Philippine Short Stories

Compilation of Short Stories

Written by Filipino Authors
Waywaya
Author: F. Sionil José or in full Francisco Sionil José (born December 3,
1924) is one of the most widely read Filipino writers in the English
language. His novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of
class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society. José's works - written in
English - have been translated into 22 languages, including Korean,
Indonesian, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Dutch.
The first time Dayaw crossed the river, he felt fulfilled, as if he had finally
passed the greatest test of all. It was so unlike that leap over the flaming pit
the feat of strength that
would have assured his father, the Ulo, that he was no weakling, that in
spite of his seeming indolence and love of poetry and singing, he was
capable nonetheless of courage as were the bravest warriors of Daya. All
his life he had been cooped up like the pigs his mother fattened in the pit
before they were taken out for the feasts. Daya, after all, was hemmed in to
the east by the sea, vast and mysterious, and to the west, this mighty river,
for beyond it was forest and mountain, land of the Laga Laud, the ancient
and indomitable enemy of his people.
He had made the crossing at night after he had blackened his face and body
with soot, carrying with him nothing but a coil of maguey twine and his
long knife, he had dashed from the cover of reeds near the river's bank, for
while Apo Bufan showed the way, it would also reveal him to whoever
watched the river. Days afterwards, he tried to fathom the reasons for the
deed, why he went alone, and for what. For one the river was there, a
barrier to knowledge of new things, new sights, and perhaps a new life. He
was, indeed, aglow with wanting to know; how many times he had mused,
gazing at the changing cloud patterns in the sky, the shapes of the waves as
they broke and foamed on the beach, the track of ants, the wheeling of birds
they all seemed to follow a design that could not know what lay beyond the
river and the sea without crossing them.
Once, he climbed the lofty dalipawen at the edge of the communal farms
and as if he was on some promontory, he scanned the world around him the
shining sea in the east and beyond the green, mangy top of the forest, far
down the horizon to the west, the mountains, purplish green in the last light
of day. He envied those who lived there for they could see everything. Was
it possible for them to know everything as well? Wading across the river in
the dry season was not difficult; there were islands of reeds and upturned
trees ragged down from the mountains with their catch of moss of dried
leaves, and clear pools where there would be silverfish and shells. This was
how it felt then, to ford this limit of what was safe. From the very
beginning, it was dinned to him, and to all the young Taga Daya to cross the
river meant going to war.
The first time he came to this river was when he was thirteen and was with
some twenty boys of the same age; they had marched for one day and one
night, in anxiety and fear, for they had no warriors to protect them but this
old, shriveled healer who made this journey every year. They had been
taught stealth and cunning, and once they entered the forest beyond the
cultivated fields and cogon wastes, it was possible for the enemy to be
lurking there. They were not warriors they would be hog-tied and brought
to Laud as slaves. For a day, they walked without eating and by the morning
of the next day, when they finally reached the river, they were weak, hungry
and ready to die. Only the fear of capture kept them alive. There, on the
sandy bank, behind the tall reeds that had flowered with plumes of
dazzling white, they lined up, squatting while the healer sharpened his knife
and prepared the strange mixture of tobacco and weeds with which he
treated their wounds after he had circumcised them.
He was now on his third night and the relentless sense of danger that
hounded him was no longer as keen as it had been on the first, particularly
when a dog had howled and a man had come out with a lighted pine splinter
and a spear, wondering perhaps what lizard was out there after his chickens.
He had slithered into the recesses of the bush and returned afterwards. He
knew the town by then, and in the waning moonlight, he stole away from it,
detoured through terraces in the mountains, then down to the forest of scrub
and cogon, making a new way each time. It was still dark when he reached
the river. He had already satisfied most of his curiosities, heard their songs,
their conversations. He had looked at their handiwork, their fields of sweet
potato and rice, and marveled at the quality of their crafts. He returned to
the cove which was actually a small turn of the river that was hidden by a
wall of low branches. Within it was a pool that was fed by a spring and
beyond the spring, up a sandy bar, was a sprout of cogon behind which he
had slept the night before. He had taken care that there was no trace of him
in the sand so that when he went to the spring to drink, he had wiped out his
tracks carefully.
Now he went to sleep, and once rested, he would merely race across the
river to the sanctuary of his own land. It was long past morning when he
woke up, alive to the twitter of birds, the jabber of monkeys, the scent of
moss and green living things. He lay on his back motion less for some time,
gazing at the cloud-flecked sky. It was then that a rustling to his right jarred
him from his reverie; he keened to the footfalls on the grass and dried
leaves. Whoever was approaching was not trying to hide his presence. Then
he burst into view, a girl lovely as morning and just as fair, her hair knotted
to the left above her ear. A fine, blue tattoo of flower designs ran in a thin
line down her arms to her wrists. She knelt down before the rim of the pool
and gazed at her reflection there, then stood up, untied the knot of her blue
sack dress on her shoulder and let it slip down to her feet. She stood naked
and true and beautiful, her face upraised to such a bit of sun, her breasts and
nipples touched with pink. Her stomach was flat and below the patch of
pubic hair, her legs were supple well shaped; she stooped and untied the
thongs of her leather sandals then she walked nimbly into the water,
shivering at first as she tested it with her toe. Then she plunged and
splashed about. She dived to the shallow depths an in the clear water, he
could follow her lissome figure turning, then surfacing to float on her back,
so that her breasts were shiny with water and sun.
Dayaw watched, keeping cats keen; he wanted to know if she had
companions but he could hear only the rustle of the wind in the trees, the
gurgling of the river as it coursed through boulders and shallows. He had
stashed across the river an iron plowshare, a piece of newly woven cloth, a
quiver iron tipped arrow. Now, he would also bring home a slave—healthy,
young and good to look at. With her sandals, her bangles of gold, she was
no simple peasant; she must come from the upper class of Laud. His agile
mind quickly devised a way by which he could capture her with her least
resistance and trouble. It seemed that she would swim forever but finally,
she made for her clothes. By then, Dayaw had crouched closer to her things
and as she stooped to gather them, he rushed out and pinned her arms,
clamping a band over her mouth. That was a mistake for she bit his hand;
the pain was sharp and his response was immediate. He spun her around
and struck her in the jaw. There was this dumb, surprised look on her face
as she staggered backwards and fell. Dayaw bound her hands and feet, and
gagged her mouth. He gathered her clothes, her sandals, then erased the
signs of struggle on the sand. And heaving her on his shoulders, he headed
for the river.
It did not matter very much that he would cross now in the daylight; if they
pursued him, he could easily outrace them, and once he was in the
sanctuary of his forest, it was a brave man who would follow him. Once or
twice, while he was knee-deep in the water, he turned to look, and again
when he was finally across, no one had seen him. Once across, he laid her
on the grass, still naked, while he went back to the water to wash the soot of
three days from his face and body. When he returned, she had revived and
she cringed at his approach. “You are heavy!” Dayaw said, smiling. “And
look at my
hand—you little wildcat!” He waved his right hand which had begun to
swell, her teeth marks deeply imprinted still below the thumb. She made
angry protesting sounds, shaking her head. She tried to rise but when she
realized it was useless to struggle, she did not move anymore.
In the sunlight, looking closer at her, she seemed fairer and prettier than
when he first saw her. That was what the Taga Laud women were noted for,
unlike the women of Daya, who had darker skin. “You are good for the
eyes,” Dayaw said, moving closer and tweaking her nipples. She glared at
him but did not move and very soon the nipples hardened. Pleased with
himself, Dayaw smiled. “If you promise not to make trouble,” he said with
a laugh, “I will give you back your clothes.” She nodded quickly. “We have
a long way to go—a long day’s march, and I don’t want to carry you.” He
helped her to her feet and as she stood up, he realized that she was tiny, she
did not even reach up to his shoulder. He went beside her and ran a hand
down the curve of her back to her buttocks. Then he untied her hands and
feet. Free at last, she stretched her arms and stamped her feet. She picked
the sack dress up and put it on. When she looked at him again, entreaty was
in her eyes. “Yes, I will hit you again,” he said, raising his fist, “if you
cannot be tamed. And I don’t want to do that.” Shortly before midday, he
found the water tubes, the dried meat and the cakes of brown sugar that he
had hidden under the trunk of the dead tree. He ate ravenously and when he
was through, he gave her a little of what was left. She was hungry, and
thirsty, too, but she refused what he offered her. Dayaw shrugged, “if you
don’t want to eat, then march on an empty stomach.” By nightfall, she still
had not spoken a word. Her jaw had begun to swell and he wondered if he
had hit her so hard that her tongue had been cut. In the dimming light, he
held her face. She winced. “Open your mouth,” he said, but she refused. He
glared at her and raised his fist. Slowly, she opened her mouth. No, her
tongue was not cut and her breath was warm and sweet like a baby upon his
face. He gazed at the sullen eyes, at the mouth, the nose; yes, he really had
a good-looking slave, perhaps better looking than any of the young women
he knows, even Liwliwa with whom he already spent many nights.
They reached the gulley where saplings grew and at this time of the year,
the gulley was dry. He told her to recline against a sapling. He tied her
hands behind the young tree and then her feet. It was not that he feared
treachery; it was that she might run away and be captured by another Taga
Daya and he would then lose all claims to her. She seemed resigned and not
once did he protest. The dark came quickly. Fireflies emerged from the tall
grass and winked at them. The stars were out; would be some time before
the rains came. He was tired but sleep was slow in coming. He turned on his
side. She was leaning against the tree, her legs raised. In the soft dark, he
could see the outline of her face in quiet repose. “What is your name?” She
did not answer. “I am Dayaw,” he said, “the older son of the Ulo. My
younger brother, Parbangon, will be circumcised before the rains start. Do
you know any Laud songs?” No reply. “I like to sing. I make my own
songs. Listen.” He quickly formed the lines and gave a tune to them: “The
river is deep but we can ford it. Who will make the bridge? Perhaps love
will do it. Perhaps time will prove it…” He paused, “do you like it?” The
pensive face was immobile, the eyes closed as if in thought. “You don’t like
music,” he said, “you silly girl, going there alone and so far away from
home. What were you doing there by yourself, anyway?” he paused and
laughed, “well, you may just as well ask what was I doing there, too.”
Silence again, the soughing of the wind in the grass, crickets alive in the
bushes. “It was Apo Langit that brought me there, that brought you there. It
was Apo Langit that made you my slave.” For an instant, he vanquished the
thought; he was not going to use the force, she should go to him because
she wanted to the way Liwliwa wanted him. And it was Liwliwa and her
promise of welcome that was in his thoughts when sleep finally claimed
him.
In the morning, he was rudely wakened and when he opened his eyes, he
realized that she had kicked him, not in anger but because she was in pain.
She had slipped, twisted her back and could not rise. He stood up and
looked at her wrists: they were swollen. He was determined to teach her
obedience, to humble her, but the pain in her face touched him and he
untied the twine that abound her wrists. She quickly withdrew her hands
from behind her. He untied her legs next and free at last. She stood up and
limped to the bushes down the gulley. He did not go after her---she was
going to urinate but when she did not return, he followed her. She was lying
on her stomach on the grass and crying silently. Then she turned to him.
“Why don’t you kill me and let me suffer no more?” It was the first time
that she had spoken and he understood everything; but for the different
intonation, she was speaking in her own tongue. “You are in our own land
now,” he said coldly “You are a captive, a slave and you will be killed, of
course if you try to run away. You know that. Your life is in your hands.”
Then abruptly, as a warrior would speak: “Let us go.” She stood up and
followed him quickly. Before noon, they reached the fringes of Daya, the
well-groomed fields that were being prepared for the seed. His first impulse
was to do what was customary, to strip her, parade her through the town and
humiliate her. The swelling of her jaw was subsided and its place was a
dark bruise. Her wrists had bled when the twine was cut. But he did not
undress her; he merely tied her wrist again, this time loosely, and then
marched her in town. Thinking about it later, he was to realize why he did
not want her naked. He had seen her in her glory; he covered her and did
not want others to see her as he had seen her then.
Out of their houses, where they were cooking the noon day meal, came the
women, the children, and the menfolk who were not working in the fields or
at the beach. The children gathered around her, fingering her dress,
touching her bangles and jeering at her. Her head erect she looked straight
ahead as she walked but her eyes were frightened and once or twice, she
stumbled. “Dayaw that is some trophy!” “Can she cook?” “Can she
weave?” “Can she gyrate her hips?” “Is she juicy and tight?” They shrieked
and laughed and Dayaw laughed with them, acknowledging their greetings,
pleased that they knew where he had been, proud that they could see his
slave and also the new quiver, the piece of cloth slung on his shoulder and
the plowshare under his arm. He let the day lengthen though courtesy
demanded that she should have gone straight to the Ulo, his father, or tell
him that he was back. He had not told anyone where he was going, not even
Parbagon who often came to his house to listen to his songs and his
kutibeng.
Liwliwa came shortly after noon with a bowl of eggplants, and bitter
melons cooked with tomatoes, onions and dried fish, and a pot of rice. Her
hair was glossy with coconut oil, and while he reclined after they had eaten,
she kneaded his muscles with oil and stirred him; and while the slave girl
washed the pots outside, she closed the bamboo door and welcomed him in
the way he had expected it. When he woke up, Liwliwa had gone his slave
was in the room, fanning with him a small palm leaf. He showed her where
she should sleep, a corner of the kitchen, among the fish traps and cooking
pots, and told her what her chores would be, from sunup to sundown. She
listened intently. Women passed and peeped, and children who had not seen
her earlier shouted obscenities to her.
“Now, what should I call you?” he asked, as he made ready to visit the Ulo.
“Waywaya,” she said, bowing. He could see that she was crying again and
he hated the sight of women in tears. At this time of day, the Ulo would be
in the community house, acting out his duties, dispensing advice and help to
those who needed it, allocating seed rice for the next planting season as
well as new plots to be cleared and new duties. Dayaw loved his father and
had not meant to appear disobedient, but through the years, his interest has
veered; while the other youths would listen to the talk of the elders, he got
bored and would go by himself to the forest or to the beach. He was no
weakling, but while the other youths practiced the arts of war and exercised
for the great leap that would transform them into men, he played with his
kutibeng and took pleasure in composing new songs. When the great feast
came, he was not even anxious. They had lighted the wide pit and the hay
and the logs there were a roaring flame. They lined up the young men who
would now be warriors, and one by one, they leaped across the chasm of
fire. They had practiced and he had not and when it was his turn, he started
to panic for he now realized that the pit was wider than he thought it would
be. He ran and leaped just the same and barely made it to the other side; he
had burned his foot - the stigma that his father would bear - but he thought
nothing of it. The final test, after all, was when the warrior crossed the river.
He had done that, been in Laud for three nights, and what did he learn?
Were the warriors of Laud all that skilled and ferocious? Were they out to
destroy Daya and everything his father and his people had built? This was
what his father had told him and all Tag-Daya; he had heard this when he
was small, and again when he trained and he still heard it now that the Ulo
had begun to age and a few strands of white laced his mane. Still, he was
the Ulo, the repository of wisdom and strength until that time when
someone braver, stronger and wiser would lead them to battle. The
community house came into view-a magnificent structure as tall as a
bamboo, with a high-pitched roof that was almost an arm’s length in
thickness, so thick that it could last a hundred years! The flooring was solid
parunapin, taken from the forest and drawn across the gullies by water
buffaloes. The bamboo on the walls had been tempered in brine so that all
the insects would not be able to attack it. The posts-almost as fat as a man’s
thigh, were the best sagat there was. And above the walls, just below the
eaves were the skulls of their enemies, impaled on rattan staves. He waited
until everyone had gone, then the Ulo beckoned to him. His dark, handsome
face was shrouded in gloom.
“Do you know that had you not returned today, tomorrow we would have
dispatched men to Laud to look for you?”
“Forgive me, Father,” Dayaw said contritely.
“Well, how far did you go?”
“I crossed the river, Father.” He wanted to say more but he held back.
“And what else did you do?”
“I wanted to know the enemy. . . “
“That is a foolish thing to do, going there alone, with no one behind you.
And this girl. . .”
Dayaw smiled. “She is wildcat but I can tame her. I will know more about
Laud from her. But this I already know – the Taga Laud – they are like us
and I think they want peace.” “So do we,” the Ulo said.
“But time has a momentum and we must be ready for war. Always. And
you don’t prepare for war by reciting poetry and going on an adventure by
yourself. . .” Again, the sarcasm.
The Ulo did not hide it anymore, his frustration that his older son, bright
with tunes and words and wise in his own way – did not have any Feeling
for combat, for politics, for the craft of ruling. He was getting on in years
and to whom would he pass this accumulated wisdom and experience?
Dayaw, his son, his blood, but he had been claimed by the talisman of forest
and sea when it was all before him, the opportunity to rule, to unite,
conquer not just land but also the many regions beyond Daya, the lands of
Abagatan and Amianan.
When Dayaw was still young he had looked upon the Ulo with awe; it had
pleased him to know that his father was a leader, respected and loved, that it
was he who led the warriors and had given the taga Daya a sense of unity
their best defense against their enemies which had eluded them for years.
With the years, however, he had also seen the panoply of power and of
ceremony that had consumed the Ulo, that for all his avowals of justice, he
was not beyond the reach of fawning relatives and panderers. He could not
understand how in a year of drought his mother could still go down the far
reach of Amianan bringing with her a retinue of friends, honey and rice in
two boatloads, and return with nothing but beads and gushing talk about
lavish feasts given by the rich and powerful whom she had met. He could
not understand how his mother’s brother continue in blessed idleness while
everyone worked, how his father could hand over grain from the communal
granary to his favorite warriors who had not even fought in Laud. There
were times when the people grumbled and had less to eat but the Ulo had
brought them peace, the right to work and live without the Taga Laud
descending from the mountain to badges their lives.
“The war must stop, Father,” he said quietly.
“And you took slave,” the Ulo hissed at him, “This means that they will
seek revenge.”
His father was right and again, he was clobbered not by superior
intelligence but by his own impulsiveness. If he had only carefully thought
out the consequences of the deed. And thinking about it later, he recognized
this magic compulsion about Waywaya that he could not exorcise. Again, it
came to him not as a flash of lightning but just as scaring, the knowledge
that his perdition was in himself. He went down the wooden stairs into the
wide grassy yard once more; the urge to leave Daya came. How often had
he thought about it, but always he seemed rooted in the land? When the
ships of the Narrow Eyes docked at the stone pier which they had built from
coral, he had often wondered if they could take him so that the niggling
doubts, the nagging sentiments would be banished forever. However, after
the Narrow Eye had loaded the tobacco and the rice in exchange for knives,
plates and beads, they would leave and he would not even tarry to ask that
they take him.
It was dusk when he reached his house and from the distance, he saw
Parbangon idling at the foot of the stairs strumming the kutibeng. His
younger brother would probably be with him the whole night, asking a host
of questions, listening to his new songs. Waywaya kept house. Liwliwa
sneered at her and envied her for she was doing what she, herself, would
have wanted to do had Dayaw but asked her. She said Waywaya would not
be able to last; her ways, her attitudes were different and all because she
was from Laud. The older women made the same remarks – she was alien
to the ways of Daya. But in time, all the pots in the kitchen were clean of
soot, the firewood rack below the house was neatly slacked and there was
always husked grain in the bin. The grass roof was patched where it had
thinned and where the rattan twines on the floor had loosened, she had
tightened it so that the split bamboo was once more taut and secure.
Waywaya asked if she could weave and Dayaw retrieved one of the old
looms his grandmother had left, and there was enough cotton too and
vegetable dye which she mixed in a way different from the women of Daya.
She did not use the patterns from where she came; she fashioned new ones,
using the primary reds and blacks of the Taga Daya and in time, she made
trousers for Dayaw, for Parbangon and last of all, a dress for herself. There
were many nights that Dayaw did not sleep in his house, he loitered often in
the communal house for the unmarried, and when the weather was good, he
would go to the beach or the fields with Liwliwa. And when he returned in
the morning, there was the usual plate of steaming rice, the bowl of ginger
broth which she had brewed, the perfunctory questions about how the night
had been, if he slept well, and inevitably, how Liwliwa was.
Once, he woke up in the night with a parched throat and he went to the
water jar for a drink. She was awake and sat up. In the dark, he went to her
and for a moment he wanted to touch her. There was no stopping him; she
was his property, but he remembered the past impulsiveness that had been
his damnation and he withdrew, hissing to himself.
Lightning! Lightning! It was a good year; the rice grew tall. Apo Langit had
been kind and the harvest had been abundant. By the time the easterly
winds began to blow, the fields had all been gleaned, the bat wing ships of
the Narrow Eyes were rounding the point again; they brought more jars and
plates, more bells and gongs. The slaves were even given new clothes, some
were set free, but they selected to remain to partake of Daya’s peace and
prosperity. A good year, but not for Waywaya. She had her first horrible
bout with fever before the harvest and though Parbangon came and
prepared marunggay broth for her, the fever worsened. Dayaw made an
offering to Apo Daga; apprehensive and frightened, he placed the bowl of
glutinous rice with hard boiled eggs in the corner where she slept. The fever
did not leave till a few days afterwards and she was still weak when she got
up to do her work. She was friendly; she smiled at all whom she met and to
Dayaw’s people and friends, she showed obeisance and respect. He was
convinced, though she never admitted it, that her bearing was noble, but
why, why did she go to the river? She told him afterwards that she was
curious, that she would have crossed the river, too, if only she was made to
run swiftly like a deer, that she had gone up the mountain often and looked
at creation spread before her, the forest and the plain and beyond, the river
emptying into the sea.
He finally took her there on a night when the surf was rough, a night
without stars. At first, she was scared but he held her hand. Together they
breasted the surf as it collapsed on them until they got to where it was calm
and the water was up to their shoulders when it heaved. He thought he
could soften her loneliness if he explained, although he did not have to. “It
is what you remind my people of, not what you are . . ..” he told her. In the
soft dark, her eyes shone, the grateful smile. She chose to be elusive “Don’t
worry,” she said. “I can belong anywhere; I can even be across the sea
although I don’t know what is there . . ..” “But the greatest unknown, one
that we can never get into, is the mind of other people,” Dayaw said.
She was not meant to do all that work, to bear all those insults. She had
become very thin and one afternoon, in the month when the rains were to
come again, Dayaw came upon her at her weaving, the shuttle unmoving in
her hands. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Dayaw was engulfed by the
pity and compassion he had felt for her from the very start. In the morning,
he prepared long provisions for the long walk: dried meat, rice cooked in
coconut milk, salt and sugar, and the tubes of water. He told her to gather
her things, nothing really but her old dress, the buffalo skinned sandals that
were almost frayed and the length of fabric that she had woven. They left
Daya before light broke upon the land and late the following day, they
finally reached the river. All through the night, he had been quiet and now,
looking at her moving quietly, a great sadness filled him. He was taking her
back and he wanted to go as far as it was possible, to cross the river with
her, so he waited for darkness, until the stars swarmed out of the sky. Once,
she slipped over a mossy boulder and he reached out to steady her and her
grasp firm and warm.
They reached the curve at the other side, and as he had planned, headed for
the cove where he had found her. After they had eaten the cold rice and the
dried meet and drank from the pool, she laid on the sand the piece of cloth
she had woven and they lay down. He slept easily, and at the first sliver of
light, he woke up to find that she was still beside him. He watched her, the
slow rise of her breast, her parted lips, and her closed eyes. Then she
stirred. “I had expected you to leave in the night,” he said. “Well, you know
why we are here. I have caused you harm and sorrow. Also, I did not do
right from the beginning, I know that now.” He rose, unsheathed the knife
at his side and handed it to her without ceremony. “You can have your
revenge now,” he said simply. Her eyes widened in amazement, in wonder.
She fell on her knees, hugged his legs then kissed his feet, “Dayaw, I
belong to you,” she murmured. That was how it really began.
Back in Daya, in the mornings when dew was still glistening on the grass
and cooking fires still sent grey smoke trailing, above the houses, he would
rise to find that she already had food for him. She would hover silently
around, waiting for his every whim to express itself. The first time was a
revelation; she had gone with him to gather firewood in the communal
forest beyond the fields; it was to be their fuel for many rainy seasons and
she had balanced a heavy load on her head and his own load was a pole
slung over his shoulder. The day was warm and beads of sweat were on her
nape like pearls. They were about to break through into the clearing and he
was tired so he brought his load down and helped her to bring her bundle
down, too. She was close to him and could smell her warm body, her hair.
He drew her to the shadow of a great tree; she met his gaze without fear,
without pretense. It was as if she had expected this moment, too, and with
one deft pull at the knot on her shoulder, she let her dress drop so that she
stood before him as he had seen her for the first time, only now there was
no anxiety, no fear in her eyes. She was not as experienced as Liwliwa and
there was this unspoken demand that he teaches her, but for the moment he
knew only his need, the fire that must be quenched and when it was, he lay
on his back, his breathing quiet and slow. The sun filtered through the
leaves above them. She lay beside him, unmoving, while his hand stroked
her smooth, flat belly. “I hope I did not hurt you,” he said afterwards. “I will
be better next time,” she said “I am sorry I don’t know too well how to
please you. And no one but you will teach me.”
 
She still slept in the kitchen except on those nights when he called her in,
but after two months, when she was finally sure, Dayaw forbade her to
sleep there for always. That morning, before the men went to the fields or
put out to sea, he put on the robe that she had woven and she slipped into
her old Laud dress, and on her head a garland of kalachuchi that Parbangon
had made. Then they went down the steps, bright with happiness.
Parbangon walked ahead of them, blowing on the buffalo horn, the shrill
blasts echoing in the morning quiet. They walked hand in hand, first, to the
farthest end of town, close to the sea, and the people peered out of their
windows or paused in their yards to watch them. The young men smiled,
but none of the girls greeted them. Liwliwa had done her words more than
that, she had cursed them. Their march around the town ended in his
father’s house beside the community hall. They passed at the bottom of the
flight while Parbangon blew at the horn again and again. The Ulo came out,
his face glum and with a wave of his hand, he forbade his younger son to
continue the bleating.
To Dayaw, he said with a slow shake of his venerable head: “Now” more in
sadness than in anger “Dayaw, you will never be Ulo” “But I will be happy,
Father,” Dayaw said, looking straight at his father. Within the house, his
mother was waiting; she shared her husband’s sorrow and she must have
wondered what terrible deed of hers had displeased Apo Langit. And that
evening when Waywaya came with her offering of rice and coconut milk,
Pintas accepted both, but in the presence of her daughter-in-law, she
emptied the pots into the pit where her pigs were. Hate --- this was the
strongest and rawest of feelings that bound people together and it was hate,
Dayaw knew, that made the Taga Daya regard Waywaya and now, himself,
with derision. And how did this feeling start? How did it take root? It was
in the fears and insecurities of his own people and it was the Ulo – his
father who knew how to use hate. It was he, his family and his family’s
relatives and friends who benefited from the largesse that hatred created.
Indeed, without hate and fear, the Ulo would not have been able to shape
Dayaw into the fortress that it had become. But at what cost? Knowing this,
Dayaw often wondered how it would be if he fled to the deeper forest. Such
a flight was a wish that he sometimes played in his mind, imagined himself
starting out, clearing the land with his bare hands, planting the crops on a
patch that the wilderness would constantly encroach upon. The labor would
be severe and the vigil constant. How to watch over the field, protect it
from wild pigs, marauding deer and rats -- and no fence would really keep
away the wild buffaloes and when the grain was ripe, there would be the
birds. How much simple it would be if he just stayed and moved with the
daily rhythm that his father had decreed. Here, there was a community,
order, certitude the finality that would assure him and everyone not only of
their place but of their destiny. How was it in other lands? Hate and
injustice were everywhere and he himself had contributed to the inequity of
things. Look at what you have done to Waywaya: you do not love her; you
merely possess her. You are as guilty as your father, as your warriors who
have ambushed and maimed that Taga Laud. And in the evenings, when he
strummed his kutibeng and sang, the words were sad. Waywaya understood.
“Why are you unhappy?” she asked. “Because you are.” “With you I am
always happy.” “And when I am no longer here?” “I’ll stand by myself,”
she said. He shook his head. He had made up his mind; he would speak to
the Ulo again, find out how they could clear the dust that had suffocated
them. He formed clearly and sharply the thoughts that he would express.
Our tools are lined with the skulls of our enemies and they do not evoke
their ghosts to rampage in our midst they don't disturbed our sleep for the
skulls of our loved ones and they are there without honor. What has war has
brought us? Women wailing when they should be singing. How much blood
has been spilled? It was not used to water the crops, quench our thirst, or
wash the dirt from our bodies. And the flesh of our enemies we did not fill
our stomachs with it, or make the fields fertile with it. Who knows what
they who fell before our lances could have achieved, what offspring they
would have sired, what clearings they would have made? All this is for the
mind to guess, for the death that we bestowed unto them is final.
They walk slowly on the beach, the waves to their right dappled with moon
silver. It was a quiet night interrupted by the sounds of children playing in
the moonlight, the howling of dogs; the planting season would soon set in,
still no avenging warriors from Laud, still no tear in the fine fabric of peace.
“They are afraid,” the Ulo said, “They cannot penetrate the wall of our
determination. And if they come, will they be fast enough to flee to their
sanctuary, to escape our hound dogs? Then you ask, why are we strong?”
Dayaw stared at the waves breaking on the surf with a murmur. “Nature has
been on our side Father,” he said.
 
“Not just nature,” the Ulo was exuberant “We know our past, we don't
repeat its mistakes. That, too, is tradition.”
“The past could also be a prison, Father,” Dayaw said. “You always look
back, not ahead. Do you know that across the river, they are cooking not
with earthen pots but with copper? They have kilus better than our, not for
making pots but for melting metals. And they have beeswax and mountain
dyes.
Hardwood. And their spears...”
“Our bamboo spears are lighter, easier to throw.”
“Their spearheads are better.”
“We fight in groups, we eat rice – not camotes.”
“They have lowland rice, too, and they use water from the spring...” The
Ulo was silent.
Dayaw continued eventually. “We have to change, Father. To be where we
are, we have to change...”
“That is the law of life,” the Ulo said. “You are not telling me anything.”
“Change not war.”
“War that is part of change. And however, you may detest it, with war we
have become prosperous. And I have worked very hard...”
“We have worked very hard.”
“And now, our seed is the best in the land. Our water buffaloes are the
strongest. We used our knowledge to breed, not just plants, but animals...”
“And people?”
“Don't speak like that to me.”
“You wanted Liwliwa for my wife.”
“Her father is powerful and...”
“The way Mother's father was powerful...”
“Yes, and everything we do should contribute to Daya, to our unity, our
progress...Even our leisure. Our weaving, our pottery...”
“The Taga Laud have better...”
