“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.”