Short story

FAITH, LOVE, TIME AND DR. LAZARO

By: Greg Brillantes

From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country darkness, the lights on the distant
highway at the edge of town. The phonograph in the sala played Chopin – like a vast sorrow controlled,
made familiar, he had wont to think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the habitual slack repose took
after supper, and stared at the plains of night that had evoked gentle images and even a kind of peace (in
the end, sweet and invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched by any
conscious thought, he was scarcely aware of the April heat; the pattern of music fell around him and
dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his
blood it was everywhere in his body. In the scattered light from the sala his angular face had a dusty,
wasted quality, only his eyes contained life. He could have remained there all evening, unmoving, and
buried, it is were, in a strange half-sleep, had his wife not come to tell him he was wanted on the phone.

Gradually his mind stirred, focused; as he rose from the chair he recognized the somber passage in the
sonata that, curiosly, made him think of ancient monuments, faded stone walls, a greyness. The brain
filed away an image; and arrangement of sounds released it… He switched off the phonograph,
suppressed and impatient quiver in his throat as he reached for the phone: everyone had a claim on his
time. He thought: Why not the younger ones for a change? He had spent a long day at the provincial
hospital.

The man was calling from a service station outside the town – the station after the agricultural high
school, and before the San Miguel bridge, the man added rather needlessly, in a voice that was frantic yet
oddly subdued and courteous. Dr. Lazaro thad heard it countless times, in the corridors of the hospitals,
in waiting rooms: the perpetual awkward misery. He was Pedro Esteban, the brother of the doctor’s
tenant in Nambalan, said the voice, trying to make itself less sudden remote.

But the connection was faulty, there was a humming in the wires, as though darkness had added to the
distance between the house in the town and the gas station beyond the summer fields. Dr. Lazaro could
barely catch the severed phrases. The man’s week-old child had a high fever, a bluish skin; its mouth
would not open to suckle. They could not take the baby to the poblacion, they would not dare move it; its
body turned rigid at the slightest touch. If the doctor would consent to come at so late an hour, Esteban
would wait for him at the station. If the doctor would be so kind…

Tetanus of the newborn: that was elementary, and most likely it was so hopeless, a waste of time. Dr.
Lazaro said yes, he would be there; he had committed himself to that answer, long ago; duty had taken
the place of an exhausted compassion. The carelessness of the poor, the infected blankets, the toxin
moving toward the heart: they were casual scribbled items in a clinical report. But outside the grilled
windows, the night suddenly seemed alive and waiting. He had no choice left now but action: it was the
only certitude – he sometimes reminded himself – even if it would prove futile, before, the descent into

1|Page
nothingness.

His wife looked up from her needles and twine, under the shaded lamp of the bedroom; she had finished
the pullover for the grandchild in Bagiuo and had begun work, he noted, on another of those altar
vestments for the parish church. Religion and her grandchild certainly kept her busy … She looked at
him, into so much to inquire as to be spoken to: a large and placid woman.

“Shouldn’t have let the drive go home so early,” Dr. Lazaro said. “They had to wait till now to call …
Child’s probably dead…”

“Ben can drive for you.”

“I hardly see that boy around the house. He seems to be on vacation both from home and in school.”

“He’s downstairs,” his wife said.

Dr. Lazaro put on fresh shirt, buttoned it with tense, abrupt motions, “I thought he’d gone out again…
Who’s that girl he’s been seeing?...It’s not just warm, it’s hot. You should’ve stayed on in Baguio…
There’s disease, suffering, death, because Adam ate the apple. They must have an answer to everything…
“He paused at the door, as though for the echo of his words.

Mrs. Lazaro had resumed the knitting; in the circle of yellow light, her head bowed, she seemed absorbed
in some contemplative prayer. But her silences had ceased t disturb him, like the plaster saints she kept in
the room, in their cases of glass, or that air she wore of conspiracy, when she left with Ben for Mass in the
mornings. Dr. Lazaro would ramble about miracle drugs, politics, music, the common sense of his
unbelief; unrelated things strung together in a monologue; he posed questions, supplied with his own
answers; and she would merely nod, with an occasional “Yes?” and “Is that so?” and something like a
shadow of anxiety in her gaze.

He hurried down the curving stairs, under the votive lamps of the Sacred Heart. Ben lay sprawled on the
sofa, in the front parlor; engrossed in a book, one leg propped against the back cushions. “Come along,
we’re going somewhere,” Dr. Lazaro said, and went into the clinic for his medical bag. He added a vial of
penstrep, an ampule of caffeine to the satchel’s content’s; rechecked the bag before closing it; the cutgut
would last just one more patient. One can only cure, and know nothing beyond one’s work… There had
been the man, today, in the hospital: the cancer pain no longer helped by the doses of morphine; the
patients’s eyes flickering their despair in the eroded face. Dr. Lazaro brushed aside the stray vision as he
strode out of the whitewashed room; he was back in his element, among syringes, steel instruments,
quick decisions made without emotion, and it gave him a kind of blunt energy.

I’ll drive, Pa?” Ben followed him through the kitchen, where the maids were ironing the week’s wash,
gossiping, and out to the yard shrouded in the dimness of the single bulb under the eaves. The boy push
back the folding doors of the garage and slid behind the wheel.

2|Page
“Somebody’s waiting at the gas station near San Miguel. You know the place?”

“Sure,” Ben said.

The engine sputtered briefly and stopped. “Battery’s weak,” Dr. Lazaro said. “Try it without the lights,”
and smelled the gasoline overflow as the old Pontiac finally lurched around the house and through the
trellised gate, its front sweeping over the dry dusty street.

But he’s all right, Dr. Lazaro thought as they swung smoothly into the main avenue of the town, past the
church and the plaza, the kiosko bare for once in a season of fiestas, the lam-posts shining on the quiet
square. They did not speak; he could sense his son’s concentration on the road, and he noted, with a
tentative amusement, the intense way the boy sat behind the wheel, his eagerness to be of help. They
passed the drab frame houses behind the marketplace, and the capitol building on its landscaped hill, the
gears shifting easily as they went over the railroad tracks that crossed the asphalted street.

Then the road was pebbled and uneven, the car bucking slightly; and they were speeding between open
fields, a succession of narrow wooden bridges breaking the crunching drive of the wheels. Dr. Lazaro
gazed at the wide darkness around them, the shapes of trees and bushes hurling toward them and sliding
away and he saw the stars, hard glinting points of light yards, black space, infinite distances; in the
unmeasured universe, man’s life flared briefly and was gone, traceless in the void. He turned away from
the emptiness. He said: “You seem to have had a lot of practice, Ben.”

“A lot of what, Pa?”

“The ways you drive. Very professional.”

In the glow of the dashboard lights, the boy’s face relaxed, smiled. “Tio Cesar let me use his car, in
Manila. On special occasions.”

“No reckless driving now,” Dr. Lazaro said. “Some fellows think it’s smart. Gives them a thrill. Don’t be
like that.”

“No, I won’t, Pa. I just like to drive and – and go place, that’s all.”

Dr. Lazaro watched the young face intent on the road, a cowlick over the forehead, the mall curve of the
nose, his own face before he left to study in another country, a young student of full illusions, a lifetime
ago; long before the loss of faith, God turning abstract, unknowable, and everywhere, it seemed to him,
those senseless accidents of pain. He felt a need to define unspoken things, to come closer somehow to
the last of his sons; one of these days, before the boy’s vacation was over, they might to on a picnic
together, a trip to the farm; a special day for the two of them – father and son, as well as friends. In the
two years Ben had been away in college, they had written a few brief, almost formal letters to each other:
your money is on the way, these are the best years, make the most of them…

3|Page
Time was moving toward them, was swirling around and rushing away and it seemed Dr. Lazaro could
almost hear its hallow receding roar; and discovering his son’s profile against the flowing darkness, he
had a thirst to speak. He could not find what it was he had meant to say.

The agricultural school buildings came up in the headlights and glided back into blurred shapes behind a
fence.

“What was that book you were reading, Ben?”

“A biography,” the boy said.

“Statesman? Scientist maybe?”

It’s about a guy who became a monk.”

“That’s your summer reading?” Dr. Lazaro asked with a small laugh, half mockery, half affection.
“You’re getting to be a regular saint, like your mother.”

“It’s an interesting book,” Ben said.

“I can imagine…” He dropped the bantering tone. “I suppose you’ll go on to medicine after your AB?”

“I don’t know yet, Pa.”

Tiny moth like blown bits of paper flew toward the windshield and funneled away above them. “You
don’t have to be a country doctor like me, Ben. You could build up a good practice in the city. Specialized
in cancer, maybe or neuro-surgery, and join a good hospital.” It was like trying to recall some rare
happiness, in the car, in the shifting darkness.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Ben said. It’s a vocation, a great one. Being able to really help people, I
mean.”

“You’ve done well in math, haven’t you?”

“Well enough, I guess,” Ben said.

Engineering is a fine course too, “ Dr. Lazaro said. “There’ll be lots of room for engineers. Planners and
builders, they are what this country needs. Far too many lawyers and salesmen these days. Now if your
brother –“ He closed his eyes, erasing the slashed wrists, part of the future dead in a boarding-house
room, the landlady whimpering, “He was such a nice boy, doctor, your son…” Sorrow lay in ambush
among the years.

4|Page
“I have all summer to think about, “ Ben said.

“There’s no hurry,” Dr. Lazaro said. What was it he had wanted to say? Something about knowing each
other, about sharing; no, it was not that at all…

The stations appeared as they coasted down the incline of a low hill, its fluorescent lights the only
brightness on the plain before them, on the road that led farther into deeper darkness. A freight truck was
taking on a load of gasoline as they drove up the concrete apron and came to a stop beside the station
shed.

A short barefoot man in a patchwork shirt shuffled forward to meet them.

I am Esteban, doctor,” the man said, his voice faint and hoarse, almost inaudible, and he bowed slightly
with a careful politeness. He stood blinking, looking up at the doctor, who had taken his bag and
flashlight form the car.

In the windless space, Dr. Lazaro could hear Esteban’s labored breathing, the clank of the metal nozzle as
the attendant replaced it in the pump. The men in the truck stared at them curiously.

Esteban said, pointing at the darkness beyond the road: “We will have to go through those fields, doctor,
then cross the river,” The apology for yet one more imposition was a wounded look in his eyes. He
added, in his subdued voice: “It’s not very far…” Ben had spoken to the attendants and was locking the
car.

The truck rumbled and moved ponderously onto the road, its throb strong and then fading in the warm
night stillness.

“Lead the way, “ Dr. Lazaro said, handing Esteban the flashlight.

They crossed the road, to a cleft in the embankment that bordered the fields, Dr. Lazaro was sweating
now in the dry heat; following the swinging ball of the flashlight beam, sorrow wounded by the stifling
night, he felt he was being dragged, helplessly, toward some huge and complicated error, a meaningless
ceremony. Somewhere to his left rose a flapping of wings, a bird cried among unseen leaves: they walked
swiftly, and there was only the sound of the silence, the constant whirl of crickets and the whisper of their
feet on the path between the stubble fields.

With the boy close behind him, Dr. Lazaro followed Esteban down a clay slope to the slope and ripple of
water in the darkness. The flashlight showed a banca drawn up at the river’s edge. Esteban wade waist-
deep into the water, holding the boat steady as Dr. Lazaro and Ben stepped on the board. In the darkness,
with the opposite bank like the far rise of an island, Dr. Lazaro had a moment’s tremor of fear as the boar
slide out over the black water; below prowled the deadly currents; to drown her in the dephts of the
night… But it took only a minute to cross the river. “We’re here doctor,” Esteban said, and they padded p
a stretch of sand to a clump of trees; a dog started to bark, the shadows of a kerosene lamp wavered at a
window.

5|Page
Unsteady on a steep ladder, Dr. Lazaro entered the cave of Esteban’s hut. The single room contained the
odors he often encountered but had remained alien to, stirring an impersonal disgust: the sourish decay,
the smells of the unaired sick. An old man greeted him, lisping incoherently; a woman, the grandmother,
sat crouched in a corner, beneath a famed print of the Mother of Perpetual Help; a boy, about ten, slept
on, sprawled on a mat. Esteban’s wife, pale and thin, lay on the floor with the sick child beside her.

