Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

Dantes acted swiftly. “Please,” he addressed the two officers, “let us go into this dispassionately.”

The old hate pulsed in Luis. “There was nothing to check,” he said. “I saw the grave where the victims were deposited without decent burial. I’ve talked with some of the villagers who escaped from your men and my father’s guards. I saw the place where the houses stood — a whole barrio, mind you — leveled. I need no further proof.”

The colonel was unimpressed. He lighted a cigarette, inhaled casually, and turned to Luis with contemptuous self-confidence. “Since you are so sure, I hope you will consent to hear our side. These you didn’t mention — that the villagers were active Huk supporters, that one of the leading Huk commanders in central Luzon is from the village — and I think you know him well. You did not mention that there was an encounter — that the villagers fired first—”

“And twenty villagers were killed and not one casualty among the civilian guards or the troops.”

“Only because they were trained well.” The major laughed, although his ascetic face remained expressionless. He opened his portfolio and handed Luis a sheaf of papers. “Read it,” he said.

Luis took the sheaf and skimmed through it. The report was obviously prepared by a staff member and was an arid bureaucratic piece.

“This is your side,” Luis said, “but you are big, and who will take the side of the people — the small people — whose interests, since the government should serve the people, should be your concern?”

The colonel grinned. “You talk as if you were their anointed spokesman. Why don’t you be yourself, Mr. Asperri?” Luis could sense the scorn in the appellation. “You know very well you are not small. You are very big, sir.” The colonel got a fat envelope from the portfolio. Turning to the publisher, he said, “Perhaps this will prove our point. Read it, sir. This is the handwriting of our editor’s father, who is the biggest landlord in the province. It seems hardly possible that he has sired someone like his son. If a father does not believe in his son, who will?”

Dantes read the first page carefully, then the second. He stopped reading. “Your father, Luis,” he said bleakly, “feels you were prejudiced when you wrote that article. There was no massacre — just an encounter. So many of them taking place in central Luzon, you know. Even in the Visayas, in Negros, they have started. Furthermore, your father says that these two gentlemen know why you are prejudiced. Would you care to tell me why? Here, read it yourself.”

The two officers turned to Luis. “I don’t personally want to talk about your past or your personal life,” the major said. The ribbon on his chest showed that he was a Bataan veteran. “I can very well understand why you are bitter, but we will have to break our silence …”

Everyone knows, everyone! It was a time when he should not have cared, when neither contempt nor praise should have affected him, when nothing should have eroded his belief, but in this moment of truth, he felt clammy and small.

“… and expose you,” the major continued. “Tell the world the reason for your bias, your prejudice. Maybe you do not think that this is fair, but what, then, is the reason for your inability to see it our way? We should ask you, as an editor, to be impersonal, but this you have not been. Well — everything is now in your hands. The future …”

The future — did it really mean anything now? His lies — his denials of Sipnget and his mother — had caught up with him.

“What do you say, Luis?” Dantes asked, pointing to the document that Don Vicente had written. “Your own father refutes you.”

“We had the whole barrio site examined.” The colonel laughed casually. “There was no grave at all. Yes, the village was burned. You know these things happen when houses roofed with thatch are close together. That the whole village was plowed — that is not our doing. It was his father’s. We do not deny that two villagers were killed — just two — and I think our editor knows who they are. They were taken away by the villagers themselves when they left. They were buried decently, according to them. I dare someone to go there and dig the land inch by inch and show me the mass grave!”

All is done. Luis gritted his teeth; my own father, he has gouged out my brains and squeezed the air out of my lungs. “Call it what you want,” Luis said. “How do we know how you may have exhumed the refugees when I am sure that by now you may have dispersed them? How can I gather testimony from the people who are afraid? The dead will bear me out if the living won’t.”

The major laughed again in his humorless manner. “I see that you are even superstitious. I do not think that is good for journalism.”

The officers stood up, ramrod-straight, and made ready to leave, their Pershing caps in their hands. “You have a very interesting story,” the colonel said. “I hope that someday we can have a really long talk.”

“In the stockade?” Luis asked contemptuously.

“You misunderstand us,” the colonel said, “but perhaps you will be able to explain to me why Filipinos would kill their own brethren. This, in principle, seems to be what you insinuate. We are not wealthy like you, Mr. Asperri. Without the government in which your father has a very strong say, we are really nothing — and who made this government, Mr. Asperri? It’s the people of Rosales and Sipnget — and your father and you yourself and Mr. Dantes.”

He was beyond the reach of anger, and his voice was clear as he echoed his father: “It is the strong who make the laws, and the laws are not for the weak.”

“Your political beliefs,” the colonel said, “seem straight out of medieval times. I am sorry, but we did not come here to talk politics. We merely came here to give you a chance to retract before we start any action. It is but proper that you should know where we stand. You are being given the choice, and in your own language, you have a deadline. Mr. Dantes knows …”

They tipped their Pershing caps in mock politeness, shook the publisher’s hand, then marched to the door. Luis sat back and stared at the papers on Dantes’s desk, the affidavit that his father had signed, which the officers had left for him to read. Even the phrasing was unmistakably his father’s; so was the uneven signature.

“I hope that you listened carefully to what was said,” Dantes said scowling. “We are in a mess. They were here yesterday and told me what they would do. Eddie said you haven’t been coming to the office, and I understand. Now this.”

“It is part of the job, sir. The risks go with it,” Luis said.

Dantes walked to his side and placed an arm on his shoulder. “Luis, let us not make it difficult. I don’t want my back against a wall. I don’t want to be forced to select the kind of ax my executioner will use.”

“Isn’t that what they have already done?”

The publisher’s brow knitted, and his thin lips compressed into a line across his tired, aging face. “What is it that really happened, Luis? What is it you hold against your father? After all, one reads in the papers every day about encounters like this, and one must learn to take them in stride. It is not the end of the world if one village is burned down and twenty people — like you said — are dead. You get more killed in traffic accidents in one day in the country.”

“We have learned to take murder as an everyday occurrence,” Luis said. “When we do this we may just as well stop worrying about whether or not we will ever have law and order. We die when we stop being angry.”

“But that’s not the point, Luis,” Dantes said, moving away and facing the young man. “There is a limit to our capacity. We cannot fight all battles as if they were of the same magnitude. That is the way things run. In some we use high stakes. Others we just ignore — or file away while we wait for a more propitious time. Now, this is what those officers want us to do — print a retraction and declare that there was no massacre, unless we are willing to conduct an investigation ourselves.” He walked slowly to the wide glass window through which the sun streamed in. “You have to make the decision,” he said softly.