legs collapsed beneath the trunk, his whole weight upon his hands, his
head straining ahead like that of a bird in flight, and in his eyes
something strange and moving--a soft, regretful gleam, yes--God bless
me, how strange it seemed in that sullen, stolid cripple!--a look of
longing, longing infinite.
From this day I watched him, watched him as the tuba-carriers flashed
into the pueblo, at high noon.
* * * * *
He was about forty years old, and above the waist he was beautiful. From
the belt the body shot upward, broadening like a Greek urn into a deep
chest, and wide, massive shoulders. Beneath the gleaming terra-cotta
skin the muscle played in elastic bundles of power. His face was
hatchet-carved, with a relentless jaw and eagle nose, and his straight
black hair was ennobled by a sprinkle of gray.
But below the waist was ruin. He had been ham-strung. His legs were
folded flaccidly beneath the trunk, the calf against the
thigh--powerless things which, as he dragged himself on his hands,
trailed limply behind as if some ignoble, useless attachment of the
great body above.
It was not often that he courted this humiliation. Usually he was in his
nipa hut in the coconuts, silent and alone. But regularly, a little
before noon, he dragged himself to his station in front of the store of
Gong Ah Deam, merchant and usurer, and there, leaning against the wall,
he watched and waited for the coming of the manangetes. There was
something tragic about the man, a singular dignity of woe, and as he
crouched there, that quality made him appear as tall as those about him.
He never spoke, and an awe--partly superstitious, I think--kept a vacant
circle around him.
One day that man told me his story. He told it to me in hoarse whispers,
impelled by some torturing desire to unburden himself, in front of the
store of Gong Ah Deam, there, awaiting the coming of the tuba-carriers.
* * * * *
"I was one of them, senor," he said, pointing with his chin toward the
far vista where the tuba-men would presently appear; "I was a manangete;
yes, the strongest and fleetest of them. For five years I was the
leader of the file. They would challenge me often at first. As we
strained toward the far pueblo, in turn each would move up and try to
pass me, but I only quickened a little as the man tugged at my side, his
breath whistling like the wind through the coco trees, his legs
stiffening till they cracked, till finally he dropped back, gasping, to
the foot of the line, the tuba running down the sides of the bucket,
while another spurted up to wrest from me the honour. After two years
they ceased to challenge me--all except one. I was their acknowledged
king--except by one. His name was Herrera. He was small and light and
stringy. He had no chance against me. I could laugh and sing as he
walked at my elbow, agonising with the effort. Day after day, as I raced
proudly along, the long line behind me, the bamboo pole springing
lightly on my shoulder, the tuba frothing in the buckets, I felt him
start out of his place; soon his hot breath was on my neck, and out of
the corner of my eye I saw his evil, yellow face. I hummed and sang and
cracked my muscle with walking. And he hung on, I don't know how, senor,
he hung on mile after mile, till I thought he would die. Then suddenly
he reeled and sobbed, and inch by inch I passed him, proudly smiling,
while his heart burst with bitterness. We rushed into the pueblo, and
as I, raising my head, spurted with new speed, and each man, his eyes
glued upon the back ahead, strained to keep up, I knew that he was last
in the line, staggering blindly, his tuba spilling at every step, a
disgraceful spectacle. And to my ears came the laughter of the women,
pointing their fingers at him.
"They looked at me with longing eyes; they laughed at him. For I was
strong and beautiful, senor. Look at these arms--they were a third
bigger then. And my thighs--they are shrivelled and soft now, like meat
that has hung in the market too long--but they were like the trunk of
the iron tree, strong as the carabao's, fleet as the mountain deer's.
And he was small and dried, and his legs were bowed.
"Senor, I knew why he challenged me thus day after day. He loved
Constancia Torres. And I loved her, too.
"We had played together when children; we were youths and did not know
it; one day I saw her come out of the bath and suddenly I was a man. Her
dripping patadyon, wrapped high beneath her armpits, followed the curves
of her body like a long caress; above, her shoulders glowed like
polished gold, and over all there fell to her heels the glistening glory
of her black hair. And her eyes were deep as the pools of the
Cabancalan, and her voice was soft as the sigh of the breeze through
the sugar cane at sundown, and I loved her, senor.
"Of course I won her. I went to her father one evening and asked for her
and got her. She stood aside while I spoke; a corner of her camisa had
slipped down from her left shoulder and the light shone on the golden
skin. She did not smile when her father assented. Next day we were
married by Padre Marcelino, and she did not smile.
