Shortstory.docx

Philippine College of Criminology 641 Sales St, Sta Cruz, Manila Philippines

FOOTNOTE TO YOUTH By: Jose Garcia Villa The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and led it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, he wanted his father to know what he had to say was of serious importance as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, but a thought came to him that his father might refuse to consider it. His father was a silent hardworking farmer, who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong’s grandmother. I will tell 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 further rows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled clammily over it. Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where into the air, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young anymore. 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 and the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interest. 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 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 stature. Thinking himself 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 young dreams of himself and 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 want to touch her, to hold her. She made him dream even during the day. Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscle 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 marched obliquely to a creek. Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray under shirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. Then 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 was already lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. He and his parents sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried freshwater fish, and 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 caked 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 we had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and without selfconsciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decresent 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 very 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 in his seat. “I asked her last night to marry me and she said…yes. I want your permission… I… want… it…” There was an impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at his coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sound it made broke the night stillness dully. “Must you marry, Dodong?” Dodong resented his father’s question; his father himself had married early. Dodong made a quick impassioned essay 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. Too absorbed was he in himself. Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment toward his father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dreams… 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 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 compress his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also for Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, she 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 ago. He was very young… He felt queer, troubled, uncomfortable…“Your son,” people would soon be telling him. “Your son, Dodong.” Dodong felt tired of standing. He sat down on a sawhorse with his feet close together. He looked at his calloused 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 has taken something not properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust off his kundiman shorts. “Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”

He turned to look again and this time, he 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. His parent’s eyes seemed to pierce through him so he felt limp. He wanted to hide or even run away from them. “Dodong, you come up. You come up,” his mother said. Dodong did not want to come up. He’d rather stayed in the sun. “Dodong… Dodong.” I’ll… come up. Dodong traced the tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parent’s 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 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 him cry. The thin voice pierced him quietly. 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 that the coming of children could not 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 had 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. If she had married Lucio, she wondered, would she have borne him children? Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong… Dodong whom life had made ugly. One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to be wise about many things. One of them was why life did not fulfill all of the Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken… after love. Dodong could 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. Dodong heard Blas’ steps for he could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blass undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called his name and asked why he did not sleep. “You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said. Blas raised himself on is elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice. “Itay..” Blas called softly. Dodong stirred and asked him what it was. “I’m going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.” Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving. “Itay, you think its over.” Dodong lay silent. I loved Tona and… I want her.” Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard where everything was still and quiet.The moonlight was cold and white. “You want to marry Tona,” Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard… “Yes.” “Must you marry?” Blas’ voice was steeled with resentment. “I will marry Tona.” “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. Afterward… 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.

Magnificence By: Jose Garcia Villa There was nothing to fear, for the man was always so gentle, so kind. At night when the little girl and her brother were bathed in the light of the big shaded bulb that hung over the big study table in the downstairs hall, the man would knock gently on the door, and come in. he would stand for a while just beyond the pool of light, his feet in the circle of illumination, the rest of him in shadow. The little girl and her brother would look up at him where they sat at the big table, their eyes bright in the bright light, and watch him come fully into the light, but his voice soft, his manner slow. He would smell very faintly of sweat and pomade, but the children didn’t mind although they did notice, for they waited for him every evening as they sat at their lessons like this. He’d throw his visored cap on the table, and it would fall down with a soft plop, then he’d nod his head to say one was right, or shake it to say one was wrong. It was not always that he came. They could remember perhaps two weeks when he remarked to their mother that he had never seen two children looking so smart. The praise had made their mother look over them as they stood around listening to the goings-on at the meeting of the neighborhood association, of which their mother was president. Two children, one a girl of seven, and a boy of eight. They were both very tall for their age, and their legs were the long gangly legs of fine spirited colts. Their mother saw them with eyes that held pride, and then to partly gloss over the maternal gloating she exhibited, she said to the man, in answer to his praise, But their homework. They’re so lazy with them. And the man said, I have nothing to do in the evenings, let me help them. Mother nodded her head and said, if you want to bother yourself. And the thing rested there, and the man came in the evenings therefore, and he helped solve fractions for the boy, and write correct phrases in language for the little girl. In those days, the rage was for pencils. School children always have rages going at one time or another. Sometimes for paper butterflies that are held on sticks, and whirr in the wind. The Japanese bazaars promoted a rage for those. Sometimes it is for little lead toys found in the folded waffles that Japanese confectionmakers had such light hands with. At this particular time, it was for pencils. Pencils big but light in circumference not smaller than a man’s thumb. They were unwieldy in a child’s hands, but in all schools then, where Japanese bazaars clustered there were all colors of these pencils selling for very low, but unattainable to a child budgeted at a baon of a centavo a day. They were all of five centavos each, and one pencil was not at all what one had ambitions for. In rages, one kept a collection. Four or five pencils, of different colors, to tie with strings near the eraser end, to dangle from one’s book-basket, to arouse the envy of the other children who probably possessed less.

Add to the man’s gentleness and his kindness in knowing a child’s desires, his promise that he would give each of them not one pencil but two. And for the little girl who he said was very bright and deserved more, ho would get the biggest pencil he could find.

One evening he did bring them. The evenings of waiting had made them look forward to this final giving, and when they got the pencils they whooped with joy. The little boy had tow pencils, one green, one blue. And the little girl had three pencils, two of the same circumference as the little boy’s but colored red and yellow. And the third pencil, a jumbo size pencil really, was white, and had been sharpened, and the little girl jumped up and down, and shouted with glee. Until their mother called from down the stairs. What are you shouting about? And they told her, shouting gladly, Vicente, for that was his name. Vicente had brought the pencils he had promised them. Thank him, their mother called. The little boy smiled and said, Thank you. And the little girl smiled, and said, Thank you, too. But the man said, Are you not going to kiss me for those pencils? They both came forward, the little girl and the little boy, and they both made to kiss him but Vicente slapped the boy smartly on his lean hips, and said, Boys do not kiss boys. And the little boy laughed and scampered away, and then ran back and kissed him anyway. The little girl went up to the man shyly, put her arms about his neck as he crouched to receive her embrace,

