On the seventh day, the fever left him and he slept well and without screaming. Sometime in the night, he woke briefly to find Dalin by his side, wiping his brow. The solid wheels of the cart were creaking — they were relentlessly moving, moving. He slept on through the yaw and jerk of the cart. When he woke up, the cart no longer jerked; they were now on the plain, on a trail, or on the beach.
Soon it was daylight and they stopped traveling. No one was in the cart — they were all outside. Mayang was saying there should not be too much salt in the chicken broth. How sweet her voice sounded! Then she was saying how sad it was that she was not able to bring all the yarn she needed so that once they had arrived in the new land she could start weaving.
Beyond the door spread an obscure forest. Birds twittered outside, and the delicious scent of meat roasting over an open fire drifted to his nostrils, lifting him, and for the first time, he craved food. It came to him then, the dream about Padre Jose and for an instant, a chill coursed through him.
Inang! Inang! — he called but only a gurgling sound escaped his lips as if pebbles filled his throat. He coughed then repeated, “Inang! Inang!” and now the words took shape but were a mere whisper.
“My God, thank you,” his mother said at the door. “He is alive.”
In a moment, Dalin was in the cart, too.
They brought him newly cooked rice and roasted pork and sliced tomatoes; aroma flooding his senses. He had not eaten for days except broth; now was the time to practice self-restraint. Padre Jose had always dinned it into him, to restrain himself, to avoid temptation, for to surrender to it was to invite perdition.
He took just a mouthful of rice, a tiny piece of pork, savoring the meat fully, letting it linger in his mouth, and a cup of the chicken broth. He was weak; he could not even raise his head from the coverless pillow without Dalin holding him up. Then he realized that he could feel with his right arm the ridges in the split bamboo mat which walled the cart; the arm was no longer numb. Slowly he raised it, moved the thumb first, then all the fingers. They were all responding. He tried to raise the entire arm, flex it, and it was then that this lacerating pain lashed at him and he screamed.
They crowded around the cart. His brow was damp and cold. He asked Dalin to examine the wound to see if there was pus. She lifted the bandage carefully and smiled. “It is beginning to heal. The wound is closed and there is no swelling,” she said happily.
The worst was over.
“You did not know what was happening,” Dalin told him afterward. “We all thought you would die.”
He smiled, remembering quickly the bits of conversation he had overheard, the dream.
Dalin said, “We were frightened. And when you became very hot, thank God, you told us what we should do.”
“And what was that?”
“We took you to a stream and your father and An-no, they soaked you in the water, up to your neck, till your body cooled. On the fourth day, when your fever became worse and there was no stream, you told them again what to do. They cut a wild banana stalk, took off the skins, wrapped you in them, till the fever subsided again …”
He had not forgotten his lessons, not from the books that he had read, but what Padre Jose had told him.
“You know so many things,” Dalin said, wonder in her eyes.
“I had a very good teacher,” he said. “An old, kindly priest.”
“A priest?” Dalin asked. Istak nodded.
After a while: “You were talking in your sleep,” Dalin said, “Now I find it difficult to understand why you said those things.”
“What did I say?”
“You were shouting, ‘Kill the priest! Kill all Kastilas!’ ”
Istak became silent. It was An-no who took him to the creek, the brother who loathed him, who coveted Dalin for himself. It was Padre Jose whom he had always respected and loved — yes, he had really loved the old priest not so much in return for the many kindnesses that had been shown him, but for the light that Padre Jose had cast upon the path Istak had taken. And yet, in the deeper wilderness of his mind, in this dream, he had wished his benefactor harm. In wine, truth; in dreams, the soul?
If these thoughts were hidden in the fastness of his mind, if he did not recognize them, would they surface someday as evil deeds?
It was true then what Padre Jose had said, that there is evil in all of us, that only with faith and its capacity for exorcism can we master this evil.
“Where are we now? And how long have we been traveling?” he asked.
“A week,” she said. “We are still close to the mountains, but in a day we will be down by the shore. We have been harvesting wild bananas and green papayas.”
“How long before we get to the sea?”
“Tomorrow,” she said.
He went back to sleep and dreamed that he was flying, floating over the caravan, scouting far ahead of it the plain beyond the hills. He floated above the treetops and waved at those below; he soared with ease in any direction he wished; it was such a natural thing for him to fly. Then he saw the narrow road which cut the mountainside and skirted the coast, and ahead were hundreds of Guardia waiting. They would all pass through this dreaded funnel, they could not hurdle the mountain.
He woke up at noon and remembered the dream. He called for Ba-ac, who came to the cart immediately. They propped him up on a sack of grain. Beyond the line of carts, a dense growth of scrub, butterfly trees browned by the dry season.
“Father, we will soon reach the Spanish road and we will all be searched there.”
“I know,” Ba-ac said sadly. In the light, his father seemed much older. “But there is no other way.”
“We must cross singly,” Istak said. “They will not think of stopping or searching just one cart. One at night, one in the daytime. And we should all then meet … but where?”
Dalin, who knew the road, was ready with a suggestion. “Before we reach the Abra River,” she said, “we cannot miss that, we will wait till everyone is there.”
Istak had passed the road many times when he and Padre Jose traveled to Abra. The people were forced into building it, just as, even now, the ilustrados were forcing the people to work for nothing, exacting punishment if they refused. It was a narrow dirt road flanked by brick embankments, gently sloping with the descent of the hills, clinging to the strip of land before it plunged into a rocky coast. There were battering waves during the typhoon season, but the sea this time of the year should be blue and calm.
“If you look long enough,” Dalin said, “you can see the bottom.”
That night, Istak could not sleep. He lay, waiting for each lurch as the cart dipped into ruts or went over stones, the swish of tall grass as they cut through outgrowths.
“Where are we?” he asked. Dalin was in front, holding on to the reins of the bull. She turned briefly and shushed him. They must be passing again through dreaded territory and the wheels had been greased anew with coconut oil so they would not creak.
Istak closed his eyes but could not sleep. The pit in his stomach deepened. He would endure the hunger till morning. What was it compared to what awaited them in this dark maw of night? Even the Guardia were not safe here. But the cocks — they would give them away by their crowing. He was alarmed.
“They have all been killed,” Dalin assured him.
Morning again; the sky lightened slowly and the stars winked out. Istak could raise half his body now. They were on a rise of ground and close by the forest, with the mountain rising behind the tall trees. On one side, through the curtain of tall grass, the land plummeted to the sea, and there, like a brown line on the coast, was the Spanish road.