Mill of the Gods by Estrella Alfon

Among us who lived in Espeleta that street that I love, about whose people I keep telling tales among us, I say, there was one named Martha, and she
was the daughter of Pio and Engracia.
To all of us, life must seem like a road given us to travel, and it is up to Fate, that convenient blunderer, whether, that road be broad and unwinding, or
whether it shall be a tortuous lane, its path a hard and twisted mat of dust and stones. And each road, whether lane or avenue, shall have its own landmarks,
that only the traveller soul shall recognize and remember, and remembering, continue the journey again. To Martha, the gods gave this for a first memory: a
first scar.
She was a girl of twelve, and in every way she was but a child. A rather dull child, who always lagged behind the others of her age, whether in study or in
play. Life had been so far a question of staying more years in a grade than the others, of being told she would have to apply herself a little harder if she didnt
want the infants catching up with her. But that was so dismal thing. She had gotten a little bit used to being always behind. To always being the biggest girl in
her class. Even in play there was some part of her that never managed to take too great a part she was so content if they always made her it in a game of
tag, if only they would let her play. And when she had dolls, she was eager to lend them to other girls, if they would only include her in the fascinating games
she could not play alone.
This was she, then. Her hair hung in pigtails each side of her face, and already it irked a little to have her dresses too short. She could not help in her
mothers kitchen, and could be trusted to keep her room clean, but she was not ready for the thing her mother told her one night when she was awakened
from sleep.
It was a sleep untroubled by dreams, then all of a sudden there was an uproar in the house, and she could hear her mothers frenzied sobbing, and it was
not sobbing that held as much of sorrow as it did of anger. She lay still for a while, thinking perhaps she was dreaming, until she could hear her fathers
grunted answers to the half understood things her mother was mouthing at him. Then there were sounds that was clearly the sound of two bodies
struggling in terrible fury with each other. She stood up, and like a child, cried into the night. Mother?
She wailed the word, in her panic finding a little relief in her own wailing, Mother? And she heard her mothers voice call her, panting out, saying, Martha,
come quickly, come into this room!
Martha got up and stood at the door of the room, hesitating about opening it, until her mother, the part of a terrible grasp, said Martha! So Martha pushed in
the door, and found her mother and her father locked in an embrace in which both of them struggled and panted and had almost no breath left for words.
Martha stood wide eyed and frightened, not knowing what to do, just standing there, even though she had seen what it was they struggled for. A kitchen
knife, blade held upwards in her mothers hand. Her arms were pinioned to her sides by her husband, but her wild eyes, the frenzy with which she stamped
her feet on his feet, and kicked him in the shins, and tried to bite him with her teeth, these were more terrible than the glint of that shining blade. It was her
father who spoke to her saying urgently, Martha, reach for her knife, take it away. Yet Martha stood there and did not comprehend until her mother spoke,
saying No, no; Martha, your father deserves to be killed. Then it was Martha who realized what she was to do, and slowly, hesitantly, she went near them,
her fear of both of them in this terrible anger they now presented making her almost too afraid to reach up for the knife. But reach up she did, and with her
childs fingers, put her mothers away from the weapon. And when she had it in her hands she did not know what to do with it, except look at it. It wasnt a
very sharp knife, but its blade was clean, and its hilt firm. And so she looked at it, until her father said. Throw it out of the window, Martha and without
thinking, she went to a window, opened a casement and threw it away.
Then her father released her mother, and once her mother had gotten her arms free, she swung back her hand, and wordlessly, slapped him; slapped him
once, twice, three times, alternating with her hands, on alternate cheeks, until her father said. Thats enough, Engracia. And saying so, he took her hands in
his, led her resisting to the bed, and made her sit down.
And Martha was too young to wonder that her father, who was a big man, should have surrendered to the repeated slapping from her mother who was a very
small frail woman.
Her father said, Arent you ashamed now Martha has seen?
And immediately her mother screamed to him, Ashamed? Me, ashamed? Ill tell Martha about you!
Her father looked at Martha still standing dumbly by the window out of which she had thrown the knife, and said, No, Aciang, she is just a child. And to her:
Martha, go back to bed.
But now her mother jumped up from the bed, and clutched at Martha, and brought her to bed with her. And deliberately without looking at Marthas father,
she said, Martha you are not too young to know. And so, the words falling from her lips with a terrible quiet, she told Martha. The words that were strange to
her ears, Martha heard them, and listened to them, and looked from her mother to her father, and without knowing it, wetting her cheeks with her tears that
fell. And then her mother stopped talking, and looking at her husband, she spat on him, and Martha saw the saliva spatter on the front of the dark shirt he
wore. She watched while her father strode over them, and slowly, also deliberately, slapped her mother on the cheek. Martha watched his open palm as he
did it, and felt the blow as though it had been she who had been hit. Then her father strode out of the room, saying nothing, leaving them alone.
When her father had gone, Marthas mother began to cry, saying brokenly to Martha, It is that woman, that woman! And making excuses to Martha for her
father, saying it was never completely the mans fault. And Martha listened bewildered, because this was so different from the venomous words her mother
had told her while her father was in the room. And then her mother, still weeping, directed her to look for her father and Martha went out of the room.
Her father was not in the house. The night was very dark as she peered out of the windows to see is she could find him outside, but he was nowhere. So she
went back to her mother, and told her she could not find her father. Her mother cried silently, the tears coursing down her cheeks, and her sobs tearing
through her throat. Martha cried with her, and caressed her mothers back with her hands, but she had no words to offer, nothing to say. When her mother at
last was able to talk again, she told Martha to go back to bed. But it wasnt the child that entered who went out of that room.
And yet the terror of that night was not so great because it was only a terror half understood. It wasnt until she was eighteen, that the hurt of that night was
invested with its full measure. For when she was eighteen, she fell in love. She was a girl of placid appearance, in her eyes the dreaming stolid night of the
unawakened. She still was slow to learn, still not prone to brilliance. And when she fell in love she chose the brightest boy of her limited acquaintance to fall
in love with. He was slightly older than herself, a little too handsome, a trifle too given to laughter. Espeleta did not like him; he was too different from the
other young me n on the street. But Martha loved him. You could see that in the way she looked at him, the way she listened to him.
Marthas pigtails had lengthened. She now wore her braids coiled on the top of her head like a coronet, and it went well with the placid features, the rather

