Cebu Normal University

Osmea Blvd., Cebu City

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Undergraduate Studies

A Compilation of Literatures in the Philippines

Submitted by: KEVIN JOHN B. ENCARNACION BSEd Math III

Submitted to: Professor

Jose Garcia Villa (August 5, 1908 February 7, 1997) was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and painter. He was awarded the National Artist of the Philippines title for literature in 1973, as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by Conrad Aiken. He is known to have introduced the "reversed consonance rime scheme" in writing poetry, as well as the extensive use of punctuation marksespecially commas, which made him known as the Comma Poet. He used the penname Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle, Lion"), based on the characters he derived from himself. These animals were also explored by another poet e.e. cummings in Doveglion, Adventures in Value, a poem dedicated to Villa. Villa was born on August 5, 1908, in Manila's Singalong district. His parents were Simeon Villa (a personal physician of Emilio Aguinaldo, the founding President of the First Philippine Republic) and Guia Garcia (a wealthy landowner).He graduated from the University of the Philippines Integrated School and the University of the Philippines High School in 1925. Villa enrolled on a Pre-Medical course in the University of the Philippines, but then switched to Pre-Law course. However, he realized that his true passion was in the arts. Villa first tried painting, but then turned into creative writing after reading Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Villa's tart poetic style was considered too aggressive at that time. In 1929 he published Man Songs, a series of erotic poems, which the administrators in UP found too bold and was even fined Philippine peso for obscenity by the Manila Court of First Instance. In that same year, Villa won Best Story of the Year from Philippine Free Press magazine for Mir-I-Nisa. He also received P1,000 prize money, which he used to migrate to the United States. He enrolled at the University of New Mexico, wherein he was one of the founders of Clay, a mimeograph literary magazine.He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and pursued postgraduate work at Columbia University.Villa had gradually caught the attention of the country's literary circles, one of the few Asians to do so at that time. After the publication of Footnote to Youth in 1933, Villa switched from writing prose to poetry, and published only a handful of works until 1942. During the release of Have Come, Am Here in 1942, he introduced a new rhyming scheme called "reversed consonance" wherein, according to Villa: "The last sounded consonants of the last syllable, or the last principal consonant of a word, are reversed for the corresponding rhyme. Thus, a rhyme for near would be run; or rain, green, reign." In 1949, Villa presented a poetic style he called "comma poems", wherein commas are placed after every word. In the preface of Volume Two, he wrote: "The commas are an integral and essential part of the medium: regulating the poem's verbal density and time movement: enabling each word to attain a fuller tonal value, and the line movement to become more measures. Villa worked as an associate editor for New Directions Publishing in New York City between 1949 to 1951, and then became director of poetry workshop at City College of New York from 1952 to 1960. He then left the literary scene and concentrated on teaching, first lecturing in The New School|The New School for Social Research from 1964 to 1973, as well as conducting poetry workshops in his apartment. Villa was also a cultural attach to the Philippine Mission to the United

Jose Garcia Villa

Nations from 1952 to 1963, and an adviser on cultural affairs to the President of the Philippines beginning 1968. As an editor, Villa first published Philippine Short Stories: Best 25 Short Stories of 1928 in 1929, an anthology of Filipino short stories written in English literature English that were mostly published in the literary magazine Philippine Free Press for that year. It is the second anthology to have been published in the Philippines, after Philippine Love Stories by editor Paz Mrquez-Bentez in 1927. His first collection of short stories that he has written were published under the title Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others in 1933; while in 1939, Villa published Many Voices, his first collection poems, followed by Poems by Doveglion in 1941. Other collections of poems include Have Come, Am Here (1942), Volume Two (194 in that year when he edited The Doveglion Book of Philippine Poetry in English from 1910. Three years later, he released a followup for The Portable Villa entitled The Essential Villa.Villa, however, went under "self-exile" after the 1960s, even though he was nominated for several major literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. This was perhaps because of oppositions between his formalism (literature)formalist style and the advocates of proletarian literature who misjudged him as a petty bourgeois. Villa only "resurfaced" in 1993 with an anthology entitled Charlie Chan Is Dead, which was edited by Jessica Hagedorn Several reprints of Villa's past works were done, including Appasionata: Poems in Praise of Love in 1979, A Parliament of Giraffes (a collection of Villa's poems for young readers, with Tagalog language Tagalog translation provided by Larry Francia), and The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings by Villa that was edited by Eileen Tabios with a foreword provided by Hagedorn (both in 1999). Among his popular poems include When I Was No Bigger Than A Huge, an example of his "comma poems", and The Emperor's New Sonnet (a part of Have Come, Am Here) which is basically a blank sheet of paper. On February 5, 1997, at the age of 88, Jose was found in a coma in his New York apartment and was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital in the Greenwich area. His death two days later was attributed to "cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia". He was buried on February 10 in St. John's Cemetery in New York, wearing a Barong Tagalog.

