Dwell in the Wilderness

by: Bienvenido N. Santos

"Naglilihi" by Manuel Cadag

Long before dawn, Julia woke up her young husband. It was still dark on the hills and a few stars shone with unsullied brightness.

Dawn does not seem to come to the Sinicaran hills. It is night, long and seemingly endless, and then morning at once, impatient and glaring with sunlight or cold with low winds and loud with rain beating on leaves and grass.

Now the winds were completely hushed, poised like wings preparing for flight. Soon the leaves of the trees around the house would quiver with the sound. The winds would rise through them with a moan to meet the morning. "Pio, Pio," Julia called repeatedly, touching her husband's side. "Wake up, I'm sick." Pio woke up with a start, rubbing his eyes, as if the darkness and the voice were part of a dream fast slipping away.

"Julia?" he spoke uncertainly, gazing unseeingly at the woman.

"I'm sick," whispered the young wife, her sigh accentuated by the darkness that enveloped them.

Pio, young though he was, understood what Julia meant. Both of them had been waiting for this hour. It was long in coming, but thank God, now it had come at last.

He was now fully awake. He rose quickly, and opened the window, and the darkness within the house thinned perceptibly as if one black curtain had been drawn aside by an unseen hand. But outside he saw only the stars and the shadows of trees against the sky.

"I'll call Nana Dosia." Pio told his wife as he stood by the window, looking outside, wondering if this darkness could be dawn. He hoped it was.

"What will you do? Shout for her?" asked Julia, sensing what her husband was about to do.

"Yes" answered Pio.

He did not want to leave his wife alone. Nana Dosia's house was within shouting distance.

"Don't, please," his wife begged. "You will wake up other people. It is shameful."

Their house stood in the wilderness. Their nearest neighbors had their houses go beyond the waterless creek on the way to Cotmon, but were within calling distance. Near the creek lived Tio Etrio, the man with eternally blistered lips, with his prolific wife Nana Dosia, midwife and nurse and quack doctor. To the north, farther inland near the branching of the trails, was the only store in these mountains. It was owned by a Chinese and his wife, Adela.

Julia must have been thinking of the neighbors, poor people, all of them like her and Pio, forever exuding the smell of the earth and the sun, when she said it was shameful.

"All right," agreed her husband. You'll wait for me? I shall go for her. I shall not be gone long." His hands groped for the kerosene lamp at its usual place in a corner of the house. He lighted the lamp with a match.

"Hurry," Julia answered, closing her eyes, shying away from the sudden light.

She lay on the mat spread on the floor. Above her head was a small wooden trunk in which were stacked three white plates, at her feet were some kitchen utensils, including a covered pot. Hanging from the roof were ears of corn tied together in bunches. On the walls around her were pasted pictures of young trainees carrying guns, and of several women in bathing suits riding bicycles, clipped from old magazines and newspapers left behind by the salesmen who' occasionally came to these remote parts selling cure-all medicines and lamps and framed lithographs of saints and martyrs. The young husband disappeared behind the house and went down the beated path by the creek scarcely visible in the starlight. 

When Pio returned with Nana Dosia, it was no longer dark. He had not been away long, but now there were bright streaks of light in the east. It was now morning. Only a few minutes ago, it had been night. Dawn had failed to come to the Sinicaran hills.

Julia was glad to see the old woman with the knowing eyes. "Nana," she sighed between tightly

closed lips, for the spasm of pain was upon her again, "it is terrible."

Really it was terrible. Even Nana Dosia could not do anything about it. The case baffled her. "Maybe the child is dead," she finally concluded as she rose from the floor, wet and coldly perspiring, yet reluctant to admit defeat.

"And what shall I do, Nana Dosia" asked the young husband, anxiously. 

Take her to the hospital. Right now. Quick!" The young man bit his lips and looked away as if Suddenly ashamed of himself. Julia was very dear to him. God and his heart knew that. They had been married only a year ago. Why, it seemed only yesterday that he had brought Julia to his house he had made, where they had often sat together watching white doves fly over the clearing.

"Wait for a while, Nana Dosia," Pio said after a while. "I'm going out, but I'm coming back at once."

He ran downstairs and the bright sunlight fell full on his face. He went to the store of the Chinese. He found the Chinese adding up figures on a piece of paper. He did not even look up when Pio's shadow fell across a corner of the counter.

"Good morning," Pio said, panting in the doorway. "Julia is terribly sick She must be taken to the hospital. We have no money. Will you lend me one peso?"

