21ST CENT LIT Lessons

21St CENTURY
LITEARTURE FROM
THE PHILIPPINES AND
THE WORLD
TEACHER
21ST CENTURY LITEARTURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD
What is Literature?
 Literature is a written works such as books, poems, lyrics/song, novel, short stories and etc.
 Litera - Latin word which literally means an “acquaintance with letters”
 Webster defines literature as anything that is printed, as long as it is related to the ideas and
feelings of people, whether it is true, or just a product of one’s imagination.
 “Literature raises life to a new level of meaning and understanding, and in the process
restores sanity and justice in an insane and unjust world.” - Cirilo F. Bautista
Importance of Literature
1. Studying literature is like looking at the mirror of life where man’s experiences, his innermost
feelings and thoughts are reflected.
2. Through literature, we learn the culture of people across time and space
3. We understand not only the past life of a nation but also its present.
4. We become familiar not only with the culture of neighboring countries but also with that of
others living very.
5. Studying literature is like looking at the mirror of life where man’s experiences, his innermost
feelings and thoughts are reflected.
6. Through literature, we learn the culture of people across time and space.
7. We understand not only the past life of a nation but also its present.
8. We become familiar with the culture of neighboring countries.
Why do we need to study Philippine Literature?
 To trace out rich heritage of ideas and handed down to us from our forefathers.
 For Appreciation of our heritage.
 To understand that we have noble traditions which can serve as the means to assimilate other
cultures.
Branches of Literature
1. POETRY is much more economical in the use of words and relies heavily on imagery figurative
language, rhythm and sound.
2. PROSE includes novels, short stories, myths, parables, romance and epics. It is created using
sentences and paragraphs.
Kinds of Prose
Fiction-imaginative writing; invented stories.
Example: Legend, Myth, Short Story, Novel, Fables, Parable and Fantasy
Non-Fiction- writing that is about facts or real events.
Example: Biography, Thesis, Dissertation and all academic writings
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I AM A FILIPINO
CARLOS P. ROMULO
I am a Filipino–inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove
equal to a two-fold task–the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing
my obligation to the future.
I sprung from a hardy race, child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the
centuries the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships
that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing
wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope–hope in the free abundance of
new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.
This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill
and mountain that beckoned to them with a green-and-purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that
their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of
commerce, is a hallowed spot to me.
By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all
the appurtenances thereof–the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish,
the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels
swollen with minerals–the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number,
the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust will pass it to my children,
and so on until the world is no more.
I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes–seed that flowered down the centuries
in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapulapu to
battle against the first invader of this land, that nerved Lakandula in the combat against the alien foe,
that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor.
That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in
Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit
deathless forever, the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gergorio del
Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit; that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart
of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst fourth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L.
Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacañan Palace, in the symbolic act of
possession and racial vindication.
The seed I bear within me is an immortal seed. It is the mark of my manhood, the symbol of dignity as
a human being. Like the seeds that were once buried in the tomb of Tutankhamen many thousand
years ago, it shall grow and flower and bear fruit again. It is the insignia of my race, and my
generation is but a stage in the unending search of my people for freedom and happiness.
I am a Filipino, child of the marriage of the East and the West. The East, with its languor and
mysticism, its passivity and endurance, was my mother, and my sire was the West that came
thundering across the seas with the Cross and Sword and the Machine. I am of the East, an eager
participant in its spirit, and in its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke. But I also know that
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the East must awake from its centuried sleep, shake off the lethargy that has bound his limbs, and
start moving where destiny awaits
For I, too, am of the West, and the vigorous peoples of the West have destroyed forever the peace
and quiet that once were ours. I can no longer live, a being apart from those whose world now
trembles to the roar of bomb and cannon-shot. I cannot say of a matter of universal life-and-death, of
freedom and slavery for all mankind, that it concerns me not. For no man and no nation is an island,
but a part of the main, there is no longer any East and West–only individuals and nations making
those momentous choices which are the hinges upon which history resolves.
At the vanguard of progress in this part of the world I stand–a forlorn figure in the eyes of some, but
not one defeated and lost. For, through the thick, interlacing branches of habit and custom above me,
I have seen the light of the sun, and I know that it is good. I have seen the light of justice and equality
and freedom, my heart has been lifted by the vision of democracy, and I shall not rest until my land
and my people shall have been blessed by these, beyond the power of any man or nation to subvert
or destroy.
I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy of my
inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the centuries, and it
shall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when first they saw the contours of
this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have resounded in every field of combat from
Mactan to Tirad Pass, of the voices of my people when they sing:
Land of the morning,

Child of the sun returning–
Ne’er shall invaders

Trample thy sacred shore.
Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heartstrings of sixteen million people
all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of the songs of the farmers
at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields, out of the sweat of the hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-lig
and Koronadal, out of the silent endurance of stevedores at the piers and the ominous grumbling of
peasants in Pampanga, out of the first cries of babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing,
out of the crashing of gears and the whine of turbines in the factories, out of the crunch of plough-
shares upturning the earth, out of the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in
the clinics, out of the tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge:
“I am a Filipino born to freedom, and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added unto my
inheritance—for myself and my children and my children’s children—forever.”
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FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH
BY JOSE GARCIA VILLA
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would 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, but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of
serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought
came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who
chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong’s grandmother.
I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.
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 burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short
colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and
jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of
his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The 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 of grass before it land the carabao began to eat.
Dodong looked at it without interests.
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, the down on his upper lip already was
dark–these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man–he was a man. Dodong felt
insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man
grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone 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 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 made him
dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This 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.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the
grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in
bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the
low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around
the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one
held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his
glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the
remainder for his parents.
Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash
them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong 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 housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
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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 dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father
was. He did not tell that to 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 bolder than his
father.
Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he
had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and
without self-consciousness. Dodong 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 father. His
father looked old now.
“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense
and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was
uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering
anything.
“I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”
His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
“I asked her last night to marry me and she said…yes. I want your permission. I… want… it….” There
was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong
looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke
dully the night stillness.
“Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong resented his father’s questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick
impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.
“You are very young, Dodong.”
“I’m… seventeen.”
“That’s very young to get married at.”
“I… I want to marry…Teang’s a good girl.”
“Tell your mother,” his father said.
“You tell her, tatay.”
“Dodong, you tell your inay.”
“You tell her.”
“All right, Dodong.”
“You will let me marry Teang?”
“Son, if that is your wish… of course…” There was a strange helpless light in his father’s eyes.
Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.
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 he confined his mind to dreaming of
Teang and himself. Sweet young dream….
——————————————-
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He
was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house,
but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid
of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of
Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that 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 painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.
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In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe, with
strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable…
“Your son,” people would soon be telling him. “Your son, Dodong.”
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 made him think that? What was the matter with
him? God!
He heard his mother’s voice from the house:
“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”
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 had taken something no properly his. He
dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.
“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”
He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.
“It is a boy,” his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents’ eyes seemed
to pierce him through and he felt limp.
He wanted to hide from them, to run away.
“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” he mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.
“Dodong. Dodong.”
“I’ll… come up.”
Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His
heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so
that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and
his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to
punish him.
His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.
“Son,” his father said.
And his mother: “Dodong…”

How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.
“Teang?” Dodong said.
“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag
with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that
feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could
not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.
——————————————-
Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive 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 with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now,
even if she was young. There was interminable work to 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 dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved.
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There has been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, 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 now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have
borne him children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong…
Dodong whom life had made ugly.

One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight,
tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to be wise
about many things.
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was
forsaken… after Love.
Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to
make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house
humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.
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 Blas’s steps, for he could not sleep well of
nights. He watched Blas undress in 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.
Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.
Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

