Footnote to Youth

by: Jose Garcia Villa

The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father
about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and led it
to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, he wanted his father to know what he
had to say was of serious importance as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally
decided to tell it, but a thought came to him that his father might refuse to consider it. His
father was a silent hardworking farmer, who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do
from his mother, Dodong’s grandmother.
He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the housework.
I will tell him. I will tell it to him.
The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy
smell. Many slender soft worm emerged from the further rows and then burrowed again deeper
into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled clammilu
over it. Dodong got tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not
bother to look where into the air, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he
was not young anymore.
Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and fave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned
its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal
walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it and the carabao began
to eat. Dodong looked at it without interest.
Dodong started homeward thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to
marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, then down on his upper lip
was dark-these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man – he was a
man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it, although he was by nature low in
stature.
Thinking himself man – grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.
He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but
he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on
walking. In the cool sundown, he thought wild young dreams of himself and Teang, his girl. She
had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair.How desirable she was to
him. She made him want to touch her, to hold her. She made him dream even during the day.
Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscle of his arms. Dirty. This fieldwork was
healthy invigorating, but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had
come, then marched obliquely to a creek.
Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong resented his father’s question; his father himself had married early.
Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray under shirt and red kundiman shorts, on
the grass. Then he went into the water, wet his body over and rubbed at it vigorously. He was
not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.
It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling was already lighted and
the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. He and his parents sat down on the floor
around the table to eat. They had fried freshwater fish, and rice, but did not partake of the
fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held the,, they felt more fluid than
solid. Dodong broke off a piece of caked sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got
another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parent.
Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through, and went with slow careful
steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out. But he was tired and now, feld
lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the
housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him, again. Dodong
knew, Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was
afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward,
Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth, he would be afraid to go to the dentist;
he would not be any bolder than his father.
Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out,
what we had to say, and over which he head said it without any effort at all and without self-
consciousness. Dodong felt relived and looked at his father expectantly. A decresent moon
outside shed its feebled light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His
father look old now.
“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.
His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth, the silence became
intense and cruel, and Dodong was uncomfortable and then became very angry because his
father kept looking at him without uttering anything.
“I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”
His father kept gazing at him in flexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.
I asked her last night to marry me and she said… “Yes. I want your permission… I… want…
it…” There was an impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at his coldness, this
indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the
little sound it made broke dully the night stillness.
“Must you marry, Dodong?”
Dodong resented his father’s question; his father himself had married early.Dodong made a
quick impassioned essay in his mind about selfishness, but later, he got confused.
“You are very young, Dodong.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“That’s very young to get married at.”
“I… I want to marry… Teang’s a good girl…
“Tell your mother,” his father said.
“You tell her, Tatay.”
“Dodong, you tell your Inay.”
“You tell her.”
“All right, Dodong.”
“All right, Dodong.”
“You will let me marry Teang?”
“Son, if that is your wish… of course…” There was a strange helpless light in his father’s
eyes. Dodong did not read it. Too absorbed was he in himself.
Dodong was immensely glad he has asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father, for
a while, he even felt sorry for him about the pain I his tooth. Then he confined his mind
dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dreams…
***
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely so that his camisetawas
damp. He was still like a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to
leave the house, but he had left. He wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all.He was
afraid, he felt afraid of the house. It had seemingly caged him, to compress his thoughts with
severe tyranny. He was also afraid of Teang who was giving birth in the house; she face
screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that. He began to wonder
madly if the process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did
not cry.
In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe,
with strangeness. He was young, he realized now contradicting himself of nine months ago. He
was very young… He felt queer, troubled, uncomfortable.
Dodong felt tired of standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He
looked at his calloused toes. Then he thought, supposed he had ten children…
The journey of thought came to a halt when he heard his mother’s voice from the house.
Some how, he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as
if he had taken something not properly his.
“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”
Suddenly, he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow, he was ashamed to his
mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he has taken something not
properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust off his kundimanshorts.
“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”
He turned to look again and this time, he saw his father beside his mother.
“It is a boy.” His father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.
Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. His parent’s eyes seemed to pierce through
him so he felt limp. He wanted to hide or even run away from them.
“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” his mother said.
Dodong did not want to come up. He’d rather stayed in the sun.
“Dodong… Dodong.”
I’ll… come up.
Dodong traced the tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps
slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parent’s eyes. He walked
ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untru. He felt like
crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to
the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.
“Son,” his father said.
And his mother: “Dodong..”
How kind their voices were. They flowed into him, making him strong.
“Teanf?” Dodong said.
“She’s sleeping. But you go in…”
His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his wife, asleep on the paper
with her soft black hair around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.
Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips. But
again that feeling of embarrassment came over him, and before his parent, he did not want to
be demonstrative.
The hilot was wrapping the child Dodong heard him cry. The thin voice touched his heart. He
could not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.
***
Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive years, a new
child came along. Dodong did not want any more children. But they came. It seemed that the
coming of children could not helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.
Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children tolled on her. She was shapeless and thin
even if she was young. There was interminable work that kept her tied up. Cooking,
laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had no married. She did
not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet, she wished she had not married. Not
even Dodong whom she loved. There had neen another suitor, Lucio older than Dodong by nine
years and that wasw why she had chosen Dodong.Young Dodong who was only
seventeen. Lucio had married another. Lucio, she wondered, would she have born him children?
Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong… in the moonlight, tired and
querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to be wise
about many thins.
Life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams.
Why must be so? Why one was forsaken… after love?
One of them was why life did not fulfill all of the youth’ dreams. Why it must be so. Why one
was forsaken… after love.
Dodong could not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so
to make youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet.
Dodong returned to the house, humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know little wisdom but
was denied it.
When Blas was eighteen, he came home one night, very flustered and happy.Dodong heard
Blas’ steps for he could not sleep well at night. He watched Blass undress in the dark and lie
down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called his name and
asked why he did not sleep.
You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said.
Life did not fulfill all of youth’s dreams. Why it must be so? Why one was forsaken after love?
“Itay..” Blas called softly.
Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.
“I’m going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.
“Itay, you think its over.”
Dodong lay silent.
I loved Tona and… I want her.”
Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard where
everything was still and quiet.
The moonlight was cold and white.
“You want to marry Tona, Dodong said, although he did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was
very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard…
“Yes.”
“Must you marry?”
Blas’ voice was steeled with resentment. “I will mary Tona.”
“You have objection, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.
“Son… non…” But for Dodong, he do anything. Youth must triumph… now. Afterward… It will
be life.
As long ago, Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then life.
Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for
him.
 The Wedding Dance
by: Amador T. Daguio
1Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the head high
threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him across to the
narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After
some moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.
2“I’m sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it.”
3The sounds of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house, like muffled roars of
falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding doors opened had
been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. The sudden rush of rich sounds when
the door opened was like a sharp gush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao,
but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
4But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitted her. He crawled on all fours to the
middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With his fingers he stirred the
covered smouldering embers, and blew into them. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put
pieces of pine wood on them, then full round logs as big as his arms. The room brightened.
5“Why don’t you go out,” he said, “and join the dancing women?” He felt a pang inside him,
because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not talk
or stir.
6“You should join the dancers, he said, “as if nothing happened.” He looked at the woman
huddled in a corner, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving
shadows and light upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sulleness was not because of
anger or hate.
7“Go out-go out and dance. If you really don’t hate me for this separation, go out and dance.
One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing; he will marry you. Who knows
but that, with him, you will be luckier than you are with me?”
8“I don’t want any man,” she said sharply. I don’t want any other man.”
9“He
felt relieved that at last she talked:”You know very well that I don’t want any other
woman, either. You know that, don’t you? Lumnay, you know it, don’t you?”
10She did not answer him.
11“You know it Lumnay, don’t you?” he repeated.
12”Yes, I know,” she said weakly.
13”It
is not my fault,” he said feeling relieved. You cannot blame me; I have been a good
husband to you.”
14”Neither can you blame me, “ she said. She seemed about to cry.
15”You, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say
against you.” He set some of the burning wood in place. “It’s only that a man must have a child.
