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- Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
The year is 1904. Luki has lived a tribal life in the mountains of the Philippines. Now she's growing up, she is expected to become a wife and a mother, but Luki isn't ready to give up her dream to become a warrior.When her tribe are offered a journey to America to be part of the St. Louis World's Fair, Luki will discover that the land of opportunity does not share its possibilities equally . . .
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Praise for Bone Talkby Candy Gourlay
Shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal
A United States Board on Books for Young People Outstanding International Book
A Washington Post Best Children’s Book
An NBC News Best Asian American Children’s/Young Adult Book
Endorsed by Amnesty International
‘Shows us a moment of change, as two worlds meet, and that it takes more than a ceremony to make a man’ Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week
‘Very special’ The Times Books of the Year
‘One of the standout titles of the year’ Independent
‘Gourlay’s evocative writing grips from the outset’ Guardian Books of the Month
‘A master storyteller’ Scotsman
‘A mesmerising world of soulful ritual and community’ Observerii
‘A soulful coming-of-age story rich in Filipino myth and tradition’ The Bookseller
‘Gourlay paints an intricate backdrop steeped in mystical and brutal imagery … A visceral coming-of-age novel’ Kirkus
‘Steeped in Filipino tradition … richly historic’ Publishers Weekly
‘Whisks readers away into a fascinating, unfamiliar world’ International Youth Library
‘Anyone wanting to indulge and learn from different perspectives … might find the same reprieve I did between these pages’ International Examiner
‘Utterly engrossing … sumptuously realised … It will lodge deep in the bone long after these pages have been turned’ Sita Brahmachari
‘A really thoughtful and wonderful piece of storytelling’ Catherine Johnson
‘Totally transported to another time, another word. Utterly amazing’ Emily Drabble
‘A wonderful novel … will stay with me for a long time’ Elizabeth Laird
‘A good coming-of-age story transcends worlds and timelines, and such is the case for Bone Talk’ Erin Entrada Kelly
In memory of two women I love very much
Cynthia Lopez Quimpo
My fierce, beloved Mom who could light up any room
18 December 1936–4 April 2021
And
Susan Quimpo
Wondrous truth-teller, cousin, forever friend
6 February 1961–14 July 2020
In 1904, more than a thousand people from the Philippines travelled to the United States to take part in the World’s Fair in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also known as the Saint Louis World’s Fair. Among them were indigenous people called Igorots.
Contents
Part One
1
Hunting
The tree was singing.
No it’s not, Samkad would have said. But he wasn’t here yet and anyway, what did he know about anything?
I pressed my cheek against the bark to feel the tree’s voice rumble in my blood, rough and low and shapeless, unlike American music with its pom pom pom. I like your song, I whispered to the tree. It calls my spirit.
Which was a good thing, Mother, because I’d been sitting on that branch for hours, and I could barely keep my eyes open. The boar I’d been hunting for days was nowhere to be seen.
My right leg had gone to sleep and, when I straightened it, my knee made a cracking noise, sudden and deafening as an American gunshot. Which was unnerving in the moss-muffled silence of the forest. 4
Eheh, you’ve been dead a whole year, Mother, but I still glanced down nervously, half-expecting to see you in the clearing below, fists planted in your waist, ordering me down from the tree like you’d done countless times before, bombarding me with questions. How had I acquired that breechcloth I was wearing? What had I done to my skirt? What if the Americans had caught me? Didn’t they forbid hunting in the dark?
The stillness was suddenly split by a violent screeching of monkeys in the next tree. What had set them off? I searched the gloom carefully. But there was nothing there.
During the war, a lowland soldier had tried to hide in the mossy forest, but the Americans were not far behind and he was soon captured. When the war was over, American patrols trawled through the forest, making a mess, hacking trees and shooting everything in sight. But now the patrols were gone and the forest was quiet again. The Americans had finished their warring and turned their attention to ruling us. So many new laws! Ancients must listen. Women must wear blouses. Children must go to American school.
But no, Mother, as far as I was aware, hunting in the dark was still allowed. And nobody, not the Americans, nor the ancients, needed to know whether I did so wearing a skirt or a breechcloth.
Up the sun rose. The sky bloomed pink. The tops of the trees turned gold. A thick, white mist boiled up on the forest floor. And the boar came.5
It was a great black lump, gliding through the mist. Squealing softly, it began to root between the tree’s toes, tail flicking its great, meaty flanks. Mother, it was even bigger than the last one I killed.
Crunch.
The boar’s head jerked up, ears pricked.
