I remembered then that he was a little deaf, but he must have known I was near, for he spoke without looking at me: “Listen, boy.”
I held his hand.
“Listen, boy, listen,” he repeated in a soft, tremulous voice.
“What is it, Grandfather?” I asked, hearing nothing.
“Listen,” he repeated severely.
Across the silent fields where the farmers’ homes were huddled a dog howled. The evening wind whimpered in the camachile saplings, a carabao snorted. Somewhere in the shaggy grass that covered the dikes, cicadas were chirping, and farther down, the river gurgled as it meandered in its course.
“I hear only the river, a dog, the wind, and insects,” I said.
It seemed as if his thoughts were far, far away.
“The bells, boy,” he said, a glow on his face bright as happiness, clear as morning. “The bells are ringing.”
I remembered again the legend of the bells, how men like Grandfather had defied time and circumstance, lived through the years crowned with bliss and fortune, because, once on a Christmas night, they heard the bells. And here was this old man, who had always said this was not so, straining his old deaf ears listening, crying.
I looked at his face again, at the drooping eyelids, at the thin lips mumbling a prayer, perhaps, and it occurred to me that he no longer belonged to my time. He had taken on a countenance that struck me with awe. In the next instant, I drew away from him and slowly turned and ran across the new hay, over the irrigation ditches, down the incline, beyond the towering palms standing like hooded sentinels of darkness, all the way to Carmay in the Christmas night. I went breathlessly up to the old man’s house, my heart thundering in my chest, and cuddled among the pillows in his damp room, not wanting to return, cursing myself for not hearing anything and, most of all, for not believing what the old man said he heard.
When Christmas morning broke over Carmay, a neighbor and I went where Grandfather and I camped in the night. I had expected the old man to be angry with me for having left him.
I told no one about what Grandfather said he heard, not even the doctor who declared that Grandfather, whom we found lying serenely on the sled with an angelic smile on his face, had finally died of old age.
CHAPTER
6
After Grandfather’s death, Father asked Tio Benito if he wanted to live in Carmay, but my uncle was too comfortable in his new residence to care for the virtues of the village. Before the elements could claim Grandfather’s house, Father had it torn apart, and all its good planks of wood were brought to Rosales. The other materials—the galvanized-iron sheets, sash windows, and wooden sidings, even the kitchen utensils—were given by Father to his tenants.
The wooden shed, which was full, he gave to a tenant family that had suffered a disaster that year; while the woman of the house was preparing charcoal, some sparks flew and their house burned down. They were so poor that they would have slept on the ground and without a roof had not Father taken pity on them and given them the woodshed.
I remember this family very well, particularly Ludovico, the son. Among the many farmer boys whom I knew, Ludovico alone dared show me his true feelings and speak to me in anger, as if I were no more than a worthless younger brother.
But then, Ludovico’s anger was not the long, smouldering kind. The moment he had given vent to his feelings, he was again his old likeable self. He was a tall, gangling youth with eyes that gave the impression he was sleepy all the time, but those eyes became instantly alive the moment he spoke. He seldom talked, though, and when he did, he seemed always to be groping for the proper words to say.
He was dark like most of the other barrio boys who had no education except the practical kind that one absorbed after knowing hunger quite as well as the endless drudgery that went with being a tenant. He had only a pair of pants—blue denims, well worn, faded at the knees and the buttocks—which he washed himself and ironed with such consuming care, as if it were a de hilo suit.
Ludovico came to the house on a Sunday after the first mass was said. He accompanied his mother, Feliza—a thin little woman who always spoke in a whisper, whose face was as pale as a banana stalk. Her wide bamboo basket was usually filled with vegetables—sweet-potato tops, bamboo shoots, eggplants, greens that she could not have sold for much, because in Rosales vegetables are cheap and could be had for the asking. She would give some of the vegetables to Sepa, for these were raised on Father’s farm, and by some unwritten law, a part of such harvest belonged to us.
Feliza was very industrious—this much could be seen in the way she swept the storehouse or the yard so thoroughly whenever Father asked her.
