24
By Christmas talk was rife that the Huks were already in the outskirts of the city, that they could now attack Manila at will. Many provincial capitals in central Luzon had been raided and occupied for at least one night before the constabulary could retake them. Luis was certain that the propaganda arm of the movement was working in Manila. He learned from some of his old college friends that a few of their acquaintances in the interuniversity cultural and press groups had joined the Huks. The tension that was reflected in the press and in the government hierarchy was not, however, the kind that tormented him. He had continued his poetry, but it was to him too prosaic, too pallid, and it did not tally with the realities. He could see the greater contradiction within himself as he helped Dantes become richer, at the same time making himself safe from the cares of living, unlike those whom he sincerely felt he championed. There was freedom, yes, but for whom did it work? Certainly it was working for him but not for Sipnget and his people there, for his grandfather and his mother, to whom he threw occasional crumbs.
He did not drink except socially, but now, in the evenings when he could not sleep, he would fix himself a glass of bourbon and toy with it until it was empty. One evening it came as a surprise even to himself that he took not one but three glasses before he could sleep. I must stop this, he told himself, and he got to writing more poetry. He read Mayakovsky and reread Whitman and even tried experimenting in Tagalog and Ilokano with the kind of poetry that he felt the lower classes would understand. It was all a sham, a mistake, that he was writing in English—a language that was for him and the elite—when there should be no barrier between him and the greater masses. Why should the language of science and culture be denied them? Much as he would have wanted to pursue this line of thinking, however, at the same time he felt secure and superior with the fact that he had mastered English and that he would continue writing in it—if only for his ego and for self-justification. It was not the language, after all, that really mattered—it was the heart of it, the art of it. This contradiction was of course an inanity. What really tormented him, as always, was the past, his past, and his recreance to it.
At Christmas he gave his first real party. Our Time had already piled up a steady circulation, and advertisements were coming in. More important to him, however, was that the magazine had become credible and prestigious, even to those whose views he disagreed with. It was politically left, but the writers of the right recognized it nevertheless for its liberal outlook, its fairness, and this was not lost on Dantes, who was a businessman before anything else. Dantes had suggested that the party be held in his house, which Luis had recently been frequenting because of Ester. Luis said, however, that it would be better in his own house, which, although smaller, had a wide garden and was more accessible. He knew that many of his friends on the left, particularly the college crowd, would never feel at ease in such surroundings as those of the Dantes residence.
Luis had expected only a few guests, but a riot descended upon him and he was very pleased. It was almost like a reunion with the old college crowd. There were also members of the cosmopolitan set, friends of Dantes, editors from the other Dantes publications, and the inseparable Abelardo Cruz and Etang Papel. Most important of all, Ester was there with some of her friends.
Luis was sorry that Trining was not coming. It would have been an experience for her to know people other than those to whom she was exposed in school, but a week earlier she had gone back to Rosales for the Christmas vacation as well as to look after Don Vicente, whose condition had worsened. She had tried convincing Luis to go with her, even for just a week, not only so that his mind would clear a little but also so that he would be able to see his mother. Luis, however, loathed the idea of staying in Rosales for more than a day, and he had decided that spending New Year’s Day at home would be more than enough for him not only to fulfill his filial obligations but also to confront his other self again.
The buffet started at seven, but Luis had started to drink much earlier. By eleven most of his guests had already left in search of nightclubs that were not crowded and churches where they might catch the midnight mass. He was the perfect host, slightly inebriated but gracious, waving heartily, making wry comments once in a while, in keeping with his character, and always saying, “And do come again—if there’s going to be another time!”
He had broken into a heated discussion on the azotea between Abelardo Cruz, Etang Papel, and a couple of new Ph.D.’s from the university who had just returned from Harvard, brimming with American wisdom and enthusiasm. He had never been apologetic about not having finished his B.A., and particularly after he had read a doctoral dissertation on social change in a Nueva Ecija village. He had been infuriated by the trivia that had come to pass for scholarship.
