M.P.H. Part 4

Part IV SELECTED READINGS IN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
LESSON 1
OBJECTIVES
At the end of this module, you should be able to:
1. answered various activities;

2. construct a friendly letter;
3. create a collage and explain its message/meaning;
4. illustrate your favorite part of the story;
5. express ideas by answering questions; and
6. create a slogan about the message of the poem.
READ
DEAD STARS
Paz Marquez Benitez
BENITEZ, PAZ MARQUEZ (1894-1983) was recognized as "far ahead of her period" in mastering some aspects of
the technique of writing the modern short story. Her story "Dead Stars," first published in the Philippines Herald on
20 September 1925, has been called delineation, local color, plot, and message." Leopoldo Y. Yabes, noted UP essayist-
critic-anthologist researcher, put it as the lead story in his anthology Philippine Short Stories: 1925-1946, published
in 1975. The same story has indeed been called "the first short story in English written by a Filipino."A Night in the
Hills," first published in the Literary Apprentice in 1931, was included in the 1946 edition of Philippine Prose_and
Poetry. vol. 3. and T. D. Agcaoili included it in his compilation Philippine Writing (1948). Other stories by her include:
"Stepping Stones," "Half a Life," *An Old Story" and "The Fool."
Through the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly
enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, and 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 bricktiled 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?"
A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 59

"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 straightnhome 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 todo. 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, womanlike, 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, foundunending 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 lowhung 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. Cametoo 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 hugejewelled 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 halflistened, 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 atall! 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 ceaseeven 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 cothe 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.
Activity 1: Literary Analysis

Directions: Give the needed information for the following elements of short story.
1. Setting
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2. Plot
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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Activity 2: Comprehension Check-Up

Directions: Answer the following questions.
1. What was the mood created by the setting of the story? Described it clearly to show
a clear picture of the setting.
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2. Why do you think the author entitled this story as Dead Star? Explain your answer.
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Activity 3: Letter to Character

Directions: Write a friendly letter from a character’s eye (point-of-view). You will pretend to
be one of the character in the story and write a letter to another character. Your letter may
explain how you feel towards the letter’s recipient. You may feel free to tell us details about
your thoughts and feelings (as the character) that we didn’t find out from the story.
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BONSAI
Edith L. Tiempo
Edith L. Tiempo, poet, fictionist, teacher and literary critic is one of the finest Filipino writers in English
whose works are characterized by a remarkable fusion of style and substance, of craftsmanship and
insight. Born on April 22, 1919 in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, her poems are intricate verbal
transfigurations of significant experiences as revealed, in two of her much anthologized pieces, “The
Little Marmoset” and “Bonsai”. As fictionist, Tiempo is as morally profound. Her language has been
marked as “descriptive but unburdened by scrupulous detailing.” She is an influential tradition in
Philippine literature in English. Together with her late husband, Edilberto K. Tiempo, she founded and
directed the Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, which has produced some of the
country’s best writers.
All that I love

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

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

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

From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.

1. Give the message of the poem.

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2. Paraphrase the poem.
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1. What emotions were expressed in this poem?

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2. What was used to symbolize the poet’s feelings? Explain.

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Activity 3: Paper Collage

Directions: Make a paper collage that represents the theme of the poem. Then, explain your
work.

FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH
Jose Garcia Villa
Jose Garcia Villa was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was awarded
the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973, as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship
in creative writing by Conrad Aiken. He is known to have introduced the "reversed consonance rime
scheme" in writing poetry, as well as the extensive use of punctuation marks—especially commas, which
made him known as the Comma Poet. He used the penname Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle,
Lion"), based on the characters he derived from himself. These animals were also explored by another poet
e.e. cummings in Doveglion, Adventures in Value, a poem dedicated to Villa.
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell
his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow,
and let it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to
know. What he had to say was of serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life.
Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought came to him his father might refuse to consider
it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to
do from his mother, Dodong's grandmother.
I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.
The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish
earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again
deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong's foot and crawled
calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong
did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself
he was not young any more.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The
beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and
the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the
carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests.
Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He
wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on
his upper lip already was dark--these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a
man – he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by
nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his
foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went
on walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang,
his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How
desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms dirty.This fieldwork
was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way
he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman
shorts, on the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it
vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made
him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was
lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat
down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and
caked sugar.
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe
and when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes
sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more,
but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents.
Dodong's mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the
batalan to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her

carry the dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that
he had a sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the
housework alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again,
Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he
was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward
Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist;
he would not be any bolder than his father.
Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it
was out, what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it
without any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at
his father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the window,
graying the still black temples of his father. His father looked old now.
"I am going to marry Teang," Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence
became intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth
again. Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking
at him without uttering anything.
"I will marry Teang," Dodong repeated. "I will marry Teang."
His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
"I asked her last night to marry me and she said...yes. I want your permission. I...
want... it...." There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness,
this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one,
and the little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness.
"Must you marry, Dodong?"
Dodong resented his father's questions; his father himself had married. Dodong
made a quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.
"You are very young, Dodong."
"I'm... seventeen."
"That's very young to get married at."
"I... I want to marry...Teang's a good girl."
"Tell your mother," his father said.
"You tell her, Tatay."
"Dodong, you tell your Inay."
"You tell her."
"All right, Dodong."
"You will let me marry Teang?"
"Son, if that is your wish... of course..." There was a strange helpless light in his
father's eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his
father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his
mind to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream....
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta
was damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him
not to leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at
all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his
thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she
gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed to
be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really painful.
Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.
In a few moments he would be a father. "Father, father," he whispered the word with
awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months
comfortable... "Your son," people would soon be telling him. "Your son, Dodong."
Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together.
He looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children... What made him think that?
What was the matter with him? God!
He heard his mother's voice from the house:

"Come up, Dodong. It is over."

Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was
ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken
something no properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman
shorts.
"Dodong," his mother called again. "Dodong." He turned to look again and this time
saw his father beside his mother.
"It is a boy," his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His
parents' eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp.
He wanted to hide from them, to run away.
"Dodong, you come up. You come up," he mother said. Dodong did not want to come
up and stayed in the sun.
"Dodong. Dodong."
"I'll... come up."
Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo
steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents’ eyes. He
walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt
like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go
back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.
His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.
"Son," his father said.
And his mother: "Dodong..."
How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.
"Teang?" Dodong said.
"She's sleeping. But you go on..."
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep
on the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her
lips, but again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did
not want to be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him
queerly. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me," Dodong said.
Blas was not Dodong's only child. Many more children came. For six successive
years a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It
seemed the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself
sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless
and thin now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking.
Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married.
She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not
married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older
than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong.
Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless
until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children. Maybe
not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong...Dodong whom life had made ugly.
One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in
the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer
him. He wanted to be wise about many things.
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth's dreams. Why it must be so. Why
one was forsaken... after Love.
Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It
must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong
returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was
denied it.

When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was
late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas' steps, for he
could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas
was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did
not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.
"You better go to sleep. It is late," Dodong said. Blas raised himself on his elbow and
muttered something in a low fluttering voice. Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.
"Itay ...," Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
"I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight."
Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.
"Itay, you think it over."
Dodong lay silent.
"I love Tona and... I want her."
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard,
where everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.
"You want to marry Tona," Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was
very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard...
"Yes."
"Must you marry?"
Blas' voice stilled with resentment. "I will marry Tona."
Dodong kept silent, hurt.
"You have objections, Itay?" Blas asked acridly.
"Son... n-none..." (But truly, God, I don't want Blas to marry yet... not yet. I don't want
Blas to marry yet....) But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph...
now. Love must triumph... now. Afterwards... it will be life.
As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong... and then Life. Dodong looked
wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.

1. Setting
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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1. What made Dodong feel that he was no longer a boy but already a man?
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2. What character is revealed by Dodong when he was got tickled by the worm, jerked
his foot, flinging the worm into air yet never bothered to look at where it fell?
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3. How did Teang find married life?
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4. When Dodong asked permission to get married, his father felt sorry for him. So did
Dodong when Blas asked for permission to get married. They knew that life is hard
after marriage, why then do you think that they did not prevent their sons from
experiencing those hardships that they’ve gone through?
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5. Explain the line “Youth must triumph... now. Love must triumph... now. Afterwards...
it will be life.”
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6. What do you think will happen if Blas continue marrying Tona?

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7. What if Dodong did not marry Teang, what will be Dodong now?
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Activity 3: Fill Me
Directions: Give at least five that one should consider before marrying.
Five
Factors to
consider
before
Marrying

Activity 4: Draw Me
Directions: Illustrate your favorite part of the story. Then, explain why did you like this part?

CACTUS
Tita Lacambra Ayala
Writer, poet and multimedia artist Tita Lacambra Ayala was born in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte but grew up
in Antamok, Benguet. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Education (BSE) Major in English, minor
in History, at the University of the Philippines in 1953. Tita is one of the most celebrated Filipino
poets in English with her work receiving numerous awards. She has authored many books in her
distinguished career, among them Sunflower Poems (1960), Friends, The Confessions of a Professional
Amateur (prose) and Camels and Shapes of Darkness in a Time of Olives (poetry). Her selection,
“Everything”, won third prize in 1966- 67 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
Excuse the cactus

thirsting on the sill
excuse it’s quills
stuck out;
they’re only an attempt
at self-defense.
See how it bleeds
to fossils the old sand
itself looking to be such
a fussy fossil.
Not quite futile.
It should require
some sort of guile
some genius
to subsist on sun
some lake of sand
(have both for free!)
and come out looking
freshly green,
(juicy even)
as if in spite of
as if in fun.


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1. What does the image of the cactus symbolize?

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2. Explain the second to the last stanza.
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Activity 3: Slogan Making
Directions: Make a slogan based from the theme and message of the poem.

LESSON 2
OBJECTIVES

2. analyze and identify the symbols used in the story;
3. create a storyboard;
4. make a slogan about the message of the poem;
5. interpret and reflect on the text;
6. identify and deduce the message and the theme of the poem; and
7. appreciate the stories and poems through answering various activities.
READ
WEDDING DANCE
Amador T. Daguio
Amador T. Daguio was a Filipino writer and poet during pre-war Philippines. He published two
books in his lifetime, and three more posthumously. He was a Republic Cultural Heritage
awardee for his works. He won several prizes for his fiction and poetry. Among his volumes of
poetry were “Bataan Harvest” and “The Family Lyre”. He died on April 26, 1966.
Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the
headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him
across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover
back in place. After some moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening
darkness.
"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars
of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had
been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in
her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours
to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred
the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow,
Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside
him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did
not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked
at the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played
with strange moving shadows and lights upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her
sullenness was not because of anger or hate.

"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and
dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you.
Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any
other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"
She did not answer him.
"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.
"Yes, I know," she said weakly.
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a
good husband to you."
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to
say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have
a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should
have another chance before it is too late for both of us."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She
wound the blanket more snugly around herself.
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I
have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."
"Yes, I know."
"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in
the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease
Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The
spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the
split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the
split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers
clamorously called in her care through the walls.
Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her
bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the
other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled
the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.
"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course,
I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell
you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She
is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a
house clean. You are one of the best wives in the
whole village."
"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She
almost seemed to smile.
He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face
between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never
again would he hold her face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go
back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her
fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as
you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents
are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our
marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."
"I have no use for any field," she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will
wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."

"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are
playing."
"You know that I cannot."
"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child.
You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my
back. You know that."
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the
beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring
river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep
canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and
roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled, resounded in thunderous echoes through the
walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other
ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip
would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the
final climb to the other side of the mountain.
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and
kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the
village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and
firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She
looked at his body the carved out of the mountains five fields for her; his wide and supple
torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in
fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she had lost him.
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband,"
she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look
at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work
fast in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am
useless. I must die."
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked
naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon
his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for
anything but you. I'll have no other man."
"Then you'll always be fruitless."
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me
to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
She was silent.
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the
fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."
"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a
shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."
"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us
will vanish from the life of our tribe."
The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.
"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they
come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay.
They are worth twenty fields."
"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love
you. I love you and have nothing to give."
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside.
"Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
"I am not in hurry."
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."

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

"It is all right with me."
He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"I know," she said.
He went to the door.
"Awiyao!"
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in
agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man
wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the
silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe
itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his
mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a
child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away
of his life to leave her like this.
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned
back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly
possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out
from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to
Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange
obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would
never let him go.
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her
face in his neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into
the night.
Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened
it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of
the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the
dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not
have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird
tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the
men praise her supple body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the
wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at
her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her honor, were
dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her
husband a child.
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody
know? It is not right," she said.
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief
of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take
him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule
that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely
would relent. Was not their love as strong as the
river?
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a
flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more
loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the
dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing
women decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds,
following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her
blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire
commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire
leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night.
The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to
break into the wedding feast.

Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought
of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons
before. She followed the trail above the village.
When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her
hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the
moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she could see from where she stood the blazing
bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor
of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound
did not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking
love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her
like many gangsas.
Lumnay thought of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong,
muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had
met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the
spring to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her
coconut shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of
her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the
leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants
now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter?
She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the
dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the
morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting
petals would go on.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.

1. Setting
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2. Plot
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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1. Why is the story entitled “The Wedding Dance”?

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2. If you were Lumnay, would you attend the Wedding Dance of your husband to his
second wife? Why or why not?
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3. Is Awiyao really inlove with Madulimay? Support your answer.
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4. Was Awiyao sincere in saying that if a man will see Luminay dance, that man might
marry her? Explain your answer.
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5. If you were to end the story, how you would end it?
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Activity 3: Storyboard Making

Directions: Create a storyboard illustrating the symbolisms used in the story. You should also
put an explanation of each symbol based from the story.

INK
Guillermo Castillo
Guillermo Castillo is a much-respected poet of his time. He has written hundreds of verses
about the beauty of nature and the Filipino people and society. He has an unpublished
collection of verses entitled “Filipino, Unlimited”.
Ink
bottled in glass prison
meaningless in itself
black and mute without a language
silent but strongly urged
to speak.
Ink
chance-impressed on white
inarticulate unintelligible chaotic
welcome on the bareness of white
but still foreign excommunicate.
But ink
pen-lifted pen-impressed
on black white paper
Will-ordered
Interprets intensifies clarifies
expresses
Life.


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1. How does an inanimate object like on the Ink give life according to the poem?
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2. Think of other similar objects with some potentials as the Ink. Explain.
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Activity 3: Slogan Making

Directions: Make a slogan about the message of the poem.

SERVANT GIRL
Estrella D. Alfon
Estrella D. Alfon was a well-known prolific Filipina author who wrote in English. Because of
unwavering and poor health, she could manage only an A. A. degree from the University of the
Philippines. She then became a member of the U. P. writers club and earned and was given the
privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. Her first
story entitled “Gray Confetti” was published in Graphic in 1935. She died in the year 1983 at the age
of 66.
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 fin-ger. 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 patadiong and 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 ten-derness
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, someone 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-humoured 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 her 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, say-ing,
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.

