Home Reading Assignment PDF

PHILIPPINE SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL – MAIN CAMPUS
Agham Road, Diliman, Quezon City
Collection of Short Stories

Zita (Arturo Rotor) - 1
Footnote to Youth (Jose Garcia Villa) - 11
The Bread of Salt (N.V.M. Gonzalez) - 18
My Father Goes to Court (Carlos Bulosan) - 25
Wedding Dance (Amador Daguio) - 31
Rice (Manuel Arguilla) - 39
ENGLISH I | Home Reading Assignment: Pre-war Philippine Literature in English
ZITA (1930)
Arturo B. Rotor
TURONG brought him from Pauambang in his small sailboat, for the coastwise steamer did not
stop at any little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms. It was almost midday; they had been standing
in that white glare where the tiniest pebble and fluted conch had become points of light, piercing-bright
-- the municipal president, the parish priest, Don Eliodoro who owned almost all the coconuts, the herb
doctor, the village character. Their mild surprise over when he spoke in their native dialect, they looked
at him more closely and his easy manner did not deceive them. His head was uncovered and he had a
way of bringing the back of his hand to his brow or mouth; they read behind that too, it was not a gesture
of protection. "An exile has come to Anayat… and he is so young, so young." So young and lonely and
sufficient unto himself. There was no mistaking the stamp of a strong decision on that brow, the brow
of those who have to be cold and haughty, those shoulders stooped slightly, less from the burden that
they bore than from a carefully cultivated air of unconcern; no common school-teacher could dress so
carelessly and not appear shoddy; no one could assume the detached, bored, congenial manner in a
small village and not excite offense.
They had prepared a room for him in Don Eliodoro's house so that he would not have to walk
far to school every morning, but he gave nothing more than a glance at the big stone building with its
Spanish azotea, its arched doorways, its flagged courtyard. He chose instead Turong's home, a shaky
hut near the sea. Was the sea rough and dangerous at times? He did not mind it. Was the place far
from the church and the schoolhouse? The walk would do him good. Would he not feel lonely with
nobody but an illiterate fisherman for a companion? He was used to living alone. And they let him do
as he wanted, for the old men knew that it was not so much the nearness of the sea that he desired as
its silence so that he might tell it secrets he could not tell anyone else.
They thought of nobody but him; they talked about him in the barber shop, in the cockpit, in the
sari-sari store, the way he walked, the way he looked at you, his unruly hair. They dressed him in purple
and linen, in myth and mystery, put him astride a black stallion, at the wheel of a blue automobile. Mr.
Reteche? Mr. Reteche! The name suggested the fantasy and the glitter of a place and people they
never would see; he was the scion of a powerful family, a poet and artist, a prince.
That night, Don Eliodoro had the story from his daughter of his first day in the classroom; she
perched wide-eyed, low-voiced, short of breath on his arm.
"He strode into the room, very tall and serious and polite, stood in front of us and looked at us
all over and yet did not seem to see us.
"'Good morning, teacher,' we said timidly.”
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"He bowed as if we were his equals. He asked for the list of our names and as he read off each
one we looked at him long. When he came to my name, Father, the most surprising thing happened.
He started pronouncing it and then he stopped as if he had forgotten something and just stared and
stared at the paper in his hand. I heard my name repeated three times through his half-closed lips, 'Zita.
Zita. Zita.'”
"'Yes sir, I am Zita.'”
"He looked at me uncomprehendingly, inarticulate, and it seemed to me, Father, it actually