Papel was huge and homely and had a spongelike mind that soured everything it absorbed; she would have been dismissed as someone’s fat old-maid aunt, which, of course, she was not, for in spite of her plain features, she had had a string of men, some of them foreigners who had, perhaps, fantasized about her looks. She was saying that the true nationalist commitment was not freedom from America’s apron strings but freedom of the people from their own rich exploiters.
Luis had always agreed with such a statement, but for tonight, he was simply, wearily tired. “Thank God for the poor,” he had said, “otherwise, we would have fewer Ph.D.’s and columnists as well.”
Papel did not like it and had retorted, “Thank God for the rich, then, for it is they who made the poor!”
His was still the last word: “And thank God again for the poor, for they will make some writers rich writing about poverty!”
Etang Papel left shortly afterward, followed by her coterie. Soon it was only Eddie and Ester in the house with Simeon and Marta, who had come to tidy up the place. Eddie was trying “Silent Night” on the piano with one finger, and beside him Ester sang in a cool pleasant voice, sipping iced tea from a tall glass. Luis joined them, half dragging his feet on the floor, which was now dusty and littered with canapé picks and cigarette stubs.
“Sing louder, Ester,” he said. “This is my happiest Christmas.”
Eddie stood up. “I have to go, too,” he said. “It’s been a nice party, Louie.”
Luis held him by the shoulder. “And I thought you were my friend,” he said. “Stay awhile. You haven’t heard Ester play yet.” Then to Ester: “Please, boss, do play for us a hymn—any hymn.”
“Now, what do you mean, calling me boss?” Ester asked.
Luis laughed. “You are the publisher’s daughter, aren’t you? You are boss, too.”
“That’s not funny,” Ester said coldly.
“You are drunk,” Eddie said.
“I am not, but—Ester, play just the same. I will sing to your tune. Isn’t it time we sang something not just to honor Christ but also to those who are in the hills? Let’s sing a hymn also for those fighting a private war—those who are now in whorehouses, driven there by decent women.”
“You are really drunk.” Eddie turned to the girl. “Ester, I think we should go.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” Luis said. “In fact, if anyone should go home, it is I. Do you know where home is? It is not in this house or that atrocious feudal castle in Rosales. It is out there, in them thar hills—only there’s no yellow gold …”
“What’s come over you?” Eddie asked. “You just had a most wonderful party, surrounded by the nicest people in the world. What are you beefing about?” He headed for the door. “I’m leaving before I change my mind and call this a lousy party.”
“I wish I were dead,” Luis said, meaning it. But Eddie had already gone down the stairs. Ester walked over to him and, holding his clammy hand, led him to the azotea. From the near distance there came an explosion of firecrackers. It was cooler out in the open, and the sea breeze helped clear his mind a little. He was, however, aware of everything that he had said, and he hoarsely repeated, “I wish I were dead.”
“That is not a nice thing to say on Christmas Eve, Luis,” Ester said.
“Perhaps I will feel differently tomorrow. I have something for you. It’s not wrapped up—it couldn’t be wrapped up. It’s my heart and I can’t take it out. And what is more, it is fouled up, I think. You will not want it that way, would you?”
“I hope this is not the liquor at work,” Ester said softly. “We say so many things that we don’t mean afterward. And when this happens, it is all wrong. It sours relationships.”
Luis listened attentively for the first time during the hectic evening. This was not party talk; they were really alone now. The world had slipped by, and stars swarmed over the sky.
He held her hand and pressed it. “I mean what I say, Ester,” he said, looking at her serene face.
“I have friends, many friends,” she continued barely above a whisper. “But the relationships are empty. It is not that there is no trust—I trust them as I trust you now, and I hope that they trust me, too. But how can I express it? What I want? What I’m looking for? It is not something that money can buy, else I would have gotten it a long time ago. Do you understand, Louie, what I am trying to say?”
