7
All the lures of Carmay and its feeling of space seemed dulled after Grandfather and Ludovico were gone. Even when the irrigation ditches were finally shallow and the fishing there with bamboo traps was good, even when the melons in the delta were ripe and beckoning, I did not go there. The dry season was upon us—a glaze of sun and honeyed air; it touched the green mangoes and made them golden yellow, took the roar and the brownish tint from the Agno and made it placid and green. The dry season and school vacation also brought to Rosales my Cousin Pedring (on Father’s side) and my Cousin Clarissa (on my mother’s side). Pedring had just finished law school in Manila and had come to Rosales ostensibly for some quiet and to review for the coming bar examinations. He was about twenty-four. He must have been miserable, cooped up in the city for so long, and on his first day in Rosales he got me to go with him to Carmay “to fill his lungs with clean air.”
He was handsome and fair, and he recalled how once he had vacationed in Rosales when I was still a baby; he had bathed in the irrigation ditch in Carmay then, and now he wanted to relive that experience. But in the dry season all the irrigation ditches had dried up except in spots where the water was stagnant and green. This did not deter him; he would have immersed himself the whole morning there like a carabao if I did not tell him that we had to return to town before noon. Gathering his clothes, his hair still streaked with bits of moss, his pale skin shiny with a patina of mud, he dressed hurriedly. We boarded the next caretela that passed.
It had been one of my chores to proceed shortly after noon to the post office in the municipio to pick up Father’s mail and newspapers that were brought in by the train connection from Paniqui. It was a chore I enjoyed because it afforded me the first look at the comics section of the papers, and even in the midday sun on the way back I would be reading Tarzan and Mutt & Jeff.
It was lunchtime when Cousin Pedring and I reached the town, and the sun was warm. On the street, dust rose at the gentlest stirring of the breeze. With mud now caked on his hair, he rushed to the artesian well for another bath with Old David working the pump.
When both of us were through, Father called us up. “You go to the station,” he said.
“But the mail, Father.”
“It is all right,” Father said. “For once the mail carrier will do his job.”
“Who is arriving?” Pedring asked.
“Clarissa,” Father said, and dismissed us with a wave of his hand.
Old David was readying the calesa when we got to him at the stable. It was a short ride, and, from the elevated station platform we could see the train rounding the bend at Calanutan, blowing its whistle shrilly. Pedring helped me down the calesa and said, “Tell me about Clarissa.”
“A cousin like you, but on Mother’s side,” I said.
“I know,” he said, passing his hand over his hair, which had dried. Without pomade, it was unruly. “How old is she?”
I made a hasty mental calculation. “About eighteen, I think.”
He stomped his feet on the stone platform to shake off the dust from his shoes. “I have not seen her yet,” he said. “What does she look like?”
I remembered Clarissa very well. Father and I once went to Cebu for a two-week vacation, and she and her parents met us at the pier; I was barely nine then, but everything about that visit was etched clearly in my mind—the pungent smell of copra at the pier, the sloping, narrow streets, their beautiful stone house, its sash windows festooned with butterfly orchids. There was a party in her honor, for she was sixteen and it was her first time to dance in public. She wore a white lace dress, and her hair was knotted with a red ribbon. I remember how flushed and anxious she looked as she kept in step with her father, and when it was over and the small band changed tune, she sought me, literally pulled me to the floor and, amidst much laughter and coaxing, tried to dance with me. I remember her moist, warm hand, her sweet breath upon my face, and my stepping on her feet many times.
“Is she pretty?” Cousin Pedring was insistent. I hardly heard him above the clangor as the train pulled into the station and shot blasts of white steam into the noonday glare.
“Yes,” I said, “very pretty.”
“Will she stay long in Rosales?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I could not miss her when she alighted. One could not but pause and cast a lingering look at her, even if she was in a crowd; she really had bloomed—a regal head, full lips, and eyes filled with laughter. When she saw me, she waved at once, and moved away from the women with their baskets of vegetables.
“You have become so tall,” she said, bussing me on the cheek. I introduced Pedring, and they shook hands, then we walked down the cement platform to the palisaded yard, where Old David waited. We helped her with her rattan suitcase, then boarded.
“How is Tio?” she asked as we cantered off to town. After I replied, she did not speak again all through the drive. Pedring attempted some conversation: “It is good to have you here.” But to his attempts, she merely nodded or smiled, and her smile—if it was one—was as dry as the dust that Old David’s horse raised.
“What are you thinking of, Clarissa?” I asked later as we ate lunch.
