Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks)

by F. Sionil Jose

  A long pause, then the Cripple continued sadly: “But when will Filipinas ever be free from its leaders who are wealthy and crooked, in whom we have put so much trust?”

  To Istak’s questioning look, the man sighed. “I am voicing thoughts that I should keep to myself. But I have always mistrusted the wealthy men who have joined the revolution. I know that great wealth is always accumulated by foul means, by exploiting other people. If we have wealthy men at the helm, we can be sure that they will enrich themselves further. Virtue and wealth seldom go together. The greatest criminals are also the wealthiest men.”

  Istak looked at his bare feet, at the shiny wooden floor. Was he the epitome of virtue because he was poor? How had it been in the village? There was foul gossip and cussedness anywhere in the world where small men had to think of their stomachs first before thinking about others. “The poor are not always virtuous, Apo,” he mumbled.

  “Ah, but I did not say they are.” The Cripple became vibrant again. “What I do say is this: it is more difficult for the poor to be virtuous. When you are hungry and you steal a ganta of rice, that is not a crime; but when you are rich and you steal gold, is that not despicable? In this war, hundreds have died with honor, but I also know that some have already profited by their professions of patriotism. When this is all over, we will know who among the ilustrados have enriched themselves with the funds that should have gone for the purchase of guns, food, medicine for our soldiers. We will know who betrayed the revolution to the Americans. And because we are Filipinos, we may even proclaim these thieves as patriots. Patriots don’t become rich, Eustaquio.” The Cripple raised his hand in a gesture of futility and for the first time, Istak pitied him, his infirmity, his incapacity to express himself beyond words, in deeds that would bespeak iron physical courage as well.

  What could a farmer like him do? Had the lives of people really changed during all the years that salvation was offered by the priests? If the revolution succeeded, what assurance was there that his life would change? Would brown rulers be different from the Spaniards? Would it not be worth waiting to find out what kind of rulers the Americans would be? He did not know much about America, but he had read about Lincoln and how he had freed the slaves. Surely, there must be some redeeming virtue in a nation which produced such a man.

  “I don’t want to make you angry, Apo,” Istak said clearly. “All that I can look after is my own farm, serve those who seek me when they are sick. I have my children to look after so that they will not know what hunger is.”

  The Cripple bowed as if enveloped in thought and for some time he did not speak. Darkness deepened, dishes clattered in the nearby kitchen, mice scurried in the attic, a dog howled somewhere in the vastness of the night. The Cripple spoke again. “I understand only too well what you are trying to say. That you are a farmer? Or that you are Ilokano? And if I ask you, what is under your skin, inside your skull, do not tell me it is blood and flesh and brains!” His gaze turned to the sky studded with stars and as if he had reached out for one and held it out to the farmer, his words took shape again, crystal-clear, lucid. “Don’t ever be a patriot, Eustaquio. Those who think they are or will be delude themselves. Patriotism is selfless. And it is not the generals who are the bravest—they usually have the means to stay away from the battle and thereby lengthen their lives. The bravest are usually those whom we do not know or hear about, those anonymous men who dig the trenches, who produce the food. They are the corpus—you understand that word—the body and also the soul of a nation. Eustaquio, my words are just words, but all through history—and you have studied it—it has always been the many faceless men, those foot soldiers, who have suffered most, who have died. It is they who make a nation.”

  * The Filipinos usually coin nicknames (often terms of endearment) from a person’s physical attributes. “Kalbo” (“bald”) is the name given to a man by people who know him. President Ramos is called “Tabaco” because of the unlit cigar always clamped in his mouth. A fat boss will be called “Taba” (“fat”) by everyone in his office, although not to his face.

  CHAPTER

  14

  My concern is here in this land that I have cleared. Yes, my house is small—a typhoon can destroy it. I have no weapons to defend it against the Americans, who have everything. I will welcome them to partake of my food, and if they will command me to serve them, what choice do I have? The little people have always been like this—they die, but then they can bring on a plague. All that I want is to be left alone.

