Letters: Book Two: Letters, #2

I

Contemporary Writer Friends

P. C. MORANTTE

P. C. was vacationing in Leyte when he replied to a couple of requests I had sent him earlier at his address in Lompoc, California. He was sorry he couldn’t find my letters except for recent ones I had sent him. He sent a brief essay on me, quite flattering and as usual written in his simple, graceful prose. Thanks, but that was not what I needed.

It was such a happy surprise then when a large bulky envelope, sent by P. C., arrived in Greeley, Colorado in May 1995 during my visit. It contained more than 50 letters I had written him, some as early as 1945. One of the priceless ones was the letter I wrote him in Nov. 1981 immediately after the death of Aquing, expressing my immeasurable loss; to my mind the only letter I have written about her death and what it really meant to me.

Miami

Sept. 18, 1945

Dear PC:

Thanks a million for sending me my mail. Batoon & Co. are doing a good job of it also. I’m sorry to hear of the apparent disintegration of the solid individuals who used to make up the coterie. The hay fever must be largely responsible for it.

Esquire editor had a little scribbled note for me on my story Woman Afraid, the same kind of ineffectual praise that it got from Angoff. So he’s a tough man, eh? I don’t remember where I sent my MSS After the Storm. Maybe I sent it to the Atlantic.

Well, the Post is out with my poem, Hasten My Dream or something. If you knew me as you know me and you didn’t know how the poem got to be written, wouldn’t you go plumb crazy trying to find out what I wanted to say? Who cares? I hope you have also sent and got an acceptance note on the poem I left in your care before you left for New Jersey. I think the poem is called War Casualty. Please collect for me the amount due me my poem and also the other poem March of Death. You get the usual percentage plus my love. (I get the Post quite regularly. I don’t mind paying double for it. Out here, you pay double for everything, especially for such things, after which you see double. Oh, well.)

I’m leaving Miami after this week, so hold on to my mail until I give you my next station. I believe it will be in Cambridge. What is Dalisay doing in Harvard? I hope Harvard is big enough for both of us.

I’m not surprised that the Preston woman has left. She had no place in an office like ours where we are more like a family than anything else. You know what I mean by family. In Basic, we say: father, mother, brother, daughter, son, sister, husband, wife… family, see?

I hope you have gotten rid of your hay fever by now. Hold that running nose. Incidentally, now that Rose is back in Washington, don’t you think it will be a patriotic thing for her to return to her old job? There I go talking again.

Please remember me to everybody, even to Meding. Tell her, remember the little guy who drank from the library fountain more than was good for him? Perhaps she will remember then. As for Gladys, tell her anything.

Ben

The Philippine Center

227 Commonwealth Ave.

Boston 16, Mass.

September 25, 1945

Dear PC:

Up here the most popular reading matter is your digest. It’s displayed conspicuously near the door. It was my first reading matter here. Of course, alongside with it is the Philippine Mail, also a bulwark of Philippine journalism.

But this is all silly. What I wanted to tell you is that I’m here at last, a sinner among a land of saints and other unhappy people. I’m staying at Brattle Inn in Harvard Square in Cambridge. The landlady who met me answered my good evening with the caustic remark: Rather late isn’t it? Ratha, I answered, outratharing her. All she needed was a broom, and the next morning I saw her with it. I don’t think I shall stay at the inn long. I don’t care whether it’s steeped in history, or whether Miles Standish slept in the bed where I now sleep. It creaks anyhow.

Please address me at Peabody House, 13 Kirkland Street, Cambridge 38, Mass. I have a cubicle there and am supposed to sweat it out from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., an improvement on my 8 a.m. program in Miami.

Yes, Miami. While the hurricane blew, I played poker with disastrous results with a number of officers of the USN.

I saw my poem in the Washington Post. Maybe I have told you about this already. As soon as you collect, remove the amount due you and have a chop suey dinner on me, you and Rose, of course.

