Sins

by F. Sionil Jose

  I saw him with his canvas bag about to board a jeepney. I rushed after him and held on to the handle of the jeepney as it started. I was dragged along before I pitched myself into the jeepney—fortunately, there was a seat beside him. I held his arm, “I must talk with you, hijo. You cannot leave me like this.” I realized I was pleading.

  The driver stopped the jeepney.

  The boy must have been embarrassed by the attention I had drawn, my attire and all, so he followed me down out of the jeepney. Walking beside him back to the house, this pride, this vaulting sense of being a father, this great paternal feeling I had never felt before filled me, never, not even for Angela, although I loved her so much; maybe because she was a girl and was always there when I needed her.

  We were now in the shade of the huge acacia trees along this street that led to the house. I would have ridden the jeepney to wherever it was going had he not agreed to get off. I think he realized this, too. It would have been my first jeepney ride, for even in the days after the war when there was very limited transportation, my family always had our own—jeeps and command carriers, which Father got from the American army. And, soon after, our first Buick and Cadillac arrived.

  I asked Delfin where he was going and he said it was to a distant aunt somewhere in Parañaque. He had arrived the day before and from the pier he had gone straight to the house. Did he have money? It was a foolish question, but I wanted to know. Yes, he said with some pride, what Severina had saved, all three hundred pesos of it, pinned inside his shirt so no pick-pocket could reach it.

  At the gate, I instructed a flustered gatekeeper to let Delfin in at any time he wished. It was Sunday and though I worked even on Sundays, this time I decided to stay in the house and be with him.

  How does one become an instant father? All my life I have had my way. With money, I got anything I wanted; almost anything anyway. Could I now buy this young man’s affection? He had had no supper the previous evening, no breakfast, this I soon realized. I took him back to the dining room and told the cook to prepare breakfast, and for me another cup of coffee.

  So many questions ached to be asked, but I held back, and watched him eat silently. When I did ask, he spoke slowly, as if he were weighing every uttered word.

  To my pleasure, he said he was enrolling at the state university. He had a full scholarship through the efforts of the high school principal who recognized, perhaps, the boy’s academic excellence. He was his high school’s valedictorian that year. I knew little of the island where Severina had gone—that Siquijor was somewhere in the Visayas, minuscule, insignificant, without any industry. I would ask my office the following morning to prepare its profile.

  And what did he want to be? What course in the university would he be taking?

  Not one hesitant moment. “I hope I can be a lawyer, sir,” he said simply. Almost immediately, I knew that he would achieve that goal.

  I had presumed that I could persuade him to stay. How many rooms in the house were empty? How many servants did we have to serve just the three of us? Maybe I sounded too eager when I said, “Hijo, live with me. There is so much space here—there is just my sister and her daughter and I …”

  Again, no hesitation. “Thank you very much, sir. All that I promised my mother was to see you.”

  At this moment my precious Angela came to the dining room and sat beside me to look at Delfin. She had heard part of the conversation.

  “Your cousin,” I said, almost blurting out “your sister” instead. Though in poor health, Angela would surely grow into a beauty—the signs were explicit, the large dark eyes, the angelic face—indeed, her name truly fitted her and her disposition as well.

  Delfin and I were talking in English. His Tagalog was not any better than mine and it was heavily accented.

  “Tito.” Angela had been calling me uncle since she could speak. Her hand was on mine, but those limpid eyes were on the young man before us. “Why does he not want to stay with us? Then you don’t have to help me with my homework. I can ask him to do that.”

  I told her in Spanish that this young man was my son, that I really wanted him to stay, and when I turned to Delfin, something in his face told me he understood everything. I was to learn later that, indeed, he knew enough Spanish to get by—Severina had taught him what she had learned in the house. It was only a matter of time, in college and by his own reading, that he would know Spanish, speak it correctly in a manner better than mine.

  Perhaps I tried too hard. I could imagine his uneasiness not just with me but with the grand dimensions of the house. He need not tell me how he had lived and grown up in that god-forsaken island. The roughness of his skin, his big callused hands were more than eloquent expressions of how harshly he had lived.