He nodded, for she was now saying something that he had always felt himself; she was giving shape to thoughts that had bedeviled him but that he had not been able to express.
“You want peace,” he said simply. “You want happiness, fulfillment—all those wonderful things that come to the yogi, the enlightenment. You want a way out.”
She looked at him and nodded.
“There is no way out, Ester,” he said. “Not for you. Not for me.”
“Yes, there is, for me,” she said. “For you, I have doubts. You thrive on conflict. On anger. You are alive when you are angry. I cannot see you in a world where there is peace and harmony.”
He shook his head, not because he disagreed with her but because he did not want to believe what she said; it was true, he would be a misfit in a world without anger. Did he really believe in justice, or was he not just rebelling against a past that had injured him? Did he really love the poor, or in professing love for the poor was he doing what was easy, addressing himself to man—amorphous, unreal, without identity—rather than be committed to one individual in need of sympathy, which he could give but would not? And if he loved the poor, would he give them the wealth that was going to be his? Would he be willing to let go of the comforts that he enjoyed so that they—his people in Sipnget—would have something better on their table? He loved Ester, but now he also resented her for pushing him against the wall, for flailing at him with the truth, for forcing him to be honest with himself. But he also knew that to lose her would be to lose his conscience.
“We have to live with ourselves,” he said contritely. “That is difficult to do. And the peace that we seek, I suppose, is the peace of the grave.”
Her face lighted up, the smile bloomed again. “I have often thought of it that way,” she said, rising, a sudden lift in her being. “Then the burden would be lifted, and finally we would be free.”
“You agree with me, then, death isn’t so tragic after all. And I do wish sometimes that I were dead.”
He walked with her to the gate, where her car was waiting, and before he turned to go he pulled her to him and gently, ever so gently, kissed her, murmuring, “Ester, don’t hate me for my alcoholic histrionics. In vino, Veritas!”
She held him and kissed him, then quickly got into the car. Luis walked slowly back to the azotea. Along the boulevard the houses were brightly lighted with red, white, and blue star lanterns, with colored bulbs strung across their fronts and the trees in the yards. From the direction of Ermita and Malate came more firecracker explosions. At times the voices of children singing carols and the brash music of cumbancheros came through, clear and sharp.
The party had actually tired him, and he was most riled by the hypocrites among his own crowd—Abelardo Cruz, Etang Papel—those who prattled about their vaunted love for humanity and understanding of the country’s social malaise. There they were, all dolled up, their perfumed hands never having known the brutal hardness of a plow handle. His starveling friends were no different. They banded together as if they belonged to a touted though impoverished aristocracy, and they regarded the masses—the masses, how contemptible, how hopeless they are! Of course, he also used the phrase occasionally—but only when he wanted to make the point that revolution could start not only with the peasantry but also with the middle class, the enlightened bourgeoisie, himself among them. Why isn’t there more honesty in this world? Perhaps it is only in art that we can be totally honest. Again, he tried to exculpate himself from the inadequacy of his response. But of what use is art? He was not even sure that the poetry he had written was art. It sounded so effete, maybe because he was looking for the innate music of words or maybe because he was searching deeply for the symbolic meanings of words when there were no symbols at all—just words strung together in order to evoke ideas, images, and the total whole of aesthetic experience. He was becoming an aesthete, incapable of translating his ideas into action. Indeed, he was beginning to wither as he sometimes wished he would.
He went back to the house and wandered about. In the kitchen Simeon and Marta were tucking away the bowls and the wineglasses. The two waiters had gone home, and the rubbish was now in the garbage cans, but the house still looked dirty and the floor was a mess. Marta would have to spend the whole morning cleaning up. “Simeon,” he said, “you and Marta go to Rosales for a week. Just be sure you are back by New Year’s, for you must drive me to Rosales. Right now I can be alone by myself. And if I forget, do not fail to remind me about your bonus—both of you—tomorrow.”
