1
This is a journey to the past—a hazardous trek through byways dim and forgotten—forgotten because that is how I choose to regard many things about this past. In moments of great lucidity, I see again people who—though they may no longer be around—are ever present still; I can almost hear their voices and reach out to touch them—my friends, cousins, uncles and aunts, and most of all, Father.
My doctor says it is good that I should remember, for in memory is my salvation. I should say, my curse. This, then, is a recollection as well, of sounds and smells, and if the telling is at times sketchy, it is because there are things I do not want to dwell upon—things that rile and disturb because they lash at me and crucify me in my weakness, in my knowledge of what was. So it was—as Father has said again and again—that the boy became a man.
I am a commuter, not between the city and the village, although I do this quite frequently; I am a commuter between what I am now and what I was and would like to be, and it is this commuting, at lightning speed, at the oddest hours, that has done havoc to me. My doctor flings at me clichés like “alienation,” “guilt feelings,” and all the urban jargon that has cluttered and at the same time compartmentalized our genteel, middle-class mores, but what ails me are not these. I can understand fully my longing to go back, to “return to the womb”—even the death wish that hounds me when I find it so difficult and enervating to rationalize a middle-aged life that has been built on a rubble of compromise and procrastination. It is this commuting, the tension and knowledge of its permanence, its rampage upon my consciousness, that must be borne, suffered, and vanquished, if I am to survive in this arid plateau called living.
At times it can be unbearable, and neither pills nor this writing can calm my mind; but then, I must go on—that is what the arteries and the gonads are for—so I hie back to this past wherefrom I can draw sustenance and the ability to see more clearly how it was and why it is.
I was born and I grew up in a small town—any town. I suppose that from the very beginning, I have always been thus—a stranger to Rosales, even to the people who knew me—relatives, friends, tenants, and all those fettered beings who had to serve Father as he, too, had to serve someone bigger than himself. A stranger because that is how I feel now; the years have really numbed a host of memories—dew-washed mornings, the tolling of church bells, the precision and color of my own language.
Sometimes, when I go north to Baguio to recuperate, I stop by Rosales; it cannot be missed, for Carmen—perhaps the town’s biggest barrio—sits at the crossroad before the long bridge that spans the Agno; turn right, through Tomana and its makeshift houses, along what is now an asphalted road, and drive on till a thin line of decrepit houses forms by the road. They are roofed with nipa and walled with buri leaves; then the houses multiply—wooden frames with rusting tin roofs, the marketplace, the main street and its stores. I sometimes stop here, walk the familiar streets—how narrow, how weed-choked they are. I pass the creek where I swam, and its banks are littered with garbage. The old cement schoolhouse still stands—how shabby it looks, surrounded by scraggly acacia. I go past broken-down bamboo fences, meet people who sometimes smile and greet me but move on. Many of them I do not recognize, but I know those faces and the stolid endurance imprinted in them.
My steps lead to the middle of the town, and there, by the side of the road, the balete tree stands—tall, leafy, majestic, and as huge as it has always been. Our house, at one end of the wide yard, is no longer there; it was dismantled long ago, shortly after Father’s death, and so was the old brick wall. But the balete tree will perhaps be there for always. There are very few trees of this kind in this part of the province. It has taken decades, perhaps a century, for it to reach this spread and height, taller than the church, than any building in the town—its trunk so huge and veined with vines that six men with their hands joined could not embrace it.
All my life, it has always been to me what Father said it was meant to be—a shade. It was this to countless farmers who came to our yard with their bull carts loaded with grain, or with their problems that only Father could solve—debts that had not been paid and debts that were to be incurred because somebody was dying, somebody was getting married, somebody was born. It was shade from the sun and also from the rain when they who had come to ask Father’s favor would get wet under its canopy rather than presume to enter the house.
No one could really say who planted the tree; it seemed ageless like the creek that courses through the town. Father’s grandfather had told him he had seen it already crowned with fireflies at night, and though Father did not believe him, he respected the feelings of people, they who believe that this giant tree was endowed with a talisman, that it was more than a tree—it was a guardian over the land and our lives, immemorial like our griefs.
