept watch over him had crossed the Agno to spend the holiday with his family, and knowing this, we tried to dissuade Grandfather from returning to Carmay and spending Christmas there alone.

He was too stubborn and set in his ways to accede. He arrived hobbling up the graveled path with his long, ivory-handled cane, a relic of his younger days when he was gobernadorcillo , his feet encased in leather sandals firmly tied to his ankles by thongs. On his head was a crumpled buntal hat. Although he tried to walk as if his bones were those of a frisky youth still, he could not refrain from stooping. It was only when he paused at the foot of the stairs that his fatigue became apparent, though he had walked but a short distance from the bus station. He was panting, and as I tried to help him up, he looked at me, at the young hand that held his arm, and a flash of scorn crossed his face. The expression changed quickly into a wry smile. “I am all right, boy,” he said.

But he did not go up to the house alone, for quickly Father came rushing down, saying he should have sent us word so that Old David could have fetched him in the calesa .

It was one of the old man’s rare visits, usually made three or four times a year. He had chosen to stay on the farm, which he had helped clear out of the wilderness that had once stretched from the Andolan creek to the banks of the Agno. He had also imparted to the farmers around him his knowledge of farming amassed through years of frugal Ilokano existence, which were interrupted only when he held office and participated in the revolution or when he visited town.

If Father did not tell me, I would never have known, for instance, what he did during the revolution, that among other things, he knew Apolinario Mabini and took care of the Sublime Paralytic when he fled to Rosales, that Mabini stayed in our house, where he wrote a lot before he went to Cuyapo, where later on he was captured by the Americans.

The only time I heard Grandfather really raise his voice was when I was perhaps nine or ten years old. I had gotten ill, and he had come to see me on the third day that I had this high fever and hardly noticed the people fleeting about my sickroom. He had made inquiries about what had happened, and Sepa told him I had played at the foot of the balete tree together with some classmates and that we had constructed a playhouse on the veined trunk of the tree.

I remember him roaring at Father, why knowing this, he had not sent an offering so that I would get well, and how Sepa immediately went to the kitchen at Father’s harried command to do what Grandfather wanted although I knew that Father did not really believe in all that superstition.

Father used to threaten me when I misbehaved, saying that he would banish me to Carmay. Though I had always regarded Grandfather with awe, he never terrified me. After all, I loved listening to his stories of the supernatural and the mysterious. He was particularly fond of telling stories about the balete tree, for he believed that the tree was blessed and that it was bound to protect us from the curses and onslaught of evil. When Father realized that packing me off to Carmay would cause me no suffering, he resorted to the whip instead.

For a man over eighty, Grandfather seemed in good health. As far as I could recall, he had been sick only once, and I distinctly remember how, on a stormy September night, Father and the doctor had to rush in the calesa to Carmay and slosh through rice fields to attend to him; he lay in his old rattan bed saying that if death were to strike, no one would be able to thwart the blow, and for that reason he refused absolutely to take any medication.

Grandfather was more than prepared. It was no secret that he had ordered a coffin made of the finest narra when he was just a few years over seventy. Somehow, Father had disposed of the relic when the old man ceased asking about it. Many marveled over his ability to maintain an agile mind, and his memory for faces was superb; he could identify his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and the host of farmers and their families who lived around him.

What was the secret of his longevity? His tenant neighbors, especially the more superstitious, had an explanation. It could be, they said, that once upon a time, he had heard the bells on Christmas Eve. On that very hour of midnight when Christ was born, a heavenly chime would peal; only the chosen would hear it, and they who are so blessed would live to a ripe old age, their fondest wishes all come true.

I recounted this to Grandfather, but he ignored it; he was not really all that keen about things said of him, for his religiosity pertained mostly to the land, whose yield was greatly influenced by God and the elements. He had not stepped within the portals of the church for ages, though he was not one to deride those who did. During the dark days of the revolution against Spain, he had developed an apathy about the Spanish friars and, eventually, the church.