Don Vicente

by F. Sionil Jose

  “Why are you so certain?” Luis asked, his interest aroused.

  The coffee had been brought in, and the captain took a cup. “I am sure,” he replied, “because there is freedom in this country. Oh, you will disagree with me—this freedom works only for the rich, for people like you, and it does not work for the poor. But there is more to it than that—there is freedom to express opposition in words, even in action occasionally. There is a kind of mobility, too—is that the word? People are able to rise from their low origins. Look at me, sir. Maybe we will not go beyond a certain position, but we can move. And the government, for all its shortcomings, is an elected government. There is communication between the politicians and the people—open communication, sir.”

  “There is one thing you miss,” Luis said. “Revolutions are not made by the masses. They are made by new men, by people like you—if you were on the other side.”

  “And if I were there—thank God, I am not,” the captain said, his voice excited and high-pitched, “you know what would happen? I would get killed—or I would surrender in the end. Your brother, sir, will get killed, no matter how fast he runs—that is, if he does not surrender. It is not a question of the Army being a superior force. It’s a question of forcing a revolution upon a society that is malleable, that will change with the needs of the hour. This is what the Huks misunderstand, Mr. Asperri. They are blind to it. As the problem intensifies, the government will become frantic—it will institute reforms, try to win the Huks and their friends back to the fold, with promises, with concrete programs, and who can then fight the government and the powerful men who run it? These men—for all their corruption—are malleable too, Mr. Asperri. They will change, and when this happens the Huks will be destroyed. It is really as simple as that.”

  “And in the meantime, while we wait for this change, there will be more people killed, more poor people sacrificed in the name of reform?”

  “I suppose it has to be that way, Mr. Asperri,” the captain said.

  “I thought,” Luis said, “that the war just over taught us at least one thing—the meaninglessness of violence. It did cheapen a lot of our values and this that is happening now. Do you really think it will strengthen our society?”

  The captain sighed and slapped his thigh in a gesture of futility. “We have our favorite hopes,” he said. “You have yours—and I understand your views, your affection for your brother. You may even be giving the Huks aid, but if you do, please think it over. They are doomed, and you are simply lengthening their agony. You really cannot fight the government, which, in a way, is of our own making. This is what we often forget—whatever its shortcomings, this government is ours.”

  The officer glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s time I went back,” he said. “I wish I could return and have a long talk with you and tell you about our side, too. Those boys out there, barely out of their teens, are farm boys—like I said—and they are not concerned with politics or philosophy. They are concerned about the money they will send home if they survive their patrols—fringe benefits. These are the things that interest them. The right formula for patriotism—love, duty, honor—it’s for the birds, isn’t it, Mr. Asperri? Or for people like you and me.”

  Luis smiled wanly. The officer stood up, and Luis accompanied him to the stairs, where they shook hands again, this time warmly.

  “You need not worry,” he said as he turned to leave. “A new detachment may arrive tomorrow or within the week. Our patrols are out every night, and if an attack should come, your town police is quite ready—and radio contact is very good. Assistance will be immediately available.”

  It did not rain the whole day, and the heat had become oppressive—it rose from the earth, too, like some diaphanous spirit in possession of everything, and even the massive house seemed to have been conquered by it. Trining, who normally complained about the heat, now did so with vehemence. The generators had just been brought from the city. The air-conditioning and refrigerating units in the house had malfunctioned, perhaps from the excessive heat itself, and now there was no light as well. At dusk, however, it finally rained with a suddenness that was both welcome and soothing. The evening that came soon after was fragrant with the scent of green things.

  For the first time since she got back from the hospital, Luis slept with his wife in their room. Luis went to sleep swimming in the pleasantness that had come with the July twilight. He had tried reading some of his new poems to her, but she had lost interest after the first two, had turned on her side and gone to sleep, so he had lain them down; soon he was dreaming that he was strolling in a field of water lilies and that as he stepped on the soft purple blossoms they were not crushed at all but yielded instead to his feet and sprang up, larger and prettier, as he moved on. He saw the field spread about him, a throbbing purple sea that melted into a bowl of glazed blue sky.

  It was a shot that woke him up, sending consciousness coursing through him like fire. He opened his eyes and strained his ears. In the dark, somehow, all sounds seemed more defined. Now the shots burst again in quick fury. He turned quickly on his side, and in the dimness he saw that his wife had sat up. She reached out for his hand. It was cold and trembling.

  “Something is the matter, Luis,” she whispered. “I called for the nurse, but there was no reply. She is gone. I called for one of the servants—there was no answer either. We are alone in the house. Something is the matter.”

  Another burst of gunfire rang out, and Luis thought it did not come from afar but from the vicinity of the municipio.

  “It’s the Huks,” Trining whispered hoarsely, her breath gusty on his face, her heart pounding against his chest. He held her, and although he had started to tremble, he assured her. “If they are Huks, they will not harm us. There is something I should have told you long ago—my brother, Victor, is one of them. The Huks know that we are brothers.”

