The bells of Christmas

Two days before Christmas, Grandfather came to the house; the help who kept watch over him had crossed the Agno to spend the holiday with his family and knowing this, we tried to dissuade Grandfather from returning to Carmay and spending Christmas there alone.

He was too stubborn and too set in his ways to accede. He arrived hobbling up the graveled path with his long, ivory-handled cane, a relic of his younger days when he was gobernadorcillo, his feet encased in leather sandals firmly tied to his ankles by thongs. On his head was a crumpled buntal hat. Although he tried to walk as if his bones were those of a frisky youth still, he could not refrain from stooping. It was only when he paused at the foot of the stairs that his fatigue became apparent though he had walked but a short distance from the bus station. He was panting and as I tried to help him up, he looked at me, at the young hand that held his arm, and a flash of scorn crossed his face. The expression changed quickly into a wry smile. "I am all right, Boy," he said.

But he did not go up the house alone for quickly, Father came rushing down, saying he should have sent us word so that Old David could have fetched him in the calesa.

It was one of the old man’s rare visits, usually made three or four times a year. He had chosen to stay on the farm, which he had helped clear from the wilderness that had once stretched from the Andolan creek to the banks of the Agno. He had also imparted to the farmers around him his knowledge of farming amassed through the years of frugal Ilokano existence which was interrupted only when he held office and participated in the Revolution or when he visited town.

If Father did not tell me, I would never have known, for instance, what he did during the Revolution; that among other things, he knew Apolinario Mabini and took care of the Sublime Paralytic when he fled to Rosales, that Mabini stayed in our house where he wrote a lot before he went to Cuyapo where later on he was captured by the Americans.

The only time I heard Grandfather really raise his voice was when I was perhaps nine or ten years old. I had gotten ill and he had come to see me on the third day that I had this high fever and hardly noticed the people flitting about my sick room. He had made inquiries about what had happened and Sepa told him I had played at the foot of the balete tree together with some classmates and that we had constructed a playhouse between the veined trunk of the tree.

I remember him roaring at Father, why knowing this, he had not sent an offering so that I would get well, and how Sepa immediately went to the kitchen at Father’s harried command to do what Grandfather wanted although I knew that Father did not really believe in all that superstition.

Father used to threaten me when I misbehaved, saying that he would banish me to Carmay. Though I had always regarded Grandfather with awe, he never terrified me. After all, I loved listening to his stories of the supernatural and the mysterious. He was particularly fond of telling stories about the balete tree for he believed that the tree was blessed and that it was bound to protect us from the curses and onslaught of evil. When Father realized that my being packed off to Carmay would cause me no suffering he resorted to the whip instead.

For a man over eighty, Grandfather seemed in good health. As far as I could recall, he had been sick only once and I distinctly remember how, on a stormy September night, Father and the doctor had to rush in the calesa to Carmay and slosh through rice fields to attend to him; he lay in his old rattan bed saying that if death were to strike, no one would be able to thwart the blow, and for that reason he refused absolutely to take any medication.

Grandfather was more than prepared. It was no secret that he had ordered a coffin made of the finest narra when he was just a few years over seventy. Somehow, Father had disposed of the relic when the old man ceased asking about it. Many marveled over his ability to maintain an agile mind and his memory for faces was superb; he could identify his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, and the host of farmers and their families who lived around him.

What was the secret of his longevity? His tenant-neighbors, especially the more superstitious, had an explanation. It could be, they said, that once upon a time, he had heard the bells on Christmas Eve. On that very hour of midnight when Christ was born, a heavenly chime would peal; only the chosen would hear it and they who are so blessed would live to a ripe old age, their fondest wishes all come true.

I recounted this to Grandfather, but he ignored it; he was not really all that keen about things said of him, for his religiosity pertained mostly to the land whose yield was greatly influenced by God and the elements. He had not stepped within the portals of the church for ages though he was not one to deride those who did. During the dark days of the Revolution against Spain, he had developed an apathy for the Spanish friars and, eventually, the church.