seemed that he was begging me to tell him that that was not my name, that I was deceiving him. He
looked so miserable and sick I felt like sinking down or running away.”
"'Zita is not your name; it is just a pet name, no?'”
"'My father has always called me that, sir.'”
"'It can't be; maybe it is Pacita or Luisa or--'”
"His voice was scarcely above a whisper, Father, and all the while he looked at me begging,
begging. I shook my head determinedly. My answer must have angered him. He must have thought I
was very hard-headed, for he said, 'A thousand miles, Mother of Mercy… it is not possible.' He kept on
looking at me; he was hurt perhaps that he should have such a stubborn pupil. But I am not really so,
am I, Father?"
"Yes, you are, my dear. But you must try to please him, he is a gentleman; he comes from the
City. I was thinking… Private lessons, perhaps, if he won't ask too much." Don Eliodoro had his dreams
and she was his only daughter.
Turong had his own story to tell in the barber shop that night, a story as vividly etched as the
lone coconut palm in front of the shop that shot up straight into the darkness of the night, as vaguely
disturbing as the secrets that the sea whispered into the night.
"He did not sleep a wink, I am sure of it. When I came from the market the stars were already
out and I saw that he had not touched the food I had prepared. I asked him to eat and he said he was
not hungry. He sat by the window that faces the sea and just looked out hour after hour. I woke up three
times during the night and saw that he had not so much as changed his position. I thought once that he
was asleep and came near, but he motioned me away. When I awoke at dawn to prepare the nets, he
was still there."
"Maybe -- he wants to go home already." They looked up with concern.
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"He is sick. You remember Father Fernando? He had a way of looking like that, into space,
seeing nobody, just before he died."
Every month there was a letter that came for him, sometimes two or three large, blue envelopes
with a gold design in the upper left hand comer, and addressed in broad, angular, sweeping handwriting.
One time Turong brought one of them to him in the classroom. The students were busy writing a
composition on a subject that he had given them, "The Things That I Love Most." Carelessly he had
opened the letter, carelessly read it, and carelessly tossed it aside. Zita was all aflutter when the
students handed in their work for he had promised that he would read aloud the best. He went over the
pile two times, and once again, absently, a deep frown on his brow, as if he were displeased with their
works. Then he stopped and picked up one. Her heart sank when she saw that it was not hers, she
hardly heard him reading:
"I did not know that the poise and pomp of wealth dies by itself, so quickly. Moths are not
supposed to know; they only come to the light. And the light was decorated with diamonds and pearls,
exquisitely perfumed, exquisitely tinted, it looked so inviting, there was no resisting it. Moths are not
supposed to know; one does not even know one is a moth until one's wings are burned."
It was incomprehensible, no beginning, no end. It did not have unity, coherence, emphasis.
Why did he choose that one?
What did he see in it? And she had worked so hard, she had wanted to please, she had written
about the flowers that she loved most. Who could have written what he had read aloud? She did not
know that any of her classmates could write so, use such words, sentences, use a blue paper to write
her lessons on.
But then there was little in Mr. Reteche that the young people there could understand. Even his
words were so difficult, just like those dark and dismaying things that they came across in their readers,
which took them hour after hour in the dictionary. She had learned like a good student to pick out the
words she did not recognize, writing them down as she heard them, but it was a thankless task. She
had a whole notebook filled now, two columns to each page:
esurient… greedy.
amaranth… a flower that never fades.
peacock… a large bird with lovely gold and green feathers.
mirash …
The last word was not in the dictionary.
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And what did such things as original sin, selfishness, insatiable, actress of a thousand faces
mean, and who were Sirse, Lorelay, other names she could not find anywhere? She meant to ask him
someday, someday when his eyes were kinder, someday he did not bite his hands so fiercely.
He never went to church, but then, that always went with learning and education, did it not?
One night Bue saw him coming out of the dim doorway. He watched again and the following night he
saw him again. They would not believe it, they must see it with their own eyes and so they came. He
did not go in every night, but he could be seen at the most unusual hours, sometimes at dusk,
sometimes at dawn, once when it was storming and the lightning etched ragged paths from heaven to
earth. Sometimes he stayed for a few minutes, sometimes he came twice or thrice in one evening. They
reported it to Father Cesareo but it seemed that he already knew. "Let a peaceful man alone in his
prayers." The answer had surprised them.
The sky hangs over Anayat, in the middle of the Anayat Sea, like an inverted wineglass, a glass
whose wine had been spilled, a purple wine of which Anayat was the last precious drop. For that is
Anayat in the crepuscule, purple and mellow, sparkling and warm and effulgent when there is a moon,
cool and heady and sensuous when there is no moon. One may drink of it and forget what lies beyond
a thousand miles, beyond a thousand years; one may sip it at the top of a jagged cliff, nearer peace,
nearer God. Where one could see the ocean dashing against the rocks in eternal frustration, more
moving, more terrible than man's; or touch it to his lips in the lush shadows of the dama de noche, its
blossoms iridescent like a thousand fireflies, its bouquets the fragrance of flowers that know no fading.
Zita sat by her open window, half asleep, half dreaming. Francisco B. Reteche; what a name.
What could his nickname be? Paking, Frank, Pa… The night lay silent and expectant, a fairy princess
waiting for the whispered words of a lover. She was not a bit sleepy; already she had counted three
stars that had fallen to earth, one almost directly into that bush of dama de noche at their garden gate,
where it had lighted the lamps of a thousand fireflies. He was not so forbidding now, he spoke less
frequently to himself, more frequently to her; his eyes were still unseeing, but now they rested on her.
She loved to remember those moments she had caught him looking when he thought she did not know.
The knowledge came keenly, bitingly, like the sea breeze at dawn, like the prick of the rose's thorn, or-
- yes, like the purple liquid that her father gave the visitors during pintakasi which made them red and
noisy. She had stolen a few drops one day, because she wanted to know, to taste, and that little sip
had made her head whirl.
Suddenly she stiffened; a shadow had emerged from the shrubs and had been lost in the other
shadows. Her pulses raced, she strained forward. Was she dreaming? Who was it? A lost soul, an
unvoiced thought, the shadow of a shadow, the prince from his tryst with the fairy princess? What were
the words that he whispered to her?
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They who have been young once say that only youth can make youth forget itself; that life is a
river bed. The water passes on it, sometimes it encounters obstacles and cannot go on, sometimes it
flows unencumbered with a song in every bubble and ripple, but always it goes forward. When its way
is obstructed it burrows deeply or swerves aside and leaves its impression, and whether the impress
will be shallow and transient, or deep and searing, only God determines. The people remembered the
day when he went up Don Eliodoro's house, the light of a great decision in his eyes, and finally accepted
the father's request that he teach his daughter "to be a lady."
"We are going to the City soon, after the next harvest perhaps; I want her not to feel like a
provinciana when we get there."
They remembered the time when his walks by the seashore became less frequent at night, less
solitary, for now on afternoons, he would draw the whole crowd of village boys from their game of
leapfrog or patintero and bring them with him. And they would go home hours after sunset with the
wonderful things that Mr. Reteche had told them, why the sea is green, the sky blue, what one who is
strong and fearless might find at that exact place where the sky met the sea. They would be flushed
and happy and bright-eyed, for he could stand on his head longer than any of them, catch more crabs,
send a pebble skimming over the breast of Anayat Bay farthest.
Turong still remembered, though dimly, those ominous, terrifying nights when he had got up
cold and trembling to listen to the aching groan of the bamboo floor, as somebody in the other room
restlessly paced to and fro. And his pupils now remembered those mornings he received their flowers,
the camia which had fainted away at her own fragrance, the kampupot, with the night dew still trembling
in its heart, received them with a smile and forgot the lessons of the day and tell them all about those
princesses and fairies who dwelt in flowers; why the dama de noche must have the darkness of the
night to bring out its fragrance; how the petals of the ilang-ilang, crushed and soaked in some liquid,
would one day touch the lips of some wondrous creature in some faraway land whose eyes were blue
and hair golden.
Those were days of surprise for Zita. Box after box came in Turong's sailboat and each time
they were the things that took the words from her lips. Silk as sheen and perishable as gossamer, or
heavy and shiny and tinted like the sunset sky, slippers strudded with bright stones which twinkled with
the least movement of her feet, a necklace of green, flat, polished stone, whose feel against her throat
sent a curious choking sensation there, perfume that she must touch her lips with. If only there would
always be such things in Turong's sailboat, and none of those horrid blue envelopes that he always
brought. And yet--the Virgin have pity on her selfish soul--suppose one day Turong brought not only
