The Time of No-Change
A short story by ©Elizabeth Medina.
2004. All rights reserved.
The family group stood in
the jungle clearing. The rosy dawn was just beginning to filter through the
trees. The grandfather and grandmother,
their numerous grown children, the wives and husbands and grandchildren old
enough to walk with their parents deep into the jungle. They were accompanied
by guardian hounds. They stood before a
boulder of amazing proportions, half buried in the clearing. No large trees grew around it, and the ancients
who were no longer had told the grandparents that
one night, when the ancestors had yet to be born many
many generations ago, fire roared in the sky, roared into the forest announced
by deafening thunderclaps and a blaze of lightning that lit up the world. The flash
of light swallowed the night so that it seemed day had suddenly returned, the
fire destroyed almost all of creation and burned
all growth uncounted strides all around the rock. A single tree of gigantic
size survived because Bathala needed to be able to go down to Earth and sow new
beings, animals and food. Almost beside it, however, a single ancient balete
tree of immense proportions towered, Linn’s Ficus
Indica. The tree was still there, a many centuries-old mythical tree that
withstood the cataclysm. In it lived a
powerful Nono that had to be venerated because It was the Protector of
the world. They had to make offerings to It so It would not forget them,
because if It did their lives would be snuffed out as the rain smothered live
coals during the season of sorrowing heavens. The grandmother, their priestess impo Jaba, began gathering branches,
leaves, flowers and fruit. The rest followed suit. Soon the sacred bower had
been assembled. With her eldest granddaughter ate Tabgao, impo Jaba set
up an altar, after asking for permission from the Nono, the spirits who resided
in the boulder and the forest. When the altar was ready impo Jaba sang a prayer chant joined by ate Tabgao and the rest of the family. Around them the sounds of the forest had
fallen into a hush. No monkeys heard
chattering and boisterously rampaging across the trees, no parrots shrieking or
birds trilling and flapping in great groups across the cathedral-like canopy. Not the rasping of a giant python stealthily slithering over leaves and
brush on the jungle floor. No crocodiles
roaring --- the river was a morning’s hike away. This space was sacred and
powerfully protected: no hostile spirits came near. Impo Jaba ended her singing prayer before the altar, the family
group sat down and from baskets took out colorful cloths, in which foods were
wrapped. Some of the men and the older
boys had gone off with their long knives and returned with mangoes, guavas,
star apples, and coconuts that were cracked open and drunk from. The group shared their meal and were now
talking, sometimes smiling or pronouncing an interjection, laughing,
singing. Impo Jaba, Tabgao always beside her, ate with them. The simple worship had been done. They had paid their respects to Bathala and
the anitos, given thanks and asked
for protection from bad weather, enemies, dangerous animals and insects that
destroyed their rice crop, killed their bees, spirits that caused anger,
disharmony, illness.
After the meal they lay down
and slept for a time before trekking back to the river. Barely had the river’s
singing waters grown audible than some of the men moved ahead with their bows
and arrows and baladaos, long knives, and their hounds trained to detect
buayas, snakes, warthogs and tamaraos. It was the time of day when they knew that
few crocodiles would be about, when the monsters slept, but long experience
with the beasts had made them naturally wary.
Crocodiles were divinities and periodic ritual sacrifice was necessary
to appease them and gain their benevolence.
Periodically also, the men formed hunting parties to kill them, though
their numbers never decreased. The
family had lost members and animals to the beasts in the past. One could not live too near the river for
this reason, and they never went to fetch water or wash clothes alone. When they bathed – they loved the water –
they did so inside large cages of stout bamboo stakes. It was always better to go to smaller
streams to bathe and wash in. Even when
family groups lived by the sea, especially near the river mouths, they had to
be careful because there were also crocodiles in the sea. For this reason too, they built their houses
atop tall, sturdy poles as a safeguard from floods, and performed a ritual to
attract a special anito that protected
each house.
The river was clear, their
large canoes waiting on the bank. The
family group climbed in and set off downstream for their hamlet. They arrived quickly and before dark reached
their huts. The women began preparing
the evening meal, the men fetched water and wood and built a fire. The evening song of the trees, the chorus of
mayas, the cries of multicolored parrots, the fragrance of flowers, the cooing
doves, croaking frogs, chirping crickets, and a thousand gentle sounds wrapped
around them with the cool moist darkness of night. Large groups of bats swooped noiselessly
through the air, hunting. The dogs
barked occasionally. Warthogs stayed
away. The boys and girls had gone to and
returned from the rice fields, bringing back the carabaos, and fed the
dogs. The girls helped their mothers prepare
the meal and serve. impo Jaba, nono
Bitun and the other venerable ancients sat around the fire and tended it, some
still weaving on looms in the dimming light, others carving tools out of molave
or making rope. The younger men lounged
nearby, chewing betel nut, smoking aromatic tobacco, drinking coconut wine,
talking about hunting, visits to nearby hamlets, their fields and animals,
unusual sightings, rumors, jungle beasts, stories of marvels both real and
imagined – for them, there was hardly a difference.