“Itay …,” Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
“I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.”
Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.
“Itay, you think it over.”
Dodong lay silent.
“I love Tona and… I want her.”
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything
was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.
“You want to marry Tona,” Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The
life that would follow marriage would be hard…
“Yes.”
“Must you marry?”
Blas’s voice stilled with resentment. “I will marry Tona.”
Dodong kept silent, hurt.
“You have objections, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.
“Son… n-none…” (But truly, God, I don’t want Blas to marry yet… not yet. I don’t want Blas to marry
yet….)
But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph… now. Love must triumph…
now. Afterwards… it will be life.
As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then Life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for
him.
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The Mats
By FRANCISCO ARCELLANA
For my family, Papa’s homecoming from his many inspection trips around the Philippines was always
an occasion to remember. But there was one homecoming - from a trip to the south – that turned out
to be more memorable than any of the others.
Papa was an engineer. He inspected new telegraph lines for the government. He had written from
Lopez, Tayabas: I have just met a marvelous matweaver – a real artist – and I shall have a surprise
for you. I asked him to weave a sleeping mat for every one of the family. I can hardly wait to show
them to you…
After a few days Papa wrote again:
I am taking the Bicol Express tomorrow. I have the mats with me, and they are beautiful. I hope to be
home to join you for dinner.
Mama read Papa’s letter aloud during the noon meal. Talk about the mats flared up like wildfire.
“I like the feel of mats,” said my brother Antonio. “I like the smell of new mats.”
“Oh, but these mats are different,” said Susanna, my younger sister. “They have our names woven
into them. There is a different color for each of us.”
A mat was not something new to us. There was already one such mat in the house. It was one we
seldom use, a mat older than any of us. This mat had been given to Mama by her mother when
Mama and Papa were married. It had been with them ever since. It was used on their wedding night
and afterwards only on special occasions. It was a very beautiful mat. It had green leaf borders and
gigantic red roses woven onto it. In the middle it said:
Emilia y Jaime Recuerdo
The mat did not ever seem to grow old. To Mama it was always as new as it had been on her
wedding night. The folds and creases always looked new and fresh. The smell was always the smell
of a new mat. Watching it was an endless joy.
Mama always kept that mat in her trunk. When any of us got sick, the mat was brought out and the
sick child made to sleep on it. Every one of us had at some time in our life slept on it. There had been
sickness in our family. And there had been deaths…. That evening Papa arrived. He had brought
home a lot of fruit from the fruit-growing provinces he had passed in his travels. We sampled
pineapple, lanzones, chico, atis, santol, watermelon, guayabano, and avocado. He had also brought
home a jar of preserved sweets.
Dinner seemed to last forever. Although we tried not to show it, we could hardly wait to see the mats.
Finally, after a long time over his cigar, Papa rose from his chair and crossed the room. He went to
the corner where his luggage was piled. From the heap he pulled out a large bundle. Taking it under
his arm, he walked to the middle of the room where the light was brightest. He dropped the bundle to
the floor. Bending over and balancing himself on his toes, he pulled at the cord that bound it. It was
strong. It would not break. It would not give way. Finally, Alfonso, my youngest brother, appeared at
Papa’s side with a pair of scissors. Papa took the scissors. One swift movement, snip!, and the
bundle was loose!
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Papa turned to Mama and smiled. “These are the mats, Miling,” he said.
He picked up the topmost mat in the bundle.
“This is yours, Miling.” Mama stepped forward to the light, wiping her still moist hands against the
folds of her apron. Shyly, she unfolded the mat without a word.
We all gathered around the spread mat.
It was a beautiful mat. There was a name in the very center of it: Emilia. Interwoven into the large,
green letters where flowers – cadena de amor.
“It’s beautiful, Jaime.” Mama whispered, and she could not say any more.
“And this, I know, is my own,” said Papa of the next mat in the bundle. His mat was simple and the
only colors on it were purple and cold.
“And this, for you, Marcelina.”
I had always thought my name was too long. Now I was glad to see that my whole name was spelled
out on the mat, even if the letters were small. Beneath my name was a lyre, done in three colors.
Papa knew I loved music and played the piano. I was delighted with my new mat.
“And this is for you, Jose.” Jose is my oldest brother. He wanted to become a doctor.
“This is yours, Antonio.”
“And this, yours, Juan.”
“And this is yours, Jesus.”
One by one my brothers and sisters stepped forward to receive their mats. Mat after mat was
unfolded. On each mat was a symbol that meant something special to each of us.
At last everyone was shown their mats. The air was filled with excited talk.
“You are not to use the mats until you go the university,” Papa said.
“But, Jaime,” Mama said, wonderingly, “there are some more mats left in the bundle.”
“Yes there are three more mats to unfold. They are for the others who are not here…” Papa’s voice
grew soft and his eyes looked far away.
“I said I would bring home a sleeping mat for every one of the family. And so I did,” Papa said. Then
his eyes fell on each of us. “Do you think I’d forgotten them? Do you think I had forgotten them? Do
you think I could forget them?
“This is for you, Josefina!
“And this, for you, Victoria!
“And this, for you, Concepcion!”
Papa’s face was filled with a long-bewildered sorrow.
Then I understood. The mats were for my three sisters, who died when they were still very young.
After a long while, Papa broke the silence. “We must not ever forget them,” he said softly. “They may
be dead but they are never really gone. They are here, among us, always in our hearts.”
The remaining mats were unfolded in silence. The colors were not bright but dull. I remember that the
names of the dead among us did not glow o shine as did the other living names.
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The Lake of Ice
Jose A. Quirino
Figure skating became an obsession to Tito Guanzon after a winter he spent with a sister in
Canada. When he arrived there the trees were just turning purple and the cold seemed no more
severe than April in Baguio. By the end of November, however, Montreal was turning into a white city.
Then in December, the snow began falling in the daytime and Tito loved to walk into the falling snow.
In January, the winter set in and every body of water in Montreal was frozen hard. Just across
the streets from St. Anne’s Hospital where his sister worked as a nurse was a small park with a lake
in it.
Swans floated on the lake in summer; in winter it was taken over by then skaters. Tito loved to
watch them spinning around in pairs, arms interlocked, doing figure eights or dizzy whirls. He told
himself he would become part of winter’s purity if he could only skate as expertly as the Canadians.
One day he was sitting as usual at the edge of the lake of ice, watching the skaters, when an
apple-checked girl in red plaid, muffler flying from her neck, came to a stop right in front of him.
“You Italian?’ she asked. Tito blushed deeply.
“No, Filipino,: he mumbled.
“What’s that?” cried the girl. But she didn’t wait for an answer. Suddenly, she grabbed his
gloved hands. “Come on, skate with me!”
“I don’t know,” cried Tito blushing even redder, ”Anyway, I don’t even have skates.”
“I can get you a pair. I can teach you.”
“Not in front of all these people!” exclaimed Tito.
“Why not?” shrugged the girl.” You’re funny. Are all Filipinos funny like you?”
“Well, we’re rather shy when not in our own land.”
“I’m not in my own land,” laughed the girl. “I’m form California.”
“And I thought you were a Canadian.”
“No, I’m just here for the snow and all that. We don’t have winter where I come from.”
“Same here.,” sighed Tito. “Then how come you know how to skate?”
“Because I like to do things that don’t come naturally!” she said.
That, thought Tito, was the difference between him and the girl. She had daring, he has his
country’s paralyzing shyness.
“What’s your name?” he suddenly asked.
“Linda.” She said. “Listen, write it down somewhere, my name, Linda Anderson. Someday
you’re going to see it up in lights.”
“But you’re famous already. Your name is even in a song, you know. When I go to sleep I
never count sheep, I count all the charms about Linda and all the jazz.” Tito was surprised with
himself. Suddenly he was singing and humming before this strange, lovely creature.
“Oh, you’re pulling my leg because you think I’m mad,” she laughed.
“No-oh, no!” he gasped, feeling embarrassed.
“Then write down my name, “ she insisted. He pulled out his ball pen and notebook and worte
down Linda Andreson.
“And what’s your name?” she asked, stooping over him.
“Tito,”was all he could say.
She kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Good bye Tito,” she whispered. “The kiss was to make you remember me on the likae of ice.
When we meet again, it’s going to be on another lake of ice and under bright famous lights!”
Well, about five years later, Tito back in Manila, took his girl to the ice show that was the
holiday attraction at the Araneta Coliseum. In the darkness, the lake of ice gleamed clean and pure
and holy and suddenly Tito felt seventeen again and imagined Montreal during that winter vacation
with his sister nurse.
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One spotlight pierced the darkness and in the circle of light, Tito saw an apple-cheeked girl in
red plaid, with a muffler flying from her neck.
“That’s the star of the show,”whispered the irl at his side. “do you know that she had infantile
paralysis and couldn’t walk for years?” said Tito’s girlfriend, who had obviously read press accounts
about the star of the icetravaganza.
“She didn’t walk until she was a teenager and she made herself not only walk but dance , jump
and run as well. And now she’s a star skater. Don’t you think that’s wonderful, Tito?”
Tito now understood the history of human adventure. People were so wonderful because they
were always daring enough to do what didn’t come naturally.
“I’ll never be timid again,” Tito thought as he watched the superstar, Linda Anderson, dancing
on silver skates on the lake of ice!
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May Day Eve
By Nick Joaquin
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, while the girls who were staying
were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the young men gathering around to wish them a
good night and lamenting their ascent with mock signs and moaning, proclaiming themselves
disconsolate but straightway going off to finish the punch and the brandy though they were quite
drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment, arrogance and audacity, for they were
young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had been in their honor; and they had waltzed and
polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and flirted all night and where in no mood to sleep yet--no,
caramba, 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 serenade the neighbors! cried one;
and swim in the Pasid! cried another; and 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 and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses 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 corner or where a murderous wind whirled,
whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting
unbearable childhood fragrances or ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously down the
street that the girls who were desiring upstairs in the bedrooms catered screaming to the windows,
crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over those young men bawling
below; over those wicked young men and their handsome apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and
their elegant mustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite 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 plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chases them
off to bed---while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobble
and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his great voice booming
through the night, "Guardia serno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o.
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 shawls and
raking slippers in corner while the girls climbing into four great 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!"
"Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!"
"She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of Christmas Eve!"
"St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr."
"Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin, Anastasia?"
"No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!"
"Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell me."
"You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid."
"I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed.
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"Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will come and pinch us
all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command you to shut your mouth and go away!""Your
mother told me to stay here all night, my grand lady!"
"And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. "Stay, old woman.
Tell me what I have to do."
"Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls.
The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her eyes on
the girl. "You must take a candle," she instructed, "and go into a 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 shy:
Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be. If all goes right, just above your left
shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry." A silence. Then: "And hat if all does not go
right?" asked Agueda. "Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!" "Why." "Because you may see--the
Devil!"
The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what nonsense!" cried Agueda.
"This is the year 1847. There are no devil anymore!" Nevertheless she had turned pale. "But where
could I go, hugh? Yes, I know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and no one is there now." "No,
Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!" "I do not care! I am not afraid! I will go!" "Oh, you
wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!" "If you do not come to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother." "And if you
do I will tell her who came to visit you at the convent last March. Come, old woman---give me that
candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me that candle, I go."
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 wind as she fled down the stairs,
the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while with the other she pulled up her white gown from her
ankles. She paused breathless in the doorway to the sala and her heart failed her. She tried to
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 the windows had been closed and the furniture
stacked up against the walls. She crossed herself and stepped inside.
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 approaching fearfully in it: a small while
ghost that the darkness bodied forth---but not willingly, not completely, for her eyes and hair were so
dark that the face 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 gown. But when she stood before
the mirror she lifted the candle level with her chin and the dead mask bloomed into her living face.
She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished such a terror took hold of
her that she felt unable to move, unable to open her eyes and thought she would stand there forever,
enchanted. But she heard a step behind her, and a smothered giggle, and instantly opened her eyes.
"And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had forgotten the little girl
on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head nestling at 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---a hard, bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying hair, and so sadly altered, so sadly
different from that other face like a white mask, that fresh young face like a pure mask than she had
brought before this mirror one wild May Day midnight years and years ago.... "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 with tears. "I saw the devil." she said bitterly. The child blanched. "The
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devil, Mama? Oh... Oh..." "Yes, my love. I opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over
my left shoulder, was the face of the devil." "Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very frightened?"
"You can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors except when their mothers
tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling, of admiring yourself in every mirror you pass- or
you may see something frightful some day." "But the devil, Mama---what did he look like?" "Well, let
me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---" "Like the scar of Papa?" "Well, yes. But this of
the devil was a scar of sin, while that of your Papa is a scar of honor. Or so he says." "Go on about
the devil." "Well, he had mustaches." "Like those of Papa?" "Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and
graying and smell horribly of tobacco, while these of the devil were very black and elegant--oh, how
elegant!" "And did he speak to you, Mama?" "Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And
bowing her graying head; she wept.
"Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had said, smiling at her in the
mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking bow. She had whirled around and glared at him
and he had burst into laughter. "But I remember you!" he cried. "You are Agueda, whom I left a mere
infant and came 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 the way. "But I want to
dance the polka with you, fair one," he said. So they stood before the mirror; their panting breath the
only sound in the dark room; the candle shining between them and flinging their shadows to the wall.
And young Badoy Montiya (who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) suddenly
found himself cold sober and very much awake and ready for anything. His eyes sparkled and the
scar on his face gleamed scarlet. "Let me pass!" she cried again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped
her by the wrist. "No," he smiled. "Not until we have danced." "Go to the devil!" "What a temper has
my serrana!" "I am not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have offended
grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends like your mortal enemies." "And why not?"
she demanded, jerking her wrist away and 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
tame to please you. We have no grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians, and
we have no salt, no salt, no salt! Aie, how you weary me, how you bore me, you fastidious men!"
"Come, come---how do you know about us?"
"I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon perhaps?" "Oh!" she gasped,
and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand and she covered her face and sobbed
piteously. The candle had gone out and they stood in darkness, and young Badoy was conscience-
stricken. "Oh, do not cry, little one!" Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But what a brute I am! I
was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I said." He groped and found 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 forgive me, Agueda." But instead she pulled his hand to her
mouth and bit it - bit 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 rustling of her
skirts up the stairs as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers. 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 girl’s room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at the same
time he was thinking that they were all going to Antipolo in the morning 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
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knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold in her candlelight and delicately
furred. He saw the mobile insolence of her neck, and her taut breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of
a Turk, but she was quite enchanting! How could she think she had no fire or grace? And no salt? An
arroba she had of it!
"... No lack of salt in the chrism At the moment of thy baptism!" He sang aloud in the dark room
and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in love with her. He ached intensely to see her again--
-at once! ---to touch her hands and her hair; to hear her harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung
open the casements and the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow. It was May, it was
summer, and he was young---young! ---and deliriously in love. Such a happiness welled up within him
that the tears spurted from his eyes. But he did not forgive her--no! He would still make her pay, he
would still have his revenge, he thought viciously, and kissed his wounded fingers. But what a night it
had been! "I will never forge this night! he thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the window in
the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the wind in his hair and his bleeding knuckles pressed to his
mouth.
But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes; summer lends; the
storms break over the rot-tipe orchards and the heart grows old; while the hours, the days, the
months, and the years pile up and pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded, too confused: dust
gathers in it; cobwebs multiply; the 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 without remembering, without even caring to remember; being merely concerned in feeling
his way across the street with his cane; his eyes having grown quite dim and his legs uncertain--for
he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stopped and shivered old man with white hair and
mustaches coming home from a secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with the
speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his way up the steps to the front door and
inside into the slumbering darkness of the house; wholly 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 face in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes closed and the lips
moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had been there before though it was a full minutes before the
lost memory came flowing, came tiding back, so overflooding the actual moment and so swiftly
washing away the piled hours and days and months and years that he was left suddenly young again;
he was a 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 called out...and the lad standing
before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night go jumped with fright and almost dropped his candle, but
looking around and seeing the old man, laughed out with relief and came running.
"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 here at this hour?" "Nothing,
Grandpa. I was only... I am only ..." "Yes, you are 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 maga wish you were
someone else, Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me I would see my wife."
"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I looked in a mirror
tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me her whose lover I will be.
Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along into the room, sat
down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees. "Now, put your cane down the floor, son, and
let us talk this over. So you want your wife already, hey? You want to see her in advance, hey? But
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so you know that these are wicked games and that wicked boys who play them are in danger of
seeing horrors?"
"Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead."
"Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will be witch you, she will torture
you, she will eat your heart and drink your blood!"
"Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore."
"Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a witch.
"You? Where?
"Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man, and his playful voice had turned
savage.
"When, Grandpa?"
"Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow and though I was
feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down somewhere and die I could not pass that
doorway of course without stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like when dying. But when I
poked my head in what should I see in the mirror but...but..."
"The witch?"
"Exactly!"
"And then she bewitch you, Grandpa!"
"She bewitched me and she tortured me. l She ate my heart and drank my blood." said the old
man bitterly.
"Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she very horrible?
"Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen! Her 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 should have known even then---the dark and fatal
creature she was!"
A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered the boy.
"What makes you slay that, hey?"
"Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once told her that
Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was it of the scare that Grandma died?"
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, her tired body at rest; her broken
body set free at last from the brutal pranks of the earth---from the trap of a May night; from the snare
of summer; from the 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 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 young girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day
midnight, long, long ago.
And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she had bitten his
hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark room and surprised his heart in the instant of
falling in love: such a grief tore up his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed before the boy; pushed
the boy away; stood up and 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 cobbles, while
the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tiled roofs looming like sinister chessboards against
a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a
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murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer
orchards and wafting unbearable the window; the bowed old man sobbing so bitterly at the window;
the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wind in his hair and one hand pressed to his mouth---
while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the
clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through the night:
"Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!"
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Wedding Dance
By Amador Daguio
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 carried him across to the narrow
door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After some
moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.
"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled 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 was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that
she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to the middle of
the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare 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 as his arms. The room brightened.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang 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 room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and
lights
upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.
"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 will marry you. Who knows but that, with
him, you will be luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman either.
You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"
She did not answer him.
"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.
"Yes, I know," she said weakly.
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to
you."
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against you."
He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is
just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too
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late for both of us."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the
blanket more snugly around herself.
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have sacrificed
many chickens in my prayers."
"Yes, I know."
"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 permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because,
like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through
the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo
flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she 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.
Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her 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. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that
evening.
"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing
you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay,
although I am marrying her, can 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 best
wives in the
whole village."
"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost seemed
to smile.
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 away. Never again would he hold her
face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of
her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split
bamboo floor.
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will
build another house for Madulimay."
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old. They will
need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he said.
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"You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."
"I have no use for any field," she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder where you
are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."
"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."
"You know that I cannot."
"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that
life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning of their
new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the 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 mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled,
resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; 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 would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to the
other side of the mountain.
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 made her and the village people laugh.
How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their
hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of 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--he was strong and for that she had lost him.
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 hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look
at my body. Then it was full of 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."
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm 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 darkness.
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything but
you. I'll have no other man."
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"Then you'll always be fruitless."
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child.
You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
She was silent.
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have carved
out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."
"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No--no, I
don't want you to fail."
"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish from
the life of our tribe."
The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.
"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from up
North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty
fields."
"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love you and
have nothing to give."
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O
Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
"I am not in hurry."
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."
"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."
"It is all right with me."
He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"I know," she said.
He went to the door.
"Awiyao!"
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It pained
Page | 21
him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it 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 husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the
laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the 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 away of his life to leave her like this.
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned back and
walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly possession---his
battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the
beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied
them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly
clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.
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 whole village.
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns 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 the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace?
Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy the
way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How
long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced
in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could
give her
husband a child.
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not right,"
she said.
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to
the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; 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 tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as
strong as the
river?
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a 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 at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man
leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and
beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming
call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming
brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in countless
Page | 22
sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to
her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.
Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She 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.
When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held 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 the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at the
edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in
their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed
to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude
for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.
Lumnay though 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 home. She had met him one day as she was
on her way to fill her clay jars with 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 him long to
decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of the
bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded
her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would be
holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them,
silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching
of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods .
Page | 23
WORMS
Godofredo burce bunao
it isn't the kind of illness

