I picked up a garment and held it in the light—a bright silk shawl embroidered with red roses and edged with lace. I placed it back, then lifted a thick wad of clothes, and underneath, close to the bottom of the trunk, was a small wooden box with two small ivory angels on its lacquered cover. I opened it and found a heap of letters and dried petals of what looked like a big red rose. The box smelled of perfume, and in a moment the heavy and wonderful scent pervaded the room. It was then that Martina, one of the new maids, drifted by the open door and for a moment stood there, watching me. I opened one of the letters. It was in fine, feminine script, and addressed to Father. I could not read all of it; at the end, “Always—Nena.” I felt as if I was trespassing into a secret realm, where I belonged but was not, at the moment, allowed in. Trembling, I put the letters back and gently placed the box under the pile of clothes.
Her pert brown face screwed up, Martina asked, “What is that?” She did not dare venture into Father’s room.
“Letters,” I said. “My mother’s letters to my father.”
“Those are her clothes?”
I nodded.
“They look beautiful,” she said, still standing at the door. “Why don’t you try one?”
“I am a man,” I said, frowning at her.
“Go on,” she said. “I just want to see how women’s clothes looked years ago. I won’t tell anyone.”
In another moment, I was flailing my arms and thrashing as I put on a blue silk dress.
It did not fit, of course; it hung loose, well below my feet, and seeing me attired thus, Martina let go a delighted squeal. I laughed with her and was, in fact, enjoying myself so much I did not realize that Father had returned, was at the door in his riding breeches, the whip in his hand. Martina must have seen him approach, for she had disappeared.
Although his countenance was severe, Father did not whip me; in fact, there was more sadness in his eyes than anger. “Never again,” he said softly but sternly. “Never again shall I see you open this trunk.”
And never again did I do it. After Father died I kept the trunk, and it has always been closed as he had willed it; with the years its locks rusted, and there came a time when the key no longer worked and it would take a crowbar and a sturdy hand to open it—but that hand would not be mine.
CHAPTER
3
Next to December and its holidays, June was the most welcome month in our town. The floodgates of heaven were finally opened, the rains started, and the rice planting began. The fields that were brown began to stir with the emerald of new grass. Grasshoppers were on the wing, and the frogs came alive. But more than these, June was the time when we celebrated our town fiesta. A full month before the festivities, they had already started coming, the feria people who erected tin sheds near the church, in which they sold cheap dolls with plump cheeks and bright eyes, and ran shooting galleries and stalls for other forms of gambling.
It was during this time, too, that the comedia players—the farmers and their children—from Carmay came and stayed in the bodega, where they practiced their prancing and their lines before they acted them out on the stage in the plaza. As fiesta patron, Father provided for their meals, their mirror-spangled clothes, the papier-mâché helmets and wooden swords, as well as the five-piece band that accompanied their acting.
The year I was twelve, two weeks before the fiesta, a circus came. Three big trucks immediately transformed the plaza into a mud puddle as they manueuvered into position. I did not know anyone from the circus except a girl about my age; she walked the tightrope—so well, up there in the heights, she could have been walking on even ground. Her name was Hilda.
She and I did not have much in common, but during the two weeks that she was in Rosales, we became friends. I lived in a big house with old people. The young sons of Father’s tenants acted ill at ease in my presence, but Hilda did not. She lived in a tent—that was the home she knew—with old people, too, who did not care about what went on inside young minds, what made them want to go swimming even in dirty creeks the whole day, or what drove them, naked, splashing and singing in the rain.
I should not have told Hilda about my going to Grandfather’s house, but we got to talking about where we would like to be most; she had come that morning as usual to draw water from our artesian well, and I was waiting for her there. She had a ready answer for me: “I would like to be up there, feeling the height, knowing that people are looking at you—tensely, waiting for you to fall.”
She said she started walking the tightrope when she was five years old along with her parents, who were trapeze artists. She did not sound boastful at all. At six, when she should have been in school, she was already earning, starring in the circus act.
I described to her what Carmay was, and I did not exaggerate. I told her about the buri palms, how in the dry season they were tapped and the sap was boiled in huge iron vats into sugar or drunk sweet and cool and soothing in the sweaty afternoons. Cornfields laced Carmay, and water lilies decked its irrigation ditches in flaming violet. Beyond the village was the Agno, swift and murky during the wet season, and in its wide delta, corn and watermelons grew. In Grandfather’s yard were fruit trees—santol, duhat, and orange—all of which I climbed. I also often went with the men to the river to watch them fish till their bamboo baskets were full. And now that the rains had come, the banabas lining the paths were flowering. It is a heavenly place, Carmay!
“I must go with you,” Hilda said.
During the first week of June, the vacant lot beyond the house, which was often regarded as an extension of the plaza—which it was not—was transformed into a field of green amorseco weeds that had started to flower. Before Father built the storehouse behind the house, his tenants used to fill the place with their loaded bull carts while waiting for Chan Hai, the Chinese merchant who came for the grain with his battered truck and a huge weighing machine. But every time there was an athletic competition of the grade schools in the district, the town mayor always asked Father’s permission to use the place in addition to the plaza. Father did not ask for any rent, and perhaps in recognition of his charity, his name was always prominently included in the programs.
