Wild Song, page 4
‘He’s still talking about how impressed he was when he saw you kill that boar,’ Kinyo said. ‘And that he had been certain Samkad would not allow you to go.’
My face glowed hot, as if someone had passed a torch in front of it. Even Truman Hunt thought Samkad ruled over me.
‘Let me see that list!’ I demanded.
Hunt handed me the piece of paper and I peered at it, wishing I’d paid more attention when Mister William was teaching us how to read and write. I knew enough to recognize the L U K I of my name. But that was not what caught my attention.
There was hardly anything written on the sheet.
There were four scribbles. One would be for Kinyo’s name. The other two would be for Tilin and Sidong. And then the fourth one would be me. Mother, it was going to be so embarrassing, the four of us lining up before the President. ‘Well now,’ he would say. ‘Is that all?’ And then he would shrug his mighty shoulders, tug his moustache and wish he had not bothered to invite us.
Truman Hunt though, looked unworried. He grinned, thanked me, thanked Kinyo, thanked Tilin, then began to enumerate a list of items we should pack for the journey – mats to sleep on, blankets for the cold, something to carry water, rice to cook, cured pork, sweet potatoes. And for America we should bring our finest adornments, necklaces, headdresses, gangsas, shields, weapons, anything the American public might appreciate, any musical instruments we played. All of which had to fit in the packs we would be carrying on our backs or on our heads. He would be back for us in a week’s time.
‘It will be grand, it will be an adventure!’ he assured us. ‘Saint Louis is one of the most glorious cities in the United States. You will love it.’
And that was what I told myself, Mother. Over and over again – It will be grand. It will be an adventure! – as I spent the loneliest week of my life, preparing to leave. Samkad kept himself away, and I was glad. I had nothing to say to him. The ancients turned away whenever I so much as walked past the Council House. The other girls in the House for Women pretended that they were not at all curious about Tilin and our impending trip. Tilin herself went about her daily chores as if nothing was unusual. We stored our packs in the back of the House for Women, out of sight. Sidong, unaware of all the tension, chattered incessantly about the trip, asking us an endless stream of questions. What did the lowlands look like? Where were we going to sleep on the way? How would we eat? How long would it take? What was Manila like? How would we eat on the boat? She followed me into the forest and watched as I offered a chicken to the spirits and asked for their protection and forgiveness. I poured tapuy over your spirit figure, Mother, and I begged the invisible world to understand why I had to go.
But the day before our departure, a wind gusted down from the mountain top with a great howling and took the roof off one of the granaries. It blew down a tall post adorned with the skulls of ten carabaos and one of the skulls came crashing to earth. Were you trying to send me a message, Mother? Was this a portent of things to come?
It will be grand. It will be an adventure! I told myself. Anything to stop myself thinking about how I was never going to become Samkad’s wife. Anything to stop myself changing my mind.
7
Lowlanders
I was worried that we would be President Roosevelt’s only guests, Mother. But I was wrong.
We left the village, and on the first day we followed the meandering trail along the Chico River, bright blue from the recent rains, shifting and winding as it followed the shape of the mountain. At every turn, we found people waiting for us. Two men from distant Tanudan, five from Sadanga, eight from Sagada, four from Barlig. And on and on they came, more groups from other parts of Bontok: Sabangan, Bauko, Natonin, Besao … until there were seventy of us in all. All Bontok. All strangers to each other.
On the second day, we plunged down, down, down, on a trail that went beyond Bontok, rice paddies climbing in tiers above us. We walked small forests, past thick plumes of bamboo. Until eventually we reached a busy town called Cervantes, populated by migrants from the lowlands.
There, on the banks of a river called the Abra, another group was waiting for us – a huge one. Twenty-five were a people called the Suyoc, most of them members of a family of miners from Mankayan. Seventeen were a people called the Tinguian, who had come down from the far northern mountains.
After all that, there were now more than a hundred of us in all, Mother, walking down the mountain.
Theodore Roosevelt should be flattered.
