Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

Those were four tedious years during which I grew up without family and the pleasures of Sipnget. I was in high school — a junior — when the war came, and you had, at first, thought of going to Rosales but, on second thought, decided that Manila would be safe. You were right; the conquerors did not bother us, and we were adequately supplied not just with the amenities that you were used to but with the same dogged loyalty that your encargados and your tenants had always shown you .

I will now recall, dear Father, some aspects of those years that I know you did not particularly relish but that, if you understood better, would have explained to you why things were changing, why I, myself, knew that we must change not only because by doing so we would continue to occupy the positions that we always coveted but because by changing we would also be able to live .

You must remember that day when Santos and other men from Sipnget came and told you that they needed medicines, that the countryside was alive with guerrillas. I had listened and asked if I might go to Sipnget, if only to see my mother, whom I had not seen in years. And you told me to go with them so that I might see for myself and tell you how it was .

I was of course pleased to break away from the monotony of the house. We took the train to Rosales, then hiked for two days until we reached the range. We scaled a steep ridge, and in the glimmer of morning we saw the camp, a cluster of cogon huts at the bottom of a ravine. Trees covered the ridge and the narrow clearing from the air. The men were disappointed that we did not bring more medicines. They led me to the hut in the center, where they said their commander was. They called him, saying that Don Vicente’s son had come. The commander came out, a short, well-built man with a peasant’s simple, trusting face. His handshake was muscular and gnarled. Come in , Señorito, and make yourself at home in this humble dwelling, he said, grinning. His politeness irritated me. He was a leader of men whose reputation had spread well beyond Rosales. A hardened fighter, he had no reason to appear so meek. It was only afterward that I learned that he was not putting on a front, compared with the constabulary officers whom I had met. At one time (his men told me) he had a priest brought up to the hills because a spy whom he had ordered executed wanted the last sacraments. It was medicine that his men needed most. Malaria, typhoid, and dysentery had thinned their ranks, and they could not bring the sick down from the hills. I said that I didn’t see why they could not be brought down. At this his politeness vanished and he laughed aloud. He told a woman passing by with the day’s laundry to call someone in the nearby hut, and a one-armed man came. The man used to be a farmer, not a guerrilla, but a Japanese patrol had come upon him — and to the Japanese all those with malaria were guerrillas. They would have killed him had he not escaped. Wounded, he had fled to the hills to become a guerrilla .

I know, Father, that you did not want me to go to the hills again after that first trip, but I did go. I must tell you now that I went with my brother, Victor, and that when you thought I was in Rosales, in truth I was really with them for a few weeks. I saw them kill, but I was not appalled. In their company I was part of a wave. Without your knowing it I had forded rivers and stayed in mountain redoubts, where they made their own laws. It was a time for volcanic angers and it was a time for dreams, and Commander Victor dreamed that someday, when the killing was over, better times would come and he would go back to his farm .

Then peace came and I forgot Commander Victor. I returned to college, to cosmology and protoplasm, the reality and the activity of multiple beings and the place they occupied in the order of causality. I dozed through the devil’s rantings, metaphysics, and Father Aguirre’s Greek. My professors bored me. They had all shut themselves up in the drabness of their jobs, navigating in narrow circles. Each was placid and self-contained, mouthing dogmas and dieting on imagination. My classmates were of the same mongrel breed — rich, untouched by the war. If they were affected by war at all, they certainly bore no scars. I was the editor of the college paper, a job I relished in spite of the fact that I detested the restrictions imposed upon me by the invisible college censors, priests fastidiously occupied with word and symbol .

You returned to Rosales, too, to build the house that had been burned; you said you wanted to be closer to the land .

The war was over, and the last time I had seen Commander Victor was in Rosales. He was wearing an olive-gray GI fatigue, and he was with a group of nondescript men, drinking in one of the hole-in-the-wall bars that flourished after Liberation. He waved and cried— Señorito, I missed you!

I did not miss him. I had forgotten the men who killed — but not the killing. One morning I received a letter in pencil: “Dear Señorito, this shames me to the very core of my heart, but there is no one I can turn to but you. I need help , Señorito— money — and I hope you will not forsake me, as you never had in the past.” The mention of money sickened me, but I realized that he had quailed a lot to write to me. “I am not a recognized guerrilla. I received no back pay, nor have my men, but you recognized me and that is all that matters. My family is hungry. I cannot farm, because I have no carabao. My Garand and tommy gun were confiscated, but my automatic — if the worst comes and I won’t be able to pay — I’ll give it to you. It is the only valuable thing I have.”

I intended to send him a little sum, but somehow, with my schoolwork and other interests, I forgot about the letter. In the following week Santos came to inquire about my needs and to check the house to see if it needed repairs, and to pay some of your Manila taxes. We talked about Commander Victor — and of course Santos knew. Commander Victor is dead, he said. The constabulary had been investigating him for the things his men did during the war, and I would not be surprised if he was even investigated for killing the enemy. He was a poor man, and his wife, said Santos, had come to you to borrow money. You could not refuse, for it was for Commander Victor’s funeral. He had blown his brains out .

I can understand, Father, why you have been angered by the change that came upon Sipnget. Aren’t these the people you helped in their hour of need? But virtue — as the angels have always said — needs no reward, and if you are virtuous, your reward is not in this mundane world peopled by peasants .

I must now tell you what happened in college. You never asked me to explain, and I am grateful. In the press room that night, where I was closing the college paper, I junked my editorial and decided to tell the story of Commander Victor — his village, how he was delivered to his judges. If he was to survive, he had to use force, the same brute force with which he tilled the land. Wearied by his helplessness, by the weight of a future he could not carry, he surrendered his family to the brutality that he could not bear, and he ended his life with the same gun he had wielded to make secure the men who were his judges .

I justified, as I must now justify, the use of violence to secure justice — and self-destruction as the greatest virtue, for it is from death that we must rebuild .

I did not show the editorial to the college censors — not because I was afraid that they would blot it out but because there was just no time. I had done similar things in the past and received no adverse reaction from them. The following morning, however, the office clerk called me. The whole issue of the paper was being held in the office, and when I got there each news item, each article, poetry, and fiction was marked: Imprimatur, tribunal censorum. My editorial was crossed out in red pencil, and on it was: Donec Corrigatur, tribunal censorum. On my desk, too, were instructions to write another editorial or fill the editorial column with a news story .