State of War

by Ninotchka Rosca

  After an hour of rest and breakfast of fried rice, sausages and ginger tea, the boy led the way through a labyrinthine footpath past gigantic fern and grass patches. The path burrowed into bedrocks of ancient boulders covered with lichens and lost itself now and then in the soft clay of abrupt springs and tiny brooks. After nearly half a day of wading through the melancholy twilight of a rain forest, they reached the camp: a few tents and lean-tos of nipa fronds on stripped branches, a makeshift stove of three rocks, and twenty men all as young as Luis Carlos.

  Commander Manny, as Jake’s cousin was called, turned out to be long on ideals and short on skills. Their first ambush of a Japanese patrol led to their grief, with five men dead and Jake suffering a flesh wound in his thigh, into which, frightened nearly out of his head, he poured what little sulfa powder was left in his medical kit.

  “Rats,” he said to Luis Carlos, “they didn’t fight fair. We stood square across the path with our guns, mano a mano, cutting their escape. But they didn’t have the decency to shoot it out. First thing we knew, they were diving for cover, flat on the ground, and were lobbing hand grenades. We had to retreat.”

  “But where are your rifle sights?” Mayang asked.

  “Took ’em off,” said one of the men. “They made us cross-eyed.”

  “Holy bananas,” Luis Carlos muttered.

  Commander Manny, fiddling with the ham radio, managed to contact a larger guerrilla unit and was told that three men from the Chinese Wang Chai Division were fighting their way through enemy lines, fording the gaps between towns and mountains, slipping past fortifications to reach Laguna. They had started a week ago and were expected any day now.

  “Three men?” Luis Carlos scratched his head. “You’re sure they’re still alive?”

  Mayang cautioned her son with a smile. Having found a dry enough spot for their things, she stepped back into the forest to gather palm fronds and fallen branches—materials for their own lean-to. Automatically, as she circled farther from the camp, the local names of berries and ferns returned, and she began to catalogue what was edible and what wasn’t, what virtue each had, not noticing how, by this simple act, she was already reverting to her unwedded days. Whenever she spied and bent to pick up a usable discard of the forest, the fingers of her left hand went to her chest, pressing back the cloth of a remembered wide-neck peasant blouse though she wore a man’s shirt and trousers. Catching herself in the gesture, she had to smile ruefully, thinking how strangely indeed time had looped, so that she found herself in her old province once again, breathing that impossibly pure air and wondering how it all would have been had the Spaniards not arrived three hundred years ago. Just then the labuyo shrieked again and from below the mountains, distant but true as bell peals, came the answering chatter of domesticated hens. The labuyo crowed twice more. In the abrupt silence that followed, Mayang’s heart kicked thrice in her ribs. The worm of foreboding stirred and told her she would not survive the war.

  “Nana.” The voice scattered her thoughts.

  Whirling, she found a man standing to her left, camouflaged by forest shadows. A disquieting familiarity, as though she had seen him before, flitted through her mind. Then, she was clapping her hands in childlike delight. “A Chinaman,” she said and remembered her roses. But this was the forest and the slim youth was soon joined by two others, all of them mud spattered and in the last throes of exhaustion. As she led them to the camp, she was haunted by the feeling that she had something important to remember but all that came to her was the insane chattering of hens from some village below.

  “But how,” she asked, just to ease her mind, “can you teach them how to fight? You’re not old enough to be warriors.”

  Even as she asked, the last of the three, walking behind them, was straightening broken fern leaves, propping grass blades, and, where the bald earth showed through, carefully sweeping away footprints with a twig, erasing traces of their passage. From time to time, he circled away from the path, in an odd complex dance, and Mayang was about to laugh at this madness when she realized he was removing the signs of her foraging as well.

  “Nana, you mustn’t be careless,” their leader said.

  Abashed, she kept quiet after that.