those letters but the writer as well? She shuddered, not because she feared it but because she knew it
would be.
"Why are these dresses so tight fitting?" Her father wanted to know.
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"In society, women use clothes to reveal, not to hide." Was that a sneer or a smile in his eyes?
The gown showed her arms and shoulders and she had never known how round and fair they were,
how they could express so many things.
"Why do these dresses have such bright colors?"
"Because the peacock has bright feathers."
"They paint their lips…"
"So that they can smile when they do not want to."
"And their eyelashes are long."
"To hide deception."
He was not pleased like her father; she saw it, he had turned his face toward the window. And
as she came nearer, swaying like a lily atop its stalk she heard the harsh, muttered words:
"One would think she'd feel shy or uncomfortable, but no… oh no… not a bit… all alike… comes
naturally."
There were books to read; pictures, names to learn; lessons in everything; how to polish the
nails, how to use a fan, even how to walk. How did these days come? What did they do? What does
one do when one is so happy, so breathless? Sometimes they were a memory, sometimes a dream.
"Look, Zita, a society girl does not smile so openly; her eyes don't seek one's so--that reveals
your true feelings."
"But if I am glad and happy and I want to show it?"
"Don't. If you must show it by smiling, let your eyes be mocking; if you would invite with your
eyes, repulse with your lips."
That was a memory.
She was in a great drawing room whose floor was so polished it reflected the myriad red and
green and blue fights above, the arches of flowers and ribbons and streamers. All the great names of
the capital were there, stately ladies in wonderful gowns who walked so, waved their fans so, who said
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one thing with their eyes and another with their lips. And she was among them and every young and
good-looking man wanted to dance with her. They were all so clever and charming but she answered:
"Please, I am tired." For beyond them she had seen him alone, he whose eyes were dark and brooding
and disapproving and she was waiting for him to take her.
That was a dream. Sometimes though, she could not tell so easily which was the dream and
which the memory.
If only those letters would not bother him now, he might be happy and at peace. True he never
answered them, but every time Turong brought him one, he would still become thoughtful and
distracted. Like that time he was teaching her a dance, a Spanish dance, he said, and had told her to
dress accordingly. Her heavy hair hung in a big, carelessly tied knot that always threatened to come
loose but never did; its dark, deep shadows showing off in startling vividness how red a rose can be,
how like velvet its petals. Her earrings--two circlets of precious stones, red like the pigeon's blood--
almost touched her shoulders. The heavy Spanish shawl gave her the most trouble--she had nothing
to help her but some pictures and magazines--she could not put it on just as she wanted. Like this, it
revealed her shoulder too much; that way, it hampered the free movement of the legs. But she had
done her best; for hours she had stood before her mirror and for hours it had told her that she was
beautiful, that red lips and tragic eyes were becoming to her.
She'd never forget that look on his face when she came out. It was not surprise, joy, admiration.
It was as if he saw somebody there whom he was expecting, for whom he had waited, prayed.
"Zita!" It was a cry of recognition.
She blushed even under her rouge when he took her in his arms and taught her to step this
way, glide so, turn about; she looked half questioningly at her father for disapproval, but she saw that
there was nothing there but admiration too. Mr. Reteche seemed so serious and so intent that she
should learn quickly; but he did not deceive her, for once she happened to lean close and she felt how
wildly his heart was beating. It frightened her and she drew away, but when she saw how unconcerned
he seemed, as if he did not even know that she was in his arms, she smiled knowingly and drew close
again. Dreamily she closed her eyes and dimly wondered if his were shut too, whether he was thinking
the same thoughts, breathing the same prayer.
Turong came up and after his respectful "Good evening" he handed an envelope to the school
teacher. It was large and blue and had a gold design in one comer; the handwriting was broad, angular,
sweeping.
"Thank you, Turong." His voice was drawling, heavy, the voice of one who has just awakened.
With one movement he tore the unopened envelope slowly, unconsciously, it seemed to her, to pieces.
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"I thought I had forgotten," he murmured dully.
That changed the whole evening. His eyes lost their sparkle, his gaze wandered from time to
time. Something powerful and dark had come between them, something which shut out the light,
brought in a chill. The tears came to her eyes for she felt utterly powerless. When her sight cleared she
saw that he was sitting down and trying to piece the letter together.
"Why do you tear up a letter if you must put it together again?" she asked rebelliously.
He looked at her kindly. "Someday, Zita, you will do it too, and then you will understand."
One day Turong came from Pauambang and this time he brought a stranger. They knew at
once that he came from where the teacher came--his clothes, his features, his politeness--and that he
had come for the teacher. This one did not speak their dialect, and as he was led through the dusty,
crooked streets, he kept forever wiping his face, gazing at the wobbly, thatched huts and muttering
short, vehement phrases to himself. Zita heard his knock before Mr. Reteche did and she knew what
he had come for. She must have been as pale as her teacher, as shaken, as rebellious. And yet the
stranger was so cordial; there was nothing but gladness in his greeting, gladness at meeting an old
friend. How strong he was; even at that moment he did not forget himself, but turned to his class and
dismissed them for the day.
The door was thick and she did not dare lean against the jamb too much, so sometimes their
voices floated away before they reached her.
"…like children… making yourselves… so unhappy."
"…happiness? Her idea of happiness…"
Mr. Reteche's voice was more low-pitched, hoarse, so that it didn't carry at all. She shuddered
as he laughed, it was that way when he first came.
"She's been… did not mean… understand."
"…learning to forget…"
There were periods when they both became excited and talked fast and hard; she heard
somebody's restless pacing, somebody sitting down heavily, the sharp intake of breaths.
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"I never realized what she meant to me until I began trying to seek from others what she would
not give me."
She knew what was coming now, knew it before the stranger asked the question:
"Tomorrow?"
She fled; she could not wait for the answer.
He did not sleep that night, she knew he did not, she told herself fiercely. And it was not only
his preparations that kept him awake, she knew it, she knew it. With the first flicker of light she ran to
her mirror. She must not show her feeling, it was not in good form, she must manage somehow. If her
lips quivered, her eyes must smile, if in her eyes there were tears… She heard her father go out, but
she did not go; although she knew his purpose, she had more important things to do. Little boys came
up to the house and she wiped away their tears and told them that he was coming back, coming back,
soon, soon.
The minutes flew, she was almost done now; her lips were red and her eyebrows penciled; the
crimson shawl thrown over her shoulders just right. Everything must be like that day he had first seen
her in a Spanish dress. Still he did not come, he must be bidding farewell now to Father Cesareo; now
he was in Doña Ramona's house; now he was shaking the barber's hand. He would soon be through
and come to her house. She glanced at the mirror and decided that her lips were not red enough; she
put on more color. The rose in her hair had too long a stem; she tried to trim it with her fingers and a
thorn dug deeply into her flesh.
Who knows? Perhaps they would soon meet again in the city; she wondered if she could not
wheedle her father into going earlier. But she must know now what were the words he had wanted to
whisper that night under the dama de noche, what he had wanted to say that day he held her in his
arms; other things, questions whose answers she knew. She smiled. How well she knew them!
The big house was silent as death; the little village seemed deserted, everybody had gone to
the seashore. Again she looked at the mirror. She was too pale, she must put on more rouge. She tried
to keep from counting the minutes, the seconds, from getting up and pacing. But she was getting chilly
and she must do it to keep warm.
The steps creaked. She bit her lips to stifle a wild cry there. The door opened.
"Turong!"
"Mr. Reteche bade me give you this. He said you would understand."
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In one bound she had reached the open window. But dimly, for the sun was too bright, or was her sight
failing?--she saw a blur of white moving out to sea, then disappearing behind a point of land so that she
could no longer follow it; and then, clearly against a horizon suddenly drawn out of perspective, "Mr.
Reteche," tall, lean, brooding, looking at her with eyes that told her somebody had hurt him. It was like
that when he first came, and now he was gone. The tears came freely now. What matter, what matter?
There was nobody to see and criticize her breeding. They came down unchecked and when she tried
to brush them off with her hand, the color came away too from her cheeks, leaving them bloodless,
cold. Sometimes they got into her mouth and they tasted bitter.
Her hands worked convulsively; there was a sound of tearing paper, once, twice. She became
suddenly aware of what she had done when she looked at the pieces, wet and brightly stained with
uneven streaks of red. Slowly, painfully, she tried to put the pieces together and as she did so a sob
escaped deep from her breast--a great understanding had come to her.
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FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH (1930)

