The Color of My Fears
[A Reminiscence in Fiction]
Nest Ferreras
Chapter 1
Image by Heri Santoso from Pixabay
The shaman (cirujano) looked at me solemnly then quickly set to work. The sharp razor blade (labaha) in his
hand glinted in the late morning sun as he wiped its thin edge with a moist
cloth. He murmured something, a whispered prayer or incantation (oracion),
no doubt, as he rubbed the blade against a piece of light wood which had become
smooth and black by countless rubbings. Each time the bright flicker of the silvery
blade struck my eyes, I squirmed in imagined pain.
Metal
touched skin. I felt the blade cut coldly through my foreskin. Then there was
an itchy feeling, not quite painless, but more akin to the bite of a large ant (pala),
prickly at first. Then the pain became more pronounced. Overcame with nausea, I
unconsciously swallowed the juice of guava (bayabas) leaves I was
munching. Mustering enough courage to look down, I saw white flesh exposed
under the open wound. Then from the cut spurted blood which, I thought, had the
color of my fears...
-ooo-
It happened during one lazy summer month when sugar canes (tubo) had barely grown tall, standing on endless
rows in the cane fields (kampo). The cane stalks were full of
innumerable tiny white needle-sharp bristles (gilok) that sting and itch
anyone who was unfortunate enough to get scratched.
One
day during that summer month young boys in our hacienda village trooped to the
nipa hut by the creek (sapa) where Tyo Berto, the shaman, lived. During this month of the year
Tyo Berto performed for free the rite of circumcision on a promontory by the
creek as some sort of a serious promise (panaad) made a long time ago.
Not that our parents were reluctant to bring us to a doctor; it’s just that there
simply was no doctor to go to in the village in those days.
Being
the village shaman, Tyo Berto seemed
to be knowledgeable in all things under the sun, from performing acts of
healing to becoming the village barber on Sundays. Parents in the hacienda
considered him a healer (manugbulong) (quack healing was not in vogue
back then), an expert in the ways of herbal medicine but old folks looked at
him with awe, a person, who had the strange ability to perform unnatural
things, like walking dry under the rain. It might be considered some kind of folk
magic, but it’s not the kind of magic that was performed for show by some
roving ‘magicians’ who went from village to village to delight folks with their
kind of tricks, like changing a piece of old newspaper into a five-peso bill.
In my puerile imagination, I wondered why couldn’t they just make money out of
old newspapers instead of collecting the pitiful amount of coins that their gullible
but obviously delighted audience threw around a rusty tin can (lata).
For
us boys we remember Tyo Berto as the barber who shaved our heads and cut our
sideburns clean. The cirujano
possessed a labaha so sharp it could
slice through skin at the slightest touch of the blade. I would cringe at the
thought of the cirujano-cum-barber
accidentally slicing a piece of my ears off with the razor every time Father convinced me, after a series of endless cajoling,
to get a haircut.
If
there was a day I ever dreamed of not to pass, it was the rite of circumcision
by the creek. And if there was one thing I ever dreaded, it was the cut of the labaha through my flesh. I was very much reluctant to go, but Father
doggedly insisted.
“You’re
twelve years old now and still afraid of the labaha, huh? Soon your skin will be thick that the labaha couldn’t cut it quickly enough.
You would feel so much pain.”
Even
that fatherly admonition couldn’t persade me. Once I tried to imagine the silvery
edge of that razor slicing my foreskin and I threw up. Mother was alarmed and
had me drunk all manner of concoction from the medicinal herbs and leaves she was
able to gather from all over the village, like kasla and bayabas.
When I could no longer bear the bitter taste of home-made medicinal broth, I
told her the reason why.
I
thought Mother would understand my predicament, but she said, “You’re old enough
to withstand the pain. You’re no longer a child. A few years more and you’ll be
a man. If your friends would do it, why wouldn’t you? Besides, if the girls
know you’re still uncircumcised, they would tease you endlessly.”
That’s
it, maternal advice did the job. I never thought until that time that circumcision
was a step to manhood. I realized later it was a rite of passage.
-ooo-
We had all the time in the world when
the summer months arrived, except when our mothers sent us on errands. Usually,
we spent the afternoons playing beside the creek, dirtying ourselves by
making tambon (mud dams) across it and then panag-a (draining the
water from the tambon). This way we caught a lot of fish of different
varieties – pantat, haluan, balaskugay, tilapia, uldok and even the lowly
gurami – enough to fill one ganton (a large tin can that is used
to contain biscuits) to the brim. We sometimes quarreled among ourselves over who
would get the larger part of the catch but eventually found some means to settle
the childhood issue. Sometimes we did it through a swimming contest, like who could
swim the longest downstream or jump the farthest from the banks of the creek,
especially when it was high tide (taob).
Frequently,
after the morning task of herding our carabaos in the pasture (pasto), we
brought them to the creek for their bath. We let the animals wallow in the
brown waters which were occasionally mixed with debris from fallen croton
leaves and banana (saging) trunks thriving on the banks of the creek.
We scrubbed the grime and dried mud (lunang) off the animals’ skin,
splashing water onto their exposed parts. It didn’t take a long while for us
boys to enjoy the creek for ourselves. We tried to stand erect on the animals’
slippery backs and jumped into the muddy water, or trying hard to sit tight on
felled saging trunks which kept on rolling while throwing mud balls (lutak)
at each other. After the bath, our bodies reeked of lutak, rotten saging
trunks, and the pungent smell of carabaos.
During
summer when school classes closed, I found myself doing the childhood job of a bakero
(one who tends to cattle/carabaos). I brought our tamed field carabao to feed
on the verdant grasses growing beside the ditches (kanal) that surrounded
each plot of cane field. It was one of those times when I reached into my
pocket and got a piece of paper hastily torn from one of my notebooks (cuaderno)
of poems I kept meticulously. (I hid my notebooks away from my siblings. They sometimes
tore several pages to be used as kindling material when they could not start a
fire to cook rice.) I tried to find my direction from the sketches drawn on the
paper. It was Father’s drawing of the map of several kampo in the area.
It gave me instruction where I should bring my carabao to feed. Father must have
known by heart the lay of each kampo; he had been a laborer all his life
(but that's another story to tell).
Since
that early times in my youth I have known how to follow directions if I wished
it and skipped those if I willed against it. I just couldn’t bear to bring my
carabao and myself to places in the hacienda far from the houses and where they
said were enchanted (mariit). Next to the fear of the labaha, I
feared approaching an enchanted balete tree (lunok) or acacia (akasya),
standing alone clothed in a long-sleeved maong shirt in the middle of the
kampo under the blazing heat of the afternoon sun. Goblins (kama-kama)
and elves (tamawo) inhabited those trees, and occasionally abducted
people.
During
that particular summer, I felt drowsy after getting tired of sitting on the back
of our carabao while it was grazing. I might have fallen had someone not come
along. It was Nilo, my boyhood buddy bakero, and with him his pet
carabao that had an upper tooth missing. Tagging along was Edwin holding a
bamboo stick, walking beside the carabao. He held a small plastic bag full of ripe,
golden orange cape gooseberries (tino-tino).