I Can No More Hear Love's

by Jose Garcia Villa I can no more hear Love's Voice. No more moves The mouth of her. Birds No more sing. Words I speak return lonely. Flowers I pick turn ghostly. Fire that I burn glows Pale. No more blows The wind. Time tells No more truth. Bells Ring no more in me. I am all alone singly. Lonely rests my head. O my God! I am dead. (SOURCE: http://pinoyreader.blogspot.com/2006/07/jose-garcia-villas-i-can-no-more-hear.html)

Carlos Sampayan Bulosan (November 2, 1913 September 11, 1956) was an Englishlanguage Filipino novelist and poet who spent most of his life in the United States. His best-known work is the semi-autobiographical America Is in the Heart. Carlos Bulosan was born to Ilocano parents in the Philippines in the rural village of Mangusmana, in the town of Binalonan, Pangasinan. There is considerable debate around his actual birth date, as he himself used several dates, but 1911 is generally considered the most reliable answer, based on his baptismal records, but according to the late Lorenzo Duyanen Sampayan, his childhood playmate and nephew, Carlos was born on November 2, 1913. Most of his youth was spent in the countryside as a farmer. It is during his youth that he and his family were economically impoverished by the rich and political elite, which would become one of the main themes of his writing. His home town is also the starting point of his famous semi-autobiographical novel, America is in the Heart. Following the pattern of many Filipinos during the American colonial period, he left for America on July 22, 1930 at age 17, in the hope of finding salvation from the economic depression of his home. He never again saw his Philippine homeland. Upon arriving in Seattle, he met with racism and was forced to work in low paying jobs. He worked as a farmworker, harvesting grapes and asparagus, and doing other types of hard work in the fields of California. He also worked as a dishwasher with his brother and Lorenzo in the famous Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. He was active in labour movement along the Pacific coast of the United States and edited the 1952 Yearbook for International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 37, a predominantly Filipino American cannery trade union based in Seattle. After many years of discrimination, starvation and sickness, Bulosan had to undergo surgery for tuberculosis in the Los Angeles County Sanitarium, now the USC Medical Center. The tuberculosis operations made him lose most of the right side of his ribs and the function of one lung. He was confined in the hospital for two years where he took advantage and read one book per day. He became a prolific writer and voice concerning for Filipinos and the struggles they were forced to live in. There is some controversy surrounding the accuracy of events recorded within America Is in the Heart. He is celebrated for giving a post-colonial, Asian immigrant perspective to the labor movement in America and for telling the experience of Filipinos working in the U.S. during the 1930s and '40s. In the 1970s, with a resurgence in Asian/Pacific Islander American activism, his unpublished writings were discovered in a library in the University of Washington leading to posthumous releases of several unfinished works and anthologies of his poetry. His other novels include The Laughter of My Father, which were originally published as short sketches, and the posthumously published The Cry and the Dedication which detailed the armed Huk Rebellion in the Philippines. One of his most famous essays was "Freedom from Want," commissioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of a series on the "Four Freedoms" and published on March 26, 1943 in the Saturday Evening Post. Maxim Lieber was his literary agent in 1944.

Carlos Bulosan

As a labor organizer and socialist write, he was blacklisted. Denied a means to provide for himself, his later years were of flight and hardship, probably including alcoholism. He died in Seattle suffering from an advanced stage of bronchopneumonia. He is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. Carlos Bulosan's works and legacy is heralded in a state of the art permanent exhibition known as 'The Carlos Bulosan Memorial Exhibit" displayed at the historic Eastern Hotel in the heart of Seattle's International District highlighted with a massive centerpiece mural titled: 'Secrets of History' created by renowned artist Eliseo Art Silva.

