Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks)

by F. Sionil Jose

  CHAPTER

  11

  The first time—there is always the first time when recognition and discovery come. The knowledge brings the inner vision with which even the blind can see, and reality is no longer something to touch but to covet. Here it was, then, the first time that Istak realized that he could heal, and with it, the exaltation that he had become not a destroyer but what he had always hoped to be, a giver of life.

  In November, on the day of the dead, the three brothers journeyed to the Agno. The river was no longer swollen, for the rains had dwindled and the sun came out steady and strong. The few plots planted to the three-month rice had already been harvested, and along the way, they came across Ilokanos who had come down from the north to help in the main harvest. They would stay on to glean the fields.

  Every November Istak went to the river, and again he carried a length of siitan which he would cut and make into a small raft when he reached the riverbank. Dalin had prepared the usual offering—a coconut bowl of soft sticky rice cooked in coconut milk. A shelled hard-boiled egg was embedded in the middle, and beside the coconut bowl Istak would place a hand-rolled cigar and a betel nut; then he would put a lighted candle atop the raft and its offering, pray the Rosary, and let the raft float down with the current. Somewhere, amid the reeds or deep in the murk and loam of the great river, Mayang’s spirit would know she was remembered.

  They had done all this and now it was high noon—time for the lunch of rice with strips of dried deer meat which Dalin had wrapped in banana leaves, time to dive again for those sticks of pine washed down from the mountain. Thrice a year they went to this river for kindling wood to case the kitchen chores through the soggy days of the rainy season. When the winds were gusty and the oil lamps would flicker, then dim, the lighted pine splinter gave a steady, sooty flame.

  The river was clearer. It eddied slowly—a green and living thing. There was hardly any spot now where the water was higher than a man’s head and they could explore the bottom with their feet. It was easy to recognize the driftwood they were after. With a bolo Bit-tik skimmed off the veneer. Pine wood was always scented and yellowish.

  By midafternoon they had gathered enough kindling pine and the bull cart was half full with driftwood as well. The sun blazed down, and beyond Carmay they rested in the shade of an acacia tree.

  An-no was in the cart, holding the reins of the carabao. He turned to Istak suddenly and shook his head. “There is something wrong with me,” he said. “I feel dizzy, and my head seems to be splitting apart.”

  Istak felt his brother’s temple—indeed, it was hot, although they were in the shade. And his pulse was beating very fast. “It must have been the coldness of the river,” Istak said. “Or it must have been something you ate this morning.” What could his brother have eaten in Cabugawan that he himself had not?

  He made An-no lie down on the floor of the cart and over his face he laid a banana leaf to shield him from the afternoon sun. Then An-no rose quickly and retched.

  That night, back in Cabugawan, An-no could not sleep. Orang and the two small children gathered around him, watching him vomit and defecate in the batalan. Toward early dawn, when his vomit was nothing more than water, chills shook him. They called Istak, who told them to cover him with blankets until the chills subsided. In the morning, An-no was as pale as a cadaver, and seeing him thus, Istak told them all to leave the house so that he could minister to his brother alone.

  All that he had learned in Cabugaw came to mind—the medicinal plants, the human body, even astronomy—all the minutiae that Padre Jose had taught him. But of what use were these if it was the spirit of the river that had been displeased?

  Then he remembered the guava which he had planted near the spring, the spring which he had dug by the mound and which was now funneled by a series of bamboo tubes to irrigate his farm and to water the tuber pond.

  He rushed down and ran to the bangcag with an earthen jar which he filled with water. And from the guava tree which had grown he gathered a handful of young leaves, and with these he went back, told An-no’s wife to boil the leaves, and have him drink as much of the brew as his stomach could hold.

  A weak, almost lifeless man—his head held up by his wife—An-no took short drafts of the brew, then lay down. Squatting on the bamboo floor beside him, Istak closed his eyes in prayer. And in that small damp room smelling of tobacco and sweat and imminent death, he was catapulted to another time and place, to a vast white void where he was surrounded by luminous unearthly shapes as if he were within a cloud, and he was stretching his arms, beseeching, asking the unknown around him for his brother’s life.

