SHOES OF THE TRAVELER

By Mauro Gia Samonte

BOOK TWO

WORLD WITHOUT SHOES

CHAPTER I

BLOOD-STAINED FEET of a new-born infant boy were held up in the air, clipped in the hands of a native midwife, who gave the already crying baby another tap on its bottom, making it cry on. The infant Ka Mao was born at a time when nations were at war against one another, kingdoms against kingdoms. World War II had already broken out in Europe and the Axis Powers led by Hitler, having overrun in a blitzkrieg the allied democracies,  were now in a determined bid to conquer Russia and thereby complete its onslaught of the entire European continent. In the Far East, Japan, comprising the Asian wing of the Axis Powers, had already annexed a big portion of China, had gone on a rampage across Southeast Asia and was now poised to push the war all the way to the islands in the Pacific Ocean. By the time the infant Ka Mao was five months old, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, finally forcing America to join in the global conflict; consequently, the Philippines, too, being a colony of the United States since the start of the century.

            “No man is born with shoes on,” Nanay Puping told the eleven-year-old boy who was balancing himself as he trudged after her on the elevated footpath that snaked across a vast sea of green which were the rice fields cradling the hills yonder. They walked with their feet unshod.

            “You were only five months old when the Japanese came to our town and I had to rush you to our coconut farm in Solpo to escape their cruelty. Other mothers were carrying their own babies and little children to hide in the barrios and in the mountains. All of us wore no shoes. Imagine if I had shoes on at the time, the Japanese soldiers would have caught up with us.”

            “I mean, Nanay, why do we travel around  now on bare feet?”

            “Because, Maurito, we would be foolish if we walked with shoes on our feet. Like now, do you suppose you’d be able to keep your balance on this pathwalk if you had shoes on?”

            Maurito, the boy, stared wonderingly.

            “Our life seems meant for not wearing shoes,” continued the mother in mid-thirties who  herself did some balancing over the very narrow footpaths that were actually the low walls of  earth subdividing the fields into individual patches; the subdivisions enabled farmers to pace their planting work, i.e., cultivating one plot at a time instead of one whole vast field all at once  every time which would be very cumbersome. She was carrying a rattan basket containing rice and soup in small pots and viand of fish  wrapped in banana leaves.

“Ay, if we are not working the fields in the mud with your Tatay, we are helping him make copra in our coconut farm. Or helping him out make hemp in our abaca farm in the mountain. Otherwise we climb  the mountain to harvest camote. In all these works, do you think we need shoes?”

            Nanay Puping laughed, amused by thoughts that suddenly crossed her mind.

            “Pity your Tatay as he gets a harder time just getting his shoes off where they had stuck in the mud than steering his carabao in  slicing his  plow through the earth. Or as he slides down a coconut tree because his shoes won’t catch on the shallow steps carved out of the trunk of the tree.”

            Maurito could visualize the words of his mother and began being amused himself.

            “He can deepen the steps on the trunk,” he said.

            “And make the tree crack down altogether.”

            They laughed together.

            Now the two take the path on the slope that got steeper and steeper leading to the hilltop. From here you get a breathtaking vista of the town of San Andres whose shores are washed by waters of the San Bernardino Strait. It was a sunny day and you could see clearly the entirety of the town. Prominent were the municipal building and the 40-foot circular concrete water reservoir standing beside it on top of a molehill toward the south end of the community. Toward the opposite end was the church ancient for its façade and belfry, to the east of which was the Calolbon Elementary School where Maurito studied and to the west, the market just off the shore and the pier. If this were photography you had a view that was beautifully lit, the focus set to infinity and the composition quite in accord with the rule on landscape, two-thirds land, one third sky, with the green of the foliage and of the rice fields in the plains in the foreground, the town proper and the sea in the middle ground, and yonder Mount Mayon, indeed, as goes the legend, sitting majestically on the ocean edge of mainland Bicol. With that panorama, Paul Cezanne could have done a post-impressionist work much better than his L’Etaque or Joaquin Clausell a far more inspired impression than his famous La Vista del Pico de Orizaba.

            San Andres, which used to be called Calolbon, is in the west coast of Catanduanes, an island province off the main Bicol peninsula. The  province is the favorite whipping boy of  typhoons that blow in from the Pacific Ocean, though in many instances, it is just a reference point for storms that actually make a landfall on the northeast coastal provinces of Aurora, Cagayan, and the Batanes islands in Luzon.

