The Cripple continued: “You will not attract attention—this is one reason why we have chosen you. Forgive me, Eustaquio—but you don’t look like a soldier or the ilustrado that you are. You are a farmer … the way I was.”
How well he had put it! The praise burned in Istak’s face. An ilustrado—so that was what he had become.
“The most important thing, Eustaquio,” the Cripple emphasized, “is not that we are not farmers anymore, but that we should never, never forget that we were.” He paused and looked at his old friend. Don Jacinto nodded.
The Cripple now told him what he was to do:
“Ride to Bayambang—that is where they will be tomorrow. They are moving very fast at night, with the Americans pursuing them. I should not tell you, but this knowledge should never leave you, not even if they torture you, that the president is headed for the Ilokos. He will cross the mountains into Cagayan. This is as much as I know and I cannot tell you more although I wish I could. There is no other way, Eustaquio. The Americans have landed in San Fabián and their cavalry has advanced already to San Jose, to the towns near here, San Quintín and Umingan. The escape route is sealed.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything, Apo,” Istak said, wondering when the Americans would backtrack to Rosales itself.
“I trust you,” the Cripple exclaimed. “If only we could learn to trust one another—Tagalogs trusting Ilokanos, Pampangos trusting Tagalogs. An Ilokano showed the way—more than a hundred years ago, Diego Silang trusted his neighbors. The people of Pangasinan became his allies. His rebellion was defeated, yes—but it was a beginning, the cooperation among the peoples of the north. More of this and, Eustaquio, we have a nation! Not this, not this …” The Cripple sighed and shook his head. From a folder on his desk, he withdrew a sheaf of papers. He picked out a few and began to read. “The defeat of the insurgents is inevitable; not only are they disunited and disorganized—they are also hated by the natives …” He paused, looked at Don Jacinto and Istak and asked: “Does it not sound familiar? It is this chauvinist Thomas Collins again, and his report tells of how bands and cheering crowds have welcomed them in the towns they have entered. Yes, this could all be true, maybe it is also true that there are many Filipinos who do not like war and want peace at any cost. But this … this!” The Cripple’s lips were compressed and anger flashed in his eyes. He returned to the paper he was reading and quietly continued: “Our forces are assisted by Macabebes—native scouts from Pampanga—who know the terrain and are familiar with insurgent methods. Like our Indian scouts in the Indian campaign, they are absolutely loyal to us …” The Cripple stopped, his head dropped, silence.
“There is truth in what this Collins says,” he finally said in a small, defeated voice. “How can we build trust among our own people? How can we make them confident of themselves and their countrymen so that they will not sell their souls for a few silver dollars? We need more leaders like Diego Silang.” He raised his thin arms in a gesture of futility, then dropped them on the table. “There is so much that the past can teach us,” he continued softly, as if he were talking more to himself than to anyone else. “Diego Silang—more than a hundred years ago, what did he prove? That with a brilliant and selfless leader, we can be united the way he united the north. And united, we can then make Filipinas strong, formidable …
“We have no time for remonstrances, fault-finding, self-scrutiny. We must only think of how we can survive. No, not us, but the republic. The president must not be captured.”
“They must flee quickly,” Don Jacinto said. “And to escape their pursuers, they need a very good guide, someone who knows those mountains. I have not forgotten what you have told me, Eustaquio.”
The Cripple opened the drawer on his desk and brought out a small brown envelope. “You must give this letter to the president, Eustaquio,” he said quickly. “If it is lost or if you have to destroy it, remember that this is what I have written in this letter, and you must repeat this to no one but him. No one, remember that. I believe that the war is lost, but not the struggle. The mistakes that were committed, we learn from them. We cannot fight an enemy as powerful as America in the manner with which they are slaughtering our men—with cavalry and cannon. We will fight them—I am simply reiterating this—in a guerrilla war everywhere. A long, costly war, not set battles and frontal attacks. They are well trained, well supplied. We should never stop and I—I will continue what I am doing—trying to reach the councils of the world, speaking of our rights. I will wage this campaign in their own newspapers, in the chambers of their own government. I will do this with the pen. Whatever we do, in whatever battlefield we fight, we must be united. The president is a just man. Tell him what I have told you—that this is not a Tagalog war, but a war involving all of us.”
