"Eh?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the surprised Maestro.
And in his mind there framed a picture of himself riding along the road with a string between his fingers; and, following in the upper layers of air, a buzzing kite; and, down in the dust of the highway, an urchin trudging wistfully after the kite, drawn on irresistibly, in spite of his better judgment, on and on, horrified but fascinated, up to the yawning school-door.
It would have been the better way. "I ought to go and soak my head,"
murmured the Maestro, pensively.
This was check number one, but others came in quick succession.
For, the morning after this incident, the Maestro did not find Isidro among the weird, wild crowd gathered into the annex (a transformed sugar storehouse) by the last raid of the Munic.i.p.al Police.
Neither was Isidro there the next day, nor the next. And it was not till a week had pa.s.sed that the Maestro discovered, with an inward blush of shame, that his much-longed-for pupil was living in the little hut behind his own house. There would have been nothing shameful in the overlooking--there were seventeen other persons sharing the same abode--were it not that the nipa front of this human hive had been blown away by the last baguio, leaving an un.o.bstructed view of the interior, if it might be called such. As it was, the Munic.i.p.al Police was mobilised at the urgent behest of the Maestro. Its "cabo," flanked by two privates armed with old German needle-guns, besieged the home and, after an interesting game of hide-and-go-seek, Isidro was finally caught by one arm and one ear, and ceremoniously marched to school. And there the Maestro asked him why he had not been attending.
"No hay pantalones," (there are no pants), Isidro answered, dropping his eyes modestly to the ground.
This was check number two, and unmistakably so, for was it not a fact that a civil commission, overzealous in its civilising ardour, had pa.s.sed a law commanding that everyone should wear, when in public, "at least one garment, preferably trousers"?
Following this, and an unsuccessful plea to the town tailor, who was on a three weeks" vacation on account of the death of a fourth cousin, the Maestro shut himself up a whole day with Isidro in his little nipa house; and behind the closely-shut shutters engaged in some mysterious toil. When they emerged again the next morning, Isidro wended his way to the school at the end of the Maestro"s arm, trousered!
The trousers, it must be said, had a certain cachet of distinction. They were made of calico-print, with a design of little black skulls sprinkled over a yellow background. Some parts hung flat and limp as if upon a scarecrow; others pulsed like a fire-hose in action with the pressure of flesh compressed beneath, while at other points they bulged pneumatically in little footb.a.l.l.s. The right leg dropped to the ankle; the left stopped, discouraged, a few inches below the knee. The seams looked like the putty mountain-chains of the geography cla.s.s. As the Maestro strode along he threw rapid glances at his handiwork, and it was plain that the emotions that moved him were somewhat mixed in character.
His face showed traces of a puzzled diffidence, as that of a man who has come in a sack-coat to a full-dress affair; but after all it was satisfaction that predominated, for after this heroic effort he had decided that Victory had at last perched upon his banners.
And it really looked so for a time. Isidro stayed at school at least during that first day of his trousered life. For when the Maestro, later in the forenoon, paid a visit to the Annex, he found the a.s.sistant in charge standing disconcerted before the urchin who, with eyes indignant and hair perpendicular upon the top of his head, was evidently holding to his side of the argument with his customary energy.
Isidro was trouserless. Sitting rigid upon his bench, holding on with both hands as if in fear of being removed, he dangled naked legs to the sight of who might look.
"Que barbaridad!" murmured the a.s.sistant, in limp dejection.
But Isidro threw at him a look of black hatred. This became a tense, silent plea for justice as it moved up for a moment to the Maestro"s face, and then it settled back upon its first object in frigid accusation.
"Where are your trousers, Isidro?" asked the Maestro.
Isidro relaxed his convulsive grasp of the bench with one hand, canted himself slightly to one side, just long enough to give an instantaneous view of the trousers, neatly folded and spread between what he was sitting with and what he was sitting on, then swung back with the suddenness of a kodak shutter, seized his seat with new determination, and looked eloquent justification at the Maestro.
"Why will you not wear them?" asked the latter.
"He says he will not get them dirty," said the a.s.sistant, interpreting the answer.
"Tell him when they are dirty he can go down to the river and wash them," said the Maestro.
Isidro pondered over the suggestion for two silent minutes. The prospect of a day spent splashing in the lukewarm waters of the Ilog he finally put down as not at all detestable, and, getting up to his feet:
"I will put them on," he said, gravely.
Which he did on the moment, with an absence of hesitation as to which was front and which was back, very flattering to the Maestro.
That Isidro persevered during the next week, the Maestro also came to know. For now, regularly every evening, as he smoked and lounged upon his long, cane chair, trying to persuade his tired body against all laws of physics to give up a little of its heat to a circ.u.mambient atmosphere of temperature equally enthusiastic; as he watched among the rafters of the roof the snakes swallowing the rats, the rats devouring the lizards, the lizards snapping up the spiders, the spiders snaring the flies in eloquent representation of the life struggle, his studied pa.s.siveness would be broken by strange sounds from the dilapidated hut at the back of his house. A voice imitative of that of the Third a.s.sistant who taught the annex, hurled forth questions which were immediately answered by another voice, curiously like that of Isidro.
Fiercely: "Du yu ssee dde hhett?"
Breathlessly: "Yiss I ssee dde hhett."
Ferociously: "Show me dde hhett."
Eagerly: "Here are dde hhett."
Thunderously: "Gif me dde hhett."
Exultantly: "I gif yu dde hhett."
