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  • 5-6 Lucero Composo of Hacienda Buyung

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    Camille Grefaldia
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    eng 11

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    eng 11

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    5-6 Lucero Composo of Hacienda Buyung

    Загружено:

    Camille Grefaldia
    eng 11

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Скачайте в формате PDF или читайте онлайн в Scribd
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    из 9
    04 am Feestand Famine: Stoies of Negros while waiting for her. He would ask as he took her overnight bag from her, “How was the trip?” ‘And because they were husband and wife, becauce che had no one else to tell her story to, she would tell him about the many ways she'd eared a man could die of a heart attack. She could almost hear him say ashe concentrated on his driving, “Ah well, dead men tell no tales.” But then again, sometimes he could also surprise her with something specific to her story, like “Some things about a person you're better off not knowing.” vex The Composo of Hacienda Buyung The Composo of Toto Kiko's Despair ‘hen the people of Barangay Hacienda Buyung heard the news st a bunch of jewels had been found entangled in the bushes ‘on the riverbank of Hlog Danao, they were not surprised. Ever since-they could remember, their mother had sung them to sleep ‘with the composo about Don Enrico Soler, whose suit Inday Juana had rejected. The families of Inday Juana and Don Soler—named in the composo 2s Toto Kiko—owned adjacent haciendas, so of course, a love ‘match between the two would have been ideal. Toto Kiko was heir to what had once been an encomienda granted by the Spanish crown to Fray Fernando Duertas, who had had a son by Francisca Lim Chua, who was the daughter of a merchant from Fu Chow. But on the day that the ‘two families were to formalize the betrothal, with Toto Kiko bringing ‘with him a bagful of jewels as his family's proof of the purity of their intentions, they found Inday Juana gone. She had eloped with Jose Buyung, their encargado, From the bag of jewels clasped in Toto Kiko's hand sprang many legends that slowly grew branches all around it, many of them sinking to ‘the ground, weighed down by the many rings of truths they carried, each one taking root in the fertile soil of the people's imaginings. When ‘Tiya Estrella began to sing the opening lines of the composo of Toto Kiko, people would gather ‘round her store, ready to listen to a story they had already heard hundreds of times but ready, too, to be surprised at anew twist to it or a continuation to a story that they thought had already been brought to closure. O mga sefiores kag seftoras, Famati-i ninyo, ‘akon iga-asoy ining higugma ni 'To Kiko “Tiya Estrella would then sing about how Toto Kiko, still numbly clutching his bag of jewels, had slumped on the riverbank, sunk in 8 186 Feast and Famine Soe of Negros the depths of despeir. Then he had looked up and seen, from the deep, middle part of the river, the scales of u large fish’s tail flashing silver in the dawn light. He stood up, opened the bag, and walked several paces up and down the riverbank, scattering the jewels on it before wading into the river until he vanished, pulled in by the river diwata whose heart had gone out to him as she watched him suffering the kind of torment that only a mortal woman could inflict upon mortal man. “And that’s why,” Tiya Estrella sang, {when the moon is very bright and full, sometimes you can see diamonds half-buried in the sand, sparkling like sugarduston the riverbank." And then she would end the composo in the traditional way, which was either with a moral or an apology or a warning, like this: “But don’t go there to pick them up, for the sirena will get you." ‘Tiya Estrella owned the store around which the men and women gathered ‘round at the end of the day, but she was proud to know that they applauded her composo not because they owed her three months’ dumaan wages on sardines, rice, and gin but because she had a ‘memory for the formula phrases of the composo, which she combined with her ‘own original turns of phrase—a gift that many said she had inherited from her family line of epic chanters, who as the. ‘babaylan of the people, had been massacred by the Spanish soldiers that had come with Fray Fernando Duertas to Christia them. “Indi ah,” said Tiyo Sardo, “Fray Duertas was not the first fraile to arrive here; otherwise he would be 200 years old now: Fray Duertas was, only Toto Kiko's great grandfather, which makes him just 120 years old.” Tiyo Sardo, who was the hacienda timekeeper, prided himself on being the only one among them who had gone up to second year college, and so he knew enough about history and mathematics to make them useful in conversation. Besides, he wanted to add, our diwatas don’t have fish tails. Women with fish