  Amami adda ca sadi langit—

  Dalin and the two boys intoned the Lord’s Prayer. Always in the hush of dusk before they supped, they prayed with the words that the Augustinians had shaped for them, and with the end of the novena, they now sang softly, their voices blending together with what Istak had taught and explained to them:

  Tantum ergo sacramentum

  Veneremur cernui

  Et antiquum documentum

  Novo cedat ritui …

  So be it, the old giving way to the new. Where the senses cannot confirm, let faith be the unswerving guide, the final and only answer. Faith made them persevere so that they could reach Rosales. His two boys, his wife—they looked up to him with more than faith; Dalin could only write her name before; now she could read and knew a lot more than woman’s work. Still she had not changed really—she was still the same woman who took that desolate trail to Po-on. What is it, then, that makes people endure? To remain steadfast? Surely they must be imbued with more than courage.

  And now, the Cripple was asking him to face the enemy, fling stones at him, and bare his chest to him. No, courage is also the capacity to use wisdom so that we, not he, will prevail, to learn how the enemy can be destroyed, to have the patience to wait, to search for his weakness, to attack when he Does not expect it.

  Istak could not sleep. The gecko called from the dalipawen tree beyond the house, and the cocks crowed from their roosts in the nearby branches. Dalin was quietly asleep beside him. In the morning, he would have to return to town with answers that had been thought out, dredged from his deepest being. It was only at night when he was home lying wide-awake that the big thoughts—as he called them—came but did not linger. A body that was tired succumbed easily to sleep; he waited for it but it was a long time coming.

  Daylight again, Dalin preparing breakfast in the kitchen, the smell of corn coffee, of dried fish frying in coconut oil. Outside, the boys already shouting, the dogs yelping, the world alive and pulsing, and here he was, though rested, still disturbed, still unsure.

  At the low eating table, the two boys ate noisily. He nibbled at the dried fish, the fried rice almost untouched on his plate.

  “Whatever it is that the Cripple is asking you to do,” Dalin said, “do it. He is a man you respect and honor; he will not ask you to do work which will dishonor you or leave you without reward. And reward does not mean silver.”

  She seemed fairer in the morning light of the open doorway. It must have been her blouse as well, its long sleeves rolled up. Her hair, neatly combed, hung down her shoulders. Every so often, she washed her hair with the ash water from the stalks of palay that she burned—now it shone lustrous in the light.

  “I am not going to be involved with his violence,” Istak said quickly. “My duty is to them.” He thrust a chin at the boys, who continued eating. “And to you.”

  Dalin shook her head. “How quickly you have forgotten.” She sighed. “You have tried to run away from it, but it seeks you just the same.”

  “We have had peace for years now,” he said, shaken a little by what she said.

  “We cannot escape our fate,” she said softly, reaching out to touch his hand.

  Don Jacinto gave him a corner in the cavernous storeroom beneath the house. The windows were wide, the sun flooded in, and it was bright even till late in the afternoon. Then, a maid would come with a candle or a pair of oil lamps and he would continue writing till the work was done. If needed upstairs, he wo
uld go up the stone flight of the azotea without having to pass the main hall. The Cripple merely thumped on the wooden floor with a cane and the dust of many years would drift down, threatening to smother him. But soon, no matter how loudly the Cripple thumped, no more dust descended on him.

  The work was not difficult; most of the time, it was simply copying neatly what the Cripple had written and corrected. Istak had some difficulty at first—he had not written with a pen for a long time, and the nib often flattened out as he pressed on it too hard. After two days it all came back—the old agility, the smoothness. Though his back ached from the hours hunched before the writing table, it was not the body that was really fatigued but the mind, for everything that the Cripple wrote, he absorbed. Writing provoked thinking as well, and it had been a long, long time since Istak was made to think as he was doing now. He marveled at the Cripple’s tenacity and how, despite his infirmity, he could still write so much, even now that he was no longer in power and the war was being lost. The Americans were getting closer and very soon they would reach Pangasinan.