One last question was burning in Istak’s mind; the Cripple, the president, all of them—surely they must know that the revolution had failed. And it had failed because the leaders could not see themselves as Filipinos. Always, they were men of Cavitc, of Bulacan, and now, he was Ilokano. How could anyone rise from his origins? Everything starts from there just as with him everything started in Po-on. But he asked it anyhow:
“Why do you persevere, Apo, if everything is lost?”
The question was lightning, perhaps, or thunder. Don Jacinto, who was listening to everything, head bowed, jerked up. The Cripple, immobile in his chair, leaned forward and raised his hands in an angry gesture, but slowly brought them down. In the morning light, his face had seemed solemn and at peace but suddenly the fire in his eyes banished all this. He breathed deeply, then spoke: “You say then that we must leave the leader to his fate? He has committed mistakes … but until he is captured or killed, he is not just a leader, he is a symbol of our struggle, of our will. Yes, we have already lost the war. This is true. Even an unlettered man can see this. This land belongs to us, Eustaquio, and someday, we will win. We lose now, but we will fight again, each one of us, until they tire, until they are bloodied and wearied, until we are free and justice triumphs.”
Istak had not ridden in years, but Don Jacinto assured him that Kimat, his beautiful chico-colored horse, was not a difficult animal. He should not forget to give the horse a piece of sugar cake every afternoon, together with the grass. Don Jacinto gave him fifty pesos—the largest sum Istak had ever had. The letter in a leather pouch was sewn into the jute mat that was to be his saddle. Farmers could not afford the leather saddle Kimat was used to. At the gate, Don Jacinto embraced him, reminding him what the Cripple had said: “Eustaquio, you are no longer Ilokano, you are Filipino.”
How would he tell Dalin what he was to do, where he was going? There were just the three of them who knew. Remembering the stories of torture the Americans had inflicted upon his people, he wondered about his capacity to be silent if his flesh was torn, or if his boys or his wife would be forfeit for what was entrusted to him. He had kept a few secrets to himself. Not even to the old priest from whom he had learned so much or to Dalin had he revealed how he had been aroused by Capitán Berong’s daughter. That was, of course, a trifling matter, important only to himself. What he knew involved not just the two friends who shared the secret with him, but, perhaps, a thousand others whose lives depended on how well he could keep the secret, then lead the president to the valley.
Don Jacinto held the reins for a while and patted his favorite horse on the head. Before he let go, he whispered to Istak: “Do not worry about your family.”
A chill wave collapsed on him. He might never return; how would he tell Dalin this? She had understood why he had to work for the Cripple for days. And how exhilarating it had been—to have the mind soar again, to speak again with someone who could scale those ethereal heights. He had forgotten the feeling, although on occasion something akin to it would lift him from his mundane self, when he brought back color to faces already marked by Death, when a bony arm still and numb responded to his touch. Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! Would Dalin understand?
For all her intelligence, she had never really thought much beyond what was circumscribed by Cabugawan. Nights he would lie awake, his arm laid across her breast, and they would talk not about what the Cripple had said but about the ripening corn, the sick, and why he had to see all who came to him as if a compulsion possessed him. How would he explain to her the sickness which he had survived, which ordained him to do what he was doing? And now, no dream hastened him, nothing but a cripple’s words—yet they were all that mattered.
Even without Istak’s telling her, Dalin knew how much he had enjoyed writing again. The time would come when the words he shaped would spring to life, and these same words would claim him—not as words but as a promise, as Vigan in the past had been, and perhaps, someday, Manila—all the evocations that the Cripple had made. Manila, where people could appreciate better what he did with words and prayers; Manila, where there were more men like the Cripple. But it was not to that Queen City he was headed. He was going back to the north, to the beginning.