and kissed him on the cheeks. The man’s arms tightened suddenly about the little girl until the little girl squirmed out of his arms, and laughed a little breathlessly, disturbed but innocent, looking at the man with a smiling little question of puzzlement. The next evening, he came around again. All through that day, they had been very proud in school showing off their brand new pencils. All the little girls and boys had been envying them. And their mother had finally to tell them to stop talking about the pencils, pencils, for now that they had, the boy two, and the girl three, they were asking their mother to buy more, so they could each have five, and three at least in the jumbo size that the little girl’s third pencil was. Their mother said, Oh stop it, what will you do with so many pencils, you can only write with one at a time. And the little girl muttered under her breath, I’ll ask Vicente for some more. Their mother replied, He’s only a bus conductor, don’t ask him for too many things. It’s a pity. And this observation their mother said to their father, who was eating his evening meal between paragraphs of the book on masonry rites that he was reading. It is a pity, said their mother, People like those, they make friends with people like us, and they feel it is nice to give us gifts, or the children toys and things. You’d think they wouldn’t be able to afford it. The father grunted, and said, the man probably needed a new job, and was softening his way through to him by going at the children like that. And the mother said, No, I don’t think so, he’s a rather queer young man, I think he doesn’t have many friends, but I have watched him with the children, and he seems to dote on them. The father grunted again, and did not pay any further attention. Vicente was earlier than usual that evening. The children immediately put their lessons down, telling him of the envy of their schoolmates, and would he buy them more please? Vicente said to the little boy, Go and ask if you can let me have a glass of water. And the little boy ran away to comply, saying behind him, But buy us some more pencils, huh, buy us more pencils, and then went up to stairs to their mother. Vicente held the little girl by the arm, and said gently, Of course I will buy you more pencils, as many as you want And the little girl giggled and said, Oh, then I will tell my friends, and they will envy me, for they don’t have as many or as pretty. Vicente took the girl up lightly in his arms, holding her under the armpits, and held her to sit down on his lap and he said, still gently, What are your lessons for tomorrow? And the little girl turned to the paper on the table where she had been writing with the jumbo pencil, and she told him that that was her lesson but it was easy. Then go ahead and write, and I will watch you. Don’t hold me on your lap, said the little girl, I am very heavy, you will get very tired. The man shook his head, and said nothing, but held her on his lap just the same. The little girl kept squirming, for somehow she felt uncomfortable to be held thus, her mother and father always treated her like a big girl, she was always told never to act like a baby. She looked around at Vicente, interrupting her careful writing to twist around. His face was all in sweat, and his eyes looked very strange, and he indicated to her that she must turn around,

attend to the homework she was writing. But the little girl felt very queer, she didn’t know why, all of a sudden she was immensely frightened, and she jumped up away from Vicente’s lap. She stood looking at him, feeling that queer frightened feeling, not knowing what to do. By and by, in a very short while her mother came down the stairs, holding in her hand a glass of sarsaparilla, Vicente. But Vicente had jumped up too soon as the little girl had jumped from his lap. He snatched at the papers that lay on the table and held them to his stomach, turning away from the mother’s coming. The mother looked at him, stopped in her tracks, and advanced into the light. She had been in the shadow. Her voice had been like a bell of safety to the little girl. But now she advanced into glare of the light that held like a tableau the figures of Vicente holding the little girl’s papers to him, and the little girl looking up at him frightenedly, in her eyes dark pools of wonder and fear and question. The little girl looked at her mother, and saw the beloved face transfigured by some sort of glow. The mother kept coming into the light, and when Vicente made as if to move away into the shadow, she said, very low, but very heavily, Do not move. She put the glass of soft drink down on the table, where in the light one could watch the little bubbles go up and down in the dark liquid. The mother said to the boy, Oscar, finish your lessons. And turning to the little girl, she said, Come here. The little girl went to her, and the mother knelt down, for she was a tall woman and she said, Turn around. Obediently the little girl turned around, and her mother passed her hands over the little girl’s back. Go upstairs, she said. The mother’s voice was of such a heavy quality and of such awful timbre that the girl could only nod her head, and without looking at Vicente again, she raced up the stairs. The mother went to the cowering man, and marched him with a glance out of the circle of light that held the little boy. Once in the shadow, she extended her hand, and without any opposition took away the papers that Vicente was holding to himself. She stood there saying nothing as the man fumbled with his hands and with his fingers, and she waited until he had finished. She was going to open her mouth but she glanced at the boy and closed it, and with a look and an inclination of the head, she bade Vicente go up the stairs. The man said nothing, for she said nothing either. Up the stairs went the man, and the mother followed behind. When they had reached the upper landing, the woman called down to her son, Son, come up and go to your room. The little boy did as he was told, asking no questions, for indeed he was feeling sleepy already. As soon as the boy was gone, the mother turned on Vicente. There was a pause. Finally, the woman raised her hand and slapped him full hard in the face. Her retreated down one tread of the stairs with the force of the blow, but the mother followed him. With her other hand she slapped him on the other side of the face again. And so down the stairs they went, the man backwards, his face continually open to the force of the woman’s slapping. Alternately she lifted her right hand and made him retreat before her until they reached the bottom landing. He made no resistance, offered no defense. Before the silence and the grimness of her attack he cowered, retreating, until out of his mouth issued something like a whimper. The mother thus shut his mouth, and with those hard forceful slaps she escorted him right to the other door. As soon as the cool air of the free night touched him, he recovered enough to turn away and run, into the

shadows that ate him up. The woman looked after him, and closed the door. She turned off the blazing light over the study table, and went slowly up the stairs and out into the dark night. When her mother reached her, the woman, held her hand out to the child. Always also, with the terrible indelibility that one associated with terror, the girl was to remember the touch of that hand on her shoulder, heavy, kneading at her flesh, the woman herself stricken almost dumb, but her eyes eloquent with that angered fire. She knelt, She felt the little girl’s dress and took it off with haste that was almost frantic, tearing at the buttons and imparting a terror to the little girl that almost made her sob. Hush, the mother said. Take a bath quickly. Her mother presided over the bath the little girl took, scrubbed her, and soaped her, and then wiped her gently all over and changed her into new clothes that smelt of the clean fresh smell of clothes that had hung in the light of the sun. The clothes that she had taken off the little girl, she bundled into a tight wrenched bunch, which she threw into the kitchen range. Take also the pencils, said the mother to the watching newly bathed, newly changed child. Take them and throw them into the fire. But when the girl turned to comply, the mother said, No, tomorrow will do. And taking the little girl by the hand, she led her to her little girl’s bed, made her lie down and tucked the covers gently about her as the girl dropped off into quick slumber.

Scent of Apples By: Bienvenido N. Santos When I arrived in Kalamazoo it was October and the war was still on. Gold and silver stars hung on pennants above silent windows of white and brick-red cottages. In a backyard an old man burned leaves and twigs while a gray-haired woman sat on the porch, her red hands quiet on her lap, watching the smoke rising above the elms, both of them thinking the same thought perhaps, about a tall, grinning boy with his blue eyes and flying hair, who went out to war: where could he be now this month when leaves were turning into gold and the fragrance of gathered apples was in the wind? It was a cold night when I left my room at the hotel for a usual speaking engagement. I walked but a little way. A heavy wind coming up from Lake Michigan was icy on the face. If felt like winter straying early in the northern woodlands. Under the lampposts the leaves shone like bronze. And they rolled on the pavements like the ghost feet of a thousand autumns long dead, long before the boys left for faraway lands without great icy winds and promise of winter early in the air, lands without apple trees, the singing and the gold! It was the same night I met Celestino Fabia, "just a Filipino farmer" as he called himself, who had a farm about thirty miles east of Kalamazoo. "You came all that way on a night like this just to hear me talk?" "I've seen no Filipino for so many years now," he answered quickly. "So when I saw your name in the papers where it says you come from the Islands and that you're going to talk, I come right away." Earlier that night I had addressed a college crowd, mostly women. It appeared they wanted me to talk about my country, they wanted me to tell them things about it because my country had become a lost country. Everywhere in the land the enemy stalked. Over it a great silence hung, and their boys were there, unheard from, or they were on their way to some little known island on the Pacific, young boys all, hardly men, thinking of harvest moons and the smell of forest fire. It was not hard talking about our own people. I knew them well and I loved them. And they seemed so far away during those terrible years that I must have spoken of them with a little fervor, a little nostalgia. In the open forum that followed, the audience wanted to know whether there was much difference between our women and the American women. I tried to answer the question as best I could, saying, among other things, that I did not know that much about American women, except that they looked friendly, but differences or similarities in inner qualities such as naturally belonged to the heart or to the mind, I could only speak about with vagueness. While I was trying to explain away the fact that it was not easy to make comparisons, a man rose from the rear of the hall, wanting to say something. In the distance, he looked slight and old and very brown. Even before he spoke, I knew that he was, like me, a Filipino. "I'm a Filipino," he began, loud and clear, in a voice that seemed used to wide open spaces, "I'm just a Filipino farmer out in the country." He waved his hand toward the door. "I left the Philippines more than twenty years ago and have never been back. Never will perhaps. I want to find out, sir, are our Filipino women the same like they were twenty years ago?" As he sat down, the hall filled with voices, hushed and intrigued. I weighed my answer carefully. I did not want to tell a lie yet I did not want to say anything that would seem platitudinous, insincere. But more important than these considerations, it seemed to me that moment as I looked towards my countryman, I must give him an answer that would not make him so unhappy. Surely, all these years, he must have held on to certain ideals, certain beliefs, even illusions peculiar to the exile. "First," I said as the voices gradually died down and every eye seemed upon me, "First, tell me what our women were like twenty years ago." The man stood to answer. "Yes," he said, "you're too young . . . Twenty years ago our women were nice, they were modest, they wore their hair long, they dressed proper and went for no monkey business. They were natural, they went to church regular, and they were faithful." He had spoken slowly, and now in what seemed like an afterthought, added, "It's the men who ain't." Now I knew what I was going to say. "Well," I began, "it will interest you to know that our women have changed--but definitely! The change, however, has been on the outside only. Inside, here," pointing to the heart, "they are the same as they were twenty years ago. God-fearing, faithful, modest, and nice." The man was visibly moved. "I'm very happy, sir," he said, in the manner of one who, having stakes on the