Was that a human-shaped shadow, Mother? There, by that bush? The boar turned and stared.
Then, from the opposite direction, running feet. And barking.
‘Little Luki?’ Samkad, the idiot, burst into the clearing. His dog, Chuka, yapped from somewhere behind him.
The boar spun to face Samkad. It lowered its head to attack.
I leaped, landing between the boar and my friend so hard my teeth rattled in my skull.
The boar launched itself, and I found myself on my back, its weight pinning me down, its head turning right and left, its tusks within gouging distance of my eyes, the hot, stinky breath washing over my face, its hairy hide coarse and wiry against my skin, the hooves scrabbling painfully on my waist.
My spear was buried deep in its throat. The boar glared at me, its eyes sparking with anger and fear. I pushed the spear deeper. It grunted. The eyes began to glaze, and the hot, hairy body slumped against me. I wrenched myself from under it, backing away as the creature fell onto its side. Its feet began to run, as if it was racing from its own death. I watched the hooves kick and kick and kick, and then stop as its 6spirit drained from its body. The boar’s soul was running in the invisible world of the dead now. And its flesh had become meat.
I turned to check on Samkad, and Chuka the dog promptly stopped her yapping to throw herself in front of him, in case I tried to kiss him or something. Mother, I swear it’s embarrassing to have a dog for a love rival.
Samkad was fine, of course, gazing at me with wide-eyed admiration as Chuka danced about as if to say, ‘Me! Me! It’s me you should look at!’
‘Do you need me to finish it off?’ Samkad asked.
But I hushed him. That rustling again. ‘Who’s there?’ I yelled, scooping up a rock and throwing it into the bushes.
‘What is it?’ I could feel the heat of Samkad at my back.
‘Shh! Just before I jumped down, I saw someone.’ If it was someone from the village, they would be rushing to report me to the ancients, I thought.
‘Where?’
‘Over there,’ I said. But there was nothing there; no footsteps, no trampled grass, no broken twigs. Had I imagined it?
‘Maybe it was not a someone, but a something?’ Samkad said.
Yes. Maybe it was just a monkey, casting a large shadow.
Mother, don’t you dead people see everything? Was it a person? Shake a tree branch for yes, toss a pebble for no!
Samkad turned to the boar. He’d already forgotten about it. Kneeling, he laid a hand on its head. ‘Thank you, beast,’ he whispered. ‘May you live contentedly in the invisible world.’7
Then he got back to his feet and wrapped his arms around me. He smelled of damp soil and wet fern. His mouth, pressed against my forehead, was soft, like fruit. ‘It looks like I got here just in time.’
I snorted. ‘Just in time. You were lucky it didn’t gore you!’
‘It was not luck, it was you! You were magnificent.’ Samkad nuzzled my hair. ‘That boar – it’s twice the size of the other two. You did well.’
‘That’s not what they’re going to say.’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘There will be no thanks from all the hungry folk who are going to share this boar.’
He pressed his lips against mine and all the ungrateful people of Bontok melted away in a rush of sudden heat, as if we’d both tumbled from the cold outdoors into a warm, dry hut.
Mother, it must amuse you to see us like this when just five years ago, we were scrawny best friends with scabbed knees, brawling in the dirt when we weren’t traipsing up and down the hills, pushing each other into rice paddies. But now we were both sixteen and everything had changed.
Later, when I had washed in a nearby stream and swapped my hunting breechcloth for a fresh skirt and blouse, Samkad tied the boar to a strong bamboo pole. We each shouldered one end, Samkad in front, me at the back. The boar swung easily between us as we walked out of the forest and up the steep, green slope towards the village.
Samkad grinned over his shoulder. ‘What shall we tell the ancients this time?’8
‘All the excruciating details.’ I laughed. ‘How you waited in the tree. How you leaped in front of the boar. How you speared the boar, just so.’
Sam hooted with laughter.
And when we got there, that was exactly what we told them. How Samkad had waited in the tree. How he leaped in front of the boar. How he speared the boar, just so. And the ancients – gazing up at Sam’s amiable smile, those honest brown eyes, those broad shoulders, that deep chest etched with tattoos that marked him out as a brave man – believed everything he said.
2
Deception
Sometimes, I think about all the times you had to face the wrath of the ancients over me, Mother. Luki’s been wearing a breechcloth again, Chochon! Chochon, your daughter was fighting with a boy! Chochon, the girl was playing with a spear when she should have been pounding rice with the other girls!
