The sun was salmon and hazy in
the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about Teang when
he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it to
its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father
to know. What he had to say was of serious import as it would mark a
climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought came
to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent
hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his
mother, Dodong’s grandmother.
I will tell it to him. I will
tell it to him.
The ground was broken up into
many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many slender soft
worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A
short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly over
it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air.
Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen,
and he said to himself he was not young any more.
Dodong unhitched the carabao
leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head to
look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the
animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it
land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests.
Dodong started homeward, thinking
how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He
was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already
was dark–these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man–he was a
man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by
nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do
anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the
thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he dismissed
it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on
walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang.
Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight
glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the
day.
Dodong tensed with desire and
looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
Dodong stripped himself and laid
his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. The he
went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not
long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home.
The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the low unvarnished
square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor
around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and
caked sugar.
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did
not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held them they
felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped
it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more,
but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents.
Dodong’s mother removed the
dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash them. She
walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes
out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he
had a sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing
all the housework alone.
His father remained in the room,
sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew. Dodong had
told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was
afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it.
Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be
afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father.
Dodong said while his mother was
out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he had to say, and
over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at
all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his
father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the
window, graying the still black temples of his father. His father looked old
now.
“I am going to marry Teang,”
Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently
and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense and cruel, and
Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was
uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him
without uttering anything.
“I will marry Teang,” Dodong
repeated. “I will marry Teang.”
His father kept gazing at him in
inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
“I asked her last night to marry
me and she said…yes. I want your permission. I… want… it….” There was impatient
clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference.
Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the
little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness.
“Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong resented his father’s
questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick impassioned easy
in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.
“You are very young, Dodong.”
“I’m… seventeen.”
“That’s very young to get married
at.”
“I… I want to marry…Teang’s a
good girl.”
“Tell your mother,” his father
said.
“You tell her, tatay.”
“Dodong, you tell your inay.”
“You tell her.”
“All right, Dodong.”
“You will let me marry Teang?”
“Son, if that is your wish… of
course…” There was a strange helpless light in his father’s eyes. Dodong did
not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he had
asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while he even
felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to
dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream….
Dodong stood in the sweltering
noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was still as a
tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the
house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at
all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to
compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was
giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not
want her to scream like that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder
madly if the process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they
gave birth, did not cry.
In a few moments he would be a
father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe, with strangeness. He
was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable…
“Your son,” people would soon be telling him. “Your son, Dodong.”
Dodong felt tired standing. He
sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his callused
toes. Suppose he had ten children… What made him think that? What was the
matter with him? God!
He heard his mother’s voice from
the house:
“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”
Suddenly he felt terribly
embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of his
youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no
properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman
shorts.
“Dodong,” his mother called
again. “Dodong.”
He turned to look again and this
time saw his father beside his mother.
“It is a boy,” his father said.
He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and
did not move. What a moment for him. His parents’ eyes seemed to pierce him
through and he felt limp.
He wanted to hide from them, to
run away.
“Dodong, you come up. You come
up,” he mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up
and stayed in the sun.
“Dodong. Dodong.”
“I’ll… come up.”
Dodong traced tremulous steps on
the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded
mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of
them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt
like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn
back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.
His father thrust his hand in his
and gripped it gently.
“Son,” his father said.
And his mother: “Dodong…”
How kind were their voices. They
flowed into him, making him strong.
“Teang?” Dodong said.
“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”
His father led him into the small
sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag with her
black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to
push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that feeling
of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be
demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child,
Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could not control
the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him
to me,” Dodong said.
Blas was not Dodong’s only child.
Many more children came. For six successive years a new child came along.
Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of
children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the
bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even if she
was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The
house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did
not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had
not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor,
Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong.
Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to
Dodong, but he was childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio,
would she have borne him children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot.
But she loved Dodong…
Dodong whom life had made ugly.
One night, as he lay beside his
wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired and
querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He w anted to
be wise about many things.
One of them was why life did not
fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken… after
Love.
Dodong would not find the answer.
Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make youth Youth.
Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house
humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen he came
home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and Teang and the
other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas’s steps, for he could not sleep
well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas
was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked
why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.
“You better go to sleep. It is
late,” Dodong said.
Blas raised himself on his elbow
and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.
Dodong did not answer and tried
to sleep.
“Itay …,” Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what
it was.
“I am going to marry Tona. She
accepted me tonight.”
Dodong lay on the red pillow
without moving.
“Itay, you think it over.”
Dodong lay silent.
“I love Tona and… I want her.”
Dodong rose from his mat and told
Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything was still and
quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.
“You want to marry Tona,” Dodong
said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that
would follow marriage would be hard…
“Yes.”
“Must you marry?”
Blas’s voice stilled with
resentment. “I will marry Tona.”
Dodong kept silent, hurt.
“You have objections, Itay?” Blas
asked acridly.
“Son… n-none…” (But truly, God, I
don’t want Blas to marry yet… not yet. I don’t want Blas to marry yet….)
But he was helpless. He could not
do anything. Youth must triumph… now. Love must triumph… now. Afterwards… it
will be life.
As long ago Youth and Love did
triumph for Dodong… and then Life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his
young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.
REFLECTION:
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