Their faces lit up, and he told them to leave the work—it was late; they could always do it in the morning before taking the bus or train home.
He went back to his room as their footsteps died down on the stone staircase. Slowly removing his red bow tie and his jacket, he sank into his bed. The phone jangled, and half rising, he took it.
It was Ester and her voice was warm: “How are you feeling now? I should have made you a cup of coffee before I left.”
“I’m fine,” he said, “and I’m sorry.”
“You always say you are sorry.”
“Blame it on the world—or circumstance.”
“You are still sour.”
“Even milk sours,” he said.
“You are forgiven, then.”
“How can I ever thank you?”
“Plenty. We can hear mass tomorrow. I can drop in at your place and pick you up.”
“I might not be up early,” Luis said, feeling suddenly trapped.
“I’ll wake you up.”
“I’ll be a mess—the house, too. Besides, I’ve got to work.”
“It won’t take more than forty-five minutes.”
“High mass?”
“Luis, you sound bored.”
He could feel the apprehension in her voice. He laughed. “You are going to be a nun.”
She laughed softly, too. “Merry Christmas again.”
Then he was really alone. The tedium of the day finally possessed him, and he sank in complete surrender to it. He could not remember how much he had drunk, and the urge to have one last nightcap came, but he withstood the temptation. He struck the headboard behind him, cursing, then he reached out to switch off the light. It was then that his door slowly opened and, more surprised than frightened, he watched the man come in.
Recognition came quickly. Luis jumped up and rushed forward to embrace his brother. “Vic,” he said, drawing away, studying the sun-browned face, short-cropped hair, buck teeth, and laughing eyes. “Why did you not come earlier?”
“I did,” Vic said, “but I didn’t want to interfere with your party and I wanted to be sure you were alone. I stayed in the garage.”
Luis was incredulous. “Now, that is a foolish thing to do,” he said, shaking his head. He was angry. “You know you are welcome in this house. If you didn’t want to be with the party, you could have come here and locked yourself in.”
“Anyway,” Vic said, “I am here and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
Luis’s mind was keen again. In the soft bedroom light he looked at his brother. It was just two years since Vic’s last visit in this house, a visit that had peeved and perplexed him. He knew then that his brother was in need, and he had tried to give him money, but Vic had refused it, saying that he already had a job, that it was enough that he had helped him with his education and with books that he had sent. Luis hoped that his brother would not be as proud again. Tonight, after all, was Christmas.
He could see that although Vic was robust, his clothes were faded khaki and his shoes were battered leather. He smelled of sun and harsh living.
“Marta let me in,” he said simply.
“You could have joined us,” Luis said.
Vic shook his head. “Manong,” he said, “you know very well that I do not belong to that crowd.”
Luis knew what else Vic would say, so he changed the subject at once. “Let’s go to the kitchen. There’s a lot of food and drink, and I’m getting hungry again.”
“Marta gave me something to eat,” he said. “I’m really full, and besides, I came here to ask for something important from you—more than food.”
Luis sighed. “Vic,” he said, “you know I’d give you anything you ask for, but you refuse what I give you.”
“I have come here not to ask for help for myself. I know you have it in your heart to help people like me.”
“How much do you need?” Luis asked. “I told you before that this house is always open to you. You can stay here if you wish. There’s even an extra room. It is so much simpler and easier for you to come and see me than for me to go to Rosales. I’ve told you this a hundred times. And you haven’t written to Mother. I was there last April. She doesn’t know where you are. That’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry, Manong,” Vic said. He sat on the edge of the bed, and Luis sat in front of him. “I have not bothered telling Mother where I am, but I told her—really told her—when I left Sipnget that she should never look for me, that I would be all right, and that I would always be thinking of them.”
Luis was silent. He was recalling his mother’s sadness, her quiet despair, as she spoke of Vic. It was as if she had already accepted the fact that she would never see her younger son again.