“That is not the test. A people survive not because of its pots. It survives,
endures because it has a will...”
“And who provides the will, Father? The leaders?” “Yes!” The Ulo ignored
the remark.
“She has also helped the weavers, sold what they made, improved their
designs. And the carvers. Has there been any time that out crafts have been
so encouraged? We don’t rely any more on the bowls and plates that the
Narrow Eyes bring from across the sea. Soon we will be firing our kilns and
making plates just as beautiful......”
He had heard it all before and he would hear it again. But what is truth?
Dayaw had asked himself many times but could not find the answer except
that he believed what he felt and saw, the sunrise that glad denied him, the
wind in the bamboo, the smell of new rice, of meat crackling in the open
fire. And now Waywaya the scent of her hair, the warmth and softness of
her being – he would not be leader now, with her as his wife.
“Parbangon is growing like bamboo shoot, Father,” Dayaw said, divining
his father’s thoughts. “And he is already taking after you”
“He must know poetry, and music, too. He will be a complete man.” Then
Dayaw said it. “So, he will be the leader. Father. What I cannot be. But
Waywaya at least, you can be kind to her.” “She is Taga Laud,” the Ulo
said sadly.
“She is my wife. And her baby…” he said this slowly “our baby, he will
have your blood, Father!”
He marvelled at the miracle of life in her belly, felt its first stirring. With
eyes shining, she had told him of her deepest wish that the child become
truly happy and not given to gloom because of her. Dayaw watched her go
through the phases, the first three months during which she hankered for
oranges, for chicken as only the Taga Laud could cook, but when it was
cooked its blood coagulated with its flesh – she would have none of it. She
became emaciated and he worried about her health; he gathered water
buffalo milk, lots of fish. But why did she have to die? O Apo Langit, O
Apo Daga – all of you who shape the course of time and the destiny of men,
what wrong has she done? He had watched her bleed; he could not staunch
the flow and there was no healer who would come. “Waywaya – you have
son!” he cried and she looked at him and smiled, then slowly, ever so
slowly, she closed her eyes. He took his son and hastened to his father’s
house.
“You have a grandson, Mother,” he told Pintas who met him at the stairs.
“And the slave whom all of you loathed don’t regard your feelings to her
anymore. She is no longer among us.”
The traces of beauty were still on her face. “It is not my fault, child of mine.
It’s fate,” Pintas remonstrated.
“I am not blaming anyone.” Dayaw said. “Not even fate. But promise me,
Mother, raise my son to love his mother as I have always loved you.”
“And why do you say this?”
“I have a duty to do, Mother. I’ll not be there to watch him grow…”
It was then that the immensity of what he was saying struck her. She
shrieked an animal cry of surprise and grief that brought the Ulo to the
house. To him, Pintas fled, her face contorted with fright. “Stop him, my
husband. He does not have to do it. She was not one of us!”
“What foolishness is this” his father asked. “Must you spite me? Whatever
it is that I have done, I did because you are my blood and I want you
honored…”
“I do not seek honor, Father.”
“You have already shown that. But now, I want you alive, whatever your
faults, whatever your weaknesses.”
“Tradition, Father. We have to live up to it. You said that.”
“Don’t throw it back to me like spoiled meat…”
“But I believe in tradition, too, Father. This you never understood. There
are traditions we must uphold because they are not just for us, they are for
all people…” The Ulo was silent.
“How many seasons passed that she was without honor among my people?
But I can honor her now.” “Then live with dishonor!” the Ulo screamed at
him. “For me! Now!”
He went forward and embraced his father, tears scalding his eyes, “My son,
my son,” the Ulo whispered.
Dayaw felt his father’s arms tighten around him. It was the last time that
they would embrace.
Parbangon had already been circumcised and had already started to build
his own house.
“She is light,” Dayaw told him remembering how he had carried Waywaya
across the river.
“I will carry her upright, strapped to my back.”
“But that is not how it is done, Manong,” Parbangon insisted. And of
course, his brother was right. “You are not that strong…” Parbangon shook
his head.
“No, that is not the reason. You fear for me.” Dayaw did not speak: he was
condemning his brother to a life travail but Parbangon knew all that.
“She was sister to me. She cooked for me, wove for me. I have not done
anything for her. Let me honor her too.”
Dayaw wrapped Waywaya in the blanket she had woven, the bright red with
blas of her people, the designs of moon, mountain and tree coming through
the slats of bamboo. On both ends of the pole to which the bier was
attached were the wreaths of kalachuchi that Parbangon had made. They
reached the river easily following afternoon for they rested and ate but little
and Dayaw marveled at the boy’s strength. They untied the thongs of their
sandal’s ad waded across the shallows, stepping over mossy boulders,
taking care that their precious burden did not tilt into the water.
There was still plenty of light when they reached the other side and he
followed the bend to the small cove where he first saw her. How peaceful it
was and briefly, in his mind’s eye, he saw her again as he saw her then,
poised before the pool, serene as nightfall, and a sharp, almost physical pain
coursed through him. By dusk, they reached the town of Laud; they had
been watched even before they had approached the fringes and now, the
enemy appeared from everywhere, women, children and men who looked at
them more with curiosity than hate.
He knew where to go; he had studied the town only too well and to his
knowledge, Waywaya had contributed her share. A clutch of women met
them before they reached the clearing in front of their community hall and
they started wailing, their voices high-pitched and nasal, listening to what
they said-the sister, the friend who was no more-again tears dimmed his
eyes. Through the blur, he could see the structure before him, the high posts
with finely carved filigrees, the beams jutting out and around the rafters-just
below the grass roof-a line of skulls of his people. The huge door of the
community hall swung open and down the massive stairs he came, the
leader of Laud, and as Dayaw by the shoulder as Dayaw lowered Waywaya
onto the wooden platform where offerings were made, and spoke in a voice
that quavered.
“It has been two harvest seasons. We missed her…” Then he beckoned to
one of the older women who had met them, and to her he said “Look at
your jewel, woman!”
 
Darkness came quickly and with it, bird calls and the cool breezes of the
mountain. He sat with the old chief in the place of honor, and they filed up
to him. The warriors of Laud with their wooden shields and shiny battle
axes, and raised their arms in salute. Then the gongs started beating,
sonorous and loud-his knell. Death would be welcome, for with Waywaya’s
passing no longer would the sky hold its dominion over him, nor would the
earth that he had cultivated; whose fruits he would offer to her. How will it
feel? There would be pain but he could bear that. He had been wounded
before, had seen blood ooze from the wound, had felt his head grow light
and his strength slowly ebb. It was not this pain which he learned for the
warrior was prepared for it. It was this deeper anguish that no herb, no
sorcery could staunch.
All around them the huge pine splinter torches had been ignited and they
cast a red glow over the crowd; it was time to do the final ceremony and
they rose-just him and her family, and they formed a small procession to the
side of the mountain where a hole had already been dug. They let him shove
her coffin within the; they pushed a boulder at the entrance to the burial
place and covered it with earth. Waywaya’s mother planted before it a few
strands of ramos-they would grow, tall and purple. He was a Taga Daya, he
must show them that he could dam his feelings but as tears streamed down
his cheeks, he shuddered violently and cried. The chief laid an arm around
Dayaw’s shoulder and took him back. The gongs were louder now and
above their rhythm rose the squealing of pigs being butchered. They went
up the hall, its floor of hewn wood, and from the roof dangled lamps of
iron, ablaze with light. “I have asked my father.” Dayaw said, “that they do
not cross the river anymore, that if they do, they bear gifts of life. I pray that
you do the same. This is what Waywaya would have wanted. . .”
The old chief, squatting on his deerskin rug, did not reply; his gaze went
beyond the bonfire outside the wide-open door, leaping now, lighting the
sombrous sky. In the yellow embroidery of flames, it seemed that his eyes
were glazed and when he finally spoke, his words were slow and they bore
great feeling. “There something about an old tree, “he said, “it grows no
more. At the same time, it is difficult to cut it down. Its roots are deep
although it can draw no more sustenance from the earth. Maybe, it is right
that the new trees should grow.”
He ate little when the food finally came. Parbangon ate nothing for he had
falllen asleep. They brought Dayaw wine – sweet slightly bitter and he
wondered if it would be in the wine. But it was not. It was late and he must
rest so they left him while the feasting and dancing continued outside. He
slept fitfully until dawn-that deep and tranquil quiet when just a tint of
purple appeared in the east and stars still studded the sky like gems. Now,
thoughts crowded his mind like drones and he was filled once more with
regret that he had not been kinder to her. He could see her now in this time
of day, her hair glossy and black, her precious face, the luminous eyes, the
moist lips-the image of her alive and breathing and touching, pottering in
the kitchen, preparing his meal. And the baby yes, their son, how would it
be when he finally b became a man? And Parbangon, would they enslave
him order him return as he had hoped they would so that he could tell Taga
Daya? And how would it end for him? He had been trained not to fear death
and though he had considered fighting, there was no sense to it as there was
really no logic for his being here, just as the lo said. No logic, but since
when did love have any?
Morning and it was time to leave the old chief was at the door and as he
approached, Dayaw glanced at Parbngon who was still asleep. “Don’t wake
him up,” the chief said softly. “He needs rest; we will take him back to the
river.” A wave of joy engulfed him. They went down the broad steps, into a
brilliant morning, where some of the warriors had already gathered. The old
chief put an arm around his shoulder, murmuring, “Husband of my
daughter-my son.” “Father of my wife-my father,” he returned the farewell.
In the clear, everything stood out now – the bamboo houses with their grass
roofs, the corrals for the pigs, the chicken houses, the vegetable patches, the
orange trees. He knew almost everything around him just as Waywaya had
described it; why, he was almost home at home!
They walked him to the edge of the village. He must utter now the
important word. “Waywaya,” he said in reverential prayer. “I loved her. The
fruit of our union-a boy. Your blood is in him, he is across the river. Will
you let him grow in peace ignorant of a time like this? “Will you?” The
chief did not answer and if he spoke. Dayaw did not hear. The gongs started
again and then, from the women in the distance came a sound of wailing.
Was it for him? In his heart, though he was afraid, he was glad. The forest
awaited him… as sunset, he knew that he would not reach the river.
The Wedding Dance
Author: Amador T. Daguio was a poet, novelist and teacher during the pre-
war. He was best known for his fictions and poems. He had published two
volumes of poetry, "Bataan Harvest" and "The Flaming Lyre". He served as
chief editor for the Philippine House of Representatives before he died in
1966.
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, and 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. There was a sudden rush 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.
"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, and 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."
"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
has 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. 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."
"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 gongs 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
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
hurried 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?
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, 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 on.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
Dead Stars
Author: Paz Marquez – Benitez was born in 1894 in Lucena City, Quezon.
Marquez - Benítez authored the first Filipino modern English language
short story, Dead Stars, published in the Philippine Herald in 1925. Born
into the prominent Marquez family of Quezon province, she was among the
first generation of Filipino people trained in the American education system
which used English as the medium of instruction.
Through the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room,
quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the
sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to
weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless
melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-
tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away
among the rose pots.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza
wants it to be next month."
Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder.
He is over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired
waiting."
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally
commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.
"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?"
Carmen returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air.
"Papa, do you remember how much in love he was?"
"In love? With whom?"
"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know
of," she said with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the
beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things like
that--"
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame.
That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of
a great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that
had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the
dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being
cheated by life? Love-he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that
others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an
exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies
such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or
sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the
eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined
it might be.
Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of
those days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his
boyhood when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was
trying to get there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it,"
someone had seemed to urge in his ears. So, he had avidly seized on the
shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of
humanity from time immemorial. In the meantime, he became very much
engaged to Esperanza.
Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what
ruined so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the
enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will
yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing
possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement.
Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.
"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
"I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I
think they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement
has been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of
temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." Don Julian
loved to philosophize. He was talking now with an evident relish in words,
his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to monologue pitch. "That phase
you were speaking of is natural enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I
see it, was Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--"
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical
repose--almost indolence-disturbed in the role suggested by her father's
figurative language.
"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends
had amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible
evidence. Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on
grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth
of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed
Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity;
rather a poet with wayward humor, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the
stone steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through
the little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening,
now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre
cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose
wide, open porches he could glimpse through the heat-shriveled tamarinds
in the Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago, that house meant nothing to him save that it was the
Martinez house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six
weeks ago, Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her
name; but now--
One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough
occurrence, since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying
favor with the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed
himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is
beneficial," the old man had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;"
the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's trouble"--Don
Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own worldly
wisdom.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the
excitement of the Judge's children that she was a recent and very welcome
arrival. In the characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had been
omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with
the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the
evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he
addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the
Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but his sister-in-law, and that her name
was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the
young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly
embarrassed, and felt that he should explain.
To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, each time I was about to
correct you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before."
"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.
"A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time
or so, the young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but
my name is Manalang, Manalang.' You know, I never forgave him!"
He laughed with her.
"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she
pursued, "is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his
mistake without help."
"As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a
game of chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator
and desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat
in the vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately
tinkled and banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and
wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming
speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was
unmistakably a sister of the Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a
different type altogether. She was small and plump, with wide brown eyes,
clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty woman
with the complexion of a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia
was taller, not so obviously pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but
she was much darker, of a smooth rich brown with underlying tones of
crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding vitality.
On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the
gravel road to the house on the hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered
them beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a half hour
or so, the chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas
would go out to the porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a
rocking chair and the hours-warm, quiet March hours--sped by. He enjoyed
talking with her and it was evident that she liked his company; yet what
feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter
of course. Only when Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those
visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo
suddenly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for
Esperanza to come out of the church as he had been wont to do. He had
been eager to go "neighboring."
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not
habitually untruthful, added, "Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del
Valle's."
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked
jealousies. She was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in
their power to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man were married,
why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly
love another woman.
That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he
was giving Julia Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized
that; yet something that would not be denied beckoned imperiously, and he
followed on.
It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so
easy and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to
her, the shadows around, enfolding.
"Up here I find--something--"
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing
unwanted intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?"
"No; youth--its spirit--"
"Are you so old?"
"And heart's desire."
Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every
man?
"Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is
too broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery."
"Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the
stars. In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed
in from somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a
dream.
"Mystery--" she answered lightly, "that is so brief--"
"Not in some," quickly. "Not in you."
"You have known me a few weeks; so, the mystery."
"I could study you all my life and still not find it."
"So long?"
"I should like to."
Those six weeks were now so swift--seeming in the memory, yet had they
been so deep in the living, so charged with compelling power and
sweetness. Because neither the past nor the future had relevance or
meaning, he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such
a willful shutting out of fact as astounded him in his calmer moments.
Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to
spend Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a
house on the beach. Carmen also came with her four energetic children. She
and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the preparation of
the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands--how
Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take
time off to accompany her on this visit to her father; how Doña Adela's
Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes going out without
his collar, or with unmatched socks.
After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him
what a thriving young coconut looked like--"plenty of leaves, close set, rich
green"--while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending
entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far
down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the
gray of the out-curving beach.
Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed.
Here were her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his
black canvas footwear which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on
dry sand.
When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
"I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection.
"Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a
lovely beach."
There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead,
and whipped the tuckedup skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the
picture was something of eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The
girl had grace, distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet she had a
tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality,
an achievement of the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert
vitality of mind and body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant
perverseness which is sauce to charm.
"The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the
last time--we can visit."
"The last? Why?"
"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."
He noted an evasive quality in the answer.
"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"
"If you are, you never look it."
"Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be."
"But--"
"Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself.
"I wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause.
She waited.
"A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid."
"Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely
"Who? I?"
"Oh, no!"
"You said I am calm and placid."
"That is what I think."
"I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves."
It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and
covert phrase.
"I should like to see your home town."
"There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns
growing on them, and sometimes squashes."
That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated,
yet withal more distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded
him.
"Nothing? There is you."
"Oh, me? But I am here."
"I will not go, of course, until you are there."
"Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American
there!"
"Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment."
She laughed.
"We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees."
"Could I find that?"
"If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.
"I'll inquire about--"
"What?"
"The house of the prettiest girl in the town."
"There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now,
that is not quite sincere."
"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.
"I thought you, at least, would not say such things."
"Pretty--pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other handier I did not
mean that quite--"
"Are you withdrawing the compliment?"
"Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is
more than that when--"
"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.
"Exactly."
"It must be ugly."
"Always?"
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad,
glinting streamer of crimsoned gold.
"No, of course you are right."
"Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as they turned
back.
"I am going home."
The end of an impossible dream!
"When?" after a long silence.
"Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They
want me to spend Holy Week at home."
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the
last time."
"Can't I come to say goodbye?"
"Oh, you don't need to!"
"No, but I want to."
"There is no time."
The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more
than a pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that
affects the senses as does solemn harmony; a peace that is not contentment
but a cessation of tumult when all violence of feeling tones down to the
wistful serenity of regret. She turned and looked into his face, in her dark
eyes a ghost of sunset sadness.
"Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life."
"I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the
old things."
"Old things?"
"Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage." He said it lightly,
unwilling to mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching
hers for one whirling second.
Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind.
Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned
her face away, but he heard her voice say very low, "Goodbye."
Alfredo Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened
and entered the heart o the town--heart of Chinese stores sheltered under
low-hung roofs, of indolent drug stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-
repairing establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith's cubbyhole where a
consumptive bent over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses
with quaint hand-and-ball knockers on the door; heart of grass-grown plaza
reposeful with trees, of ancient church and convento, now circled by
swallows gliding in flight as smooth and soft as the afternoon itself. Into the
quickly deepening twilight, the voice of the biggest of the church bells kept
ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their long
wax candles, young women in vivid apparel (for this was Holy Thursday
and the Lord was still alive), older women in sober black skirts. Came to
the young men in droves, elbowing each other under the Talisay tree near
the church door. The gaily decked rice-paper lanterns were again on display
while from the windows of the older houses hung colored glass globes,
heirlooms from a day when grass pith wicks floating in coconut oil were the
chief lighting device.
Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down
the length of the street like a huge jeweled band studded with glittering
clusters where the saints' platforms were. Above the measured music rose
the untutored voices of the choir, steeped in incense and the acrid fumes of
burning wax.
The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of
Sorrows suddenly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those
lines of light into component individuals. Esperanza stiffened self-
consciously, tried to look unaware, and could not.
The line moved on.
Suddenly, Alfredo's slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl
was coming down the line-a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the
woman that could cause violent commotion in his heart, yet had no place in
the completed ordering of his life.
Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church
and then back again, where, according to the old proverb, all processions
end.
At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and
the choir, whose voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang
the close of the procession.
A round orange moon, "huge as a winnowing basket," rose lazily into a
clear sky, whitening the iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the
windows. Along the still densely shadowed streets the young women with
their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home.
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas.
The crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those
who lived farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting
him in a little while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he said "Good
evening" and fell into step with the girl.
"I had been thinking all this time that you had gone," he said in a voice that
was both excited and troubled.
"No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go."
"Oh, is the Judge going?"
"Yes."
The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been
assigned elsewhere. As lawyer-and as lover--Alfredo had found that out
long before.
"Mr. Salazar," she broke into his silence, "I wish to congratulate you."
Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.
"For what?"
"For your approaching wedding."
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not
offend?
"I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere
visitors are slow about getting the news," she continued.
He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He
heard nothing to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal
tones of early acquaintance. No revelation there; simply the old voice--cool,
almost detached from personality, flexible and vibrant, suggesting
potentialities of song.
"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly
"When they are of friends, yes."
"Would you come if I asked you?"
"When is it going to be?"
"May," he replied briefly, after a long pause.
"May is the month of happiness they say," she said, with what seemed to
him a shade of irony.
"They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?"
"Why not?"
"No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?"
"If you will ask me," she said with disdain.
"Then I ask you."
"Then I will be there."
The gravel road lay before them; at the road's end the lighted windows of
the house on the hill. There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a
longing so keen that it was pain, a wish that, that house was his, that all the
bewilderments of the present were not, and that this woman by his side
were his long-wedded wife, returning with him to the peace of home.
"Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to
choose between something you wanted to do and something you had to
do?"
"No!"
"I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a
man who was in such a situation."
"You are fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer.
"Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"
"I don't know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes
us and rushes downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is
foolish to ask whether one will or will not, because it no longer depends on
him."
"But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I know? That
is his problem after all."
"Doesn't it--interest you?"
"Why must it? I--I have to say goodbye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the house."
Without lifting her eyes, she quickly turned and walked away.
Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of
hope trembled in his mind though set against that hope were three years of
engagement, a very near wedding, perfect understanding between the
parents, his own conscience, and Esperanza herself--Esperanza waiting,
Esperanza no longer young, Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the
intensely acquisitive.
He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and
with a kind of aversion which he tried to control.
She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly
acceptable appearance. She never surprised one with unexpected
homeliness nor with startling reserves of beauty. At home, in church, on the
street, she was always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and clear of
complexion, spare of arms and of breast, with a slight convexity to thin
throat; a woman dressed with self-conscious care, even elegance; a woman
distinctly not average.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something
about Calixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-
listened, understanding imperfectly. At a pause he drawled out to fill in the
gap: "Well, what of it?" The remark sounded ruder than he had intended.
"She is not married to him," Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously
pitched voice. "Besides, she should have thought of us. Nanay practically
brought her up. We never thought she would turn out bad."
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta?
"You are very positive about her badness," he commented dryly. Esperanza
was always positive.
"But do you approve?"
"Of what?"
"What she did."
"No," indifferently.
"Well?"
He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of
her mind. "All I say is that it is not necessarily wicked."
"Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--immoral man. I did not know that
your ideas were like that."
"My ideas?" he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. "The
only test I wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring
anybody? No? Then I am justified in my conscience. I am right. Living
with a man to whom she is not married--is that it? It may be wrong, and
again it may not."
"She has injured us. She was ungrateful." Her voice was tight with
resentment.
"The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he stopped, appalled by
the passion in his voice.
"Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why
you have been indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and
hear what perhaps some are trying to keep from me." The blood surged into
his very eyes and his hearing sharpened to points of acute pain. What would
she say next?
"Why don't you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think
of me and of what people will say." Her voice trembled.
Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered
before. What people will say-what will they not say? What don't they say
when long engagements are broken almost on the eve of the wedding?
"Yes," he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, "one
tries to be fair--according to his lights--but it is hard. One would like to be
fair to one's self first. But that is too easy, one does not dare--"
"What do you mean?" she asked with repressed violence. "Whatever my
shortcomings, and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone
out of my way, of my place, to find a man."
Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her;
or was that a covert attack on Julia Salas?
"Esperanza--" a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. "If you--suppose
I--" Yet how could a mere man word such a plea?
"If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of--why
don't you tell me you are tired of me?" she burst out in a storm of weeping
that left him completely shamed and unnerved.
The last word had been said.
 
As Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling
over the lake, he wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to
this trip of his. He was supposed to be in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the
People of the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him, and there he
would have been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the
defense. He had to find that elusive old woman. That the search was leading
him to that particular lake town which was Julia Salas' home should not
disturb him unduly. Yet he was disturbed to a degree utterly out of
proportion to the prosaicness of his errand. That inner tumult was no
surprise to him; in the last eight years he had become used to such
occasional storms. He had long realized that he could not forget Julia Salas.
Still, he had tried to be content and not to remember too much. The climber
of mountains who has known the back-break, the lonesomeness, and the
chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He
looks up sometimes from the valley where settles the dusk of evening, but
he knows he must not heed the radiant beckoning. Maybe, in time, he
would cease even to look up.
He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of
capitulation to what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and
of character. His life had simply ordered itself; no more struggles, no more
stirring up of emotions that got a man nowhere. From his capacity of
complete detachment, he derived a strange solace. The essential himself,
the himself that had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected,
always be free and alone. When claims encroached too insistently, as
sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner fastness, and from that
vantage he saw things and people around him as remote and alien, as
incidents that did not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and
helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but immeasurably far away, beyond
her reach.
Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up-
tilted town nestling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snub crested
belfry stood beside the ancient church. On the outskirts the evening
smudges glowed red through the sinuous mists of smoke that rose and lost
themselves in the purple shadows of the hills. There was a young moon
which grew slowly luminous as the coral tints in the sky yielded to the
darker blues of evening.
The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden
ripples on the dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the
crowd assembled to meet the boat--slow, singing cadences, characteristic of
the Laguna lakeshore speech. From where he stood, he could not
distinguish faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidente was
there to meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.
"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"
"What abogado?" someone irately asked.
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.
It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left
with Brigida Samuy-Tandang "Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor
Salazar's second letter had arrived late, but the wife had read it and said,
"Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house."
Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on
board since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So, the
presidente had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that
official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman replied, "but he could
not write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we
went there to find her."
San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo,
must do something for him. It was not every day that one met with such
willingness to help.
Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled
into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but
it was too bare to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would
walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore
over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water.
How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its
dim light issuing forlornly through the single window which served as
counter. An occasional couple sauntered by, the women's chinelas making
scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing
games on the street--tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought
of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.
How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant
anything to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April
haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid
ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a
conscious effort at regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe
a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on
his forehead, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved him
to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer.
A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the
young moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens
the cotton tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in
the cool, stilly midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soaring jets of
sound. Calle Luz.
Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she
would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a
moonlit night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw
her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of
vivid surprise.
"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.
"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?"
"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.
"Won't you come up?"
He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had
left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone
came downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last--he was
shaking her hand.
She had not changed much--a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet
something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully
into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and
that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing
ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could
not take his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He
felt an impersonal curiosity creeping into his gaze. The girl must have
noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush.
Gently--was it experimentally? --he pressed her hand at parting; but his
own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the
question hardly interested him. The young moon had set, and from the
uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-studded sky. So that was all
over.
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream? So, all these years--since
when? --he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet
seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.
An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for
some immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom
again, and where lives on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of
vanished youth.
The Small Key
Author: Paz M. Latorena (January 17, 1908 – October 20 1953), one of the
foremost writers of the first generation of Filipino English writers, in both
literary writing and education was a poet, editor, author, and teacher.
Latorena’s former students are now giants in Philippine letters: F. Sionil
Jose, Nita Umali, Genoveva Edroza Matute, Zeneida Amador, Ophelia
Dimalanta and Alice Colet-Villadolid, to name a few.
It was very warm. The sun, up above a sky that was blue and tremendous
and beckoning to birds ever on the wing, shone bright as if determined to
scorch everything under heaven, even the low, square nipa house that stood
in an unashamed relief against the gray-green haze of grass and leaves.
It was lonely dwelling located far from its neighbors, which were huddled
close to one another as if for mutual comfort. It was flanked on both sides
by tall, slender bamboo tree which rustled plaintively under a gentle wind.
On the porch a woman past her early twenties stood regarding the scene
before her with eyes made incurious by its familiarity. All around her the
land stretched endlessly, it seemed, and vanished into the distance. There
were dark, newly plowed furrows where in due time timorous seedling
would give rise to sturdy stalks and golden grain, to a rippling yellow sea in
the wind and sun during harvest time. Promise of plenty and reward for
hard toil! With a sigh of discontent, however, the woman turned and
entered a small dining room where a man sat over a belated a midday meal.
Pedro Buhay, a prosperous farmer, looked up from his plate and smiled at
his wife as she stood framed by the doorway, the sunlight glinting on her
dark hair, which was drawn back, without relenting wave, from a rather
prominent and austere brow.
“Where are the shirts I ironed yesterday?” she asked as she approached the
table.
“In my trunk, I think,” he answered.
“Some of them need darning,” and observing the empty plate, she added,
“do you want some more rice?”
“No,” hastily, “I am in a burry to get back. We must finish plowing the
south field today because tomorrow is Sunday.”
Pedro pushed the chair back and stood up. Soledad began to pile the dirty
dishes one on top of the other.
“Here is the key to my trunk.” From the pocket of his khaki coat he pulled a
string of non-descript red which held together a big shiny key and another
small, rather rusty looking one.
With deliberate care he untied the knot and, detaching the big key, dropped
the small one back into his pocket. She watched him fixedly as he did this.
The smile left her face and a strange look came into her eyes as she took the
big key from him without a word. Together they left the dining room.
Out of the porch he put an arm around her shoulders and peered into her
shadowed face.
“You look pale and tired,” he remarked softly. “What have you been doing
all morning?”
“Nothing,” she said listlessly. “But the heat gives me a headache.”
“Then lie down and try to sleep while I am gone.” For a moment they
looked deep into each other’s eyes.
“It is really warm,” he continued. “I think I will take off my coat.”
He removed the garment absent mindedly and handed it to her. The stairs
creaked under his weight as he went down.
“Choleng,” he turned his head as he opened the gate, “I shall pass by Tia
Maria’s house and tell her to come. I may not return before dark.”
Soledad nodded. Her eyes followed her husband down the road, noting the
fine set of his head and shoulders, the case of his stride. A strange ache rose
in her throat.
She looked at the coat he had handed to her. It exuded a faint smell of his
favorite cigars, one of which he invariably smoked, after the day’s work, on
his way home from the fields. Mechanically, she began to fold the garment.
As she was doing so, s small object fell from the floor with a dull, metallic
sound. Soledad stooped down to pick it up. It was the small key! She stared
at it in her palm as if she had never seen it before. Her mouth was tightly
drawn and for a while she looked almost old.
She passed into the small bedroom and tossed the coat carelessly on the
back of a chair. She opened the window and the early afternoon sunshine
flooded in. On a mat spread on the bamboo floor were some newly washed
garments.
She began to fold them one by one in feverish haste, as if seeking in the
task of the moment in refuge from painful thoughts. But her eyes moved
restlessly around the room until they rested almost furtively on a small
trunk that was half concealed by a rolled mat in a dark corner.
It was a small old trunk, without anything on the outside that might arouse
one’s curiosity. But it held the things she had come to hate with
unreasoning violence, the things that were causing her so much
unnecessary anguish and pain and threatened to destroy all that was most
beautiful between her and her husband!
Soledad came across a torn garment. She threaded a needle, but after a few
uneven stitches she pricked her finger and a crimson drop stained the white
garment. Then she saw she had been mending on the wrong side.
“What is the matter with me?” she asked herself aloud as she pulled the
thread with nervous and impatient fingers.
What did it matter if her husband chose to keep the clothes of his first wife?
“She is dead anyhow. She is dead,” she repeated to herself over and over
again.
The sound of her own voice calmed her. She tried to thread the needle once
more. But she could not, not for the tears had come unbidden and
completely blinded her.
“My God,” she cried with a sob, “make me forget Indo’s face as he put the
small key back into his pocket.”
She brushed her tears with the sleeves of her camisa and abruptly stood up.
The heat was stifling, and the silence in the house was beginning to be
unendurable.
She looked out of the window. She wondered what was keeping Tia Maria.
