Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Meanwhile, the colonel held forth, his fork mostly in the air, one hand gripping his tumbler as if pinning it to the table. He spoke in a Boston Irish accent overlaid by years on air force bases in Texas and Georgia. “Lansdale’s one true goal is to know the people, to learn from them. His efforts amount to art.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Pitchfork. “Completely irrelevant, but hear, hear!” “Edward Lansdale is an exemplary human being,” the colonel said. “I say it without blushing.” “And what has Lansdale got to do with the aswang or any of our other legends?” Eddie said.

“Let me say it again, and maybe you’ll hear me this time,” the colonel said. “Edward Lansdale’s overriding fascination is with the people themselves, with their songs, their stories, their legends. Whatever comes out of that fascination in the way of intelligence—do you get it? — it’s all by-product. God, that fish was skinny. Sebastian, where’s my little fish? Where did it go? Hey—are you giving him my fish?” The houseboy Sebastian at that very moment was offering Skip a second go at the platter of bangos. Skip knew this to be the colonel’s favorite. Had even the cook been warned of this visit? “Okay, I’ve landed a whale,” the colonel said, taking another helping. “I’ll postpone telling you my story about the aswang.”

Sebastian, unbidden, forked yet a third fish onto the colonel’s plate and headed for the kitchen, laughing to himself. Back there the staff talked loudly, happily. Around the colonel and his kidding, Filipinos grew giddy. His obvious affection for them had a way of driving them nuts. Eddie too. He’d unbuttoned his tunic and switched from ice water to Chardonnay. Skip could see the evening ending with phonograph records littering the polished floor and everybody doing the Limbo Rock, falling on their asses. Suddenly Eddie said, “I knew Ed Lansdale! I worked with him extensively!”

Had he? Eddie? Skip didn’t see how this could be true.

“Anders,” Skip asked Pitchfork, “what is the scientific name of this fish?”

“The bangos? It’s called milkfish. It spawns upriver, but lives in the sea. Chanos salmoneus.” Eddie said, “Pitchfork speaks several languages.” The bangos were tasty, troutlike, not at all fishy. AID had helped put

in a hatchery at the bottom of the mountain. The colonel ate steadily and carefully, stripping the morsels of flesh from the tiny bones with his fork and washing them down with several whiskeys during the meal. His habits hadn’t changed: after five each evening he drank voluminously and without apology. The family’s not-quite-articulated assumption was that the Irish drank, but drinking before five was undisciplined and decadent, and patrician. “Tell us about the aswang. Give us a tall tale,” he said to Eddie.

“Well, all right,” Eddie agreed, once again assuming, Skip believed, some of the character of his Henry Higgins, “let’s see; once upon a time, which is how these things begin, there lived a brother and sister with their mother, who was in fact a widow following the death of the father in a tragic accident of some kind, I’m sorry I don’t remember what kind, but I’m sure it was heroic. I’m sorry you didn’t give me a warning to consult with my grandmother! But in any case I’ll try to remember the tale. Two young children, a brother and sister, and now I apologize once more, because it was a pair of orphans, both their parents had been killed, and it was not after all their mother, but their mother’s old aunt who was caring for them in a hut some distance from one of our villages in Luzon. Perhaps our own village of San Marcos, I’m certainly not ruling that out. The boy was strong and brave, the young girl was beautiful and kind. The great-aunt was—well, you can predict, I’m sure—she liked to torment the two fine children with too many tasks, too much harsh language, and blows with a broom to get them to hurry up. The brother and sister obeyed her without complaining, because in fact they were quite dutiful.

“The village had been happy a long time, but lately a curse had fallen, and a bloodthirsty aswang fed on the lambs, also upon the young goats, and worst of all it fed on the little children, and especially on the young girls like the sister. Sometimes the aswang was seen as an old woman, sometimes in the form of a gigantic boar with savage tusks, sometimes even as a lovely young child to lure the little ones into the shadows and suck their innocent blood. The people of the region were terrified, they failed to smile anymore, they stayed in the houses at night near their candles, they never went to the forest, to the jungle, to gather the avocados or any beneficial plants, or to hunt for meat. They gathered in the chapel of the village each afternoon to pray for the death of the aswang, but nothing helped, and, even, they were sometimes suddenly taken in a bloody murder while walking home from these prayers.

“Well, in the manner of these things, a saint appeared to the brother and sister, Saint Gabriel in the rags of a wanderer one day coming along in the jungle. He met the children at the well when they came to get some water, and he gave the boy a bow and a sack of arrows—what do you call that sack?”

“A quiver,” Pitchfork said.

“A quiver of arrows. That’s rather a beautiful phrase. He gave the lad a quiver of arrows and a very strong bow and charged him to stay all night in the granary at the bottom of the path, because there he would slay the aswang. Many cats gathered in the granary at night, one of whom was in fact the aswang, who assumed this form in order to camouflage. ‘But, sir, how will I know the aswang, because you haven’t given me arrows to shoot every cat?’ And Saint Gabriel said, ‘The aswang will not play with its rat when it catches one, it only tears the rat in pieces instantly and revels in its blood. When you see a cat do that, you must shoot him right away, because that one is the aswang. Of course, if you fail, I don’t have to inform you you’re going to feel yourself being torn apart by the fangs of the aswang, and it will drink your blood as you die.’

” ‘I am not afraid,’ the boy said, ‘because I know you are Saint Gabriel in a disguise. I am not afraid, and with the help of the saints, I won’t fail.’

“When the boy returned to his home with these arrows and such, the aunt of his dead and departed mother was refusing to let him go out. She said he must sleep in his bed every night. She attacked him with her broom and confiscated his weapons and hid them in the thatch of the hut. But for the first time, the boy disobeyed his guardian and stole them back that night, and crept away to the granary with one candle, and waited in the shadows of the place, and I will assure you they were very eerie shadows! And silhouettes of rats scurrying among the shadows. And silhouettes of cats creeping everywhere, about three dozen. Which one would be the aswang? Let me just tell you that a pair of fangs glowed red in the night, the hiss of an aswang was heard, then the cry, and as a horrible visage leapt at his throat, the boy loosed an arrow and heard a thump when the creature fell back, and then a strangled moaning came, and then he heard the claws scraping as the wounded fiend dragged itself to protection somewhere. Surveying the scene, the young hero found the severed leg of a giant cat with deadly claws, the left foreleg, and his arrow was lodged through and through it.

“The young hero returned home, and his ugly old guardian scolded him. His sister was also awake. Great-Aunt served them tea and some rice. ‘Where did you go, brother?’ ‘I fought the aswang, sister, and I think I wounded it.’ And sister said, ‘Beloved Aunt, you too were absent in the night. Where were you?’

” ‘I?’ said the beloved aunt. ‘No, I was here with you all night.’ But she served the tea quickly, and made her excuses to go lie down.