Now and at the Hour

By Aida Rivera-Ford

For three years the people of Bacolod bowed low before the Japanese sentry, spoke cautiously even among friends and trembled at the thought of the Kempetai, the Japanese Military Police. In a whispered “Susmariosep!” they called upon Jesus, Mary and Joseph when they heard of someone being brought to the Kempetai on suspicion. Now this thing was going on, like a fearful epidemic.

The first inkling came when Mr. Schweig was asked to move out of his store — the Casa de Plata, the back of which had served as his home since the Occupation. The Japanese told him they needed a building in which to house the Taiwan Bank. Then the colonel of the Air Force was arriving and needed a residence. And so the Inhelders had to move into the basement of the Ruffs. The Bacolod folk wondered whether the “whites” were in for a treatment. But then Dr. Consing was asked next, and the Lopezes and the Laras and even old Mr. and Mrs. Golez who both had t.b. the others had managed to squeeze in with relatives and friends; but the relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Golez had children, and it was true that all their friends’ homes were already crowded. The people clucked their tongues sadly and expressed the hope that the Japanese who were getting the Golez house would also get their t.b., but no one could suggest a place for them. The Japanese set Saturday as a deadline. On Friday afternoon, Mrs. Golez had stopped looking in on friends. Padre Ignacio found her kneeling alone in church, her tubercular pallor glowing in the purplish light of the empty church. He suddenly thought of a back room in the sacristy with the separate door leading out to the garden. The gilt carosas of Santa Veronica and of San Jose were kept there till the town fiesta when the hermana would dust and decorate these carriages in preparation for the long procession. But there would be no fiestas in a long time. He tapped Mrs. Golez on the shoulder and told her she could move into the back of the sacristy.

For sixteen years, Padre Ignacio had worked hard as the cura of Bacolod; but because of a certain jovial and carefree air he had, he was still regarded as a bungling “youngster” and “liberal.” The people still remembered fondly old Padre Vicenting, who had caught the cholera from administering the sacrament during the terrible epidemic, as being their cura. And now, because he had found room for the Golezes, Padre Ignacio accomplished what all his years of hard work had not done; and the people esteemed him. Even the old ex-governor, who was known to be a heretic, conceded that he was a good man.

But the series of ejections did not stop. After two weeks the Montserats followed and then the Roldans and the Baylons.

Engineer Augusto Baylon would never have thought that he too would be forced out of his house. He was Assistant City Engineer and, having performed every ceremonial nonsense faithfully under the Japanese government, he thought he was immune. During the early days of the Occupation, he was one of those who stood in a drizzle while the High Command in Negros lectured to the officials on cooperation. When he was told to salute, he strained his paunchy waistline bowing; he attended the Niponggo classes faithfully and raised his hand like a little boy when he knew the answers. His wife grumbled against his unheroic acquiescence to Japanese rule, but he would tell her that he was playing it smart by receiving a salary for just sitting idly in his office and that he was just biding his time — that one of these days he would prove his patriotism. His wife Catalina could always exasperate him by turning from him to her fat, comical Berkshire hogs, which had become her sole delight.

On this day, Catalina Baylon was chopping up banana stalks to add bulk to the feed of her hogs — “the biggest Negros,” she could justly boast — when her dog raised an uproar in the front yard. Before she could go in, she heard hurried thumps in the sala, and then a Japanese officer was in the kitchen waving his sabre at the growling dog. He would have slashed at it had not Catalina brandished her chopping knife in the general direction of the dog and the officer.

“Lintik! Demonio! Yawa!” she spewed at him, startled into bravery. Her husband came in time to hear the litany of invective.

“Come in to the sala — come in…” he said nervously, grabbing the dog by the neck. “He won’t bite you.”

The Japanese sheathed his sabre slowly. “Next time, better you tie dog.” The look of one about to claim revenge crossed his face as he glanced at Mrs. Baylon. He followed Mr. Baylon back into the sala, shifted awkwardly into a chair, and frowned:

“Tomorrow-tomorrow-tomorrow…” he counted up to his third finger, “new civilian administrator come. Your house very big for you two. Administrator request you rent house. Administrator pay what you want. Okay-okay?”

