The Chieftest Mourner by Aida Rivera-Ford

He was my uncle because he married my aunt (even if he had not come to her these past ten
years), so when the papers brought the news of his death, I felt that some part of me had died,
too.
I was boarding then at a big girls college in Manila and I remember quite vividly that a few
other girls were gathered about the lobby of our school, looking very straight and proper since it
was seven in the morning and the starch in our long-sleeved uniform had not yet given way. I
tried to be brave while I read that my uncle had actually been the last of a distinct school of
Philippine poets. I was still being brave all the way down the lengthy eulogies, until I got to the
line which said that he was the sweetest lyre that ever throbbed with Malayan chords.
Something caught at my throat and I let out one sobthe rest merely followed. When the girls
hurried over to me to see what had happened, I could only point to the item on the front page
with my uncles picture taken when he was still handsome. Everybody suddenly spoke in a low
voice and Ning who worshipped me said that I shouldnt be so unhappy because my uncle was
now with the other great poets in heavenat which I really howled in earnest because my uncle
had not only deserted poor Aunt Sophia but had also been living with another woman these many
years and, most horrible of all, he had probably died in her embrace!
Perhaps I received an undue amount of commiseration for the death of the delinquent
husband of my aunt, but it wasnt my fault because I never really lied about anything; only,
nobody thought to ask me just how close an uncle he was. It wasnt my doing either when, some
months after his demise, my poem entitled The Rose Was Not So Fair O Alma Mater was
captioned by the niece of the late beloved Filipino Poet. And that having been printed, I
couldnt possibly refuse when I was asked to write on My UncleThe Poetry of His Life. The
article, as printed, covered only his boyhood and early manhood because our adviser cut out
everything that happened after he was married. She said that the last half of his life was not
exactly poetic, although I still maintain that in his vices, as in his poetry, he followed closely the
pattern of the great poets he admired.
My aunt used to relate that he was an extremely considerate manwhen he was sober, and
on those occasions he always tried to make up for his past sins. She said that he had never meant
to marry, knowing the kind of husband he would make, but that her beauty drove him out of his
right mind. My aunt always forgave him but one day she had more than she could bear, and when

he was really drunk, she tied him to a chair with a strong rope to teach him a lesson. She never
saw him drunk again, for as soon as he was able to, he walked out the door and never came back.
I was very little at that time, but I remembered that shortly after he went away, my aunt put
me in a car and sent me to his hotel with a letter from her. Uncle ushered me into his room very
formally and while I looked all around the place, he prepared a special kind of lemonade for the
two of us. I was sorry he poured it out into wee glasses because it was unlike any lemonade I had
ever tasted. While I sipped solemnly at my glass, he inquired after my aunt. To my surprise, I
found myself answering with alacrity. I was happy to report all details of my aunts health,
including the number of crabs she ate for lunch and the amazing fact that she was getting fatter
and fatter without the benefit of Scotts Emulsion or Ovaltine at all. Uncle smiled his beautiful
somber smile and drew some poems from his desk. He scribbled a dedication on them and
instructed me to give them to my aunt. I made much show of putting the empty glass down but
Uncle was dense to the hint. At the door, however, he told me that I could have some lemonade
every time I came to visit him. Aunt Sophia was so pleased with the poems that she kissed me.
And then all of a sudden she looked at me queerly and made a most peculiar request of me. She
asked me to say ha-ha, and when I said ha-ha, she took me to the sink and began to wash the
inside of my mouth with soap and water while calling upon a dozen of the saints to witness the
act. I never got a taste of Uncles lemonade.
It began to be a habit with Aunt Sophia to drop in for a periodic recital of woe to which
Mama was a sympathetic audience. The topic of the conversation was always the latest low on
Uncles state of misery. It gave Aunt Sophia profound satisfaction to relay the report of friends
on the number of creases on Uncles shirt or the appalling decrease in his weight. To her, the fact
that Uncle was getting thinner proved conclusively that he was suffering as a result of the
separation. It looked as if Uncle would not be able to hold much longer, the way he was reported
to be thinner each time, because Uncle didnt have much weight to start with. The paradox of the
situation, however, was that Aunt Sophia was now crowding Mama off the sofa and yet she
wasnt looking very happy either.
When I was about eleven, there began to be a difference. Everytime I came into the room
when Mama and Aunt Sophia were holding conference, the talk would suddenly be switched to
Spanish. It was about this time that I took an interest in the Spanish taught in school. It was also
at this time that Aunt Sophia exclaimed over my industry at the pianowhich stood a short
distance from the sofa. At first I couldnt gather much except that Uncle was not any more the