“But why?”
Vic smiled and did not answer. Seeing that no reply was forthcoming, Luis asked, “Now, tell me. How much do you really need? If I don’t have enough in this house, I can go to the bank first thing after the holiday—and if you don’t want to come to my office to pick it up, I’ll leave it with Marta.”
Again Vic smiled. “It’s not money, Manong, although that will help, of course. It is you we need, and others like you—more than anything now. We need teachers, people with knowledge and understanding such as you have.”
“You are talking in riddles. What are you talking about?”
“About us. About Commander Victor.”
“He is dead.”
“Yes, both of us know that.” Then he smiled rather self-consciously. “I supposed you never knew that his name was not Victor. It was Hipolito, but he was always talking about victory, and when he was given an opportunity to have a nom de guerre, he chose Victor.”
“But how can I help a dead man?”
“Help me, Manong. I am now Commander Victor.”
Luis looked at his brother. Victor was not even twenty, and he looked more like a village teenager, with his crew cut and his lean, dark face, but behind the youth was the man who had known travail as Luis had never known it. Vic was no longer a boy but the man Luis could never be, and this fact humbled Luis.
“Were you in Rosales in April?”
Again Vic smiled but did not answer.
“Did you know that I was home?”
The same noncommittal smile.
“You know, of course, that I will always help you, that I will do what you want me to do, because we are brothers.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Vic said. “I have been thinking a lot about us. I will be going back to Rosales. It will be my territory now. I know every village, almost every tree, every turn of the creek, and every fold of the hill—and a lot of people know me. So I will go there, but I need you, too, to protect me if necessary, because I can trust you. Let me make one thing clear, however: the old days are over. Your father, all his property, must go back to the people whom he has robbed.”
Luis could not believe what he was hearing, and for a minute Vic droned on about social justice and democracy and the future. What would all this mean now? He would lose the house in Rosales and all the land that would be his inheritance. For a while this bleak reality numbed his heart, and for all his protestations, for all that he had written and said, he had grown to like this ease, this surfeit of leisure, all that marked him for perdition. He was, after all, his father’s son.
Maybe, if he tried to dissuade his brother, there would be other ways, feasible means by which he could remain what he was and yet be totally in agreement with him, support him, and sacrifice for him.
“Vic,” he asked, “what do you really believe in?”
Vic paused, gazed at the ceiling, and then looked down at his black battered shoes. “What can one like me believe in? I wish I could say that I believe in God—or any god up there. I wish I could say that I believe in our leaders. One thing I can tell you is that I do not believe in the Americans anymore. We fought the Japanese, didn’t we? We were only teenagers then. We were not going to be heroes—whoever thinks of patriotism and heroism when he is there, scared, praying that he can live through the ambush? There were heroes, just the same, and who were they? The thieves who raided the GI quartermaster depots, who robbed the government treasury, the same ones who continue to do it now. These were the people who traded with the Japanese and got rich working for themselves. How can I believe in the Americans when they are responsible for making heroes of these scum?”
“I didn’t ask you about the Americans,” Luis said.
“Yes, but you cannot avoid them,” Vic said. “They are everywhere and, most dangerously, in the dark corners of the mind, especially the minds of the ignorant people we deal with every day.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I am coming to that,” Vic said, a smile fleeting across his dark face. “I believe in Mother—our mother.” He paused and waited for the word to sink in. “She fed me, she taught me all that I will ever know. Even if she didn’t teach me anything, I would still believe in her, because I know she is Mother, who brought me up in this world. There are lots of things in this world that I despise—the lying and the thieving. You don’t know how deeply I resent these things, how I rage—but I believe in Mother.”
“Do you believe in me?” Luis asked. He had not wanted to ask the question, but he had to know the answer now.
