Thursday, September 23, 2010

UNDER THE MANGO TREE by Hugh Aaron

ONE would think we were a couple of returning heroes. “Americanos, Americanos,” the naked children shouted, zigzagging like circus clowns in mad circles around us as Billiard Ball and I ambled abreast down the beaten path through the shade of the green canopy. Heavy duffel bags hanging from our shoulders were laden with gifts: bottles of beer, cartons of cigarettes, cans of fruit juice. Repeatedly sweeping past us like zephyrs, each child snatched a bar of sweet chocolate from our extended hands. We were no less boisterous than they, shouting along with them, asking their names, having a good time ourselves, caught up in the infectious joy of their freewheeling abandon. Such was the character of our entry into Lubao time after time.
As we walked down the village street, people waved from their houses repeating our names, people we didn’t recognize from our earlier visit. “Hullo Beelyard Ball,” and “Al. Hullo. Comusta.”
Anita emerged from one of the houses to greet us. “You must both stay with my family,” she said. Then Alejandro appeared and said to Billiard Ball, “I have been waiting all week. Please, if you wouldn’t mind some metaphysical discussion I would be honored to have you as my guest.”
“How can I resist metaphysical discussion?” said Billiard Ball with a smile. As the two walked off, I heard Alejandro say, “And I imagine you have read Man’s Fate in the original French? How lucky! Malraux is right. For our time the answer lies in courageous action.” Had Billiard Ball found himself a revolutionary?
I followed Anita up the ladder to her family’s one-room house, similar in its simplicity to Rosalio’s but larger. Both had the same style cooking hearth near one wall, the split bamboo floor, the same immaculateness. Squatting before the hearth, Anita’s mother, looking in her fifties (but only in her thirties, I learned later), was preparing the noon meal. She acknowledged our entrance with a nod and a warm smile. Sitting cross-legged on a floor mat in a corner, Anita’s wispy maternal grandmother, her skin wrinkled like an elephant’s, grinned, showing toothless black gums. She mumbled something incomprehensible to me in Spanish. Shortly Mr. Quiboloy, wearing a wide-brimmed hat woven of jute, came in from the hot fields. We shook hands warmly. “Thank you for having me, Mr. Quiboloy,” I said.
“You may call me Lucio, now that we are old friends,” he responded. We all sat on the floor in a circle and ate brown rice and chicken from clay bowls while Mr. Quiboloy spoke of their lot in Lubao.
“I am only a small tenant farmer,” he said—to clarify his role, not to complain. “The family in the hacienda on the Bataan highway owns the land.”
“The fancy place we passed on the way?”
“Yes, the fancy place,” he said, and everyone laughed at my odd description. “I keep fifty percent for myself and fifty percent is for the landowner. The incentive is small, but what choice do we have?”
“The Hukbalahaps think we have one, Father,” said Anita.
“How dare you speak of them in our house,” Mr. Quiboloy said in a flash of anger. Turning to me, he explained. “The Huks are radicals, communists; they know only one way: violence.” Then, addressing Anita, he said, “Where do you get such foolish thoughts? Is that what you are learning in school? Is that what Alejandro teaches?”
“Where are the Huks from?” I asked.
“From everywhere,” Lucio replied. “Some dwell within our own barrio, but since I am not a sympathizer, I cannot be sure which ones they are. You see, I believe in Philippine democracy. I believe we should be like America, where everyone has an opportunity to succeed and live well.”
“But that’s not always true. You remember our discussion last weekend?” I said.
“Oh, yes, I have not forgotten. Still, you have not had to live through our poverty and pain. You have never had that in America.”
How could I argue? I knew of no pain first-hand. I never saw anyone starving. Through the desperate thirties there was always food on our table and ample clothes to wear and a snug apartment to sleep in. Although my father had lost the wealth gained during his most vigorous years, and he had lost his daring and capacity to dream for the rest of his life, he never lost his belief in America. In its worst times the nation somehow provided opportunity for survival.
When the meal was over, Anita handed me a sleeping mat, which I unrolled on the floor beside those of my hosts. It was too hot to be out in the high sun of the early afternoon. What could be more sensible than to have a cool siesta? In two hours Anita awakened me from a soft sleep. Lucio had returned to the field, her mother was elsewhere, and her grandmother squatted quietly in a corner weaving a mat. “My father has asked me to show you the mango tree,” she said. “Will you come with me, please?”
We walked down the path to the highway, at first side by side, but soon she fell behind. “Am I going too fast for you?”
“No, no,” she said, urging me to keep on ahead. She continued to linger behind.
“Are you tired?”
“No, no,” and she giggled in amusement. “It’s the custom in Lubao that I walk behind.”
Since the concrete highway was blistering, we walked along the narrow dirt shoulder, which was less hot but still burned through the soles of my GI boots. Anita, barefoot as usual, didn’t seem to mind. Nor, in her white dress and wide brimmed woven hat, did she seem bothered by the afternoon sun beating down on us, while I perspired heavily and had to stop to rest now and then under a tree. Although several passing ten-wheel army trucks offered us a lift, she refused them. Grudgingly I submitted to her wish. “We have only a few miles,” she said, a promise of small comfort. Soon we passed by the grand white stucco hacienda, a stark contrast to Anita’s house.
“So this is where the rich landowners live,” I said.
“Oh, but they are no longer rich, Hal. They have the land, but that is all. The Japanese took all the crops. The land is of little use without seed. And the Japanese removed all their possessions, leaving the house bare. They are mestizos and very proud, but the Japanese took that away too. A commander occupied the hacienda and humiliated the family, making them his servants. He hoped that by doing this, the rest of us would be pleased and that we would cooperate with him.”
“And weren’t the people happy to see the selfish landowner get what he deserved?”
“Oh, no, the Santoses are good people; they are always very kind. When we have malaria, they bring us quinine. When a typhoon ruins our crops, they give us rice to eat and new seed for the next planting. The Japanese commander had mistaken how we would feel. We knew he was cruel.”