1. Setting
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2. Plot
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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1. What incident happened when Rosa was on her way to bleach the clothes? Narrate
briefly.
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2. Did Rosa get mad when a cochero tried to help her? Why or why not?
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3. Was Rosa able to explain to the mistress the cause of the broken bottle? Why or why
not?
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4. How did the cochero and Roa meet again?
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Activity 3: Interpreting the Text

Directions: Construct an interpretation and/or explanation of the story and connect it to your
personal knowledge.
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Activity 4: Moving beyond the Text

Directions: Reflect on the story and make personal judgements about its quality and meaning.
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SONG OF A CITY-DWELLER
N.V.M. Gonzalez
Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez, better known as N.V.M. Gonzalez, fictionist, essayist, poet, and
teacher, articulated the Filipino spirit in rural, urban landscapes. He was born in Romblon, Romblon.
Among the many recognitions, he won the First Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940, was granted
the Republic Award for “Outstanding Contributions towards the Advancement of Filipino Culture” in
the field of English Literature in 1954, received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1960 and the
Gawad CCP Para sa Sining in 1990. He was also awarded as the National Artist for Literature in 1997.
The awards attest to his triumph in appropriating the English language to express, reflect and shape
Philippine culture and Philippine sensibility. He became U.P.’s International-Writer-In-Residence and
a member of the Board of Advisers of the U.P. Creative Writing Center. In 1987, U.P. conferred on him
the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, its highest academic recognition. His famous short story,
“Children of the Ash-Covered Loam” was published in 1954.
Clear as lovely crystal

Gray like doves
The waters of the lake
Have only silence for their voice;
So will my heart seek long for song,
So will my dreams be lost like ghosts;
Pale as lonely smoke,
Gray like doves.


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1. Give your analysis to the first two lines of the poem.

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2. What is the theme of the poem? Explain.

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LESSON 3
OBJECTIVES

2. make a theme connections;
3. make a character analysis of the story;
4. fill the plot diagram;
5. answered comprehension questions; and
6. reflect on the message of the story.
READ
THE VIRGIN
Kerima Polotan-Tuvera
Kerima Polotan-Tuvera was a Filipino author. She was a renowned and highly respected fictionist, essayist,
and journalists, with her works having received among the highest literary distinctions of the Philippines.
Some of her stories have been published under the pseudonym Patricia S. Torres. Her 1952 short story, (the
widely anthologized) The Virgin, won two first prizes: of the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards and of
the Palanca Awards. In 1957, she edited an anthology for the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for
Literature, with English and Tagalog prize-winning short stories from 1951 to 1952. Her short stories “The
Trap” (1956), “The Giants” (1959), “The Tourists” (1960), “The Sounds of Sunday” (1961) and “A Various
Season” (1966) all won the first prize of the Palanca Awards. The 1961 Stonehill Award was bestowed on
Polotan-Tuvera, for her novel The Hand of the Enemy. In 1963, she received the Republic Cultural Heritage
Award, an award discontinued in 2003 but was then considered the government’s highest form of recognition
for artists at the time. The city of Manila conferred on Polotan-Tuvera its Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan
Award, in recognition of her contributions to its intellectual and cultural life.
He went to where Miss Mijares sat, a tall, big man, walking with an economy of
movement, graceful and light, a man who knew his body and used it well. He sat in the low
chair worn decrepit by countless other interviewers and laid all ten fingerprints carefully on
the edge of her desk. She pushed a sheet towards him, rolling a pencil along with it. While
he read the question and wrote down his answers, she glanced at her watch and saw that it
was ten. "I shall be coming back quickly," she said, speaking distinctly in the dialect (you
were never sure about these people on their first visit, if they could speak English, or even
write at all, the poor were always proud and to use the dialect with them was an act of charity),
"you will wait for me."
As she walked to the cafeteria, Miss Mijares thought how she could easily have said,
Please wait for me, or will you wait for me? But years of working for the placement section

had dulled the edges of her instinct for courtesy. She spoke now peremtorily, with an
abruptness she knew annoyed the people about her.
When she talked with the jobless across her desk, asking them the damning
questions that completed their humiliation, watching pale tongues run over dry lips, dirt
crusted handkerchiefs flutter in trembling hands, she was filled with an impatience she could
not understand. Sign here, she had said thousands of times, pushing the familiar form across,
her finger held to a line, feeling the impatience grow at sight of the man or woman tracing a
wavering "X" or laying the impress of a thumb. Invariably, Miss Mijares would turn away to
touch the delicate edge of the handkerchief she wore on her breast.
Where she sat alone at one of the cafeteria tables, Miss Mijares did not look 34. She
was slight, almost bony, but she had learned early how to dress herself to achieve an illusion
of hips and bosom. She liked poufs and shirrings and little girlish pastel colors. On her bodice,
astride or lengthwise, there sat an inevitable row of thick camouflaging ruffles that made her
look almost as though she had a bosom, if she bent her shoulders slightly and
inconspicuously drew her neckline open to puff some air into her bodice.
Her brow was smooth and clear and she was always pushing off it the hair she kept
in tight curls at night. She had thin cheeks, small and angular, falling down to what would
have been a nondescript, receding chin, but Nature's hand had erred and given her a jaw
instead. When displeased, she had a lippy, almost sensual pout, surprising on such a small
face.
So while not exactly an ugly woman, she was no beauty. She teetered precariously
on the border line to which belonged countless others who you found, if they were not working
at some job, in the kitchen of some married sister's house shushing a brood of devilish little
nephews.
And yet Miss Mijares did think of love. Secret, short-lived thoughts flitted through her
mind in the jeepneys she took to work when a man pressed down beside her and through
her dress she felt the curve of his thigh; when she held a baby in her arms, a married friend's
baby or a relative's, holding in her hands the tiny, pulsing body, what thoughts did she not
think, her eyes straying against her will to the bedroom door and then to her friend's laughing,
talking face, to think: how did it look now, spread upon a pillow, unmasked of the little
wayward coquetries, how went the lines about the mouth and beneath the eyes: (did they
close? did they open?) in the one final, fatal coquetry of all? To finally, miserably bury her
face in the baby's hair. And in the movies, to sink into a seat as into an embrace, in the
darkness with a hundred shadowy figures about her and high on the screen, a man kissing a
woman's mouth while her own fingers stole unconsciously to her unbruised lips.
When she was younger, there had been other things to do--- College to finish, a
niece to put through school, a mother to care for.
She had gone through all these with singular patience, for it had seemed to her that
love stood behind her, biding her time, a quiet hand upon her shoulder (I wait. Do not despair)
so that if she wished she had but to turn from her mother's bed to see the man and all her
timid, pure dreams would burst into glory. But it had taken her parent many years to die.
Towards the end, it had become a thankless chore, kneading her mother's loose flesh, hour
after hour, struggling to awaken the cold, sluggish blood in her drying body. In the end, she
had died --- her toothless, thin-haired, flabby-fleshed mother --- and Miss Mijares had pushed
against the bed in grief and also in gratitude. But neither love nor glory stood behind her, only
the empty shadows, and nine years gone, nine years. In the room for her unburied dead, she
had held up her hands to the light, noting the thick, durable fingers, thinking in a mixture of
shame and bitterness and guilt that they had never touched a man.
When she returned to the bleak replacement office, the man stood by a window, his
back to her, half-bending over something he held in his hands. "Here," she said, approaching,
"have you signed this?"
"Yes," he replied, facing her.
In his hands, he held her paperweight, an old gift from long ago, a heavy wooden
block on which stood, as though poised for flight, an undistinguished, badly done bird. It had
come apart recently. The screws beneath the block had loosened so that lately it had stood
upon her desk with one wing tilted unevenly, a miniature eagle or swallow? Felled by time
before it could spread its wings. She had laughed and laughed that day it had fallen on her
desk, plop! "What happened? What happened?" they had asked her, beginning to laugh, and

she had said, caught between amusement and sharp despair, "Someone shot it," and she
had laughed and laughed till faces turned and eyebrows rose and she told herself, whoa, get
a hold, a hold, a hold!
He had turned it and with a penknife tightened the screws and dusted it. In this man's
hands, cupped like that, it looked suddenly like a dove.
She took it away from him and put it down on her table. Then she picked up his paper
and read it.
He was a high school graduate. He was also a carpenter.
He was not starved, like the rest. His clothes, though old, were pressed and she
could see the cuffs of his shirt buttoned and wrapped about big, strong wrists.
"I heard about this place," he said, "From a friend you got a job at the pier." Seated,
he towered over her, "I'm not starving yet," he said with a quick smile. "I still got some money
from that last job, but my team broke up after that and you got too many jobs if you're working
alone. You know carpentering," he continued, "you can't finish a job quickly enough if you got
to do the planning and sawing and nailing all by your lone self. You got to be on a team."
Perhaps he was not meaning to be impolite? But for a jobseeker, Miss Mijares
thought, he talked too much and without call. He was bursting all over with an obtruding
insolence that at once disarmed and annoyed her.
So then she drew a slip and wrote his name on it. "Since you are not starving yet,"
she said, speaking in English now, wanting to put him in his place, "you will not mind working
in our woodcraft section, three times a week at two-fifty to four a day, depending on your skill
and the foreman's discretion, for two or three months after which there might be a call from
outside we may hold for you."
"Thank you," he said.
He came on the odd days, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.
She was often down at the shanty that housed their bureau's woodcraft, talking with
Ato, his foreman, going over with him the list of old hands due for release. They hired their
men on a rotation basis and three months was the longest one could stay.
"The new one there, hey," Ato said once. "We're breaking him in proper." And he
looked across several shirted backs to where he stopped, planing what was to become the
side of a bookcase.
How much was he going to get? Miss Mijares asked Ato on Wednesday. "Three,"
the old man said, chewing away on a cud. She looked at the list in her hands, quickly running
a pencil down. "But he's filling a four-peso vacancy," she said. "Come now," surprised that
she should wheedle so, "give him the extra peso." "Only a half," the stubborn foreman shook
his head, "three-fifty."
"Ato says I have you to thank," he said, stopping Miss Mijares along a pathway in
the compound.
It was noon, that unhappy hour of the day when she was oldest, tiredest, when it
seemed the sun put forth cruel fingers to search out the signs of age on her thin, pinched
face. The crow's feet showed unmistakably beneath her eyes and she smiled widely to cover
them up and aquinting a little, said, "Only a half-peso --- Ato would have given it to you
eventually."
"Yes, but you spoke for me," he said, his big body heaving before her. "Thank you,
though I don't need it as badly as the rest, for to look at me, you would knew I have no wife -
-- yet."
She looked at him sharply, feeling the malice in his voice. "I'd do it for any one," she
said and turned away, angry and also ashamed, as though he had found out suddenly that
the ruffles on her dress rested on a flat chest.
The following week, something happened to her: she lost her way home.
Miss Mijares was quite sure she had boarded the right jeepneys but the driver,
hoping to beat traffic, had detoured down a side alley, and then seeing he was low on gas,
he took still another shortcut to a filling station. After that, he rode through alien country.
The houses were low and dark, the people shadowy, and even the driver, who earlier
had been an amiable, talkative fellow, now loomed like a sinister stranger over the wheel.
Through it all, she sat tightly, feeling oddly that she had dreamed of this that some night not
very long ago, she had taken a ride in her sleep and lost her way. Again and again, in that

dream, she had changed direction, losing her way each time, for something huge and
bewildering stood blocking the old, familiar road home.
But that evening, she was lost only for a while. The driver stopped at a corner that
looked like a little known part of the boulevard she passed each day and she alighted and
stood on a street island, the passing headlights playing on her, a tired, shaken woman, the
ruffles on her skirt crumpled, the hemline of her skirt awry.
The new hand was absent for a week. Miss Mijares waited on that Tuesday he first
failed to report for some word from him sent to Ato and then to her. That was regulation.
Briefly though they were held, the bureau jobs were not ones to take chances with. When a
man was absent and he sent no word, it upset the system. In the absence of a definite notice,
someone else who needed a job badly was kept away from it.
"I went to the province, ma'am," he said, on his return.
"You could have sent someone to tell us," she said.
"It was an emergency, ma'am," he said. "My son died."
"How so?"
A slow bitter anger began to form inside her. "But you said you were not married!"
"No, ma'am," he said gesturing.
"Are you married?" she asked loudly.
"No, ma'am."
"But you have -- you had a son!" she said.
"I am not married to his mother," he said, grinning stupidly, and for the first time she
noticed his two front teeth were set widely apart. A flush had climbed to his face, suffusing it,
and two large throbbing veins crawled along his temples.
She looked away, sick all at once.
"You should told us everything," she said and she put forth hands to restrain her
anger but it slipped away she stood shaking despite herself.
"I did not think," he said.
"Your lives are our business here," she shouted.
It rained that afternoon in one of the city's fierce, unexpected thunder-storms. Without
warning, it seemed to shine outside Miss Mijares' window a gray, unhappy look.
It was past six when Miss Mijares, ventured outside the office. Night had come swiftly
and from the dark sky the thick, black, rainy curtain continued to fall. She stood on the curb,
telling herself she must not lose her way tonight. When she flagged a jeepney and got in,
somebody jumped in after her. She looked up into the carpenter's faintly smiling eyes. She
nodded her head once in recognition and then turned away.
The cold tight fear of the old dream was upon her. Before she had time to think, the
driver had swerved his vehicle and swung into a side street. Perhaps it was a different alley
this time. But it wound itself in the same tortuous manner as before, now by the banks of
overflowing esteros, again behind faintly familiar buildings. She bent her tiny, distraught face,
conjuring in her heart the lonely safety of the street island she had stood on for an hour that
night of her confusion.
"Only this far, folks," the driver spoke, stopping his vehicle. "Main Street’s a block
straight ahead."
"But it's raining," someone protested.
"Sorry. But if I got into a traffic, I won't come out of it in a year. Sorry."
One by one the passengers got off, walking swiftly, disappearing in the night.
Miss Mijares stepped down to a sidewalk in front of a boarded store. The wind had
begun again and she could hear it whipping in the eaves above her head. "Ma'am," the man's
voice sounded at her shoulders, "I am sorry if you thought I lied."
She gestured, bestowing pardon.
Up and down the empty, rain-beaten street she looked. It was as though all at once
everyone else had died and they were alone in the world, in the dark.
In her secret heart, Miss Mijares' young dreams fluttered faintly to life, seeming
monstrous in the rain, near this man --- seeming monstrous but sweet overwhelming. I must
get away, she thought wildly, but he had moved and brushed against her, and where his
touch had fallen, her flesh leaped, and she recalled how his hands had looked that first day,
lain tenderly on the edge of her desk and about the wooden bird (that had looked like a

moving, shining dove) and she turned to him with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the dark she
turned to him.

