Western Visayas

The Datto Somacuel

compiled by Clara Kern Baylis

Datto Somacuel was one of the seven chiefs who, coming from Borneo many years before the Spaniards conquered these islands, settled the
Island of Panay. He lived in Sinaragan, a town near San Joaquin, in the southern part of Iloilo Province. His wife’s name was Capinangan.
Somacuel went every morning to the seashore to watch his slaves fish with the sinchoro, or net. One day they caught many fishes, and Somacuel commanded them:–
“Spread the fish to dry, and take care that the crows do not eat them up.”
A slave answered: “Sir, if your treasure inside the house is stolen by the crows, how do you expect those out of doors to be kept safe?” This was said with a certain intonation that made Somacuel conjecture that there was a hidden meaning in it.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Sir, I have to inform you of something that I should have told you
long ago. Do not reprove me if I have been backward in telling you
of the injury done you by your wife. It was due to my desire to get
complete proofs of the truth of my statement.”
“End at once your tedious narrative!” said the datto, “What did my
wife do?”
“Sir,” answered the slave, “she deceives you shamefully. She loves
Gorong-Gorong, who is at this very moment in your house jesting at
your absence.”
“Alas!” said Somacuel, “if this be true he shall pay well for his
boldness.”
The chief hurried home, intending to surprise the offenders. He carried
a fish called ampahan in a bamboo tube full of water, going around by
a secret way, so as not to be seen. On reaching home he went up into
the attic to observe what was going on, and found that his informant
had told the truth.
Gorong-Gorong and Capinangan were engaged in an affectionate
dialogue. Involuntarily Somacuel spilled some of the water down, and,
fearing that he would be discovered, seized a spear that was hidden
in the attic and, dropping it down, dexterously ran Gorong-Gorong
through the body, killing him instantly.
“Oh, Diva!” exclaimed Capinangan, kneeling beside the inert corpse,
“How shall I be able to take it away without being discovered by
Somacuel?”
Somacuel, who had not been seen at all, stayed quietly above, watching
what Capinangan would do. Capinangan did not suspect that her husband was there, as he usually did not come home before nightfall.
She tried to take the corpse out for burial, but could not carry the heavy body of her unfortunate lover. She must conceal it in some way, and it was dangerous for her to call for aid, lest she might be betrayed
to her husband. So she took a knife and cut the body into pieces so that she could take them out and bury them under the house.
After this task was done she managed to wash the blood up. She
became tranquil for a moment, believing she would never be
discovered. Somacuel, however, had observed all, and he formed a
plan for punishing his wife as she deserved. When everything seemed
to be calm he crept down, doing his best not to be seen. At the door
he called his wife by name.
Capinangan was afraid, but concealed her
fear with a smile.
“Capinangan,” said her husband, “cut this fish in
pieces and cook it for me.”
Capinangan was astonished at this command, because she had never before been treated in this way. They had many slaves to perform such tasks.
“You know I cannot,” she said.
“Why not?” asked her husband.
“Because I have never learned how to cut a fish in pieces nor to cook
it,” she replied.
“I am astonished that you don’t know how to cut, after seeing that
cutting is your favorite occupation,” said Somacuel.
Capinangan then did not doubt that her husband knew what she had done, so she did as he had bidden.
When dinner was ready the husband and wife ate it, but without speaking to each other. After the meal, Somacuel told his wife that he had seen all and should punish her severely. Capinangan said nothing. A
guilty person has no argument with which to defend himself. Somacuel
ordered his servants to throw Capinangan into the sea.
At that time the chief’s will was law. Neither pleadings nor tears softened his hard heart, and Capinangan was carried down to the sea and thrown in.
Time passed by; Somacuel each day grew sadder and gloomier. He would
have been willing now to forgive his wife, but it was too late.
He said to his slaves: “Prepare a banca for me, that I may sail from
place to place to amuse myself.”
So one pleasant morning a banca sailed from Sinaragan, going
southward. Somacuel did not intend to go to any definite place, but drifted at the mercy of wind and current. He amused himself by singing during the voyage.
One day the crew descried land at a distance. “Sir,” they said,
“that land is Cagayan. Let us go there to get oysters and crane’s eggs.” To this their master agreed, and upon anchoring off the coast he prepared to visit the place.
Oh, what astonishment he felt, as he saw, peeping out of the window of
a house, a woman whose appearance resembled in great measure that of Capinangan! He would have run to embrace her, had he not remembered that Capinangan was dead. He was informed that the woman was named Aloyan. He began to pay court to her, and in a few weeks she became his wife.
Somacuel was happy, for his wife was very affectionate. Aloyan, on her part, did not doubt that her husband loved her sincerely, so she said to him:
“My dear Somacuel, I will no longer deceive you. I am the very woman whom you caused to be thrown into the sea. I am Capinangan. I clung to a log in the water and was carried to this place, where I have lived ever since.”
“Oh,” said Somacuel, “pardon me for the harshness with which I meant to punish you.”
“Let us forget what is passed,” said Capinangan. “I deserved it, after all.”
So they returned to Sinaragan, where they lived together happily for many years.

3.) It Rained Saturday Afternoon 

by Antonio Gabila

It rained at three Saturday afternoon. And we looked at the sky as if it could not be true, at the slanting rain that fell in steady streams, at the earth getting first moist, then sticky, then watery.

We could not resign our self to the fact that it should rain on Saturday. Why Saturday of all days? Why not Monday and the other weekdays? Any day but Saturday – and Sunday also, that is.

