He was always first comprehended in loud decibels before the sight of him confirmed for us what voice alone could conjure so thoroughly: the loud Italian man had generous girth to throw around–and throw his weight around he did in our little City–and his busy eyebrows competed with the eternal bushiness of his hair, which was whitened by age and then yellowed, like a kind of sadness, by the tropical sun that must have been strange for him, this Brooklyn man with the Brooklyn accent and the Brooklyn swagger.
We first heard about him from friends who swore by the pasta that he made–and they were truly delicious, these swirling Mediterranean names with an attitude, like Ciceri e Tria, Bucatini all’Amatriciana, Penne all’arrabbiata, Tortelloni ricotta and spinach, Spaghetti all’ aglio, Cannelloni al ragí¹, Rigatoni con la Pajata, Tortelloni alla zucca, Ziti, Trofie al pesto, Pansotti alla Genovese.
They were aromatic temptations he shepherded with frightful gusto from the warmth of the spacious kitchen he kept in his quaint little restaurant he called, of course, The Emperor of Pasta.
“Do you know the Fettucine Alfredo?” he’d boom to us, as he flitted from one table to the next like a bulky prize-fighter with pasta fixations. “Alfredo was my uncle!” he’d bellow, while stomping around in the crowd.
Then he’d shout to a serving girl standing nearby: “What the fuck are you doing there doing nothing?”
Oh, he vexed us, this little man with the big voice and the big attitude, and after we heard too often his stories of him rubbing elbows with celebrities–on the restaurant walls, the wallpapers were blown up sepia photos of him with Frank Sinatra, with Alain Delon, with Brigitte Bardot, with Tony Bennett, with the Pope–some of us began to ask: What was he doing here, in this little town, halfway across the world?
One night, during dinner, I began concocting a tale to give ourselves the explanation we craved for, but never dared to ask: “I suppose he is on the run,” I said to a bunch of people I knew.We were eating pizza quattro stagioni, careful to partake of slices from each of the different seasons. “I suppose he’s on the run from the Mafia, and he’s under the Witness Protection Program, and he’s here in Dumaguete, hiding away from it all.”
It made some sense, of course, but it was only fiction.
Months passed, and the restaurant failed, becoming quite a shadow of its brief glory. And soon after, he too, passed away: his spunky girlfriend–a local girl from the wrong side of town–had allegedly run off with all of his money, and he had died soon after presumably from a heart attack.
“But it might as well be like that,” we were told by other people in the gossip that followed. “Apparently, he was on the run from the Mafia, and he was here in Dumaguete under the Witness Protection Program.”
They sold peanuts in separate pockets of the City–the one-armed man in a spot along Avenida Alfonso Trese, near the corner bakery that used to be a magnificent video store; the blind man near the entrance of the university library, before he was told to keep a more discreet spot behind it, along a curved path between buildings that not many students took.
The one-armed peanut man had a capacious operation: his wheeled stall had a roof and had space for a small stove, over which he had a variety of helpers cook the peanuts for him, adobo-style, one batch spiced with chili, and the other plain and seasoned with rock salt. He stood beside the stall like a quiet god, his white wifebeater revealing a surprising physique that said this must have been quite a sporty man in his youth–his shoulders were broad, his biceps were bulging, his pectorals were toned. But he certainly looked his age–perhaps nearing 60–and his eyes were rheumy and gray from cataracts.
And then there was his right hand, which ended in a stump right above where his elbows would have been. Which made you wonder: What happened to it? Was it lost in a fight? Did a crocodile eat it? Did it get mangled in the teeth of some infernal machine?
He never spoke, and he never entertained any of his customers. He’d just stand there on the same spot near his stall every single day, owning his quiet with gravity, and perhaps gazing at the world passing by him and beholding everything in a haze of white, like life itself in its blurry unfolding.
The blind peanut man, on the other hand, had become an icon for generations and generations of college students, selling adobo-style peanuts by the pack, and sometimes peanuts fried and speckled with white sugar.
On his little foldable clapboard, beside which he sat on a stool and kept his watch, he sold other things, too, like candy.
And because he was blind, he trusted us with the money we gave him for our purchases, as well as the change we’d take from his tiny coffers.
We often wondered who among us cheated him–but who would dare steal from a blind man?
His unseeing eyes turned to us, he seemed to say, God is watching.
Sometimes, in our puerile days, we’d crack a bad joke: “Did you know that Manong Peanut has a son at the University of the Philippines?” “Really?” “Yes. He’s selling peanuts there, too.” And we laughed ourselves silly–until we’d finally learn there was actually a son, and he was our P.E. teacher.
Later, some of us would come to know how this man actually was in unguarded moments. He’d know, somehow, if you were crying from a failed exam, or perplexed by a broken heart–and he’d say, “Okay ra na, ‘day. This, too, shall pass.”
And we’d then cringe from all the memories of the times we had dared laugh at him, this supposedly- sorry sight of a man without vision selling peanuts.
We were the blind ones, until we learned to see life was something ultimately like this: it’s a quiet spot in an unbusy walkway, and there, we make do with what we have despite everything, and yet, we rise above it when we learn to give–like unassuming packets of peanuts–a whole lot kindness parceled out in small gestures that meant, for some of us, the world.
He died last week.
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Author’s email: ian.casocot@gmail.com
