Don Vicente

by F. Sionil Jose

  I regretted having asked again when it was so unnecessary. Now we were silent, unusually so. We walked across the tobacco plots, the leaves brushing against our faces, the air around us strong and compounded with the aroma of tobacco and the brilliant sun.

  “I am his bad luck,” she finally said. “He says he had plenty of good luck before. Then he married my mother … then I came. Bad luck … bad luck, that is all he says …”

  “Why was your mother bad luck?”

  “Mother?” she turned quickly to me, anger flashing in her eyes. But the anger quickly fled, and in its place, this ineffable sadness, and she shook her head as we walked on. We had reached the end of the tobacco farm, and before us was a narrow strip of fallow land given to dried brown shrubs and the amorseco weeds. “Wait here,” she commanded.

  Across the weed-choked strip was her father’s shack. Its windows of battered buri palm were closed, and it stood alone and desolate, no life pulsating from it. But I wanted to look within, and I objected shrilly. “You asked me to come, to see your father. You asked me!”

  Her tone was final. “You stay here and wait.”

  I watched her gallop away; her lithe, catlike figure disappeared behind a curtain of grass, then emerged again only to go up the bamboo ladder and into the hut.

  Its windows did not open, and no sound seeped from it.

  We got home at dusk, and Father was already eating. I was breathless, and when he asked where I had been, I said simply, “I climbed the ash mountain, Father. Martina and I. We went to her house, too.”

  “So. Did you see her father?” I turned briefly to Martina and could see the look of displeasure on her face, the anxiety.

  “No,” I said.

  Father continued with his chicken adobo, and, when Martina returned from the kitchen with the water pitcher, he said, “Don’t go with Martina to that place again.” And to Martina, who was filling the glasses, he said icily, “Don’t take him there again, understand?”

  “Yes, Apo,” she said, looking straight at Father, and then she turned to me, the ancient sadness in her eyes.

  Martina and I did not talk anymore about that afternoon, though I wished we had. And when I saw her leave, I wanted each time to go with her, but she merely smiled and said there would be a time when the sun would not rise from the east.

  She continued to do her work with frenzy, so that Sepa and all the others could not complain when, having nothing more to do, she would be out in the yard, playing marbles with me, or out in the fields chasing the grasshoppers that had come with the rains.

  Then on that week before school opened, she asked me if I wanted to go with her. She had a bottle of medicine that she had bought with her savings; it was for her father, who, I now learned, had not been feeling well for weeks but, in spite of this, had sent his daughter to work for us, and this was what Martina had done, knowing that her place was at home. What was it that made him do this? And for her to accept it? I did not know, Father did not know, but it had to be done if that black mound of ash was anything.

  I did not want to disobey Father, though, and the thought held me back, but only briefly. He had gone to Carmay that day, and it would be late in the night when he would return. “It will be I who will tell him. Only I will know that you had come along,” Martina assured me.

  It was almost dusk; the farmer boys were bringing home their carabaos from the creek where they had been bathed, and the pigs were being called in for their meal.

  “We may be late coming back,” I said.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  We hastened to the backyard and climbed over the barbed-wire fence, and as we dropped on the other side, she turned apprehensively toward the house, almost hidden from view by a screen of guava trees, to see if Sepa or any of the help had seen us. We were secure; there was no one in the kitchen or in the azotea.

  We walked quickly toward the river, passed the clump of thorny camachile trees, and found the path that led to the gully, which the carabaos had widened when they were herded down for their daily bath. We skirted the bank, then went up the path that crossed the tobacco patches. I had begun to tire, for she walked at a fast pace; she did not want the darkness to catch up with us, and now my breath came in heavy gusts. We went over a bamboo bridge that spanned a dry irrigation ditch, and I sat down to rest. She jeered at me. “You are not tired. I sometimes run all the way from your house to ours!” And I recalled those mornings when she came to sweep the yard and she was pale and breathless, sweat trickling down her forehead.

  “No, I am not tired,” I said, and rose.