We’re
all more or less of the same age, when boyhood ends and the particulars of character
of a youth starts to manifest. I didn’t know how they found me. Maybe it’s just
happenstance. But looking back at those times with the privilege of hindsight,
I thought of it as destiny in the making.
Without
so much as a greeting, Nilo dared me in a race of carabaos to Tyo Berto’s
place.
“I'd
rather not,” I told him hastily. Not that I despised him, (he’s my buddy bakero
after all), but something happened that was still fresh in my mind. It was
just a few weeks’ ago that we nearly lost our carabaos because we played pirates
and gangsters inside the rows of mature sugar cane stalks. We were so absorbed
in our make-believe world of swords and guns that we lost track of where our
carabaos had gone grazing. After nearly three hours of searching for the
animals, we found them munching on tubo leaves inside the cane fields.
The two carabaos were quietly feeding on tender tubo leaves to their
hearts’ content. We hurriedly left the place, lest we be caught and scolded by Tyo
Purdit, the encargado (hacienda’s caretaker) for neglecting to keep an
eye on our carabaos.
Nilo
pleaded once more. “Come on, Junior. It’s been a long time we haven’t done
this. You beat me by a few seconds the last time.”
“Minutes,”
I corrected him.
“But
he could beat you this time,” Edwin butted in, stuffing tino-tino into
his little mouth. “Nilo caught a bird,” he added. I could see the enthusiasm on
his face, feeling proud to be the first one to tell me, as if it really
mattered to me at all.
“Yes,
I would give you my pet bird if you win,” Nilo offered. It seemed they had
planned for this, I thought. I smelled a boyhood conspiracy.
“What
bird?” I inquired, his boastful declaration got on my nerves but his offer
piqued my curiosity.
Nilo
tapped a brown bag sewed from an old sack (sako) of rice). I hadn’t
noticed it earlier. The bag seemed to have appeared out of nowhere the moment
he said something about the bird. It dangled from the right side of his
carabao, the bag dotted with little holes, one end tied tightly by a length of
cotton string and the other end tied around his waste.
“You don’t have a pet. You don’t know how to feed a dog, let alone a bird,”
I taunted him. “Let me see,” I said.
“Let him see it,” Edwin echoed what I just said. He winked at Nilo, his
eyes bulging. I wondered why Edwin felt so excited. The two were really into
it.
“Don’t get too excited, Edwin. You might lose your breath again,” I told him.
He had had bouts of asthma and we boys were careful enough not to tease him.
I wondered where Nilo got the bird. He climbed down from his carabao and untied
the string from his waist, pulled up the brown bag and started to loosen the
opening. With one hand holding the bag, he took out a small makeshift cage. The
cage was crudely constructed of small bamboo sticks tied together with small colored
rubber bands (ligas) like the ones we wore around our wrists as
playthings.
“I
caught the bird near Tyo Berto's house,” Nilo said as he struggled with the
bag. “It didn’t attempt to fly when I grabbed it.”
I
caught a glimpse of black feathers inside the cage. Kkrrr… a sound emanated from it when Nilo tried to put his hands
inside.
“See,
it was perching on the bayabas tree when I caught it bare-handed,” Nilo
proudly declared, holding the cage high for me to see clearly. Edwin edged
closer to the cage. He was distracted by the bird, its countenance exuding something,
inviting us to perceive what it was. Edwin’s small plastic bag of tino-tino
fell to the ground.
Nilo’s
words were lost on me. I hurriedly climbed down from my carabao, immediately got
hold of the cage from Nilo and stared at the bird. Turning the cage around, I
inspected its strange occupant. I confirmed my suspicion: no bigger than a maya, the bird was black, claws and beak
and feathers all. It stared back right at me.
How
strange the bird looked inside the cage. So strange and yet I discerned a
strain of the familiar...
-ooo-
“Don't dare take a peep in the closet,” I heard a voice say. It was Ismael, the cirujano’s son, who led us, Tony and me, inside their house one
afternoon, after we tired ourselves of playing tirohay (cowboys and indians)
among the tall cogon grasses near the
creek. With brown slanting eyes, he’s about my age, had prominent cheek bones
and long wavy hair. I sometimes wondered why he preferred to keep his hair
long. After all his father was the village barber.
“What’s
in there?” my curiosity got the better of me. The closet was an old wooden
cabinet constructed from old slabs of wood which were most probably salvaged
from some debris floating occasionally in the creek, especially after a heavy
rain. On the outside the closet smelled of dried mud.
In a
hushed voice, Ismael said, “Father hide many things in there. I’m not supposed
to open it. There’s a strange bird inside.”
“A
bird in the closet?” Tony whispered, covering his mouth with his hand.
“Yes,
dead one, stuffed,” Ismael answered in a tone I didn’t quite recognize, putting
his left index finger across his lips..
“A
dead bird in the closet? Can I see it?” I edged closer to the closet. I ran my
fingers over its edges. They were full of marks and scratches apparently made
from repeated blows of a binangon (sharp medium-size knife or bolo).
“No,
father will get mad at me.” Ismael
stopped in midstep, seemed to dilly-dally, turned back and looked perplexedly at
me. “You won’t tell him, will you?” he said at last.
“Tony,
give him your marbles,” I nodded to Tony.
“I’ll
give you my marbles, promise” Tony said, reluctantly. I knew he was as much as
curious as I, if not more than curious. But this little act of blackmail eventually
convinced Ismael to go on. Tony had with him five rugged marbles (holen)
which we used to play by shooting them with our fingers. I knew he hated to
part with them, but this was an extraordinary chance, and extraordinary chances
need extraordinary sacrifices.
Ismael
went to one corner of the room and climbed up the wooden wall, ever careful not
to accidentally loosen the deteriorating planks hastily nailed to the corner
posts. When he reached the roof made from thatched palm fronds (nipa),
he recovered a small, rusted key tucked inside the layers. When he had climbed
down, he told me once more, “Don’t you tell my father.”
The penalty
is death from a Damocles’ sword falling on his head.
Ismael
silently inserted and turned the key. Humming to himself, he opened the double
door. I smelled the odor of ripe bayabas wafting in the air, obviously coming
out from the closet. The wooden cabinet was full of curiosities, its narrow
shelves cramped with queer things, both mundane and magical.
“You
know what these are?” Ismael said in a whisper, his voice becoming hoarse.
“Pearls of green shells. You swallow
them and you’ll become strong and agile.” His tone was serious with nary a hint
of doubt. He held up a small milky orange medicine bottle half-full of water.
Tony
leaned closer to take a peek at the bottle. “I don’t see any pearls,” he said, his
lips curving into a wry smile. Suddenly, he seemed to be less inclined to
believe. Perhaps Tony decided not to part with his marbles after all.
“No?
Because they’re floating,” Ismael answered back, obviously irked by Tony’s
seemingly mockery of his words.
“Ah,
I see, let’s open it.” I attempted to grab the bottle from him.
