HOW Gerardo Luna came by his dream no one could have told,
not even he. He was a salesman in a jewelry store on Rosario street and had
been little else. His job he had inherited from his father, one might say; for
his father before him had leaned behind the self-same counter, also solicitous,
also short-sighted and thin of hair.
After office hours, if he was tired, he took the street car
to his home in Intramuros. If he was feeling well, he walked; not frequently,
however, for he was frail of constitution and not unduly thrifty. The stairs of
his house were narrow and dark and rank with characteristic odors from a
Chinese sari-sari store which occupied part of the ground floor.
He would sit down to a supper which savored strongly of
Chinese cooking. He was a fastidious eater. He liked to have the courses spread
out where he could survey them all. He would sample each and daintily pick out
his favorite portions—the wing tips, the liver, the brains from the chicken
course, the tail-end from the fish. He ate appreciatively, but rarely with much
appetite. After supper he spent quite a time picking his teeth meditatively,
thinking of this and that. On the verge of dozing he would perhaps think of the
forest.
For his dream concerned the forest. He wanted to go to the
forest. He had wanted to go ever since he could remember. The forest was
beautiful. Straight-growing trees. Clear streams. A mountain brook which he
might follow back to its source up among the clouds. Perhaps the thought that
most charmed and enslaved him was of seeing the image of the forest in the
water. He would see the infinitely far blue of the sky in the clear stream, as
in his childhood, when playing in his father’s azotea, he saw in the
water-jars an image of the sky and of the pomelo tree that bent over the
railing, also to look at the sky in the jars.
Only once did he speak of this dream of his. One day, Ambo
the gatherer of orchids came up from the provinces to buy some cheap ear-rings
for his wife’s store. He had proudly told Gerardo that the orchid season had
been good and had netted him over a thousand pesos. Then he talked to him of
orchids and where they were to be found and also of the trees that he knew as
he knew the palm of his hand. He spoke of sleeping in the forest, of living
there for weeks at a time. Gerardo had listened with his prominent eyes staring
and with thrills coursing through his spare body. At home he told his wife
about the conversation, and she was interested in the business aspect of it.
“It would be nice to go with him once,” he ventured
hopefully.
“Yes,” she agreed, “but I doubt if he would let you in on
his business.”
“No,” he sounded apologetically. “But just to have the
experience, to be out.”
“Out?” doubtfully.
“To be out of doors, in the hills,” he said precipitately.
“Why? That would be just courting discomfort and even
sickness. And for nothing.”
He was silent.
He never mentioned the dream again. It was a sensitive,
well-mannered dream which nevertheless grew in its quiet way. It lived under
Gerardo Luna’s pigeon chest and filled it with something, not warm or sweet,
but cool and green and murmurous with waters.
He was under forty. One of these days when he least
expected it the dream would come true. How, he did not know. It seemed so
unlikely that he would deliberately contrive things so as to make the dream a
fact. That would he very difficult.
Then his wife died.
And now, at last, he was to see the forest. For Ambo had
come once more, this time with tales of newly opened public land up on a forest
plateau where he had been gathering orchids. If Gerardo was interested—he
seemed to be—they would go out and locate a good piece. Gerardo was
interested—not exactly in land, but Ambo need not be told.
He had big false teeth that did not quite fit into his
gums. When he was excited, as he was now, he spluttered and stammered and
his teeth got in the way of his words.
“I am leaving town tomorrow morning.” he informed Sotera.
“Will—”
“Leaving town? Where are you going?”
“S-someone is inviting me to look at some land in Laguna.”
“Land? What are you going to do with land?”
That question had never occurred to him.
“Why,” he stammered, “Ra-raise something, I-I suppose.”
“How can you raise anything! You don’t know anything about it.
You haven’t even seen a carabao!”
“Don’t exaggerate, Ate. You know that is not true.”
“Hitched to a carreton, yes; but hitched to a plow—”
“Never mind!” said Gerardo patiently. “I just want to leave
you my keys tomorrow and ask you to look after the house.”
“Who is this man you are going with?”
“Ambo, who came to the store to buy some cheap jewelry. His
wife has a little business in jewels. He suggested that I—g-go with him.”
He found himself then putting the thing as matter-of-factly
and plausibly as he could. He emphasized the immense possibilities of land and
waxed eloquently over the idea that land was the only form of wealth that could
not he carried away.
