A compendium of Filipino Contemporary Writings

REFLECTION
Harvest by Loreto Paras Sulit

HE first saw her in his brother’s eyes. The palay stalks were taking on gold in the late afternoon
sun, were losing their trampled, wind-swept look and stirring into little, almost inaudible
whispers.

The rhythm of Fabian’s strokes was smooth and unbroken. So many palay stalks had to be
harvested before sundown and there was no time to be lost in idle dallying. But when he stopped
to heap up the fallen palay stalks he glanced at his brother as if to fathom the other’s state of
mind in that one, side-long glance.

The swing of Vidal’s figure was as graceful as the downward curve of the crescent-shaped
scythe. How stubborn, this younger brother of his, how hard-headed, fumed Fabian as he felled
stalk after stalk. It is because he knows how very good-looking he is, how he is so much run-
after by all the women in town. The obstinate, young fool! With his queer dreams, his strange
adorations, his wistfulness for a life not of these fields, not of their quiet, colorless women and
the dullness of long nights of unbroken silence and sleep. But he would bend… he must bend…
one of these days.

Vidal stopped in his work to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. He wondered how his
brother could work that fast all day without pausing to rest, without slowing in the rapidity of his
strokes. But that was the reason the master would not let him go; he could harvest a field in a
morning that would require three men to finish in a day. He had always been afraid of this older
brother of his; there was something terrible in the way he determined things, how he always
brought them to pass, how he disregarded the soft and the beautiful in his life and sometimes
how he crushed, trampled people, things he wanted destroyed. There were flowers, insects, birds
of boyhood memories, what Fabian had done to them. There was Tinay… she did not truly like
him, but her widowed mother had some lands… he won and married Tinay.

I wonder what can touch him. Vidal thought of miracles, perhaps a vision, a woman… But no…
he would overpower them…he was so strong with those arms of steel, those huge arms of his
that could throttle a spirited horse into obedience.
“Harvest time is almost ended, Vidal.” (I must be strong also, the other prayed). “Soon the
planting season will be on us and we shall have need of many carabaos. Milia’s father has five.
You have but to ask her and Milia will accept you any time. Why do you delay…”

He stopped in surprise for his brother had sprung up so suddenly and from the look on his face it
was as if a shining glory was smiling shyly, tremulously in that adoring way of his that called
forth all the boyishness of his nature—There was the slow crunch, crunch of footsteps on dried
soil and Fabian sensed the presence of people behind him. Vidal had taken off his wide, buri hat
and was twisting and untwisting it nervously.

“Ah, it is my model! How are you, Vidal?” It was a voice too deep and throaty for a woman but
beneath it one could detect a gentle, smooth nuance, soft as silk. It affected Fabian very queerly,
he could feel his muscles tensing as he waited for her to speak again. But he did not stop in work
nor turn to look at her.

She was talking to Vidal about things he had no idea of. He could not understand why the sound
of her voice filled him with this resentment that was increasing with every passing minute. She
was so near him that when she gestured, perhaps as she spoke, the silken folds of her dress
brushed against him slightly, and her perfume, a very subtle fragrance, was cool and scented in
the air about him.

“From now on he must work for me every morning, possibly all day.”

“Very well. Everything as you please.” So it was the master who was with her.

“He is your brother, you say, Vidal? Oh, your elder brother.” The curiosity in her voice must be
in her eyes. “He has very splendid arms.”

Then Fabian turned to look at her.

He had never seen anyone like her. She was tall, with a regal unconscious assurance in her figure
that she carried so well, and pale as though she had just recovered from a recent illness. She was
not exactly very young nor very beautiful. But there was something disquieting and haunting in
the unsymmetry of her features, in the queer reflection of the dark blue-blackness of her hair, in
her eyes, in that mole just above her nether lips, that tinged her whole face with a strange
loveliness. For, yes, she was indeed beautiful. One discovered it after a second, careful glance.
Then the whole plan of the brow and lip and eye was revealed; one realized that her pallor was
the ivory-white of rice grain just husked, that the sinuous folds of silken lines were but the
undertones of the grace that flowed from her as she walked away from you.

The blood rushed hot to his very eyes and ears as he met her grave, searching look that swept
him from head to foot. She approached him and examined his hot, moist arms critically.

“How splendid! How splendid!” she kept on murmuring.

Then “Thank you,” and taking and leaning on the arm of the master she walked slowly away.

The two brothers returned to their work but to the very end of the day did not exchange a word.
Once Vidal attempted to whistle but gave it up after a few bars. When sundown came they
stopped harvesting and started on their way home. They walked with difficulty on the dried rice
paddies till they reached the end of the rice fields.

The stiffness, the peace of the twilit landscape was maddening to Fabian. It augmented the spell
of that woman that was still over him. It was queer how he kept on thinking about her, on
remembering the scent of her perfume, the brush of her dress against him and the look of her
eyes on his arms. If he had been in bed he would be tossing painfully, feverishly. Why was her
face always before him as though it were always focused somewhere in the distance and he was
forever walking up to it?

A large moth with mottled, highly colored wings fluttered blindly against the bough, its long,
feathery antennae quivering sensitively in the air. Vidal paused to pick it up, but before he could
do so his brother had hit it with the bundle of palay stalks he carried. The moth fell to the ground,
a mass of broken wings, of fluttering wing-dust.

After they had walked a distance, Vidal asked, “Why are you that way?”
“What is my way?”

“That—that way of destroying things that are beautiful like moths… like…”

“If the dust from the wings of a moth should get into your eyes, you would be blind.”

“That is not the reason.”

“Things that are beautiful have a way of hurting. I destroy it when I feel a hurt.”
To avoid the painful silence that would surely ensue Vidal talked on whatever subject entered his
mind. But gradually, slowly the topics converged into one. He found himself talking about the
woman who came to them this afternoon in the fields. She was a relative of the master. A cousin,
I think. They call her Miss Francia. But I know she has a lovely, hidden name… like her beauty.
She is convalescing from a very serious illness she has had and to pass the time she makes men
out of clay, of stone. Sometimes she uses her fingers, sometimes a chisel.

One day Vidal came into the house with a message for the master. She saw him. He was just the
model for a figure she was working on; she had asked him to pose for her.

“Brother, her loveliness is one I cannot understand. When one talks to her forever so long in the
patio, many dreams, many desires come to me. I am lost… I am glad to be lost.”

It was merciful the darkness was up on the fields. Fabian could not see his brother’s face. But it
was cruel that the darkness was heavy and without end except where it reached the little, faint
star. For in the deep darkness, he saw her face clearly and understood his brother.

On the batalan of his home, two tall clay jars were full of water. He emptied one on his feet, he
cooled his warm face and bathed his arms in the other. The light from the kerosene lamp within
came in wisps into the batalan. In the meager light he looked at his arms to discover where their
splendor lay. He rubbed them with a large, smooth pebble till they glowed warm and rich brown.
Gently he felt his own muscles, the strength, the power beneath. His wife was crooning to the
baby inside. He started guiltily and entered the house.
Supper was already set on the table. Tinay would not eat; she could not leave the baby, she said.
She was a small, nervous woman still with the lingering prettiness of her youth. She was rocking
a baby in a swing made of a blanket tied at both ends to ropes hanging from the ceiling. Trining,
his other child, a girl of four, was in a corner playing siklot solemnly all by herself.

Everything seemed a dream, a large spreading dream. This little room with all the people inside,
faces, faces in a dream. That woman in the fields, this afternoon, a colored, past dream by now.
But the unrest, the fever she had left behind… was still on him. He turned almost savagely on his
brother and spoke to break these two grotesque, dream bubbles of his life. “When I was your age,
Vidal, I was already married. It is high time you should be settling down. There is Milia.”

“I have no desire to marry her nor anybody else. Just—just—for five carabaos.” There! He had
spoken out at last. What a relief it was. But he did not like the way his brother pursed his lips
tightly That boded not defeat. Vidal rose, stretching himself luxuriously. On the door of the silid
where he slept he paused to watch his little niece. As she threw a pebble into the air he caught it
and would not give it up. She pinched, bit, shook his pants furiously while he laughed in great
amusement.

“What a very pretty woman Trining is going to be. Look at her skin; white as rice grains just
husked; and her nose, what a high bridge. Ah, she is going to be a proud lady… and what deep,
dark eyes. Let me see, let me see. Why, you have a little mole on your lips. That means you are
very talkative.”

“You will wake up the baby. Vidal! Vidal!” Tinay rocked the child almost despairingly. But the
young man would not have stopped his teasing if Fabian had not called Trining to his side.

“Why does she not braid her hair?” he asked his wife.

“Oh, but she is so pretty with her curls free that way about her head.”

“We shall have to trim her head. I will do it before going out to work tomorrow.”
Vidal bit his lips in anger. Sometimes… well, it was not his child anyway. He retired to his room
and fell in a deep sleep unbroken till after dawn when the sobs of a child awakened him. Peering
between the bamboo slats of the floor he could see dark curls falling from a child’s head to the
ground.

He avoided his brother from that morning. For one thing he did not want repetitions of the
carabao question with Milia to boot. For another there was the glorious world and new life
opened to him by his work in the master’s house. The glamour, the enchantment of hour after
hour spent on the shadow-flecked ylang-ylang scented patio where she molded, shaped, reshaped
many kinds of men, who all had his face from the clay she worked on.

In the evening after supper he stood by the window and told the tale of that day to a very quiet
group. And he brought that look, that was more than a gleam of a voice made weak by strong,
deep emotions.

His brother saw and understood. Fury was a high flame in his heart… If that look, that quiver of
voice had been a moth, a curl on the dark head of his daughter… Now more than ever he was
determined to have Milia in his home as his brother’s wife… that would come to pass. Someday,
that look, that quiver would become a moth in his hands, a frail, helpless moth.

When Vidal, one night, broke out the news Fabian knew he had to act at once. Miss Francia
would leave within two days; she wanted Vidal to go to the city with her, where she would finish
the figures she was working on.

“She will pay me more than I can earn here, and help me get a position there. And shall always
be near her. Oh, I am going! I am going!”

“And live the life of a—a servant?”

“What of that? I shall be near her always.”

“Why do you wish to be near her?”

“Why? Why? Oh, my God! Why?”

That sentence rang and resounded and vibrated in Fabian’s ears during the days that followed.
He had seen her closely only once and only glimpses thereafter. But the song of loveliness had
haunted his life thereafter. If by a magic transfusing he, Fabian, could be Vidal and… and… how
one’s thoughts can make one forget of the world. There she was at work on a figure that
represented a reaper who had paused to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. It was Vidal in
stone.

Again—as it ever would be—the disquieting nature of her loveliness was on him so that all his
body tensed and flexed as he gathered in at a glance all the marvel of her beauty.

She smiled graciously at him while he made known himself; he did not expect she would
remember him.
“Ah, the man with the splendid arms.”

“I am the brother of Vidal.” He had not forgotten to roll up his sleeves.

He did not know how he worded his thoughts, but he succeeded in making her understand that
Vidal could not possibly go with her, that he had to stay behind in the fields.

There was an amusement rippling beneath her tones. “To marry the girl whose father has five
carabaos. You see, Vidal told me about it.”

He flushed again a painful brick-red; even to his eyes he felt the hot blood flow.

“That is the only reason to cover up something that would not be known. My brother has
wronged this girl. There will be a child.”
She said nothing, but the look in her face protested against what she had heard. It said, it was not
so.

But she merely answered, “I understand. He shall not go with me.” She called a servant, gave
him a twenty-peso bill and some instruction. “Vidal, is he at your house?” The brother on the
patio nodded.
Now they were alone again. After this afternoon he would never see her, she would never know.
But what had she to know? A pang without a voice, a dream without a plan… how could they be
understood in words.

“Your brother should never know you have told me the real reason why he should not go with
me. It would hurt him, I know.

“I have to finish this statue before I leave. The arms are still incomplete—would it be too much
to ask you to pose for just a little while?”

While she smoothed the clay, patted it and molded the vein, muscle, arm, stole the firmness, the
strength, of his arms to give to this lifeless statue, it seemed as if life left him, left his arms that
were being copied. She was lost in her work and noticed neither the twilight stealing into the
patio nor the silence brooding over them.

Wrapped in that silver-grey dusk of early night and silence she appeared in her true light to the
man who watched her every movement. She was one he had glimpsed and crushed all his life,
the shining glory in moth and flower and eyes he had never understood because it hurt with its
unearthly radiance.

If he could have the whole of her in the cup of his hands, drink of her strange loveliness,
forgetful of this unrest he called life, if… but his arms had already found their duplicate in the
white clay beyond…
When Fabian returned Vidal was at the batalan brooding over a crumpled twenty-peso bill in his
hands. The haggard tired look in his young eyes was as grey as the skies above.

He was speaking to Tinay jokingly. “Soon all your sampaguitas and camias will be gone, my
dear sister-in-law because I shall be seeing Milia every night… and her father.” He watched
Fabian cleansing his face and arms and later wondered why it took his brother that long to wash
his arms, why he was rubbing them as hard as that… Ω

This 1930 story is a perrenial favorite among anthologists.