If You Want To Know What We Are

by Carlos Bulosan If you want to know what we are who inhabit forest mountain rivershore, who harness beast, living steel, martial music (that classless language of the heart), who celebrate labour, wisdom of the mind, peace of the blood; If you want to know what we are who become animate at the rain's metallic ring, the stone's accumulated strength, who tremble in the wind's blossoming (that enervates earth's potentialities), who stir just as flowers unfold to the sun; If you want to know what we are who grow powerful and deathless in countless counterparts, each part pregnant with hope, each hope supreme, each supremacy classless, each classlessness nourished by unlimited splendor of comradeship; We are multitudes the world over, millions everywhere; in violent factories, sordid tenements, crowded cities; in skies and seas and rivers, in lands everywhere; our number increase as the wide world revolves and increases arrogance, hunger disease and death. We are the men and women reading books, searching in the pages of history for the lost word, the key to the mystery of living peace, imperishable joy; we are factory hands field hands mill hand everywhere, molding creating building structures, forging ahead, Reaching for the future, nourished in the heart; we are doctors scientists chemists discovering, eliminating disease and hunger and antagonisms; we are soldiers navy-men citizens guarding the imperishable will of man to live in grandeur, We are the living dream of dead men everywhere,

the unquenchable truth that class-memories create to stagger the infamous world with prophecies of unlimited happiness_a deathless humanity; we are the living and the dead men everywhere.... If you want to know what we are, observe the bloody club smashing heads, the bayonet penetrating hallowed breasts, giving no mercy; watch the bullet crashing upon armorless citizens; look at the tear-gas choking the weakened lung. If you want to know what we are, see the lynch trees blossoming, the hysterical mob rioting; remember the prisoner beaten by detectives to confess a crime he did not commit because he was honest, and who stood alone before a rabid jury of ten men, And who was sentenced to hang by a judge whose bourgeois arrogance betrayed the office he claimed his own; name the marked man, the violator of secrets; observe the banker, the gangster, the mobsters who kill and go free; We are the sufferers who suffer for natural love of man for man, who commemorate the humanities of every man; we are the toilers who toil to make the starved earth a place of abundance who transform abundance into deathless fragrance. We are the desires of anonymous men everywhere, who impregnate the wide earth's lustrous wealth with a gleaming flourescence; we are the new thoughts and the new foundations, the new verdure of the mind; we are the new hope new joy life everywhere. We are the vision and the star, the quietus of pain; we are the terminals of inquisition, the hiatuses of a new crusade; we are the subterraean subways of suffering; we are the will of dignities; we are the living testament of a flowering race. If you want to know what we are WE ARE REVOLUTION! (SOURCE: http://www.bulatlat.com/news/2-44/2-44-bulosan.html)

Edith L. Tiempo (April 22, 1919 August 21, 2011), poet, fiction writer, teacher and literary critic was a Filipino writer in the English language. Tiempo was born in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. Her poems are intricate verbal transfigurations of significant experiences as revealed, in two of her much anthologized pieces, "Lament for the Littlest Fellow" and "Bonsai." As fictionist, Tiempo is as morally profound. Her language has been marked as "descriptive but unburdened by scrupulous detailing." She is an influential tradition in Philippine literature in English. Together with her late husband, writer and critic Edilberto K. Tiempo, they founded (in 1962) and directed the Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, which has produced some of the Philippines' best writers. She was conferred the National Artist Award for Literature in 1999.

Edith Tiempo

Bonsai
by Edith Tiempo All that I love I fold over once And once again And keep in a box Or a slit in a hollow post Or in my shoe. All that I love? Why, yes, but for the momentAnd for all time, both. Something that folds and keeps easy, Sons note or Dads one gaudy tie, A roto picture of a queen, A blue Indian shawl, even A money bill. Its utter sublimation, A feat, this hearts control Moment to moment To scale all love down To a cupped hands size Till seashells are broken pieces From Gods own bright teeth,

And life and love are real Things you can run and Breathless hand over To the merest child. (SOURCE: http://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/bonsai-by-edith-tiempo/)

