FAITH, LOVE, TIME AND DR LAZARO its

(Gregorio Brillantes)

From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country
darkness, the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town. The
phonograph in the sala played Chopin – like a vast sorrow controlled, made
familiar, he had want to think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the
habitual slack repose took after supper, and stared at the plains of night that
had evoked gentle images and even a kind of peace (in the end, sweet and
invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched
by any conscious thought, he was scarcely aware of the April heat; the
pattern of music fell around him and dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It
was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his blood it
was everywhere in his body. In the scattered light from the sala his angular
face had a dusty, wasted quality, only his eyes contained life. He could have
remained there all evening, unmoving, and buried, it is were, in a strange
half- sleep, had his wife not come to tell him he was wanted on the phone.

Gradually his mind stirred, focused; as he rose from the chair he recognized
the somber passage in the sonata that, curiously, made him think of ancient
monuments, faded stone walls, a greyness. The brain filed away an image;
and arrangement of sounds released it… He switched off the phonograph,
suppressed and impatient quiver in his throat as he reached for the phone:
everyone had a claim on his time. He thought: Why not the younger ones for
a change? He had spent a long day at the provincial hospital.

The man was calling from a service station outside the town – the station
after the agricultural high school, and before the San Miguel bridge, the man
added rather needlessly, in a voice that was frantic yet oddly subdued and
courteous. Dr. Lazaro had heard it countless times, in the corridors of the
hospitals, in waiting rooms: the perpetual awkward misery. He was Pedro
Esteban, the brother of the doctor’s tenant in Nambalan, said the voice,
trying to make itself less sudden remote.

But the connection was faulty, there was a humming in the wires, as though
darkness had added to the distance between the house in the town and the
gas station beyond the summer fields. Dr. Lazaro could barely catch the
severed phrases. The man’s week-old child had a high fever, a bluish skin;
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mouth would not open to suckle. They could not take the baby to the
poblacion, they would not dare move it; its body turned rigid at the slightest
touch. If the doctor would consent to come at so late an hour, Esteban would
wait for him at the station. If the doctor would be so kind…

Tetanus of the newborn: that was elementary, and most likely it was so
hopeless, a waste of time. Dr. Lazaro said yes, he would be there; he had
committed himself to that answer, long ago; duty had taken the place of an
exhausted compassion. The carelessness of the poor, the infected blankets,
the toxin moving toward the heart: they were casual scribbled items in a
clinical report. But outside the grilled windows, the night suddenly seemed
alive and waiting. He had no choice left now but action: it was the only
certitude – he sometimes reminded himself – even if it would prove futile,
before, the descent into nothingness.

His wife looked up from her needles and twine, under the shaded lamp of
the bedroom; she had finished the pullover for the grandchild in Baguio and
had begun work, he noted, on another of those altar vestments for the parish
church. Religion and her grandchild certainly kept her busy … She looked at
him, into so much to inquire as to be spoken to: a large and placid woman.

“Shouldn’t have let the drive go home so early,” Dr. Lazaro said. “They had
to wait till now to call … Child’s probably dead…”

“Ben can drive for you.”

“I hardly see that boy around the house. He seems to be on vacation both
from home and in school.”

“He’s downstairs,” his wife said.