In time, therefore, when the harvest was good, there would be offerings at its base, rice cakes in tin plates, embedded with hard-boiled eggs and hand-rolled cigars between the big roots that cascaded down the trunk and looped into the earth. There were offerings, too, when someone got sick, for the farmers did not consult the town doctor—they relied first on the herbolario and sacristan, who recited Latin phrases and plastered the forehead and other afflicted parts of the body with nameless leaves, and then they brought their gifts to the balete tree and, in solemn tones, invoked the spirits—“Come now and accept this humble token of our respect—and please make our dear and loved one well again …”
It had provided shade for politicians, for during election time meetings were held beneath it. In the light of kerosene lamps, the politicians would harangue whoever was there to listen, and they would shout their virtues and vilify their enemies. They would butcher a carabao or two, and with Father’s amen, they would mount wooden planks beneath the tree, spread banana leaves on them, then feed the electorate. Here, too, no less than Quezon had met with the provincial leaders at the behest of Don Vicente, the wealthiest landlord in our part of the country and the man for whom Father worked. And there was the photograph in the living room for all to see—the great man in his drill de hilo suit, Don Vicente—plump and smug beside him—and Father at Quezon’s right, looking frightened and stiff, and all around them the provincial great. Father had recounted it so often, how the train from Paniqui got in late and how a thousand waiting people had dispersed and Don Vicente would have been put to shame had not Father ridden in great haste out to Carmay and the other barrios, asking the people to return.
During the town fiesta—June 12 and 13—the feast day of San Antonio de Padua, it was shade again for the farmers who rested in the wide yard, unhitched their bull carts, and did their cooking there so that for two days they could watch the freak shows, the garish coronation night in the public market, and the comedia, in which brightly clothed farmers and their sons and daughters acted out and danced the ancient drama of the Christian and Moro wars.
Beyond the balete tree and the yard, down the incline of barren ground, is the river, marked on Tio Baldo’s maps as the Totonoguen Creek, but because its waters were always swift during the rainy season, I always called it a river. When the rains started in June, continuing all through the early days of the planting season, its waters would be deep and muddy brown. As the rains intensified, within a matter of hours after the first downpour, we could see it rise in a rage of whirlpools, and it would carry the flotsam of the Cordilleras where it had started—the gnarled and twisted roots and branches of trees. Men would line the banks and the wooden bridge, and with wire loops at the end of long poles they would ensnare these gifts of the mountain for firewood. There were times when the river would rise so high it would flood portions of the town and even the bodega, which at this time would be quite empty of grain, for almost everything would have been sold by then to Chan Hai. Once it even swept away the wooden bridge, and for weeks the village of Cabugawan was isolated. The floods delighted us, for then we could float our wooden fishes in the ditches.
As the rains subsided and the fields turned green, the mud settled and the river acquired a clear, green hue. It would no longer be swift; it flowed with a rhythm, broken by small ripples in the shallows. It was at this time that we bathed in it and dove to its depths to discover what secrets it held. Now, too, the women took their washing to the banks; they would squat before wide tin basins and whack at clothes with wooden paddles. Where the banks were even and stony or sandy, they laid the clothes to bleach, for now the sun came out not only to help the washerwomen but to ripen the grain. It was also at this time of the year that, once more, Father could go down the riverbank and follow it down, down and beyond to the village of Cabugawan, to a place everyone in town knew; he usually went down at dusk, perhaps because at this time few people would see him, and he did not have to smile at those he met or wave his hand in greeting, for they all knew that at the end of the trail was his secret place.
It was also at this time that Old David, who took care of the horses and the calesa, would go to the river with his fine mesh net and kerosene lamp, and before midnight he would be back with a basket of shrimp and silverfish.
