Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks)

by F. Sionil Jose

  Ba-ac did not answer; he had not come here to be told that his brain held only so much. He did not have the education of this priest, or of his son, but this he knew, that Eustaquio was asked by Capitán Berong to teach his daughters, that Padre Jose—and he was old and wise—wanted Eustaquio to be more than just a sacristan.

  “I do not ask that you pity Eustaquio, Apo,” he said. “I came here for the land—to beg you to allow us to stay one more harvesttime. We have lived in Po-on all our lives, Apo. My father, my grandfather. And the last harvest was not good, as you know. That was why your share, Apo, was not as much as it should have been. The drought—that was the reason. We did not keep anything you did not know about. We did not steal.”

  The priest looked at him, at the right hand that was missing. “I did not know Eustaquio came from a family of thieves. Padre Jose—he was too old to be sound of mind. He should not have trusted your son too much, given him ideas that made him feel important. It should not be difficult for you to survive—with your special talents, you will not starve. The land should then go to a farmer better equipped—with two hands. But tell me truthfully, do you people really have two hands? No, you have four feet like the water buffalo.”

  Ba-ac, still kneeling, let the words sink; they were lies, they were poison, and it was a holy man uttering them.

  “All of you,” the priest said softly, “you were born to be like the carabao, to serve us. The little knowledge you got from us—it is dangerous. You will soon imagine yourselves as Spaniards, and because you know it cannot be, you will soon be thinking like those robbers who want the country for themselves, filibusters, rebels.”

  “No, Apo,” Ba-ac said, knowing what the priest was leading to. “My son, he is a true Catholic. You cannot find a more loyal servant than him.”

  The priest glowered at him. “So you see why you must leave this place. I don’t want contagion here.”

  There was no use arguing; perhaps, if he appealed to his sense of mercy. “All our lives, Apo,” Ba-ac said in desperation, raising his left hand. “We have lived in Po-on, working faithfully for you. Please, until the next harvesttime is over. We have very little food, Apo. In God’s name—”

  The blow that blazed across his face did not really hurt the old man, although it knocked him to the floor.

  “Don’t blaspheme, you wretch,” the priest said evenly. Ba-ac was prostrate at the feet of the young priest and when he opened his mouth to continue with his pleading, he tasted salt. He brought his palm to his lips, and in the shadowy light, the blot of bright and living red was distinct. He shook his head and rose slowly, leaning on the side of the cabinet behind him. His left hand touched something solid and in the corner of his eye, he saw it was the crucifix. The moment of truth, of revelation, and he grasped it.

  The young priest was too stunned to react; what could this armless old man possibly do, this ignorant Indio with fire in his eyes? He did not back away, although he easily could have done so, so that when the silver instrument crashed into his face, he did not even raise his hands to defend himself. He fell, not noisily like a tree, but just as slowly, and even when he was already slipping, Ba-ac raised the instrument again, and when he finally stopped to look at it, silver had turned to red. The young priest was unconscious, prostrate on the floor, and Ba-ac bent over him and struck again and again at the Castilian brow, the blue eyes, till the whole face was pulped.

  Ba-ac stood over the man, not quite believing that he was dead. Blood still oozed from the wound in the face and neck. He glanced at the hairy arms which were nerveless, the powerful torso that seemed to dissolve into a black blur as the night encompassed everything. The Angelus must have already tolled, but he had not heard it. He must flee, not just this church, not just Po-on, but Cabugaw. But to where? He breathed deeply, and felt very light, as if the crushing weight upon his chest which had long oppressed him had finally been lifted by this single act.

  The sense of elation stayed, but it was soon compounded with fear, not just for himself but for his poor, sinless family, and his younger brothers as well. He did not try hiding the dead priest under the bed, although it did cross his mind to do so—anything to delay the discovery, anything to give him time. But did he or Po-on really have this precious time? They had all been doomed from the very beginning, their fate foreordained because they had dark skins, because their noses were flat.