  We rounded the curve where the grass was tall, and in the deepening hush of afternoon, the sound of insects was sharper, the smell of the earth stronger. Then we were at the foot of the black mound, and Martina was saying softly, “How long did it take to build? How long did it take the balete tree to grow? Only those who have memories can tell, and I would like nothing better than not to remember … to forget …”

  The small hut was ahead of us, somber and alone against the purpling sky. She held my hand, and I could feel the sudden sprint of life coursing through her with the tightening of her grip.

  “Do you know what to say if he asks you who you are?”

  “Do I have to say anything?” I was disturbed by what her question implied.

  “Only if he asks,” was her hurried reply. “Just tell him anything—anything—that you live across the street. Anything. But don’t tell him you live in the big house—that you are your father’s son!”

  I nodded dumbly, and her grip on my wrist relaxed. She continued quietly: “We may be little people … but you must understand, we are not beggars.”

  “Whoever said you are a beggar?” I objected vehemently.

  “Everyone does,” she said. “Why should you be different?”

  We were in the yard and had hurdled the low bamboo gate. Martina headed for the short flight of bamboo stairs, and at the top, she beckoned me to follow her. I did. She slowly opened the door of the sipi—the small room where farmers kept their precious things, their rice, their fishnets, their clothes—and stepped in.

  “Father?” tentatively, then, “Father, Father!”

  Silence.

  In a while, she came out slowly, and in that instant, I should have known from the dumb despair on her face. I should have stayed with her and learned to understand her ways, why she came to the house swiftly and disappeared just as fast when she had done her work, how hurriedly she ate her meals—like a hog—especially during those first days she was with us, the hunger in her belly that could not be easily appeased. Most of all, I should have understood how steadfastly, how proudly she took care of that cripple inside, how he, too, had sought to live his way by sending his only child to work for us, making believe that what was given to him by Father was not charity, when all of us—but not the two of them—knew it was theirs by right. Who built the ash mound?

  But I did not know. I was only twelve.

  Martina did not fumble for words. “Father is dead,” she said quietly.

  I remember having peeped briefly into that darkened room at the legless figure there lying still and stiff, its eyes staring blankly in the gathering dusk, the buzz of mosquitoes around us. And this feeling came to me, freeing me of other feelings, all other thoughts, this feeling of dread that I had intruded into a misshapen world that I had somehow helped to shape, and that, if I did not flee it, it would entrap and destroy me. I do not recall what else Martina said, for I had quickly turned, rushed down the stairs and across the barren ground, away from this house and the ash mound beyond it. I ran and ran—away from the macabre shadows that trailed me, away from Martina and her dead father, into the comforting brightness of our home. I remember, too, her voice, her face determined and calm, and that last look of hurt and abandonment, as I ran out of a beautiful friendship into the certitude of ease that awaited me. And much later, I wished that I could see Martin
a again, that I could reclaim her friendship, but she left Rosales that very night and did not even attend her father’s funeral, which Father had grudgingly arranged.

  CHAPTER

  9

  One of the crude insinuations I often heard from classmates and neighbors when I was young was that I should be tolerated and my tantrums ignored for the simple reason that insanity ran in our family. It was no joke considering that almost everyone is related—no matter how tenuously and distantly—to a person who may not be exactly insane, but whose behavior is often delightfully unbalanced. We had one such individual in our midst, and thinking about him now, I envy Cousin Marcelo for his being able to do what he wanted and not be disturbed by eccentric labels that our relatives and even some of the townspeople had attached to him.

  There were, of course, past evidences of why he had gotten his reputation—that night he returned from Carmay drunk from basi and singing all the way in the loudest possible voice. “The bird sings when it is happy. Why shouldn’t a man do the same?” And what about that time he exploded a box of firecrackers during the Rizal Day program in the plaza? “I hate verbose speeches—they never can explain the Noli and the Fili the way firecrackers can.”