“But this house is not for rent. We will not accept payment. We cannot move into any other house. Besides as a public official…”

“Other Filipinos find house. You find house also. You tell them you are official.” The Japanese stood up.

“Tell him we have our pigs. We need the backyard for them. Tell him!” Mrs. Baylon put in shrilly.

“Calla, es inutil,” her husband said.

“Tomorrow-tomorrow-tomorrow, Japanese Civilian Administrator take possession. By order of the Military Administration. Sayonara.” He bowed stiffly and walked out.

There was much blaming back and forth between husband and wife but the fact still was that they had to find a place. Catalina Baylon finally sought out Padre Ignacio for advice. He thought for a while and said:

“Many people have come to see me about this same problem. The other day one told me her family had to move out because sabes tu, a man whom who would never suspect, a very well-known citizen who had been living in that same house, tried to scale the partition that marked off their daughter’s bedroom; but luckily this Romeo’s wife woke up and raised a great fuss. It was quite a quarrel, I am told. The wife was too angry to be discreet, and she shouted out for the benefit of the whole house just what her husband had set out to do…”

“Padre, tell me who it was. I think I know.”

“Ah, Señora, but that would be a sin although I did not hear of it in the confessional. What I was going to tell you was that since so many families need room, I have decided to turn over the West wing of the convento to several families. The other priests and I can all squeeze into one wing and you will have your own separate entrance. You can start moving in if you like, and I will tell the Roldans…” Padre Ignacio caught himself a little too late.

Mrs. Baylon chuckled and said: “The Roldans have a very pretty daughter, haven’t they?… and they’re really squeezed in with their in-laws and that well-known doctor — what’s his name?”

The padre shook his finger at her, but he was smiling. “If this story gets around, I’ll know whom to blame, Señora Catalina…”

And so Mrs. Baylon tearfully sold her pigs with the exception of a little one that she could not bear to part with and she carted her things into the convento. She arranged her bureaus and her piano to form a wall at one end of a long hall, and Mrs. Roldan put up another wall with her furniture. In a month, five other families had moved in; and in some cases, a family had to walk through the living quarters of another to get in and out. The women grew peevish trying to keep the mats and chamber pots and the many intimate details of a home out of sight. On the majestic carved stairway, the men gathered to whisper the latest news from radyo puwak, as the grapevine was called. Here they bemoaned the patches on their shirts and remembered their more resplendent days. Here on warm afternoons the young girls took in the breeze from the open windows and knitted polo shirts from rough twine or sat on the steps with the boys. There was a society air in the matrons’ going off together to barter their clothes and even jewelry for food and in their cooking in the makeshift kitchen in the yard of the convento. And there was laughter about the menu of kamote a la king and kamoteng kahoy supreme and a fiesta atmosphere possessed the group when all women turned out to prepare puto and bibingka out of rice powder, coconut milk and fermented tuba. But this strange juxtaposed existence was beginning to tell on the nerves of the women.

Mrs. Baylon and Mrs. Roldan had become great friends and almost invariably they compared notes on Mrs. Asuncion who could be counted on to speak of her horseback-riding days at the slightest provocation. “Why, I was practically born on horseback,” she would say, drooping an unusually dark eyelid; and then she would talk of the ranch parties she went to while touring the States. Before the war these women had met one another casually. The Roldans owned a drugstore and that way Mrs. Roldan met practically everyone. Mrs. Asuncion was a great party-goer and in those pre-war days, she had rather awed the more provincial Mrs. Baylon with her charming manner of alternating between vivacity and boredom. Mr. Asuncion was in business of some vague gentlemanly sort but Mrs. Asuncion had money for she was the only daughter of a sugar-mill owner. Now, the sugar-mills were not functioning and it was rumored that Mr. Asuncion sold iron and rails from the mill to the enemy.

“I wonder how those people live,” Mrs. Baylon remarked of the Asuncions. “And I wonder where their daughter Mely got that American accent she affects since as far as I can tell she has never been out of this island.”

“Mrs. Asuncion thinks her precious Mely so very superior to my Alma. You should have heard the insinuations she made about Alma because of that swine of a doctor. But I saw Mely flirting with a Japanese officer. Imagine, with a Japanese officer!”