main topic. It was a woman by the name of Esaor so I thought she was called. Later I began to
appreciate the subtlety of the Spanish la mujer esa.
And so I learned about the woman. She was young, accomplished, a woman of means. (A
surprising number of connotations were attached to these terms.) Aunt Sophia, being a loyal
wife, grieved that Uncle should have been ensnared by such a woman, thinking not so much of
herself but of his career. Knowing him so well, she was positive that he was unhappier than ever,
for that horrid woman never allowed him to have his own way; she even denied him those little
drinks which he took merely to aid him into poetic composition. Because the woman brazenly
followed Uncle everywhere, calling herself his wife, a confusing situation ensued. When people
mentioned Uncles wife, there was no way of knowing whether they referred to my aunt or to the
woman. After a while a system was worked out by the mutual friends of the different parties. No.
1 came to stand for Aunt Sophia and No. 2 for the woman.
I hadnt seen Uncle since the episode of the lemonade, but one day in school all the girls
were asked to come down to the lecture roomUncle was to read some of his poems! Up in my
room, I stopped to fasten a pink ribbon to my hair thinking the while how I would play my role
to perfectionfor the dear niece was to be presented to the uncle she had not seen for so long. My
musings were interrupted, however, when a girl came up and excitedly bubbled that she had seen
my uncleand my aunt, who was surprisingly young and so very modern!
I couldnt go down after all; I was indisposed.
Complicated as the situation was when Uncle was alive, it became more so when he died. I
was puzzling over who was to be the official widow at his funeral when word came that I was to
keep Aunt Sophia company at the little chapel where the service would be held. I concluded with
relief that No. 2 had decamped.
The morning wasnt far gone when I arrived at the chapel and there were only a few people
present. Aunt Sophia was sitting in one of the front pews at the right section of the chapel. She
had on a black and white print which managed to display its full yardage over the seat. Across
the aisle from her was a very slight woman in her early thirties who was dressed in a dramatic
black outfit with a heavy veil coming up to her forehead. Something about her made me
suddenly aware that Aunt Sophias bag looked paunchy and worn at the corners. I wanted to ask
my aunt who she was but after embracing me when I arrived, she kept her eyes stolidly fixed
before her. I directed my gaze in the same direction. At the front was the presidents immense
wreath leaning heavily backward, like that personage himself; and a pace behind, as though in

deference to it, were other wreaths arranged according to the rank and prominence of the people
who had sent them. I suppose protocol had something to do with it.
I tiptoed over to the muse before Uncle as he lay in the dignity of death, the faintest trace of
his somber smile still on his face. My eyes fell upon a cluster of white flowers placed at the foot
of the casket. It was ingeniously fashioned in the shape of a dove and it bore the inscription
From the Loyal One. I looked at Aunt Sophia and didnt see anything dove-like about her. I
looked at the slight woman in black and knew of a sudden that she was the woman. A young
man, obviously a brother or a nephew, was bending over her solicitously. I took no notice of him
even though he had elegant manners, a mischievous cowlick, wistful eyes, a Dennis Morgan
chin, and a pin which testified that he belonged to what we girls called our brother college. I
showed him that he absolutely did not exist for me, especially when I caught him looking in our
direction.
I always feel guilty of sacrilege everytime I think of it, but there was something grimly
ludicrous about my uncles funeral. There were two women, each taking possession of her
portion of the chapel just as though stakes had been laid, seemingly unmindful of each other, yet
revealing by this studied disregard that each was very much aware of the other. As though to give
balance to the scene, the young man stood his full height near the woman to offset the collective
bulk of Aunt Sophia and myself, although I was merely a disproportionate shadow behind her.
The friends of the poet began to come. They paused a long time at the door, surveying the
scene before they marched self-consciously towards the casket. Another pause there, and then
they wrenched themselves from the spot and movedno, slitheredeither towards my aunt or
towards the woman. The choice must have been difficult when they knew both. The women
almost invariably came to talk to my aunt whereas most of the men turned to the woman at the
left. I recognized some important Malacaang men and some writers from seeing their pictures
in the papers. Later in the morning a horde of black-clad women, the sisters and cousins of the
poet, swept into the chapel and came directly to where my aunt sat. They had the same deep eyesockets and hollow cheek-bones which had lent a sensitive expression to the poets face but
which on them suggested t.b. The air became dense with the sickly-sweet smell of many flowers
clashing and I went over to get my breath of air. As I glanced back, I had a crazy surrealist
impression of mouths opening and closing into Aunt Sophias ear, and eyes darting toward the
woman at the left. Uncles clan certainly made short work of my aunt for when I returned, she
was sobbing. As though to comfort her, one of the women said, in a whisper which I heard from
the door, that the president himself was expected to come in the afternoon.

