SUNSET

Paz Latorena

THE MAN

She came to him out of the rain like a rabbit of flotsam washed from the distant
seas to the shore by uncertain tides. The wind blew from the east that night and as the
door of the rustly shop opened westward, it slammed shut behind her with a sort of vicious
cheated force when she hurried in. The whole place rocked with the impact and startled
him as he sat on a stool mending a pair of brown shoes in the dim light of a small, red
lamp that hung from the blackened sawali ceiling.
Outside the shop, the rain lashed down the narrow street with the fury of an
aroused maniac, a steady flood from a sky of impenetrable darkness. The water streamed
along the gutters, foaming at the heaps of filth congested there, rejected scraps of food,
bits of yellow paper, pieces of rags, and untidy dirt. In that weather, no lights shone along
Barranco, the heart of the slums of the northern district, early as the hour still was.
He stood up and eyed her uncertainly as she leaned heavily against the threshold,
a slender half-drowned wisp of a woman clutching a faded violet scarf tightly around her
narrow chest.
”Yes?” he said with rising inflection.
She looked around the small shop- it was shabby but it was clean- and then at him
as he stood under the red lamp, tall in his sleeveless undershirt and dark-blue trousers
with white stripes.
”I was caught by the rain,” she exclaimed in a voice hardly above a whisper, “this
was the only place with a light.”
She coughed a dry, unnatural sound that shook her small body from head to foot.
”So I came in,“ she gasped on, “but now I shall go.”
She turned to the door and opened it. The rain darted in and awoke him from his
trance- like immobility and silence.
”Don’t,” he protested, striding to the door and closing it with finality. “Sit down and
wait for the rain to stop.”
She looked up and a tired smile of gratitude lighted up her face for a moment.
There was his stool in the middle of the small shop, directly under the red lamp,
and there was a small papag in a corner by the small, tightly closed window. He led her
to that. The only chair in the shop had been borrowed that afternoon by a neighbor and
had not yet been returned; he apologized with an embarrassed laugh.
 The papag creaked unpleasantly as she sat down without a word. She cast off the
wet scarf from her shoulders with a quick movement, as if its dampness had suddenly
become oppressive and intolerable.
He sat on the stool once more and resumed his work.
Did she live far? was his tentative query.
She nodded.
Was she looking for someone living in the neighborhood?
Again the mute answer.
There were other things he wanted to know but the questions that surged to his
lips were stilled by her reticence.
He glanced at her furtively. There was something vaguely disturbing in her
stillness; her feet barely touched the floor, her hands were quietly folded on her lap, her
eyes were turned down, seemingly intent on the pattern of her red chinelas.
The silence deepened, lengthened into minutes. A musty odor of damp earth and
humid air hung heavily in the room. Dark wetness crept in through the slits in the nipa
wall. The wind continued the havoc without, and in all the world there seemed to be no
other sound but the drip, drip on the roof.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the rain stopped. From somewhere in the
distance a church bell made itself heard and tolled the hour.
He looked up. The woman had fallen asleep. She had dropped on one side, and
one of her arms pillowed her head while the other was carelessly thrown across her
breast.
He put his work down and lighted a stumpy candlestick. He stood up and made his
way to the corner to wake her up.
Drops of water still glistened on the mass of black hair that was knotted loosely at
that back of her head. A stray tendril threw its shadow across her sleeping face. The large
mouth with its full but colorless lips was slightly parted by her irregular breathing.
He gazed at her for a long while- the mass of black hair, the closed eyes with their
long lashes the tips of which touched the soft brown of her cheeks. And a sudden desire
to touch her face overwhelmed him as he stood above her. She was so small, so soft, so
still in the flickering candlelight.
He remembered that she had looked at him from the door with eyes made
enormous by dark circles under them. In the dim light of the lamp he had not discerned
the color of those eyes. Were they black? Or brown?
 They were dark-brown in the clear morning when Barranco woke up to find a
strange woman in the cobbler’s shop. And they were sad as they met his in the cold and
cruel light.
But could anything else have happened, he asked himself hopelessly. He closed
his eyes and saw her again in the frail and haunting loveliness that had been hers in the
flickering candlelight.
A long silence bridged the charm of speech. When she spoke it was almost as if
her words were so many pebbles flung into that chasm for themer purpose of sound, as
full of hopeless regret was her voice.
“I suppose, I should . . .” the words halted there.
It was many days later when he learned how she came to him that night of wind
and rain. She had been working in the house of a vaudeville star. She had been happy,
she assured him, because the señorita was kind. But the younger brother, coming home
only that night, had been nasty in his drunkenness. She had fled from the house, from
evil eyes and evil lips and evil hands that had seared her flesh with their touch. She had
wandered through unfamiliar streets- from the boat she had gone straight to the señorita’s
house, upon her arrival from the province only a few months before- until the sudden rain
had driven her to his door.
From mud to mud, he thought as he listened to her story and watched her trembling
hands. A sense of the enormous wrong he had done her troubled him, also an intangible
responsibility and a vague desire to atone.
He would marry her. He said that aloud, feeling he not only should but wanted to.
”But we have to wait,” he told her one evening across their frugal meal; “marriage
costs money. The license . . . other fees. . .”
“The señorita . . .” she ventured timidly.
“I do not want you to go back to that house,” he reminded her, “and I shall pay for
the license” he added in cold voice.
She was silent.