Perhaps Pedro had forgotten to pass by her house in his hurry. She could
picture him out there in the south field gazing far and wide at the newly
plowed land with no thought in his mind but of work, work. For to the
people of the barrio whose patron saint, San Isidro Labrador, smiled on
them with benign eyes from
his crude altar in the little chapel up the hill, this season was a prolonged
hour during which they were blind and dead to everything but the demands
of the land.
During the next half hour Soledad wandered in and out of the rooms in
effort to seek escape from her own thoughts and to fight down an
overpowering impulse. If Tia Maria would only come and talk to her to
divert her thoughts to other channels!
But the expression on her husband’s face as he put the small key back into
his pocket kept torturing her like a nightmare, goading beyond endurance.
Then, with all resistance to the impulse gone, she was kneeling before the
small trunk. With the long-drawn breath, she inserted the small key. There
was an unpleasant metallic sound, for the key had not been used for a long
time and it was rusty.
That evening Pedro Buhay hurried home with the usual cigar dangling from
his mouth, pleased with himself and the tenants because the work in the
south field had been finished. Tia Maria met him at the gate and told him
that Soledad was in bed with a fever.
“I shall go to town and bring Doctor Santos,” he decided, his cool hand on
his wife’s brow.
Soledad opened her eyes.
“Don’t, Indo,” she begged with a vague terror in her eyes which he took for
anxiety for him because the town was pretty far and the road was dark and
deserted by that hour of the night. “I shall be alright tomorrow.”
Pedro returned an hour later, very tired and very worried. The doctor was
not at home but his wife had promised to give him Pedro’s message as soon
as he came in.
Tia Maria decide to remain for the night. But it was Pedro who stayed up to
watch the sick woman. He was puzzled and worried – more than he cared
to admit it. It was true that Soledad did not looked very well early that
afternoon. Yet, he thought, the fever was rather sudden. He was afraid it
might be a symptom of a serious illness.
Soledad was restless the whole night. She tossed from one side to another,
but toward morning she fell into some sort of troubled sleep. Pedro then lay
down to snatch a few winks.
He woke up to find the soft morning sunshine streaming through the half-
open window. He got up without making any noise. His wife was still
asleep and now breathing evenly. A sudden rush of tenderness came over
him at the sight of her – so slight, so frail.
Tia Maria was nowhere to be seen, but that did not bother him, for it was
Sunday and the work in the south field was finished. However, he missed
the pleasant aroma which came from the kitchen every time he had
awakened early in the morning.
The kitchen was neat but cheerless, and an immediate search for wood
brought no results. So, shouldering an ax, Pedro descended the rickety
stairs that led to the backyard.
The morning was clear and the breeze soft and cool. Pedro took in a deep
breath of air. It was good – it smelt of trees, of the rice fields, of the land he
loved.
He found a pile of logs under the young mango tree near the house and
began to chop. He swung the ax with rapid clean sweeps, enjoying the feel
of the smooth wooden handle in his palms.
As he stopped for a while to mop his brow, his eyes caught the remnants of
a smudge that had been built in the backyard.
“Ah!” he muttered to himself. “She swept the yard yesterday after I left her.
That, coupled with the heat, must have given her a headache and then the
fever.”
The morning breeze stirred the ashes and a piece of white cloth fluttered
into view.
Pedro dropped his ax. It was a half-burn panuelo. Somebody had been
burning clothes. He examined the slightly ruined garment closely. A
puzzled expression came into his eyes. First it was doubt groping for truth,
then amazement, and finally agonized incredulity passed across his face. He
almost ran back to the house. In three strides he was upstairs. He found his
coat hanging from the back of a chair.
Cautiously he entered the room. The heavy breathing of his wife told him
that she was still asleep. As he stood by the small trunk, a vague distaste to
open it assailed to him. Surely, he must be mistaken. She could not have
done it; she could not have been that… that foolish.
Resolutely he opened the trunk. It was empty.
It was nearly noon when the doctor arrived. He felt Soledad’s pulse and
asked question which she answered in monosyllables. Pedro stood by
listening to the whole procedure with an inscrutable expression on his face.
He had the same expression when the doctor told him that nothing was
really wrong with his wife although she seemed to be worried about
something. The physician merely prescribed a day of complete rest.
Pedro lingered on the porch after the doctor left. He was trying not to be
angry with his wife. He hoped it would be just an interlude that could be
recalled without bitterness. She would explain sooner or later, she would be
repentant, perhaps she would even listen and eventually forgive her, for she
was young and he loved her. But somehow, he knew that this incident
would always remain a shadow in their lives.
Zita
Author: Arturo B. Rotor (June 7, 1907–April 9, 1988) was a Filipino
medical doctor, civil servant, musician, and writer. Rotor was an
internationally respected writer of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is
widely considered among the best Filipino short story writers of the
twentieth century. He was a charter member of the Philippine Book Guild;
the guild's initial publication (1937) was “The Wound and the Scar”,
despite Rotor's protests that someone else's work should have been selected.
To stop at any little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms. It was almost
midday; they had been Turong brought him from Pauambang in his small
sailboat, for the coastwise steamer did not 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.
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, and 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 sarisari 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 the
arm of his chair.
"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.
"He bowed as if we were his equals. He asked for the first 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, 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.
"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 work. 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 any better. Moths are not supposed to know; they only
come to the light. And the light 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.
And what did such things as original sin, selfishness, insatiable, actress of a
thousand faces mean, and who were Sirse, Lorelay, and other names she
could not find anywhere? She meant to ask him someday, someday when
his eyes were kinder.
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 can 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 bouquet 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?
They who have been young once say that only youth can make youth forget
itself; that life is a river bed; the water passes over 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
solitary, for now of 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 meets 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 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 still
remember 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; receive them with a smile and forget 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 ylang-ylang, 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 surprises for Zita. Box after box came in Turong's
sailboat and each time they contained things that took the words from her
lips. Silk as sheer and perishable as gossamer, or heavy and shiny and tinted
like the sunset sky; slippers 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.
"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; how did they go? 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
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, turnabout; 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. "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?" 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.
"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, and 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."
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.
The Footnote to Youth
Author: José García Villa (August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997) was a
Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was
awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973, as
well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by Conrad Aiken.
He is known to have introduced the "reversed consonance rime scheme" in
writing poetry, as well as the extensive use of punctuation marks—
especially commas, which made him known as the Comma Poet. He used
the penname Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle, Lion"), based on the
characters he derived from himself.
About Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from
the plow, and led it. The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong
thought to himself he would tell his father to its shed and fed it. He was
hesitant about saying it, he wanted his father to know what he had to say
was of serious importance as it would mark a climacteric in his life.
Dodong finally decided to tell it, but a thought came to him that his father
might refuse to consider it. His father was a silent hardworking farmer, who
chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong’s
grandmother. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could
help his mother in the housework. I will tell 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 further
rows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm
marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong got
tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not
bother to look where into the air, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he
said to himself he was not young anymore. Dodong unhitched the carabao
leisurely and fave 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, then down on his upper lip 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
stature. Thinking himself 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 young dreams of himself and 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 want to touch her, to hold her. She made him
dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscle of his arms. Dirty. This
fieldwork was healthy invigorating, but it begrimed you, smudged you
terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then marched obliquely to a
creek.
“Must you marry, Dodong?” Dodong resented his father’s question; his
father himself had married early. Dodong stripped himself and laid his
clothes, a gray under shirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. Then 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 was
already lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. He
and his parents sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried
freshwater fish, and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were
overripe and when one held the fruit, they felt more fluid than solid.
Dodong broke off a piece of caked 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 parent.
Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through, and went
with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out.
But he was tired and now, feld 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 has said it without
any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and
looked at his father expectantly. A crescent moon outside shed its feeble
light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His
father looks old now.
“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.His father looked at him silently
and stopped sucking the broken tooth, The silenece became intense and
cruel, and Dodong was uncomfortable and then became very 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 flexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his
seat. I asked her last night to marry me and she said… “Yes. I want your
permission… I… want… it…” There was an impatient clamor in his voice,
an exacting protest at his coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his
father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sound it
made broke dully the night stillness. “Must you marry, Dodong?” Dodong
resented his father’s question; his father himself had married early. Dodong
made a quick impassioned essay 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. Too absorbed was he in
himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he has asserted himself. He lost his
resentment for his father, for a while, he even felt sorry for him about the
pain I his tooth. Then he confined his mind dreaming of Teang and himself.
Sweet young dreams…
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely so that his
camiseta was damp. He was still like a tree and his thoughts were confused.
His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He wanted
to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt afraid of
the house. It had seemingly caged him, to compress his thoughts with
severe tyranny. He was also afraid of Teang who was giving birth in the
house; she faces screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to
scream like that. 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 ago. He was very young… He felt
queer, troubled, and uncomfortable. Dodong felt tired of standing. He sat
down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his
calloused toes. Then he thought, supposed he had ten children… The
journey of thought came to a halt when he heard his mother’s voice from
the house. Somehow, he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful
paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something not properly
his.
“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 has taken something not properly
his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust off his kundiman shorts.
“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.” He turned to look again and
this time, he 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. His parent’s eyes seemed to pierce through him so he felt limp.
He wanted to hide or even run away from them.
“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” his mother said. Dodong did not
want to come up. He’d rather stayed in the sun.
“Dodong… Dodong.”
I’ll… come up. Dodong traced the tremulous steps on the dry parched yard.
He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in
him. Within, he avoided his parent’s eyes. He walked ahead of them so that
they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untru. 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.
“Son,” his father said.
And his mother: “Dodong..” How kind their voices were. They flowed into
him, making him strong.
“Teang?” Dodong said.
“She’s sleeping. But you go in…”
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his wife,
asleep on the paper with her soft black hair 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 parent, he did not want to be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child Dodong heard him cry. The thin voice
touched his heart. 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 that the coming of children could not
helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children tolled on her. She was
shapeless and thin even if she was young. There was interminable work that
kept her tied up. Cooking, laundering. The house. The children. She cried
sometimes, wishing she had no 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 had neen another suitor, Lucio older than
Dodong by nine years and that wasw why she had chosen Dodong. Young
Dodong who was only seventeen. Lucio had married another. Lucio, she
wondered, would she have born him children? Maybe not, either. That was
a better lot. But she loved Dodong… in the moonlight, tired and querulous.
He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to be
wise about many things.
Life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why must be so? Why one was
forsaken… after love? One of them was why life did not fulfill all of the
youth’ dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken… after love.
Dodong could not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be
answered. It must be so to make youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet.
Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house, humiliated by himself.
He had wanted to know little wisdom but was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen, he came home one night, very flustered and
happy. Dodong heard Blas’ steps for he could not sleep well at night. He
watched Blass undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on
his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called his name and asked why he did
not sleep. You better go to sleep. It is late,”
Dodong said.
“Itay..” Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
“I’m going to marry Tona. She
accepted me tonight. “Itay, you think
it over.” Dodong lay silent.
“I loved 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, although 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’ voice was steeled with resentment. “I will
mary Tona.” “You have objection, Itay?” Blas
asked acridly.
“Son… none…”
But for Dodong, he does anything. Youth must triumph… now.
Afterward… 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.
Midsummer
Author: Manuel E. Arguilla (1911 – 1944) was an Ilokano writer in
English, patriot, and martyr. Most of Arguilla's stories depict scenes in
Barrio Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union where he was born. His bond with
his birthplace, forged by his dealings with the peasant folk of Ilocos,
remained strong even after he moved to Manila where he studied at the
University of the Philippines where he finished BS Education in 1933 and
where he became a member and later the president of the U.P. Writer's Club
and editor of the university's Literary Apprentice.
The cover of his cart and peered ahead. The road seemed to writhe under
the lash of the noon he pulled down his hat until the wide brim touched his
shoulders. He crouched lower under day heat; it swum from side to side,
humped and bent itself like a feeling serpent, and disappeared behind the
spur of a low hill on which grew a scrawny thicket of bamboo.
There was not a house in sight. Along the left side of the road ran the deep,
dry gorge of a stream, the banks sparsely covered by sun-burned cogon
grass. In places, the rocky, waterless bed showed aridly. Farther, beyond the
shimmer of quivering heat waves rose ancient hills not less blue than the
cloud palisaded sky. On the right stretched a land waste of low rolling
dunes. Scattered clumps of hardy ledda relieved the otherwise barren
monotony of the landscape. Far away he could discern a thin indigo line
that was the sea.
The grating of the cartwheels on the pebbles of the road and the almost
soundless shuffle of the weary bull but emphasized the stillness. Now and
then came the dry rustling of falling earth as lumps from the cracked sides
of the gorge fell down to the bottom.
He struck at the bull with the slack of the rope. The animal broke into a
heavy trot. The dust stirred cumbrously. The bull slowed down, threw up
his head, and a glistening thread of saliva spun out into the dry air. The
dying rays of the sun were reflected in points of light on the wet, heaving
flanks.
The man in the cart did not notice the woman until she had rounded the
spur of land and stood unmoving beside the road, watching the cart and its
occupant come toward her. She was young, surprisingly sweet and fresh
amidst her parched surroundings. A gaily stripped kerchief covered her
head, the ends tied at the nape of her neck. She wore a homespun bodice of
light red cloth with small white checks. Her skirt was also homespun and
showed a pattern of white checks with narrow stripes of yellow and red.
With both hands she held by the mouth a large, apparently empty, water
jug, the cool red of which blended well with her dress. She was barefoot.
She stood straight and still beside the road and regarded him with frank
curiosity. Suddenly she turned and disappeared into the dry gorge. Coming
to where she had stood a few moments before, he pulled up the bull and got
out of the cart. He saw where a narrow path had been cut into the bank and
stood a while lost in thought, absently wiping the perspiration from his
face. Then he unhitched his bull and for a few moments, with strong brown
fingers, kneaded the hot neck of the beast. Driving the animal before him,
he followed the path. It led up the dry bed of the stream; the sharp
fragments of sun-heated rocks were like burning coals under his feet. There
was no sign of the young woman.
He came upon her beyond a bed in the gorge, where a big mango tree,
which had partly fallen from the side of the ravine, cast its cool shade over
a well.
She had filled her jar and was rolling the kerchief around her hand into a
flat coil which she placed on her head. Without glancing at him, where he
had stopped some distance off, she sat down of her heels, gathering the fold
of her skirt between her wide-spread knees. She tilted the brimful jar to
remove part of the water. One hand on the rim, the other supporting the
bottom, she began to raise it to her head. She knelt on one knee resting, for
a moment, the jar onto her head, getting to her feet at the same time. But
she staggered a little and water splashed down on her breast. The single
bodice instantly clung to her bosom molding the twin hillocks of her breasts
warmly brown through the wet
cloth. One arm remained uplifted, holding the jar, while the other shook the
clinging cloth free of her drenched flesh. Then not once having raised her
eyes, she passed by the young man, who stood mutely gazing beside his
bull. The animal had found some grass along the path and was industriously
grazing.
He turned to watch the graceful figure beneath the jar until it vanished
around a bend in the path leading to the road. Then he led the bull to the
well, and tethered it to a root of the mango tree.
"The underpart of her arm is white and smooth," he said to his blurred
image on the water of the well, as he leaned over before lowering the
bucket made of half a petroleum can. "And her hair is thick and black." The
bucket struck with a rattling impact. It filled with one long gurgle. He threw
his hat on the grass and pulled the bucket up with both hands.
The twisted bamboo rope bit into his hardened palms, and he thought how...
the same rope must hurt her.
He placed the dripping bucket on a flat stone, and the bull drank. "Son of
lightning!" he said, thumping the side of the bull after it had drunk the third
bucketful, "you drink like the great Kuantitao!" A low, rich rumbling rolled
through the cavernous body of the beast. He tied it again to the root, and the
animal idly rubbed its horns against the wood. The sun had fallen from the
perpendicular, and noticing that the bull stood partly exposed to the sun, he
pushed it farther into shade. He fanned himself with his hat. He whistled to
entice the wind from the sea, but not a breeze stirred.
After a while he put on his hat and hurriedly walked the short distance
through the gorge up to the road where his cart stood. From inside he took a
jute sack which he slung over one shoulder. With the other arm, he gathered
part of the hay at the bottom of the cart. He returned to the well, slips of
straw falling behind him as he picked his way from one tuft of grass to
another, for the broken rocks of the path has grown exceedingly hot.
He gave the hay to the bull, its rump was again in the sun, and he had to
push it back. "Fool, do you want to broil yourself alive?" he said good-
humoredly, slapping the thick haunches. It switched its long-haired tail and
fell to eating. The dry, sweet-smelling hay made harsh gritting sounds in the
mouth of the hungry animal. Saliva rolled out from the corners, clung to the
stiff hairs that fringed the thick lower lip, fell and gleamed and evaporated
in the heated air.
He took out of the jute sack a polished coconut shell. The top had been
sawed off and holes bored at opposite sides, through which a string tied to
the lower part of the shell passed in a loop. The smaller piece could thus be
slipped up and down as a cover. The coconut shell contained cooked rice
still a little warm. Buried on the top was an egg now boiled hard. He next
brought out a bamboo tube of salt, a cake of brown sugar wrapped in
banana leaf, and some dried shrimps. Then he spread the sack in what
remained of the shade, placed his simple meal thereon, and prepared to eat
his dinner. But first he drew a bucketful of water from the well, setting the
bucket on a rock. He seated himself on another rock and ate with his
fingers. From time to time he drank from the bucket.
He was half through with his meal when the girl came down the path once
more. She had changed the wetted bodice. He watched her with lowered
head as she approached, and felt a difficulty in continuing to eat, but went
through the motions of filling his mouth nevertheless. He strained his eyes
looking at the girl from beneath his eyebrows. How graceful she was! Her
hips tapered smoothly down to round thighs and supple legs, showing
against her skirt and moving straight and free. Her shoulders, small but
firm, bore her shapely neck and head with shy pride.
When she was very near, he ate more hurriedly, so that he almost choked.
He did not look at her. She placed the jar between three stones. When she
picked up the rope of the bucket, he came to himself. He looked up--
straight into her face. He saw her eyes. They were brown and were
regarding him gravely, without embarrassment; he forgets his own timidity.
"Won't you join me, Ading?" he said simply. He remained seated.
Her lips parted in a half smile and a little dimple appeared high upon her
right cheek. She shook her head and said: "God reward you, Manong."
"Perhaps the poor food I have is not fit for you?"
"No, no. It isn't that. How can you think of it? I should be ashamed. It is
that I have must eaten myself. That is why I came to get water in the middle
of the day--we ran out of it. I see you have eggs and shrimps and sugar.
Why, be had nothing but rice and salt."
"Salt? Surely you joke."
"I would be ashamed..."
"But what is the matter with salt?"
"Salt...salt...Makes baby stout," he intoned. "My grandmother used to sing
that to me when I complained of our food."
They laughed and felt more at ease and regarded each other more openly.
He took a long time fingering his rice before raising it to his mouth, the
while he gazed up at her and smiled for no reason. She smiles back in turn
and gave the rope which she held an absentminded tug. The bucket came
down from its perch of rock in a miniature flood. He leaped to his feet with
a surprised yell, and the next instant the jute sack on which he lay his meal
was drenched. Only the rice inside the coconut shell and the bamboo of
tube of salt were saved from the water.
She was distressed, but he only laughed.
"It is nothing," he said. "It was time I stopped eating. I have filled up to my
neck."
"Forgive me, Manong," she insisted. "It was all my fault. Such a clumsy
creature I am."
"It was not your fault," she assured him. "I am to blame for placing the
bucket of water where I did." "I will draw you another bucketful," he said.
"I am stronger than you."
"No, you must let me do it."
But when he caught hold of the bucket and stretched forth a brawny arm for
the coil of rope in her hands, she surrendered both to him quickly and drew
back a step as though shy of his touch. He lowered the bucket with his back
to her, and she had time to take in the tallness of him, the breadth of his
shoulders, and the sinewy strength of his legs. Down below in the small of
his back, two parallel ridges of rope-like muscle stuck out against the wet
shirt. As he hauled up the bucket, muscles rippled all over his body. His
hair, which was wavy, cut short behind but long in fronts fell in a cluster
over his forehead.
"Let me hold the bucket while you drink," she offered.
He flashed her a smile over his shoulders as he poured the water into her
jar, and again lowered the bucket.
"No, no, you must not do that." She hurried to his side and held one of his
arms. "I couldn't let you, a stranger..."
"Why not?" He smiled down at her, and noticed a slight film of moisture
clinging to the down on her upper lip and experienced a sudden desire to
wipe it away with his forefinger. He continued to lower the bucket while
she had to stand by.
"Hadn't you better move over to the shade?" he suggested, as the bucket
struck the water.
"What shall I do there?" she asked sharply, as though the idea of seeking
protection from the heat were contemptible to her.
"You will get roasted standing here in the sun," he said, and began to haul
up the bucket.
But she remained beside him, catching the rope as it feels from his hands,
coiling it carefully. The jar was filled, with plenty to drink as she tilted the
half-filled can until the water lapped the rim. He gulped a mouthful, gargled
noisily, spewed it out, then commenced to drink in earnest. He took long,
deep droughts of the sweetish water, for he was thirstier than he had
thought. A chuckling sound persisted in forming inside his throat at every
swallow. It made him self-conscious. He was breathless when through, and
red in the face.
"I don't know why it makes that sound," he said, fingering his throat and
laughing shamefacedly.
"Father also makes that sound when he drinks, and mother always laughs at
him," she said. She untied the headkerchief over her hair and started to roll
it.
Then sun had descended considerably and there was now hardly any shade
under the tree. The bull was gathering with its tongue stray slips of straw.
He untied the animal to lead it to the other side of the girl who spoke;
"Manong, why don't you come to our house and bring your animal with
you? There is shade and you can sleep, though our house is very poor."
She had already placed the jar on her head and stood, half-turned to him,
waiting for his answer.
"I would be troubling you, Ading."
"No. You come. I have told mother about you." She turned and went down
the path.
He sent the bull after her with smart slap on its side. Then he quickly
gathered the remains of his meal, put them inside the jute sack which had
almost dried, and himself followed. Then seeing that the bull had stopped to
nibble the tufts of grass that dotted the bottom of the gorge, he picked up
the dragging rope and urged the animal on into a trot. They caught up with
the girl near the cart. She stopped to wait.
He did not volunteer a word. He walked a step behind, the bull lumbering in
front. More than ever he was conscious of her person. She carried the jar on
her head without holding it. Her hands swung to her even steps. He drew
back his square shoulders, lifted his chin, and sniffed the motionless air.
There was a flourish in the way he flicked the rump of the bull with the
rope in his hand. He felt strong. He felt very strong. He felt that he could
follow the slender, lithe figure to the end of the world.
How My Brother Leon Brought A
Wife
Author: Manuel E. Arguilla (1911 – 1944) was an Ilokano writer in
English, patriot, and martyr. Most of Arguilla's stories depict scenes in
Barrio Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union where he was born. His bond with
his birthplace, forged by his dealings with the peasant folk of Ilocos,
remained strong even after he moved to Manila where he studied at the
University of the Philippines where he finished BS Education in 1933 and
where he became a member and later the president of the U.P. Writer's Club
and editor of the university's Literary Apprentice.
She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate
grace. She was lovely. She was tall. She looked up to my brother with a
smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth.
"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her
nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning
when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high
on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much."
She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and
Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to
his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.
I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch
his forehead now."
She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But
she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang
never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by
and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily.
My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He
paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of
Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly.
I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his
fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.
"Maria---" my brother Leon said.
He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had
always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my
mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.
"Yes, Noel."
Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself,
thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother
Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way.
"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely
toward the west.
She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while
she said quietly.
"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"
Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the
camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his
braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.
We stood alone on the roadside.
The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was
wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the
Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us
the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red
and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat,
which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened
like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with
fire.
 
He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that
the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the
field a cow lowed softly in answer.
"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she
laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm
around her shoulders.
"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of
it."
"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear
another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like
him."
She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across
Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very
white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple
high up on her right cheek.
"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with
him or become greatly jealous."
My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other
and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in
them.
I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he
was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and
would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several
times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the
cart, placing the smaller on top.
She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand
to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one
breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang
was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him
from running away.
"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the
hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that
instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew
himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope
hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and
the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.
She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side,
her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were
visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her
hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I
knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was
merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.
"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.
I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and
away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The
sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills
shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned
with many slow fires.
When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of
the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season,
my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly:
"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"
His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a
word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.
"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why
do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"
His fingers bit into my shoulder.
"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."
Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of
Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still,
he said:
"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us
with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."
Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why
do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have
you ever seen so many stars before?"
I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks,
hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of
the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the
shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was
merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks
in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-
heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to
the night air and of the hay inside the cart.
"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her
voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank,
was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.
"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I
would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to
Nagrebcan?"
"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so
many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."
"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."
"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.
"Making fun of me, Maria?"
She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's
hand and put it against her face.
I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the
cart between the wheels.
"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart,
and my heart sant.
Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of
andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed
by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and
swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the
cart.
"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.
"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."
"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.
Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:
"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is
home---Manong."
"So near already."
I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the
tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have
gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was
not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky
Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the
fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the
song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle
stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big
rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing
on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.
Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the
wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his
steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low
dikes.
"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and
scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though
indistinctly.
"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't
you?" My brother Leon stopped singing.
"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."
With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on.
He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little
while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.
"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves
around the foot of the
Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields
because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."
"Noel," she said.
"Yes, Maria."
"I am afraid. He may not like me."
"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way
you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that
was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-
tempered, gentlest man I know."
We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but
Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with
the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home
and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said
"Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my
brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to
them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the
noise of the wheels.
I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down
but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned
Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would
crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time.
There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway,
and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over
the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed
Mother's hand were:
"Father... where is he?"
"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His
leg is bothering him again."
I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch
Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling
me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed
through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria
and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.
There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the
big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it.
He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when
he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.
"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.
"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."
He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.
"She is very beautiful, Father."
"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the
room seemed to resound with it. And again, I saw her eyes on the long
curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.
"No, Father, she was not afraid."
"On the way---"
"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."
"What did he sing?"
"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."
He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister
Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I
thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young.
He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the
smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into
the night outside.
The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.
"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.
I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.
"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.
I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon,
she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the
fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.
Magnificence
Author: Estrella D. Alfon (July 18, 1917 – December 28, 1983) was a well-
known prolific Filipina author who wrote in English. Because of continued
poor health, she could manage only an A. A. degree from the University of
the Philippines. She then became a member of the U. P. writers club and
earned and was given the privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction
post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. She died in the year 1983 at the
age of 66.
There was nothing to fear, for the man was always so gentle, so kind. At
night when the little girl and her brother were bathed in the light of the big
shaded bulb that hung over the big study table in the downstairs hall, the
man would knock gently on the door, and come in. he would stand for a
while just beyond the pool of light, his feet in the circle of illumination, the
rest of him in shadow. The little girl and her brother would look up at him
where they sat at the big table, their eyes bright in the bright light, and
watch him come fully into the light, but his voice soft, his manner slow. He
would smell very faintly of sweat and pomade, but the children didn’t mind
although they did notice, for they waited for him every evening as they sat
at their lessons like this. He’d throw his visor cap on the table, and it would
fall down with a soft plop, then he’d nod his head to say one was right, or
shake it to say one was wrong.
It was not always that he came. They could remember perhaps two weeks
when he remarked to their mother that he had never seen two children
looking so smart. The praise had made their mother look over them as they
stood around listening to the goings-on at the meeting of the neighborhood
association, of which their mother was president. Two children, one a girl
of seven, and a boy of eight. They were both very tall for their age, and
their legs were the long gangly legs of fine spirited colts. Their mother saw
them with eyes that held pride, and then to partly gloss over the maternal
gloating she exhibited, she said to the man, in answer to his praise, but their
homework. They’re so lazy with them. And the man said, I have nothing to
do in the evenings, let me help them. Mother nodded her head and said, if
you want to bother yourself. And the thing rested there, and the man came
in the evenings therefore, and he helped solve fractions for the boy, and
write correct phrases in language for the little girl.
In those days, the rage was for pencils. School children always have rages
going at one time or another. Sometimes for paper butterflies that are held
on sticks, and whirl in the wind. The Japanese bazaars promoted a rage for
those. Sometimes it is for little lead toys found in the folded waffles that
Japanese confection-makers had such light hands with. At this particular
time, it was for pencils. Pencils big but light in circumference not smaller
than a man’s thumb. They were unwieldy in a child’s hands, but in all
schools then, where Japanese bazaars clustered there were all colors of
these pencils selling for very low, but unattainable to a child budgeted at a
baon of a centavo a day. They were all of five centavos each, and one pencil
was not at all what one had ambitions for. In rages, one kept a collection.
Four or five pencils, of different colors, to tie with strings near the eraser
end, to dangle from one’s book-basket, to arouse the envy of the other
children who probably possessed less.
Add to the man’s gentleness and his kindness in knowing a child’s desires,
his promise that he would give each of them not one pencil but two. And
for the little girl who he said was very bright and deserved more, ho would
get the biggest pencil he could find.
One evening he did bring them. The evenings of waiting had made them
look forward to this final giving, and when they got the pencils they
whooped with joy. The little boy had two pencils, one green, one blue. And
the little girl had three pencils, two of the same circumferences as the little
boy’s but colored red and yellow. And the third pencil, a jumbo size pencil
really, was white, and had been sharpened, and the little girl jumped up and
down, and shouted with glee. Until their mother called from down the
stairs. What are you shouting about? And they told her, shouting gladly,
Vicente, for that was his name. Vicente had brought the pencils he had
promised them.
Thank him, their mother called. The little boy smiled and said, Thank you.
And the little girl smiled, and said, Thank you, too. But the man said, are
you not going to kiss me for those pencils? They both came forward, the
little girl and the little boy, and they both made to kiss him but Vicente
slapped the boy smartly on his lean hips, and said, Boys do not kiss boys.
And the little boy laughed and scampered away, and then ran back and
kissed him anyway.
The little girl went up to the man shyly, put her arms about his neck as he
crouched to receive her embrace, and kissed him on the cheeks.
The man’s arms tightened suddenly about the little girl until the little girl
squirmed out of his arms, and laughed a little breathlessly, disturbed but
innocent, looking at the man with a smiling little question of puzzlement.
The next evening, he came around again. All through that day, they had
been very proud in school showing off their brand-new pencils. All the little
girls and boys had been envying them. And their mother had finally to tell
them to stop talking about the pencils, pencils, for now that they had, the
boy two, and the girl three, they were asking their mother to buy more, so
they could each have five, and three at least in the jumbo size that the little
girl’s third pencil was. Their mother said, Oh stop it, what will you do with
so many pencils, you can only write with one at a time.