Later they would all eat
together with their hands on plates of banana leaf and bark, seasoning their
food with salt by rubbing two rocks together over it, the adults speaking about
domestic concerns such as the beeswax needed for candles, medicinal herbs to be
collected for ailments among them, broken earthenware that needed replacing,
cotton, dyes and other things needed for weaving, the next trips to villages
where the supplies could be bartered for, who was to go, who was to stay. The men addressed their dato, the leader of
the family, who was the oldest and strongest son and brother, regarding their
need for iron for lance tips and knives, which they obtained from Chinese
merchants who periodically visited a larger settlement downriver. The children ate in silence, listening and
observing their elders. When the meal was eaten the women cleared and put away
while the grandparents formed a circle with the children and told stories about
the ancestors and spirits, how the world was made by mythic beings. The adults listened too, mothers cradling
toddlers, nursing infants, men smoking, sharpening spearheads, whittling sticks
to make arrows, offering stray remarks or telling stories heard from other
family groups, and so on. The children
told their own tales of things they had seen and done, things they had dreamed,
and asked questions. The stories were
punctuated by laughter, shouts of fear, squeals of delight, teasing and
scolding.
“Impo,” said one of the
bigger children, “tell us about the anitos, the tauos.”
“You know children that
everything is alive, because inside them live the anitos, that are two in
kind: good and bad spirits, and our
venerated ancestors. The anitos protect
and help us. There is an anito that
lives in every house, there is Apo laki, the anito of war, there are anitos of
the jungle, the Tauo sa salugo, and the Tauong-damó. There is a spirit that lives on the top of
every high mountain, another that lives on the plain. Other spirits live in the branches of the
balete tree and at the bottom of the lake.
A spirit provokes storms, and another spirit, Damolag, protects the
flowering rice in the field when the bagyó, the hurricane, comes. Whenever you
walk in the ricefields, you know you must first say, “Pasing tabe sa nono” so
you may walk about freely, and when your elders work in the fields, they also
have to ask permission from the nono.
“Impo,” said one of the
youngest, “Once I did not say pasing tabe sa nono – and I was stung by a
bee!” The children and the adults
laughed.
As the fire died down they
entered their huts and went to sleep.
This is how a modern
historian or hack might evoke that world, but it was not really like that at
all, except in a few details.
They must have been quiet,
peace-loving people, passionately attached to their homes and their land, who
spoke little. Words were not their
vehicle of communication – they sang much more, or used their gaze, clicked
their tongues or whistled. Most of all they communicated knowings through
feeling – what is felt by the skin: the
breeze, the heat of the sun, the cool of night, the prickly, tight air when
spirits rampaged as lightning and wind, the freshness of water, the pain of a
gash when one cut oneself accidentally while chopping wood, the burning of
fever, the sweet juiciness of a ripe mango, the solid, steady, heaving and
swaying of the carabao’s back, the hair rising on the nape and arms as one
walked alone through the forest in the dead of night, sensing that the tikbalang,
the asuang, or the patianac, a demon thirsty for blood, was following. Feeling expressed in love and protection,
sharing and helping. They were
intuitives as all indigenous are intuitives.
But unlike indigenous of Aztec and Inca civilizations, they had not a
culture versed in the rituals and arts of large-scale warring, of power over
great lands to control and assure access to scarce necessities or rare luxuries
– the only power they understood and made use of was that of natural authority
which obeyed the imperatives of collective survival of small groups. Gold, silver, mother-of-pearl, raw silk,
honey were for trade. Their crafts
sustained an elementary level of life that was never devoid of beauty, ease and
joy – their beauty, their ease, their joy, that others would later call
ugliness, sloth and sin.
Their wealth was time, the
peaceful lulling splendor surrounding them, they lived with their dead, their
ancestors who protected and anchored them.
They did not starve, the environment was rich, flowing, gentle; the
climate relatively mild, not like the barren deserts, the arid high plains
swept by icy winds or mantled by eternal snows in lands that did not exist for
them. Even sickness was rare but, when it came, there were medicinal plants of
great power, and when Death came, It was welcomed with equanimity, the dying
prepared for their journey and their memory secured.
They lived in a paradise, a
beautiful plentiful land, aware that there were other groups considerable
distances away from their own nests.
Note that I did not say “they lived in Paradise” – it was a paradise on
earth they lived in, indeed, but they had their worries too, and these worries
tended to multiply as the centuries passed and the forces active in other
worlds began to press down on theirs.
First, spirits and demons.
Then pirates. At first rarely, then ever
more frequently, invaders. Finally,
lying usurpers.