tails were the: ‘sirenas, and Tiya Estrella ‘made that up from watching Dyesebel starring Alice Dixson, or maybe The Litol Mermaid starring Walt Disney. But the people's eyes were already rolling upwards as the more impatient ones shushed him because Lito Libat was beginning to strum hhis guitar to sing his own version of what had happened to the jewels. He sang about Toto Kiko’ suicide. which he committed hu tina the ‘The Composo of Hacienda Buyung -@ 87 sack of jewels around his neck and jumping from the pumpboat into that part ofthe river that all the children avoided swimming into because of the whirlpool. And Toto Kiko had done this out of shame, for already there had been rumors that he kept two different wardrobes in his closets: ‘one for the daytime and another for the evening, when he turned into Dama. Lito Libat’s version was the more entertaining one, and his audience would howl with laughter whenever he would sing the refrain about Darna, for he wriggled his eyebrows and pouted his lips and made many flourishes on the guitar with his right thumb, whose fingernail he had somehow managed to grow and keep one inch long in spite of his work in the fields, cutting and loading cane. After the applause and another round of gin, Luciong Ulianon, who could not sing, declared with authority that he had been witness when ‘Toto Kiko was hit inthe head by Landong Walis, who was at the helm of ‘the boat when Toto Kiko had wanted to cross the river so he could get to the city and deposit the jewels inthe bank. The jewels were a handful of diamonds contained in a velvet bag the size of Inday Juana’s purse that she put her rosary beads in. Landong Walis had then thrown Toto Kiko into the river so he could keep the jewels for himself. And then Landong ‘Walis had vanished. ve The Composo of the Negros Nine “GAGO.” TIYO SARDO CORRECTED him. “Lando was one of the ‘Negros Nine, the nine boys that Don Pedro had ordered arrested by the military when they were playing basketball at Hacienda Istanpord during its pista, And it wasn't just Lando who was missing; all of them went ‘missing. He was called Landong Walis because he could shoot the ball ‘with a left hook when he was actually right-handed in everything else.” “Including shooting the enemy right on target?” someone asked. “No no,” someone else replied, "he was not gani en-pi-eh. None of them were. They just happened tobe playing basketball when the military ‘wanted to fill up their quota of arrests for the week. Besides, the Negros ‘Mine dicannearance hannened anly durine the time of Corv. when General ee ond Famine: Stores of Negros Jarque was leading Operation Thunderbolt. There is a composo about that too, di bala, Tiyay Estrella? That story of Inday Juan's vanished lover happened much before that—during peacetime in fact. Te, kundi sulianon ka gid.” “Te, who is wlianon, aber?” Luciong Ulianon’s tone was belligerent because it was not his fault that his real surname was Ulianon. Litong Libat's real surname was Magbanua, but they called him Libat because hhe was cross-eyed. Landong Walis was Rolando Alarcon, but they called hhim Landong Walis because he was left-handed. But Luciong Ulianon could not appeal toa birth certificate for defense because he was doomed by the accident of his name to fulfil its very meaning with every word he uttered. But now, historical truth was on his side and he was self- righteous with it. “Jarque is the commander of the en-pi-eh, not of the military. Te, who is ulianon aber?” he repeated triumphantly. “Buang ka gid. Jarque became en-pi-ch only during the time of Ramos. Before that, he was the one in fact who trained the si-ets-di-ep, the ones who came upon your father when he was on his way to the tabuan and they made him strip while singing all those hymns because he was the Kornunista lay leader of Bo. Alimango.” “Te, what are you two arguing about?” Barangay Capitan Cabral butted in. “Both of you are right. Besides, there were no jewels found on the "iverbank anyway. These rumors started only because a Merkano arrived yesterday and is now guest in Mayor Soler’s house. He has a map with him and he’s soon going to hire some of us to dig up the fields to look for the treasure that the Japanese buried here when they used Inday Juana’s Balay Daku as headquarters. Do you remember when the surveyors came last month and they went around measuring Inday Juana's cane fields and our lagwerta? Te, it turns out that our lagwerta is not part of Inday Juana's hacienda. Kuno t is government property but Inday Juana didn’t know that when she gave it to us. And they're not digging up the riverbank, which isall limestone. Nothing could have been buried there, It's our lagwerta they're digging up.” Everyone fell silent as the meaning of Capitan Cabral's words sank in. They looked at each other as they, almost at the same time, began to understand where these words would lead. But they were ‘momentarily distracted when Miss Lourdes walked toward them as ‘The Composo