Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“See?” she said as I looked aghast at what remained of my vase. “I am bad luck, too.”

She was etched against the bright frame of window where the morning sun came in. “I was simply cleaning this …” she said as she picked up the fragments and placed them in the dustpan.

I faced her squarely, my suspicions aroused. “Where is the money?” I asked. “There were two one-peso bills there.”

She glared at me, her hands fingering the frayed hem of her soiled cotton dress. She had raised it so that her dirty bones stuck out. “Am I to know?” she retorted.

I was angry and could not hold back. I took one step forward. “You are a thief!” I hissed at her.

She did not budge; she lowered the hem of her dress, then pointed a finger straight, almost into my face. “Don’t you ever repeat that word to me,” she said coldly, evenly. “The thieves in this town are not us; if I ever hear you call me a thief again …”

I was helpless facing her, knowing how capable she was of doing whatever she threatened to do.

“I will tell Father,” I said finally.

“Go tell him,” she said in the same even voice.

But i did not tell Father, and it was not that I was afraid to do so; rather, I was bothered by what she had said, that the thieves in Rosales were not people like her. Yet, I had heard Father say so often that the tenants could not be trusted, that during the harvest season they should be watched carefully for they were always hiding part of the grain or harvesting the fields in spots where it could not readily be discovered. They never gave our rightful share of the vegetable harvest, the fruits of the orchards — the bananas, the pomelos — and in time of need, they went to no one but him.

I could not ask Martina about these, so we never talked about the money in the vase again. I could have easily forgotten about it, but the next day, after she had gone to visit her father, I found that the coconut-shell bank that I had filled with coins had grown very light, and there had not been a day that I had not put something in it. But who would I blame? There were other servants in the house who went to my room — Old David, Sepa — I had no proof and will never have one, but nonetheless, Martina was always on my mind.

She came to me once while I was in the bodega chasing the rats, which were eating the palay and the corn stored in huge piles. She asked if I wanted to go with her to her father’s. It was an invitation I had waited for, more out of curiosity than anything else. Now I would see a legless man who did nothing but weave fishnets every day.

Again, we went by the backyard, hurdled the barbed-wire fence, and headed for the open fields. It was a long walk to the other end of town. We paused in the shade of a mango tree, which had started to bloom, then followed the path that led to the big ash mound behind the rice mill.

“You have never been on top of that,” she said. “When you are there, on top of that black mound, you stand so high, you can see almost all of the town and the river, too.”

“Let’s climb,” I said.

She took my hand to lead me, and we followed the black path up the huge mound — the ashes spewed by the rice mill for more than two decades. Her palms were rough and her grip was strong. The rice mill came into view, and we heard the faint chug-chug of its engine, saw its smoke, like a careless lock of Martina’s dark, uncombed hair, trailing off from the tall chimney that stabbed black and straight into the afternoon sky.

When we reached the top of the mound, I was breathless and my hands and brow were moist; there was not much to see — the mound was not high enough the way Balungao mountain and its foothills were. Just a stretch of the river, farms baked in the sun, and the shapeless forms of farmer houses. But for Martina this was the pinnacle, the top of the world, and on her face was happiness and triumph. “This — all this,” she said, “my father put this here. How many years did he work to put this here? And now, I am on top of it — and look at what both of us can see.”

I did not want to spoil her pleasure. “Yes,” I said softly. “You can see farther and more from up here.” A sharp wind rose and the ash swirled around us. For some time the view was marred. A speck got into my eye and blinded me, hurt me, and I went down with her, half seeing what was ahead of the soft and powdery path that led to the fields.

We reached the tobacco rows, the green plants taller than we were, their green speckled leaves, their white flowers like plumes glinting in the sun.

It was a stupid question I asked on impulse: “What did he do before?”

She paused and looked sternly at me: “You know that,” she said. “He built that mound where we were. A mountain of ashes — a mountain! How long do you think it took to collect all that ash? Certainly, it was not a week.”

I regretted having asked again when it was so unnecessary. Now we were silent, unusually so. We walked across the tobacco plots, the leaves brushing against our faces, the air around us strong and compounded with the aroma of tobacco and the brilliant sun.

“I am his bad luck,” she finally said. “He says he had plenty of good luck before. Then he married my mother … then I came. Bad luck … bad luck, that is all he says …”

“Why was your mother bad luck?”

“Mother?” she turned quickly to me, anger flashing in her eyes. But the anger quickly fled, and in its place, this ineffable sadness, and she shook her head as we walked on. We had reached the end of the tobacco farm, and before us was a narrow strip of fallow land given to dried brown shrubs and the amorseco weeds. “Wait here,” she commanded.

Across the weed-choked strip was her father’s shack. Its windows of battered buri palm were closed, and it stood alone and desolate, no life pulsating from it. But I wanted to look within, and I objected shrilly. “You asked me to come, to see your father. You asked me!”

Her tone was final. “You stay here and wait.”

I watched her gallop away; her lithe, catlike figure disappeared behind a curtain of grass, then emerged again only to go up the bamboo ladder and into the hut.

Its windows did not open, and no sound seeped from it.

We got home at dusk, and Father was already eating. I was breathless, and when he asked where I had been, I said simply, “I climbed the ash mountain, Father. Martina and I. We went to her house, too.”

“So. Did you see her father?” I turned briefly to Martina and could see the look of displeasure on her face, the anxiety.

“No,” I said.

Father continued with his chicken adobo , and, when Martina returned from the kitchen with the water pitcher, he said, “Don’t go with Martina to that place again.” And to Martina, who was filling the glasses, he said icily, “Don’t take him there again, understand?”

“Yes, Apo,” she said, looking straight at Father, and then she turned to me, the ancient sadness in her eyes.

Martina and I did not talk anymore about that afternoon, though I wished we had. And when I saw her leave, I wanted each time to go with her, but she merely smiled and said there would be a time when the sun would not rise from the east.

She continued to do her work with frenzy, so that Sepa and all the others could not complain when, having nothing more to do, she would be out in the yard, playing marbles with me, or out in the fields chasing the grasshoppers that had come with the rains.

Then on that week before school opened, she asked me if I wanted to go with her. She had a bottle of medicine that she had bought with her savings; it was for her father, who, I now learned, had not been feeling well for weeks but, in spite of this, had sent his daughter to work for us, and this was what Martina had done, knowing that her place was at home. What was it that made him do this? And for her to accept it? I did not know, Father did not know, but it had to be done if that black mound of ash was anything.