You stood there, listening calmly, and when we went home, it was your turn to do the scolding. You talked about duty, you talked about manners, you talked about modesty. But after a time, I saw that you were only scolding because that was what the ancients expected of you. You put your fury on like a hat and then, just as quickly, took it off.
Even so, the ancients filled me with rage. Look at these tattoos on my face, Mother, look at these tattoos on my shoulders! All those years ago, the ancients rewarded me with tattoos and called me brave when I raised the alert that our blood enemy 10the Mangili was about to attack. But in the same breath they forbade my carrying a spear and prohibited my hunting.
‘Luki,’ you told me patiently. ‘The ancients esteem women. We bear children. We plant the rice, we cultivate the soil. We nourish the village. We are the future.’
‘So why can’t I hunt?’ I complained.
‘Because women don’t hunt,’ you said. ‘We never have. Not since before we began to remember.’
That’s what you said, Mother. But you didn’t sound convinced.
I tried to be good. I tried to be like all the other women. I followed the new American rules. I wore a blouse. I did my chores. I learned how to speak American at Mister William’s little school. I kept out of trouble. Apart from hunting.
Now the Americans are emptying the forests so quickly with their guns, we need all the meat we can get. And, Mother, you have to admit, my arrangement with Samkad is perfect.
Samkad was playing his part well. The ancients couldn’t look away from those flexing biceps and that boyish smile. As Samkad began to talk, you could see them relax, settling down on their haunches in front of the Council House fire, the wrinkles hanging looser from their foreheads, their faces spreading wide in toothless smiles. They began to thank the spirits of our ancestors for the boar – my boar. A crowd began to gather and I pushed my way to the back, my empty belly growling mercilessly to the chanting of the ancients.
I felt an elbow in my side. A spiteful voice hissed into my ear. 11
‘Pssst! What are you so pleased about, Luki?’
My belly clenched with annoyance. It was Tilin, Bontok’s meanest girl, who slept on the pallet next to mine in the House for Women. You’d think the ten of us unmarried girls would be friends, sleeping side by side on our narrow pallets, heads to the wall, feet pointing towards the warm fire in the cooking room next door. Well, I guess they tolerated me when you were still alive, Mother. They liked you. You were easy, you made people smile. But I am not like you, am I, Mother?
Tilin glared at me. Looking at her, it baffled me that young men were constantly hanging around the House for Women, waiting for a glimpse of those dark butterfly eyebrows and that too-wide mouth that made her look like she was smiling even when she was smirking. Which was what she was doing now.
‘Well?’
I sighed. Obviously, in my rush to go hunting I must have forgotten some important chore.
Tilin snorted. ‘Guess who had to trample manure this morning because you weren’t there?’
‘Oh!’ I clapped a hand over my mouth. I’d completely forgotten that it was my turn. I turned to face her and the sun struck my eyes like a blow. ‘I … I was helping Samkad!’
‘Samkad, Samkad, SAMKAD!’ Tilin was practically spitting in my ear. ‘Why does he always need YOU to help him? What does Samkad see in you?’
Samkad loves me, I thought. And it was not Samkad who needed me. I needed him. I could not hunt without Samkad.12
I scowled at Tilin. There was a flower in her hair, and a neat string of seashells from far away held her long hair away from her face. Her blouse looked crisp and white and her small feet were not blackened with forest mud like mine. Even so, she didn’t look very strong. I could fight you, I thought. I could rub your pretty face in the dirt.
But then a small voice murmured at my knee. ‘Tilin, I’m bored.’ It was Sidong, Tilin’s little sister. ‘Where is my book? I want to draw.’
Instantly, Tilin was on her knees with her arms around Sidong. ‘You can’t draw now, little chick,’ Tilin murmured. ‘The ancients are not finished.’
Looking at the two of them, I felt rotten for thinking horrible thoughts. Maybe I was the meanest girl in Bontok.
While Tilin busied herself with Sidong, Kakot, who slept on the pallet on my other side, took over. ‘And where were you last night, when the rice needed to be put on the boil?’
‘Probably with Samkad,’ someone murmured behind me. ‘She’s never there when there are chores to be done.’
The others joined in.
‘Never there when babies need to be carried.’
‘Never there when rice needs husking.’
‘Luki’s no help!’
‘Luki’s no use!’
They hawked my name like gobs of spit. Luki! Luki! Luki!
‘Luki.’ We all turned. ‘Let’s go.’ Samkad was standing right next to us. When did the chanting end? And did he hear 13them chastising me? His face was smooth, it gave nothing away.
‘Come on, Luki, help me carry the boar to Father’s house so that I can butcher it,’ he said.