"But I did not care, senor. It seemed such a little thing, her
indifference, near my love. Senor, you have seen the hot breath of the
monsoon pass over the land, day after day, month after month, till the
palms and the bamboo and the sugar cane all bend its self-willed way. My
love was the hot monsoon and she was the bamboo wisp.
"I took her away to my new nipa-hut, under the coconut palms. And I
trembled to my own happiness as the violin vibrates to its own music.
"I could not sleep those days, senor, I was so happy. At sundown I
climbed the tall coconut trees, my bolo between my teeth. I hacked at
the shoots above and hung my buckets, and then slid down and found her.
We stood long at the window, senor, in the night. The wind blew softly
through the trees. Beneath the leaves the stars shone upon our love, and
when the breeze ceased, so quiet was it, senor, that we could hear the
gentle dripping of the tuba in the buckets, above us in the sky. And we
would stay thus many hours of the night, senor, my arms about her, her
soft body against mine, and it was only later that I remembered that all
the caresses came from me.
"Senor, I was so happy, that I forgot to hate. The day after my marriage
I let Herrera lead into the pueblo. The next day he was not in line, nor
ever after. Senor, the man who forgets to hate is a fool.
"All about me there was a rippling of evil laughter, and winkings and
signs and tappings of fingers on foreheads. And I was blind.
"One afternoon, late, as I was coming back to my hut, my empty buckets
swinging on the pole, my eyes fixed upon the little nipa-roof already
showing through the trees, and hunger of love in my heart, I tripped
against a liana across the path. There was a whirr of pliable bamboo and
something sharp whistled through the air and struck me there, behind the
knee, with the sound of the butcher's cleaver cutting meat. I fell, and
my legs were as they are now. Senor, you have fought in the war; you
know the bamboo-trap. A bamboo-trap had been laid for me.
"My legs were gone, but something terrible whispered in my heart that I
should be home. And I was there almost as quick as if I had been still a
man, and not a worm.
"Senor, the house was deserted. As I crawled about like a dog smelling
tracks, there was not a trace of the woman I loved.
"Then all that my eyes had refused to see, all that my ears had refused
to hear poured into me in a black tide. I knew why the pueblo had
laughed. And throwing myself on my back I shivered all night with pain
and lust to kill."
* * * * *
The man suddenly leaned forward and his eyes flamed. The manangetes were
rushing into the town. Smoothly they glided around the plaza, and then
they passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze. The creaking of the bamboo
poles shrieked in our ears, the pungent sulphurous odour of the tuba bit
our nostrils, and long with a wistful look the cripple followed them
till they were lost in the palpitating colour-play of the market.
* * * * *
Four miles from Cabancalan there is a lonely pile of rocks of evil
repute. Heavy, cannon-like reports come from it at times, and a
sickening smell of sulphur pinches the nostrils a quarter of a mile
away.
I was passing the place at noon one day when I saw a man crawling
queerly among the rocks. His movements were so suspicious that I
dismounted and followed him.
I gained fast and finally a full look as he passed around a big boulder
intensified my surprise. It was the cripple of the pueblo, the old
manangete.
He was labouring heavily, dragging himself on his hands, his big chest
wet with perspiration, and a glint of baneful determination in his eye.
After a dolorous scramble through putrescent vegetation and leprous
rocks, he slid down a little ravine into a cup-like depression bare of
plant life except at the farther end, where a gigantic banyan embraced
the earth with its huge tentacle roots.
He crawled to the middle of the clearing, and then he stopped, on his
hands and knees, looking at something on the ground which I could not
see. I waited for half an hour, but he remained thus in this strange
posture and I silently crawled back and away.
The next morning, early, I was back at the place. I slid down the little
ravine into the cup-like depression. It was deserted. A white object on
the ground caught my eye. It was a human skull.
It was a human skull, white and polished with age. And its lower jaw was
twisted in a most abominable grin.
I touched the thing to roll it over. It was fast. I felt beneath. The
sharp, saw-like edge of vertebrae rasped my fingers. I dug the earth
beneath. The vertebrae extended downward for a few inches and then the
smooth collar bones crossed them at right angles.
I understood. An entire skeleton was there, buried upright to the neck.
I thought I understood also the abominable grin.
I did not want to see any more; but as I turned away a whiteness among
the octopus-like tentacles of the banyan compelled me.
