Morning in Nagrebcan

Manuel E.Arguilla

It was sunrise at Nagrebcan. The fine,bluish mist, low over the tobacco fields, waslifting
and thinning moment by moment. ragged strip of mist, pulled away by the morning
breeze, had caught on the clumps of bamboo along the banks of the stream that flowed
toone side of the barrio. Before long the sun would top the Katayaghan hills, but as yet
no people were around. In the grey shadow of the hills, the barrio was gradually
awaking. Roosters crowed and strutted on the ground while hens hesitated on their
perches among the branches of the camanchile trees. Stray goats nibbled the weeds on
the sides of the road, and the bull carabaos tugged restively against their stakes. In the
early morning the puppies lay curled up together between their mother’s paws under the
ladder of the house. Four puppies were all white like the mother. They had pink noses
and pink eyelids and pink mouths. The skin between their toes and on the inside of their
large, limp ears was pink. They had short sleek hair, for the mother licked them often.
The fifth puppy lay across the mother’s neck. On the puppy’s back was a big black spot
like a saddle. The tips of its ears were black and so was a patch of hair on its chest. The
opening of the sawali door, its uneven bottom dragging noisily against the bamboo
flooring, aroused the mother dog and she got up and stretched and shook herself,
scattering dust and loose white hair. A rank doggy smellrose in the cool morning air. She
took a quick leap forward, clearing the puppies which had begun to whine about her,
wanting to suckle.She trotted away and disappeared beyond the house of a neighbor.
The puppies sat back on their rumps, whining. After a little while they lay down and went
back to sleep, the black-spotted puppy on top. Baldo stood at the threshold and rubbed
his sleep-heavy eyes with his fists. He must have been about ten years old, small for his
age, but compactly built, and he stood straight on his bony legs. He wore one of his
father’s discarded cotton undershirts. The boy descended the ladder, leaning heavily on
the single bamboo railing that served as a banister. He sat on the lowest step of the
ladder, yawning and rubbing his eyes one after the other. Bending down, he reached
between his legs for the black-spotted puppy. He held it to him, stroking its soft, warm
body. He blew on its nose. The puppy stuck out a small red tongue, lapping the air. It
whined eagerly. Baldo laughed – a low gurgle. He rubbed his face against that of the
dog. He said softly, “My puppy. My puppy.” He said it many times. The puppy licked his
ears, his cheeks. When it licked his mouth, Baldo straightened up, raised the puppy on
a level with his eyes. “You are a foolish puppy,” he said, laughing. “Foolish, foolish,
foolish,” he

said, rolling the puppy on his lap so that it howled. The four other puppies awoke and
came scrambling about Baldo’s legs. He put down the black-spotted puppy and ran to
the narrow foot bridge of woven split-bamboo spanning the roadside ditch. When it
rained, water from the roadway flowed under the makeshift bridge, but it had not rained
for a long time and the ground was dry and sandy. Baldo sat on the bridge, digging his
bare feet into the sand, feeling the cool particles escaping between his toes. He
whistled, a toneless whistle with a curious trilling to it produced by placing the tongue
against the lower teeth and then curving it up and down. The whistle excited the
puppies; they ran to the boy as fast as their unsteady legs could carry them, barking
choppy little barks. Nana Elang, the mother of Baldo, now

appeared in the doorway with handful of rice straw. She called Baldo and told him to get
some live coals from their neighbor. “Get two or three burning coals and bring them
home on the rice straw,” she said. “Do not wave the straw in the wind. If you do, it will
catch fire before you get home.” She watched him run toward Ka Ikao’s house where
already smoke was rising through the nipa roofing into the misty air. One or two empty
carromatas drawn by sleepy little ponies rattled along the pebbly street, bound for the
railroad station. Nana Elang must have been thirty, but she looked at least fifty. She was
a thin, wispy woman, with bony hands and arms. She had scanty, straight, graying hair
which she gatheredbehind her head in a small, tight knot. It made her look thinner than
ever. Her cheekbones seemed on the point of bursting through the dry, yellowish-brown
skin. Above a gray-checkered skirt, she wore a single wide-sleeved cotton blouse that
ended below her flat breasts. Sometimes when she stooped or reached up for anything,
a glimpse of the flesh at her waist showed in a dark, purplish band where the skirt had
been tied so often. She turned from the doorway into the small, untidy kitchen. She
washed the rice and put it in a pot which she placed on the cold stove. She made ready
the other pot for the mess of vegetables and dried fish. When Baldo came back with the
rice straw and burning coals, she told him to start a fire in the stove, while she cut the
ampalaya tendrils and sliced the eggplants. When the fire finally flamed inside the clay
stove, Baldo’s eyes were smarting from the smoke of the rice straw. “There is the fire,
mother,” he said. “Is father awake already?” Nana Elang shook her head. Baldo went
out slowly on tiptoe. There were already many people going out. Several fishermen
wearing coffee-colored shirts and trousers and hats made from the shell of white
pumpkins passed by. The smoke of their home-made cigars floated behind them like
shreds of the morning mist. Women carrying big empty baskets were going to the
tobacco fields. They walked fast, talking among themselves. Each woman had gathered
the loose folds of her skirt in front and, twisting the end two or three times, passed it
between her legs, pulling it up at the back, and slipping it inside her waist. The women
seemed to be wearing trousers that reached only to their knees and flared at the thighs.
Day was quickly growing older. The east flamed redly and Baldo called to his mother,
“Look, mother, God also cooks his breakfast.” He went to play with the puppies. He sat
on the bridge and took them on his lap one by one. He searched for fleas which he
crushed between his thumbnails. “You, puppy. You, puppy,” he murmured softly. When
he held the black-spotted puppy, he said, “My puppy. My puppy.” Ambo, his seven-year
old brother, awoke crying. Nana Elang could be heard patiently calling him to the
kitchen. Later he came down with a ripe banana in his hand. Ambo was almost as tall as
his older brother and he had stout husky legs. Baldo often called him the son of an
Igorot. The home-made cotton shirt he wore was variously stained. The pocket was
torn, and it flipped down. He ate the banana without peeling it. “You foolish boy, remove
the skin,” Baldo said. “I will not,” Ambo said. “It is not your banana.” He took a big bite
and swallowed it with exaggerated relish. “But the skin is tart. It tastes bad.” “You are
not eating it,” Ambo said. The rest of the banana vanished in his mouth. He sat beside
Baldo and both played with the puppies. The mother dog had not yet returned and the
puppies were becoming hungry and restless. They sniffed the hands of Ambo, licked his
fingers. They tried to scramble up his breast to lick his mouth, but he brushed them
down. Baldo laughed. He held the black- spotted puppy closely, fondled it lovingly. “My
puppy,” he said. “My puppy.” Ambo played with the other puppies, but