For some time Victor did not speak. When he finally did he looked straight into his brother’s eyes. “I wish I could answer you with a simple yes and mean it. We have never lied to each other, but how can I say that I believe in you when I can’t even believe in myself now? I am wracked by doubts, by anguish and mistrust. There is nothing anymore that one can be sure of, Manong. Nothing is true anymore except Mother, for she is what she is and we cannot change her. And death.”
“I am your brother, Vic,” Luis said softly, but within him he was crying out: Believe me, I am you and you are me!
“Do you think I will ever forget?” Vic’s voice shrilled. “You have done for me what no one has ever done, and I am grateful. Without you and the money you sent Mother I would not have been able to finish high school. All the learning that I got afterward—it came from the books you sent me. The wealth you gave me is here”—Vic pointed to his head—“where no one can take it—not even you. But there is something here, too. Memory. I remember our days together—and our quarrels.” Vic laughed suddenly and his laughter was eerie. When he paused, his eyes were misty. “Mother loved you, perhaps more than she loved me, because you were not wanted—and I was. That everyone knew. But where are you now, and where am I? This is the whole point. You will go far, very far, but what of those who are still in Sipnget?”
“And do you not believe me because I am a bastard and because I am only a half-brother?”
“You fool!” Vic lashed at him. “Haven’t I just spoken about how we grew up together and lived together? That is something I always look back to with pleasure. That’s why I came here.”
“And yet you cannot trust me?”
“I trust even Marta and Simeon. Why shouldn’t I trust you in another way? But you asked if I believed you.”
“There’s so little difference,” Luis said wearily.
“I said we lived together, but that was long ago and I have never talked with you as I am doing now. In between, many things have happened. You went to the city and I stayed on the farm. I am not saying that you don’t deserve better things—you were always smarter than I, and you had a way with words.” Vic paused and looked around him. “I had to catch up with my own education my own way, and I know that people change when they live differently, away from the land. Now, tell me. Have you changed? What do you believe in now?”
Luis walked to the window that opened to the bay. The night was calm, a faint glimmering of stars and the silence of a world gone to sleep, and the bay was a black, shimmering stretch—a line of lights where Cavite was. It was long past midnight. Luis turned to Vic and said slowly, “I believe in humanity—not just you or Mother but all mankind. Do I sound like a preacher or a cheap politician making a pretty speech? This is not what I intend to do. Father told me that he wanted me to go into politics. I believe in life, that it is sweet, and that, for all its occasional bitterness, we—man, that is—are headed toward something better—fulfillment. There is much shame, however, and so much hypocrisy around us, and these inhibit our fulfillment as human beings. I am what you may call a humanist. I cannot explain this to you. Life is holy and it is for all of us. God’s design I cannot understand myself, and I never will, but I do know that what we are experiencing now will pass and in the end we will all be brothers, not just blood brothers, as we are, but brothers in spirit. Neither you nor I can change the world or human nature, and we can only aim at changing attitudes—and perhaps teach those who have so much to give a portion of their blessings to those who have less.”
“Paradise on earth, achieved with human understanding. Not a single egg broken.” Vic coughed mirthlessly.
“Do not try to be smart or funny.” Luis spoke hotly. “I have been writing poetry, as you very well know—not very good, perhaps, but this is not important. What I am trying to say is that I have hope that there is still truth to be gleaned, even from the garbage dump, if we search hard enough.”
“And you think that I have no hope? We fought the Japanese with slingshots because we had hope. We now fight for the same reason. You forget the source of our real strength. It is not people like you, although you can be one of us. We are very rich in numbers. The poor are many—they are the majority. This is all that I understand. As for the good life or reason or the world of the spirit, you can afford to be poetic about it because you are here. You forget one thing: we are there!”
“Is that what they are teaching you in the Stalin universities? I have heard about them.”
Victor laughed loudly. “Listen,” he said after a while, “we have lots of books, and lecturers, some of whom are Ph.D.’s. Does this surprise you? And we do have schools but not the kind you think. Every day is school day for us. We deal with facts, not with books. We know who is exploited and who are exploiters. If there is a god at all, He is in us—He is not up there. Paradise can be here if we fight well. There is goodwill in men if they are of the same class.”
