Don Vicente

by F. Sionil Jose

  “Is she pretty?” Cousin Pedring was insistent. I hardly heard him above the clangor as the train pulled into the station and shot blasts of white steam into the noonday glare.

  “Yes,” I said, “very pretty.”

  “Will she stay long in Rosales?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I could not miss her when she alighted. One could not but pause and cast a lingering look at her, even if she was in a crowd; she really had bloomed—a regal head, full lips, and eyes filled with laughter. When she saw me, she waved at once, and moved away from the women with their baskets of vegetables.

  “You have become so tall,” she said, bussing me on the cheek. I introduced Pedring, and they shook hands, then we walked down the cement platform to the palisaded yard, where Old David waited. We helped her with her rattan suitcase, then boarded.

  “How is Tio?” she asked as we cantered off to town. After I replied, she did not speak again all through the drive. Pedring attempted some conversation: “It is good to have you here.” But to his attempts, she merely nodded or smiled, and her smile—if it was one—was as dry as the dust that Old David’s horse raised.

  “What are you thinking of, Clarissa?” I asked later as we ate lunch.

  She shook her head and looked pensive. I would have pressed for a clearer answer, but I caught Father’s eye; he sat at the other end of the table, and though he did not speak, I knew he did not want me to press the query further.

  The following day, though Father did not explain it clearly, I learned why Clarissa was with us. It seemed that a young man in Cebu had taken an interest in her—he was the son of a clerk, had no chance of going to college, and Clarissa’s parents did not approve—after all, they were well-to-do and all their children had studied in convent schools. She was therefore exiled to Rosales, so that in time she would forget.

  Before we went to bed that night, I invited Pedring and Clarissa to play dominoes in the azotea; I knew that she did not relish being in Rosales, in this small dusty town away from the delights of home. “We can go to Carmay tomorrow,” I said. “The camachile trees are now bearing fruit, and we can gather them. We can bring a lunch basket, and we can go to the Agno, swim, or stay there and gather pine splinters. There are so many wonderful things one can do in Carmay.” She shook her head and said something listless, that she did not like hiking.

  We did not go, and Cousin Pedring, who had wanted very much to stay in Carmay, seemed pleased that Clarissa had elected to be in the old dreary house instead. And there came a time afterward that he lost all interest in Carmay and would rather be cooped up in the house with her.

  The following day, before I was to leave for the post office to get the mail, Father called me to his room and said that all the letters addressed to Clarissa should not be given to her. I should give them all to him.

  Clarissa must have expected them, for on the day she arrived, she asked what time the postman usually came to deliver the mail, and I told her it was I who was the mail carrier. She met me at the yard when I returned and breathlessly inquired if there was any letter for her.

  “Nothing,” I said, and it was true.

  But the following day three did arrive. I followed Father’s instruction and gave them all to him. He opened them and read them briefly, then instructed me to burn them in the kitchen. It was a job I did not relish. As I proceeded to burn them, I got curious and started reading one. It was a love letter—mushy words strung together—and having memorized the penmanship, I never bothered reading any of the many that came afterward. Every day Clarissa would ask and I would lie; she had me mail letters, and like the letters she was supposed to receive, they never reached their destination.

  “Are you sure I don’t have any mail today?” she asked one particularly trying day when the heat seemed to scorch everything, even my patience. She had been in Rosales for more than three weeks.

  “Yes,” I said sourly. “Why should I hide it from you?”

  “Well then,” she said with determination. “Tomorrow, I will be at the post office ahead of you so Tio will not know.”

  But on that day she did not come because Pedring managed—by some miracle—to take her to Carmay instead; they left shortly after breakfast with a basket that was amply prepared by Sepa. And in the afternoon when they returned, the wind and the sun in her hair, the basket was filled with camachile fruits. She forgot to ask about her letters.

  On the days that followed, she no longer seemed to care whether she received a letter or not, and soon the letters from the boy in Cebu stopped coming altogether, and I was glad and relieved, for then I no longer had to lie. I began to see less of Pedring, too. He was not reviewing, nor did he like to go swimming in the Agno. He had time only for Clarissa.

  May came quickly, and once more the land turned green; somehow, the life and vivacity came back to Clarissa, too, and she seemed to enjoy my cousin’s company, for many a time I would catch them laughing on the bench in the yard.

  When we played dominoes in the azotea, they would often get to talking and it would be difficult for me to catch the thread of what it was all about. More and more, they would clam up when I asked what it was that they were so secretive about.

  At the end of the month, before the town fiesta and the opening of the school year, the parents of both Clarissa and Pedring came to Rosales. With Father joining them, they talked far into the night, while on the moon-drenched balcony Pedring, Clarissa, and I played a listless game of dominoes. I won most of the time, for they did not have their minds on the game; they did not speak much, for they seemed all ears, instead, to the talk and the occasional laughter that went on in the living room.