Motionless, its tiny blue-tinged face drawn way from its chest in a fixed wrinkled grimace, the infant
seemed to be straining to express some terrible ancient wisdom.

Dr. Lazaro made a cursory check – skin dry, turning cold; breathing shallow; heartbeat
fast and irregular. And I that moment, only the child existed before him; only the child and his own mind
probing now like a hard gleaming instrument. How strange that it should still live, his mind said as it
considered the spark that persisted within the rigid and tortured body. He was alone with the child, his
whole being focused on it, in those intense minutes shaped into a habit now by so many similar instances:
his physician’s knowledge trying to keep the heart beating, to revive an ebbing life and somehow make it
rise again.

Dr. Lazaro removed the blankets that bundled the child and injected a whole ampule to check the tonic
spasms, the needle piercing neatly into the sparse flesh; he broke another ampule, with deft precise
movements , and emptied the syringe, while the infant lay stiff as wood beneath his hands. He wiped off
the sweat running into his eyes, then holding the rigid body with one hand, he tried to draw air into the
faltering lungs, pressing and releasing the chest; but even as he worked to rescue the child, the bluish
color of its face began to turn gray.

Dr. Lazaro rose from his crouch on the floor, a cramped ache in his shoulders, his mouth dry. The
lamplight glistened on his pale hollow face as he confronted the room again, the stale heat, the poverty.
Esteban met his gaze; all their eyes were upon him, Ben at the door, the old man, the woman in the
corner, and Esteban’s wife, in the trembling shadows.

Esteban said: “Doctor..”

He shook his head, and replaced the syringe case in his bag, slowly and deliberately, and fastened the
clasp. T Here was murmuring him, a rustle across the bamboo floor, and when he turned, Ben was
kneeling beside the child. And he watched, with a tired detached surprise, as the boy poured water from
a coconut shell on the infant’s brow. He caught the words half-whispered in the quietness: “..in the name
of the Father.. the Son… the Holy Ghost…”

The shadows flapped on the walls, the heart of the lamp quivering before it settled into a slender flame.
By the river dogs were barking. Dr. Lazaro glanced at his watch; it was close to midnight. Ben stood over
the child, the coconut shell in his hands, as though wandering what next to do with it, until he saw his
father nod for them to go.

6|Page
Doctor, tell us – “Esteban took a step forward.

“I did everything: Dr. Lazaro said. “It’s too late –“

He gestured vaguely, with a dull resentment; by some implicit relationship, he was also responsible, for
the misery in the room, the hopelessness. “There’s nothing more I can do, Esteban, “ he said. He thought
with a flick of anger: Soon the child will be out of it, you ought to be grateful. Esteban’s wife began to cry,
a weak smothered gasping, and the old woman was comforting her, it is the will of God, my daughter…”

In the yard, Esteban pressed carefully folded bills into the doctor’s hand; the limp, tattered feel of the
money was sort of the futile journey, “I know this is not enough, doctor,” Esteban said. “as you can see
we are very poor… I shall bring you fruit, chickens, someday…”

A late moon had risen, edging over the tops of the trees, and in the faint wash of its light, Esteban guided
them back to the boat. A glimmering rippled on the surface of the water as they paddled across,; the
white moonlight spread in the sky, and a sudden wind sprang rain-like and was lost in the tress massed
on the riverbank.

“I cannot thank you enough, doctor,” Esteban said. “You have been very kind to come this far, at this
hour.” He trail is just over there, isn’t it?” He wanted to be rid of the man, to be away from the shy
humble voice, the prolonged wretchedness.

I shall be grateful always, doctor,” Esteban said. “And to you son, too. God go with you.” He was a
faceless voice withdrawing in the shadows, a cipher in the shabby crowds that came to town on market
days.

“Let’s go, Ben” Dr. Lazaro said.

They took the path across the field; around them the moonlight had transformed the landscape, revealing
a gentle, more familiar dimension, a luminous haze upon the trees stirring with a growing wind; and the
heat of the night had passed, a coolness was falling from the deep sky. Unhurried, his pace no more than
a casual stroll, Dr. Lazaro felt the oppression of the night begin to life from him, an emotionless calm
returned to his mind. The sparrow does not fall without the Father’s leave he mused at the sky, but it falls
just the same. But to what end are the sufferings of a child? The crickets chirped peacefully in the moon-
pale darkness beneath the trees.

“You baptized the child, didn’t you, Ben?”

“Yes, Pa.” The boy kept in the step beside him.

He used to believe in it, too. The power of the Holy Spirit washing away original sin, the purified soul

7|Page
made heir of heaven. He could still remember fragments of his boy hood faith, as one might remember an
improbable and long-discarded dream.

“Lay baptism, isn’t that the name for it?”

“Yes,” Ben said. I asked the father. The baby hadn’t been baptized.” He added as they came to the
embankment that separated the field from the road: “They were waiting for it to get well.”

The station had closed, with only the canopy light and the blobed neon sign left burning. A steady wind
was blowing now across the filed, the moonlit plains.

He saw Ben stifle a yawn. I’ll drive,” Dr. Lazaro said.

His eyes were not what they used to be, and he drove leaning forward, his hands tight on the wheel. He
began to sweat again, and the empty road and the lateness and the memory of Esteban and of the child
dying before morning in the impoverished, lamplit room fused into tired melancholy. He started to think
of his other son, one he had lost.

He said, seeking conversation, If other people carried on like you, Ben, the priests would be run out of
business.”

The boy sat beside him, his face averted, not answering.

“Now, you’ll have an angel praying for you in heaven,” Dr. Lazaro said, teasing, trying to create an easy
mood between the. “What if you hadn’t baptized the baby and it died? What would happen to it then?”

It won’t see God,” Ben said.

“But isn’t that unfair?” It was like riddle, trivial, but diverting. “Just because..”

“Maybe God has another remedy,” Ben said. “I don’t know. But the church says.”

He could sense the boy groping for the tremendous answers. “The Church teaches, the church says…. “
God: Christ: the communications of saints: Dr. Lazaro found himself wondering about the world of
novenas and candles, where bread and wine became the flesh and blood of the Lord, and a woman
bathed in light appeared before children, and mortal men spoke of eternal life; the visions of God, the
body’s resurrection at the tend of time. It was a country from which he was barred; no matter – the
customs, the geography didn’t appeal to him. But in the care suddenly, driving through the night, he was
aware of an obscure disappointment, a subtle pressure around his heart, as though he had been deprived
of a certain joy…

A bus roared around a hill toward, its lights blinding him, and he pulled to the side of the road, braking
involuntarily as a billow of dust swept over the car. He had not closed the window on his side, and the

8|Page
flung dust poured in, the thick brittle powder almost choking him, making him cough, his eyes smarting,
before he could shield his face with his hands. In the headlights, the dust sifted down and when the air
was clear again, Dr. Lazaro, swallowing a taste of earth, of darkness, maneuvered the car back onto the
road, his arms exhausted and numb. He drove the last half-mile to town in silence, his mind registering
nothing but the frit of dust in his mouth and the empty road unwinding swiftly before him.

They reached the sleeping town, the desolate streets, the plaza empty in the moonlight, and the dhuddled
shapes of houses, the old houses that Dr. Lazaro had always know. How many nights had he driven
home like this through the quiet town, with a man’s life ended behind him, or a child crying newly risen
from the womb; and a sense of constant motions, of change, of the days moving swiftly toward and
immense reverlation touched him onced more, briefly, and still he could not find the words.. He turned
the last corner, then steered the car down the graveled driveway to the garage, while Ben closed the gate.
Dr. Lazaro sat there a momen, in the stillness, resting his eyes, conscious of the measured beating of his
heart, and breathing a scent of dust that lingered on his clothes, his skin..SLowely he merged from the
car, locking it, and went around the towere of the water-tank to the frotnyard where Ben Stood waiting.

With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder was they turned toward the ement –
walled house. They had gone on a trip; they had come home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than
he hade ever been in years.

“Sorry for ekeeping you up this late,” Dr. Lazaro said.

“It’s all right, Pa.”

Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in that barrio” – ther was just the slightest patronage in this
one –“ yourmomother will love to hear about it.”

He shook the boy beside him gently. “Reverend Father Ben Lazaro.”

The impulse of certain humor – it was part of the comradeship. He chuckled drowsily: father Lazaro,
what must I do to gain eternal life?”

As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depth of the house, it came to Dr. Lazaro
faitly in the late night that for certain things, like love there was only so much time. But the glimmer was
lost instantly, buried in the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain.

9|Page
DEAD STARS
by Paz Marquez Benitez

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 puttering away among the rose pots.

"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"

"I don't 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 moon 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 perfervid
imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up
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

10 | P a g e
will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of
ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time,
or of Fate.

"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
Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--"

Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose--almost indolence--
disturbed in the role suggested by her father's 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, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened
little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, 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 "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it a
point to avoid all appearance of currying favor 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 judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's
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 Judge's 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.

11 | P a g e
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 Judge's 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 greatly 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 time 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 neighborhood alternately tinkled and
banged away as the player's 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 Judge's
wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether. She was small and plump, with wide
brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty woman with the complexion
of a baby and the expression of a likable 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 mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to the house on
the hill. The Judge's 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.

12 | P a g e
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 "neighboring."

He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually untruthful, added,
"Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's."

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 so 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 heart's 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."

13 | P a g e
"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 willful shutting out of 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 Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the preparation of
the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands--how Carmen's Vicente was so
absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time off to accompany her on this visit to her father;
how Doña Adela's 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 black 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, hasn't 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.

14 | P a g e
"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 retorted 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."

"There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on them, and sometimes
squashes."

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 I am here."

"I will not go, of course, until you are there."

"Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American there!"

"Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment."

15 | P a g e
She laughed.

"We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees."

"Could I find that?"

"If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.

"I'll 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 crimsoned gold.

"No, of course you are 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.

16 | P a g e
"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."

"Can't I come to say good-bye?"

"Oh, you don't 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 Julian's 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."

II

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, and a cluttered goldsmith's cubbyhole where a consumptive bent
over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with quaint hand-and-ball knockers on the door;
heart of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of ancient church andconvento, 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

17 | P a g e
from the windows of the older houses hung colored 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, Alfredo's 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.

18 | P a g e
"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 road's 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.

19 | P a g e
"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 don't 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 know? That is his problem after all."

"Doesn't it--interest you?"

"Why must it? I--I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the 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-
carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-listened, understanding imperfectly. At a pause he drawled
out to 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?

20 | P a g e
"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 shouldn't 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 indifferent 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 don't 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 don't 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 one's 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?

21 | P a g e
"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 don't 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 had been said.

III

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 BrigidaSamuy had not been so important to the defense. 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 inflections 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 thepresidente was there to meet him or not. Just then a voice
shouted.

22 | P a g e
"Is the 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 BrigidaSamuy--Tandang
"Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar's 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 thepresidente 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 TandangBinday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her."

San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do something for him. It
was not every day that one met with such willingness to help.

Eight o'clock, 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
women's chinelasmaking 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 as 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 insistent, 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 cock's 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?"

23 | P a g e
"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.

"Won't 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 he 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. The girl must have
noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush.

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 years--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 as 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.

This is the 1925 short story that gave birth to modern Philippine writing in English.

24 | P a g e
Footnote to Youth- Jose Garcia Villa
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about
Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it to its shed and fed
it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of serious
import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought came to
him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who chewed areca
nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong’s grandmother.
I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.

The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many
slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short
colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and
jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of
his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more.

Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head to
look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal walked alongside him
to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it
without interests.

Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry,
Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already was dark–
these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man–he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and
big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong
felt he could do anything.

He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he
dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool
sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face
and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even
during the day.

Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he
had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass.
The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing,
then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.

It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the low
unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around the table to
eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.

Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held
them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his glass of
water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder
for his parents.

Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash them.
She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he was tired

25 | P a g e
and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the
housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.

His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew.
Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was.
He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had
a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father.

Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he had
to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and
without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent moon
outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His father
looked old now.

“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.

His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense and
cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was uncomfortable
and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.

“I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”

His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.

“I asked her last night to marry me and she said…yes. I want your permission. I… want… it….” There
was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked
at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke dully the
night stillness.

“Must you marry, Dodong?”

Dodong resented his father’s questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick
impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.

“You are very young, Dodong.”

“I’m… seventeen.”

“That’s very young to get married at.”

“I… I want to marry…Teang’s a good girl.”

“Tell your mother,” his father said.

“You tell her, tatay.”

“Dodong, you tell your inay.”

“You tell her.”

“All right, Dodong.”

“You will let me marry Teang?”

“Son, if that is your wish… of course…” There was a strange helpless light in his father’s eyes. Dodong
did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.

26 | P a g e
Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while he
even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang and
himself. Sweet young dream….

——————————————-

Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was
still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had
left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house.
It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang
was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like
that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really
painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.

In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe, with
strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable… “Your
son,” people would soon be telling him. “Your son, Dodong.”

Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his
callused toes. Suppose he had ten children… What made him think that? What was the matter with him?
God!

He heard his mother’s voice from the house:

“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”

Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of his
youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no properly his. He dropped his
eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.

“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”

He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.

“It is a boy,” his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.

Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents’ eyes seemed to
pierce him through and he felt limp.

He wanted to hide from them, to run away.

“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” he mother said.

Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.

“Dodong. Dodong.”

“I’ll… come up.”

Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His
heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so that
they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest
wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.

His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.

27 | P a g e
“Son,” his father said.

And his mother: “Dodong…”

How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.

“Teang?” Dodong said.

“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”

His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag with
her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.

Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that
feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative.

The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could not
control the swelling of happiness in him.

“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.

——————————————-

Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a new child came
along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of children could
not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.

Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even if
she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The children.
She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to
dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been
another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong.
Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was
childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children. Maybe
not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong…

Dodong whom life had made ugly.

One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired
and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He w anted to be wise about
many things.

One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was
forsaken… after Love.

Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make
youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house
humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.

When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and
Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas’s steps, for he could not sleep well of
nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could
not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.

“You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said.

28 | P a g e
Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.

Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

“Itay …,” Blas called softly.

Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.

“I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.”

Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.

“Itay, you think it over.”

Dodong lay silent.

“I love Tona and… I want her.”

Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything
was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.

“You want to marry Tona,” Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The
life that would follow marriage would be hard…

“Yes.”

“Must you marry?”

Blas’s voice stilled with resentment. “I will marry Tona.”

Dodong kept silent, hurt.

“You have objections, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.

“Son… n-none…” (But truly, God, I don’t want Blas to marry yet… not yet. I don’t want Blas to marry
yet….)

But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph… now. Love must triumph… now.
Afterwards… it will be life.

As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then Life.

Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.

29 | P a g e
We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers – Alejandro Roces
When the Americans recaptured the Philippines, they built an air base a few miles from our barrio.
Yankee soldiers became a very common sight. I met a lot of GIs and made many friends. I could not
pronounce their names. I could not tell them apart. All Americans looked alike to me. They all looked
white.

One afternoon I was plowing our rice field with our carabao named datu. I was barefooted and stripped
to the waist. My pants that were made from abaca fibers and woven on homemade looms were rolled to
my knees. My bolo was at my side.

An American soldier was walking on the highway. When he saw me, he headed toward me. I stopped
plowing and waited for him. I noticed he was carrying a half-pint bottle of whiskey.
Whiskey bottles seemed part of the American uniform.

“Hello, my little brown brother,” he said, patting me on the head.

“Hello, Joe,” I answered. All Americans are called Joe in the Philippines.

“I am sorry, Jose,” I replied. “There are no bars in this barrio.”

“Oh, hell! You know where I could buy more whiskey?”

“Here, have a swig. You have been working hard,” he said, offering me his half-filled bottle.

“No, thank you, Joe,” I said. “We Filipinos are mild drinkers.”

“Well, don’t you drink at all?”

“Yes, Joe, I drink, but not whiskey.”

“What the hell do you drink”

“I drink lambanog”

“Jungle juice, eh?”

30 | P a g e
“I guess that is what the GIs call it.”

“You know where I could buy some?”

“I have some you can have, but i do not think you will like it.”

“I’ll like it alright. Don’t worry about that. I have drunk everything—whiskey, rum, brandy, tequila, gin,
champagne, sake, vodka. . . .” He mentioned many more that i cannot spell.

“I not only drink a lot, but i drink anything. I drank Chanel number 5 when I was in France. In New
Guinea I got soused on Williams’ Shaving Lotion. When I was laid up in a hospital I pie-eyed with
medical alcohol. On my way here on a transport I got stoned on torpedo juice. You ain’t kidding when
you say I drink a lot. So let’s have some of that jungle juice, eh?”

“All right,” I said. “I will just take this carabao to the mud hole then we can go home and drink.”

“You sure love that animal, don’t you?

“I should,” I replied. “It does half of my work.”

“Why don’t you get two of them?” I didn’t answer.

I unhitched datu from the plow and led him to the mud hole. Joe was following me. Datu lay in the mud
and was going. Whooooosh! Whooooosh!

Flies and other insects flew from his back and hovered in the air. A strange warm odor rose out of the
muddle. A carabao does not have any sweat glands except on the nose. It has to wallow in the mud or
bathe in a river every three hours. Otherwise it runs amok.

Datu shook his head and his widespread horns scooped the muddy water on his back. He rolled over and
was soon covered with slimy mud. An expression of perfect contentment came into his eyes. Then he
swished his tail and Joe and I had to move back from the mud hole to keep from getting splashed. I left
Datu in the mud hole. Then turning to Joe, I said.

“Let us go.”

31 | P a g e
And we proceeded toward my house. Jose was cautiously looking around. “This place is full of coconut
trees,” he said.

“Don’t you have any coconut trees in America?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Back home we have the pine tree.”

“What is it like?”

“Oh, it is tall and stately. It goes straight up to the sky like a skyscraper. It symbolizes America.”

“Well,” I said, “the coconut tree symbolizes the Philippines. It starts up to the sky, but then its leaves
sway down the earth, as if remembering the land that gave it birth. It does not forget the soil that gave it
life.”

In a short while, we arrived in my nipa house. I took the bamboo ladder and leaned it against a tree. Then
I climbed the ladder and picked some calamansi.

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“Philippine lemon,” I answered. “We will need this for our drinks.”

“Oh, chasers.”

“That is right, Joe. That is what the soldiers call it.”

I filled my pockets and then went down. I went to the garden well and washed the mud from my legs.
Then we went up a bamboo ladder to my hut. It was getting dark, so I filled a coconut shell, dipped a
wick in the oil and lighted the wick. It produced a flickering light. I unstrapped my bolo and hung it on
the wall.

“Please sit down, Joe,” I said.

“Where?” he asked, looking around.

“Right there,” I said, pointing to the floor.

32 | P a g e
Joe sat down on the floor. I sliced the calamansi in halves, took some rough salt and laid it on the foot
high table. I went to the kitchen and took the bamboo tube where I kept my lambanog.

Lambanog is a drink extracted from the coconut tree with pulverized mangrove bark thrown in to
prevent spontaneous combustion. It has many uses. We use it as a remedy for snake bites, as
counteractive for malaria chills, as an insecticide and for tanning carabao hide.

I poured some lambanog on two polished coconut shells and gave one of the shells to Joe. I diluted my
drink with some of Joe’s whiskey. It became milky. We were both seated on the floor. I poured some of
my drink on the bamboo floor; it went through the slits to the ground below.

“Hey, what are you doing,” said Joe, “throwing good liquor away?”

“No, Joe,” I said. “It is the custom here always to give back to the earth a little of what we have taken
from the earth.”

“Well,” he said, raising his shell. “Here’s to the end of the war!”

“Here is to the end of the war!” I said, also lifting my shell. I gulped my drink down. I followed it with a
slice of calamansi dipped in rough salt. Joe took his drink but reacted in a peculiar way.

His eyes popped out like a frog’s and his hand clutched his throat. He looked as if he had swallowed a
centipede. “Quick, a chaser!” he said.

I gave him a slice of calamansi dipped in unrefined salt. He squirted it in his mouth. But it was too late.
Nothing could chase her. The calamansi did not help him. I don’t think even a coconut would have
helped him.

“What is wrong, Joe?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “The first drink always affects me this way.”

He was panting hard and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Well, the first drink always acts like a minesweeper,” I said, “but this second one will be smooth.”

33 | P a g e
I filled his shell for the second time. Again I diluted my drink with Joe’s whiskey. I gave his shell. I
noticed that he was beaded with perspiration. He had unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. Joe took
his shell but he did not seem very anxious. I lifted my shell and said: “Here is to America!”

I was trying to be a good host.

“Here’s to America!” Joe said.

We both killed our drinks. Joe again reacted in a funny way. His neck stretched out like a turtle’s. And
now he was panting like a carabao gone berserk. He was panting like a carabao gone amok. He was
grasping his tie with one hand.

Then he looked down on his tie, threw it to one side, and said: “Oh, Christ, for a while I thought it was
my tongue.”

After this he started to tinker with his teeth.

“What is wrong, Joe?” I asked, still trying to be a perfect host.

“Plenty, this damned drink has loosened my bridgework.”

As Joe exhaled, a moth flying around the flickering flame fell dead. He stared at the dead moth and said:
“And they talk of DDT.”

“Well, how about another drink?” I asked. “It is what we came here for.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m through.”

“OK. Just one more.”

I poured the juice in the shells and again diluted mine with whiskey. I handed Joe his drink. “Here’s to
the Philippines,” he said.

“Here’s to the Philippines,” I said.

34 | P a g e
Joe took some of his drink. I could not see very clearly in the flickering light, but I could have sworn I saw
smoke coming out of his ears.

“This stuff must be radioactive,” he said. He threw the remains of his drink on the nipa wall and yelled:
“Blaze, goddamn you, blaze!”

Just as I was getting in the mood to drink, Joe passed out. He lay on the floor flat as a starfish. He was in a
class all by himself. I knew that the soldiers had to be back in their barracks at a certain time. So I decided
to take Joe back. I tried to lift him. It was like lifting a carabao. I had to call four of my neighbors to help
me carry Joe. We slung him on top of my carabao. I took my bolo from the house and strapped it on my
waist. Then I proceeded to take him back. The whole barrio was wondering what had happened to the
big Amerikano.

After two hours I arrived at the airfield. I found out which barracks he belonged to and took him there.
His friends helped me to take him to his cot. They were glad to see him back. Everybody thanked me for
taking him home. As I was leaving the barracks to go home, one of his buddies called me and said:

“Hey, you! How about a can of beer before you go?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “We Filipinos are mild drinkers.”

35 | P a g e
Folk song

ManangBiday
KatutubongAwitin / Folk Songs

ManangBiday, ilukatmo man

'Ta bintanaikalumbabam
Ta kitaem 'toy kinayawan
Ay, matayakon no dinakkaasian

Siasinnokangaaglabaslabas
Ditoyhardinkopagay-ayamak
Ammomngarud a balasangak
Sabongnilirio, di pay nagukrad

Denggem, ading, ta bilinenka

Ta inkanto 'diaysadidaya
Agalakanto'tbunga'tmangga
Ken lansones pay, adu a kita

No nababa, dimogaw-aten
No nangato, dikasukdalen
No naregreg, dikapiduten
Ngemlabaslabasamto met laeng

Daytoypaniok no maregregko
Ti makapidutisublinanto
Ta nagmarkaitinaganko
Nabordaan pay tisinanpuso

Alaemdaytakutsilio
Ta abriem 'toy barukongko
Tapnomaipapasmotiguram
Kaniak ken sentimiento

36 | P a g e
Atincupungsingsing

Atin cu pungsingsing
Metung yang timpucan
Amana queiti
Qngindungibatan
Sancanquengsininup
Qngmetung a caban
Mewalayaiti
E cu camalayan!

