How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife by Manuel ArguillaShe 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.

Footnote To Youth by Jose Garcia VillaThe 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 w anted to be wise about many things.One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken… after Love.Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas’s steps, for he could not sleep well of nights. He

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

My Father Goes To Court by Carlos BulosanWhen I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so for several years afterward we all lived in the town, though he preffered living in the country. We had a next-door neighbor, a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While we boys and girls played and sand in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. His house was so tall that his children could look in the windows of our house and watch us as we played, or slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.

Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of the food was wafted down to us from the windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the wonderful smell of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon or ham. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbor’s servants roasted three chickens. The chickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting odor. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted out to us.

Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one by one, as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun every day and bathed in the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes we wrestled with one another in the house before we went out to play.

We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other neighbors who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in our laughter.

Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go in to the living room and stand in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers and making faces at himself, and then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.

There was plenty to make us laugh. There was, for instance, the day one of my brothers came home and brought a small bundle under his arm, pretending that he brought something to eat, maybe a leg of lamb or something as extravagant as that to make our mouths water. He rushed to mother and through the bundle into her lap. We all stood around, watching mother undo the complicated strings. Suddenly a black cat leaped out of the bundle and ran wildly around the house. Mother chased my brother and beat him with her little fists, while the rest of us bent double, choking with laughter.

Another time one of my sisters suddenly started screaming in the middle of the night. Mother reached her first and tried to calm her. My sister criedand groaned. When father lifted the lamp, my sister stared at us with shame in her eyes.

“What is it?” <other asked.

“I’m pregnant!” she cried.

“Don’t be a fool!” Father shouted.

“You’re only a child,” Mother said.

“I’m pregnant, I tell you!” she cried.

Father knelt by my sister. He put his hand on her belly and rubbed it gently. “How do you know you are pregnant?” he asked.

“Feel it!” she cried.

We put our hands on her belly. There was something moving inside. Father was frightened. Mother was shocked. “Who’s the man?” she asked.

“There’s no man,” my sister said.

‘What is it then?” Father asked.

Suddenly my sister opened her blouse and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother fainted, father dropped the lamp, the oil spilled on the floor, and my sister’s blanket caught fire. One of my brothers laughed so hard he rolled on the floor.

When the fire was extinguished and Mother was revived, we turned to bed and tried to sleep, but Father kept on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more. Mother got up again and lighted the oil lamp; we rolled up the mats on the floor and began dancing about and laughing with all our might. We made so much noise that all our neighbors except the rich family came into the yard and joined us in loud, genuine laughter.

It was like that for years.

As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anemic, while we grew even more robust and full of fire. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich man started to cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children started to cough one after

the other. At night their coughing sounded like barking of a herd of seals. We hung outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what had happened to them. We knew that they were not sick from lack of nourishing food because they were still always frying something delicious to eat.

One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He looked at my sisters, who had grown fat with laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave, which is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and ran through the house, shutting all the windows.

From that day on, the windows of our neighbor’s house were closed. The children did not come outdoors anymore. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight the windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our house.

One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich man had filled a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and asked him what it was all about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit of his wealth and food.

When the day came for us to appear in court, Father brushed his old army uniform and borrowed a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the center of the courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall. Father kept jumping up his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though he were defending himself before an imaginary jury.

The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With him was his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the room and sat on a high chair. We stood up in a hurry and sat down again.

After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge took at father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.

“I don’t need a lawyer judge.” He said.

“Proceed,” said the judge.

The rich man’s lawyer jumped and pointed his finger at Father, “Do you or do you not agree that you have been stealing the spirit of the complainant’s wealth and food?”

“I do not!” Father said.

“Do you or do you not agree that while the complainant’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of lambs and young chicken breasts, you and your family hung outside your windows and inhaled the heavenly spirit of the food?”

“I agree,” Father said.

“How do you account for that?”

Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to see the

children of the complainant, Judge.”

“Bring the children of the complainant.”

They came shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands. They were so amazed to see the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down without looking up. They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.

Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he said, “I should like to cross-examine the complainant.”

“Proceed.”

“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours became morose and sad?” Father asked.

“Yes.”

“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children were sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo pieces that he took out his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw in their small change.

“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a minutes, Judge?” Father asked.

“As you wish.”

“Thank you,” Father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.

“Are you ready?” Father called.

“Proceed.” The judge said.

The sweet tinkle of coins carried beautifully into the room. The spectators turned their faces toward the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complainant.

“Did you hear it?” he asked.

“Hear what?” the man asked.

“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you are paid.” Father said.

The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.

“Case dismissed,” he said.

Father strutted around the courtroom. The judge even came down to his high chair to shake hands with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”

“You like to hear my family laugh, judge?” Father asked.

“Why not?”

Did you hear that children?” Father said.

My sister started it. The rest of us followed them and soon the spectators were laughing with us, holding their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest of all.

CHIEFTEST MOURNER by Aida Rivera-Ford

He was my uncle because he married my aunt (even if he had not come to her these past ten years),

so when the papers brought the news of his death, I felt that some part of me had died, too.

I was boarding then at a big girls’ college in Manila and I remember quite vividly that a few other girls

were gathered about the lobby of our school, looking very straight and proper since it was seven in the

morning and the starch in our long-sleeved uniform had not yet given way. I tried to be brave while I read

that my uncle had actually been “the last of a distinct school of Philippine poets.” I was still being brave all

the way down the lengthy eulogies, until I got to the line which said that he was “the sweetest lyre that ever

throbbed with Malayan chords.” Something caught at my throat and I let out one sob–the rest merely

followed. When the girls hurried over to me to see what had happened, I could only point to the item on the

front page with my uncle’s picture taken when he was still handsome. Everybody suddenly spoke in a low

voice and Ning who worshipped me said that I shouldn’t be so unhappy because my uncle was now with the

other great poets in heaven–at which I really howled in earnest because my uncle had not only deserted

poor Aunt Sophia but had also been living with another woman these many years and, most horrible of all,

he had probably died in her embrace!

Perhaps I received an undue amount of commiseration for the death of the delinquent husband of my

aunt, but it wasn’t my fault because I never really lied about anything; only, nobody thought to ask me just

how close an uncle he was. It wasn’t my doing either when, some months after his demise, my poem entitled

The Rose Was Not So Fair O Alma Mater was captioned “by the niece of the late beloved Filipino Poet.” And

that having been printed, I couldn’t possibly refuse when I was asked to write on My Uncle–The Poetry of

His Life. The article, as printed, covered only his boyhood and early manhood because our adviser cut out

everything that happened after he was married. She said that the last half of his life was not exactly poetic,

although I still maintain that in his vices, as in his poetry, he followed closely the pattern of the great poets he

admired.

My aunt used to relate that he was an extremely considerate man–when he was sober, and on those

occasions he always tried to make up for his past sins. She said that he had never meant to marry, knowing

the kind of husband he would make, but that her beauty drove him out of his right mind. My aunt always

forgave him but one day she had more than she could bear, and when he was really drunk, she tied him to a

chair with a strong rope to teach him a lesson. She never saw him drunk again, for as soon as he was able

to, he walked out the door and never came back.

I was very little at that time, but I remembered that shortly after he went away, my aunt put me in a car

and sent me to his hotel with a letter from her. Uncle ushered me into his room very formally and while I

looked all around the place, he prepared a special kind of lemonade for the two of us. I was sorry he poured

it out into wee glasses because it was unlike any lemonade I had ever tasted. While I sipped solemnly at my

glass, he inquired after my aunt. To my surprise, I found myself answering with alacrity. I was happy to

report all details of my aunt’s health, including the number of crabs she ate for lunch and the amazing fact

that she was getting fatter and fatter without the benefit of Scott’s Emulsion or Ovaltine at all. Uncle smiled

his beautiful somber smile and drew some poems from his desk. He scribbled a dedication on them and

instructed me to give them to my aunt. I made much show of putting the empty glass down but Uncle was

dense to the hint. At the door, however, he told me that I could have some lemonade every time I came to

visit him. Aunt Sophia was so pleased with the poems that she kissed me. And then all of a sudden she

looked at me queerly and made a most peculiar request of me. She asked me to say ha-ha, and when I said

ha-ha, she took me to the sink and began to wash the inside of my mouth with soap and water while calling

upon a dozen of the saints to witness the act. I never got a taste of Uncle’s lemonade.

It began to be a habit with Aunt Sophia to drop in for a periodic recital of woe to which Mama was a

sympathetic audience. The topic of the conversation was always the latest low on Uncle’s state of misery. It

gave Aunt Sophia profound satisfaction to relay the report of friends on the number of creases on Uncle’s

shirt or the appalling decrease in his weight. To her, the fact that Uncle was getting thinner proved

conclusively that he was suffering as a result of the separation. It looked as if Uncle would not be able to

hold much longer, the way he was reported to be thinner each time, because Uncle didn’t have much weight

to start with. The paradox of the situation, however, was that Aunt Sophia was now crowding Mama off the

sofa and yet she wasn’t looking very happy either.

When I was about eleven, there began to be a difference. Everytime I came into the room when Mama

and Aunt Sophia were holding conference, the talk would suddenly be switched to Spanish. It was about this

time that I took an interest in the Spanish taught in school. It was also at this time that Aunt Sophia

exclaimed over my industry at the piano–which stood a short distance from the sofa. At first I couldn’t gather

much except that Uncle was not any more the main topic. It was a woman by the name of Esa–or so I

thought she was called. Later I began to appreciate the subtlety of the Spanish la mujer esa.

And so I learned about the woman. She was young, accomplished, a woman of means. (A surprising

number of connotations were attached to these terms.) Aunt Sophia, being a loyal wife, grieved that Uncle

should have been ensnared by such a woman, thinking not so much of herself but of his career. Knowing

him so well, she was positive that he was unhappier than ever, for that horrid woman never allowed him to

have his own way; she even denied him those little drinks which he took merely to aid him into poetic

composition. Because the woman brazenly followed Uncle everywhere, calling herself his wife, a confusing

situation ensued. When people mentioned Uncle’s wife, there was no way of knowing whether they referred

to my aunt or to the woman. After a while a system was worked out by the mutual friends of the different

parties. No. 1 came to stand for Aunt Sophia and No. 2 for the woman.

I hadn’t seen Uncle since the episode of the lemonade, but one day in school all the girls were asked

to come down to the lecture room–Uncle was to read some of his poems! Up in my room, I stopped to fasten

a pink ribbon to my hair thinking the while how I would play my role to perfection–for the dear niece was to

be presented to the uncle she had not seen for so long. My musings were interrupted, however, when a girl

came up and excitedly bubbled that she had seen my uncle–and my aunt, who was surprisingly young and

so very modern!

I couldn’t go down after all; I was indisposed.

Complicated as the situation was when Uncle was alive, it became more so when he died. I was

puzzling over who was to be the official widow at his funeral when word came that I was to keep Aunt

Sophia company at the little chapel where the service would be held. I concluded with relief that No. 2 had

decamped.