of Hecende Buyung «89 they sat on the benches on either side of the store. Tiya Estrella handed her her month's supply of toiletry already prepared and discreetly ‘wrapped in a newspaper. “Ah te.” Tiyo Sardo broke the silence as he gave the assurance that everyone was hoping to hear. “That lagwerta is so wide I'm sure they'll dig into only one corner of it. Even if they dig in several spots, they can’t possibly uproot everything we've planted there. That time of our lives is now past. Basta, we planted it with our vegetables and fruit trees because Inday Juana told us we could. Maybe the reason why they want to dig it up is because Inday Juana gave it to us. For eso, Mayor Soler is just using this treasure hunt as an excuse so he can destroy our crops because we're selling the biggest and best- looking fruits and vegetables in the market at the cheapest price. Te, T heard him say to Pedring the encargardo that we are getting reclamador again because we have other sources of living to depend on besides our cutting and loading cane. We should all agree, right now, that none of us will allow ourselves to be hired to destroy our ‘own means of living.” “Ay abaw, I thought all that was over now?” Tiya Estrella exclaimed. “Te, what will we do now that Fr. Louie is no longer here to help us every time the bulldozers come?” “Times are different now,” Tiyo Sardo replied impatiently. And he added slowly as if addressing a half-wit who had not been able to catch the drift of the conversation from its very start, "What we should in fact pray for is that Mayor Soler is really interested only in destroying our crops and not digging up that piece of land.” "0." Someone pointed to a human figure shaped like a question mark shuffling toward them, Its already bent figure was bent further by a sack that curved around his hump. “Here comes Ekot Buktot. Aber, let's ask him what's going on at the Balay Daku.” But as always, none of them could hope for anything more from Inday Juana’s loyal servant except a shake of his head with every question, He would pull out an empty bottle of Perrier Mineral Water with every headshake, for Tiya Estrella bought them from him for 25 centavos each, ‘At night she would fill up most of the plastic bottles with cooking oil for her sari-sati store and the rest she would fill with her own drinking water that came frorn the village well. 90m Feast ond Famine: Stones of Negros Miss Lourdes, who had stayed quietly to hear the rest of the conversation, left when she saw there was nothing to be learned from the silent Ekot Buktot and hurried to find her sister to tell her about this latest gossip. She found her sister, Miss Demetria, in the classroom doing the boardwork for next day’s lessons. Miss Lourdes taught first grade ‘while Miss Demetria taught the second grade in this school that had been Inday Juana’s pet project. The Dofa had saved the two sisters from alife as either indentured servants or weed-and-grass pullers in the fields by putting them through school in the city on the condition that these two sisters came back and devoted the rest of their lives to the Hacienda Buyung Elementary School, which never went beyond Grade 2. Miss Lourdes' every word came witha sound resembling an asthmatic wheeze when she was nervous. “I heard the people at the store talking about a Merkano coming to dig up the lagwerta.” “Yes, I met the barangay capitan this morning and he said the same thing to me. He said this Merkano is a professional treasure hunter. He had found a map in some library in the States. I'm sure Mayor Soler will get commission on this, the way he’s really entertaining this Merkano,” “Do you think Inday Juana will allow it?” “Te, what can she do? She no longer has the strength to protect us the way she used to. The left side of her body is dead; there's nothing coming out of her mouth but her saliva and her litany of saints. Toto Pepito has his own life abroad; he no longer cares what happens to his. hacienda here.” “I'm so scared, Metring. I told you even then we shouldn't have used that lagwerta ..." "Ay sus, don't worry, it’s been more than fifteen years, Forget all about it” ‘They stopped and hurriedly reached for their handkerchiefs kept in the desk drawer when the strong smell ofa thousand rotten eggs wafted through the classroom windows, doors, and the cracks through the walls. ‘They knew Inday Juana had soiled herself again and now Ekot Buktot was washing her down with the Perrier Mineral Water that he drew from the well in the middle of Inday Juana’s garden. Ekot Buktot was the only servant now staying in the Balay Daku, caring for the bedridden Inday Juana. It was he who spooned the lugaw into ‘The Compoto of Heclends Buyung =# 91 her mouth, washed her down when she soiled herself, and carried her from the bed to the rocking chair when she wanted to look out the ‘window, where she could view the four duendes of the garden playing around the dried-up well. She believed it was these duendes who