Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

For an instant, I wanted to call out to him and tell him of the kite that was now drifting down the river, but it became apparent that he was in a hurry. What Sepa had said rankled in my mind, and I hurried down the ash mound and trailed him.

Father walked quickly, as if he was afraid someone was following him. As he neared the nipa house, a woman I had never seen before came out. She hurried past the bamboo gate to the path, and as Father drew near, her arm went around his waist, and arm in arm they went up to the house.

I crouched behind a sapling, numb in spirit, and forgot all about the kite. I remembered Mother’s whitewashed grave and Father’s angry voice when he saw me wearing her dress. When I finally went home, the sun had sunk and Rosales was empty and dark.

All through the night, I could not sleep. When Father arrived at dawn amidst the howling of the dogs, for the first time I loathed him.

He appeared at the breakfast table in excellent spirits, his face radiating happiness. He must have noticed my glumness, for he asked me what the matter was. I shook my head and did not answer.

The whole day I stayed in the bodega with my air gun idle in my hands. Many rats were out in the open, scampering in the eaves and on the sacks of grain, clear targets all, but somehow they no longer interested me.

And at the supper table after all had left, Sepa came and tried to humor me.

Unable to contain myself anymore, I went to Father, who was smoking in the azotea .

“I was near the rice mill yesterday afternoon,” I said, hedging close to him. The rocking of his chair stopped; he knocked his pipe on the sill and turned to me.

“What were you doing there?”

“I was flying a kite,” I said, looking down at my rubber shoes, unable to meet his gaze. “Its string snapped and I chased it. I went near the new house by the river.”

I looked quickly at him and saw in the cool light of the Aladdin lamp his tired, aging face.

“What else did you do?” he asked, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

“Nothing,” I said. “I saw you.”

He looked away and said quietly, “I don’t have to explain anything.” And with a wave of his hand, he ordered me away.

I waited until I was sure the house was quiet, then I stole into the kitchen and with the meat cleaver, I busted my bamboo bank and filled my pockets with the silver coins. The back door was open, and without a sound I stepped out into the moonlight.

Sepa was at the gate. She sat beneath the pergola, smoking a hand-rolled cigar whose light burned clear like sapphire in the soft dark.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Do not interfere,” I said. “You are a cook and nothing else.”

She held my arm, but I brushed her away. Undaunted, she stood up and followed me to the street. In the moonlight, she peered at me. “Young one,” she said, “it’s a nice night for taking a walk, isn’t it?”

I did not speak.

She said lightly, “It’s a lot better sleeping out in the open than in a room stuffy with curtains and mosquito nets.” Her hand alighted on my shoulder. “But then sometimes it rains, and then there’s the heat of the highway, and the awful dust that spreads and itches and soon pocks your body with sores.”

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“I should, but listen. It is a man who understands, who knows that life isn’t always cozy,” she said with a wisp of sadness in her voice. “We would like to see things as we want them to be. Unfortunately, that can’t always be.”

We reached the town plaza, which was now deserted of promenaders and the children skating in the kiosk. The plaza was lined with rows of banaba trees glistening in the moonlight.

“Take these trees,” she said, “how wonderful it would be if all through the year they were blooming. But the seasons change just like people. There is nothing really that lasts. Even the mountains don’t stand forever. But people, I am sure, can be steadfast if they have faith.”

Her hand on my shoulder was light, and as I walked slowly she kept pace with me. With her wooden shoe, she kicked at a tin can and sent it clattering down the asphalt.

“Who is she, Sepa?” I asked after a while.

“Who?”

“You know whom I mean.”

“She is good-looking. She came from a village in the next town … was a barrio fiesta queen.”

“Did Father build the new house for her?”

“That’s all I know,” she said. After a while, from out of the quiet, she spoke again: “You know how it is with the hilot —the midwives who deliver babies. I’m one, too. Remember? Sometimes they have to use force to hasten birth and lessen the mother’s suffering. It’s always better for the mother and the baby, but it doesn’t always look good with the hilot . She is misunderstood.”

“I understand you perfectly,” I said flatly.

Sepa sighed: “I still believe your mother was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and more than that I believe, too, that she bequeathed much of her graciousness to her only child. And your father — he is a wonderful man.”

Then it was November again, and the rains no longer came in gusts; the sun shone and the grain ripened, and all over the land the rich smell of harvest hung heavy and sweet. There would be smoke in the early evenings and the delicious odor of roasting, half-ripe, gelatinous rice, and there would be pots of bubbling sweets — camotes, bananas, langka. The mornings would be washed with dew, and I would lie longer in bed till the sun roasted my brain.

It was on one such morning that I was roused from sleep. Father had swept into my room, his leather boots creaking; he tapped the iron bedpost with the steel butt of his riding stick, and in the bronze glimmer of day, he stood before me, big and impressive. “A hunter must rise ahead of the sun,” he said.

I stirred, but when Father had gone I slowly sank back into this bog of blissful sleep. It was brief, though, for the dogs started howling in the grounds, and Old David was shouting at the boys not to tarry with the saddles. Above the clangor of everything, I could distinguish the neighing of the black pony that Father had given me. The world was alive; we were going to hunt together for the first time, for I was already old enough to handle a gun. It was a time I had waited for, and looking back, all through those trying times, Father really needed not just the woman I had yet to meet but a diversion from the cares that had begun to nag and depress him.

At this time of the year, Old David said, the delta was dry again; the waters had receded from their pockets, and in the mornings shrouded with mist the quail would gather at the water holes. It was time for Father to mount his chestnut horse, gallop past the iron gate through the still-sleeping town. On mornings like this when I was not yet allowed to go with him, I would rise early, too, and wrapped in bedsheets, I would linger at the balcony and watch Old David help him mount. The face of the old man would always turn up to me in a smile as he and Father passed below. I loved his work, his closeness to the horses to whom he often spoke, and I often idled in the stables, all around me the pungent smell of urine and sawdust, while he tinkered with the leather. And in the stable, he dismantled father’s escopetas —the twelve-gauge double-barreled shotguns — and cleaned them till their bores shone and their hand-carved stocks glistened. With his permission and watchful eye, I had touched them, listening to the double click of the trigger. By the time I was ten, I could handle the guns, though I could barely lift them, and I had learned not just how to shoot but how to treat them with respect and caution.