Emmanuel Lacaba
Emmanual Lacaba (December 10, 1949 - March 18, 1976), or Eman, was an award-winning poet, fictionist, essayist and playwright, a magazine illustrator, a stage actor and a production hand, a university lecturer, a song writer, a martial arts teacher, and even an occultist. He was an honor student from grade school to high school and won a full scholarship at the Ateneo de Manila in college. Flower child Eman started to show political awareness during the first quarter storm of 1970, when he began political actions. He named his two daughters, born during that period, Miriam Manavi Mithi Mezcaline Mendiola, and Emanwelga. Eman was a teacher of Rizals life and works in UP when he was arrested and detained due to his participation in a strike. He lost his job at UP as a result. In 1974 Eman decided to join the New Peoples Army in South Cotabato. He took up the name Popoy Dakuykoy, an allusion to a comic book character whose name he had once used for a character in an epic poem he had written in the 1960s. Eman was well known for his passion. When he ran out of paper to write on, he wrote on the backs of cigarette foils. Fellow writers described him as the shy young poet forever writing last poem after last poem, the Brown Rimbaud who became a peoples warrior. Eman had been with the NPA two years when in March 1976 an informer had led a troop of soldiers to their camp. With no warning shots or calls for surrender, the soldiers opened fire. All the guerrillas were killed immediately, except Eman and a pregnant teenager who were both wounded. They were being taken to Tagum, Davao del Norte, when the sergeant who headed the soldiers gave the instruction not to bring anyone back alive. The pregnant woman was first to be shot dead, then Eman, who is said to have dared the informer, Go ahead, finish me off. The informer had then put a .45 into his mouth and fired. Emans mother claimed the bodies later. Eman is perhaps the first nationally-known creative writer who joined the armed struggle against the Marcos dictatorship. Poems and articles were written about him after his death. A collection of his poems, Salvaged Poems, was published posthumously in 1986. Another collection, Salvaged Prose, of his short stories, plays and essays, is being prepared. His life has been made into a feature film by Swedish director Vilgot Sjoman.

Open Letters To The Filipino Artists

by Emmanuel Lacaba Invisible the mountain routes to strangers: For rushing toes an inch-wide strip on boulders And for the hand that's free a twig to grasp, Or else we headlong fall below to rocks And waterfalls of death so instant that Too soon they're red with skulls of carabaos.

But patient guides and teachers are the masses: Of forty mountains and a hundred rivers; Of plowing, planting, weeding, and the harvest; And of a dozen dialects that dwarf This foreign tongue we write each other in Who must transcend our bourgeois origins. South Cotabato May 1, 1975 II You want to know, companions of my youth How much has changed the wild but shy young poet Forever writing last poem after last poem; You hear he's dark as earth, barefoot, A turban round his head, a bolo at his side, His ballpen blown up to a long-barreled gun: Deeper still the struggling change inside. Like husks of coconut he tears away The billion layers of his selfishness. Or learns to cage his longing like the bird Of legend, fire, and song within his chest. Now of consequence is his anemia From lack of sleep: no longer for Bohemia, The lumpen culturati, but for the people, yes. He mixes metaphors but values more A holographic and geometric memory For mountains: not because they are there But because the masses are there where Routes are jigsaw puzzles he must piece together. Though he has been called a brown Rimbaud, He is no bandit but a people's warrior. South Cotabato and Davao del Norte November 1975 III We are tribeless and all tribes are ours. We are homeless and all homes are ours. We are nameless and all names are ours. To the fascists we are the faceless enemy Who come like thieves in the night, angels of death: The ever moving, shining, secret eye of the storm. The road less traveled by we've takenAnd that has made all the difference: The barefoot army of the wilderness We all should be in time. Awakened, the masses are Messiah.

Here among workers and peasants our lost Generation has found its true, its only home. Davao del Norte January 1976 (SOURCE: http://www.bulatlat.com/news/2-44/2-44-lacaba.html)

Rene Estella Amper

Rene Estella Amper was born on October 18, 1940 in Boljoon, Cebu. As physician he has served as head of the Boljoon rural health unit; as poet, he has participated as an Asia Foundation Writing Fellow at the Silliman U. Summer Writers' Workshop in 1968 and 1969. He has also shared the 2 nd Palanca prize in poetry in 1989 with Fatima Lim for a collection called All Else Is Grass . His works have been published in 12 Poems (1969) and Collected Poems (1990). He has been mayor of Boljoon, and is incumbent vice-president.

Letter To Pedro, U.S. Citizen, Also Called Pete

by Rene Estella Amper Pete, old friend; there isn't really much change in our hometown since you left. This morning I couldn't find anymore the grave of Simeona, the cat we buried at the foot of Miguel's mango tree, when we were in grade four, after she was hit by a truck while crossing the street. The bulldozer has messed it up while making the feeder road into the mountains to reach the hearts of the farmers. The farmers come down every Sunday to sell their agony and their sweat for a few pesos, lose in the cockpit or get drunk on the way home. A steel bridge named after the congressman's wife now spans the gray river where Tasyo, the old goat, had split the skin of our young lizards to make us a man many years ago. The long blue hills where we used to shoot birds with slingshot or spend the summer afternoons we loved so much doing nothing in the tall grass have been bought by the mayor's son. Now there's a barbed wire fence about them; the birds have gone away. The mayor owns a big sugar plantation, three new cars, and a mansion with the gate overhung with sampaguita. Inside the gate are guys who carry a rifle and a pistol. We still go to Konga's store for rice and sardines and sugar and nails for the coffin.

