Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

Within the week, more sideshows came to town and decked the main street with their gaudy fronts and raucous shooting galleries. The people flocked to them — children wide-eyed and amazed at the freaks, the wild man from Borneo who ate live animals, the cobra woman, half snake, half human — but it was really the circus that attracted people, for this was the first time it traveled to our part of the country. The two elephants alone, feeding on sugarcane and mountains of grass — drew crowds from other towns and the distant villages. Two weeks before the actual fiesta, the streets were rigged up with varicolored bulbs and from all the houses stretched bunting of brightly colored Japanese paper. Above every street corner soared a bamboo arch, festooned with woven palm flowers, proclaiming Her Majesty, the Queen, for whom the town market was decorated, and on one end a stage with a throne and across the white canvas, Her Majesty’s name and that of her two princesses — the annual handiwork of Cousin Marcelo.

The day before the feast of San Antonio de Padua, Hilda came as usual to the artesian well. I was in the yard, waiting for Old David to hitch the calesa; beside me was my air rifle and my canvas bag. Father had expected a few guests to arrive in the afternoon for the fiesta; as a matter of fact, some of the tenants had already appropriated places under the balete tree and others were camped inside the bodega . We needed some chicken and fresh vegetables, perhaps fruits from the farm. We fell to talking again about Carmay, and when the calesa was ready, Hilda cast her pail aside and said firmly, “Take me with you.”

“But your folks might look for you,” I tried to dissuade her.

“They won’t,” she replied. “They do that only if they don’t see me on the high wire. I haven’t been to any farm, really. You know, I have ridden two elephants in the parade, but I have not ridden any carabao yet.”

All argument was useless. She clambered up the calesa after me, and we drove out. From the asphalted main street we veered to the left, to the graveled provincial road and Carmay three kilometers away. The calesa jerked over the ruts, but Hilda did not mind. Beyond the town, Father’s fields lay green and vast, extending to the banks of the Agno. Some of these he had bought from Don Vicente, whose lands were in the opposite end of the town; some were cleared by his grandfather, who had come with the first settlers from the Ilocos; some he had taken bit by bit from farmers who owed him money and could not pay. The sun punctuated every tree, the buri palms, the mounds that dotted the fields and on whose crests tall grass waved with each breath of wind.

We reached Carmay, a neat huddle of farmhouses beside a creek. She crinkled her nose and said it was not much — just like all the other villages in this part of the country. We dipped down the provincial road into a narrow path and got off before the biggest house in the village, the only one roofed with tin. We found Grandfather knitting fishnets by the stairs. In his old age, he should not have been living alone, but he preferred the Carmay, where he was born and where he grew, where he worked and saved enough not only to buy out his other neighbors’ farms but also to send all his children to college, so that they would not be farmers like him.

I kissed his gnarled and wrinkled hand, then embraced him, smelling once again his tobacco. Old David told him what we had come for, and while our servant tended to his chores, Hilda and I went to the irrigation ditches, which had begun to fill. We romped in the newly stirring fields and chased grasshoppers. For lunch, Old David had brought hard-boiled eggs and broiled catfish; he then broiled a slice of dried carabao meat, tough as rubber, all of which we ate with our hands in Grandfather’s cluttered kitchen. After this, we went back to the cornfields and gathered a few ears, which we roasted over coals that Grandfather had kept alive for us in the shade of one of his mango trees. Under the tree, with the scent of June and the living world around us, we were shielded from the sun, which was shining on the rich brown earth, freshly plowed and shining still where the plowshares had ripped into it. I went to the furrow and picked up a clod. It was warm and moist.

Hilda was lying on the sled. I sat beside her and told her to raise the hem of her dress up to the navel. She turned to me, half-rising, and said angrily, “I will not do such a thing.”

I told her then, “I want you to belong to Carmay, to be free from the sickness of other earths. I will rub this on your stomach”—I held the clod before her eyes—“and just as Grandfather said, you will never get sick, not while you are here.”

She seemed apprehensive, but she smiled. Though she did not seem fully convinced about the efficacy of my magic, she finally raised her dress. “You are like an old man,” she said, shaking her head. “You believe in spirits.”

I did not speak. Her legs were white and clean, and her skin was smooth. I crushed the clod and let particles trickle on her skin. The grains fell on her navel and rolled down her sides. With my palm, I spread the clod on her belly, slowly, softly, and when this was done, she snapped her dress down and pinched my hand. “Foolish!” she said, laughing.

It was late afternoon when we headed for home. Shortly before dusk, rain fell in torrents and flooded the newly dug canals along the streets. When she saw the clouds darken, Hilda had hoped it would not rain so hard so that the tent entrance would not be muddy. She had asked me to go see her again, but I was tired, and besides, the program would not be changed till the morrow — on the first night of the fiesta — when there would be some variations.

I went to bed after a supper that we shared with Father’s talkative guests from Manila. The rain stopped, but soon there was a slight insistent patter on the roof again. Occasionally a streak of lightning knifed across the sky. I closed the sash shutters and went to sleep. The patter was still on the roof when I woke up and discerned weighted voices in the hall. They persisted, anxious and harried, not the soft sounds of a dream. I rose and walked to the door. The hall was ablaze, and even the big chandelier, which was used only on special occasions, was lighted. Beyond the balcony, however, the plaza was dark and quiet and the lights of the many vendors and dice tables were out.

I recognized at once the members of the troupe. Hilda’s father paced the floor, still wearing his baggy pants and multicolored coat, but the paint was erased from his face. Hilda’s mother was a forlorn figure near the sofa where most of them were gathered.

Catching a glimpse of Father, I went to him and asked what it was all about. He told me to go back to sleep, but I could see that he was greatly disturbed. “Who is it, Father?” I asked. He said it simply: “Hilda, the girl from the circus, the tightwire artist. She slipped.”

“Isn’t the doctor coming?” one of the women asked. She did not get any reply. The others slouched on the sofas, their faces tense with waiting, and soon they started mumbling. Hilda’s father told them to be quiet. He approached Father and said softly, “I hope you don’t mind the inconvenience we are causing you, but the plaza, with all those people, and the rain …”

Father dismissed him with a nod. Then I saw her. I went to the sofa where the older women were gathered about. Hilda lay there, pale and motionless, and in the corners of her mouth were little streams of red that had dried. As she opened her eyes, her mother bent over her, whispering, “My poor, poor darling …”

She was not listening; she closed her eyes again, and as she stirred, she moaned. “Don’t crowd around her,” Father said when they started hurrying to the sofa again. With the exception of her mother, they went back to their seats.