DEAD STARS by 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.

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 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. 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 of every man?

“Down there,” he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, “the road is too broad, too
trodden by feet, too barren of mystery.”
“Down there” beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the darkness
the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from somewhere, bringing elusive,
faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.

“Mystery–” she answered lightly, “that is so brief–”

“Not in some,” quickly. “Not in you.”

“You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery.”

“I could study you all my life and still not find it.”

“So long?”

“I should like to.”

Those six weeks were now so swift–seeming in the memory, yet had they been so deep in the
living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness. Because neither the past nor the future
had relevance or meaning, he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such a
willful shutting out of fact as astounded him in his calmer moments.

Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his family to spend Sunday afternoon at
Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on the beach. Carmen also came with her
four energetic children. She and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the
preparation of the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands–how
Carmen’s Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time off to
accompany her on this visit to her father; how Doña Adela’s Dionisio was the most
absentminded of men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.

After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a thriving young
coconut looked like–“plenty of leaves, close set, rich green”–while the children, convoyed by
Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were
far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-
curving beach.
Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were her footsteps,
narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear which he removed forthwith
and tossed high up on dry sand.

When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.

“I hope you are enjoying this,” he said with a questioning inflection.

“Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach.”

There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead, and whipped the
tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture was something of eager freedom
as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet
she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality, an
achievement of the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind and
body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to charm.

“The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn’t it?” Then, “This, I think, is the last time–we can
visit.”

“The last? Why?”

“Oh, you will be too busy perhaps.”

He noted an evasive quality in the answer.

“Do I seem especially industrious to you?”

“If you are, you never look it.”

“Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be.”

“But–”

“Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm.” She smiled to herself.

“I wish that were true,” he said after a meditative pause.

She waited.

“A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid.”

“Like a carabao in a mud pool,” she retorted perversely

“Who? I?”

“Oh, no!”

“You said I am calm and placid.”

“That is what I think.”

“I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves.”

It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert phrase.

“I should like to see your home town.”

“There is nothing to see–little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on them, and
sometimes squashes.”

That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet withal more distant,
as if that background claimed her and excluded him.

“Nothing? There is you.”

“Oh, me? But I am here.”

“I will not go, of course, until you are there.”

“Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn’t even one American there!”

“Well–Americans are rather essential to my entertainment.”

She laughed.

“We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees.”

“Could I find that?”

“If you don’t ask for Miss del Valle,” she smiled teasingly.

“I’ll inquire about–”

“What?”

“The house of the prettiest girl in the town.”

“There is where you will lose your way.” Then she turned serious. “Now, that is not quite
sincere.”

“It is,” he averred slowly, but emphatically.

“I thought you, at least, would not say such things.”

“Pretty–pretty–a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that quite–”

“Are you withdrawing the compliment?”

“Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye–it is more than that when–”

“If it saddens?” she interrupted hastily.

“Exactly.”

“It must be ugly.”

“Always?”

Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting streamer of
crimsoned gold.

“No, of course you are right.”

“Why did you say this is the last time?” he asked quietly as they turned back.

“I am going home.”

The end of an impossible dream!

“When?” after a long silence.

“Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend Holy
Week at home.”
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. “That is why I said this is the last time.”

“Can’t I come to say good-bye?”

“Oh, you don’t need to!”

“No, but I want to.”

“There is no time.”

The golden streamer was withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a pool far away
at the rim of the world. Stillness, a vibrant quiet that affects the senses as does solemn harmony;
a peace that is not contentment but a cessation of tumult when all violence of feeling tones down
to the wistful serenity of regret. She turned and looked into his face, in her dark eyes a ghost of
sunset sadness.

“Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another life.”

“I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old things.”

“Old things?”

“Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage.” He said it lightly, unwilling to mar the
hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers for one whirling second.

Don Julian’s nasal summons came to them on the wind.

Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At his touch, the girl turned her face away, but he
heard her voice say very low, “Good-bye.”

II

ALFREDO Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened and entered the
heart of the town–heart of Chinese stores sheltered under low-hung roofs, of indolent drug stores
and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-repairing establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith’s cubbyhole
where a consumptive bent over a magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with quaint
hand-and-ball knockers on the door; heart of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of ancient
church and convento, now circled by swallows gliding in flight as smooth and soft as the
afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight, the voice of the biggest of the church bells
kept ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their long wax candles, young
women in vivid apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the Lord was still alive), older women
in sober black skirts. Came too the young men in droves, elbowing each other under the talisay
tree near the church door. The gaily decked rice-paper lanterns were again on display while from
the windows of the older houses hung colored glass globes, heirlooms from a day when grasspith
wicks floating in coconut oil were the chief lighting device.

Soon a double row of lights emerged from the church and uncoiled down the length of the street
like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering clusters where the saints’ platforms were.
Above the measured music rose the untutored voices of the choir, steeped in incense and the
acrid fumes of burning wax.

The sight of Esperanza and her mother sedately pacing behind Our Lady of Sorrows suddenly
destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up those lines of light into component individuals.
Esperanza stiffened self-consciously, tried to look unaware, and could not.

The line moved on.

Suddenly, Alfredo’s slow blood began to beat violently, irregularly. A girl was coming down the
line–a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that could cause violent commotion in
his heart, yet had no place in the completed ordering of his life.

Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.

The line kept moving on, wending its circuitous route away from the church and then back again,
where, according to the old proverb, all processions end.

At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and the choir, whose
voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang the close of the procession.

A round orange moon, “huge as a winnowing basket,” rose lazily into a clear sky, whitening the
iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the still densely shadowed streets the
young women with their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home.
Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The crowd had
dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who lived farther out. It was past eight,
and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he
said “Good evening” and fell into step with the girl.

“I had been thinking all this time that you had gone,” he said in a voice that was both excited and
troubled.

“No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go.”

“Oh, is the Judge going?”

“Yes.”

The provincial docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned elsewhere. As
lawyer–and as lover–Alfredo had found that out long before.

“Mr. Salazar,” she broke into his silence, “I wish to congratulate you.”

Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.

“For what?”

“For your approaching wedding.”

Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not offend?

“I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors are slow about
getting the news,” she continued.

He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice. He heard nothing to
enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones of early acquaintance. No
revelation there; simply the old voice–cool, almost detached from personality, flexible and
vibrant, suggesting potentialities of song.

“Are weddings interesting to you?” he finally brought out quietly

“When they are of friends, yes.”

“Would you come if I asked you?”

“When is it going to be?”

“May,” he replied briefly, after a long pause.

“May is the month of happiness they say,” she said, with what seemed to him a shade of irony.

“They say,” slowly, indifferently. “Would you come?”

“Why not?”

“No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?”

“If you will ask me,” she said with disdain.

“Then I ask you.”

“Then I will be there.”

The gravel road lay before them; at the road’s end the lighted windows of the house on the hill.
There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so keen that it was pain, a wish that, that
house were his, that all the bewilderments of the present were not, and that this woman by his
side were his long wedded wife, returning with him to the peace of home.

“Julita,” he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, “did you ever have to choose between something
you wanted to do and something you had to do?”

“No!”

“I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man who was in
such a situation.”

“You are fortunate,” he pursued when she did not answer.

“Is–is this man sure of what he should do?”

“I don’t know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us and rushes
downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish to ask whether one will or will
not, because it no longer depends on him.”
“But then why–why–” her muffled voice came. “Oh, what do I know? That is his problem after
all.”

“Doesn’t it–interest you?”

“Why must it? I–I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the house.”

Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.

Had the final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope trembled in his
mind though set against that hope were three years of engagement, a very near wedding, perfect
understanding between the parents, his own conscience, and Esperanza herself–Esperanza
waiting, Esperanza no longer young, Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the intensely
acquisitive.

He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a kind of aversion
which he tried to control.

She was one of those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly acceptable appearance.
She never surprised one with unexpected homeliness nor with startling reserves of beauty. At
home, in church, on the street, she was always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and clear
of complexion, spare of arms and of breast, with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman
dressed with self-conscious care, even elegance; a woman distinctly not average.

She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something about Calixta, their
note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely half-listened, understanding imperfectly. At a
pause he drawled out to fill in the gap: “Well, what of it?” The remark sounded ruder than he had
intended.

“She is not married to him,” Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched voice. “Besides,
she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her up. We never thought she would
turn out bad.”

What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta?

“You are very positive about her badness,” he commented dryly. Esperanza was always positive.

“But do you approve?”

“Of what?”

“What she did.”

“No,” indifferently.

“Well?”

He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of her mind. “All I say is
that it is not necessarily wicked.”

“Why shouldn’t it be? You talked like an–immoral man. I did not know that your ideas were like
that.”

“My ideas?” he retorted, goaded by a deep, accumulated exasperation. “The only test I wish to
apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring anybody? No? Then I am justified in my
conscience. I am right. Living with a man to whom she is not married–is that it? It may be
wrong, and again it may not.”

“She has injured us. She was ungrateful.” Her voice was tight with resentment.

“The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are–” he stopped, appalled by the passion in his
voice.

“Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why you have been
indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what perhaps some are trying to
keep from me.” The blood surged into his very eyes and his hearing sharpened to points of acute
pain. What would she say next?

“Why don’t you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think of me and of what
people will say.” Her voice trembled.

Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before. What people will
say–what will they not say? What don’t they say when long engagements are broken almost on
the eve of the wedding?
“Yes,” he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, “one tries to be fair–
according to his lights–but it is hard. One would like to be fair to one’s self first. But that is too
easy, one does not dare–”

“What do you mean?” she asked with repressed violence. “Whatever my shortcomings, and no
doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never gone out of my way, of my place, to find a man.”

Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought her; or was that a covert
attack on Julia Salas?

“Esperanza–” a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words. “If you–suppose I–” Yet how could a
mere man word such a plea?

“If you mean you want to take back your word, if you are tired of–why don’t you tell me you are
tired of me?” she burst out in a storm of weeping that left him completely shamed and unnerved.

The last word had been said.

III

AS Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling over the lake, he
wondered if Esperanza would attribute any significance to this trip of his. He was supposed to be
in Sta. Cruz whither the case of the People of the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him,
and there he would have been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the defense. He had
to find that elusive old woman. That the search was leading him to that particular lake town
which was Julia Salas’ home should not disturb him unduly Yet he was disturbed to a degree
utterly out of proportion to the prosaicalness of his errand. That inner tumult was no surprise to
him; in the last eight years he had become used to such occasional storms. He had long realized
that he could not forget Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be content and not to remember too
much. The climber of mountains who has known the back-break, the lonesomeness, and the chill,
finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He looks up sometimes from the
valley where settles the dusk of evening, but he knows he must not heed the radiant beckoning.
Maybe, in time, he would cease even to look up.

He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt no rebellion: only the calm of capitulation to what
he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and of character. His life had simply ordered
itself; no more struggles, no more stirring up of emotions that got a man nowhere. From his
capacity of complete detachment he derived a strange solace. The essential himself, the himself
that had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free and alone. When
claims encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner fastness, and
from that vantage he saw things and people around him as remote and alien, as incidents that did
not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but
immeasurably far away, beyond her reach.

Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the town, a little up-tilted town nestling in
the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry stood beside the ancient church. On the
outskirts the evening smudges glowed red through the sinuous mists of smoke that rose and lost
themselves in the purple shadows of the hills. There was a young moon which grew slowly
luminous as the coral tints in the sky yielded to the darker blues of evening.

The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the dark
water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd assembled to meet the boat–slow,
singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake-shore speech. From where he stood he could
not distinguish faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidente was there to meet him
or not. Just then a voice shouted.

“Is the abogado there? Abogado!”

“What abogado?” someone irately asked.

That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.

It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with Brigida Samuy–
Tandang “Binday”–that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar’s second letter had arrived late, but
the wife had read it and said, “Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house.”

Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat
would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente had received his first letter?
Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an answer. “Yes,” the policeman replied,
“but he could not write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went
there to find her.”
San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do something for
him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to help.

Eight o’clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a somnolent
quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be inviting at that
hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked
his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water.

How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issuing
forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An occasional couple sauntered
by, the women’s chinelas making scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of
children playing games on the street–tubigan perhaps, or “hawk-and-chicken.” The thought of
Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.

How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That
unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incompleteness
as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married–why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a
conscious effort at regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent
awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles–a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as
of voices in a dream–at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an
insistent, unfinished prayer.

A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young moon wove
indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton tree threw its angular shadow
athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cock’s first call rose in tall,
soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.

Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would surely be
sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low and
the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw
her start of vivid surprise.

“Good evening,” he said, raising his hat.

“Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?”

“On some little business,” he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.

“Won’t you come up?”

He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the window,
calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came downstairs with a lighted
candle to open the door. At last–he was shaking her hand.

She had not changed much–a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He
missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about
the home town, about this and that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with
increasing ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take
his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity
creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush.

Gently–was it experimentally?–he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undisturbed and
emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question hardly interested him.