All the week, week after week, we work in close, stuffy offices from early morning until late in the afternoon, except that promptly at half past twelve every Saturday there comes a break in the routine, after which we do not have to enter our close world again until the following Monday morning at seven-thirty.

On Saturday mornings our smiles are wider and last longer, our greetings are cheerier. For at the back of every workers mind is the thought that he may have that afternoon all to himself, to do with as he pleases.

To some of us, Saturday afternoon always means a rectangular court of clay with white lime markings, rackets, and balls about as big as a little boy’s fist. On the court one can swing one’s arm about and not be afraid of hitting something, and after five-and-a-half days inside an office, you feel this is more important than anything else in the world. Stepping lively on a marked court on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, we forget about our close, dim offices with their wall clocks that never seem to move at all, and about the things one has to do, about work.

But it rained at three. Saturday.

And why should it rained on Saturday, and at three o’clock, when we always feel that Saturday just begins, and with, in fact, the best part of the afternoon yet to be. At three one plays his best game because it is neither too warm nor too chilly.

Some of us had played only a set or, at most, two, while the others just arriving. We all always say we have not really played until the third set. And here it was raining at three, raining so heavily that even the most hopeful among us, looking up, could only shake our heads seeing how black the whole sky looked. It rained so heavily that shortly the clay court, just before so hard and smooth, was sticky with mud and water, the white lime markings becoming indistinct and finally disappearing altogether.

We picked up our things disgustedly, taking care the rain did not wet the delicate guts of the rackets, and made haste to the nearest shelter, a low concrete bodega beside the town presidencia.

The rain made puddles at our feet in no time as we stood under the overhanging edge of the concrete roof. The puddles grew and became little running streams that twisted about in their tiny tortuous courses to reach the nearest deeper hollows which, when filled, became miniature lakes. We drew gingerly back against the bodega wall as the miniature rivers threatened out shod feet. Over the edge of the roof above us fell a thick, transparent curtain of rain. We were trapped, but we were six and company made the trap less tragic.

We raised our eyes finally from our hypnotic regard of the water at our feet to look into four cells on that side of the presidencia whose barred windows stared down at us, looking very much like caves in the sheer cliff that was the presidencia’s austere wall. The barred windows did not surprise us, for we had long known they were there. Nor did the old, ugly, vicious faces caged in them: are realized they ought to be there too. Only when we looked into the last cell and saw there a young face, not so much vicious as mischievous in a childlike way, were we taken aback.

The boy, he could not be over eighteen, had no clothes on: even when he stood on the floor of the cell, we knew he was without covering because the slightly lighter skin below the waist showed above the ledge of the low, barred window.

“My God, that boy’s crazy!”

The boy was so obviously that, without anyone saying so, that I turned around to look at the speaker. And yet I knew we were all alike: we did not understand such things. I wanted to ask someone what could have caused such a thing, why that youth should come to be in this cell, stripped of clothes and shame, and keep on singing and posturing, I wanted to ask how people come to lose hold of reality and what goes on in the mind of one like that boy of no more than eighteen, but I realized we, toiling in close, musty offices, would know nothing of such things.

“You are my sugar plum…” The mad boy’s singing could be heard above the crash of heavy rain.

In the other cells, the vicious faces were momentarily still, listening, their ugly faces intent and looking now less vicious, as if they too were trying to divine perhaps how one became like his boy.

“Why do people become crazy?”, I finally asked a young fellow who once worked in a physician’s office-but who played a poor game of tennis.

“Many causes. Love for instance.”

“You are my sugar plum…” Perhaps the boy loved deeply and futilely. He may have thought the girl was everything the world could hold for him; and yet the girl thought nothing of him. Such things happen.

The boy has suddenly climbed up into the upper one of two bunks affixed to one side of a wall of his cell, leaping full upon it in all his uncovered state, and smiling down upon us, baring white, even teeth in an expression that must have been one of geniality in a day now gone.

“You may not be an angel…” he broke forth, swaying his body and looking up every time he said “angel.” After one song, there would always be another, as if he wanted us to know that this repertoire of song was not by far exhausted, crooning in that soft voice of his as if he were addressing his song to someone he held so near him he did not have to raise his voice to be heard.

The boy had a good figure, with slight, shapely muscles, and seemed so healthy an animal that one could hardly believe he had lost his mind. The unseemliness of his unconscious behavior was all the more pitiful because of his splendid figure.

“Don’t take away my dreams…” Now why does he sing that?

They say madness is a thick fog; losing your mind is like losing your bearings in the dark: you believe you are doing the perfectly correct thing not knowing that it is far from what you think. That must explain the boy, his stripped state, his crooning, his friendly and shameless grin which God knows he couldn’t help.

“Don’t take away my dreams…” Just why had that crazy youth hit upon that piece? Was there a reason? For madness too is like being a child again, playing again in that dream world man loses as he grows up. Times there are in a man’s mature years when he regrets that loss.

This boy, suddenly grown a youth, had asked to be taken back to that world and had been granted his desire. Now he had what he wanted, nobody could take away his dreams, nobody tear the toys out of his hands, and nobody come to him and strikes him. For a mad boy is always a child with dreams…

The rain had stopped, we realized with a start. We looked about us vaguely: even had it been possible for us to play again, I doubt if we would have. A little while before we had thought we were the most unlucky of humans: but after what we had seen we hardly knew what to think.

We stepped forth from our shelter and walked through the wet grass until we hit the hard pavement, when we broke into a brisker gait, not one of us brave enough for one backward glance at the body whom we could still hear singing about dreams that no one please must take away from him.