And in a way difficult to explain but, deep in his heart, expressive of a basic truth, Tonyo saw in that glance a secret fear, a streak of jealousy that overcame the mother, dreading the fact that her daughter was searching for someone to love her, and in return, for her to love.
Tonyo found himself breaking up into a smile as he concentrated on painting the shiny edge of the roof in that large building in Ermita. The image of his mother staring fixedly at him early in the morning impinged on his memory,
“Where did you go last night to pay court, Tonyo?” his mother asked.
He flashed a grin and laughed softly. “I did not, Mother,” he answered, as he felt blood rushing to his face. “I don’t know how to woo a woman, mother …”
“Ow, who says you don’t know … According to Teming, you’re sending out signals that you’re attracted to Uring. Do you think I am not aware of this?”
And then he suddenly caught his mother staring at him: a look that was a mixture of resentment, dread, pained, but delighted at the same time.
A cord suddenly snapped in his heart. A sharp pain bore through his being. In that brief moment, he had a vision of the glory and despair of mothers on earth when the ties that bound mother and son in a dream-like situation came apart irrevocably, as the grown child began the search for another kind of love.
For a long time, since his heart was awakened to pursue another dream, a gap between himself and his mother had deepened. Never for a moment did he feel that it signified a waning of his affection and love for the woman to whom he owed his life.
What it really was remained incomprehensible to him. But a dark vision haunted him with increasing frequency. He likened himself to a fisherman gathering oysters. As he painstakingly opened those hard, recalcitrant shells, he hoped, with all his heart, to discover a precious pearl.
Tonyo laid down his brush near the can of paint. His stomach had soured and he craved a cigarette. He glanced at his hand to see if it was smeared with paint, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. It skipped his mind that the few matchsticks he had wrangled from his co-worker were gone.
He bent over the ledge and looked for his co-workers down below. “Ninoy,” he yelled at a worker. “Can you throw your lighter up here? I’d like to smoke.”
Suddenly, an image of Uring, throwing matches at him one morning when they were helping Uring’s father out in the field early in the planting season, surged through his mind.
“Here it is, o … catch it,” yelled the voice form the street. “Make sure you don’t touch the live wire above you.”
The worker hurled the shiny lighter up, which when struck by sunlight, briefly glinted brightly. That was a forceful throw. Tonyo stretched out his arm to catch the lighter.
At that precise moment, a far more blinding light exploded in his mind. As an image of a woman’s lovely face flashed through his mind, a horrible realization overcame him, filling him with terror: “I touched the live wire …”
His whole body was devoured by a terrifying flame. About to explode … exploding … his heart exploded into smithereens. A monstrous black cloud wrapped itself around him.
When he came to, he found himself standing on the roof ledge giving off sultry pinpoints of light in the noontime heat. A blackened body was sprawled at his feet, its hand hanging loosely by its side, and its head grotesquely dropping backward. A strange sensation came to him as he watched that body, and only when he saw the blackened face did the truth dawn on him that he had been electrocuted and that it was his corpse lying at his feet. And he, the one staring at the corpse, was only the spirit, what remained of the young man known by the name of Antonio de la Cruz. A few of the laborers were frantically climbing towards the roof. A woman alternately screamed and wailed from the ground. The laborer who threw the lighter seemed paralyzed on the spot, but was furiously waving his hand and shouting something at his companions desperately making their way to the rooftop. A long line of vehicles got stuck in the traffic, while a policeman blew his whistle repeatedly, asking for help from the other policemen. The cacophony of defeaning sounds, meaningless words and discordant tunes coming from a city preoccupied with its selfish concerns refused to see itself mirrored in the recently concluded tragedy.
Six laborers slowly and with much apprehension approached the dead body on the roof ledge. Tonyo moved aside when one of the men came near. He was who had brushed past him failed to see him. Only then did the bitter truth hit him, that the men could no longer see him.
“Is he dead?” one of the laborers asked.
“He’s dead …”
“That’s terrible.”
“Yes,” someone said. “One electric current surge and everything’s over. See, his burnt hand that got in contact with the live wire …”
Tonyo gazed at the faces of the men. Six sweaty faces etched with sadness. Six pairs of lips voicing out the grief that their faces could not hide. But Tonyo who stood over the dead body, remained invisible, finding it strange that the feelings expressed by the men seemed circumscribed by the emotions and the mind that the mortal body could grasp. In the light of the preternatural knowledge that had broken free of the ignorance and limitations of the body made of clay and dust, Tonyo grasped the meaning of everything.
“Let’s carry the body down …”
“Not yet. The police will take a look at the body first …”
“Then, I’ll go ahead and inform his parents about this,” one of the victim’s neighbors declared.
Tonyo gave the sprawled body one final, lingering look before focusing his mind on those he had left behind in the village. Simultaneously, he found himself standing in front of his parents’ home.
His mother was in front of the stove, cooking the family’s lunch. A younger brother was playing by himself downstairs. His father was out working in the field.
“My mother …” he called. And when she did not turn around, he remembered tha she could not hear him.
