Republic of the Philippines

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Bayambang Campus
College of Teacher Education
Languages Department
Bayambang, Pangasinan

EL 111
SURVEY ON PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
BSE – EL II-1 COMPILATION

Presented to Jessica Ailen Pascua

THE POST-WAR PERIOD (1946-2000)

 THE VISITATION OF THE GODS
by Gild Cordero-Fernando

The letter announcing the visitation (a yearly descent upon the school by
the superintendent, the district supervisors and the division supervisors for "purposes
of inspection and evaluation")had been delivered in the morning by a sleepy janitor
to the principal. The party was, the attached circular revealed a hurried glance, now
at Pagkabuhay, would be in Mapili by lunchtime, and barring typhoons, floods,
volcanic eruptions and other acts of God, would be upon Pugad Lawin by afternoon.

Consequently, after the first period, all the morning classes were dismissed.
The Home Economics building, where the fourteen visiting school officials were to
be housed, became the hub of a general cleaning. Long-handled brooms ravished the
homes of peaceful spiders from cross beams and transoms, the capiz of the windows
were scrubbed to an eggshell whiteness, and the floors became mirrors after
assiduous bouts with husk and candlewax. Open wood boxes of Coronas largas were
scattered within convenient reach of the carved sofa, the Vienna chairs and the stag-
horn hat rack. The sink, too, had been repaired and the spent bulbs replaced; a block
ofice with patches of sawdust rested in the hollow of the small unpainted icebox.
There was a brief discussion on whether the French soap poster behind the kitchen
door was to go or stay: it depicted a trio of languorous nymphs in various stages of
deshabille reclining upon a scroll bearing the legend Parfumerie et Savonerie but the
woodworking instructor remembered that it had been put there to cover a rotting
jagged hole - and the nymphs had stayed.

The base of the flagpole, too, had been cemented and the old gate given a
whitewash. The bare grounds were, within the remarkable space of two hours,
transformed into a riotous bougainvillea garden. Potted blooms were still coming in
through the gate by wheelbarrow and bicycle. Buried deep in the secret earth, what
supervisor could tell that such gorgeous specimens were potted, or that they had
merely been borrowed from the neighboring houses for the visitation? Every school
in the province had its special point of pride - a bed of giant squashes, an enclosure
or white king pigeons, a washroom constructed by the PTA. Yearly, Pugad Lawin
High School had made capital of its topography: rooted on the firm ledge of a hill,
the schoolhouse was accessible by a series of stone steps carved on the hard face of
the rocks; its west windows looked out on the misty grandeur of a mountain chain
shaped like a sleeping woman. Marvelous, but the supervisors were expecting
something tangible, and so this year there was the bougainvillea.

The teaching staff and the student body had been divided into four working
groups. The first group, composed of Mrs. Divinagracia, the harassed Home
Economics instructor, and some of theless attractive lady teachers, were banished to
the kitchen to prepare the menu: it consisted of a14-lb. suckling pig, macaroni soup,
embutido, chicken salad, baked lapu-lapu, morcon, leche flan and ice cream, the total
cost of which had already been deducted from the teachers' pay envelopes. Far be it
to be said that Pugad Lawin was lacking in generosity, charm or good tango dancers!
Visitation was, after all, 99% impression - and Mr. Olbes, the principal, had
promised to remember the teachers' cooperation in that regard in the efficiency
reports.

The teachers of Group Two had been assigned to procure the beddings and
the dishes to be used for the supper. In true bureaucratic fashion they had relegated
the assignment to their students, who in turn had denuded their neighbors' homes of
cots, pillows, and sleeping mats. The only bed properly belonging to the Home
Economics Building was a four-poster with a canopy and the superintendent was to
be given the honor of slumbering upon it. Hence it was endowed with the grandest
of the sleeping mats, two sizes large, but interwoven with a detailed map of the
archipelago. Nestling against the headboard was a quartet of the principal's wife's
heart-shaped pillows - two hard ones and two soft ones - Group Two being uncertain
of the sleeping preferences of division heads.

"Structuring the Rooms" was the responsibility of the third group. It

consisted in the construction (hurriedly) of graphs, charts, and other visual aids.
There was a scurrying to complete unfinished lesson plans and correct neglected
theme books; precipitate trips from bookstand to broom closet in a last desperate
attempt to keep out of sight the dirty spelling booklets of a preceding
generation, unfinished projects and assorted rags - the key later conveniently
"lost" among the folds of Mrs. Olbes' (the principal's wife) balloon skirt.

All year round the classroom walls had been unperturbably blank. Now they
were, like the grounds, miraculously abloom - with cartolina illustrations of Parsing,
Amitosis Cell Division and the Evolution of the Filipina Dress - thanks to the
Group Two leader, Mr. Buenaflor (Industrial Arts) who, forsaken, sat hunched
over a rainfall graph. The distaff side of Group Two were either practicing tango
steps or clustered around a vacationing teacher who had taken advantage of her paid
maternity leave to make a mysterious trip to Hongkong and had now returned with
a provocative array of goods for sale.

The rowdiest freshman boys composed the fourth and discriminated group.
Under the stewardship of Miss Noel (English), they had, for the past two days been
"Landscaping the Premises," as assignment which, true to its appellation, consisted
in the removal of all unsightly objects from the landscape. That the dirty
assignment had not fallen on the hefty Mr. de Dios (Physics) or the crafty Mr.
Baz (National Language), both of whom were now hanging curtains, did not surprise
Miss Noel. She had long been at odds with the principal, or rather, the principal's
wife - ever since the plump Mrs. Olbes had come to school in a fashionable sack
dress and caught on Miss Noel's mouth a half-effaced smile.

"We are such a fashionable group," Miss Noel had joked once at a
faculty meeting. "If only our reading could also be in fashion!" -- which statement
obtained for her the ire of the only two teachers left talking to her. That Miss Noel
spent her vacations taking a summer course for teachers in Manila made matters
even worse - for Mr. Olbes believed that the English teacher attended these courses
for the sole purpose of showing them up. And Miss Noel's latest wrinkle, the
Integration Method, gave Mr. Olbes a pain where he sat.

Miss Noel, on the other hand, thought utterly unbecoming and disgusting
the manner in which the principal's wife praised a teacher's new purse of shawl.
("It's so pretty, where can I get one exactly like it?" - a heavy-handed and
graceless hint) or the way she had of announcing, well in advance, birthdays
and baptisms in her family (in other words, "Prepare!"). The lady teachers were,
moreover, for lack of household help, "invited" to the principal's house to make a
special salad, stuff a chicken or clean the silverware. But this certainly was much
less than expected of the vocational staff - the Woodworking instructor who
was detailed to do all the painting and repair work on the principal's house, the
Poultry instructor whose stock of leghorns was depleted after every party of the
Olbeses, and the Automotive instructor who was forever being detailed behind the
wheel of the principal's jeep - and Miss Noel had come to take it in stride as
one of the hazards of the profession.

But today, accidentally meeting in the lavatory, a distressed Mrs. Olbes had
appealed to Miss Noel for help with her placket zipper, after which she brought out
a bottle of lotion and proceeded to douse the English teacher gratefully with it. Fresh
from the trash pits, Miss Noel, with supreme effort, resisted from making an
untoward observation - and friendship was restored on the amicable note of a stuck
zipper.

At 1:30, the superintendent's car and the weapons carrier containing the
supervisors drove through the town arch of Pugad Lawin. A runner, posted at the
town gate since morning, came panting down the road but was outdistanced by the
vehicles. The principal still in undershirt and drawers, shaving his jowls by the
window, first sighted the approaching party. Instantly, the room was in a hustle.
Grimy socks, Form 137's and a half bottle of beer found their way into Mr. Olbes'
desk drawer. A sophomore breezed down the corridor holding aloft a newly-pressed
barong on a wire hanger. Behind the closed door, Mrs. Olbes wriggled determinedly
into her corset.

The welcoming committee was waiting on the stone steps when the
visitors alighted. It being Flag Day, the male instructors were attired in barong, the
women in red, white or blue dresses in obedience to the principal's circular. The
Social Studies teacher, hurrying down the steps to present the sampaguita
garlands, tripped upon an unexpected pot of borrowed bougainvillea. Peeping
from an upstairs window, the kitchen group noted that there were only twelve
arrivals. Later it was brought out that the National Language Supervisor had gotten
a severe stomach cramp and had to be left at the Health Center; that Miss Santos
(PE) and Mr. del Rosario (Military Tactics) had eloped at dawn.
 Four pairs of hands fought for the singular honor of wrenching open
the car door, and Mr. Alava emerged into the sunlight. He was brown as a
sampaloc seed. Mr. Alava gazed with satisfaction upon the patriotic faculty and
belched his approval in cigar smoke upon the landscape. The principal, rivaling
a total eclipse, strode towards Mr. Alava minus a cuff link. "Compañero!"
boomed the superintendent with outstretched arms.

"Compañero!" echoed Mr. Olbes. They embraced darkly.

There was a great to-do in the weapons carrier. The academic supervisor's
pabaon of live crabs from Mapili had gotten entangled with the kalamay in the
Home Economics supervisor's basket. The district supervisor had mislaid his left
shoe among the squawking chickens and someone had stepped on the puto seco.
There were overnight bags and reed baskets to unload, bundles of perishable and
unperishable going-away gifts. (The Home Economics staff's dilemma: sans ice box,
how to preserve all the food till the next morning). A safari of Pugad Lawin
instructors lent their shoulders gallantly to the occasion.

Vainly, Miss Noel searched in the crowd for the old Language Arts
supervisor. All the years she had been in Pugad Lawin, Mr. Ampil had come: in him
there was no sickening bureaucracy, none of the self-importance and pettiness that
often characterized the small public official . He was dedicated to the service of
education, had grown old in it. He was about the finest man Miss Noel had ever
known.

How often had the temporary teachers had to court the favor of their
supervisors with lavish gifts of sweets, de hilo, portfolios and what-not, hoping
that they would be given a favorable recommendation! A permanent position
for the highest bidder. But Miss Noel herself had never experienced this
rigmarole -- she had passed her exams and had been recommended to the
first vacancy by Mr. Ampil without having uttered a word of flattery or given a
single gift. It was ironic that even in education, you found the highest and the
meanest forms of men.
 Through the crowd came a tall unfamiliar figure in a loose coat, a triad of
pens leaking in his pocket. Under the brave nose, the chin had receded like a gray
hermit crab upon the coming of a great wave. "Miss Noel, I presume?" said the
stranger.

The English teacher nodded. "I am the new English supervisor - Sawit
is the name." The tall man shook her hand warmly.

"Did you have a good trip, Sir?"

Mr. Sawit made a face. "Terrible!"
Miss Noel laughed. "Shall I show you to your quarters? You must
be tired."

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Sawit. "I'd like to freshen up. And do see
that someone takes care of my orchids, or my wife will skin me alive."

The new English supervisor gathered his portfolios and Miss Noel
picked up the heavy load of orchids. Silently, they walked down the corridor of
the Home Economics building, hunter and laden Indian guide.

"I trust nothing's the matter with Mr. Ampil, Sir?"

“Then you haven't heard? The old fool broke a collar bone. He's
dead."
"Oh."

"You see, he insisted on doing all the duties expected of him - he'd be ahead
of us in the school we were visiting if he felt we were dallying on the road. He'd
go by horseback, or carabao sled to the distant ones where the road was
inaccessible by bus - and at his age! Then, on our visitation to barrio Tungkod - you
know that place, don't you?"

Miss Noel nodded.

"On the way to the godforsaken island, that muddy hellhole, he slipped on
the banca - and well, that's it."
"How terrible."
 "Funny thing is - they had to pass the hat around to buy him a coffin. It
turned out the fellow was as poor as a churchmouse. You'd think, why this old
fool had been thirty-three years in the service. Never a day absent. Never a day
late. Never told a lie. You'd think at least he'd get a decent burial - but he hadn't
reached 65 and wasn't going to get a cent he wasn't working for. Well, anyway, that's
a thorn off your side."

Miss Noel wrinkled her brow, puzzled.

"I thought all teachers hated strict supervisors." Mr. Sawit elucidated.
"Didn't you all quake for your life when Mr. Ampil was there waiting at the door of
the classroom even before you opened it with your key?"

"Feared him, yes," said Miss Noel. "But also respected and admired
him for what he stood for."

Mr. Sawit shook his head smiling. "So that's how the wind blows," he said,
scratching a speck of dust off his earlobe.

Miss Noel deposited the supervisor's orchids in the corridor. They

had reached the reconverted classroom that Mr. Sawit was to occupy with two
others.

"You must be kind to us poor supervisors," said Mr. Sawit as Miss Noel
took a cake of soap and a towel from the press. "The things we go through!"
Meticulously, Mr. Sawit peeled back his shirt sleeves to expose his pale
hairless wrists. "At Pagkabuhay, Miss What's-her-name, the grammar teacher,
held a demonstration class under the mango trees. Quite impressive, and
modern; but the class had been so well rehearsed that they were reciting like
machine guns. I think it's some kind of a code they have, like if the student knows
the answer he is to raise his left hand, and if he doesn't he is to raise his right,
something to that effect." Mr. Sawit reached for the towel hanging on Miss Noel's
arm.
 "What I mean to say is, hell, what's the use of going through all that
palabas? As I always say," Mr. Sawit raised his arm and pumped it vigorously
in the air, "Let's get to the heart of what matters."
Miss Noel looked up with interest. "You mean get into the root of
the problem?"

"Hell no!" the English supervisor said, "I mean the dance! I always believe
there's no school problem that a good round of tango will not solve!

Mr. Sawit groped blindly for the towel to wipe his dripping face
and came up to find Miss Noel smiling.

"Come, girl," he said lamely. "I was really only joking.

As soon as the bell rang, Miss Noel entered I-B followed by Mr. Sawit.
The students were nervous. You could see their hands twitching under the desks.
Once in a while they glanced apprehensively behind to where Mr. Sawit sat
on a cane chair, straight as a bamboo. But as the class began, the nervousness
vanished and the boys launched into the recitation with aplomb. Confidently, Miss
Noel sailed through a sea of prepositions, using the Oral Approach Method:
"I live in a barrio."
"I live in a town."
"I live in Pugad Lawin."
"I live on a street."
"I live on Calle Real…"

Mr. Sawit scribbled busily on his pad.

Triumphantly, Miss Noel ended the period with a trip to the back of the
building where the students had constructed a home-made printing press and
were putting out their first school paper.

The inspection of the rest of the building took exactly half an hour. It was
characterized by a steering away from the less presentable parts of the school
(except for the Industrial Arts supervisor who, unwatched, had come upon and
stood gaping at the French soap poster). The twenty-three strains of bougainvillea
received such a chorus of praise and requests for cutting that the poor teachers
were nonplussed on how to meet them without endangering life and limb from their
rightful owners. The Academic supervisor commented upon the surprisingly fresh
appearance of the Amitosis chart and this was of course followed by a ripple of
nervous laughter. Mr. Sawit inquired softly of Miss Noel what the town's cottage
industry was, upon instructions of his uncle, the supervisor.

"Buntal hats," said Miss Noel.

The tour ended upon the sound of the dinner bell and at 7 o'clock the
guests sat down to supper. The table, lorded over by a stuffed Bontoc eagle, was
indeed an impressive sight. The flowered soup plates borrowed from Mrs. Valenton
vied with Mrs. De los Santos' bone china. Mrs. Alejandro's willoware server rivalled
but could not quite outshine the soup tureens of Mrs. Cruz. Pink paper
napkins blossomed grandly in a water glass.

The superintendent took the place of honor at the head of the table with
Mr. Olbes at his right. And the feast began. Everyone partook heavily of the
elaborate dishes; there were second helpings and many requests for toothpicks.
On either side of Mr. Alava, during the course of the meal, stood Miss Rosales and
Mrs. Olbes, the former fanning him, the latter boning the lapu-lapu on his plate. The
rest of the Pugad Lawin teachers, previously fed on hopia and coke, acted as
waitresses. Never was a beer glass empty, never a napkin out of reach, and the
supervisors, with murmured apologies, belched approvingly. Towards the end
of the meal, Mr. Alava inquired casually of the principal where he could
purchase some buntal hats. Elated, the latter replied that it was the cottage industry
right here in Pugad Lawin. They were, however, the principal said, not for sale to
colleagues. The Superintendent shook his head and said he insisted on paying, and
brought out his wallet, upon which the principal was so offended he would not
continue eating. At last the superintendent said, all right, compañero, give me one or
two hats, but the principal shook his head and ordered his alarmed teachers to round
up fifty; and the ice cream was served.
 Close upon the wings of the dinner tripped the Social Hour. The hosts and
the guests repaired to the sala where a rondalla of high school boys were playing
an animated rendition of "Merry Widow" behind the hat rack. There was a
concerted reaching for open cigar boxes and presently the room was clouded with
acrid black smoke. Mr. Olbes took Miss Noel firmly by the elbow and steered
her towards Mr. Alava who, deep in a cigar, sat wide-legged on the carved sofa.
"Mr. Superintendent," said the principal. "This is Miss Noel, our English teacher.
She would be greatly honored if you open the dance with her."