The morning wasn’t far gone when I arrived at the chapel and there were only a few people present.

Aunt Sophia was sitting in one of the front pews at the right section of the chapel. She had on a black and

white print which managed to display its full yardage over the seat. Across the aisle from her was a very

slight woman in her early thirties who was dressed in a dramatic black outfit with a heavy veil coming up to

her forehead. Something about her made me suddenly aware that Aunt Sophia’s bag looked paunchy and

worn at the corners. I wanted to ask my aunt who she was but after embracing me when I arrived, she kept

her eyes stolidly fixed before her. I directed my gaze in the same direction. At the front was the president’s

immense wreath leaning heavily backward, like that personage himself; and a pace behind, as though in

deference to it, were other wreaths arranged according to the rank and prominence of the people who had

sent them. I suppose protocol had something to do with it.

I tiptoed over to the muse before Uncle as he lay in the dignity of death, the faintest trace of his

somber smile still on his face. My eyes fell upon a cluster of white flowers placed at the foot of the casket. It

was ingeniously fashioned in the shape of a dove and it bore the inscription “From the Loyal One.” I looked

at Aunt Sophia and didn’t see anything dove-like about her. I looked at the slight woman in black and knew

of a sudden that she was the woman. A young man, obviously a brother or a nephew, was bending over her

solicitously. I took no notice of him even though he had elegant manners, a mischievous cowlick, wistful

eyes, a Dennis Morgan chin, and a pin which testified that he belonged to what we girls called our “brother

college.” I showed him that he absolutely did not exist for me, especially when I caught him looking in our

direction.

I always feel guilty of sacrilege everytime I think of it, but there was something grimly ludicrous about

my uncle’s funeral. There were two women, each taking possession of her portion of the chapel just as

though stakes had been laid, seemingly unmindful of each other, yet revealing by this studied disregard that

each was very much aware of the other. As though to give balance to the scene, the young man stood his

full height near the woman to offset the collective bulk of Aunt Sophia and myself, although I was merely a

disproportionate shadow behind her.

The friends of the poet began to come. They paused a long time at the door, surveying the scene

before they marched self-consciously towards the casket. Another pause there, and then they wrenched

themselves from the spot and moved–no, slithered–either towards my aunt or towards the woman. The

choice must have been difficult when they knew both. The women almost invariably came to talk to my aunt

whereas most of the men turned to the woman at the left. I recognized some important Malacañang men

and some writers from seeing their pictures in the papers. Later in the morning a horde of black-clad women,

the sisters and cousins of the poet, swept into the chapel and came directly to where my aunt sat. They had

the same deep eye-sockets and hollow cheek-bones which had lent a sensitive expression to the poet’s face

but which on them suggested t.b. The air became dense with the sickly-sweet smell of many flowers

clashing and I went over to get my breath of air. As I glanced back, I had a crazy surrealist impression of

mouths opening and closing into Aunt Sophia’s ear, and eyes darting toward the woman at the left. Uncle’s

clan certainly made short work of my aunt for when I returned, she was sobbing. As though to comfort her,

one of the women said, in a whisper which I heard from the door, that the president himself was expected to

come in the afternoon.

Toward lunchtime, it became obvious that neither my aunt nor the woman wished to leave ahead of

the other. I could appreciate my aunt’s delicadeza in this matter but then got hungry and therefore grew

resourceful: I called a taxi and told her it was at the door with the meter on. Aunt Sophia’s unwillingness

lasted as long as forty centavos.

We made up for leaving ahead of the woman by getting back to the chapel early. For a long time she

did not come and when Uncle’s kinswomen arrived, I thought their faces showed a little disappointment at

finding the left side of the chapel empty. Aunt Sophia, on the other hand, looked relieved. But at about three,

the woman arrived and I perceived at once that there was a difference in her appearance. She wore the

same black dress but her thick hair was now carefully swept into a regal coil; her skin glowing; her eyes,

which had been striking enough, looked even larger. The eyebrows of the women around me started

working and finally, the scrawniest of the poet’s relations whispered to the others and slowly, together, they

closed in on the woman.

I went over to sit with my aunt who was gazing not so steadily at nothing in particular.

At first the women spoke in whispers, and then the voices rose a trifle. Still, everybody was polite.

There was more talking back and forth, and suddenly the conversation wasn’t polite any more. The only

good thing about it was that now I could hear everything distinctly.

“So you want to put me in a corner, do you? You think perhaps you can bully me out of here?” the

woman said.

“Shh! Please don’t create a scene,” the poet’s sisters said, going one pitch higher.”

It’s you who are creating a scene. Didn’t you come here purposely to start one?”

“We’re only trying to make you see reason…. If you think of the dead at all…”

“Let’s see who has the reason. I understand that you want me to leave, isn’t it? Now that he is dead

and cannot speak for me you think I should quietly hide in a corner?” The woman’s voice was now pitched

up for the benefit of the whole chapel. “Let me ask you. During the war when the poet was hard up do you

suppose I deserted him? Whose jewels do you think we sold when he did not make money… When he was

ill, who was it who stayed at his side… Who took care of him during all those months… and who peddled his

books and poems to the publishers so that he could pay for the hospital and doctor’s bills? Did any of you

come to him then? Let me ask you that! Now that he is dead you want me to leave his side so that you and

that vieja can have the honors and have your picture taken with the president. That’s what you want, isn’t it–

to pose with the president….”

“Por Dios! Make her stop it–somebody stop her mouth!” cried Aunt Sophia, her eyes going up to

heaven.

“Now you listen, you scandalous woman,” one of the clan said, taking it up for Aunt Sophia. “We don’t

care for the honors–we don’t want it for ourselves. But we want the poet to be honored in death… to have a

decent and respectable funeral without scandal… and the least you can do is to leave him in peace as he

lies there….”

“Yes,” the scrawny one said. “You’ve created enough scandal for him in life–that’s why we couldn’t go

to him when he was sick… because you were there, you–you shameless bitch.

“The woman’s face went livid with shock and rage. She stood wordless while her young protector, his

eyes blazing, came between her and the poet’s kinswomen. Her face began to twitch. And then the sobs

came. Big noisy sobs that shook her body and spilled the tears down her carefully made-up face. Fitfully,

desperately, she tugged at her eyes and nose with her widow’s veil. The young man took hold of her

shoulders gently to lead her away, but she shook free; and in a few quick steps she was there before the

casket, looking down upon that infinitely sad smile on Uncle’s face. It may have been a second that she

stood there, but it seemed like a long time.

“All right,” she blurted, turning about. “All right. You can have him–all that’s left of him!“

At that moment before she fled, I saw what I had waited to see. The mascara had indeed run down her

cheeks. But somehow it wasn’t funny at all.

DEAD STARS by Paz Maquez Benitez

THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.

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

"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month."

Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."

"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.

"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much in love he was?"

"In love? With whom?"

"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of," she said with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that--"

Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love--he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.

Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it," someone had seemed to urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.

Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.

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

"I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." Don Julian loved to philosophize. He was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to monologue pitch. "That phase you were speaking of is natural enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I see it, was Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--"

Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose--almost indolence--disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative language.

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

Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible evidence. Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.

He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.

The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open porches he could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the Martinez yard.

Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now--

One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favor with the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial," the old man had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own worldly wisdom.

A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the Judge's children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had been

omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening.

He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but his sister-in-law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed, and felt that he should explain.

To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, Each time I was about to correct you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before."

"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.

"A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is Manalang, Manalang.' You know, I never forgave him!"

He laughed with her.

"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she pursued, "is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without help."

"As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"

"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."

Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately tinkled and banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.

He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a sister of the Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether. She was small and plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty woman with the complexion of a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not so obviously pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a smooth rich brown with underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding vitality.

On Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to the house on the hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered them beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a half hour or so, the chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas would go out to the porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a rocking chair and the hours--warm, quiet March hours--sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it was evident that she liked his company; yet what feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter of course. Only when Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of the girl next door.

Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo suddenly realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza to come out of the church as he had been wont to do. He had been eager to go "neighboring."

He answered that he went home to work. And, because he was not habitually untruthful, added, "Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's."

She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked jealousies. She was a believer in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their power to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly love another woman.

That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving Julia Salas something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet something that would not be denied beckoned imperiously, and he followed on.

It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of the world, so easy and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the shadows around, enfolding.

"Up here I find--something--"

He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?"

"No; youth--its spirit--"

"Are you so old?"

"And heart's desire."

Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?

"Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is too broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery."

"Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.

"Mystery--" she answered lightly, "that is so brief--"

"Not in some," quickly. "Not in you."

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

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

"So long?"

"I should like to."

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

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

After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a thriving young coconut looked like--"plenty of leaves, close set, rich green"--while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-curving beach.

Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.

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

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

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

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

"The afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the last time--we can visit."

"The last? Why?"

"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."

He noted an evasive quality in the answer.

"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"

"If you are, you never look it."

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

"But--"

"Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself.

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

She waited.

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

"Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely

"Who? I?"

"Oh, no!"

"You said I am calm and placid."

"That is what I think."

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

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

"I should like to see your home town."

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

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

"Nothing? There is you."

"Oh, me? But I am here."

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

"Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American there!"

"Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment."

She laughed.

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

"Could I find that?"

"If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.

"I'll inquire about--"

"What?"

"The house of the prettiest girl in the town."

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

"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.

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

"Pretty--pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that quite--"

"Are you withdrawing the compliment?"

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

"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.

"Exactly."

"It must be ugly."

"Always?"

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

"No, of course you are right."

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

"I am going home."

The end of an impossible dream!

"When?" after a long silence.

"Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend Holy Week at home."

She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the last time."

"Can't I come to say good-bye?"

"Oh, you don't need to!"

"No, but I want to."

"There is no time."

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

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

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

"Old things?"

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

The line moved on.

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

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

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

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

A round orange moon, "huge as a winnowing basket," rose lazily into a clear sky, whitening the iron roofs and dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the still densely shadowed streets the young women with their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home.

Toward the end of the row of Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle Real to those who lived farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he said "Good evening" and fell into step with the girl.

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

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

"Oh, is the Judge going?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

"For what?"

"For your approaching wedding."

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

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

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

"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly

"When they are of friends, yes."

"Would you come if I asked you?"

"When is it going to be?"

"May," he replied briefly, after a long pause.

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

"They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?"

"Why not?"

"No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?"

"If you will ask me," she said with disdain.

"Then I ask you."

"Then I will be there."

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

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

"No!"

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

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

"Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"

"I don't know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us and rushes downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish to ask whether one will or will not, because it no longer depends on him."

"But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I know? That is his problem after all."

"Doesn't it--interest you?"

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

Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But do you approve?"

"Of what?"

"What she did."

"No," indifferently.

"Well?"

