It is summer in the global North and winter in the global South. Reason enough to bring summer and winter together in August's Literatur.Review and publish previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the North and South of our world.

Kristian Sendon Cordero writes in three Philippine languages as a poet, fictionist, essayist, translator, and an independent filmmaker. The Philippine Daily Inquirer calls Kristian Sendon Cordero as the emerging cultural czar of his home region known as Bikol. His bookshop, Savage Mind and the art space, Kamarin has been hailed as the creative heart of the city, the bastion of free thinking and the soul of the community  He received the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 2017 and has been named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines for his contribution in arts and culture in 2022.

As soon as the lamp was lit at six every evening and the chickens would flutter down from the cacao and jack fruit trees, Father would leave. He wore shabby military fatigues, boots as large as my legs, and an antique amulet on which was inscribed an angelus that only Father could read and understand: Que cecop, deus meus, deus noter. I had once attempted to say it aloud, but I almost swallowed my own tongue. He said that the prayer is sacred, that words have their own power and that these should not be taken lightly. When, one time, he had caught me in the act of stashing it in my pocket, Father had warned me that when I would continue to utter the angelus, all my hair would fall off and my tongue fully contort. I had wanted to use the triangular amulet with an open eye in the middle as ammunition. It was said to be the Lord’s eye. The vision of the open eye, which seemed to have been carved out of the sky by lightning, was said to have been seen by Father’s grandfather. The amulet weighed as much as the dozen marbles and twenty flattened bottle caps we used to play tatsian. Whenever Father wore the amulet, no metal or bronze could wound him, only lighting, snake bite or any bite from a wild animal. Instead of scolding and welting me with his belt after catching me, Father would calmly ask for his amulet and would merely exchange it for a peso he took out from his ear.

These past few months, Father’s departures had become more frequent. He came home in the early hours of the morning as with the bats living in the old bell tower in the church of Santiago who was Father’s favorite saint. So when I was born on the day of the saint’s feast day, he did not hesitate to make me a namesake of the mounted saint.

Santiago was the patron saint of cavalries and soldiers. He was one of the Lord’s twelve disciples, one of San Juan’s brothers. Prominently seen in his iconography were decapitated heads and dismembered men strewn underneath Santiago’s figure. They wore flashy turbans and had beards that seemed to have been haircurled by Mother’s friend (like those of Plaridel or Antonio Luna seen above blackboards). The men scattered below the patron saint’s feet were apparently called Moros— enemies of the Christians. Even before the arrival of the Spaniards, they were said to often raid towns and abduct young women to take as child-bearers and slaves. Moros were said to have weaned on pigs’ hearts when they were in the womb. These people were the same ones that San Miguel trampled upon on the gin bottle’s label.

If one should examine him closely, Santiago’s eyes were said to overflow with anger. His eyeballs, said an old sacristan, were cast from gold that came from a mountain of ice in South America while the head and arms were fashioned from pure ivory in Africa. Many have tried to steal the santo but no one ever succeeded. The Moros, who still continue to wreak havoc, had also attempted to steal it during the first years of the Spanish era, but due to the miraculous statue, they could not sack our town, because of spreading rumors that Santiago’s horse would come alive and would sprout flaming horns like those of a bull if ever an enemy should come near it. It was believed that its eyes were more powerful that the amulet Father wore and anyone wielding it would attain unbelievable strength. There had also been some rumors in town that each time the santo went missing from its altar, it was accompanying Father’s group whenever they raided the towns of Topas, Malawag and Tapayas which were reportedly teeming with rebels that Apo had ordered to be pursued. These rebels were the new Moros.
 
I have often seen Mother and other women in our town before the same icon of Santiago. During the feast day of the patron saint, they contributed to have a new dress sewn for the santo. It usually wore red embroidered with golden thread that was said to have come from Manila. This thread was the same one used in the First Lady’s dresses according to the old women whose scapulars had almost turned into a birthmark on their bodies.

(1) Hilot is a traditional Filipino healing art that incorporates massage techniques, the use of medicinal plants and prayers. Santigwar is a form of miracle healing performed by an albularyo (quack or herbal healer) who calls on spirits and uses natural/herbal remedies.

