May Day Eve By Nick Joaquin The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop

at ten oclock 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 thirdwhereupon 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 watchmans 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 girls 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 Seor only and how delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Seor 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..." Magnificence "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 clacketyclack of the watchmans 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!" Estrella D. Alfon 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 didnt mind although they did notice, for they waited for him every evening as they sat at their lessons like this. Hed throw his visored cap on the table, and it would fall down with a soft plop, then hed 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. Theyre 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 confection-makers had such light hands with. At this particular time, it was for pencils. Pencils big but light in circumference not smaller than a mans thumb. They were unwieldy in a childs 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 ones book-basket, to arouse the envy of the other children who probably possessed less. Add to the mans gentleness and his kindness in knowing a childs 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 boys 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 mans 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 girls 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, Ill ask Vicente for some more. Their mother replied, Hes only a bus conductor, dont ask him for too many things. Its 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. Youd think they wouldnt 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 dont think so, hes a rather queer young man, I think he doesnt 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 dont 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. Dont 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 didnt know why, all of a sudden she was immensely frightened, and she jumped up away from Vicentes 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 mothers 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 girls 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 girls back. Go upstairs, she said. The mothers 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 womans 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 girls 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 girls bed, made her lie down and tucked the covers gently about her as the girl dropped off into quick slumber.

WHERE'S THE PATIS? By Carmen Guerrero Nakpil Travel has become the great Filipino dream. In the same way what an American dreams of becoming a millionaire or an English boy dreams of going to one of the great universities, the Filipino dreams of going abroad. His most constant vision is that of himself as a tourist. To visit Hong Kong, Tokyo, and other cities of Asia, per chance, to catch a glimpse of Rome, Paris, or London and to go to America( even if only for a week in a fly- specked motel in California) in the sum of all delights. Yet having left the Manila International Airport in a pink cloud of despedidas and sampaguita garlands and pabilin, the dream turns into nightmare very quickly. But why? Because the first bastion of the Filipino spirit was the palate. And in all the palaces and flesh pots and skycrapers of that magic world called "abroad" there is no par/5 to be have. Consider the Piony abroad, he has discarded barong tagalog or "polo" for a sleek, dark western suit. He takes to the habiliments from Tlong Kong Brooks Brothers or Savile Row with the greatest of ease. He has also shed the casual informality of manner that is characteristically Filipino. He gives himself the airs of cosmopolite to the credit- card born. He is extravagantly courteous (especially in a borrowed language) and has taken to hand- kissing and too plenty of American "D'you mind?" 's. He hardly misses the heat, the native accent of Tagalog or llonggo or the company of his brown-skinned cheerful compatriots. He takes, like a duck to water, to the skyscrapers, the temperate climate, the strange landscape and the fabled refinement of another world. How nice, after all, to be away from old RP for a change! But as he sits down to meal, no matter how sumptuous, his heart sinks. His stomach juices, he discovers, are much less cosmopolitan than the rest of him. They are much less adaptable that his sartorial or social habits. They have remained in that dear barrio in Bulacan or in that little town in llocos andnothing that is set on the table before him can summon them to London or Paris. There he is in the most expensive restaurant in Europe, surrounded by beautiful women and impeccably dressed men bending over their rich meal. Waiters in black ties and tails stand at his elbow ready to cater to his smallest wish. An array of glass, silver, china, and artistic blooms is set before him. An elegant wagon of hors d'oeuvres approaches: pink salmon from Scotland, golden English herring, sensuous anchovies from France, green salad from a Belgian farm, mounds of Italian pasta, Russian caviar on ice, melon halves, stuffed eggs, shrimp smothered in piquant red sauce. At that precise moment the Pinoy is overcome with a yearning for a mound of white rice, a bowl of sinigang and a little saucer of patis. What would happen, he asked himself, if I shouted for sinigang na bangus? The thought

that perishes as he catches sight of the world-weary hauteur on the face of the waiter. With a sigh, he applies himself to the foreign delicacies. The herring, after a few mouthfuls tastes almost like tinapa. The shrimp would be excellent if he had some white sukang lloko to soak it in but the melon is never half as good as the ones his wife buys from her suki in San Andres. Now he must make another choice. The waiter, with an air of prime minister approaching a concordat murmurs, something about choosing a soup. The menu is in French and to be safe, our hero asks the waiter to recommend the specialty of the house. A clear consomme! When it comes, the Pinoy discovers that it is merely the kind of soup Filipinos sip when they are convalescing from "tifus" or "trancazo". Tomato soup is almost an emetic. Onion soup with bits of bread and cheese is too odd for words but palatable. If he is lucky, the waiter brings bouillabaisse with a flourish. A French classic? Nonsense. We Filipinos invented it. It is sinigang, he tells the astonished waiter, only not quite as good as we do it at home. And where, for heaven's sake is the patis? The entree or the main course is quite another problem. Poulet is chicken. Fillet de sole is fish, though recognizable neither as apahap nor lapu-lapu. Tournedos is meat done in a barbarian way, thick and barely cooked with red juices still oozing out. The safest choice is steak. If the Pinoy can get it, well done enough and slice thinly enough, it might remind him of tapa. If the waiter only knew enough about Philippine cuisine, he might suggest venison which is really something like tapang usa, or escargots which the unstylish poor on Philippine beaches know as snails. Or even frogs legs which are a Pampango delight. But this is the crux of the problem- where is the rice? A silver tray offers varieties of bread: slices of crusty French bread, soft yellow rolls, rye bread, crescents studded with sesame seeds. There are also potatoes in every conceivable manner, fried mashed, boiled, buttered. But no rice. The Pinoys learn that rice is considered a vegetable in Europe and America. The staff of life a vegetable! And when it comes- a special order which takes at least half an hour- the grains are large, oval, and foreign-looking and what's more, yellow with butter. And oh horrors! - One must shove it with pork or piled it with one's knife on the back of another fork. After a few days of these debacles, the Pinoy, sick with longing, decides to comb the strange city for a Chinese Restaurant, the closest thing to the beloved, gastronomic country. There in the company of other Asian exiles, he will put his nose finally in a bowl of rice and find it mire fragrant than an English rose garden, more exciting than a castle on the Rhine and more delicious than pink champagne. To go with rice, there is siopao (not so rich as at Salazar) pansit guisado reeking with garlic (but never so good as any that can be had in the sidewalks of Quiapo) fried lumpia with the incorrect sauce, and even mami (but nothing like the downtown wanton) Better than a Chinese restaurant is the kitchen of a kababayan. When in a foreign city, a Pinoy searches every busy sidewalks, theater, restaurant for the well- remembered golden features of a fellow- Pinoy. But make no mistake. It is only because he is in desperate need of Filipino meal and, like a homing pigeon, he follows his nose to a Filipino kitchen that is well stocked with bagoong, patis, garlic, balat ng lumpia, gabi leaves and misua. When the Pinoy finally finds such a treasure- house, he will have every meal with his kababayan. Forgotten are the bistros and the smart restaurant. The back of his hand to the Four Seasons and the Tour d' Argent. Ah, the regular orgies of cooking and eating the ensue. He may never have known his host before. In Manila, if he saw him again, they would hardly exchange two words. But here in this odd, barbarian land where people eat inedible things and have never heard of patis, they are brothers forever.The Filipino may denationalized himself but not his stomach. He may travel over the seven seas and the five continents and the two hemispheres and lose the savor of home and forget his identity and believe himself a citizen of the world. But he remains- the astronomically, at least- always a Filipino. For, if in no other way, the Filipino loves his country with his stomach.

insides was like a drum. I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now." She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily. My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her. "Maria---" my brother Leon said. He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name. "Yes, Noel." Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way. "There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west. She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly. You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?" Ca Celin drove away hi-yiing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel. We stood alone on the roadside. The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire. He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer. "Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders. "Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it." "There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him." She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek. "If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous." My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them. I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top. She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away.

How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife By Manuel E. Arguilla She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth. "You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his

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

"Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."

"The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."

"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath. "Making fun of me, Maria?" She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face. I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels. "Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant. Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart. "Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.

"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him." "I am asking you, Baldo," she said. Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly: "Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong." "So near already." I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.

"I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes. "But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.

"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing. "Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here." With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real. "---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home." "Noel," she said. "Yes, Maria." "I am afraid. He may not like me."

"No, Father, she was not afraid." "On the way---" "She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang." "What did he sing?" "---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him." He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside. The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.