The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-studded sky.

So that was all over.

Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?

So all these years–since when?–he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet
seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.

An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable
refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and where live on in unchanging
freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.
A NIGHT IN THE HILLS by Paz Marquez
Benitez
HOW Gerardo Luna came by his dream no one could have told, not even he. He was a salesman
in a jewelry store on Rosario street and had been little else. His job he had inherited from his
father, one might say; for his father before him had leaned behind the self-same counter, also
solicitous, also short-sighted and thin of hair.

After office hours, if he was tired, he took the street car to his home in Intramuros. If he was
feeling well, he walked; not frequently, however, for he was frail of constitution and not unduly
thrifty. The stairs of his house were narrow and dark and rank with characteristic odors from a
Chinese sari-sari store which occupied part of the ground floor.

He would sit down to a supper which savored strongly of Chinese cooking. He was a fastidious
eater. He liked to have the courses spread out where he could survey them all. He would sample
each and daintily pick out his favorite portions—the wing tips, the liver, the brains from the
chicken course, the tail-end from the fish. He ate appreciatively, but rarely with much appetite.
After supper he spent quite a time picking his teeth meditatively, thinking of this and that. On the
verge of dozing he would perhaps think of the forest.

For his dream concerned the forest. He wanted to go to the forest. He had wanted to go ever
since he could remember. The forest was beautiful. Straight-growing trees. Clear streams. A
mountain brook which he might follow back to its source up among the clouds. Perhaps the
thought that most charmed and enslaved him was of seeing the image of the forest in the water.
He would see the infinitely far blue of the sky in the clear stream, as in his childhood, when
playing in his father’s azotea, he saw in the water-jars an image of the sky and of the pomelo tree
that bent over the railing, also to look at the sky in the jars.
Only once did he speak of this dream of his. One day, Ambo the gatherer of orchids came up
from the provinces to buy some cheap ear-rings for his wife’s store. He had proudly told Gerardo
that the orchid season had been good and had netted him over a thousand pesos. Then he talked
to him of orchids and where they were to be found and also of the trees that he knew as he knew
the palm of his hand. He spoke of sleeping in the forest, of living there for weeks at a time.
Gerardo had listened with his prominent eyes staring and with thrills coursing through his spare
body. At home he told his wife about the conversation, and she was interested in the business
aspect of it.

“It would be nice to go with him once,” he ventured hopefully.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but I doubt if he would let you in on his business.”

“No,” he sounded apologetically. “But just to have the experience, to be out.”

“Out?” doubtfully.

“To be out of doors, in the hills,” he said precipitately.

“Why? That would be just courting discomfort and even sickness. And for nothing.”

He was silent.

He never mentioned the dream again. It was a sensitive, well-mannered dream which
nevertheless grew in its quiet way. It lived under Gerardo Luna’s pigeon chest and filled it with
something, not warm or sweet, but cool and green and murmurous with waters.

He was under forty. One of these days when he least expected it the dream would come true.
How, he did not know. It seemed so unlikely that he would deliberately contrive things so as to
make the dream a fact. That would he very difficult.

Then his wife died.

And now, at last, he was to see the forest. For Ambo had come once more, this time with tales of
newly opened public land up on a forest plateau where he had been gathering orchids. If Gerardo
was interested—he seemed to be—they would go out and locate a good piece. Gerardo was
interested—not exactly in land, but Ambo need not be told.

He had big false teeth that did not quite fit into his gums. When he was excited, as he was now,
he spluttered and stammered and his teeth got in the way of his words.

“I am leaving town tomorrow morning.” he informed Sotera. “Will—”

“Leaving town? Where are you going?”

“S-someone is inviting me to look at some land in Laguna.”

“Land? What are you going to do with land?”

That question had never occurred to him.

“Why,” he stammered, “Ra-raise something, I-I suppose.”

“How can you raise anything! You don’t know anything about it. You haven’t even seen a
carabao!”

“Don’t exaggerate, Ate. You know that is not true.”

“Hitched to a carreton, yes; but hitched to a plow—”

“Never mind!” said Gerardo patiently. “I just want to leave you my keys tomorrow and ask you
to look after the house.”

“Who is this man you are going with?”

“Ambo, who came to the store to buy some cheap jewelry. His wife has a little business in
jewels. He suggested that I—g-go with him.”
He found himself then putting the thing as matter-of-factly and plausibly as he could. He
emphasized the immense possibilities of land and waxed eloquently over the idea that land was
the only form of wealth that could not he carried away.

“Why, whatever happens, your land will be there. Nothing can possibly take it away. You may
lose one crop, two, three. Que importe! The land will still he there.”

Sotera said coldly, “I do not see any sense in it. How can you think of land when a pawnshop is
so much more profitable? Think! People coming to you to urge you to accept their business.
There’s Peregrina. She would make the right partner for you, the right wife. Why don’t you
decide?”
“If I marry her, I’ll keep a pawnshop—no, if I keep a pawnshop I’ll marry her,” he said
hurriedly.

He knew quite without vanity that Peregrina would take him the minute he proposed. But he
could not propose. Not now that he had visions of himself completely made over, ranging the
forest at will, knowing it thoroughly as Ambo knew it, fearless, free. No, not Peregrina for him!
Not even for his own sake, much less Sotera’s.

Sotera was Ate Tere to him through a devious reckoning of relationship that was not without
ingenuity. For Gerardo Luna was a younger brother to the former mistress of Sotera’s also
younger brother, and it was to Sotera’s credit that when her brother died after a death-bed
marriage she took Gerardo under her wings and married him off to a poor relation who took
good care of him and submitted his problem as well as her own to Sotera’s competent
management. Now that Gerardo was a widower she intended to repeat the good office and
provide him with another poor relation guaranteed to look after his physical and economic well-
being and, in addition, guaranteed to stay healthy and not die on him. “Marrying to play nurse to
your wife,” was certainly not Sotera’s idea of a worthwhile marriage.

This time, however, he was not so tractable. He never openly opposed her plans, but he would
not commit himself. Not that he failed to realize the disadvantages of widowerhood. How much
more comfortable it would be to give up resisting, marry good, fat Peregrina, and be taken care
of until he died for she would surely outlive him.
But he could not, he must not. Uncomfortable though he was, he still looked on his widowerhood
as something not fortuitous, but a feat triumphantly achieved. The thought of another marriage
was to shed his wings, was to feel himself in a small, warm room, while overhead someone shut
down on him an opening that gave him the sky.

So to the hills he went with the gatherer of orchids.

AMONG the foothills noon found them. He was weary and wet with sweat.

“Can’t we get water?” he asked dispiritedly.

“We are coming to water,” said Ambo. “We shall be there in ten minutes.”

Up a huge scorched log Ambo clambered, the party following. Along it they edged precariously
to avoid the charred twigs and branches that strewed the ground. Here and there a wisp of smoke
still curled feebly out of the ashes.

“A new kaingin,” said Ambo. “The owner will be around, I suppose. He will not be going home
before the end of the week. Too far.”

A little farther they came upon the owner, a young man with a cheerful face streaked and
smudged from his work. He stood looking at them, his two hands resting on the shaft of his axe.

“Where are you going?” he asked quietly and casually. All these people were casual and quiet.

“Looking at some land,” said Ambo. “Mang Gerardo is from Manila. We are going to sleep up
there.”
He looked at Gerardo Luna curiously and reviewed the two porters and their load. An admiring
look slowly appeared in his likeable eyes.

“There is a spring around here, isn’t there? Or is it dried up?”

“No, there is still water in it. Very little but good.”

They clambered over logs and stumps down a flight of steps cut into the side of the hill. At the
foot sheltered by an overhanging fern-covered rock was what at first seemed only a wetness. The
young man squatted before it and lifted off a mat of leaves from a tiny little pool. Taking his tin
cup he cleared the surface by trailing the bottom of the cup on it. Then he scooped up some of
the water. It was cool and clear, with an indescribable tang of leaf and rock. It seemed the very
essence of the hills.

He sat with the young man on a fallen log and talked with him. The young man said that he was
a high school graduate, that he had taught school for a while and had laid aside some money with
which he had bought this land. Then he had got married, and as soon as he could manage it he
would build a home here near this spring. His voice was peaceful and even. Gerardo suddenly
heard his own voice and was embarrassed. He lowered his tone and tried to capture the other’s
quiet.

That house would be like those he had seen on the way—brown, and in time flecked with gray.
The surroundings would be stripped bare. There would be san franciscos around it and probably
beer bottles stuck in the ground. In the evening the burning leaves in the yard would send a
pleasant odor of smoke through the two rooms, driving away the mosquitoes, then wandering
out-doors again into the forest. At night the red fire in the kitchen would glow through the door
of the batalan and would be visible in the forest,

The forest was there, near enough for his upturned eyes to reach. The way was steep, the path
rising ruthlessly from the clearing in an almost straight course. His eyes were wistful, and he
sighed tremulously. The student followed his gaze upward.

Then he said, “It must take money to live in Manila. If I had the capital I would have gone into
business in Manila.”

“Why?” Gerardo was surprised.

“Why—because the money is there, and if one wishes to fish he must go where the fishes are.
However,” he continued slowly after a silence, “it is not likely that I shall ever do that. Well, this
little place is all right.”
They left the high school graduate standing on the clearing, his weight resting on one foot, his
eyes following them as they toiled up the perpendicular path. At the top of the climb Gerardo sat
on the ground and looked down on the green fields far below, the lake in the distance, the
clearings on the hill sides, and then on the diminishing figure of the high school graduate now
busily hacking away, making the most of the remaining hours of day-light. Perched above them
all, he felt an exhilaration in his painfully drumming chest.

Soon they entered the dim forest.

Here was the trail that once was followed by the galleon traders when, to outwit those that lay in
wait for them, they landed the treasure on the eastern shores of Luzon, and, crossing the
Cordillera on this secret trail, brought it to Laguna. A trail centuries old. Stalwart adventurers,
imperious and fearless, treasure coveted by others as imperious and fearless, carriers bent
beneath burden almost too great to bear—stuff of ancient splendors and ancient griefs.

ON his bed of twigs and small branches, under a roughly contrived roof Gerardo lay down that
evening after automatically crossing himself. He shifted around until at last he settled into a
comfortable hollow. The fire was burning brightly, fed occasionally with dead branches that the
men had collected into a pile. Ambo and the porters were sitting on the black oilcloth that had
served them for a dining table. They sat with their arms hugging their knees and talked together
in peaceable tones punctuated with brief laughter. From where he lay Gerardo Luna could feel
the warmth of the fire on his face.

He was drifting into deeply contented slumber, lulled by the even tones of his companions.
Voices out-doors had a strange quality. They blended with the wind, and, on its waves, flowed
gently around and past one who listened. In the haze of new sleep he thought he was listening
not to human voices, but to something more elemental. A warm sea on level stretches of beach.
Or, if he had ever known such a thing, raindrops on the bamboos.

He awoke uneasily after an hour or two. The men were still talking, but intermittently. The fire
was not so bright nor so warm.

Ambo was saying:

“Gather more firewood. We must keep the fire burning all night. You may sleep. I shall wake up
once in a while to put on more wood.”

Gerardo was reassured. The thought that he would have to sleep in the dark not knowing whether
snakes were crawling towards him was intolerable. He settled once more into light slumber.

The men talked on. They did not sing as boatmen would have done while paddling their bancas
in the dark. Perhaps only sea-folk sang and hill-folk kept silence. For sea-folk bear no burdens to
weigh them down to the earth. Into whatever wilderness of remote sea their wanderer’s hearts
may urge them, they may load their treasures in sturdy craft, pull at the oar or invoke the wind,
and raise their voices in song. The depths of ocean beneath, the height of sky above, and
between, a song floating out on the darkness. A song in the hills would only add to the
lonesomeness a hundredfold.

He woke up again feeling that the little twigs underneath him had suddenly acquired
uncomfortable proportions. Surely when he lay down they were almost unnoticeable. He raised
himself on his elbow and carefully scrutinized his mat for snakes. He shook his blanket out and
once more eased himself into a new and smoother corner. The men were now absolutely quiet,
except for their snoring. The fire was burning low. Ambo evidently had failed to wake up in time
to feed it.

He thought of getting up to attend to the fire, but hesitated. He lay listening to the forest and
sensing the darkness. How vast that darkness! Mile upon mile of it all around. Lost somewhere
in it, a little flicker, a little warmth.

He got up. He found his limbs stiff and his muscles sore. He could not straighten his back
without discomfort. He went out of the tent and carefully arranged two small logs on the fire.
The air was chilly. He looked about him at the sleeping men huddled together and doubled up for
warmth. He looked toward his tent, fitfully lighted by the fire that was now crackling and rising
higher. And at last his gaze lifted to look into the forest. Straight white trunks gleaming dimly in
the darkness. The startling glimmer of a firefly. Outside of the circle of the fire was the
measureless unknown, hostile now, he felt. Or was it he who was hostile? This fire was the only
protection, the only thing that isolated this little strip of space and made it shelter for defenseless
man. Let the fire go out and the unknown would roll in and engulf them all in darkness. He
hastily placed four more logs on the fire and retreated to his tent.

