Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) (21 page)

Not once did Istak dive. He prayed that his mother might finally be granted the peace she never had in life.

Far into the afternoon, they ranged along the river, but found no trace of the cart.

At sundown, they stopped and set up camp for the night. Beyond the river were newly opened fields and Carmay—a solitary village on the fringes of a forest being cleared. The great trees that had not yet been felled were burned; they stood around like huge black skeletons. The caravan found refuge from the rain in the houses, and the women, who had no dry firewood, cooked the evening meal in the stoves of kindly villagers.

Early in the evening, the three brothers sat down together for the first time in weeks to a meal prepared by Dalin. They had barely spoken to one another the whole day, and though words were not uttered, Istak knew that his brothers resented him; perhaps they even blamed him for their mother’s death. Why did he not dive at all—he, the eldest son—when even men who were strangers helped? Why did he give up too soon?

The vegetable broth warmed their insides, and the salted fish with crushed tamarind tasted good. Istak had no appetite; he put into words the thoughts that rankled An-no. “Do not blame mc, my brother, for our mother’s fate. Do you think I wanted her dead? Who is the son who would wish this on his mother? I would not have been able to save her. The hands of fate are stronger than mine. I prayed.”

“You did not even try.” An-no’s words were like prongs that dug into his flesh.

Istak bowed, then stood up and walked away, down the muddy path toward the river, the dusk thickening around him, the insects noisy in the grass. Dalin, who was serving them, followed, but Istak waved her back: “Let me be alone,” he mumbled.

What was it, really, that had happened to him on that submerged bridge? Why did he not dive after the cart? It all came back—how it was when Ba-ac was nowhere to be found. In his mind, it had quickly formed—this knowledge, this certainty that the old man was dead. And again, at the river, it had flashed through his mind clearly, that there was nothing he could do, as if something stronger than the current had held him back, telling him he could do nothing, nothing. He was not a coward, he reassured himself; when he decided to stay behind in Po-on, he was fully aware of the risk. What was this in him that seemed to guide him in his deepest thoughts? Was it some supreme intelligence
that he had gleaned from the
kumbento
in Cabugaw? If only he could explain this to his brothers, if only he could put into words these fears and feelings, inchoate and yet so real.

It was not just Mayang they had lost. Lost, too, were the sacks of seed rice which must have pinned her down when the cart overturned. Now they would have nothing to plant and little to eat. But at least they were alive; they could subsist on weeds and insects. Ilokanos can eat what other people cannot. And most of all, with the bridge gone, for the moment, at least, they were farther away from Capitán Gualberto and his Guardia.

The rain resumed the following morning and the fields around them were flooded. The road to the valley, Dalin said, would be a quagmire. Istak and his brothers left Carmay early and paced the riverbank, asking the few settlers who lived nearby if they had seen the cart or Mayang, but no one had. The water was higher, with more islands of water lilies and reeds, occasional logs and small uprooted trees that drifted with the current.

All through the journey, Istak was amazed at the kindness of villagers, how readily they were invited to sleep in kitchens, in sheds, or under the houses if there was no space upstairs. He understood then how Dalin and her family could go so far with a cart loaded with more goods to sell than what the family needed to live.

He asked them to please bury his mother if her body ever surfaced; he would surely come back to find out and to express his gratitude to whomever had done the Christian thing.

At noon, Istak asked his brothers and everyone in the caravan to join him at the riverbank to pray. Dalin had gathered a basket of white rosal flowers in the village, and these she made into a wreath which she then tied onto a small raft made of banana trunks.

Rest in peace, Istak intoned as An-no and Bit-tik lowered the
wreath into the water. Bit-tik pushed it toward the middle, where the current was strong, and silently they watched it drift down the river. It was caught in a whirlpool briefly, then bobbed up and swiftly floated down the vast brown expanse. They watched it grow smaller, till it was no longer visible, hidden as it was by the flotsam from the mountains.

“We are orphans now,” Istak said, turning to his brothers. “Whatever may rile us, whatever differences we may have, we must be closer together. We have no one else.”