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

"Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--immoral man. I did not know that your ideas were like that."

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

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

"The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he stopped, appalled by the passion in his voice.

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

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

Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember ever having suffered before. What people will say--what will they not say? What don't they say when long engagements are broken almost on the eve of the wedding?

"Yes," he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as if merely thinking aloud, "one tries to be fair--according to his lights--but it is hard. One would like to be fair to one's self first. But that is too easy, one does not dare--"

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

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

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

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

The last word had been said.

III

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

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

remote and alien, as incidents that did not matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but immeasurably far away, beyond her reach.

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

The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd assembled to meet the boat--slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake-shore speech. From where he stood he could not distinguish faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidentewas 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 thepresidente 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 chinelasmaking scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street--tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.

How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid

ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer.

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

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

"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.

"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?"

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

"Won't you come up?"

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

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

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

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

So that was all over.

Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?

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

An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.

MORNING IN NAGREBCAN by Manuel C. Arguilla

It was sunrise at Nagrebcan. The fine, bluish mist, low over the tobacco fields, was lifting and thinning

moment by moment. A ragged strip of mist, pulled away by the morning breeze, had caught on the clumps of

bamboo along the banks of the stream that flowed to one side of the barrio. Before long the sun would top

the Katayaghan hills, but as yet no people were around. In the grey shadow of the hills, the barrio was

gradually awaking. Roosters crowed and strutted on the ground while hens hesitated on their perches

among the branches of the camanchile trees. Stray goats nibbled the weeds on the sides of the road, and

the bull carabaos tugged restively against their stakes.

In the early morning the puppies lay curled up together between their mother’s paws under the ladder

of the house. Four puppies were all white like the mother. They had pink noses and pink eyelids and pink

mouths. The skin between their toes and on the inside of their large, limp ears was pink. They had short

sleek hair, for the mother licked them often. The fifth puppy lay across the mother’s neck. On the puppy’s

back was a big black spot like a saddle. The tips of its ears were black and so was a patch of hair on its

chest.

The opening of the sawali door, its uneven bottom dragging noisily against the bamboo flooring,

aroused the mother dog and she got up and stretched and shook herself, scattering dust and loose white

hair. A rank doggy smell rose in the cool morning air. She took a quick leap forward, clearing the puppies

which had begun to whine about her, wanting to suckle. She trotted away and disappeared beyond the

house of a neighbor.

The puppies sat back on their rumps, whining. After a little while they lay down and went back to sleep,

the black-spotted puppy on top.

Baldo stood at the threshold and rubbed his sleep-heavy eyes with his fists. He must have been about

ten years old, small for his age, but compactly built, and he stood straight on his bony legs. He wore one of

his father’s discarded cotton undershirts.

The boy descended the ladder, leaning heavily on the single bamboo railing that served as a banister.

He sat on the lowest step of the ladder, yawning and rubbing his eyes one after the other. Bending down, he

reached between his legs for the black-spotted puppy. He held it to him, stroking its soft, warm body. He

blew on its nose. The puppy stuck out a small red tongue, lapping the air. It whined eagerly. Baldo laughed –

a low gurgle.

He rubbed his face against that of the dog. He said softly, “My puppy. My puppy.” He said it many

times. The puppy licked his ears, his cheeks. When it licked his mouth, Baldo straightened up, raised the

puppy on a level with his eyes. “You are a foolish puppy,” he said, laughing. “Foolish, foolish, foolish,” he

said, rolling the puppy on his lap so that it howled.

The four other puppies awoke and came scrambling about Baldo’s legs. He put down the black-

spotted puppy and ran to the narrow foot bridge of woven split-bamboo spanning the roadside ditch. When it

rained, water from the roadway flowed under the makeshift bridge, but it had not rained for a long time and

the ground was dry and sandy. Baldo sat on the bridge, digging his bare feet into the sand, feeling the cool

particles escaping between his toes. He whistled, a toneless whistle with a curious trilling to it produced by

placing the tongue against the lower teeth and then curving it up and down.

The whistle excited the puppies; they ran to the boy as fast as their unsteady legs could carry them,

barking choppy little barks.

Nana Elang, the mother of Baldo, now appeared in the doorway with handful of rice straw. She called

Baldo and told him to get some live coals from their neighbor.

“Get two or three burning coals and bring them home on the rice straw,” she said. “Do not wave the

straw in the wind. If you do, it will catch fire before you get home.” She watched him run toward KaIkao’s

house where already smoke was rising through the nipa roofing into the misty air. One or two empty

carromatas drawn by sleepy little ponies rattled along the pebbly street, bound for the railroad station.

Nana Elang must have been thirty, but she looked at least fifty. She was a thin, wispy woman, with

bony hands and arms. She had scanty, straight, graying hair which she gathered behind her head in a small,

tight knot. It made her look thinner than ever. Her cheekbones seemed on the point of bursting through the

dry, yellowish-brown skin. Above a gray-checkered skirt, she wore a single wide-sleeved cotton blouse that

ended below her flat breasts. Sometimes when she stooped or reached up for anything, a glimpse of the

flesh at her waist showed in a dark, purplish band where the skirt had been tied so often.

She turned from the doorway into the small, untidy kitchen. She washed the rice and put it in a pot

which she placed on the cold stove. She made ready the other pot for the mess of vegetables and dried fish.

When Baldo came back with the rice straw and burning coals, she told him to start a fire in the stove, while

she cut the ampalaya tendrils and sliced the eggplants. When the fire finally flamed inside the clay stove,

Baldo’s eyes were smarting from the smoke of the rice straw.

“There is the fire, mother,” he said. “Is father awake already?”

Nana Elang shook her head. Baldo went out slowly on tiptoe.

There were already many people going out. Several fishermen wearing coffee-colored shirts and

trousers and hats made from the shell of white pumpkins passed by. The smoke of their home-made cigars

floated behind them like shreds of the morning mist. Women carrying big empty baskets were going to the

tobacco fields. They walked fast, talking among themselves. Each woman had gathered the loose folds of

her skirt in front and, twisting the end two or three times, passed it between her legs, pulling it up at the

back, and slipping it inside her waist. The women seemed to be wearing trousers that reached only to their

knees and flared at the thighs.

Day was quickly growing older. The east flamed redly and Baldo called to his mother, “Look, mother,

God also cooks his breakfast.”

He went to play with the puppies. He sat on the bridge and took them on his lap one by one. He

searched for fleas which he crushed between his thumbnails. “You, puppy. You, puppy,” he murmured softly.

When he held the black-spotted puppy, he said, “My puppy. My puppy.”

Ambo, his seven-year old brother, awoke crying. Nana Elang could be heard patiently calling him to

the kitchen. Later he came down with a ripe banana in his hand. Ambo was almost as tall as his older

brother and he had stout husky legs. Baldo often called him the son of an Igorot. The home-made cotton

shirt he wore was variously stained. The pocket was torn, and it flipped down. He ate the banana without

peeling it.

“You foolish boy, remove the skin,” Baldo said.

“I will not,” Ambo said. “It is not your banana.” He took a big bite and swallowed it with exaggerated

relish.

“But the skin is tart. It tastes bad.”

“You are not eating it,” Ambo said. The rest of the banana vanished in his mouth.

He sat beside Baldo and both played with the puppies. The mother dog had not yet returned and the

puppies were becoming hungry and restless. They sniffed the hands of Ambo, licked his fingers. They tried

to scramble up his breast to lick his mouth, but he brushed them down. Baldo laughed. He held the black-

spotted puppy closely, fondled it lovingly. “My puppy,” he said. “My puppy.”

Ambo played with the other puppies, but he soon grew tired of them. He wanted the black-spotted one.

He sidled close to Baldo and put out a hand to caress the puppy nestling contentedly in the crook of his

brother’s arm. But Baldo struck the hand away. “Don’t touch my puppy,” he said. “My puppy.”

Ambo begged to be allowed to hold the black-spotted puppy. But Baldo said he would not let him hold

the black-spotted puppy because he would not peel the banana. Ambo then said that he would obey his

older brother next time, for all time. Baldo would not believe him; he refused to let him touch the puppy.

Ambo rose to his feet. He looked longingly at the black-spotted puppy in Baldo’s arms. Suddenly he

bent down and tried to snatch the puppy away. But Baldo sent him sprawling in the dust with a deft push.

Ambo did not cry. He came up with a fistful of sand which he flung in his brother’s face. But as he started to

run away, Baldo thrust out his leg and tripped him. In complete silence, Ambo slowly got up from the dust,

getting to his feet with both hands full of sand which again he cast at his older brother. Baldo put down the

puppy and leaped upon Ambo.

Seeing the black-spotted puppy waddling away, Ambo turned around and made a dive for it. Baldo

saw his intention in time and both fell on the puppy which began to howl loudly, struggling to get away. Baldo

cursed Ambo and screamed at him as they grappled and rolled in the sand. Ambo kicked and bit and

scratched without a sound. He got hold of Baldo’s hair and ear and tugged with all his might. They rolled

over and over and then Baldo was sitting on Ambo’s back, pummeling him with his fists. He accompanied

every blow with a curse. “I hope you die, you little demon,” he said between sobs, for he was crying and he

could hardly see. Ambo wriggled and struggled and tried to bite Baldo’s legs. Failing, he buried his face in

the sand and howled lustily.

Baldo now left him and ran to the black-spotted puppy which he caught up in his arms, holding it

against his throat. Ambo followed, crying out threats and curses. He grabbed the tail of the puppy and jerked

hard. The puppy howled shrilly and Baldo let it go, but Ambo kept hold of the tail as the dog fell to the

ground. It turned around and snapped at the hand holding its tail. Its sharp little teeth sank into the fleshy

edge of Ambo’s palm. With a cry, Ambo snatched away his hand from the mouth of the enraged puppy. At

that moment the window of the house facing the street was pushed violently open and the boys’

father, Tang Ciaco, looked out. He saw the blood from the toothmarks on Ambo’s hand. He called out

inarticulately and the two brothers looked up in surprise and fear. Ambo hid his bitten hand behind him.

Baldo stopped to pick up the black-spotted puppy, but Tang Ciaco shouted hoarsely to him not to touch the

dog. At Tang Ciaco’s angry voice, the puppy had crouched back snarling, its pink lips drawn back, the hair

on its back rising. “The dog has gone mad,” the man cried, coming down hurriedly. By the stove in the

kitchen, he stopped to get a sizeable piece of firewood, throwing an angry look and a curse at NanaElang for

letting her sons play with the dogs. He removed a splinter or two, then hurried down the ladder, cursing in a

loud angry voice. Nana Elang ran to the doorway and stood there silently fingering her skirt.