We walked up and down hills, in and out of small valleys, until the third day, when we made our final descent and put the highlands behind us. Mother, the few men in our village who had made that journey to the lowlands had described magnificent flat lands rising to meet them as they walked down the mountain. But the sun tugged great dark clouds over its head and sent rain smacking down on us in such heavy gobs we could barely raise our eyes – and then we found ourselves walking through a deep jungle. There was no view to see, and anyway, it was unsafe to look up because the ground under our feet was steep and slippery with moss.
All of a sudden the cool fog that had been our constant companion, swilling around our feet throughout the journey, vanished. We were on level ground.
When had the air thickened into this warm soup? And the trees! They seemed taller somehow, stretching their arms up high, their leaves bigger and broader. Insects were everywhere, biting, vicious. I could feel my armpits prickling, and I had an urgent need to bathe.
We wiped mosquitoes from our faces and walked out of the trees into a wall of heat, into a world so flat it pushed the sky away, shrinking the sun to a tiny thumbnail. Weh, I had never trodden on such flatness. I felt light-headed, rolling around on the balls of my feet. On either side of the road, rice paddies spread all the way to the horizon. Mother, I had not imagined fields like this, bigger, broader, greener than our mountain terraces. These paddies had no mountain shadows to stunt the grain. They had an uninterrupted landscape on which to flourish. Kinyo had told us about his childhood in the lowlands. But he had not told us about this.
Growing up, our elders had taught us to think badly of lowlanders. Lowlanders were cruel, they said. They were violent, uncivilized people. They were not to be trusted. They were incapable of carving mountains and coaxing life out of barren soil as we did. But all this time the lowlanders had this and we had no idea.
‘Luki, are you all right?’ Kinyo was suddenly there, a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. Did I look so dismayed that he had left Truman Hunt’s side?
‘Yes,’ I lied, as I lowered myself to my heels, folded my arms on my knees and buried my face in them. ‘Just having a quick rest.’
But now Kinyo was lowering himself next to me.
‘I know how you feel,’ he said softly.
‘You don’t know how I feel.’ I didn’t raise my head.
‘I really wanted to go to America,’ he said. ‘I was determined to go, never mind what anybody said. But that moment, when we turned our backs on Bontok, I felt a terrible wrench. I was missing home so much and I had barely left. I was missing Samkad, even though he’s decided to call me the enemy.’
‘I don’t miss Samkad,’ I lied.
‘Weh, that may be so. But he will definitely be missing you,’ Kinyo said softly. ‘And he will be sorry he drove you away.’
‘He didn’t drive me away,’ I snapped. ‘I decided to leave.’
He touched my elbow. ‘You have me, Luki. I will look out for you.’ Then he quickly got to his feet, walking away as if he was embarrassed to be caught feeling sorry for me.
I had never experienced such heat. In Bontok, there were warm days, but not like this. It weighed heavily on us, making sweat run down our backs, so that our packs slipped. We tied cloths over our heads to keep the sun off, but the cloths were quickly soaked through with sweat. Sidong struggled and soon Kinyo had to carry Tilin’s pack as well so that she could put Sidong on her back.
Our pace slowed and the long line wavered and broke whenever people stopped to rest. Truman Hunt became impatient, galloping his horse into the distance and back again and ordering Kinyo to make us walk faster. But Kinyo just told everyone to ignore him. ‘This is how we must walk in the lowlands,’ he explained. ‘It is hot. Save your energy.’
The long road unfurling before us had its own cruel magic. Several times we saw shiny, silvery streams crossing the road up ahead. We all raced to fill our bamboo containers, but the streams vanished at our approach only to reappear further down the road.
‘It’s a trick of the heat,’ Truman Hunt explained, wiping his red face on his sleeve. ‘It’s called a mirage.’
As the sun was beginning to lower, we spotted thatched roofs and a grove of banana trees in the distance.
‘Look, a village!’ I heard Tilin cry. A murmur of anticipation ran down the cordon behind us. We had been walking for two hours and had yet to glimpse a single human being. I began to run, overtaking Truman Hunt’s plodding horse in my haste to get there first.