2nd stanza
Ingsucalninglub cu
Susucdulqngbanua
Picuruscunggamat
Baboninglamesa
Ninumangmanaquit
Qngsingsingcungmana
Calulungpusu cu
Manginuyacaya!

Repeat 1st stanza 2x

Repeat 2nd stanza

37 | P a g e
Sarong Banggi

ORIGINAL BICOLANO LYRICS LOOSE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

One evening as I lay in bed

Sarungbanggisahigdaan
I heard the sad song of a bird
Nakadangogakohinunininsarunggamgam
At first I thought it was a dream
Sa lubakokatorogan
But soon I recognized your voice
Bakokundisimongbosesiyopalan

Dagos akobangonsisakuyangmatabinuklat, I opened my eyes and arose

Kadtongkadiklomanakonangalagkalag And strained in the darkness to see
Si sakongpaghelingpasiringsaitaas I looked about and up
Nahelingkosimonglawogmaliwanag
Then saw your radiant face.

38 | P a g e
Speech

The Educated Man

By jovitosalonga

Address delivered at the 63rd Founders Day Convocation, August 28, 1964, Silliman University, Dumaguete City.

Authors note: I was invited by my UP classmate, Dr. Cicero Calderon, the president of Silliman University at the
time, to speak at the Silliman campus in Dumaguete City during the 63rd celebration of Founder's Day, August
28,1964. He and his elder brother Jose (Pepe) had been close to our family since 1936 when we all began our pre-law
course. In mid-1965, I campaigned for the Senate. This speech was reproduced during the campaign by many
students of Silliman and other schools and colleges. Later, it was reprinted in various periodicals and collections of
speeches, including my own collection, entitled "Land of the Morning."

Long before your distinguished President invited me to speak on this your day of days — in point of fact,
as far back as the tender years of my childhood — Silliman had been vividly impressed upon my
memory. Every once in a while, my mind would catch, however faintly, strains of music from long, long
ago, when my elder brother, fresh from what seemed to me then a wonderful adventure in a world far
from home, used to sing that sweet song with words I can still remember — "Silliman Beside the Sea."

I felt, even as a child, that there was some strange fascination in that song, for a restless, unyielding urge
to go back to Silliman seemed to possess and haunt my brother all the time. He studied here in what he
must have considered the best years of his life and he has not quite recovered from the incredible charm
and magic of this lovely, blessed place.

Many years later — that is, after the second World War — your then President, Dr. Arthur Carson,
learned that I was going to the United States to pursue graduate studies in law and he very kindly gave
me letters of recommendation addressed to two outstanding universities in America. I would like to let
you know, and I have been saying this many a time — that those letters were given the highest degree of
consideration because the schools there considered as a university that possesses the highest traditions of
scholarship and excellence.

When I learned some three years ago that my former classmate and good friend, Dr. Calderon, accepted

39 | P a g e
the offer to become the President of this University, I was happy both for your President and this
institution, convinced as I was, that an enduring partnership had been forged and that Silliman could
look ahead, for even brighter days, in the unending quest for truth and goodness and beauty.

I am therefore grateful for the opportunity to be with you on your 63rd Anniversary. The journey started
by Horace Silliman and Dr. and Mrs. David Sutherland Hibbard on August 28, 1901 has been in a sense, a
long and tiresome journey. Were we to call the roll of the men and women — from the highest officials to
the humblest teacher and worker — who have dedicated their energies, their talents, their hearts and
even their very lives to see that the journey is not interrupted, so that the quest may not stop, so that the
tradition of excellence may go on, against seemingly endless odds and obstacles without number, we
would have a fair measure of the kind of quiet heroism that went into the making and building of
Silliman.

But, in a deeper sense, the journey has not been long, it has not been tiresome. The journey has just begun
and the thrill of wonder and adventure will never end. Sixty-three years is a long time, but you are still
young. For in the language of a General who has faded away —

"Youth is not entirely a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not wholly a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips or
supple knees. It is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of
the springs of life.

"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and
despair — these are the long, long wires that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

"You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your
fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of your heart, there is a recording
chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young.
When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snow of pessimism and the ice of
cynicism, then — and then only — are you grown old."

May I take the liberty of reminding you that the capacity of Silliman to get into the stream of things and

40 | P a g e
contribute to the life and the spirit of the nation has not been fully tapped? True it is that from the ranks
of Silliman graduates great leaders have emerged in the field of thought and action, in the arts and
sciences, in government and in private enterprise, but we would all be committing a tragic mistake if we
were to look back only to the glories of the past and forget the new challenges of our time, if we were to
count in detail its achievements and overlook the massive tasks that would require of you more than just
planning and effort, but the vision and the dedication of a lifetime.

For when we begin to look around us, we see that amidst the physical reconstruction of towns and cities,
the rebuilding of homes and factories and shops, there has crept in a serious case of internal breakdown.
Buildings and edifices have gone up, but the edifice that constitutes the real soul of the nation is
beginning to shake and unless everyone of us does something about it, the national structure may
collapse and go down.

There is a feeling of despair and hopelessness amongst those who are overwhelmed by the immensity of
our problems — the fact of widespread, grinding poverty, the problem of massive unemployment in the
context of a society that possesses a high rate of population growth, the fact of graft and the paralysis of
initiative in public service, the chronic problem of moral breakdown and the wastage and neglect of
human resources.

But those who continue to hope and refuse to give up the good fight look primarily to the institutions of
learning to provide the guidance and direction in critical days such as these. For it is in the schools, the
colleges and the universities of the land where the youth who will pilot the affairs of tomorrow are being
taught and trained and equipped for what we trust will be a better kind of leadership.

It may well be that society is placing an impossibly difficult demand on the capabilities of institutions
such as this. For it is evident that the schools and the universities cannot, by themselves alone, do the job.
Nor can they mean much unless society itself comes to grips with the paradoxes that confront the youth.

For the youth is a witness of many glaring contradictions. He hears democracy extolled in every forum,
but wonders whether democracy is worth fighting for if it merely means the freedom to out-shout and
out-promise and out-smear the other fellow. He is told in school that honesty is the best policy, but he
sees how artfully society lionizes and pampers the fellow who made a clean million with a couple of
clever tricks. He is made to believe that it is a great thing to serve his country, but he begins to doubt that

41 | P a g e
considering how shamelessly those in power have abused it and earned the well-deserved contempt of
the people they profess to love so well.

He is told that honest toil is good and most rewarding, but he sees his elders engage themselves in the
mad, breathless drive to make a pile through fast and dubious means. He is taught that in courts of
justice, rich and poor are treated alike and that the poor man with the right cause will win out in the end
— but he never quite recovers when a crime committed in his presence is lightly disposed of, because
there are no witnesses and those in authority are only too willing to look the other way.

He is told in public schools that merit alone matters, but he finds a confirmation of his deepest suspicions
right in school itself — the teacher with the best preparation and who knows how to teach and discipline
is not promoted, because he has no backing and the student who cheats and bluffs his way through
school is considered smart, because he does not get caught. And when in his everyday world, he sees that
it is not what you are, not what you know, but whom you know and how much you are worth that
matter in the end, he becomes a hopeless, helpless bundle of confusion and unbelief.

Shall we, the school officials and teachers and students, throw up our hands in resignation and defeat
and pass back the whole burden to society?

You in Silliman cannot do that, even if you wanted to. For you are an institution of learning wedded to a
mission you cannot abandon without denying your own existence. Yours is an institution that serves the
highest end of a free society, namely, to help men develop their potentialities to the fullest extent possible
so they may live meaningful lives in a social order that accords first priority to the intrinsic worth and
dignity of the human personality. It is precisely because the problems of this our world and time are so
critical and the tasks so demanding that it becomes your peculiar, unavoidable responsibility to get into
the stream of things and relate your assets and resources to the needs of the nation. Yours is a work of
great relevance.
And in that task, your main function as a University is to produce, as you have done so in the past, the
educated man.

When I say "educated man," I do not refer to the individual who has read a thousand books and
magazines, however important reading may be to the life of the mind. One of the most unfortunate things
in this country is that so much is read by so many who do not know what to read. Because of cheap paper

42 | P a g e
and printing, comics, pulp magazines and cheap literature have replaced the classics and the great
masterpieces. As a consequence, an enormous mental garbage has been piled up beyond our collective
capacity to liquidate. Writers of history a hundred years from now, in assessing the quality of education
in the Philippines, may have ample reason to say that our schools have produced a vast population able
to read, but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. It was Mark Twain, I believe, who said he never
allowed his schooling to interfere with his education.

When I use the term "educated man," I do not mean the individual who has memorized a thousand facts
and assembled in his mind a million data, on the basis of which he has earned a string of academic
degrees. I do not mean to minimize the importance of memory, for it is stating the obvious when I say we
should be able to observe, sort out and remember relevant facts so we may have a sound basis for each
judgment. Of Themistocles, it has been said that he knew by heart the names of twenty thousand citizens
of Athens; and Cyrus, it is recorded, knew every soldier in his huge army. Indeed, how refreshing it
would be for our youth to learn by heart Jesus' inimitable Sermon on the Mount, the magnificent
soliloquies of Shakespeare, the unforgettable dialogue of Plato and in our own land, the lofty language of
Arellano and Laurel, the trenchant outbursts of Manuel Quezon and the elegant prose of Claro M. Recto.
How inspiring it would be for our young men and women to remember the historic landmarks in our
struggle for freedom — from the heroism of Lapu-Lapu to the lonely battle of Del Pilar at Tirad Pass,
from the field of Bagumbayan where the young Rizal met his tragic death to the dark dungeons of Fort
Santiago, where the youth of the land suffered a thousand times and met a thousand deaths! Nor do I
minimize the significance of degrees and diplomas in a degree-conscious society such as we have, except
to emphasize the danger of mistaking a degree for intellectual worth. A college graduate has once been
described as one who at the end of his studies is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual
nakedness.

When I say "educated man," I do not refer to the skilled engineer, the able trial lawyer, the talented
musician, the gifted writer, or the expert surgeon. Far be it from me to underrate the importance of skills
and talents. Sometime ago, I made reference to the fact that while we have abundant natural resources in
this country, we do not have sufficient skills to make this country great. Japan is relatively poor in natural
resources, with land scarcely enough to sustain her tremendous population, but despite a war that laid
waste her towns and cities, she has recovered and come back with greater vigor because she has a people
of abundant skills.
But I would like to submit the proposition that one becomes a great scientist, an able lawyer, or a noted

43 | P a g e
writer, only because he is first — and pre-eminently a good man. An abundant talent employed to serve
an evil end is a prostitution of divine endowment.

What, then, is the educated man? Is he the man who has read a lot? Partly yes, because his reading is
serious and discriminate and uplifting. Is he the man who remembers many facts and events? Partly yes,
because the training of memory is a wholesome discipline that requires effort and application and
because one cannot make a sound judgement without respect for remembered facts. Is the educated man,
then, one who because of his skill is able to provide for himself and his family? Partly yes, since education
should teach us how to make a living. But there is one thing we should always remember and it is this —
that far more important than the making of a living, is a living of life — a good life, a meaningful life, an
abundant life.

The educated man lives this kind of a life, because he has opened the windows of his mind to great
thoughts and ennobling ideas; because he is not imprisoned by the printed page, but chooses to make a
relentless, rigorous analysis and evaluation of everything he reads; because he is less interested in the
accumulation of degrees than in the stimulation of his mind and the cultivation of a generous spirit;
because his interest is less in knowing who is right but more importantly, in discerning what is right and
defending it with all the resources at his command; because he can express himself clearly and logically,
with precision and grace; because he is not awed by authority, but is humble enough to recognize that his
best judgment is imperfect and may well be tainted by error or pride; because he has a deep reverence for
the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, as a creature of God; because he has a healthy
sense of values, a breadth of outlook and the depth of compassion which a purposeful education
generates; because whenever he talks about good government he is prepared and willing to sacrifice
himself for it; and because he lives a life of relevance to the world in which we live, a sharing in the
problems of his time and doing whatever he can with intelligence and fairness and understanding.

