Part 40 (1/2)

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 glee and druled ad libitum.

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 roll-book 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 civilization. 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, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of 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-mama.”

”Oh-look-et-de-moon-she-ees-s.h.i.+nin-up-theyre-oh-mudder-she look-like-a-lom-in-de-ayre-lost-night-she-was-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-s.h.i.+nin-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-rridd-on-whit-on-bloo-oo-oo!”

By this time the Maestro was ready to go to bed, and long in the torpor of the tropic night there came to him, above the hum of the mosquitoes fighting at the net, the soft, wailing croon of Isidro, back at his ”Goo-oo-oo nigh-igh-igh loidies-ies-ies.”