At War's End 1 The Dinner Party

At War's End 3 The Funeral

FATHER Sean O’Donovan, S.J., refused to say Mass or to bless the corpse. “Those who die by their own hand are beyond the pale of the Church,” he said firmly.

“Let us take him home,” Clara said. She asked me to make all the arrangements and not to mind the cost.

The rent for the hearse was clearly exorbitant. I bargained feebly and then agreed. Victor, Zacarias, Enrique, Apolonio and myself were to travel in the Packard. Honesto and Clara had driven to Manila in a new Buick.

The hearse moved at a stately 30 kilometers per hour while a scratchy dirge poured out of it at full volume. The Garcias followed in their Buick and we brought up the rear.

The rains of July had transformed the brown, dusty fields of Bulacan and Nueva Ecija into muddy fields. We passed small, nut-brown men, following a beast and a stick that scored the wet earth; dithering birds swooped down to pluck the crickets and worms that were turned up by the plow.

The beat of sprung pebbles against the fender of the car marked our passage.

The yard of the big house was already full of people. In the sala, a bier had been prepared. The wives of inquilinos were all in black. Large yellow tapers gave off a warm, oily smell that commingled with the attar of the flowers, producing an odor that the barrio folk called the smell of death.

Then the local worthies arrived, led by the congressman of the district, the governor of the province, the mayor of Jaen, the commander of the Scout Rangers who was leading a campaign against the Huks, with their wives and retainers. They were all on intimate teams with Honesto and Clara. Except for the colonel who was in full combat uniform, they were dressed in sharkskin and two-toned shoes. They wore their hair tightly sculpted with pomade against their skulls and on their wrists and fingers gold watches and jeweled rings glistened.

They all knew that Honesto had political ambition. It was not clear yet which position he had his sights on.

With the death of Virgilio, the immense wealth of the Serranos devolved on Clara and on Honesto and on their 5-year old son, Jose Jr. Both the Nacionalista and Liberal Parties have been dangling all manner of bait before Honesto. Now, there will be a scramble.

Honesto shook hands with everyone, murmuring acknowledgments of their expressions of grief but secretly assessing their separate motives. Clara was surrounded by the simpering wives of the politicians; like birds they postured to show their jewels to best advantage.

They only fell silent when Father Francisco Santander, the parish priest, came to say the prayer for the dead and to lead the procession to the Church where Virgilio’s mortal remains would be displayed on a catafalque before the altar before interment in the south wall side by side with Don Pepe’s.

I left the sala to join the crowd in the yard. My parents were there with the Serranos’ and our tenants.

There was a palpable tension in the air. A number of the kasamas had been seized by the Scout Rangers, detained and tortured, so that they may reveal the whereabouts of Carding. They were frightened. From what I heard from my parents, most of the tenants distrusted Honesto who they felt was using the campaign against the Huks to remove those he did not like. The inquilinos were helpless because Clara was now completely under the sway of Honesto.

I walked home. When I got there, Restituto, our caretaker, very agitated, took me aside and whispered. “Carding is in the house. He has been waiting for you since early morning. I kept him from view in your bedroom.” He looked at me, uncertain and obviously frightened. “What shall we do?

“Leave it to me. But do not tell anyone—not even my parents. He shall be gone by the time they return.” I put my arm around Restituto’s shoulder to reassure him.

Carding wheeled when I walked in, pistol at the ready. He was dressed in army fatigues and combat boots. A pair of Ray-Ban glasses dangled on his shirt. He put the pistol back in its holster.

“You shouldn’t be here. There are soldiers all around.”

“They will not come here. They are too busy in the hacienda,” Carding said.

The shy, spindly boy that I knew during the war had grown into a broad muscular man. His eyes were hooded and cunning.

“I have to talk to you. Did Virgilio leave a last will and testament?”

“Not that I know of. He left a notebook of poems.”

“What is that?” Carding demanded, startled.

“A notebook of verses with the title ‘Down There.’ You are mentioned in the poem. But the police has it,” I answered.

“Did it say anything about the disposition of the hacienda in case of his death?”

“I did not have a chance to read it closely but I doubt it. Aren’t such things always done up in legal language? There certainly is nothing like that in the notebook. What are you leading up to?”

Carding sighed. “In 1943; Virgilio came to see me. He had heard from Honesto that I have been talking to the tenants about their rights. Virgilio wanted to know himself the bases of my claims. We had a long talk. I told him about the inevitability of the triumph of the peasant class. Despite his wide reading, he had not heard of Marx, Lenin, or Mao Tse Tung. He was visibly shaken. But when I told him of the coming calamity that will bring down his class, he asked ‘What can I do?’ and I said: ‘Give up. Give up your land, your privilege and your power. That is the only way to avoid the coming calamity’.

“He apparently did not have any grasp of social forces. He kept talking of individual persons—tenants that he had known since he was a child, inquilinos who had been faithful to his father until their old age, and all that nonsense. ‘The individual does not matter,’ I yelled at him. ‘Only the class called the proletariat.’

“But even without understanding, he said that he will leave the hacienda to the tenants because it was probably the right thing to do. But Clara should not be completely deprived of her means of support. It was exasperating, talking to him, but he did promise that in his will the tenants would get all.

“Obviously, he changed his mind.” Carding said in a low voice. “That is too bad because now we have to take his land by force.”

I was speechless. In university, talk of revolution was all the rage but this was my first encounter with a man who could or would try to make it happen.

“When I get back the notebook, I will study it to see if there is any statement that will legally transfer the Serrano hacienda to you and the other tenants,” I said weakly.

“I will be in touch,” Carding said. He walked out the door.

The day of the funeral was clear and hot. Dust devils rose from the road. In the shadow of the acacia trees in the churchyard, hundreds of people of all ages crowded to get away from the sun. Inside the church, even the aisles were packed.

“Introibo ad altare Dei” Father Santander intoned.

“Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,” I answered.

The mass for the dead began.

My heart was racing because I knew the reason for Virgilio’s suicide. But nobody would care, save me. Ω