1. Setting
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2. Plot
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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Activity 2: Theme Connections

Directions: Answered the following questions to make a thematic connections.
1. What other novels, short stories, plays, films, or poems can you connect with this
story?
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2. What big ideas are presented in the text?
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3. What connections can you make with the story and historical or current events?
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4. What motifs or repeated elements seem to come up frequently throughout the text?
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5. What do you notice about symbols in the story?
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6. What major changes do characters in the story experience?
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7. What passages in the text stand out as very important?
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8. What is the moral of the story?
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9. What lesson can you take from the story and pull into your own real life?
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Activity 3: Character Analysis: STEAL Process

Directions: Use evidence from the story to answer the prompts.
S (speech)
What important thing does the character (Ms. Mijares) say that make you
understand what she is like?
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T (thoughts)
What are her thoughts and what do they say about the kind of person that this she
is?
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E (effects on others)
What do other people think about her? Write about it.
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A (actions)
What does she do that shows the kind of person that she is?
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L (looks)
What does she look like?
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Write a short description about Ms. Mijares using all the information that you have
gathered. Make sure to tell how it relates to the story.
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THE DOG-EATERS
Leoncio P. Deriada
Leoncio P. Deriada was born in Iloilo but spent most of his life in Davao. He is a multi-lingual
writer having produced works in English, Filipino, Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a and Cebuano. His
seventeen Palanca Awards include works in English, Filipino and Hiligaynon. Of these seventeen,
five are first-prize winners, and these include "The Day of the Locusts" (Short Story, 1975), "Mutya
ng Saging" (Dulaang May Isang Yugto, 1987), "The Man Who Hated Birds" (Short Story for
Children, 1993), "Medea of Siquijor" (One-Act Play, 1999), and "Maragtas: How Kapinangan
Tricked Sumakwel Twice" (Full-Length Play, 2001). He became a Palanca Hall of Famer on
September 1, 2001. Aside from his Palanca awards, he has garnered other prestigious awards such as
the Gawad CCP para sa Sining, Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas (awarded by the Unyon
ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas), Asiaweek, Graphic, Focus, Yuhum Magazine (Iloilo), and Blue
Knight Award from Ateneo de Davao for Outstanding Achievement in Literature.
Mariana looked out of the window toward the other side of Artiaga Street. A group of
men had gathered around a low table in front of Sergio s san-san store. t was ten o’clock,
Tuesday morning. Yet these men did not find it too early to drink, and worse, they wanted
her husband to be with them.
Victor was now reaching for his shirt hooked on the wall between Nora Aunor and
Vilma Santos. Mariana turned to him, her eyes wild in repulsion and anger.
“Those filthy men!" she snarled. "Whose dog did they slaughter today?”
VIctor did not answer. He put on his shirt. Presently, he crawled on the floor and
searched tor his slippers under the table. Mariana watched him strain his body toward the
wall, among the rattan tools. He looked like a dog tracking the smell hidden carrion.
Victor found his slippers. He emerged from under the table, smoothed his pants and
unbuttoned his shirt. He was sweating. He looked at his wife and smiled faintly, the
expression sarcastic, and said in an attempt to be funny, “Its barbeque today.”
I’m not in the mood tor jokes!" Mariana raised her voice. "It's time you stop going with
those good-for-nothing scavengers."
Her words stung. For now she noted an angry glint in Victor’s eyes. “They are my
friends, Mariana” he said.
You should have married one of them!" she snapped back. Suddenly, she
straightened. She heard Sergio's raspy voice, calling from his store across the street. It was
an ugly voice, and it pronounced Victors name in a triumphant imitation of a dog's bark.
Victor! Victor! Aw! Aw! The canine grow floated across Artiaga Street. Mariana glared
at her husband as he brushed her aside on his way to the window. She felt like clawing his
face, biting his arms, ripping the smelly shirt off his back. “I’m coming,” Victor answered,
leaning out of the window. Mariana opened her mouth for harsher invectives but a sharp cry
from the bedroom arrested her. It was her baby. She rushed to the table, picked a cold bottle
of milk, and entered the room.
In his rattan crib that looked like a rats nest, the baby cried louder. Mariana shook the
crib vehemently. The baby all mouth and all legs - thrust in awkward arms into the air, blindly
searching for accustomed nipple.
The baby sucked the rubber nipple noisily. But Marianas mind was outside the room
as she watched her husband lean out of the window to answer the invitation of the dog-eaters
of Artiaga Street.
"Aren't you inviting your wife?" she spoke loud, the hostility in her voice unchecked
by the dirty plywood wall. "Perhaps your friends have reserved the best morsel for me. Which
is the most delicious part of a dog, ha, Victor? Its heart? Its liver? Its brain? Blood? Bone?
Ears? Tongue? Tail? I wish to God you'd all die of hydrophobia!"
"Can you feed the baby and talk at the same time?" Victor said. She did not expect
him to answer and now that he had, she felt angrier. The heat from the unceilinged roof had
become terrible and it had all seeped into her head. She was ready for a fight.
The baby had gone back to sleep. Mariana dashed out of the room, her right hand
tight around the empty bottle. She had to have a weapon. She came upon her husband

opening the door to little porch. The porch was at the top of the stairs that led out into Artiaga
Street.
"Why don't you do something instead of drinking their stinking tuba and eating that
filthy meat? Why don't you decent for a change?"
Victor turned her off. It seemed he was also ready for a fight. The glint in his eyes had
become sinister.
And what's so indecent about eating dog meat?" His voice sounded canine, too, like
Sergio's. "The people of Artiaga Street have been eating dog meat for as long as I can
remember."
"No wonder their manners have gone to the dogs!"
"You married one of them."
"Yes, to lead a dog's life!"
Victor stepped closer, breathing hard. Marina did not move.
"What's eating you?" he demanded.
"What's eating me?" she yelled. "Dog's! I'm ready to say aw-aw, don't you know?"
Victor repaired his face, amused by this type of quarrel. Again, he tried to be funny.
"Come, come, Mariana darling," he said, smiling condescendingly.
Mariana was not amused. She was all set to proceed with the fight. Now she tried to
be acidly ironic.
“Shall I slaughter Ramir for you? That pet of yours does nothing but bark at strangers
and dirty the doorstep. Perhaps you can invite your friends tonight. Let’s celebrate.”
“Leave Ramir alone,” Victor said, seriously.
“That dog is enslaving me!”
Victor turned to the door. It was the final insult, Mariana thought. The bastard! How
dare he turn his back on her?
“Punyeta!” she screeched and flung the bottle at her husband. Instinctively, Victor
turned and parried the object with his arm. The bottle fell to the floor but did not break. It
rolled noisily under the table where Victor moment had hunted for his rubber slippers.
He looked at her, but there was no reaction in his face. Perhaps he thought it was all
a joke. He opened the door and stepped out into the street.
Mariana ran to the door and banged it once, twice, thrice, all the while shrieking, “Go!
Eat and drink until your tongue hangs like a mad dog’s. Then I’ll call a veterinarian.”
Loud after came across the street.
Mariana leaned out of the window and shouted to the men gathered in front of Sergio’s
store. “Why don’t you leave my husband alone? You dogs!”
The men laughed louder, obscenely. Their voices offended the ears just as the stench
from the garbage dump at the Artiaga-Mabini junction offended the nostrils. There were five
other men aside from the chief drinker, Sergio. Downing a gallon of tuba at ten o’clock in the
morning with of Artiaga’s idle men was his idea of brotherhood. It was good for his store, he
thought, though his wife languish behind the row of glass jars and open cartons of dried fish
– the poor woman deep in notebooks of unpaid bills the neighbors had accumulated these
last two years.
Mariana closed the window. The slight darkening of the room intensified the heat on
the roof and in her head. She pulled a stool and sat beside the sewing machine under the
huge pictures of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, under the altar-like alcove on the wall where
a transistor radio was enshrined like an idol.
She felt tired. Once again, her eyes surveyed the room with repulsion. She had stayed
in this rented house for two years, tried to paste pictures on the wall, hung up classic curtains
that could not completely ward off the stink from the street. Instead of cheering up the house,
they made it sadder, emphasizing the lack of the things she had dreamed of having when
she eloped with Victor two years ago.
Victor was quite attractive. When he was teen-ager, he was a member of the Gregory
Body Building Club on Cortes Street. He dropped out of freshmen year at Harvadian and
instead developed his chest and biceps at the club. His was to be Mr. Philippines, until one
day, Gregory cancelled his membership. Big Boss Gregory - who was not interested in girls
but in club members with the proportions of Mr. Philippines – had discovered that Victor was
dating a manicurist named Fely.

Victor found work as a bouncer at Three Diamonds, a candlelit bar at the end of
Artiaga, near Jacinto Street. All the hostesses there were Fely’s customers. Mariana, who
came from a better neighborhood, was a third year BSE student at Rizal Memorial Colleges.
They eloped during the second semester, the very week Fey drowned in the pool behind
Three Diamonds.
Just as Mariana grew heavy with a child, Victor lost his job at the bar. He quarrelled
with the manager. An uncle working in a construction company found him a new job. But he
showed up only when the man did not report for work.
These last few days, not one of the carpenters got sick. So Victor had to stay home.
Mariana felt a stirring in her womb. She felt her belly with both hands. Her tight faded
dress could not quite conceal this most unwanted pregnancy. The baby in the crib in the other
room was only eight months, and here she was - carrying another child.
She closed her eyes and pressed her belly hard. She felt the uncomfortable swell,
and in a moment, she had ridiculous thought. What if she bore a pair or a trio of puppies?
She imagined herself as a dog, a spent bitch with hind legs spread out obscenely as her litter
of three, or four, or five, fought for her tits while the mongrel who was responsible for all this
misery flirted with the other dogs of the neighborhood.
A dog barked. Mariana was startled. It was Ramir. His chain clanked and she could
picture the dog going up the stairs, his lethal fangs bared in terrible growl.
“Ay, ay, Mariana!” a familiar, nervous voice rose from the din. “Your dog! He’ll bite
me. Shoo! Shoo!”
It was Aling Elpidia, the fish and vegetable vendor.
“Stay away from the beast, Aling Elpidia!” Mariana shouted. She opened the door. Aling
Elpidia was in the little yard, her hands nervously holding her basket close to her like a shield.
Ramir was at the bottom of the stairs, straining at his chain, barking at the old woman.
Mariana pulled the chain. The dog resisted. But soon he relaxed and stopped barking.
He ran upstairs, encircled Mariana once, and then sniffed her hands.
“Come on up, Aling Elpidia. Don’t be afraid. I’m holding Ramir’s leash.”
The old woman rushed upstairs, still shielding herself with her basket of fish and
vegetables.
“Naku, Mariana. Why do you keep that crazy dog at the door? He’ll bite a kilo off every
visitor. The last time I was here I almost had a heart attack.”
“That’s Victor’s idea of a house guard. Come, sit down.”
Aling Elpidia dragged a stool to the window. “Why, I’m still trembling!” she said. “Why
must you close the window, Mariana?”
Mariana opened the window. “Those horrible men across the street, I can’t stand their
noise.”
“Where’s Victor?”
“There!” Mariana said contemptuously. “With them.”
The old woman looked out of the window.
“He is one of them!”
“One of what?”
“The dog-eaters of Artiaga Street!” Mariana spat out the words, her eyes wild in anger.
Aling Elpidia sat down again. “What is so terrible about that?” she asked.
Mariana looked at the old woman. For the first time she noticed that Aling Elpidia had
been dying her hair. But the growth of hair this week had betrayed her.
“Do you eat dog meat, Aling Elpidia?” Mariana asked.
“It’s better than goat’s meat: And a dog is definitely cleaner than a pig. With the price
of pork and beef as high as Mount Apo – one would rather eat dog meat. How’s the baby?”
“Asleep.”
Aling Elpidia picked up her basket from the floor. “Here’s your day’s supply of
vegetables. I also brought some bangus. Cook Victor a pot of sinigang and he’ll forget the
most delicious chunk of aw-aw meat. Go, get a basket.”
Mariana went to the kitchen to get a basket as Aling Elpidia busied herself sorting out
the vegetables.
“I hope you haven’t forgotten the green mangoes and – and that thing you promised
me,” Mariana said, laying her basket on the floor.

“I brought all of them,” assured the old woman. She began transferring the vegetables
and fish into Mariana’s basket. Mariana helped her.
“I haven’t told Victor anything,” Mariana said in a low, confidential tone.
“He does not have to know,” Aling Elpidia said.
The old woman produced from the bottom of the basket a tall bottle filled with a dark
liquid and some leaves and tiny, gnarled roots. She held the bottle against the light. Mariana
regarded it with interest and horror.
“I’m afraid, Aling Elpidia,” she whispered.
“Nonsense. Go, take these vegetables to the kitchen.”
Mariana sped to the kitchen. Aling Elpidia moved to the table, pushed the dish rack
that held some five or six tin plates, and set the bottle beside a plastic tumbler that contained
spoon and forks. She pulled a stool from beneath the table and sat down. Soon Mariana was
beside her.
“Is it effective?” Mariana asked nervously.
“Very effective. Come on let me touch you.”
Mariana stood directly in front of the old woman, her belly her belly almost touching
the vendor’s face. Aling Elpidia felt Mariana’s belly with both hands.
“Three months did you say, Mariana?”
“Three months and two weeks.”
“Are you sure you don’t want this child?” Aling Elpidia asked one hand flat on
Mariana’s belly. “It feels so healthy.”
“I don’t want another child,” Mariana said. And to stress the finality of her decision,
she grabbed the bottle and stepped away from the old woman. The bottle looked like atrophy
in her hand.
“Well, it’s your decision,” Aling Elpidia said airily. “The bottle is yours.”
“Is it bitter?”
“Yes.” Mariana squirmed. “How shall I take this?”
“A spoonful before you sleeps in the evening and another spoonful after breakfast.”
“May I take it with a glass of milk or a bottle of coke?”
“No. You must take it pure.”
“It’s not dangerous, is it, Aling Elpidia?”
“Don’t you worry. It is bitter but it is harmless. It will appear as an accident. Like falling
down the stairs. Moreover, there will be less pain and blood.”
“Please come every day. Things might go wrong.”
Aling Elpidia nodded and stood up. “I think I must go now,” she said. Then she lowered
her voice and asked, “Do you have the money?”
“Yes, yes,” Mariana said. She went to the sewing machine and opened a drawer. She
handed Aling Epidia some crumpled bills.
The vendor counted the bills expertly, and then dropped the little bundle into her
breast. She picked up her basket and walked to the door. Suddenly she stopped. “Your dog,
Mariana.” Her voice became nervous again.
Mariana held Ramir’s leash as the old woman hurried down the stairs. “You may start
taking it tonight.” It was her last piece of medical advice.
Loud laughter rose from the store across the street. Mariana stiffened. Her anger
returned. Then her baby cried.
She hurried to the bedroom. The tall bottle looked grotesque on the table: tiny, gnarled
roots seemed to twist like worms or miniature umbilical cords. With a shudder, she glanced
at the bottle. The sharp cry became louder. Mariana rushed inside and discovered that the
baby had wetted its clothes.
She heard somebody coming up the stairs. It must be Victor. Ramir did not bark.
“Mariana!” Victor called out. “Mariana!”
“Quiet!” she shouted back. “The baby’s going back to sleep.”
The house had become hotter. Mariana went out of the bedroom, ready to resume
the unfinished quarrel. Victor was now in the room, sweating and red-eyed. He had taken off
his shirt and his muscular body glistened wit animal attractiveness. But now Mariana was in
a different type of heat.
“I met that old witch Elpidia,” Victor said, “What did she bring you today?”
“The same things. Vegetables. Some fish.”

