10
A week before Padre Andong left, the new priest arrived in Rosales. He was a young Pangasinense with short-cropped hair and a bounce in his walk. He had just graduated from the seminary near the provincial capital, and Rosales was his first assignment. During his first week in town, he was always up and about, visiting his wealthy parishioners and supervising the completion of the church.
He came to the house, too, and after losing two successive games of chess with Father, he practically got Father to promise that henceforth he would hear mass again.
He must have made some impression not only on Father but with the townspeople as well, for on his first Sunday mass, the church was filled to overflowing and the crowd spilled all over the sacristy and beyond the open doors onto the lawn.
Shortly after his arrival, however, I stopped serving in the church. I no longer relished working for him; for one, he turned down Cousin Marcelo’s plan to paint murals. He wanted the wall plain. But what really angered me was his refusal to give Tio Baldo a Christian burial. I know that the laws of the church are steadfast, but still, I believe that Tio Baldo—because of his goodness—should have been given a church burial, and that he should not have been buried as if he were a swine.
It is easy to forgive a person his faults when he is dead because in death he atones for his sins somewhat before the eyes of people who are still living and who have yet to add more on the parchment where their sins are listed. But even if Tio Baldo had lived to this day, I would not nurse within me the slightest displeasure toward him for his having taunted Father. I would, instead, honor him as I do honor him now, although in the end his courage seemed futile.
It happened that year when the harvest was so good, Old David had to remove the sacks of rice bran from the bodega so that every available space there could be used for storing grain. I thought that Father’s tenants—and also those of Don Vicente—could buy new clothes at last, but they did not; all they saved they gave to Tio Baldo, who, I’m sure, spent it wisely and well.
Tio Baldo was not really an uncle. In fact, he was no relation at all. He had lived in a battered nipa shack near our house with his mother, who had been, like him, in Father’s employ. She took in washing and did odd jobs for as far back as I could remember.
Tio Baldo helped Father with the books. He had gone through grade school and high school with Father’s money and insistence, and when Father was in a gracious mood, he spoke of him in terms that always brought color to Tio Baldo’s dark, oily face.
He would be a teacher someday if he continued enjoying Father’s beneficence. Indeed, Tio Baldo was made for teaching. He used to solve my arithmetic and my spelling problems in such a lucid manner that he never had to do the same trick twice. He also taught me how to fashion a well-balanced kite out of bamboo sticks, so that once it was airborne, it would not swoop down—too heavy in the nose. He taught me how to make the best guava handle for a slingshot, how to ride curves on a bicycle without holding the handlebar, and most important, how to swim.
One hot, raw afternoon he came to the garden and saw Angel, one of the houseboys, squirting the garden hose at me. He asked if I wanted to go with him to the creek. No invitation would have been more welcome.
We stripped at the riverbank. From a rise of ground on the bank, he stood straight and still, his muscles spare and relaxed, then he fell forward in a dive that hardly stirred the cool, green water as he slid into it.
When he bobbed up for air, he looked up at me and shouted: “Come!”
And seeing him there, so strong and ever ready to protect me, it did not matter that I did not know how to swim, that the water was deep. I jumped after him without a second thought.
One June morning, Tio Baldo came to the house with his mother—an aging woman with a crumpled face, whose hair was knotted into a tight ball at her nape. They talked briefly with Father in the hall; then the old woman suddenly scooped up Father’s hand and, with tears in her eyes, covered it with kisses.
The following day Old David hitched his calesa, and we picked up Tio Baldo at his house, loaded his bamboo valise, and took him to the railroad station. He was to stay in Tia Antonia’s house in the city, and while he served her family, he would go to college to be an agrimensor—a surveyor.
For the next two years that he was in the city, Tio Baldo never took a vacation. He returned one April afternoon; he went straight to the house from the station, carrying a wooden trunk on his shoulders all the way. He had grown lighter in complexion. His clothes were old and shabby, but he wore them with a confidence that was not there before.
Father stood up from his chocolate and galletas to meet him. Tio Baldo took Father’s hand, and though Father tried clumsily to shake off his hold, Tio Baldo brought the hand to his lips.
The following day he resumed his old chores, but Father had other ideas. Father took the broom and ledger from him. “I did not send you to college so you can count sacks,” he said in mock anger. “Go train a surveying party. You’ve work to do.”
Tio Baldo was delighted, particularly so when Father bought him a second-hand transit and a complete line of surveyor’s instruments. With these and some of the farm hands trained as linemen and transit men, he straightened out the boundaries of Father’s farms, apart from Don Vicente’s hacienda.
