34
Rain fell the following afternoon, preceded by incessant thunder. The four o’clock whistle at the rice mill had not yet blown, but the shower hid the sun completely and it seemed as if dusk had come. Luis had not closed the windows in their room, and the gusts had made a wide wet gash on the floor. He dragged the high-backed narra chair across the floor and set it by the window. With a towel he mopped up the water on the sill. He flung the towel to a corner, where the maids would pick it up, together with his soiled clothes. He took a bedsheet, and wrapping it around his shoulders, he sat by the window and gazed at the town raked by mist and wind. He hoped that he could write, and he had a bookcase carried in from the library. In it were most of the books he had brought home from his city shelves. He found out, however, much to his discomfiture, that running the farm, along with the host of other responsibilities that he had inherited from his father, was turning him into a drudge involved not just in looking at figures but also in dealing in a very personal way with tenants, overseers, and even some of the townspeople and officials themselves. The first few days after his father’s burial were spent in meeting people, in trying to remember faces and first names, the way his father did. Even the smallest decisions were left to him; making them was what his father did, and this was not entrusted to the lawyer, the accountant, or Santos. This fact impressed upon him how authoritarian his father had been and how, therefore, his father must have been responsible for what had befallen Sipnget.
No new desires moved Luis in his new position, and the mind that had prowled the past terrain of anger and of remorse and dwelt briefly on those few moments of happiness with Ester could not find a moment of inspiration. He was a fugitive in the silence of his house. The time he now had on his hands was not time at all, for the essence of life eluded him and what he wrote was no more than a jumble of phrases, a few typewritten pages, verbose, clumsy, clipped together, or crumpled into little balls in the mesh wastebasket near his desk.
The dry season was not really over. Beyond the wet sweep of the azotea, the wide garden with its azucena pots was starting to sink in a flood. Beyond the pall of rain the adobe walls and the wide asphalt ribbon had acquired a polish and the neighborhood children had rushed out, naked, and were running up and down, shouting, holding their faces to the sky taut with storm. Some of them climbed the short banaba trees that lined the street, all the way down to where the gray-green hulk of the municipio stood; they plucked twigs off the trees, which they shook at one another. It was wonderful to be young and splashing in the rain. In Luis’s mind he raced with the children, and he felt the slosh of the rain on his bare feet and the tingling drops on his skin. But this season of fresh green would not last—the rain would pock the plaza, and there would be muddy craters where the pigs would wallow. The weeds would grow everywhere, and the green would acquire a dirty hue.
He did not see his wife come in. He became aware of her only when she sat on the broad arm of his chair and rested a shaky elbow on his shoulder, her breath warm on his cheek. “You will never make a good housekeeper,” she chided him. “Look at the floor—it is all wet. And your things piled up there. And all that waste paper. You forgot to close the window again.”
“I was asleep,” he said, his eyes still on the children on the asphalt, who had started playing leapfrog. “Besides, I want it open.”
“Aren’t you cold?”
“You see I have a blanket about me.”
She brought her swollen body closer to him. “I thought you might want to be more comfortable.” She was soft and warm, her breast against his arm, a strand of hair across his cheek. “I am having some coffee brought in. You should go out. Do not confine yourself so much in this room. You will end up being a monk if you don’t watch out.”
He leaned on the sill. “Must you recite the things you do for me? Must you always be giving me advice?”
Her hand was cool on his nape. “Please do not be vexed with me,” she said. “I just cannot bear seeing you like this—an hour or two in the office below and the rest of the day here. Do you want to go to the sea? To the beach in Dagupan? Or to Baguio for the weekend? Or do you want to see the latest movie in Manila? Whatever you say, but please do not shut yourself up here. This was just what Tio did.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I know.”
“You used to wake up early—in Manila—and stroll down the boulevard, and at dusk you would walk to the Luneta. This is not a time for walking, but tomorrow, if the sun comes out, we will go for a walk. I need it. We can follow the dike, and as you used to do, we may be able to get some saluyot for lunch.”
“No, Trining,” he said, “what I want is peace.” Rain lashed the ditches; the huge leaves of the lilies in the garden trembled, and gusts of wind swept the media agua.
“You will get wet here,” she said, tugging at his pajama sleeve.
“The worst that can happen is for me to catch pneumonia,” he said.
