Many, many thanks to Bebop3, without whose suggestions and guidance, this story would have remained forgotten.
This story has fourteen parts and is published in its entirety.
A glossary of terms can be found at the end.
The characters of this tale are 18 and above.
-------------------------------
PROLOGUE
"Can't I try it,
kuya
, just for a little while? You can always tell me what to do," Emanuel's younger sister, Katrina, begged, not for the first time.
"No, Katrina, threshing is not for girls... farming is not for girls!" Emanuel said, as he jumped off the huge machine.
He took off the kerchief tied around his neck and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Come along now, Lucas wants to talk to me before lunch," he held out his hand to his sister.
"Alright, but I left my clogs by the paddy. You go on ahead, I'll catch up," Katrina said, already running to the opposite field, where her wooden slippers lay under the hot baking sun.
Her brother smiled and shook his head as he watched her, blue-ribboned pigtails bobbing as she ran across the field to get her clogs, she could get away with anything.
"Hurry, Mamá will have a fit if you're late to the table," he shouted back and laughed as Katrina turned and put out her tongue at him.
He was still smiling as he turned for home.
That was the last time he saw Katrina alive .
-----
She was called Maria del Sueño. That was what her mother named her - after a difficult birthing that had gone from bad to worse.
Cradling the tiny bundle in arms that were growing weaker with every minute, she kissed the baby girl with lips pale from the loss of blood, and died.
At first, all that Maria's father could feel was grief, but it did not last long; a week after he buried his wife, he felt the anger... white hot anger... at the fickleness of fate, the injustice of heaven and the heartlessness of a god who could mete out life and death at the flick of a finger.
And as the little girl he was left with grew, his anger turned cold - a dispassionate, uncaring, soulless contempt - which spared no one, not even his own daughter.
Thus, Maria spent a childhood sparse in conversation, lacking in emotion and devoid of touch. Her upbringing, if it could be called that, was spent in the company of her father's servants - an elderly married couple, Naring and Kiko - who made sure that she was fed and dressed and given the comfort she sadly lacked from her parent.
Maria had no recollection of speaking with her father before she turned seven - the age when most children started school. She only remembered
Aling
Naring, waking her up unusually early, giving her breakfast, dressing her and then marching her off to her father's study - a room which the young girl had never entered before.
Don Panchito was behind a huge desk, surrounded by empty bottles of
lambanog
, a potent coconut wine, most of which were empty. He sat unmoving, staring out at the window across the room.
Maria knew what he was looking at. The window was large and offered a magnificent view of the garden and beyond the flower beds, which Don Panchito's wife had planted - Aling Naring took great pains to recount the gifts her dead parent had possessed - the small hill where a lone marble tombstone stood.
The floorboards creaked as Maria and the old woman walked towards the desk. Don Panchito looked at them. The young girl saw the way her father's jaw tightened, it was clear he was not happy with the interruption.
"Well?" he asked, speaking to Naring.
"Maria wants to say good-bye, Señor, it's her first day of school."
Don Panchito's eyes fell on his daughter, and the cold rage once again filled him. It did not help that Maria looked so much like his beloved wife, the beautiful but tragic Elena, whose life was snuffed out by the young girl standing in front of him.
"Go, then."
If Naring was surprised by the curt dismissal, Maria was not. She had known for quite some time, with an intuition innate in all young children, that her father did not love her.
I
It was many years later - a few weeks after she turned eighteen - that Maria was once again told to go to her father's study. She and Don Panchito seldom spoke, except the customary greeting during dinner, if and when Don Panchito was at home in the evening or when he was not too drunk to eat. She sighed, supper would be uncomfortable again.
"Wear the green dress, Maria," Aling Naring said.
"Why?" Maria asked.
"The color suits you, besides the Señor has guests coming over tonight and I'm sure he would have you looking more... presentable," the servant answered.
"Is there anything wrong with how I look, Naring?"
"No," Naring said, eyeing the faded blue dress Maria was wearing, a little haughtily, "but there is a need to impress these guests. Besides, your mother was always well dressed on every occasion. It would be a shame if the same could not be said of her daughter. Now, hurry, girl."
The older woman turned to leave Maria's room, but turned back again.
"And do something with your hair. Put it up or at least tie it back. Show them your pretty face," and with that, the old servant left.