“Why, whatever happens, your land will be there. Nothing
can possibly take it away. You may lose one crop, two, three. Que
importe! The land will still he there.”
Sotera said coldly, “I do not see any sense in it. How can
you think of land when a pawnshop is so much more profitable? Think! People
coming to you to urge you to accept their business. There’s Peregrina. She
would make the right partner for you, the right wife. Why don’t you
decide?”
“If I marry her, I’ll keep a pawnshop—no, if I keep a
pawnshop I’ll marry her,” he said hurriedly.
He knew quite without vanity that Peregrina would take him
the minute he proposed. But he could not propose. Not now that he had visions
of himself completely made over, ranging the forest at will, knowing it
thoroughly as Ambo knew it, fearless, free. No, not Peregrina for him! Not even
for his own sake, much less Sotera’s.
Sotera was Ate Tere to him through a devious
reckoning of relationship that was not without ingenuity. For Gerardo Luna was
a younger brother to the former mistress of Sotera’s also younger brother, and
it was to Sotera’s credit that when her brother died after a death-bed marriage
she took Gerardo under her wings and married him off to a poor relation who
took good care of him and submitted his problem as well as her own to Sotera’s
competent management. Now that Gerardo was a widower she intended to repeat the
good office and provide him with another poor relation guaranteed to look after
his physical and economic well-being and, in addition, guaranteed to stay
healthy and not die on him. “Marrying to play nurse to your wife,” was
certainly not Sotera’s idea of a worthwhile marriage.
This time, however, he was not so tractable. He never
openly opposed her plans, but he would not commit himself. Not that he failed
to realize the disadvantages of widowerhood. How much more comfortable it would
be to give up resisting, marry good, fat Peregrina, and be taken care of until
he died for she would surely outlive him.
But he could not, he must not. Uncomfortable though he was,
he still looked on his widowerhood as something not fortuitous, but a feat
triumphantly achieved. The thought of another marriage was to shed his wings,
was to feel himself in a small, warm room, while overhead someone shut down on
him an opening that gave him the sky.
So to the hills he went with the gatherer of orchids.
AMONG the foothills noon found them. He was weary and wet
with sweat.
“Can’t we get water?” he asked dispiritedly.
“We are coming to water,” said Ambo. “We shall be there in
ten minutes.”
Up a huge scorched log Ambo clambered, the party following.
Along it they edged precariously to avoid the charred twigs and branches that
strewed the ground. Here and there a wisp of smoke still curled feebly out of
the ashes.
“A new kaingin,” said Ambo. “The owner will be
around, I suppose. He will not be going home before the end of the week. Too
far.”
A little farther they came upon the owner, a young man with
a cheerful face streaked and smudged from his work. He stood looking at them,
his two hands resting on the shaft of his axe.
“Where are you going?” he asked quietly and casually. All
these people were casual and quiet.
“Looking at some land,” said Ambo. “Mang Gerardo is from
Manila. We are going to sleep up there.”
He looked at Gerardo Luna curiously and reviewed the two
porters and their load. An admiring look slowly appeared in his likeable
eyes.
“There is a spring around here, isn’t there? Or is it dried
up?”
“No, there is still water in it. Very little but good.”
They clambered over logs and stumps down a flight of steps
cut into the side of the hill. At the foot sheltered by an overhanging
fern-covered rock was what at first seemed only a wetness. The young man
squatted before it and lifted off a mat of leaves from a tiny little pool.
Taking his tin cup he cleared the surface by trailing the bottom of the cup on it.
Then he scooped up some of the water. It was cool and clear, with an
indescribable tang of leaf and rock. It seemed the very essence of the hills.
He sat with the young man on a fallen log and talked with
him. The young man said that he was a high school graduate, that he had taught
school for a while and had laid aside some money with which he had bought this
land. Then he had got married, and as soon as he could manage it he would
build a home here near this spring. His voice was peaceful and even.
Gerardo suddenly heard his own voice and was embarrassed. He lowered his tone
and tried to capture the other’s quiet.
That house would be like those he had seen on the
way—brown, and in time flecked with gray. The surroundings would be stripped
bare. There would be san franciscos around it and probably beer bottles stuck
in the ground. In the evening the burning leaves in the yard would send a
pleasant odor of smoke through the two rooms, driving away the mosquitoes, then
wandering out-doors again into the forest. At night the red fire in the kitchen
would glow through the door of the batalan and would be visible in the
forest,
The forest was there, near enough for his upturned eyes to
reach. The way was steep, the path rising ruthlessly from the clearing in an
almost straight course. His eyes were wistful, and he sighed tremulously. The
student followed his gaze upward.
