Short Stories

SCENT OF APPLES know that much about American women, except that they looked friendly, but
differences or similarities in inner qualities such as naturally belonged to the
by Bienvenido Santos heart or to the mind, I could only speak about with vagueness.

While I was trying to explain away the fact that it was not easy to make
I arrived in Kalamazoo it was October and the war was still on. Gold and silver comparisons, a man rose from the rear of the hall, wanting to say something. In
stars hung on pennants above silent windows of white and brick-red cottages. In the distance, he looked slight and old and very brown. Even before he spoke, I
a backyard an old man burned leaves and twigs while a gray-haired woman sat knew that he was, like me, a Filipino.
on the porch, her red hands quiet on her lap, watching the smoke rising above "I'm a Filipino," he began, loud and clear, in a voice that seemed used to wide
the elms, both of them thinking the same thought perhaps, about a tall, grinning open spaces, "I'm just a Filipino farmer out in the country." He waved his hand
boy with his blue eyes and flying hair, who went out to war: where could he be toward the door. "I left the Philippines more than twenty years ago and have
now this month when leaves were turning into gold and the fragrance of never been back. Never will perhaps. I want to find out, sir, are our Filipino
gathered apples was in the wind? women the same like they were twenty years ago?"
It was a cold night when I left my room at the hotel for a usual speaking As he sat down, the hall filled with voices, hushed and intrigued. I weighed my
engagement. I walked but a little way. A heavy wind coming up from Lake answer carefully. I did not want to tell a lie yet I did not want to say anything
Michigan was icy on the face. If felt like winter straying early in the northern that would seem platitudinous, insincere. But more important than these
woodlands. Under the lampposts the leaves shone like bronze. And they rolled considerations, it seemed to me that moment as I looked towards my
on the pavements like the ghost feet of a thousand autumns long dead, long countryman, I must give him an answer that would not make him so unhappy.
before the boys left for faraway lands without great icy winds and promise of Surely, all these years, he must have held on to certain ideals, certain beliefs,
winter early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold! even illusions peculiar to the exile.
It was the same night I met Celestino Fabia, "just a Filipino farmer" as he called "First," I said as the voices gradually died down and every eye seemed upon me,
himself, who had a farm about thirty miles east of Kalamazoo. "First, tell me what our women were like twenty years ago."
"You came all that way on a night like this just to hear me talk?" The man stood to answer. "Yes," he said, "you're too young . . . Twenty years
"I've seen no Filipino for so many years now," he answered quickly. "So when I ago our women were nice, they were modest, they wore their hair long, they
saw your name in the papers where it says you come from the Islands and that dressed proper and went for no monkey business. They were natural, they went
you're going to talk, I come right away." to church regular, and they were faithful." He had spoken slowly, and now in
what seemed like an afterthought, added, "It's the men who ain't."
Earlier that night I had addressed a college crowd, mostly women. It appeared
they wanted me to talk about my country, they wanted me to tell them things Now I knew what I was going to say.
about it because my country had become a lost country. Everywhere in the land "Well," I began, "it will interest you to know that our women have changed--but
the enemy stalked. Over it a great silence hung, and their boys were there, definitely! The change, however, has been on the outside only. Inside, here,"
unheard from, or they were on their way to some little known island on the pointing to the heart, "they are the same as they were twenty years ago. God-
Pacific, young boys all, hardly men, thinking of harvest moons and the smell of fearing, faithful, modest, and nice."
forest fire.
The man was visibly moved. "I'm very happy, sir," he said, in the manner of one
It was not hard talking about our own people. I knew them well and I loved who, having stakes on the land, had found no cause to regret one's sentimental
them. And they seemed so far away during those terrible years that I must have investment.
spoken of them with a little fervor, a little nostalgia.
After this, everything that was said and done in that hall that night seemed like
In the open forum that followed, the audience wanted to know whether there an anti-climax, and later, as we walked outside, he gave me his name and told
was much difference between our women and the American women. I tried to me of his farm thirty miles east of the city.
answer the question as best I could, saying, among other things, that I did not
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We had stopped at the main entrance to the hotel lobby. We had not talked very says to her, I'm bringing you a first class Filipino, and she says, aw, go away,
much on the way. As a matter of fact, we were never alone. Kindly American quit kidding, there's no such thing as first class Filipino. But Roger, that's my
friends talked to us, asked us questions, said goodnight. So now I asked him boy, he believed me immediately. What he is like, daddy, he asks. Oh, you will
whether he cared to step into the lobby with me and talk. see, I says, he's first class. Like you daddy? No, no, I laugh at him, your daddy
ain't first class. Aw, but you are, daddy, he says. So you can see what a nice boy
"No, thank you," he said, "you are tired. And I don't want to stay out too late." he is, so innocent. Then Ruth starts griping about the house, but the house is a
"Yes, you live very far." mess, she says. True it's a mess, it's always a mess, but you don't mind, do you?
We're poor folks, you know.
"I got a car," he said, "besides . . . "
The trip seemed interminable. We passed through narrow lanes and disappeared
Now he smiled, he truly smiled. All night I had been watching his face and I into thickets, and came out on barren land overgrown with weeds in places. All
wondered when he was going to smile. around were dead leaves and dry earth. In the distance were apple trees.
"Will you do me a favor, please," he continued smiling almost sweetly. "I want "Aren't those apple trees?" I asked wanting to be sure.
you to have dinner with my family out in the country. I'd call for you tomorrow
afternoon, then drive you back. Will that be alright?" "Yes, those are apple trees," he replied. "Do you like apples? I got lots of 'em. I
got an apple orchard, I'll show you."
"Of course," I said. "I'd love to meet your family." I was leaving Kalamazoo for
Muncie, Indiana, in two days. There was plenty of time. All the beauty of the afternoon seemed in the distance, on the hills, in the dull
soft sky.
"You will make my wife very happy," he said.
"Those trees are beautiful on the hills," I said.
"You flatter me."
"Autumn's a lovely season. The trees are getting ready to die, and they show
"Honest. She'll be very happy. Ruth is a country girl and hasn't met many their colors, proud-like."
Filipinos. I mean Filipinos younger than I, cleaner looking. We're just poor
farmer folk, you know, and we don't get to town very often. Roger, that's my "No such thing in our own country," I said.
boy, he goes to school in town. A bus takes him early in the morning and he's That remark seemed unkind, I realized later. It touched him off on a long
back in the afternoon. He's nice boy." deserted tangent, but ever there perhaps. How many times did lonely mind take
"I bet he is," I agreed. "I've seen the children of some of the boys by their unpleasant detours away from the familiar winding lanes towards home for fear
American wives and the boys are tall, taller than their father, and very good of this, the remembered hurt, the long lost youth, the grim shadows of the years;
looking." how many times indeed, only the exile knows.

"Roger, he'd be tall. You'll like him." It was a rugged road we were traveling and the car made so much noise that I
could not hear everything he said, but I understood him. He was telling his story
Then he said goodbye and I waved to him as he disappearedin the darkness. for the first time in many years. He was remembering his own youth. He was
thinking of home. In these odd moments there seemed no cause for fear no cause
The next day he came, at about three in the afternoon. There was a mild,
at all, no pain. That would come later. In the night perhaps. Or lonely on the
ineffectual sun shining, and it was not too cold. He was wearing an old brown
farm under the apple trees.
tweed jacket and worstedtrousers to match. His shoes were polished, and
although the green of his tie seemed faded, a colored shirt hardly accentuated it. In this old Visayan town, the streets are narrow and dirty and strewn with coral
He looked younger than he appeared the night before now that he was clean shells. You have been there? You could not have missed our house, it was the
shaven and seemed ready to go to a party. He was grinning as we met. biggest in town, one of the oldest, ours was a big family. The house stood right
on the edge of the street. A door opened heavily and you enter a dark hall
"Oh, Ruth can't believe it," he kept repeating as he led me to his car--a
leading to the stairs. There is the smell of chickens roosting on the low-topped
nondescript thing in faded black that had known better days and many hands. "I
walls, there is the familiar sound they make and you grope your way up a
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massive staircase, the bannisters smooth upon the trembling hand. Such nights, Ruth got busy with the drinks. She kept coming in and out of a rear room that
they are no better than the days, windows are closed against the sun; they close must have been the kitchen and soon the table was heavy with food, fried
heavily. chicken legs and rice, and green peas and corn on the ear. Even as we ate, Ruth
kept standing, and going to the kitchen for more food. Roger ate like a little
Mother sits in her corner looking very white and sick. This was her world, her gentleman.
domain. In all these years, I cannot remember the sound of her voice. Father was
different. He moved about. He shouted. He ranted. He lived in the past and "Isn't he nice looking?" his father asked.
talked of honor as though it were the only thing.
"You are a handsome boy, Roger," I said.
I was born in that house. I grew up there into a pampered brat. I was mean. One
day I broke their hearts. I saw mother cry wordlessly as father heaped his curses The boy smiled at me. You look like Daddy," he said.
upon me and drove me out of the house, the gate closing heavily after me. And Afterwards I noticed an old picture leaning on the top of a dresser and stood to
my brothers and sisters took up my father's hate for me and multiplied it pick it up. It was yellow and soiled with many fingerings. The faded figure of a
numberless times in their own broken hearts. I was no good. woman in Philippine dress could yet be distinguished although the face had
But sometimes, you know, I miss that house, the roosting chickens on the low- become a blur.
topped walls. I miss my brothers and sisters, Mother sitting in her chair, looking "Your . . . " I began.
like a pale ghost in a corner of the room. I would remember the great live posts,
massive tree trunks from the forests. Leafy plants grew on the sides, buds "I don't know who she is," Fabia hastened to say. "I picked that picture many
pointing downwards, wilted and died before they could become flowers. As they years ago in a room on La Salle street in Chicago. I have often wondered who
fell on the floor, father bent to pick them and throw them out into the coral she is."
streets. His hands were strong. I have kissed these hands . . . many times, many
"The face wasn't a blur in the beginning?"
times.
"Oh, no. It was a young face and good."
Finally we rounded a deep curve and suddenly came upon a shanty, all but ready
to crumble in a heap on the ground, its plastered walls were rotting away, the Ruth came with a plate full of apples.
floor was hardly a foot from the ground. I thought of the cottages of the poor
colored folk in the south, the hovels of the poor everywhere in the land. This one "Ah," I cried, picking out a ripe one. "I've been thinking where all the scent of
stood all by itself as though by common consent all the folk that used to live apples came from. The room is full of it."
here had decided to say away, despising it, ashamed of it. Even the lovely season
"I'll show you," said Fabia.
could not color it with beauty.
He showed me a backroom, not very big. It was half-full of apples.
A dog barked loudly as we approached. A fat blonde woman stood at the door
with a little boy by her side. Roger seemed newly scrubbed. He hardly took his "Every day," he explained, "I take some of them to town to sell to the groceries.
eyes off me. Ruth had a clean apron around her shapeless waist. Now as she Prices have been low. I've been losing on the trips."
shook my hands in sincere delight I noticed shamefacedly (that I should notice)
how rough her hands were, how coarse and red with labor, how ugly! She was "These apples will spoil," I said.
no longer young and her smile was pathetic.
"We'll feed them to the pigs."
As we stepped inside and the door closed behind us, immediately I was aware of
Then he showed me around the farm. It was twilight now and the apple trees
the familiar scent of apples. The room was bare except for a few ancient pieces
stood bare against a glowing western sky. In apple blossom time it must be
of second-hand furniture. In the middle of the room stood a stove to keep the
lovely here. But what about wintertime?
family warm in winter. The walls were bare. Over the dining table hung a lamp
yet unlighted. One day, according to Fabia, a few years ago, before Roger was born, he had an
attack of acute appendicitis. It was deep winter. The snow lay heavy
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everywhere. Ruth was pregnant and none too well herself. At first she did not "No," he said softly, sounding very much defeated but brave, "Thanks a lot. But,
know what to do. She bundled him in warm clothing and put him on a cot near you see, nobody would remember me now."
the stove. She shoveled the snow from their front door and practically carried
the suffering man on her shoulders, dragging him through the newly made path Then he started the car, and as it moved away, he waved his hand.
towards the road where they waited for the U.S. Mail car to pass. Meanwhile "Goodbye," I said, waving back into the darkness. And suddenly the night was
snowflakes poured all over them and she kept rubbing the man's arms and legs cold like winter straying early in these northern woodlands.
as she herself nearly froze to death.
I hurried inside. There was a train the next morning that left for Muncie, Indiana,
"Go back to the house, Ruth!" her husband cried, "you'll freeze to death." at a quarter after eight.
But she clung to him wordlessly. Even as she massaged his arms and legs, her
tears rolled down her cheeks. "I won't leave you," she repeated.
__________________________________________________
Finally the U.S. Mail car arrived. The mailman, who knew them well, helped
them board the car, and, without stopping on his usual route, took the sick man FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH
and his wife direct to the nearest hospital.
by Jose Garcia Villa
Ruth stayed in the hospital with Fabia. She slept in a corridor outside the
patients' ward and in the day time helped in scrubbing the floor and washing the
dishes and cleaning the men's things. They didn't have enough money and Ruth The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would
was willing to work like a slave. tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao
from the plow, and let it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it,
"Ruth's a nice girl," said Fabia, "like our own Filipino women."
but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of serious import as it
Before nightfall, he took me back to the hotel. Ruth and Roger stood at the door would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a
holding hands and smiling at me. From inside the room of the shanty, a low light thought came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent
flickered. I had a last glimpse of the apple trees in the orchard under the hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from
darkened sky as Fabia backed up the car. And soon we were on our way back to his mother, Dodong’s grandmother.
town. The dog had started barking. We could hear it for some time, until finally,
I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.
we could not hear it anymore, and all was darkness around us, except where the
headlamps revealed a stretch of road leading somewhere. The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish
earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then
Fabia did not talk this time. I didn't seem to have anything to say myself. But
burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to
when finally we came to the hotel and I got down, Fabia said, "Well, I guess I
Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his
won't be seeing you again."
foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell,
It was dimly lighted in front of the hotel and I could hardly see Fabia's face. but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any
Without getting off the car, he moved to where I had sat, and I saw him extend more.
his hand. I gripped it.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The
"Tell Ruth and Roger," I said, "I love them." beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a
slight push and the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles
He dropped my hand quickly. "They'll be waiting for me now," he said. of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without
"Look," I said, not knowing why I said it, "one of these days, very soon, I hope, interests.
I'll be going home. I could go to your town." Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father.
He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face,
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the down on his upper lip already was dark–these meant he was no longer a boy. Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There
He was growing into a man–he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the it was out, what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking.
thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man He had said it without any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong
grown, Dodong felt he could do anything. felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside
shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone father. His father looked old now.
bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the
hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you “I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.
dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and
small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The
made him dream even during the day. silence became intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that
troublous tooth again. Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.
field work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly.
He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek. “I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”

Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his
kundiman shorts, on the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, seat.
and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched “I asked her last night to marry me and she said…yes. I want your permission.
homeward again. The bath made him feel cool. I… want… it….” There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already this coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked
was lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke dully the night
and he sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water stillness.
fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar. “Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were Dodong resented his father’s questions; his father himself had married. Dodong
overripe and when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke made a quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got
off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got confused.
another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder
for his parents. “You are very young, Dodong.”

Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to “I’m… seventeen.”
the batalan to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong
“That’s very young to get married at.”
wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He
wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the “I… I want to marry…Teang’s a good girl.”
housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
“Tell your mother,” his father said.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him
again, Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town “You tell her, tatay.”
dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to
“Dodong, you tell your inay.”
Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he
had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any “You tell her.”
bolder than his father.
“All right, Dodong.”

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“You will let me marry Teang?” “Dodong, you come up. You come up,” he mother said.

“Son, if that is your wish… of course…” There was a strange helpless light in Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.
his father’s eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.
“Dodong. Dodong.”
Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for
his father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then “I’ll… come up.”
he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream…. Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided
camiseta was damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face.
mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest
out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted
had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid somebody to punish him.
also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.
chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed to be
rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really “Son,” his father said.
painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.
And his mother: “Dodong…”
In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word
How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.
with awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting
himself of nine months comfortable… “Your son,” people would soon be telling “Teang?” Dodong said.
him. “Your son, Dodong.”
“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”
Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close
together. He looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children… What His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife,
made him think that? What was the matter with him? God! asleep on the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her
to look that pale.
He heard his mother’s voice from the house:
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched
“Come up, Dodong. It is over.” her lips, but again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his
parents he did not want to be demonstrative.
Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was
ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced
had taken something no properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust him queerly. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
dirt off his kundiman shorts.
“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.
“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”
Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive
He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother. years a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they
came. It seemed the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry
“It is a boy,” his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
with himself sometimes.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was
parents’ eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp.
shapeless and thin now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to
He wanted to hide from them, to run away. be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes,
wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to
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dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the
loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, yard, where everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.
and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio
had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless until “You want to marry Tona,” Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet.
now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard…
children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong… “Yes.”
Dodong whom life had made ugly. “Must you marry?”
One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood Blas’s voice stilled with resentment. “I will marry Tona.”
in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody
to answer him. He w anted to be wise about many things. Dodong kept silent, hurt.

One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be “You have objections, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.
so. Why one was forsaken… after Love.
“Son… n-none…” (But truly, God, I don’t want Blas to marry yet… not yet. I
Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. don’t want Blas to marry yet….)
It must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet.
But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph… now.
Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had
Love must triumph… now. Afterwards… it will be life.
wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.
As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then Life.
When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It
was late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely
Blas’s steps, for he could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in sad and sorry for him.
the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep.
Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not
sleep.
__________________________________________________
“You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said.
THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering
by Nick Joaquin
voice.

Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

THE MORETAS were spending St. John’s Day with the children’s grandfather,
“Itay …,” Blas called softly.
whose feast day it was. Doña Lupeng awoke feeling faint with the heat, a sound
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was. 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
“I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.” at once.
Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving. “How long you have slept, Mama!”
“Itay, you think it over.” “We thought you were never getting up!”
Dodong lay silent. “Do we leave at once, huh? Are we going now?”
“I love Tona and… I want her.”

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“Hush, hush I implore you! Now look: your father has a headache, and so have woman on the bed, in whose nakedness she seemed so to participate that she was
I. So be quiet this instant—or no one goes to Grandfather.” ashamed to look directly at the man in the doorway.

Though it was only seven by the clock the house was already a furnace, the “Tell me, Entoy: has she had been to the Tadtarin?”
windows dilating with the harsh light and the air already burning with the
immense, intense fever of noon. “Yes, señora. Last night.”