Baldo and Ambo awaited the coming of their father with fear written on their faces. Baldo hated his

father as much as he feared him. He watched him now with half a mind to flee as Tang Ciaco approached

with the piece of firewood held firmly in one hand. He is a big, gaunt man with thick bony wrists and stoop

shoulders. A short-sleeved cotton shirt revealed his sinewy arms on which the blood-vessels stood out like

roots. His short pants showed his bony-kneed, hard-muscled legs covered with black hair. He was a

carpenter. He had come home drunk the night before. He was not a habitual drunkard, but now and then he

drank great quantities of basi and came home and beat his wife and children. He would blame them for their

hard life and poverty. “You are a prostitute,” he would roar at his wife, and as he beat his children, he would

shout, “I will kill you both, you bastards.” If Nana Elang ventured to remonstrate, he would beat them harder

and curse her for being an interfering whore. “I am king in my house,” he would say.

Now as he approached the two, Ambo cowered behind his elder brother. He held onto Baldo’s

undershirt, keeping his wounded hand at his back, unable to remove his gaze from his father’s close-set,

red-specked eyes. The puppy with a yelp slunk between Baldo’s legs. Baldo looked at the dog, avoiding his

father’s eyes.

Tang Ciaco roared at them to get away from the dog: “Fools! Don’t you see it is mad?” Baldo laid a

hand on Ambo as they moved back hastily. He wanted to tell his father it was not true, the dog was not mad,

it was all Ambo’s fault, but his tongue refused to move. The puppy attempted to follow them, but Tang Ciaco

caught it with a sweeping blow of the piece of firewood. The puppy was flung into the air. It rolled over once

before it fell, howling weakly. Again the chunk of firewood descended, Tang Ciaco grunting with the effort he

put into the blow, and the puppy ceased to howl. It lay on its side, feebly moving its jaws from which dark

blood oozed. Once more Tang Ciaco raised his arm, but Baldo suddenly clung to it with both hands and

begged him to stop. “Enough, father, enough. Don’t beat it anymore,” he entreated. Tears flowed down his

upraised face.

Tang Ciaco shook him off with an oath. Baldo fell on his face in the dust. He did not rise, but cried and

sobbed and tore his hair. The rays of the rising sun fell brightly upon him, turned to gold the dust that he

raised with his kicking feet.

Tang Ciaco dealt the battered puppy another blow and at last it lay limpy still. He kicked it over and

watched for a sign of life. The puppy did not move where it lay twisted on its side.

He turned his attention to Baldo.

“Get up,” he said, hoarsely, pushing the boy with his foot.

Baldo was deaf. He went on crying and kicking in the dust. Tang Ciaco struck him with the piece of

wood in his hand and again told him to get up. Baldo writhed and cried harder, clasping his hands over the

back of his head. Tang Ciaco took hold of one of the boy’s arms and jerked him to his feet. Then he began

to beat him, regardless of where the blows fell.

Baldo encircled his head with his loose arm and strove to free himself, running around his father,

plunging backward, ducking and twisting. “Shameless son of a whore,” Tang Ciaco roared. “Stand still, I’ll

teach you to obey me.” He shortened his grip on the arm of Baldo and laid on his blows. Baldo fell to his

knees, screaming for mercy. He called on his mother to help him.

Nana Elang came down, but she hesitated at the foot of the ladder. Ambo ran to her. “You

too,”Tang Ciaco cried, and struck at the fleeing Ambo. The piece of firewood caught him behind the knees

and he fell on his face. Nana Elang ran to the fallen boy and picked him up, brushing his clothes with her

hands to shake off the dust.

Tang Ciaco pushed Baldo toward her. The boy tottered forward weakly, dazed and trembling. He had

ceased to cry aloud, but he shook with hard, spasmodic sobs which he tried vainly to stop.

“Here take your child,” Tang Ciaco said, thickly.

He faced the curious students and neighbors who had gathered by the side of the road. He yelled at

them to go away. He said it was none of their business if he killed his children.

“They are mine,” he shouted. “I feed them and I can do anything I like with them.”

The students ran hastily to school. The neighbors returned to their work.

Tang Ciaco went to the house, cursing in a loud voice. Passing the dead puppy, he picked it up by its

hind legs and flung it away. The black and white body soared through the sunlit air; fell among the tall corn

behind the house. Tang Ciaco, still cursing and grumbling, strode upstairs. He threw the chunk of firewood

beside the stove. He squatted by the low table and began eating the breakfast his wife had prepared for him.

Nana Elang knelt by her children and dusted their clothes. She passed her hand over the red welts on

Baldo, but Baldo shook himself away. He was still trying to stop sobbing, wiping his tears away with his

forearm. Nana Elang put one arm around Ambo. She sucked the wound in his hand. She was crying silently.

When the mother of the puppies returned, she licked the remaining four by the small bridge of woven

split bamboo. She lay down in the dust and suckled her young. She did not seem to miss the black-spotted

puppy.

Afterward Baldo and Ambo searched among the tall corn for the body of the dead puppy. TangCiaco

had gone to work and would not be back till nightfall. In the house, Nana Elang was busy washing the

breakfast dishes. Later she came down and fed the mother dog. The two brothers were entirely hidden by

the tall corn plants. As they moved about among the slender stalks, the corn-flowers shook agitatedly. Pollen

scattered like gold dust in the sun, falling on the fuzzy· green leaves.

When they found the dead dog, they buried it in one corner of the field. Baldo dug the grove with a

sharp-pointed stake. Ambo stood silently by, holding the dead puppy.

When Baldo finished his work, he and his brother gently placed the puppy in the hole. Then they

covered the dog with soft earth and stamped on the grave until the disturbed ground was flat and hard again.

With difficulty they rolled a big stone on top of the grave. Then Baldo wound an arm around the shoulders of

Ambo and without a word they hurried up to the house.

The sun had risen high above the Katayaghan hills, and warm, golden sunlight filled Nagrebcan. The

mist on the tobacco fields had completely dissolved.

THE CENTIPEDE by Rony V. DiazWHEN I saw my sister, Delia, beating my dog with a stick, I felt hate heave like a caged, angry beast in my chest. Out in the sun, the hair of my sister glinted like metal and, in her brown dress, she looked like a sheathed dagger. Biryuk hugged the earth and screamed but I could not bound forward nor cry out to my sister. She had a weak heart and she must not be surprised. So I held myself, my throat swelled, and I felt hate rear and plunge in its cage of ribs. I WAS thirteen when my father first took me hunting. All through the summer of that year, I had tramped alone and unarmed the fields and forest around our farm. Then one afternoon in late July my father told me I could use his shotgun.

Beyond the ipil grove, in a grass field we spotted a covey of brown pigeons. In the open, they kept springing to the air and gliding away every time we were within range. But finally they dropped to the ground inside a wedge of guava trees. My father pressed my shoulder and I stopped. Then slowly, in a half-crouch, we advanced. The breeze rose lightly; the grass scuffed against my bare legs. My father stopped again. He knelt down and held my hand.

“Wait for the birds to rise and then fire,” he whispered.I pushed the safety lever of the rifle off and sighted along the barrel. The saddle of the stock felt greasy

on my cheek. The gun was heavy and my arm muscles twitched. My mouth was dry; I felt vaguely sick. I wanted to sit down.

“You forgot to spit,” my father said.Father had told me that hunters always spat for luck before firing. I spat and I saw the breeze bend the

ragged, glassy threads of spittle toward the birds.“That’s good,” Father said.“Can’t we throw a stone,” I whispered fiercely. “It’s taking them a long time.”“No, you’ve to wait.”Suddenly, a small dog yelping shrilly came tearing across the brooding plain of grass and small trees. It

raced across the plain in long slewy swoops, on outraged shanks that disappeared and flashed alternately in the light of the cloud-banked sun. One of the birds whistled and the covey dispersed like seeds thrown in the wind. I fired and my body shook with the fierce momentary life of the rifle. I saw three pigeons flutter in a last convulsive effort to stay afloat, then fall to the ground. The shot did not scare the dog. He came to us, sniffing cautiously. He circled around us until I snapped my fingers and then he came me.

“Not bad,” my father said grinning. “Three birds with one tube.” I went to the brush to get the birds. The dog ambled after me. He found the birds for me. The breast of one of the birds was torn. The bird had fallen on a spot where the earth was worn bare, and its blood was spread like a tiny, red rag. The dog scraped the blood with his tongue. I picked up the birds and its warm, mangled flesh clung to the palm of my hand.

“You’re keen,” I said to the dog. “Here. Come here.” I offered him my bloody palm. He came to me and licked my palm clean.

I gave the birds to my father. “May I keep him, Father?” I said pointing to the dog. He put the birds in a leather bag which he carried strapped around his waist.

Father looked at me a minute and then said: “Well, I’m not sure. That dog belongs to somebody.”“May I keep him until his owner comes for him?” I pursued.“He’d make a good pointer,” Father remarked. “But I would not like my son to be accused of dog-

stealing.”“Oh, no!” I said quickly. “I shall return him when the owner comes to claim him.”“All right,” he said, “I hope that dog makes a hunter out of you.”Biryuk and I became fast friends. Every afternoon after school we went to the field to chase quails or to

the bank of the river which was fenced by tall, blade-sharp reeds to flush snipes. Father was away most of the time but when he was home he hunted with us. BIRYUK scampered off and my sister flung the stick at him. Then she turned about and she saw me.

“Eddie, come here,” she commanded. I approached with apprehension. Slowly, almost carefully, she reached over and twisted my ear.

“I don’t want to see that dog again in the house,” she said coldly. “That dog destroyed my slippers again. I’ll tell Berto to kill that dog if I see it around again.” She clutched one side of my face with her hot, moist hand and shoved me, roughly. I tumbled to the ground. But I did not cry or protest. I had passed that phase. Now, every word and gesture she hurled at me I caught and fed to my growing and restless hate. MY sister was the meanest creature I knew. She was eight when I was born, the day my mother died. Although we continued to live in the same house, she had gone, it seemed, to another country from where she looked at me with increasing annoyance and contempt.

One of my first solid memories was of standing before a grass hut. Its dirt floor was covered with white banana stalks, and there was a small box filled with crushed and dismembered flowers in one corner. A doll was cradled in the box. It was my sister’s playhouse and I remembered she told me to keep out of it. She was not around so I went in. The fresh banana hides were cold under my feet. The interior of the hut was rife with the sour smell of damp dead grass. Against the flowers, the doll looked incredibly heavy. I picked it up. It was slight but it had hard, unflexing limbs. I tried to bend one of the legs and it snapped. I stared with horror at the hollow tube that was the leg of the doll. Then I saw my sister coming. I hid the leg under one of the banana pelts. She was running and I knew she was furious. The walls of the hut suddenly constricted me. I felt sick with a nameless pain. My sister snatched the doll from me and when she saw the torn leg she gasped. She pushed me hard and I crashed against the wall of the hut. The flimsy wall collapsed over me. I heard my sister screaming; she denounced me in a high, wild voice and my body ached with fear. She seized one of the saplings that held up the hut and hit me again and again until the flesh of my back and thighs sang with pain. Then suddenly my sister moaned; she stiffened, the sapling fell from her hand and quietly, as though a sling were lowering her, she sank to the ground. Her eyes were wild as scud and on the edges of her lips,. drawn tight over her teeth, quivered a wide lace of froth. I ran to the house yelling for Father.