And the little girl muttered under her breath, I’ll ask Vicente for some more.
Their mother replied, He’s only a bus conductor, don’t ask him for too
many things. It’s a pity. And this observation their mother said to their
father, who was eating his evening meal between paragraphs of the book on
masonry rites that he was reading. It is a pity, said their mother, people like
those, they make friends with people like us, and they feel it is nice to give
us gifts, or the children toys and things. You’d think they wouldn’t be able
to afford it.
The father grunted, and said, the man probably needed a new job, and was
softening his way through to him by going at the children like that. And the
mother said, No, I don’t think so, he’s a rather queer young man, I think he
doesn’t have many friends, but I have watched him with the children, and
he seems to dote on them.
The father grunted again, and did not pay any further attention.
Vicente was earlier than usual that evening. The children immediately put
their lessons down, telling him of the envy of their schoolmates, and would
he buy them more please?
Vicente said to the little boy, Go and ask if you can let me have a glass of
water. And the little boy ran away to comply, saying behind him, but buy us
some more pencils, huh, buy us more pencils, and then went up to stairs to
their mother.
Vicente held the little girl by the arm, and said gently, Of course I will buy
you more pencils, as many as you want. And the little girl giggled and said,
Oh, then I will tell my friends, and they will envy me, for they don’t have
as many or as pretty.
Vicente took the girl up lightly in his arms, holding her under the armpits,
and held her to sit down on his lap and he said, still gently, what are your
lessons for tomorrow? And the little girl turned to the paper on the table
where she had been writing with the jumbo pencil, and she told him that
that was her lesson but it was easy.
Then go ahead and write, and I will watch you.
Don’t hold me on your lap, said the little girl, I am very heavy, you will get
very tired.
The man shook his head, and said nothing, but held her on his lap just the
same.
The little girl kept squirming, for somehow she felt uncomfortable to be
held thus, her mother and father always treated her like a big girl, she was
always told never to act like a baby. She looked around at Vicente,
interrupting her careful writing to twist around.
His face was all in sweat, and his eyes looked very strange, and he indicated
to her that she must turn around, attend to the homework she was writing.
But the little girl felt very queer, she didn’t know why, all of a sudden, she
was immensely frightened, and she jumped up away from Vicente’s lap.
She stood looking at him, feeling that queer frightened feeling, not knowing
what to do. By and by, in a very short while her mother came down the
stairs, holding in her hand a glass of sarsaparilla, Vicente.
But Vicente had jumped up too soon as the little girl had jumped from his
lap. He snatched at the papers that lay on the table and held them to his
stomach, turning away from the mother’s coming.
The mother looked at him, stopped in her tracks, and advanced into the
light. She had been in the shadow. Her voice had been like a bell of safety
to the little girl. But now she advanced into glare of the light that held like a
tableau the figures of Vicente holding the little girl’s papers to him, and the
little girl looking up at him frightened, in her eye’s dark pools of wonder
and fear and question.
The little girl looked at her mother, and saw the beloved face transfigured
by some sort of glow. The mother kept coming into the light, and when
Vicente made as if to move away into the shadow, she said, very low, but
very heavily, do not move.
She put the glass of soft drink down on the table, where in the light one
could watch the little bubbles go up and down in the dark liquid. The
mother said to the boy, Oscar, finish your lessons. And turning to the little
girl, she said, Come here. The little girl went to her, and the mother knelt
down, for she was a tall woman and she said, Turn around. Obediently the
little girl turned around, and her mother passed her hands over the little
girl’s back.
Go upstairs, she said.
The mother’s voice was of such a heavy quality and of such awful timbre
that the girl could only nod her head, and without looking at Vicente again,
she raced up the stairs. The mother went to the cowering man, and marched
him with a glance out of the circle of light that held the little boy. Once in
the shadow, she extended her hand, and without any opposition took away
the papers that Vicente was holding to himself. She stood there saying
nothing as the man fumbled with his hands and with his fingers, and she
waited until he had finished. She was going to open her mouth but she
glanced at the boy and closed it, and with a look and an inclination of the
head, she bade Vicente go up the stairs.
The man said nothing, for she said nothing either. Up the stairs went the
man, and the mother followed behind. When they had reached the upper
landing, the woman called down to her son, Son, come up and go to your
room.
The little boy did as he was told, asking no questions, for indeed he was
feeling sleepy already.
As soon as the boy was gone, the mother turned on Vicente. There was a
pause.
Finally, the woman raised her hand and slapped him full hard in the face.
Her retreated down one tread of the stairs with the force of the blow, but the
mother followed him. With her other hand she slapped him on the other
side of the face again. And so down the stairs they went, the man
backwards, his face continually open to the force of the woman’s slapping.
Alternately she lifted her right hand and made him retreat before her until
they reached the bottom landing.
He made no resistance, offered no defense. Before the silence and the
grimness of her attack he cowered, retreating, until out of his mouth issued
something like a whimper.
The mother thus shut his mouth, and with those hard-forceful slaps she
escorted him right to the other door. As soon as the cool air of the free night
touched him, he recovered enough to turn away and run, into the shadows
that ate him up. The woman looked after him, and closed the door. She
turned off the blazing light over the study table, and went slowly up the
stairs and out into the dark night.
When her mother reached her, the woman, held her hand out to the child.
Always also, with the terrible indelibility that one associated with terror, the
girl was to remember the touch of that hand on her shoulder, heavy,
kneading at her flesh, the woman herself stricken almost dumb, but her eyes
eloquent with that angered fire. She knelt, she felt the little girl’s dress and
took it off with haste that was almost frantic, tearing at the buttons and
imparting a terror to the little girl that almost made her sob. Hush, the
mother said. Take a bath quickly.
Her mother presided over the bath the little girl took, scrubbed her, and
soaped her, and then wiped her gently all over and changed her into new
clothes that smelt of the clean fresh smell of clothes that had hung in the
light of the sun. The clothes that she had taken off the little girl, she
bundled into a tight wrenched bunch, which she threw into the kitchen
range.
Take also the pencils, said the mother to the watching newly bathed, newly
changed child. Take them and throw them into the fire. But when the girl
turned to comply, the mother said, No, tomorrow will do. And taking the
little girl by the hand, she led her to her little girl’s bed, made her lie down
and tucked the covers gently about her as the girl dropped off into quick
slumber.
May Day Eve
Author: Nick Joaquin or in full Nicomedes Márquez Joaquín (May 4, 1917
– April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer, historian and journalist, best known
for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote
using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquin was conferred the rank and
title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. He is considered
one of the most important Filipino writers in English, and the third most
important overall, after José Rizal and Claro M. Recto.
The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten o’clock
but it was almost midnight before the carriages came filing up the departing
guests, while the girls who were staying were promptly herded upstairs to
the bedrooms, the young men gathering around to wish them a good night
and lamenting their ascent with mock signs and moaning, proclaiming
themselves disconsolate but straightway going off to finish the punch and
the brandy though they were quite drunk already and simply bursting with
wild spirits, merriment, arrogance and audacity, for they were young bucks
newly arrived from Europe; the ball had been in their honor; and they had
waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and flirted all night and
where in no mood to sleep yet--no, caramba, not on this moist tropic eve!
Not on this mystic May eve! --With the night still young and so seductive
that it was madness not to go out, not to go forth---and serenade the
neighbors! Cried one; and swim in the Pasid! Cried another; and gather
fireflies! cried a third—whereupon there arose a great clamor for coats and
capes, for hats and canes, and they were a couple of street-lamps flickered
and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black
houses muttered hush-hush, their tile roofs looming like sinister
chessboards against a wile sky murky with clouds, save where an evil
young moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled,
whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer
orchards and wafting unbearable childhood fragrances or ripe guavas to the
young men trooping so uproariously down the street that the girls who were
desiring upstairs in the bedrooms catered screaming to the windows,
crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over
those young men bawling below; over those wicked young men and their
handsome apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and their elegant mustaches so
black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite ravished with
love, and began crying to one another how carefree were men but how
awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was, till old Anastasia
plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chases them off to bed---
while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots
on the cobble and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the
mighty roll of his great voice booming through the night, "Guardia serno-o-
o! A las doce han dado-o-o.
And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May
and witches were abroad in the night, she said--for it was a night of
divination, and night of lovers, and those who cared might peer into a
mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it was they were fated to
marry, said the old Anastasia as she hobble about picking up the piled
crinolines and folding up shawls and raking slippers in corner while the
girls climbing into four great poster-beds that overwhelmed the room began
shrieking with terror, scrambling over each other and imploring the old
woman not to frighten them.
"Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!"
"Go scare the boys instead, you, old witch!"
"She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of
Christmas Eve!"
"St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr."
"Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin,
Anastasia?"
"No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!"
"Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come,
tell me."
"You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid."
"I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in
bed.
"Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will
come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command
you to shut your mouth and go away!" "Your mother told me to stay here
all night, my grand lady!"
"And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor.
"Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do."
"Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls.
The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and
fixed her eyes on the girl. "You must take a candle," she instructed, "and go
into a room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in
the room. Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and shy:
Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be. If all goes right,
just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will
marry." A silence. Then: "And what if all does not go right?" asked
Agueda. "Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!" "Why." "Because you
may see--the Devil!"
The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what
nonsense!" cried Agueda. "This is the year 1847. There is no devil
anymore!" Nevertheless, she had turned pale. "But where could I go, hugh?
Yes, I know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and no one is there
now." "No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!" "I do not
care! I am not afraid! I will go!" "Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you, mad girl!"
"If you do not come to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother." "And if you do,
I will tell her who came to visit you at the convent last March. Come, old
woman---give me that candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me that candle, I go."
But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing across the
hall; her feet bare and her dark hair falling down her shoulders and
streaming in the wind as she fled down the stairs, the lighted candle
sputtering in one hand while with the other she pulled up her white gown
from her ankles. She paused breathless in the doorway to the sala and her
heart failed her. She tried to imagine the room filled again with lights,
laughter, whirling couples, and the jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh,
it was a dark den, a weird cavern for the windows had been closed and the
furniture stacked up against the walls. She crossed herself and stepped
inside.
The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a gold
frame carved into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues. She saw
herself approaching fearfully in it: a small while ghost that the darkness
bodied forth---but not willingly, not completely, for her eyes and hair were
so dark that the face approaching in the mirror seemed only a mask that
floated forward; a bright mask with two holes gaping in it, blown forward
by the white cloud of her gown. But when she stood before the mirror, she
lifted the candle level with her chin and the dead mask bloomed into her
living face.
She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished
such a terror took hold of her that she felt unable to move, unable to open
her eyes and thought she would stand there forever, enchanted. But she
heard a step behind her, and a smothered giggle, and instantly opened her
eyes.
"And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had
forgotten the little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head
nestling at her breast and seeing herself in the big mirror hanging in the
room. It was the same room and the same mirror out the face she now saw
in it was an old face---a hard, bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying hair,
and so sadly altered, so sadly different from that other face like a white
mask, that fresh young face like a pure mask than she had brought before
this mirror one wild May Day midnight years and years ago.... "But what
was it, Mama? Oh, please go on! What did you see?" Dona Agueda looked
down at her daughter but her face did not soften though her eyes filled with
tears. "I saw the devil." she said bitterly. The child blanched.
"The devil, Mama? Oh... Oh..." "Yes, my love. I opened my eyes and there
in the mirror, smiling at me over my left shoulder, was the face of the
devil." "Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very frightened?" "You
can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors
except when their mothers tell them. You must stop this naughty habit,
darling, of admiring yourself in every mirror you pass-or you may see
something frightful someday." "But the devil, Mama---what did he look
like?" "Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---" "Like
the scar of Papa?" "Well, yes. But this of the devil was a scar of sin, while
that of your Papa is a scar of honor. Or so he says." "Go on about the devil."
"Well, he had mustaches." "Like those of Papa?" "Oh, no. Those of your
Papa are dirty and graying and smell horribly of tobacco, while these of the
devil were very black and elegant--oh, how elegant!" "And did he speak to
you, Mama?" "Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And bowing
her graying head; she wept.
"Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had said,
smiling at her in the mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking
bow. She had whirled around and glared at him and he had burst into
laughter. "But I remember you!" he cried. "You are Agueda, whom I left a
mere infant and came home to find a tremendous beauty, and I danced a
waltz with you but you would not give me the polka." "Let me pass," she
muttered fiercely, for he was barring the way. "But I want to dance the
polka with you, fair one," he said. So they stood before the mirror; their
panting breath the only sound in the dark room; the candle shining between
them and flinging their shadows to the wall. And young Badoy Montiya
(who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) suddenly found
himself cold sober and very much awake and ready for anything. His eyes
sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed scarlet. "Let me pass!" she cried
again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped her by the wrist. "No," he smiled.
"Not until we have danced." "Go to the devil!" "What a temper has my
serrana!" "I am not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know?
Someone I have offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all
my friends like your mortal enemies." "And why not?" she demanded,
jerking her wrist away and flashing her teeth in his face. "Oh, how I detest
you, you pompous young men! You go to Europe and you come back
elegant lords and we poor girls are too tame to please you. We have no
grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians, and we have
no salt, no salt, and no salt! Aie, how you weary me, how you bore me, you
fastidious men!" "Come, come---how do you know about us?"
"I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon perhaps?"
"Oh!" she gasped, and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand
and she covered her face and sobbed piteously. The candle had gone out
and they stood in darkness, and young Badoy was conscience-stricken.
"Oh, do not cry, little one!" Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But
what a brute I am! I was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I
said." He groped and found her hand and touched it to his lips. She
shuddered in her white gown. "Let me go," she moaned, and tugged feebly.
"No. Say you forgive me first. Say you forgive me, Agueda." But instead
she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it - bit so sharply in the knuckles
that he cried with pain and lashed cut with his other hand--lashed out and
hit the air, for she was gone, she had fled, and he heard the rustling of her
skirts up the stairs as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers. Cruel
thoughts raced through his head: he would go and tell his mother and make
her turn the savage girl out of the house--or he would go himself to the
girl’s room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at
the same time he was thinking that they were all going to Antipolo in the
morning and was already planning how he would maneuver himself into
the same boat with her. Oh, he would have his revenge, he would make her
pay, that little harlot! She should suffer for this, he thought greedily, licking
his bleeding knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders:
gold in her candlelight and delicately furred. He saw the mobile insolence
of her neck, and her taut breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of a Turk, but
she was quite enchanting! How could she think she had no fire or grace?
And no salt? An arroba she had of it!
"... No lack of salt in the chrism at the moment of thy baptism!" He sang
aloud in the dark room and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in
love with her. He ached intensely to see her again---at once! ---to touch her
hands and her hair; to hear her harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung
open the casements and the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow.
It was May, it was summer, and he was young---young! ---and deliriously
in love. Such a happiness welled up within him that the tears spurted from
his eyes. But he did not forgive her--no! He would still make her pay, he
would still have his revenge, he thought viciously, and kissed his wounded
fingers. But what a night it had been! "I will never forget this night! He
thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the
window in the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the wind in his hair and
his bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth.
But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes;
summer lends; the storms break over the rot-tipe orchards and the heart
grows old; while the hours, the days, the months, and the years pile up and
pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded, too confused: dust gathers in it;
cobwebs multiply; the walls darken and fall into ruin and decay; the
memory perished...and there came a time when Don Badoy Montiya
walked home through a May Day midnight without remembering, without
even caring to remember; being merely concerned in feeling his way across
the street with his cane; his eyes having grown quite dim and his legs
uncertain--for he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stopped and
shivered old man with white hair and mustaches coming home from a
secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with the speeches
and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his way up the steps to the
front door and inside into the slumbering darkness of the house; wholly
unconscious of the May night, till on his way down the hall, chancing to
glance into the sala, he shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold-- for he
had seen a face in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes
closed and the lips moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had been there
before though it was a full minutes before the lost memory came flowing,
came tiding back, so over flooding the actual moment and so swiftly
washing away the piled hours and days and months and years that he was
left suddenly young again; he was a gay young buck again, lately came
from Europe; he had been dancing all night; he was very drunk; he s
stepped in the doorway; he saw a face in the dark; he called out...and the
lad standing before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night go jumped with
fright and almost dropped his candle, but looking around and seeing the old
man, laughed out with relief and came running.
"Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me. Don Badoy had turned very pale.
"So, it was you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What are you
doing down here at this hour?" "Nothing, Grandpa. I was only... I am only
..." "Yes, you are the great Señor only and how delighted I am to make your
acquaintance, Señor only! But if I break this cane on your head you maga
wish you were someone else, Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They
told me I would see my wife."
"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I
looked in a mirror tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me her whose
lover I will be.
Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along
into the room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees.
"Now, put your cane down the floor, son, and let us talk this over. So, you
want your wife already, hey? You want to see her in advance, hey? But so,
you know that these are wicked games and that wicked boys who play them
are in danger of seeing horrors?"
"Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead."
"Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will be witch
you, she will torture you, she will eat your heart and drink your blood!"
"Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore."
"Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a
witch.
"You? Where?
"Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man, and his
playful voice had turned savage.
"When, Grandpa?"
"Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow
and though I was feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down
somewhere and die I could not pass that doorway of course without
stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like when dying. But when I
poked my head in what should I see in the mirror but...but..."
"The witch?"
"Exactly!"
"And then she bewitched you, Grandpa!"
"She bewitched me and she tortured me. l She ate my heart and drank my
blood." said the old man bitterly.
"Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she very
horrible?
"Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen!
Her eyes were somewhat like yours but her hair was like black waters and
her golden shoulders were bare. My God, she was enchanting! But I should
have known---I should have known even then---the dark and fatal creature
she was!"
A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered the
boy.
"What makes you slay that, hey?"
"Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once
told her that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was it of the scare
that Grandma died?"
Don Badoy started. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead, that
she had perished---the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at last, the two
of them, her tired body at rest; her broken body set free at last from the
brutal pranks of the earth---from the trap of a May night; from the snare of
summer; from the terrible silver nets of the moon. She had been a mere
heap of white hair and bones in the end: a whimpering withered
consumptive, lashing out with her cruel tongue; her eye like live coals; her
face like ashes... Now, nothing--- nothing save a name on a stone; save a
stone in a graveyard---nothing! Was left of the young girl who had flamed
so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight, long, long ago.
And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she
had bitten his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark room
and surprised his heart in the instant of falling in love: such a grief tore up
his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed before the boy; pushed the boy
away; stood up and looked out----looked out upon the medieval shadows of
the foul street where a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage
was rattling away upon the cobbles, while the blind black houses muttered
hush-hush, their tiled roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wild
sky murky with clouds, save where an evil old moon prowled about in a
corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining,
smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting
unbearable the window; the bowed old man sobbing so bitterly at the
window; the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wind in his hair and
one hand pressed to his mouth--while from up the street came the clackety-
clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang of his
lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through
the night:
"Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!"
The Summer Solstice
Author: Nick Joaquin or in full Nicomedes Márquez Joaquín (May 4, 1917
– April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer, historian and journalist, best known
for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote
using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquin was conferred the rank and
title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. He is considered
one of the most important Filipino writers in English, and the third most
important overall, after José Rizal and Claro M. Recto.
The Moretas were spending St. John’s Day with the children’s grandfather,
whose feast it was. Doña Lupeng awoke feeling faint with the heat, a sound
of screaming in her ears. In the dining room the three boys, already attired
in their holiday suits, were at breakfast, and came crowding around her,
talking at once.
“How long you have slept, Mama!”
“We thought you were never getting up!”
“Do we leave at once, huh? Are we going now? “
“Hush, hush, I implore you! Now look: your father has a headache, and so
have I. So be quiet this instant-or no one goes to Grandfather.”
Though it was only seven by the clock the house was already a furnace, the
windows dilating with the harsh light and the air already burning with
immense, intense fever of noon. She found the children’s nurse working in
the kitchen. “And why is it you who are preparing breakfast? Where is
Amada?” But without waiting for an answer she went to the backdoor and
opened it, and the screaming in her ears became a wild screaming in the
stables across the yard. “Oh, my God!” she groaned and grasping her skirts,
hurried across the yard. In the stables Entoy, the driver, apparently deaf to
the screams, was hitching the pair of piebald ponies to the coach.
“Not the closed coach, Entoy! The open carriage!” shouted Doña Lupeng as
she came up.
“But the dust, señora-”
“I know, but better to be dirty than to be boiled alive. And what ails your
wife, eh? Have you been beating her again?”
“Oh no, señora:I have not touched her.”
“Then why is she screaming? Is she ill?”
“I do not think so. But how do I know? You can go and see for yourself,
señora. She is up there.”
When Doña Lupeng entered the room, the big half-naked woman sprawled
across the bamboo bed stopped screaming. Doña Lupeng was shocked.
‘What is this, Amanda? Why are you still in bed at this hour? And in such
posture! Come, get up at once. You should be ashamed!”
But the woman on the bed merely stared. Her sweat-beaded brows
contracted, as if in an effort to understand. Then her face relaxed, her
mouth sagged open humorously and, rolling over on her back and spreading
out her big soft arms and legs, she began noiselessly quaking with laughter-
the mute mirth jerking in her throat; the moist pile of her flesh quivering
like brown jelly. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth. Doña
Lupeng blushed, looking around helplessly; and seeing that Entoy had
followed and was leaning in the doorway, watching stolidly, she blushed
again. The room
wrecked hotly of intimate odors. She averted her eyes from the laughing
woman on the bed, in whose nakedness she seemed to participate that she
was ashamed to look directly at the man in the doorway.
“Tell me, Entoy: has she been to the Tadtarin?”
“Yes, senora. Last night.”
“But I forbade her to go! And I forbade you to let her go!”
“I could do nothing.”
“Why, you beat her at the least pretext!”
“But now I dare not touch her.”
“Oh, and why not?”
“It is the day of St. John: the spirit is in her.”
“But man— “
“It is true, senora. The spirit in her.”
“But, man— “
“It is true señora. The spirit is in her. She is the Tadtarin. She must do as she
pleases. Otherwise, the grain would not grow, the trees would bear no fruit,
the rivers would give no fish, and animals would die.”
“Naku, I did not know your wife was so powerful, Entoy.”
“At such times she is not my wife: She is the wife of the river, she is the
wife of the crocodile, and she is the wife of the moon.”
“But how can they still believe such things?” demanded Doña Lupeng of
her husband as they drove in the open carriage through the pastoral
countryside that was the arrabal of Paco in the 1850′s. Don Paeng, drowsily
stroking his mustaches, his eyes closed against the hot light, merely
shrugged.
“And you should have seen the Entoy,” continued his wife. “You know how
the brute treats her: she cannot say a word but he trashes her. But this
morning he stood as meek as lamb while she screamed and screamed. He
seemed actually in awe of her, do you know actually afraid of her!”
Don Paeng darted a sidelong glance at his wife, by which he intimated that
he subject was not a proper one for the children, who were sitting opposite,
facing their parents.
“Oh, look, boys— here comes the St.John!” cried Doña Lupeng, and she
sprang up in the swaying carriage, propping one hand on her husband’s
shoulder while with the other she held up her silk parasol.
And “Here come the men with their St. John!” cried voices up and down
the countryside. People in wet clothes dripping with well-water, ditch-water
and river-water came running across the hot woods and fields and
meadows, brandishing cans of water, wetting each other uproariously, and
shouting San Juan! San Juan! As they ran to meet the procession. Up the
road, stirring a cloud of dust, and gaily bedrenched by the crowds gathered
along the wayside, a concourse of young men clad only in soggy trousers
were carrying aloft an image of the Precursor. Their teeth flashed white in
their laughing faces and their hot bodies glowed crimson as they pranced
past, shrouded in fiery dust,
singing, and shouting and waving their arms: the St. John riding swiftly
above the sea of dark heads and glittering in the noon sun— a fine, blonde,
heroic St. John: very male, very arrogant: the Lord of Summer indeed; the
Lord of Light and Heat erect and goldly virile above the prone and female
earth while the worshippers danced and the dust thickened and the animals
reared and roared and the merciless fires came raining down from the skies
the vast outpouring of light that marks this climax of the solar year ─raining
relentlessly upon field and river and town and winding road, and upon the
joyous throng of young men against whose uproar a couple of seminarians
in muddy cassocks vainly intoned the hymn of the noon god: That worthy
servants, in chorus May praise thee, our tongues restore us…
But Doña Lupeng, standing in the stopped carriage, looking very young and
elegant her white frock, under the twirling parasol, stared down on the
passing male horde with increasing annoyance. The insolent man-smell of
their bodies rose all about her -- wave upon wave of it─ enveloping her,
assaulting her senses, till she felt faint with it and pressed a handkerchief to
her nose. And as she glanced at her husband and saw with what a smug
smile, he was watching the revelers, her annoyance deepened. When he
bade her sit down because all eyes were turned on her, she pretended not to
hear; stood up even straighter, as if to defy those rude creatures flaunting
their manhood in the sun.
And she wondered peevishly what the braggarts were being so cocky
about? For this arrogance, this pride, this bluff male health of theirs was
(she told herself) founded on the impregnable virtue of generations of good
women. The boobies were so sure of themselves because they had always
been sure of their wives. “All the sisters being virtuous, all the brothers are
brave. “Thought Doña Lupeng, with a bitterness that rather surprised her.
Women had built it up: this poise of the male. Ah, and women could
destroy it, too! She recalled, vindictively, this morning’s scene at the
stables: Amada naked and screaming in bed while from the doorway her
lord and master looked on in meek silence. And was it not the mystery of a
woman in her flowers that had restored the tongue of that old Hebrew
prophet?
“Look, Lupeng, they have all passed now,” Don Paeng was saying. “Do you
mean to stand all the way?” She looked around in surprise and hastily sat
down. The children tittered, and the carriage started.
“Has the heat gone to your head, woman?” asked Don Paeng, smiling. The
children burst frankly into laughter.
Their mother colored and hung her head. She was beginning to feel
ashamed of the thoughts that had filled her mind. They seemed improper—
almost obscene— and the discovery of such depths of wickedness in herself
appalled her. She moved closer to her husband, to share the parasol with
him.
“And did you see our cousin Guido?” he asked.
“Oh, was he in that crowd?”
“A European education does not seem to have spoiled his taste for country
pleasures.”
“I did not see him.”
“He waved and waved.”
“The poor boy. He will feel hurt. But truly, Paeng, I did not see him.”
“Well, that is always a woman’s privilege.”
***
But when that afternoon, at the grandfather’s, the young Guido presented
himself, properly attired and brushed and scented, Doña Lupeng was so
charming and gracious with him that he was enchanted and gazed after her
all afternoon with enamored eyes. This was the time when our young
men were all going to Europe and bringing back with them, not the Age of
Victoria, but the Age of Byron. The young Guido knew nothing of Darwin
and evolution; he knew everything about Napoleon and the Revolution.
When Doña Lupeng expressed surprise at his presence that morning in the
St. John’s crowd, he laughed in her face.
“But I adore these old fiestas of ours! They are so romantic! Last night, do
you know, we walked all the way through the woods, I and some boys to
see the procession of the Tadtarin.”
“And was the romantic too?” asked Doña Lupeng.
It was weird. It made my flesh crawl. All those women in such a mystic
frenzy! And she who was the Tadtarin last night— she was a figure right
out of a flamenco!”
I fear to disenchant you,Guido— but that woman happens to be our cook.”
“She is beautiful.”
“Our Amada is beautiful? But she is old and fat!”
“She is beautiful— as that old tree you are leaning on is beautiful,”calmly
insisted the young man, mocking her with his eyes.
They were out in the buzzing orchard, among the ripe mangoes; Doña
Lupeng seated on the grass, her legs tucked beneath her, and the young man
sprawled flat on his belly, gazing up at her, his face moist with sweat. The
children were chasing dragonflies. The sun stood still in the west. The long
day refused to end. From the house came the sudden roaring laughter of the
men playing cards.
“Beautiful! Romantic! Adorable! Are those the only words you learned in
Europe?” cried Doña Lupeng, feeling very annoyed with this young man
whose eyes adored her one moment and mocked her at the next.
“Ah, I also learned to open my eyes over there— to see the holiness and the
mystery of what is vulgar.”
“And what is so holy and mysterious about— about the Tadtarin, for
instance?”
“I do not know. I can only feel it. And it frightens me. Those rituals come to
us from the earliest dawn of the world. And the dominant figure is not the
male but the female.”
“But they are in honor of St. John.”
“What has your St. John to do with them? Those women worship a more
ancient lord. Why, do you know that no man may join in those rites unless
he first puts on some article of women’s apparel and— “
“And what did you put on, Guido?”
“How sharp you are! Oh, I made such love to a toothless old hag there that
she pulled off her stocking for me. And I pulled it on, over my arm, like a
glove. How your husband would have despised me!”
“But what on earth does it mean?”
“I think it is to remind us men that once upon a time you woman were
supreme and we men were the slaves.”
“But surely there have always been kings?”
“Oh, no. The queen came before the king, and the priestess before the
priest, and the moon before the sun.”
“The moon?”
“—who is the Lord of the women.”
“Why?”
“Because the tides of women, like the tides of the sea, are tides of the
moon. Because the first blood—
But what is the matter, Lupe? Oh, have I offended you?”
“Is this how they talk to decent women in Europe?”
“They do not talk to women; they pray to them— as men did in the dawn of
the world.”
“Oh, you are mad! Mad!”
“Why are you so afraid, Lupe?”
“I, afraid? And of whom? My dear boy, you still have your mother’s milk in
your mouth. I only wish you to remember that I am a married woman.”
“I remember that you are a woman, yes. A beautiful woman. And why not?
Did you turn into some dreadful monster when you married? Did you stop
being a woman? Did you stop, being beautiful? Then why should my eyes
not tell you what you are— just because you are married?”
“Ah, this is too much now!” cried Doña Lupeng, and she rose to her feet.
“Do not go, I implore you! Have pity on me!”
“No more of your comedy, Guido! And besides— where have those
children gone to! I must go after them.”
As she lifed her skirts to walk away, the young man, propping up his
elbows, dragged himself forward on the ground and solemnly kissed the
tips of her shoes. She stared down in sudden horror, transfixed— and he felt
her violent shudder. She backed away slowly, still staring; then turned and
fled toward the house. On the way home that evening Don Paeng noticed
that his wife was in a mood. They were alone in the carriage: the children
were staying overnight at their grandfather’s. The heat had not subsided. It
was heat without gradations: that knew no twilights and no dawns; that was
still there, after the sun had set; that would be there already, before the sun
had risen.
“Has young Guido been annoying you?” asked Don Paeng.
“Yes! All afternoon.”
“These young men today— what a disgrace they are! I felt embarrassed as a
man to see him following you about with those eyes of a whipped dog.”
