Don Vicente

by F. Sionil Jose

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Well,” Dantes said, “Ester, he is all yours.”

  Luis took another look at the celebrants. Dantes looked older than his fifty-five years, his hair prematurely white and with bags under his eyes, which were perennially misty. His chin always quivered when he talked, and it was quivering now as he chatted with a couple who had just arrived. Luis became aware of Ester’s hand gripping his and keeping him from tarrying. “Oh, I’m so glad you came,” she said, gushing. “I asked Papa if you were coming, and he said that you had gone home to visit your ailing father. So you left Trining there. She should have come, too. I was allowed four guests, and she is, well, my best friend—but you are here and that is all that matters.”

  “I wouldn’t miss this for all the world,” he said, “and not because it is your parents’ anniversary but because you are here; I really want to know you better.”

  She squeezed his hand and said, “Flatterer! But I love it. Would you like to meet my friends, or would you rather join your crowd?” She pointed to a tent close to one of the buffet tables.

  They were passing a floodlight that blazed upon a huge statue of ice—a swan in the middle of a big table of hors d’oeuvres—and drawing away from her, he saw how beautiful Ester was. He noted the difference between her uniform and this billowy fuchsia gown she was blooming in tonight. A dash of rouge, a bit of eye shadow—she had the fine features of the Danteses, the fair skin, the imperious chin. Gazing at her in the brightness, he said, “Ester, you are beautiful,” meaning every word of it.

  She laughed: “If you keep this up the whole evening, I may yet become your girlfriend.”

  He picked a cracker from the table and scooped caviar from a bowl.

  “I’ll stay with you and serve you,” Ester said, “if you are hungry.”

  “Starved,” Luis said. She guided him to a food-laden table beyond the court where a crowd was busy filling up their plates. She helped him choose his, then took him to a vacant table by the court. She was being the perfect hostess. “I’ve told my friends I may have a very eligible bachelor—I hope you will not disappoint them,” she said.

  “I’ll stop the presses to see you,” he told her. She left him to bring her friends over. He was not really hungry. With a glass of Scotch he went up to the balcony, where he could have an unobstructed view of the garden, the guests rambling around in its great breadth. The orchestra played softly, and couples started moving toward the court. He was not aware that Ester had followed him and was hovering around him, a quizzical look on her face.

  “I thought you would be down there,” she said solicitously. “I hope you are not angry with anyone.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, laughing. “I was waiting for your gang, but where are they?”

  “Dancing,” she said gaily, “but I will make up for it. I will be your partner the rest of the evening—if you want.”

  She took the vacant chair beside him. “I wanted Trining to come—very much—but going to the province was more important. How is your father?”

  “Not so well, but he will manage. Old people always do.” The orchestra started playing “Stardust.” “That’s one of my favorites,” Luis said. “Learned it during the war. The words are poetic.”

  “I’ve read your poetry,” Ester said.

  “My condolences.”

  “I like it—but why is it always so sad and bitter? You must be terribly unhappy.”

  “Are you a psychologist of sorts?”

  “No, just trying to understand you.”

  “I’m an open book. No deep dark secrets.”

  She stood up. “Let’s not waste your favorite song,” she said, holding his hand.

  They went down the stone steps. At the edge of the court he hesitated, suddenly awkward, knees watery, as if this were his first dance. She was already pressing close to him, however, so he held her narrow waist and her hand went up to rest on his shoulder, her cheek brushing against his chin. He felt the round, smooth, and silky nudging of her thighs, the warm softness of her breast, and all his senses became alive in response to her exalting nearness. He wanted to dance with her still, but the orchestra shifted to an abominable limbo and he said tersely, “There goes our poetry.” A young man whose face he did not bother to look at accosted them on their way back to their seats and asked Ester for a dance. Luis let her go.