One Sunday, after attending church, I saw Mother rubbing her hands on the statues, her eyes closed as if they had been soaped, and groping the santo like someone whose eyes were suddenly splashed with soap, felt for the dipper to rinse it off. Like all devotees, Mother believed that the saint had the power to heal. So there was always a line before the holy statue to be able rub it and wipe handkerchiefs on it, which people would then dab on their aching parts, mostly the back, the nape, the temples, the lips, the chest, their trembling hands and feet and there were those who coyly wiped their blessed hands even on to their breasts and penises. Some would sneak out coconut oil to make candles for the altar. It was used for hilot and Santigwar (1). Because of the old women rubbing the statue, the balls of the saint’s mounted horse shone. It was like an incredibly soft and over-ripe duhat.

Mother was a teacher in our town. There were only four of them teaching the six grades, each with twenty students. Mother had been my teacher when I was in Grade One and Grade Three. She was also assigned to be my teacher when I would enter Grade Five the next year. Once we arrived home from school, Father would have already left. Only steamed rice would be waiting for us. At the beginning, Mother frequently went to church and was an active member of the Confradia of Santiago. But these past few months as the mass on her throat grew bigger which was perhaps brought about by more than a decade’s worth of teaching and inhaling chalk, her churchgoing became less frequent. I remember that when Mother noticed that her mouth dried up easily and it was as if she felt live frog inside her throat, she offered a novena to the saint and gave tithe to the mass within the month. However, no improvement was seen  in her illness which became a huge mass on her throat. It grew larger than the balls of Santiago’s horse.

As the mass grew, Mother became more irritable at home and at school. One day, I heard that she threw a coconut floor scrub at one of her students because of a mistake in spelling out her name. Instead of writing “e,” the student replaced it with “i” in our surname De la Fuente. They almost resorted to the kapitan of the barrio when the child’s parents complained. It was a good thing that Father had gifted the kapitan three bottles of lambanog. While Mother’s mass was continually growing, like a rat constricted by a snake, her devotion to the saint dwindled further and further. She tried petitioning to other santos or santas. She went to Ombao-Pulpog and promised San Vicente to have a bronze throat made to hang on the saint’s costume when she was cured. She also went to Hinulid in Calabanga and walked ten kilometers one Good Friday just to remove the impinging mass. But it seemed that the heavens were conspiring against her. So after a few months of trying to get well, Mother seemed to accept that the mass was like a part of her body. It was like a strand of hair or nail which sprung and grew. Mother looked pitiful because I knew that she had difficulty swallowing food, even her saliva. Her wincing and spitting nearly simultaneous with her loud cursing, that later became her new angelus, was proof of this. 
After her last and futile covenant lighting lady-shaped candles in the cathedral of the Virgin of Salvacion in Tiwi, even her shadow had not stepped foot inside a church anymore. She diverted her attention to playing cards on Saturdays and Sundays. She consulted an albularyo but she was only advised to go back to Santiago, a thing Mother had not done because her mass was nearly the size of an unripe pomelo while Father more frequently stayed in the camp.

Mother would not trust any doctor. She had sometimes said, the doctor might only excise the frog inside her throat and use it to teach new medical students. Mother was probably only joking then, but Father and I did not bat an eye.

“Your Father’s an aswang!”

(2) Teks is a Filipino word and game meaning ‘playing cards with text’. There are numerous different designs with texts, such as comic strips or characters from anime or cartoons.

Shouted my playmate Intoy when I lost at teks (2) and grew tried playing of teks. It was as if Mother’s spirit had possessed me and had wanted me to force feed my playmate with sand when I heard Intoy saying it.

“Is there an aswang that prays to the saints, aber?” I retorted back at Intoy, clutching his remaining three teks cards of Panday and Pedro Penduko.

“Ay, whatever, our neighbors say that your father is an aswang! That’s why your Mother has a mass on her throat and why you don’t grow because you have asbo blood!”

Not contented, he continued to shout until he went home: “Tiago, midget, supot!”

He acted like a ravenous crow hurling insults at me until he was swallowed up by the dark that gradually enveloped the town. The last thing I heard was the sudden crack of his voice. 
I went home carrying the teks I acquired as thick as my books. I hid it in a small cabinet so that Mother would not find it. That night, I could not take my mind off Intoy’s claim that my puniness and Mother’s mass were because my Father was an aswang.