“No,”
Ismael turned away without letting go of the bottle. Slowly, he untied the
black rubber band which held the plastic cover. When done, he offered me the
bottle. “Take a look.”
Indeed,
the pearls were there, but they’re not the kind of pearls I had in mind. Where
I expected to see shiny, round things, I saw tiny irregular stone-like objects
the size of salt grains. I wondered whether these ‘pearls’ bestowed upon Tyo
Berto and Ismael the peculiar ability on the use of hoes and trowels. During
the off-milling season when sugar cane plants were still young, we worked in
the cane fields by tilling the soil and pulling off grasses which grew
profusely between the rows. They were so fast that father and son easily
finished the tasks (pakyaw) assigned to them. We just scratched our
heads at how fast they did it. They floated over the rows, one instant at one
end of a row and in another instant I saw them at the other end. And yet when
the cabo (leader/watcher of the farm workers) inspected their tracks, all the
grasses were pulled out or cut neatly and laid down on the side of the rows.
“What’s
this?” Tony asked Ismael as he picked a loose bundle of papers from the partly
open cabinet. Ismael grabbed them quickly from Tony’s prying hands. He wouldn’t
want Tony to read the words on the pages as if Tony could read them. After choosing
one item, Ismael handed over to me a thin book for a quick look.
It
was a small, thin worn-out black book bound in leather the cover of which was full
of sketches crisscrossing a central figure of a man. I browsed the pages and my
lips followed the words but the meanings escaped my understanding. The letters were
English but the words were not.
Seeing
my contorted face, Ismael explained. “This book is full of oraciones (enchanted prayers). The oraciones can make your enemies weak. The hermit of the creek, on
his deathbed, gave it to father. The old man said he saw the book floating
downstream in the creek. He almost lost his life swimming for it. You know what
he did to get it? He swam upstream.” It’s not the story that was incredible to
me; it’s how easy he spoke and delivered the words. They came out from his
mouth as if they were there a long time, waiting for the right moment to get
out. And this was the moment.
Unable
to follow what he meant, I turned several pages and on page seven, I began to
read aloud. “Dix-it-do-mi-nus.”
The words sank deeply, for me meaningless. But words have power; they can move
mountains if used as prayers. As soon as I spoke the words, I felt a tingling
sensation up my spine and an unseen hand tapped me cold by the shoulders.
What
did I just read? Those alpha waves in my brain started to dance, waiting for
the right frequency, the one that was even more powerful than the Schumann
resonance, earth’s natural frequency. And when it did arrive, I entered into a
trance; I was in synch with the last wave. I might have gone farther into the
trance had not Ismael quickly snatched the little book from me.
After
a few seconds, I recovered and felt relieved, but only to find out that both
Ismael and Tony were staring at me.
“Have
you seen a ghost (morto)?” Tony whispered, this time his voice changed
into one of concern.
I
didn’t mind him and from the corner of my eyes, I espied another object on the
shelf. A small, crystal-clear bottle, with some sort of gray smoke curling
inside, stood alone, apart from the rest of the things in the upper shelf. The
bottle turned hazy at first then started to clear, the smoke fading away. Then
the smoke appeared again, taking on a form, morphing into many shapes. Tony extended
his hand to get the bottle. But Ismael’s hand managed to grab it first.
“This
bottle contains my fears,” Ismael revealed, there he was again, speaking the
words smoothly, believably. I had known him since we were in grade one in the
village school, but this was the first time I heard him speak like this. His
words struck me as mysterious, full of secrets waiting to be revealed and the
way he voiced out those words got my head spinning. As he spoke, his face
became dark, his image blurred, but his voice was as clear as glass breaking on
metal.
Ismael
continued, “I trapped my fears inside the bottle. The color started out as red,
back to the days when I have so much to fear. My fears slowly disappeared and the
color has turned gray. I got nothing more to fear now.” He brushed aside his wavy
hair and exposed a cut earlobe on his left ear. “See this? Father accidentally
sliced a piece of my ear with the labaha.
He’s still learning to be a barber then. I was scared to death to get a haircut
after that. But father showed me how to trap my fears, including the fear of
the labaha.” That’s it. I got hooked.
Fear of the labaha! Ismael had exactly the same
fear that I had. Eagerly, I poured out to him what I feared most, the silvery labaha that could slice a man’s neck with
one swoop. I pleaded with him how I could do the same, to banish away not only
the fear of the labaha but all of my fears, if possible. The engkanto,
kama-kama, kapre, and all the supernatural beings that inhabit the lunok
and other enchanted (mariit) trees. Not to mention, the aswang, bampira,
tigbalang, and other evil creatures of the night. For endless seconds, I
waited for him to tell me how. “I forgot,” he said nonchalantly at last.
Despaired,
I walked into a corner. I wanted to leave then but Tony slowly approached me
and looked at me with that inquiring gaze. Then I remembered.
I
faced Ismael. “I don’t see the bird. Where is it?” Tony tried to get past
Ismael to look for the bird, but Ismael’s body blocked him easily.
Ismael
rummaged through the bric-a-brac, finally found a yellow-stained shoe box and
opened it. Inside was a small bird, stuff and dried, obviously dead, lying on
its side. Its feathers, though crumpled, still gave an ebony sheen. I’d never
seen a bird like it before. It was the size of a maya but was black all over, with
small beak and claws, except for one thing, the eyes. They were red and fresh and
alive! Turning the dead avian on its side, I poked it with my fingers.
“Aguy,”
I said, more surprised than feeling pain. I felt something pricked my fingers. Then
I saw red droplets dripping to the bottom of the box. Quickly withdrawing my
hand, I saw a tiny amount of blood oozing from my right pinkie.
What
followed next became jumbled in my mind. However, I did see images of various
colors and smelled odors coming out from that shoe box. Things spun around me.
I felt the heavy presence of bayabas hanging in the air. I tried to raise my
right hand but couldn’t do so. The fruits grew larger each time they made
circles around the room. Then from somewhere a labaha, flaming red, appeared and sliced all the fruits into tiny
pieces, each slice tinier than the previous one until all the bayabas were
gone. I cowered against the wall, my body shaking. Feeling dizzy, I slumped on
a dilapidated bamboo bench lying in one corner of the room. The images began to
fade away like round puffs of smoke. When I blinked, the images were gone, bayabas
and labaha and the tiny slices, all were gone.
Ismael
tip-toed towards Tony who was standing cold and looking pale, paralyzed like a
statue in front of the fully open closet, his arms wide-open, his eyes
transfixed, staring at the bird. “Now, give me the marbles,” Ismael said,
standing with arms akimbo.
-ooo-
“Come on, Junior, let’s begin!” I
heard Nilo call me again. His voice had stopped my reverie and his shout brought
me back to my senses. Since that episode at Tyo Berto’s house, I began to have these
hallucinations, if I may say so, or visions, if you will. And I recalled it all
started when I spoke the words that should been left unspoken. To a boy barely
out of childhood, visions or hallucinations were as real as the bite of the pala
(a large ant) on my skin. That hallucination or vision of mine wanted to blend into my reality.
