I
Valentina
“Power”
She looked at the man, asleep in his bed. The sun is already out, baking the bodies of the men working in her coprasan. The sweltering summer heat of Buhi, this idyllic place by a lake she has grown to be tired of provided a backdrop to what has become her daily frustrations. She wanted to get away from this place. She wanted more.
Yet, what is holding her was the sense of power she has, a rare feat for women in 19th century Philippines, now at the cusp of two colonial powers. She celebrated the fact that the Americans treat their women better than the former masters, the friars. She is no Maria Clara, after all. She is not the fainting type. She loves to be in control. She takes pleasure in commanding the men whose sweaty bodies secretly turns her on. She after all, owns them. Many of them work for her as payment for the unpaid loans that their parents owed her. Either that, or she takes away their land. Or both.
This is how she, Valentina Contrada, formerly Valentina Ebarle, has become the richest woman in Buhi. She knows that people do not like her. Men avoid her like a plague, not because they are not attracted to her. After all, she is also one of the most beautiful. They avoid her because they fear her. Behind her back, men refer to her as a Medusa-like figure who can swallow men whole. They cannot control her. They know she controls men, and it shows.
The women of Buhi loathe her. How can she earn their respect when she knowingly cohabited with a Chinese immigrant from mainland China who as it turned out left a bride behind? Only a woman of loose morals would do that.
But Valentina is not like just any ordinary woman. She equally loathes the women of Buhi for being contented in waiting for their men when they come home, and happy to serve them, from being their powerless queens to being their disempowered sex objects and punching bags when they want to release their misplaced masculinities. She cannot imagine herself living a life serving men, feeding them when they are hungry, cleaning them when they are dirty, and pleasuring them when they are bored. She can only do this if these come with a material reward. After all, that is what men do when they eat in a karihan at the centro, or ask someone to do their laundry in the Tabao river, or have sex with loose women in Polangui. They pay.
Valentina wanted her services to be paid, not just with money but with power. She thought that romantic and sexual pleasures are just extras in having relationships with men.
She has enormous foresight, and can smell opportunity even if it is as far as someone riding a distant ship full of Chinese men sailing over the rough seas of the South China Sea from Fujian province. And for her, such opportunity came with a name. He was Procopio Contrada.
She first saw him as this chinky-eyed coolie disembarking from a careta drawn by a carabao. He was not particularly handsome in a way Valentina would be attracted to. But she is very different from the men in her lakeside village in Cabatuan. She doesn’t have that animal sensuality. But Valentina saw Procopio not as a husband material, but as an investment. While women in her village were looking for men to shelter them and turn them into wives and mothers, she was looking for a business opportunity.
And as if their worlds were destined to overlap, Procopio was also looking for a woman who can provide him with the legitimacy that a Chinese migrant like him badly needs to survive in these islands. He needed a Filipina wife. After all, he just acquired his Spanish surname Contrada. He and his two other cousins who all came from China had to buy that surname with all the money they have when their boat landed in Batangas. One of his cousin, renamed Artemio decided to stay in Batangas and from whom the Contradas of Southern Tagalog came from. The one who was renamed Severo decided to take another boat ride that ended docking in Hamtic. From him came the Contradas of Panay. Procopio opted to travel by land further southeast to the Bicol Peninsula. And his bloodline is what the Contradas of Buhi have become.
This is the man who Valentina considered as a business opportunity. Chinese men are known to be good at money and business. For Valentina, that is more than enough.
All Procopio needed to completely become a Filipino and freely explore business opportunities aside from his Christian name is a Filipina wife. And Valentina was there for the taking as a willing bride.
But Procopio, formerly Lee Sia Co, has a secret that he kept from Valentina even on the night he proposed marriage, and on the night of their wedding. He left a bride in Fujian, a woman he truly loved named Lee Tan Cu.
The marriage of Valentina and Procopio became a flourishing business partnership. Valentina took care of the properties and the coprasan, while Procopio handled the stores. From one sari-sari store in Buhi, they were able to put up another one in Iriga. They were also able to build a house in Santa Clara in the Poblacion. Valentina was so preoccupied running the land, that she failed to notice the energy Procopio invested not only in the store in Iriga, but in building a modest house there. Little did she know that Procopio was building it for his Chinese wife.
Valentina had no plans of being a mother, but she decided to bear children to strengthen her claim over Procopio, not only as a father, but typical of her mindset, to secure inheritance for them from him. And she had one every year, all ten of them. Valentina was as fertile as the land she owned.