“Fish! Again?”
“You are drunk!”
“I’m not drunk. Come Mariana dear. Let me hold you.”
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “You stink!”
Victor moved back, offended. “I don’t stink and I’m not drunk.”
Mariana stepped closer to her husband. He smelled of cheap pomade, onions, and
vinegar.
“Do you have to be like this all the time? Quarreling every day? Why don’t you get a
steady job like any decent husband? You would be out the whole day, and perhaps, I would
miss you.”
“You don’t have to complain,” Victor said roughly. “True, my work is not permanent
but I think we have enough. We are not starving, are we?”
“You call this enough?” her hands gesticulated madly. “You call this rat’s nest, this
hell of a neighborhood – enough? You call these tin plates, this plastic curtains – enough?
This is not the type of life I expect. I should have continued school. You fooled me!”
“I thought you understood. I-“
“No, no I didn’t understand. And still I don’t understand why you – you –“
“Let’s not quarrel,” Victor said abruptly. I don’t want to quarrel with you.”
“But I want to quarrel with you!” Mariana shouted.
“Be reasonable.”
“You are not reasonable. You never tried to please me. You would rather be with your
stinking friends and drink their dirty wine and eat their dirty meat. Oh, how I hate it, Victor!”
“What do you want me to do – stay here and boil the baby’s milk?”
“I wish you would!”
“That’s your job. You’re a woman.”
“Oh, how are you admire yourself for being a man,” Mariana sneered in utter sarcasm.
“You miserable-“
“Don’t yell. You wake up the baby.”
“To hell with your baby!”
“You are mad, Mariana.”
“And so I’m mad. I’m mad because I don’t eat dog meat. I’m mad because I want my
husband to make a man of himself, I’m mad because – “
“Stop it!”
“Punyeta!”
“Relax, Mariana. You are excited. That’s not good for you. I want my second baby
healthy.”
“There will be no second baby.”
“What do you mean?”
“You met Aling Elpidia on your way.”
“And what did that witch do? Curse my baby? Is a vampire?”
“She came to help me.”
Mariana went to the table and snatched the bottle. She held high in Victor’s face. “See
this, Victor?” she taunted him.
Victor was not interested. “You don’t want me to drink tuba, and here you are with a
bottle of sioktong.”
“How dull you are!” her lips twisted in derision. “See those leaves? See those roots?
They are very potent, Victor.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One spoonful in the morning and one spoonful in the evening. It’s bitter, Victor, but I
will bear it.”
Like a retarded, Victor stared at his wife. Then the truth dawned upon him and
exclaimed in horror, “What? What? My baby!”
Mariana faced her husband squarely. “Yes! And I’m not afraid!” she jeered.
“You won’t do it.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Give me that bottle.”
“No!” “What kind of woman are you?”
“And what kind of man are you?”

“It’s my baby!”
“It’s mine. I have the right to dispose of it, I don’t want another child.”
“Why, Mariana, why?”
“Because you cannot afford it! What would you feed your another child, ha, Victor?
Tuba milk? Dog meat for rice?”
“We shall manage, Mariana. Everything will be all right.”
“Sure, sure, everything will be all right – for you. I don’t believe in that anymore.”
“Give me that bottle!”
“No!”
They grappled for a moment. Mariana fought like an untamed animal. At last Victor
took hold the bottle. He pushed his wife against the wall and ran to the window, his right hand
holding the bottle above his head.
And like a man possessed, he hurled the bottle out f the window. The crash of the
glass against the gravel on the road rendered Mariana speechless. But she recovered. She
dashed to the window and gave out almost inhuman scream at what she saw. The bottle was
broken into countless splinters and the dark liquid stained the dry gravel street. Bits of leaves
and roots stuck to the dust. Presently, a dog came along and sniffed the wet ground
suspiciously, then left with his tail between his legs.
Mariana screamed again in horror and frustration. In the glare of the late morning sun
she had a momentary image of the men – now faceless and voiceless – in front of the store
across the street. This time they did not laugh, but they watched her from certain blankness.
She turned to her husband and flung herself at him, raising her arms, her fingers poised like
claws. She scratched his face and pounded his chest with her fists.
“Damn you! Damn you!” she shrieked in fury.
Victor caught her arms and shook her. “Stop it, Mariana!” he mumbled under his
breath. “Let me go! You are hurting me!”
“Behave you woman!” Victor shook her harder.
Mariana spat on his face. Then she bit on the right arm. She spat again, for she had
a quick taste of salt and dirt.
Victor released her. She moved back, her uncontrollable rage shaking her. “You threw
it away! You destroy it! I paid forty pesos for it and it’s not your money!”
“Forty pesos,” Victor murmured. “That is a lot of milk.”
Mariana caught her breath. She allowed dryly and said, “What do you want me to do
now – cut children’s dresses?”
“You are unnatural. You don’t act like a mother, you want to kill your own child.”
“It’s my own child.”
“It’s murder!”
“Nobody will know.”
“I will know. You will know. And God – and God – will know!”
“Ahhh!” Mariana sneered contemptuously. “Now who’s talking? When was the last
time you went to church, ha Victor? That was the time the Legion of Mary brought us to
Fatima Church to be married and you fought with the priest in the confessional. And now here
you are mentioning God’s name to me.”
“Please, please, Mariana,” Victor was begging now. “That’s our child!” “I told you I
didn’t want another child. You broke that bottle but I’ll look for other means. I’ll starve myself.
I’ll jump out of the window. I’ll fall down the stairs.”
“Mariana!”
“You cannot afford to buy pills or hire a doctor.”
“I want my child.”
“You men can talk because you don’t have to bear the children. You coward!”
“Shut up!”
Victor raised his hand to strike her. Mariana offered her face, daring him to complete
his own humiliation. Victor dropped his hand. He was lost, totally unmanned.
A bit of his male vanity stirred inside him. He raised his hand again, but Mariana was
quick with the nearest weapon. She seized a stool with both hands, and with the strength all
her arms could muster, throws the stool at him. Victor caught the object with his strong
shoulder. The stool dropped to the floor as Mariana made ready with another weapon, a vase
of plastic flowers.

“Go away from me! Get out! Get out!”

Victor went out of the room. Mariana was left panting, giving vent to her anger by
pulling down the plastic curtains and the printed cover of the sewing machine. She stooped
to the table and with a furious sweep of her hand, cleared it of dish rack, tin plates, spoons,
and forks. Then she went to the kitchen and tossed the basket of vegetables and fish out of
the kitchen window. A trio of dogs rushed in from nowhere and fought over the fish strewn in
the muddy space under the sink.
Then Ramir barked.
“Shut up, you miserable dog!”
Ramir continued barking. Mariana paused. Ramir, she taught. Victor’s dog. A cruel
thought crossed her mind and stayed there. Now she knew exactly what to do.
She reached for the big kitchen knife of a shelf above the sink. Kicking the scattered
tin plates on the floor, she crossed the main room to the porch.
Downstairs, Ramir was barking at some object in the street. Noticing Mariana’s
presence, he stopped barking. Mariana stared at the dog. The dog stared back, and Mariana
noticed the change in the animal’s eyes. They became fiery, dangerous. My God, Mariana
thought. This creature knew!
Ramir’s ears stood. The hair on the back of its neck stood, too. Then he bared his
fangs viscously and growled.
Mariana dropped the knife. She did not know how to use it at this moment. She was
beginning to be afraid.
Slowly, she climbed up the stairs. He moved softly but menacingly. Like a hunter
sizing up his quarry. His yellowing fangs dropped with saliva.
Meanwhile, Mariana was untying the chain on the top of the stairs.
And the dog rushed into the roaring attack. Quicker than she thought she was,
Mariana slipped the end of the chain under the makeshift railing of the stairway and pulled
the leash with all her might. As she had expected, the dog hurtled into the space between
the broken banisters and fell. The weight of the animal pulled her to her knees, but she was
prepared for that, too. She braced herself against the rails of the porch, and now, the dog
was dangling below her.
A crowd had now gathered in front of the house to witness the unexpected execution.
But Mariana neither saw their faces nor heard their voices.
Ramir gave a final yelp and stopped kicking the air.
Mariana laughed deliriously. She watches the hanging animal and addressed it in
triumph: “I’ll slit your throat and drink your blood and cut you to pieces and stew you and eat
you! Damn you Victor. Damn this child. Damn everything. I’ll cook you, Ramir. I’ll cook you
and eat you and eat you and eat you!”
She released the chain and the canine carcass dropped with a thud on the ground
below.
Mariana sat on the topmost step of the stairs; she put her hands between her legs
and stared blankly at the rusty rooftops in front of her. And for the first in all her life on the
Artiaga Street, Mariana cried.

1. Setting
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2. Theme
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3. Conflict
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4. Characterization
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5. Symbolism/s
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6. Tone
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7. Mood
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Directions: Answered the following questions to make a thematic connections.
1. What made Mariana decide to abort her baby?

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2. What was the reaction of Victor when he knew the plan of Mariana?
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3. What was the cause of the frequent quarrel of Mariana and Victor?
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4. Why did Mariana stab their dog to death?

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5. If you were in Mariana’s position are you going to do the same actions as she did?
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6. What is the moral of the story?
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Activity 3: Fill Me
Directions: Fill the plot diagram below.
PLOT DIAGRAM
EXPOSITION
RISING
ACTION
CONFLICT
CLIMAX
FALLING
ACTION
RESOLUTION

SONG OF MY SEVEN LOVERS

Translated by Frank Charles Laubach
Frank Charles Laubach was an Evangelical Christian missionary and mystic known as
"The Apostle to the Illiterates." In 1935, while working at a remote location in the
Philippines, he developed the "Each One Teach One" literacy program. Laubach had a deep
interest in the Philippines. He wrote a biography of the Filipino national hero, Jose Rizal:
Man and Martyr, published in Manila in 1936. He also translated the hero's valedictory
poem, "Mi Ultimo Adios" (My Last Farewell.) He was considered a pioneer mover of
Maranao literature.
I
I crave your pardon, Royal Kin,
Whose praises cheer my heart so well,
If I should wound some friends by
The story which I mean to tell.
II
Deep loves which I alone have known
I venture to reveal to you.
They echo here within my heart
.As fond desire will ever do
III
When first I felt the darts of love,
The words of women worried me,
The whispered scandals which they told
I closed my ears and turned to flee.
IV
A thousand longings tore my soul
And left me in perplexity,
For how could I reveal my love
To those who did not care for me?
V
A thousand aching memories,
I think shall never be forgot,
Still whisper to me in the air
Of loves for those who loves me not
VI
Mere fancies all within my mind,
They changed their shapes like shifting sands.
Alas, the men for whom I pined
Had other loves in other lands.
VII
My first love was a hidden sun,
A dawn which never came to day,
But like a lovely know of hair,
It fluttered loose and fell away.
VIII
My second love was ecstasy,
A glorious glowing hidden fire

Which burned within my secret breast;

No other guessed my deep desire
IX
A golden song of perfect tone
Whose notes were lost within my heart;
Another knot of lovely hair
Which I trembled loose and fell apart.
X
My third love was a letter sweet,
A letter sealed but never sent,
Contrived of futile fantasies,
And all my hours to love ware lent.
XI
Ah! Had I dared I would have shared
A name for which I madly cared;
For never a thought was bent on aught
Save him who held my mind ensnared.
XII
My lover was my cousin too
And so no word was ever said
We could not speak the thing we felt
For plainly we could never be wed.
XIII
And so he chose to marry wealth
And took a bride or noble rank,
While I beheld without a tear
To tell the bitter cup I drank.
XIV
My fourth love fills me yet with joy
As recollections flood my mind,
For he was rich enough to give
Great wedding gifts of every kind
XV
He did not dare to tell his love
Because, no doubt, he was too shy,
And my high parents seemed to him
Like mountain peaks against the sky.
XVI
Besides his heart was also drawn
By some fair maiden we have heard,
Who shone like moonlight in his eyes,
And whom his relatives preferred.
XVII
The Prophet grant that no sad fate
May rob him of his maiden’s hand;
And though we are so poor we hope
To spread his fame throughout the land.

XVIII
My fifth love was a sweet perfume
Which set my eager mind a whirl;
A fragrant flower which faded fast;
His parents chose another girl.
XIX
My sixth love was a strong south wind
Which gently fanned this breast of mine
Till dark clouds gathered in the south
And soon the sun cease to shine.
XX
Did he not swear his love was sure
And constant as the ardent sun?
Ah, fickle sun and dreary end
That so brightly had begun.
XXI
My seventh love is stronger still
A north wind blowing over the seas
And whipping for off unknown waves,
While sunbeams dance upon the breeze.
XXII
Will now at last my dreams come true,
And will he choose me for his mate?
Has holy Prophet written it
Across the pages of our fate?
XXIII
If people’s hopes could be fulfilled?
If he who loves would speak the word,
Such crowds would gather to rejoice,
Their shouts like thunder would be heard.
XXIV
Oh, how the sun might beam with smiles,
Oh, how our kin would be glad
Oh, how the world would ring with song,
If I should wed this royal lad!
XXV
Yet round the sun deep colors creep;
And though he loves with splendid fire
And vows his will is firm as rock,
I tremble lest he too may tire.
XXVI
Sore doubts about our hostile kin
Assail my mind with painful dread
There is an ancient song which
A noble Prophet wisely said:
XXVII
“What comes of feud between two clans
Who will not speak save to condemn,
Who hurt defiance till the last?

A God who sees will punish them.
”XXVIII
My dream is like a fog at sea
Which tries to reach the land in vain,
For earthquakes and the tidal waves
Keep driving it to sea again.
XXIX
So while he waits and hesitates
His chance of winning fame slips by
Ah! Should he dare I firmly swear
My love for him would never die,
XXX
For if the ship should venture forth,
Then I would weave a happy plot,
And conjure up some potent charm
That evil winds could harm it not.


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1. How can you describe the emotion of the persona in the first six stanzas of the poem?
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2. As the poem moves, how does this emotion intensify?
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3. What particular truth does the poem uphold?
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4. What specific symbols represent the characteristics of Lanao and its people?
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5. What do you think are the inferred meanings of “My Seven Lover”?
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HOW MY BROTHER LEON BROUGHT HOME A WIFE

Manuel E. Arguilla
MANUEL E. ARGUILLA (1911-1944) was an Ilocano who wrote in English. He was

best known for his short story "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife." which
received first price in the Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940.
She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She
was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on
a level with his mouth.
"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were
long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom.
And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom
I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang,
and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more
cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.
I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his
forehead now."
She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came
and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing
his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead
very daintily.
My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca
Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing
beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his
horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.
"Maria---" my brother Leon said.
He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called
her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a
beautiful name.
"Yes, Noel."
Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking
Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it
sounded much better that way.
"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.
She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said
quietly.
"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"
Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where
the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes
of the wheel.
We stood alone on the roadside.
The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and
deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the
southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through
which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun.
Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk,
glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.
He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth
seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in
answer.
"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with
him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.
"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."
"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull
call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's
neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so
full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek.
"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become
greatly jealous."
My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it
seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.
I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was
always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still,
so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my
brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top.
She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my
brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up
into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it
was all I could do to keep him from running away.
"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and
hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped
forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and
made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my
cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.
She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, Her skirts
spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. Her eyes were
on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my
brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the
rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.
"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.
I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we
went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from
the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up
overhead the sky burned with many slow fires.
When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig
which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a
hand on my shoulder and said sternly:
"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"
His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we
were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.
"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow
the Wait instead of the camino real?"
His fingers bit into my shoulder.
"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."
Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang.
Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:
"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him
instead of with Castano and the calesa."
Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think
Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars
before?"
I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands
clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of
the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the
white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in
the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated
earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the
hay inside the cart.
"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very
low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and
brightest in the sky.

"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell
you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"
"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times
bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."
"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."
"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.
"Making fun of me, Maria?"
She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand
and put it against her face.
I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart
between the wheels.
"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart
sant.
Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and
arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated
shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the
lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.
"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.
"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."
"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.
Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:
"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---
Manong."
"So near already."
I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her
voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited
for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke
out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang
when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her
the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting
a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in
her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.
Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the
light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became
more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes.
"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the
darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.
"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My
brother Leon stopped singing.
"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."
With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was
breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the
grassy side onto the camino real.
"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot
of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but
I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."
"Noel," she said.
"Yes, Maria."
"I am afraid. He may not like me."
"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he
might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution
is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."
We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did
not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I
thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins,
Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked
if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then
told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.

