What did your father say? his mother asked suddenly. She had stopped pedaling and the machine was quiet.
He asked me if I wanted to live with him, Luis said.
She dropped the colored piece of cloth she was holding and folded her hands at the wooden edge of the machine. What did you tell him?
I said I would ask you first, Mother.
She picked up the piece of cloth and started working on it again. You must go with him, she said; you are going to live with him from now on.
Luis held his breath, not wanting to believe, not wanting to listen to what she had said. You don’t mean that, Mother! he cried.
Her voice was firm but disconsolate: You—you have to go to high school and then to college, so that you will not be in want, and someday, when you are older, I hope that you will be kind—much kinder than he—and not wreck the life of one hapless woman.
Mother!
Yes, she said, be kind.
He could not contain his grief anymore. You never wanted me, because I am not like Vic!
She dropped the piece of cloth she was working on and pointed a thimbled finger at him. Do you want to rot here? she asked softly. No, my Luis, you must go, not only because it is your fate but because I want you to. Vic does not have a similar choice, so he will stay.
Luis walked to the open window. In the near distance, the light in Tio Joven’s store still burned, and among the men talking was the hunched, unmistakable form of his grandfather. Yes, Luis was different. His classmates called Vic and him “coffee and milk,” and although the jesting did hurt at first, he learned to bear it. After all, his mother loved them both in a way that blunted all barbs. He had put the jumbled pieces together and understood—it was he, not Vic, who had sprung from muddied springs.
His earliest memories were confused and inchoate; he did know, however, that before he was born, his mother had married a man from their own village and from this union Vic was born. But that faceless “father” had died before he could remember, and Vic and Luis grew up without knowing what a father was, although they did know the affinity that a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins to the third degree had blessed them with, and most of all, they knew one mother’s love.
From the very beginning, too, Luis knew that he was not really from Sipnget and that in time, as Vic had guessed, he would leave. They were in the river then, hurling stones across the broad sweep of water with a sling, diving for pine splinters, which they would dry in the sun and use as kindling wood. They were resting on the broad stones at the riverbank, and after some silence Vic had said: Manong, if you go there, would you still come here and gather this wood with me?
Luis had answered with conviction: No—he would not leave Sipnget. But he did not know then what was to come, the point where their paths would separate, and there would be more water buffalos to bathe, eggplant and tomato plots to work on, mudfish to catch, and sweet corn to roast. There would be more mornings with martins singing in the buri palms.
Now, with a pang of sadness, Luis accepted his being “milk,” his being bangus—Get out of the sun, puraw, or you will become black like Victor; Bangus, go home and help in the kitchen, we will do the plowing! How they had patronized him! He was their kind, their property, the village emblem, and when he reached the age of puberty all the girls would chase him and his mother would watch over him, as if he were a foolish virgin. Now everything would be changed.
I’ll go tomorrow then, Mother, he said.
Tomorrow? his mother asked incredulously.
Yes, Father wants to bring me to Manila with him.
Is that all he said?
He looked long at her and remembered how his father had laid his heavy hand on his shoulder. How strange it felt—and stranger his voice when he said: I will take care of you.
He said he would take care of me, Mother.
But she was no longer looking at him. A softness came over her careworn face. Did she love him still, did she want to know more about him, the years he never came to call although he was near, and if they should meet again, how would she—this wasted, dearly loved woman—greet him?
He went to the little room and lay beside Vic, who moved over to give him space. He pressed his cheek against the caseless pillow, and then came this feeling of wanting to shout until the lungs were dry and the parched throat ached with the desire to curse the red house, to curse earth and heaven and everyone capable of perfidy.
The sewing machine whirred, then was silent. He heard his mother walk lightly and approach him, and from the corner of his eye he could see her bend over him, see her wan and wasted face as she tenderly drew the torn Ilokano blanket over his legs.
He turned and whispered: Leave me, Mother.
