Bangkang Papel ni Genoveva Edroza Matute
Sa tabi nito’y nabanaagan niya ang katawan ng ina, at sa
Nagkatuwaan ang mga bata sa pagtatampisaw sa baha. Ito ang pinakahihintay
nilang araw mula nang magkasunud-sunod ang pag-ulan. Alam nilang kapag
iyo’y nagpatuloy sa loob ng tatlong araw ang lansangang patungo sa laruan ay
lulubog. At ngayon, ay ikalimang araw nang walang tigil ang pag-ulan.
Ilang maliliit na bata ang magpapalutang ng mga bangkal papel, nariyang
tinatangay ng tubig, naroong sinasalpok at inilulubog, nariyang winawasak.
Sa tuwi akong makakikita ng bangkang papel ay nagbabalik sa aking gunita
ang isang batang lalaki. Isang batang lalaking gumawa ng tatlong malalaking
bangkang papel na hindi niya napalutang sa tubig kailanman...
Isang batang lalaking nagising sa isang gabi, sa mag dagundong na
nakagugulat.
Sa loob ng ilang saglit, ang akala niya’y Bagong Taon noon. Gayon ding
malalakas na ugong ang natatandaan niyang sumasalubong sa Bagong Taon.
Ngunit pagkalipas ng ilan pang saglit, nagunita niyang noon ay wala nang
ingay na pumapatak mula sa kanilang bubungan.
Sa karimla’t pinalaki niya ang dalawang mata, wala siyang makitang ano man
maliban sa isang makitid na silahis. Hindi niya malaman kung alin ang
dagundong ng biglang pumuno sa bahay ang biglang pagliliwanag. Gulilat
siyang nagbalikwas at hinanap nang paningin ang kanyang ina.
Nagsunud-sunod ang tila malalaking batong gumugulong sa kanilang
bubungan. Ang paggulong ng mga iyo’y sinasaliwan ng pagliliwanag at
pagdidilim ng bahay, ng pagliliwanag na muli. Samantala’y patuloy ang
pagbuhos ng ulan sa kanilang bubungan, sa kanilang paligid, sa lahat ng dako.
Muling nahiga ang nagbalikwas at ang tinig niya ay pinatalagos sa karimlan.
“Inay, umuulan, ano?”
“Oo, anak, kangina,” anang tinig mula sa dulo ng hihigan.
“Inay,” ang ulit niya sa karimlan, “dumating na ba ang Tatay?”
Sumagot ang tinig ngunit hindi niya maunawaan. Kaya’t itinaas niya nang
bahagay ang likod at humilig sa kaliwang bisig. Sa kanyang tabi;y naroon ang
kapatid na si Miling.
kabila naman nito’y nakita niya ang banig na walang tao.
Ibinaba niya ang likod at iniunat ang kaliwang bisig. Naramdaman niya ang
sigis ng lamig ng kanyang buto. Mula sa nababalot na katawan ni milng ay
hinila niya ang kumot at ito’y itinakip sa sariling katawan. Bahagyang
gumalaw ang kapatid, pagkatapos ay nagpatuloy sa hindi pagkilos. Naaawa
siya kay Miling kaya’t ang kalahati ng kumot ay ibinalot sa katawan niyon at
siya’y namaluktot sa nalabing kalahati.
Naramdaman niya ang panunuot ng lamig sa kanyang likod. Inilabas niya ang
kanag kamay sa kumot at kinapa ang banig hanggang sa maabot niya ang
sahig.
Anong lamig sa sahig, ang naisip niya, at ang kanang kamay ay dali-daling
ipinasok muli sa kumot.
“Inay,” ang tawag niyang muli, “bakit wala pa si Tatay? Anong oras na ba?”
“Ewan ko,” ang sagot ng kanyang ina. “Matulog ka na, anak, at bukas ay
magpapalutang ka ng mga bangkang ginawa mo.” Natuwa ang bata sa kanyang
narinig. Magkakarerahan kami ng bangka ni Miling, ang aki’y malalaki’t
matitibay...hindi masisira ng tubig.
Dali-dali siyang nagbangon at pakapa-kapang sumiksik sa pagitan ng kapatid
at ng kanyang kausap. Idinaan niya ang kanyang kamay sa pagitan ng baywang
at bisig ng ina. Naramdaman niya ang bahagyang pag-aangay ng kaliwang
bisig niyon. Ang kanang kamay noo’y ipinatong sa kanyang ulo at pabulong
na nagsalita:
“Siya, matulog ka na.”
Ngunit ang bata’y hindi natulog. Mula sa malayo’y naririnig niya ang hagibis
ng malakas na hangin. At ang ulang tangay-tangay noon.
“Marahil ay hindi na uuwi ang Tatay ngayong gabi,” ang kanyang nasabi.
Naalala niyang may mga gabing hindi umuuwi ang kanyang ama.
“Saan natutulog ang Tatay kung hindi siya umuuwi rito?” ang tanong niya sa
kanyang ina. Ngunit ito’y hindi sumagot.
Sinipat niya ang mukha upang alamin kung nakapikit na ang kanyang ina.
Ngunit sa karimlan ay hindi niya makita.
Bago siya tuluyang nakalimot, ang kahuli-hulihang larawan sa kanyang
balintataw ay ito. Tatlong malalaking bangkang yari sa papel na inaanod ng
baha sa kanilang tapat...
At samantalang pumapailanlang sa kaitaasan ang kahuli-hulihang pangrap ng
batang yaon, ang panahon ay patuloy sa pagmamasungit. Ang munting bahay
na pawid ay patuloy sa pagliliwanag at pagdidilim, sa pananahimik at pag-
uumugong, sa pagbabata ng walang awing hampas ng hangin at ulan...
Ang kinabukasan ng pagtatampisaw at pagpapaanod ng mga bangkang papel
ay dumating... Ngunit kakaibang kinabukasan.
Pagdilat ng inaantok pang batang lalaki ay nakita niyang nag-iisa siya sa
hihigan. Naroon ang kumot at unan ni Miling at ng kanyang ina.
Pupungas siyang bumangon.