Seven harvests are just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited long. We should have another
chance before it is too late for both of us.”
16Thistime the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound
the blanket more snugly around herself.
17”You know that I have done my best, she said.”I have prayed to Kabunayan much. I have
sacrificed many chickens in my prayers.”
18”Yes, I know.”
19You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace
because I butchered one of our pigs without permission. I did it to appease Kabunayan, because
like you, I wanted so much to have a child. But what could I do?”
20”Kabunayan does not see fit for us to have a child,”he said. He stirred the fire. The sparks rose
through the crackles of the flames. The smoke soot went up to the ceiling.
21Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split
bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split
bamboo went up and came down with a sligh rattle. The gongs of the dancers clamorously
called in her ears through the walls.
22Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, look at her bronzed and
sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of the water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao
took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the
mountain creek early that evening.
23”Icame home,” he said, “because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not
forcing you to come, if you don’t want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that
Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not
strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good in keeping a house
clean. You are one of the best wives in the whole village.”
24That
has not done me any good, has it” she said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost
seemed to smile.
25He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between
his hands, and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he
hold her face. The next day she would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she
bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.
26This house is yours, he said. “I built it for you. Make it your own; live in it as long as you wish. I
will build another house for Madulimay.”
27I
have no need for the house,” she said slowly. I’II go to my own house. My parents are old.
They will need help in planting of the beans, in pounding of the rice.
28Iwill give you the field that I dug out of the mountain during the first year of our marriage,”
he said. “You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us.”
29 “I have no use for any field,” she said.
30He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a long time.
31”Goback to the dance,” she said finally, “It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder
where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance.”
32”I would feel better if you could come, and dance – for the last time. ‘The gangas are playing.”
33”You know that I cannot.”
34”Lumnay, “ he said tenderly. “Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You
know that life is not worth living without a child. They have mocked me behind my back. You
know that.”
35”I know it, “she said. “I will pray that Kabunayan will bless you and Madulimay.”
36She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
37She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning
of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the
other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon
which they had to cross – the waters boiled in her mind in foams of white and jade and roaring
silver; the waters rolled and growled, resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the
stiff cliff; they were far away now but loud still and receding; the waters violently smashed
down from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the
buttresses of rocks they had to step on—a slip would have meant death.
38They both drank of the water, then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb
to the other side of the mountain.
39She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features- hard and strong, and kind. He
had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things, which often made her and the village
people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor! The muscles were taut and firm, bronze
and compact in their hold upon his skull – how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at this
body that carved out of the mountains five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if
a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles – he
was strong and for that she had lost him.
40She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them.” Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband,” she cried.
“I did everything to have a child,” she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. She took away the
blanket that covered her. “Look at me,” she cried, “Look at my body. Then it was full of
promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the field; it could climb the mountains fast. Even
now it is firm, full. But Awiyao, Kabunayan never blessed me. Awiyao, Kabunayan is cruel to me.
Awiyao, I am useless, I must die.”
41”Itwill not be right to die,” he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole arm naked breasts
quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her head lay upon his right shoulder,
her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
42”I
don’t care about the fields,” she said. “I don’t care about the house.” “I don’t care for
anything but you. I’ll never have another man.”
43”Then you’ll always be fruitless.”
44”I’ll go back to my father, I’ll die”
45”Then you hate me, “he said. ‘If you die, it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a
child. You don’t want my name to live on in our tribe.”
46She was silent.
47”If
I do not try a second time,” he explained, “it means I’ll die. Nobody will get the fields I have
carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me.”
48”If
you fail- if you fail this second time-, “she said thoughtfully. Then her voice was a shudder.
“No-no, I don’t want you to fail.”
49”IfI fail, “he said, “I’ll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will
vanish from life of our tribe.”
50The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and far away.
51”I’ll keep my beads, “she said. “ Awiyao let me keep my beads,” she half-whispered.
52Youwill keep the beads. They came from far-off times. My grandmother said they came from
way up North, from the slant-eyed people from across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They
are worth twenty fields.”
53”I’ll
keep them because they stand for the love you have for me,” she said. “I love you. I love
you and have nothing to give.”
54Shetook herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from the outside. “Awiyao!
Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!”
55”I am not in a hurry.”
56”The elders will scold you. You had better go.”
57Not until you tell me it is all right with you.”
58”It is all right with me.”
59He clasped her hands. “I do this for the sake of the tribe,” he said.
60”I know,” she said.
61He went to the door.
62”Awiyao!”