  The shots came nearer now, the inaudible cries and the howling of dogs. They were coming from the east, from the foothills, and the sounds were now at the entrance to the town. Whoever they were, the shouting was coming in a flood that could not be dammed. Their cries exploded sonorously in the quiet, as if the mob was now downstairs, taunting the silent ghosts, crying: Our moment has come.

  “What shall we do?” Trining asked.

  He tried to calm her, saying, “Do you know what they are really after? They will raid the municipio first, get the guns of the police and loot the municipal treasury and the stores, then they will leave. This is the way they always work.” He wanted to believe his words. “We will be safe—my brother …” But he did not finish what he wanted to say—that they would be safe because he had done harm to no one.

  To no one? He turned the words briefly in his mind and tried to convince himself that they were true, but he could not now lie to himself, not in this hour of need. He had not harmed Ester and his mother and his grandfather and Victor—they who were closest to him; he had only denied them, and denying them, he had killed them. He had done harm to no one, and now rocks crashed through the panes, smashed into the room. Bullets ricocheted from the stonework and the aging wood and sang deep into the caverns of his redoubt.

  “No!” he cried. “They cannot do this to me. I am their friend! Not to me!” He rushed to the window and flung it open, so that he was framed there, his arms flailing as he shouted to the huge and formless blackness before him. “Vic, it is I, Luis, your brother. You don’t know what you are doing!”

  He could not see the shapes that moved below. Trining pulled him away from the window just as the giant veil of darkness before him suddenly exploded in sharp orange flashes of thunder. He found himself being dragged to the floor, among bits of glass. Again the horrendous shouts, like a curse, burst in unison in the street below in all its frightening clarity: Commander Victor! Commander Victor!

  The firing and the stoning ceased, and the shuffle of feet below moved on. He stirred, the dust of the floor gritty on his lips. His wife, beside him, gr
oped in the dark for his hand. “Luis,” she said softly, “I’ve been hit.” She pressed his hand to her breast. It was wet and warm.

  “My God!” he cried, and gathering her gently, he carried her across the room and laid her gently on the bed. He moved quickly, groped for the light switch twice, thrice, but it did not work. The generators were out; the complementary power from the town powerhouse had been cut off, too. It was elementary strategy—they must have cut off the communication lines as well. Rosales was now sealed off, and there would be no help forthcoming unless the news was relayed to the constabulary by wireless.

  He bent over her and asked, “Does it hurt?” In the dimness he saw her shake her head. He ran to the hall and called the servants—Santos slept in the room near the landing—but there was no movement in the house except the patter of rat feet in the ceiling and the tumult of his own breathing. He rushed to the servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. Lighting a match, he saw that all the cots were empty, the drawers, too, and on the floor were scattered pieces of clothing that had been left by the servants as they fled. Trining was right—they were alone in the house. Everyone was gone—Santos, all of them whom he trusted, who would do his bidding without question. The servants had known about the attack, and none of them had warned him. Was it because they hated him and wanted him to die—or was it because, no matter what he did, he would always be his father’s son? He felt miserable at their perfidy, they who had lived with him, who had partaken of his food and played with him in his childhood.

  He strangled a sob and fled back to their room, where his wife lay bleeding. I must stop it, he said to himself, and in the darkness he groped for anything to stop the bleeding. He lighted a match and in the feeble light Trining’s face was dreamy and unafraid. “Does it hurt?” he repeated, wanting desperately to hear her assure him that it did not. She shook her head.

  “Luis, my Luis,” she said softly, “it is the same thing all over again, but I am no longer scared the way I was—and I was not even hurt then. No, I am not afraid at all—but for you, my husband, I am afraid.”

  He found a candle at the bottom of her dresser and lighted it. Quickly the things in the room jumped up. He saw the medicine chest that the nurse had brought. He pushed down her nightgown. The wound was above the right nipple, a neat little hole, and from it a stream oozed, not in spurts but in a slow, sure trickle. She had bled much, and the whole front of her nightgown was drenched.

  “We must get out of this house,” he said, and proceeded to help her up so that he could carry her, but she held him back and, smiling bravely, said, “They will kill you the moment they see you. Just try to stop the bleeding.”

  He opened the medicine cabinet, took out wads of cotton and bandages, a bottle of Merthiolate and sulfa powder, then went back to her. He worked swiftly, although his hands shook. He sprinkled the wound with the powder, swabbed it, then padded it with cotton. He was not sure if the bleeding would stop after he had plastered the dressing, but this was better than nothing. “How do you feel?” he asked when the job was done.

  “Weak,” she said, looking at him with misty eyes. “Luis, I am going to die and my poor baby, my poor baby—I have not even seen him.”

  Tears welled from her eyes and wet her cheeks. Luis eased her back onto the bed and wiped the tears and the beads of sweat that glistened on her brow. She mustn’t die, he prayed, looking at her face, which was now quiet as a child’s and as lovely. She mustn’t die, he prayed, hoping for daylight and the end of this nightmare. He blew the candle out and took her hand. Her pulse was weak but steady.

