Francisco Jose: Don Vicente: Two Novels

We walked down a gravel path bordered with rosal, bloomless now till next June, when it would sprout white, scented flowers, to the small chapel at the center of the cemetery. It was already quite late in the afternoon, and the sun was soft on the skin. The vestiges of work were everywhere — the freshly cut grass and the splashes of whitewash on the picket fences and on the figures of plump baby angels that adorned the tombs.

Father held my hand and guided me through the narrow passageways between the tombs. We reached a lot fenced off from the rest by a low iron grill, and in its center was a narrow slab of black marble, bordered with freshly trimmed San Francisco. Father let go of my hand. He removed the palm wrap of the bouquet and placed it at the foot of the slab, then, as if his legs were suddenly knocked away from under him, he fell on his knees on the grass and I, too, compelled by some magic force, knelt beside him. When he spoke, his voice was hollow and sounded far away. “Nena, I’ve brought your son to you now that he is old enough …”

I glanced at Father in the thickening dusk; his hair was tousled by the wind, his white unbuttoned coat flapped about him, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

It was the first time I saw him cry, and I realized how much he must have loved — and still loved — her who was no more.

Ours was an old house with a steep, galvanized-iron roof grown rusty red over the years. It had unpainted wooden siding and sash windows with balustrades that could be flung open to let the breeze in when the days were hot. The ground floor was red tile, and its walls were red brick, scarred in places but whitewashed. The flooring was solid mahogany — long planks two inches thick and a foot wide — laid side by side without a single nail piercing them. When the servants scrubbed the floor, the fine grain of the wood shone.

The furniture was just as old; though some pieces were lost during the Japanese occupation, most of the bigger ones were still with us: the mirrored lockers, the steel pedestals, the marble-topped tables.

A few paintings hung in the living room — just pretty pictures done by my Cousin Marcelo. One that should not have been there was the picture of Don Vicente. The modern frame, a media cuerpo , shows Don Vicente, massive and impregnable, wearing a Panama hat, his corpulent chest almost breaking out from his tight-fitting, collarless suit. The picture hung on the wall by the big clock as a symbol, I think, of the vast authority the rich man wielded over us, particularly Father.

I could not understand then why Father worked for Don Vicente. We had enough to get by, and Father had his own lands to look after. Maybe, as Cousin Marcelo said, he did not have enough courage to leave Don Vicente, or maybe Father knew that if he ceased being close to the Great Man, there would be a hundred fawning and greedy men who would be only too glad to take on his job. This could be the reason, but I don’t think it was; Father took the job because Don Vicente trusted him and, more than that, it gave Father a sense of power such as he would never have known if he tended no more than the land and properties under his name. Once I heard him say to a tenant, “Don’t you know that I can drive you all away from your homes today, right now, if I wanted to? Where will you live? Don Vicente’s word is law, and I am that law!”

But knowing Father, his bluster seldom meant anything, for he was, I always like to believe, just and fair.

The living room, through a door at the right, led to the dining room and the kitchen, which were in a separate structure roofed with clay tile upon which weeds sprouted. At the left of the kitchen, which was Sepa’s domain, was a stone azotea that stretched to the wing of the house including the living room. On warm evenings, when the moon bloomed over the town, it was Father’s haunt and mine.

The wide yard — all the way up to the storehouse roofed and walled with galvanized-iron sheets, too — was not grassy like the plaza. The earth was bare and packed tight and clean with carabao dung but for the green patch of garden planted with roses, azucenas, and other flowering plants. Guava trees — their slender branches seldom laden with fruit — stood in the yard, and to their trunks the carabaos of the tenants were often tethered when they came during the harvest season with their bull carts. A woodshed and a stable stood near the storehouse. In all three buildings, big rodents lived, burrowing under the piles of chopped acacia boughs or in the sacks of grain.

One of the pleasant pastimes I used to enjoy as a child was to discover the alien things in the crannies of our home. I used to climb to the attic, endure the sun as it lashed on the iron roof. There, among the dust of years, I poked at old boxes that stored strange shapes and wanton objects. The place I enjoyed best, however, was Father’s room. It adjoined mine, but I seldom had freedom in it except when he was in the field during the planting and harvesting seasons looking after the hacendero ’s tenants under his care as encargado and also after our own. Then I would sneak into the room, open his drawers and trunks. There was one beside his dresser that fascinated me most, because it was made of handsome and polished Chinese rosewood embedded with ivory carved into birds and bamboo. It was always locked, and though I had seen him open the other trunks, I never saw him touch this one. I heard him riding down from the stable to the street one Sunday morning, and after he had galloped toward the creek, I was in his room before the rosewood trunk. I lifted the lid, and this time, to my surprise, it was open. The biting scent of naphthalene balls assailed my nostrils. There before me, filled to the brim, were women’s things. I knew at once I had opened my mother’s wardrobe.

I picked up a garment and held it in the light — a bright silk shawl embroidered with red roses and edged with lace. I placed it back, then lifted a thick wad of clothes, and underneath, close to the bottom of the trunk, was a small wooden box with two small ivory angels on its lacquered cover. I opened it and found a heap of letters and dried petals of what looked like a big red rose. The box smelled of perfume, and in a moment the heavy and wonderful scent pervaded the room. It was then that Martina, one of the new maids, drifted by the open door and for a moment stood there, watching me. I opened one of the letters. It was in fine, feminine script, and addressed to Father. I could not read all of it; at the end, “Always — Nena.” I felt as if I was trespassing into a secret realm, where I belonged but was not, at the moment, allowed in. Trembling, I put the letters back and gently placed the box under the pile of clothes.

Her pert brown face screwed up, Martina asked, “What is that?” She did not dare venture into Father’s room.

“Letters,” I said. “My mother’s letters to my father.”

“Those are her clothes?”

I nodded.

“They look beautiful,” she said, still standing at the door. “Why don’t you try one?”

“I am a man,” I said, frowning at her.

“Go on,” she said. “I just want to see how women’s clothes looked years ago. I won’t tell anyone.”

In another moment, I was flailing my arms and thrashing as I put on a blue silk dress.

It did not fit, of course; it hung loose, well below my feet, and seeing me attired thus, Martina let go a delighted squeal. I laughed with her and was, in fact, enjoying myself so much I did not realize that Father had returned, was at the door in his riding breeches, the whip in his hand. Martina must have seen him approach, for she had disappeared.

Although his countenance was severe, Father did not whip me; in fact, there was more sadness in his eyes than anger. “Never again,” he said softly but sternly. “Never again shall I see you open this trunk.”