IV
The rains began. Seated at her window she would hear a roaring tattoo in the grove of abaca palms to the south. The noise neared, rose, thundered. Long, lithe coconuts began an inexplicable bending to and fro, their tops circling in trembling descent almost to earth, then swinging back to the spring of the bow-tense trunks in a movement exaggerated and violent like that of some stage tempest. Out of the grove, beaten, trampled down, there advanced into the open a black wall of rain, perpendicular from earth to sky. Ahead of it, dust, twigs, rubbish suddenly ascended to heaven in rotary spirals; trees were flayed of their leaves, roofs blew up like gigantic bats. Then her own house, strongly built, shook as with earthquake; the thatch of the roof sprang vertical, like hair that stiffens with fear, and between the interstices she saw the muddy sky stream by. A powder of debris, of dry rot, snowed down upon the table, the books, the chairs; little lizards, unperched, struck the floor with a squeak like that of a mechanical doll, remained as dead for long minutes, then scampered across the room and up the walls again; great black spiders, centipedes, scorpions fell; sometimes a large rat. Then the nipa clicked back to position as a box is shut; a breathless silence, a heavy immobility petrified the world. There came three or four detached, resounding raps upon the roof, and suddenly a furious, roaring beating as of stones coming down, great stones, chuted in thousands, in millions—and the church, the plaza, the mountain, the whole Land disappeared in a yellow swirl of waters. It rained thus for hours, for days, for weeks. The leaden vault of the sky seemed irreparably cracked, letting down the liquid hoardings of ages. It rained, in drops big like eggs, falling so swiftly that they welded sky to earth as with iron bars; it rained, heavily, monotonously, mournfully. The first wild, triumphant burst over, the elements seemed to have settled down to their task with a quiet, brooding patience, an immense persistence of unalterable purpose. It seemed that it would rain thus for years, for ages, for inconceivable æons. The world was rain, the future was rain; she lived in a chaos of water. The whole earth softened, dissolved; it rolled through eternity, a silent, viscous ball of ooze spattering the stars. Inside her hut a musty leprosy crept over things; her clothes rotted in her trunk, mushrooms sprang overnight upon her books; her very soul, it seemed to her, disintegrated before this malevolent persistence of elemental purpose. A black mournfulness was over her like a veil.
She yet saw him sometimes. Out of the obscure chaos he emerged, a vague shadow; behind the vitrious sheet of waters he passed, wrapped in a great cape, erect, immovable upon the horse, struggling up to its knees in mud, the heavy flaps of his sombrero down over his face, leaving to view but the hatchet-carved chin. She knew now where he had been that Sunday. A discharged negro soldier had been terrorising a little barrio to the south. The Maestro had ridden there and going directly to the bully, had disarmed him and ordered him out of the district.
And now, up in the hills, but daily nearer to the coast towns, a band of tulisanes were committing depredations. Barrios were burned; principales suspected of giving information to the authorities were tortured. And it was said that a negro renegade was the leader of the band.
He was present to her in ways other than these shadowy apparitions. One day men had placed upon her nipa roof a sheeting of zinc; she found later that the material came from the ruined convento of Cantalacan. She felt about her a fostering care, immense, enveloping like the Rains, mysterious, impalpable like them. But it was impersonal, far, cold—like the Justice of God. It left her very lonely.
One morning at sun-up he rode into the pueblo at the head of a dozen men. By their uniforms, their rusty Remingtons, she knew them as the municipal police of Cantalacan. For a week there had been a respite of the rains and the roads were fairly firm; but the outfit came in mud-crusted to the eyes, the horses staggering and dripping foam. They clattered rapidly past the house and stopped before the Casa Popular. The Maestro dismounted, but she noticed that before he allowed the others to do so, he sent a man ahead to the outskirts of the pueblo on the side opposite to that by which they had come; she could see him, sharply delineated against the rising sun, scanning the horizon. The Maestro sprang up the bamboo steps of the municipal house; his voice rang sharp and incisive. There was a running to and fro of muchachos, and man after man, the town police assembled. She had noted before their slovenliness, but now, as they mingled with the men of Cantalacan, this appeared emphasised. There was something brisk and efficient about everything that came from Cantalacan, it seemed. The Maestro reappeared and mounted. He placed half of his men in the van, the other half in the rear, the Barang contingent being framed between, and putting himself at the head started out of the pueblo by the road opposite to that by which he had come in. She saw him for a while, pliant in the saddle, leaning forward, pressing the pace, the rest of the troop pell-mell after him, rising and falling one after the other, their broad hats flapping. Suddenly he seemed to go through the crust of the earth; man after man disappeared after him; the last laggard dropped out of sight. They were crossing the river. They reappeared, toiling slowly up the farther bank, bunched for a moment, then vanished between the palms.
Toward evening she saw them return. He was not riding in front. But between the horses, formed in hollow square, something limp swung from side to side—a litter borne by four men.