Still only a handful go to mass on Sundays. In the church the men talk, sleep; the children play. The priest is sad. Last night the storm came and blew away the cornflowers. The cornfields are full of cries. Your cousin, Julia, has just become a whore. She liked good clothes, good food, big money. That's why she became a whore. Now our hometown has seven whores. Pete, old friend, every time we have good reason to get drunk and be carried home in a wheelbarrow we always remember you. Oh, we miss both Pete and Pedro. Remember us to your American wife, you lucky bastard. Islaw, your cock-eyed uncle, now calls himself Stanley after he began wearing the clothes you sent him last Christmas. P.S. Tasyo, the old goat, Sends your lizard his warmest congratulations. (SOURCE: http://philiterature.blogspot.com/2009/03/letter-to-pedro-us-citizen-also-called.html)

Paz Marquez - Benitez

Paz Marquez- Benitez was born in 1894 in Lucena City, Quezon to the prominent Marquez family. Being one of the students who learned under American Education, she wrote the first Filipino modern short story in English. This achievement put her and her story as one of the best writers and best Filipino short stories. Paz went to the Tayabas High School (now Quezon National High School) and proceeded for college in the University of the Philippines, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. She then married UP College of Education dean, Dean Francisco Benitez, two years after her graduation. She had two children. She then became a teacher in the same university, teaching short story writing. She is an influential figure to some Filipino writers, such as Loreto Paras-Sulit, Paz M. Latorena, Arturo Belleza Rotor, Bienvenido N. Santos and Francisco Arcellana. She wrote one more story, entitled "A Night in the Hills". The short story, "Dead Stars" was written during the American Colonization of the Philippines, a time when the modern short story, critical essay, and free verse poetry were introduced. English was the medium of learning, and became, as well, the language of the learned. This was also the time when utilitarian literature was slowly being overshadowed by the individualistic, modern view of creating "art for art's sake".

Dead Stars
by Paz Marquez Benitez THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots. "Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?" "I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month." Carmen sighed impatiently. "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not? And still a bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."

"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away. "How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned, pinching off a worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much in love he was?" "In love? With whom?" "With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that I know of," she said with goodnatured 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-inlaw, 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 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 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 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. 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-andball 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. 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. This is the 1925 short story that gave birth to modern Philippine writing in English. (SOURCE: http://sushidog.com/bpss/stories/stars.htm)

Nstor Vicente Madali Gonzlez

"Literature is an affair of letters," N.V.M. Gonzalez once said. A teacher, author, journalist and essayist, Gonzalez is one of the most widely recognized, anthologized and closely studied among Filipino writers. His most notable works include the novels The Winds of April, The Bamboo Dancers and A Season of Grace, short story collections Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and The Bread of Salt and Other Stories and essay collections Work on the Mountain and The Novel of Justice: Selected Essays. Gonzalez distinctively wrote of the Filipino life, of the Filipino in the world. Gonzalez is himself a Filipino in the world, traversing between the United States and the Philippines and exploring Europe and Asia. The affair of letters Gonzalez created is more than literature. It is the story of a Filipino in the world. It is his story. Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez, familiarly known as simply "N.V.M.," was born on September 8, 1915 in Romblon, Romblon and moved to Mindoro at the age of five. The son of a school supervisor and a teacher, Gonzalez helped his father by delivering meat door-to-door. Gonzalez attended Mindoro High School from 1927 to 1930, and although he studied at National University in Manila, he never obtained a degree. While in Manila, Gonzalez wrote for the Philippine Graphic and later edited for the Evening News Magazine and Manila Chronicle. His first published essay appeared in the Philippine Graphic and his first poem in Poetry in 1934. A Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, awarded to Gonzalez in 1948, allowed the aspiring author to travel to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and Columbia University in New York City. While at Stanford, Gonzalez attended lectures and classes from many prominent writers, Wallace Stegner and Katherine Anne Porter amongst them. After Gonzalez returned to the Philippines in 1950, he began a long teaching career, beginning with a position at the University of Santo Tomas. Gonzalez also taught at the Philippine Women's University, but it was the lengthy position at the University of the Philippines that gave distinction to Gonzalez's career - as a teacher at the university for 18 years, Gonzalez was only one of two people to teach there without holding a degree. Gonzalez hosted the first University of the Philippines writer's workshop with a group who would soon form the Ravens. In addition, Gonzalez made his mark in the writing community as a member of the Board of Advisers of Likhaan: the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center, founder The Diliman Review and as the first president of the Philippine Writers' Association. Gonzalez continued to teach when he returned to California in the 1960s, serving as a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara; professor emeritus at California State University, Hayward; and professor at University of California at Los Angeles' Asian American Studies Center and English department. Throughout Gonzalez's teaching career, the author produced 14 books and accumulated many awards along the way. Through these writings, Gonzalez received many prestigious awards, including repeated Palanca Memorial Award for Literature awards, the Jose Rizal Pro Patria Award,

