Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) (23 page)

A
nd so the rains came, and the typhoons and the floods as well, and after the rains, the drought—a cycle blessed with God’s bounty and damned by His negligence.

They persevered. In the evenings, the cogonal distances crackled with huge bursts of fire which quickly died, for that was the way the wild grass burned. That was the way—so the Spaniards said—the Indios also behaved, with rash and easily spent enthusiasms. The cogonals they cleared yielded to their will. These lands had never been plowed before—the roots of the wild cogon had bored deep and wide into the soil and many a time a plowshare would snap as it lost in the constant wrestling with the stubborn mesh. All of them also worked parcels in Don Jacinto’s land, and here they did not have too many difficulties; the land had been planted before and had merely lain fallow; the soil yielded smoothly to the plow.

The rats did not multiply as fast as they were warned would happen. For one, the rats were herded into bamboo traps—lured there with grain and beaten to death. They were as big as cats, and were skinned carefully, dried in the sun or broiled in open fires, their fat sizzling on the coals. Like chicken, they all said.

They rose earlier than the sun and, having vanquished the wild grass, pushed the forest farther. What they could not cut they burned, leaving some trees as markers of their property.

Snakes lurked in the mounds which dotted the plain. Some of these mounds were spared as markers, too, and the others were leveled after the appropriate prayers so that there would be more land to till.

At night, if there was a moon, they plowed or harrowed, and dug the ditches that would bring water to the fields. In the flooded paddies, frogs were plentiful and they filled the night with their croaking. It was easy to catch them—they seemed mesmerized by the light of the lanterns and they were brought back in strings for the women to skin.

Even in a year of bad weather, the harvest was abundant in the lands of Don Jacinto; half was theirs, which was good. The harvest was niggardly in the newer land, but all of it was theirs, which was even better.

With Istak, time hardly mattered anymore, only work. The blisters in his palms had long since hardened into calluses. He had ceased wearing slippers after he left the sacristy; his soles had thickened and could no longer be easily punctured by thorns. His muscles became hard as stone and he sometimes marveled at his strength, how he could now lift the wooden mortar all by himself and how long he could endure the sun or the continuous rain that sent the other farmers home shivering, their skin wrinkled by the cold. He liked the cold more than the heat;
the water dripped through his palm-leaf hat and palm-leaf cloak, his lips lost their color, but he worked on, sometimes thinking of what awaited him at home, steaming ginger broth flavored with cane sugar. And Dalin—the sweet peace with which she always welcomed him.

As in the planting and harvesting, they helped one another build their permanent homes near the creek. The houses were bigger than their first huts, with posts of sagat, some of which they dragged down from the foothills of Balungaw. They fenced their yards with split bamboo and planted fruit trees in them. Farmers in Carmay whom they befriended helped in the harvest. They gathered the ripening gelatinous grain and roasted it over slow-burning strips of old bamboo that had rotted and dried.

Istak and Dalin were married the month they arrived in Rosales, and a year after, An-no and Orang. There would have been no wedding feast, for Istak had nothing, but Don Jacinto, who was their godfather, gave them a goat to butcher.

An-no was better prepared. Not only had he built a new house by then, he had also raised two pigs for the wedding feast.

Orang’s father declaimed, his rich, loud voice drowning the babble of children and women, and they paused to listen to his exultation:

The women wept.

More land waited for those who were willing to go to the east toward Balungaw mountain, but that land belonged to the Asperris, who had come to Rosales way back when most of it was wilderness still. The family lived in Manila, although at the eastern end of the town they maintained a massive stone house that was more of a
bodega
than a residence. Spanish friars and officers visited the house sometimes, but no one was known to stay there permanently. When the Manila landlord came, bright lights bloomed from within, raucous laughter rang out, and at the landing stood a line of black carriages drawn by handsome Abra ponies. When Istak passed it, he was reminded of Capitán Berong, his tremendous wealth and his three daughters, and yes, Carmencita—she must have children by now, maybe a dozen handsome bastards, and again the ancient feelings were recalled.

How fortunate that they came upon the free land Don Jacinto had shown to them. Istak had studied it before they started clearing—the limits to what was flat, a slow rise of ground with three huge mounds overgrown with grass. He must be generous to his brothers, his cousins, his uncles. When they parceled out the land the lots with mounds went to him.

“This portion I could make into a
bangcag
,” he explained. “Plant vegetables, fruit trees. Bit-tik and An-no are tired of working on such land; with level fields they could grow rice.”

Dalin helped in the clearing. By the second year, the bamboo which Istak had planted as boundary to his
bangcag
had
taken root and soon there would be shoots to harvest for food. He had planted three species—kiling for fences; siitan, which was thorny, for size and strength; and bayog, which when cut into strips while still tender would make good twine, but once mature it made good house posts, so thick and sturdy bugs could not destroy it.

Silvestre, otherwise known as Bit-tik, was taller and handsomer than his two brothers. His brow was wide, his shoulders broad, and he walked straight. He seemed strong enough to lift a water buffalo, but with all his attributes he was not really interested in farming. He worked his plot of rice land poorly, letting weeds grow and the water escape from gaps in the dikes he did not repair, so that his harvest was often the poorest in all Cabugawan. He was fond of traveling and had gone beyond the nearby villages and well into the other towns—Alcala, Villasis, Balungaw—not so much in search of adventure or opportunities as simply because the spell of new places, new people, attracted him. It was logical for his relatives to assume that he would be paired off with Sabel, Orang’s younger sister, and Istak and his uncle Blas had talked all too often of this possibility in the near future. But Bit-tik seldom paid attention to the young woman, who had now blossomed as handsomely as Orang.