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 anymore.
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 and the carabao began to eat. Dodong
looked at it without interest.
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.
11 | P a g e
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 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.
12 | P a g e
“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.
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 dreams…
13 | P a g e
--
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.”
14 | P a g e
“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.
“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.
15 | P a g e
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 wanted
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.
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.”
16 | P a g e
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.
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THE BREAD OF SALT (1934)

Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez
Usually I was in bed by ten and up by five and thus was ready for one more day of my fourteenth
year. Unless Grandmother had forgotten, the fifteen centavos for the baker down Progreso Street – and
how l enjoyed jingling those coins in my pocket!- would be in the empty fruit jar in the cupboard. I would
remember then that rolls were what Grandmother wanted because recently she had lost three molars.
For young people like my cousins and myself, she had always said that the kind called pan de sal ought
to be quite all right.
The bread of salt! How did it get that name? From where did its flavor come, through what
secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from the counter by early buyers. I would
push my way into the shop so that I might watch the men who, stripped to the waist worked their long
flat wooden spades in and out of the glowing maw of the oven. Why did the bread come nut-brown and
the size of my little fist? And why did it have a pair of lips convulsed into a painful frown? In the half light
of the street and hurrying, the paper bag pressed to my chest I felt my curiosity a little gratified by the
oven-fresh warmth of the bread I was proudly bringing home for breakfast.
Well l knew how Grandmother would not mind if I nibbled away at one piece; perhaps, l might
even eat two, to be charged later against my share at the table. But that would be betraying a trust and
so, indeed, I kept my purchase intact. To guard it from harm, I watched my steps and avoided the dark
street comers.
For my reward, I had only to look in the direction of the sea wall and the fifty yards or so of
riverbed beyond it, where an old Spaniard’s house stood. At low tide, when the bed was dry and the
rocks glinted with broken bottles, the stone fence of the Spaniard’s compound set off the house as if it
were a castle. Sunrise brought a wash of silver upon the roofs of the laundry and garden sheds which
had been built low and close to the fence. On dull mornings the light dripped from the bamboo screen
which covered the veranda and hung some four or five yards from the ground. Unless it was August
when the damp, northeast monsoon had to be kept away from the rooms, three servants raised the
screen promptly at six-thirty until it was completely hidden under the veranda eaves. From the sound
of the pulleys, l knew it was time to set out for school.
It was in his service, as a coconut plantation overseer, that Grandfather had spent the last thirty
years of his life. Grandmother had been widowed three years now. I often wondered whether I was
being depended upon to spend the years ahead in the service of this great house. One day I learned
that Aida, a classmate in high school, was the old Spaniard’s niece. All my doubts disappeared. It was
as if, before his death. Grandfather had spoken to me about her. concealing the seriousness of the
matter by putting it over as a joke, if now l kept true to the virtues, she would step out of her bedroom
18 | P a g e
ostensibly to say Good Morning to her uncle. Her real purpose. I knew, was to reveal thus her assent
to my desire.
--
On quiet mornings I imagined the patter of her shoes upon the wooden veranda floor as a
further sign, and I would hurry off to school, taking the route she had fixed for me past the post office,
the town plaza and the church, the health center east of the plaza, and at last the school grounds. I
asked myself whether I would try to walk with her and decided it would be the height of rudeness.
Enough that in her blue skirt and white middy she would be half a block ahead and, from that distance,
perhaps throw a glance in my direction, to bestow upon my heart a deserved and abundant blessing. I
believed it was but right that, in some such way as this, her mission in my life was disguised.
Her name, I was to learn many years later, was a convenient mnemonic for the qualities to
which argument might aspire. But in those days it was a living voice. “Oh that you might be worthy of
uttering me,” it said. And how l endeavored to build my body so that l might live long to honor her. With
every victory at singles at the handball court the game was then the craze at school -I could feel my
body glow in the sun as though it had instantly been cast in bronze. I guarded my mind and did not let
my wits go astray. In class I would not allow a lesson to pass unmastered. Our English teacher could
put no question before us that did not have a ready answer in my head. One day he read Robert Louis
Stevenson’s The Sire de Maletroits Door, and we were so enthralled that our breaths trembled. I knew
then that somewhere, sometime in the not too improbable future, a benign old man with a lantern in his
hand would also detain me in a secret room, and there daybreak would find me thrilled by the sudden
certainty that I had won Aida’s hand.
It was perhaps on my violin that her name wrought such a tender spell. Maestro Antonino
remarked the dexterity of my stubby fingers. Quickly l raced through Alard-until l had all but committed
two thirds of the book to memory. My short, brown arm learned at last to draw the bow with grace.
Sometimes, when practising my scales in the early evening. I wondered if the sea wind carrying the
straggling notes across the pebbled river did not transform them into Schubert’s “Serenade.”
At last Mr. Custodio, who was in charge of our school orchestra, became aware of my progress.
He moved me from second to first violin. During the Thanksgiving Day program he bade me render a
number, complete with pizzicati and harmonics.
“Another Vallejo! Our own Albert Spalding!” I heard from the front row.
Aida, I thought, would be in the audience. I looked around quickly but could not see her. As I
retired to my place in the orchestra I heard Pete Saez, the trombone player, call my name.
19 | P a g e
“You must join my band,” he said. “Look, well have many engagements soon, it’ll be vacation
time.”
Pete pressed my arm. He had for some time now been asking me to join the Minviluz Orchestra,
his private band. All I had been able to tell him was that l had my schoolwork to mind. He was twenty-
two. I was perhaps too young to be going around with him. He earned his school fees and supported
his mother hiring out his band at least three or four times a month. He now said:
“Tomorrow we play at the funeral of a Chinese-four to six in the afternoon; in the evening, judge
Roldan’s silver wedding anniversary; Sunday, the municipal dance.”
My head began to whirl. On the stage, in front of us, the principal had begun a speech about
America. Nothing he could say about the Pilgrim Fathers and the American custom of feasting on turkey
seemed interesting. I thought of the money I would earn. For several days now l had but one wish, to
buy a box of linen stationery. At night when the house was quiet I would fill the sheets with words that
would tell Aida how much l adored her. One of these mornings, perhaps before school closed for the
holidays, I would borrow her algebra book and there, upon a good pageful of equations, there l would
slip my message, tenderly pressing the leaves of the book. She would perhaps never write back. Neither
by post nor by hand would a reply reach me. But no matter, it would be a silence full of voices.
That night l dreamed l had returned from a tour of the world’s music centers; the newspapers
of Manila had been generous with praise. I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine. A writer had
described how, many years ago, I used to trudge the streets of Buenavista with my violin in a battered
black cardboard case. In New York, he reported, a millionaire had offered me a Stradivarius violin, with
a card that bore the inscription: “In admiration of a genius your own people must surely be proud of.” I
dreamed l spent a weekend at the millionaire’s country house by the Hudson. A young girl in a blue skirt
and white middy clapped her lily-white hands and, her voice trembling, cried “Bravo!”
What people now observed at home was the diligence with which l attended to my violin
lessons. My aunt, who had come from the farm to join her children for the holidays, brought with her a
maidservant, and to the poor girl was given the chore of taking the money to the baker’s for rolls and pan
de sal. I realized at once that it would be no longer becoming on my part to make these morning trips
to the baker’s. I could not thank my aunt enough.
I began to chafe on being given other errands. Suspecting my violin to be the excuse, my aunt
remarked:
“What do you want to be a musician for? At parties, musicians always eat last.”
20 | P a g e
Perhaps, I said to myself, she was thinking of a pack of dogs scrambling for scraps tossed over
the fence by some careless kitchen maid. She was the sort you could depend on to say such vulgar
things. For that reason, I thought she ought not to be taken seriously at all.
But the remark hurt me. Although Grandmother had counseled me kindly to mind my work at
school, l went again and again to Pete Saez’s house for rehearsals.
She had demanded that l deposit with her my earnings; I had felt too weak to refuse. Secretly,
