Don Vicente

by F. Sionil Jose

  They went up to the house, and when Luis started for his father’s sickroom, Trining held him back. “Please,” she implored, “it won’t be long.”

  He followed her to her room, its doors always open to him since they were young. Now she locked it after they had gone inside. The drapes had been changed—the heavy purple brocade had become white damask, and on the gray walls were Navarro sketches that the artist had not bothered to frame. On her wide steel bed and on her narra dresser were the coverlets that she had patiently worked on in high school—“to keep from getting bored because you didn’t take me out.”

  “I just don’t want any interruption,” she explained as she latched the door securely and pulled him to the rattan sofa. As an afterthought, she said, “Do you want a Coke? I baked a cake this morning.”

  He nodded, sitting back and yielding to the comfort of the sofa. Trining wheeled around and unlatched the door again. Although Simeon was a good driver, the trip had wearied Luis, who had dozed between Angeles and San Fernando. In the hypnotic heat of the straight and glistening road, they had to stop at a shabby roadside restaurant for a cup of coffee and to douse their faces with iced water. Luis felt that he could go to sleep now and forget everything, but Trining returned with Coke and a piece of chocolate cake. Again she latched the door.

  “What was it you wanted to tell me?” The cake was very good, just like the ones she baked for him in Manila.

  “You eat first.” She sat beside him and ran her fingers through his dry mop of hair, then gently massaged his nape and shoulders. When he was through, he asked again.

  “Tio is dying,” Trining said. “That is what the doctor told me. Tio knows. That is what makes it so sad.”

  Luis stood up and paced the floor. The news did not jolt him, really. He had somehow expected it, the inevitability of it all. He walked to the window. Tents were all over the school yard, and soldiers were either playing volleyball or lolling about. Trucks, jeeps, and armored cars were parked, too, under the acacia trees, and by the gate was a machine gun behind a protective pile of sandbags.

  “If he dies,” Trining said softly behind him, “we will be alone. We are all he has. Do you know what that means?”

  Luis did not answer. “What are the soldiers doing here, and how long have they been here?”

  “The soldiers?” Trining was momentarily baffled. “Oh, they were here when I arrived. There is Huk trouble in the villages and in the mountains.”

  Luis shook his head and turned to her. “If Tio dies,” Trining continued, “will you let me stay in this house, Luis?”

  Luis could not help laughing. “Of course,” he said. “It’s more yours than mine.” He walked toward the door, but Trining held him back. “Please, that was not what I wanted to tell you.”

  “Father is waiting.”

  “Please.” Her eyes were pleading. “There is one thing he wants to see before—before he goes,” she said tremulously. “He told me so only a while ago, after I called you. He wants to see you get married, Luis—now, this week.”

  So this is destiny—he wants an heir, his name imprinted forever upon the land. Luis cupped his cousin’s face. “Now, isn’t that just like Father?” He smiled. “Always telling me what to do. And who does he want my bride to be? Perhaps he has also made up his mind about that.”

  “He has,” Trining whispered. In spite of her pallor she was blushing. She could not stand his gaze, and she embraced him, saying in a voice that trembled, “Oh, Luis, he wants me to be your wife.”

  He held her away, gazed at her expectant face, her pleading eyes, her lips quivering and parted, her heaving bosom—all of her which he had already possessed. Then he drew her close again and kissed her. It was a kiss of affection—not passion—and she sighed, holding him tightly as if she were afraid this was the last moment they would be together.

  Presently, he drew away. He unlatched the door and, looking back, saw that she had started to cry.

  He did not knock, for the door of his father’s room was ajar. Don Vicente was awake. He lay on his high-canopied bed. A massive bulk, he had his head propped up by pillows. The sheets were freshly ironed, and the room smelled of cologne and sunlight, for the shades were up. A silver fruit tray filled with grapes and apples and the cut-glass vases filled with sprays of azucena on the side table brightened the room. His father had grown thinner, but he still looked as solid as ever.

  “I heard your car,” he said, raising himself with effort.

  Don Vicente introduced his son to the doctor, who was swarthy, with a calm professional air. He grinned, rolled up the old man’s pajama sleeves, then jabbed a needle into the bulging arm. The old man winced. “That will keep his blood pressure down,” the doctor explained to Luis.