The farmers who gave them shelter in Carmay told Istak that in the town of Rosales they could get some help.

“You must go to Don Jacinto. Everyone knows him, for his big house is by the big balete tree. He is good—he will help you …”

They left Carmay at midday; the rain had eased somewhat. The sky was scabbed with gray clouds that scudded away and the sun came out in short shifts, full and bright upon a land now laved in green.

To their right, a straggle of trees and beyond the trees, farther in the distance, was the heavily forested mountain called Balungaw. Dalin told Istak of a village with the same name near the mountain, of a hot spring there where the sick often went. To their left was another creek which emptied into the Agno, and like the Agno, it was also swollen.

Shortly before nightfall, thatch-roofed houses with buri palm walls appeared on both sides of the narrow road. Pigs wallowed in side ditches. From under the houses, mangy dogs appeared and trailed and barked at the slow-moving
carabaos
. People
went to the windows to look at the caravan, the palm-leaf canopies of the carts dark with rain, the solid wooden wheels caked with mud, and the new settlers walking beside their carts while inside were their women and children. They were in Rosales at last.

It was one of those new towns carved out of cogonal wastes and forests by settlers like them. As in most of the new towns that lined the road to the valley, its leading citizens were mestizos who were the favorites of the friars. Some took advantage of the recent opening of the colleges in Manila for Indios and went to the University of Santo Tomás to study law and medicine, and became infected, too, with the ideas of liberalism, that deadly contagion which the friars detested and ranted against. Large tracts of land toward the east, all the way to that prosperous village of Balungaw, to the very foothills of Mount Balungaw, were claimed by the first Spanish settler in this part of the country, but there were also equally large areas titled to the
principalia
—the educated men like Don Jacinto.

Since most of the settlers in this wild part of the country were Ilokanos, their new settlements were named after the towns they came from—Casanicolasan, Cabalawangan—or after the vegetation that abounded in the new land—Cabaletean (balete trees) or even Rosales itself, after the rosal bush which lined the roads and with the start of the rainy season had started to bloom with puffy white flowers. They brought with them not just implements from their old villages, but the attitudes of hard work and perseverance that had made them endure.

From Rosales, if they pushed onward to the south, it was to the towns of Nueva Ecija—Cuyapo, Gapan—most of them still surrounded by forests; and to the north, Santa Maria, Tayug; and onward to the Caraballo range, the new settlements of San Nicolas and Natividad. And to the east, Umingan, Lupao, then San
José, the big town that was also a gateway to the valley, for beyond San José, up to the first mountain range that was a barrier to the valley, was the narrow trough of Santa Fe.

Like most of the new towns, Rosales had no municipal building except a ramshackle shed near the open market, where, sometimes, the health inspector conducted what little official duties he had. There was no telegraph as yet in this part of the country, no Spanish official. The priest in the new church was Indio, for the Spanish friars usually stayed in the bigger communities where their quarters were more comfortable and their meals more nourishing. Civic order was imposed traditionally by a member of the
principalia
, and in Rosales, this authority was vested in Don Jacinto, who was not only rich but also educated.

His house stood prominently in the middle of the town, and from there he dispensed patronage, and like the Indio priest, was revered for his many acts of kindness to his tenants and those wayfaring strangers passing through. It was a big house roofed with tile, and its wide yard was dominated by a balete tree, massive and brooding, a perpetual abode of spirits and endowed with an awesome talisman. Its trunk was three, even four times the size of a cartwheel, larger than any of the forest trees they had passed. The thick veins coiled around it, fat as pythons, thrust upward and merged with each other, forming a mantle, a pall, of vivid green.

Across the plaza was the small wooden church with a grass roof. Istak could put on the soutane and say Mass now for Ba-ac, for Mayang, but he was not a priest, he was not going to be a priest. It was getting on toward evening and the Angelus should soon be tolled. The Indio priest who was pacing the churchyard walked to where the carts were unhitched in the shade of the balete tree and asked where they had come from. The Ilokos, An-no replied politely.