On the way up here, I spent an extra night on the train on account of some floods that busted the rails between Florence and Rocky Mount in North Carolina. I had just barely enough time to take my dirty linen to the laundry. In New York I saw Tejam.

I registered for a course in Teaching English at the Graduate School this morning, but before they gave me the final acceptance papers, they wanted me to prove first that I’m not as feeble minded as I looked. That will be something to prove, wouldn’t it? Then I have to undergo a physical check-up, and at my age, I feel kind of embarrassed.

I understand Dalisay is here, but he isn’t. They tell me he is still in New York. I’m not surprised.

Tell me how is Gladys B? I am a tired man, and very unhappy, because I am broke.

Tell me how is Mariya Batoon? I am a hungry man, never had a decent bite since Labor Day.

The Boston Center is better than anything in its category that I have seen before. I can be quoted on this. Then again, regards to everybody. I still say the right things.

Ben

Harvard University

Graduate School of Education

Peabody House, Kirkland St.

Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

October 5, 1945

Dear PC:

I have just finished writing Sol in Basic. My point is to disprove your calling it baby talk. Wait until I become really proficient in Basic, and I shall be writing better. Meanwhile, you may read the letter, and my first exercises in Basic. Prof. Richards is beginning to talk about publishers. Maybe, who knows, my first book in America will be in Basic, and it will serve the world. Ah, such grandiose dreams, and this is only a three-dollar check, and it is all yours, or what remains of it after you have paid Sammy and this telegram bill from the Western Union. It has been hounding me.

What happened to my story, The House that I Built and my poem War Casualties - casualties both of them? I have this Woman Afraid stuff, and I think I’ll send it to Story. Twenty-five dollars is not the idea, but the publication of such a thing as this. My next poem will be about a lovely rich girl from Radcliffe listening to a lecture on the Iliad. I haven’t written a word, but it is almost finished now, and it is exquisite, well, as exquisite as 25 cents a line can be.

You must have been very busy. Write me at the above, and we shall not have to disturb the equanimity of the director of the Philippine Center in Boston. What happened to Gladys B? Has she met Confessor and I mean met in the same spirit that D.H. Lawrence says, You Touched Me! The females here look stinking rich, also stinking. They are so full of worldliness, and the world seems to belong to them even whilst they sit, legs crossed, in the subways. I don’t know what to do. I’m paying three dollars (one poem) a day for a room on historic Brattle Street, and all I see is a nosy decrepit housekeeper with white whiskers and beard, smiling at me radiantly after she makes sure I have returned alone. Oh, she could be radiant, she could also die one of these days.

Do write, PC. And tell me about everything. I’m interested in the President, in Sinco, and in Galang. I’m also interested in you and Rose. I sit in a lecture room and I get lost in the beauty of meaning. I have never heard poetry read the way Richards reads poetry. You feel so inferior. You shut your mouth and keep your peace. Meanwhile, heck, I better write that poem!

Regards,

Ben, which in Basic, is Ben.

P.S.

Please collect payment for March of Death. A copy is between the pages of my bound short-stories. We should get 15 bucks for this.

The Resident Commissioner

of The Philippines

405 Montgomery Street

San Francisco, 4, California

January 14, 1946

Dear P.C.:

I have never seen so many Filipinos than in Frisco. Today I had lunch at the Bataan on Kearny and Washington. I don’t feel too little anymore among so many short paisanos. I had my last injection today, and I’m feeling sick all over again.

Thank God, after these hectic weeks, the SS Uruguay is taking us to Manila on the 17th. I hope you and Rose are happy and comfortable in your new apartment. And should you see Dot again, please tell her nothing except what would make her happy. I shall never be the same again after that leave-taking on the 4th. We are leaving everything in God’s hands. That’s all that we could do.

If you find them please write me. My brother’s house is 1128 Antonio Rivera, Tondo, Manila. I don’t know where I’m going to live or what job I’ll take when I reach Manila.