  But why did Severina never tell me that we had a child? Why did she leave without telling me? Later on, it would have been easy for her to write. I could only surmise that it was my parents’ doing. How often had they dinned into me that I must never marry someone whose social background was inadequate.

  Having finished breakfast, he stood up, bowed and thanked me. “I must go now, sir,” he said.

  I couldn’t hold him back, so I decided to take him to his aunt. I would at least know in what anonymous corner of Parañaque he would stay.

  Angela wanted to come along. She sat between Delfin and me. The Cadillac, the fifth in the garage, was new, black and shiny. A couple of Mercedes-Benzes were awaiting release at the piers.

  Delfin gave the address to the driver with some hesitation. All the way to Parañaque, he did not speak unless he was spoken to. Angela asked her own kind of questions: Did he live by the sea in this Siquijor island? No, but the sea was not far. Did he do a lot of swimming and boating? Angela loved the sea and when I would take the boat from the yacht club for a breath of sea air along the Bataan or Cavite coasts, she always wanted to come along. Yes, Delfin told her—he also liked swimming and fishing.

  It took us more than an hour to locate the place, tucked inside a narrow alley into which the Cadillac could not squeeze. We walked through a seedy neighborhood, ramshackle wooden houses. It was Angela’s first time in a slum; her face was so mobile that, although she did not speak, the shock was all over her young face. The whole place smelled, too, of abandoned urinals and dour living, and this is where my son was going to live.

  I met the distant aunt, a fat, slovenly woman, middle-aged and worldly-wise, who immediately recognized my social status. She could glimpse through the narrow alley the El Dorado parked on the street around which the children and the neighborhood riffraff were now crowded. Her manner was sickeningly ingratiating, saying how fortunate that Delfin had such well-to-do relatives and, now, he had to visit such a humble place blessed though he was with the acquaintanceship of such generous people.

  She had opened the door of the tiny apartment; some slattern women were inside, squatting on the cement floor, smoking and playing cards. Delfin walked me back to the car and, before we parted, I thrust into his pocket a fistful of bills. He did not want to accept it.

  “I will come back for you,” I said, dodging his hand as he tried to shove the money at me.

  Angela went into the car immediately as if she were anxious to be inside, to be shielded from the destitution and squalor she had just seen. She seemed very relieved when we finally left.

  “He is going to stay there?” she asked in disbelief.

  In the office the following morning I sent an aide to the state university to inquire about Delfin’s scholarship, specifically how much it was worth, for how long. What about his textbooks? The other expenses he might incur? I wanted to know all about his needs.

  The aide returned. Delfin had a full scholarship, which meant he also had a little spending money, but he had to maintain his high grades to retain the stipend and the scholarship. With so many other bright young people at the university on scholarships, he might have some difficulty keeping his. How could he concentrate on his studies while living
in that dreadful place? The stipend was measly—would it keep him alive? I was very glad when at the opening of the school year, he transferred to a tiny room near the campus. His having to commute to Parañaque every day was a terrible waste of time.

  The profile prepared by my research department was comprehensive. None of my ships stopped in Dumaguete, the port closest to the island. Three hours by ferry from Siquijor and you are in Dumaguete and, from there, connections by air or boat to any of the country’s big cities.

  Though densely populated, the island is basically agricultural, with almost no potential for industry. For tourism, it has white sand beaches and snorkeling possibilities in its coral reefs, many of them teeming with fish, particularly skipjacks and the rare blue ribbon eel.

  A coastal road, some seventy-six kilometers long, skirts the island and all its towns. It is hilly, limestone-ridged. The natives are fishermen, and farmers tending coconut, corn, cassava, abaca, rice, peanuts and tobacco. Some manganese is mined in the interior.

  What attracted me most, however, were the details about the island’s history and its identification with the black arts.