She came back from the hospital in the city, pale and quiet and mean, drained, it seemed, of all emotions, she moved and acted with the keen, perversity and deceptive dullness of a sheathed knife, concealing in her body that awful power for inspiring fear and pain and hate, not always with its drawn blade but only with its fearful shape, defined by the sheath as her meanness was defined by her body.

Nothing I did ever pleased her. She destroyed willfully anything I liked. At first, I took it as a process of adaptation, a step of adjustment; I snatched and crushed every seed of anger she planted in me, but later on I realized that it had become a habit with her. I did not say anything when she told Berto to kill my monkey because it snickered at her one morning, while she was brushing her teeth. I did not say anything when she told Father that she did not like my pigeon house because it stank and I had to give away my pigeons and

Berto had to chop the house into kindling wood. I learned how to hold myself because I knew we had to put up with her whims to keep her calm and quiet. But when she dumped my butterflies into a waste can and burned them in the backyard, I realized that she was spiting me.

My butterflies never snickered at her and they did not smell. I kept them in an unused cabinet in the living room and unless she opened the drawers, they were out of her sight. And she knew too that my butterfly collection had grown with me. But when I arrived home, one afternoon, from school, I found my butterflies in a can, burned in their cotton beds like deckle. I wept and Father had to call my sister for an explanation. She stood straight and calm before Father but my tear-logged eyes saw only her harsh and arrogant silhouette. She looked at me curiously but she did not say anything and Father began gently to question her. She listened politely and when Father had stopped talking, she said without rush, heat or concern: “They were attracting ants.” I RAN after Biryuk. He had fled to the brambles. I ran after him, bugling his name. I found him under a low, shriveled bush. I called him and he only whimpered. Then I saw that one of his eyes was bleeding. I sat on the ground and looked closer. The eye had been pierced. The stick of my sister had stabbed the eye of my dog. I was stunned. ,For a long time I sat motionless, staring at Biryuk. Then I felt hate crouch; its paws dug hard into the floor of its cage; it bunched muscles tensed; it held itself for a minute and then it sprang and the door of the cage crashed open and hate clawed wildly my brain. I screamed. Biryuk, frightened, yelped and fled, rattling the dead bush that sheltered him. I did not run after him.

A large hawk wheeled gracefully above a group of birds. It flew in a tightening spiral above the birds.On my way back to the house, I passed the woodshed. I saw Berto in the shade of a tree, splitting

wood. He was splitting the wood he had stacked last year. A mound of bone-white slats was piled near his chopping block When he saw me, he stopped and called me.

His head was drenched with sweat. He brushed away the sweat and hair from his eyes and said to me: “I’ve got something for you.”

He dropped his ax and walked into the woodshed. I followed him. Berto went to a corner of the shed. I saw a jute sack spread on the ground. Berto stopped and picked up the sack.

“Look,” he said.I approached. Pinned to the ground by a piece of wood, was a big centipede. Its malignantly red body

twitched back and forth.“It’s large,” I said.“I found him under the stack I chopped.” Berto smiled happily; he looked at me with his muddy eyes.“You know,” he said. “That son of a devil nearly frightened me to death”I stiffened. “Did it, really?” I said trying to control my rising voice. Berto was still grinning and I felt hot all

over.“I didn’t expect to find any centipede here,” he said. “It nearly bit me. Who wouldn’t get shocked?” He

bent and picked up a piece of wood.“This wood was here,” he said and put down the block. “Then I picked it up, like this. And this centipede

was coiled here. Right here. I nearly touched it with my hand. What do you think you would feel?”I did not answer. I squatted to look at the reptile. Its antennae quivered searching the tense afternoon

air. I picked up a sliver of wood and prodded the centipede. It uncoiled viciously. Its pinchers slashed at the tiny spear.

“I could carry it dead,” I said half-aloud.“Yes,” Berto said. “I did not kill him because I knew you would like it.”“Yes, you’re right.”“That’s bigger than the one you found last year, isn’t it?”“Yes, it’s very much bigger.”

I stuck the sliver into the carapace of the centipede. It went through the flesh under the red armor; a whitish liquid oozed out. Then I made sure it was dead by brushing its antennae. The centipede did not move. I wrapped it in a handkerchief.

My sister was enthroned in a large chair in the porch of the house. Her back was turned away from the door; she sat facing the window She was embroidering a strip of white cloth. I went near, I stood behind her chair. She was not aware of my presence. I unwrapped the centipede. I threw it on her lap.

My sister shrieked and the strip of white sheet flew off like an unhanded hawk. She shot up from her chair, turned around and she saw me but she collapsed again to her chair clutching her breast, doubled up with pain The centipede had fallen to the floor.

“You did it,” she gasped. “You tried to kill me. You’ve health… life… you tried…” Her voice dragged off into a pain-stricken moan.

I was engulfed by a sudden feeling of pity and guilt.“But it’s dead!” I cried kneeling before her. “It’s dead! Look! Look!” I snatched up the centipede and

crushed its head between my fingers. “It’s dead!”My sister did not move. I held the centipede before her like a hunter displaying the tail of a deer, save

that the centipede felt thorny in my hand.

The Fence by Jose Garcia VillaThey should have stood apart, away from each other, those two nipa houses. There should have been a lofty impenetrable wall between them, so that they should not stare so coldly, so starkly, at each other—just

staring, not saying a word, not even a cruel word. Only a yard of parched soil separated them, a yard of brittle-crusted earth with only a stray weed or two to show there was life still in its bosom.They stood there on the roadside, they two alone, neighborless but for themselves, and they were like two stealthy shadows, each avid to betray the other. Queer old houses. So brown were the nipa leaves that walled and roofed them that they looked musty, gloomy. One higher than the other, pyramid-roofed, it tried to assume the air of mastery, but in vain. For though the other was low, wind-bent, supported without by luteous bamboo poles against the aggressiveness of the weather, it had its eyes to stare back as haughtily as the other—windows as desolate as the souls of the occupants of the house, as sharply angular as the intensity of their hatred.From the road these houses feared no enemy—no enemy from the length, from the dust, of the road; they were unfenced. But of each other they were afraid: there ran a green, house high, bamboo fence through the narrow ribbon of thirsty earth between them, proclaiming that one side belonged to one house, to it alone; the other side to the other, and to it alone.Formerly there had been no bamboo fence; there had been no weeds. There had been two rows of vegetables, one to each house, and the soil was not parched but soft and rich. But something had happened and the fence came to be built, and the vegetables that were so green began to turn pale, then paler and yellow and brown. Those of each house would not water their plants, for if they did, would not water their water spread to the other side and quench too the thirst of pechays and mustards not theirs? Little by little the plants had died, the soil had cracked with neglect, on both sides of the fence.Two women had built that fence. Two tanned country-women. One of them had caught her husband with the other one night, and the next morning she had gone to the bamboo clumps near the river Pasig and felled canes with her woman strength. She left her baby son at home, heeded not the little cries. And one by one that hot afternoon she shouldered the canes to her home. She was tired, very tired, yet that night she could not sleep. When morning dawned she rose and went back t the back of the house and began to split the bamboos. Her husband noticed her, but said nothing. By noon, AlingBiang was driving tall bamboo splits into the narrow ribbon of yard.Pok, Pok, Pok, sounded her crude hammer. Pok, Pok, Pok-Pok, Pok, Pok.When her husband asked her what she was doing, she answered, “I am building a fence.”“What for?” he asked.“I need a fence.”And then, too, even AlingSebia, the other woman, a child-less widow, asked inoffensively, “What are you doing, AlingBiang?”“I am building a fence.”“What for?”“I need a fence, AlingSebia. Please do not talk to me again.”And with that AlingSebia had felt hurt. Out of spite she too had gone to the bamboo clumps to fell canes. After she had split them, tried though she was, she began to thrust them into the ground, on the same straight line as AlingBiang’s but from the opposite end. The building of the fence progressed from the opposite end. The building of the fence progresses from the ends centerward. AlingBiang drove in the last split. And the fence completed, oily perspiration wetting the brows of the two young women, they gazed pridefully at the majestic wall of green that now sperated them.Not long after the completion of the fence AlingBiang’s husband disappeared and never came back. AlingBiang took the matter passively, and made no effort to find him. She had become a hardened woman.The fence hid all the happenings in each house from those who lived in the other. The other side was to each a beyond, dark in elemental prejudice, and no one dared encroach on it. So the months passed, and each woman lived as though the other were nonexistent.But early one night, from beyond the fence, AlingBiang heard cries from AlingSebia. Unwilling to pay any heed to them, she extinguished the light of the petrol kinke and laid herself down beside her child. But, in

spite of all, the cries of the other woman made her uneasy. She stood up, went to the window that faced the fence, and cried from there: “What is the matter with you, AlingSebang?”Faintly from the other side came: “AlingBiang, please go the town and get me a hilot (midwife).”“What do you need a hilot for?” asked AlingBiang.“I am going to deliever a child, AlingBiang, and I am alone. Please go, fetch a hilot.”AlingBiang stood there by the window a long time. She knew when child it was that was coming as the child of AlingSebia. She stood motionless, the wind brushing her face coldly. What did she care of AlingSebia was to undergo childbirth? The wind blew colder and pierced the thinness of her shirt. She decided to lie down and sleep. Her body struck against her child’s as she did so, and the child moaned:Ummm—The other child, too, could be moaning like that. Like her child. Ummm.From the womb of AlingSebia—the wrong womb.Hastily AlingBiang stood up, wound her tapiz round her waist, covered her shoulders with a cheap shawl.Ummm.Ummm.The cry that called her.Ummm. The cry of a lifeShe descended the bamboo steps. They creaked in the night.The fence grew moldy and inclined to one side, the child of AlingBianggrew up into sickly boy with hollow dark eyes and shaggy hair, and the child that was born to AlingSebia grew up into a girl, a girl with rugged features , a simian face, and a very narrow brow. But not a word had passed across the fence since that night.The boy Iking was not allowed to play by the roadside; for if he did, would he not know were on the other side of the fence? For his realm he had only his home and the little backyard. Sometimes, he would loiter along the narrow strip of yard beside the fence, and peep surreptitiously through the slits. And he could catch glimpses of a girl, dark-complex-ioned, flat-nosed on the other side. She was an ugly girl, even uglier than he was, but she was full-muscled, healthy. As he peeped, his body, like a thin reed pressed against the fungused canes, would be breathless. The flat-nosed girl intoxicated him, his loose architecture of a body, so that it pulsed, vibrated cruelly with the leap in his blood. The least sound of the wind against the nipa wall of their house would startle him, as though he had been caught, surprised, in his clandestine passion; a wave of frigid coldness would start in his chest and expand, expand, expand until he was all cold and shivering. Watching that girl only intensified his loneliness—watching that girl of whom he knew nothing except that form them it was not right to know each other.When his mother caught him peeping, she would scold him, and he would turn quickly about, his convex back pressed painfully against the fence.“Did I not tell you never to peep through that fence? Go up.”And he would go up without answering a word, because the moment he tried to reason out things, prolonged coughs would seize him and shake his thin body unmercifully.At night, as he lay on the bamboo floor, notes of a guitar would reach his ears. The notes were metallic, clanking, and at the middle of the nocturne they stopped abruptly. Who played the raucous notes? Who played the only music he had ever heard in his life? And why did the player never finish his music? And lying beside his mother, he felt he wanted to rise and go down the bamboo steps to the old forbidden? fence and see who it was that was playing. But AlingBiang would stir and ask, “Are you feeling cold, Iking? Here is the blanket.” Poor mother she did not know that it was she who was making the soul of this boy so cold, so barren, so desolate.And one night, after AlingBiang had prepared his bedding beside her, Iking approached her and said: “I will sleep by the door, nanay. I want to sleep alone. I am grownup. I am fifteen.” He folded his mat and tucked it under an arm carrying a kundiman-cased pillow in one thin hand, and marched stoically to the place he mentioned.When the playing came, he stood up and went down the stairs and moved towards the bamboo fence. He leaned against it and listened, enthralled, to the music. When it ceased he wanted to scream in protest, but a