Later: How would he tell his sons? Antonio was not even ten and though the boy already knew how to plow straight furrows and control the plowshare so that it did not sink too deep, still he was just a boy. And Pedro, who could help in the transplanting of rice, in the pasturing of the carabaos, who was as proficient as his older brother at reading and writing—what would happen to them? They would not starve as long as Dalin was alive, that was true. He regretted that he had spent so little time with them.
Kimat cantered through the narrow lane bordered with flowering madre de cacao trees. The jute-mat saddle held the letter sewn within, the silver pesos were in his pocket. Slung across the horse’s back was the bag with cakes of cane sugar. He would add to his pack rice, salt, and dried beef. It would suffice. With money, he could always buy provisions on the way.
Antonio’s dog, Kebaan, barked in greeting when he approached; the barking frightened the horse, which reared, but only for an instant. Kimat became still as soon as Istak smoothed his mane and said a few soothing words. All the boys in the neighborhood who had heard the neighing rushed out of their homes to look at the beautiful beast, bigger than the ponies which pulled the calesas. Though Don Jacinto had been to Cabugawan a few times, Kimat always drew attention from the children. Their own uncle astride the steed impressed upon them all of their uncle’s importance, that something unknown, exciting, was happening.
Dalin came down the stairs. Through the open door, the kitchen fire reached out to them with its warm glow. Istak, tying Kimat to a gatepost, could discern at once the anxiety in her face as she approached. He held her by the waist and drew her up to the house, leaving the boys in the yard to admire the horse.
“That is Don Jacinto’s mount,” she said. “Where are you going?”
He did not reply; instead, he kissed her softly on the brow. It was moist with perspiration. “Do not be angry, Old Woman,” he said affectionately. “Just do not forget that you are precious to me and that I will always treasure you in my mind and heart.”
The concern in her face deepened. He told her everything without any embellishment, and when he was through, she embraced him and cried, “I may not see you again. I have waited for this day, I knew it would come.”
She had always been brave. Like the house posts uprooted from the Ilokos, she was also sturdy. She would be able to withstand the long wait, the uncertainty, he assured himself as he held her, feeling the quiver in her body, the trickle of her tears against his cheek. “I will return, just wait,” he whispered.
He left her so she could finish her cooking, the smell of the vegetable stew clinging to his nostrils. This was the pleasure of home he would certainly miss, and briefly, he wondered where he would have his breakfast; the road to Bayambang was not within his compass and he did not know of a single eating place along the way.
At his instruction, his older son had gone quickly to the neighbors, to Bit-tik first. Now the men, the women, and children were gathered in the yard, sitting on their haunches, on the long wooden mortar where the sheaves of rice were pounded.
To them, he entrusted his family. He was leaving, he said, on a journey to the north. They knew of the Cripple’s presence in Rosales, this great man whose wisdom they could not fathom. He was tempted to tell them he would go across the Cordilleras and that he would probably try and see Po-on again. Po-on where they came from and where it all began. Po-on which clung to them tenaciously as memory.
In the afterglow, he recognized all the faces raised to him. The soft light hid the lines of care and hard work just as it hid from them, too, the glaze of tears in his eyes.
He was valuable to them—teacher, healer, patriarch; now he realized with searing sharpness that they were valuable to him not only as cousins and neighbors—they were the earth, the water, the air which sustained him.
He asked Bit-tik to stay after they had gone; he would have a last word with him. They stood in the yard talking, while above, the stars swarmed and the cool harvest air filled the lungs. He wrapped an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “How do you think the weather will turn out in the next few days?”
“You are the one who knows more about the ways of God, Manong,” Bit-tik said. “I hope that it will be good, not because the harvest season is upon us—but because you will be going on a long journey.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “It is a long trip. And the boys—you know, they cannot yet take care of the farm or of their mother.”
“Do not insult mc,” Bit-tik said. “If we cat, they will eat.”
