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HERCOR COLLEGE
Km. 1 Lawaan, Roxas City, Capiz 5800
ACADEMIC YEAR 2021-2022

Department: College of Education Course Code: Lit 111

Name of Instructor: Richele B. Dorado Schedule:
Course Descrip tive Title: Philippine Literature Semester:

 Module Release: October 11, 2021 (Monday)

 Submission of Tasks and Assignments: Next Release of Modules
 Google Classroom Code: tq3iivw

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” - Carl Jung

W EEK 6
CONTENT
OVERVIEW
This week, you will study the stories Zita by Arturo Rotor, A Night in the Hills by Paz Marquez Benitez, and The
Virgin by Kerima Polotan Tuvera. Also, you will encounter elements of short stories and figurative languages
often used in short stories and other literary pieces. These are useful to fully understand the wholeness of the
piece.

Along with these concepts, you will encounter activities that will gauge and evaluate your learning and
comprehension regarding the subject matter. Materials for your references are also available and attached in this
module. For this week, you are expected to gear yourself with the basic understanding of the course in preparation
for a larger scope of commitment to learn Philippine Literature.

WEEK 6 [LOVE IN THE CORNHUSKS, THE BREAD OF SALT, PEOPLE OF CONSEQUENCE] OBJECTIVES
By the end of this chapter/week, you will be able to:

1. understand and evaluate the stories; and

2. reflect on the message and moral lessons of these stories.

WEEKLY SCHEDULE
This week, we will utilize blended learning method. Upon receiving this learning module, you shall be guided with
the lessons, discussions, and tasks need to be completed. The DISCUSSION part of this module is for your
independent reading. Make sure to read and understand the provided notes and feel free to use books or online
references provided therein if you can access online. Prepare your inquiries and questions regarding the topics in
our scheduled time in Google Classroom. Also, you can reach me out for your clarifications through my email or
you can reach me out via messenger just in case we cannot meet in person.
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DISCUSSION
ZITA (ARTURO ROTOR)
TURONG brought him from Pauambang in his small sailboat, for the coastwise steamer did not stop at any
little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms. It was almost midday; they had been standing in that white glare
where the tiniest pebble and fluted conch had become points of light, piercing-bright–the municipal president, the
parish priest, Don Eliodoro who owned almost all the coconuts, the herb doctor, the village character. Their mild
surprise over when he spoke in their native dialect, they looked at him more closely and his easy manner did not
deceive them. His head was uncovered and he had a way of bringing the back of his hand to his brow or mouth;
they read behind that too, it was not a gesture of protection. “An exile has come to Anayat… and he is so young, so
young.” So young and lonely and sufficient unto himself. There was no mistaking the stamp of a strong decision on
that brow, the brow of those who have to be cold and haughty, those shoulders stooped slightly, less from the
burden that they bore than from a carefully cultivated air of unconcern; no common school-teacher could dress so
carelessly and not appear shoddy.

They had prepared a room for him in Don Eliodoro’s house so that he would not have to walk far to school
every morning, but he gave nothing more than a glance at the big stone building with its Spanish azotea, its arched
doorways, its flagged courtyard. He chose instead Turong’s home, a shaky hut near the sea. Was the sea rough and
dangerous at times? He did not mind it. Was the place far from the church and the schoolhouse? The walk would
do him good. Would he not feel lonely with nobody but an illiterate fisherman for a companion? He was used to
living alone. And they let him do as he wanted, for the old men knew that it was not so much the nearness of the
sea that he desired as its silence so that he might tell it secrets he could not tell anyone else.

They thought of nobody but him; they talked about him in the barber shop, in the cockpit, in the sari-sari
store, the way he walked, the way he looked at you, his unruly hair. They dressed him in purple and linen, in myth
and mystery, put him astride a black stallion, at the wheel of a blue automobile. Mr. Reteche? Mr. Reteche! The
name suggested the fantasy and the glitter of a place and people they never would see; he was the scion of a
powerful family, a poet and artist, a prince.