full figure. She was easily one of our prettier maidens. It was well that she was not too brilliant. That she did not have any too modern ideas. The air of
shyness, the awkward lack of sparkling conversation suited her Madonna like face and calm. And her seriousness with love was also part of the calm
waiting nature. It did not enter her head that there are such things as play, and a game. And a mans eagerness for sport. And so when she noticed that his
attentions seemed to be wandering, even after he had admitted to a lot of people that they were engaged, she asked him, with the eager desperation of the
inexperienced, about their marriage.
He laughed at her. Laughed gently, teasingly, saying they could not get married for a long time yet; he must repay his parents first for all that they had done
for him. He must first be sure to be able to afford the things she deserved. Well turned phrases he said his excuses with. Charming little evasions. And if she
did not see through them while he spoke them, his frequent absences, where his visits had been as a habit; his excuses to stay away when once no amount
of sending him off could make him stay away; these but made her see. And understand.
And then the way neighbours will, they tried to be kind to her. For they could see her heart was breaking and they tried to say sweet things to her, things like
her being far too good for him. And then they heard that he had married. Another girl. And they saw her grief, and thought it strange that a girl should grieve
over an undeserving lover or so. She lost a little of the plumpness that was one of her charms. And into her eyes crept a hurt look to replace the dreaming.
And Espeleta, with all the good people, strove to be even kinder to her. Watched her grief and pitied her. And told her that whatever mistakes she had
committed to make her grieve so, to make her suffer so, they understood and forgave. And they did not blame her. But now that she had learned her lesson,
she must beware. She knew her own father as much as they knew about him. And it was in the Fates that his sins must be paid for. If not by himself, then by
whom but she who was begotten by him? So, didnt she see? How careful she should be? Because you could, they said it to her gently, kindly, cruelly,
because she could if she were careful, turn aside the vengeance of the implacable fates. And she believed them kind although she hated their suspicions.
She believed them kind, and so she started, then, to hate her father. And that night long ago came back to her, and she wished she had not thrown that knife
away.
Espeleta saw Martha turn religious. More religious than Iya Andia and Iya Nesia, who were old and saw death coming close, and wanted to be assured of the
easing of the gates of heaven. Espeleta approved. Because Espeleta did not know what she prayed for. Because they saw only the downcast eyes under the
light veil, the coil of shining hair as it bowed over the communion rail.
Yet Marthas mother and father still lived together. They never had separated. Even after that night, when she was twelve years old and frightened, and she
had called for him and looked for him and not found him. The next day he had come back, and between her mother and him there was a silence. They slept
in the same bed, and spent the nights in the same room, and yet Martha and Espeleta knew he had another bed, another chamber. Espeleta praised
Marthas mother for being so patient. After Martha had fallen in love, when she began hating her father truly then also she began despising her mother.
You did not know it to look at Martha. For her coil of braided hair was still there, and the shy way of speaking, and the charming awkwardness at
conversation. And Martha made up her earlier lack of lustre by shining in her class now. She was eighteen and not through high school yet. But she made up
for it by graduating with high honours. Espeleta clapped its hands when she graduated. Gave her flowers. Her mother and father were there, too. And they
were proud. And to look at Martha, you would think she was proud too, if a little too shy still.
Martha studied nursing. And started having visitors in her mothers house again. Doctors this time. Older men, to whom her gravity of manner appealed, and
the innate good sense that seemed so patient in her quiet demeanour. Espeleta was now rather proud of Martha. She seemed everything a girl should be,
and they cited her as an example of what religion could do. Lift you out of the shadow of your inheritance. For look at Martha. See how different she is from
what should be her fathers daughter.
But what they did not know was that all of these doctors Martha had to choose someone slightly older than the rest. And where the girl of eighteen that she
had been almost a child unschooled, now she was a woman wise and wary. Where the other nurses knew this doctor only as someone who did not like their
dances as much as the younger ones, who did not speak as lightly, as flippantly of love as the younger ones, Martha knew why he didnt.
Between the two of them there had been, form the very start, a quick lifting of the pulse, an immediate quickening of the breath. From the very start. And
where he could have concealed the secrets of life, he chose the very first time they were able to talk to each other, to tell her that he was not free. He had a
wife, and whether he loved her or not, whether she was unfaithful to him or not, which she was, there had been the irrevocable ceremony to bind them, to
always make his love for any other woman, if he ever fell in love again, something that must be hidden, something that might not see light.
She was a woman now, Martha was. Wise and wary. But there is no wisdom, no weariness against love. Not the kind of deep love she knew she bore him.
And as even she him, she found within herself the old deep abiding secret hate. Against her father. Against the laws of man and church. Against the very
fates that seemed rejoiced in making her pay for a sin she had not committed. She now learned of bitterness. Because she could not help thinking of that
night, long ago, when her mother had sat on the bed, and in deliberate words told her just what kind of a father she had. It had been as though her mother
had shifted on to her unwilling, unready shoulders the burden of the sorrows, the goad of the grief.
Espeleta, that was so quick to censure, and to condemn; even Espeleta had taken the situation in Marthas house as something that could not be helped.
And as long as there was no open strife, Espeleta made excuses for a thing that, they said, had been designed by Fate. Marthas father came home. Acted,
on the surface, the good husband. And since he was married to Marthas mother, so must Marthas mother bear it, and welcome him home again. Because
she would rather he came home, then went to the other one, wouldnt she? Espeleta cited heavenly rewards. For Marthas mother. And Martha went to
church regularly, and was a good nurse. And still called her father, Father.
You have heard that one of course, about the mill of the gods, how they grind exceedingly fine, and grind exceedingly slow. Espeleta hadnt heard that one,
nor had Martha. But Espeleta of course would have a more winded version of it. Anyhow, one day at the hospital, Martha was attendant nurse at an
emergency case. A man had been shot. There were three bullets through his chest, but he was still alive. Martha laughed queerly to herself, saying I must be
dreaming, I am imagining that man has my fathers face.
It was the doctor she loved who was in charge. With a queer dreaming feeling, she raised her eyes to meet his, and was shocked to see him drop his gaze,
and over his face steal a twist as of pain, as of pity. They were instantly their efficient selves again, cloaking themselves in the impersonal masks of physician
and nurse. It was as if he who lay there beneath their instruments and their probing fingers was any man, the way it could be any man. Not her father. But all
while, training and discipline unavailing. Martha said to herself, but it is my father.
He died on the table. He never gained consciousness. Martha drew the sheet over his face and form. And watched as they wheeled him out of the room. She
still had the instruments to put away and the room to put in order. But this did not take long and when she went out into the corridor, she found her mother
weeping beside the shrouded form on the wheeled table. There was a policeman beside her awkwardly trying with gruff words to console the little woman
over her loss. Beside the policeman stood also the doctor, who passed an arm around the shoulder of Marthas mother, saying simply, we tried to save him.
Martha joined them, knowing that she should be in tears, yet finding that she had none to shed. It would ease the tightness within her, would loosen the hard