Toward lunchtime, it became obvious that neither my aunt nor the woman wished to leave
ahead of the other. I could appreciate my aunts delicadeza in this matter but then got hungry
and therefore grew resourceful: I called a taxi and told her it was at the door with the meter on.
Aunt Sophias unwillingness lasted as long as forty centavos.
We made up for leaving ahead of the woman by getting back to the chapel early. For a long
time she did not come and when Uncles kinswomen arrived, I thought their faces showed a little
disappointment at finding the left side of the chapel empty. Aunt Sophia, on the other hand,
looked relieved. But at about three, the woman arrived and I perceived at once that there was a
difference in her appearance. She wore the same black dress but her thick hair was now carefully
swept into a regal coil; her skin glowing; her eyes, which had been striking enough, looked even
larger. The eyebrows of the women around me started working and finally, the scrawniest of the
poets relations whispered to the others and slowly, together, they closed in on the woman.
I went over to sit with my aunt who was gazing not so steadily at nothing in particular.
At first the women spoke in whispers, and then the voices rose a trifle. Still, everybody was
polite. There was more talking back and forth, and suddenly the conversation wasnt polite any
more. The only good thing about it was that now I could hear everything distinctly.
So you want to put me in a corner, do you? You think perhaps you can bully me out of
here? the woman said.
Shh! Please dont create a scene, the poets sisters said, going one pitch higher.
Its you who are creating a scene. Didnt you come here purposely to start one?
Were only trying to make you see reason. If you think of the dead at all
Lets see who has the reason. I understand that you want me to leave, isnt it? Now that he
is dead and cannot speak for me you think I should quietly hide in a corner? The womans voice
was now pitched up for the benefit of the whole chapel. Let me ask you. During the war when
the poet was hard up do you suppose I deserted him? Whose jewels do you think we sold when
he did not make money When he was ill, who was it who stayed at his side Who took care
of him during all those months and who peddled his books and poems to the publishers so that
he could pay for the hospital and doctors bills? Did any of you come to him then? Let me ask
you that! Now that he is dead you want me to leave his side so that you and that vieja can have

the honors and have your picture taken with the president. Thats what you want, isnt itto pose
with the president.
Por Dios! Make her stop itsomebody stop her mouth! cried Aunt Sophia, her eyes going
up to heaven.
Now you listen, you scandalous woman, one of the clan said, taking it up for Aunt Sophia.
We dont care for the honorswe dont want it for ourselves. But we want the poet to be
honored in death to have a decent and respectable funeral without scandal and the least you
can do is to leave him in peace as he lies there.
Yes, the scrawny one said. Youve created enough scandal for him in lifethats why we
couldnt go to him when he was sick because you were there, youyou shameless bitch.
The womans face went livid with shock and rage. She stood wordless while her young
protector, his eyes blazing, came between her and the poets kinswomen. Her face began to
twitch. And then the sobs came. Big noisy sobs that shook her body and spilled the tears down
her carefully made-up face. Fitfully, desperately, she tugged at her eyes and nose with her
widows veil. The young man took hold of her shoulders gently to lead her away, but she shook
free; and in a few quick steps she was there before the casket, looking down upon that infinitely
sad smile on Uncles face. It may have been a second that she stood there, but it seemed like a
long time.
All right, she blurted, turning about. All right. You can have himall thats left of
him!
At that moment before she fled, I saw what I had waited to see. The mascara had indeed run
down her cheeks. But somehow it wasnt funny at all.