The line between the metaphysical and the mundane was so thin as to be
non-existent at all.
With one quick lash of the kagingking
(a whip cut from the end part of a young bamboo plant), I hit my carabao’s
rump. Plak! The kagingking made a cracking sound against the animal's flesh.
Because of its thin pointed tip, it could lash through the air at the speed of
sound, like a true whip. I might have whipped it a little bit too hard. Back
then, the kagingking was every parent's tool of last resort, for children who
willfully disobeyed their parents' repeated commands.
“Hyaah!” I shouted, without waiting
for Nilo to say another word. Apparently startled, my carabao shook its head,
its long curved horns swaying, forcing the insects hovering over it to scatter away
quickly in all directions. The poor animal gave a defiant cry, disturbed from
its quiet graze on the roadside bordered by drainage canals. The carabao kicked
its legs and started to gallop, slowly at first, taking a few steps, then took
great strides as if it was jumping over ditches without letup. I held onto the
rope with one hand; my other hand groped for the carabao’s tail, which served
as an anchor to prevent myself from falling down. I looked back. Nilo’s carabao
jumped in a rhythmic motion, kicking dust and pebbles with every step. I looked
for Edwin; he was nowhere to be seen. I just hoped he stayed behind and tried
not to catch up with the race.
Beads
of sweat streamed off my forehead, warmed by the morning sun. There was Nilo
beating his poor carabao to death, but there were only so many steps the poor
animal could manage. I shouted all manner of taunts and dared him to pass by me
if he could. When I took another glimpse back, all I saw was a hazy figure of boy
and carabao amidst a blanket of dust. There he was; Nilo was shouting, standing
on the back of his carabao! Shades of Tarzan!
I let
go of my carabao’s tail. Looking back again, I squinted at the figure following
me. Boyhood adrenalin surged in. This can’t be, I thought. I can’t
allow him to beat me. I didn’t have to think otherwise. I knew I could win
this impromptu contest of two boys with inflated egos. Even without any forethought.
Because
of dusts rising from the road, the figure of Nilo and his carabao looked hazy. However,
every time I glimpsed back at the hazy figure, it grew larger by the second, the
blanket of dusts took a definite form, its color turning into gray. In the few
instances when I glimpsed back, the shape had turned into a bird for I saw its
wings stretched out fleetingly. Before my eyes were half-blinded with dusts, the
bird shot upwards!
I turned
my gaze forward, with all that heaving motion sitting on the carabao’s back. There
was a fork in the road, the one on the left pointed to the cirujano’s house. The
other would lead us to the Gate to the Other Side; the Other Side was the name
we, the hacienda youth, called the next hacienda. That iron gate marked the
boundary of the hacienda village in the east with the next hacienda.
Feeling
relieved to see the fork up ahead, I knew I would win. The image of that bird
didn’t register in my brain, so fleeting it existed, seen and unseen almost at
the same time. Another whack of the kagingking on the carabao’s rump, and victory
would be mine. Then there was that bird again, coming straight at me, with outstretched
wings, blocking the sun. I could see its outline, defined by sunlight striking
its back. Its wingspan filled my vision; it was so thin like gossamer that I
was able to see the black criscrossed lines running across it. It was getting
nearer every second. The sight took me aback. Not that I had not seen enough of
birds after that incident at Ismael’s house, but this one was different. It had
a human head staring at me with inhuman eyes! I ducked and almost fell from my
carabao but managed to heave myself up just in time. Facing the road with my
eyes closed, I leaned forward. I let my carabao run to its heart’s content. I couldn’t
care less to where it was running, my heart pounding inside my chest. Time stopped
for me, and when I opened my eyes, I was stunned. There, a few paces in front
of me were Nilo and his carabao, galloping with all the stamina of one huge
beast, and ahead was the fork in the road.
After
what seemed to be an eternity of heaving on the carabao’s back, I reached the
fork in the road. I pulled the rope to the left and my carabao obligingly
followed, puffing heavily while trying to walk slowly. There ahead I saw Nilo
smiling broadly with a grin as wide as the creek. He and his poor carabao,
panting for breath with white foam bubbling from its broken mouth, were resting
beside the guava tree. From Nilo’s right hand dangled the queer black bird inside
the cage. And Edwin was really nowhere to be found.
-ooo-
Chapter 2
Picture by Justin Smith from Scopio
IF THERE WAS A PLACE IN THE HACIENDA where we could find our friends or
meet girls our age, it’s a place we called the plasa (plaza). The
function of the plaza has been there as far as I could remember, serving its
purpose as varied as the culture of the hacienda folks, as ancient as the land
itself, back to the time when the hacienda began to plant its roots in anyone’s
memory, at least to those people who were living during my childhood. The plaza
of my youth was the new one, an open basketball court, located in the center of
the village, bordered by concrete houses (we called them halublak, from
the words “hollow block”, the main material used to build the houses).
To the west side of the plaza was the besbolan (baseball field), a
sprawling grassy area of land where baseball (actually softball) was played
during the sports season, when men and women had all the time to play the
favorite sport, next to basketball, encouraged by the hacienda owners, who were
themselves, avid players and fans of besbol. The plasa and the besbolan
were two of the places in the hacienda that my mind would go to in my youth and
'where my heart used to beat.’
During the summer months when school days were over, the place was alive
with all manner of activities, from children playing lagsanay (game of
tag) in the afternoons when the sun began to descend low on the horizon, to
youths my age telling stories about their latest escapades in the kampo
(canefield) or pasto (pasture) or punong (fishpond). Their
stories usually had them escaping some kind of perceived danger (like running
away immediately after stealthily catching fishes in the fishpond) or tales of
childhood bravery, mustering enough courage to overcome a challenge, like jumping
over a wooden bridge to dive into the water of the sapa (creek) during taob
(high tide). One could listen to these stories no end, and share the momentary
happiness that these meetings elicited, if one could only for a short time, suspend
his disbelief in the embellished tales being told. The stories had have kernels
of truth in them, no doubt, but one could not escape the feeling that most of
those stories were tinikal (made-up stories of bravery or courage) and
the story teller, tikalon (boastful), at the moment. I would not fail
though to go to these afternoon get-togethers of my childhood or adolescence
during the hot season for the sheer delight and acceptance of being one of the
gang. Later, I realized, those times spent together were the beginnings of a
kind of a camaraderie that would last a lifetime.
When the sun has set, and darkness started to creep in, more people
could be seen gathering in the plaza, forming into coteries of friends with
similar interests. Most conspicuous was the group of youth (teenagers) that
formed the hacienda youth club. They were a few years older than us, and were
already attending high school or college. On one of the nights, especially when
there was a full moon, they could be seen sitting on benches on one corner of
the plaza, discussing something like projects or what they should do to
beautify the place, or how to help keep the bayle (public dance)
peaceful. Then laughter would suddenly erupt and shouts of incoherent words
would emanate from the gathering, as if the night belonged to them when they
were all young, enjoying the thrill of the moment, their innocence untainted
and their hearts not yet broken.
