Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

Vic had stopped eating, too, and his dark face was pensive as he listened to what the old man said: We felled the trees, big trees, which men with their arms outstretched couldn’t embrace. The Bagos came with their spears and brought ubi and tugui as big as jars. I had a bow and a spear, too, and we were friends, although I knew that they adorned their dwellings with the skulls of their enemies. We met in the yard and hastened beneath the house where the basi was fermenting and where my richest and biggest tobacco was curing. We opened the jars and we rolled cigars, and our laughter reached out to our neighbors, who came and joined us. Ah, those were happy days, and the Bagos were not strangers as people today are strangers, learned men who came from the north with their books and their machines.

That was fifty years ago, Father, his mother said, putting away the dishes; fifty years — you must understand that!

So it was — fifty years! The old man sighed ruefully. But what happened? They stretched the roads across the fields and dammed the creeks, so that the water could flow only to their farms. They built the railroad, too, right across the dikes we built, and finally they brought their lawyers and these learned men said: This land is ours, and this spot, which is just wide enough for your grave, is yours. And we said nothing and did nothing, because they were learned. Of what use is a bolo before a gun? Like the Bagos, we were raised in God’s futile ways …

His mother stood up and went to the squat earthen stove, held the sooty rim of the pot, and emptied its contents onto the chipped porcelain plate on the table.

Isn’t it so, Nena? the old man asked.

But what if it is so, Father? she asked with a hint of displeasure in her voice. She took the empty plate and placed it in the basin of water beyond the dining table. His grandfather sighed. When his mother returned, her face was troubled.

And now the tractor is here, the old man said; every day we are driven farther from our homes. Can you not see what this means? With the tractor we will not be needed anymore, and where will we go? To the farthest hills like the Bagos? They will follow us there, tear away the wilderness that will hide us. They will strangle us with their roads, and we will go on seeking the forest, because there we might find some peace …

But, Grandfather, Luis said, you did not see how much easier the tractor can rip a mound apart!

The old man turned to Luis. In the yellow glimmer of the kerosene lamp he could not tell if the old man’s eyes were misty or on the verge of tears. The old man turned away and said: Luis, you must speak like this. It is in your blood, and someday, very soon, you will leave this house, because you do not belong here and because it is also in you to be strong.

Outside, the crickets whirred and the blooming dalipawen tree in the yard sent its heavy scent into the house. From the direction of the buri palms a boy herding his work animals hummed an old ballad — Dear, dear raft, come to me, save me before the whirlpool sucks me …

His mother rose from the water platform and said in a voice tinged with sadness: Father, how many times have I told you never to bring the child into this?

The old man did not heed her. Someday, he said, turning to Luis again, you will leave us just the same.

You do not know what you are talking about, his mother said; what do you know about the future? So many things about us are unsure. You never went to school, and that is why they made a fool of you. But my boys, they will get educated and they will know how to avoid the mistakes you made. They will have something even if my hands bleed getting them an education.

His grandfather did not speak. He stood up, holding his knees as if he would totter, then walked out of the kitchen, down the stairs, into the dark yard. The cicadas chirped, and a work animal in a corral down the path called its young. His mother went about her chores; she placed the empty dishes on the earthen basin, then scooped the leftover rice from the big plate and returned it to the pot. She spread the rolled buri mat on the floor and brought down the caseless kapok pillows from a shelf on the wall.

Vic sat by the open window. Where do you think Grandfather went? he asked no one in particular. Luis went down the stairs and scoured the yard and the dark approaches to the house. He returned and asked his mother: What was Grandfather trying to tell me, Mother?

She lay on the mat, her eyes on the ceiling, and spoke softly, as if she were afraid that the night, the house, and all of Sipnget were listening to a dreadful secret she was about to break: The ways of people are strange, but bear this in mind — we have done no one wrong.

Why was Grandfather angry, and where did he go?

His mother dispelled his anxiety: Father has nowhere to go. He will come back when he is no longer angry.

Through the open window the April sky was cloudless and the stars burned bright. His mother drew the blanket over her bare feet. The two boys unrolled their mat close to the stairs, and in a while, wordless, they too lay down. She stirred later at the snorting of pigs in the yard. Vic was snoring, but Luis tossed. In the sallow light of the kerosene lamp that dangled from the roof, he saw his grandfather slowly open the kitchen door. Even after the cock crowed on its perch in the madre de cacao tree beside the house, Luis was still wide awake.

The next afternoon, when he and his brother arrived from a bath in the river, they came upon his mother and Santos, the caretaker, talking in the yard. Her voice was pitched low, and she left the caretaker when she saw the boys. She went up to the house with them, not bothering to ask the caretaker to follow. To Luis she said simply: Now you will see your father.

It was as if he did not hear. He went to the small room, got his books, and leafed through them. She followed him. Well, don’t you want to see your father? He gazed out of the small window and saw his grandfather seated with the menfolk, talking at Tio Joven’s store.

Don’t you want to go? Like your grandfather said, this has to come sometime. The decision is yours. You are old enough now to have a mind of your own.

She would get angry again, so without a word Luis put on his battered rubber shoes and his only shirt, which was stiff with starch. When he was ready she bade him stand before her. This is how it has to be, she said quickly. He knew that she was angry, not with him but with the man in the big brick house, he whose name she always told him to spit at whenever it was mentioned, the man he was going to see, the man whose blood, she said, was in his own veins.

It was late when Luis returned to Sipnget. A rooster crowed, the stars were out like jewels in the deep bowl of the sky, the air was sultry and dust was thick on the deserted lane. Were there people peeping through the close windows into the dark maw of night?

It hardly mattered then whether he went back to Sipnget or not. Now he knew what was within the red house, the brightness and the spaciousness, the piano, the table laden with apples and oranges shining with the luster of soft gold. Vic and he tasted apples and oranges only once a year, at Christmas. His mother would unwrap the frayed kerchief she always had tied to her skirt strings, and after she had counted carefully she would hand him and Vic a few coins and say: This is Christmas. And they would buy apples as gifts in exchange for apples they would get during the Christmas party in school.

The lamp in the house still shone, so they would be awake, waiting for him. He went up the stairs slowly and heard the steady whirr of the sewing machine. When he reached the door the whirring stopped. His mother called out to him: Draw the ladder up and don’t forget to bolt the door. He did what she told him. It was as if she were afraid a giant hand might slip past the door to snuff out their lives, but there was no such hand and they never had visitors except the women who came to have their clothes mended — and the man from the big red house with whom she argued in the yard.