that pushes one
down flat; she still reports,
like everyone,
to the office, and the rest
of her time she lives
the way she must, holding on
to what she beleives.
but, somehow,word has seeped out
that miss ver is sick
she may not last the year
"a dirty trick"
said a voice in the room
where meets the board:
miss ver has fed the firm
much of its hoard
of profit anf prestige
all the while age
has crept after her in that
huge air cooled age
that has become her home
and now her sickbed
management will care for her
till she falls dead;
she's listed under assets
but, more than this,
it is laws that hire the doctor---
she knows it is
meantime, a few have dreams
about her chair
worms dream ----she laughs--of corpses
that they can share.
Page | 24
The Centipede
Rony V. Diaz
WHEN I saw my sister, Delia, beating my dog with a stick, I felt hate heave like a caged, angry beast
in my chest. Out in the sun, the hair of my sister glinted like metal and, in her brown dress, she looked
like a sheathed dagger. Biryuk hugged the earth and screamed but I could not bound forward nor cry
out to my sister. She had a weak heart and she must not be surprised. So I held myself, my throat
swelled, and I felt hate rear and plunge in its cage of ribs.
I WAS thirteen when my father first took me hunting. All through the summer of that year, I had
tramped alone and unarmed the fields and forest around our farm. Then one afternoon in late July my
father told me I could use his shotgun.
Beyond the ipil grove, in a grass field we spotted a covey of brown pigeons. In the open, they kept
springing to the air and gliding away every time we were within range. But finally they dropped to the
ground inside a wedge of guava trees. My father pressed my shoulder and I stopped. Then slowly, in
a half-crouch, we advanced. The breeze rose lightly; the grass scuffed against my bare legs. My
father stopped again. He knelt down and held my hand.
“Wait for the birds to rise and then fire,” he whispered.
I pushed the safety lever of the rifle off and sighted along the barrel. The saddle of the stock felt
greasy on my cheek. The gun was heavy and my arm muscles twitched. My mouth was dry; I felt
vaguely sick. I wanted to sit down.
“You forgot to spit,” my father said.
Father had told me that hunters always spat for luck before firing. I spat and I saw the breeze bend
the ragged, glassy threads of spittle toward the birds.
“That’s good,” Father said.
“Can’t we throw a stone,” I whispered fiercely. “It’s taking them a long time.”
“No, you’ve to wait.”
Suddenly, a small dog yelping shrilly came tearing across the brooding plain of grass and small trees.
It raced across the plain in long slewy swoops, on outraged shanks that disappeared and flashed
alternately in the light of the cloud-banked sun. One of the birds whistled and the covey dispersed like
seeds thrown in the wind. I fired and my body shook with the fierce momentary life of the rifle. I saw
three pigeons flutter in a last convulsive effort to stay afloat, then fall to the ground. The shot did not
scare the dog. He came to us, sniffing cautiously. He circled around us until I snapped my fingers and
then he came me.
“Not bad,” my father said grinning. “Three birds with one tube.” I went to the brush to get the birds.
The dog ambled after me. He found the birds for me. The breast of one of the birds was torn. The bird
had fallen on a spot where the earth was worn bare, and its blood was spread like a tiny, red rag. The
dog scraped the blood with his tongue. I picked up the birds and its warm, mangled flesh clung to the
palm of my hand.
“You’re keen,” I said to the dog. “Here. Come here.” I offered him my bloody palm. He came to me
and licked my palm clean.
I gave the birds to my father. “May I keep him, Father?” I said pointing to the dog. He put the birds in
a leather bag which he carried strapped around his waist.
Father looked at me a minute and then said: “Well, I’m not sure. That dog belongs to somebody.”
“May I keep him until his owner comes for him?” I pursued.
“He’d make a good pointer,” Father remarked. “But I would not like my son to be accused of dog-
stealing.”
“Oh, no!” I said quickly. “I shall return him when the owner comes to claim him.”
“All right,” he said, “I hope that dog makes a hunter out of you.”
Page | 25
Biryuk and I became fast friends. Every afternoon after school we went to the field to chase quails or
to the bank of the river which was fenced by tall, blade-sharp reeds to flush snipes. Father was away
most of the time but when he was home he hunted with us.
BIRYUK scampered off and my sister flung the stick at him. Then she turned about and she saw me.
“Eddie, come here,” she commanded. I approached with apprehension. Slowly, almost carefully, she
reached over and twisted my ear.
“I don’t want to see that dog again in the house,” she said coldly. “That dog destroyed my slippers
again. I’ll tell Berto to kill that dog if I see it around again.” She clutched one side of my face with her
hot, moist hand and shoved me, roughly. I tumbled to the ground. But I did not cry or protest. I had
passed that phase. Now, every word and gesture she hurled at me I caught and fed to my growing
and restless hate.
MY sister was the meanest creature I knew. She was eight when I was born, the day my mother died.
Although we continued to live in the same house, she had gone, it seemed, to another country from
where she looked at me with increasing annoyance and contempt.
One of my first solid memories was of standing before a grass hut. Its dirt floor was covered with
white banana stalks, and there was a small box filled with crushed and dismembered flowers in one
corner. A doll was cradled in the box. It was my sister’s playhouse and I remembered she told me to
keep out of it. She was not around so I went in. The fresh banana hides were cold under my feet. The
interior of the hut was rife with the sour smell of damp dead grass. Against the flowers, the doll looked
incredibly heavy. I picked it up. It was slight but it had hard, unflexing limbs. I tried to bend one of the
legs and it snapped. I stared with horror at the hollow tube that was the leg of the doll. Then I saw my
sister coming. I hid the leg under one of the banana pelts. She was running and I knew she was
furious. The walls of the hut suddenly constricted me. I felt sick with a nameless pain. My sister
snatched the doll from me and when she saw the torn leg she gasped. She pushed me hard and I
crashed against the wall of the hut. The flimsy wall collapsed over me. I heard my sister screaming;
she denounced me in a high, wild voice and my body ached with fear. She seized one of the saplings
that held up the hut and hit me again and again until the flesh of my back and thighs sang with pain.
Then suddenly my sister moaned; she stiffened, the sapling fell from her hand and quietly, as though
a sling were lowering her, she sank to the ground. Her eyes were wild as scud and on the edges of
her lips,. drawn tight over her teeth, quivered a wide lace of froth. I ran to the house yelling for Father.
She came back from the hospital in the city, pale and quiet and mean, drained, it seemed, of all
emotions, she moved and acted with the keen, perversity and deceptive dullness of a sheathed knife,
concealing in her body that awful power for inspiring fear and pain and hate, not always with its drawn
blade but only with its fearful shape, defined by the sheath as her meanness was defined by her
body.
Nothing I did ever pleased her. She destroyed willfully anything I liked. At first, I took it as a process of
adaptation, a step of adjustment; I snatched and crushed every seed of anger she planted in me, but
later on I realized that it had become a habit with her. I did not say anything when she told Berto to kill
my monkey because it snickered at her one morning, while she was brushing her teeth. I did not say
anything when she told Father that she did not like my pigeon house because it stank and I had to
give away my pigeons and Berto had to chop the house into kindling wood. I learned how to hold
myself because I knew we had to put up with her whims to keep her calm and quiet. But when she
dumped my butterflies into a waste can and burned them in the backyard, I realized that she was
spiting me.
My butterflies never snickered at her and they did not smell. I kept them in an unused cabinet in the
living room and unless she opened the drawers, they were out of her sight. And she knew too that my
butterfly collection had grown with me. But when I arrived home, one afternoon, from school, I found
my butterflies in a can, burned in their cotton beds like deckle. I wept and Father had to call my sister
Page | 26
for an explanation. She stood straight and calm before Father but my tear-logged eyes saw only her
harsh and arrogant silhouette. She looked at me curiously but she did not say anything and Father
began gently to question her. She listened politely and when Father had stopped talking, she said
without rush, heat or concern: “They were attracting ants.”
I RAN after Biryuk. He had fled to the brambles. I ran after him, bugling his name. I found him under a
low, shriveled bush. I called him and he only whimpered. Then I saw that one of his eyes was
bleeding. I sat on the ground and looked closer. The eye had been pierced. The stick of my sister had
stabbed the eye of my dog. I was stunned. ,For a long time I sat motionless, staring at Biryuk. Then I
felt hate crouch; its paws dug hard into the floor of its cage; it bunched muscles tensed; it held itself
for a minute and then it sprang and the door of the cage crashed open and hate clawed wildly my
brain. I screamed. Biryuk, frightened, yelped and fled, rattling the dead bush that sheltered him. I did
not run after him.
A large hawk wheeled gracefully above a group of birds. It flew in a tightening spiral above the birds.
On my way back to the house, I passed the woodshed. I saw Berto in the shade of a tree, splitting
wood. He was splitting the wood he had stacked last year. A mound of bone-white slats was piled
near his chopping block When he saw me, he stopped and called me.
His head was drenched with sweat. He brushed away the sweat and hair from his eyes and said to
me: “I’ve got something for you.”
He dropped his ax and walked into the woodshed. I followed him. Berto went to a corner of the shed. I
saw a jute sack spread on the ground. Berto stopped and picked up the sack.
“Look,” he said.
I approached. Pinned to the ground by a piece of wood, was a big centipede. Its malignantly red body
twitched back and forth.
“It’s large,” I said.
“I found him under the stack I chopped.” Berto smiled happily; he looked at me with his muddy eyes.
“You know,” he said. “That son of a devil nearly frightened me to death”
I stiffened. “Did it, really?” I said trying to control my rising voice. Berto was still grinning and I felt hot
all over.
“I didn’t expect to find any centipede here,” he said. “It nearly bit me. Who wouldn’t get shocked?” He
bent and picked up a piece of wood.
“This wood was here,” he said and put down the block. “Then I picked it up, like this. And this
centipede was coiled here. Right here. I nearly touched it with my hand. What do you think you would
feel?”
I did not answer. I squatted to look at the reptile. Its antennae quivered searching the tense afternoon
air. I picked up a sliver of wood and prodded the centipede. It uncoiled viciously. Its pinchers slashed
at the tiny spear.
“I could carry it dead,” I said half-aloud.
“Yes,” Berto said. “I did not kill him because I knew you would like it.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“That’s bigger than the one you found last year, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s very much bigger.”
I stuck the sliver into the carapace of the centipede. It went through the flesh under the red armor; a
whitish liquid oozed out. Then I made sure it was dead by brushing its antennae. The centipede did
not move. I wrapped it in a handkerchief.
My sister was enthroned in a large chair in the porch of the house. Her back was turned away from
the door; she sat facing the window She was embroidering a strip of white cloth. I went near, I stood
behind her chair. She was not aware of my presence. I unwrapped the centipede. I threw it on her
lap.
Page | 27
My sister shrieked and the strip of white sheet flew off like an unhanded hawk. She shot up from her
chair, turned around and she saw me but she collapsed again to her chair clutching her breast,
doubled up with pain The centipede had fallen to the floor.
“You did it,” she gasped. “You tried to kill me. You’ve health… life… you tried…” Her voice dragged
off into a pain-stricken moan.
I was engulfed by a sudden feeling of pity and guilt.
“But it’s dead!” I cried kneeling before her. “It’s dead! Look! Look!” I snatched up the centipede and
crushed its head between my fingers. “It’s dead!”
My sister did not move. I held the centipede before her like a hunter displaying the tail of a deer, save
that the centipede felt thorny in my hand.
Page | 28
Chambers of the Sea
Edith L. Tiempo
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till
human voices wake us and we drown. ----T.S Eliot
“Call your Tio Teban.” Amalia nodded at her youngest son. This is very inconsiderate of
Teban, went her hurried flurried mind.
“Tell him we are waiting lunch for him.” Tony flushed with importance. He slid off his chair and
ran toward the bathroom where Tio Teban had haughtily locked himself in. The twins, Deena and
Mario, were seated together on one side of the table; their identically turned-up noses were crinkled
in a superior way. The twins had unabashed eyes; very discomforting to people because of the too
interested look in them. Their faces were quite alike, for all that one was a girl and the other a boy.
Just now they broke out in suppressed grins at the thought of Tio Teban’s grim and somewhat
undignified retreat an hour before.
Amalia and Miguel, and their oldest child Daniel, remained grave. Tony’s childish treble and his
tapping on the bathroom door cut through the continuous background of freely- flowing water from the
faucet beyond the door and the defiant plop-plop of Tio Teban’s hands beating the soap and the dirt
out of his undershirts and drawers and handkerchiefs.
Whenever Tio Teban got indignant about something, he took to washing furiously his soiled
undershirts and drawers and handkerchiefs. It seemed as though the sight of his intimate wear
blowing fresh and white on the clothesline in the yard washed his soul clean of resentment, too. “Tio
Teban! Tio Teban!” Tony’s knocks became frantic and his voice rose. The child sounded shrilly
determined. Pak! Pak! went the hands behind the door. The rhythm of the beating was broken. Then
abruptly the silence was complete and almost weird. The faces at the table grew anxious. “Get away!”
The man tight hiss of Tio Teban swished out suddenly. Tony jumped as from a lash. His face
as he ran back to the table was screwed up in confusion and he blubbered on the edge of tears.
“Never mind,” Amalia soothed her youngest. “ Tio Teban did not mean to frighten you.” Thus it was
minutes later when Miguel and Amalia had relaxed themselves and the children around the table.
Daniel observed, then, “It was Deena and Mario. Deena and Mario laughed when he slid coming up
the back stairs with a port of rice.”
At this calm observation of his oldest brother, Tony looked at his parents expectantly. Deena
and Mario were very studious with their food. Miguel looked up his oldest child, at Daniel’s pimpled
virtuous face. Sometimes Miguel’s firstborn irritated him; his voice, for one thing, was just starting to
settle and it cracked and squeaked like an uncertain saw. Miguel put down his fork slowly. A frown
crowded his brows together. “Later, later,” Amalia mumbled hastily. “Daniel!” she snapped, when the
pimpled face stopped chewing to speak up once more. At his mother’s level look Daniel shrugged
and piously took up his spoon. Often Tio Teban had threatened to himself to leave the house and
return to Bangan.
The children drove him frantic. Even after five years he could not get used to them. Entrenched
in his own room, he thought with satisfaction how the children might now be squirming with their guilt
-----for he had refused to eat his lunch. Directly after hanging out the wash he had gone to his room.
And he was staying there. Amalia was a fool about her children. If they were his children he would
know what to do with them.
Page | 29
Those twins, Deena and Mario, they would feel the edge of his tongue as well as the edge of
his belt. And that self-righteous Daniel! -----He would put him in his place, conceited squirt! He
thought with choking resentment of the way he had deteriorated in this house. He, with an M.A in
Political Science, washing underwear! It was those misbegotten brats. He was both powerless and
indignant at how the twins crept up on him when he was most engrossed ------sometimes at the siesta
hour when he was writing his letters to his numerous far-away friends or to relatives in Bangan,
sometimes at bedtime when he was reading Cervantes or Toynbee or Rizal------and suddenly how
that peculiar feeling would hover in the air and ruffle his composure hard-won through the hours of
reading, and he would look up from the page to see the two bland round faces staring from around
the door.
Four solemn eyes round and black and avid for something Tio Teban hastily refused to define
even to himself. At first the little monsters even got into his room and made paper boats and planes
out of letters in his desk drawers, tearing around the room with them, shrieking back and forth,
pummeling each other when they got excited. He kept a straight cold face throughout although inside
he quaked with horror when their hands dived into the drawers for his letters. He remembered the
time he saw Daniel reading one of the sheets which the twins had made into a paper boat. It was one
of those he had failed to retrieve. The sly smirk on Daniel’s face as he looked him shamelessly in the
eyes and handed him back the letter! Even until now he shook inside to think of it. What right had that
young lout to read what people wrote to him of their secret sleves, their private feeling divulged to him
in complete confidence.
What right had he to act amused like somebody superior! And was he exempt from pain and
worry just because he was not a grown man yet? But Tio Teban was triumphant about one thing. At
least the twins were more careful, since the time he had snatched the letters from their hands and
shaken them till their heads wobbled on their necks. Now their vandalism was confirmed to the
doorway. It was true it was disconcerting to have their eyes on him and his book for minutes at a time.
It even occurred to him they might just be wanting to romp with him-----what a thought!-----but all the
same he was he was glad he had frightened them out of his room.
With all these Tio Teban did not think he would ever go back to Bangan, even if his father
asked him. And he knew the old man would not. The old man could not forgive his only son for
turning out to be so like him in looks but quite unlike him in ways. His father had only a distant
contempt for what to him was his son’s womanish disposition-----His flower garden of eighteen
varieties of roses, his small framed watercolors which he gave away to favorite relatives and friends,
his strolls along the countryside, his perpetual reading until he had to get a pair of glasses and never
quite got rid of that forward bend of his head and the squint of his eyes as though he were always in a
dazed scrutiny of people and objects. Gradually as the old man grew physically less able, he threw