(Stop, I’m getting too much attached to my story; I exercise my right to
poetic license being the writer. I just hope my story gets better in spite of
it.)
A week after I was humiliated by losing the race, I saw Nilo in the plaza. He was sitting on a concrete bench in a corner of
the open basketball court, keeping himself eerily quiet, head slightly bowed,
drumming with his fingers on the cold surface of the bench. His face, small and
round topped by wisps of thin hair, projected a quizzical look. He wore khaki
shorts, one button missing, and an old blue sleeveless shirt, torn on one side.
A balete tree (lonok) stood behind him, its roots crawling above the ground
and leaves spreading a cool shade over the bench. The lonok tree was said to be
enchanted (mariit). None dared to be alone under its shade especially when it’s
high noon or be caught near the tree at nightfall.
On
the other end of the bench sat Totpik, a boy slightly younger than us, munching
a piece of badela, (a species of sugar cane plant which has a large,
soft, juicy stem), juices oozing from the side of his mouth. (I wondered where
he got the stick of badela; the badela was planted in the field as
an experiment to see whether it would become profitable.) Totpik held a small,
curved blade (sanggot) which he used to peel the skin off the sugar cane
from time to time. (Why we called him Totpik has escaped my memory now. I
wonder if it has something to do with toothpicks.)
When
Nilo saw me, I waved to him. “Where’s your pet?” I shouted as I walked briskly
towards him. I was waiting eagerly for a reply. I stopped in front of him.
“At
home. Mother said I shouldn’t bring it with me. She said it brings bad luck,”
he replied gloomily as if he and his pet were inseparable.
“Not
when you raced against me. That’s the first time you beat me,” I said.
He
was silent for a few minutes. Then he edged closer, as if making sure no one
else could hear what’s he’s going to say next. Totpik obviously heard our conversation,
stopped munching for a moment and strained his neck to listen to us.
“Yes,
my carabao did run alright but I had that feeling in my gut I was floating. My
carabao and me were lifted off the ground,” Nilo said nervously. He was
shaking. His voice toned down in a manner of one who realized that something
indeed happened and could hardly believe it. He didn’t want Totpik to hear what
he wanted to say. He might be branded a tikalon (boastful). And then I
heard somebody called Totpik from a distance. I turned and saw two other boys,
Bugok and Amay, who were a few years older than me, beckoning Totpik to come to
them.
I
turned to Nilo. Speechless, I began to feel suspicious. Not that I believed
Nilo was lying. I harbored a feeling that black bird had something to do with
it. I knew Nilo could not beat me in a race of carabaos, not in a hundred years.
I felt cheated. I suddenly felt shortness of breath, something crawling on my
feet, up towards my neck and the air becoming dry and chill and my eyes were heavy,
making me drowsy, lifting my feet towards the lonok where the leaves were
waiting and eager to enfold me in its arms because dusk had come and darkness
started to claim its own…
Something
snapped. I turned my back on Nilo and hurriedly left without so much as a goodbye.
I
didn’t know what came over me in my encounter with Nilo at the plaza. That
boyhood friend of mine really had me at my wit’s end every time I was with him.
As old folks said, he has a stronger dungan (?). I kept on walking, my
mind heavy of the scene of the race where I felt cheated. I let my feet carry
me where they wanted to go. From the plaza, I traversed the beaten path through
the middle of the grassy field beside the baseball field (besbolan),
where giant ipil-ipil trees (agho) grew abundantly, their branches
swaying tonight.
I
passed by the chapel (kapelya) fenced in by thorny bougainvillea plants
so thick you couldn’t get through it. The harder you try, the deeper the thorns
bite into your flesh. The chapel yard had huge trees planted on it: the nara,
the acacia and the kobe trees. On the north side of the chapel stood the Balay-Bakasyonan
(Vacation House) of the hacienda owners. On the south side were the ruins of an
ancient sugar mill, its stones still clinging to each other, a part of a broken
wall or rampart or what remained of it, ending on the fallen tower on one side,
where a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception was
placed, transforming the site into we called the grotto. We used to crawl in
the nooks and niches of the ruins and played hide-and-seek (panaguay),
notwithstanding various incoherent stories told by old folks that the old sugar
mill was used by the Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Each time a
story was told about these ruins, new versions came out.
The
chapel had a pointed roof as seen on the facade. During a full moon and clear
sky, you could see moonbeams striking the roof as if a bridge from nowhere just
appeared linking heaven and earth, and angels would descend flying, flapping
their wings, sparkling in the moonlight. I thought then that angels lived in
the chapel but wondered why we were so afraid to enter the chapel grounds at
night, let alone sleep inside when we boys decided to test the limits of our
courage.
But
tonight the moon was invisible, or rather, dark clouds hid the moon and slowly,
ever so slowly the clouds moved across the face of the darkening sky. And stars
were like brilliant stones, emerging one by one from the gathering darkness.
I turned
left and kept on walking, forgetting that I already passed our house. Mother
would be looking for me, wondering where I would have gone looking for spiders.
My hand had a mind of its own and instinctively felt for the match box in my
pocket, ready to put the spiders inside when I caught one. My feet continued to
walk on, dragging me along with an invisible force pulling me towards the
village school where kapok trees lined both sides of the road. I didn’t know
exactly where my feet would carry me, but I did know where the road would lead
me – to Ismael’s house.
The
road to the village school – St. Francis of Assisi Elementary School – looked
like a ribbon of faded light in the gathering darkness punctuated by twinkling
starlights in the sky. Cicadas and crickets started to spew out a cacophony of
shrill sounds, each one trying to outdo each other to get the attention of
passers-by. On both sides of the road stood a row of ancient kapok (ceiba) trees, one tree facing
another in a pair, with their branches arching overhead, gripping each other in
a tight embrace. They formed some kind of one long arched tunnel in a dark
passageway, with the fading light barely passing through the spaces between the
thick foliage. The village school stood at the end of these double rows of
kapok trees connected by a concrete bridge to the road which turned east to Tyo
Berto’s house.
I
walked briskly on the long, straight road. It has been said since time
immemorial that darkness hides all vile creatures of the night. To a
twelve-year old boy, no manner of assurance could assuage the fear of the bagat
(?) in which aswang (witches) could play evil tricks on you, leading to
your destruction. You would hear something whispered in your ears, something
seductive, something pleasurable, something ominous, that would lead to
forgetfulness, to getting around in circles, endlessly wandering, walking on a
path of black roses, ending seeing a coffin blocking your way on the road. And
to escape this evil madness, you have to take your shirt or dress off and put
it back again inside out. Shades of the devil biting his tail!
I
looked behind my back from time to time, to assure myself no evil creatures of
the night were stalking me. None behind me, I said to myself, but when I
turned to face the road, dark figures loomed at a distance. Oh, it’s the branches
of kapok trees swaying low, I thought. But it’s getting bigger every second!