“Don’t you think we should warn Padre Ignacio about the Asuncions? I thought I was the only one who noticed how Mr. and Mrs. Asuncion have been so friendly to the Japanese. For all we know they may even have coached Mely to fool around with those Japs. Do you know that they’ve suddenly acquired several bags of rice when before they could hardly get anything to eat? I know this because she borrowed half a ganta of rice from me which she never returned and you know that at that time a ganta of rice was already a hundred twenty-five pesos, Japanese money. Of course I bartered clothes for our rice, but all the same.

“Oye, Catalina, I hope you don’t think I have forgotten the milk-can of monggo I borrowed from you yesterday. I am going to return that, you know,” Mrs. Roldan said teasingly.

“But you are terrible, Isiang. I only mentioned the rice she borrowed because, the other day, I was boiling banana for breakfast as usual and Doña Sisay Asuncion turned up her nose and said the smell alone would make her throw up. I felt like telling her that although I couldn’t afford rice every morning, I didn’t go borrowing rice and not think of returning it. Now, in our case, I borrow from you and you borrow from me and we treat each other just like sisters.”

One day, it was Mrs. Asuncion’s turn to complain about Mrs. Baylon’s pig.

“Isiang,” she turned to Mrs. Roldan while they were cooking, “I know you are not saying anything about Mrs. Baylon’s pig because you are such good friends but don’t you think she should have more sense than to bring a pig here? Imagine keeping a pig right in the courtyard of the church and close to where our kitchen is. We will catch the peste before long. Don’t you think we should tell Padre Ignacio about it?” Mrs. Baylon had apparently not been far, for she came suddenly upon them looking belligerent. But Mrs. Asuncion went on smoothly. “I was just saying that we should tell Padre Ignacio to slaughter a pig on his feast-day.” She let her eyes fall on the pig tied to the hedge.

“As long as it’s your pig that’s to be killed, I have no objection,” Mrs. Baylon retorted.

“Nobody mentioned your pig, Catalina…”

The women stopped wrangling as they saw Padre Ignacio stride in from the sacristy, excited.

“Muy buenas, señoras — I have very good news. Maybe it won’t be long now before you can get back to the comfort of your homes.”

“Is it from the radio, Padre, or from radyo puwak?” Mrs. Asuncion asked.

“Padre, be careful about telling news. You know there are spies everywhere,” Mrs. Baylon said.

“Señoras, I can trust you not to tell anyone except your husbands. Do you notice what the Japanese have been doing lately… how they’ve been sending their women and children back to Japan? At least they’ve been seen going off on transports. And then the officers are taking our homes. Do you know why? — so that they can be mixed up with Filipinos and so that when the Americans come to bomb the town…”

“Susmariosep, Susmariosep!” Mrs. Roldan exclaimed. “Is it possible the Americans would bomb us civilians…”

“The military installations at least,” Padre Ignacio replied. “They will have to bomb that. And that reminds me. We better start building air-raid shelters right here. The Japanese issued circulars about that and I think it is wise to follow.”

“But, Padre, the Americans will not bomb the church; they will not be so cruel…”

“You said you brought us some news, Padre,” Mrs. Asuncion reminded him. “What is it? Are we going to be liberated after all?”

“Ah yes… and it is something the saints whispered to me. San Pedro himself confided to me that MacArthur has landed at Wake. The Americans are really at Wake. Do you know what that means? They’re really coming this way, and, God willing, there’s nothing that can stop them. That’s why the Japs are so jittery.”

The building of the air-raid shelter started the next day. The men were glad to have something to do and although they kept repeating that never in their lives had they worked like common laborers, they obviously felt like little boys playing at making trenchera. The women too enjoyed pausing at their work to bandy remarks with the men who heaved enormous grunts when they were around.

“Oy, Paing,” Fat Mrs. Duran called to her husband. “Be careful you don’t fall into the grave you are digging…”

“It won’t be me who will fall,” came the answer. “Don’t you see that this grave was built for a big, fat elephant woman?”

“Be careful you don’t get shoved in then,” Mrs. Duran retorted.

