“What was it you wanted to tell me?” The cake was very good, just like the ones she baked for him in Manila.
“You eat first.” She sat beside him and ran her fingers through his dry mop of hair, then gently massaged his nape and shoulders. When he was through, he asked again.
“Tio is dying,” Trining said. “That is what the doctor told me. Tio knows. That is what makes it so sad.”
Luis stood up and paced the floor. The news did not jolt him, really. He had somehow expected it, the inevitability of it all. He walked to the window. Tents were all over the school yard, and soldiers were either playing volleyball or lolling about. Trucks, jeeps, and armored cars were parked, too, under the acacia trees, and by the gate was a machine gun behind a protective pile of sandbags.
“If he dies,” Trining said softly behind him, “we will be alone. We are all he has. Do you know what that means?”
Luis did not answer. “What are the soldiers doing here, and how long have they been here?”
“The soldiers?” Trining was momentarily baffled. “Oh, they were here when I arrived. There is Huk trouble in the villages and in the mountains.”
Luis shook his head and turned to her. “If Tio dies,” Trining continued, “will you let me stay in this house, Luis?”
Luis could not help laughing. “Of course,” he said. “It’s more yours than mine.” He walked toward the door, but Trining held him back. “Please, that was not what I wanted to tell you.”
“Father is waiting.”
“Please.” Her eyes were pleading. “There is one thing he wants to see before — before he goes,” she said tremulously. “He told me so only a while ago, after I called you. He wants to see you get married, Luis — now, this week.”
So this is destiny — he wants an heir, his name imprinted forever upon the land. Luis cupped his cousin’s face. “Now, isn’t that just like Father?” He smiled. “Always telling me what to do. And who does he want my bride to be? Perhaps he has also made up his mind about that.”
“He has,” Trining whispered. In spite of her pallor she was blushing. She could not stand his gaze, and she embraced him, saying in a voice that trembled, “Oh, Luis, he wants me to be your wife.”
He held her away, gazed at her expectant face, her pleading eyes, her lips quivering and parted, her heaving bosom — all of her which he had already possessed. Then he drew her close again and kissed her. It was a kiss of affection — not passion — and she sighed, holding him tightly as if she were afraid this was the last moment they would be together.
Presently, he drew away. He unlatched the door and, looking back, saw that she had started to cry.
He did not knock, for the door of his father’s room was ajar. Don Vicente was awake. He lay on his high-canopied bed. A massive bulk, he had his head propped up by pillows. The sheets were freshly ironed, and the room smelled of cologne and sunlight, for the shades were up. A silver fruit tray filled with grapes and apples and the cut-glass vases filled with sprays of azucena on the side table brightened the room. His father had grown thinner, but he still looked as solid as ever.
“I heard your car,” he said, raising himself with effort.
Don Vicente introduced his son to the doctor, who was swarthy, with a calm professional air. He grinned, rolled up the old man’s pajama sleeves, then jabbed a needle into the bulging arm. The old man winced. “That will keep his blood pressure down,” the doctor explained to Luis.
“I want to talk with my son.” Don Vicente waved the doctor away.
“But don’t forget what I told you,” the doctor said. “Don’t talk too much. Avoid intense discussions.” Smiling politely at Luis, he stepped out.
“Did it hurt, Father?”
Don Vicente sank back and said, grumbling, “I get that injection every two days. He keeps changing the place, both arms and”—indicating his buttocks—“down here. No, they don’t hurt as much as the thought of what is happening to Rosales, to the land. And I am going to die soon — I can feel it. I don’t know when. That doesn’t hurt, Luis.” He looked at his son. “Please don’t make it hurt.”
“You will live to be a hundred, Father,” Luis said.
“Do you think you can humor me? You young people, you have no idea how real, how permanent death is. Trining thinks that she can joke or tease it away. She should be in Manila, looking after you, but she has to look after me — as if she can do anything. She was so young when it happened. It was I who really brought her up. Such an admirable sense of filial obligation! But I am resigned.”
Luis sat back and looked at his father helplessly. In spite of his affliction the old man still wanted to be domineering and sarcastic.
“Now listen to what I have to tell you.” The old man’s face was turned to the ceiling, as if in thought. “How is your work in the city?”
The question surprised him. “Very well, Father.”
“Of course I know that, but that is not what I meant. I have been following your magazine, seeing the advertising increase. Are you happy working for Dantes? Like I told you, he is no angel. With your kind of thinking, you should not be there long — just long enough to get your name established.”
“I have a free hand, Father,” he said, but suddenly he felt extremely uneasy, now that his relationship with the sugar baron was being probed into. It had occurred to him before, of course, that the Dantes hierarchs were conniving and rapacious, but the publisher had been most judicious with him.
“He is using you,” his father was saying pointedly, “your youth, your imagination, your integrity. You will have to leave someday — and make it on your own as soon as you can. In the first place, materially you cannot earn much from the job. You are an Asperri — not a Dantes. Perhaps if you were a Locsung or a Mondovino, you could marry into the family — but you are an Asperri, don’t you ever forget that.”
“How can I, Father?”
The old man turned to him. “On your own you are not so badly off, you know. The house in Manila — and there are those lots in Mandaluyong and in San Francisco del Monte, in Quezon City. There are five thousand hectares here, the rice mill, some stocks in the brewery, in the mines. My poor brother is dead, but actually his share is very small, for it was I who acquired most of these properties. Maybe just a few hundred hectares will go to Trining. Have you any idea how much all these are worth?”
Luis shook his head without emotion.
“You can put up your own publishing if you wish,” Don Vicente said flatly. “Tonight — or tomorrow — I will have the accountant, the lawyer, and Santos come here. You study the Torrens titles — all the papers — and ask me all the questions you want clarified.” The old man started to cough violently, his face contorted with pain. Luis rushed to him and tried to hold him up, but the old man brushed off his clumsy hold with a quickness that was surprisingly strong. Luis went back to his seat as the old man’s coughing ceased.
“What do you want me to do, Father?” Luis asked.
“It is difficult, hijo,” the old man said. “I just want to go with my mind at peace. Requiescat in pace. I want to know that I leave everything in good hands — your hands — and as I said before, I want the Asperri name on this land.”
“I will do anything you wish, Father.”
Don Vicente sighed happily. “That’s good,” he said, folding his stubby hand on the mound that was his belly. “I am glad that is your attitude. Have you ever thought of getting married?”
Luis was prepared for the question. “No, Father,” he said truthfully. “I have never given it serious thought.”