My feet, if I still remembered it, instinctively carried me to stand motionless
behind a large trunk of a dead kapok tree, hiding my body. I smelled something
like burning sulfur, heavy and dissonant in the moist evening air. I couldn’t
help imagining, in my puerile mind, all sorts of monstrous creatures appearing suddenly, lurking in every
bush and corner of the road, ready to devour me any time. Feeling a bit dizzy
in this kapokian (?) twilight, I had totally forgotten the reason why I
chose this particular time to go to the little house by the creek (sa higad
sapa).
It’s
only in my mind, I kept on repeating, saying to myself,
trying to convince myself that there was nothing on the road but dusts and
pebbles and mud. But it was a lie I didn’t know was a lie. What do you call it?
More like cognitive dissonance? My other self said, it’s untrue and you
better take a peep. Giving in, from behind the dead trunk of the kapok
tree, I peeped and looked ahead at the road. The dark figures were still there,
becoming larger every second, the shapes blurred by moving shadows formed by
moonlight. Am I hallucinating? I thought. Is this one of my visions,
similar to the one I saw during that unfortunate race with Nilo?
Legs
shaking and hands trembling, I decided to go back, to run as fast as I could,
back to where I was minutes ago, and to the safety of our house. Mother would
be happy then. This was a bagat, I finally admitted. So did I ran, as
fast as my feet would carry me, as if I had never run like this before in my
twelve years of life living in the hacienda; it was all the whole earth for me.
Run, Junior, run. Your life depends on it. I heard that voice again. I’m
running, just leave me alone, I cried silently, no sounds came out from my
mouth, and the only sound I heard was the throbbing of my heart.
I
saw our house just ahead, its silhouette looming on the distance, combined with
the shadows of kapok trees, a montage of roof, wall, leaves, branches, and
trunks. A hundred feet more, and…
Dalagan,
dasiga (run faster)! I heard from smeone behind, unmistakenly a
human voice, male. Dasiga gid (run even faster)! I jumped to the side of
the road, more surprised than feeling scared, without even bothering to look at
whoever was running or who was it he’s running from. And then I saw there were
three of them, running with all their might, as I stood behind a kapok tree. I
saw something dropped on the road, two or three pieces, from the last one
running, obviously smaller than the first two running ahead of him. And farther
away, I heard a shout, Mga lilintian kamo! (?).
It was
the voice of Tyo Jose, whose house was located at the end of the road, beside
the bridge before the village school. He was running after those three, angry
and with a vengeance! I could not have been mistaken. The last one running was
Totpik and the other two boys were Bugok and Amay. I saw the three of them
earlier at the plaza. And I recalled they beckoned Totpik to join them. They
had hatched a sinister plan, done only at night, especially when the moon was
out. A mischief only youth could carry out, steal somebody’s Indian mangoes or
bananas or guavas at night.
I
picked the Indian mangoes that were dropped on the road. I started to walk
towards home, but my feet opted otherwise. I told you they had a mind of their
own tonight. My feet traced back the road towards Ismael’s house.
I found
Ismael beside the creek, standing watchfully in front of a guava tree. The tree
looked like a black sentinel guarding the cirujano’s
house tonight. Watching from a distance, I saw him looking intently at the
branches of the tree, as if waiting for something or someone to appear. At a
certain point in time, I saw the tree grow tall and large, leaves expanding in
all directions, transforming into one giant shadow, first in the shape of a
human head, then in the form of one huge flapping wing, embracing Ismael, and
then the house, and I saw it’s coming for me as well, run my feet, I shouted, for
heaven’s sake, run, but those two feet of mine were planted firmly on the
ground. And then time stopped.
The
scene unraveled before me. Shades of kama-kama (goblin) twisting his ears! The
giant wing slowly changed into a huge bird, that
bird again, feathers and beak and claws gradually took shape in a distinct
pattern. When the transformation was complete, the bird had one fiery eye
turned towards me, shrieking loudly, moistening the air with a heavy tang of
guava. Then suddenly, a silver razor popped out into existence, cut the bird in
two with one clean slicing movement. The blade shot upwards, came swooping down
and finished the job by cutting the rest of the bird into tiny pieces. Quelling
the panic that swelled within me, I helplessly let the grotesque vision run its
inevitable end, like a horror movie shown for a lone audience. What had I done
to deserve this unimaginable horror, that a man couldn’t be able to keep his
sanity, much less a boy cowering in fear? The visions I had before of labaha
(razor), guavas, wing and bird all combined into a tapestry of horrors,
tinkering or playing with my fears. What’s the meaning of all these? What’s all
the more incredible was that they encroached into my version of reality.
Looking
back and with the benefit of hindsight, what rules and principles of science
can ever explain the event that happened that night? If it was beyond physics, hyperdimensional
physics, then could it still be explained, by some supernatural means, by a
process beyond our ken? Was it really supernatural? Was it deemed only
supernatural because we have no scientific proofs or evidence to prove it?
Time
resumed its forward march and I fell on my knees. After a moment the equal of
eternity, I saw a figure standing in front of me. He extended a calloused hand.
“Are
you looking for me?” Ismael asked, helping me up from the moist earth.
“Yes,”
my voice quivered in the darkness, hardly audible. “I saw you standing beside
the guava tree. And suddenly the tree grew tall and large and sucked you and
your house. One moment, you and your house were all gone, and in the next,
you’re here as if nothing happened.”
Ismael
kept quiet. Why the silence, tell me why,
I preferred to ask myself, instead of the boy in front of me. His silence was
deafening. If silence had colors, his was totally black, blacker than the dark
that enveloped us, dimly lit my moonlight.
What
were you doing there beside the tree, anyway?” I regained my composure, shook
off the fear I displayed a while ago.
“Oh
that, I was waiting for someone,” he said at last, in his characteristic way of
stating the obvious. “Father said I’m to wait for the hermit here.”
“Wait
for who?”
“The
hermit of the creek,” Ismael said, trying to sound nonchalant. “He comes here
once a year. When he couldn’t, he sends a messenger.”
“The
creek hermit? You said he’s dead. He was drowned when he swam after that
strange booklet you showed me.”
“Yes
and no. He’s dead alright…”
Ismael
stopped talking. He leaned closer towards me, and in a whisper, said, “He came
back, resurrected. He’ll send a bird, all black, to bring something. I wonder
when it’s going to come. It’s getting dark already. I might have missed it.”
At
the mention of a bird, the first part of his revelation escaped my attention. The
rest did not so much strained my incredibility as it piqued my curiosity. The
bird was all I had in mind.
“A
bird? You mean like the one I saw in your closet? And what would it bring?”
“I
don’t know, father said it brings either good fortune or bad luck. It depends,”
he said, his voice back to normal again. But I discerned he harbored something
that he wouldn’t want me to know. For now.
“But
it’s just a bird, how could it probably bring good fortune or bad luck,” I
protested, feeling incredulously foolish. I was falling into his world, I was
being enchanted, I was trapped between two versions of reality. Despite what I had
just witnessed tonight.
“It’s
not just a bird,” Ismael said. In a hushed voice, again he whispered, “it’s the
tinhab,” putting his right forefinger
in front of his lips. “The bird can trap anyone’s fears in the bottle, as it
did with mine.” The sacred name was muttered, and a cold puff of air ruffled my
hair, blew into Ismael’s, swayed the branches and leaves of the guava tree,
shook the house and disturbed the water of the creek, ripples sparkling under
the light of a thousand stars, reflecting the silent face of the waxing moon
occasionally marred by marching clouds.