He could not sleep. He felt absolutely alone. Aloneness was like hunger in that it drove away
sleep.

He remembered his wife. He had a fleeting thought of God. Then he remembered his wife again.
Probably not his wife as herself, as a definite personality, but merely as a companion and a
ministerer to his comfort. Not his wife, but a wife. His mind recreated a scene which had no
reason at all for persisting as a memory. There was very little to it. He had waked one midnight
to find his wife sitting up in the bed they shared. She had on her flannel camisa de chino, always
more or less dingy, and she was telling her beads. “What are you doing?” he had asked. “I forgot
to say my prayers,” she had answered.

He was oppressed by nostalgia. And because he did not know what it was he wanted his longing
became keener. Not for his wife, nor for his life in the city. Not for his parents nor even for his
lost childhood. What was there in these that could provoke anything remotely resembling this
regret? What was not within the life span could not be memories. Something more remote even
than race memory. His longing went farther back, to some age in Paradise maybe when the soul
of man was limitless and unshackled: when it embraced the infinite and did not hunger because it
had the inexhaustible at its command.

When he woke again the fire was smoldering. But there was a light in the forest, an eerie light. It
was diffused and cold. He wondered what it was. There were noises now where before had
seemed only the silence itself. There were a continuous trilling, strange night-calls and a
peculiar, soft clinking which recurred at regular intervals. Forest noises. There was the noise,
too, of nearby waters.

One of the men woke up and said something to another who was also evidently awake, Gerardo
called out.

“What noise is that?”

“Which noise?”

“That queer, ringing noise.”

“That? That’s caused by tree worms, I have been told.”

He had a sudden vision of long, strong worms drumming with their heads on the barks of trees.

“The other noise is the worm noise,” corrected Ambo. “That hissing. That noise you are talking
about is made by crickets.”

“What is that light?” he presently asked.

“That is the moon,” said Ambo.

“The moon!” Gerardo exclaimed and fell silent. He would never understand the forest.

Later he asked, “Where is that water that I hear?”

“A little farther and lower, I did not wish to camp there because of the leeches. At daylight we
shall stop there, if you wish.”

When he awoke again it was to find the dawn invading the forest. He knew the feel of the dawn
from the many misas de gallo that he had gone to on December mornings. The approach of day-
light gave him a feeling of relief. And he was saddened.

He sat quietly on a flat stone with his legs in the water and looked around. He was still sore all
over. His neck ached, his back hurt, his joints troubled him. He sat there, his wet shirt tightly
plastered over his meager form and wondered confusedly about many things. The sky showed
overhead through the rift in the trees. The sun looked through that opening on the rushing water.
The sky was high and blue. It was as it always had been in his dreams, beautiful as he had always
thought it would be. But he would never come back. This little corner of the earth hidden in the
hills would never again be before his gaze.
He looked up again at the blue sky and thought of God. God for him was always up in the sky.
Only the God he thought of now was not the God he had always known. This God he was
thinking of was another God. He was wondering if when man died and moved on to another life
he would not find there the things he missed and so wished to have. He had a deep certainty that
that would be so, that after his mortal life was over and we came against that obstruction called
death, our lives, like a stream that runs up against a dam, would still flow on, in courses fuller
and smoother. This must be so. He had a feeling, almost an instinct, that he was not wrong. And
a Being, all wise and compassionate, would enable us to remedy our frustrations and heartaches.

HE went straight to Sotera’s to get the key to his house. In the half light of the stairs he met
Peregrina, who in the solicitous expression of her eyes saw the dust on his face, his hands, and
his hair, saw the unkempt air of the whole of him. He muttered something polite and hurried up
stairs, self-consciousness hampering his feet. Peregrina, quite without embarrassment, turned and
climbed the stairs after him.

On his way out with the keys in his hand he saw her at the head of the stairs anxiously lingering.
He stopped and considered her thoughtfully.

“Pereg, as soon as I get these clothes off I shall come to ask you a question that is very—very
important to me.”

As she smiled eagerly but uncertainly into his face, he heard a jangling in his hand. He felt,
queerly, that something was closing above his hand, and that whoever was closing it, was rattling
the keys. Ω

This piece is the only other short story from the author to have made it in print.
ALL OVER THE WORLD by Vicente Rivera, Jr.

ONE evening in August 1941, I came out of a late movie to a silent, cold night. I shivered a little
as I stood for a moment in the narrow street, looking up at the distant sky, alive with stars. I
stood there, letting the night wind seep through me, and listening. The street was empty, the
houses on the street dim—with the kind of ghostly dimness that seems to embrace sleeping
houses. I had always liked empty streets in the night; I had always stopped for a while in these
streets listening for something I did not quite know what. Perhaps for low, soft cries that empty
streets and sleeping houses seem to share in the night.

I lived in an old, nearly crumbling apartment house just across the street from the moviehouse.
From the street, I could see into the open courtyard, around which rooms for the tenants, mostly
a whole family to a single room, were ranged. My room, like all the other rooms on the
groundfloor, opened on this court. Three other boys, my cousins, shared the room with me. As I
turned into the courtyard from the street, I noticed that the light over our study-table, which stood
on the corridor outside our room, was still burning. Earlier in the evening after supper, I had
taken out my books to study, but I went to a movie instead. I must have forgotten to turn off the
light; apparently, the boys had forgotten, too.

I went around the low screen that partitioned off our “study” and there was a girl reading at the
table. We looked at each other, startled. I had never seen her before. She was about eleven years
old, and she wore a faded blue dress. She had long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. She was
reading my copy of Greek Myths.
The eyes she had turned to me were wide, darkened a little by apprehension. For a long time
neither of us said anything. She was a delicately pretty girl with a fine, smooth. pale olive skin
that shone richly in the yellow light. Her nose was straight, small and finely molded. Her lips,
full and red, were fixed and tense. And there was something else about her. Something lonely?
something lost?

“I know,” I said, “I like stories, too. I read anything good I find lying around. Have you been
reading long?”
“Yes,” she said. not looking at me now. She got up slowly, closing the book. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you want to read anymore? I asked her, trying to smile, trying to make her feel that
everything was all right.

“No.” she said, “thank you.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the book. “It’s late. You ought to be in bed. But, you can take this
along.”

She hesitated, hanging back, then shyly she took the book, brought it to her side. She looked
down at her feet uncertain as to where to turn.

“You live here?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“What room?”

She turned her face and nodded towards the far corner, across the courtyard, to a little room near
the communal kitchen. It was the room occupied by the janitor: a small square room with no
windows except for a transom above the door.

“You live with Mang Lucio?”

“He’s my uncle.”
“How long have you been here? I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

“I’ve always been here. I’ve seen you.”

“Oh. Well, good night—your name?”

“Maria.”

“Good night, Maria.”

She turned quickly, ran across the courtyard, straight to her room, and closed the door without
looking back.

I undressed, turned off the light and lay in bed dreaming of far-away things. I was twenty-one
and had a job for the first time. The salary was not much and I lived in a house that was slowly
coming apart, but life seemed good. And in the evening when the noise of living had died down
and you lay safe in bed, you could dream of better times, look back and ahead, and find that life
could be gentle—even with the hardness. And afterwards, when the night had grown colder, and
suddenly you felt alone in the world, adrift, caught in a current of mystery that came in the hour
between sleep and waking, the vaguely frightening loneliness only brought you closer to
everything, to the walls and the shadows on the walls, to the other sleeping people in the room,
to everything within and beyond this house, this street, this city, everywhere.

I met Maria again one early evening, a week later, as I was coming home from the office. I saw
her walking ahead of me, slowly, as if she could not be too careful, and with a kind of grownup
poise that was somehow touching. But I did not know it was Maria until she stopped and I
overtook her.

She was wearing a white dress that had been old many months ago. She wore a pair of brown
sneakers that had been white once. She had stopped to look at the posters of pictures advertised
as “Coming” to our neighborhood theater.

“Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual.

She smiled at me and looked away quickly. She did not say anything nor did she step away. I felt
her shyness, but there was no self-consciousness, none of the tenseness and restraint of the night
we first met. I stood beside her, looked at the pictures tacked to a tilted board, and tried whistling
a tune.

She turned to go, hesitated, and looked at me full in the eyes. There was again that wide-eyed—
and sad? —stare. I smiled, feeling a remote desire to comfort her, as if it would do any good, as
if it was comfort she needed.

“I’ll return your book now,” she said.

“You’ve finished it?”

“Yes.”

We walked down the shadowed street. Magallanes Street in Intramuros, like all the other streets
there, was not wide enough, hemmed in by old, mostly unpainted houses, clumsy and unlovely,
even in the darkening light of the fading day.

We went into the apartment house and I followed her across the court. I stood outside the door
which she closed carefully after her. She came out almost immediately and put in my hands the
book of Greek myths. She did not look at me as she stood straight and remote.

“My name is Felix,” I said.

She smiled suddenly. It was a little smile, almost an unfinished smile. But, somehow, it felt
special, something given from way deep inside in sincere friendship.

I walked away whistling. At the door of my room, I stopped and looked back. Maria was not in
sight. Her door was firmly closed.

August, 1941, was a warm month. The hangover of summer still permeated the air, specially in
Intramuros. But, like some of the days of late summer, there were afternoons when the weather
was soft and clear, the sky a watery green, with a shell-like quality to it that almost made you see
through and beyond, so that, watching it made you lightheaded.

I walked out of the office one day into just such an afternoon. The day had been full of grinding
work—like all the other days past. I was tired. I walked slowly, towards the far side of the old
city, where traffic was not heavy. On the street there were old trees, as old as the walls that
enclosed the city. Half-way towards school, I changed my mind and headed for the gate that led
out to Bonifacio Drive. I needed stiffer winds, wider skies. I needed all of the afternoon to
myself.

Maria was sitting on the first bench, as you went up the sloping drive that curved away from the
western gate. She saw me before I saw her. When I looked her way, she was already smiling that
half-smile of hers, which even so told you all the truth she knew, without your asking.

“Hello,” I said. “It’s a small world.”

“What?”

“I said it’s nice running into you. Do you always come here?”

“As often as I can. I go to many places.”

“Doesn’t your uncle disapprove?”

“No. He’s never around. Besides, he doesn’t mind anything.”

“Where do you go?”

“Oh, up on the walls. In the gardens up there, near Victoria gate. D’you know?”

“I think so. What do you do up there?”

“Sit down and—”

“And what?”

“Nothing. Just sit down.”

She fell silent. Something seemed to come between us. She was suddenly far-away. It was like
the first night again. I decided to change the subject.
“Look,” I said, carefully, “where are your folks?”

“You mean, my mother and father?”

“Yes. And your brothers and sisters, if any.”

“My mother and father are dead. My elder sister is married. She’s in the province. There isn’t
anybody else.”

“Did you grow up with your uncle?”

“I think so.”

We were silent again. Maria had answered my questions without embarrassment. almost without
emotion, in a cool light voice that had no tone.

“Are you in school, Maria?”

“Yes.”

“What grade?”

“Six.”

“How d’you like it?”

“Oh, I like it.”

“I know you like reading.”

She had no comment. The afternoon had waned. The breeze from the sea had died down. The
last lingering warmth of the sun was now edged with cold. The trees and buildings in the
distance seemed to flounder in a red-gold mist. It was a time of day that never failed to carry an
enchantment for me. Maria and I sat still together, caught in some spell that made the silence
between us right, that made our being together on a bench in the boulevard, man and girl,
stranger and stranger, a thing not to be wondered at, as natural and inevitable as the lengthening
shadows before the setting sun.

Other days came, and soon it was the season of the rain. The city grew dim and gray at the first
onslaught of the monsoon. There were no more walks in the sun. I caught a cold.

Maria and I had become friends now, though we saw each other infrequently. I became
engrossed in my studies. You could not do anything else in a city caught in the rains. September
came and went.

In November, the sun broke through the now ever present clouds, and for three or four days we
had bright clear weather. Then, my mind once again began flitting from my desk, to the walls
outside the office, to the gardens on the walls and the benches under the trees in the boulevards.
Once, while working on a particularly bad copy on the news desk, my mind scattered, the way it
sometimes does and, coming together again, went back to that first meeting with Maria. And the
remembrance came clear, coming into sharper focus—the electric light, the shadows around us,
the stillness. And Maria, with her wide-eyed stare, the lost look in her eyes…

IN December, I had a little fever. On sick leave, I went home to the province. I stayed three days.
I felt restless, as if I had strayed and lost contact with myself. I suppose you got that way from
being sick,

A pouring rain followed our train all the way back to Manila. Outside my window, the landscape
was a series of dissolved hills and fields. What is it in the click of the wheels of a train that
makes you feel gray inside? What is it in being sick, in lying abed that makes you feel you are
awake in a dream, and that you are just an occurrence in the crying grief of streets and houses
and people?
In December, we had our first air-raid practice.

I came home one night through darkened streets, peopled by shadows. There was a ragged look
to everything, as if no one and nothing cared any more for appearances.