  It was the Cripple’s view on the Church, on Bishop Aglipay, whom he wanted to be the undisputed leader of the Filipino priests, that bothered Istak most. Mabini’s belief in God was formidable and steadfast, but he thought little of the Roman Church as an institution. The Cripple’s letters and resolutions asked instead for the creation of a Filipino Church, serving not Rome but the Filipino people.

  Shadowy figures stole into the house and talked with Don Jacinto, who then took them to the Cripple’s room. They did not tarry. Their faces were grim and melancholy when they arrived, but when they left it seemed as if they were recipients of indescribable grace, their gait quicker, the sorrow banished from their faces. Surely, the Cripple held some secret talisman as well.

  Istak was justly proud of his penmanship, which he had developed through the years. Though he no longer gave his capital letters fancy loops, he still decorated them with a curl or two. It was, after all, with this penmanship that the trained writer was recognized; the more elegant the calligraphy, the better it spoke of the writer’s skill.

  The Cripple was meticulous; he said the loops occupied too much space and interfered with the reading because they were distractive; the penmanship drew attention to itself and not to what was being said.

  “Remember, Eustaquio, these are curtains to a window. And the words are themselves the window. First, the writing must be neat but not ornate, for if I wanted beautiful letters, then I would have nothing but a page of the alphabet in ornate lettering. The Chinese consider calligraphy an art form and it can be beautiful, but attention, as tradition demands, is drawn to the shape of the characters themselves. Great calligraphers are, therefore, great poets, too. But you are not Chinese. Words should not hinder the expression of thought unless one is expressing poetry. I am not writing poetry; I am writing to convince people of the validity of our struggle, its righteousness, and the utter fallacy and hypocrisy of the Americans in saying we are not capable of self-government.”

  For all his wisdom, Padre Jose had never spoken to him like this and with such lucidity. How he would have rewritten now that pompous journal which he had started in Cabugaw, influenced as he was by the classics and the Latin poets; he was but twenty-one then, and Padre Jose—bless him—had said that even one so young as he had already shown wisdom by being concerned not only with living but with what made life bearable. How apt, how beautiful it had all sounded. He was shut up in the convent, assured of his meals and safe from conscription in the public works in Vigan and elsewhere, yet he could see the inequities heaped upon his people, the drudgery that warped the lives of his own kin in Po-on. He saw, but could not bring himself to loathe the old priest, just as he could not hate the Americans the way the Cripple did. He had heard in frightened whispers what they had done to Filipino soldiers, the women they chanced upon, these big men with red hair and red beards, pillaging the villages, but he had seen not a drop of blood nor heard one gunshot.

  “They have done all these, Eustaquio.”

  He brought to mind what had happened to Po-on, how he was shot and left to die, but there was a reason.

  “There is no need for reason in war,” the Cripple said with a sneer. “Passion rules. And yet, for those of us who can and should think, we must always remind ourselves that if we lose, it will not be only our lives—which have become inconsequential—but those of our future generations. We have so many structures to build so that we will be strong—for one, a church that is truly ours. We are a divided citizenry. We have ambitious leaders who think only of themselves, and an army in retreat. But not everything is lost. Our men can continue fighting even though they may no longer be in uniform. They will be indistinguishable from the village people in the daytime and at night, whenever the opportunity comes, they will strike. Every Filipino becomes suspect then.”

  In a month, the Cripple had regained his health and Istak returned to his bangcag. The rains lengthened, the rice grew, and by October, the first harvest was in. Now, the rains no longer came in nine-day torrents; the sun shone and the air was thick with the scent of newly cut hay. The moon came out silvery and full. It was on nights like this, lying on the sled in the yard, listening to the children play in the moonlight, their eager voices lifting his spirit, that thoughts bedeviled him. The Cripple still believed in God, but not God as the source of all good. Men could be morally upright not because an omnipresent God meted out punishment to those who strayed, but because men possessed reason. Where did this reason, this conscience come from? Man did not sprout from some empty seed by himself, but through a Supreme Will. And the city which this man builds is the City of God as well; shall it have blood as its foundation—as the native belief held and thus struck fear in the young—so that it will last for centuries, longer than Rome, for all eternity even? How long can this city last if it is not God who keeps watch over it?