The Chinese looked at the young man panting in front of him, and shook his head.

"Money is scarce, my friend," he said, brokenly, and, showing him a yellow sheet of paper, he added, "Look, people do not pay."

"But I will surely pay you," Pio said, his eyes smarting all of a sudden. "I have never borrowed any money from you; have I? But Julia is suffering. I have to take her to the hospital. Besides, there is my corn plot. Some of the corn is ripe now. I can sell it easily. Monday will be market day. There will be many people here."

Pio looked at Julia, and Julia looked at him, their eyes meeting across the barrenness of their little room Before the Chinese could renew his protest, a woman called out from the inside of the store, and Pio knew it was Adela speaking.

She was saying, "Give Pio one peso. He will pay it back."

The Chinese shrugged his thin shoulders, silently opened a drawer, and gave Pio a dirty one-peso bill. Then he wet his pencil tip with his tongue, and began writing again.

"Thank you, Adela," Pio said, addressing the woman inside the store. "We shall go to the hospital now."

Fortunately, the bus which passed along the trail on its way to Daraga soon came by. It was not yet nine o'clock. Julia was visibly exhausted by her labor. Cold sweat covered her brow.

As Pio, carrying Julia in his arms, aided Nana Dosia and an uncle, boarded the bus, he whispered to the chauffeur, "Please don't let the bus bounce very much. Julia is very sick."

The driver looked at the little wife in the young husband's arms and grinned as if there was something wrong with the picture he saw.

"The road is really bumpy, " he said.

Pio was neither looking at him nor listening to him. He was looking down at his wife, asking her if she was all right. Julia smiled.

There were several passengers and much freight, it being Saturday. Almost every passenger who boarded the bus especially the women, had a question to ask, and a suggestion or two offered in the light of past experiences.

The bus stopped at the station' which was a kilometer away from the hospital. Everybody left the bus except the young husband and his wife because Julia was too sick to board another bus.

Pio looked around him helplessly. How magnificent the houses looked. Very few were made of nipa. Most of them were roofed with corrugated iron and walled with brick and stone or first class wood. Even the church atop a hill did not look like the weather-beaten, mossy church in San Juan on the other side of the Sinicaran hills. But he was not thrilled today as he had been when he visited the town on previous trips. After those trips he had gone home bursting with news about the splendid houses and the apparent wealth of the townspeople.

"Please," Pio begged the driver, "Cant you drive us as far as the hospital? Look at my wife. She cannot..."

Julia opened her eyes. "What are we waiting for?"

"Let's go," said the driver, his voice suddenly soft.

On the way to the hospital, they had to pass by a golf course and two tennis courts. The well-trimmed grass glittered in the sunlight. A man was mowing the grass. Another laborer, under the huge trees that lined the provincial road, was raking up leaves. A boy with a wide buri hat was pushing a stone roller on the courts. A miniature Mount Mayon stood in the park in front of the hospital. A well dressed young man was taking a picture of three giggling girls, slim and short like Julia, as they stood on the slopes of the miniature volcano hugging its smokeless crater.

Pio stood inside the main door of the hospital, holding the suffering Julia, and didn't know what to do until someone shoved him inside a narrow hall that reeked with the smell of medicine. Pio could not remember what happened.

But if Pio understood English, the words of the stacky chief doctor of the hospital would have worried him as he decided, "This is a serious case." But the doctor did not even shake his head, nor did his voice give even the shadow of a hint of the grimness of his words.

Hours passed and they seemed years to Pio who stood awkwardly at the door outside the operating room. He gazed at every nurse and physician who came out of the room, but he dared not ask them any questions. The idea that they might not understand him had suddenly come to him; he realized that most of the hospital attendants spoke in English, a language he

had heard before but did not understand. He felt lost, lost in the simple grandeur of this clean, spotless building, heavy with the odor of sickbeds and open medicine bottles -- this man whose home was in the wilderness. 

Julia was at last wheeled out of the operating room, and Pio ran toward her almost tripping over a chair.

Julia," he cried voicelessly, but Julia's eyes were closed and she did not hear him. He followed her, running noiselessly on the cold cement floor with his bare mud-caked feet.

"The child is dead," one of the nurses said casually.

Pio stared at her sheepishly as if the news did not mean anything to him. "What about Julia?" he asked softly.

The pretty nurse in immaculate white smiled at the young husband reassuringly. "But don't wake her up," she warned him. "Don't disturb her."