  The three stayed for two weeks, at the end of which even Mayang was familiar with the short, full-powered blow—with a dagger, if there was one; with the outer edge of the fist, if no knives were on hand—at the nape’s base, which disabled the motor nerves; the graceful glide of blade across a neck, destroying the vocal cords; and the bunt with the rifle butt which cracked the ribs and drove its broken ends into the heart. She watched bemused as the twenty young men learned how to flit like deer through the forest, to safeguard the secret of their comings and goings, and, more important, to catch hold of the rhythm of sounds—birdcalls, rustle of butterfly wings, fall of dew on leaves—that spelled the difference between danger and safety. Often, to while away the afternoon hours, two of the three Chinese would give an exhibition. Mayang, convinced though she was that she would never understand men’s need to kill each other, would have to suck in her breath as the pair circled, danced, flew, and struck in stylized combat.

  One afternoon, on her return with a pail of water from a nearby spring, Mayang found the men huddled at the camp’s center, studying marks which a Chinese was making on the ground.

  “This is the fort,” he said, laying a stone down, “and this, the river.” He drew a line with a pointed stick. “A frontal attack is impossible. The river is the only access. A hundred men inside. In groups of ten. Guards here and here. We’re more than par. Rifles, grenades, ammos, medicine. We’ll take it at dawn. Now, who can swim?”

  “I can swim,” Luis Carlos replied.

  Mayang’s hair tried to stand on end. But it had been said and Luis Carlos was chosen to be with the first assault team of the sneak attack, swimming across the river, wearing only a coat of soot mixed with coconut oil, and with his knife between his teeth.

  “Holy mother of God,” Mayang said and went off to huddle at a tree base in prayer and tears.

  Moments later, a hand touched her head.

  “Nana,” the Chinese leader said gently. “He’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know?” Angrily, she wiped tears off her cheeks.

  He shrugged. “Presentiment. But you must eat.” He disappeared and returned with a spoon and rice gruel in a tin bowl. Settling on his haunches, he would have fed her but she snatched the food away, still furious with him.

  “I don’t smell death on him,” the Chinese said.

  “Don’t humor me, child.”

  “We’ve never done that, Nana.”

  His tone said he meant neither her nor himself. After a while, he sighed.

  “You have never trusted us. We were trading with you before the Spaniards came. Your ancestors were buried in porcelain kilned in our land. Yet at the white man’s word, you razed our districts and massacred our uncles.” He shook his head. “We’ll never understand you.” He exhaled audibly. “Trust me, Nana. He will be safe.”

  “You can talk. You’re not swimming the river stark naked.”

  He laughed. “But I am. I go with the first group. I promise to keep your son by me. Will that make you happy?”

  Mayang, head bent, hid her relief by blowing on the gruel.

  “Of course, I know he’s special. I played the flute!” He laughed again at Mayang’s astonishment. “I’ve known from the first day who he is. But since it’s not supposed to make any difference . . .” He hummed the opening bars of “Chattering Flowers.” “Lovely song. Nana, perhaps when we begin to treat you like the white men do, you’ll trust us at last. He shall be by my side. All right?” He rose to his feet. “But then again, if you knew me, you wouldn’t want him beside me.”

  “Stop! Why are you doing this? Why do you do this?” She swung a hand to take in the forest, the country, the war.

  The question hung in the air. The Chinese youth, for he seemed even young
er in the phosphorescent glow of the forest night, shrugged.

  “Some say because of Manchuria. Some say because any ground where our forefathers are buried is hallowed ground. Can you, with your blood, understand that? The others don’t; your people do not. So we say because of Manchuria. This country—it has no continuity. It is only a country of beginnings. No one remembers. Not the burial jars, at least.”

  When he walked away, sure of foot despite the dark, it did not occur to Mayang that he could be lost to her forever. But three days later, when the men returned from the attack, having cached their loot in mountain caves, the Wang Chai men were not with them. The three had taken leave of the unit, for some secret destination. Commander Manny’s unit, in their estimation, had enough skills to survive, and they would learn more by surviving. In addition, the group now had supplies taken from the fort and such confidence as could only come from an unblemished victory. “Expect retaliation” were the last words from the Chinese. Sure enough, two weeks later, black smoke roiled upward from the lowlands. The Japanese had torched the October harvest.