Mrs. Baylon too became an object of the witticisms. She often came to give suggestions to her husband who, being an engineer, became the construction boss. She was soon dubbed “Chief Engineer.” And so the fun went on. It was going to be a very special shelter, big enough for thirty or even fifty. The work had gone on for three days when a problem came up. The huge hole that the men had dug soon turned out to be a lake. Mr. Baylon was gesticulating in the midst of a noisy group when two Japanese officers got off a car and asked for Padre Ignacio. After an hour, they came out and took Padre Ignacio with them in the car. Nobody could tell what had happened.

“There is a Judas among us,” the thought ran chillingly over the group, and each family withdrew into its own makeshift apartment and wondered what would happen next. The Roldans and the Baylons huddled together for a conference.

“Padre Ignacio talked too much. I warned him not to confide in everyone, but he wouldn’t listen. Pray God nothing happens to him…” Mr. Roldan said.

“And pray he doesn’t involve us in whatever it is,” Mrs. Baylon said. “Dios mio, if they should torture him…” “You, Catalina,” her husband interrupted. “Whom have you been talking to lately? Did you tell anyone that Padre Ignacio kept his shortwave in the sacristy and listened to the Voice of Freedom?”

“You know I have more sense than that. You better ask yourself whom you have been talking to. It seems too that Padre Ignacio has let Mr. Asuncion in on the secret, and I remember now that Mrs. Asuncion was present when Padre Ignacio told us about Wake… and she was so inquisitive about the radio — you remember that; don’t you, Isiang? I had always suspected the Asuncions from the first… their presence just lies heavily in my blood, and I seldom go wrong when I feel that way… something terrible always happens. There’s no doubt about it — they’ve been planted here among us by the Japs.”

“We can’t be sure about that,” Mr. Roldan said. “I can’t believe that anyone of us would sell Padre Ignacio to the Japanese.”

“The trouble with you,” his wife said, “is that you are too trusting. Catalina is right — it couldn’t be anyone else. How do you account for their sudden prosperity?”

“Mr. Asuncion did say that he sold some sugar…”

“What sugar!” said Mrs. Baylon, scoffingly. “When they did not even have sugar on their table…”

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Roldan, “that what we should figure out now is where we are going from here. We cannot stay in the convent any longer. We better get out before the Japs drive us out.”

“Yes, but we have to watch Asuncion very closely,” Mr. Baylon said. “If you notice anything, let me know. I won’t say anything more now, but, depend on it, I’ll know what to do…”

“Yes, Agusting always knows what to do,” Mrs. Baylon said, sourly.

There was nothing heard about Padre Ignacio for the next few days. The younger priests went several times to the Kempetei to ask about him but they were turned away curtly each time. Then, one night, old Mr. Golez, who lived at the back of the sacristy, sought out Mr. Roldan quietly. It took the old man a long time to bring his story out, but in effect this was what he said: Since the day that Padre Ignacio was taken in, he had made it a habit to pass by the Kempetei because he thought that just possibly he might catch a glimpse of Padre Ignacio. As he approached the building on the night previous, he saw a figure emerge from the side door that seemed to him like Mr. Asuncion. He followed and saw, the man turn into the convento. It was Mr. Asuncion. He didn’t know what to make out of it but the fact bothered him, and he thought he would tell Mr. Roldan so that at least the people in the convent could be careful.

The next day, the story was all over the convento. Mr. Asuncion had gone out early, but Mrs. Asuncion was soon aware of the whispering going on and she kept asking what it was all about.

“You see, you see,” Mrs. Baylon nudged Mrs. Roldan; “she has been nervous all day. You can always tell when a person has something on her conscience.” She said to her husband: “Are you convinced now, or are you going to wait till it is our turn to be sold? If I were a man…”

Mr. Baylon shushed his wife with irritation and left the convento. He came home usually late that night, and very early the next morning he was already working on the air-raid shelter. Mr. Roldan found him there sweating alone at the work.

“Why, you are shoveling the earth back in!” he said with some surprise.

“Well, what are you going to do with a hole that’s full of water? Go swimming? We’ll have to find another place for our shelter,” Mr. Baylon replied.

“But there must be a way to get the water out. I think Mr. Asuncion said something could be done. Wait — I’ll call him.”

“No, no!”

“Why not?” Mr. Roldan asked.

“Because he — he may not be up yet.”

“Oh, no, Asuncion is up before any of us. I’ll call him.”

