Part 15

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.

The church was closed, for the padres had been driven out by the revolution two years before and had never returned. So the coffin was laid on the ground at the great barred doors, a naive little object begging for a mite of the holy emanation that still clung about the great building as some vague odour of incense. The mother let tallow drip upon the frame, then stuck the candle upright into it. She opened the big umbrella and set it down so that the stinging sun-rays of noon should not shine through the thin cloth of the coffin into the closed eyes of Carnota. The man crouched down against the church wall, the boy sat on the shovel, and the woman squatted on her heels by her husband.

It was noon, and the perpendicular sun dripped molten lead upon the land. The tin roof of the church crackled, white with heat; the tin roof of the school crackled back to it; the heat, reverberated from one to the other, fell into the space between, and the pink-and-blue rosettes on the coffin shrunk like sensitive things.

A big fly buzzed near and the woman wafted it away. A little fly struck the candle and boiled to death in the molten tallow. From a hole in the church wall a big gee-kaw lizard uttered his hoarse, spasmodic cry three times, then stopped, smothered by the heat. Ten feet away a carabao plumped into a mud hole with a cool, squashy sound. A heavy silence fell upon the plaza, punctuated only by the raucous breathing of a big American cavalry-horse, dying of the surra by the cuartel.

The door of the schoolhouse opened, and the Maestro came out. Almost at the same time the Lieutenant stepped out of the cuartel. He stopped to look at the horse and the Maestro joined him.

The animal, a big gray, was standing with his four legs wide apart, like the tripod of a camera. His ribs stood out like the ribs of a long-stranded derelict; his legs were puffed up as big as barrels, and a viscous fluid oozed from his nostrils. A cloud of flies buzzed about this already half-carrion flesh.

The Maestro looked into the patient, bulging, blood-shot eyes.

"He will die?" he asked.

"Yes, they all die," said the officer.

"Why don't you have it shot?"

The officer smiled, a trifle embarrassed.

"Well," he said, "you know they're great on red-tape in the army. If the horse dies naturally, the post-surgeon can fill out a comparatively brief report; if he orders it shot, he will have to write out some five foolscap pages. The Doc, you know, is pretty lazy; so he chooses the short report."

"I see," said the Maestro.

They separated. The forlorn group at the church door drew a shrug of the shoulders from the officer. The Maestro stopped and approached it.

The woman nudged the man with her elbow. "The Maestro!" she whispered, awestruck.

They scrambled to their feet and stood respectfully before him. Their downcast eyes peered at him half-anxious, half-wondering. For he was a strange person, the Maestro. Carnota had often told about him.

The first day he had come to school he had been very angry because, turning around upon the crash of a chart, upset by one of the boys in a sly antic, he had found all the index-fingers converging dutifully upon the abashed culprit.

He was very queer. He did not like the boys to tell on each other.

Every morning he made them go through violent movements with their arms, their legs, their bodies; and they were very tired, for the palay crop had failed and they had little in their stomachs.

But if he was queer at school, he was still more queer at home.

One Saturday afternoon, Carnota, peering with his brother into the Maestro's house, had retreated suddenly, very much awed and astonished.

For the Maestro, in his shirt sleeves, was insanely pounding away at a big, round ball that hung from the ceiling by a string. He hit and hit and hit, and the ball rebounded from his fist to the ceiling so fast that it sounded like the escribiente beating a bandillo upon his drum, only much louder.

The man and the woman stood before the Maestro, thinking of these things. And he stood before them, also thinking. He was before a result, and he wondered if it was good.

* * * * *

He thought of the little boy. He saw him again as he had seen him on his first day as Teacher of Balangilang--a little nino with a big round head sunk in between sharp shoulders, and big brown eyes that looked up into his own, half-scared, half-loving. He was a very little boy, Carnota, and his peculiar uncertainty of movement made him still more babyish. His face was dirty and his nose needed a handkerchief. His camisa was open in front, and the abdomen projected over the trouser-band in a soft roll of fat. Somehow that was what remained the most vividly in the Maestro's memory--the vision of that roll of baby-flesh that had suddenly filled his heart with unmanly softness.

That was the day of the "my" and "your" struggle.

"Do you see the hat?" the Maestro had asked.

"Yiss, I ssee dde hhett," staccattoed the class in answer.

"My hat," said the Maestro, pointing to his cap; "your hat," he said, pointing to the reduced version of a dilapidated nipa roof which served to cover Carnota's head. "Now, [pointing to his own], do you see my hat?"

"Yiss, I sse my hett," answered the urchin confidently.

"No, no," said the Maestro. "This is my hat, not your hat; it is my hat. Do you see my hat, my, my hat?"

"Yiss, I see my, my hhett," answered Carnota, his eyes alight with sweet obedience.

The Maestro paused and wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

"Now, let us begin again," he went on with determination in his eye. "My hat, your hat; your hat, my hat. This is my hat; this is your hat. Now, show me your hat."