I counted the money and decided not to ask for it until l had enough with which to buy a brooch. Why
this time I wanted to give Aida a brooch, I didn’t know. But I had set my heart on it. I searched the
downtown shops. The Chinese clerks, seeing me so young, were annoyed when I inquired about prices.
At last the Christmas season began. I had not counted on Aida’s leaving home, and
remembering that her parents lived in Badajoz, my torment was almost unbearable. Not once had l tried
to tell her of my love. My letters had remained unwritten, and the algebra book unborrowed. There was
still the brooch to find, but I could not decide on the sort of brooch l really wanted. And the money, in
any case, was in Grandmothers purse, which smelled of Tiger Balm.” I grew somewhat feverish as our
class Christmas program drew near. Finally it came; it was a warm December afternoon. I decided to
leave the room when our English teacher announced that members of the class might exchange gifts.
I felt fortunate; Pete was at the door, beckoning to me. We walked out to the porch where, Pete said,
he would tell me a secret.
It was about an asalto the next Sunday which the Buenavista Women’s Club wished to give
Don Esteban’s daughters, Josefina and Alicia, who were arriving on the morning steamer from Manila.
The spinsters were much loved by the ladies. Years ago, when they were younger, these ladies studied
solfeggio with Josefina and the piano and harp with Alicia. As Pete told me all this, his lips ash-gray
from practising all morning on his trombone, I saw in my mind the sisters in their silk dresses, shuffling
off to church for the evening benediction. They were very devout, and the Buenavista ladies admired
that. I had almost forgotten that they were twins and, despite their age, often dressed alike. In low-
bosomed voile bodices and white summer hats, l remembered, the pair had attended Grandfather’s
funeral, at old Don Esteban’s behest I wondered how successful they had been in Manila during the
past three years in the matter of finding suitable husbands.
“This party will be a complete surprise,” Pete said, looking around the porch as if to swear me
to secrecy. They’ve hired our band.”
I joined my classmates in the room, greeting everyone with a Merry Christmas jollier than that
of the others. When I saw Aida in one comer unwrapping something two girls had given her. I found the
boldness to greet her also.
21 | P a g e
“Merry Christmas,” I said in English, as a hairbrush and a powder case emerged from the fancy
wrapping, it seemed to me rather apt that such gifts went to her. Already several girls were gathered
around Aida. Their eyes glowed with envy, it seemed to me, for those fair cheeks and the bobbed dark-
brown hair which lineage had denied them.
I was too dumbstruck by my own meanness to hear exactly what Aida said in answer to my
greeting. But I recovered shortly and asked:
“Will you be away during the vacation?”
“No, I’ll be staying here,” she said. When she added that her cousins were arriving and that a
big party in their honor was being planned, l remarked:
“So you know all about it?” I felt I had to explain that the party was meant to be a surprise,
an asalto.
And now it would be nothing of the kind, really. The women’s club matrons would hustle about,
disguising their scurrying around for cakes and candies as for some baptismal party or other. In the
end, the Rivas sisters would outdo them. Boxes of meringues, bonbons, ladyfingers, and cinnamon
buns that only the Swiss bakers in Manila could make were perhaps coming on the boat with them. I
imagined a table glimmering with long-stemmed punch glasses; enthroned in that array would be a
huge brick-red bowl of gleaming china with golden flowers around the brim. The local matrons, however
hard they tried, however sincere their efforts, were bound to fail in their aspiration to rise to the level of
Don Esteban’s daughters. Perhaps, l thought, Aida knew all this. And that I should share in a
foreknowledge of the matrons’ hopes was a matter beyond love. Aida and l could laugh together with
the gods.
At seven, on the appointed evening, our small band gathered quietly at the gate of Don
Esteban’s house, and when the ladies arrived in their heavy shawls and trim panuelo, twittering with
excitement, we were commanded to play the Poet and Peasant overture. As Pete directed the band,
his eyes glowed with pride for his having been part of the big event. The multicolored lights that the old
Spaniard’s gardeners had strung along the vine-covered fence were switched on, and the women
remarked that Don Esteban’s daughters might have made some preparations after all. Pete hid his face
from the glare. If the women felt let down, they did not show it.
The overture snuffled along to its climax while five men in white shirts bore huge boxes of goods
into the house. I recognized one of the bakers in spite of the uniform. A chorus of confused greetings,
and the women trooped into the house; and before we had settled in the sala to play “A Basket of
Roses,” the heavy damask curtains at the far end of the room were drawn and a long table richly spread
22 | P a g e
was revealed under the chandeliers. I remembered that, in our haste to be on hand for the asalto, Pete
and I had discouraged the members of the band from taking their suppers.
“You’ve done us a great honor!” Josefina, the more buxom of the twins, greeted the ladies.
“Oh, but you have not allowed us to take you by surprise!” the ladies demurred in a chorus.
There were sighs and further protestations amid a rustle of skirts and the glitter of earrings. I
saw Aida in a long, flowing white gown and wearing an arch of sampaguita flowers on her hair. At her
command, two servants brought out a gleaming harp from the music room. Only the slightest scraping
could be heard because the servants were barefoot As Aida directed them to place the instrument near
the seats we occupied, my heart leaped to my throat. Soon she was lost among the guests, and we
played The Dance of the Glowworms.” I kept my eyes closed and held for as long as l could her radiant
figure before me.
Alicia played on the harp and then, in answer to the deafening applause, she offered an encore.
Josefina sang afterward. Her voice, though a little husky, fetched enormous sighs. For her encore, she
gave The Last Rose of Summer”; and the song brought back snatches of the years gone by. Memories
of solfeggio lessons eddied about us, as if there were rustling leaves scattered all over the hall. Don
Esteban appeared. Earlier, he had greeted the crowd handsomely, twisting his mustache to hide a
natural shyness before talkative women. He stayed long enough to listen to the harp again, whispering
in his rapture: “Heavenly. Heavenly …”
By midnight, the merrymaking lagged. We played while the party gathered around the great
table at the end of the sala. My mind traveled across the seas to the distant cities l had dreamed about.
The sisters sailed among the ladies like two great white liners amid a fleet of tugboats in a bay. Someone
had thoughtfully remembered-and at last Pete Saez signaled to us to put our instruments away. We
walked in single file across the hall, led by one of the barefoot servants.
Behind us a couple of hoarse sopranos sang “La Paloma” to the accompaniment of the harp,
but I did not care to find out who they were. The sight of so much silver and china confused me. There
was more food before us than I had ever imagined. I searched in my mind for the names of the dishes;
but my ignorance appalled me. I wondered what had happened to the boxes of food that the Buenavista
ladies had sent up earlier. In a silver bowl was something, I discovered, that appeared like whole egg
yolks that had been dipped in honey and peppermint The seven of us in the orchestra were all of one
mind about the feast; and so. confident that I was with friends, l allowed my covetousness to have its
sway and not only stuffed my mouth with this and that confection but also wrapped up a quantity of
those egg-yolk things in several sheets of napkin paper. None of my companions had thought of doing
the same, and it was with some pride that I slipped the packet under my shirt. There. I knew, it would
not bulge.
23 | P a g e
“Have you eaten?”
I turned around. It was Aida. My bow tie seemed to tighten around my collar. I mumbled
something, l did not know what.
“If you wait a little while till they’ve gone, I’ll wrap up a big package for you,” she added.
I brought a handkerchief to my mouth. I might have honored her solicitude adequately and even
relieved myself of any embarrassment; I could not quite believe that she had seen me, and yet l was
sure that she knew what I had done, and I felt all ardor for her gone from me entirely.
I walked away to the nearest door, praying that the damask curtains might hide me in my
shame. The door gave on to the veranda, where once my love had trod on sunbeams. Outside it was
dark, and a faint wind was singing in the harbor.
With the napkin balled up in my hand. I flung out my arm to scatter the egg-yolk things in the
dark. I waited for the soft sound of their fall on the garden-shed roof. Instead, I heard a spatter in the
rising night-tide beyond the stone fence. Farther away glimmered the light from Grandmother’s window,
calling me home.
--
But the party broke up at one or thereabouts. We walked away with our instruments after the
matrons were done with their interminable good-byes. Then, to the tune of “Joy to the World.” we pulled
the Progreso Street shopkeepers out of their beds. The Chinese merchants were especially generous.
When Pete divided our collection under a street lamp, there was already a little glow of daybreak.
He walked with me part of the way home. We stopped at the baker’s when l told him that I
wanted to buy with my own money some bread to eat on the way to Grandmother’s house at the edge
of the sea wall. He laughed, thinking it strange that I should be hungry. We found ourselves alone at
the counter; and we watched the bakery assistants at work until our bodies grew warm from the oven
across the door, it was not quite five, and the bread was not yet ready.
24 | P a g e
MY FATHER GOES TO COURT (1947)

