“That is not a nice thing to say on Christmas Eve, Luis,” Ester said.
“Perhaps I will feel differently tomorrow. I have something for you. It’s not wrapped up—it couldn’t be wrapped up. It’s my heart and I can’t take it out. And what is more, it is fouled up, I think. You will not want it that way, would you?”
“I hope this is not the liquor at work,” Ester said softly. “We say so many things that we don’t mean afterward. And when this happens, it is all wrong. It sours relationships.”
Luis listened attentively for the first time during the hectic evening. This was not party talk; they were really alone now. The world had slipped by, and stars swarmed over the sky.
He held her hand and pressed it. “I mean what I say, Ester,” he said, looking at her serene face.
“I have friends, many friends,” she continued barely above a whisper. “But the relationships are empty. It is not that there is no trust—I trust them as I trust you now, and I hope that they trust me, too. But how can I express it? What I want? What I’m looking for? It is not something that money can buy, else I would have gotten it a long time ago. Do you understand, Louie, what I am trying to say?”
He nodded, for she was now saying something that he had always felt himself; she was giving shape to thoughts that had bedeviled him but that he had not been able to express.
“You want peace,” he said simply. “You want happiness, fulfillment—all those wonderful things that come to the yogi, the enlightenment. You want a way out.”
She looked at him and nodded.
“There is no way out, Ester,” he said. “Not for you. Not for me.”
“Yes, there is, for me,” she said. “For you, I have doubts. You thrive on conflict. On anger. You are alive when you are angry. I cannot see you in a world where there is peace and harmony.”
He shook his head, not because he disagreed with her but because he did not want to believe what she said; it was true, he would be a misfit in a world without anger. Did he really believe in justice, or was he not just rebelling against a past that had injured him? Did he really love the poor, or in professing love for the poor was he doing what was easy, addressing himself to man—amorphous, unreal, without identity—rather than be committed to one individual in need of sympathy, which he could give but would not? And if he loved the poor, would he give them the wealth that was going to be his? Would he be willing to let go of the comforts that he enjoyed so that they—his people in Sipnget—would have something better on their table? He loved Ester, but now he also resented her for pushing him against the wall, for flailing at him with the truth, for forcing him to be honest with himself. But he also knew that to lose her would be to lose his conscience.
“We have to live with ourselves,” he said contritely. “That is difficult to do. And the peace that we seek, I suppose, is the peace of the grave.”
Her face lighted up, the smile bloomed again. “I have often thought of it that way,” she said, rising, a sudden lift in her being. “Then the burden would be lifted, and finally we would be free.”
“You agree with me, then, death isn’t so tragic after all. And I do wish sometimes that I were dead.”
He walked with her to the gate, where her car was waiting, and before he turned to go he pulled her to him and gently, ever so gently, kissed her, murmuring, “Ester, don’t hate me for my alcoholic histrionics. In vino, Veritas!”
She held him and kissed him, then quickly got into the car. Luis walked slowly back to the azotea. Along the boulevard the houses were brightly lighted with red, white, and blue star lanterns, with colored bulbs strung across their fronts and the trees in the yards. From the direction of Ermita and Malate came more firecracker explosions. At times the voices of children singing carols and the brash music of cumbancheros came through, clear and sharp.
The party had actually tired him, and he was most riled by the hypocrites among his own crowd—Abelardo Cruz, Etang Papel—those who prattled about their vaunted love for humanity and understanding of the country’s social malaise. There they were, all dolled up, their perfumed hands never having known the brutal hardness of a plow handle. His starveling friends were no different. They banded together as if they belonged to a touted though impoverished aristocracy, and they regarded the masses—the masses, how contemptible, how hopeless they are! Of course, he also used the phrase occasionally—but only when he wanted to make the point that revolution could start not only with the peasantry but also with the middle class, the enlightened bourgeoisie, himself among them. Why isn’t there more honesty in this world? Perhaps it is only in art that we can be totally honest. Again, he tried to exculpate himself from the inadequacy of his response. But of what use is art? He was not even sure that the poetry he had written was art. It sounded so effete, maybe because he was looking for the innate music of words or maybe because he was searching deeply for the symbolic meanings of words when there were no symbols at all—just words strung together in order to evoke ideas, images, and the total whole of aesthetic experience. He was becoming an aesthete, incapable of translating his ideas into action. Indeed, he was beginning to wither as he sometimes wished he would.