"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know." We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels. I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were: "Father... where is he?" "He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them. There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking. "Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked. "No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night." He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair. "She is very beautiful, Father." "Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.

"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me. I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn. "It is time you watered him, my son," my father said. I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom

Si Lola Isyang at ang Matandang Puno ng Kaimito by Chary Lou Navarro-Defante Isang gabi Si Lola Isyang dumungaw sa bintana Natanaw niya ang mga daliri ng hangin Isa-isa, dahan-dahang pinipitas Ang mga dahon ng matandang puno ng kaimito. The man was calling from a service station outside the town the station after the agricultural high school, and before the San Miguel bridge, the man added rather needlessly, in a voice that was frantic yet oddly subdued and courteous. Dr. Lazaro thad heard it countless times, in the corridors of the hospitals, in waiting rooms: the perpetual awkward misery. He was Pedro Esteban, the brother of the doctors tenant in Nambalan, said the voice, trying to make itself less sudden remote. But the connection was faulty, there was a humming in the wires, as though darkness had added to the distance between the house in the town and the gas station beyond the summer fields. Dr. Lazaro could barely catch the severed phrases. The mans week-old child had a high fever, a bluish skin; its mouth would not open to suckle. They could not take the baby to the poblacion, they would not dare move it; its body turned rigid at the slightest touch. If the doctor would consent to come at so late an hour, Esteban would wait for him at the station. If the doctor would be so kind Tetanus of the newborn: that was elementary, and most likely it was so hopeless, a waste of time. Dr. Lazaro said yes, he would be there; he had committed himself to that answer, long ago; duty had taken the place of an exhausted compassion. The carelessness of the poor, the infected blankets, the toxin moving toward the heart: they were casual scribbled items in a clinical report. But outside the grilled windows, the night suddenly seemed alive and waiting. He had no choice left now but action: it was the only certitude he sometimes reminded himself even if it would prove futile, before, the descent into nothingness. His wife looked up from her needles and twine, under the shaded lamp of the bedroom; she had finished the pullover for the grandchild in Bagiuo and had begun work, he noted, on another of those altar vestments for the parish church. Religion and her grandchild certainly kept her busy She looked at him, into so much to inquire as to be spoken to: a large and placid woman. Gradually his mind stirred, focused; as he rose from the chair he recognized the somber passage in the sonata that, curiosly, made him think of ancient monuments, faded stone walls, a greyness. The brain filed away an image; and arrangement of sounds released it He switched off the phonograph, suppressed and impatient quiver in his throat as he reached for the phone: everyone had a claim on his time. He thought: Why not the younger ones for a change? He had spent a long day at the provincial hospital.

At ang mga mata ni Lola ay kinurot Ng mga daliri ring iyon Isinara ni Lola ang bintana At dahan-dahang nahiga.

Doon naramdaman ni Lola Isyang Ang hapdi na dala ng kurot Ang talukap ng kanyang mga matay Unti-unting nag-abot Kasabay ng pagkaubos ng mga dahon Ng matandang puno ng kaimito. Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro FAITH, LOVE, TIME AND DR. LAZARO By: Greg Brillantes From the upstairs veranda, Dr. Lazaro had a view of stars, the country darkness, the lights on the distant highway at the edge of town. The phonograph in the sala played Chopin like a vast sorrow controlled, made familiar, he had wont to think. But as he sat there, his lean frame in the habitual slack repose took after supper, and stared at the plains of night that had evoked gentle images and even a kind of peace (in the end, sweet and invincible oblivion), Dr. Lazaro remembered nothing, his mind lay untouched by any conscious thought, he was scarcely aware of the April heat; the pattern of music fell around him and dissolved swiftly, uncomprehended. It was as though indifference were an infection that had entered his blood it was everywhere in his body. In the scattered light from the sala his angular face had a dusty, wasted quality, only his eyes contained life. He could have remained there all evening, unmoving, and buried, it is were, in a strange half-sleep, had his wife not come to tell him he was wanted on the phone.

Shouldnt have let the drive go home so early, Dr. Lazaro said. They had to wait till now to call Childs probably dead

Ben can drive for you. I hardly see that boy around the house. He seems to be on vacation both from home and in school. Hes downstairs, his wife said. Dr. Lazaro put on fresh shirt, buttoned it with tense, abrupt motions, I thought hed gone out again Whos that girl hes been seeing?...Its not just warm, its hot. You shouldve stayed on in Baguio Theres disease, suffering, death, because Adam ate the apple. They must have an answer to everything He paused at the door, as though for the echo of his words.

Mrs. Lazaro had resumed the knitting; in the circle of yellow light, her head bowed, she seemed absorbed in some contemplative prayer. But her silences had ceased t disturb him, like the plaster saints she kept in the room, in their cases of glass, or that air she wore of conspiracy, when she left with Ben for Mass in the mornings. Dr. Lazaro would ramble about miracle drugs, politics, music, the common sense of his unbelief; unrelated things strung together in a monologue; he posed questions, supplied with his own answers; and she would merely nod, with an occasional Yes? and Is that so? and something like a shadow of anxiety in her gaze. He hurried down the curving stairs, under the votive lamps of the Sacred Heart. Ben lay sprawled on the sofa, in the front parlor; engrossed in a book, one leg propped against the back cushions. Come along, were going somewhere, Dr. Lazaro said, and went into the clinic for his medical bag. He added a vial of penstrep, an ampule of caffeine to the satchels contents; rechecked the bag before closing it; the cutgut would last just one more patient. One can only cure, and know nothing beyond ones work There had been the man, today, in the hospital: the cancer pain no longer helped by the doses of morphine; the patientss eyes flickering their despair in the eroded face. Dr. Lazaro brushed aside the stray vision as he strode out of the whitewashed room; he was back in his element, among syringes, steel instruments, quick decisions made without emotion, and it gave him a kind of blunt energy. Ill drive, Pa? Ben followed him through the kitchen, where the maids were ironing the weeks wash, gossiping, and out to the yard shrouded in the dimness of the single bulb under the eaves. The boy push back the folding doors of the garage and slid behind the wheel. Somebodys waiting at the gas station near San Miguel. You know the place? Sure, Ben said. The engine sputtered briefly and stopped. Batterys weak, Dr. Lazaro said. Try it without the lights, and smelled the gasoline overflow as the old Pontiac finally lurched around the house and through the trellised gate, its front sweeping over the dry dusty street. But hes all right, Dr. Lazaro thought as they swung smoothly into the main avenue of the town, past the church and the plaza, the kiosko bare for once in a season of fiestas, the lam-posts shining on the quiet square. They did not speak; he could sense his sons concentration on the road, and he noted, with a tentative amusement, the intense way the boy sat behind the wheel, his eagerness to be of help. They passed the drab frame houses behind the marketplace, and the capitol building on its landscaped hill, the gears shifting easily as they went over the railroad tracks that crossed the asphalted street. Then the road was pebbled and uneven, the car bucking slightly; and they were speeding between open fields, a succession of narrow wooden bridges breaking the crunching drive of the wheels. Dr. Lazaro gazed at the wide darkness around them, the shapes of trees and bushes hurling toward them and sliding away and he saw the stars, hard glinting points of light yards, black space, infinite distances; in the unmeasured universe, mans life flared briefly and was gone, traceless in the void. He turned away from the emptiness. He said: You seem to have had a lot of practice, Ben. A lot of what, Pa? The ways you drive. Very professional. In the glow of the dashboard lights, the boys face relaxed, smiled. Tio Cesar let me use his car, in Manila. On special occasions. No reckless driving now, Dr. Lazaro said. Some fellows think its smart. Gives them a thrill. Dont be like that. No, I wont, Pa. I just like to drive and and go place, thats all.

Dr. Lazaro watched the young face intent on the road, a cowlick over the forehead, the mall curve of the nose, his own face before he left to study in another country, a young student of full illusions, a lifetime ago; long before the loss of faith, God turning abstract, unknowable, and everywhere, it seemed to him, those senseless accidents of pain. He felt a need to define unspoken things, to come closer somehow to the last of his sons; one of these days, before the boys vacation was over, they might to on a picnic together, a trip to the farm; a special day for the two of them father and son, as well as friends. In the two years Ben had been away in college, they had written a few brief, almost formal letters to each other: your money is on the way, these are the best years, make the most of them Time was moving toward them, was swirling around and rushing away and it seemed Dr. Lazaro could almost hear its hallow receding roar; and discovering his sons profile against the flowing darkness, he had a thirst to speak. He could not find what it was he had meant to say.