To be an aswang was even more terrifying. There were stories around town that, long before the missionaries arrived, our town had been a nest of malignant and evil spirits. Only Santiago could be able to vanquish their camp. The aswang were evil beings and those devils were often seen wandering during a new moon to devour new victims. An aswang must take a coconut shell with two eyes and smother it with guano before it could levitate into the darkness and kill. There are two types of aswang, an aswang who could fly, known as a manananggal and an aswang who walks called an asbo. They were both acolytes from Hell and on days when God was dead, they gathered in the Mayon  volcano to reaffirm their allegiance to the dark powers. Aswang were afraid of water, especially holy water and, once, when a woman was thought to be an aswang in our town during the Japanese occupation, she was dragged to the river, her hips tied to a large stone and was thrown in the water. If the woman was an aswng, she would not sink as she would use her powers to walk on water and to escape. But when she sank and died, the woman was innocent. That woman died from bleeding, her blood admixed in the river. The woman had been two months pregnant and her husband had just been found dead while gathering coconut. The two were rumored to be spies for the Japanese.

Most believed that there were more female aswang and that they were more powerful than the male aswang. Female aswang were more ferocious when angered, like giant hens. When the moon was full, the aswang appeared, some strolling in the air or if not, at the basement, feasting on the spit of the ill. Fuera dios, fuera hulog, this was the angelus the aswang chanted which meant, There is no God, I will not stumble. There is another angelus uttered repeatedly by aswang until their spreading wings sprouted: Siri, siri, daing Diyos kun banggi, labaw sa kakahoyan, lagbas sa kasirongan. (Do not fear, do not worry, there is no God in the night, above the forest, outside the basements).

Sometimes, they took the form of a boar, a cat or even a dog. Phlegm was as a vitamin to them, and blood was water to quench their thirst. Aswang could not be killed, they only hibernated, so before they go into hibernation, the aswang must first pass on a black orb to whichever relative or person they chose to propagate the line. An aswang could not rest until it could pass it on to others. I have heard these stories retold by elders of the town who little by little had died and perhaps had been victims of aswang themselves. But still their tales remain, cautioning them not to tell stories about aswang during Tuesdays and Fridays because the aswangs’ hearing is more acute on these two days.

(3) Sweet Filipino milk rolls.

The moon had almost sunk beneath our window and the stars, which I had caught a glimpse of through the small hole in our roof, had already passed when I sensed Father’s arrival. Even before Mother had grown a mass, they slept separately. Mother slept restlessly; hence she needed to be surrounded by pillows to prevent her from falling off. The pillows surrounding her bed looked like dead men. Father slept on the floor, beside me. Father’s snoring sounded like horses in a chase. I felt the throbbing of his heart like a beating drum. Father perspired. He smelt of burnt slippers. When Father hugged me tightly, I felt like a small pillow embraced by a huge giant. I pretended to sleep. Father’s muscles on his arm were large, like small pan de sal (3), like rats. I felt Father’s breath blazing, grazing my nape. It was like a strong gust dancing the tiny grass of my head. Before I was visited by sleep, I saw Mother’s large shadow inside the mosquito net and the pillows which seemed to be bursting, their blackened cotton protruding. 
At daybreak, we were horrified by the bodies by the river. Six men had been found being nibbled on by crabs and shrimp. Bullet holes were found in their heads and abdomen. One of the bodies had been burnt because his head looked like it had asphalt poured over it and another one had his penis cut off and shoved into his mouth. They were like frogs mangled by cars. The dead men were presumed to be rebels. From Tigaon and Sorsogon, said a teacher. The aswang have attacked, said an albularyo, one of the elders in town who before had been suspected of as an aswang. The slain rebels were young except for the old one covered in asphalt, added another teacher. The rebels were already skin and bones as though they had been starved for months. One of the dead men still had his eyes wide open and they almost protruded out of the skull covered with wounds which were being lapped up by tilapia and carp.

Because of what had happened, classes were suspended the whole day. Everyone talked about the dead men from the church to the market, where fish sales had slackened because of the news of the corpses found in the river. Those who sold fish were most disturbed because their catch that day had putrefied.