Ludovico always carried the firewood—dried acacia or dalipawen branches on a pliant pole balanced across his shoulder. One bundle was for us, and the other was for sale in the public market.
They always came barefoot, and their feet were thick and black with mud or dust depending on the season. Like most of the tenants in Carmay, Ludovico would have probably grown to a venerable old age without having known how it was to wear shoes. I would ask them to come up to the house for a while, but like the other tenants, they would refuse with plenty of head-shaking. They would look bashfully at their dirty feet and still decline to come up to the house even after they had gone to the artesian well below the kitchen to wash.
After Ludovico had stacked the firewood in the woodshed and carried the other bundle to market, he would return to the house and wait in the yard while his mother sold the greens and the extra firewood.
Feliza would return at about eleven, her face damp with sweat. With the little money she had made from the vegetables, she would have bought a bottle of kerosene, salted fish wrapped in dried banana leaves, sometimes a bundle of rice cakes, laundry soap, and cheap little items from the Chinese stores that occupied Father’s building along the main street.
They would not depart until Father had acknowledged their presence, not by talking with them as they stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs but by simply waving his hand in their direction and occasionally inquiring how things were in Carmay.
It was while waiting for his mother that Ludovico and I became friends. I would often join him on the stone bench in the shade of the balete tree. He was never voluble; he would shift his position when cramped, or sometimes he would venture into the graveled street and loiter there.
I asked him once if he had gone to school.
He had reached the third grade, he said, his face aglow as if reaching the third grade and being able to write one’s name were an achievement.
During the harvest season, I would get permission to go to Carmay regularly with Old David. The old servant would leave me in Ludovico’s care, and Ludovico would lift me and carry me around on his shoulders while I held on to his short, dry hair.
One day, we went to gather camachile fruits along the provincial road. That was the day Ludovico was scared, for I had messed with some poisonous vine, and the whole day my arms swelled and ached. Father gave him three lashes with the horse whip, and after that Ludovico waited on me as if I were a sultan’s son.
I remember the time we were standing by the half-dried irrigation ditch and my straw hat was blown into the ditch by a strong gust of wind. He crouched low on the embankment to retrieve my hat. On a sudden impulse, I gave him a little shove and into the muddy ditch he fell. He got splashed all over with black mud. He cussed, but I laughed and laughed till I found out that he was really angry. I thought he would give me a thrashing, but when he noticed I was scared, he began laughing, too. He laughed so madly I thought he would never stop.
After the harvest season, the open spaces no longer fascinated me. In a few months the rains came, in driblets at first and then in torrents. Just the same, Ludovico walked three kilometers to our house from the barrio with his two bundles of firewood balanced on a pole.
Once, sitting on the top rung of the kitchen stairs, I watched him drink from the artesian well. I was
in a mood for pranks. I went down, splashed water on him and, while at it, I slipped and fell at his feet. We laughed together till Sepa told him to go away, which he did immediately, as if he were a whipped dog.
I cannot now forget the last time Feliza, his mother, came to our house. Balanced on her head was the same old load of greens to sell at the market, but she didn’t put it down. After Ludovico finished drinking, she suddenly started to cough.
Ludovico took the basket off his mother’s head and placed it on the ground, then patted his mother gently on the back.
“I told you not to come,” he said. “Now look—it has started again.”
Feliza stooped and beat her flat chest with her knotted fists. She shook convulsively, then spat out something red, very red.
“What is that?” I asked.
She sat down and gurgled. Seeing that she had nothing to use, I got a glass from the kitchen shelf and handed it to her. She thanked me when her coughing ceased.
Father came out then. He asked what the matter was, and reluctantly, I told him.
Father said, “Don’t carry so heavy a load, Feliza. After all, Ludovico is a big man now and he can do that for you. Or is Ludovico lazy?”
Ludovico reddened. “No, Apo,” he said softly, “I am not lazy.”
After they had gone, Father asked me if it was I who had given the glass to Feliza. He instructed Sepa to immerse the glass in boiling water, then he turned to me: “Don’t give Feliza any of the things we use.”
