Children of Ash Covered Loam
 
 

If there is a gift NVM Gonzales gives to me, it is this story  about his childhood in his native Romblon. I consider myself lucky to have experienced in my childhood what he is narrating, so glad I can visualize  the portraiture of the  Children of Ash Covered Loam.

And though I cannot remember everything about my childhood anymore, this story  seems to flash some pieces of it...

The way NVM writes is extremely detailed and careful, as careful as walking on a heap of eggs, and so detailed I feel I am  looking at old photographs.

It's the symbolism of walking on eggs that I  associate with the story-writing of NVM Gonzales.

When I read him, I feel a very close affinity with him, he's like an old playmate, like a childhood friend. Reading him brings to life the roads I passed by, the green fields I saw in my provincial life; I smell the smell of the sun exuded by farm persons,  the hay; I see the men and women bending to pick scattered stalks of rice; the language of his characters remind me of this uncle or that aunt, this neighbor or that old-man by the river; I remember my father fishing quietly, I see the haze brought in by the fog of smoke from mornings'  bonfires.

At first, as I was reading Children of Ash Covered Loam, I was expecting the usual thing I always  expect from a story - you know...the conflict and resolution kind'a thing...but Gonzales goes on and on and on...Aw common, ay caramba, kapatad kong manong, give me the conflict...

So Nanay starts asking where Tatay  got the piglet...mmmm....maybe Tatay is having an affair with  Paula who gave him the piglet....Naaaaah!.... and here comes the rain, Mmmmm...maybe there's an impendign disaster and death,  aw this must be it....but....Naaaah!

Ay Gonzales, where is the story in the Ash Covered Loam. Donde, Saan, Nukarin, Where?????

Then it struck me. It struck me so powerfully I thought I went through Epiphany. Gaddammit! This is not a story! This is a portrait. This is a painting. This is discovering. This writer is capturing in words a photograph about some little, ordinary thing and it's exclusively meant for me! Yeah. Children of Ash Covered Loam is still life super. And I am watching this kid - then I become the kid. I don't understand why I see myself as the kid. Why this kid is soooooo familiar. So common. So....oooh yeah! So like me. And I go through the whirlwind of my beautiful youth...NVM Gonzales takes me out of my reality and I swim in the forest of my childhood. I watch my younger brother and sister turning into babies again. I see my parents young again. I see our old house, our old trees, my father watering his vegetable garden. I see the backyard so big. I see coconuts sprouting from  coconut trees. I feel the torrential rain. I smell the wet thatched roof. I see the nipa hut swaying with the tropical typhoons. I see everything so vividly that I start crying. The writer of Ash Covered Loam, NVM Gonzales,  wants me so much to remember. So that,  even while I'm writing this, I feel as though  I am writing on my table beside the window of our house, on a January cold evening, silence all over, darkness all over outside, except for the wagging of the lizard's tail beside my lampstand, I can hear the barking of the dogs...

This is the magic of NVM Gonzales. He's got the power. He's got the chant. He's got the amulet to resurrect what's been buried. He makes alive what we now consider a ghost of past.

The boy Tarang of Children of Ash Covered Loam reminds me of the boy we see everyday of our lives. He stares at everything around him with curiosity, he looks at the carabao as if it were talking to him. He watches the movements of his mother and father and little baby sister and every word he hears form them is carefully recorded in his mind. Everything is new to him: the hemped clothes of the old midwife Orang, the coconut-shell dipper, the rain.  A reminder to all of us about our first dicoveries in life and the world!

The ground was not too wet. In his haste, Tarang struck a tree stump with his big toe; and the hurt was not half as keen as it might have been, not half as sharp as his hunger for knowing, for seeing with his own eyes how life emerged from this dark womb of the land (kaingin) and at this time of the night (his mother's pregnancy perhaps?).

NVM Gonzales considers himself a writer in Pilipino  (I read this somewhere, flips list I guess) even if he uses English.... all his words are native, and nobody else will  identify his words except the native Filipino. He recently passed away...

and I always believe writers the caliber of NVM Gonzales never die, they just give us the false pretense they've left though they're still around(in their writings).

Thank you NVM.

Alex Maskara

Volume 1