Then he said, “It must take money to live in Manila. If I
had the capital I would have gone into business in Manila.”
“Why?” Gerardo was surprised.
“Why—because the money is there, and if one wishes to fish
he must go where the fishes are. However,” he continued slowly after a silence,
“it is not likely that I shall ever do that. Well, this little place
is all right.”
They left the high school graduate standing on the
clearing, his weight resting on one foot, his eyes following them as they
toiled up the perpendicular path. At the top of the climb Gerardo sat on the
ground and looked down on the green fields far below, the lake in the distance,
the clearings on the hill sides, and then on the diminishing figure of the high
school graduate now busily hacking away, making the most of the remaining hours
of day-light. Perched above them all, he felt an exhilaration in his painfully
drumming chest.
Soon they entered the dim forest.
Here was the trail that once was followed by the galleon
traders when, to outwit those that lay in wait for them, they landed the
treasure on the eastern shores of Luzon, and, crossing the Cordillera on this
secret trail, brought it to Laguna. A trail centuries old. Stalwart
adventurers, imperious and fearless, treasure coveted by others as imperious
and fearless, carriers bent beneath burden almost too great to bear—stuff of
ancient splendors and ancient griefs.
ON his bed of twigs and small branches, under a roughly
contrived roof Gerardo lay down that evening after automatically crossing
himself. He shifted around until at last he settled into a comfortable hollow.
The fire was burning brightly, fed occasionally with dead branches that the men
had collected into a pile. Ambo and the porters were sitting on the black
oilcloth that had served them for a dining table. They sat with their arms
hugging their knees and talked together in peaceable tones punctuated with
brief laughter. From where he lay Gerardo Luna could feel the warmth of the
fire on his face.
He was drifting into deeply contented slumber, lulled by
the even tones of his companions. Voices out-doors had a strange quality. They
blended with the wind, and, on its waves, flowed gently around and past one who
listened. In the haze of new sleep he thought he was listening not to human
voices, but to something more elemental. A warm sea on level stretches of
beach. Or, if he had ever known such a thing, raindrops on the bamboos.
He awoke uneasily after an hour or two. The men were still
talking, but intermittently. The fire was not so bright nor so warm.
Ambo was saying:
“Gather more firewood. We must keep the fire burning all
night. You may sleep. I shall wake up once in a while to put on more wood.”
Gerardo was reassured. The thought that he would have to
sleep in the dark not knowing whether snakes were crawling towards him was
intolerable. He settled once more into light slumber.
The men talked on. They did not sing as boatmen would have
done while paddling their bancas in the dark. Perhaps only sea-folk sang and
hill-folk kept silence. For sea-folk bear no burdens to weigh them down to the
earth. Into whatever wilderness of remote sea their wanderer’s hearts may urge
them, they may load their treasures in sturdy craft, pull at the oar or invoke
the wind, and raise their voices in song. The depths of ocean beneath, the
height of sky above, and between, a song floating out on the darkness. A song
in the hills would only add to the lonesomeness a hundredfold.
He woke up again feeling that the little twigs underneath
him had suddenly acquired uncomfortable proportions. Surely when he lay down
they were almost unnoticeable. He raised himself on his elbow and carefully
scrutinized his mat for snakes. He shook his blanket out and once more eased
himself into a new and smoother corner. The men were now absolutely quiet,
except for their snoring. The fire was burning low. Ambo evidently had failed
to wake up in time to feed it.
He thought of getting up to attend to the fire, but
hesitated. He lay listening to the forest and sensing the darkness. How vast
that darkness! Mile upon mile of it all around. Lost somewhere in it, a little
flicker, a little warmth.
He got up. He found his limbs stiff and his muscles sore.
He could not straighten his back without discomfort. He went out of the tent
and carefully arranged two small logs on the fire. The air was chilly. He
looked about him at the sleeping men huddled together and doubled up for
warmth. He looked toward his tent, fitfully lighted by the fire that was now
crackling and rising higher. And at last his gaze lifted to look into the
forest. Straight white trunks gleaming dimly in the darkness. The startling
glimmer of a firefly. Outside of the circle of the fire was the measureless
unknown, hostile now, he felt. Or was it he who was hostile? This fire was the
only protection, the only thing that isolated this little strip of space and
made it shelter for defenseless man. Let the fire go out and the unknown would
roll in and engulf them all in darkness. He hastily placed four more logs on
the fire and retreated to his tent.