he soon grew tired of them. He wanted the black-spotted one. He sidled close to Baldo
and put out a hand to caress the puppy nestling contentedly in the crook of his brother’s
arm. But Baldo struck the hand away. “Don’t touch my puppy,” he said. “My puppy.”
Ambo begged to be allowed to hold the black-spotted puppy. But Baldo said he would
not let him hold the black-spotted puppy because he would not peel the banana. Ambo
then said that he would obey his older brother next time, for all time. Baldo would not
believe him; he refused to let him touch the puppy. Ambo rose to his feet. He looked
longingly at the black-spotted puppy in Baldo’s arms. Suddenly he bent down and tried
to snatch the puppy away. But Baldo sent him sprawling in the dust with a deft push.
Ambo did not cry. He came up with a fistful of sand which he flung in his brother’s face.
But as he started to run away, Baldo thrust out his leg and tripped him. In complete
silence, Ambo slowly got up from the dust, getting to his feet with both hands fullof sand
which again he cast at his older brother. Baldo put down the puppy and leaped upon
Ambo. Seeing the black-spotted puppy waddling away, Ambo turned around and made
a dive for

it. Baldo saw his intention in time and both fell on the puppy which began to howl loudly,
struggling to get away. Baldo cursed Ambo and screamed at him as they grappled and
rolled in the sand. Ambo kicked and bit and scratched without a sound. He got hold of
Baldo’s hair and ear and tugged with all his might. They rolled over and over and then
Baldo was sitting on Ambo’s back, pummeling him with his fists.

He accompanied every blow with a curse. “I hope you die, you little demon,” he said
between sobs, for he was crying and he could hardly