Isang kamay ang dumantay sa kanyang balikat at nang magtaas ng paningin ay
nakitang yao’y si Aling Berta, ang kanilang kapitbahay. Hindi niya
maunawaan ang tingin noong tila naaawa. Biglang-biglang naparam ang
nalalabi pang antok. Gising na gising ang kanyang ulirat.
Naroon ang asawa ni Aling Berta, gayon din sina Mang Pedring, si Alng
Ading, si Feli, at si Turing, si Pepe. Nakita niyang ang kanilang bahay ay halos
mapuno ng tao.
Nahihintakutang mga batang humanap kay Miling at sa ina. Sa isang sulok,
doon nakita ng batang lalaki ang kanyang ina na nakalikmo sa sahig. Sa
kanyang kandungan ay nakasubsob si Miling. At ang buhok nito ay walang
tigil na hinahaplus-haplos ng kanyang ina.
Ang mukha ng kanyang ina ay nakita ng batang higit na pumuti kaysa rati.
Ngunit ang mga mata noo’y hindi pumupikit, nakatingin sa wala.
Patakbo siyang lumapit sa ina at sunud-sunod ang kanyang pagtatanong.
“Bakit, Inay, ano ang nangyari? Ano ang nangyari, Inay? Bakit maraming tao
rito?”
Ngunit tila hindi siya narinig ng kausap. Ang mga mata noo’y patuloy sa hindi
pagsikap. Ang kamay noo’y patuloy sa paghaplos sa buhok ni Miling.
Nagugulumihang lumapit ang bata kina Mang Pedring at Aling Feli. Ang pag-
uusap nila’y biglang natigil nang siya’y makita.
Wala siyang narinig kundi... “Labinlimang lahat ang nangapatay...”
Hindi niya maunawaan ang ang lahat. Ang pagdami ng tao sa kanilang bahay.
Ang anasan. Ang ayos ng kanyang ina. Ang pag-iyak ni Aling Feli nang siya
ay makita.
Sa pagitan ng mga hikbi, siya’y patuloy sa pagtatanong...
“Bakit po? Ano po iyon?”
Walang sumasagot sa kanya. Lahat ng lapitan niya’y nanatiling pinid ang labi.
Ipinatong ang kamay sa kanyang balikat o kaya’y hinahaplos ang kanyang
buhok at wala na. Hindi niya matandaan kung gaano katagal bago may
nagdatingan pang mga tao.
“Handa na ba kaya?” anang isang malakas ang tinig. “Ngayon din ay magsialis
na kayo. Kayo’y ihahatid ni Kapitan Sidro sa pook na ligtas. Walang maiiwan,
isa man. Bago lumubog ang araw sila’y papasok dito... Kaya’t walang
maaaring maiwan.”
Matagal bago naunawaan ng bata kung ano ang nagyari.
Sila’y palabas na sa bayan, silang mag-iiba, ang lahat ng kanilang kapitbahay,
ang maraming-maraming tao, at ang kani-kanilang balutan.
Sa paulit-ulit na salitaan, sa sali-salimbayang pag-uusap ay nabatid niya ang
ilang bagay.
Sa labinlimang nangapatay kagabi ay kabilang ang kanyang ama...sa labas ng
bayan...sa sagupaan ng mga kawal at taong-bayan.
Nag-aalinlangan, ang batang lalaki’y lumapit sa kanyang ina na mabibigat ang
mga paa sa paghakbang.
“Inay, bakit pinatay ng mga kawal ang Tatay? Bakit? Bakit?”
Ang mga bata noong nakatingin sa matigas na lupa ay isang saglit na lumapit
sa kanyang mukha. Pagkatapos, sa isang tinig na marahang-marahan ay
nagsalita.
“Iyon din ang nais kong malaman, anakm iyon din ang nais kong malaman.”
Samantala...
Sa bawat hakbang na palayo sa bahay na pawid at sa munting bukid na
kanyang tahanan ay nararagdagan ang agwat ng ulila sa kanyang kabataan.
Ang gabing yaon ng mga dagundong at sigwa, ng mga pangarap na
kinabukasan at ng mga bangkang papel – ang gabing yaon ang kahuli-hulihan
sa kabataang sasansaglit lamang tumagal. Ang araw na humalili’y tigib ng
pangamba at ng mga katanungang inihahanap ng tugon.
Kaya nga ba’t sa tuwi akong makakikita ng bangkang papel ay nagbabalik sa
aking gunita ang isang batang lalaki. Isang batang lalaking gumawa ng tatlong
malalaking bangkang papel na hindi niya napalutang kailanman...
The House in Zapote Street by Nick Joaquin
Dr. Leonardo Quitangon, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered, cool-tempered
Caviteno, was still fancy-free at 35 when he returned to Manila, after six years
abroad. Then, at the University of Santo Tomas, where he went to reach, he
met Lydia Cabading, a medical intern. He liked her quiet ways and began to
date her steadily. They went to the movies and to basketball games and he took
her a number of times to his house in Sta. Mesa, to meet his family.
Lydia was then only 23 and looked like a sweet unspoiled girl, but there was a
slight air of mystery about her. Leonardo and his brothers noticed that she
almost never spoke of her home life or her childhood; she seemed to have no
gay early memories to share with her lover, as sweethearts usually crave to do.
And whenever it looked as if she might have to stay out late, she would say:
"I'll have to tell my father first". And off she would go, wherever she was, to
tell her father, though it meant going all the way to Makati, Rizal, where she
lived with her parents in a new house on Zapote Street.
The Quitangons understood that she was an only child and that her parents
were, therefore, over-zealous in looking after her. Her father usually took her
to school and fetched her after classes, and had been known to threaten to
arrest young men who stared at heron the streets or pressed too close against
her on jeepneys. This high-handedness seemed natural enough, for Pablo
Cabading, Lydia's father was a member of the Manila Police Department.
