When the Elephants Dance (51 page)

The family squatted on a blanket and ate with their hands from a bowl. The bowl contained a small portion of rice and a few strips of meat and onions. The young woman sat with her legs crossed and her back straight. She was eating a banana, and a young man was sitting next to her. I watched her face then. Very soft, her expression was, as she talked to her kinsman. It angered me.

After the meal, her brother Virgil came to stand near the perimeter of trees
with several of his friends. I concentrated on my art, but I could not help but hear their snide comments, most of which I did not understand. The few that I did decipher were infuriating. They questioned my masculinity, jeering that painting was an excuse for men who were not physically agile. I sat through it all, gritting my teeth and telling myself to concentrate. More than once I locked eyes with the brother.

Next, her father came to stand beside me, and as he viewed the sketches the crowd held its breath. They strained their necks and whispered to one another. The father nodded, put his chin in his hands, and looked worthy enough to be one of the caretakers at the galleries.

“This is very good.” He nodded at me. “The flowers—” He pointed. “They have no color. Her face is not finish,” he stated imperially.

“Yes, this is so.” I turned my back on him and shook my head; what an ego the man had.

The crowd began to talk furiously. Nothing annoyed me more than their giggles and their laughter. I glared at them to show I needed silence.

“I will sit for one more hour, then we must stop.” The young woman sat back down.

I took out my silver
reloj
and studied it. It was only three o’clock. “We will stop in two hours,” I stated.

“You will stop in two hours. I will be gone in one.” She raised a brow in challenge.

“You are talking crazy.” I began to mix the paints.

“Does the crowd embarrass you? Did I not tell you this was a stupid idea?”

“What are they saying?” I asked.

She looked at me in disbelief. “You know nothing of your language?”

“There you go again. I am a Spaniard; I speak my language. Your language I do not know. Never mind. I care not what they are saying.”

“That is a good thing. For they are making fun of your dress, and your pretty manners,” she said, and gave me her first real smile. I felt as if someone had pierced me with a dagger.

A
T EXACTLY AN
hour she stood to go.

“Is it finished yet?” She straightened her dress, untied her dark hair, smoothed it out, then swept it up into a coil again. The image was intoxicating.

“Finished? I have not yet begun. This is merely the groundwork. You understand, the framework of what is to come.”

“Well, how long will this take?”

“I do not appreciate your tone, señorita. These things cannot be rushed. Possibly two weeks, possibly a month.”

“A month?” she shouted, then went into the house to further argue with her mother.

I was near to breaking the brush I held in my hand.

“Fredrico.” A voice boomed through the house, and I recognized my brother Oscar’s voice.

“Hola, Oscar,”
I called to him as I packed, and the crowd began to disperse. I watched her brother Virgil’s face darken as Oscar approached.

Oscar returned Virgil’s gaze, grinning condescendingly at the Filipino.

“Brother.” I stood. “Come see what progress I have made.”

Oscar would not move; his eyes remained locked with the Filipino’s. Finally I walked in between the two of them and willed Oscar to look at me. “I intend to finish this portrait,” I said firmly.

Oscar glanced at me, and immediately his tone changed. “Manuel said you had come here. But I had to witness it myself. Whom did you wager a bet with? Was it Edgar? How much did he wager you to come here? Why was I not in on this? Am I not your favorite brother?”

“You are my only brother.” I shut the case and clapped him on the back.

“Well?”

“Well?” I looked at him.

The girl came out with her furious face once again. “Come back at seven tomorrow. If you are late again, I will not return until you are gone. Is this understood, señor?” She glanced at Oscar, who was grinning like a fool.

“Sí,”
I said, wanting to wring her neck at her tone.

She turned on her heels and slammed the back door, leaving Oscar and me to walk around to the front.

Oscar was smiling the entire way. “Thank God, I thought you had gone mad. I see now, younger one. I see now. She is exquisite.”

“It is not as you think.” I brushed his hand off my back in irritation.

“Oh, I think it is.” He laughed.