I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my
brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open
gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my
brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother
stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria
over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were:
"Father... where is he?"
"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is
bothering him again."
I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang.
But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon
going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my
sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.
There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big
armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but
he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the
windowsill before speaking.
"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.
"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."
He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.
"She is very beautiful, Father."
"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed
to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my
brother Leon around her shoulders.
"No, Father, she was not afraid."
"On the way---"
"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."
"What did he sing?"
"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."
He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia
downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice
must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the
windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and
vanish slowly into the night outside.
The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.
"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.
I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.
"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.
I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was
tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a
morning when papayas are in bloom.

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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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1. What was Baldo’s impression to Maria?

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2. What was his father’s purpose in asking Baldo to pass through the Waig instead of
Camino Real?
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3. Why it is important to Leon to introduce Maria to his family? Do you think that family
members who are getting married should do the same? Why or why not?
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4. What would you feel if your brother/sister comes home with a wife?
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Activity 3: Describing the Text

Directions: Give an initial reaction to the story and describe its general content and purpose.

LESSON 4
OBJECTIVES
1. give your point-of-view on the ideas presented in the quotation;

2. illustrate and explain the symbol of the story;
3. identify the lesson about life depicted in the story;
4. reflect on how superstition influenced people’s lives;
5. expressed ideas about the importance of valuing nationalism and preserving Filipino
traits; and
6. appreciate the literary pieces through answering various activities.
READ
THE SMALL KEY

Paz M. Latorena
Paz Latorena was born in Boac, Marinduque. Fictionist. Her works of fiction are included
in the Philippine Prose and Poetry series which are used as textbooks in public high schools.
Aside from “Sunset”, her best works include “Small Key”, inPhilippine Herald, in 1927;
“Myrrh”, in Graphic, 1931; “Years and a Day”, inTribune , 1936; and “Desire”, in Literary
Apprentice in 1937. All of them were included in Jose Garcia Villa’s roll of honor from
1926-1940. Latorena’s stories have a wistfulness which tells of a gentle disillusionment
with life. Many of her stories chronicle the unexpressed heartaches of women. There is
bitterness, however, but sadness over certain dreams left unfulfilled.
It was very warm. The sun, up above a sky that was blue and tremendous and
beckoning to birds ever on the wing, shone bright as if determined to scorch everything under
heaven, even the low, square nipa house that stood in an unashamed relief against the gray-
green haze of grass and leaves.
It was lonely dwelling located far from its neighbors, which were huddled close to one
another as if for mutual comfort. It was flanked on both sides by tall, slender bamboo tree
which rustled plaintively under a gentle wind.
On the porch a woman past her early twenties stood regarding the scene before her
with eyes made incurious by its familiarity. All around her the land stretched endlessly, it
seemed, and vanished into the distance. There were dark, newly plowed furrows where in
due time timorous seedling would give rise to sturdy stalks and golden grain, to a rippling
yellow sea in the wind and sun during harvest time. Promise of plenty and reward for hard
toil! With a sigh of discontent, however, the woman turned and entered a small dining room
where a man sat over a belated a midday meal.

Pedro Buhay, a prosperous farmer, looked up from his plate and smiled at his wife as
she stood framed by the doorway, the sunlight glinting on her dark hair, which was drawn
back, without relenting wave, from a rather prominent and austere brow.
“Where are the shirts I ironed yesterday?” she asked as she approached the table.
“In my trunk, I think,” he answered.
“Some of them need darning,” and observing the empty plate, she added, “Do you
want some more rice?”
“No,” hastily, “I am in a burry to get back. We must finish plowing the south field today
because tomorrow is Sunday.”
Pedro pushed the chair back and stood up. Soledad began to pile the dirty dishes one
on top of the other.
“Here is the key to my trunk.” From the pocket of his khaki coat he pulled a string of
non-descript red which held together a big shiny key and another small, rather rusty looking
one.
With deliberate care he untied the knot and, detaching the big key, dropped the small
one back into his pocket. She watched him fixedly as he did this. The smile left her face and
a strange look came into her eyes as she took the big key from him without a word. Together
they left the dining room.
Out of the porch he put an arm around her shoulders and peered into her shadowed
face.
“You look pale and tired,” he remarked softly. “What have you been doing all
morning?”
“Nothing,” she said listlessly. “But the heat gives me a headache.”
“Then lie down and try to sleep while I am gone.” For a moment they looked deep into
each other’s eyes.
“It is really warm,” he continued. “I think I will take off my coat.”
He removed the garment absent mindedly and handed it to her. The stairs creaked
under his weight as he went down.
“Choleng,” he turned his head as he opened the gate, “I shall pass by Tia Maria’s
house and tell her to come. I may not return before dark.”
Soledad nodded. Her eyes followed her husband down the road, noting the fine set
of his head and shoulders, the case of his stride. A strange ache rose in her throat.
She looked at the coat he had handed to her. It exuded a faint smell of his favorite
cigars, one of which he invariably smoked, after the day’s work, on his way home from the
fields. Mechanically, she began to fold the garment.
As she was doing so, s small object fell from the floor with a dull, metallic sound.
Soledad stooped down to pick it up. It was the small key! She stared at it in her palm as if
she had never seen it before. Her mouth was tightly drawn and for a while she looked almost
old.
She passed into the small bedroom and tossed the coat carelessly on the back of a
chair. She opened the window and the early afternoon sunshine flooded in. On a mat spread
on the bamboo floor were some newly washed garments.
She began to fold them one by one in feverish haste, as if seeking in the task of the
moment in refuge from painful thoughts. But her eyes moved restlessly around the room until
they rested almost furtively on a small trunk that was half concealed by a rolled mat in a dark
corner.
It was a small old trunk, without anything on the outside that might arouse one’s
curiosity. But it held the things she had come to hate with unreasoning violence, the things
that were causing her so much unnecessary anguish and pain and threatened to destroy all
that was most beautiful between her and her husband!
Soledad came across a torn garment. She threaded a needle, but after a few uneven
stitches she pricked her finger and a crimson drop stained the white garment. Then she saw
she had been mending on the wrong side.
“What is the matter with me?” she asked herself aloud as she pulled the thread with
nervous and impatient fingers.
What did it matter if her husband chose to keep the clothes of his first wife?

“She is dead anyhow. She is dead,” she repeated to herself over and over again.
The sound of her own voice calmed her. She tried to thread the needle once more.
But she could not, not for the tears had come unbidden and completely blinded her.
“My God,” she cried with a sob, “make me forget Indo’s face as he put the small key
back into his pocket.”
She brushed her tears with the sleeves of her camisa and abruptly stood up. The heat
was stifling, and the silence in the house was beginning to be unendurable.
She looked out of the window. She wondered what was keeping Tia Maria. Perhaps
Pedro had forgotten to pass by her house in his hurry. She could picture him out there in the
south field gazing far and wide at the newly plowed land with no thought in his mind but of
work, work. For to the people of the barrio whose patron saint, San Isidro Labrador, smiled
on them with benign eyes from his crude altar in the little chapel up the hill, this season was
a prolonged hour during which they were blind and dead to everything but the demands of
the land.
During the next half hour Soledad wandered in and out of the rooms in effort to seek
escape from her own thoughts and to fight down an overpowering impulse. If Tia Maria would
only come and talk to her to divert her thoughts to other channels!
But the expression on her husband’s face as he put the small key back into his pocket
kept torturing her like a nightmare, goading beyond endurance. Then, with all resistance to
the impulse gone, she was kneeling before the small trunk. With the long drawn breath she
inserted the small key. There was an unpleasant metallic sound, for the key had not been
used for a long time and it was rusty.
That evening Pedro Buhay hurried home with the usual cigar dangling from his mouth,
pleased with himself and the tenants because the work in the south field had been finished.
Tia Maria met him at the gate and told him that Soledad was in bed with a fever.
“I shall go to town and bring Doctor Santos,” he decided, his cool hand on his wife’s
brow.
Soledad opened her eyes.
“Don’t, Indo,” she begged with a vague terror in her eyes which he took for anxiety for
him because the town was pretty far and the road was dark and deserted by that hour of the
night. “I shall be alright tomorrow.”
Pedro returned an hour later, very tired and very worried. The doctor was not at home
but his wife had promised to give him Pedro’s message as soon as he came in.
Tia Maria decide to remain for the night. But it was Pedro who stayed up to watch the
sick woman. He was puzzled and worried – more than he cared to admit it. It was true that
Soledad did not looked very well early that afternoon. Yet, he thought, the fever was rather
sudden. He was afraid it might be a symptom of a serious illness.
Soledad was restless the whole night. She tossed from one side to another, but
toward morning she fell into some sort of troubled sleep. Pedro then lay down to snatch a
few winks.
He woke up to find the soft morning sunshine streaming through the half-open
window. He got up without making any noise. His wife was still asleep and now breathing
evenly. A sudden rush of tenderness came over him at the sight of her – so slight, so frail.
Tia Maria was nowhere to be seen, but that did not bother him, for it was Sunday and
the work in the south field was finished. However, he missed the pleasant aroma which came
from the kitchen every time he had awakened early in the morning.
The kitchen was neat but cheerless, and an immediate search for wood brought no
results. So shouldering an axe, Pedro descended the rickety stairs that led to the backyard.
The morning was clear and the breeze soft and cool. Pedro took in a deep breath of
air. It was good – it smelt of trees, of the rice fields, of the land he loved.
He found a pile of logs under the young mango tree near the house and began to
chop. He swung the axe with rapid clean sweeps, enjoying the feel of the smooth wooden
handle in his palms.
As he stopped for a while to mop his brow, his eyes caught the remnants of a smudge
that had been built in the backyard.
“Ah!” he muttered to himself. “She swept the yard yesterday after I left her. That,
coupled with the heat, must have given her a headache and then the fever.”

The morning breeze stirred the ashes and a piece of white cloth fluttered into view.
Pedro dropped his axe. It was a half-burn panuelo. Somebody had been burning
clothes. He examined the slightly ruined garment closely. A puzzled expression came into
his eyes. First it was doubt groping for truth, then amazement, and finally agonized incredulity
passed across his face. He almost ran back to the house. In three strides he was upstairs.
He found his coat hanging from the back of a chair.
Cautiously he entered the room. The heavy breathing of his wife told him that she was
still asleep. As he stood by the small trunk, a vague distaste to open it assailed to him. Surely
he must be mistaken. She could not have done it, she could not have been that… that foolish.
Resolutely he opened the trunk. It was empty.
It was nearly noon when the doctor arrived. He felt Soledad’s pulse and asked
question which she answered in monosyllables. Pedro stood by listening to the whole
procedure with an inscrutable expression on his face. He had the same expression when the
doctor told him that nothing was really wrong with his wife although she seemed to be worried
about something. The physician merely prescribed a day of complete rest.
Pedro lingered on the porch after the doctor left. He was trying not to be angry with
his wife. He hoped it would be just an interlude that could be recalled without bitterness. She
would explain sooner or later, she would be repentant, perhaps she would even listen and
eventually forgive her, for she was young and he loved her. But somehow he knew that this
incident would always remain a shadow in their lives.

1. Setting
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2. Plot
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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1. What is the importance of the small key to Pedro and Soledad?

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2. What is the reaction of Pedro towards the illness of his wife?

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Activity 3: Q and A
1. Share your ideas on the quote “Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was hard
line to walk.” – Stephanie Meyer, New Moon
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2. Answer the question in one word only, “What does KEY mean to you?” Then, draw a
key and put there your given meaning with explanation.

THE QUARREL
Andres Cristobal Cruz
Andres Cristobal Cruz was born in Dagupan City, Pangasinan. He holds a degree
in Bachelor of Arts major in English at the University of the Philippines. He joined the staff
of Liwayway Publishing after his graduation. He was chosen one of the Ten Outstanding
Young Men (TOYU) for his contributions to Philippine Literature. He received the Republic
Cultural Heritage Award in 1964 for his short stories. His selection “The Quarrel” won first
prize in 1952-53 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
He portrayed the character of his wife, Nina as a good housewife and a fast
housekeeper. However, as good as she was, she often got into conflict with their landlady
because of her inhuman attitude toward the couple.
With half-shut eyes he tried in his mind, to make out other things of the objects in the
still dim room. His shirt, for instance, hanging from a nail of the post between the bed and
small altar of the Sagrada Familia, appeared, against the unmoving faint light of the oil wick,
like a man’s severed body, armless in the dark, headless against the blackwood, and like the
cellutex curtain drawn to side against the wall seemed cold and mute, as if driven there by
the whole night’s darkness which would soon leave, allowing light outside to comment,
through the blind eyes of their only window where sashpanes were missing, here and there
upon the narrow room, defining in straight rays the reality of the things he had made out ––
the still golden finger that was the oil lamp-wick which now looked more like a tiny slit of light,
or a small bright leaf of light in the huge wall of darkness, the incomplete form of a man that
was his shirt where it should not be, had it been noticed by Nina, on the nail –– all of these
the outside light would slowly reintegrate into what they really were.
He heard the first trip dragging itself in the distance, leaving three tortured shrill whistle
blasts and the irregular rumbling of iron-wheels to echo in whose consciousness lay listening,
echo less and less until what had been one should became only a vague thought, as it was
now with him as he turned on his side, getting under the mosquito net to lie beside Nina, his
wife. She had her back to him; he had shaken her when she shriek in the nightmare, and
since then he had not slept again. He pulled her lovingly by the shoulder, his hand passing
over her breast as she turned, still asleep. Had the child lived, that was six months, seven?
He tried to remember, had it lived, she would be cradling it now. She moaned, called: Ismael,
Nina, he whispered; she yawned after a while, meeting him under the tightening sheet as
they pressed the coldness. What time is it? He heard her say. It’s very cold, she said shivering
against him. She was awake now; they lay on their backs. Above them, on the second floor,
Mrs. Smith, their landlady was up, her cane, she had rheumatism, tapping in long intervals.
There was the rent to pay.
“I’ll ask her to wait,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “When did she tell you?”
“Last night,” she said turning once more to him, “she’s very mean, the hag.” Her small
laughter tickled his neck. She had little harmless curse worse, hag one of them.
“She’s not very old, nor very ugly,” he said, “forty? Forty-five?”
“I wonder if her husband still remember her,” she said in a little sarcastic voice, “she
wants to be Missis Smith’ the wife of an American…”
“Was he a sergeant?” Until now he was not sure.
“A captain, so she told me,” she said, “how she could talk about him! You know,
nothing-better-than-American-way talk,” she said “he’s now a civilian in business-s what’s
that for?” she asked after he had kissed her on the mouth.
“Good morning,” he said turning on the other side and reaching out a hand for the
radiophone on the head table by the bed. The radio was silent for a while, then a soft tune
came out. Chopin. It was Early Morning Classic time. It was the kind of music they liked. He
turned back to her. She put her head on his arms and snuggled close…
“I’m asking up Wordsworth today,” he said. The image of the classroom appeared in
his mind, there were the young faces before him.
“Do you still like him?” she asked. “In college she was one of your favorites.”
“I still do,” he said, Wordsworth and the rest, and the new ones.”

“Your class understands?”