After Lydia finished her internship, Leopardo Quitangon became a regular
visitor at the house on Zapote Street: he was helping her prepare for the board
exams. Her family seemed to like him. The mother Anunciacion, struck him as
a mousy woman unable to speak save at her husband's bidding. There was a
foster son, a little boy the Cabadings had adopted. As for Pablo Cabading, he
was a fine strapping man, an Ilocano, who gave the impression of being taller
than he was and looked every inch an agent of the law: full of brawn and guts
and force, and smoldering with vitality. He was a natty dresser, liked youthful
colors and styles, decorated his house with pictures of himself and, at50,
looked younger than his inarticulate wife, who was actually two years younger
than he.
When Leonardo started frequenting the house on Zapote Street, Cabading told
him: ill be frank with you. None of Lydia's boyfriends ever lasted ten minutes
in this house. I didn't like them and I told them so and made them get out."
Then he added laying a hand on the young doctor's shoulder: "But I like you.
You are a good man."
The rest of the household were two very young maids who spoke almost no
Tagalog, and two very fierce dogs, chained to the front door in the day time,
unchained in the front yard at night.
The house of Zapote Street is in the current architectural cliché: the hoity-toity
Philippine split-level suburban style—a half-story perched above the living
area, to which it is bound by the slope of the roof and which it overlooks from
a balcony, so that a person standing in the sala can see the doors of the
bedrooms and bathroom just above his head. The house is painted, as is also
the current fashion, in various pastel shades, a different color to every three or
four planks. The inevitable piazza curves around two sides of the house, which
has a strip of lawn and a low wall all around it. The Cabadings did not keep a
car, but the house provides for an eventual garage and driveway. This, and the
furniture, the shell lamps and the fancy bric-a-brac that clutters the narrow
house indicate that the Cabadings had not only risen high enough to justify
their split-level pretensions but were expecting to go higher.
Lydia took the board exams and passed them. The lovers asked her father's
permission to wed. Cabading laid down two conditions: that the wedding
would ba a lavish one and that was to pay a downy of P5.000.00. The young
doctor said that he could afford the big wedding but the big dowry. Cabading
shrugged his shoulders; no dowry, no marriage.
Leonarado spent some frantic weeks scraping up cash and managed to gather
P3.000.00. Cabading agreed to reduce his price to that amount, then laid down
a final condition: after the wedding, Lydia and Leonardo must make their
home at the house on Zapote Street.
"I built this house for Lydia," said Cabading,"and I want her to live here even
when she's married. Besides, her mother couldn't bear to be separated from
Lydia, her only child."
There was nothing. Leonardo could do but consent.
Lydia and Leonardo were on September 10 last year, at the Cathedral of
Manila, with Mrs. Delfin Montano, wife of the Cavite governor, and Senator
Ferdinand Marcos as sponsors. The reception was at the Selecta. The status
gods of Suburdia were properly propitiated. Then the newlyweds went to live
on Zapote Street -- and Leonardo almost immediately realized why Lydia had
been so reticent and mysterious about her home life.
The cozy family group that charmed him in courtship days turned out to be
rather too cozy. The entire household revolved in submission around Pablo
Cabading. The daughter, mother, the foster-son, the maids and even the dogs
trembled when the lifted his voice. Cabading liked to brag that was a “killer":
in 1946 he had shot dead two American soldiers he caught robbing a
neighbor's house in Quezon City.
Leonardo found himself within a family turned in on itself, self-enclosed and
self-sufficient — in a house that had no neighbors and no need for any. His
brothers say that he made more friends in the neighborhood within the couple
of months he stayed there than the Cabadings had made in a year. Pablo
Cabading did not like what his to stray out of, and what was not his to stray
into, his house. And within that house he wanted to be the center of
everything, even of his daughter's honeymoon.
Whenever Leonardo and Lydia went to the movies or for a ride, Cabading
insisted on being taken along. If they seated him on the back seat while they
sat together in front, be raged and glowered. He wanted to sit in front with
them.
When Leonardo came home from work, he must not tarry with Lydia in the
bedroom chatting: both of them must come down at once to the sala and talk
with their father. Leonardo explained that he was not much of a talking:
"That's why I fell in love with Lydia, because she's the quiet type too". No
matter, said Cabading. They didn't have to talk at all; he would do all the
talking himself, so long as they sat there in the sala before his eyes.
So, his compact family group sat around him at night, silent, while Cabading
talked and talked. But, finally, the talk had stop, the listeners had to rise and
retire - and it was this moment that Cabading seemed unable to bear. He
couldn't bear to see Lydia and Leonardo rise and go up together to their room.
One night, unable to bear it any longer he shouted, as they rose to retire:
"Lydia, you sleep with your mother tonight. She has a toothache." After a dead
look at her husband, Lydia obeyed. Leonardo went to bed alone.
The incident would be repeated: there would always be other reasons, besides
Mrs. Cabading's toothaches.
What horrified Leonardo was not merely what being done to him but his
increasing acquiesces. Had his spirit been so quickly broken? Was he, too, like
the rest of the household, being drawn to revolve, silently and obediently,
around the master of the house?
Once, late at night, he suddenly showed up at his parents’ house in Sta. Mesa
and his brothers were shocked at the great in him within so short a time. He
looked terrified. What had happened? His car had broken down and he had had
it repaired and now he could not go home. But why not
"You don’t know my father-in-law," he groaned. "Everybody in that house
must be in by a certain hour. Otherwise, the gates are locked, the doors are
locked, the windows are locked. Nobody can get in anymore!”
A younger brother, Gene offered to accompany him home and explain to
Cabading what had happened. The two rode to Zapote and found the house
dark and locked up.
Says Gene: "That memory makes my blood boil -- my eldest brother fearfully
clanging and clanging the gate, and nobody to let him in. 1 wouldn't have
waited a second, but he waited five, ten, fifteen minutes, knocking at thai gate,
begging to be let in. I couldn't have it!"
In the end the two brothers rode back to Sta. Mesa, where Leonardo spent the
night. When he returned to the house on Zapote the next day, his father-in-law
greeted him with a sarcastic question: “Where were you? At a basketball
game?"
Leonardo became anxious to take his wife away from that house. He talked it
over with her, then they went to tell her father. Said Cabading bluntly: "If she
goes with you, I'll shoot her head before your eyes."
His brothers urged him to buy a gun, but Leonardo felt in his pocket and said,
"I've got my rosary." Cried his brother Gene: “You can't fight a gun with a
rosary!".
