A Woman's Impression Of The Philippines Part 12

Then follow meats innumerable, each with its own garnish, but without separate vegetables. There is goat's flesh stewed with garbanzos, onions, potatoes, and peppers; chicken minced with garlic, and green peas; chicken boned and made to look and taste like breaded cutlet; boiled ham; a fat capon, boned, stuffed, and seasoned with garlic, his erstwhile proud head rolling in scarified humility; breaded pork chops; roast pork, with unlimited crackling; cold turkey; baked duck, and several kinds of fish.

There are no salads, but plenty of relishes, including the canned red peppers of Spain; olives, pickles, cheese, and green mango pickles. At intervals along the table are alluring gla.s.s dishes, filled with crystallized fruits.

After this come the sweets. There is no cake, as we know it, but meringues (French kisses), baked custard coated with caramel sauce, which they call _flaon_; a kind of cocoanut macaroon, the little gelatinous seeds of the nipa palm, boiled in sugar syrup, and half a dozen kinds of preserves and candied fruits. Tinto accompanies the supper, and possibly champagne.

As two or three hundred people are served on such an occasion, the intermission for supper is a long one, and dancing is not resumed till half-past nine or ten o'clock. It may then continue till midnight or dawn, just as the actions of a few important guests may determine. Filipinos are very quick to follow a lead; and if, owing perhaps to a concurrence of events which may be perfectly foreign to the occasion, a number of prominent people leave early, the rest soon take flight.

In one of the later years of my stay my good fortune led me to witness a wedding of another type, which differed from the cla.s.s I have described as the simple rural gathering at home differs from the exotic atmosphere of a fashionable reception. It was just after my return from vacation that one morning a group of my pupils burst in, accompanying a middle-aged Filipina who hesitatingly made known her errand. Her niece, who lived some five or six miles up the river, was to be married that night, and a large number of people from town were going up. Could I accompany them, and would I act as one of the three _madrinas_ for the occasion? As the bride was of an insurrecto family, whose name was familiar through bygone military acquaintances, I snapped at an opportunity to view the insurrecto upon his own (pacified) hearth, and after consuming a hasty lunch and packing a valise, I set out for the river bank where we were to rendezvous.

Our craft, a catamaran made by securing three barotos side by side and flooring them with bamboo, was the centre of great public excitement. It had a walk dutrigged at each side for the men who were to punt, or pole us up the river. It was roofed with a framework of bamboo, which was covered with palm, leaves and wreathed in _bonoc-bonoc_ vines, and from this green bower were suspended the fruits of the season.--bananas, the scarlet _sagin-sagin_, and even succulent ears of sweet corn.

Cane stools were provided for a few, but many of the young people sat flat on the floor. When we were embarked, to the number of about forty, the barotos were so deep in the water that the swirling current was within an inch of their gunwales. A tilt to one side or a wave in the river would have sunk us.

The baggage and a few supernumerary young men and a mandolin orchestra were loaded into an enormous baroto, and ten st.u.r.dy brown backs bent forward as the boatmen pushed with all their strength against the great bamboo poles, which looked as if they would snap under the strain.

The river was swollen with three days' tropical downpour and running out resistlessly in the teeth of a high tide. As we slipped out of the shallow water at the bank, the current caught us and hurled us fifty feet down stream. The baroto left apparently for the port, which was four miles away. Our valiant punters were useless against the river; but amid a hubbub in which every man, woman, and babe aboard, except one American man and myself, appeared to be giving orders, we got back to the bank and shipped an additional crew. This consumed time, because the spectators, who had seen what work it was going to be, were coy of enlisting. But at last we got away, eight men to a side, and the water perceptibly nearer the gunwales, and with infinite labor we succeeded in poling around a bend and leaving the town behind us.

But there we stuck again in a swift reach, and there were time and opportunity to marvel at the impenetrable green and silence of the nipa swamps. The banks--or rather limits of the current--were thickets of water gra.s.s six feet high, its roots sunk in ooze. Here and there a rise of ground betrayed itself in a few cocoanuts, the ragged fans of tall bouri palms, or a plume-like clump of bamboo and the hospitable shade of a magnificent mango tree.

The atmosphere was close and muggy, and now and then a shower pattered down on us. Suddenly, through the strange desolation of this alien landscape, the familiar thump of guitars and mandolins a.s.sailed the stillness. The music carried me back to half-forgotten experiences--red sunsets between the cathedral bluffs of the Mississippi, and sad-eyed negroes tw.a.n.ging the strings on the forward deck of a nosing steamboat; crisp July afternoons on the Straits of Mackinac when the wind swept in from froth-capped blue Huron, and the little excursion steamer from St. Ignace rollicked her way homeward to the cottage-crowned heights of the island.