filled her well with clean, magical water that kept her alive beyond everyone's expectations. Years before, Inday Juana had drawn emphatic lines and shapes in the air with her hands to signal to Ekot Buktot why there should be no other source of water for her but this well. She had, she gestured and jabbed with her finger, seen the Virgin Mary playing with her four duendes and then the Virgin had floated above the well and gazed at her and she had heard the Virgin's voice tell her that the water from the well was the water of Life. Inday Juana took this to mean her life, for Life was a capital letter whose seasons of famine and debt, murders and grief, and everything else that made up its rhythms in this hacienda village lost themselves in the steady rhythm of her chair rocking back and forth, back and forth. ‘Of course, she didn't know that the well had actually dried up the day that her son Toto Pepito was born—which was why her breasts, in sympathy with the four jealous duendes, had also refused to cooperate in extending Toto Pepito’s life and had decided, without consultation ‘with the mother's heart that nestled between and beneath them, that the world would be better off if they would deprive him of nourishment from birth. Because Inday Juana had been as dry as a virgin when she {ave birth to Toto Pepito, Tiya Ason, their kusinera, who had also just given birth to Ekot Buktot, had suckled them both from her four breasts, ‘two of which spouted milk from below her armpits. Inday Juana thought the water that Ekot Buktot drew from the well was what she was drawing the last remaining years of her life from. But every night, after Inday Juana had fallen asleep, Ekot Buktot ‘would then go down to the storeroom beneath the winding staircase of the Balay, where gallons of Perrier Mineral Water were kept. He ‘would take them to the dried-up well and pour the water, gallon by gallon, into it. And every morning, under the serene gaze of Inday Juana, who sat in her rocking chair with rosary beads wound around cone hand, he would draw the Mineral Water from the well for her to drink and bathe in, 92 a Feast and Famine: Stories of Negros If Toto Pepito had at least one redeeming grace, it was that he was faithful to his promise to Ekot Buktot that for the rest of his life he ‘would see ta it that his mother's well would he supplied with Perrier Mineral Water. He could not give any assurances about what he could do beyond that, for they both knew that, with the strength of her faith in the duendes and the Virgin Mary and a mineral spring that was being bottled by @ Frenchman and rosary beads clutched in her hand, she would outlive them both. And so, every Saturday afternoon, while Inday Juana ‘was taking her nap, the Perrier van would drive up to the kitchen door and unload the week's supply of eternal life. But while the water might keep her alive forever, Inday Juana was like a decaying fruit that was liquefying inside her skin, which remained ‘smooth and firm enough to contain her. Everyday, while Ekot Buktot washed her with the water, the smell of Inday Juana’s gangrenous intestines traveled from her room in Balay Daku to the workers’ campo so that it cut into their nostrils the way the serrated edges of the sugarcane ‘cut into their skin as they cut and loaded the Buyung cane. At first, the smell had been just an occasional whiff, vaguely noticed, and people had ‘thought it was just a remnant of the curse that had visited the whole island during the year of the whales. But everyday, the smell had begun to invade their lives with a persistence that worried them because it had reached the sugarcane fields and they were afraid it would seep into the cane themselves, the way the smell of the whales had done forty years before. vex ‘The Composo of the Stranded Whales ‘THE SCHOOL OF WHALES had been stranded on the riverbank of Baryo Buyung, The barrio had won its share of national fame then when 4 swarm of news reporters and photographers came to investigate. Tiya Estrella, who had been only Manang Estrella then, would still sing the composo about the 27 whales to outsiders who sometimes drove by to buy her own supply of mineral water that she had drawn from the village well and rebottled with Ekot Buktot's recycled Perrier bottles. She said ‘that the leader of the whales had been enticed by the song of the sirena “The Compote of Haclende Buyung A 93 ‘to enter the rivermouth from the sea and when they got into the shallow part of the river, they got stranded and died there, by the riverbank. After a few weeks, the smell of rotten giant carcasses wafted all the way to neighboring islands—to Iloilo, Cebu, even Bohol. The workers and the hacenderos and their families were fainting from the smell of it. The people in Bacolod City shut themselves up in their bedrooms but still had to cover their noses because the smell sneaked in through the aircon vents. Dogs howled; cockroaches swarmed out of their dark and dank hiding places; ants broke