Mr. Roldan was back in a few minutes looking puzzled. “His wife says he didn’t come home last night. She’s very much worried. She said to ask you if you had seen him.”

“Why ask me about him…? Am I supposed to know what everybody does around here? You know I hardly talk to him…,” Mr. Baylon said, pushing great shovefuls of earth in. “Why don’t you help me here instead of asking foolish questions?”

“All right,” Mr. Roldan said, taking off his shirt; “but you could have said simply that you had not seen him. I merely asked, just in case.” He made the sign of the cross as he took up a shovel.

“Don’t do that, por favor!” Mr. Baylon said.

Mr. Roldan looked at his friend with some perplexity. “Why, compadre, what has come over you… You know I always make the sign of the cross before I start anything. What’s the matter with you anyway?”

“It’s just that… well, it looks effeminate. But you must excuse me, compadre; I was just irritable because I’m tired from all this shoveling.”

“Well, I still don’t see why you had to cover up this hole…”

A week went by. Two families had moved out and the rest had their things packed and were nervously looking for a place to go. Mrs. Asuncion was the only one who made no move to leave the convento. Her husband had not returned all week. She went everyday to the Kempetei to inquire about her husband, but each time she came home weeping hysterically.

“Nobody can tell me anything… nobody. But I’m sure it’s all mixed up with Padre Ignacio. If only I knew what it is or where he is — but nobody will tell me…”

The people in the convento would mutter something hopeful and even jokingly mention the possibility of his staying away with a querida, and then they would excuse themselves with embarrassment and go their way. The Baylons stayed away from her entirely. They were getting ready to move out when Mrs. Roldan excitedly broke the news that Padre Ignacio had come home to the convento. She had not seen him but those who did said that his sutana was hanging very loosely about him and that he looked very old.

“Where is he — I must see him!” Mr. Baylon said.

“I’m coming too, Agusting,” his wife said.

“No, no,” Mrs. Roldan objected. “They say it is useless to talk to him. He is tired and he won’t say anything. He is probably sleeping now, but he did say he would be down to lead the novena this evening.”

“I know what we can do,” Mrs. Baylon said. “Isiang, help me get the pig ready. This evening we will have lechon for Padre Ignacio. We’ll have a real banquet. Agustin, go tell everyone about it, but it must be a real surprise for Padre Ignacio.”

“Catalina, do you think Mrs. Asuncion…”

Mrs. Baylon did not seem to hear her husband. She bustled away to prepare her pig.

The hall immediately before the altar room of the Blessed Virgin was made ready. The windows were blacked out and a long table set. By six o’clock almost everyone left in the convento had gathered around the table on which was the first lechon they had seen in a long time. The light from a single chandelier fell on the rich copper sheen of the roast pig, the ears and tail of which were known to be Padre Ignacio’s favorite. Even the little children were not allowed to pick off the crisp, crackly skin.

Padre Ignacio came down still looking wan, but a benign smile lit his face; and at sight of the roast pig, he raised his arms in mock surprise. Later he confessed that he literally got wind of surprise when the unmistakable odor of roast pig floated up to his room; he had been dreaming he was dead and when the odor struck him, he thought he had awakened in heaven. But as he came into the room, he made a show of surprise.

“Oy, what a shock this is! What have you here?”

“It’s your lechon, Padre,” Mrs. Baylon said, beaming.

“But your baby pig, Señora, your beautiful Berkshire pig. Now, there won’t be any more Berkshires left in the island!”

“For you Padre, we will do anything. We would do more than kill a pig,” Mrs. Baylon said, linking her arm with that of her husband.

“Ah, but have you forgotten that is a Friday and you must abstain from eating meat now?”

“But, Padre,” everyone protested at once, “the dispensation!”

Padre Ignacio winked and everybody laughed.

“It is too bad when you know more than your priest,” he said looking around at the happy faces. “But where are the Asuncions… they haven’t left too, have they?”

There was a pause. Then Mr. Baylan said, “We will talk about everything later, Padre. You’ll tell us what they did to you at the Kempetei and we’ll tell you what happened here. But now the lechon is getting cold.”