She glanced at him coldly. “And was that all you felt, Paeng? Embarrassed
— as a man?”
“A good husband has constant confidence in the good sense of his wife,” he
pronounced grandly, and smiled at her.
But she drew away; huddled herself in the other corner. “He kissed my
feet,” she told him disdainfully, her eyes on his face.
He frowned and made a gesture of distaste. “Do you see? They have the
instincts, the style of the canalla! To kiss a woman’s feet, to follow her like
a dog, to adore her like a slave— “
“Is it so shameful for a man to adore women?”
“A gentleman loves and respects Woman. The cads and lunatics— they
‘adore’ the women.”
“But maybe we do not want to be loved and respected— but to be adored.”
“Ah, he has converted you then?”
“Who knows? But must we talk about it? My head is bursting with the
heat.”
But when they reached home, she did not lie down but wandered listlessly
through the empty house. When Don Paeng, having bathed and changed,
came down from the bedroom, he found her in the dark parlour seated at
the harp and plucking out a tune, still in her white frock and shoes.
“How can you bear those hot clothes, Lupeng? And why the darkness?
Order someone to bring a light in here.”
“There is no one, they have all gone to see the Tadtarin.”
“A pack of loafers we are feeding!”
She had risen and gone to the window. He approached and stood behind
her, grasped her elbows and, stooping, kissed the nape of her neck. But she
stood still, not responding, and he released her sulkily. She turned around to
face him.
“Listen, Paeng. I want to see it, too. The Tadtarin, I mean. I have not seen it
since I was a little girl. And tonight, is the last night.”
“You must be crazy! Only low people go there. And I thought you had a
headache?” He was still sulking.
“But I want to go! My head aches worse in the house. For a favour, Paeng.”
“I told you: No! Go and take those clothes off. But, woman, whatever has
got into you!” He strode off to the table, opened the box of cigars, took one,
banged the lid shut, bit off an end of the cigar, and glared about for a light.
She was still standing by the window and her chin was up.
“Very well, if you do not want to come, do not come— but I am going.”
“I warn you, Lupe; do not provoke me!”
“I will go with Amada. Entoy can take us. You cannot forbid me, Paeng.
There is nothing wrong with it. I am not a child.”
But standing very straight in her white frock, her eyes shining in the dark
and her chin thrust up, she looked so young, so fragile, that his heart was
touched. He sighed, smiled ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, the
heat has touched you in the head, Lupeng. And since you are so set on it—
very well, let us go. Come, have the coach ordered!” The cult of the
Tadtarin is celebrated on three days: th feast of St. John and the two
preceding days. On the first night, a young girl heads the procession; on the
second, a mature woman; and on the third, a very old woman who dies and
comes to life again. In these processions, as in those of Pakil and Obando,
everyone dances.
Around the tiny plaza in front of the barrio chapel, quite a stream of
carriages was flowing leisurely. The Moretas were constantly being hailed
from the other vehicles. The plaza itself and the sidewalk were filled with
chattering, strolling, profusely sweating people. More people were crowded
on the balconies and windows of the houses. The moon had not yet risen;
the black night smoldered; in the windless sky the lightning’s abruptly
branching fire seemed the nerves of the tortures air made visible.
“Here they come now!” cried the people on the balconies.
And “Here come the women with their St. John!” cried the people on the
sidewalks, surging forth on the street. The carriages halted and their
occupants descended. The plaza rang with the shouts of people and the
neighing of horses— and with another keener sound: a sound as f sea-
waves steadily rolling nearer. The crowd parted, and up the street came the
prancing, screaming, writhing women, their eyes wild, black shawls flying
around their shoulders, and their long hair streaming and covered with
leaves and flowers. But the Tadtarin, a small old woman with white hair,
walked with calm dignity in the midst of the female tumult, a wand in one
hand, a bunch of seedlings in the other. Behind her, a group of girls bore
aloft a little black image of the Baptist— a crude, primitive, grotesque
image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and
swaying above the hysterical female horde and looking at once so comical
and so pathetic that Don Paeng watching his wife n the sidewalk, was
outraged. The image seemed to be crying for help, to be struggling to
escape— a St. John indeed in the hands of the Herodiads; a doomed captive
these witches were subjecting first to their derision; a gross and brutal
caricature of his sex.
Don Paeng flashed hotly: he felt that all those women had personally
insulted him. He turned to his wife, to take her away— but she was
watching greedily, taut and breathless, her head thrust forward and her eyes
bulging, the teeth bared in the slack mouth, and the sweat gleaming on her
face. Don Paeng was horrified. He grasped her arm— but then just a flash
of lightning blazed and the screaming women fell silent: the Tadtarin was
about to die. The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank
slowly to her knees. A pallet was brought and set on the ground and she
was laid in it and her face covered with a shroud. Her hands still clutched
the wand and the seedlings. The women drew away, leaving her in a cleared
space. They covered their heads with their black shawls and began wailing
softly, unhumanly— a hushed, animal keening.
Overhead the sky was brightening; silver light defined the rooftops. When
the moon rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded
square, the black-shawled women stopped wailing and a girl approached
and unshrouded the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and sat up, her face
lifted to the to the moonlight. She rose to her feet and extended the wand
and the seedlings and the women joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off
and waved their shaws and whirled and began dancing again— laughing
and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon that the people in the
square and on the sidewalks, and even those on the balconies, were soon
laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their parents and wives
from their husbands to join in the orgy.
“Come, let us go now,” said Don Paeng to his wife. She was shaking with
fascination; tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and
allowed herself to be led away. But suddenly she pulled free from his grasp,
darted off, ad ran into the crowd of dancing women. She flung her hands to
her hair and whirled and her hair came undone. Then, planting her arms
akimbo, she began to trip a nimble measure, an instinctive folk-movement.
She tossed her head back and her arched throat bloomed whitely. Her eyes
brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth with laughter.
Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her
head and darted deeper and into the dense maze of the procession, which
was moving again, towards the chapel. He followed her, shouting; she
eluded him, laughing— and through the thick of the female horde they lost
and found and lost each other again— she, dancing and he pursuing— till,
carried along by the tide, they were both swallowed up into the hot, packed,
turbalent darkness of the chapel. Inside poured the entire procession, and
Don Paeng, finding himself trapped tight among milling female bodies,
struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out. Angry voices roses all
about him in the stifling darkness.
“Hoy, you are crushing my feet!”
“And let go of my shawl, my shawl!”
“Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you!”
“Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots!” cried Don Paeng.
“Ahah, it is a man!”
“How dare he come in here?”
“Break his head!”
“Throw the animal out!”
“Throw him out! Throw him out!” shrieked the voices, and Don Paeng
found himself surrounded by a swarm of gleaming eyes. Terror possessed
him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his strength— but
they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon him and
pinned his arms helpless, while unseen hands struck and struck his face,
and ravaged his hair and clothes, and clawed at his flesh, as— kicked and
buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with blood— he was
pushed down, down to his knees, and half-shoved, half-dragged to the
doorway and rolled out to the street. He picked himself up at once and
walked away with a dignity that forbade the crowd gathered outside to
laugh or to pity. Entoy came running to meet him.
“But what has happened to you, Don Paeng?”
“Nothing. Where is the coach?”
“Just over there, sir. But you are wounded in the face!”
“No, these are only scratches. Go and get the señora. We are going home.”
When she entered the coach and saw his bruised face and torn clothing, she
smiled coolly.
“What a sight you are, man! What have you done with yourself?” And
when he did not answer:
“Why, have they pulled out his tongue too?” she wondered aloud.
And when they were home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she
was as still as lighthearted.
“What are you going to do, Rafael?”
“I am going to give you a whipping.”
“But why?”
“Because you have behaved tonight like a lewd woman.”
“How I behaved tonight is what I am. If you call that lewd, then I was
always a lewd woman and whipping will not change me — though you
whipped me till I died.”
“I want this madness to die in you.”
“No, you want me to pay for your bruises.”
He flushed darkly. “How can you say that, Lupe?”
“Because it is true. You have been whipped by the women and now you
think to avenge yourself by whipping me.”
His shoulders sagged and his face dulled. “If you can think that of me— “
“You could think me a lewd woman!”
“Oh, how do I know what to think of you? I was sure I knew you as I knew
myself. But now you are as distant and strange to me as a female Turk in
Africa!”
“Yet you would dare whip me— “
“Because I love you, because I respect you— “
“And because if you ceased to respect me you would ceased to respect
yourself?”
“Ah, I did not say that!”
“Then why not say it? It is true. And you want to say it, you want to say it!”
But he struggled against her power. “Why should I want to?” He demanded
peevishly.
“Because, either you must say it— or you must whip me,” she taunted.
Her eyes were upon him and the shameful fear that had unmanned him in
the dark chapel possessed him again. His legs had turned to water; it was a
monstrous agony to remain standing. But she was waiting for him speak,
forcing him to speak.
“No, I cannot whip you!” he confessed miserably.
“Then say it! Say it!” she cried, pounding her clenched her fists together.
“Why suffer and suffer? And in the end, you would only submit.”
But he still struggled stubbornly, “Is it not enough that you have me
helpless? Is it not enough that I feel what you want me to feel?”
But she shook her head furiously. “Until you have said it to me, there can
be no peace between us.”
He was exhausted at last: he sank heavily to his knees, breathing hard and
streaming with sweat, his fine body curiously diminished now in its
ravaged apparel.
“I adore you, Lupe,” he said tonelessly.
She strained forward avidly. “What? What did you say?” she screamed.
And he, in his dead voice: “That I adore you. That I adore you. That I
worship you. That the air you breathe and the ground you tread is holy to
me. That I am your dog. Your slave…”
But it was still not enough. Her fists were still clenched, and she cried:
“Then come, crawl on the floor, and kiss my feet!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his
arms and legs, gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great
agonized lizard, the woman steadily backing away as he approached, her
eyes watching him avidly, her nostrils dilating, till behind her loomed the
open window, the huge glittering moon, the rapid flashes of lightning. She
stopped, panting, and leaned against the sill.
He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the floor. She raised her skirts
and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his dripping face and
touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands
and grasped the white foot and kissed it savagely— kissed the step, the sole,
the frail ankle— while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the
windowsill, her body distended and wracked by horrible shivers, her head
flung back and her loose hair streaming out the window— streaming fluid
and black in the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the
dry air flamed into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense
intense fever of noon.
The Day
The Dancers Came
Author: Bienvenido N. Santos (1911–1996) was a Filipino-American
fiction, poetry and nonfiction writer. He was born and raised in Tondo,
Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao, Pampanga,
Philippines. He lived in the United States for many years where he is widely
credited as a pioneering Asian-American writer.
As soon as Fil woke up, he noticed a whiteness outside, quite unusual for
the November mornings they had been having. That fall, Chicago was
sandman's town, sleepy valley, drowsy gray, slumberous mistiness from
sunup till noon when the clouds drifted away in cauliflower clusters and
suddenly it was evening. The lights shone on the avenues like soiled lamps
centuries old and the skyscrapers became monsters with a thousand sore
eyes. Now there was a brightness in the air land Fil knew what it was and
he shouted, "Snow! It's snowing!"
Tony, who slept in the adjoining room, was awakened.
"What's that?" he asked.
"It's snowing," Fil said, smiling to himself as if he had ordered this and was
satisfied with the prompt delivery. "Oh, they'll love this, they'll love this."
"Who'll love that?" Tony asked, his voice raised in annoyance.
"The dancers, of course," Fil answered. "They're arriving today. Maybe
they've already arrived.
They'll walk in the snow and love it. Their first snow, I'm sure."
"How do you know it wasn't snowing in New York while they were there?"
Tony asked.
"Snow in New York in early November?" Fil said. "Are you crazy?"
"Who's crazy?" Tony replied. "Ever since you heard of those dancers from
the Philippines, you've been acting nuts. Loco. As if they're coming here
just for you. Tony chuckled. Hearing him, Fil blushed, realizing that he had,
indeed, been acting too eager, but Tony had said it. It felt that way--as if the
dancers were coming here only for him.
Filemon Acayan, Filipino, was fifty, a U.S., citizen. He was a corporal in
the U.S. Army, training at San Luis Obispo, on the day he was discharged
honorably, in 1945. A few months later, he got his citizenship papers.
Thousands of them, smart and small in their uniforms, stood at attention in
drill formation, in the scalding sun, and pledged allegiance to the flat and
the republic for which it stands. Soon after he got back to work. To a new
citizen, work meant many places and many ways: factories and hotels,
waiter and cook. A timeless drifting: once he tended a rose garden and took
care of a hundred-year-old veteran of a border war. As a menial in a
hospital in Cook Country, all day he handled filth and gore. He came home
smelling of surgical soap and disinfectant. In the hospital, he took charge of
row of bottles on a shelf, each bottle containing a stage of the human
embryo in preservatives, from the lizard-like fetus of a few days, through
the newly born infant, with its position unchanged, cold and cowering and
afraid. He had nightmares through the years of himself inside a bottle. l
That was long ago. Now he had a more pleasant job as special policemen in
the post office.
He was a few years younger than Tony-Antonio Bataller, a retired pullman
porter but he looked older in inspite of the fact that Tony had been
bedridden most of the time for the last two years, suffering from a kind of
wasting disease that had frustrated doctors. All over Tony's body, a gradual
peeling was taking place at first, he thought it was merely tiniaflava, a skin
disease common among adolescent in the Philippines. It had started around
the neck and had spread to his extremities. His
face looked as if it was healing from severe burns. Nevertheless, it was a
young face much younger than Fil's, which had never looked young.
"I'm becoming a white man," Tony had said once, chuckling softly.
It was the same chuckle Fil seemed to have heard now, only this time it
sounded derisive, insulting.
Fil said, "I know who's nuts. It's the sick guy with the sick thoughts. You
don't care for nothing but your pain, your imaginary pain."
"You're the imagining fellow. I got the real thing," Tony shouted from the
room. He believed he had something worse than the whiteness spreading on
his skin. There was a pain in his insides, like dull scissors scraping his
intestines. Angrily he added, "What for I got retired?"
"You're old, man, old, that's what, and sick, yes, but not cancer," Fil said
turning towards the snowfilled sky. He pressed his faced against the glass
window. There's about an inch now on the ground, he thought, maybe
more.
Tony came out of his room looking as if he had not slept all night. "I know
what I got," he said, as if it were an honor and a privilege to die of cancer
and Fill was trying to deprive him of it. "Never a pain like this. One day,
I'm just gonna die."
"Naturally. Who says you won't?" Fil argued, thinking how wonderful it
would be if he could join the company of dancers from the Philippines,
show them around walk with them in the snow, watch their eyes as they
stared about them, answer their questions, tell them everything they wanted
to know about the changing seasons in this strange land. They would pick
up fistfuls of snow, crunch it in their fingers or shove it into their mouths.
He had done just that the first time, long, long ago, and it had reminded him
of the grated ice the Chinese sold near the town plaza where he had played
tatching with an older brother who later drowned in a squall. How his
mother had grieved over that death, she who has not cried too much when
his father died, a broken man. Now they were all gone, quick death after a
storm, or lingeringly, in a season of drought, all, all of them he had loved.
He continued, "All of us will die. One day. A medium bomb marked
Chicago and this whole dump is tapus, finished. Who'll escape then?"
"Maybe your dancers will," Fil answered, now watching the snow himself.
"Of course, they will," Fil retorted, his voice sounding like a big assurance
that all the dancers would be safe in his care. "The bombs won't be falling
on this night. And when the dancers are back in the Philippines..."
He paused, as if he was no longer sure of what he was going to say. "But
maybe, even in the Philippines the bombs gonna fall, no?" he said, gazing
sadly at the falling snow.
"What's that to you?" Tony replied. "You got no more folks over 'der right?
I know it's nothing to me. I'll be dead before that."
"Let's talk about something nice," Fil said, the sadness spreading on his
face as he tried to smile.
"Tell me, how will I talk, how am I gonna introduce myself?"
He would go ahead with his plans, introduce himself to the dancers and
volunteer to take them sight-seeing. His car was clean and ready for his
guests. He had soaped the ashtrays, dusted off the floor boards and thrown
away the old mats, replacing them with new plastic throw rugs. He had got
himself soaking wet while spraying the car, humming, as he worked,
faintly-remembered tunes from the old country.
Fill shook his head as he waited for Tony to say something. "Gosh, I wish I
had your looks, even with those white spots, then I could face every one of
them," he said, "but this mug."
"That's the important thing, you mug. It's your calling card. It says, Filipino.
Countrymen," Tony said.
"You're not fooling me, friend," Fil said. "This mug says, Ugly Filipino. It
says, old-timer, muchacho. It says Pinoy, bejo."
For Fil, time was the villain. In the beginning, the words he often heard
were: too young, too young; but all of a sudden, too young became too old,
too late. What happened in between, a mist covering all things. You don't
have to look at your face in a mirror to know that you are old, suddenly
old, grown useless for a lot of things land too late for all the dreams you
had wrapped up w ell against a day of need.
"It also says sucker," Fil answered, "but who wants a palace when they can
have the most delicious adobo here and the best stuffed chicken...
yum...yum..."
Tony was angry, "Yum, yum, you're nuts," he said, "plain and simple
loco. What for you want to spend? You've been living on loose change
all your life and now on dancing kids who don't know you and won't
even send you a card afterwards."
"Never mind the cards," Fil answered. "Who wants cards? But don't you
see, they'll be happy; and then, you know what? I'm going to keep their
voices, their words and their singing and their laughter in my magic sound
mirror."
He had a portable tape recorder and a stack of recordings, patiently labeled,
songs and speeches.
The songs were in English, but most of the speeches were in the dialect,
debates between him and Tony. It was evident Tony was the better speaker
of the two in English, but in the dialect, Fil showed greater mastery. His
style, however, was florid, sentimental, poetic.
Without telling Tony, he had experimented on recording sounds, like the
way a bed creaked, doors opening and closing, rain or sleet tapping on the
window panes, footsteps through the corridor. He was beginning to think
that they did. He was learning to identify each of the sounds with a
particular mood or fact. Sometimes, like today, he wished that there was a
way of keeping a record of silence because it was to him the richest sound,
like snow falling. He wondered as he watched the snow blowing in the
wind, what took care of that moment if memory didn't. Like time, memory
was often a villain, a betrayer.
"Fall, snow, fall," he murmured and, turning to Tony, said, "As soon as they
accept my invitation, I'll call you up. No, you don't have to do anything, but
I'd want to be here to meet them."
"I'm going out myself," Tony said. "And I don't know what time I'll be
back. “Then he added. "You're not working today. Are you on leave?"
"For two days. While the dancers are here." Fil said.
"It still doesn’t make sense to me," Tony said. "But good luck, anyway."
"Aren't you going to see them tonight? Our reserved seats are right out in
front, you know."
"I know. But I'm not sure I can come."
"What? You're not sure?"
Fil could not believe it. Tony was indifferent. Something must be wrong
with him. He looked at him closely, saying nothing.
"I want to, but I'm sick Fil. I tell you; I'm not feeling so good. My doctor
will know today. He'll tell me." Tony said.
"What will he tell you?"
"How do I know?"
"I mean, what's he trying to find out?"
"If it's cancer," Tony said. l Without saying another word, he went straight
back to is room.
Fil remembered those times, at night, when Tony kept him awake with his
moaning. When he called out to him, asking, "Tony, what's the matter?" his
sighs ceased for a while, but afterwards, Tony screamed, deadening his
cries with a pillow against his mouth. When Fill rushed to his side, Tony
dove him about the previous night, he would reply, "I was dying," but it
sounded more like disgust overt a nameless annoyance.
Fil has misgivings, too, about the whiteness spreading on Tony's skin. He
had heard of leprosy. Every time he thought of that dreaded disease, he felt
tears in his eyes. In all the years he had been in America, he had not had a
friend until he meet Tony whom he liked immediately and, in a way,
worshipped, for all the things the man had which Fil knew he himself
lacked.
They had shared a lot together. They made merry on Christmas, sometimes
got drunk and became loud. Fil recited poems in the dialect and praised
himself. Tony fell to giggling and cursed all the railroad companies of
America. But last Christmas, they hadn't gotten drunk. They hadn't even
talked to each other on Christmas day. Soon, it would be Christmas again.
The snow was still falling.
"Well, I'll be seeing you," Fil said, getting ready to leave. "Try to be home
on time. I shall invite the dancers for luncheon or dinner maybe, tomorrow.
But tonight, let's go to the theater together, ha?"
"I'll try," Tony answered. He didn't need boots. He loved to walk in the
snow.
The air outside felt good. Fil lifted his face to the sky and closed his eyes as
the snow and a wet wind drench his face. He stood that way for some time,
crying, more, more to himself, drunk with snow and coolness. His car was
parked a block away. As he walked towards it, he plowed into the snow
with one foot and studied the scar he made, a hideous shape among perfect
footmarks. He felt strong as his lungs filled with the cold air, as if just now
it did not matter too much that he was the way he looked and his English
way the way it was. But perhaps, he could talk to the dancers in his dialect.
Why not?
A heavy frosting of snow covered his car and as he wiped it off with his
bare hands, he felt light and young, like a child at play, and once again, he
raised his face to the sky and licked the flakes, cold and tasteless on his
tongue.
When Fil arrived at the Hamilton, it seemed to him the Philippine dancers
had taken over the hotel. They were all over the lobby on the mezzanine,
talking in groups animatedly, their teeth sparkling as they laughed, their
eyes disappearing in mere slits of light. Some of the girls wore their black
hair long. For a moment, the sight seemed too much for him who had but
all forgotten how beautiful Philippine girls were. He wanted to look away,
but their loveliness held him. He must do something, close his eyes
perhaps. As he did so, their laughter came to him like a breeze murmurous
with sounds native to his land.
Later, he tried to relax, to appear inconspicuous. True, they were all very
young, but there were a few elderly men and women who must have been
their chaperons or well-wishers like him. He would smile at everyone who
happened to look his way. Most of them smiled back, or rather, seemed to
smile, but it was quick, without recognition, and might not have been for
him but for someone else near or behind him.
His lips formed the words he was trying to phrase in his mind: Ilocano ka?
Bicol? Ano na, paisano? Comusta? Or should he introduce himself---How?
For what he wanted to say, the words didn't come too easily, they were
unfamiliar, they stumbled and broke on his lips into a jumble of
incoherence.
Suddenly, he felt as if he was in the center of a group where he was not
welcome. All the things he had been trying to hide now showed: the age in
his face, his horny hands. He knew it the instant he wanted to shake hands
with the first boy who had drawn close to him, smiling and friendly. Fil put
his hands in his pocket.
Now he wished Tony had been with him. Tony would know what to do. He
would harm these young people with his smile and his learned words. Fil
wanted to leave, but he seemed caught up in the tangle of moving bodies
that merged and broke in a fluid strangle hold. Everybody was talking,
mostly in English. Once in a while he heard exclamations in the dialect
right out of the past, conjuring up playtime, long shadows of evening on the
plaza, barrio fiestas, misa de gallo.
Time was passing and he had yet to talk to someone. Suppose he stood on a
chair and addressed them in the manner of his flamboyant speeches
recorded in his magic sound mirror?
"Beloved countrymen, lovely children of the Pearl of the Orient Seas, listen
to me. I'm Fil Acayan.
I've come to volunteer my services. I'm yours to command. Your servant.
Tell me where you wish to go, what you want to see in Chicago. I know
every foot of the lakeshore drive, all the gardens and the parks, the
museums, the huge department stores, the planetarium. Let me be your
guide. That's what I'm offering you, a free tour of Chicago, and finally,
dinner at my apartment on West Sheridan Road--pork adobo and chicken
relleno, name your dish. How about it, paisanos?"
No. That would be a foolish thing to do. They would laugh at him. He felt a
dryness in his throat. He was sweating. As he wiped his face with a
handkerchief, he bumped against a slim, short girl who quite gracefully,
stepped aside, and for a moment he thought he would swoon in the perfume
that enveloped him. It was fragrance, essence of camia, of ilang-ilang, and
dama de noche.
Two boys with sleek, pomaded hair were sitting near an empty chair. He sat
down and said in the dialect, "May I invite you to my apartment?" The boys
stood up, saying, "Excuse us, please," and walked away. He mopped his
brow, but instead of getting discouraged, he grew bolder as though he hands
moved one step beyond shame. Approaching another group, he repeated his
invitation, and a girl with a mole on her upper lip, said, "Thank you, but we
have no time." As he turned towards another group, he felt their eyes on his
back. Another boy drifted towards him, but as soon as he began to speak,
the boy said, "Pardon, please," and moved away.
They were always moving away. As if by common consent, they had
decided to avoid him, ignore his presence. Perhaps it was not their fault.
They must have been instructed to do so. Or was it his looks that kept them
away? The though was a sharpness inside him.
After a while, as he wandered about the mezzanine, among the dancers, but
alone, he noticed that they had begun to leave. Some had crowded noisily
into the two elevators. He followed the others going down the stairs.
Through the glass doors, he saw them getting into a bus parked beside the
subway entrance on Dearborn.
The snow had stopped falling; it was melting fast in the sun and turning
into slush.
As he moved about aimlessly, he felt someone touch him on the sleeve. It
was one of the dancers, a mere boy, tall and thin, who was saying, "Excuse,
please." Fil realized he was in the way between another boy with a camera
and a group posing in front of the hotel.
"Sorry," Fill said, jumping away awkwardly.
The crowd burst out laughing.
 
Then everything became a blur in his eyes, a moving picture out of focus,
but gradually, the figure cleared, there was mud on the pavement on which
the dancers stood posing, and the sun throw shadows at their feet.
Let them have fun, he said to himself, they're young and away from home. I
have no business up their schedule, forcing my company on them.
He watched the dancers till the last of them was on the bus. The voices
came to him, above the traffic sounds. They waved their hands and smiled
towards him as the bus started. Fil raised his hand to wave back, but
stopped quickly, aborting the gesture. He turned to look behind him at
whomever the dancers were waving their hands to. There was no one there
except his own reflection in the glass door, a double exposure of himself
and a giant plant with its thorny branches around him like arms in a loving
embrace.
Even before he opened the door to their apartment, Fil knew that Tony had
not yet arrived. There were no boots outside on the landing. Somehow, he
felt relieved, for until then he did not know how he was going to explain his
failure.
From the hotel, he had driven around, cruised by the lakeshore drive,
hoping he could see the dancers somewhere, in a park perhaps, taking
pictures of the mist over the lake and the last gold on the trees now wet with
melted snow, or on some picnic grounds, near a bubbling fountain. Still
taking pictures of themselves against a background of Chicago's gray and
dirty skyscrapers. He slowed down every time he saw a crowd, but the
dancers were nowhere along his way. Perhaps they had gone to the theater
to rehearse. He turned back before reaching Evanston.
He felt weak, not hungry. Just the same, he ate, warming up some left-over
food. The rice was cold, but the soup was hot and tasty. While he ate, he
listened for footfalls.
Afterwards, he lay down on the sofa and a weariness came over him, but he
tried hard not to sleep. As he stared at the ceiling, he felt like floating away,
but he kept his eyes open, willing himself hard to remain awake. He wanted
to explain everything to Tony when he arrived. But soon his eyes closed
against a weary will too tired and weak to fight back sleep--and then there
were voices. Tony was in the room, eager to tell his own bit of news.
"I've discovered a new way of keeping afloat," he was saying.
"Who wants to keep afloat?" Fil asked.
"Just in case. In a shipwreck, for example," Tony said.
"Never mind shipwrecks. I must tell you about the dancers," Fil said.
"But this is important," Tony insisted. "This way, you can keep floating
indefinitely."
"What for indefinitely?" Fil asked.
"Say in a ship... I mean, in an emergency, you're stranded without help in
the middle of the Pacific or the Atlantic, you must keep floating till help
comes..." Tony explained.
"Better," Fil said, "find a way to reach shore before the sharks smells you.
You discover that."
"I will," Tony said, without eagerness, as though certain that there was no
such way, that, after all, his discovery was worthless.
"Now you listen to me," Fil said, sitting up abruptly. As he talked in the
dialect, Tony listened with increasing apathy.
"There they were," Fil began, his tone taking on the orator's pitch, "Who
could have been my children if I had not left home-- or yours, Tony. They
gazed around them with wonder, smiling at me, answering my questions,
but grudgingly, edging away as if to be near me were wrong, a violation in
their rule book. But it could be that every time I opened my mouth, I gave
myself away. I talked in the dialect, Ilocano, Tagalog, Bicol, but no one
listened. They avoided me. They had been briefed too well: Do not talk to
strangers. Ignore their invitations. Be extra careful in the big cities like New
York and Chicago, beware of the old-timers, the Pinoys. Most of them are
bums. Keep away from them. Be on the safe side--stick together, entertain
only those who have been introduced to you properly.
"I'm sure they had such instructions, safety measures, they must have called
them. What then could I have done, scream out my good intentions, prove
my harmlessness and my love for them by beating my breast? Oh, but I
loved them. You see, I was like them once. I, too, was nimble with my feet,
graceful with my hands; and I had the tongue of a poet. Ask the village girls
and the envious boys from the city--but first you have to find them. After
these many years, it won't be easy. You'll have to search every suffering
pace in the village gloom for a hint of youth and beauty or go where the
graveyards are and the tombs under the lime trees. One such face...oh, God,
what am I saying...
"All I wanted was to talk to them, guide them around Chicago, and spend
money on them so that they would have something special to remember
about us here when they return to our country. They would tell their folks:
We melt a kind, old man, who took us to his apartment. It was not much of
a place. It was old-like him. When we sat on the sofa in the living room, the
bottom sank heavily, the broken springs touching the floor. But what a cook
that man was! And how kind! We never thought that rice and adobo could
be that delicious. And the chicken relleno! When someone asked what the
stuffing was--we had never tasted anything like it, he smiled saying, 'From
heaven's supermarket' touching his head and pressing his heart like a clown
as if heaven were there. He had his tape recorder which he called a magic
sound mirror, and he had all of us record our voices. Say anything in the
dialect, sing, if you please, our kundiman, please, he said, his eyes pleading,
too. Oh, we had fun listening to the playback. When you're gone, the old
man said, I shall listen to your voices with my eyes closed and you'll be
here again and I won't ever be alone, no, not anymore, after this. We wanted
to cry, but he looked very funny, so we laughed and he laughed with us.
"But, Tony, they would not come. They thanked me, but they said they had
no time. Others said nothing. They looked through me. I didn't exist. Or
worse, I was unclean. Basura. Garbage. They were ashamed me. How could
I be Filipino?"
The memory, distinctly recalled, was a rock on his breast. He grasped for
breath.
"Now, let me teach you how to keep afloat," Tony said, but it was not
Tony's voice.
