Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

Being a true Democrata, Tio Doro would not support President Manuel Quezon, but when Quezon made his now oft-quoted “Better a government run like hell by the Filipinos than a government run like heaven by the Americans,” Tio Doro tersely commented: “Tama!”

After high school, Cousin Emma continued her piano studies at the state university conservatory. Tio Doro might have at times been smothered with loneliness in his big house, and the wheelchair to which he was tied might have depressed him no end. Emma was not around to play his nostalgic kundimans , the nonpopularity of which he lamented. “These songs,” he said, “express the soul of our people.”

I seldom went to see him, but on those occasions that I did, he spoke to me of the conflict between Japan and China as if I were now grown-up. But clearly the flare-ups loomed nearer, darker. Mussolini had attached Ethiopia to his empire. In Spain the civil war raged. Then Germany invaded the Balkans. Developments came quickly: Japan joined the Axis, and he predicted that, with Japan now on one side and America on the other, Filipinos would soon be involved more precariously than ever in the whirlpool of the White Man’s destiny.

Hitler must have slightly piqued Tio Doro’s interest, for he bought a copy of Mein Kampf . He never trusted foreigners, and now he justified the racism of the totalitarians as long as national progress was their goal. When the Atlantic Charter was promulgated, Tio Doro was inclined to be sarcastic about it. It is a very interesting scrap of paper, he averred, but the Americans and the British have common imperialistic designs, as history had proved in Cuba and India. Do you think they will come to the succor of the colonials without considering their private interests first?

War engulfed the Philippines shortly afterward. The Japanese landed on the beaches of my province, and Tio Doro’s town, like ours, was one of the first to be occupied. Father saw no reason for us to leave the province. We were not molested, and we had enough to eat. But the transportation was slow and difficult, and I rarely visited Tio Doro and Emma, although Father did see him frequently.

Cousin Emma wrote to me occasionally. In her letters she could not say much because the mails were censored. For Tio Doro, however, his writing days were over; the dread paralysis had crept to his hands.

Then Emma’s letters ceased. The country was liberated, and we weathered a few scary nights. When the fighting was over, Emma wrote in one long letter everything of importance that had happened. She told of how her father had been humiliated by the Japanese. His frailty had proved to be no shield. He had been asked to serve as town mayor, a figurehead, but he had flatly refused. Yet, before the war, he had appreciated the Japanese love of country and emperor that amounted to fanaticism, and he believed in the validity of the Japanese catchword: Asia for the Asiatics, the Philippines for the Filipinos. Then, inconsistently, he secretly gave most of his harvest to the guerrillas rather than sell it to the Japanese rice agency, the BIBA. Cousin Emma recounted some gory episodes, among which was how the only son of Mon Luk in their town was executed for underground activities, and how the rice mill of the Chinese had been razed to the ground, transforming the Chinese merchant into a pauper. To all these incidents Tio Doro had been an eyewitness. At one time he was a prisoner, too.

But for all that happened, Tio Doro’s absorption in politics had not waned. Although the war had added to his worries, he still managed to dabble in politics. His health was deteriorating, and his resistance was petering away. He was sick most of the time from complications of his paralysis so that the doctor’s visits became more frequent. He was never really physically strong; even when his legs had not yet succumbed, his frame was meager and he was susceptible to colds, so that when he made his nighttime speeches he was always wrapped up. Emma asked if I would like to see the old invalid before he passed away.

I arrived on an Army truck transformed into a bus. The Balungao municipal building was a gaunt remnant of a once imposing edifice, and beyond it, Tio Doro’s blue house still stood above the rubble of the other residences, which had not been as fortunate. At my right loomed the chimney of Mon Luk’s rice mill, a monolith pointing to a sodden sky as a reminder of a once-flourishing business, over which Tio Doro would have pleasantly chuckled years ago if by some occult and terrible power it suddenly collapsed.

I passed through the stirring May streets, felt the cool whiff of the rainy season through the thick afternoon heat, recalled how every house once stood, how edges of gumamela had not yet sprung up in the yard of the demolished schoolhouse, which was now alive with American GI’s. The acacia trees that lined the main road were bigger — they had been but puny saplings once. The asphalted road, which they lined, was rutted and scarred by the tracks of tanks and bulldozers. A couple of makeshift bars were filled with soldiers in olive uniforms, laughing boisterously and singing “You’ll Never Know.”

As I neared the blue house — its paint peeling off, its fence shabby and crooked — jazz welled up from within. I pushed the heavy iron gate that squeaked open with a metallic tinkle from the bronze bell above it. Up the graveled path I hurried, and from the direction of the back-door stairs, Cousin Emma came beaming.

I hurried up the polished stairs, on each side of which stood little statues of discus throwers. Cousin Emma took me to the spacious drawing room and told me that the old man’s days were numbered.

We went to the room where Tio Doro was confined. He was propped up in a wheelchair near the wide-open window. The afternoon sun streamed in. His cheeks were sallow, the crop of distinguished white hair sparse. He was apparently resigned, as would be the earth to the whims of the elements. But now in the room were two middle-aged American officers and Tio Doro’s former archenemy, Mon Luk, who, I later learned, had just borrowed a little capital from him to start business anew.

I held his soft, nerveless hand and kissed it, and almost forgot to answer when he inquired how Father was.

At that time when no explanations were possible, I was hurtling back to those blurred yesteryears, to that conspicuous Rizal Day program long ago, when as the main speaker he discoursed despicably on all foreigners, when on his election platform he damned all Chinese. And now, in the privacy of his home — in his own room — were these strangers laughing with him as if they were his long-lost brothers.

What happened to Tio Doro was one of those profound transformations that the Occupation wrought. Rosales itself underwent irreparable changes — the great fire that burned down the business area and Father’s commercial buildings, the guerrilla war that brought death to more Filipinos, I think, than to Japanese. For me, neither death nor suffering was trivialized. I had seen both and was touched, but not by lesser forms of travail. Father had seen to it that his family and those under his wing were well provided for. He had also played superb politician by keeping away from entanglements either with the guerrillas or with the Japanese puppets. As I heard him say all too often, “The bamboo survives by bending to the storm.”

As for the balete tree, it weathered the war handsomely. The belief of the people in its sacredness, in its being the embodiment of spirits that watched over us, was even reinforced. At one time, the Japanese needed some poles or timber for additional construction in the schoolhouse they had taken over, and they ordered some civilian laborers to cut down a few branches. The laborers — as was to be expected — ran away for fear that they would displease the spirits. Faced with having to do the job themselves, a couple of bald-shaved Japanese proceeded to the tree with their handsaws. No one really saw what happened, but the two soldiers were killed by a grenade that exploded while they were up in the tree. How the grenade got there is one of those riddles that will never be unraveled. Then, when the Americans came, they pitched their tents in the plaza and had a bulldozer level or cover up the bomb shelters with which the Japanese had pocked the plaza. The bulldozer had grazed the balete trunk — much to the shock of the people who were watching the machine work, for they had warned the American sergeant driving it not to go near the tree. He had, perhaps, never heeded the warning. As he turned around, an explosion rent the air, and after the smoke had cleared, the bulldozer was in shambles and the American was seriously injured. He had hit a land mine that had lain there all the time, undisturbed, planted by whom, nobody knew. The American detachment in Rosales left soon after the accident, and the bulldozer lay by the tree in a crumpled heap. It was there for some time, rusting in a pile of scrap, till someone dismantled it, testimony again to the sorcery of the balete tree.