"Compañero," twinkled the superintendent. "I did not know Pugad

Lawin grew such exquisite flowers."

Miss Noel smiled thinly. Mr. Alava's terpsichorean knowledge had

never advanced beyond a bumbling waltz. They rocked, gyrated, stumbled,
recovered, rolled back into the center, amid a wave of teasing and applause. To each
of the supervisors, in turn, the principal presented a pretty instructor, while the rest,
unattractive or painfully shy, and therefore unfit offering to the gods, were left to
fend for themselves. The first number was followed by others in three-quarter time
and Miss Noel danced most of them with Mr. Sawit.

At ten o'clock, the district supervisor suggested that they all drive to the
next town where the fiesta was being celebrated with a big dance in the plaza. All
the prettier lady teachers were drafted and the automotive instructor was ordered
behind the wheel of the weapons carrier. Miss Noel remained behind together
with Mrs. Divinagracia and the Home Economics staff, pleading a headache.
Graciously, Mr. Sawit also remained behind.

As Miss Noel repaired to the kitchen, Mr. Sawit followed her. "The
principal tells me you are quite headstrong, Miss Noel," he said. "But then I
don't put much stock by what principals say."

Miss Noel emptied the ashtrays in the trash can. "If he meant why I
refused to dance with Mr. Lucban…"
 "No, just things in general," said Mr. Sawit. "The visitation, for instance.
What do you think of it?"

Miss Noel looked into Mr. Sawit's eyes steadily. "Do you want my
frank opinion, Sir?"
"Yes, of course."
"Well, I think it's all a farce."
"That's what I've heard - what makes you think that?"

"Isn't it obvious? You announce a whole month ahead that you're visiting.
We clean the schoolhouse, tuck the trash in the drawers, bring out our best manners.
As you said before, we rehearse our classes. Then we roll out the red carpet - and
you believe you observe us in our everyday surrounding, in our everyday
comportment?"

"Oh, we know that."

"That's what I mean - we know that you know. And you know that
we know that you know."

Mr. Sawit gave out an embarrassed laugh. "Come now, isn't that
putting it a trifle strongly?

"No," replied Miss Noel. "In fact, I overheard one of your own companions
say just a while ago that if your lechon were crisper than that of the preceding school,
if our pabaon were more lavish, we would get a higher efficiency rating."

"Of course he was merely joking. I see what Mr. Olbes meant about
your being stubborn."

"And what about one supervisor, an acquaintance of yours, I know, who used
to come just before the town fiesta and assign us the following items: 6 chickens,
150 eggs, 2 goats, 12 leche flans. I know the list by heart - I was assigned the
checker."

"There are a few miserable exceptions…"

 "What about the sweepstakes agent supervisor who makes a ticket of the
teacher's clearance for the withdrawal of his pay? How do you explain him?"
Mr. Sawit shook his head as if to clear it.

"Sir, during the five years that I've taught, I've done my best to live up
to my ideals. Yet I please nobody. It's the same old narrow conformism and favor-
currying. What matters is not how well one teaches but how well one has learned the
art of pleasing the powers-that-be and it's the same all the way up."

Mr. Sawit threw his cigar out of the window in an arc. "So you want to
change the world. I've been in the service a long time, Miss Noel. Seventeen years.
This bald spot on my head caused mostly by new teachers like you who want to
set the world on fire. In my younger days I wouldn't hesitate to recommend
you for expulsion for your rash opinions. But I've grown old and mellow - I
recognize spunk and am willing to give it credit. But spunk is only hard-headedness
when not directed towards the proper channels. But you're young enough and you'll
learn, the hard way, singed here and there - but you'll learn."

"How are you so sure?" asked Miss Noel narrowly.

"They all do. There are thousands of teachers. They're mostly disillusioned
but they go on teaching - it's the only place for a woman to go."

"There will be a reclassification next month," continued Mr. Sawit. "Mr.

Olbes is out to get you - he can, too, on grounds of insubordination, you know that.
But I'm willing to stick my neck out for you if you stop being such an idealistic fool
and henceforth express no more personal opinions. Let sleeping dogs lie, Miss Noel.
I shall give you a good rating after this visitation because you remind me of my
younger sister, if for no other reason. Then after a year, when I find that you
learned to curb your tongue, I will recommend you for a post in Manila where your
talents will not be wasted. I am related to Mr. Alava, you know."

Miss Noel bit her lip in stunned silence. Is this what she had been
wasting her years on? She had worked, she had slaved - with a sting of tears she
remembered all the parties missed ("Can't wake up early tomorrow, Clem"),
alliances forgone ("Really, I haven't got the time, maybe some other year?") the
chances by-passed ("Why, she's become a spinster!") - then to come face to face
with what one has worked for - a boor like Mr. Sawit! How did one explain him
away? What syllogisms could one invent to rub him out of the public school system?
Below the window, Miss Noel heard a giggle as one of the Pugad Lawin teachers
was pursued by a mischievous supervisor in the playground.

"You see," the voice continued, "education is not so much a matter of

brains as getting along with one's fellowmen, else how could I have risen to my
present position?" Mr. Sawit laughed harshly. "All the fools I started out with are
still head-teachers in godforsaken barrios, and how can one be idealistic in a
mudhole? Goodnight, my dear." Mr. Sawit's hot trembling hand (the same mighty
hand that fathered the 8-A's that made or broke English teachers) found its way
swiftly around her waist, and hot on her forehead Miss Noel endured the
supreme insult of a wet, fatherly kiss.

Give up your teaching, she heard her aunt say again for the hundredth time,
and in a couple of months you might be the head. We need someone educated
because we plan to export.

Oh, to be able to lie in a hammock on the top of the hill and not have to worry
about the next lesson plan! To have time to meet people, to party, to write.
She remembered Clem coming into the house (after the first troubled
months of teaching) and persuading her to come to Manila because his boss
was in need of a secretary. Typing! Filing! Shorthand! She had spat the words
contemptuously back at him. I was given a head so I could think! Pride goeth… Miss
Noel bowed her head in silence. Could anyone in the big, lighted offices of the city
possibly find use for a stubborn, cranky, BSE major?

As Miss Noel impaled the coffee cups upon the spokes of the drainboard, she
heard the door open and the student named Leon come in for the case of beer
empties.

"Pandemonium over, Ma'am?" he asked. Miss Noel smile dimly. Dear

perceptive Leon. He wanted to become a lawyer. Pugad Lawin's first. What kind of
a piker was she to betray a dream like that? What would happen to him if she wasn't
there to teach him his p's and f's? Deep in the night and the silence outside flickered
an occasional gaslight in a hut on the mountain shaped like a sleeping woman. Was
Porfirio deep in a Physics book? (Oh, but he mustn't blow up any more pigshed.)
What was Juanita composing tonight? (An ode on starlight on the trunk of a banana
tree?) Leon walked swiftly under the window: in Miss Noel's eyes he had already
won a case. Why do I have to be such a darn missionary?

Unafraid, the boy Leon stepped into the night, the burden of bottles
light on his back.

After breakfast the next morning, the supervisors packed their belongings
and were soon ready. Mr. Buenaflor fetched a camera and they all posed on the
sunny steps for a souvenir photo: the superintendent with Mr. and Mrs. Olbes on
either side of him and the minor gods in descending order on the Home Economics
stairs. Miss Noel was late - but she ran to take her place with pride and
humility on the lowest rung of the school's hierarchy.
 CHILDREN OF THE CITY
by Amadis Ma. Guerrero

Children of the City by Amadis Ma.

Guerrero

The father of the boy Victor worked on the waterfront and got involved in a strike,
a long drawnout affair which had taken the following course: It began with charges
that the employees were not being given a just compensation, that part of their
earnings were being withheld from them, and that their right to form a union was
being disregarded. It escalated with the sudden dismissal, for unstated reasons, of
several workers, giving rise to fears that more layoffs would be carried out in the
near future. This led to organized defiance, and the setting up of picket lines.
Finally, one stifling summer evening, violence broke out on the piers of the city as
the strikers were receiving sandwiches and soft drinks from sympathetic outsiders.

Victor had been, and still was, too young to understand it all. But when they were

living in one of the shanties that stood in Intramuros, he would frequently overhear

snatches of conversation between his parents regarding his father’s job. Sobra na,

his father would say, we cannot take it anymore. Naglalagay sila, they are

depriving us of our wages, and they even have this canteen which charges us

whether we eat there or not.

Then his mother’s voice, shrill and excited, would cut in, urging him to swallow it

all, accept what little was given to him and stay away from the groups that wanted
to fight back. She spoke bitterly of the newly emerging unions – and that priest

with his cohorts and his student volunteers – who were trying to organize the

workers. Victor’s father defended these groups, saying were only protecting the

dockhands’ interests. You don’t know what it’s like out there, he would say, there

have been beatings, and all sorts of accidents. It’s a dreadful place really.
Once the boy interrupted them and wanted to know what the discussion was all about,
only to be met with a rebuke from his mother. But he was insistent, the heat of the

argument stirring a vague fear within him, and he asked what a cabo was. To distract

him, his father playfully laid hold of him and hoisted him over his shoulders (although

Victor was getting a bit heavy for this sort of thing). And thus they horsed about the

house, or what passed for it, to the tune of the boy’s delighted shrieks and the cold

stares of his mother.

Occasionally, whenever he would find the time, his father would take him out at

night for a stroll along the Boulevard, to feel the breeze and to walk gingerly on the

narrow embankment. The place at this hour wove its spell around him, a kind of

eerie enchantment, and he would gaze fascinated at the murky waters gently,

rhythmically swirling on the shore, and at the beckoning lights of Cavite, and thrill

to the mournful blast of a departing ship.

– Tatang, where is the ship going? –

– I don’t know, Victor. Maybe to the provinces. Maybe to another country, a

faraway land. –

– When will we be able to travel too? –

– I don’t know, when we have a little money, perhaps. –

The whistle of the ship, which seemed to be a big liner, sounded once more as it

steamed out of the harbor and headed in the direction of the South China Sea. Arm

in arm in the darkness punctuated only by a few insufficient lights, father and son

tried to make out the dim outline steadily moving away from them. Then the ship

faded into the shadows, and its whistle sounded no more.

Later they strolled on the promenade and made their way slowly to the Luneta, where

his father bought him some chicharon.

The park was dimly lit and ill-kept, and as they passed by the Rizal monument they

noticed a number of rough-looking men lurking about in its vicinity. Two women,

dressed gaudily and unaware of their presence, were approaching from another

direction. As they neared, the men unloosed a volley of whistles, yells and taunts.

Then stones were flung, triggering screams and curses from the two. Victor was

startled at hearing their voices, which, though high-pitched, sounded distinctly

masculine.

His father hurriedly led him away from the scene, and to his puzzled queries replied

that it was nothing, just a quarrel, an incident. As an afterthought, he observed that

the park had not always been like this, that once in the distant past it had been a clean

and picturesque place.

– Maybe it will become beautiful again in the future…

A week after this the dock strike materialized. It was called against a shipping firm

following the breakdown of negotiations. The picket dragged on, with the strikers

and their families subsisting on funds raised by student, labor and civic-spirited

elements. And the tide seemingly began to favor the strikers, for soon the case

attracted national attention.

Victor’s father would return home late at night from the marathon picket manned in

shifts, exhausted but excited, and brimming over with enthusiasm for the cause. His

mother made no comment, her protests having long subsided into a sullen silence.

Students and unionists drummed up public support for the workers, organizing

drives for them, detailing their plight in pamphlets and press interviews. They

reinforced the picket lines, held rallies to boost their morale and distributed food and

money. And the shipping management’s haughtiness turned to concern and then to

desperation…

ONE evening, four months after the strike began, the silence of the piers was broken

by the rumble of six-by-six trucks. There were three of them, and they were heading

straight for the picket lines. A shot rang out, reverberating through the night, then

another and a third.

Panic spread through the ranks of the strikers, and a few started to run away. Calls

by the activists to stand fast, however, steadied the majority, who stood rooted on

the spot following the initial wave of fear and shock. – Easy lang, easy lang, they

won’t dare crash through. – But the huge vehicles advanced inexorably, and as they

neared, a kind of apocalyptic fit seized three picketers who, propelled by the months

and years of exploitation, charged right into the onrushing trucks.

Amid screams and yells, the barricades were rammed. And the scores of strikers fell

upon the 6-by-6s loaded with goons in a fury, uncaring now as to what happened to

them. They swarmed over the trucks, forced open the doors and fought back with

stones, placards and bare fists, as more guns sounded.

Then the harbor police moved in, and as suddenly as it began, the spasm of violence
ended. The moans of the injured mingled with the strident orders of the authorities

to replace the noise of combat. In addition to the three who had been ran over, two

other men had been shot to death. One of them was Victor’s father, and his picture

appeared on the front page of one newspaper. It showed him spreadeagled on the

ground, eyes staring vacantly, with a stain on his breast.

Later that evening, the news was relayed to Victor’s mother, and she fell into

hysterics. Her cries betrayed not only anguish but fury and frustration as well, and

learning of his father’s death and seeing and hearing his mother thus, Victor, eight-

year-old Victor, cowered in the shadows.

Neighbors took care of him that night, but in the morning he managed to slip out,

and he made his way to the Boulevard, once there walking about aimlessly. He heard

the call of newsboys going about their job, and unknown fears began to tug at him.

At a newsstand in the Ermita district his glance fell on the photo of his father, and

he stared at it long and hard. It was the first time he had paid such close attention to

a newspaper.

Victor’s father was laid to rest three days later at the crowded cemetery to the north.

His fellow workers had passed the hat around, and although the amount collected

was meager, contributions from the union organizers and their supporters had made

possible the fairly decent burial. His mother sobbed all throughout the ceremony,

and broke down noisily when the time came for a final look at her husband. The boy

stood at her side, subdued. As the coffin was being lowered, he felt like calling out

to his father, tatang, tatang, but the impulse died down, swept aside by the copious

tears of his mother. It was a bright, clear day. On the avenida extension, the early

morning traffic was forming and the sound of car horns intruded into the place where

the mourners were gathered.

Not long after his father’s death, Victor, a third-grader dropped out of school, and

plans were made to employ him as a newsboy with the help of an uncle who was a

newspaper agent. His mother, who had gotten into the habit of disappearing in the

afternoons and returning home early in the evening, pointed out that he was healthy
and active, though lacking somewhat in aggressiveness. Surely this could be easily

acquired once he was thrown out into the field?

One day she brought with her a man, a stranger with a fowl breath who swayed from

side to side, and introduced him to Victor as your new tatang. The boy did not

respond to him, thinking some joke he could not comprehend was being played on

him. And in the days that followed he avoided as much as possible all contact with

the interloper. This man, unkempt in appearance, seemed to be everything his father

wasn’t. For one thing he was always cursing (his father had done so only when angry,

and kept this at a minimum whenever Victor was around.) And in his friendlier

moments he would beckon to the boy’ and say -want this, sioktong? – in such a

falsetto tone that Victor coldly looked away. At night he heard strange sounds behind

the partition, accompanied by his mother’s giggling and the man’s coarse laughter,

and he felt like taking a peek, but some instinct held him back. He was disturbed no

end.

One morning a week after the man moved in. Victor woke up to find him gone, along

with his mother. In their stead stood his agent uncle, Tio Pedring, who said his

mother had gone on a long vacation, and amid assurances that she would come back

soon, informed the boy that he was to start to work immediately as a courier for the

newspaper he was connected with. It’s easy, Tio Pedring said, and forthwith briefed

him on his duties.

He was to report at the plant every night at 9 o’clock, wait for the first edition, which

came out at 11 p.m., and observe the routine. He was to sleep right outside the

circulation offices, and then awaken before 4 a.m., for that was the time the city

edition was made available. A number of copies, perhaps 15 or 20, would then be

turned over to him, and it was up to him to distribute these in the Blumentritt area.

Tio Pedring, his mother’s older brother and a thin man with a nervous tic, gave him

the names and addresses of 10 regular customers, and said that it was up to him to

develop, his own contacts so as to dispose off the rest of the newspapers allotted.

