Don Vicente: Two Novels

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These novels contain expressions and words — some Spanish, some specific to the Philippines — that may be unfamiliar to the reader. A glossary has been included at the end of the book.

This is a journey to the past — a hazardous trek through byways dim and forgotten — forgotten because that is how I choose to regard many things about this past. In moments of great lucidity, I see again people who — though they may no longer be around — are ever present still; I can almost hear their voices and reach out to touch them — my friends, cousins, uncles and aunts, and most of all, Father.

My doctor says it is good that I should remember, for in memory is my salvation. I should say, my curse. This, then, is a recollection as well, of sounds and smells, and if the telling is at times sketchy, it is because there are things I do not want to dwell upon — things that rile and disturb because they lash at me and crucify me in my weakness, in my knowledge of what was. So it was — as Father has said again and again — that the boy became a man.

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