Istak did not speak again. Before he turned to leave, he tightened his arm around the broad, strong shoulders of his younger brother.
Supper was waiting in the house; the stew was steaming on the low eating table, on top of it a big black mudfish which had been broiled. The new rice in the open pot was red and fragrant. A small coconut bowl was beside the rice pot; it was half filled with salted fish sauce flavored with lime juice and roasted red pepper. A plate of boiled camote tops completed the meal. The two boys ate quickly with their hands; they were growing and they always seemed famished. He watched them—Antonio, who was older, who had already handled the plow, whose brow was wide like his; and Pedro the younger, who had inherited his mother’s handsome features. He had delivered them himself—held them up to his wife, their umbilical cords still uncut, their bodies still wet and shining with the juices of the womb. They were such tiny, wailing things then, and now they were big. Three more harvests, just three more short years and Antonio would be circumcised, and Pedro after him. Would they be able to take care of their mother? Would they stay in Cabugawan, or would the call of far and exotic distances bewitch them as once he himself had hearkened, had longed for the distances he would traverse? Now, there was this long and perhaps perilous journey. What new wisdom would he extract from it?
“Take me with you, Father,” Antonio pleaded, looking eagerly at him. “I can ride behind you, I know. I will take care of the horse, gather the grass for him.”
“No, son,” Istak said softly. “This is a journey I must take alone. Maybe, when I return—we can go on a long, long ride. You in the back, Pedro in the front because he is smaller.”
They continued eating, Dalin wordless now. Outside, the darkness was complete.
They all went down to the yard, the night alive with the soughing of the wind, the whispering of insects. He held his two boys close to his chest, half kneeling, smelling the day on their young bodies. Antonio—he had learned some reading, writing, a little arithmetic, and Pedro—only eight years old—alert of eye and swift with his hands and legs. Again—how would they fare when he was gone? But Don Jacinto had promised to help them if by some awry turn of fate he did not return. And they were among relatives here.
He stood up and held Dalin, felt her heart thump against his chest. The hard work in the fields, the pounding of rice, the weaving, and the cooking had roughened her palms. With the pain in her face was this grace, this luster which he had always lov
ed. He could say nothing except look at her and hope to God that whatever might happen, she would always be safe. He wanted most to remember her as he saw her, the starlight in her eyes, the silence of her prayer. He held her tight, then let go.
His provisions were light—the sack that was half full, a clean shirt and trousers, a thick blanket which Dalin herself had woven, a length of saluyot twine, his old bolo, and a pencil and his journal. He tied them into a bundle which he slung over his shoulder. It would be his pillow for the night.
As he mounted the horse, Dalin finally broke into a plaintive cry. Tears burned in Istak’s eyes. The boys followed him beyond the gate, where they were joined by their cousins. It was too early for them to sleep; soon the moon would be out in all its sheen. They would have gone with him beyond the arbor of bamboo at the end of the village, but Istak told them this was as far as they should go.
The night was all around, fireflies winking in the air. Bayambang was two towns away to the west. The president would be there in a day. If Istak did not tarry, he would be there ahead of them. He had all that time to plan.
CHAPTER
15
Istak took the road to Santo Tomás. Times were perilous and brigands who preyed on travelers would covet his horse. Kimat was well trained and amiable, and he responded quickly to every nudge and snap of the reins. The night was cool; the shadowed, even fields, some still heavy with grain, were perfumed with the scent of harvest and newly mown hay. From underneath some of the farmhouses along the road, a dog would stir and sometimes rush out to snap at the horse’s legs. But Kimat did not frighten easily. Istak rode at a canter, almost in a walk. He did not want to tire the animal needlessly—there were many miles to go. Before he reached Alcala, after Santo Tomás, the moon sailed out of a cloud bank. He found a spot beyond the road with a stand of tall grass behind it; he dismounted, took a long sip from his water bottle. His eyes had become heavy and the hide of the horse was wet with perspiration.
Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) Page 24