            This geographical location must be one factor why until Maurito’s time, Catanduanes, and hence San Andres, too, had remained underdeveloped. Save for hemp and copra making, there hardly were any other sources of income for majority of the Catanduanes people who lived in poverty. The sons and daughters of poor families would seek livelihood elsewhere, some in more developed areas of the country, like Manila. Even those with enough means were forced to look for greener pasture, so to speak, by migrating abroad, mostly to the USA. 

            Maurito had come to wonder why he and folks like him, big and small, travelled around on bare feet: the toilers in the fields, the laborers in public construction works, fisher folks going out to sea, the children going to school, and most of those attending mass on Sundays.

            In the case of his father, Tatay Simo,  Maurito would seem to  understand why. His very industrious father would plow the family’s modest riceland for planting to palay, climb up coconut trees to down the nuts for making into copra, climb the mountain for planting or harvesting kamote, or otherwise making hemp from abaca, and went out to sea on a small outrigger to fish.

            Except in the fishing ventures, Maurito accompanied his father in his work during weekends, and like Nanay Puping he would tell himself, “How could Tatay possibly do all these with shoes on.” He would amuse at his thoughts: Tatay Simo’s  shoes getting snagged in the sticky mud as he plowed the rain-soaked field, or slipping on the shallow steps chopped off on the coconut trunks, or causing clumsy footwork on the mountain path traversable only by foot, because on foot, you could dig your toes into the ground like spikes while walking and thus avoiding slips in the climb uphill.

            But in the case of his grandfather Tay Celso, father of Nanay Puping, Maurito would stare in seeming awe.

            The tall fellow with handsome Castillan looks would gait down the street to the church in trim starched de hilo pants topped by a  well-ironed  shirt called morona made from fine pineapple fabric, and betraying none of his more than sixty years past, struck up the flair of a Spanish don  immaculately garbed for Sunday mass – except that he walked barefoot.

            Such paradox!

            Ka Mao never got to solve it in his youth,  nor even in the many subsequent journeys he would take in life after that. Only in a recent indoctrination session conducted for his family by INC Antipolo Pastor Ka Wilson  did Ka Mao think he got the answer.

            Ka Mao showed to the pastor the worn-out sole of his Swatch by way of impressing him on just how much travel he had already made in his journey to baptism.

            Ka Wilson said, “Observe this. When you walk with your shoes on, what happens? The soles of the shoes get worn out. Right? “

            Ka Mao nodded.

           

            “But walk on your feet,” continued Ka Wilson, “do your soles ever get worn out, too? No. Never. How amazing is God’s wisdom.?”

            “They get calloused,” jested Ka Mao.

            “All the better for walking,” replied the pastor.

            Ka Mao had a hearty laugh. But at the same time, he thought the revelation might be one good sales pitch for the makers of his worn-out shoes.

            “Only God makes shoes for trips to heaven. Swatch is meant only for traipsing in the pleasures of the world.”

            Ka Mao gasped to himself, “Imagine the millions upon millions of sin-loving people who would catch on the spiel!”

            Calloused  indeed were the soles of Tay Celso, as Maurito observed them in the old man’s walking to his regular Sunday communion with God. The venerable Gianan patriarch would wear those calluses all the way to his rest. Tay Celso died  at the ripe, fully-fulfilled age of 99 – just a year short of that of Abraham.

            The Gianan siblings took some time deciding whether or not to put shoes on Tay Celso’s corpse in resting it inside his coffin. Ka Mao argued to himself, Why make grandfather wear in his death something he detested to put on his feet in his whole life?

            In the end, Tay Celso rested in his coffin wearing shoes. He lay there serene in his immaculate garb of trim starched de hilo pants with his morona of fine pineapple fabric to match – with this big difference from his regular Sunday walks to communion with God in life: leather shods now wrapped the God-made shoes that had been his calluses-protected bare feet.

            But did Tay Celso reach heaven?

            Only now would Ka Mao shudder at the question. In the INC doctrine, no one outside the Iglesio ni Cristo would be saved. And Tay Celso was born a Catholic,  baptized a Catholic, grew up a devoted Catholic, raised a family a Catholic.

            As a matter of fact, his coffin, as it rested in the living room of the Gianan ancestral home during his wake, continued to be surrounded by framed photos of Catholic saints, the crucifix, Virgin Mary as the Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and a large statue of St. John, the Baptist, which the Gianans kept for the Catholic Church, for parading together with  similar statues of Christ and other saints during the Catholic observance of the Holy Week. These are what the INC condemns as diyus-diyosan or false gods, worship of which is a terrible sin...

CHAPTER II

BELLS rang in the belfry, signaling the start of a church ceremony.

