The fruits of Gaget

Not very long ago, there lived in the foothills of the Sierra Madre overlooking Manila a poor painter named Roberto Gaget. It was Bertong Gaget’s fault, of course, that he was poor. At a time when many artists were already living like landlords, he was still living like a tenant. He was not good in public relations and he did not have connections with art patrons in Manila. Yet, he was the most industrious painter in the entire country. Not only that, perhaps he was also the most skillful. He could draw a fly on a piece of white paper and it would seem that the fly was so real, it would fly anytime.

His wife, Isabel, was very understanding. She tried as best as she could to make a comfortable home and feed her family of four with the little money that her husband earned.

They had a very small house roofed with nipa. There was, however, behind their house, higher up the hill, a larger building also roofed with nipa. It was once a garage for calesas, for Bertong Gaget’s father built calesas that were bought as far as Manila. But calesas were no longer good business. They had been replaced by jeepneys. It was Bertong’s job when he was young to help paint the new calesas — a job which he liked very much. Now he painted jeepneys instead, and kept the huge shed as a studio and as a storeroom for his paintings and art materials. It was here where he worked from early morning till there was no more light.

Sometimes, there was very little to eat in the house, and Sabel had to scrape the bottom of the rice bin. She would tell her husband, “Bertong, my dear, why don’t you paint like those painters in Manila who are getting rich? All those millionaires in Pobres Park are buying their work — and they have not bought one from you. I read in Liwayway…”

Sabel was not a nagger; she said this more in jest. She believed in her husband very much.

 “Do you mean that I should no longer paint mangoes, coconuts, guavas, pineapples and tamarind?” Bertong Gaget would readily reply. “These are the fruits you and the children like to eat. They are beautiful fruits. Do you mean I should just splash paint on the canvas, or let paint trickle on it and call it a painting?”

This is what the famous painter in Manila, Hoy, was doing, and he was already a millionaire. More than that, his picture was always in the newspapers. Not once did Bertong Gaget get his picture in the papers, least of all his paintings.

 “First thing in the morning,” Bertong Gaget said with some determination. “I will try to paint in a different way. I will just put many dots — black, blue, all colors — and call it, ‘Man Conked in the Head.’ That’s what a man who is struck in the head sees, isn’t it?”

But the next morning, as soon as it was light, he was again sketching landscapes, farmers toiling in the fields, their bodies bent, their faces grim. He felt compelled to do these pictures although he did not like doing them too much. He was happiest when he was doing still lifes — the macopa when it is ripe, its glorious pink melting into white; the mango when it is just beginning to lose its sourness, the light green turning yellow; a cluster of bananas without a bit of rust in them—pure yellow, so luscious-looking you’d feel already full in the stomach just looking at them.

He went to the market and sometimes, because the vendors liked him, they would give him fruits. Or his children went up the hills and gathered siniguelas, or tamarind. There were, of course, bananas of many varieties in the yard, and papayas as well. He would include the fragrant bloom of the papayas, the pink banaba flowers. There were so many ways of arranging the fruits and his children and his wife often watched him and gave suggestions on how they should be clustered together.

He would stop doing what he liked best when more important jobs arrived. Sometimes, he was asked to help paint the houses of the rich in town. Or, a jeepney or a tricycle owner wanted something nice in his vehicle. He did not do more than what the owners wanted because they might not like it. But, occasionally, he would have his way. He would then paint fruits on the ceiling or on the sides, or some motto that he remembered from grade school, like “Honesty Is The Best Policy,” or “Virtue Is Its Own Reward.”

The jeepney drivers were not imaginative. They also wanted fancy lines like, “This Jeepney Is Driven by the Most Handsome Driver in Sulok.” Or he would just put the names of the children of the owner, or the name of the girlfriend of the driver on the narrow panel just below the windshield.

Bertong Gaget — like so many provincial artists — was never known in Manila where fortunes in paintings were being made; perhaps it was because he did not go to any of the art schools in the city. He only had a high school education. But even in high school, he had pleased his teachers with his very fine drawings of plants and flowers for his classes in science. And even if he stopped at high school, he continued drawing, using school pads or any blank piece of paper he could work on. There was no day that he was not drawing a hand, a foot, or birds and animals in various poses and in motion. He was happiest when he could capture the likeness of a face so well that you would think the faces of children whom he drew would start winking any time.

Though everyone in Sulok knew him, he had very few buyers. And because art materials were expensive, he used the leftover paints when he was doing jeepneys, tricycles or the houses of people.

One rainy season when there was very little rice in the bin, he went to the other hills bringing along six paintings of fruits.

Kardo, who raised vegetables, was very happy to see the paintings of eggplants, onions and squash. “But what will I do with pictures of vegetables, Bertong?” he asked. “I see them everyday.”

Kardo showed him the pictures that he had on the walls of his house. Covers of Liwayway showing faces of movie stars, pictures of calendars and, of course, the image of the Virgin Mary.