That night, Don Eliodoro had the story from his daughter of his first day in the classroom; she perched
wide-eyed, low-voiced, short of breath on 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 fist 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,
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‘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, 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
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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.
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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.
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She’d never forget that look on his face when she came out. It was not surprise, joy, admiration. It was as
if he saw somebody there whom he was expecting, for whom he had waited, prayed.
“Zita!” It was a cry of recognition.

She blushed even under her rouge when he took her in his arms and taught her to step this way, glide so,
turn about; she looked half questioningly at her father for disapproval, but she saw that there was nothing there
but admiration too. Mr. Reteche seemed so serious and so intent that she should learn quickly; but he did not
deceive her, for once she happened to lean close and she felt how wildly his heart was beating. It frightened her
and she drew away, but when she saw how unconcerned he seemed, as if he did not even know that she was in his
arms, she smiled knowingly and drew close again. Dreamily she closed her eyes and dimly wondered if his were
shut too, whether he was thinking the same thoughts, breathing the same prayer.

Turong came up and after his respectful “Good evening” he handed an envelope to the school teacher. It
was large and blue and had a gold design in one comer; the handwriting was broad, angular, sweeping.
“Thank you, Turong.” His voice was drawling, heavy, the voice of one who has just awakened. With one movement
he tore the unopened envelope slowly, unconsciously, it seemed to her, to pieces.
“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.
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He did not sleep that night, she knew he did not, she told herself fiercely. And it was not only his
preparations that kept him awake, she knew it, she knew it. With the first flicker of light she ran to her mirror. She
must not show her feeling, it was not in good form, she must manage somehow. If her lips quivered, her eyes must
smile, if in her eyes there were tears… She heard her father go out, but she did not go; although she knew his
purpose, she had more important things to do. Little boys came up to the house and she wiped away their tears
and told them that he was coming back, coming back, soon, soon.

The minutes flew, she was almost done now; her lips were red and her eyebrows penciled; the crimson
shawl thrown over her shoulders just right. Everything must be like that day he had first seen her in a Spanish
dress. Still he did not come, he must be bidding farewell now to Father Cesareo; now he was in Doña Ramona’s
house; now he was shaking the barber’s hand. He would soon be through and come to her house. She glanced at
the mirror and decided that her lips were not red enough; she put on more color. The rose in her hair had too long
a stem; she tried to trim it with her fingers and a thorn dug deeply into her flesh.

Who knows? Perhaps they would soon meet again in the city; she wondered if she could not wheedle her
father into going earlier. But she must know now what were the words he had wanted to whisper that night under
the dama de noche, what he had wanted to say that day he held her in his arms; other things, questions whose
answers she knew. She smiled. How well she knew them!

The big house was silent as death; the little village seemed deserted, everybody had gone to the seashore.
Again she looked at the mirror. She was too pale, she must put on more rouge. She tried to keep from counting the
minutes, the seconds, from getting up and pacing. But she was getting chilly and she must do it to keep warm.
The steps creaked. She bit her lips to stifle a wild cry there. The door opened.
“Turong!”
“Mr. Reteche bade me give you this. He said you would understand.”

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.

A NIGHT IN THE HILLS (PAZ MARQUEZ BENITEZ)

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 sari-sari 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
 8

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 ear-rings 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.

“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 he 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?”
 9

“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 he 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 foothills 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?”
 10

“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 out-doors 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
day-light. 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 centuries 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 out-
doors 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
 11

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 ministerer 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.
 12

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 were 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 day-light 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 up stairs, 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.
 13

THE VIRGIN (KERIMA POLOTAN TUVERA)

He went to where Miss Mijares sat, a tall, big man, walking with an economy of movement, graceful and light, a
man who knew his body and used it well. He sat in the low chair worn decrepit by countless other interviewers and
laid all ten fingerprints carefully on the edge of her desk. She pushed a sheet towards him, rolling a pencil along
with it. While he read the question and wrote down his answers, she glanced at her watch and saw that it was ten.
"I shall be coming back quickly," she said, speaking distinctly in the dialect (you were never sure about these
people on their first visit, if they could speak English, or even write at all, the poor were always proud and to use
the dialect with them was an act of charity), "you will wait for me."