  The islanders’ oral tradition holds that Siquijor rose from the sea amid thunder and lightning, and also describes a legendary King Kihod. Fossilized sea creatures have been found in the interior highlands. Chinese porcelain plowed up by local farmers indicates the prevalence of pre-Hispanic trading. The island’s native name was Katugasan, after tugas—the molave trees that covered the hills. The Spanish first called it Isla del Fuego (Island of Fire), probably due to the swarms of fireflies they found here, and later renamed it Siquijor.

  In spite of the long presence of Christianity, Siquijor is noted for herbal medicine, witchcraft, magic and superstition, with San Antonio as the center of shamanism. There are said to be about fifty mananambals who are classified as either “white” or “black” sorcerers, depending on whether they specialize in healing or harming. You can see a collection of their paraphernalia, including voodoo dolls, potions and concoctions, skulls and candles at Silliman University’s Anthropology Museum in Dumaguete. San Antonio, named after the patron saint of medicine, is reached by a back road leading into the interior hills, but don’t expect to see much evidence of the dark arts.

  During Holy Week, herbalists and sorcerers come from all over the Visayas and Mindanao to San Antonio to participate in a ritual known as tang-alap. They roam the area’s forests, caves and cemeteries to gather medicinal herbs and roots, then sit in a circle, and while a humorous mood prevails, the ingredients are combined in piles. The gathering culminates in an exclusive ritual that takes place in a secluded cave at dawn.

  Magbabarang is the name given to the “black” sorcerers. These dreaded purveyors of pain and death can be hired as agents of vengeance, and use barang—certain bees, beetles and centipedes that have an extra leg—and magic invocations to achieve their ends. They collect these insects and keep them in a bamboo tube. Always on a Friday, they place several pieces of paper, each bearing someone’s name and address, in the tube. They check a short time later, and if the papers have been shredded, it’s taken as a sign that the insects will attack the individuals named. The magbabarang ties a white string around the insects’ other legs before releasing them. They are ordered to find their victims, enter their bodies and cause death by biting the internal organs. Then they return to their master, who examines the strings to see if the magic was successful. If so, the string will be red with blood; if it’s clean, it means the person was innocent and could resist the hex. Those who suspect that a magbabarang had been hired against them may employ their own practitioner to counteract the voodoo, which could result in a complex power struggle.

  Later that year, during Holy Week, an aide came in excitedly. He had helped prepare the Siquijor profile. Now, he showed me an Agence France Presse dispatch:

  “WITCHES” CONVERGE ON SIQUIJOR ISLAND

  TO TEST POTENCY OF THEIR MEDICINES

  Self-styled medicine men, sorcerers, herbalists and other practitioners of esoteric arts converged on this Visayan island this Holy Week to cook up their most potent potions.

  Such medicine men could be seen in the island’s cemeteries on Good Friday, picking up gravel with their hands from the base of the graves for use in their potions.

  The annual event has earned Siquijor the title of “the island of witches.”

  It has also given its inhabitants a fearsome reputation among fellow Filipinos—much to the irritation of some of Siquijor’s more image-conscious residents.

  From Good Friday until Easter, various people described alternately as healers, witches, shamans and medicine men prepared the various mixes that they will use all year.

  Ingredients for potions were gathered on Friday, cooked in cauldrons on Saturday and made into various preparations that the sorcerers sell.

  Most ingredients are from Siquijor’s forests: plants, leaves, twigs, vines and roots. Some “treatments” from these materials seem to be much like traditional herbal medicine since they supposedly alleviate aches, pains and various diseases.

  Only plants from Siquijor will do, although some herbalists readily admit these plants grow elsewhere.

  But some potions use even stranger ingredients: cemetery dirt and wood gathered on Good Friday, and leftover candlewax and flower petals scavenged from Holy Week processions.

  Florian Cabico, a 68-year-old herbalist from the nearby island of Cebu who travels to Siquijor each year, says the potions must be prepared on Good Friday because “there is no God on Good Friday.”

  This refers to the belief among Catholics that Good Friday marks the death of Christ, who is not resurrected until Easter Sunday. The Philippines is largely Roman Catholic, but animist beliefs persist in many areas of everyday life.