At last we reached our destination, the small solitary thatched house on stilts beside the sluggish stream that I had observed on our first trip along the highway. We climbed the ladder to the house and entered its cool, dim interior, where I saw a mostly naked old man seated on the floor. “This is my grandfather,” said Anita as she uncovered a basket of fruit, vegetables, and rice that she had brought for him.
He reached for my outstretched right hand with his left; his other arm hung limp by his side. “Comusta ka,” he said in a clear, high voice.
“Comusta,” I said, returning the greeting. He then spoke to Anita in dialect, pointing to a small woven box beside his hearth, which she retrieved for him. From it he removed a GI dog tag, which he held suspended for me to see.
“It is an American soldier’s necklace,” said Anita.
“May I look at it closely?” I asked, astonished that he would have such a thing.
The dog tag bore the name Roger B. Anderson and his serial number and blood type. “Where did your grandfather get this, Anita?”
“From Lieutenant Anderson,” she replied plainly.
“I don’t understand. GIs don’t give away their dog tags.”
“Let us sit and I shall tell you about Lieutenant Anderson.” She peeled a banana for her grandfather, and handed me one with a dark green skin. “It is quite ripe even though it is green,” she said. It was, and tasted sweeter than any I had ever eaten. “He is there under my grandfather’s mango tree.” I followed her gaze through the doorway. Symmetrical and spreading, a low tree stood between the house and the stream, creating a cool, grassy oasis beneath its graceful branches.
Baffled by her indirection, I tried to deduce her meaning. “Buried? In a grave? Under the tree?”
Anita’s grandfather, having sense my sudden comprehension, broke into excited dialect, and struggled to rise. “My grandfather says that you may keep the necklace,” said Anita. She addressed him sternly and he sat down again. “My grandfather’s bones give him much pain. They never healed correctly after the Japanese broke them. He should stay with us in the barrio, but he refuses. My grandfather is a stubborn man.”
Later I learned that Anita made the trip to her grandfather’s house several days a week to bring him food and often to stay and cook for him. I could sense an unspoken bond between them, a mutual appreciation. Anita once confessed that she felt much closer to her grandfather than to her own father. The old and young are on common ground: Both are concerned only with the fresh simplicities of life, the very business of being alive.
Anita began her story: “The Japanese marched hundreds of American prisoners through Pampanga from Bataan, giving them no food or water, and whipping them when they fell behind. They made them walk on the hot concrete so that they left bloody footprints from their scorched and wounded feet.” I winced, recalling my recent distress walking under the sun, even along the cooler shoulder of the highway. Anita spoke with a chilling earnestness, as if she were describing a scene in progress, making no comment, stating only facts. “Some were already weakened from wounds in the battle on Bataan and could not keep up. Lieutenant Anderson was one of these. When the men fell and did not rise after being kicked and beaten, they were shot, and their bodies were collected on a wagon pulled by carabao that followed the marchers. Lieutenant Anderson was shot there at the edge of the road.” She stared out at the glaring white concrete. “But my grandfather and grandmother saw him move; he was still alive. So before the wagon passed they dragged him from the road and hid him under the trees by the stream in the field behind the house. They nursed his wounds for many weeks.” She interrupted her account to consult with her grandfather in dialect. “Yes, my grandfather says it was more than a month before the American opened his eyes and spoke.”
“Did you meet him?” I asked.
“Much later in the barrio,” she said, “but I was only a child.” I had failed to realize immediately that she had become a woman in the intervening four years.
“It was very dangerous for my grandparents. The Japanese often warned us not to help the Americanos or we would be shot. When the monsoon came and the land was covered with water, Lieutenant Anderson was moved to Reverend Mr. Corum’s house in Lubao. But soon the Japanese returned to search for the Americano, saying they had heard we were hiding one of the marchers. Someone, maybe from the barrio—we shall never know—had betrayed us. They entered my grandparents’ house and asked my grandfather to give them the Americano, but he would admit nothing. They broke his limbs and he passed out from the pain.” Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of his suffering. “Then they took him and my grandmother to the barrio where all the people were gathered and they showed what they did to my grandfather and they threatened to kill us one by one until we gave them the Americano. My father and Reverend Mr. Corum replied to the Japanese commander that killing us would be useless.” She faltered; the words came hard. “The commander ordered a soldier to stand my Nanay by the wall of the church.” With tear streaked cheeks, she went on. “And he shot her. Oh, I loved my Nanay so very much.” She had to stop, and her grandfather reached for her with his one good arm and took her into it and comforted her with the soft words of his dialect as he, too, cried.
Her story was too appalling. I was speechless. I wanted to take on her pain, to share the suffering of her memory. But regaining her composure, she resumed. “After the commander killed my Nanay, the Americano, Lieutenant Anderson, appeared from Reverend Mr. Corum’s house. He had witnessed the commander’s cruelty and understood that others would also die unless he was found. The soldiers took him and flung him to the ground and beat him with their rifles. And then the commander ordered his soldiers to stand him by the wall of the church where my Nanay had stood. Blood was pouring from his head and they shot him. Then they left us.”
“What happened to the bodies of your Nanay and Lieutenant Anderson?”
“We took them and prepared them and, after a deep mourning, buried them side by side under the mango tree, as my grandfather wished.”
The sun appeared like an enormous orange balloon balanced at the apex of a faraway mountaintop. The heat of its slanting rays was now comfortably diminished in the late afternoon. “We must return to Lubao,” said Anita. Embracing her grandfather, she bid him good-bye and I shook his hand again. “Let me show you the graves.” Together we stood beside them, each marked by a simple boulder, nothing more. “The rounder rock is my Nanay’s grave.” The next few moments we shared in silence. Soon she raised her eyes and asked, “Do you like mangoes?” Taking one from the tree, she gave it to me. It was sweet and moist.