Once, perched on Ludovico’s shoulders, I asked him: “What would you want to be when you grow up?”
He replied he was already “almost a man” like his father, but I insisted there must be something, someone he would still want to be.
“All right,” he said, laughing. Behind us was Rosales, and in front of us were sprawled the hills of Balungao.
He jabbed a finger at them. “I want to own one of those. You have never been there. You don’t know how it is to own a few trees. Giant trees that can mean a lot of firewood. Sagat and parunapin. These make good house posts, too.”
He went on talking about the trees, how they were felled and later tediously dragged down the slopes. And how he caught the slippery mudfish in the creeks, how his father had a row with an uncle over the irrigation ditches, how his cousin was hurt in a drinking spree. Then, unconsciously, his mother was sucked into the whirlpool of his thoughts, and he told of the work she did at home, which might as well pass for that of a carabao’s—washing clothes, pounding rice, helping in the tilling of the soil.
The harvest season passed. The tenants littered the yard again with their bull carts filled with grain. They tucked the jute sacks in neat piles in Father’s storehouse. And one morning, Chan Hai drove into the yard with his trucks, joked with Father, weighed the palay, then took most of it away. Father counted over and over the money the Chinese had handed him and placed it in the steel safe in his room.
Father always bought a lot of things when he made a sale. Even the servants were provided with new clothes, and a new set of furniture found its way into the house. I wondered what Ludovico’s father did with his share of the crop, for when Ludovico came to town on Sundays, he still wore those faded denims.
Then the rains came. Now the mornings were cool and refreshing, and the world had a sharp, clean aroma that made one glad to have a nose.
Ludovico’s father and the other tenants came to Father’s bodega, talked of the planting season and the harvest. It would be something to be reckoned with, they said. That was immaculately clear in the stars, in the aura of the full moon, in the red-blood sun as it sank beyond the coconut groves of Tomana. When they left, they carted a few sacks for seed.
It was in the first week of October that Ludovico stopped coming to our house and headed for the hills to gather more firewood to make charcoal with. His mother was very sick, and she needed all the money he could earn. His father suffered in his stead with the firewood—small branches of madre de cacao and twigs that were damp and did not kindle so easily.
He apologized when Sepa fumed because the firewood he brought did not give off charcoal for broiling.
He does not know much about firewood, I mused.
He came one Thursday in the hush of twilight with the same two bundles. Since his usual day to come was Sunday, from the dimly lighted kitchen Sepa inquired why he was rather early. He said he was going to the hills the following day.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Sunday, probably,” he said complacently. “I am just going to take Ludovico home. He caught something bad over there. Typhoid, I think.”
That Sunday, as he said he would, Ludovico’s father did return. He came to the house with a black piece of cloth tied around his head. He had freshly ironed, well-starched pants folded at the ankles.
His peasant feet, big and spread, were washed and clean.
Father, whom he sought, emerged from the front door. Father did not ask why he had the black piece of cloth tied around his head. Instead, the first question Father prodded him with was: “Has the rice started to flower already, and has the dike in the west end of the farm been fixed?”
“Everything is all right, Apo.” Ludovico’s father smiled broadly, but almost as precipitately as it came, his grin vanished as he now spoke in low, even tones. He had come to borrow money for a funeral. Ludovico had died.
Father went to the house, shaking his balding head. When he returned, he handed some bills to Ludovico’s father, who in his relief pocketed them at once.
“There will be the usual interest to that,” Father reminded him.
Ludovico’s father nodded and was all smiles. Then his voice faltered. “But Apo, I cannot return this after the harvest this year. Feliza, my wife … Next harvest time, maybe …”
“And why not, may I know?” Father demanded.
Ludovico’s father explained hurriedly. At first, Father was unmoved. Then he said. “All right, next harvest time. But don’t forget, the interest will then be twice.”
