Motivational Questions:

Do you watch drama series/action movies?

Have you felt disliking the characters because of their wrong decisions or actions they
have done?

Important Terms
Conflict- is a problem that the central character encounters
Protagonist- Central Character
Antagonist- Opposing Character

Activity 1: Identify who the protagonist and the antagonist in the given pictures:

1.
Daniela and Romina

Protagonist:
Antagonist:

2. Cardo and Bungo

Protagonist:
Antagonist:

3. Batman and Joker

Protagonist:
Antagonist:

What is a conflict?
A conflict is a problem that the central character encounters.

Internal- A struggle within oneself

External- A struggle against other people/nature/society.

Types of Conflict

1. Man vs Man
The central character faces opposition from another person or group of people.
Examples
• A new student is bullied by a bigger, older student.

2. Person Versus Self

When a story has a person vs. self conflict, the main character battles him or herself. He
or she may lack confidence or ability. He or she may have to make a difficult choice. Or
he or she may have to address a personal problem. The key here is that the battle occurs
within the character, though it may involve and affect other characters.

Ex :

1. A young man goes through hard times after losing his father in a car accident.

3.Person Versus Society

With this type of conflict, the main character challenges a law, tradition, or institution.
The main character or characters may battle against the forces that represent these
institutions.

Ex: Vanessa makes an art project protesting police brutality. Her art teacher loves the
project and tries to feature it in the town art show, but the chief of police rejects the
project. Now Vanessa and her art teacher are going to fight for the freedom of
expression.

4. Person Versus Nature

When a story has a person vs. nature conflict, the main character fights to endure or
overcome forces of nature. He or she may struggle to survive harsh elements, navigate
through a disaster, or meet his or her basic needs. Stories with this type of conflict may
occur in the wilderness often, but they can occur in urban settings too.

Ex: -Natural Disasters (Earthquake.Flood, etc)

-Disease Outbreak/Pandemic (Covid-19, AH1N1)
-A hunter gets lost in the jungle and is pursued by a man-eating lion.

Activity 2:

DIRECTIONS: Read each scenario. In the box below each scenario, write whether the
conflict is internal or external.

1. A young girl from the province attending a new school in the urban area.

2. A farmer trying to get his scared animals out of a barn that was struck by lightning
and has caught on fire.

3. A policeman comes face to face with the criminal who killed his father.

4. A boy tries to tame a snake as a pet, but it proves uncontrollable and becomes a
menace to the community.

5. A boy wins a full scholarship to college, and he can’t decide whether or not he should
go, or stay home and work to help support his sick mother who was abandoned by his
father several months ago

Activity 3:

Identify what type of conflict is present on the given texts

Man vs Man
Man vs Self
Man vs Nature
Man vs Society

1. Paulo’s hands trembled in the cold as he fished through his coat pockets for a
match. He had already gathered scraps of wood and piled them up to make a fire. Now,
he had to figure out how to kindle it. The sun had already set and all light was quickly
fading from the sky; John could feel the temperature dropping just as rapidly. Without a
match, there was no way to get this fire going, and without a fire, he wasnʼt sure how he
would survive the night. Nobody knew he was stuck out there, alone, without food or
shelter. His best hope was to try to avoid freezing, then head out at dawn to find help.
Type of conflict: ___________________________
2. Michael hit the snooze button for the fifth time. He had to get up now, or else heʼd
be late again. After the usual pandesal and coffee, stepped into the bathroom to shave
and brush his teeth. Every morning, he had the same conversation with his reflection in
the mirror. “Todayʼs the day,” he thought, “Today I am going to quit. Iʼm going to walk
right into Mr. De Leonʼs office and tell him what I think about this difficult job, and then
Iʼll quit. Iʼll leave today.” Even as he rehearsed his final speech, he knew that it would
never happen. The thought of being unemployed terrified him, and he was too much of a
coward to speak his mind to his boss. Instead, he would work another day at a job he
hated. The next morning, he began again. “Todayʼs the day. Today I am going to quit.”