He went back to the house and wandered about. In the kitchen Simeon and Marta were tucking away the bowls and the wineglasses. The two waiters had gone home, and the rubbish was now in the garbage cans, but the house still looked dirty and the floor was a mess. Marta would have to spend the whole morning cleaning up. “Simeon,” he said, “you and Marta go to Rosales for a week. Just be sure you are back by New Year’s, for you must drive me to Rosales. Right now I can be alone by myself. And if I forget, do not fail to remind me about your bonus—both of you—tomorrow.”
Their faces lit up, and he told them to leave the work—it was late; they could always do it in the morning before taking the bus or train home.
He went back to his room as their footsteps died down on the stone staircase. Slowly removing his red bow tie and his jacket, he sank into his bed. The phone jangled, and half rising, he took it.
It was Ester and her voice was warm: “How are you feeling now? I should have made you a cup of coffee before I left.”
“I’m fine,” he said, “and I’m sorry.”
“You always say you are sorry.”
“Blame it on the world—or circumstance.”
“You are still sour.”
“Even milk sours,” he said.
“You are forgiven, then.”
“How can I ever thank you?”
“Plenty. We can hear mass tomorrow. I can drop in at your place and pick you up.”
“I might not be up early,” Luis said, feeling suddenly trapped.
“I’ll wake you up.”
“I’ll be a mess—the house, too. Besides, I’ve got to work.”
“It won’t take more than forty-five minutes.”
“High mass?”
“Luis, you sound bored.”
He could feel the apprehension in her voice. He laughed. “You are going to be a nun.”
She laughed softly, too. “Merry Christmas again.”
Then he was really alone. The tedium of the day finally possessed him, and he sank in complete surrender to it. He could not remember how much he had drunk, and the urge to have one last nightcap came, but he withstood the temptation. He struck the headboard behind him, cursing, then he reached out to switch off the light. It was then that his door slowly opened and, more surprised than frightened, he watched the man come in.
Recognition came quickly. Luis jumped up and rushed forward to embrace his brother. “Vic,” he said, drawing away, studying the sun-browned face, short-cropped hair, buck teeth, and laughing eyes. “Why did you not come earlier?”
“I did,” Vic said, “but I didn’t want to interfere with your party and I wanted to be sure you were alone. I stayed in the garage.”
Luis was incredulous. “Now, that is a foolish thing to do,” he said, shaking his head. He was angry. “Yo
u know you are welcome in this house. If you didn’t want to be with the party, you could have come here and locked yourself in.”
“Anyway,” Vic said, “I am here and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
Luis’s mind was keen again. In the soft bedroom light he looked at his brother. It was just two years since Vic’s last visit in this house, a visit that had peeved and perplexed him. He knew then that his brother was in need, and he had tried to give him money, but Vic had refused it, saying that he already had a job, that it was enough that he had helped him with his education and with books that he had sent. Luis hoped that his brother would not be as proud again. Tonight, after all, was Christmas.
He could see that although Vic was robust, his clothes were faded khaki and his shoes were battered leather. He smelled of sun and harsh living.
“Marta let me in,” he said simply.
“You could have joined us,” Luis said.
Vic shook his head. “Manong,” he said, “you know very well that I do not belong to that crowd.”
Luis knew what else Vic would say, so he changed the subject at once. “Let’s go to the kitchen. There’s a lot of food and drink, and I’m getting hungry again.”
