He could see Orang nudge Bit-tik on the side, and Bit-tik looked at her briefly, then spoke again: “It has been three months now that Manong An-no has gone. I live in his house.”
“It is also your house,” Orang said softly.
Bit-tik glanced at her, then went on. “The year of mourning is not over. Is it a sin, Manong? In my heart, I know it is not.”
Istak knew at once what his brother would say next; he did not let him. “Orang needs someone to look after the farm An-no left behind. And her two very young children—they hardly knew their father. You will now be father to them. And you can truly love them, for your blood is also in them. And now, you have two farms to work, not just one. But when will you stop wandering, and be tied to a house? Orang keeps a good house, and she knows how to cook very well—look at this adobo. Where can you get something as good as this except in a rich man’s house?”
Dalin sat beside Orang; she was older by at least five years and since that time when Capitán Gualberto had ravaged her, there had existed between the two a bond stronger than that which welds two sisters together.
“I am very happy it will be this way, Orang,” Dalin said.
The rains came and in early July a typhoon blew across the land and bowled over many farmers’ homes. But not the houses of Istak and An-no. With the typhoon came the nine-day rain which flooded the fields and swelled the rivers to overflowing, and with the land washed fresh, the pestilence disappeared. As Dalin’s belly grew, Istak regained strength. He had not brought any books from Cabugaw and had yearned so much for something to read, particularly in those times when, weak and emaciated, he could not leave the house. He tried recalling the important though tiny bits of knowledge taught him, and formulated a chronology wherein he could recall events, people, fragments of the past that must be resuscitated so that the present could yield some meaning or, at least, be explained.
With his improved health, he started to heal others again and news of his healing touch reached the nearby villages. They came seeking cures for stomach pains, late menstrual periods, fevers, and they left thinking he wrought miracles with his Latin oraciónes, which were really just the prayers that he had recited in church.
He attended to everyone, and in some instances knew he could do nothing as in that deep pit of his vision no light prevailed, just the blackest of black. It was at such moments that he prayed silently, asking God to have mercy on this human being, that the end be painless and quick.
Istak did not accept payment; he was not a medíco titulado—and what he did offer was but water brewed from guava leaves.
They usually came early in the morning, sometimes even before sunrise, for it was at this time of day that Istak felt he was best prepared. Those whom he cured recounted how it was when he “touched” them, the unseen force emanating from his hand which ended the pain, the warmth that flowed from his touch inundating the body and, finally, the feeling of being lifted from the mundane self for an instant into a state of well-being, if not of grace. When someone told him this, Istak would not believe it was his doing. It was the Divine who inhabited these parts, not he who was mortal, who sinned. Why had he not had this “touch” before, why now was he endowed with it, and in this particular corner of the world? Could it be that here, perhaps more than in Cabugaw or anywhere else, was where the kindly spirits dwelled?
What they did not know was that every time he “touched” the sick, he was drained of strength, and by midmorning, although there were still people waiting, he could no longer attend to them. He had become so weak, at times he had difficulty stumbling up to his own house.
He did not want anyone in the village to remain illiterate like his parents, so he gathered the children and taught them the cartilla and a little arithmetic. They did not have books and almost no paper and pencils, so they used banana leaves and charcoal from their stoves, and wrote on smooth bamboo boards or on the ground. He taught them a little Spanish, too, enough to understand some conversation, told them never to speak the language when Spaniards were within hearing, that whatever they knew of the language they should keep to themselves.
The produce from the farm sufficed and there was the additional grain, pork, chickens, and eggs his teaching earned for him. At first, it was just the children in Cabugawan who came to learn, but soon children and even adults from the nearby villages also came. A shed was built at the end of the lane close to his house, its earthen floor hardened with carabao dung. The roof was cogon and the walls were palm leaves. One side was completely open. At one end was a small table, and above it, close to the rafters, dangled a wooden crucifix. Aside from being a schoolhouse, it was also here where he ministered to the sick.
He also built a small shed in his bangcag near the mound where the huge snake had appeared. This mound was never touched, as were most of the mounds that dotted the fields. It was now surrounded with orange trees.
Down the shallow incline to the ground were the neat vegetable rows of ampalaya, eggplant, winged beans, watered constantly by the spring. This hut was his and his alone. He would lie on the bamboo floor and shut off everything—even the whisper of the wind on the grass roof. It was here where he replenished his strength, for after every healing he felt like a hollow length of bamboo—inert and useless, his innards spilled out, his veins and arteries drained. He stayed in the shed sometimes well into the night, when the whole village was already asleep, and would return to Dalin’s side shortly after the cock had crowed. Lying there, he could feel his spirit leave his body slowly, like an essence floating away from a bottle, or smoke which rises from the kitchen stove to disappear in the air, and from there, he could see everything clearly, himself weightless on the floor. He could feel himself soaring over the fields, over Cabugawan. Then that blinding light that seemed to wash over everything, a brilliant wave cascading down on him, and still more light so intense he dared not open his eyes. I have seen another world without the hard crust of earth. I have gone beyond passion and craving; I have seen the spirit, an invocation beyond understanding …
When he was in his shed in the bangcag, Dalin, who understood, did not have to dissuade people from bothering him. It was not necessary, not after what happened to those who had trespassed.