The agricultural school buildings came up in the headlights and glided back into blurred shapes behind a fence.

What was that book you were reading, Ben? A biography, the boy said Statesman? Scientist maybe? Its about a guy who became a monk. Thats your summer reading? Dr. Lazaro asked with a small laugh, half mockery, half affection. Youre getting to be a regular saint, like your mother. Its an interesting book, Ben said. I can imagine He dropped the bantering tone. I suppose youll go on to medicine after your AB? I dont know yet, Pa. Tiny moth like blown bits of paper flew toward the windshield and funneled away above them. You dont have to be a country doctor like me, Ben. You could build up a good practice in the city. Specialized in cancer, maybe or neuro-surgery, and join a good hospital. It was like trying to recall some rare happiness, in the car, in the shifting darkness. Ive been thinking about it, Ben said. Its a vocation, a great one. Being able to really help people, I mean. Youve done well in math, havent you? Well enough, I guess, Ben said. Engineering is a fine course too, Dr. Lazaro said. Therell be lots of room for engineers. Planners and builders, they are what this country needs. Far too many lawyers and salesmen these days. Now if your brother He closed his eyes, erasing the slashed wrists, part of the future dead in a boarding-house room, the landlady whimpering, He was such a nice boy, doctor, your son Sorrow lay in ambush among the years. I have all summer to think about, Ben said.

Theres no hurry, Dr. Lazaro said. What was it he had wanted to say? Something about knowing each other, about sharing; no, it was not that at all The stations appeared as they coasted down the incline of a low hill, its fluorescent lights the only brightness on the plain before them, on the road that led farther into deeper darkness. A freight truck was taking on a load of gasoline as they drove up the concrete apron and came to a stop beside the station shed. A short barefoot man in a patchwork shirt shuffled forward to meet them. I am Esteban, doctor, the man said, his voice faint and hoarse, almost inaudible, and he bowed slightly with a careful politeness. He stood blinking, looking up at the doctor, who had taken his bag and flashlight form the car.

beneath a famed print of the Mother of Perpetual Help; a boy, about ten, slept on, sprawled on a mat. Estebans wife, pale and thin, lay on the floor with the sick child beside her. Motionless, its tiny blue-tinged face drawn way from its chest in a fixed wrinkled grimace, the infant seemed to be straining to express some terrible ancient wisdom. Dr. Lazaro made a cursory check skin dry, turning cold; breathing shallow; heartbeat fast and irregular. And I that moment, only the child existed before him; only the child and his own mind probing now like a hard gleaming instrument. How strange that it should still live, his mind said as it considered the spark that persisted within the rigid and tortured body. He was alone with the child, his whole being focused on it, in those intense minutes shaped into a habit now by so many similar instances: his physicians knowledge trying to keep the heart beating, to revive an ebbing life and somehow make it rise again. Dr. Lazaro removed the blankets that bundled the child and injected a whole ampule to check the tonic spasms, the needle piercing neatly into the sparse flesh; he broke another ampule, with deft precise movements , and emptied the syringe, while the infant lay stiff as wood beneath his hands. He wiped off the sweat running into his eyes, then holding the rigid body with one hand, he tried to draw air into the faltering lungs, pressing and releasing the chest; but even as he worked to rescue the child, the bluish color of its face began to turn gray. Dr. Lazaro rose from his crouch on the floor, a cramped ache in his shoulders, his mouth dry. The lamplight glistened on his pale hollow face as he confronted the room again, the stale heat, the poverty. Esteban met his gaze; all their eyes were upon him, Ben at the door, the old man, the woman in the corner, and Estebans wife, in the trembling shadows. Esteban said: Doctor.. He shook his head, and replaced the syringe case in his bag, slowly and deliberately, and fastened the clasp. T Here was murmuring him, a rustle across the bamboo floor, and when he turned, Ben was kneeling beside the child. And he watched, with a tired detached surprise, as the boy poured water from a coconut shell on the infants brow. He caught the words half-whispered in the quietness: .. in the name of the Father.. the Son the Holy Ghost The shadows flapped on the walls, the heart of the lamp quivering before it settled into a slender flame. By the river dogs were barking. Dr. Lazaro glanced at his watch; it was close to midnight. Ben stood over the child, the coconut shell in his hands, as though wandering what next to do with it, until he saw his father nod for them to go. Doctor, tell us Esteban took a step forward. I did everything: Dr. Lazaro said. Its too late He gestured vaguely, with a dull resentment; by some implicit relationship, he was also responsible, for the misery in the room, the hopelessness. Theres nothing more I can do, Esteban, he said. He thought with a flick of anger: Soon the child will be out of it, you ought to be grateful. Estebans wife began to cry, a weak smothered gasping, and the old woman was comforting her, it is the will of God, my daughter In the yard, Esteban pressed carefully folded bills into the doctors hand; the limp, tattered feel of the money was sort of the futile journey, I know this is not enough, doctor, Esteban said. as you can see we are very poor I shall bring you fruit, chickens, someday A late moon had risen, edging over the tops of the trees, and in the faint wash of its light, Esteban guided them back to the boat. A glimmering rippled on the surface of the water as they paddled across,; the white moonlight spread in the sky, and a sudden wind sprang rain-like and was lost in the tress massed on the riverbank.

In the windless space, Dr. Lazaro could hear Estebans labored breathing, the clank of the metal nozzle as the attendant replaced it in the pump. The men in the truck stared at them curiously.

Esteban said, pointing at the darkness beyond the road: We will have to go through those fields, doctor, then cross the river, The apology for yet one more imposition was a wounded look in his eyes. He added, in his subdued voice: Its not very far Ben had spoken to the attendants and was locking the car.

The truck rumbled and moved ponderously onto the road, its throb strong and then fading in the warm night stillness.

Lead the way, Dr. Lazaro said, handing Esteban the flashlight.

They crossed the road, to a cleft in the embankment that bordered the fields, Dr. Lazaro was sweating now in the dry heat; following the swinging ball of the flashlight beam, sorrow wounded by the stifling night, he felt he was being dragged, helplessly, toward some huge and complicated error, a meaningless ceremony. Somewhere to his left rose a flapping of wings, a bird cried among unseen leaves: they walked swiftly, and there was only the sound of the silence, the constant whirl of crickets and the whisper of their feet on the path between the stubble fields.

With the boy close behind him, Dr. Lazaro followed Esteban down a clay slope to the slope and ripple of water in the darkness. The flashlight showed a banca drawn up at the rivers edge. Esteban wade waist-deep into the water, holding the boat steady as Dr. Lazaro and Ben stepped on the board. In the darkness, with the opposite bank like the far rise of an island, Dr. Lazaro had a moments tremor of fear as the boar slide out over the black water; below prowled the deadly currents; to drown her in the dephts of the night But it took only a minute to cross the river. Were here doctor, Esteban said, and they padded p a stretch of sand to a clump of trees; a dog started to bark, the shadows of a kerosene lamp wavered at a window. Unsteady on a steep ladder, Dr. Lazaro entered the cave of Estebans hut. The single room contained the odors he often encountered but had remained alien to, stirring an impersonal disgust: the sourish decay, the smells of the unaired sick. An old man greeted him, lisping incoherently; a woman, the grandmother, sat crouched in a corner,

I cannot thank you enough, doctor, Esteban said. You have been very kind to come this far, at this hour. He trail is just over there, isnt it? He wanted to be rid of the man, to be away from the shy humble voice, the prolonged wretchedness. I shall be grateful always, doctor, Esteban said. And to you son, too. God go with you. He was a faceless voice withdrawing in the shadows, a cipher in the shabby crowds that came to town on market days. Lets go, Ben Dr. Lazaro said. They took the path across the field; around them the moonlight had transformed the landscape, revealing a gentle, more familiar dimension, a luminous haze upon the trees stirring with a growing wind; and the heat of the night had passed, a coolness was falling from the deep sky. Unhurried, his pace no more than a casual stroll, Dr. Lazaro felt the oppression of the night begin to life from him, an emotionless calm returned to his mind. The sparrow does not fall without the Fathers leave he mused at the sky, but it falls just the same. But to what end are the sufferings of a child? The crickets chirped peacefully in the moon-pale darkness beneath the trees. You baptized the child, didnt you, Ben? Yes, Pa. The boy kept in the step beside him. He used to believe in it, too. The power of the Holy Spirit washing away original sin, the purified soul made heir of heaven. He could still remember fragments of his boy hood faith, as one might remember an improbable and longdiscarded dream. Lay baptism, isnt that the name for it? Yes, Ben said. I asked the father. The baby hadnt been baptized. He added as they came to the embankment that separated the field from the road: They were waiting for it to get well. The station had closed, with only the canopy light and the blobed neon sign left burning. A steady wind was blowing now across the filed, the moonlit plains.