“Marta gave me something to eat,” he said. “I’m really full, and besides, I came here to ask for something important from you—more than food.”
Luis sighed. “Vic,” he said, “you know I’d give you anything you ask for, but you refuse what I give you.”
“I have come here not to ask for help for myself. I know you have it in your heart to help people like me.”
“How much do you need?” Luis asked. “I told you before that this house is always open to you. You can stay here if you wish. There’s even an extra room. It is so much simpler and easier for you to come and see me than for me to go to Rosales. I’ve told you this a hundred times. And you haven’t written to Mother. I was there last April. She doesn’t know where you are. That’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry, Manong,” Vic said. He sat on the edge of the bed, and Luis sat in front of him. “I have not bothered telling Mother where I am, but I told her—really told her—when I left Sipnget that she should never look for me, that I would be all right, and that I would always be thinking of them.”
Luis was silent. He was recalling his mother’s sadness, her quiet despair, as she spoke of Vic. It was as if she had already accepted the fact that she would never see her younger son again.
“But why?”
Vic smiled and did not answer. Seeing that no reply was forthcoming, Luis asked, “Now, tell me. How much do you really need? If I don’t have enough in this house, I can go to the bank first thing after the holiday—and if you don’t want to come to my office to pick it up, I’ll leave it with Marta.”
Again Vic smiled. “It’s not money, Manong, although that will help, of course. It is you we need, and others like you—more than anything now. We need teachers, people with knowledge and understanding such as you have.”
“You are talking in riddles. What are you talking about?”
“About us. About Commander Victor.”
“He is dead.”
“Yes, both of us know that.” Then he smiled rather self-consciously. “I supposed you never knew that his name was not Victor. It was Hipolito, but he was always talking about victory, and when he was given an opportunity to have a nom de guerre, he chose Victor.”
“But how can I help a dead man?”
“Help me, Manong. I am now Commander Victor.”
Luis looked at his brother. Victor was not even twenty, and he looked more like a village teenager, with his crew cut and his lean, dark face, but behind the youth was the man who had known travail as Luis had never known it. Vic was no longer a boy but the man Luis could never be, and this fact humbled Luis.
“Were you in Rosales in April?”
Again Vic smiled but did not answer.
“Did you know that I was home?”
The same noncommittal smile.
“You know, of course, that I will always help you, that I will do what you want me to do, because we are brothers.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Vic said. “I have been thinking a lot about us. I will be going back to Rosales. It will be my territory now. I know every village, almost every tree, every turn of the creek, and every fold of the hill—and a lot of people know me. So I will go there, but I need you, too, to protect me if necessary, because I can trust you. Let me make one thing clear, however: the old days are over. Your father, all his property, must go back to the people whom he has robbed.”
Luis could not believe what he was hearing, and for a minute Vic droned on about social justice and democracy and the future. What would all this mean now? He would lose the house in Rosales and all the land that would be his inheritance. For a while this bleak reality numbed his heart, and for all his protestations, for all that he had written and said, he had grown to like this ease, this surfeit of leisure, all that marked him for perdition. He was, after all, his father’s son.
Maybe, if he tried to dissuade his brother, there would be other ways, feasible means by which he could remain what he was and yet be totally in agreement with him, support him, and sacrifice for him.
“Vic,” he asked, “what do you really believe in?”
Vic paused, gazed at the ceiling, and then looked down at his black battered shoes. “What can one like me believe in? I wish I could say that I believe in God—or any god up there. I wish I could say that I believe in our leaders. One thing I can tell you is that I do not believe in the Americans anymore. We fought the Japanese, didn’t we? We were only teenagers then. We were not going to be heroes—whoever thinks of patriotism and heroism when he is there, scared, praying that he can live through the ambush? There were heroes, just the same, and who were they? The thieves who raided the GI quartermaster depots, who robbed the government treasury, the same ones who continue to do it now. These were the people who traded with the Japanese and got rich working for themselves. How can I believe in the Americans when they are responsible for making heroes of these scum?”