  When he opened his eyes again, they were all in the room—Bit-tik, the children, Orang, even Dalin—all staring at him as if he were some apparition. And beside him, An-no—the color returned to his skin, his eyes open, too, as if he had just wakened. He asked softly if there was food in the kitchen.

  The following day they brought a four-year-old boy to Istak—the son of his own cousin. His belly was swollen. Istak knew at once it was not air, worms, or food, but a boil that must be lanced.

  He looked within himself, at the new life he had obtained for An-no; it was not just the guava leaves and his brew that had helped. It was his prayer, his faith in the Almighty ever present in the very air he breathed, watching and helping him! Of this he was now sure when he raised his hand—it was as if the hand were no longer his, no longer subject to his will. His right hand calmly pressing the swollen side of the boy had become an instrument, a knife. Where his forefinger had pointed, there spurted thick, greenish pus. It spilled on the bamboo floor and down to the earth below. He pressed the belly until no more pus oozed from it. He had merely wished the child’s belly to open, to drain it of its poison, and that was what had happened. Where the wound should have been, there was just this slight indention, the skin untouched and whole. They had all seen it—the children, the women, the men—their eyes wide in supreme awe. Eustaquio, their cousin, their uncle, their neighbor, was blessed with faith. He would be the true light that would lead them.

  Within him, Istak cried in humility and wonder: I am no different from you! We come from the same Po-on and here we are cast together by fate. So it is only I who know so much, but you have knowledge, too, which I do not have—the knowledge that each of us retains, as experience has given it to us, that which is ours and ours alone.

  The affliction that had almost taken the life of An-no was not confined to Cabugawan. Soon enough, there spread stories of how people were dying in the south, not by the dozens but by the hundreds. Manila, where there were many médicos titulados, was not spared by the plague; the whole city was engulfed for days by smoke from fires that were stoked constantly so that the plague would be fumigated away.

  As the hot season dried up the rivers into stagnant pools, as the heat festered and Apo Init bore down upon the land like an avenging ball of fire, the plague took more victims in Rosales and in the villages that ringed it.

  “Do not go to town,” Istak told his relatives, at the same time wondering when it would strike the village in full force. “We are self-sufficient here, we will keep our village free.”

  He could not stop, however, those who sought his help, the sick in the neighboring villages who had heard of his healing powers.

  It was shortly before the Angelus on a particularly hot and humid day that Istak himself finally became afflicted. It came as a hot flush of fever which engulfed him totally, enervating him, fogging his senses. Then he was defecating and vomiting as well.

  By nightfall, he knew that cholera had gotten into his system. He told Dalin to leave the house, to stay away from him until death claimed him, and that when it happened, they should not touch him or anything he had used, for surely the contagion in his body would strike her, too.

  “This cannot be, my husband,” Dalin wailed.

  “Do as I tell you, Old Woman,” he said weakly.

  Dalin did not leave him. She b
rought him instead plenty of water to drink, water from the spring and brewed from the guava leaves. And she washed him with the same water when he could no longer move.

  Tearfully, she walked into the night assisted by An-no and Bit-tik and made the brew in an open fire in the yard, not just for Istak, but for everyone.

  While there was still a little sense to his mind and he could still pray, softly Istak intoned: Ave Maria purísima, sin pecado concebida. Santo Dios, Santo Fuerte, líbranos, Señor de la peste y de todo mal … por vuestras Hayas, por vuestra líbranos de la peste, O divino Jesús …

  Days afterward, Dalin told him how his body had grown cold, how he sought the life-giving brew from the spring almost by instinct when he could no longer speak. Sometimes, in the night, he would mumble prayers, then lapse again into silence, while beside him, Dalin braved the pestilence and watched.