ranks, their antennae ‘quivering in confused synaesthesia; mice scampered in broad daylight and stood before people, begging to be picked up by their tails and drowned in pails of water. There was an exodus of hacendero families to Spain, where they still had cousins they could live with while waiting for the smell to fade. The sugar economy collapsed because the rotten smell had penetrated to the core of the sugarcanes. When they ran the canes through the mill, the combined odor of molasses and the rotting whales produced what seemed to be the portent of the end of the world—an undiluted cosmic fart. For the first time, the Negros Sugar Producers Inc. found a real cause to unify themselves and urged all sectors of Negros society to do the same. Each hacienda sent in its Peterbilt truck, bulldozers, workers with shovels and rakes—anything to bury the giant monsters as speedily as possible. The military dropped bombs on the areas hardened by limestone to create instant giant graves. The workers worked in those areas that oversized machinery could not enter, and they fulfilled the delicate task ‘of pushing and pulling at the whales’ rotting flesh that metal claws would merely have torn and scattered allover the topsoil. Finally all 27 whales were buried in oné field. It was the next generation of workers who reaped the benefits from this makeshift whale graveyard, for their ‘vegetables and fruit became known far and wide for their gigantic size. ‘Tothe relief ofall, no one or thing ever drowned in Hog Danao again. ‘To bring closure to her story, Tiya Estrella then added that it was the barrio folk's common belief that the leader whale had swallowed the sirena out of sheer agony over the unbearable beauty of her song. “Ha?” Tiyo Sardo objected. Again, he put on his mathematician teacher's voice. “If the sirena is now in the whale’s stomach and the ‘whales have long ago been buried under our lagwerta, then what about 94 a Feest and Famine: Stores of Negros that composo of the seven missing women that the sirena had imprisoned in her cave?” “Ah, tch,” said Tiya Estrella impatiently. “That is another composo, the one about the sirena and her many captives.” And Tiya Estrella began, to sing the composo about the jealous love of the sirena that led her to drown the seven missing women. EXD The Composo of the Desaparecidos ‘THEY HAD ALL BEEN seen on separate occasions at the Balay Daku, ‘where Toto Pepito had invited each of them over for dinner and a night of lovemaking, But because they had all been raised as chaste Catholic sirls, they had refused his invitation unless Toto Pepito could show them some sign of commitment. And so, Toto Pepito would pledge his undying love and present each one with a diamond ring before she would allow herself to be presented to Inday Juana as his fiancee. Then, after much hesitation, she would demurely allow her body to become the object of his worship up in his room at the Balay Daku. The city’s jewelry store lost its most regular customer in Toto Pepito only when the police came to inquire, very diffidently, about eyewitness reports that it was invariably Toto Pepito who had been last seen with the seven women who were missing. ‘Toto Pepito had been hurriedly packed off to San Diego, California, when rumors spread that the women’s families were looking for a more ‘murderous recourse of revenge, in frustration at the slowness with which the wheels of justice were moving. No, the wheels were, in fact, missing and had been replaced by the cement blocks that were the police detectives’ brains, which were all that justice was standing, absurdly, on, so that it was immobile, The delivery of a barong tagalog with a black band around a sleeve from a popular but anonymous source sealed Toto Pepito’s fate. He escaped through the kitchen door one late night, a pillow folded in half and tied to his back underneath his shirt, while Ekot Buktot sat in the dark, careful not to throw the grotesque shape of. his shadow on the house's inside walls, where it could be seen through the windows, ‘The Compoto of Hacienda Buyung <# 95 Inday Juana and Don Pepe, ever the resourceful parents, eventually found a sacada desperate to send at least the eldest of his 11 children to college and therefore willing to confess to the murder of the missing ‘women. He had killed them for their diamond rings, he was coached to say, after they had come home from their night of love with Toto Pepito, and then he had rowed the boat into the middle of the river where he had thrown their corpses into the whirlpool. “Ah,” everyone said, “they'll never recover those corpses now; the sirena has got them.” Nobody really believed this, but it was one more stanza that Tiya Estrella could add to the ever growing composo about the river sirena, who was so jealous of her captive lover Don Kiko that she hid away the seven women forever in the river cave behind an impregnable wall of limestone before Don Kiko could catch a glimpse of their human