“I didn’t ask you about the Americans,” Luis said.
“Yes, but you cannot avoid them,” Vic said. “They are everywhere and, most dangerously, in the dark corners of the mind, especially the minds of the ignorant people we deal with every day.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I am coming to that,” Vic said, a smile fleeting across his dark face. “I believe in Mother—our mother.” He paused and waited for the word to sink in. “She fed me, she taught me all that I will ever know. Even if she didn’t teach me anything, I would still believe in her, because I know she is Mother, who brought me up in this world. There are lots of things in this world that I despise—the lying and the thieving. You don’t know how deeply I resent these things, how I rage—but I believe in Mother.”
“Do you believe in me?” Luis asked. He had not wanted to ask the question, but he had to know the answer now.
For some time Victor did not speak. When he finally did he looked straight into his brother’s eyes. “I wish I could answer you with a simple yes and mean it. We have never lied to each other, but how can I say that I believe in you when I can’t even believe in myself now? I am wracked by doubts, by anguish and mistrust. There is nothing anymore that one can be sure of, Manong. Nothing is true anymore except Mother, for she is what she is and we cannot change her. And death.”
“I am your brother, Vic,” Luis said softly, but within him he was crying out: Believe me, I am you and you are me!
“Do you think I will ever forget?” Vic’s voice shrilled. “You have done for me what no one has ever done, and I am grateful. Without you and the money you sent Mother I would not have been able to finish high school. All the learning that I got afterward—it came from the books you sent me. The wealth you gave me is here”—Vic pointed to his head—“where no one can take it—not even you. But there is
something here, too. Memory. I remember our days together—and our quarrels.” Vic laughed suddenly and his laughter was eerie. When he paused, his eyes were misty. “Mother loved you, perhaps more than she loved me, because you were not wanted—and I was. That everyone knew. But where are you now, and where am I? This is the whole point. You will go far, very far, but what of those who are still in Sipnget?”
“And do you not believe me because I am a bastard and because I am only a half-brother?”
“You fool!” Vic lashed at him. “Haven’t I just spoken about how we grew up together and lived together? That is something I always look back to with pleasure. That’s why I came here.”
“And yet you cannot trust me?”
“I trust even Marta and Simeon. Why shouldn’t I trust you in another way? But you asked if I believed you.”
“There’s so little difference,” Luis said wearily.
“I said we lived together, but that was long ago and I have never talked with you as I am doing now. In between, many things have happened. You went to the city and I stayed on the farm. I am not saying that you don’t deserve better things—you were always smarter than I, and you had a way with words.” Vic paused and looked around him. “I had to catch up with my own education my own way, and I know that people change when they live differently, away from the land. Now, tell me. Have you changed? What do you believe in now?”
Luis walked to the window that opened to the bay. The night was calm, a faint glimmering of stars and the silence of a world gone to sleep, and the bay was a black, shimmering stretch—a line of lights where Cavite was. It was long past midnight. Luis turned to Vic and said slowly, “I believe in humanity—not just you or Mother but all mankind. Do I sound like a preacher or a cheap politician making a pretty speech? This is not what I intend to do. Father told me that he wanted me to go into politics. I believe in life, that it is sweet, and that, for all its occasional bitterness, we—man, that is—are headed toward something better—fulfillment. There is much shame, however, and so much hypocrisy around us, and these inhibit our fulfillment as human beings. I am what you may call a humanist. I cannot explain this to you. Life is holy and it is for all of us. God’s design I cannot understand myself, and I never will, but I do know that what we are experiencing now will pass and in the end we will all be brothers, not just blood brothers, as we are, but brothers in spirit. Neither you nor I can change the world or human nature, and we can only aim at changing attitudes—and perhaps teach those who have so much to give a portion of their blessings to those who have less.”
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