I reached my room just as the siren shrilled. I undressed and got into my old clothes. It was dark,
darker than the moment after moon-set. I went out on the corridor and sat in a chair. All around
me were movements and voices. anonymous and hushed, even when they laughed.

I sat still, afraid and cold.

“Is that you. Felix?”

“Yes. Maria.”

She was standing beside my chair, close to the wall. Her voice was small and disembodied in the
darkness. A chill went through me, She said nothing more for a long time.

“I don’t like the darkness,” she said.

“Oh, come now. When you sleep, you turn the lights off, don’t you?”
“It’s not like this darkness,” she said, softly. “It’s all over the world.”

We did not speak again until the lights went on. Then she was gone.

The war happened not long after.

At first, everything was unreal. It was like living on a motion picture screen, with yourself as
actor and audience. But the sounds of bombs exploding were real enough, thudding dully against
the unready ear.

In Intramuros, the people left their homes the first night of the war. Many of them slept in the
niches of the old walls the first time they heard the sirens scream in earnest. That evening, I
returned home to find the apartment house empty. The janitor was there. My cousin who worked
in the army was there. But the rest of the tenants were gone.
I asked Mang Lucio, “Maria?”

“She’s gone with your aunt to the walls.” he told me. “They will sleep there tonight.”

My cousin told me that in the morning we would transfer to Singalong. There was a house
available. The only reason he was staying, he said, was because they were unable to move our
things. Tomorrow that would be taken care of immediately.

“And you, Mang Lucio?”

“I don’t know where I could go.”

We ate canned pork and beans and bread. We slept on the floor, with the lights swathed in black
cloth. The house creaked in the night and sent off hollow echoes. We slept uneasily.

I woke up early. It was disquieting to wake up to stillness in that house which rang with
children’s voices and laughter the whole day everyday. In the kitchen, there were sounds and
smells of cooking.

“Hello,” I said.

It was Maria, frying rice. She turned from the stove and looked at me for a long time. Then,
without a word, she turned back to her cooking.

“Are you and your uncle going away?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did he not tell you?”

“No.”

“We’re moving to Singalong.”

“Yes, I know.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll come back tonight. Maybe this afternoon. We’ll not have to say goodbye till
then.”

She did not say anything. I finished washing and went back to my room. I dressed and went out.

At noon, I went to Singalong to eat. All our things were there already, and the folks were busy
putting the house in order. As soon as I finished lunch, I went back to the office. There were few
vehicles about. Air-raid alerts were frequent. The brightness of the day seemed glaring. The
faces of people were all pale and drawn.

In the evening, I went back down the familiar street. I was stopped many times by air-raid
volunteers. The house was dark. I walked back to the street. I stood for a long time before the
house. Something did not want me to go away just yet. A light burst in my face. It was a
volunteer.

“Do you live here?”

“I used to. Up to yesterday. I’m looking for the janitor.”

“Why, did you leave something behind?”

“Yes, I did. But I think I’ve lost it now.”

“Well, you better get along, son. This place, the whole area. has been ordered evacuated. Nobody
lives here anymore.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Nobody.” Ω

This is yet another great story from an early writer that deserves to be read again.
ZITA by Arturo B. Rotor

TURONG brought him from Pauambang in his small sailboat, for the coastwise steamer did not
stop at any little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms. It was almost midday; they had been
standing in that white glare where the tiniest pebble and fluted conch had become points of light,
piercing-bright–the municipal president, the parish priest, Don Eliodoro who owned almost all
the coconuts, the herb doctor, the village character. Their mild surprise over when he spoke in
their native dialect, they looked at him more closely and his easy manner did not deceive them.
His head was uncovered and he had a way of bringing the back of his hand to his brow or mouth;
they read behind that too, it was not a gesture of protection. “An exile has come to Anayat… and
he is so young, so young.” So young and lonely and sufficient unto himself. There was no
mistaking the stamp of a strong decision on that brow, the brow of those who have to be cold and
haughty, those shoulders stooped slightly, less from the burden that they bore than from a
carefully cultivated air of unconcern; no common school-teacher could dress so carelessly and
not appear shoddy.

They had prepared a room for him in Don Eliodoro’s house so that he would not have to walk far
to school every morning, but he gave nothing more than a glance at the big stone building with
its Spanish azotea, its arched doorways, its flagged courtyard. He chose instead Turong’s home,
a shaky hut near the sea. Was the sea rough and dangerous at times? He did not mind it. Was the
place far from the church and the schoolhouse? The walk would do him good. Would he not feel
lonely with nobody but an illiterate fisherman for a companion? He was used to living alone.
And they let him do as he wanted, for the old men knew that it was not so much the nearness of
the sea that he desired as its silence so that he might tell it secrets he could not tell anyone else.

They thought of nobody but him; they talked about him in the barber shop, in the cockpit, in the
sari-sari store, the way he walked, the way he looked at you, his unruly hair. They dressed him in
purple and linen, in myth and mystery, put him astride a black stallion, at the wheel of a blue
automobile. Mr. Reteche? Mr. Reteche! The name suggested the fantasy and the glitter of a place
and people they never would see; he was the scion of a powerful family, a poet and artist, a
prince.

That night, Don Eliodoro had the story from his daughter of his first day in the classroom; she
perched wide-eyed, low-voiced, short of breath on the arm of his chair.

“He strode into the room, very tall and serious and polite, stood in front of us and looked at us all
over and yet did not seem to see us.
” ‘Good morning, teacher,’ we said timidly.

“He bowed as if we were his equals. He asked for the fist of our names and as he read off each
one we looked at him long. When he came to my name, Father, the most surprising thing
happened. He started pronouncing it and then he stopped as if he had forgotten something and
just stared and stared at the paper in his hand. I heard my name repeated three times through his
half-closed lips, ‘Zita. Zita. Zita.’

” ‘Yes sir, I am Zita.’

“He looked at me uncomprehendingly, inarticulate, and it seemed to me, Father, it actually

seemed that he was begging me to tell him that that was not my name, that I was deceiving him.
He looked so miserable and sick I felt like sinking down or running away.

” ‘Zita is not your name; it is just a pet name, no?’

” ‘My father has always called me that, sir.’

” ‘It can’t be; maybe it is Pacita or Luisa or–‘

“His voice was scarcely above a whisper, Father, and all the while he looked at me begging,
begging. I shook my head determinedly. My answer must have angered him. He must have
thought I was very hard-headed, for he said, ‘A thousand miles, Mother of Mercy… it is not
possible.’ He kept on looking at me; he was hurt perhaps that he should have such a stubborn
pupil. But I am not really so, Father?”

“Yes, you are, my dear. But you must try to please him, he is a gentleman; he comes from the
city. I was thinking… Private lessons, perhaps, if he won’t ask too much.” Don Eliodoro had his
dreams and she was his only daughter.

Turong had his own story to tell in the barber shop that night, a story as vividly etched as the
lone coconut palm in front of the shop that shot up straight into the darkness of the night, as
vaguely disturbing as the secrets that the sea whispered into the night.

“He did not sleep a wink, I am sure of it. When I came from the market the stars were already
out and I saw that he had not touched the food I had prepared. I asked him to eat and he said he
was not hungry. He sat by the window that faces the sea and just looked out hour after hour. I
woke up three times during the night and saw that he had not so much as changed his position. I
thought once that he was asleep and came near, but he motioned me away. When I awoke at
dawn to prepare the nets, he was still there.”

“Maybe he wants to go home already.” They looked up with concern.

“He is sick. You remember Father Fernando? He had a way of looking like that, into space,
seeing nobody, just before he died.”

Every month there was a letter that came for him, sometimes two or three; large, blue envelopes
with a gold design in the upper left hand comer, and addressed in broad, angular, sweeping
handwriting. One time Turong brought one of them to him in the classroom. The students were
busy writing a composition on a subject that he had given them, “The Things That I Love Most.”
Carelessly he had opened the letter, carelessly read it, and carelessly tossed it aside. Zita was all
aflutter when the students handed in their work for he had promised that he would read aloud the
best. He went over the pile two times, and once again, absently, a deep frown on his brow, as if
he were displeased with their work. Then he stopped and picked up one. Her heart sank when she
saw that it was not hers, she hardly heard him reading:

“I did not know any better. Moths are not supposed to know; they only come to the light. And
the light looked so inviting, there was no resisting it. Moths are not supposed to know, one does
not even know one is a moth until one’s wings are burned.”

It was incomprehensible, no beginning, no end. It did not have unity, coherence, emphasis. Why
did he choose that one? What did he see in it? And she had worked so hard, she had wanted to
please, she had written about the flowers that she loved most. Who could have written what he
had read aloud? She did not know that any of her classmates could write so, use such words,
sentences, use a blue paper to write her lessons on.

But then there was little in Mr. Reteche that the young people there could understand. Even his
words were so difficult, just like those dark and dismaying things that they came across in their
readers, which took them hour after hour in the dictionary. She had learned like a good student to
pick out the words she did not recognize, writing them down as she heard them, but it was a
thankless task. She had a whole notebook filled now, two columns to each page:

esurient greedy. Amaranth a flower that never fades. peacock a large bird with lovely gold and
green feathers. Mirash

The last word was not in the dictionary.

And what did such things as original sin, selfishness, insatiable, actress of a thousand faces
mean, and who were Sirse, Lorelay, other names she could not find anywhere? She meant to ask
him someday, someday when his eyes were kinder.

He never went to church, but then, that always went with learning and education, did it not? One
night Bue saw him coming out of the dim doorway. He watched again and the following night he
saw him again. They would not believe it, they must see it with their own eyes and so they came.
He did not go in every night, but he could be seen at the most unusual hours, sometimes at dusk,
sometimes at dawn, once when it was storming and the lightning etched ragged paths from
heaven to earth. Sometimes he stayed for a few minutes, sometimes he came twice or thrice in
one evening. They reported it to Father Cesareo but it seemed that he already knew. “Let a
peaceful man alone in his prayers.” The answer had surprised them.

The sky hangs over Anayat, in the middle of the Anayat Sea, like an inverted wineglass, a glass
whose wine had been spilled, a purple wine of which Anayat was the last precious drop. For that
is Anayat in the crepuscule, purple and mellow, sparkling and warm and effulgent when there is
a moon, cool and heady and sensuous when there is no moon.

One may drink of it and forget what lies beyond a thousand miles, beyond a thousand years; one
may sip it at the top of a jagged cliff, nearer peace, nearer God, where one can see the ocean
dashing against the rocks in eternal frustration, more moving, more terrible than man’s; or touch
it to his lips in the lush shadows of the dama de noche, its blossoms iridescent like a thousand
fireflies, its bouquet the fragrance of flowers that know no fading.

Zita sat by her open window, half asleep, half dreaming. Francisco B. Reteche; what a name!
What could his nickname be. Paking, Frank, Pa… The night lay silent and expectant, a fairy
princess waiting for the whispered words of a lover. She was not a bit sleepy; already she had
counted three stars that had fallen to earth, one almost directly into that bush of dama de noche at
their garden gate, where it had lighted the lamps of a thousand fireflies. He was not so forbidding
now, he spoke less frequently to himself, more frequently to her; his eyes were still unseeing, but
now they rested on her. She loved to remember those moments she had caught him looking when
he thought she did not know. The knowledge came keenly, bitingly, like the sea breeze at dawn,
like the prick of the rose’s thorn, or–yes, like the purple liquid that her father gave the visitors
during pintakasi which made them red and noisy. She had stolen a few drops one day, because
she wanted to know, to taste, and that little sip had made her head whirl.

Suddenly she stiffened; a shadow had emerged from the shrubs and had been lost in the other
shadows. Her pulses raced, she strained forward. Was she dreaming? Who was it? A lost soul, an
unvoiced thought, the shadow of a shadow, the prince from his tryst with the fairy princess?
What were the words that he whispered to her?
They who have been young once say that only youth can make youth forget itself; that life is a
river bed; the water passes over it, sometimes it encounters obstacles and cannot go on,
sometimes it flows unencumbered with a song in every bubble and ripple, but always it goes
forward. When its way is obstructed it burrows deeply or swerves aside and leaves its
impression, and whether the impress will be shallow and transient, or deep and searing, only God
determines. The people remembered the day when he went up Don Eliodoro’s house, the light of
a great decision in his eyes, and finally accepted the father’s request that he teach his daughter
“to be a lady.”

“We are going to the city soon, after the next harvest perhaps; I want her not to feel like a
‘provinciana’ when we get there.”

They remembered the time when his walks by the seashore became less solitary, for now of
afternoons, he would draw the whole crowd of village boys from their game of leapfrog or
patintero and bring them with him. And they would go home hours after sunset with the
wonderful things that Mr. Reteche had told them, why the sea is green, the sky blue, what one
who is strong and fearless might find at that exact place where the sky meets the sea. They would
be flushed and happy and bright-eyed, for he could stand on his head longer than any of them,
catch more crabs, send a pebble skimming over the breast of Anayat Bay farthest.