THE WOMAN

Barranco was horrified– even the slums had a code of morals, however loose– but
not for long. The poor people had too many other things and personal affairs to worry
about– for example, how to feed seven children every day on twenty centavos.
In time the neighbors forgot, for they rarely saw her. It was the cobbler who went
to the market; it was the cobbler who hung the wet clothes in the backyard every morning.
And something in her voice, something gay and undaunted, made them stop their work
for a while to listen to her and to notice how lovely the day was.
For beautiful mornings came after that night of rain– soft sunshine, blue skies,
tender breezes– kind days during which she learned to love her tall cobbler who made
barely enough money to keep them both in rice and fish everyday.
Oftentimes she would sit quietly on the papag and watch him as he sat on his stool
mending a pair of shoes that would bring them a day’s meal or standing by the door talking
to a neighbor across the narrow street while waiting for a customer to come in. And the
night.
So they were not only lovely but happy days as well. Yet she counted them, for if
work became steady, they might save the money to marry on.
Somehow nothing had been said about marriage since the night he had forbidden
her to go back to the house of her former señorita. But how could he talk about it, she
argued with herself impatiently whenever the question furtively intruded into her thoughts,
when there were times when they did not have enough money for the market?
Once or twice she was tempted to go to the señorita without his knowledge, but
she could not think of a good excuse to leave the house for a long time. And she had
learned his anger which was swift and silent and somehow terrible. She had incurred it
once by making a friend of the wife of a neighbor and chatting for hours across the back
fence for the sheer pleasure of hearing another woman’s voice. He had not said anything
but she had cried because he had eaten his meal without her.
She was sweeping the shop one morning– the cobbler had left to deliver a pair of
shoes to its owner– when a small gray car made its way through the narrow street and a
girl in a gaudy sweater came down, staring with bewildered eyes at the small protection.
“Señorita,” she exclaimed joyfully as a shadow darkened the threshold.
“Yes,” the girl in the gaudy sweater hastened inside. “What are you doing in this
shop?”
“I am living here, señorita,” she said, dusting the only chair with a sleeve of her
camisa and offering it to the unexpected visitor.
“I have come to take you back,” crossing her silk-clad legs, “because Pepe is now
living with Mother. He told me what happened the night you left. But the detective I hired
took a long time to locate you.”
The voice of the señorita was very kind, so were the eyes, and before she realized
what she was doing, she had sobbed the whole story.
“But he is going to marry me, señorita,” she smiled through her tears, “as soon as
we have enough money with which to pay the license and other fees.”
 The girl’s face softened, became almost beautiful.
“Well, here is the salary you forgot to ask for in your hurry to leave,” opening a
beaded handbag and drawing out two ten-peso bills and a small card, “and here is my
new address, in case you should change your mind.”
“But señorita. . .”she stared at the bills in her hand.
”The other bill is my gift to the bride,” she said smiling. “And now is there anything
else I can do for you?”
“Yes, there is, señorita,” she clutched the girl’s arm in her excitement. “Wait for
him. And do not tell him you have seen me. Say that you have heard about us from the
detective you hired to locate me, that you are giving him this gift of money so he can
marry me.”
“But why?” the girl was puzzled.
“Because I love him, señorita, and I want him to think he is paying for the license,
not I,” she explained as she snatched a scarf– the same faded violet scarf with which she
had come to her cobbler out of the night and the rain and hurried out.
The small grey car no longer blocked the narrow street when she returned about
an hour later. Inside the shop the cobbler was regarding a dirty pair of black shoes
perched on his low table with evident dislike.
“Where have you been?” he asked casually as she came in.
Looking for isis with which to polish our table,” she answered in a happy voice,
waving a branch of rough leaves before his eyes.
“You should not leave the shop when I am out,” he remarked thoughtfully. “People
might come in,” he added.
“Did any?” she challenged gayly.
She stood before him expectantly, her eyes starry bright.
“Well . . . no,” he spoke slowly as he resumed the scrutiny of the black shoes.
A bit of the radiance left her eyes. Rather puzzled, she picked up the isis that had
fallen to the ground and went inside the kitchen to prepare the midday meal.
Throughout the rest of the morning she resolutely kept calm and refrained from
thinking. She would not let anything, not even curiosity, master her into unnecessary
doubts, until he himself should, consciously or unconsciously, give the clue to his rather
strange behavior.
“I have a surprise for you,” he told her drowsily as he curled up for his usual
afternoon nap.
 The relief was so sudden and so sharp that it almost brought tears to her eyes.
She did not speak because she knew her voice would betray her.
He was keeping the news as a surprise. He would tell her about it tonight and she
hoped there would be rain to remind him of the night she had come to him. And in a rush
of penitence for the ugly and furtive thoughts that had troubled her in spite of herself, she
ran her fingers through his hair. He was fast asleep.
With renewed buoyancy, she moved about the shop the rest of the afternoon,
excited, humming a tune as she worked. She made fun of the dirty black shoes the
cobbler began mending after his brief nap. She laughed over the very long needle and
the very thick thread he chose for his work.
But even the night brought nothing. Close to him in the dark she waited in vain for
the words that would make of their life together a beautiful symphony, not the sordid
interlude it was threatening to be.
Seen through the little window, the sky of night, so smooth, so be starred, looked
wrinkled through her screen of unshed tears. Her thoughts released at last, kept her
company through the long night like so many shadow specters. And something she could
only feel but not name assumed definite proportions with the dawn.
The new day brought his surprise– it was carefully wrapped in fine white paper,
and he had it in his pocket when he arrived home from the market. At first she did not
want to unwrap the small package. Truth hung by a hair and as long as it hung, she could
swear it was a lie. When she finally did, she was conscious of a sharp and indignant
agony.
She did not ask questions about it. And she noticed that he was relieved as he was
surprised by her strange lack of curiosity.
It was a pretty although inexpensive little thing– a square violet scarf of thin silk
with a small tassels all around. But she wore the old faded one when, three days later,
she told him she had found another job.
”But why?” he wanted to know. “I am not earning much but . . .”
“We cannot go on like this,” she spoke low to keep the bitterness out of her voice;
“it is not right.”
”You mean . . .”
”Yes. Let us both work and save money. Then perhaps . . .”
She watched his face keenly. There was not even the flicker of an eyelash to betray
him.
 ”Where will you work this time?” he asked after a long silence. She had only to
show the card the señorita had given her. But her knowledge of the whole torturing
incident prevented her from doing so.
“Somewhere not very far from here,” she told him lightly.
A gift was a gift, she reminded herself fiercely. She had given him that money
through the señorita without his asking for it, freely, to do with it as he liked. And he chose
to let her go.
She left late the next afternoon. He wanted to go with her but she asked him not
to, promising to send him word and her address later.
“The fish is under the basin, near the stove,” she reminded him as he helped her
into the carretela that was waiting for her.
He gave her a bundle, the clothes of his dead mother which he had insisted on her
taking with her. His face was pale in the late afternoon light; his hands were none too
steady.She smiled compassionate divinity looking down on the puny sins of man.
She was still smiling as the horse started. At the end of the street she turned her
head and waved her hand to him as he stood by the gate in the falling darkness.
Name: ___________________________________________ Score: _______________
Course: ________________________________ Professor: ______________________