  On the third day, Dalin said, they thought he had become mad, for he suddenly started talking to someone whom they could not sec, someone in the room.

  He was damning the invisible visitor, telling him that he was paying too heavy a price for all that he was doing, that he wanted to be no more than what he had always been, a farmer like all of them, to live in peace, undisturbed by hallucinations and disordered dreams. He had gone back to sleep, froth in his mouth. And they were all afraid until he began to snore.

  Late in the night, he woke up, his body taut as a bowstring. The oil lamp was burning low on the wooden table at his feet. He turned fitfully and saw Dalin sitting upright by the window.

  A shouting in the yard had wakened him; he wanted to rise, but it seemed as if his whole being were tied to the floor.

  It was not he who did it; it was my father, but he is dead. What do you want of us? Haven’t you sought us long enough? Did you not leave me for dead? I have a new life, I am no longer the man you left in Po-on with a hole in his chest, he wanted to shout. But no word escaped his mouth.

  His ears picked up the minutest sound, the snap of house lizards on the beams, the shuffling of horses’ hooves in the yard, even their slow breathing, and most of all, he now recognized that voice, rasping and almost effeminate, could almost see the man speaking; how could he ever forget the last words that he had heard from him? Or that blaze of red that had exploded in his face before he was lost to the world?

  “Do you think you can run away from Spanish justice? To the highest mountain? The deepest jungle? There is no running away!”

  Yes, Capitán Gualberto had caught up with them.

  He lifted his arms, but they did not respond; a shout erupted from his lips, but he heard no sound; more shouts in the yard, and as he struggled with words that would not be freed, a sudden weakness came over him—his body had withered; he could feel it shrink smaller and smaller until all memory and all feeling were stilled.

  Morning. On the brink of this lightless day, the beating of his heart was a faint echo in his ears. He realized that he was breathing and could hear his lungs sucking in air. He wanted to lift his arms again, but they were numb. It all came back, the voice of Capitán Gualberto in the yard, the scuffling there, and yes, Dalin had whispered to him: “They are taking An-no! They will not bring him back!”

  Fools! He is my brother, yes, but he is an ignorant farmer who can hardly write his name. What did he ever do to you? It is I who did everything, who sent my father on an errand of death. It is I who should pay …

  There was no more scuffling in the yard. He would remember it all clearly later, but now his mind was clouded and all that he could perceive was this narrow room, this sad-eyed woman bending over him.

  He lifted his eyes to the grass roof, where a house lizard clung motionless to a bamboo rafter, and then at Dalin again. Tears gathered in her eyes. “Thank God,” she murmured.

  His strength was returning slowly; he raised his hands—they were not his and he recoiled at the sight, the bones kept together by brown, withered skin. And his palms, when he turned them, were white and bloodless.

  What happened to me? he wanted to ask, but all he could hear was a meaningless rasp, not his own.

  “You are alive,” Dalin murmured in his car.

  He lifted the coarse Ilokano blanket and saw the big bones that were his knees. His thighs, his legs—they were withered, too. Shocked, frightened, how did all this happen? It was only last night that he had gone to sleep.

  Dalin had hurried to the kitchen and returned with a bowl which she set on the floor. Then, propping his head against the buri wall, she fed him a spoonful. The soft-boiled rice was spiced with strips of onion but the aroma escaped him and so did its taste. It scalded his mouth and tongue. The gritty gruel sank quickly and brought a warm glow all over his middle. It brought, too, a new kind of throbbing to his head, and he was conscious now of the nearness, the soft nudging of Dalin’s breast against his shoulder. His hand had become sweaty and, trembling, he sought the cool, smooth touch of the bamboo floor and the breeze that came up through the house from beneath it.

  “Eat now,” Dalin said, dipping the spoon again into the bowl. “It has been a month—a month that you were very ill, that you knew nothing.”

  “A month? It cannot be—just seven days, just seven days …” He sighed, then with eyes closed so that he would not see the house suddenly turning over, he sank back onto the floor.

