To Catch a Gust of Wind [COMPLETE]

Chapter 3 - Silay after Dark [#8]

It's getting dark when they left El Ideal. But not without first ordering a takeout of their favorite thin-crusted piaya and napoleones. Rafael suggested they walk the distance to the waiting area to get the bus home. Thea Marie agreed. A stretch of the legs would be soothing to the body after spending an hour sitting at the bakery.

They walked without saying anything. Thea Marie held onto Rafael's arms while they walked the length of Rizal street. After that brief exchange of words in the cemetery, Rafael at first felt inclined to go home in a hurry. Taking a stroll through downtown Silay after dark gave him time and space to think, refresh his mind. Not that he wanted to share his feelings with the woman walking beside him. Not yet.

They remained silent while their thoughts roamed free.

Rafael had not seen Silay for many years. When he came back home two weeks ago, he didn't stay long enough for a quick tour of the city. There's so much to see of the place, Thea Marie had told him one time.

What was new in Silay that he had missed all these years, working in Manila, far away from this place, this city which was often called the 'Paris of Negros'? Googling Silay, he read of the development which had taken place in the city since then, development that saw the construction of the new airport, Bacolod-Silay International. It contributed a lot to the local economy, creating jobs, establishing new businesses and attracting more local tourists to the city. More conspicuous to the rise of new Silay were the launching of popular fast-food chains, like Jollibee and McDonald's, as if progress is measured in the coming of popular brands to the city.

But the Silay of his heart was the city he came to know while he was studying in Silay Intitute, spending four years there before he went to college in Manila. And he knew so little of it. For Rafael, Silay was a place which had been stuck in time. It never changed. Like the city's ancestral houses.

The city's heritage buildings were in contrast to the ordinary people whose names he didn't know and whom he met on the streets. The great ancestral houses that had remained standing during Rafael's time in Silay struck him with awe and wonder. What stories of love and romance, of sadness and tragedy, or of adventure and courage lurked in each corner of the antique houses? These ancient structures once housed the powerful and mighty men of the city in a time when sugar barons reigned supreme. In Rafael's time, the houses lay in disrepair, some of them even were said to be haunted, that children would not come near them, let alone stop to stare at them. The style and built of the structures evoked images of Spanish or American colonial architecture when the influence of Spain and America had lorded it over the place.

The ancestral houses once neglected and almost in ruins had made a comeback, thanks to the efforts of those who were lovers of culture and preservers of heritage. They were testaments to the lives of prominent clans who made Silay their home. The names of the hacienderos, of the rich and powerful, of the influentials and intellectuals, had arisen once again through the preservation of these precious heritage, putting Silay as a tourist destination on the map of Negros. These houses had become living museums with stories to tell: Gaston, Ledesma, Jalandoni, Locsin, Lacson, Hofileña, Golez, Gamboa, Severino, Lopez.

Silay, in Rafael's time, was a city in which he knew only a few by name and that included his circle of friends and acquaintances, most of whom were his classmates and teachers at the Institute. The only time he came to meet the people of the city, those ordinary people who, for him, became the face of Silay was when he walked to the bus station after school. They walked with him along Rizal street rushing to get home; he saw them standing under the canopy of the antiquated buildings that lined the streets and staring at passers-by; he watched them shout their wares in the public market; and his favorite nameless person was the one in the stall selling English superhero comics. These ordinary folks were all nameless to him, but their faces had become familiar, as if he knew them by heart, the emotion their images evoked in him when they smiled or shouted, seeing them every afternoon during school days. He saw them in the eyes of a high school student, struggling to get an education and carving a name for himself. He didn't want to become nameless.

However, you don't get to be intimate with people if you don't know their names. But then you are free. You are free when people don't know your name either...