I. Testing One’s Word Power

Choose the best synonym for the italicized word in each of the phrases from the
word in parentheses. Write the answer on the provided space before the number.

__________________ 1. a sort of vicious cheated force (malicious, angry, violent,

victorious)
__________________ 2. shabby but clean (threadbare, unkempt, big, waxed)
__________________ 3. gay and undaunted (charming, patient, discouraged, fearless)
__________________ 4. gaudy sweater (beautiful, flashy, imported, knitted)
__________________ 5. furtive thoughts (sweet, clandestine, furious, thief like)
__________________ 6. bewildered eyes (smiling, confused, misty, tantalizing)
__________________ 7. sardonic revelation (disdainful, happy, scornful, beautiful)
__________________ 8. cobbler’s shop (one who mends shoes, one who exports shoes,
one who shines shoes, one sell shoes)
__________________ 9. a stumpy candlestick (short, big, antique, old)
__________________ 10. stilled by her reticence (silence, patience, modesty, beauty)

II. Checking One’s Understanding

Answer the following questions.

1. Describe the setting of the story. What function does the setting serve in this
story?

2. Why are the characters anonymous or unnamed?

3. What made the woman decide to live with cobbler?

4. What was the cobbler’s reason for marrying the woman?

5. Did the man love her? Defend your answer.

 6. Did she love him? Defend your answer.

7. Is the man worthy of her love? Justify your answer.

8. In your opinion, was it a wise decision for her to leave him? Explain your
answer.

9. Why was she smiling in the last paragraph of the story? Explain your answer.

10. What is the significant man-woman relationship which the author is trying to
communicate? Have you observed this in real life?

11. What is the significance of the title? Is it appropriate for the story’s plot and
theme?

12. Why is the story divided into two parts? Does this division add meaningful
significance to your understanding and appreciation of the story? Why?

III. Enrichment Activity

Choose suitable piece/dialogue from the story for interpretative reading. Take
note of the following pointers for interpretative reading.

1. You should know the piece to be interpreted so well that you can almost recite it
from memory.

2. As you read the piece by glancing at it every now and then, maintain eye contact
with the audience.

3. Vary your expression, volume, tone, pitch and rate of voice.

4. Keep your gesture and body movements to a minimum.

5. Move closer to the microphone when you make as dramatic whisper; farther
when you make a vocal climax.