  He slid into the shadows, down the garden slope, where the bougainvillea thinned out toward the rocky promontory. He stood there and watched the city in the distance, aglow like embers, kindling a sky flecked with summer clouds. His back was turned to the music, and soon, so soon, he was hurtling away from this precinct to another time, in a far and forgotten place, and the music was the twang of guitars: I always go back, back to where it all started, to Sipnget, and the village fiesta, lighted by kerosene lamps, the hardened earth for a dance floor, the woven palm leaf for decor, divider, and shade, and the village girls …

  “At last, I’ve found you.” It was Ester behind him. He turned around, stepped down the rock, and said, “The view from here is lovely. Manila looks like a spread of jewels.”

  “Not in the daytime,” she said. “There’s a haze over it, and it looks quite ugly.” Then, seriously, “Why did you leave the party?”

  “I’m still here, am I not?” he asked.

  “I should have asked what you are doing here.”

  “Not again,” he said. He held her arm as they went down the incline. “Don’t you know that you make me feel so eccentric?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Well, I just wandered around and I got to thinking about the town I left, the music I used to listen to. You know, just rambling around in my thoughts—I often do that. It’s quite exhilarating.”

  “How far did you go?”

  Luis did not know what to make of her, whether she was making fun of him or was sincerely inquisitive. He decided to be honest. “I was thinking of the very recent past—the war. I had to stop high school, and I commuted between Manila and the province, you know. Looking at Manila from here, with all those lights, and listening to the music, I am aware that time has really gone by.”

  They went down a terrace and were now on the edge of the dance floor. Luis sat with her near the garden wall.

  “We have to live in the present,” she said simply, “and thank God we are here, waiting for the morrow.”

  “You are an optimist, I can see,” he said. “But the present is an extension of the past. The connection is not broken at all, and the war—what a big word it is!—it is an extension of peace.”

  But what did he really know about the war? He was too young to have been in the Army and too old to be with the women. He spent the four war years in Ermita, where he grew up to be a young man, pampered, all his wishes granted. He was frightened, but he was never really in danger. It was Vic who knew war, who told him about its starkest details. It was Vic who was in Rosales and Sipnget, who helped to take care of Don Vicente in the earliest days of evacuation. Vic saw the Japanese enter the town, and he saw the pile of Filipino dead—their hands tied behind them with wire—loaded into pushcarts by civilians and taken to the plaza, before the whitewashed Rizal monument, and like so many diseased and butchered cattle, dumped into a common grave. Vic was in Sipnget, too, when the Japanese entered the village, herded the young men together, and picked out the prettiest girls. Now there was another war, and it was being fought in the mountains, in the plains, in Sipnget and Rosales, in dark, unknown warrens of the city, in newspaper offices, and most of all, in the convoluted recesses of minds such as his.

  “You are young only once, but you want to grow old before your time,” Ester was saying.

  “Our tragedy,” he said, trying to sound very light, “is that, as a famous writer once said, youth is wasted on the young.”

  “But I don’t think you have really started to live.” Ester was prodding him. She had struck at the root of his ennui, and per
haps, he thought later, she was right. He had not begun to live—or love. He had not seen life as Vic had seen it; all that he had seen were the freaks, both of the imagination and of living reality. He had listened once to his grandfather’s tales, of aswangs making gold out of children’s blood, of winged men who could with a wave of a kerchief vault mountain and valley.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Why don’t you help me live a little?” He glanced at his watch.

  “It is still early,” Ester said, “and you asked me to help, didn’t you?”

  It was a dare he must pick up sometime. Right now he could not stay for another moment. The night was lost, no matter how amusing the conversation and enchanting this girl. In that inner self there was no light; there was this scourge of the searching mind that could not be eluded.

  “I have to be up very early,” he said. “Aren’t you happy that I’m such a thoughtful employee?”

  “That’s not a nice thing to say,” she said. “You are trying to put me in my place, and I am not spoiled.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ester tried to be light. “And speaking of Father, he sleeps until lunchtime sometimes but still manages to work the whole night. Aren’t you really going to meet some of my friends?”