The Lottery Ticket

by Anton Chekhov

Ivan Dmitritch, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an income of twelve
hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his lot, sat down on the sofa after supper and
began reading the newspaper.
'I forgot to look at the newspaper today,' his wife said to him as she cleared the table. 'Look
and see whether the list of drawings is there.'
'Yes, it is,' said Ivan Dmitritch; 'but hasn't your ticket lapsed?'
'No; I took the interest on Tuesday.'
'What is the number?'
'Series 9,499, number 26.'
'All right . . . we will look . . . 9,499 and 26.'
Ivan Dmitritch had no faith in lottery luck, and would not, as a rule, have consented to look
at the lists of winning numbers, but now, as he had nothing else to do and as the newspaper was
before his eyes, he passed his finger downwards along the column of numbers. And immediately,
as though in mockery of his scepticism, no further than the second line from the top, his eye was
caught by the figure 9,499! Unable to believe his eyes, he hurriedly dropped the paper on his
knees without looking to see the number of the ticket, and, just as though some one had given
him a douche of cold water, he felt an agreeable chill in the pit of the stomach; tingling and
terrible and sweet!
'Masha, 9,499 is there!' he said in a hollow voice.
His wife looked at his astonished and panicstricken face, and realized that he was not joking.
'9,499?' she asked, turning pale and dropping the folded tablecloth on the table.
'Yes, yes . . . it really is there!'

'And the number of the ticket?'

'Oh yes! There's the number of the ticket too. But stay . . . wait! No, I say! Anyway, the
number of our series is there! Anyway, you understand....'
Looking at his wife, Ivan Dmitritch gave a broad, senseless smile, like a baby when a bright
object is shown it. His wife smiled too; it was as pleasant to her as to him that he only mentioned
the series, and did not try to find out the number of the winning ticket. To torment and tantalize
oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!
'It is our series,' said Ivan Dmitritch, after a long silence. 'So there is a probability that we
have won. It's only a probability, but there it is!'
'Well, now look!'
'Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It's on the second line from the top,
so the prize is seventy-five thousand. That's not money, but power, capital! And in a minute I
shall look at the list, and there--26! Eh? I say, what if we really have won?'
The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in silence. The possibility
of winning bewildered them; they could not have said, could not have dreamed, what they both
needed that seventy-five thousand for, what they would buy, where they would go. They thought
only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and pictured them in their imagination, while somehow they
could not think of the happiness itself which was so possible.
Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to corner,
and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming a little.
'And if we have won,' he said--'why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation! The
ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend twenty-five thousand on
real property in the shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate expenses, new furnishing . . .
travelling . . . paying debts, and so on. . . . The other forty thousand I would put in the bank and
get interest on it.'
'Yes, an estate, that would be nice,' said his wife, sitting down and dropping her hands in her
lap.
'Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces. . . . In the first place we shouldn't need a
summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an income.'