  Bending over her, he whispered, “You will be all right.” He felt her lips touch his cheek. Now was the time to tell her—she must know about the misshapen thing in the hospital, about that Asperri who would inherit all they had if it lived. If it were to live! He would forsake it; this was not his, nor was it Trining’s—this thing with handless arms and footless legs, this grotesque thing he had sired. What infernal seed had he planted? What evil was it that thwarted his father’s dream to perpetuate his name upon the land he had coveted? Was this the coagulation of all his sins, all the frustrations he had passed around as his blessings? But it is alive—this baby, this son—and it cries and its eyes are human, although as yet they are unseeing. It would require courage to look at it, the doctor had intoned, and resignation to accept it, but it was pity now—and charity and the purest kind of love—for Trining to be shielded from the truth. Bending over her again, Luis said softly, “Don’t worry about your baby. At least it is safe. You will see him. Just wait.”

  “If I die,” Trining said, “will you marry again? If you do, Luis, please take care of him, see to it that he is loved, that he will have a happy—a very happy childhood—” He did not want her to finish, so he bent down and smothered her face with kisses.

  He went to the window and peered carefully into the street that was now empty and silent. From the direction of the municipio fresh volleys broke out and the plaintive cry “Commander Victor!” in unison, as if a cheerleader for a basketball tournament had trained the shouting throng—only the cry was harsher, louder, and seemed to ignite the air. That was what happened when they raided a town or a capital—they always shouted the name of their leader for all to hear, as if doing so would give their unit prestige and strike into the hearts of their victims the fear and the respect that their leader evoked. There was the first Commander Victor whom he and his brother knew, who blasted his brains out with his own gun, and there was a new one now—and there would be a third and a fourth. There would always be a new commander each time one died. These leaders never died, for how can a ghost, a dream, be nailed up in a coffin and shut up in the hollow of the earth?

  Although the shouting had ceased, the gunfire persisted, not in volleys but in isolated bursts. They must be looting the Chinese stores now, and he wondered how Go Chua and his waddling, unctuous assistant, the ascetic Joaquin Lee—all of them who occupied his father’s accesorias—would appear. Perhaps they were helping the raiders themselves fill up their jeeps with cases of canned food, shoes, clothes, and sacks of rice.

  There was a chance that he could steal into the car with Trining and make a dash across the town and head for the city, but he quickly gave up the thought. His brother was not dumb. He must have placed roadblocks at all entrances and exits of Rosales. But why didn’t they rush the house when they passed? It was a simple thing to do, smash the iron gate, proceed to the bodega, which was still stacked high with seed palay and newly milled rice, and they could have gone up the marble stairs and blasted open the steel safe in the study and made off with the thousands of pesos in it. The answer to his own query came viciously—they did not bother because they knew that he and his wife were now alone, because they were like ripe guavas about to fall at the slightest breeze, because to enter the brick house was like entering an unguarded treasure trove.

  Luis crouched low, hiding himself from the street, and slipped through the azotea door. Through the low stone balustrade he peered into the street and beyond—into the town. No shape emerged from the darkness—just the fine uneven line of the horizon against the sky dotted with stars, for the rain had gone and with it its portent of clouds. They were taking their time, and if they did tarry, there would be time for him and Trining to escape. He rushed back to their room, and in the dark, to which he was now accustomed, he saw that their bed was empty.

  He rushed out, shouting her name, and at the other end of the hall he caught up with her wobbling to the door. He swept her up in his arms and in spite of her protests carried her back. She was light and helpless as a child. Perhaps she did not hear him call her name, and when she snuggled in his arms, her face pressed warm and cool against his cheek, she asked, “Why were you so afraid? I just wanted to make sure the door was bolted tight. They must not harm you, Luis. Even if I die you must live.”

  “They will not harm us,” he assured her, but he knew he was lying. There was no place for them that was saf
e, not in this house, not in Rosales, not in Manila even, for it was not so much violence that they could not escape; it was life itself—crude, cunning, and vengeful. But they would leave behind this abomination that would inherit all of Rosales—the land—and the thought of it sickened him. At the same time it confirmed for him, at least, the irony of his being here.

  “If they break into this house, will they burn it?”

  He shook his head. “It will be a waste,” Luis said. “My brother knows much, much more than that.”

  “Your brother?”

  “He is Commander Victor,” he said simply.

  Trining did not speak. It was better that way. She must now know and understand that this fate was not just theirs; it was also shared by someone who had, after all, come to warn him in a final gesture of remembrance and love.

  “Forgive me,” he said brokenly. “Vic came here last night; he told me to take you away, to leave immediately. I did not heed him—I was so sure—and I was thinking only of myself.”

  “Do not blame yourself,” she said softly. “Please do not blame yourself.” He was holding her hand and he felt her stiffen. “Oh, Luis,” she whispered, “it is beginning to hurt.”

  “Please, God,” he cried softly, “please do not let her die.” Then he mumbled senselessly into her ear. “When morning comes the servants —and the doctor—will be back. I will not leave you. I won’t leave you.”