“Absolutely delicious,” I said.
“It is by far my favorite fruit,” she replied. “And don’t you think it is a beautiful tree? See how it spreads its branches like the arms of dancers; see how it shades the earth and makes it green.”
It was in the flash of that instant, transcending all feelings of desire, that I understood I had fallen in love with Anita. It was then I knew I had found someone who surpassed all I could ever hope to be. “Yes, it’s a beautiful and rare tree,” I answered.
During our walk back to Lubao we hardly spoke, save for one short exchange. “I have never been alone with a man, never with an Americano,” she said. “But my father said I could be with you, for he trusts you. At first I was very frightened, but now I am happy that we have spent this time together.”
“What are you afraid of? That I would bite you?”
She laughed. “No, no, of course not that.”
“What then?”
Delaying her reply, she slipped farther behind me as she pondered how best to express her thoughts. I stopped, waiting. “That I am not worthy,” she said. “That you would be ashamed of me. That we are like monkeys.”
“Oh, my God, Anita. Don’t you realize how beautiful you are?”
“Americanos are beautiful. Mestizos are beautiful.”
“No, you are.” I gently enclosed her hand in mine. It was the first time we touched.
“I hope you will come back often,” she said, hesitatingly withdrawing her hand.
“Nothing can stop me,” I promised.
That evening Billiard Ball and I had supper at the reverend’s. Anita, like soft music, was ever-present in the background, assisting Mrs. Corum. Afterwards we retired to the cozy living room, joined by Lucio, Anita’s father, and Hando. The gathering, being more intimate, dealt with both controversial and heartfelt matters, ranging from Shakespearean drama and symphonic music (Bartok no less), extolled by the uncommonly erudite Hando, to local politics and agrarian reform. Lucio, farmer and mayor, was a graduate of an agricultural college, a respected expert. “We must not be impatient and greedy,” he said, referring to a program he was promoting among his fellow farmers. “Rather than harvest all our rice for today’s consumption, we must set aside a portion for seed even if it means we will be hungry a while longer.” But few were paying heed to his recommendation. “It is not easy to believe in the future when the present is still so hard,” he sighed.
“Yes,” Hando agreed, “we must take the necessary steps now to become masters of the future. And we must be concerned with more than rice seedlings. Reform, dividing the haciendas and distributing the land, is essential.”
“Isn’t that what the Huks are striving to do?” I asked.
“But they are trying to do it by violent means,” said Lucio. “That is wrong.”
“Our people have been exploited for more than three hundred years,” said Hando with vehemence, his smooth, feminine amber skin taut and glistening. “The hacienda system is too firmly implanted. It will never submit to being destroyed peacefully.”
“But violence never knows where to stop. The innocent end up being victims,” Lucio countered with equal insistence. “If we expect to be independent, we must also have stability.”
“Perhaps America should be our model,” said the reverend, addressing Billiard Ball. “Unlike us, you do not kill your politicians over elections. You do not have our corruption. Sadly, we have few patriots and everyone is for himself.”
“But Roxas will unite us,” said Lucio, referring to the new presidential candidate in the elections to take place less than a year hence.
“Roxas was a collaborator; he betrayed us,” Hando said dourly.
Finding their intensity contagious, I listened, unable to decide who was right. With independence near at hand, at a crossroad in their history, they were contemplating the formation of the new nation and how best to correct ancient, firmly established inequities and injustice. Would their hopes and arguments ultimately be meaningless?
Would Billiard Ball and I care to attend church in the morning, asked Reverend Mr. Corum. We politely begged off, and he took no offense. “I have never met a Jew before,” he said. “but your religion and the history of your people are a part of my education as a clergyman. Do you attend your church?”
“Well, the truth is I don’t practice a religion,” I said sheepishly. “But I was born a Jew and I insist on belonging. The Jews have been a scapegoat ever since their exile from Babylonia over two thousand years ago. I can’t escape the past and I feel a duty to accept its consequences.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
“I don’t see it as noble. It is necessary for my self-respect.”
“But as a Jew you have nothing to fear in America,” said Hando, who was listening intently.
“Probably not. Tolerance is part of the American tradition,” I replied, “but I sometimes worry when I’m singled out and despised by prejudiced Gentiles. When I was a child I was often victimized by my schoolmates.”
“I see,” said Hando, “then you are a Jew first?”
“Hando, you are being discourteous to our guest,” said Reverend Mr. Corum.
“Please forgive him,” said Lucio. “He often oversteps decent bounds.”
“Really, I’d like to answer the question,” I said. Having ignored the reverend’s rebuke and Lucio’s apology, Hando kept his clear, penetrating, catlike eyes fastened on mine. “No, Hando, I am first an American.”
“Ah, what a lucky many you are. If only I could first be a Filipino.”
“And you, Billiard Ball, do you have a faith?” asked the reverend.
“I suppose I’m an atheist,” he replied, “but I don’t disapprove of religion, although it’s the major cause of war and misery throughout the history of civilized man.”
“Not religion itself, if you will forgive me for contradicting you,” said the reverend, holding up his finger pedantically, “but man, in the name of religion.”
“Yes, Reverend,” said Billiard Ball, nodding vigorously. “I stand corrected.”
Such were our conversations. They were of a depth and seriousness and range I had never experienced before. We discussed political systems, communism versus democracy, psychology, man’s startling discoveries of his hidden self, his search for meaning in life (There is none according to Billiard Ball), the crisis in physics, the pessimism of contemporary philosophers, the shocking renunciation of tradition in modern art and music, the truth of literature, and on and on. Billiard Ball and I found, in this comparatively primitive village, a gold mine of astounding sophistication. And who was the principal force behind all this magnificent cerebration? Reverend Mr. Corum, of course, supported by two lesser and opposing forces: Lucio and Hando.