Dr. Lazaro put on fresh shirt, buttoned it with tense, abrupt motions, “I
thought he’d gone out again… Who’s that girl he’s been seeing? It’s not just
warm, it’s hot. You should’ve stayed on in Baguio… There’s disease,
suffering, death,
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because Adam ate the apple. They must have an answer to everything… “He “Try it without the lights,” and smelled the gasoline overflow as the old
paused at the door, as though for the echo of his words. Pontiac finally lurched around the house and through the trellised gate, its
front sweeping over the dry dusty street.
Mrs. Lazaro had resumed the knitting; in the circle of yellow light, her head But he’s all right, Dr. Lazaro thought as they swung smoothly into the main
bowed, she seemed absorbed in some contemplative prayer. But her avenue of the town, past the church and the plaza, the kiosko bare for once
silences had ceased t disturb him, like the plaster saints she kept in the in a season of fiestas, the lam-posts shining on the quiet square. They did
room, in their cases of glass, or that air she wore of conspiracy, when she left not speak; he could sense his son’s concentration on the road, and he noted,
with Ben for Mass in the mornings. Dr. Lazaro would ramble about miracle with a tentative amusement, the intense way the boy sat behind the wheel,
drugs, politics, music, the common sense of his unbelief; unrelated things his eagerness to be of help. They passed the drab frame houses behind the
strung together in a monologue; he posed questions, supplied with his own marketplace, and the capitol building on its landscaped hill, the gears shifting
answers; and she would merely nod, with an occasional “Yes?” and “Is that easily as they went over the railroad tracks that crossed the asphalted street.
so?” and something like a shadow of anxiety in her gaze.
Then the road was pebbled and uneven, the car bucking slightly; and they
He hurried down the curving stairs, under the votive lamps of the Sacred were speeding between open fields, a succession of narrow wooden bridges
Heart. Ben lay sprawled on the sofa, in the front parlor; engrossed in a book, breaking the crunching drive of the wheels. Dr. Lazaro gazed at the wide
one leg propped against the back cushions. “Come along, we’re going darkness around them, the shapes of trees and bushes hurling toward them
somewhere,” Dr. Lazaro said, and went into the clinic for his medical bag. He and sliding away and he saw the stars, hard glinting points of light yards,
added a vial of penstrep, an ampule of caffeine to the satchel’s content’s; black space, infinite distances; in the unmeasured universe, man’s life flared
rechecked the bag before closing it; the cutgut would last just one more briefly and was gone, traceless in the void. He turned away from the
patient. One can only cure, and know nothing beyond one’s work… There emptiness. He said: “You seem to have had a lot of practice, Ben.”
had been the man, today, in the hospital: the cancer pain no longer helped
by the doses of morphine; the patient’s eyes flickering their despair in the “A lot of what, Pa?”
eroded face. Dr. Lazaro brushed aside the stray vision as he strode out of
the whitewashed room; he was back in his element, among syringes, steel “The ways you drive. Very professional.”
instruments, quick decisions made without emotion, and it gave him a kind of
blunt energy. In the glow of the dashboard lights, the boy’s face relaxed, smiled. “Tio Cesar
let me use his car, in Manila. On special occasions.”
I’ll drive, Pa?” Ben followed him through the kitchen, where the maids were
ironing the week’s wash, gossiping, and out to the yard shrouded in the “No reckless driving now,” Dr. Lazaro said. “Some fellows think it’s smart.
dimness of the single bulb under the eaves. The boy push back the folding Gives them a thrill. Don’t be like that.”
doors of the garage and slid behind the wheel.
“No, I won’t, Pa. I just like to drive and – and go place, that’s all.”
“Somebody’s waiting at the gas station near San Miguel. You know the
Dr. Lazaro watched the young face intent on the road, a cowlick over the
place?” “Sure,” Ben said. forehead, the mall curve of the nose, his own face before he left to study in
another country, a young student of full illusions, a lifetime ago; long before
The engine sputtered briefly and stopped. “Battery’s weak,” Dr. Lazaro said.
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the loss of faith, God turning abstract, unknowable, and everywhere, it could build up a good practice in the city. Specialized in cancer, maybe or
seemed to him, those senseless accidents of pain. He felt a need to define neuro-surgery, and join a good hospital.” It was like trying to recall some rare
unspoken things, to come closer somehow to the last of his sons; one of happiness, in the car, in the shifting darkness.
these days, before the boy’s vacation was over, they might to on a picnic
together, a trip to the farm; a special day for the two of them – father and “I’ve been thinking about it,” Ben said. It’s a vocation, a great one. Being able
son, as well as friends. In the two years Ben had been away in college, they to really help people, I mean.”
had written a few brief, almost formal letters to each other: your money is on
the way, these are the best years, make the most of them… “You’ve done well in math, haven’t you?”