  Luis smiled and stood up. “I’d rather be with you,” he said solemnly. He had intended to flatter her, but now that he had said it he meant every word. “I really would like very much to be with you again when I can have you all to myself.”

  Her eyes shone, and he felt that they were looking right through his permeable skull, into the recondite corners of his brain, reading his thoughts as if they were in blazing neon.

  “I’m not really a snob—even if you did call me one.”

  “I did not,” she objected vehemently. “Whoever gave you—”

  He pressed his forefinger to her lips to stop her from talking further. “I think I am beginning to love you,” he said.

  Even as he drove away it seemed as if Ester was still beside him. He could still smell her fragrance, her hair, and most of all, he could envision those dark, sad eyes that would—he was now sure—always hound him.

  CHAPTER

  22

  When Luis drove up the graveled driveway and saw that the lights in his bedroom were on, he decided that Marta must have forgotten to turn them off again. It was her duty to turn off all the lights except those in the foyer whenever he went out in the evening. He would remind her in the morning about her wastefulness. He went up the stairs, fumbled briefly with his keys, then opened the door. Soft music flowed from the radio/phonograph in the study. It was almost midnight, and he did not remember having turned it on when he left. He hurried in and turned the radio off; glancing into his bedroom, he saw Trining, asleep in his bed. He gazed at her with some vexation, which quickly turned into amusement. Trining was in a pink negligée, the hem of which was raised, so that her beautiful white thighs gleamed creamy and soft in the light. He could also see the clean slopes of her breast and its rising and falling as she breathed. He went into the room, bent over her slowly, and kissed her lips. She stirred, stretched her arms, then opened her eyes.

  “Oh, Luis,” she murmured, purring like a kitten disturbed from a nap. Her displeasure with his having left her was gone, and a smile lit her face. She swung her legs down and stood up.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, wondering how she had come—and so soon. “Had I known you also wanted to return to Manila, I would have waited for you.”

  “I told Tio that I wanted to be with you—and he put me on the bus. You should take the bus sometime. It is quite an experience. Tio wanted me driven over, but why should it matter how I came?”

  Luis started taking off his barong tagalog.

  “How were the dukes and the princesses?”

  “I never met them. Ester said you should have come.”

  He took his pants off and put on his pajamas. He could undress before her without embarrassment, for they had grown up together, known each other for so long.

  “I’ll stay here for a month, if you’ll let me—or two months. Then I will go back to school.”

  “You should be in Rosales.”

  “I can’t go back. The house bores me; you yourself hate it. I think I will take up a secretarial course—shorthand and typing. I’ll keep house for you, and I can type some of your manuscripts afterward.”

  “Thank you, but you will only mess up everything.”

  “You don’t even give me a chance.”

  “And I don’t want you to stay longer than you should. People, my friends come here—you know that—and they will talk.”

  “Tio said I should stay here until school begins,” she said stubbornly. “We are cousins, Luis, or have you forgotten?”

  He scowled at her. He went to the bathroom and started to brush his teeth. “Have you fixed up the guest room?”

  “Marta has done that.”

  Luis went back to his room, took Trining by the hand, and led her to the sofa, where they sat, her head resting on his shoulder, his arm around her. “How did Father take my leaving so soon?”

  “He was very sad,” she said evenly, “but I think he understands. Anyway, you have seen him—and he told you things, I presume.” Then, somberly: “What’s happening, Luis? Are we going to have trouble? Sometimes just thinking about this frightens me and makes me sad. No, not again. Oh, God, not again! You once said that we are far from the—the people. This morning, remembering what you said, I took the bus, and a taxi from the bus station to here. I was not scared. Only once—only once …”

  “Brave girl.” He patted her arm.

  “I don’t even know now if I should finish college. It seems unnecessary. What do you think, Luis?” She paused and pressed closer to him. “What is going to happen to us?”