corporeality, which would trigger a longing to be back among his kind again. Only Ekot Buktot perhaps knew what had really happened to those seven missing women—he and, without his knowledge, Miss Lourdes, wiho, in her constant state of nervousness, was kept awake by the sensation of each strand of her hair being pulled by its roots by the numerous, black duendes inhabiting the trees around the lagwerta. She would sit up on her bed and look out the window just before the break of dawn, when she would see, on those nights when Toto Pepito was entertaining a fiancee, Ekot Buktot coming out the kitchen door with a sack curved around his hump, He would walk out of the garden and into and through the canefields and get back to Balay Daku just in time to see Inday Juana beginning to wake, and he would catch her crystal-colored urine into the chamberpot. But village speculations about the fate of the seven women were soon replaced by stories of other incidents of salvaging and disappearances. Hence, it was nothing unusual when the District Education Supervisor, ‘who insisted on personally distributing the paychecks of the teachers in his district, also one day vanished when he was doing his rounds of the hacienda schools. One rumor was that the NPAs had kidnapped and then executed him at the request of the teachers for reasons ranging from favoritism to various imaginative acts of lechery. But the Provincial Superintendent was more inclined to believe the rumor that the Supervisor had been building a fortune on the teachers’ 96 Feast and Famine: Stories of Negros salaries, taking a fraction from each envelope with the excuse that these wwere deductions for his per diem and transportation fare. Multiply this amount with the hundreds of teachers thet he was distibuting these ‘envelopes to and he certainly had accumulated enough to try his fortune in Canada, which he had often been heard he was bent on emigrating to, ‘The rumor of his estafa was confirmed when the Superintendent forced his office drawers open and found his accounting ledgers. So this ‘explained why he could afford to have a thick gold ring around every finger, gold necklaces that weighed him down, and gold bracelets that frightened the birds whenever he walked through the workers’ vegetable garden toward the teachers’ home. ‘The Superintendent kept to himself his discovery that along with the ledgers were pornographic magazines so plentiful that they erupted. from the desk drawers as soon as he pulled these open. It was only after he took the magazines home for his own leisurely enjoyment that he found, between the pages, photos of the teachers, in various states of dishabille but all wearing identical expressions of torment and shame. ‘The Superintendent immediately burned the photos before anyone else ould discover the Supervisor's secret and then he kept the magazines for himself. No Education Supervisor replaced the missing one, for no one dared to travel through this area during that dark period of mutilated corpses and their ghosts suddenly crossing the traveler's path in the glowing ‘shape of the santelmo. This was when the Negros Nine had disappeared, Padre Antonio's headless corpse had been found, and anyone that the (CHDF happened to encounter walking in the hills with a bag of rice or 4 string of salted fish was accused of being an NPA supporter about to feed a squad of these Communists. Even the assistant to the governor ‘went missing when he went to a militarized zone with a fact-finding mission; and they found his roasted remains only three years later. So, because it had become a dangerous place to live in, Toto Pepito did ‘not return home for a long time in spite of the sacada’s confession about hhaving been the serial rapist killer. The only sign that he still harbored thoughts of Hacienda Buyung was when he sent instructions to the hacienda administrator to change the hacienda’s name to Hacienda San Diego, in honor of his new place of residence. Tiyo Sardo supervised the ‘The Compoto of Hacenda Buyung <4 97 oval of the Hacienda Buyung sign, shaped like a whale, hanging at rrr———C—=—S ego sign, which wae in the chape of a cow. ats Sea no one ever femembered to allt Hacienda San Diego, for Hacienda Buyung was not just a name. The ground had been ‘sweetened by the blood of workers’ pregnant wives who had miscarried in the fields as they knelt, a if in the attitude of ritual offering, to pull cout the weeds and grass. The sweetsalty taste of it had seeped into soil and root and climbed its way into the moist, creamy pulp ofthe Byung sugarcane. Changing the name of the hacienda from Buyung to San Diego ‘would have been like changing the name of the world from Earth, on which the human race perched, to Ocean, which, although there was ‘more of it making up the composition of the world, had no solid reality for the people to weave their dreams with. But Too Pepito suddenly had to return home when he received the telephone call about Don Pepe having died in his