When he was off-duty, Victor could stay in his uncle’s Blumentritt place, and for

every newspaper he sold he would get three centavos. No mention was made of

resuming the boy’s interrupted schooling.

THAT evening at the appointed hour he went over to the newspaper’s building

located in the downtown section, and was greeted by the sight of scores of ragged,

barefooted newsboys swarming before the dispatcher’s section. A few were

stretched out on the pavement, asleep on kartons that served as their bed, while

others were having their supper, bibingka and softdrinks, from the turo-turo that

catered to them. The majority just milled around, grouped together in tight bunches

playing their crude game of checkers, or simply loafing, awaiting the call to duty.

The noise of their conversation, loud and harsh and punctuated by words like

putangina, filled the newspaper’s building.

In reply to his hesitant queries, the guard directed him to the distributing center, a

stifling, enclosed place adjoining the printing presses. Victor entered, knowing that

the notice which said unauthorized persons keep out

Our work here is rush, rush, rush. You’ve got to be listo.

Victor nodded, then, dismissed, made his way back outside, where the chill of the

evening had replaced the heat of the plant. A mood of foreboding descended upon

him, like a pall. He was hungry, but had no money, and so contented himself with

watching the other newsboys. He wanted to mingle with them, but they didn’t seem

to be very friendly. A dilapidated ice cream pushcart stood at one end of the corner,

and to this the urchins went for their ice cream sandwiches, consisting of one or two

scoops tucked into hot dog and hamburger-sized bread. Beside it was a Magnolia

cart, patronized by outsiders.

One boy stood out from among the throng. The others called him Nacio, and like all

of them he wore a dirty T-shirt and faded short pants, and had galis sores on his legs,

but cheerfulness emanated from him and he seemed to enjoy a measure of popularity

among his companions. Upon noticing Victor watching from the side he detached

himself from a group and offered him a cigarette.

Surprised, Victor demurred, and said he did not know how to smoke. Nacio shrugged

his shoulders, as if to say hindi bale, then asked if Victor was new on the
job. Upon receiving a reply in the affirmative, he nodded in satisfaction and told the

other to learn from him, for he would teach him the tricks of the trade, such as how

to keep a sharp eye out for customers, how to swiftly board a bus or jeep and alight

from it while still in motion, and so on…

Nacio invited him to eat, but again Victor declined, saying he had no money.

– Hindi problema yan! – the irrepressible Nacio said, – Sige, I’ll pay for you. – He

turned to the turo-turo owner: Hoy, Aling Pacing! Pianono at Coke nga ho! Will you

give me a discount? – Aling Pacing only looked down coldly at the boy, and grunted

– no discount for you. No discount for any of you –

Nacio winked at Victor as he paid, took the rolls and drinks, and handed over to the

other his share. Victor wolfed down the pianono, although it didn’t taste too new,

and drank with deep satisfaction while his companion chattered on, regaling him

with his experiences as a carrier and his ability to skillfully dodge in and out of

traffic. He disclosed that once he had been sideswiped by a car, but escaped only

with a few scratches, and boasted: – I’m the fastest newsboy in Manila. – Victor

marveled at his luck in finding such a fine friend.

As the time for the release of the first edition neared, an air of expectation

materialized outside the plant. The newspaper’s trucks and vans stood in readiness.

The newsboys grew in number and began to form a dense mass. Their conversation
became louder, more excited, and their horseplay rougher. Shortly after 11 p.m. a

team of dispatchers emerged with the initial copies, the ink of the presses still warm

on them, and was greeted by yells of anticipation. A stampede followed, and Victor

noted that for every bundle turned over to a newsboy, one distributor jotted down on

a piece of paper the number allotted to him.

The clamor grew as the boys dashed out of the building and surged into the darkened

streets. They were like school children being let out for recess. The noise continued,

then subsided after a few minutes, with the last urchin scampering away. The

nighttime silence returned once more to the area, broken only by occasional shouts

of the men loading the main bulk of the provincial edition into the trucks, the toot of

passing motorist’s horn and the sound of laughter from drunkards in the sari-sari

store in front.

Victor settled himself on the pavement, and despite the hard ground he felt tired and

sleepy. He used his right arm as a pillow, and thought briefly about his father, his

mother and the man she had taken up with, Tio Pedring and the day’s events, before

sleep claimed him.

He awakened several hours later, jolted by the noise of the second wave of newsboys

gathering for the city edition. Gingerly he stretched his cramped arms and legs,

peered about him and shivered, for it had grown much colder. He kept an
eye out for Nacio, although he felt sure he would not come back anymore tonight.

He could recognize, though, some of the faces in the crowd.

The same procedure took place at 4 a.m., it was like a reel being retaken. The routine

was now familiar to Victor, but with a difference. This time he was a participant in

the activities, and he found himself caught up in the excitement. All weariness gone

from him, he sped away in the company of his colleagues, holding on tightly to his

ration of 15 copies. Exhilaration coursed through him, and he ran and ran, stopping

only when he reached the avenida. The others had scattered in different directions,

and the street stretched away endlessly, virtually devoid of traffic. Its stores had long

closed down for the night, and only a few neon signs glowed.

He began to walk slowly, sober now, his responsibilities heavy on him. His
destination was Blumentritt. As he crossed Azcarraga, a taxi slowed down, and its

passenger called out to him. Tremblingly he handed over a paper, and received 15

centavos in turn. His very first sale! His spirits soared anew… perhaps it wasn’t so

difficult after all to sell a newspaper. This impression was bolstered when in a matter

of minutes he made two more sales, to customers at a small, all-night restaurant.

It was still dark when he arrived at the district, and the first thing he heard was the

whistle of the train which passed through the place every evening. He reacted in the

same way he had to the foghorn blasts of the ships along the Boulevard.

He set about reconnoitering the area, to get the feel of it, and took out the list Tio

Pedring had given him. He recalled his uncle’s words:

– You’re lucky. Not all newcomers have mga suki when they begin, and they have

to return so many copies at first. Tambak sila. – The customers included a

dressmaker, a barber, a small pharmacist, and a beautician. And to their places Victor

eventually made his way, slipping the newspapers under doors, into mailboxes, and

the apertures of padlocked steel gates.

Soon it grew light, and more jeepneys began to ply their routes, as buses appeared,

bound for Santa Cruz and Grace Park. The signs of activity in the neighborhood

market increased while the small parish church near it remained closed, silent and

deserted. Young scavengers, worn out from poking all night among trash cans, slept

inside their pushcarts. Piles of garbage stood on several streets and alleyways.

Victor made no other sales that day, and he returned to the plant with three unsold

newspapers. He turned them over apologetically. The one in charge now shrugged,

then noted that he had not done badly for a first night’s work. He added that he

expected Victor to improve in the future and equal the other newsboys, who always
complained that their allotment was not enough. The dispatcher said: – Our

newspaper is sikat. By noon we are all sold out in the newsstands. –

On his second night on the job, Victor was set upon by a group of street boys his

age, who sprang up from out of the shadows and began to beat him up. He managed

to flee from the scene in terror, leaving behind all his newspapers. For this he was

roundly cursed by his uncle, who promised to take it out on his earnings for the next

few days.

He took to haunting his beat even during the daytime and became friends with the

little people, the vendors, the sellers of peanuts, kalamansi, coconuts and pigs, the

grocery employees, the market denizens, the modistas and shop owners, and even

some of’ the patrolmen. Through his constant presence in the area, he was able to

find additional regular customers, and no more did he have to return unsold copies.

At night he went about his tasks with renewed confidence, and when through he

would rest in front of the local bank. Gradually he lost his fear of thugs.

Though his work improved, his relations with the other newsboys didn’t. Nacio

remained his only friend, and whenever he was around the others let Victor alone.

He couldn’t make them out at all, with their rough games and harsh tongues, their

smoking and their constant baiting. At one time he was jolted awake from the

dreamless sleep by the concerted yells of the newsboys, who were hurling missiles,

with the drivers reacting by merely stepping on the gas, and the passengers
cowering in alarm. The guards whose job it was to break up these things did not

seem to be around. No one could give an explanation for the sudden outburst.

VICTOR was eventually allowed to sell both editions of the paper and his daily

quota was increased to 20. Soon he was making about three pesos every day,

sometimes more. His beat late at night was transferred to the Boulevard district,

where he peddled the provincial edition to night clubbers and cocktail loungers. In

the early hours of the morning he would distribute the city edition to his Blumentritt

customers. Tio Pedring expressed satisfaction with his development, and granted the

boy more decent accommodations and better food at his residence.

Victor settled down into the routine, which would be livened up sometime by big

events, like an earthquake. During such occasions the labor force would swell,

augmented by now inactive boys who had graduated to other fields of endeavor, like

pickpocketing and the watch-your-car business. In January the Press Club held its

annual party in honor of newsboys, and Victor and Nacio along with many others,

attended. There were balloons, soft drinks and cookies. Nacio kept stuffing these

into his pockets, to the great amusement of Victor, who was tempted to do the same,

but there didn’t seem to be enough around.

That was the last time the two spent together. Within a week Nacio met his death –
violently; he had been run over by a car while recklessly charging into the street

following the release of the first edition. The following afternoon, this sign stood at
the corner leading to the newspaper building: SLOW DOWN NEWSBOYS

COMING OUT.

Victor grieved for his friend, and from that time on he became even more taciturn

and withdrawn.

HE avoided the Boulevard by night, with its motionless ships, its necking couples,

jagged embankment and swaying trees, and stuck to the well-populated areas. The

bar district in the southern part of the city began to attract him, and fortified by his

sheaf of newspapers, which was like a badge of distinction for him, he would stare

expressionlessly at the painted girls posing before the doorways under the garish

neon signs, at the customers briefly eyeing them before going in, and at the

well-dressed bouncers.

On this particular evening the bars were filled with foreign sailors, for a military

exercise was to be held within a few days. Red-faced and grinning, the fair-

complexioned seamen made the rounds, boisterous, arm in arm sometimes, and

swaying from side to side (they reminded Victor of the man who had replaced his

father). Helmeted men, with MP arm-bands, stood in front of some of the cocktail

lounges.

Victor approached one of the dives and, getting a nod from the bouncer, who saw he

was a newsboy, made his way in. It was almost pitch-dark inside, and it took a
few minutes for his eyes to grow accustomed to the cavern-like atmosphere.

Hostesses and sailors were grouped around the small tables, drinking, talking and

laughing shrilly while a combo belted out pulsating music and a singer strained to

make herself heard above the din. Some couples were pawing each other.

He approached a group noisily drinking, and tugged at the sleeves of one sailor.

– You buy newspaper from me, sir. Sige na, Joe. –

The other peered at him in surprise, then guffawed loudly, and waved him away. He

said thickly – Beat it, Flip boy! –

Victor stood rooted on the spot. He didn’t understand the words, but the gesture was

unmistakable. Some hostesses started giggling nervously. He was about to turn away

in anger and humiliation when another seaman, blonde and clean-shaven, gently laid

a hand over him – Wait a minute, sonny. – Then he dipped into his pocket and handed

over something to Victor. – Here, take it, it’s yours. Have a grand time with it. –

Victor thanked him automatically, and went out swiftly. He looked at the paper bills
in his hand and saw that they totaled two pesos, practically a night’s work for him…

and the pall that had descended over him for weeks was suddenly lifted, like
a veil. He felt liberated, renewed. He wanted to sing out, to shout and dance about.

And he began to run, joy spurring him on.

Later that night he recounted the incident to his surprised colleagues, who had never

seen him this garrulous before. He elaborated on the story, enriching it with

imaginary details, and transformed it into a tale of danger, excitement and exotic

drama. As a clincher, he proudly showed off his money, realizing his mistake in the

next instant. But it was too late. The others began to advance toward him, encircling

him. Their words were flung at him like stones:

– Why aren’t you like us? –

– Why don’t you smoke? –

– Why don’t you curse? –

– Say putangina.

Victor drew back, frightened. With a chill he remembered the time the Blumentritt

boys had ganged up on him. – I don’t say words like that. –

– Say it! –
– All right, all right, putangina. – But the ephitet carried no conviction, and he

repeated it, stronger this time. The boys laughed in derision, and gave out a mirthless

kind of cheer. After uttering the words, Victor could no longer control himself. He

began screaming all kinds of curses, and he hurled himself bodily upon them,

kicking, hitting, screaming, in the grip of a fury he had not known existed within

him.

With a great shout, the others fell upon him. Newsboys sleeping on the ground woke

up in alarm, the night circulation people looked around in consternation, and the

turo-turo owner screamed. The melee continued until a shouting security guard

rushed in and roughly broke it up. He led Victor away, and was about to interrogate

him when the boy, who had sustained some cuts and bruises, broke free of his grasp

and fled into the night.

He roamed the streets, the byways and darkened alleys of the teeming district. He

passed by children his age scrounging around trash cans, and dingy motels where

couples went in and out. One small restaurant, a focal point of excitement during the

daytime when the racing results were posted, now stood silent and almost empty,

about to close down. His face and body ached from the blows he had received, and

a trickle of blood streamed down his nostrils. He wiped this on his T-shirt. He

seemed to be in good shape otherwise, and he felt relief that the fight had been

stopped in time. His thoughts flew back and forth. He promised himself
that he would never go back to the plant, but his resolve soon began to weaken. He

was at a loss as to what to do.

A rough voice to his right drew his attention, and as he turned into a narrow sidestreet

leading to the avenida, he saw a policeman bending over a man sprawled on a heap,

and apparently asleep. The officer kept on shaking the fellow, who failed to respond.

Then, cursing, he hit him with his night stick, as Victor watched…

HE reported for work the following evening, prepared for anything. But nothing

untoward happened. Last night’s incident seemed to have been forgotten, and the

others made no reference to it. Then one of the boys, whom Victor recognized as a

ring-leader, went over to him and, apparently as a kind of peace offering, held out a

cigarette. Victor hesitated, then said he

didn’t smoke.

The others began to form around him anew, but this time their attitude was one of

curiosity rather than of menace.

– Sige na, take it. It is very nice to smoke, and it is easy. All you have to do is take a

deep breath, then exhale slowly.

And Victor, his last defenses down, leaned forward and wearily accepted the

cigarette, while around them swirled the life of the city: this city, flushed with

triumphant charity campaigns, where workers were made to sign statements

certifying they received the minimum wage, where millionaire politicians

received Holy Communion every Sunday, where mothers taught their sons and

daughters the art of begging, where orphans and children from broken homes

slept on pavements and under darkened bridges, and where best friends fell out

and betrayed one another.

37
 SMALL TOWN FILIPINOS
by Kerima Polotan-Tuvera

I have not seen Ligao in two years and here is another year ending and the
prospects of visiting this town I call home are as remote as ever. The last time I
went was in '62, on the eve of a departure that meant crossing an ocean for away
places, and that visit had been made on something deeper than impulse, squeezed
in between passports and vacation shots and yet, once in Ligao, what do I really
do?

I stayed only twelve hours, just long enough to pick up half a dozen blooms
from my aunt's garden and jump into a tricycle for the familiar ride to the
municipal cemetery where my father lies buried. People in my town have a way
of putting it that is unlike any other in the world-they speak of this as pag-i-sung-
ko, which literally means to go to the cemetery, meet one's dead, and converse
with a cherished presence indistinguishable from the fragrance or ripening grain,
the murmur of creeks, the whisper of bamboo groves.

He could have been buried nearer town but my father and the Church
rejected each other to the end, and so he lies there, many kilometers out of Ligao
proper, among his fellow Masons, the town's Aglipayans and Iglesias and
Adventists, a firm old man, who has loomed larger in my life by dying, about
whom I cannot think of now, even 15 years after, without a suggestion of tears.
He spent more years out of Ligao than in it, leaving town when he was 19,
returning when he was 53, to live out just three more years then to die. But he
was always a small-town Filipino, with small-town notions and small-town
loyalties, something he unwittingly passed on to me when he sent me off packing
in the summer of '47 to Ligao, to recuperate from a touch of TB.

Before this, hometowns were hypothetical quantities in my life. I had been

born in Jolo and had spent portions of my childhood in various places in

38
Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, Laguna, Tarlac, Rizal, and in '47, it looked as if I was
going to be a Manilan after all when I took this fateful plane trip with him which
ended 500 miles and three hours later, in the town of Ligao, Albay. It was for me
like going back to the beginning: everyone ought to have one, a town where he
begins from, and probably ends in, remembrance of which tallies up the best of
his dreams, the purest of his joys.