  The following day the tenants came, and with isis leaves and wax they cleaned every nook of the house; they also polished the silver that had started to tarnish. All through the week the preparation went on, and, when it finally came, it was the grandest wedding Rosales had seen in years. There was a battery of photographers, and two days after the wedding, I saw our picture in the papers, Pedring looking bewildered, Clarissa radiant and pretty as always, and I in my white suit looking dandy—too dandy and too old to be a ring bearer.

  Pedring took his bride to Hong Kong, and from there he wrote to Father and to me saying they would return to Manila, where they would make their home, then visit us before Christmas. He also took the bar examinations and passed.

  I did not see them again until I went to Manila to continue my studies, and then and only then did I realize what I had done, what fate I had helped to shape.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Lack of household help was one problem we never had to face. In fact, Father used to have some difficulty turning away many youngsters who wanted to serve in the house, the sons and daughters of tenants who wanted their children to be with us, so that they would be assured of three meals a day, particularly during the lean months of the planting season—June to August—when many a rice bin was empty. Some of those who came to work, of course, knew that their servitude was payment for debts incurred, debts that their fathers had accumulated through the years. They all came to Rosales without much education, barefoot, their brown, emaciated bodies slowly putting on flesh after the first few weeks of eating regularly, their blemished skin becoming clear, their deportment less awkward as in the first few days when, awed by Father’s presence and the proportions of the house, they would walk or go about their chores in reverential silence.

  Not Martina; of all the maids who came to serve us it was she I remembered best, for there was a brashness in her ways that was self-confidence rather than arrogance; it was not that she did not respect Father or that she looked with condescension at the timidity of the other help. She was, from the very beginning, herself, untrammeled by convention and uncaring toward those who thought she was without the refinements that any growing girl—barrio-born or from the heart of town—should have. They said that no good would ever come to her—that she would end up in the s
treets; I cannot believe this conclusion, and though I never saw her again after she left us, I am sure that wherever she is, she can cope with most of the problems life would shower on her.

  She was fifteen when she came to the house. She had had some schooling, for she knew how to write her name and many a time, too, did I see her go over the old papers Sepa used to kindle the firewood. She was well on the way to becoming a woman, and I remember the ogling of the boys in the barbershop when they watched her go to market and the guarded language they used when they spoke with her. She never bothered with them. She would flop on the bench in the yard in a most unwomanly manner, exposing her thin thighs. Sometimes, too, I would catch the other boys in the house stealing glances at her low neckline and her small firm breasts, as she bent doing her chores, sweeping the yard or pumping water from the artesian well.

  At first she came to the house only on weekends to do odd jobs, and she would do them as fast as she could, sweeping the wide yard cluttered with acacia and guava leaves and the dung of work animals when the tenants brought their bull carts in. She also helped clean the bodega, which was always in disarray, and once her chores were done, she would disappear. She did not seem to bother with her looks, her hair hanging in damp, uncombed locks, her face stained with dirt, although I was sure with some care and with a little bit more to eat, she would be good-looking.

  Once, as Old David told me, her father operated Father’s rice mill, but by some accident, his feet got caught in the gears. It was a miracle that he survived, but he was maimed for life. Earning a living with both legs gone was impossible, so Father gave him an annual pension of twenty cavans of palay, more as a result of a court order, I think, than of sympathy.

  Martina always took the shortcut from her house, which was a distance, and hurdled the tall barbed-wire fence in the rear of the bodega. Seeing her scrambling over the fence one afternoon, Father shook his head and said, “Knowing that girl’s future is like being sure that tomorrow the sun will rise from behind the Balungao mountain.”

  One afternoon I saw her up a guava tree in the yard; I had refrained from climbing it for one week so that by the end of that time the fruits would be ripe. She had tied a piece of string around her waist, then filled her dress with the hard green fruits so that her tummy bulged out front.

  “Get down there!” I shouted. “Or I’ll call Father and he will flog you.” She did not mind me, and angered by her insolence, I started to whimper and cry. As she scurried down, the string around her middle snapped; the fruits all came tumbling out.

  “Cry—cry all you can,” she said, jumping to the ground. I stopped crying and scrambled after the fruits, grabbing with both hands all that I could and stuffing them into my pockets until they were full. And while I was at it, she never made an attempt to take anything; she just stood there watching me. When I could no longer gather more fruit, I looked up to meet her gaze, contempt, pity, perhaps, in her sullen eyes. She turned and walked to the house.

  There seemed to be a gulf between us after that incident, but somehow, in another week we were friends again. She told me little about herself, but she did talk a lot about her father, who was not feeling well, so that she had to go home for about an hour every day to see him. She was not hindered from doing so; after all, she was not needed much in the house, and I think that Father tolerated her presence only because he felt some obligation toward his former employee.