  “My husband,” Dalin said huskily. “You have to live—not for me, but for the child I am carrying …”

  This was the moment of revelation, and he would have wanted to see her in her full splendor, drink her very essence, wallow in her tenderness, but he did not dare open his eyes for fear that he would be suspended in midair, that she would not be within the frame of his vision but would be mist, as even now, with his eyes closed, he was sinking into a vast hollow, the world was whirling, and he could not stop it.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Think, remember how it was, the very beginning when the fever suffused you. Is there ever a beginning with no end? We have always been here and shall pass as all others have, leaving nothing behind.

  The dizziness ebbed, he dozed off into a limbo, and when he woke, it was already light—not dark as he remembered; the sun splashed on the buri wall. He tried to rise but could not. His head had become a leaden ball. He lay still, all sense of direction dulled, and the small house itself seemed to be falling into an abyss.

  It was Dalin again who stopped the fall; she came in and by her very presence steadied him. She placed a bamboo chair before the window, then returned to him, went down on her knees—so close that he could smell the sun on her skin, the honey in her breath.

  “You can sit there,” she said.

  He tried to rise but to his amazement there was no strength in either his arms or legs. “I am not strong,” he said. She bent still closer to him and held him in the crook of his legs and shoulders so that he snuggled to her, and as a mother would take a baby from the crib, she lifted him and gently propped him on the chair.

  He saw what the new world was—the sun a white flood upon the plain, so green and shiny he could feel the earth throb. In the sky, clouds billowed in masses of kapok white. This was creation itself and Istak began to cry.

  It came back—the dim voices in the night, his brother An-no shouting in the yard, the scuffle there, the curses, and Dalin, her face taut with despair.

  “What happened to An-no?”

  His words were clear but she merely looked at him and did not speak.

  “Tell me,” he insisted, turning away from the window and the new life framed there.

  “They took him away,” she said sadly. “He claimed as his what your father did. They wanted to get you but he said it was he. You were very ill. We understood.”

  “That his life was not worth as much as mine?”

  She looked at him and did not reply.

  “They showed us his body—they wanted us to know. Then they gave it to us. He had a good funeral.”

  For a long time he did not speak;
head bowed, he closed his eyes and brought to mind how it was, the journey that brought them to this land and to the beginning which was Po-on. Again, those days when An-no, Bit-tik, and he were small, roaming the green fields in May, searching for the first growths of saluyot that their mother cooked with grasshoppers which they had caught to eat as well, three brothers swimming in the river, gathering the fruits of camantres and lomboy that grew wild there. What did these years engender? He had been away from them for ten years and yet, though there were enmities among them, the bond had endured—reaffirmed by a supreme act of love. Why did An-no do it when he could just have remained silent and they would have taken him instead? Why did he do it and in doing so gamble as well? Istak was ill and dying—how could An-no have known that he would survive the fever? He turned all these questions over, remembering only what was good to remember of a past that he wanted to forget. Did he not even have a new name? He started to cry again, the tears scalding his eyes, trickling down his cheeks, and he shuddered, his thin frame shaking with the immensity of his grief.

  Dalin embraced him.

  One evening, when Istak was already well and could stand and walk around the house but not venture into the yard as yet, Bit-tik and Orang came with a big bowl of wild-pig meat stewed in vinegar. Bit-tik had trapped the animal that had been destroying the peanut patch at one end of his farm.

  Istak could eat his fill and would soon be strong enough to work in the bangcag, and teach and heal again. They ate in the kitchen, savoring the meat, Orang hardly speaking. Sadness still lingered in her face, but neither grief nor motherhood had destroyed her handsome features.

  “I want to ask you a question, Manong,” Bit-tik said when they were finished. Dusk was descending quickly, and in a while, Dalin would light the earthen oil lamp that dangled from a rafter, then join them squatting around the low table.

  “When was it that you could not ask me anything?” Istak asked.