Tiburon! Tiburon!

A. Paulita Roa .

AS a kid, our Good Fridays were spent in some kind of a mournful seclusion in our house. The streets were empty of  tartanillas, cars and people. We could hear the neighbors’ radios turned to the Lenten radio drama in Binisaya as we stayed in our rooms reading or just sleeping. For lunch, we were had Bacalao ala Vizcaina, the traditional family dish that was served every Viernes Santo. I never got to really liked this glorified Spanish bulad cooked in olive oil with peppers and other fancy ingredients. As always this was a hot day. We would ask our parents to drive us to the beach so we could cool ourselves by taking a dip in the sea. The usual reply was a big no and us being labelled as “mga erehes.” To them, it was the day that Christ was crucified and we were to behave as if “namatyan kami” or we had lost a loved one. Then, my father would tell us for the nth time about his grandaunt named Dolores and the tragic thing that happened to her on a Viernes Santo.

It is said that Dolores Corrales y Roa was a beautiful young lady. Her family house was in what is today Burgos St. and so near the Cagayan river. At that time, the river was wide, deep and it looked forbidding. Many big lancha vapors or boats used to anchor by the river banks before a wharf was built in Macabalan. On a Viernes Santo, Dolores and her maids felt the searing heat of the day that she decided to go and take a dip in the river. A muchacho (servant boy) of the Spanish military governor saw Dolores and alerted his master for it was known that he had a crush on her. The governor who was residing in Casa Real which was also near the river, rushed to the window with a larga vista or telescope in hand and focused his sight on the lovely Dolores. When her maids saw the him, they warned her that they were being watched by the governor. So she briefly submerged herself under the water to avoid his prying eyes.

Just then, from the window, the governor shouted, “Tiburon! Tiburon!” (Shark! Shark!). The maids also screamed in horror as they saw the waters around them turn bloody red and saw the lifeless body of Dolores whose legs were bitten off by a shark. The screaming attracted many residents who rushed to the river banks. Among them was the sister of Dolores who married a Gabor relative. She had given birth a few days before the Viernes Santo and was resting, when she was told what happened to her younger sister. She ran to the river screaming so loudly that it frightened a horse who in turn, kicked her on the face. She died right near the river bank.

The guilt stricken governor organized a group of volunteers to catch the killer shark. My father said the men placed a huge net in the mouth of the river (bocana sa suba) and in no time, they caught the shark. The shark was then cut in to two and placed in two big carromatas. The gongs and budjong (conch shells) were sounded by town criers around town as the governor called on the people to line the streets with knives in hand and stab the carcass of the shark as the carromatas pass their streets. A few years ago, I was surprised to learn from the late Teddy Bautista that the skeletal remains of this shark is now in the museum of the University of Santo Tomas. I would like to check on this soon for I am intrigued on how it got there. It is a story by itself.

And so this was our family’s Lenten story. Dolores was the sister of my great grandmother, Soledad. Their only brother was Manuel Corrales y Roa, was the first governor during the American colonial period of the then undivided Misamis Province. Hers was a tragic story that was traditionally repeated within our family circle epecially on a Good Friday for many generations. However, the lesson taken from it has in time, became passe or outdated. In fact, many fancy resorts will be fully booked for the Holy Week. So its observance today is neither sad nor mournful. But there are those who will be spending their Viernes Santo in desolate and dark old cemeteries to renew their vows as healers or mananagna — but then, that is another story.