I shall keep sending you my MSS. I believe I can write now. My period of gestation is over… the milk spilleth over, and I will write good things. I may be famous yet and you rich.

Should you get to Manila, look me up among the ruins.

Ben

Hello from the Dionisios. Twice I’ve been to their house. Nice people.

1128 Antonio Rivera

Tondo, Manila, P.I.

February 11, 1946

Dear P.C.:

I have just found time to write. Ever since my arrival I have been busy looking for my baggage and a place to live in the city, and a job which will be sufficient to buy three meals a day. I have not yet seen my family, since there’s no transportation by land, the boat schedules have been stopped by the strike, and commercial flights don’t begin till some time in the future.

The city is badly battered. I can see the city in my brother. He’s licked and somehow, even his way of thinking has changed. ’Tis only his kindness and his love that remain. Like the city. They call it Manila. The sounds and the fury of living are here, mixed with the smoke and the greed for money. If I had no obligation and a duty to my country, I should have stayed; but now that I am here, I must learn to survive, and when the going gets toughest, learn to bite the lips and dwell on the memory of better times in the great old United States.

I don’t have a single copy of any poem I’ve published and written in America. Do me the favor of sending me copies. Every evening I visit writer friends at the old Ramon Roces Publications building and I tell you, P.C. they are wide awake, they are no longer the children that they were. What gravely concerns them is the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end, and nothing can make them believe that it isn’t there. The old standbys, SP and FM, are deep in politics and the younger writers think their days are past. The minimum pay writers get for stories here is 35 pesos, 50 is middling. A group of us wishes to form a sort of cooperative that will raise the price further, a sort of agency that will deal directly with the publishers. We are looking for agents in the U.S. Send us the names and addresses of the more reputable agents in the States. We intend to sell works of Filipinos through them. Perhaps we would also be able to sell books. Almost everybody I have talked to has a book. The body calls for sane editorship and business-mindedness. I may have to fall on this, for by the looks of things the little decrepit child selling foreign articles in the corner of Quezon Avenue and Azcarraga may be earning five times what our government would be in a position to give me. Isn’t it a pity that after all these years of striving, we cannot have the peace of mind that comes with a job well rewarded?

I hope 1617 takes a hand in facilitating the sending of those boxes of books and papers, etc. that belong to us pensionados, up in the attic. We need them in our work. It will be time well spent should Noli and his men do something about the sending of those suitcases and boxes. And please ask Mike if he has sent the box, and how can I get it? His wife is coming to the house to claim the suitcase Mike sent me.

The government seems in a hurry to get the pensionados back to their work. But I’m afraid there’s a lot of disappointment in store for them. The present purchasing value of the peso is less than 20 centavos, prewar evaluation. So if my job gives me 200 pesos a month, I shall be earning the prewar equivalent of 40 pesos. I don’t know what I’m going to do. It isn’t pleasant to be broke at a time like this. Nor at any other time.

Write me about you and Rose. And if you see Dot, tell her nice things about me, don’t let her know what a terrible fix I’m in. She might pity me and that would be tragic. Tell me about her. Tell me about friends. I’m dark already. The day I came I had red cheeks like a bride. Now what I need is a bride and plenty of money and snow under the moonlight.

Ben

September, 1946

Dear P.C.:

I thought you were coming over, and so I’ve been holding your money; but it seems, according to NVM you and Rose are not passing this way until sometime after you’ve received this letter, or around the middle of the month. To make sure that you’re seeing us I’m not sending the money. Come and get it! Then I’d want Beatriz to see Rose. I have been telling her how beautiful your wife is. I hope she has not changed. Then I’d want to see how she’d bear up with our primitive ways of life out here. In our city home, she’d not find much difference, there would be modern facilities: bathroom, radio and all that. But here, which perhaps would be worse than what she’d find in Leyte, I’d want to see how she’d dislike it. Sagpon is a far cry from the wildernesses of New York.