Carlos Bulosan
When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island
of Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so several
years afterwards we all lived in the town though he preferred living in the country. We had as a next
door neighbour a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While we
boys and girls played and sang in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. His
house was so tall that his children could look in the window of our house and watched us played, or
slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.
Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma
of the food was wafted down to us form the windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the
wonderful smells of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood outside
the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon or ham.
I can remember one afternoon when our neighbour’s servants roasted three chickens. The chickens
were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting odour.
We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted out to us.
Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one
by one, as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun and
bathed in the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes we wrestled
with one another in the house before we went to play.
We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other neighbours who
passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in laughter.
Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go in to the living room
and stand in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers and
making faces at himself, and then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.
There was plenty to make us laugh. There was, for instance, the day one of my brothers came
home and brought a small bundle under his arm, pretending that he brought something to eat, maybe
a leg of lamb or something as extravagant as that to make our mouths water. He rushed to mother and
through the bundle into her lap. We all stood around, watching mother undo the complicated strings.
Suddenly a black cat leaped out of the bundle and ran wildly around the house. Mother chased my
brother and beat him with her little fists, while the rest of us bent double, choking with laughter.
25 | P a g e
Another time one of my sisters suddenly started screaming in the middle of the night. Mother
reached her first and tried to calm her. My sister cried and groaned. When father lifted the lamp, my
sister stared at us with shame in her eyes.
“What is it?” other asked.
“I’m pregnant!” she cried.
“Don’t be a fool!” Father shouted.
“You’re only a child,” Mother said.
“I’m pregnant, I tell you!” she cried.
Father knelt by my sister. He put his hand on her belly and rubbed it gently. “How do you know
you are pregnant?” he asked.
“Feel it!” she cried.
We put our hands on her belly. There was something moving inside. Father was frightened.
Mother was shocked. “Who’s the man?” she asked.
“There’s no man,” my sister said.
“What is it then?” Father asked.
Suddenly my sister opened her blouse and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother fainted, father
dropped the lamp, the oil spilled on the floor, and my sister’s blanket caught fire. One of my brothers
laughed so hard he rolled on the floor.
When the fire was extinguished and Mother was revived, we turned to bed and tried to sleep,
but Father kept on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more. Mother got up again and lighted the
oil lamp; we rolled up the mats on the floor and began dancing about and laughing with all our might.
We made so much noise that all our neighbors except the rich family came into the yard and joined us
in loud, genuine laughter.
It was like that for years.
As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anemic, while we grew even more
robust and full of life. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich man started
26 | P a g e
to cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children
started to cough, one after the other. At night their coughing sounded like the barking of a herd of seals.
We hung outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what happened. We knew that they
were not sick from the lack of nourishment because they were still always frying something delicious to
eat.
One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He looked at my
sisters, who had grown fat in laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave,
which is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and ran through his house,
shutting all the windows.
From that day on, the windows of our neighbour’s house were always closed. The children did
not come out anymore. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight
the windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our
house.
One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The
rich man had filed a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and
asked him what it was about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the
spirit of his wealth and food.
When the day came for us to appear in court, father brushed his old Army uniform and borrowed
a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the centre
of the courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall.
Father kept jumping up from his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though we were defending
himself before an imaginary jury.
The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With
him was his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the room
and sat on a high chair. We stood in a hurry and then sat down again.
After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge looked at the Father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he
asked.
“I don’t need any lawyer, Judge,” he said.
“Proceed,” said the judge.
The rich man’s lawyer jumped up and pointed his finger at Father. “Do you or you do not agree
that you have been stealing the spirit of the complaint’s wealth and food?”
27 | P a g e
“I do not!” Father said.
“Do you or do you not agree that while the complaint’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of
lamb or young chicken breast you and your family hung outside his windows and inhaled the heavenly
spirit of the food?”
“I agree,” Father said.
“Do you or do you not agree that while the complaint and his children grew sickly and tubercular
you and your family became strong of limb and fair in complexion?”
“I agree,” Father said.
“How do you account for that?”
Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like
to see the children of complaint, Judge.”
“Bring in the children of the complainant.”
They came in shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands, they were so
amazed to see the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down
without looking up. They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.
Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he
said, “I should like to cross-examine the complainant.”
“Proceed.”
“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours
became morose and sad?” Father said.
“Yes.”
“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your food by hanging outside your windows when your
servants cooked it?” Father said.
“Yes.”
28 | P a g e
“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children
were sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo pieces
that he took out of his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw
in their small change.
“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a few minutes, Judge?” Father said.
“As you wish.”
“Thank you,” father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost
full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.
“Are you ready?” Father called.
“Proceed,” the judge said.
The sweet tinkle of the coins carried beautifully in the courtroom. The spectators turned their
faces toward the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complainant.
“Did you hear it?” he asked.
“Hear what?” the man asked.
“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you are paid,” Father said.
The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer
rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.
“Case dismissed,” he said.
Father strutted around the courtroom the judge even came down from his high chair to shake
hands with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”
“You like to hear my family laugh, Judge?” Father asked?
“Why not?”
29 | P a g e
“Did you hear that children?” father said.
My sisters started it. The rest of us followed them soon the spectators were laughing with us,
holding their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest of all.
30 | P a g e
WEDDING DANCE (1953)