see. Ambo wriggled and struggled and tried to bite Baldo’s legs. Failing, he buried his
face in the sand and howled lustily. Baldo now left him and ran to the black- spotted
puppy which he caught up in his arms, holding it against his throat. Ambo followed,
crying out threats and curses. He grabbed the tail of the puppy and jerked hard. The
puppy howled shrilly and Baldo let it go, but Ambo kept hold of the tail as the dog fell to
the ground. It turned around and snapped at the hand holding its tail. Its sharp little
teeth sank into the fleshy edge of Ambo’s palm. With a cry, Ambo snatched away his
hand from the mouth of the enraged puppy. At that moment the window of the house
facing the street was pushed violently open and the boys’ father, Tang Ciaco, looked
out. He saw the blood from the toothmarks on Ambo’s hand. He called out inarticulately
and the two brothers looked up in surprise and fear. Ambo hid his bitten hand behind
him. Baldo stopped to pick up the black-spotted puppy, but Tang Ciaco shouted
hoarsely to him not to touch the dog. At Tang Ciaco’s angry voice, the puppy had
crouched back snarling, its pink lips drawn back, the hair on its back rising. “The dog
has gone mad,” the man cried, coming down hurriedly. By the stove in the kitchen, he
stopped to get a sizeable piece of firewood, throwing an angry look and a curse at Nana
Elang for letting her sons play with the dogs. He removed a splinter or two, then hurried
down the ladder, cursing in a loud angry voice. Nana Elang ran to the doorway and
stood there silently fingering her skirt. Baldo and Ambo awaited the coming of their
father with fear written on their faces. Baldo hated his father as much as he feared him.
He watched him now with half a mind to flee as Tang Ciaco approached with the piece
of firewood held firmly in one hand. He is a big, gaunt man with thick bony wrists and
stoop shoulders. A short-sleeved cotton shirt revealed his sinewy arms on which the
blood-vessels stood out like roots. His short pants showed his bony-kneed, hard-
muscled legs covered with black hair. He was a carpenter. He had come home drunk
the night before. He was not a habitual drunkard, but now and then he drank great
quantities of basi and came home and beat his wife and children. He would blame them
for their hard life and poverty. “You are a prostitute,” he would roar at his wife, and as he
beat his children, he would shout, “I will kill you both, you bastards.” If Nana Elang
ventured to remonstrate, he would beat them harder and curse her for being an
interfering whore. “I am king in my house,” he would say. Now as he approached the
two, Ambo cowered behind his elder brother. He held onto Baldo’s undershirt, keeping
his wounded hand at his back, unable to remove his gaze from his father’s close-set,
red-specked eyes. The puppy with a yelp slunk between Baldo’s legs. Baldo looked at
the dog, avoiding his father’s eyes. Tang Ciaco roared at them to get away from the
dog: “Fools! Don’t you see it is mad?” Baldo laid a hand on Ambo as they moved back
hastily. He wanted to tell his father it was not true, the dog was not mad, it was all
Ambo’s fault, but his tongue refused to move. The puppy attempted to follow them, but
Tang Ciaco caught it with a sweeping blow of the piece of firewood. The puppy was
flung into the air. It rolled over once before it fell, howling weakly. Again the chunk of
firewood descended, Tang Ciaco grunting with the effort he put into the blow, and the
puppy ceased to howl. It lay on its side, feebly moving its jaws from which dark blood
oozed. Once more Tang Ciaco raised his arm, but Baldo suddenly clung to it with both
hands and begged him to stop. “Enough, father, enough. Don’t beat it anymore,” he
entreated. Tears flowed down his upraised face. Tang Ciaco shook him off with an oath.
Baldo fell on his face in the dust. He did not rise, but cried and sobbed and tore his hair.
The rays of the rising sun fell brightly upon him, turned to gold the dust that he raised
with his kicking feet. Tang Ciaco dealt the battered puppy another blow and at last it lay
limpy still. He kicked it over and watched for a sign of life. The puppy did not move
where it lay twisted on its side. He turned his attention to Baldo. “Get up,” he said,
hoarsely, pushing the boy with his foot. Baldo was deaf. He went on crying and kicking
in the dust. Tang Ciaco struck him with the piece of wood in his hand and again told him
to get up. Baldo writhed and cried harder,clasping his hands over the back of his head.
Tang Ciaco took hold of one of the boy’s arms and jerked him to his feet. Then he began
to beat him, regardless of where the blows fell. Baldo encircled his head with his loose
arm and strove to free himself, running around his father, plunging backward, ducking
and twisting. “Shameless son of a whore,” Tang Ciaco roared. “Stand still, I’ll teach you
to obey me.” He shortened his grip on the arm of Baldo and laid on his blows. Baldo fell
to his knees, screaming for mercy. He called on his mother to help him. Nana Elang
came down, but she hesitated at the foot of the ladder. Ambo ran to her. “You too,” Tang
Ciaco cried, and struck at the fleeing Ambo. The piece of firewood caught him behind
the knees and he fell on his face. Nana Elang ran to the fallen boy and picked him up,
brushing his clothes with her hands to shake off the dust. Tang Ciaco pushed Baldo
toward her. The boy tottered forward weakly, dazed and trembling. He had ceased to cry
aloud, but he shook with hard, spasmodic sobs which he tried vainly to stop. “Here take
your child,” Tang Ciaco said, thickly. He faced the curious students and neighbors who
had gathered by the side of the road. He yelled at them to go away. He said it was none
of their business if he killed his children. “They are mine,” he shouted. “I feed the and I
can do anything I like with them.” The students ran hastily to school. The neighbors
returned to their work. Tang Ciaco went to the house, cursing in a loud voice. Passing
the dead puppy, he picked it up by its hind legs and flung it away. The black and white
body soared through the sunlit air; fell among the tall corn behind the house. Tang
Ciaco, still cursing and grumbling, strode upstairs. He threw the chunk of firewood
beside the stove. He squatted by the low table and began eating the breakfast his wife
had prepared for him. Nana Elang knelt by her children and dusted their clothes. She
passed her hand over the red welts on Baldo, but Baldo shook himself away. He was
still trying to stop sobbing, wiping his tears away with his forearm. Nana Elang put one
arm around Ambo. She sucked the wound in his hand. She was crying silently. When
the mother of the puppies returned, she licked the remaining four by the small bridge of
woven split bamboo. She lay down in the dust and suckled her young. She did not seem
to miss the black-spotted puppy. Afterward Baldo and Ambo searched among the tall
corn for the body of the dead puppy. Tang Ciaco had gone to work and would not be
back till nightfall. In the house, Nana Elang was busy washing the breakfast dishes.
Later she came down and fed the mother dog. The two brothers were entirely hidden by
the tall corn plants. As they moved about among the slender stalks, the corn-flowers
shook agitatedly. Pollen scattered like gold dust in the sun, falling on the fuzzy· green
leaves. When they found the dead dog, they buried it in one corner of the field. Baldo
dug the grove with a sharp-pointed stake. Ambo stood silently by, holding the dead
puppy. When Baldo finished his work, he and his brother gently placed the puppy in the
hole. Then they covered the dog with soft earth and stamped on the grave until the
disturbed ground was flat and hard again. With difficulty they rolled a big stone on top of
the grave. Then Baldo wound an arm around the shoulders of Ambo and without a word
they hurried up to the house. The sun had risen high above the Katayaghan hills, and
warm, golden sunlight filled Nagrebcan. The mist on the tobacco fields had completely
dissolved.

Manuel Estabilla Arguilla

( Nagrebcan, June 17, 1911 – beheaded , Manila Chinese Cemetery , August 30, 1944)
was an Ilokano writer in English , patriot, and martyr. He is known for his widely
anthologized short story "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife," the main story
in the collection How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other Short Stories ,
which won first prize in the Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940. His stories
"Midsummer" and "Heat" were published in Tondo, Manila by the Prairie Schooner .

