Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“You shame me,” Luis said.

“But it is true. Remember how it was in the big house? How I used to go there to work and you did not because Mother didn’t want you to go to town? How I used to collect the peelings of apples that your father ate and bring them home for us to eat?”

Luis did not speak. He did not want to remember. “All right then,” he said after a while, “what do you want me to give you?”

“Give! Give!” Vic flung at him. “I shouldn’t be ungrateful, but you always give. People like me — we never get anything that is ours because we worked for it, because we deserve it.”

“You are my brother.”

“Half-brother.”

“We came from the same womb. It is all that matters. We are equals.”

“How I wish I could believe that,” Vic said, “but it is not so. If we cannot be equal, at least both of us are Filipinos, with the same opportunities. I did not make the laws, nor did I set up the system for mestizos and brown people like me. I would like to think that under the skin it’s the same red blood. But blood is cheap, and I will use it to water the land so that people like me will live.”

“I will be on the other side,” Luis said, “not because I want to be there but because that is where you have pushed me.”

“But that is where you are,” Vic said, “not because I want you there. You are there of your own free will. You will inherit great wealth. Would you give it up? Why should you?”

“We can share it,” Luis said.

“But how far will you go, my brother? If I asked you to get rid of everything and come with me, would you do it? You have much to lose — and if you stay, I will understand. I even understand why you are reluctant to come out in your magazine that you are for us. Yes, we read you every week, and although you seem to sympathize with us, you really are not for us. Could it be that you have forgotten those years in Sipnget?”

“I have not forgotten,” Luis said hotly. “I am not turning away from that. You do not know of my turmoil.”

“And you think I don’t have doubts and moments of anguish, too?” Vic asked. “It has been dirty, dirtier than the war we went through. I thought that after Liberation all the fighting would cease, but it has not been that way. It’s uglier now — and so sad — and yet, what must be done must be done.”

Vic stood up. He did not even look grown-up. His hands twitched at his sides as he walked to the door.

“You didn’t tell me what you came here for — or what I can do,” Luis said.

“Some other time, Manong,” he said. “It has been refreshing, talking with you.”

“One last question,” Luis said. “Did you send that message to my father?”

Vic smiled. “You see, my brother, I have not lost my aim.”

Luis saw him to the gate and on the way kept saying, “What can I do for you? There must be something …” Through it all Vic was smiling, and after he disappeared into the shadows it seemed that a primeval darkness, thicker than the night, dropped like a final curtain between them.

Dear Mother ,

It is long past Christmas Eve, and I can think of no better time to write you this letter than now. As you perhaps have already surmised, I am not very religious. There was a time, however, when I was — and I remember how you took me to the church in town during the Holy Week and how piously I followed you as you fingered your rosary and made your Stations of the Cross, how your care-lined face was turned to the prostrate image of a dead Christ at the altar. I still recall that time when I was flushed with fever and Tio Joven applied all those leaves on my chest and rubbed his saliva all over my forehead and I still didn’t get well. It was then that you decided that there should be a novena in the house to appease God, whom you believed had been angered. That early evening, after the novena, Grandfather went to the backyard where the dalipawen tree stood, and there, making an offering of the rice cake that you made, the hard-boiled eggs, and the hand-rolled cigar, Grandfather beseeched the spirits: You who have brought fever to my grandson, here is a humble offering. Come now and partake of it, and hurt my grandson no more. That evening I felt the fever ebb, as if it were no more than simple fatigue, although for a week I couldn’t stand. I remember how that early morning I went to the tree and saw the cake and the hard-boiled eggs still there and how, because the spirits had not helped themselves to them, I feasted on the offering, against all customary warnings. All this comes to me as lucid as day. It was this that made me realize that food for the spirits could also be food for the stomach .

I am not being facetious. I had not meant to go off-tangent this way. I had meant to start this letter in all seriousness — like an editorial in my magazine, which will never be read by you and by Grandfather and by all the people in Sipnget, although Vic tells me that he reads the magazine every week. I had meant to be poetic, for tonight the Son of Man was born to a mother who, like all mothers, should be revered because it was in her body that she suffered the beginning of life. The birth of Christ is to me the celebration of motherhood, for there are many among us today who would not be loved and who would not be cared for except by their mothers .

I write this letter because just a while ago Vic was here to see me. I asked him what he believed in, and he said he believed in you. I would like to say that I, too, believe in you, but do not think that I will be fair to you or to myself if I didn’t explain this belief that is more than belief. I think it is a kind of blindness — or faith .

There are times — and God knows there are many — when I wish I had not been born, but I must tell you that even this suffering that I bear is something that I must experience, both as a poet and as a human being who loves life. It will be difficult for you or for Vic to understand this suffering, for it is a form of ennui that is embedded in the mind, a pain without surcease, even after the wound has healed and the scab has lifted. In fact you will look in vain for scars. It is a malaise that money or circumstance cannot dispel. How utterly simple it would be if it were something a medical specialist could conquer with a new strain of antibiotic. Perhaps a vacation in San Francisco, a new Mercedes, or an eight-carat sparkler — each is a simple-enough solution, but not one of these will suffice .

I am speaking of my birth, dear Mother, my conception, my reason for being here, for being your son and my father’s son. It is not enough that I am here, living in comfort, while you are there, suffering. I would like to know how I came to be. I am curious to know if I was born out of love, if I deserve this life that has come to me as a gift from you, and if you regret that I ever came to be .

I will never know the answers, for these are questions I could not dare ask you or Father. At most I can only guess — and that is enough. Even if I do get the answers that I seek, I would still ask why I am here .

Vic knows his reason for being. He has found a cause to which he can give his life. As for me, I have not found out if this life is worth living. It was, I am certain, given to me in sufferance, and perhaps I am loved not because of myself but because of what I am supposed to be .

Dear Mother, in spite of all these doubts that rankle in my mind and poison my heart, there is one certitude for you: I love you, perhaps not in the way that you expect me to, sometimes not even the way I would like to, but I love you with a tenacity that I alone can feel. I love you because, as my brother has said, you are all I truly have .