Z
OILA BURST INTO
the dining room that evening. “Is it true?” she demanded.

“Zoila, sit down,” I commanded.

Oscar leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in amusement.

Zoila continued her tirade. “Is it true that you sat in the dirt house of a peasant girl all day just to paint her, and in front of an entire village?”

I must admit it sounded ridiculous even to my own ears.

“Yes, it is true.” I shrugged without apology. “This is something you do not know about artists, Zoila.” I pointed a gilded fork at her. “Any artist who is worth his paint must experience different things; they must endure hardships.”

“My God, you are good.” Oscar raised his glass in toast.

“Shut up,” I told him.

“I demand you stop this. It is an embarrassment that my beau be seen in such places.” Zoila looked to Oscar for help, but he continued to pour himself another glass of wine. He couldn’t have been happier had he been at a bullfight and the matador just walked out onto the plaza to fight two bulls.

“I intend to stop when I have completed the portrait. Now have a seat.” I gestured to one of the five empty seats. Manuel rushed to pull out a chair for her.

Zoila looked pleased. “Where is Consuelo? I would like one of her famous empanadas, and not that wine.” She frowned at Oscar as he was about to pour a glass for her.

Oscar put down the bottle and opened his palms placatingly, like a priest.
“Querida
, you have not even tasted this.”

“If it is already opened, it is already spoiled. I want a fresh one.” She liked to demand things in our house, and we entertained her in that way.

I
WOKE UP
on the floor and very late in the day. When I lectured Manuel on forgetting to wake me, he claimed that he had been trying for the better part of an hour amid my kicking out and throwing things at his person. Only when Oscar had walked in, returning from a long night, did he manage to obtain some help. Oscar came into my room, put both his hands to the side of my person, and shoved me onto the floor. He then walked out of the room, leaving a horrified Manuel to explain himself when I woke up shouting.

Of course, the young woman was gone when I arrived at her home. And true to her word, she did not return that evening. I left the house furious, threatening to throw the entire family into prison under suspicion of crimes against the aristocracy. The mother begged me to return the following morning and assured me her daughter would be there. I was so angry that I could not sleep the entire night, and when dawn broke I was the one who woke Manuel and arrived at the ramshackle little lean- to and waited on the doorstep as the young woman opened the door to let in the fresh air. After glaring at me determinedly for a long moment, she let me pass into her house. She made me
wait another hour in the garden, while I watched an old beggar man picking berries from a nearby tree. I got the idea to practice and warm my fingers by sketching him before the family woke and ran him off the property.

I had to admit to myself that for a Filipino, there was a certain dignity about him. He greeted me with a single inclination of his head, as if reaching over the fence to their papaya tree were nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing spectacular when he crept up and drank from the dog’s water trough. When he peeked into the bedroom of the house, I stood and he backed away and resumed his picking of berries with the air of a man studying a velvet satchel of loose jewels. He held each berry up to the rising sun and turned it in certain ways to the light. I do not know why he did that; it was not as if he threw away any that he deemed inedible. He ate each one that he picked.

As with the previous day, there was much stomping of the feet and a small argument ensued before the young woman came out to sit for me. I sat up watching with pity as the old beggar man backed away from the berries, but to my surprise, she took out a small cake from her skirt pocket. “Mang Thomas,” she called.

I watched as the beggar approached and thanked her as a beloved neighbor would and not a thief. When he left I said to her, “Maricel, you have just rewarded a thief. He has been picking your berries since I arrived.”

“My name is Divina; why do you insist on calling me by my mother’s name? And those berries my mother planted just for him,”
estupido
, she added with her eyes.

I shut my mouth and began to sketch her. “He bears my father’s name,” I said, trying to find a common ground where we were not each at each other’s jugulars.

“You insist on drawing this portrait for my mother when we have no place for it.”

“Why do you insist on her not having the portrait? You do not wish for her to have something beautiful?”