The reverend was on an endless voyage in search of life’s truth. In an unobtrusive, self-effacing manner, he subtly enticed us to follow him, to think aloud without fear of criticism or reproof. But attacks on those personalities present or close to us were forbidden. Despite his extraordinary sophistication, there was a deceptive simplicity, a childlike quality, an innocence about him. His gentleness was saintly. I was always eager to be in his presence, to hear his views on any subject, to hear his questions. His quiet power was the source of the barrio’s pride in itself. It was he who made the barrio an enclave against alien influences. Admiring America, he distrusted Americans and their careless style. Loving God, he rarely invoked his name. And not once in conversation during the time I knew him, an all too brief five months, did he mention Lieutenant Anderson’s name, or speak of the cruel Japanese commander or refer to Nanay’s untimely death.
On a subsequent visit I vividly recall a discussion on the nobility of sacrificing oneself for another. “It is natural to the human spirit,” the reverend stated. “Don’t we place our children and all those we deeply love before ourselves? Hadn’t we practiced this spirit toward the prisoners of the Death March? And didn’t we bear witness to the highest form of sacrifice by the Americano? Yes, I believe that in the end our goodness will prevail, for it is the most universal human trait.”
“All of history disputes your thesis,” Billiard Ball retorted.
“May I say, if you wish to call up history, then we shall find support for any view of man’s nature,” replied the reverend.
“Checkmate,” I whispered to Billiard Ball.
That night Billiard Ball slept at Hando’s house, and I at Anita’s with three generations in a single room. Being a product of a comfortable urban middle class environment, certain practical questions came to mind. How did one have sex, unless perhaps very quietly; where did one find privacy, and where was the bathroom? I never found the answer to the first; wherever one could, and rarely, was the answer to the second, and to the third the answer was a question: What is a bathroom? One bathed in the local stream and went out in the field to defecate. I found this hard to cope with, but in the nick of time I learned that there was an outhouse behind Reverend Mr. Corum’s.
In the morning Anita served me the traditional rice, from America, she said, and eggs and some goat’s milk, a menu similar to that at Rosalio’s. On a like occasion during a later visit, to my awkward chagrin, she served me a bottle of Budweiser. Since beer was available only on the black market, it must have cost Lucio a large sum. Thinking back to our prior group discussion comparing the Filipino and American diets, I recalled mentioning that America’s favorite drinks were Coke and beer. But I did not explain that I cared for neither, particularly beer. The magnanimity of these people was unbounded. I could not fail to come to love them.
After church, which Billiard Ball and I did not attend, a volleyball net was set up across the width of the dirt street. One side of the street was bordered by banana trees and the other by the white stucco wall of the church, which still bore the chips and holes of spent bullets when Nanay and Lieutenant Anderson were murdered. The volleyball game, in which Hando, Billiard Ball, and I and other new friends participated, was an exciting, happy event, full of joking and laughter, and watched by everyone in the barrio. The prize for the winning team was a carton of Camels, donated by Billiard Ball. At one crucial stage I accidentally hit the net, costing our side the loss of the ball and, quickly, the game. My mortification at being responsible for the loss was so evident that the winners insisted upon splitting the carton of cigarettes equally with the opposing team. Their sensitivity to the feelings of others was beyond me.
Again, as on the previous weekend but more so, we departed that Sunday afternoon with unbearable sadness. But our hearts were also full of fresh pleasurable memories, and the prospect of more such visits. Tears filled Anita’s eyes as we said good-bye, and Hando embraced Billiard Ball. Reverend Mr. Corum held my hand in both of his, reluctant to let it go.
On the ride to Olongapo in back of an army truck, I told Billiard Ball Anita’s story of Lieutenant Anderson. “Poor devil, Anderson,” said Billiard Ball. “It was a heroic act, and it shouldn’t go unacknowledged. As soon as we get back to the base, I’ll report our discovery.”
“No, don’t,” I said belligerently. “Don’t you see he’s a symbol to the barrio people? They took an enormous risk in saving his life and keeping him. Christ, it cost them Anita’s grandmother’s life, and they were ready for anything rather than give him up. I’d hate to think what could have happened if Anderson hadn’t surrendered himself. He represents a victory to them. He gave them cause for self-respect while being humiliated by a cruel enemy. Look how Anita’s grandfather watches over and cares for the grave.”
Billiard Ball weighed my argument for several minutes. “I understand what you’re saying, Hal. You look upon these people as being like your own, don’t you?”
“It’s true, I’ve never felt so at home, so much a part of them, as if I belonged.”
“I can see that, but that isn’t what I mean.” Puzzled, I waited for him to continue. “They are like the Jews against the world. You, your people, and they have suffered and still suffer and refuse to submit. It is, I think, what attracts you to each other; it’s what you have in common.”
Confused, surprised, I stammered, “Maybe you’re right. I’m not sure. I have to think.”
“Getting back to Anderson, consider this, Hal,” said Billiard Ball. “Don’t you think Anderson’s family would like to have his remains? Shouldn’t they also know about his meritorious act of heroism, what a special individual he was? Maybe he left a wife or son behind to feel proud of him for the rest of their lives were they to know. And wouldn’t we also deprive our country of a chance to honor its best?” I stared at Billiard Ball in silence. By the time we reached the dock at Olongapo, we were no nearer to a resolution. “Okay, Hal,” he said, “I’m going to follow my own conscience. Like you, I think Anderson was first an American, and should go home. I’m going to report Anita’s story.”
He did, and I didn’t hold it against him. Ī©