Seeing the town my father had spoken of so evocatively, meeting his

relatives and his friends, being shown the very spot where his parents' hut had
stood, the ruins of a Spanish chimney be had haunted as a boy, the river, the
bridge, I began to understand a little why men write their tenderest stories and die
their fiercest deaths for their ow cannot imagine anyone killing for Quiapo, or
Central Market, or say Pa Lawton, but I have it in me, I think, to pick up a gun
and blow the bead anyone who changes by the littlest bit that walk,on a twilight
to the Barrion of Tuburan, a kilometer from the heart of town, a walk through
evening mist and trees, or the journey to Pandan on a sled, touching whip to
carabao rump, then alighting near the barrio chapel to make it on foot to this
spring, Males with its tricky bed, quicksand in parts, firm in others, where the
barrio fu stake out their fish traps and one can scoop mudfish and catfish by the
pail.

There are mountain ranges around the volcano, Mayon, dwarfs everything
else, and there is a lesser mountain whose name I never quite remember and
hillocks that undulate in and out of the horizon. One sees it all from the back of
the elementary school building, including the rice fields, the coconut groves, the
abuca plutaices: these are what sustain Ligao, and it is odd that I should speak of
the town with much knowledge when I never lived in it longer than a year. I have
returned to it whenever I could, for stretches of a week or a mon staying in an old
house in Guilid with people who are strictly more friends than relatives.

As a young girl, running home to them between jobs and disappointments.

I was always given the back room, the one near the avocado trees, the ducks, and
the tilapia pond. But with marriage and children, somente decided it was time I
got the front room and I established my rights to an enormous, ancient four- poster
39
beside which a votive candle burns night and day before the Virgin of
Penafrancia. I speak of it as my hometown and yet there is nothing in it I own,
except for these memories and the affection of some people, I hold no papers to
any property in it, having given up long ago trying to collect some debts owed
my dead lather. But it owns me, as completely as if I had been born in it, and all
those other years, in all those other towns, hazy remembrances of seashores and
shady sen and town plazas, come to a focus in Ligao.

It was in Ligao, too, I assure myself that this and that happened, some
vignette of childhood, though it could very well have been in Pangasinan or
Nueva Ecija, but having taken Papa's town my own, I desired to invest it with my
own past, even if I was a stranger to it until I was grown. Wrenching time and
geography, I forcibly transform recollections, reminiscences, and retrospections
from some unnamed setting in the back of my mind to Ligao, stopping only when
convinced I was as small a town as I could ever be. With my father's death and
interment there, it has since then become, for me, birthplace, beginning, base, my
country in minuscule.

You must meet my Uncle C. He is really a granduncle but there being a

word for that in the dialect, I have called him Uncle all these years. He should be
nearing 80, I think, but if I know him at all, he still walks his daily ten-kilometer
from Danao to Pandan, twice a day, barefoot, parting the grass ahead with the
same bamboo stick he has swung for years. He is the only man who can walk in
formal company dressed in camisa de chino, a pair of khaki pants, in his bare and
still be full of dignity no one dares jest about. For a long time, he distrusted me,
speaking of me as Jose's daughter from et, the city I was ill at ease before this
man with the weather-beaten face, who seemed everything seriously. He never
had much of a formal education but he old write a sensitive hand-he had been
quite a swain in his younger days. With a reputation for climbing up porches of
pretty young girls, and for drawing bolo quickly but life has tamed him and now
he reads the lives of saints and to church early in the mornings.

Uncle C has not opened many books in his life but there are a number of
things outside of them that he knows. He can smell out a storm, he knows
40
everything there is about fields, and yields, and irrigation, what to do with poor,
when to cut down the bananas or strip the abacca or begin to smoke the copra,
what fish will bite today with what bait, and both in Danao where he lives, and in
Pandan where he owns a few parcels of land, he cannot walk by without a hundred
urchins running out to kiss his hand. Eventually, he learned to like me, I could
tell from the stories he told when we met. They were always stories of my father
and himself, stories of swooning girls and outraged parents, cocked guns and
missing bullets, mysterious bundles picked up by faithful servants in the dead of
the night and thrown into the river, conventos stoned and priests run out of town,
and I never asked him where fact died and fancy began. That he deigned to spin
these tales for me was manifest affection and, I would sit in my rocking chair till
it was time to go home to Guilid. I'd give my rocking chair a last push, feeling
the packed earth beneath my feet. His housekeeper would shuffle out to light the
Petromax.

In the suddenness of the burning lamp, we would blink at each other, half
a hundred years between us. He would tilt the lamp to look at me better and let
me go with baskets of guavas and balls of native chocolate. I wish that I could
say of him he had been in the Revolution, but I do not know that he was, he has
spoken of it. I wish also I could say that he is full of wisdom, but he isn't-he is an
old man and has seen the stars come and go for 80 years, but I do not know if age
and the stars make a man wise. I wish I could say that he had been a hero, slaying
dragon or minotaur, befuddling the Sphinx, but he hasn't and all he's really done
was to get born and live with an instinct for goodness, subtracting from no one to
add to his own, respecting property lines, setting seasons of life with courage and
kindness: poor harvest and rich, bereavement and birth, drought and flood, just a
man, unlettered and unshod. He had come to the railroad station to see me off at
the end of one of my quick visits.

Once, I saw him with shoes on and I couldn't look—it was all wrong. He
gestures and I noticed his great dark feet encased in rubber shoes. He was Uncle
C still but there was nothing now to tell him from the baggage carriers, device
players, the chicken merchants—it was like seeing a magnificent wild nature, full
of natural splendor, suddenly festooned and painted for the circus.
41
"Don't they hurt?" I asked. "Don't they? Take them off," I insisted.

And he did, measuring his movements, bending down to untie the shoes,
knotting the laces together, and throwing the burden over an arm. It was strange
how quickly his dignity returned, even with his shoes dangling absurdly from an
arm. He waved his bamboo cane at me.

"You come back soon," he called as the trais started to move. "And stay
longer!" "You will meet me?" I said.

"Yes, with can and carabao, if you wish." "But no shoes, Uncle," I said, "No
shoes.”

He grinned suddenly and flung his arms upwards, a man cheering

something and wishing long life. Long live, I thought, watching him grow smaller
as the train raced towards the mountains, long live my uncle, I cheered, long live
his bare feet I have written before of this house in Guilid, and of the three spinsters
in it.

There used to be four but Tinang died the year I went to Ligao for the first
time When I walked into that house in '47, everyone was mourning. Manay
Tinang had been a teacher, and so was Manay Tin. Manay Pina was the
housekeeper and Paz, the baby, was the merchant. Their father had built the house
himself, put up the posts and planed the shingles, every one of them, and built his
house to last, built it with an eye to space and sun and air. The bedrooms opened
on the dining room, the dining room opened on the sala, and the sala welcomed
the world outside.

I lived there for a year, getting well, constantly plied with Klim and fresh
eggs, and in and out of the rooms was an assortment of nieces and nephews and
cousins and whatnots My three Manays were sending I don't know how many
children to school, and once or twice, Manay Tin would sigh about the expense
and the trouble but it did not stop her from apportioning her treasury warrant each
month to ensure some child's future. She was for everyone's learning a trade,

42
typing or dressmaking or basket weaving. The brighter ones were pledged support
through normal school or nursing school or farm school, and from each was
drawn the tacit promise that when he was through he would, in turn, send a
younger brother or sister through school.

Two sins alone imperiled their help: drink and love. If a nephew took to
the bottle the news of it somehow filtered back to Ligao, and the monthly
allowance stopped even before he'd gotten over his first hangover. If a niece fell
in love, she was aware of the iron- clad rules-everything to be held in abeyance
till after graduation. She might marry the boy if he passed some acid tests, but
there was still her promise to help send her siblings to school. A marriage made
no difference. Until her first baby came, a married niece assigned a reasonable
percentage of her income to the general education fund. But after the baby, she
was released from this duty, and she thereafter kept every centavo she made. Her
own children might look forward to the continuation of the arrangement, which
had its disadvantages—nieces were wont to postpone marriage until it was
impractical or impossible to marry at all, but they stayed on in the house, upping
the number of spinsters in the rooms. But everyone got an education-only the
wastrels remained illiterate.

When I met Manay Tin in '47, she had been the head of the family for a month,
the length of time that her sister had been dead. They did not share their grief
easily with newcomers. I remember feeling like an interloper, the silences that
arrived suddenly at the dining table when someone had just said something
awkward, how one by one, they melted away into the darkness of the kitchen or
the bedroom or the garden below, returning after half an hour, white-faced, thin-
lipped but dry-eyed. long time before anyone laughed in that house. It was the
children who did it. There were always so many of them underfoot, to be taught
reading. It was a tutored in arithmetic, drilled in good manners, and to be made
to realize, by precept and example, the meaning of duty as the three spinsters saw
it.

My Manays lives were circumscribed by church, school, and home, but

Manay Tin added a fourth dimension by visiting her sister's grave twice a day.
43
Manay Tin was heavy set when I met her for the first time but there were several
pictures around the house to show how she had looked at 18, slender and soft-
mouthed-1 imagine she broke a few hearts. But that house in Guilid meant more
than shelter, it stood for duty, tradition, filial obligations, and one did not leave it
while one's parents lived. When the old folk died, there were still the countless
nieces and nephews; no suitor had been plucky enough to sweep them aside and
carry off one of my aunts. And so it went. The children left for the city, and twice
a month, bundles of vegetables, salted meat, and rice, wrapped as carefully as
CARE packages, were shipped by train to the city, and the money. too, never too
much since there was not too much, but whoever studied in the city could depend
on Manay T's 20 or 30 pesos at a time.

Each summer I went home to Ligao, there was always someone with brand-
new degree, who used to toddle beneath the tables, between the chairs, who was
now a nurse or a teacher. Implacably, she was held to her end of the bargain, and
the consequences of rebelling were terrifying the house in Guilid forever
inaccessible to her, an absolute ostracism, the Manays walking by like strangers.
A villa girl fell in love before graduation, she weighed the chances of her passion
against the tradition of the house, and invariably, the house won. The boy was
dispatched with some comfort, perhaps told to come back in five or eight years,
the fact that he had to court the niece all over again, court her, her aunts, and if
he was foolhardy enough to do so, he found his wooing compounded by Current
crop of children in the front porch.

The nephews got off more lightly. After a year or two of token support,
they were allowed to go, with no hard feelings, and they married women from
Batangas or Laguna and either went to their wives' provinces or brought the
women back to town to live. Their first babies were brought around, to visit the
aunts who spoiled them with cuddling and too much candy. The system was
harsher on the nieces. The last time I was home, there were marriageable girls in
the house, no great beauties, but charming quiet-mannered girls. The younger one
was going to be a school nurse in a town nearby, but she would be home for the
holidays. The second had just had an engagement broken off and it did not look
as if another suitor was coming by quickly. She had been betrothed to this young
44
man for more than ten years but the aunts had not liked him, and he received his
walking papers. The latest news we got, he was buying a bridal bed for another
girl. Gely took the news calmly, but she and I talked in the old kitchen, beneath
the swinging bulb. She would not come right out and say that she had loved him
deeply or that her heart was broken-would do her no good to admit either. "But,"
she said, wistful, "I thought," she began again, "I thought-of running," and
covered her mouth. I remembered her from her childhood, a sweet-faced, rather
skinny child annoying the per monkey in the yard, coming home on weekends
from a girls' academy in Legaspi bringing into the house her laughter and her
muddy shoes. If she grieved tonight, only her large, luminous eyes showed it. She
pushed 30 and in a few more years, she would be a spinster herself. It was very
likely that she would succeed Manay Tin as head of the family, but that evening
in the old kitchen, her mouth trembled a little, her eyes shone with unshed tears.
How many renunciations the women had to make for that house in Guild! Yet it
was a matriarchy and the young girls who now gave up love would in time
become unmarried matriarchs themselves, demanding the same sacrifice of later
flocks of nieces. But no one turned hard and bitter: all in that house were women
to the last, fussing over shoes and clothes and jewelry. They set a festive table
each year, with guests coming from Sorsogon and Naga, and everything went as
well as if the men had planned it. When a storm was up, a brother or nephew
might be sent for to tie the trees down and lash the windows, but otherwise, the
women ran the show, worrying about the crops, buying up mortgages, making all
their devotion to the Virgin of Peñafrancia.

"When you come again," Manay Tin likes to say, "the house may not be
here." But each year that I manage to make it to Ligao to turn around the corner
in Guilid where I can see the kakawati fence, the roof, and the walls rise brown
and sturdy as ever. As surely as the sun rises and sets in Ligao, Manay Tin will
wait for me at the door, telling me which flowers I might pick in the garden so I
can my dead father and thus begin my visit properly.

45
 SUMMER’S SOLSTICE
by Nick Joaquin

THE MORETAS WERE spending St. John’s Day with the children’s
grandfather, whose feast day 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 all 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 the
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
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.
46
“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 Amada? Why are you still in bed at this hour? And in such a 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 reeked hotly of intimate odors. She averted her eyes from the laughing
woman on the bed, in whose nakedness she seemed so to participate that she was
ashamed to look directly at the man in the doorway.
“Tell me, Entoy: has she had been to the Tadtarin?”
“Yes, señora. Last night.”
“But I forbade her to go! And I forbade you to let her go!”

47
“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, 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 the animals would die.”
“Naku, I did no 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, 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 darted a sidelong glance at his wife, by which he intimated that the
subject was not a proper one for the children, who were sitting opposite, facing
their parents.
Don Paeng, drowsily stroking his moustaches, his eyes closed against the hot
light, merely shrugged.
“And you should have seen that Entoy,” continued his wife. “You know how the
brute treats her: she cannot say a word but he thrashes her. But this morning he
stood as meek as a lamb while she screamed and screamed. He seemed actually
in awe of her, do you know—actually afraid of her!”
48
“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
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
riverwater 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 godly 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 form the skies—the
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 we, thy servants, in chorus

May praise thee, our tongues restore us…

But Doña Lupeng, standing in the stopped carriage, looking very young and
elegant in 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,
49
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 young cousin Guido?” he asked.
50
“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 that 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 beautiful? But she is old and fat!”

51
“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 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 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?”
52
“I think it is to remind us men that once upon a time you women 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!”
53
“No more of your comedy, Guido! And besides—where have those children gone
to! I must go after them.”
As she lifted 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?”
54
“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.”
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 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 favor, 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 want to come, do not come—but I am going.”
55
“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: the 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 sidewalks 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 tortured 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 of sea-waves steadily rolling nearer.

56
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 with his wife on 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 Herodias; a doomed captive these witches were subjecting first to
their derision; a gross and brutal caricature of his sex.

Don Paeng flushed 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 gleaning on her face. Don Paeng was horrified. He grasped her arm—
but just then 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
57
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 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 shawls and whirled and began
dancing again—laughing and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon that the
people in the square and on the sidewalk, 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,
and 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 indistinctive
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 into the dense maze of 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, turbulent 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 rose all about him in the stifling darkness.
“Hoy you are crushing my feet!”
“And let go of my shawl, my shawl!”
58
“Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you!”
“Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots!” cried Don Paeng.
“Abah, 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?”

59
And when he did not answer: “Why, have they pulled out his tongue too?” she
wondered aloud.
AND WHEN THEY are home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she
was still as light-hearted.
“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 a 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.”

60
“And because if you ceased to respect me you would cease 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 to speak, forcing him to speak.
“No, I cannot whip you!” he confessed miserably.
“Then say it! Say it!” she cried, pounding her clenched 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 feel?”
But she shook her head furiously. “Until you have said 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.

61
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 so 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 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 kiss it savagely – kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle –
while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the whole windowsill her body 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.

62
 MAGNIFICENCE
by Estrella D. Alfon

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 visored 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 paper butterflies are held on sticks, and
63
whirr 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, he 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 circumference 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.

64
 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, and 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.

65
 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.

66
 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 frightenedly, in her eyes 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.

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 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.
He 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 backward, 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.

68
 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.

69
 BONSAI
by Edith L. Tiempo

All that I love

I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.

All that I love?

Why, yes, but for the moment-
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

It’s utter sublimation,

A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size

Till seashells are broken pieces

From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over

70
 To the merest child

THE CORRAL
by Edith L. Tiempo

Pilar fed the fire on the open stove with more wood. The stewed pork must
be hot or her father would refuse it again. She'd get the contained look, then the
Phot snort, then "Who wants cold stew?" her father's own endearing way of
saying no. She frowned and screwed up her thin pointed nose and chin until her
whole face looked all chucked backward and upward. But the frown did her face
good; her cheeks and forehead were stirred out of a wrinkled apathy and a nice
flush started throughout her face. She didn't want to be irritated at her father
because there had already been too much politeness between them lately, and it
was a strain. For her, anyway, it was.The one taking it out on the other about little
things, unimportant things that became so stubbornly important. Like cold meat
stew. She picked up the tongs and jabbed at the fire until a hollow of red heat
leaped under the pan.

