Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) (6 page)

In the grass that surrounded the yard, crickets started again and a gecko in the buri palm announced itself, its
tek-ka
keen as a whip in the still air. “He knew he was going to die,” Dalin continued. “He had this wish and I promised I would fulfill it.”

The east had paled and the cocks that roosted in the guava trees and among the fish traps under the house started to crow. The narrow cracks of the split-bamboo wall framed strips of light. In a while, he heard his mother stirring in the kitchen. Breakfast would be ready soon—fried rice, perhaps, and coffee brewed from roasted corn and flavored with molasses.

Dalin walked back to the cart, Istak behind her. “You must get some sleep,” he told her. “My mat has not been rolled yet. You can go up to the house.”

Gratitude shone in her face. She went toward the house and disappeared within. He heard his mother call out to him to go to the woodshed and bring up an armful of firewood.

The candle at the foot of the coffin had burned out and Istak lighted another and stuck it in the soft warm wax. As he turned for the woodshed, An-no came down and followed him. Istak was about to draw wood from the stack when An-no gripped him on the shoulder and spun him around. Surprised, Istak dropped the dry acacia branches and turned to his younger brother, who now confronted him, brawny as a bull and just as headstrong.

“I don’t like the way you move about in this house,” An-no said, throwing away the respect a younger brother should always give to an elder.

Istak was stunned. “You act like you are the best man here,” An-no continued. “Not just in the house, but in the entire village. That is perhaps correct—you are the learned one. But don’t forget, it is now we who feed you.”

Istak recovered from his shock. “What nonsense are you talking about?” he asked sternly. “Have you forgotten I am the eldest?”

“I have not forgotten that,” An-no said quietly. He was eighteen but farm work had made him appear older. “But there is no younger or older when it concerns a woman.”

“What are you talking about?” Istak asked. Anger had coiled in him.

“You know what I mean,” An-no said. “I found her, I brought her here. We made her husband’s coffin. Bit-tik and I. You did nothing but snore …”

Istak moved away from his brother. “She is a widow, have you forgotten?”

“Does it matter?”

“And she is much older than you. A full five years!”

“And you say that she is about your age and just the woman for you? I found her first,” An-no reiterated sharply. “And she will be mine. You must not stop me. I will take her and if she won’t come, I will make her.” He turned and marched away.

For some time Istak stood immobile, unable to think, unable to respond to his brother’s sudden anger. It was not real, it did not happen at all—this aberration. Slowly, he stooped and groped for the branches that had fallen and, finding them, placed them one by one in the crook of his arm. His hands started to feel numb and he paused and stood up with but three branches. An-no would do what he threatened and he would not be able to stop him. He would never be able to be firm, to be a rock before anyone because his hands were like the dead branches he carried. He was like his father, and even more like the dead man they were to bury, a cripple to himself and to all the creatures in this miasma called Po-on.

2

T
he Darkness began to lift and the eastern rim of the world was tinted with silver. In a while, the cocks dropped from their roosts in the guava trees with a noisy flapping of wings and chased the cackling hens, and the sun burst upon the land in a flood of dazzling light, flowed over the foothills, and its rays impaled the mists upon the kapok trees.

They sat down to a breakfast of corn coffee and bowls of rice fried in fresh coconut oil. Dalin sat at one end of the low eating table, taking sips from the coconut bowl which Mayang had passed to her.

Istak could see her clearly now, the brooding eyes, the thick eyebrows. Even in her gray, shapeless blouse of handwoven Iloko cloth, the contours of her body—her bosom, her shoulders—were as lovely as those of Carmencita, the eldest of
Capitán Berong’s daughters, whom he had taught the
cartilla
. His brother stared at him, bothering him with his unspoken enmity. Istak left the table quickly and went down the yard to make a hearse of the bull cart. His mother followed him. Some of the neighbors who had come in the night—mostly relatives, cousins, and second cousins—had returned. Istak scraped off the candle smudge on the tamarind stump and put the half-burned candle in his pocket.

“Are you thinking of her, son?” Mayang asked.

The question surprised him. “Of whom, Mother?”

“The beautiful stranger,” she said simply.

He did not know what to make of his mother’s question. He decided to be evasive. “It is very sad that at her age,” he said, “she is already a widow.”

“She has not cried that much.”

“Not all those who shed tears really grieve.”

“Still, we do not know anything about her. We help because she needs it.”

“I know that, Mother,” Istak said. “Why are you telling me this?”

Mayang smiled. “My son, it is about time you had a woman, I know. But Dalin—do not let her and her misfortune mislead you into believing that she is helpless, that you should rush into helping her, then loving her.” She turned toward the brown fields beyond the arbor of bamboo which served as a gateway to the village. Beyond, in the far distance, loomed the dome of Cabugaw Church like a woman’s breast pressed to the sky. Her voice became soft, almost a whisper. “I can feel it—this omen creeping into our lives. Something is hounding her. Once we have done what is Christian, we should let her seek her fate.”

Istak smiled. Omens. It was as if he were in Cabugaw again,
listening to Padre Jose after a break in his Latin lessons. The old priest had decided to teach him Latin when he was twelve or thirteen, and him alone, there in the sacristy itself, after he had dusted the shelves and seen to it that all the ledgers were in place. “Eustaquio, there are many things in this world that we cannot sec, spirits that move about us, things we cannot explain, not even with the faith that we possess.”

The old priest said he knew things which he was utterly ignorant of when he arrived in the Ilokos. Past seventy and too old to care, he could now say what he never dared whisper when he was young, the mystery of this land, the beliefs rooted in an experience that only a pagan past could have engendered.