  “I want to talk with my son.” Don Vicente waved the doctor away.

  “But don’t forget what I told you,” the doctor said. “Don’t talk too much. Avoid intense discussions.” Smiling politely at Luis, he stepped out.

  “Did it hurt, Father?”

  Don Vicente sank back and said, grumbling, “I get that injection every two days. He keeps changing the place, both arms and”—indicating his buttocks—“down here. No, they don’t hurt as much as the thought of what is happening to Rosales, to the land. And I am going to die soon—I can feel it. I don’t know when. That doesn’t hurt, Luis.” He looked at his son. “Please don’t make it hurt.”

  “You will live to be a hundred, Father,” Luis said.

  “Do you think you can humor me? You young people, you have no idea how real, how permanent death is. Trining thinks that she can joke or tease it away. She should be in Manila, looking after you, but she has to look after me—as if she can do anything. She was so young when it happened. It was I who really brought her up. Such an admirable sense of filial obligation! But I am resigned.”

  Luis sat back and looked at his father helplessly. In spite of his affliction the old man still wanted to be domineering and sarcastic.

  “Now listen to what I have to tell you.” The old man’s face was turned to the ceiling, as if in thought. “How is your work in the city?”

  The question surprised him. “Very well, Father.”

  “Of course I know that, but that is not what I meant. I have been following your magazine, seeing the advertising increase. Are you happy working for Dantes? Like I told you, he is no angel. With your kind of thinking, you should not be there long—just long enough to get your name established.”

  “I have a free hand, Father,” he said, but suddenly he felt extremely uneasy, now that his relationship with the sugar baron was being probed into. It had occurred to him before, of course, that the Dantes hierarchs were conniving and rapacious, but the publisher had been most judicious with him.

  “He is using you,” his father was saying pointedly, “your youth, your imagination, your integrity. You will have to leave someday—and make it on your own as soon as you can. In the first place, materially you cannot earn much from the job. You are an Asperri—not a Dantes. Perhaps if you were a Locsung or a Mondovino, you could marry into the family—but you are an Asperri, don’t you ever forget that.”

  “How can I, Father?”

  The old man turned to him. “On your own you are not so badly off, you know. The house in Manila—and there are those lots in Mandaluyong and in San Francisco del Monte, in Quezon City. There are five thousand hectares here, the rice mill, some stocks in the brewery, in the mines. My poor brother is dead, but actually his share is very small, for it was I who acquired most of these properties. Maybe just a few hundred hectares will go to Trining. Have you any idea how much all these are worth?”

  Luis shook his head without emotion.

  “You can put up your own publishing if you wish,” Don Vicente said flatly. “Tonight—or tomorrow—I will have the accountant, the lawyer, and Santos come here. You study the Torrens titles—all the papers—and ask me all the questions you want clarified.” The old man started to cough violen
tly, his face contorted with pain. Luis rushed to him and tried to hold him up, but the old man brushed off his clumsy hold with a quickness that was surprisingly strong. Luis went back to his seat as the old man’s coughing ceased.

  “What do you want me to do, Father?” Luis asked.

  “It is difficult, hijo,” the old man said. “I just want to go with my mind at peace. Requiescat in pace. I want to know that I leave everything in good hands—your hands—and as I said before, I want the Asperri name on this land.”

  “I will do anything you wish, Father.”

  Don Vicente sighed happily. “That’s good,” he said, folding his stubby hand on the mound that was his belly. “I am glad that is your attitude. Have you ever thought of getting married?”

  Luis was prepared for the question. “No, Father,” he said truthfully. “I have never given it serious thought.”

  “You haven’t given your word to any girl then?”

  For an instant Ester came across Luis’s mind, but he and Ester had not talked at all about marriage. He had told her many times that he loved her, and he was certain that in his own fashion he did love her, although there always was in his mind, alive in its recesses, the thought that she had not been completely truthful. It would be so profoundly personal, so demeaning to him, if he were to confront her, so he had never bothered to.

  “No, Father,” he said firmly, “I have not promised myself to any girl.”

  Don Vicente wanted to rise a little again, and Luis fluffed the pillows up and added a couple to the pile that supported his father’s back.