Type of conflict: ___________________________

3. I was just about to beat my high score in Call of Duty when my mom walked into
the room and stood directly in front of the TV screen. “Mom! What are you doing?!” In
her hand was a folded piece of paper. My report card must have arrived. This was about
to get ugly. “Exactly when were you going to tell me that you are failing three classes?!
Youʼre failing P.E.! How do you fail P.E??” I rolled my eyes and sighed, and that just
made things worse. I could tell that she was waiting for me to respond, so I said, “Mom,
itʼs not a big deal. Iʼll bring my grades up.” This was probably the worse thing I could
have said, because her face turned a deep scarlet. “Your father and I have sacrificed way
too much to send you to the best school in the city. It is VERY MUCH a big deal that you
are nearly failing out,” she said, her voice about twice the normal volume. I responded,
“Yeah, well, I didnʼt ask for you to make any sacrifices for me, so sorry if I donʼt care
about that school as much as you do.”
Type of conflict: ___________________________

4. Hector and his father had a very contentious relationship. Whenever his father
would come home late, Hector yelled at him for not being there to take care of the family.
Hector hated how his father would rather be out partying with his friends, rather than
eating dinner with his mom and little sister. When his dad was home, he treated the
whole family like dirt. He ordered Hectorʼs mom around like a servant and told her to shut
up whenever she complained. Even worse, Hector feared that he would become like his
father himself one day. He noticed that he sometimes used his dadʼs phrases when his
little sister was bugging him, and sometimes he told his mom to bring him some food,
without asking or saying thank you. The feeling of acting like his dad was frightening,
and it pushed him to work hard in school. If he could go to a good college and provide
for his family, he thought, then he would become the man that his father never was.

Type of conflict: ___________________________

5. Janet stared the horse Rowan in the eye. Rowan was an impatient and testy young
horse, and it was Janetʼs job to break him in. Every day after school, she would ride her
bike 5 miles out to the stables to groom, walk, and, hopefully, ride Rowan. He usually
tried to run away from her or bucked around until she fell off, but it was only a matter of
time before he became accustomed to her presence. Janet checked the tightness of the
saddle straps, stuck her foot into the stirrup, and flung her other leg over the horse. The
moment her weight landed on Rowanʼs back, he took off at a full gallop across the field.
Janet clenched the reins, bouncing in the saddle. Just when she thought she was steady,
Rowan reared back. She lost her grip and fell flat onto her back on the muddy ground.
“Oh well,” she thought as she picked herself up, “Try, try again.”

Type of conflict: ___________________________

Key terms:

Mood of the story- is the underlying message that the writer would like to convey,
Theme of the story- is a literary element that evokes certain feelings through words and
descriptions.

Author’s purpose in writing- to amuse the reader, to persuade the reader, to inform
the reader, or to satirize a condition

An author’s purpose may be to amuse the reader, to persuade the reader, to inform the
reader, or to satirize a condition. An author writes with one of four general purposes in mind:
1. To relate a story or to recount events, an author uses narrative writing.
2. To tell what something looks like, sounds like, or feels like, the author uses descriptive writing
3. To convince a reader to believe an idea or to take a course of action, the author uses
persuasive writing.
4. To inform or teach the reader, the author uses expository writing.

Read the following selections written by famous Filipino writers and answer the
following questions below:
1. What is the theme of the story?
2. What is the mood of the story?
3. Who are the main characters? Protagonist and Antagonist?
4. What is the purpose of the writer?
5. What type of conflict is present in the selections?
6. What is the moral lesson of the story?

Selection 1
 We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers by Alejandro Roces
We Filipinos are mild drinkers. We drink for only three good reasons. We drink when we are
very happy. We drink when we are very sad. And we drink for any other reason.

When the Americans recaptured the Philippines, they built an air base a few miles from our barrio.
Yankee soldiers became a very common sight. I met a lot of GIs and made many friends. I could not
pronounce their names. I could not tell them apart. All Americans looked alike to me. They all looked
white.

One afternoon I was plowing our rice field with our carabao named Datu. I was barefooted and stripped to
the waist. My pants that were made from abaca fibers and woven on homemade looms were rolled up to
my knees. My bolo was at my side.

An American soldier was walking on the highway. When he saw me, he headed toward me. I stopped
plowing and waited for him. I noticed he was carrying a half-pint bottle of whiskey. Whiskey bottles
seemed part of the American uniform.