That December evening as he sat down with us at the head of the table, he seemed exuberant. He relished the mudfish and sipped his chicken broth, as if he thoroughly enjoyed every drop. We waited for him to finish and had expected him to talk, but he was adamant. "I came here for no other reason than to take my grandson with me," he said. "He can return when Basilio returns from his family."

It was a time I did not particularly care for Carmay, because at Christmas I would rather be at home. The provincial road sliced through the far end of the barrio which was really nothing but a few thatched houses huddled together with Grandfather’s – the biggest of them all and the only one with a tin roof – standing closest to the narrow bullcart path which leads down from the road. There was peace and quiet in Carmay on Christmas Day and, perhaps, its only attraction during the holidays was its excellent rice cakes – better than those available in town. It was livelier in Rosales – the early morning mass, the chill permeating our bones, the jaunty band music rousing all of us. We would then stagger from our warm beds to go to church where, first, we would drink scalding ginger tea from the convent kitchen. Afterward there would be the happy sight of flickering candles in the altar, the smell of incense swirling about and above everything, our voices swelling in the choir loft. Later, the sun would rise from behind the heavily wooded hills of Balungao, and suddenly it was morning.

The evenings were just as memorable. Tio Baldo, come Christmas-time, always fashioned a bamboo cannon for me, and as soon as it was dark we filled one end with heated kerosene, stuck empty milk cans in the mouth of the cannon and fired away at the youngsters across the street who also had the same noisy toy. Or with Angel, Ludovico, and the other boys, we would play from house to house as a bamboo orchestra, all the rest tooting and puffing at a weird assortment of bamboo flutes, clappers, and jingles, while I played the harmonica – the only instrument that somehow managed to give a running tune to the noise that we emitted. The money we made was not much, but for the boys it meant a merrier Christmas. Shortly before midnight when we returned to the house, we also had something for the help – maybe a cigar for Sepa and a bottle of gin for Old David.

But Grandfather had spoken, and what was Carmay on Christmastime but a wide, dreary field ripe with grain? There was nothing there to dispel the quiet, but the loud booming voice of some farmer calling his children from their river bathing, or the martins cawing in the lofty buri palms.

"We are not going to sleep in the house," Grandfather said, "we are going to sleep in the field to watch the new harvest.

It was only then that I perked up, for the prospect of sleeping in the open – something I never did before – was vastly appealing.

"Why should we sleep in the field, Grandfather?" I asked. "Aren’t you afraid you might get a cough?"

He tousled my hair, then went on to explain that times had changed. "Years ago," he said, "during harvest time, the newly cut stalks of palay were piled in the fields where they were not removed, or brought to the granaries till they were to be husked. Now, with hunger slowly stalking the land, one had to keep watch over the harvest, lest it be stolen…"

I am sure we made a fine sight that afternoon as we walked down main street to the bus station. Grandfather walked stiffly in his sandals, ivory cane in his hand, and his crumpled hat propped straight on his head. I felt proud walking behind the old man who had helped build the town, and who was, perhaps, the oldest man for miles and miles around.

When we passed the church, I said, "If I were not coming along, Grandfather, I would sing in the choir tonight during the Christmas Mass…"

A scowl swept across his face, and, knowing I had displeased him with my remark, I did not speak again.

The trip to Carmay was uneventful. We reached it in a few minutes. The sun lay bright on the countryside, and the golden fields were alive with reapers in brightly colored clothes. The boundaries of our land which Grandfather had cleared blended with the tall dikes running parallel to the banks of the Agno.

We went up to his house. Ears of corn and fish nets were piled near the door. In the kitchen, chickens were pecking at grains scattered on the floor. The nippy December wind stole in, and Grandfather told me to bundle the blankets and a couple of pillows. We hitched a bullcart, then headed for the open fields where the harvest was stacked high. It had become dark and stars began to sparkle in the black bowl of sky.

