Call of the Agong

By Edilberto K. Tiempo

They met on the hillside of the big kaingin or clearing of old man Miloy. It was the planting season in Bagtik in the uplands of Amio. This day was Miloy’s dagyao, during which the men, women and children of the neighboring hills came to help him with his rice planting.

The backs of the half-naked men glistened in the bright May morning and the women looked small in their wide dark skirts and the purongs wound about their faces. The men struck the ground with their pointed sticks and the women and children followed to drop the rice grains into the holes, closing them carelessly with their feet. Now and then the children turned their eyes to Miloy’s payag or hut where two women were preparing the morning meal.

He looked big and powerful in his stained pants rolled above his knees and in his tight camisa which left his arms bare high above the elbow. She looked frail in her red and brown tapis fastened around her slim waist. Her dark purong half hid a small, rather sad face.

From under his wide, pandan hat, he watched her as she followed in the steps of an old man. He wished she were working behind him. For the second time their eyes met and he felt a wild, queer tingling in his blood.

“You are scattering the seed,” the old man remarked to the woman. “Are the holes too small?” The woman looked at him confusedly, her brown cheeks turning red.

The agong sounded — -three slow beats, followed by another three. It was time for the morning meal. The man quickened his steps and came alongside the woman. After a few moments of hesitation he said hoarsely, “You follow me.” She looked at him quizzically. “Work behind me in the kaingin”, he explained, and went past her to where the men were gathering.

The workers squatted on the floor, around the smoking rice placed upon fresh banana leaves. The linatan of boiled port and jackfruit was placed before them in bowls and tin plates. The men ate silently and after they were through, rolled leaves of tobacco were distributed by some of the women.

The man retired behind the hut and stood leaning against a bamboo pole, watching the curling smoke rising from his crude cigar, until the workers had gone back to their labor, then joined them, choosing the edge of the clearing for his own place of work. The people almost worked silently. The man and the woman were even more silent than the others. The Amio hill people are a quiet folk. The young men are very shy, the women timid. No man ever himself proposed to a woman.

The man struck the ground determinedly with his stick and turned halfway to his companion. The stick’s point still buried in the soil, he spoke in a hushed uncertain voice, “I shall tell my father to make you my wife.”

When she did not reply, he looked straight at her and repeated: “I shall tell my father to make you my wife.”

She looked at him but did not speak.

“You do not like it?” asked the man.

“I — -I do not like it.”

The man went on with his work, but after a few moments turned to the woman again. “You will have to learn to like it because I shall tell my father about you; he will tell your father and your father will give you to me.” The man smiled.

“You can not marry me”, said the woman.

“Yes, I can.”

“I — -I am a married woman.”

The man looked at her fixedly. “You — -you are a married woman…” He turned slowly to his work.

Some hours after that he spoke to her again, for she was still following him silently. “How much was your father paid for the marriage?”

The woman looked at him for a moment, then said: “One hundred thirty umbacs.” (An umbac is literally a spear, but the word is also used for the dowry, which may be in the form of spears, rice, money, etc. An umbac is then roughly equivalent to one peso.)

“I could have paid a hundred and thirty more,” he said, to himself rather than to her. “Where is your husband?”

The woman looked at the winding river at the foot of the hill, where, at the bend, a raft was slowly moving upstream. “He will be coming. He went to the lowland to buy salt and some pots.”

“Do you like your husband?”

She shook her head slightly and her voice was sad as she spoke at last: “He is cruel to me.”

Many silent minutes followed after that, then the man again spoke to the woman with something wild in his eyes: “We can run away!” He spoke hoarsely.

It was not fear that came to her face; it was not surprise. It was the look that follows the discovery of something new and forbidden.

“Yes, we will run away,” the man repeated with a note of decision. “At sundown.”

The men were sitting around a thick bamboo tube container, drinking guhang, a kind of palm wine, out of cups made of coconut shell. There was an almost pitiful contentment on their faces. But suddenly, above the low, lazy chatter, rose a voice: “Where is my wife?”

Avarice had inscribed ugly lines about the mouth of the speaker, and his eyes held a glint of cruelty. “Nobody has seen her?” he inquired again.

Men and women turned to him. They remembered that Anog’s wife had been absent during the meal.

“She must be somewhere — -fetching water, maybe,” said one.

“Itik — -where is he?” a man spoke? There was an ominous silence as men and women looked at each other with growing apprehension.

“After the planting was over, I saw a man disappear behind the group of trees where the salong tree stands”, a girl volunteered.

“And Lora?”

“I saw only a man.”

After another apalling silence, the old man who had been followed by the woman earlier in the day said: “I have a feeling — -when I saw them together…”

“What is it!” Anog barked with furious impatience.

“ — that they have run away,” finished the old man.

“She has run away!” cried Anog savagely as he strode to the wall where his spears were stuck. “We must pursue them!”

“But it is getting dark,” a woman said.

“Shut up, wench!” said Miloy, who was Anog’s father. “We must go after them.” He stepped to where the agong hung. “They can not have gone far. You trail them, Anog, with your friends, while I call all the villages to help. We shall find them. They will be punished. Only once has such a thing happened, and that was when I was a boy!” The agong sounded. A strange call, echoing from hill to hill, carrying a message of fury and vengeance.

Upon a ridge a man and a woman were hurrying over a beaten trail. When they heard the call, they stopped for a moment and looked at each other’s face.

“Itik, I am not afraid,” said the woman, answering his unspoken question.

“You are not?” he said. Picking her up in his strong arms, and leaving the trail, he stumbled on.

Wherever men, in hut or on path or river, heard the agong’s call, they would pause, listen attentively, then hurry away in the direction of the sound. They knew the meaning of that barbaric rhythm.

“Itik, put me down,” said the woman, after the man had clambered up a steep incline with her in his arms. “I can run.”

“No, you do not know the way.”

“But I can follow you. Then we can make faster progress.”

“You will follow me?” he asked, a happy note in his voice.

They were going down a gentle slope when Itik heard the sound of men’s feet some distance behind. He looked back only to see something flying swiftly toward them.

“Lora!” he shouted, pushing the woman to one side.

But he was too late. The spear had not missed the mark.

The man caught her as the woman staggered back.

“Itik — -I — -I am not afraid…” she said. A flicker of a smile struggled with the agony in her face.

“So you are the man,” Anog leered savagely. “I have brought two spears. This one is for you. Now…”

Anog never finished his sentence. Itik had wrenched the spear from the woman’s back and flung it at the speaker.

But a spear flew from another one of the pursuers. Another…

From afar the agong was still faintly throbbing…

Upon a mossy tree trunk a solitary duliduli (cicada) offered its droning song to the night.