“Hello, my little brown brother,” he said, patting me on the head.

“Hello, Joe,” I answered.

All Americans are called Joe in the Philippines.

“I am sorry, Jose,” I replied. “There are no bars in this barrio.”

“Oh, hell! You know where I could buy more whiskey?”

“Here, have a swig. You have been working hard,” he said, offering me his half-filled bottle.

“No, thank you, Joe,” I said. “We Filipinos are mild drinkers.”

“Well, don’t you drink at all?”

“Yes, Joe, I drink, but not whiskey.”

“What the hell do you drink?”

“I drink lambanog.”

“Jungle juice, eh?”

“I guess that is what the GIs call it.”

“You know where I could buy some?”

“I have some you can have, but I do not think you will like it.”

“I’ll like it all right. Don’t worry about that. I have drunk everything—whiskey, rum, brandy, tequila, gin,
champagne, sake, vodka. . . .” He mentioned many more that I cannot spell.

“I not only drink a lot, but I drink anything. I drank Chanel Number 5 when I was in France. In New
Guinea I got soused on Williams’ Shaving Lotion. When I was laid up in a hospital I pie-eyed with
medical alcohol. On my way here on a transport I got stoned on torpedo juice. You ain’t kidding when
you say I drink a lot. So let’s have some of that jungle juice, eh?”

“All right, “I said. “I will just take this carabao to the mud hole then we can go home and drink.”

“You sure love that animal, don’t you?”

“I should,” I replied. “It does half of my work.”

“Why don’t you get two of them?”

I didn’t answer.

I unhitched Datu from the plow and led him to the mud hole. Joe was following me. Datu lay in the mud
and was going: Whooooosh! Whooooosh!

Flies and other insects flew from his back and hovered in the air. A strange warm odor rose out of the
muddle. A carabao does not have any sweat glands except on the nose. It has to wallow in the mud or
bathe in a river every three hours. Otherwise it runs amok.

Datu shook his head and his widespread horns scooped the muddy water on his back. He rolled over and
was soon covered with slimy mud. An expression of perfect contentment came into his eyes. Then he
swished his tail and Joe and I had to move back from the mud hole to keep from getting splashed. I left
Datu in the mud hole. Then turning to Joe, I said.

“Let us go.”

And we proceeded toward my house. Jose was cautiously looking around.

“This place is full of coconut trees,” he said.

“Don’t you have any coconut trees in America?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Back home we have the pine tree.”

“What is it like?”

“Oh, it is tall and stately. It goes straight up to the sky like a skyscraper. It symbolizes America.”

“Well,” I said, “the coconut tree symbolizes the Philippines. It starts up to the sky, but then its leaves
sway down the earth, as if remembering the land that gave it birth. It does not forget the soil that gave it
life.”

In a short while, we arrived in my nipa house. I took the bamboo ladder and leaned it against a tree. Then
I climbed the ladder and picked some calamansi.

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“Philippine lemon,” I answered. “We will need this for our drinks.”

“Oh, chasers.”

“That is right, Joe. That is what the soldiers call it.”

I filled my pockets and then went down. I went to the garden well and washed the mud from my legs.
Then we went up a bamboo ladder to my hut. It was getting dark, so I filled a coconut shell, dipped a
wick in the oil and lighted the wick. It produced a flickering light. I unstrapped my bolo and hung it on
the wall.

“Please sit down, Joe,” I said.

“Where?” he asked, looking around.

“Right there,” I said, pointing to the floor.

Joe sat down on the floor. I sliced the calamansi in halves, took some rough salt and laid it on the foot
high table. I went to the kitchen and took the bamboo tube where I kept my lambanog.

Lambanog is a drink extracted from the coconut tree with pulverized mangrove bark thrown in to prevent
spontaneous combustion. It has many uses. We use it as a remedy for snake bites, as counteractive for
malaria chills, as an insecticide and for tanning carabao hide.

I poured some lambanog on two polished coconut shells and gave one of the shells to Joe. I diluted my
drink with some of Joe’s whiskey. It became milky. We were both seated on the floor. I poured some of
my drink on the bamboo floor; it went through the slits to the ground below.