  Luis Carlos was caught in the dilemma. Each attack on the enemy was visited on the hapless villagers. Public executions, rapes, vandalized homes, even crop burning became the enemy’s standard response. The towns emptied as the peasants fled to the forest, hauling pots and blankets, dragging roped pigs, goats, and children, until Luis

  Carlos feared that the lowlands would melt back into the primeval forest out of which they’d been carved. Miles of ricefields lay fallow now. “The whole country’s sinking into barbarity,” he said to Mayang. “I don’t like this war. Any war!” Pained and angry, he would stalk away from the camp, with only his saxophone for company, and hie off to the waterfall whose noise masked the bull wail of his lament.

  Mayang had no time for discussion. From dawn, when the labuyo’s cry roused her, to nightfall, when she threw dust on the cooking fire’s last embers, she was intent on foraging. Picking berries, scrounging for sweet potatoes, discovering a wild banana grove, setting traps for monkeys and bats, she roamed through the forest. Now and then, she would come across itinerant vendors with their bamboo poles and woven baskets. A furious haggle would then ensue, she with her rare green coconut or two, a banana bunch, or sweet potato shoots; the vendor with the needed jacket or blanket. At such times, Mayang could believe that nothing at all was left of the world, except for this jungle in which they lived no better than the monkeys they ate stewed in tamarind leaves.

  She could not know that in the enemy’s territories she was a legend, that the old native title of respect, Nana, had been construed by the ignorant aliens as a guerrilla alias and that they had set a price on her head. Jake had started the lie, explaining to Luis Carlos that it would protect the identities of the rest of them while enhancing the band’s reputation, for it was here, in the self-same place, that two female generals had discombobulated the Spanish garrison during the Revolution many, many years ago. “Besides, it’s a good joke,” Jake said, laughing, “And your mother’s never in the battle zone anyway. She’s safe.” Luis Carlos had to agree. Thus Manny’s guerrilla unit became famous for two things: its musician, said to summon water spirits with an instrument of unspeakable sadness; and its ferocious leader, Generala Nana or General Old Lady.

  It had been almost a lark, this war, the first year when the peasants, whose own sons and daughters were scattered in guerrilla units throughout the archipelago, gave willingly of both food and information. But as Japanese reprisals—swift and merciless—increased, an essential weakness in the national character surfaced, and the townspeople found themselves betrayed by men who wore paper-bag masks, with torn-out holes through which the informers peeped at and identified those who served the guerrilla network. In Saray, one early morning, the Japanese descended in armored personnel carriers and, kicking doors open, hustled the villagers from their homes to the town’s central clearing, a miserable plaza. Standing shoulder to shoulder, men, women, and children watched with incredulous eyes as a man wearing a reed-bag mask and speaking in their own language and their own accent aimed his forefinger at one individual after another: “This one, this one, this one.” It was death for a boy of eleven, fleet of foot, who carried messages to and from the guerrillas; an elderly woman who went to the town market near the Japanese fort; a brawny peasant who, for the sheer pleasure of it, occasionally unearthed his guns from the ricefields’ dried-up irrigation ditch and joined a guerrilla sally. The three, speechless at the betrayal, were pushed to their knees before an executioner and summarily beheaded.

  Hard times descended then, for the Japanese stationed sentries at the dust roads leading to the village. They also confiscated fowl and grain, three silver lockets, and two gold-capped teeth from the village elder who had to submit to the bloody and rude ministrations of a Japanese soldier wielding pliers. When two families slipped away under cover of darkness, determined to die rather than live so imposed upon, the sentries had the entire village line up from the oldest to the youngest. They took turns slapping the villagers’ faces.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the enemy force spread out through the forest searching for the guerrillas and gunning down whatever moved in their path: wild boars, roosters, monkeys and lizards, an unfortunate refugee family or two. Warned by the villagers who had escaped, the guerrillas were already on forced march, wading upstream to conceal their footprints. After two hours of walking, they slipped back into the forest cover, diving under tangled vines, between giant heads of fern, careful not to disturb even the littlest pebble between green- bearded boulders. They traveled, having hidden their provisions in caves along the way. True to her word, Mayang carried only the saxophone, the first thing she had snatched up at the alarm, while Luis Carlos had his rifle, two guns, two daggers, and two ammo belts.