But what I saw made my stomach churn.
The village might have been alive once, but not any more. There were small squares of scruffy, overgrown shrubbery that must have once been vegetable gardens. The bamboo huts were burnt ruins and trees were blackened by fire. A larger building, made of stone, had been smashed in.
Mother, seeing all this destruction brought back that terrible night when our blood enemy, the Mangili, attacked and burned down the village. Even now that we’ve rebuilt everything, the thought of it still makes my skin crawl.
Draped on a fence was a flag. It was not the stripy American flag that fluttered everywhere in Bontok. This one was different. It was riddled with holes and faded by sun and rain, its edges singed and tattered. One half was blue, and the other red. There was a white triangle on one side, with a golden star in each corner. In the middle of the triangle was a yellow sun, with stern eyes, nose and mouth.
I heard a snort. ‘The impudence of these people!’ Truman Hunt exclaimed as he jumped off his horse, handing the reins to Kinyo. Behind him, the others were gathering in a clump, murmuring to each other, eyes wide with curiosity. Hunt marched across the debris and grabbed the strange flag. ‘The war is over. This flag is forbidden,’ he exclaimed.
‘Is it the Filipino flag, sir?’ Kinyo said.
‘It is nobody’s flag,’ Hunt replied, rolling it up into a ball and tossing it into a pile of rubble. ‘The stars and stripes is the only flag allowed to fly over these islands now.’
‘Mister Hunt!’ Kinyo suddenly said. ‘Look!’
Behind the wreckage of a hut, stood a lowlander, clad in a pair of tattered trousers, clutching a long knife.
Truman Hunt looked suddenly pale.
The man was shouting, his face ugly with hatred.
‘Sir, he is angry that you threw his flag away,’ Kinyo said.
The only word I could understand was ‘Amerikano’, which the lowlander spat out as if he couldn’t bear for it to be on his tongue.
The man suddenly ran up to Truman Hunt, pointing his knife just a hair short of Truman Hunt’s neck. The American jumped back, his eyes round with horror.
‘No!’ I cried. I had never seen anyone treat an American with such disrespect. I found myself diving for the man’s legs, knocking him off his feet. His knife flew from his fist, striking a stone with a ringing noise.
Truman Hunt was already clambering onto his horse. ‘Get everyone out of here,’ he shouted at Kinyo. And then he kicked his horse and galloped down the road.
‘He’s abandoned us!’ I heard Tilin cry.
Couldn’t Tilin see that Truman Hunt needed to get away from that man? As I got back onto my feet, I turned to argue with her. But the words died in my throat. She was looking past me one hand covering her mouth.
I whirled around. There were one, two, three … more than twenty people watching us from the rubble of the ruined village. Hollow-eyed men and women, ragged and gaunt, muttering to each other. I heard the word ‘Amerikano’ and then ‘Igorot’.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Kinyo cried. ‘Everyone, get moving!’ Tilin put Sidong on her back and began to run in the direction Truman Hunt had taken. Everyone followed suit, shouting and stumbling.
But there were still some people just arriving at the village with no idea of the danger. I stumbled, my muscles slow to unfreeze.
A lowlander woman bent down to pick up a brick. The lowlanders without knives were picking up planks of wood and pieces of rubble. They wanted to fight.
As Kinyo turned, shouting warnings at the stragglers down the road, the woman flung her brick. It landed at my feet. I felt someone else grab me by the hair.
My new assailant was jabbering. ‘Igorot!’ Her lips worked and she spat into my face. Kinyo managed to drag her off me. ‘What is wrong with you?’ I screamed, wiping the spit off my cheek.
Lowlanders fanned out around us, cutting us off from the others. I could see the glint of their knives. How were we going to fight our way through?
Suddenly the air convulsed with the sharp peals of a bell.
Knives clattered to the ground. The lowlanders dropped to their knees, their hands flying across their chests in some kind of mystical gesture. They bowed their heads and clasped their hands to their breasts.