By November, the river ceased to move. The smaller streams up in the Cordilleras would have dried, too, and now its sandy bed would be burned, and in between, where there were slivers of earth, thorny weeds and the hardy cogon would thrust out. The depths where we swam would now be shallow pools turned murky with moss that laced the river bottom. It is here where the mudfish and a few silverfish have sought final refuge from Old David’s net. Beyond the river that was now dead, the fields would be golden brown and ready for the scythe, and the banks and the narrow delta that could be planted on would be now laced with eggplant, tomato, and watermelon plots that are also ready for harvesting.
I know where the Totonoguen links up with the Andolan creek and how this new river joins the Agno, which never dries even in the years of drought. I have swum in the Agno itself, brought home from its sandy bottom the pieces of pine washed down from the mountains, and these we have splintered to use as kindling wood.
I left Rosales a long time ago; I was grieving then, but they told me I was lucky because I had no quarrel with anyone, that I had everything to look forward to, and that when it would be time for me to return, things would be so changed I would not recognize anything anymore.
Cousin Marcelo was particularly emphatic on that sad, memorable day; I had been away only a year then, and nothing, nothing had changed, and yet he said, “Did you notice that a change has come upon the town? Look at the faces of people—there’s hope there, in spite of everything. I tell you, you will forget what happened to your father, and more important, you will forget the past. Even now, people have forgotten that a year has passed and people died, not by ones and twos but by the hundreds. Think of it. You will remember only what is important.”
But what is important? I looked around me, at the wide, parched plaza, the shriveled people, the balete tree. All will be the same. I refused to believe that people changed merely because some holocaust had coursed through their lives. They will still know happiness as I had known it, they will still talk of pleasant hours as they have lived them. It is going to be this way with me.
“You will not be coming back until you’ve finished college then?” Cousin Marcelo asked.
He was past thirty, and he wore his hair unduly long at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. “I don’t know,” I told him. “I will return, perhaps, on the Day of the Dead, to visit them. And if I cannot come, you will look after them, won’t you?”
It was not necessary for me to have told him thus; he held my hand and pressed it. “Yes,” he said, trying to smile.
It did not take me long to pack, for I was leaving many things behind. Sepa, our cook, had found some of my old books and had brought them in; I picked out one—the Bible—and tucked it in with my clothes. There was still time to look around, to wander around the town, but there was nothing for me to see, no one to visit. I gazed around my room; the hardwood narra floor shone from constant polishing, sometimes with banana leaves, sometimes with coconut meat after the milk had been squeezed. My mementoes were everywhere—the air rifle Cousin Marcelo bought for me, the stuffed squirrel Tio Benito brought home from America. The photographs on the wall were starting to brown—me in a white sailor suit when I had my First Communion, my Cousin Pedring and Clarissa when they were married. And there was a big one—dusty yellow with years although all the faces were still very clear as if the picture had been taken only yesterday but it was years ago when we were mourning Grandfather’s death. Indeed, here was the entire clan—my relatives, uncles and aunts, the servants, too, and the old, faithful people who had served our household.
I remembered the crowd in the yard, the long table under the balete tree laden with pancit, dinardaraan, and basi for all the servants and tenants who had come to pay their respects to Grandfather’s memory.
In Rosales as in many other Ilokano towns of northern and central Luzon, the ninth day of the burial of the dead is celebrated with dining and drinking, depending on the finances of the bereaved family. We call the feast the pasiam—meaning “for the ninth.” On this day, those who are not directly related to the deceased may stop wearing the black clothes of mourning, but not the direct descendants—the children and grandchildren.