and the City of Manila Medal of Honor. In addition, his books became internationally recognized, and his works have been translated into Chinese, German, Russian and Bahasa Indonesian. Gonzalez received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Philippines in 1987 and became its first international writer in residence in 1988. He served as the 1998-1999 Regents Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and continued to receive distinctions such as the National Artist Award for Literature in 1997 and the Centennial Award for Literature in 1998. In 1990 and 1996, "N.V.M. Gonzalez Days" were celebrated in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. Despite Gonzalez's travels, he never gave up his Filipino citizenship. Critics feared that Gonzalez would someday settle into the Filipino-American genre of literature, but Gonzalez often pointed out with an all-familiar twinkle in his eye, "I never left home." True to his word, the home that shaped Gonzalez's days is present in his writings, from the blossoming of a love story to the culture reflected in an immigrant experience. N.V.M. started his career at the age of 19; 65 years later, he was still creating affairs with letters. He passed away on November 28, 1999, due to kidney complications. He was 84. N.V.M. Gonzalez is remembered as an innovative writer, a dedicated and humble worker and an honest witty friend. He will be dearly missed.

The Bread of Salt

by Nstor Vicente Madali Gonzlez Usually I was in bed by ten and up by five and thus was ready for one more day of my fourteenth year. Unless Grandmother had forgotten, the fifteen centavos for the baker down Progreso Street and how I enjoyed jingling those coins in my pocket!- would be in the empty fruit jar in the cupboard. I would remember then that rolls were what Grandmother wanted because recently she had lost three molars. For young people like my cousins and myself, she had always said that the kind called pan de sal ought to be quite all right. The bread of salt! How did it get that name? From where did its flavor come, through what secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from the counter by early buyers, I would push my way into the shop so that I might watch the men who, stripped to the waist, worked their long flat wooden spades in and out of the glowing maw of the oven. Why did the bread come nut-brown and the size of my little fist? And why did it have a pair of lips convulsed into a painful frown? In the half light of the street, and hurrying, the paper bag pressed to my chest, I felt my curiosity a little gratified by the oven-fresh warmth of the bread I was proudly bringing home for breakfast. Well I knew how Grandmother would not mind if I nibbled away at one piece; perhaps, I might even eat two, to be charged later against my share at the table. But that would be betraying a trust; and so, indeed, I kept my purchase intact. To guard it from harm, I watched my steps and avoided the dark street corners. For my reward, I had only to look in the direction of the sea wall and the fifty yards or so of riverbed beyond it, where an old Spaniard's house stood. At low tide, when the bed was dry and the rocks glinted with broken bottles, the stone fence of the Spaniard's compound set off the house as if it were a castle. Sunrise brought a wash of silver upon the roofs of the laundry and garden sheds which had been built low and close to the fence. On dull mornings the light dripped from the bamboo screen which covered the veranda and hung some four or five yards from the ground. Unless it was August, when the damp, northeast monsoon had to be kept away from the rooms, three servants raised the screen promptly at six-thirty until it was completely hidden under the veranda eaves. From the sound of the pulleys, I knew it was time to set out for school.