My
cognitive dissonance just ran deep. Reality and fantasy had merged and I didn’t
know one from the other. I could not discern the difference if there was any
difference at all.
-ooo-
Chapter 3
The tinhab. It’s the first time I heard about it. And my life revolved around it for a few days. I couldn’t shake it off. A secret
word has power, much more a name reeking of mystery, spoken of by one even more
mysterious.
One night after supper, I
asked Father about the mysterious tinhab.
He looked at me with a stare that said you better forget it. I knew better then
than pursue the subject further.
As I was about to leave, I heard him say, “Don’t ever attempt to catch a tinhab. It would make your wish come true.
That’s the good part. The bad part is it also bloats your fears out of
proportion.” That said, Father went out of the house, down the bamboo steps and
onto the yard (lagwerta). When I glanced upwards, I saw myriads of stars (bituon)
in the sky flooded with moonlight. Lured by the twinkling lights in the
heavens, I followed Father outside.
“You
said the tinhab could heighten my
fears. What if I have no fears, I mean, what if I fear nothing?” I asked. The
words came out spontaneously. Unconsciously, I spoke about my fears without me
knowing how I thought about them.
Father
turned to face me. “I will tell you a story, later. When you’re ready to hear
it.” He might have guessed what I had felt that night. Father looked up the sky,
moved his lips as if he’s silently counting the stars. Literally. I followed
his gaze heavenwards, and saw up there familiar groups of stars I came to know
during the endless sessions of going with him to the cane station.
Usually,
the sky was clear, a canvass of black sprinkled with brilliant specks of light,
like diamonds on display. And I could see the stars; they looked like one was
the same as the rest. If you saw one, you had seen them all. Later, I knew each
star is different, each distinct, heralding its existence to an observer who
has the power to tell the difference. From a book of stars borrowed from the
village school, I was able to identify many bright stars and the shapes they form
in the sky. The Milky Way with its unique signature at whose center lies the
black hole named Sagittarius A, devouring anything in its path, that not even
light could escape. The end of existence. I wondered then whether it was a
dragon that could not be satiated. The Orion and its belt of three stars: Alnitak,
Alnilam and Mintaka, said to be the template for the three huge pyramids of Giza
in Egypt. As above so below. I knew where to look for the Big Dipper. The myth
about it I learned to love so much. Polaris the north star in Ursa Minor. And I
could not miss Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. I could name all the
planets in the solar system, in order of increasing distance from the sun, when
Pluto was still a bona fide planet. Venus when visible becomes the evening and
the morning star. I could trace clearly the shape of the different constellations
hanging in the cosmos, the zodiac even. I knew I was born under the influence
of Aquarius. And sometimes, I had the fortune to witness the bright path of a falling
star (bulalakaw) blazing across the night sky. And often I made a wish. But
not the kind of wish I wished I had had about the tinhab.
Standing
there under the evening sky, I saw Father’s face, silhouetted against the light
coming from a sputtering oil lamp in the balcony. The hacienda transformed him into a silent laborer, more like a prisoner
in the cane fields. During the milling season when school days were over, Father
would wake me up in the wee hours of the morning to ride with him to the cane
fields. There, I saw his body strained as he shouldered the heavy bundles of canes
and loaded them into a waiting cart fastened to the carabao’s neck. I would feed
the animal fresh hay (kumpay) cut from the upper stalks of sugar canes,
to keep it still while father did his back-breaking labor. His was a life I knew
was hard, for we were a family; we shared in the hardships of hacienda life. However,
during that time, I hadn’t put much thought to it, nor put emotion into the description
of cane labor. I could hardly imagine that time that his dreams were unfufilled,
his protests silent, but his faith was in God and his happiness in the family.
But
even then, as I remembered it, his haggard face exuded a sense of confidence
born out of a long struggle of hauling canes in the field. It made him looked strong
and firm, at least he was to the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. I hadn’t seen
him squirm in pain, much less cry, not even once, and if he did, perhaps he cried
silently, keeping the pain inside of him. But on the outside his visage betrayed the suffering and the sacrificies: The
wavy lines and the wrinkles, the black dots and the skin the color of bronze,
they showed them all. The sheer will to survive, feed a family and live the
next day all combined to shake the fears away from his life. I wondered if Father
kept a bottle with his fears trapped inside. And it would be a gift of hindsight
to know what colors his fears displayed.
Father
turned and stared back at me. “Fear lurks in the heart of every man. You must
have courage to face it. You must remember that, my boy.” Father tapped my
head, mumbled something about fear and the tinhab,
turned around, paused as if he had something more to say, changed his mind,
then went back inside the house. I wondered when he’s going to tell the story
he promised. How could I know when I’m ready, if I’m ready at all?
I
wanted to follow him, and asked another question but decided against it. The story
might be about the tinhab. Was there a story of how it came to be? Could the
enchanted bird grant wishes, like in that story I read about a certain genie of
the lamp? What if you wish to banish all
your fears away? If what they said about the bird is true, then it could be
done. As an afterthought, an idea slowly crept into my mind, took shape and
begged to be carried out.
I
went to Nilo’s house the next day and I brought something. He was sitting on
the bamboo floor in the balcony, his hands cupped his face, his elbows propped
on a dilapidated wooden bench. He was
staring absently at his pet bird in the yard. He had let the bird out from its
makeshift cage and tied one leg of the avian to a post with a length of string.
The bird was feeding on rice grains that Nilo had sprinkled onto the yard.
“Why
the long face?” I asked him. He didn’t seem eager to see me. He didn’t even
look at me. Stepping closer to the bird, I inspected it. The bird was all
black, except for the eyes. I didn’t notice them when I first saw it. The eyes
were as white as powdered milk.
“You
said the bird brings bad luck. I’ll buy it, if you want to sell it,” I made the
offer, without telling him the reason why. I hatched my plan last night when
Father told me about the tinhab, corroborating what Ismael had revealed a
couple of days ago.
I turned
to look at Nilo in the porch. At this moment, he stood up, idly lifting his
whole body, and stepped outside. He walked up to his pet, squatted, and started
poking at it with a kagingking (a thin long stick of a bamboo plant cut near
the tip). The bird made short hops away from the stick.
Nilo
paused, stopped poking at the bird, and stood up. He turned to me.
“How
much?” he asked me after a moment of silence.
I had
brought my alkansiya (piggy bank) made of cut bamboo trunk, sun-dried, with a
slit big enough to slip in a one-peso coin. I shook it; the coins jingled inside. I offered it to Nilo. I didn’t know
what Mother’s reaction would be if she had known. She would surely give me a mouthful
of her maternal advice concerning this hasty decision to part with my hard-earned
money. But I couldn’t help it, any more than Mother can, given the
circumstances.