When Lydia took her oath as a physician, Cabading announced that only he
and his wife would accompany Lydia to the ceremony. I would not be fair, he
said, to let Leonardo, who had not borne the expenses of Lydia’s education, to
share that moment of glory too. Leonardo said that, if he would like them at
least to use his car. The offer was rejected. Cabading preferred to hire a taxi.
After about two months at the house on Zapote Street, Leonardo moved out,
alone. Her parents would not let Lydia go and she herself was too afraid to
leave. During the succeeding weeks, efforts to contact her proved futile. The
house on Zapote became even more closed to the outside world. If Lydia
emerged from it at all, she was always accompanied by her father, mother or
foster-brother, or by all three.
When her husband heard that she had started working at a hospital he went
there to see her but instead met her father coming to fetch her. The very next
day, Lydia was no longer working at the hospital.
Leonardo knew that she was with child and he was determined to bear all her
prenatal expenses. He went to Zapote one day when her father was out and
persuaded her to come out to the yard but could not make her make the money
he offered across the locked gate. "Just mail it," she cried and fled into the
house. He sent her a check by registered mail; it was promptly mailed back to
him.
On Christmas Eve, Leonardo returned to the house on Zapote with a gift for
his wife, and stood knocking at the gate for so long the neighbors gathered at
windows to watch him. Finally, he was allowed to enter, present his gift to
Lydia and talk with her for a moment. She said that her father seemed
agreeable to a meeting with Leonardo's father, to discuss the young couple's
problem. So the elder Quitangon and two of his younger sons went to Zapote
one evening. The lights were on in Cabading house, but nobody responded to
their knocking. Then all the lights were turned off. As they stood wondering
what to do, a servant girl came and told them that the master was out. (Lydia
would later tell them that they had not been admitted because her father had
not yet decided what she was to say to them.)
The last act of this curious drama began Sunday last week when Leonardo was
astounded to receive an early-morning phone call from his wife. She said she
could no longer bear to be parted from him and bade him pick her up at a
certain church, where she was with her foster brother. Leonardo rushed to the
church, picked up two, dropped the boy off at a street near Zapote, and then
sped with Lydia to Maragondon, Cavite where the Quitangons have a house.
He stopped at a gasoline station to call up his brothers in Sta. Mesa, to tell
them what he had done and to warn them that Cabading would surely show up
there. "Get Mother out of the house," he told his brothers.
At about ten in the morning, a taxi stopped before the Quitangon house in Sta.
Mesa and Mrs. Cabading got out and began screaming at the gate: "Where’s
my daughter? Where's my daughter?" Gene and Nonilo Quitangin went out
tothe gate and invited her to come in. "No! No! All I want is my daughter!" she
screamed. Cabading, who was inside the waiting taxi, then got out and
demanded that the Quitangons produce Lydia. Vexed, Nonilo Quitangon cried:
"Abah, what have we do with where your daughter is? Anyway, she's with her
husband." At that, Cabading ran to the taxi, snatched a sub machinegun from a
box, and trained it on Gene Quitangon. (Nonilohad run into the house to get a
gun.)
"Produce my daughter at once or I'll shoot you all down!" shouted Cabading.
Gene, the gun's muzzle practically in his face, sought to pacify the older man:
"Why can't we talk this over quietly, like decent people, inside the house?
Look, we're creating a scandal in the neighborhood.."
Cabading lowered his gun. "I give you till midnight tonight to produce my
daughter," he growled. "If you don't, you better ask the PC to guard this
house!"
Then he and his wife drove off in the taxi, just a moment before the mobile
police patrol the neighbors had called arrived. The police advised Gene to file
a complaint with the fiscal's office. Instead, Gene decided to go to the house on
Zapote Street, hoping that "diplomacy" would work.
To his surprise, he was admitted at once by a smiling and very genial
Cabading. "You are a brave man," he told Gene, "and a lucky one", And he
ordered a coke brought for the visitor. Gene said that he was going to Cavite
but could not promise to "produce". Lydia by midnight: it was up to the couple
to decide whether they would come back.
It was about eight in the evening when Gene arrived in Maragondon. As his
car drove into the yard of this family's old house, Lydia and Leonardo
appeared at a window and frantically asked what had happened. "Nothing,"
said Gene, and their faces lit up. "We’re having our honeymoon at last," Lydia
told Gene as he entered the house. And the old air of dread, of mystery, did
seem to have lifted from her face. But it was there again when, after supper, he
told them what had happened in Sta. Mesa.
"I can't go back," she moaned. "He'll kill me! He'll kill me!"
"He has cooled down now," said Gene. "He seems to be a reasonable man after
all."
"Oh, you don’t know him!" cried Lydia. “I’ve known him longer, and I've
never, never been happy!"
And the brothers at last had glimpses of the girlhood she had been so reticent
about. She told them of Cabading's baffling changes of temper, especially
toward her; how smiles and found words and caresses could abruptly turn into
beatings when his mood darkened.
Leonardo said that his father-in-law was an artista, "Remember how he used to
fan me when I supped there while I was courting Lydia?"
(At about that time, in Sta. Mesa, Nonilo Quitanongon, on guard at the gate of
his family's house, saw Cabading drive past three times in a taxi.)
"I can't force you to go back," said Gene. "You'll have to decide that
yourselves. But what, actually, are you planning to do? You can't stay forever
here in Maragondon. What would you live on?"
The two said they would talk it over for a while in their room. Gene waited at
the supper table and when a longtime had passed and they had not come back
he went to the room. Finding the door ajar, he looked in. Lydia and Leonardo
were on their knees on the floor, saying the rosary, Gene returned to the supper
table. After another long wait, the couple came out of the room.
Said Lydia: "We have prayed together and we have decided to die together.”
We'll go back with you, in the morning."
They we’re back in Manila early the next morning. Lydia and Leonardo went
straight to the house in Sta. Mesa, where all their relatives and friends warned
them not to go back to the house on Zapote Street, as they had decided to do.