knot in her heart to cry. But you cannot summon tears when you feel no grief, and the pain you feel is not of sorrow but of the cruel justness of things. She
could not even put her arms around her weeping mother. When the doctor told her that she would be excused from duty the rest of the day, that he would
arrange it for her, she did not thank him. She did not say anything for indeed she no longer had any words, nor any emotions that required speech. Or should
be given speech. For one cannot say, how right! How just! When ones father has just died.
Her mother and she took a taxi together to accompany the hearse that took her father home. There was a crowd awaiting them. Espeleta in tears. Espeleta
crying condolence and opprobrium in the same breath. It was from them their good neighbours, their kind neighbours that Martha learned how Gods
justice had overtaken the sinner.
Colon is not as intimate as Espeleta. For it is a long street and broad street. But where the railroad crosses it, the houses group together in intimate warmth
and neighbourly closeness and its families live each others lives almost as meddlingly as Espeleta does. And is as avid for scandals as Espeleta is. Among
the people in Marthas house were some from Colon. And it was they who supplied the grimmer details, the more lucid picture.
In that other womans house and Martha did not even know the other womans name there had existed the stalemate state of affairs that had existed in
Marthas house. Only where in Marthas house it had been a wife who was patient, in that other womans house it had been the husband who had bided his
time. And yet the neighbours had thought he had not cared. For indeed he had seemed like a man blind and deaf, and if he raised his voice against his wife,
it was not so they could hear it. Yet today, he had come home, after he had said he was going away somewhere. And had come upon Marthas father in the
house, and had, without saying anything, taken out his revolver, and shot at him.
Martha heard all these. And thought you know often life seems like an old fashioned melodrama, guns and all. And yet the gun had not gone off. It had
jammed, and Marthas father had been able to run. And running, even as he seemed far enough from the house to be safe, the gun in the husbands hand
had come right again. The man had gone out in the street, aimed at the fleeing figure. That explained why the bullets had gone in through his back and out
through his chest. They said that the street was spattered with blood and where he fell, there was a pool of gory red. The killer had surrendered himself at
once. But everyone knew he would not pay with his life he had taken. For the woman was his wife and he had come upon them in his own home.
Martha stayed with the kind condolers only a while. She left her mother for them to comfort as best as they could. They would have praises like The good
God knows best; they would have words like, Your grief is ended, let your other grief commence. She went to look at her father lying well arranged now in
his bier. Already in spite of the manner of his death, there were flowers for him. Death had left no glare in the eyes that the doctor at the hospital had
mercifully closed, over the features lingered no evidence of pain. And Martha said, Death was kind to you.
In Marthas room there hung a crucifix. Upon the crossed wood was the agonized Christ, His eyes soft and deep and tender, even in his agony. But as
Martha knelt, and lighted her candles, and prayed, in her eyes was no softness, and on her lips no words appealing for pity for him who had died. There was
only the glitter of a justice meted out at last, and the thankfulness for a punishment fulfilled. So she gave thanks, very fervent thanks. For now, she hoped,
she would cease to pay.

