Frustrated Wish
Translated by Prof. Carolina Arceo
So happy and trusted
These people in love
For their sorrow they have
Somebody to share.
My destiny that’s so lonely
Am I alone with this?
For I said I won’t think twice
Because suffering I am now.
If ever I fall in love to a lady
There’s nothing I could see
That I have my counterpart.
Time I shall forget when I was born
Better is a thousand years
If at birth I was gone.
I should have tried to explain
But tounge-tide I was
For I could clearly see
That I won’t be lucky.
And it really pleases me much
That my love for you know
So I swear and promise you
That my life is just for you.
************************
People of Consequences
by Ines Taccad Cammayo
Camus and his wife secretly
prided themselves in being, of all the residents in their barrio, the
only ones who had really known and lived with people of consequence.
When
he was a young man, Camus had been the houseboy of a German haciendero.
The German who was a bachelor had often told Camus that his punishments
were for his own good because he must learn to shed his indolent and
clumsy ways if he ever hoped to amount to anything. Unfortunately,
before he could learn more from his stern master, his father wrote to
say that he must come home right away because his bethrothed was
waiting. The German had mouthed unintelligible, guttural curses which
Camus listened to with mixed feelings of shame and pleasure because it
meant that he was wanted after all, but in the end, the German sent him
off with a de hilo cerrada suit, a heavy pair of boots capacious enough
to let him wiggle his gnarled toes in, and two months extra pay which
came handy fox the wedding celebrations. That was twenty years ago,
shortly before the war, and although Camus had all the intentions to see
the German off when he left for his country, the expense and the effort
turned out to him, at the last minute, discouraging. In the meantime,
Camus and his wife were themselves becoming people of consequence.
They
now owned the best house in the barrio which, with other lakeside
villages, lay at the base of a high chit which the people called Munting
Azul because a perpetual haze clung to its summit. To reach the summit,
one must climb the step and circuitous steps that many years ago, time
men, Camus among them, had hacked out of the thick underbrush that
covered the entire face of the cliff, and then cemented in places where
the down-rushing water in rainy seasons was wont to wash away.
One
could also leave the village by crossing the lake westward. The upward
climb was the quicker route but was difficult for the old and the weak.
Once the embankment was reached, Munting Azul leveled off into fields,
and three kilometers away was the town of Cuenco.
The town was
bypass by the National highway but jeepney and a couple of minibuses
shuttled to and from the larger towns, including Capitolyo, on the
descent. Cuenco was the only large town which Camus really knew although
he had been to the Capitolyo occasionally. When he lived with the
German, they resided in what was called the White House in the middle of
the vast, treeless hacienda rimmed by forests across the lake.
Meding,
his wife, had, in her own adolescence, lived in the Capitolyo for
almost four years as servant of the Mayor’s family. It was there that
she learned the hard-driving manners of townsfolk. It constantly amazed
him how she could make idle time yield profit, and even more
astonishing, how, having made profit, she held on to it. Camus, a hard
worker, was at his fishing long before the dawn, and later in the day,
mending his nets on the pier he had built from his hut. It was his
father’s life he had learned, and after he came from the German’s
household he saw no cause and no way to change.
The first thing
that Meding did was to barter over his vehement objections the one male
carabao he owned for a puny female. When it began to yield milk, she
gathered it to make into a white curd which she molded into banana leaf
containers or boiled into sweet candy. Not one frasco found its way to
their table. Every Sunday she would climb the steep ascent to sell her
white cheese and milk sticks in Cuenco.
She gathered the
occasional coconuts and mangoes from the trees behind their house and
sold them, together with the harvest of fish Camus hauled in every day.
She was so undemanding, she never had to sell at a loss or to mortgage
his catch, and the hard – dealing middleman who came with his tempting
offers bypassed their house with great aloofness.
Meding even
opened a postal saving account and once in a while she showed him
figures. As the sum increased he felt he knew her less and less. Long
before she began the feverish phase of acquiring possessions, when they
sat down to their frugal meal he felt that, perhaps they could afford
something more appetizing. A look of Meding’s face bent over her plate,
contented in determined self-denial would silence him.
She
astounded him most by buying crochet thread and needles. In the
mornings, keeping by herself from the village women, she sat at the
window of the little hut, thrusting away at her hook and thread, making
beautiful patterns of lace that he believed, his heart bursting with
pride, no other wife in all the lakeside barrios could make, let alone
possess her infinite patience. To his unbelieving ears, she whispered
that he wavy laces were so prized that housewives in the town willingly
pail for them with sacks of rice.
