Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) (32 page)

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 rain 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.

The Cripple continued: “You will not attract attention—this is one reason why we have chosen you. Forgive me, Eustaquio—but you don’t look like a soldier or the
ilustrado
that you are. You are a farmer … the way I was.”

How well he had put it! The praise burned in Istak’s face. An
ilustrado
—so that was what he had become.

“The most important thing, Eustaquio,” the Cripple emphasized,
“is not that we are not farmers anymore, but that we should never, never forget that we were.” He paused and looked at his old friend. Don Jacinto nodded.

The Cripple now told him what he was to do:

“Ride to Bayambang—that is where they will be tomorrow. They are moving very fast at night, with the Americans pursuing them. I should not tell you, but this knowledge should never leave you, not even if they torture you, that the president is headed for the Ilokos. He will cross the mountains into Cagayan. This is as much as I know and I cannot tell you more although I wish I could. There is no other way, Eustaquio. The Americans have landed in San Fabián and their cavalry has advanced already to San Jose, to the towns near here, San Quintín and Umingan. The escape route is sealed.”

“You don’t have to tell me everything, Apo,” Istak said, wondering when the Americans would backtrack to Rosales itself.

“I trust you,” the Cripple exclaimed. “If only we could learn to trust one another—Tagalogs trusting Ilokanos, Pampangos trusting Tagalogs. An Ilokano showed the way—more than a hundred years ago, Diego Silang trusted his neighbors. The people of Pangasinan became his allies. His rebellion was defeated, yes—but it was a beginning, the cooperation among the peoples of the north. More of this and, Eustaquio, we have a nation! Not this, not this …” The Cripple sighed and shook his head. From a folder on his desk, he withdrew a sheaf of papers. He picked out a few and began to read. “The defeat of the insurgents is inevitable; not only are they disunited and disorganized—they are also hated by the natives …” He paused, looked at Don Jacinto and Istak and asked: “Does it not sound familiar? It is this chauvinist Thomas Collins again, and his report tells of how bands and cheering crowds have welcomed them in the towns they have entered. Yes, this could all be true, maybe it is also true that
there are many Filipinos who do not like war and want peace at any cost. But this … this!” The Cripple’s lips were compressed and anger flashed in his eyes. He returned to the paper he was reading and quietly continued: “Our forces are assisted by Macabebes—native scouts from Pampanga—who know the terrain and are familiar with insurgent methods. Like our Indian scouts in the Indian campaign, they are absolutely loyal to us …” The Cripple stopped, his head dropped, silence.

“There is truth in what this Collins says,” he finally said in a small, defeated voice. “How can we build trust among our own people? How can we make them confident of themselves and their countrymen so that they will not sell their souls for a few silver dollars? We need more leaders like Diego Silang.” He raised his thin arms in a gesture of futility, then dropped them on the table. “There is so much that the past can teach us,” he continued softly, as if he were talking more to himself than to anyone else. “Diego Silang—more than a hundred years ago, what did he prove? That with a brilliant and selfless leader, we can be united the way he united the north. And united, we can then make Filipinas strong, formidable …

“We have no time for remonstrances, fault-finding, self-scrutiny. We must only think of how we can survive. No, not us, but the republic. The president must not be captured.”

“They must flee quickly,” Don Jacinto said. “And to escape their pursuers, they need a very good guide, someone who knows those mountains. I have not forgotten what you have told me, Eustaquio.”

The Cripple opened the drawer on his desk and brought out a small brown envelope. “You must give this letter to the president, Eustaquio,” he said quickly. “If it is lost or if you have to destroy it, remember that this is what I have written in this letter, and you must repeat this to no one but him. No one, remember
that. I believe that the war is lost, but not the struggle. The mistakes that were committed, we learn from them. We cannot fight an enemy as powerful as America in the manner with which they are slaughtering our men—with cavalry and cannon. We will fight them—I am simply reiterating this—in a guerrilla war everywhere. A long, costly war, not set battles and frontal attacks. They are well trained, well supplied. We should never stop and I—I will continue what I am doing—trying to reach the councils of the world, speaking of our rights. I will wage this campaign in their own newspapers, in the chambers of their own government. I will do this with the pen. Whatever we do, in whatever battlefield we fight, we must be united. The president is a just man. Tell him what I have told you—that this is not a Tagalog war, but a war involving all of us.”

One last question was burning in Istak’s mind; the Cripple, the president, all of them—surely they must know that the revolution had failed. And it had failed because the leaders could not see themselves as Filipinos. Always, they were men of Cavitc, of Bulacan, and now, he was Ilokano. How could anyone rise from his origins? Everything starts from there just as with him everything started in Po-on. But he asked it anyhow:

“Why do you persevere, Apo, if everything is lost?”

