Sins

by F. Sionil Jose

  Anselmo, the encargado for that part of the hacienda planted to rice, was at the landing, ever ready to jump at my bidding. He was fair of skin, maybe of Spanish or Chinese ancestry. His father had been encargado, and Anselmo’s oldest son would probably get the job, too.

  I had not visited the hacienda for more than a year and had entrusted so much to this man. I had used it as collateral in many transactions and it had served us well. I have always tried to be one step—no, three steps—ahead in my thinking about traditional agriculture and saw the opportunities in manufacturing, food processing and other industries that are agriculture-based. From there, I had hoped that with technology transferred from the United States or Japan, I could expand into light industry.

  The house is on the eastern edge of the town, at the end of a long road lined, as in Sta. Mesa, with acacia trees that my grandfather had planted. It is not on the main road, but it cannot be missed because it is the biggest house in San Quentin, larger than the municipio, with its wide lot and stable for horses in the back, although the stable had not been in use for many years because seldom did Corito and I go horseback riding in the hacienda like we used to when we were children. The house is roofed with tile, so old that grass had sprouted in the cracks; the walls are brick, plastered over. Two of the upstairs bedrooms had lowered ceilings to make them easier to air-condition. The staff at the house really did nothing except clean it, and because they never knew when we would come, it was always neat and the floors shiny. Now they were lined up at the landing, too, eager smiles plastered on their faces. They know that when we leave, all of them will be given additional money. All of them, too, would have better fare, for when the cook came she always brought along more food than we could consume.

  Behind the house is the water tower, a steel cylindrical tank painted red, perched on iron girders as tall as a buri palm. As a boy, I would climb the tower, usually late in the afternoon, and sit on the shelf below the tank and watch the sun sink in a blaze of reds and purples at the rim of the world—the ripening grain a shining golden ocean in October. In July, that same landscape would become water-logged fields, a vast crisscrossed mirror awaiting the transplanting of rice seedlings. Beyond the rice fields, in the far distance, is the rimless expanse of green—the cane fields stretching as far as the eye can see and, in the horizon, the twin smokestacks of the Cobello sugar mill, a wisp of smoke curling above it. And, across the graying sky, a white blur of herons swooping down for their evening meal of tadpoles. Beholding this glorious plain, I would be filled with that exhilarating sense of possession, of pride, knowing all this would be mine.

  Now the rice fields are fallow and brown and the emerald vastness of growing rice is yet to come and, after that, the sweet fragrance of ripening grain and newly cut hay would swirl all around and drift into the big house itself.

  I told Anselmo to send a messenger to the village where Severina had lived. All her relatives to the third degree must come to the house in the early morning.

  We had fresh eggplants, bitter melons. Anselmo had a pig butchered. I was tired. I had a long talk with Delfin in the car, all those three hours from Manila to San Quentin. He was closer to me now. And that night, he would sleep with me in one of the two air-conditioned rooms.

  After dinner, Angela asked Delfin to help her with her homework. She had brought along a lot of it, and indeed she was not good at arithmetic. Not only was Delfin good at math, he was also excellent in composition, which would be an asset when he would prepare those briefs for the courts. He had earned a little money, as he had already explained, writing reports for some of his classmates. I was in bed, dozing, when Corito came in, locked the door, and extracted from me her usual pleasure. She did all the work, my mind was elsewhere and, sometimes, I could hear Angela’s laughter down the hall. It was also the first time I heard Delfin laugh.

  In a while, Delfin came to our room. I was in bed reading progress reports. He stripped down to his jockey shorts, displaying an Adonis physique; his torso, chest and arms exuded power, hard masculinity, reminding me of my own youth. And on his neck dangled this necklace—

  I had seen it before. I stood up and went to him. “Your mother gave you this,” I said, fingering the triangle. It was smooth to my touch. I remembered it as whitish, but now it was completely reddish-brown, with a soft lustre like gold.