Mother, the other girls were smiling at him. Smiling! Right in the middle of their nastiness! I rolled my eyes at Samkad, but he was too busy showing the girls his straight white teeth to notice.
‘Congratulations,’ Tilin simpered, stretching her chin out, clearly trying to make her neck look longer. ‘Another boar! What a skilful hunter you are, Samkad!’
If it hadn’t been for Sidong, I would have scooped up a handful of mud and smeared it on her silly neck.
Samkad led me to the boar and we lifted it up on his signal. The boar was heavier now that it was weighed down with the ancients’ good wishes. We carried it out of the courtyard, Chuka leading the way to the hut that once belonged to Samkad’s dead father. Although he lived in the House for Men with the other unmarried men, Samkad had continued to tend his father’s house. After you died, Mother, was where Samkad and I had cooked and shared many meals, and it was where we always butchered the meat from our hunts. Someday, in the far away future, when we’re ready to marry, we can make our home in it.
We had barely left the Council House when Samkad signalled me to stop and lower the boar to the ground.
‘What?’ I said.14
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘You’ve got to try harder, Luki.’ His voice was gentle but chiding.
I flattened my face and hid all my feelings. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’
‘They are your friends.’
I scowled. ‘HAH! They were never my friends.’
‘Give them a chance.’
‘A chance to annoy me?’
‘No, a chance to know you.’
‘They have known me since we were children. They can’t stand me.’
‘They like you really, Luki.’
‘They liked my mother. Me? They don’t want to know.’
‘That’s not true,’ Sam said quietly. ‘It is you who reject them.’
Didn’t he get it? The more time I spent with the other girls, the less they liked me. And what if they found out about my hunting expeditions? They would probably rather I became an expert manure trampler than a hunter.
Mother, that was when it occurred to me that this was all your fault. It was you who thought it amusing to dress me in a breechcloth because I liked playing with boys. It had pleased you when I learned to throw Father’s spear and you had shown me how to practise with a target. It was you who made me different. And now you’ve gone to the invisible world, Mother, and left me to face the consequences.
Sam continued to give me advice. ‘Make light of things! 15Have a laugh with them! Then they won’t be so hard on you. Smile!’
Smile! It made me scowl so hard I could feel the strain on my ears. He was a man, he was allowed to fight, to choose his wife, to hunt. He had no idea what it was like to want something you couldn’t have.
Just then, I heard a voice murmuring by my right hip. I didn’t catch it all, just Luki-something-something-Samkad. All this time, some idiot had been listening.
I spun around.
‘I DARE YOU TO SAY THAT TO MY FACE!’
Oh, Mother. Why didn’t you teach me more self-control? It was Sidong, chasing after us with a ledger from the American school under one arm.
She stared up at me, her mouth open, tears trembling on her brown cheeks.
Samkad was suddenly beside her, smiling. ‘Of course you can, Sidong. We don’t mind, do we, Little Luki?’
‘Mind what?’ I muttered.
‘She asked if she could come along. She wants to watch us prepare the boar.’
Guilt swelled into a lump in my throat. ‘Sure,’ I mumbled. ‘Come along, Sidong.’
My voice must have sounded normal and maybe I even managed a smile, because the little girl’s face brightened immediately. She gathered up her ledger and followed us as if I hadn’t just screamed tears into her eyes.
3
Brothers
Samkad and I hoisted the carcass up on the bamboo scaffold outside his father’s hut and then I watched as he began to cut into the beast with a thin blade. Soon he was tugging the pelt off to reveal glistening pink meat. He took up a larger knife and began to carve out neat slices of meat, slowly filling the large basket at his feet. Chuka sat next to it, never taking her eyes off his face.
Sidong sat on a nearby log with her ledger on her lap, drawing with a stubby pencil. I saw her pick up a lump of charcoal from the charred pile where Samkad lit his fire. Mister William, the American schoolteacher, told everyone that Sidong had a talent for drawing. He actually hiked across the valley to the new Episcopalian Mission in Sagada to beg for pencils and ledgers for Sidong to draw with.
As Samkad worked, he spoke softly to the boar’s spirit, 17promising that its gift would not be wasted, naming each piece and who would benefit from it. ‘This the ancients may keep, because their teeth can cope with it,’ he told the boar. ‘This the ancients will give away. And this –’ he glanced at me – ‘Luki and I will keep. We will remember you as we become strong with your meat.’