By Jayson with No comments

THE LITTLE PEOPLE by Maria Aleah G. Taboclaon

THE elves came to stay with us when I was nine. They were noisy creatures and we would hear them stomping on an old crib on the ceiling. We heard them from morning till night. They kept us awake at night.

One night, when it was particularly unbearable, Papa mustered enough courage and called out. "Excuse me!" he said. "Our family would like to sleep, please? Resume your banging tomorrow!" Of course, we had tried restraining him for we didn't know how the elves would react to such audacity.

We got the shock of our lives when silence suddenly filled the house--no more banging, no more stomping from the elves. Papa turned to us smugly. Sheepishly, we turned in for the night, thankful for the respite.

When dawn came, the smug look on Papa's face the night before turned into anger for shortly before six, the banging started again, and louder this time! We got up and tried speaking to the elves but got no response. The banging continued all day and into the night, and stopped at the same hour--eleven o'clock. And at exactly six a.m. the next day, it started again.

What could our poor family do?

Papa tried to call an albularyo to get rid of our unwelcome housemates but the woman was booked till the end of the week. Meanwhile, the elves had become our alarm clock. When they start their noise, we would get up and do our errands. Papa would start cooking, I would start setting the table, Mama would sweep. The whole house--my older sister and my cousin would water the plants, and my brother would start coloring his books. (We really didn't expect him to work, he was only four.)

After a week, we got hold of the albularyo. She spent the night in our house and by morning, she told us to never bother her again. The elves had already made themselves a part of our life, she said. Prax, the leader of the elves, had spoken to her and had told her that his family had no plans of moving out. They liked things as they were.
We eventually settled down to a comfortable coexistence with the elves. They woke us up at six, they let us sleep at eleven, and in return for the alarm service we would leave food on the table. By morning, the food would be gone and the table cleaned.

All in all, it was a very good relationship.

After three weeks--the first week of May--I met Prax, the leader and oldest in the clan, and I met him literally by accident. I was climbing the mango tree in our yard when one of its branches broke. I fell and broke my ankle. The pain was so great that I just sat there numb, staring at my ankle which had begun to turn blue. I could not move or cry out. I went to sleep to forget the pain. My last conscious thought was that the ground was too cold to sleep on.

I woke to a hand touching my foot. It belonged to someone--somethingnonhuman, for his hand radiated warmth that seemed to penetrate to my bones. His hand was small, wrinkled and felt like dried prunes.

