War! by Ricardo Burguete

Author:Ricardo Burguete
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hamilton Books
Published: 2019-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

We returned to Dinalupijan, the municipal seat of our zone. The detachment from the small blockhouses that we had left to defend the approaches to the town came out to receive us along with the soldiers, the public, and a commission of the principal figures in the town who also came out to the road. News of the pacification on the opposite side of the mountain was circulated before we arrived. That success boosted our authority so that we were received amidst cheers, flags, music and other excesses.

The fiestas and attentions lasted long enough to provide the time necessary for the troops to recuperate before setting out to fight enemy nuclei dispersed on the other side of the mountain.

The game of panguingui [a card game] was permitted, cucañas [greased poles competition] were raised in the plaza, and, to the sound of musicians who roved tirelessly through the streets, the plebe got its fill of dancing1 the gubli, the cutang-cutang, the os é, the estejarro, and even the culitangán and the moro-moro, imported from Jolo.

The principal figures came to serve the table in our lodging and, in the plaza in order to celebrate their own people, they provided a good number of carejais [pots] and other vessels replete with morisqueta [rice], with water buffalo milk, and dinuguan [blood pudding]. Slop—after it got cold—that was served indiscriminately at the end of the day to people and dogs.

We organized a dance in the convent, which served us as a barracks since the indigenous priest was not there. It was attended by the daughters of the cabezay [deputy mayors]: Totay (Carlota), Wena (Eugenia), Guicay (Fran-cisca), Charin (Rosario), Pelan (Rafaela), Chate (Manuela), Asón (Consolación). These were the most select of the dalagas [single women], with their hair loose down their backs, adorned with beads and sequins and decked out in the showiest colors in dresses and chapines [slippers].

The dalagas and matandas [young women and old women] left late at night, very pleased with the celebration.

Once the fiesta and the music ended, I looked out from one of the dark windows of the convent. I saw that the departing women formed a line and, turning their backs to the building, lifted the front of their dresses with one hand and with the other carefully lifted the train of the dress . . . A sudden shower made me step back from the observatory fearing the rain. I looked at the firmament, which starry and serene, shone with luminous winks at seeing the upright female partisans satisfy a necessity with the violence of a sudden squall in the most unusual and capricious manner that the amused reader could imagine.

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