sleep from the weight of the kapre that had sat on his chest and blown its cigar smoke, which hhad a soporifc effect, into his nose to ensure that he would not try to ‘wake himself up in time to pull himself from death. Toto Pepito stayed only long enough to bury his father, court and marry the daughter of the neighboring Hacienda Stanford (whose family members were proud, genuine graduates of Stanford University, USA), make arrangements with the Perrier Mineral Water supplier, and solve the problem of the Australian cows, before departing the country with his wife, this time for good. vex The Composo ofthe Starving Cows EVERYONE INTHE HACIENDA village would always remember Toto Pepito with great affection and gratitude, for he had saved them from several lifetimes of debt by solving the problem of the Australian cows. Immediately after the People’s Revolt years ago, the Australian Prime Minister, in his eagerness to express his admiration and compassion for the heroism of a starving people, had offered to donate to Negros two freighters full of cows. A contract was signed between the two governments, stipulating that the cows were considered a donation on 90m Feastand Famine Storie of Negros the condition that these were not to be slaughtered. These were to be propagated up to the third generation, by which time a fraction thereof could then be slaughtered for their meat and leather. Any first- and second-generation cow discovered by the Australian government to have ‘been slaughtered would be paid for in full by the Filipino recipient. The sugar workers of Negros rejoiced, for they were to be the recipients. In a matter of weeks, the cows began to drop dead one by one, their ribs sticking out through their skin that had now grown dull and wrinkled from lack of nourishment. The laws of evolution had prevented mutual ‘cooperation between Australian mammalia and Filipino vegetation: the grass growing in Negros had edges too sharp for the tender skin of the ‘mouths of the Australian cows. Chewing and masticating was for the ‘cowsa form of torture that the local military had not yet had the ingenuity to invent for their own human captives. Thus, the cows, like most of the ‘human population on this island, were surrounded by food that others of their own species could eat but which they could only stare at in an attitude of anguished deprivation. When the workers who owned these ‘cows began to discover the cause of this massacre wrought by Bovine Providence, they then began to slaughter the cows for thei fat and protein before these wasted away completely, But an Australian agriculture inspector came regularly to check ‘on the cow population. The remains of every dead cow were inspected to check if it had been killed to be eaten. Dead cows whose skin and bone remained intact were written off as having died of natural causes. Any dead cow which showed signs of having been hacked, sliced, knifed, hammered on the head, or any other such sign of violence— deliberate or accidental—was charged to the cow owner's account. The sugar workers who had eagerly looked upon the cows as the savior ‘that would make them rise above their destitution became buried in more debt. ‘Toto Pepito was blessed with the practical sense and imagination of cone who had somehow sailed through school without reading or writing. Tt was also a natural gift that he had further honed into a skill when he hhad invented the various ways to entice the seven women into his room and then hide the evidence of their presence. Now, it was perhaps not so much concer for his workers that drove him to find the solution as the challenge to solve this amusing puzzle. He advised the workers to ‘The Compeco of Hacends Buyung st 99 slaughter their cows and eat them, except for ten of these that he kept in the basement of Balay Daku. He then instructed Ekot Buktot to direct the workers to a safe place where they could bury the cows’ stripped remains without ever being traced. “Bury them where you can make good use of them as fertilizer,” he advised them as he warmed to the role of patron. ‘Toto Pepito then called a cousin who had emigrated to Australia to send him a regular supply of grass from that continent, packed in balikbayan boxes. This kept the ten Australian cows fat and happy. Each time the agriculture inspector came, Toto Pepito would ply him with Scotch before they would go out to the fields to count the cows. By then the Australian was too inebriated to notice that, grazing among the ten cows were twenty carabaos that had becn painted white with black patches to make them rise above their station. At the end of the day, ‘when he had gone, the carabaos were then scrubbed with paint remover so that their skin could breathe freely again. But the workers noticed that, the day after each monthly inspection, the carabaos’ milk came out curdled and sour until, with the passing of the months, not only the carabaos were in agony over the viscous, greenish white blobs squeezing