The Music Child

By Alfred A. Yuson

When I first heard of the hair-string fiddlers from Fil, I thought it was just another of his blustery inventions.

But then the odd and curious never seem in short supply in these islands. Quickly have I learned to keep the brow down upon getting wind of possibly interesting copy.

I was in Southern Philippines for a follow-up story on muro-ami fishing, having already sent a report on the Manila end of the ecologically ruinous operations.

I had interviewed the big bosses of the Frebel fishing Corporation, as well as a few legislators involved in a committee on natural resources. Easy enough to get into these high offices when one represents Western media.

It was a dying issue as far as the local papers went. Officials had upheld the ban on boy divers pounding the reefs with iron balls to drive fish into giant nets. All that the greedy operators could do was take it on the chin and shrug.

But for the Examiner back home, the triumph of environmental concern would always rate a banner story in the features section. So had my editor assured me as soon as I faxed Part One of the series.

Ecology couldn’t die as a cause in the world’s leading democracy. And where better to flush out tales of horror than in Third World enclaves run by petty politicians?

Cebu City was a smaller Manila, just as dense, dustier, hotter, more humid, except at the seafront where I found the usual spot of calm amid the chaos, by sitting alone over cold San Miguel beer in a small restaurant.

The day I flew in I hired a jeepney, or rather, had Fil hire a jeepney to drive us down to the southern-most tip of the elongated island. There we had sought out the boy divers who were now all out of work.

Fil provided the free translation as I explained to their father and the barrio chiefs that I wasn’t taking any sides. It was strictly a human interest story.

The good old Polaroid helped us along, until I brought out the Nikkormat for more professional images this side of posterity.

Indeed, awash in human interest were the boys’ accounts of their life at sea — packed by the hundreds in a small ship for months on end, diving daily with only makeshift goggles for protection, tugging diligently at the scare lines underwater to ensure a profitable catch of all kinds of reef denizens, at the expense of battered corals.

Short-term gains for everyone, of course. But the perilous work earned the family some credit in the barrio store.

When occasionally a boy of 13 or 15 didn’t surface, attacked by sharks, or worse, the bends, then so sorry. One life less at sea, one mouth less to feed in the poor southern tip of the island, the victim’s kin need not mourn over the body. If recovered at all, it was buried in some anonymous, far-off isle where luckless divers were destined to spend their eternal summers under a few feet of sand and some tropical shade.

The tapes would have to he transcribed for the next night or so. A simple chore then, a few hours of holding fort in the hotel room. I’d pare down Fil’s translations of the boys’ stories. Adding no more than a brief intro, I’d let the barrio kids speak for themselves. The cause of ecology would best be served by the voice of the innocents.

For the nonce, languorous time enough to idle at a resto by the quay.

The San Mig isn’t quite as chilled as I’d prefer. But my thirst for local color is no sooner provoked than quenched here in this apparent hotbed of cargo cults.

A tuna’s jaw is paraded along the row of tables before it’s plunked down upon a grill resting on red-hot coals. The instant hiss wafts the call of the sea. Surge of smoke dies back into imminent succulence.

I slide a fork under a cluster of fresh green seaweed swimming in cane vinegar. There it is again, siren song of brine, tart picture of boys diving a hundred feet to pummel the magnificent corals. It’s a life. For an American enervated by the afternoon heat, the philosophy of seabreeze is the sole recourse.

Violins with strings made of human hair, Fil had said. Up north, in some obscure settlement no tourists had yet heard of, far from the gleaming white sands of the bewitching coastline.

What is it in these people, I ask myself, that makes light of the uncommon, serves it as fodder to guests of bland interest?

Fil said they saved the tresses of the tribe’s departed, twined it round for weeks in a vat filled with tree sap, and pulled on the thickness to create a certain pitch. Then they strung up the instruments, not really violins, said Fil, but similar, without a waist, and no frets, just a small round hole where the bow caressed the belly.

He said he wasn’t sure what the bowstring was made of, perhaps some fiber drawn from jungle vine. He hadn’t seen the instrument himself, had never heard the tribesmen play. But he had gotten word of how they had performed in some barrio in the hinterland, where they had been chanced upon by a musicologist who taught in one of the city’s universities. The professor had asked the musicians to give an evening, concert for the coming fiesta in the big city.

That wouldn’t be until a month. I could go north with Fil as soon as I faxed the follow-up piece on the aborted rape of tropical reefs, answer to another disquieting call of human interest.

This could be bigger game, worthy of Ripley’s.