He could sense the boy groping for the tremendous answers. The Church teaches, the church says. God: Christ: the communications of saints: Dr. Lazaro found himself wondering about the world of novenas and candles, where bread and wine became the flesh and blood of the Lord, and a woman bathed in light appeared before children, and mortal men spoke of eternal life; the visions of God, the bodys resurrection at the tend of time. It was a country from which he was barred; no matter the customs, the geography didnt appeal to him. But in the care suddenly, driving through the night, he was aware of an obscure disappointment, a subtle pressure around his heart, as though he had been deprived of a certain joy A bus roared around a hill toward, its lights blinding him, and he pulled to the side of the road, braking involuntarily as a billow of dust swept over the car. He had not closed the window on his side, and the flung dust poured in, the thick brittle powder almost choking him, making him cough, his eyes smarting, before he could shield his face with his hands. In the headlights, the dust sifted down and when the air was clear again, Dr. Lazaro, swallowing a taste of earth, of darkness, maneuvered the car back onto the road, his arms exhausted and numb. He drove the last halfmile to town in silence, his mind registering nothing but the frit of dust in his mouth and the empty road unwinding swiftly before him. They reached the sleeping town, the desolate streets, the plaza empty in the moonlight, and the dhuddled shapes of houses, the old houses that Dr. Lazaro had always know. How many nights had he driven home like this through the quiet town, with a mans life ended behind him, or a child crying newly risen from the womb; and a sense of constant motions, of change, of the days moving swiftly toward and immense reverlation touched him onced more, briefly, and still he could not find the words.. He turned the last corner, then steered the car down the graveled driveway to the garage, while Ben closed the gate. Dr. Lazaro sat there a momen, in the stillness, resting his eyes, conscious of the measured beating of his heart, and breathing a scent of dust that lingered on his clothes, his skin..SLowely he merged from the car, locking it, and went around the towere of the water-tank to the frotnyard where Ben Stood waiting.

With unaccustomed tenderness he placed a hand on Bens shoulder was they turned toward the ement walled house. They had gone on a trip; they had come home safely together. He felt closer to the boy than he hade ever been in years.

He saw Ben stifle a yawn. Ill drive, Dr. Lazaro said. His eyes were not what they used to be, and he drove leaning forward, his hands tight on the wheel. He began to sweat again, and the empty road and the lateness and the memory of Esteban and of the child dying before morning in the impoverished, lamplit room fused into tired melancholy. He started to think of his other son, one he had lost. He said, seeking conversation, If other people carried on like you, Ben, the priests would be run out of business. The boy sat beside him, his face averted, not answering. Now, youll have an angel praying for you in heaven, Dr. Lazaro said, teasing, trying to create an easy mood between the. What if you hadnt baptized the baby and it died? What would happen to it then? It wont see God, Ben said. But isnt that unfair? It was like riddle, trivial, but diverting. Just because.. Maybe God has another remedy, Ben said. I dont know. But the church says.

Sorry for ekeeping you up this late, Dr. Lazaro said. Its all right, Pa. Some night, huh, Ben? What you did back in that barrio ther was just the slightest patronage in this one your momother will love to hear about it. He shook the boy beside him gently. Reverend Father Ben Lazaro. The impulse of certain humor it was part of the comradeship. He chuckled drowsily: father Lazaro, what must I do to gain eternal life? As he slid the door open on the vault of darkness, the familiar depth of the house, it came to Dr. Lazaro faitly in the late night that for certain things, like love there was only so much time. But the glimmer was lost instantly, buried in the mist of indifference and sleep rising now in his brain. HARVEST by Loreto Paras Sulit HE first saw her in his brothers eyes. The palay stalks were taking on gold in the late after-noon sun, were losing their trampled, wind-swept look and stirring into little, almost inaudi-ble whispers.

The rhythm of Fabians strokes was smooth and unbroken. So many palay stalks had to be harvested before sundown and there was no time to be lost in idle dallying. But when he stopped to heap up the fallen palay stalks he glanced at his brother as if to fathom the others state of mind in that one, side-long glance.

She was talking to Vidal about things he had no idea of. He could not under-stand why the sound of her voice filled him with this resentment that was increasing with every passing minute. She was so near him that when she gestured, perhaps as she spoke, the silken folds of her dress brushed against him slightly, and her perfume, a very subtle fragrance, was cool and scented in the air about him.

From now on he must work for me every morning, possibly all day. The swing of Vidals figure was as graceful as the downward curve of the cres-cent-shaped scythe. How stubborn, this younger brother of his, how hard-headed, fumed Fabian as he felled stalk after stalk. It is because he knows how very good-looking he is, how he is so much run-after by all the women in town. The obstinate, young fool! With his queer dreams, his strange adorations, his wistfulness for a life not of these fields, not of their quiet, colorless women and the dullness of long nights of unbroken silence and sleep. But he would bend he must bend one of these days.

Very well. Everything as you please. So it was the master who was with her.

Vidal stopped in his work to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. He wondered how his brother could work that fast all day without pausing to rest, with-out slowing in the rapidity of his strokes. But that was the reason the master would not let him go; he could harvest a field in a morning that would require three men to finish in a day. He had always been afraid of this older brother of his; there was something terrible in the way he deter-mined things, how he always brought them to pass, how he disregarded the soft and the beautiful in his life and sometimes how he crushed, trampled people, things he wanted destroyed. There were flowers, insects, birds of boyhood memories, what Fabian had done to them. There was Tinay she did not truly like him, but her widowed mother had some lands he won and married Tinay.

He is your brother, you say, Vidal? Oh, your elder brother. The curiosity in her voice must be in her eyes. He has very splendid arms.

Then Fabian turned to look at her.

I wonder what can touch him. Vidal thought of miracles, perhaps a vision, a woman But no he would overpower themhe was so strong with those arms of steel, those huge arms of his that could throttle a spirited horse into obedience.

He had never seen anyone like her. She was tall, with a regal unconscious assurance in her figure that she carried so well, and pale as though she had just recovered from a recent illness. She was not exactly very young nor very beautiful. But there was something disquieting and haunting in the unsymmetry of her features, in the queer reflection of the dark blue-blackness of her hair, in her eyes, in that mole just above her nether lips, that tinged her whole face with a strange loveliness. For, yes, she was indeed beautiful. One dis-covered it after a second, careful glance. Then the whole plan of the brow and lip and eye was revealed; one realized that her pallor was the ivorywhite of rice grain just husked, that the sinuous folds of silken lines were but the undertones of the grace that flowed from her as she walked away from you.

Harvest time is almost ended, Vidal. (I must be strong also, the other prayed). Soon the planting season will be on us and we shall have need of many carabaos. Milias father has five. You have but to ask her and Milia will accept you any time. Why do you delay

The blood rushed hot to his very eyes and ears as he met her grave, searching look that swept him from head to foot. She approached him and examined his hot, moist arms critically.

He stopped in surprise for his brother had sprung up so suddenly and from the look on his face it was as if a shining glory was smiling shyly, tremulously in that adoring way of his that called forth all the boyishness of his natureThere was the slow crunch, crunch of footsteps on dried soil and Fabian sensed the presence of people behind him. Vidal had taken off his wide, buri hat and was twisting and untwisting it nervously.

How splendid! How splendid! she kept on murmuring.

Then Thank you, and taking and leaning on the arm of the master she walked slowly away. Ah, it is my model! How are you, Vidal? It was a voice too deep and throaty for a woman but beneath it one could detect a gentle, smooth nuance, soft as silk. It affected Fabian very queerly, he could feel his muscles tensing as he waited for her to speak again. But he did not stop in work nor turn to look at her.

The two brothers returned to their work but to the very end of the day did not exchange a word. Once Vidal attempted to whistle but gave it up after a few bars. When sundown came they stopped harvesting and started on their way home. They walked with difficulty on the dried rice paddies till they reached the end of the rice fields.