The question was lightning, perhaps, or thunder. Don Jacinto, who was listening to everything, head bowed, jerked up. The Cripple, immobile in his chair, leaned forward and raised his hands in an angry gesture, but slowly brought them down. In the morning light, his face had seemed solemn and at peace but suddenly the fire in his eyes banished all this. He breathed deeply, then spoke: “You say then that we must leave the leader to his fate? He has committed mistakes … but until he is captured or killed, he is not just a leader, he is a symbol of our struggle, of our will. Yes, we have already lost the war. This is true.
Even an unlettered man can see this. This land belongs to us, Eustaquio, and someday, we will win. We lose now, but we will fight again, each one of us, until they tire, until they are bloodied and wearied, until we are free and justice triumphs.”

Istak had not ridden in years, but Don Jacinto assured him that Kimat, his beautiful chico-colored horse, was not a difficult animal. He should not forget to give the horse a piece of sugar cake every afternoon, together with the grass. Don Jacinto gave him fifty pesos—the largest sum Istak had ever had. The letter in a leather pouch was sewn into the jute mat that was to be his saddle. Farmers could not afford the leather saddle Kimat was used to. At the gate, Don Jacinto embraced him, reminding him what the Cripple had said: “Eustaquio, you are no longer Ilokano, you are Filipino.”

How would he tell Dalin what he was to do, where he was going? There were just the three of them who knew. Remembering the stories of torture the Americans had inflicted upon his people, he wondered about his capacity to be silent if his flesh was torn, or if his boys or his wife would be forfeit for what was entrusted to him. He had kept a few secrets to himself. Not even to the old priest from whom he had learned so much or to Dalin had he revealed how he had been aroused by Capitán Berong’s daughter. That was, of course, a trifling matter, important only to himself. What he knew involved not just the two friends who shared the secret with him, but, perhaps, a thousand others whose lives depended on how well he could keep the secret, then lead the president to the valley.

Don Jacinto held the reins for a while and patted his favorite horse on the head. Before he let go, he whispered to Istak: “Do not worry about your family.”

A chill wave collapsed on him. He might never return; how would he tell Dalin this? She had understood why he had to work for the Cripple for days. And how exhilarating it had been—to have the mind soar again, to speak again with someone who could scale those ethereal heights. He had forgotten the feeling, although on occasion something akin to it would lift him from his mundane self, when he brought back color to faces already marked by Death, when a bony arm still and numb responded to his touch.
Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison!
Would Dalin understand? For all her intelligence, she had never really thought much beyond what was circumscribed by Cabugawan. Nights he would lie awake, his arm laid across her breast, and they would talk not about what the Cripple had said but about the ripening corn, the sick, and why he had to see all who came to him as if a compulsion possessed him. How would he explain to her the sickness which he had survived, which ordained him to do what he was doing? And now, no dream hastened him, nothing but a cripple’s words—yet they were all that mattered.

Even without Istak’s telling her, Dalin knew how much he had enjoyed writing again. The time would come when the words he shaped would spring to life, and these same words would claim him—not as words but as a promise, as Vigan in the past had been, and perhaps, someday, Manila—all the evocations that the Cripple had made. Manila, where people could appreciate better what he did with words and prayers; Manila, where there were more men like the Cripple. But it was not to that Queen City he was headed. He was going back to the north, to the beginning.

Later: How would he tell his sons? Antonio was not even ten and though the boy already knew how to plow straight furrows
and control the plowshare so that it did not sink too deep, still he was just a boy. And Pedro, who could help in the transplanting of rice, in the pasturing of the
carabaos
, who was as proficient as his older brother at reading and writing—what would happen to them? They would not starve as long as Dalin was alive, that was true. He regretted that he had spent so little time with them.

Kimat cantered through the narrow lane bordered with flowering madre de cacao trees. The jute-mat saddle held the letter sewn within, the silver pesos were in his pocket. Slung across the horse’s back was the bag with cakes of cane sugar. He would add to his pack rice, salt, and dried beef. It would suffice. With money, he could always buy provisions on the way.

Antonio’s dog, Kebaan, barked in greeting when he approached; the barking frightened the horse, which reared, but only for an instant. Kimat became still as soon as Istak smoothed his mane and said a few soothing words. All the boys in the neighborhood who had heard the neighing rushed out of their homes to look at the beautiful beast, bigger than the ponies which pulled the
calesas
. Though Don Jacinto had been to Cabugawan a few times, Kimat always drew attention from the children. Their own uncle astride the steed impressed upon them all of their uncle’s importance, that something unknown, exciting, was happening.

Dalin came down the stairs. Through the open door, the kitchen fire reached out to them with its warm glow. Istak, tying Kimat to a gatepost, could discern at once the anxiety in her face as she approached. He held her by the waist and drew her up to the house, leaving the boys in the yard to admire the horse.

“That is Don Jacinto’s mount,” she said. “Where are you going?”

He did not reply; instead, he kissed her softly on the brow. It was moist with perspiration. “Do not be angry, Old Woman,”
he said affectionately. “Just do not forget that you are precious to me and that I will always treasure you in my mind and heart.”