  I went with Martina to the river, too, and we bathed there, her clothes sticking to her thin body, her hair wet and dripping. We dove into the cold depths and tried to stay there as long as our breath could hold, and in the murky greenness, I would open my eyes to see her flapping and holding her nose. After the swim, we crossed the fields glinting brown in the sun and took the path that went by the rice mill, climbed the barbed-wire fence, and then we were home, dry and ruddy from the swim.

  I had not seen Martina’s father, and once or twice I asked her to take me so that I could see how a man without legs moved about, but she always said, “Some other time.” Her mother died when she was a baby, and she did not remember her; she was more like a shadow in the past, without any importance.

  Martina was very clumsy but could be very gentle, particularly with animals. She was cleaning my room one morning when she tipped the china vase—my bank—from my aparador top, and it fell with a resounding crash on the hardwood floor. She had said earlier that her mother brought bad luck to her father, that her father said so, and now that Martina was growing up, she, too, was bringing bad luck to him.

  “See?” she said as I looked aghast at what remained of my vase. “I am bad luck, too.”

  She was etched against the bright frame of window where the morning sun came in. “I was simply cleaning this …” she said as she picked up the fragments and placed them in the dustpan.

  I faced her squarely, my suspicions aroused. “Where is the money?” I asked. “There were two one-peso bills there.”

  She glared at me, her hands fingering the frayed hem of her soiled cotton dress. She had raised it so that her dirty bones stuck out. “Am I to know?” she retorted.

  I was angry and could not hold back. I took one step forward. “You are a thief!” I hissed at her.

  She did not budge; she lowered the hem of her dress, then pointed a finger straight, almost into my face. “Don’t you ever repeat that word to me,” she said coldly, evenly. “The thieves in this town are not us; if I ever hear you call me a thief again …”

  I was helpless facing her, knowing how capable she was of doing whatever she threatened to do.

  “I will tell Father,” I said finally.

  “Go tell him,” she said in the same even voice.

  But i did not tell Father, and it was not that I was afraid to do so; rather, I was bothered by what she had said, that the thieves in Rosales were not people like her. Yet, I had heard Father say so often that the tenants could not be trusted, that during the harvest season they should be watched carefully for they were always hiding part of the grain or harvesting the fields in spots where it could not readily be discovered. They never gave our rightful share of the vegetable harvest, the fruits of the orchards—the bananas, the pomelos—and in time of need, they went to no one but him.

  I could not ask Martina about these, so we never talked about the money in the vase again. I could have easily forgotten about it, but the next day, after she had gone to visit her father, I found that the coconut-shell bank that I had filled with coins had grown very light, and there had not been a day that I had not put something in it. But who would I blame? There were other servants in the house who went to my room—Old David, Sepa—I had no proof and will never have one, but nonetheless, Martina was always on my mind.

  She came to me once while I was in the bodega chasing the rats, which were eating the palay and the corn stored in huge piles. She asked if I wanted to go with her to her father’s. It was an invitation I had waited for, more out of curiosity than anything else. Now I would see a legless man who did nothing but weave fishnets every day.

  Again, we went by the backyard, hurdled the barbed-wire fence, and headed for the open fields. It was a long walk to the other end of town. We paused in the shade of a mango tree, which had started to bloom, then followed the path that led to the big ash mound behind the rice mill.

  “You have never been on top of that,” she said. “When you are there, on top of that black mound, you stand so high, you can see almost all of the town and the river, too.”

  “Let’s climb,” I said.

  She took my hand to lead me, and we followed the black path up the huge mound—the ashes spewed by the rice mill for more than two decades. Her palms were rough and her grip was strong. The rice mill came into view, and we heard the faint chug-chug of its engine, saw its smoke, like a careless lock of Martina’s dark, uncombed hair, trailing off from the tall chimney that stabbed black and straight into the afternoon sky.

  When we reached the top of the mound, I wa
s breathless and my hands and brow were moist; there was not much to see—the mound was not high enough the way Balungao mountain and its foothills were. Just a stretch of the river, farms baked in the sun, and the shapeless forms of farmer houses. But for Martina this was the pinnacle, the top of the world, and on her face was happiness and triumph. “This—all this,” she said, “my father put this here. How many years did he work to put this here? And now, I am on top of it—and look at what both of us can see.”

  I did not want to spoil her pleasure. “Yes,” I said softly. “You can see farther and more from up here.” A sharp wind rose and the ash swirled around us. For some time the view was marred. A speck got into my eye and blinded me, hurt me, and I went down with her, half seeing what was ahead of the soft and powdery path that led to the fields.

  We reached the tobacco rows, the green plants taller than we were, their green speckled leaves, their white flowers like plumes glinting in the sun.

  It was a stupid question I asked on impulse: “What did he do before?”

  She paused and looked sternly at me: “You know that,” she said. “He built that mound where we were. A mountain of ashes—a mountain! How long do you think it took to collect all that ash? Certainly, it was not a week.”