“You do not appreciate the fact that I care,” she said bitterly.
“But I do,” he assured her, trying to hide his irritation, “but I need time for myself.”
“It is not time for yourself that you really want,” Trining said, bending so low that her cheek brushed his. “You are looking for something you will not find. After that trip to Aguray, Luis, I have come to accept it—that we cannot find them. There are things that we must accept because we have no choice.”
“You are beginning to sound like Father,” he said.
“I am only trying to help. Aren’t you glad?”
“God, I’m glad,” he said. “I am glad for the food you stuff me with, but do not pamper me. I can leave today if it will make things easier for you. I can return to Manila or go back to Sipnget and start building again. Perhaps that is the best way. You know, I married you so that our house and our landholdings wouldn’t fall into other hands. With me out of the way, you can have it all.”
She stepped away, staring at him, her lips quivering. “Luis, how horrible can you get! Is that the reason—the only reason?” She was frightened. “Please let us not quarrel. If you want me to stay away, I will—but don’t say these things. Do you really mean them? Then why didn’t you tell me before?”
The outburst had left him shaky but elated somehow. Now he was calm. “I’m sorry, Trining,” he said quietly. “I am not myself anymore. I cannot think straight anymore. Please leave me alone.”
She stood before him, speechless, then turned and walked out of the room. As the door closed after her, the cold, hostile silence came back, stronger than the rain. He went to the bed and lay down. If anybody could give him comfort, it was his wife, and yet he was shutting her off, hurting her. There must be something bestial and satanic in me to make me hurt like a sadist those closest to me. Ester, and now Trining. He rose quickly and called out, “Trining! Trining!” When she did not answer he went to his old room, to the kitchen, then to his father’s room. She was not in any of the rooms. One last place—the library. He flung the door open, and there she was, on the couch, her eyes wet with tears, her faced contorted with pain.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” he said, bending low. “Have I hurt you?” She nodded but smiled, then kissed him. “I am in pain, Luis. I think I’m going to have the baby soon. This is a different kind of pain I’m feeling now.”
He rushed out of the room, called for Santos, and told him to get Trining’s doctor. When he got back she had wiped her face. Although her eyes were red, she was smiling. “It doesn’t happen that fast,” she said. “The pain comes in several intervals. Maybe I should go to the provincial hospital or leave for Manila, whichever you think is best.”
When a woman gives birth, he remembered the saying clearly, one foot is in the grave. Why did he not even have the decency to be more attentive to her in this time of need? “You are all I have now,” he said, “and I have not been a good husband to you during the last few days. Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she said.
He held her hand. “I have committed many crimes—I mustn’t commit one more. I cannot go around sending to perdition those whom I love.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said, trying to rise from the couch, but he restrained her.
“It is true,” he said sadly. “Ester, I have a feeling I was the cause of it all. Before she did it—the last night she was alive—she was with me. I feel responsible, for I could have stopped her. I don’t know why she did it—I can only suspect. She did not expect us to get married, Trining, and she loved me. Please do not be angry now, but I think she killed herself because there was no future for us, or because she—she was pregnant, because she was carrying my baby. I cannot be sure. I can never be sure …”
Trining closed her eyes and shook her head vehemently. “Stop telling me. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it!”
“I am sorry,” he said, “but it’s better this way. You will get to understand me better, know what I am. I feel that I hurried Father, too, to his grave, that I did not help Mother and Grandfather. Now I am also hurting you. God, I don’t want to hurt you!”
“Then stop talking. Stop talking about Ester!”
“It was not love, Trining,” he said. “I didn’t promise her anything. I could have promised her something from the beginning. You were the first girl whom I asked to marry me. With Ester it wasn’t love, it was something else.”
She half sat and covered his mouth with her hand. “Don’t talk anymore,” she begged him.
“All right,” he said, shaking his head. “I am like rust. I destroy everything I cling to. The dog in the street that bites its master’s hand might be forgiven, but not me.”
She swung down from the couch and stood before him. “You won’t leave me?” she asked. “No matter what, you will not leave me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I just want to know how long you will be needing me. It will not be forever. If you say so, you are lying. You don’t have to put up appearances, not with me. I will just assume that someday you will leave me. Luis—that I won’t be able to stand!”
