Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

The small sala was littered with pieces of cloth, as usual, and in the center was the old sewing machine with his mother hunched before it. She would be there until it was almost dawn, sewing until she could hardly see.

Her face was expectant when she turned to him: Did you kiss his hand?

I did, Mother.

She seemed relieved. I thought you’d forget, she said; you always forget what I teach you.

The machine whirred again. He took off his shoes and squirmed out of his shirt carefully, so that the slight tear on its back, which had been mended, would not run. Vic was still awake and was looking at him from across the room.

In the big red house, what where they saying now? You will not regret it — that was what Santos, the caretaker, told his father. With his hand upon Luis’s shoulder Santos had added: And there is a good head on these shoulders.

The great man — his father — looked at Luis, then the porcine head nodded and smiled — he whose name he must spit at every time it was uttered, he whom his mother had cursed. But Luis could not look at him, nor could he spit at him, so he stared at the polished floor and at his dusty rubber shoes. He could not look at his father, who was all smiles and solicitation.

Yet he went to him, and as his mother had said he should, he held the white hirsute hand and kissed it, knowing as he did that someday, if he grew old and fat and powerful, perhaps he would look just like this man. He would have been glad if he had known this man when he needed him most; he would have been proud to kiss his big fat hand and would have wanted to live in his big red house — but why had his father waited? Why did he not come when he was in the cradle or when he was six or eight and was teased in school — or when they had nothing to eat but rice gruel and leaves of camote and marunggay? There would not have been those bitter moments when his mother would not talk with him, moments when he knew he was not like Victor, nights when she would toss and weep. There would not have been the anguished look on her face when he asked her for the first time: Mother, what has my father done and where is he? My father is not Vic’s father — I know that now …

He was eight years old then, mud was thick on his feet, his hair unruly, but his skin was fair — fairer than anyone’s in the village, although he swam in the river, too, and climbed the camachile trees and like everyone else was exposed to the rage of the sun.

You bear an honorable name! his mother shrieked. She dropped her sewing and towered before him. Her hand fell across his face, its sting sharp on his lips. He stared at her in utter surprise, feeling the pain spread across his face, but he did not cry. He did not move, and he could feel something warm trickling down his mouth, and when she saw this she ran to the kitchen and with a damp towel wiped the blood off his lips. It was not she who had done him wrong: it was his father, and though he could not understand why she had slapped him, he was not angry with her, though always, the memory of her hand across his face and the taste of his own blood would be imperishable in his mind.

December — she had many clothes to sew, but they were neither for Victor nor for him. January — and the harvest would be in, but they would have none of it. Cold mornings — and she would rise before the sun and in the white mists hovering over Sipnget would go to town to get more sewing to be done and through the night, the whirr of the infernal machine in his ears. In March, Luis finished grade school, while Vic, who was younger, had one more year to go. Then April — and the man from the big red house came and said, your father who is visiting from Manila wants to see you. He would have been glad, but he was thirteen and it was enough that there was this frail, sun-browned woman who had slapped him, this old man who loved to talk of days gone by, and his brother — much, much darker than he, who looked up to him, as if he were the only holder of knowledge and virtue.

What did your father say? his mother asked suddenly. She had stopped pedaling and the machine was quiet.

He asked me if I wanted to live with him, Luis said.

She dropped the colored piece of cloth she was holding and folded her hands at the wooden edge of the machine. What did you tell him?

I said I would ask you first, Mother.

She picked up the piece of cloth and started working on it again. You must go with him, she said; you are going to live with him from now on.

Luis held his breath, not wanting to believe, not wanting to listen to what she had said. You don’t mean that, Mother! he cried.

Her voice was firm but disconsolate: You — you have to go to high school and then to college, so that you will not be in want, and someday, when you are older, I hope that you will be kind — much kinder than he — and not wreck the life of one hapless woman.

Mother!

Yes, she said, be kind.

He could not contain his grief anymore. You never wanted me, because I am not like Vic!

She dropped the piece of cloth she was working on and pointed a thimbled finger at him. Do you want to rot here? she asked softly. No, my Luis, you must go, not only because it is your fate but because I want you to. Vic does not have a similar choice, so he will stay.

Luis walked to the open window. In the near distance, the light in Tio Joven’s store still burned, and among the men talking was the hunched, unmistakable form of his grandfather. Yes, Luis was different. His classmates called Vic and him “coffee and milk,” and although the jesting did hurt at first, he learned to bear it. After all, his mother loved them both in a way that blunted all barbs. He had put the jumbled pieces together and understood — it was he, not Vic, who had sprung from muddied springs.

His earliest memories were confused and inchoate; he did know, however, that before he was born, his mother had married a man from their own village and from this union Vic was born. But that faceless “father” had died before he could remember, and Vic and Luis grew up without knowing what a father was, although they did know the affinity that a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins to the third degree had blessed them with, and most of all, they knew one mother’s love.

From the very beginning, too, Luis knew that he was not really from Sipnget and that in time, as Vic had guessed, he would leave. They were in the river then, hurling stones across the broad sweep of water with a sling, diving for pine splinters, which they would dry in the sun and use as kindling wood. They were resting on the broad stones at the riverbank, and after some silence Vic had said: Manong, if you go there, would you still come here and gather this wood with me?

Luis had answered with conviction: No — he would not leave Sipnget. But he did not know then what was to come, the point where their paths would separate, and there would be more water buffalos to bathe, eggplant and tomato plots to work on, mudfish to catch, and sweet corn to roast. There would be more mornings with martins singing in the buri palms.

Now, with a pang of sadness, Luis accepted his being “milk,” his being bangus —Get out of the sun, puraw , or you will become black like Victor; Bangus, go home and help in the kitchen, we will do the plowing! How they had patronized him! He was their kind, their property, the village emblem, and when he reached the age of puberty all the girls would chase him and his mother would watch over him, as if he were a foolish virgin. Now everything would be changed.

I’ll go tomorrow then, Mother, he said.

Tomorrow? his mother asked incredulously.

Yes, Father wants to bring me to Manila with him.

Is that all he said?

He looked long at her and remembered how his father had laid his heavy hand on his shoulder. How strange it felt — and stranger his voice when he said: I will take care of you.