“A little, and now and then,” he said. He had been having a hard time with the class.
“Pure water gone stale. And tasteless, etcetera,” she said in a mock lecturing voice,
“Sir, you have me for an anxious student.” She laughed softly, teasingly.
He pulled her to him. “We’re still young,” he said. He remembered the scene in the
City Hall. That was after he got the high school job right after graduation. But she was not
able to finish her course. There was a child she was going to have and her parents, quite
well-to-do and proper about things in the determined ways of the old, had found out too soon.
“Are you sorry, Nina?”
“About what?”
“Us, the child, your parents,” he said. He had asked the same thing a long time ago.
He felt like he wanted to really be sure, really sure.
“We have nothing to be sorry about,” she said and her lips on his confirmed deeply
for him her words. He embraced her tightly.
“Get up, get up,” she said after a long while, playfully trying to push him off the bed.
“We can’t live on it, alone.” She was in her joking mood, and he felt glad about it, sometimes
he wondered if she had completely forgotten about the child. She was such a brave little
woman…
Sunlight fell slicing through the narrow passages between the houses on the other
side of the estero; it was warm on his face as he stood gurgling water inside the roofless
makeshift bathroom that jutted over the sloping edge of the estero. Opening his mouth as his
head bent the gurgled water splashed on the thick board flooring, the smell of dead animal
rose from under –– it was bloated pig with a mass of active worms on its pale yellow and blue
belly –– he looked around instinctively for something to dislodge it out with the post of the
bathroom and mossy concrete edge. There was nothing handy for the purpose. He washed
his face, he seldom took his bath here; seeing the black water moving under him he thought
of the white-tiled bathroom in the school, and the shower, of the swimming pools and Nina
went to Sunday mornings, the beach in the province; Nina and his mother preparing the picnic
food while he and his kid brothers built sand castles while Judge, his father, stood nearby
taking the sea wind… His face tightened, the dead pig under, worm and smell, assailed his
nostrils; not this, he said to himself, somebody outside the door coughed; Not this! He flushed
the water in the small coffee can he had dipped in gasoline drum that was half-filled; the wall,
a rusty sheet of corrugated iron dripped with the wash of water carrying the urine and rust.
Another cough outside the door.
“Will they give up, Maestro?” It was Mang Jose, the old carpenter. He was standing
out on the narrow lot between the back of the small four-door accesoria and the common
bathroom.
“I don’t know,” he said opening the door wider and stepping out. It’s up to the
President, I guess.”
“It’s up to us, Maestro,” Mang Jose said. “What I mean to say is it is really up to us,
isn’t it Maestro?” In the sunlight, the carpenter’s face appeared older, even pained where the
wrinkles stood out. He always had something to say something: Huks, politics, the ‘merkanos,
the fellowmen soldiers fighting in the far-away island. The old man was an ispiritista, Rizal,
Quezon, Saint Peter, he had talked to them, and they all wanted peace, so Mang Jose told
him. “Peace is what God wants,” the old man said pulling the door of the bathroom after him,
“peace!” He must have seen the bloated pig. “The devil of a pig!” he heard the old man saying
aloud. From the row of kitchens to each of the ground rooms of the accesoria, smoke floated
in different shapes.
He stood out in the sunlight, wiping his face with a towel, in his mind reciting “The
world is too much”– he wondered if the class understand the poem. But that is something he
must see about it. A part of his job. He could hear the jeeps warming up on the small street
in front of the accesoria. As usual Mrs. Smith was barking out orders to the men who were to
take out her jeeps for the routes, “Sooner or later,” he recited aloud, “but stopped after we
lay waste our powers.” Nina had appeared by the narrow backdoor, a coconut midrib broom
in her hand fighting the hard earth with a regular swishing noise. Mrs. Smith’s passenger
jeeps roared. “A phantom of delight,” he teased her loudly. She looked up from her sweeping
and made a funny face. He walked up to her and giving her a pat on the cheek went up to
their room asking, “What’s breakfast?” on the way.

“As-you-like-it eggs,” she said to him. He could hear her broom swishing on the
ground towards the backyard. Inside the bedroom claimed from the kitchen-dining space by
the cellutex curtain printed with blue birds in gay flight he listened to the music, turned the
volume knob, and the rich voice of a tenor poured out louder song. Intermezzo. He took up
the clean shirt lying on the already made-up bed. His shirt on the nail was no longer there.
He smiled. Nina was such a fast housekeeper. She went about her chores with what he
sometimes thought of as her punitive fury against disorder of any kind. She had never lost
her next-to-Godliness mind she was brought up in. Everywhere in their room the mark of her
hands was in the a chair was set, a pillow cased and smoothed out invitingly again, his lesson
plan notebook and the books neatly placed on the small study table; she was humming in the
kitchen; the shell of an egg distinctly broke on the edge of a frying pan… and then another.
It was going to be as-you-like-it for them. He looked out of the window. He caught sight of a
hand quickly disappearing on the upper edge of the bathroom wall of the house on the other
side of the estero, there was the splash. On the scummy water a big ball of newspaper moved
slowly, unfolding as it followed on the tide of procession of bits of driftwood and a mass of
house manure from the nearby stables. A daily occurrence. Now, they seemed used to it.
They could even tell, if they liked, what had been dropped or what had been thrown. He had
felt sorry the first days they started living in this almost a slum place, but then, there was
Nina. He put on his shirt.
“We need a little,” Nina had said, “let us not feel sorry about what we must face.” That
face was also her, aside from the Nina that was his young wife with the large dark eyes, a
dimple-slit on one cheek, long hair, lips that were full of flesh as they were with the soul of
words.
You decided your life, Nina’s mother had said that evening when they found out about
the baby she was going to have, live it then with him…And here they were in a rented room
she made with her heart and hands: into a room distinct from the others in the same
accesoria, distinct from the just-so-there-are-walls-floor-to-lie-on others: a radiophono they
bought after the child died, the books, the few but good clothes –– and there was her
extracurricular job of teaching the kids in the accesoria, they came to her for extra lessons
(I’m an educational system, she would tell him when he felt jealous of her attention to the
kids), the wives who came now and then to borrow money and utensils. With the small salary
he had, Nina managed commendably to make ends of their wants and means just meet.
Except for the times, and they were so few and negligible, when he sent necessary amounts
to his kid brothers, or when their friends didn’t live up to their promise to pay punctually – but
they could always wait and make adjustments. And what a budget commissioner Nina could
be at such times. She would always skimp; or haggle to the amused despair of the market
vendors. Thanks to my charm! She would say and wink across their small round dining table,
or you won’t be eating that. He tucked his shirt, zippered himself there, hearing Strauss? It
must be Strauss, he guessed, gay, light, nymphy almost. There! He said looking at himself
on the large round mirror of the dresser. From the kitchen she called.
“Coming,” he answered. He set the phono put several records. Breakfast music. That
was what the modern science can do. The birds on the curtain seemed to fly as a stray wind
flapped across and made little vertical waves. The table was set just for two, the as-you-like-
it still smelled with the flavor of her cooking. He instantly felt hungry. Behind him she was
patting in a bulge on his shirt. There! She said pushing him towards the chair.
“We thanked thee…” Nina’s voice saying the grace struck him as oddly beautiful each
morning. They made the sign of the cross.
“You had a nightmare,” he said smiling as she poured him coffee in his cup. “Must be
something you ate last night.”
“That’s superstition,” she answered reproaching with a distorted smile. She had
pigtailed her hair and seeing her thus – the coffee was hot – he put down the cup, looked at
her. There was a serves-you-right look in her eyes. She laughed softly. “Don’t forget to tell
Missis Smith about the money,” she said, “It was due yesterday, you know.” Behind the
curtain another record dropped.
“My pretty phantom of delight,” he said. He mashed the egg with the fried rice. The
catsup was taking time to flow, he shook the bottle harder.

The jeeps had gone, and as he ate he could hear the voices of the other tenants.
“Don’t be a bother!” that was Aling Pepang to her youngest child with the neck goiter and who
was wailing. From the bathroom came the pouring of water for the clothes wash. Nina was
half listening to the music while eating. An instant picture of her appeared in his thought. She
was sweating as she worked without any expression in her face… Until she tapped his plate
with a spoon he did not have an awareness of himself before the table. “What’s wrong?”
Nina’s voice sounded frantic. He had opened his eyes. “Nothing,” he said. The dimple
appeared on her cheek, her smile seemed to fight what he suddenly thought of. It was foolish
thought. About getting Nina to live with his parents in the province. She would surely say No
again. Mrs. Smith was on the sidewalk outside talking loudly to somebody. Gossiping, talking
of how much she spent for marketing… Her voice came nearer and nearer in the narrow
passage between the ground rooms. Nina looked at him. She was going to say something
when, without knocking, Mrs. Smith came in by the backdoor, her cane tapping against the
polished rungs of the low stairs.
“Come in,” Nina said, “have breakfast Missis.”
“I came for the rent, it’s due today.” The landlady’s voice was cutting.
“We would like to give it now,” Nina said with a humbly apologizing tone.
“Yes, Missis,” he said, “my friend forgot to pay me yesterday, and I just sent money
to the province.”
“I’ve no business with your friend,” the landlady said putting a fist to her large ugly hip
and keeping her head cocked.
“The school I’m teaching in is private, a small school, it so happened they couldn’t
pay the full salaries,” he said. That was the truth.
“I have only one say, today’s today, I need the money!” the rise of the landlady’s voice
shook him unguardedly, the cane kept tapping the floor with authority.
Under the table he stepped on Nina’s foot. “But tomorrow or next day I can give it,”
he said trying to suppress an inexplicable mass of sudden hatred that rose in him, even as
his legs shook for a moment beneath the table; he gripped the spoon and fork until his fists
felt about to bursts, hearing: “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” and other words, words that smashed
the music turning behind the curtain of birds, falling past his ears, struck obscenely at the
plates, the coffee cups, and amidst them he caught a glimpse of Nina’s face, her mouth open
as if she had just been slapped, her eyes struck wide with a wordless astonishment;
“Tomorrow! He says! Tomorrow!” he heard while he felt in his breast the tortured beatings of
many wings in the hardening air of disgust and hate that welled and fell with words that were
neither his nor Nina’s. “How long? How long?” his mind cried wanting to laugh and at the
same time shout, just shout: “STOP IT!” he only heard words, he was no longer listening.
Nina was struggling to free her foot. And there was the gasp.
Now he was only aware of holding Nina back, the two of them pushing each other
away, bodily he tried to get her safely behind the curtain of birds. “Too much! Too much!”
Nina was shouting too: words clashed with words, there was long ripping sound of something,
and he found himself brushing away something that felt like a net on him or Nina.
“What good people you are! How clean! What saints!” the words came clear and
insulting in his ears.
“You’re envious, you hag! Leech! LEECH!” and there was Nina faying him; now he
was pulling her, now pushing her, the room seemed to be turning and he saw now and then
the faces of anonymous people that appeared from nowhere, children, women, men, in the
light and shadows of the walls and window then the door, here a sudden piece of nearby
roofs and sky, hearing words, there the sudden fragment of dimming faces, colorless sky,
dark, light, eyes that swept around; himself and Nina flashing off and on in the round mirror.
“Nina! Nina!” He shouted, shaking her as if in a terrible nightmare, pushing and pulling,
holding her in his frantic arms, noise and music scratched the air, rasped through him, other
hands swiftly appeared and disappeared in the turning room. “You’re envious, you hag! Who
comes to our kitchen and looks at our food! You give me this! Give me that! You! You think
you’re the richest around! Leech! Let me go! Let me go! Ismael! Let me!” And when he was
pulling Nina back, shouting: “Enough! Enough!” he saw Mang Jose holding Mrs. Smith back,
her black cane cutting the air up and down as if she were a mad woman conducting noise;
“Maestro! Missis! Nina, child!” His fingers reached wildly behind Nina, he twisted a knob and
the music blared, hearing at the same instant Mrs. Smith’s: “Ha! Yes! Yes! Turn it loud! Turn

it loud! I’ll shout! Shout! Everybody will hear!” Voices screeched and shrieked with his own.
He had half-dragged and pushed Nina down on the bed when he felt something strike his
shoulder with a sharp pain, and the music stopped dead while something clattered down the
floor. “Leech! Leech!” Nina kept on shouting. Suddenly his palm stung on something soft.
“Nina!” and then he was bursting his lungs. “Get out!” LEECH! GET OUT! Get out! Leech!”
He closed the window and the door, then sat down tired and weak on the edge of the
bed, passing the small open bottle of ammonia spirit over Nina’s quivering nostrils as her
head rolled from side to side; she was sobbing and tears and the sliver of saliva from her
mouth mixed where she rubbed her face with agony on the pillow. “Nina,” he called, “Nina.”
Shivers crept and passed under her skin as if the closed room chilled him. He looked
at the floor that was scratched and ugly with the pervading presence of crazy and formless
streaks of dust and the dark smudges of feet. Through the spaces of the window light fell
carrying a broad band of thin whirling smoke, a page on the volume of Wordsworth lying open
on the floor stood upright and rigid as if an invisible hand were turning it, and then a page fell
gray and looking blank, on the headtable by the bed the last record on the phono was broken,
a black incomplete disc that carried a fragment of music, he ranged hid eyes around the
room, feeling like a confused survivor of a nightmare that had racked his body; his eyes fell
on the black cane that was leaning against the table, its shook coiled oddly on the neck of
the phono arm, he disinterestedly gave it a short kick on its lower end and it fell clattering for
a moment down the floor, he smirked bitterly at its rattling sound. Across the floor the curtain
lay like a tent crushed by the stampede of beasts; he saw the birds only as a disordered mass
of dark dots on white, a broken cup shone dully under the table, from its gaping shattered
mouth was a dark pool.
He tightly shut his eyes for a moment, passing a cold palm breaking with sweat heavily
across on his face, shaking vigorously his head because he wanted to uproot the images that
struck out in his mind; but they were there: the torn, shattered, dirtied, smashed, and cluttered
objects that were once whole and neat within their room’s privacy and order; the cries, the
screaming, yelling, shouting, raging words that now seemed remote and vague under the
splashing of water of kids bathing outside and the loud regular hammering of Mang Jose in
the other room across the dim narrow passage. The floor was cold; he picked up the volume
of poetry that he had thrown in fury blindly at the landlady, closed it between his hands and
with it thrust open the window that almost slapped back on hinges that momentarily screamed
in his hearing, the sudden light outside binding him with its harsh brightness.
It was not the rent to be paid that he could think about. The quarrel and the noise
seemed to be intruding in the room. He remembered Mang Jose pulling away Mrs. Smith. He
saw himself shouting. He had slapped Nina to quiet her, slapped her out of practical
necessity. Had he struck the landlady? Leech, he thought, the dark whitish scabs on the
surface of the ester moved slowly in the shadow of the house on the other side, then in the
bright light, then another shadow blackened them before his eyes, a dead large trunk was
drifting with bits of papers and leaves clinging on its emerged skeletal twigs. He looked back
at Nina lying on the crumpled bed. He had never thought she could be that violent and strong.
“Maestro,” somebody called behind him. It was Mang Jose washing his hands on the tap
outside the bathroom. The old carpenter was approaching him walking under the shade of
the eaves.
“Maestro, you can understand more, you know more,” the old man said.
He nodded, smiling bitterly to himself, “It’s useless,” he said, “it’s almost noon, I’m
late.”
Mang Jose went into the bathroom. “I’ve taken out the dead pig.” He heard the old
man saying aloud.
“Ismael, Ismael.”
He sat again on the edge of the bed. He patted her cheeks where her tears had dried.
He helped her up off the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked. She nodded, she swayed a little
against him, and after a while she straightened herself back. She walked away and picked
up the curtain, spreading it as far as her hands could reach to the sides. His feet touched the
black cane. He stooped and picked up the cane; it broke easily on his knees. “You’ll be late,
Ismael,” he heard Nina saying, “I’ll pick up things.” He threw the broken pieces far out of the
window. The pieces jabbed into the water of the estero. They made up of the surface and
drifted with the ebb. Behind him, he was aware of Nina putting things in order. It was going

to take a long time to clean up things again. Before they could go out and take a long walk.
He knew that like him she was thinking of a new place. “I’ll help,” he said touching her hand
that held one end of the curtain. He took the other end and pulled it across the room.
He saw fingering the torn edges of the rip that made an empty between them. He
heard the sharp, clear sounds of many things outside. “We don’t need it anymore,” he said
holding off the limp curtain from him. She was clearing her nose through the pinch of her
fingers.