The tuna’s jaw is flopped over. Again its juices drip on the live coals and send whiffs of smoke to ride the seawind. Incredibly mouth-watering it is, a hint of Pacific heaven, and certainly worth more than I bargained for when I agreed to go East for the Examiner.

Fil arrives in a tricycle. He is all heigh-ho and bluster — a lean, dark man with a grin wider than the tunas in its grilling throes. He comes lunging towards my table on the balls of his feet.

“Okay, Pardner! We go tomorrow by bus. Leave at nine. Three, four hours trip. Then we get jeepney from small town. If none, we walk. Only a few hours. Right, Pardner? Alih, Fil needs beer. Beer and tuna to make Fil and Pardner strong for long, trip tomorrow!”

As Fil warned, the bus ride proved to be an exercise in inertia. We stopped at every barrio to pick up old women and young pigs, baskets of corn and cassava, a couple of soldiers with their M-16’s swinging awkwardly to threaten everyone as we creaked and groaned along the winding dirt road.

Soon there was no sight of sea. The rainforest closed in on us, and the implacable jungle stench seemed to quiet even the trussed-up piglets.

Fil and I got off five hours later, way past noon, and headed straight for a small store to pick up some sardine cans. We opened one, dipped some stale buns into the blood-red sauce, and washed it all down with warm Coke.

Between bites and sips, Fil spoke to the pregnant woman tending the store. She sent off a scrawny kid who came back with a fat guy in a greasy undershirt.

I could tell the kind of jeepney the fellow had just by counting the oil stains round his beer belly, and the way he looked up at the sky and scratched his head as Fil plied him with questions.

In another hour we sputtered off, taking a narrow, overgrown trail up a hill before descending into a small valley. Fording a stream, I asked for a quick stop to fill an empty Coke bottle with cool mountain water. Then we struggled up several steep inclines again, with the jeepney surprisingly coughing up enough power to make it, but barely each time.

It was an old logging road, Fil said, now unused. The loggers had moved a number of mountains away. This tribe we’re visiting, he said, no one wants to tangle with them. Everyone’s afraid his scalp will wind up making strange music. Ha ha ha ha ha, Fil laughed, elbowing the driver’s paunch. Ha ha ha ha ha. And the clattering tailpipe laughed along with him.

We stopped at a clearing where the driver said we couldn’t go any farther. The road didn’t end, but he had never made it past that ridge before, he said and Fil translated. We had to walk the rest of the way. The driver would come along, even spend the night with us, for Fil might not make much sense to the tribe, ha ha ha ha.

Nonoy the driver was right. The village was just a couple of cigarettes away, off the old logging road and down some damp path through thick jungle. Suddenly we stumbled upon a cluster of huts in a grassy clearing. A good thing it was too, for the mountain dark was fast closing in on us.

The villagers were all excited at the sight of the visitors, especially the white man with the Cokes and cameras. They offered freshly boiled yams I couldn’t believe the sweetness of, and sat us by an early fire.

Much of the evening was taken up by Fil’s exchanges with the elders, helped along by Nonoy, to much tittering among the women and occasional nodding from the men.

Fil said it was all right to take pictures. I didn’t really feel like it but decided to try a new trick by aiming and clicking both cameras simultaneously so they could share the flash. The kids squealed and chattered about how they had gone blind, according to Fil, ha ha ha ha ha.

The squeals grew louder on the part of the women when they saw themselves taking shape and color like slow magic on the white square. Everyone jostled to take a look. One man said that he had lost a snapshot like that taken by a cousin who had worked a year in Saudi Arabia.

For dinner we had salted meat, salted fish, boiled vegetables and crushed corn steamed with rice. Still sitting on our haunches, we shared two bottles of rum and more of Fil’s jokes, this time about Japanese tourists flocking to the island’s beaches in their floppy hats.

Before we knew it, the band had formed before us, nine men and women diddling with their bows while smiling shyly to themselves. As we all quieted down, they proceeded to play a tune in unison.

The kids continued to run about and swirl the Coke bottle in the dust. The moon rose above some distant treetops, gibbous and bright orange. The music seemed to rise as well from all the nameless vines and tendrils in the forest.

The time was rather cloying. The sounds the extraordinary instruments made were terribly scratchy at times, with some of the players frequently sliding up or down into another key. But they were a pretty picture all right, sealed on low stools in an irregular row beyond the fire, smiling and laughing at false screeches as they nodded in time over there bows.

The wooden instruments were set on their laps or propped against a hip and strummed downward like a fiddle.