  He breathed deeply again and tried to calm the trembling of his hand, the strangling in his throat, the earthquake within. Then he walked calmly to the huge wooden door, down the black stairway to the alcove. The young acolyte who had sent him upstairs was still there.

  The acolyte was perhaps only twelve, or eleven even. “Did you see him, Tatang?” he asked.

  Ba-ac nodded. “He did not want to see me—he said he was going to sleep …” He wanted to say more, but was afraid lest the tremor in his voice betray him.

  At last, he reached the door and outside, in the wide yard, he could pick out the goats still tied to their stakes and grazing grass. He walked slowly, as if on a Sunday stroll; it suddenly seemed as if the churchyard were without limit, like the river delta he would have to cross. When he got to the fringes of the town where the houses were made of bamboo and buri palm and not of hardwood and stone, he walked faster, but without seeming to run. It was when he reached the open field that he began to run out of the reaches of Cabugaw. He was surprised at his stamina. He was consumed by only one thought: to flee as fast as he could, alone if that was possible. He was a dead man and it was a dead man who would return to Po-on, to Mayang and her quibbling, to the boisterous boys who bore his name.

  As he crossed the river, he slipped on a moss-covered stone. But he rose quickly, then ran again, his lungs close to bursting, his throat rasping dry. Across the river finally, he paused on the bank. Was that the tolling of bells? He keened—yes, the church bells of Cabugaw were tolling as they often did when there was a fire, a calamity that must be announced, a Moro raid, although it had been ages since there was one. The tolling was long, insistent. They had found the body! Did the boy tell them that he was the last man to see the young priest? And did not the boy recognize him? Indeed, who would fail to recognize him since there were not all that many one-armed men in the entire Ilokos.

  As he neared Po-on, Ba-ac consoled himself. They had a little time, as the Guardia and their Spanish officers did not like pursuing their quarry at night. They were afraid of the bandidos who hid in the villages and ambushed them on the trails to get their Mausers and their revolvers. This had become increasingly common, particularly because there had grown to be so much uneasiness and discontent all over the Ilokos. The bells had proclaimed to the whole town what he had done; he was marked, convicted, but they did not have him yet.

  Ba-ac fled down the fields, over the rough, uneven earth the plows had gone through, the soft, ash-brown scars where the torches had seared. He was thirsty but amazed at his own strength, that he could reach Po-on so fast, not on a spirited mount but on his feet.

  Even as he hurried, walking fast when running squeezed his lungs, there came lucidly to mind as if it had happened only days ago, how the same young priest had ordered him confined in Vigan and there, in the fortresslike kumbento, his inquisition had started, the memory ever present now like a branding iron scorching the flesh. He was an ever-loyal and obedient Christian. Did he not know that there were roads to be built, to lace the country so that progress would come to each town and village? These were, after all, what the ilustrados, the filibusteros, were asking for in Europe, where, like frightened dogs with their tails between their legs, they had fled? Ba-ac had tried to explain that he was with fever during those two weeks when his contribution to the well-being of the patria was demanded. He had sent word through his youngest son, Bit-tik. He did not mean to refuse service. Why should he when he knew what the punishment was? Had he not given up his eldest son to work for the church in Cabugaw and this dearly beloved son had seldom visited his paren
ts in the last ten years? True, he had not given work for two weeks, but let him pay for that with four weeks’ labor if it had to be paid double, for that is how long the rice which he brought with him would last.

  The young priest was unmoved. Ba-ac, past sixty, was taken to a cell of the municipio, a dank and perpetually dark enclosure smelling of urine, and was hanged there by the right hand.

  Now the hand was gone, but not the anger that blazed in his mind and the venom that had inflamed his being. He could still see the young priest as he saw him then—the ivory face, the sensuous smile—even as he pronounced Ba-ac’s fate. Maybe he had not really been killed. Maybe everything was an aberration. But the image in his mind was clear, and in the muffled night, the bells which tolled confirmed only too well what he had done.

