Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“I’m fine,” he said, “and I’m sorry.”

“You always say you are sorry.”

“Blame it on the world — or circumstance.”

“You are still sour.”

“Even milk sours,” he said.

“You are forgiven, then.”

“How can I ever thank you?”

“Plenty. We can hear mass tomorrow. I can drop in at your place and pick you up.”

“I might not be up early,” Luis said, feeling suddenly trapped.

“I’ll wake you up.”

“I’ll be a mess — the house, too. Besides, I’ve got to work.”

“It won’t take more than forty-five minutes.”

“High mass?”

“Luis, you sound bored.”

He could feel the apprehension in her voice. He laughed. “You are going to be a nun.”

She laughed softly, too. “Merry Christmas again.”

Then he was really alone. The tedium of the day finally possessed him, and he sank in complete surrender to it. He could not remember how much he had drunk, and the urge to have one last nightcap came, but he withstood the temptation. He struck the headboard behind him, cursing, then he reached out to switch off the light. It was then that his door slowly opened and, more surprised than frightened, he watched the man come in.

Recognition came quickly. Luis jumped up and rushed forward to embrace his brother. “Vic,” he said, drawing away, studying the sun-browned face, short-cropped hair, buck teeth, and laughing eyes. “Why did you not come earlier?”

“I did,” Vic said, “but I didn’t want to interfere with your party and I wanted to be sure you were alone. I stayed in the garage.”

Luis was incredulous. “Now, that is a foolish thing to do,” he said, shaking his head. He was angry. “You know you are welcome in this house. If you didn’t want to be with the party, you could have come here and locked yourself in.”

“Anyway,” Vic said, “I am here and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

Luis’s mind was keen again. In the soft bedroom light he looked at his brother. It was just two years since Vic’s last visit in this house, a visit that had peeved and perplexed him. He knew then that his brother was in need, and he had tried to give him money, but Vic had refused it, saying that he already had a job, that it was enough that he had helped him with his education and with books that he had sent. Luis hoped that his brother would not be as proud again. Tonight, after all, was Christmas.

He could see that although Vic was robust, his clothes were faded khaki and his shoes were battered leather. He smelled of sun and harsh living.

“Marta let me in,” he said simply.

“You could have joined us,” Luis said.

Vic shook his head. “Manong,” he said, “you know very well that I do not belong to that crowd.”

Luis knew what else Vic would say, so he changed the subject at once. “Let’s go to the kitchen. There’s a lot of food and drink, and I’m getting hungry again.”

“Marta gave me something to eat,” he said. “I’m really full, and besides, I came here to ask for something important from you — more than food.”

Luis sighed. “Vic,” he said, “you know I’d give you anything you ask for, but you refuse what I give you.”

“I have come here not to ask for help for myself. I know you have it in your heart to help people like me.”

“How much do you need?” Luis asked. “I told you before that this house is always open to you. You can stay here if you wish. There’s even an extra room. It is so much simpler and easier for you to come and see me than for me to go to Rosales. I’ve told you this a hundred times. And you haven’t written to Mother. I was there last April. She doesn’t know where you are. That’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry, Manong,” Vic said. He sat on the edge of the bed, and Luis sat in front of him. “I have not bothered telling Mother where I am, but I told her — really told her — when I left Sipnget that she should never look for me, that I would be all right, and that I would always be thinking of them.”

Luis was silent. He was recalling his mother’s sadness, her quiet despair, as she spoke of Vic. It was as if she had already accepted the fact that she would never see her younger son again.

“But why?”

Vic smiled and did not answer. Seeing that no reply was forthcoming, Luis asked, “Now, tell me. How much do you really need? If I don’t have enough in this house, I can go to the bank first thing after the holiday — and if you don’t want to come to my office to pick it up, I’ll leave it with Marta.”

Again Vic smiled. “It’s not money, Manong, although that will help, of course. It is you we need, and others like you — more than anything now. We need teachers, people with knowledge and understanding such as you have.”

“You are talking in riddles. What are you talking about?”

“About us. About Commander Victor.”

“He is dead.”

“Yes, both of us know that.” Then he smiled rather self-consciously. “I supposed you never knew that his name was not Victor. It was Hipolito, but he was always talking about victory, and when he was given an opportunity to have a nom de guerre, he chose Victor.”

“But how can I help a dead man?”

“Help me, Manong. I am now Commander Victor.”

Luis looked at his brother. Victor was not even twenty, and he looked more like a village teenager, with his crew cut and his lean, dark face, but behind the youth was the man who had known travail as Luis had never known it. Vic was no longer a boy but the man Luis could never be, and this fact humbled Luis.

“Were you in Rosales in April?”

Again Vic smiled but did not answer.

“Did you know that I was home?”

The same noncommittal smile.

“You know, of course, that I will always help you, that I will do what you want me to do, because we are brothers.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Vic said. “I have been thinking a lot about us. I will be going back to Rosales. It will be my territory now. I know every village, almost every tree, every turn of the creek, and every fold of the hill — and a lot of people know me. So I will go there, but I need you, too, to protect me if necessary, because I can trust you. Let me make one thing clear, however: the old days are over. Your father, all his property, must go back to the people whom he has robbed.”

Luis could not believe what he was hearing, and for a minute Vic droned on about social justice and democracy and the future. What would all this mean now? He would lose the house in Rosales and all the land that would be his inheritance. For a while this bleak reality numbed his heart, and for all his protestations, for all that he had written and said, he had grown to like this ease, this surfeit of leisure, all that marked him for perdition. He was, after all, his father’s son.

Maybe, if he tried to dissuade his brother, there would be other ways, feasible means by which he could remain what he was and yet be totally in agreement with him, support him, and sacrifice for him.

“Vic,” he asked, “what do you really believe in?”

Vic paused, gazed at the ceiling, and then looked down at his black battered shoes. “What can one like me believe in? I wish I could say that I believe in God — or any god up there. I wish I could say that I believe in our leaders. One thing I can tell you is that I do not believe in the Americans anymore. We fought the Japanese, didn’t we? We were only teenagers then. We were not going to be heroes — whoever thinks of patriotism and heroism when he is there, scared, praying that he can live through the ambush? There were heroes, just the same, and who were they? The thieves who raided the GI quartermaster depots, who robbed the government treasury, the same ones who continue to do it now. These were the people who traded with the Japanese and got rich working for themselves. How can I believe in the Americans when they are responsible for making heroes of these scum?”