Charita might be at the beach, too; Manuel said his wife might help them
today with mending the nets. Pilar unslung a basket from the wall. She slid into
it the pot of rice and the bowl of camote tops and squeezed into the remaining
space three flasks of drinking water. She lifted the basket, testing its weight. It
was all she could carry. That boy Elmo would have to go with her today. She
eased the basket on the table and flung open the side door of the kitchen. The
open door let in the salt wind from the sea. The wind was warm and smelled of
moist dead rockweeds and algae. She stepped into the yard, pushing the door
creakily shut behind her. Elmo was not in the yard. She shaded her eyes from the
sun's glare while surveying the trail that led to the coconut grove and up the
71
wooded hillock beside it. That boy wouldn't be getting firewood, he knew she
was going to the beach.

A cart jerked forth heavily from the bend as she looked. The carabao that
drew it plodded forward, taking its case with a heavy load. The cart was stacked
to the top with wood fuel. The driver sat up in front. He was a dark big-shouldered
fellow in his shirtsleeves. He clucked encouragement to the beast. The man was
big but his size was not obtrusive; what called attention to it was the suggestion
of strength in the way he held himself. Very quiet and assured. His legs were
hitched up in front of him, his hands held the reins loosely, his elbows resting on
his knees. He smiled at Pilar and his teeth were even and white in his face that
was dark like burnt clay. She did not smile back. He was a stranger.

“I get off here, Gregorio!” From the rear of the cart a small figure swung
to the ground. Elmo. The rascal had gone off to the woods the minute her back
was turned. The driver reached in back of him for a bundle of wood which he to
to the side of the road. The servant boy picked it up.

“Thanks, Gregorio!”

“No thanks. It's your share.”

“A big share. When are you coming back?”

“Tomorrow.” The dark man looked at Pilar. This time he did not smile He
tipped his buri hat to her and turned his face to the road. He clucked softly to the
animal and the cart bumped forward again.

Pilar caught at the boy's sleeve as he was about to run. "Who told you to

72
go after firewood? Who is that man?"

Elmo dug dirty fists into his eyes and she snatched them away, saying
wearily."You're coming with me to the beach."

"Yes, ma'am. Exactly." Elmo shifted the wood to his shoulder and started
whistling softly as they walked back to the house. She knew what he was
thinking, now, the monkey. She couldn't help it, it was exasperating the way he
got around her so easily. Well, she'd have to let him sneak off for a swim when
they got to the beach. He would sneak off, in any case.

"That man Gregorio, where is he taking all that firewood?"

"To the city, ma'am. He gets a good price."

When she said nothing he added, "I got a good bundle for myself. Look."
They entered the kitchen and he slid the wood into the box under the stove She
picked up the tongs and handed them to him, and he stepped up to the fire and
began stirring and shoving the branch ends into a blaze.

She leaned on the door panel watching him and thinking how after a month
she still felt strange not to be sitting behind a desk watching a room full of
children at that time of the morning. Sometimes, like now, it didn't seem possible
she had really left the school. Yet it was true, it would be this kitchen from now
on. No more walls hung with brightly colored drawings of houses and people and
flowers and weird-looking animals. It would be this room with the streaked
smoky layer on the unpainted wood, and the lizards crawling in the black eaves
and tapping their bloated bodies, and the bundles of unshucked corn seed
dangling from the beams. The table-top crisscrossed
73
by knife scars. Soot. Soap and water. The open stove, her one big responsibility.

Elmo was slightly bent toward the stove; he was looking deeply into the
flames. The boy had grown as quiet as she. Pilar straightened.

"Watch it now. I'm going upstairs." She added firmly, "And don't go
running. off again."

On the landing the cat was washing its face. She pushed it aside with her
foot but could not move. She was halfway up the stairs when the cat stirred and
mewed at her. She wondered; and then she heard someone below in the living
room. She stopped with one quiet hand on the bannister. The cat was right. Slowly
she leaned over the side of the stairway to look. Yes, as she had thought, it was
Mr. Perfecto. He stood up. His great bulk seemed to rise out of the four walls and
jar her by his presence. His looks meet hers uncertainly, however---as though they
had had a misunderstanding. As though, she thought wryly, their main concern
all these years had not been to keep up a good fellowship between them. What
could he want? She had made it very clear she wasn’t going back. He shouldn’t
have come. She turned and walked down slowly. She would be very calm with
him, she would let nothing bother her, not only her annoyance, certainly not the
things she knew she was going to hear from this man. But already she felt the
muscles drawing tight across her face; and her mouth was stiff as two clam shell
valves when she loosened them to speak.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I forgot to knock. Is your father home?”

74
 “He’s at the beach with Manuel.”

“How’s the work going?”

“The corral may be up this week. Did you want to speak to Father?”

Mr. Perfecto settled back in his chair, laughing, not loud but with laughter
in his red face, in his big shaking frame.

“Speak to your father? No, not for a while. He's still too angry with me."
She looked at him thinking, I wish he didn't come. But she had thought the same
thing-for how long now?-and always he had come. "Why does he come here,
Pilar?"

Even from the first she had felt it was meddling on her father's part. "He is
the school principal." Because she could not help it, she had smiled grimly and
added, "Also, I am not unattractive, Father." "Nor exactly young."

"He wants me to marry him."

"You have picked yourself a good one," he had sneered. "Don't be a fool."

Why the man had continued to come she didn't know, for outside of school
they had nothing to say to each other, nothing true, and nothing even perishable.
She had told herself she should do something about him finally. And she shouldn't
be so weak and let him turn her into an occasion for mockery from her father. But
what had happened instead wasn't altogether her fault because to her

75
bewilderment her father began to speak to the man. Even to take to him in a rough,
off-hand fashion. The two of them gradually began to seek out each other like old
friends, to smoke each other's cigars. Only once in a while, for the period of a few
days, their mutual politeness made her feel indefinably safe; most of the time she
was uneasy at the way they showed off like silly boys, through two or three hours
arguing about politics, cockfighting, fishtraps, women. Often they got coarse in
their talk as between men who understood each other well.

She sat now against the wall in front of him and as often happened she
found herself losing some of her tenseness in his laughter. She even laughed a
little with him.

“Father hates for anyone to beat him, you know that. He’s so proud of his
chess game, and is such a poor sport. Manuel always loses, for the sake of peace.”

"Father hates for anyone to beat him, you know that. He's so proud of h
chess game, and is such a poor sport. Manuel always loses, for the sake of "I've
managed to let him win, myself."

Mr. Perfecto heaved his body straigh peace." in the chair. "But I can't go
on doing that," he said significantly. "Besides, the old fellow is getting too smug.

"Yes," said Pilar, "isn't he?" Mr. Perfecto smiled on her. "It's you I've come
to see this morning. It's about your work, of course."

"Well?"

76
 "You're well now, Pilar. Your substitute has asked to know how long
she'll stay."

"I told you I'm not going back."

"I know you did, but that was when you were sick. I never really
considered that letter of resignation."

"I'm not sick now and I still mean it." He was quiet. And then he said, "This
is strange." He leaned his fat face forward. "Perhaps we have to talk some more
about this, you and I. I believe," he said, "you know what?-I believe you are
running away from me." "Please. I told you before, and I tell you again, you have
nothing to do with it. Ten years I taught in your school and I'm tired. That'sall."

"I don't believe it."

She shrugged. "You may believe what you like, then." He leaned back. He
asked in a flat voice, "Now that you've quit, what do you plan to do?"

"I have enough to do, don't concern yourself," she said coldly. "I'm taking
care of Father. He's an old man now."

He laughed aloud. "He needs no woman. A man like that." He stopped

laughing but it seemed to her his laughter went on and on in the fatty smile that
lifted his cheeks and eyelids and agitated his face like the actual sound of laughter.
As she watched him, a small thought whirred inside her head, a glinting sinning
thought, that hardened into a pinpoint.

77
 "The school doesn't need me either. Look," she said rigidly, "you might
as well make up your mind. I am not marrying you." She looked straight into his
face and said, "It is best if you stop coming."

"What should I do? You are such a selfish inhibited person, Pilar."

She thought, He is ugly, fat and ugly and daring to say such things. "Look
at me," he went on, "I'm a normal man. But you think there's something person,
excessive about me. Oh, don't bother to deny it. The funny part of it is that all
these years you have held away, in spite of yourself. It's monstrous.

"You know it all, don't you? Naturally, I have nothing to say." He rose
heavily, looked down at her. "You don't want to be a drudge. You can't be. I want
you to marry me, Pilar." When she said nothing he said regretfully.

"I wish you could be your own self some day. You've been thrashing
around. Do you have to be so suspicious?"

Her reply was a cold stare.

"If you weren't such a hypocrite!" His whispered words were venomous.
won't admit you have some feelings."

He reached for his hat on the table. "You will change your mind." He
stood "You clutching the hat in his fat tensed hands. "You can't send me away,
you don't want to."

78
 "I will-I am."

"But you don't want to. That's right, isn't it?"

She sat unmoving.

"Isn't it?" he asked, then threw up his hands. When he had gone Pilar stood
up as though she had wakened from a numbed and dreadful sleep. She went into
the kitchen still slightly dazed. The servant boy was pouring the steaming stew
into a clean casserole.

The boy looked up. "We can go now, if you're ready.”

She tied a scarf about her head and tucked the edges all around her head.
No, she wasn't going back to the school, the man must have no more reason to
come. She picked up the basket and the boy followed her out of the yard to the
trail through the coconut grove.

The sun was hot now. It was almost noon. Their shadows striped the path
slantwise before them. In a little while they approached the low hillslope to one
side of the path. Fallen trunks of trees and withered stems of coconut fronds strew
the slope. That fellow Gregorio must have dragged them out there to dry before
splitting them.

She thought of the afternoon ahead and hoped Charita had decided to come
to the beach. The two of them could work on the nets, and the men could go ahead
with the corral. It was almost finished, it needed about three dozen splits more.
As soon as the men had strung together the bamboo splits, her father would hire

79
the divers to set up the finished trap in the sea. Maybe in two or three days the
corral would be up.

The path went straight through the grove and the sea was visible ahead
through the gaps between the coconut trunks. She saw Charita and Manuel on the
sand beside the shed, mending a net spread out between them.

"You were gone a long time," the old man complained. He sat at the door
of the shed and his large frame almost filled it.

Pilar smiled, shook a reproachful finger at him. "You talk. Elmo and I are
hungry, too." Charita got up from the sand to help her. On the floor of the shed
they spread out the rolls of banana fronds the boy had cut on the way. Charita
ladled out the stew.

Pilar said, "Mr. Perfecto was at the house."

Manuel and Charita said nothing. The old man looked up from his food.

"What did he want?"

"He asked me to go back to work."

"I thought you had told him you were giving it up."

"Why yes, Father, I did."

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 "Hmm," the old man grunted. "He shouldn't insist."

Charita told Pilar, "You refused to go back, of course."

"Of course," said Pilar, with a sidewise look at her father.

The old man was enjoying his rice and meat. "What did you tell Perfecto?"
Before she could answer he said, "You've been very foolish, all along. I hope you
see that now. I hope you remembered that when you talked to him this morning."

She kept her eyes on her plate. "There's nothing I told him that I hadn't
already told him before. I said I was tired of the school." She raised her head
suddenly, her eyes glinting. "Yes, I did tell him something else." She looked up
at her father, at his barrel chest, his heavy arms and shoulders, his unruly grey
hair. “I also told him that as you are now old you needed someone to look after
you.”

He snorted. "You told him that." He was mocking. That he should be made
her flimsy excuse! "What did he say, then?"

She smiled, to his surprise, she could see that. "You rather enjoy being
my reason, Father, don't you? You rather like it." She lowered her plate and
leaned toward him. "Dutiful daughter! But Mr. Perfecto didn't seem convinced,
Father. He asked me to think it over-to think him over, that is. And maybe," she
said, "maybe I will."

At noon the following day she and Elmo went out a little earlier. They

81
were still some distance away when they saw the cart on the outskirts of the
grove, and the carabao unhitched and grazing at the foot of the low slope. As
they approached they saw Gregorio himself seated on a log on the grassy eating
his lunch. The man saw them coming but said no word to greet them or to show
he had even seen them.

Elmo called, "You need help today?"

He did look up as they came near. He brushed his mouth with his hand
and wiped his hand on his trouser leg. "Tomorrow you come," he said finally. "I
didn't do much today."

Pilar lowered the basket. "Let's stop here a little in the shade, Elmo. My
arm's tired."

She turned to Gregorio. "Go on with your lunch."

"I'm through." He balled up the scrap o of cloth where he had taken his
meal and crammed it into a basket.

Pilar untied the scarf from her head and let it slip down around her
shoulders.

She sat on a log, rubbing her arm.

Gregorio stood up and stretched his body and his arms and threw out his
chest. She thought it indelicate the way he stretched and yawned in front of her
but she showed no sign. The man's great fists closed, his shoulders hunched as
82
he drew deep breaths, and with his movements the muscles on his arms stirred
and bulged under the dark skin. He had removed his shirt and had on a thin
undershirt wet with his perspiration. He stopped stretching. And it came to her
that the man did not care what she thought–he cared no more for her little
sensibilities than would his carabao.

"Hot day," he said. "Hot, hot day." He stooped and reached for the bottle
of water in his basket. "Oh, oh," he said, looking anxiously at the little water left.
He put the flask to his mouth and tilted his head back and his throat showed itself
moving up and down as he guzzled the water.

Elmo higher up the slope had picked up Gregorio’s ax. He swung clumsily
and brought it down on the log between his feet.

"Let that alone," she called.

Gregorio said, "He's just playing." He turned from Elmo and smiled at
her. His teeth were strong and startlingly even, his eyes were black and friendly
and alive in his brown face. He said, "I wondered if perhaps you were angry
when I kept the boy. He helps a little."

She smiled back and felt good, seeing him quickly flush with pleasure.
"No, I wasn't angry."

"He ties up the bundles. I don't make him split the wood."

83
 "Not with your ax, he can't," she laughed.

"Yes, it's a big ax. A big ax." He looked straight at her face, his dark glance
struck boldly into her eyes. He looked at her arms and her hands, but longest at
her face. "You can't lift it," he said. "You're so little, yourself. So little."

She sat up. His eyes carefully avoided her body, but she was angry, as
though the man had actually reached out and explored her littleness. She stood up
from the log and in a thick silence raised the scarf about her shoulders to her head.
Elmo saw her trying on the scarf and ran toward them. The boy looked at her and
she nodded without a word. Elmo picked up the basket and walked down the path.

Gregorio said nothing. Before she could leave he turned his back abruptly
and strode to the fallen logs. He reached for his ax. He braced himself, swung it
high and brought it down with vindictive force on the log in front of him. Again
and again the ax swung blows upon the log. He had his back to her, and she could
not stir for looking at the skin that moved underneath its surface like smooth
rounded mangoes on his arms and back and underarms. Muscles moving, bulging,
disappearing as he braced himself and swung the ax. He was angry with an
inarticulate anger. Turning away she
picked up the basket. She stood there, but he seemed unconscious of her presence.
The splinters flew about him with each blow. In a quick movement she set down
the basket and took out a flask of water.

“Gregorio,” she called.

He lowered his arms in the act of swinging down the ax. Slowly he turned
his head and located her where she stood on the low incline.

84
 She held up the bottle. "You'll be wanting this by and by."

The man threw down the ax. He did not move. Sweat rolled down his face
and glistened on his arms. He wiped the drops from his temples with the back of
his hand. She said, "I'll leave it here on the log."

He came toward her. He reached out but she ignored his outstretched hand
with care, and bent and leaned the flask on the log. He stood before her as though
waiting for her to speak again. She had nothing more to say. She picked up her
basket and walked quickly down the slope.

Gregorio got the flask. "Thanks."

She did not answer. She did not look back but walked away quickly
through the grove to the beach.

After lunch she lay on the floor of the shed and watched the divers roll up
the fish corral and push it down the beach to the boat at the edge of the water. The
corral, finished at last, was beautiful; the splits were strung evenly and close
together and sharpened to points at both ends. The men, eight of them, had
stripped themselves almost naked, leaving only a width of cloth about the loins.
She felt their excitement. She liked their casual roughness, the way they moved
and talked to each other. They were going to dive into the sea five or six fathoms
to the sandy bottom to plant the rest of the piles needed to hold the corral in place.
Out in the sea was a semi-circle of
coconut trunks planted a few days before; the men were going to finish the circle
and have the corral attached to it, if they could, before nightfall.

