The odd ventures of a boy with an oddly shaped head

This Week’s Winner

Mariano F. Carpio, 63, was born in Manila and grew up in a remote fishing village in Cabangan, Zambales, where he engaged in a lot of odd ventures. He took graduate studies in literature at UST and won first prize in the My Favorite Book Contest in 2004.

If my life, or a slice of it, were a book, it could well be one of the stories in the fiction anthology of Gregorio Brillantes, The Distance To Andromeda. I read the book, which looked like a hardbound Bible on the shelf of the university library, in the l960s, and I relished reading particularly the main story about the 13-year-old boy who, one evening after supper, lies on his back in the front lawn and, as he gazes up at the dark sky, becomes overwhelmed by a great mystery he cannot understand. The prize-winning stories of Brillantes portray memorably the life of the simple folk in Camiling, Tarlac, who are caught in a maze of time and distance, departures and arrivals.

When I was six or so I came to discover that there was something odd about the shape of my head. Its top seemed to jut like that of the mountain. Well, I did not come to know about it until my boyhood friends began to call me kupit (an Ilocano word that means “twisted, deformed”) when they saw the barrio barber shave off my hair, leaving only a timid cowlick over my forehead. My clean, boyish haircut exposed the oddity and offered my friends reason for poking relentless fun at me. Every time they called me kupit, they would laugh like a bunch of devils. I still remember it, their wicked laughter.

In the title story,  “The Distance To Andromeda,” Ben, the main character, looks curious like any other 13-year-old boy. At the beginning of the story, he watches a scene in a movie showing a spaceship hurtling in space past the galaxy of stars and the vast expanse of space catches his attention. It terrifies him.

In the l950s after World War II, when I went to Longos Elementary School in Cabangan, Zambales (beside Tarlac), we had a wonderful teacher who was carried away by her zeal for teaching us good manners and right conduct. She wanted us to behave not like the people from the boondocks that we were but like the polite sons and daughters of the rich hacienderos. We should not only be good but also look good. Every day she would train us how to walk properly. She would place a book on the head of her pupil and tell him to walk from one wall of the room to another, balancing the book on his head. When my turn came, even before I began to move, the book would fall from my head like a ripe guava fruit picked at by birds. At home, when nobody was looking, I would practice balancing a piece of flat wood on my head; still, in school the book would refuse to sit on my head like a crown. Did I ever learn to walk with grace and dignity as my teacher expected? You bet.

After watching the movie, Ben passes by a bus station and sees the passengers looking haggard and weary. They must be thinking of the long distance still to be traveled, the destination still to be reached.

When it was my turn among my siblings to fetch water from the neighbor’s well, I would fill the round clay pot with water to the brim; but as soon as I lifted the pot and let it rest on my head, the water would spill on my face and drench my shirt. Along the path, the sharp protrusion on my head would cause the pot of water to wiggle and splash water on my face. By the time I reached the house, the pot would be half empty. I envied my elder sister who could walk briskly holding with only one hand on the pot of water on her head, her long black hair swaying gracefully across her face.

On his way home, Ben stops by the town plaza where children are skating around the kiosk. He hears the noise of roller skates and it resounds in his ears like the hum of the stars in the dark void. He wonders if there are people on Mars. On the town bridge he sees the stars rising from the darkness that covers the land, and then he feels afraid and lonely.

As if the odd shape of my head were not enough, my tongue gave me a lot of embarrassment, too. No, it was not short; I could stick it out like a devil to scare away a nasty friend. But in school, our teacher would teach us how to read aloud in front of the class. I would be called on to read a page from the Philippines Reader, and I would grow nervous, knowing that I would come across a word with the letter “r” (such as “river”) and my tongue would shrink absurdly behind my teeth refusing to produce the sound of the water flowing to the sea. When I went home from school, my classmates and those in the higher grades would challenge me to roar like a lion, growl like a dog, but when they heard the “r” slurring from the tip of my tongue they would feel so pleased that they would give me cashew seeds or rubber bands as my consolation. I thanked them for their generosity.

My problems were not only the peculiar shape of my head and my retarded tongue but also my toes, which soon grew like ginger. The daily trek from one barrio to another to Longos Elementary School broadened the soles of my feet and thickened the edges so that, as my cousins would quip, I could flatten the dirt road by just stomping on it. Mother had to buy me a new pair of leather shoes made to order from San Felipe, the next town, and you can imagine how my friends giggled when they saw my proud pair of shoes looking like gigantic boats. The corns and bunions, which in no time grew on my feet, made me limp in my shoes like a dazed boxer, and I had to take them off and carry them in my hands on the way home. I wanted to woo my classmate, the pretty daughter of the town mayor, but I felt discouraged. My toes and fingers showed their awkward shape. I was in love with her.

Yet the remembrance of childhood gladdens my heart. After the rain, my playmates and I would run on the steel railing of the town bridge and then stand on it naked and, as the Try-V Tran bus roared by, we would plunge into the river, delighting the passengers who would see us. I’m sure my boyhood friends must have seen how the odd protrusion on my head made me dive sharply into the river and swim like a fish. Under the bright moon, we would play hide-and-seek and patintero in the town plaza, and my playmates could hardly catch me because I ran swiftly like the wind, my crabby feet kicking whirls of dust behind me. During the school vacation, my friends and I would romp on the green meadow near the foot of the hills, and I would be the first among them to catch, with my deft stubby fingers, a slender dragonfly by the tip of its wings. Always, I would emerge the winner.

Like the main character in the story of Brillantes, I was surrounded by well-meaning friends, a happy family and the promise of adventure. If Brillantes were to write about this stage in my life, he would write its story, I’m sure, with sympathy and tenderness, leading the main character towards the realization that, in the end, for all the pleasures of this world, there is only so much time.