WALA LANG
Alone with his flock in a meadow high above the hamlet he called home, a small boy with blue-green eyes sat dreaming of what lay beyond the peaks that surrounded his world. The boy’s papa once took him to the lowlands where he saw the boundless sea, heard screeching seagulls, tasted salt on his face as his feet sank into the sand.
Ever since, the boy had imagined what wonders lay beyond the rocky Pyrenees, beyond the hazy distance where waves turned into clouds. With hard work and the bracing mountain air, the little shepherd grew up to be a tall, strapping youth. God called the young man to His service and, fulfilling the priest’s boyhood dreams, the good brought him to the Islas del Poniente, to Filipinas, Spain’s farthest possession.
Friars had begun to Christianize the pagans of the distant headwaters of the Cordilleras and the Sierra Madre, up in the Rio Grande de Pampanga. From the village of Puncán, the tireless Fray Alejandro Cacho spread the Gospel and baptized legions of the Isinay and Ilongot.
He built chapels and convents of brick in what had been thick jungle, gathering people into settlements within the sound of church bells. He opened roads, established schools, and what was gloomy and impenetrable jungle became fertile fields that were the pride and livelihood of the new converts. Not content with conversion, the scholarly Padre studied the region’s flora, identifying those with medicinal properties. He ministered to soul and body.
It was to Puncán under the aging Fray Alejandro that our young priest from the Pyrenees was assigned.
HOW CAN I RESIST YOU? The old mission church at Puncan, Nueva Ecija (Walter Robb).
He was young, too young, too vigorous for such a lonely post. Soledád, a parishioner’s lovely daughter, told him as much. She was exquisite. Her hair was black and her complexion olive, soft and rounded over a form like that of a nubile Venus. She wanted him, the tall blond-haired youth with blue-green eyes in priestly robes.
The young priest was often invited to joyful gatherings after christenings and weddings and at fiesta time. Soledád of the errant spirit was ever the tease. She laughed at him for not dancing, for refusing wine. Her favorite pastime was to pretend to limp when everyone was seated, hand him a cane, and with a wavering voice, swear that not a year would pass before he should be grayer than the doddering Padre Alejandro himself.
It was tantalizing, all the more so because Soledad dismissed every admonishment, every reproach. She would toss her head, laugh merrily, and say that he was very wise, so wise for one so young. With a wave of her fan, she would add, Sayang, los chicos guapos nunca deberían ser sacerdotes! What a waste, good looking hunks should never be priests!
We do not know what secrets she confessed to the young priest, but when she did it was with the fragrance of sampaguita blossoms in her hair. So far was the world, so near was the beautiful Soledad, and the stars offered no guidance on those nights when sleepless, he paced to and from in the convent patio.
One such night when the young priest paced the stone courtyard with temples throbbing and thoughts unchaste, there broke a fearful storm. Rain fell in torrents, in massive silver sheets. The distraught priest sought not the convent’s shelter, but rushed into the hurricane.
He banged open the courtyard gate and plunged onward, calling for heaven’s mercy. But in the wind howling “revenge” were aswang and duende, the diwatà and lamán-lupa ejected by strangers bearing cross and sword. Blindly, he stumbled into the arms of a waiting Soledád. She had conspired with the forces of darkness for the young man’s soul. Knowing of his struggle, she had come to block his escape. In the fury of the storm rose the scent of sampaguita.
The holy recoiled but most shrugged indulgently. In spite of the recently learned catechism, they could not but think that man and woman are of the earth and therefore earthly. In giving absolution to his remorseful assistant, learned and wise Fray Alejandro might have concluded that Venus was a preference while the worship of Minerva a mere alternative.
In a place as isolated as Puncán, people were not wholly condemnatory of such lapses by young men in monks’ clothing. After all, the newly Christianized villagers had not forgotten and indeed still practiced trial marriage and childlessness continued to justify divorce. But with such casualness was the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
His priestly vows were chains of iron and the handsome young man with the blue-green eyes was laid to rest far from the high mountain pastures of his childhood but tended always with sprigs of sampaguita blossoms.
Notes: (a) This article is a retelling with embellishments by your columnist of Percy H. Hill, “Puncan: Trail-Ends in Sociology” in Walter Robb, The Khaki Cabinet and Old Manila (Manila: Published by the author, 1926); and (b) The story is fiction, imagined by Hill while searching for the grave of a real person, Fray Alejandro Cacho who evangelized Carranglán and Pamtabañgan, Nueva Ecija and Dupax, Nueva Vizcaya in the early 1700s. Puncán is now a barangay of Carranglán.
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