"Your hat," said Carnota, pointing to his own.

"No, no, that is not my hat; that is your hat; this is my hat, that is your hat. Now, show me my hat, my hat."

"My hat, my hat!" shouted Carnota, triumphantly pointing to the Maestro's.

"Oh, Lordy," muttered the Maestro. He looked down half-angrily. Two brown eyes and an uplifted nose were turned up toward him in absolute, admiring confidence, and his annoyance flew away as by enchantment. But he could not bear to disillusion the child with further elucidation, so it was many days before Carnota ceased mixing his pronouns with calm unconcern.

* * * * *

He forced his thoughts onward to later and less pleasant memories.

First had come the cattle-pest, which had killed all the carabaos; then the surra, which had killed all the horses; then the drought, just at palay-sowing, baking the ground so hard that the wooden plows made only derisive scratches. Now, it is true, the cholera was coming down the coast to restore the balance. But it should have come first. The palay crop had failed and there was nothing to eat.

There had been little to eat for weeks, and the children had begun to droop and wither. Every morning the Maestro cursed under his breath as he looked upon his waning audience. He could do little more than swear, for it would have taken a hundred times his salary to feed them all, and half of that went home religiously every month to a younger brother who was playing end on the Yale team. So, not being able to help them all, he had come to the determination to feed none. Which did not prevent him from smuggling little Carnota into his house every morning, to send him forth again with grains of mush sticking to his nose.

But this did not stop Carnota's head from sinking daily deeper between his shoulders nor the peculiar uncertainty of movements to gain and gain on him till, sometimes, when walking, he would fall suddenly without cause, as if he had stepped into a hole.

The attendance dropped and dropped, and the Maestro did not like to look at his reports. At last, one morning, Carnota himself failed to come to school. He did not come the next day, nor the next. The Maestro went to the tumble-down nipa shack by the river. He found the boy lying on a mat, on the bamboo floor. He could not move.

"Yiss, I ssee dde hhett," he murmured when the Maestro asked him how he felt.

The Maestro went to see the Post-Surgeon. But the Post-Surgeon had been in the Philippines four years. That is, his ideal of life now was to slop about his room all day in a kimona, smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking whiskey-and-soda after whiskey-and-soda. To go out and see a sick child, especially when that sick child happened to have a brown skin, demanded an effort absolutely colossal for the corroded shreds of his moral strength. It took several days of begging, remonstrance, appeal, almost threats to galvanize the dead fibres. At last the Doctor slipped into a khaki and walked a hundred yards with the Maestro to the hut by the river.

He examined the boy with a vague, returning ghost of professional interest.

"Curvature of the spine," he said at length.

"No cure?" asked the Maestro.

"No, he'll die; it may take several years."

"Will he suffer?"

The surgeon pointed to the child. The little body was vibrating in exquisite torture and cold beads of sweat were welling up on the stoical Malay face.

That night the Maestro went to the Post Hospital and asked the steward for some morphine.

"The dose is----" the steward started to say, giving him the pellets.

"I know, I know," the Maestro broke out hastily. "I've used it often."

He did not know the dose, but he did not want to know it.

He went back to Carnota. He found him with his sharp knees pressed tight against his chin.

He gave him several pellets. He did not know what was the proper dose, but he knew that this one was surely a highly improper one, and that is all he wanted to know.

The little boy had gone to sleep with a deep, restful sigh.

And now he was there, beneath the pink-and-blue rosettes.

The man and the woman were becoming uneasy beneath the vacant-eyed scrutiny of the Maestro. Finally the father stooped, wound his arms about the coffin, and looked up questioningly into the Maestro's face.

"Yes," nodded the Maestro, "I will go with you."

The man heaved the coffin to his shoulder. The boy took the shovel, the woman the candle, and they started in a file. The Maestro followed and took the shovel from the boy.

At the cemetery the father began to dig in the black ooze, but the Maestro stopped him. He led them to a little knoll close by beneath a giant mango tree. The soil was dry there, and, taking off his jacket, the Maestro toiled till a little hole was ready.

They lowered the paper-frilled box into it, then they scraped back the earth. The father went into the jungle and came back with a cross made of two bamboo sticks. He planted the cross and the Maestro placed a few stones about it.

Then they walked back to the pueblo.

"Are you very sad?" asked the Maestro of the woman.

"Oho," she answered, "muy triste."

But she had not understood the question. She had had nine children, and eight were buried. As far back as she could remember Death had never let by a year without entering her hut. She had long ceased feeling.

They came to the plaza. The old cavalry horse was still standing as before, his swollen legs spread in a wide base, his head dropped to the ground, his patient, bulging eyes red with blood. His rattling, dolorous breath, above the humming undertone of carrion-flies, was the only break in the heated silence.

The Maestro looked at the animal. His chin dropped to his chest.

He raised his head with a sharp movement and walked on.

"I have done well," he said.

XIV

THE CONFLUENCE