For half a year he worked very hard; he would start for the fields early in the morning with his huge canvas umbrella, chain, and stakes, and he would return to Rosales late in the evening. He did not work for Father alone; he worked, too, for the tenants.
Then, one evening, Father came home in an extremely bad humor. He struck my dog with his cane when it came yelping down the gravel path to meet him.
“See if Baldo is in,” he told me at the top of the stairs in a manner that was enough to send me scampering down from the house to the nipa hut.
Tio Baldo rushed to the house at once, to the dining room where Father had sat down to supper and was slurping a bowl of cold chicken soup. The moment he saw Tio Baldo, Father pushed the soup aside.
“Sit down!” he shouted, pointing to the vacant chair at his side. “I want to talk to you, you ungrateful dog.”
Tio Baldo, his face surprisingly unruffled, took the seat beside Father.
Father did not waste words. “I’ve always considered a little knowledge dangerous. Baldo, the truth. Is it true you are starting trouble against Don Vicente?”
I admired Tio Baldo’s courage. “Forgive me, Manong,” he said softly. “I am grieved, but I’ve already given them—the old people in Carmay—my word. I only want to get their lands back. Don Vicente can still live in luxury even without those lands, Manong. It’s common knowledge he grabbed these lands because the farmers didn’t know anything about cadastral surveys and Torrens titles. You said so yourself.”
The steady glow of the Aladdin lamp above him lighted up Father’s face. It was very red. “You accuse Don Vicente of being a thief? You might as well shout to the world that I’m a robber, too, because I’m his overseer.”
“You are his employee,” Tio Baldo said.
“And that I’m only doing my job?” Father screamed. He flung his spoon to the wall, and Sepa picked it up quietly.
Tio Baldo nodded.
“What are you doing, Baldo?” Father asked, his face distorted with rage. “What has gone into your head?”
“You knew my father,” Tio Baldo said simply. “You said he was not impoverished until Don Vicente took his land. I’m locating the old Spanish markers. The old men are very helpful, Manong. Please don’t be angry with them.”
As if by an unknown alchemy, Father’s anger slowly diminished, and when he spoke again after a long silence, his voice was calm. “Well, then, so that is how it will be. I’ll tell Don Vicente about this, of course. You will have lots to answer for, Baldo. I only hope you know what you are doing.”
Tio Baldo nodded.
Father looked at him with resignation. “I don’t know what to do with you, Baldo,” he said finally. “You have so much to learn. I’m sorry for you.”
That night I could not sleep for a long time. Father stayed up late in his room, writing, pacing. Occasionally, he would curse aloud and slap his writing desk. When morning came, he roused me from sleep and handed me a fat envelope to mail. It was addressed to Don Vicente.
Four days later, a woman came.
It was early November then. The first harvest was being brought in by the tenants, and their bull carts were scattered in the wide, balete-shaded yard.
She arrived in Don Vicente’s black Packard, and from the balcony, I saw her step out with the lightness of a cat. She must have been Father’s old acquaintance, for she shouted his name in greeting when she saw him padding down the stairs to greet her.
They embraced effusively. “Ah, Nimia!” Father sighed. “I didn’t expect you. This is a surprise.”
She grinned and tried to press away the wrinkles on her elegant blue dress. She went up to the house, sat daintily on Father’s rocking chair in the sala, and shucking off her high heels, curled her toes. Her toenails were as brightly painted as her lips. She must have been near forty and used to having her way, to getting what she wanted, and the very way she talked with Father, the coyness of her gestures, the instances when she touched his arm or smiled at him, suggested not just how well she knew how to use her femininity but how well prepared she was to go all the way if that, too, was the ultimate necessity. That she was brought to Rosales in Don Vicente’s own car from Manila indicated just as well the extent to which the rich man would go to protect his interests; he knew the people in the country who mattered, men who made the laws, who rendered justice, but, more than all of these, he knew, too, the primordial weakness of all men, and I suppose that included Father.
Nimia, as Father called her, fascinated me—how she swung her hips when she walked, how she crossed her legs when she sat down, revealing just a bit of thigh, how everything in the world seemed pleasant and beyond cavil, for there was this smile plastered on her face and it never seemed to leave her.
She came to me when she finally saw me, her perfume swirling around her, and kissed me on the cheek—a wet, motherly kiss—then looked at me with those black witch eyes kindling with delight. “How you have grown!” Then to Father, “He was just a baby when I saw him,” and I thought she would talk more with me, but she wheeled around and relegated me to limbo, while she asked Father about the town, about the problems of Don Vicente and his tenants, and finally about this Baldo.
Father lingered around her with his light talk, ignoring her question. He asked what she would have for refreshments—a glass of sarsaparilla or halo-halo? “Nothing,” she said, then in all earnestness she asked, “Tell me, what does Baldo look like?”