At one time in the early part of the dry season when the watermelon and pomelo were ripening, two interlopers tipsy with basi thought they could simply snatch a few fruits. They were taught a fearsome lesson they would not forget, a lesson which soon got whispered about in the villages. One had seen the fat pomelos dangling from the trees, and without asking permission, simply walked through the uneven fence of thicket and bamboo and started to reach for the fruits. His story was frightening.
The watermelon thief had come upon this length of big bamboo stretched between the leafy rows. Only it turned out not to be bamboo, but a giant snake suddenly come alive, hissing and staring at him with beady eyes. As for the orange thief, he was about to reach for the fruit when he saw a fat vine coiled around the tree trunk. Only it was not a vine, but the long body of a snake with its fangs bared. Both could have been killed and they thanked the spirits that the snake did not strike them. They understood only later: it had merely warned them.
There were eight houses in Cabugawan in the beginning; soon there were more as other settlers from the Ilokos joined them. There was land for everyone who dared challenge the forest and the wild cogonals that bordered the swamps to the south. The lane between the new houses widened, planted on both sides with marunggay trees, and another gully to the creek where the carabaos bathed was carved out.
Dalin was a good wife and mother but memory was her implacable enemy and at night when they were in their small sleeping room, she would remain awake, badgered by thoughts of what was, wondering if Istak truly loved her in spite of all that had happened.
She was very glad when the baby came—a boy—for she knew that with him they would be brought closer. He was baptized Antonio, in honor of her father, and this truly made her h
appy, and happier yet when, in a couple of years, the second baby came—also a boy—and was named Pedro, in honor of her grandfather. She had hoped for a girl, so they would have her to depend on in their old age—but no girl—in fact, no more babies came after the birth of the second child. Her life was ordered, comfortable, and she had no complaints. Istak provided well, he was esteemed and everyone regarded him as the repository of wisdom, although he was not the eldest. His uncle Blas was certainly much older, and was better with words.
In times like this, when the world was still and their thoughts were distinct and whole, it seemed as if they were completely one, their bodies merging, their spirits entwined as well, and the days ahead seemed clear and without shadows. Still, when she spoke her thoughts, it was as if this ancient sorrow never could be assuaged, not by her two boys, not by this man who had sworn to serve her to the very end.
“Old Man, when will you no longer want to have me lie beside you?”
“Old Man, will there ever be a time when I will forget what happened years ago, and remember only that I live for our children and tomorrow?”
“Old Man, who will take you away from me?”
He would hug her closer, feel the beating of her heart against his chest, smell the sun and earth on her skin and wonder why, after all these years, the old wound had not healed. He was a healer, but this was one wound he could not close no matter how much he reassured her, no matter how much he showed her by deeds that he loved her.
“I know it,” she said, holding him tight. “Someday you will leave us.”
Neither one was allowed to forget that they were running away and that even in Cabugawan they were not spared the omens of events to come. The news which reached them was of troubled times, of men being killed by the Spaniards in the north and the south. They did not hear the gunfire, so Istak consoled himself with the hope that perhaps they would no longer be hunted. What he had read convinced him that the tides rise and ebb. Though they could erode the shore, the sea itself remained constant, just as the land will be and they who work it, inseparable and perhaps indestructible.
“Whatever ill wind blows, we should not run anymore,” he told Bit-tik, Orang, and his cousins. “We will work as before. If there are men who believe so much in themselves that they can drive away the Spaniards, let them think that way; let them shout themselves hoarse. Our duty is to our families.”
As talk about the wildfire spreading in the south, particularly in Manila, heightened, they looked at the house of the Spanish landlord in Rosales for signs. The house stood there, quiet and impregnable, and the Spaniard’s many tenants continued to leave his mountain share in the bodega behind the house. Could it be that he had the unblemished loyalty of his tenants and was not worried about any Indio recalcitrance? Or could it be that he, like Padre Jose, was unsparing in his criticism of the Indios yet loved them as only a father could?
The harvest that year was very good and the sacks which Istak and the new tenants brought to Don Jacinto were fat and heavy. Their benefactor received them, however, not with great joy but with a face overcast by gloom. Once, as they were about to leave, Don Jacinto took Istak aside to the shade of the balete tree in his yard and presented him with a bottle of new basi. Then, the serious talk. Don Jacinto, gobernadorcillo, the authority of office imprinted all over him, was now merely another Indio in a moment of mourning. “Rizal is dead, Eustaquio. You may never have heard of him, but he is known to many of us who believe in justice. The Spaniards executed him last week at the Luneta …”
Above, the January sky was swept clean and a breeze that careened by brought to them the scent of harvest. A time for rejoicing, and because he loved Don Jacinto, he must now show that one man’s passing had touched him, too, although he did not really know who Rizal was.
“Tell me, Apo, about him.”
“He was a good man, Eustaquio. I think it is about time that I showed you some of the things he wrote—I have them, you know. His novels, copies of La Solidaridad …” Don Jacinto spoke softly. “I am telling you this because I know you are an educated man. But more than this, I know that I can trust you.”