the responsibilities of overseeing the rice land on his son-in-law, the husband of Tio Teban’s younger
sister Mina.
Antero should have been his father’s son, Tio Teban thought in grim amusement. They were
so alike in their relentless preoccupation with fences and seedlings and ditches and patient sweating
tenants. How he had come to live with his Cousin Amalia’s family he could tell to the last detail. It had
been deliberate from the time he first thought of leaving Bangan to the day he moved into this room. It
was a pleasant room overlooking the orange grove bordering the woods lot that had belonged to
Miguel’s father and to his father before him. Why have I come here, Tio Teban had thought to himself
the first time he had taken possession of the room and looked out at the tops of the orange trees and
Page | 30
at the woods beyond. Leaving my own father’s land to live on another man’s, with another mans’
family.
But he had to get away from Bangan. His father’s remote contempt was no longer to be met
with a thick face. There was that odd speculative look, too, that lurked in his father’s eyes whenever
he looked at him. And his older sister Quirina , a widow, was embittered at him for allowing Antero to
usurp his rightful place. “And what happens when Father dies? Antero and his children will get the
land. A family bearing an entirely different name will own the land! Even if my own son, had lived I
would not have allowed him to meddle with the land---no, not as long as there is still one of us with
the name of Ferrer alive! Now there is Antero, with Father’s eyes still wide open, to say nothing of
you----although you’d rather poke at your flowers and your books----“ She made his engrossments
sound indecent. It was oppressive. Unthinkable the way they expected him to canter around on horse
and bury himself in rice and rice and rice. All the same he could have stood it if he was sure it was
only that-----only their selfish desire to gain possession of his time, his life. But gradually he became
aware of another kind of interest, even from his father----a surprised curiosity about him, a frank
amazement, almost prying, on the part of Quirina. What made up his mind was Quirina’s shameless
question which even now he burned in embarrassment to recall. His *
“And that reminds me,” she said before he could say anything, “the Edward leaves tomorrow
for Manila.” She swept out of the room with the fat handbag tucked under her arm, leaving Tio Teban
to decipher the last cryptic remark. Pulling off his pajamas he remembered how her look had darted
out of the window and he decided she meant she must get the oranges plucked that day to be sent to
her sister in Manila by the Edward in the morning. She had been reminding herself about if for days.
He shaved, only a little disturbed by the scrutiny of the open-mouthed Tony. After watering the two
ferns at his window he took his breakfast by himself in the kitchen. The other children were at school
and Miguel had already gone to the bank. For a while he heard the tap of Amalia’s heels downstairs
and then he heard the gate shut as she went out. The house was quiet. This was the time of the
morning he could call all his own. He read, or he walked in the orchard or in the woods. Hemmed in
there by ancient mangoes and guavas and tamarinds he sometimes forgot the sea was just nearby,
and especially on a day of high winds there was something incongruous to him in the roar of the surf
breaking through the walls of trees.
Usually he walked across the woods lot and out on a path heading toward a part of the beach
where a fisherman’s shed leaned sideways in the sun. The shed was strung up inside with nets and
traps to be mended. He often stopped in the shed to watch the divers out at seas setting up a fish
trap or repairing the stakes of a corral that had been damaged by strong winds. “Would you like us to
go the beach, Tony?” “Now?” “Yes.” As the boy’s face lighted up he added, “Only don’t cry and say
you are hungry or you want to swim or something. Remember now.” He had taken the twins to the
beach a number of times to watch the men come in from the sea. The bottom of their boats piled with
gleaming andohao or adlo, the men swelled and swaggered a little as they came ashore and titillated
the haggling market retailers with their catch, Or he and the twins would wander off one afternoon to
a porting of the beach scattered over with salvage thrown up by waves. One time thy came upon a
crowd staring fascinated at a whale flung up on the shore. The twins quickly squirmed through the
crowd but he had to wait nearly fifteen minutes before he could come close to see the huge mammal.
It was quite dead; perhaps, wounded fatally by some fisherman’s harpoon, it had evaded
capture but was soon washed ashore dead. It was the sea equivalent of a carabao. Think of that
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dark, thick skin, he observed to himself, that compact body, more animal than fish for its tremendous
bulk.
When he and Tony reached the shed it was empty. All the men were out on the sea setting up
a new fish corral. The boy wandered out of the shed after a while and started to build mounds on the
sand, and the early morning sun glinted on his hair as he bent over his work. Out on the sea the
naked men dived by turns from a baroto, and their skins, too, glinted in the sun. Their shouts came to
Tio Teban, shouts full of glee and yet so far away. His look went beyond the men to the white
cumulus clouds piled above the horizon, and then worked back over the whole stretch of undulating
sea. Fishes and prawns and squids, he thought, lurked in the sea. Under the gently waving surface
was active life. And the eyes of man could only steal brief glances at that life. And somehow, looking
at the traps and the naked diving men, he felt sad. There was a diver standing upright, straight and
slim in the baroto.
He dripped wet and glistened darkly in the sunlight. Tio Teban noticed the clean lines of his
form, the hips that tapered to the quick legs, the flashing brown arms. Like a supplicant the diver
raised his arms stiffly, flexed his knees and plunged into the sea. The sea rose around him, receiving
him in a calyx of foam. On the sand Tony had built three creditable mounds. Coming home, he and
Tony took the longer way skirting the woods lot. Through his nonchalant enjoyment of the morning a
mood of self-questioning sneaked in and would not be ignored. What am I doing here, playing
nursemaid to a boy not even mine? What am I making out of my days-----where are my garden and
my painting? What had he done here but the creditable mound of a Master of Arts to be swept away
at the wash of a wave! Since he arrived from Bangan he had not painted a single watercolor nor
frown a single bloom. And a question even more disturbing------why am I not bothered by the loss of
these occupations? What is wrong with me, anyway, that I should have betrayed myself into mean
domestic involvements? In all these years there was one thing that comforted him, though: he was
still essentially untrammeled; with Miguel and Amalia he could never be forced to do anything against
his will.
Ultimately, it was still true that he could involve himself or not as he pleased. Always as he
pleased. They were now in the orange grove. Beside him Tony tugged at his hand for attention. “Tio
Teban, Tio Teban! You will take me again to the beach, won’t you?” “I will see. That depends.” That
afternoon as Miguel was leaving the house for the office he was met at the gate by the
telecommunications messenger. The telegram was addressed to Esteban Ferrer and it came from
Bangan. Miguel signed for it. As the messenger rode off on his bicycle, Miguel turned the paper over
in his hand. “Teban!” he called out, suddenly realizing it was almost two o’clock and he must be off.
Tio Teban thrust an inquiring head out of the window. He hurried out when he saw what it was.
In his room Tio Teban sat staring at the opened piece of blue paper. It was from Antero. The
old man was dead. His father. Dead. . . . Quite without reason he remembered the day his father had
stopped under the tamarind tree where Tio Teban had been sitting for nearly an hour in front of his
easel. Why he should think of that incident he could not understand. Perhaps because his father was
dead and that was one of the times the two of them might have spoken, forgetting self and prejudice.
He had been looking at the east corner of the rice field and trying to decide how to get the morning
light not harsh, and he was rapidly putting on the large strokes of the watercolor as his father came
up.
He was hurrying, as the light on the east corner was quite what he wanted just then. He
thought his father would pass him, and was uneasy when he stopped and looked at the picture. The
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old man tipped the front brim of his balangot hat a little over his eyes to shut out the glare as he
leaned above the painting. For two or three minutes he stood like that, not saying anything, and all
the time the painting grew swiftly under the sure, easy strokes of the brush. The old man straightened
backward, still looking at him.
The long eyes under the white brows were deep and long-lashed and just then had a puzzled
squint. “I have only come from the municipio. They asked if I would lead the Red Cross drive.” Tio
Tean laughed. “You should never have bought the arm for that man.” His father said quickly, “No,
Teban. I told them I was too old. But I would ask you to do it.” A long line of yellow-gold streaked
downward on the painting as his hand dropped to his side. “What?” “Will you do it?” “Of course not,”
he said irritably. “What did they say?” “What do you think?” The painting was spoiled now. He cleaned
his brushes and started putting them away.
His father turned and walked off. As Teban folded his chair he saw the old man’s figure on one
end of the field to look at the east corner. . . . Now his father was dead. Antero said that funeral was
in a week’s time, as soon as Tio Teban arrived. He laid the telegram on the table, put on his shoes
and walked out of the house. He strayed through the orchard and out of the woods and was soon on
the beach where he and Tony were this morning. It was close to four o’clock and the shadows of the
coconuts were slanted all around on the sand. The men were not diving now and the sea was
undisturbed by human voices.
But the voices in Tio Teban were far from still. He could already hear Quirina’s shrill tones
demanding atrocious possibilities from him. Both his sisters would expect him to take over, now that
their father was dead. Was that it after all? He left the shed and walked along the shore toward a
large bend. On that side of the beach were a few huts of deep-sea fisherman, and high up on the
sand where some vines had partly covered the ground under the coconut trees, were five beached
boats. Farther ahead he saw one boat that had come in. A group of people on the shore, about seven
or eight fisherman and their wives, were looking at the catch laid out on the sand. A couple of dark
things, whale or porpoise, maybe, or some other sea monsters. They were each about four or five
feet long.
As he stood over the creatures lying side by side he saw with horror that they were truly
monsters of the deep. Strange, terrifying, half-human. Dark coarse hair sprouted from the heads and
fell about their long horse-like faces. Slimy hair grew on the spots where human hair would grow.
Their bodies were a dark grey-brown, and the epithelium had a thick, rough, pore-ridden texture. Only
the fin that formed the base of each figure was fish-like. Were they perhaps man and wife? Or twins?
He pushed off the horrible thought. As the waves washed over them, the long hair swayed and
streamed out briefly and swayed again. He realized with another shock that these were mermaid and
merman in the popular tales. But they must be beautiful and graceful in the deep! He remembered the
straight young diver he had seen that morning. He was sure these creatures were lovely in their
home.
At the mouth of a cave a mother might nurse her young. She would lean there quietly while the
lines of her form ripped and undulated with the waves. Her hair would stream softly around her face
and her fin would swish gently. Why could they not have been left to die in the sea? Who was to
delight in this ugly nakedness?
At least Tio Teban knew one thing for himself as he turned and walked rapidly away.
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DEAD STARS
PAZ MARQUEZ BENITEZ
THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him,
stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to
come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless
melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian
and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month."
Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not?
And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose
scissors busily snipped away.
"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned, pinching off a
worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much in love he was?"
"In love? With whom?"
"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of," she said with good-
natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades,
notes, and things like that--"
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less than four
years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger that was not of the body nor yet
of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under
the dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love--
he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid
imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made
up his love life? Was love a 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 when something beautiful was going on
somewhere and he was trying to get 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.
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Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed--the
desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion
it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future
fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the
hand of Time, or of Fate.
"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
"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 been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain
placidity of temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." Don Julian loved to
philosophize. He was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice 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 escaping youth--"
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose--almost indolence--
disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative language.
"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had 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 straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying
breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo
Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, a
fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then went down
the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little 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 lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open porches he
could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rented and
occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did
not even know her name; but now--
One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it
a point to avoid all appearance of currying favor with the Judge. This particular evening however, he
had allowed himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial," the old
man had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising
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young lawyer's trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own
worldly wisdom.
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 characteristic Filipino way formal introductions
had been omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with the consequence
that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed her thus. Later
Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but his sister-in-
law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the
young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed, and felt that he should
explain.
To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, Each time I was about to correct you, but I remembered
a similar experience I had once before."
"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.
"A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the young man rose
from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is Manalang, Manalang.' You know, I
never forgave him!"
He laughed with her.
"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she pursued, "is to pretend not to
hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without help."
"As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess. The
young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory conversationalist, so he and
Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood
alternately tinkled and banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and wondered
irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a sister of the
Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether. She was small and plump, with
wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty woman with the
complexion of a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not so obviously pretty.
Page | 36
She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a smooth rich brown with
underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding vitality.
On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to the house
on the hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered them beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did
not. After a half hour or so, the 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 hours--
warm, quiet March hours--sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it was evident that she liked his
company; yet what feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter of
course. Only when Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those visits did some uneasiness
creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.
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 to come out of the church as he had been
wont to do. He had been eager to go "neighboring."
He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually untruthful, added,
"Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's."
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked jealousies. She was a
believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their power to regulate feeling as well as conduct.
If a man were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly
love another woman.
That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving Julia Salas
something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet something that would not be denied
beckoned imperiously, and he followed on.
It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so easy and so poignantly
sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the shadows around, enfolding.
"Up here I find--something--"
He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted intensity, laughed,
woman-like, asking, "Amusement?"
"No; youth--its spirit--"
"Are you so old?"
"And heart's desire."
Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart
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BONSAI
EDITH TIEMPO
All that I love