“You sound so familiar,” Luis said softly, thinking of his own college days and those sophomoric discussions under the acacia trees. “I am tired of dreams. Why can you not be practical and learn to live with facts, as you say you do? With education—and I am only too glad to help you—you can be more than what you are, whether you are a farmer or a clerk. There is a lot of room. There’s freedom, too. Why are you doing this? There must be a reason.”
Vic had not stirred from where he sat. “I cannot give an easy answer,” he said with great feeling. “I wish I could tell you that I will endure all privation because I love our country, but what is our country? It is a land exploited by its own leaders, where the citizens are slaves of their own elite.”
“Be honest,” Luis pressed. “Do you think you will be different if you achieve power?”
“I do not know,” Vic said humbly. “One cannot foresee the future. I would like to say that I will be Spartan and honest. I am no hero. I would like the good life if I can get it. I would like to have lechon every day, to travel and see the world. I would like to be comfortable and not have one worry. But none of these is possible. It is not even possible for me to go to school the usual way, to know myself better …”
Luis was silent.
“And you want to know why I am away from all the comforts that I could appreciate, just like other human beings? I will tell you why. I am tired, Manong—very tired. I am tired of everything. I hate the present and I long for the future. It is a future that I hope will at least provide enough food for all of us. I am tired of soft-boiled rice and camote tops and coconut meat and green papayas, such as we have in the mountains most of the time. Once, long ago, I thought that all that mattered was food. There was so little of it—you know what we had in Sipnget.”
“You shame me,” Luis said.
“But it is true. Remember how it was in the big house? How I used to go there to work and you did not because Mother didn’t want you to go to town? How I used to collect the peelings of apples that your father ate and bring them home for us to eat?”
Luis did not speak. He did not want to remember. “All right then,” he said after a while, “what do you want me to give you?”
“Give! Give!” Vic flung at him. “I shouldn’t be ungrateful, but you always give. People like me—we never get anything that is ours because we worked for it, because we deserve it.”
“You are my brother.”
“Half-brother.”
“We came from the same womb. It is all that matters. We are equals.”
“How I wish I could believe that,” Vic said, “but it is not so. If we cannot be equal, at least both of us are Filipinos, with the same opportunities. I did not make the laws, nor did I set up the system for mestizos and brown people like me. I would like to think that under the skin it’s the same red blood. But blood is cheap, and I will use it to water the land so that people like me will live.”
“I will be on the other side,” Luis said, “not because I want to be there but because that is where you have pushed me.”
“But that is where you are,” Vic said, “not because I want you there. You are there of your own free will. You will inherit great wealth. Would you give it up? Why should you?”
“We can share it,” Luis said.
“But how far will you go, my brother? If I asked you to get rid of everything and come with me, would you do it? You have much to lose—and if you stay, I will understand. I even understand why you are reluctant to come out in your magazine that you are for us. Yes, we read you every week, and although you seem to sympathize with us, you really are not for us. Could it be that you have forgotten those years in Sipnget?”
“I have not forgotten,” Luis said hotly. “I am not turning away from that. You do not know of my turmoil.”
“And you think I don’t have doubts and moments of anguish, too?” Vic asked. “It has been dirty, dirtier than the war we went through. I thought that after Liberation all the fighting would cease, but it has not been that way. It’s uglier now—and so sad—and yet, what must be done must be done.”
Vic stood up. He did not even look grown-up. His hands twitched at his sides as he walked to the door.
“You didn’t tell me what you came here for—or what I can do,” Luis said.
“Some other time, Manong,” he said. “It has been refreshing, talking with you.”
“One last question,” Luis said. “Did you send that message to my father?”
Vic smiled. “You see, my brother, I have not lost my aim.”