  An unblemished November day, the fields caparisoned with gold. He was starting out for his bangcag when Don Jacinto arrived. Had the Cripple’s condition worsened? He had prayed for him more than he had ever done for any of the sick who sought him.

  “It is not his health,” Don Jacinto said. “He wants you to go on an errand—something only you can do.”

  As he entered the room, the Cripple turned to him, grinning. “Thank you for coming, Eustaquio.”

  “At Don Jacinto’s bidding, Apo,” Istak said. The Cripple pointed to a chair. What errand could he do for this man who, with his pen, could squeeze water from stone?

  “Have you ever gone back to the Ilokos since you left it, Eustaquio?”

  “No, Apo,” Istak said with a shake of the head.

  “You told me you know your way across those mountains to the valley. Through the land of the Igorots. You said you were there every year with this old priest. That you even made some friends among the Bagos …”

  How well the Cripple remembered! In the late afternoons when he asked Istak up to the azotea to have a merienda of cocoa and galletas, he had asked Istak about his boyhood, how he had learned so much without formal schooling. Istak had reminisced, sometimes with reluctance, for he was uneasy recalling his Spanish mentor.

  The Cripple’s mind was a cavernous repository not just of ideas but of facts. He asked Istak about the Igorots—how they reacted to the missionary priests, how he himself felt about the savages that they were, whose homes were decorated with the skulls of their enemies, who regarded the Christian Ilokanos with hatred. Istak was frightened of them at first and that fright had not really left him, even afterward when he saw them again and remembered many of them, not just their villages perched on mountainsides or their well-groomed fields but also their names. There came to mind how the Bagos had attacked their bull-cart train. Would they ever change, would they ever be brothers to us?

  “Yes, Apo,” Istak said. “I was with them. Perhaps they still have no guns, so they cannot fight those who are armed. But they know their land—they ra
in stones from the mountaintops, they ambush those who are not wary or who cross their territory without their permission.”

  “They were a splendid sight in Malolos when the republic was inaugurated,” the Cripple said quietly. “They paraded in their loincloths, armed with axes and spears. Like the Moros in the south, they are our brothers. We must recognize their belonging to Filipinas, their willingness to fight for her.”

  He turned to Don Jacinto briefly, then to Istak. “Some months ago when the war already seemed lost—yes, Eustaquio, we always prepared for the worst—Bishop Aglipay and General Luna went north to look for our last redoubt. Now I am going to ask you, Eustaquio, to do a favor not only for Don Jacinto and for me—but for yourself, your family, though you may not think of it this way. In time, I know you will. It is a very dangerous job, and you must do it with great caution and secrecy. You will surely go through territory already occupied by the Americans and if you are caught, you will most probably be tortured before you are shot. Remember, the enemy has spies who are brown like us, the opportunist Chinese and mestizos in Manila whom the Americans have enlisted to work for them, and those bastard Macabebes.”

  “Please don’t tell me what you don’t have to, Apo,” Istak said. “Just tell me what the job is, if I can do it.”

  “You can,” Don Jacinto said, smiling benignly. “We have been discussing this since yesterday. You are the man to do it.”

  “You know the land of the Bagos. The Ilokos is your own country,” the Cripple said. “You speak excellent Spanish, and even Latin, and it is just as well, for the people you are going to meet cannot speak your language, nor you theirs.”

  Istak sat still, taking in every word. He recalled now how they had talked about the many languages in Filipinas, how necessary it was to have but one with which the people could reach one another. For the time being, it would have to be Spanish, but in the future, it would be a language wholly theirs, expressive of their souls and rooted in their lives.