As she walked to the cafeteria, Miss Mijares thought how she could easily have said, please wait for me, or will you
wait for me? But years of working for the placement section had dulled the edges of her instinct for courtesy. She
spoke now peremtorily, with an abruptness she knew annoyed the people about her.

When she talked with the jobless across her desk, asking them the damning questions that completed their
humiliation, watching pale tongues run over dry lips, dirt crusted handkerchiefs flutter in trembling hands, she was
filled with an impatience she could not understand. Sign here, she had said thousands of times, pushing the
familiar form across, her finger held to a line, feeling the impatience grow at sight of the man or woman tracing a
wavering "X" or laying the impress of a thumb. Invariably, Miss Mijares would turn away to touch the delicate edge
of the handkerchief she wore on her breast.

Where she sat alone at one of the cafeteria tables, Miss Mijares did not look 34. She was slight, almost bony, but
she had learned early how to dress herself to achieve an illusion of hips and bosom. She liked poufs and shirrings
and little girlish pastel colors. On her bodice, astride or lengthwise, there sat an inevitable row of thick
camouflaging ruffles that made her look almost as though she had a bosom, if she bent her shoulders slightly and
inconspicuously drew her neckline open to puff some air into her bodice.

Her brow was smooth and clear and she was always pushing off it the hair she kept in tight curls at night. She had
thin cheeks, small and angular, falling down to what would have been a nondescript, receding chin, but Nature's
hand had erred and given her a jaw instead. When displeased, she had a lippy, almost sensual pout, surprising on
such a small face.

So while not exactly an ugly woman, she was no beauty. She teetered precariously on the border line to which
belonged countless others who you found, if they were not working at some job, in the kitchen of some married
sister's house shushing a brood of devilish little nephews.

And yet Miss Mijares did think of love. Secret, short-lived thoughts flitted through her mind in the jeepneys she
took to work when a man pressed down beside her and through her dress she felt the curve of his thigh; when she
held a baby in her arms, a married friend's baby or a relative's, holding in her hands the tiny, pulsing body, what
thoughts did she not think, her eyes straying against her will to the bedroom door and then to her friend's
laughing, talking face, to think: how did it look now, spread upon a pillow, unmasked of the little wayward
coquetries, how went the lines about the mouth and beneath the eyes: (did they close? did they open?) in the one
final, fatal coquetry of all? to finally, miserably bury her face in the baby's hair. And in the movies, to sink into a
seat as into an embrace, in the darkness with a hundred shadowy figures about her and high on the screen, a man
kissing a woman's mouth while her own fingers stole unconsciously to her unbruised lips.

When she was younger, there had been other things to do--- college to finish, a niece to put through school, a
mother to care for.

She had gone through all these with singular patience, for it had seemed to her that love stood behind her, biding
her time, a quiet hand upon her shoulder (I wait. Do not despair) so that if she wished she had but to turn from her
mother's bed to see the man and all her timid, pure dreams would burst into glory. But it had taken her parent
many years to die. Towards the end, it had become a thankless chore, kneading her mother's loose flesh, hour
 14

after hour, struggling to awaken the cold, sluggish blood in her drying body. In the end, she had died --- her
toothless, thin-haired, flabby-fleshed mother --- and Miss Mijares had pushed against the bed in grief and also in
gratitude. But neither love nor glory stood behind her, only the empty shadows, and nine years gone, nine years. In
the room for her unburied dead, she had held up her hands to the light, noting the thick, durable fingers, thinking
in a mixture of shame and bitterness and guilt that they had never touched a man.

When she returned to the bleak replacement office, the man stood by a window, his back to her, half-bending over
something he held in his hands. "Here," she said, approaching, "have you signed this?"

"Yes," he replied, facing her.