In short, it is the responsibility of Silliman, as in all other institutions of learning in this country, to
produce the educated man and to produce him in such number and of such high quality of excellence
that Silliman products will be a leavening influence in a time of great challenge and in a world of
countless perils.

But Silliman is not just any other university— it is a Christian institution. The message of Jesus has a
wealth of meaning it cannot afford to ignore — "Be ye the salt of the earth... Be ye the light of the world" And

44 | P a g e
when Silliman produces, as it has in the past, these kind of men, we may better appreciate the truth and
beauty of the words of Emerson: —

"Not gold, but only men, can make

A nation great and strong.
Men who, for truth and honor's sake,
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men, who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others shy.
They build a nation's pillars deep,
And lift them to the sky."

45 | P a g e
What's Better Than .....
- By Butch Jimenez

As College Students, You're Just About To Set Sail Into The Real World. As You Prepare For The
Battleground Of Life, You'll Hear Many Speeches, Read Tons Of Books And Get Miles Of Advise Telling
You To Work Hard, Dream Big, Go Out And Do Something For Yourself, And Have A Vision.

Not Bad Advise, Really. In Fact, Following These Nuggets Of Truth May Just Bring You To The Top. But
As I've Lived My Life Over The Years, I Have Come To Realise That It Is Great To Dream Big, Have A
Vision, Make A Name, And Work Hard. But Guess What : There's Something Better Than That -

So My Message Today Simply Asks The Question, What's Better Than ...?

What's Better Than Being Negative?

Let's Start Off With Something Really Simple.

What's Better Than A Long Speech? No Doubt,A Short One. So, You Guys Are In Luck Because I Intend
To Keep This Short.

Now, Let Me Take You Through A Very Simple Math Exam. I'll Rattle Off A
Couple Of Equations, And You Tell Me What You Observe About Them. Be
Mindful Of The Instruction. You Are To Tell Me What You Observe About The Equations.

Here It Goes : 3+4=7, 9+2=11, 8+4=13 And 6+6=12.

Tell Me, What Do You Observe ?

Every Time I Conduct The Test, More Than 90 Percent Of The Participants
Immediately Say, 8+4 Is NOT 13, It's 12. That's True And They Are Correct.
But They Could Have Also Observed That The Three Other Equations Were
Right. That 3+4 Is 7, That 9+2 Is 11, And That 6+6 Is 12.

What's My Point? Many People Immediately Focus On The Negative Instead Of The Positive. Most Of Us
Focus On What's Wrong With Other People More Than What's Right About Them. Examine Those Four

46 | P a g e
Equations. Three Were Right An Only One Was Wrong. But What Is The Knee-Jerk Observation?
The Wrong Equation.

If 10 People You Didn't Know Were To Walk Through That Door, Most Of You Would Describe Those
People By What's Negative About Them. He's Fat. He's Balding. Oh, The Short One. Oh, The Skinny Girl.
Etc.

Get The Point? It's Always The Negative We Focus On And Not The Positive.

You'll Definitely Experience This In The Corporate World. You Do A Hundred Good Things And One
Mistake-Guess What? Chances Are, Your Attention Will Be Called On That One Mistake..

So What's Better Than Focusing On The Negative?

Believe Me, It Focusing On The Positive. And If This World Could Learn To Focus On The Positive More
Than The Negative, It Would Be A Much Nicer Place To Live In.

What's Better Than Working Hard?

We Have Always Been Told To Work Hard. Our Parents Say That, Our Teachers Say That, And Our
Principal Say That. But There's Something Better Than Merely Working Hard. It's Working SMART.

It's Taking Time To Understand The Situation, And Coming Out With An
Effective And Efficient Solution To Get More Done With Less Time And
Effort. As The Japanese Say, "There's Always A Better Way."

One Of The Most Memorable Case Studies I Came Across With As I Studied
Japanese Management At Sophia University In Tokyo Was The Case Of The Empty Soap Box, Which
Happened In One Of Japan's Biggest Cosmetic Companies. The Company Received A Complaint That A
Customer Had Bought A Box Of Soap That Was Empty. It Immediately Isolated The Problem To The
Assembly Line, Which Transported All The Packaged Boxes Of Soap To The Delivery Department. For
Some Reason, One Soap Box Went Through The Assembly Line Empty.

Management Tasked Its Engineers To Solve The Problem. Post-Haste, The

Engineers Worked Hard To Devise An X-Ray Machine With High-Resolution

47 | P a g e
Monitors Manned By Two To Ensure They Were Not Empty. No Doubt, They Worked Hard And They
Worked Fast. But A Rank-And-File Employee That Was Posed The Same Problem Came Out With
Another Solution. He Bought A Strong Industrial Electrical Fan And Pointed It At The Assembly Line. He
Switched The Fan On, An As Each Soap Box Passed The Fan, It Simply Blew The Empty Boxes Out Of
The Line. Clearly, The Engineers Worked Hard, But The Rank-And-File Employee Worked Smart. So
What's Better Than Merely Working Hard? It's Working Smart.

Having Said That,It Is Still Important To Work Hard. If You Could Combine Both Working Hard And
Working Smart, You Would Possess A Major Factor Toward Success.

What's Better Than Dreaming Big ?

I Will Bet My Next Month's Salary That Many Have Encouraged You To Dream Big. Maybe Even To
Reach For The Stars And Aim High. I Sure Heard That About A Million Times Right Before I Graduated
From This University. So I Did. I Did Dream Big. I Did Aim High. I Did Reach For The Stars. No Doubt,It
Works. In Fact, The Saying Is True "If You Aim For Nothing, That's Exactly What You'll Hit: Nothing."

But There's Something Better Than Dreaming Big.

Believe Me, I Got Shocked Myself. And I Learned It From The Biggest Dreamer Of All Time Walt Disney.
When It Comes To Dreaming Big. Walt Is The Man. No Bigger Dreams Were Fulfilled Than His. Every
Leadership Book Describes Him As The Ultimate Dreamer. In Fact, The Principle Of Dreaming And
Achieving Is The Core Message Of The Disney Hit Song, "When You Wish Upon A Star".
"When You Wish Upon A Star, Makes No Difference Who You Are; Anything Your Heart Desires Will
Come To You. If Your Heart Is In Your Dream, No Request Is Too Extreme. When You Wish Upon A Star,
As Dreamers Do, " As Jiminy Cricket Sang. But Is That What He Preached In Disney Company? Dream?

Imagineering...Well, Not Exactly. Kinda , But Not Quite. The Problem With Dreaming Is If That's All You
Do, You'll Really Get Nowhere. Infact, You May Just Fall Asleep And Never Wake Up. The Secret To
Disney's Success Is Not Just Dreaming, It's IMAGINEERING.

You Won't Find This Word In A Dictionary. It's Purely A Disney Word. Those Who Engage In
Imagineering Are Called Imaginers. The Word Combines The Words "Imagination" And "Engineering".
In The Book " Imagineers," Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, Claims That "Imaginers Turn Impossible
Dreams Into Real Magic." Walt Disney Explained There Is Really No Secret To This Approach. They Just

48 | P a g e
Keep Moving Forward-Opening New Doors And Doing New Things, Because They Are Curious. And It
Is This Curiosity That Leads Them Down New Paths. They Always Dream, Explore And Experiment. In
Short, Imagineering Is The Blending Of Creative Imagination And Technical Know-How. Eiser Expounds
On This Thought By Saying That "Not Only Are Imaginers Curious, They Are Courageous, Outrageous,
And This Creativity Is Contagious."

The Big Difference With Imaginers Is That They Dream An Then They DO ! So Don't Just Be A Dreamer,
Be AnImagineer.

What's Better Than Vision?

You Must Have All Been Given A Lecture At One Time Or Another About The
Importance Of Having A Vision. Even Leadership Expert John Maxwell Says
That An Indispensable Quality Of A Leader Is To Have A Vision. It Is Also Very Clear That Without
Vision, People Perish." So No Doubt About It, Having A Vision Is Important To Success. But Surprise !
There's Something More Potent Than A Vision. It's A CAUSE. If All You're Doing Is Trying To Reach
Your Vision An You're Pitted Against Someone Fighting For A Cause, Chances Are You'll Lose. The
Vietnam War Is A Classic Example. Literally With Sticks And Stones, The Viet Cong Beat The Heavily
Armed US Army To Surrender, Primarily Because The US Has A Vision To Win The War, But The
Vietnamese Were Fighting For A Cause.

In The Realm Of Business, Many Leaders Have Visions Of Making Their Company No. 1, Or Grabbing
Market Share, Or Forever Increasing Profits.Nothing Really Wrong With That Vison, But Take The
Example Of Sony Founder Akio Morita. He Did Not Just Have A Vision To Build The Biggest Electronics
Company In The World. In His Biography, " Made In Japan" He Reveals That The Real Reason He Set Up
Sony Was To Help Rebuild His Country, Which Had Just Been Bettered By War. He Had A Cause He
Was Fighting For. His Vision To Be An Electronics Giant Was Secondary.

What's The Difference Between A Vision And A Cause?

Here's What Sets Them Apart.

• No One Is Wiling To Die For A Vision. People Will Die For A Cause.

• You Possess A Vision. A Cause Possesses You.

49 | P a g e
• A Vision Lies In Your Hands. A Cause Lies In Your Heart.

• A Vision Involves Sacrifice. A Cause Involves The Ultimate Sacrifice.

Just A Word Of Caution. You Must Have The Right Vision, And You Must Be
Fighting For The Right Cause. In The End, Right Will Always Win Out. It May Take Time, And It May
Take Long. But If You Have The Right Vision And Are Fighting For The Right Cause, You Will Prevail. If
Not, No Matter How Sincere You Are, If You Are Not Fighting For What Is Right, You Will Ultimately
Fail.

It Is Said : "To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Required."

Having Been Given The Opportunity To Study In UP, No Doubt, Much Has Been Given To You In Terms
Of An Excellent Education. Don't Forget That In Return, Much Is Now Required Of You To Use That
Education Not Just For Yourself, But For Others. And As You Move Up And Start Reaching The
Pinnacle Of Success, Even More Will Be Required Of You To Look At The
Welfare Of Others, Of Society And Of The Country.

A Final Review :

• What's Better Than Focusing On The Negative ?

Focus On The Positive

• What's Better Than Working Hard ?

Its Working Smart

• What's Better Than Doing Something For Yourself ?

Doing Something For Your Country

• What's Better Than A Vision ?

50 | P a g e
A Cause

• What's Better Than A Long Speech ?

Definitely, A Short One

51 | P a g e
Poetry

Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa

Tula ni Andres Bonifacio

Aling pag-ibig pa ang hihigit kaya

sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila

gaya ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa?

Alin pag-ibig pa? Wala na nga, wala.

Ulit-ulitin mang basahin ng isip

at isa-isahing talastasing pilit

ang salita’t buhay na limbag at titik

ng isang katauhan ito’y namamasid.

Banal na pag-ibig pag ikaw ang nukal

sa tapat na puso ng sino’t alinman,

imbit taong gubat, maralita’t mangmang

nagiging dakila at iginagalang.

Pagpupuring lubos ang nagiging hangad

sa bayan ng taong may dangal na ingat,

umawit, tumula, kumatha’t sumulat,

kalakhan din nila’y isinisiwalat.

Walang mahalagang hindi inihandog

ng pusong mahal sa Bayang nagkupkop,

dugo, yaman, dunong, katiisa’t pagod,

buhay ma’y abuting magkalagot-lagot.

52 | P a g e
Bakit? Ano itong sakdal nang laki

na hinahandugan ng buong pag kasi

na sa lalong mahal kapangyayari

at ginugugulan ng buhay na iwi.

Ay! Ito’y ang Inang Bayang tinubuan,

siya’y ina’t tangi na kinamulatan

ng kawili-wiling liwanag ng araw

na nagbibigay init sa lunong katawan.