She found the children’s nurse working in the kitchen. “And why is it you who “But I forbade her to go! And I forbade you to let her go!”
are preparing breakfast? Where is Amada?” But without waiting for an answer “I could do nothing.”
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, “Why, you beat her at the least pretext!”
grasping her skirts, hurried across the yard.
“But now I dare not touch her.”
In the stables Entoy, the driver, apparently deaf to the screams, was hitching the
“Oh, and why not?”
pair of piebald ponies to the coach.
“It is the day of St. John: the spirit is in her.”
“Not the closed coach, Entoy! The open carriage!” shouted Doña Lupeng as she
came up. “But, man—“
“But the dust, señora—“ “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
“I know, but better to be dirty than to be boiled alive. And what ails your wife,
rivers would give no fish, and the animals would die.”
eh? Have you been beating her again?”
“Naku, I did not know your wife was so powerful, Entoy.”
“Oh no, señora: I have not touched her.”
“At such times she is not my wife: she is the wife of the river, she is the wife of
“Then why is she screaming? Is she ill?”
the crocodile, she is the wife of the moon.”
“I do not think so. But how do I know? You can go and see for yourself, señora.
She is up there.”
“BUT HOW CAN they still believe such things?” demanded Doña Lupeng of
When Doña Lupeng entered the room, the big half-naked woman sprawled
her husband as they drove in the open carriage through the pastoral countryside
across the bamboo bed stopped screaming. Doña Lupeng was shocked.
that was the arrabal of Paco in the 1850’s.
“What is this Amada? Why are you still in bed at this hour? And in such a
Don Paeng darted a sidelong glance at his wife, by which he intimated that the
posture! Come, get up at once. You should be ashamed!”
subject was not a proper one for the children, who were sitting opposite, facing
But the woman on the bed merely stared. Her sweat-beaded brows contracted, as their parents.
if in an effort to understand. Then her face relax her mouth sagged open
Don Paeng, drowsily stroking his moustaches, his eyes closed against the hot
humorously and, rolling over on her back and spreading out her big soft arms
light, merely shrugged.
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 “And you should have seen that Entoy,” continued his wife. “You know how the
dribbled from the corners of her mouth. 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
Doña Lupeng blushed, looking around helplessly, and seeing that Entoy had
in awe of her, do you know—actually afraid of her!”
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

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“Oh, look, boys—here comes the St. John!” cried Doña Lupeng, and she sprang morning’s scene at the stables: Amada naked and screaming in bed while from
up in the swaying carriage, propping one hand on her husband’s shoulder while the doorway her lord and master looked on in meek silence. And was it not the
the other she held up her silk parasol. mystery of a woman in her flowers that had restored the tongue of that old
Hebrew prophet?
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 “Look, Lupeng, they have all passed now,” Don Paeng was saying, “Do you
river-water came running across the hot woods and fields and meadows, mean to stand all the way?”
brandishing cans of water, wetting each other uproariously, and shouting San
Juan! San Juan! as they ran to meet the procession. She looked around in surprise and hastily sat down. The children tittered, and
the carriage started.
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 “Has the heat gone to your head, woman?” asked Don Paeng, smiling. The
trousers were carrying aloft an image of the Precursor. Their teeth flashed white children burst frankly into laughter.
in their laughing faces and their hot bodies glowed crimson as they pranced past, Their mother colored and hung her head. She was beginning to feel ashamed of
shrouded in fiery dust, singing and shouting and waving their arms: the St. John the thoughts that had filled her mind. They seemed improper—almost obscene—
riding swiftly above the sea of dark heads and glittering in the noon sun—a fine, and the discovery of such depths of wickedness in herself appalled her. She
blonde, heroic St. John: very male, very arrogant: the Lord of Summer indeed; moved closer to her husband to share the parasol with him.
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 “And did you see our young cousin Guido?” he asked.
reared and roared and the merciless fires came raining down form the skies—the
“Oh, was he in that crowd?”
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 “A European education does not seem to have spoiled his taste for country
muddy cassocks vainly intoned the hymn of the noon god: pleasures.”
That we, thy servants, in chorus “I did not see him.”
May praise thee, our tongues restore us… “He waved and waved.”
But Doña Lupeng, standing in the stopped carriage, looking very young and “The poor boy. He will feel hurt. But truly, Paeng. I did not see him.”
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 “Well, that is always a woman’s privilege.”
rose all about her—wave upon wave of it—enveloping her, assaulting her
senses, till she felt faint with it and pressed a handkerchief to her nose. And as
she glanced at her husband and saw with what a smug smile he was watching the BUT WHEN THAT afternoon, at the grandfather’s, the young Guido presented
revelers, her annoyance deepened. When he bade her sit down because all eyes himself, properly attired and brushed and scented, Doña Lupeng was so
were turned on her, she pretended not to hear; stood up even straighter, as if to charming and gracious with him that he was enchanted and gazed after her all
defy those rude creatures flaunting their manhood in the sun. afternoon with enamored eyes.
And she wondered peevishly what the braggarts were being so cocky about? For This was the time when our young men were all going to Europe and bringing
this arrogance, this pride, this bluff male health of theirs was (she told herself) back with them, not the Age of Victoria, but the Age of Byron. The young
founded on the impregnable virtue of generations of good women. The boobies Guido knew nothing of Darwin and evolution; he knew everything about
were so sure of themselves because they had always been sure of their wives. Napoleon and the Revolution. When Doña Lupeng expressed surprise at his
“All the sisters being virtuous, all the brothers are brave,” thought Doña Lupeng, presence that morning in the St. John’s crowd, he laughed in her face.
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
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“But I adore these old fiestas of ours! They are so romantic! Last night, do you “How sharp you are! Oh, I made such love to a toothless old hag there that she
know, we walked all the way through the woods, I and some boys, to see the pulled off her stocking for me. And I pulled it on, over my arm, like a glove.
procession of the Tadtarin.” How your husband would have despised me!”

“And was that romantic too?” asked Doña Lupeng. “But what on earth does it mean?”

“It was weird. It made my flesh crawl. All those women in such a mystic frenzy! “I think it is to remind us men that once upon a time you women were supreme
And she who was the Tadtarin last night—she was a figure right out of a and we men were the slaves.”
flamenco!”
“But surely there have always been kings?”
“I fear to disenchant you, Guido—but that woman happens to be our cook.”
“Oh, no. The queen came before the king, and the priestess before the priest, and
“She is beautiful.” the moon before the sun.”

“Our Amada beautiful? But she is old and fat!” “The moon?”

“She is beautiful—as that old tree you are leaning on is beautiful,” calmly “—who is the Lord of the women.”
insisted the young man, mocking her with his eyes.
“Why?”
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 “Because the tides of women, like the tides of the sea, are tides of the moon.
flat on his belly, gazing up at her, his face moist with sweat. The children were Because the first blood -But what is the matter, Lupe? Oh, have I offended
chasing dragonflies. The sun stood still in the west. The long day refused to end. you?”
From the house came the sudden roaring laughter of the men playing cards. “Is this how they talk to decent women in Europe?”
“Beautiful! Romantic! Adorable! Are those the only words you learned in “They do not talk to women, they pray to them—as men did in the dawn of the
Europe?” cried Doña Lupeng, feeling very annoyed with this young man whose world.”
eyes adored her one moment and mocked her the next.
“Oh, you are mad! mad!”
“Ah, I also learned to open my eyes over there—to see the holiness and the
mystery of what is vulgar.” “Why are you so afraid, Lupe?”

“And what is so holy and mysterious about—about the Tadtarin, for instance?” “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 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 “I remember that you are a woman, yes. A beautiful woman. And why not? Did
the female.” 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
“But they are in honor of St. John.” what you are—just because you are married?”
“What has your St. John to do with them? Those women worship a more ancient “Ah, this is too much now!” cried Doña Lupeng, and she rose to her feet.
lord. Why, do you know that no man may join those rites unless he first puts on
some article of women’s apparel and—“ “Do not go, I implore you! Have pity on me!”

“And what did you put on, Guido?” “No more of your comedy, Guido! And besides—where have those children
gone to! I must go after them.”

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As she lifted her skirts to walk away, the young man, propping up his elbows, “There is no one, they have all gone to see the Tadtarin.”
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 “A pack of loafers we are feeding!”
shudder. She backed away slowly, still staring; then turned and fled toward the She had risen and gone to the window. He approached and stood behind her,
house. 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.

ON THE WAY home that evening Don Paeng noticed that his wife was in a “Listen, Paeng. I want to see it, too. The Tadtarin, I mean. I have not seen it
mood. They were alone in the carriage: the children were staying overnight at since I was a little girl. And tonight is the last night.”
their grandfather’s. The heat had not subsided. It was heat without gradations: “You must be crazy! Only low people go there. And I thought you had a
that knew no twilights and no dawns; that was still there, after the sun had set; headache?” He was still sulking.
that would be there already, before the sun had risen.
“But I want to go! My head aches worse in the house. For a favor, Paeng.”
“Has young Guido been annoying you?” asked Don Paeng.
“I told you: No! go and take those clothes off. But, woman, whatever has got
“Yes! All afternoon.” into you!” he strode off to the table, opened the box of cigars, took one, banged
“These young men today—what a disgrace they are! I felt embarrassed as a man the lid shut, bit off an end of the cigar, and glared about for a light.
to see him following you about with those eyes of a whipped dog.” She was still standing by the window and her chin was up.
She glanced at him coldly. “And was that all you felt, Paeng? Embarrassed — as “Very well, if you do want to come, do not come—but I am going.”
a man?”
“I warn you, Lupe; do not provoke me!”
“A good husband has constant confidence in the good sense of his wife,” he
pronounced grandly, and smiled at her. “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 she drew away; huddled herself in the other corner. “He kissed my feet,” she
told him disdainfully, her eyes on his face. 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 frowned and made a gesture of distaste. “Do you see? They have the He sighed, smiled ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders.
instincts, the style of the canalla! To kiss a woman’s feet, to follow her like a
dog, to adore her like a slave –” “Yes, the heat ahs touched you in the head, Lupeng. And since you are so set on
it—very well, let us go. Come, have the coach ordered!”
“Is it so shameful for a man to adore women?”

“A gentleman loves and respects Woman. The cads and lunatics—they ‘adore’
the women.” 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
“But maybe we do not want to be loved and respected—but to be adored.” procession; on the second, a mature woman; and on the third, a very old woman
But when they reached home she did not lie down but wandered listlessly who dies and comes to life again. In these processions, as in those of Pakil and
through the empty house. When Don Paeng, having bathed and changed, came Obando, everyone dances.
down from the bedroom, he found her in the dark parlour seated at the harp and Around the tiny plaza in front of the barrio chapel, quite a stream of carriages
plucking out a tune, still in her white frock and shoes. was flowing leisurely. The Moretas were constantly being hailed from the other
“How can you bear those hot clothes, Lupeng? And why the darkness? Order vehicles. The plaza itself and the sidewalks were filled with chattering, strolling,
someone to bring light in here.” profusely sweating people. More people were crowded on the balconies and

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windows of the houses. The moon had not yet risen; the black night smoldered; and began dancing again—laughing and dancing with such joyous exciting
in the windless sky the lightning’s abruptly branching fire seemed the nerves of abandon that the people in the square and on the sidewalk, and even those on the
the tortured air made visible. balconies, were soon laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their
parents and wives from their husbands to join in the orgy.
“Here they come now!” cried the people on the balconies.
“Come, let us go now,” said Don Paeng to his wife. She was shaking with
And “Here come the women with their St. John!” cried the people on the fascination; tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and allowed
sidewalks, surging forth on the street. The carriages halted and their occupants herself to be led away. But suddenly she pulled free from his grasp, darted off,
descended. The plaza rang with the shouts of people and the neighing of horses and ran into the crowd of dancing women.
—and with another keener sound: a sound as of sea-waves steadily rolling
nearer. 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
The crowd parted, and up the street came the prancing, screaming, writhing folk-movement. She tossed her head back and her arched throat bloomed
women, their eyes wild, black shawls flying around their shoulders, and their whitely. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth with laughter.
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 Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her head
female tumult, a wand in one hand, a bunch of seedling in the other. Behind her, and darted deeper into the dense maze of procession, which was moving again,
a group of girls bore aloft a little black image of the Baptist—a crude, primitive, towards the chapel. He followed her, shouting; she eluded him, laughing—and
grotesque image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and through the thick of the female horde they lost and found and lost each other
swaying above the hysterical female horde and looking at once so comical and again—she, dancing and he pursuing—till, carried along by the tide, they were
so pathetic that Don Paeng, watching with his wife on the sidewalk, was both swallowed up into the hot, packed, turbulent darkness of the chapel. Inside
outraged. The image seemed to be crying for help, to be struggling to escape—a poured the entire procession, and Don Paeng, finding himself trapped tight
St. John indeed in the hands of the Herodias; a doomed captive these witches among milling female bodies, struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out.
were subjecting first to their derision; a gross and brutal caricature of his sex. Angry voices rose all about him in the stifling darkness.

Don Paeng flushed hotly: he felt that all those women had personally insulted “Hoy you are crushing my feet!”
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 “And let go of my shawl, my shawl!”
in the slack mouth, and the sweat gleaning on her face. Don Paeng was horrified. “Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you!”
He grasped her arm—but just then a flash of lightning blazed and the screaming
women fell silent: the Tadtarin was about to die. “Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots!” cried Don Paeng.

The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank slowly to her “Abah, it is a man!”
knees. A pallet was brought and set on the ground and she was laid in it and her
“How dare he come in here?”
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 “Break his head!”
with their black shawls and began wailing softly, unhumanly—a hushed, animal
keening. “Throw the animal out!”

Overhead the sky was brightening, silver light defined the rooftops. When the ”Throw him out! Throw him out!” shrieked the voices, and Don Paeng found
moon rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded square, the himself surrounded by a swarm of gleaming eyes.
black-shawled women stopped wailing and a girl approached and unshrouded
Terror possessed him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his
the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and sat up, her face lifted to the moonlight.
strength—but they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon
She rose to her feet and extended the wand and the seedlings and the women
him and pinned his arms helpless, while unseen hands struck and struck his face,
joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off and waved their shawls and whirled
and ravaged his hair and clothes, and clawed at his flesh, as—kicked and
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buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with blood—he was pushed “You could think me a lewd woman!”
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 “Oh, how do I know what to think of you? I was sure I knew you as I knew
dignity that forbade the crowd gathered outside to laugh or to pity. Entoy came myself. But now you are as distant and strange to me as a female Turk in
running to meet him. Africa.”

“But what has happened to you, Don Paeng?” “Yet you would dare whip me –”

“Nothing. Where is the coach?” “Because I love you, because I respect you.”

“Just over there, sir. But you are wounded in the face!” “And because if you ceased to respect me you would cease to respect yourself?”

“No, these are only scratches. Go and get the señora. We are going home.” “Ah, I did not say that!”

When she entered the coach and saw his bruised face and torn clothing, she “Then why not say it? It is true. And you want to say it, you want to say it!”
smiled coolly. But he struggled against her power. “Why should I want to?” he demanded
“What a sight you are, man! What have you done with yourself?” peevishly.

And when he did not answer: “Why, have they pulled out his tongue too?” she “Because, either you must say it—or you must whip me,” she taunted.
wondered aloud. 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.
AND WHEN THEY are home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she
was still as light-hearted. But she was waiting for him to speak, forcing him to speak.

“What are you going to do, Rafael?” “No, I cannot whip you!” he confessed miserably.

“I am going to give you a whipping.” “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 why?”
But he still struggled stubbornly. “Is it not enough that you have me helpless? Is
“Because you have behaved tonight like a lewd woman.” it not enough that I feel what you want me feel?”

“How I behaved tonight is what I am. If you call that lewd, then I was always a But she shook her head furiously. “Until you have said to me, there can be no
lewd woman and a whipping will not change me—though you whipped me till I peace between us.”
died.”
He was exhausted at last; he sank heavily to his knees, breathing hard and
“I want this madness to die in you.” streaming with sweat, his fine body curiously diminished now in its ravaged
apparel.
“No, you want me to pay for your bruises.”
“I adore you, Lupe,” he said tonelessly.
He flushed darkly. “How can you say that, Lupe?”
She strained forward avidly, “What? What did you say?” she screamed.
“Because it is true. You have been whipped by the women and now you think to
avenge yourself by whipping me.” 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
His shoulders sagged and his face dulled. “If you can think that of me –” am your dog, your slave...”

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But it was still not enough. Her fists were still clenched, and she cried: “Then servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted out to
come, crawl on the floor, and kiss my feet!” us.

Without moment’s hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his arms and Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He
legs, gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great agonized lizard, the looked at us one by one, as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy
woman steadily backing away as he approached, her eyes watching him avidly, because we went out in the sun every day and bathed in the cool water of the
her nostrils dilating, till behind her loomed the open window, the huge glittering river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes we wrestled with
moon, the rapid flashes of lightning. she stopped, panting, and leaned against the one another in the house before we went out to play.
sill. He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the floor.
We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other
She raised her skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his neighbors who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in
dripping face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and our laughter.
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 Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go in to the
body and her loose hair streaming out the window - streaming fluid and black in living room and stand in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into
the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed grotesque shapes with his fingers and making faces at himself, and then he
into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon. would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.

There was plenty to make us laugh. There was, for instance, the day one of my
brothers came home and brought a small bundle under his arm, pretending that
__________________________________________________ he brought something to eat, maybe a leg of lamb or something as extravagant as
that to make our mouths water. He rushed to mother and through the bundle into
MY FATHER GOES TO COURT her lap. We all stood around, watching mother undo the complicated strings.
by Carlos Bulosan Suddenly a black cat leaped out of the bundle and ran wildly around the house.
Mother chased my brother and beat him with her little fists, while the rest of us
bent double, choking with laughter.
When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small Another time one of my sisters suddenly started screaming in the middle of the
town on the island of Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one night. Mother reached her first and tried to calm her. My sister criedand
of our sudden Philippine floods, so for several years afterward we all lived in the groaned. When father lifted the lamp, my sister stared at us with shame in her
town, though he preffered living in the country. We had a next-door neighbor, a eyes.
very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While
we boys and girls played and sand in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept “What is it?” <other asked.
the windows closed. His house was so tall that his children could look in the “I’m pregnant!” she cried.
windows of our house and watch us as we played, or slept, or ate, when there
was any food in the house to eat. “Don’t be a fool!” Father shouted.

Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, “You’re only a child,” Mother said.
and the aroma of the food was wafted down to us from the windows of the big
house. We hung about and took all the wonderful smell of the food into our “I’m pregnant, I tell you!” she cried.
beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood outside the windows Father knelt by my sister. He put his hand on her belly and rubbed it gently.
of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of “How do you know you are pregnant?” he asked.
bacon or ham. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbor’s servants
roasted three chickens. The chickens were young and tender and the fat that “Feel it!” she cried.
dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting odor. We watched the
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We put our hands on her belly. There was something moving inside. Father was When the day came for us to appear in court, Father brushed his old army
frightened. Mother was shocked. “Who’s the man?” she asked. uniform and borrowed a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the
first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the center of the courtroom. Mother
“There’s no man,” my sister said. occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall.
‘What is it then?” Father asked. Father kept jumping up his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though he
were defending himself before an imaginary jury.
Suddenly my sister opened her blouse and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother
fainted, father dropped the lamp, the oil spilled on the floor, and my sister’s The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with
blanket caught fire. One of my brothers laughed so hard he rolled on the floor. deep lines. With him was his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled
the chairs. The judge entered the room and sat on a high chair. We stood up in a
When the fire was extinguished and Mother was revived, we turned to bed and hurry and sat down again.
tried to sleep, but Father kept on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more.
Mother got up again and lighted the oil lamp; we rolled up the mats on the floor After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge took at father. “Do you have a
and began dancing about and laughing with all our might. We made so much lawyer?” he asked.
noise that all our neighbors except the rich family came into the yard and joined “I don’t need a lawyer judge.” He said.
us in loud, genuine laughter.
“Proceed,” said the judge.
It was like that for years.
The rich man’s lawyer jumped and pointed his finger at Father, “Do you or do
As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anemic, while we you not agree that you have been stealing the spirit of the complainant’s wealth
grew even more robust and full of fire. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs and food?”
were pale and sad. The rich man started to cough at night; then he coughed day
and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children started to cough one “I do not!” Father said.
after the other. At night their coughing sounded like barking of a herd of seals.
We hung outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what had “Do you or do you not agree that while the complainant’s servants cooked and
happened to them. We knew that they were not sick from lack of nourishing fried fat legs of lambs and young chicken breasts, you and your family hung
food because they were still always frying something delicious to eat. outside your windows and inhaled the heavenly spirit of the food?”