The bodies were placed in a cart pulled by a white carabao and brought to the municipal to be photographed and claimed by relatives. As expected, no one came and introduced themselves as relatives of the rebels. After the priest had blessed them, they were immediately buried in a vacant lot near the cemetery that night. According to the albularyo whom Mother had once consulted, the woman who had drowned in the river was now taking her revenge. Many more bodies would surface from the river. He said the aswang had killed off the rebels. 
That day, I went back home early after my ears seemed to be swollen from the stories I had heard about the dead bodies and aswang. I found Father still asleep. I noticed his small wound on his right arm infected because of flies. His face and feet had abrasions. The pants he had taken off the previous night were covered with amorseco.

As he had always done, Father left that night before the lamp was lit and before the one kilo of beef he bought had been cooked to a tender. He said that there will be drinking at the camp which was one creek and three hills away from our town. Father had not once brought us to the camp. Children were not allowed to be near such places. A party was held in the camp because the new chief of their battalion had arrived from Albay. He was absolutely delighted that the soldiers had won in their encounter with the rebels.

Before heading to camp, some soldiers had offered a Mass as gratitude to the patron saint. That was most likely why they were deemed Santiago’s cult by some of our townsfolk, most especially Ka Pedring who owned a large plot of farmland in a town said to be a nesting ground of the enemies of Apo who was Father’s and other soldiers’ overall chief. I have not seen Apo aside from the picture that hung in our classroom alongside his family. They were like kings and queens and my teacher said that Apo’s family owned much gold that came from a Japanese general’s loot and old churches in the Visayas and the North, which Apo’s wife had let be demolished. What was said to be lacking from the family’s possessions was the eye of the Matamoros (Santiago’s beatific endowed by some sisters of the parish). But news had reached us that the First Lady had written to the curate, requesting that the statue be sent to the Palace in Manila to be shown to a cardinal from Rome. The whole town could refuse. The patron saint might be incensed at having to be separate from its throne for a long time. The saint had never been away from its retablo. The curate could do nothing even though the First Lady had already sent money for renovations in the convent. There was talk about how the priest had sent an antique relic instead to add to the collection assembled by the First Lady who was somehow satisfied.

Whenever a high-ranking official came to the camp, it was flooded with drink and food. A pig was slaughtered, and cash was handed out to the soldiers. Some girls, those from the Red House were permitted to enter. Many of these girls claimed to be from Polangui because they were told to say that they were from Polangui if asked even though some of them were from Masbate or Samar. I had only seen them once in town when they joined the procession and followed the float of the Santo Sepulro. They were the girls covered with black veils and walked barefoot carrying straw brooms.

The meat Father had left was still tough even though I already had forked it and had added jackfruit leaves. The beef still had a rubbery texture although the coal I put was almost running out boiling our cutlet. Our cutlet looked better when Mother mixed sweet potato and kangkong sprouts to the braised dish. The yellowish-white marrow slowly seeped out from inside the bones. Mother asked me to pluck some calamansi from our yard. The sour fruit was used to remove the oil and counteract the fat. The calamansi can also be used against aswangs, said the elders. The calamansi’s fragrance was more potent than that of garlic although elders say that garlic was all the more effective against the aswang. 

Mother had finished cooking our dish at eight o’clock. It had not yet tenderized but it was more satisfying than eating our own tongues. I dumped my rice into the soup though the image of the bodies found in the river still occasionally came back to mind. This was alright because our meal was beef unlike Intoy’s, who I saw was washing shrimp and cablets a while back when I passed by their street to buy kerosene.

It was easy to sleep when one was full. After I finished washing the dishes, I went up to spread the mat and hang the mosquito net. Mother remained at the table, playing solitaire. She neither studied nor prepared for her lectures. She said she already knew the lesson. She already has the entire textbook—which, she said, was older than me— in her head.

Father came home smelling of chico. Unlike other drunks, Father was not rowdy or disposed to making a scene. He quietly felt the heat of the alcohol emanating from his body. He need not muster up his courage to speak or do whatever he intended, and he would go by it with drink. That father of Intoy’s, whenever he would come back from Saudi and have a drink—Jesus, he would chase his mother, wielding a machete and take off his clothes in the road.