He could not sleep. He felt absolutely alone. Aloneness was
like hunger in that it drove away sleep.
He remembered his wife. He had a fleeting thought of God.
Then he remembered his wife again. Probably not his wife as herself, as a
definite personality, but merely as a companion and a ministerer to his
comfort. Not his wife, but a wife. His mind recreated a scene which had no
reason at all for persisting as a memory. There was very little to it. He had
waked one midnight to find his wife sitting up in the bed they shared. She had
on her flannel camisa de chino, always more or less dingy, and she was
telling her beads. “What are you doing?” he had asked. “I forgot to say my
prayers,” she had answered.
He was oppressed by nostalgia. And because he did not know
what it was he wanted his longing became keener. Not for his wife, nor for his
life in the city. Not for his parents nor even for his lost childhood. What was
there in these that could provoke anything remotely resembling this regret?
What was not within the life span could not be memories. Something more remote
even than race memory. His longing went farther back, to some age in Paradise
maybe when the soul of man was limitless and unshackled: when it embraced the
infinite and did not hunger because it had the inexhaustible at its
command.
When he woke again the fire was smoldering. But there was a
light in the forest, an eerie light. It was diffused and cold. He wondered what
it was. There were noises now where before had seemed only the silence itself.
There were a continuous trilling, strange night-calls and a peculiar, soft
clinking which recurred at regular intervals. Forest noises. There was the
noise, too, of nearby waters.
One of the men woke up and said something to another who
was also evidently awake, Gerardo called out.
“What noise is that?”
“Which noise?”
“That queer, ringing noise.”
“That? That’s caused by tree worms, I have been told.”
He had a sudden vision of long, strong worms drumming with
their heads on the barks of trees.
“The other noise is the worm noise,” corrected Ambo. “That
hissing. That noise you are talking about is made by crickets.”
“What is that light?” he presently asked.
“That is the moon,” said Ambo.
“The moon!” Gerardo exclaimed and fell silent. He would
never understand the forest.
Later he asked, “Where is that water that I hear?”
“A little farther and lower, I did not wish to camp there
because of the leeches. At daylight we shall stop there, if you wish.”
When he awoke again it was to find the dawn invading the
forest. He knew the feel of the dawn from the many misas de gallo that
he had gone to on December mornings. The approach of day-light gave him a
feeling of relief. And he was saddened.
He sat quietly on a flat stone with his legs in the water
and looked around. He was still sore all over. His neck ached, his back hurt,
his joints troubled him. He sat there, his wet shirt tightly plastered over his
meager form and wondered confusedly about many things. The sky showed overhead
through the rift in the trees. The sun looked through that opening on the
rushing water. The sky was high and blue. It was as it always had been in his
dreams, beautiful as he had always thought it would be. But he would never
come back. This little corner of the earth hidden in the hills would never
again be before his gaze.
He looked up again at the blue sky and thought of God. God
for him was always up in the sky. Only the God he thought of now was not the
God he had always known. This God he was thinking of was another God. He was
wondering if when man died and moved on to another life he would not find there
the things he missed and so wished to have. He had a deep certainty that that
would be so, that after his mortal life was over and we came against that
obstruction called death, our lives, like a stream that runs up against a dam,
would still flow on, in courses fuller and smoother. This must be so. He had a
feeling, almost an instinct, that he was not wrong. And a Being, all wise and
compassionate, would enable us to remedy our frustrations and heartaches.
HE went straight to Sotera’s to get the key to his house.
In the half light of the stairs he met Peregrina, who in the solicitous
expression
of her eyes saw the dust on his face, his hands, and his hair, saw the unkempt
air of the whole of him. He muttered something polite and hurried up stairs,
self-consciousness hampering his feet. Peregrina, quite without embarrassment,
turned and climbed the stairs after him.
On his way out with the keys in his hand he saw her at the
head of the stairs anxiously lingering. He stopped and considered her
thoughtfully.
“Pereg, as soon as I get these clothes off I shall come to
ask you a question that is very—very important to me.”
As she smiled eagerly but uncertainly into his face, he
heard a jang