“Hey, what are you doing,” said Joe, “throwing good liquor away?”

“No, Joe,” I said. “It is the custom here always to give back to the earth a little of what we have taken
from the earth.”

“Well,” he said, raising his shell. “Here’s to the end of the war!”

“Here is to the end of the war!” I said, also lifting my shell. I gulped my drink down. I followed it with a
slice of calamansi dipped in rough salt. Joe took his drink but reacted in a peculiar way.

His eyes popped out like a frog’s and his hand clutched his throat. He looked as if he had swallowed a
centipede.

“Quick, a chaser!” he said.

I gave him a slice of calamansi dipped in unrefined salt. He squirted it in his mouth. But it was too late.
Nothing could chase her. The calamansi did not help him. I don’t think even a coconut would have helped
him.

“What is wrong, Joe?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “The first drink always affects me this way.”

He was panting hard and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Well, the first drink always acts like a minesweeper,” I said, “but this second one will be smooth.”

I filled his shell for the second time. Again I diluted my drink with Joe’s whiskey. I gave his shell. I
noticed that he was beaded with perspiration. He had unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. Joe took
his shell but he did not seem very anxious. I lifted my shell and said: “Here is to America!”

I was trying to be a good host.

“Here’s to America!” Joe said.

We both killed our drinks. Joe again reacted in a funny way. His neck stretched out like a turtle’s. And
now he was panting like a carabao gone berserk. He was panting like a carabao gone amok. He was
grasping his tie with one hand.

Then he looked down on his tie, threw it to one side, and said: “Oh, Christ, for a while I thought it was
my tongue.”

After this he started to tinker with his teeth.

“What is wrong, Joe?” I asked, still trying to be a perfect host.

“Plenty, this damned drink has loosened my bridgework.”

As Joe exhaled, a moth flying around the flickering flame fell dead. He stared at the dead moth and said:
“And they talk of DDT.”

“Well, how about another drink?” I asked. “It is what we came here for.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m through.”

“OK. Just one more.”

I poured the juice in the shells and again diluted mine with whiskey. I handed Joe his drink.

Here’s to the Philippines,” he said.

“Here’s to the Philippines,” I said.

Joe took some of his drink. I could not see very clearly in the flickering light, but I could have sworn I
saw smoke coming out of his ears.

“This stuff must be radioactive,” he said.

He threw the remains of his drink on the nipa wall and yelled: “Blaze, goddam you, blaze!”

Just as I was getting in the mood to drink, Joe passed out. He lay on the floor flat as a starfish. He was in
a class all by himself.

I knew that the soldiers had to be back in their barracks at a certain time. So I decided to take Joe back. I
tried to lift him. It was like lifting a carabao. I had to call four of my neighbors to help me carry Joe. We
slung him on top of my carabao. I took my bolo from the house and strapped it on my waist. Then I
proceeded to take him back. The whole barrio was wondering what had happened to the big Amerikano.

After two hours I arrived at the airfield. I found out which barracks he belonged to and took him there.
His friends helped me to take him to his cot. They were glad to see him back. Everybody thanked me for
taking him home. As I was leaving the barracks to go home, one of his buddies called me and said:

“Hey, you! How about a can of beer before you go?”

“No, thanks, “I said. “We Filipinos are mild drinkers.”