“Ginse,” an old man said. “Ginse,” Fil repeated to name the instrument. Its sound was a mite unearthly, incredibly high-pitched, and I couldn’t tell if it was just the ginse’s limitations, until the musicians fell upon a passage where their bowstrings sawed long and graceful curves to produce extended wails that finally brought the piece to a lugubrious close.

Fil and I clapped loudly and raced one another to the players. A ginse was quickly handed over, and I plucked innocently at the strings, noting them to be as taut as any bow fiddle’s. I slid a thumb upward, and elicited a sharp whine that sent a musician into a mock grimace.

“Is it really human hair?” I asked Fil, still a bit incredulous.

He pressed his own palm up and down the strings before turning to the players to relay my query.

Yes, they all nodded, their faces lighting up with a mischievous glint that seemed to say you don’t have to believe it.

An old woman explained in all seriousness how they had made such instruments since as far back as her own mother could remember. The women grew their hair long, and had it cut only twice in their lives. The hair was often preserved in separate packets, but sometimes mixed together, until the old men felt it was time to gather the sap of a particular tree, from where the wood for the fiddle’s body also came. The hair was boiled in the sap for days, then brought out to cool as thick clumps, pulled in quick jerks and returned to the frothing sap. The process was repeated for weeks.

Fil was getting excited translating what Nonoy said the old woman said, at times heedlessly racing on until Nonoy would shake his head and tug at Fil’s arm and correct what he said. A long argument ensued between them over what the old woman had really meant. Then Fil would nod vigorously and so would Nonoy, and they’d agree before Fil turned to me again to alter his initial version, but not beyond a whit.

I asked if it was true that they’d be performing in the city for the fiesta. Yes, they said, it would be the first time they’d face a large crowd. Could you give me the name of the musicologist and where I can find him in the city? One of the men ran off to his hut and came back waving a calling card.

I copied the name and address, resolving to rely more on the professor’s likely notes on the oddity than on Fil’s elaborations which I had grown to suspect. I’d take more pictures in the morning, and come up with a story chat should titillate the punks in Frisco.

Meanwhile, we could sit hack around the fire and enjoy the rest of the evening’s casual performance. The group continued with their esoteric repertoire long after we ran out of rum.

“It’s a pity,” one of the women said in the morning, “that Luisito can’t come with us to the city. If he did, they’d really hear something.”

Again Fil and Nonoy had to argue endlessly over the full import of the woman’s utterance. She continued to speak to them, and Fil’s eyes grew extraordinarily large as he turned around to interpret, then caught himself and questioned the woman further while Nonoy attempted to help.

The story I eventually heard had to do with a boy, not of their tribe, but the son of a mestizo farm owner some hills away. They called him the music child, for he had a truly wondrous voice, the woman said — a boy who never spoke but sang his every phrase, and mimicked to perfection all the bird sounds and jungle calls, the roar of the waterfall by his father’s cornfields, the monsoon wind, and rustle of stalks.

They had visited the farm some months back, and played before Don Julio on their hair-stringed instruments. He had admired their talent, played along with them on his piano, then introduced his son. The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, but there was no telling for he was probably big for his age, having a large mestizo for a father. Luisito was himself dark-skinned but looked robust. His mother, a native of the place, had died in childbirth.

The father told them the infant had sung, not cried, when held aloft by the midwife upon delivery. His first song had been eerily plaintive, reeking of death, as if he knew, and indeed was describing, his mother’s slippage into the afterlife at that very moment.

Don Julio recounted this in near tears before them. He hadn’t been too sure it he could share the boy with them that evening, but realized that his son had to meet people who also made music.

The boy was brought out of his room, from where he had obviously been listening. He came out all in smiles, sang his greetings and deferences with the purest voice they had ever heard, then launched, with a twinkle in his eves, into an imitation of their fiddle’s sounds. He replicated passages of the music they had played as if he were one of those music boxes the professor had once brought to record their songs.

No, they hadn’t told the university man about the boy. They had agreed to honor Don Julio’s request to keep him a secret until he grew up.

But since I was of fair skin like the Don, he might not mind, said the woman. He is lonely, she pronounced gravely. He has to share his treasure of a son.

“This isn’t just a fancy story?” I kept asking Fil. He turned to the woman again. Some of the other musicians had joined us and now repeated her claims. Never had they heard such a voice, so sweet and powerful, bereft of quaver, and of such assurance and luster that anyone who heard him could not help but gasp. It was effortless singing, they said, as if he were only talking. He had sung with them that night, making up words to fit their music which he was hearing for the first time. Bin he never fell out of step, predicting correctly where the passage would course even before they strummed the next notes.