            In the sacristy of the Calolbon Parish Church, a month-old infant kicked its feet shod with typical baptismal shoes. Crying, the infant wiggled in the arms of Nanay Puping as the priest poured water on its head, pronouncing the baptismal blessing for the infant Ka Mao.

            “Those were the first shoes you ever wore,” Nanay Puping recalled to Maurito as they struggled their way up the steepest slope on top of which stood the century-old narra tree signaling the end of their journey. It had been raining the night before and the soil was extremely slippery; they had to dig their toes deep into the earth or they would go slipping down the hill.

            “First shoes? The only ones,” said the boy.

            Nanay  Puping stared, wondering.

            “I don’t remember having worn any until now. The best I could wear to school is bakya.”

            Bakya is an improvised slipper made from wood with strap recycled from discarded car tire. The strap was painted with austere flower design to make the clog attractive.

            Up to the fifties, bakya was a common footwear for those who could not afford to buy shoes. Even in Manila, people wore them in their daily travels, and those were the kind of people who loved to go to the movies. For that reason, Lamberto Avellana, the film director whose movies rated good with the critics but not with the masses of film audience, coined  the term “bakya crowd”, to refer to lovers of movies by such popular directors as Armando Garces or Artemio Marquez.

            In a fifth-rate town like Calolbon, bakya did serve, too, as barometer for your rung in social standing. In the case of Maurito, in a most pronounced way

            Shortly they reached the spot by the foot of  the narra tree. A small fire was burning in the improvised stove. Close by, a man of modest physique, with highly Malayan features on his face and wearing a crew cut for his hair, was hard at work in making hemp from abaca pulps. The spot was half-circumscribed by abaca plantation from where were harvested the pulps the man was working.

            He simply threw a glance at the two arrivals, uttering no word for a greeting. Neither did the two. It looked as though, for him, the arrival was a matter of course, and for the two, to find him there working; nothing was unusual about their coming together now that needed wording of any kind; it was enough that they acknowledged one another with glances.

            “If we had shoes on now, we would have been tumbling down the hill with every step we made,” said Nanay Puping. “Only on foot can you climb up to the mountain, because you can dig your toes into the ground like spikes and avoid slipping in the steep climb.”.

            “But it’s not for climbing to the mountain that I need shoes now,” countered Maurito. “It’s for the boy scout jamboree on Monday night.”

            The man doing the hemp paused for a moment. He knew what Maurito meant. He would rather not think about it. He resumed his work.

            Nanay Puping realized now what Maurito was leading up to. She ached inside but avoided the topic. She proceeded to set the pot of  soup of magisara shell on the improvised stove while calling out to the man.

            “Have a rest, Simo. I’ll be just a minute heating  up this magisara. Then we can eat lunch.”

            “Yes,” said Tatay Simo as he gave the abaca pulp a mighty pull through the implement for making hemp.

            The implement was called in Bicol ha-got. It consisted of steel  a foot and a half long, three inches wide and one fourth inch thick one side of which had been made like a saw and  fitted like a clapper on a block of wood set on a stand. The steel would be clamped down crosswise such that its teeth dug deep into the flesh of the abaca pulp. The pulp end at the ha-got would then be rolled tightly on a wooden peg which served as handle for pulling the  pulp through the teeth of the steel implement. That way the abaca fiber was separated from the pulp, for drying as hemp. Think of a lady whose hair is completely enwrapped by dandruff and a comb is run through it, with Clear shampoo to boot, and all that dandruff is flaked off and what remains is the soft-flowing hair. That’s exactly how hemp from the abaca pulps was made.

            Philippine hemp had gotten popular the world over as Manila hemp, and the best hemp in the country is from Catanduanes where the abaca variety has fiber with long enduring tensile strength.

            Tatay Simo repeated the process on the same pulp four times before being convinced that the fiber he made was fine enough.

            He exhaled hard as he got done with the pulp.

            Maurito took Tatay Simo’s hand to pay him respect by pressing it on his forehead.

            “Why did you have to tag along with your Nanay? You’d be better off studying your assignment lessons at home,” said Tatay Simo as he prepared to set another pulp for pulling through the implement.

            Maurito  sat on the ground and keenly watched Tatay Simo work.

            “I need shoes, Tatay,” the boy said.

            Tatay Simo threw a brief stare at him then continued his work.

            “You finished four years of the elementary without shoes. You can finish the next two years without them.”

            “We have our boy scout jamboree at the plaza Monday night.”

            “I thought I told you to forget about that. You can pass by just minding your subjects.”

            “I want to graduate a valedictorian. Boy scouting can add to my grades.”