Sa kanya’y utang ang unang pagtanggap

ng simoy ng hanging nagbigay lunas,

sa inis na puso na sisinghap-singhap,

sa balong malalim ng siphayo’t hirap.

Kalakip din nito’y pag-ibig sa Bayan

ang lahat ng lalong sa gunita’y mahal

mula sa masaya’t gasong kasanggulan.

hanggang sa katawan ay mapasa-libingan.

Ang nangakaraang panahon ng aliw,

ang inaasahang araw na darating

ng pagka-timawa ng mga alipin,

liban pa ba sa bayan tatanghalin?

At ang balang kahoy at ang balang sanga

na parang niya’t gubat na kaaya-aya

sukat ang makita’t sa ala-ala

53 | P a g e
ang ina’t ang giliw lampas sa saya.

Tubig niyang malinaw sa anaki’y bulog

bukal sa batisang nagkalat sa bundok

malambot na huni ng matuling agos

na nakaka aliw sa pusong may lungkot.

Sa aba ng abang mawalay sa Bayan!

gunita ma’y laging sakbibi ng lumbay

walang ala-ala’t inaasam-asam

kundi ang makita’ng lupang tinubuan.

Pati na’ng magdusa’t sampung kamatayan

wari ay masarap kung dahil sa Bayan

at lalong maghirap. O! himalang bagay,

lalong pag-irog pa ang sa kanya’y alay.

Kung ang bayang ito’y nasa panganib

at siya ay dapat na ipagtangkilik

ang anak, asawa, magulang, kapatid

isang tawag niya’y tatalikdang pilit.

Datapwa kung bayan ano ang bayan ng ka-Tagalogan

ay nilalapastangan at niyuyurakan

katwiran, puri niya’t kamahalan

ng sama ng lilong ibang bayan.

Di gaano kaya ang paghinagpis

ng pusong Tagalog sa puring nalait

54 | P a g e
at aling kaluoban na lalong tahimik

ang di pupukawin sa paghihimagsik?

Saan magbubuhat ang paghihinay

sa paghihiganti’t gumugol ng buhay

kung wala ring ibang kasasadlakan

kundi ang lugami sa kaalipinan?

Kung ang pagka-baon niya’t pagka-busabos

sa lusak ng daya’t tunay na pag-ayop

supil ng pang-hampas tanikalang gapos

at luha na lamang ang pinaa-agos

Sa kanyang anyo’y sino ang tutunghay

na di-aakayin sa gawang magdamdam

pusong naglilipak sa pagka-sukaban

na hindi gumugol ng dugo at buhay.

Mangyari kayang ito’y masulyap

ng mga Tagalog at hindi lumingap

sa naghihingalong Inang nasa yapak

ng kasuklam-suklam na Castilang hamak.

Nasaan ang dangal ng mga Tagalog,

nasaan ang dugong dapat na ibuhos?

bayan ay inaapi, bakit di kumikilos?

at natitilihang ito’y mapanuod.

Hayo na nga kayo, kayong nanga buhay

55 | P a g e
sa pag-asang lubos na kaginhawahan

at walang tinamo kundi kapaitan,

kaya nga’t ibigin ang naaabang bayan.

Kayong antayan na sa kapapasakit

ng dakilang hangad sa batis ng dibdib

muling pabalungit tunay na pag-ibig

kusang ibulalas sa bayang piniit.

Kayong nalagasan ng bunga’t bulaklak

kahoy niyari ng buhay na nilanta't sukat

ng bala-balakit makapal na hirap

muling manariwa’t sa baya’y lumiyag.

Kayong mga pusong kusang inuusal

ng daya at bagsik ng ganid na asal,

ngayon magbangon’t baya’y itanghal

agawin sa kuko ng mga sukaban.

Kayong mga dukhang walang tanging sikap

kundi ang mabuhay sa dalita’t hirap,

ampunin ang bayan kung nasa ay lunas

sapagkat ang ginhawa niya ay sa lahat.

Ipahandog-handog ang buong pag-ibig

hanggang sa mga dugo’y ubusang itangis

kung sa pagtatanggol, buhay ay mapatid

56 | P a g e
To A Lost One

Angela Manalang-Gloria

I shall haunt you, O my lost one, as the twilight

Haunts a grieving bamboo trail,

And your dreams will linger strangely with the music

Of a phantom lover’s tale

You shall not forget, for I am past forgetting

I shall come to you again

With the starlight, and the scent of wild champakas,

And the melody of rain.

You shall not forget. Dusk will peer into your

Window, tragic-eyed and still,

And unbidden startle you into remembrance

With its hand upon the sill.

57 | P a g e
Like The Molave

By Rafael Zulueta da Costa

Not yet, Rizal, not yet. Sleep not in peace:

There are a thousand waters to be spanned;

there are a thousand mountains to be crossed;

there are a thousand crosses to be borne.

Our shoulders are not strong; our sinews are

grown flaccid with dependence, smug with ease

under another's wing. Rest not in peace;

Not yet, Rizal, not yet. The land has need

of young blood-and, what younger than your own,

Forever spilled in the great name of freedom,

Forever oblate on the altar of

the free? Not you alone, Rizal. O souls

And spirits of the martyred brave, arise!

Arise and scour the land! Shed once again

your willing blood! Infuse the vibrant red

into our thin anemic veins; until

we pick up your Promethean tools and, strong,

Out of the depthless matrix of your faith

in us, and on the silent cliffs of freedom,

we carve for all time your marmoreal dream!

Until our people, seeing, are become

like the Molave, firm, resilient, staunch,

rising on the hillside, unafraid,

Strong in its own fiber, yes, like the Molave!

II.

Not yet,Rizal,not yet. The glory hour will come

Out of the silent dreaming

58 | P a g e
from the seven thousand fold silence

We shall emerge, saying WE ARE FILIPINOS!

and no longer be ashamed

sleep not in peace

the dream is not yet fully carved

hard the wood but harder the woods

yet the molave will stand

yet the molave monument will rise

and god's walk on brown legs

59 | P a g e
Drama

Sa Pula, Sa Puti Ni Francisco "Soc" Rodrigo

Kulas: A…hem! E, kumusta ka ngayong umaga, Celing.

Celing: Mabuti naman, Kulas. Salamat at naalala mo akong kamustahin.

Kulas: Si Celing naman, bakit naman ganyan ang sagot mo sa akin?

Celing: Sapagkat pagkidlat ng mata mo sa umaga, wala ka ng iniisip kamustahin at himasin kundi ang
iyong tinali. Tila mahal mo ang tinali mo kaysa sa akin.

Kulas: Ano ka ba naman, Celing, wala ng mas mahal pa sa akin sa buhay na ito kundi ang asawa.

(Ilalagay ang kamay sa balikat ni Celing).

Celing: Siya nga ba? Ngunit kung nakikita kong hinihimas mo ang iyong tinali, ibig ko ng kung minsang
mainggit at magselos.

Kulas: Ngunit Celing, alam mo namang kaya ko lamang inaalagaang mabuti ang mga tinaling ito ay para
sa atin din. Sila ang magdadala sa atin ng grasya.

Celing: Grasya ba o disgrasya, gaya ng karaniwang nangyayari?

Kulas: Huwag mo sanang ungkatin ang nakaraan. Oo, ako nga'y napagtalo noong mga nakaraang araw,
sapagkat noon ay hindi pa ako bihasa sa pagpili at paghimas ng manok. Ngunit ngayon ay marami na
akong natutuhan, mga bagong sistema.

Celing: At noong nakaraang Linggo, noong matalo ang iyong talisain, hindi mo pa ba alam ang mga
bagong sistema.

Kulas: Iyon ay disgrasya lamang, Celing, makinig ka. Alam mo, kagabi ay nanaginip ako. Napanaginipan
kong ako'y hinahabol ng isang kalabaw na puti. Kalabaw na puti, Celing!

Celing: E ano kung puti?

Kulas: Ang pilak ay puti, samakatwid ang ibig sabihin ay pilak. At ako'y hinahabol…Hinahabol ako ng
pilak…ng kuwarta!

Celing: Ngunit ngayon ay wala nang kuwartang pilak.

Kulas: Mayroon pa, nakabaon lang. kaya walang duda, Celing. Bigyan mo lamang ako ng limang piso
ngayon ay walang salang magkakuwarta tayo.

Celing: Ngunit, Kulas, hindi ka pa ba nadadala sa mga panaginip mong iyan? Noong isang buwan,
nanaginip ka ng ahas na numero 8. Ang pintakasi noon ay nation sa a-8 ng Pebrero at sabi mo'y kuwarta
na ngunit natalo ka ng anim na piso.

60 | P a g e
Kulas: Oo nga, ngunit ang batayan ko ngayon ay hindi lamang panaginip. Pinag-aralan kong mabuti ang
kaliskis at ang tainga ng manok na ito. Ito'y walang pagkatalo, Celing. Ipinapangako ko sa iyo, walang
sala tayo ay mananalo.

Celing: Kulas, natatandaan mo bang ganyan-ganyan din ang sabi mo sa akin noong isang Linggo tungkol
sa manok mong talisain? At ano ang nangyari? Nagkaulam tayo ng pakang na manok.

Kulas: Sinabi ko nang iyon ay disgrasya!

(Maririnig uli ang sigawan sa sabungan. Maiinip si Kulas).

Sige na, Celing. Ito na lamang. Pag natalo pa ang manok na ito, hindi na ako magsasabong.

Celing: Totoong-totoo?

Kulas: Totoo. Sige na, madali ka at nagsusultada na. sige na, may katrato ako sa susunod na sultada. Pag
hindi ako dumating ay kahiya-hiya.

(Titingnan ni Celing ang pagkakabalisa ni Kulas at maisip na walang saysay ang pakikipagtalo pa, iiling-
iling na dudukot ng salapi sa kanyang bulsa).

Celing: O, Buweno, kung sa bagay, ay tatago lamang ako ng pera. O, heto. Huwag mo sana akong sisihan
kung mauubos ang kaunting pinagbilhan ng ating palay.

Kulas:

(Kukunin ang salapi)

Huwag kang mag-alala, Celing, ito'y kuwarta na. seguradong-segurado! O, Buweno, diyan ka muna.

(Magmamadaling lalabas si Kulas, ngunit masasalubong si Sioning sa may pintuan.)

Sioning: Kumusta ka, Kulas?

Kulas:

(Nagmamadali)

Kumusta…e…eh…Sioning didispensahin mo ako. Ako lang ay nagmamadali. Eh…este…nandiyan si

Celing! Heto si Sioning. Buwena-diyan ka na.

(Lalabas si Kulas).

Sioning: Celing, ano ba ang nangyayari sa iyong asawa? Tila pupunta sa sunog.

Celing: Ay, Sioning, masahol pa sa sunog ang pupuntahan. Pupunta na naman sa sabungan.

Sioning: Celing, talaga bang…

Celing: Sandali lang ha, Sioning.

(Sisigaw sa gawing kusina).

Teban! Teban! Teban!

61 | P a g e
Teban:

(Masunurin ngunit may kahinaan ang ulo).

Ano po iyon Aling Celing?

Celing:

(Kukuha ng limang piso sa bulsa at ibibigay kay Tebang).

O heto, Teban, limang piso…Nagpunta na naman ang amo mo sa sabungan. Madali, ipusta mo ito.
Madali ka at baka mahuli!

Teban:

(Nagmamadaling itinulak ni Celing sa labas).

Sioning: Ipusta ang limang piso! Ano ba ito, Celing, ikaw man ba'y naging sabungera na rin?

Celing: Si Sioning naman. Hindi ako sabungera! Ngunit sa tuwing magsasabong si Kulas ay pumupusta
rin ako.

Sioning: A…Hindi ka sabungera, ngunit pumupusta ka lamang sa sabong? Hoy, Celing, ano ba ang
pinagsasabi mo?

Celing: O, Buweno, Sioning, maupo ka't ipaliliwanag ko sa iyo. Ngunit huwag mo namang ipaalam
kaninuman.

Sioning: Oo, huwag kang mag-alala sa akin.