land, had found no cause to regret one's sentimental investment. After this, everything that was said and done in that hall that night seemed like an anti-climax, and later, as we walked outside, he gave me his name and told me of his farm thirty miles east of the city. We had stopped at the main entrance to the hotel lobby. We had not talked very much on the way. As a matter of fact, we were never alone. Kindly American friends talked to us, asked us questions, said goodnight. So now I asked him whether he cared to step into the lobby with me and talk. "No, thank you," he said, "you are tired. And I don't want to stay out too late." "Yes, you live very far." "I got a car," he said, "besides . . . " Now he smiled, he truly smiled. All night I had been watching his face and I wondered when he was going to smile. "Will you do me a favor, please," he continued smiling almost sweetly. "I want you to have dinner with my family out in the country. I'd call for you tomorrow afternoon, then drive you back. Will that be alright?" "Of course," I said. "I'd love to meet your family." I was leaving Kalamazoo for Muncie, Indiana, in two days. There was plenty of time. "You will make my wife very happy," he said. "You flatter me." "Honest. She'll be very happy. Ruth is a country girl and hasn't met many Filipinos. I mean Filipinos younger than I, cleaner looking. We're just poor farmer folk, you know, and we don't get to town very often. Roger, that's my boy, he goes to school in town. A bus takes him early in the morning and he's back in the afternoon. He's nice boy." "I bet he is," I agreed. "I've seen the children of some of the boys by their American wives and the boys are tall, taller than their father, and very good looking." "Roger, he'd be tall. You'll like him." Then he said goodbye and I waved to him as he disappeared in the darkness. The next day he came, at about three in the afternoon. There was a mild, ineffectual sun shining, and it was not too cold. He was wearing an old brown tweed jacket and worsted trousers to match. His shoes were polished, and although the green of his tie seemed faded, a colored shirt hardly accentuated it. He looked younger than he appeared the night before now that he was clean shaven and seemed ready to go to a party. He was grinning as we met. "Oh, Ruth can't believe it," he kept repeating as he led me to his car--a nondescript thing in faded black that had known better days and many hands. "I says to her, I'm bringing you a first class Filipino, and she says, aw, go away, quit kidding, there's no such thing as first class Filipino. But Roger, that's my boy, he believed me immediately. What's he like, daddy, he asks. Oh, you will see, I says, he's first class. Like you daddy? No, no, I laugh at him, your daddy ain't first class. Aw, but you are, daddy, he says. So you can see what a nice boy he is, so innocent. Then Ruth starts griping about the house, but the house is a mess, she says. True it's a mess, it's always a mess, but you don't mind, do you? We're poor folks, you know. The trip seemed interminable. We passed through narrow lanes and disappeared into thickets, and came out on barren land overgrown with weeds in places. All around were dead leaves and dry earth. In the distance were apple trees. "Aren't those apple trees?" I asked wanting to be sure. "Yes, those are apple trees," he replied. "Do you like apples? I got lots of 'em. I got an apple orchard, I'll show you." All the beauty of the afternoon seemed in the distance, on the hills, in the dull soft sky. "Those trees are beautiful on the hills," I said. "Autumn's a lovely season. The trees are getting ready to die, and they show their colors, proud-like." "No such thing in our own country," I said. That remark seemed unkind, I realized later. It touched him off on a long deserted tangent, but ever there perhaps. How many times did lonely mind take unpleasant detours away from the familiar winding lanes towards home for fear of this, the remembered hurt, the long lost youth, the grim shadows of the years; how many times indeed, only the exile knows. It was a rugged road we were traveling and the car made so much noise that I could not hear everything he said, but I understood him. He was telling his story for the first time in many years. He was remembering his own youth. He was thinking of home. In these odd moments there seemed no cause for fear no cause at all, no pain. That would come later. In the night perhaps. Or lonely on the farm under the apple trees.