The stiffness, the peace of the twilit landscape was maddening to Fabian. It aug-mented the spell of that woman that was still over him. It was queer how he kept on thinking about her, on remembering the scent of her perfume, the brush of her dress against him and the look of her eyes on his arms. If he had been in bed he would be tossing painfully, fever-ishly. Why was her face always before him as though it were always focused somewhere in the distance and he was forever walking up to it?

It was merciful the darkness was up on the fields. Fabian could not see his brothers face. But it was cruel that the darkness was heavy and without end except where it reached the little, faint star. For in the deep darkness, he saw her face clearly and understood his brother.

A large moth with mottled, highly colored wings fluttered blindly against the bough, its long, feathery antennae quivering sensitively in the air. Vidal paused to pick it up, but before he could do so his brother had hit it with the bundle of palay stalks he carried. The moth fell to the ground, a mass of broken wings, of fluttering wing-dust.

On the batalan of his home, two tall clay jars were full of water. He emptied one on his feet, he cooled his warm face and bathed his arms in the other. The light from the kero-sene lamp within came in wisps into the batalan. In the meager light he looked at his arms to discover where their splendor lay. He rubbed them with a large, smooth pebble till they glowed warm and rich brown. Gently he felt his own muscles, the strength, the power beneath. His wife was crooning to the baby inside. He started guiltily and entered the house.

After they had walked a distance, Vidal asked, Why are you that way? Supper was already set on the table. Tinay would not eat; she could not leave the baby, she said. She was a small, nervous woman still with the lingering prettiness of her youth. She was rocking a baby in a swing made of a blanket tied at both ends to ropes hanging from the ceiling. Trining, his other child, a girl of four, was in a corner playing siklot solemnly all by herself.

What is my way?

Thatthat way of destroying things that are beautiful like moths like

If the dust from the wings of a moth should get into your eyes, you would be blind.

Everything seemed a dream, a large spreading dream. This little room with all the people inside, faces, faces in a dream. That woman in the fields, this afternoon, a colored, past dream by now. But the unrest, the fever she had left behind was still on him. He turned almost savagely on his brother and spoke to break these two gro-tesque, dream bubbles of his life. When I was your age, Vidal, I was already married. It is high time you should be settling down. There is Milia.

That is not the reason.

Things that are beautiful have a way of hurting. I destroy it when I feel a hurt.

I have no desire to marry her nor anybody else. Justjustfor five carabaos. There! He had spoken out at last. What a relief it was. But he did not like the way his brother pursed his lips tightly That boded not defeat. Vidal rose, stretching himself luxuriously. On the door of the silid where he slept he paused to watch his little niece. As she threw a pebble into the air he caught it and would not give it up. She pinched, bit, shook his pants furiously while he laughed in great amusement.

To avoid the painful silence that would surely ensue Vidal talked on whatever subject entered his mind. But gradually, slowly the topics converged into one. He found himself talking about the woman who came to them this afternoon in the fields. She was a relative of the master. A cousin, I think. They call her Miss Francia. But I know she has a lovely, hidden name like her beauty. She is convalescing from a very serious illness she has had and to pass the time she makes men out of clay, of stone. Sometimes she uses her fingers, some-times a chisel.

What a very pretty woman Trining is going to be. Look at her skin; white as rice grains just husked; and her nose, what a high bridge. Ah, she is going to be a proud lady and what deep, dark eyes. Let me see, let me see. Why, you have a little mole on your lips. That means you are very talkative.

One day Vidal came into the house with a message for the master. She saw him. He was just the model for a figure she was working on; she had asked him to pose for her.

You will wake up the baby. Vidal! Vidal! Tinay rocked the child almost despairingly. But the young man would not have stopped his teasing if Fabian had not called Trin-ing to his side.

Why does she not braid her hair? he asked his wife. Brother, her loveliness is one I cannot understand. When one talks to her forever so long in the patio, many dreams, many desires come to me. I am lost I am glad to be lost.

Oh, but she is so pretty with her curls free that way about her head.

Why? Why? Oh, my God! Why?

We shall have to trim her head. I will do it before going out to work tomorrow.

Vidal bit his lips in anger. Sometimes well, it was not his child anyway. He retired to his room and fell in a deep sleep unbroken till after dawn when the sobs of a child awak-ened him. Peering between the bamboo slats of the floor he could see dark curls falling from a childs head to the ground.

That sentence rang and resounded and vibrated in Fabians ears during the days that followed. He had seen her closely only once and only glimpses thereafter. But the song of loveliness had haunted his life thereafter. If by a magic transfusing he, Fabian, could be Vidal and and how ones thoughts can make one forget of the world. There she was at work on a figure that represented a reaper who had paused to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. It was Vidal in stone.

Againas it ever would bethe disquieting nature of her loveliness was on him so that all his body tensed and flexed as he gathered in at a glance all the marvel of her beauty. He avoided his brother from that morning. For one thing he did not want repetitions of the carabao question with Milia to boot. For another there was the glorious world and new life opened to him by his work in the masters house. The glam-our, the enchantment of hour after hour spent on the shadow-flecked ylang-ylang scented patio where she molded, shaped, reshaped many kinds of men, who all had his face from the clay she worked on.

She smiled graciously at him while he made known himself; he did not expect she would remember him.

In the evening after supper he stood by the window and told the tale of that day to a very quiet group. And he brought that look, that was more than a gleam of a voice made weak by strong, deep emotions.

Ah, the man with the splendid arms.

His brother saw and understood. Fury was a high flame in his heart If that look, that quiver of voice had been a moth, a curl on the dark head of his daughter Now more than ever he was determined to have Milia in his home as his brothers wife that would come to pass. Someday, that look, that quiver would become a moth in his hands, a frail, helpless moth.

I am the brother of Vidal. He had not forgotten to roll up his sleeves.

He did not know how he worded his thoughts, but he succeeded in making her understand that Vidal could not possibly go with her, that he had to stay behind in the fields.

When Vidal, one night, broke out the news Fabian knew he had to act at once. Miss Francia would leave within two days; she wanted Vidal to go to the city with her, where she would finish the figures she was working on.

There was an amusement rippling beneath her tones. To marry the girl whose father has five carabaos. You see, Vidal told me about it.

She will pay me more than I can earn here, and help me get a position there. And shall always be near her. Oh, I am going! I am going!

He flushed again a painful brick-red; even to his eyes he felt the hot blood flow.

And live the life of aa servant?

That is the only reason to cover up something that would not be known. My brother has wronged this girl. There will be a child.

What of that? I shall be near her always. She said nothing, but the look in her face protested against what she had heard. It said, it was not so. Why do you wish to be near her? But she merely answered, I understand. He shall not go with me. She called a servant, gave him a twenty-peso bill and some instruction. Vidal, is he at your house? The brother on the patio nodded.

"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month." Now they were alone again. After this afternoon he would never see her, she would never know. But what had she to know? A pang without a voice, a dream without a plan how could they be understood in words. 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.

Your brother should never know you have told me the real reason why he should not go with me. It would hurt him, I know.

I have to finish this statue before I leave. The arms are still incompletewould it be too much to ask you to pose for just a little while?

While she smoothed the clay, patted it and molded the vein, muscle, arm, stole the firmness, the strength, of his arms to give to this lifeless statue, it seemed as if life left him, left his arms that were being copied. She was lost in her work and noticed neither the twi-light stealing into the patio nor the silence brooding over them.

Wrapped in that silver-grey dusk of early night and silence she appeared in her true light to the man who watched her every movement. She was one he had glimpsed and crushed all his life, the shining glory in moth and flower and eyes he had never understood because it hurt with its unearthly radiance.

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.

If he could have the whole of her in the cup of his hands, drink of her strange loveli-ness, forgetful of this unrest he called life, if but his arms had already found their duplicate in the white clay beyond

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.

When Fabian returned Vidal was at the batalan brooding over a crumpled twenty-peso bill in his hands. The haggard tired look in his young eyes was as grey as the skies above.

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

He was speaking to Tinay jokingly. Soon all your sampaguitas and camias will be gone, my dear sister-in-law because I shall be seeing Milia every night and her father. He watched Fabian cleansing his face and arms and later wondered why it took his brother that long to wash his arms, why he was rubbing them as hard as that 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 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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--

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.

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 Doa 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

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."

off to accompany her on this visit to her father; how Doa Adela's Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.

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."

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.

"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.

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. "Mystery--" she answered lightly, "that is so brief--" "I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection. "Not in some," quickly. "Not in you." "Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach." "You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery." 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.