SELECTION 2

arvest by Loreto Paras Sulit

HE first saw her in his brother’s eyes. The palay stalks were taking on gold in the late afternoon
sun, were losing their trampled, wind-swept look and stirring into little, almost inaudible
whispers.
The rhythm of Fabian’s strokes was smooth and unbroken. So many palay stalks had to be
harvested before sundown and there was no time to be lost in idle dallying. But when he stopped
to heap up the fallen palay stalks he glanced at his brother as if to fathom the other’s state of mind
in that one, side-long glance.
The swing of Vidal’s figure was as graceful as the downward curve of the crescent-shaped scythe.
How stubborn, this younger brother of his, how hard-headed, fumed Fabian as he felled stalk
after stalk. It is because he knows how very good-looking he is, how he is so much run-after by
all the women in town. The obstinate, young fool! With his queer dreams, his strange adorations,
his wistfulness for a life not of these fields, not of their quiet, colorless women and the dullness of
long nights of unbroken silence and sleep. But he would bend… he must bend… one of these
days.
Vidal stopped in his work to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. He wondered how his
brother could work that fast all day without pausing to rest, without slowing in the rapidity of his
strokes. But that was the reason the master would not let him go; he could harvest a field in a
morning that would require three men to finish in a day. He had always been afraid of this older
brother of his; there was something terrible in the way he determined things, how he always
brought them to pass, how he disregarded the soft and the beautiful in his life and sometimes how
he crushed, trampled people, things he wanted destroyed. There were flowers, insects, birds of
boyhood memories, what Fabian had done to them. There was Tinay… she did not truly like him,
but her widowed mother had some lands… he won and married Tinay.
I wonder what can touch him. Vidal thought of miracles, perhaps a vision, a woman… But no…
he would overpower them…he was so strong with those arms of steel, those huge arms of his that
could throttle a spirited horse into obedience.
“Harvest time is almost ended, Vidal.” (I must be strong also, the other prayed). “Soon the
planting season will be on us and we shall have need of many carabaos. Milia’s father has five.
You have but to ask her and Milia will accept you any time. Why do you delay…”
He stopped in surprise for his brother had sprung up so suddenly and from the look on his face it
was as if a shining glory was smiling shyly, tremulously in that adoring way of his that called
forth all the boyishness of his nature—There was the slow crunch, crunch of footsteps on dried
soil and Fabian sensed the presence of people behind him. Vidal had taken off his wide, buri hat
and was twisting and untwisting it nervously.
“Ah, it is my model! How are you, Vidal?” It was a voice too deep and throaty for a woman but
beneath it one could detect a gentle, smooth nuance, soft as silk. It affected Fabian very queerly,
he could feel his muscles tensing as he waited for her to speak again. But he did not stop in work
nor turn to look at her.
She was talking to Vidal about things he had no idea of. He could not understand why the sound
of her voice filled him with this resentment that was increasing with every passing minute. She
was so near him that when she gestured, perhaps as she spoke, the silken folds of her dress
brushed against him slightly, and her perfume, a very subtle fragrance, was cool and scented in
the air about him.
“From now on he must work for me every morning, possibly all day.”
“Very well. Everything as you please.” So it was the master who was with her.
“He is your brother, you say, Vidal? Oh, your elder brother.” The curiosity in her voice must be
in her eyes. “He has very splendid arms.”
Then Fabian turned to look at her.
He had never seen anyone like her. She was tall, with a regal unconscious assurance in her figure
that she carried so well, and pale as though she had just recovered from a recent illness. She was
not exactly very young nor very beautiful. But there was something disquieting and haunting in
the unsymmetry of her features, in the queer reflection of the dark blue-blackness of her hair, in
her eyes, in that mole just above her nether lips, that tinged her whole face with a strange
loveliness. For, yes, she was indeed beautiful. One discovered it after a second, careful glance.
Then the whole plan of the brow and lip and eye was revealed; one realized that her pallor was
the ivory-white of rice grain just husked, that the sinuous folds of silken lines were but the
undertones of the grace that flowed from her as she walked away from you.
The blood rushed hot to his very eyes and ears as he met her grave, searching look that swept him
from head to foot. She approached him and examined his hot, moist arms critically.
“How splendid! How splendid!” she kept on murmuring.
Then “Thank you,” and taking and leaning on the arm of the master she walked slowly away.
The two brothers returned to their work but to the very end of the day did not exchange a word.