Intoy’s mother was said to have another man in the rebels’ mountain. That was why it was not a stretch, for Intoy, that, whether rebel, moro or soldier, they were all aswang. His mother was cast under an aswang’s spell by the rebels’ leader known by the name, Ka Don. He was once a pastor of a sect before joining the rebels. The women in town swooned at the thought of Ka Don. He was like a movie star. You would not make him out to be rebel. It was rumoured that Intoy’s mother was not the only one who had been swayed by Ka Don. Almost all the other towns beside ours had someone captivated by the said leader. There were also some of us who sympathized with the principles of Ka Don, who seemed to possess a natural charisma to people, especially farmers and tenants. According to Ka Pedring, the rebels were good people and could be considered heroes by those like Ka Don. But aside from Ka Don’s handsome looks, he was also known to be an executioner. Days  after the six bodies of the men had been found along the river, Apo’s adversaries retaliated. Two of Father’s fellow soldiers were gunned down inside the Red House. Their skulls were smashed, and they were hauled outside. The two corpses were dragged around the village by a motorcycle. The two soldiers looked like bopis when they were found in the middle of the plaza the next morning. You would first have to puke before weeping or shuddering at the sight of their corpses.

Father entered the mosquito net and woke me up. He kissed me on the forehead and the faint smell of gin lingered. His beard brushed me like a makahiya’s thorns. I seemed to have felt a shiver when Father did it. Most especially when Father held my skinny arm and then he seized my crotch, he then laughed as if he was tickled. “How my son has grown. I’ll feel for your birdie to see if you’ve become a true man.” My Father’s spoke teasingly, but I was taken aback and cowered. I shamefully covered my penis. I saw how it was smaller than Intoy’s. But Father insisted on groping it as if inspecting jocote to buy in the market. Father uncovered my hand and touched my penis. I tried to stomach it while he fondled it like a rooster to be played in a cockfight.

“You should be circumcised during the school break, so they’ll say that you’ve become a man. You need to carry on my line, the De la Fuente family...” Because of his drunkenness, Father appeared to mumble his words. The only thing I knew of circumcision was that it was done by the river. In the river, the tip of the penis was made to soften like the beef we had eaten. As to why the river, which was the source of livelihood for some of us, was always associated with blood, with death, it was the river through which the rituals of birth, baptism, and death flowed. 
It was also through the river where the priests had brought Santiago’s statue. Before the missionaries came, the river had been a breeding ground for crocodiles and one priest had also died after being attacked by a crocodile while he was bathing. Only the priest’s rosary and crucifix was left. This was the town’s first miracle because once the crocodiles had started consuming priests, the crocodiles died one after another until the entire population had gone. I was a man now, but I would one truly after being circumcised. The old albularyo performed it in the town. You couldn’t refuse or else it would bring a great shame to your family. A child fathered by an uncircumcised male had crusty eyes and was sickly.

Again, father embraced me tightly. I felt his eyes scanning my whole body. I was like a mirror that Father looked into. I was scared to be circumcised, but that was better than having to give birth or menstruate. Women perhaps had been more cursed than men. I slowly turned away from Father. I did not see how he looked. The fear I felt was perhaps thicker than the blanket I used. That moment when he grabbed hold of my penis, I was afraid that I might see that he was an aswang and at the time when he embraced me, it was then he turned back to a man.

He still held my penis until he slept. He continued to emit snores which could have been Mother’s kisses instead. But Mother was already engulfed by the dark when evening came. She was like a large mass inside the mosquito net. While Father held my penis, I felt my legs stiffening as if my thighs up to the tip of the prepuce in my sheathed penis were pierced by wire. It was like a plucked flower breaking off to brandish its petals. I was by then at the verge of dozing off among other sensations when a liquid slowly oozed from my penis. The liquid was like sap exuding out the banana’s heart at 12 midnight during Good Friday which according to stories, was a source of power to fight off the aswang. From that day on, I waited for Father’s arrival each night. During the times I waited, I was visited by new dreams of large and generous hands to which I was like a bushel of rice hulls being pounded until the grain came out. The more days I waited, finding bodies by the river had become more regular. Some corpses were also found in the thicket, the bodies dismembered and wrapped in sacks of cement. They were like the men seen in Santiago’s statue. Dismembered arms and decapitated heads, according to one drunk, haunted the river. No one dared to pass by that part of the river when the geckos started clucking among the bamboo, unless one used kalampunay. Doing the laundry by the river became less frequent while the crabs, shrimps and fish caught here became larger. But only a few people bought it. The most expensive was one piso for a kilo of shrimp while crabs could be obtained for free. It was also reported that a catfish was seen in the river and swallowed an entire carabao while it was wading there. The catfish that had been seen was said to be as large as Mang Andoy’s dinghy. Had the crocodiles come back?