Fil was alone and gasping for air. His eyes opened slowly till he began to
breathe more easily. The sky outside was gray. He looked at his watch--a
quarter past five. The show would begin at eight. There was time. Perhaps
Tony would be home soon.
The apartment was warming up. The radiators sounded full of scampering
rats. He had a recording of that in his sound mirror.
Fil smiled. He had an idea. He would take the sound mirror to the theater,
take his seat close to the stage, and make tape recordings of the singing and
the dances.
Now he was wide-awake and somehow pleased with himself. The more he
thought of the idea, the better he felt. If Tony showed up now... He sat up,
listening. The radiators were quiet. There were no footfalls, no sound of a
key turning.
 
Late that night, back from the theater, Fill knew at once that Tony was back.
The boots were outside the door. He, too, must be tired, and should not be
disturb.
He was careful not to make any noise. As he turned on the floor lamp, he
thought that perhaps Tony was awake and waiting for him. They would
listen together to a playback of the dances and songs Tony had missed.
Then he would tell Tony what happened that day, repeating part of the
dream.
From Tony's bedroom came the regular breathing of a man sound asleep. To
be sure, he looked into the room and in the half-darkness, Tony's head
showed darkly, deep in a pillow, on its side, his knees bent, almost touching
the clasped hands under his chin, an oversized fetus in the last bottle. Fill
shut the door between them and went over to the portable. Now. He turned
it on to low. At first nothing but static and odd sounds came through, but
soon after there was the patter of feet to the rhythm of a familiar melody.
All the beautiful boys and girls were in the room now, dancing and singing.
A boy and a girl sat on the floor holding two bamboo poles by their ends
flat on floor, clapping them together, then apart, and pounding them on the
boards, while dancers swayed and balanced their lithe forms, dipping their
bare brown legs in and out of the clapping bamboos, the pace gradually
increasing into a fury of wood on wood in a counterpoint of panic among
the dancers and in a harmonious flurry of toes and ankles escaping certain
pain--crushed bones, and bruised flesh, and humiliation. Other dances
followed, accompanied by songs and live with the sounds of life and death
in the old country; I go rot natives in G-strings walking down a
mountainside; peasants climbing up a hill on a rainy day; neighbors moving
a house, their sturdy legs showing under a moving roof; a distant gong
sounding off a summons either to a feast for a wake. And finally, prolonged
ovation, thunderous, wave upon wave...
"Turn that thing off!" Tony's voice was sharp above the echoes of the gongs
and the applause settling into silence.
Fil switched off the dial and in the sudden stillness, the voices turned into
faces, familiar and near, like gesture and touch that stayed on even as the
memory withdrew, bowing out, as it were, in a graceful exit, saying, thank
you, thank you, before a ghostly audience that clapped hands in silence and
stomped their feet in a such emptiness. He wanted to join the finale, such as
it was, pretend that the curtain call included him, and attempt a shamefaced
imitation of a graceful adieu, but he was stiff and old, incapable of grace;
but he said, thank you, thank you, his voice sincere and contrite, grateful for
the other voices and the sound of singing and the memory.
"Oh, my God..." the man in the other room cried, followed by a moan of
such anguish that Fil fell on his knees, covering the sound mirror with his
hands to muffle the sounds that had started again, it seemed to him, even
after he had turned it off.
Then he remembered.
"Tony, what did the doctor say? What did he say?" he shouted and listened,
holding his breath, no longer able to tell at the moment who had truly
waited all day for the final sentence.
There was no answer. Meanwhile, under his hands, there was Tony saying?
That was his voice, no? Fil wanted to hear; he must know. He switched
dials on and off, again and again, pressing buttons. Suddenly, he didn't
know what to do. The spool was live, they kept turning. His arms went
around the machine, his chest pressing down on the spools. In the quick
silence, Tony's voice came clear. "So they didn't come after all?"
"Tony, what did the doctor say?" Fil asked, straining hard to hear.
"I knew they wouldn't come. But that's okay. The apartment is old anyhow.
And it smells of death."
"How you talk. In this country, there's a cure for everything."
"I guess we can't complain. We had it good here all the time. Most of the
time, anyway."
"I wish, though, they had come. I could..."
"Yes, they could have. They didn't have to see me, but I could have seen
them. I have seen their pictures, but what do they really look like?"
"Tony, they're beautiful, all of them, but especially the girls. Their
complexion, their grace, their eyes, they were what we call talking eyes,
they say, things to you. And the scent of them!"
There was a sigh from the room soft, hardly like a sigh. A louder, grating
sound, almost under his hands that had relaxed their hold, called his
attention. The sound mirror had kept going, the tape was fast unraveling.
"Oh, no! He screamed, noticing that somehow, he had pushed the eraser.
Frantically, he tried to rewind and play back the sounds and the music, but
there was nothing now but the full creaking of the tape on the spool and
meaningless sounds that somehow had not been erased, the thud of dancing
feet, a quick clapping of hands, alien voices and words: in this country...
everything... all of them... talking eyes... and the scent... a fading away into
nothingness, till about the end when there was a screaming, senseless kind
of finale detached from the body of a song in the background, drums and
sticks and the tolling of a bell.
"Tony! Tony!" Fil cried, looking towards the sick man's room, "I've lost
them all."
Biting his lips, Fil turned towards the window, startled by the first light of
the dawn. He hadn't realized till then the long night was over.
A Night in the Hills
Author: Paz Marquez – Benitez was born in 1894 in Lucena City, Quezon.
Marquez - Benítez authored the first Filipino modern English language
short story, Dead Stars, published in the Philippine Herald in 1925. Born
into the prominent Marquez family of Quezon province, she was among the
first generation of Filipino people trained in the American education system
which used English as the medium of instruction.
How Gerardo Luna came by his dream no one could have told, not even he.
He was a salesman in a jewelry store on Rosario street and had been little
else. His job he had inherited from his father, one might say; for his father
before him had leaned behind the self-same counter, also solicitous, also
short-sighted and thin of hair.
After office hours, if he was tired, he took the street car to his home in
Intramuros. If he was feeling well, he walked; not frequently, however, for
he was frail of constitution and not unduly thrifty. The stairs of his house
were narrow and dark and rank with characteristic odors from a Chinese
sarisari store which occupied part of the ground floor.
He would sit down to a supper which savored strongly of Chinese cooking.
He was a fastidious eater. He liked to have the courses spread out where he
could survey them all. He would sample each and daintily pick out his
favorite portions—the wing tips, the liver, the brains from the chicken
course, the tail-end from the fish. He ate appreciatively, but rarely with
much appetite. After supper he spent quite a time picking his teeth
meditatively, thinking of this and that. On the verge of dozing he would
perhaps think of the forest.
For his dream concerned the forest. He wanted to go to the forest. He had
wanted to go ever since he could remember. The forest was beautiful.
Straight-growing trees. Clear streams. A mountain brook which he might
follow back to its source up among the clouds. Perhaps the thought that
most charmed and enslaved him was of seeing the image of the forest in the
water. He would see the infinitely far blue of the sky in the clear stream, as
in his childhood, when playing in his father’s azotea, he saw in the water-
jars an image of the sky and of the pomelo tree that bent over the railing,
also to look at the sky in the jars.
Only once did he speak of this dream of his. One day, Ambo the gatherer of
orchids came up from the provinces to buy some cheap earrings for his
wife’s store. He had proudly told Gerardo that the orchid season had been
good and had netted him over a thousand pesos. Then he talked to him of
orchids and where they were to be found and also of the trees that he knew
as he knew the palm of his hand. He spoke of sleeping in the forest, of
living there for weeks at a time. Gerardo had listened with his prominent
eyes staring and with thrills coursing through his spare body. At home he
told his wife about the conversation, and she was interested in the business
aspect of it.
“It would be nice to go with him once,” he ventured hopefully.
“Yes,” she agreed, “but I doubt if he would let you in on his business.”
“No,” he sounded apologetically. “But just to have the experience, to be
out.”
“Out?” doubtfully.
“To be out of doors, in the hills,” he said precipitately.
“Why? That would be just courting discomfort and even sickness. And for
nothing.”
He was silent.
He never mentioned the dream again. It was a sensitive, well-mannered
dream which nevertheless grew in its quiet way. It lived under Gerardo
Luna’s pigeon chest and filled it with something, not warm or sweet, but
cool and green and murmurous with waters.
He was under forty. One of these days when he least expected it the dream
would come true. How, he did not know. It seemed so unlikely that he
would deliberately contrive things so as to make the dream a fact. That
would be very difficult.
Then his wife died.
And now, at last, he was to see the forest. For Ambo had come once more,
this time with tales of newly opened public land up on a forest plateau
where he had been gathering orchids. If Gerardo was interested—he seemed
to be—they would go out and locate a good piece. Gerardo was interested
—not exactly in land, but Ambo need not be told.
He had big false teeth that did not quite fit into his gums. When he was
excited, as he was now, he spluttered and stammered and his teeth got in the
way of his words.
“I am leaving town tomorrow morning.” he informed Sotera. “Will—”
“Leaving town? Where are you going?”
“S-someone is inviting me to look at some land in Laguna.”
“Land? What are you going to do with land?”
That question had never occurred to him.
“Why,” he stammered, “Ra-raise something, I-I suppose.”
“How can you raise anything! You don’t know anything about it. You
haven’t even seen a carabao!”
“Don’t exaggerate, Ate. You know that is not true.”
“Hitched to a carreton, yes; but hitched to a plow—”
“Never mind!” said Gerardo patiently. “I just want to leave you my keys
tomorrow and ask you to look after the house.”
“Who is this man you are going with?”
“Ambo, who came to the store to buy some cheap jewelry. His wife has a
little business in jewels. He suggested that I—g-go with him.”
He found himself then putting the thing as matter-of-factly and plausibly as
he could. He emphasized the immense possibilities of land and waxed
eloquently over the idea that land was the only form of wealth that could
not he carried away.
“Why, whatever happens, your land will be there. Nothing can possibly take
it away. You may lose one crop, two, three. Que importe! The land will still
be there.”
Sotera said coldly, “I do not see any sense in it. How can you think of land
when a pawnshop is so much more profitable? Think! People coming to
you to urge you to accept their business. There’s Peregrina. She would
make the right partner for you, the right wife. Why don’t you decide?”
“If I marry her, I’ll keep a pawnshop—no, if I keep a pawnshop, I’ll marry
her,” he said hurriedly.
He knew quite without vanity that Peregrina would take him the minute he
proposed. But he could not propose. Not now that he had visions of himself
completely made over, ranging the forest at will, knowing it thoroughly as
Ambo knew it, fearless, free. No, not Peregrina for him! Not even for his
own sake, much less Sotera’s.
Sotera was Ate Tere to him through a devious reckoning of relationship that
was not without ingenuity. For Gerardo Luna was a younger brother to the
former mistress of Sotera’s also younger brother, and it was to Sotera’s
credit that when her brother died after a death-bed marriage she took
Gerardo under her wings and married him off to a poor relation who took
good care of him and submitted his problem as well as her own to Sotera’s
competent management. Now that Gerardo was a widower, she intended to
repeat the good office and provide him with another poor relation
guaranteed to look after his physical and economic well-being and, in
addition, guaranteed to stay healthy and not die on him. “Marrying to play
nurse to your wife,” was certainly not Sotera’s idea of a worthwhile
marriage.
This time, however, he was not so tractable. He never openly opposed her
plans, but he would not commit himself. Not that he failed to realize the
disadvantages of widowerhood. How much more comfortable it would be to
give up resisting, marry good, fat Peregrina, and be taken care of until he
died for, she would surely outlive him.
But he could not, he must not. Uncomfortable though he was, he still
looked on his widowerhood as something not fortuitous, but a feat
triumphantly achieved. The thought of another marriage was to shed his
wings, was to feel himself in a small, warm room, while overhead someone
shut down on him an opening that gave him the sky.
So, to the hills he went with the gatherer of orchids.
AMONG the foothill’s noon found them. He was weary and wet with
sweat.
“Can’t we get water?” he asked dispiritedly.
“We are coming to water,” said Ambo. “We shall be there in ten minutes.”
Up a huge scorched log Ambo clambered, the party following. Along it
they edged precariously to avoid the charred twigs and branches that
strewed the ground. Here and there a wisp of smoke still curled feebly out
of the ashes.
“A new kaingin,” said Ambo. “The owner will be around, I suppose. He
will not be going home before the end of the week. Too far.”
A little farther they came upon the owner, a young man with a cheerful face
streaked and smudged from his work. He stood looking at them, his two
hands resting on the shaft of his axe.
“Where are you going?” he asked quietly and casually. All these people
were casual and quiet.
“Looking at some land,” said Ambo. “Mang Gerardo is from Manila. We
are going to sleep up there.”
He looked at Gerardo Luna curiously and reviewed the two porters and
their load. An admiring look slowly appeared in his likeable eyes.
“There is a spring around here, isn’t there? Or is it dried up?”
“No, there is still water in it. Very little but good.”
They clambered over logs and stumps down a flight of steps cut into the
side of the hill. At the foot sheltered by an overhanging fern-covered rock
was what at first seemed only a wetness. The young man squatted before it
and lifted off a mat of leaves from a tiny little pool. Taking his tin cup, he
cleared the surface by trailing the bottom of the cup on it. Then he scooped
up some of the water. It was cool and clear, with an indescribable tang of
leaf and rock. It seemed the very essence of the hills.
He sat with the young man on a fallen log and talked with him. The young
man said that he was a high school graduate, that he had taught school for a
while and had laid aside some money with which he had bought this land.
Then he had got married, and as soon as he could manage it he would build
a home here near this spring. His voice was peaceful and even. Gerardo
suddenly heard his own voice and was embarrassed. He lowered his tone
and tried to capture the other’s quiet.
That house would be like those he had seen on the way—brown, and in
time flecked with gray. The surroundings would be stripped bare. There
would be san franciscos around it and probably beer bottles stuck in the
ground. In the evening the burning leaves in the yard would send a pleasant
odor of smoke through the two rooms, driving away the mosquitoes, then
wandering outdoors again into the forest. At night the red fire in the kitchen
would glow through the door of the batalan and would be visible in the
forest,
The forest was there, near enough for his upturned eyes to reach. The way
was steep, the path rising ruthlessly from the clearing in an almost straight
course. His eyes were wistful, and he sighed tremulously. The student
followed his gaze upward.
Then he said, “It must take money to live in Manila. If I had the capital I
would have gone into business in Manila.”
“Why?” Gerardo was surprised.
“Why—because the money is there, and if one wishes to fish, he must go
where the fishes are. However,” he continued slowly after a silence, “it is
not likely that I shall ever do that. Well, this little place is all right.”
They left the high school graduate standing on the clearing, his weight
resting on one foot, his eyes following them as they toiled up the
perpendicular path. At the top of the climb Gerardo sat on the ground and
looked down on the green fields far below, the lake in the distance, the
clearings on the hill sides, and then on the diminishing figure of the high
school graduate now busily hacking away, making the most of the
remaining hours of daylight. Perched above them all, he felt an exhilaration
in his painfully drumming chest.
Soon they entered the dim forest.
Here was the trail that once was followed by the galleon traders when, to
outwit those that lay in wait for them, they landed the treasure on the
eastern shores of Luzon, and, crossing the Cordillera on this secret trail,
brought it to Laguna. A trail century old. Stalwart adventurers, imperious
and fearless, treasure coveted by others as imperious and fearless, carriers
bent beneath burden almost too great to bear—stuff of ancient splendors
and ancient griefs.
ON his bed of twigs and small branches, under a roughly contrived roof
Gerardo lay down that evening after automatically crossing himself. He
shifted around until at last he settled into a comfortable hollow. The fire
was burning brightly, fed occasionally with dead branches that the men had
collected into a pile. Ambo and the porters were sitting on the black oilcloth
that had served them for a dining table. They sat with their arms hugging
their knees and talked together in peaceable tones punctuated with brief
laughter. From where he lay Gerardo Luna could feel the warmth of the fire
on his face.
He was drifting into deeply contented slumber, lulled by the even tones of
his companions. Voices outdoors had a strange quality. They blended with
the wind, and, on its waves, flowed gently around and past one who
listened. In the haze of new sleep, he thought he was listening not to human
voices, but to something more elemental. A warm sea on level stretches of
beach. Or, if he had ever known such a thing, raindrops on the bamboos.
He awoke uneasily after an hour or two. The men were still talking, but
intermittently. The fire was not so bright nor so warm.
Ambo was saying:
“Gather more firewood. We must keep the fire burning all night. You may
sleep. I shall wake up once in a while to put on more wood.”
Gerardo was reassured. The thought that he would have to sleep in the dark
not knowing whether snakes were crawling towards him was intolerable.
He settled once more into light slumber.
The men talked on. They did not sing as boatmen would have done while
paddling their bancas in the dark. Perhaps only sea-folk sang and hill-folk
kept silence. For sea-folk bear no burdens to weigh them down to the earth.
Into whatever wilderness of remote sea their wanderer’s hearts may urge
them, they may load their treasures in sturdy craft, pull at the oar or invoke
the wind, and raise their voices in song. The depths of ocean beneath, the
height of sky above, and between, a song floating out on the darkness. A
song in the hills would only add to the lonesomeness a hundredfold.
He woke up again feeling that the little twigs underneath him had suddenly
acquired uncomfortable proportions. Surely when he lay down, they were
almost unnoticeable. He raised himself on his elbow and carefully
scrutinized his mat for snakes. He shook his blanket out and once more
eased himself into a new and smoother corner. The men were now
absolutely quiet, except for their snoring. The fire was burning low. Ambo
evidently had failed to wake up in time to feed it.
He thought of getting up to attend to the fire, but hesitated. He lay listening
to the forest and sensing the darkness. How vast that darkness! Mile upon
mile of it all around. Lost somewhere in it, a little flicker, a little warmth.
He got up. He found his limbs stiff and his muscles sore. He could not
straighten his back without discomfort. He went out of the tent and
carefully arranged two small logs on the fire. The air was chilly. He looked
about him at the sleeping men huddled together and doubled up for warmth.
He looked toward his tent, fitfully lighted by the fire that was now crackling
and rising higher. And at last his gaze lifted to look into the forest. Straight
white trunks gleaming dimly in the darkness. The startling glimmer of a
firefly. Outside of the circle of the fire was the measureless unknown,
hostile now, he felt. Or was it he who was hostile? This fire was the only
protection, the only thing that isolated this little strip of space and made it
shelter for defenseless man. Let the fire go out and the unknown would roll
in and engulf them all in darkness. He hastily placed four more logs on the
fire and retreated to his tent.
He could not sleep. He felt absolutely alone. Aloneness was like hunger in
that it drove away sleep.
He remembered his wife. He had a fleeting thought of God. Then he
remembered his wife again. Probably not his wife as herself, as a definite
personality, but merely as a companion and a ministered to his comfort. Not
his wife, but a wife. His mind recreated a scene which had no reason at all
for persisting as a memory. There was very little to it. He had waked one
midnight to find his wife sitting up in the bed they shared. She had on her
flannel camisa de chino, always more or less dingy, and she was telling her
beads. “What are you doing?” he had asked. “I forgot to say my prayers,”
she had answered.
He was oppressed by nostalgia. And because he did not know what it was,
he wanted his longing became keener. Not for his wife, nor for his life in
the city. Not for his parents nor even for his lost childhood. What was there
in these that could provoke anything remotely resembling this regret? What
was not within the life span could not be memories. Something more
remote even than race memory. His longing went farther back, to some age
in Paradise maybe when the soul of man was limitless and unshackled:
when it embraced the infinite and did not hunger because it had the
inexhaustible at its command.
When he woke again the fire was smoldering. But there was a light in the
forest, an eerie light. It was diffused and cold. He wondered what it was.
There were noises now where before had seemed only the silence itself.
There was a continuous trilling, strange night-calls and a peculiar, soft
clinking which recurred at regular intervals. Forest noises. There was the
noise, too, of nearby waters.
One of the men woke up and said something to another who was also
evidently awake, Gerardo called out.
“What noise is that?”
“Which noise?”
“That queer, ringing noise.”
“That? That’s caused by tree worms, I have been told.”
He had a sudden vision of long, strong worms drumming with their heads
on the barks of trees.
“The other noise is the worm noise,” corrected Ambo. “That hissing. That
noise you are talking about is made by crickets.”
“What is that light?” he presently asked.
“That is the moon,” said Ambo.
“The moon!” Gerardo exclaimed and fell silent. He would never understand
the forest.
Later he asked, “Where is that water that I hear?”
“A little farther and lower, I did not wish to camp there because of the
leeches. At daylight we shall stop there, if you wish.”
When he awoke again it was to find the dawn invading the forest. He knew
the feel of the dawn from the many misas de gallo that he had gone to on
December mornings. The approach of daylight gave him a feeling of relief.
And he was saddened.
He sat quietly on a flat stone with his legs in the water and looked around.
He was still sore all over. His neck ached, his back hurt, his joints troubled
him. He sat there, his wet shirt tightly plastered over his meager form and
wondered confusedly about many things. The sky showed overhead through
the rift in the trees. The sun looked through that opening on the rushing
water. The sky was high and blue. It was as it always had been in his
dreams, beautiful as he had always thought it would be. But he would never
come back. This little corner of the earth hidden in the hills would never
again be before his gaze.
He looked up again at the blue sky and thought of God. God for him was
always up in the sky. Only the God he thought of now was not the God he
had always known. This God he was thinking of was another God. He was
wondering if when man died and moved on to another life, he would not
find there the things he missed and so wished to have. He had a deep
certainty that that would be so, that after his mortal life was over and we
came against that obstruction called death, our lives, like a stream that runs
up against a dam, would still flow on, in courses fuller and smoother. This
must be so. He had a feeling, almost an instinct, that he was not wrong. And
a Being, all wise and compassionate, would enable us to remedy our
frustrations and heartaches.
HE went straight to Sotera’s to get the key to his house. In the half light of
the stairs he met Peregrina, who in the solicitous expression of her eyes saw
the dust on his face, his hands, and his hair, saw the unkempt air of the
whole of him. He muttered something polite and hurried upstairs, self-
consciousness hampering his feet. Peregrina, quite without embarrassment,
turned and climbed the stairs after him.
On his way out with the keys in his hand he saw her at the head of the stairs
anxiously lingering. He stopped and considered her thoughtfully.
“Pereg, as soon as I get these clothes off, I shall come to ask you a question
that is very—very important to me.”
As she smiled eagerly but uncertainly into his face, he heard a jangling in
his hand. He felt, queerly, that something was closing above his hand, and
that whoever was closing it, was rattling the keys.
Portrait of a Great Man
Author: Manuel Viray was born on April 13, 1917, in the province of
Pangasinan, in the Philippines. He is survived by three daughters; two
living in the U.S. and one in Paris, France. He has four sisters in the
Philippines and two brothers in California. Mr. Viray was a poet, an
educator, short story writer and an essayist. He taught creative writing and
literary criticism in universities in Manila, Philippines. He served as a
foreign service official in the Philippines Embassies in several countries,
including the United States from 1955 to 1973. His last post was
Philippines Ambassador to Cambodia, until Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer
Rouge.
 
Dr. Rufino T. Ventanilla knew this capricious mood of the city but he was
too irritated to care. To the east, where the sun, intruder of sleep and stolen
love, was slowly rising, he could see the black smoke spiraling above the
shipyards. He and Serafin, his chauffeur, whose unkempt head and dirty
nape annoyed him, had left the snarled traffic of Avenida Rizal. They were
now speeding along the street leading to Mabini Avenue. It was a
comparatively quiet street. All he could see were two or three employees
from his bureau—hurrying, hurrying, because of the stern compulsion of
the Bundy clock he himself had ordered installed according to civil service
requirements. The employees had grumbled: but it did not matter.
As the sleek car moved slowly, he wanted to ask Serafin what it was he had
forgotten of the items Lita had asked to him to bring, but forcibly caught
himself in time. How would Serafin know? What Lita wanted was strictly a
matter between them. Let’s see, remembering the tyrannical, exciting lips of
Lita, the fierce passionate hours at dawn. A case of evaporated milk, a sack
of white sugar, and… He was baffled.
The car eased to a stop before the high, imposing structure housing his
office. He heaved his heavy bulk from the front seat, yanking his bulging
black portfolio, and told Serafin to send in the personnel clerk right away.
As he turned right from the long flight of steps, he saw three figures. The
thin, angular girl whom he had assigned to the research section smiled at
him as she wiped her pink eyeglasses.
“Don’t be in a hurry, doctor, you are on time; it’s still five minutes to eight,”
she said without apparent guile.
He managed a parody of a laugh and said, “Yes. Yes. That’s good.” Darn
her, doesn’t she know I am the Deputy Commissioner? I will fire her yet.
But he knew he never would; she was the protégée of Assemblyman Juan
Tuviera y Sibulsibul.
He strode into his office and found himself barricaded by the hill of papers
on his desk. If only I can sweep all this blasted correspondence aside. The
refrigerator in the inner room to his right was purring softly.
He shouted at Zabala, his stenotypist and asked him if he had put in the
bottle of Schenley in the frigidaire. When Zabala said yes, Dr. Ventanilla
said: “What are you standing there for? Give it to me.” Silently, as he rested
his bulk on the plush armchair, he drummed his fingers and was
discomfited to find that the papers and bundles of previous records were
scattered as far as the edge of the table. He tried to remember what the third
item was that Lita wanted.
His stenotypist poured a thimbleful of whisky for him impassively, with a
nonchalant, economical gesture. “Put it away,” he said. “And don’t touch
it.”
“I never do, sir,” was the reply.
When he looked up he saw the personnel clerk saying, “Good morning, sir,”
with a crooked smile.
“Here. Come here.” For the life of him he could never recall the man’s
name. “I want you to order from the Republic Rehabilitation Center some
rice (for the real Mrs. Ventanilla), a case of evaporated milk and a bag—no,
make it two bags of white sugar.”
“But, sir, we ordered only last week.”
“Our supplies have run out, so I want these tomorrow. Make a special
request.”
The clerk stared at him.
“What are you standing there for?” he said testily. “Well, pass a circular
among the employees. Find out who wants sugar and milk and rice.” He
could not remember the third item Lita wanted.
The telephone rang, its sound jarring him. Picking it up with his pudgy
hands, he said: “Yes. Who? Oh, yes, Colonel. What? All right, I’ll see you
at nine-thirty.” He put the phone down on its cradle.
He picked up the paper on top of the middle hill of correspondence—and
peered at it through his eyeglasses. Rapidly he skimmed over the fine print,
noting typographical errors—a period which should have been a semicolon,
a comma which had been misplaced. The bundle of previous records was on
top of the pile. He saw that some pages were folded. Time and again, with
meticulous care, he riffled through the other file, comparing the legal
clauses. He was thankful it was Adriano Perez who had prepared the
treatise for his signature. Good man, Perez was, he thought. This would
look fine to the Commissioner.
In the next thirty minutes, he signed a memorandum, the text of a
cablegram, a letter, a four-page instruction to some chairman of a
committee, and the voucher for partial salary of Marcos Montalbo II,
special assistant.
There was a knock at the door. “Good morning, boss,” Perez, tall, his mop
of hair falling over his forehead burst in cheerily.
“Say, Perez, that treatise was well done,” he said.
“Thanks, chief. That was my first draft,” Perez said. He sat down and filled
his Kaywoodie, thinking that it was a pity the doctor could not plow
through all the correspondence in one day. Poor farmer, he thought
impulsively making comparisons while sucking in the fragrant smoke with
satisfaction. If only he delegated the work in the office properly, instead of
bothering himself with every word and comma that went in the papers, the
office would run more efficiently. Why, when he was editorial writer on
Humanidad…
“But your stenographer missed a semicolon,” Dr. Ventanilla shoved the
paper forward unceremoniously. Perez suppressing a smile, placated his
superior and said it would be changed right away.
“Hurry it up. The Commissioner may call for it this morning.”
He watched Perez’ well-formed back disappears.
As Perez closed the door, the doctor removed his eyeglasses and rested his
head before picking up the next bunch of papers. This had to do with the
appointment of an assistant chief in the administrative division. The
memorandum below was signed by the Commissioner himself. Two pages
beneath the memorandum were the letters of Assemblyman Tuviera,
chairman of the finance committee of the Assembly, urging the appointment
of a certain Eduardo Botelho, a topnotcher in the 1930 bar examination.
“No doubt, he can’t make enough money outside,” he muttered, “if I refuse
it, but I must.” He had not heard of the name before.
Edrosa was the man he wanted. Self-made man. Graduate of Harvard.
Good-looking, brilliant. Law partner of Ozamis, Ozamis and Ozamis. A
keen analyst. “This fellow Botelho… he’s just liked the rest of the fellows
forced upon me… only wants a big salary… maybe he’s too lazy to make a
living. I won’t appoint him.”
He pressed the buzzer. The messenger came in with alacrity. Dr Ventanilla
asked him to send in Del Mundo and Estabillo, the assistants on
mechanization. When Del Mundo and Estabillo entered he told them to wait
for the Colonel.
Just then the Colonel entered, preceded by the messenger.
“I got your call. Sit down. There, there at the long table.”
They did. “Now, then, in this estimate of the exports of the Hindus, I see a
discrepancy. It’s too high. Silver is getting out of the country.”
“A greater figure can be found in the estimate of American investors,” Del
Mundo interposed.
“No matter, the Americans are our allies. Don’t be an ungrateful pup.”
Del Mundo reddened. The telephone jingled.
Zabala, the typist, said it was for the doctor. He sat down again, pounding
his typewriter with machinegun precision, but never missing the dialogue
over the wire. “Yes, sir,” the doctor was saying, “right away, sir. The treatise
is ready. I’ll take it over myself.” He could see the figures of his fellow
employees reflected in the doctor’s alert but fawning look, the strained and
fidgety intonation, and the bobbing Adam’s apple. Zabala stopped typing
and looked at the paper he was copying with pretended industry while Dr.
Ventanilla stood up and went over to the trio huddled around the long table
and told them to finish the draft of the trade contract. He would be right
back. Zabala could not help smiling a little as the doctor went to the rest
room—the “House of Commons,” everyone called it—possibly to allay his
nervousness. The doctor always did that, every time the Commissioner’s
call came in.
Ten minutes after Dr. Ventanilla had gone, the door opened again and Dr.
Adriano Perez y Tiron and Marcos Montalbo II asked Zabala where the
Deputy Commissioner was. He told them. “When he returns and wants me,
tell him Mr. Montalbo and I are at the restaurant,” Dr. Perez said and the
stenographer nodded.
MARCOS Montalbo II lighted Perez’ cigarette while the waiter hovered
over them. The two had finished their coffee and Marcos was saying, “But
seriously, chico,” striking a match, “if the deputy commissionership were
offered you, would you turn it down?”