Don Julio’s eyes were full of joyful tears at the music they made together. And when it was over, he kissed his son and told him to go to bed. Hie music child sang goodnight and farewell in the most becalming way, using phrases that were a mixture of birdcalls at twilight and certain words from the areas dialect.

They didn’t dare ask Don Julio if he would allow the boy to sing with them in the fiesta, not after he had stressed that the boy should remain unknown. He had admitted however that it was just a matter of time before someone breathed a word about the boy to the outside world.

On our return to the city I immediately sought out Dr. Cesar Abellana at a Catholic university.

He proved extremely helpful and articulate, expounding on what he knew of the hair-string fiddlers, as he had chosen to call them. He said he hadn’t finished his research on the origin of their uncommon instrument, but had more or less codified the range of its musical capabilities.

He rattled off terms that had me scribbling like a freshman in choir school, then allowed as to how he feared that he wasn’t doing the right thing, exposing the musicians to possible exploitation by local tourism officials.

He didn’t want them to be turned into a sideshow. Dr. Abellana said in all earnestness. But he thought that the benefit program would at least make his own students aware of the varieties of musical expression, and of how music was such a crying human need as to defy all convention. Of course the school would also raise funds from the unique attraction of the instruments as much as the cultural fascination with the performers themselves.

I wondered silently how he would react to reports about the music child. The boy had been on my mind for days. The possibility of finding out if what I had heard about him was true had intrigued me no end.

I resolved to finish the transcription of “Muro-Ami Part Two,” wrap it up and send it off, then go back to the hinterland with Fil to see what we could come up with on the story of Don Julio and his son.

Fil came to the hotel the next day, raring to go. He had taken a lease on an old Willys jeep, four-wheel drive. We could have it for an entire week, he said, although I had only given him enough cash for three days at the normal rate.

Fil always seemed to get everything at a bargain, that much I can say of his aim-to-please attitude. My contact in Manila hadn’t fed me a live one when he gave me Fil’s address in Cebu. The guy was proving so effectively gung-ho that I could forgive him his rapstyle.

He did his own research, too. We would pick up Nonoy and take a different road to Don Julio’s farm. No trekking this lime. We could cart in all we wanted of warm Cokes and sardine cans, just in case the music child’s recluse of a father proved inhospitable.

Fil had also found out that the Don’s farmhands were tribesmen who had only recently been identified by a church group running a linguistics institute.

“What’s that? They deal with lingo, huh, Pardner?”

“Yeah, that’s what they do all right. You’re pretty sharp, Fil. So, what are they called, these tribesmen of Don Julio?”

“Maligta, “he answered quickly. “Aborigines. Short, dark, curly-haired. They go around with spear.s, bow-and-arrows… But not to worry, Pardner. Safe, peaceful people. Only problem is, you step on them at night. No see them, very small, very dark, ha ha ha ha ha….”

Drove like a laughing demon too, Fil did.

We reached Nonoy’s barrio well before noon, and were treated to a sumptuous lunch prepared by his wife — rice and stewed cabbage with sardines.

Fil suggested bringing along a case of beer for the maligta (“They will like it better than rum, believe you me, Pardner!”) and a bottle of local brandy for the Don whom he said was part-Spanish.

The road was carved out of a deeply forested mountainside. Nonoy took over the wheel and kept wheezing as he struggled over the narrow turns and inclines. Fil bounced around on the back seat as he tried to keep a lid on the case of beer and assorted foodstuff.

Almost an hour into the rough, unused road, we were surprised to find it joining a wider track that appeared to have only recently been gouged out of the mountainside. Nonoy screeched to a stop, Fil’s brows furrowing.

“Loggers,” he said simply.

“They’re not supposed to have reached here,’ said Fil as he craned his neck out one side of the jeep.

Nonoy said something in the dialect as he drove forward and swung the Willys towards the right fork, following the freshly dug-up road marked with heavy truck tires.

“He says it’s the new company, Pardner,” offered Fil. “They have protection from the soldiers.”

In less than another hour, in which we slogged along no more than five miles past a couple of dried-up stream beds, we reached a scenic plateau ringed by low hills. A small road branched off from the loggers’ tracks, and Nonoy eased us gently into it. More rolling terrain lay ahead. After a couple of miles we reached the edge of a vast cornfield and knew that we were on Don Julio’s land.