            “Hey, you two,” called out Nanay Puping as she set food  for lunch.”Let’s eat.”

            The meal was set on an abaca leaf laid out on the ground by the fireplace. It consisted of rice scooped from the pot with a spoon done from coconut shell, two broiled fish, and the shell soup contained in a bowl fashioned from coconut shell as well.

            Tatay Simo stopped working and sat before the food. He took a sip at the soup bowl first.

            Maurito, hurting from the rejection he got from his father, suddenly got an idea. He set up a pulp for making hemp and tried to pull it through the implement. He could not move it. Still he tried, exerting all his young strength.

            “Your son is asking for shoes,” Nanay Puping told Tatay Simo as he began eating.

            Tatay Simo ignored the topic. He threw a glance at the boy.

.

            “What’s he doing anyway?”

            Maurito gave it his all in pulling hard at the abaca pulp, but his hands rolled on the handle, causing the pulp to loosen up on it and get detached. He threw to the ground.

            Nanay Puping hurriedly walked to the boy and scolded him with a whip of her hand at his thigh.

            “What are you doing anyway?”

            “I need boy scout shoes.”

            Tatay Simo rushed to the boy’s rescue, shielding him from Nanay Puping while helping him get back to his feet.

            “Today is Saturday,” Tatay Simo consoled the boy. “Two days to Monday. Let’s see if the hemp can dry enough for selling.”

CHAPTER III

SUNDAY, as usual, was for going to church.

            For Maurito, too. Nanay Puping had raised him up on that obligation so that it was deep in his consciousness that not going to church on Sundays was a big sin. 

            And the whole family always went together. Nanay Puping, cradling the infant Ellen in her arms, sat beside Tatay Simo, while next to her in the order of age were the two-year-old Violeta, the four-year-old Manuel, the six-year-old Jose, the eight-year-old Raul, and Maurito at the end of the line. It made you feel good to see the brood and their parents deeply listening to the homily of the priest, including, it seemed, the infant who was quietly sucking its thumb.

            Maurito had other thoughts. Even as he listened, he kept whispering to himself, “God, please… please…”

            Maurito had lost hope that his father could still provide the shoes he needed. Surely Tatay Simo promised to buy him the shoes if the hemp dried up by Monday.

            “What if it rained,” he had told himself. “That would be a good reason for Tatay not to fulfill his promise.”

            Maurito thought Tatay Simo had always been like that, promising and not keeping it. He. remembered the last time there was a provincial public school athletics and academic competitions in the capital and he had perfected his practice of a piece for performing in a declamation contest. Tatay Simo promised to buy him the required military attire; he failed to buy the uniform, Maurito failed to join the competition, thus losing out on default in a contest in which he knew he could easily have won the gold medal.

            In his young mind, Maurito couldn’t yet realize that  the family was  poor and  his parents  could not afford to give him means for the accomplishments he wanted to have in his studies. Just providing for the children’s food was difficult enough, no matter that the couple were truly hardworking. When rice from the last harvest ran out – and most often it would happen months before Tatay Simo could plant palay again – the family mainly thrived on kamote, alternated with other root crops, like cassava, hupi or galyang. They could eat rice in this period only when Tatay Simo earned money from fishing, from selling copra and hemp, which didn’t happen everyday,

            Or otherwise, when the store owner would let them get rice on credit, which had a low limit.

            Or on election time.

            For all his lack of education, Tatay Simo  was gifted with an elegant penmanship which could easily qualify him for a writing job in medieval style, but since there was none of it in Calolbon, he was exceedingly glad just the same working as clerk in a voting precinct.

            “Ay,  Dios mabalos,” Nanay Puping would utter in relief, making the sign of the cross.  Either that meant “Thank God” or  to a giver of a favor “God will reward.” She was quite unconscious that in the context of Philippine politics, what she uttered to mean thank you was an expression of great irony. And it even became  pathetic when she wished elections were held everyday.

            The money Tatay Simo earned as election clerk would sustain the family for a month, give and take three days before going back to root crop subsistence. But those who would get elected would wallow in endless ostentation.

            Tatay Simo was a very simple man. But for smoking, which was average anyway by normal reckoning, he had no vices whatsoever. He didn’t drink, never womanized. He didn’t even have the habit of gallivanting around or spending endless hours just exchanging tall tales with friends. He minded the family dutifully.

            For him, it had been a daily routine of hard toil, in the field, in the coconut farm, in the mountain and in the sea, and at infrequent times in public construction work on the provincial road. The nights, when not out fishing, he spent teaching Maurito and Raul in their homeworks for school, and then just sitting on the bamboo bench at the porch, staring into the dark.