  “Yes, sir,” Delfin said.

  “To protect you from misfortune, from evil …”

  He smiled rather sheepishly, I think. “Yes, sir. That was what my mother said. Especially since I come from Siquijor.”

  I nodded, recalling the brief profile of the island and its infestation with witchcraft.

  Peace and well-being soon lulled me to sleep. I also dreamed, which rarely happens now. Sometimes I note down these dreams in some vague expectation that a good psycho-analyst might go over them and find in them aspects of my personality that have been secreted under an external patina of iron perseverance and business acumen. In this dream, I was a boy and I was in some field chasing grasshoppers. I had a bag already filled with them, and there was another boy, a peasant, who was behind me, also catching grasshoppers, and the boy was no other than Delfin. He said he would eat the grasshoppers as his mother had very little food in their house. I was filled with pity and gave him all the grasshoppers I had caught. I started to cry. I did not know people ate them and I was just catching them for fun … end of dream.

  In reality, I know Filipinos eat grasshoppers. Even the Japanese do. Now I am again digressing because I have come to one of my favorite delights—food. Not just good food but interesting food, perhaps the only pleasure left in later years when the muscles are palsied but not the palate.

  When I was a boy, a locust plague hit Nueva Ecija, among the most infested areas being San Quentin. The tenants were ecstatic instead of being apprehensive that the insects would devour their plants. With all sorts of traps and mosquito nets, they caught the locusts by the sack and sold them as far as Manila. One of the hacienda workers brought half a sack to Sta. Mesa but only I and the maids ate them, fried in vinegar, crispy and crunchy like chitcharon.

  Our most fastidious gourmets are the Pampangos—they eat crickets, too. All my cooks—you guessed it—are from Pampanga.

  I have tried a lot of exotic food most Filipinos wouldn’t touch. Ann Lee’s father became a good friend—now there’s a real connoisseur. It was he who introduced me to chicken feet, duck tongue and web, dog, civet cat in Chinese wine, the gamy flavor subdued, anteater and, of course, in the winter, snake soup. I’ve tried rattlesnake in Albuquerque; bear steak in Anchorage; moose, elk and reindeer in Stockholm; turtle meat in Malacca and, in Japan, whale sushi—its flavor is strong and fishy—and that special kamikaze sashimi, the poisonous blow-fish. Its subtle taste is not worth dying for. And in Cotabato, crocodile filet—its texture is like tough chicken meat. Kangaroo tail soup in Melbourne—it’s just like oxtail soup. And those beautiful Sydney oysters! No lime, no hot sauce, just its pristine taste. Chew it just a little to let its delicate flavor tease your palate, then let it glide down your throat smoothly, like the caress of an aged single malt whiskey. I am sorry to hear they are soon to become inedible because of pollution.

  My most interesting eating adventure, however, was right here in the Philippines. I have mentioned earlier and at some length my interest in the welfare of our ethnic minorities—they are the poorest and most exploited of our people. I had heard of the health problems of the Dumagats in the Sierra Madre range so, on my own, I flew there by helicopter with my medical team. They had so much to do, I found out: goiter for lack of iodized salt, skin diseases, malnutrition, tuberculosis. We were high up and deep in the mountain range, in a valley that was far from the sea. I had not figured on the out-of-season typhoon that isolated us for almost a week as the helicopter couldn’t come and supply us. We had to eat what the Dumagats had—plenty of vegetables, camote and dried wild pig and deer meat. We were cold, often wet, but our appetites were
excellent. Never before had dried meat tasted so good.

  One afternoon they brought in a big buck they had trapped and so we had fresh meat that night. It was very bland because they simply boiled it with camotes without salt. There was more meat than we could eat so I asked what they would do with the rest.

  Dry it, they said.

  The storm lifted that same afternoon. The following day, the sun emerged bright and steady on the verdant valley. The deer meat was laid out in the sunlight in neat strips. And everyone in the village, including the children and the women, urinated on it.

