PinoyWrimos

“Grandmother, why can’t we stay on the back porch when it’s raining?” the boy asked after a while.

Maria contemplated the gloomy scene outside before answering. “Many things shelter in the rain; it hides them from human eyes more effectively, and so they can come out and walk more freely. Otherwise they cannot do so in a clear day. When you are older, and are ready to see more, then I shall show you.”

“I already see a lot of people in the church who are dead,” Santiago argued.

“These are different,” was all Maria would say.

Thus the boy learned that there were two worlds living side by side, and seemed to exist without knowledge of each other.

While Santiago acknowledged the existence of God, and miracles, angels and saints, he also acknowledged the presence of the others. He thought, if one exists the other must as well. And more so, for I have not seen an angel, and I see these other people. However, the more his grandmother Eleonora spoke about angels, the more Santiago wanted to see one.

He asked his grandmother Maria about them.

“Angels are different; they are difficult creatures, they are too apart from us in this time,” Maria said. “There used to be an age when they loved to come to earth, and indeed even had children with humans, but that time is past. Humans are less willing to accept their existence, and so angels are harder to see. It is enough to know they are there. You do not see God, but you believe He is present, don’t you?”

The boy nodded slowly. “Still,” he said, “it would be something to see an angel, wouldn’t it, grandmother?”

“It would,” Maria replied. “Come to the garden; I will show you some other things.”

It was twilight, and the fireflies were beginning to appear in the farthest corner, around an ancient mango tree. Santiago liked the creatures and came closer. He discovered to his delight that some of them were tiny naked creatures with wings, flying along with the real insects.

“They’re like tiny angels,” he told his grandmother.

“Angels are creatures of light… nothing like these poor little creatures,” Maria said. “But they are good examples of the wonders that are in the world.”

After a while, the boy asked his grandmother: “Have you ever seen an angel?”

To which Maria replied, “Yes.” She and Santiago returned to the house, and as the boy lay in bed with his grandmother sitting beside him, she told him how it was.

It had happened this way:

Maria was ten years old, not much older than Santiago was when he asked her his question, and out in the fields that belonged to her sister-in-law’s family. She was a town girl herself, and vacationing in the country where there were forests and hills and fields of rice that needed to be attended to, was a novelty to her. She was enjoying her sojourn very much, and her new in-laws were very nice to her. Her brother was some ten years older and in those days people married young.

She was on her way home, in the twilight (much like this one, she told the boy), balancing herself along the narrow walkways of raised dirt that separated one square of rice-field (creating the grid effect) from the next (the better to control irrigation of the crops when they needed to be flooded, which was during planting season), when she saw something very bright suddenly come down from the sky. She shielded her eyes, thinking it was a lightning bolt and crouched down to make herself a smaller target. The glare against her lids remained, however, and her curiosity got the better of her. She cautiously opened an eye and beheld a wondrous sight.

A man, or woman (she could not tell which, it could have been either or, even, both; who knew with angels) stood amidst the growing young rice plants just a couple of squares away, and, it seemed as if this humanoid form was not stable. She saw mostly light, and often the figure was just that: a spot of light. There was the faintest suggestion of things growing out of the back, like wings, but also of light. None of your feathers for real angels, Maria said with a grin. The angel touched the plants lightly and seemed pleased. Maria could sense this; she could not explain how, but she knew the angel was happy. She then realized that the angel knew she was watching, and didn’t mind a bit. Just as she realized that, the angel straightened up and simply vanished upwards. It had happened so quickly, her eyes had trouble adjusting to the dimness of oncoming night. She had stumbled on back to the main homestead, dazed and inexplicably cheerful.

“My brother’s mother-in-law explained it to me. She came to me as I stared out dreamily at the fields bathed in moonlight and asked me if I had seen the angel.” Maria laughed. Santiago waited. He did not find anything funny, but he supposed it was for his grandmother.

“She knew, old Rosalina. She explained it all to me, as I will explain it to you. You see, none of her children were connected to both realities as she was. My being able to was a sign from heaven, she said; she would pass on her knowledge to a new branch of men, as it must have before, when it failed in bloodlines.”

Santiago did not understand all that, but he nodded. It was very nice to have a grandmother who knew stories about angels and saints, but it was cool to have a grandmother who had actually seen an angel.

The next day, the boy asked his grandmother about old Rosalina.

“What was she like? Were her parents also used to the extraordinary?” he asked her one day, as he accompanied her to his aunt’s car, which would take his grandmother back to her hometown, incidentally the same hometown Eleonora and Elena hailed from. It was the only chance he had of asking, as he could not find an opportunity to have her tell more stories that day.

Maria smiled and looked towards his father, who was saying his goodbyes to his sister and brother-in-law. “Those stories, your father knows,” she replied. “Ask him.”

The boy nodded and smiled back. “I will; thank you grandmother.”

Later that night, as he and his father aimlessly channel surfed in the living room before their television set (it was one of their nightly rituals, after Santiago finished his homework or when he had no exams the next day), the boy asked his father about grandmother Rosalina.

“So mama has told you some stories, has she?” his father said, but he was not displeased. He seemed merely surprised, but went ahead, the TV forgotten. “What has she told you about Rosalina?”

“Nothing much,” the boy answered. “Grandmother said you knew the stories, and that I should ask you.”

“I do know them,” Antonio replied. “Hmm… where should I start? Perhaps it should begin with Rosalina’s father, Juan Lakas.”

The boy was intrigued. “Juan Lakas? That was his name?” he asked his father, settling more comfortably into a corner of the worn sofa on which they sat.

Antonio smiled, mustache twitching as he beheld his son’s eager face. “Yes, indeed.”

How Juan Lakas got his name:

In their barrio (Antonio began), Juan was a famous man. So much so that his fame spread to the nearby towns and people wanted to meet him.

As a child Juan was like any other. But one day, after he had come from a long journey delivering grain and selling livestock for his father, he exhibited a sudden, unusual trait.

He had come home laden with items he had bartered the sacks of rice his family had grown with cloth, with iron kitchen tools, pots and pans, a new carabao plough, coffee beans, sacks of sugar, tablets of chocolate, laces and ribbons for his mother and sisters, and slippers for everyone.

His cart got stuck in the mud, and immediately many came to help him, but their efforts were in vain. His poor carabao was knee-deep in the mire, and could not be taken out. Finally Juan waved everybody away and said, “I should have known I must do this alone,” and before anyone knew what was happening, he untied the carabao from its traces, knelt under it and lifted the beast on his shoulders as if it weighed like the merest calf, and not the half-ton creature it was. Then he proceeded to lift and pull the cart out of the mud himself.

From that day forward he was called Juan Lakas.

There was nothing he could not move or lift. Once he helped uproot a tree that even the strongest team of water buffalos could not pull out of the ground. Juan grunted, heaved, his muscles popping with exertion, and succeeded.

Circus impresarios wanted him to join their acts, one of them coming from as far away as France. Juan Lakas always declined. His place was in his town, he said, and his strength was for them alone.

“Stories have been told about him by famous writers, you know, “Antonio informed his son. “They were fascinated by Juan and his gift, and how he stubbornly refused to leave his home.”

“What about Rosalina?” Santiago asked.

His father nodded. “I’m getting to that. Rosaline had the same power her father had. Only, people tended to forget, until one day someone needed help moving a rock in the fields, or assistance in loading up a cart with sacks of grain. Rosalina was always around. The last time she did something like that was when she was well into her 80s, and she was even smoking a thin cigarillo while she stacked sacks of sugar in the warehouse.”

“That’s pretty cool,” the boy said, grinning.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Antonio agreed.