So everyone sat down to eat and the lechon was so good that hardly anyone noticed later when Mrs. Asuncion came in. a stunned silence fell upon the room as she said: “Excuse me, excuse me, Padre Ignacio. I am not invited here, but I have to see you. You must tell me what they’ve done to my husband. Don’t try to spare me anything. I want the truth…”

“Mrs. Asuncion!” Padre Ignacio said in surprise. “Why, where is your husband? I was wondering myself why he wasn’t here!”

“Padre, do you mean that he was not confined with you at the Kempetei? He has not come home for a week now, and I thought surely he was taken in too…”

“But why? You know what good friends he and Iwabe are — as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be here now if he had not pleaded with Iwabe for me. He went to the Kempetei once to see Iwabe, but I don’t see why…”

“He went to plead for you, Padre?” Mr. Baylon asked, horror flooding his face.

“Yes. The Japanese threatened and threatened because I would not give up the convento. They were going to make a geisha house of it — imagine, a geisha house… our convento. They said — they said that we could all live in the church. And Mr. Asuncion went to talk to them out of it. I know because before they let me go, they said that if it were not for him… but you say he has not come home!”

“No, Padre. Migueling is not here and what am I to do? Nobody knows, nobody knows…” Mrs. Asuncion’s voice rose into a scream.

Padre Ignacio led her gently to the next room where the altar was and he led the prayers in an old shaky voice, devoid of its once virile and dramatic timber. Mrs. Asuncion made an attempt to subdue her sobs as the muffled voices rising and dying down gradually and suddenly rising again became a consistent pattern of sound.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Jesus… Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace…

Padre Ignacio was distracted by the sound of painful vomiting. He saw Mr. Baylon lead his stricken wife out. Mr. Baylon himself looked paler that his wife.

Mr. Asuncion was never seen in Bacolod again and as the years went by, the people supplied many versions to explain his disappearance. His wife was positive that he was killed by the Kempetei, and her story became so embellished with details of his heroism in guerilla work and subsequent martyrdom under the Japanese that people hearing her story for the first time went away feeling that they must write a story about him someday. But there were those who claimed that the guerilla did away with him because of his over-friendly dealings with the Japanese; and, of course, there were those who believed he wasn’t dead at all.

One night, years after the convent had survived bombings and machinegun strafing and Liberation itself, Padre Ignacio was sitting alone by his window watching the young sacristans play barefoot on the courtyard.

“Hoy, boys!” he called to them. “Come in now — it is drizzling and it’s too dark anyway.”

“Yes, Padre, yes, Padre,” the cura muttered to himself. He remembered the times he used to chase the children playfully during the war when the convento was full of people. It came to him that he missed those days. There was much more tension, but also more excitement, more feeling, he thought. And there was that beautiful bond of comradeship among the Baylons and Roldans and even the Asuncions. Poor Mr. Asuncion. He never saw the Baylons any more, too, not even in Church. The Roldans complained that they had changed, and that they were always having violent quarrels and calling each other names. Mr. and Mrs. Golez had lived through the war but they had died soon after, one shortly after the other. Those two old people had kept watch while he listened to the radio hidden in the sacristy for news from America. How exciting it had been! He had to remind himself that those had been uncomfortable and anxious days. There were the days of unspeakable indignity at the Kempetei, days when he almost starved and finally was forced to cup his hands for rice poured steaming hot only to drop it on the dirt floor and pick it up again greedily; the low opening to his cell he had to crawl through and the kick on his buttocks to help him into it; the time he parried a blow and told an astonished Jap, “Have respect for my grey hair at least,” and almost immediately his falling forward from something that had hit him at the back of his neck, and the gritty pain of the Jap’s shoe scraping against his hair…

Padre Ignacio smiled as these things came back to him. he wondered that he enjoyed the memory and there was something of unbelief — what was it…?

“Ay, Mama! Mama!” the frightened scream of the boys cut through his reverie. “Santelmo! Santelmo!”

Padre Ignacio looked down. The boys were scampering away. A bluish phosphorescent ball of light was whipping itself over a spot of ground. Padre Ignacio crossed himself. It is a poor soul struggling to have its grave sanctified, he thought. He must remember to sprinkle holy water over the spot the next day — But Señor mio, at the convento… he shivered as he peered again: it was where the hole for the air-raid shelter had been dug.