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

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

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

From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.
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WORLD
LITERATURE
Page | 39
INTRODUCTION TO WORLD LITERATURE
LITERATURE - is a body of work, either written, oral, or visual, containing imaginative language that
realistically portrays thought, emotions, and experiences of the human condition.
WORLD LITERATURE
It is considered in global context. It suggests to the sum of total world’s national
literature and also the circulation of work into the wider world beyond country’s origin.
PERIODS OF LITERATURE
PERIODS OF LITERATURE Famous Works Famous Authors
Old English Literature (450 – 1066) - Beowulf - Caedmon
- Also known as ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD - Cynewulf
- Most literatures are ORAL.
- Words have different spellings
- It has different grammar
Medieval Period (1066 AD – 1500) - The - Geoffrey Chaucer
- Stories are about kings and noble people Canterbury
- Focused on Chivalry, Romance & Religion Tales by
- Printing Press was invented by William Caxton Geoffrey
(1476) Chaucer
Renaissance Period (1500 – 1600) - William Shakespeare
- The Golden Age of Literature
- Famous for the drama and Theatre
- Stories are about Religion and Faith
Neoclassical Period (1600 - 1785)
- Also known as “ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD”
- Stories about science and logic
- Detective stories
- Form of Essays are introduced
Romantic Period (1785 – 1830) - Dracula – - Edgar Allan Poe
- Stories have Medieval period influential Bram Stoker - Jane Austen
- Famous for Gothic writings and Horror stories - Pride & - Bronte Sisters
- Themes of the stories are nature and inner most Prejudice, and
emotions Emma by
Jane Austen
Victorian Period (1832 – 1901) - Emily Dickinson
- Free verse poetry is introduced - Charles Dickens
- Novels are introduced - Robert and Elizabeth
- Prose Fiction is introduced Barrett Browning
- Children’s Literature is introduced
- Stories are about Revolution / Power / Social
Modern & Postmodern Period (1901 – Present)
- Experimentation of subject matter, style, and form
of writing
Page | 40
After Twenty Years