            That night before Sunday, it rained. Good enough that he was on the porch so that  he was on hand to salvage from the downpour the hemp he had hung on a line for drying. Feeling the fibers as he secured them under the house, Tatay Simo shook his head.

            He got inside the house. Maurito and his siblings were slept side by side on a common mat. Nanay Puping was ironing clothes with charcoal-heated iron. Their youngest child, the infant Ellen, was on a hammock, which Tatay Simo nudged as he spread on the floor his own mat for sleeping on. He gently rocked the hammock but the baby girl cried on.

            Nanay Puping paused from her work to get a bottle filled with what looked like milk, which  she fed  into the baby’s mouth. The baby sucked on it immediately, stopping to cry.

            “Where’d you get money to buy milk?” asked Tatay Simo.

            “It’s no milk,” said Nanay Puping. “It’s am.”  

            Am is the local term for the water condensed with rice sap along with its milky color in the process of cooking the cereal.  With sugar, it tastes nice for drinking.

            “Rice sap for milk,” said Tatay Simo. “What nutrients will Ellen get from it?”

            “She stopped crying, ” Nanay Puping said. 

            Tatay Simo lay on the mat.

            “Wish Manay Oliva sent us coffee now.”

            Manay Oliva, or Mamay as Maurito and her other nephews and nieces called her, was a doting older sister of Tatay Simo and a spinster who had some good job in Manila. She had been  regularly sending them ground coffee and sugar every month as a ploy. She used to send her regular financial support to the family through the mail enclosed in a  letter in a sealed  envelope. But mail sorters at the post office in Manila could see no matter how vaguely that the letter contained money. And they found a way of stealing it. They split one end of a stick rendered so thin as to get it through the fold of the pasted envelope cover and by that caught the money bill inside the envelope, rolled the bill to the size of the stick and through the same way it got in, the stick neatly got the money out of the envelope without opening the cover.

            Such Filipino ingenuity!

            So Mamay Oliva got the opportunity to prove herself more ingenious. She stopped sending her letters in envelopes. Rather she inserted them together with the money bills in a  pack of ground coffee which she bundled in a box together with same-size packed sugar. Labeling the package as simply coffee and sugar, she sent the parcel through the mail. Thus were the thieving mail sorters outwitted, and Tatay Simo safely got the money from Mamay Oliva monthly ever since.

            The infant Ellen quieted down in sleep on the hammock. Nanay Puping resumed ironing clothes.

            ‘It’s always a week after the end of the month when Manay Oliva sends the coffee,” she said. “That’s  two weeks from now.”

            Tatay Simo threw on the mat as though in torment.

            “What’s it, Simo?”asked Nanay Puping.

            “I grew up with no father to rely on, but that was because Tatay died when I was just two years old.”

            “What are you fretting about?”

            “How does a father, alive and strong, say sorry to a son for not being able to give him the shoes he needs?”

CHAPTER IV

“Pray,” intoned the priest in the homily, as though to stir Tatay Simo, Nanay Puping and Maurito from their recollections. “In times of need, pray. No matter the hardship, pray. No matter the difficulty. Pray, pray. And God will listen…”

             Maurito was still praying to himself as he walked with the family  going home  from the church. And lo! what greeted his eyes was a set of boy scout uniform complete with shoes hanging on a clothes line by the stairs of a two-storey house.

            It was the house of Tang Emoy, his godfather.

            Maurito lit up at the sight. He begged leave of his parents, “I’ll do besa to Tang Emoy.”

            Besa  is the Bicol term for the custom of young people in paying respect to elders by placing on the forehead the right hand of the latter; in Filipino it’s termed mano. Ka Mao had gone through no literature about how the practice evolved. He could only surmise that it developed after the custom of the royalties of Europe who would kiss the ring of the Pope as a sign of reverence. That practice was brought by friars to the Philippines during the Spanish conquest. But it would leave a pungent smell on the friar’s hand when done by the native males who loved to drink tuba, a wine from the sap of young coconut fruit, which though sweet in its original state emitted a pungency when burped from the esophagus of the drinker. In the case of women who loved to chew nganga, a mixture of tobacco, lime, the herb buyo and betel nut, the friar squinted at the ugly reddish residue on their lips. For these reasons, the early Spanish priests had grown the habit of   pulling at their hands when the natives kissed them, causing the hands to slip upward to the forehead and get pressed there. Repeated over time, that habit was taken by the natives as a way of saying that the friar’s  hand on their foreheads was the right way of paying respect. And practiced over 400 years of  Spanish colonization, a bad habit became a hallowed tradition.