Once Vidal attempted to whistle but gave it up after a few bars. When sundown came they
stopped harvesting and started on their way home. They walked with difficulty on the dried rice
paddies till they reached the end of the rice fields.
The stiffness, the peace of the twilit landscape was maddening to Fabian. It augmented the spell
of that woman that was still over him. It was queer how he kept on thinking about her, on
remembering the scent of her perfume, the brush of her dress against him and the look of her eyes
on his arms. If he had been in bed he would be tossing painfully, feverishly. Why was her face
always before him as though it were always focused somewhere in the distance and he was
forever walking up to it?
A large moth with mottled, highly colored wings fluttered blindly against the bough, its long,
feathery antennae quivering sensitively in the air. Vidal paused to pick it up, but before he could
do so his brother had hit it with the bundle of palay stalks he carried. The moth fell to the ground,
a mass of broken wings, of fluttering wing-dust.
After they had walked a distance, Vidal asked, “Why are you that way?”
“What is my way?”
“That—that way of destroying things that are beautiful like moths… like…”
“If the dust from the wings of a moth should get into your eyes, you would be blind.”
“That is not the reason.”
“Things that are beautiful have a way of hurting. I destroy it when I feel a hurt.”
To avoid the painful silence that would surely ensue Vidal talked on whatever subject entered his
mind. But gradually, slowly the topics converged into one. He found himself talking about the
woman who came to them this afternoon in the fields. She was a relative of the master. A cousin,
I think. They call her Miss Francia. But I know she has a lovely, hidden name… like her beauty.
She is convalescing from a very serious illness she has had and to pass the time she makes men
out of clay, of stone. Sometimes she uses her fingers, sometimes a chisel.
One day Vidal came into the house with a message for the master. She saw him. He was just the
model for a figure she was working on; she had asked him to pose for her.
“Brother, her loveliness is one I cannot understand. When one talks to her forever so long in the
patio, many dreams, many desires come to me. I am lost… I am glad to be lost.”
It was merciful the darkness was up on the fields. Fabian could not see his brother’s face. But it
was cruel that the darkness was heavy and without end except where it reached the little, faint
star. For in the deep darkness, he saw her face clearly and understood his brother.
On the batalan of his home, two tall clay jars were full of water. He emptied one on his feet, he
cooled his warm face and bathed his arms in the other. The light from the kerosene lamp within
came in wisps into the batalan. In the meager light he looked at his arms to discover where their
splendor lay. He rubbed them with a large, smooth pebble till they glowed warm and rich brown.
Gently he felt his own muscles, the strength, the power beneath. His wife was crooning to the
baby inside. He started guiltily and entered the house.
Supper was already set on the table. Tinay would not eat; she could not leave the baby, she said.
She was a small, nervous woman still with the lingering prettiness of her youth. She was rocking
a baby in a swing made of a blanket tied at both ends to ropes hanging from the ceiling. Trining,
his other child, a girl of four, was in a corner playing siklot solemnly all by herself.
Everything seemed a dream, a large spreading dream. This little room with all the people inside,
faces, faces in a dream. That woman in the fields, this afternoon, a colored, past dream by now.
But the unrest, the fever she had left behind… was still on him. He turned almost savagely on his
brother and spoke to break these two grotesque, dream bubbles of his life. “When I was your age,
Vidal, I was already married. It is high time you should be settling down. There is Milia.”
“I have no desire to marry her nor anybody else. Just—just—for five carabaos.” There! He had
spoken out at last. What a relief it was. But he did not like the way his brother pursed his lips
tightly That boded not defeat. Vidal rose, stretching himself luxuriously. On the door of the silid
where he slept he paused to watch his little niece. As she threw a pebble into the air he caught it
and would not give it up. She pinched, bit, shook his pants furiously while he laughed in great
amusement.
“What a very pretty woman Trining is going to be. Look at her skin; white as rice grains just
husked; and her nose, what a high bridge. Ah, she is going to be a proud lady… and what deep,
dark eyes. Let me see, let me see. Why, you have a little mole on your lips. That means you are
very talkative.”
“You will wake up the baby. Vidal! Vidal!” Tinay rocked the child almost despairingly. But the
young man would not have stopped his teasing if Fabian had not called Trining to his side.
“Why does she not braid her hair?” he asked his wife.
“Oh, but she is so pretty with her curls free that way about her head.”
“We shall have to trim her head. I will do it before going out to work tomorrow.”
Vidal bit his lips in anger. Sometimes… well, it was not his child anyway. He retired to his room