After we had fixed our beds in the bullcart and in the sled with a thin canopy of hay over us, Grandfather sat on the sled quietly. Distant wisps of singing and the ring of laughter from the farm houses reached us. Rosales was far away – a halo of light in the horizon. No sound from it could reach us, not even the boom of the bamboo cannons or the sharp crackle of firecrackers.

It was peaceful and quiet. After a while, with his head resting on the rump of the sled, Grandfather began to tell stories of the days when this field was a jungle of cogon grass, mounds, and snakes lurked in every hole. He spoke of the Bagos who trekked down the Cordillera ranges and traded venison for cloth and matches. It was a time when the Agno river was not so wild and the Andolan creek had plenty of fish, and, in his own backyard, he hunted the wild pig. He spoke, too, of past Christmases though he was not keen about them, of the night he slept in the open during the hunt and harvest evenings, when he kept watch over the grain that could not be carted off to his granary.

"Boy," Grandfather said, "the silence of a field can give a man beautiful thoughts. Here, more than any place, you are nearer God."

I did not understand then what he meant for I was Padre Andong’s acolyte in the Catholic church and had quite a different idea about worship. But I listened just the same to his stories of the revolution till the singing and the hoarse shouting of the tenants from across the fields waned, and a heaviness stole over my eyes.

Perhaps I dozed off, for when I looked up from my seat of hay, Grandfather was no longer near me. Over the land, a moon shone like a cool, silver lamp. The Balungao mountain in the east slumped like a sleeping beast and all around us was the night, the endless river of night insects and crickets, and the rich, heady smell of new hay. It was cold, and I wrapped the blanket tighter around my quivering body. I looked around apprehensively to where the camachile stood, and where the carabao, tied to a saluyot shrub, was chewing its cud. I saw Grandfather then standing in the open behind the cart, his head raised to the sheen of the starlit heavens, and his right hand clutching his old ivory cane.

He stood there erect as a spear, for how long, I can’t remember. I went to him, but he did not seem to feel my presence. Staring closer at his upturned face, I saw tears trickling down his coarse, wrinkle-furrowed face, to his lips that were parted in an exultant smile.

I remembered then that he was a little deaf, but he must have known I was near for he spoke without looking at me: "Listen, Boy."

I held his hand.

"Listen, Boy, listen," he repeated in a soft, tremulous voice.

"What is it, Grandfather?" I asked, hearing nothing.

"Listen," he repeated severely.

Across the silent fields where the farmers’ homes were huddled a dog howled. The evening wind whimpered in the camachile saplings, a carabao snorted. Somewhere in the shaggy grass that covered the dikes, cicadas were chirping, and, farther down, the river gurgled as it meandered in its course.

"I hear only the river, a dog, the wind and insects," I said.

It seemed as if his thoughts were far, far away.

"The bells, Boy," he said, a glow on his face bright as happiness, clear as morning. "The bells are ringing."

I remembered again the legend of the bells, how men like Grandfather had defied time and circumstance, lived through the years crowned with bliss and fortune, because, once on a Christmas night, they heard the bells. And here was this old man, who had always said this was not so, straining his old deaf ears listening, crying.

I looked at his face again, at the drooping eyelids, at the thin lips mumbling a prayer, perhaps, and it occurred to me that he no longer belonged to my time. He had taken on a countenance that struck me with awe. In the next instant, I drew away from him, and slowly turned and ran across the new hay, over the irrigation ditches, down the incline, beyond the towering palms standing like hooded sentinels of darkness, all the way to Carmay in the bright Christmas night. I went breathlessly up the old man’s house, my heart thundering in my chest, and cuddled among the pillows in his damp room, not wanting to return, cursing myself for not hearing anything and, most of all, for not believing what the old man said he heard.

When Christmas morning broke over Carmay, a neighbor and I went where Grandfather and I had camped in the night. I had expected the old man to be angry with me for having left him.

I told no one about what Grandfather said he heard, not even the doctor who declared that Grandfather, whom we found lying serenely on the sled with an angelic smile on his face, had finally died of old age.