Most of Arguilla's stories depict scenes in Barrio Nagrebcan, Bauang, La Union , where
he was born. His bond with his birthplace, forged by his dealings with the peasant folk of
Ilocos , remained strong even after he moved to Manila , where he studied at the
University of the Philippines, finished his BS in Education in 1933, and became a
memberand later the president of the U.P. Writer's Club and editor of the university's
Literary Apprentice. He married Lydia Villanueva, another talented writer in English, and
they lived in Ermita , Manila. Here, F. Sionil José , another seminal Filipino writer in
English, recalls often seeing him in the National Library, which was then in the
basement of what is now the National Museum. "You couldn't miss him", José describes
Arguilla, "because he had this black patch on his cheek, a birthmark or an overgrown
mole. He was writing then those famous short stories and essays which I admired." He
became a creative writing teacher at the University of Manila and later worked at the
Bureau of Public Welfare as managing editor of the bureau's publication Welfare
Advocate until 1943. He was later appointed to the Board of Censors. He secretly
organized a guerrilla intelligence unit against the Japanese. On August 5, 1944, he was
captured and tortured by the Japanese army at Fort Santiago . In one account, he was
later transferred to the grounds of the Manila Chinese Cemetery . Along with him were
guerrilla leaders, along with more than 10 men. They were then asked to dig their own
graves, after which, they were immediately, one by one, beheaded with swords . His
remains, as well as the others', have never been recovered , as they were dumped into
one unmarked grave.The remains of the executed men were said to be located and
identified by their compatriots after the war, after a Japanese- American officer (working
in the Japanese Army as a spy), revealed what he had seen and the location of the
grave after the executions of August 30 of 1944. At present, their remains lie within the
Manila North Cemetery .

