Americans All Part 40

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."

These were days of ease and beauty to the Maestro, and he enjoyed them the more when a new problem came to give action to his resourceful brain.

The thing was this: For three days there had not been one funeral in Balangilang.

In other climes, in other towns, this might have been a source of congratulation, perhaps, but not in Balangilang. There were rumors of cholera in the towns to the north, and the Maestro, as president of the Board of Health, was on the watch for it. Five deaths a day, experience had taught him, was the healthy average for the town; and this sudden cessation of public burials--he could not believe that dying had stopped--was something to make him suspicious.

It was over this puzzling situation that he was pondering at the morning recess, when his attention was taken from it by a singular scene.

The "batas" of the school were flocking and pus.h.i.+ng and jolting at the door of the bas.e.m.e.nt which served as stable for the munic.i.p.al caribao.

Elbowing his way to the spot, the Maestro found Isidro at the entrance, gravely taking up an admission of five sh.e.l.ls from those who would enter. Business seemed to be brisk; Isidro had already a big bandana handkerchief bulging with the receipts which were now overflowing into a great tao hat, obligingly loaned him by one of his admirers, as one by one, those lucky enough to have the price filed in, feverish curiosity upon their faces.

The Maestro thought that it might be well to go in also, which he did without paying admission. The disappointed gate-keeper followed him. The Maestro found himself before a little pink-and-blue tissue-paper box, frilled with paper rosettes.

"What have you in there?" asked the Maestro.

"My brother," answered Isidro sweetly.

He cast his eyes to the ground and watched his big toe drawing vague figures in the earth, then appealing to the First a.s.sistant who was present by this time, he added in the tone of virtue which _will_ be modest:

"Maestro Pablo does not like it when I do not come to school on account of a funeral, so I brought him (pointing to the little box) with me."

"Well, I'll be----" was the only comment the Maestro found adequate at the moment.

"It is my little pickaninny-brother," went on Isidro, becoming alive to the fact that he was a center of interest, "and he died last night of the great sickness."

"The great what?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Maestro who had caught a few words.

"The great sickness," explained the a.s.sistant. "That is the name by which these ignorant people call the cholera."

For the next two hours the Maestro was very busy.

Firstly he gathered the "batas" who had been rich enough to attend Isidro's little show and locked them up--with the impresario himself--in the little town-jail close by. Then, after a vivid exhortation upon the beauties of boiling water and reporting disease, he dismissed the school for an indefinite period. After which, impressing the two town prisoners, now temporarily out of home, he shouldered Isidro's pretty box, tramped to the cemetery and directed the digging of a grave six feet deep. When the earth had been sc.r.a.ped back upon the lonely little object, he returned to town and transferred the awe-stricken playgoers to his own house, where a strenuous performance took place.

Tolio, his boy, built a most tremendous fire outside and set upon it all the pots and pans and caldrons and cans of his kitchen a.r.s.enal, filled with water. When these began to gurgle and steam, the Maestro set himself to stripping the horrified bunch in his room; one by one he threw the garments out of the window to Tolio who, catching them, stuffed them into the receptacles, poking down their bulging protest with a big stick. Then the Maestro mixed an awful brew in an old oil-can, and taking the brush which was commonly used to sleek up his little pony, he dipped it generously into the pungent stuff and began an energetic scrubbing of his now absolutely panic-stricken wards. When he had done this to his satisfaction and thoroughly to their discontent, he let them put on their still steaming garments and they slid out of the house, aseptic as hospitals.

Isidro he kept longer. He lingered over him with loving and strenuous care, and after he had him externally clean, proceeded to dose him internally from a little red bottle. Isidro took everything--the terrific scrubbing, the exaggerated dosing, the ruinous treatment of his pantaloons--with wonder-eyed serenity.

When all this was finished the Maestro took the urchin into the dining-room and, seating him on his best bamboo chair, he courteously offered him a fine, dark perfecto.

The next instant he was suffused with the light of a new revelation.

For, stretching out his hard little claw to receive the gift, the little man had shot at him a glance so mild, so wistful, so brown-eyed, filled with such mixed admiration, trust, and appeal, that a queer softness had risen in the Maestro from somewhere down in the regions of his heel, up and up, quietly, like the mercury in the thermometer, till it had flowed through his whole body and stood still, its high-water mark a little lump in his throat.

"Why, Lord bless us-ones, Isidro," said the Maestro quietly. "We're only a child after all; mere baby, my man. And don't we like to go to school?"

"Senor Pablo," asked the boy, looking up softly into the Maestro's still perspiring visage, "Senor Pablo, is it true that there will be no school because of the great sickness?"