strangling cough seized him. He choked, yet his neck craned and his eye strained to see who had been the player.His lips did not move, but his soul wept, “It is she!”And he wanted to hurl himself against fence to break it down. But he knew that even that old, mildewed fence was stronger than he. Stronger—stronger than the loneliness of his soul, stronger than his soul itself.Pok, Pok, Pok—Pok, Pok, Pok.The boy Iking, pallid, tubercular, watched his mother with sunken, hating eyes from the window. She was mending the fence, because now it leaned to their side and many of the old stakes had decayed. She substituted fresh ones for these, until finally, among the weather-beaten ones, rose bold green splits like stout corporals among squads of unhealthy soldiers. From the window, the boy Iking asked nervously: “Why do you do that, mother? Why—why…”“It needs reinforcing” replied his mother. Pok, Pok, Pok…“Why-why!” he exclaimed in protest.His mother stopped hammering. She stared at him cruelly.“I need it,” she declared forcefully, the veins on her forehead rising out clearly. “Your mother needs it. You need it too.”Iking cowered from the window. He heard again: Pok, Pok, Pok—Pok, Pok, Pok.That night no playing came from beyond the fence. And Iking knew why.PhthisicalIking.Eighteen-year-old bony Iking.Lying ghastly pale on the mat all the time.Waiting for the music from the other side of the fence that had stopped three years ago.And tonight was Christmas Eve. Iking’s Christmas Eve. He must be happy tonight—he must be made happy tonight…At one corner of the room his mother crooned to herself. A Biblia was on the table, but no one read it; they did not know how to read.But they knew it was Christmas Eve. AlingBiang said, “The Lord will be born tonight.”“The Lord will be born tonight,” echoed her son.“Let us pray, Iking.”Iking stood up. His emaciated form looked so pitiful that his mother said, “Better lie down again, Iking. I will pray alone.”But Iking did not lie down. He move slowly to the door and descended into the backyard… His mother would pray. “Could she pray?” his soul asked… He stood motionless. And then he saw the fence—the fence that his mother had built and strengthened—to crush his soul. He ran weakly, groggily, to it—allured by its forbidding, crushing sterness. He peeped hungrily between the splits—saw her…His dry lips mumbled, tried to make her hear his word, “Play for me tonight!”He saw that she heard. Her ugly faced turned sharply to the fence that separated him and her. He wept. He had spoken to her—the first time—the first time…He laid himself down as soon as he was back in the house. He turned his face toward the window to wait for her music. He drew his blanket closer round him so that he should not feel cold. The moonlight that poured into the room pointed at his face, livid, anxious, hoping, and at a little, wet, red smudge on the blanket where it touched his lips.Cicadas sang and leaves of trees rustled. A gorgeous moon sailed westward across the sky. Dark-skinned bats occasionally lost their way into the room. A pale silken moth flew in to flirt with the flame of kerosene kinke.And then the cicadas had tired of singing. The moon was far above at its zenith now. The bats had found their way out of the room. The moth now lay signed on the table, beside he realized now that the fence between their houses extended into the heart of this girl.“The Lord is born,” announced AlingBiang, for it was midnight.“He is born,” said her son, his ears still ready for her music because the fence did not run through his soul.

The moon descended… descended..At two a.m. Iking’s eyes were closed and his hands were cold. His mother wept. His heart beat no more.Two-three a.m.—only a few minutes after—and from beyond the fence came the notes of a guitar.The notes of a guitar.Metallic.Clanking.Raucous.Notes of the same guitar. And she who played it finished her nocturne that mourn.AlingBiang stood up from beside her son, approached the window, stared accusingly outside, and said in a low resentful voice, “They are mocking. Who would play at such a time of morn as this? Because my son is dead.”But she saw only the fence she had built and strengthened, stately white in the matutinal moonlight.

Woman With Horns (Cecilia Menguera - Brainard)Dr. Gerald McAllister listened to the rattle of doors being locked and footsteps clattering on the marble floors. The doctors and nurses were hurrying home. It was almost noon and the people of Ubec always lunched in their dining rooms their high ceilings, where their servants served soup, fish, meat, rice, and rich syrupy flan for dessert. After, they retired to their spacious, air rooms for their midday siesta. At three, they resumed work or their studies.

His assistant, Dr. Jaime Laurel, had explained that the practice was due to the tropical heat and high humidity. Even the dogs, he had pointed out, retreated under houses and shade trees.

Gerald could not understand this local custom. An hour for lunch should be more than enough. He barely had that when he was a practising physician in New York.

He reread his report about the cholera epidemic in the southern town of Carcar. It was an impressive report, well written, with numerous facts. Thanks to his vaccination program, the epidemic was now under control. This success was another feather in his cap, one of many he had accumulated during his stay in the Philippine Islands. No doubt Governor General Taft or perhaps even President McKinley would send him a letter of commendation. Politicians were like that; they appreciated information justifying America’s hold on

the archipelago.

He glanced at the calendar on his ornate desk. It was March 16, 1903, a year and a half since he arrived at the port of Ubec aboard the huge steamship from San Francisco. Three years since Blanche died.

His head hurt and removed his glasses to stroke his forehead. When the headache passed, he straightened the papers on his desk and left the office. He was annoyed at how quiet his wing at the Ubec General Hospital was, as he walked past locked doors, potted palms, and sand – filled spittoons.

In front of Dr, Laurel’s office, he saw a woman trying to open the door. She looked distraught and wrung her hands. She was a native Ubecan – Gerald had seen her at the Mayor’s functions – a comely woman with bronze skin and long hair so dark it looked blue. She wore a long hair so dark it turned blue. She wore a long blue satin skirt. An embroidered panuelo over her camisa was pinned to her bosom with a magnificent brooch of gold and pearls.

“It is lunchtime,” he said. “His Spanish was bad and his Ubecan dialect far worse.

Dark fiery eyes flashed at him.

“Comer,” he said, gesturing with his right hand to his mouth.

“I know its lunchtime. It wasn’t, fifteen minutes ago.” She tried the door once more and slapped her skirt in frustration. Tears started welling in her eyes. “My husband died over a year ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. He was in pain for years; consumption. I have been coughing and last night, I dreamt of a funeral. I became afraid. I have a daughter, you see.”

“Dr. Laurel will return at three.”

“You are a doctor. American doctors are supposed to be the best. Can you help me?”

“I don’t see patients.”

“Ah,” she said, curved eyebrows rising. She picked up her fan with a gold chain pinned to her skirt. “Ah, a doctor who doesn’t see patients.” She fanned herself slowly.

Her words irritated him and he brusquely said, “Come back in a few hours; Dr. Laurel will be back then.” She stood there with eyes still moist, her neck tilted gracefully to one side and her hand languorously moving the fan back and forth.

“It was nothing.” Jaime said. “I listened to her chest and back. There are no lesions, no TB. I told her to return in a month. I think she is spectacular; she can come back for check – ups forever.” With mischief in his eyes, he added, “Agustina Macaraig has skin like velvet; if she were not my patient –“

“Jaime, your oath. You and your women. Doesn’t your wife mind?” Gerald said.

“Eh, she’s the mother of my children, is she not?” Shrugging his shoulders, he fixed the panama hat on his head.

It was late Friday afternoon and they were promenading in the park, trying to catch the cool sea breeze. The park was in front of an Old Spanish fort. There was a playground in the middle of the benches were scattered under the surrounding acacia and mango trees. Children led by their yayas crowded the playground. Men and women walked or hudddled together to talk about the day’s events.

As he walked by the playground, Gerald was surprised to see Agustina pushing a girl of around five on the swing. When the child pleaded to do the pushing, Agustina got on the swing. He watched her kick her legs out and throw her head back, her blue – black hair flying about. She was laughing, oblivious to the scandal she was causing.

“The people don’t approve of her,” Gerald commented when he noticed women gossiping behind their fans, their eyes riveted on Agustina.

“There is a saying here in Ubec, ‘A mango tree cannot bear avocados,” Jaime continued.

Gerald shrugged his shoulders.

“Look at her. Is she not delectable?” Jaime said. “People say she is wicked, like her mother. She has a very mysterious background.”

They sat on a bench next to a blooming hibiscus bush where they could see her. The child pushed her hard and Agustina’s infectious laughter rose above other sounds.

“I can see why the people would despise a widow who carries on the way she does,” Gerald said.

“But, friend, you don’t understand. We love her. She is one of us. It’s just that Ubecans love to gossip even when she patiently nursed her husband. They said she had lovers but for five years, she took care of him. The people of Ubec like to talk. Over their meals, they talk; after eating, they talk; outside church after worshipping God, they talk; during afternoon walks, they talk. Just like we’re talking, no?”

“I did not come here to gossip. I was perfectly content planning my bubonic plague campaign when you –“

“Friend, you don’t know how to enjoy life. Look at the sun turning red, getting ready to set spectacularly. It is a wonderful afternoon, you walk with a friend, you talk about beautiful women, about life. Now, let me finish my story. People say her – mother a simple laundry woman – jumped over the seminary walls and behind those hollowed walls, under the arbol de fuego trees, she bedded with one of Christ’s chosen.”

“Ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous, nothing,” Jaime replied as he pulled out a cigar from his pocket and offered it to Gerald. “Tabacalera, almost as good as Havanas.”

Gerald shook his head. “Thank you, but I don’t smoke.”