May Day Eve by Nick Joaquin

The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten oclock but it was almost midnight before the carriages came lining up to the front door, the
servants running to and fro with torches to light the departing guests, while the girls who were staying were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the
young men gathering around to wish them a good night and lamenting their ascent with mock signs and moanings, proclaiming themselves disconsolate but
drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment, arrogance and audacity, for they were young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had
been in their honor; and they had waltzed and polka ed and bragged and swaggered and flirted all night and were in no mood to sleep yet no, caramba,
not on this moist tropic eve! Not on this mystic May eve! with the night still young and so seductive that it was madness not to go out, not to go forth and
serenade the neighbours! cried one; and swim in the Pasig! cried another; and gather fireflies! cried a third whereupon there arose a great clamour for
coats and capes, for hats and canes, and they were presently stumbling out among the medieval shadows of the foul street where a couple of street lamps
flickered and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses muttered hush hush, their tile roofs looming like sinister
chessboards against a wile sky murky with clouds, save where an evil young moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling
and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable childhood fragrances of ripe guavas to the young men
trooping so uproariously down the street that the girls who were disrobing upstairs in the bedrooms scattered screaming to the windows, crowded giggling at
the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over those young men bawling below; over those wicked young men and their handsome apparel, their proud
flashing eyes, and their elegant moustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite ravished with love, and began crying to one another
how carefree were men but how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, and chased them off to bed while from up the street came the clackety clack of the
watchmans boots on the cobbles, and the clang clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his great voice booming through the night,
Guardia sereno o o! A las doce han dado o o.
And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said for it was a night of divination, a
night of flowers, and those who cared might peer in a mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it was they were fated to marry, said the old
Anastasia as she hobbled about picking up the piled crinolines and folding up shawls and raking slippers to a corner while the girls climbing into the four
great poster beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror, scrambling over each other and imploring the old woman not to frighten them.
Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!
Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!
She is not a witch, she is a maga. She was born on Christmas Eve!
St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr.
Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin, Anastasia?
No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!
Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell me.
You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid.
I am not afraid, I will go, cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed.
Girls, girls we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command you to
shut your mouth and go away!
Your mother told me to stay here all night, my grandlady!
And I will not lie down! cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do.
Tell her! Tell her! chimed the other girls.
The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her eyes on the girl. You must take a candle, she instructed, and go into
a room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and say:
Mirror, mirror,
Show to me
Him whose woman
I will be.
If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry.
A silence. Then: And what if all does not go right? asked Agueda.
Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!
Why?
Because you may see the Devil!
The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering.
But what nonsense! cried Agueda. This is year 1847. There are no devils anymore! Nevertheless she had turned pale. But where could I go, huh? Yes, I
know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and no one is there now.
No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!
I do not care! I am not afraid! I will go!

Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!

If you do not come to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother.
And if you do I will tell her who came to visit you at the convent last March. Come, old woman give me that candle. I go.
Oh girls come and stop her! Take hold of her! Block the door!
But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing across the hall; her feet bare and her dark hair falling down her shoulders and streaming in
the wind as she fled down the stairs, the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while with the other she pulled up her white gown from her ankles.
She paused breathless in the doorway to the sala and her heart failed her. She tried to imagine the room filled again with lights, laughter, whirling couples,
and the jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh, it was a dark den, a weird cavern, for the windows had been closed and the furniture stacked up against the
walls. She crossed herself and stepped inside.
The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a gold frame carved into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues. She saw herself
approaching fearfully in it; a small white ghost that the darkness bodied forth but not willingly, not completely, for her eyes and hair were so dark that the
face approaching in the mirror seemed only a mask that floated forward; a bright mask with two holes gaping in it, blown forward by the white cloud of her
gown. But when she stood before the mirror she lifted the candle level with her chin and the dead mask bloomed into her living face.
She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished such a terror took hold of her that she felt unable to move, unable to open her
eyes and thought she would stand there forever, enchanted. But she heard a step behind her, and a smothered giggle, and instantly opened her eyes.
And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?
But Dona Agueda had forgotten the little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head nestling at her breast and seeing herself in the big mirror
hanging in the room. It was the same room and the same mirror but the face she now saw in it was an old face a hard, bitter, vengeful face, like a white
mask, that fresh young face like a pure mask than she had brought before this mirror one wild May Day midnight ten years ago...
But what was it Mama? Oh please go on! What did you see?
Dona Agueda looked down at her daughter but her face, did not soften though her eyes filled with tears. I saw the devil, she said bitterly.
The child blanched. The devil, Mama? Oh... Oh...
Yes my love. I opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over my left shoulder, was the face of the devil.
Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very frightened?
You can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors except when their mothers tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling, of
admiring yourself in every mirror you pass or you may see something frightful some day.
But the devil, Mama what did he look like?
Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek
Like the scar of Papa?
Well, yes. But this of the devil was a scar of sin, while that of your Papa is a scar of honour. Or so he says.
Go on about the devil.
Well, he had mustaches.
Like those of Papa?
Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and graying and smell horribly of tobacco, while these of the devil were very black and elegant oh, how elegant!
And did he have horns and tail?
The mothers lips curled. Yes, he did! But, alas, I could not see them at that time. All I could see were his fine clothes, his flashing eyes, his curly hair, and
moustaches.
And did he speak to you, Mama?
Yes... Yes, he spoke to me, said Dona Agueda. And bowing her graying head, she wept.
Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one, he had said, smiling her in the mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking bow. She had
whirled around and glared at him and he had burst into laughter.
But I remember you! he cried. You are Agueda, whom I left a mere infant and came home to find a tremendous beauty, and I danced a waltz with you but
you would not give me the polka.
Let me pass, she muttered fiercely, for he was barring her the way.
But I want to dance the polka with you, fair one, he said.