Confused anew, they went to the Manila police headquarters to ask for advice,
but the advice given seemed drastic to them: summon Cabading and have it
out with him in front of his superior officer. Leonardo's father then offered to
go to Zapote with Gene and Nonilo, to try to reason with Cabading.
They found him in good humor, full of smiles and hearty greetings. He
reproached his balae for not visiting him before. "I did come once," drily
remarked the elder Quitangon, "but no one would open the gate." Cabading
had his wife called. She came into the room and sat down. "Was I in the house
that night our balae came?" her husband asked her. "No, you were out," she
replied. Having spoken her piece, she got up and left the room. (On their
various visits to the house on Zapote Street, the Quitangons noticed that Mrs.
Cabading appeared only when summoned and vanished as soon as she had
done whatever was expected of her).
Cabading then announced that he no longer objected to Lydia's moving out of
the house to live with her husband in an apartment of their own. Overjoyed,
the Quitangons urged Cabading to go with them in Sta. Mesa, so that the
newlyweds could be reconciled with Lydia’s parents. Cabading readily agreed.
When they arrived in Sta. Mesa, Lydia and Leonardo were sitting on a sofa in
the sala.
"Why have you done this?" her father chided her gently. "If you wanted to
move out, did you have to run away?" To Leonardo, he said: "And you - are
angry with me?" house by themselves. Gene Quitangon felt so felt elated he
proposed a celebration: "I'll throw a blow-out! Everybody is invited! This is on
me!" So they all went to Max's in Quezon City and had a very merry fried-
chicken party. "Why, this is a family reunion!" laughed Cabading. "This
should be on me!" But Gene would not let him pay the bill.
Early the next morning, Cabading called up the Sta. Mesa house to pay that his
wife had fallen ill. Would Lydia please visit her? Leonardo and Lydia went to
Zapote, found nothing the matter wither mother, and returned to Sta. Mesa.
After lunch, Leonardo left for his classes. Then Cabading called up again.
Lydia's mother refused to eat and kept asking for her daughter. Would Lydia
please drop in again at the house on Zapote? Gene and Nonilo Quitangon said
they might as well accompany Lydia there and start moving out her things.
When they arrived at the Zapote house, the Quitangon brothers were amused
by what they saw. Mrs. Cabading, her eyes closed, lay on the parlor sofa, a
large towel spread out beneath her. "She has been lying there all day," said
Cabading, "tossing restlessly, asking for you, Lydia. "Gene noted that the
towel was neatly spread out and didn't look crumpled at all, and that Mrs.
Cabading was obviously just pretending to be asleep. He smiled at the
childishness of the stratagem, but Lydia was past being amused. She won’t
straight to her room, were they heard her pulling out drawers. While the
Quitangons and Cabading were conversing, the supposedly sick mother
slipped out of the sofa and went upstairs to Lydia's room.
Cabading told the Quitangons that he wanted Lydia and Leonardo to stay
there; at the house in Zapote. "I thought all that was settled last night," Gene
groaned.
"I built this house for Lydia," persisted Cabading,"and this house is hers. If she
and her husband want to be alone, I and my wife will move out of here, turn
this house over to them." Gene wearily explained that Lydia and Leonardo
preferred the apartment they had already leased.
Suddenly the men heard the clatter of a drawer falling upstairs. Gene surmised
that it had fallen in a struggle between mother and daughter. "Excuse me," said
Cabading, rising. As he went upstairs, he said to the Quitangons, over his
shoulder, “Don't misunderstand me. I'm not going to 'coach' Lydia". He went
into Lydia's room and closed the door behind him.
After a long while, Lydia and her father came out of the room together and
came down to the sala together. Lydia was clasping a large crucifix. There was
no expression on her face when she told the Quitangon boys to go home. "But
I thought we were going to start moving your things out this afternoon,," said
Gene. She glanced at the crucifix and said it wasone of the first things she
wanted taken to her new home. "Just tell Narding to fetch me," she said.
Back in Sta. Mesa, Gene and Nonilo had the painful task of telling Leonardo,
when he phoned, that Lydia was back in the house on Zapote. "Why did you
leave her there?" cried Leonardo. "He'll beat her up! I'm going to get her."
Gene told him not you go alone, to pass by the Sta. Mesa house first and pick
up Nonilo. Gene could not go along; he had to catch a bus for Subic, where he
works. When Leonardo arrived, Gene told him: "Don't force Lydia to go with
you. If she doesn't want to, leave at once. Do not, for any reason, be persuaded
to stay there too."
When his brother had left for Zapote, Gene realized that he was not sure he
was going to Subic. He left too worried. He knew he couldn't rest easy until he
had seen Lydia and Leonardo settled in their new home. The minutes quickly
ticked past as he debated with himself whether he should stay or catch that
bus. Then, at about a quarter to seven, the phone rang. It was Nonilo, in
anguish.
"Something terrible has happened in Lydia’s room! I heard four shots," he
cried.
"Who are up there?"
"Lydia and Narding and the Cabadings."
"I’ll be right over.
Gene sent a younger brother to inform the family lawyer and to alert the
Makati police. Then he drove like mad to Zapote. It was almost dark when he
got there. The house stood perfectly still, not a light on inside. He watched it
from a distance but could see no movement, Then a taxi drove up and out
jumped Nonilo. He had telephoned from a gasoline station. He related what
had happened.
He said that when he and Leonardo arrived at the Zapote house, Cabading
motioned Leonardo upstairs: "Lydia is in her room." Leonardo went up;
Cabading gave Nonilo a cup of coffee and chatted amiably with him. Nonilo
saw Mrs. Cabading go up to Lydia's room with a glass of milk. A while later,
they heard a woman scream, followed by sobbing. "There seems to be trouble
up there," said Cabading, and he went upstairs. Nonilo saw him enter Lydia's
room, leaving the door open. A few moments later, the door was closed. Then
Nonilo heard three shots. He stood petrified, but when he heard a fourth shot
he dashed out of the house, ran to a gasoline station and called up Gene.
Nonilo pointed to the closed front gate; he was sure he had left it open when he
ran out. The brothers suspected that Cabading was lurking somewhere in the
darkness, with his gun.