In this old Visayan town, the streets are narrow and dirty and strewn with coral shells. You have been there? You could not have missed our house, it was the biggest in town, one of the oldest, ours was a big family. The house stood right on the edge of the street. A door opened heavily and you enter a dark hall leading to the stairs. There is the smell of chickens roosting on the low-topped walls, there is the familiar sound they make and you grope your way up a massive staircase, the bannisters smooth upon the trembling hand. Such nights, they are no better than the days, windows are closed against the sun; they close heavily. Mother sits in her corner looking very white and sick. This was her world, her domain. In all these years, I cannot remember the sound of her voice. Father was different. He moved about. He shouted. He ranted. He lived in the past and talked of honor as though it were the only thing. I was born in that house. I grew up there into a pampered brat. I was mean. One day I broke their hearts. I saw mother cry wordlessly as father heaped his curses upon me and drove me out of the house, the gate closing heavily after me. And my brothers and sisters took up my father's hate for me and multiplied it numberless times in their own broken hearts. I was no good. But sometimes, you know, I miss that house, the roosting chickens on the low-topped walls. I miss my brothers and sisters, Mother sitting in her chair, looking like a pale ghost in a corner of the room. I would remember the great live posts, massive tree trunks from the forests. Leafy plants grew on the sides, buds pointing downwards, wilted and died before they could become flowers. As they fell on the floor, father bent to pick them and throw them out into the coral streets. His hands were strong. I have kissed these hands . . . many times, many times. Finally we rounded a deep curve and suddenly came upon a shanty, all but ready to crumble in a heap on the ground, its plastered walls were rotting away, the floor was hardly a foot from the ground. I thought of the cottages of the poor colored folk in the south, the hovels of the poor everywhere in the land. This one stood all by itself as though by common consent all the folk that used to live here had decided to say away, despising it, ashamed of it. Even the lovely season could not color it with beauty. A dog barked loudly as we approached. A fat blonde woman stood at the door with a little boy by her side. Roger seemed newly scrubbed. He hardly took his eyes off me. Ruth had a clean apron around her shapeless waist. Now as she shook my hands in sincere delight I noticed shamefacedly (that I should notice) how rough her hands were, how coarse and red with labor, how ugly! She was no longer young and her smile was pathetic. As we stepped inside and the door closed behind us, immediately I was aware of the familiar scent of apples. The room was bare except for a few ancient pieces of second-hand furniture. In the middle of the room stood a stove to keep the family warm in winter. The walls were bare. Over the dining table hung a lamp yet unlighted. Ruth got busy with the drinks. She kept coming in and out of a rear room that must have been the kitchen and soon the table was heavy with food, fried chicken legs and rice, and green peas and corn on the ear. Even as we ate, Ruth kept standing, and going to the kitchen for more food. Roger ate like a little gentleman. "Isn't he nice looking?" his father asked. "You are a handsome boy, Roger," I said. The boy smiled at me. You look like Daddy," he said. Afterwards I noticed an old picture leaning on the top of a dresser and stood to pick it up. It was yellow and soiled with many fingerings. The faded figure of a woman in Philippine dress could yet be distinguished although the face had become a blur. "Your . . . " I began. "I don't know who she is," Fabia hastened to say. "I picked that picture many years ago in a room on La Salle street in Chicago. I have often wondered who she is." "The face wasn't a blur in the beginning?" "Oh, no. It was a young face and good." Ruth came with a plate full of apples. "Ah," I cried, picking out a ripe one. "I've been thinking where all the scent of apples came from. The room is full of it." "I'll show you," said Fabia. He showed me a backroom, not very big. It was half-full of apples. "Every day," he explained, "I take some of them to town to sell to the groceries. Prices have been low. I've been losing on the trips." "These apples will spoil," I said.

"We'll feed them to the pigs." Then he showed me around the farm. It was twilight now and the apple trees stood bare against a glowing western sky. In apple blossom time it must be lovely here. But what about wintertime? One day, according to Fabia, a few years ago, before Roger was born, he had an attack of acute appendicitis. It was deep winter. The snow lay heavy everywhere. Ruth was pregnant and none too well herself. At first she did not know what to do. She bundled him in warm clothing and put him on a cot near the stove. She shoveled the snow from their front door and practically carried the suffering man on her shoulders, dragging him through the newly made path towards the road where they waited for the U.S. Mail car to pass. Meanwhile snowflakes poured all over them and she kept rubbing the man's arms and legs as she herself nearly froze to death. "Go back to the house, Ruth!" her husband cried, "you'll freeze to death." But she clung to him wordlessly. Even as she massaged his arms and legs, her tears rolled down her cheeks. "I won't leave you," she repeated. Finally the U.S. Mail car arrived. The mailman, who knew them well, helped them board the car, and, without stopping on his usual route, took the sick man and his wife direct to the nearest hospital. Ruth stayed in the hospital with Fabia. She slept in a corridor outside the patients' ward and in the day time helped in scrubbing the floor and washing the dishes and cleaning the men's things. They didn't have enough money and Ruth was willing to work like a slave. "Ruth's a nice girl," said Fabia, "like our own Filipino women." Before nightfall, he took me back to the hotel. Ruth and Roger stood at the door holding hands and smiling at me. From inside the room of the shanty, a low light flickered. I had a last glimpse of the apple trees in the orchard under the darkened sky as Fabia backed up the car. And soon we were on our way back to town. The dog had started barking. We could hear it for some time, until finally, we could not hear it anymore, and all was darkness around us, except where the headlamps revealed a stretch of road leading somewhere. Fabia did not talk this time. I didn't seem to have anything to say myself. But when finally we came to the hotel and I got down, Fabia said, "Well, I guess I won't be seeing you again." It was dimly lighted in front of the hotel and I could hardly see Fabia's face. Without getting off the car, he moved to where I had sat, and I saw him extend his hand. I gripped it. "Tell Ruth and Roger," I said, "I love them." He dropped my hand quickly. "They'll be waiting for me now," he said. "Look," I said, not knowing why I said it, "one of these days, very soon, I hope, I'll be going home. I could go to your town." "No," he said softly, sounding very much defeated but brave, "Thanks a lot. But, you see, nobody would remember me now." Then he started the car, and as it moved away, he waved his hand. "Goodbye," I said, waving back into the darkness. And suddenly the night was cold like winter straying early in these northern woodlands. I hurried inside. There was a train the next morning that left for Muncie, Indiana, at a quarter after eight.

Bread of Salt By: N.V.M Gonzales Usually I was in bed by ten and up by five and thus was ready for one more day of my fourteenth year. Unless Grandmother had forgotten, the fifteen centavos for the baker down Progreso Street – and how l enjoyed jingling those coins in my pocket!- would be in the empty fruit jar in the cupboard. I would remember then that rolls were what Grandmother wanted because recently she had lost three molars. For young people like my cousins and myself, she had always said that the kind called pan de sal ought to be quite all right. The bread of salt! How did it get that name? From where did its flavor come, through what secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from the counter by early buyers. I would push my way into the shop so that I might watch the men who, stripped to the waist worked their long flat wooden spades in and out of the glowing maw of the oven. Why did the bread come nut-brown and the size of my little fist? And why did it have a pair of lips convulsed into a painful frown? In the half light of the street and hurrying, the paper bag pressed to my chest I felt my curiosity a little gratified by the oven-fresh warmth of the bread I was proudly bringing home for breakfast. Well l knew how Grandmother would not mind if I nibbled away at one piece; perhaps, l might even eat two, to be charged later against my share at the table. But that would be betraying a trust and so, indeed, I kept my purchase intact. To guard it from harm, I watched my steps and avoided the dark street comers. For my reward, I had only to look in the direction of the sea wall and the fifty yards or so of riverbed beyond it, where an old Spaniard’s house stood. At low tide, when the bed was dry and the rocks glinted with broken bottles, the stone fence of the Spaniard’s compound set off the house as if it were a castle. Sunrise brought a wash of silver upon the roofs of the laundry and garden sheds which had been built low and close to the fence. On dull mornings the light dripped from the bamboo screen which covered the veranda and hung some four or five yards from the ground. Unless it was August when the damp, northeast monsoon had to be kept away from the rooms, three servants raised the screen promptly at six-thirty until it was completely hidden under the veranda eaves. From the sound of the pulleys, l knew it was time to set out for school. It was in his service, as a coconut plantation overseer, that Grandfather had spent the last thirty years of his life. Grandmother had been widowed three years now. I often wondered whether I was being depended upon to spend the years ahead in the service of this great house. One day I learned that Aida, a classmate in high school, was the old Spaniard’s niece. All my doubts disappeared. It was as if, before his death. Grandfather had spoken to me about her. concealing the seriousness of the matter by putting it over as a joke, if now l kept true to the virtues, she would step out of her bedroom ostensibly to say Good Morning to her uncle. Her real purpose. I knew, was to reveal thus her assent to my desire. On quiet mornings I imagined the patter of her shoes upon the wooden veranda floor as a further sign, and I would hurry off to school, taking the route she had fixed for me past the post office, the town plaza and the church, the health center east of the plaza, and at last the school grounds. I asked myself whether I would try to walk with her and decided it would be the height of rudeness. Enough that in her blue skirt and white middy she would be half a block ahead and, from that distance, perhaps throw a glance in my direction, to bestow upon my heart a deserved and abundant blessing. I believed it was but right that, in some such way as this, her mission in my life was disguised. Her name, I was to learn many years later, was a convenient mnemonic for the qualities to which argument might aspire. But in those days it was a living voice. “Oh that you might be worthy of uttering me,” it said. And how l endeavored to build my body so that l might live long to honor her. With every victory at singles at the handball court the game was then the craze at school -I could feel my body glow in the sun as though it had instantly been cast in bronze. I guarded my mind and did not let my wits go astray. In class I would not allow a lesson to pass unmastered. Our English teacher could put no question before us that did not have a ready answer in my head. One day he read Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Sire de Maletroits Door, and we were so enthralled that our breaths trembled. I knew then that somewhere, sometime in the not too improbable future, a benign old man with a lantern in his hand would also detain me in a secret room, and there daybreak would find me thrilled by the sudden certainty that I had won Aida’s hand. It was perhaps on my violin that her name wrought such a tender spell. Maestro Antonino remarked the dexterity of my stubby fingers. Quickly l raced through Alard-until l had all but committed two thirds of the book to memory. My short, brown arm learned at last to draw the bow with grace. Sometimes, when practising my scales in the early evening. I wondered if the sea wind carrying the straggling notes across the pebbled river did not transform them into Schubert’s “Serenade.”