  I am, of course, on my Cousin Marcelo’s side, and if he was insane, so was I. He was the happiest man I knew, although much, much later he was just as burdened with the prosaic chores of looking after properties that enabled him to indulge in the kind of independence I wanted for myself.

  Cousin Marcelo was not really a cousin; he was Father’s youngest brother, the youngest in the family, and I should have called him Tio and in the most deferential tones, but he did not relish that. “Can you see a single white hair on my head?” he had asked. There was none, of course, in the jet-black mane that reached to his nape, and in time, his asking me to search for one became a ritual. “Call me cousin, then,” he concluded.

  He had finished with the highest honors in a Jesuit school in Manila—a fact that, perhaps, explained his rambunctious good humor particularly when it came to his schooling and the church. “Be careful when you go with priests,” he said when I became a sacristan. “He who walks with Jesuits never walks with Jesus.”

  He knew a bit of Latin, a bit of Greek, and lots of Spanish, which he spoke with Father and Grandfather, liberally spiced with sexual epithets; if you heard him and did not see him, you would conclude he was some Spaniard. In actual fact, Cousin Marcelo looked very much like a peasant and also dressed like one; he was always going around in denim shorts, which were comfortable—but they also showed how atrociously bowlegged he was, and he was also partial to wooden shoes in spite of the racket they caused. But he had a warm, friendly face, a little squint, and long hair when no one wore his hair long. He was past thirty, but his disposition must have done some physiological magic to his face; he looked no older than twenty. When Grandmother died, he lived for a while with Grandfather but had to go to the city to study and had to live alone—“not in a garret because there are no garrets in the Philippines.”

  He had majored in philosophy and was easily the most learned man in town, and his favorite high-sounding expression always had “aesthetics” to it—Don Vicente had no “moral aesthetics,” Father had “no aesthetics” in his life, and he worried about my becoming “an aesthete.”

  He chose to return home to paint shop signs, calesas and caretelas, and, for the town fiesta, arches to the auditorium and, of course, his annual masterpiece, the stage and throne of the fiesta queen and her princesses. He could not make a living in Manila doing portraits or the still lifes and landscapes he wanted to do, so he lavished some of his talents on the mundane things in our town, and it was our calesa, its tin inlay aside, that was the most colorful, for he had covered it with cloud and floral designs, as he did with jeepneys in a much later period.

  He went to Manila perhaps once a month, sometimes twice, to “unburden” himself, and I always looked forward to his return after three or four days, for he always had something for me—books, chocolates. Indeed, he was my favorite relative, and his big room on the ground floor was almost mine. It was airy, with frosted windows that were open most of the time. One side opened to the garden, and in the morning when the sun flooded the green, his room would be ablaze with light, which never seemed enough. He had Aladdin lamps without their shades, and they were almost always on so that, as he said, he should be able to see everything, even the sins that were hiding under every speck of dirt.

  This was his domain, and its main difference, I think, from rooms or the sala of most houses I have been to was not its brightness. He had this diploma—a fine document from his college in a gilt frame, with silver lettering in Latin and a pompous seal. All the diplomas I had seen in our town were in living rooms, prominently displayed for everyone to see.

  “Diplomas are turds,” he said, and his hung right in front of the toilet bowl in his closet.

  His room, as I have said, was always open, and I often wandered in and out, poked among his things, his paints and brushes, his sketches of nudes, and heaps and heaps of old magazines, pieces of string, bits of glass, old bottles, all of which he said he would shape into living and breathing objects.

  Of all his paintings, it was his portrait of Don Vicente that intrigued me most, for he had, more than with any other, enjoyed doing it. As the youngest, he always spoke to Father and all those older than him with some diffidence, but he cast aside the familial hierarchy when he spoke about Don Vicente. “It is time you end your servitude to him,” he had said. “What do you want a hacienda as big as his for? You will be getting many problems, and in the end you will not even be able to enjoy the simplest food that the farmers have.”

