Singing the sad song of the sea

GREMER Chan Reyes, one of the senior Cebuano authors writing in the native tongue, “spent most of his childhood steeped in books and swimming in the sea." Poet and literary scholar Hope S. Yu, who compiled and translated Reyes’ collection of ten short stories entitled Men at Sea and Other Stories, revealed this detail about the writer’s life to explain the inspiration for his work. Reyes was born in 1931 in Cebu City. His father was a head teacher and his mother was a small-time merchant. The family later left the city for Lambusan, a remote village in the island of Cebu. The family also lived in Matanhag and Tinagong Dagat, places that became the settings of his stories. He started writing when he was in high school in 1948. His love of books drew him to writing, and he was eventually published in the vernacular magazines Bisaya and Alimyon after some rejections. The stories in Men at Sea and Other Stories are as exquisite as the bleached seashells on the shore, seashells whose perfect form is shaped by the caress of sea waves and the kiss of the tropical sun. They are beautiful and sad at the same time. His stories are so lyrical they almost sound like poetry. Reyes is the bard tasked to sing the sad song of the sea. This Cebuano fictionist is a master of the austere. He can achieve the effect of a John Steinbeck novel in a short story, but I will refuse to tag him as “the John Steinbeck of Cebuano literature" because Gremer Chan Reyes has his own distinct voice as a fictionist. In the story “Ang Isda sa Bulak sa Talikod" (The Fish of the Flower of Talikod), let us listen to a grandfather advising his visiting grandson to forget their ancestral village by the sea called Mantanhag and go to America instead to pursue his dreams. The old man believes that their place, although beautiful, has nothing to offer a young man with a bright future: “Ang Matanhag mao lamang ang karon. Ang yuta sa pagsidlak ug pagsalop sa adlaw apan walay ugma, kay kini ang pinuy-an sa mga tawo nga walay damgo. Ang mga may damgo nanglayas, Dodo. Ang Matanhag usa ka sementeryo. Mopuli lang sila aron pagpalubong." (“Matanhag is only the present. A piece of land where the sun rises and sets but it does not have a tomorrow because it is the home of people without dreams. Those who have dreams have left, Dodo. Matanhag is a cemetery. They will come home only to be buried.") This admonition came after the grandfather heard about his grandson’s plan of staying in Matanhag for two years before going to America to practice his degree in chemical engineering. The grandson wanted to experience the boyhood of his father in his home village. The grandfather compared Matanhag to an enchantress: “Usa ka engkantada ang Matanhag, Dodo. Sa higayon ikaw mahigugma ug higugmaon ‘di ka na makalingkawas sa iyang mga butkon." ("Dodo, Matanhag is an enchantress. The moment you fall in love and she will love you in return, you’ll never get away from her embrace.") The enchantress’ embrace included poverty, the hardship of a fisherman’s life who is at the mercy of the sea, and a steady diet of dried fish and sweet potatoes. While the grandson was exploring the coral gardens of Matanhag, he saw a clownfish that was very protective of its home, the anemone or the talikod. He called this a beautiful “flower," with its petals protecting the fish. This was the coral garden of the boyhood of his father. The grandfather was happy to see his grandson falling in love with the sea. Wala koy ikasulti kon unsay gisilsil sa isip sa iyong kahilom. Tingali buot niini tugkaron ang maanindot nga kasinatian nga iyang hibangalan sa ilawom sa dagat. Moabot da ang adlaw nga siya mogikan. Tingali, didto sa layong yuta…sa lamdag sa kahayag sa laing panahon, sa iyang pagbugtaw sa iyang mga damgo, iya dang maaninag ang kahulogan nga gimugna kaniya sa usa ka yugto sa higayon sa iyang kinabuhi sa ilawom sa dagat sa Matanhag. Samtang ang Matanhag maghulat…maghulat…ug maghulat. (I could not tell what was running through his head as he sat lost in thought. Perhaps he wished to fathom the beautiful experience that he encountered underwater. The day will come when he will leave. Perhaps, there in the foreign land…illuminated by the light of another time, in the realization of his dreams, he will work out the meaning of an event in a chapter of his life underneath the waters of Matanhag. While Matanhag waits…waits…and waits.) The characters in Reyes’ stories are simple folk who are full of wisdom despite their poverty, like the father in “Ang Bata, Ang Langgam, Ang Tawo" (The Child, The Bird, The Man) who left the protective embrace of his well-to-do family to marry a poor woman in a village by the sea. There, he tried to live the life of a fisherman even though he was uninitiated to the mysteries of the sea. Reyes’ stories have the capacity to transport readers to their interior seashores where emotions and memories are raw, therefore touching on their humanity. He is a master story teller, a Filipino writer of the highest magnitude. With this collection alone, he should be nominated for a Nobel Prize. Hope S. Yu should be commended for this translation project. This is already her second translation of a Cebuano writer; in 2008, she came out with a translation of Austregelina Espina-Moore’s novel Ang Inahan ni Mila (Mila’s Mother), also published by the NCCA. She is doing a great service, not only to Cebuano Literature but to Philippine Literature as a whole. Her efforts must be duplicated in other vernacular literature. Yu is a professor at the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City. She holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. She is an author of three poetry collections in Cebuano and English, and represents Central Visayas in the NCCA’s Committee on Literary Arts. – YA, GMANews.TV Men at Sea and Other Stories was published by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts in 2009