At last Mr. Custodio, who was in charge of our school orchestra, became aware of my progress. He moved me from second to first violin. During the Thanksgiving Day program he bade me render a number, complete with pizzicati and harmonics. “Another Vallejo! Our own Albert Spalding!” I heard from the front row. Aida, I thought, would be in the audience. I looked around quickly but could not see her. As I retired to my place in the orchestra I heard Pete Saez, the trombone player, call my name. “You must join my band,” he said. “Look, well have many engagements soon, it’ll be vacation time.” Pete pressed my arm. He had for some time now been asking me to join the Minviluz Orchestra, his private band. All I had been able to tell him was that l had my schoolwork to mind. He was twenty-two. I was perhaps too young to be going around with him. He earned his school fees and supported his mother hiring out his band at least three or four times a month. He now said: “Tomorrow we play at the funeral of a Chinese-four to six in the afternoon; in the evening, judge Roldan’s silver wedding anniversary; Sunday, the municipal dance.” My head began to whirl. On the stage, in front of us, the principal had begun a speech about America. Nothing he could say about the Pilgrim Fathers and the American custom of feasting on turkey seemed interesting. I thought of the money I would earn. For several days now l had but one wish, to buy a box of linen stationery. At night when the house was quiet I would fill the sheets with words that would tell Aida how much l adored her. One of these mornings, perhaps before school closed for the holidays, I would borrow her algebra book and there, upon a good pageful of equations, there l would slip my message, tenderly pressing the leaves of the book. She would perhaps never write back. Neither by post nor by hand would a reply reach me. But no matter, it would be a silence full of voices. That night l dreamed l had returned from a tour of the world’s music centers; the newspapers of Manila had been generous with praise. I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine. A writer had described how, many years ago, I used to trudge the streets of Buenavista with my violin in a battered black cardboard case. In New York, he reported, a millionaire had offered me a Stradivarius violin, with a card that bore the inscription: “In admiration of a genius your own people must surely be proud of.” I dreamed l spent a weekend at the millionaire’s country house by the Hudson. A young girl in a blue skirt and white middy clapped her lily-white hands and, her voice trembling, cried “Bravo!” What people now observed at home was the diligence with which l attended to my violin lessons. My aunt, who had come from the farm to join her children for the holidays, brought with her a maidservant, and to the poor girl was given the chore of taking the money to the baker’s for rolls and pan de sal. I realized at once that it would be no longer becoming on my part to make these morning trips to the baker’s. I could not thank my aunt enough. I began to chafe on being given other errands. Suspecting my violin to be the excuse, my aunt remarked: “What do you want to be a musician for? At parties, musicians always eat last.” Perhaps, I said to myself, she was thinking of a pack of dogs scrambling for scraps tossed over the fence by some careless kitchen maid. She was the sort you could depend on to say such vulgar things. For that reason, I thought she ought not to be taken seriously at all. But the remark hurt me. Although Grandmother had counseled me kindly to mind my work at school, l went again and again to Pete Saez’s house for rehearsals. She had demanded that l deposit with her my earnings; I had felt too weak to refuse. Secretly, I counted the money and decided not to ask for it until l had enough with which to buy a brooch. Why this time I wanted to give Aida a brooch, I didn’t know. But I had set my heart on it. I searched the downtown shops. The Chinese clerks, seeing me so young, were annoyed when I inquired about prices. At last the Christmas season began. I had not counted on Aida’s leaving home, and remembering that her parents lived in Badajoz, my torment was almost unbearable. Not once had l tried to tell her of my love. My letters had remained unwritten, and the algebra book unborrowed. There was still the brooch to find, but I could not decide on the sort of brooch l really wanted. And the money, in any case, was in Grandmothers purse, which smelled of Tiger Balm.” I grew somewhat feverish as our class Christmas program drew near. Finally it came; it was a warm December afternoon. I decided to leave the room when our English teacher

announced that members of the class might exchange gifts. I felt fortunate; Pete was at the door, beckoning to me. We walked out to the porch where, Pete said, he would tell me a secret. It was about an asalto the next Sunday which the Buenavista Women’s Club wished to give Don Esteban’s daughters, Josefina and Alicia, who were arriving on the morning steamer from Manila. The spinsters were much loved by the ladies. Years ago, when they were younger, these ladies studied solfeggio with Josefina and the piano and harp with Alicia. As Pete told me all this, his lips ash-gray from practising all morning on his trombone, I saw in my mind the sisters in their silk dresses, shuffling off to church for the evening benediction. They were very devout, and the Buenavista ladies admired that. I had almost forgotten that they were twins and, despite their age, often dressed alike. In low-bosomed voile bodices and white summer hats, l remembered, the pair had attended Grandfather’s funeral, at old Don Esteban’s behest I wondered how successful they had been in Manila during the past three years in the matter of finding suitable husbands. “This party will be a complete surprise,” Pete said, looking around the porch as if to swear me to secrecy. They’ve hired our band.” I joined my classmates in the room, greeting everyone with a Merry Christmas jollier than that of the others. When I saw Aida in one comer unwrapping something two girls had given her. I found the boldness to greet her also. “Merry Christmas,” I said in English, as a hairbrush and a powder case emerged from the fancy wrapping, it seemed to me rather apt that such gifts went to her. Already several girls were gathered around Aida. Their eyes glowed with envy, it seemed to me, for those fair cheeks and the bobbed dark-brown hair which lineage had denied them. I was too dumbstruck by my own meanness to hear exactly what Aida said in answer to my greeting. But I recovered shortly and asked: “Will you be away during the vacation?” “No, I’ll be staying here,” she said. When she added that her cousins were arriving and that a big party in their honor was being planned, l remarked: “So you know all about it?” I felt I had to explain that the party was meant to be a surprise, an asalto. And now it would be nothing of the kind, really. The women’s club matrons would hustle about, disguising their scurrying around for cakes and candies as for some baptismal party or other. In the end, the Rivas sisters would outdo them. Boxes of meringues, bonbons, ladyfingers, and cinnamon buns that only the Swiss bakers in Manila could make were perhaps coming on the boat with them. I imagined a table glimmering with longstemmed punch glasses; enthroned in that array would be a huge brick-red bowl of gleaming china with golden flowers around the brim. The local matrons, however hard they tried, however sincere their efforts, were bound to fail in their aspiration to rise to the level of Don Esteban’s daughters. Perhaps, l thought, Aida knew all this. And that I should share in a foreknowledge of the matrons’ hopes was a matter beyond love. Aida and l could laugh together with the gods. At seven, on the appointed evening, our small band gathered quietly at the gate of Don Esteban’s house, and when the ladies arrived in their heavy shawls and trim panuelo, twittering with excitement, we were commanded to play the Poet and Peasant overture. As Pete directed the band, his eyes glowed with pride for his having been part of the big event. The multicolored lights that the old Spaniard’s gardeners had strung along the vine-covered fence were switched on, and the women remarked that Don Esteban’s daughters might have made some preparations after all. Pete hid his face from the glare. If the women felt let down, they did not show it. The overture snuffled along to its climax while five men in white shirts bore huge boxes of goods into the house. I recognized one of the bakers in spite of the uniform. A chorus of confused greetings, and the women trooped into the house; and before we had settled in the sala to play “A Basket of Roses,” the heavy damask curtains at the far end of the room were drawn and a long table richly spread was revealed under the chandeliers. I remembered that, in our haste to be on hand for the asalto, Pete and I had discouraged the members of the band from taking their suppers. “You’ve done us a great honor!” Josefina, the more buxom of the twins, greeted the ladies. “Oh, but you have not allowed us to take you by surprise!” the ladies demurred in a chorus.