One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He “I agree,” Father said.
looked at my sisters, who had grown fat with laughing, then at my brothers, “How do you account for that?”
whose arms and legs were like the molave, which is the sturdiest tree in the
Philippines. He banged down the window and ran through the house, shutting all Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said,
the windows. “I would like to see the children of the complainant, Judge.”

From that day on, the windows of our neighbor’s house were closed. The “Bring the children of the complainant.”
children did not come outdoors anymore. We could still hear the servants
They came shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands. They
cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight the windows were shut, the
were so amazed to see the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently
aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our house.
to a bench and sat down without looking up. They stared at the floor and moved
One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed their hands uneasily.
paper. The rich man had filled a complaint against us. Father took me with him
Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at
when he went to the town clerk and asked him what it was all about. He told
them. Finally he said, “I should like to cross-examine the complainant.”
Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit of his
wealth and food. “Proceed.”

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“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing “Why not?”
family while yours became morose and sad?” Father asked.
Did you hear that children?” Father said.
“Yes.”
My sister started it. The rest of us followed them and soon the spectators were
“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where laughing with us, holding their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the
we children were sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and laughter of the judge was the loudest of all.
began filling it up with centavo pieces that he took out his pockets. He went to
Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw in their small
change. __________________________________________________
“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a minutes, Judge?” THE WEDDING DANCE
Father asked.
By Amador Daguio
“As you wish.”

“Thank you,” Father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his
hands. It was almost full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open. Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the
headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that
“Are you ready?” Father called. carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside,
“Proceed.” The judge said. then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments during which he
seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.
The sweet tinkle of coins carried beautifully into the room. The spectators turned
their faces toward the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before "I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
the complainant. The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled
“Did you hear it?” he asked. roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding
door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There
“Hear what?” the man asked. was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but
continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.
But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all
“Yes.” fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare
“Then you are paid.” Father said. fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When
the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs
The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. as his arms. The room brightened.
The lawyer rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang
“Case dismissed,” he said. inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and
because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as
if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the
Father strutted around the courtroom. The judge even came down to his high room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving
chair to shake hands with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who shadows and lights upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was
died laughing.” not because of anger or hate.

“You like to hear my family laugh, judge?” Father asked. "Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out
and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he
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will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her
were with me." bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one
over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank.
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man." Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want "I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of
any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding
you?" ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can
She did not answer him. never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as
fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the
"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated. best wives in the whole village."
"Yes, I know," she said weakly. "That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly.
She almost seemed to smile.
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been
a good husband to you." He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her
face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
away. Never again would he hold her face. The next day she would not be his
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have anymore. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent
nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split
that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we bamboo floor.
have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late for
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as
both of us."
long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in.
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My
She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.
parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan of the rice."
much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of
"Yes, I know." our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for
the two of us."
"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your
work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your "I have no use for any field," she said.
permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a
child. But what could I do?"
time.
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They
The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up
will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the
the ceiling.
dance."
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the
"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The
split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she
gangsas are playing."
did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong
of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls. "You know that I cannot."

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"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a "Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want
child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
mocked me behind my back. You know that."
She was silent.
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed. the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."

She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the "If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was
beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."
roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they
had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her "If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both
mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."
growled, resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and
they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip "I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-
would have meant death. whispered.

They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the "You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said
final climb to the other side of the mountain. they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep
them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong,
and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often "I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I
made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. love you. I love you and have nothing to give."
The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside.
skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of
"Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
the mountains five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of
shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles-- "I am not in hurry."
he was strong and for that she had lost him.
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my
husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a "Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."
hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of
"It is all right with me."
promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb the
mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die." He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm "I know," she said.
naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her
hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming He went to the door.
darkness.
"Awiyao!"
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was
for anything but you. I'll have no other man."
in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it
"Then you'll always be fruitless." that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in
the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
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husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as
laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the strong as the river?
unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to
come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a
away of his life to leave her like this. flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas
clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their
turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and beads,
they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart
nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up,
given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded
them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let
him go. She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire
leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not
her face in his neck. have the courage to break into the wedding feast.

The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She
into the night. thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make
only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.
Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and
opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held
whole village. her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she
was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns the mountain.
of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe
was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of When Lumnay reached the clearing, she could see from where she stood the
the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could
among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing
beautifully timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call far
body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of
mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her their gratitude for her sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many
own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her gangsas.
honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps
she could give her husband a child. Lumnay thought of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong,
muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with
anybody know? It is not right," she said. water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made him
drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token
chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; on his desire to marry her.
nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain,
to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. She would

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The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to young men and their handsome apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and their
stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit elegant moustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite
down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them. ravished with love, and began crying to one another how carefree were men but
how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was, till old Anastasia
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chases them off to bed---while
matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the
almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the cobble and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of
light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of the his great voice booming through the night, "Guardia serno-o-o! A las doce han
bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on. dado-o-o.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods. And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May and
witches were abroad in the night, she said--for it was a night of divination, and
night of lovers, and those who cared might peer into a mirror and would there
__________________________________________________ behold the face of whoever it was they were fated to marry, said the old
Anastasia as she hobble about picking up the piled crinolines and folding up
MAY DAY EVE
shawls and raking slippers in corner while the girls climbing into four great
by Nick Joaquin poster-beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror, scrambling
over each other and imploring the old woman not to frighten them.

"Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!"

THE old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten o’clock but it
was almost midnight before the carriages came filing up the departing guests, "Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!"
while the girls who were staying were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms,
"She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of Christmas
the young men gathering around to wish them a good night and lamenting their
Eve!"
ascent with mock signs and moaning, proclaiming themselves disconsolate but
straightway going off to finish the punch and the brandy though they were quite "St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr."
drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment, arrogance and
audacity, for they were young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had "Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin,
been in their honor; and they had waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and Anastasia?"
swaggered and flirted all night and where in no mood to sleep yet--no, caramba, "No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!"
not on this moist tropic eve! Not on this mystic May eve! – with the night still
young and so seductive that it was madness not to go out, not to go forth---and "Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell
serenade the neighbors! Cried one; and swim in the Pasid! Cried another; and me."
gather fireflies! cried a third—whereupon there arose a great clamor for coats
and capes, for hats and canes, and they were a couple of street-lamps flickered "You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid."
and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses "I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed.
muttered hush-hush, their tile roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a
wile sky murky with clouds, save where an evil young moon prowled about in a "Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will
corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command you to
now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable shut your mouth and go away!""Your mother told me to stay here all night, my
childhood fragrances or ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously grand lady!"
down the street that the girls who were desiring upstairs in the bedrooms catered
"And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor.
screaming to the windows, crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon
"Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do."
sighing amorously over those young men bawling below; over those wicked
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"Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls. approaching in the mirror seemed only a mask that floated forward; a bright
mask with two holes gaping in it, blown forward by the white cloud of her
The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed gown. But when she stood before the mirror she lifted the candle level with her
her eyes on the girl. "You must take a candle," she instructed, "and go into a chin and the dead mask bloomed into her living face.
room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room.
Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and say: Mirror, mirror, show to me him She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished such
whose woman I will be. If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will a terror took hold of her that she felt unable to move, unable to open her eyes
appear the face of the man you will marry." A silence. and thought she would stand there forever, enchanted. But she heard a step
behind her, and a smothered giggle, and instantly opened her eyes.
Then: "And that if all does not go right?" asked Agueda.

"Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!"

"AND what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had
"Why." forgotten the little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head nestling at
"Because you may see--the Devil!" her breast and seeing herself in the big mirror hanging in the room. It was the
same room and the same mirror out the face she now saw in it was an old face---
The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what nonsense!" a hard, bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying hair, and so sadly altered, so
cried Agueda. "This is the year 1847. There are no devil anymore!" Nevertheless sadly different from that other face like a white mask, that fresh young face like
she had turned pale. "But where could I go, hugh? Yes, I know! Down to the a pure mask than she had brought before this mirror one wild May Day midnight
sala. It has that big mirror and no one is there now." years and years ago....
"No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!" "But what was it Mama? Oh please go on! What did you see?" Dona Agueda
looked down at her daughter but her face did not soften though her eyes filled
"I do not care! I am not afraid! I will go!"
with tears.
"Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!"
"I saw the devil." she said bitterly.
"If you do not come to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother."
The child blanched. "The devil, Mama? Oh... Oh..."
"And if you do I will tell her who came to visit you at the convent last March.
"Yes, my love. I opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over my
Come, old woman---give me that candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me that candle,
left shoulder, was the face of the devil."
I go."
"Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very frightened?"
But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing across the hall;
her feet bare and her dark hair falling down her shoulders and streaming in the "You can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors
wind as she fled down the stairs, the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while except when their mothers tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling,
with the other she pulled up her white gown from her ankles. She paused of admiring yourself in every mirror you pass- or you may see something
breathless in the doorway to the sala and her heart failed her. She tried to frightful someday."
imagine the room filled again with lights, laughter, whirling couples, and the
jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh, it was a dark den, a weird cavern for "But the devil, Mama---what did he look like?"
the windows had been closed and the furniture stacked up against the walls. She "Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---"
crossed herself and stepped inside.
"Like the scar of Papa?"
The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a gold frame
carved into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues. She saw herself "Well, yes. But this of the devil was a scar of sin, while that of your Papa is a
approaching fearfully in it: a small while ghost that the darkness bodied forth--- scar of honor. Or so he says."
but not willingly, not completely, for her eyes and hair were so dark that the face
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"Go on about the devil." her hand and touched it to his lips. She shuddered in her white gown. "Let me
go," she moaned, and tugged feebly. "No. Say you forgive me first. Say you
"Well, he had mustaches." forgive me, Agueda." But instead she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it - bit
"Like those of Papa?" so sharply in the knuckles that he cried with pain and lashed cut with his other
hand--lashed out and hit the air, for she was gone, she had fled, and he heard the
"Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and graying and smell horribly of tobacco, rustling of her skirts up the stairs as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers.
while these of the devil were very black and elegant--oh, how elegant!" Cruel thoughts raced through his head: he would go and tell his mother and
make her turn the savage girl out of the house--or he would go himself to the
"And did he speak to you, Mama?"
girl’s room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at the
"Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And bowing her graying head; same time he was thinking that they were all going to Antipolo in the morning
she wept. and was already planning how he would maneuver himself into the same boat
with her. Oh, he would have his revenge, he would make her pay, that little
harlot! She should suffer for this, he thought greedily, licking his bleeding
knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold in her
"CHARMS like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had said, smiling
candlelight and delicately furred. He saw the mobile insolence of her neck, and
at her in the mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking bow. She had
her taut breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of a Turk, but she was quite
whirled around and glared at him and he had burst into laughter. "But I
enchanting! How could she think she had no fire or grace? And no salt? An
remember you!" he cried. "You are Agueda, whom I left a mere infant and came
arroba she had of it!
home to find a tremendous beauty, and I danced a waltz with you but you would
not give me the polka." "Let me pass," she muttered fiercely, for he was barring "... No lack of salt in the chrism at the moment of thy baptism!" He sang aloud
the way. "But I want to dance the polka with you, fair one," he said. So they in the dark room and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in love with her.
stood before the mirror; their panting breath the only sound in the dark room; the He ached intensely to see her again---at once! ---to touch her hands and her hair;
candle shining between them and flinging their shadows to the wall. And young to hear her harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung open the casements and
Badoy Montiya (who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow. It was May, it was summer,
suddenly found himself cold sober and very much awake and ready for anything. and he was young---young! ---and deliriously in love. Such a happiness welled
His eyes sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed scarlet. "Let me pass!" she up within him that the tears spurted from his eyes. But he did not forgive her--
cried again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped her by the wrist. "No," he smiled. no! He would still make her pay, he would still have his revenge, he thought
"Not until we have danced." "Go to the devil!" "What a temper has my serrana!" viciously, and kissed his wounded fingers. But what a night it had been! "I will
"I am not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have never forget this night! He thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the
offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends like your window in the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the wind in his hair and his
mortal enemies." "And why not?" she demanded, jerking her wrist away and bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth.
flashing her teeth in his face. "Oh, how I detest you, you pompous young men!
You go to Europe and you come back elegant lords and we poor girls are too But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes; summer
tame to please you. We have no grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like lends; the storms break over the rot-tipe orchards and the heart grows old; while
the Sevillians, and we have no salt, no salt, no salt! Aie, how you weary me, the hours, the days, the months, and the years pile up and pile up, till the mind
how you bore me, you fastidious men!" "Come, come---how do you know about becomes too crowded, too confused: dust gathers in it; cobwebs multiply; the
us?" walls darken and fall into ruin and decay; the memory perished...and there came
a time when Don Badoy Montiya walked home through a May Day midnight
"I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon perhaps?" "Oh!" without remembering, without even caring to remember; being merely
she gasped, and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand and she concerned in feeling his way across the street with his cane; his eyes having
covered her face and sobbed piteously. The candle had gone out and they stood grown quite dim and his legs uncertain--for he was old; he was over sixty; he
in darkness, and young Badoy was conscience-stricken. "Oh, do not cry, little was a very stopped and shivered old man with white hair and mustaches coming
one!" Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But what a brute I am! I was home from a secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with the
drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I said." He groped and found speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his way up the steps to
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the front door and inside into the slumbering darkness of the house; wholly "When, Grandpa?"
unconscious of the May night, till on his way down the hall, chancing to glance
into the sala, he shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold-- for he had seen a "Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow and
face in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes closed and the though I was feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down
lips moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had been there before though it was a somewhere and die I could not pass that doorway of course without stopping to
full minutes before the lost memory came flowing, came tiding back, so see in the mirror what I looked like when dying. But when I poked my head in
overflooding the actual moment and so swiftly washing away the piled hours what should I see in the mirror but...but..."
and days and months and years that he was left suddenly young again; he was a "The witch?"
gay young buck again, lately came from Europe; he had been dancing all night;
he was very drunk; he s stepped in the doorway; he saw a face in the dark; he "Exactly!"
called out...and the lad standing before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night go
"And then she bewitch you, Grandpa!"
jumped with fright and almost dropped his candle, but looking around and
seeing the old man, laughed out with relief and came running. "She bewitched me and she tortured me. She ate my heart and drank my blood."
said the old man bitterly.
"Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me. Don Badoy had turned very pale. "So it
was you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What are you doing down "Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she very
here at this hour?" "Nothing, Grandpa. I was only... I am only ..." "Yes, you are horrible?
the great Señor only and how delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Señor
only! But if I break this cane on your head you might wish you were someone "Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen! Her
else, Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me I would see my wife." eyes were somewhat like yours but her hair was like black waters and her golden
shoulders were bare. My God, she was enchanting! But I should have known---I
"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I looked should have known even then---the dark and fatal creature she was!"
in a mirror tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me her whose lover I will
be. A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered the boy.

Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along into "What makes you slay that, hey?"
the room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees. "Now, put
"Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once told
your cane down the floor, son, and let us talk this over. So you want your wife
her that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was it of the scare that
already, hey? You want to see her in advance, hey? But so you know that these
Grandma died?"
are wicked games and that wicked boys who play them are in danger of seeing
horrors?" Don Badoy started. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead, that she
had perished---the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at last, the two of them,
"Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead."
her tired body at rest; her broken body set free at last from the brutal pranks of
"Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will be witch you, the earth---from the trap of a May night; from the snare of summer; from the
she will torture you, she will eat your heart and drink your blood!" terrible silver nets of the moon. She had been a mere heap of white hair and
bones in the end: a whimpering withered consumptive, lashing out with her cruel
"Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore." tongue; her eye like live coals; her face like ashes... Now, nothing--- nothing
save a name on a stone; save a stone in a graveyard---nothing! Was left of the
"Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a
young girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight,
witch.
long, long ago.
"You? Where?
And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she had
"Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man, and his playful bitten his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark room and
voice had turned savage. surprised his heart in the instant of falling in love: such a grief tore up his throat

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and eyes that he felt ashamed before the boy; pushed the boy away; stood up and "In love? With whom?"
looked out----looked out upon the medieval shadows of the foul street where a
couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage was rattling away upon the "With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of,"
cobbles, while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tiled roofs she said with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the beginning he
looming like sinister chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that--"
where an evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That
whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great
orchards and wafting unbearable the window; the bowed old man sobbing so hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on
bitterly at the window; the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wind in his him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow
hair and one hand pressed to his mouth---while from up the street came the of the trees in the plaza, did man woo maid. Was he being cheated by life?
clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang of Love--he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere
his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a
the night: glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a
"Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!" combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days
love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger
to love as he divined it might be.

__________________________________________________ Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those
days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood
DEAD STARS when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get
by Paz Marquez Benitez there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it," someone had seemed to
urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded
himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the
meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.
THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room,
quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined
sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will
down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit
tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness
Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots. of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the
future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants
it to be next month." "I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I
think they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has
Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is
been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of temperament--or of
over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."
affection--on the part of either, or both." Don Julian loved to philosophize. He
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice
commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away. toned down to monologue pitch. "That phase you were speaking of is natural
enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I see it, was Alfredo's last race with
"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen escaping youth--"
returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do
you remember how much in love he was?"

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Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose-- should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed, and felt that
almost indolence--disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative he should explain.
language.
To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, each time I was about to correct
"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man. you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before."

Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had "Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.
amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible evidence.
Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under "A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so,
straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, the young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is
dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo Salazar's Manalang, Manalang.' You know, I never forgave him!"
appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with He laughed with her.
wayward humor, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she pursued,
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone "is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without
steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little help."
tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on
the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge in tardy "As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
lavender bloom.
"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide,
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game
open porches he could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the
of chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and
Martinez yard.
desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the
Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately tinkled and
house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and wondered
Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now-- irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.