Turong still remembered those ominous, terrifying nights when he had got up cold and trembling
to listen to the aching groan of the bamboo floor, as somebody in the other room restlessly paced
to and fro. And his pupils still remember those mornings he received their flowers, the camia
which had fainted away at her own fragrance, the kampupot, with the night dew still trembling in
its heart; receive them with a smile and forget the lessons of the day and tell them all about those
princesses and fairies who dwelt in flowers; why the dama de noche must have the darkness of
the night to bring out its fragrance; how the petals of the ylang-ylang, crushed and soaked in
some liquid, would one day touch the lips of some wondrous creature in some faraway land
whose eyes were blue and hair golden.

Those were days of surprises for Zita. Box after box came in Turong’s sailboat and each time
they contained things that took the words from her lips. Silk as sheer and perishable as gossamer,
or heavy and shiny and tinted like the sunset sky; slippers with bright stones which twinkled with
the least movement of her feet; a necklace of green, flat, polished stone, whose feel against her
throat sent a curious choking sensation there; perfume that she must touch her lips with. If only
there would always be such things in Turong’s sailboat, and none of those horrid blue envelopes
that he always brought. And yet–the Virgin have pity on her selfish soul–suppose one day
Turong brought not only those letters but the writer as well? She shuddered, not because she
feared it but because she knew it would be.

“Why are these dresses so tight fitting?” Her father wanted to know.

“In society, women use clothes to reveal, not to hide.” Was that a sneer or a smile in his eyes?
The gown showed her arms and shoulders and she had never known how round and fair they
were, how they could express so many things.

“Why do these dresses have such bright colors?”

“Because the peacock has bright feathers.”

“They paint their lips…”

“So that they can smile when they do not want to.”

“And their eyelashes are long.”

“To hide deception.”

He was not pleased like her father; she saw it, he had turned his face toward the window. And as
she came nearer, swaying like a lily atop its stalk she heard the harsh, muttered words:

“One would think she’d feel shy or uncomfortable, but no… oh no… not a bit… all alike…
comes naturally.”

There were books to read; pictures, names to learn; lessons in everything; how to polish the nails,
how to use a fan, even how to walk. How did these days come, how did they go? What does one
do when one is so happy, so breathless? Sometimes they were a memory, sometimes a dream.
“Look, Zita, a society girl does not smile so openly; her eyes don’t seek one’s so–that reveals
your true feelings.”

“But if I am glad and happy and I want to show it?”

“Don’t. If you must show it by smiling, let your eyes be mocking; if you would invite with your
eyes, repulse with your lips.”

That was a memory.

She was in a great drawing room whose floor was so polished it reflected the myriad red and
green and blue fights above, the arches of flowers and ribbons and streamers. All the great names
of the capital were there, stately ladies in wonderful gowns who walked so, waved their fans so,
who said one thing with their eyes and another with their lips. And she was among them and
every young and good-looking man wanted to dance with her. They were all so clever and
charming but she answered: “Please, I am tired.” For beyond them she had seen him alone, he
whose eyes were dark and brooding and disapproving and she was waiting for him to take her.

That was a dream. Sometimes though, she could not tell so easily which was the dream and
which the memory.

If only those letters would not bother him now, he might be happy and at peace. True he never
answered them, but every time Turong brought him one, he would still become thoughtful and
distracted. Like that time he was teaching her a dance, a Spanish dance, he said, and had told her
to dress accordingly. Her heavy hair hung in a big, carelessly tied knot that always threatened to
come loose but never did; its dark, deep shadows showing off in startling vividness how red a
rose can be, how like velvet its petals. Her earrings–two circlets of precious stones, red like the
pigeon’s blood–almost touched her shoulders. The heavy Spanish shawl gave her the most
trouble–she had nothing to help her but some pictures and magazines–she could not put it on just
as she wanted. Like this, it revealed her shoulder too much; that way, it hampered the free
movement of the legs. But she had done her best; for hours she had stood before her mirror and
for hours it had told her that she was beautiful, that red lips and tragic eyes were becoming to
her.

She’d never forget that look on his face when she came out. It was not surprise, joy, admiration.
It was as if he saw somebody there whom he was expecting, for whom he had waited, prayed.

“Zita!” It was a cry of recognition.

She blushed even under her rouge when he took her in his arms and taught her to step this way,
glide so, turn about; she looked half questioningly at her father for disapproval, but she saw that
there was nothing there but admiration too. Mr. Reteche seemed so serious and so intent that she
should learn quickly; but he did not deceive her, for once she happened to lean close and she felt
how wildly his heart was beating. It frightened her and she drew away, but when she saw how
unconcerned he seemed, as if he did not even know that she was in his arms, she smiled
knowingly and drew close again. Dreamily she closed her eyes and dimly wondered if his were
shut too, whether he was thinking the same thoughts, breathing the same prayer.

Turong came up and after his respectful “Good evening” he handed an envelope to the school
teacher. It was large and blue and had a gold design in one comer; the handwriting was broad,
angular, sweeping.

“Thank you, Turong.” His voice was drawling, heavy, the voice of one who has just awakened.
With one movement he tore the unopened envelope slowly, unconsciously, it seemed to her, to
pieces.
“I thought I had forgotten,” he murmured dully.

That changed the whole evening. His eyes lost their sparkle, his gaze wandered from time to
time. Something powerful and dark had come between them, something which shut out the light,
brought in a chill. The tears came to her eyes for she felt utterly powerless. When her sight
cleared she saw that he was sitting down and trying to piece the letter together.

“Why do you tear up a letter if you must put it together again?” rebelliously.
He looked at her kindly. “Someday, Zita, you will do it too, and then you will understand.”

One day Turong came from Pauambang and this time he brought a stranger. They knew at once
that he came from where the teacher came–his clothes, his features, his politeness–and that he
had come for the teacher. This one did not speak their dialect, and as he was led through the
dusty, crooked streets, he kept forever wiping his face, gazing at the wobbly, thatched huts and
muttering short, vehement phrases to himself. Zita heard his knock before Mr. Reteche did and
she knew what he had come for. She must have been as pale as her teacher, as shaken, as
rebellious. And yet the stranger was so cordial; there was nothing but gladness in his greeting,
gladness at meeting an old friend. How strong he was; even at that moment he did not forget
himself, but turned to his class and dismissed them for the day.

The door was thick and she did not dare lean against the jamb too much, so sometimes their
voices floated away before they reached her.

“…like children… making yourselves… so unhappy.”

“…happiness? Her idea of happiness…”

Mr. Reteche’s voice was more low-pitched, hoarse, so that it didn’t carry at all. She shuddered as
he laughed, it was that way when he first came.

“She’s been… did not mean… understand.”

“…learning to forget…”

There were periods when they both became excited and talked fast and hard; she heard
somebody’s restless pacing, somebody sitting down heavily.

“I never realized what she meant to me until I began trying to seek from others what she would
not give me.”

She knew what was coming now, knew it before the stranger asked the question:

“Tomorrow?”
She fled; she could not wait for the answer.

He did not sleep that night, she knew he did not, she told herself fiercely. And it was not only his
preparations that kept him awake, she knew it, she knew it. With the first flicker of light she ran
to her mirror. She must not show her feeling, it was not in good form, she must manage
somehow. If her lips quivered, her eyes must smile, if in her eyes there were tears… She heard
her father go out, but she did not go; although she knew his purpose, she had more important
things to do. Little boys came up to the house and she wiped away their tears and told them that
he was coming back, coming back, soon, soon.

The minutes flew, she was almost done now; her lips were red and her eyebrows penciled; the
crimson shawl thrown over her shoulders just right. Everything must be like that day he had first
seen her in a Spanish dress. Still he did not come, he must be bidding farewell now to Father
Cesareo; now he was in Doña Ramona’s house; now he was shaking the barber’s hand. He
would soon be through and come to her house. She glanced at the mirror and decided that her
lips were not red enough; she put on more color. The rose in her hair had too long a stem; she
tried to trim it with her fingers and a thorn dug deeply into her flesh.

Who knows? Perhaps they would soon meet again in the city; she wondered if she could not
wheedle her father into going earlier. But she must know now what were the words he had
wanted to whisper that night under the dama de noche, what he had wanted to say that day he
held her in his arms; other things, questions whose answers she knew. She smiled. How well she
knew them!

The big house was silent as death; the little village seemed deserted, everybody had gone to the
seashore. Again she looked at the mirror. She was too pale, she must put on more rouge. She
tried to keep from counting the minutes, the seconds, from getting up and pacing. But she was
getting chilly and she must do it to keep warm.

The steps creaked. She bit her lips to stifle a wild cry there. The door opened.

“Turong!”
“Mr. Reteche bade me give you this. He said you would understand.”

In one bound she had reached the open window. But dimly, for the sun was too bright, or was her
sight failing?–she saw a blur of white moving out to sea, then disappearing behind a point of land
so that she could no longer follow it; and then, clearly against a horizon suddenly drawn out of
perspective, “Mr. Reteche,” tall, lean, brooding, looking at her with eyes that told her somebody
had hurt him. It was like that when he first came, and now he was gone. The tears came freely
now. What matter, what matter? There was nobody to see and criticize her breeding. They came
down unchecked and when she tried to brush them off with her hand, the color came away too
from her cheeks, leaving them bloodless, cold. Sometimes they got into her mouth and they
tasted bitter.

Her hands worked convulsively; there was a sound of tearing paper, once, twice. She became
suddenly aware of what she had done when she looked at the pieces, wet and brightly stained
with uneven streaks of red. Slowly, painfully, she tried to put the pieces together and as she did
so a sob escaped deep from her breast–a great understanding had come to her.

This 1930 story is included in everybody’s list of best Philippine stories of the 20th century.
SERVANT GIRL by Estrella D. Alfon

ROSA was scrubbing the clothes she was washing slowly. Alone in the washroom of her
mistress’ house she could hear the laughter of women washing clothes in the public bathhouse
from which she was separated by only a thin wall. She would have liked to be there with the
other women to take part in their jokes and their laughter and their merry gossiping, but they paid
a centavo for every piece of soiled linen they brought there to wash and her mistress wanted to
save this money.

A pin she had failed to remove from a dress sank its point deep into her finger. She cried to
herself in surprise and squeezed the finger until the blood came out. She watched the bright red
drop fall into the suds of soap and looked in delight at its gradual mingling into the whiteness.
Her mistress came upon her thus and, shouting at her, startled her into busily rubbing while she
tried not to listen to the scolding words.

When her mistress left her, she fell to doing her work slowly again, and sometimes she paused to
listen to the talk in the bathhouse behind her. A little later her mistress’ shrill voice told her to go
to the bathhouse for drinking water. Eagerly wiping her hands on her wet wrap, she took the can
from the kitchen table and went out quickly.
She was sweating at the defective town pump when strong hands closed over hers and started to
help her. The hands pressing down on hers made her wince and she withdrew her hands hastily.
The movement was greeted by a shout of laughter from the women washing and Rosa looked at
them in surprise. The women said to each other “Rosa does not like to be touched by Sancho”
and then slapped their thighs in laughter. Rosa frowned and picked up her can. Sancho made a
move to help her but she thrust him away, and the women roared again, saying “Because we are
here, Sancho, she is ashamed.”

Rosa carried the can away, her head angrily down, and Sancho followed her, saying “Do not be
angry,” in coaxing tones. But she went her slow way with the can.

Her mistress’ voice came to her, calling impatiently, and she tried to hurry. When she arrived,
the woman asked her what had kept her so long, and without waiting for an answer she ranted
on, saying she had heard the women joking in the bathhouse, and she knew what had kept the
girl so long. Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally swung out an arm,
and before she quite knew what she was doing, she slapped Rosa’s face.

She was sorry as soon as she realized what she had done. She turned away, muttering still, while
Rosa’s eyes filled with sudden tears. The girl poured the water from the can into the earthen jar,
a bitter lump in her throat, and thought of what she would do to people like her mistress when
she herself, God willing, would be “rich.” Soon however, she thought of Sancho, and the jokes
the women had shouted at her. She thought of their laughter and Sancho following her with his
coaxing tones, and she smiled slowly.

Getting back to her washing, she gathered the clothes she had to bleach, and piled them into a
basin she balanced on her head. Passing her mistress in the kitchen, she said something about
going to bleach the clothes and under her breath added an epithet. She had to cross the street to
get to the stones gathered about in a whitened circle in a neighbor’s yard where she was wont to
lay out the clothes. She passed some women hanging clothes on a barbed-wire fence to dry. They
called to her and she smiled at them.

