Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) (36 page)

T
he dried
carabao
meat and the rice were long gone, so when hunger struck, he gathered a few green guavas along the trail. His legs were blistered. Where the thickets were high and thorny, they had lashed at his arms as well.

He stopped once to drink from a small stream that forked from the Buaya River, then rested his back against a mossy boulder, facing the turn of the stream and the trail which he had just taken. In a short while, he would be in Baugen and he hoped there were people there who could tell him how long ago the president had passed. There were reports he could not quite believe, how the Americans were welcomed with brass bands and cheers in some of the towns of Sur. What was it that made his own people greet their conquerors and regard their own countrymen with ridicule if not hostility?

He brought out the notebook from the knapsack.

The tiredness in his bones disappeared, and once again he was alive to the sounds and scents around him and to the peace that the forest seemed to exude, comforting him with its somber stillness. He rose quickly, making sure the sack was slung securely on his shoulder. He always examined the twine with
which it was tied—it was not loose even after all that climbing and straining. In fact, the sack had given him comfort, as he also used it for a pillow.

One more hill, then Baugen. He recalled what he knew of it, a village with a dozen or so thatch-roofed houses, farmers who worked the narrow valley and looked after the ranches of cattle that were now sparse. They were all Ilokanos, and braver than most, for it was in these hills where the Igorots often rampaged. Baugen was also a way station for those who went up the pass at Tirad. How often had Padre Jose and he stopped here for a bath at the village well, for provisions, sometimes dried meat and dry-season fruits, a restful night in one of the houses, an early-morning Mass, perhaps a baptism and confirmation, then onward to the pass by noon.

He breasted the hill, no longer keeping to the trail which he knew the Americans would take; he walked behind stands of grass as he cautiously approached the village.

It finally came into view. There were more houses now, more fruit trees. Then a shot rang out. He dropped onto his stomach; no, the shot was not for him. Blue-shirted American soldiers dashed into the village, shouting, firing. The screams of pain and fear were not only of men and women but of children. He crawled away to the edge of the forest bordered by butterfly trees and though he could not see the village now, he could still hear the screams, the guttural shouts, and the neighing of frightened horses.

When the firing stopped, he slithered close to the village again; the big men walked about the village. They had gathered in small sheaves portions of a roof and were igniting them and tossing them onto the houses. How easily the grass caught fire—first a grayish trail of smoke, then the flames in a crackling, swirling rage. Sparks burst from the roofs and landed on the
other roofs which were already burning, too. A dozen houses—and not one was spared.

Po-on all over again, the toil of years vanishing in an hour. So this is how a house burns; how quickly the fire devours everything—the palm-leaf sidings, the floors of bamboo, all the familiar implements, the remembered corners, a bamboo post where some coins were kept in its hollow, an eating table, a battered chair, a chest. In a while, everything was ash but for the sturdy posts of wood which still stood, blackened and red, slowly burning, smoking.

The soldiers did not leave immediately; it seemed as if they wanted to be sure that nothing was spared, nothing lived. They had bivouacked in a gully beyond the village, and they came back to look at their handiwork. They had mounted their horses, their packs in their saddles. He counted carefully—there were twenty-three soldiers, and the twenty-fourth did not sit upright; he was slumped like a sack across his horse instead. Perhaps the soldier was dead, for his body was tied to the saddle.

Were they all the Americans who had come to this village? They rode easily and they seemed to be in no hurry as they headed toward Tirad.

Istak looked keenly around him, wondering if there was someone left behind, a rear guard, perhaps, or the main force following this patrol. There was none.

He ran to the village, no longer cautious, wanting to know if there would be someone, anyone, who had lived through this hell. Not a moan, not a whimper from the bloodied bodies sprawled in the yards; to each he went looking for a breath of life. Who would bury them? There was nothing he could do, no one he could save. He moved away from the human pyre, the bodies with indistinct features. Toward the other end of the village
was an old brick-lined well and there, a youth slumped on the wet ground, a spot of red on his back.

Istak bent over him—he was not even seventeen. His pulse was still beating, though faintly. Istak turned him over carefully and the glazed eyes beseeched him. He tore open the shirt. The bullet had pierced his chest. Only a miracle could help and when Istak closed his eyes to pray, the path ahead of him was filled not with light but with darkness.

“Tell me, what happened?”

The lips opened, a gurgling sound. There was no need for him to know. Had he not seen what was done? The gurgling ceased, blood had foamed in the young man’s lips and some of it had dried. Then the words came softly, disjointed. “My sister—she was taking a bath at the well … one of them started forcing her, I cut his skull in two …” The eyes closed.

Istak could feel the life leak away as if from a broken pot. He could not put back the blood which had soaked the ground around him; it was not just this boy’s blood—it was an American’s as well.

Wearily, he rose and walked down the trail toward Tirad, where the butchers had gone. He saw her lying on her back in the sun, the girl who was taking a bath at the well, the piece of blue Ilokano cloth she had wrapped around her body already dry and in a heap beside her. She was so young, so very young—perhaps not even fourteen. Those small breasts were just starting to grow; below the waist, the pubic hair that was barely discernible was covered with blood. A little wound above the navel no longer bled. A line of blood had trickled right on the grassy trail and dried. He stifled a sob, remembering Dalin, what was done to her and how she had survived it. And Orang, too, how a Spaniard had defiled her. He picked up the cloth and covered her with it.