Then I’d want you to see our school. How we teach under leaking roofs, our feet on wet earth, but how eager and bright the faces of the children, how readily they respond to praise or reproach.

Look for the normal school when you come between 8 and 12; but in the afternoon, I might be home, although I could also be in school. Beatriz is in the high school.

You haven’t said anything yet about my poetry, much less about my stories. You must be busy at the office, and now, at home.

I hope that by now Rose has been able to adjust herself.

Well, until I see you then, so long….

As ever,

Ben

Sagpon, Daraga, Albay

May 27, 1947

Dear P.C.:

Bienvenido! So you’re home at last! I can hardly believe it. Just quite recently I got a note from Villa telling me that you and he were trying to wangle a job with the UNO, and now you’re here. Headman of Jesse’s bureau! Isn’t it wonderful? My first reaction was to send you a wire and ask you to come over pronto, but I shuddered at the impersonality of the whole thing. So I said I’d write you, but ’tis only now that I’m able to.

I’m teaching in the summer school here in Legaspi on an honorarium basis. It may sound incredible but true. For six weeks, at no less than five hours’ work a day, the government is paying me 75% of 190 pesos per 30 days. That is not hard to add. I wish I were not a teacher but a diplomat! But then I’d not be as happy as I’m now. But that’s the trouble with me, I’m getting too fat, but not rich as you say in your letter. I wish it were true!

But come. There’s no better way to show you how poor but hospitable we are than for you to come over and spend the weekend with the family. They’d love to see you. They’d want to see a man balder than their Papa. I’ve told them about you, how we have been through the hell that is America.

I hope you’d be able to stay through. There are a lot of things in this country of ours beside the heat that may get under your skin, but hang on. I’m hanging on here for good, unless some kind magician gives me another free trip to, say, Europe. But the good old U.S.A. I’ll try to shy away from for sometime yet. I’m still very tired.

I’ve stayed here for nearly two years now. And you when did you come? What is this I hear from the Press about your agencing for Bulosan? I wrote an article about Bulosan sometime ago and Yabes, I understand, jumped on me. Perhaps you would have, too, if you had been here. But I done nothin’ wrong.

Have you properly acclimatized yourself already with our fellow craftsmen in Manila? Have you met NVM? What articles are you doing now? And what book? I have written about ten chapters about Filipinos in and around Washington, and they seem pretty good. I’m not surprised. What surprises me is the way I have been able to carry across the sort of poetry I started in Washington. Remember how I stuck with the old Washington Post? Well I have written better pieces since. I intend to write more. Contact Viray. He’s publishing some of my poems. On our own. It’s the only way. Do you think you can sell my idea of a novel to some of the guys in New York?

I want to ask you a lot of questions, especially about Rose and Villa’s most beautifulest girl in the world. And where are you staying? I hope you didn’t have to go to Mindanao. I’m sure you have free access with the airlines. Drop in here on a week-end. Just carry a toothbrush and we’ll take care of the discomfort but we’ll do our best. I have many things to show you. Or better still, if you can come before the summer ends, June 21st, I’ll make you talk to my English classes. I have been bragging about you.

Please write again plenty about yourself in Manila and the literary world of which I’m now very ignorant. When you write to Rose give her our love, the Infanta’s and mine.

Write …write…and come…come….please…..

As ever,

Ben

P.S.

Say hello to Jesse for me.

(Jesus Villamor)

Albay Normal School

Legaspi, Albay

September 28, 1947

Dear P.C.:

Can you forgive me for not answering you soon enough? The pace I have been keeping is faster than most, and although it has to date failed to diminish my obesity, I have accomplished quite a lot, but all of it school work, very little for literature and the muses. My novel has remained in my box for months now. I hate to look at it. If I had the courage most people seem to possess in quantity I would chuck my government job and devote myself to writing. To date I haven’t written much except the poems which, alas, you still understand!

