So this was home, this mass of unfeeling masonry, this alien room. But the people that he loved were not here. They were in another time and place, and the fact that he had not written to them for a long time or given them more than the few tidbits that he had thrown their way filled him with remorse. Maybe at this hour his mother would already be cooking supper and his grandfather, as usual, would be by the window that opened to the west, trying to make use of the last faltering light of day, knitting fishnets. Vic would be herding the work animals to the corral if he was with them, if he had not left Sipnget so that he could get some education and improve himself as he had vowed he would. Luis had not written to them for months, and he was sure they did not even know he was home. On his last visit to Sipnget four years ago his mother had cried, saying how tall he had grown. “Jump up you did, like a bamboo shoot!” she said, her eyes laughing and yet filmy with tears. They had tried to make him comfortable as best as they could. His grandfather even vacated his chair by the window and offered it to him.
Trining slipped back into the room quietly. He had closed his eyes but had not really fallen asleep, just drifted into that dulled consciousness between waking and sleep. She was bending over him and shaking his arm. “Supper is ready. Wake up, lazy one,” her voice droned pleasantly.
His displeasure with her recent conduct was gone, and looking at her in the gathering darkness, so near and smiling, he raised his hand and caressed her face. She held his hand and brushed his open palm against her lips, her cheek. He rose and pulled her to him, felt the trembling of her lips, tasted their sweet honey-salt, felt her breath warm and soft on his face, smelled the scent of her hair. She did not object. Instead, her arms encircled him slowly, tentatively, almost shyly. Then, with a swiftness that surprised him, she pushed him away and stood up. Her eyes were serious, but they were not angry. “Tio,” she whispered. “He is waiting for us.”
He stood up reluctantly and changed his shirt while she, too, brushed her dress, although it was not crumpled. That was a beginning, he thought, and before he opened the door Trining tiptoed up to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I think I have been forgiven,” she said with a smile.
The dining room that adjoined the hall was lined with glass cabinets varnished rich brown and filled with silver and antique china that his father had brought from Italy and England. On the severe mahogany walls were still-life paintings of ripe guavas, mangoes, and chicos in gilt frames. At one end of the glass-topped table in the center of the room Don Vicente sat, and behind him on the wall hung a large silver-framed painting of the Last Supper. A maid stood by with a cut-paper wand, which she occasionally shook over the table.
Don Vicente stopped slurping his soup and bade them sit. Trining paused before her place at Don Vicente’s left and with head bowed said grace. Don Vicente looked at his niece, then turned to Luis, who had not observed the ritual but instead had sat down immediately.
“Ah,” Don Vicente murmured, “it’s wonderful to have someone in the family who will save us heathens.”
The girl made the sign of the cross. “I can’t eat without praying,” she said, sitting down. “It’s a habit, more than anything.”
“You will go straight to heaven,” Luis said. Trining glared at him.
“I do my only son honor,” Don Vicente said. “This is the first time I have come out to eat in weeks.”
“Thank you, Father,” Luis said. My son, my only son—the words roiled in his ears. Father, what is the love you know — you who sent Mother away and took me here? I can go on living, accepting your presents, your protestations of affection — but is this love?
A beneficent dinner — stuffed chicken, fruit salad, mushroom soup, spaghetti, and roasted eggplants in tomato-and-salted-fish sauce — but Luis had no appetite. Maybe, he thought, picking at his food, at this time Mother, Grandfather, and Victor would be through with supper — perhaps just boiled camote tops and rice — and now Mother would again be before the sewing machine, stitching in the poor light of the kerosene lamp. He turned to the table laden with food, to the servant waving the cut-paper wand to keep the flies away, the cook glancing in through the screened kitchen door, waiting for the signal that meant his masters wanted more. I see a sullenness in their faces as they serve me. Even in my cousin’s eyes and in the face of this man they call my father, I see ridicule and contempt.
“Anything the matter, Luis?” Don Vicente’s voice jarred.
“The trip, Father.” Luis had a ready alibi. “All those checkpoints, the delay … I’ve lost all appetite …”
His father sighed. “I know, I know, but what can we do? Now, that chicken.” Don Vicente pushed toward him the serving tray filled with brown chunks of chicken in gravy. “Try it, just the same.”
Luis placed a drumstick on his plate. It was strange how his mother used to do the same, push her plate to him, saying, Here, son, I’m not hungry. His grandfather, too, saying after her in a crude attempt at levity: I am full. Finish this catfish or the house lizards will beat you to it.
Supper was extremely long. After the macapuno ice cream and a few more explanations about his work (a good magazine, one that seeks the truth and, having found it, isn’t afraid to print it) he asked his father if he could leave for a walk.
“Where to?” Don Vicente asked, putting his dessert spoon down.
“I was wondering how things in Sipnget are,” he said simply.
Don Vicente’s face became thoughtful, and his red, baggy eyes narrowed. He shook his head. “I don’t want you walking alone — not these days. I’ll have Simeon go with you.”
“Can I come along?” Trining asked.
“You stay here,” Don Vicente told her.
Luis was embarrassed telling his father where he wanted to go. He stood up, avoiding his father’s eyes, which he felt clung to him even as he walked out of the dining room. He paused in the foyer. The night was calm, and beyond the long tiled sweep of the porte cochere, the stars were luminous. He went down the stairs, the marble banister cold and smooth in his hand. In the garden the crickets were alive and the scent of azucenas and roses met him like a welcoming wave. Deep inside him he cried: If I can go to Sipnget and climb another stair, would I belong there, I who have long disowned them? He remembered with a twinge of regret, of sadness, how he had told all his city friends that his mother had long been dead — she was not, she had done him no wrong except to carry him in her womb when he did not want to be born.
“Luis,” Trining said softly.
He turned around. Trining hurried down the landing after him. “Must you really go? Please bring me with you! I would like to meet them.”
He shook his head. “Yes, I want to go. That’s my family there, can’t you see? And you need not meet them. They do not matter to you.”
“Oh, Luis,” she said, holding his hand.
Does she know, does everyone know the sore that festers in me? “They matter only to me, and you don’t know how much I really miss the place,” he lied. He would have added: That was where I was born, and all that I remember or need to remember is there — but the words just did not take form, for there was this rock in his throat choking him and all he could say hoarsely as they were parting was, “That is where I belong!”
CHAPTER 19
Simeon had an almost paternal feeling for the big car, and in the mornings and late afternoons, when there was no more driving to be done, he would clean and polish it till the black paint was glossy. He would lift the hood and wipe clean the carburetor, the wirings, the steel hump of the engine, and even the backside of the hood. He and his wife — the chubby, cigar-smoking barrio matron who looked after the house in Manila — were childless, and they had transferred their affection to other things, even to Luis, whom they looked after with devotion. It was Marta, too — then a maid in the old Asperri house — who had clasped the frightened Trining, four years old, to her breast, telling the madmen who had already killed the girl’s father and mother and were now setting the house on fire that they should spare her who was without sin.