But Kardo was a good neighbor, just like the others. In exchange for the pictures that he left with his neighbors, Bertong Gaget got or was promised two dozen eggs, six chickens, a sack of palay which he could not carry for the moment, and all the bitter melons, tomatoes and eggplants his family could eat the next month when the season for the vegetables came. By now, his neighbors felt that he was a little bit touched in the head. He spent so much money on art materials, and worked so hard seven days a week, and yet got so little for his effort.

Then one day, the whole village was startled. A very important looking man in a big, fat car with a driver came and started asking everyone where Bertong Gaget lived.

 “Aha—” the villagers sighed. “At last, good fortune has come knocking at Bertong Gaget’s door.”

The man had a leather clasp bag, well-shined black shoes. He wore a jacket which made him look like a general. He said he had seen a jeepney in Manila which was so unusual he asked the driver who painted it. It was Bertong Gaget from Sulok.

Sabel was very happy. At last, someone from Manila had noticed her husband.

The man said he was an art critic. He knew important people — most of all, the First Lady who was the country’s leading patron of the arts. He would introduce his work to her and to the big people in Manila.

 “I will arrange for you to have a show at the Pus Gallery. It is the most important, the poshiest gallery in the country. Once you are exhibited there, you are made. You become a celebrity…”

Bertong Gaget wanted to know what a celebrity was. The man threw out his chest and smiled. “I am a celebrity myself,” he said. “I am the best art critic in the country. I make and unmake reputations. I will make yours, too.”

Bertong Gaget immediately had second thoughts about wanting to be a celebrity, if being one meant talking boastfully. He also wondered how the man could possibly make a reputation for him. He was already painting the best way he could. If there was any reputation to be made, he would make it himself.

Bertong Gaget was much too polite to say all these. So he and his wife just listened. The art critic then praised his technique, his colors, using words that Bertong Gaget never heard in his life. “You are a primitive!” the celebrity from Manila said with great enthusiasm.

The blood rushed to Bertong Gaget’s face. His high school books described as primitive the people in the forests who did not know anything about television and transistor radios, who went about half-naked.

The art critic explained that Bertong Gaget did not know anything about the different art movements in Europe and America. He was not influenced by any of the great painters in the Western world. He was working alone in the province, therefore, he was a primitive.

Again, Bertong Gaget knew in his heart that the man from Manila was all wrong. Even if he never went to art school, he knew how to draw a human face, the human body, the likeness of anything he set his mind on. What was schooling for an artist anyway? He was painting the world as he saw it, the grimness of life in the village. On the other hand, he was also painting the beautiful bounty of nature, the green of leaves, the yellow and gold of ripening grain. He was not trying to copy nature or improve on it. He was putting himself into everything he did, with all his honesty, with all his skill. And finally, the man said pompously. “You are giving Filipino art an identity…”

And what is that?

“Many Filipinos,” the visitor said, “have no identity. But your work has identity. You have identity.”

Again, Bertong Gaget felt that the man must be fooling. Identity — who is he to tell him now that he had it? Was there ever a time that he did not have it? That he was not Bertong Gaget? He was Bertong Gaget when he was a boy in these hills, when he drew water from the spring or chopped firewood, or helped his father build those calesas. He knew who he was and no one needed to tell him who he was now.

Still, he listened because it was impolite for him to leave the man and his nonsense. After all, he had come from Manila to see him.

The day was drawing to a close and the man said he had to hurry back. Would Roberto Gaget give him a dozen of his paintings? That was what the man said, give him a dozen, so that he could show them in Manila. He would recommend him to the Pus Gallery. Bertong Gaget could unframe the paintings, and the art critic would just roll them and take them.

Now, Bertong Gaget may just be a village boy but he was no easy prey. He said that he never gave his paintings away — there was always something he got in return, a sack of palay, vegetables for a whole season…

The man turned red in the face. He had come all the way from Manila, he was a very important figure in the cultural life of the country. Does this mean that Bertong Gaget did not trust him?

The painter did not speak. He was very embarrassed. It was Sabel who spoke in his stead. “We really don’t sell them at a very high price,” she said. “Why don’t you buy one, since you like them like you said. It is only a hundred pesos each. Just enough to cover the materials, and the time…”

The man was now glaring at them. He turned on his heels and left, saying that Bertong Gaget would rot in the hills because he was not going to mention him at all in his writings. And as for the exhibition at the Pus Gallery, he might just as well forget it.

It was the last time they saw of the man. Bertong Gaget did not care about being a “celebrity,” so he did not lose sleep about not exhibiting in Manila. He went on with his chores and his painting as diligently as before.

In the meantime, progress crept slowly to the foothills. Many new factories went up in the plains below. And above them, high up in the mountains, giant trees were being cut and hauled down to the lumber mills in the plain.

But progress did not touch Bertong Gaget. People were not interested in pictures no matter how excellent they were. They saved money for television, for refrigerators, the very things which Bertong Gaget did not have.

Still, he persisted and drew his bananas, his pomelos and his caimitos. The dry season passed and clouds formed in the heavens, thickened and darkened. The season for rain and the planting of seed was upon the land.

