Don Vicente

by F. Sionil Jose

  As he stood in the heat of day, he saw before him the barren land. How lonely and empty Sipnget had become—a few buri palms, the bamboo brakes that lined the riverbank, the green puffs of acacia, rows of broken buri-palm trunks left to rot near the riverbank, the water shining in the sun, the broad stony island, and the stubborn reeds, jutting above the water with their catch of moss and water lilies.

  Sipnget as it used to be was gone—the store below the dike, the house where he was born, where he had heard the halting screech of his mother’s scolding and the soothing remonstrances of an old man. An infernal machine had thundered past Sipnget, leveled the trees and the palms, and furrowed the land into a flat and ugly wound. In a moment of doubt and faltering he retraced his steps—no, he was not wrong, he was in Sipnget, but gone were all the little things that had enmeshed themselves with his life. How could he bring back the village that he knew—blow life upon a desert of brown, so that it might bloom with the old and familiar scents? He ran down the dike, away from the vanishing traces of the path. A sprout of grass caught his foot, and he stumbled on the hard plowed earth. He picked himself up, cursing, shaking the clod that dug into his palms. He hurried to where he knew the first house used to stand. When he reached the place he stooped and examined the ground. Curled up with the dry, upturned soil were cinders and white-bleached roots of acacias and buri palms, like maggots feasting on his past.

  All of them in the house in Rosales, including his dear ailing father—surely they must have known what had happened to the village. He had not asked any of them or even told them that he was coming, but they should have told him. On the day he arrived he had asked Santos how it was in Sipnget, and the short, work-ridden caretaker had turned away and—as if he never heard the question—left. Luis was not close to any of his father’s workers, not even to Simeon, who had taken him from Sipnget to this big red house, and to the servants, who greeted him politely. He had taken for granted that the countryside—for all its being stirred by the proselytizing of the Huks—would be unchanged, that the village would be where it always had been, the end of dreams. Surely, someone in Rosales must have known that Sipnget was gone. But why did nobody tell him?

  He raised his eyes to the sun that singed the heavens, and he was about to turn and go back to the dike when, from the direction of the river, behind the large prostrate trunks of buri palms, he saw a man rise.

  “Hoy!” He waved his hands.

  The figure bobbed up, and he caught a glimpse of an old, anonymous face, but the man bent down again and was hidden behind the trunk. Only his back and the brim of his wide buri hat rose intermittently. He seemed to be busy, rising and stooping behind the trunk.

  Luis ran toward the man and in a leap perched himself atop the trunk. Below him the man was tying together burned planks of wood with black, sooty wire. More planks of burned wood were scattered nearby.

  “What’s happened? Did the whole village burn down?” he asked.

  The man went on with his work, his face hidden by the wide brim of his hat, his blackened hands struggling clumsily with the wire.

  “Are you deaf?”

  “I heard,” the man said, still without looking at Luis.

  “Tell me, where are the people? How did this happen?”

  The man did not speak. Luis descended from atop the trunk and bent down a little. The face was gaunt, the eyes tired, the chin withered, and the forehead wrinkled. Recognition came: “Tio Joven!”

  The man raised the bundle of wood and stood it on one end. Picking up a piece from the pile, he rammed it into the middle of the bundle and hammered it, so that the bundle would tighten.

  “Luis, the grandson of Ipe.” Luis spoke in haste. “You know me, Tio Joven.”

  The man paused and dropped the piece of wood that he used as a club. He squinted at Luis. Then he picked up his club again and pounded at the plank. “Why did you come here?” he asked without pausing in his work.

  Yes, why did I come here—I who had wanted to escape from this land, to blot from my mind the faces of my people? “That’s a foolish question,” Luis said simply.

  Tio Joven peered at him again, but there was no apparent recognition in his eyes. He shook the bundle and tested its tightness. “People change,” he said. “Many come here, asking all sorts of questions—and what can I say when I am just here to gather wood for my stove?”

  The man stopped and, lifting the bundle to his shoulder, started to walk away. Luis held the man’s load and dragged it down. Holding him by the shoulders, Luis shook the man viciously. “My mother and my grandfather and my brother—where are they?” he cried.

  The old man shook off his hold and backed away. For a moment Luis expected him to draw the bolo at his waist, but the man did not. In Tio Joven’s eyes Luis saw no hatred and no fear—only that resignation of old people who have grown tired of living.

  “What do you want me to say?” the old man finally asked, barely raising his voice above a whisper, his eyes throwing glances around him, as if he were afraid that among the dead trunks of palms, in the hot harsh day, someone was listening to the horrendous secret that he was about to tell. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, taking off his wide-brimmed hat and fanning himself. His eyes had grown warm. “It’s all too late now.”

  Luis felt panic pounding his chest. “My mother,” he said. “Where are they? Can’t you tell me?”