Manuel and her father pushed the boat into the water and the men

85
scrambled into their places and took up the paddles. They cut into the water with
clean strokes, bending down their hard backs and thick brown necks with each
thrust. Their deep voices floated over the water and were drowned out
intermittently by the loud wash of the waves hitting the shore.

Manuel and the old man left the water's edge. They dragged the net near
the shed to a place where the two of them sat in the shadow cast by the roof. Pilar
was sleepy. It was the warm sea wind and the regular beat of the waves. Even
without opening her eyes she could sense the movement of the water as though it
swayed from under her, as though she drifted on it. Once she opened her and
looked far out on the sea and she saw the boat with the men in it. They had stopped
paddling. She could hear their distant voices. They were now at the unfinished
circle of stakes.

She shifted on her other side. The wind blew on her back, through her
clothes, cooling her skin until the heat lay just under it, inside her pores, and she
felt washed clean all over. She remembered what had happened that morning on
the slope. And then she thought of Mr. Perfecto. But thinking of him at this
moment did not annoy her. She smiled to herself. No, in this place, in the blowing
wind and with sleep misting her thoughts, he was only an amorphous image. A
neutral image. She was free of him.

Manuel and her father were talking in low voices and she was so drowsy
all she could hear was the mumbled drone of their words. Thin tails of smoke
from fishermen's huts floated over the palms to one side of the coconut grove.
Hens scratched around on the swampy ground at the distant edge of the grove.
She heard the far-away barking of a dog. She placed an arm
across her eyes to hide the glare of the sun....

86
 For some time before she woke up she had been hearing the far shouts of
the divers. She half-dreamed. She was with them as they lifted the net from the
bottom of the corral, and she saw the great fish thrashing around in the meshes,
their mouths opened and closed in dumb shouts and their eyes were indignant
blobs of white in their flat heads. She woke up, trying to grasp at the fading bits
of the dream, trying to continue it in the far shouts of the men. It was gone and
she had not understood its strange outlines, its disturbing rage. She turned over to
look at the divers and she sat up, a little surprised at what she saw. She must have
been asleep for some time, maybe a couple of hours. The corral was set up in the
water. The men were still diving by turns to attach it more firmly to the stakes,
their brown bodies sparkled as they splashed around in the water. It was late
sunshine that fell on the sea, and it gleamed on the naked bodies and made them
shine like great burnished clay jars. One diver stood alone in the boat. He had one
foot on the edge of the boat, his hands on his hips. He looked like that fellow
Gregorio, big and dark and shining. His companions called out to him and
beckoned, and the man stretched his arms and plunged.

Manuel spoke quietly to her. "Charita told me your dress is finished. Said
could go over and try it on." She rose from the floor. She rubbed her side you
which was numb; she had lain on it too long without moving.

The old man looked at her with eyes that were darkly commiserating.

"You can take it easy now. The corral is up."

"The corral is up," she repeated. "I'm glad, Father." She tightened the scarf
about her head. "I'm going on home ahead. I think I'll stop at your house, Manuel."

87
 Her brother looked up from the net and smiled at her. "It's pretty. I know
you'll think so."

The dress was pretty. It was past sundown when Charita finished the little
alteration on the neck. It was so pretty she wore it going home, and all the while
she was suppressing a smile as she hurried between the tall coconut trees
bordering the dark trail. When she was a hopeless old maid, and that wasn't too
far off either, she knew she would still be fussy about a new dress. More so; she
would have to be.

She turned around the outskirts of the grove and came to the joining of the
trail and the footpath that went past her house. As she stepped into the path she
saw a cart heading toward her. A lighted lantern swung near the carabao's rump
and the lantern jogged up and down with every bump in the path. She stepped
back under some guava trees and watched for the cart to come near.

It was Gregorio. He clucked softly to the carabao. He did not see her
because she kept well in the shadow of the guavas. She stood there startled at this
sudden secret sight of him. Breathlessness like pain gripped her all over, and she
stood waiting in expectation for she didn't quite know what,
puzzled at herself, but inside herself a bright core glowing. The cart jerked
forward and passed by, so close she could hear the animal's heaving; she could
have touched its flank if she dared move. Carabao and wheel and driver lurched
by. Then it was past her, and she wanted to cry out but the cry had no voice.

When a woman had seen Gregorio she would know him anywhere, on a
boat, diving into the sea, on a slope cutting wood, on the sand mending nets and
building traps. Behind a desk in a schoolhouse. She would know him even in the

88
dark. Having seen Gregorio, she would keep seeing him in all men.

But Gregorio had not seen her. No man had ever really seen her, except
Mr. Perfecto, and how could they know what she was like? She might wear the
prettiest, newest dress and Gregorio might pass by her and not see her at all.
And that was as it should be. With Gregorio the woodcutter it would have been
very improper otherwise.

She stood under the guava tree looking after the cart at his straight back.
She thought, O how I hate you–you who are so right, so hatefully right, Mr.
Perfecto.

89
 RICE
by Estrella D. Alfon

It is open season for politics in the country again, and demagogues enter the
world
of the famished, make capital of their chronic hunger, and enable us to witness
the
latter's despair.

Characters:

CLARO: an indigent young man who looks old at the age of 30

90
 LUMEN: his wife, a thin, famished-looking woman whose gaunt frame
belies her 25 years

MRS. HASPLENTY: a wealthy matron

MRS. TAMALAMANG: another matron but of much more modest

means

BOY: a child of about 8

ENING: younger sister to Boy

FIRST NEIGHBOR: a hungry-looking man of about 35

SECOND NEIGHBOR: a woman, again-looking older than her years

THIRD NEIGHBOR: a pregnant woman who carries a small child, about

a year and a half, on her hip

OTHER NEIGHBORS: mostly raggedy, including the little children,

mostly halfdressed and mostly in tatters, with unwashed faces

Locale:

91
 One of the modern, very prosperous subdivisions in the suburbs, where the
land has been subdivided by the well-to-do into fenced lots, grown with well-
tended,
well-manicured Bermuda grass and lushly flowering bougainvillaeas and fragrant
roses. Among these beautiful houses, fairly shouting their prosperity and the
status
and means of their owners — in a remote corner of such a village forgotten while
some newly rich estate owner has not yet thought of erecting his dream house on
it, some of the unwindowed daring have-nots of this day have had the temerity to
put up barong barong shelters that cower in the shadow of the beautiful mansions
of the rich. These are the typical eyesore structures of the impermanent, the
hounded, the often dispossessed. Tin hammered to flatness, leftovers from some
cruel fire, shakily
erected, intended to be as quickly torn down as they have been so quickly put up.
These then are the houses of the people — are they people? — in this play.

LIGHTS OUT

COCKCROW on high note — Crow 1: BLUE Light

Crow 2: RED Light

COUGHING, prolonged fit of coughing from man on daisin CENTER of stage

draped
in red but looking like a coffin bier.

92
MUSIC

LUMEN:

Ening…………Boy…………

(Enter ESCO, with cock in arms. He sits on tree stump. fondles rooster,
flies it
in air several times to test its wings. Walks around dais, off to another side, calls
to
man lying on raised bed.)

MUSIC

ESCO:

Pareng Claro. Claro! The sun is high. Wake Up! Tanghali na, Pare.

Gising na ang Kristiano.

(Enter STREETWALKER. Slightly drunk, as seen by the way she walks.

And
tired, with her night work, wearied with the coming of the bright day. Sits on
the same
tree stump ESCO sat on. CLARO coughs.)

93
 Psst. Hey, Rosie! Why are you running away? Are you afraid?

ROSIE:

Afraid? Afraid of what? (Pausing, looks back. Hesitates. Then goes

slowly
away.) It is none of your business.

ESCO:

Wasn't he your querido for a long time?

ROSIE:

Oh, shut up! So what? That was a long time ago.

ESCO:

Nangangamoy kandila na yang bata mo, Rosie. Tulungan mo naman.

ROSIE:

Ako? Why should I? After all, he has his wife and… children…

ESCO:

94
 Hey.' Walang t.b. ito! Materiales fuertes, blue seal, Choy!

ROSIE:

Bastos! Walang hiya! Manok mo na lang ang pagtiagaan mong

himasin!...

MUSIC

(Enter LUMEN.)

LUMEN:

(Calls to children off scene): Boy... Ening...

CHILDREN:

(Answer off stage): Opo, Inay. Ano hu ‘yon.

LUMEN:

Claro. Mahal. Wake up. It is morning.

(Looks up at the day, the listless tired look.of the sleeper who has found
no rest in his slumber, tortured through. the night by his coughing, and fearful
95
now of the traits' that the relentless day brings.)

CLARO:

What day is it?

LUMEN:

It is Sunday. What do you want for breakfast?

(She has been busy with the small things a wife finds to do around a sick
spouse. The pillows to fluff. The blankets to smooth out. She walks around to the
other side of him so she can change his clothes. She is never still. While the
conversation here takes place, there are motions for her to go through, all of them
connected with the duties of a housekeeper with a helpless husband.)

CLARO:
We haven't any money. What breakfast can you get without a cent?

LUMEN:

God is always kind. Maybe I can still borrow something from Aling
Bibang.

(LUMEN proceeds to change the shirt CLARO has slept in for a clean one.
The process is often interrupted by CLARO'S coughing, and LUMEN massages
96
'his back as he struggles with his phlegm. She wipes his back with the shirt she
has taken off him, wipes his agonized face with it. Then she lays it aside as he
rests his head on her bosom. She reaches for a T-shirt and puts it on him as he
submits to her attentions with the limp docility of a baby. As this goes on, there's
business off-stage of a group of men fighting their cocks. Shouts and calls typical
of a cock-fight crowd.)

LUMEN:

In fact, Aling Bibang said she would bring a Mrs. Hasplenty with her.
From the
S. W. A.¹ You know the S. W. A.

(OFF STAGE: SOUNDS)

VOICE #1:

Mang Esco, subukan natin 'yang manok mo.

NEIGHBOR:

Siyanga naman, Mang Esco.

ESCO:

97
 Aba, huwag. Isasabung ko ito sa Linggo.

NEIGHBORS:

Sigue na, makita naman naming oh!

VOICE #2:

Natatakot ka lang yata.

ESCO:
Huwag, sabi. Bakit matatakot? Ha!

VOICE #2:

Sa buhay ko, o, ‘pare…

ESCO:

Magsisi ka, ‘pare. Hindi takot ito.

¹S.W.A. : Social Welfare Administration, a relief agency of the

government.

98
NEIGHBORS:

Hay-a-a-an!!!

VOICES:

Sa pula! Sa puti! Sa pula! Sa puti! Tumakbo Naku! Tumakbo ang manok!

Duwag! Iluto na lang natin ‘yan!

Ang lolo mo ang duwag! Sa pula! Sa puti! Sa pula! Sa puti!

(Sounds of cocks in furious wing beat and tattoo of cock fight. Yells and
shouts of excited onlookers.)

VOICES:

Sa pula! Sa puti! Sa pula! Sa puti!

NEIGHBOR:

Naku! Ang ganda! Blue seal!

MUSIC, strains of a march.

99
CHILDREN'S VOICES:

Si Aling Bibang, pala. Si Aling Bibang. Mga kapit-bahay, ito na si Aling

Bibang

NEIGHBORS:
Magandang umaga po, Aling Bibang.

(Enters ALING BlBANG on scene, followed by crowd, and arm-in-arm

with MRS. HASPLENTY, who is dressed in stylish kimona and patadyong and
retinued by a uniformed chauffeur bringing big boxes under each arm; a
photographer with his camera and flash at ready, and several reporters with bored
looks, pencils ready to take notes on small note. books. March music. Cheers.)

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

(Waves her hand flutteringly at people to make them quiet down so they
can hear her.)

Good morning, mga people. Mga kapitbahay, I brought with me my boss

from the S.W.A., our beloved Manang Eniang. Our good Manang Eniang. She
wants to see all of you.

(Crowd cheers. Photographer takes one picture as the crowd come up to

MRS. HASPLENTY and shake her hand. She does it very gracefully, with the
sincerity and devotion of a really sincere person. She has an arm around each
woman’s shoulders very briefly, presses the arm of each man just as briefly. Her

100
smile brilliantly includes them all, and all her gestures are charming, including
the fingers she gracefully raises to her head to pat her coiffure in place and the
hand that she places on the head of each child in loving solicitation. She has
candies she takes out of her handbag that she passes on to them.)

(Music of her march plays on.)

MRS. HASPLENTY:

My very dear people of this looban. Ako'y, nagagalak na makita kayong

lahat na maligaya. I want you to know that I think of you all the time. Kaawa-awa
naman kayo. Aling Bibang told me about you, and I want (holds her graceful
hands to breast), oh, I want so much to help you.

(Music on a more triumphant note. People clap their hands at her charming
words and gesture.)

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

Mga people, visitahan na natin si Claro. (In general aside to people

around):

Pumarito si Manang Eniaag dahil kay Claro. (Sees LUMEN.) Alam mo,
Eniang, kawawa itong si Lumen at si Claro — wala sila'ng matirahan, kaya dito
na ho sila pinatira.. Ah, heto pala si Lumen.

MRS. HASPLENTY:

101
 (Embraces LUMEN briefly, who partly draws back in abasement.)
Kumusta si Claro, Lumen? Kumusta ang asawa mo? Alagaan mong mabuti si
Claro, ha. Malapit na ang eleksiyon, kailangang makaboto siya.

(Motions to the chauffeur, who deposits the boxes at MRS.

HASPLENTY'S feet. She looks around at the crowd and bends to take other
things from the big boxes. Hands out a few dresses to some women, moving
around in the same graceful manner. All the while the crowd try to get their share,
but MRS. HASPLENTY sweetly shakes herhead and moves back again to where
LUMEN watches all this show with dumb reality. CLARO has looked up once to
watch the commotion and then, like one already separated from the affairs of the
world, turns his eyes away. In the meantime, MRS. TAMALAMANG has been
efficiently, although superfluously-for this is all routine to Manang Eniang's
retinue—stage-managing the proceedings, pulling some neighbors to receive
Manang Eniang’s dole, and nudging the photographer to take the shots he does
with the boredom of one who has been doing nothing but the expected.)

MRS. HASPLENTY:

My dearest friends. Mga kapatid. Mahal ko kayong lahat. But today,

through the information given to me by your good Aling Bibang, my friend, I
came to help Lumen and Claro. So today I must give rice and things to Lumen. It
is Sunday, and the S.W.A. is closed. But tomorrow I will come back, and I'll bring
you all, the things I know you need. (Turning to ALING BIBANG)
Magpasalamat kayo that you have here among you such a woman as Aling
Bibang.

102
 (The praise so overwhelms ALING BIBANG, she takes MRS.
HASPLENTY'S hand and quickly kisses it.)

(Music stronger, but not enough to drown her voice, which takes on a
platform tone.

ALING BIBANG directs her, however, to formally hand over the rice and
the
canned goods that are intended for CLARO and LUMEN.

But even as MANANG ENIANG turns over the boxes to LUMEN with the
same implacable cool sweetness, she doesn't abandon her stance: head held back
and lovely throat lengthened the better to deliver the lines she can say so well.
The
photographer is at the ready. ALING BIBANG has inserted her own person into
the
tableau so that when the picture is taken, she will be right there with MANANG
ENIANG.)

MRS. HASPLENTY:

Babalik ako nang talagang matutulungan kayo. For my peart always

weeps for you.

(The people cheer.)

103
 I will bring you clothes. Aling Bibang will distribute them to you.

(Cheers from the crowd.)

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

It is better if you distribute these yourself, Manang Eniang. Ito si Nena.

MRS. HASPLENTY:

Oy, Nena. Kailan ka manganganak?

NENA:

Sa isang buwan po, Manang.

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

Ito naman si Awang. Mayroon si Manang Eniang para sa iyo.

AWANG:

Abaw! Katahum guid. Madamo guid na salamat. Baw! Hustong husto pa

sa
akon... ay!

104
MRS. TAMALAMANG:
Ito naman si Fidel, wala akong para sa iyo, pero ito, para sa asawa mo.

MRS. HASPLENTY:

Food. I shall bring you food.

(Cheers.)

For when you hunger, I hunger too. Oh, I want to really give you what I
can.

CROWD:

Trabaho, Manang Eniang. Trabaho ang kailangan namin!

(Rest of crowd murmur their loud assent.)

CROWD:

If we could work...

We could earn ...

And we could buy...

