Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

That December evening as he sat down with us at the head of the table, he seemed exuberant. He relished the mudfish and sipped his chicken broth, as if he thoroughly enjoyed every drop. We waited for him to finish and had expected him to talk, but he was adamant. “I came here for no other reason than to take my grandson with me,” he said. “He can return when Basilio returns from his family.”

It was a time I did not particularly care for Carmay, because on Christmas I would rather be at home. The provincial road sliced through the far end of the barrio, which was really nothing but a few thatched houses huddled together with Grandfather’s — the biggest of them all and the only one with a tin roof — standing closest to the narrow bull-cart path that leads down from the road. There was peace and quiet in Carmay on Christmas Day, and perhaps its only attraction during the holidays was its excellent rice cakes, better than those available in town. It was livelier in Rosales — the early-morning mass, the chill permeating our bones, the jaunty band music rousing all of us. We would then stagger from our warm beds to go to church, where first we would drink scalding ginger tea from the convent kitchen. Afterward there would be the happy sight of flickering candles on the altar, the smell of incense swirling about, and above everything our voices swelling in the choir loft. Later the sun would rise from behind the heavily wooded hills of Balungao, and suddenly it was morning.

The evenings were just as memorable. Tio Baldo, come Christmastime, always fashioned a bamboo cannon for me, and as soon as it was dark we filled one end with heated kerosene, stuck empty milk cans in the mouth, and fired away at the youngsters across the street, who also had the same noisy toy. Or with Angel, Ludovico, and the other boys, we would play from house to house as a bamboo orchestra, all the rest tooting and puffing at a weird assortment of bamboo flutes, clappers, and jingles, while I played the harmonica — the only instrument that somehow managed to give a running tune to the noise that we emitted. The money we made was not much, but for the boys it meant a merrier Christmas. Shortly before midnight, when we returned to the house, we also had something for the help — maybe a cigar for Sepa and a bottle of gin for Old David.

But Grandfather had spoken, and what was Carmay at Christmastime but a wide, dreary field ripe with grain? There was nothing there to dispel the quiet but the booming voice of some farmer calling his children from their river bathing or the martins cawing in the lofty buri palms.

“We are not going to sleep in the house,” Grandfather said. “We are going to sleep in the field to watch the new harvest.”

It was only then that I perked up, for the prospect of sleeping in the open — something I had never done before — was vastly appealing.

“Why should we sleep in the field, Grandfather?” I asked. “Aren’t you afraid you might get a cough?”

He tousled my hair, then went on to explain that times had changed. “Years ago,” he said, “during harvest time, the newly cut stalks of palay were piled in the fields, where they were not removed, or brought to the granaries till they were to be husked. Now, with hunger slowly stalking the land, one has to keep watch over the harvest, lest it be stolen.”

I am sure we made a fine sight that afternoon as we walked down the main street to the bus station. Grandfather walked stiffly in his sandals, ivory cane in his hand and his crumpled hat propped straight on his head. I felt proud walking behind the old man who had helped build the town and who was, perhaps, the oldest man for miles and miles around.

When we passed the church I said, “If I were not coming along, Grandfather, I would sing in the choir tonight during the Christmas mass.”

A scowl swept across his face, and knowing I had displeased him with my remark, I did not speak again.

The trip to Carmay was uneventful. We reached it in a few minutes. The sun lay bright on the countryside, and the golden fields were alive with reapers in brightly colored clothes. The boundaries of our land, which Grandfather had cleared, blended with the tall dikes running parallel to the banks of the Agno.

We went up to his house. Ears of corn and fishnets were piled near the door. In the kitchen, chickens were pecking at grains scattered on the floor. The nippy December wind stole in, and Grandfather told me to bundle the blankets and a couple of pillows. We hitched a bull cart, then headed for the open fields where the harvest was stacked high. Soon it had become dark, and stars began to sparkle in the black bowl of sky.

After we had fixed our beds in the bull cart and in the sled with a thin canopy of hay over us, Grandfather sat on the sled quietly. Distant wisps of singing and the ring of laughter from the farmhouses reached us. Rosales was far away — a halo of light on the horizon. No sound from it could reach us, not even the boom of the bamboo cannons or the sharp crackle of firecrackers.

It was peaceful and quiet. After a while, with his head resting on the rump of the sled, Grandfather began to tell stories of the days when this field was a jungle of cogon grass and mounds, and snakes lurked in every hole. He spoke of the Bagos, who trekked down the Cordillera ranges and traded venison for cloth and matches. It was a time when the Agno River was not so wild and the Andolan creek had plenty of fish and, in his own backyard, he hunted the wild pig. He spoke, too, of past Christmases, though he was not keen about them, of the nights he slept in the open during the hunt and harvest evenings, when he kept watch over the grain that could not be carted off to his granary.

“Boy,” Grandfather said, “the silence of a field can give a man beautiful thoughts. Here, more than anyplace, you are nearer God.”

I did not understand then what he meant, for I was Padre Andong’s acolyte in the Catholic church and had quite a different idea about worship. But I listened just the same to his stories of the revolution till the singing and the hoarse shouting of the tenants from across the fields waned and a heaviness stole over my eyes.

Perhaps I dozed, for when I looked up from my seat of hay, Grandfather was no longer near me. Over the land, a moon shone, a cool, silver lamp. The Balungao mountain in the east slumped like a sleeping beast, and all around us was the night, the endless river of night insects and crickets, and the rich, heady smell of new hay. It was cold, and I wrapped the blanket tighter around my quivering body. I looked around apprehensively to where the camachile tree stood, and where the carabao , tied to a saluyot shrub, was chewing its cud. I saw Grandfather then standing in the open behind the cart, his head raised to the sheen of the starlit heavens and his right hand clutching his old ivory cane.

He stood there erect as a spear, for how long I can’t remember. I went to him, but he did not seem to feel my presence. Staring closer at his upturned face, I saw tears trickling down his coarse, wrinkle-furrowed face, to his lips, which were parted in an exultant smile.

I remembered then that he was a little deaf, but he must have known I was near, for he spoke without looking at me: “Listen, boy.”

I held his hand.

“Listen, boy, listen,” he repeated in a soft, tremulous voice.

“What is it, Grandfather?” I asked, hearing nothing.

“Listen,” he repeated severely.

Across the silent fields where the farmers’ homes were huddled a dog howled. The evening wind whimpered in the camachile saplings, a carabao snorted. Somewhere in the shaggy grass that covered the dikes, cicadas were chirping, and farther down, the river gurgled as it meandered in its course.