Amador T. Daguio
Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the head-high
threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him across to the narrow
door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments
during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.
"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of falling
waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been hearing the
gangsas for she did not know how long. The sudden rush of the rich sounds when the door was opened
was like a gush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in
the darkness. But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to
the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the covered
smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine
on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside him,
because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not stir. "You
should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled
in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows
and lights upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.
"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and dance.
One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but
that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman
either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"
She did not answer him.

"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.
"Yes, I know," she said weakly.
31 | P a g e
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband
to you."
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against
you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests
is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too
late for both of us."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the
blanket more snugly around herself.
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have
sacrificed many chickens in my prayers.”
"Yes, I know."
"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace
because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because,
like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose
through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo
flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bamboo went up and
came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the
walls.
Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and
sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut
cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that
evening.
"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not
forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay,
although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting
beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best
wives in the whole village."
32 | P a g e
"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost
seemed to smile.
He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between
his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he hold
her face. The next day she would not be his anymore. She would go back to her parents. He let go of
her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split
bamboo floor.
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish.
I will build another house for Madulimay."
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old.
They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he
said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."
"I have no use for any field," she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder
where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."
"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."
"You know that I cannot."
"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know
that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning
of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the other side
of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross.
33 | P a g e
The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and
growled, resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now
from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of
rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to
the other side of the mountain.
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and kind. He
had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village people laugh.
How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their
hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of the
mountains five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were
heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles -- he was strong and for that she had lost
him.
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband," she cried.
"I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried.
"Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could
climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die."
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked naked
breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder;
her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything
but you. I'll have no other man."
"Then you'll always be fruitless."
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a
child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
She was silent.
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have
carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."
34 | P a g e
"If you fail -- if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No-
-no, I don't want you to fail."
"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish
from the life of our tribe."
The gangsas thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.
"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from
up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty
fields."
"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love
you and have nothing to give."
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao!
Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
"I am not in hurry."
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."
"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."
"It is all right with me."
He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"I know," she said.
He went to the door.
"Awiyao!"
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It
pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child?
What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the
35 | P a g e
communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter
and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway,
that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved
Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!"
He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept
their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug
out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay
on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the
firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his
neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.
Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The
moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other
houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was
absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and
grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground,
beautifully timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women
envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she
danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who
once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps
she could give her husband a child.
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not
right," she said.
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the
village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him away from
her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another
woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong
as the river?
36 | P a g e
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow
over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now, and it
seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The
man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and
beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming
call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run.
But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop.
Did anybody see her approach? She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The
flames of the bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out
in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to
break into the wedding feast.
Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new
clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the
trail above the village.
When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and
the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among
the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she could see from where she stood the blazing bonfire
at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still
rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they
seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their
gratitude for her sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.
Lumnay thought of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy
carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one day as she
was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she
had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take him long
to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of
the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded
her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would
be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them,
37 | P a g e
silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching
of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
38 | P a g e
RICE
Manuel Arguilla
Slowly, Pablo unhitched the carabao from the empty sled. He laid a palm on the back of the
tired animal; the thick, coarse-haired skin was warm and dry like sun-heated earth. The carabao laid by
quietly, licking with its dark colored tongue and beads of moisture that hung on the stiff hairs around its
nostrils. Dropping the yoke inside the sled, Pablo led the beast to a young tamarind tree almost as high
as nipa hut beside it. A bundle of fresh green zacate lay under the tree and the carabao began to feed
upon it hungrily. Pablo watched the animal a moment, half listening to its snuffling as it buried its mouth
in the sweet-smelling zacate. A sudden weakness came upon him and black spots whirled before his
eyes. He felt so hungry he could have gone down on his knees beside the carabao and chewed the
grass.
"Eat," he said in a thin, wheezy voice. "You can have all the grass you want." He slapped the
animal's smooth, fat rump, and turned to the house, his hand falling limpy to his side.
"Sebia," he called, raising his voice until it broke shrilly, "Sebia!"
No answering voice came from the hut. He bent low to pass under a length of hard bamboo
used as a storm prop, muttering to himself how careless of his wife it was to leave the house with the
door open. Toward the side where the prop slanted upward against the eaves, the hunt leaned sharply.
The whole frail structure in fact looked as though it might collapse at any moment. But this year it has
weathered four heavy storms without any greater damage than the sharp part inclined toward the west,
and that has been taken care of by the prop. As he looked at the house, Pablo did not see how squalid
it was. He saw the snapping nipa walls, the shutterless windows, the rotting floor of the shaky batalan,
the roofless shed over the low ladder, but there were familiar sights that had ceased to arouse his
interest.
He wiped his muddy feet on the grass that grew knee deep in the yard. He could hear the sound
of pounding in the neighboring hut and, going to the broken-down fence that separated the two houses,
he called out weakly, "Osiang, do you know where my wife and children have gone?"
"Eh?" What is it Mang Pablo?" The loud voice of a woman broke out the hut. “You are home
already? Where are your companions? Did you see my husband? Did you not come together? Where
is he? Where is the shameless [good-for-nothing] guy?"
"Andres is talking with some of the men at the house. Osiang, do you know where Sebia and
the children are?"
39 | P a g e
"Why doesn't he come home? He knows I have been waiting the whole day for the rice he is
bringing home! I am so hungry I cannot even drag my bones away from stove. What is he doing at the
house of Elis, that shameless, good-for-nothing guy?"
Pablo moved away from the fence, stumbling a little, for the long blades of grass got in his way.
"There is no rice, Osiang," he called back wheezily over his shoulder, but evidently the woman did not
hear him, for she went on talking: "Mang Pablo, how many cavanes of rice did you borrow? Sebia told
me you are to cook the rice as soon as you came home. She went with the children to the creek for
snails. I told them to be careful and throw away whatever they gather if they see a watchman coming.
God save our souls! What kind of life is this when we cannot even get snails from the fields? Pay a
multa of five cavanes for a handful of snails!" Osiang spat noisily through the slats of her floor. She had
not once shown her face. Pablo could hear her busily pounding in a little stone mortar.
"There is no rice, Osiang," he whispered. He felt too tired and weak to raise his voice.
He sat on the ladder and waited for his wife and children. He removed his rain-stained hat
of buri palm leaf, placing it atop one of the upright pieces of bamboo supporting the steps of the ladder.
Before him, as far as his uncertain gaze could make out, stretched the rice fields of the Hacienda
Consuelo. The afternoon sun brought out the gold in the green of the young rice plants. Harvest time
was two months off and in the house of Pablo there was no rice to eat...
That morning he and several other tenants had driven over with their sleds to the house of the
Senora to borrow grain. The sleds had been loaded with the cavanes of rice. Pablo remembered with
what willingness he had heaved the sacks to his sled -- five sacks -- the rice grains bursting through the
tiny holes of the juice covers. Then the announcement:
"Five sacks of rice borrowed today become ten at harvest time."
"We have always borrowed tersiohan - four cavanes become six," the man had repeated over
and over. Although they used to find even this arrangement difficult and burdensome, they now insisted
upon it eagerly.
"Tersiohan!" they had begged.
"Not takipan - that is too much. What will be left to us?"
"The storms have destroyed half of my rice plants..."
"I have six children to feed..."
40 | P a g e
"Five becomes ten," the encargado said, "Either that or you get no rice."
They had gathered around Elis. In the end every man had silently emptied his loaded sled and
prepared to leave.
The senora had come out, her cane beating a rapid tattoo on the polished floor of the porch;
she was an old woman with a chin that quivered as she spoke to them, lifeless false teeth clenched
tightly in her anger.
"Do you see those trucks?" she had finished, pointing to three big red trucks under the mango
tree in the yard. "If you do not take the rice today, tonight the trucks will carry every sack in sight to the
city. Then I hope you all starve you ungrateful beasts!"
It was Elis who drove away first. The others followed. The sacks of rice lay there in the yard in
the sun, piled across each other...
"Mang Pablo," loud voice of Osiang broke again, "are you cooking rice yet? If you have no fire,
come here under the window with some dry rice straw and I'll give you two of three coals from my stove.
I am boiling a pinchful of bran. It will do to check my hunger a bit while I wait for that shameless Andres."
"Wait, Osiang," Pablo said, and finding this mouth had gone dry, he stepped into the kitchen
and from the red clay jar dipped himself a glass of water. He came down with the sheaf of rice straw in
his fist. Passing the tamarind tree, he pulled down a lomb covered with new leaves, light green and
juicy. He filled his mouth with them and walked on to Osiang's hut, munching the sourish leaves.
"Here I am, Osiang," he said, but he had to strike the wall of the hut before he could attract the
attention of Osiang, who had gone back to her pounding and could not hear Pablo's weak, wheezy
voice.
She came to the window talking loudly. Her face, when she looked out, was a dark, earthy
brown with high, sharp cheekbones and small pig-like eyes. She had a wide mouth and large teeth
discolored from smoking tobacco. Short, graying hair fell straight on either side of her face, escaping
from the loose knot she had at the back of her head. A square necked white cotton dress exposed half
of her flat, bony chest.
"Goodness gracious!" she exclaimed, as one of the pieces of coal she was transferring from a
coconut shell to the straw in Pablo's hand rolled away.
41 | P a g e
Pablo looked up to her and wanted to tell her again that there was no rice, but he could not
bring himself to do it. Osiang went back to her pounding after all. He spat out the greenish liquid. It
reminded him of crushed caterpillars.
Smoke began to issue forth from the twisted straw in his hand. He was preparing to climb over
the intervening fence when he saw Andres coming down the path from the direction of Eli's house. The
man appeared excited. He gestured with his arm to Pablo to wait for him.
Pablo drew back the leg he had over the fence. The smoking sheaf of straw in his hand, he
went slowly to meet Andres. Osiang was still pounding in her little stone mortar. The sharp thudding of
the stone pestle against the mortar seemed to Pablo unnaturally loud. Andres had stopped beneath
the clump of bamboo some distance from his hut. He stood beside his carabao -- a much younger man
than Pablo -- dark, broad, squat. He wrote a printed camisa de chino, threadbare at the neck and
shoulders, the sleeves cut short above the elbows so that his arm hung out, thick-muscled awkward.
"Are you coming with us?" he asked Pablo, his voice granting in his throat as he strove a speak
quietly. There was in his small eyes a fierce, desperate look that Pablo found to meet.
"Don't be a fool, Andres," he said, coughing to clear his throat and trying to appear calm.
Andres breathed hard. He glared at the older man. But Pablo was looking down at the smoking
straw in his hand. He could feel the heat steadily increasing and he shifted his hold farther from the
burning end. Andres turned to his carabao with a curse. Pablo took a step forward until he stood close
to the younger man. "What can you do, Andres?" he said. "You say you will stop the trucks bearing the
rice to the city. That will be robbery.”
"Five cavanes paid back double is robbery too, only the robbers do not go to jail,"
"Perhaps there will be a killing..."
"We will take that chance."
"You will all be sent to bilibid."
"What will become of the wife and the children behind? Who will feed them?"
"They are starving right now under our very eyes."
"But you are here with them."
42 | P a g e
"That is worse."
The smoke from the burning rice straw got into Pablo's mouth and he was shaken a fit of
coughing. "What do you hope to gain by stealing a truck load of rice?" he asked when he recovered his
breath.
"Food," Andres said tersely.
"Is that all?"
"Food for our wives and children. Food for everybody. That is enough!"
"What will happen if the stolen rice is gone? Will you go on robbing?"
"It is not stealing. The rice is ours."
The straw in Pablo's hand burst into sudden flame. He threw it away. It fell in path, the fire dying
out as the straw scattered and burning coals rolled in all directions.
"I must get some rice straws," Pablo said in his thin, wheezy voice. "Osiang, your wife is waiting
for you."
As he turned to leave, Andres whispered hoarsely to him, "before the moon rises tonight, the
first truck will pass around the bend by the bridge..."
Pablo did not look back. He had seen his wife and three children approaching the hut from the
fields. They were accompanied by a man. He hurried to meet them. A moment later the loud voice of
Osiang burst out of the hut of Andres, but Pablo had no ear for other things just then. The man with his
wife was the field watchman.
"They were fishing in the fields," the watchman said stolidly. He was a thickset, dull-faced fellow
clad in khaki shirt and khaki trousers. "You will pay a fine of five cavanes."
"We are only gathering snails," Sebia protested, sobbing. She was wet. Her skirt clung to her
thin legs dripping water and slow trickle of mud.
"Five cavanes," the watchman said. "I came to tell you so that you will know--" speaking to
Pablo. He turned and strode away.
43 | P a g e
Pablo watched the broad, khaki covered back of the watchman. "I suppose he has to earn his
rice too," he said in his wheezy voice, feeling an immense weariness and hopelessness settle upon
him.
He looked at his wife, weeping noisily, and the children streak with dark-blue mud, the two older
boys thin like sticks, and the youngest a girl of six. Five cavanes of rice for a handful of snails! How
much is five cavanes to five hungry people?
"Itay, I'm hungry," Sabel, the girl said. The two boys looked up at him mutely. They were cold
and shivering and full of the knowledge of what had happened.
"I was just going to get fire from Osiang," Pablo heard himself say.
"You have not cooked the rice?" Sebia asked, moving wearily to the ladder.
"There is no rice."
Sebia listened in silence while he told her why there was no rice.
"Then what were you going to cook with the fire?" she asked finally.
"I don't know," he was forced to say. "I thought I would wait for you and the children."
"Where shall we ever get the rice to pay the multa?" Sebia asked irrelevantly. At their feet the
children began to whimper.
"Itay, I'm hungry," Sabel repeated.
Pablo took her up his arms. He carried her to the carabao and placed her on its broad, warm
back. The child stopped whimpering and began to kick with her legs. The carabao switched its tails, he
struck with its mud-encrusted tip across her face. She covered her eyes with both hands and burst out
crying. Pablo put her down, tried to pry away her hands from her eyes, but she refused to uncover them
and cried as though in great pain.
"Sebia,” Pablo called, and his wife hurried. He picked up a stout piece of wood lying nearby
and began to beat the carabao. He gripped the piece of wood with both hands and struck the dumb
beast with all his strength. His breath came in gasps. The carabao wheeled around the tamarind tree
until its rope was wound about the trunk and the animal could not make another turn. It stood there
snorting with pain and fear as the blows of Pablo rained down its back.
44 | P a g e
The piece of wood at last broke and Pablo was left with a short stub in his hands. He gazed at
it, sobbing with rage and weakness, then he ran to the hut, crying. "Give me my bolo, Sebia, give me
my bolo. We shall have food tonight." But Sebia held him and would not let him go until he quieted down
and sat with back against the wall of the hut. Sabel had stopped crying. The two boys sat by the cold
stove.
"God save me," Pablo said, brokenly. He brought up his knees and, dropping his face between
them, wept like a child.
Sebia lay down with Sabel and watched Pablo. She followed his movements wordlessly as he
got up and took his bolo from the wall and belted it around his waist. She did not rise to stop him. She
lay there on the floor and watched his husband put his hat and go down the low ladder. She listened
and learned he had not gone near the carabao.
Outside, the darkness had thickened. Pablo picked his way through the tall grass in the yard.
He stopped to look back in the house. In the twilight the hut did not seem to lean so much. He tightened
the belt of the heavy bolo around his waist. Pulling the old buri hat firmly over his head, he joined
Andres, who stood waiting by the broken-down fence. In silence they walked together to the house of
Elis.
45 | P a g e