Before them loomed the dark house, now so sinister and evil in their eyes. The
upper story that jutted forward, forming the house's chief facade, bore a
curious sign: Dra. Lydia C. Cabading, Lady Physician. (Apparently, Lydia
continued- or was made- to use her maiden name.) Above the sign was the
garland of colored lights that have been put up for Christmas and had not yet
been removed. It was an ice-cold night, the dark of the moon, but the two
brothers shivered not from the wind blowing down the lonely murky street but
from pure horror of the house that had so fatally thrust itself into their lives.
But the wind remembered when the sighs it heard here were only the sighing
of the ripe grain, when the cries it heard were only the crying of birds nesting
in the reeds, for all these new suburbs in Makati used to be grassland,
Riceland, marshland, or pastoral solitudes where few cared to go, until the big
city spilled hither, replacing the uprooted reeds with split-levels, pushing noisy
little streets into the heart of the solitude, and collecting here from all over the
country the uprooted souls that now moan or giggle where once the carabao
wallowed and the frogs croaked day and night. In very new suburbs, one feels
human sorrow to be a grass intrusion on the labors of nature. Even barely two
years ago, the talahib still rose man-high on the plot of ground on Zapote
Street where now stands the relic of an ambiguous love.
As the Quitangon brothers shivered in the darkness, a police van arrived and
unloaded quite a large contingent of policemen. The Quitangons warned them
that Cabading had a sub machinegun. The policemen crawled toward the front
gate and almost jumped when a young girl came running across the yard,
shaking with terror and shrieking gibberish. She was one of the maids. She and
her companion and the foster son had fled from the house when they heard the
shooting and had been hiding in the yard. It was they who had closed the front
gate.
A policeman volunteered to enter the house through the back door; Gene said
he would try the front one. He peered in at a window and could detect no one
in the sala. He slipped a hand inside, opened the front door and entered, just as
the policeman came in from the kitchen. As they crept up the stairs they heard
a moaning in Lydia's room. They tried the door but it was blocked from inside.
"Push it, push it," wailed a woman's voice. The policeman pushed the door
hard and what was blocking it gave. He groped for the switch and turned light.
As they entered, he and Gene shuddered at what they saw.
The entire room was spattered with blood. On the floor, blocking the door lay
Mrs. Cabading. She had been shot in the chest and stomach but was still alive.
The policeman tried to get a statement from her but all she could say was: "My
hand, my hand- it hurts!" She was lying across the legs of her daughter, who
lay on top of her husband's body. Lydia was still clutching an armful of
clothes; Leonardo was holding a clothes hanger. He had been shot in the
breast; she, in the heart. They had died instantly, together.
Sprawled face up on his daughter's bed, his mouth agape and his eyes bulging
open as though still staring in horror and the bright blood splashed on his face
lay Pablo Cabading.
"Oh, I cursed him!" cries Eugenio Quitangon with passion." Oh, I cursed him
as he lay there dead, God forgive me! Yes, I cursed that dead man there on that
bed, for I had wanted to find him alive!"
From the position of the bodies and from Mrs. Cabading's statements later at
the hospital, it appears that Cabading shot Lydia while she was shielding her
husband and Mrs. Cabading when she tried to shield Lydia. Then he turned the
gun on himself, and it's an indication of the man's uncommon strength and
power that, after the first shot, through the right side of the head, which must
have been mortal enough, he seems to have been able, as his hands dropped to
his breast, to fire at himself a second time. The violent spasm of agony must
have sent the gun - a .45 caliber pistol-flying from his hand. It was found at the
foot of the bed, near Mrs. Cabading's feet.
The drama of the jealous father had ended at about half-past six in the evening,
Tuesday last week.
The next day, hurrying commuters slowed down and a whispering crowd
gathered before 1074 Zapote Street, to watch the police and the reporters going
through the pretty little house that Pablo Cabading built for his Lydia.
The Scent of Apples by Bienvenido Santos
When I arrived in Kalamazoo it was October and the war was still on. Gold
and silver stars hung on pennants above silent windows of white and brick-red
cottages. In a backyard an old man burned leaves and twigs while a gray-
haired woman sat on the porch, her red hands quiet on her lap, watching the
smoke rising above the elms, both of them thinking the same thought perhaps,
about a tall, grinning boy with his blue eyes and flying hair, who went out to
war: where could he be now this month when leaves were turning into gold
and the fragrance of gathered apples was in the wind?
It was a cold night when I left my room at the hotel for a usual speaking
engagement. I walked but a little way. A heavy wind coming up from Lake
Michigan was icy on the face. If felt like winter straying early in the northern
woodlands. Under the lampposts the leaves shone like bronze. And they rolled
on the pavements like the ghost feet of a thousand autumns long dead, long
before the boys left for faraway lands without great icy winds and promise of
winter early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold!
It was the same night I met Celestino Fabia, "just a Filipino farmer" as he
called himself, who had a farm about thirty miles east of Kalamazoo.
"You came all that way on a night like this just to hear me talk?"
"I've seen no Filipino for so many years now," he answered quickly. "So when
I saw your name in the papers where it says you come from the Islands and
that you're going to talk, I come right away."
Earlier that night I had addressed a college crowd, mostly women. It appeared
they wanted me to talk about my country, they wanted me to tell them things
about it because my country had become a lost country. Everywhere in the
land the enemy stalked. Over it a great silence hung, and their boys were there,
unheard from, or they were on their way to some little known island on the
Pacific, young boys all, hardly men, thinking of harvest moons and the smell
of forest fire.
It was not hard talking about our own people. I knew them well and I loved
them. And they seemed so far away during those terrible years that I must have
spoken of them with a little fervor, a little nostalgia.
In the open forum that followed, the audience wanted to know whether there
was much difference between our women and the American women. I tried to
answer the question as best I could, saying, among other things, that I did not
know that much about American women, except that they looked friendly, but
differences or similarities in inner qualities such as naturally belonged to the
heart or to the mind, I could only speak about with vagueness.
While I was trying to explain away the fact that it was not easy to make
comparisons, a man rose from the rear of the hall, wanting to say something.
In the distance, he looked slight and old and very brown. Even before he
spoke, I knew that he was, like me, a Filipino.