I took a few steps and stood before a skeleton. It was tied upright to
the banyan roots by an iron chain, corroded with rust. There was no
flesh on the thing, but a stream of heavy black hair cascaded down from
the skull to the heels, undulating in and out of the ribs.
One more thing I noticed. The hollow eyes of the skeleton among the
banyan roots were focused upon the centre of the clearing. In the centre
of the clearing was the skull of the horrible grin, and its staring
orbits were turned upon the roots of the banyan tree.
For a moment I was too cold to climb out of the place. Yet when I
succeeded my body was wet with perspiration.
[Footnote 1: Manangete is a Negros Visayan dialect word, denominating
the men who gather tuba. Tuba is the fermented sap of the coconut palm,
obtained by incisions made at the top of the tree.]
XII
THE PAST
The coconut palms rose straight to heaven, bending pliably to the
western breeze; their heads tapped gently against each other and a
murmur of secrets sighed overhead. From the shifting shreds of sky the
sun fell upon the sands in heavy gold spots. To the east, through the
lithe, silver trunks, the vivid green of the rice fields flashed; to the
west a tawny thread of beach banked up the rippling tide.
In the darkness of the recess a frail hut of nipa leaves and bamboo
slowly shaped itself as I advanced, and suddenly a shrill voice, rasping
as the violin note of the tyro, pierced the peace of the place. In the
doorway, at the head of the cane ladder, old Marietta was gesticulating.
"Oh, senor," she called asthmatically; "pray come in; visit your humble
servant. The house is yours, the tuba is fresh, and coconuts are in the
trees."
"Not to-day, Marietta; not to-day," I called back, "I'm going on to
Suay; I can't stop."
She threw her arms up in consternation. "To Suay, senor, to Suay?
Jose-Maria! do you not see the baguio coming? Soon it will be upon you,
the trees will bend, the coconuts will fall, and you will die!"
The typhoon of the Philippines is not to be disdained. A picture formed
in my mind of falling trees, rent bridges, melted roads. I stopped,
hesitating, looked up at the blue sky above, listened to the regular
breath of the wind. "Nonsense!" I said, and just then a sudden gust
screeched overhead; the coconuts bent in half circles, snapped back,
bent again with weird elasticity. Before my mind could fairly seize
them, before the impression of them could be more than hazy and faint as
those of a dream, these manifestations ceased. The wind fell dead, the
trees came back to equilibrium. A heavy torpor descended upon the land.
"I'll come in, Marietta," I decided, "and you'll tell me more of the
Negritos in the hills."
She did not answer, but waited for me at the head of the bamboo
ladder--a weird, dried-up mummy of a woman, with teeth corroded by the
betel-nut, and eyes that flashed hard beneath the heavy, yellow folds of
the lids--an old witch, fit for broomstick rides and the nightmares of
children. Inside, I sat down upon the bench by the window while she
squatted upon the bamboo-strip floor, a big cheroot tied up with hemp
fibre in her mouth, a hollow coconut filled with tuba at her side. But
she did not speak. A strange taciturnity was upon her; she sat there
speechless, motionless, like some monstrous idol, her lids half-dropped
over eyes that showed opaque and dead.
"Well, Marietta," I said at length; "what about that coconut milk you
promised me?"
"Oh, senor, pardon me, pardon your servant. 'Tis the baguio. When I feel
the baguio coming I forget; I think of other days."
She half rose, then sank again upon her heels, her mind refusing to stay
with the present.
"For there were other days, senor," she said gently; "ah, yes, far other
days!"
She rocked herself slowly to and fro, her face in her hands. Outside,
the heavy torpor was suddenly torn by a shriek in the upper layers of
air. A few great drops pattered resoundingly upon the nipa roof, then
heat and silence reigned again, with the torment of the woman's soul.
Curiously I looked upon the old crone. She sat there rocking gently from
side to side, her lips bubbling in meaningless mutters. Then her yellow
paw crept down her arid bosom, fumbled beneath her camisa, and
reappeared with something in it that flashed gold. She pressed it to her
withered lips--and I saw that it was a locket--pressed it to her
withered lips with a singular intensity of passion; pressed it there
again and again--and that sudden flash of something long gone, of a
spark, dying, perhaps, but which in that ruined body should have been
long dead, moved me with uneasiness, as if I were watching, and a party
to, a sacrilege.