  Tio Joven put on his hat and wiped his hands against his faded trousers. “Nena—your mother—she is alive, but your grandfather is dead—and so are many others.”

  Luis could not believe what he heard. “No!” he cried, and although fear, anger, and sorrow claimed him, no tears welled in his eyes. There was instead this choking weight that pressed upon his chest. “Only a few months ago …” He wanted to say that he had been here, but he realized immediately that he had quite forgotten the old folks, that he had not written to his mother at all or attended to her needs, that he had shut her and his grandfather conveniently out of his mind.

  “My mother, where can I find her?”

  The old man shook his head. “After it happened we did not really know who was alive and who was not. After a week your mother came to where we had evacuated. She was hungry and we fed her. She was dirty and we gave her some clothes. She would go to every man and say, ‘Victor—or Luis—you must go home now.’ Every young man was Luis or Victor. She had nothing else. Her eyes were red from crying. She carried a small bundle, which she used as a pillow. It contained nothing but old newspapers and letters. She would not part with it. She left at night, so no one noticed her departure. That was the last time we saw her.”

  “Where could she be now? Where can I find her?”

  Tio Joven looked far away. “Ask the wind,” he said. “She goes where the wind wills. She was in Rosales, I have heard—in the market, searching. She does not bother anyone. People are kind—they will always give her food, clothing, and a roof over her head.”

  After a while, Luis asked, “Tio Joven, how did it start, how did it happen?”

  “I do not know,” the old man said, “but your grandfather, he was among the first to fall. He was feeding the hogs, I think. Two days later—the fires hadn’t completely died down and the posts of the houses were still smoking—the dead were still there, where the bullets had found them.”

  Luis covered his face with his hands and leaned on the buri trunk, his knees watery and shaking. “Only a few months ago—” he said bitterly.

  “Time is swift.” The old man sighed. “Sometimes we don’t notice it anymore.”

  “Tell me what happened?”

  “You never heard about it in the city, not even from your father?” Luis did not speak.

  “Three months ago, or less,” Tio Joven said, sitting on the bundle and fanning himself again with his hat. “It is not very clear to me now. Ask those who are in town. They know better.”

  Luis leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  “But what use is the
truth now?”

  Luis turned away. “I have to know,” he said quietly.

  Tio Joven bent over, rested his elbows on his knees, his chin on his palms. “It’s very hazy now,” he said, looking at the yellowish blades of grass struggling up from where he had picked up the bundled pieces of wood, “but that afternoon—how can one forget it? The harvest in November was good. Your tia was planning to butcher a pig.” He turned to Luis and smiled.

  “It was sunset. I was coming up the river, where I had lifted the fish traps. It was a poor catch. I had gone up the gully when the shooting started. I could hear the bullets whistling. I stopped, then I saw the people, the women and the children, running toward the river. I went back and fled to the delta with them, and we hid in the high grass. From there we saw the village go up in fire—all through the night. Then, before dawn, we started looking around for the others in the delta. I called my wife’s name, but she was not among those who escaped.” The old man’s face was inscrutable. His eyes had long been dried of tears, and the story he told had long numbed his senses to grief.

  “Why did it happen?” Luis asked.

  Tio Joven bit his lower lip and spat. “I do not know—how will I know? They came searching for us in Aguray—in the delta to which we had fled. The constabulary soldiers and Don Vicente’s civilian guards—they said that our village was evil, that there were Huks among us, and that they would continue to follow us. We returned here—some of us. We saw for the first time what had happened, and we knew we couldn’t stay here anymore. A few days afterward the tractors came.”

  Luis stood up. Around him the newly plowed earth was waiting for rain and seed. “Grandfather,” he asked, “where was he buried?”

  The old man pointed to the turn of the river. “There are twenty of them there.” The old man rose, heaving his load on his shoulders. Luis walked behind him.

  “I am now in Aguray, too. That’s farther up the river—if you remember. There’s not much to eat there, and we cannot tell when we will have to leave. When the rains come we won’t know how the floodwaters will turn. The delta may be flooded, and all the houses of reed and bamboo that we have built will be washed away. They haven’t come down to drive us away. Maybe we will go to Manila if we can raise the transport money. We can try our luck there.”

  Luis took his wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed them to the old man. The old man shook his head, but Luis tucked the bills into the old man’s shirt pocket just the same. “Thank you, thank you,” the old man said. “You will be going back to Manila? I hear it is very peaceful there.”

  Luis did not answer.

  “We do talk about you sometimes,” the old man said finally, “that you will be getting married. You will live in Rosales, of course?”

  Luis did not want to talk about himself. “Are all the others in Aguray, too?” he asked.

  “About five families,” Tio Joven said, shaking his head. “Life there is difficult. There are no fish in the river. We have planted some peanuts and watermelons—seeds that we got from the farmers there, who wanted to help us. We need many things. See, I come this far for firewood.” They walked with difficulty, stumbling over dry chunks of earth and deep furrows. The old man stopped before a thicket of shrubs near the riverbank. “Behind this,” he said.