A Convict’s Twilight

Arturo Belleza Rotor

In the convict camps of Davao, the day is short. Twilight comes early, much earlier than
it does elsewhere in the world. It seemed to me that way the first day I was there. I do
not think that the feeling is due alone to the sense of solitude brought about by one’s
being in the midst of thousands of hectares of virgin forest. For I have lived in other
forests before. And these are not the tallest trees I have seen, nor the oldest, and I have
already experience that terror overcomes one when he losses a trail. No, the end of the
day here and the beginning of the night are brought about by more subtle forces than
the movement of heavenly bodies, influences more mysterious than light or darkness,
heat or cold, the shifting of vagrant winds. Perhaps it is not really the end of the day that
comes so soon, but merely the feeling that it is ended. What matter is not the daily
passage of the sun through an arc that ends somewhere in neither the west, nor the
lengthening shadows, nor the reddish afterglow that tints the top of the tallest Lauan. It
is more than that. It is a premonition more than an actual experience, a foretaste rather
than a sensation, a thought, instinct with the sad beauty of every twilight that has
passed before, that the hour signifies the end of the day’s work, the cessation of all the
hurrying and stumbling during the day. A chance to sit down or lie among the cool
hedges that grow near the spring, to bow your head or rest your bowed head on sleep
and forgetting, and the expectations of the sensation is peaceful andresigned where the
actual sensation itself is often restless and troubled. This twilight comes when I see the
convict emerge from the forest into the clearing. They look weary as they trudge single
file to their barracks, backs bent not so much by the weight of the heavy spades, picks,
baskets, that they carry as by the unseen burned that they have piled on their
shoulders. They have just finished the day’s work of opening new farms or keeping
those already open from being swallowed again by the wilderness. Some of the men
are caked with mad up to their waists; they have spent the morning clearing the streams
of fallen logs and boulders, deepening them so that the water will not stagnate and
breed malaria-bearing mosquito. Others are covered with soot, their faces and arm
cress-crossed with black lines in crazy patterns, as if they had been playing with
charcoal and painted each other’s faces. But they looked tired and dirty, even their
eyebrows are matted with black dust, their uniforms are in tatters; they have not been
playing. They are the men who first entered a kaingin after it had burned out. The soot
on their faces they got when they brushed against the charred and matted branches, as
they worked in a cloud o ashes rooting out the smoldering stumps. For me, night begins
when I see these men returning home, though it may be long before darkness comes
and the air turns cold. The forest, always silent, now assumes that calm is more
breathless and awesome than silence. The breeze dies down, the leaves cease to
rustle, the animals of the wood slink away to their lairs. One sees only an occasional
crow. Its obstreperous caw-caw-caw echoing and re-echoing for miles around. No
angelus rings here, for the nearest church is a day’s journey away, down the river and
along the coast. But one does not need to hear the tolling of distant bells to be reminded
of the hour for prayer. One must pray here, if only to relieve the terrifying solitude, to
stay the gathering darkness. Here one must kneel down, make the sign of the cross,
join the twilight host that like a solemn invocation rises above the heads of the tallest to
heaven. The darkness comes like a sluggish, ever deepening stream Imperceptibly it
crawls, inch by inch, and as it crawls, it swallows everything that stands in its way, first
the towering trees, from their buttressed roots to the highest quivering leaf, then the
shrubs and the undergrowth. One knows that it has reached a certain point by sound
and movement cease, the creaking of the stiff branches, the scampering of the small
animals under the trees, even the wind as it hurries through the lattice of leaves and
vines seems arrested in its flight. Over the deep holes left by decaying logs, the deep
puddle made by the wild boar, this stream swirls, eddies, and forms little unplumbed
pools. Arriving at the edge of the woods and at the beginning of the cleared area of corn
and bananas, its progress is faster, because here there are no trees and vines to
obstruct its way. Here it broadens cut without shallow, and finally inundates the whole
valley. Once, while gravely ill, I lost consciousness and, since then, light leaving the
world has always reminded me of consciousness leaving a sick body. I do not recall any
struggling to retain it, the outward flow was so smooth, so placid, so gradual. I desired
to prolong it, not because I wanted to retain a clear perception of objective, but
because, losing it, I knew that I would also loss an ineffable peace. I wanted to keep
indefinitely that twilight interval between awareness and insensibility. Twilight here in the
convict’s camps is like that. It is different from any other twilight. For the sake of the
convict, it comes early so that he may work early. It stays so that after his toiling he
does not have to go to sleep right away; it delays the coming of night and the command
to sleep. For it is the only hour that the convict has for playing. All morning he works in
the fields and the shops, and at night he sleeps like a log with a hundred out hers in
long barn-like quarters; but between these two states, between a fretful existence and a
brief lethargy. He has this hour of crepuscule. It is the only hour he can really forget he
is a convict. It is an hour of forgetfulness of the sin and its atonement; an hour to play at
being free. During this short time he is like you and me; afterwards he is again the
unfortunate, taciturn. Self-conscious and servile, the man who marches with heavy feet
and a heavier heart. As soon as the men are gathered, the roll is called, and the
presence of everyone is checked. After they have dispersed to return the tools and
implements to the tool house, they receive the evening ration. Then comes the hour for
play. Their pleasures are simple, their games few. The indoor baseball team goes out to
the field and spirited battle is played between two camps. Or it may be volleyball or foot
race. Group became bigger or break up, the men wander from barrack to barrack, loiter
by the water pump, join other groups nears the general store and exchange bits of news
and opinions. Soon everybody is playing or watching others plays and enjoying the
games as much as if were active participants, from the embezzler, who teaches his dog
to retrieve a stick, to the murderer with his guitar who hurries to join the colony’s string
band composed of men like him who are serving sentence of from twenty year of life
imprisonment. The air resounds with their cheers and laughter. These people could not
have been happier if they were little children playing patintero in some remote barrio.
Thieves, rustlers, smugglers, hardened recidivists, as well as bewildered, boyish killers,
all take part in one big game. The game of forgetting, a game with no rules to be
followed. Strenuous and difficult as any exhilarating and rough a game which only these
men understand fully, a game in which all with except those who are too weak to play it
or those who do not see it as a game, or those who have been tired of playing it, twilight
after twilight, year in and year out. Once the colony had a radio and is provided the most
exciting game of all. In the midst of their chess or do mine, when a certain hour, some of
the men would drop everything they held and rush to the place where the radio was; a
room above the general store. And there first was too small to contain all of them, only
those who get there first went up, the rest sat down on the benches and stools around
the store. When I was new there, I did not understand what drew them like that. At first I
thought it was the dance music they liked so much. Later on I learned that this was not
the case. For one day when I joined the group below at that hour, the radio was playing
a well-known dance piece, but nobody seemed to be listening, and they were making
enough noise to drown the music but when it stopped and a voice announced, “the
English Information Period” all noise cease and the place became as silent as a church.
Benches were move over so carefully, shuffling legs became still. The men talked to
each other and only in whispers, and then only ask about some word they did not catch.
I doubt if they understood what they heard, for the voice spoke of a battle in Africa, the
political situation in Europe, a strike in America, the problems of the Commonwealth. I