We have a little mimeographed paper in school. It’s cute. I’m advisor. I’m teaching poetry and drama. Next week we are putting out two Guerrero plays. I do everything except act. The trouble with it all is that I don’t believe in acting. I have very good friends in the movies and they want me to write for them, but how can I? I’m tied to my work. I tell you this isn’t my idea of a picnic. I teach in 3 schools, and every weekend I play tennis. I’m getting nowhere as far as reducing is concerned. All I get is sunburn. I’m almost black! Rosie wouldn’t recognize me anymore. If you can’t come over, I may be able to show up in Manila for a couple of days during the Christmas season. You’ll be in Manila then I hope.

I expect an heiress on December 23rd! I’ve decided that a fourth daughter wouldn’t be bad. They could all be Miss Philippines one year after another and get a free trip to America and oodles of dresses. Their Mama could go with them. Do you intend to stay long in this here country? How’s Rosie liking it? I read her story. I hope she got paid much for it. If I get a chance to go to Europe, I’ll take the chance, but meanwhile I’ll hibernate here. Our house is old. When I arrived it sagged in the middle and was full of holes. It’s no longer sagging, but it still is full of holes. So I built a house near it, but an army officer begged on his knees to live in it, so I bid him stand and stay there. And we’re still living in this old house. It’s this old house I wanted to show you because it looks quite historical to me, the holes the shrapnel had made on the sawali walls, the thick vines, and the wilderness behind it, a terrific contrast to Main Street, you know. If I get a good place somewhere else in the province I’ll build me a bigger house, then we’ll be comfortable, but there will be no more history, nor any remembrance of history.

I passed the suggestion of the possibility of your coming to the high school, but I haven’t got any reaction yet. Our school is practically a girls’ school and there are only a little over a hundred students. The high school is big. You will fit in there. How are Villa and Bulosan? What do you think of our writers? Write an article about them. You should know them by now. Use a feminine pseudonym, Rosa Vargas or something. Regards. Write again and don’t mind my slowness.

Ben Ben

Albay Normal School

Legaspi, Albay

Christmas Day, 1947

Dear P.C.:

On a Christmas Day I can write. Besides it’s a wet Christmas, and windy too as if another storm is coming. If this keeps up I shall miss my tennis this afternoon. I need to exercise, amigo, I’m as fat as a pig; but I’m still insurable, not to mention the fact that I’m still very able. Very able indeed. On Dec. 8, 6th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, my first boy was born! I’m calling him Tomas de los Santos. He’s my spittin’ image. Matter of fact, he is already bald. But I’m kidding, he’s a good looking hombre, and very masculine, I tell you. The nurses at the Ago Hospital are thrilled! Moment he was born, he winked at one of them. The mother is doing well. I ordered some wonderful things for her from Manila, and they arrived just in time for Christmas. Mother and child are well, thank God. The father ain’t so well seeing as he can’t play no tennis this afternoon. I hope this typhoon isn’t another Gladys! We know Gladys, don’t we?

You are lucky, you don’t have to work as hard as I do to earn what you’re earning now, 5200, no? Why didn’t you get that UNO Secretariat job? The very ordinary men we knew in the USA are mostly all consuls now. Don’t you smile wisely looking at their pictures and their wives in gilded splendor? Me, I have to slave away teaching. In the morning, I teach at the normal school, in the afternoon, I supervise English instruction at the high school, at noon I teach in a nursing school, at four, I teach seniors of high school, at night, I teach advanced English in a private college; this is Monday through Friday. Saturday, I teach old teachers at the Saturday Normal Institute. It’s a hard grind, P.C. It is not the teaching alone that wears you down, it’s the preparation, the themes to correct, the themes to make, etc…but hell, why am I complaining? I’m not. I’m simply trying to show you why I cannot write as often as I want to, why I can’t communicate with friends like you much as I want to.

