JOSE MARTE ABUEG

Anthill

THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS STORY. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR.

                                       Most of us have, at one time, wantonly disturbed an ants� nest, and
                                        watched with wild amusement the scurrying confusion that resulted.

                                                                                                        Bertrand Russell

                                        We had set fire to the wooded hills, to the fields and the little villages.
                                        It was most diverting. The bombs had hardly touched the earth before
                                        they burst out into white smoke and an enormous flame, and the dry
                                        grass began to burn. I thought of the animals: God how they ran ...
                                        It was like hell.

                                                                                                        Bruno Mussolini

The real danger, I was told, was of big snakes. The small ones in the uplands were not deadly. They had bitten nine of us and no one died. Also killers were mosquitoes; we took triple the normal dosage of malaria pills.

A minor menace I discovered for myself. Appointed as scout in preparation for a trek, I ventured out through a thicket that con-cealed a path to a known creek. In seconds, leeches were on my neck, arms and legs. Some had fallen off, fat and sated, before I could remove the others. Blood oozed from the wounds, and the wounds gave a terrible itch.

Often, after hours of non-stop walking�a moment�s halt could be fatal�we would take our shoes off to remove the leeches that had entered them and were trapped, all the while sucking at our feet. In those hours, we as well as they were damned.

When moving through dense woods, we needed continually to inspect our backs, necks, legs, even our ears and faces. The sun scorched us and our bodies itched from contact with the foliage; we could not feel the parasites on our skins. A number of times upon arriving in our camp we found leeches in our armpits.

How long have you been here? Joven asked.

Two years.

Do you get in touch with your parents?

They are both dead. They were killed seven months before I came here.

Orlando asked, Do you think of Manila often, of school?

Sometimes, a few times.

What do you miss most? Totoy asked.

You won�t believe this, but last night, you know what I dreamed of? A bottle of Pepsi!

Hah! Ador slapped his thigh. The M-16 on his lap tilted to the ground. I was like that in my first year, on Mount Arayat. I remember I was standing in a downpour when I was nearly overcome by a desire to run down to the town, but then it occurred to me that what I wanted might not be there, either. The rain was beating against my face. I was thinking how nice it would be to drink from a glass again.

A fighter in the woods needs and will be like a poet, Ador said to me, after reading a worn-out book, on my first dusk, in a unique departure from teaching of doctrine. After months of sleeping on rocks, eating roots dug up from the dirt, going thirsty for days and nights, you will come to be like an animal. You will change clothes as seldom as the forest floor changes grass. There will be delight in the discov-ery of a brook or a pond with its promise of drink and possibly fish. But you will view the water with suspicion. Its being there could mean the presence of another human. So you must move like a snake, soundlessly and without a trace; for that reason, you will appreciate the grass. The air carries scents; be alert to what they convey. The sound of a twig breaking may signal mortal danger. You will learn to sleep standing against a tree while a storm rages over you and around you. Your skin will change. The feel of blood streaming from a wound may become as familiar as that of water from a fresh spring. But make no mistake: It will all be like a baptism of blood, or of fire.

We were about three hours on the way to camp via an invisible, twisting route when a clanking sound came from up a slope behind the dense bushes to our right. We scattered quickly and noise-lessly. I dropped to the ground behind a tree, my breathing halted, my vision clear over my M-1. Above me, to my left, Ador stood with his knapsack hanging by its strap from his teeth while he trained his M-16 at the bushes.

Corn, water cabbage, young coconuts and bananas were the object of our trip to a small field that was more than four hours� walk from the camp. We calculated the field would be untraceable from likely sources of food on that particular mountain, so that if it were discovered, we would have time to decamp.

I glanced at Ador. He had slowly put his rifle down between his legs and now had his fists by his chest. I could see he was preparing to unpin a hand grenade. In my mind I scanned the situation quickly. Orlando, Joven and Totoy could be counted on in such an engagement.

A woman�s voice uttered a few syllables. A child�s squeak answered the woman. A man spoke two short sentences. It was Aeta talk.

In a moment Orlando was out in the open, minus his M-1, with a loose sack of corn hanging from a shoulder. He began walking in the direction away from the field, to let the Aetas know where the food came from�not in the direction of the camp. I rose up quietly and moved toward Orlando with my rifle pointed to the ground.

They came out from behind the bushes, six tiny dark men, five women and three children, one a girl. They were obviously a noma-dic clan, one of many that roamed the Cordillera Mountains. They carried all their belongings with them: stuffed sodden blankets, and wooden bowls, all stringed to their shoulders and waists. Four men held bows and arrows.

They stopped and were silent as Orlando stood several meters from them, looking relaxed and his eyes wide open. He let his shoulder stoop from the weight of the bag of corn. The Aetas� attention was divided between Orlando and me when Totoy came out slowly behind them. In one hand he had a bunch of bananas, and in the other held his M-16 downward.

Immediately, I saw, the Aetas realized they had no way for escape. Without a word, they contracted their space. Their men surrounded the women and children, and held had their bows and arrows half-ready and pointed slightly above our heads.

Totoy gave half a smile, gently slung the rifle on his shoulder, and with his free hand raised an open palm.

Orlando and I kept still. Without lowering his palm, Totoy raised the bunch of bananas toward the nomads.

We knew words of Aeta language but they were not to be used in such a situation.

We never exchanged words with those Aetas.

The little girl yielded a giggle. Three women mumbled to their men who had their gaze fixed on us and were examining our faces. In that silence Totoy motioned to them to come and follow us.

With my rifle still hanging from my shoulder, I turned my back to the Aetas and began to walk. One of their men spoke and they followed.