They were Ilokanos; they did not have to be told about the balete tree. In the evening before eating, they would make an offering of food to the spirits. In the old country and here, there were many things that could not be explained. One had to accept them without question, just as one welcomed the morning and recognized God.

Istak would go to Don Jacinto in the morning, tell him what had happened. The work animals were their most precious possessions; he would leave one of the
carabaos
if necessary so that they would not starve.

In the onrushing dusk, he glanced at his arms; they were sunburned. His palms were no longer soft—the few days’ work in Po-on, gathering firewood, feeding the
carabaos
, all that had callused his hands. And there would be harder work now that he would really be the farmer he was not meant to be.

No one but he could talk to Don Jacinto. There was not much that the Carmay farmers could tell him except that Don Jacinto had studied in Manila, and that he was rich—as all the few educated people were. He wondered how it would be when he would finally ask for help. Else they would have to eat banana pith and all those weeds meant for pigs.

He pitied Dalin most. She had known only tragedy, and she would be hungry, too. And only because she had elected to cast her lot with them. What more could a man want from a woman but this loyalty?

Morning stole into Rosales during the rainy season with little sun, but there was the pleasant odor of cooking fires, and the stirring of work animals. The farmers had to go to the sodden fields early to plow, to plant, to watch the seedlings. Then the sun rose, and the grass in the plaza shone; beyond the edge of the plaza were green hedges of rosal in bloom. Dalin had risen
earlier and she had again gathered a few of the white blossoms and now, with the flowers in an empty pot, Istak drank the fragrance. She had taken a piece of black cloth, cut it into strips, and pinned it on the sleeves of the menfolk and on the blouses of the women. They could not afford black dresses to wear as emblems of their grief. They would wear these ribbons for a year, after which there would be a
bakas
, the ritual end of mourning.

Istak put on his best trousers and the white shirt that Mayang had woven. His clothes were now tight, but they were all he had.

He was asked by a servant to go up the staircase, so polished that the reddish narra grains shone. The house, though made of stone, was not as big as the houses in Vigan, nor as old; the brick sidings were new and no weeds sprouted from the tile roof as yet. The walls were painted with a lime wash, but with the oncoming rains, the wash had turned a dirty brown.

Inside the house, all the sash windows were wide open, and the waxed floors were solid, thick, and wide, as they were cut from huge tree trunks. The furniture had probably been made in Manila, for the pieces were sturdy but not as well made as some of the furniture in the
kumbento
in Cabugaw, which had come from Europe and was finely crafted, resplendent with gold and silver paint.

He stood in the middle of the
sala
, waiting. Then the rich man came out from one of the rooms.

He was about forty, with patrician features—a thin nose and a wade forehead. He was fair, like most mestizos. It could have been his grandfather—perhaps a Dominican friar? perhaps a Spanish officer? But there was nothing haughty about him. Warmth, welcome lit his eyes, and at once he asked Istak to sit on the wooden chair by the window which opened to the plaza where the carts waited.

“Good morning, Apo,” Istak began in greeting. “I am Eustaquio
Sal—” He hastily corrected himself. “Eustaquio Samson, Apo. We arrived yesterday and those are our carts.”

“Yes,” Don Jacinto said. “I saw you when you arrived.” He did not waste words. “What is it that you want?”

“We are from Cabugaw, Apo.” Istak paused. Did the rich man know? There was no question in his face. “We are planning to go to the valley. But the other day—” He paused again. His lips trembled and his eyes misted. “The other day, when we were crossing the Agno, one of our carts overturned—then it got carried away by a tree that rushed down with the current. My mother—she drowned, Apo.”

The rich man’s face softened, and immediately Istak saw sympathy in his eyes.

“We also lost all our seed rice in that cart and some of our provisions. It is the rainy season now but we have nothing to plant. And we will be hungry, Apo.”

Don Jacinto had listened attentively, then quickly asked, “What do you want now?”

“We would like to borrow grain from you, Don Jacinto. And pay for it with a
carabao
or some of the tobacco that we have.”