Then the Maestro would step to the window and look into the hut from which came this Socratic dialogue. And on this wall-less platform, which looked much like a primitive stage, a singular action was unrolling itself in the smoky glimmer of a two-cent lamp. The Third a.s.sistant was not there at all; but Isidro was the Third a.s.sistant. And the pupil was not Isidro, but the witless old man who was one of the many sharers of the abode. In the voice of the Third a.s.sistant, Isidro was hurling out the tremendous questions; and, as the old gentleman who represented Isidro opened his mouth only to drule betel-juice, it was Isidro who, in Isidro"s voice, answered the questions. In his role as Third a.s.sistant he stood with legs akimbo before the pupil, a bamboo twig in his hand; as Isidro the pupil, he plumped down quickly upon the bench before responding. The sole function of the senile old man seemed that of representing the pupil while the question was being asked and receiving, in that capacity, a sharp cut across the nose from Isidro-the-Third-a.s.sistant"s switch, at which he chuckled to himself in silent and liquid joy.
For several nights this performance went on with gradual increase of vocabulary in teacher and pupil. But when it had reached the "Do you see the apple-tree?" stage, it ceased to advance, marked time for a while, and then slowly but steadily began sliding back into primitive beginnings. This engendered in the Maestro a suspicion which became certainty when Isidro entered the schoolhouse, one morning just before recess, between two policemen at port arms. A rapid scrutiny of the rollbook showed that he had been absent a whole week.
"I was at the river cleaning my trousers," answered Isidro, when put face to face with this curious fact.
The Maestro suggested that the precious pantaloons, which, by the way, had been mysteriously embellished by a red stripe down the right leg and a green stripe down the left leg, could be cleaned in less than a week, and that Sat.u.r.day and Sunday were days specially set aside in the Catechismo of the Americanos for such little family duties.
Isidro understood; and the nightly rehearsals soon reached the stage of:
"How menny hhetts hev yu?"
"I hev _ten_ hhetts."
Then came another arrest of development, and another decline, at the end of which Isidro, again making his appearance flanked by two German needle-guns, caused a blush of remorse to suffuse the Maestro by explaining with frigid gravity that his mother had given birth to a little pickaninny brother and that, of course, he had had to help.
But significant events in the family did not stop there. After birth, death stepped in for its due. Isidro"s relatives began to drop off in rapid sequence--each demise demanding three days of meditation in retirement--till at last the Maestro, who had had the excellent idea of keeping upon paper a record of these unfortunate occurrences, was looking with stupor upon a list showing that Isidro had lost, within three weeks, two aunts, three grandfathers, and five grandmothers--which, considering that an actual count proved the house of bereavement still able to boast of seventeen occupants, was plainly an exaggeration.
Following a long sermon from the Maestro, in which he sought to explain to Isidro that he must always tell the truth for sundry philosophical reasons--a statement which the First a.s.sistant tactfully smoothed to something within range of credulity by translating it that one must not lie to Americanos, because Americanos do not like it--there came a period of serenity.
III----THE TRIUMPH
There came to the Maestro days of peace and joy. Isidro was coming to school; Isidro was learning English. Isidro was steady, Isidro was docile, Isidro was positively so angelic that there was something uncanny about the situation. And with Isidro, other little savages were being pruned into the school-going stage of civilisation. Helped by the police, they were pouring in from barrio and hacienda; the attendance was going up by leaps and bounds, till at last a circulative report showed that Balangilang had pa.s.sed the odious Cabancalan with its less strenuous school-man, and left it in the ruck by a full hundred. The Maestro was triumphant; his chest had gained two inches in expansion.
When he met Isidro at recess, playing cibay, he murmured softly: "You little devil; you were Attendance personified, and I"ve got you now." At which Isidro, pausing in the act of throwing a sh.e.l.l with the top of his head at another sh.e.l.l on the ground, looked up beneath long lashes in a smile absolutely seraphic.
In the evening the Maestro, his heart sweet with content, stood at the window. These were moonlight nights; in the gra.s.sy lanes the young girls played graceful Spanish games, winding like garlands to a gentle song; from the shadows of the huts came the tinkle-tinkle of serenading guitars and yearning notes of violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropped into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of the obscure melancholy of a race that dies.
"Goo-oo-oo nigh-igh-igh loidies-ies-ies; goo-oo-oo nigh-igh-igh loidies-ies-ies; goo-oo-oo-oo nigh-igh-igh loidies-ies-ies-ies," he repeated and repeated, over and over again, till the Maestro"s soul tumbled down and down abysses of maudlin tenderness, and Isidro"s chin fell upon his chest in a last drawling, sleepy note. At which he shook himself together and began the next exercise, a recitation, all of one piece from first to last syllable, in one high, monotonous note, like a mechanical doll saying "papa-mamma."
"Oh-look-et-de-moon-she-ees-shinin-up-theyre-oh-mudder-she-look-like-a -lom-in-de-ayre-lost-night-shewas-smalleyre-on-joos-like-a-bow-boot-now -she-ees-biggerr-on-rrraon-like-an-O."
Then a big gulp of air, and again:
"Oh-look-et-de-moon-she-ees-shinin-up-theyre, etc.----"
An hour of this, and he skipped from the lyric to the patriotic, and then it was:
"I-loof-dde-name-off-Wash-ing-ton, I-loof-my-c.o.o.ntrrree-tow, I-loof-dde-fleg-dde-dear-owl-fleg, Off-rrid-on-whit-on-bloo-oo-oo!"