Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) (26 page)

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 brought 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.

12

T
hink, 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.

He could see Orang nudge Bit-tik on the side, and Bit-tik
looked at her briefly, then spoke again: “It has been three months now that Manong An-no has gone. I live in his house.”

“It is also your house,” Orang said softly.

Bit-tik glanced at her, then went on. “The year of mourning is not over. Is it a sin, Manong? In my heart, I know it is not.”

Istak knew at once what his brother would say next; he did not let him. “Orang needs someone to look after the farm An-no left behind. And her two very young children—they hardly knew their father. You will now be father to them. And you can truly love them, for your blood is also in them. And now, you have two farms to work, not just one. But when will you stop wandering, and be tied to a house? Orang keeps a good house, and she knows how to cook very well—look at this
adobo
. Where can you get something as good as this except in a rich man’s house?”

Dalin sat beside Orang; she was older by at least five years and since that time when Capitán Gualberto had ravaged her, there had existed between the two a bond stronger than that which welds two sisters together.

“I am very happy it will be this way, Orang,” Dalin said.

The rains came and in early July a typhoon blew across the land and bowled over many farmers’ homes. But not the houses of Istak and An-no. With the typhoon came the nine-day rain which flooded the fields and swelled the rivers to overflowing, and with the land washed fresh, the pestilence disappeared. As Dalin’s belly grew, Istak regained strength. He had not brought any books from Cabugaw and had yearned so much for something to read, particularly in those times when, weak and emaciated, he could not leave the house. He tried recalling the important though tiny bits of knowledge taught him, and formulated
a chronology wherein he could recall events, people, fragments of the past that must be resuscitated so that the present could yield some meaning or, at least, be explained.