One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably
occurrence, since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favor a sister of the Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type
with the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed himself to be altogether. She was small and plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined
persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial," the old man eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty woman with the complexion of
had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not so obviously
worth a rising young lawyer's trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a
and a smile that derided his own worldly wisdom. smooth rich brown with underlying tones of crimson which heightened the
impression she gave of abounding vitality.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of
the Judge's children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the
characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had been omitted--the judge gravel road to the house on the hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered them
limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with the consequence that beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a half hour or so, the
Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening. chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas would go out to
the porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a rocking chair and the
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he hours--warm, quiet March hours--sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it
addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge's was evident that she liked his company; yet what feeling there was between
sister, as he had supposed, but his sister-in-law, and that her name was Julia them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter of course. Only when
Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young lady
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Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those visits did some uneasiness "You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery."
creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
"I could study you all my life and still not find it."
Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo
suddenly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza "So long?"
to come out of the church as he had been wont to do. He had been eager to go "I should like to."
"neighboring."
Those six weeks were now so swift--seeming in the memory, yet had they been
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually so deep in the living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness. Because
untruthful, added, "Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's." neither the past nor the future had relevance or meaning, he lived only the
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such a willful shutting out of fact as
jealousies. She was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their astounded him in his calmer moments.
power to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man were married, why, of Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to spend
course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly love another Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on
woman. the beach. Carmen also came with her four energetic children. She and Doña
That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the preparation of
giving Julia Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands--how
something that would not be denied beckoned imperiously, and he followed on. Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time
off to accompany her on this visit to her father; how Doña Adela's Dionisio was
It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so the most absentminded of men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with
easy and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the unmatched socks.
shadows around, enfolding.
After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a
"Up here I find--something--" thriving young coconut looked like--"plenty of leaves, close set, rich green"--
while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of
intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?" the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-curving beach.
"No; youth--its spirit--" Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here
"Are you so old?" were her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas
footwear which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.
"And heart's desire."
When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?
"I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection.
"Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is too
broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery." "Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely
beach."
"Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars.
In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and
somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream. whipped the tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture
was something of eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace,
"Mystery--" she answered lightly, "that is so brief--" distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all
the more compelling because it was an inner quality, an achievement of the
"Not in some," quickly. "Not in you."
spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind and body, of
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a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to "Nothing? There is you."
charm.
"Oh, me? But I am here."
"The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the last
time--we can visit." "I will not go, of course, until you are there."

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

"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps." "Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment."

He noted an evasive quality in the answer. She laughed.

"Do I seem especially industrious to you?" "We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees."

"If you are, you never look it." "Could I find that?"

"Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be." "If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.

"But--" "I'll inquire about--"

"Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself. "What?"

"I wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause. "The house of the prettiest girl in the town."

She waited. "There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is
not quite sincere."
"A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid."
"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.
"Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely
"I thought you, at least, would not say such things."
"Who? I?"
"Pretty--pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not
"Oh, no!" mean that quite--"

"You said I am calm and placid." "Are you withdrawing the compliment?"

"That is what I think." "Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is more
than that when--"
"I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves."
"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.
It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and
covert phrase. "Exactly."

"I should like to see your home town." "It must be ugly."

"There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing "Always?"

on them, and sometimes squashes."
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting
That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet streamer of crimsoned gold.
withal more distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded him.
"No, of course you are right."
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"Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as they turned back. ALFREDO Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened and
entered the heart of the town--heart of Chinese stores sheltered under low-hung
"I am going home." roofs, of indolent drug stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-repairing
The end of an impossible dream! establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith's cubbyhole where a consumptive bent
over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with quaint hand-and-
"When?" after a long silence. ball knockers on the door; heart of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of
ancient church and convento, now circled by swallows gliding in flight as
"Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me
smooth and soft as the afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight, the
to spend Holy Week at home."
voice of the biggest of the church bells kept ringing its insistent summons.
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the last Flocking came the devout with their long wax candles, young women in vivid
time." apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the Lord was still alive), older women
in sober black skirts. Came to the young men in droves, elbowing each other
"Can't I come to say good-bye?" under the talisay tree near the church door. The gaily decked rice-paper lanterns
were again on display while from the windows of the older houses hung colored
"Oh, you don't need to!"
glass globes, heirlooms from a day when grasspith wicks floating in coconut oil
"No, but I want to." were the chief lighting device.

"There is no time." Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down the
length of the street like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering clusters
The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a where the saints' platforms were. Above the measured music rose the untutored
pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affects the voices of the choir, steeped in incense and the acrid fumes of burning wax.
senses as does solemn harmony; a peace that is not contentment but a cessation
of tumult when all violence of feeling tones down to the wistful serenity of The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of
regret. She turned and looked into his face, in her dark eyes a ghost of sunset Sorrows suddenly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those lines
sadness. of light into component individuals. Esperanza stiffened self-consciously, tried
to look unaware, and could not.
"Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life."
The line moved on.
"I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old
things." Suddenly, Alfredo's slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl was
coming down the line--a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that
"Old things?" could cause violent commotion in his heart, yet had no place in the completed
ordering of his life.
"Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage." He said it lightly,
unwilling to mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
for one whirling second.
The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church and
Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind. then back again, where, according to the old proverb, all processions end.
Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned her At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and the
face away, but he heard her voice say very low, "Good-bye." choir, whose voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang the
close of the procession.

A round orange moon, "huge as a winnowing basket," rose lazily into a clear
sky, whitening the iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along
II
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the still densely shadowed streets the young women with their rear guard of "May," he replied briefly, after a long pause.
males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home.
"May is the month of happiness they say," she said, with what seemed to him a
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The shade of irony.
crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who lived
farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little "They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?"
while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he said "Good evening" and fell into "Why not?"
step with the girl.
"No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?"
"I had been thinking all this time that you had gone," he said in a voice that was
both excited and troubled. "If you will ask me," she said with disdain.

"No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go." "Then I ask you."

"Oh, is the Judge going?" "Then I will be there."

"Yes." The gravel road lay before them; at the road's end the lighted windows of the
house on the hill. There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so
The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned keen that it was pain, a wish that, that house were his, that all the bewilderments
elsewhere. As lawyer--and as lover--Alfredo had found that out long before. of the present were not, and that this woman by his side were his long wedded
"Mr. Salazar," she broke into his silence, "I wish to congratulate you." wife, returning with him to the peace of home.

Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable. "Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to choose
between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?"
"For what?"
"No!"
"For your approaching wedding."
"I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not who was in such a situation."
offend?
"You are fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer.
"I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors
are slow about getting the news," she continued. "Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"

He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He "I don't know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us
heard nothing to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones and rushes downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish to
of early acquaintance. No revelation there; simply the old voice--cool, almost ask whether one will or will not, because it no longer depends on him."
detached from personality, flexible and vibrant, suggesting potentialities of "But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I know? That is
song. his problem after all."
"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly "Doesn't it--interest you?"
"When they are of friends, yes." "Why must it? I--I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the house."
"Would you come if I asked you?" Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.
"When is it going to be?" Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope
trembled in his mind though set against that hope were three years of
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engagement, a very near wedding, perfect understanding between the parents, No? Then I am justified in my conscience. I am right. Living with a man to
his own conscience, and Esperanza herself--Esperanza waiting, Esperanza no whom she is not married--is that it? It may be wrong, and again it may not."
longer young, Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the intensely
acquisitive. "She has injured us. She was ungrateful." Her voice was tight with resentment.

He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a "The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he stopped, appalled by the
kind of aversion which he tried to control. passion in his voice.

She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly "Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why you
acceptable appearance. She never surprised one with unexpected homeliness nor have been indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what
with startling reserves of beauty. At home, in church, on the street, she was perhaps some are trying to keep from me." The blood surged into his very eyes
always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and clear of complexion, spare of and his hearing sharpened to points of acute pain. What would she say next?
arms and of breast, with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman dressed with "Why don't you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think of me
self-conscious care, even elegance; a woman distinctly not average. and of what people will say." Her voice trembled.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before.
about Calixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-listened, What people will say--what will they not say? What don't they say when long
understanding imperfectly. At a pause he drawled out to fill in the gap: "Well, engagements are broken almost on the eve of the wedding?
what of it?" The remark sounded ruder than he had intended.
"Yes," he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, "one tries to
"She is not married to him," Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched be fair--according to his lights--but it is hard. One would like to be fair to one's
voice. "Besides, she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her self first. But that is too easy, one does not dare--"
up. We never thought she would turn out bad."
"What do you mean?" she asked with repressed violence. "Whatever my
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta? shortcomings, and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of
"You are very positive about her badness," he commented dryly. Esperanza was my way, of my place, to find a man."
always positive. Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her; or
"But do you approve?" was that a covert attack on Julia Salas?

"Of what?" "Esperanza--" a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. "If you--suppose I--"
Yet how could a mere man word such a plea?
"What she did."
"If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of--why don't
"No," indifferently. you tell me you are tired of me?" she burst out in a storm of weeping that left
him completely shamed and unnerved.
"Well?"
The last word had been said.
He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of her
mind. "All I say is that it is not necessarily wicked."

"Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--immoral man. I did not know that
your ideas were like that." III
"My ideas?" he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. "The only AS Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling
test I wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring anybody? over the lake, he wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to this
trip of his. He was supposed to be in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the People of
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the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him, and there he would have It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with
been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the defense. He had to find Brigida Samuy--Tandang "Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar's
that elusive old woman. That the search was leading him to that particular lake second letter had arrived late, but the wife had read it and said, "Go and meet
town which was Julia Salas' home should not disturb him unduly yet he was the abogado and invite him to our house."
disturbed to a degree utterly out of proportion to the prosaicalness of his errand.
That inner tumult was no surprise to him; in the last eight years he had become Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board
used to such occasional storms. He had long realized that he could not forget since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So
Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be content and not to remember too much. The the presidente had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that
climber of mountains who has known the back-break, the lonesomeness, and the official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman replied, "but he could not
chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He looks up write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went
sometimes from the valley where settles the dusk of evening, but he knows he there to find her."
must not heed the radiant beckoning. Maybe, in time, he would cease even to San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must
look up. do something for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to
He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of help.
capitulation to what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and of Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into
character. His life had simply ordered itself; no more struggles, no more stirring a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too
up of emotions that got a man nowhere. From his capacity of complete bare to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around
detachment he derived a strange solace. The essential himself, the himself that the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore over the rafts made
had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free and fast to sundry piles driven into the water.
alone. When claims encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he
retreated into the inner fastness, and from that vantage he saw things and people How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim
around him as remote and alien, as incidents that did not matter. At such times light issuing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An
did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but occasional couple sauntered by, the women's chinelas making scraping sounds.
immeasurably far away, beyond her reach. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street--
tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet
Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up-tilted place filled him with a pitying sadness.
town nestling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry stood
beside the ancient church. On the outskirts the evening smudges glowed red How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything
through the sinuous mists of smoke that rose and lost themselves in the purple to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him
shadows of the hills. There was a young moon which grew slowly luminous as with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not
the coral tints in the sky yielded to the darker blues of evening. married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at regretful
memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of
The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds
on the dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd as of voices in a dream--at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to
assembled to meet the boat--slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer.
lake-shore speech. From where he stood he could not distinguish faces, so he
had no way of knowing whether the presidente was there to meet him or not. A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young
Just then a voice shouted. moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton
tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly
"Is the abogado there? Abogado!" midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.
"What abogado?" someone irately asked. Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing. would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit

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night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head by Gregorio Brillantes
into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise.

"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.

From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country darkness,
"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?" the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town. The phonograph in the sala
played Chopin – like a vast sorrow controlled, made familiar, he had wont to
"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint. think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the habitual slack repose took after
"Won't you come up?" supper, and stared at the plains of night that had evoked gentle images and even
a kind of peace (in the end, sweet and invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro
He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched by any conscious thought, he was
the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came scarcely aware of the April heat; the pattern of music fell around him and
downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last--he was shaking her dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It was as though indifference were an
hand. infection that had entered his blood it was everywhere in his body. In the
scattered light from the sala his angular face had a dusty, wasted quality, only
She had not changed much--a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet
his eyes contained life. He could have remained there all evening, unmoving,
something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into
and buried, it is where, in a strange half-sleep, had his wife not come to tell him
her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a
he was wanted on the phone.
sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease, though
with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes Gradually his mind stirred, focused; as he rose from the chair he recognized the
from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal somber passage in the sonata that, curiosly, made him think of ancient
curiosity creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek monuments, faded stone walls, a greyness. The brain filed away an image; and
darkened in a blush. arrangement of sounds released it… He switched off the phonograph,
suppressed and impatient quiver in his throat as he reached for the phone:
Gently--was it experimentally?--he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt
everyone had a claim on his time. He thought: Why not the younger ones for a
undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question
change? He had spent a long day at the provincial hospital.
hardly interested him.
The man was calling from a service station outside the town – the station after
The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a
the agricultural high school, and before the San Miguel bridge, the man added
star-studded sky.
rather needlessly, in a voice that was frantic yet oddly subdued and courteous.
So that was all over. Dr. Lazaro thad heard it countless times, in the corridors of the hospitals, in
waiting rooms: the perpetual awkward misery. He was Pedro Esteban, the
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream? brother of the doctor’s tenant in Nambalan, said the voice, trying to make itself
less sudden remote.
So all these years--since when?--he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long
extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens. But the connection was faulty, there was a humming in the wires, as though
darkness had added to the distance between the house in the town and the gas
An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some
station beyond the summer fields. Dr. Lazaro could barely catch the severed
immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and
phrases. The man’s week-old child had a high fever, a bluish skin; its mouth
where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.
would not open to suckle. They could not take the baby to the poblacion, they
would not dare move it; its body turned rigid at the slightest touch. If the doctor
would consent to come at so late an hour, Esteban would wait for him at the
__________________________________________________ station. If the doctor would be so kind…
FAITH, LOVE, TIME AND DR. LAZARO

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Tetanus of the newborn: that was elementary, and most likely it was so hopeless, propped against the back cushions. “Come along, we’re going somewhere,” Dr.
a waste of time. Dr. Lazaro said yes, he would be there; he had committed Lazaro said, and went into the clinic for his medical bag. He added a vial of
himself to that answer, long ago; duty had taken the place of an exhausted penstrep, an ampule of caffeine to the satchel’s content’s; rechecked the bag
compassion. The carelessness of the poor, the infected blankets, the toxin before closing it; the cutgut would last just one more patient. One can only cure,
moving toward the heart: they were casual scribbled items in a clinical report. and know nothing beyond one’s work… There had been the man, today, in the
But outside the grilled windows, the night suddenly seemed alive and waiting. hospital: the cancer pain no longer helped by the doses of morphine; the
He had no choice left now but action: it was the only certitude – he sometimes patients’s eyes flickering their despair in the eroded face. Dr. Lazaro brushed
reminded himself – even if it would prove futile, before, the descent into aside the stray vision as he strode out of the whitewashed room; he was back in
nothingness. his element, among syringes, steel instruments, quick decisions made without
emotion, and it gave him a kind of blunt energy.
His wife looked up from her needles and twine, under the shaded lamp of the
bedroom; she had finished the pullover for the grandchild in Bagiuo and had I’ll drive, Pa?” Ben followed him through the kitchen, where the maids were
begun work, he noted, on another of those altar vestments for the parish church. ironing the week’s wash, gossiping, and out to the yard shrouded in the dimness
Religion and her grandchild certainly kept her busy … She looked at him, into of the single bulb under the eaves. The boy push back the folding doors of the
so much to inquire as to be spoken to: a large and placid woman. garage and slid behind the wheel.

“Shouldn’t have let the drive go home so early,” Dr. Lazaro said. “They had to “Somebody’s waiting at the gas station near San Miguel. You know the place?”
wait till now to call … Child’s probably dead…”
“Sure,” Ben said.
“Ben can drive for you.”
The engine sputtered briefly and stopped. “Battery’s weak,” Dr. Lazaro said.
“I hardly see that boy around the house. He seems to be on vacation both from “Try it without the lights,” and smelled the gasoline overflow as the old Pontiac
home and in school.” finally lurched around the house and through the trellised gate, its front
sweeping over the dry dusty street.
“He’s downstairs,” his wife said.
But he’s all right, Dr. Lazaro thought as they swung smoothly into the main
avenue of the town, past the church and the plaza, the kiosko bare for once in a
Dr. Lazaro put on fresh shirt, buttoned it with tense, abrupt motions, “I thought season of fiestas, the lam-posts shining on the quiet square. They did not speak;
he’d gone out again… Who’s that girl he’s been seeing?...It’s not just warm, it’s he could sense his son’s concentration on the road, and he noted, with a tentative
hot. You should’ve stayed on in Baguio… There’s disease, suffering, death, amusement, the intense way the boy sat behind the wheel, his eagerness to be of
because Adam ate the apple. They must have an answer to everything… “He help. They passed the drab frame houses behind the marketplace, and the capitol
paused at the door, as though for the echo of his words. building on its landscaped hill, the gears shifting easily as they went over the
railroad tracks that crossed the asphalted street.
Mrs. Lazaro had resumed the knitting; in the circle of yellow light, her head
bowed, she seemed absorbed in some contemplative prayer. But her silences had Then the road was pebbled and uneven, the car bucking slightly; and they were
ceased t disturb him, like the plaster saints she kept in the room, in their cases of speeding between open fields, a succession of narrow wooden bridges breaking
glass, or that air she wore of conspiracy, when she left with Ben for Mass in the the crunching drive of the wheels. Dr. Lazaro gazed at the wide darkness around
mornings. Dr. Lazaro would ramble about miracle drugs, politics, music, the them, the shapes of trees and bushes hurling toward them and sliding away and
common sense of his unbelief; unrelated things strung together in a monologue; he saw the stars, hard glinting points of light yards, black space, infinite
he posed questions, supplied with his own answers; and she would merely nod, distances; in the unmeasured universe, man’s life flared briefly and was gone,
with an occasional “Yes?” and “Is that so?” and something like a shadow of traceless in the void. He turned away from the emptiness. He said: “You seem to
anxiety in her gaze. have had a lot of practice, Ben.”

He hurried down the curving stairs, under the votive lamps of the Sacred Heart. “A lot of what, Pa?”
Ben lay sprawled on the sofa, in the front parlor; engrossed in a book, one leg “The ways you drive. Very professional.”
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In the glow of the dashboard lights, the boy’s face relaxed, smiled. “Tio Cesar could build up a good practice in the city. Specialized in cancer, maybe or
let me use his car, in Manila. On special occasions.” neuro-surgery, and join a good hospital.” It was like trying to recall some rare
happiness, in the car, in the shifting darkness.
“No reckless driving now,” Dr. Lazaro said. “Some fellows think it’s smart.
Gives them a thrill. Don’t be like that.” “I’ve been thinking about it,” Ben said. It’s a vocation, a great one. Being able to
really help people, I mean.”
“No, I won’t, Pa. I just like to drive and – and go place, that’s all.”
“You’ve done well in math, haven’t you?”
Dr. Lazaro watched the young face intent on the road, a cowlick over the
forehead, the mall curve of the nose, his own face before he left to study in “Well enough, I guess,” Ben said.
another country, a young student of full illusions, a lifetime ago; long before the
loss of faith, God turning abstract, unknowable, and everywhere, it seemed to Engineering is a fine course too, “ Dr. Lazaro said. “There’ll be lots of room for
him, those senseless accidents of pain. He felt a need to define unspoken things, engineers. Planners and builders, they are what this country needs. Far too many
to come closer somehow to the last of his sons; one of these days, before the lawyers and salesmen these days. Now if your brother –“ He closed his eyes,
boy’s vacation was over, they might to on a picnic together, a trip to the farm; a erasing the slashed wrists, part of the future dead in a boarding-house room, the
special day for the two of them – father and son, as well as friends. In the two landlady whimpering, “He was such a nice boy, doctor, your son…” Sorrow lay
years Ben had been away in college, they had written a few brief, almost formal in ambush among the years.
letters to each other: your money is on the way, these are the best years, make
the most of them…
“I have all summer to think about, “ Ben said.
Time was moving toward them, was swirling around and rushing away and it
seemed Dr. Lazaro could almost hear it’s hallow receding roar; and discovering “There’s no hurry,” Dr. Lazaro said. What was it he had wanted to say?
his son’s profile against the flowing darkness, he had a thirst to speak. He could Something about knowing each other, about sharing; no, it was not that at all…
not find what it was he had meant to say.
The stations appeared as they coasted down the incline of a low hill, its
The agricultural school buildings came up in the headlights and glided back into fluorescent lights the only brightness on the plain before them, on the road that
blurred shapes behind a fence. led farther into deeper darkness. A freight truck was taking on a load of gasoline
as they drove up the concrete apron and came to a stop beside the station shed.
“What was that book you were reading, Ben?”
A short barefoot man in a patchwork shirt shuffled forward to meet them.
“A biography,” the boy said.
I am Esteban, doctor,” the man said, his voice faint and hoarse, almost inaudible,
“Statesman? Scientist maybe?” and he bowed slightly with a careful politeness. He stood blinking, looking up at
It’s about a guy who became a monk.” the doctor, who had taken his bag and flashlight form the car.

