Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) by F. Sionil Jose Page B

those years, wasted now. When he entered Padre Jose’s room for the first time, he was awed by the old books all over the place, leather bound, some of them with gilt edges. Before the old priest had selected him to be a sacristan, all that he knew was the church itself—how massive it was, its walls thick and impregnable, the wood in the sacristy and the
kumbento
the best that could be dragged from the mountains. Portions of the
kumbento
were roofed with tile, but the church itself was roofed with galvanized iron, which had rusted in parts.
    As a child, he had believed that when huge buildings or churches were built, a fearsome creature called
Komaw
would kidnap children, kill them, and spill their blood into the foundation diggings so that the buildings would be so blessed they would last a thousand years and those constructing them would not be injured. Surely, it must have taken pails of blood to make this church endure. He had wanted to ask the priest but never dared, for Padre Jose, Istak learned later, was skeptical aboutthe many miracles the other churches claimed and had a surfeit of, a skepticism which the old priest did not voice but which Istak knew was there—in the shaking of the venerable head, in the lift of the thick eyebrows when such topics were brought to him.
    The church was more than a hundred years old; he had often imagined the multitude of workers hauling those big rocks and cutting them in perfect shapes to make arches that could withstand earthquakes. He wondered why the church was built on a rise of ground on the fringes of the town—not in the middle as it was with the other churches. The church was like a fort; indeed, it was a sanctuary from Moro raids along the coast—self-sustained, with granaries, wells.
    When he was new in the church, one of his chores was to toll the bells. He had delighted in climbing up to the belfry and once up there, past the dim stairway, the wind whistling through, he would scan the vista around him, and look to the far distance, to Po-on, where he came from, where time began—just a smudge of brown hidden by bamboo groves, the river that emerged out of the low hills like a trough of silver and disappeared in the narrow plain, and all around the town, the fields ready for the seed, or—as it was in November and December—a sea of shimmering gold. He would hurry down after the Angelus, the tolling of the bells still humming in his ears, and in the sacristy join the singing:
Tantum ergo, tantum ergo
. Then to the kitchen where, with the other boys, he helped with the cooking and setting of the table in the dining room, above it a broadcloth which was swung continuously to stir a breeze when it was warm or to drive away the flies. Here was the chipped china, the polished candelabra, the frayed gray napkins, and Padre Jose’s simple dinner of chicken broth, some vegetables, and rice that was cooked soft.
    All the rooms in the
kumbento
and the sacristy were no longer secret; he had grown up cleaning them, learning in them the
cartilla
and all that Padre Jose had imparted to him—knowledge and a sense of right as well. The old priest was patient; sometimes he would surrender himself to reverie. His bushy eyebrows would lift, his gray eyes glazed, and he would then start those soliloquies—about his sister and brothers, his parents, and that sparkling whitewashed village in Andalucía where he came from, the skies that were always blue, grapes as big as chicos, the golden oranges, the sherry, and most of all, the bread his mother baked. Mail took so long, and sometimes he read to all the acolytes letters that described Spain. Once it was a mighty nation, possessing an empire that stretched across the oceans; but in the decades past, this empire had dwindled. Though Padre Jose never told him, Istak came to realize, too, that the old man joined the priesthood not so much in service to God and country, but to escape the poverty of his own village. And this was what