Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“But you need it, and I’m giving it to you,” I said firmly. The burning in my face had subsided. “Is there anything wrong with giving one a gift?”

And that was when she said, “There are things you just can’t give like what you are doing now …”

I think it all started that evening when we were in the third year and Teresita recited a poem. It was during the graduation exercises, and she was the only junior in the program. I cannot remember distinctly what the piece was about, except that she spoke of faith and love, and how suffering and loss could be borne with fortitude, and as she did, a clamminess gripped me, smothered me with a feeling I’d never felt before. I recall her resonant voice cleaving the hushed evening, and I was silently one with her.

I did not go home immediately after the program, for a dance in honor of the graduates followed. Miss Santillan, who was in charge of the refreshments, had asked me to help Teresita in serving them. I sat on one of the school benches after I got tired, watching the dancers file in and out, giggling. When most of them had eaten, Teresita asked Miss Santillan for permission to leave.

“My father, ma’am,” she said. “He doesn’t want me to stay out very late, because of my cough. Besides, I have work to do early tomorrow.”

“Going home alone?” Miss Santillan asked.

“I’m not afraid,” she said resolutely.

I stood up, strode past the table laden with an assortment of trays and glasses. Beyond the window, a moon dangled over the sprawling school buildings like a huge sieve, and the world was pulsating and young.

“I’ll walk with you,” I said.

She protested at first, but Miss Santillan said it would be best if I went along. After Miss Santillan had wrapped up some cakes for her, we went down the stone steps. The evening was clean and cool like a newly washed sheet, and it engulfed us with an intimacy that seemed unreal and elusive. We did not speak for some time.

“I live very far,” she reminded me, drawing a shabby shawl over her thin shoulders.

“I know,” I told her. “I’ve been there.”

“You’ll be very tired.”

“I’ve walked longer distances. I can take Carmay in a run,” I said, trying to impress her.

“I’m sure of that,” she said. “You are strong. Once I was washing in the river, and you were swimming with Angel, and you outraced him.”

“I did not see you,” I said.

“Of course,” she said, “you never notice the children of your tenants, except those who serve in your house.”

I was so upset that I could not speak at once. “That is not true,” I objected. “I go to Carmay often.”

She must have realized that she had hurt me, for when she spoke again she sounded genuinely sorry. “That was not what I meant, and I didn’t say that to spite you.”

Again, silence.

The moon drifted out of the clouds in a sudden smudge of silver, lighting up the dusty road. It glimmered on the parched fields and on the giant buri palms that stood like hooded sentinels. Most of the houses we passed had long extinguished their kerosene lamps. Once in a while a dog stirred in its bed of dust and growled at us.

“You won’t be afraid going home alone?” she asked after a while.

“There is a giant capre in the balete tree that comes out when the moon is full,” I said. “I’d like to see it. I’ve never seen a ghost.”

“When I die,” she laughed, “I’ll appear before you.”

“You’ll be a good ghost, and I won’t be afraid,” I said.

We walked on. We talked about ourselves, the friends that we ought to have had but did not. We reached the edge of the village where the row of homes receded and finally her house, near the river that murmured as it cut a course through reeds and shallows.

When we went up to the house, her father was already asleep. In fact he was snoring heavily. At the door she bade me good night and thanked me. Then, slowly, she closed the door behind her.

So the eventful year passed, and the rains came on time. The fields became green, and the banabas in the streets blossomed. The land became soggy, and the winds lashed at Rosales severely, bowling over a score of flimsy huts that stood on bamboo stilts. Our house did not tremble in the mightiest typhoon. With us, nothing changed. The harvest with its usual bustle passed, the tenants — among them Teresita’s father — filled our spacious bodega with their crops. The drab, dry season with its choking dust settled oppressively, and then it was March — time for Teresita and me to graduate.

Throughout the hot afternoon, we rehearsed our parts for the graduation program. We would march to the platform to receive our high school diplomas, then return solemnly to our seats. When the sham was over, Teresita and I rested on the crude benches lined before the stage.

She said softly, “I will not attend the graduation exercises. I can feign illness. I can say I had a fever or my cough got worse, which is the truth, anyway.”

“Why?”

“No one would miss me in the march if I don’t come.”

“You are foolish,” I said.

“I can’t have my picture, too, I’m sure.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t come. I just can’t,” she repeated with finality.

She did not have to say anything more. I understood, and that afternoon I asked for money from Father to buy a graduation dress for Teresita.

And that same week Father ordered Teresita’s father, who farmed a lot in the delta in Carmay, to vacate the place, as Father had sold it. Teresita’s father had to settle in the hills of Balungao, where there were small vacant parcels, arable patches on the otherwise rocky mountainside. There he might literally scratch the earth to eke out a living.

April, and a hot glaring sun filtered through the dusty glass shutters and formed dazzling puddles on the floor. The dogs that lolled in the shade of the balete tree stuck out their tongues and panted. The smudges of grass in the plaza were a stubbly brown. The sky was cloudless and azure. Sepa told me to see Father, who had something important to tell me.

He was in the azotea reading the papers and fanning himself vigorously. The question he asked stunned me. “When do you want to leave for the city?”

For some time I could not say a word. The school vacation had just started, and the school opening was still two months away. “It’s only April, Father,” I finally said.

“I know,” he said. “But I want you to get well acquainted with your cousins there.”

Heat waves rose, shimmering in the street, swallowed up by the dust that fluffed high when a jeepney passed. Father’s voice: “You will grow older.” He hammered this notion into me. “You will grow older and realize how important — this thing that I’m doing. You will leave many faces here. You will outgrow boyish whims. In the city you’ll meet new friends.”

I did not speak.

“The time will come when you will return to me — a man.”

“Yes, Father,” I said as he, having spoken, went on with his reading.

The dark came quickly. The sun sank behind the coconut groves of Tomana and disappeared below the jagged horizon. Before darkness fell, I left the house and journeyed to where the houses were decrepit, where children were clad most of the time in unkempt rags and, when a stranger would stumble into their midst, they would gape at him with awe. Beyond the cluster of homes came the barking of dogs stirring in the dust.

I went up the ladder that squeaked, and when Teresita’s father recognized me in the light of the flickering kerosene lamp hanging from a rafter, a shadow of a scowl crept into his leathery face. Even when I said, “Good evening,” his sullen countenance remained. He returned my greeting coldly, then went down and left us alone.