Nilo’s
eyes bulged wide at the tingling of the coins. It’s an offer he couldn’t afford
to pass up. “Okay,” he said and the purchase was made. I gave him the alkansiya.
He peeked at the slit as if making sure there were coins inside. I saw his face
lighten up. So happy was he at the exchange made that he even forgot to ask me
how much money I deposited inside. I tried my best to contain my excitement. The tinhab was mine at last.
That
very night, following my hunch, I got a small bottle, placed it inside the cage
and prodded the bird to strike it with its beak. It poked at the bottle a few
times, making sounds like the ticking of a clock. Then I made my wish in
silence. I knew then I was ready to face the labaha.
The
day I dreaded most came. It was a fine sunny morning. The boys came swarming to
Tyo Berto’s place by the side of the creek, even those who had already
undergone the rite last year. They were there to assist us in the rite of passage.
They would munch fresh guava leaves to extract the juice and apply this, mixed
with one’s saliva, to the freshly cut wound. The juice would serve as an antibiotic
against possible infection. They were there also to watch, to see how our faces
squirmed in pain. Later, they would taunt and make fun of us if we showed as
much a sign of cowardice as Nestor who, last year, went running away from the
cutting block when he saw the labaha
being sharpened in front of him. After that humiliating experience, he had been
called a tilawit (coward) since then.
Tyo
Berto, holding a black wooden box, came out of the house, followed by Ismael, who
brought two small benches. Their faces were solemn. There was something odd in their
countenance that day I just couldn’t figure out.
We
all proceeded in a file down to the creek, to the promontory which jutted out
into the water. Sitting on the benches, the cirujano
and son began to prepare the paraphernalia. The big boys assigned us numbers
which told us when to go to the cutting block fashioned from a piece of wood that
came from a branch of that guava tree by the creek.
The
rite began with Bobot the first in the list. The big boys prodded him to
proceed. Bobot gave a wink, boldly went to the cutting block and, without
fanfare, dropped his faded short pants.
Tyo
Berto’s lips moved. He’s mumbling something, an oracion, no doubt. Ismael opened a black box and gave his father
the labaha and a piece of wood that
served as a light mallet. Bobot stood still, his head at an angle gazing
upwards, pretending to be oblivious to what was being done in front of him.
After inspecting that everything was ready, Tyo Berto raised the mallet with his
right hand. He struck the labaha lightly, thus cutting the
foreskin with one quick blow. For an instant, everybody held their breath. Then
Bobot gave a loud cry. Blood came out. Somebody spat out munched guava leaves.
Murmuring another oracion, Tyo Berto
finished the task by wrapping Bobot’s wound with a piece of torn, clean cotton
cloth. Somebody pushed Bobot toward the creek and he jumped into it. Lining up
by the bank, we strained our necks to see Bobot swimming to the other side.
Unexpectedly,
a small pool of water in the creek displayed the color of blood. Flowing downstream
from the promontory down to Tyo Berto’s house past the guava tree, the
red-blood pool of water turned left into a narrow gap where a cluster of banana
plants throve on both sides of the creek, wound its way down to a three-trunk
bamboo bridge which straddled the creek across the road to the village school,
continued to flow under the concrete bridge on the highway, crisscrossed the
endless stretches of fishponds beyond, and disappeared into the sea.
Then
my turn came...
I felt
unafraid…as the mallet struck the razor blade. I thought of happy things...as
the labaha cut the skin. After all I had made a wish with the tinhab. Or
so I thought…
My mind
drifted. To an age I was smaller…to a time I was 6 or 7 years old…to a place I barely
recalled the hacienda was like. I was amazed at myself, how I was able to remember
such things so early in my childhood.
Oblivious
to what was in front of me, I saw the old plaza in my mind. The scene was as
clear as images on crystal. And my vision was as vivid as if it happened
seconds ago.
The old
plaza was once located on a piece of land situated on the west side of the
highway. It had already been in ruins for a long time by the time I was born. Its
days of glory was over. But still I could hear the sound of guitars and drums
and violins rising to a beautiful music during the nights when the village
folks held public dances (bayle).
I saw
a boy playing on a raised square platform of broken concrete, invaded by wild
vines and creeping grasses and wild flowers, running in glee, chasing dragonflies
and butterflies, running round and round the old plaza in ruins, running back
to the house where I was raised as a baby, our old house, a wooden structure
with the nipa roof, standing beside the house of the village blacksmith, Tyo
Lope, where I used to go visit his shop full of iron instruments and implements:
trowels (guna), hoes (sadol), bolos (espading), spades (pala) which he
fabricated in his forge for the use of laborers working in the canefields; the
anvil, the iron hammer, and the air blower were my favorite playthings when I
did visit Tyo Lope’s forge, where my friends and I, sometimes collected the scraps of metal lying in
the area and then sold our collection to a passing metal buyer (manugsalsalon)
for a few pesos which was more than enough for us boys to make us happy for a
few days, eating white rabbit (candy) to
our hearts’ content.
-ooo-
“You should have stayed a
little longer that night. You should have seen the tinhab,” Ismael told me. We
were walking down the grassy path towards the creek a week after the rite of
circumcision. I walked with had an awkward gait, being too careful not to aggravate
the wound.
“The
tinhab? You did catch the tinhab?”
I repeated, more unbelieving than feeling surprised.
“Yes,”
Ismael replied, “it perched on top of the guava tree, a few minutes after you
left. It was easy to do. The tinhab
was meant to be caught.” Ismael was munching a piece from a stick of sugar cane.
“But,”
I stammered, “Nilo had the bird, he caught it from a branch of that guava tree.
He even made a pet out of it.” I felt incredulous after what happened. I didn’t
tell him the purchase I made. If Ismael had caught the tinhab, then what was the
bird I bought from Nilo with my alkansiya? Shades of the engkanto under the
balete tree!
“Oh that
one,” replied Ismael. You and Nilo fell for it. “It’s a black bird alright, but it’s not the tinhab. It’s a look-alike sent to fool
those with malevolent purposes in mind,” Ismael revealed. “You could not fool
the hermit of the creek. Father tried once but failed,” he added solemnly. He
walked ahead of me, taking slow, measured steps.
I
could no longer contain the hidden disbelief inside me, which slowly diminished
as the veracity of Ismael’s words took over. I tugged at his loose T-shirt. “If
you had caught the tinhab, what happened
to it?” It was a whisper in fact, as if I didn’t want to hear what Ismael would
finally reveal. He had this habit of stating facts in bits and pieces, unraveling
the mystery as if he’s unwinding a skein of yarn very, very slowly.
Ismael
stopped and turned to face me. “Why, it died after granting my wish. But it
will resurrect. Another one will come back again next year,” he said. I saw his
lips formed into a shape, the kind which made you wonder whether it’s a smile
or a frown.
“You
made a wish?” I started to shake, feeling none the wiser after Ismael’s revelations.
“Yes,”
Ismael said. He got something from his pocket. It was a small bottle with a
blue haze swirling inside. He raised the bottle for me to see clearly. Now this
time he was obviously smiling. “I made a wish for you. See, this is the color
of your fears.”
-Ω-
