Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

All of them in the house in Rosales, including his dear ailing father — surely they must have known what had happened to the village. He had not asked any of them or even told them that he was coming, but they should have told him. On the day he arrived he had asked Santos how it was in Sipnget, and the short, work-ridden caretaker had turned away and — as if he never heard the question — left. Luis was not close to any of his father’s workers, not even to Simeon, who had taken him from Sipnget to this big red house, and to the servants, who greeted him politely. He had taken for granted that the countryside — for all its being stirred by the proselytizing of the Huks — would be unchanged, that the village would be where it always had been, the end of dreams. Surely, someone in Rosales must have known that Sipnget was gone. But why did nobody tell him?

He raised his eyes to the sun that singed the heavens, and he was about to turn and go back to the dike when, from the direction of the river, behind the large prostrate trunks of buri palms, he saw a man rise.

“Hoy!” He waved his hands.

The figure bobbed up, and he caught a glimpse of an old, anonymous face, but the man bent down again and was hidden behind the trunk. Only his back and the brim of his wide buri hat rose intermittently. He seemed to be busy, rising and stooping behind the trunk.

Luis ran toward the man and in a leap perched himself atop the trunk. Below him the man was tying together burned planks of wood with black, sooty wire. More planks of burned wood were scattered nearby.

“What’s happened? Did the whole village burn down?” he asked.

The man went on with his work, his face hidden by the wide brim of his hat, his blackened hands struggling clumsily with the wire.

“Are you deaf?”

“I heard,” the man said, still without looking at Luis.

“Tell me, where are the people? How did this happen?”

The man did not speak. Luis descended from atop the trunk and bent down a little. The face was gaunt, the eyes tired, the chin withered, and the forehead wrinkled. Recognition came: “Tio Joven!”

The man raised the bundle of wood and stood it on one end. Picking up a piece from the pile, he rammed it into the middle of the bundle and hammered it, so that the bundle would tighten.

“Luis, the grandson of Ipe.” Luis spoke in haste. “You know me, Tio Joven.”

The man paused and dropped the piece of wood that he used as a club. He squinted at Luis. Then he picked up his club again and pounded at the plank. “Why did you come here?” he asked without pausing in his work.

Yes, why did I come here — I who had wanted to escape from this land, to blot from my mind the faces of my people ? “That’s a foolish question,” Luis said simply.

Tio Joven peered at him again, but there was no apparent recognition in his eyes. He shook the bundle and tested its tightness. “People change,” he said. “Many come here, asking all sorts of questions — and what can I say when I am just here to gather wood for my stove?”

The man stopped and, lifting the bundle to his shoulder, started to walk away. Luis held the man’s load and dragged it down. Holding him by the shoulders, Luis shook the man viciously. “My mother and my grandfather and my brother — where are they?” he cried.

The old man shook off his hold and backed away. For a moment Luis expected him to draw the bolo at his waist, but the man did not. In Tio Joven’s eyes Luis saw no hatred and no fear — only that resignation of old people who have grown tired of living.

“What do you want me to say?” the old man finally asked, barely raising his voice above a whisper, his eyes throwing glances around him, as if he were afraid that among the dead trunks of palms, in the hot harsh day, someone was listening to the horrendous secret that he was about to tell. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, taking off his wide-brimmed hat and fanning himself. His eyes had grown warm. “It’s all too late now.”

Luis felt panic pounding his chest. “My mother,” he said. “Where are they? Can’t you tell me?”

Tio Joven put on his hat and wiped his hands against his faded trousers. “Nena — your mother — she is alive, but your grandfather is dead — and so are many others.”

Luis could not believe what he heard. “No!” he cried, and although fear, anger, and sorrow claimed him, no tears welled in his eyes. There was instead this choking weight that pressed upon his chest. “Only a few months ago …” He wanted to say that he had been here, but he realized immediately that he had quite forgotten the old folks, that he had not written to his mother at all or attended to her needs, that he had shut her and his grandfather conveniently out of his mind.

“My mother, where can I find her?”

The old man shook his head. “After it happened we did not really know who was alive and who was not. After a week your mother came to where we had evacuated. She was hungry and we fed her. She was dirty and we gave her some clothes. She would go to every man and say, ‘Victor — or Luis — you must go home now.’ Every young man was Luis or Victor. She had nothing else. Her eyes were red from crying. She carried a small bundle, which she used as a pillow. It contained nothing but old newspapers and letters. She would not part with it. She left at night, so no one noticed her departure. That was the last time we saw her.”

“Where could she be now? Where can I find her?”

Tio Joven looked far away. “Ask the wind,” he said. “She goes where the wind wills. She was in Rosales, I have heard — in the market, searching. She does not bother anyone. People are kind — they will always give her food, clothing, and a roof over her head.”

After a while, Luis asked, “Tio Joven, how did it start, how did it happen?”

“I do not know,” the old man said, “but your grandfather, he was among the first to fall. He was feeding the hogs, I think. Two days later — the fires hadn’t completely died down and the posts of the houses were still smoking — the dead were still there, where the bullets had found them.”

Luis covered his face with his hands and leaned on the buri trunk, his knees watery and shaking. “Only a few months ago—” he said bitterly.

“Time is swift.” The old man sighed. “Sometimes we don’t notice it anymore.”

“Tell me what happened?”

“You never heard about it in the city, not even from your father?” Luis did not speak.

“Three months ago, or less,” Tio Joven said, sitting on the bundle and fanning himself again with his hat. “It is not very clear to me now. Ask those who are in town. They know better.”

Luis leaned forward. “Tell me.”

“But what use is the truth now?”

Luis turned away. “I have to know,” he said quietly.

Tio Joven bent over, rested his elbows on his knees, his chin on his palms. “It’s very hazy now,” he said, looking at the yellowish blades of grass struggling up from where he had picked up the bundled pieces of wood, “but that afternoon — how can one forget it? The harvest in November was good. Your tia was planning to butcher a pig.” He turned to Luis and smiled.

“It was sunset. I was coming up the river, where I had lifted the fish traps. It was a poor catch. I had gone up the gully when the shooting started. I could hear the bullets whistling. I stopped, then I saw the people, the women and the children, running toward the river. I went back and fled to the delta with them, and we hid in the high grass. From there we saw the village go up in fire — all through the night. Then, before dawn, we started looking around for the others in the delta. I called my wife’s name, but she was not among those who escaped.” The old man’s face was inscrutable. His eyes had long been dried of tears, and the story he told had long numbed his senses to grief.