Luis saw him to the gate and on the way kept saying, “What can I do for you? There must be something …” Through it all Vic was smiling, and after he disappeared into the shadows it seemed that a primeval darkness, thicker than the night, dropped like a final curtain between them.
Dear Mother,
It is long past Christmas Eve, and I can think of no better time to write you this letter than now. As you perhaps have already surmised, I am not very religious. There was a time, however, when I was—and I remember how you took me to the church in town during the Holy Week and how piously I followed you as you fingered your rosary and made your Stations of the Cross, how your care-lined face was turned to the prostrate image of a dead Christ at the altar. I still recall that time when I was flushed with fever and Tio Joven applied all those leaves on my chest and rubbed his saliva all over my forehead and I still didn’t get well. It was then that you decided that there should be a novena in the house to appease God, whom you believed had been angered. That early evening, after the novena, Grandfather went to the backyard where the dalipawen tree stood, and there, making an offering of the rice cake that you made, the hard-boiled eggs, and the hand-rolled cigar, Grandfather beseeched the spirits: You who have brought fever to my grandson, here is a humble offering. Come now and partake of it, and hurt my grandson no more. That evening I felt the fever ebb, as if it were no more than simple fatigue, although for a week I couldn’t stand. I remember how that early morning I went to the tree and saw the cake and the hard-boiled eggs still there and how, because the spirits had not helped themselves to them, I feasted on the offering, against all customary warnings. All this comes to me as lucid as day. It was this that made me realize that food for the spirits could also be food for the stomach.
I am not being facetious. I had not meant to go off-tangent this way. I had meant to start this letter in all seriousness—like an editorial in my magazine, which will never be read by you and by Grandfather and by all the people in Sipnget, although Vic tells me that he reads the magazine every week. I had meant to be poetic, for tonight the Son of Man was born to a mother who, like all mothers, should be revered because it was in her body that she suffered the beginning of life. The birth of Christ is to me the celebration of motherhood, for there are many among us today who would not be loved and who would not be cared for except by their mothers.
I write this letter because just a while ago Vic was here to see me. I asked him what he believed in, and he said he believed in you. I would like to say that I, too, believe in you, but do not think that I will be fair to you or to myself if I didn’t explain this belief that is more than belief. I think it is a kind of blindness—or faith.
There are times—and God knows there are many—when I wish I had not been born, but I must tell you that even this suffering that I bear is something that I must experience, both as a poet and as a human being who loves life. It will be difficult for you or for Vic to understand this suffering, for it is a form of ennui that is embedded in the mind, a pain without surcease, even after the wound has healed and the scab has lifted. In fact you will look in vain for scars. It is a malaise that money or circumstance cannot dispel. How utterly simple it would be if it were something a medical specialist could conquer with a new strain of antibiotic. Perhaps a vacation in San Francisco, a new Mercedes, or an eight-carat sparkler—each is a simple-enough solution, but not one of these will suffice.
I am speaking of my birth, dear Mother, my conception, my reason for being here, for being your son and my father’s son. It is not enough that I am here, living in comfort, while you are there, suffering. I would like to know how I came to be. I am curious to know if I was born out of love, if I deserve this life that has come to me as a gift from you, and if you regret that I ever came to be.
I will never know the answers, for these are questions I could not dare ask you or Father. At most I can only guess—and that is enough. Even if I do get the answers that I seek, I would still ask why I am here.
Vic knows his reason for being. He has found a cause to which he can give his life. As for me, I have not found out if this life is worth living. It was, I am certain, given to me in sufferance, and perhaps I am loved not because of myself but because of what I am supposed to be.
Dear Mother, in spite of all these doubts that rankle in my mind and poison my heart, there is one certitude for you: I love you, perhaps not in the way that you expect me to, sometimes not even the way I would like to, but I love you with a tenacity that I alone can feel. I love you because, as my brother has said, you are all I truly have.
Forgive me then, dear Mother.