I shut my eyes and tried to "make believe" that they would open on far-off, familiar scenes. Nothing could have been more weird and incongruous than the American air with this alien soil and people. It was "Hiawatha," and to the inspiring strains of "Let the women do the work, let the men take it easy," our forgotten baroto swept into sight in the easy water under the opposite bank. We made a herculean effort, inspired by envy, and got away. s.p.a.ce forbids me to enumerate the hairbreadth escapes of that journey. We put men ash.o.r.e when the banks permitted and were towed like a ca.n.a.l boat. Once we were swept into mid-stream, where the poles were useless on account of the great depth, and had to drift back till the water shoaled again. In late afternoon we took on a supply of sugar cane, and chewed affably all the rest of the way.

At first I had been nervous, but my native friends were quite unconcerned. So remembering that Heaven protects the insane and the imbecile, and regarding them as the former and myself as the latter, I ceased to speculate on the probabilities of another incarnation.

We consumed six hours in a journey normally accomplished in two, and night overtook us in a labyrinth of water lanes above whose forested swamps the outlines of a stern old church were magnified in the gloom. One by one the stars sprang mysteriously into view in the soft void overhead, and somehow--marvellously--we found our destination. A group of friends and servants flared their torches on the bank, and we dragged our stiffened limbs to them. It was too dark to see where we were going, until we stumbled almost into a lighted doorway and found the company awaiting us. Owing to the delay in our arrival, the wedding was deferred till the next morning, but the ball was about to open.

Food was given us, and after a freshening up and a change of raiment we joined the reunion, which was in full swing. The prospective husband and wife were enjoying their usual state of effacement, but I discovered them finally. I talked with the insurrecto and found him a man of ability.

I left the ball, exhausted, at one o'clock, but those indefatigable people kept it up all night. I awoke at dawn to find the floor occupied by about twenty yawning maidens who were merely resting, for there was no time for a nap. We dressed in the cool dawn breeze and went out in time to see the morning mists rise from a broad oval of rice and maize fields, and hang themselves in ever-changing folds on the sides of the purple mountains beyond.

But for the character of the vegetation that rimmed the arable land, and the bare green shoulders of the hills, streaked here and there with pink clayey ravines, it might have been a peaceful sunrise in middle America. The homelike atmosphere was accentuated by the roofs of a town and by a church spire, still silvered with mist, half a mile away. We tramped across the fields to our objective point. As madrina, I walked with the bride, but conversation did not thrive because she spoke little Spanish, and I less Visayan.

Carabaos sniffed at us as we pa.s.sed, and people crowded their windows to look. We crossed a slough upon a bridge of quaint and ancient architecture on the thither side of which were a gra.s.sy plaza and the stern lines of the church. The wedding bells broke forth in a furious joy and flung their notes to the distant hill flanks, which in turn flung them back to the blue, sparkling sea.

The church was tiled in black and white marble, and inhabited by a l.u.s.ty family of goats. Their innate perversity and an apparent curiosity led them to resent exclusion; but after a lively pursuit they were ejected, and the bride and I sat on a bench to rest. The bridegroom took a last smoke, and the strangers deciphered obituary notices on the mural tombstones.

The padre came along finally, smelling of a matutinal appetizer, and they distributed pillows and candles to the _madrinas_ and _padrinos_. As evidence of change of heart in the late insurrecto, the pillows were some of red, some of white, and some of blue cloth.

It was over at last, when I was stiff with kneeling and had ornamented myself with much candle grease. I went up to congratulate the bride, but felt that the handshake was not coming off properly. Finally I discovered that I was resisting an effort on her part to bring my hand to her lips. So I succ.u.mbed and submitted to the distinction, and she then proceeded to salute the other madrinas.

There was nothing coy or sentimental about that bride. She needed no support, moral or other. Sweet sixteen, "plump as a partridge,"

she gathered up her white silk skirt with its blue ribbons and struck out for home. Her husband made no attempt to follow her. She beat us all home by a quarter of a mile. When we arrived, she had changed her gown and was supervising breakfast preparations.