There were sighs and further protestations amid a rustle of skirts and the glitter of earrings. I saw Aida in a long, flowing white gown and wearing an arch of sampaguita flowers on her hair. At her command, two servants brought out a gleaming harp from the music room. Only the slightest scraping could be heard because the servants were barefoot As Aida directed them to place the instrument near the seats we occupied, my heart leaped to my throat. Soon she was lost among the guests, and we played The Dance of the Glowworms.” I kept my eyes closed and held for as long as l could her radiant figure before me. Alicia played on the harp and then, in answer to the deafening applause, she offered an encore. Josefina sang afterward. Her voice, though a little husky, fetched enormous sighs. For her encore, she gave The Last Rose of Summer”; and the song brought back snatches of the years gone by. Memories of solfeggio lessons eddied about us, as if there were rustling leaves scattered all over the hall. Don Esteban appeared. Earlier, he had greeted the crowd handsomely, twisting his mustache to hide a natural shyness before talkative women. He stayed long enough to listen to the harp again, whispering in his rapture: “Heavenly. Heavenly …” By midnight, the merrymaking lagged. We played while the party gathered around the great table at the end of the sala. My mind traveled across the seas to the distant cities l had dreamed about. The sisters sailed among the ladies like two great white liners amid a fleet of tugboats in a bay. Someone had thoughtfully remembered-and at last Pete Saez signaled to us to put our instruments away. We walked in single file across the hall, led by one of the barefoot servants. Behind us a couple of hoarse sopranos sang “La Paloma” to the accompaniment of the harp, but I did not care to find out who they were. The sight of so much silver and china confused me. There was more food before us than I had ever imagined. I searched in my mind for the names of the dishes; but my ignorance appalled me. I wondered what had happened to the boxes of food that the Buenavista ladies had sent up earlier. In a silver bowl was something, I discovered, that appeared like whole egg yolks that had been dipped in honey and peppermint The seven of us in the orchestra were all of one mind about the feast; and so. confident that I was with friends, l allowed my covetousness to have its sway and not only stuffed my mouth with this and that confection but also wrapped up a quantity of those egg-yolk things in several sheets of napkin paper. None of my companions had thought of doing the same, and it was with some pride that I slipped the packet under my shirt. There. I knew, it would not bulge. “Have you eaten?” I turned around. It was Aida. My bow tie seemed to tighten around my collar. I mumbled something, l did not know what. “If you wait a little while till they’ve gone, I’ll wrap up a big package for you,” she added. I brought a handkerchief to my mouth. I might have honored her solicitude adequately and even relieved myself of any embarrassment; I could not quite believe that she had seen me, and yet l was sure that she knew what I had done, and I felt all ardor for her gone from me entirely. I walked away to the nearest door, praying that the damask curtains might hide me in my shame. The door gave on to the veranda, where once my love had trod on sunbeams. Outside it was dark, and a faint wind was singing in the harbor. With the napkin balled up in my hand. I flung out my arm to scatter the egg-yolk things in the dark. I waited for the soft sound of their fall on the garden-shed roof. Instead, I heard a spatter in the rising night-tide beyond the stone fence. Farther away glimmered the light from Grandmother’s window, calling me home. But the party broke up at one or thereabouts. We walked away with our instruments after the matrons were done with their interminable good-byes. Then, to the tune of “Joy to the World.” we pulled the Progreso Street shopkeepers out of their beds. The Chinese merchants were especially generous. When Pete divided our collection under a street lamp, there was already a little glow of daybreak. He walked with me part of the way home. We stopped at the baker’s when l told him that I wanted to buy with my own money some bread to eat on the way to Grandmother’s house at the edge of the sea wall. He laughed, thinking it strange that I should be hungry. We found ourselves alone at the counter; and we watched the bakery assistants at work until our bodies grew warm from the oven across the door, it was not quite five, and the bread was not yet ready.

May Day Eve By: Nick Joaquin The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten o’clock but it was almost midnight before the carriages came filing up the departing guests, while the girls who were staying were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the young men gathering around to wish them a good night and lamenting their ascent with mock signs and moaning, proclaiming themselves disconsolate but straightway going off to finish the punch and the brandy though they were quite drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment, arrogance and audacity, for they were young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had been in their honor; and they had waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and flirted all night and where in no mood to sleep yet--no, caramba, not on this moist tropic eve! not on this mystic May eve! --with the night still young and so seductive that it was madness not to go out, not to go forth---and serenade the neighbors! cried one; and swim in the Pasid! cried another; and gather fireflies! cried a third—whereupon there arose a great clamor for coats and capes, for hats and canes, and they were a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tile roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wile sky murky with clouds, save where an evil young moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable childhood fragrances or ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously down the street that the girls who were desiring upstairs in the bedrooms catered screaming to the windows, crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over those young men bawling below; over those wicked young men and their handsome apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and their elegant mustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite ravished with love, and began crying to one another how carefree were men but how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was, till old Anastasia plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chases them off to bed---while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobble and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his great voice booming through the night, "Guardia serno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o. And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said--for it was a night of divination, and night of lovers, and those who cared might peer into a mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it was they were fated to marry, said the old Anastasia as she hobble about picking up the piled crinolines and folding up shawls and raking slippers in corner while the girls climbing into four great poster-beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror, scrambling over each other and imploring the old woman not to frighten them. "Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!" "Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!" "She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of Christmas Eve!" "St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr." "Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin, Anastasia?" "No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!" "Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell me." "You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid." "I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed. "Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command you to shut your mouth and go away!""Your mother told me to stay here all night, my grand lady!" "And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. "Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do." "Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls.