  He remembered how he had kissed her for the first time the other evening. There were many times in the past when he would embrace her as they danced or horsed around, but there was never any of this closeness and this intimacy that they now shared.

  “I wish I could tell you now,” he said, “but everything is so uncertain. Let’s not talk about the future. Think about something more pleasant.”

  “Let’s talk about Mr. Dantes’s anniversary. The grandest thing ever, and I did not go.”

  “It was fine.”

  “Were my classmates there? Whom did you meet?”

  “None,” Luis said, “but I did get to know a bit of Ester, and she set me thinking.”

  “What about?” Her interest was piqued.

  “She rather seems too mature for her age …”

  “And you think that I am not—that I am a scatterbrain besides?”

  He hugged her. “No, but why compare yourself with her? You are prettier, although she isn’t bad-looking.”

  “You can say that again,” Trining said boorishly.

  “I told her that I’d like to see her again.”

  Trining turned to him. He could feel her breath warm on his cheek, and her voice was belligerent. “Just what is it that you want to do?” He smiled at her and pressed her close to him again. “Are you in love with her?” He tweaked her nose and laughed. “Well, are you?”

  “And if I am?”

  “Answer me!”

  He gazed at her sullen face, mobile and pretty, and at her eyes, now smouldering. Eyes that could light up and easily beguile him into forgetting that they were cousins. Yes, she had bloomed and was ignorant of the miracle that had transpired. She still had that girlish spontaneity in her moods, in her laughter, in the way she would fling her arms, her nostrils flaring, when she was happy or angry. This was now what fascinated him—the freshness, the vitality of her womanhood. Her cheeks glowed in the light, and her lips, although she was pouting, were full of promise. It was not so long ago that she had been almost tomboyish in the way she moved, in the brusqueness of her speech, and now here she was in his arms, a creature that was ready for the first warm touch o
f love. “Are you jealous?”

  “Tell me, Luis.”

  “Her father is my boss. I am just developing her acquaintance. No, how can you say that I love her when I have just met her?”

  Her face was still close, but the anger was gone. He stroked her hair and then, bending, kissed her softly. Her lips were slightly parted, and her breath was honeyed and sweet. She sighed and embraced him. “It’s wonderful. Now I know why they close their eyes. It’s more enjoyable that way.”

  He withdrew briefly and could not help laughing. She laughed at herself, too, then kissed him again. He started to fondle her breasts, and she squirmed. “You don’t like it?” he asked.

  “It tickles,” she murmured, but soon stopped squirming as his fingers touched her nipples. His hand began to wander down the silky line of her thighs. For a moment he could feel her stiffen, although her mouth still clung to his.

  “Luis—not here,” she said in a husky whisper.

  “And why not?”

  “It embarrasses me.”

  “I suppose it always does the first time,” he murmured, “but you have to have a first time.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve been reading all those books, and we have had lectures in school.”

  “Well, this is real now,” he said, bending so that they were now prostrate on the sofa. He could feel her gasp for breath. Her embrace had become tighter, possessive. “Luis, what is going to happen to us?” she repeated the question, this time with urgency.

  “Love me,” he said, pleading.

  She nodded and sighed an almost inaudible yes, pressing her eager body still closer to him.

  CHAPTER

  23

  June came in a green that flooded the boulevard. The dead brown of March that had scorched the city was gone. The banaba trees had begun to bloom, and their purple flowers brightened the wide shoulders of the streets and the fronts of restaurants and nightclubs. The school year opened, and a rash of college uniforms—the plaid skirts, the grays and blues—colored the Luneta in the afternoons, together with the olive-gray and khaki of the ROTC cadets having their drills there. The invigorating smell of green things wafted to the house, bringing memories of Sipnget. Trining came, too, every Friday afternoon when her classes were over, and she stayed with him until Sunday afternoon, when he drove her back to the convent school.