Nonoy drove on until we espied a modest cabin that stood on a hillock. Clumps of tall bamboo sheltered it from behind. A solitary figure appeared on the porch. He was a tall man, fair-skinned, bearded. I took him to be Don Julio.

I had earlier thought of presenting myself as a writer concerned with tribal minorities. We would say nothing about the hair-string fiddlers, or of what we had heard from them of Luisito. We would pretend that we were totally unaware of the music child’s existence. Our interest had to do with the maligta.

But upon getting off the jeep and striding purposefully over to the man who stared at us with hard eyes, something told me that we should change our cover.

I said hello and introduced myself, while Fil and Nonoy remained by the jeep. Don Julio didn’t say anything. I went on about how we had been traveling in pursuit of reports of illegal logging on the island, and how we had heard of the presence of his farm. I wanted to know if the tribal farmers’ existence was now being threatened by the loggers, whom I had heard were in cahoots with the corrupt military.

“You’re American,” Don Julio said matter-of-factly, while relaxing his stare somewhat.

“Yes,” I replied, making a move forward to shake his hand. “I write for the San Francisco Examiner. I’m here for a series of reports on environmental problems. Perhaps you can help me, sir. This island is obviously experiencing uncontrolled denudation.”

He met me halfway and offered his hand. “My name is Julio Cortez.”

We shook hands firmly and I repeated my name. “And those guys are my guide and driver. Fil and Nonoy.

“Come in for coffee,” he said without acknowledging my companions’ presence in the distance.

I hesitated on the porch, wondering whether the invitation had been for myself alone. I decided he couldn’t care less if it seemed so, and entered the cabin without any further word. The guys by the jeep would understand. Besides, I figured Don Julio would be more comfortable chatting one-on-one.

It turned out to be a correct assessment. We settled ourselves cozily across one another in low, thickly upholstered armchairs with paisley prints, the kind I had last seen in Aunt Maggie’s ranch house off San Diego. My host poured steaming coffee into a pair of large ceramic mugs that said “Yo” and “Barcelona” with a red heart between the words.

“Do you play chess?” he asked casually as he gestured at the howl of brown sugar. I noticed that the square table between us was topped by an intricate chessboard of inlaid mother-of-pearl.

“Haven’t played in year,” I said truthfully. “But I understand the game, and would be most willing to take it up again with you, sir.”

He nodded and took a sip of his dark coffee.

There’s a new logging consortium that’s out to terrorize everyone in this part of the island,” he said slowly. “We may not able to stop them, but we will not give up without a fight.”

He took a heavier sip, dipped a cigar end into the cup, and lit up to smoke. He went on to recount his life in brief, quickly leading to recent events that had clearly disturbed his idyll of seclusion. He spoke in measured tones, with a deep melodious voice that betrayed unmistakable good breeding as well as the gravity with which he regarded his current plight.

He had started his farm almost twenty years ago, after tiring of life as a wine importer in Manila. His half-Spanish father and Scottish mother had perished in a fire that struck their ancestral home in a fashionable section of the capital.

He had no other close relations. As a bachelor at 35, he had decided to close down his business, move South, find a large parcel of land, and start an orchard. He had sufficient savings for an early retirement. He wanted to be in solitude, away from commerce and civilization. He had no wish to leave the country of his birth, no desire to trace his European roots. Living in the tropics was just fine for him. There was a particular stillness at most hours, if one knew where to go, deep in some mountain where only forest sounds entered one’s consciousness.

He had planted mango, banana, and papaya among other indigenous fruit trees. His dream of a self-sustaining orchard was partly realized. But then it meant constant relations with middle-men and a large work force, something he had increasingly grown averse to.

When the maligta came to befriend him, he decided they were the only people he wanted to commune with. He had them cultivate fields of corn on his land, and grow tubers and vegetables, enough for them all to live. The fruit trees were maintained, their bounty gathered every season. But he stopped caring for them as extensively as he had on a commercial basis. The fruits turned sweeter, he noted, they also became less than profitable to truck down to the city markets. The people who tended his land contented themselves with whatever they could gather.

Five years ago they began to have problems with big logging companies. But they had stood their ground and the encroachment stopped. Now it appeared that the new group was determined to have its way. He himself was quite resigned to the thought that their mountains would soon be stripped naked and dry. He had hoped however that his land would not be touched in any way.

But the little people around him were sure to resist the newcomers, and he would have no choice but to help the maligta. They were peaceable, hut turned fierce when fighting for their lives.

