After some silence, Luis said, “And Victor, do you know where he is? What has become of him? He wasn’t in Sipnget when it happened.”
Santos rose and went to the grilled window. “We don’t know where he is, but the civilian guards and the constabulary think he is the new Commander Victor. They thought he was in the village when they attacked it.”
So it was my brother who brought death and destruction to Sipnget, Luis thought grimly. My brother …
“A happy day has come, Luis,” Santos was saying. “On your wedding day, how could we have told you? Besides, I should not be the one to tell you. Your father knows what happened. Our guards were involved, perhaps less than the constabulary, but they were involved, just the same.”
He knows, the whole town knows — and how will I face him now who strapped these clothes on my back? Santos had more to say, but Luis wheeled around and rushed out.
In the shiny, heat-laden hall the calla lilies that had been brought from Baguio for his wedding had wilted in their crystal vases. A garland of bridal bouquet that a thoughtful maid had strung on the statue of the farmer with a plow had dried, and its small petals had fallen, dotting the base of the statue with white. Trining was asleep in their room. He wriggled out of his sweat-soaked clothes and sat on the rattan sofa by the window. The fatigue had reached his limbs, and in a while he rose and bent over his wife, kissed her gently on the cheek, then went out and crossed the hall to his father’s room.
Don Vicente was slouched on his bed. As usual, the blinds were down, but the depressing dimness of the room no longer dulled his vision. His father’s eyes were closed, mere slits below the black bushy patch of eyebrows. His arms were dumpy at his sides. On his head, as if it had been grafted to the round, fleshy lump, the ice bag was precariously propped, and running down the side of his mouth to his chin was a thin line of saliva. If he had as much as nodded, the ice bag would have fallen, but it did not fall even when he stirred. “Speak, son — what is it that you want?”
Now the baggy eyes were half open and were glued on him.
“I have just returned from Sipnget,” Luis said, sitting on the wrought-iron chair beside the bed, watching the rising and falling of his father’s broad chest. “I found out that my mother has disappeared and my grandfather is dead — killed by your guards.” He thought of sterner words to say, but now this was all he could utter, as if all fight had been drained from him and he had become puerile and timid.
“I knew you would go there,” Don Vicente said softly. “I was waiting for you to come and see me, to tell me you finally did go. It is a very tragic thing, Luis — this I must tell you.”
Luis bit his lower lip. “There were others killed.”
“I know,” Don Vicente said, shaking his head. “Tragic thing.”
“I have heard of things like this,” Luis said, “but in the city, where one is detached from the barrios, I always thought these were exaggerated.”
Don Vicente propped himself higher on his bed. “Now perhaps you will tell me what wrongs are to be righted?” The father peered at his son, his thick, pallid lips drawn across the flat expanse of his corpulent face. “Luis—” The old man’s voice was almost pleading. He tried to smile, so that the corners of his mouth no longer drooped. “Luis, I have never told you about my past. I did not want to talk about it, but now, now I must. You are my son, you have a right to know it. You know that I am dying and perhaps I deserve to die unloved and — and hated, even by you. However, I was once young, too, and the young have their own weaknesses.”
“I have never claimed that I have no weaknesses,” Luis said simply.
The old man did not heed him. He went on, his face bathed with the luminosity of remembrance: “I was young when I traveled all over Europe, and I was curious and virile then — not like now. It has been two years since I have had a woman, because I am no longer capable. Oh, what I would give to have one erection! But this diabetes, this drug that works on my heart … Yes, it was different then, hijo. I traveled all over Europe and had a good share of prim English girls and healthy Nordics, but there’s nothing like a Filipina in the way she holds a man, loves him, satisfies him. I should know. God forbid that you become a homosexual — that’s becoming so fashionable nowadays — with all that literary life you are living. Oscar Wilde was a homosexual, wasn’t he? There must have been others.”
“Must I prove my manhood all the time, Father?”
Don Vicente shook his head. “No, hijo—I am explaining myself more than anything else. You see, Rosales was not big enough, nor was Pangasinan, perhaps not even Luzon. Your grandfather knew that. He knew I was bright. So off I went to Manila, to high school, like you did, and then I came back to this town and its stupid peasant ways and its ugly peasant women.”
“Including my mother.”
Don Vicente shook his head sadly. “You misunderstand, hijo. Please do not misjudge me. In her youth she was very pretty, and as you would say, I fell for her. It was not like those popular stories you like to repeat in your articles, about landlords having their choice of the prettiest of their tenants’ daughters. She was working in the house, and I loved her — you do not know how much. My father knew, he heard about it — and that was why he sent me to Europe for college, and of course I could not but obey. It was difficult tearing myself away from her — you know, we couldn’t get married. There was not even a thought about it. For many months she was on my mind, always. You will understand the anguish. I did not write to her, nor did she write to me. I was in Europe. I was going around—”
“And you forgot all about her — and her son.”
His father shook his head sadly. “It was not like that, hijo.” His voice was soft, supplicating. “It was not like that at all. It was human frailty. I came back and wanted to see her, but I had gotten married in Spain, and I did not want to stay in Rosales. Would you want to live here after you have lived in Europe? How many times did I want to see her, to ask her about you, after I found out about you.”
“And yet you did nothing to help her when I was a baby — yes, she did tell me this.”
“I was away, Luis. I was away, and when I came back and her husband had died and I did see her again, she was no longer the pretty girl I remembered. Work and motherhood had destroyed her.”
“And suffering, too,” Luis said. “I look at myself in the mirror, and I see you.”
“And you do not like what you see,” Don Vicente said. “I do not blame you, Luis, but I want you, just the same.”
“And that is why I am here — because this is what you want.”
Don Vicente turned away, and sobs convulsed his body. “I am dying, and I don’t want you to hate me for what happened to Sipnget. I will do anything for you, because — because you are my son.”
Luis steeled himself. “Thirteen years, Father,” he said clearly. “Thirteen long years — you never had need for us. No, you didn’t love her or me at all.”
The old man turned to him, his baggy eyes red with tears. “What do you want me to do?”
“There is nothing you can do now,” Luis said. “My grandfather is dead. My mother, she is crazy and no one knows how she is. And my brother — only God knows where he is.”
“Your brother!” Don Vicente suddenly raised his voice. “He is my enemy. He is your enemy. All of them have become your enemy. Don’t you understand? She is a fine woman, but what could I do? I am no god, and I can’t dictate to the soldiers where they should go or to the civilian guards who are under their control — tactical, they call it — when they are in the field. They will not say it was a mistaken encounter, but that is what I suspect it was.”