  “I know how young people feel nowadays. How times have changed!” He chuckled. “I want to see you married before I die, Luis. That’s a legitimate paternal wish, isn’t it? And Trining—I hope that your closeness to each other has not made you blind—she is very pretty. If you have no feeling for her except that of a cousin or even a brother, don’t worry. Love will come. She is a very good girl and she cares for you, although you perhaps do not know. I think she adores you. And do not forget, she is also rich—and it will be in the family, intact. No messy legal procedures and all that sort of thing. Your being cousins is no problem. We will get a dispensation from the bishop later. And your heirs—may there be a dozen of them! They will really have something substantial to lean on.” A long pause. “You agree with me about Trining, don’t you?”

  Luis nodded dumbly.

  “How long will it take you to decide? Until this evening? The earlier you decide, the sooner you can go back to your work.”

  Now that it was crudely put to him, Luis did not really need time to think. What would be had been in the back of his mind, inchoate but whole, and Trining had really been a warm and wonderful companion—if only there were more mind in her, not just homemaking and loving. What she had, however, were attributes of the housewife, not the mistress. Whenever she got permission to leave the convent and stay with him she took over the house—the kitchen most of all. She never tried going into meanderings of his mind. She never really reproved him for quitting school and creating havoc with the priests. It would have been easy for Luis to loathe the direct hand that his father was playing in a matter that was intensely personal, but Luis did not resent it. His father was right—there was also the family wealth to consider. How materialistic and crass can you get? The thin, raspy voice of conscience twitted him, but he did not heed it. He loved Trining, too, perhaps in a way that was not as deep as love should be, but he loved her nonetheless and that justified everything.

  “The decision is an easy one to make, Father,” he said. “Come to think of it, I am very fond of Trining, too, but”—he paused—“do you think she will not object?”

  “Hah!” the old man exclaimed, then burst out laughing, shaking with uncontrolled mirth until tears came to his eyes. When he finally stopped, his breathing was slow and relaxed and a warm contentment settled over him. “Trining will grab you with her two hands,” he said. “Well, this is wonderful. I knew you would see my point. You will get married tomorrow, then. I’ll tell Santos that the papers he has prepared are not going to be wasted.” He laughed softly again. “The judge will come here for the ceremony—and the church ceremony will come later. I am sure Trining will insist on that.” The old man shook his head, and with a slight wave of his hand he signaled Luis to leave him alone with his thoughts and his happiness.

  Trining was waiting in the hall. “What happened?” she asked, following him to his room. “I am glad there was no shouting, nothing of that sort. You have to be kind to him. What was he laughing about so uproariously?”

  In his room Luis started laughing, too, as soon as he had closed the door.

  “What is so funny?”

  “Us,” Luis said. “What a wonderful, compact family we are. All in complete agreement with one another.” He realized that she was waiting for the final word. In the fading light of the afternoon he saw that her eyes were beseeching. They had been very close, and he was always aware of her moods, how quickly they changed and how spontaneous they were. “Trining,” he said, holding her hands, “will you marry me?”

  She gasped, flung herself at him, and burst into tears. “Luis … Luis …” She was sobbing softly. “I am so happy, so very happy.”

  Her heart thumped against his chest. She took his hand and pressed it against her belly. “You are here, darling,” she whispered. “I wanted to tell you, for some time now, but I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t—but now I can.”

  He drew her away. “Why did you not tell me?”

  “Maybe you will say that I am proud,” she said softly, “but I wanted to be sure of many things. We have always been close. We have done many things together—and naturally. Even making love—it was the most natural thing, and finally”—she paused and did not seem to want to speak further.

  “Tell me,” he prodded her.

  “Well, I could see you paying attention to Ester. I thought that maybe—oh, I suffered. I couldn’t go to sleep. You can see I’ve lost weight, thinking …”

  He held her close again, and she hugged him, covering his face with kisses. “It must have been that time you didn’t ask me about my period. You are so damn fertile.” She laughed softly. “Oh, Luis, how many children do you think we should have? I’d like to have a dozen—and they will know more companionship than we did. But I am not complaining. Did Tio threaten you or argue with you about us? I want you—God, how I want you—but of your own free will.”

  His hand wandered down the silky valley of her thighs, up the mound and unmistakable feel of pubic hair, onto her belly, which he now rubbed ever so gently. He was filled with tenderness and compassion for this girl who had been his companion as well. “I hope we will have a boy,” he told her.