do not think knew English. But apparently that were hearing a strange voice telling them
of strange happenings in far countries. Very easily one could make believe that he was
seeing these events himself, taking an active part in them. That was the most
exhilarating game of all, more satisfying than baseball or ping-pong, more than baseball
or ping-pong it brought sweat readily and that delicious sense of tiredness which comes
from hard putting all your heart into the game. And then twilight ends, and the voice
from, and all the games. Tomorrow is another day and another night and between the
two another hour for play. But the men do not look forward to it. Only the new arrivals do
that, with their calendars where each day that passes is carefully crossed out in colored
pencil. Those who have been here five or ten years often smile at these fellows,
knowing full well that after a few months they will not keep track of the days anymore,
nor of the hours, nor whether it is morning or night or twilight. I was surprised to see
Cornelio at the hospital that morning. “Why, I thought you were in Iwahig” “I was
transferred here sir,” he answered, “I arrived about a week ago.” The man looked
healthier and less reticent than when I had seen him last. I guessed at the reason.
“Parole” “Not yet, sir, but soon maybe.” “And your wife?” “She came with me, with my
son. I have a son now sir, who was born in the Colony. They went to Tayabas to see my
mother soon after we came here but I am expecting them this afternoon. I have been
expecting them for the last three days. I shall tell her you are here sir.” It was like seeing
an old friend to see Corneli here. The joy on his face when he saw me was
unmistakable. He had never forgotten the time he pulled through a bad attack of black
water fever and he thought that just because I had prescribed a few injections he owed
his life to me. His wife thought so too. He wrote to her as soon as he was able to and
when I got back to Manila she was waiting for me. She wept soon as she began to
thank me, but I do not think it was so much for you that her husband was saved from
death as for her helplessness to reward me, her realization that any reward would
always be inadequate. Cynically I thought at the time, must we got to convicts to find
honest acknowledgement of a debt. The men who are free, have they no such simple
qualities as sincerity and gratefulness? I know Cornelio well. I recall clearly the first time
I saw him. It was here in Bilibid, in a cell, where he had been placed in solitary
confinement. His quietness that was not resignation. There was no trace of sullenness
in him, nor of that grim hiding of time that convicts who have been severely disciplined
often show for weeks after their sentence. I had attempted to find out why he was there,
what offense he had committed and although he answered me politely enough, soon I
began to feel that I was despicable interloper praying officiously into his private affairs. It
was something in his impeccably courteous manner. That in itself was surprising
enough for here in Bilibid, every inmate seems only glad to get anybody to listen to his
life history. You ask a patient for his symptoms and he still start with his childhood, his
family troubles, his accomplishments, the story of the crime for which he was unjustly
condemned. Later on if you are still listening, he will tell you where he buried the money
before he was captured. Not so with Cornelio. He answers my questions and nothing
more, and when I realized my mistake, I almost felt like apologizing to him. A few years
afterwards I found him in the convict camps of Davao when that Colony was just being
carved out of a dark and matted wilderness. I saw him strip red to the waist, swinging an
axe as expertly as if he had been used to the work all his life. I watched him as he
scampered away with the others when the signal came that the great trees were
toppling over. Except that he was tanned by the sun and scarred all over with scratches
from rattan vines, he was unchanged. He was still the reserved, soft-spoken somewhat
self assured prisoner. It seemed that he had quietly worked out his problem, found its
solution and settling his eyes on the road ahead, had resolved that for no reason at all
would be linger by the wayside. Somehow he did not seem to be a convict, he did not
belong to the place, he was merely visiting these men and would leave shortly. If there
was ever anybody who deserved to regain his freedom, it was Cornelio. He had
expiated his crime fully, further incarceration served no useful purpose. Seeing him that
day brought Davao and Iwahig back to me. I talked with dozens of convicts and saw
hundreds of them, morning and afternoon. Again the question came to me about which I
had thought of hundred times before. Which made imprisonment morecomplete and
absolute, the massive walls and iron gates of Bilibid, or the unfenced forest of Davao?
Here in Manila freedom and liberty were just on the other side of the wall. In Davao, the
nearest settled town was a day’s journey away. If I were a convict would I prefer to be in
Manila where I could bear the rumble of a great city, where I could catch occasional
glimpses of tall buildings, of the multitude hurrying by? Being so near life, feeling its
strong pulsating rhythm, would my own pulse quicken? Would the day of my isolation
pass sooner if an every hour of the day was made aware of the sounds that augment
the sense of my isolation? Probable not, probably I would prefer to be in Davao. There,
tramping the field, following a river down stream and exploring its muddy banks for
catfish, sitting down that flat stone near the spring one could better hold to the delusion
that one is free. All you have to do to be free, to throw away chains and shackles, to
discard a numbered uniform, so to discredit your sense. You will find many who are only
too willing to help you in the face of contrary facts; your companions, the officials, will do
all they can to make you feel that you are not really a convict. They will talk kindly to you
and give wise and advice, food and clothes, take care of you when you are sick, and
there in Davao, the place provides a fitting setting. There are no walls here except the
impenetrable wall of forest, the only sentries you see are hoary trees, row upon row,
unbending, unrelaxing in their vigilance, keeping a century old watch day and night.
Here in Manila so near freedom and yet never any nearer, one can easily forget to
laugh. Going back to the hospital that afternoon, I noticed that the observation tower
and platform was full of visitors. I thought there might be something new going on and
so I ascended the ladder. This tower, reached by three flights, is built in the center of the
compound. Up there an armed guard is posted day and night; he commands clear view
of every corner of the yard. Around this tower a sort of sort a platform is built, which
would server as a grandstand where visitors are sometimes allowed during parades,
reviews or games. Here, one gets a general view of the construction of the whole
reservation. The general building are grouped along a large circle whose centexr is this
tower. The outermost circumference is the wall, so high and forbidding from below, here
looking like only a few a low fence. Inside this are the long stone- walled barrack all
convening toward the center. Outside wall is another world, the aspect and extent of
which those inside see only dimly, in memory or more vividly in imagination. Sometimes
they hear various sounds that rise above the wall and are carried inside, but they do not
seem to have any meaning. In some corners of the yard, one may hear more and see
more an airplane passing by, an electric sign apparently suspended in mid-air, the spire
of the nearest church pointed, towards the sky like a finger of exhortation. I found the
usual motley collection of Sunday visitors, mostly relatives of the prisoners came from
neighboring towns for the monthly visit, a group of tourist in white duck or shorts,
sunhelmets askew, cameras slung over their shoulder. There was really nothing new. I
hadseen this routine review and callisthenic exercise innumerable times. First the
prisonbond came out, with a great blare of trumpets and roughly roll of drums. The
prisoners then followed coming out of their where saluted, andon to their appointed
places. There were a few exercises with dummy guns, and calisthenics and gymnastics,
briskly and mechanically done. It was the weekly picture of order and obedience and
discipline. The drill was almost half through when, chancing to turn my head slightly, I
espied a figure to my left and somewhat behind me. It was a woman, her back turned
toward me, and towards the whole crowd. She alone faced that was, for the rest of us
were looking the opposite direction where the exercises were