So they stood before the mirror; their panting breath the only sound in the dark room; the candle shining between them and flinging their shadows to the wall.
And young Badoy Montiya (who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) suddenly found himself cold sober and very much awake and ready
for anything. His eyes sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed scarlet.
Let me pass! she cried again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped her by the wrist.
No, he smiled. Not until we have danced.
Go to the devil!
What a temper has my serrana!
I am not your serrana!
Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends like your mortal enemies.
And why not? she demanded, jerking her wrist away and flashing her teeth in his face. Oh, how I detest you, you pompous young men! You go to Europe
and you come back elegant lords and we poor girls are too tame to please you. We have no grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians,
and we have no salt, no salt, no salt! Aie, how you weary me, how you bore me, you fastidious young men!
Come, come how do you know about us?
I heard you talking, I have heard you talking among yourselves, and I despise the pack of you!
But clearly you do not despise yourself, senorita. You come to admire your charms in the mirror even in the middle of the night!
She turned livid and he had a malicious satisfaction.
I was not admiring myself, sir!
You were admiring the moon perhaps?
Oh! she gasped, and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand and she covered her face and sobbed piteously. The candle had gone out and
they stood in darkness, and young Badoy was conscience stricken.
Oh, do not cry, little one! Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But what a brute I am! I was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I said.
He groped and found her hand and touched it to his lips. She shuddered in her white gown.
Let me go, she moaned, and tugged feebly.
No. Say you forgive me first. Say you forgive me, Agueda.
But instead she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it bit so sharply into the knuckles that he cried with pain and lashed out with his other hand lashed
out and hit the air, for she was gone, she had fled, and he heard the rustling of her skirts up the stairs as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers.
Cruel thoughts raced through his head: he would go and tell his mother and make her turn the savage girl out of the house or he would himself to the girls
room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at the same time he was thinking that they were all going up to Antipolo in the morning
and was already planning how he would manoeuvre himself into the same boat with her.
Oh, he would have his revenge, he would make her pay, that little harlot! She should suffer for this, he thought greedily, licking his bleeding knuckles. But
Judas! what eyes she had! And what a pretty colour she turned when angry! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold in the candlelight and delicately
furred. He saw the mobile insolence of her neck, and her taunt breasts steady in the fluid no fire or grace? And no salt? An arroba she had of it!
... No lack of salt in the chrism
At the moment of thy baptism!
He sang aloud in the dark room and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in love with her. He ached intensely to see her again at once! to touch her
hands and her hair; to hear her harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung open the casements and the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow. It
was May, it was summer, and he was young young! and deliriously in love. Such a happiness welled up within him that the tears spurted from his eyes.
But he did not forgive her no! He would still make her pay, he would still have his revenge, he thought viciously, and kissed his wounded fingers. But what a
night it had been! I will never forget this night! he thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the window in the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the
wind in his hair and his bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth.
But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes; summer ends; the storms break over the rot ripe orchards and the heart grows
old; while the hours, the days, the months, and the years pile up and pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded. Too confused: dust gathers it; cobwebs
multiply; the walls darken and fall into ruin and decay; the memory perishes... and there came when Don Badoy Montiya walked home through a May Day
midnight without remembering, without even caring to remember; being merely concerned in feeling his way across the street with his cane; his eyes having
grown quite dim and his legs uncertain for he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stooped and shrivelled old man with white hair and moustaches,
coming home from a secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with the speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his way up
the steps to the front door and inside into the slumbering darkness of the house; wholly unconscious of the May night, till on his way down the hall, chancing
to glance into the sala, he shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold for he had seen a face in the mirror there a ghostly candlelit face with the eyes
closed and the lips moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had seen there before though it was a full minute before the lost memory came flowing, came
tiding back, so overflooding the actual moment and so swiftly washing away the piled hours and days and months and years that he was left suddenly young
again; he was a gay young buck again, lately come from Europe; he had been dancing all night; he was very drunk; he stopped in the doorway; he saw a
face in the dark; he cried out... and the lad standing before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night gown) jumped with fright and almost dropped his candle, but
looking around and seeing the old man, laughed out with relief and came running.

Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me!