  When I woke up, the sun was already splashing all over the room. Delfin was no longer in his bed, and when I went out, it seemed they had had breakfast, too, for there was only one plate—mine—on the breakfast table. The cook came and gave me my cup of coffee. All of them, she said, were at the other end of the lot. There were people there, she said, from some village.

  I hurried with my fried rice, boneless bangus, fried tapa and sliced tomatoes. At the other end of the wide yard, close to the old stable, a small crowd had gathered and I recognized Delfin at once—taller than all the rest—and Angela beside him. Corito had stayed in the house. More than two dozen of them—they had all come from the village, all relatives of Severina, farmers in their shabby clothes, most of them barefoot, dark-skinned children but with good teeth, and that shy smile of peasants. Delfin was talking to them in his heavily accented Tagalog and they seemed amused. Angela beside him was listening. When I approached, all talk stopped and the villagers suddenly became quiet, greeting me at first, then looking down as if they were ashamed to meet my gaze. I did not belong there so I told Delfin to continue and I turned to go. The moment I turned, the ebullient babble resumed.

  Only much, much later did I learn that this wasn’t Delfin’s first trip to San Quentin, that he had already visited several times. And as the encargado told me later on, Delfin had been giving money to Hirap, Severina’s village.

  I asked Delfin afterward why he never told me.

  “You did not ask me, sir,” he said simply. It was just like him, never volunteering information unless asked.

  I had revealed too much of myself to my son. My son! This was contrary to what my father had told me. In dealing with people, never be close to anyone, the members of your immediate family excepted. Know the weaknesses of others but never let them know yours. Such a lesson had served me well in business, but with Delfin, I was truly a father seeking closeness, companionship. He had already shown me his independence and, in the hacienda, his feelings for his relatives he did not know till recently. He was close to them, those farmers, and I envied them, for I could never feel close to my second cousins, to my uncles and aunts, and to their daughters who have tried to seduce me, to their sons in my employ who expect to get a piece of the cake when I pass away. A vain hope, for I knew in their fawning attention only their greed. They resented my aloofness, my careful distancing from them and, now, I was surrendering myself to this boy who shunned me, who perhaps in his innermost being not only resented me but hated me as well.

  What did my dear Severina teach him? I tried to recall my conversations with her, but I was so young then, and there was so little substance in our talks, enthused as I was only with her beauty, dark though she was, in her unquestioning submission to my demands. Father must have given her some money when she left, I never found out how much, but knowing my father, I am sure it was not enough for Severina and her son to live on. And they were in this far-flung island, this Siquijor, away from San Quentin and the sustenance that relatives could give them.

  We were still in San Quentin when I told Delfin not to blame an unhappy childhood on me. I said this, noting that the children from the village of Severina all had happy faces.

  “But I did not have an unhappy childhood, sir,” Delfin quickly replied. “I always had enough to eat. Mother worked very hard …”

  “What did she do?”

  “She had a sister there who had married a local farmer. She helped on the farm first, then she opened a small store. She sold dried fish. I helped. I worked hard because she worked very hard.”

  We returned to Manila Sunday afternoon. I felt I had become closer to Delfin in those two days and yet not truly close enough, for though he was quick to answer my questions, he spoke to me without the familiarity that sons have with their fathers, the same familiarity that Angela had with me. It was she, however, who became truly close to Delfin and it seemed he was fond of her, too. Corito sat beside me in the rear and Angela chose to sit beside Delfin in the front seat with the driver.

  We reached Diliman in the early evening. Delfin did not want us to take him to where he lived—a small middle-class house owned by a city hall official who, to earn some extra money, had rented out three of the rooms on the lower floor to students. We let him off a block away. He bent down for Angela to kiss him on the cheek. She had elicited a promise from him to help with her homework again.

  Now, the witchcraft in Siquijor fascinated me. I asked Professor Adda Bocano from the University of the Philippines to visit; he was my consultant on our indigenous peoples. Early enough, he had made a map of the islands defining the areas where the different tribes lived.