63He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It
pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a
child? What was it in life, in works in the fields, in planting and harvesting, in the silence of the
tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his
mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child
to come after him? And if he was fruitless – but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away half of
his life to leave her like this.
64”Awiyao,” she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. “The beads!”
65He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept
their wordly possessions – his battle-axe and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads.
He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to
give to Lumnay on the day of his marriage. He went to her, lifted her head, put the beads on,
and tied them in place. The white, jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She
suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck, as if she would never let him go.
66”Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!” she gasped and she closed her eyes and buried her face in his
neck.
67The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and hurried out into the night.
68Lumnay sat for sometime in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The
moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself upon the whole village.
69She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other
houses. She knew that all houses were empty; that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she
was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer in the village? Did she not have the most
lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among the women, dance like a bird tripping for
grains on the ground, beautifully timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her
supple body, and the women envy. The way she stretched her hands like the wings of the
mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own now and
then? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted,
who once danced in her honor, where dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was
that perhaps she could not give her husband a child?
70”Itis not right. It is not right!” she cried. “How does she know? How can anybody know? It is
not right,” she said.
71Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the
village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him
away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a
man may take another woman. She would break the dancing of the men and women. She
would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong as
the river?
72She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow
over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamoured more loudly now,
and it seemed they were calling her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly
now. The men leaped lithely with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in
feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her
heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she
started to run.
73But the flaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her
approach? She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The lames of the bonfire
leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and dies out in the night.
The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break
into the wedding feast.
74Lumnay walked from the ground, away from the village. She thought of the new clearing of
beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the
trail above the village.
75When she came to mountain stream, she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hands, and
the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows
among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.
76When Lumnay reached the clearing, she could see from where she stood the blazing bonfire
at the edge of the village where the dancing was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the
gongs,still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not
mock her; they seemed to call far to her; speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She
felt the pull of their clamour, almost feeling that they wer telling to her the gratitude for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.
77Lumnay thought of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago- a strong, muscular boy
carrying his heagy loads of fuel logs down the mountain to his home. She had met him one day
as she was on her way to fill her clay glass with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink the
rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it
did not take long for him to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father’s house in toke
of his desire to marry her.
78The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to sough and stir
the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. Th bean
plants surrounded her, and she was lost among them.
79Afew more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests- what did it matter? She would
be holding the bean flowers, soft in texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into
them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes.
The stretching of the bean pods full length form the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.
80 Lumnay’s fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
 Dead Stars
Paz Marquez Benitez
THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping
him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the
years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused
into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled
azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"