In his hands, he held her paperweight, an old gift from long ago, a heavy wooden block on which stood, as though
poised for flight, an undistinguished, badly done bird. It had come apart recently. The screws beneath the block
had loosened so that lately it had stood upon her desk with one wing tilted unevenly, a miniature eagle or
swallow? felled by time before it could spread its wings. She had laughed and laughed that day it had fallen on her
desk, plop! "What happened? What happened?" they had asked her, beginning to laugh, and she had said, caught
between amusement and sharp despair, "Some one shot it," and she had laughed and laughed till faces turned and
eyebrows rose and she told herself, whoa, get a hold, a hold, a hold!

He had turned it and with a penknife tightened the screws and dusted it. In this man's hands, cupped like that, it
looked suddenly like a dove.

She took it away from him and put it down on her table. Then she picked up his paper and read it.

He was a high school graduate. He was also a carpenter.

He was not starved, like the rest. His clothes, though old, were pressed and she could see the cuffs of his shirt
buttoned and wrapped about big, strong wrists.

"I heard about this place," he said, "from a friend you got a job at the pier." Seated, he towered over her, "I'm not
starving yet," he said with a quick smile. "I still got some money from that last job, but my team broke up after that
and you got too many jobs if you're working alone. You know carpentering," he continued, "you can't finish a job
quickly enough if you got to do the planing and sawing and nailing all by your lone self. You got to be on a team."

Perhaps he was not meaning to be impolite? But for a jobseeker, Miss Mijares thought, he talked too much and
without call. He was bursting all over with an obtruding insolence that at once disarmed and annoyed her.

So then she drew a slip and wrote his name on it. "Since you are not starving yet," she said, speaking in English
now, wanting to put him in his place, "you will not mind working in our woodcraft section, three times a week at
two-fifty to four a day, depending on your skill and the foreman's discretion, for two or three months after which
there might be a call from outside we may hold for you."

"Thank you," he said.

He came on the odd days, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.

She was often down at the shanty that housed their bureau's woodcraft, talking with Ato, his foreman, going over
with him the list of old hands due for release. They hired their men on a rotation basis and three months was the
longest one could stay.

"The new one there, hey," Ato said once. "We're breaking him in proper." And he looked across several shirted
backs to where he stopped, planing what was to become the side of a bookcase.
 15

How much was he going to get? Miss Mijares asked Ato on Wednesday. "Three," the old man said, chewing away
on a cud. She looked at the list in her hands, quickly running a pencil down. "But he's filling a four-peso vacancy,"
she said. "Come now," surprised that she should wheedle so, "give him the extra peso." "Only a half," the stubborn
foreman shook his head, "three-fifty."

"Ato says I have you to thank," he said, stopping Miss Mijares along a pathway in the compound.

It was noon, that unhappy hour of the day when she was oldest, tiredest, when it seemed the sun put forth cruel
fingers to search out the signs of age on her thin, pinched face. The crow's feet showed unmistakably beneath her
eyes and she smiled widely to cover them up and aquinting a little, said, "Only a half-peso --- Ato would have given
it to you eventually."

"Yes, but you spoke for me," he said, his big body heaving before her. "Thank you, though I don't need it as badly
as the rest, for to look at me, you would knew I have no wife --- yet."

She looked at him sharply, feeling the malice in his voice. "I'd do it for any one," she said and turned away, angry
and also ashamed, as though he had found out suddenly that the ruffles on her dress rested on a flat chest.

The following week, something happened to her: she lost her way home.

Miss Mijares was quite sure she had boarded the right jeepneys but the driver, hoping to beat traffic, had detoured
down a side alley, and then seeing he was low on gas, he took still another shortcut to a filling station. After that,
he rode through alien country.

The houses were low and dark, the people shadowy, and even the driver, who earlier had been an amiable,
talkative fellow, now loomed like a sinister stranger over the wheel. Through it all, she sat tightly, feeling oddly
that she had dreamed of this, that some night not very long ago, she had taken a ride in her sleep and lost her way.
Again and again, in that dream, she had changed direction, losing her way each time, for something huge and
bewildering stood blocking the old, familiar road home.

