Landscapes of feeling

This is one of the essays in my forthcoming book called “Si Nanay Si Tatay Di Ko Babayaan: Works on Bikol” which I had submitted to Ateneo de Nata University Press for publication.

Oas is a strange town. It is famous for the number of priests it produces while on the next town sits Polangui, Albay’s endless source of the best bailarinas (dancehall girls) in the country.

But aside from this, Oas also sports food that can do any small town proud. It has white bagoong which, when mixed with calamanci juice, tastes like no other in the country. I was there one Holy Week a decade ago.

When we arrived, my grandfather is already there, still tall but thinner than I remember him. He stood by the gate and we waved at him. My parents, aunt and uncle walked over to him and kissed his hand. They were beginning to make small noises about the trip when suddenly, my grandfather burst into tears. This was not the stern grandfather of memory – the teacher who asks his stubborn students to kneel on mongo seeds if they could not – would not – slave over the square root of something or other.

At the edge of town, ringed by rice fields and a river, stood the brown glutinous rice cakes called binasuso, we threaded our way to the cemetery. Here it is a custom to honor the beloved dead, to tell them you are back, if only briefly. We lit two tall candles before my grandmother’s tomb.

My relatives prayed for my maternal grandmother, Lola Socerro, who died when I was seven years old and 600 kilometers away. The morning after she died, my other Grandmother Lola Juana (who had stayed behind to keep us company), found me asleep on the floor. This was strange, since before she had turned in for the night, she made sure I was already asleep beside her, on her bed. Then the housemaids said the ghost of my grandmother must have pulled my feet and left me right there on the living room. When you are seven years old, this could strike a terrible fear in your heart.

When we walked home, the sun was beginning to set, streaking blood on the sky. The last-light left shadows in the rice fields. Later, there would only be the sound of the river and the chanting of the cicadas.

Morning. The sky in the province is bluer, vaster than the one in the city. And Mayon in there, breathing like a breast.

Holy Week in Oas revolves around the procession of the heirloom images on Good Friday. It was my grandmother’s turn to sponsor the family’s procession, and that was why we all had to go home. It was a tradition, and nobody says “no” to tradition ? not even bored city kids who had begun to become smart-ass and “talk back” (actually, reason with) their parents.

Early morning on Good Friday, my cousins and I would brush the cobwebs from my grandfather’s caro (cart in Bikolano). Then we would cut vines of morning glory and garland the caro with the pink flowers. From its niche on the living-room wall, my grandfather would bring down the image of Christ on the Cross, holding it gently, and then placing it atop the cart. One story is that this image has been shrinking with the years. It does look smaller, but perhaps it is because I have grown bigger?

By four o’clock, my grandfather in his well-pressed white polo shirt would ask the children to pull the caro out of the garage. Us older grandchildren in our best clothes would follow the caro; by virtue of age, we had been exempted from the task. Our eyes should be alert: there were a thousand relatives whose hands you had to kiss, there were some good-looking boys and girls from Manila, also here for a brief visit.

Only 30 heirloom images joined this year’s procession. In front stood the image of Saint Peter with a large key in one hand and a rooster in the other. The Virgin Mary was also there, face calm as a lake. Then much later, Jesus Christ reclining inside a glass tomb, frozen in temporary defeat. And at the tail-end of the precession, the Christ of Resurrection, bathed in brilliant light.

Everything ends in the plaza. In the darkness we would head for home, where warm soup and food waited for us.

On Saturday night, we went to the Easter dance, for the dance, the plaza bloomed with five bulbs of many colors. You could see the church from the plaza. First built in 1605 by the Franciscans, the church in Oas in like many other old Philippine churches. My teacher calls them “earthquake baroque,” the curvilinear design impressed on the massive stone walls. By day, the church looks revolting: coat of white paint had been slapped on the façade. The old parish priest called it “restoration.”

After the Mass on Sunday, I accompanied my grandfather to the central elementary school. There would be a reunion of Class 1937 (1937!). My grandfather was not in that batch – he was their teacher in Grade VII.

There were also stories about the war: how my grandfather brought his old Olympia from the guerilla hideout to another, writing down words for the resistance movements; how my grandfather’s students survived the war by eating boiled banana stalks, then roasted rats and geckos, and finally, snakes.

It was four o’clock in the morning when my sister knocked on the door of the basement room I shared in my two cousins. I lifted the mosquito net and opened the door. The raw air of dawn stole into our room.

After taking our breakfast and loading our bags into the Fiera, we walked to our grandfather to say goodbye. One by one, as if in procession, my aunts, uncles and cousins kissed him. He was bundled up in a brown sweater, a bright blue bonnet on his head. I held his hands. They were full of veins. He leaned forward. I kissed his face revered with lines.

By the gate he stood. After promising him he would be back next year, we all boarded the Fiera and waved at him. And then the Fiera began to move farther and farther from my grandfather by the gate, until his figure became one with darkness.