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

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

"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."

He noted an evasive quality in the answer. 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 Doa 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

"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"

It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert phrase. "If you are, you never look it." "I should like to see your home town." "Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be." "There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on them, and sometimes squashes." "But--" 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. "Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself. "Nothing? There is you." "I wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause. "Oh, me? But I am here." She waited. "I will not go, of course, until you are there." "A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid." "Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American there!" "Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely "Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment." "Who? I?" She laughed. "Oh, no!" "We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees." "You said I am calm and placid." "Could I find that?" "That is what I think." "If you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly. "I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves." "I'll inquire about--"

"No, of course you are right." "What?" "Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as they turned back. "The house of the prettiest girl in the town." "I am going home." "There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is not quite sincere." The end of an impossible dream! "It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically. "When?" after a long silence. "I thought you, at least, would not say such things." "Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend Holy Week at home." "Pretty--pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that quite--" She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the last time." "Are you withdrawing the compliment?" "Can't I come to say good-bye?" "Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is more than that when--" "Oh, you don't need to!" "If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily. "No, but I want to." "Exactly." "There is no time." "It must be ugly." 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.

"Always?"

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

"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."

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.

"Old things?" Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop. "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.

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.

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

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 shoerepairing 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.

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." 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.

"Oh, is the Judge going?"

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.

"Yes."

The line moved on.

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."

"Then I will be there." Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable. 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.

"For what?" "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?"

"For your approaching wedding."

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

"No!"

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

"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. 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. "Is--is this man sure of what he should do?" "Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly

"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?"

"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."

"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.

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

"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. 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 presidente was there to meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.

"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."

"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"

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

"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. Seor Salazar's second letter had arrived late, but the wife had read it and said, "Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house." Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman replied, "but he could not write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her." San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do something for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to help. Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water. How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issuing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An occasional couple sauntered by, the women's chinelas making scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street-tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness. How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer. A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz. Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise "Good evening," he said, raising his hat. "Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?" "On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint. "Won't you come up?" He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last--he was shaking her hand. She had not changed much--a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush. Gently--was it experimentally?--he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question hardly interested him. The young moon had set, and from the uninviting 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 CHILDREN OF THE CITY

AMADIS MA. GUERRERO (For the newsboys of Manila, in the hope of a better life for them)

"Suffer the little children to come to Me...

THE father of the boy Victor worked on the waterfront and got involved in a strike, a long drawnout affair which had taken the following course: It began with charges that the employees were not being given a just compensation, that part of their earnings were being withheld from them, and that their right to form a union was being disregarded. It escalated with the sudden dismissal, for unstated reasons, of several workers, giving rise to fears that more layoffs would be carried out in the near future. This led to organized defiance, and the setting up of picket lines. Finally, one stifling summer evening, violence broke out on the piers of the city as the strikers were receiving sandwiches and soft drinks from sympathetic outsiders.

Victor had been, and still was, too young to understand it all. But when they were living in one of the shanties that stood in Intramuros, he would frequently overhear snatches of conversation between his parents regarding his fathers job. Sobra na, his father would say, we cannot take it anymore. Naglalagay sila, they are depriving us of our wages, and they even have this canteen which charges us whether we eat there or not.

Then his mother's voice, shrill and excited, would cut in, urging him to swallow it all, accept what little was given to him and stay away from the groups that wanted to fight back. She spoke bitterly of the newly emerging unions and that priest with his cohorts and his student volunteers - who were trying to organize the workers. Victor's father defended these groups, saying were only protecting the dockhands' interests. You don't know what it's like out there, he would say, there have been beatings, and all sorts of accidents. It's a dreadful place really

Once the boy interrupted them and wanted to know what the discussion was all about, only to be met with a rebuke from his mother. But he was insistent, the heat of the argument stirring a vague fear within him, and he asked what a cabo was. To distract him, his father playfully laid hold of him and hoisted him over his shoulders (although Victor was getting a bit heavy for this sort of thing). And thus they horsed about the house, or what passed for it, to the tune of the boy's delighted shrieks and the cold stares of his mother.

Occasionally, whenever he would find the time, his father would take him out at night for a stroll along the Boulevard, to feel the breeze and to walk gingerly on the narrow embankment. The place at this hour wove its spell around him, a kind of eerie enchantment, and he would gaze fascinated at the murky waters gently, rhythmically swirling on the shore, and at the beckoning lights of Cavite, and thrill to the mournful blast of a departing ship.

- Maybe it will become beautiful again in the future...

- Tatang, where is the ship going? -

A week after this the dock strike materialized. It was called against a shipping firm following the breakdown of negotiations. The picket dragged on, with the strikers and their families subsisting on funds raised by student, labor and civic-spirited elements. And the tide seemingly began to favor the strikers, for soon the case attracted national attention.

- I don't know, Victor. Maybe to the provinces. Maybe to another country, a faraway land. -

Victor's father would return home late at night from the marathon picket manned in shifts, exhausted but excited, and brimming over with enthusiasm for the cause. His mother made no comment, her protests having long subsided into a sullen silence.

- When will we be able to travel too?

Students and unionists drummed up public support for the workers, organizing drives for them, detailing their plight in pamphlets and press interviews. They reinforced the picket lines, held rallies to boost their morale and distributed food and money. And the shipping management's haughtiness turned to concern and then to desperation...

- I don't know, when we have a little money, perhaps. ONE evening, four months after the strike began, the silence of the piers was broken by the rumble of six-by-six trucks. There were three of them, and they were heading straight for the picket lines. A shot rang out, reverberating through the night, then another and a third.

The whistle of the ship, which seemed to be a big liner, sounded once more as it steamed out of the harbor and headed in the direction of the South China Sea. Arm in arm in the darkness punctuated only by a few insufficient lights, father and son tried to make out the dim outline steadily moving away from them. Then the ship faded into the shadows, and its whistle sounded no more.

Later they strolled on the promenade and made their way slowly to the Luneta, where his father bought him some chicharon.

Panic spread through the ranks of the strikers, and a few started to run away. Calls by the activists to stand fast, however, steadied the majority, who stood rooted on the spot following the initial wave of fear and shock. - Easy lang, easy lang, they won't dare crash through. - But the huge vehicles advanced inexorably, and as they neared, a kind of apocalyptic fit seized three picketers who, propelled by the months and years of exploitation, charged right into the onrushing trucks.

The park was dimly lit and ill-kept, and as they passed by the Rizal monument they noticed a number of roughlooking men lurking about in its vicinity. Two women, dressed gaudily and unaware of their presence, were approaching from another direction. As they neared, the men unloosed a volley of whistles, yells and taunts. Then stones were flung, triggering screams and curses from the two. Victor was startled at hearing their voices, which, though high-pitched, sounded distinctly masculine.

Amid screams and yells, the barricades were rammed. And the scores of strikers fell upon the 6-by-6s loaded with goons in a fury, uncaring now as to what happened to them. They swarmed over the trucks, forced open the doors and fought back with stones, placards and bare fists, as more guns sounded.

His father hurriedly led him away from the scene, and to his puzzled queries replied that it was nothing, just a quarrel, an incident. As an afterthought, he observed that the park had not always been like this, that once in the distant past it had been a clean and picturesque place.

Then the harbor police moved in, and as suddenly as it began, the spasm of violence ended. The moans of the injured mingled with the strident orders of the authorities to replace the noise of combat. In addition to the three who had been ran over, two other men had been shot to death. One of them was Victor's father, and his picture appeared on the front page of one newspaper. It showed him spreadeagled on the ground, eyes staring vacantly, with a stain on his breast.

Later that evening, the news was relayed to Victor's mother, and she fell into hysterics. Her cries betrayed not only anguish but fury and frustration as well, and learning of his father's death and seeing and hearing his mother thus, Victor, eight-year-old Victor, cowered in the shadows.

Neighbors took care of him that night, but in the morning he managed to slip out, and he made his way to the Boulevard, once there walking about aimlessly. He heard the call of newsboys going about their job, and unknown fears began to tug at him. At a newsstand in the Ermita district his glance fell on the photo of his father, and he stared at it long and hard. It was the first time he had paid such close attention to a newspaper.