In time their neighbors ran to
them for loans, and although she never charged usurious rate, Meding was
as hard as stone when it came to collecting. If the borrower failed to
pay or on time she demanded goods in payment. Her laconic and unsmiling
manner defeated any jocose attempt at gaining time and even whining plea
bought only the unfeeling retort that life was just as hard for her,
and that always shamed them into passing for one better than their
neighbors knew how Spartan was their life.
The first change in
the quiet girl he married came one night: lying, facing each other on
the slatted floor of their bedroom in the hut which was now their
kitchen, she spoke of her plans, spelled each dream so grimly as to
leave no doubt in Camus’ mind that these were already real. Talk of a
child had long since been avoided. Now she spoke of bringing in
kiln-dried posts from Cuenco, a proposal wildly ostentious and
impossible, considering the steep descent from town. She spoke of
galvanized roofing, capiz windows and all the accoutrements of town
houses, hardware, varnished walls, two big bedrooms, a sala so spacious
it could accommodate their old hut, and carved narra furniture. When the
house was finally finished – a reality of shining walls and costly
gleaming windows – Camus went about apologizing for its size. “We really
planned to have it much bigger, but my wife with her usual good sense
wanted something more modest.”
The house never wore a coat of
paint, growing darker and rain-stained with every passing season. The
bedroom was never occupied except when out-of-town officials came. It
contained a monstrous, carved and highly varnished bed. Its snaky posts
bore aloft a wooden balance that gave it unusual elegance. A three-panel
mirrored aparador in the room was used by no one except guests; so,
too, a washbowl inlaid with mother-of-pearl which gleamed against the
mahogany shadows of the room.
One day, Meding said, “The young
men are going up to the Capitolyo next week. It would be a good time for
you to go with them.” After a long pause, she added, “they invite you
every year but you have gone only once. You could visit with the
Superintendent this time.” At an earlier fiesta, when Camus at the
inspector’s house, the official was already taken up with his other
visitors. The señora did not know him. She must have also been
distracted at the never-ending stream of visitors. With an absent-minded
wave hand and murmured acknowledgement, she ordered someone to unburden
him of his coop of chicken and made him feel at home. “Well, don’t just
stand there!” an old crone had cackled at him. “Dress the chickens!”
With that she thrust a halo into his hands. Camus was dismayed, but only
for a few seconds. He spent the rest of the day cheerfully helping out
in the backyard, very much needed and feeling useful as he stirred a
huge carajay. He had caught a glimpse of the Inspector but the man was
deep in conversation with some important-looking men. In a way, he was
glad. He had stripped down to his shorts to save his Americana from
stain.
His only regret about that visit, however, was his not
having been able to join in talk with the townsmen, When they came to
his house, he never felt shy telling his favorite recollections of Señor
Lehniann, the German master whom many of them had heard of but never
seen, “lie was a man of few words and a great reader. There was this
thick book which he always read but would never let me touch. Otherwise
he was extremely generous with other things. Advice. His old clothes.
Sometimes money.”
As the years passed, his stories of intimacy
with the German master grew, and there were times when he ventured
saying that he was such the confidant of the aleman that they used to
hold long conversations. The aleman had often said that he should aspire
to go to Manila to study, and that, he would make good because he would
then cultivate further the inclination and the attitude, that he
acquired through exposure to better things. Time had a way of making
resolutions fade, but the inclination remained, Camus would say, with a
complacent shrug.
A few years back, a frequent visitor, the
Councilor for their area, offered him a caminero’s job on a section of
the municipal road to Cuenco. Camus still remembered the four short
weeks of that only employment with an emotion akin to righteousness. He
received thirty pesos scrupulously kept their dirt hidden in their
backyards. It was the grass and the weeds that continually threatened to
overrun the road. Then someone told him that the same Councilor had
placed someone else as a checker who had nothing to do but check on the
camineros. With polite apologies to Meding and the baffled councilor, he
left the job.
In the yard of their neighbors house a group of
young men began to gather. Laughter broke out often and once in a while,
someone slapped a neighbor on the back. Camus could make out nothing;
the whirr of the crickets seemed to drown out all their talk. He sat at
the window picking with his nails, a veined and hairy leg drawn up on
the bench to support his chin. In the dusk, the group looked
conspiratorial.