Some dogs chasing each other on the street, she did not notice because the women were praising
her for the whiteness of the linen in the basin on her head. She was answering them that she
hadn’t even bleached them yet, when one of the dogs passed swiftly very close to her. Looking
down, she saw in wide alarm another dog close on the heels of the first. An instinctive fear of
animals made her want to dodge the heedlessly running dog, and she stepped gingerly this way
and that. The dog, intent on the other it was pursuing, gave her no heed and ran right between her
legs as Rosa held on to the basin in frantic fear lest it fall and the clothes get soiled. Her
patadiong was tight in their wetness about her legs, and she fell down, in the middle of the street.
She heard the other women’s exclamations of alarm and her first thought was for the clothes.
Without getting up, she looked at the basin and gave obscene thanks when she saw the clothes
still piled secure and undirtied. She tried to get up, hurrying lest her mistress come out and see
her thus and slap her again. Already the women were setting up a great to do about what had
happened. Some were coming to her, loudly abusing the dogs, solicitousness on their faces. Rosa
cried, “Nothing’s the matter with me.” Still struggling to get up, she noticed that her wrap had
been loosened and had bared her breasts. She looked around wildly, sudden shame coloring her
cheeks, and raised the wrap and tied it securely around herself again.
She could stand but she found she could not walk. The women had gone back to their drying,
seeing she was up and apparently nothing the worse for the accident. Rosa looked down at her
right foot which twinged with pain. She stooped to pick up the basin and put it on her head again.
She tried stepping on the toes of her right foot but it made her wince. She tried the heel but that
also made her bite her lip. Already her foot above the ankle was swelling. She thought of the slap
her mistress had given her for staying in the bathhouse too long and the slap she was most certain
to get now for delaying like this. But she couldn’t walk, that was settled.

Then there came down the street a tartanilla without any occupant except the cochero who rang
his bell, but she couldn’t move away from the middle of the street. She looked up at the driver
and started angrily to tell him that there was plenty of room at the sides of the street, and that she
couldn’t move anyway, even if there weren’t. The man jumped down from his seat and bent
down and looked at her foot. The basin was still on Rosa’s head and he took it from her, and put
it in his vehicle. Then he squatted down and bidding Rosa put a hand on his shoulders to steady
herself, he began to touch with gentle fingers the swelling ankle, pulling at it and massaging it.
They were still in the middle of the street. Rosa looked around to see if the women were still
there to look at them but they had gone away. There was no one but a small boy licking a candy
stick, and he wasn’t paying any attention to them. The cochero looked up at her, the sweat on his
face, saw her looking around with pain and embarrassment mingled on her face. Then, so swiftly
she found no time to protest, he closed his arms about her knees and lifted her like a child. He
carried her to his tartanilla, plumped her down on one of the seats. Then he left her, coming back
after a short while with some coconut oil in the hollow of his palm. He rubbed the oil on her foot,
and massaged it. He was seated on the seat opposite Rosa’s and had raised the injured foot to his
thigh, letting it rest there, despite Rosa’s protest, on his blue faded trousers. The basin of wet
clothes was beside Rosa on the seat and she fingered the clothing with fluttering hands. The
cochero asked her where she lived and she told him, pointing out the house. He asked what had
happened, and she recited the whole thing to him, stopping with embarrassment when she
remembered the loosening of her patadiongand the nakedness of her bosom. How glad she was
he had not seen her thus. The cochero had finished with her foot, and she slid from the seat, her
basin on a hip. But he took it from her, asking her to tell him where the bleaching stones were.
He went then, and himself laid out the white linen on the stones, knowing like a woman, which
part to turn to the sun.

He came back after a while, just as Rosa heard with frightened ears the call of her mistress. She
snatched the basin from the cochero’s hand and despite the pain caused her, limped away.

She told her mistress about the accident. The woman did not do anything save to scold her lightly
for being careless. Then she looked at the swollen foot and asked who had put oil on it. Rosa was
suddenly shy of having to let anyone know about her cochero, so she said she had asked for a
little oil at the store and put it on her foot herself. Her mistress was unusually tolerant, and Rosa
forgot about the slapping and said to herself this was a day full of luck!

It was with very sharp regret that she thought of her having forgotten to ask the cochero his
name. Now, in the days that followed, she thought of him, the way he had wound an arm around
her knees and carried her like a little girl. She dreamed about the gentleness of his fingers. She
smiled remembering the way he had laid out the clothes on stones to bleach. She knew that
meant he must do his own washing. And she ached in tenderness over him and his need for a
woman like her to do such things for him—things like mending the straight tear she had noticed
at the knee of his trousers when her foot had rested on them; like measuring his tartanilla seat
cushions for him, and making them, and stringing them on his vehicle. She thought of the names
for men she knew and called him by it in thinking of him, ever afterwards. In her thoughts she
spoke to him and he always answered.
She found time to come out on the street for a while, every day. Sometimes she would sweep the
yard or trim the scraggly hedge of viola bushes; or she would loiter on an errand for tomatoes or
vinegar. She said to herself, He dreams of me too, and he thinks of me. He passes here every day
wishing to see me. She never saw him pass, but she said to herself, He passes just when I am in
the house, that’s why I never see him.

Some tartanilla would pass, and if she could, as soon as she heard the sound of the wheels, she
looked out of a window, hoping it would be Angel’s. Sometimes she would sing very loudly, if
she felt her mistress was in a good humor and not likely to object. She told herself that if he
could not see her, he would at least wish to hear her voice.

She longed no more to be part of the group about the water tank in the bathhouse. She thought of
the women there and their jokes and she smiled, in pity, because they did not have what she had,
some one by the name of Angel, who knew how to massage injured feet back to being good for
walking and who knew how to lay out clothes for bleaching.

When they teased her about Sancho, who insisted on pumping her can full every time she went
for drinking water, she smiled at the women and at the man, full of her hidden knowledge about
someone picking her up and being gentle with her. She was too full of this secret joy to mind
their teasing. Where before she had been openly angry and secretly pleased, now she was
indifferent. She looked at Sancho and thought him very rude beside… beside Angel. He always
put his hands over hers when she made a move to pump water. He always spoke to her about not
being angry with the women’s teasing. She thought he was merely trying to show off. And when
one day Sancho said, “Do not mind their teasing; they would tease you more if they knew I
really feel like they say I do,” she glared at him and thought him unbearably ill-mannered. She
spat out of the corner of her mouth, letting him see the grimace of distaste she made when she
did so, and seeing Sancho’s disturbed face, she thought, If Angel knew, he’d strike you a big
blow. But she was silent and proud and unsmiling. Sancho looked after her with the heavy can of
water held by one hand, the other hand flung out to balance herself against the weight. He waited
for her to turn and smile at him as she sometimes did, but she simply went her way. He flung his
head up and then laughed snortingly.

Rosa’s mistress made her usual bad-humored sallies against her fancied slowness. Noticing
Rosa’s sudden excursions into the street, she made remarks and asked curious questions. Always
the girl had an excuse and her mistress soon made no further questions. And unless she was in
bad temper, she was amused at her servant’s attempts at singing.

One night she sent the maid to a store for wine. Rosa came back with a broken bottle empty of
all its contents. Sudden anger at the waste and the loss made her strike out with closed fists, not
caring where her blows landed until the girl was in tears. It often touched her when she saw Rosa
crying and cowering, but now the woman was too angry to pity.

It never occurred to Rosa that she could herself strike out and return every blow. Her mistress
was thirtyish, with peaked face and thin frame, and Rosa’s strong arms, used to pounding clothes
and carrying water, could easily have done her hurt. But Rosa merely cried and cried, saying
now and then Aruy! Aruy!, until the woman, exhausted by her own anger left off striking the girl
to sit down in a chair, curse loudly about the loss of such good wine, and ask where she was
going to get the money to buy another bottle.

Rosa folded her clothes into a neat bundle, wrapped them in her blanket, and getting out her
slippers, thrust her feet into them. She crept out of a door without her mistress seeing her and
told herself she’d never come back to that house again.

It would have been useless to tell her mistress how the bottle had been broken, and the wine
spilled. She had been walking alone in the street hurrying to the wine store, and Sancho had met
her. They had talked; he begging her to let him walk with her and she saying her mistress would
be angry if she saw. Sancho had insisted and they had gone to the store and bought the wine, and
then going home, her foot had struck a sharp stone. She had bent to hold a foot up, looking at the
sole to see if the stone had made it bleed. Her dress had a wide, deep neck, and it must have hung
away from her body when she bent. Anyway, she had looked up to find Sancho looking into the
neck of her dress. His eyes were turned hastily away as soon as she straightened up, and she
thought she could do nothing but hold her peace. But after a short distance in their resumed walk
home, he had stopped to pick up a long twig lying on the ground. With deft strokes he had drawn
twin sharp peaks on the ground. They looked merely like the zigzags one does draw playfully
with any stick, but Rosa, having seen him looking into her dress while she bent over, now
became so angry that she swung out and with all her force struck him on the check with her open
palm. He reeled from the unexpected blow, and quickly steadied himself while Rosa shot name
after name at him. Anger rose in his face. It was nearly dark, and there was no one else on the
street. He laughed, short angry laughter, and called her back name for name. Rosa approached
him and made to slap him again, but Sancho was too quick for her. He had slipped out of her
way and himself slapped her instead. The surprise of it angered her into sudden tears. She swung
up the bottle of wine she had held tightly in one hand, and ran after the man to strike him with it.
Sancho slapped her arm so hard that she dropped the bottle. The man had run away laughing,
calling back a final undeserved name at her, leaving her to look with tears at the wine seeping
into the ground. Some people had come toward her then, asking what had happened. She had
stooped, picked up the biggest piece of glass, and hurried back to her mistress, wondering
whether she would be believed and forgiven.

Rosa walked down street after street. She had long ago wiped the tears from her face, and her
thoughts were of a place to sleep, for it was late at night. She told herself she would kill Sancho
if she ever saw him again. She picked up a stone from the road, saying, I wish a cold wind would
strike him dead, and so on; and the stone she grasped tightly, saying, If I meet him now, I would
throw this at him, and aim so well that I would surely hit him.

She rubbed her arm in memory of the numbing blow the man had dealt it, and touched her face
with furious shame for the slap he had dared to give her. Her fists closed more tightly about the
stone and she looked about her as if she expected Sancho to appear.

She thought of her mistress. She had been almost a year in the woman’s employ. Usually she
stayed in a place, at the most, for four months. Sometimes it was the master’s smirking ways and
evil eyes, sometimes it was the children’s bullying demands. She had stayed with this last
mistress because in spite of her spells of bad humor, there were periods afterward when she
would be generous with money for a dress, or for a cine with other maids. And they had been
alone, the two of them. Sometimes the mistress would get so drunk that she would slobber into
her drink and mumble of persons that must have died. When she was helpless she might perhaps
have starved if Rosa had not forcibly fed her. Now, however, thought of the fierce beating the
woman had given her made Rosa cry a little and repeat her vow that she would never step into
the house again.

Then she thought of Angel, the cochero who had been gentle, and she lost her tears in thinking
how he would never have done what Sancho did. If he knew what had happened to her, he would
come running now and take her to his own home, and she would not have to worry about a place
to sleep this night. She wandered about, not stopping at those places where she knew she would
be accepted if she tried, her mind full of the injustices she had received and of comparisons
between Sancho and Angel. She paused every time a tartanilla came her way, peering intently
into the face of the cochero, hoping it would be he, ready to break her face into smiles if it were
indeed. She carried her bundle on her arm all this while, now clenching a fist about the stone she
still had not dropped and gnashing her teeth.

She had been walking about for quite a while, feeling not very tired, having no urgent need to
hurry about finding herself a place, so sharp her hopes were of somehow seeing her cochero on
the streets. That was all she cared about, that she must walk into whatever street she came to,
because only in that way would he see her and learn what they had done to her.

Then, turning into a street full of stores set side by side, she felt the swish of a horse almost
brushing against her. She looked up angrily at the cochero’s laughing remark about his whip
missing her beautiful bust. An offense like that, so soon after all her grief at what Sancho had
done, inflamed her into passionate anger, and mouthing a quick curse, she flung the stone in her
hand at the cochero on his seat. It was rather dark and she did not quite see his face. But
apparently she hit something, for he suddenly yelled a stop at the horse, clambered down, and
ran back to her, demanding the reason for her throwing the stone. She exclaimed hotly at his
offense with the whip, and then looking up into his face, she gasped. She gasped and said,
“Angel!”
For it was he. He was wearing a striped shirt, like so many other people were wearing, and he
had on the very same trousers of dark blue he had worn when he massaged her foot. But he
gazed at her in nothing but anger, asking whether her body was so precious that she would kill
his horse. Also, why did she keep saying Angel; that was not his name!

Rosa kept looking up at him not hearing a word of his threats about taking her to the municipio,
saying only Angel, Angel, in spite of his protests that that was not his name. At last she
understood that the cochero did not even remember her and she realized how empty her thoughts
of him now were. Even his name was not Angel. She turned suddenly to walk away from him,
saying, “You do not even remember me.”