Celing: Alam mo, Sioning, ako'y pumupusta sa sabong upang huwag kaming matalo.

Sioning: Ah, pumupusta ka sa sabong upang huwag kayong matalo. Celing pinaglalaruan mo yata ako.

Celing: Hindi. Alam mo'y marami kaming nawawalang kuwarta sa kasasabong ni Kulas. Nag-aalaala
akong darating ang araw na magdidildil na lamang kami ng asin. Pinilit kong siya'y pigilin. Ngunit
madalas kaming magkagalit. Upang huwag kaming magkagalit at huwag maubos ang aming kuwarta,
ay umisip ako ng paraan. May isang buwan na ngayon, na tuwing pupusta si Kulas sa kaniyang manok
ay pinupusta ko si Teban sa sabungan upang pumusta sa manok na kalaban.

Sioning:

(May kahinaan din ang ulo).

Sa anong dahilan?

Celing: Puwes, kung matalo ang manok ni Kulas ay nanalo ako. At kung ako nama'y matalo at nanalo si
Kulas, kaya't anuman ang mangyari ay hindi nababawasan ang aming kuwarta.Sioning. A siya nga. Siya
nga pala naman.

(Mag-uumpisang Maririnig ang sigawan buhat sa sabungan).

Celing: Hayan, nagsusultada na marahil. Naku, sumasakit ang ulo ko sa sigawang iyan.

62 | P a g e
Sioning: Ikaw kasi, eh. Sukat ka bang pumili ng bahay sa tapat ng sabungan.

Celing: Ano bang ako ang pumili ng bahay na ito. Ang gusto kong bahay ay sa tabi ng simbahan, ngunit
ang gusto ni Kulas ay sa tabi ng sabungan.

Sioning:

(Lalong lalakas ang sigawan).

Ah, siya nga pala, Celing naparito ako upang ibalita sa iyo na dumating na ang rasyon ng sabon sa
tindahan ni Aling Kikay. Baka tayo maubusan.

Celing: Hindi, siyempre ipagtitira tayo ni Aling Kikay. Sayang lamang ang pagkukumare namin.

(Dudungaw)

O heto na nga si Teban. Tumatakbo.

(Papasok si Teban na may hawak na dalawang lilimahin).

Teban:

(Tuwang-tuwa)

Nanalo tayo, Aling Celing, nanalo tayo!

(Ibibigay ang salapi kay Aling Celing. Agad-agad namang itatago ito.)

Celing: Mabuti Teban, o magpunta ka na sa kusina. Baka dumating na si Kulas ay mahalaga ang ating
ginagawa.

(Magmamadaling lalabas si Teban).

Sioning: O, Buweno, lumakad na tayo, Celing.

(Kukunin ni Celing ang tapis niyang nakasampay sa isang silya. Aalis na sila. Papasok si Kulas na tila
walang kasigla-sigla).

Celing: Ano ba, Kulas, tila hindi ka inabutan ng kalabaw na puti.

Kulas:

(Mainit ang ulo)

Huwag mo ngang banggitin iyan. Talagang ako'y malas. Celing, uyo'y disgrasya kamang. Ang aking
manok ay nananalo hanggang sa huling sandali. Talagang wala akong suwerte!

Celing: Iyan ang hirap sa sugal, Kulas, walang pinaghahawakan kundi suwerte!

Kulas: Talagang buwisit ang sabong! Isinusumpa ko na ang sabong! Ni ayaw ko nang Makita ang anino
ng sabungang iyan.

Celing: Nawa'y magkatotoo na sana iyan, Kulas.

Kulas: Oo, Celing, ipinapangako ko sa iyo, hindi na ako magsasabong kailanman.

63 | P a g e
Celing: Buweno, magpalamig ka muna ng ulo. Pupunta lang kami kay Kumareng Kikay upang bumili ng
sabon.

(Lalabas sina Celing at Sioning. Sisindihan ang natitirang kalahati ng sigarilyo, hihithit at pagkatapos ay
ihahagis sa sahig at papadyakan. Pupunta sa isang silya at uupong may kalumbayan.)

Castor: Hoy, Kulas kumusta na?

Kulas: Ay, Castor…at lagi na lamang akong natatalo. Talagang ako'y malas! Akalain mo bang kanina'y
natalo pa ako? Tingnan mo lang,

Castor. Noong magsagupaan ang mga manok ay lumundag agad ang manok ko at pinalo nang pailalim
ang kalaban. Nagbuwelta pareho, at naggirian na parang buksingero. Biglang sabay na lumundag at
nagsugapaan (nagsagupaan?) sa hangin. Palo diyan, palo dini ang ginawa ng aking manok. Madalas
tamaan ang kalaban, ngunit namortalan. Sige ang batalya nila sa hangin, at tumaas ang balahibo. Unang
lumagapak ang kalaban., patihaya. Lundag ang aking manok. Walang sugat at patayo, ngunit alam mo
kung saan lumagpak?

Castor: O saan?

Kulas: Sa tari ng kalaban. Talagang ayaw ko na ng sabong.

Castor: Bakit naman? Wala pa namang maraming natatalo sa iyo.

Kulas: Ano bang walang marami? Halos, tutong na laang ang natitira sa aming natitipon.

Castor: Ngunit hindi tamang katwiran ang huwag ka nang magsabong.

Kulas: Ano bang hindi tama?

Castor: Sapagkat pag hindi ka na nagsabong ay Talagang patuluyan nang perdida ang kuwartang natalo
sa iyo. Samantalang kung ikaw ay magsasabong pa maaaring makabawi!

Kulas: Hindi Castor, lalo lang akong mababaon. Tama si Celing. Ang sugal ay suwerte-suwerte lamang,
at masama ang aking suwerte.

Castor: Ano bang suwerte-suwerte? Iyan ay hindi totoo. Tingnan mo ako, Kulas, ako'u hindi natatalo sa
sabong.

Kulas: Mano nga lang magtigil ka Castor. Kung hindi sana nakikita na ang lahat ng manok mo ay laging
nakabitin kung iuwi.

Castor: Ito si Kulas, nabastos ka na nga pala sa huwego. Oo, natatalo nga ang aking manok ngunit
nananalo ako sa pustahan!

Kulas: Ngunit paano iyan?

Castor: Taong ito…pumupusta ako, hindi sa aking manok, kundi sa kalaban.

Kulas: Eh, kung magkataong ang manok mo ang manalo?

Castor: Hindi maaaring manalo ang aking manok. Ginagawan ko ng paraan.

64 | P a g e
Kulas: Hoy, Castor, maano nga lang huwag mo akong biruin. Masama ang ulo ko ngayon.

Castor: Ano bang biro ang sinasabi mo? Ito'y totoo. At kung di lamang kita kaibigan, ay hindi ko
sasabihin sa iyo.

Kulas: Ngunit, Castor, paano mangyayari iyan?

Castor: Talaga bang gusto mo malaman?

Kulas: Aba, oo. Sige na.

Castor: O, Buweno, kunin mo ang isa sa iyong mga tinali at ipapaliwanag ko sa iyo.

Kulas: Kahit ba alin sa aking tinali?

Castor: Oo, kahit alin, sige, kunin mo.

(Lalabas si Kulas patungo sa kusina. Babalik na may dalang tinali.)

Kulas:

(Ibibigay ang tinali kay Castor).

O heto, Castor.

Castor: Ngayon, kumuha ng isang karayom.

Kulas: Karayom?

Castor: Oo, karayom. Iyong ipinanahi!

Kulas: Ah…

(Pupunta sa kahong kunalalagyan ng panahi ni Celing at kukuha ng isang karayom.)

O heto ang karayom.

Castor:

(Hawak ang tinali sa kaliwa at ang karayom sa kanan.)

O halika rito at magmasid ka. Ang lahat ng manok ay may litid sa paa na kapag iyong dinuro ay hihina
ang paa. Tingnan mo…

(Anyong duduruin ni Castro ang hita ng tinali.)

Hayan!

(Ibababa ang tinali.)

Tingnan mo. Matuwid pang lumakad ang tinaling iyan. Walang sinumang makahahalata sa ating
ginawa, ngunit mahina na ang paang ating dinuro, at ang manok na iyan ay hindi makapapalo.

Kulas: Samakatuwid ay hindi na nga maaaring manalo ang manok na iyan…Siguradong matatalo.

65 | P a g e
Castor: Natural, ngayon, ang dapat na lamang gawin ay magpunta sa sabungan…ilaban ang manok na
iyan…at pumunta nang palihim sa kalaban.

Kulas: Siya nga pala. Magaling na paraan!

Castor: Nakita mo na? Ang hirap sa iyo ay hindi mo ginagamit ang ulo mo.

Kulas:

(Balisa)

Ngunit, Castor, hindi ba iya'y pandaraya?

Castor: Oo, pandaraya…ngunit po Diyos! Sino bang tao ang nagkakuwarta sa sugal na hindi gum,agamit
ng daya? At bukod diyan, ay marami nang kuwartang natalo sa iyo. Ito'y gagawin mo lamang upang
makabawi. Ano ang sama niyan?

Kulas: Siya nga, Castor, kung sa bagay, malaki na ang natatalo sa akin.

Castor: At akala mo kay, sa mga pagkatalo mong iyan ay hindi ka dinaya.

Kulas: Kung sa bagay…

Castor: Nakita mo na. Hindi ka mandaraya, Kulas. Gaganti ka lamang.

Kulas: Siya nga, may katwiran ka.

Castor: O…eh…ano pa ang inaantay mo? Tayo na.

Kulas: Este…Castor…eh…hintayin lamang natin si Celing, ang aking asawa.

Castor: Bakit, ano pa ang kailangan?

Kulas: Alam mo na ang aking asawa ang may hawak ng supot sa bahay na ito.

Castor: Naku, itong si Kulas! Talunan na sa sabungan ay dehado pa sa bahay…Buweno, hintayin mo

siya, ngunit laki-lakihan mo ang iyong hihingin, ha? At nang makaitpak tayo ng malaki-laki.

Kulas: Oo…Este…Castor…

Castor: O, ano na naman?

Kulas: Eh…malapit na segurong dumating si Celing…alam mo'y ayaw kong Makita ka niya rito. Huwag
ka sanang magagalit kung maaari lang ay umalis ka na.

Castor:

(Tatawa)

Oo…aalis na ako. Mabuti nga at nang makahanap na ako ng kareto ng manok mo. Sumunod ka agad, ha?
Pagdating mo roon malalaban agad iyan.

Kulas: Buweno, diyan ka na. Laki-lakihan mo lang ang tipak ha?

66 | P a g e
(Lalabas si Castor. Ngingiti si Kulas, hihimas-himasin ang kanyang tinali, at hahangaan ang nadurong
hita ng tinali. Papasok sina Celing at Sioning.)

Celing: Ano ba yan, Kulas? At akala ko ba'y Isinusumpa mo na ang sabungan?

Kulas:

(Lulundag na palapit.)

Celing, ngayon na lamang. Walang salang tayo ay makababawi.

Celing: Naku, itong si Kulas, parang presyo ng asukal. Oras-oras ay nagbabago.

Kulas: Celing Talagang ngayon na lamang! Pag natalo pa ako ay patayin mo na ang lahat ng aking tinali.
Ipinangangako ko sa iyo.

Celing: Ngunit baka pangako na naman ng napapako.

Kulas: Hindi, Celing! Hayan si Sioning, siya ang testigo.

Sioning:

(Kikindatan si Celing)

Siya nga naman. Celing, bigyan mo na, ako ang testigo.

Celing: O buweno, ngunit tandaan mo, ito na lamang ha?

Kulas: Oo, Celing, itaga mo sa bato!

Celing: Magkano ba ang kailangan mo?

Kulas: Eh…dalawampung piso lamang.

Celing: Dalawampung piso?

Sioning: Susmaryosep!

Kulas: Oo, Celing. Dalawampung piso, upang tayo ay makabawi.

(Mag-aatubili si Celing).

Sioning: Sige na, Celing. Tutal ito naman ay kahuli-hulihan.

Celing: O buweno, heto.