            For Maurito that Sunday morning, the habit gave him a most convenient excuse to remedy his problem. He found Tang Emoy having breakfast at the large table in the dining room at the back portion of the second floor.

            “Good morning, Godfather,” said Maurito.

            “O, hijo. Sit here,” Tang Emoy said. “Join me for breakfast.”

            “I’m done with breakfast,” said Maurito as he approached the table tentatively.

            “I’d like to borrow…” Maurito held back on his words when he overheard the talk between a boy, Tang Emoy’s son, and the laundry woman in the backyard.

            “My boy scout uniform? Will wear it tonight for the practice.”

            “No, it’ll get dirty. Wear it in the jamboree. Use your old uniform for the practice.”

            Maurito realized he could not proceed with his intention.

            “Borrow what?” said Tang Emoy. “Come on, sit. Eat.”

             “Just been to church. I passed by to make besa,”  came Maurito’s alibi. He took Tang Emoy’s hand and placed it on his forehead.

            “Es tengo santo,” Tang Emoy said, whatever that meant.

            Maurito turned to walk away.

            “Goodbye.”

            “Here,” said Tang Emoy as he got a centavo coin from his pocket. He handed it to Maurito. “Buy yourself some bread.”

            “Dios mabalos,” said Maurito. He took the coin, pocketing it as he turned away.

            Passing the hung boy scout uniform as he walked down the stairs, Maurito gave in to an idea he would not think of doing in other circumstances. He made sure that nobody was looking then quietly took all the boy scout items off the clothes line.

            Maurito clipped the boy scout uniform and shoes in his arms like they were his own as he strutted on the street very casually, even humming a boy scout song.          

Night of Monday next was truly exciting for Maurito, doing antics in the jamboree together with the other boy scouts which entertained the spectators. Tang Emoy’s son did as well but kept fidgettng in his uniform, which was rather tight for his size. But he performed on, doing an Indian war dance together with Maurito.

            Of course, Maurito had not told his parents the truth. What he told them was that he borrowed the boy scout uniform and shoes from his classmate. And he was not lying either. Soon after the affair was over, he sneaked into his godfather’s compound and returned to the clothesline the items which, he told himself, he merely borrowed.

            That done, Maurito gently tapped the clothesline and said, “Dios mabalos.”

CHAPTER V

A SHOWMAKER was what Maurito was greatly turning out to be. He was a favorite performer in town shows and school programs 

            At one time, during the flag ceremony at the Calolbon Elementary School, he was called by Miss Fe Aldave, his class adviser who was the emcee, to deliver the welcome remarks impromptu for the provincial public school superintendent, who was the guest of honor. For that purpose, he went on top of the long concrete water sink from the back of which rose the flag pole where now flew the Philippine flag. But as soon as he leaped to the top of  the sink, some naughty girls at the front of the students’ formation cheered, “In Despair… In Despair…,” referring to a popular hit song.  At that, he looked to Miss Aldave, who already with pride glanced at the special guest, a way of saying that what was about to transpire was the performance of the school’s star. And she gave the signal to Maurito to go ahead.

“You taught my heart how to dream…

            The students burst in applause at that opening strain of the song alone. And they cheered on and on with every succeeding strain.

                                               

                                                Filling each moment divine

                                                Just for a while you were mine

                                                Now I’m alone in despair…

            The students applauded heartily at the conclusion of the song, whereupon, after signaling to his fans to quiet down, Maurito proceeded to his remarks.

            “But it is not in despair that our dear Provincial Public School Superintendent has come to visit us this morning. It is hope that he will bring the good life which we students of the Calolbon Elementary School are all dreaming of.”

            And with that he introduced the guest of honor, “Dear teachers and fellow students, please welcome our distinguished guest, the honorable provincial public school superintendent…” God, he didn’t know the name! He looked to Miss Aldave for succor. She understood it and took it from there.

            “Mister Venancio Molina!”

            The guest rose from his seat and went over to the front of the water sink, shaking Maurito’s hand in the process. The students applauded Maurito on when he returned to their formation. The guest could not quite get himself started seeing that the applause was not meant for him.

A SCENE STEALER even was Maurito.

            One time, as a fulfillment of an assignment in school, he staged in the classroom a skit extracted from a film, “Prinsipe Amante” which he had seen in the movie house in the provincial capitol. It was not just a reading from the script he wrote which his partakers did but acting complete with swords fashioned from bamboo sticks, capes made up of their mothers’ tapis or wrap-around skirts and beards and moustaches done on their faces with charcoal. Students from the other sections heard about the presentation and they all rushed to Maurito’s classroom to view it, pressing tight at one another inside the room, over one another’s shoulders and heads at the door and at the windows. The teachers could only throw their arms in surrender in their effort to contain their pupils, if they were not themselves excited to do their own viewing, even pulling at desks on which to stand just to get a good  view of the presentation.

