Northern exposure

(Part two)

I saved the Pangasinan leg from last week’s piece on our “Northern exposure” trip for another installment because I thought it merited its own report, given the two delightful architectural discoveries I mentioned.

Let me just repeat that our hosts in Pangasinan were the Arcinues — Titus and Luz — both of them retired physicians from California who came back home to see as much as they could of the homeland and also to live and do some business in it. Titus was born and grew up in Lingayen, and met Luz in medical school at the PGH in Manila. With the Quesadas who had organized the trip to as far north as Maira-ira in Ilocos Norte, our party rode down south in a convoy to Vigan and then to Lingayen with the Arcinues.

The first discovery we made was the home — indeed, the compound — of the Arcinues itself. Sitting on the banks of a tributary of the great Agno River, the Arcinues’ place would seem, at the gate, to be a ghostly ruin, with the empty hulk of a squarish gray building guarding the entrance.

And indeed it is a ruin, as the concrete shell is all that remains of the main building of the Colegio de la Nuestra Sra. del Santisimo Rosario, set up by the Dominicans toward the end of the 19th century; after the Second World War, the Columban sisters took over the property and opened the co-educational St. Columban Academy. As a boy, Edgardo “Titus” Arcinue had studied there; during one visit home from the US, he learned that the place was up for sale, and bought it. (“Imagine,” I remember thinking, “buying your old school — what sweet revenge!” The word “Columban” also rang a bell for me, because it was here that the subjects of one of my biographies — the lawyer Chito Buenaventura and his brother the late banker Paeng — had gone to school after the war. Businessman Hermie Disini had also studied there at about the same time.)

Titus and Luz have lovingly preserved the ruins, building around it and with it, transforming what had been stuffy old classrooms into comfortable living quarters; the graceful arches of the walls now act as hangers for exuberant growths of bougainvillea and as picture frames for views of the vegetable and fruit gardens. Close to the water’s edge, a spiral staircase leads up to an open balcony from which to enjoy the spell of sunset; as fires burn on the slopes of hills in the distance, fruit bats explode skyward from the dark recesses of the main building. The crumbling masonry, the wild and rambling foliage, the bats, and the bursts of floral color suggest a Gothic beauty; and yet, like an English garden, all that unruliness is deliberate and carefully planned.

The ruins from another angle

It would be the perfect place to hole up and write a book — which is what Titus, an expert in pediatric critical care, plans to do: his memoirs and the story of his family, and also a historical novel on Diego and Gabriela Silang who, he notes, collaborated with the British against the Spanish forces. Otherwise, Dr. Arcinue is occupied by his high-tech chicken farm, which supplies chickens under contract to a major food company. The Columban sisters must have taught the young Titus well.

The other discovery we made was a building that Titus insisted on bringing our group to, for good reason. It was none other than the provincial capitol, a great Neoclassical yellow-ochre structure close to the waterfront facing Lingayen Gulf.

I’ve been to quite a few statehouses in my travels here and abroad, and I have to say that Pangasinan’s left me and my companions enthralled. Built in 1917, the building was completely renovated in 2007 by local architect Cris David during the first term of current Gov. Amado Espino, Jr., to whom the credit must go for giving not just his fellow politicians but his provincemates and the country a public building that all Filipinos could take pride in.

Neoclassical buildings (think of the Post Office and National Museum buildings in Manila) are an enduring legacy of American colonial rule, but they are among the easiest to mangle and destroy, physically and architecturally. Today, many of those remaining are blighted by unsightly add-ons, airconditioning exhausts, ghastly paint jobs, and crusty grime.

The Pangasinan capitol is a paean to grace and tastefulness, evoking a sense of nobility and purpose that all lawmakers should be imbued with and guided by. You get the impression that however much was devoted to the capitol’s renovation, it was public money well spent. Nowhere do you get a hint of abuse or excess; everything seems just as it should be.

On the afternoon we visited, a steady flow of ordinary citizens streamed into the capitol, taking in the quiet grandeur of the place and eager to enjoy the breeze and the view from the capitol’s open rooftop. There were no pompous security guards or search procedures to stop them. Truly it felt like a capitol of the people.

The Pangasinan capitol’s graceful staircase

And it was no aberration: as we drove back to the Colegio, we paused at the nearby Sison Auditorium and the Narciso Ramos Sports Complex, and saw the same care for detail and openness to the public that we can only wish other local governments and communities would foster.

* * *

Speaking of ruins and writing books, I’m away for the month (yes, at this very moment) in a 15th century castle in Umbria in central Italy, working on my third novel, thanks to a generous fellowship from the New York-based Civitella Ranieri Foundation (www.civitella.org).

A few Filipinos have preceded me here: the writers Eric Gamalinda and Gina Apostol, and the musicians Chino Toledo and the late Jose Maceda. While not quite as well known to Filipinos as the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center up north, the Civitella Center has been supporting writers, visual artists, and musicians from all over the world since 1968. The fellowships come by invitation only, so I feel doubly honored and doubly pressured to produce good work. Pray that these five weeks of enforced isolation away from home, family, and regular work result in something we can all be happy and proud to read.

* * *

E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.