Although I was curious, I kept my eyes closed. I imagined a hideously deformed face, with long and sharp teeth. Would he disappear when I open my eyes? Or would he devour me? I pretended to be asleep.

After several minutes, I could pretend no longer; I was too curious to remain still. When I opened my eyes, the horrible sight that I expected was not there. Instead, there was this old, wrinkled creature, even shorter than I was although I was the smallest in my class. He wore overalls unlike any clothing I knew of. Its texture was a mixture of green leaves and earth. It clung to his skin and writhed with a life of its own. Its color continually changed from deep to light green, to dark to light brown, and to green again. It was fascinating to look at. I felt a sense of awe and respect towards the elf.

He was good with his hands. My ankle already felt better. He was massaging it with an ointment that smelled nice. Before I could stop myself, I sniffed deeply, bringing the healing aroma of the ointment deep into my lungs. Detecting my movement, the elf turned to me and smiled kindly. Although I didn't see his mouth moving, I could hear him talking.

"Don't be afraid," he said. His voice was so soothing that I had to fight my urge to snuggle and sleep in his small arms.

I shook my head slightly. What was I supposed to say? Hello, elf? How are you? I could not. I didn't even know if I was supposed to call him that or just say Tabi or Apo.

As if knowing what I was thinking, the elf smiled again. "You call our kinddwendes or elves, no?" I nodded. "I actually don't mind if you call me an elf, but please call me Prax."

Seeing my astonished look, Prax laughed. His laugh sounded like the whistling of wind through the trees and a bit like the breaking of the waves on the seashore. I thought it nice and longed to hear more. And I wanted to know more about his kind. Did they have children? Wives? Did they play games like patintero? Habulan?

But Prax was not in the mood to chat. He told me that I should have been more careful. I could have been seriously hurt.

I nodded absently, thinking that I liked his clothes, his laugh, and his voice. He reminded me of my grandfather who had died a long time ago.

I closed my eyes, letting Prax's healing massage lull me to sleep. Thirty minutes later when I woke up, the elf was gone. Only the lingering fragrance of his balm remained.

When Mama and Papa arrived, I told them what had happened. It was really frustrating seeing their reactions. They became pale, then collapsed on the sofa. I had to douse them with water before they revived. Why couldn't they be like other people and be glad that I had been befriended by a supernatural being? I had told them about my first encounter with a real elf, and they fainted on the spot! I sulked for the rest of the evening.

Mama told me to never, never talk to elves again. Or did I forget the countless tales of elves taking people to their kingdom after killing them? I just shrugged. After all, the elf had saved my life!

I thought no more of it and, indeed, began to enjoy the banging and stomping on our ceiling. I almost wished to be hurt again just so I could see Prax. But nothing happened and I passed the rest of my summer days dreaming about playing with elves.

I met my second elf in school. I was in Grade 3, a transferee to a new public school that had a haunted classroom. My classmates related tales about dwendes, white ladies, and kapres in our school. I believed their stories readily.

I tried to tell them about Prax but since they were skeptical, I decided to let them be. As it was, I was excluded from their games.

In the classroom, I chose the seat I felt was the most haunted, the one farthest away from the teacher's table. Nobody wanted to sit near me. Behind me was a picture of the president. Without the company of my classmates, I expected elves to make their presence felt. So I waited.

By the third month in class, it happened. We had a very difficult math exam. Our teacher left us and went to gossip outside and all around me my classmates were openly copying each other's work. I looked at their papers from my seat, hoping that their scribbles would mean something to me but the answers to the blasted long divisions eluded me. I looked at the ceiling, trying to see if my brain would work better if my head was tilted a certain angle. It did not. I looked to my right, nothing there. And finally, I looked down and saw this tiny little elf, smaller than Prax by as much as six inches, sitting on the bag in front of me tap-tapping his foot impatiently.
"What took you so long to notice? I've been here for hours!" he said.

What gall! Did he really think that his race would excuse his bad manners? I ignored him and frowned at my test paper. What was 3996 divided by 6?

Immediately, he apologized and told me that his name was Bat. He had seen me play outside and thought that I was beautiful, sensitive, and romantic. Did I want him to help me in my test?

Me beautiful? I enthusiastically agreed to let him answer the test. I showed him my paper, and he snorted. "For us elves, this is elementary!" he said. I wanted to tell him that to us humans, these problems are also elementary, third-grade in fact, but I changed my mind.

Bat and I became friends. He helped me with my homework and gave me little things such as colored pencils and stationery that were the craze in school. He cautioned me strongly against telling my parents of my friendship with him. After all, he said, some people might not understand our relationship. They might forbid us from seeing each other.

I thought nothing of it and kept silent about my friendship with Bat. I enjoyed his company, for he was very thoughtful. He was a good friend and I thought we would be friends forever.

The time came, though, when he declared that he loved me. He wanted me to go with him to his kingdom and be his princess. I refused, of course. For God's sake, I was only nine! I didn't know how to cook or do the laundry or do the other things that wives are expected to do. And he was an elf! Short as I was, he only came up to my knees. What a ridiculous picture we would surely make. He pleaded with me for days but out of spite I told him that I had already confided to my parents, and that they were very angry. It was not true, but Bat didn't know that. He got angry and launched into diatribes about promises being made and broken. Then he vanished.

