Four Students 3

Mod's character is a constant source of amusement, a peculiar blend of imagination and solitude. He is an inveterate daydreamer, a master at weaving his own reality. His isolation has not only taught him to create his own world but also allowed him to inhabit it fully. He talks to himself, slipping effortlessly into different roles. If he wishes to converse with the Pope, he does not need an audience; he simply assumes the Pope's role. Alone in his room, he gazes into the mirror, raises his hand in solemn blessing, then closes his eyes, makes the sign of the cross, and feels divinely consecrated. If music drifts through the air, his imagination transforms him into a dancer; if he watches a sports event, he becomes the champion; if he loses himself in a movie, he is the undisputed hero. Sometimes, he stands up just to announce to himself, "I am standing now." Then he walks, declaring, "I am walking now." In his mind, he is always engaged in vibrant conversations—an orator in his own silent, self-constructed world.

On this particular morning, as on many others, Mod leads the water buffalo to the damp grasslands for feeding. This is Cuenca—a town so quiet and unremarkable that it barely registers on the map, except during the Lenten season when pilgrims flock to climb Mount Makulot for the annual reenactment of Calvary. In Cuenca, celebrations are not centered around Christmas or New Year's Eve; instead, the town awakens during Holy Week, particularly on Good Friday. It is then that shops reopen, roads are swept clean, and mountain trails are revived for the penitents. On this day, barefooted devotees line up with flickering candles, whispering prayers that seem to have been withheld all year, waiting for this sacred moment. Children are hushed by elders, their laughter stifled so as not to disturb the solemn procession of faith. In this atmosphere of quiet reverence, Mod nurtured a deep appreciation for silence, preferring the company of books over idle chatter. When he longed for conversation, he created it himself—out in the open field, where his only audience was the vast, whispering expanse of nature.

His mind is an ever-churning repository of questions—questions for which he readily supplies his own answers: Why do eels burrow? Because they are too shy to face the world, embarrassed by their ugliness.

Why do fish have fins? Because they cannot walk.

He was born in 1966, an event his mother often recounted with vivid detail. It was a bitterly cold December morning when Cuenca witnessed its first major flash flood from the torrential monsoon rains. His father, braving the harsh downpour with a kerosene lamp in one hand, waded through the rising waters to fetch Apung Ingga, the revered midwife of the barrio. As the rain lashed down, his father found himself contemplating the unusual confluence of events—his son's imminent birth and the town’s first great flood. Was it an omen? A sign of something extraordinary?

It was five o’clock in the morning when Mod entered the world. Before leaving his laboring wife in the care of their other children, his father cracked open ten coconuts, pouring the liquid into a pitcher—an age-old remedy believed to ease childbirth. His wife drank it while waiting for Apung Ingga’s arrival. By the time the midwife finally stepped into the house, the baby had already begun his journey into the world. So eager was he to be born that he could not wait for assistance. But it was his first cries that perplexed his father the most. Unlike the uniform wails of newborns, Mod’s cries emerged in shifting tones, unpredictable and varied.

"This boy," his father mused with delight, "knows how to modulate his voice. Perhaps I am blessed with a future singer."

Apung Ingga, however, listened with an experienced ear, tilting her head as if weighing the significance of the infant's cry. "Hush, Saturnino," she said, dismissing the father’s musings. With the certainty of someone who had delivered countless children, she added, "A child who cries like that is not just crying—he is choosing his voice. He is a child unsure of what pitch to use in this world." Her words carried a quiet authority, and as if sealing fate itself, she wrapped the baby in flour sack sheets and laid him gently beside his mother.

"It’s a boy," she announced. "A very confused boy."

As Mod grew, his parents adhered to Apung Ingga’s judgment, believing that the best way to resolve his confusion was to leave him alone. His mother harbored secret anxieties, unable to shake off the thought that her son’s birth coincided with Cuenca’s first major flood—an event that became an annual occurrence due to deforestation. He was the only child in their town whose first cries were not singular or monotonous. His uniqueness seemed undeniable. His mother often thought, someday, he would accomplish something extraordinary. And whatever that would be, he would not wait to do it.

Life, however, was not kind. Mod’s childhood was marked by hardship, the weight of survival pressing upon his small shoulders. He labored alongside his parents—helping at home, toiling in the rice fields, working in public fishponds. He learned early on that survival was earned through sweat and perseverance. When typhoons destroyed their crops, he contributed to the family’s survival in whatever way he could. As the eldest of three siblings, responsibility was thrust upon him. During difficult times, he learned to sell whatever he could—scrap metal, old bundles, meat, peanuts, ice candies—anything that could turn a small profit. He borrowed money for small businesses, sometimes at steep interest rates, and learned the bitter sting of public humiliation when he failed to pay on time. He endured the silent judgment of classmates who came from wealthier families, the children of the very people who lent money to his parents. Slowly, he grew more reserved, his shyness becoming a shield against a world that often felt too cruel.

Yet, in solitude, Mod found solace. Left alone, he cultivated his own world. Books became his most cherished companions. Whatever he could get his hands on—borrowed novels, discarded textbooks, bargain-bin finds—he devoured them all. He did not merely read; he engaged in conversations with books as if they were living beings. When a story felt incomplete, he rewrote its ending. When a character’s fate seemed unjust, he imagined an alternative path. He extended dialogues, debated with protagonists, and reimagined worlds. His literary companions went beyond books. In time, he conversed with trees, scolded birds, reprimanded fish for being too slippery, and even berated fences for obstructing his way.

His imagination, boundless and uncontainable, earned him a peculiar kind of respect in town. He dreamed of Princeton through Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, envisioned the fall of Bastille as the destruction of Lipa’s great church through Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. For the first time in his life, he seriously considered the distinction between the rich and the poor and how comforting it is to belong to the latter. Other authors such as Ayn Rand, Bronte, Elliot, H. James, Bocaccio and Cervantes were read not so much for their profound value but for their availability. The Bible was a favorite. He loved strong characters like Roark and Amory Blaine and felt deep sympathy for sufferers like Christ and Catherine Sloper. His life mingled with these foreigners and with powerful imagination he resurrected them in such a way they lived next door. These personalities were made into daily companions that he could visualize Hank Rearden planting rice and Danny Taggart washing clothes.

He longed for a college education, but he found solace in knowing that great minds—Hugo, Poe—had never needed Manila to write masterpieces. He convinced himself that the rice paddies and fishponds of Cuenca were enough. Enough to inspire. Enough to create. Enough to fuel a dream larger than himself.

Ah, Mod’s masterpiece! It would be grand—an international sensation akin to Tagore’s works. The Pulitzer, the Nobel—they would beckon him to America and Europe. But then, Rand whispered in his ear, warning against the trappings of fame. Fountainhead redefined his ambition. Who, he now asked himself, who will judge my masterpiece? Art, he concluded, is expression, not a commodity. Great art is valued not by immediate recognition, but by the depth of its impact over time.
2025-02-05 09:44:22
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