He laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled wanly. “Son,” he whispered. He had not spoken the word in a long, long time. “Be good.”
I wanted to fling my arms around his neck, tell him that I loved him, but my throat was dry. I only said, “I’ll remember, Father.”
I boarded the jeep, and we drove out into the street. I did not look back.
It was early evening when I reached Tutuban Station. The jostling crowd in the giant, gloomy building baffled me, but I had no difficulty because Cousin Andring was on the platform to greet me. When we emerged into the lobby, Old David came forward from the nameless phalanx of people. He had aged so much. I did not want him to carry my suitcase, but his grip was strong and determined.
We hurried to Cousin Andring’s jeep, which was parked outside the station, then we drove off to the suburbs. The long trip did not tire me, but in the jeep, watching the brilliant neon lights and the depressing huddle of tall buildings, I felt lost and tired.
My first days in the city were restless and uneventful. In the mornings, I’d wander around the shops or see a movie. I’d return to their house in Santa Mesa shortly before lunchtime. Tia Antonia seldom talked with me, and Old David did not have the time, either, for he was always busy in the garage or in the garden. I imagine that he purposely avoided me and busied himself whenever I went near.
Tia Antonia’s children — since most of them were already grown-up — were correct but not friendly, and, if they talked with me at all, they asked the most asinine questions.
I was very glad when, one morning, Cousin Pedring telephoned and said he would come in the afternoon to pick me up, so that I could stay in his house in Cubao until classes started. It had been ages since I saw him last, when he and Clarissa got married, and I was very glad he had not forgotten.
He had changed a lot. His girth was wider and so was his forehead.Clarissa, too, looked different from the young girl I used to know. Her cheeks were plump, and she moved about with a matriarchal dignity rather than the gay sprightliness that was her. She had three children now, the youngest a darling girl about two years old. Clarissa hummed incessantly as she prepared the supper table.
In the early evening Cousin Pedring and I got to talking about the old times, and we would have talked far into the night if he did not have a poker session with friends. He kissed Clarissa at the door, as if he were going on a long journey.
I was alone with her, and as she served me a second helping of ice cream we talked about Rosales and how it was. “That was the most beautiful wedding I have ever seen,” I said, recalling theirs.
“In a short time yours, too, will come,” she said. “And then you’ll be raising your own family. But you men never know the trouble women go through.”
I remembered the secret I had kept and decided that now was the time to get it off my chest.
“It was good you came to Rosales that vacation,” I said. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come.”
“What do you think would have happened?” Her eyes lighted up.
I remember the letters postmarked Cebu, which I showed Father first, then burned. “Well,” I said, “you might have ended up marrying that fellow from Cebu and not Pedring.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked, the laughter drained from her.
“After all, he wrote to you so many times when you were in Rosales. He was very insistent, you know.”
“He did write to me?” She was incredulous.
“Yes,” I said. “But you never knew it, did you? Father told me never to tell you. As a matter of fact, I burned the letters myself.”
Her face became blank. “And I thought all along he had decided to forget. I was all wrong,” she mumbled, a faraway look in her eyes. And then her head drooped, and her body shook with silent sobs.
“Clarissa.” I went to her. “Is there anything wrong?”
She kept sobbing for some time, and I stood before her, not knowing what to do. She looked up at me and hurriedly wiped her tears.
“Tell me,” I said. “Does Pedring beat you?”
A smile bloomed again. “Foolish!” she said, rising from her chair. She tweaked my ear. “Of course, he treats me well. He doesn’t beat me at all. Whoever gave you that idea?”
“Why are you crying, then?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You are too young.”
“Tell me,” I urged her. “I won’t tell your secret.”
She turned away. A trace of sadness lined her voice. “I was thinking of all those letters … and it seems as if it was only yesterday …”
“You’ve not grown up,” I said, but she did not hear, for the baby had started crying and she rushed to the crib, baby talk gushing from her lips.
Then June, and I was in college at last, engrossed with botany, zoology, chemistry, and a host of other subjects for preparatory medicine. College was an exhilarating experience, and for a time the old nagging aches were soothed and I was immersed in new interests.
Until one October afternoon: I was in the college cafeteria drinking Coke, when one of my classmates rushed to me white-faced and asked if I had seen the evening paper.
I shook my head. He thrust the front page in front of me and asked if the photograph before me was that of Father.
I could not believe what I read, how he was brought out of our house the evening before by men who were armed. The soldiers had gone after his kidnappers, so the paper reported, but they had returned empty-handed.
I rushed to the dormitory, and at the lobby I met the father dean. He must have read the story, too, and had come to tell me about it. He held my shoulders, and his cool blue eyes gazed into mine.
“You have to be brave,” he said.
I went to my room and shut the door. No tears came; a tightness gripped my chest, and I could not breathe. I lay on my cot and could not think.
At dusk Cousin Marcelo and Tia Antonia came mouthing platitudes. “Maybe,” they said, “the men did not harm him.” Cousin Pedring came, too, with Clarissa. He said he would leave for Rosales the following morning.
I did not go down for supper. My roommate came in shortly before lights-out and brought me a glass of warm milk and crackers.
After Three Days, Cousin Pedring came, the grime of travel still on his face. There was no news at all about Father. Then, after a week, a tenant stumbled upon Father in the delta. He had died terribly, said Cousin Marcelo, who came with the news. The body bore more than a dozen bolo wounds. The day they found Father, they buried him beside Mother’s grave.
“You do not have to go home,” Cousin Marcelo said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”
“But I’m going home,” I told him, suddenly aware that it was now my duty to look after his ledgers, the farm. “I’d like to look at the papers.”
“Yes, of course,” Cousin Marcelo said. “Now you have to study a lot of things and make decisions.” He looked ruefully at me. “And you … so young and not even through with school.”
But it would not do for me to stay in Rosales anymore; everywhere I would turn, there would always be something familiar, yet alien.
“You’ll be free now,” Cousin Marcelo said. “You must not be like your father. He was a slave to what he owned. You must begin again — that is most important.”