by O. Henry
The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and
not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o'clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind
with a taste of rain in them had well nigh depeopled the streets.
Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and
then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and
slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early
hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the
majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed.
When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed his walk. In the doorway of a
darkened hardware store a man leaned, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman
walked up to him the man spoke up quickly.
"It's all right, officer," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment made
twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it? Well, I'll explain if you'd like to make certain
it's all straight. About that long ago there used to be a restaurant where this store stands--'Big Joe'
Brady's restaurant."
"Until five years ago," said the policeman. "It was torn down then."
The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light showed a pale, square-jawed face
with keen eyes, and a little white scar near his right eyebrow. His scarfpin was a large diamond, oddly
set.
"Twenty years ago to-night," said the man, "I dined here at 'Big Joe' Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my
best chum, and the finest chap in the world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two
brothers, together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was to start for the
West to make my fortune. You couldn't have dragged Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the
only place on earth. Well, we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years
from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from what distance we might have
to come. We figured that in twenty years each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our
fortunes made, whatever they were going to be."
"It sounds pretty interesting," said the policeman. "Rather a long time between meets, though, it
seems to me. Haven't you heard from your friend since you left?"
"Well, yes, for a time we corresponded," said the other. "But after a year or two we lost track of each
other. You see, the West is a pretty big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But
I know Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for he always was the truest, stanchest old chap in the
Page | 41
world. He'll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door to-night, and it's worth it if my
old partner turns up."
The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with small diamonds.
"Three minutes to ten," he announced. "It was exactly ten o'clock when we parted here at the
restaurant door."
"Did pretty well out West, didn't you?" asked the policeman.
"You bet! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plodder, though, good fellow as he
was. I've had to compete with some of the sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove
in New York. It takes the West to put a razor-edge on him."
The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two.
"I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp?"
"I should say not!" said the other. "I'll give him half an hour at least. If Jimmy is alive on earth he'll be
here by that time. So long, officer."
"Good-night, sir," said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went.
There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady
blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars
turned high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a
thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth,
smoked his cigar and waited.
About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his
ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man.
"Is that you, Bob?" he asked, doubtfully.
"Is that you, Jimmy Wells?" cried the man in the door.
"Bless my heart!" exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both the other's hands with his own. "It's Bob,
sure as fate. I was certain I'd find you here if you were still in existence. Well, well, well! --twenty
years is a long time. The old gone, Bob; I wish it had lasted, so we could have had another dinner
there. How has the West treated you, old man?"
"Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. You've changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought you were
so tall by two or three inches."
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"Oh, I grew a bit after I was twenty."
"Doing well in New York, Jimmy?"
"Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments. Come on, Bob; we'll go around to a
place I know of, and have a good long talk about old times."
The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the West, his egotism enlarged by
success, was beginning to outline the history of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat,
listened with interest.
At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights. When they came into this glare each of
them turned simultaneously to gaze upon the other's face.
The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm.
"You're not Jimmy Wells," he snapped. "Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change a
man's nose from a Roman to a pug."
"It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one, said the tall man. "You've been under arrest for
ten minutes, 'Silky' Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants
to have a chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That's sensible. Now, before we go on to the station
here's a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it here at the window. It's from Patrolman
Wells."
The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he
began to read, but it trembled a little by the time he had finished. The note was rather short.
"Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was
the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went around and got a
plain clothes man to do the job.
JIMMY."
Page | 43
A Letter to God
Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes
Translated by Donald A. Yates
The house – the only one in the entire valley – sat on the crest of a low hill. From this height one
could se the river and, next to the corral, the field of ripe corn dotted with the kidney bean flowers that
always promised a good harvest.
The only thing the earth needed was a rainfall, or at least a shower. Throughout the morning Lencho
– who knew his fields intimately – had done nothing else but scan the sky toward the northeast.
“Now we’re really going to get some water, woman.”
The woman, who was preparing supper, replied: “Yes, God willing.”
The oldest boys were working in the field, while the smaller ones were playing near the house, until
the woman called to them all: “Come for dinner…”
It was during the meal that, just as Lencho had predicted, big drips of rain began to fall. In the
northeast huge mountains of clouds could be seen approaching. The air was fresh and sweet.
The man went out to look for something in the corral for no other reason than to allow himself the
pleasure of feeling the rain on his body, and when he returned he exclaimed: “those aren’t raindrops
falling from the sky, they’re new coins. The big drops are ten-centavo pieces and the little ones are
fives…”
With a satisfied expression he regarded the field of ripe corn with its kidney bean flowers, draped in a
curtain of rain. But suddenly a strong wind began to fall. These truly did resemble new silver coins.
The boys, exposing themselves to the rain, ran out to collect the frozen pearls.
“It’s really getting bad now,” exclaimed the man, mortified. “I hope it passes quickly.”
It did not pass quickly. For an hour the hail rained on the house, the garden, the hillside, the cornfield,
on the whole valley. The field was white, as if covered with salt. Not a leaf remained on the trees. The
corn was totally destroyed. The flowers were gone from the kidney bean plants. Lencho’s soul was
filled with sadness. When the storm had passed, he stood in the middle of the field and said to his
sons: “A plague of locusts would have left more than this… the hail has left nothing: this year we will
have no corn or beans…”
That night was a sorrowful one: “All our work, for nothing!”
“There’s no one who can help us!”
But in the hears of all who lived in that solitary house in the middle of the valley, there was a single
hope: help from God.
“Don’t be so upset, even though this seems like a total loss. Remember, no one dies of hunger!”
“That’s what they say: no one dies of hunger….”
All through the night, Lencho thought only of his one hoe: the help of God, whose eyes, as he had
been instructed, see everything, even what is deep in one’s conscience.
Lencho was an ox of a man, working like an animal in the fields, but still he knew how to write. The
following Sunday, at day break, after having convinced, himself that there is a protecting spirit he
bgan to write a letter which he himself would carry to town and place in the mail.
It was nothing less than a letter to God.
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“God,” he wrote, “if you don’t help me, my family and I will go hungry this year. I need a hundred
pesos in order to resow the field and to live until the crop comes, because the hailstorm…”
He wrote “To God” on the envelope, put the letter inside and, still troubled, went to town. At the post
office he placed a stamp on the letter and dropped it into the mailbox.
One of the employees, who was a postman and also helped at the post officer, went to his boss,
laughing heartily and showed him the letter to God. Never in his career as a postman had he known
that address. The postmaster – a fat amiable fellow – also broke out laughing, but almost immediately
he turned serious and, tapping the letter on his desk, commented: “what faith! I wish I had the faith of
the man who wrote this letter. To believe the way he believes. To hope with the confidence that he
knows how to hope with. Starting up a correspondence with God!”
So, in order not to disillusion that prodigy of faith, revealed by a letter that could not be delivered, the
postmaster cmae up with an idea: answer the letter. But when he opened it, it was evident that to
answer it he needed something more than good will, ink and paper. But he stuck to his resolution: he
asked for money from his employee, he himself gave part of his salary, and several friends of his
were obliged to give something “for an act of charity”.
It was impossible for him to gather together the hundred pesos requested by Lencho, so he was able
to send the farmer only a little more than half. He put the bills in an envelope addressed to Lencho
and with them a letter containing only a signature:
GOD
The following Sunday Lencho came a bit earlier than usual to ask if there was a letter for him. It was
the postman himself who handed the letter to him, while the postmaster, experiencing the
contentment of a man who ahs performed a good deed, looked on from the doorway of his office.
Lencho showed not the slightest surprise on seeing the bills – such was his confidence – but he
became angry when he counted the money. God could not have made a mistake, nor could he have
denied Lencho what he had requested!
Immediately, Lencho went up to the window to ask for paper and ink. On the public writing table, he
started to write with much wrinkling of his brow, caused by the effort he had to make to express his
ideas. When he finished, he went to the window to buy a stamp, which he licked and then affixed to
the envelope with a blow of his fist.
The moment that the letter fell into the mailbox the postmaster went to open it. It said;
“God: Of the money that I asked for only seventy pesos reached me. Send me the rest, since I need it
very much. But don’t send it to me through the mail, because the post office employees are a bunch
of crooks. Lencho.”
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The Necklace
by Guy de Maupassant
The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if
by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known,
understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little
clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.
She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really
fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and
charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for what is elegant, a supple mind
is their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was
distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the
ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have
been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her
humble housework aroused in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent
antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great
footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of the
stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets containing
priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception rooms made for chatting at five
o'clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose
attention they all desire.
When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth in use three days,
opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a delighted air, "Ah, the
good soup! I don't know anything better than that," she thought of dainty dinners, of shining
silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in
the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the
whispered gallantries to which you listen with a sphinxlike smile while you are eating the pink meat of
a trout or the wings of a quail.
She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She
would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.
She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go
to see any more because she felt so sad when she came home.
But one evening her husband reached home with a triumphant air and holding a large envelope in his
hand.
"There," said he, "there is something for you."
She tore the paper quickly and drew out a printed card which bore these words:
The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Georges Ramponneau request the honor of M. and
Madame Loisel's company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th.
Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table crossly,
muttering:
"What do you wish me to do with that?"
"Why, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine opportunity. I
had great trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many
invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there."
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She looked at him with an irritated glance and said impatiently:
"And what do you wish me to put on my back?"
He had not thought of that. He stammered:
"Why, the gown you go to the theatre in. It looks very well to me."
He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping. Two great tears ran slowly from the corners
of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.
"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he answered.
By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her wet
cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can't go to this ball. Give your card to some
colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am."
He was in despair. He resumed:
"Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on other
occasions--something very simple?"
She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask
without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical
clerk.
Finally she replied hesitating:
"I don't know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred francs."
He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a
little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks
there of a Sunday.
But he said:
"Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty gown."
The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her frock was
ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening:
"What is the matter? Come, you have seemed very queer these last three days."
And she answered:
"It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewelry, not a single ornament, nothing to put on. I shall
look poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go at all."
"You might wear natural flowers," said her husband. "They're very stylish at this time of year. For ten
francs you can get two or three magnificent roses."
She was not convinced.
"No; there's nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich."
"How stupid you are!" her husband cried. "Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to
lend you some jewels. You're intimate enough with her to do that."
She uttered a cry of joy:
"True! I never thought of it."
The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.
Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it back,
opened it and said to Madame Loisel:
"Choose, my dear."
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She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with precious
stones, of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could
not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:
"Haven't you anymore?"
"Why, yes. Look further; I don't know what you like."
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart throbbed
with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat,
outside her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.
Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:
"Will you lend me this, only this?"
"Why, yes, certainly."
She threw her arms round her friend's neck, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure.
The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any other
woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her
name, sought to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wished to waltz with her. She was
remarked by the minister himself.
She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her
beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised of all this homage,
admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to woman's heart.
She left the ball about four o'clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a
little deserted anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball.
He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, the modest wraps of common life, the poverty
of which contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as not
to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.
Loisel held her back, saying: "Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will call a cab."
But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the stairs. When they reached the street they
could not find a carriage and began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen passing at a distance.
They went toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of
those ancient night cabs which, as though they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during the
day, are never seen round Paris until after dark.
It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they mounted the stairs to their flat. All
was ended for her. As to him, he reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o'clock that morning.
She removed her wraps before the glass so as to see herself once more in all her glory. But suddenly
she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!
"What is the matter with you?" demanded her husband, already half undressed.
She turned distractedly toward him.
"I have--I have--I've lost Madame Forestier's necklace," she cried.
He stood up, bewildered.
"What!--how? Impossible!"
They looked among the folds of her skirt, of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere, but did not find it.
"You're sure you had it on when you left the ball?" he asked.
"Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the minister's house."
"But if you had lost it in the street we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab."
"Yes, probably. Did you take his number?"
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"No. And you--didn't you notice it?"
"No."
They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At last Loisel put on his clothes.
"I shall go back on foot," said he, "over the whole route, to see whether I can find it."
He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed,
without any fire, without a thought.
Her husband returned about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.
He went to police headquarters, to the newspaper offices to offer a reward; he went to the cab
companies--everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least spark of hope.
She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.
Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered nothing.
"You must write to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you
are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round."
She wrote at his dictation.
At the end of a week they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
"We must consider how to replace that ornament."
The next day they took the box that had contained it and went to the jeweler whose name was found
within. He consulted his books.
"It was not I, madame, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case."
Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the other, trying to recall it, both
sick with chagrin and grief.
They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the
one they had lost. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.
So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should
buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they should find the lost necklace before the end of
February.
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.
He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis
there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He
compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could
meet it; and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon
him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures that he was to suffer, he went to
get the new necklace, laying upon the jeweler's counter thirty-six thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame Forestier said to her with a chilly manner:
"You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it."
She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. If she had detected the substitution,
what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel
for a thief?
Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with
sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant;
they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.
She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed
the dishes, using her dainty fingers and rosy nails on greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled
linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the
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street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And dressed like
a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm,
bargaining, meeting with impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou.
Every month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.
Her husband worked evenings, making up a tradesman's accounts, and late at night he often copied
manuscript for five sous a page.
This life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the
accumulations of the compound interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households--strong
and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the
floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down
near the window and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so
beautiful and so admired.
What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange
and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us!
But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to refresh herself after the labors
of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still
young, still beautiful, still charming.
Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she
would tell her all about it. Why not?
She went up.
"Good-day, Jeanne."
The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognize her at all
and stammered:
"But--madame!--I do not know---- You must have mistaken."
"No. I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!"
"Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty--and that because of you!"
"Of me! How so?"
"Do you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"What do you mean? You brought it back."
"I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. You can
understand that it was not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad."
Madame Forestier had stopped.
"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?"
"Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very similar."
And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It was worth at most only five hundred francs!"
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The Parting
By Zona Gale
Bill was thirty when his wife died, and little Minna was four. Bill’s carpenter shop was in the yard of
his house, so he thought that he could keep his home for Minna and himself. All day while he worked
at his bench, she played in the yard, and when he was obliged to be absent for a few hours, the
woman next door looked after her. Bill could cook a little, coffee and bacon and fried potatoes and
flapjacks, and he found bananas and sardines and crackers useful. When the woman next door said
it was not the diet for four-year-olds, he asked her to teach him to cook oatmeal and vegetables, and
though he was always burned the dishes in which he cooked these things, he cooked them every
day. He swept, all but corners, and he dusted, dabbing at every object; and he complained that after
he had cleaned the windows he could not see as well as he could before. He washed and patched
Minna’s little garments and mended her doll. He found a kitten for her so that she wouldn’t be lonely.
At night he heard her say her prayer, kneeling in the middle of the floor with her hands folded, and
speaking like lightning. If she forgot the prayer, he either woke her up, or else he made her say it the
first thing in the morning. He himself used to pray: “Lord, make me do right by her if you see me doing
wrong.” On Sundays, he took her to church and listening with his head on one side, trying to
understand, and giving Minna peppermints when she rustled. He stopped work for a day and took her
to the Sunday-school picnic. “Her mother would of,” he explained. When Minna was old enough to go
to kindergarten, Bill used to take her morning or afternoon, and he would call for her. Once he
dressed himself in his best clothes and went to visit the school. “I think her mother would of,” he told
the teacher, diffidently. But he could make little of the colored paper and the designs and the games,
and he did not go again. “There’s something I can’t be any help to her with,” he thought.
Minna was six when Bill fell ill. On a May afternoon, he went to a doctor. When he came home, he sat
in his shop for a long time and did nothing. The sun was beaming through the window in bright
squares. He was not going to get well. It might be that he had six months. … He could hear Minna
singing to her doll.
When she came to kiss him that night, he made an excuse, for he must never kiss her now. He held
her arm’s length, looked in her eyes, said: Minna’s a big girl now. She doesn’t want Papa to kiss her.”
But her lip curled and she turned away sorrowful, so the next day Bill went to another doctor to make
sure. The other doctor made him sure.
He tried to think what to do. He had a sister in Nebraska, but she was a tired woman. His wife had a
brother in the city, but he was a man of many words. And little Minna… there were things known to
her which he himself did not know—matters of fairies and the words of songs. He wished that he
could hear of somebody who would understand her. And he had only six months…
Then the woman next door told him bluntly that he ought not to have the child there, and him
coughing as he was; and he knew that his decision was already upon him.
One whole night he thought. Then he advertised in a city paper:
A man with a few months more to live would like nice people to adopt his little girl, six, blue eyes,
curls. References required.
They came in limousine, as he had hoped that they would come. Their clothes were as he had hoped.
They had with them a little girl who cried: “Is this my little sister?” On which the woman in the smart
frock said sharply:
“Now then, you do as mama tells you and keep out of this or we’ll leave you here and take this darling
little girl with us.”
So Bill looked at this woman and said steadily that he had now other plans for his little girl. He
watched the great blue car roll away. “For the land sake!” said the woman next door when she heard.
“You done her out of fortune. You hadn’t the right—a man in your health.” And then the other cars
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came, and he let them go, this woman told her husband that Bill ought to be reported to the
authorities.
The man and woman who walked into Bill’s shop one morning were still mourning their own little girl.
The woman was not sad—only sorrowful, and the man, who was tender of her, was a carpenter. In
blooming of his hope and his dread, Bill said to them: “You’re the ones.” When they asked: “How long
before we can have her?” Bill said: “One day more.”
That day he spent in the shop. It was summer and Minna was playing in the yard. He could hear the
words of her songs. He cooked their supper and while she ate, he watched. When he had tucked her
in her bed, he stood in the dark hearing her breathing. “I’m a little girl tonight—kiss me,” she had said,
but he shook his head. “A big girl, a big girl,” he told her.
When they came for the next morning, he had her ready, washed and mended, and he had mended
her doll. “Minna’s never been for a visit!” he told her buoyantly. And when she ran toward him, “A big
girl, a big girl,” he reminded her.
He stood and watched the man and woman walking down the street with Minna between them. They
had brought her a little blue parasol in case the parting should be hard. This parasol Minna held
bobbing above her head, and she was so absorbed in looking up at the blue silk that she did not
remember to turn and wave her hand.
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The Parable of the Lost Son
11Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his
father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between
them.
“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant
13
country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.14 After he had spent everything,
there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he
went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed
pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one
gave him anything.
17“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have
food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father
and say to him: Father, I have sinnedagainst heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer
worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up
and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion
for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no
longer worthy to be called your son.’
22“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a
ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have
a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and
is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard
25
music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going
on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.’
28“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and
pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving
for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I
could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your
propertywith prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
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31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is
yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead
and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
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The Great Decision
Fulton Oursler
Stella was dark and slim and young, and her flashing back eyes were full of questions, she was very eager about people
and the world. One Thanksgiving day, at a football game, she met Ralph. He was a student from John Hopkins University,
a blonde, thoughtful, intellectual lad from the Deep South. As the storybooks used to say, they fell madly in love, and in
their courtship days, they were so happy that they almost afraid of such glory.
Often in the moonlight walks through the whispering groves of Thruid Hill Park, they swore to each other that
nothing – nothing whatever should part them.
Ralph, a medical student, came from an old colonial family, his father and his grandfather having been doctors
before him. In spite of his precise, logical way of reasoning everything out, he seemed to Stella the kindest, most romantic
man she had ever known. I say man instead of youth, because while Stella was nineteen, Ralph was nearly thirty. It never
occurred to Stella to wonder why her fiancé was so late in reaching his graduation year. They were too full of plans for
their future to think of such details.
Within two months of their first meeting they decided to be married; the ceremony would be held right after he
passed his state medical board examinations. Then, one day, while they were waiting for the results, Stella had a visitor.
Sitting stiffly in her living room, an elderly woman was waiting for her, tears glittering like melting ice in her eyes. She was
Ralph’s mother, and this is what she had come to say.
“I know you love her son. I am sure that you will be a good wife to him. And I’m certain your marriage will be a
success. However, there is something about Ralph that you have to know, and he is afraid to tell you. I have urged him
tolet you know and he has refused. That is why he has always off our meeting. Against his wishes, therefore, I considered
it my duty to come and tell you myself, even though it may end everything.”
“My son spent three years of his life in mental asylum.”
“Oh, the doctors regard him as completely cure. They all feel his trouble will never return. But if you are going to
be his wife, and that means until death, you should go into marriage knowing the truth.”
What wasthe right thing to do? For days and nights Stella wrestled with her soul. When she thought of the long
years ahead and of the possibility of children, horrors thronged her mind. Even though it broke her own heart as well as
his, her common sense told her she must break the engagement and try to forget him. But another part of her pleaded for
love.
In her heart, where she had treasured so much of eager devotion, there waited up a passionate rebuttal.
“At the altar you would promise to love him in sickness and in health, for better or for worse. You should do that
even if this sad thing about him were not true. Yet afterward he might be crippled in an accident, and then you would
stand by him. Why not stand by him now? Take the chance for him not against. If you love him, pray for better, but take
him for better or worse.”
The other logical part of her relpied;
“If he had told you about himself, you might feel differently. How can you trust him?”
To which her heart replied: “He loved me so much he was afraid to risk tossing our happiness.”
The end of it was that Stella’s mind, her sensible arguments won over her hearts entreaties. The logical
conclusion that the engagement be broken, and so it was. Ralph left Baltimore and went to California. For a long time
after his going, Stella was inconsolable. Indeed, ten years passed before she was able to become interested in another
man. That time did come, however, and in her young thirties, she became a wife of a lawyer in Trenton, New Jersey.
Then, only a few years after her marriage, she awoke one night and found the bed beside her empty. She began
searching through the house, only to find her husband in the cellar, swinging an axe against the stone foundations of the
house and screaming: “I am Samson and I am going to tear down this place.”
Quite mad he was – and incurably so. Today he is ending his life in asylum.
After the commitment Stella took a long trip West. One night a small city in California, she came by chance, face
to face with Ralph again. He was the most distinguish surgeon in that whole region. With him were his wife, his son and
his daughter – all sane all happy.
END
Of course, in making our decisions, we must use our brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts,
which he also gave us – as part of himself.
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THE LAST LEAF
O. HENRY
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into
small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses
itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector
with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming
back, without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows
and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter
mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for
Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth
Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that
the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,
stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this
ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the
narrow and moss-grown "places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman
with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old
duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking
through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow.
"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical
thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side
of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind
that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were
almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one.
There are only five left now."
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days.
Didn't the doctor tell you?"
"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy
leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a
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goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's
see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance
as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take
some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy
port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."
"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There
goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it
gets dark. Then I'll go, too."
"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and
not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need
the light, or I would draw the shade down."
"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy
leaves."
"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as
fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to
turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired
leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not
be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and
had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an
imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough
to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had
never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line
of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the
colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his
coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any
one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the
studio above.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one
corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive
the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would,
indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew
weaker.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such
idiotic imaginings.
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"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off
from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool
hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor
leetle Miss Yohnsy."
"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange
fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a
horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."
"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you.
For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which
one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go
away. Gott! yes."
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and
motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine.
Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling,
mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned
kettle for a rock.
When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open
eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night,
there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green
near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely
from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.
"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It
will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."
"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of
yourself. What would I do?"
But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready
to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one
the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its
stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while
the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
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The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken
broth over the gas stove.
"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show
me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk
with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and
I will sit up and watch you cook."
And hour later she said:
"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll
win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an
artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope
for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."
The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's
all."
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and
very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.
"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in
the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room
downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't
imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and
a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green
and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't
you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's
masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."
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THE PARABLE OF THE COFFEE BEAN, CARROT AND EGG
A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her.
She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and
struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.
Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first, she placed carrots, in
the second she placed eggs, and the last she placed ground coffee beans.
She let them sit and boil without saying a word. In about twenty minute she turned off the burners.
She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a
bowl. Then she ladled the coffee into a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me what you
see?
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.
She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She
then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled
egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma.
The daughter then asked, “What’s the point, mother?”
Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity… boiling water – but
each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being
subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer
shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after being through the boiling water, its inside became
hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they
had changed the water.
“Which are you?” she asked the daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you
respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”
Think of this: Which am I?
Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my
strength?
Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit,
but after death, a break up, a financial hardship, or some other trial, have I become hardened and
stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a
hardened heart?
Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that
brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the
bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.
When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate to another level?
How do you handle adversity?

