My mother, Raskolnikov and I

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

Joel E. Abelinde is originally from the province of Quirino but lives in Quezon City. He studied philosophy in Saint Louis University, Baguio City and now works as the communications coordinator of Children International-Manila, a non-government organization providing health and education support to poor children and their families. Aside from reading, he loves museums, historic places, art galleries, movies, songwriting and poetry.

MANILA, Philippines - My mother related the story of Raskolnikov on a dark rainy November night. I was perhaps four years old then. Her narrative was not meant to bring sleep to my eyes as I was safely tucked in bed; in fact, the objective was exactly the opposite. It was time for planting. During those nights, my parents, my sister and I sat in a circle on the floor, each with a winnowing basket filled with groundnuts for shelling. “Raskolnikov was a fine young man,” she began. “He was a respected student with good friends some of whom were officers in the government. But because he was poor, he dropped out of the university. Then one day, he conceived a plan to murder an old lady — a usurer to whom people brought things to be pawned, to steal money and property.” She unfolded this poor student’s desperate tale from Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment, and I — captivated — ended up not crushing a single pink nut out of its shell.

Just like most children, I loved stories as a child. I felt lucky because people somehow told a lot of stories then. They recounted their experiences of the Second World War, how they hid from the Japanese, how they traveled from Ilocos to Cagayan Valley, how they took up planting tobacco, about how to brew the best basi. They talked about natural calamities, ghosts, dwarves and giants. A story lay behind everything and it accompanied every human activity. Spanning the mundane, the personal and the communal, the earth and everything in it, their themes soared and explored the heavens of gods in myths that mesmerize me until now. I loved being around older people because of their wealth of narratives.

Years later, I would realize that there was always something missing in my parents’ stories. Most often, they went without titles. Or if they had, the characters would all bear common names. Raskolnikov stood apart. Though, strange it was, he had a proper name. My father said it was Russian. From the gory murder scene with the hatchet in the great Russian novel, to the ways that Raskolnikov dodged people to escape notice — it was a full-blown suspense tale. Winter, snow, a school so big it was maybe 30 times the size of the elementary school my sister attended — it all left vague but lasting impressions. How his conscience ate him up to the brink of physical and mental dysfunction cast an enduring moral lesson.

Mostly importantly, the drama and beauty Raskolnikov’s story evoked led me to discover stories on my own. Stammering and repeating syllables, my first attempt was Mona, a cow from my reading skills book in Grade 1; and then Elmo in my Filipino book. Real adventures began when I was in the third grade, when I could read on my own. I looked forward to the latest Bannawag and Liwayway our teacher bought.

And then I discovered The Philippine Journal of Education. I learned from its pages Ang Alamat Ng Araw at Buwan, Ang Alamat Ng Bahaghari, Ang Alamat Ng Kalabaw. I had a steady supply of myths and legends. It contained English vocabulary quizzes too, plus poems and bits of general information in boxes that supplemented what I gleaned from my teacher’s lessons. The wealth of knowledge about plants, insects, animals, rocks, clouds and the planets added to the anticipation of what was in the next issue. I began to discover the stories of science: the reason why it rains, why the mushrooms that clung to our coffee bushes glowed at night, why there is night and day, what causes a rainbow.  

In high school, I was introduced to more authors and their works. Knowing Guy de Maupassant, Chaucer, Poe, Marlowe, N.V.M. Gonzales, Rotor, Beowulf and Leon and Maria on their way to Nagrebcan made me realize that the reward of reading is the exclusively personal joy of experiencing the conflicts, sorrows and liberation of imagined characters. We learned about plots, elements, styles, points of view and figures of speech. Honestly, I was not even sure I completely understood the works (We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers, for example). Despite that, was it the way the words were strung together, or the few specks of understanding that made me feel they were great? Whatever it was, I was on to the next project. My eyes were opened to the magic of literature.

I would meet Raskolnikov again at noontime in our college library. I was going through a shelf of pocket books, hoping I could come across something interesting. Going through a list of dramatis personae that began with the moneylender Alena Ivanovna, I did not know whether I would jump out of my skin or if my head was as big as a winnowing basket. In the middle of the list was Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov — student, murderer! Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the first and the most memorable story of my childhood, is a classic of world literature. Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the only story of those years with a title, stood a few books away. Anticipation, a quiet pride, and a remotely distinct sadness silently swam together in my eyes as I wrote my name on the borrower’s card. I walked to a garden to read my childhood.

When I went home after that semester, I asked my mother why she stopped her education after high school. She said they were poor and my grandfather told her she would just get married anyway, so better to give the men whatever education his poverty could afford. Needless to say, how painful that must have been for a woman who liked to read! “I am doing everything to give you that,” she said.

Crime and Punishment holds a special place in my heart though it is not the best novel ever written. But it was the foundation of my enchanting journey through characters that inhabit a world created of carefully chosen words that mirror facets of the human condition back at us, showing us who we are and what we can become. Seeing, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, of others and the world we create.

I am well into my 30s now. It is my turn to tell stories. I work as a communications coordinator for a non-government organization. I write the experiences of children, their struggles and dreams, and hope that someone across the globe will lend them a hand — out of the hostile world of extreme poverty — and accompany them to a brighter future. Walking in poor and dangerous places is not an easy job. But I love what I am doing. I figure it began many years ago, on a dark rainy November night.