  Before the mound of earth Tio Joven flung down his load and wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “There are twenty here—we counted them, and we know all of them.”

  Luis stood before the swell, his arms limp at his sides. Beyond, the river, the sparse growth of weeds motionless on its banks. Above, a smoky blue sky and the sun, which ravaged everything. I see them all before me now, all who have trusted me because I was one of them. This is my truth, and it would have been simpler if I were ignorant of it and could not trace myself to it. Here I am, the chief mourner, but I cannot cry. I see an ancient and craggy face and eyes that have also seen travail I will never witness. Grandfather—if you are here now, I will hold your hand to my brow and tell you that the world is evil and that not even love such as mine matters anymore. And Mother, you who cared for me simply, where are you? What do I have to offer you? You are here around me—alive as the air is alive and kind as the land that will continue to nurture the seed.

  “Tell me, Tio,” he asked without looking at the old man, who now squatted beside him and was starting to pull the strands of grass that had sprouted at the base of the grave. “Who buried them here?”

  The old man kept at the grass. “Who else but we? We could have buried them earlier, but we were all afraid to go to the village. When we finally went, they were lying in the ashes, their bodies black and bloated. They all looked the same, and you wouldn’t know them if you had not been with them all your life. They left them there—they were not even decent enough to bury them after they had killed them. We had to gather them, each one, carefully, so that they would not fall apart. We didn’t want them eaten by dogs—dogs, do you realize that?” His voice had become an ugly screech. “Dogs,” he was saying, again and again, in futile anger. “They will pay for this. Dogs. Dogs!”

  A warm whiff of wind swept the grass that sprouted from the mound. The grass was yellowish green unlike the grass that covered the dike and the riverbank. Between the blades, shoots were breaking through the soil, straight and firm and sharp. Luis bent down and scooped a handful of earth, which he crushed and let trickle through his fingers.

  “I’ll come here again,” he promised.

  “What for?” the old man asked. “We buried them properly. There was no priest—we could not even afford that—but we prayed for all of them.”

  “I’ll come again,” Luis said, although the bleak truth was that there was no sense in returning.

  Tio Joven bent down and pitched the bundle on his shoulders. Luis watched him do this, and his eyes followed flakes of ash and charcoal as they fell to the ground. “Maybe I will return, too,” the old man said. “There is still some firewood I can get.” He struggled toward the river and disappeared down the gully.

  Luis turned his back to the sun, and his shadow lay like a stub on the ground. A thousand curses stirred violently in his mind, like a pack of starved dogs straining at their leashes. Not many in Manila would believe him if he told them what had happened in Sipnget. His friends would say: Luis, this is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. However, he would tell them the truth.

  The journey was longer now. The dream is over, vanished like the aimless drift of smoke, like the echo of a gun. It was here on this hallowed land, now violated, where I saw the dream in my grandfather’s eyes, in the anger that fed his soul and stirred his withered muscles. We came from the delta one afternoon, on our shoulders old jute sacks half filled with turnips that we had dug. I was tired, and so were he and Victor. We were all gasping as we went up the gully that the carabaos had widened as they trampled their way to the river. I gripped his hand and helped him up. We were to follow the dike home. On the dike’s broad back Grandfather paused to catch his breath. We laid our sacks down, and when he had regained his breath Grandfather turned to us and said: If I had my way—and a smile kindled in his face—you both would not be here today, looking for something to fill the supper pot.

  I told him that I had no complaints. He stood his full height, his tattered trousers pressed close to his bones by a wind that sprang from across the fields, and Vic and I, we reached no higher than his chest. He pointed to the distance and said hoarsely: See that dalipawen tree there, I planted that like a monument. See how green its leaves—but the tree does not matter, for the markers that are important are those of stone, which the rich man has studded the land with.

  With a slow sweep of his hand he traced the curve of the river, which gleamed in the sun, and said: All this—up to the river—was ours, because we cleared it.

  My father’s men intruded upon Sipnget after that and told this defeated man—my grandfather—long before I was born, even before my mother’s time—that everything he
had cleared, even the lot where his house stood, belonged not to him but to the man who lived in the big red house in Rosales. Like all the farmers in the village who had clawed their farms out of the wilderness, this man found himself shackled to this land. Times when the stars and the full moon’s halo augured a bountiful harvest, times when the river brimmed with fish—these were forgotten. The old people died or left, their homes were swept by typhoons or were torn apart by inheritors, but the big red house withstood all vicissitudes. If they got sick or a child was born, if they married and needed money, to the big red house they went. Debt piled upon debt, and one day Grandfather, no longer able to pay, sent his only daughter to serve in the house, and she, who they said was as beautiful as the morning star, was lost forever to Sipnget.