He was to report at the plant every night at 9 o'clock, wait for the first edition, which came out at 11 p.m., and observe the routine. He was to sleep right outside the circulation offices, and then awaken before 4 a.m., for that was the time the city edition was made available. A number of copies, perhaps 15 or 20, would then be turned over to him, and it was up to him to distribute these in the Blumentritt area. Tio Pedring, his mother's older brother and a thin man with a nervous tic, gave him the names and addresses of 10 regular customers, and said that it was up to him to develop, his own contacts so as to dispose off the rest of the newspapers allotted. When he was off-duty, Victor could stay in his uncle's Blumentritt place, and for every newspaper he sold he would get three centavos. No mention was made of resuming the boy's interrupted schooling.

Victor's father was laid to rest three days later at the crowded cemetery to the north. His fellow workers had passed the hat around, and although the amount collected was meager, contributions from the union organizers and their supporters had made possible the fairly decent burial. His mother sobbed all throughout the ceremony, and broke down noisily when the time came for a final look at her husband. The boy stood at her side, subdued. As the coffin was being lowered, he felt like calling out to his father, tatang, tatang, but the impulse died down, swept aside by the copious tears of his mother. It was a bright, clear day. On the avenida extension, the early morning traffic was forming and the sound of car horns intruded into the place where the mourners were gathered.

THAT evening at the appointed hour he went over to the newspaper's building located in the downtown section, and was greeted by the sight of scores of ragged, barefooted newsboys swarming before the dispatcher's section. A few were stretched out on the pavement, asleep on kartons that served as their bed, while others were having their supper, bibingka and softdrinks, from the turo-turo that catered to them. The majority just milled around, grouped together in tight bunches playing their crude game of checkers, or simply loafing, awaiting the call to duty. The noise of their conversation, loud and harsh and punctuated by words like putangina, filled the newspaper's building.

Not long after his father's death, Victor, a third-grader dropped out of school, and plans were made to employ him as a newsboy with the help of an uncle who was a newspaper agent. His mother, who had gotten into the habit of disappearing in the afternoons and returning home early in the evening, pointed out that he was healthy and active, though lacking somewhat in aggressiveness. Surely this could be easily acquired once he was thrown out into the field?

In reply to his hesitant queries, the guard directed him to the distributing center, a stifling, enclosed place adjoining the printing presses. Victor entered, knowing that the notice which said unauthorized persons keep out was not meant for those like him, and for the first time he heard the throbbing of the machines which daily poured out thousands of newspaper copies. He listened for a while, fascinated, before seeking out the chief dispatcher, a harried-looking man who looked at him sharply and said - so you're the new boy? - then told him to stick around for the provincial edition and observe how things went. After that he could sleep if he wanted to, and he would be awakened at 4 a.m., when the city edition came out. Fifteen copies would be given to him, and if he consistently managed to sell all of these, the number would be increased and he would make more money.

One day she brought with her a man, a stranger with a fowl breath who swayed from side to side, and introduced him to Victor as your new tatang. The boy did not respond to him, thinking some joke he could not comprehend was being played on him. And in the days that followed he avoided as much as possible all contact with the interloper. This man, unkempt in appearance, seemed to be everything his father wasn't. For one thing he was always cursing (his father had done so only when angry, and kept this at a minimum whenever Victor was around.) And in his friendlier moments he would beckon to the boy' and say -want this, sioktong? - in such a falsetto tone that Victor coldly looked away. At night he heard strange sounds behind the partition, accompanied by his mother's giggling and the man's coarse laughter, and he felt like taking a peek, but some instinct held him back. He was disturbed no end.

Our work here is rush, rush, rush. You've got to be listo.

Victor nodded, then, dismissed, made his way back outside, where the chill of the evening had replaced the heat of the plant. A mood of foreboding descended upon him, like a pall. He was hungry, but had no money, and so contented himself with watching the other newsboys. He wanted to mingle with them, but they didn't seem to be very friendly. A dilapidated ice cream pushcart stood at one end of the corner, and to this the urchins went for their ice cream sandwiches, consisting of one or two scoops tucked into hot dog and hamburger-sized bread. Beside it was a Magnolia cart, patronized by outsiders.

One morning a week after the man moved in. Victor woke up to find him gone, along with his mother. In their stead stood his agent uncle, Tio Pedring, who said his mother had gone on a long vacation, and amid assurances that she would come back soon, informed the boy that he was to start to work immediately as a courier for the newspaper he was connected with. It's easy, Tio Pedring said, and forthwith briefed him on his duties.

One boy stood out from among the throng. The others called him Nacio, and like all of them he wore a dirty T-shirt and faded short pants, and had galis sores on his legs, but cheerfulness emanated from him and he seemed to

enjoy a measure of popularity among his companions. Upon noticing Victor watching from the side he detached himself from a group and offered him a cigarette.

Victor settled himself on the pavement, and despite the hard ground he felt tired and sleepy. He used his right arm as a pillow, and thought briefly about his father, his mother and the man she had taken up with, Tio Pedring and the day's events, before sleep claimed him.

Surprised, Victor demurred, and said he did not know how to smoke. Nacio shrugged his shoulders, as if to say hindi bale, then asked if Victor was new on the job. Upon receiving a reply in the affirmative, he nodded in satisfaction and told the other to learn from him, for he would teach him the tricks of the trade, such as how to keep a sharp eye out for customers, how to swiftly board a bus or jeep and alight from it while still in motion, and so on...

He awakened several hours later, jolted by the noise of the second wave of newsboys gathering for the city edition. Gingerly he stretched his cramped arms and legs, peered about him and shivered, for it had grown much colder. He kept an eye out for Nacio, although he felt sure he would not come back anymore tonight. He could recognize, though, some of the faces in the crowd.

Nacio invited him to eat, but again Victor declined, saying he had no money. The same procedure took place at 4 a.m., it was like a reel being retaken. The routine was now familiar to Victor, but with a difference. This time he was a participant in the activities, and he found himself caught up in the excitement. All weariness gone from him, he sped away in the company of his colleagues, holding on tightly to his ration of 15 copies. Exhilaration coursed through him, and he ran and ran, stopping only when he reached the avenida. The others had scattered in different directions, and the street stretched away endlessly, virtually devoid of traffic. Its stores had long closed down for the night, and only a few neon signs glowed.

- Hindi problema yan! - the irrepressible Nacio said, - Sige, I'll pay for you. - He turned to the turo-turo owner: Hoy, Aling Pacing! Pianono at Coke nga ho! Will you give me a discount? - Aling Pacing only looked down coldly at the boy, and grunted - no discount for you. No discount for any of you -

Nacio winked at Victor as he paid, took the rolls and drinks, and handed over to the other his share. Victor wolfed down the pianono, although it didn't taste too new, and drank with deep satisfaction while his companion chattered on, regaling him with his experiences as a carrier and his ability to skillfully dodge in and out of traffic. He disclosed that once he had been sideswiped by a car, but escaped only with a few scratches, and boasted: - I'm the fastest newsboy in Manila. - Victor marveled at his luck in finding such a fine friend.

He began to walk slowly, sober now, his responsibilities heavy on him. His destination was Blumentritt. As he crossed Azcarraga, a taxi slowed down, and its passenger called out to him. Tremblingly he handed over a paper, and received 15 centavos in turn. His very first sale! His spirits soared anew... perhaps it wasn't so difficult after all to sell a newspaper. This impression was bolstered when in a matter of minutes he made two more sales, to customers at a small, all-night restaurant.

As the time for the release of the first edition neared, an air of expectation materialized outside the plant. The newspaper's trucks and vans stood in readiness. The newsboys grew in number and began to form a dense mass. Their conversation became louder, more excited, and their horseplay rougher. Shortly after 11 p.m. a team of dispatchers emerged with the initial copies, the ink of the presses still warm on them, and was greeted by yells of anticipation. A stampede followed, and Victor noted that for every bundle turned over to a newsboy, one distributor jotted down on a piece of paper the number allotted to him.

It was still dark when he arrived at the district, and the first thing he heard was the whistle of the train which passed through the place every evening. He reacted in the same way he had to the foghorn blasts of the ships along the Boulevard.

He set about reconnoitering the area, to get the feel of it, and took out the list Tio Pedring had given him. He recalled his uncle's words: The clamor grew as the boys dashed out of the building and surged into the darkened streets. They were like school children being let out for recess. The noise continued, then subsided after a few minutes, with the last urchin scampering away. The nighttime silence returned once more to the area, broken only by occasional shouts of the men loading the main bulk of the provincial edition into the trucks, the toot of passing motorist's horn and the sound of laughter from drunkards in the sari-sari store in front.

