I held his soft, nerveless hand and kissed it, and almost forgot to answer when he inquired how Father was.
At that time when no explanations were possible, I was hurtling back to those blurred yesteryears, to that conspicuous Rizal Day program long ago, when as the main speaker he discoursed despicably on all foreigners, when on his election platform he damned all Chinese. And now, in the privacy of his home — in his own room — were these strangers laughing with him as if they were his long-lost brothers.
CHAPTER 14
What happened to Tio Doro was one of those profound transformations that the Occupation wrought. Rosales itself underwent irreparable changes — the great fire that burned down the business area and Father’s commercial buildings, the guerrilla war that brought death to more Filipinos, I think, than to Japanese. For me, neither death nor suffering was trivialized. I had seen both and was touched, but not by lesser forms of travail. Father had seen to it that his family and those under his wing were well provided for. He had also played superb politician by keeping away from entanglements either with the guerrillas or with the Japanese puppets. As I heard him say all too often, “The bamboo survives by bending to the storm.”
As for the balete tree, it weathered the war handsomely. The belief of the people in its sacredness, in its being the embodiment of spirits that watched over us, was even reinforced. At one time, the Japanese needed some poles or timber for additional construction in the schoolhouse they had taken over, and they ordered some civilian laborers to cut down a few branches. The laborers — as was to be expected — ran away for fear that they would displease the spirits. Faced with having to do the job themselves, a couple of bald-shaved Japanese proceeded to the tree with their handsaws. No one really saw what happened, but the two soldiers were killed by a grenade that exploded while they were up in the tree. How the grenade got there is one of those riddles that will never be unraveled. Then, when the Americans came, they pitched their tents in the plaza and had a bulldozer level or cover up the bomb shelters with which the Japanese had pocked the plaza. The bulldozer had grazed the balete trunk — much to the shock of the people who were watching the machine work, for they had warned the American sergeant driving it not to go near the tree. He had, perhaps, never heeded the warning. As he turned around, an explosion rent the air, and after the smoke had cleared, the bulldozer was in shambles and the American was seriously injured. He had hit a land mine that had lain there all the time, undisturbed, planted by whom, nobody knew. The American detachment in Rosales left soon after the accident, and the bulldozer lay by the tree in a crumpled heap. It was there for some time, rusting in a pile of scrap, till someone dismantled it, testimony again to the sorcery of the balete tree.
The war was over — we thought there would be no more killing. But we were wrong, for now, all around us in the plain, the men who had fought the Japanese so well as Huk guerrillas now fought their landlords and the Army, which they perceived as instruments of the landlords to perpetuate their ancient, miserable lot.
But even if this was so, Father’s tenants did not seem affected by the dissidence that had broken out in their midst; they went about their duties promptly, and for all the memories of Tio Baldo, they seemed as docile as always. Yet I knew that it was not so — the surface calm was deceptive.
It had been growing — I am conscious of that now — like the yellow, poisonous yam; and though there were mere tendrils above the earth, crawling and withered, underneath was this root, massive and deformed, with appendages of the most grotesque shape, burrowed deep. To bring out the whole would require careful prodding and digging, so that all of the root would be lanced from its mooring, for any remaining shred could well be nurtured again by the rich and loving earth, not just into life, but into something bigger than the original root wherefrom it had sprung.
“It is so clear,” Cousin Marcelo said. “The war showed the farmers, the poor, how they could survive and how the rich and the powerful could not. Look around you — the tenants are no longer the cowed starvelings they used to be. They know that if they are united and if they have guns, they can do almost anything. Anything! We have to be aware of these changes and adjust to them. We cannot live in the past forever.”
Indeed, the war altered many things but again not us, not us. We knew no hunger as did our neighbors, who lived on buri-palm flour; no lack of clothes as did many of our tenants, who learned the feel of sackcloth on their backs.
“We are fortunate,” Cousin Marcelo continued. “But look at the thousands of young people with no future. They either become soldiers or bandits in the hills whom the soldiers seek without pity. Look at Angel, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
I knew what Cousin Marcelo meant. I also know now that the changes that came upon the country were very profound and much more all-embracing than we had the courage to perceive. The farmers, the tenants — we did not realize then how they saw and understood that the power of the rich, of Don Vicente and Father himself, had been eroded, that in those four abject years it was really each man for himself. The old loyalties held insofar as we were concerned, but they were rendered fragile, as only time would soon show. For what the Japanese did was not to destroy the landlords; they were not interested in social change, in the restructuring of classes; they were interested only in the produce of the land, and they got the rice and whatever bounties the land gave and in the process leveled everyone.
But with the Japanese gone, the old arrangements were quickly resumed — or so we thought — little realizing that what had been broken could never be brought together again. And all these now come sharply to mind as I think of Angel and that morning during the dry season, when Father woke me up with his swearing in the garden. I rose and went to the window.
Below, Angel struck the stone bench by the balete tree with his straw hat and stirred the dust and dry leaves that covered it. As if he were a participant in a primal ritual, without looking at Father poised before him, Angel lay flat on his stomach.
I hurried down the flight in time to see Father lash the horse whip across Angel’s buttocks for the last time. The servant’s lips were drawn, his eyes were shut, and he did not rise. Panting and cursing still, Father flung the whip to the caked earth and with his forefinger scraped off the beads of sweat that glistened on his forehead.
Father was a tired shadow of his former self; he forgave the servants their manners, their barging into the sala before the guests, tongue-tied and fumbling for words, when he asked what brought them there; he did not mind their forgetting to polish his boots when he galloped off on his castaño to the fields. But it seemed that the mistake Angel had committed was beyond reprieve.
“And you say you will soon buy a cédula, ha?” Though Father’s wrath was spent, his voice was threatening still. “Not in ten years will a stupid one like you need one!”
Angel finally stood up. He passed a hand over his buttocks and mumbled, “It won’t happen again, Apo.”
Father did not hear him, as he turned away and stomped back to the house.
Since he came to serve us, Angel was to tend Mother’s garden — the roses, dahlias, and sparse rows of azucena that had survived the rainy season. He had failed to water the unpotted roses to which Father was particularly devoted because the rose plots were what Mother had lavished her care on. Father himself padded them with horse dung from the stable, but now the rose plots were whitish patches of dry soil.