“And in the end I will be betrayed as others have been?”
“There wall always be betrayals because we are men, not angels. They who betray — no pile of money, no shining title or other forms of adulation by which they were bought can assuage the self-hate, the sense of inferiority and sickening weakness which will corrode their very bones. They know this and there is no greater punishment than this self-knowledge. They cannot end it with suicide, for they know that such an act is the final push that bogs them into the slime of their own creation.”
Was he rejected because he was Ilokano, or was it simply because the general did not know him? He had given all the incontrovertible proofs of his identity — not things that one could touch, or feel, but the account of what he had seen, what he knew. Had he been a spy, he would not have ventured this far, and alone. Again, the Cripple came to mind. He would understand.
It would be a long walk back to the plain, to Cabugawan. He had slept soundly and the tiredness in his legs seemed to have gone. He felt hungry again; it should not be difficult to calm that hunger and in the first stream that he had passed, he drank his fill. Nearby were papayas with fruit. The birds had eaten into the very ripe ones; he did not like them too ripe, for these often harbored tiny worms. He picked two and walked on; along the way, there would be guavas, too, or tree mushrooms.
He slept briefly, then woke up, the mountain breeze caressing his face. He brought out the journal — stained in places — and looked at his notations; it was ten days since he had left Cabugawan — it was now December, the first day of the month, and tomorrow would be Saturday.
He wet the pencil tip with his tongue, a habit that never left him, and wrote:
Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that is duty to value justice above everything — to do what is right not because someone ordains it, but because the heart, which is the scat of truth, decrees it so.
Duty. Justice. All his life he had never really given much thought to these, or to the possibility of his being really free. He was concerned with being secure, with being part of the structure that the friars had built, because wherever he went, he saw that they did not even have guns. Their being white marked them as superior beings, for how else could they have conquered this land, how else could they have written all those books and understood the mysteries of God? For as long as he was brown and Indio, he was marked an inferior man, destined to be no more than an acolyte.
All this ignominy had been wiped away — the Indio had fought the white man and won, but how fragile, how short-lived that victory had been.
It would be a hellish trek out of the Ilokos, and ahead of him, now, was a long march out of this towering ring of mountains. Closing his eyes, in the black pit of memory, his past came instantly alive, ever present and bright, as if it were only yesterday that he had left Po-on. God forgive me for this one conceit; I am not just a healer, but in a way, I was Moses, too. He had read the Bible and seen the world in the Magnificat: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich He hath sent away empty …”
He closed the journal and turned to the narrow plain below, and there, in the last light of day — the pursuers in even file. He started counting quickly those that he could clearly see. A hundred, two hundred. Perhaps five hundred men, their horses loaded with provisions. By nightfall, they would be at the pass. How could they have marched so fast? They would get to Del Pilar before morning if they marched through the night.
He should no longer care, why should he? He had come to warn them, help them, and the general had rejected him. Let him and his men and even the president suffer the fate they had fashioned for themselves. He could save himself easily — he knew where to detour to a distance away from their line of march, and he would then be free to return to Cabugawan. There was all the time to do that in the safety of the night.
O Apo Dios, You who know everything and see everything. You will not begrudge me if I seek safety so that I can be with my loved ones. I have tried to give these soldiers all that this humble self can give but they did not trust me. Surely, I will do no wrong to the Cripple, to Don Jacinto, and most of all, to my own self-respect if I leave them to their fate. Surely, O Apo Dios, You will understand.
He turned to the darkening and disheveled landscape around him, the mountains that bore down on him with their silence and their gloom. He listened to his hurried breathing, to the thunder in his heart, to the depths of himself crying, yes, I do no wrong, but I must prove in flesh and in spirit that I am Indio, I am one of them!
CHAPTER 19
The night came quickly, and though he was already up the incline, following the trail which laced the mountainside, still the pass seemed as distant as the stars that glimmered above. What sublime obstinacy was it that demanded he should now persist? He consoled himself; at night, the Americans might not march, not in this jumble of trees and rocks where they could be ambushed easily, that they were — like the Spaniards and the Guardia — afraid of the dark and the Indio phantoms that lurked in it.
He had raced the wind, propelled by a strength that did not flag. He climbed the trail, now shrouded by tall trees, quiet and sepulchral, and dark as men’s minds. What was it that urged him on?
Duty — the thought was emblazoned in his mind, a torch over the trail, food to his stomach, the rich, fresh air in his lungs, and yes, the bone to his tender flesh. Duty, and this meant Dalin as well, his two sons, and oh, my father, I can see you now with your one good arm reaching out, and Mother — you who had prayed that I be able to vault the distance from Po-on to a pinnacle where I could draw you up, where you would no longer know the cares of living.
And remembering them, tears stung his eyes, blurring briefly what was ahead, the brambles that tore at his legs, the huge boulders that blocked his way.
Then someone shouted the familiar ¡Alto! He did not stop; he ran forward instead, shouting: “The Americans! They are coming. With horses. Hundreds of them. The Americans — they are coming!” A commotion ahead, a mad whirl of bodies. Arms seized him, clamped his mouth, pinioned him, bade him keep quiet. Around him figures moved quietly.
They knew who he was, and he was thankful that he had reached them safely. They left him by the side of the trail while a soldier went up toward the pass. He sat quietly, letting the coolness of the mountain seep into his being, quieting down the tremor in his heart. And it was then that a tiredness crept into his limbs, his body, and with it, a heaviness of the eyelids, the diminishing awareness of everything around him, and finally, sleep — deep and dreamless.
He woke up with the whole world grown still; even the insects seemed to have gone to sleep. Then, the sound of digging, low Tagalog voices, brisk commands. Above him, the night arched beautiful and dusted with stars. It had become cold; he missed the familiar warmth of Dalin, the contours of her body, and the smell of their narrow sipi. Dalin — how she had changed through the years, from the headstrong woman that she was when they first met, into this wife and mother who knew how to persevere, to wait for the good times that might never come.
His mind remained sharp; it encompassed in one sweep again how it was in Po-on, those seemingly wasted years in the convent in Cabugaw. If he were there still, perhaps at this time he would still be reading, or writing, putting into pompous words the thoughts that came: he was so presumptuous then. Now, he was no longer afflicted with verbosity; he had discipline, detachment, maturity.