  They were married in the hall the following evening. The town judge, who had once clerked for his father, performed the ceremony. He was a short, paunchy man, and he stuttered badly; his hand was wet when he congratulated Luis and Trining. The town knew about the wedding, and in no time all of Luis’s office mates would learn about it, for Luis had sent a telegram to Eddie telling him that he would be absent for a few days, perhaps a week, since he and Trining would be getting married—and would he please look after everything?

  There were no guests. For Luis to have invited his mother and his grandfather was unthinkable. Besides, Don Vicente wanted it as quiet as possible, so only Dr. Collantes and Santos’s wife stood as witnesses. Don Vicente permitted the servants to watch the ceremony, but they did not file into the hall. Simeon stood at the dining room door, looking in, and Trining wished Marta was present, too, but she was in Ermita, unaware that the girl she had saved was happiest at this moment. Don Vicente did not leave his room, but his door was kept open so he could see everything. When the ceremony, which Trining said later was so brief and unromantic, was over, the newlyweds went to Don Vicente’s room and kissed his hand. At seven they had an ordinary supper, and after reciting the rosary in Don Vicente’s room they retired to T
rining’s bedroom, for her bed, as she herself had whispered to him, not only was wider but also did not squeak.

  Now there were just the two of them, and with the sounds of evening muted, they sought each other and put the quietus to the waiting and the uncertainty of the past. The window was open. The sky was cloudless, deep black, and sprinkled with stars. The cold of January evenings was in the air. Trining wanted to switch the light off, but Luis stopped her. “Isn’t this one time,” he said, running his hand across the valley of her breast, “that we shouldn’t care if the light is on?”

  “I don’t want to feel sorry,” she said, her face close to his, so that the fine contours of her nose, her cheeks, and her forehead were blurred.

  “But I’m not,” Luis assured her. For a while they did not speak. In the silence he could feel himself flowing out to her, his whole body lost in the welcome of her being.

  “Do you think your mother and your grandfather will approve of me?” she asked afterward. She had asked him to bring them from Sipnget, so that they would be present at his wedding, but Luis knew that they would never set foot in the big red house.

  “I’d like to go with you this time—to meet them. She is also my mother now, remember that.”

  “You will do nothing of the kind. Besides, you cannot walk very far.”

  She did not bother him again about meeting his mother and his grandfather. He turned on his side and reached for the switch near the bedpost, and as darkness claimed them Luis thought: This is not wrong, for if it were, then I would feel wretched. Even if it was Father who planned it this way, this is also what I want. For a while Luis forgot the cancerous hatreds that had embittered him. With Trining beside him, a sense of peace finally came over him, and with it, sleep.

  CHAPTER

  27

  It was a dreary walk from the camino. All around him were the newly harvested fields. There were still a few golden patches waiting to yield to the scythe, and the fields smelled richly of grain and of cut grass. When Luis finally reached the dike his legs were numb. Once, this dike was no more than a rise of earth that followed every bend of the river, but in a few years the path astride it had become a dirt road and the saplings of camachile and acacia on both sides had grown into trees, which helped to hold the earth in place. The narrow road carried no more than bull carts, horse-drawn calesas, and an occasional jeepney. On both sides, down to the bank of the river, spread patches of ripening tobacco plots, gold and green, topped with white where the blossoms had not yet fallen. The sun was high, and in the still afternoon the earth seemed to simmer. Astride the dike, he could see the distance he had traversed, and he cursed himself for not having worn sneakers. His aching feet must be blistered by now. His shoes had been newly polished by Simeon, but after he had crossed the muddy harvested fields, they had, like the cuffs of his gray pants, become dusty, the mud having dried on them. He walked on. Weeds were beginning to obscure the path. There were no quarter-moon marks of carabao hooves or the fine polished lines made by sled runners, and the earth was crusty under his feet. The path had not been used for some time, he mused. He stopped and looked back to where he had come from—the wide, flat fields splotched with high mounds of hay, and in the distance the lash of white country road where not a single bull cart or calesa moved and the lomboy tree at the edge of the depression from where the earth that formed the dike had been excavated. That tree—he was not wrong—years ago he had climbed it, defying the bees that hived in its trunk to gather its black juicy berries. This was the path, and holding on to a thick stand of grass, he bounded up onto the flat broad back to the dike.