Don Badoy had turned very pale. So it was you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What are you doing down here at this hour?
Nothing, Grandpa. I was only... I am only...
Yes, you are the great Senor Only and how delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Senor Only! But if I break this cane on your head you may wish you
were someone else, sir!
It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me I would see my wife.
Wife? What wife?
Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I looked in a mirror tonight and said:
Mirror, mirror
Show to me
Her whose lover
I will be.
Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along into the room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees.
Now, put your candle down on the floor, son, and let us talk this over. So you want your wife already, hey? You want to see her in advance, hey? But do you
know that these are wicked games and that wicked boys who play them are in danger of seeing horrors?
Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead.
Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will bewitch you, she will torture you, she will eat your heart and drink your blood!
Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore.
Oh ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a witch.
You? Where?
Right in this room and right in that mirror, said the old man, and his playful voice had turned savage.
When, Grandpa?
Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow and though I was feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down
somewhere and die. I could not pass that doorway of course without stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like when dying. But when I poked my head
in what should I see in the mirror but... but...
The witch?
Exactly!
And did she bewitch you, Grandpa?
She bewitched me and she tortured me. She ate my heart and drank my blood, said the old man bitterly.
Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she was very horrible?
Horrible? God, no she was beautiful. She was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen! Her eyes were somewhat like yours but her hair was like black
waters and her golden shoulders were bare. My God, she was enchanting! But I should have known I should have known even then the dark and fatal
creature she was!
A silence. Then: What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa, whispered the boy.
What makes you say that, hey?
Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once told her that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was is of the scare that
Grandma died?
Don Badoy stared. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead, that she had perished the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at last, the two of
them, her tired body at rest; her broken body set free at last from the brutal pranks of the earth from the trap of a May night; from the snare of a summer;
from the terrible silver nets of the moon. She had been a mere heap of white hair and bones in the end: a whimpering withered consumptive, lashing out with
her cruel tongue; her eyes like live coals; her face like ashes... Now, nothing nothing save a name on a stone; save a stone in a graveyard nothing!
nothing at all! All that was left of the young girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight, long, long ago.
And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she had bitten his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark moon and
surprised hi heart in the instant of falling in love: such a grief tore up his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed before the boy; pushed the boy away; stood up
and fumbled his way to the window, threw open the casements and looked out looked out upon the medieval shadows of the foul street where a couple of
street lamps flickered and a last carriage was rattling away upon the cobbles, while the blind black houses muttered hush hush, their tiled roofs looming
like sinister chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled,
whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable Maytime memories of an old, old love to the old
man shaking with sobs by the window; the bowed old man sobbing so bitterly at the window; the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wind in his hair

and one hand pressed to his mouth while from up the street came the clackety clack of the watchmans boots on the cobbles, and the clang clang of
his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll if his voice booming through the night: Guardia sereno o o! A las doce han dado o o!

Dead Stars by Paz Marquez Benitez

Scene 1
Through the open window the air steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry
mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The
tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy pattering away among the rose pots.
Papa, and when will the long table be set?
I dont know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month.
Carmen sighed impatiently. Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting.
She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either, Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.
How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her? Carmen returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. Papa, do
you remember how much in love he was?
In love? With whom?
With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of, she said with good natured contempt. What I mean is that at the beginning
he was enthusiastic flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a
great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the mood was abroad and under the
dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others
told about a mere fabrication of fervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up of his love
life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew
it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.
Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his
boyhood when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it, someone had
seemed to urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time
immemorial. In the meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.
Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed, - the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will
hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of
ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement.
What do you think happened? asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
I supposed long engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has
been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of temperament or of affection on the part of either, or both. Don Julian loved to philosophize. He
was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to monologue pitch. That phase you were speaking of is natural
enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I see it, was Alfredos last race with escaping youth
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brothers perfect physical repose almost indolence disturbed in the role suggested by her fathers figurative
language.
A last spurt of hot blood, finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible
evidence. Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of
forehead, slow, dreamers eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips indeed Alfredo Salazars appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a
poet with wayward humour, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the
little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge
in tardy lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open porches he could glimpse through the heat shrivelled tamarinds in the
Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago
Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now
One evening he had gone neighbouring with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favour with
the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed himself to be persuaded. A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial, the old man had
said. Besides, a judges good will, you know; the rest of the thought is worth a rising young lawyers trouble Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and
a smile that derided his own worldly wisdom.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the Judges children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the
characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had been omitted the judge limiting himself to a casual Ah, ya se conocen? with the consequence that
Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judges
sister, as he had supposed, but his sister in law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young

lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was grandly embarrassed, and felt that he should explain.
To his apology, she replied, That is nothing, each time I was about to correct you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before.
Oh, he drawled out, vastly relieved.
A man named Manalang I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth or so, the young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, Pardon me, but my name is
Manalang, Manalang. You know, I never forgave him!
He laughed with her.
The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out, she pursued, is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake
without help.
As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I
I was thinking of Mr. Manalang.
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and
desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine covered porch. The lone piano in the neighbourhood alternately tinkled
and banged away as the players moods altered. He listened, and wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a sister of the Judges wife, although Dona Adela was of a different type
altogether. She was small and plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modelled hips a pretty woman with the complexion of
a baby and the expression of a likeable cow. Julia was taller, not so obviously pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a
smooth rich brown with underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding vitality.
On Sunday mornings after the mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to the house on the hill. The Judges wife invariably offered them
beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a half hour or so, the chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas would go out
to the porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a rocking chair and the hours warm, quiet March hours sped by. He enjoyed talking with her
and it was evident that she liked his company; yet what feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter of course. Only when
Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo suddenly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza
to come out of the church as he had been wont to do. He had been eager to go neighbouring.
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually untruthful, added, Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valles.
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked jealousies. She was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their
power to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly love another
woman.
That half lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving Julia Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized that;
yet something that would not be denied beckoned imperiously, and he followed on.
It was easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so easy and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the
shadows around, enfolding.
Up here I find something
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted intensity, laughed, woman like, asking, Amusement?
No; youth its spirit
Are you so old?
And hearts desire.
Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?
Down there, he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, the road is too broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery.
Down there beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from
somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.
Mystery she answered lightly, that is so brief
Not in some, quickly. Not in you.
You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery.
I could study you all my life and still not find it.
So long?
I should like to.
Those six weeks were now so swift seeming in the memory, yet had they been so deep in the living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness.