But in an instant, his mother shifted her body to look behind, as if she felt in her heart the call from her son she did not actually hear. His mother looked at the slatted bamboo flooring and tried to make out her younger son.
“Totoy, did you call me?”
“No, mother …”
And he saw his mother take a deep breath as if her heart was about to break.
He now focused his mind on his father busy tilling the field. He appeared to have finished working, and Tonyo had a glimpse of him peering between sheaves of play, hoping to catch some fish in the muddy soil.
“My father …” he called out.
But the man, carefully pushing away the abundant palay leaves, showed no evidence that he intuited something or that he was touched by a mysterious force.
Tonyo shifted his attention to the young woman who, until the last breath of his mortal body, loomed largely in his mind. In a flash, he found himself standing beside the young woman in front of the stove.
The young woman was preparing their lunch. Aling Ninay was washing clothes by the well at the rear of the house. And her father was shaving a customer in the small barbershop in front of the house.
For a few moments, he gazed at the woman. And through his otherwordly knowledge, he understood what kind of beauty Uring possessed that mesmerized his heart, without any doubt: the almost lyrical and intense honesty and fidelity shored up by an enviable tranquility of the mind, left untouched by life’s fickleness and greed.
“Uring,” he called out to her. “This is Tonyo, Uring.”
The woman was staring at the leaping flames. A dreamy vision added sparkle to her eyes. She picked up a thong and pushed a short piece of wood into the stove.
“Uring, this is Tonyo …this is Tonyo, Uring …”
Uring glanced at the door. She felt the call that could not be heard. And apparently dissatisfied, she scoured the street with her eyes. She then took a deep breath.
“You will shed tears, the love of my heart,” he warned Urin
g. “You will weep, for in a few moments you will find out that we can no longer be together even in our dreams …”
He then turned his attention to another part of the village, and he saw her cousin Tale sewing a mosquito net by the window. His cousin was softly humming a tune.
“Ka Tale,” he called out from the ground.
Tale went on singing, without missing a beat, totally oblivious.
“Ka Tale, this is Tonyo …” he repeated.
But the woman, sewing by the window, seemed unable to share any connection with him.
The sun had peaked and his neighbors were about to finish preparing their meals. He tarried a little longer, taking in the scenes, as the final reiteration of the bond with those people he had lived with for the eighteen years of his life on earth. He was about to depart when Pinang, looking shocked and distraught, hurriedly entered the gate.
“Tale … Tale …” the woman cried out.
Tale looked out from the window.
“Tonyo has died … They said he was electrocuted …”
“What?”
“It’s Tonyo … He was electrocuted and died …”
“Don’t crack a joke, Pinang. That’s not funny …”
“But it’s true, Tale. There is much weeping in his house.”
Tale’s mother who was cooking in the kitchen, looked out the window, her brows furrowed. “What did you say, Pinang? What are you saying?”
“They say that Tonyo died in Manila. He was electrocuted….”
“Oh, Mother of God in heaven …” the old woman gasped.
Tonyo gazed at the faces of the three women.
“Oh my God, is that true?” Tale asked, tears now streaming down her face. “Perhaps it is not true, Pinang?”
“It’s true. It was Doming who shared the news.”
Ingga who lived across the house, and Belen from the adjoining house, both looked out their windows.
“What’s that again, Ka Tasya?” Ingga yelled.
It was Pinang who answered. “Tonyo, the son of Ka Marya, died …. He was electrocuted in Manila …”
“What?” Minang, from another house, screamed.
He waited for all the women to come down. His Nana Sima and Luming were hurriedly walking towards the house. And when Pinang repeated the sad news she had told Tale and her mother, the variety of expressions their faces registered—profound sadness, depression, shock, regret, horror—were not lost on him …. But it no longer gave him pause that all the level of these emotions were well within what the mortal body could experience.
“Has Uring heard the news?” he asked himself.
But Uring had been told. He saw the woman weeping, with her head buried in her arms resting on a table. He saw her body wracked with spasms, as she strove to control her sobbing. He saw drops of tears glistening on the floor.
He stared at the weeping woman for a long time. He could not believe what he had witnessed in the woman’s expression of grief: a deep and inconsolable pain much greater than that he had seen in his aunt and cousin, but not quite so shatteringly profound that it cracked open a grieving heart, perhaps because what she experienced was still severely limited by what her mortal body was capable of.
He felt no surprise, though, to see his mother stand out, all by herself and in deep sorrow, in the midst of these women. His mother was all alone in her anguish. And he understood, in his newly acquired heavenly knowldge, that his bond with his mother was far stronger than the connection between lovers: this was a connection found only between a mother and her child.
He hovered near his mother and gently planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Do not grieve, mother …” he said softly.
But even as he utttered those words, he realized that from that moment on, the wound inflicted by fate on her mother’s heart would never heal. It was possible, though, that after a few days, false joy could mask the searing pain. Yet, he was fully convinced that nothing could wash away the wound. The source of that wound was the infinite and unfathomable agony and grief only the heart of a mother could comprehend.
Suddenly, a riveting image streaked in front of him, as if in a vision: a mother whose heart was being lacerated by a nameless grief, as she stood at the foot of her Son’s cross.