The balloting for the fiesta queen was not yet over—it was usually held two weeks before the fiesta—when the circus came. The trucks—their radiators spewing steam, their tops brimming with poles, trunks, and people—rumbled past the house, drawing the servants from their chores to the windows. They proceeded to the plaza and to Father’s vacant lot and started to unload.
Father saw the crates spilled on the grass, the wooden stakes piled high, the lot now churned by heavy tires. Shaking his head, he went on with his figures. In a while, three policemen from the nearby municipio approached the visitors, who had already started driving stakes on Father’s land. They went into a huddle and finally broke up, the policemen leading the way to our house.
Ever correct and polite, Father met them in the hall where they piled in with their muddy shoes and flopped on the rattan sofas with their brash city ways. From their ranks, a well-built man with a balding top came forward; his tone was apologetic, and he was saying how sorry he was that they had used Father’s land without realizing it was not part of the town plaza. A girl tugged at his hand continually, and when he could not ignore her anymore, he said, “This is my daughter. She walks the tightwire.” Another tug. “And she is the star of the show.”
She was not even ten, I think; she certainly was no taller than I. She preened her faded overalls and grinned exuberantly, her big eyes shining, then she stepped back a little and executed a neat curtsy. Everyone broke into laughter, even Father, then she walked away from the assembly. I followed her to the middle of the hall near the picture of Father’s grandfather; from it her gaze turned to the chandelier in the rose-colored ceiling as it tinkled to a slight breeze, then she walked to the grandfather clock by the foot of the stairs, and finally, catching a glimpse of me watching her, she came to me and asked if
I lived in the house.
I nodded.
“It looks so big,” she said, scowling. She was on the verge of another question, but the circus people seemed to have obtained Father’s permission, for they started for the stairs, her father still profuse with thanks. Hilda joined them.
“Please come when we start,” her father said at the top of the stairs. “We have a good program, and it is known through all of the province. There will be people from as far as Lingayen, Dagupan, and, of course, from Urdaneta.”
Father nodded, then went back to his seat in the sala.
“It is not much of a circus,” he told me afterward. It was dusk, and I had lingered by the window watching the men work, listening to the rhythmic pounding of their sledgehammers on the wooden stakes. A stage took shape, and a wire fence, and within the enclosure they rolled out a mound of canvas that occupied one whole truck. Amid shouts and creaking pulleys, they hoisted the giant tent.
“When you go to the city,” Father continued, “you will see a real circus at the carnival. This is just a big sideshow, although it is quite famous. A circus has wild animals, maybe five elephants, lions, and tigers. And look at them—they have only two elephants.”
“Father said yours is not a real circus,” I told Hilda the next morning. She had come to the backyard where the artesian well was, as did the other members of the troupe before her. They had also parked some of the trailers near our bodega, and in the wide threshold of the building they had set up some of their cots. “A real circus,” I went on reciting what Father had said, “has lions and tigers.”
“It is a real circus,” Hilda retorted. She put down her battered pail, braced herself before the pump, and glared at me. I did not move from the bottom rung of the stone stairs that led to the azotea. For a while, it seemed that she would shout at me or do something rash, but she lowered her pail and started to pump.
“There was a time,” she said, throwing angry glances at me, “we had two lions and two tigers. Three elephants, tall and strong as trucks.”
“They are not here now,” I said.
“No,” she said, pumping furiously. “The trainer was killed by the tigers. They were all sold to the zoo—but not the elephants because they are easy to take care of. And they work—but even without them ours is still a real circus. Come with me.” Her pail was full. I turned apprehensively to the house to see if anyone was watching. Sensing my reluctance, she taunted, “Don’t be a sissy.”
I helped her with the bucket, spilling the water on our legs as we hurried behind the house and out to the plaza until we were behind the tent. The previous night, rain had fallen, and now the morning was polished to a sheen. The tent was a dull white hump fringed by acacias. In its cool shadow, on planks that were laid side by side, the menfolk rested. The women were washing and cooking, and when they saw me, they smiled in recognition. Hilda was holding my hand, and as we entered the wide awning, her grip tightened. “Wait here,” she said, and darted out. It was warm inside the tent. Tufts of grass rose above the narrow slits between the boards that were laid in the middle for a stage. Around it, on the sides, were boards fastened together, tier upon tier. From the top of the tent, which now looked patched up from within, bits of sun stole in and lay in bright silver puddles on the ground. The two poles crowned by a blue halo of the June sky soared up, and near the halos were swings and ropes that stretched from one pole to the other.
Hilda returned wearing red tights. Her feet were encased in thin-soled leather shoes, and she trotted to one of the poles where the end of a rope ladder dangled. She bade me follow her as she started the climb, nimbly scaling each swaying rung. It was warmer up on the precarious perch near the top, but Hilda did not seem to care. She smiled when she turned and saw me holding tightly to the pole, not venturing as high as she had climbed. She put one foot forward on the high wire that extended out into space—and there was no net beneath her. I called at her to stop, but she answered with a resonant laugh. As she lifted each foot in her slow progress, the wire swayed. Balancing on her right foot, she raised her hands. The wire ominously zagged, and by then, I thought that even the poles were swaying. I turned away, unable to look.