Some time later, the doctor told Pio that he could take the dead child home, and then return if he cared to. If he cared to? It was not yet 12 o'clock. Pio remembered that the bus was leaving Daraga for the mountains at a quarter to one.

"And you can talk to your wife, but don't disturb her. She is very weak," the doctor added.

Pio entered Julia's room and gazed down at her so worshipping that it seemed as if he was ready at any time to fall down on his knees and pray to her. She looked ghastly white and he remembered the time a big snake had frightened her. She had been as pale as this. They had been newly married then. It did not seem a year ago.

Julia," he whispered, bending over her.

Julia opened her eyes and looked at him. The child is dead," Pio told her. "Really, Nana Dosia was right. She is always right, isn't she? l am glad I brought you here. The doctor says you must stay quiet and will be well, God willing.

The subdued light in Julia's eyes brightened for a moment but quickly flickered low once more.

"I am going to take the child home. The doctor has told me to do so. I will have it buried. Tio Celo will take care of that. Then I shall return immediately. This afternoon. I may go, may I not, Julia?

Julia closed her eyes as if trying to remember something she wanted to say. But she opened them again and nodded weakly.

Is there anything you want me to do, or bring you when I come back?" 

Julia's lips moved as if she would speak. Finally, she was able to say very softly, "When are you coming back?"

"This afternoon. Is there anything you want me to bring?"

Julia's eyes seemed to cling to him. But perhaps she was only thinking of their home. Maybe she just wanted to tell him that there were two dried fish pierced together by a stick hanging on the roof above the wall with the picture of the trainees marching in shorts. But Julia simply

shook her head. "Nothing," she whispered.

"I am going now," said Pio, smoothing the blanket about her because he felt he must do something for her, and he did not know what to do.

As he moved away, Julia opened her lips as if she wanted to say something, and Pio paused

to listen, but Julia was silent.

"I am going now," Pio repeated. "I'll come back this afternoon, after four o'clock."

"Good-bye," Julia's eyes answered as they trailed after Pio long after the door had closed behind him.

The sun was unusually bright at four o'clock that afternoon. On the golf links several people, including two foreigners, were playing. Beyond the tennis courts on the other side of the railways, Mount Mayon rose high in the sky, bluer than the clouds.

Both tennis courts were busy. One of the young interns of the hospital sat near the sidelines watching his chief smashing a ball. "My chief. plays well," he said proudly after Dr. Lara had served a sizzling ball.

Dr. Lara was grinning in the sunlight. He was in usually good form. He was always in top form. Even on such a busy day as this. I can see only the chief's teeth," remarked

someone.

Many spectators laughed, and the chief doctor's grin grew wider. They were still laughing when two men carrying a stretcher came out of the back door of the hospital.

The morgue was not far from the hospital. From the tennis courts, it looked like an unused garage partly hidden by two great trees, or like the main gate of a cave at the base of Mount Mayon.

"Man or woman?" someone asked.

Nobody answered. All eyes were glued on the ball as it flew back and forth, but the intern even as he watched the game managed to answer the question after it had been repeated by a curious person. "Woman. Just delivered this morning. Child died, too," then broke off with a muffled shout as if his heart would break for Dr. Lara had missed an easy one.

The ball fell out of bounds and soared over the backstop. It rolled over the grass toward the miniature volcano and threatened to roll over the golf course to the spot where a fat bellied man was on the point of putting.

At the moment, a young man, barefoot and hatless, was walking toward the hospital. Pio had just alighted from a bus; he had come back from their home in the wilderness. As he half- rarń eagerly toward the hospital, he saw the tennis ball, white and round, rolling on the grass toward him. He paused in his tracks and bent down to pick it up. He fingered it for some time,

wondering what to do with it, and looked toward the tennis courts.

Far out in the field, the men bearing the stretcher had just disappeared behind the gnarled tamarind tree at the foot of Mount Mayon. 

The men on the tennis courts were still laughing about the doctor's flying ball. Pio could hear the laughter, mellow and gay and sincere. One of them was making signs to him, asking him to throw the ball.

The short fat-bellied man on the golf course had made a successful put, and was now chuckling under his breath like a very happy boy.

Pio threw the ball, and it cut through the afternoon sunlight like one of the white doves which Julia and he had once seen as they sat one aftern0on at the door of their house out there in the wilderness of the Sinicaran hills. It did not seem a year ago.

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