It was when all her children were already born, when her eldest Modesto was already in his early twenties, that Procopio revealed to her his well-kept secret about Lee Tan Cu. He asked her to allow him to go back to Fujian to fetch her.
Valentina, surprisingly, took this revelation well. She would not act like any typical woman who would pull her hair, cry in hysterics, even run to the Tabao river and threaten to drown herself. She would not slap Procopio. It is too melodramatic for her taste. After all, she knew that she did not truly love Procopio, and the marriage was all a business arrangement. She wanted better prospects of acquiring property, land and money while Procopio wanted his citizenship.
“I do not care if you have several wives left in China. You can bring all of them here.” She told him one night while a fierce tribunada was raging outside. “You go back to China and fetch her. I won’t mind as long as you keep her away from me, my children and my land.” She calmly said this, with no hint of anger or drama, while a clap of loud thunder served as background and a fierce flash of lightning illuminated her stoic face. Procopio knew. These are dangerous words from a dangerous woman.
This is the man Valentina is staring at now this hot morning as he laid asleep in the bed, raging, a month after he came back from China. She knew she slept in Iriga the night before with his Chinese wife. But this is not the reason why Valentina is raging. It is not even because Procopio took their youngest son Antonio with him when he went back to China to fetch his wife, violating her command of not letting his Chinese wife Lee Tan Cu have any contact with any of her children. It is not even because Antonio, age ten, is now smitten with Lee Tan Cu’s young niece who accompanied them back that he declared he wants to marry her when they get older. It is not even because she now learned about the secret house Procopio built in Iriga for his Chinese wife.
What deeply angered Valentina is when she found out that the titles to all her properties were missing from her baul. Without even asking Procopio, she knew. He took them and gave them to his Chinese wife.
That morning, Valentina took a bath, braided her hair, powdered her face, and put on the best kimona and saya she can find in her baul. On occasions like what she was raring to do, she wanted to look her best. She ordered four of her most able-bodied men to accompany her.
As she was leaving the house, she saw Modesto, her eldest, packing his clothes. The day before, he asked permission to be allowed to enter the seminary in Nueva Caceres. He wanted to enter the priesthood. She knew that when she comes home, he wouldn’t be there anymore. She actually felt that it would be better that way. She doesn’t want to bid him her goodbyes. She disapproved of his entering the seminary. Unlike other mothers who would be elated when their sons decide to enter the priesthood, Valentina saw it as a sign of weakness, an absence of a backbone. As the eldest son, she was hoping he would take interest in managing the land and her properties. But instead, he is wasting it on a vocation where there will be no material rewards. Now, she is looking forward to training her two daughters to take up that role. After all, she is determined to rear them into becoming strong women, just like her.
Her sons, it seemed to appear, are all like their father. Emotional. Easily smitten by women like her youngest. Or if not, would rather dedicate his life to an unproductive spiritual journey, like Modesto.
The only redeeming quality of Modesto becoming a priest is that at least, somebody will be praying for her soul. Not that she is a religious woman. She hated the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, which she associates with the gossiping women wearing their cassocks, whom she knew took pleasure on feasting on her as a topic for their afternoon pastime while doing some religious ritual among themselves. Unlike many people in that part of the islands, known for their religiosity, Valentina saw the Church as a necessary tool for influence. She despised its corruption from the moment she saw the womb of her sister grow after being a regular visitor of the convent.
But then again, it doesn’t hurt to have all the ground covered, with someone taking care of her spiritual future. And that day, she would need a prayer for what she was about to do.
As her vehicle, one of the few owned and running in Buhi, was passing by the rice fields and coconut groves on the way to Iriga, she kept on thinking of the many sacrifices she had to endure just to acquire her many land properties. It is less about owning them. The pleasure she felt was derived from the fact that they are living testaments to her power, as a woman who refused to be boxed even if it meant earning a reputation one cannot easily love. The only reason for her existence now, and which define her being a wife and a mother, emanate from the land. These are not just mere possessions. They are her life.
She can afford to share her husband to another woman. She can afford to lose her eldest son to his religion. But she cannot allow her land to be taken away from her, and to make it worse, by foreigners even if one of them happened to be her husband, father of her children. She is not a nationalist. She looked at politics and politicians as merely tools to use to advance her business interests. She doesn’t care if the Philippines truly gain its independence. What she is interested about is her land.
They arrived in Iriga in front of the house Procopio built for his Chinese wife. This is the first time she laid eyes on it. It was a simple house. At least, it did not surpass the house she and Procopio built. For this, she was somewhat pleased.