I was tired, and when a native sled drawn by a carabao came along, was glad enough to seat myself on its flat bottom, together with one or two wearied maidens, and be drawn back in slow dignity. We intercepted a boy with roasting ears, and the wedding guests sat about, nibbling like rodents while we waited breakfast.

After that meal dancing began again and continued until dinner. Once the floor was cleared, and the bridal pair danced one waltz together. They did not glance once at each other, and seemed bored.

Dinner was another feast, and afterwards we sought our state barge and the perils of the return journey. The newly married couple came down to see us off, still bearing themselves with a preoccupied and listless air. The orchestra remained until the next day, and we threaded the water lanes in quiet, emerging at last on the full-breasted river. The home journey consumed only three hours, and was comparatively uneventful. The wife of the Presidente gathered her family about her and artlessly searched their raven pates for inhabitants which pay no taxes, and most of the young people drooped with weariness. We rounded the bend at five o'clock; and thankful I was to put foot on _terra firma_ once more. I was tired, but glad that I had gone.

CHAPTER XX

Sickbeds and Funerals

Customs in the Treatment of the Sick--Stately Funeral Processions--The Funeral of a Poor Man--Unsociableness of the Poor--Wakes and Burial of the Rich--A "Petrified" Man.

Filipinos are punctilious about many things concerning which we have pa.s.sed the extremely punctilious stage. Some of their strictest observances are in the matters of sickness and death. The sick have what we would consider a hard time. To begin with, they are immured in rooms from which, as far as possible, all light and air are excluded. In a tropical climate, where the breeze is almost indispensable to comfort, the reader may imagine the result. Then all their relatives, near and far, flock to see them; they crowd the apartment, and insist on talking to keep the patient from becoming _triste_. When the sufferer finds this insupportable and gives up the struggle to live, the whole clan, out to the last connection, set about preparing their mourning.

Every woman makes a black dress, and every man ties a band of black cloth around his white coat sleeve. When there is a wake, it is noisy enough to be Irish. Our Eastern friends resemble the Irish also in their love of a fine funeral. To go to the last resting-place escorted by a band and with all possible ceremony seems to make even death acceptable to them.

Among the very poor this ambition is quite disproportionate to their resources. The percentage of infant mortality, owing to poor nutrition, is especially high; yet babe after babe whose mother unwittingly starved it to death is given a funeral in which the baby carriage hea.r.s.e is preceded by a local band, and hired mourners stalk solemnly behind the little coffin in place of the mother, who is, in etiquette, required to remain at home.

In Manila funerals resemble our own, save that the hea.r.s.e, be it white for a child or black for an adult, is drawn by stately caparisoned horses, at the bridles of which stalk men in eighteenth-century court costumes, which include huge shoe buckles, black silk stockings, and powdered wigs. The carriages flock behind with little pretence of order, and at a sharper pace than is customary with us. The populace are, however, most respectful; rich and poor alike remove their hats when the funeral _cortege_ is pa.s.sing.

In the provinces where there are no hea.r.s.es, a funeral consists usually of a coffin carried on the shoulders of four men, and followed by a straggling concourse of mourners. If the corpse be that of a child, it not infrequently lies, gorgeously dressed, upon the blue-and-pink-beribboned cushions of a four-wheeled baby carriage. New-born babes are buried in tiny coffins covered with pink or blue cambric.

The Filipinos say that when a child dies its pure little soul goes straight to _gloria_, wherefore it is much to be congratulated on leaving this abode of sorrow for one of unending happiness, and only gay music is used at the funeral. The local bands play solely by ear, and make the most of whatever music they hear sung or whistled on the streets, with the result that strangely inappropriate selections are used on these occasions. At the first child's funeral I ever saw, the band was playing "Hot Time," and a friend to whom I related this fact, declared that at the first one he ever saw they were playing, "I don't care if you never come back." This sounds too fortuitously happy to be true, but it is quite within the possible.

When I had lived in Capiz a year or two, my washerman, or _lavandero_, died, and his widow, pointing to a numerous progeny, besought for an advance of five pesos for necessary funeral expenses. She wanted ten, but I refused to countenance that extravagance. She did not seem overcome by grief, and her plea of numerous offspring was really valueless, for, if anything, they were all better off than before. Her lord had been only a sham washerman, collecting the garments for her to wash, delivering them, and pocketing the returns, of which he gave her as small a moiety as would sustain life, and spent the rest on the c.o.c.kpit.

Funerals in a country where there are no preservatives take place very soon. The lavandero died at dawn, his widow made her levy on me before seven o'clock, and, coming home that afternoon, I met the funeral in a thickly shaded lane.