That night I dreamed that Prax talked to me. He told me that I should have never offended Bat outright. "That elf is a stranger in our town," he said. "We don't know his family. He might be violent."
But I had already done what I had done and there was no use wishing otherwise. I told Prax I'd never worry. After all, he'd always be there for me and my family, right?

"Wrong," he said. His gift was for giving good luck and for healing minor, nonfatal injuries. "What good is that for?" I asked. He couldn't answer, and left me to a dream of falling houses and shrieking elves.

The next day, I got sick and did not get well even after the best doctor in town treated me. My parents had grown desperate so the albularyo was called once more. She told my parents to roast a whole cow, which they did willingly. The albularyo and her family feasted on it. When I was still sick after a few days, she instructed my parents to cut my hair; she told them that elves liked longhaired women. The problem was Bat liked my new look, and in my dreams, he was always there, entreating me to go with him. I got sicker than ever.

The albularyo, getting an idea from a dream, then tried her last cure--an ointment taken from the bark of seven old trees applied to my hair. It cost more than the cow and nobody could enter my room without gagging. The smell was terrible. That did the trick. Apparently, Bat was disgusted but he would stop at nothing to get me, even if it meant getting my family out of the way. I told him again and again that I didn't love him and would never go with him, but the elf's mind was set. In the end I just ignored him, for who could reason with an elf, and a mad one at that?

He did not turn up in my dreams the next few nights. In a week, I was up and running again and I thought that all was right. My parents decided that I should transfer to another school, this time a sectarian school.
Then something happened. My mother had a miscarriage. People blamed the elves and talked about it for a long time. I remember the sad and fearful looks of my parents every day as they heard the banging on our ceiling. Were they friends or were they responsible for the accident? I had never told them about Bat, who Prax said was the one behind all these incidents.

Years passed, and since nothing untoward had happened since my mother's miscarriage, we began to let go of our fears. The alarm service continued, and our belief that my mother's miscarriage was the elves' doing was discarded. It was simply the fetus's fate to die before it was born.

"Bat left town, probably to look for some of his kin to help him," Prax said.

It was a chilling thought, and with Bat's words the last time we talked, I was terrified. I laid awake at night thinking of a way to protect my family. I had Prax, but what about them?

When I was twelve, the banging on our ceiling stopped. We were having lunch, feasting on the pork barbecue my mother had bought after her experiment with chicken curry failed. The sudden cessation of the noise we had been living with for years was jarring. The silence grated on our ears. For the first time, we could hear ourselves breathe.
No one moved. Even my brother, who was now seven, stopped chewing the pork he had just bitten off the stick. Papa stood up and called to the elves. Nobody answered. Gesturing for my cousin to follow him, they got the ladder and prepared to climb to the ceiling. They took with them an old wooden crucifix and a bottle of water from the first rain of May. My cousin brought along a two-by-two and a rope. I didn't know what they wanted to do but we looked on, our barbecue forgotten.

Papa went inside the ceiling and my cousin followed. Moments later, they came back running. My cousin descended the ladder first and I don't know whether it was because of fright or just because he was careless, but a rung broke and he fell to the ground, back first, hitting the two-by-two he had dropped in his haste. He lay there, unmoving except for his ragged breathing, his back bent at an angle we never thought possible.

Mama fainted, Papa stood still, my sister called an ambulance, my brother wailed, and I sat in the ground, laughing. It was not a laugh of gladness, just my nervous reaction to what happened. But they misunderstood and locked me in my room. I cried, shouted, cursed, but remained locked in. From inside my room I could hear them talking, the medical help coming in, and relatives pouring inside our house. I was ignored. I slept and dreamed that an elf was laughing. When I woke up, the whole house was filled by elven laughter. Then my cousin died.
After another year, my little brother followed. He was run over by a postal service van. I can still hear the anguished wail of the driver as he asked for forgiveness. He claimed that a tiny creature had run in front of his van and he had swerved to avoid it. My brother was unfortunately playing by the roadside and the van ran straight into him. Witnesses say they had heard laughter at the exact moment the wheels caught my brother.

The driver was imprisoned, but the deaths did not stop there. Barely six months later, my father drowned while fishing. A freak storm, the fishermen said, but for us who were left alive there was no mistaking that our family would die one by one.

There were only three of us left: my mother, my sister, and I. We tried to seek help, but the policemen laughed in our faces. We were branded as lunatics. And Prax was gone, defeated by Bat and his family apparently on the day the banging stopped. Even the albularyo could not help us. What use were her potions and ointments? What the elves needed was a good dose of magic, and the albularyo was primarily a healer and an exorcist. She had no training when it came to defending a whole family against vengeful elves.

And poor Mama! A mere week after my father died she followed. Extreme despair, the doctors said but we knew better.