She shook her head and looked pensive. I would have pressed for a clearer answer, but I caught Father’s eye; he sat at the other end of the table, and though he did not speak, I knew he did not want me to press the query further.
The following day, though Father did not explain it clearly, I learned why Clarissa was with us. It seemed that a young man in Cebu had taken an interest in her—he was the son of a clerk, had no chance of going to college, and Clarissa’s parents did not approve—after all, they were well-to-do and all their children had studied in convent schools. She was therefore exiled to Rosales, so that in time she would forget.
Before we went to bed that night, I invited Pedring and Clarissa to play dominoes in the azotea; I knew that she did not relish being in Rosales, in this small dusty town away from the delights of home. “We can go to Carmay tomorrow,” I said. “The camachile trees are now bearing fruit, and we can gather them. We can bring a lunch basket, and we can go to the Agno, swim, or stay there and gather pine splinters. There are so many wonderful things one can do in Carmay.” She shook her head and said something listless, that she did not like hiking.
We did not go, and Cousin Pedring, who had wanted very much to stay in Carmay, seemed pleased that Clarissa had elected to be in the old dreary house instead. And there came a time afterward that he lost all interest in Carmay and would rather be cooped up in the house with her.
The following day, before I was to leave for the post office to get the mail, Father called me to his room and said that all the letters addressed to Clarissa should not be given to her. I should give them all to him.
Clarissa must have expected them, for on the day she arrived, she asked what time the postman usually came to deliver the mail, and I told her it was I who was the mail carrier. She met me at the yard when I returned and breathlessly inquired if there was any letter for her.
“Nothing,” I said, and it was true.
But the following day three did arrive. I followed Father’s instruction and gave them all to him. He opened them and read them briefly, then instructed me to burn them in the kitchen. It was a job I did not relish. As I proceeded to burn them, I got curious and started reading one. It was a love letter—mushy words strung together—and having memorized the penmanship, I never bothered reading any of the many that came afterward. Every day Clarissa would ask and I would lie; she had me mail letters, and like the letters she was supposed to receive, they never reached their destination.
“Are you sure I don’t have any mail today?” she asked one particularly trying day when the heat seemed to scorch everything, even my patience. She had been in Rosales for more than three weeks.
“Yes,” I said sourly. “Why should I hide it from you?”
“Well then,” she said with determination. “Tomorrow, I will be at the post office ahead of you so Tio will not know.”
But on that day she did not come because Pedring managed—by some miracle—to take her to Carmay instead; they left shortly after breakfast with a basket that was amply prepared by Sepa. And in the afternoon when they returned, the wind and the sun in her hair, the basket was filled with camachile fruits. She forgot to ask about her letters.
On the days that followed, she no longer seemed to care whether she received a letter or not, and soon the letters from the boy in Cebu stopped coming altogether, and I was glad and relieved, for then I no longer had to lie. I began to see less of Pedring, too. He was not reviewing, nor did he like to go swimming in the Agno. He had time only for Clarissa.
May came quickly, and once more the land turned green; somehow, the life and vivacity came back to Clarissa, too, and she seemed to enjoy my cousin’s company, for many a time I would catch them laughing on the bench in the yard.
When we played dominoes in the azotea, they would often get to talking and it would be difficult for me to catch the thread of what it was all about. More and more, they would clam up when I asked what it was that they were so secretive about.
At the end of the month, before the town fiesta and the opening of the school year, the parents of both Clarissa and Pedring came to Rosales. With Father joining them, they talked far into the night, while on the moon-drenched balcony Pedring, Clarissa, and I played a listless game of dominoes. I won most of the time, for they did not have their minds on the game; they did not speak much, for they seemed all ears, instead, to the talk and the occasional laughter that went on in the living room.
The following day the tenants came, and with isis leaves and wax they cleaned every nook of the house; they also polished the silver that had started to tarnish. All through the week the preparation went on, and, when it finally came, it was the grandest wedding Rosales had seen in years. There was a battery of photographers, and two days after the wedding, I saw our picture in the papers, Pedring looking bewildered, Clarissa radiant and pretty as always, and I in my white suit looking dandy—too dandy and too old to be a ring bearer.
Pedring took his bride to Hong Kong, and from there he wrote to Father and to me saying they would return to Manila, where they would make their home, then visit us before Christmas. He also took the bar examinations and passed.
I did not see them again until I went to Manila to continue my studies, and then and only then did I realize what I had done, what fate I had helped to shape.