“Your Father and his fellow soldiers are the ones killing the bodies in the river!” Intoy’s taunting comeback when we went home together from the market. “Both your Father and those in the mountains are monsters!” Intoy added in reproach while pulling down an eyelid as though he were taking out dust stinging his eye and stuck out his tongue.

“If you Father is an aswang, then you’ll become an aswang too!” my friend shouted and scurried away when he saw me picking up a stone I was about to throw at him. 
I had no idea why Intoy called my Father an aswang while he was his godfather during his baptism. Father would often give him presents for Christmas. Last December, he was given a toy gun the same gift as mine. But Intoy easily broke it because there was not a day he did not bring it to school, gloating that it had been given to him by his father in Saudi.

I have kept up for Father many times just to prove that he was not an aswang. He was not scared that I had calamansi leaves in my pocket. He looked directly at people’s eyes. He entered the church to pray at Santiago’s altar. I suspected Mother more who was more spiteful these past few days. Some children had started calling her a witch because of her sternness known throughout the town. Some had even complained about Mother’s grating demeanor. She had also often screamed at me whenever she noticed that some of her cards were missing. I sometimes saw her talking with the king of cards, kissing and singing the jack a lullaby, while stepping on the queens.

Sometimes I stole some playing cards from Mother’s deck—the two cards seldom used, which had pictures of clowns—and betted them in teks. My classmates were all impressed because my teks were unique. They were new and smelled imported. “From what movie is that?” asked my playmate. I said, “From Dolphy and Panchito’s” which made them more amazed. They had not yet heard of that movie in the betamax rental store. When Mother found out, she chased me with a long stingray whip which was feared amongst aswang. I fled from the house and went to a hill and washed the wound Mother inflicted on me with tender guava leaves and Pay Isong’s nganga spit. Being hit by a stingray’s tail was like being bitten by an eel. Probably a circumcision was more painful. The tail was covered with spikes. An aswang hit by its lash would die. The tail was always underneath Mother’s sleeping mat. That was most likely why Father did not sleep with her? 
To determine that Father was not an aswang, I waited for him to fall asleep when he arrived early. He was obviously tired, and if Father had not been snoring, he would be mistaken as someone dead. I slowly groped for his penis. Carefully. I wanted to prove that he had what I had. That was proof that he was not an aswang like Intoy had claimed. I pretended to toss and turn and then slightly lifted my shirt. I felt nervous like a rat being chased by a cat when I slowly placed and directed my knee towards Father’s crotch. A single piece of flesh seemed to be attached to it. I quickly shook my thigh and felt Father’s penis harden. It was like a mass. I noticed that it grew while something was placed on top of it. I became more worried and so I gradually took off my thigh placed on it and carefully loosened my embrace on Father. Father still slept soundly while I opened and closed my palms because I felt that I wanted to grab hold of Father’s penis more. I wanted to make sure that we were both the same. But I feared that Father or his penis would get mad. I just prostrated myself on our hard floor. The floor was just as hard as Father’s warm body. The soil’s aroma wafted from the basement of our house and from my Father’s body. Petrichor. Mother had said that that vapor was bad, that kind that comes when the brief rain suddenly waters a dry land. The vapor was bad for the stomach. That was the smell that exuded out of Father’s skin. But for me, that night, it was though the ilang-ilang in our yard had bloomed. I hugged my pillow and again groped my penis which had also hardened like a banana ready to be plucked. When I felt that sleep was already knocking on my eyelids, at once, I let in the racing dreams. In my first dream, it had rained sampaguita.