“You have handled worse people.” Father patted her arm. “He is not handsome, of course. A little bit on the lean side, with an average peasant’s face, but I’m sure you’ll have a hard time with him.”
“Vicente always says that in the beginning,” she said, waving Father away with a deft motion of her hand.
“I know Baldo better than you,” Father said.
“After I’m through, I’ll know him better. When do I start?” she asked.
“Right now, if you want,” Father said.
But she did not start at once. Like a bat, she waited for the dark. After supper, she peered out the window; light burned in the sala of the small house, and before a big table there, Tio Baldo was poring over maps.
She smiled confidently at Father, then she went down to the house.
I did not notice her return, but after breakfast the following morning, she started packing her things. Her face was sour when she bade Father good-bye at the gate.
“Don Vicente must try something new,” Father said.
“I’ll tell him you can do just that, but you aren’t lifting a finger,” she said angrily.
Father waved as she boarded the Packard that would take her back to Manila. “I have limitations, my dear,” he said lightly.
She did not wave back.
After the woman left, things moved quickly. November tapered off into December, and the harvest came in a steady stream. Shortly after lunch one afternoon, the black Packard with a uniformed chauffeur drove into the yard, its horn blaring.
Father dressed hurriedly. Our visitor was Don Vicente himself. It was the first time I had seen him, although almost every day his name was mentioned in the house. Father tried to talk him into getting up into the house, but he firmly refused. He sat inside his car, gesticulating, his fat white face tightly drawn. Occasionally, he would shake a stubby finger at Father, and though I could not understand much of their conversation, which was in Spanish, I knew that the rich man was very angry.
Don Vicente concluded his tirade by thrusting a cardboard box in Father’s hand, and then, at a wave of his hand, his chauffeur started the car. Father stood stiffly and said good-bye, and the car sped away.
After we had supped, Father bade me follow him to his room. He handed me the box, then we went to Tio Baldo’s house.
I had not been in it for some time, and now I noticed how really small it was. The sala was bare except for the big table and a sorry-looking bookcase made of packing crates. The only costly fixture in the house was the Coleman lamp hanging from a rafter, and below it Tio Baldo was drafting. When he saw us, he stopped and came forward to meet us.
“You know why I’m here?” Father asked.
“Does it matter, Manong?” Tio Baldo said. “It is always good to have you visit.”
Father took the cardboard box from me, and ripping its cover away, he spilled its contents on the large blue map on which Tio Baldo was working.
“It’s all yours. There’s five thousand pesos there. Count it. Not a centavo less.”
“If you say it’s a million, Manong,” Tio Baldo said, “it’s a million.”
“Don Vicente brought it this afternoon.”
“I heard he was here,” Tio Baldo said. “But I didn’t expect this.”
“All the money you got from the old men—you can return it now, and there would still be enough left to tide you through five lifetimes. Is the price all right?”
“Don Vicente hasn’t enough to buy us out,” Tio Baldo said. “We have all the proofs we need now. We will charge him for damages, too, when we get the land back.”
“You are not taking this money, then?” Father asked, moving toward him.
Tio Baldo did not speak.
“What’s wrong with you?” Father asked sternly. “Don’t you know an opportunity when you see it? You’ll never earn this in a thousand years. Think of it!”
Baldo gathered the bills and returned them carefully to the box. “If you were in my place,” he asked, facing Father, “would you take it?”
Father blanched and his lips quivered.
“Tell me,” Tio Baldo pressed. “Would you take it?”
Father picked up the box and, muttering, he stomped to the door.
The next morning, Father left for the city. When he returned the following day, the first thing he did was tell me to call Tio Baldo to the house.
He came obediently. I followed him to Father’s room and stood guard at the door to see to it that no one ventured near.
“Well, Baldo,” Father said, a hint of sadness in his voice, “I’ve done everything I could. That money … if you want it, it’s still available.”
“I have all the maps and papers ready,” Tio Baldo told Father quietly instead. “I’ll leave for the city tomorrow. The old people who have opened their bamboo banks—all of them—they are expecting so much. I think we have enough to present to the officials. They’ll give us justice, I’m sure.”
Father spoke calmly. “So you think you can win. You are at the end of your road, Baldo.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said with conviction. “There are people on our side.”
Father controlled himself; the veins in his temples were bloated, and his fists were balled. “Do you think you’ll matter?”
“You are wrong to think otherwise,” Tio Baldo said.
“You think I am?” Father brought his fist down on the small table beside him and sent paper clips and pencils flying around the room.
Tio Baldo simply looked at him.
“You think I’m afraid, too?”
