Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

Beyond the balete tree and the yard, down the incline of barren ground, is the river, marked on Tio Baldo’s maps as the Totonoguen Creek, but because its waters were always swift during the rainy season, I always called it a river. When the rains started in June, continuing all through the early days of the planting season, its waters would be deep and muddy brown. As the rains intensified, within a matter of hours after the first downpour, we could see it rise in a rage of whirlpools, and it would carry the flotsam of the Cordilleras where it had started — the gnarled and twisted roots and branches of trees. Men would line the banks and the wooden bridge, and with wire loops at the end of long poles they would ensnare these gifts of the mountain for firewood. There were times when the river would rise so high it would flood portions of the town and even the bodega , which at this time would be quite empty of grain, for almost everything would have been sold by then to Chan Hai. Once it even swept away the wooden bridge, and for weeks the village of Cabugawan was isolated. The floods delighted us, for then we could float our wooden fishes in the ditches.

As the rains subsided and the fields turned green, the mud settled and the river acquired a clear, green hue. It would no longer be swift; it flowed with a rhythm, broken by small ripples in the shallows. It was at this time that we bathed in it and dove to its depths to discover what secrets it held. Now, too, the women took their washing to the banks; they would squat before wide tin basins and whack at clothes with wooden paddles. Where the banks were even and stony or sandy, they laid the clothes to bleach, for now the sun came out not only to help the washerwomen but to ripen the grain. It was also at this time of the year that, once more, Father could go down the riverbank and follow it down, down and beyond to the village of Cabugawan, to a place everyone in town knew; he usually went down at dusk, perhaps because at this time few people would see him, and he did not have to smile at those he met or wave his hand in greeting, for they all knew that at the end of the trail was his secret place.

It was also at this time that Old David, who took care of the horses and the calesa , would go to the river with his fine mesh net and kerosene lamp, and before midnight he would be back with a basket of shrimp and silverfish.

By November, the river ceased to move. The smaller streams up in the Cordilleras would have dried, too, and now its sandy bed would be burned, and in between, where there were slivers of earth, thorny weeds and the hardy cogon would thrust out. The depths where we swam would now be shallow pools turned murky with moss that laced the river bottom. It is here where the mudfish and a few silverfish have sought final refuge from Old David’s net. Beyond the river that was now dead, the fields would be golden brown and ready for the scythe, and the banks and the narrow delta that could be planted on would be now laced with eggplant, tomato, and watermelon plots that are also ready for harvesting.

I know where the Totonoguen links up with the Andolan creek and how this new river joins the Agno, which never dries even in the years of drought. I have swum in the Agno itself, brought home from its sandy bottom the pieces of pine washed down from the mountains, and these we have splintered to use as kindling wood.

I left Rosales a long time ago; I was grieving then, but they told me I was lucky because I had no quarrel with anyone, that I had everything to look forward to, and that when it would be time for me to return, things would be so changed I would not recognize anything anymore.

Cousin Marcelo was particularly emphatic on that sad, memorable day; I had been away only a year then, and nothing, nothing had changed, and yet he said, “Did you notice that a change has come upon the town? Look at the faces of people — there’s hope there, in spite of everything. I tell you, you will forget what happened to your father, and more important, you will forget the past. Even now, people have forgotten that a year has passed and people died, not by ones and twos but by the hundreds. Think of it. You will remember only what is important.”

But what is important? I looked around me, at the wide, parched plaza, the shriveled people, the balete tree. All will be the same. I refused to believe that people changed merely because some holocaust had coursed through their lives. They will still know happiness as I had known it, they will still talk of pleasant hours as they have lived them. It is going to be this way with me.

“You will not be coming back until you’ve finished college then?” Cousin Marcelo asked.

He was past thirty, and he wore his hair unduly long at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. “I don’t know,” I told him. “I will return, perhaps, on the Day of the Dead, to visit them. And if I cannot come, you will look after them, won’t you?”

It was not necessary for me to have told him thus; he held my hand and pressed it. “Yes,” he said, trying to smile.

It did not take me long to pack, for I was leaving many things behind. Sepa, our cook, had found some of my old books and had brought them in; I picked out one — the Bible — and tucked it in with my clothes. There was still time to look around, to wander around the town, but there was nothing for me to see, no one to visit. I gazed around my room; the hardwood narra floor shone from constant polishing, sometimes with banana leaves, sometimes with coconut meat after the milk had been squeezed. My mementoes were everywhere — the air rifle Cousin Marcelo bought for me, the stuffed squirrel Tio Benito brought home from America. The photographs on the wall were starting to brown — me in a white sailor suit when I had my First Communion, my Cousin Pedring and Clarissa when they were married. And there was a big one — dusty yellow with years although all the faces were still very clear as if the picture had been taken only yesterday but it was years ago when we were mourning Grandfather’s death. Indeed, here was the entire clan — my relatives, uncles and aunts, the servants, too, and the old, faithful people who had served our household.

I remembered the crowd in the yard, the long table under the balete tree laden with pancit, dinardaraan , and basi for all the servants and tenants who had come to pay their respects to Grandfather’s memory.

In Rosales as in many other Ilokano towns of northern and central Luzon, the ninth day of the burial of the dead is celebrated with dining and drinking, depending on the finances of the bereaved family. We call the feast the pasiam —meaning “for the ninth.” On this day, those who are not directly related to the deceased may stop wearing the black clothes of mourning, but not the direct descendants — the children and grandchildren.

A host of relatives had descended upon us, cousins to the third degree whom I’d never seen before, aunts and uncles from Manila, and grown-up nephews and nieces who called me Tio with all the respect that the name demands although I still wore short pants. They crowded the house and spilled out into the yard, and some of the menfolk and the entourage of servants had to sleep in the storehouse, where the grain and the corn in jute sacks were piled high. During the last nine days that preceded the pasiam , every evening at seven a novena was held in the house. Tomas, the old acolyte, had presided over this, singing in a loud, cracked voice “ Ora pro nobis ” after each of the fifteen mysteries of the rosary. Although the neighbors and the servants prayed with us, we barely filled a corner of the hall. But on the pasiam , it was the parish priest himself, Padre Andong, who led the prayers and Tomas — past sixty and a little hard of hearing — bungled as usual his answers as acolyte. The living room could hardly hold all the members of the clan and the servants, and most of the neighbors had to pray in the adjoining room and in the azotea .