“That’s your summer reading?” Dr. Lazaro asked with a small laugh, half In the windless space, Dr. Lazaro could hear Esteban’s labored breathing, the
mockery, half affection. “You’re getting to be a regular saint, like your mother.” clank of the metal nozzle as the attendant replaced it in the pump. The men in
the truck stared at them curiously.
“It’s an interesting book,” Ben said.
Esteban said, pointing at the darkness beyond the road: “We will have to go
“I can imagine…” He dropped the bantering tone. “I suppose you’ll go on to through those fields, doctor, then cross the river,” The apology for yet one more
medicine after your AB?” imposition was a wounded look in his eyes. He added, in his subdued voice:
“It’s not very far…” Ben had spoken to the attendants and was locking the car.
“I don’t know yet, Pa.”
The truck rumbled and moved ponderously onto the road, its throb strong and
Tiny moth like blown bits of paper flew toward the windshield and funneled then fading in the warm night stillness.
away above them. “You don’t have to be a country doctor like me, Ben. You
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“Lead the way, “ Dr. Lazaro said, handing Esteban the flashlight. flesh; he broke another ampule, with deft precise movements, and emptied the
syringe, while the infant lay stiff as wood beneath his hands. He wiped off the
They crossed the road, to a cleft in the embankment that bordered the fields, Dr. sweat running into his eyes, then holding the rigid body with one hand, he tried
Lazaro was sweating now in the dry heat; following the swinging ball of the to draw air into the faltering lungs, pressing and releasing the chest; but even as
flashlight beam, sorrow wounded by the stifling night, he felt he was being he worked to rescue the child, the bluish color of its face began to turn gray.
dragged, helplessly, toward some huge and complicated error, a meaningless
ceremony. Somewhere to his left rose a flapping of wings, a bird cried among Dr. Lazaro rose from his crouch on the floor, a cramped ache in his shoulders,
unseen leaves: they walked swiftly, and there was only the sound of the silence, his mouth dry. The lamplight glistened on his pale hollow face as he confronted
the constant whirl of crickets and the whisper of their feet on the path between the room again, the stale heat, the poverty. Esteban met his gaze; all their eyes
the stubble fields. were upon him, Ben at the door, the old man, the woman in the corner, and
Esteban’s wife, in the trembling shadows.
With the boy close behind him, Dr. Lazaro followed Esteban down a clay slope
to the slope and ripple of water in the darkness. The flashlight showed a banca Esteban said: “Doctor..”
drawn up at the river’s edge. Esteban wade waist-deep into the water, holding
the boat steady as Dr. Lazaro and Ben stepped on the board. In the darkness, He shook his head, and replaced the syringe case in his bag, slowly and
with the opposite bank like the far rise of an island, Dr. Lazaro had a moment’s deliberately, and fastened the clasp. T Here was murmuring him, a rustle across
tremor of fear as the boar slide out over the black water; below prowled the the bamboo floor, and when he turned, Ben was kneeling beside the child. And
deadly currents; to drown her in the dephts of the night… But it took only a he watched, with a tired detached surprise, as the boy poured water from a
minute to cross the river. “We’re here doctor,” Esteban said, and they padded p a coconut shell on the infant’s brow. He caught the words half-whispered in the
stretch of sand to a clump of trees; a dog started to bark, the shadows of a quietness: “.. in the name of the Father.. the Son… the Holy Ghost…”
kerosene lamp wavered at a window. The shadows flapped on the walls, the heart of the lamp quivering before it
Unsteady on a steep ladder, Dr. Lazaro entered the cave of Esteban’s hut. The settled into a slender flame. By the river dogs were barking. Dr. Lazaro glanced
single room contained the odors he often encountered but had remained alien to, at his watch; it was close to midnight. Ben stood over the child, the coconut shell
stirring an impersonal disgust: the sourish decay, the smells of the unaired sick. in his hands, as though wandering what next to do with it, until he saw his father
An old man greeted him, lisping incoherently; a woman, the grandmother, sat nod for them to go.
crouched in a corner, beneath a famed print of the Mother of Perpetual Help; a Doctor, tell us – “Esteban took a step forward.
boy, about ten, slept on, sprawled on a mat. Esteban’s wife, pale and thin, lay on
the floor with the sick child beside her. “I did everything: Dr. Lazaro said. “It’s too late –“

Motionless, its tiny blue-tinged face drawn way from its chest in a fixed He gestured vaguely, with a dull resentment; by some implicit relationship, he
wrinkled grimace, the infant seemed to be straining to express some terrible was also responsible, for the misery in the room, the hopelessness. “There’s
ancient wisdom. nothing more I can do, Esteban, “ he said. He thought with a flick of anger: Soon
the child will be out of it, you ought to be grateful. Esteban’s wife began to cry,
Dr. Lazaro made a cursory check – skin dry, turning cold; breathing shallow; a weak smothered gasping, and the old woman was comforting her, it is the will
heartbeat fast and irregular. And I that moment, only the child existed before of God, my daughter…”
him; only the child and his own mind probing now like a hard gleaming
instrument. How strange that it should still live, his mind said as it considered In the yard, Esteban pressed carefully folded bills into the doctor’s hand; the
the spark that persisted within the rigid and tortured body. He was alone with the limp, tattered feel of the money was sort of the futile journey, “I know this is not
child, his whole being focused on it, in those intense minutes shaped into a habit enough, doctor,” Esteban said. “as you can see we are very poor… I shall bring
now by so many similar instances: his physician’s knowledge trying to keep the you fruit, chickens, someday…”
heart beating, to revive an ebbing life and somehow make it rise again.
A late moon had risen, edging over the tops of the trees, and in the faint wash of
Dr. Lazaro removed the blankets that bundled the child and injected a whole its light, Esteban guided them back to the boat. A glimmering rippled on the
ampule to check the tonic spasms, the needle piercing neatly into the sparse surface of the water as they paddled across,; the white moonlight spread in the
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sky, and a sudden wind sprang rain-like and was lost in the tress massed on the impoverished, lamplit room fused into tired melancholy. He started to think of
riverbank. his other son, one he had lost.

“I cannot thank you enough, doctor,” Esteban said. “You have been very kind to He said, seeking conversation, if other people carried on like you, Ben, the
come this far, at this hour.” He trail is just over there, isn’t it?” He wanted to be priests would be run out of business.”
rid of the man, to be away from the shy humble voice, the prolonged
wretchedness. The boy sat beside him, his face averted, not answering.

I shall be grateful always, doctor,” Esteban said. “And to you son, too. God go “Now, you’ll have an angel praying for you in heaven,” Dr. Lazaro said, teasing,
with you.” He was a faceless voice withdrawing in the shadows, a cipher in the trying to create an easy mood between them. “What if you hadn’t baptized the
shabby crowds that came to town on market days. baby and it died? What would happen to it then?”

“Let’s go, Ben” Dr. Lazaro said. It won’t see God,” Ben said.

They took the path across the field; around them the moonlight had transformed “But isn’t that unfair?” It was like riddle, trivial, but diverting. “Just because..”
the landscape, revealing a gentle, more familiar dimension, a luminous haze “Maybe God has another remedy,” Ben said. “I don’t know. But the church
upon the trees stirring with a growing wind; and the heat of the night had passed, says.”
a coolness was falling from the deep sky. Unhurried, his pace no more than a
casual stroll, Dr. Lazaro felt the oppression of the night begin to life from him, He could sense the boy groping for the tremendous answers. “The Church
an emotionless calm returned to his mind. The sparrow does not fall without the teaches, the church says…. “ God: Christ: the communications of saints: Dr.
Father’s leave he mused at the sky, but it falls just the same. But to what end are Lazaro found himself wondering about the world of novenas and candles, where
the sufferings of a child? The crickets chirped peacefully in the moon-pale bread and wine became the flesh and blood of the Lord, and a woman bathed in
darkness beneath the trees. light appeared before children, and mortal men spoke of eternal life; the visions
of God, the body’s resurrection at the end of time. It was a country from which
“You baptized the child, didn’t you, Ben?” he was barred; no matter – the customs, the geography didn’t appeal to him. But
“Yes, Pa.” The boy kept in the step beside him. in the care suddenly, driving through the night, he was aware of an obscure
disappointment, a subtle pressure around his heart, as though he had been
He used to believe in it, too. The power of the Holy Spirit washing away original deprived of a certain joy…
sin, the purified soul made heir of heaven. He could still remember fragments of
his boy hood faith, as one might remember an improbable and long-discarded A bus roared around a hill toward, its lights blinding him, and he pulled to the
dream. side of the road, braking involuntarily as a billow of dust swept over the car. He
had not closed the window on his side, and the flung dust poured in, the thick
“Lay baptism, isn’t that the name for it?” brittle powder almost choking him, making him cough, his eyes smarting, before
he could shield his face with his hands. In the headlights, the dust sifted down
“Yes,” Ben said. I asked the father. The baby hadn’t been baptized.” He added and when the air was clear again, Dr. Lazaro, swallowing a taste of earth, of
as they came to the embankment that separated the field from the road: “They darkness, maneuvered the car back onto the road, his arms exhausted and numb.
were waiting for it to get well.” He drove the last half-mile to town in silence, his mind registering nothing but
The station had closed, with only the canopy light and the blobed neon sign left the frit of dust in his mouth and the empty road unwinding swiftly before him.
burning. A steady wind was blowing now across the field, the moonlit plains. They reached the sleeping town, the desolate streets, the plaza empty in the
He saw Ben stifle a yawn. I’ll drive,” Dr. Lazaro said. moonlight, and the huddled shapes of houses, the old houses that Dr. Lazaro had
always know. How many nights had he driven home like this through the quiet
His eyes were not what they used to be, and he drove leaning forward, his hands town, with a man’s life ended behind him, or a child crying newly risen from the
tight on the wheel. He began to sweat again, and the empty road and the lateness womb; and a sense of constant motions, of change, of the days moving swiftly
and the memory of Esteban and of the child dying before morning in the toward and immense revelation touched him once more, briefly, and still he
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could not find the words.. He turned the last corner, then steered the car down One day just as they were finishin their lunch, Ka Ugong announced: “I’m not
the gravelled driveway to the garage, while Ben closed the gate. Dr. Lazaro sat going to wash the dishes any more.” He threw out his chest and lifted his chin.
there a moment, in the stillness, resting his eyes, conscious of the measured
beating of his heart, and breathing a scent of dust that lingered on his clothes, his “Who says so?” asked Ka Maldang, holding up her chin, highert than his.
skin. Slowly he emerged from the car, locking it, and went around the tower of “I say so; I worked so hard in the field this morning. I’m not going to wash any
the water-tank to the front yard where Ben Stood waiting. dish.”
With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder was they Ka Maldang stood up and with her arms akimbo, she glared down at Ka Ugong
turned toward the ement –walled house. They had gone on a trip; they had come across the table. She was at Ka Ugong across the table. She was a Big woman.
home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than he had ever been in years. Her arms were stourt. Her voice was also big. “Ad who, Mister Hugo, is going
“Sorry for ekeeping you up this late,” Dr. Lazaro said. to wash these dishes?” she asked.

“It’s all right, Pa.” Ka Ugong’s chest sank again. His chin salso went down. He held on the edge of
the table nervously.
Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in that barrio” – there was just the
slightest patronage in this one – “ your mother will love to hear about it.” “You!” he said in a much lower tone. “You are the woman. You should do all
the housework.”
He shook the boy beside him gently. “Reverend Father Ben Lazaro.”
“And what do you do?” asked Ka Maldang. “You tie the carabao to the reeds in
The impulse of certain humor – it was part of the comradeship. He chuckled the field and then you lie down on the grass to watch it graze. You call that hard
drowsily: father Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life?” work? I cook, clean the house, wash your clothes, I scrub the floor, I do all the
work that only slaves should do. And yet, you even refuse to help me wash the
As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depth of the plate which you have eaten!” Ka Maldang’s voice was now raised to a high
house, it came to Dr. Lazaro faintly in the late night that for certain things, like pitch and her tears posed on her eyelids at Ka Ugong and at her broom. She
love there was only so much time. But the glimmer was lost instantly, buried in grabbed the broom. She raised the broom to strike him, crying, “You, you, you
the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain. lazy man!”

Ka Ugong ducked under the table, “Don’t” he cried. “Don’t strike me!”
__________________________________________________ “Come out from under the table, you coward.” ordered Ka Maldang.
WHY WOMEN WASH THE DISHES “Lay down your broom,” said Ka Ugong.
by Filomena N. Colendrino “All right, all right. Come out.” Ka Maldang put her broom behind the door.

Ka Ugong returned to his seat opposite her at the table.

In the town of Santa Rosa there once lived a couple named Hugo and Imelda. “What have you to say?” asked Ka Maldang, wipingher eyes.
Every mealtime they quarreled over the chore of washing the dishes. Imelda
would scold Hugo if he refused to wash the dishes. Sometimes she would “Let’s stop quarreling over the plates. Let’s have a wager. The first one of us
become angry and call him names, and if he talked back she would get coconut who will speak after I’d said ‘Begin’ will wash the dishes. Always”
midrib broom and chase him with it. He would run to the house of his compadre
and hide there till his wife’s anger had passed. “Only that?” said Ka Maldang. “The first one who talks will always wash the
plates, and bowls, and pots and pans. Always.”
The neighbors familiarly called Imelda, Ka Maldang and Hugo, Ka Ugong.
“Right.” said Ka Ugong. “If you ever say just one word to me or to anybody, or
to anything after I had said ‘Begin’, you will always wash the dishes.”

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“That’s easy. I can keep my mouth shut even for a week. You can’t. You even The neighbor turned to Ka Maldang. “Speak, Comadre! What happened?” He
talk to your carabao.” shook her shoulders, too.

“All right, are you ready?” asked Ka Ugong. She pushed him roughly aside but did not speak.

Ka Maldang sat upright in front of him across the table. She nodded her head, “Did you eat something poisonous? Some food that has made you dumb?” He
compressed her lips, and Ka Ugong said “Begin.” shook each one alternately. But still neither stood up nor talked.

They both fell silent. They sat at the table looking at each other across the The neighbor was alarmed. He did not get the ax but ran out to the rest of the
unwashed plates and bowls and spoons. They did not like to leave each other for neighbors, He told them that something terrible had happened to to his
fear that one would talk to him self without the other’s hearing. They sat there Compadre Ugong and Compadre Maldang. The neighbors gathered at Ka
just staring. Maldang’s dining room. They took turns trying to make them speak. But the two
continued to sit staring at each other in silence. Ka Maldang looked at her
Soon the cat began to mew for its food. Neither Ka Maldang nor Ka Ugong paid husband threateningly for a moment then closed her eyes. Ka Ugong knew that
attention to its mewing. The cat jumped upon the drying dishes to lick the she did so to avoid looking at the neighbors, He also closed his eyesand ignored
leftovers. Ka Maldang did not drive the cat away. Neither did Ka Ugong. The everyone who had come up to his house. Ka Maldang was very angry with her
cat licked the pot and pan on it, overturned a kettle, spilled its contents, then Compadre’s interference but she dared not to speak her mind, she pretended to
went to lie down under the table. Ka Ugong pretended that nothing had be asleep.
happened. He continue to sit still, and so did Ka Maldang.
The compadre was very much worried. He ran to the village herb man. The herb
Soon, it was getting late in the afternoon but they went on sitting mutely at the man came and when he saw the motionless, silent husband and wife sitting at the
lunch table. Their eyes were tired from staring hard at each other. Tears began to table, he declared that they were bewitched. He spread a woven bud mat in the
roll down their cheeks. Ka Ugong’s shirt became damp with his sweat. Ka center of the sala and asked the “bewitched” couple to lie down. Ka Ugong
Maldang’s sweat gathered on her fore heat, and trickle down to the sides of her obediently lay down and closed his eyes. He curled up and went to sleep. But Ka
face, and fell drop by drop to her breast. Maldang refused to get up from where she sat at the dining table
A neighbor called, “Compadre Ugong! Oh! Compadre!” The herb man said “Ah, the spirit that has taken possession of her is very
Ka Ugong did not answer. stubborn. I must break its spell.”

The neighbor called again, “Comadre Maldang! Yoo-hoo Comadre Maldang. He turned, then produced from a small bag which he always carried nine pieces
Yoo-hoo, Compadre Ugong, may I borrow your ax?” of betel leaf, a piece of areca nut, and a little lime from a tiny bottle. He
examined the leaves closely to choose those which had veins running in
Ka Maldang did not answer. Ka Ugong looked at her silently. identical arrangements on each side of the midrib. He cut the nut into nine
pieces. He spread a little lime on each betel leaf, rolled them and wrapped them
“Perhaps nobody is at home,” they heard the neighbor say to himself. “But why
around each piece of areca nut. He now had nine rings of the leaves.
did they leave their ladder at the door? They usually remove the ladder when
they go away. Well, I’ll just go up get the ax and return it later.” The neighbor “This represents the lost spirit of the couple,” he said.
went up.
He chewed the leaf and nut. When he had chewed it he spat it on his palm,
When the neighbor went u the bamboo ladder he was surprised to see Ka dipped a forefinger of the other hand into the nut colored saliva and marked with
Maldang and Ka Ugong sitting silently at the table where the plates had dried up it a cross on the foreheads of Ka Ugong and Ka Maldang. Ka Ugong did not
with the leftovers. He hurried toward them. seem to feel the old man’s finger on his forehead. Ka Maldang caught the man’s
forefinger and twisted it. The old herb doctor cried “aray” and pulled back his
Ka Ugong nether moved nor talked. The neighbor repeated his question. He
hand. He moved toward Ka Ugong who was lying down. Calling his name softly
shook Ka Ugong;s shoulder. Ka Ugong let him shake him, closing his lips
and slowly several times. “Come, Ugong, Come back, Ugong!” Ka Ugong did
tighter.
not move nor speak.
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“Come Maldang…come home to your body now…come. Maldang…!” chanted He jumped about clapping his hands and saying to the astonished neighbors,
the old man. Ka Maldang did not answer. “She talked first. We had a wager. Now she will always wash the dishes!’

Evening fell on the frightened village, frightened because the herb doctor said Ka Maldang lifted up the lid of Ka Ugong’s coffin to strike his head with it but
that the spell might be cast on some other villagers besides Ka Ugong and Ka he ran out with his neighbors, still shouting happily and saying “I won, I knew I
Maldang. He called to the bewitched couple softly at first, and then louder, but would win! Now I’ll never wash dishes.”
became tired so she reclined against the bamboo wall.