She cringed, the ancient hurt—as when he asked her where his father was, as when she wiped the blood off his lips—now written on her face. He was not angry with her but with himself. Softly, so as not to wake Vic, he repeated: Mother, leave me.
The path was wider now. Beyond the river dike, the buri palms were like huge sentinels watching over the land. Luis went up to the dike. Below, Sipnget was not yet asleep. The amarillo lights of a dozen kerosene lamps still shone from the windows. He ran down the incline, and the growl of a dog, the crowing of cocks, and the low mooing of carabaos came to him. He walked hurriedly and entered the grove of kapok and madre de cacao trees that grew along the path. He passed the barrio school that was roofed with tin, its front gate barricaded for the vacation so that goats and the work animals would not stray in. The Coleman lamp in the village store blazed and bathed with cool bluish light the men seated on the bamboo benches below the grass marquee.
Somebody called his name: “Luis! Luisss!” He recognized Tio Joven’s raspy voice, and he waved and went on.
He was back in the familiar haunts of childhood, the dying grass and the old hay. Although it was dark, he could feel that the village had not changed. His mother’s house was finally before him. How small it really was—how could it have contained four people? Although he expected it, the sound of the sewing machine surprised him. He pushed the bamboo gate and went up the ladder. The rungs creaked and the whirring of the sewing machine stopped.
“Who’s there?” It was his mother’s thin voice.
Luis did not answer. Came the drag of bare feet on the bamboo floor, the lamp throwing his mother’s shadow on the buri walls, then she stood before him, thinner and shabbier than she was the last time he had seen her. For an instant she just stood by the door, shading her eyes with her palm, regarding him with perplexed eyes. He stepped forward, held the bony hand, and kissed it. She sobbed then, and the lamp quivered in her hand. “Luis, my Luis,” she whispered, clinging to him.
He felt ill at ease and he gently broke away. By the window his grandfather, who was weaving fishnets, stood up and hobbled to them. “Must you welcome your son with tears?” he asked. Luis took the old man’s gnarled hand and kissed it, too. His mother smiled, and placing an arm around his waist, she drew Luis to the narrow sala cluttered with pieces of cloth. She raised the lamp to the blackened iron hook dangling from the rafters, and in the poor light she looked at him again. “You are so tall, much more than I expected—and so handsome!” she sighed. She wiped her eyes with the frayed hem of her skirt and smiled.
The old man asked Luis if he had already eaten. “There is half a roasted catfish in the larder,” he said. “I caught it this morning. I knew we would have a visitor.”
He could not say no to his mother, who dragged him to the kitchen and set the low dining table. The old man picked up a wooden stool from a corner piled with bamboo fish traps and torn nets and set it before the table. “We don’t have anything better,” his mother said. She placed before him a tin plate with cold chunks of rice and fish—blackened and stiff—and salt. Luis dipped his hand into the shallow coconut-water bowl, and cupping the rice into small balls, he ate, using his hand. The rice was dry and pasty, the fish tasted bitter and burnt. He did not have an appet
ite, but he could not refuse.
They returned to the sala when he was through, his mother carrying the lamp back to its hook.
Then he remembered. “And where is Vic?” he asked no one in particular.
His mother turned away. “I haven’t seen Victor for more than three months now, Luis,” she said. “When he left he said he would join a trucking company, carry rice from Cagayan and perhaps go to school, to college, like you. I am sure he is well, although he has not written or visited us.”
“He came to me last year,” Luis said. “He had a job, but I could see that he needed clothes and money. I gave him some.”
“Did he ever come to see you again?” his mother asked.
