Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

I did not want to disobey Father, though, and the thought held me back, but only briefly. He had gone to Carmay that day, and it would be late in the night when he would return. “It will be I who will tell him. Only I will know that you had come along,” Martina assured me.

It was almost dusk; the farmer boys were bringing home their carabaos from the creek where they had been bathed, and the pigs were being called in for their meal.

“We may be late coming back,” I said.

“Are you afraid?”

“Of course not,” I said.

We hastened to the backyard and climbed over the barbed-wire fence, and as we dropped on the other side, she turned apprehensively toward the house, almost hidden from view by a screen of guava trees, to see if Sepa or any of the help had seen us. We were secure; there was no one in the kitchen or in the azotea .

We walked quickly toward the river, passed the clump of thorny camachile trees, and found the path that led to the gully, which the carabaos had widened when they were herded down for their daily bath. We skirted the bank, then went up the path that crossed the tobacco patches. I had begun to tire, for she walked at a fast pace; she did not want the darkness to catch up with us, and now my breath came in heavy gusts. We went over a bamboo bridge that spanned a dry irrigation ditch, and I sat down to rest. She jeered at me. “You are not tired. I sometimes run all the way from your house to ours!” And I recalled those mornings when she came to sweep the yard and she was pale and breathless, sweat trickling down her forehead.

“No, I am not tired,” I said, and rose.

We rounded the curve where the grass was tall, and in the deepening hush of afternoon, the sound of insects was sharper, the smell of the earth stronger. Then we were at the foot of the black mound, and Martina was saying softly, “How long did it take to build? How long did it take the balete tree to grow? Only those who have memories can tell, and I would like nothing better than not to remember … to forget …”

The small hut was ahead of us, somber and alone against the purpling sky. She held my hand, and I could feel the sudden sprint of life coursing through her with the tightening of her grip.

“Do you know what to say if he asks you who you are?”

“Do I have to say anything?” I was disturbed by what her question implied.

“Only if he asks,” was her hurried reply. “Just tell him anything — anything — that you live across the street. Anything. But don’t tell him you live in the big house — that you are your father’s son!”

I nodded dumbly, and her grip on my wrist relaxed. She continued quietly: “We may be little people … but you must understand, we are not beggars.”

“Whoever said you are a beggar?” I objected vehemently.

“Everyone does,” she said. “Why should you be different?”

We were in the yard and had hurdled the low bamboo gate. Martina headed for the short flight of bamboo stairs, and at the top, she beckoned me to follow her. I did. She slowly opened the door of the sipi —the small room where farmers kept their precious things, their rice, their fishnets, their clothes — and stepped in.

“Father?” tentatively, then, “Father, Father!”

Silence.

In a while, she came out slowly, and in that instant, I should have known from the dumb despair on her face. I should have stayed with her and learned to understand her ways, why she came to the house swiftly and disappeared just as fast when she had done her work, how hurriedly she ate her meals — like a hog — especially during those first days she was with us, the hunger in her belly that could not be easily appeased. Most of all, I should have understood how steadfastly, how proudly she took care of that cripple inside, how he, too, had sought to live his way by sending his only child to work for us, making believe that what was given to him by Father was not charity, when all of us — but not the two of them — knew it was theirs by right. Who built the ash mound?

But I did not know. I was only twelve.

Martina did not fumble for words. “Father is dead,” she said quietly.

I remember having peeped briefly into that darkened room at the legless figure there lying still and stiff, its eyes staring blankly in the gathering dusk, the buzz of mosquitoes around us. And this feeling came to me, freeing me of other feelings, all other thoughts, this feeling of dread that I had intruded into a misshapen world that I had somehow helped to shape, and that, if I did not flee it, it would entrap and destroy me. I do not recall what else Martina said, for I had quickly turned, rushed down the stairs and across the barren ground, away from this house and the ash mound beyond it. I ran and ran — away from the macabre shadows that trailed me, away from Martina and her dead father, into the comforting brightness of our home. I remember, too, her voice, her face determined and calm, and that last look of hurt and abandonment, as I ran out of a beautiful friendship into the certitude of ease that awaited me. And much later, I wished that I could see Martina again, that I could reclaim her friendship, but she left Rosales that very night and did not even attend her father’s funeral, which Father had grudgingly arranged.

One of the crude insinuations I often heard from classmates and neighbors when I was young was that I should be tolerated and my tantrums ignored for the simple reason that insanity ran in our family. It was no joke considering that almost everyone is related — no matter how tenuously and distantly — to a person who may not be exactly insane, but whose behavior is often delightfully unbalanced. We had one such individual in our midst, and thinking about him now, I envy Cousin Marcelo for his being able to do what he wanted and not be disturbed by eccentric labels that our relatives and even some of the townspeople had attached to him.

There were, of course, past evidences of why he had gotten his reputation — that night he returned from Carmay drunk from basi and singing all the way in the loudest possible voice. “The bird sings when it is happy. Why shouldn’t a man do the same?” And what about that time he exploded a box of firecrackers during the Rizal Day program in the plaza? “I hate verbose speeches — they never can explain the Noli and the Fili the way firecrackers can.”

I am, of course, on my Cousin Marcelo’s side, and if he was insane, so was I. He was the happiest man I knew, although much, much later he was just as burdened with the prosaic chores of looking after properties that enabled him to indulge in the kind of independence I wanted for myself.

Cousin Marcelo was not really a cousin; he was Father’s youngest brother, the youngest in the family, and I should have called him Tio and in the most deferential tones, but he did not relish that. “Can you see a single white hair on my head?” he had asked. There was none, of course, in the jet-black mane that reached to his nape, and in time, his asking me to search for one became a ritual. “Call me cousin, then,” he concluded.

He had finished with the highest honors in a Jesuit school in Manila — a fact that, perhaps, explained his rambunctious good humor particularly when it came to his schooling and the church. “Be careful when you go with priests,” he said when I became a sacristan. “He who walks with Jesuits never walks with Jesus.”

He knew a bit of Latin, a bit of Greek, and lots of Spanish, which he spoke with Father and Grandfather, liberally spiced with sexual epithets; if you heard him and did not see him, you would conclude he was some Spaniard. In actual fact, Cousin Marcelo looked very much like a peasant and also dressed like one; he was always going around in denim shorts, which were comfortable — but they also showed how atrociously bowlegged he was, and he was also partial to wooden shoes in spite of the racket they caused. But he had a warm, friendly face, a little squint, and long hair when no one wore his hair long. He was past thirty, but his disposition must have done some physiological magic to his face; he looked no older than twenty. When Grandmother died, he lived for a while with Grandfather but had to go to the city to study and had to live alone—“not in a garret because there are no garrets in the Philippines.”