He looked long at Meding clearing the table. “You are right, I think,” he said half-asking.
Meding
shrugged her frail shoulders. She crossed the wobbly bamboo bridge that
connected their house to the old hut. Camu followed her without a word,
wondering what she would do.
She led the way to the smaller of two rooms. “I have prepared your white suit,” she said.
She
knelt before the wooden trunk, took a black key from the ring which
always hung at her waist and twisted it into the keyhole. The suit lay
on top of all the old clothes, like a silent shock that it had been
years since he wore it. The fragrance of its being kept in the trunk was
wafted to him, redolent of an opulence he had never really enjoyed
again after that morning of his wedding. Camus received it with some
shyness. It was almost like a ritual and Camus was glad that the soft
light hid his emotions.
All their life, sentiment had had very
little meaning perhaps because love had never figured in the courtship.
Camus married Meding because his father and her father had agreed on the
union. She had submitted impassively, although he had heard she was
spirited girl. The vaunted spirit was to be known by him only through
the regimen with which he had imposed on their lives.
Sometimes
when the barrenness of living engulfed him with a misery he could not
understand, he felt that this was as it should be, life is hard, why
should he complain, she was an ardent example of what hard work and
frugality could bring. In this reveries, he began to believe in the
gladsome fullness of his life as the German had said it could be. Camus
held the coat before him. “It may no longer fit me,” he said.
He
felt that he had grown bigger, taller, more expansive in girth, so that
when the coat slid easily over his shoulders and the pants hung loosely
around his waist, consternation filled him. He realized that he had
really, looked at himself for sometime. He turned and lifted the lantern
from the hook and walked slowly into the bigger bedroom where the
three-paneled aparador stood.
The man in the mirror was someone
he scarcely knew. He was stooped-shouldered, his chest caved in, and his
silvery hair that stood erect in a close-cropped aguinaldo cut was
sparse and revealed his shiny brown scalp.
The face- taut and
mask-like – shook him. He began to think that he would never be able to
greet his hosts in the capitol like with that boisterous warmth they
themselves greeted him when they mounted his stairs. Even if he had
never intended to do so, he had long since he learned that humility
pleased his visitors.
So the suit did not really matter. All
these years he thought he had really grown stout, lie was still strong
at the nets. He could lift sacks of rice with ease. Heavy loads never
shortened his breath. When his wife’s face appeared from the shadows in
the mirror, he felt even more saddened. He wondered did she ever feel
the need to look and live well, to experience heady well-being. Her lips
drew back unsmiling, and as an answer to his thought, she spoke, her
eyes betraying nothing: “You have not changed much. The years do riot
tell on you.”
Camus stared at his image like it were stricken
adversary. He slowly unbuttoned the coat dropped the pants and handed
them back to Meding.
“Perhaps you had better put this back in the
trunk.” He looked at his wife in the mirror and in a voice not his, he
told her that he could not go.
She listened to him indifferently;
already in her mind, she was counting the chickens which she must
catch, tie up and cage in stripped baskets. She knew how in the town
every leaf of vegetables had its price and these would be her husband’s
levy. She had watched him welcome those people with touching sincerity
that somehow made the patronizing tones of his guests sound boorish. And
she, too, had a acquiesced, having learned from dealing with merchants
that sometimes yielding was only way of getting your due.
The
young men are starting early in the morning. We must be up before the
first cock crows,” she said flatly, refusing to yield to the pleading in
his eyes.
The crowd of women converged on Camus the moment he
alighted from the bus, screaming and tugging at his two chicken coops.
Then as suddenly as a swarm of flies that have found another victim,
they dispersed, he wing him with the empty containers and several smelly
bills in his hands.
Camus stared at the money, then quickly
pocketed it. He walked towards the church, not minding the crowd, the
hawking vendors who thrust bundles of cake at his face. Camus rubbed the
back of his hand against his temples. Every step was taking him nearer
to the Superintendent’s house and how could he go to him without the
chicken’s of his throat was parched, the vendors thrust their wares at
him again. Pinipig! Balut! Kropeck! Mais laga! Above the voices, in a
tinkling bell now attracted him. He turned around, an ice cream vendor
smiled at him: Ice cream, sir! Ice cream! They exchanged a look of
understanding.
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