I took a direction away from the camp. We all walked quietly. The mountain air was still. After some minutes I sensed the ten-sion easing. Some minutes later I thought: How meek the Aetas were.

Walking now almost beside them, Totoy and Orlando gave the Aetas bananas and corn. From time to time I watched the tiny dark people. They ate without speaking.

Ador and Joven would carry my load of coconuts and the vegetables to the camp after we had left with the Aetas.

Orlando lighted a cigarette and offered a near-empty pack to the Aeta men. The nomads were interested only in the food. They went on eating the whole time we walked. It occurred to me that Totoy, Orlando and I had the same thought, that hunger was part of the terrain.

Shortly afterwards we gestured to the Aetas we would be starting our descent. The Aeta men nodded. Followed by the children and women, they headed uphill.

The hike back to the camp took about five hours. That night Ador reviewed the incident for us. He spoke calmly but, I felt, much too briefly, as though avoiding a vague possibility that he could foresee.

We chanced upon the Aetas again after two weeks, a half-day�s walk from where we first encountered them. They were after food; we gave them some corn. The third encounter was almost at the other side of the mountain. The fourth was near the site of the first.

The danger was clear. In that last encounter Ador, through hand gestures, told the Aeta men to come and gather food with us. He told them to let the women and children go on ahead without them.

The group of Aetas agreed readily. After some words from their men, the women left with the children. The men came with us obediently.

We walked for what I felt was longer than an hour. I thought I saw the day�s light dimming. In that light, in a small clearing surrounded by tall grass and trees, as had been debated upon and decid-ed, with care to save on ammunition, we gunned the six Aeta men down.

We cleared the spots where blood had fallen, dug a hole in the ground among the trees, buried the bodies, and covered the grave with dry leaves.

Deafening blasts started pounding the earth without warning, in quick succes-sion. Every impact violently shook the forest, instantly turning everything into a blur. Alone at a distant sentry point, I ran as fast as I could like a frightened animal. I ran almost with no control of my legs while the ground shook continuously under them.

In the forest�s blur I almost did not see a large tree in front of me. Without a thought I climbed it up as high as I could, as though the terror came from the ground.

Suddenly the tree�s branches and leaves below me appeared strangely very clear. Only then did I notice that I had lost my hearing.

In the soundlessness I saw Aetas on the ground, running as though being chased. Soon they were countless, scurrying like an agitated colony, filling the ground below me like ants.

The children appeared to howl, the women were crying, but I could not hear them. I could feel only the ceaseless bomb blasts as they condensed the air.

Behind the Aetas, whole trees were erupting in a blaze. The forest and a wide sky turned red. I lost my grip and fell on my back to the ground. The fall restored my hearing. On ground I could feel the explosions were approaching fast.

Aetas seemed to come from everywhere. Their incessant, trem-bling cries were all around me. In their spreading mass I could see clusters of men, women and little children.

I was getting up on my feet when a tiny hand grabbed my hair and began tugging at it. A small Aeta boy, probably blinded by fear and the tears on his dark contorted face, was crying to me but had hardly any voice.

For a moment large and minute pains filled my head. The ground continued to convulse under me, and was itself turning fiery red. I seized the boy�s hand and began running with the Aetas.

Quiet and an empty haze engulfed me when I awoke. Lying atop a wide rock, I felt heavy in the head and numb from my legs to my chest.

I could not remember reaching that part of the wilderness, and could not recognize it.

There were sounds of breaking sticks, and then shadows flick-ered at the edges of my vision. Several paces away, silhouettes of people stood around a small fire. A glance at them suggested a family of Aetas. Instinctively I knew they were all that remained of them.

I had learned long ago that nomads had a way of flocking together at a common ground at the first sign of danger. After the conflagration the Aetas had gathered there in a semicircular clearing to restore the shape, as it were, of dust.

Dusk was ending, the crackling of burning leaves and wood trailed thin strips of the veil of late clouds. I smelled the heated earth as my head started to clear. The Aetas� motions showed very little in the receding space.

I sat up. At last I heard a voice, one or two words spoken. A shadow in the center stoked the fire.

Soon the sky was completely dark, without a trace of the reddish tinge.

By the time I had run a hundred meters the drizzle had grown into torrential rain, and I was out of breath. The downpour turned every-thing gray. I could see only diagonal lines of water that was almost opaque. My own speed surprised me, my feet simply ran. �They cannot catch me,� the thought formed itself. I escaped straight into the space and the water. Where two drops of rain fell on my face and right shoulder, the way I ran with my body half turned, how I glanced back and saw a void, and how I sensed being glad to be in such a situation: I was conscious of all the strangeness. There was bizarreness in the place itself. I was running on an asphalted avenue. Where I could see through the endless downpour, stood buildings of the university. When I felt certain that my pursuers would never reach me, before me appeared three children�two boys, one taller than the other, and a little girl. I had slowed down and by then was nearly just walking, but they sensed I was in flight, and playfully joined me as I started to run again. Still without any deliberate thought, I knew, �I have to save them.� The floodwater had risen quickly. We were at by gates of the university when we saw, several paces in front of us, the floodwater crashing down into where half of the road had collapsed. We turned back, and were astonished to see a house where stood four men who seemed to be calmly watching the street. One of them, the tallest, motioned with his hand to us. We went and en-tered the wooden framed door, followed the man inside, to the middle of a darkly lit, almost empty room, where a staircase led underground. The idea seemed logical, that safety from a raging storm was to be found beneath the surface. De-scending the staircase, we saw different clusters of people, seated, standing, silent�dim, wet figures, refugees from the storm. Then there were big windows through which shone (in dreams there are no surprises) white morning light. A door led to a yard with bright green grass.