105
 RICE, YES, RICE.

Opo, Manang, bigas po! Rice, Manang!

MRS. HASPLENTY:

RICE, YES, RICE!

(The crowd takes it up like a cry.)

CROWD:

Rice, Manang, rice!

(MRS. HASPLENTY nods her head in solemn agreement, like a beautiful

doll.)

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

Mga kapitbahay, handa siyang tumulong. But she can help more if she
were a senator. Let us make her a senator.

(The crowd raises their hands to her in enthusiastic endorsement of this

106
wonderful plan. MRS. TAMALAMANG raises MANANG ENIANG'S hand in
triumphant sign and she screams hysterically at the crowd!)

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

Mabuhay si Senadora Eniang!

(The crowd shouts its riotous answer. MRS. HASPLENTY puts her free
arm about LUMEN, who looks up in adoration at the beautiful would-be-
senator.The photographer takes the picture. It includes, besides the crowd, the
miserable CLARO curled up on his miserable pallet.)

MRS. HASPLENTY:

(To LUMEN): This is really very little. Just a few gantas of rice and
several tins
of sardines. There's some corned beef, too.

(Peers into the box, takes out several tins so as to rapidly,

inventory what else there are. To herself):

Salvahe that boy of mine. I told him five gantas and this looks like a mere
three gantas. And I said 5 tins of sardines, and 5 tins of corned beef. Comorte na
naman.

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

107
 (Bends down to help EUGENIA inventory the box's contents.
Appeasingly):

Never mind, really, Eugenia. Lumen will be glad enough about what is
here.

(To LUMEN): Ano, Lumen, isn't this better than nothing?

LUMEN:

(Holding her skirts tighter around her as the children threaten to unskirt her
with their clinging.)

Naku, po! (Almost in tears): Naku, po, I don't even know what to say.
Thank you, oh thank you ...

MRS. HASPLENTY:

No, no, don't thank me. I should have been here sooner if Bibang here had
told me earlier. But you don't know how angry I am. That houseboy of mine has
snitched some of the rice and canned stuff I told him to put in this box. He's a
thief that's all. I'll dismiss him.

LUMEN:

108
 No, please, po, he may be another poor one like us. Anyway, there is
enough here.

(Gladness finally overcomes her timidity. She kneels down and thrusts her
hand into the little sack of rice and clenched her fists on the precious grain.)

Rice. Rice. (Looks up at MRS. HASPLENTY): Thank you, oh so many

times…

(The neighbors reach the group, exclaim among themselves about the box
of foodstuffs. LUMEN'S children even detach themselves from their mother's
skirt and shyly, unused to having anything to display, hold out the tins of sardines
and corned beef to the neighbors so they can see, until their mother motions to
desist.)

MRS. HASPLENTY:

(Looks around at the neighbors gathered and smiles at them. But she
wants to escape, and she nods to LUMEN):

Do not thank me yet. You want me to come back, don't you?

(Surreptitiously places some bills in LUMEN'S• hand on the pretext of

making LUMEN stand up from her kneeling. Whispering.)

109
 And here's something to buy a few things with.

(Turns away. Takes MRS. TAMALAMANG with her.)I really must go. I
have to see Inday Lilang yet. But Bibang here must tell me if you, Lumen, should
need anything in an emergency. I can always help, in a small way…

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

They have really no one else to go to but me, and I know no one can help
you.

(Turns to LUMEN):

Lumen, dahan-dahanin mo na 'yan, ha! If Claro still does not get well, come
to see me, hane. Or if he gets well, let me know that also. He will ask Manang
Eniang to give him a job.

MRS. HASPLENTY:

Paalam na sa inyong lahat. Thank you. Do not forget me for Senator.

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

Mabuhay si Manang Eniang! Mabuhay si Senadora Eniang!

(Exit MRS. HASPLENTY, MRS. TAMALAMANG.)

110
 (Lumen dumbly nods her head and watches as the two go off stage. The
neighbors surge to her.

One or two men help LUMEN lift the box just inside the barong-barong,
on to
the plank and beside CLARO.)

(The children speak to their father.)

ENING:

Itay, did you see? A lady all dressed up came and gave us food.

BOY:

And money, Itay. I saw her put some in the hands of Inay. I saw it.

CLARO:

(His voice half a whisper and a rasp):

Who was she? Can your mother, call her.

(LUMEN comes back to the barong-barong. The neighbors have made

111
their goodbyes, but lingeringly; LUMEN takes' out the tinned stuff, arranges them
at the foot of the papag floor. She smiles tremulously at the sick man.)

Who were they, mahal? Who were those good people?

LUMEN:

A friend of our landlady's, Mrs. Tamalamang. It seems her name is

Mrs.Hasplenty. Did you see her? Did you see her jewels? And her dress? You
should have smelled her. She smelled nice.

CLARO:

But why should she be so good to us?

LUMEN:

Who knows, mahal? She brought rice and tinned viands. She even put
some
money in my hand.

(Opens her hand clenched about the money.)

CLARO:

How much is there, mahal? You could buy yourself a dress.

112
 (Fondles LUMEN'S rags. His eyes are eloquent with despair.)

LUMEN:

Are you crazy?

(Feels under the pillows CLARO lies on. Pulls out a slip of paper. Shows
it to
CLARO, then folds it and gets up, hands futilely trying to pull her rags into
some
semblance of neatness.)

I can buy the medicine in the doctor's prescription, Claro. You know that?
(Scornfully.) A dress indeed!

CLARO:

But maybe there will be some money left over, Lumen.

LUMEN:
(Counts the money.) Why, there's all of ten pesos here, mahal.

CLARO:

113
 (Wistfully.) Perhaps you'll have something left over. When did we see ten
pesos last, dear heart?

(Turns to LUMEN):

Lumen, dahan-dahanin mo no ‘yan, ha! If Claro still does not get well,
come to see me, hane. Or if he gets well, let me know that also. He will ask
Manang Eniang to give him a job.

MRS. HASPLENTY:

Paalam na sa inyong lahat. Thank you. Do not forget me for Senator.

MRS. TAMALAMANG:

Mabuhay si Manang Eniang! Mabuhay s; Senadora Eniang!

(Exit MRS. HASPLENTY, MRS. TAMALAMANG.)

(Lumen dumbly nods her head and watches as the two go on stage. The
neighbors surge to her. One or two men help LUMEN lift the box just inside the
barong•barong, on to the plank and beside CLARO.)

(The children speak to their father.)

114
ENING:

Ifay, did you see? A lady all dressed up came and gave us food.

BOY:

And money, Itay. I saw her put some in the hands of Inay. I saw it.

CLARO:

(His voice half a whisper and a rasp):

Who was she? Can your mother, call her.

(LUMEN comes back to the barong.barong. The neighbors have made

their
goodbyes, but lingeringly; LUMEN takes’ out the tinned stuff, arranges them at
the foot of the papag floor. She smiles tremulously at the sick man.)

Who were they, mahal? Who were those good people?

LUMEN:

A friend of our landlady’s, Mrs. Tamalamang. It seems her name is Mrs.

115
Hasplenty. Did you see her? Did you see her jewels? and her dress? You should
have smelled her. She smelled so nice.

CLARO:

But why should she be so good to us?

LUMEN:

Who knows, maha/? She brought rice and tinned viands. She even put
some
money in my hand.

(Opens her hand clenched about the money.)

CLARO:

How much is there, mahal? You could buy yourself a dress.(Fondles

LUMEN’S rags. His eyes are eloquent with despair.)

LUMEN:

Are you crazy?

(Feels under the pillows CLARO lies on. Pulls out a slip of paper. Shows
it to
116
CLARO, then folds it and gets up, hands futilely trying to pull her rags into
some
semblance of neatness.)

I can buy the medicine in the doctor’s prescription, Caro. You

Know that? (Scornfully.) A dress indeed!

CLARO:

But maybe there will some money left over, Lumen.

LUMEN:

(Counts the money.) Why, there’s all of ten pesos here, mahal.

CLARO:

(Wistfully.) Perhaps you’ll have something left over. When did we see
ten pesos last, dear heart?

LUMEN:

Ten pesos. For want of it, we were driven out of the room we rented in
Paco. And Mrs. Tamalamang, for whom I washed told us to make use of this little
space. And it is from lying on ‘these boards so close to the ground that you have
117
this fever in your bones, Claro. I should asked that dressed-up lady to give us a
place to live, too. But I could not open my mouth.

CLARO:

I’m sorry I’m sick, my poor one late to be lying down while you make
yourself so thin with the washing you do. Oh Lumen perhaps if I just died, it
would be better. One less mouth to feed: and perhaps you could even get new
husband. A better partner.

LUMEN:
Hush your mouth! You dare to talk that way today, of all days, when we
have
food to eat. I’ll buy your medicine. You’ll get well. Things will get better,
you’ll see. I’ll
go. Here’s a’ stone.

(Picks up a stone from outside the barong-barong.)

Hit the walls when you need to call the children. Do not exert yourself.

(She fixes the pillows so CLARO will be more comfortable. Settles the
foodstuff to the end of the plank floor away from Claro so he can have a bit more
room.)

(To the children):

118
 Boy! Ening! .Don’t go too far from your father. He can not shout for you.
He’ll just bang the walls with a stone. (Demon-strates.) Do not make him exert
himself. Boy? Ening? .

BOY:

Opo, Inay.

(LUMEN goes off-stage.)

CLARO:

(He gets up from lying down a sitting position. He inches his way toward
the foot of the planking moving on his thin buttocks to do so. As he reaches the
box of tinned stuff, he reaches for other things placed on makeshift nails and
flanges on tin on the walls: a milk-can for measuring rice, a pencil stub, some
wrapping paper he flattens out to write on. He coughs in weakness and fatigue
with even these exertions. He reaches for sole other paper and smooth it out on
the planking, and on this improvised mat, he ekes out the rice in measures with
the tin cat, piling it in small equal piles, and to each he juxtaposes I can of viand.
The mat of paper is filled with these little piles of rice, and he counts them and
makes calculations of their number on his little piece of writing pad and his small
stub of a pencil. His frenzy with this work,' his preoccupation with it even, makes
him forget his cough' or his malaise yet his labored breathing is definitely
observable so that it is the observer who feels anxious for his state of health.)

(To himself):

119
 If we cook two cans a day for each meal, we can eat breakfast, lunch, and
supper for eight days. If we only boll rice for lunch and supper, this will last
twelve days. Maybe by that time I will be well and strong again. Enough to work.
(Rearranging his tins of viand and his mounds of rice.) But on the last days there
wouldn't be any viands to eat with the rice. Well, we've been hungry enough for
so long. Salt with the rice will be good enough.

(The two children enter and approach and gaze solemnly at him. By this
time CLARO is leaning against the shaky walls. His shortness of breath alarms
even himself.)

BOY:

What are you doing, Itay?

CLARO:

(Smiling at them wanly):I am counting the days of our eating. Look. Here
Is for today. And for tomorrow this. If we eat three times a day, this will last only
eight days. So breakfast, we won’t eat any rice.

ENING:

But we get so hungry, Itay

CLARO:
120
 If you don’t about so much, children, you won’t get so hungry.

ENING:
You only lie down, Iwy, but you eat too. You get hungry too.

CLARO:

I’m trying to get well, Ening, child. Then I can work and you can all eat
regularly again.

ENING:

And then perhaps buy ne a dress, Isay?

BOY:

Hungh! My clothes are even more tom than yours. But I don’t care, Ivy. I
only want you to get well.

CLARO:

(Turning his face to the wall to hide his tears.) Why do I have so be sick
anyhow? What business have the poor being sick?

(Beste his palms against his aching joints.)

121
 What right, even, have the bones of the poor to schel.

(Tries to rise and finds the effort completely beyond him. Beats at his
weak knees in despair.)

Stand, stand! Oh, knees a week! Stand!

(Sebe against the wall in a fit of hysterical despair. The children stare at
him and then tentatively pick at the mounds of rice, throwing some grains into
their mouths. The face of neighbor peeks in, looks at CLARO, waits for him to
notice him, then gestures at the children to desist from putting the new rice in
their mouths. Another neighbor drifts into the scene. A woman. Then, from
another corner of the stage, another neighbor, pregnant woman with a sickly-
looking baby on her hip. The CHILDREN word-lessly touch CLARO and
indicate the neighbors' presence CLARO wipes his tears away on the lower part
of his shirt and looks up at his neighbors, his tears still in his eyes.)

FIRST NEIGHBOR:

(Sitting down on planking, which creaks ominously with his weight so

that he hastily jumps up.)

Claro, are you crying?

CLARO:

I hate being sick. I hate having to see my children and my wife starve.
122
SECOND NEIGHBOR:

We really are all in despair, but we can not cry.

PREGNANT WOMAN:

Today, at least, you should not do any crying. You’re lucky. You have
these…
(indicates the mounds of rice and viands on paper mat.)

FIRST NEIGHBOR:

You can eat for sure today.

SECOND NEIGHBOR:

And tomorrow too, and the day after.

PREGNANT WOMAN:

We all give thanks when any one of us finds some Godsend.

CLARO:

(Slowly, because of his weakness, yet with a feeling of haste, his claw-like
123
fingers pet the mounds of rice together, and with the tin can be strives to put it all
back into the little sack. The tinned goods he also tries to put back into the box.
Then tremulously):

Thanks be to God indeed. Now I pray I'll be able to get up and work before
this small plenty is gone.

FIRST NEIGHBOR:

You know, Clan, that’s what we thought.

SECOND NEIGHBOR:

Yes, that you and we—we all know what hunger is.

PREGNANT WOMAN:

Most of the time we put out the very morsel we are of swallowing, because
our children must first be fed.

CLARO:
(Looking cornered and harassed.) These past few days, I have tried not to
eat at all because there was so little and my poor wife and children did not have
enough, even fee just themselves. But I grow so weak from the sickness and
hungering.

PREGNANT WOMAN:
124
 In my house, toe, it is that way. But when we hear that your children are
crying because they haven’t got even one mouthful at least, then we can not eat
but we must send a little food here to you.

CLARO:

Yes, yes, my good neighbors, I know if it hadn’t been for you, all of you,
yes, we would have starved, a , all of us, by now. Thanks be to you indeed.

FIRST NEIGHBOR:

The God is always kind. Just when one thinks there isn’t going to be any
of God’s mercy on earth, He sends evidence of it. Look at this windfall come your
way, like a jackpot, ha, friend, Claro?

SECOND NEIGHBOR:

And you having this, please therefore let me borrow a little for our own
cooking. We haven’t a grain in our own house today.

FIRST NEIGHBOR:

Claro, you remember how we all helped carry you home-that day when the
fever in your bones made you drop the water pipe you were carrying? Is dropped
right on your chest and we thought you were dead. But we took you home and
took you to bed and called a doctor for your troubled breath.

125
CLARO:

(Thoroughly harassed, cornered and set upon. He frenziedly tries to put

away at last all of the rice and the sins. Feverishly):

Please, please, wait for Lumen…

PREGNANT WOMAN:

(Shrewishly) We came to borrow some rice, a little each. But you sound as
though you don’t want to let us have any. If T were you, I would be happy to be
able to have my tum at fending my neighbors. Anyway, it is only rice we wish to
borrow.

SECOND NEIGHBOR:

Well, if I can have a tin of sardines too, I could put some mongo with it,
and we could have some hot soup. And I would bring you some, Claro. But if you
don’t want to…

CLARO:

I am not, please (sounding desperate), not ‘refusing. I wish you only, please,
to wait for my wife.

FIRST NEIGHBOR:

126
 Why, what will Lumen say? It is she herself who manages to always be
there when our own rice pot boils. She doesn’t object, but we know her need
and before she can ask, we always ladle out some for her. Knowing you are
sick. Wanting to help you.

SECOND NEIGHBOR:

And anyway, I need it now so I can cook it for supper. (Turning away.)
But if you want us to wait, that’s just as well as saying No. I’ll borrow the rice
somewhere else. But I’ll remember this, Claro.

CLARO:

(Sadly, angrily, helplessly): Wait. Please take the rice you need.

(As the neighbors eagerly approach the carton):

Take what you need. Take what you want.

(The neighbors each take their measure of rice. FIRST NEIGHBOR pats
several ties full into his gathered-up skirt. SECOND NEIGHBOR tears off a piece
of the paper mat to make a cornucopia into which she puts her own dole.
PREGNANT WOMAN has capacious pocket in her skirt, and she puts down the
child on her hip for a little while as she scoops out her own need, pouring the
measures into her pocket. When they go away, CLARO watches them at first,

127
then he takes the stone and hangs away at the tin walls with it. The boy comes to
him.)