He must say a prayer. He knelt, and as he started to pray, he heard a thunder of hooves behind him. He turned, but not quickly enough, and the last thing he saw was a blue shirt.

Consciousness returned, his head throbbing as if it would split. He passed a hand over it, and at the back of his head was a huge lump now pulpy and soft. He withdrew his hand to look at what had stuck to it—clotted blood that had not yet dried. For a while, his vision dimmed and even in the blur, he saw again the girl prostrate on the grass. He stumbled, reached out to her and held her hand—it was still warm but limp. The face was calm, the eyes closed. Go to sleep, young one, and in this sleep, forgotten is the past, the anguish and the pain. Go to sleep, young one, and rest in peace.

Overhead, the sun was still high. When he tried to rise, it seemed as if the earth heaved and the sky was suddenly so close he could touch it. He let the dizziness pass without moving, afraid that if he stirred the sky would fall on him. It was no longer darkening; all around him the land was bathed with light—the edge of the dark forest, the slope of grass.

He rose slowly, feeling his bones, wondering if there was any other wound in his body that had numbed, but there was none. He was not yet up on his feet when he realized that the bundle slung over his shoulder was no longer there; it had been cut loose. A pang of anxiety gripped him. He looked around quickly. It was nowhere, not on the grass, not on the rise of ground before him. His hands went to the pocket of his loose trousers; the notebook was still there—it had not been taken—and so was the nub of a pencil.

What would he do now? Without the letter, who would believe this peasant? It was all there—the reason for his being
here, his purpose, his measure as a man. But he knew what was in the letter. No, he must not stop. He must go on, convince them he was sent by the Cripple not just with a message but to help them through these mountains. He must tell them, too, of Baugen.

17

D
ecember was at hand and the air was already crisp, the valleys scented with harvest. He needed to rest—his lungs were caving in, his legs were like logs. Though his throat was parched, he did not approach any of the few isolated houses along the way to ask for a drink. Time was precious, and it must not be wasted on his simple needs.

At times he tried to run, his failing breath permitting it. How he wished Kimat were with him now. But in this tortuous region, anyone on horseback would be easily spotted by the Americans.

The Cripple was right; the Americans were no different from the Spaniards—they were here to humiliate, to deny life. The three
insurrectos
who were hanged in the plaza in Bauang—they had been dead for more than a day and still they were not cut down and buried decently. The people must see the fearsome handiwork and be coerced into betraying Aguinaldo.

The trail that clung to the hillside was darkening and in the night it was not the marauding wild boar or the snake that he was afraid of. It was the occasional brigand whose face he could not see and the treacherous crevices hidden by weeds and caved earth at the side of the trail.

The Buaya River was no longer swift and bloated the way it was during the rainy season. It whispered through boulders and pools, placid in the starlight, the trees and reeds alongside it like a black margin to the river’s course.

There was no habitation along the trail, even in those narrow valleys. Once or twice, he went down the river to drink, and put to flight a couple of deer as thirsty as he was.

Often, as he walked in patches clear of foliage, he would see the silhouette of Tirad—lofty and serene against the sky. Around him spread this quietude as if the earth breathed, muted sounds of crickets in the grass, night birds in the trees.

And again, thoughts of Cabugawan! He drew his strength from the earth and the earth meant peace. It was all changed now; he brought to mind the horrors that had been described so many times, they were vivid and real—how the Americans pumped water into the mouths of their prisoners, then stomped on their stomachs to pump out not just the water but information as well. Surely, they must have given him up for dead, as in Po-on. Otherwise, with the letter from the Cripple, they would have tortured him and he would then have brought harm not just to himself and to the president, but to the courageous Cripple he had left in Rosales.

He was in a narrow valley, small rice fields close by, the mooing of cattle, some farmer boy calling his water buffalo, a mother shouting to a wandering child to hurry with the firewood—the sounds of home that were all too familiar.

Then in the soft dark, a village suddenly stood before him. The thatch-roofed houses were indistinct. Some oil lamps were
lighted, and cooking fires glimmered through the cracks of split-bamboo walls. He knew the village—the last before the ascent to Tirad. How many times had he been here with Padre Jose, and beyond, to the forbidding country of the Igorots. If he had to go deep into their land, he hoped that the men he knew—Kuriat, Ippig, and all the others—would still be in their villages and remember him. He had in the dim past brought them sugar, salt, and tobacco, and they in return had given him baskets, spearheads, and most important—protection.

He had not even reached the first house when from out of the darkness, the shout
“¡Alto!”
The command did not have to be repeated. He stopped and waited. From the shadows, two soldiers, their rifles pointed at him, approached, and a feeling of relief came over him, so pleasurable that he was smiling when the soldiers were upon him. He did not wait for them to speak. He addressed them in Spanish. “I have a message for the president,” he said.