  The camachile trees at last, the edge of the village, the growling of dogs. He stumbled once more at the margin of the field which they had planted to mongo beans, and bits of hard earth dug into his palm. As he rose, he glanced up to a sky sprinkled with stars.

  An-no was in the yard, talking with Dalin, whose bull cart had already been unhitched. To him, Ba-ac shouted: “Hurry, hitch all the bull carts. We are leaving—all of us, we are leaving!”

  An-no followed him as he rushed up the stairs to the kitchen where Mayang, her eyes red from blowing at the earthen stove, was letting a pot of rice simmer.

  He drew a full pitcher from the water jar and drank, his throat making gurgling sounds, then he faced his wife, waving his left hand. “Old Woman, we must flee Po-on! Do you know what I have done? You have no time to serve that meal. Listen—all of us, your children, we have to flee …”

  “You are drunk again,” Mayang said, not minding him.

  “I am not!” Ba-ac shouted at her. He brandished his left arm as if it were a precious ornament he wanted her to sec. “With this hand, I smashed his face till it could not be recognized. I killed him!” Triumph, pride! “The young priest who sent your son away, who made me what I am. I killed him!”

  His wife looked at him, disbelieving; then she saw his trousers grazed by dust, the white shirt speeked with red. She peered at them, touched them, then withdrew her hand in horror, for the blood had clung to her fingers.

  “Yes, it is blood, Old Woman,” Ba-ac said. “I could not stop. I struck again and again.”

  Mayang crumpled on her knees, wrung her hands, and animal sounds escaped her. Her wailing brought Bit-tik to the house. “Old Man, you have decreed death for yourself and shame and punishment on all of us!”

  “Shame? Punishment? Disgrace?” It had filled him quickly, this courage which lifted him as well. Mayang had grown old. He looked evenly at her as she struggled to hold back her tears. “It is not disgrace I bring you, my beloved half”—he rarely used the words—“it is honor. Don’t you know what this means? I am not a servant anymore. So we must run away and hurry. Else they will find us here in the morning.”

  Mayang stood up sobbing and went to their wooden trunk in a corner. Their few clothes were inside, most of which she had woven herself, her skirts, her starched pañuelo. An-no and Bit-tik were now in the house, silent and tense, and Ba-ac told them what to do. They listened, understood, and in an instant they were down the yard herding the animals. The neighbors—they had committed no crime other than to live in Po-on and be related to him—they must be told, then they could elect to stay and suffer, or to flee.

  “It is not your sons who should tell your brothers and cousins,” Mayang told Ba-ac with derision in her voice. “Go tell them yourself. Are you not proud of what you have done? When the Guardia come, will they make distinctions?”

  He needed Istak now. He would know the right words to bring the truth to them not as a bludgeon but as light. Where could that son be at this time? At the edge of the village again, thinking, dreaming? He went out and at the wall of blackness he shouted: “Istaaakkk—Istaaakk!”

  Istak came running from the direction of the dalipawen tree, his white shirt distinct in the dark.

  “My son, we have no time …”Then quietly, solemnly, Ba-ac told him. Istak listened, the words cutting deeply; when it was over, he embraced the old man and wept; his father’s breath told him the deed was not the handiwork of basi. His father smelled of tobacco, the earth, and harsh living.

  “It is my fault, Father,” Istak said bitterly. “This happened because of me. So leave then—all of you. I will stay.”

  Istak knew the Guardia Civil. They were Indios like himself and yet they were different—the uniform and the gun had transformed them. What would he tell them when they came? Padre Jose had said that a father’s success could be measured only by how well he had made his children able to stand on their own. The old priest was thinking, of course, of that time when Istak would be a priest, cast adrift by the ways of the world, but strengthened by faith. To the real father who would be hunted like a mad dog, how would Istak be to him?