It was in his service, as a coconut plantation overseer, that Grandfather had spent the last thirty years of his life. Grandmother had been widowed three years now. I often wondered whether I was being depended upon to spend the years ahead in the service of this great house. One day I learned that Aida, a classmate in high school, was the old Spaniard's niece. All my doubts disappeared. It was as if, before his death, Grandfather had spoken to me about her, concealing the seriousness of the matter by putting it over as a joke. If now I kept true to the virtues, she would step out of her bedroom ostensibly to say Good Morning to her uncle. Her real purpose, I knew, was to reveal thus her assent to my desire. On quiet mornings I imagined the patter of her shoes upon the wooden veranda floor as a further sign, and I would hurry off to school, taking the route she had fixed for me past the post office, the town plaza and the church, the health center east of the plaza, and at last the school grounds. I asked myself whether I would try to walk with her and decided it would be the height of rudeness. Enough that in her blue skirt and white middy she would be half a block ahead and, from that distance, perhaps throw a glance in my direction, to bestow upon my heart a deserved and abundant blessing. I believed it was but right that, in some such way as this, her mission in my life was disguised. Her name, I was to learn many years later, was a convenient mnemonic for the qualities to which argument might aspire. But in those days it was a living voice. "Oh that you might be worthy of uttering me," it said. And how I endeavored to build my body so that I might live long to honor her. With every victory at singles at the handball court the game was then the craze at school -- I could feel my body glow in the sun as though it had instantly been cast in bronze. I guarded my mind and did not let my wits go astray. In class I would not allow a lesson to pass unmastered. Our English teacher could put no question before us that did not have a ready answer in my head. One day he read Robert Louis Stevenson's The Sire de Maletroit's Door, and we were so enthralled that our breaths trembled. I knew then that somewhere, sometime in the not too improbable future, a benign old man with a lantern in his hand would also detain me in a secret room, and there daybreak would find me thrilled by the sudden certainty that I had won Aida's hand. It was perhaps on my violin that her name wrought such a tender spell. Maestro Antonino remarked the dexterity of my stubby fingers. Quickly I raced through Alard-until I had all but committed two thirds of the book to memory. My short, brown arm learned at last to draw the bow with grace. Sometimes, when practising my scales in the early evening, I wondered if the sea wind carrying the straggling notes across the pebbled river did not transform them into Schubert's "Serenade." At last Mr. Custodio, who was in charge of our school orchestra, became aware of my progress. He moved me from second to first violin. During the Thanksgiving Day program he bade me render a number, complete with pizzicato and harmonics. "Another Vallejo! Our own Albert Spalding!" I heard from the front row. Aida, I thought, would be in the audience. I looked around quickly but could not see her. As I retired to my place in the orchestra I heard Pete Saez, the trombone player, call my name. "You must join my band," he said. "Look, we'll have many engagements soon. It'll be vacation time."

Pete pressed my arm. He had for some time now been asking me to join the Minviluz Orchestra, his private band. All I had been able to tell him was that I had my schoolwork to mind. He was twentytwo. I was perhaps too young to be going around with him. He earned his school fees and supported his mother hiring out his band at least three or four times a month. He now said: "Tomorrow we play at the funeral of a Chinese-four to six in the afternoon; in the evening, judge Roldan's silver wedding anniversary; Sunday, the municipal dance." My head began to whirl. On the stage, in front of us, the principal had begun a speech about America. Nothing he could say about the Pilgrim Fathers and the American custom of feasting on turkey seemed interesting. I thought of the money I would earn. For several days now I had but one wish, to buy a box of linen stationery. At night when the house was quiet I would fill the sheets with words that would tell Aida how much I adored her. One of these mornings, perhaps before school closed for the holidays, I would borrow her algebra book and there, upon a good pageful of equations, there I would slip my message, tenderly pressing the leaves of the book. She would perhaps never write back. Neither by post nor by hand would a reply reach me. But no matter; it would be a silence full of voices. That night I dreamed I had returned from a tour of the world's music centers; the newspapers of Manila had been generous with praise. I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine. A writer had described how, many years ago, I used to trudge the streets of Buenavista with my violin in a battered black cardboard case. In New York, he reported, a millionaire had offered me a Stradivarius violin, with a card that bore the inscription: "In admiration of a genius your own people must surely be proud of." I dreamed I spent a weekend at the millionaire's country house by the Hudson. A young girl in a blue skirt and white middy clapped her lily-white hands and, her voice trembling, cried "Bravo!" What people now observed at home was the diligence with which I attended to my violin lessons. My aunt, who had come from the farm to join her children for the holidays, brought with her a maidservant, and to the poor girl was given the chore of taking the money to the baker's for rolls and pan de sal. I realized at once that it would be no longer becoming on my part to make these morning trips to the baker's. I could not thank my aunt enough. I began to chafe on being given other errands. Suspecting my violin to be the excuse, my aunt remarked: "What do you want to be a musician for? At parties, musicians always eat last." Perhaps, I said to myself, she was thinking of a pack of dogs scrambling for scraps tossed over the fence by some careless kitchen maid. She was the sort you could depend on to say such vulgar things. For that reason, I thought, she ought not to be taken seriously at all. But the remark hurt me. Although Grandmother had counseled me kindly to mind my work at school, I went again and again to Pete Saez's house for rehearsals. She had demanded that I deposit with her my earnings; I had felt too weak to refuse. Secretly, I counted the money and decided not to ask for it until I had enough with which to buy a brooch. Why this time I wanted to give Aida a brooch, I didn't know. But I had set my heart on it. I searched the downtown shops. The Chinese clerks, seeing me so young, were annoyed when I inquired about prices.