Some nights, Father did not come home after I had ascertained that he was not an aswang. Other nights, I thought of his penis. It grew when I was touched, when it was pressed upon, when it was held. Like mine. This was similar to what was believed of Santiago’s statue, that both the saint and his horse grew. It was said was, before it was brought here by the missionaries, its feet had not yet touched the ground from where he was mounted on his horse. Now, the saint’s boots almost touched the shelf. The horse’ balls also grew said a woman I had often seen rubbing the statue. 
Meanwhile, gunshots had been heard more frequently from the other town and it seemed that it was moving closer and closer to our town. The sound of a gunshot was different from that of fireworks during the New Year. These past few nights, the sound from the successive blasts were sharp. It was like a thunder’s roar. Stones seemed to pour down the steel roofs.

The flow of the river became boggy because of the blood mixed with it. Before six in the evening, people would have already packed up and retired into their homes. There were aswang roaming around at night, announced the albularyo. Raids also became more frequent. The other day, Ka Pedring’s house had been broken in and all the rice stored in it was taken. Ka Pedring was accused of aiding Apo’s enemies. Even Intoy had ceased his taunting and his bad mouthing when, on one afternoon, my friend witnessed his uncle gunned down by soldiers because his uncle had smitten a soldier who had brashly slaughtered and made a meal of his goat. Ka Pedring’s daughter had also disappeared after the soldiers had intruded into their home. Only a bloodied sanitary napkin was seen being fought over by stray dogs after the said abduction. After some nights searching for the girl, the whole town presumed that Ka Pedring had gone mad. The old man mimicked the gecko’s clucking by the river while holding that one sanitary napkin.

It was almost a month until I next saw Father. We were awakened by the loud knocking at the door and by the dog’s barking. Mother, who slept beside her scattered cards, and I were wakened at the same time. There were five soldiers waiting outside. They talked with Mother who seemed to have accepted a letter without writing. She told me to get up. We had not yet even changed clothes or gargled. We immediately got into the soldiers’ jeep. The first rays of the sun had the color of blood. It appeared to be dusk, as though red flowers smeared the sky’s light bulb. We passed by the river. Some were fishing for fish and crabs to be sold in the market. They seemed to be wearing black veils. The folded acacia leaves were fanned out.

It had not yet been half an hour when we arrived at the municipal. We entered a small room that smelled of pig shit. There was a body covered by a blanket that was the color of moss stuck on the stones I used to see on the river. The solider swiftly took out the covering blanket and immediately left and lit a crumpled cigarette stick from his pocket.

Father was the dead body. We recognized him instantly because of his amulet. Father looked like a butchered cow. The left side of his face was shattered, and fresh blood dripped from his nose, ears and from a crack on his skull like fragments of a broken bottle. I saw his penis sticking out of his mouth, the piece of flesh that proved to me he was not an aswang. It was as though in that part of him Father had stored his humanity, strength, anger, even his reasons to embrace, to keep quiet and to avoid sleeping with Mother, to convince me to be circumcised and to his devotion to Santiago. It was like I felt Father’s entire hardship when I saw his nearly shredded penis. And even though Father looked that way, Father’s whole body seemed to become a magnet and I felt him drawing me closer.

I hugged Father as when he hugged me the night he held my penis. I did not mind the dripping blood which was dried up right away by the August breeze and which became a huge birthmark, a map on the skin. There was a bullet that had pierced through his amulet. It hit the open eye. Father’s body was still warm when I embraced it until it cooled to that of the river’s water. I looked around and when I made sure that those five soldiers who did not seem to mind were still outside, I slowly took out with much care and delicateness Father’s dismembered penis from his mouth. It was still bleeding and it seemed to have shrunk like the meat we had used as bait in the river when the fish were still just as large as my palms and not as large as carabaos. I looked at Father’s penis, and I remembered the dark orb which the aswang had to pass on before dying. I slowly put it in my mouth and swallowed Father’s penis as soon as the rooster’s crowing which I heard right after the gecko’s clucking.

The first beams of the sun were blinding, melting. 

About the story

About the translator

Bernard Capinpin is a poet and translator. His translations have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as The Arkansas International, The Washington Square Review, AGNI, and The Massachusetts Review, as well as in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and the anthology ULIRÁT: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines (Gaudy Boy Translates, 2021). He is one of the winners of the 2020 Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Contest. He lives in the Philippines.