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THE VINTAR SUITE
As a child I climbed trees, sitting motionless
For hours on a branch
And scared birds to death.
They cocked their heads and burst out in fright
Incredulous as I was
Before the dreaming world.
Later, bored by this pointless cruelty
I convinced myself that beauty
Has its place in a troubled world.
What else could possibly save me in this life?
Between twigs and small branches
A bird’s left wing--
Sometimes the bright yellow eye--
The vireo questioning who I was, what I was singing
In what strange language, what strange voice.
How was I to know what song?
The town drunks sang and danced all night near the Central School
Thrashing flower pots by the Presidencia and Paradise Inn.
Jose Rizal looked down from his perch of stone
And asked them to keep it down. The sky grew cold all night long.
The moon was hurting him.
Once at the old Vintar Academy, I remember pigeons
Scuffling overhead, at which our History teacher
Winked and quipped: “Oh, they’re just making love.”
Mr. Agpalza, I have a confession to make: After all these years
I have learned nothing! It brings tears to my eyes to realize
I’ve never learned from experience…
Who knows what music plays like an endless tape from memory?
Who knows where April showers came from,
Blowing speckled wings of yellow blossoms on the ground?
It’s too late now, but I can still see her in Vintar Dam,
Her hair and bare skin the bruised gardenias of late afternoons
Shining with the far-off shadows of Baton Bituen…
You know who you are, ading, but I don’t care.
I don’t blame you at all; neither can I blame anything.
As for the past, I have my memories, the rest be damned!
Remember the blaze of midsummer dusks that blinded us
By the river where women scrubbed themselves with pumice stone,
While we lay trembling behind waterlilies, hidden in the sand?
And chewing guava leaves, we spat at the sun, against the sharp,
Quick pain, the skin of incandescent noon that parted and bled
Before we could be whole again…
What would the river be without us swimming naked in ’53?
And how did the young girl drown, her long black hair like dead branches
Still floating in memory, in the cool shadows of an acacia tree?
Beyond town, past Margaay and Gabaldon
A lightning storm drove my father’s horse to break away
From rain and thunder, from the boy riding in flight also.
The cockfight fans roared for miles around, shook the bamboo rafters,
Broke hearts and home at every turn, and all that time I knew
Nothing of my grandfather who was one of them.
This is it. I am coming down, I thought in terror, but did not
As I gazed down the ruins of the old bell tower—no rope, no barrier
To keep one from falling, no one to catch the dead.
How does the town keep its memories otherwise—the past forgotten
Save those evenings at the town square: Moonlight Serenade,
The old refrain, the unguarded moments of the moon!
My dear friends, I know why the moon followed us all the way
To Gabaldon, then back again at dawn, cold and thirsty by Lola Petra’s Store.
It is not what you think, and I won’t tell you.
Don’t look at me. The neighbors’ dogs scared me more than ghosts. I am
Not wrong to write these lines. Whatever childhood loss we made,
The tears are yours and mine to shed.
In his more august years, years ago, Tata Oliong gave us radiance
From his lens. It is all we have, something to bring us back
Without getting lost.
I wonder how many made a vow to return. And almost did.
Frightened by memories and the long road back. All those summer days!
What tears and what dust!
Still I wonder if we’ll see it again, those nights of candies and sweetcakes
That were never in pictures—tupig and kalti at a friend’s house, by the town
Market, when summer came with the scent of fruits.
Columbina was crying behind Central School one day
Because the others, cold and heartless, called her names
And no one dared to face her tormentors.
If you heard a voice that cried to be left alone
Would you let mercy turn to stone? But Vintar has its fools just like
Any other place, and God help you if you beg otherwise.
Legend has it that the town’s name came from villagers who fell in line
Like a bad platoon—history tends to drift and dream
Under the bittaog where you pray to spirits and gnomes.
At a neighbor’s house, the chicken barely made a sound—
Not a squawk!--when a childhood friend caught it in a bamboo basket
And made Arroz Caldo for everyone!
We cranked their turntable and played scratchy ballads till it hurt,
Fumbled with nail-sized needles that skipped on Harry Belafonte
And all but ruined Pat Boone.
Every Monday, people came from upstream to buy soap, food, and
Other necessities. Every Monday at dawn, my parents walked for miles
Upstream so we can have soap, food, and other necessities.
My father gave me a Hohner Harmonica
And taught me nothing to play
But an orphan song.
Tata Kelly, a genial neighbor, had hands like sparrows, played
The harp like an angel, an exaltation of wings that soared and marveled
At the moment you died in his music…
You never heard a sweeter Clair de lune,
A favorite nocturne, a number he played many evenings so rapturous
Debussy himself would have swooned.
Meanwhile, at dusk the ancient campanile rang its vespers
To the town, to the beat of my grandmother’s voice
And athritic limbs.
Every evening, my uncle Ruben resurrected his demons
With a toast, each glass a terrible angel howling for manong Vicente,
His long-lost brother in America.
San Francisco del Monte! His voice rose and fell until dawn,
Flogged by his archangel, his nightly vigil back of the house,
For the good news that never came.
With my harmonica, I played a lousy ‘cumbanchero’
And sneaked with friends into the backyard for grapefruit and mango,
The golden pulp, like many a summer night, a sweet mystery.
How could I help myself? Some nights I saw how some dogs died
And disappeared. Shameless, I was in cahoots with dogeaters
Who made the best kilawen in my neighborhood!
A gaucherie to some, including relatives
Who scolded us to leave their kitchenware alone
Especially the drinking glasses that were always sparkling clean!
When I awoke, it was to see the world again as if for the first time
With my birds and trees and my mother gone to her early grave,
Her tomb at the edge of town, her star-speckled dome.
What do the stone angels know that we don’t, besides scaring us
To death on moonless nights? Their embrace is not one of death, I read
Somewhere years after she died. It left me wondering.
I thought she wore her sequins and saffron dress to match her fair skin.
I thought her beauty real, not invisible,
I thought she wasn’t dead or a ghost at all.
The brooch, the mother-of-pearl, “The Most Elegant Evening Mestiza
Dress” that stood in the picture frame and gathered dust
Since 1948—
The crescent moon, the leafy crown, her face removed from mine
Courtesy of Vintar’s Photo Art Studio and Laoag’s Fashion
Fairyland -- I later put them all away for a song.
Later, I realized the pungent tune wasn’t enough
And must come down
To play another place, another time.
And here I am, running past the school and the ancient bell tower,
Looking up at the old church choir, where as a child I stood on
The dark and dusty hardwood floor.
What happened to the rafters where our voices rang?
Years ago, the priest gave us estampitas for being good. Now the wood
Echoes nothing but dust and crumbling bricks.
Vintar, it is too late and too dark as it is! Can’t you see I like the beautiful
To blossom? I like to dream away! I like the Bislak River to carry me away
From this boyhood town!
Too long have I been drunk with longing!
Too long have I been dreaming of home! Sing me your pamulinawen
And I will sing you mine!
Don Pacis June 24, 2004
dpacis626@hotmail.com
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