“You don’t smoke; you don’t have women; you are a shell. Bringing you here was a chore. Are all American

doctors like yourself? If they are, I wouldn’t be caught dead in your rich and great country. You look like a god from Olympus – tall, blonde with gray eyes. You’re not forty, yet you act like an old man.”

“Jaime, skip the lecture and get on with your story.” Gerald watched Agustina loll her head back. She was biting her lower lip, afraid of how high she was.

“If you were not my boss, I would shake you to your senses. Anyway, the story goes that Agustina was born with horns.”

“Horns?”

“Like tor, yes.” Jaime put his fingers to his forehead. “At noon, her mother went to the enchanted river to do her wash. The spirits roam at that time, do you know what?”

Gerald shook his head at this nonsense. “I swim almost daily at your so – called enchanted river and I have seen nothing but fish and an occasional water buffalo. Filthy animals.”

“Well, maybe there are or aren’t spirits, no? Who are we to say there are none? The people say that her mother had – ah, how do you say – an encounter with an encantado, a river spirit. And Agustina is the product of that brief encounter.”

Gerald watched her jump off the swing, her skirt swirling up, her shapely legs flashing before his eyes.

“Her mother bribed a carpenter to saw off her horns when she was an infant.”

“She doesn’t look much like a river spirit’s daughter, Jaime,” Gerald said with a snort.

“Beware, you can never be sure.”

She took the girl’s hand and they ran into a group of women. Agustina carried on an animated conversation then waved goodbye. Before she turned to leave the park, she looked briefly at Gerald. He caught her gaze but she quickly lowered her eyes and walked away as if she had not seen him.

On the way to the Mayor’s house, Gerald thought that attending social functions was part of his job. He was not only Ubec’s Public Health Director, he was also an ambassador – of – sorts for the United States. The truth was, he didn’t really mind social affairs at all. They kept him occupied. When he was busy, he didn’t have time to think about the past, to feel that shakiness, that pain that had possessed him after Blanche died.

During the day he was fine; he worked, lunched, swam, went on promenades, had rich frothy chocolate with the men. Later he dined; sipped after – dinner brandies and liqueurs, and chatted until way past midnight. It was when the servants locked the doors and the house was still, when the only sound was the lonely clatter of the night watchman, that he would feel his composure slip away. His heart would palpitate and an uneasiness would overcome him. He would try to cram his mind with thoughts – health education campaigns, sanitation programs, quarantine reports – but the disquiet would stay with him.

The mayor of Ubec, a small, round man, greeted Gerald warmly. He introduced him as the great American doctor who was wiping out cholera, smallpox, and bubonic plague from Ubec. The people knew him of

course and they shook his hand heartily. They congratulated him on his recent success in Carcar and inquired about his current bubonic plague campaigns. Rats, Gerald explained, transmit the disease; therefore, getting rid of the pets by traps and arsenic poisoning would eliminate the problem.

When the food was served on the long dining table with tall silver candelabras, the Mayor teased Dr. McAllister for his squeamishness at the roasted pig. The women giggled demurely, covering their mouths with their hand painted fans or lace handkerchiefs, while the men laughed boisterously. The Mayor’s mother, a fat old lady with a moustache, tore off the pig’s ear and pressed it in Gerald’s hand. “Taste it, my American son,” she said. Laughing and clapping, the people urged him until he finally did.

When he later went to the verandah to drink his rice wine, he saw Agustina standing there, gazing at the stars. She looked different, not the frightened woman at the hospital, not the carefree girl at the park, but a proper Ubecan window in black, with her hair done in a severe bun. Curiously, the starkness enhanced her grace and beauty, calling attention to the curves of her body.

“You did not like the lechon?” she asked softly, with an amused twinkle in her eyes.

“I beg your pardon? Oh – the – pig?” He shook his head, embarrassed that she had witnessed that charade. They were alone and he hoped someone would join them.

“What do Americans eat, Dr. McAllister?” She was studying him, eyes half – closed with a one – sided smile that was very becoming.

Gerald pushed his hair from his hair from his forehead. “Pies – cherry pies, boysenberry pies – I miss them all. Frankly, I have –“

She drew closer to him and he caught a warm, musky scent coming from her body.

“– I have lost ten pounds since I’ve been here.”

“In kilos, how many?”

“Around four and a half.”

“Santa Clara! You must get rid of your cook. She must be an incompetent, starving you like that. It is a shame to the people of Ubec.”

Gerald watched her, aware of his growing infatuation.

“I like you,” she said suddenly. “You and I have a kinship. Come to my house and my daughter and I will feed you.” Pausing, she reached up to stroke his face with her fan. His cheeks burned. “Nothing exotic,” she continued, “just something good.” Her eyes flashed as she smiled. “You know where I live?”

He hesitated the shook his head. His knees were shaking.

“The house at the mouth of the river. I see you swimming during siesta time. I like to swim at night, when the moon is full.” She looked at him, closed her eyes languidly and walked away.

After dinner, Gerald hurried home and paced his bedroom floor. He should have been flattered by Agustina’s advances, but instead he was angry and confused. She was enchanting and desirable and he was upset that he should find her so.

Once he had been unfaithful when Blanche was bedridden. The surgical nurse who laughed a lot had been willing, and he had wanted even for just for a few hours to forget, to be happy. Blanche had known, just by looking at him. “Oh, Tiger, how could you? How could you?” After her death, he had not given this side of himself a thought. Yet now, he found himself recalling that indescribable musky – woman scent emanating from Agustina.

There was something else. It bothered him deeply that Agustina, widowed for only a little over a year, would laugh, be happy, even flirt outrageously with him. Why was she not consumed with grief? Why did she not sit at home crocheting white doilies? Why did she not light candles in the crumbling musty churches, the way proper Ubecan widows did? He was outraged at her behaviour. He condemned her for the life that oozed out of her, when he needed every ounce of his strength just to stay sane.

He strode to his desk and stared at the album with photographs, which he had not looked at in years. The wedding picture showed a vibrant smiling girl with a ring of tiny white flowers around her blonde curly hair. His face was unlined then, and his moustache seemed an affection. Anxious eyes peered through round eyeglasses, as if he knew then that the future would give him anguish.

He studied the other pictures – serious daguerreotypes – that unleashed a flood of emotions. He found himself weeping at some, smiling at others. He remembered Blanche’s soft voice: “Oh, Tiger, I adore you so.” Blanche in bed, waiting for him. And later, Blanche in bed, pale, thin, with limp hair. She had been eaten bit by bit by consumption; she had been consumed, only a skeleton, that coughed incessantly and spat blood remained. Gerald did not believe in God, but he had prayed for her death, just so it would end. When she died, he was surprised to feel another kind of grief, more acute, more searing.

After her funeral, his mind would go on and on about how useless he was – a doctor whose wife died of consumption was a failure. And always the soft voice: “Oh, Tiger, how could you?”

Returning from his work each night, he had found himself waiting for her voice: How was your day, Tiger? He saw slight women with curly blonde hair and he followed them. He plunged into a depression – not eating, unable to work, to think clearly, to talk coherently. He stayed shut up in his room with wine – coloured drapes. At times he thought he was losing his mind. When he pointed a gun to his forehead, a part of him panicked and said: NO. That part had taken over and started running his life again. Eat, so you will gain weight; exercise, so your body will be healthy; work, so your mind will not dwell on the agony.

It was this part that led him to the Islands, far away, from slight women with curly blonde hair. It was the same part that now said: Blanche is dead, you are alive; you have the right to laugh and be happy just as Agustina laughs and is happy.

Gerald struggled within himself but would not allow himself to surrender his mourning. He decided not to see Agustina; he would not allow her to corrupt him.

Governor General William H. Taft’s handwritten letter from Manila arrived the morning and Gerald reread it several times, trying to absorb the congratulatory words. He felt nothing. He would have not cared if the letter had never come. He realized he didn’t really care, nowadays. Work was predictable; there was a little

risk. He applied himself and the laurels came. But the successes, the commendations did not fill emptiness. He picked up the conch shell that he used as a paper weight and tapped it, listening to the hollow ring that echoed in his office.

Gerald went to Jaime’s office to show him the letter. Jaime appeared cross; he sat erect and immobile as he listened quietly.

“Well?” Gerald asked after reading the letter aloud.

“The letter – it’s a fine letter, don’t you think?” he hoped for an enthusiastic reply that would rub some life into him.

“The Mayor’s mother is dead.” Jaime said. “She choked on some food.”

“Too bad. Well, at least it wasn’t typhoid or anything contagious,” he said.

Jaime’s black eyes snapped at him.”You bastard!” he said. “All you can think about is work. You have no soul.”

Gerald could not work the rest of the morning. He felt a growing restlessness, a vague uneasiness that he could not pinpoint. No soul. Had he indeed lost his soul? Was that why he could not feel and why he didn’t care about anything? In trying to bring order to his life, in restructuring it after Blanche died, had he lost a vital part of himself – his soul?

Funerals, Gerald thought as he walked into the Mayor’s house, were dreary, maudlin affairs, where people wore long faces and tried to sound sincere as they dug up some memory of the deceased.

He braced himself when he saw mourners in black and the huge black bow on the Mayor’s front door. Inside, he was surprised to see the number of people crowding the place. Some wept; others laughed and related stories about the old woman. A rather festive air filled the place.

The Mayor hugged Gerald, saying, “What a tragedy, what a tragedy! She was eating pickled pig snout when suddenly she choked. It was over before any of us could do anything. She loved you like a son and worried that you were too thin.”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Gerald.

The Mayor brought him to the casket in the living room. “Mama chose her own funeral picture,” the Mayor said as he pointed at the huge picture of a slim, young girl, propped up next to the coffin. “She was a vain woman. The picture was taken almost half a century ago.”

The mayor continued, “Her mind was not clear. She wanted to be buried in her wedding gown but it was far too small. I had to hire three seamstresses to work all night. They ripped and stitched, adding panels to the cloth of the dress. It was still too small. Finally we decided to clothe her in another dress and to lay her wedding gown on top, pinning it here and there to keep it in place. Family deaths can be trying,” he said.

The old Spanish friar said a Latin Mass and spoke lengthily about her goodness and kindness. “She had a rich and long life,” he concluded. Six men picked up the casket and carried it downstairs. Near the hearse,

an old man riding a horse stopped them. He was dressed in revolutionary uniform with medals hanging on his chest, and a gun on his right hand which he fired once. Gasping, the mourners stopped still. The old man ordered the men to open the casket. He got off his horse, bent over the casket and planted a kiss on the corpse’s lips. Then, he got back on his horse and galloped off.

It took a while for the mourners to compose themselves and continue to the cemetery. A pair of scissors was placed under the satin pillow; family members kissed the body; the priest blessed the coffin and she was finally buried.

Everybody returned to the Mayor’s house for a huge banquet. Jaime tried to explain the revelry by saying that the person was feted on his birth, his marriage, and his death. “It’s the end of a good life, my friend,” he said.