It all seemed inevitable now, Don Julio said wearily. Violence had already claimed the lives of his friends who had tried to block the new road with rocks and dead trees.

Accompanied by soldiers, the loggers had exacted swift retribution, stealing into his land a few days ago and shooting down two of the tribesmen. Worse, they had threatened to return to wipe out all resistance.

“You’ve come at the right time to record all of this,” Don Julio said. “We’re prepared to do battle. I have an old shotgun that can take a few lives. The little people are fashioning their old weapons. This afternoon they bury their dead, our dead. Your arrival is well-timed. You can take a lot of interesting pictures.”

He had settled back on his chair, his eyes resting on the ceiling. It was as if, resigned to the outcome, he had taken to addressing himself, recounting for his own ears what had taken him to this moment.

Once again I wondered whether I had just heard a tall tale. We were nearing the end of the twentieth century, alter all. Bad guys didn’t just show up and kill off recalcitrant natives. It couldn’t happen. We were only several hours away from a bustling city. And yes this man before me was painting a scenario of crude confrontation, between two sets of primitives, with himself, surely a civilized man, being drawn into the fray. Did these things still happen?

And he hadn’t mentioned his son at all. But before my suspicion grew that I had again been welcomed to the province of fiction, I espied a photograph resting atop the upright piano. It was some distance from where we sat, but I could make out the bright young face of a boy, eyes large and unafraid. He looked about seven or eight years old.

Don Julio seemed to have heard my thoughts, for he suddenly sat upright and took cognizance of my presence.

“My son, Luisito, is with them now, helping them prepare to bury the dead. You should come with me and meet them. Meet my son, who is ten years old. He is a special child, with a special gift that will amaze you. Perhaps it is time too, for it cannot be helped anymore, that his existence is made known to others. Like yourself.”

He lifted his great bulk and waved a hand in my direction.

“Come. They wait for me. We agreed to bury the dead before twilight.”

On our way out Don Julio nodded a quiet greeting to Fil and Nonoy who had made themselves comfortable on the porch. Our host maintained his large strides as we followed him up a path towards the jungle beyond the cornfields.

We trudged on silently for a mile, the shadows on the trail deepening with every step. We crossed a stream and hauled ourselves up a ridge. As we broke our run down into another gully, we were greeted by a faint, elegiac tune that was being sung in the distance. It was a young boy’s voice, sounding clear and precise as it lured us on.

The words sung in dialect were unintelligible to me, but I noticed wonder and apprehension merging in Nonoy’s face. He muttered something to Fil, who quickly apprised me that someone had died. I nodded and ran on after Don Julio, not wanting any other voice to join the marvelous sound I was hearing with increasing clarity at each step.

Soon we burst upon a small glade where close to a hundred dark-.skinned men and women had gathered. Pygmies, I thought instantly, noting that their bows stood taller by their sides. They looked at us with hardly any change in their mournful expressions. Some had tears flowing down their cheeks. Beside a deep pit, a couple of bodies lay wrapped in strips of palm leaf and vine. Their faces were uncovered. Above them stood Luisito, singing to his young heart’s content, face thrown up to the heavens, eyes virtually closed, phrasing long, curling lines that soared powerfully above the silent group. His features were sharply chiseled, his skin bronzed by the sun. And he was taller than some of the small men standing beside him.

Don Julio walked forward and touched the dead men’s faces. When he moved back, two women fell forward and cradled the dead men’s heads in their arms, rocking them gently in time to Luisito’s plaintive singing. Soon they laid the heads down and made way for the men to lift the bodies carefully and pass them on until they rested in the bottom of the pit.

The special child sang on, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. His arms swept up to encompass the sky. Now there was rage in his voice. Then, slowly, his lament turned into a veritable whisper, still lucid in its lowest registers, as earth was piled upon the bodies and the women wailed softly as one.

I felt no urge to record the scene except with my eyes and ears. But I shall remember with ferocity how the twilight descended slowly upon us while the common grave was leveled, and how the boy fell into mellifluous sobs as he ended his song.

We trooped back in silence to the cabin. A meal was prepared for us. We ate wordlessly, even Fil whose eyes darted constantly about. Until suddenly the boy broke into song again, phrasing lilting questions in the dialect which Don Julio answered in Spanish.

The boy shifted to Spanish himself, then lapsed into a charming, twittering patois that included a few words in English. He turned to me and asked, in a melody I could swear approximated the first bar of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” whether I was from America. I smiled and said yes. He munched briefly on a corncob, then sputtered into “oh so proudly we hailed, as the twilight’s last gleaming….”