Kinyo and I ran. It was properly dusk now and we could barely see the others on the road ahead. We all ran until the ruined village was out of sight. And then we ran some more.
And then suddenly there was Truman Hunt. On his horse, he made a tall shadow in the middle of the road. He waved us into a copse of trees along a thin creek. We collapsed under the trees, bewildered and frightened in the dark. As we began to set up camp, Truman Hunt wandered amongst us, asking if we were all right.
When he got to me, I couldn’t see his expression properly, but the hand he laid on my shoulder was warm. ‘Thank you, Luki,’ he said softly. ‘You are a life saver.’
‘Well, that was nice of him,’ Tilin said grumpily as she unrolled a mat for Sidong under a tree. ‘But I won’t forget he left us to face the knives.’
‘He was in danger,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t see you lingering when the lowlanders began to attack.’
‘I guess the war isn’t over for those lowlanders, even though the Americans say it is,’ Tilin said.
‘But then they stopped. Why did they do that?’ I asked Kinyo.
‘It’s called the Angelus,’ Kinyo said. He explained that a bell tolled three times a day – and everyone had to kneel and pray to their spirits.
He shrugged. ‘I did it too when I was growing up in the lowlands. It may not seem normal to you, but it is normal down here in the lowlands.’
I had no reason to disbelieve him, Mother. Though I wondered how much longer the Angelus could remain a normal part of their daily life. In Bontok, we’d become used to Americans changing what was normal.
8
Manila
Truman Hunt decided it would be safer for us to travel at night and sleep during the day, camping out of sight. We did this for five more nights, walking under dark skies, villages and towns looking identical in the dim glow of the moon.
One night we felt a faint current, a freshening that made us all stop and spread our arms wide to feel the breeze. There was a whispering in the distance. Truman Hunt pulled his horse to a stop and grinned.
‘Mister Hunt says it is the ocean,’ Kinyo translated. The ocean. The ocean. The ocean. The low rushing did not seem so far away. But the road to Manila never did take us near enough to see it. We could hear the ocean, sighing and groaning and thundering. But it stayed out of sight.
And then the sighing stopped, the breeze warmed, the starry clumps of fireflies in the trees blinked off and we heard roosters, hundreds of them, crowing as the sun began to breach the horizon.
Truman Hunt turned in his saddle and held up his hand. The early morning light cast long yellow rays. His hat looked like it was on fire.
‘We have arrived,’ he announced. ‘Welcome to Manila. I know you are tired, but if we keep moving, we should reach the harbour by the afternoon.’
Everyone’s mouths were agape with astonishment. It had happened without warning. None of us had noticed the dwindling of the rice paddies, the road hardening to paving, the houses turning from bamboo into stone, their rooftops changing from thatch to iron sheets and pottery.
We had dream-walked our way into Manila.
Manila is the capital city of the Philippine Islands. Mister William had made us recite this in school. But no matter how many times we repeated it, the words meant nothing. Manila had seemed a long way away.
But now here it was. We marched slowly, staring at the houses by the side of the road, the windows had shutters glazed with oyster shells. The bigger windows had elaborate bulging ironwork hung with ferns. The deeper into the city we walked, the closer together the houses seemed to huddle.
Then as the morning grew later, people began to appear. Small children darted around us like fish. One white-haired woman with a large cigar dangling from her lips marched into our midst and dragged two children away, hiding them behind her skirt, as if she needed to protect them from us. Men put down the yokes across their shoulders to stare.
Entering the city, I had been so excited it had felt like there was a swarm of bees buzzing in my belly. But my excitement quickly dulled before the lowlanders’ relentless ogling. Their eyes wandered over our bodies as if they were staring at animals they had never seen before. I could feel them looking at the tattoos on my face, the fall of my blouse and the hem of my skirt – it made me feel ashamed somehow.
I found myself looking away, pretending not to notice.
Soon the road began to fill with carts of all sorts, pulled by horses and carabaos. Truman Hunt ordered us to walk on the side of the road.
Soon the rough paving became more evenly cut. The houses became bigger, their rooftops made of tile instead of thatch.
