In April Nights Past

Chapter 02

The only link to the memory of this visit who knew of what happened thereafter were my parents and grandparents. And of my grandparents, only my maternal Lola had survived the years. Of friends I had but a select few and none that lasted long enough. Efforts to maintain these friendships were made, of course – we all did – but young adults had never been ones to keep in touch for a long time with anybody at all even if they promised to. The terrible postal system of the country didn’t help at all. Sure, they would write you once or twice, hesitant, almost tentative notes that became shorter and shorter with each passing month until the letters finally dwindle to a stop as they moved on with their lives. That was how it was in Pueblo del Maria Angeles and Pueblo Maria Victoria, and elsewhere too, because there really was nothing more to talk about. There were just too many new things coming along that had to be turned to the best account and advantage and pretty soon, everything worth remembering were no longer worth it and pushed aside by fresh and better ones.

The travel from the airport to Maria Angeles was bearable but, among the other innumerable miseries I had to endure, quite bumpy and terribly dusty. The roads of Samar were anything but level; the Koreans quarried ossified corals and compacted them with sand and clay to form the roadbeds and so the air was often dense with white powder that latched to the skin during the dry days of summer.
As I bumped with every other passenger in the bus. I strove to visualize as best as I could what little I knew of my grandparents' plantation. I knew it was one of the big plantations in that part of the province, and had always been noted for its hospitality toward its visitors and benevolence toward its tenants. I had a fleeting vision of a land of fiestas, of music and dancing and laughter, of tuba and pilipig - rice pounded flat - under a bright full moon during a cloudless night. There was a possibility of reality being completely different, of that I was certain. But I wasn’t bothered by it. Somehow, having my own impression of the place was an important part of accepting my fate.
I survived the ordeal of the travel but by the time I finally got off the bus, my skin was itchy with the extra layer of white dust it had accumulated thick enough to grow root crops. I must have looked terrible. And to make matters worse my stop was unimaginably situated in a lonely stretch of road outside of any distinguishable  civilization.
I had always been afraid of places that would require me to wait for a jeepney that somehow found its way through the dusty road only once a day. Even in Manila, they were already creations that were difficult to understand - the empty ones would often drive by when you were still too far away to get the driver’s attention.
My fears were baseless, it would turn out, when I saw Lolo Pidyo waiting there for me with a cart harnessed to a karabao. One glance was all it took and I knew that he had been waiting since dawn. It was well past noon.
He was looking much as I remembered him from a one-time visit he made except that his hair had turned from black to white, and I think he had grown thinner.
“Lolo!” I yelled and waved at him. There is always that irresistible urge to wave at people after a long journey.
Lolo Pidyo pulled on his hat and walked over to where I stood at the edge of the road.  He had been tanned by years and years of working out in the fields and, from what I remembered, during working days went about in faded clothes with stains that no amount of washing could remove.
“I’m glad to see you, apo! He said quite cordially. It had been many, many years since anyone had called me that. Then, he added “your Lola had been pestering me to wait for you here since yesterday,” he said.
I thought of my mother and laughed. It was hereditary after all.
I reached forward and held his hand to my forehead so Lolo Pidyo could give me his blessing.
“You've grown since I saw you last,” he chuckled and asked when he saw the back pack and the can of biscuits, “Where are your things, you didn’t forget the rest of them in the bus, did you?”
“This is all that Mother allowed me to bring,” I explained as he helped me with the can of biscuits. It was a pasalubong - a welcoming gift - that my mother insisted I brought with me.
No comment was made about my appearance, though. My grandfather was too polite for that.