BOY:

Yes, Itay? We don’t have rice anymore.

CLARO:

Anak! Hide this rice. Hide it. Quick.

BOY:

(Tugs at carton. Finds it too heavy for him. CLARO tries to help, but the
effort only produces a fit of coughing)

Where will I hide this, Itay? But I don’t think I can lift this box, say, and
you are no help at all.

CLARO:

Call your sister thes. Hurry. Where is your mother?BOY:

(Shouting out): Ening! Hooh! Ening!

ENING:
128
 Anu yon?

(Little girl comes on scene. Runs to them.)

ΒΟΥ:

Help me. Itay says we should hide this.

(The two children nag at the box. They can only succeed in pushing it down
the length of the plank flooring) Where can we hide this, Itay?

CLARO:

(Looks around. There is no place in his cramped quarters to hide anything.

He looks at the pillows he has been lying on. He drags himself back to that place
on the planking near the pillows. At the same time, he helps his children push the
box. He empties a pillow case of in pillow and hurriedly, frenziedly, places the
rice in the pillow case.)

Boy! Ening! Warn me if anyone approaches. I don’t want my one to know

where we hid this rice. Bring out the tins too. Put them among the rice. (Smooths
out pillow somehow, bulging unevenly with rice and sins.) Now, this leftover rice.
Range it here, where I will hide it with my body if I lie down.

(Children do as he tells them to. He lays the uncovered pillow over the tin
cans to the side. Now there seems no evidence of the rice and tinned goods. Claro

129
can be seen to have become desperately exhausted by all this effort. He gestures
to the children to put the carton back at his feet, he lies down slowly, desperately
tired, on his lumpy pillow and closes his eyes in exhaustion.

CHILDREN:

Aren’t we going to cook, Itay? We’re hungry. We’d like to eat some of
that canned stuff.

CLARO:

(Faintly.) Wait for your mother. She’ll be here soon. Watch for her.

CHILDREN:

Itay! Here she comes. We’ll go and meet her.(They tum to run, but the girl
notices the ghastly look on her father’s face and she pauses. She holds her
brother’s arm and he, too, looks at his father more closely.)

(Questioningly) Itay? Lay?

(CLARO does not answer. Slowly, perceptibly, his limbs straighten out
and his fingers unfles limply. His mouth drops open, and the boy shakes him.)

BOY:

130
 Itay, what is the matter? Itay!

(LUMEN enters. She glances quickly at CLARO and immediately feels his
forehead and his neck. Hurriedly, the woman looks at the medicines she has
brought, gets a glass of water, and wordlessly lifts her husband’s head and tries
to force him to drink the medicine. The man's lips are closed, and swallowing is
out of the question for him in his state. In wordless frenzy, LUMEN once more
tries to get him to open his lips and swallow. But it is no use. Finally she places
the little envelopes to one side, looks around for the rice, finds the carton empty,
quickly surmises that it is all hidden under CLARO’s head, and hurriedly draws
measure to cook. She gestures to BOY.)

LUMEN:

Boy, build a fire. And get your sister to wash the rice. We’ll cook some
broth for your father.

(Her fear and frenzy have communicated to the children and they go about
their tasks obediently. LUMEN CLARO’s limbs. She keeps shaking his head to
make him conscious of her. But his head lolls groggily on the lumpy willow. She
keeps massaging the thin limbs, the thin arms. As she does this, NEIGHBOR
peers in, watches her for a while until she notices him. She smiles a fleeting,
sickly smile at him, then goes back to her anxious, almost hysterical ministering
to her husband. NEIGHBOR goes away but soon comes back, bringing others
with him. Among them are our previous character. They stand around, help
LUMEN massage CLARO’s limbs. In the manner of ignorant folk they press at
his solar plexus. They catch at his heels and press at this cruelly. But CLARO

131
does not heed or return to consciousness.

(In the meanwhile, the children have built a fire and have a pot balling on
the
fireplace on the ground, three stones set apart to hold up a pot over flames.
(LUMEN has started to whimper with fear. The children blow at the fire. When
the neighbors help her massage CLARO’s limbs, she goes to the children, perhaps
thinking she can hurry up the rice cooking. This she tries to do, frantically trying
to make a bonfire of the cooking. She goes back to CLARO, touches his forehead,
and whimpers.)

His sweat is so cold.

(Wipes at CLARO’s forehead with the corner of a limp bandanna over

her shoulders.) I only went away to boy him medicines. I should have fed him
first.

NEIGHBOR:

(Whispering): Pahiram ng bigas.

LUMEN:

Help me Please help me. (Calling to her husband) Claro! What’s the
matter with you?...

ALING ETANG:
132
 Let me have the rice I wish to borrow. I want to cook it for supper.

LUMEN:

His head is pillowed on the rice. Please let’s not disturb him. As soon as
my gruel boils and I have fed him, I will bring the rice to you, Aling Etang. I’ll
give you a tin of sardines too. But don’t let us disturb him now.

(Other NEIGHBORS whisper among themselves. The pregnant woman

digs into the same capacious pocket, fishes out an assortment of things, including
a dirty towel with which she wipes her baby’s face, a length of string, a pair of
old baby shoes, finally a rosary. She gives it to an old woman among the
neighbors, who immediately lets CLARO clasp his inert fingers around the
crucifix. She kneels and gestures at the others to kneel, and they follow. LUMEN
has in the meanwhile gone to the pot on the boil, stirred it, and ladled out some
into two bowls she gives the children. A third portion she pours in and out of two
bowls to cool. Then she puts a little salt on it, stirs it, and turns to give it to
CLARO. She notices the women kneeling, and the crucifix that CLARO’s hands
are now curved around. She almost runs to CLARO. She kneels and shakes him
while with the other hand the holds the bowl of gruel.)

Claro! Claro! Are you foolish, indeed! Here is some gruel. Eat and you
will feel better. Claro! Here’s eating, and you’re sleeping. Claro!

(The woman who has pat the crucifix in CLARO’s hands pulls LUMEN
way. She turns up CLARO’s eyelids and shakes her head. She kneels down
again and loudly prays the prayers entrusting the departing spirit to God.)

133
PRAYER LEADER:

Jenus, Maria, y Josef!

NEIGHBORS:

(In antiphon): Jesus, Maria y Josef…LUMEN:

(Realizing the significance of the prayers, she puts her bowl of gruel beck
near the foot of the planking where CLARO’s feet cannot reach them. Unclasps
CLARO’s hands from around the crucifix.)

(Shouting at the kneeling neighbors.)

No! No! Stop that, all of you. Stop!

(Shouts into CLARO’s ears, shaking him slightly by the shoulders.)

Clarol Clare! Walke! They are thinking you’re dy… (She can not say the fatal
word.) Wake! Wake!

(The children are eating their gruel. They are so hungry they have forgotten
anything but the pleasure of eating the boy goes to the pot and ladles out some
more gruel into his bowl, as well as into the bowl his sister holds eagerly out to
him.)

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 (To the children.)

Boy! Ening! Shout it into your father’s ears. Tell him to wake. Tell him
how good the gruel is.

(Puled, the children pause in their eating. The old women’s praying
interposes into the pause.)

PRAYER LEADER:

Jenis Maria y Josef.

ANTIPHON:

Jesus Maria y Josef…

PRAYER LEADER:

Miserere nobis…

ANTIPHON:

Miserere nobis…

LUMEN:
135
 (Shakes CLARO more violently. Tums to the praying throng. Almost
pushes at
the old woman leading the prayers.).

No! I said No! Stop that praying. Claro! Carol

CHILDREN:

(Getting up but not abandoning their eager eating. Approaching their

mother, making their way through the kneeling throng, but bowls still in their
hands.)Why, Inay? Inay, what is the matter?

BOY:

Is Itay going to die, Inay?

ENING:

(Tearfully): Is Isay going to die?

(But even as they ask this question, they are still holding their bowls to
their lips, afraid to let any morsel of the soft rice pap go to waste. LUMEN keeps
shaking the prostrate men. NEIGHBORS keep up their lead and anti-phon
praying. In her frenzy, LUMEN’s shaking of the tired sick man has caused a tear
in the old pillow case and the rice trickles down. LUMEN finally stops. She looks
at the sick, thin frame and sits back on her haunches. As the neighbors keep up
136
their praying, LUMEN tenderly places her own thin hand against the gaunt,
hollow cheeks. She smooths the pillow under his head, realizes the lumps the tin
cans make. The rice trickles down. LUMEN watches it, then slowly picks the
grains in her hand. She whimpers like a sick dog as she looks at the rice in her
hand, then suddenly puts a thin arm across the still bosom of the man on the
planking floor, dislodging the crucifix as she does so.

(The NEIGHBORS, praying, touch her; she turns her head around to look
at them. She rights the ends curved thinly around the little crucifix. Then she lays
the little handful of rice in her hand on the now still chest. Suddenly, terrified, the
buries her head on the thin shoulders and walls.)

LUMEN:

Claro! (She raises her head to watch him and see if he will answer.)

Claro! (Half-whispering) May bigas tayo. (She remembers forgotten

nickname, whispers it like a sibilant demand: Clarito!)

(Suddenly, terribly, wails): Clar.o.of…

-SLOW CURTAIN

137
 THE DAY THE DANCERS CAME

by Bienvenido Santos

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.

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 “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
139
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.
l 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 sever 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 snow-filled 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
140
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.”

141
 “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 everyone 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 ands 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
142
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 don’t make sense to me,” Tony said. “But good luck, any way.”

143
 “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 has 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.
144
 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 invites 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
145
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
146
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 hand 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.
147
 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
148
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.
149
 “More 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 grave-yards 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, spend
money on them so that they would have something special to remember about us
150
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?”

“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 were 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.
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 “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.”
152
 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.

THEY SAY FILIPINA IS ANOTHER NAME FOR MAID

by Luisa A. Igloria

Our Overseas Contract Workers are the new heroes

of the Philippines --Fidel V. Ramos

In Hong Kong last summer

my office mate and I took
turns, smiling for pictures
in front of "The Court of Final
Appeal," as a joke, or maybe
in a kind of atonement--because
two women boarding the same
153
 ferry we took that morning said,
in the dialect they were sure
we would recognize, Is it
your day off too?

One of them had a quick, nervous way

of smiling, as if ready to take it back
if we had turned on them with
indignation. The other was clearly
ready to challenge, if the well-
intentioned expression of solidarity
were read otherwise. It was a day
filled with rainclouds, a sky
the color of aluminum, the dull
sheen on the inside of an old
rice cooker.

Yes, we smiled, it's our day, off

too. Is your amo kind? ventured the younger
of the two, shyly. Yes, we said, thinking of the air-
conditioned offices and computers we had left behind
for two weeks of r & r, as we leant back on the green
railing. The boat punched forward, toward the red
and yellow buildings, the rickshaws lined up
in the shade.

Mine too, she said; now. But the first one...

and her voice trailed like a scarf over the water,
hesitating. We had to force our way in,
said her friend, picking up the thread. I called
the center, you know, the one near the church?
Migrante. She was this close to being raped.
Did you hear about the last one? The one
who threw herself off the hospital roof?
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 Instead of an autopsy they scraped
her insides clean, stuffed her
with cotton. Now no one can
prove anything.

If the body can keep secrets, what can it tell

of them? The body as a scroll: what calligraphy,
what message, did that woman's family unwrap
when they received her body aerogrammed
in a bronze casket? For so many dollars,
you can get your name carved
in ideographs on an inked stamp
that is also called a chop.

The shy one asks me to braid her hair.

She calls me ate, older sister. She shows me
the scar on her left leg from shimmying
down a mango tree in their old backyard
at home. She has just turned nineteen,
and her smile can still be
warm as a ripe mango.

I run my fingers through the ink of her hair,

dividing into three sections. What was loose
and rippling in the wind, she has let me gather
in my hand. I braid, picking up the faint scent
of coconut oil; yeasty, warm, like good bread,
rising. She could be my daughter, my niece,
my cousin, my best friend.

Our new friends take us to the Central Station

where they will share a picnic meal
with others: garlic pork and rice, sour
broth, rice cakes, meat stewed in blood
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 gravy. They will talk, exchange
numbers, letters, news of better
openings, the meanings of insults
in a foreign language; pictures of grade
school children proudly stepping up
to receive medals on closing
day at school. Their hands
the size of their sleeping
quarters.

Even on their day off, the army

ponders the different ways
to share strength in the many
lands of the enemy, abroad
where they are known

DOG EATERS
by Randy David

ABS-CBN’s The Inside Story showed an episode on Filipino dog eaters

last Tuesday which left me wondering exactly why watching it became for my
family such an offensive experience. My children, typically liberal and modern,
are not normally squeamish about these things. But this time they were
screaming.

The camera shows a light brown native dog, not more than a year old,
wagging its tail – its half-open mouth a picture of trustful playfulness. A group
of young men, who do not look desperately starved, begin to surround the
dog. One of them winds its leash tightly around a post. The dog continues to
wag its tail while it scans the faces of the men.

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 Suddenly, a man, carrying what looks like a metal bar, steps into the
foreground and begins hitting the dog on the head. The dog struggles to get out
of the leash, while the man, sensing his prey might get away, continues to pound
its face with his weapon. The dog escapes, but its dash to freedom is quickly cut
short by the same group of men. Then the narrator calmly intones that the dog
had been somebody’s pet, but that the owner had given it or sold it to the dog
eaters.

The next scene shows the animal, now lifelessly hanging by its hind legs,
being singed by one of the men with a blow torch. The camera closes up on the
light brown fur as it is slowly scorched.

At this point, my children were totally distraught. One of them grabbed

the remote control and said “Enough!”. I think I saw Ms. Nita Lichauco, a
crusader for animal welfare, speaking. I am sure whatever she said was used by
the producers of the show to draw public condemnation for dog eating and its
attendant cruelty to an animal that most of the world regards as a pet.

The Inside Story and its multi-awarded host Loren Legarda have usually
taken a politically correct stand on many sensitive issues. They will likely justify
this episode as an attempt precisely to jolt the viewing public into taking note
of this common savagery and examining it in the light of higher values.
Not too long ago, a documentary shown on cable television featured the trade on
dog meat in Thailand. It is a valid and attractive subject – one that never fails to
persuade western viewers about the general meanness of life in the Orient. But,
it is a subject that is approached with great care precisely because of the
heightened danger of offending the sensibilities of viewers.

That documentary showed dogs in crowded cages, some of them still

wearing tags identifying them as some family’s pet. The camera quickly pans
this sordid scene and stays with some of the dogs just long enough to show their
owners’ tags. There are no clips of the actual slaughter, no blood, no faces of
gleeful or hungry men going after their prey. Perhaps the most potentially
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offensive shot was that of flesh being dried in the sun. But the camera never
dwells on gore. It zeroes in instead on the speech of the men who engage in it as
an occupation.

But Loren’s show was something else. It showed the brutalization of an

animal in such a manner that one is tempted to ask whether the man behind the
camera was enjoying it or whether the journalist who accompanied him ever felt
any compulsion at any point to intervene on behalf of the dog. Or, could the
entire scene have been staged precisely so that it could be filmed?

Situations like these involve judgment calls – decisions that require of the
reporter of human events the exercise of utmost discernment. The camera, in this
sense, is not the neutral eye that it is often thought to be. It chooses what to see
and how to see. The relationship between the camera and the viewer therefore is
essentially one of trust.

The viewer is defenseless before a predatory camera that is mounted upon

the base of his unexamined drives and passions. A responsible camera protects
its viewer: it allows for the play of his reason. It sensitizes him to the meanness
of everyday life to which we all contribute in unsuspecting ways; but it doesn’t
numb him.

The dog eaters episode is only the latest expression of what I feel is
becoming an accepted trend on Philippine television: the visual feasting on the
deviant, the esoteric, the physically and mentally disfigured, the deranged, and
the anthropologically-strange. That is why we are among the remaining countries
in the world that still feature in the early evening news burnt and mangled human
bodies, headless corpses, psychopaths in the grip of their personal demons,
sociopaths numbed by drugs.

Over the past week, television has tried to diagnose what ails Jonathan
Galora, a young man who beheaded his own mother, repeatedly stabbed his own
sister, and chopped the household’s cat and dog. It is one family’s tragedy that
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is difficult to comprehend. Jonathan has sought refuge in the inaccessible layers
of his psyche, where, mercifully, television cannot reach him.

But his family has been unable to protect him from the peering eye of the
camera. Television just would not let him be even in his solitary cell at the
Valenzuela jail. It surveys his distant and angry eyes, and records its own concept
of what a madman is like. Is this journalism?

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