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Harvest by Loreto Paras Sulit
Harvest by Loreto Paras Sulit
plan of the brow and lip and eye was revealed; one realized that her pallor was the ivory-white of rice grain just husked, that the sinuous folds of
silken lines were but the undertones of the grace that flowed from her as she walked away from you.
The blood rushed hot to his very eyes and ears as he met her grave, searching look that swept him from head to foot. She approached him and
examined his hot, moist arms critically.
How splendid! How splendid! she kept on murmuring.
Then Thank you, and taking and leaning on the arm of the master she walked slowly away.
The two brothers returned to their work but to the very end of the day did not exchange a word. Once Vidal attempted to whistle but gave it up
after a few bars. When sundown came they stopped harvesting and started on their way home. They walked with difficulty on the dried rice paddies
till they reached the end of the rice fields.
The stiffness, the peace of the twilit landscape was maddening to Fabian. It augmented the spell of that woman that was still over him. It was
queer how he kept on thinking about her, on remembering the scent of her perfume, the brush of her dress against him and the look of her eyes on
his arms. If he had been in bed he would be tossing painfully, feverishly. Why was her face always before him as though it were always focused
somewhere in the distance and he was forever walking up to it?
A large moth with mottled, highly colored wings fluttered blindly against the bough, its long, feathery antennae quivering sensitively in the air.
Vidal paused to pick it up, but before he could do so his brother had hit it with the bundle of palay stalks he carried. The moth fell to the ground, a
mass of broken wings, of fluttering wing-dust.
After they had walked a distance, Vidal asked, Why are you that way?
What is my way?
Thatthat way of destroying things that are beautiful like moths like
If the dust from the wings of a moth should get into your eyes, you would be blind.
That is not the reason.
Things that are beautiful have a way of hurting. I destroy it when I feel a hurt.
To avoid the painful silence that would surely ensue Vidal talked on whatever subject entered his mind. But gradually, slowly the topics
converged into one. He found himself talking about the woman who came to them this afternoon in the fields. She was a relative of the master. A
cousin, I think. They call her Miss Francia. But I know she has a lovely, hidden name like her beauty. She is convalescing from a very serious
illness she has had and to pass the time she makes men out of clay, of stone. Sometimes she uses her fingers, sometimes a chisel.
One day Vidal came into the house with a message for the master. She saw him. He was just the model for a figure she was working on; she
had asked him to pose for her.
Brother, her loveliness is one I cannot understand. When one talks to her forever so long in the patio, many dreams, many desires come to me.
I am lost I am glad to be lost.
It was merciful the darkness was up on the fields. Fabian could not see his brothers face. But it was cruel that the darkness was heavy and
without end except where it reached the little, faint star. For in the deep darkness, he saw her face clearly and understood his brother.
On the batalan of his home, two tall clay jars were full of water. He emptied one on his feet, he cooled his warm face and bathed his arms in the
other. The light from the kerosene lamp within came in wisps into the batalan. In the meager light he looked at his arms to discover where their
splendor lay. He rubbed them with a large, smooth pebble till they glowed warm and rich brown. Gently he felt his own muscles, the strength, the
power beneath. His wife was crooning to the baby inside. He started guiltily and entered the house.
Supper was already set on the table. Tinay would not eat; she could not leave the baby, she said. She was a small, nervous woman still with the
lingering prettiness of her youth. She was rocking a baby in a swing made of a blanket tied at both ends to ropes hanging from the ceiling. Trining,
his other child, a girl of four, was in a corner playing siklot solemnly all by herself.
Everything seemed a dream, a large spreading dream. This little room with all the people inside, faces, faces in a dream. That woman in the
fields, this afternoon, a colored, past dream by now. But the unrest, the fever she had left behind was still on him. He turned almost savagely on
his brother and spoke to break these two grotesque, dream bubbles of his life. When I was your age, Vidal, I was already married. It is high time you
should be settling down. There is Milia.
I have no desire to marry her nor anybody else. Justjustfor five carabaos. There! He had spoken out at last. What a relief it was. But he
did not like the way his brother pursed his lips tightly That boded not defeat. Vidal rose, stretching himself luxuriously. On the door of the silid where
he slept he paused to watch his little niece. As she threw a pebble into the air he caught it and would not give it up. She pinched, bit, shook his pants
furiously while he laughed in great amusement.
What a very pretty woman Trining is going to be. Look at her skin; white as rice grains just husked; and her nose, what a high bridge. Ah, she is
going to be a proud lady and what deep, dark eyes. Let me see, let me see. Why, you have a little mole on your lips. That means you are very
talkative.
You will wake up the baby. Vidal! Vidal! Tinay rocked the child almost despairingly. But the young man would not have stopped his teasing if
Fabian had not called Trining to his side.
Why does she not braid her hair? he asked his wife.
Oh, but she is so pretty with her curls free that way about her head.
We shall have to trim her head. I will do it before going out to work tomorrow.
Vidal bit his lips in anger. Sometimes well, it was not his child anyway. He retired to his room and fell in a deep sleep unbroken till after dawn
when the sobs of a child awakened him. Peering between the bamboo slats of the floor he could see dark curls falling from a childs head to the
ground.
He avoided his brother from that morning. For one thing he did not want repetitions of the carabao question with Milia to boot. For another there
was the glorious world and new life opened to him by his work in the masters house. The glamour, the enchantment of hour after hour spent on the
shadow-flecked ylang-ylang scented patio where she molded, shaped, reshaped many kinds of men, who all had his face from the clay she worked
on.
In the evening after supper he stood by the window and told the tale of that day to a very quiet group. And he brought that look, that was more
than a gleam of a voice made weak by strong, deep emotions.
His brother saw and understood. Fury was a high flame in his heart If that look, that quiver of voice had been a moth, a curl on the dark head
of his daughter Now more than ever he was determined to have Milia in his home as his brothers wife that would come to pass. Someday, that
look, that quiver would become a moth in his hands, a frail, helpless moth.
When Vidal, one night, broke out the news Fabian knew he had to act at once. Miss Francia would leave within two days; she wanted Vidal to
go to the city with her, where she would finish the figures she was working on.
She will pay me more than I can earn here, and help me get a position there. And shall always be near her. Oh, I am going! I am going!
And live the life of aa servant?
What of that? I shall be near her always.
Why do you wish to be near her?
He was speaking to Tinay jokingly. Soon all your sampaguitas and camias will be gone, my dear sister-in-law because I shall be seeing Milia
every night and her father. He watched Fabian cleansing his face and arms and later wondered why it took his brother that long to wash his arms,
why he was rubbing them as hard as that