It was not just the good steady rain which came, however.

Now nature vented its fury on the land. First, a typhoon swept over the mountains and the plains, blew down the trees and even the bamboo that usually bowed. The banana trunks were snapped in two, even the young nuts were felled from the coconut palms. Many houses with flimsy posts and roofs were bowled over.

After the storm, a long, unrelenting rain fell for more than nine days. There were snatches of sunshine but soon after, the rain came again in fearful gusts. No one can really go out, for now, the waters rose. In many parts of the country, the animals that could not flee to high ground were drowned. People clambered up the roofs of their houses to escape the flood.

Bertong Gaget was fortunate. His house was on the side of the hill which shielded it from the winds. Although the rain washed away his wife’s vegetable garden, the house was dry and so was the shed where she kept all his paintings and his paints.

But as he looked down on the plain, he wept. Everything was under water as far as the horizon.

After 10 days, the water subsided. The farmers tried to plant again. They would have succeeded, but after a month, the sun blazed down without mercy. Novenas were prayed in the church, in the homes. For seven days, there were evening processions begging God to send the rain. But no rain fell.

The fields that were planted now withered in the heat. The people knew that they would be hungry. Many of the farmers went to the city to look for jobs, others went to the islands in the south.

There was no place for Bertong Gaget to go to. He went to the town plaza asking the jeepney drivers if they wanted their vehicles repainted. No one accepted his cheap offer. The fiesta was still very far away, so there was no auditorium to decorate, no throne for the fiesta queen to paint.

Now, more than ever, he needed to sell his paintings. But people would rather buy food than representations of fruits—no matter how beautifully they were painted.

One Saturday, Sabel went to Manila with a couple of paintings under her arm. She knew of a street called Mabini where tourists bought paintings by the dozen.

When she returned, she said she was almost arrested, because she did not have a permit to sell paintings. She would not go there again — she was that scared. But she had a little luck; an American tourist bought one of the paintings so that they had food for a week.

Toward the end of the week, Bertong Gaget really felt deep despair. He started questioning himself, how he had failed as a provider. Your children are not properly clothed, he told himself; they are not even eating properly.

 “I think you are right, Sabel,” he told his wife. “I should have gone to school long ago so that I could paint and talk like those artists in Manila. Perhaps, if I did that we will already be living now in Pobres Park…”

Sabel stood her ground. “If you did that, do you think you will be happy? Tell me honestly, my husband.”

Bertong Gaget was quiet. Then he said, “Maybe I will not be happy — but what is happiness for me if my family is hungry? Look, there is no more rice in the bin. We don’t even have a black and white TV. And Mang Simeon — he no longer gives us credit in his store…”

“But he also no longer gives credit to others,” Sabel said.

 “What does it matter? The fact is we are hungry. We ate only twice yesterday. Today, we only have food for lunch. And tonight, what will we eat? And tomorrow?”

 “God is kind, my husband,” Sabel said.

They had rice gruel and boiled camote tops that evening. In the morrow, Bertong Gaget would go to Manila, look for that art critic. He would swallow his pride and offer him as many paintings as he wanted, as long as he assured him and his family food even just for another week…He did not tell his wife this, however. He did not have the heart to do so. He merely said he would go to Manila and sell the paintings, wholesale, and cheaper.

They went to sleep, the young ones crying because they did not have their fill, and Bertong Gaget himself in tears because as a father, he knew that he had failed. Sabel cried, too, because she was so sad about the turmoil her husband was in.

It was Sabel who woke him up early in the morning when dawn was just breaking.

 “Yes,” he said. “I have forgotten about going to Manila…I must get ready at once.”

“No, my husband,” Sabel said. “I did not wake you up to remind you of your trip. There is something sweet in the air. I can smell it.” She paused and sniffed.

“Yes, I can smell it, too,” Bertong Gaget said. “It is the scent of ripe mangoes. Did you bring some when you came from Manila?”

“No,” Sabel said. “I brought home only rice as you very well saw. But it is not mangoes. It is pineapples. Ripe pineapples.”

Bertong Gaget inhaled again. “No,” he said. “It is not pineapples. It is the smell of oranges…”

Both stood up. It was now getting bright, the summit of the mountain was already rimmed with light. Outside the house, the smell became stronger, more pleasant. It seemed to come from the shed where the paintings were stored and to it, Sabel went.

In a while, she was out, jumping, laughing, screaming. “My husband!” she was shouting. “We will not be hungry anymore. No, we will not be hungry anymore. There is enough, not just for us but for many people…” She pointed hysterically to the shed.

Bertong Gaget rushed to her side and peered into the shed where he had worked so long, so patiently, so skillfully. There they were — sheaves of grain, piles of young coconuts, ripe mangoes, guavas, caimitos, and prawns, crabs, and mudfish squirming all over the ground and spilling out from the open door. All the pictures that Bertong Gaget had lovingly painted—they had all become real.