Time was moving toward them, was swirling around and rushing away and it “Well enough, I guess,” Ben said.
seemed Dr. Lazaro could almost hear its hallow receding roar; and
discovering his son’s profile against the flowing darkness, he had a thirst to Engineering is a fine course too Dr. Lazaro said. “There’ll be lots of room for
speak. He could not find what it was he had meant to say. engineers. Planners and builders, they are what this country needs. Far too
many lawyers and salesmen these days. Now if your brother–” He closed his
The agricultural school buildings came up in the headlights and glided back eyes, erasing the slashed wrists, part of the future dead in a boarding-house
into blurred shapes behind a fence. room, the landlady whimpering, “He was such a nice boy, doctor, your son…”
Sorrow lay in ambush among the years.
“What was that book you were reading, Ben?”
“I have all summer to think about,” Ben said.
“A biography,” the boy said.
“There’s no hurry,” Dr. Lazaro said. What was it he had wanted to say?
“Statesman? Scientist maybe?” Something about knowing each other, about sharing; no, it was not that at
all…
It’s about a guy who became a monk.”
The stations appeared as they coasted down the incline of a low hill, its
“That’s your summer reading?” Dr. Lazaro asked with a small laugh, half fluorescent lights the only brightness on the plain before them, on the road
mockery, half affection. “You’re getting to be a regular saint, like your that led farther into deeper darkness. A freight truck was taking on a load of
mother.” gasoline as they drove up the concrete apron and came to a stop beside the
station shed.
“It’s an interesting book,” Ben said.
A short barefoot man in a patchwork shirt shuffled forward to meet them.
“I can imagine…” He dropped the bantering tone. “I suppose you’ll go on to I am Esteban, doctor,” the man said, his voice faint and hoarse, almost
medicine after your AB?” inaudible, and he bowed slightly with a careful politeness. He stood blinking,
looking up at the doctor, who had taken his bag and flashlight form the car.
“I don’t know yet, Pa.”
In the windless space, Dr. Lazaro could hear Esteban’s labored breathing,
Tiny moth like blown bits of paper flew toward the windshield and funneled the clank of the metal nozzle as the attendant replaced it in the pump. The
away above them. “You don’t have to be a country doctor like me, Ben. You
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men in the truck stared at them curiously.

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 wife, pale and
Esteban said, pointing at the darkness beyond the road: “We will have to go
through those fields, doctor, then cross the river,” The apology for yet one
more imposition was a wounded look in his eyes. He added, in his subdued
voice: “It’s not very far…” Ben had spoken to the attendants and was locking
the car.

The truck rumbled and moved ponderously onto the road, its throb strong
and then fading in the warm night stillness.

“Lead the way, “Dr. Lazaro said, handing Esteban the flashlight.

They crossed the road, to a cleft in the embankment that bordered the fields,
Dr. Lazaro was sweating now in the dry heat; following the swinging ball of
the flashlight beam, sorrow wounded by the stifling night, he felt he was
being dragged, helplessly, toward some huge and complicated error, a
meaningless ceremony. Somewhere to his left rose a flapping of wings, a
bird cried among unseen leaves: they walked swiftly, and there was only the
sound of the silence, the constant whirl of crickets and the whisper of their
feet on the path between the stubble fields.

With the boy close behind him, Dr. Lazaro followed Esteban down a clay
slope to the slope and ripple of water in the darkness. The flashlight showed
a banca drawn up at the river’s edge. Esteban wade waist-deep into the
water, holding the boat steady as Dr. Lazaro and Ben stepped on the board.
In the darkness, with the opposite bank like the far rise of an island, Dr.
Lazaro had a moment’s tremor of fear as the boar slide out over the black
water; below prowled the deadly currents; to drown her in the depths of the
night… But it took only a minute to cross the river. “We’re here doctor,”
Esteban said, and they padded p a stretch of sand to a clump of trees; a dog
started to bark, the shadows of a kerosene lamp wavered at a window.

Unsteady on a steep ladder, Dr. Lazaro entered the cave of Esteban’s hut.
The single room contained the odors he often encountered but had remained
alien to, stirring an impersonal disgust: the sourish decay, the smells of the
unaired sick. An old man greeted him, lisping incoherently; a woman, the
grandmother, sat crouched in a corner, beneath a famed print of the Mother
of Perpetual Help; a boy, about ten, slept on, sprawled on a mat. Esteban’s
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thin, lay on the floor with the sick child beside her. whispered

Motionless, its tiny blue-tinged face drawn way from its chest in a fixed
wrinkled grimace, the infant seemed to be straining to express some terrible
ancient wisdom.