Local tradition disapproves of the appearance of near female relations at a funeral, so the dead man's escort consisted only of the four bearers, and three small boys, all under eleven years of age. The coffin was one in general use--rented for the trip to the cemetery! Once there, the body, wrapped in its _petate_, or sleeping mat, would be rolled into a shallow grave.

The four bearers were dirty and were chewing betel-nut as they trudged along under their burden. Behind them came the dead man's son, apparelled in a pair of blue denim trousers. His body, naked to the waist, was glistening brown after a bath, and he carried under one arm a fresh laundered _camisa_, or Chino shirt, of white muslin, to be put on when he reached the church.

His two supporters were the brothers of my _muchacha_, who lived in the same yard and who evidently had convictions about standing by a comrade in misfortune. The elder, a boy of seven, was fairly clean; but the younger, somewhere between three and five, was clad in a single low-necked slip of filthy pink cotton, which draped itself at a coquettish angle across his shoulders, and hung down two or three inches below his left knee. His smile, which was of a most engaging nature, occupied so much of his countenance that it was difficult to find traces of the pride which actually radiated from the other two.

My curiosity was enough to make me turn and follow them to the church. There the body was deposited on the floor at the rear, just below a door in the gallery which led to the priest's house, or _convento_. The bearers squatted on their heels and fell to wrapping up pieces of betel-nut in lime paste and _buya_ leaf, while a sacristan went to call the priest. The dead man's son reverently put on his clean shirt, and the youngest urchin sucked his thumb and continued to grin at me.

Presently a priest came through the door and leaned over the gallery, followed by two sacristans, one bearing a censer and the other a bell. The censer-bearer swung his implement vindictively in the direction of the corpse, while the other rang a melodious chime on the bell. At this all the babies fell on their knees. The priest muttered a few lines of Latin, made the sign of the cross, and disappeared to another chime of the bells and a last toss of the censer. The bearers picked up the coffin, and the little procession went on its way to the cemetery. The ceremony lasted about one minute and a half, and consumed three out of my five pesos.

This incident ill.u.s.trates neatly the friendless condition in which most Filipino poor live. Filipino lower-cla.s.s people are gregarious, but not sociable. They are averse to solitary rural life and tend everywhere to live in villages, but they visit little with each other, and seem very indifferent to the cordial relations which bind our own laboring cla.s.ses together.

In the same yard with the dead lavandero lived at least ten or twelve other families, yet no one could be found to accompany him to his grave save two play-mates of his son.

If the poor are fond of display, the rich outvie them. The pomp of a rich man's obsequies finds its beginning while he is yet on earth, when the padre goes in state to administer extreme unction. His vehicle, a gilt coach which looks like the pictures of those of the seventeenth century, is often preceded by a band, while the priest within is arrayed in embroidered vestments. When the _surra_, or horse disease, had made a scarcity of those animals, the padre's gilded equipage had to be drawn by a cebu, or very small and weary-looking cow, imported from Indo-China. The spectacle of this yoke animal, the gilt coach, and the padre in all his vestments was one not to be forgotten.

When the rich man dies, there is generally a wake, noisy enough, as before stated, to be Irish, and a pretentious funeral. Five o'clock in the afternoon seems to be a favorite hour for this. In the rainy season, with sodden clouds hanging low in the sky, with almond trees dripping down, and the great church starred with candles which do not illuminate but which dot the gloom, the occasion is lugubrious indeed. Fresh flowers are little used, but _immortelles_ and set designs accompanied by long streamers of gilt-lettered ribbon attest the courtesy of friends.

They bury the dead--that is, all the upper-cla.s.s dead--in _nichos_, or ovens, such as are found in the old cemeteries of New Orleans. The cemetery, which is usually owned, not by the munic.i.p.ality but by the church, is surrounded by a brick or stone wall six or eight feet high surmounted by a bal.u.s.trade of red baked clay in an urn design. The ovens form their back walls against this, and are arranged in tiers of four or five, so that the top of the ovens makes a fine promenade around three sides of the enclosure. In the centre there is generally a mortuary chapel, where the final words are said. From the chapel tiled walks lead out to the ovens. The plan is a very pretty one, and if the cemeteries were kept in good condition, it would be beautiful. But they are nearly always dirty and neglected.

In the open ground between the chapel and the sides, the poor people are rolled into graves so shallow that a little digging would soon exhume the body.