Istak held his mother by the shoulder as if to assure her that he knew what he was doing, that no harm would befall them. “Evil is often a creation of our minds, Mother,” he said. “It starts as a spark, then it is fanned into a fire, self-willed and self-sustaining. No, Mother, if we do not think about it, if we do not let it bother us, it will not be there. This is not to say that there are no evil men, but our best protection against them is our innocence and our truth.” This was real Christian virtue, but even as he said this, his thoughts were about his younger brother. Did his mother know what An-no had told him in the woodshed? Had she seen his younger brother’s face—the unbridled desire for Dalin which had now warped his mind?

He found himself saying, “It is An-no, Mother, that I am worried about, not Dalin.”

“What has he told you?” Mayang asked. “Fool sons of mine—I could see him following her all the time with his eyes the way you do. And she had just been widowed. It is a sin!”

Istak shook his head. “You see more than what is there, Mother.”

But Mayang did not hear, for she had turned to leave, mumbling, “My sons, my fool sons.”

They were set to leave. Dalin came down the bamboo stairs, wearing a well-starched skirt. An-no walked behind her, a dark scowl on his face. Together they went to Istak, who had, by then, removed the palm-leaf canopy of the cart.

An-no told him: “I want to go to the cemetery to help dig the grave. It is better if there are two of us.”

“What is this now?” Istak turned to Dalin, perplexed. She had washed her face and her skin shone.

“I tried to explain,” Dalin said, “that I don’t want anyone but the two of us to go to the cemetery—you because you can say the prayers and help me dig the grave. Just the two of us—it is best that way. I don’t want to be a bother to people the way I already am. And the cemetery is far.” She turned to An-no. “How can I repay you? You made the coffin, you brought me here. I will have a lifetime paying you for all you have done. But it is my wish that you stay …”

An-no dug his toe into the ground and mumbled something unintelligible.

“Help me carry the coffin,” Istak asked his brother, and together they brought it to the cart. The few neighbors who had gathered in the yard had heard her wish, and to them she said, “God be with you, thank you for coming.”

They drove out of the yard. Istak whacked the reins on the broad back of the bull and the cart dipped down the low incline onto the dusty path lined with dying weeds. The trip would take the whole morning and it would almost certainly be high noon before they would reach the cemetery. The brown fields spread around them. To their right, the Cordilleras seemed so near
though they were at a far distance. Since he went to Cabugaw ten years ago, he had gone up these ranges every year during the dry season when the rivers were no longer bloated. Padre Jose always brought with them four of the best horses in the church stable. The old priest did not ride the best one; he reserved it for the tortuous trails to the land of the Igorots that lay beyond the narrow pass called Tirad. Istak had looked forward to these trips, to the rambling discourses of the old priest, to the meetings with the Igorots whom he finally got to know—and yes, to see them again—the bare-breasted girls who worked the narrow valleys and mountainsides, their arms tattooed, their bodies glistening with sweat in the sunlight.

He carried the Iloko missal, the holy water, and candles; on their two-pack horses were their ration of water, some salt, sugar, hand-rolled cigars (which the old priest was addicted to), salted meat, rice, and their iron cooking pot. He soon learned the way so well, it seemed he had lived in this forbidden land all his life. He knew them, too, the Igorots, who did not harm them although his own people expected otherwise; the Igorots were savages—did they not kill strangers or one another when their tribal laws were violated?

Now the mountains beckoned to him—if he could only flee this withered plain and lose himself up there close to the clouds where the air is so pure it made breathing such a pleasure. Maybe someday he would be able to go there again and forget what had happened, break out of the mountains into the valleys beyond. Dalin was beside him, and though he did not believe what his mother had said, she seemed to have cast a spell over him.

The bull loped down the trail and the wheels hit a bump—a root of a tree. Briefly their arms touched.

“Why did you not want them to come along?” he asked afterward.
The village was well behind them, just a line of madre de cacao trees.

She turned to him, her face determined. “I told you I would bury him anywhere. That is why it is just the two of us. Over there, at the bend of the river where An-no came upon us, beyond the clump of bamboo—no one can see us dig the grave there.”

“But why there?” Istak asked, surprised. “It is not done that way, you know that.”

“It was what he wanted. He knew he was going to die. Bury me, he said, where there’s water—the river, the sea. Any place where there is water, for water is life, too. Do you understand? And when we have buried him, then I will go. Far away to where his people are so that I can tell them. You will not even remember me then.”

“But I will remember you,” Istak said. He wanted to add, “always,” but he held back. “You cannot travel by yourself now. You know how it is—by land, even by sea—the way is very dangerous. Unless you have companions. You know what I mean.”

She nodded, not as if to acknowledge the truth of what he said but as if to accept the sorrow which she must bear. “But what can they steal from me?” she asked, expecting no answer.

Istak did not reply. “You can stay with us,” he said much later. If she left, there would be peace in their household; the ill wind that his mother had prophesied would not blow their way. And yet, he needed to see her again. Banish the omens then. Why should he believe them? Did he not trust in Someone who bestowed grace on men and saw them safely through their journeys?

They rode in silence. The sun edged up the sky and dust swirled around them as the bull continued its even pace. In a
while, the trail dropped into the wide delta of the river, and all around them, the sprouts of cogon grew lush and tall, and farther down, the earth had become sandy. Stones littered the way—some of them boulders that had slid down from the mountains together with dead, uprooted trees when the heavy rains fell in July. Dalin looked around her.

“This will do,” she said, pointing to a spot surrounded by tall grass. Istak drew the reins and the bull stopped. They got down and Dalin unhitched the cart, then tethered the animal to a sprout of cogon and gave it some hay. She got a spade and a hoe from the cart and started digging. Istak took a spade and worked at the other end, the blade sinking quickly into the sandy loam. Soon, the hole was deep, up to their waists, and Istak clambered up, his body dripping with sweat. Dalin, too, was tired and her face was damp with sweat. They had worked in silence.