Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“Why did it happen?” Luis asked.

Tio Joven bit his lower lip and spat. “I do not know — how will I know? They came searching for us in Aguray — in the delta to which we had fled. The constabulary soldiers and Don Vicente’s civilian guards — they said that our village was evil, that there were Huks among us, and that they would continue to follow us. We returned here — some of us. We saw for the first time what had happened, and we knew we couldn’t stay here anymore. A few days afterward the tractors came.”

Luis stood up. Around him the newly plowed earth was waiting for rain and seed. “Grandfather,” he asked, “where was he buried?”

The old man pointed to the turn of the river. “There are twenty of them there.” The old man rose, heaving his load on his shoulders. Luis walked behind him.

“I am now in Aguray, too. That’s farther up the river — if you remember. There’s not much to eat there, and we cannot tell when we will have to leave. When the rains come we won’t know how the floodwaters will turn. The delta may be flooded, and all the houses of reed and bamboo that we have built will be washed away. They haven’t come down to drive us away. Maybe we will go to Manila if we can raise the transport money. We can try our luck there.”

Luis took his wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed them to the old man. The old man shook his head, but Luis tucked the bills into the old man’s shirt pocket just the same. “Thank you, thank you,” the old man said. “You will be going back to Manila? I hear it is very peaceful there.”

Luis did not answer.

“We do talk about you sometimes,” the old man said finally, “that you will be getting married. You will live in Rosales, of course?”

Luis did not want to talk about himself. “Are all the others in Aguray, too?” he asked.

“About five families,” Tio Joven said, shaking his head. “Life there is difficult. There are no fish in the river. We have planted some peanuts and watermelons — seeds that we got from the farmers there, who wanted to help us. We need many things. See, I come this far for firewood.” They walked with difficulty, stumbling over dry chunks of earth and deep furrows. The old man stopped before a thicket of shrubs near the riverbank. “Behind this,” he said.

Before the mound of earth Tio Joven flung down his load and wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “There are twenty here — we counted them, and we know all of them.”

Luis stood before the swell, his arms limp at his sides. Beyond, the river, the sparse growth of weeds motionless on its banks. Above, a smoky blue sky and the sun, which ravaged everything. I see them all before me now, all who have trusted me because I was one of them. This is my truth, and it would have been simpler if I were ignorant of it and could not trace myself to it. Here I am, the chief mourner, but I cannot cry. I see an ancient and craggy face and eyes that have also seen travail I will never witness. Grandfather — if you are here now, I will hold your hand to my brow and tell you that the world is evil and that not even love such as mine matters anymore. And Mother, you who cared for me simply, where are you? What do I have to offer you? You are here around me — alive as the air is alive and kind as the land that will continue to nurture the seed .

“Tell me, Tio,” he asked without looking at the old man, who now squatted beside him and was starting to pull the strands of grass that had sprouted at the base of the grave. “Who buried them here?”

The old man kept at the grass. “Who else but we? We could have buried them earlier, but we were all afraid to go to the village. When we finally went, they were lying in the ashes, their bodies black and bloated. They all looked the same, and you wouldn’t know them if you had not been with them all your life. They left them there — they were not even decent enough to bury them after they had killed them. We had to gather them, each one, carefully, so that they would not fall apart. We didn’t want them eaten by dogs — dogs, do you realize that?” His voice had become an ugly screech. “Dogs,” he was saying, again and again, in futile anger. “They will pay for this. Dogs. Dogs!”

A warm whiff of wind swept the grass that sprouted from the mound. The grass was yellowish green unlike the grass that covered the dike and the riverbank. Between the blades, shoots were breaking through the soil, straight and firm and sharp. Luis bent down and scooped a handful of earth, which he crushed and let trickle through his fingers.

“I’ll come here again,” he promised.

“What for?” the old man asked. “We buried them properly. There was no priest — we could not even afford that — but we prayed for all of them.”

“I’ll come again,” Luis said, although the bleak truth was that there was no sense in returning.

Tio Joven bent down and pitched the bundle on his shoulders. Luis watched him do this, and his eyes followed flakes of ash and charcoal as they fell to the ground. “Maybe I will return, too,” the old man said. “There is still some firewood I can get.” He struggled toward the river and disappeared down the gully.

Luis turned his back to the sun, and his shadow lay like a stub on the ground. A thousand curses stirred violently in his mind, like a pack of starved dogs straining at their leashes. Not many in Manila would believe him if he told them what had happened in Sipnget. His friends would say: Luis, this is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. However, he would tell them the truth.

The journey was longer now. The dream is over, vanished like the aimless drift of smoke, like the echo of a gun. It was here on this hallowed land, now violated, where I saw the dream in my grandfather’s eyes, in the anger that fed his soul and stirred his withered muscles. We came from the delta one afternoon, on our shoulders old jute sacks half filled with turnips that we had dug. I was tired, and so were he and Victor. We were all gasping as we went up the gully that the carabaos had widened as they trampled their way to the river. I gripped his hand and helped him up. We were to follow the dike home. On the dike’s broad back Grandfather paused to catch his breath. We laid our sacks down, and when he had regained his breath Grandfather turned to us and said: If I had my way — and a smile kindled in his face — you both would not be here today, looking for something to fill the supper pot .

I told him that I had no complaints. He stood his full height, his tattered trousers pressed close to his bones by a wind that sprang from across the fields, and Vic and I, we reached no higher than his chest. He pointed to the distance and said hoarsely: See that dalipawen tree there, I planted that like a monument. See how green its leaves — but the tree does not matter, for the markers that are important are those of stone, which the rich man has studded the land with .

With a slow sweep of his hand he traced the curve of the river, which gleamed in the sun, and said: All this — up to the river — was ours, because we cleared it .

My father’s men intruded upon Sipnget after that and told this defeated man — my grandfather — long before I was born, even before my mother’s time — that everything he had cleared, even the lot where his house stood, belonged not to him but to the man who lived in the big red house in Rosales. Like all the farmers in the village who had clawed their farms out of the wilderness, this man found himself shackled to this land. Times when the stars and the full moon’s halo augured a bountiful harvest, times when the river brimmed with fish — these were forgotten. The old people died or left, their homes were swept by typhoons or were torn apart by inheritors, but the big red house withstood all vicissitudes. If they got sick or a child was born, if they married and needed money, to the big red house they went. Debt piled upon debt, and one day Grandfather, no longer able to pay, sent his only daughter to serve in the house, and she, who they said was as beautiful as the morning star, was lost forever to Sipnget .