After the vision had ended, he gazed at his mother again. And he shifted his gaze towards the incomparable vastness light and its never-ending promise of eternal life.
Why the Angels Are Sad
The sun was blazing at noon when Pinong entered his yard, bringing fodder grass. He was still at work in his irrigation ditch when the church bells told him it was twelve o’ clock. His stomach was churning with hunger.
He put down the fodder grass beside his carabao’s corral, and proceeded to feed the carabao, who had stood on its legs to watch him when he arrived. He briefly prepared the fodder grass for the carabao’s latter meal before walking towards the wooden steps of his hut.
His mother’s voice called out from the hut.
“Is that you, Pinong?”
“Yes, Mother!” he said as he washed his feet in the basin at the foot of the stairs. “Have the children eaten?”
“Father, we eat plenty rice …”
A louder voice followed.
“She says we’re eating, Father!” the voice gleefully explained, as it burst into laughter.
He walked up the steps in a hurry. His two children, both girls, were really at the dulang. The three-year-old, awkwardly putting the rice that she had scooped out of the plate into her mouth, lifted her eyes and looked at him, and grinned, her eyes turning into slits. The five-year-old was sipping soup from a large bowl.
“Hurry up and join us, Pinong,” his mother said. “We were going to wait for you if not for this brat Neneng. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the stove, e …”
It was the five-year-old’s turn to speak, with a smile, as she gently laid down the bowl on the dulang.
“This Nene eats a lot, Father!” she said as she gazed at her sister Her father smiled broadly.
“This girl loves to eat! Lita had wanted to wait for you, but Nene cried and she wanted to eat at once …”
The pangs of hunger attacking Pinong suddenly disappeared, and taking their place was this strange, uncomfortable tightening of his chest and shortness of breath. He turned his back and without a word, climbed down the steps.
“Where are you going, Pinong?” His mother asked
“I’ll eat in a little while, Mother!” he muttered, as if a lump in his throat had stuck.
“Why don’t you join us now?” the mother persisted. “The soup will get cold, Pinong!”
Pinong kept quiet. He was near the low wooden gate and was about to step over it when he changed his mind and walked toward the edge of the yard. He could feel his madly pulsating heartbeat, and for a moment, he feared that his heart was about to explode. He took a deep breath …
It had been a month snce Mameng and their newly-born child, that had caused the mother’s death, had been laid to rest; but the gnawing pain in his heart had not been assuaged. In those weeks, he could barely force himself to eat with his mother and two daughters at their small dulang.
Pinong picked up a few sheaves of fodder grass, from a wooden container and dumped them on the carabao’s feeding trough. The carabao noisily expelled steam at if gladdened by his gesture, and cast him a glance as if in gratitude. Pinong heaved a sigh and sat down on his haunches in the shade under the mango tree. A little later, his mother called out.
“Pinong, come up, we’re done. You might faint because of hunger …”
And the man, with great reluctance, stood up.
“I felt the same way, too …” Aling Marya informed Simang, Pedring’s wife, “immediately after the death of their father. Every time we faced each other at the dulang for meal, I felt as if the sky was falling down on me. And right there at the table, I would lose my appetite and find myself breaking down.”
The food had been r
eplenished when Pinong went to the kitchen.. The soured mudfish soup was steaming hot. And a large bowl contained big and sweet guavas from the guava trees near the river. When he sat down at the low table, Nene came and stood beside him.
“Guavas, Father. Please give me …” his daughter pleaded. The older daughter giggled.
“She said, please give her guavas. She wanted me to ask you but it was she who liked them. You’re a glutton …”
Pinong handed over a guava to the three-year-old, and the child grinned, her eyes forming slits.
“Nice, guava, Father. Nice …”
“Naku, come here at once, you little brat!” Pinong’s mother yelled at the little girl. “Aren’t you ever satisfied? You might just get sick, always overeating …”
The litte girl rushed towards her grandmother, and with a smile, showed the old woman the guava.
“Guava, from Father …”
Pinong gave out a faint smile. That was how Mameng smiled. That was how her teeth would sparkle and her eyes turned into slits. And deep within his heart, he felt a sense of happiness from which he drew consolation each time he saw his motherless daughters: that strange happiness that suffused a grieving, tearful heart.
He finished his meal in haste. He poured his soured soup into his rice, and hurriedly filled his mouth, barely chewing his food. And when his mother turned her attention to him after a while, he had pushed away his plate.
“Have you eaten, Pinong?” His mother asked, curiously.
“Yes, Mother!” he said softly.
Pinong felt a pain in his chest, making his breathing difficult, and was again overcome with the desperation and sorrow that had never left him, especially when his mind wandered off into the void, where he searched for answers to his wife’s early death. He sat down on the top step while smoking a cigarette. But after he had flicked away the butt into the ground, he returned to the kitchen and lay down beside the wooden wall connecting the kitchen to the main room.
Pinong took a deep breath. His mind wandered off into the past. Several months ago, friend from Panginay dropped by his house one evening. He had wanted to make Pinong the baptismal sponsor of his child.
Love in the Rice Fields Page 8