SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA- ?Now you return that pencil at once and apologize to him!? Mother was upset after I showed her a funny pencil that wouldn?t roll over. It was flat, even the graphite lead. I was so amused by it that I nonchalantly took it from among a dozen sharpened Mongol pencils crammed in the empty Darigold milk can of Kuya Ponching as he napped.

It was 1958 and Estero de Gallina (Hen?s Creek) in Pasay City had deteriorated into a cesspool of human and industrial waste. Lola (Grandma) Pina used to catch tulla (clams), talangka (crabs) and suso (snails) in what used to be a fresh water creek leading to Pasig River. During the Spanish Era, according to Lola, the waterway was like a gentle Venice canal plied by bancas (dug-out canoes) leading to city markets. During monsoon floods, men riding rafts of bamboo-impaled banana tree trunks caught bayawak (huge goanna-like lizards) and some other crocodilian critters.

Our house was few minutes walk from where Kuya (Elder Brother) Ponching lived. My 9 year-old legs cautiously trudged wooden-bridge planks that led to the rivulet. My sense of equilibrium was often put to test as planks were stolen by some wretched souls for firewood.

Across the riverbank was the city of Makati. Kuya Ponching?s castle of a nipa (thatch-roofed) hut stood a couple of meters away from a shore of soggy black and green carpet (toxic and blooming algae!) I learned to climb his slippery bamboo staircase with masterful agility as I frequented the place like a second home during childhood. It also toughened my Achilles? tendons.

But here?s real reason why I rapidly learned ascending and descending it ? I was scared of the pigs underneath the staircase! They were black, huge and fattened with loving care by my Tia Aying (distant cousin of Mother) who lived with Kuya Ponching. A strong lady, she did rounds of gathering kaning-baboy (leftover food, soggy but organic) from house-to-house. Despite the abhorrent stink, I persisted in visiting the place often.

Kuya Ponching was famous as the village artist. He painted all those awesome mural cobras and jets on the walls of our local basketball and handball courts in Pasay. He also painted huge Esso logos all over the city billboards and tiger tails hanging out of gas tank lorries (commissioned for a ?Put a tiger in your tank? campaign).

Nervously clasping the flat carpenter?s pencil tight, I finally landed on the bamboo-slatted floor with a built-in squeaky analogue movement alarm.

?Who?s there??

?Uh..it?s only me, Kuya, I?m returning?err?the pencil I?err...borrowed. What are you painting this time??

?Spoliarium by Juan Luna!? Silence.

?So you took my pencil. Why??

?I don?t know. The pencil looked funny and I wanted to try it at home and draw like you.?

?Why do you paint sad things?? as he painted gore on the Spoliarium?s floor. ?Bata ka pa kasi, hindi lahat ng masaya ay nagpipinta ng bulaklak (You?re still too young to understand that not all happy people paint flowers),? was all he said, continuing to paint behind his thick Woody Allen glasses.

Kuya Ponching handled brushes well and preferred oil. It dried quickly under the hot and humid Philippine weather. (In cold Europe oil paintings usually have to dry for six months before final varnish). The smell of turpentine and linseed oil assaulted my olfactory nerves but my eyes were fixed at his Spoliarium as he mixed colors instinctively. It was as if he felt colors, and knew when to stop when he got the desired hue. He hated new brushes. If he had a new, squarish-ended one, he?d scumble paint with it until it was rounded off.

A few weeks later I?d snuggled enough warmth with Kuya Ponching (he could be a hothead, too!) He explained later that it was his entry to get a scholarship at De La Salle College a few blocks away. He was copying it from a tattered picture on a magazine page; I noticed his version seemed to be crisper and brighter as he enhanced the highlights and shadows.

?Sorry Kuya Ponching, I didn?t mean to steal your pencil. Mom was really upset when I showed her.?

Kuya Ponching had big canvasses all over his pawid- (palm leaf) roofed home studio. Most of his paintings were guaranteed to shock anyone, especially a child like me. There was a tall painting of an American soldier throwing up blood profusely. Another was of Japanese soldiers with Filipino babies impaled by their fixed bayonets and a few other gory images. I often went home disturbed and couldn?t sleep.

It took some time to impress on me: those were images of the last war that most adults didn?t want to talk about. But Kuya Ponching painted them! He survived the war that left horrifying images in his mind. He lived to paint and exorcise demons. Oh, the trauma of war. I was a post-war baby and didn?t understand much about the terrible impact of the war on our happy and rustic Amorsolo-painted village. Families were broken, property razed to the ground, artists, writers, poets massacred, some missing, maimed while zombiesque amputees ambled on streets where they used to play patintero (game of tag).

That was our village, our Philippine village ... straight from Juan Luna?s Spoliarium . Good gladiators used to kill and be killed in a game of war by village chieftains indulging in the legacy of Nero.

?Tell your Nanay Epang it?s all right; and you can have the pencil. Next time learn to ask, okay? Also you have to first learn to sharpen it with a knife before you can use it. No pencil sharpener can handle a flat one?and so if you can handle a knife, well, then, you can focus.?

I breathed a sigh of relief, thought I?d be like that dead Roman gladiator being dragged in the Spoliarium , punished for stealing a pencil while Mother wept in the background.

Kuya Ponching impressed the La Salle Brothers so much he got the scholarship.

Much later, for two years in the late 70?s, I was art director for Project Compassion and Green Revolution, both community projects of Mrs. Imelda Marcos. Whenever there was a 3-D carpentry and painting job I needed for my design presentations, I always fielded the services of Kuya Ponching, which overjoyed him. Painters and lack of money seem to be partners by default he?d say.

When my father died in 1998, I went back to Manila briefly and saw the rest of family who arrived from Canada for the burial ritual. Before we left, Mother and I went to visit Kuya Ponching who, we learned, was in coma for weeks due to brain tumor. Tia Aying could no longer afford the expensive drugs. We knelt by his bedside.

?Ponching, Ponching, si Nanay Epang mo ito!? Mother called his name, gave hers, and went into intense prayer and trance, holding Kuya Ponching?s limp hand (I?ve known Mother as a spiritual medium; back then people came to our house to be given healing prayers, and she never asked to be paid).

?Kuya Ponching, si Edd po ito, ano ba?ng nangyari sa iyo? (Kuya, Ponching, this is Edd, what?s happened to you?) ?I whispered in tears. Then to everyone?s amazement Kuya spoke!

?Kumusta na kayo, (How are you) Nanay Epang, Eddie?? he greeted us miraculously! But he was in coma and spoke for the first time! And sadly, the last. Hair stood up on my neck. Kuya Ponching died during the morning of our flight.

I don?t know what happened to all his paintings. I never saw one in his room. Where was his version of Juan Luna?s Spoliarium ? Did La Salle keep it? Now every time I see the Spoliarium and its dead Roman gladiator, I think of Kuya Ponching ? killed by brain tumor, perhaps by toxicity dumped in our river, affecting the health and lives of people up till now.

What prodded me to write about Kuya Ponching was an e-mail from John Silva via my photographer friend Ben Razon. John invites all Filipinos to see Juan Luna?s Spoliarium at the National Gallery of Art, National Museum Complex in Manila until November.

- eddaragon.blogspot.com