At the door, she immediately saw the girl child with whom her youngest son Antonio was smitten – a pretty looking, chinky-eyed girl. Briefly, she felt pleased about the taste of her son on girls, even if she wished he could be more practical in his preferences and would go beyond beauty. She strode past her, as she was about to rise to ask her about her business. The four men with her followed her. Then she saw her, the one true love of her husband, the one who has his heart, and now he would also like to have her land. The rage once again boiled. She couldn’t care less if she can have him. But not her land.
Strange. The face of the Chinese wife did not even register in her mind. She was simply not interested in her. All she wanted was to take back what was hers. And she was not referring to her husband.
Without introducing herself, she barked: “Where are the papers? The titles! Los documentos de las tierras! Mis tierras!” Valentina does not raise her voice even if she is enraged. This is how she became even more fearsome. But this time, she was different. She was shrill, almost hysterical.
Lee Tan Cu didn’t understand any word she said. She looked over to the Chinese girl she brought from Fujian with her. The girl spoke in Fukien to her, explaining what was happening.
Valentina grew more impatient. “The papers. Los titulos! Where are they! Give them to me.”
Lee Tan Cu ran inside a small room. But her tiny feet caused her to stumble. Valentina chased after her as she struggled to get up. She was half running, half-crawling as she reached for a baul and barricaded it with her supple body, as if protecting its contents. Valentina did not think twice. She kicked Lee Tan Cu, causing her body to roll over the floor. Valentina opened the baul, and there indeed are the documents, all the land titles. All her life work, her being, right there, about to be taken away from her. She quickly grabbed the documents and called on her men outside the room to put these in the bayong one of them was carrying. Lee Tan Cu tried to stop her, but she kicked her once again, this time with a menacing force that it threw her right across the anteroom.
“You can have my husband for all you want, you Chinese whore! But you cannot have my land!,” she screamed at the now shocked Lee Tan Cu.
Valentina strode past the pretty girl child, the one who stole the heart of her youngest, now cowering in fear. “And you can also have my son, if that pleases you, you little bitch!,” she yelled at her.
Valentina was so tired emotionally and physically, but she was so pleased with herself as she rode back to Buhi. She felt she protected her legacy; she defended her birthright. She was not thinking about her husband. Or her youngest son. The land, she was thinking about her land.
Upon arriving in Buhi, she got off her vehicle, and told her men to retire for the day, as she handed out some money to each of them. As she was doing this, she felt a rush of adrenaline. She felt power over them. Here she was, a native, unschooled India who learned how to read, write and count by herself because her parents thought that women are only good as receptacles for men and as breeders of children, scorned by women, but feared by men, now commanding men like they are eating at the palms of her hand, willing to do her bidding.
And as she entered inside her house, the house that she and Procopio built, she saw her nine other children all sitting in the long bench in the porch. Modesto apparently already left for the seminary. She did not feel any tinge of sadness. An unlamented loss, nothing that having back possession of the papers to her land could not compensate. She looked at her youngest Antonio and thought of that pretty young Chinese girl back in Iriga. At that moment she was still unaware that a month after, he would run away to Manila, with her husband’s Chinese wife and that girl child. Another unlamented loss, as it will soon turn out. She would see them as weak, spineless men.
When she entered the sala, she saw Procopio reading beside a table. She said nothing. She went over to him, emptied the contents of her bayong over the table, as she watched him stare at the land titles and other documents he knew he took away to give to his Chinese wife just the other day. Valentina did not have to say anything. Procopio knew.
As she was walking away toward their bedroom, Procopio asked. “What happened?”
Valentina replied. “You can have her. But those papers, and the land. They are mine.”
Then she called her two daughters, Eulalia and Artemia, who were sitting outside with their brothers, to gather the papers on the table of their father and put them back in the baul in their room. “You will protect these documents, as what good women should do, as your mother did. Let it be known that you are the daughters of Valentina Contrada y Ebarle,” she told them.
Procopio knew. He lost. And from that day on until he died, he became the husband that Valentina can afford to lose, and that was enough for him to know his place. His Chinese wife left for Manila, taking with her his youngest Antonio, and his heart.
And Valentina knew. She is not the woman worth loving. Her husband remained with her but without a heart capable of loving her. Her youngest son chose to be with the Chinese wife of his father, to follow the girl child of his dreams. But she knew she had power. And that, to her, is more than all the men who could love her.
And her eldest Modesto would soon abandon his dream of being a priest and left the seminary when he fell in love with a native Agta who ran away with him, leaving her husband and two children for him, for love. Her name was Maria Segunda Igat
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