  Medicine men say their potions have supernatural effects: charms that allow the wearers to dodge bullets, prevent them from falling off coconut trees, and ensure good luck.

  There are charms that guarantee salesmen big earnings, preparations that draw fish into nets and love potions for both men and women.

  But the most feared are the curses: spells cast by witches using voodoolike dolls and, through offerings of food and drink, to unseen spirits in a hidden ceremony within the gnarled roots of the “balete” tree, widely believed by Filipinos to be an abode of unearthly creatures.

  Such witches, both male and female, can supposedly bring illnesses and even painful death to their enemies—or anyone they are paid to curse. Fortunately, sorcerers also prepare charms to counter these.

  Medicine men, who often live as simple farmers alongside the rest of the communities in rural towns here, will rarely admit they are also witches who cast curses, due to possible retaliation from their victims’ relatives.

  But people in their neighborhood will say—out of earshot—who among them practice such black arts.

  Other Siquijor medicine men reputedly have even stranger skills, like the ability to walk on hot coals or charm snakes by reciting certain prayers or, in one case, to make spirits animate paper dolls so they dance to disco music.

  Many medicine men insist they are good Catholics who see no conflict between their practices and their faith.

  Juan Ponce, 70, describes himself as a Catholic and says he uses his potions only to “cure sicknesses that can’t be cured in hospitals.”

  Ponce, considered a teacher by a small clique of younger herbalists who gather at his home from throughout the country each year, says his knowledge was passed on to him from his father, who received it from his own father.

  I know, of course, that witchcraft, a heritage of ghosts and the macabre, is not confined to Siquijor. Every village has its lore of the mysterious, a past beyond fathoming, enshrined in myth for the young to embellish and perhaps to believe in—the trees that are the abode of spirits, the turn of a river where a nymph was once seen, an empty lot where on moonlit nights wraiths in white reveled.

  One Sunday mornin
g, having fulfilled my duty to Corito for the day, we fell to talking about Delfin.

  “I find him very attractive,” Corito said. She had gotten dressed but was still lounging on my bed. “You know who he reminds me of? You—when there was more stamina here,” she said, fingering my crotch.

  “He is barely out of his teens,” I said.

  “That’s when they are the most sturdy, too,” she said. “And you know, he looks just like you, darker eyes, but so very handsome …”

  I knew exactly what she was saying. “Now, Corito,” I said rather testily, “whatever is in your mind, just keep it there. He is my son, your nephew—don’t you forget that!”

  She rose and started laughing, her laughter in sonorous volleys of joyless mirth. She turned around, looked at me and said clearly, “Your son, my nephew—and you, Carling—you are my brother!” and turning abruptly, she left me to ponder the irony and the truth of what she had uttered.

  I now realized how truly I wanted Delfin. In those times when I socialized and the talk veered to family and children, I had kept silent. As I said, I wanted my private life unintruded upon, even in conversation. I was now delighted to talk openly, fondly even, of my son, raising as I did curiosity and skepticism, that I was perhaps joking, or enlivening a particularly asinine conversation.

  I’ll let you in on a little secret, I would say with a conspiratorial smile. I did get married long ago, but she died.

  And when they pressed for details, I would clam up. But where was this Delfin, this brilliant boy who had my name, my looks?

  You will see, I told them proudly. You will see.

  And then I would announce boastfully, He is a scholar at the state university. You can always check the veracity of this statement. He is a Cobello. His first name is Delfin.

  Having revealed those details, I saw more than ever how important it was that he move to Sta. Mesa. He never called or visited, however. Always, it was I who went to see him, and I had to suffer my pride, which I never did in the past. I was capable of noblesse oblige, particularly with those in my employ who had served me and my family for so long, but with people who were seemingly equal, to them I showed no mercy. At forty, I think I had gotten the reputation in business of being astute—and ruthless—and I nurtured that image so that anyone with intentions of crossing my path would be forewarned, would then beware. And rarely did anyone taunt me.