“I don’t know,” Perez leaned forward, his restless eyes subdued for a
moment. “It’s too much of a responsibility.” He recited the story of the
semicolon.
Marcos laughed. “Sometimes, I think. Dr. Ventanilla has an unhappy home
life.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps, he has been given too big a bite to chew. You, you’re
an accessory to the fact. Your lawyers’ guild urged his appointment on the
Secretary.”
“I’m disappointed. It’s a pity. He was forcibly yanked out of the foundation.
Now there is some talk he might be appointed Director of Internal Affairs.”
“I don’t have a grudge against him, you know. It’s just that all the routine
appalls him. Maybe. What the office needs is more integration, proper
distribution of work, and greater trust in the abilities of subordinates. Day
after day, the office becomes more entangled. Papers that should be signed
in two days do not get signed until after one week.”
“The word is bureaucracy. Red tape.”
‘That’s right. You know, the other day the Commissioner objected to a
clause in the contract with the British engineers. But since Dr. Ventanilla
wrote the clause himself, he insisted that it be retained. What he got was a
‘the trouble with you, Ventanilla, you are not a lawyer,’ accompanied by a
laugh.”
“I heard about that. And Ventanilla naively said: ‘But I am, Commissioner,
I am.’”
Dr. Perez and Montalbo decried the tragic implication of the incident. They
knew that Dr. Ventanilla was a graduate of the Escuela de Derecho, and had
gone to Oxford for his master’s and doctor’s degrees in jurisprudence.
“There’s plenty of talent in our office, you know, even discounting the lame
ducks and political protégées.”
“You are the best.”
“Don’t pull my leg,” said Perez, putting his pipe on the ashtray. “If the work
were systematized and coordinated, Dr. Ventanilla would not have to yell
and tear his hair as he usually does.”
“Tear his hair? But the man is baldheaded.”
“There should be a course given for young men anxious to enter the public
service. Once in, after graduation, they should be given a chance to go to
the top of the ladder.”
“Not in this country. The ladder is incessantly pulled thither and yon by
scheming politicians. For instance, the doctor should have acceded to
Reyes’ appointment. After all, he is the heir, though only a nephew of
Secretary Reyes. The Secretary is the President’s closest confidant. Besides
he controls government accounts.”
“If I were Dr. Ventanilla I would have insisted on a free hand before
accepting the deputy commissionership. He executes the policies. It’s late.
Let’s go.”
AFTER two weeks, Perez was appointed Deputy Commissioner to succeed
Dr. Ventanilla.
Now he was relaxing luxuriously in the car as Serafin drove slowly towards
Mabini Avenue. He ran his fingers delicately across the smooth cellophane
box containing a corsage. Esperanza will like the orchids, he thought. He
had met Esperanza at a musical last night. He remembered her face at the
furioso, and how she threw back her head at the finish. He read the card
again as the car slowly rolled in front of the tall, imposing building.
He gave Serafin the address and told him to take the flowers up right away
and return. “There will he no answer,” he said. “And come back after you
have delivered it. I have an appointment with the chairman of the Planning
Commission.”
Swiftly, Perez ran up the long flight of steps, looking neither right nor left.
He asked Zabala to send Mr. Montalbo in at once.
Marcos strode in. “We made it,” he said, as he sat down with ease.
“Smoke?”
Perez waved away the offer. “Look. Marcos,” he said. “Help me in this.
Sort out the urgent papers. By God, by tomorrow I expect to clear this
mess.”
“All right. Now our good friend, the doctor, is already sweating it out in the
Bureau of Internal Affairs.”
“Uh-huh,” Perez bent down.
“Look, can I give you a good-looking stenographer?”
Perez looked up with interest. “Why not?” He did not see the alarm on
Zabala’s face.
The door opened. Del Mundo came in.
“What do you want?”
“I would like to see you about the trade agreement.”
Marcos went out, obviously pleased with himself, noting Del Mundo’s
discomfiture, for he knew Perez and Del Mundo were classmates in college.
“That’s right. You made a terrible mistake in the last paragraph. Wrong
figures. Luckily, I saw it. What’s the matter with you? Do you want the
Commissioner to howl? Type it yourself if you have to.”
Del Mundo tried to open his mouth in protest.
“That’s all. On your way out, send Villalva to me.”
The door creaked.
“Villalva,” he said, “why did you write that atrocious memorandum
regarding Botelho’s appointment? Don’t you realize Botelho is a protégée
of Assemblyman Tuviera?”
“I thought you were against political lame ducks,” Villalva was amazed.
“Not when appropriations are at stake. He will put the squeeze on us and
where would you be? You want a promotion, don’t you?”
Villalva scowled darkly and strode out without making a reply. The
telephone rang. He picked it up. “Yes, yes, Commissioner, I’ll be right
over.”
There was a knock at the door.
Perez strode to the “House of Commons.” As he came out the personnel
clerk stood at the doorway.
“What do you want?”
“I would like to have this voucher signed, sir.”
“Don’t bother me. I have an appointment.”
“It’s for a partial salary, sir. My wife is sick, terribly sick. I have to take her
to the hospital at once.”
“Don’t bother me,” Perez said curtly and walked past him.
Servant Girl
Author: Estrella D. Alfon (July 18, 1917 – December 28, 1983) was a well-
known prolific Filipina author who wrote in English. Because of continued
poor health, she could manage only an A. A. degree from the University of
the Philippines. She then became a member of the U. P. writers club and
earned and was given the privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction
post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. She died in the year 1983 at the
age of 66.
Rosa was scrubbing the clothes she was washing slowly. Alone in the
washroom of her mistress’ house she could hear the laughter of women
washing clothes in the public bathhouse from which she was separated by
only a thin wall. She would have liked to be there with the other women to
take part in their jokes and their laughter and their merry gossiping, but they
paid a centavo for every piece of soiled linen they brought there to wash
and her mistress wanted to save this money.
A pin she had failed to remove from a dress sank its point deep into her
finger. She cried to herself in surprise and squeezed the finger until the
blood came out. She watched the bright red drop fall into the suds of soap
and looked in delight at its gradual mingling into the whiteness. Her
mistress came upon her thus and, shouting at her, startled her into busily
rubbing while she tried not to listen to the scolding words.
When her mistress left her, she fell to doing her work slowly again, and
sometimes she paused to listen to the talk in the bathhouse behind her. A
little later her mistress’ shrill voice told her to go to the bathhouse for
drinking water. Eagerly wiping her hands on her wet wrap, she took the can
from the kitchen table and went out quickly.
She was sweating at the defective town pump when strong hands closed
over hers and started to help her. The hands pressing down on hers made
her wince and she withdrew her hands hastily. The movement was greeted
by a shout of laughter from the women washing and Rosa looked at them in
surprise. The women said to each other “Rosa does not like to be touched
by Sancho” and then slapped their thighs in laughter. Rosa frowned and
picked up her can. Sancho made a move to help her but she thrust him
away, and the women roared again, saying “Because we are here, Sancho,
she is ashamed.”
Rosa carried the can away, her head angrily down, and Sancho followed
her, saying “Do not be angry,” in coaxing tones. But she went her slow way
with the can.
Her mistress’ voice came to her, calling impatiently, and she tried to hurry.
When she arrived, the woman asked her what had kept her so long, and
without waiting for an answer she ranted on, saying she had heard the
women joking in the bathhouse, and she knew what had kept the girl so
long. Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally
swung out an arm, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she
slapped Rosa’s face.
She was sorry as soon as she realized what she had done. She turned away,
muttering still, while Rosa’s eyes filled with sudden tears. The girl poured
the water from the can into the earthen jar, a bitter lump in her throat, and
thought of what she would do to people like her mistress when she herself,
God willing, would be “rich.” Soon however, she thought of Sancho, and
the jokes the women had shouted at her. She thought of their laughter and
Sancho following her with his coaxing tones, and she smiled slowly.
Getting back to her washing, she gathered the clothes she had to bleach, and
piled them into a basin she balanced on her head. Passing her mistress in the
kitchen, she said something about going to
bleach the clothes and under her breath added an epithet. She had to cross
the street to get to the stones gathered about in a whitened circle in a
neighbor’s yard where she was wont to lay out the clothes. She passed some
women hanging clothes on a barbed-wire fence to dry. They called to her
and she smiled at them.
Some dogs chasing each other on the street, she did not notice because the
women were praising her for the whiteness of the linen in the basin on her
head. She was answering them that she hadn’t even bleached them yet,
when one of the dogs passed swiftly very close to her. Looking down, she
saw in wide alarm another dog close on the heels of the first. An instinctive
fear of animals made her want to dodge the heedlessly running dog, and she
stepped gingerly this way and that. The dog, intent on the other it was
pursuing, gave her no heed and ran right between her legs as Rosa held on
to the basin in frantic fear lest it fall and the clothes get soiled. Her
patadiong was tight in their wetness about her legs, and she fell down, in
the middle of the street. She heard the other women’s exclamations of alarm
and her first thought was for the clothes. Without getting up, she looked at
the basin and gave obscene thanks when she saw the clothes still piled
secure and undirtied. She tried to get up, hurrying lest her mistress come out
and see her thus and slap her again. Already the women were setting up a
great to do about what had happened. Some were coming to her, loudly
abusing the dogs, solicitousness on their faces. Rosa cried, “Nothing’s the
matter with me.” Still struggling to get up, she noticed that her wrap had
been loosened and had bared her breasts. She looked around wildly, sudden
shame coloring her cheeks, and raised the wrap and tied it securely around
herself again.
She could stand but she found she could not walk. The women had gone
back to their drying, seeing she was up and apparently nothing the worse
for the accident. Rosa looked down at her right foot which twinged with
pain. She stooped to pick up the basin and put it on her head again. She
tried stepping on the toes of her right foot but it made her wince. She tried
the heel but that also made her bite her lip. Already her foot above the ankle
was swelling. She thought of the slap her mistress had given her for staying
in the bathhouse too long and the slap she was most certain to get now for
delaying like this. But she couldn’t walk, that was settled.
Then there came down the street a tartanilla without any occupant except
the cochero who rang his bell, but she couldn’t move away from the middle
of the street. She looked up at the driver and started angrily to tell him that
there was plenty of room at the sides of the street, and that she couldn’t
move anyway, even if there weren’t. The man jumped down from his seat
and bent down and looked at her foot. The basin was still on Rosa’s head
and he took it from her, and put it in his vehicle. Then he squatted down and
bidding Rosa put a hand on his shoulders to steady herself, he began to
touch with gentle fingers the swelling ankle, pulling at it and massaging it.
They were still in the middle of the street. Rosa looked around to see if the
women were still there to look at them but they had gone away. There was
no one but a small boy licking a candy stick, and he wasn’t paying any
attention to them. The cochero looked up at her, the sweat on his face, saw
her looking around with pain and embarrassment mingled on her face.
Then, so swiftly she found no time to protest, he closed his arms about her
knees and lifted her like a child. He carried her to his tartanilla, plumped
her down on one of the seats. Then he left her, coming back after a short
while with some coconut oil in the hollow of his palm. He rubbed the oil on
her foot, and massaged it. He was seated on the seat opposite Rosa’s and
had raised the injured foot to his thigh, letting it rest there, despite Rosa’s
protest, on his blue faded trousers. The basin of wet clothes was beside
Rosa on the seat and she fingered the clothing with fluttering hands. The
cochero asked her where she lived and she told him, pointing out the house.
He asked what had happened, and she recited the whole thing to him,
stopping with embarrassment when she remembered the loosening of her
patadiongand the nakedness of her bosom. How glad she was he had not
seen her thus. The cochero had finished with her foot, and she slid from the
seat, her basin on a hip. But he took it from her, asking her to tell him where
the bleaching stones were. He went then, and himself laid out the white
linen on the stones, knowing like a woman, which part to turn to the sun.
He came back after a while, just as Rosa heard with frightened ears the call
of her mistress. She snatched the basin from the cochero’s hand and despite
the pain caused her, limped away.
She told her mistress about the accident. The woman did not do anything
save to scold her lightly for being careless. Then she looked at the swollen
foot and asked who had put oil on it. Rosa was suddenly shy of having to let
anyone know about her cochero, so she said she had asked for a little oil at
the store and put it on her foot herself. Her mistress was unusually tolerant,
and Rosa forgot about the slapping and said to herself this was a day full of
luck!
It was with very sharp regret that she thought of her having forgotten to ask
the cochero his name. Now, in the days that followed, she thought of him,
the way he had wound an arm around her knees and carried her like a little
girl. She dreamed about the gentleness of his fingers. She smiled
remembering the way he had laid out the clothes on stones to bleach. She
knew that meant he must do his own washing. And she ached in tenderness
over him and his need for a woman like her to do such things for him—
things like mending the straight tear she had noticed at the knee of his
trousers when her foot had rested on them; like measuring his tartanilla seat
cushions for him, and making them, and stringing them on his vehicle. She
thought of the names for men she knew and called him by it in thinking of
him, ever afterwards. In her thoughts she spoke to him and he always
answered.
She found time to come out on the street for a while, every day. Sometimes
she would sweep the yard or trim the scraggly hedge of viola bushes; or she
would loiter on an errand for tomatoes or vinegar. She said to herself, He
dreams of me too, and he thinks of me. He passes here every day wishing to
see me. She never saw him pass, but she said to herself, He passes just
when I am in the house, that’s why I never see him.
Some tartanilla would pass, and if she could, as soon as she heard the sound
of the wheels, she looked out of a window, hoping it would be Angel’s.
Sometimes she would sing very loudly, if she felt her mistress was in a
good humor and not likely to object. She told herself that if he could not see
her, he would at least wish to hear her voice.
She longed no more to be part of the group about the water tank in the
bathhouse. She thought of the women there and their jokes and she smiled,
in pity, because they did not have what she had, some one by the name of
Angel, who knew how to massage injured feet back to being good for
walking and who knew how to lay out clothes for bleaching.
When they teased her about Sancho, who insisted on pumping her can full
every time she went for drinking water, she smiled at the women and at the
man, full of her hidden knowledge about someone picking her up and being
gentle with her. She was too full of this secret joy to mind their teasing.
Where before she had been openly angry and secretly pleased, now she was
indifferent. She looked at Sancho and thought him very rude beside…
beside Angel. He always put his hands over hers when she made a move to
pump water. He always spoke to her about not being angry with the
women’s teasing. She thought he was merely trying to show off. And when
one day Sancho said, “Do not mind their teasing; they would tease you
more if they knew I really feel like they say I do,” she glared at him and
thought him unbearably ill-mannered. She spat out of the corner of her
mouth, letting him see the grimace of distaste she made when she did so,
and seeing Sancho’s disturbed face, she thought, If Angel knew, he’d strike
you a big blow. But she was silent and proud and unsmiling. Sancho looked
after her with the heavy can of water held by one hand, the other hand flung
out to balance herself against the weight. He waited for her to turn and
smile at him as she sometimes did, but she simply went her way. He flung
his head up and then laughed snortingly.
Rosa’s mistress made her usual bad-humored sallies against her fancied
slowness. Noticing Rosa’s sudden excursions into the street, she made
remarks and asked curious questions. Always the girl
had an excuse and her mistress soon made no further questions. And unless
she was in bad temper, she was amused at her servant’s attempts at singing.
One night she sent the maid to a store for wine. Rosa came back with a
broken bottle empty of all its contents. Sudden anger at the waste and the
loss made her strike out with closed fists, not caring where her blows
landed until the girl was in tears. It often touched her when she saw Rosa
crying and cowering, but now the woman was too angry to pity.
It never occurred to Rosa that she could herself strike out and return every
blow. Her mistress was thirtyish, with peaked face and thin frame, and
Rosa’s strong arms, used to pounding clothes and carrying water, could
easily have done her hurt. But Rosa merely cried and cried, saying now and
then Aruy! Aruy!, until the woman, exhausted by her own anger left off
striking the girl to sit down in a chair, curse loudly about the loss of such
good wine, and ask where she was going to get the money to buy another
bottle.
Rosa folded her clothes into a neat bundle, wrapped them in her blanket,
and getting out her slippers, thrust her feet into them. She crept out of a
door without her mistress seeing her and told herself she’d never come back
to that house again.
It would have been useless to tell her mistress how the bottle had been
broken, and the wine spilled. She had been walking alone in the street
hurrying to the wine store, and Sancho had met her. They had talked; he
begging her to let him walk with her and she saying her mistress would be
angry if she saw. Sancho had insisted and they had gone to the store and
bought the wine, and then going home, her foot had struck a sharp stone.
She had bent to hold a foot up, looking at the sole to see if the stone had
made it bleed. Her dress had a wide, deep neck, and it must have hung away
from her body when she bent. Anyway, she had looked up to find Sancho
looking into the neck of her dress. His eyes were turned hastily away as
soon as she straightened up, and she thought she could do nothing but hold
her peace. But after a short distance in their resumed walk home, he had
stopped to pick up a long twig lying on the ground. With deft strokes he had
drawn twin sharp peaks on the ground. They looked merely like the zigzags
one does draw playfully with any stick, but Rosa, having seen him looking
into her dress while she bent over, now became so angry that she swung out
and with all her force struck him on the check with her open palm. He
reeled from the unexpected blow, and quickly steadied himself while Rosa
shot name after name at him. Anger rose in his face. It was nearly dark, and
there was no one else on the street. He laughed, short angry laughter, and
called her back name for name. Rosa approached him and made to slap him
again, but Sancho was too quick for her. He had slipped out of her way and
himself slapped her instead. The surprise of it angered her into sudden tears.
She swung up the bottle of wine she had held tightly in one hand, and ran
after the man to strike him with it. Sancho slapped her arm so hard that she
dropped the bottle. The man had run away laughing, calling back a final
undeserved name at her, leaving her to look with tears at the wine seeping
into the ground. Some people had come toward her then, asking what had
happened. She had stooped, picked up the biggest piece of glass, and
hurried back to her mistress, wondering whether she would be believed and
forgiven.
Rosa walked down street after street. She had long ago wiped the tears from
her face, and her thoughts were of a place to sleep, for it was late at night.
She told herself she would kill Sancho if she ever saw him again. She
picked up a stone from the road, saying, I wish a cold wind would strike
him dead, and so on; and the stone she grasped tightly, saying, If I meet him
now, I would throw this at him, and aim so well that I would surely hit him.
She rubbed her arm in memory of the numbing blow the man had dealt it,
and touched her face with furious shame for the slap he had dared to give
her. Her fists closed more tightly about the stone and she looked about her
as if she expected Sancho to appear.
She thought of her mistress. She had been almost a year in the woman’s
employ. Usually she stayed in a place, at the most, for four months.
Sometimes it was the master’s smirking ways and evil eyes, sometimes it
was the children’s bullying demands. She had stayed with this last mistress
because in spite of her spells of bad humor, there were periods afterward
when she would be generous with money for a dress, or for a cine with
other maids. And they had been alone, the two of them. Sometimes the
mistress would get so drunk that she would slobber into her drink and
mumble of persons that must have died. When she was helpless she might
perhaps have starved if Rosa had not forcibly fed her. Now, however,
thought of the fierce beating the woman had given her made Rosa cry a
little and repeat her vow that she would never step into the house again.
Then she thought of Angel, the cochero who had been gentle, and she lost
her tears in thinking how he would never have done what Sancho did. If he
knew what had happened to her, he would come running now and take her
to his own home, and she would not have to worry about a place to sleep
this night. She wandered about, not stopping at those places where she
knew she would be accepted if she tried, her mind full of the injustices she
had received and of comparisons between Sancho and Angel. She paused
every time a tartanilla came her way, peering intently into the face of the
cochero, hoping it would be he, ready to break her face into smiles if it were
indeed. She carried her bundle on her arm all this while, now clenching a
fist about the stone she still had not dropped and gnashing her teeth.
She had been walking about for quite a while, feeling not very tired, having
no urgent need to hurry about finding herself a place, so sharp her hopes
were of somehow seeing her cochero on the streets. That was all she cared
about, that she must walk into whatever street she came to, because only in
that way would he see her and learn what they had done to her.
Then, turning into a street full of stores set side by side, she felt the swish of
a horse almost brushing against her. She looked up angrily at the cochero’s
laughing remark about his whip missing her beautiful bust. An offense like
that, so soon after all her grief at what Sancho had done, inflamed her into
passionate anger, and mouthing a quick curse, she flung the stone in her
hand at the cochero on his seat. It was rather dark and she did not quite see
his face. But apparently, she hit something, for he suddenly yelled a stop at
the horse, clambered down, and ran back to her, demanding the reason for
her throwing the stone. She exclaimed hotly at his offense with the whip,
and then looking up into his face, she gasped. She gasped and said,
“Angel!”
For it was he. He was wearing a striped shirt, like so many other people
were wearing, and he had on the very same trousers of dark blue he had
worn when he massaged her foot. But he gazed at her in nothing but anger,
asking whether her body was so precious that she would kill his horse.
Also, why did she keep saying Angel; that was not his name!
Rosa kept looking up at him not hearing a word of his threats about taking
her to the municipio, saying only Angel, Angel, in spite of his protests that
that was not his name. At last she understood that the cochero did not even
remember her and she realized how empty her thoughts of him now were.
Even his name was not Angel. She turned suddenly to walk away from him,
saying, “You do not even remember me.”
The cochero peered at her face and exclaimed after a while, “Oh yes! the
girl with the swollen foot!” Rosa forgot all the emptiness, forgot the sudden
sinking of her heart when she had realized that even he would flick his whip
at a girl alone on the road, and lifted her smiling face at him, stopping
suddenly to tell him her foot had healed very quickly. The cochero asked
her after a while where she was going, and she said breathlessly, without
knowing just why she answered so, “I am going home!” He asked no
questions about where she had been, why she was so late. He bade her ride
in his vehicle, grandly saying he would not make her pay, and then, with
many a loud exclamation to his horse, he drove her to her mistress’ house.
Rosa didn’t tell him what had happened. Nor anything about her dreams.
She merely answered the questions the cochero asked her about how she
had been. “With the grace of God, all right, thank you.” Once he made her a
sly joke about his knowing there were simply lots of men courting her. Rosa
laughed breathlessly and denied it. She wished they would never arrive, but
they soon did. The cochero waited for her to get out, and then drove off,
saying “Don’t mention it” to her many thanks. She ran after the tartanilla
when it had gone off a little way, and asked, running beside the moving
vehicle, looking up into his face, “What is your name?”
The cochero shouted, without stopping his horse, “Pedro” and continued to
drive away.
Rosa went into the house without hesitation, forgetting all her vows about
never stepping into it again and wondering why it was so still. She turned
on the lights and found her mistress sleeping at a table with her head
cradled in her arms, a new wine bottle before her, empty now of all its
contents. With an arm about the thin woman’s waist, she half dragged her
into her bed. When the woman would wake, she would say nothing,
remembering nothing. Rosa turned on the light in the kitchen and hummed
her preparations for a meal.
All Over the World
Author: Vicente Rivera Jr. is a writer from the Bicol region who started
writing in the 1930s and best known as the editor of the Evening News
Magazine. He also wrote the famous short story entitled, All Over the
World, and the serialized novel, Some Passing Winds.
One evening in August 1941, I came out of a late movie to a silent, cold
night. I shivered a little as I stood for a moment in the narrow street,
looking up at the distant sky, alive with stars. I stood there, letting the night
wind seep through me, and listening. The street was empty, the houses on
the street dim—with the kind of ghostly dimness that seems to embrace
sleeping houses. I had always liked empty streets in the night; I had always
stopped for a while in these streets listening for something, I did not quite
know what. Perhaps for low, soft cries that empty streets and sleeping
houses seem to share in the night.
I lived in an old, nearly crumbling apartment house just across the street
from the movie house. From the street, I could see into the open courtyard,
around which rooms for the tenants, mostly a whole family to a single
room, were ranged. My room, like all the other rooms on the ground floor,
opened on this court. Three other boys, my cousins, shared the room with
me. As I turned into the courtyard from the street, I noticed that the light
over our study-table, which stood on the corridor outside our room, was still
burning. Earlier in the evening after supper, I had taken out my books to
study, but I went to a movie instead. I must have forgotten to turn off the
light; apparently, the boys had forgotten, too.
I went around the low screen that partitioned off our “study” and there was
a girl reading at the table. We looked at each other, startled. I had never seen
her before. She was about eleven years old, and she wore a faded blue
dress. She had long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. She was reading
my copy of Greek Myths.
The eyes she had turned to me were wide, darkened a little by
apprehension. For a long time neither of us said anything. She was a
delicately pretty girl with a fine, smooth. pale olive skin that shone richly in
the yellow light. Her nose was straight, small and finely molded. Her lips,
full and red, were fixed and tense. And there was something else about her.
Something lonely? something lost?
“I know,” I said, “I like stories, too. I read anything good I find lying
around. Have you been reading long?”
“Yes,” she said. not looking at me now. She got up slowly, closing the book.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you want to read anymore? I asked her, trying to smile, trying to
make her feel that everything was all right.
“No.” she said, “thank you.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the book. “It’s late. You ought to be in bed.
But, you can take this along.”
She hesitated, hanging back, then shyly she took the book, brought it to her
side. She looked down at her feet uncertain as to where to turn.
“You live here?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“What room?”
She turned her face and nodded towards the far corner, across the courtyard,
to a little room near the communal kitchen. It was the room occupied by the
janitor: a small square room with no windows except for a transom above
the door.
“You live with Mang Lucio?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“How long have you been here? I haven’t seen you before, have I?”
“I’ve always been here. I’ve seen you.”
“Oh. Well, good night—your name?”
“Maria.”
“Good night, Maria.”
She turned quickly, ran across the courtyard, straight to her room, and
closed the door without looking back.
I undressed, turned off the light and lay in bed dreaming of faraway things.
I was twenty-one and had a job for the first time. The salary was not much
and I lived in a house that was slowly coming apart, but life seemed good.
And in the evening when the noise of living had died down and you lay safe
in bed, you could dream of better times, look back and ahead, and find that
life could be gentle—even with the hardness. And afterwards, when the
night had grown colder, and suddenly you felt alone in the world, adrift,
caught in a current of mystery that came in the hour between sleep and
waking, the vaguely frightening loneliness only brought you closer to
everything, to the walls and the shadows on the walls, to the other sleeping
people in the room, to everything within and beyond this house, this street,
this city, everywhere.
I met Maria again one early evening, a week later, as I was coming home
from the office. I saw her walking ahead of me, slowly, as if she could not
be too careful, and with a kind of grownup poise that was somehow
touching. But I did not know it was Maria until she stopped and I overtook
her.
She was wearing a white dress that had been old many months ago. She
wore a pair of brown sneakers that had been white once. She had stopped to
look at the posters of pictures advertised as “Coming” to our neighborhood
theater.
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual.
 , , y g
She smiled at me and looked away quickly. She did not say anything nor
did she step away. I felt her shyness, but there was no self-consciousness,
none of the tenseness and restraint of the night we first met. I stood beside
her, looked at the pictures tacked to a tilted board, and tried whistling a
tune.
She turned to go, hesitated, and looked at me full in the eyes. There was
again that wide-eyed—and sad? —stare. I smiled, feeling a remote desire to
comfort her, as if it would do any good, as if it was comfort, she needed.
“I’ll return your book now,” she said.
“You’ve finished it?”
“Yes.”
We walked down the shadowed street. Magallanes Street in Intramuros, like
all the other streets there, was not wide enough, hemmed in by old, mostly
unpainted houses, clumsy and unlovely, even in the darkening light of the
fading day.
We went into the apartment house and I followed her across the court. I
stood outside the door which she closed carefully after her. She came out
almost immediately and put in my hands the book of Greek myths. She did
not look at me as she stood straight and remote.
“My name is Felix,” I said.
She smiled suddenly. It was a little smile, almost an unfinished smile. But,
somehow, it felt special, something given from way deep inside in sincere
friendship.
I walked away whistling. At the door of my room, I stopped and looked
back. Maria was not in sight. Her door was firmly closed.
August, 1941, was a warm month. The hangover of summer still permeated
the air, specially in Intramuros. But, like some of the days of late summer,
there were afternoons when the weather was soft and clear, the sky a watery
green, with a shell-like quality to it that almost made you see through and
beyond, so that, watching it made you lightheaded.
I walked out of the office one day into just such an afternoon. The day had
been full of grinding work—like all the other days past. I was tired. I
walked slowly, towards the far side of the old city, where traffic was not
heavy. On the street there were old trees, as old as the walls that enclosed
the city. Half-way towards school, I changed my mind and headed for the
gate that led out to Bonifacio Drive. I needed stiffer winds, wider skies. I
needed all of the afternoon to myself.
Maria was sitting on the first bench, as you went up the sloping drive that
curved away from the western gate. She saw me before I saw her. When I
looked her way, she was already smiling that half-smile of hers, which even
so told you all the truth she knew, without your asking.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s a small world.”
“What?”
“I said it’s nice running into you. Do you always come here?”
“As often as I can. I go to many places.”
 g yp
“Doesn’t your uncle disapprove?”
“No. He’s never around. Besides, he doesn’t mind anything.”
“Where do you go?”
“Oh, up on the walls. In the gardens up there, near Victoria gate. D’you
know?”
“I think so. What do you do up there?”
“Sit down and—”
“And what?”
“Nothing. Just sit down.”
She fell silent. Something seemed to come between us. She was suddenly
faraway. It was like the first night again. I decided to change the subject.
“Look,” I said, carefully, “where are your folks?”
“You mean, my mother and father?”
“Yes. And your brothers and sisters, if any.”
“My mother and father are dead. My elder sister is married. She’s in the
province. There isn’t anybody else.”
“Did you grow up with your uncle?”
“I think so.”
We were silent again. Maria had answered my questions without
embarrassment. almost without emotion, in a cool light voice that had no
tone.
“Are you in school, Maria?”
“Yes.”
“What grade?”
“Six.”
“How d’you like it?”
“Oh, I like it.”
“I know you like reading.”
She had no comment. The afternoon had waned. The breeze from the sea
had died down. The last lingering warmth of the sun was now edged with
cold. The trees and buildings in the distance seemed to flounder in a red-
gold mist. It was a time of day that never failed to carry an enchantment for
me. Maria and I sat still together, caught in some spell that made the silence
between us right, that made our being together on a bench in the boulevard,
man and girl, stranger and stranger, a thing not to be wondered at, as natural
and inevitable as the lengthening shadows before the setting sun.
Other days came, and soon it was the season of the rain. The city grew dim
and gray at the first onslaught of the monsoon. There were no more walks
in the sun. I caught a cold.
 g
Maria and I had become friends now, though we saw each other
infrequently. I became engrossed in my studies. You could not do anything
else in a city caught in the rains. September came and went.