The old her man said, “This is the first witchery of its kind that I have met here.
By their silence I believe that they are dead. Their spirits, driven away by the __________________________________________________
witch, have left their bodies. The only thing to do in order to keep their souls in MAGNIFICENCE
peace and to prevent this witchery craft from spreading among us is to bury
them.” by Estrella Alfon

The herb man ordered some of the men to look for boards and make two coffins
immediately before the malady would go to them. In no time, the two coffins,
There was nothing to fear, for the man was always so gentle, so kind. At night
made of rough planks, hurriedly nailed together, were finished.
when the little girl and her brother were bathed in the light of the big shaded
The women began to weep for Ka Maldang. She had leaned rigidly against the bulb that hung over the big study table in the downstairs hall, the man would
back of her chair, closed her eyes, and shut her lips tight. The herb man asked knock gently on the door, and come in. he would stand for a while just beyond
the men gathered around to lift the couple into the coffins. 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
“We shall bury them at sunrise. Some of us have to stay to keep the wake for the table, their eyes bright in the bright light, and watch him come fully into the
dead,” he said. light, but his voice soft, his manner slow. He would smell very faintly of sweat
The man easily lifted Ka Ugong and places him inside his coffin. Surely, he and pomade, but the children didn’t mind although they did notice, for they
thought to himself, he would win the wager. He would not be afraid of being waited for him every evening as they sat at their lessons like this. He’d throw his
buried. Why, he would just get cut of the grave when the neighbors were gone. visored cap on the table, and it would fall down with a soft plop, then he’d nod
He thought everything going on was great fun and he was enjoying himself. his head to say one was right, or shake it to say one was wrong.
How he would frighten them all when he returned from his grave! It was not always that he came. They could remember perhaps two weeks when
The herb man approached Ka Maldang. Although her eyes were closed, she had he remarked to their mother that he had never seen two children looking so
been listening to his directions. She was afraid that he would surely force her smart. The praise had made their mother look over them as they stood around
into the coffin if she did not tell him to go away. But she did not want to talk. listening to the goings-on at the meeting of the neighborhood association, of
She hoped her husband would object to the men’s lifting her into the coffin. 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
“Surely, Hugo will not let me be buried tomorrow. Uh, I’m afraid to sleep in that gangly legs of fine spirited colts. Their mother saw them with eyes that held
coffin tonight. No, I’ll not let them lift me into it,” she thought to herself. 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
But she did not hear Ka Ugong speak. She opened her eyes just as the herb man, them. And the man said, I have nothing to do in the evenings, let me help them.
aided by two other men, put his arms around her to lift up from her chair. Mother nodded her head and said, if you want to bother yourself. And the thing
Ka Maldang pushed the men, got up to her feet, and shouted, “Don’t touch us! rested there, and the man came in the evenings therefore, and he helped solve
Get out! Get out of my house. Shame on you for coming here, meddling with fractions for the boy, and write correct phrases in language for the little girl.
our lives!” In those days, the rage was for pencils. School children always have rages going
Ka Ugong leaped to his feet. He also shouted, “You talked first!” at one time or another. Sometimes for paper butterflies that are held on sticks,
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and whirr in the wind. The Japanese bazaars promoted a rage for those. girl three, they were asking their mother to buy more, so they could each have
Sometimes it is for little lead toys found in the folded waffles that Japanese five, and three at least in the jumbo size that the little girl’s third pencil was.
confection-makers had such light hands with. At this particular time, it was for Their mother said, Oh stop it, what will you do with so many pencils, you can
pencils. Pencils big but light in circumference not smaller than a man’s thumb. only write with one at a time.
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 And the little girl muttered under her breath, I’ll ask Vicente for some more.
unattainable to a child budgeted at a baon of a centavo a day. They were all of Their mother replied, He’s only a bus conductor, don’t ask him for too many
five centavos each, and one pencil was not at all what one had ambitions for. In things. It’s a pity. And this observation their mother said to their father, who was
rages, one kept a collection. Four or five pencils, of different colors, to tie with eating his evening meal between paragraphs of the book on masonry rites that he
strings near the eraser end, to dangle from one’s book-basket, to arouse the envy was reading. It is a pity, said their mother, People like those, they make friends
of the other children who probably possessed less. with people like us, and they feel it is nice to give us gifts, or the children toys
Add to the man’s gentleness and his kindness in knowing a child’s desires, his and things. You’d think they wouldn’t be able to afford it.
promise that he would give each of them not one pencil but two. And for the The father grunted, and said, the man probably needed a new job, and was
little girl who he said was very bright and deserved more, who would get the softening his way through to him by going at the children like that. And the
biggest pencil he could find. mother said, No, I don’t think so, he’s a rather queer young man, and I think he
One evening he did bring them. The evenings of waiting had made them look doesn’t have many friends, but I have watched him with the children, and he
forward to this final giving, and when they got the pencils they whooped with seems to dote on them.
joy. The little boy had two pencils, one green, and one blue. And the little girl The father grunted again, and did not pay any further attention.
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 Vicente was earlier than usual that evening. The children immediately put their
had been sharpened, and the little girl jumped up and down, and shouted with lessons down, telling him of the envy of their schoolmates, and would he buy
glee. Until their mother called from down the stairs. What are you shouting them more please?
about? And they told her, shouting gladly, Vicente, for that was his name.
Vicente said to the little boy, Go and ask if you can let me have a glass of water.
Vicente had brought the pencils he had promised them.
And the little boy ran away to comply, saying behind him, But buy us some
Thank him, their mother called. The little boy smiled and said, Thank you. And more pencils, huh, buy us more pencils, and then went up to stairs to their
the little girl smiled, and said, Thank you, too. But the man said, are you not mother.
going to kiss me for those pencils? They both came forward, the little girl and
Vicente held the little girl by the arm, and said gently, Of course I will buy you
the little boy, and they both made to kiss him but Vicente slapped the boy
more pencils, as many as you want
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. 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.
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. 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
The man’s arms tightened suddenly about the little girl until the little girl
tomorrow? And the little girl turned to the paper on the table where she had been
squirmed out of his arms, and laughed a little breathlessly, disturbed but
writing with the jumbo pencil, and she told him that that was her lesson but it
innocent, looking at the man with a smiling little question of puzzlement.
was easy.
The next evening, he came around again. All through that day, they had been
Then go ahead and write, and I will watch you.
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 Don’t hold me on your lap, said the little girl, I am very heavy, you will get very
talking about the pencils, pencils, for now that they had, the boy two, and the tired.
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The man shook his head, and said nothing, but held her on his lap just the same. 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
The little girl kept squirming, for somehow she felt uncomfortable to be held finished. She was going to open her mouth but she glanced at the boy and closed
thus, her mother and father always treated her like a big girl, she was always told it, and with a look and an inclination of the head, she bade Vicente go up the
never to act like a baby. She looked around at Vicente, interrupting her careful stairs.
writing to twist around.
The man said nothing, for she said nothing either. Up the stairs went the man,
His face was all in sweat, and his eyes looked very strange, and he indicated to and the mother followed behind. When they had reached the upper landing, the
her that she must turn around, attend to the homework she was writing. woman called down to her son, Son, come up and go to your room.
But the little girl felt very queer, she didn’t know why, all of a sudden she was The little boy did as he was told, asking no questions, for indeed he was feeling
immensely frightened, and she jumped up away from Vicente’s lap. sleepy already.
She stood looking at him, feeling that queer frightened feeling, not knowing As soon as the boy was gone, the mother turned on Vicente. There was a pause.
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. Finally, the woman raised her hand and slapped him full hard in the face. Her
retreated down one tread of the stairs with the force of the blow, but the mother
But Vicente had jumped up too soon as the little girl had jumped from his lap. followed him. With her other hand she slapped him on the other side of the face
He snatched at the papers that lay on the table and held them to his stomach, again. And so down the stairs they went, the man backwards, his face
turning away from the mother’s coming. continually open to the force of the woman’s slapping. Alternately she lifted her
The mother looked at him, stopped in her tracks, and advanced into the light. right hand and made him retreat before her until they reached the bottom
She had been in the shadow. Her voice had been like a bell of safety to the little landing.
girl. But now she advanced into glare of the light that held like a tableau the He made no resistance, offered no defense. Before the silence and the grimness
figures of Vicente holding the little girl’s papers to him, and the little girl of her attack he cowered, retreating, until out of his mouth issued something like
looking up at him frightened, in her eyes dark pools of wonder and fear and a whimper.
question.
The mother thus shut his mouth, and with those hard forceful slaps she escorted
The little girl looked at her mother, and saw the beloved face transfigured by him right to the other door. As soon as the cool air of the free night touched him,
some sort of glow. The mother kept coming into the light, and when Vicente he recovered enough to turn away and run, into the shadows that ate him up. The
made as if to move away into the shadow, she said, very low, but very heavily, woman looked after him, and closed the door. She turned off the blazing light
do not move. over the study table, and went slowly up the stairs and out into the dark night.
She put the glass of soft drink down on the table, where in the light one could When her mother reached her, the woman, held her hand out to the child.
watch the little bubbles go up and down in the dark liquid. The mother said to Always also, with the terrible indelibility that one associated with terror, the girl
the boy, Oscar, finish your lessons. And turning to the little girl, she said, come was to remember the touch of that hand on her shoulder, heavy, kneading at her
here. The little girl went to her, and the mother knelt down, for she was a tall flesh, the woman herself stricken almost dumb, but her eyes eloquent with that
woman and she said, turn around. Obediently the little girl turned around, and angered fire. She knelt, she felt the little girl’s dress and took it off with haste
her mother passed her hands over the little girl’s back. that was almost frantic, tearing at the buttons and imparting a terror to the little
Go upstairs, she said. girl that almost made her sob. Hush, the mother said. Take a bath quickly.

The mother’s voice was of such a heavy quality and of such awful timbre that Her mother presided over the bath the little girl took, scrubbed her, and soaped
the girl could only nod her head, and without looking at Vicente again, she raced her, and then wiped her gently all over and changed her into new clothes that
up the stairs. The mother went to the cowering man, and marched him with a smelt of the clean fresh smell of clothes that had hung in the light of the sun.
glance out of the circle of light that held the little boy. Once in the shadow, she The clothes that she had taken off the little girl, she bundled into a tight
extended her hand, and without any opposition took away the papers that wrenched bunch, which she threw into the kitchen range.
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Take also the pencils, said the mother to the watching newly bathed, newly had pasted cut-out pictures of Mayon Volcano, Pagsanjan Falls and the Banaue
changed child. Take them and throw them into the fire. But when the girl turned Rice Terraces, and he had pointed out their locations on the map. Bienvenido
to comply, the mother said, No, tomorrow will do. And taking the little girl by had remarked that they all seemed to be very far away from Kangmating, and
the hand, she led her to her little girl’s bed, made her lie down and tucked the Mr. Pareja, wiping his glasses on the hem of his shirt, had tried to explain that
covers gently about her as the girl dropped off into quick slumber. away by saying that Kangmating was a beautiful place in its own right—there
were wild orchids and blue-feathered birds to be found in the outlying forests—
but no one had smiled.
__________________________________________________ Now it was past four in the afternoon and the midday heat had dissipated. Mr.
IN THE GARDEN Pareja had removed his shoes, as it was his habit to do, and had forgotten to put
them back on. His socks were the same ones he had worn the day before, but
by Jose Dalisay they were soft and comfortable on his feet, which he perched on top of his shoes.
The shoes themselves—brown suede with black rubber soles—had long lost
their color and had taken on the dull grey of the earthen floor; one of the laces
The children were in the schoolhouse garden, pressing squash seeds into mounds had frayed so badly that he had had to knot it whole again. Nevertheless they
they had shaped the day before, when the soldiers came. The tomatoes would were the only shoes in the building, and he had resolved to wear them every
have been ripe for picking in a few days; they had watered these, and Rosita, school day for the past two years, failing only once when a scorpion had stung
being big-boned and the eldest at fourteen, was drawing more water from the him in the ankle, causing it to swell.
pump near the mango tree. The pump was old and creaky; it was as old as the
Mr. Pareja looked out the window and saw two children arguing over the
schoolhouse, and older than the tree. Rosita pushed the iron lever down with all
distance to leave between the seeds. He thought of stepping out and resolving
her weight, and the pump spat water out into her pail in uneven bursts. The pail
the issue for them, but he changed his mind just as quickly; they would know, in
was nearly full when Rosita saw the soldiers coming up the path.
a few weeks, who was right. It was more likely that they already knew, being
Mr. Pareja was inside the one-room schoolhouse at that moment, preparing farmers’ children, and that one was simply being stubborn. It did not matter;
questions for a social studies quiz he planned to give the following morning. On they would learn. The bushes of white rosal caught his eye, and gladdened him;
the table, in front of him, was a tin box that had once held biscuits. The crayons he had planted these himself at the beginning of his tenure, and now the garden
he had brought back with him from his last trip to the capital now lay at the had yielded both vegetables for the children and himself to study and to eat, and
bottom of the box, most of them stripped of their paper coverings. The box sat flowers for the plaster Virgin they had set up in a corner of the schoolroom. The
on top of a folded map, and the map was reinforced with tape at the folds. garden was neat and well-tended; a sea of weeds and deep-rooted shrubbery
Earlier that day Mr. Pareja had made the children copy, with their pencils and stood on the other side of the fence, and beyond were the foothills and the
the crayons, the map of the country—all its major islands and important cities. forests, watered on their own by rivers and cloudbursts; where the children went
He had watched over their shoulders as the children labored with the unfamiliar home among the coconut and bamboo groves, the same vegetables and flowers
names and shapes and shaded the islands—lightly, because the crayons were grew in abandon. But Mr. Pareja had insisted on the garden; the children had
few and had to be shared. giggled the first time that the man had taken them out to scratch plots in the hard
earth, but soon everyone went about his business severely, and their first harvest
Bienvenido, the brightest boy, had asked him where Kangmating was on the big of eggplants—small and pudgy as they were—was roasted and feasted on by all.
map. It was nowhere to be found, much to the children’s anxiety, so Mr. Pareja
had had to mark its approximate location with his pen. In doing so his eyes had At the instant that the soldiers came into view, Mr. Pareja was divided between
strayed upwards, across straits and seas, to another town with its name printed in forming a question about famous landmarks in the distant north and savoring the
the smallest and faintest type, and he felt a fleeting clutch in the chest, and saw memory of how sweet and crunchy the biscuits in the box had been.
in his mind the outlines of a church and belfry and the fall of delicate white lace.
Then Rosita screamed, and Mr. Pareja ran out to the garden in his socks.
“Here,” he had said softly, “Kangmating is here. This map was made by very old
people. They forgot to put us in it.” The children had laughed, and he had There were six of them, led by a sergeant. The sergeant was a large man in his
laughed with them. Then he had gone to the part of the wall where the children forties, and when he moved he forced the air about him into corners; his name
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was Baclagon. The other men on the detail were younger and leaner of build; destroy those plants. His fingers curled around the ball of mud he had been
they wore soggy but new camouflage uniforms and held their rifles close to their holding when the soldiers came, and soon Bienvenido, now eleven but fatherless
bodies; they would look at Baclagon, then sweep the perimeter, then look at the at eight, was crying. The soldier looked back at him, and then away; he could
sergeant again. He would tell them where to go and what to do, and they would not have been older than seventeen himself; he, too, looked like a farmer’s son, a
follow. Now the soldiers were picking the garden clean of its vegetables, green boy from the north as soldiers usually were. The soldier put his rifle down on the
tomatoes and all, as Mr. Pareja and the children watched in silence. Baclagon ground to free both hands for his work, but the sergeant quickly strode over to
stood before them and spoke kindly to Rosita. him and struck him hard on the shoulder. “Never drop your weapon unless I say
so, estupido! Very soon you’ll have a rebel on your back, with a grin on his face
“It was nothing, it was only a tweak.” and a knife in your neck!” The soldier scrambled for his rifle, scattering okra.
Rosita took a step backward, murmuring something, not knowing that she had His companions snickered; Baclagon glared at them as well, and they fell quiet.
begun to hold on to Mr. Pareja’s shirt. Mr. Pareja was looking at the garden; one The sergeant returned to Mr. Pareja. “We have to take everything. We have
of the soldiers had found it easier to uproot the plants than to pick the vegetables orders, you understand? These rebels, they come and go. But they need food,
off them one by one. Slowly he removed his glasses and stared at his feet. too, like you have here. But surely this is nothing to you, no? It’s just a—what—
Baclagon stared along with him and laughed. a decoration. But to some people, it is everything. So we take everything—with
your permission, sir. Ah, everything but the flowers. We are not sissies, you
“Sir, did you forget your shoes at home, sir?” see.” That drew a laugh from the men.
Mr. Pareja shook his head. He felt a tug at his shirt and then he found his voice. “There is food in the mountains,” Mr. Pareja said. “You cannot possibly uproot
“How long will you stay?” everything.”
“Tonight. Tomorrow morning, maybe. It’s a routine job, that’s all. There are “Good, then let them stay and feast there, in the mountains. Here, unless fools
rebels all around these days, terrorists. I’m sure you know.” support them, they starve.” He stepped closer and softened his voice. “You, sir,
you seem to be a wise and honest man. Surely you were not born here?”
“We’re peaceful people here. We hide nothing.”
“No,” Mr. Pareja said. “I come from the north.”
Baclagon rubbed his chest and squinted at Bienvenido. “The other day, a soldier
was killed, here in Kangmating. Do you have a cigarette?” “That’s what I thought!” Baclagon said, slapping his thigh. “What do you know,
I’m a northerner myself! Boys, the maestro is one of us!” The sergeant roared
“No. I don’t smoke.”
with laughter and shook Mr. Pareja roughly. Rosita staggered backward. “Now,”
“You want to live longer, sir?” The sergeant chuckled. “Did you hear about our Baclagon said grandly, “we feel less shy to avail ourselves of your hospitality,
soldier?” shouldn’t we, manong, if I may call you that? And we, needless to say, are at
your service.”
“Yes.” The children had told him about it. The man had been drinking a gallon
of tuba, and had started firing his rifle into trees and houses. That evening he had Mr. Pareja cleared his throat and put his glasses back on. “I’d like to send the
been found along the road, his guts bubbling out of a huge gash in his belly. It children home now. It’s past the hour.”
had shocked Mr. Pareja—the soldier’s actions and his fate—but there was
“Yes, of course!”
nothing, he thought, to be done about it, and he made a point later in the day to
make no further mention of the incident. Mr. Pareja looked at the children and said “Go.” Uro, a boy of ten, came up to
ask if a quiz was going to be given the next day, but Bienvenido tugged him
“There is food in the mountains,” Mr. Pareja said. “You cannot possibly uproot
away before Mr. Pareja could answer. “Go,” the teacher said again, and the
everything.”
children turned to go.
“It was very unfortunate,” Baclagon said. “His killers have not been caught.
“The girl stays,” Baclagon said, “the big one.”
Now, we have to do this.” The vegetable patch was a shambles. Bienvenido,
who had planted most of the okra, was staring at the soldier whose task it was to

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Rosita froze in her step and stared in terror at the sergeant, then at Mr. Pareja. rapidly setting sun. Mr. Pareja turned, dragged his socks across the garden, sat at
The sergeant’s face was stern and impassive; the teacher’s reflected his pupil’s his desk, and prayed desperately to the plaster Virgin for the gift of wakefulness.
astonishment.