And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and poetical than the
last. And in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy, felt warm, even hot! Here,
after eating a summer soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back on the burning sand close to a stream
or in the garden under a lime-tree. . . . It is hot. . . . His little boy and girl are crawling about near
him, digging in the sand or catching ladybirds in the grass. He dozes sweetly, thinking of
nothing, and feeling all over that he need not go to the office today, tomorrow, or the day after.
Or, tired of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or to the forest for mushrooms, or watches the
peasants catching fish with a net. When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and saunters to the
bathing shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare chest with his hands, and
goes into the water. And in the water, near the opaque soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and
green water-weeds nod their heads. After bathing there is tea with cream and milk rolls. . . . In
the evening a walk or vint with the neighbors.
'Yes, it would be nice to buy an estate,' said his wife, also dreaming, and from her face it was
evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.
Ivan Dmitritch pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold evenings, and its St.
Martin's summer. At that season he would have to take longer walks about the garden and beside
the river, so as to get thoroughly chilled, and then drink a big glass of vodka and eat a salted
mushroom or a soused cucumber, and then--drink another. . . . The children would come running
from the kitchen-garden, bringing a carrot and a radish smelling of fresh earth. . . . And then, he
would lie stretched full length on the sofa, and in leisurely fashion turn over the pages of some
illustrated magazine, or, covering his face with it and unbuttoning his waistcoat, give himself up
to slumber.
The St. Martin's summer is followed by cloudy, gloomy weather. It rains day and night, the
bare trees weep, the wind is damp and cold. The dogs, the horses, the fowls--all are wet,
depressed, downcast. There is nowhere to walk; one can't go out for days together; one has to
pace up and down the room, looking despondently at the grey window. It is dreary!
Ivan Dmitritch stopped and looked at his wife.
'I should go abroad, you know, Masha,' he said.
And he began thinking how nice it would be in late autumn to go abroad somewhere to the
South of France . . . to Italy . . . to India!
'I should certainly go abroad too,' his wife said. 'But look at the number of the ticket!'
'Wait, wait! . . .'

He walked about the room and went on thinking. It occurred to him: what if his wife really
did go abroad? It is pleasant to travel alone, or in the society of light, careless women who live in
the present, and not such as think and talk all the journey about nothing but their children, sigh,
and tremble with dismay over every farthing. Ivan Dmitritch imagined his wife in the train with a
multitude of parcels, baskets, and bags; she would be sighing over something, complaining that
the train made her head ache, that she had spent so much money. . . . At the stations he would
continually be having to run for boiling water, bread and butter. . . . She wouldn't have dinner
because of its being too dear. . . .
'She would begrudge me every farthing,' he thought, with a glance at his wife. 'The lottery
ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of her going abroad? What does she want there?
She would shut herself up in the hotel, and not let me out of her sight. . . . I know!'
And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his wife had grown elderly
and plain, and that she was saturated through and through with the smell of cooking, while he
was still young, fresh, and healthy, and might well have got married again.
'Of course, all that is silly nonsense,' he thought; 'but . . . why should she go abroad? What
would she make of it? And yet she would go, of course. . . . I can fancy. . . . In reality it is all one
to her, whether it is Naples or Klin. She would only be in my way. I should be dependent upon
her. I can fancy how, like a regular woman, she will lock the money up as soon as she gets it. . . .
She will look after her relations and grudge me every farthing.'
Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and sisters and aunts
and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they heard of the winning ticket, would begin
whining like beggars, and fawning upon them with oily, hypocritical smiles. Wretched,
detestable people! If they were given anything, they would ask for more; while if they were
refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them every kind of misfortune.
Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at which he had looked
impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and hateful.
'They are such reptiles!' he thought.
And his wife's face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger surged up in his heart
against her, and he thought malignantly:
'She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she would give me a
hundred roubles, and put the rest away under lock and key.'
And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She glanced at him too,
and also with hatred and anger. She had her own daydreams, her own plans, her own reflections;

she understood perfectly well what her husband's dreams were. She knew who would be the first
to try to grab her winnings.
'It's very nice making daydreams at other people's expense!' is what her eyes expressed. 'No,
don't you dare!'
Her husband understood her look; hatred began stirring again in his breast, and in order to
annoy his wife he glanced quickly, to spite her at the fourth page on the newspaper and read out
triumphantly:
'Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!'
Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to seem to Ivan
Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small and low-pitched, that the supper
they had been eating was not doing them good, but Lying heavy on their stomachs, that the
evenings were long and wearisome. . . .
'What the devil's the meaning of it?' said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to be ill-humored.
'Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one's feet, crumbs, husks. The rooms are never
swept! One is simply forced to go out. Damnation take my soul entirely! I shall go and hang
myself on the first aspen-tree!'