But that evening, she was lost only for a while. The driver stopped at a corner that looked like a little known part of
the boulevard she passed each day and she alighted and stood on a street island, the passing headlights playing on
her, a tired, shaken woman, the ruffles on her skirt crumpled, the hemline of her skirt awry.

The new hand was absent for a week. Miss Mijares waited on that Tuesday he first failed to report for some word
from him sent to Ato and then to her. That was regulation. Briefly though they were held, the bureau jobs were
not ones to take chances with. When a man was absent and he sent no word, it upset the system. In the absence
of a definite notice, someone else who needed a job badly was kept away from it.

"I went to the province, ma'am," he said, on his return.

"You could have sent someone to tell us," she said.

"It was an emergency, ma'am," he said. "My son died."

"How so?"

A slow bitter anger began to form inside her. "But you said you were not married!"

"No, ma'am," he said gesturing.

"Are you married?" she asked loudly.

 16

"No, ma'am."

"But you have -- you had a son!" she said.

"I am not married to his mother," he said, grinning stupidly, and for the first time she noticed his two front teeth
were set widely apart. A flush had climbed to his face, suffusing it, and two large throbbing veins crawled along his
temples.

She looked away, sick all at once.

"You should told us everything," she said and she put forth hands to restrain her anger but it slipped away she
stood shaking despite herself.

"I did not think," he said.

"Your lives are our business here," she shouted.

It rained that afternoon in one of the city's fierce, unexpected thunder-storms. Without warning, it seemed to
shine outside Miss Mijares' window a gray, unhappy look.

It was past six when Miss Mijares, ventured outside the office. Night had come swiftly and from the dark sky the
thick, black, rainy curtain continued to fall. She stood on the curb, telling herself she must not lose her way tonight.
When she flagged a jeepney and got in, somebody jumped in after her. She looked up into the carpenter's faintly
smiling eyes. She nodded her head once in recognition and then turned away.

The cold tight fear of the old dream was upon her. Before she had time to think, the driver had swerved his vehicle
and swung into a side street. Perhaps it was a different alley this time. But it wound itself in the same tortuous
manner as before, now by the banks of overflowing esteros, again behind faintly familiar buildings. She bent her
tiny, distraught face, conjuring in her heart the lonely safety of the street island she had stood on for an hour that
night of her confusion.

"Only this far, folks," the driver spoke, stopping his vehicle. "Main street's a block straight ahead."

"But it's raining," someone protested.

"Sorry. But if I got into a traffic, I won't come out of it in a year. Sorry."

One by one the passengers got off, walking swiftly, disappearing in the night.

Miss Mijares stepped down to a sidewalk in front of a boarded store. The wind had begun again and she could hear
it whipping in the eaves above her head. "Ma'am," the man's voice sounded at her shoulders, "I am sorry if you
thought I lied."

She gestured, bestowing pardon.

Up and down the empty, rain-beaten street she looked. It was as though all at once everyone else had died and
they were alone in the world, in the dark.

In her secret heart, Miss Mijares' young dreams fluttered faintly to life, seeming monstrous in the rain, near this
man --- seeming monstrous but sweet overwhelming. I must get away, she thought wildly, but he had moved and
brushed against her, and where his touch had fallen, her flesh leaped, and she recalled how his hands had looked
 17

that first day, lain tenderly on the edge of her desk and about the wooden bird (that had looked like a moving,
shining dove) and she turned to him with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the dark she turned to him.

REFERENCES FOR THE TOPIC/S

[https://www.sushidog.com/bpss/stories/zita.htm]
[https://www.sushidog.com/bpss/stories/hills.htm]
https://docs.google.com/document/preview?hgd=1&id=1kfGtMdTxhq3P2vOJeYZ9l8vHuTw1m_-oT7lQ1CAgb6s#

TEST AND EVALUATION

TASK DIRECTIONS
1. Go over your module, read and understand so that you can answer the evaluation comprehensively.
2. You can search online for further readings through the links provided above but you are not allowed to
copy answers from Google.
3. Ask for clarification (that is, ask questions) if needed.
4. Please practice independent reading and independent learning in this new normal set up.
5. Most importantly, STAY SAFE always!