    .

            Always, there were two other youth competing with him for fame as enterainer, as was the case in the past boy scout jamboree. One was Ignacio, a boy with handsome Spanish features but for eyes that glared as from a white lizard, who sang mimicking the style of Leopoldo Salcedo, his tongue slightly thrusting outward, eyes half-closed for feeling  – not conscious of the fact that the movie actor was doing it that way because he was not actually sounding the words but merely lip-synching, and the singing looked artificial. 

            The other competitor of Maurito was Jose, his classmate, whom Maurito considered a better performer in the finer points of singing. But in declamation, Maurito was superior to both. In the jamboree, he awed the big crowd of spectators with his rendition of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s epic poem, “Charge of the Light Brigade.”

                                                            “Forward, the Light Brigade!”

                                                            Was there a man dismay’d?

                                                            Not tho the soldiers knew

                                                                        Someone had blunder’d

                                                            Theirs not to make reply

                                                            Theirs not to reason why

                                                            Theirs but to do and die

                                                            Into the valley of Death

                                                                        Rode the six hundred.

            That was the same piece he had practiced painstakingly for performing in the past public school provincial meet, intending to win the gold medal. He failed on that occasion for sheer want of a military uniform in which to deliver it, and  he gave it in the jamboree the spirit of battle it depicted, his voice ringing with energy and the precision of oratorical cadence that stirred the crowd into giving him a rousing ovation.

                                                            Cannon to right of them

                                                            Cannon to left of them

                                                            Cannon in front of them

                                                                        Volly’d and thunder’d

                                                            Storm’d at with shot and shell

                                                            Boldly they rode so well

                                                            Into the Jaws of Death

                                                            Into the mouth of Hell

                                                                        Rode the six hundred

            That was mid-1954, when the country was brimming with high hopes from the election of President Ramon Magsaysay, packaged to be the country’s salvation from the corruption of the past Quirino regime. President Elpidio Quirino had been pilloried endlessly in the media as  corrupt, one highlight of such corruption being the use of a golden urinal in Malacanang.

            Maurito had occasion to  take a dig at the past president in the Magsaysay campaign, repeating that golden urinal line during one rally in the town plaza. 

            “Ano man na klaseng Presidene iyan si Quirino? Para maudo, mangaipo pa ning urinolang bulawan. Kita?Tukmo sana sa malubago, puswit na.” That was Bicol for “What kind of a president is that Quirino? Just for shitting, he’ll need a golden urinal. Us? Just squat among the malubago trees and that’s it, shit.”

            Actually, the boy was being fed with words by elder operators in the campaign. But he delivered it effectively and the crowd guffawed. After his remarks he descended the stage while the public address system sounded the “Mambo Magsaysay” as an intro to the next speaker. He stepped to the mambo tune to the thrill of the crowd.   

            In entertaining his audience, Maurito went as far as doing the acts he observed from a magician who performed in the last town fiesta. One act was a sleigh of the hand which caused a coin to vanish. Another was driving of a long nail into the nose. At the back of the family’s house he improvised a show room in which he did those tricks to a crowd of young kids who paid their way into the room with 5 matchsticks per head, except when sometimes some wise kid would sneak in when Maurito was not looking.

            Gathered together, the matchsticks paid him filled up more than two matchboxes, which he converted to cash by selling them to the store at a discount. 

            For the coin act, Maurito earned extra income, because the coin he used was from among the audience and when it vanished, it necessarily ended up in his pockets. It was all trick of course, but he had to make it look real or else spoil the illusion. So the boy who provided the coin paid for the joy of seeing his money lost. And if another kid wanted the same enjoyment, then he must furnish his own coin. One boy, though, wouldn’t part with his 1-centavo coin. Why risk his money when he could have the joy at the expense of somebody else’s money? He was the same one who had succeeded in getting inside the room unnoticed thereby seeing the show for free. 

            Early picture of a dirty cheat opportunist outwitting a dirty cheat illusionist.

            It was while Maurito was at the nail act when Tatay Simo barged in and flared up at Maurito’s performance.  He snatched the nail that glistened with mucous from Maurito’s nose.

            “You want to get killed?”

            “I know the magician’s secret, Tatay.”

