Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

He said he would take care of me, Mother.

But she was no longer looking at him. A softness came over her careworn face. Did she love him still, did she want to know more about him, the years he never came to call although he was near, and if they should meet again, how would she — this wasted, dearly loved woman — greet him?

He went to the little room and lay beside Vic, who moved over to give him space. He pressed his cheek against the caseless pillow, and then came this feeling of wanting to shout until the lungs were dry and the parched throat ached with the desire to curse the red house, to curse earth and heaven and everyone capable of perfidy.

The sewing machine whirred, then was silent. He heard his mother walk lightly and approach him, and from the corner of his eye he could see her bend over him, see her wan and wasted face as she tenderly drew the torn Ilokano blanket over his legs.

He turned and whispered: Leave me, Mother.

She cringed, the ancient hurt — as when he asked her where his father was, as when she wiped the blood off his lips — now written on her face. He was not angry with her but with himself. Softly, so as not to wake Vic, he repeated: Mother, leave me.

The path was wider now. Beyond the river dike, the buri palms were like huge sentinels watching over the land. Luis went up to the dike. Below, Sipnget was not yet asleep. The amarillo lights of a dozen kerosene lamps still shone from the windows. He ran down the incline, and the growl of a dog, the crowing of cocks, and the low mooing of carabaos came to him. He walked hurriedly and entered the grove of kapok and madre de cacao trees that grew along the path. He passed the barrio school that was roofed with tin, its front gate barricaded for the vacation so that goats and the work animals would not stray in. The Coleman lamp in the village store blazed and bathed with cool bluish light the men seated on the bamboo benches below the grass marquee.

Somebody called his name: “Luis! Luisss!” He recognized Tio Joven’s raspy voice, and he waved and went on.

He was back in the familiar haunts of childhood, the dying grass and the old hay. Although it was dark, he could feel that the village had not changed. His mother’s house was finally before him. How small it really was — how could it have contained four people? Although he expected it, the sound of the sewing machine surprised him. He pushed the bamboo gate and went up the ladder. The rungs creaked and the whirring of the sewing machine stopped.

“Who’s there?” It was his mother’s thin voice.

Luis did not answer. Came the drag of bare feet on the bamboo floor, the lamp throwing his mother’s shadow on the buri walls, then she stood before him, thinner and shabbier than she was the last time he had seen her. For an instant she just stood by the door, shading her eyes with her palm, regarding him with perplexed eyes. He stepped forward, held the bony hand, and kissed it. She sobbed then, and the lamp quivered in her hand. “Luis, my Luis,” she whispered, clinging to him.

He felt ill at ease and he gently broke away. By the window his grandfather, who was weaving fishnets, stood up and hobbled to them. “Must you welcome your son with tears?” he asked. Luis took the old man’s gnarled hand and kissed it, too. His mother smiled, and placing an arm around his waist, she drew Luis to the narrow sala cluttered with pieces of cloth. She raised the lamp to the blackened iron hook dangling from the rafters, and in the poor light she looked at him again. “You are so tall, much more than I expected — and so handsome!” she sighed. She wiped her eyes with the frayed hem of her skirt and smiled.

The old man asked Luis if he had already eaten. “There is half a roasted catfish in the larder,” he said. “I caught it this morning. I knew we would have a visitor.”

He could not say no to his mother, who dragged him to the kitchen and set the low dining table. The old man picked up a wooden stool from a corner piled with bamboo fish traps and torn nets and set it before the table. “We don’t have anything better,” his mother said. She placed before him a tin plate with cold chunks of rice and fish — blackened and stiff — and salt. Luis dipped his hand into the shallow coconut-water bowl, and cupping the rice into small balls, he ate, using his hand. The rice was dry and pasty, the fish tasted bitter and burnt. He did not have an appetite, but he could not refuse.

They returned to the sala when he was through, his mother carrying the lamp back to its hook.

Then he remembered. “And where is Vic?” he asked no one in particular.

His mother turned away. “I haven’t seen Victor for more than three months now, Luis,” she said. “When he left he said he would join a trucking company, carry rice from Cagayan and perhaps go to school, to college, like you. I am sure he is well, although he has not written or visited us.”

“He came to me last year,” Luis said. “He had a job, but I could see that he needed clothes and money. I gave him some.”

“Did he ever come to see you again?” his mother asked.

Luis shook his head. He would have wanted to go about the fields and perhaps, with Vic, swim in the Agno, this time fully provisioned, not with only rice and a cake of buri-sap sugar, as it was when they were young. Or they could drive to the foothills to hunt the elusive wild doves, although that would be dangerous now, for the Huks were supposed to be hiding in the deep folds of those hills. Vic had always known the secrets of the land and was always a better hiker. Luis had envied his brother for the stamina and knowledge he had that could be put to use in the country, where book learning would not catch the mudfish or trap the crab. Luis was certain that wherever he was, Vic was well. He could have helped him if Vic only asked, but Vic did not even acknowledge the books that Luis had sent him, which were nowhere in the house. How Vic had changed — from a docile younger brother into someone self-willed and strong.

Luis took off his shoes and sat on the floor. His mother sat on a stool that he had made years back as a project for his “industrial work” in school. The old man returned to his perch by the window, the bamboo shuttle now idle in his hand.

“What are you doing now, son, aside from studying?” his mother asked.

“I am now working, Mother,” he said. “It is in a newspaper office, and it is very tiring.”

“My poor Luis! I hope that you are never in need—”

“Father gives me more than enough,” he assured her. “And with my work, I now have a little all my own.” He took his wallet out.

“Don’t,” she said, pride in her voice. “Your grandfather — we make enough to live on, and you know our needs are few.”

“Just the same,” he said, thrusting the bills into the pocket of her skirt; she made an attempt to take them out, but he held her hand firmly, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “Mother,” he said with emotion, “please — it is my own money now, and I would like to give it to you.”

Her eyes shone, and after a while she asked how it was with him, if he had problems. And he told them in a rambling manner how he was not able to finish college and that not having a college degree was not important anymore. He spoke of how he had quarreled with his father rector, murmuring, “I defied them all, I defied them all,” and when the anger evoked by memory died away, he spoke of the trips he had taken, to Hong Kong and the Visayas, the many friends he had made, many of them writers and poets. They sat there, drinking in every word. And looking at them enthralled by his presence, his talk, it suddenly occurred to Luis how unjust he had been to them, how recreant. It is a sham — the thought rankled him; how can I ever tell them that I have told my friends my mother is dead, that Sipnget does not exist, nor Vic and the past that we shared? God — he closed his eyes briefly and pondered his shame — what has warped me?