Mother, back when we were still attending American School, Mister William showed us a magnet and how some objects were drawn to it helplessly. That was how we have always been, I thought. Since we were little, Samkad has been like a magnet, drawing me to him.
Now the basket was towering with cuts of meat, and all that was left hanging on the bamboo pole was a vaguely boar-shaped thing made of gristle and bone, ready to be boiled into soup. Samkad tossed a large bone in the air and Chuka caught it gratefully.
I felt a tug on my skirt. Sidong held up her ledger for me to see.
At first glance, it was just a dirty page, streaked with charcoal. But the more I looked, the more I began to see. The black resolved into Samkad’s hut, the scaffold, the carcass dangling from it. She had left places unshaded so that everything looked dappled by sun. One wavy scrawl was unmistakably Chuka, alert for a treat. And then there was Samkad. And there was me.
How did she do this? In the picture, Samkad’s back was turned as he hacked at the meat, but in those black smudges, I could feel the weight of his body, the power in his arms. 18Looking at myself, the tilt of my head, the way I leaned towards him, I could see all my feelings.
‘Is that how we look?’ Samkad whispered over my shoulder.
He smiled at me and I smiled at him, and for a moment, I pictured a warm fire, a cauldron bubbling, and children sitting around it, laughing … and they all had Samkad’s eyes.
Suddenly, Tilin’s voice began to call: ‘Sidong! Sidong!’
‘Ay!’ Sidong clapped her hands. ‘He’s here!’
‘Who’s here?’ I asked.
She leaped to her feet, putting her pencil stub away in a pouch and hugging the drawing ledger to her chest. ‘Truman Hunt!’
‘Is that today?’ Samkad said.
‘Yes, don’t you remember? The ancients reminded everyone about it the other day.’ Sidong peeked up at Samkad. ‘How could you forget? Kinyo is going to be there to speak American for the ancients!’
Samkad turned his face away. When his adopted brother, Kinyo, had decided to move down to the river to work for Americans, they had quarrelled bitterly.
‘Sidong!’ Tilin sounded impatient. ‘Don’t keep me waiting!’
‘Go, little one.’ I smiled.
Sidong waved and disappeared round the corner.
I felt the clap of a hand on my shoulder.
‘Where is this giant boar?’ someone boomed in my ear. ‘I’ve been told that everyone will be eating meat tonight.’
‘Kinyo,’ Samkad said softly. ‘Hello, brother.’ 19
*
Kinyo’s mother and Samkad’s mother had been best friends. When Kinyo was orphaned, he had been cared for by an aunt who had married a lowlander. They lived in a lowland village, even after his aunt was widowed. Growing up in the lowlands, Kinyo had filled his throat with lowland words, and then Mister William came to live there and taught Kinyo English as well. When the war rolled through the lowlands, Samkad’s father had risked his life to fetch Kinyo and his aunt to the safety of the mountains. They brought Mister William with them.
Before Samkad’s father had died, he declared Kinyo his son and brother to Samkad.
I stared at Kinyo. He was wearing trousers and a shirt, buttoned up to his chin. His hair was cut in the American style, close to his head and around his ears so that they stuck out like the handles of a cauldron.
The trousers made him stand in a different way, hand in pocket. And what a difference the haircut made! He looked sleeker somehow. I liked it!
But I didn’t dare say it out loud. Not when Samkad looked like he wanted to smash boulders with his bare fists.
‘You look like an idiot,’ he said. ‘You think you look American, but people only have to look at those bare feet to know you’re a fake.’
Kinyo stared sadly at his toes. ‘Don’t worry, I intend to buy a pair of shoes and socks when I’ve saved up enough money.’ 20He smirked at Samkad. ‘Brother, aren’t you tired of looking like a wild man?’
There was a pulsing in Samkad’s temple. He shook out his hair, long in the back and long over his eyes. ‘So you think I look like a wild man?’
Kinyo sighed, offering his hand to Chuka, who’d been sniffing, as if trying to decide what was different about him. She licked it enthusiastically.
‘Eheh, thank you, Chuka. It’s nice to feel welcome.’
I tugged at his elbow. ‘I’m glad to see you, Kinyo, even if Samkad is not. How are you? What’s it like, working for those Americans?’
‘It’s great!’ He grinned. ‘My boss, Mister Jenks, is writing a book about us. He is collecting objects from here to show off when he returns to America. He’ll buy anything – baskets, bowls, spears, shields. They are kind, and they pay me well. It’s fun. Mrs Jenks gave me this suit.’
‘And it was she who made you cut your hair, I’ll bet!’ Samkad snarled.