In the future War of Words
and Burning Steel they were destined to be defeated and destroyed. Defeated, because though they knew how to
survive in the jungles of beasts and vine-choked trees, in their
intimately-known womb of emerald walls and rivers and surging blue seas, they
did not know how to track and survive in the jungle of human motives. They had just been born. They would be like a baby thrown into a
gambling den. The baby grew up and
longed to be free, but when the baby was already a strong young man, he was
still a baby in his heart, yet no longer innocent. He had become full of
murderous hatred, confused resentment, crippling guilt and shamed longing for
the occasional crumbs of love received from his masters -- no longer members of
his own family group, but greater chiefs arrived in his land from the Great
Unknown, now the owners of the gambling houses, opium dens and brothels where
his mother and sisters worked, some like fabled courtesans and others as
scullery maids.
And they were destroyed.
Their resplendent emerald jungles clear cut and paved over. Their names, stories,
divinities ceased to be passed on and venerated. As though their world had
never been. The children of their
greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgrand-children only
heard the echo of their names and their voices calling out to them, for the
very first time, at the instant the mudslides entombed them.
Indeed, the strong young man
was not alone…there were others like him who survived after being abandoned in
the doorway of the house of sin. But so many brothers were killed, whether by
their own hand or by those of their enemies – among whom were their own
fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbors, teachers, priests,
servants, and so on. There were many
different kinds of houses at whose doorstep the babies were left by mothers who
tried to save them. In some cases, the
mothers were gamblers or courtesans or opium merchants themselves, and they
watched their children grow up from a distance.
They provided them with a roof, clothing, even schooling – especially in
humiliation or effective servility – and believed this was the right way, that
their children would finally grow up to be acceptable citizens. These mothers amassed fortunes, not on their
backs or by planting the poppies, or running the gambling saloons – no, for
there were now many ways to become rich, and they were mostly
small-timers. They worked for the big
sharks. The biggest Shark was the
conqueror, who not only controlled the small, damaged country our characters
were the so-called nation of, but many, many more. Once the shark had swallowed everything in
sight, it would start on its own tail.
In the meantime, the baby in
its belly, who did not know about the mother shark, did not even know about
business, much less why people have a need to gamble, smoke opium or frequent
whores, and why other people need to amass wealth (to feel the
self-satisfaction of no longer being poor and humiliated, safely watching from
afar the spectacle of others’ poverty and others’ humiliation, in the comfort
and solace of perfect safety from those horrible tragedies, thanks to their
competence and genius – in other words, their superiority), the baby and the
others like him, who now were in appearance strong, virile young men and
handsome, astute young women – set to building their dreams within millions of
rooms; some large, some smaller, but all decently-appointed, even quite modern
and tasteful, within the establishments they were born to. Definitively, they lived in a society of
sinners who appeared to be holy. But… something
was wrong, even when they felt self-satisfied and possessed “everything a
self-made man could want.” A void, a
dread gnawed away somewhere deep inside the gut. They thought the problem was they still had
to get to the top of the casino industry, or finally become the kingpin of the
drug production and distribution networks, or the nation’s First Lady, or even
– why not? – Madame President.
In the still of the humid,
clammy night, the air heavy with silence now only broken by strange shouts and
distant explosions, in the cities patrolled by engines speaking in hard,
guttural machine dialect, crawling along streets lined by endless dreary gray
walls of cement blocks crowned with thorns, concealing the opulent mausoleums
from the eyes of the resentful and hungry. No longer any singing frogs, praying
crickets, hooting owls, swooping, chittering bats, all buildings and houses
locked shut and dark. Something very wrong.
Everyone knowing it. And the one
who was to blame – Satan, the Anti-Christ, Marx, Mohammed, Che Guevara – who
could it be? The one to blame was
faceless, invisible, yet omnipresent, ubiquitous.
So they did what their
ancestors did, the only thing they could do when they felt surrounded by evil,
by demons, by bloodthirsty spirits or vampires:
they drew out their bolos, their long knives, and attacked the enemy, no
matter if he had wooden ships, arquebusses, crossbows, steel lances and cannon
or Remington rifles, gattling guns and armored destroyers. In imitation of their brave ancestors, the
great datus, they hired assassins, professional thugs, mercenaries, informers,
to weed out their enemies, those who (of course) were the ones who were sowing
strife, creating discontent among the masses who could not enter the gambling
saloons, buy the whores or dream the languorous Arabian Nights fantasies of
addicts. Surely it was those malcontents
who were the One to Blame.
Thus the jungles of fearsome
creatures, centuries-old trees and impenetrable underbrush of our ancestors
gave way to the jungles of asphalt, cars spewing exhaust, abnormal heat, the
atmosphere of impending calamity, resolute denial and mass escape from the
land, once a paradise, now a paradise of thieves, ruffians, slave owners and
traders, rapists, whores and murderers.
But it was always there,
from the beginning. The seeds of
it. Our fall and expulsion from
Paradise. It’s just that…we cannot seem
to stop. Hell seems to have eternal concentric circles, spiraling down, down,
down….and there is never any bottom.
After Paradise Lost, the
eternal collective Nightmare.
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