- You're lucky. Not all newcomers have mga suki when they begin, and they have to return so many copies at first. Tambak sila. - The customers included a dressmaker, a barber, a small pharmacist, and a beautician. And to their places Victor eventually made his way, slipping the newspapers under doors, into mailboxes, and the apertures of padlocked steel gates.

Soon it grew light, and more jeepneys began to ply their routes, as buses appeared, bound for Santa Cruz and Grace Park. The signs of activity in the neighborhood market increased while the small parish church near it remained closed, silent and deserted. Young scavengers, worn out from poking all night among trash cans, slept inside their pushcarts. Piles of garbage stood on several streets and alleyways.

Victor settled down into the routine, which would be livened up sometime by big events, like an earthquake. During such occasions the labor force would swell, augmented by now inactive boys who had graduated to other fields of endeavor, like pickpocketing and the watch-your-car business. In January the Press Club held its annual party in honor of newsboys, and Victor and Nacio along with many others, attended. There were balloons, soft drinks and cookies. Nacio kept stuffing these into his pockets, to the great amusement of Victor, who was tempted to do the same, but there didn't seem to be enough around.

Victor made no other sales that day, and he returned to the plant with three unsold newspapers. He turned them over apologetically. The one in charge now shrugged, then noted that he had not done badly for a first night's work. He added that he expected Victor to improve in the future and equal the other newsboys, who always complained that their allotment was not enough. The dispatcher said: - Our newspaper is sikat. By noon we are all sold out in the newsstands.

That was the last time the two spent together. Within a week Nacio met his death - violently; he had been run over by a car while recklessly charging into the street following the release of the first edition. The following afternoon, this sign stood at the corner leading to the newspaper building: SLOW DOWN NEWSBOYS COMING OUT.

On his second night on the job, Victor was set upon by a group of street boys his age, who sprang up from out of the shadows and began to beat him up. He managed to flee from the scene in terror, leaving behind all his newspapers. For this he was roundly cursed by his uncle, who promised to take it out on his earnings for the next few days.

Victor grieved for his friend, and from that time on he became even more taciturn and withdrawn.

He took to haunting his beat even during the daytime and became friends with the little people, the vendors, the sellers of peanuts, kalamansi, coconuts and pigs, the grocery employees, the market denizens, the modistas and shop owners, and even some of' the patrolmen. Through his constant presence in the area, he was able to find additional regular customers, and no more did he have to return unsold copies. At night he went about his tasks with renewed confidence, and when through he would rest in front of the local bank. Gradually he lost his fear of thugs.

HE avoided the Boulevard by night, with its motionless ships, its necking couples, jagged embankment and swaying trees, and stuck to the well-populated areas. The bar district in the southern part of the city began to attract him, and fortified by his sheaf of newspapers, which was like a badge of distinction for him, he would stare expressionlessly at the painted girls posing before the doorways under the garish neon signs, at the customers briefly eyeing them before going in, and at the well-dressed bouncers.

On this particular evening the bars were filled with foreign sailors, for a military exercise was to be held within a few days. Red-faced and grinning, the fair-complexioned seamen made the rounds, boisterous, arm in arm sometimes, and swaying from side to side (they reminded Victor of the man who had replaced his father). Helmeted men, with MP arm-bands, stood in front of some of the cocktail lounges.

Though his work improved, his relations with the other newsboys didn't. Nacio remained his only friend, and whenever he was around the others let Victor alone. He couldn't make them out at all, with their rough games and harsh tongues, their smoking and their constant baiting. At one time he was jolted awake from the dreamless sleep by the concerted yells of the newsboys, who were hurling missiles, with the drivers reacting by merely stepping on the gas, and the passengers cowering in alarm. The guards whose job it was to break up these things did not seem to be around. No one could give an explanation for the sudden outburst.

Victor approached one of the dives and, getting a nod from the bouncer, who saw he was a newsboy, made his way in. It was almost pitch-dark inside, and it took a few minutes for his eyes to grow accustomed to the cavern-like atmosphere. Hostesses and sailors were grouped around the small tables, drinking, talking and laughing shrilly while a combo belted out pulsating music and a singer strained to make herself heard above the din. Some couples were pawing each other.

VICTOR was eventually allowed to sell both editions of the paper and his daily quota was increased to 20. Soon he was making about three pesos every day, sometimes more. His beat late at night was transferred to the Boulevard district, where he peddled the provincial edition to night clubbers and cocktail loungers. In the early hours of the morning he would distribute the city edition to his Blumentritt customers. Tio Pedring expressed satisfaction with his development, and granted the boy more decent accommodations and better food at his residence.

He approached a group noisily drinking, and tugged at the sleeves of one sailor.

- You buy newspaper from me, sir. Sige na, Joe.

The other peered at him in surprise, then guffawed loudly, and waved him away. He said thickly - Beat it, Flip boy!

Victor stood rooted on the spot. He didn't understand the words, but the gesture was unmistakable. Some hostesses started giggling nervously. He was about to turn away in anger and humiliation when another seaman, blonde and clean-shaven, gently laid a hand over him - Wait a minute, sonny. - Then he dipped into his pocket and handed over something to Victor. - Here, take it, it's yours. Have a grand time with it.

- All right, all right, putangina. - But the ephitet carried no conviction, and he repeated it, stronger this time. The boys laughed in derision, and gave out a mirthless kind of cheer. After uttering the words, Victor could no longer control himself. He began screaming all kinds of curses, and he hurled himself bodily upon them, kicking, hitting, screaming, in the grip of a fury he had not known existed within him.

Victor thanked him automatically, and went out swiftly. He looked at the paper bills in his hand and saw that they totaled two pesos, practically a night's work for him... and the pall that had descended over him for weeks was suddenly lifted, like a veil. He felt liberated, renewed. He wanted to sing out, to shout and dance about. And he began to run, joy spurring him on.

With a great shout, the others fell upon him. Newsboys sleeping on the ground woke up in alarm, the night circulation people looked around in consternation, and the turo-turo owner screamed. The melee continued until a shouting security guard rushed in and roughly broke it up. He led Victor away, and was about to interrogate him when the boy, who had sustained some cuts and bruises, broke free of his grasp and fled into the night.

Later that night he recounted the incident to his surprised colleagues, who had never seen him this garrulous before. He elaborated on the story, enriching it with imaginary details, and transformed it into a tale of danger, excitement and exotic drama. As a clincher, he proudly showed off his money, realizing his mistake in the next instant. But it was too late. The others began to advance toward him, encircling him. Their words were flung at him like stones:

He roamed the streets, the byways and darkened alleys of the teeming district. He passed by children his age scrounging around trash cans, and dingy motels where couples went in and out. One small restaurant, a focal point of excitement during the daytime when the racing results were posted, now stood silent and almost empty, about to close down. His face and body ached from the blows he had received, and a trickle of blood streamed down his nostrils. He wiped this on his T-shirt. He seemed to be in good shape otherwise, and he felt relief that the fight had been stopped in time. His thoughts flew back and forth. He promised himself that he would never go back to the plant, but his resolve soon began to weaken. He was at a loss as to what to do.

- Why aren't you like us? -

A rough voice to his right drew his attention, and as he turned into a narrow sidestreet leading to the avenida, he saw a policeman bending over a man sprawled on a heap, and apparently asleep. The officer kept on shaking the fellow, who failed to respond. Then, cursing, he hit him with his night stick, as Victor watched...

- Why don't you smoke? HE reported for work the following evening, prepared for anything. But nothing untoward happened. Last night's incident seemed to have been forgotten, and the others made no reference to it. Then one of the boys, whom Victor recognized as a ring-leader, went over to him and, apparently as a kind of peace offering, held out a cigarette. Victor hesitated, then said he didn't smoke. - Say putangina. The others began to form around him anew, but this time their attitude was one of curiosity rather than of menace. Victor drew back, frightened. With a chill he remembered the time the Blumentritt boys had ganged up on him. - I don't say words like that. - Sige na, take it. It is very nice to smoke, and it is easy. All you have to do is take a deep breath, then exhale slowly. - Say it! And Victor, his last defenses down, leaned forward and wearily accepted the cigarette, while around them swirled the life of the city: this city, flushed with triumphant charity campaigns, where workers were made to sign statements

- Why don't you curse? -

certifying they received the minimum wage, where millionaire politicians received Holy Communion every Sunday, where mothers taught their sons and daughters the art of begging, where orphans and children from broken homes slept on pavements and under darkened bridges, and where best friends fell out and betrayed one another.