going on. Half squat tin, half-kneeling, she held a baby clasped in her arms. She
seemed strangely familiar. I looked more closely and recognized Cornelio’s wife.

She was dress in blacked, in the cheap fashion of the poor, a thin old shawl around her
shoulders, the hem of her skirt frayed and grey with dust. I stepped forward to a have
word with her, but stopped short when I saw how intent she was on something. I
followed her graze, followed it to the prisoner’s barracks, saw it fixed on the one directly
in front of us. I was somewhat perplexed for I knew the buildings were empty except for
the trustees who stood, one to each building, just at the entrance. And then I saw that
the men in front of that building, standing against the iron- barred door, was looking up
at her. I could not at first make out his features, because the light was failing already,
but before I finally did so, I knew it was, that it must be, Cornelio,; it could not have been
any other person. She must have been there from the beginning, the must have been
looking at each other like that for that for the last hour. Although she was almost at the
edge of the platform, about a hundred yards still lay between them; they were too far
away to talk to each other, to even see each other’s eyes clearly. But by the way he
looked down. I knew they had been speaking to each other all this time. She must have
just arrived from Tayabas, too late to catch the visitor’s hour and meet her husband, but
not too late to got a glimpse of him from here. From her cramped position she hardly
moved, except when the baby became restless and then she patted his head and
murmured something. Once in a while she held him up in her arm, for the father to see
him or perhaps in an excess of naïve expectation that at this age and from this distance
the baby would recognize his father. And in his place the man did not move, not even
shift his weight from leg to leg. Every now and then one of the spectators regarded her
dubiously thinking it queer that this woman would be alone like that in one corner of the
platform, not paying any attention to what was going on. But he did not see what she
saw, Cornelio was too far away. And nobody came near and spoke to her. Perhaps if
anyone had she would not have seen him, nor hear his voice. Gradually I found myself
looking at the two of them and like them forgetting all the others first at the man, then at
the woman, wondering if after all they were not really talking audible to one another in a
language not only beyond my sense of hearing, but also utterly beyond my pitiful
comprehension. I strove hard to see her lips move, I desired intensely to see her even
wave her hand at the figure opposite. If she had so much as whispered his name, I am
sure I would have heard it above the din of that band, above the sound of marching feet.
But I could not make out anything and after a while the roll of the drums and the sound
of men’s feet keeping time mechanically became less and less distinct. The silence
recalled the forest, a great forest at twilight, the afterglow tinting the tallest trees a dull
red, the animals slinking to their lairs, the wind being arrested in its flight as it passed
through the lactase of leaves. The night falling was consciousness leaving a sick body,
restlessness and strife and pain being replaced by a profound peace. I seemed to hear
the sound of a distant bell tolling and that silhouette of the woman kneeling naturally
brought the thought of angelus; the woman was praying, the silence itself was a prayer,
the darkening world’s daily invocation at twilight. It was somebody touching my shoulder
and starting me unduly that made me look around. I saw a guard by my side and seeing
him, I also saw that there were no more people here, that the review had ended and the
visitors gone home. I nodded and the guard left me and approached the woman. She
rose. Took the shawl from her shoulder and wrapped it around the baby, holding him
close, laying him check against hers. As she stepped down the ladder she looked back
once, but she did not wave her hand. Following a few paces behind her and picking my
steps carefully because it was almost dark, I stopped for a moment and looked back
also. But I saw nothing. Night had fallen.

Arturo B. Rotor

(June 7, 1907 – April 9,1988) was a Filipino medical doctor, civil servant, musician, and
writer.Medical career Rotor was born in the Philippines and attended the University of
the Philippines. He graduated simultaneously from the Conservatory of Music and the
College of Medicine. He trained further at Johns Hopkins University 's medical school,
publishing a paper on a rare form of hyperbilirubinaemia (jaundice) now known as "
Rotor syndrome".During World War II , Rotor served asexecutive secretary of the
Philippine Commonwealth government-in-exile under Manuel L. Quezon , the Philippine
president in exile. In the immediate post-World War II period, he was appointed
secretary of the Department of Health and Welfare. Later, Rotor was director of the
University of the Philippines' Postgraduate School of Medicine and was a practising
physician until the early 1980s.

Writing career

Rotor was an internationally respected writer of fiction and non-fiction in English. He is

widely considered among the best Filipino short story writers of the twentieth century.
He was a charter member of the Philippine Book Guild; the guild's initial publication
(1937) was Rotor's The Wound and the Scar , despite Rotor's protests that someone
else's work should have been selected. In 1966, the Philippine government recognized
his literary accomplishments by awarding him

the Republic Cultural Heritage Award. Rotor's best-known literary works are The Wound
and the Scar (1937), Confidentially, Doctor (1965), Selected Stories from the Wound
and the Scar (1973), The Men Who Play God (1983), and the short stories "Dahong
Palay" (1928) and "Zita" (1930).

Personal

Rotor died in 1988 due to Cancer, and was survived by his wife Emma Unson, who
taught college mathematics and physics. They had no children.

Angela Manalang-Gloria

Early life

Angela Marie Legaspi Manalang was born on August 24, 1907 in Guagua , Pampanga
to parents, Felipe Dizon Manalang (born in Mexico, Pampanga) and Tomasa Legaspi
(whom she hardly mentions). However, their family later settled in the Bicol region,
particularly in Albay. Caring—as she is fondly called—studied at St. Agnes Academy in
Legaspi, where she graduated valedictorian in elementary. In her senior year, she
moved to St. Scholastica's College in Malate, Manila , where her writing started to get
noticed. Angela Manalang was among the first generation female students at the
University of the Philippines. Angela initially enrolled in law, as suggested by her father.
However, with the advice of her professor C.V. Wickers, who also became her mentor,
she eventually transferred to literature.