Honestly, Mother, Samkad was determined to make a quarrel of everything. I frowned at him but he ignored me.
Samkad continued. ‘Americans think our hair is dirty. Did she tell you your hair smelled bad? Was she afraid you had lice?’
‘Samkad,’ I hissed. ‘Leave him alone.’
‘Shut up, Samkad,’ Kinyo groaned. ‘I can grow my hair if I want to.’
Samkad tapped his head. ‘It’s not your hair that’s the 21problem, it’s what’s inside your head. Look at you. Do you even know who you are any more?’
‘So you would rather I stayed here and helped you dig your paddies,’ Kinyo snapped.
‘They are not just mine. The paddies belong to both of us. Father left them to OUR care. Why am I tending them on my own?’
‘It is not my fault you want to tend the paddy fields,’ Kinyo said. ‘Is that your plan, brother? To stay in this village forever – hunting boar, planting rice, trampling manure?’
Samkad pushed his face into Kinyo’s. ‘It’s our way of life. I am proud of it.’
‘It’s a TINY life!’
They looked like goats about to ram each other. Chuka yapped nervously, ears flat.
I shoved myself between them. ‘Enough!’
They glared at each other over my head.
‘Brother, do you know why Truman Hunt is here?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Do you?’
‘He’s signing people up for a trip to America.’
‘But it isn’t going to happen,’ I interrupted. ‘The ancients have forbidden it.’
Kinyo raised his chin. ‘I’ve signed up. My name is the first on his list.’
Samkad grabbed Kinyo by the shoulders. ‘As your brother, I order you to take your name off that list.’ 22
Kinyo shrugged him off. ‘You are not my brother.’
Samkad hands dropped from his shoulders. He stared at Kinyo.
‘You know as well as I do that I’m adopted.’ Kinyo said. ‘We are not really brothers. You cannot forbid me to do anything.’
Samkad’s eyes turned red.
‘My father called you his son,’ he whispered. ‘He gave you his own axe. He gave you shelter. He fed you.’
‘He was a good man, and I loved him and called him Father,’ Kinyo said. ‘But I don’t have to call you my brother. Do you want the axe? I have no use for it. You can have it.’
‘Kinyo, you don’t mean any of that,’ I stammered.
But he’d already turned to leave, the pale fabric of his trouser legs swishing against each other as he sauntered to the Council House.
4
The Invitation
‘Come, Samkad,’ I said. ‘Everyone is required to be there.’
Reluctantly, Samkad put his knives away and stowed the meat safely in the hut. He followed me into the alley, now choked with people. Chuka skittered past us, wriggling quickly through the forest of legs and out of sight.
There had been a sizeable throng when we had presented the boar to the ancients. Now there were many times that number, come to listen to Truman Hunt.
He and Mister William were perched on wooden chairs made of pinewood. The ancients squatted alongside, close to the ground, while Kinyo stood next to them, ready to translate American into Bontok and Bontok into American.
Five years ago, we had all been aghast when the Americans conquered the lowlands and announced that the highlands belonged to them as well. At first the ancients had resisted. 24‘We are not lowlanders! We govern ourselves.’ But we had no choice but to accept the new state of affairs. As you explained to me, Mother: ‘How can we make war with men who tower over us like giants? Whose guns can kill twenty of our men before they had managed to take aim with their spears?’
They took control of the mountains, flying their striped flag everywhere, carving roads up and down the valleys, felling forests and floating the trees down the Chico River to build jails, missions, chapels and schools. We obeyed when they commanded women to cover their shoulders under clumsy blouses. And we obeyed when they ordered warring villages to cease their fighting.
But, Mother, it hasn’t been all bad has it? We all love Mister William and the American School – those tall stacks of magazines filled with photographs of American towns and trains and buildings taller than trees and women in outlandish hats and great big skirts. And what child wouldn’t rather go to Mister William’s school and learn English than toil in the rice paddies with their parents?
The courtyard was packed. Samkad and I slowly pushed our way through.
Hunt sat, there, waiting beside Mister William with a slight smile on his pale face, his forehead beaded with sweat despite the cool mountain air. His hat, one of those American ones shaped like an inverted bowl, was pushed to the back of his head. He kept reaching into his waistcoat and looking at his watch as if he was nervous, even though he shouldn’t have been. 25
Hunt was one of many American soldiers who downed their guns at the end of the war and hurried to the mountains, thinking to get rich on our gold. But unlike the other Americans, who traded with us in trinkets, matchsticks and bolts of cotton, Truman Hunt traded in cures – syrups that could cool fevers, stinging solutions that washed the fester out of a wound, sweet pellets that relieved headache, diarrhoea, and all manner of ailments. We all liked Truman Hunt. His cures worked better than the chants of the ancients and when the American powers realized how popular he’d become, they made Truman Hunt governor of a bracelet of mountains.
