Francisco Jose - Don Vicente - Two Novels

“In a manner of speaking,” Luis said thoughtfully, “I am sad. I suppose I will miss him eventually.”

“Don’t speak lightly about death,” Eddie said. “They say that when a blight strikes it doesn’t come once. Remember what happened to Job? I am sorry, Luis — really very sorry.”

Luis said, “But this is what I wanted to tell you. Can’t you see? I’m now really on my own.”

Eddie shook his head. He had downed his drink, and he walked to the foyer. Luis wanted him to stay longer, but there was nothing more that they could talk about. “So, you see,” Luis told his friend as they went down the stairs, “I am an orphan now — and free.”

“No one is ever free from one’s self,” Eddie said dully. They had reached the landing, and the light shone on Eddie’s face.

“This is good-bye, then,” Luis said.

Eddie gripped his hand. “There is no good-bye between friends.”

Luis watched him walk down the driveway and disappear on the boulevard, where night had fallen. It was warm outside, but he did not yield to the temptation to walk over to the seawall. He bolted the gate and went up to the house.

In the morning he went to the gas station down the boulevard and bought a liter of gas for his empty tank. Then he washed the car; he had not worked with his hands in a long time, and he rediscovered the pleasure in it. He changed his wet clothes and tidied up the house, first sweeping the kitchen and ending up in the garden, where he piled up the dry acacia leaves and burned them. It was almost noon when he finished, and although his bones ached, he marveled at the satisfaction, the release from tension, that the work had given him.

From the library he picked out some books, Mayakovsky and Walt Whitman, Sartre and an anthology of Asian poetry. He arranged them in a trunk in the rear compartment of the car. He then disconnected the house main switch and locked all the windows and doors until it was stuffy and warm.

It was dusk when he reached Rosales. As he drove into the town the Angelus pealed, dirgelike, and some of the townspeople paused to pray. The massive gate opened, and he drove straight to the landing, where Simeon was waiting. He handed the keys to the driver and instructed him to leave in the morning for Manila. He hurried up to the hall filled with people, none of whom he recognized, and went straight to the bier at the other end, before the statue of the farmer with a plow. He felt he had to see for himself. He stood between the tall brass candelabras before the elevated coffin, and his eyes wandered up the lacquered wood to the glass-encased viewplate. It seemed as if the man inside, obese and darkened by embalming fluid, was a stranger. Staring at the face of the corpse, Luis felt no sharp incision of grief. His father would have a mausoleum in the town cemetery — perhaps the biggest, the grandest. Santos must already have made arrangements. As for his grandfather, Luis was certain that the old man’s remains had been exhumed along with those of the rest and he would not even know where his grandfather was, in what unmarked and unremembered spot of land the old man had finally found the resting place he never had in life.

And his mother — where could she be now, that poor, deranged woman roaming the streets, sleeping on sidewalks, and seeking food in garbage cans? He imagined her on street corners in Manila, in rags, talking to herself, seeking Luis or Victor, carrying a bundle of old letters and clippings. How now would he look for her? If he did find her, would reason return, would she recognize him and say, My son, my son — or would she run away from him as one would from the reincarnation of evil, the spirits that abound in Sipnget and bring fevers to the young until they were appeased with offerings? This, too, was his father’s doing.

Forgive me, I cannot wail like the women. Everything that I have felt for you has become a festering wound whose pus, finding no escape, has gushed into my bloodstream and fouled my heart and transformed it into unfeeling rock. How can I cry, how can I rile the fact of death, the end of all tissues, diseased and sterile, when it is death alone that can erode the rock? I have not known the kind of love a father gives to his son. You have not held my hand, carried me on your shoulders, tousled my hair, or held me in your embrace, so I must not mourn you, Father, but the past, which I did not shape, since the present is decayed beyond redemption. If I mourn, it will not be for you but for a baby yet unborn, the days of darkness upon which it must crawl, the future that would wrinkle its face, so that long before the happy time, it would be ready for the grave. I mourn the dear ones who died at twilight, my kin in the wilderness firing at their kindred. I mourn for those who, like you, are great and indolent, seated in the safety and comfort of important offices. They are dead, Father, without knowing it — and for them there is no salvation. For these I grieve — but not for you. Forgive me, then, my father, forgive me .

A hand rested on his shoulder, and he turned to his wife, her eyes swollen and red from crying. “I am back,” he said simply, stepping away from the bier and the heavy, nose-clogging scent of funeral wreaths. Arm in arm, they went to their room, where the murmur in the hall diminished into an almost imperceptible hum, and they looked at each other.

“I was afraid you would not come,” she said. “I was not thinking of myself but of you. Everyone knows you are all that remains, and if you weren’t here, what would people think?”

“Let them think whatever they want,” he said. “I was not present when they buried my grandfather, was I?”

She did not answer, and he told her what had happened in Manila — the confrontation in Dantes’s office and how he had been eased out. He told her, too, about Ester — not the anguish he felt over her death but the simple fact of it and how it was just right that in the end he had severed all connections with her family. “It’s all over,” he said, sitting on the stool before her wide narra dresser.

She took everything calmly, as if no tragedy could ever faze her, and she went to him and held his head in her arms, her large belly nudging his shoulder. “Luis, what is happening to the world? I only hope that, no matter what, you will be with me. Do you think you can endure living with me all your life?” She moved away from him and lay on her bed, her face contorted with pain. “Come.” She beckoned to him, trying to smile.

He sat by her side. She took his hand and held it to her belly. “Feel it,” she said. He could feel the smooth swelling, the slight movements of the life imprisoned there, and a swift, physical sensation akin to joy lifted him.

“Feel it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when it moves so much,” she told him. He laid his hand again on her belly until the movements ceased. Then, bending over, he kissed her and buried his face in her breast, murmuring, “My wife, my wife.”

This is me inside, this is me living, complete, a proof that I am here — now. I can say that I have lived and planted well, although the soil was barren and the air was polluted. I can explain this nameless life, but how can I explain myself ?

“I need you, my husband,” Trining was saying softly. “I hope you will give him a happy childhood.”

They buried Don Vicente Asperri the following morning. It was a warm May day, and a fierce sun bathed Rosales with a searing brightness. All the town officials were gathered in the house, five congressmen from the province and three senators, all in dark suits or barong tagalogs , and the whole front of the house was lined with big black cars. Luis received their condolences with indifference and fretted at the toilsome length of the funeral service in the hall. When the coffin was brought down the marble stairs the senators and congressmen vied with one another to hold the carved silver handles as if the chore was a privilege for a chosen few. If only his father could see it all now, he would be pleased at such fawning gratitude from the big men whom he had helped. Now it was to ingratiate themselves with Luis, the next Asperri, the only Asperri, and around him they hovered — powerful men — knowing that the mantle had been transferred to him.