Don Julio smiled appreciatively as the boy burst into full song, ranging lyrically through half of the anthem before breaking into a different melody with unfamiliar but unmistakably English phrases. His father slapped a knee and roared in laughter.

Finally, containing himself as his son wove on with his stirring rendition, Don Julio turned to me and explained, “The Flower of Scotland. I sang it once for him and he has never forgotten. I’m afraid he favors it to your own anthem. The Spanish one he doesn’t like at all, thinks it’s too sentimental. Which I find strange, since he performs with real emotion during wakes and burials.”

Don Julio laughed again, mussed the boy’s hair as he finished his song, and waved at him to finish his slipper.

Later that night Don Julio sat before the piano to showcase his son’s admirable gift to the full. Incredibly, Luisito ranged from Manuel de Falla’s “Cancion” and “Seguidilla murciana” to Leoncavallo’s aria “Una furtiva lagrima” from La Boheme, and then from “Hey Jude” to the lilting folk songs Fil and Nonoy knew and shamelessly hummed along to. He sang “Cu Cu Ru Cu Cu Paloma,” which he obviously took delight in, embellishing it extensively with his own improvisations in the dialect, and much to his father’s resounding approval as manifested by a jazzy thumping of the keyboard. Luisito’s “La vie en rose” couldn’t have been more sultry or heartfelt, his “Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond” an unforgettably emotive confluence of garrulousness and poignance. The boy was magnificent, and after a while we tired of applauding him and just sat back to listen in tremulous awe, wondering if there were any limits to his genius.

Don Julio gently ordered him to bed after he finished a sportive medley that married “God Save the Queen” with “La Marseillaise.” Then our host led me to the porch while Fil and Nonoy found their bunks for the night.

“My boy hears a tune once and repeats it flawlessly,” Don Julio said proudly. “Hearing a passage, he can bring it to its proper conclusion. When I taught him to read words on paper, he was only four and he lost no time in showing me that he could read notes as well. He would rummage through all the music sheets I kept inside the piano seat, and burst out in Italian, getting the accent right, too. He’d turn a score by Wagner upside down and make sport of it, as a boy would the most terrible of toys. It was frightful. It still is.”

Bats flapped noisily past the root and swooshed around the bamboo grove. The night wind lofted across the valley, the cornfields hissing before us.

“Not only is he a great mimic, repeating exactly what he hears, he takes it further where he will, adding his own touches of whimsy, cutting it here and there to suit his taste for the game, his own special game. Then, too, he makes up his own music, chanting epic tales of courage and gallantry, or of how two mountains coupled and gave birth to a new forest. Indeed, he was born to sing. Yet never has he sung originally of love. I remember the day his mother died. The midwife almost dropped him in fright. It was as if he was horn to sing of death.”

Don Julio drew a long puff from his cigar. Its end glowed like a terribly distant hearth.

“Whatever will I do with him, Señor?”

I couldn’t answer. I averted my eyes, and found myself gazng at a low, bright star that was repeatedly erased by a tree branch with each gust of wind. I shivered momentarily at the cruel wonder of it all. Luisito took me to the waterfall and mocked it with his own song, an echo that drowned its source. He hooted as an owl and clucked as a gecko, then merged these sounds into a playful nocturnal syncopation. He asked me, in his quaint way of trilling melodic refrains, how the birds were in my country. He had heard that they were different, and he had longed to hear birds other than those he had matched notes with in his valley.

I described the largest birds I knew. Even as I was sure that he failed to grasp most of my words, he sensed the shapes and sizes, and imagined the sounds they made while soaring high over a great expanse of land. He became the bald eagle and the mighty condor, the buzzard and the whooping crane. He sang the mating dance and the tale of migration. He breathed the flapping of powerful wings and the constant whoosh of wind, before ending his impressions with a sustained, sibilant cry of free fall.

We joined the maligta in a hunt for monitor lizards and came back with three large specimens of the glistening reptiles. As they were skinned and stewed in vinegar before Don Julio, the dark darling prince of the tribe sang his tribute to their past lives, how they slithered under rotting leaves and fallen branches, how they skulked after rodents and sank their teeth into fowl.

Fil and Nonoy were wordless before him. They could only shake their heads in disbelief as he silenced the tree-tops with flute-like bubbling trills and prolonged warbling. He would essay the meadow pipit’s accelerating sequence of tinkling notes that ended in a high-pitched and far-carrying pee-pee-pee, or the blackbird’s staccato dik-dik-dik that wound up in a jarring screech.