Writing

It was also during her education at the University of the Philippines that she and poet,
Jose Garcia Villa developed a lifelong rivalry. Both poets vied for the position of literary
editor of The Philippine Collegian, which Manalang eventually held for two successive
years. In her junior year, she was quietly engaged to Celedonio Gloria whom she
married. She graduated summa cum laude with the degree of Ph.B. in March 1929.
After graduation, Manalang-Gloria worked briefly for the Philippine Herald Mid Week
Magazine. However, this was cut short when she contracted tuberculosis.Achievements
She was the author of Revolt from Hymen , a poem protesting against marital rape ,
which caused her denial by an all-male jury from winning the Philippine 's
Commonwealth Literary Awards in 1940. She was also the author of the poetry
collection, Poems, first published in 1940 (and revised in 1950). The collection
contained the best of her early work as well as unpublished poems written between
1934-1938. Her last poem, Old Maid Walking on a City Street can also be found in the
collection. This book was her entry to the Commonwealth Literary Awards, losing to
Rafael Zulueta y da Costa’s verse Like the Molave .
Personal life
On March 11, 1945, her husband Celedonio and her son Ruben were attacked by
Japanese patrol in Alitagtag, Batangas . Though her husband died, Ruben was able to
survive, yet his trauma had been so severe that he could not bring himself to recount
the attack. This event left Manalang-Gloria a young widow with three children to
support, which forced her to abandon writing and enter the abaca business, which she
successfully managed.

Jose Garcia Villa

(August 5, 1914 – February 7, 1997) was a Filipino poet , literarycritic, short story writer,
and painter. He was awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in
1973, as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by\ Conrad Aiken . He is
known to have introduced the "reversed consonance rhyme scheme" in writing poetry,
as well as the extensive use of punctuation marks— especially commas , which made
him known as the Comma Poet . He used the penname Doveglion (derived from " Dove,
Eagle, Lion "), based on the characters he derived from himself. These animals were
also explored by another poet E. E. Cummings in Doveglion, Adventures in Value,
a poem dedicated to Villa.
Early life
Villa was born on August 5, 1908, in Manila's Singalong district. His parents were
Simeón Villa (a personal physician of Emilio Aguinaldo, the founding President of the
First Philippine Republic) and Guia Garcia (a wealthy landowner). He graduated from
the University of the Philippines Integrated School and the University of the Philippines
High School in 1925. Villa enrolled on a Pre-Medical course in the University of the
Philippines, but then switched to Pre-Law course. However, he realized that his true
passion was in the arts. Villa first tried painting, but then turned into creative writing after
reading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Writing career Villa's tart poetic style
was considered too aggressive at that time. In 1929 he published Man Songs , a series
of erotic poems, which the administrators in UP found too bold and was even fined
Philippine peso for obscenity by the Manila Court of First Instance. In that same year,
Villa won Best Story of the Year from Philippine Free Press magazine for Mir-I-Nisa . He
also received P1,000 prize money, which he used to migrate to the United States. He
enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where in he was one of the founders of Clay,
a mimeograph literary magazine. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and
pursued post-graduate work at Columbia University . Villa had gradually caught the
attention of the country's literary circles, one of the few Asians to do so at that time. After
the publication of Footnote to Youth in 1933, Villa switched from writing prose to
poetry, and published only a handful of works until 1942. During the release of Have
Come, Am Here in 1942, he introduced a new rhyming scheme called "reversed
consonance" wherein, according to Villa: "The last sounded consonants of the last
syllable, or the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding
rhyme. Thus, a rhyme for near would be run; or rain, green, reign ." In 1949, Villa
presented a poetic style he called "comma poems", wherein commas are placed after
every word. In the preface of Volume Two, he wrote: "The commas are an integral and
essential part of the medium: regulating the poem's verbal density and time movement:
enabling each word to attain a fuller tonal value, and the line movement to become
more measured." Villa worked as an associate editor for New Directions Publishing in
New York City from 1949-51, and then became director of poetry workshop at City
College of New York from 1952 to 1960. He then left the literary scene and concentrated
on teaching, first lecturing in The New School|The New School for
Social Research from 1964 to 1973, as well as conducting poetry workshops in his
apartment. Villa was also a cultural attaché to the Philippine Mission to the United
Nations from 1952 to 1963, and an adviser on cultural affairs to the President of the
Philippines beginning 1968. Death On February 5, 1997, at the age of 88, Jose was
found in a coma in his New York apartment and was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital in
the Greenwich Village area. His death two days later, February 7, was attributed to
"cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia". He was buried on February 10 in St. John's
Cemetery in New York, wearing a Barong Tagalog.

Awards
Villa was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Writing by American writer
Conrad Aiken, wherein he was also awarded a $ 1,000 prize for "outstanding work in
American literature", as well as a fellowship from Bollingen Foundation. He was also
bestowed an Academy Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and
Letters in 1943. [10] Villa also won first prize in the Poetry Category of UP Golden
Jubilee Literary Contests in 1958, as well as the Pro Patria Award for literature in 1961,
and the Heritage Award for poetry and short stories a year later. He was conferred with
a honoris causa doctorate degree for literature by Far Eastern University in Manila on
1959 (and later by University of the Philippines), and the National Artist Award for
Literature in 1973.He was one of three Filipinos, along with novelist Jose Rizal and
translator Nick Joaquin, included in World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity
to Our Time published in 2000, which featured over 1,600 poems written by hundreds of
poets in different languages and culture within a span of 40 centuries dating from the
development of early writing in ancient Sumer and Egypt .