I could feel the crowd leaning towards him in anticipation. We were just like that last time when Hunt announced that Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, would like to invite us to visit America. After he delivered the President’s invitation, we were all talking too fast, and laughing too loudly, like we’d been chewing too much betel nut. I remember you were so enthusiastic, Mother! But right after you died, the ancients told us, no, it was impossible. They forbade anybody from accepting the invitation. Truman Hunt was about to discover that he’d been wasting his time.
Now here was Truman Hunt repeating the invitation. After so many years in Bontok, he had learned quite a few Bontok words and seemed to enjoy the laughter when he got it wrong. But he still needed Kinyo to make himself understood.
I wondered how accurate Kinyo’s translation was. Did Hunt really mean it when he said President Roosevelt would 26send a boat the size of a mountain – a whole mountain! – to ferry us across the ocean? Did he really mean thirty days when he told us how long it would take to sail to America? And then there would be a train – Mister William told us they were like houses on wheels – to take us to a city called Saint Louis, where we would live in a village built specially for us.
‘Unfortunately,’ Hunt said, looking nervously at the ancients, ‘it is not a journey to be taken by those who are elderly or infirm.’
It was called a ‘World’s Fair’, Kinyo translated. In a place called Saint Louis, they had built a magnificent city of white buildings, great gardens and waterfalls. At night, the city was strung with stars from the sky so that it was lit up as bright as day. Tens of thousands of Americans were coming to Saint Louis just to see us. And people from all over the world too.
We hung onto every translated word, glancing at each other with wide eyes.
But, as Hunt spoke, we could see the ancients’ faces growing longer and longer. The corners of their mouths drooped right down so that I was afraid their lower jaws might fall off completely.
‘We will arrive in America in March and leave in December. There will be a payment of thirty-five American cents for every day you are in Saint Louis,’ Kinyo was saying.
American cents! Mister William had taught us about money, twenty-five cents was a quarter, ten cents a nickel and five cents a dime, but none of us had ever seen such coins – 27apart from Kinyo, who earned them from his American employers.
‘President Roosevelt has appointed Truman Hunt manager of all Igorot guests,’ Kinyo said. ‘He will look after you. He leaves for America next week; those who wish to go must give him their names before he leaves today.’
Around me, faces were shining with hope. But then it was the ancients’ turn to speak, and one by one, they told Truman Hunt why nobody would be going to America.
First of all, there were the paddy fields, carved into these mountains by our forefathers. They could not be left untended. There were stone walls to be repaired and weeded, seedlings to be planted, ground to be tilled, rice to be harvested, granaries to be filled, before the winds turned and the monsoon rains began to thrash the valleys.
Second, the journey was deemed unsuitable for ancients. How were young people to cope? What would we do without the guidance of our elders? Who would read the portents? Who would make all the vital decisions?
Third, how could we leave behind the invisible world of the spirits? Our ancestors watched over us, kept us safe from harm. Without them, we would be utterly defenceless!
After Kinyo finished translating, Mister William stood up and said something about how he had hoped we would be able to see for ourselves all America’s wonders. Then Truman Hunt rose to speak, his eyes red-rimmed, as if he wanted to cry. His voice was petulant, like a small child. ‘How can you 28not want to go? It’s the chance of a lifetime! You are invited to the World’s Fair and you would rather stay here and plant rice? You have no idea what you’re turning down!’
Kinyo had hardly translated everything when I decided it was time to leave.
‘I’ve had enough,’ I whispered to Samkad. As I picked my way through the crowd I heard Tilin say, in a loud whisper: ‘There she goes. She just can’t help calling attention to herself.’ I blushed angrily and tried to move more quickly, but only succeeded in stepping on a man’s instep. A very loud man, it turned out, because he gave out a yell that sent a flock of rice birds fluttering out of the Council House’s thatched roof.
‘Miss! Excuse me, miss!’ I was startled. Truman Hunt was calling me?
I felt all the blood rush to my face. I was really hurrying now, practically leaping over the heads of people sitting on their heels.
I felt a large hand close around my shoulder.
‘Miss, I’m talking to you!’
I looked up, aghast. Truman Hunt had actually waded in to get to me.
‘Oh my,’ he said. ‘You’re the girl in the tree!’