“Beauty is for the Spaniards to sit and watch and sip their wine while they expound on the sunset. Others such as us need that time to harvest the rice, to chop the trees, to plant the sugar cane, while there is still yet sunlight, and then to pay the taxes imposed on our trade.”

“You are beautiful. Do you think perhaps your God wasted His time in creating you?”

She eyed me. “Is there a separate God, then, for the Spaniards?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“Then why do your people act as if they have a different God to answer to?”

“Again you speak nonsense. We treat the peasants as peasants. Show me a Filipino who is an aristocrat and I shall treat him as such.”

At that moment her brother Virgil walked in, grimacing and holding his back with one hand. His face was badly bruised, and his lips and teeth were bloody. “Forget this talk, sister. He will never acknowledge their treatment of our people, much less that he has Filipino blood running through his veins.”

“Virgil.” Divina ran to him.

“Who has done this to you?” I demanded.

He brushed Divina aside and regarded me with a wry smile. “Go on painting with your eyes closed, Spaniard. You do not wish to know.”

Oscar was waiting for me when I returned that evening. “Have you bedded the Filipina yet?”

“Don’t be crude,” I said. “You know my great love for our Spanish women.”

“Then if you have no intentions of bedding the girl, why do you keep returning to that house?” He anticipated my answer. “I know”—he waved his cigar in the air—“you owe a debt. To a peasant, Fredrico. Pay them and be done with it.”

“Her brother was badly beaten by the constable this evening.”

“And did he play the innocent? Incredible, what do these people expect if they do not work hard, a pat on the back?”

“From the calluses on his hands, he appears to be a good worker.”

“Fredrico,” Oscar said with deep gravity, “leave them to the constable.”

D
IVINA’S EYES WERE
red the next morning as she let me in. There was a certain stillness to the house. “Come in.” She opened the door with a sweeping gesture. I merely raised a brow at her.

“Good morning, señorita.” I inclined my head and headed for the back room.

“I am afraid that I will have to cancel our sitting this morning.”

Another trick of hers. I turned on my heels and pursed my lips. “If you would only let me finish the portrait, we will both be out of each other’s skin.”

She clenched her fists. “I must hurry to the jailhouse. Your constable has taken my youngest brother and my father to be questioned. Pepe is only seven years old.” Her voice cracked.

“What?” I asked in astonishment. I knew the inquisitions could be brutal, even fatal. A peasant, especially a non-Spaniard, had about as much say as a chicken after the cook has decided it is to be the evening meal.

“They came early this morning, so sure that my father had stolen from one
of your friars. A man of God lying. My father is no thief. He would rather cut off his hand.”

“When did they take him?”

“This morning, were you not listening?” Her voice was a mixture of sarcasm and fear.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “This is not the time to be spiteful. I need to know.”

“An hour ago,” she stuttered.

“Come with me.” I grabbed her hand and called out to Manuel, “Take us to Fort Santiago.”

W
HEN WE ARRIVED
it was as I feared. Both father and son were badly beaten in the area of their hands. The father was sweating profusely, and his hands shook. He was about to confess to stealing the friar’s coins simply to stop them from punishing the boy. I recognized Friar De Guzman immediately. He stood straight, his hands folded before him, with his brown robe moving in the breeze.

I knew De Guzman liked to “borrow” from the donations he collected. I had seen him many times at cockfights and drinking in the corners of the taverns late at night. I also knew there was a big collection that had been accumulating from the parishioners. It was to go to the purchase of a second stained-glass window. It was not difficult to guess where the money had gone.

The constable stood immediately when we strode in. “Señor Basa.” He nodded. He had a wide grin for me. My family came from a long line of generals and dignitaries on the Basa side and a great deal of money from the Jacinto side. We had given quite a bit of money to the rebuilding of that particular garrison.

“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded. “This man and the boy are my servants. What are the charges? Speak carefully or there will be hell to pay.”

“Señor, the friar insists that his money was stolen from his pockets and that the man and his son were the only ones present.”

“When did this happen?”