and fell in a deep sleep unbroken till after dawn when the sobs of a child awakened him. Peering
between the bamboo slats of the floor he could see dark curls falling from a child’s head to the
ground.
He avoided his brother from that morning. For one thing he did not want repetitions of the
carabao question with Milia to boot. For another there was the glorious world and new life
opened to him by his work in the master’s house. The glamour, the enchantment of hour after
hour spent on the shadow-flecked ylang-ylang scented patio where she molded, shaped, reshaped
many kinds of men, who all had his face from the clay she worked on.
In the evening after supper he stood by the window and told the tale of that day to a very quiet
group. And he brought that look, that was more than a gleam of a voice made weak by strong,
deep emotions.
His brother saw and understood. Fury was a high flame in his heart… If that look, that quiver of
voice had been a moth, a curl on the dark head of his daughter… Now more than ever he was
determined to have Milia in his home as his brother’s wife… that would come to pass. Someday,
that look, that quiver would become a moth in his hands, a frail, helpless moth.
When Vidal, one night, broke out the news Fabian knew he had to act at once. Miss Francia
would leave within two days; she wanted Vidal to go to the city with her, where she would finish
the figures she was working on.
“She will pay me more than I can earn here, and help me get a position there. And shall always be
near her. Oh, I am going! I am going!”
“And live the life of a—a servant?”
“What of that? I shall be near her always.”
“Why do you wish to be near her?”
“Why? Why? Oh, my God! Why?”
That sentence rang and resounded and vibrated in Fabian’s ears during the days that followed. He
had seen her closely only once and only glimpses thereafter. But the song of loveliness had
haunted his life thereafter. If by a magic transfusing he, Fabian, could be Vidal and… and… how
one’s thoughts can make one forget of the world. There she was at work on a figure that
represented a reaper who had paused to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. It was Vidal in
stone.
Again—as it ever would be—the disquieting nature of her loveliness was on him so that all his
body tensed and flexed as he gathered in at a glance all the marvel of her beauty.
She smiled graciously at him while he made known himself; he did not expect she would
remember him.
“Ah, the man with the splendid arms.”
“I am the brother of Vidal.” He had not forgotten to roll up his sleeves.
He did not know how he worded his thoughts, but he succeeded in making her understand that
Vidal could not possibly go with her, that he had to stay behind in the fields.
There was an amusement rippling beneath her tones. “To marry the girl whose father has five
carabaos. You see, Vidal told me about it.”
He flushed again a painful brick-red; even to his eyes he felt the hot blood flow.
“That is the only reason to cover up something that would not be known. My brother has
wronged this girl. There will be a child.”
She said nothing, but the look in her face protested against what she had heard. It said, it was not
so.
But she merely answered, “I understand. He shall not go with me.” She called a servant, gave him
a twenty-peso bill and some instruction. “Vidal, is he at your house?” The brother on the patio
nodded.
Now they were alone again. After this afternoon he would never see her, she would never know.
But what had she to know? A pang without a voice, a dream without a plan… how could they be
understood in words.
“Your brother should never know you have told me the real reason why he should not go with
me. It would hurt him, I know.
“I have to finish this statue before I leave. The arms are still incomplete—would it be too much to
ask you to pose for just a little while?”
While she smoothed the clay, patted it and molded the vein, muscle, arm, stole the firmness, the
strength, of his arms to give to this lifeless statue, it seemed as if life left him, left his arms that
were being copied. She was lost in her work and noticed neither the twilight stealing into the
patio nor the silence brooding over them.
Wrapped in that silver-grey dusk of early night and silence she appeared in her true light to the
man who watched her every movement. She was one he had glimpsed and crushed all his life, the
shining glory in moth and flower and eyes he had never understood because it hurt with its
unearthly radiance.
If he could have the whole of her in the cup of his hands, drink of her strange loveliness, forgetful
of this unrest he called life, if… but his arms had already found their duplicate in the white clay
beyond…
When Fabian returned Vidal was at the batalan brooding over a crumpled twenty-peso bill in his
hands. The haggard tired look in his young eyes was as grey as the skies above.
He was speaking to Tinay jokingly. “Soon all your sampaguitas and camias will be gone, my dear
sister-in-law because I shall be seeing Milia every night… and her father.” He watched Fabian
cleansing his face and arms and later wondered why it took his brother that long to wash his arms,
why he was rubbing them as hard as that…