When I looked again at her urging, the swaying had ceased. Hilda was not on the wire anymore; she was perched safe and smiling on the small platform near the other pole.
I was weak and trembling when I got down. Hilda waited for me at the entrance and walked cheerfully with me to the outside, where the sunlight was waiting.
Hilda’s father dropped by the house again the next afternoon, reiterating his invitation. But Father, always enigmatic and aloof, merely nodded and said he would try.
The plaza was in a gala mood that night; the small town band whose services the circus had secured started tooting around the town, even before dusk, carrying placards about Hilda’s death-defying act and the world’s strongest man pitting his strength against an elephant. After a hurried supper, I asked Father if I could go. He called Tio Baldo—I don’t know why I called him Tio when he was really just one of the help; perhaps it was because Father had considered him bright enough to be patron to him; perhaps because of all those who helped in the house, it was only he who attended to my school problems. He was to accompany me with no less than the circus manager, so that I would be given the best seat that night.
The plaza was illuminated by carbide lamps of dice tables and other enticements. Before the makeshift stage that was actually part of a truck with the sides removed, a big electric bulb blazed, drawing many moths, showing the painted faces, the baggy pants of the circus clown, and the barker, urging the crowd to hurry, hurry—the seats were being filled. Some members of the troupe were seated at one end of the stage, and I recognized Hilda at once in the same red tights she had worn that morning, but her face was now thick with paint. She did not recognize me in the crowd as she sat there in the center, basking in her glory while the barker pointed to her and shouted her virtues, her mockery of death. The band stopped playing and went inside the tent, followed by the troupe; the show was about to begin.
Tio Baldo and I had the best seats, beside the mayor and his wife, at the rim of the circular stage. Although outside it was cool, within the tent it was warm, and the smells of perspiration and tobacco smoke were all around us. I did not mind this so much, for soon the clown came out, Hilda’s father recognizable even in his baggy pants and with a pillow tied to his girth; he and the other clowns went through their paces while the kids up on the tiers squealed at their pratfalls. A magician enthralled us as he made balls vanish, drew doves out of a black hat, put a woman to sleep, then proceeded to saw her in two. Next, the strongest man in the world—a hefty six-footer with bulging biceps—bent a steel rod, let a truck run him over slowly, and, as a finale, pushed an elephant toward the other end of the stage. Then the trapeze artists, and finally, Hilda.
Now the lights blinked out except for one spotlight atop a tall tripod. In the middle of the stage, in that circle of white, she seemed so tiny and fragile. While the barker described what she would do, she did somersaults, splits, and back bends; it was as if she were made of rubber. She could put her head down between her feet and contort into every imaginable shape. She did several curtsies, turning around to face the audience, then she trotted to the pole and went up, up to her perch, the spotlight never leaving her. The band ceased playing, only the snare drum rumbled, and now an apprehensive murmur coursed through the audience. The beat of the snare drum quickened as she rose from the narrow platform; she stepped onto the high taut wire on her dainty feet, tested it like a frightened child learning how to walk. One shaky step forward, then a short, ominous pause. Balancing herself, she repeated the same staggering process until—or almost until—she got to the center, for now the wire had started to sway, and from the audience exploded one despairing cry as she slipped and then toppled.
But Hilda did not fall. Below the first wire was another; she had jumped into a dance, each step sure and steady t
his time, below her no net at all. When she had finished, the applause was deafening.
Hilda was in the yard again the following morning and, of course, in the succeeding mornings with the same battered pail. She worked like the others and did not seem to mind. She did not have much to say when I asked about the different towns she had visited, but her face always brightened as she recounted each.
“I will go to the city someday,” I told her a week later when she said she liked performing best in Manila, for she did not have to work so hard helping in the kitchen. Her chores for the day were over, and we were idling in the bodega, which was now, save for a few sacks of seed rice, almost empty.
“I will study there,” I said, and she told me, too, how she had taken snatches of schooling during the rainy season; Rosales, as a matter of fact, was their last performance for the season, for the circus closed when the rains came, and they started on the road again in November.
Within the week, more sideshows came to town and decked the main street with their gaudy fronts and raucous shooting galleries. The people flocked to them—children wide-eyed and amazed at the freaks, the wild man from Borneo who ate live animals, the cobra woman, half snake, half human—but it was really the circus that attracted people, for this was the first time it traveled to our part of the country. The two elephants alone, feeding on sugarcane and mountains of grass—drew crowds from other towns and the distant villages. Two weeks before the actual fiesta, the streets were rigged up with varicolored bulbs and from all the houses stretched bunting of brightly colored Japanese paper. Above every street corner soared a bamboo arch, festooned with woven palm flowers, proclaiming Her Majesty, the Queen, for whom the town market was decorated, and on one end a stage with a throne and across the white canvas, Her Majesty’s name and that of her two princesses—the annual handiwork of Cousin Marcelo.
Don Vicente Page 3