But she dropped her hands upon her lap in a gesture of infinite
hopelessness and she began to speak, to speak in a queer sing-song, a
monotonous chant, like some religious recital of her Malay ancestors
suddenly coming back to her through the ages.
"Ah, he was beautiful, senor; he was beautiful, he was beautiful, he was
beautiful! He was tall and straight like the coco tree; his hair curled
like the waves upon the sand, and his eyes were deep and soft like the
pools of the Cabancalan. He came to me from over the seas, senor; from
far-away Spain. I was standing on the beach, right over there. There
were many boat-loads of soldiers landing, and he was on the foremost
prao. It came straight to me, foaming with eagerness, its wings spread
out like those of a butterfly, flying over the waves, and he stood at
the bow. His cap was in his hand; the wind blew his hair of gold into a
halo like that of the Christ of the Santa Iglesia; the sun beat down
upon his white suit and he glistened like a god. Straight for the spot
where I stood, senor; straight as your compass needle points to the
north, the prao steered from afar, and not a palm's breadth either way
did it turn as it foamed toward me. And when, heeling over like a
wounded bird, it grounded in the shallows, and ten men jumped out into
the water to carry him ashore, he motioned them off, sprang himself into
the waves waist-deep, and impatiently, as a horse paws, he forced his
way toward me. Then a fear entered my heart and I fled, fled back into
the woods, to my hut, and threw myself upon the floor panting, panting
and dreaming.
"I was not ugly, then, senor; ah, no, I was not ugly; age and sorrow had
not yet knotted me like the roots of the banyan. I was Queen then,
senor; the Queen of Beauty among my own people. At the procession it was
I that stood on a pedestal, clad in gold and silk, the picture of the
Mother of God. At the bailes it was I that the young men sought, and it
was for me, senor, that Juan Perez had a knife plunged between his
shoulders, one dark night, long ago. It was long ago, senor; it was long
ago.
"I was beautiful, senor, and I knew my beauty. I was proud, proud of my
dark eyes, of my golden shoulders, of the hair that fell about me like a
garment to the ground when I unrolled it in the sun, after the bath at
the spring. I was loved, senor; I was desired; my fame was all over
Negros and had no boundaries but the sea; but I, I loved no one; I
railed and scoffed at all; I loved no one, till he came.
"Then, senor, railing and scoffing died upon my lips; all things hard
and mean died within me, and I felt my heart open, bloom, till it seemed
my breast would not hold it. Ah, those were happy days, senor; days of
beauty. Then the sky was blue, the sun was golden, the breeze was
soft--it was long ago, senor; it was long ago. He was my sun, and the
warmth and the beauty of him entered my heart till it burst into bloom
like the purple moon-flower. We were of different race, but he taught
me. He taught me, ah, many things, but what are they, senor, what is
anything, compared to love? And he taught me to love. In the evenings,
after sundown, we roamed the groves together, in the pale moonshine, and
the sea shimmered and the trees whispered, and in my ear was the music
of his voice, on my hand the caress of his hand--ah, senor, senor, why
do these things stay with us; why, when they pass, do they not leave us,
and not stay and stay and stay and torment and torture, hooked to our
hearts with double barbs--senor, you who know so many things, can you
tell me that?
"Listen, senor! Over there, where the river goes into the sea and the
bamboos grow almost into the sky, he built a little nipa house. And it
was ours, ours, all our own; and it was there that we lived. _Lived_,
you understand; it is true that some of his time was passed elsewhere;
he had the cuartel and his soldiers, but it was here that he lived, for
it was here that he loved. Senor, in that little house by the side of
the sea, it was there that happiness dwelled, happiness such as there
never had been, such as there never will be. Senor, I was beautiful
then--now I am old and dried; I chew betel; I drink tuba; I spit. But
this is not all the work of years. I might have grown old as the corn
grows old--golden-ripe, but now, you see, I do not care. He taught me,
then he left me, and my heart fell back like a rock, aye, and lower than
he had found it.