The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her eyes on the girl. "You must take a candle," she instructed, "and go into a room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and shy: Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be. If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry." A silence. Then: "And hat if all does not go right?" asked Agueda. "Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!" "Why." "Because you may see--the Devil!" The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what nonsense!" cried Agueda. "This is the year 1847. There are no devil anymore!" Nevertheless she had turned pale. "But where could I go, hugh? Yes, I know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and no one is there now." "No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!" "I do not care! I am not afraid! I will go!" "Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!" "If you do not come to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother." "And if you do I will tell her who came to visit you at the convent last March. Come, old woman---give me that candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me that candle, I go." But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing across the hall; her feet bare and her dark hair falling down her shoulders and streaming in the wind as she fled down the stairs, the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while with the other she pulled up her white gown from her ankles. She paused breathless in the doorway to the sala and her heart failed her. She tried to imagine the room filled again with lights, laughter, whirling couples, and the jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh, it was a dark den, a weird cavern for the windows had been closed and the furniture stacked up against the walls. She crossed herself and stepped inside. The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a gold frame carved into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues. She saw herself approaching fearfully in it: a small while ghost that the darkness bodied forth---but not willingly, not completely, for her eyes and hair were so dark that the face approaching in the mirror seemed only a mask that floated forward; a bright mask with two holes gaping in it, blown forward by the white cloud of her gown. But when she stood before the mirror she lifted the candle level with her chin and the dead mask bloomed into her living face. She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished such a terror took hold of her that she felt unable to move, unable to open her eyes and thought she would stand there forever, enchanted. But she heard a step behind her, and a smothered giggle, and instantly opened her eyes. "And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had forgotten the little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head nestling at her breast and seeing herself in the big mirror hanging in the room. It was the same room and the same mirror out the face she now saw in it was an old face---a hard, bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying hair, and so sadly altered, so sadly different from that other face like a white mask, that fresh young face like a pure mask than she had brought before this mirror one wild May Day midnight years and years ago.... "But what was it Mama? Oh please go on! What did you see?" Dona Agueda looked down at her daughter but her face did not soften though her eyes filled with tears. "I saw the devil." she said bitterly. The child blanched. "The devil, Mama? Oh... Oh..." "Yes, my love. I opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over my left shoulder, was the face of the devil." "Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very frightened?" "You can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors except when their mothers tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling, of admiring yourself in every mirror you pass- or you may see something frightful some day." "But the devil, Mama---what did he look like?" "Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---" "Like the scar of Papa?" "Well, yes. But this of the devil was a scar of sin, while that of your Papa is a scar of honor. Or so he says." "Go on about the devil." "Well, he had mustaches." "Like those of Papa?" "Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and graying and smell horribly of tobacco, while these of the devil were very black and elegant--oh, how elegant!" "And did he speak to you, Mama?" "Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And bowing her graying head; she wept. "Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had said, smiling at her in the mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking bow. She had whirled around and glared at him and he had burst into laughter. "But I remember you!" he cried. "You are Agueda, whom I left a mere infant and came home to find a tremendous beauty, and I danced a waltz with you but you would not give me the polka." "Let me pass," she muttered fiercely, for he was barring the way. "But I want to dance the polka with you, fair one," he said. So they stood before the mirror; their panting breath the only sound in the dark room; the candle shining between them and flinging their shadows to the wall. And young Badoy Montiya (who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) suddenly found himself cold sober and very much awake and ready for anything. His eyes sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed scarlet. "Let me pass!" she cried again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped her by the wrist. "No," he smiled. "Not until we have danced." "Go to the devil!" "What

a temper has my serrana!" "I am not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends like your mortal enemies." "And why not?" she demanded, jerking her wrist away and flashing her teeth in his face. "Oh, how I detest you, you pompous young men! You go to Europe and you come back elegant lords and we poor girls are too tame to please you. We have no grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians, and we have no salt, no salt, no salt! Aie, how you weary me, how you bore me, you fastidious men!" "Come, come---how do you know about us?" "I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon perhaps?" "Oh!" she gasped, and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand and she covered her face and sobbed piteously. The candle had gone out and they stood in darkness, and young Badoy was conscience-stricken. "Oh, do not cry, little one!" Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But what a brute I am! I was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I said." He groped and found her hand and touched it to his lips. She shuddered in her white gown. "Let me go," she moaned, and tugged feebly. "No. Say you forgive me first. Say you forgive me, Agueda." But instead she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it - bit so sharply in the knuckles that he cried with pain and lashed cut with his other hand--lashed out and hit the air, for she was gone, she had fled, and he heard the rustling of her skirts up the stairs as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers. Cruel thoughts raced through his head: he would go and tell his mother and make her turn the savage girl out of the house--or he would go himself to the girl’s room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at the same time he was thinking that they were all going to Antipolo in the morning and was already planning how he would maneuver himself into the same boat with her. Oh, he would have his revenge, he would make her pay, that little harlot! She should suffer for this, he thought greedily, licking his bleeding knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold in her candlelight and delicately furred. He saw the mobile insolence of her neck, and her taut breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of a Turk, but she was quite enchanting! How could she think she had no fire or grace? And no salt? An arroba she had of it! "... No lack of salt in the chrism At the moment of thy baptism!" He sang aloud in the dark room and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in love with her. He ached intensely to see her again---at once! ---to touch her hands and her hair; to hear her harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung open the casements and the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow. It was May, it was summer, and he was young---young! ---and deliriously in love. Such a happiness welled up within him that the tears spurted from his eyes. But he did not forgive her--no! He would still make her pay, he would still have his revenge, he thought viciously, and kissed his wounded fingers. But what a night it had been! "I will never forge this night! he thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the window in the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the wind in his hair and his bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth. But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes; summer lends; the storms break over the rot-tipe orchards and the heart grows old; while the hours, the days, the months, and the years pile up and pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded, too confused: dust gathers in it; cobwebs multiply; the walls darken and fall into ruin and decay; the memory perished...and there came a time when Don Badoy Montiya walked home through a May Day midnight without remembering, without even caring to remember; being merely concerned in feeling his way across the street with his cane; his eyes having grown quite dim and his legs uncertain--for he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stopped and shivered old man with white hair and mustaches coming home from a secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with the speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his way up the steps to the front door and inside into the slumbering darkness of the house; wholly unconscious of the May night, till on his way down the hall, chancing to glance into the sala, he shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold-- for he had seen a face in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes closed and the lips moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had been there before though it was a full minutes before the lost memory came flowing, came tiding back, so overflooding the actual moment and so swiftly washing away the piled hours and days and months and years that he was left suddenly young again; he was a gay young buck again, lately came from Europe; he had been dancing all night; he was very drunk; he s stepped in the doorway; he saw a face in the dark; he called out...and the lad standing before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night go jumped with fright and almost dropped his candle, but looking around and seeing the old man, laughed out with relief and came running. "Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me. Don Badoy had turned very pale. "So it was you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What are you doing down here at this hour?" "Nothing, Grandpa. I was only... I am only ..." "Yes, you are the great Señor only and how delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Señor Only! But if I break this cane on your head you maga wish you were someone else, Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me I would see my wife."