At eighteen, Maria had indeed grown into a lovely young woman. She had inherited her mother's beauty - light brown skin kissed by the sun, long dark hair, a short straight nose, and eyes that were like a cat's - but she had also inherited Doña Elena's timidity, and growing up alone and unwanted, had made her extremely shy. She had no friends, for she could never summon up the courage to make one, so everyone assumed she was either simple-minded, or worse, a snob.
Maria walked to her closet, took out the green dress and laid it out on the bed. It was a deep green and was her father's gift to her two months earlier - her birthday - at least, that was what Naring said.
The old servant had given Maria the beautifully wrapped package while the young girl was having breakfast, told her it was from her father and left it at that.
Maria never thought of asking, although she knew that it was unlikely that her father had given her the present or that he even recalled that it was her birthday. In all likelihood, it had come from Naring herself and her husband, Kiko. She remembered thinking then that she did not care about her father's callousness.
A single tear fell on the green dress as it lay on her bed. The truth was that she did care... and the only reason she never asked Don Panchito, was because she did not want to hear him say he had never given her the dress, in the first place.
Maria wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Then she stood up and undid the buttons of the blue dress, letting it slide down her ankles. She put on the green garment and smoothed it over her hips. Then, after clipping her hair back, she left the room and went downstairs to her father's study.
-----
"A toast, then, gentlemen," Don Panchito said as he raised his glass.
The other three gentlemen in the study raised theirs in turn.
"You
have
spoken to your daughter about this, haven't you, Panchito?"
Don Simon, the eldest of the three men asked, a few minutes later.
"What if she refuses?" Simon's son, Emanuel, added.
"She will do as she is told," Maria's father replied.
The third guest, Señor Lucas Regalado, Simon's nephew and recently arrived from Europe, spoke up.
"I think what my uncle and cousin are trying to say, Don Panchito, is... will she give Emanuel children?"
A loving father would have taken umbrage at the younger man's forwardness. But Don Panchito did not answer. Instead, he walked to the large liquor cabinet in the study, bent down and looked through the bottles he kept in it.
"My servant woman tells me that my daughter's monthly flux is strong and very regular, sure signs that she will breed well. Have no reservations on that matter, Lucas, Maria will give your young cousin any number of children."
He straightened up, a bottle in hand, and turned to them.
"Another round, gentlemen?"
II
Emanuel entered the nursery just as the ancient clock in the hallway chimed the
orasyon
. He glanced at the open window in the room and saw that the sun had indeed set and the sky had darkened considerably. From the bottom of the stairs, he could hear the faint sounds of the women-folk gathering in the
sala
to pray the evening vespers, led no doubt, by his mother, Doña Cecilia. He snorted softly, he had grown cynical at the mundane yet unfaltering consistency of his mother's faith.
A sound drew his eyes to the middle of the room where his wife, Maria, sat in an old rocking chair, a tiny bundled figure in pink clasped to a naked breast. Her eyes were on the infant's face, a small smile on her lips as she hummed an old lullaby.
The tune was vaguely familiar - perhaps he, too, once fell asleep to its melody when he was a baby - but the thought of his mother cradling him, much less, nursing him was ludicrous to Emanuel; Doña Cecilia may have been very religious, but she had never been a warm and caring soul. She was mildly devoted to his father, Simon, but her greatest passion was reserved for the saints and martyrs whose images could be found all over the house. Simon did not seem to mind - Emanuel's father was a surprisingly dutiful husband.
Perhaps it was just a façade, the young man thought, and there was actually a sensitive and sensual woman underneath the litany of prayers. Emanuel laughed at the absurdity of his thoughts.
Maria became aware of her husband's presence, she gently but quickly pulled her nipple from her daughter's mouth, the babe made a few mewling sounds but already replete, she soon stopped. A soundless yawn escaped from the tiny lips.
Maria stood up and laid her in the small crib beside the rocker. Then she hurriedly pulled her blouse up to cover herself and turned to face her husband, the tenderness in her eyes only a few moments ago now gone, replaced by a fear she could not hide.
Emanuel bowed his head slightly, his eyes on the bodice of Maria's white blouse. Then he walked towards the crib and gazed at his sleeping daughter. He reached out and touched the baby's cheek with the back of his hand. He gently caressed its softness. Then he suddenly whipped the same hand around, to catch his wife's arm as she tried to walk past him.
"So eager to get to the bedroom, Maria? I am flattered," he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes.
"I was hoping to join in the evening prayers, Manuel," Maria whispered.