“She’s just a child,” Mr. Pareja said, “she can do nothing.”

__________________________________________________
“Our things need washing. If she can draw water she can wash for us. It’s the
least she can do to help her people.” The sergeant sniffed his armpit and snorted. PORTENTS

Mr. Pareja’s throat felt scorched as he heard himself saying, “Let me do it. I can by Jessica Zafra
do your washing. Please.”

“You’ll do no such thing. What an insult! Did you hear that, boys? A man of Positive, she said cheerily, as if I shouldn’t go out and hang myself this instant. I
learning and position, begging to do our laundry. It’s unthinkable. We refuse held on to the phone for a long time; I was sure that if I let go I would fall down.
your offer, for the sake of your pride!” The laughter again. “Go!” Baclagon The coffee turned to mud in my mouth—I ran to the sink and heaved.
growled at the other children, who promptly scurried off into the woods. Congratulations, it’s a fetus. You frigging idiot.
Bienvenido’s ball fell and crumbled by the wayside.
Afterwards I sat at the kitchen table and tried to make sense of the stuff swirling
“It’s all right, sir,” Rosita said. “I know how to wash clothes, I’ve done it around in my head. Visions of blood and umbilical cords and feeding bottles
before.” whirled before my eyes like malevolent frisbees. The newspaper was lying next
“Your parents—” to the platter of toast; I read the headline about two hundred times. “May use
poison gas, Iraq warns.” Next to it a picture of a dead Kurdish woman clutching
“Bienvenido will tell them.” the body of her dead child. Mother. Child. I felt like throwing up all over again.
I imagined a creature ripping out of my stomach in a gory mess, like the monster
The sergeant clapped his hands together. “Good. You, manong, you can go. We in Alien.
will sleep in your schoolhouse, but I assure you, we will leave your precious
things alone.” There was a Post-it note on the mirror: “Lunch with Lawrence, 12:30,”
Lawrence being a fifty-fifty candidate for the father. I painted a face on and
“No, I am sorry, but I must stay. It is my responsibility.” His socks again. “You stared at the mirror. I saw my belly swelling up, my clothes rising like a circus
will have to drag me out of here.” tent, and all I could think about was the ten pounds I’d just lost, and the new
Baclagon considered a sharp retort to that, but he looked at Rosita and said, dress I bought to mark the occasion. Finally I got my new dress out of the closet
smiling, “Oh, all right, if you must. You can watch us sleep. Perhaps you can and put it on while it still fit.
even tell me in the morning if I fart in my sleep, as the rumors say. You’ll stay In the elevator my next-door neighbor smiled and said Good morning. She had
awake, won’t you?” The teacher did not answer. “Girl, clean some of those this sort of knowing smile, and I found myself wondering if she knew about me.
eggplants and broil us a supper. You can do the washing afterwards. Tumaneng, I wasn’t just being paranoid; this is Manila, the neighbors know everything.
go with her to the pump, and light her a fire. Don’t forget, always keep your They are extremely sympathetic, and if you let them they will take over your
weapon at the ready!” The soldiers hooted at the innuendoes. “Tumaneng, I’ll life. It turned out she was just trying to sell me a watch. Her husband had
shoot you if anything happens to my eggplants!” managed to get out of Kuwait by driving across the desert, and when he got
A cool wind blew across the clearing and brought the fragrance of rosal to Mr. home the banks refused to change his Kuwaiti dinars. That’s why she was
Pareja’s nose. The petals seemed tinted by the afternoon sun; their delicateness selling his watches. I felt kind of sorry for Mrs. Santos, setting out with her
made him ache. He watched Rosita walk to the iron pump, followed by the imitation Gucci handbag and several dozen gold bracelets to sell her husband’s
soldier. The other conscripts had paused in their work and were looking at the watches. Or was it Mrs. San Juan, I can never remember.
pair, their brows sweaty and their hands caked with earth. Baclagon gazed at the A nervous breakdown would’ve been in order, or a fit of tears and keening, the
kind that comes with a runny nose and smeared mascara. But I’ve never been
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one for hysterics. Thanks to my parents, by the time I was eight, the sight of a “Anyway,” Pocholo continued, “my aunts say they saw this vision in Taal.” His
chair being hurled across the room was no longer cause for alarm. Maybe there voice dropped to a whisper. “They saw a horseman in the sky.”
is something to be said for a lousy home life. Ramon says my emotional range is
limited to rage, guilt, and occasional hilarity. He neglected to mention “A what?”
blanknesss—there are times when I just don’t feel anything. “A man on a horse. Riding across the sky. A hundred schoolchildren saw it.
Ramon also claims he can read my thoughts by looking at me—he says I’m According to my aunt it looked like the statue of St. Martin that stands in their
transparent. I hope so; it’s embarrassing to tell somebody there’s a fifty per cent church.”
chance that he may be a father in several months. “St. Martin on a horse?” I said. “Maybe it was St. George or Joan of Arc. I don’t
By the time it occurred to me to catch a ride I was halfway to my office and think St. Martin rode a horse.”
decided to walk the rest of the way. I was swallowed up by the crowd of people “No, stupid,” he said. “You’re thinking of St. Martin de Porres. We’re elating
hurrying to work; rising above the din of traffic, their footfalls sounded like the about St. Martin of Tours. And you know what? My aunt says they saw the same
marching of a distant army. vision just before World War II. Then the Japanese arrived.” He ran his fingers
In front of the church where rosaries and good-luck charms were sold under the through his artfully moussed and tousled hair. “Oh my God, what if it’s really
baleful stare of the Archangel Michael’s statue, a strange figure appeared on my the end. I mean, I don’t even have a kid yet.”
right; a filthy man with long, matted hair. A tattered bag was slung across his I looked away so he wouldn’t see me grimace, and was just in time to see Wilma
bare chest, upon which his ribs protruded like spikes. A thick layer of soot spitting into her wastebasket.
covered his emaciated body—he looked like a walking pile of ashes. He started
speaking to me in urgent tones, as if he were revealing important secrets, and All morning I wondered whether I should ask Wilma for her abortionist’s
there was a crazy glint in his eyes. I understood nothing. He was speaking either address. She would give the address, I knew, even accompany me to the place.
in dialect of in gibberish, I couldn’t tell, I looked on stupidly. People stared, Probably some decrepit wooden house in the fetid alleys of Tondo, where the
expecting perhaps that he would produce a cleaver and hack me to death. The gangs hunted each other down with homemade revolvers. Wilma hid nothing,
man went on with his weird recitation; why he chose me I had no idea, maybe he she wore her brazen honesty like a soiled and rusty halo. She had had four
could see past the designer clothes into my dark and grimy soul. After a while he abortions, she told me casually while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom;
frowned like a teacher who had just given up on a particularly moronic student. the washerwoman down her street performed the operation, she owed Wilma
Then he wheeled and dashed into the church, stopping a moment to rub with his money. I imagine Wilma’s insides, as torn and bloody as a battlefield. She said
filthy hand the scowling face of the Archangel Michael. she’d regretted her last abortion: it was a girl, she’s always wanted a baby girl.
She put the fetus in a jar of formalin and kept it in the drawer where her wedding
Through the glass I could see the cashier, Wilma, on the telephone, spewing vile dress, which had outlasted her marriage, lay yellowing among mothballs and
words like poisoned toads into the receiver. She was screaming at some poor dead flowers.
bastard who owed her money. Across from me, Pocholo, in his pink shirt and
red paisley necktie, sat flipping through the morning papers. The others she’d flushed down the toilet.

“It’s exactly as Nostradamus said,” Pocholo said. “He predicted earthquakes Lawrence ate his lunch the way he lived his life: very carefully, as if he would
signaling the end of the world, and we had that big one last month. Then he said choke on it. Everything about him was resoundingly correct, from his hair to his
a leader from the Middle East would launch a world war. I thought it would be Italian shoes, from the schools he’d attended to the fashionable gym where he
Khadaffi but no, it’s Saddam Hussein. wrestled with machines three times a week. I knew that as he read the menu he
was figuring out how much cholesterol, how much sodium and fat were in the
“Sure,” I said. I watched Wilma slam the phone so hard it fell to the floor. entrees.
Cursing mightily, she stopped to pick it up. On this particular day she was clad
in polyester cloth abloom with pink and purple flowers, which made her look “It’s going to be bad,” he was saying. “By next year the official exchange rate
like a demented sofa. could be 28 pesos to the dollar. That’s a conservative projection. We haven’t
considered oil prices and the damage from the earthquake.” Daintily, he chewed
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on his vegetable. “Inflation will go through the roof,” he added, almost with “What’s the matter with you?” he said. Funny he should use the exact same
relish. words he said coming up to me at Diday’s birthday party while I stood in a
corner holding my breath to get rid of my hiccups. He said he was Lawrence and
While he delivered his analysis of the economy, I twirled the noodles around my I should breathe into a paper bag, so we went into the kitchen and rummaged in
fork but I hardly ate anything. No appetite. Idly, I wondered if Lawrence was the closets. There weren’t any paper bags, and when he found a plastic shopping
sleeping with someone else. One of the girls from his office, someone tall and bag I didn’t need anymore, my hiccups were gone. He got my name and my
svelte who worked in PR, shopped in Hong Kong, and wore linen suits with tiny telephone number, it was as easy as that.
skirts. I concluded that he wasn’t—I had no illusions about his undying love and
fidelity, but I trusted his fear of AIDS. “Miggy,” he said. Miggy, for Chrissakes. I knew Lawrence wasn’t going to
follow me, he hated scenes—and I walked out of the restaurant, it was as easy as
“Am I boring you?” he said at last. Mr. Sensitive. He put his hand on my knee— that.
maybe he expected me to salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs. “I’m sorry,” he
said. “I know we haven’t seen each other much lately, but it’s been hell at the I wandered around the mall for a while. I went into stores and looked at things.
office.” Without missing a beat he slid his hand up my skirt. Boy, he was There was this outfit that looked like our uniform at the Academy of Our Lady’s
smooth, no one would’ve suspected that the earnest-looking young man in the Seven Sorrows—white blouse, blue necktie, and a navy-blue skirt—only the
pinstripe shirt could be doing something as ignoble as giving a girl a feel in a skirt was too short. At Seven Sorrows, skirts had to cover the entire knee area. If
restaurant. “That guy from the head office is a major asshole. Goes around your knees were exposed the nuns would give you a lecture on modesty. There
trying to catch people loafing. The office feels like a...” was no spanking—the nuns were an enlightened bunch—but after fifteen
minutes of having guilt laid thickly on you, you’d wish they’d give you ten
Abruptly he withdrew his hand and stood up. A large, red-nosed white man in an lashes instead and get it over with.
ill-fitting brown suit was approaching our table.
Corporal punishment would simplify everything. For sleeping with a guy you
“Mr. Fowler,” said Lawrence. weren’t married to, you’d get, say, five hundred lashes. For sleeping with two
“Alvarado,” said the man, shaking the hand Lawrence extended. guys, neither of whom you were married to, one thousand lashes. For even
thinking about abortion, ten thousand lashes. And I’d been such a good girl too,
“How was the beach?” Lawrence said. I had to restrain myself from calling the until recently, anyway, so I’d probably get five hundred extra lashes for being
waiter and asking for a receptacle I could puke into. such a disappointment.
“Fine,” said Fowler, “Well. Enjoy your meal.” I made a mental list of the reasons for and against having this baby. Pro: This
child would be mine, really truly mine, which couldn’t be said of a lot of things.
“Is that the asshole from the main office?” I said.
Pro: Maybe I’ll turn out to be a genius who will invent something beneficial to
“Sssh,” Lawrence hissed. “He might hear you.” mankind, like a device that would cause world leaders to self-destruct if they got
the urge to wage war.
“Let him.” I reached over with my fork and speared food off his plate. He hated
it whenever I did that. Lawrence had a very definite concept of “mine.” For Anti: I’m not sure I’d be such a hot parent. I have serious deficiencies in the
instance, all his books were stamped “Private Library of Lawrence R. responsibility department, as the credit card people will attest. Anti: The lack of
Alvarado.” The strange thing was, he didn’t even read his books. They were a husband, the resulting social stigma, and if not that, my own paranoia. I would
lined up according to height on his antique bookshelf, neatly covered in plastic. drive myself crazy wondering if someone was going to cast stones at me. Anti:
One time I took a book out of the shelf, and it had been there unopened for so my mother would freak. She’s in California, running a Filipino restaurant, and
long the pages stuck together. she’s always going on about the decline of traditional Filipino values. I don’t
think she would appreciate having me prove her theories. I can just see her
“Anyway,” Lawrence said, “where were we?” talking to my father, blaming him for dying young and leaving her to raise his
daughter to adulthood (I was always “his daughter” everytime I screwed up).
“You mean until your sahib came along?”

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When I got back to the office people were scurrying about like newly-beheaded It did seem like a dream, the crowd of people gathered at the parking lot and
chickens. looking at the building, waiting for the swaying to start. Idiots, I muttered, as I
flagged down a taxi.
“What’s going on?” I asked Pocholo. He was alternately squirting his asthma
medication into his mouth with an inhaler and stuffing folders into his briefcase. “Where to?” the driver snarled.

“There’s going to be a big earthquake at 2:30,” he said, only there were no “Salcedo,” I said.
pauses between his words.
“Too near,” he snapped, zooming off before I could get in the cab. Taxi drivers!
“Says who?” I demanded. This was not a great moment for humanity: everyone was being an idiot or an
asshole.
“It was on the radio,” he said. He snapped his briefcase shut. People were
running into elevators. Wilma let loose a steady stream of obscenities while she All the taxis were taken, and the buses were so full people were sprouting out
stuffed into shopping bags the fake Benetton shirts she sold on installment. the windows. I could see the passengers crammed together like fillings in an
enormous sandwich, bumping and rubbing against each other with every lurch
“That’s crazy,” I said. “You can’t predict exactly when an earthquake will of the bus. Maybe if something asks who my kid’s father is, I could say I took a
happen.” really crowded bus and got knocked up.
"It was on the radio,” Pocholo repeated, as if media coverage were an infallible By the time I got back to my apartment my feet were throbbing. A menu from a
confirmation of truth. “2:30. Powerful earthquake, intensity nine.” pizza parlor that delivered had been shoved under my door; reading it I had a
“Well, I’m not leaving,” I declared. “I’m not going to fall for an idiotic prank.” sudden wild craving for anchovy pizza. Pregnant women are supposed to have
these wild cravings, but I was slightly worried. I’ve heard old people say that
“This building could collapse!” he screeched. “Like the Hyatt Terraces!” what you crave during pregnancy determines how your child will turn out. For
instance, if you crave guavas, your child will be stubborn. My friend claims her
“You can’t predict an earthquake exactly.”
clumsiness was caused by her mother’s fondness for noodles. And singkamas is
“What if there is one? Be reasonable!” supposed to produce fair-complexioned children, no matter how dark their
parents are. I thought, if I ate a lot of anchovies, would my child have scaly skin,
Reasonable! I nearly laughed at that. Pocholo gave up, gathered his briefcase or look like a fish?
and inhaler, and ran to the elevator.
I phoned the pizza place anyway, and when I put the phone down it rang. “Hi,”
“Come on,” said Wilma, “It’s almost time.” said Ramon.
“It’s a prank,” I said. “I’m not leaving.” “How did you know I was home?” I said.
“They’re closing the building,” she said. “Everyone’s getting out. Do you want “You’re always home on Sunday.”
to get locked in?”
“It’s Monday.”
She had a point. I got my bag—I could use the afternoon off, anyway.
“Oh. Are you going out tonight?” he said. “Can I come over?”
I figured I’d go home and get some sleep; maybe when I woke up this whole
thing would turn out to be a bad dream like the one that killed my Uncle “Okay.”
Danding. One night he ate too much rice and stewed pork, then went to bed and
When I hung up I noticed how quiet the building was. No radios blaring, no TV,
started screaming horribly in his sleep. They slapped him, poured cold water on
no brats squalling down the hall. For a second I wondered if there really was an
him, pounded and bit him, but he never woke up. He died uttering strange
earthquake. The last time, when the tremors started there was a stunned silence.
garbled noises. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest, but everyone said
The phones stopped ringing, the printers stopped whirring, conversations paused
it was bangungot, the sleeping sickness.
in mid-sentence; everyone sat gripping their desks, their eyes wide open and

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their mouths shaped into O’s. Then people dove under tables and Wilma was “Keep looking for another survivor. Try to go crazy,” he reached over and
saying “OhGodOhGodOhGod” and there was a loud wailing in the air. When picked a noodle from my plate. “We’re being morbid tonight.”
the tremors stopped I heard Pocholo’s radio, and the B-52s were singing,
“Cosmic! Cosmic!” “I can’t help it,” I said. “All this talk about war.”

I switched the TV on. There was this soap opera about a little girl whom It started to rain, so we got up and went inside. As I closed the door to the
everyone maltreated. The actress was played by a little girl was so good at being terrace I thought I saw something in the sky—a man on a black horse, riding
a martyr, it was as if she had a sign on her forehead that said, “Kick me.” The through the rain.
soap was interrupted by a news broadcast: 262 more Filipinos had fled Kuwait. “You want some coffee?” Ramon called from the kitchen.
A middle-aged woman told a reporter she had been raped by Iraqi soldiers. Why
should I be ashamed, she said, I didn’t want it to happen. It was amazing how “Yes, please,” I said. My knees were wobbly, I had to sit down. You’re seeing
casual she was. How could she be so cool? War could break out any second, and things, I told myself. Pregnant women do it all the time, it’s hormones or
that madman could use chemical weapons. I thought of worldwide recession, something.
rioting for food, and pictures I had seen of Hiroshima after that blast.
“What’s wrong?” said Ramon.
Maybe Pocholo and his aunt were right, the world was coming to an end. What a
“Nothing,” I said, and in the pit of my stomach I felt a little kick.
lousy time it was to be born, with madmen waiting to gas you or blow you away,
and the earth opening up to swallow you. On the other hand, with everything
going against you, you didn’t need your own mother plotting to get rid of you.
__________________________________________________
Ramon came in at six. His hair looked like he’d cut it himself, which he often
did. He brought a take-out box of friend noodles and a videotape of Road LOVE IN THE CORNHUSKS
Runner cartoons. I heated the pizza leftovers and he ate them on the card table
by Aida L. Rivera
on the terrace.

He looked exhausted. “I stayed up late filling out the forms for my grant,” he
explained, rubbing his eyes. Tinang stopped before the Señora’s gate and adjusted the baby’s cap. The dogs
that came to bark at the gate were strange dogs, big-mouthed animals with a
“I had a weird day,” I said. I told him about the street crazy in front of the
sense of superiority. They stuck their heads through the hogfence, lolling their
church, and his strange message.
tongues and straining. Suddenly, from the gumamela row, a little black mongrel
He rubbed a spot of sauce off my chin with his thumb. “Maybe it was an emerged and slithered through the fence with ease. It came to her, head down
obscene proposal. Or maybe he was speaking Aramaic. Repent or else.” and body quivering.