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

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

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

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

"In love? With whom?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the Judge's
children that she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic Filipino way
formal introductions had been omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se
conocen?"--with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the
evening.

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

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

"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.

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

He laughed with her.

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

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

"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Up here I find--something--"

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

"No; youth--its spirit--"

"Are you so old?"

"And heart's desire."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So long?"

"I should like to."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The last? Why?"

"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."

He noted an evasive quality in the answer.

"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"

"If you are, you never look it."

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

"But--"

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

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

She waited.

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

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

"Who? I?"

"Oh, no!"
"You said I am calm and placid."

"That is what I think."

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

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

"I should like to see your home town."

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

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

"Nothing? There is you."

"Oh, me? But I am here."

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

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

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

She laughed.

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

"Could I find that?"

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

"I'll inquire about--"

"What?"

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

"There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is not quite
sincere."
"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.

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

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

"Are you withdrawing the compliment?"

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

"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.

"Exactly."

"It must be ugly."

"Always?"

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

"No, of course you are right."

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

"I am going home."

The end of an impossible dream!

"When?" after a long silence.

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

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

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

"Oh, you don't need to!"

"No, but I want to."

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

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

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

"Old things?"

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

The line moved on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, is the Judge going?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

"For what?"
"For your approaching wedding."

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

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

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

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

"When they are of friends, yes."

"Would you come if I asked you?"

"When is it going to be?"

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

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

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

"Why not?"

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

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

"Then I ask you."

"Then I will be there."

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

"Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to choose between
something you wanted to do and something you had to do?"
"No!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Doesn't it--interest you?"

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

Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But do you approve?"

"Of what?"

"What she did."

"No," indifferently.

"Well?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last word had been said.

III

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

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

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

The vessel approached the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the dark
water. Peculiar hill inflections came to his ears from the crowd assembled to meet the boat--
slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the Laguna lake-shore speech. From where he stood he
could not distinguish faces, so he had no way of knowing whether the presidente was there to
meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.

"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"

"What abogado?" someone irately asked.

That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.

It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with Brigida Samuy--
Tandang "Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar's second letter had arrived late, but
the wife had read it and said, "Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house."

Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat
would leave at four the next morning anyway. So 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.
 How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife
(American Colonial Literature)
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 insides was like a drum.

I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."

She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched
Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big
eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily.

My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the
usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to
him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its
forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.
"Maria---" my brother Leon said.

He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that
to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.

"Yes, Noel."

Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not
like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way.

"There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.

She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly.

"You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"

Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat
tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.

We stood alone on the roadside.

The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue
above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of
clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow
bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that
 morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared
tipped with fire.

He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble
underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer.

"Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big
uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.

"Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."

"There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In
all the world there is no other bull like him."

She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite
end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the
small dimple high up on her right cheek.

"If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous."

My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was
a world of laughter between them and in them.

I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I
kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to
say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart,
placing the smaller on top.

She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed
a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of
her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running
away.

"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything."
Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as
he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back
of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road
echoed in my ears.

She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them
so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw
the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on
the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made
him turn around.

"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.

I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to
where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the
Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow
fires.

When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be
used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said
sternly:

"Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"

His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky
bottom of the Waig.

"Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead
of the camino real?"

His fingers bit into my shoulder.

"Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."

Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother
Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:

"And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with
Castano and the calesa."

Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do
that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees.
Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the
deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim,
grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of
dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed
to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.

"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west,
almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.

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

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

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

"So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.

 "Making fun of me, Maria?"

She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her
face.

I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels.

"Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant.

Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view
and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and
down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.

"Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.

"Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."

"I am asking you, Baldo," she said.

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:

"Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."

"So near already."

I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her
last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say
something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky
Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he
went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed
into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock,
her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would
join him again.

Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern
mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we
crossed the low dikes.

"But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one
could see far on every side, though indistinctly.

"You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped
singing.

"Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."

With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I
knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.

"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the
Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking
Father as soon as we get home."

"Noel," she said.

"Yes, Maria."

"I am afraid. He may not like me."

"Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre,
for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the
mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."

We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the
window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being
made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!"
calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me.
And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in
the noise of the wheels.

I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took
the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our
yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time.
There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling
shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he
had kissed Mother's hand were:

"Father... where is he?"

"He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."

I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied
him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks.
As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to
me they were crying, all of them.

There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western
window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from
his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.

"Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.

"No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.
 "She is very beautiful, Father."

"Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it.
And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her
shoulders.

"No, Father, she was not afraid."

"On the way---"

"She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."

"What did he sing?"

"---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."

He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was
also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father
was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver
faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside.

The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.

"Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.

I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.

"It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.

I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still.
Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in
bloom.