Luis shook his head. He would have wanted to go about the fields and perhaps, with Vic, swim in the Agno, this time fully provisioned, not with only rice and a cake of buri-sap sugar, as it was when they were young. Or they could drive to the foothills to hunt the elusive wild doves, although that would be dangerous now, for the Huks were supposed to be hiding in the deep folds of those hills. Vic had always known the secrets of the land and was always a better hiker. Luis had envied his brother for the stamina and knowledge he had that could be put to use in the country, where book learning would not catch the mudfish or trap the crab. Luis was certain that wherever he was, Vic was well. He could have helped him if Vic only asked, but Vic did not even acknowledge the books that Luis had sent him, which were nowhere in the house. How Vic had changed—from a docile younger brother into someone self-willed and strong.
Luis took off his shoes and sat on the floor. His mother sat on a stool that he had made years back as a project for his “industrial work” in school. The old man returned to his perch by the window, the bamboo shuttle now idle in his hand.
“What are you doing now, son, aside from studying?” his mother asked.
“I am now working, Mother,” he said. “It is in a newspaper office, and it is very tiring.”
“My poor Luis! I hope that you are never in need—”
“Father gives me more than enough,” he assured her. “And with my work, I now have a little all my own.” He took his wallet out.
“Don’t,” she said, pride in her voice. “Your grandfather—we make enough to live on, and you know our needs are few.”
“Just the same,” he said, thrusting the bills into the pocket of her skirt; she made an attempt to take them out, but he held her hand firmly, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “Mother,” he said with emotion, “please—it is my own money now, and I would like to give it to you.”
Her eyes shone, and after a while she asked how it was with him, if he had problems. And he told them in a rambling manner how he was not able to finish college and that not having a college degree was not important anymore. He spoke of how he had quarreled with his father rector, murmuring, “I defied them all, I defied them all,” and when the anger evoked by memory died away, he spoke of the trips he had taken, to Hong Kong and the Visayas, the many friends he had made, many of them writers and poets. They sat there, drinking in every word. And looking at them enthralled by his presence, his talk, it suddenly occurred to Luis how unjust he had been to them, how recreant. It is a sham—the thought rankled him; how can I ever tell them that I have told my friends my mother is dead, that Sipnget does not exist, nor Vic and the past that we shared? God—he closed his eyes briefly and pondered his shame—what has warped me?
“I am so happy, Luis,” his mother was saying, “I am so happy …”
He sidled close to her and held her hand; her palm was calloused, and a wave of guilt swept over him again. In their moments of need, which were many, he had helped them little. His work and his friends were not that much of a distraction; he had simply forgotten them, and realizing this, he now saw the futility of his coming here, the hypocrisy of it all, but he said without conviction, “I need you. I am so far away, and I cannot come here as often as I want. I will just send you money then, and write to you more often …”
They were silent.
“What is it that you need? Mother, is there any way you can come and see me in Manila, too? I’d like to give you as much of my own money as I can. The little that you have saved, what are you doing with it?”
The old man stirred and looked at his daughter. “Tell him, Nena,” he said.
“What we saved,” his mother said, “we gave to our leaders. You don’t know who they are, but you must know now. Someday, son, we will get back the land your grandfather lost. Then you won’t have to worry about sending us money.”
“Who are these leaders?” His interest was aroused.
“Fine men,” his mother said, “and it won’t be long now before we will succeed. You will see.”
“You may be fooled again—if you are not careful,” he warned them.
“Who knows?” the old man asked, rising from his seat. He inserted the shuttle into a loose fold of the buri wall, lighted his pipe from the lamp, and sat on the floor. “The drowning man clutches at the water lily, hoping that a leaf will save him. Maybe it is the same with us, but this time we are holding on to something bigger—a sturdy raft, not a leaf.”
Luis walked to the window. The night was still, and he could hear the river rushing through the shallows.
“Soon, life here won’t be all darkness,” the old man mused. “We have the right leaders now, Luis—not the way it was.”
“Don’t believe everything your grandfather says,” his mother said. She was spreading the sleeping mat on the bamboo floor. “But something has to be done. Children are born and there is not enough food for them—and you know why.”
