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.”
Don Jacinto stared out of the window at a plaza washed with morning sun and glinting on the new grass. “It is a still a long way to the valley, you know. Rotten trails all the way now that the rains have come. A
nd I am sure, the pass across the mountains in San Jose would be impassable in parts, very muddy, if not washed away. You can stay here, you know …”
Istak looked at the handsome profile. There was kindness and compassion in the man, and Istak knew at once that he could be trusted, mestizo though he was.
“We have to hurry, Don Jacinto,” he said evenly. “Even now, I know we have but little time. When the ferry is back …”
“Arc you fleeing from anyone?” Don Jacinto asked. How quickly the man had guessed their plight! “If you are, you don’t have to run anymore. You can hide here, in the forest close to the mountain, in the cogonal near the delta. You must work hard.”
Istak did not speak. “My father, they are looking for him, Apo, but he is dead …”
Don Jacinto waved a hand and smiled. “Do not tell me why. I can guess the reason. After all, you are not the only ones running away. There are so many of you, and I understand.”
“We have no cédulas, Apo,” Istak said plainly.
Again, the low, pleasant laugh. “Pieces of paper,” Don Jacinto said. “You can get new ones here. I’ll help you. And if you are worried about having new names—no one need know about this.”
Istak was silent. He had said more than he should have but, again, almost instinctively, he knew this man, this rich mestizo, was not like Capitán Berong or any of the mestizos in the Ilokos who flourished because they pandered to the friars. Don Jacinto would not betray them, though he may on occasion have pandered, too.
“I can help you,” he continued. “You must help mc, too. I have land which I cannot clear or plant because there are not enough hands for it. You can work there …” Then he turned to Istak. “There is plenty of land here—across the creek are more cogonals, mounds, many, many trees. They are yours if you can clear them. So why don’t you work for me and I will give you all the seed rice you need? There is still time—if you want to stay—to prepare some of the fallow land for planting.”
Already, Istak could envision fields of ripening grain, all theirs, and no priest telling them to leave. Already, he could imagine himself building a house, and asking Dalin to live with him.
The rich man told them to sleep in the large bodega roofed with iron sheets beyond the house should the rains come strong in the evening. They could store their things there while they built their houses.
After they had eaten breakfast, all the men went with Don Jacinto beyond the town, onward to the still unplowed farmlands spread on both sides. They reached a small creek, brown and full.
“It dries easily after the rainy season,” Don Jacinto explained. “Since this is all rainwater, when it stops raining, the creek becomes shallow and there are places where you can cross on foot, although a simple bamboo bridge would help. You can build a better one when the dry season comes.”
A bamboo raft was tethered to a sapling near the bank and they pushed it to the other side; the creek was not really wide, no more than a length of bamboo, and it was not swift the way the Agno was.
Across the creek, more cogon wastes dotted with mounds as far as the eye could see. Don Jacinto described an are to the right: “All this is my land,” he explained. “And beyond the cogonal are swamps—you will see, they never really dry up, even when it does not rain anymore. There are a lot of mudfish there—as big as your legs—and you will always have snails and frogs—if you have the patience to look for them—even in the dry season.”
In the horizon, to the west, an uneven line of trees. “When he was a boy, my father planted those to mark where his father had said the land was theirs. It is all recorded in the titles I keep. How can I farm all of this?” He spread out his hands in a gesture of futility. Istak was surprised; Don Jacinto’s hands were rough like any farmer’s. The rich man knew what he was talking about. More cogonals to the left, and within the near distance, all the way to the foothills of Balungaw mountain, the forest began—a thick, green canopy upon the land, brooding and secret.
“The forest belongs to no one—it is yours to clear if you want. Mark the land you clear. I told you, you don’t have to go to the valley. Here there is land for everyone who wants to sweat for it.” Turning to Istak, Don Jacinto whispered warmly, “It is also a good place to hide.”
Then, as if dragged into some deep misgivings, the rich man’s countenance changed. He shook his head, mumbled, then inhaled deeply. The lines in his brow deepened. “I hope I am not giving you false hopes,” he said softly, as if in apology. “The most powerful people in this part of the country are the Asperris; they are Spanish, they own whole villages, all the way to Balungaw to the east and Santa Maria to the north. They own the biggest house in this region—you will see it on the way to San Pedro—a castle of a house, with many, many rooms, and a tower—a massive building of brick. They came here much earlier than my grandfather and only God knows if they have title to the mountain, too. I am sure that this land that I am showing you, which I tell you is mine, is really mine. Help mc, too, if you can.”