1. Setting
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2. Plot
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3. Theme
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4. Conflict
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5. Characterization
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1. Describe Nina and Ismael.

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2. Describe the place where the couple lives.
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3. Would you consider Nina’s violent reaction in keeping with her husband’s description
of her? Why or why not?
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4. Do you think that with their given situation in life, the relationship of the couple would
remain the same? Why or why not?
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5. What is the lesson about life depicted in the story?
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MAY DAY EVE

Nick Joaquin
Nicomedes "Nick" Márquez Joaquín (May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004) was a Filipino
writer and journalist best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He
also wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquín was conferred the rank and title of
National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. He has been considered one of the most
important Filipino writers, along with José Rizal and Claro M. Recto. Unlike Rizal and Recto,
whose works were written in Spanish, Joaquin's major works were written in English despite
being a native Spanish speaker.
The literary ability of Nick Joaquín allowed him to earn multiple distinction and
honors in the field of Philippine literature. On June 1, 1973, he won in the Seato Literary Award
Contest for his submitted collection of short stories and poem. While on May 27, 1976, he was
a recipient of one the nation's most prestigious awards which carried material emoluments
besides honors and privileges. He was conferred the title of “National Artist for Literature” by
the former president and Mrs. Marcos during the special rites at the Cultural Center of the
Philippines in 1976, on the condition that the Regime release Pete Lacaba, the author of the
poem "Prometheus Unbound" from detention.
The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten o’clock but it was
almost midnight before the carriages came filing up the departing guests, while the girls who
were staying were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the young men gathering
around to wish them a good night and lamenting their ascent with mock signs and moaning,
proclaiming themselves disconsolate but straightway going off to finish the punch and the
brandy though they were quite drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment,
arrogance and audacity, for they were young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had
been in their honor; and they had waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and
flirted all night and where in no mood to sleep yet--no, caramba, not on this moist tropic eve!
Not on this mystic May eve! --with the night still young and so seductive that it was madness
not to go out, not to go forth---and serenade the neighbors! Cried one; and swim in the Pasid!
Cried another; and gather fireflies! cried a third—whereupon there arose a great clamor for
coats and capes, for hats and canes, and they were a couple of street-lamps flickered and a
last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush,
their tile roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wile sky murky with clouds, save
where an evil young moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled,
whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting
unbearable childhood fragrances or ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously
down the street that the girls who were desiring upstairs in the bedrooms catered screaming
to the windows, crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over
those young men bawling below; over those wicked young men and their handsome apparel,
their proud flashing eyes, and their elegant mustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight
that the girls were quite ravished with love, and began crying to one another how carefree
were men but how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was, till old Anastasia
plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chases them off to bed---while from up the street
came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobble and the clang-clang of his
lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his great voice booming through the night,
"Guardia serno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o.
And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May and witches
were abroad in the night, she said--for it was a night of divination, and night of lovers, and
those who cared might peer into a mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it was
they were fated to marry, said the old Anastasia as she hobble about picking up the piled
crinolines and folding up shawls and raking slippers in corner while the girls climbing into four
great poster-beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror, scrambling over
each other and imploring the old woman not to frighten them.
"Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!"
"Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!"
"She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of Christmas Eve!"

"St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr."

"Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin, Anastasia?"
"No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!"
"Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell me."
"You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid."
"I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed.
"Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will come and
pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command you to shut your mouth and
go away!""Your mother told me to stay here all night, my grand lady!"
"And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. "Stay, old
woman. Tell me what I have to do."
"Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls.
The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her
eyes on the girl. "You must take a candle," she instructed, "and go into a room that is dark
and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and close
your eyes and shy:
Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be. If all goes right, just above your
left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry." A silence. Then: "And hat if all
does not go right?" asked Agueda. "Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!" "Why." "Because
you may see--the Devil!"
The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what nonsense!" cried
Agueda. "This is the year 1847. There are no devil anymore!" Nevertheless she had turned
pale. "But where could I go, hugh? Yes, I know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and
no one is there now." "No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!" "I do not
care! I am not afraid! I will go!" "Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!" "If you do not come
to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother." "And if you do I will tell her who came to visit you at
the convent last March. Come, old woman---give me that candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me
that candle, I go."
But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing across the hall; her
feet bare and her dark hair falling down her shoulders and streaming in the wind as she fled
down the stairs, the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while with the other she pulled up
her white gown from her ankles. She paused breathless in the doorway to the sala and her
heart failed her. She tried to imagine the room filled again with lights, laughter, whirling
couples, and the jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh, it was a dark den, a weird cavern
for the windows had been closed and the furniture stacked up against the walls. She crossed
herself and stepped inside.
The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a gold frame carved
into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues. She saw herself approaching fearfully in it:
a small while ghost that the darkness bodied forth---but not willingly, not completely, for her
eyes and hair were so dark that the face approaching in the mirror seemed only a mask that
floated forward; a bright mask with two holes gaping in it, blown forward by the white cloud
of her gown. But when she stood before the mirror she lifted the candle level with her chin
and the dead mask bloomed into her living face.
She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished such a
terror took hold of her that she felt unable to move, unable to open her eyes and thought she
would stand there forever, enchanted. But she heard a step behind her, and a smothered
giggle, and instantly opened her eyes.
"And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had forgotten the
little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head nestling at her breast and seeing
herself in the big mirror hanging in the room. It was the same room and the same mirror out
the face she now saw in it was an old face---a hard, bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying
hair, and so sadly altered, so sadly different from that other face like a white mask, that fresh
young face like a pure mask than she had brought before this mirror one wild May Day
midnight years and years ago.... "But what was it Mama? Oh please go on! What did you
see?" Dona Agueda looked down at her daughter but her face did not soften though her eyes
filled with tears. "I saw the devil." she said bitterly. The child blanched. "The devil, Mama?
Oh... Oh..." "Yes, my love. I opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over my
left shoulder, was the face of the devil." "Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very

frightened?" "You can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors except
when their mothers tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling, of admiring yourself
in every mirror you pass- or you may see something frightful someday." "But the devil, Mama-
--what did he look like?" "Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---"
"Like the scar of Papa?" "Well, yes. But this of the devil was a scar of sin, while that of your
Papa is a scar of honor. Or so he says." "Go on about the devil." "Well, he had mustaches."
"Like those of Papa?" "Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and graying and smell horribly
of tobacco, while these of the devil were very black and elegant--oh, how elegant!" "And did
he speak to you, Mama?" "Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And bowing her
graying head; she wept.
"Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had said, smiling at her
in the mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking bow. She had whirled around and
glared at him and he had burst into laughter. "But I remember you!" he cried. "You are
Agueda, whom I left a mere infant and came home to find a tremendous beauty, and I danced
a waltz with you but you would not give me the polka." "Let me pass," she muttered fiercely,
for he was barring the way. "But I want to dance the polka with you, fair one," he said. So
they stood before the mirror; their panting breath the only sound in the dark room; the candle
shining between them and flinging their shadows to the wall. And young Badoy Montiya (who
had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) suddenly found himself cold sober and
very much awake and ready for anything. His eyes sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed
scarlet. "Let me pass!" she cried again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped her by the wrist.
"No," he smiled. "Not until we have danced." "Go to the devil!" "What a temper has my
serrana!" "I am not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have
offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends like your mortal
enemies." "And why not?" she demanded, jerking her wrist away and flashing her teeth in his
face. "Oh, how I detest you, you pompous young men! You go to Europe and you come back
elegant lords and we poor girls are too tame to please you. We have no grace like the
Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians, and we have no salt, no salt, and no salt! Aie,
how you weary me, how you bore me, you fastidious men!" "Come, come---how do you know
about us?"
"I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon perhaps?" "Oh!" she
gasped, and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand and she covered her face
and sobbed piteously. The candle had gone out and they stood in darkness, and young
Badoy was conscience-stricken. "Oh, do not cry, little one!" Oh, please forgive me! Please
do not cry! But what a brute I am! I was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I
said." He groped and found her hand and touched it to his lips. She shuddered in her white
gown. "Let me go," she moaned, and tugged feebly. "No. Say you forgive me first. Say you
forgive me, Agueda." But instead she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it - bit so sharply
in the knuckles that he cried with pain and lashed cut with his other hand--lashed out and hit
the air, for she was gone, she had fled, and he heard the rustling of her skirts up the stairs
as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers. Cruel thoughts raced through his head: he would
go and tell his mother and make her turn the savage girl out of the house--or he would go
himself to the girl’s room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at the
same time he was thinking that they were all going to Antipolo in the morning and was already
planning how he would maneuver himself into the same boat with her. Oh, he would have his
revenge, he would make her pay, that little harlot! She should suffer for this, he thought
greedily, licking his bleeding knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold
in her candlelight and delicately furred. He saw the mobile insolence of her neck, and her taut
breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of a Turk, but she was quite enchanting! How could she
think she had no fire or grace? And no salt? An arroba she had of it!
"... No lack of salt in the chrism At the moment of thy baptism!" He sang aloud in the
dark room and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in love with her. He ached intensely
to see her again---at once! ---to touch her hands and her hair; to hear her harsh voice. He
ran to the window and flung open the casements and the beauty of the night struck him back
like a blow. It was May, it was summer, and he was young---young! ---and deliriously in love.
Such a happiness welled up within him that the tears spurted from his eyes. But he did not
forgive her--no! He would still make her pay, he would still have his revenge, he thought
viciously, and kissed his wounded fingers. But what a night it had been! "I will never forget

this night! He thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the window in the dark room, the
tears in his eyes and the wind in his hair and his bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth.
But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes; summer
lends; the storms break over the rot-tipe orchards and the heart grows old; while the hours,
the days, the months, and the years pile up and pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded,
too confused: dust gathers in it; cobwebs multiply; the walls darken and fall into ruin and
decay; the memory perished...and there came a time when Don Badoy Montiya walked home
through a May Day midnight without remembering, without even caring to remember; being
merely concerned in feeling his way across the street with his cane; his eyes having grown
quite dim and his legs uncertain--for he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stopped
and shivered old man with white hair and mustaches coming home from a secret meeting of
conspirators; his mind still resounding with the speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as
he picked his way up the steps to the front door and inside into the slumbering darkness of
the house; wholly unconscious of the May night, till on his way down the hall, chancing to
glance into the sala, he shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold-- for he had seen a face
in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes closed and the lips moving, a
face that he suddenly felt he had been there before though it was a full minutes before the
lost memory came flowing, came tiding back, so overflooding the actual moment and so
swiftly washing away the piled hours and days and months and years that he was left
suddenly young again; he was a gay young buck again, lately came from Europe; he had
been dancing all night; he was very drunk; he s stepped in the doorway; he saw a face in the
dark; he called out...and the lad standing before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night go
jumped with fright and almost dropped his candle, but looking around and seeing the old
man, laughed out with relief and came running.
"Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me. Don Badoy had turned very pale. "So it was
you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What are you doing down here at this hour?"
"Nothing, Grandpa. I was only... I am only ..." "Yes, you are the great Señor only and how
delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Señor only! But if I break this cane on your head
you maga wish you were someone else, Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me
I would see my wife."
"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I looked in a
mirror tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me her whose lover I will be.
Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along into the
room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees. "Now, put your cane down
the floor, son, and let us talk this over. So you want your wife already, hey? You want to see
her in advance, hey? But so you know that these are wicked games and that wicked boys
who play them are in danger of seeing horrors?"
"Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead."
"Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will be witch you, she will
torture you, she will eat your heart and drink your blood!"
"Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore."
"Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a witch.
"You? Where?
"Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man, and his playful voice
had turned savage.
"When, Grandpa?"
"Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow and though
I was feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down somewhere and die I could
not pass that doorway of course without stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like when
dying. But when I poked my head in what should I see in the mirror but...but..."
"The witch?"
"Exactly!"
"And then she bewitch you, Grandpa!"
"She bewitched me and she tortured me. l She ate my heart and drank my blood."
said the old man bitterly.
"Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she very horrible?

"Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen! Her eyes
were somewhat like yours but her hair was like black waters and her golden shoulders were
bare. My God, she was enchanting! But I should have known---I should have known even
then---the dark and fatal creature she was!"
A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered the boy.
"What makes you slay that, hey?"
"Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once told her
that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was it of the scare that Grandma died?"
Don Badoy started. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead, that she had
perished---the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at last, the two of them, her tired body
at rest; her broken body set free at last from the brutal pranks of the earth---from the trap of
a May night; from the snare of summer; from the terrible silver nets of the moon. She had
been a mere heap of white hair and bones in the end: a whimpering withered consumptive,
lashing out with her cruel tongue; her eye like live coals; her face like ashes... Now, nothing-
-- nothing save a name on a stone; save a stone in a graveyard---nothing was left of the
young girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight, long, long ago.
And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she had bitten
his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark room and surprised his heart in the
instant of falling in love: such a grief tore up his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed before
the boy; pushed the boy away; stood up and looked out----looked out upon the medieval
shadows of the foul street where a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage was
rattling away upon the cobbles, while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tiled
roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an
evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and
whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable
the window; the bowed old man sobbing so bitterly at the window; the tears streaming down
his cheeks and the wind in his hair and one hand pressed to his mouth---while from up the
street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang
of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through the night:
"Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!"

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6. Theme
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7. Conflict
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1. Do any of the characters change in the story? If yes, what caused the change?
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2. How are you different from one of the characters in the story? Explain.
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3. If you could trade places with one of the characters, which one would it be and why?
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4. What was the theme or the author’s message? What events helped you figure out the
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5. If you had been the main character in this story, would you have acted differently?
Why or why not?
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6. What do you think is the best part in the story? Why?
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7. How might the story be different if it had had happened somewhere else? (time or
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8. How did you feel about the story? Would you recommend it to someone else? Why
or why not?
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Activity 3: Reflection
Directions: Write a reflection on how superstition influenced people’s lives.

SCENT OF APPLEE
Bienvenido N. Santos
Bienvenido N. Santos is a Filipino-American fiction, poetry and nonfiction writer.