Dr. Lazaro made a cursory check – skin dry, turning cold; breathing shallow;
heartbeat fast and irregular. And I that moment, only the child existed before
him; only the child and his own mind probing now like a hard-gleaming
instrument. How strange that it should still live, his mind said as it
considered the spark that persisted within the rigid and tortured body. He
was alone with the child, his whole being focused on it, in those intense
minutes shaped into a habit now by so many similar instances: his
physician’s knowledge trying to keep the heart beating, to revive an ebbing
life and somehow make it rise again.

Dr. Lazaro removed the blankets that bundled the child and injected a whole
ampule to check the tonic spasms, the needle piercing neatly into the sparse
flesh; he broke another ampule, with deft precise movements, and emptied
the syringe, while the infant lay stiff as wood beneath his hands. He wiped
off the sweat running into his eyes, then holding the rigid body with one
hand, he tried to draw air into the faltering lungs, pressing and releasing the
chest; but even as he worked to rescue the child, the bluish color of its face
began to turn gray.

Dr. Lazaro rose from his crouch on the floor, a cramped ache in his
shoulders, his mouth dry. The lamplight glistened on his pale hollow face as
he confronted the room again, the stale heat, the poverty. Esteban met his
gaze; all their eyes were upon him, Ben at the door, the old man, the woman
in the corner, and Esteban’s wife, in the trembling shadows.

Esteban said: “Doctor..”