            “You know! What that magician uses is several layers of thin tin made to look like one whole piece of nail. When he hammers that nail into his nose, he actually makes the nail fold up from the tip to the end into a short piece the length of the interior of his nose. And when he takes out the nail from his nose, he causes it to lengthen back to the original size.”

            “My nail is no cheat. It’s real.”

            “Yes. And rusty. You could contact tetanus.”

            “No, Tatay. It’s this way…”

            Maurito held back on his words, realizing he could be revealing his magic to his audience. He pulled Tatay Simo out of the showroom and spoke to him in a hush.

            “The secret is to drive the nail through your nostrils, even down to the opening of your throat without the nail getting snagged on flesh. Most people don’t know that the reason you are able to breath is that there is an opening from the lungs to the nose. Do you know that, Tatay?”

            If not for anything else but a father not wanting a son to put one over him, Tatay Simo put on an angry mien.

            “Enough, Maurito  Enough of your foolishness.”

  

            Tatay Simo hardly was enthused by Maurito’s shining as an entertainer in the community. His mind was on a one-track course: Maurito must concentrate on his studies, that’s the only way he can lift their family from poverty. With his meager talent and resources, Tatay Simo felt even then that there was nothing more he could do to improve the condition of the family. He pinned all his hopes in this regard on the studies of Maurito.

            “We should be thankful that your Mamay Oliva is willing to finance your studies all the way to college. Please, son. You are my only hope of a good life for your brothers and sisters.”

            The words struck Maurito hard. It was not a father’s plea; it was a mandate. 

            The days that followed saw him just paying attention to his studies. He excelled in recitation in class, spent long hours at night doing his homework, did woodworking for his vocational subject, and gardening, too, by planting pechay on a plot among others at the back of the school beyond the track and field grounds. On weekends he vended his vegetable harvest around town, if not the catch of Tatay Simo from fishing the night before, or otherwise helping him out together with Nanay Puping  in making hemp or copra.

            Maurito failed to graduate valedictorian. He lost it to a girl who was at the background all the while that he was shining as a campus star. The girl was bright, too, all right, but she came from a rich family and it seemed that all things being equal, in a world without shoes, even such things as graduation honors are determined by one’s consistency in having worn them all the days of your schooling. Maurito had not, the girl had, in all of those days.

            This shoe fact was illustrated in, literally, graphic terms by the braggart Ignacio who had his parents gifting him -- right on stage for all the world to see – with a new pair of shoes with which he replaced the ones he was wearing.

            But they just could not leave out Maurito from the honors. They proclaimed him: “Most voracious reader.”

            That was honor enough for Mamay Oliva, who had monitored his studies all the way. She made sure Maurito was well provided for on his graduation day. She had sent him a new pair of shoes for the commencement exercises.

CHAPTER VI

MAURITO wore the same shoes when for the first time, he made a travel away from home. As he boarded the old launch that regularly plied the route to Tabaco, Albay across San Bernardino Strait, he already felt a nascent homesickness which spread a fiery lump in his breast on which he felt choking, but did not. He controlled his tears and even smiled as he waved goodbye to his folks, themselves waving on the dock. Tatay Simo was not there; he did not want to see Maurito go.

            Tatay Simo was a very reserved man, an introvert who most of the time kept his thoughts to himself. Back at home that morning, even while Nanay Puping was profuse with advice to Maurito about the “temptations” he was prone to encounter in Manila, Tatay Simo kept quiet as he bundled up Maurito’s luggage consisting of a rattan bag filled with Maurito’s clothes and another native bag containing items for gifting Mamay Oliva with: two varieties of rice cake wrapped in coconut leaves called suman and pinironan, kamote candy called molido, dried fish, and kamote. And when Nanay Puping grew sentimental with her advice to Maurito, Tatay Simo feigned irritation to hide his own emotions.

            “Ay, son,” Nanay Puping cried now, “if we were not poor, we would not let you go away.”

            “Enough, Puping, will you. Maurito will be late,” Tatay Simo said, thrusting the luggage to Maurito and then giving him a slight push. “Hurry up.”

            Tatay Simo walked away hurriedly

            “You said Maurito would be late. Where are you going? We’re seeing him off at the pier.”

            “You see him off. Take the children with you.”

MAURITO was sad at the recollection. He was aboard a bus that would take him to Legaspi where to take the train to Manila. The sun was setting, but it was still bright enough for him to enjoy the scenery. Mayon  Volcano didn’t look as nice as it was viewed from the shoreline of Calolbon. From the traveling bus, Mayon was just a highlight in the rugged row of mountains Maurito would cross in a long, long journey to Manila.

            Yonder, the sun set…