My sister and I left home and went to live with our relatives in the city, hundreds of kilometers away. We told them about the elves but they laughed and told us we were being provincial. "It is the 90s," they said. "Belief in the little people died a long time ago." We knew they were wrong, but how could two orphaned teenagers convince the skeptics? Perhaps, we should have insisted on talking more but, as things were, our aunt had already scheduled counseling sessions for the two of us The fear of being sent to a mental institution stopped us from further trying to convince them. In the end, we just hoped that the distance from our old home would keep us safe from the elves.
But they followed and, one by one, our foster family died. Car accidents, food poisonings, assassinations through mistaken identity--there were logical explanations for their deaths but we knew we had been responsible. We could only look on helplessly, and despaired.

We traveled again, haphazardly enough to let us think that we could outwit the elves. But they finally caught my sister about a year ago. We were on the bus bound for another town when a tire blew out. The bus crashed into a ditch and although most of the passengers including myself were injured, the only fatality was my sister. I realized then that there was no escaping the fury of the little people.

After my sister's death, there was a period of silence from the elves. I decided to continue studying and enrolled at the local college. I had no problem with finances. I had inherited a large sum from a relative I had unwittingly sent to death.

After I got settled in the school dormitory, Prax appeared in my dreams again. He told me about a chant that he had dug up in the enormous library of a human psychic he had befriended. It was a weapon against any creature--effective against those with malicious intentions, whether towards humans or other creatures. Prax thought it would he better if I could defeat Bat myself. After all, hadn't Bat done me great harm already? I agreed and prepared myself for the battle that would decide my fate.

It was not long after my conversation with Prax that Bat tracked me down. It was a weekend and I had the room all to myself. I looked up from my notes and saw him--much older, his once clear complexion now marred with dark, crisscrossing veins. Hate screamed from him, and he stooped and walked with great difficulty. I pitied him.
He gave me an ultimatum: go with him or die on the spot. I pretended to look defeated and worn out. My act was effective and Bat looked pleased. He wanted us to go immediately but I dallied. At the pretext of packing my few valuable possessions, I told him to wait outside and count to a hundred.

When he was gone, I took out the ingredients I had prepared and the mini-stove I had borrowed. I boiled a small amount of sweet milk. I unwrapped Bat's image made in green and brown clay, with strands of his hair given to me by Prax, and started blowing and chanting words that meant nothing to me.

Blow. Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.
Blow. Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.
Blow. Allif, casyl, zaze, hit, mel, meltat.

Outside the room, Bat's count reached 70. I put aside the image and into the pan I poured hundreds of brand new pins and needles that had been blessed. The count reached 80. I repeated the chant and immersed the image in the boiling liquid. I waited.

Bat's count reached a hundred but I did not worry for it had become faint and weak, just as Prax had told me. Then Bat dissipated into a mist--shrieking, I might add--to where, only God would ever know.

Prax appeared again in my dreams that night and told me that they--Bat and his family--would never bother me again. He himself would move his family away from humans to avoid similar incidents in the future. It was too bad he didn't discover the old book with the vanquishing spell earlier for I could have saved my family. I could not bring them back, he said, but I could build a good life of my own. With the luck he bestowed on me, I would never be in need for material things the rest of my life.

I kissed the old elf, knowing that we would never see each other again. I watched him fade away, seeing the last of my family go.

When I woke up, I went to my desk and studied math, remembering where it all began. 

By Jayson with No comments

ANY WOMAN SPEAKS by Angela Manalang Gloria

Half of the world's true glamour
     Is held--you know by whom?
Not by the gilt Four Hundred
     Parading in perfume,

Nor by the silvered meteors
     That light the celluloid sky--
But by these eyes that called you,
     Blind fool who passed me by!

By Jayson with No comments

DEAD STARS by Paz Marquez Benitez

THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month."
Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.
"How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much in love he was?"
"In love? With whom?"
"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of," she said with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that at the beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things like that--"
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love--he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.
Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it," someone had seemed to urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.
Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.
"What do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
"I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think they are oftener cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has been allowed to prolong itself argues a certain placidity of temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." Don Julian loved to philosophize. He was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to monologue pitch. "That phase you were speaking of is natural enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I see it, was Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--"
Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's perfect physical repose--almost indolence--disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative language.
"A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.
Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar with hot blood. Even his friends had amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing incontrovertible evidence. Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain.
He rose and quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then went down the path shaded by immature acacias, through the little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening, now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender bloom.
The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open porches he could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the Martinez yard.
Six weeks ago that house meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now--
One evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it a point to avoid all appearance of currying favor with the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial," the old man had said. "Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own worldly wisdom.
A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the Judge's children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had been omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening.
He was puzzled that she should smile with evident delight every time he addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but his sister-in-law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly embarrassed, and felt that he should explain.
To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, Each time I was about to correct you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before."
"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.
"A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is Manalang, Manalang.' You know, I never forgave him!"
He laughed with her.
"The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have found out," she pursued, "is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without help."
"As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess. The young man had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone off to chat in the vine-covered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately tinkled and banged away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she had such a charming speaking voice.
He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was unmistakably a sister of the Judge's wife, although DoƱa 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 DoƱa 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 DoƱa 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. SeƱor 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.

By Jayson with 10 comments