I did not quite understand what it was all about, so I tugged at Father’s hand. He did not mind me—he went his way. I did not attend Ludovico’s funeral, but Sepa, who was fond of him, did, and she described how Ludovico was brought to church without the pealing of bells, wrapped in an old buri mat and slung on a pole carried by his father and a farmer neighbor.
And only afterward did I understand why there was not even a wooden coffin for Ludovico, why the next harvest, which might be bountiful, would be meaningless. I remembered Ludovico’s mother—so tiny and thin and overworked, her wracking cough, her pale, tired face, and the ripening grain that she would neither harvest nor see.
CHAPTER
7
All the lures of Carmay and its feeling of space seemed dulled after Grandfather and Ludovico were gone. Even when the irrigation ditches were finally shallow and the fishing there with bamboo traps was good, even when the melons in the delta were ripe and beckoning, I did not go there. The dry season was upon us—a glaze of sun and honeyed air; it touched the green mangoes and made them golden yellow, took the roar and the brownish tint from the Agno and made it placid and green. The dry season and school vacation also brought to Rosales my Cousin Pedring (on Father’s side) and my Cousin Clarissa (on my mother’s side). Pedring had just finished law school in Manila and had come to Rosales ostensibly for some quiet and to review for the coming bar examinations. He was about twenty-four. He must have been miserable, cooped up in the city for so long, and on his first day in Rosales he got me to go with him to Carmay “to fill his lungs with clean air.”
He was handsome and fair, and he recalled how once he had vacationed in Rosales when I was still a baby; he had bathed in the irrigation ditch in Carmay then, and now he wanted to relive that experience. But in the dry season all the irrigation ditches had dried up except in spots where the water was stagnant and green. This did not deter him; he would have immersed himself the whole morning there like a carabao if I did not tell
him that we had to return to town before noon. Gathering his clothes, his hair still streaked with bits of moss, his pale skin shiny with a patina of mud, he dressed hurriedly. We boarded the next caretela that passed.
It had been one of my chores to proceed shortly after noon to the post office in the municipio to pick up Father’s mail and newspapers that were brought in by the train connection from Paniqui. It was a chore I enjoyed because it afforded me the first look at the comics section of the papers, and even in the midday sun on the way back I would be reading Tarzan and Mutt & Jeff.
It was lunchtime when Cousin Pedring and I reached the town, and the sun was warm. On the street, dust rose at the gentlest stirring of the breeze. With mud now caked on his hair, he rushed to the artesian well for another bath with Old David working the pump.
When both of us were through, Father called us up. “You go to the station,” he said.
“But the mail, Father.”
“It is all right,” Father said. “For once the mail carrier will do his job.”
“Who is arriving?” Pedring asked.
“Clarissa,” Father said, and dismissed us with a wave of his hand.
Old David was readying the calesa when we got to him at the stable. It was a short ride, and, from the elevated station platform we could see the train rounding the bend at Calanutan, blowing its whistle shrilly. Pedring helped me down the calesa and said, “Tell me about Clarissa.”
“A cousin like you, but on Mother’s side,” I said.
“I know,” he said, passing his hand over his hair, which had dried. Without pomade, it was unruly. “How old is she?”
I made a hasty mental calculation. “About eighteen, I think.”
He stomped his feet on the stone platform to shake off the dust from his shoes. “I have not seen her yet,” he said. “What does she look like?”
I remembered Clarissa very well. Father and I once went to Cebu for a two-week vacation, and she and her parents met us at the pier; I was barely nine then, but everything about that visit was etched clearly in my mind—the pungent smell of copra at the pier, the sloping, narrow streets, their beautiful stone house, its sash windows festooned with butterfly orchids. There was a party in her honor, for she was sixteen and it was her first time to dance in public. She wore a white lace dress, and her hair was knotted with a red ribbon. I remember how flushed and anxious she looked as she kept in step with her father, and when it was over and the small band changed tune, she sought me, literally pulled me to the floor and, amidst much laughter and coaxing, tried to dance with me. I remember her moist, warm hand, her sweet breath upon my face, and my stepping on her feet many times.
Don Vicente Page 6