My mouth dropped open.
I had thought I’d heard someone in the bushes this morning. It was Truman Hunt!
I began to splutter, ‘No! Let go of me! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ 29
‘But I saw you!’ Hunt said. He took my arm and began to tug me towards the ancients. I wanted to pull away. I wanted to run. But my feet stumbled after him obediently.
‘She dropped out of a tree and killed the boar with one thrust of her spear.’ My English was good enough so I didn’t need Kinyo to translate Truman Hunt’s words. ‘At first I thought it was a boy, but I soon realized that it was a girl.’ He grinned at the ancients. ‘You should have seen her! The boar attacked, but she was ready with her spear. It died right on top of her. It was the most extraordinary thing I’ve seen in my life!’
The ancients were all glaring at me, Mother. I could see them listing all my past misdemeanours in their heads. I glanced at the crowd and saw Samkad’s face, jaw slack with shock.
‘Don’t believe him!’ I cried desperately. ‘The American is lying!’
Mister William had risen to his feet. He lived in the village, he knew exactly how serious this was. ‘Hunt,’ he said urgently. ‘Shut up.’
‘But you were magnificent!’ Hunt turned to me. ‘Magnificent – do you know the word?’ He turned to the old ones. ‘Kinyo, translate! Tell them she must come to America. Tell them, I am begging them to let her come! Tell them I had no idea your women were hunters too.’
Then he made a tiny squeaking noise as I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him into the fire.
5
A Betrayal
Mother, you should have seen the look on everyone’s faces. The crowd was agog. The ancients were boiling mad. Kinyo was in a panic, his usual smugness wiped from his face.
And Truman Hunt? He continued to beam at me as Kinyo extracted him from the sputtering fire, smoking and sooty, like a pork chop carelessly tumbled from a pan. He was laughing, Mother, as he brushed himself off and patted the smoke from his hair, as if the whole thing was a joke. ‘Ha ha! You were extraordinary. Better than a man! So strong! I’ve never seen anything like it!’
Everyone was agitated now, the courtyard hummed with disapproval. The girl killed the boar? Impossible! But didn’t Samkad say he had done it?
Samkad was suddenly behind me, he put an arm around my shoulders as if that would shield me from all the gawking eyes. 31
The ancients were barking angrily at Truman Hunt. ‘Mister Truman, Mister William.’ Kinyo looked from one American to the other as he translated. ‘The ancients are saying this meeting is over. You both have to leave now.’
Mister William was shaking his head, looking sympathetically at me. He tapped Truman Hunt on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go, Hunt.’
The other American looked bewildered. He tipped his hat at the crowd, saying in a bright voice. ‘I will be at the school, just in case anybody decides to sign up.’
‘NOBODY IS GOING TO AMERICA!’ snapped Salluyud, the oldest of the ancients, not even bothering to wait for Kinyo’s stuttering interpretation. Now everyone was gawking at him, astonished that he had spoken so much English. ‘LEAVE NOW.’
They left.
The ancients tottered to their feet and ordered everyone to clear the courtyard. Everyone except Samkad and me.
‘Shall I stay?’ Kinyo said.
Salluyud just glared at him until he shuffled away, rubbing the back of his neck.
The ancients gathered around us. Salluyud, Pito, Dugas, Maklan. These snaggle-toothed and wizened old men had been ancients since we were children. They had watched us grow up, performed the rituals that eased us from age to age, taught us the names of our ancestors, punished us for misdeeds, rewarded us when we did well.32
Right now they were glowering at me, their crumpled faces more deeply cut than usual, like the bark on ancient trees.
‘YOU killed the boar?’ Salluyud croaked.
‘No!’ I said.
‘Yes!’ Samkad said. I noticed that his arm tightened over my shoulders. He wasn’t holding me to comfort me. He was trying to stop me running away. I shook his arm off.
‘No!’ I told the ancients. ‘I didn’t kill the boar.’
‘Yes!’ Samkad said. ‘She did.’
He tried to put his arm round me again, but I slapped it off. ‘Stop it!’ I hissed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Then I looked at the ancients and fear curdled in my belly. They knew! I could see it!
I glanced at Samkad fearfully. As the man, Samkad would bear the brunt of any punishment the ancients had in store for us. Samkad’s face was smooth. He looked serious. But he did not look worried.
‘Samkad,’ Old Dugas spoke heavily. ‘We discussed this yesterday, did we not?’
‘Yes, old one.’ Samkad bowed his head.
Discussed this yesterday? Yesterday?