They left Don Jacinto by the creek, then they headed toward the forest, beating a path through the high grass, disturbing pigeons in their nests, and gathering their eggs in their palm-leaf hats. Although the rains had come, new cogon shoots had not sprouted yet. If only the sun would shine the whole day and tomorrow, they could set fire to large tracts to make them easier to plow.
They reached the forest before midday, first the primary growth of trees, and as they went deeper, the forest thickened, tall trees blotting out the sun, vines clambering everywhere, the earth damp and wet, smelling of rot and the decaying veneer of the land. When Padre Jose and Istak went to the Bagos, the forest they passed was a fearful domain whose recesses could never be reached, where death could waylay those who did not treat the forest with respect. It was a haven for the Bagos, who knew how to live from its surfeit, a sanctuary to the remontados who had escaped the wrath of the Spanish. It was neither haven nor threat—it was an enemy to be vanquished, and the conquest must be complete—not a single tree must stand so that the good earth would yield its blessings at last. Grimly, Istak recalled what the old men of Po-on had said, how they, too, had cleared the lands below the Cordillera. They had poured their sweat, even their blood, into each patch. And how did it all end for them? For Ba-ac? The land belonged to the King of Spain—all of it, and the King’s ministers were the friars—it was they who benefited from the land for which they had shed not a drop of sweat.
But he was not here to question, no matter how painful the memory. There was power which was man’s, and there was power which was God’s alone.
At Vespers that evening, Istak went to the church. Like most of the churches of the new towns which they had passed, the church in Rosales was quite small, unlike the stone churches in the Ilokos. The floor was hardened earth—it would be some time before the town would be prosperous enough to have a church of brick. How would he ever thank God for their new fortune? Dalin, most of all? He owed her his life. What, after all, was belief or faith? It was easy for Jesus to want to live, not die, but He died. Did He know He would rise from the dead? His agony was real. So, then, perhaps it is faith that is tested, not by those who will kill for it but by those who will die for it. I have not lost faith, Istak cried within himself. I will always be under this holy roof, but not under the bell.
Yet now, more than at any other time, this implacable sorrow hounded him—the knowledge that they were forced to leave the warm womb of home that had nourished them. If they had not left, if they had not been ordered to depart immediately, surely Ba-ac and Mayang would still be alive. Was all this part of a divine plan which no man, least of all himself, could sunder?
I have always worshipped You according to Your rules, given You proper obeisance, and still You were unmindful of Your son in his hour of need. Where, then, did they all go—my hours of penance? Were they lost in the ether? But You are wise and ever-present like the air I breathe. You snatched me from Death once, and perhaps will again, and s
till again. And each time Your gift of life is renewed, I stray further from You. What really was my suffering? How could it ever compare with what You suffered on the cross? You have tested me and though I have faltered many times, still I have been true. There must be some deeper reason why I am this way, why men commit themselves to something they cannot touch or see. If You are the God of my people, how could You also be the God of those who oppress us?
He had not cried when his mother died, and now Istak wept, the tears burning in his eyes. All the bruises that had hurt in the last few days became this vise clamped upon his chest.
His mother. His father. They had paid dearly. Their flight had come to an end.
It did not rain that night, so they did not go to Don Jacinto’s storehouse to sleep; it was wide and empty until the next harvest season, when it would be full again with the rich man’s share of the harvest.
After supper, they gathered around Dalin’s cart, now Istak’s as well. Above it, from a low branch of the balete tree, a lamp dangled and lighted up their faces, work-weary—yet alight with hope. The children had all been put to bed, but the older ones were awake, trying to listen to what was being said.
“You have seen the forest,” Istak said. “It will take us years before we can clear it.”
“We will burn the trees during the dry season,” Kardo, the youngest brother of Ba-ac, said. He had some experience clearing the forest beyond Cabugaw.
“We will plant whatever we can in the land we clear,” An-no said. “We will trap the wild pigs and deer that will come to destroy the crops, and we will raise our families here,” he continued, his eyes touching Orang, beside Dalin at the other end of the circle. She had overcome her shame and no longer kept to herself. Dalin had drawn her out slowly. In the tawny light of the lamp, her long hair shone.
Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) Page 16