  They never set up a permanent camp again, for the enemy proved tireless and stalked them through the forest. Once they ran into a patrol and had to fight their way through, Mayang on the guerrillas’ heels, her body curved about the saxophone to shield it from bullets. They lost three men but managed to cut the enemy down.

  The forest seemed to stretch forever. Submerged in a perpetual green twilight, they found themselves yearning for the sea. Luis Carlos felt he was caught in some nymph’s net and was walking the riverbed, as he chewed on the unripe mock apples Mayang had found along the way. The forest clutched at his body, and from head to foot he was covered with thorn and leech bites and was chewed up by vines and ferns, by supple branches that clawed at his face, swung back when pushed and stung his nose. “Mama,” he called out, “I’m dying.” In truth, all felt themselves to be at their last breath, soiling themselves as they marched, for the berries they plucked and the green bananas they stole from groves so offended their bellies that their bodies emptied themselves as they ate. Monkeys scolded them, trees creaked with imitation, and, to make matters worse, ghost voices from all the wars which had been fought in the forest buffeted them from all sides. Luis Carlos at first thought he was hearing the distant boom of artillery. He threw himself down, digging his face into the green slime underfoot, certain that he was dead already when he realized it was the bells—deep, bass-voiced bells, cathedral bells, ringing all at once. He propped himself on an elbow and saw how the others had thrown themselves down as well. His heart stopped then rushed again, skipping in time with the bells. “Mama!” he called out and realized Mayang was no longer with them.

  She was bent over, still cradling the saxophone swathed in a blue cloth like a baby, near the green-bearded boulder where she had stopped to catch her breath. Now, she looked up into a face full of hate and had to force herself to think, to separate the words which it had marked out in a rush.

  “Old woman, let your son go!” Jake had said, his voice hoarse, dead.

  He stood over her, his rifle in his hands, his chest rising and falling with the agony of breathing.

  “You’ll get us all killed, old woman,” he said in a low voice, mindful
of the fact that the others were searching for her.

  “But what are you saying?” Mayang whispered back.

  “Stay behind; surrender. Or just—just leave us. You’re the one they’re looking for.”

  “Who? What are you saying?”

  Losing his patience, Jake bared his teeth in a dog-grin and jiggled his rifle.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” she asked.

  He gave a despairing groan as she hoisted herself to her feet. Catching sight of the rim of the saxophone’s mouth, its mocking gold, a flare of rage lit up Jake’s face.

  “Stupid—,” he muttered, and reversing his hold on the rifle, he struck.

  Mayang barely had time to turn her torso. The rifle butt caught her on the side. Something cracked. A spurt of pain ran up and down her chest; she rocked on the balls of her feet, the forest spinning crazily. But she held on to the saxophone and heard, clear as sunlight, her son’s voice calling her name.

  “Don’t go tattling to him,” Jake hissed, ‘i’ll shoot both of you.” Straightening up, he yelled for Luis Carlos. “I found her.” His dog- grin snared Mayang again and then Luis Carlos was there, taking her arm.

  Breathing hurt her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m too old.”

  “This is too heavy,” Luis Carlos replied, taking the saxophone from her. He had Jake tie the instrument to his back, using the blue cloth as a sling. “We’ll have to stop and think. Some plan, any plan.” He slipped an arm about Mayang’s shoulder. “Next time, holler if you have to stop. You scared us half out of our minds.”

  The search though was lucky for the guerrillas. One of them stumbled on a patch of wild tomatoes and sweet potatoes. Commander Manny, in sudden good spirits, called a halt to the march, stationed Jake and two others as sentries, and told the rest to prepare for an attack on the vegetables. Laughing, they drew their knives, hacked away at the creepers, and unearthed the plump, succulent tubers. Mayang hobbled off, looking for firewood.