“I hope I deserve that trust, Apo,” Eustaquio said humbly.
“Promise me—do not show them to anyone, and don’t tell anyone they came from me. And when you are through, give them back to me.”
“As you will it, Apo,” Istak said. They took a drink from the bottle. The basi was sweet—it had not fermented long enough and was fit for women only.
“Come,” Don Jacinto said, motioning to Istak to follow him to his house.
Istak had, of course, been in the house a few times but had never been in the bedroom of his benefactor. The house was not as old as the house of the Spanish landlord, but it was of immense proportions, and the bedroom with its giant four-poster bed was bigger than Istak’s whole house. It was not just a bedroom—it was a library as well, and Istak immediately felt comfortable in it. The books lined one wall, but the novels of Rizal were not there. From a wooden trunk under the bed Don Jacinto took two books and a thick envelope with folded newspapers within. He carefully bundled them, then placed them in a sack.
“Be careful,” Don Jacinto said. “And when you are through, let us discuss them all. Maybe it is time we went to Manila together.”
Manila—Royal City, was another world, unreachable, although once upon a time he had dreamed of walking its splendid streets and watching those big boats set sail for distant and exotic ports. Most of all, he would have loved visiting the university, listening to all those venerable men who had amassed wisdom from different lands and who, possessed with goodwill, would impart their knowledge to him.
Now the dream beckoned again. All the way back to Cabugawan, Istak thought of Don Jacinto, why he would talk of bringing a farmer like him to the city.
The trip to Manila, however, was never made. In a few weeks the country was in turmoil. It was then, too, that Istak fully realized what Don Jacinto was.
There was little confusion in Rosales. Life continued on its even course. Even the Spanish landlord, who had all the while stayed in Manila, was not harmed. It had seemed that he was one of the few of his countrymen who had sided with the Indios.
How strange it all was that even when Don Jacinto had revealed himself, Istak still felt nothing but affection for old Padre Jose, who must be dead by now. If not, they must have spared him physical pain. Did not everyone know how good he was? Istak had read Rizal’s novels by then. Though he was profoundly touched by them, he could not damn Padre Jose. There was in the language he learned from the old priest a nobility that affirmed man’s worth. Spain was the personification of granite pride, for how else could the Spaniards, coming as they did from an arid peninsula, build such an empire and still spread the faith? Surely, it was more than gold, exploitation, or superior arms which had moved them. Why did they lose their bearings? Why did they weaken?
CHAPTER
13
In another year, a new ruler—and a new enemy—had come. The Americans had defeated the Spaniards and were now battling the republic’s poorly equipped army. General Aguinaldo had none of the giant horses and the big guns that enabled the Americans to move with speed and overwhelm the puny units that faced them. They were also a ruthless enemy who defiled women and bayoneted children. In a few months, they had taken most of Luzon and were soon advancing to the north. Rosales was not on the main road. In Cabugawan, Istak and his kinfolk waited, wondering if they should flee to the forest.
Well ahead of the Americans, together with the monsoon in July, there came to Rosales in secret a man whom they all held in awe. Only a few saw him, but everyone knew he was in the safest, most comfortable place in Rosales—the house of Don Jacinto. Apolinario Mabini, the famous thinker and ideologue of the revolution, was a cripple. He arrived in the night in a hammock carried by bearers who left as quickly as they had come. As a leader of the new republic, he was a hunted man and surely the Americans would soon track him t
here.
Istak was faintly curious. The revolution had never really mattered much to him. He had gone over the copies of La Solidaridad and returned them; when his benefactor had asked him what he had found in them that impressed him, he had said quickly that there was great truth in what the ilustrados wrote about being rooted in the land. This truth was self-evident to those who worked the land themselves.
Don Jacinto did not reply; perhaps he understood that there was no measure for love of country except in sacrifice, and why ask the poor for more sacrifices? It was the comfortable, the rich like himself—although Istak did not put it this way—who should express it with their wealth. The poor had only their lives to give.
On this day, Istak had gone to the delta, to Sipnget, to attend to a sick boy whose father had come to him begging with an offering of two live chickens. Istak always helped even if there was no gift. More than a decade had passed since they had crossed the Agno for the first time and always, upon reaching the river, he prayed for the soul of his mother.
It was late in the afternoon when he returned to Cabugawan. The rains had paused and the sky was clear. As he entered the arbor of bamboo which shaded the village lane, he saw Kimat, Don Jacinto’s horse, tethered to the gatepost.
The rich man was waiting in the yard, talking with Dalin. Soon it would be dark; the leaves of the acacia had closed and cicadas announced themselves in the trees. From the distance that was Rosales, the Angelus was tolling, and after Istak had greeted Don Jacinto, they stood still in silent prayer.
The rich man did not come often to Cabugawan, not even during the harvesttime; he had entrusted his share to the honesty of men like Istak, and the settlers had not failed him. He was burdened with having to run the town at a time when chaos and lawlessness prevailed. He had done this well, relying not on force but on the respect that the people had given him. He was, after all, the only one from Rosales who had gone to Manila to study.
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