Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

He could not see the shapes that moved below. Trining pulled him away from the window just as the giant veil of darkness before him suddenly exploded in sharp orange flashes of thunder. He found himself being dragged to the floor, among bits of glass. Again the horrendous shouts, like a curse, burst in unison in the street below in all its frightening clarity: Commander Victor! Commander Victor!

The firing and the stoning ceased, and the shuffle of feet below moved on. He stirred, the dust of the floor gritty on his lips. His wife, beside him, groped in the dark for his hand. “Luis,” she said softly, “I’ve been hit.” She pressed his hand to her breast. It was wet and warm.

“My God!” he cried, and gathering her gently, he carried her across the room and laid her gently on the bed. He moved quickly, groped for the light switch twice, thrice, but it did not work. The generators were out; the complementary power from the town powerhouse had been cut off, too. It was elementary strategy — they must have cut off the communication lines as well. Rosales was now sealed off, and there would be no help forthcoming unless the news was relayed to the constabulary by wireless.

He bent over her and asked, “Does it hurt?” In the dimness he saw her shake her head. He ran to the hall and called the servants — Santos slept in the room near the landing — but there was no movement in the house except the patter of rat feet in the ceiling and the tumult of his own breathing. He rushed to the servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. Lighting a match, he saw that all the cots were empty, the drawers, too, and on the floor were scattered pieces of clothing that had been left by the servants as they fled. Trining was right — they were alone in the house. Everyone was gone — Santos, all of them whom he trusted, who would do his bidding without question. The servants had known about the attack, and none of them had warned him. Was it because they hated him and wanted him to die — or was it because, no matter what he did, he would always be his father’s son? He felt miserable at their perfidy, they who had lived with him, who had partaken of his food and played with him in his childhood.

He strangled a sob and fled back to their room, where his wife lay bleeding. I must stop it, he said to himself, and in the darkness he groped for anything to stop the bleeding. He lighted a match and in the feeble light Trining’s face was dreamy and unafraid. “Does it hurt?” he repeated, wanting desperately to hear her assure him that it did not. She shook her head.

“Luis, my Luis,” she said softly, “it is the same thing all over again, but I am no longer scared the way I was — and I was not even hurt then. No, I am not afraid at all — but for you, my husband, I am afraid.”

He found a candle at the bottom of her dresser and lighted it. Quickly the things in the room jumped up. He saw the medicine chest that the nurse had brought. He pushed down her nightgown. The wound was above the right nipple, a neat little hole, and from it a stream oozed, not in spurts but in a slow, sure trickle. She had bled much, and the whole front of her nightgown was drenched.

“We must get out of this house,” he said, and proceeded to help her up so that he could carry her, but she held him back and, smiling bravely, said, “They will kill you the moment they see you. Just try to stop the bleeding.”

He opened the medicine cabinet, took out wads of cotton and bandages, a bottle of Merthiolate and sulfa powder, then went back to her. He worked swiftly, although his hands shook. He sprinkled the wound with the powder, swabbed it, then padded it with cotton. He was not sure if the bleeding would stop after he had plastered the dressing, but this was better than nothing. “How do you feel?” he asked when the job was done.

“Weak,” she said, looking at him with misty eyes. “Luis, I am going to die and my poor baby, my poor baby — I have not even seen him.”

Tears welled from her eyes and wet her cheeks. Luis eased her back onto the bed and wiped the tears and the beads of sweat that glistened on her brow. She mustn’t die, he prayed, looking at her face, which was now quiet as a child’s and as lovely. She mustn’t die, he prayed, hoping for daylight and the end of this nightmare. He blew the candle out and took her hand. Her pulse was weak but steady.

Bending over her, he whispered, “You will be all right.” He felt her lips touch his cheek. Now was the time to tell her — she must know about the misshapen thing in the hospital, about that Asperri who would inherit all they had if it lived. If it were to live! He would forsake it; this was not his, nor was it Trining’s — this thing with handless arms and footless legs, this grotesque thing he had sired. What infernal seed had he planted? What evil was it that thwarted his father’s dream to perpetuate his name upon the land he had coveted? Was this the coagulation of all his sins, all the frustrations he had passed around as his blessings? But it is alive — this baby, this son — and it cries and its eyes are human, although as yet they are unseeing. It would require courage to look at it, the doctor had intoned, and resignation to accept it, but it was pity now — and charity and the purest kind of love — for Trining to be shielded from the truth. Bending over her again, Luis said softly, “Don’t worry about your baby. At least it is safe. You will see him. Just wait.”

“If I die,” Trining said, “will you marry again? If you do, Luis, please take care of him, see to it that he is loved, that he will have a happy — a very happy childhood—” He did not want her to finish, so he bent down and smothered her face with kisses.

He went to the window and peered carefully into the street that was now empty and silent. From the direction of the municipio fresh volleys broke out and the plaintive cry “Commander Victor!” in unison, as if a cheerleader for a basketball tournament had trained the shouting throng — only the cry was harsher, louder, and seemed to ignite the air. That was what happened when they raided a town or a capital — they always shouted the name of their leader for all to hear, as if doing so would give their unit prestige and strike into the hearts of their victims the fear and the respect that their leader evoked. There was the first Commander Victor whom he and his brother knew, who blasted his brains out with his own gun, and there was a new one now — and there would be a third and a fourth. There would always be a new commander each time one died. These leaders never died, for how can a ghost, a dream, be nailed up in a coffin and shut up in the hollow of the earth?

Although the shouting had ceased, the gunfire persisted, not in volleys but in isolated bursts. They must be looting the Chinese stores now, and he wondered how Go Chua and his waddling, unctuous assistant, the ascetic Joaquin Lee — all of them who occupied his father’s accesorias —would appear. Perhaps they were helping the raiders themselves fill up their jeeps with cases of canned food, shoes, clothes, and sacks of rice.

There was a chance that he could steal into the car with Trining and make a dash across the town and head for the city, but he quickly gave up the thought. His brother was not dumb. He must have placed roadblocks at all entrances and exits of Rosales. But why didn’t they rush the house when they passed? It was a simple thing to do, smash the iron gate, proceed to the bodega , which was still stacked high with seed palay and newly milled rice, and they could have gone up the marble stairs and blasted open the steel safe in the study and made off with the thousands of pesos in it. The answer to his own query came viciously — they did not bother because they knew that he and his wife were now alone, because they were like ripe guavas about to fall at the slightest breeze, because to enter the brick house was like entering an unguarded treasure trove.