(Bibigyan ng dalawampung piso si Kulas. Kukunin ang salapi sa baul)

Kulas:

(Kukunin ang salapi)

Ay, salamat sa iyo, Celing. Ito'y kuwarta na. Hindi ka magsisisi. O buweno, diyan na muna kayo, hane?

(Magmamadaling lalabas si Kulas na dala ang kanyang tinali).

67 | P a g e
Celing:

(Susundan ng tingin si Kulas hanggang nasa malayo na)

Teban! Teban!

Sioning: Teban, madali ka!

(Papasok si Teban buhat sa kusina)

Teban: Opo, opo, Aling Celing.

Celing: O heta ang pera. Nasa sabungan na naman ang iyong amo.

Sioning: Madali ka. Teban, ipusta mo iyan sa manok ng kalaban.

Teban:

(Magugulat sa dami ng salapi).

Dalawampung piso ito a…

Celing: Oo, dalawampung piso. Sige, madali ka na.

Teban:

(Hindi maintindihan)

ito ba'y itotodo ko?

Sioning: Oo, todo.

Teban: Opo, naku! Malaking halaga ito…

(lalabas si Teban).

Celing: Ikaw naman, Sioning, bakit inayunan mo pa si Kulas?

Sioning: Hindi bale. Tutal, wala naman kayo sa pagkatalo.

Celing: Kung sa bagay. Ngunit hindi lamang ang kuwarta ang aking ipinagdaramdam.

Sioning: Eh ano pa?

Celing: Ang iba pang masasamang bunga ng bisyo…Sioning, alam mo namang ang bisyo ay
nagbubuntot. Karaniwang kasama ng bisyo a ng pandaraya, pagnanakaw…at kung anu-ano pa.

Sioning: Ngunit nangako naman si Kulas na ito na ang huli.

Celing: Oo nga, ngunit isulat mo sa tubig ang pangakong iyan.

(Lalong lalakas ang sigawan)

Sioning: Ang hirap sa iyo, Celing, e…hindi mo tigasan ang loob mo. Tingnan mo ako. Noong ang aking
asawa ay hindi makatkat sa monte, pinuntahan ko siya isang araw sa kanilang klub at sa harap ng lahat
minura ko siya mula ulo hanggang talampakan. E, di mula noo'y hindi na siya nakalitaw sa klub.

68 | P a g e
Celing: Ngunit natatandaan mo ba Sioning na ikaw nama'y hindi nakalabas ng bahay nang may limang
araw, hindi ba dahil sa nangingitim ang buong mukha mo?

Sioning: Oo nga, ngunit iyon ay sandali lamang. Pagkaraan niyon ay esta bien, tsokolate na naman kami.

Celing: Hindi ko yata magagawa iyon. Magaan pa sa akin ang magtiis lamang.

(Agad huhupa ang sigawan).

Sioning: Ayan, tila tapos na ang sultada. Sino kaya ang nanalo?

Celing: Malalaman natin pagdating ni Teban. Siya'y umuwi agad, upang huwag silang mag-abot ni
Kulas.

Sioning: Celing, mag-iingat ka naman sa pagtitiwala ng pera kay Teban.

Celing: Huwag mong alalahanin si Teban. Siya'y mapagkakatiwalaan.

Sioning: Siya nga, ngunit tandaan mong ang kuwarta ay Mainit kapag nasa palad na ng tao.

Celing: Huwag kang mag-alala…

(Papasok si Teban)

Teban:

(Walang sigla)

Aling Celing, natalo po tao.

Celing: A, natalo. O hindi bale. Tutal nanalo naman si Kulas. Buweno, Teban, magpunta ka na sa kusina
at baka dumating ang iyong amo.

(Lalabas si Teban)

Sioning: Talagang magaan ang paraan mong iyan, Celing.

Celing:

(Nalulungkot)

Siya nga.

Sioning: O, Celing bakit ka malungkot?

Celing: Dahil sa nanalo si Kulas.

Sioning: O, e ano ngayon. Kay nanalo si Kulas, kay manalo ka, hindi naman mababawasan ang iyong
kuwarta. At ikaw pa rin lamang ang maghahawak ng supot.

Celing: Oo nga, ngunit ang alaala ko'y…Ngayong manalo si Kulas, lalo siyang maninikit sa sabungan.

(Papasok si Kulas na nalulumbay).

Kulas: Ay, Celing, Talagang napakasama ng aking suwerte! Hindi na ako magsasabong kailanman.

69 | P a g e
Sioning: Ha?

Celing: Ano kamo?

Kulas: Talagang buwisit ang sabong! Isinusumpa ko na!

Celing: Ngunit, Kulas hindi ba't nanalo ka?

Kulas: Hindi, natalo na naman ako! At natodas ang dalawampung piso!

Celing:

(May hinala)

Kulas, huwag mo sana akong ululin. Alam kong nanalo ka.

Kulas: Sino ba ang may sabi sa iyong ako'y nanalo? Bakit ba ako nakinig sa buwisit na si Castor.

Celing: Kulas, hindi mo ako makukuha sa drama. Isauli mo rito ang dalawampung piso.

Kulas: Diyos na maawain, saan ako kukuha?

Celing:

(Lalo pang maghihinala)

Teka, baka kaya ikaw Kulas, ay mayroon nang kulasisi…at ipinatuka ang dalawampung piso.

Kulas: Celing, ano bang kaululan ito? Isinusumpa kong natalo ang dalawampung piso. Sino baga ang
nagkwento sa iyo na ako'y nanalo.

Celing: Si Teban. Nanggaling siya sa sabungan.

Sioning:

(Magliliwanag ang mukha)

A teka, Celing, baka si Teban ang kumupit ng kuwarta.

Celing: Siya nga pala.

Sioning: Sinabi ko na sa iyo, huwag kang masyadong magtitiwala.

(Pupunta si Celing sa pintuan ng kusina).

Celing: Teban! Teban!

(Lalabas si Teban)

Teban: Ano po iyon?

Celing: Teban, hindi ko akalain na ikaw ay magnanakaw.

Teban: Magnanakaw? Ako? Bakit po?

Celing: At bakit pala? Isauli mo rito ang pera.

70 | P a g e
Teban: Alin pong pera?

Celing: Ang dalawampung pisong dala mo sa sabungan kanina.

Teban: Aba e, natalo po, e.

Celing: Sinungaling! Ano bang natalo! Kung natalo ka, nanalo sana si Kulas. Ngunit natalo sa Kulas,
samakatuwid nanalo ka.

Teban:

(Hindi maintindihan)

Ha? Ano po? Kung ako'y natalo…ay…

Kulas: 'Tay kayo. Tila gumugulo ang salitaan. Teban, ikaw ba'y pumusta sa sabong kanina?

Teban: Opo.

Kulas: Saan ka nagnakaw ng kuwarta?

Teban: Kay Aling Celing po.

Kulas: Ha? Nagnakaw ka kay Aling Celing?

Teban: E…hindi po. Pinapusta po ako ni Aling Celing.

Kulas: A, ganoon! Hoy, Celing pinipigilan mo ako sa pagsabong, ha? Ikaw pala'y sabungerang pailalim.

Sioning: Hindi, Kulas, pumupusta lamang si Celing sa kalaban ng manok mo.

Kulas:

(kay Celing)

A…at ako pala'y kinakalaban mo pa, ha?

Celing: Huwag kang magalit, Kulas. Ako'y pumupusta sa manok na kalaban para kahit ikaw ay manalo o
matalo ay hindi tayo

awawalan.

Kulas: Samakatuwid, kahit pala manalo ang aking manok ay bale wala rin.

Sioning: Siya nga at kahit naman matalo ay bale mayroon din.

Kulas: E, sayang lamang ang kahihimas at kabubuga ko ng usok sa manok. Ako pala'y parang ulol na…

Celing: Teka muna. Ang liwanagin muna natin ay ang dalawampung piso. Teban, saan mo dinala ang
pera?

Kulas: Celing, ako man ay natalo sa pinupustahan sapagkat sa manok ng kalaban din ako pumusta.

Sioning: Naku, at lalong nag-block out.

Celing:

71 | P a g e
(Kay Kulas)

Pumusta ka sa kalaban ng manok mo?

Kulas: Oo, alam mo'y pinilayan ko ang aking tinali upang seguradong matalo at pumusta ako sa manok
ng kalaban. Ngunit, kabibitiw pa lamang ay tumakbo na ang diyaskeng manok ng kalaban at nanalo ang
aking manok.

Celing: A…gusto mong maniyope? Ikaw ngayon ang matitiyope

(Tatawa)

Kulas: Aba, at nagtawa pa.

Sioning: Siyanga. Bakit ka nagtatawa, Celing?

Celing:

(Tumatawa pa)

Sapagkat ako'y tuwang-tuwa, Sioning, dito ka maghapunan mamayang gabi. At anyayahon mo sina
Kumareng Kikay at ang iba pang kaibigan. Ako'y maghahanda.

Kulas: Ha! Maghahanda?

Celing: Oo, Teban, ihanda mo ang mga palayok, ha? At hiramin mo ang kaserola ni Ate Nena.

Teban: Opo, opo.

(Lalabas sa pintuan ng kusina)

Kulas: Ngunit paano tayo maghahanda? Ngayon lang ay natalunan tayo ng mahigpit apatnapung piso.

Celing: Hindi bale. Ibig kong ipagdiwang ang iyong huling paalam sa sabungan.

Kulas: Huling paalam?

Celing: Oo, sapagkat ikaw ay nangako at nanumpa at bukod diyan hindi na tayo kailangang bumili pa ng
ulam.

Kulas: Bakit?

Celing: Mayroon pang anim na tinali sa kulungan. Aadobohin ko ang tatlo at ang tatlo ay sasabawan.

(Tatawa sina Sioning at Celing. Hindi tatawa si Kulas ngunit pagkailang saglit ay tatawa rin siya. Mag-
uumpisa na naman ang sigawan sa sabungan ngunit makikita sa kilos ni Kulas na kailanman ay hindi na
siya magsasabong.)

72 | P a g e
Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon? (Eddie Romero, 1976)

Kulas is a slow-witted young man. People take advantage of his naivety. He lost his house, wealth, and
ladylove. But, one thing they cannot take away from him is his Filipino identity.

Who/what is a Filipino? The film’s greatness lies in its exploration of the Filipino question.

Kulas gets confounded with the different definitions of ‘Filipino.’ It originally referred to a person of pure
Spanish descent born in the country. However, the term evolved. A travelling Chinese merchant born in
the country is also called a Filipino. Being born in the country seems to be the main criteria.

Kind-hearted and gullible Kulas search out for a boy named Bindoy and reunites the kid with his grateful
father, a friar named Padre Gil Corcuera. The latter endows Kulas with a house and a huge sum of
money. He gets transformed from a lowly indio into a rich senyorito. He asks a Visayan lawyer named
Tibor if he can rightly be called Filipino. Tibor says that in order to be called a Filipino, one must be a
worthy and valuable person.

The young man finds a worthy cause to live for. He is disgusted at so-called Filipinos collaborating with
the enemies, the Spaniards and the Americans. Just like Jose Rizal, who was heartbroken, he abandons his
love for Diding and shifts his love to his country.

Kulas, in the end, realizes that a Filipino is someone who loves or will love the then newly created
Filipino nation. It is not enough to be born in the country in order to be called a Filipino. One should also
love his country through actions. Kulas approaches a group of orphans and reminds them to call
themselves Filipinos. He then hikes off to join the insurrectos.

This great film started strong, puttered somewhat in the middle, and then bounced back in the last act.
The script by Romero and Roy Iglesias oozed with spot-on humor as seen in Kulas’ transaction with a
potential property buyer and his second encounter with a notorious jailbird.

A raw and fresh Christopher de Leon is a joy to watch. He is still decades away from becoming the
hammy actor that he is today. His Kulas Ocampo is no different from Forrest Gump. Both characters find
themselves caught up in their respective countries’ upheavals. De Leon manages to show his character’s
naivety without resorting to stuttering and doing acts of stupidity.

73 | P a g e