"I'm a Filipino," he began, loud and clear, in a voice that seemed used to wide
open spaces, "I'm just a Filipino farmer out in the country." He waved his hand
toward the door. "I left the Philippines more than twenty years ago and have
never been back. Never will perhaps. I want to find out, sir, are our Filipino
women the same like they were twenty years ago?"
As he sat down, the hall filled with voices, hushed and intrigued. I weighed my
answer carefully. I did not want to tell a lie yet I did not want to say anything
that would seem platitudinous, insincere. But more important than these
considerations, it seemed to me that moment as I looked towards my
countryman, I must give him an answer that would not make him so unhappy.
Surely, all these years, he must have held on to certain ideals, certain beliefs,
even illusions peculiar to the exile.
"First," I said as the voices gradually died down and every eye seemed upon
me, "First, tell me what our women were like twenty years ago."
The man stood to answer. "Yes," he said, "you're too young . . . Twenty years
ago our women were nice, they were modest, they wore their hair long, they
dressed proper and went for no monkey business. They were natural, they went
to church regular, and they were faithful." He had spoken slowly, and now in
what seemed like an afterthought, added, "It's the men who ain't."
Now I knew what I was going to say.
"Well," I began, "it will interest you to know that our women have changed--
but definitely! The change, however, has been on the outside only. Inside,
here," pointing to the heart, "they are the same as they were twenty years ago.
God-fearing, faithful, modest, and nice."
The man was visibly moved. "I'm very happy, sir," he said, in the manner of
one who, having stakes on the land, had found no cause to regret one's
sentimental investment.
After this, everything that was said and done in that hall that night seemed like
an anti-climax, and later, as we walked outside, he gave me his name and told
me of his farm thirty miles east of the city.
We had stopped at the main entrance to the hotel lobby. We had not talked
very much on the way. As a matter of fact, we were never alone. Kindly
American friends talked to us, asked us questions, said goodnight. So now I
asked him whether he cared to step into the lobby with me and talk.
"No, thank you," he said, "you are tired. And I don't want to stay out too late."
"Yes, you live very far."
"I got a car," he said, "besides . . . "
Now he smiled, he truly smiled. All night I had been watching his face and I
wondered when he was going to smile.
"Will you do me a favor, please," he continued smiling almost sweetly. "I want
you to have dinner with my family out in the country. I'd call for you
tomorrow afternoon, then drive you back. Will that be alright?"
"Of course," I said. "I'd love to meet your family." I was leaving Kalamazoo
for Muncie, Indiana, in two days. There was plenty of time.
"You will make my wife very happy," he said.
"You flatter me."
"Honest. She'll be very happy. Ruth is a country girl and hasn't met many
Filipinos. I mean Filipinos younger than I, cleaner looking. We're just poor
farmer folk, you know, and we don't get to town very often. Roger, that's my
boy, he goes to school in town. A bus takes him early in the morning and he's
back in the afternoon. He's nice boy."
"I bet he is," I agreed. "I've seen the children of some of the boys by their
American wives and the boys are tall, taller than their father, and very good
looking."
"Roger, he'd be tall. You'll like him."
Then he said goodbye and I waved to him as he disappeared in the darkness.
The next day he came, at about three in the afternoon. There was a mild,
ineffectual sun shining, and it was not too cold. He was wearing an old brown
tweed jacket and worsted trousers to match. His shoes were polished, and
although the green of his tie seemed faded, a colored shirt hardly accentuated
it. He looked younger than he appeared the night before now that he was clean
shaven and seemed ready to go to a party. He was grinning as we met.
"Oh, Ruth can't believe it," he kept repeating as he led me to his car--a
nondescript thing in faded black that had known better days and many hands.
"I says to her, I'm bringing you a first class Filipino, and she says, aw, go
away, quit kidding, there's no such thing as first class Filipino. But Roger,
that's my boy, he believed me immediately. What's he like, daddy, he asks. Oh,
you will see, I says, he's first class. Like you daddy? No, no, I laugh at him,
your daddy ain't first class. Aw, but you are, daddy, he says. So you can see
what a nice boy he is, so innocent. Then Ruth starts griping about the house,
but the house is a mess, she says. True it's a mess, it's always a mess, but you
don't mind, do you? We're poor folks, you know.
The trip seemed interminable. We passed through narrow lanes and
disappeared into thickets, and came out on barren land overgrown with weeds
in places. All around were dead leaves and dry earth. In the distance were
apple trees.
"Aren't those apple trees?" I asked wanting to be sure.
"Yes, those are apple trees," he replied. "Do you like apples? I got lots of 'em. I
got an apple orchard, I'll show you."
All the beauty of the afternoon seemed in the distance, on the hills, in the dull
soft sky.
"Those trees are beautiful on the hills," I said.
"Autumn's a lovely season. The trees are getting ready to die, and they show
their colors, proud-like."
"No such thing in our own country," I said.
That remark seemed unkind, I realized later. It touched him off on a long
deserted tangent, but ever there perhaps. How many times did lonely mind take
unpleasant detours away from the familiar winding lanes towards home for
fear of this, the remembered hurt, the long lost youth, the grim shadows of the
years; how many times indeed, only the exile knows.
It was a rugged road we were traveling and the car made so much noise that I
could not hear everything he said, but I understood him. He was telling his
story for the first time in many years. He was remembering his own youth. He
was thinking of home. In these odd moments there seemed no cause for fear no
cause at all, no pain. That would come later. In the night perhaps. Or lonely on
the farm under the apple trees.
In this old Visayan town, the streets are narrow and dirty and strewn with coral
shells. You have been there? You could not have missed our house, it was the
biggest in town, one of the oldest, ours was a big family. The house stood right
on the edge of the street. A door opened heavily and you enter a dark hall
leading to the stairs. There is the smell of chickens roosting on the low-topped
walls, there is the familiar sound they make and you grope your way up a
massive staircase, the bannisters smooth upon the trembling hand. Such nights,
they are no better than the days, windows are closed against the sun; they close
heavily.
Mother sits in her corner looking very white and sick. This was her world, her
domain. In all these years, I cannot remember the sound of her voice. Father
was different. He moved about. He shouted. He ranted. He lived in the past
and talked of honor as though it were the only thing.