  To authenticate his social studies, he had lived in a Tondo slum for six months, worked as a room boy in one of the popular love motels in Pasig—and saw two very embarrassed colleagues there. Once, according to another story, a relative on a Friday novena at the Quiapo church saw Professor Bocano in tatters begging at the church door. Shocked, the relative had excitedly drawn aside the persevering scholar, who asked her to keep quiet. “Had times become so bad that you have become a beggar? Here, this five hundred pesos is all I have now!”

  I had always found him enlightening and, that evening in my penthouse, we talked about black magic, the aswangs of the Visayas and other folk beliefs that have persisted even in urban Manila.

  “How did the witchcraft in Siquijor originate?”

  “Many years ago,” he explained, “during the early days of the galleons, some Filipino seamen got stranded in Mexico. They strayed in the Caribbean, to the island of Haiti, and there they learned about voodoo practices. Some returned—they were from Siquijor, and on the island, they put to practice what they had learned in Haiti.”

  I sat back, sipping my cognac, amazed at his story.

  “But mind you,” Professor Bocano said, and shook a finger at me. “This is not documented. This is folk belief. There has been an effort in Silliman University to be scientific about it. In the museum there are some artifacts of this witchcraft.”

  “Do you believe in it?”

  He smiled. “When I see the empirical evidence, then I have no choice. The truth is, if witchcraft is embedded in a particular culture, its efficacy is soon taken for granted.”

  “The witches, are there women?”

  “Very few,” Profesor Bocano explained. “Most of them are males. But the aswang—”

  I remembered vaguely that the aswang, too, came from the Visayas, a malevolent creature who hovered at night over the homes of pregnant women and with her long tongue sucked the blood of the fetus.

  “The story is that they come from Panay island. Mostly women. At night, the upper portion of their bodies is separated from the waist down; then they fly. If anyone comes across the separate lower half and sprinkles it with salt, the aswang will not be able to resume its human shape. It dies.”

  Professor Bocano was silent for a while, his eyes half-closed as if in deep thought. Then his face lit up. “But do not think of our women only in this manner. In our past, in our tradition, they were also leaders, warriors. And most of all, healers and priestesses—the link between the spiritual and the temporal …”

  I thought of Severina, my sweet and poignant memories of her, and all the more did I realize how much I had loved her and, at the same time, how unfeeling and crass I had been.

  “How does a stranger—someone who visits Siquijor—prot
ect himself?”

  Again, that noncommittal smile. “You are not supposed to leave behind anything that you have used. A lock of your hair, a bit of fingernail—these can be used to cast a spell on you.… There are charms, of course, to ward off such spells, amulets, pendants. Similar to those sold on the sides of Quiapo church.”

  I did not press for more details; I was acutely remembering the pendant Severina wore, which now adorned Delfin’s chest. Did I need one myself?

  I tried to see Delfin more often, once a month. He did not avoid me but he did not welcome my presence, for he was always in a hurry to get away. His suits had long been delivered but I never saw him wear them or the Italian shoes from Francesco’s. He had bought instead a pair of jeans that was now his uniform.

  I could see that he did not like going to the Polo Club, so every time I took him to lunch or dinner, it was at some inconspicuous restaurant near the university or, if Angela came along, in Sta. Mesa, where he stayed longer after dinner or lunch. When it was time for him to go, the car always took him to where he wished, but the driver said he did not go beyond the main street, where he would then board a bus or a jeepney.

  I opened a checking account for him at a bank on the campus so he did not have to receive any cash from me. I was also waiting for any report on amorous developments, but my aide said there weren’t any, just the usual group dates with classmates and with some girls from nearby Maryknoll. I started worrying about his being a homosexual, although his shadow did not think so. He simply was too devoted to his studies and, indeed, all through those years in law school, he kept his scholarship. That took some doing and I was truly proud of him.