He shook his head, and replaced the syringe case in his bag, slowly and
deliberately, and fastened the clasp. T Here was murmuring him, a rustle
across the bamboo floor, and when he turned, Ben was kneeling beside the
child. And he watched, with a tired detached surprise, as the boy poured
water from a coconut shell on the infant’s brow. He caught the words half-
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in the quietness: “.. in the name of the Father.. the Son… the Holy Ghost…” shabby crowds that came to town on market days.
The shadows flapped on the walls, the heart of the lamp quivering before it “Let’s go, Ben” Dr. Lazaro said.
settled into a slender flame. By the river dogs were barking. Dr. Lazaro
glanced at his watch; it was close to midnight. Ben stood over the child, the They took the path across the field; around them the moonlight had
coconut shell in his hands, as though wandering what next to do with it, until transformed the landscape, revealing a gentle, more familiar dimension, a
he saw his father nod for them to go. luminous haze upon the trees stirring with a growing wind; and the heat of
the night had passed, a coolness was falling from the deep sky. Unhurried,
Doctor, tell us – “Esteban took a step forward. his pace no more than a casual stroll, Dr. Lazaro felt the oppression of the
night begin to life from him, an emotionless calm returned to his mind. The
“I did everything: Dr. Lazaro said. “It’s too late –“ sparrow does not fall without the Father’s leave he mused at the sky, but it
falls just the same. But to what end are the sufferings of a child? The crickets
He gestured vaguely, with a dull resentment; by some implicit relationship, he chirped peacefully in the moon-pale darkness beneath the trees.
was also responsible, for the misery in the room, the hopelessness. “There’s
nothing more I can do, Esteban, “ he said. He thought with a flick of anger: “You baptized the child, didn’t you, Ben?”
Soon the child will be out of it, you ought to be grateful. Esteban’s wife began
to cry, a weak smothered gasping, and the old woman was comforting her, it “Yes, Pa.” The boy kept in the step beside him.
is the will of God, my daughter…”
He used to believe in it, too. The power of the Holy Spirit washing away
In the yard, Esteban pressed carefully folded bills into the doctor’s hand; the original sin, the purified soul made heir of heaven. He could still remember
limp, tattered feel of the money was sort of the futile journey, “I know this is fragments of his boy hood faith, as one might remember an improbable and
not enough, doctor,” Esteban said. “as you can see we are very poor… I long- discarded dream.
shall bring you fruit, chickens, someday…”
“Lay baptism, isn’t that the name for it?”
A late moon had risen, edging over the tops of the trees, and in the faint
wash of its light, Esteban guided them back to the boat. A glimmering rippled “Yes,” Ben said. I asked the father. The baby hadn’t been baptized.” He
on the surface of the water as they paddled across; the white moonlight added as they came to the embankment that separated the field from the
spread in the sky, and a sudden wind sprang rain-like and was lost in the road: “They were waiting for it to get well.”
tress massed on the riverbank.
The station had closed, with only the canopy light and the blobbed neon sign
“I cannot thank you enough, doctor,” Esteban said. “You have been very kind left burning. A steady wind was blowing now across the field, the moonlit
to come this far, at this hour.” He trail is just over there, isn’t it?” He wanted to plains.
be rid of the man, to be away from the shy humble voice, the prolonged
wretchedness. He saw Ben stifle a yawn. I’ll drive,” Dr. Lazaro said.
I shall be grateful always, doctor,” Esteban said. “And to you son, too. God His eyes were not what they used to be, and he drove leaning forward, his
go with you.” He was a faceless voice withdrawing in the shadows, a cipher hands tight on the wheel. He began to sweat again, and the empty road and
in the
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the lateness and the memory of Esteban and of the child dying before of darkness, maneuvered the car back onto the road, his arms exhausted
morning in the impoverished, lamplight room fused into tired melancholy. He and numb. He drove the last half-mile to town in silence, his mind registering
started to think of his other son, one he had lost. nothing but the frit of dust in his mouth and the empty road unwinding swiftly
before him.
He said, seeking conversation, if other people carried on like you, Ben, the
priests would be run out of business.” They reached the sleeping town, the desolate streets, the plaza empty in the
moonlight, and the huddled shapes of houses, the old houses that Dr. Lazaro
The boy sat beside him, his face averted, not answering. had always know. How many nights had he driven home like this through the
quiet town, with a man’s life ended behind him, or a child crying newly risen
“Now, you’ll have an angel praying for you in heaven,” Dr. Lazaro said, from the womb; and a sense of constant motions, of change, of the days
teasing, trying to create an easy mood between them. “What if you hadn’t moving swiftly toward and immense revelation touched him once more,
baptized the baby and it died? What would happen to it then?” briefly, and still he could not find the words. He turned the last corner, then
steered the car down the graveled driveway to the garage, while Ben closed
It won’t see God,” Ben said. the gate. Dr. Lazaro sat there a moment, in the stillness, resting his eyes,
conscious of the measured beating of his heart, and breathing a scent of dust
“But isn’t that unfair?” It was like riddle, trivial, but diverting. “Just because..” that lingered on his clothes, his skin.. Slowly he merged from the car, locking
it, and went around the tower of the water-tank to the frontyard where Ben
“Maybe God has another remedy,” Ben said. “I don’t know. But the church Stood waiting.
says.”
With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder was
He could sense the boy groping for the tremendous answers. “The Church they turned toward the cement –walled house. They had gone on a trip; they
teaches, the church says…. “ God: Christ: the communications of saints: Dr. had come home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than he hade ever
Lazaro found himself wondering about the world of novenas and candles, been in years.
where bread and wine became the flesh and blood of the Lord, and a woman
bathed in light appeared before children, and mortal men spoke of eternal “Sorry for keeping you up this late,” Dr. Lazaro said.
life; the visions of God, the body’s resurrection at the tend of time. It was a
country from which he was barred; no matter – the customs, the geography “It’s all right, Pa.”
didn’t appeal to him. But in the care suddenly, driving through the night, he
was aware of an obscure disappointment, a subtle pressure around his heart, Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in that barrio” – there was just the
as though he had been deprived of a certain joy… slightest patronage in this one –“ your mother will love to hear about it.”
A bus roared around a hill toward, its lights blinding him, and he pulled to the He shook the boy beside him gently. “Reverend Father Ben Lazaro.”
side of the road, braking involuntarily as a billow of dust swept over the car.
He had not closed the window on his side, and the flung dust poured in, the The impulse of certain humor – it was part of the comradeship. He chuckled
thick brittle powder almost choking him, making him cough, his eyes drowsily: father Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life?”
smarting, before he could shield his face with his hands. In the headlights,
the dust sifted down and when the air was clear again, Dr. Lazaro, As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depth of the
swallowing a taste of earth,
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house, it came to Dr. Lazaro faintly in the late night that for certain things, like

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love there was only so much time. But the glimmer was lost instantly, buried
in the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain.

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