In November, the sun broke through the now ever-present clouds, and for
three or four days we had bright clear weather. Then, my mind once again
began flitting from my desk, to the walls outside the office, to the gardens
on the walls and the benches under the trees in the boulevards. Once, while
working on a particularly bad copy on the news desk, my mind scattered,
the way it sometimes does and, coming together again, went back to that
first meeting with Maria. And the remembrance came clear, coming into
sharper focus—the electric light, the shadows around us, the stillness. And
Maria, with her wide-eyed stare, the lost look in her eyes…
IN December, I had a little fever. On sick leave, I went home to the
province. I stayed three days. I felt restless, as if I had strayed and lost
contact with myself. I suppose you got that way from being sick,
A pouring rain followed our train all the way back to Manila. Outside my
window, the landscape was a series of dissolved hills and fields. What is it
in the click of the wheels of a train that makes you feel gray inside? What is
it in being sick, in lying abed that makes you feel you are awake in a dream,
and that you are just an occurrence in the crying grief of streets and houses
and people?
In December, we had our first air-raid practice.
I came home one night through darkened streets, peopled by shadows.
There was a ragged look to everything, as if no one and nothing cared any
more for appearances.
I reached my room just as the siren shrilled. I undressed and got into my old
clothes. It was dark, darker than the moment after moon-set. I went out on
the corridor and sat in a chair. All around me were movements and voices.
anonymous and hushed, even when they laughed.
I sat still, afraid and cold.
“Is that you. Felix?”
“Yes. Maria.”
She was standing beside my chair, close to the wall. Her voice was small
and disembodied in the darkness. A chill went through me, she said nothing
more for a long time.
“I don’t like the darkness,” she said.
“Oh, come now. When you sleep, you turn the lights off, don’t you?”
“It’s not like this darkness,” she said, softly. “It’s all over the world.”
We did not speak again until the lights went on. Then she was gone.
The war happened not long after.
At first, everything was unreal. It was like living on a motion picture
screen, with yourself as actor and audience. But the sounds of bombs
exploding were real enough, thudding dully against the unready ear.
In Intramuros, the people left their homes the first night of the war. Many of
them slept in the niches of the old walls the first time they heard the sirens
scream in earnest. That evening, I returned home to find the apartment
house empty. The janitor was there. My cousin who worked in the army
was there. But the rest of the tenants were gone.
I asked Mang Lucio, “Maria?”
“She’s gone with your aunt to the walls.” he told me. “They will sleep there
tonight.”
My cousin told me that in the morning we would transfer to Singalong.
There was a house available. The only reason he was staying, he said, was
because they were unable to move our things. Tomorrow that would be
taken care of immediately.
“And you, Mang Lucio?”
“I don’t know where I could go.”
We ate canned pork and beans and bread. We slept on the floor, with the
lights swathed in black cloth. The house creaked in the night and sent off
hollow echoes. We slept uneasily.
I woke up early. It was disquieting to wake up to stillness in that house
which rang with children’s voices and laughter the whole day every day. In
the kitchen, there were sounds and smells of cooking.
“Hello,” I said.
It was Maria, frying rice. She turned from the stove and looked at me for a
long time. Then, without a word, she turned back to her cooking.
“Are you and your uncle going away?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he not tell you?”
“No.”
“We’re moving to Singalong.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll come back tonight. Maybe this afternoon. We’ll not
have to say goodbye till then.”
She did not say anything. I finished washing and went back to my room. I
dressed and went out.
At noon, I went to Singalong to eat. All our things were there already, and
the folks were busy putting the house in order. As soon as I finished lunch, I
went back to the office. There were few vehicles about. Air-raid alerts were
frequent. The brightness of the day seemed glaring. The faces of people
were all pale and drawn.
In the evening, I went back down the familiar street. I was stopped many
times by air-raid volunteers. The house was dark. I walked back to the
street. I stood for a long time before the house. Something did not want me
to go away just yet. A light burst in my face. It was a volunteer.
“Do you live here?”
“I used to. Up to yesterday. I’m looking for the janitor.”
“Why, did you leave something behind?”
“Yes, I did. But I think I’ve lost it now.”
“Well, you better get along, son. This place, the whole area. has been
ordered evacuated. Nobody lives here anymore.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Nobody.”
 A Question of Fidelity
Author: Gémino Henson Abad is a poet and critic from Cebu, Philippines.
His family moved to Manila when his father, Antonio Abad, was offered
professorships at Far Eastern University and the University of the
Philippines. Abad co-founded the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC)
which published Caracoa, a poetry journal in English. His other works
include Fugitive Emphasis (poems, 1973); In Another Light (poems and
critical essays, 1976); A Formal Approach to Lyric Poetry (critical theory,
1978).
 
I know, Filo I know,” Paco told his imaginary self, “in a story it would be a
cheap trick, and Nelson would surely deride it.” But there it was! could he
help it? –on the cab’s front door was written, Great is your faithfulness. It
caught him up as though it laid a mocking charge at his door, and as his
heart tingled, he sensed that it was the last incident, entirely factual, which
should illuminate the fiction of his past. But his own life story? “Ye gods!”
it was farthest from his mind. And the last incident? why? The first day of
the advertisers’ conference had just ended and he was only waiting for
Bianca at the balcony of Inday’s candle shop, idly watching in Baguio’s
misty dusk the customers that came into the café below, when the cab drove
in and stopped to let off someone. A pretty girl, her legs faintly luminous as
she slid out, glanced up at him and hurried inside. It was the merest instant,
lost at once. “How many such moments in a lifetime, ha Filo?” he gibed,
but Filo only stared, wildly considering a moment’s impulse… No, Paco
didn’t think the pretty girl resembled Bianca. Not at all.
Paco was creative director in the Asia-Pacific Ad World, Inc., and Bianca,
his assistant, who took charge of the two biggest accounts with the
company, Coca-Cola and Philip Morris. For quite a while now, whenever
they had their coffee breaks and exchanged notes on the company’s
business dealings and enjoyed each other’s bantering, he sometimes sensed
a sweet yearning for her. She was young and alive, nice-smelling, pretty…
But he would quickly repress it. “Ye gods, Filo!” he’d inwardly cry, “I’m
past fifty and happily married. It’s juvenile, your hankering after a lost
youth, also called midlife crisis, haha! Bianca in her mid-twenties, could
very well be my own daughter, and surely has not a few male friends, much
younger, and not-unlikely, has a special affection for one.”
In the hazy light from street and café Paco couldn’t catch more of the cab’s
text as it drove away. It was surely from the Old Testament, the Psalms
maybe, but surely too, this puzzling now was a distraction, a quick evasion.
For some time, he had wondered whether he could unravel to himself his
own story. Then, perhaps, he might see into his future or, at least, the sort of
person that he had become from which events still to happen must
inexorably take their form. But what a strange notion, that if he were to
contrive now his real life-story, just such a cab’s message should happen
just as it already has, as a twist to his past’s fiction.
Paco smiled to himself. He was in fact, it seemed to him, always living his
story, or that of his pathetic “other,” Filo. Bianca had promised that she
would join him at Inday’s. He glanced at his watch, quarter to six. There
were many things to talk over, they had agreed, but he wasn’t eager to
review them just now, he would as usual simply let things happen as they
come. Filo would of course insist that he take control, but he knew Filo–at
the last moment, he would draw back. No, certain things you just let
happen, they take their natural course like the common cold. Sometimes,
when you try to have it your way, things become a little perverse, as though
they have a will of their own. The important thing is to avoid hurting
anyone.
“Are you avoiding me, Paco?” Bianca had asked point-blank while they
were having their usual coffee break in the office. “No, of course not, Bai,”
he had quickly denied. It was a lie, but what choice did he have? She had
frowned but did not press. A simple denial was best, for explanations are
like clouds, forming and dispersing, the words failing short, or worse,
aghast to spell out the heart’s agenda,
embarrassed with its yearning items. There are simply no clear skies in
human affairs, and so, how could he even begin to explain to Bianca?
Whenever he mentioned Bianca to his wife Agnes, usually over breakfast
when they would relate some events the day before, he sensed that it
agitated her although she never let on. An uneasy feeling would come over
him, perhaps from the way Agnes looked, as though she had not heard
anything, or as though on a sudden her mind were somewhere else, but her
eyes would turn sad, as if a light there had been snuffed, and he would feel
guilty and vexed at the same time. It would always make him vaguely
apprehensive and irritable, her sad look, her silence, as though he had done
her wrong, haunting him through his day at the office.
Agnes was the senior partner with four women friends in a law firm that
they had put up. She often came home late, and after kissing him, looking
up from his papers at his work table, she would quietly enter their teenage
son Dylan’s room and kiss him, already fast asleep, and later carry the
laundry in her arms to the washing machine before she retired for the night.
She called it a form of relaxation! She had a remarkable strength of
character, managerial, down-to-earth, which often bared his pathetic
inadequacy in practical matters, yet capable of gentleness, a rich warmth of
affection and intense loyalty, but also to his secret discomfiture a fine,
sometimes even caustic moral sense… Surely he had resented it at times,
finding no reasonable excuse, because he tended toward sloth and a happy
indifference. Filo was poor refuge, just as well quite hid. O, he loved
Agnes, and the future had often seemed bleak without her quiet affection,
her cool efficiency…
What could be keeping Bianca? Paco lighted a cigarette. Maybe in a quarter
or so, he could take a cab back to Pines Hotel to look for her. He leaned
over the balcony and watched the small crowd below in the café’s patio. A
young man with unkempt hair swirling around his twin cowlicks, in faded
jeans with a tear on the right knee, was sitting at one table, tuning his guitar
and trying a few chords. A dark frail-looking girl sat close to him,
indifferently watching the passersby on the street as she sipped at the straw
into her bottle of Coke. The tip of her straw was stained a deep red…
“What, Filo?” It was strange that Filo should be perturbed by the stain.
“Maybe they’re lovers, ha Filo?” he felt a twinge of envy. Maybe there was
going to be a performance later, and would she be singing? Four guys were
noisily talking and laughing over their bottles of beer and chicharon at
another table, and rose as one with a loud cheer, “Rita!” as the pretty girl he
was earlier looking at joined them.
A dèjá vu swept Paco to a familiar café, he had met Rita before! among
other noisy customers, but as he looked closely at her, he was certain it had
never happened. No, it was not possible, however Filo denied it. He looked
again. Though the light from street and café struggled with the pervading
dusk, Rita’s face seemed to glow with a kind of companionable warmth.
Just such bright almond eyes, too, and a full sensual mouth… Rita threw
her head back and laughed, and Paco could hardly take his eyes off where
the little delta between her breasts fairly glowed in the hazy light.
Something snakelike too about her as she leaned over the table to touch
familiarly an arm or push jestingly at one or the other of the flirtatious guys.
“Like a snake, Filo?” however did he, Paco, get that impression? Filo
sneered at Paco’s recollection. He was only eighteen when he had gone up
to Baguio for the first time and proposed to meet the woman caller at Star
Café. She too had long dark hair and wore a tight dark red dress which
showed her figure to advantage. No, she was not a Chinese mestiza like
Rita, but she was not unattractive. Her name, she had told him over the
phone, was Zita.
His parents didn’t know at the time that he was attending the YMCA
Summer Youth Leadership Conference. It wasn’t right, they would have
said, to participate in a Protestant fellowship. He went ahead of his friends
Nelson and Deomund from UP Los Baños to see the city for himself the
day before, enjoy the scenery freely wandering around, even perhaps write
ardent verses under the pine trees for Deomund’s sister, Celine, without the
distraction of endless debates with Nelson on what makes a poem.
At the bus station–was it somewhere near Tutuban? he couldn’t quite recall
just now–after a hurried lunch, he noticed that his Dangwa ticket bore his
lucky number: 7490. Neither could he recall where Nelson had read that 4
was in Chinese mythology the number for Death, but it had always seemed
to him a good omen. He sat almost at the edge of his seat during the entire
trip because he had an old couple for seatmates, an enormously fat woman
with a can of La Perla biscuits on her lap where she would dip from time to
time for a nibble, and a small, sickly looking man, obviously her husband,
who was quite glum but would sometimes mutter and whine to himself. To
keep from failing or pressing against the glum old man whenever the bus
made a sharp turn, he would grip hard the bar on the back of the opposite
seat across the aisle which had become cluttered with luggage and boxes.
He decided the old couple wouldn’t be pleasant company for six hours, and
pretended to be dozing most of the time while keeping his grip with an
outstretched hand on his bar. The fat woman never offered him a biscuit
during the entire trip.
“Isbo! Isbo!” the conductor cried before they went up Kennon Road. The
bus stopped at a roadside where, as the cloud of dust settled, he could see
dark naked boys cavorting like nimble goats over the rocks and diving into
the clear waters of a mountain stream that glittered in the sun. A number of
passengers, among them the old couple, went down to relieve themselves
among the scraggly bushes. It was a painful sight, the fat woman with her
husband in tow navigating the cluttered aisle, stepping carefully over the
luggage and holding on to the seats or the other passengers, as they made
their way to the door. Outside, in the soft wash of five o’clock sunlight, the
glum old man had to cling to the fat woman’s neck with his left arm as he
stood shaking, waited, and then blessed the grass and scatter of shards on
the ground.
As the bus climbed the zigzag along the mountain slopes, Paco’s ears
seemed suddenly to have fallen deaf and then softly popped and filled again
with the bus engine’s roar and the passengers’ incessant chatter. He felt
buoyant and free, eagerly awaiting his first sight of Baguio as pine trees
raced past the fat woman’s dozing head at the window and flushed the cool
mountain air with their fresh invigorating scent. His eye caught a waterfall
dropping gracefully like a long, serene sheet of shimmering lace down a
cliff crowded with desperate trees and shrubs. How he wished, as the sight
vanished around a bend, he could get off there awhile to stretch his cramped
legs and gaze at the silent marvel of clear mountain water leaping out of the
sky! Was it perhaps an American colonial officer who called it Bridal Veil
the first time that he climbed up to the site of Baguio from camp to camp on
a relay of horses? Who was the bride he thought of–perhaps an Igorot maid,
a village chief’s peace offering… Paco dismissed his fantasy? Deomund
would surely scoff: “So the past romanticizes itself to clear its conscience.”
When Paco saw the gigantic lion’s, head carved out of the rock over a
cliff’s edge, he knew they would he in Baguio soon enough.
They drove past villas and pretty cottages along a ridge amid their lush
flowering gardens, a roadside café, a sprawling bungalow displaying its rich
stores of woodcraft and woven things–Ah, here at last, thought Paco, the
summer capital of government and the rich, the Shangri-La of honeymoons.
The bus chugged tiredly on a narrow dirt road to its station, on either side a
clutter of shanties and ramshackle stores, and ragged children playing
among the litter of the poor–a squatter colony among pine trees vanishing
down a ravine. Through the tall pines like towers lost in the gathering
shadows, Paco glimpsed the dull gold-brown sheen of dome and spires, the
Baguio Cathedral in the last light of day.
At the bus station, he asked for directions to Session Road from a boy
vendor of strawberries in little rattan baskets. A cab driver offered to take
him to Patria Inn, but no, he preferred to walk the distance, breathe the cool
pine-scented air, and jostle with the crowd strolling pell-mell down Session
Road as the city throbbed to life in the neon flood and blare of music and
hubbub of trade and fellowship. He was in no hurry to get to his inn. His
luggage was light, which he slung over his shoulder, and despite the long
trip, he felt energized by the festive tumult around him. Neither was he
hungry; perhaps he might just have a snack before midnight in one of those
bars that he had passed. Never had he felt freer, it was as though he had all
of life and the world to enjoy at leisure. He was glad when, at the
inn, he was given a room that looked out on an empty lot, filled with the
debris of a wrecked building but gazing out on Session Road so that, at his
window, he caught still the strains of music from the bars and felt the quiet,
undemanding companionship of strangers in the streaming crowd.
The phone suddenly rang, startling him. He hadn’t told either Deomund or
Nelson about Patria Inn. “Hello?” Perhaps someone had dialed the wrong
number. “Yes?” A tinny rasp at the other end. “Who is it?” Standing by the
large bed, he held the telephone set absently over the lamp at a low side
table. “You don’t know me,” a woman’s soft voice, “if you’re lonely, I’m at
Star Café…” Is it right to just–hang up’ now? “Hello?” pretending he didn’t
quite hear. But she probably sensed his confusion. “Will you come?” So
frank and direct a dare, and is he able? A listening silence like a spell. Who
is she? “It’s okay, I just got in…” at once he felt stupid. “I…” Yes, why
shouldn’t he just hang up, ‘Sorry, ma’am’–a cruel touch! “Oh,” a sigh, or so
he imagined, “I’ll wait, take your time.” What lame excuse now? he’d be a
silly “country bumpkin,” in Nelson’s words. “Alright,” pretending
casualness, a cool indifference. “I’ll see you there.” He heard a low nervous
giggle, as to say perhaps how easily she had won! “Oh, how nice… I like
your voice. Call me Zita.” She twitters, and he is caught! but she cannot
see, he had better have a hold on himself. “I’m Filo,” the first name that
came to mind “how will I know it’s you, Zita?” Ah, what pretense, even the
way he made his voice deep and resonant; he felt a tremor of adventurous
daring. What will happen now? he had crossed over. “I’m in a red mini,
with a white handbag,” Zita’s voice caught on a light mischievous note,
“waiting at the counter by the cashier. Will you really come, Filo?” She was
confidently teasing. “Yes,” he was surer of himself now, “I’ll have a dark-
leather jacket on, and a blue cap,” both which he didn’t have, but he had
already formed a plan.
She was indeed sitting at the counter on a high stool near the cashier, her
long shapely legs catching the eye at once, and a glass of Coke beside her
small white handbag. He dallied just outside Star Café to buy the Manila
Times from an old woman vendor before he took a corner table at the foot
of a stair where he took cover in the editorial page. Ostensibly
reading–“Oh, just coffee, black ha,” to the Chinese waiter who hovered
above the page–he watched Zita cross her legs and lean her head a little on
her left hand which she had placed behind her ear, her long dark hair
flowing to the small of her back. She was not unattractive, just about his
age, too, and she cut a nice sensuous figure in her red mini. He was glad he
hadn’t said, “Oh, so sorry, ma’am” and hung up. Something easy and
nimble too about her movement as, she reached for her bag and took out a
little mirror where she checked her face, frowning a little. This is for real,
Filo, he thought, he wasn’t imagining a temptress in a garden. Perhaps Zita
earns her college tuition from tourists and vacationers. But now, what? Zita
looked quickly around as she put back the mirror into her bag, then scanned
three, four customers as they went in from the crowd of passersby and
vendors on the pavement just outside Star Café. She straightened up, looked
briefly in his direction where he slid between the movie pages and reached
for his cup of coffee. For a split second there, did not her glance catch his
eye, his solitariness suddenly suspect, as his hand froze at his cup? She
must already have paid her bill, or perhaps, she was a favored customer at
the café; pushing aside her empty glass, she spoke to the cashier, slid
gracefully from her high stool at the counter, and left him stranded,
somehow disconsolate, amid all the movies “Now Showing.”
His eyes followed Zita’s dark red form and quickly lost her in the crowd.
But Filo still pursued her, calling her name. How he filled Paco with
distaste. The milling crowd on Session Road suddenly seemed cheerless
and indifferent. Passing by a bar called Melody, he thought a snack would
feel like gravel in his mouth. Zita? probably his own fiction. Couldn’t he
just have walked casually up to her, confidently touch her arm on the
counter, say “I’m Filo” … Now she was only an imaginary garden, and Filo
the only live toad there, he could croak all night! He went up to his room
and stripped to mock Filo in the bathroom mirror. Filo only hovers at the
edge of critical moments, but does not live. At heart perhaps, give him
breath and space for action, a schemer, and like all schemers, slinks away as
the moment rises to its accomplishment. Ah, he was thoroughly punished
for his empty daring.
“O, Paco, how long were you waiting?” He started at Bianca’s cheery voice
as she tapped lightly his elbow on the balcony’s railing. She looked pretty
and elegant in her plaid skirt, sky blue blouse, and a silken scarf around her
throat. Paco was glad he hadn’t gone back to the hotel to look for her. She
always seemed to bring exhilaration to his accustomed solitude where Filo,
he imagined, would just sulk in a shallow pond, his dreams awash in lichen.
It was what drew him to her, not simply that hey enjoyed their imagination
together in creating images and texts for their clients, it always seemed as
though they were opening up worlds where they could be quite free,
basking in their fantastic light; no, not only the free rein to their
imagination, but her vitality, which seemed to sharpen a sad knowledge,
long denied, that he had missed those tricky and delicious moments with
women in his youth’s dry and desolate solitariness; Bianca’s was a kind of
wild electric vibrancy which often expressed itself in youthful mischief,
when she’d slice into his seriousness with some witty gibe or even play a
trick or two on his projects, deliberately confounding the mathematics in
some corner of the budget (but she always found a clever way for him to
notice the absurd error).
“I’m so sorry, Paco, I had to help the girls run photocopies…” “It’s okay,
Bai, I was just watching Rita.” “Rita?” Bianca’s eyes squinted with mock
envy. “It’s a secret.” He wanted to see surprise on her face. “Oh… you were
dreaming!” she jeered blithely. “Look there… but keep your voice down.
There, with those boisterous crooks. She’s very pretty, no?” “So… you
were dreaming.” She looked at him, smiling, and he laughed. It was so
characteristic of Bianca, scoring at once and taking charge, while he let
things be, considering most as indifferent, and content to be left alone or
merely jest and banter. “O, but I was also thinking, how do you steal an
image from that scene for a Coca-Cola commercial?” “Right,” she taunted,
“how do you rouse a cliché?” “Maybe you’d like to look around in the
shop?” “No, let’s go somewhere else.” “Neutron’s?” Bianca nodded. “The
evening’s so cool, Paco, let’s enjoy it and walk.”
They took the spiral stairs down to the café. As they passed Rita’s table,
Bianca glanced at her, the way a woman swiftly appraises another, it always
mystified Paco why women seem instinctively driven to it. As they rounded
a corner of the street, she asked, “Did you just invent that name for her?”
“No, I heard those guys call her Rita,” “She’s pretty,” she concluded, “with
a mole on her lip which makes her a chatterbox.” Paco couldn’t help but
laugh, “Such a serious charge, Bai!”
As they turned another corner, they could see through the dark cascade of
pine trees down a winding street, dimly lighted Burnham Park and its small
glimmering lake, now quite deserted. Neutron’s was a private cozy café on
a hill that overlooked it. Only a few customers were quietly conversing at
small round tables. Seeming to flow and tingle like a brook in air were soft
strains played by a pianist behind a trellis of flowering plants. They took a
table in an alcove and ordered drinks, creme de menthe for Bianca and
vodka tonic for himself.
“Well, you start it, Bai,” as they waited for their drinks, “you said we have
things to talk over.” “Okay,” fingering her scarf around her throat, “you just
seem a little distant these days. Is there something… wrong?” “Really?” but
Paco knew it was coming, Bianca was always forthright, “it may just be
something that worries me… in the family, you know.” He lighted a
cigarette. Bianca seemed to study him a while. “Dylan is asthmatic. But
we’ve been to an acupuncturist, I think it’ll cure the kid.”
Paco considered his white lie. It would be indelicate to involve Agnes;
besides, his impression of her odd silences on Bianca might really be quite
spurious. He remembered Dylan’s first attack of asthma a month back. The
poor kid barged crying into their bedroom, breathing heavily. “It’s alright,
son,” he tried to comfort him as he got out of bed and placed his arm around
his son’s shoulder, “you can sleep with us”–as Dylan used to when he was
little. But he felt helpless before his son’s anguish and could only wish it
were his own affliction. Agnes went to the medicine cabinet and set up the
respirator. She took off Dylan’s shirt and rubbed some ointment on his chest
as he lay in bed, gasping for breath. Through all that, leaning on the
headboard, he kept gently tapping his son’s shoulder as to tame his
drowning, and as he watched mother and son, he felt a wave of tenderness
toward Agnes…
“Acupuncture?” Bianca broke into his thoughts. “Yes,” he pulled himself
up, “Dr. Jesus Santiago, he’s getting to be quite famous. He trained in
China, I’m told, after Harvard medical school.” “I sure hope, Paco, your son
gets well soon. Can acupuncture treat insomnia, do you think?” “Oh, I
should think so, but I’ll ask next time we visit.”
They fell silent awhile as a waitress in a light green uniform came with their
drinks. She looked at Paco with a querying smile, would that be all? and he
waved her away, “Just ice water, please, and an ashtray, ha.”
He looked earnestly at Bianca. “I think I need to be sure about something.”
“What?” teasing. “Does it bother you, Bai, when people talk, I mean, seeing
how were often together, they’d be gossiping soon enough.” “O, I would
just ignore it, gossips are so empty-headed.” “Trouble is,” swirling the ice
in his drink, “they don’t know how else to fill up.” “Too bad,” shaking her
head. “Well, as for me, I’d actually be pleased,” said Paco, chuckling and
looking slyly at her. “I think it would sort of improve my reputation.”
“Meaning?” her eyes lighted up mocking. “That there’s danger in my
character,” Paco pursued quizzically, but half-serious, “not all milk of
kindness, you know; it has a dark side.” “So has everyone, but then,”
laughing, “as to that sleazy fame you want, you’d be using me.” “Gads, I
thought you said you wouldn’t mind the whole town talking.” “Now I do,
because–why do you want a double?” “The dark side needs light.” “Paco,
you’re being melodramatic. Are you writing a story?”
She was close. Filo, it occurred to him, was not quite man at his best–Paco
smiled over his drink–no, yet deeper than he knew himself, with quite a
pagan notion of sexuality. If Eve, he’d darkly say, were the first woman,
then woman is life’s very source, and man must connect with her or be less
than human; man is the parasite, drawing his vigor, his machismo, from that
source, her sex. Gads! how Filo’s silly notions carry him away. He crushed
his cigarette in the ashtray.
“Am I writing a: story?” he echoed. “Actually, at lnday’s, I was thinking
that.” On a sudden he remembered the near fatal accident with Agnes two
weeks back that he had told Bianca about, and a strange intuition swept
through his mind, a sense that for one deeply troubled and in denial,
something just happens or erupts as though to express the unnamed distress.
But how really stupid of him then! as their old Ford stalled on a slope along
Krus na Ligas on their way to a reunion of friends, how could he have let go
of the handbrake!
“Did you write stories before, Paco?” “No… I only recalled just now that
near accident with our car.” “Ah, that was terrible…” Bianca waved her
hand as though to ward off an imminent tragedy.
But Paco couldn’t shake off his memory. It wasn’t so much the terror of that
moment that shook him, but an immense feeling afterwards of sadness, as
though for the first time in his life he knew emptiness if he should lose
Agnes. But what stark mindlessness! When their Ford stalled, he had put
the hand brake on, gone out of the car, and walked to a mechanic’s shop
they had just passed. What luck, he had told himself, for he knew little
about cars, and Agnes would sometimes reprove him for not reading the
car’s manual. The mechanic told him to release the hand brake, or so he
thought he heard, and he did like an idiot! opened the car door as he stood
on the street and released the brake. Of course the car slid down, rolling
backward without direction, and desperately trying to seize it by its side, he
fell on the road where he barely had time and space to duck as the open
door swung past his head. He picked himself up and scurried after the
runaway car, unmindful of vehicles driving passed up and down on either
side of the slope. All this time Agnes froze on the front seat, she told him
afterwards that she closed her eyes when she saw a truck down the slope,
and thought he would surely go under its wheels.
“Hello?” Bianca shook his hand. “Oh, sorry, Bai… I got distracted.” The
same feeling swept through him, a great inexplicable sadness, sweet to the
soul as it suffered the sudden rush of memory and in a flash seemed to have
at last fathomed a great mystery. Oh, a tired truism. it certainly is, how each
day’s familiarity blinds one, and the easy companionship devours the ardor
of feeling, and one takes the affection freely given, and takes it, like the air
one breathes without having to take thought. Filo could be cynical about all
that, and stand back and jeer, but right now, now, as he remembered how
the Ford caught on a tree stump where it would have plunged into the
squatter’s shanties across the shallow ditch, the sudden tide of sadness was
suffering almost more than he could bear so that his tears seemed to well up
where he stood shamed upon a crumbling strand of his life’s own time.
“Paco… is anything wrong? You look…” Bianca gently pressed his hand.
“It’s alright, I…” Maybe this vodka, suggested itself; no, he must not lie
again. He felt strangely pure with the sudden resolve, a new wholeness
seemed to surge through him. How could he in his heart return to Agnes if
he didn’t face up his feeling for Bianca, make a clean breast of it, and let
go? Now was the moment he had sensed at Inday’s candle shop. “Have I
told you about Zita?” “You mean Rita?” “No… it was my first time in
Baguio…” “Ah, yes, that woman who called you at Patria Inn, you played a
heartless trick on her!” “I was only eighteen, and I think frightened.
Nothing really happened there, but maybe it struck me then… about sex and
women, you know.” Ah, there was no help for Filo now, so daring in dream,
who wouldn’t think of jumping like Basho’s frog! “What?” she looked
mockingly at him. “There’s that need… maybe we guys joke no end about
it to sort of make light of it.” Bianca shook her head, smiling. “Oh, you’re
just thinking it, Paco, intellectualizing it. It’s the normal thing, but,”
laughing softly, “it’s just to start things.” He laughed with her, but the
moment had come, although he had a vague sense of its rashness. “I meant
to tell you, Bai… I’m quite drawn to you, but…” But it isn’t right, oh, he
shouldn’t have so foolishly blurted, what need to be so honest?
Bianca looked startled, and the mocking glint in her eyes blinked out. “I
know, Bai, it’s crazy.” She was silent a long time. “But if the feeling is
honest?” It was almost a whisper. “Oh, it’s honest, Bianca,” was all he
could say as he stared at his drink. Couldn’t he have found another way
without hurt to be open and plain? He felt oppressed by a feeling that he
had transgressed a silence between them where their light heartedness with
one another had seemed perfectly natural.
“Paco,” Bianca placed her hand gently on his. She sounded distant and
looked beautiful and sad and inaccessible. I’m sorry, Bai, it’s crazy of me,
let it go, he wanted to say. “Maybe, Paco, it’s really just Zita–like you have
to make it up to her.” She let her hand stay on his.
Was she just saying it? But, Yes, he thought bitterly, it might be Zita, for she
had become a creature of his disappointed memory; but also, No, for it was
rather with having to be honest with Bianca, by a hurtful bridge of poor
words, that he had crossed over a darkness. He looked at her as though
across a great distance, “You may be right, Bai…” he said, and pressed her
hand. What words more? I’m sorry, Bai… anything more would seem to
mock the silence that he had in foolhardiness transgressed. She smiled at
him and released his hand.