  “Help me tell our relatives,” Ba-ac said. “I have brought disaster to them—”

  He had not spoken too soon. From the houses across the mud-packed yard, his cousins, their wives, and their children came running, An-no and Bit-tik behind them, then Kardo, Ba-ac’s youngest brother, Simang—Mayang’s sister—and still others, the neighbors in the six-house village: they gathered in knots, their inquiries and anxieties a continuous murmur punctuated by exclamations—“Ay, fate!”

  Ba-ac was the eldest, he was the leader, and they knew of the agony he had gone through. He did not speak of the young priest; he told the older people equably, without justification, and they listened intently, knowing that now they would share his punishment.

  “So we must seek new land beyond the mountains,” Ba-ac said to the hushed gathering. Above, the stars were out in all their splendor and the night around them was thick with the smell of earth, of sweat, of living. “We will go beyond the land of the Bagos; if need be, we can learn to live with them, start a new village, as others have already done—the many who also ran away. They cannot follow us there. They will not dare unless they come in droves and we will not be alone. Haven’t others done this?”

  Ba-ac turned to Istak beside him. “Tell them, son. Tell them it is not hopeless.”

  Istak turned to faces eager for solutions, for peace. He must tell them what he had always been told by Padre Jose—to have faith. As for patience and industry, they were Ilokanos born to these virtues—it was in their blood, in the very air they breathed.

  “Since we have been ordered to leave anyway, we should not wait—we should look at this as a challenge. But in doing so, let us not forget the Almighty, that we go in peace although we be threatened, persecuted. This is the way of the Lord. I know some of you may want to stay …” From the older people, an immediate sound: one said, “No, we are all related, we will stay together.”

  “How will we live with little grain? Will we eat the seed rice?” his uncle Kardo asked.

  “We will live as we have always lived—frugally. We will eat bamboo shoots, the green leaves of the mango and butterfly trees. And the forest provides—we can trap deer, wild fowl. We have known difficult times—remember when we had so little food we ate the pith of the big palm?”

  They murmured approval. They were Ilokanos—they would not starve anywhere. And they also believed Istak because he was the most learned, the most skilled in a language none of them could understand. Ever since his return, they had flocked around him, urging him to set up a school so that they, too, would know how to read and write—not just the rich mestizos and favorites of the friars. They would sustain him, weave his clothes, cut his hair, and give him enough grain to fill his granary so that he would not have to hold the handle of a plow and coarsen his palms. He had, of course, become enthusiastic about it, how much he could do—those years in Cabugaw were not to be wasted. He had already fashioned a series of lessons from the elementary cartilla to the higher form that would include philosophy and some science—he was going to impart to the young people of P
o-on all that Padre Jose had given him.

  He must tell them that there would be no school, and worse—that they really had to leave Po-on. This was all that the new priest wanted them to know. Now he would tell them that they had only the night to prepare, that sunrise must not catch them here. He remembered what Padre Jose had once told him of history, how the bearer of bad news was himself dispatched with the sword although the bad news that he brought was not of his own making.

  To the right, across the level patch of ground, was the house of Kardo, his father’s youngest brother. Istak felt closest to him, perhaps because Kardo was more like an older brother. What mattered were his wife and his five children. He must leave, and not in peace but in fear. They had been welded together, not just by blood or marriage, but by work, for they had always shared what could not be done by just one man or one family—the planting of rice, the harvesting, the repair of the dikes, of the irrigation canals, and of their homes.

  Before the clump of bamboo which formed an arbor, a gateway to the village, was the house of his mother’s sister, Simang. Her husband and children were before him, repeating, “Must we leave now?”

  “But I will stay behind,” Istak said quietly. He had decided on this, to stay and to beg with them who ruled, that what Ba-ac did was on impulse. He would take whatever punishment they would mete out because it was for him that his father went to see the new priest. He spoke their language, he had proven his loyalty; they would understand. Yet he recoiled at the thought of what might happen; the Guardia did not care about justice; they knew only how to exact punishment.

  Kardo told Istak there was no sense in being left behind, but Istak was adamant. If it was a guide they needed, Dalin knew the way.