  Father chose to ignore tirades such as these, reminding Cousin Marcelo that he did not know much about the mundane ways of the world, because as an artist he was confined to the ozone regions of the mind. It was, of course, a rebuttal that Cousin Marcelo did not accept, for he felt he was closer than most to reality, to people, and to the tune of living.

  “That is what an artist is,” he said, defining himself.

  One warm April afternoon, a delegation of the town’s civic leaders had come to the house seeking Father’s approval for a project that would endear them all to Don Vicente. A case of sarsaparilla, a bottle of gin, and cracked ice had enlivened the discussion, which centered on the forthcoming celebration of the town fiesta. It was Mr. Alafriz, the councilor from the market district, who suggested that, aside from crowning the fiesta queen, Don Vicente should also be honored with a statue, so that “he would look toward the town with kindlier eyes.”

  In the haze of Alhambra smoke and the torpor of Fundador, Cousin Marcelo barged in and bellowed, “You will do no such thing.”

  All eyes turned to him. His face visibly red with embarrassment, Father said, “Explain, Celo.”

  “And who would do the statue of Don Vicente? Would you be able to get someone bright enough to chisel out all the secret recesses of his personality? Show all the different layers and folds of his fat and his character? And where will you get the mountain of marble, not just for the shape of his corpulent body but for the immensity of his greed? You will insult the memory of Rizal by building this man a monument. Images of stone can only be for beings like Mabini, Bonifacio, Rizal. For someone like Don Vicente, you need something different, something that is equal to his rapacity.”

  “What are you thinking of?” Father asked.

  “You don’t have to spend. And he can take it with him if he wants to.”

  “Please tell us what it is,” Councilor Alafriz said.

  “I will paint his portrait,” Cousin Marcelo said.

  The politicians could not afford to insult Cousin Marcelo; he was Father’s brother, he was far more educated than all of them put together. There were hesitant murmurs, but in the end they agreed, convinced by the most practical of reasons—that the portrait would not cost them one centavo.

  For one whole week, Cousin
Marcelo labored in his room, which, for once, was locked. When Mr. Alafriz checked on him afterward, he always assured the councillor that the portrait would be finished on time. The great day came, but Don Vicente was not able to come to the fiesta; his piles had gotten worse, and he had to go through surgery. The first time I saw the portrait, I wondered why it was done the way it was—the blobs of black, the smouldering face—and to my question, Cousin Marcelo had grinned: “Just picture Don Vicente in your mind, what you feel about him, what you think he is, and there you have it.”

  His second chance to be of use to the town as an artist came when Padre Andong rebuilt the church. Cousin Marcelo said he would do murals for it, to depict God as he saw Him—not a just God but a vengeful one. I suppose that if Padre Andong had lived longer, he would have acceded to Cousin Marcelo’s services.

  There is something about a new church that attracts people and bids them welcome. They wander in, their eyes go over the newly painted walls, the shiny altar still flavored with the smell of mortar. Then they pray a little and make the wish, which is supposed to come true sooner or later because it was made during their first visit to the church.

  I am sure that, since then, many strangers have entered the new church more in the spirit of adventure than to commune with their faith. Built of hollow blocks with a new tin roof, it adjoins a convent with hardwood panels and a brick porch.

  We never had an old venerable church such as those moss-covered edifices farther north, because our church—like our town—is new. The old church had been a ramshackle building that, somehow, was not refurbished even at the time when Rosales was at the height of its prosperity as the rice-trading center of eastern Pangasinan. But it had a quiet and simple atmosphere, and any man who wanted peace could enter and never bother asking if it was Protestant, Aglipayan, or Seventh-Day Adventist.

  The façade was a triangle mounted by a white cross. The churchyard was plain carabao grass, with a gravel path lined with rosal. The floor of the church was plain cement, rough and uneven in parts. A skeleton of a belfry was attached to one side of the church, and it shook every time we climbed it to toll the Angelus, the elevation of the host, or the arrival of the dead. A mango tree squatted by the belfry, and on the days that we had nothing to do, we often climbed it, roosted on its branches, and told fool stories.