ANSWER THESE!
ZITA (ARTURO ROTOR)
Direction: On a sheet of yellow paper, copy the following questions and answer with honesty.
1. Analyze the characters of Zita and Mr Reteche in the story. How do you understand their personalities?
2. It is implicitly stated in the story that Mr. Reteche is troubled by Zita’s presence in his class. Why do you
think so? What makes Mr. Reteche troubled of Zita’s presence?
3. Give the symbolisms of the following in the story:
a) Turong’s Home
b) Zita
c) Mr. Reteche
d) Blue envelopes/Letters
4. Describe the love that Mr. Reteche feels to Zita and the love that Zita feels towards Mr. Reteche.
5. What makes Mr. Reteche bothered and troubled in the whole story? What have you noticed in the
character of Zita as a student in relation to what Mr. Reteche feels?
6. What is the over-all theme of the story?

A NIGHT IN THE HILLS (PAZ MARQUEZ BENITEZ)

Direction: On a sheet of yellow paper, copy the following questions and answer with honesty.
1. Using the following structure of a plot, analyze and give the plot of the story A Night in the Hills.
a) Introduction
b) Rising Action
c) Climax
d) Falling Action
e) Denouement
2. Briefly discuss the over-all theme of the story.

THE VIRGIN (KERIMA POLOTAN TUVERA)

Direction: On a sheet of yellow paper, copy the following questions and answer with honesty.
 18

1. Describe the characteristics of Miss Mijares in the story? What kind of woman she is?
2. Describe the love that Miss Mijares had in her family.
3. How does her sacrifices to her family affect her life as a woman?
4. Would you call this story a love story? Why or why not? Defend your answer.
5. What does the title symbolize?

DIRECTIONS FOR SUBMISSION OF TASK AND EVALUATION

[You can pass your evaluation task through online or in person. If you prefer online, kindly send it to my Hercor
domain, messenger, or you can submit it in Google Classroom. If you prefer in person, you can drop it in my drop
box at the gate of Riverside Campus. Just choose the most accessible way for you to pass your task and
assignment.]

DIRECTIONS TO SUBMIT (IF SUBMISSION IS THROUGH ONLINE)

[INSTRUCTIONS HERE WOULD VARY DEPENDING ON THE PLATFORM USED, FOR EXAMPLE GOOGLE
CLASSROOM , MESSENGER , GMAIL ]
1. On the right hand Menu, you will see a SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT button with a white plus sign.
2. Click on the SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT button. Then click BROWSE to look for your file on your computer.
3. When done, click the SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT button.
4. If you submit through messenger or Gmail, have it TYPEWRITTEN in MS Word Format or Google Docs.

DIRECTIONS TO SUBMIT (IF SUBMISSION IS THROUGH FACE-TO-FACE)

[Instructions here would vary depending on the instructor]
1. Bring your completed assignment in school (Riverside Campus) on or before the scheduled submission of
tasks and assignments until 5PM only.
2. Drop your completed assignment at the box placed in front of Education Department Office.
3. Make sure to label your completed assignment with your name, course, year and section, and week
number based on your module.

GRADING
[Scoring Rubrics for Task and Evaluation]

SCALE DESCRIPTION
5 Points Facts are consistently detailed/precise and very relevant. Uses correct spelling and grammar
effectively almost all of the time. Addresses the question completely.
4 Points Most facts are detailed/precise and relevant. Uses spelling and grammar with considerable
accuracy and effectiveness. Addresses the question, but left out few details.
3 Points Lacks few substantial details and examples to support ideas. Spelling and grammar require
moderate editing. Addresses the question, but provided few details.
2-1 Point/s More specific details and examples are needed to support opinions. Spelling and grammar require
considerate editing. Addresses the question, but in very few details.

END of WEEK 6 Learning Module