Tio Baldo turned away from Father and walked to the window. The yard below was littered with bull carts. A cool wind sprang and wafted up to the house the heady scent of harvest.
“Am I afraid?” Father held him by the shoulder.
“I never said that,” Tio Baldo said, without making the slightest move to shake off Father’s hold. “I think you are only acting your age.”
“Now I’m old!” Father said. “Now I’m a fool. But let me tell you this. Need I remind you it’s not only me you are destroying but yourself, and, perhaps, all those dear to you?”
Tio Baldo, still gripped by Father’s hands, smiled wanly. “I owe you for many things,” he said. “An education, but above all, a sense of right. Please don’t take the last away.”
Father’s hands dropped from Tio Baldo’s shoulders.
“Baldo,” he said softly after a bit of silence, “I’m not taking anything back. Education and righteousness, they are good.” He slapped his thigh in languid resignation. “But we have to live. All of us. All right, I have a few hectares to my name, a rice mill, some houses. But still, I’m nothing. And you know that. Don Vicente—he has everything. He can ruin not only you or me but all of us—not because he wants to, but he may be forced to.”
“We have nothing to lose,” Tio Baldo said. Tears began to well in his eyes.
Father took him to the door. “There’s nothing more I can say,” he said.
Tio Baldo’s gait quickened as he crossed the hall. He hurried down the stairs and stepped into the afternoon.
We did not hear from him the whole month that he was in the city. Christmas passed, and we would not have known that he was finally home had not Old David seen him hurry from the railroad station to his house without speaking to anyone.
The news must have reached Carmay, for at dusk Don Vicente’s tenants started coming, some riding their work animals to town straight from the fields and bearing still the strong odor of earth and sun. The young ones came, too, but there were more old men, farmers who had known nothing but the cycle of plowing and planting. They gathered in the yard, talked quietly among themselves, and wondered perhaps why Tio Baldo did not come out at once to speak to them.
At about eight, he finally came down from the hut and walked among his people. From underneath his house, he rolled out a wooden mortar into their midst and perched himself on top of it. His mother took a kerosene lamp from their kitchen and strung it up on a low branch of the balete tree.
It took him some time before he finally spoke, louder now than the mere whispers with which he half acknowledged those who welcomed him. No sound rippled from the crowd; they hung on to each word, and each was like a huge, dull knife plunged into their breasts.
Then, when he paused, someone spoke, loud enough for all to hear: “And our money, have you cheated us?”
Tio Baldo exclaimed, “All my life, I’ve lived in virtue, but now, with you condemning me, I’ll crawl in the dust to beg your forgiveness.” Lifting his palms to a darkened sky, his voice shaking with his grief, he turned around into the silent crowd that flowed beyond the yard of the little house to the street.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me, you who are older than I, upon whose brows wisdom sits. I’ve tried, but we cannot fight money with money, nor force with force because we haven’t enough of these. Where have I failed? Have I not been true to all of you? Tell me, my fathers who are old and wise, tell me what to do. I have no money to pay you back. Even the house where I live is not mine. But my blood—take it. Tell me, my elders, if it’s enough.”
But they did not tell him; they stood like many stolid posts, unable to speak.
“What has happened to the world?” Tio Baldo cried. “Since when could justice be bought, and men have become strangers to honor? And we who have been marked for this kind of life, shall we be slaves forever? I am your son and will always be; why do you fling me now to the dogs? Tell me, oh my elders, who are wise!”
Still they did not speak.
Then, from their ranks a cry broke out—very soft and plaintive—and in the light of the storm lamp, as I stood there in their midst, I could see tears in many eyes. Numbly I looked at the ancient, careworn faces. Someone started to sob aloud, and he was quickly joined by three or four, and I could feel each sob being torn out of chests, for they were only old men, enfeebled and ready for the grave, crying now that their last dream had gone to waste. And as I looked at them, at Tio Baldo alone atop the mortar, as I listened to their grief, I felt a vise tighten in my throat; I knew I did not belong here, that I had to join Father in our comfortable house.
It was to it that I returned. And there, from the balcony, I watched the farmers slowly scatter and head back for their homes. In a while the night was quiet again and the light in the small house was snuffed out. The crickets in the balete tree started whirring, and from the asphalted provincial road came the muffled clatter of bull-cart wheels and carabao hooves carrying the harvest to the storehouse of Chan Hai.
“How did Baldo take it?” Father asked as I passed him on the azotea on my way to my room.
“Bravely, Father,” I said.
I knew how right I was, even when, the following morning, we woke up to shrill cries from outside, in the wide yard, where people had gathered to see Tio Baldo hanging by the neck from one of the lofty branches of the balete tree.