The March of Death Bienvenido N. Santos Were You One of Them, My
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The March of Death Bienvenido N. Santos Were you one of them, my brother Whom they marched under the April sun And flogged to bleeding along the roads we knew and loved? March, my brother, march! The springs are clear beyond the road There is rest at the foot of the hill. We were young together, So very young and unafraid; Walked those roads, dusty in the summer sun, Brown pools and mud in the December rains; We ran barefoot along the beaten tracks in the canefields Planted corn after the harvest months. Here, too, we fought and loved Shared our dreams of a better place Beyond those winding trails. March, my brother march! The springs are clear beyond the road There is rest at the foot of the hill. We knew those roads by heart Told places in the dark By the fragrance of garden hedge In front of uncle‘s house; The clatter of wooden shoes on the bamboo bridge, The peculiar rustling of bamboo groves Beside the house where Celia lived. Did you look through the blood in your eyes For Celia sitting by the window, As thousands upon thousands of you Walked and died on the burning road? If you died among the hundreds by the roadside It should have been by the bamboo groves With the peculiar rustling in the midnight. No, you have not died; you cannot die; I have felt your prayer touch my heart As I walked along the crowded streets of America. And we would walk those roads again one April morn, Listen to the sound of working men Dragging tree trunks from the forests, Rebuilding homes- laughing again- Sowing the field with grain, fearless of death From cloudless skies. You would be silent, remembering The many young bodies that lay mangled by the roadside; The agony and the moaning and the silent tears, The grin of yellow men, their bloodstained blades opaque in the sun; I would be silent, too, having nothing to say. What matters if the winters were bitter cold And loneliness stalked my footsteps on the snow? March, my brother, march! The springs are clear beyond the road Rest, at the foot of the hill. And we would walk those roads again on April morn Hand in hand like pilgrims marching Towards the church on the hillside, Only a little nipa house beside the bamboo groves With the peculiar rustling in the midnight Or maybe I would walk them yet, Remembering... remembering Scent of Apples Bienvenido N. Santos When I arrived in Kalamazoo it was October and the war was still on. Gold and silver stars hung on pennants above silent windows of white and brick-red cottages. In a backyard an old man burned leaves and twigs while a gray-haired woman sat on the porch, her red hands quiet on her lap, watching the smoke rising above the elms, both of them thinking the same thought perhaps, about a tall, grinning boy with his blue eyes and flying hair, who went out to war: where could he be now this month when leaves were turning into gold and the fragrance of gathered apples was in the wind? It was a cold night when I left my room at the hotel for a usual speaking engagement. I walked but a little way. A heavy wind coming up from Lake Michigan was icy on the face. If felt like winter straying early in the northern woodlands. Under the lampposts the leaves shone like bronze. And they rolled on the pavements like the ghost feet of a thousand autumns long dead, long before the boys left for faraway lands without great icy winds and promise of winter early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold! It was the same night I met Celestino Fabia, "just a Filipino farmer" as he called himself, who had a farm about thirty miles east of Kalamazoo. "You came all that way on a night like this just to hear me talk?" "I've seen no Filipino for so many years now," he answered quickly. "So when I saw your name in the papers where it says you come from the Islands and that you're going to talk, I come right away". Earlier that night I had addressed a college crowd, mostly women. It appeared they wanted me to talk about my country, they wanted me to tell them things about it because my country had become a lost country. Everywhere in the land the enemy stalked. Over it a great silence hung, and their boys were there, unheard from, or they were on their way to some little known island on the Pacific, young boys all, hardly men, thinking of harvest moons and the smell of forest fire. It was not hard talking about our own people. I knew them well and I loved them. And they seemed so far away during those terrible years that I must have spoken of them with a little fervor, a little nostalgia. In the open forum that followed, the audience wanted to know whether there was much difference between our women and the American women. I tried to answer the question as best I could, saying, among other things, that I did not know that much about American women, except that they looked friendly, but differences or similarities in inner qualities such as naturally belonged to the heart or to the mind, I could only speak about with vagueness. While I was trying to explain away the fact that it was not easy to make comparisons, a man rose from the rear of the hall, wanting to say something. In the distance, he looked slight and old and very brown. Even before he spoke, I knew that he was, like me, a Filipino. "I'm a Filipino," he began, loud and clear, in a voice that seemed used to wide open spaces, "I'm just a Filipino farmer out in the country." He waved his hand toward the door. "I left the Philippines more than twenty years ago and have never been back. Never will perhaps. I want to find out, sir, are our Filipino women the same like they were twenty years ago?" As he sat down, the hall filled with voices, hushed and intrigued. I weighed my answer carefully. I did not want to tell a lie yet I did not want to say anything that would seem platitudinous, insincere. But more important than these considerations, it seemed to me that moment as I looked towards my countryman, I must give him an answer that would not make him so unhappy. Surely, all these years, he must have held on to certain ideals, certain beliefs, even illusions peculiar to the exile. "First," I said as the voices gradually died down and every eye seemed upon me, "First, tell me what our women were like twenty years ago." The man stood to answer. "Yes," he said, "you're too young . Twenty years ago our women were nice, they were modest, they wore their hair long, they dressed proper and went for no monkey business. They were natural, they went to church regular, and they were faithful." He had spoken slowly, and now in what seemed like an afterthought, added, "It's the men who ain't." Now I knew what I was going to say. "Well," I began, "it will interest you to know that our women have changed--but definitely! The change, however, has been on the outside only. Inside, here," pointing to the heart, "they are the same as they were twenty years ago. God-fearing, faithful, modest, and nice." The man was visibly moved. "I'm very happy, sir," he said, in the manner of one who, having stakes on the land, had found no cause to regret one's sentimental investment. After this, everything that was said and done in that hall that night seemed like an anti-climax, and later, as we walked outside, he gave me his name and told me of his farm thirty miles east of the city. We had stopped at the main entrance to the hotel lobby. We had not talked very much on the way. As a matter of fact, we were never alone. Kindly American friends talked to us, asked us questions, said goodnight. So now I asked him whether he cared to step into the lobby with me and talk. "No, thank you," he said, "you are tired. And I don't want to stay out too late." "Yes, you live very far." "I got a car," he said, "besides . " Now he smiled, he truly smiled. All night I had been watching his face and I wondered when he was going to smile. "Will you do me a favor, please," he continued smiling almost sweetly. "I want you to have dinner with my family out in the country. I'd call for you tomorrow afternoon, then drive you back. Will that be alright?" "Of course," I said. "I'd love to meet your family." I was leaving Kalamazoo for Muncie, Indiana, in two days. There was plenty of time. "You will make my wife very happy," he said. "You flatter me." "Honest. She'll be very happy. Ruth is a country girl and hasn't met many Filipinos. I mean Filipinos younger than I, cleaner looking. We're just poor farmer folk, you know, and we don't get to town very often. Roger, that's my boy, he goes to school in town. A bus takes him early in the morning and he's back in the afternoon.