their way out of the beasts’ nipples but also the people over the stench of putrefaction emitting from them and hovering over the fields as it merged with the sulphorous odor of Inday Juana’s internal organs. “Maybe it's the chemicals in the paint seeping through their skin into their udders," Tiyo Sardo said. But the people surmised it must have been a contagion that the alien ‘cows had brought in, to which these animals themselves were immune ‘but which they perhaps passed on with their pure, First World breaths to lowlier beasts of burden. Hence, it was not so much fear of discovery as fear of another fetid onslaught when they avoided going near their lagwerta as the digging commenced. They were sure that the accumulated gases that had remained sealed there these many years were suddenly going to escape ‘and finally kill them all. By this time, the original rumor of a treasure hhunt had grown branches all around it, many of them sinking to the ground, weighed down by the many rings of truths they carried, each ‘one taking root in the fertile soil of the people's imaginings. 100 a» Feast and Famine: Stores of Negros Inday Juana was dying, they said, and Toto Pepito had sent instructions thet a mausoleum should be prepared—to house her beloved well, the four duendes, and a statue replicating her vision of the playful ‘Virgin Mary. Nearby would be built a storehouse for the gallons of Perrier Mineral Water, for, in loving memory of her, she was still to be bathed in it so as to preserve her body in the hope that the Vatican would take this 45 a sign that she was a candidate for beatification. No no, Tiyo Sardo interjected, he had read in the papers about mass sraves being dug up everywhere, and they had found the remains of deep penetration agents that they called di-pi-chs and of en-pi-ehs who hhad turned against the movement and of si-ets-di-eps who had been caught, and they had all been executed. No no, said Litong Libat, a mall was to be erected here, with eight cinemas and a skating rink, just like the one in Manila, but to prove that the Negrenses would always remember to thank the One from Whom their blessings come, a church that was to be a replica of the Bacolod cathedral would be erected in the middle of the skating rink, so that anyone who wanted to go to church would have to rent the skates to reach it. Nono, said Luciong Ulianon, he had seen the plans that the Merkano ‘was holding and they were turning this into a plaza, with a lagoon in the middle, surrounded by statues of Australian cows being led by a bigger- than-lifesize statue of Toto Pepito, to commemorate his ole as Protector and Guardian of the Buyung workers and their families. vex The Composo of the Mass Grave FINALLY, IT WAS CONFIRMED that the Merkano had come, escorted by the Philippine Army and, for good measure, Mayor Soler’s own private Black Shirt Army. The area was cordoned off so that workers who had. been hired from Antique could dig into the lagwerta in search of Japanese buried treasure. But no treasure of a sizeable amount was to be found after several months of systematic excavation. There were, however, skeletons of various sizes and types, some of which wore jewels. The Merkano returned to the States, leaving behind an impressive vocabulary ‘The Compoto of Hacienda Buyung -# 101 for the barrio children to draw from whenever they wished to express various degrees of violent emotion. Rut the skeletons had piqued Mayor Soler’s curiosity and so he called a forensic scientist, who had specialized in France, to inspect the contents of the enormous pit. After a week, the forensic scientist submitted a list of his initial findings: 1. A velvet bag containing rings, bracelets, and necklaces, each inscribed with the words: “To My Beloved Juana from Your Devoted Badong"; 2. Seven sets of female skeletons, all wearing identical diamond rings on their left ring fingers; 3. One male skeleton, the base of whose skull had been bashed in, with gold bracelets, a gold necklace whose chain had been wound tightly around its neck several times, and a gold ring on each finger of each hand; 4. Bones of two types of mammals, one large and the other extra large, the large type having several missing bones and being more recent than the extra large ones; 5. Nine sets of skeletons, the front of whose skulls were crushed and whose ribs were broken. Eight of them had their right trigger fingers broken but one had both left and right trigger fingers broken; 6. A sirena's full head of hair. Because a pit deep enough for a building's foundation had already been dug, Mayor Soler decided to collude with the Municipal Registrar's Office so that the land ttle reflected his name as the owner of this piece ‘of land, And the Soler Mall rose. It contained a cathedral, a skating rink, ‘a mausoleum, and a permanent exhibit of various types of bones that the captions explained were fossils from the dinosaur era that had been

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