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PHILIPPINE SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL – MAIN CAMPUS

Agham Road, Diliman, Quezon City

Collection of Short Stories

"'Good morning, teacher,' we said timidly.”

"'Yes sir, I am Zita.'”

"He looked at me uncomprehendingly, inarticulate, and it seemed to me, Father, it actually

"'Zita is not your name; it is just a pet name, no?'”

"'My father has always called me that, sir.'”

"'It can't be; maybe it is Pacita or Luisa or--'”

"Maybe -- he wants to go home already." They looked up with concern.

The last word was not in the dictionary.

"Why do these dresses have such bright colors?"

"Because the peacock has bright feathers."

"They paint their lips…"

"And their eyelashes are long."

"To hide deception."

"But if I am glad and happy and I want to show it?"

That was a memory.

"Zita!" It was a cry of recognition.

"I thought I had forgotten," he murmured dully.

"…like children… making yourselves… so unhappy."

"…happiness? Her idea of happiness…"

"She's been… did not mean… understand."

She fled; she could not wait for the answer.

FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH (1930)

I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.

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

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

“Must you marry, Dodong?”

“You are very young, Dodong.”

“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?”

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

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

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.

“I’ll… come up.”

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

“Son,” his father said.

And his mother: “Dodong…”

“Teang?” Dodong said.

“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”

Dodong whom Life had made ugly.

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

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.”

“Must you marry?”

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

Dodong kept silent, hurt.

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