Agustina, who was there, walked up to Gerald. “It was a beautiful funeral,” she said.

“I’ve never attended one like it,” he replied and laughed. “I guess it was.”

They were near a window and she looked out, “Ah, the moon is full.”

From his room, Gerald watched the large moon rise, shining on the starapple and jackfruit trees in his backyard. It was a warm night, even with all the windows open. He waited for even the slightest breeze to stir the silvery leaves, but there was no wind and a restlessness grew in him.

At last he decided to go to the river. Silence and oppressive heat dominated Ubec as he walked the cobblestones. He reached the path leading to the river and the sea. The moon was so bright that the air seemed to vibrate as he followed the trail that widened, then narrowed, then widened again, until he reached the riverbank.

After leaving his things under a coconut tree, he walked to the water and saw how clear it was. Little gray fish darted between colourful rocks. In the distance the river and sea shimmered brilliantly.

The water felt cool and silky. Gerald swam back and forth, marvelling at the brazenness of the fish that brushed against him, some even nibbling his toes. He spotted a bright green rock and wondered about it. Diving at the river bottom, he fetched it. When he surfaced, he saw her standing next to his things. He was not surprised; he knew she would be there.

Moonlight bathed her, making her glow. A green and red tapis was wrapped around her, exposing golden shoulders and neck, showing mounds of flesh.

Gerald felt life stirring in him and, holding his breath, he waded to the shore. She walked toward him. The water splashed and the small gray fish skittered away when she slipped into the water. He watched the river creep higher and higher as her tapis floated gracefully around her, until they fell into each other’s arms.

Mats (Francisco Arcellana)For the Angeles family, Mr. Angeles’ homecoming from his periodic inspection trips was always an occasion for celebration. But his homecoming – from a trip to the South – was fated to be more memorable than any of the others.

He had written from Mariveles: “I have met a marvellous matweaver – a real artist – and I shall have a surprise for you. I asked him to weave a sleeping – mat for evry one in the family. He is using many different tools and for each mat the dominant colour is that of our respective birthstones. I am sure that the children will be very pleased. I know you will be. I can hardly wait to show them to you.”

Nana Emilia read the letter that morning, and again and again every time she had a chance to leave the kitchen. In the evening, when all the children were home from school she had asked her oldest son, Jose, to read the letter at the dinner table. The children became very much excited about the mats, and talked about them until late into the night. This she wrote her husband when she laboured over a reply to him. For days after that the mats continued to be the chief topic of conversation among the children.

Finally, from Lopez, Mr. Angeles wrote again: “I am taking the Bicol Express tomorrow. I have the mats with me, and they are beautiful. God willing, I shall be home to join you at dinner.”

The letter was read aloud during the noon meal. Talk about the mats flared up again like wildfire.

“I like the feel of mats,” Antonio, the third child, said. “I like the smell of new mats.” “Oh, but these mats are different,” interposed Susanna, the fifth child. “They have our names woven into them, and in our ascribed colours, too.”

The children knew what they were talking about: they knew just what a decorative mat was like; it was not anything new or strange in their experience. That was why they were so excited about the matter. They had such a mat in the house, one they seldom used, a mat older than any of them.

This mat had been given to Nana Emilia by her mother when she and Mr. Angeles were married, and it had been with them ever since. It had served on the wedding night, and had not since been used except on special occasions.

It was a very beautiful mat, not really meant to be ordinarily used. It had green leaf borders, and a lot of gigantic red roses woven into it. In the middle, running the whole length of the mat, was the lettering:

Emilia y Jaime Recuerdo

The letters were in gold.

Nana Emilia always kept that mat in her trunk. When anyone of the family was taken ill, the mat was brought out and the patient slept on it, had it all to himself. Everyone of the children had sometime in his life slept on it; not a few had slept on it more than once.

Most of the time, the mat was kept in Nana Emilia’s trunk, and when it was taken out and spread on the floor the children were always around to watch. At first there had been only Nana Emilia and Mr. Angeles to see the mat spread. Then a child – a girl – watched with them. The number of watchers increased as more children came.

The mat did not seem to age. It seemed to Nana Emilia always as new as when it had been laid on the nuptial bed. To the children it seemed as new as the first time it was spread before them. The folds and creases seemed always new and fresh. The smell was always the smell of a new mat. Watching the intricate design was an endless joy. The children’s pleasure at the golden letters even before they could work out the meaning was boundless. Somehow they were always pleasantly shocked by the sight of the mat: so delicate and so consummate the artistry of its weave.

Now, taking out that mat to spread had become a kind of ritual. The process had become associated with illness in the family. Illness, even serious illness, had not been infrequent. There had been deaths...

In the evening Mr. Angeles was with his family. He had brought the usual things home with him. There was a lot of fruit, as always (his itinerary carried him through the fruit – growing provinces): pineapples, lanzones, chicos, atis, santol, sandia, guyabano, avocado, according to the season. He had also brought home a jar of preserved sweets from Lopez.

Putting away the fruit, sampling them, was as usual accomplished with animation and lively talk. Dinner was a long affair. Mr. Angeles was full of stories about his trip but would interrupt his tales with: “I could not sleep of nights thinking of the young ones. They should never be allowed to play in the streets. And you older ones should not stay out too late at night.”

The stories petered out and dinner was over. Putting away the dishes and wiping the dishes and wiping the table clean did not at all seem tedious. Yet Nana Emilia and the children, although they did not show it, were all on edge about the mats.

Finally, after a long time over his cigar, Mr. Angeles rose from his seat at the head of the table and crossed the room to the corner where his luggage had been piled. From the heap he disengaged a ponderous bundle. Taking it under one arm, he walked to the middle of the room where the light was brightest. He dropped the bundle and, bending over and balancing himself on his toes, he strained at the cord that bound it. It was strong, would not break, would not give way. He tried working at the knots. His fingers were clumsy, they had begun shaking. He raised his head, breathing heavily, to ask for the scissors. Alfonso, his youngest boy, was to one side of him with the scissors ready.

Nana Emilia and her eldest girl, who had long returned from the kitchen, were watching the proceedings quietly.

One swift movement with the scissors, snip! And the bundle was loose.

Turning to Nana Emilia, Mr. Angeles joyfully cried: “These are the mats, Miling.”

Mr. Angeles picked up the topmost mat in the bundle.

“This, I believe, is yours, Miling.”

Nana Emilia stepped forward to the light, wiping her still moist hands against the folds of her skirt, and with a strangely young shyness received the mat. The children watched the spectacle silently, and then broke into delighted, though a little conscious, laughter. Nana Emilia unfolded the mat without a word. It was a beautiful mat: to her mind, even more beautiful than the one she had received from her mother on her wedding day.

There was a name in the very centre of it: EMILIA. The letters were large, done in green. Flowers – cadena – de – amor – were woven in and out among the letters. The border was a long winding twig of cadena – de – amor.

The children stood about the spread mat. The air was punctuated by their breathless exclamations of delight.

“It is beautiful, Jaime; it is beautiful!” Nana Emilia’s voice broke, and she could not say any more.

“And this, I know, is my own,” said Mr. Angeles of the next mat in the bundle. The mat was rather simply decorated, the design almost austere, and the only colours used were purple and gold. The letters of the name Jaime were in purple.

“And this is for you, Marcelina.”

Marcelina was the oldest child. She had always thought her name too long; it had been one of her worries with regard to the mat.”How on earth are they going to weave all of the letters of my name into my mat?” she had asked of almost everyone in the family. Now it delighted her to see her who name spelled out on the mat, even if the letters were a little small. Besides, there was a device above her name which pleased Marcelina very much. It was in the form of a lyre, finely done in three colours. Marcelina was a student of music and was quite a proficient pianist.

“And this is for you, Jose.”

Jose was the second child. He was a medical student already in the third year at medical school. Over his name the symbol of Aesculapius was woven into the mat.

“You are not to use this mat until the year of your internship,” Mr. Angeles was saying.

“This is yours, Antonio.”

“And this is yours, Juan.”

“And this is yours, Jesus.”

Mat after mat was unfolded. On each of the children’s mats there was somehow an appropriate an appropriate device.

At least all the children had been shown their individual mats. The air was filled with their excited talk, and through it all Mr. Angeles was saying over and over again in his deep voice:

“You are not to use this mats until you go to the University.”

Then Nana Emilia noticed bewilderingly that there were some more mats remaining to be unfolded.

“But Jaime,” Nana Emilia said, wonderingly, with evident trepidation, “there are some more mats.”

Only Mr. Angeles seemed to have heard Nana Emilia’s words. He suddenly stopped talking, as if he had

been jerked away from a pleasant phantasy. A puzzled reminiscent look came into his eyes, superseding the deep and quiet delight that had been briefly there, and when he spoke, his voice was different.

“Yes, Emilia,” said Mr. Angeles, “There are three more mats to unfold. The others who aren’t here...”

Nana Emilia caught her breath; there was a swift constriction in her throat; her face paled and she could not say anything.

The self – centred talk of the children also died. There was a silence as Mr. Angeles picked up the first of the remaining mats and began slowly unfolding it.

The mat was almost as austere in design as Mr. Angeles’ own, and it had a name. There was no symbol or device above the name; only a blank space, emptiness.

The children knew the name. But somehow the name, the letters spelling the name, seemed strange to them.

The Nana Emilia found her voice.

“You know, Jaime, you didn’t have to,” Nana Emilia said, and her voice was hurt and sorely frightened.

Mr. Angeles jerked his back; there was something swift and savage in the movement.

“Do you think I’d forgotten? Do you think I had forgotten them? Do you think I could forget them?

“This is for you, Josefina!”

“And this, for you, Victoria!”

“And this, for you, Concepcion!”

Mr. Angeles called the names rather than uttered them.

“Don’t, Jaime, please don’t,” was all that Nana Emilia managed to say.

“Is it fair to forget them? Would it be just to disregard them?” Mr. Angeles demanded rather than asked.

His voice had risen shrill, almost hysterical; it was also stern and sad, and somehow vindictive. Mr. Angeles had spoken almost as if he were a stranger.

Also, he had spoken as if from a deep, grudgingly – silent, long – bewildered sorrow.

The children heard the words exploding in silence. They wanted to turn away and not see the face of their father. But they could neither move nor look away; his eyes held them, his voice held them where they were. They seemed rooted to the spot.

Nana Emilia shivered once or twice, bowed her head, gripped her clasped hands between her thighs.

There was a terrible hush. The remaining mats were unfolded in silence. The names which were with infinite slowness revealed, seemed strange and stranger still; the colors not bright but deathly dull; the separate letters, spelling out the names of the dead among them, did not seem to glow or shine with a festive sheen as did the other living names.

Aguila, Augusto Antonio A., Joyce L. Arriola and John Jack Wigley. Philippine Literatures: Texts, Themes, Approaches. Espana, Manila: Univesity of Santo Tomas Publishing House. Print.