A host of relatives had descended upon us, cousins to the third degree whom I’d never seen before, aunts and uncles from Manila, and grown-up nephews and nieces who called me Tio with all the respect that the name demands although I still wore short pants. They crowded the house and spilled out into the yard, and some of the menfolk and the entourage of servants had to sleep in the storehouse, where the grain and the corn in jute sacks were piled high. During the last nine days that preceded the pasiam, every evening at seven a novena was held in the house. Tomas, the old acolyte, had presided over this, singing in a loud, cracked voice “Ora pro nobis” after each of the fifteen mysteries of the rosary. Although the neighbors and the servants prayed with us, we barely filled a corner of the hall. But on the pasiam, it was the parish priest himself, Padre Andong, who led the prayers and Tomas—past sixty and a little hard of hearing—bungled as usual his answers as acolyte. The living room could hardly hold all the members of the clan and the servants, and most of the neighbors had to pray in the adjoining room and in the azotea.
After Padre Andong had sprinkled holy water on the assemblage, our relatives who were not related directly to Grandfather took off their black mourning clothes, but we who were direct descendants still wore black bands on our sleeves or wore black for another year, after which the period of mourning would end.
At around ten in the morning, the prayers concluded, someone in the yard ignited a rocket, which swished up and exploded—the signal for the festivities to begin, for the gin and the basi to flow; it would need another minor calamity for the clan to gather, and for this occasion the town photographer was on hand. His camera, a bulky contraption, staggered him when he carried it up the stairs and posed us all at one end of the hall. “It is not bright,” he complained after he had peeped out of his red velvet shroud, so he poured some powder on a rack, told us to stand still, and at the appropriate signal sent an orange flame spurting up. For some time the smoke and the acrid odor filled the hall. It was then that Father said he would like a bigger picture, which would show part of the house, so we broke up, the cameraman bundling his huge camera again, and filed after him in one burbling procession down the stairs into the yard. There was much laughter and joking as he lined us up on one of the benches before the eating table, the morning sun blazing on our faces.
Looking about him, a bit uncomfortable perhaps in his close-necked alpaca suit, Tio Doro said aloud above the sonorous talk: “We are such a big family, why don’t we have a coat of arms like the great families during the Spanish times?”
Cousin Andring, the perennial jester, shouted: “That’s an excellent idea, Tio. I suggest that our coat of arms shows a demijohn of basi, which shall symbolize our hardiness and, of course, our pleasant disposition.”
In spite of his mother’s angry glare, Cousin Andring was unruffled, and his remark was greeted with prolonged laughter. “And we will have Tio Marcelo do the design, too,” he continued.
My relatives must have considered his second joke in bad taste, for now most of them scowled. It was not difficult to understand their reaction; Cousin Marcelo, though he was pleasant and reliable to some extent, had long been regarded as “the problem” in the family because they considered him unstable. He was the only one who greeted the reference to him with laughter.
Tio Doro was alive with ideas. “We should have someone chronicle our lives, our successes and failures.”
“Mostly the failures—particularly when there is too much gin,” Cousin Andring remarked, happy again.
Tio Doro turned around to look at his relatives, almost all of us still in identical black. Then his eyes rested on me.
“Espiridion,” he called to Father, who sat on the bench behind me. “That’s the job for your boy—he may grow up to be a writer and give us some permanence.”
The blood rushed to my head, and I glowed all over. Behind me, Father said happily, “You can depend on him to do that.”
The photographer shouted that he was ready, and everyone preened. Almost everyone. I saw them then in the shade of the balete tree—the servants, Old David, Sepa, Angel, Tio Baldo—all of them watching us and seeming left out. I turned to Father, who was straightening the creases of his white alpaca suit. “Father, couldn’t we have Sepa and all the others with us in the picture?”
He frowned at me.
“Just one,” I pleaded.
“All right,” he said, still frowning, then he called out to them to stand on the low benches in our rear. They hastened to their places, smiling.
Now the picture is before me. Where are they now, these familiar faces? Tio Baldo, Ludovico, and, perhaps, Angel were already dead. Others have left for places unknown—perhaps to Mindanao and the promise of new lands, perhaps to the labyrinths of Tondo and Santa Cruz, where they would work as drivers and house servants, in places where there will be little light and they, too, will be among strangers just as I am now in this blighted town. I knew this from the very beginning—that oil and water could not mix, just as Teresita had told me once.
I am also my father’s son.