Francisco Jose - Dusk

It was true then what Padre Jose had said, that there is evil in all of us, that only with faith and its capacity for exorcism can we master this evil.

“Where are we now? And how long have we been traveling?” he asked.

“A week,” she said. “We are still close to the mountains, but in a day we will be down by the shore. We have been harvesting wild bananas and green papayas.”

“How long before we get to the sea?”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

He went back to sleep and dreamed that he was flying, floating over the caravan, scouting far ahead of it the plain beyond the hills. He floated above the treetops and waved at those below; he soared with ease in any direction he wished; it was such a natural thing for him to fly. Then he saw the narrow road which cut the mountainside and skirted the coast, and ahead were hundreds of Guardia waiting. They would all pass through this dreaded funnel, they could not hurdle the mountain.

He woke up at noon and remembered the dream. He called for Ba-ac, who came to the cart immediately. They propped him up on a sack of grain. Beyond the line of carts, a dense growth of scrub, butterfly trees browned by the dry season.

“Father, we will soon reach the Spanish road and we will all be searched there.”

“I know,” Ba-ac said sadly. In the light, his father seemed much older. “But there is no other way.”

“We must cross singly,” Istak said. “They will not think of stopping or searching just one cart. One at night, one in the daytime. And we should all then meet … but where?”

Dalin, who knew the road, was ready with a suggestion. “Before we reach the Abra River,” she said, “we cannot miss that, we will wait till everyone is there.”

Istak had passed the road many times when he and Padre Jose traveled to Abra. The people were forced into building it, just as, even now, the ilustrados were forcing the people to work for nothing, exacting punishment if they refused. It was a narrow dirt road flanked by brick embankments, gently sloping with the descent of the hills, clinging to the strip of land before it plunged into a rocky coast. There were battering waves during the typhoon season, but the sea this time of the year should be blue and calm.

“If you look long enough,” Dalin said, “you can see the bottom.”

That night, Istak could not sleep. He lay, waiting for each lurch as the cart dipped into ruts or went over stones, the swish of tall grass as they cut through outgrowths.

“Where are we?” he asked. Dalin was in front, holding on to the reins of the bull. She turned briefly and shushed him. They must be passing again through dreaded territory and the wheels had been greased anew with coconut oil so they would not creak.

Istak closed his eyes but could not sleep. The pit in his stomach deepened. He would endure the hunger till morning. What was it compared to what awaited them in this dark maw of night? Even the Guardia were not safe here. But the cocks — they would give them away by their crowing. He was alarmed.

“They have all been killed,” Dalin assured him.

Morning again; the sky lightened slowly and the stars winked out. Istak could raise half his body now. They were on a rise of ground and close by the forest, with the mountain rising behind the tall trees. On one side, through the curtain of tall grass, the land plummeted to the sea, and there, like a brown line on the coast, was the Spanish road.

Even at this time of the year, when the land was scorched, the forest was a deep green, throbbing with secret life. Farther up the mountain, the green turned into a purplish black that cloaked the foothills all the way up to the peaks.

The forest was hostile, with unseen threats, but every year before the rains started he and the old priest had ventured without fear into it and beyond to the land of the Bagos — the Igorots, the ancient enemies of his people. He had listened, entranced, to the dal-lot and the life of Lam-ang, the epic hero whose courage and strength were tested in battles with them.

In times of peace, the Bagos came down, half-naked, their torsos caked with dirt, their spears glinting and awe-inspiring. But they did not come to fight, merely to trade their baskets, their dried deer meat for dogs, tobacco, and fibers for their looms. He could recognize them even if they dressed like Christians because they were short and squat, their backs broad, their legs muscular. They chewed betel nut continuously and their teeth were blacker than those of his own people. As a boy in Po-on he did not fear them; it was the Komaw that frightened him, that huge and ugly kidnapper of children who would take him away if he did not behave as his mother instructed him.

Only the Bagos lived in these mountains, kindred to the wild boar and the python. They were hunters who could merge with the foliage, become one with the bush until they assumed the mystery of the forest as well, sharing its darkness and its sensuous promise. But there was no promise in the forest now. It was a black redoubt to be sundered so that its soil would bear the seed. It cannot be, it must not be the haven of those who fear the light — and Istak recalled again the dim sacristy of the church in Cabugaw and how secure he felt there with the ghosts of the past, of the nameless and innumerable dead in all those records that he had kept, his fear melting in the air he breathed. It was a far more mysterious forest which they would now face, and perhaps — he shuddered at the thought — they would not be able to go beyond it.

It was the fourth day since the first two carts had left carrying Bit-tik and his aunt Simang. All the departures from the hollow of the hill were timed so that the carts would be on the coastal road late in the night or in the deep, deep dawn. It was Ba-ac who went first on foot and alone, balancing on his shoulder a small sack of rice, his stub of an arm on a sling of coarse Ilokano cloth. He was carrying this sack of rice as a wedding present to a niece in Candon; he was walking all the way even at night, hoping he would not miss the wedding. Istak had been to Candon, of course — it was a very prosperous town, one of the stations where Padre Jose used to stop for additional provisions before they turned left toward Tirad and the perpetual challenge of the Cordilleras.

Four days, and Istak wondered if all that he had taught them would be remembered, if they would be able to pretend that their destinations were not the same.

Now it was his turn and Dalin’s. They had spent the last three days waiting. Dalin was never idle; she had tended the bull, done some sewing and cooking. There was always something a woman could do while a man mused and pondered his fate. The day comes different from all others, night quickly falls, and sometimes it is best to be silent, to be alone with one’s thoughts. But for her I would be dead — but for her — there must be some purpose for this long journey other than shredding the soles, just as life is one journey from one night to another. So it must be, exitus and reditus , leaving and coming, and in between, the uncertainty which numbs the heart and lacerates the soul. But perhaps, though it is broken now, the body will be reborn — just as a tree might be ravaged by all forms of blight, yet in spite of its frailty, its fruit can be sweet because the tree itself comes from a good seed.

Dalin had calculated the distance very well; they left the hollow after they had supped on green papayas with pieces of chicken. She had cooked the food before sundown when the cooking fire would not reveal their presence. For a while, Dalin walked the bull through thickets of bamboo and shallow gullies; inside the cart, Istak remained still, braced as he was between two sacks so that the wound would not reopen.