Once, when we were alone by the porch, I brought out the Polaroid and took his portrait, Luisito pressed his face close to the curious blank square. As he saw the color come into play and his features take shape, he began to sing softly to himself, how Luisito was born one day and said goodbye to his mother, and grew up with his father and his brothers and sisters, the little people, how he swung himself down a tree and bathed in the river.

When the print was complete he stared at his lace and sang to it repeatedly, Lu-i-si-to, Lu-i-si-to, Lu-i-si-to, chanting his name in various modes of self-celebrations.

Other than that time, I had no urge to photograph him or the maligta. Or anything else that presented itself before us. We walked around in an apparent daze in the magical valley. But we knew it would not last. It was as if the acknowledgment restrained me from making a serious effort to record any part of the implausible sojourn.

Fil and Nonoy never even asked how long we would stay or what our next move would be. We shared our supplies with our host until we found ourselves relying on the tribesmen’s fruits and tubers. We drank brandy with Don Julio and listened to Luisito sing with effortless passion.

On our fourth day at the farm the loggers came hack.

They had parked their truck at the edge of Don Julio’s land, where the maligta had narrowed the road and made further passage impossible.

Cries came from the distance when the interlopers were seen marching up the trail.

Don Julio brought out his shotgun and inserted the cartridges without a word. He stepped out calmly into the porch. I followed him, my heart beginning to pound at the thought of fearful consequences.

Shots rang out from beyond the cover of trees. The maligta were shouting to one another from different directions. Two figures stumbled out of the wood. They were Nonoy and Fil, dragging one another in panic across the held.

Luisito rushed out of the cabin and ran headlong to where more gunfire was erupting. He was bare above the waist, unarmed, bellowing his version of the rifle shots as he hurried onwards.

His father made no effort to stop him. Don Julio’s eves had turned steely as he stood on the porch gripping his weapon.

Nonoy grabbed the boy as they met, and both fell to the ground. Fil had crumpled down himself, and I realized that he was hurt. As I ran forward I heard Don Julio’s imperious cry behind me. “Go! It is not your fighy!”

Nonoy grappled with the boy, until Luisito let out an emphatic cry that seemed to propel him out of his pleading captor’s grasp. Nonoy fell to his knees again as he reached out desperately. Luisito hurdled the hushes and disappeared into the trees.

I reached Fil as he struggled to crawl away. His thigh was oozing blood. Nonoy helped me right him up and drag him towards the cabin. We must go, we must go, panted Nonoy. To the jeep!

We pushed Fil into the Willys and Nonoy quickly ran around to lake the driver’s seat, the key shaking in his pudgy hand. I turned and saw Don Julio still motionless on the porch, his face a mask as he peered into the direction of the motley din; running feet, shouts, gunshots, screams of pain — each sound replicated by that familiar wondrous voice that also filled the interim silences with a defiant song.

Nonoy grabbed me from behind and tried to push me into the jeep. I resisted and threw down his thick arm. Fil moaned and writhed in the front seat. Don Julio harked once more: “Go! Get away! It is not your fight!”

Automatic fire burst out in the distance. The fighting had spread and the shrill, chattering voices of the maligta seemed to cover another hill. Nonoy whimpered, his hands pressing feebly against my chest. I jumped into the back seat and he lost no time in starting the jeep and speeding down the trail towards where the firefight was taking place.

I peered out and saw Luisito running up a bare hillock. He threw his arms up as he reached a mound, and from his throat cascaded what seemed a hymn of fury that soon dissolved into vibrant waves of lament as we sped by.

My hands gripped the restraining bar as I arched halfway out the jeep to see him. More shots were fired and bullets whizzed by. Nonoy whined and crouched low against the wheel as we lurched on.

The boy was still out there atop the bare mound, his arm sweeping across the valley and his head thrown hack as he sang. Then I lost sight of him for the final time as we rumbled past the empty truck and into the wider road.

But I could hear his lusty praise for all the bravery taking place around him, and his voice seemed to turn even more luminous as we sped away.

We were all crying in the Willys. Fil sobbed in agony while I tried to make sense of a kerchief and tie it above his ugly wound. Nonoy wailed in gratitude for slipping past unhurt. Tears flowed down my face as I knotted the tourniquet and patted Fil comfortingly on his shoulders.

It seemed a long time before the song of the music child trailed off.

It was hard to tell as we drove on whether it was just the ineradicable memory of his voice that accompanied our flight farther and farther away from all the deaths he celebrated.