“My officemate says the world is ending,” I said. “Bantay. Ay, Bantay!” she exclaimed as the little dog laid its paws upon her
shirt to sniff the baby on her arm. The baby was afraid and cried. The big
He ate the last crumb of pizza. “Maybe.” animals barked with displeasure.
“Doesn’t it worry you?” Tito, the young master, had seen her and was calling to his mother. “Ma, it’s
Tinang. Ma, Ma, it’s Tinang.” He came running down to open the gate.
“It’s not like I can do anything about it. If it’s true. What’s scary is being the last
person on earth,” Ramon said. “Aba, you are so tall now, Tito.”
"Everyone else is dead, and you wander around the rubble and slowly realize He smiled his girl’s smile as he stood by, warding the dogs off. Tinang passed
you’re alone.” quickly up the veranda stairs lined with ferns and many-colored bougainville.
On landing, she paused to wipe her shoes carefully. About her, the Señora’s
“God,” I said. “What would you do?”
white and lavender butterfly orchids fluttered delicately in the sunshine. She
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noticed though that the purple waling-waling that had once been her task to “I don’t know,” Tinang said. The baby began to cry. Tinang shushed him with
shade from the hot sun with banana leaves and to water with mixture of charcoal irritation.
and eggs and water was not in bloom.
“Oy, Tinang, come to the kitchen; your Bagobito is hungry.”
“Is no one covering the waling-waling now?” Tinang asked. “It will die.”
For the next hour, Tinang sat in the kitchen with an odd feeling; she watched the
“Oh, the maid will come to cover the orchids later.” girl who was now in possession of the kitchen work around with a handkerchief
clutched I one hand. She had lipstick on too, Tinang noted. the girl looked at her
The Señora called from inside. “Tinang, let me see your baby. Is it a boy?” briefly but did not smile. She set down a can of evaporated milk for the baby and
“Yes, Ma,” Tito shouted from downstairs. “And the ears are huge!” served her coffee and cake. The Señora drank coffee with her and lectured about
keeping the baby’s stomach bound and training it to stay by itself so she could
“What do you expect,” replied his mother; “the father is a Bagobo. Even Tinang work. Finally, Tinang brought up, haltingly, with phrases like “if it will not
looks like a Bagobo now.” offend you” and “if you are not too busy” the purpose of her visit–which was to
ask Señora to be a madrina in baptism. The Señora readily assented and said she
Tinang laughed and felt warmness for her former mistress and the boy Tito. She
would provide the baptismal clothes and the fee for the priest. It was time to go.
sat self-consciously on the black narra sofa, for the first time a visitor. Her eyes
clouded. The sight of the Señora’s flaccidly plump figure, swathed in a loose “When are you coming again, Tinang?” the Señore asked as Tinang got the baby
waist-less housedress that came down to her ankles, and the faint scent of agua ready. “Don’t forget the bundle of clothes and . . . oh, Tinang, you better stop by
de colonia blended with kitchen spice, seemed to her the essence of the the drugstore. They asked me once whether you were still with us. You have a
comfortable world, and she sighed thinking of the long walk home through the letter there and I was going to open it to see if there was bad news but I thought
mud, the baby’s legs straddled to her waist, and Inggo, her husband, waiting for you would be coming.”
her, his body stinking of tuba and sweat, squatting on the floor, clad only in his
foul undergarments. A letter! Tinang’s heart beat violently. Somebody is dead; I know somebody is
dead, she thought. She crossed herself and after thanking the Señora profusely,
“Ano, Tinang, is it not a good thing to be married?” the Señora asked, pitying she hurried down. The dogs came forward and Tito had to restrain them. “Bring
Tinang because her dress gave way at the placket and pressed at her swollen me some young corn next time, Tinang,” he called after her.
breasts. It was, as a matter of fact, a dress she had given Tinang a long time ago.
Tinang waited a while at the drugstore which was also the post office of the
“It is hard, Señora, very hard. Better that I were working here again.” barrio. Finally, the man turned to her: “Mrs., do you want medicine for your
baby or for yourself?”
“There!” the Señora said. “Didn’t I tell you what it would be like, huh? . . . that
you would be a slave to your husband and that you would work a baby eternally “No, I came for my letter. I was told I have a letter.”
strapped to you. Are you not pregnant again?”
“And what is your name, Mrs.?” He drawled.
Tinang squirmed at the Señora’s directness but admitted she was.
“Constantina Tirol.”
“Hala! You will have a dozen before long.” The Señora got up. “Come, I will
give you some dresses and an old blanket that you can cut into things for the The man pulled a box and slowly went through the pile of envelopes most of
baby.” which were scribbled in pencil, “Tirol, Tirol, Tirol. . . .” He finally pulled out a
letter and handed it to her. She stared at the unfamiliar scrawl. It was not from
They went into a cluttered room which looked like a huge closet and as the her sister and she could think of no one else who could write to her.
Señora sorted out some clothes, Tinang asked, “How is Señor?”
Santa Maria, she thought; maybe something has happened to my sister.
“Ay, he is always losing his temper over the tractor drivers. It is not the way it
was when Amado was here. You remember what a good driver he was. The “Do you want me to read it for you?”
tractors were always kept in working condition. But now . . . I wonder why he
left all of a sudden. He said he would be gone for only two days . . . .”
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“No, no.” She hurried from the drugstore, crushed that he should think her I think I am going beyond the limit of your leisure hours, so I
illiterate. With the baby on one arm and the bundle of clothes on the other and close with best wishes to you, my friends Gonding, Sefarin,
the letter clutched in her hand she found herself walking toward home. Bondio, etc.

The rains had made a deep slough of the clay road and Tinang followed the
prints left by the men and the carabaos that had gone before her to keep from
sinking mud up to her knees. She was deep in the road before she became Yours forever,
conscious of her shoes. In horror, she saw that they were coated with thick, Amado
black clay. Gingerly, she pulled off one shoe after the other with the hand still
clutching to the letter. When she had tied the shoes together with the laces and
had slung them on an arm, the baby, the bundle, and the letter were all smeared
P.S. My mother died last month.
with mud.
Address your letter:
There must be a place to put the baby down, she thought, desperate now about
the letter. She walked on until she spotted a corner of a field where cornhusks Mr. Amado Galauran
were scattered under a kamansi tree. She shoved together a pile of husks with
her foot and laid the baby down upon it. With a sigh, she drew the letter from the Binalunan, Cotabato
envelope. She stared at the letter which was written in English.

It was Tinang’s first love letter. A flush spread over her face and crept into her
My dearest Tinay, body. She read the letter again. “It is not easy to be far from our lover. . . . I
imagine your personal appearance coming forward. . . . Someday, somehow I’ll
be there to fulfill our promise. . . .” Tinang was intoxicated. She pressed herself
against the kamansi tree.
Hello, how is life getting along? Are you still in good
condition? As for myself, the same as usual. But you’re far My lover is true to me. He never meant to desert me. Amado, she thought.
from my side. It is not easy to be far from our lover. Amado.
Tinay, do you still love me? I hope your kind and generous And she cried, remembering the young girl she was less than two years ago
heart will never fade. Someday or somehow I’ll be there again when she would take food to Señor in the field and the laborers would eye her
to fulfill our promise. furtively. She thought herself above them for she was always neat and clean in
her hometown, before she went away to work, she had gone to school and had
Many weeks and months have elapsed. Still I remember our
reached sixth grade. Her skin, too, was not as dark as those of the girls who
bygone days. Especially when I was suffering with the heat of
worked in the fields weeding around the clumps of abaca. Her lower lip jutted
the tractor under the heat of the sun. I was always in despair
out disdainfully when the farm hands spoke to her with many flattering words.
until I imagine your personal appearance coming forward
She laughed when a Bagobo with two hectares of land asked her to marry him. It
bearing the sweetest smile that enabled me to view the distant
was only Amado, the tractor driver, who could look at her and make her lower
horizon.
her eyes. He was very dark and wore filthy and torn clothes on the farm but on
Tinay, I could not return because I found that my mother was Saturdays when he came up to the house for his week’s salary, his hair was
very ill. That is why I was not able to take you as a partner of slicked down and he would be dressed as well as Mr. Jacinto, the schoolteacher.
life. Please respond to my missive at once so that I know Once he told her he would study in the city night-schools and take up
whether you still love me or not. I hope you did not love mechanical engineering someday. He had not said much more to her but one
anybody except myself. afternoon when she was bidden to take some bolts and tools to him in the field, a
great excitement came over her. The shadows moved fitfully in the bamboo

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groves she passed and the cool November air edged into her nostrils sharply. He vines. Two golden candelabras, each supporting three rows of high-wattage
stood unmoving beside the tractor with tools and parts scattered on the ground electric candles, flanked the coffin and seared the white kalachuchi in the
around him. His eyes were a black glow as he watched her draw near. When she funeral wreaths, causing the flowers to release more of their heady scent before
held out the bolts, he seized her wrist and said: “Come,” pulling her to the screen they wilted prematurely. Through an open doorway, I could see into the next
of trees beyond. She resisted but his arms were strong. He embraced her roughly room where a few unfamiliar faces held murmured conversations above their
and awkwardly, and she trembled and gasped and clung to him. . . . coffee cups.

A little green snake slithered languidly into the tall grass a few yards from the “Are you Liza?” A woman beside me suddenly asked.
kamansi tree. Tinang started violently and remembered her child. It lay
motionless on the mat of husk. With a shriek she grabbed it wildly and hugged it I was surprised, for I had not heard anyone approaching. Most of the mourners
close. The baby awoke from its sleep and cries lustily. Ave Maria Santisima. Do preferred to stay out on the veranda for fear that the heat from the lights might
not punish me, she prayed, searching the baby’s skin for marks. Among the also cause them to wither.
cornhusks, the letter fell unnoticed. I looked up slowly: long, slim feet with mauve-painted toenails that peeked
through the opening of a pair of scruffy-looking slippers; smooth legs unmarred
by swollen veins or scars—so unlike the spider-veined legs of my mom—
__________________________________________________ encased in a black, pencil-cut skirt; a white blouse with its sleeves too long for
the wearer, causing the extra fabric to bunch around the cuffs; a slim neck whose
SINIGANG skin sagged just a little bit; and a pale face that seemed like it had not
by Marby Villaceran experienced sleep in days. The woman looked to me like she was in her forties
—the same age as my mother.

“Yes,” I had answered that woman—the same answer I now gave to Tita
“SO, what happened?” Loleng.
She had finally decided to ask the question. I had been wondering how long my I gently spilled out all the tomatoes into the sink and turned on the tap. The
Tita Loleng could contain her curiosity. water, like agua bendita, cleansed each tomato of the grime from its origins.
I continued to pick out tomatoes for the sinigang we were to have for dinner. I “What did she tell you?” Tita Loleng asked.
wasn’t usually the one who assisted my aunt with the cooking. She preferred my
younger sister, Meg, for I knew far less in this area—not having the aptitude, or “Nothing much. She told me who she was.”
the interest, I guess—for remembering recipes. That didn’t matter today, though. “What did she look like?”
This time, Tita Loleng wanted more than just an extra pair of hands in the
kitchen. “She’s pretty, I guess.”

“Nothing much,” I answered offhandedly. “We did what people usually do She was. She looked like she had Indian blood with her sharp nose and deep-set
during funerals.” I reminded myself to tread carefully with her. Though I did not eyes thickly bordered by long lashes. Just like Mom, she still maintained a slim
really feel like talking, I could not tell her off for she took offense rather easily. figure though she already had children. The woman, upon seeing my curious
stare, had explained, “I am Sylvia.”
I put the tomatoes in the small palanggana, careful not to bruise their delicate
skin, and carried them to the sink. All my muscles tensed upon hearing her name. It took all my self-control to
outwardly remain calm and simply raise an eyebrow.
“Did you meet…her?” Tita Loleng asked.
My reaction caused a range of emotion to cross the woman’s face before it
There came to me a memory of sitting in one of the smaller narra sofas in the finally crumbled and gave way to tears. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand from
living room in Bulacan. I faced a smooth white coffin whose corners bore gold- where it had been resting on the arm of the sofa. Her own hands were damp and
plated figures of cherubs framed by elaborate swirls resembling thick, curling
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sticky with sweat. She knelt in front of me—a sinner confessing before a priest Tita Loleng gave me a sympathetic look. “No choice then, huh?” She was
so he could wash away the dirt from her past. forever baffled at the way my mother could be such a martyr when it came to
my father and such a tyrant to her children.
But I was not a priest. I looked down at her and my face remained impassive.
Clack! Clack! The knife hacked violently against the board.
When her weeping had subsided, she raised her head and looked at me.
“Everyone makes mistakes, Liza.” Her eyes begged for understanding. “Nope.”

It was a line straight out of a Filipino soap opera. I had a feeling that the whole When my Dad had come out of the room, I remembered sensing it immediately
situation was a scene from a very bad melodrama I was watching. I looked —the same way an animal instinctively perceives when it is in danger. I had
around to see if anyone had witnessed the spectacle unfolding in this living been looking at the face of my dead half-brother, searching for any resemblance
room, but it was as if an invisible director had banned all but the actors from the between us. Chemotherapy had sunk his cheeks and had made his hair fall out,
set. Except for us, not a soul could be seen. but even in this condition, I could see how handsome he must have been before
his treatment. His framed photograph atop the glass covering of the coffin
I wanted Sylvia to free my hand so I nodded and pretended to understand. confirmed this. Lem took after my father so much that Dad could never even
Apparently convinced, she let go and, to my shock, suddenly hugged me tight. hope to deny that he was his son. I, on the other hand, had taken after my
My nose wrinkled as the pungent mix of heavy perfume and sweat assailed me. I mother.
wanted to scream at her to let go but I did not move away.
I knew my father was staring at me but I refused look at him. He approached and
“Hmm, I think they’re washed enough na.” Tita Loleng said. stood next to me. I remained silent.
Turning off the tap, I placed the tomatoes inside the basin once more. Then, as “I am glad you came,” he said.
an afterthought, I told my Tita, “I don’t think she is as pretty as Mom, though.”
I gave him a non-committal nod, not even glancing his way.
Tita Loleng nodded understandingly. She gestured for me to place the basin on
the table where she already had the knives and chopping board ready. Tita Loleng interrupted my thoughts with another one of her questions. “Did you
cry?”
“Where was your Dad when she was talking to you?”
I shook my head vehemently as I answered, “No.”
“Oh, he was sleeping in one of the bedrooms. Mom did not want to wake him up
because they told her he had not slept for two nights straight.” I took the sliced tomatoes, surprised to find not even a splinter of wood with
them, as well as the onions Tita Loleng had chopped and put them in a pot.
Tita Loleng snorted. “Haay, your mother talaga,” she said, shaking her head. “What next?” I asked her.
I had to smile at that before continuing. “When he saw me, Sylvia had already “The salt.” Then she went and added a heaping tablespoonful of salt to the pot.
been called away to entertain some of the visitors.”
“Is that all?”
“Was he surprised to see you?” Tita knew that I had not wanted to go to the
funeral. Actually, she was one of the few people who respected, and understood, “Uh-huh. Your Mom and I prefer it a bit saltier, but your Dad likes it this way.”
my decision. Then she gestured towards the pot, closing and opening her fist like a baby
flexing its fingers.
“No.” I sliced each of the tomatoes in quarters. The blade of the knife clacked
fiercely against the hard wood of the chopping board. “He requested Mom to I started crushing the onions, tomatoes, and salt together with my hand.
make me go there.” We both knew that I could never have refused my mother
once she insisted that I attend. I had even gone out and gotten drunk with some
friends the night before we were to leave just so I could have an excuse not to
go, but my mom was inflexible. She had ordered my two sisters to wake me up.

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“He was an acolyte in church,” my father had said then, finally splintering the When the kangkong was done, I threw away the tough, unwanted parts and
silence I had adamantly maintained. “Father Mario said that we shouldn’t feel reached for the labanos. I used a peeler to strip away the skin—revealing the
sad because Lem is assured of going to a better place because he was such a white, slightly grainy flesh—and then sliced each root diagonally. Next came
good child.” Good, I thought, unlike me whom he always called the sigarilyas, and finally, the string beans. Once, I asked Tita Loleng how she
“Sinverguenza”, the shameless daughter. knew what type of vegetable to put into sinigang and she said, “Well, one never
really knows which will taste good until one has tried it. I mean, some people
I finally turned to him. There was only one question I needed to ask. “Why?” cook sinigang with guavas, some with kamias. It is a dish whose recipe would
He met my gaze. I waited but he would not—could not— answer me. He looked depend mostly on the taste of those who will do the eating.”
away. I got a fork and went to the stove where the meat was simmering. I prodded the
My mask of indifference slipped. It felt like a giant hand was rubbing salt into chunks to test whether they were tender enough—and they were. After pouring
me, squeezing and mashing, unsatisfied until all of me had been crushed. in some more of the rice washing, I cleared the table and waited for the stew to
boil. A few minutes later, the sound of rapidly popping bubbles declared that it
“Stop it na, Liza!” Tita Loleng exclaimed. “Any more of that mashing and you was now time to add the powdered tamarind mix. I poured in the whole packet
will be putting bits of your own flesh and bone in there,” my aunt warned. She and stirred. Then I took the vegetables and added them, a fistful at a time, to the
went to the refrigerator and took out plastic bags containing vegetables. She pot. As I did so, I remembered the flower petals each of my two sisters and I had
placed them in the sink. “All of these will be needed for the sinigang,” she said. thrown, fistful by fistful, into the freshly dug grave as Lem’s casket was being
“Prepare them while you’re softening the meat.” Then she took off her apron, lowered into it. My dad was crying beside me and I recalled thinking, would he
“You go and finish off here. I will just go to my room and stretch my back out a be the same if I was the one who had died? I glanced up at him and was
bit.” With a tender pat on my head, she walked out of the kitchen. surprised to find that he was looking at me. His hand, heavy with sadness, fell
on my shoulder.
I breathed a sigh of relief. The questions had stopped, for now.
“I’m sorry,” he had told me.
I poured the hugas bigas into the mass of crushed onions and tomatoes and
added the chunks of beef into the concoction before covering the pot and placing I let the stew boil for a few more minutes before turning off the fire.
it on the stove. I turned on the flame. The sinigang needed to simmer for close to
an hour to tenderize the meat. The sinigang would be served later during dinner. I pictured myself seated in my
usual place beside my father who is at the head of the table. He would tell Mom
In the meantime, I started preparing all the other ingredients that will be added about his day and then he would ask each of us about our own. I would answer,
to the pot later on. Taking all the plastic bags, I unloaded their contents into the not in the animated way I would have done when I was still young and his pet,
sink then washed and drained each vegetable thoroughly before putting them but politely and without any rancor.
beside my chopping board.
Then, he would complement me on the way I had cooked his favorite dish and I
I reached for the bunch of kangkong and began breaking off choice sections to would give him a smile that would never quite show, not even in my eyes.
be included in the stew. When I was a child, before Tita Loleng had chosen to
stay with us, my mom used to do the cooking and she would have Meg and I sit
beside her while she readied the meals. I remembered that whenever it came to __________________________________________________
any dish involving kangkong, I would always insist on preparing it because I
loved the crisp popping sound the vegetable made whenever I broke off a stem.
It was on one such occasion, I was in second year high school by then but still
insistent on kangkong preparation, when Mom had divulged the truth about the
boy who kept calling Dad on the phone every day at home. Meg had also been
there, breaking off string beans into two-inch sections. Neither of us had reacted
much then, but between us, I knew I was more affected by what Mom had said
because right until then, I had always been Daddy’s girl.
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