The cochero peered at her face and exclaimed after a while, “Oh yes! the girl with the swollen
foot!” Rosa forgot all the emptiness, forgot the sudden sinking of her heart when she had realized
that even he would flick his whip at a girl alone on the road, and lifted her smiling face at him,
stopping suddenly to tell him her foot had healed very quickly. The cochero asked her after a
while where she was going, and she said breathlessly, without knowing just why she answered
so, “I am going home!” He asked no questions about where she had been, why she was so late.
He bade her ride in his vehicle, grandly saying he would not make her pay, and then, with many
a loud exclamation to his horse, he drove her to her mistress’ house.
Rosa didn’t tell him what had happened. Nor anything about her dreams. She merely answered
the questions the cochero asked her about how she had been. “With the grace of God, all right,
thank you.” Once he made her a sly joke about his knowing there were simply lots of men
courting her. Rosa laughed breathlessly and denied it. She wished they would never arrive, but
they soon did. The cochero waited for her to get out, and then drove off, saying “Don’t mention
it” to her many thanks. She ran after the tartanilla when it had gone off a little way, and asked,
running beside the moving vehicle, looking up into his face, “What is your name?”

The cochero shouted, without stopping his horse, “Pedro” and continued to drive away.

Rosa went into the house without hesitation, forgetting all her vows about never stepping into it
again and wondering why it was so still. She turned on the lights and found her mistress sleeping
at a table with her head cradled in her arms, a new wine bottle before her, empty now of all its
contents. With an arm about the thin woman’s waist, she half dragged her into her bed. When the
woman would wake, she would say nothing, remembering nothing. Rosa turned on the light in
the kitchen and hummed her preparations for a meal.

ALL OVER THE WORLD by Vicente Rivera, Jr.

ONE evening in August 1941, I came out of a late movie to a silent, cold night. I shivered a little
as I stood for a moment in the narrow street, looking up at the distant sky, alive with stars. I
stood there, letting the night wind seep through me, and listening. The street was empty, the
houses on the street dim—with the kind of ghostly dimness that seems to embrace sleeping
houses. I had always liked empty streets in the night; I had always stopped for a while in these
streets listening for something I did not quite know what. Perhaps for low, soft cries that empty
streets and sleeping houses seem to share in the night.

I lived in an old, nearly crumbling apartment house just across the street from the moviehouse.
From the street, I could see into the open courtyard, around which rooms for the tenants, mostly
a whole family to a single room, were ranged. My room, like all the other rooms on the
groundfloor, opened on this court. Three other boys, my cousins, shared the room with me. As I
turned into the courtyard from the street, I noticed that the light over our study-table, which stood
on the corridor outside our room, was still burning. Earlier in the evening after supper, I had
taken out my books to study, but I went to a movie instead. I must have forgotten to turn off the
light; apparently, the boys had forgotten, too.

I went around the low screen that partitioned off our “study” and there was a girl reading at the
table. We looked at each other, startled. I had never seen her before. She was about eleven years
old, and she wore a faded blue dress. She had long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. She was
reading my copy of Greek Myths.

The eyes she had turned to me were wide, darkened a little by apprehension. For a long time
neither of us said anything. She was a delicately pretty girl with a fine, smooth. pale olive skin
that shone richly in the yellow light. Her nose was straight, small and finely molded. Her lips,
full and red, were fixed and tense. And there was something else about her. Something lonely?
something lost?

“I know,” I said, “I like stories, too. I read anything good I find lying around. Have you been
reading long?”

“Yes,” she said. not looking at me now. She got up slowly, closing the book. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you want to read anymore? I asked her, trying to smile, trying to make her feel that
everything was all right.

“No.” she said, “thank you.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the book. “It’s late. You ought to be in bed. But, you can take this
along.”

She hesitated, hanging back, then shyly she took the book, brought it to her side. She looked
down at her feet uncertain as to where to turn.

“You live here?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“What room?”
She turned her face and nodded towards the far corner, across the courtyard, to a little room near
the communal kitchen. It was the room occupied by the janitor: a small square room with no
windows except for a transom above the door.

“You live with Mang Lucio?”

“He’s my uncle.”

“How long have you been here? I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

“I’ve always been here. I’ve seen you.”

“Oh. Well, good night—your name?”

“Maria.”

“Good night, Maria.”

She turned quickly, ran across the courtyard, straight to her room, and closed the door without
looking back.

I undressed, turned off the light and lay in bed dreaming of far-away things. I was twenty-one
and had a job for the first time. The salary was not much and I lived in a house that was slowly
coming apart, but life seemed good. And in the evening when the noise of living had died down
and you lay safe in bed, you could dream of better times, look back and ahead, and find that life
could be gentle—even with the hardness. And afterwards, when the night had grown colder, and
suddenly you felt alone in the world, adrift, caught in a current of mystery that came in the hour
between sleep and waking, the vaguely frightening loneliness only brought you closer to
everything, to the walls and the shadows on the walls, to the other sleeping people in the room,
to everything within and beyond this house, this street, this city, everywhere.

I met Maria again one early evening, a week later, as I was coming home from the office. I saw
her walking ahead of me, slowly, as if she could not be too careful, and with a kind of grownup
poise that was somehow touching. But I did not know it was Maria until she stopped and I
overtook her.
She was wearing a white dress that had been old many months ago. She wore a pair of brown
sneakers that had been white once. She had stopped to look at the posters of pictures advertised
as “Coming” to our neighborhood theater.

“Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual.

She smiled at me and looked away quickly. She did not say anything nor did she step away. I felt
her shyness, but there was no self-consciousness, none of the tenseness and restraint of the night
we first met. I stood beside her, looked at the pictures tacked to a tilted board, and tried whistling
a tune.

She turned to go, hesitated, and looked at me full in the eyes. There was again that wide-eyed—
and sad? —stare. I smiled, feeling a remote desire to comfort her, as if it would do any good, as
if it was comfort she needed.

“I’ll return your book now,” she said.

“You’ve finished it?”

“Yes.”

We walked down the shadowed street. Magallanes Street in Intramuros, like all the other streets
there, was not wide enough, hemmed in by old, mostly unpainted houses, clumsy and unlovely,
even in the darkening light of the fading day.

We went into the apartment house and I followed her across the court. I stood outside the door
which she closed carefully after her. She came out almost immediately and put in my hands the
book of Greek myths. She did not look at me as she stood straight and remote.

“My name is Felix,” I said.

She smiled suddenly. It was a little smile, almost an unfinished smile. But, somehow, it felt
special, something given from way deep inside in sincere friendship.

I walked away whistling. At the door of my room, I stopped and looked back. Maria was not in
sight. Her door was firmly closed.

August, 1941, was a warm month. The hangover of summer still permeated the air, specially in
Intramuros. But, like some of the days of late summer, there were afternoons when the weather
was soft and clear, the sky a watery green, with a shell-like quality to it that almost made you see
through and beyond, so that, watching it made you lightheaded.

I walked out of the office one day into just such an afternoon. The day had been full of grinding
work—like all the other days past. I was tired. I walked slowly, towards the far side of the old
city, where traffic was not heavy. On the street there were old trees, as old as the walls that
enclosed the city. Half-way towards school, I changed my mind and headed for the gate that led
out to Bonifacio Drive. I needed stiffer winds, wider skies. I needed all of the afternoon to
myself.

Maria was sitting on the first bench, as you went up the sloping drive that curved away from the
western gate. She saw me before I saw her. When I looked her way, she was already smiling that
half-smile of hers, which even so told you all the truth she knew, without your asking.

“Hello,” I said. “It’s a small world.”

“What?”

“I said it’s nice running into you. Do you always come here?”

“As often as I can. I go to many places.”

“Doesn’t your uncle disapprove?”

“No. He’s never around. Besides, he doesn’t mind anything.”

“Where do you go?”

“Oh, up on the walls. In the gardens up there, near Victoria gate. D’you know?”

“I think so. What do you do up there?”

“Sit down and—”

“And what?”

“Nothing. Just sit down.”

She fell silent. Something seemed to come between us. She was suddenly far-away. It was like
the first night again. I decided to change the subject.
“Look,” I said, carefully, “where are your folks?”

“You mean, my mother and father?”

“Yes. And your brothers and sisters, if any.”

“My mother and father are dead. My elder sister is married. She’s in the province. There isn’t
anybody else.”

“Did you grow up with your uncle?”

“I think so.”

We were silent again. Maria had answered my questions without embarrassment. almost without
emotion, in a cool light voice that had no tone.

“Are you in school, Maria?”

“Yes.”

“What grade?”

“Six.”

“How d’you like it?”

“Oh, I like it.”

“I know you like reading.”

She had no comment. The afternoon had waned. The breeze from the sea had died down. The
last lingering warmth of the sun was now edged with cold. The trees and buildings in the
distance seemed to flounder in a red-gold mist. It was a time of day that never failed to carry an
enchantment for me. Maria and I sat still together, caught in some spell that made the silence
between us right, that made our being together on a bench in the boulevard, man and girl,
stranger and stranger, a thing not to be wondered at, as natural and inevitable as the lengthening
shadows before the setting sun.

Other days came, and soon it was the season of the rain. The city grew dim and gray at the first
onslaught of the monsoon. There were no more walks in the sun. I caught a cold.
Maria and I had become friends now, though we saw each other infrequently. I became
engrossed in my studies. You could not do anything else in a city caught in the rains. September
came and went.

In November, the sun broke through the now ever present clouds, and for three or four days we
had bright clear weather. Then, my mind once again began flitting from my desk, to the walls
outside the office, to the gardens on the walls and the benches under the trees in the boulevards.
Once, while working on a particularly bad copy on the news desk, my mind scattered, the way it
sometimes does and, coming together again, went back to that first meeting with Maria. And the
remembrance came clear, coming into sharper focus—the electric light, the shadows around us,
the stillness. And Maria, with her wide-eyed stare, the lost look in her eyes…

IN December, I had a little fever. On sick leave, I went home to the province. I stayed three days.
I felt restless, as if I had strayed and lost contact with myself. I suppose you got that way from
being sick,

A pouring rain followed our train all the way back to Manila. Outside my window, the landscape
was a series of dissolved hills and fields. What is it in the click of the wheels of a train that
makes you feel gray inside? What is it in being sick, in lying abed that makes you feel you are
awake in a dream, and that you are just an occurrence in the crying grief of streets and houses
and people?

In December, we had our first air-raid practice.

I came home one night through darkened streets, peopled by shadows. There was a ragged look
to everything, as if no one and nothing cared any more for appearances.

I reached my room just as the siren shrilled. I undressed and got into my old clothes. It was dark,
darker than the moment after moon-set. I went out on the corridor and sat in a chair. All around
me were movements and voices. anonymous and hushed, even when they laughed.

I sat still, afraid and cold.

“Is that you. Felix?”

“Yes. Maria.”
She was standing beside my chair, close to the wall. Her voice was small and disembodied in the
darkness. A chill went through me, She said nothing more for a long time.

“I don’t like the darkness,” she said.

“Oh, come now. When you sleep, you turn the lights off, don’t you?”

“It’s not like this darkness,” she said, softly. “It’s all over the world.”

We did not speak again until the lights went on. Then she was gone.

The war happened not long after.

At first, everything was unreal. It was like living on a motion picture screen, with yourself as
actor and audience. But the sounds of bombs exploding were real enough, thudding dully against
the unready ear.

In Intramuros, the people left their homes the first night of the war. Many of them slept in the
niches of the old walls the first time they heard the sirens scream in earnest. That evening, I
returned home to find the apartment house empty. The janitor was there. My cousin who worked
in the army was there. But the rest of the tenants were gone.

I asked Mang Lucio, “Maria?”

“She’s gone with your aunt to the walls.” he told me. “They will sleep there tonight.”

My cousin told me that in the morning we would transfer to Singalong. There was a house
available. The only reason he was staying, he said, was because they were unable to move our
things. Tomorrow that would be taken care of immediately.

“And you, Mang Lucio?”

“I don’t know where I could go.”

We ate canned pork and beans and bread. We slept on the floor, with the lights swathed in black
cloth. The house creaked in the night and sent off hollow echoes. We slept uneasily.

I woke up early. It was disquieting to wake up to stillness in that house which rang with
children’s voices and laughter the whole day everyday. In the kitchen, there were sounds and
smells of cooking.
“Hello,” I said.

It was Maria, frying rice. She turned from the stove and looked at me for a long time. Then,
without a word, she turned back to her cooking.

“Are you and your uncle going away?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did he not tell you?”

“No.”

“We’re moving to Singalong.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, anyway, I’ll come back tonight. Maybe this afternoon. We’ll not have to say goodbye till
then.”

She did not say anything. I finished washing and went back to my room. I dressed and went out.

At noon, I went to Singalong to eat. All our things were there already, and the folks were busy
putting the house in order. As soon as I finished lunch, I went back to the office. There were few
vehicles about. Air-raid alerts were frequent. The brightness of the day seemed glaring. The
faces of people were all pale and drawn.

In the evening, I went back down the familiar street. I was stopped many times by air-raid
volunteers. The house was dark. I walked back to the street. I stood for a long time before the
house. Something did not want me to go away just yet. A light burst in my face. It was a
volunteer.

“Do you live here?”

“I used to. Up to yesterday. I’m looking for the janitor.”

“Why, did you leave something behind?”

“Yes, I did. But I think I’ve lost it now.”

“Well, you better get along, son. This place, the whole area. has been ordered evacuated. Nobody
lives here anymore.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Nobody.”