This, then, was what they hankered for. How elemental their needs and how little did he heed them. All that he remembered was the greenness of leaves, the taunting face of his father, who by one snap of the finger could dispossess them. Where, then, lay their hope and salvation from years of drudgery? His grandfather’s words came again: “Our leaders are different now. They are not after money. We hold meetings and they tell us how we have been slaves, not just here but in other places, other countries. The only strength we have is in our numbers—the poor are much more numerous than the rich. And someday we will triumph.”
The old man rambled on, but Luis was no longer listening. The sounds of evening, the howling of a dog, and the stray wisps of laughter in Tio Joven’s store came to him.
His mother tugged at his arm. “You will sleep here—in the sipi, where Vic and you used to sleep?”
He shook his head. “I have to go back, Mother.”
“So it must be,” the old man said. “Don’t hold Luis back. I think he belongs there now.”
“I’d like to stay,” Luis said, avoiding the old man’s eyes, “but I have to leave early tomorrow.”
“So soon?” his mother asked. “I thought you would stay here for the vacation.”
“My work, Mother,” he said simply.
They accompanied him down the path, beyond the squat cogon houses. The store was being closed when they passed, and his Tio Joven called out to him again, asking when he would come back, and Luis shouted, “Soon! Surely!”
They paused at the foot of the dike, and they would have talked some more but he bade them good night, and after kissing their hands, he went up the path.
The walk back to the camino, where Simeon waited, seemed unusually long. It was all wrong—his coming here, his going back to Rosales, to a father as impersonal as his caryatids with archaic smiles.
They drove back in silence. Only when the car purred up the driveway did Luis speak. “We go back to the city tomorrow,” he told his driver.
Simeon turned to his master: “So soon, Apo? But we have just gotten here.”
He did not have to explain, but he did. “I have work to do,” he said lamely. “In my kind of work, Simeon, one does not have vacations.” Then his tone became jocular: “Don’t you want to go back to your wife? From the looks of it, you would rather be away from her!”
/> Trining was in his room, reading the manuscripts in his portfolio. “I didn’t misplace any of these,” she said, turning away from the writing table. “I was waiting. I’m anxious to find out.”
Luis sighed. He removed his shoes and dragged a chair to the door that opened to the azotea, where a breeze and the scent of the garden flowed in. Trining followed him and caressed his nape. “You stayed quite a long time,” she said. “I was beginning to worry.”
“Nothing will happen to me.” He held her, pressing her to him. “Do you think the Huks are all over the place? Even if they are, they know who I am. What if I didn’t return?”
The girl did not speak.
“We had so many things to talk about. After all—all these years …” He rose, looking into her eyes, soft and waiting. “This you won’t tell Father,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow. In the afternoon, when he will be napping.”
Her reaction was quick. She drew away. “No,” she cried. “You can’t. You said we would stay here two weeks—or even a month!”
He held her shoulders and said solemnly, “Mr. Dantes’s silver anniversary, Trining …”
She brushed him away. “You are lying,” she flung at him. “At least you can be frank with me. I’ve known you all my life, Luis. What secret is there between us?”
But how can I tell her, how can I say that I am now a stranger among my own people? “You won’t understand,” he said softly. “You just won’t understand.”
“But I do,” she flared again. She crossed the room and stepped out into the azotea. Above, in the cloudless sky, the stars were luminous. He followed her to the ledge. She turned to him. “I won’t tell him, of course, if that is what you want, but when he learns that you have gone without telling him he will be very hurt. And what will I tell him then? Will I lie for you again?”
He nodded.
“Will I tell him that you did not want to hurt him by leaving so soon? The Dantes party is important, and Ester invited me, too. But this is not the reason. What you really feel is nothing but loathing for this house, for where you came from. Luis, we must learn to live with all this—you and I. I am alone, too, and I have no one but Tio and you now. All the way home I was thinking of the wonderful vacation we would have—how we would go to the river and swim, perhaps. You don’t know how it is to be shut up here or in that convent school.”
Don Vicente Page 24