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GOD SEES THE THRUTH BUT WAITS
LEO TOLSTOY
In the town of Vladimir lived a young merchant named Ivan Dmitrich Aksionov. He had two shops and
a house of his own.
Aksionov was a handsome, fair-haired, curly-headed fellow, full of fun, and very fond of singing.
When quite a young man he had been given to drink, and was riotous when he had had too much;
but after he married he gave up drinking, except now and then.
One summer Aksionov was going to the Nizhny Fair, and as he bade good-bye to his family, his wife
said to him, "Ivan Dmitrich, do not start to-day; I have had a bad dream about you."
Aksionov laughed, and said, "You are afraid that when I get to the fair I shall go on a spree."
His wife replied: "I do not know what I am afraid of; all I know is that I had a bad dream. I dreamt you
returned from the town, and when you took off your cap I saw that your hair was quite grey."
Aksionov laughed. "That's a lucky sign," said he. "See if I don't sell out all my goods, and bring you
some presents from the fair."
So he said good-bye to his family, and drove away.
When he had travelled half-way, he met a merchant whom he knew, and they put up at the same inn
for the night. They had some tea together, and then went to bed in adjoining rooms.
It was not Aksionov's habit to sleep late, and, wishing to travel while it was still cool, he aroused his
driver before dawn, and told him to put in the horses.
Then he made his way across to the landlord of the inn (who lived in a cottage at the back), paid his
bill, and continued his journey.
When he had gone about twenty-five miles, he stopped for the horses to be fed. Aksionov rested
awhile in the passage of the inn, then he stepped out into the porch, and, ordering a samovar to be
heated, got out his guitar and began to play.
Suddenly a troika drove up with tinkling bells and an official alighted, followed by two soldiers. He
came to Aksionov and began to question him, asking him who he was and whence he came.
Aksionov answered him fully, and said, "Won't you have some tea with me?" But the official went on
cross-questioning him and asking him. "Where did you spend last night? Were you alone, or with a
fellow-merchant? Did you see the other merchant this morning? Why did you leave the inn before
dawn?"
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Aksionov wondered why he was asked all these questions, but he described all that had happened,
and then added, "Why do you cross-question me as if I were a thief or a robber? I am travelling on
business of my own, and there is no need to question me."
Then the official, calling the soldiers, said, "I am the police-officer of this district, and I question you
because the merchant with whom you spent last night has been found with his throat cut. We must
search your things."
They entered the house. The soldiers and the police-officer unstrapped Aksionov's luggage and
searched it. Suddenly the officer drew a knife out of a bag, crying, "Whose knife is this?"
Aksionov looked, and seeing a blood-stained knife taken from his bag, he was frightened.
"How is it there is blood on this knife?"
Aksionov tried to answer, but could hardly utter a word, and only stammered: "I--don't know--not
mine." Then the police-officer said: "This morning the merchant was found in bed with his throat cut.
You are the only person who could have done it. The house was locked from inside, and no one else
was there. Here is this blood-stained knife in your bag and your face and manner betray you! Tell me
how you killed him, and how much money you stole?"
Aksionov swore he had not done it; that he had not seen the merchant after they had had tea
together; that he had no money except eight thousand rubles of his own, and that the knife was not
his. But his voice was broken, his face pale, and he trembled with fear as though he went guilty.
The police-officer ordered the soldiers to bind Aksionov and to put him in the cart. As they tied his feet
together and flung him into the cart, Aksionov crossed himself and wept. His money and goods were
taken from him, and he was sent to the nearest town and imprisoned there. Enquiries as to his
character were made in Vladimir. The merchants and other inhabitants of that town said that in former
days he used to drink and waste his time, but that he was a good man. Then the trial came on: he
was charged with murdering a merchant from Ryazan, and robbing him of twenty thousand rubles.
His wife was in despair, and did not know what to believe. Her children were all quite small; one was
a baby at her breast. Taking them all with her, she went to the town where her husband was in jail. At
first she was not allowed to see him; but after much begging, she obtained permission from the
officials, and was taken to him. When she saw her husband in prison-dress and in chains, shut up
with thieves and criminals, she fell down, and did not come to her senses for a long time. Then she
drew her children to her, and sat down near him. She told him of things at home, and asked about
what had happened to him. He told her all, and she asked, "What can we do now?"
"We must petition the Czar not to let an innocent man perish."
His wife told him that she had sent a petition to the Czar, but it had not been accepted.
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Aksionov did not reply, but only looked downcast.
Then his wife said, "It was not for nothing I dreamt your hair had turned grey. You remember? You
should not have started that day." And passing her fingers through his hair, she said: "Vanya dearest,
tell your wife the truth; was it not you who did it?"
"So you, too, suspect me!" said Aksionov, and, hiding his face in his hands, he began to weep. Then
a soldier came to say that the wife and children must go away; and Aksionov said good-bye to his
family for the last time.
When they were gone, Aksionov recalled what had been said, and when he remembered that his wife
also had suspected him, he said to himself, "It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him
alone we must appeal, and from Him alone expect mercy."
And Aksionov wrote no more petitions; gave up all hope, and only prayed to God.
Aksionov was condemned to be flogged and sent to the mines. So he was flogged with a knot, and
when the wounds made by the knot were healed, he was driven to Siberia with other convicts.
For twenty-six years Aksionov lived as a convict in Siberia. His hair turned white as snow, and his
beard grew long, thin, and grey. All his mirth went; he stooped; he walked slowly, spoke little, and
never laughed, but he often prayed.
In prison Aksionov learnt to make boots, and earned a little money, with which he bought The Lives of
the Saints. He read this book when there was light enough in the prison; and on Sundays in the
prison-church he read the lessons and sang in the choir; for his voice was still good.
The prison authorities liked Aksionov for his meekness, and his fellow-prisoners respected him: they
called him "Grandfather," and "The Saint." When they wanted to petition the prison authorities about
anything, they always made Aksionov their spokesman, and when there were quarrels among the
prisoners they came to him to put things right, and to judge the matter.
No news reached Aksionov from his home, and he did not even know if his wife and children were still
alive.
One day a fresh gang of convicts came to the prison. In the evening the old prisoners collected round
the new ones and asked them what towns or villages they came from, and what they were sentenced
for. Among the rest Aksionov sat down near the newcomers, and listened with downcast air to what
was said.
One of the new convicts, a tall, strong man of sixty, with a closely-cropped grey beard, was telling the
others what be had been arrested for.
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"Well, friends," he said, "I only took a horse that was tied to a sledge, and I was arrested and accused
of stealing. I said I had only taken it to get home quicker, and had then let it go; besides, the driver
was a personal friend of mine. So I said, 'It's all right.' 'No,' said they, 'you stole it.' But how or where I
stole it they could not say. I once really did something wrong, and ought by rights to have come here
long ago, but that time I was not found out. Now I have been sent here for nothing at all... Eh, but it's
lies I'm telling you; I've been to Siberia before, but I did not stay long."
"Where are you from?" asked some one.
"From Vladimir. My family are of that town. My name is Makar, and they also call me Semyonich."
Aksionov raised his head and said: "Tell me, Semyonich, do you know anything of the merchants
Aksionov of Vladimir? Are they still alive?"
"Know them? Of course I do. The Aksionovs are rich, though their father is in Siberia: a sinner like
ourselves, it seems! As for you, Gran'dad, how did you come here?"
Aksionov did not like to speak of his misfortune. He only sighed, and said, "For my sins I have been in
prison these twenty-six years."
"What sins?" asked Makar Semyonich.
But Aksionov only said, "Well, well--I must have deserved it!" He would have said no more, but his
companions told the newcomers how Aksionov came to be in Siberia; how some one had killed a
merchant, and had put the knife among Aksionov's things, and Aksionov had been unjustly
condemned.
When Makar Semyonich heard this, he looked at Aksionov, slapped his own knee, and exclaimed,
"Well, this is wonderful! Really wonderful! But how old you've grown, Gran'dad!"
The others asked him why he was so surprised, and where he had seen Aksionov before; but Makar
Semyonich did not reply. He only said: "It's wonderful that we should meet here, lads!"
These words made Aksionov wonder whether this man knew who had killed the merchant; so he
said, "Perhaps, Semyonich, you have heard of that affair, or maybe you've seen me before?"
"How could I help hearing? The world's full of rumours. But it's a long time ago, and I've forgotten
what I heard."
"Perhaps you heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksionov.
Makar Semyonich laughed, and replied: "It must have been him in whose bag the knife was found! If
some one else hid the knife there, 'He's not a thief till he's caught,' as the saying is. How could any
one put a knife into your bag while it was under your head? It would surely have woke you up."
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When Aksionov heard these words, he felt sure this was the man who had killed the merchant. He
rose and went away. All that night Aksionov lay awake. He felt terribly unhappy, and all sorts of
images rose in his mind. There was the image of his wife as she was when he parted from her to go
to the fair. He saw her as if she were present; her face and her eyes rose before him; he heard her
speak and laugh. Then he saw his children, quite little, as they: were at that time: one with a little
cloak on, another at his mother's breast. And then he remembered himself as he used to be-young
and merry. He remembered how he sat playing the guitar in the porch of the inn where he was
arrested, and how free from care he had been. He saw, in his mind, the place where he was flogged,
the executioner, and the people standing around; the chains, the convicts, all the twenty-six years of
his prison life, and his premature old age. The thought of it all made him so wretched that he was
ready to kill himself.
"And it's all that villain's doing!" thought Aksionov. And his anger was so great against Makar
Semyonich that he longed for vengeance, even if he himself should perish for it. He kept repeating
prayers all night, but could get no peace. During the day he did not go near Makar Semyonich, nor
even look at him.
A fortnight passed in this way. Aksionov could not sleep at night, and was so miserable that he did
not know what to do.
One night as he was walking about the prison he noticed some earth that came rolling out from under
one of the shelves on which the prisoners slept. He stopped to see what it was. Suddenly Makar
Semyonich crept out from under the shelf, and looked up at Aksionov with frightened face. Aksionov
tried to pass without looking at him, but Makar seized his hand and told him that he had dug a hole
under the wall, getting rid of the earth by putting it into his high-boots, and emptying it out every day
on the road when the prisoners were driven to their work.
"Just you keep quiet, old man, and you shall get out too. If you blab, they'll flog the life out of me, but I
will kill you first."
Aksionov trembled with anger as he looked at his enemy. He drew his hand away, saying, "I have no
wish to escape, and you have no need to kill me; you killed me long ago! As to telling of you--I may
do so or not, as God shall direct."
Next day, when the convicts were led out to work, the convoy soldiers noticed that one or other of the
prisoners emptied some earth out of his boots. The prison was searched and the tunnel found. The
Governor came and questioned all the prisoners to find out who had dug the hole. They all denied
any knowledge of it. Those who knew would not betray Makar Semyonich, knowing he would be
flogged almost to death. At last the Governor turned to Aksionov whom he knew to be a just man, and
said:
"You are a truthful old man; tell me, before God, who dug the hole?"
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Makar Semyonich stood as if he were quite unconcerned, looking at the Governor and not so much
as glancing at Aksionov. Aksionov's lips and hands trembled, and for a long time he could not utter a
word. He thought, "Why should I screen him who ruined my life? Let him pay for what I have suffered.
But if I tell, they will probably flog the life out of him, and maybe I suspect him wrongly. And, after all,
what good would it be to me?"
"Well, old man," repeated the Governor, "tell me the truth: who has been digging under the wall?"
Aksionov glanced at Makar Semyonich, and said, "I cannot say, your honour. It is not God's will that I
should tell! Do what you like with me; I am your hands."
However much the Governor! tried, Aksionov would say no more, and so the matter had to be left.
That night, when Aksionov was lying on his bed and just beginning to doze, someone came quietly
and sat down on his bed. He peered through the darkness and recognised Makar.
"What more do you want of me?" asked Aksionov. "Why have you come here?"
Makar Semyonich was silent. So Aksionov sat up and said, "What do you want? Go away, or I will call
the guard!"
Makar Semyonich bent close over Aksionov, and whispered, "Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me!"
"What for?" asked Aksionov.
"It was I who killed the merchant and hid the knife among your things. I meant to kill you too, but I
heard a noise outside, so I hid the knife in your bag and escaped out of the window."
Aksionov was silent, and did not know what to say. Makar Semyonich slid off the bed-shelf and knelt
upon the ground. "Ivan Dmitrich," said he, "forgive me! For the love of God, forgive me! I will confess
that it was I who killed the merchant, and you will be released and can go to your home."
"It is easy for you to talk," said Aksionov, "but I have suffered for you these twenty-six years. Where
could I go to now?... My wife is dead, and my children have forgotten me. I have nowhere to go..."
Makar Semyonich did not rise, but beat his head on the floor. "Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me!" he cried.
"When they flogged me with the knot it was not so hard to bear as it is to see you now ... yet you had
pity on me, and did not tell. For Christ's sake forgive me, wretch that I am!" And he began to sob.
When Aksionov heard him sobbing he, too, began to weep. "God will forgive you!" said he. "Maybe I
am a hundred times worse than you." And at these words his heart grew light, and the longing for
home left him. He no longer had any desire to leave the prison, but only hoped for his last hour to
come.
In spite of what Aksionov had said, Makar Semyonich confessed, his guilt. But when the order for his
release came, Aksionov was already dead.
Page | 66
THE MAN WITH A HOE
EDWIN MARKHAM
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans

Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Page | 67
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed—
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched ?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God
After the silence of the centuries?
Page | 68
SEVEN AGES OF MAN
WILLAIM SHAKESPEARE
All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Page | 69
A MARTIAN SENDS A POSTCARD HOME (1979)

CRAIG RAINE
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings

and some are treasured for their markings –
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside –
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves –
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Page | 70
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Page | 71

21ST CENT LIT Lessons

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21St CENTURY

Land of the morning,

Ne’er shall invaders

And his mother: “Dodong…”

Dodong whom life had made ugly.

Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

She did not answer him.

"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.

"Yes, I know," she said weakly.

"I have no use for any field," she said.

"You know that I cannot."

"Then you'll always be fruitless."

"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."

She was silent.

"I am not in hurry."

"The elders will scold you. You had better go."

"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."

"It is all right with me."

"I know," she said.

He went to the door.

it isn't the kind of illness

"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"

"In love? With whom?"

"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.

"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.

"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.

He laughed with her.

"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."

"Up here I find--something--"

"No; youth--its spirit--"

"Are you so old?"

"And heart's desire."

Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart

All that I love

All that I love?

It’s utter sublimation,

Till seashells are broken pieces

After Twenty Years

The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two.

"Is that you, Bob?" he asked, doubtfully.

"Doing well in New York, Jimmy?"

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

And hour later she said:

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.

The daughter then asked, “What’s the point, mother?”

Think of this: Which am I?

How do you handle adversity?

So he said good-bye to his family, and drove away.

"How is it there is blood on this knife?"

"Where are you from?" asked some one.

"What sins?" asked Makar Semyonich.

"Perhaps you heard who killed the merchant?" asked Aksionov.

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

SEVEN AGES OF MAN

All the world’s a stage,