"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I looked in a mirror tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me her whose lover I will be. Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along into the room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees. "Now, put your cane down the floor, son, and let us talk this over. So you want your wife already, hey? You want to see her in advance, hey? But so you know that these are wicked games and that wicked boys who play them are in danger of seeing horrors?" "Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead." "Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will be witch you, she will torture you, she will eat your heart and drink your blood!" "Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore." "Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a witch. "You? Where? "Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man, and his playful voice had turned savage. "When, Grandpa?" "Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow and though I was feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down somewhere and die I could not pass that doorway of course without stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like when dying. But when I poked my head in what should I see in the mirror but...but..." "The witch?" "Exactly!" "And then she bewitch you, Grandpa!" "She bewitched me and she tortured me. l She ate my heart and drank my blood." said the old man bitterly. "Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she very horrible? "Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen! Her eyes were somewhat like yours but her hair was like black waters and her golden shoulders were bare. My God, she was enchanting! But I should have known---I should have known even then---the dark and fatal creature she was!" A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered the boy. "What makes you slay that, hey?" "Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once told her that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was it of the scare that Grandma died?" Don Badoy started. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead, that she had perished---the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at last, the two of them, her tired body at rest; her broken body set free at last from the brutal pranks of the earth---from the trap of a May night; from the snare of summer; from the terrible silver nets of the moon. She had been a mere heap of white hair and bones in the end: a whimpering withered consumptive, lashing out with her cruel tongue; her eye like live coals; her face like ashes... Now, nothing--- nothing save a name on a stone; save a stone in a graveyard---nothing! was left of the young girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight, long, long ago. And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she had bitten his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark room and surprised his heart in the instant of falling in love: such a grief tore up his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed before the boy; pushed the boy away; stood up and looked out----looked out upon the medieval shadows of the foul street where a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage was rattling away upon the cobbles, while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tiled

roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable the window; the bowed old man sobbing so bitterly at the window; the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wind in his hair and one hand pressed to his mouth---while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through the night: "Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!"

Jose Garcia Villa Name: Jose Garcia Villa AKA: Doveglion B. Singalong Born: August 5, 1908, Manila Died: February 7, 1997, New York Parents: Simeon Villa (Emilio Aguinaldo's physician) and Guia Garcia

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND Secondary: University of Philippines (UP) Highschool College: UP College of Medicine, University of Mexico and Columbia University

Work Experience - taught poetry for a while at the City College of New York, 1964-1973 - worked in the Philippine Mission to the U.N., 1954-1963 and became the vice consul in 1965 - Teach professionals in Greenwich Village residence

Achievements/Awards - a collection of poetry was nominated for Bollingen prize - received the American academy of arts and letters Poetry Award - the Shelley Memorial Award

Nick Joaquin " National Artist for Literature" "Philippine Novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist in English"

Name: Nicomedes Marquez Joaquin AKA: "Quijano de Manila” Born: May 4, 1917 (Paco Manila on Calle Herran) Died: April 29, 2004 (San Juan Metro Manila) Parents: Atty. Leocadio Y. Joaquin (colonel of the Philippine Revolution) Salome Marquez(school teacher)

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND Elementary: Paco Elementary School Secondary: Mapa High School College: St. Albert College in Hong Kong

Literary Career: @17 - published his first poem I the Tribune the "WWII Manila Times" 1950 - Philippine Free Press: Proof Reader the later Literary Editor 1971 - Asia Philippine Leader: editor in chief

Bienvenido N. Santos (March 22, 1911 – January 7, 1996) was a Filipino-American fiction, poetry and nonfiction writer. He was born and raised in Tondo, Manila. His family roots are originally from Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines. He lived in the United States for many years where he is widely credited as a pioneering Asian-American writer. Santos received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of the Philippines where he first studied creative writing under Paz Marquez Benitez. In 1941, Santos was a government pensionado (scholar) to the United States at the University of Illinois, Columbia University, and Harvard University. He had arrived in San Francisco on October 12, 1941 aboard the Ruth Alexander leaving his wife and three daughters in the Philippines. When war in the Pacific came to the Philippines on December 8 (December 7 Hawaii time) he feared he would never see his family again—a reality that "not only interrupted his study of realism; it was overwhelming it" leading to a transformation in his sense of national consciousness and identity. That crisis changed the nature of his writing into a less carefree style to one mixing laughter and pain; described by Florentino Valeros as "a man hiding tears in his laughter." During World War 2 II, he served with the Philippine government in exile under President Manuel L. Quezon in Washington, D.C., together with the playwright Severino Montano and Philippine National Artist Jose Garcia Villa. Santos left for home on January 17, 1946 aboard the Uruguay arriving in early February. In 1967, he returned to the United States to become a teacher and university administrator. He received a Rockefeller fellowship at the Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa where he later taught as a Fulbright exchange professor. Santos has also received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a Republic Cultural Heritage Award in Literature as well as several Palanca Awards for his short stories. Scent of Apples won a 1980 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Santos received an honorary doctorate degrees in humanities and letters from the University of the Philippines, and Bicol University (Legazpi City, Albay) in 1981. He was also a Professor of Creative Writing and Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Wichita State University from 1973 to 1982, at which time the university awarded him an honorary doctorate degree in humane letters. After his retirement, Santos became Visiting Writer and Artist at De La Salle University in Manila; the university honored Santos by renaming its creative writing center after him.

Novels      

The Volcano (1965) Villa Magdalena (1965) The Praying Man (1982) The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Robert Taylor (1983) What the Hell for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco? (1987) The Late,Late Show

Short story collections   

You Lovely People (1955) Brother, My Brother (1960) The Day the Dancers Came (1967, 1991)

N.V.M Gonzalez Name: Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez Born: September 1915, Romblon, Romblon Died: November 28 1999, Quezon City

Awards         

Given a Trophy from A Jokarts company (1997-1998) Regents Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, 1998–1999 Philippines Centennial Award for Literature, 1998 National Artist Award for Literature, 1997 Oriental Mindoro Sangguniang Panlalawigan Resolution "extending due recognition to Nestor V. M. González... the commendation he well deserves..." 1996 City of Manila Diwa ng Lahi award "for his service and contribution to Philippine national Literature," 1996 City of Los Angeles resolution declaring October 11, 1996 "N.V.M. González Day, 1996 The Asian Catholic Publishers Award, 1993 The Filipino Community of California Proclamation "honoring N.V.M. González for seventyeight years of achievements," 1993

.

Name: Estrella Alfon Born: 18 July 1917, Cebu Died: 28 December 1983, Manila

Palanca Awards Estrella Alfon has won the Palanca Awards a number of times:     

Forever Witches, One-act Play (Third place, 1960) With Patches of Many Hues, One-act Play (First place, 1962) Tubig, One-act Play (Second place, 1963) The Knitting Straw, One-act Play, (Third place, 1968) The White Dress, Short Story (Second place, 1974)

Achievements  

  

1940: A collection of her early short stories, “Dear Esmeralda,” won Honorable Mention in the Commonwealth Literary Award. 1961-1962: Four of her one-act plays won all the prizes in the Arena Theater Play Writing Contest: “Losers Keepers” (first prize), “Strangers” (second prize), “Rice” (third prize), and “Beggar” (fourth prize). 1961-1962: Won top prize in the Palanca Contest for “With Patches of Many Hues.” 1974: Second place Palanca Award for her short story, "The White Dress". 1979: National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U.P. Creative Writing Center.