The Central Office (Instruction) in Manila has called for me twice already. I have my walking papers. I’m being promoted, I think to Supervisor of normal schools, that means all over the country, that means less money for me because it means abandoning my side jobs, it also means airplane rides, which I detest. (Did you read that fine article in the November Reader’s Digest about the man who was afraid to fly?) It also means moving my family. I like it here. We have no home of our own in Manila. It will mean thorough, complete impoverishment for the Santos family. Here we’re all right. Now and then I can still write poems and sometimes articles and stories.

Why aren’t you publishing any now? Busy with your book? Or are you busy with your rose?

May you find real joy this Christmas, both of you. And may the new year bring you all the unrealized dreams of the preceding year. I want you two to be happy, as I am, as we are.

Cheerio!

Ben

Legazpi Town Hall

August 25, 1948

Dear P.C.:

Twice I wanted to write you: once when there was that hullabaloo in the office of Jess Villamor; and another when somebody was trying to reply to Pan Humla. But no go. I was in the thick of story writing. I have just paused. May I call your attention to my Chronicle story, House on the Hill? That seems well written, if I may say so. There is another story in the hands of Gonzales (Scent of Apples) which is good. Rose may like the latter or both, if she’s still a loyal fan. I wish I were wise enough to tell you about the deep implications and significance of these stories I am writing, but I’m leaving that to Viray. Didn’t that picture of mine remind you too much of our golden days in Washington D.C.?

It makes me happy to know that at last you are well settled in the city. I have urged NVM to write a series of stories on the city, and I understand, he is doing well. Thanks to the strike, now he can write beautifully again.

Tell me more about this organization of free-lance writers. I came across the names of the elected officers. Tell me, are you a member? Knowing as I do that you don’t love Fabian and D.H. too much, didn’t you put in your mite to help picket them guys? As my luck would have it, every time something lovely turns up in the city I’m out in the country listening to the kokacking of frogs as the shallow ponds fill up in the rain.

Tomas is growing fast. He seems to be a nice boy and doesn’t show any signs of growing up into a writer. A boxer perhaps, the way he horns into everything that comes his way. Already he has taken spills. He will be a hardy man. He gives you (gurglingly) and Rose his love.

Ever since we have acquired a piano, there has been no peace in my household. I have gotten so used to it, that I can’t get to sleep without someone banging on it. This and the radio at full blast, and you can see why I have no more hair… on the head, I mean. But, let me tell you, I have written stories and poems in the din and noise of my crazy music makers. Now, what do you know about that?

You write me again; and Pedroche, ask him to write also. Rose may read our masterpieces.

Regards to both of you from Aquing (Beatriz) and

Ben

Legazpi Junior College

Legazpi City

March 5, 1951

Dear P. C.:

I cannot understand it, but I felt happier seeing you winner in this contest than I actually felt when I heard of mine. It cannot be that I love you more or love myself less. But there it is: I danced all over the house when I saw your good face beneath the hat and the announcement of your winning. Arme said I acted as though I won the 1,000 pesos myself, I could spank her but I won’t. Maybe because I didn’t have to suffer this time. Last time I suffered. I suffered writing the story, suffered waiting for the decision, and when it came I was only half-alive. It was such a nightmare. It could be with you now.

Anyway, I am happy for the old Washington D.C. crowd like you and me; I am happy for Rose and her Dad; I am happy for you and your boss.

I have read the piece. Its gentleness, its objectivity, its sincerity, its wisdom, all combine to make it worth the money. Now, don’t tell me you are going back to America. The first time you won the commonwealth award you went east. Now you can go south and you won’t starve here in the south the way you did in the east.

Now you can buy Rose another engagement ring. Or give her another kiss, seriously this time, with meaning. Never mind the consequences.

Now, you can even be President. I shall be content with being poet laureate. I shall see to it that you won’t understand my poems. You will be too busy answering your mail. But I shall never forgive you for not answering this.

Congratulations!

Regards, as