The light from the open window grew dimmer; the steady thrum of rain presaged high waters. He rose and embraced her awkwardly, for her belly stood in the way.
“Don’t promise me anything,” she said.
“I love you. You will be the mother of my child.”
“You don’t have to kill me if you don’t want me anymore. I will leave you in my own way—and it will be forever, too.”
He bit his lower lip, kissed her, and drew away. All my life I have made no sacrifice. I have never given up even one fingernail. All my life people have shown me the truest measure of their devotion. Love—if to love is to be willing to be used, then I do not know love. Nothing throbs here within, not a heart, only a cold and mechanical pump.
“No, I will never leave you,” he said, but he knew he was not telling the truth.
Dr. Reyes, who owned the small hospital in the town, was shivering when he arrived. He was the town’s best doctor, and although he was short and lean, there was energy and skill in his meager frame. “It is not yet your time, Trining,” he said as he entered their room and brought out his instruments. He was very casual about it all. “The blood pressure is normal, respiration is normal—but the pain, how long are the intervals? More than thirty minutes? But this is so soon—you are not due until about six weeks from now or thereabouts. Did you exert yourself? Did anything excite you? This could be a premature birth, you know, but thank God, we now have good hospitals.”
“No,” she lied, not looking at her husband. “Nothing exciting has happened, but I did go for a long walk last week.”
It was not necessary, said Dr. Reyes, that they go to the hospital immediately, but Luis was insistent.
“Well,” the doctor said, “I wish I could say that my clinic is good, which it is, but really, if we are going to any hospital at all, we might just as well go to Dagupan. It has one of the best in the north. There is a very good obstetrical staff there, and it has the latest instruments. I don’t want to take any risks.”
Santos drove them in the Chrysler. The rain was coming faster; it covered the land completely, and at times Santos had to switch his headlights on. There were ruts in many portions of the provincial road, and each bump was mirrored in Trining’s twitching face.
By the time they got to Dagupan, it was already night, the streetlights were on, and the rain had diminished to a drizzle. One foot in the grave—and he had settled for the provincial hospital when it should have been that specialists’ hospital in Manila, with its array of the country’s best doctors, anesthesiologists, and pathologists. It was a consolation that Dr. Reyes had assured him that although it would be a premature birth, he expected the delivery to be quite normal. Trining was as healthy as a cow, he had whispered to him.
He got a suite and a couple of private nurses to take care of Trining as her pain progressed. She did not deliver on that day or the next but on the third day, after Dr. Reyes and his team had finally decided that she needed a cesarian section. Luis followed her to the operating room. He would have watched it all had he not felt sickened. He had to go back to the suite, a wad of cotton drenched with ammonia clasped to his nose as he felt nausea coming.
He did not faint. He sat through the two hours, and when it was over and Trining was wheeled unconscious to the recovery room he rushed to Dr. Reyes.
“I am no surgeon”—the doctor’s face was grim—“so I merely assisted, but the surgeon we had, as you very well know, is one of the best. We did all that could be done. Trining is safe—she will be recovering in a few days, and then she can go home.”
“Why did she have to go through surgery?” Luis asked. It was a foolish question. It had been explained to him earlier when he signed the paper stating that he was permitting a surgery. If it had not been done, her pains would not have ceased, the baby would not have been born, and the mother would have died.
“She is all right,” Dr. Reyes repeated, “but we had to remove her uterus. You know, this means she cannot have another baby. Her ovaries are intact, so there will not be much hormonal change, but babies—that’s out of the question now.”
“And the baby—is it a boy or a girl?”
Dr. Reyes could not speak. The grimness of his face deepened. He beckoned to the new father to sit with him on one of the long sofas near the lobby. There, quietly, the doctor told him what had to be said.
When the doctor had finished, what stuck in Luis’s mind were his words: “It will require courage to look at the baby—and more courage to accept him.” Courage! If only his father were here now, he would perhaps curse heaven. It was not possible that he who had everything, who had worked so hard to leave his name upon the land, must now himself be blighted. Perhaps it all started with him, his genes diluted with sin. It is not I, it is not my fault or Trining’s, Luis assured himself; it is not I, it is not I.
But it was he who had planted the seed that had brought forth this thing that Trining would have to see, too, and have the courage to accept.