I was born in that house. I grew up there into a pampered brat. I was mean.
One day I broke their hearts. I saw mother cry wordlessly as father heaped his
curses upon me and drove me out of the house, the gate closing heavily after
me. And my brothers and sisters took up my father's hate for me and
multiplied it numberless times in their own broken hearts. I was no good.
But sometimes, you know, I miss that house, the roosting chickens on the low-
topped walls. I miss my brothers and sisters, Mother sitting in her chair,
looking like a pale ghost in a corner of the room. I would remember the great
live posts, massive tree trunks from the forests. Leafy plants grew on the sides,
buds pointing downwards, wilted and died before they could become flowers.
As they fell on the floor, father bent to pick them and throw them out into the
coral streets. His hands were strong. I have kissed these hands . . . many times,
many times.
Finally we rounded a deep curve and suddenly came upon a shanty, all but
ready to crumble in a heap on the ground, its plastered walls were rotting
away, the floor was hardly a foot from the ground. I thought of the cottages of
the poor colored folk in the south, the hovels of the poor everywhere in the
land. This one stood all by itself as though by common consent all the folk that
used to live here had decided to say away, despising it, ashamed of it. Even the
lovely season could not color it with beauty.
A dog barked loudly as we approached. A fat blonde woman stood at the door
with a little boy by her side. Roger seemed newly scrubbed. He hardly took his
eyes off me. Ruth had a clean apron around her shapeless waist. Now as she
shook my hands in sincere delight I noticed shamefacedly (that I should
notice) how rough her hands were, how coarse and red with labor, how ugly!
She was no longer young and her smile was pathetic.
As we stepped inside and the door closed behind us, immediately I was aware
of the familiar scent of apples. The room was bare except for a few ancient
pieces of second-hand furniture. In the middle of the room stood a stove to
keep the family warm in winter. The walls were bare. Over the dining table
hung a lamp yet unlighted.
Ruth got busy with the drinks. She kept coming in and out of a rear room that
must have been the kitchen and soon the table was heavy with food, fried
chicken legs and rice, and green peas and corn on the ear. Even as we ate, Ruth
kept standing, and going to the kitchen for more food. Roger ate like a little
gentleman.
"Isn't he nice looking?" his father asked.
"You are a handsome boy, Roger," I said.
The boy smiled at me. You look like Daddy," he said.
Afterwards I noticed an old picture leaning on the top of a dresser and stood to
pick it up. It was yellow and soiled with many fingerings. The faded figure of
a woman in Philippine dress could yet be distinguished although the face had
become a blur.
"Your . . . " I began.
"I don't know who she is," Fabia hastened to say. "I picked that picture many
years ago in a room on La Salle street in Chicago. I have often wondered who
she is."
"The face wasn't a blur in the beginning?"
"Oh, no. It was a young face and good."
Ruth came with a plate full of apples.
"Ah," I cried, picking out a ripe one. "I've been thinking where all the scent of
apples came from. The room is full of it."
"I'll show you," said Fabia.
He showed me a backroom, not very big. It was half-full of apples.
"Every day," he explained, "I take some of them to town to sell to the
groceries. Prices have been low. I've been losing on the trips."
"These apples will spoil," I said.
"We'll feed them to the pigs."
Then he showed me around the farm. It was twilight now and the apple trees
stood bare against a glowing western sky. In apple blossom time it must be
lovely here. But what about winter time?
One day, according to Fabia, a few years ago, before Roger was born, he had
an attack of acute appendicitis. It was deep winter. The snow lay heavy
everywhere. Ruth was pregnant and none too well herself. At first she did not
know what to do. She bundled him in warm clothing and put him on a cot near
the stove. She shoveled the snow from their front door and practically carried
the suffering man on her shoulders, dragging him through the newly made path
towards the road where they waited for the U.S. Mail car to pass. Meanwhile
snowflakes poured all over them and she kept rubbing the man's arms and legs
as she herself nearly froze to death.
"Go back to the house, Ruth!" her husband cried, "you'll freeze to death."
But she clung to him wordlessly. Even as she massaged his arms and legs, her
tears rolled down her cheeks. "I won't leave you," she repeated.
Finally the U.S. Mail car arrived. The mailman, who knew them well, helped
them board the car, and, without stopping on his usual route, took the sick man
and his wife direct to the nearest hospital.
"Look," I said, not knowing why I said it, "one of these days, very soon, I
hope, I'll be going home. I could go to your town."
"No," he said softly, sounding very much defeated but brave, "Thanks a lot.
But, you see, nobody would remember me now."
Then he started the car, and as it moved away, he waved his hand.
"Goodbye," I said, waving back into the darkness. And suddenly the night was
cold like winter straying early in these northern woodlands.
I hurried inside. There was a train the next morning that left for Muncie,
Indiana, at a quarter after eight.

Ruth stayed in the hospital with Fabia. She slept in a corridor outside the
patients' ward and in the day time helped in scrubbing the floor and washing
the dishes and cleaning the men's things. They didn't have enough money and
Ruth was willing to work like a slave.

"Ruth's a nice girl," said Fabia, "like our own Filipino women."

Before nightfall, he took me back to the hotel. Ruth and Roger stood at the
door holding hands and smiling at me. From inside the room of the shanty, a
low light flickered. I had a last glimpse of the apple trees in the orchard under
the darkened sky as Fabia backed up the car. And soon we were on our way
back to town. The dog had started barking. We could hear it for some time,
until finally, we could not hear it anymore, and all was darkness around us,
except where the headlamps revealed a stretch of road leading somewhere.

Fabia did not talk this time. I didn't seem to have anything to say myself. But
when finally we came to the hotel and I got down, Fabia said, "Well, I guess I
won't be seeing you again."

It was dimly lighted in front of the hotel and I could hardly see Fabia's face.
Without getting off the car, he moved to where I had sat, and I saw him extend
his hand. I gripped it.

"Tell Ruth and Roger," I said, "I love them."

He dropped my hand quickly. "They'll be waiting for me now," he said.