He was born and raised in Tondo, Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao,
Pampanga, Philippines. He lived in the United States for many years where he is widely
credited as a pioneering Asian-American writer.
In 1967, he returned to the United States to become a teacher and university
administrator. He received a Rockefeller fellowship at the Writers Workshop of the
University of Iowa where he later taught as a Fulbright exchange professor. Santos has also
received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a Republic Cultural Heritage Award in
Literature as well as several Palanca Awards for his short stories. Scent of Apples won a
1980 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
When I arrived in Kalamazoo it was October and the war was still on. Glod and silver
stars hung on pennants above silent windows of white and brick-red cottages. In a backyard
an old man burned leaves and twigs while a gray-haired woman sat on the porch, her red
hands quiet on her lap, watching the smoke rising above the elms, both of them thinking the
same thought perhaps, about a tall, grinning boy with his blue eyes and flying hair, who went
out to war: where could he be now this month when leaves were turning into gold and the
fragrance of gathered apples was in the wind?
It was a cold night when I left my room at the hotel for a usual speaking engagement.
I walked but a little way. A heavy wind coming up from Lake Michigan was icy on the face. If
felt like winter straying early in the northern woodlands. Under the lampposts the leaves
shone like bronze. And they rolled on the pavements like the ghost feet of a thousand
autumns long dead, long before the boys left for faraway lands without great icy winds and
promise of winter early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold!
It was the same night I met Celestino Fabia, "just a Filipino farmer" as he called himself, who
had a farm about thirty miles east of Kalamazoo.
"You came all that way on a night like this just to hear me talk?"
"I've seen no Filipino for so many years now," he answered quickly. "So when I saw
your name in the papers where it says you come from the Islands and that you're going to
talk, I come right away."
Earlier that night I had addressed a college crowd, mostly women. It appeared they
wanted me to talk about my country, they wanted me to tell them things about it because my
country had become a lost country. Everywhere in the land the enemy stalked. Over it a great
silence hung, and their boys were there, unheard from, or they were on their way to some
little known island on the Pacific, young boys all, hardly men, thinking of harvest moons and
the smell of forest fire.
It was not hard talking about our own people. I knew them well and I loved them. And
they seemed so far away during those terrible years that I must have spoken of them with a
little fervor, a little nostalgia.
In the open forum that followed, the audience wanted to know whether there was
much difference between our women and the American women. I tried to answer the question
as best I could, saying, among other things, that I did not know that much about American
women, except that they looked friendly, but differences or similarities in inner qualities such
as naturally belonged to the heart or to the mind, I could only speak about with vagueness.
While I was trying to explain away the fact that it was not easy to make comparisons,
a man rose from the rear of the hall, wanting to say something. In the distance, he looked
slight and old and very brown. Even before he spoke, I knew that he was, like me, a Filipino.
"I'm a Filipino," he began, loud and clear, in a voice that seemed used to wide open spaces,
"I'm just a Filipino farmer out in the country." He waved his hand toward the door. "I left the
Philippines more than twenty years ago and have never been back. Never will perhaps. I
want to find out, sir, are our Filipino women the same like they were twenty years ago?"
As he sat down, the hall filled with voices, hushed and intrigued. I weighed my answer
carefully. I did not want to tell a lie yet I did not want to say anything that would seem
platitudinous, insincere. But more important than these considerations, it seemed to me that

moment as I looked towards my countryman, I must give him an answer that would not make
him so unhappy. Surely, all these years, he must have held on to certain ideals, certain
beliefs, even illusions peculiar to the exile.
"First," I said as the voices gradually died down and every eye seemed upon me,
"First, tell me what our women were like twenty years ago."
The man stood to answer. "Yes," he said, "you're too young . . . Twenty years ago our
women were nice, they were modest, they wore their hair long, they dressed proper and went
for no monkey business. They were natural, they went to church regular, and they were
faithful." He had spoken slowly, and now in what seemed like an afterthought, added, "It's the
men who ain't."
Now I knew what I was going to say.
"Well," I began, "it will interest you to know that our women have changed--but
definitely! The change, however, has been on the outside only. Inside, here," pointing to the
heart, "they are the same as they were twenty years ago. God-fearing, faithful, modest, and
nice."
The man was visibly moved. "I'm very happy, sir," he said, in the manner of one who,
having stakes on the land, had found no cause to regret one's sentimental investment. After
this, everything that was said and done in that hall that night seemed like an anti-climax, and
later, as we walked outside, he gave me his name and told me of his farm thirty miles east of
the city.
We had stopped at the main entrance to the hotel lobby. We had not talked very much
on the way. As a matter of fact, we were never alone. Kindly American friends talked to us,
asked us questions, said goodnight. So now I asked him whether he cared to step into the
lobby with me and talk.
"No, thank you," he said, "you are tired. And I don't want to stay out too late."
"Yes, you live very far."
"I got a car," he said, "besides . . . "
Now he smiled, he truly smiled. All night I had been watching his face and I wondered
when he was going to smile.
"Will you do me a favor, please," he continued smiling almost sweetly. "I want you to
have dinner with my family out in the country. I'd call for you tomorrow afternoon, then drive
you back. Will that be alright?"
"Of course," I said. "I'd love to meet your family." I was leaving Kalamazoo for Muncie,
Indiana, in two days. There was plenty of time.
"You will make my wife very happy," he said.
"You flatter me."
"Honest. She'll be very happy. Ruth is a country girl and hasn't met many Filipinos. I
mean Filipinos younger than I, cleaner looking. We're just poor farmer folk, you know, and
we don't get to town very often. Roger, that's my boy, he goes to school in town. A bus takes
him early in the morning and he's back in the afternoon. He's nice boy."
"I bet he is," I agreed. "I've seen the children of some of the boys by their American
wives and the boys are tall, taller than their father, and very good looking."
"Roger, he'd be tall. You'll like him."
Then he said goodbye and I waved to him as he disappeared in the darkness. The
next day he came, at about three in the afternoon. There was a mild, ineffectual sun shining,
and it was not too cold. He was wearing an old brown tweed jacket and worsted trousers to
match. His shoes were polished, and although the green of his tie seemed faded, a colored
shirt hardly accentuated it. He looked younger than he appeared the night before now that
he was clean shaven and seemed ready to go to a party. He was grinning as we met.
"Oh, Ruth can't believe it," he kept repeating as he led me to his car--a nondescript
thing in faded black that had known better days and many hands. "I says to her, I'm bringing
you a first class Filipino, and she says, aw, go away, quit kidding, there's no such thing as
first class Filipino. But Roger, that's my boy, he believed me immediately. What he is like,
daddy, he asks. Oh, you will see, I says, he's first class. Like you daddy? No, no, I laugh at
him, your daddy ain't first class. Aw, but you are, daddy, he says. So you can see what a nice
boy he is, so innocent. Then Ruth starts griping about the house, but the house is a mess,
she says. True it's a mess, it's always a mess, but you don't mind, do you? We're poor folks,
you know.

The trip seemed interminable. We passed through narrow lanes and disappeared into
thickets, and came out on barren land overgrown with weeds in places. All around were dead
leaves and dry earth. In the distance were apple trees.
"Aren't those apple trees?" I asked wanting to be sure.
"Yes, those are apple trees," he replied. "Do you like apples? I got lots of 'em. I got
an apple orchard, I'll show you."
All the beauty of the afternoon seemed in the distance, on the hills, in the dull soft
sky.
"Those trees are beautiful on the hills," I said.
"Autumn's a lovely season. The trees are getting ready to die, and they show their
colors, proud-like."
"No such thing in our own country," I said.
That remark seemed unkind, I realized later. It touched him off on a long deserted
tangent, but ever there perhaps. How many times did lonely mind take unpleasant detours
away from the familiar winding lanes towards home for fear of this, the remembered hurt, the
long lost youth, the grim shadows of the years; how many times indeed, only the exile knows.
It was a rugged road we were traveling and the car made so much noise that I could not hear
everything he said, but I understood him. He was telling his story for the first time in many
years. He was remembering his own youth. He was thinking of home. In these odd moments
there seemed no cause for fear no cause at all, no pain. That would come later. In the night
perhaps. Or lonely on the farm under the apple trees.
In this old Visayan town, the streets are narrow and dirty and strewn with coral shells.
You have been there? You could not have missed our house, it was the biggest in town, one
of the oldest, and ours was a big family. The house stood right on the edge of the street. A
door opened heavily and you enter a dark hall leading to the stairs. There is the smell of
chickens roosting on the low-topped walls, there is the familiar sound they make and you
grope your way up a massive staircase, the bannisters smooth upon the trembling hand.
Such nights, they are no better than the days, windows are closed against the sun; they close
heavily.
Mother sits in her corner looking very white and sick. This was her world, her domain.
In all these years, I cannot remember the sound of her voice. Father was different. He moved
about. He shouted. He ranted. He lived in the past and talked of honor as though it were the
only thing.
I was born in that house. I grew up there into a pampered brat. I was mean. One day
I broke their hearts. I saw mother cry wordlessly as father heaped his curses upon me and
drove me out of the house, the gate closing heavily after me. And my brothers and sisters
took up my father's hate for me and multiplied it numberless times in their own broken hearts.
I was no good.
But sometimes, you know, I miss that house, the roosting chickens on the low-topped
walls. I miss my brothers and sisters, Mother sitting in her chair, looking like a pale ghost in
a corner of the room. I would remember the great live posts, massive tree trunks from the
forests. Leafy plants grew on the sides, buds pointing downwards, wilted and died before
they could become flowers. As they fell on the floor, father bent to pick them and throw them
out into the coral streets. His hands were strong. I have kissed these hands . . . many times,
many times.
Finally we rounded a deep curve and suddenly came upon a shanty, all but ready to
crumble in a heap on the ground, its plastered walls were rotting away, and the floor was
hardly a foot from the ground. I thought of the cottages of the poor colored folk in the south,
the hovels of the poor everywhere in the land. This one stood all by itself as though by
common consent all the folk that used to live here had decided to say away, despising it,
ashamed of it. Even the lovely season could not color it with beauty.
A dog barked loudly as we approached. A fat blonde woman stood at the door with a
little boy by her side. Roger seemed newly scrubbed. He hardly took his eyes off me. Ruth
had a clean apron around her shapeless waist. Now as she shook my hands in sincere delight
I noticed shamefacedly (that I should notice) how rough her hands were, how coarse and red
with labor, how ugly! She was no longer young and her smile was pathetic.
As we stepped inside and the door closed behind us, immediately I was aware of the
familiar scent of apples. The room was bare except for a few ancient pieces of second-hand

furniture. In the middle of the room stood a stove to keep the family warm in winter. The walls
were bare. Over the dining table hung a lamp yet unlighted.
Ruth got busy with the drinks. She kept coming in and out of a rear room that must
have been the kitchen and soon the table was heavy with food, fried chicken legs and rice,
and green peas and corn on the ear. Even as we ate, Ruth kept standing, and going to the
kitchen for more food. Roger ate like a little gentleman.
"Isn't he nice looking?" his father asked.
"You are a handsome boy, Roger," I said.
The boy smiled at me. You look like Daddy," he said.
Afterwards I noticed an old picture leaning on the top of a dresser and stood to pick it
up. It was yellow and soiled with many fingerings. The faded figure of a woman in Philippine
dress could yet be distinguished although the face had become a blur.
"Your . . .” I began.
"I don't know who she is," Fabia hastened to say. "I picked that picture many years
ago in a room on La Salle Street in Chicago. I have often wondered who she is."
"The face wasn't a blur in the beginning?"
"Oh, no. It was a young face and good."
Ruth came with a plate full of apples.
"Ah," I cried, picking out a ripe one. "I've been thinking where all the scent of apples
came from. The room is full of it."
"I'll show you," said Fabia.
He showed me a backroom, not very big. It was half-full of apples.
"Every day," he explained, "I take some of them to town to sell to the groceries. Prices
have been low. I've been losing on the trips."
"These apples will spoil," I said.
"We'll feed them to the pigs."
Then he showed me around the farm. It was twilight now and the apple trees stood
bare against a glowing western sky. In apple blossom time it must be lovely here. But what
about wintertime?
One day, according to Fabia, a few years ago, before Roger was born, he had an
attack of acute appendicitis. It was deep winter. The snow lay heavy everywhere. Ruth was
pregnant and none too well herself. At first she did not know what to do. She bundled him in
warm clothing and put him on a cot near the stove. She shoveled the snow from their front
door and practically carried the suffering man on her shoulders, dragging him through the
newly made path towards the road where they waited for the U.S. Mail car to pass. Meanwhile
snowflakes poured all over them and she kept rubbing the man's arms and legs as she herself
nearly froze to death.
"Go back to the house, Ruth!" her husband cried, "you'll freeze to death."
But she clung to him wordlessly. Even as she massaged his arms and legs, her tears
rolled down her cheeks. "I won't leave you," she repeated.
Finally the U.S. Mail car arrived. The mailman, who knew them well, helped them
board the car, and, without stopping on his usual route, took the sick man and his wife direct
to the nearest hospital.
Ruth stayed in the hospital with Fabia. She slept in a corridor outside the patients'
ward and in the day time helped in scrubbing the floor and washing the dishes and cleaning
the men's things. They didn't have enough money and Ruth was willing to work like a slave.
"Ruth's a nice girl," said Fabia, "like our own Filipino women."
Before nightfall, he took me back to the hotel. Ruth and Roger stood at the door
holding hands and smiling at me. From inside the room of the shanty, a low light flickered. I
had a last glimpse of the apple trees in the orchard under the darkened sky as Fabia backed
up the car. And soon we were on our way back to town. The dog had started barking. We
could hear it for some time, until finally, we could not hear it anymore, and all was darkness
around us, except where the headlamps revealed a stretch of road leading somewhere.
Fabia did not talk this time. I didn't seem to have anything to say myself. But when
finally we came to the hotel and I got down, Fabia said, "Well, I guess I won't be seeing you
again."
It was dimly lighted in front of the hotel and I could hardly see Fabia's face. Without
getting off the car, he moved to where I had sat, and I saw him extend his hand. I gripped it.

"Tell Ruth and Roger," I said, "I love them."

He dropped my hand quickly. "They'll be waiting for me now," he said.
"Look," I said, not knowing why I said it, "one of these days, very soon, I hope, I'll be
going home. I could go to your town."
"No," he said softly, sounding very much defeated but brave, "Thanks a lot. But, you
see, nobody would remember me now."
Then he started the car, and as it moved away, he waved his hand.
"Goodbye," I said, waving back into the darkness. And suddenly the night was cold
like winter straying early in these northern woodlands.
I hurried inside. There was a train the next morning that left for Muncie, Indiana, at a
quarter after eight.

1. Setting
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9. Theme
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10. Conflict
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11. Characterization
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1. What is the symbolic meaning of apple n this story?

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2. What do you think is the purpose of the author of writing this story?
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3. Did you ever experience the feeling of Fabia, the feeling of loneliness and isolation?
When and why?
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4. As a reader, does the story awaken you to love your own country?
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5. Why do you think it is entitled “Scent of Apple”?
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Activity 3: Valuing
Directions: Expressed your ideas about the importance of valuing nationalism and preserving
Filipino traits.
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M.P.H. Part 4

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Part IV SELECTED READINGS IN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE

1. answered various activities;

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 59

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 60

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 61

"Up here I find--something--"

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 62

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

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 63

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 64

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 65

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 66

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 67

Activity 1: Literary Analysis

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 68

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 69

Activity 2: Comprehension Check-Up

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 70

Activity 3: Letter to Character

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 71

All that I love

All that I love?

It’s utter sublimation,

Till seashells are broken pieces

Activity 1: Literary Analysis

1. Give the message of the poem.

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 72

Activity 2: Comprehension Check-Up

1. What emotions were expressed in this poem?

2. What was used to symbolize the poet’s feelings? Explain.

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 73

Activity 3: Paper Collage

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 74

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 75

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 76

"Come up, Dodong. It is over."

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 77

Activity 1: Literary Analysis

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 78

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 79

Activity 2: Comprehension Check-Up

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 80

6. What do you think will happen if Blas continue marrying Tona?

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 81

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 82

Excuse the cactus

Activity 1: Literary Analysis

1. Give the message of the poem.

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 83

2. Paraphrase the poem.

Activity 2: Comprehension Check-Up

1. What does the image of the cactus symbolize?

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 84

Activity 3: Slogan Making

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 85

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. answered various activities;

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 86

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 87

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 88

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

A MODULE ON LIT. III - PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 89

Activity 1: Literary Analysis