Because neither the past nor the future had relevance or meaning, he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such a wilful shutting out a
fact as astounded him in his calmer moments.
Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to spend Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on
the beach. Carmen also came with her four energetic children. She and Dona Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the preparation of the merienda
and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands how Carmens Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take off to
accompany her on this visit to her father; how Dona Adelas Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with
unmatched socks.
After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a thriving young coconut looked like plenty of leaves, close set, rich green
while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the
edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out curving beach.
Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his back canvas
footwear which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.
When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
I hope you are enjoying this, he said with a questioning inflection.
Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach.
There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and whipped the tucked up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the
picture was something of eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing
charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality, an achievement of the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind
and body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to charm.
The afternoon has seemed very short, hasnt it? Then, This, I think, is the last time we can visit.
The last? Why?
Oh, you will be too busy perhaps.
He noted an evasive quality in the answer.
Do I seem especially industrious to you?
If you are, you never look it.
Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be.
But
Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm. She smiled to herself.
I wish that were true, he said after a meditative pause.
She waited.
A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid.
Like a carabao in a mud pool, she reported perversely.
Who? I?
Oh, no!
You said I am calm and placid.
That is what I think.
I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves.
It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert phrase.
I should like to see your home town.
That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet withal more distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded him.
Nothing. There is you.
Oh, me? But Im here.
I will not go, of course, until you there.
Will you come? You will find it dull. There isnt even one American there!
Well Americans are rather essential to my entertainment.

She laughed.
We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees.
Could I find that?
If you dont ask for Miss del Valle, she smiled teasingly.
Ill inquire about
What?
The house of the prettiest girl in the town.
There is where you will lose your way. Then she turned serious. Now, that is not quite sincere.
It is, he averred slowly, but emphatically.
I thought you, at least, would not say such things.
Pretty pretty a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that quite
Are you withdrawing the compliment?
Re enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye it is more than that when
If it saddens? she interrupted hastily.
Exactly.
It must be ugly.
Always?
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting streamer of a crimsoned gold.
No, of course your right.
Why did you say this is the last time? he asked quietly as they turned back.
I am going home.
The end of an impossible dream!
When? after a long silence.
Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend Holy Week at home.
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. That is why I said this is the last time.
Cant I come to say good bye?
Oh, you dont need to!
No, but I want to.
There is no time.
The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affects
the senses as does solemn harmony; a peace that is not contentment but a cessation of tumult when all violence of feeling tones down to the wistful serenity
of regret. She turned and looked into his face, in her dark eyes a ghost of sunset sadness.
Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life.
I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old things.
Old things?
Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage. He said it lightly, unwilling to mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers for
one whirling second.
Don Julians nasal summons came to them on the wind.
Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned her face away, but he heard her voice say very low, Good bye
Scene 2

Alfredo Salazar turned to the right where, farther on,, the road broadened and entered the heart of the town heart of Chinese stores sheltered under low
hung roofs, of indolent drug stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe repairing establishments, a cluttered goldsmiths cubbyhole where a consumptive bent
over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick roofed houses with quaint hand and ball knockers of the door; heart of grass grown plaza reposeful with
trees, of ancient church and convent, now circled by swallows gliding in flight as smooth and soft as the afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight,
the voice of the biggest of the church bells kept ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their long wax candles, young women in vivid
apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the Lord was still alive), older women in sober black skirts. Came too the young men in droves, elbowing each other
under the talisay tree near the church door. The gaily decked rice paper lanterns were again on display while from the windows of the older houses hung
coloured glass globes, heirlooms from a day when grasspith wicks floating in coconut oil were the chief lighting device.
Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down the length of the street like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering clusters
where the saints platforms were. Above the measured music rose the untutored voices of the choir, steeped in incense and the acrid fumes of burning wax.
The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of Sorrows suddenly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those lines of
light into component individuals. Esperanza stiffened self consciously, tried to look unaware, and could not.
The line moved on.
Suddenly, Alfredos slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl was coming down the line a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that
could cause violent commotion in his heart, yet had no place in the completed ordering of his life.
Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church and then back again, where, according to the old proverb, all processions end.
At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and the choir, whose voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang the
close of the procession.
A round orange moon, huge as a winnowing basket, rose lazily into a clear sky, whitening the iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the
still densely shadowed streets the young women with their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home.
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who
lived farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he said Good evening and
fell into step with the girl.
I had been thinking all this time that you had gone, he said in a voice that was both excited and troubled.
No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go.
Oh, is the judge going?
Yes.
The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned elsewhere. As lawyer and as lover Alfredo had found that out long
before.
Mr. Salazar, she broke into his silence, I wish to congratulate you.
Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.
For what?
For your approaching wedding.
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not offend?
I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors are slow about getting the news, she continued.
He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He heard nothing to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones
of early acquaintance. No revelation there; simply the old voice cool, almost detached from personality, flexible and vibrant, suggesting potentialities of
song.
Are weddings interesting to you? he finally brought out quietly.
When they are of friends, yes.
Would you come if I asked you?
When is it going to be?
May, he replied briefly, after a long pause.
May is the month of happiness they say, she said, with what seemed to him a shade of irony.
They say, slowly, indifferently. Would you come?
Why not?
No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?

If you will ask me, she said with disdain.