"For, of course, he left me, senor. I have learned since it is the
way--you whites, you always leave. He went back to his Spain. He was to
return in a year. The year passed and he did not come back. Then another
and another. It was many years before he returned. The little hut in the
bamboos by the river sagged, drooped, rotted; till there was left
nothing but the four big corner-posts of narra standing upright, with
between them a little mound upon which the grass grew high, a little
mound like a grave, the grave of our love. I grew old with the waiting,
the longing; my heart was all alone, all alone; and when he landed
again, in the green dawn, one day, he did not know the woman squatting
on the beach, so near that one of his soldiers pushed her away with his
foot to let him pass. He came not alone, senor. With him was a white
woman, his wife, with eagle nose and proud bearing and skin like the
flesh of the coconut. He did not allow his soldiers to carry her, but
went in himself, all booted, to the hips in the surf. His arm went
around her waist; but, senor, she only looked that her dress would not
touch the water. And I knew within me that when he had forsaken me for
her, love had lost.
"I did not die, senor, although I thought I would as I sat there long
after he had gone, sat there through the biting of the midday sun till
the poisoned breath of the night blew into my face. I went back to my
hut and lived. I lived as others; I married, I bore children. These
children have borne children; their children have borne children. I
lived, but I did not love.
"And he, he also lived, and his wife had children. He lived, but he did
not love, senor.
"And thus year passed after year. I saw him little. Once, at sundown, as
I was crossing the plaza the portals of his stone mansion clanged open
and his carriage rolled out. I saw them pass, he and his wife, she
straight and proud, he leaning forward a little, as if tired, and as
long as the carriage was in sight I saw them, side by side, but both
looking straight ahead--far, far ahead, as if seeking something--and not
once at each other. And he, he saw me not at all.
"One night, senor, the baguio swept the land, as it will to-day soon.
There were shrieks all night, and the sea-roar and the tree-roar filled
the darkness.
"And, in the morning, senor, as the sun rose upon the ruins of the
night, there was noise and crying and a moving to and fro among the
people of the pueblo. Squads of soldiers tramped about, taos beat the
bush, and bloodhounds sniffed the ground. People whispered that the
Commandant had left his house in the evening and had not yet returned.
"They found him, senor, in the bamboos by the river, midst the rotting
remains of an old hut. One of the big corner posts had fallen upon him,
and he lay there dead, stretched across the grass-grown mound that
looked like a grave.
"But I had found him first, senor. And in his hand there was a locket,
and in the locket there was a wisp of hair. And the hair was not of his
wife."
* * * * *
Marietta stopped. Her mouth twisted in a convulsive grimace and two
glistening things ran down the lines of her cheek.
And outside, with a long-drawn wail, the baguio at length swooped down
upon us. The hut shuddered like a live thing, the trees clashed, the sea
pounded and hissed. But in the dark, silent, immovable, squatting in
infinite lassitude of posture, Marietta wept, wept over the past, the
past with its irrevocable ruins, the past, gone beyond recalling, beyond
amendment, but still with her, ever with her, with its double-barbed
torture.
XIII
THE PREROGATIVE
Little Carnota Roa was dead, and they were burying him.
The father came first, bearing the coffin on his shoulder. He was a
manangete; that is, for a living he climbed the coconut trees, hanging
his buckets till full of tuba sap and then carrying them, balanced at
the ends of a bamboo pole, seven miles to the pueblo, on the trot. This
occupation had made him very strong, so that now he bore the little box
as if it were a feather. It was a pretty coffin. On a frame of bamboo
sticks they had stretched a new patadyon, bright red and yellow, and on
this they had stuck rosettes of white, pink, and blue tissue paper. It
was beautiful. The brother followed the father. He carried a big shovel
for the hole that had to be dug over there, in the black ooze of the
cemetery, amid bones of men and carabaos. He wore a camisa, but no
pantaloons, for they were very poor. Behind the brother came the mother.
From her armpits a flaming red patadyon fell to her naked feet, red
being the colour that must be worn for children and Carnota being only
six. In her left hand she carried a big, black cotton umbrella; in her
right hand she carried a tallow candle. The tiny flame sputtered and
crackled in the stifling air and a thread of vapour rose from it toward
heaven, humble incense praying to the Great God for the little soul
ascending to Him.
The forlorn procession, man with coffin, boy with shovel, woman with
candle, wound through the high grass across the plaza. The passage of a
ditch caused some disorder. From the coffin, leaping across on the man's
shoulder, a pink-and-blue rosette fell. The woman picked it up and they
stopped while she pinned it back with a bamboo thorn. During the
operation the candle dropped and went out. The man laid the coffin down,
scratched some matches and finally relit it. Meanwhile the boy sat down
on the shovel. He was very small and the shovel was very big. At last
the man picked up the coffin, the boy picked up the shovel, and they
moved on to the church.