There was enough to eat in Cabugawan and Bit-tik had no family, so they let him wander where he pleased and be their eyes to the strange new dimension beyond Rosales. After three or four days he would return with a few things, dried fish or dried meat, a basket, and most important for Istak, news about their neighboring towns and villages, if the Guardia was on the prowl, and if there were better places where they could flee.

Dalin and Orang often cooked his ration, usually gelatinous
rice boiled in coconut milk—it would keep for three days—dried meat already roasted, and a cake of cane sugar.

On this trip, Bit-tik started in the deep, deep dawn. By late afternoon he was in Tayug, a town as decrepit as Rosales but much closer to the Caraballo mountains, which were a high green wall to the east. It was his first visit to the place. It was Sunday, a market day, but this late in the day, all the people from the nearby villages had gone, and the merchants had already loaded their bolts of cloth, mosquito netting, salted fish, soap, and other goods into their carts.

A few shops near the plaza were open, selling sugar cane, vinegar,
basi
, salted fish, cigarettes, and
galletas
. He met the two young men in one of the shops. They were looking for matches but it was one of those times when the supply had run out. As it often was in the villages, the farmers had to have a log in their stoves smoldering the whole day if there were no matches. The two men were poorly garbed, their
carzoncillos
brown with dirt, their hair in need of trimming. Both carried spears, which were their walking sticks. Obviously, they came from the mountain. Though neither could have been more than twenty, their faces looked old, disfigured by smallpox craters that seemed to merge into one another. Even their lips were pocked.

Having heard them, Bit-tik gladly offered the extra box of matches he always carried. They had little money; they had come to Tayug to sell dried meat and mountain fish preserved in fermented rice, and the big jars which they carried slung by a rattan net on their shoulders were filled with salt which they would bring back to their village.

“You don’t have to pay me for this,” Bit-tik said as they walked out of the store. Bit-tik was planning to sleep that evening in one of the sheds by the church.

“Where do you come from?” he asked. “I have no place for the night, and I have to heat roasted meat for supper.”

The two men looked at each other. Their Ilokano was accented—they could be from the big valley, Bit-tik surmised. He had heard that accent before from the people in the valley who had gone down to buy salt in Pangasinan.

“Come with us and share our humble home,” the taller of the two said with downcast eyes. He seemed shy facing people; with that kind of face, Bit-tik understood.

The afternoon was now cool, the plaza where the merchants had finished packing their goods was empty but for the scraps of trash they had left. “It is a long walk, but perhaps you will want to visit with us …”

And why not? Bit-tik had never been apprehensive about going with strangers; there was in his manner a disarming friendliness. Besides, what did he have to lose? Pieces of dried meat,
suman
, and the shabby clothes on his back? He was not a profitable prey for any
bandido
.

“I will go with you,” Bit-tik said quickly.

He was not rested yet after the long hike from Rosales and he was going on another long walk. They headed toward the Caraballo range—the mountains loomed so near but they were still a distance away. “There, there.” One of the newfound friends pointed his spear to a foothill; behind it the mountains burned with the gold of the setting sun. “Beyond that is where we live. Are you really sure you would like to come? We want you to come—and know this, not many have visited us, even the people in Tayug. You must have noticed how they regarded us as Bagos. We are not …”

“Forgive those who are ignorant,” Bit-tik said.

It was already dark when they started climbing, first through cogonals along frequented paths that were distinct in the afterglow.

He marveled at their strength. They had carried those jars strapped to their backs for a long time. Even empty, they could
weigh a man down and drive welts on the shoulders where the rattan web was strapped. In a while, the stars swarmed out of the sky; there was no moon and the mountain became alive with the call of night birds, the celebration of insects. He had done much walking on level ground and he realized that though he was as strong as a water buffalo, he would tire after every brief but steep ascent while his two companions, even with their heavy loads of salt, seemed to glide easily up the incline. The trail vanished altogether and the forest dropped on them like a giant pall, forbidding and black. The stars that once glimmered above had disappeared. Sometimes there would be a spot of greenish glow—ghostly yet ethereal, the sudden shrieks of birds disturbed in their roosts. They shook him and sent a quiver to his heart. His new friends seemed to sense his apprehension, for they started a familiar song which he knew, although the words as he remembered them were all earthy and impolite:
Pamulinawen … pamulinawen …

The forest was drenched with the odor of moss, dead leaves, and rot, and he wondered if there would be pythons hiding, too, waiting to strike. The two did not seem worried—they knew the uncharted way as if by instinct and as they told him afterward, the warm, delicious smell of home guided them.

Toward midnight, he asked them if he could rest once again, for his legs were already numb. And God, he was thirsty. One of them left, then returned with what seemed like a short length of bamboo cut on one end. He raised it to his lips and the water was sweet, almost like the water of a young coconut. They let him sleep briefly, then he was awakened, refreshed, and ready to challenge the mountain again.

They knew their way through the densest gloom. It was as if at every turn an emerald swamp opened up to swallow them and they had become the foliage itself, alive in the moss-covered
trunks, in the roots entwined with one another, in the giant ferns that brooded around them.

The east started to glimmer, and the tiny patches of sky turned into bronze, the lofty trees took shape, their leaves started to glisten as morning poured upon the range. It was then, too, that they broke through the last curtain of trees. Before them spread a wide valley, a stream running through, and in the middle, a village, the smoke of cooking fires curling above the grass roofs. Coming as he did from the bowels of night, he could feel mist gathering in his eyes; before him, the glorious beauty of creation, all that he would have wanted to live with if Cabugawan did not have a claim on him.

They raced down the mountain, through fields of young rice plants watered by springs and well-groomed plots being prepared for planting. At the edge of the fields were pits covered with leaves. Bit-tik was warned about them—they were traps for wild pigs and deer which ravaged the ripening grain.