Then I ask you.
Then I will be there.
The gravel road lay before them; at the roads end the lighted windows of the house on the hill. There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so
keen that it was pain, a wish that, that house were his, that all the bewilderments of the present were not, and that this woman by his side were his long
wedded wife, returning with him to the peace of home.
Julita, he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, did you ever have to choose between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?
No!
I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man who was in such a situation.
You are fortunate, he pursued when she did not answer.
Is is this man sure of what he should do?
I dont know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us and rushes downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish
to ask whether one will or will not, because it no longer depends on him.
But then why why her muffled voice came. Oh, what do I do know? That is his problem after all.
Doesnt it interest you?
Why must it? I I have to say good bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at house.
Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.
Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope trembled in his mind though set against that hope were three years of
engagement, a very near wedding, perfect understanding between the parents, his own conscience, and Esperanza herself Esperanza waiting, Esperanza
no longer young, Esperanza the efficient, the literal minded, the intensely acquisitive.
He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a kind of aversion which he tried to control.
She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly acceptable appearance. She never surprised one with unexpected homeliness nor with
startling reserves of beauty. At home, in church, on the street, she was always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and clear of complexion, spare of arms
and of breast, with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman dressed with self conscious care, even elegance; a woman distinctly not average.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something about Calixta, their note career, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half
listened, understanding imperfectly. At a pause he drawled out fill in the gap: Well, what of it? The remark sounded ruder than he had intended.
She is not married to him, Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched voice. Besides, she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her
up. We never thought she would turn out bad.
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle aged Calixta?
You are very positive about her badness, he commented dryly. Esperanza was always positive.
But do you approve?
Of what?
What she did.
No, indifferently.
Well?
He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of her mind. All I say is that it is not necessarily wicked.
Why shouldnt it be? You talked like an immoral man. I did not know that your ideas were like that.
My ideas? he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. The only test I wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring anybody?
No? Then I am justified in my conscience. I am right. Living with a man to whom she is not married is that it? It may be wrong, and again it may not.
She has injured us. She was ungrateful. Her voice was tight with resentment.
The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are he stopped, appalled by the passion in his voice.
Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why you have been indifferently to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what
perhaps some are trying to keep from me. The blood surged into his very eyes and his hearing sharpened to points of acute pain. What would she say next?
Why dont you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think of me and of what people will say. Her voice trembled.

Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before. What people will say what will they not say? What dont they say when long
engagements are broken almost on the eve of the wedding?
Yes, he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, one tries to be fair according to his lights but it is hard. One would like to be fair to ones
self first. But that is too easy, one does not dare
What do you mean? she asked with repressed violence. Whatever my shortcomings, and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of
my way, of my place, to find a man.
Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her; or was that a covert attack on Julia Salas?
Esperanza a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. If you suppose I Yet how could a mere man word such a plea?
If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of why dont you tell me you are tired of me? she burst out in a storm of weeping that left
him completely shamed and unnerved.
The last word has been said.
Scene 3
As Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling over the lake, he wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to this
trip of his. He was supposed to be in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the People of the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him, and there he would
have been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the defence. He had to find that elusive old woman. That the search was leading him to that
particular lake town which was Julia Salas home should not disturb him unduly yet he was disturbed to a degree utterly out of proportion to the prosaicalness
of his errand. That inner tumult was no surprise to him; in the last eight years he had become used to such occasional storms. He had long realized that he
could not forget Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be content and not to remember too much. The climber of mountains who has known the back break, the
lonesomeness, and the chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He looks up sometimes from the valley where settles the dusk of
evening, but he knows he must not heed the radiant beckoning. Maybe, in time, he would cease even to look up.
He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of capitulation to what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and of
character. His life had simply ordered itself; no more struggles, no more stirring up of emotions that got a man nowhere. From his capacity of complete
detachment he derived a strange solace. The essential himself, the himself that had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free
and alone. When claims encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner fastness, and from that vantage he saw things and
people around him as remote and alien, as incidents that did not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle, even tender,
but immeasurably far away, beyond her reach.
Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up tilted town nestling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry
stood beside the ancient church. On the outskirts the evening smudges glowed red through the sinuous mists of smoke that rose and lost themselves in the
purple shadows of the hills. There was a young moon which grew slowly luminous as the coral tints in the sky yielded to the darker blues of evening.
The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the dark water. Peculiar hill infections came to his ears from the crowd
assembled to meet the boat slow, singing, cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake shore speech. From where he stood he could not distinguish
faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidente was there to meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.
Is there abogado there? Abogado!
What abogado? someone irately asked.
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.
It was a policeman, a tall pock marked individual. The presidente had left with Bridgida Samuy Tandang Binday that noon for Santa Cruz. Senor
Salazars second letter had arrived late, but the wife had read it and said, Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house.
Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente
had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an answer. Yes, the policeman replied, but he could not write because
we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her.
San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the president! He, Alfredo, must do something for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to
help.
Eight oclock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was
too bare to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore over the rafts
made fast to sundry piles driven into the water.
How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issuing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An
occasional couple sauntered by, the womens chinelas making scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the
street tubigan perhaps, or hawk and chicken. The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.
How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That unforgettable red and gold afternoon in early April haunted
him with a sense of incompleteness as restless other unlaid ghosts. She had not married why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at
regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles a cool wind on his forehead, far away
sounds as of voices in a dream at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an interest, unfinished prayer.
A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree ceilinged street where the young moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton
tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cocks first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.
Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit
night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise.

Good evening, he said, raising his hat.

Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?
On some little business, he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.
Wont you come up?
He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came
downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last he was shaking her hand.
She had not changed much a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into
her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease,
though with a growing wonder that she should be there at all. He could not take his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an
impersonal curiosity creeping into his gaze.
Gently was it experimentally? he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the
question hardly interested him.
The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a star studded sky.
So that was all over.
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?
So all these since when? he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.
An immense sadness of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again,
and where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.