Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“I’m leaving,” I began. Teresita was washing the dishes and now she wiped the soap suds from her hands. “I’ll go to the city tomorrow to study. Father is sending me there.”

She said nothing — she just looked at me. She turned and walked to the window that opened to the banks of the river and the fields.

“We’ll soon leave, too,” she murmured, her hands on the windowsill. “Your father sold this place, you know,” she said without emotion.

“I’m very sad.”

“There is nothing to be sad about.”

“Yes, there is,” I said. “Many things.”

She remained by the window. Outside, the night was alive with crickets.

“Won’t you go to school anymore?” I asked after a while. She did not reply, and I did not prod her for an answer.

“What course are you going to take?” she asked.

“I’m not very sure,” I said. “Maybe I’ll follow your advice.”

“Please do,” she said. “Please be a doctor.” With conviction, “You can do so much if you are one.”

I did not know what else to say.

“Don’t write to me when you are there,” she said.

“But I will.”

“Nothing will happen,” she insisted. “Besides, it will not be necessary. Thank you very much for coming to see me.”

“I have to,” I said.

She followed me to the door. The bamboo floor creaked under me. She called my name as I stepped down the first rung, and I turned momentarily to catch one last glimpse of her young, fragile face, and on it a smile, half-born, half-free.

“Please don’t write,” she reiterated, raising her hand. “It’s useless, you know.”

“But I will,” I said, and in my heart I cried, “I will, I will!”

“I’d be happier, and so would Father, if you didn’t,” she said. “And besides, I wouldn’t be able to answer your letters. Stamps cost—”

“I’ll send you some,” I said.

The smile fled from her face. “You cannot buy everything,” she said.

I headed for the gate. The children who played nearby stopped and looked at us. And in the other houses, though it was very dark, I knew the farmers and their wives watched me leave, knowing how it was going to be with us, how I would leave Teresita and thus make Father happy, how I would forget everything — the orchids I gave her that now adorned her window and that, I am sure, would someday wither, the books I lent her, which she rapaciously read, the eager laughter that welled from the depths of her. I would forget, too, how we hummed to the music of the town’s brass band and walked one sultry night from the high school to Carmay.

The night was vast and the stars were hidden by clouds. In the blackness I could not see banabas along the path, but I could imagine the purple of their blooms.

On the morning that I left, Sepa came and thrust into my hand pieces of pan de sal with coconut syrup. The syrup had oozed, and the paper bag with which she had wrapped the bread was soiled.

“For the trip,” she said, attempting a smile.

I went down to the yard, where one of the boys had the jeep waiting. The air was heady, compounded with the clean tang of morning. The sun was mild, and one could drink it and never feel that the body was full. It touched the fading grass and gave it a tinge of jade. It glinted, too, in the leaves of the coconut palms and transformed them into a thousand blades gleaming and unsheathed. It was a beautiful day, but not for me.

Father was at the gate. When I kissed his hand, he held my chin up and said: “You’ll be all right in the city. But that’s not important. It’s the learning that counts, and the growing up.”

He dug out his gold watch from his waist pocket. “You have plenty of time,” he said. “Now listen. You are young and you don’t know many things, but do remember this: you are alone on this earth. Alone. You must act for yourself and no other. Kindness is not appreciated anymore, nor friendship. Think of yourself before you think of others. It’s a cruel world, and you have to be hard and cruel, too. They will strangle you if you don’t strangle them first. Trust no one but your judgment — and even then don’t trust too much.”

He laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled wanly. “Son,” he whispered. He had not spoken the word in a long, long time. “Be good.”

I wanted to fling my arms around his neck, tell him that I loved him, but my throat was dry. I only said, “I’ll remember, Father.”

I boarded the jeep, and we drove out into the street. I did not look back.

It was early evening when I reached Tutuban Station. The jostling crowd in the giant, gloomy building baffled me, but I had no difficulty because Cousin Andring was on the platform to greet me. When we emerged into the lobby, Old David came forward from the nameless phalanx of people. He had aged so much. I did not want him to carry my suitcase, but his grip was strong and determined.

We hurried to Cousin Andring’s jeep, which was parked outside the station, then we drove off to the suburbs. The long trip did not tire me, but in the jeep, watching the brilliant neon lights and the depressing huddle of tall buildings, I felt lost and tired.

My first days in the city were restless and uneventful. In the mornings, I’d wander around the shops or see a movie. I’d return to their house in Santa Mesa shortly before lunchtime. Tia Antonia seldom talked with me, and Old David did not have the time, either, for he was always busy in the garage or in the garden. I imagine that he purposely avoided me and busied himself whenever I went near.

Tia Antonia’s children — since most of them were already grown-up — were correct but not friendly, and, if they talked with me at all, they asked the most asinine questions.

I was very glad when, one morning, Cousin Pedring telephoned and said he would come in the afternoon to pick me up, so that I could stay in his house in Cubao until classes started. It had been ages since I saw him last, when he and Clarissa got married, and I was very glad he had not forgotten.

He had changed a lot. His girth was wider and so was his forehead.Clarissa, too, looked different from the young girl I used to know. Her cheeks were plump, and she moved about with a matriarchal dignity rather than the gay sprightliness that was her. She had three children now, the youngest a darling girl about two years old. Clarissa hummed incessantly as she prepared the supper table.

In the early evening Cousin Pedring and I got to talking about the old times, and we would have talked far into the night if he did not have a poker session with friends. He kissed Clarissa at the door, as if he were going on a long journey.

I was alone with her, and as she served me a second helping of ice cream we talked about Rosales and how it was. “That was the most beautiful wedding I have ever seen,” I said, recalling theirs.

“In a short time yours, too, will come,” she said. “And then you’ll be raising your own family. But you men never know the trouble women go through.”

I remembered the secret I had kept and decided that now was the time to get it off my chest.

“It was good you came to Rosales that vacation,” I said. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come.”

“What do you think would have happened?” Her eyes lighted up.

I remember the letters postmarked Cebu, which I showed Father first, then burned. “Well,” I said, “you might have ended up marrying that fellow from Cebu and not Pedring.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked, the laughter drained from her.

“After all, he wrote to you so many times when you were in Rosales. He was very insistent, you know.”

“He did write to me?” She was incredulous.