At last the Christmas season began. I had not counted on Aida's leaving home, and remembering that her parents lived in Badajoz, my torment was almost unbearable. Not once had I tried to tell her of my love. My letters had remained unwritten, and the algebra book unborrowed. There was still the brooch to find, but I could not decide on the sort of brooch I really wanted. And the money, in any case, was in Grandmother's purse, which smelled of "Tiger Balm." I grew somewhat feverish as our class Christmas program drew near. Finally it came; it was a warm December afternoon. I decided to leave the room when our English teacher announced that members of the class might exchange gifts. I felt fortunate; Pete was at the door, beckoning to me. We walked out to the porch where, Pete said, he would tell me a secret. It was about an asalto the next Sunday which the Buenavista Women's Club wished to give Don Esteban's daughters, Josefina and Alicia, who were arriving on the morning steamer from Manila. The spinsters were much loved by the ladies. Years ago, when they were younger, these ladies studied solfeggio with Josefina and the piano and harp with Alicia. As Pete told me all this, his lips ash-gray from practising all morning on his trombone, I saw in my mind the sisters in their silk dresses, shuffling off to church for theevening benediction. They were very devout, and the Buenavista ladies admired that. I had almost forgotten that they were twins and, despite their age, often dressed alike. In low-bosomed voile bodices and white summer hats, I remembered, the pair had attended Grandfather's funeral, at old Don Esteban's behest. I wondered how successful they had been in Manila during the past three years in the matter of finding suitable husbands. "This party will be a complete surprise," Pete said, looking around the porch as if to swear me to secrecy. "They've hired our band." I joined my classmates in the room, greeting everyone with a Merry Christmas jollier than that of the others. When I saw Aida in one corner unwrapping something two girls had given her, I found the boldness to greet her also. "Merry Christmas," I said in English, as a hairbrush and a powder case emerged from the fancy wrapping. It seemed to me rather apt that such gifts went to her. Already several girls were gathered around Aida. Their eyes glowed with envy, it seemed to me, for those fair cheeks and the bobbed dark-brown hair which lineage had denied them. I was too dumbstruck by my own meanness to hear exactly what Aida said in answer to my greeting. But I recovered shortly and asked: "Will you be away during the vacation?" "No, I'll be staying here," she said. When she added that her cousins were arriving and that a big party in their honor was being planned, I remarked: "So you know all about it?" I felt I had to explain that the party was meant to be a surprise, an asalto. And now it would be nothing of the kind, really. The women's club matrons would hustle about, disguising their scurrying around for cakes and candies as for some baptismal party or other. In the end, the Rivas sisters would outdo them. Boxes of meringues, bonbons, ladyfingers, and cinnamon buns that only the Swiss bakers in Manila could make were perhaps coming on the boat with them. I imagined a table glimmering with long-stemmed punch glasses; enthroned in that array would be a huge brick-red bowl of gleaming china with golden flowers around the brim. The local matrons,

however hard they tried, however sincere their efforts, were bound to fail in their aspiration to rise to the level of Don Esteban's daughters. Perhaps, I thought, Aida knew all this. And that I should share in a foreknowledge of the matrons' hopes was a matter beyond love. Aida and I could laugh together with the gods. At seven, on the appointed evening, our small band gathered quietly at the gate of Don Esteban's house, and when the ladies arrived in their heavy shawls and trim panuelo, twittering with excitement, we were commanded to play the Poet and Peasant overture. As Pete directed the band, his eyes glowed with pride for his having been part of the big event. The multicolored lights that the old Spaniard's gardeners had strung along the vine-covered fence were switched on, and the women remarked that Don Esteban's daughters might have made some preparations after all. Pete hid his face from the glare. If the women felt let down, they did not show it. The overture shuffled along to its climax while five men in white shirts bore huge boxes of goods into the house. I recognized one of the bakers in spite of the uniform. A chorus of confused greetings, and the women trooped into the house; and before we had settled in the sala to play "A Basket of Roses," the heavy damask curtains at the far end of the room were drawn and a long table richly spread was revealed under the chandeliers. I remembered that, in our haste to be on hand for the asalto, Pete and I had discouraged the members of the band from taking their suppers. "You've done us a great honor!" Josefina, the more buxom of the twins, greeted the ladies. "Oh, but you have not allowed us to take you by surprise!" the ladies demurred in a chorus. There were sighs and further protestations amid a rustle of skirts and the glitter of earrings. I saw Aida in a long, flowing white gown and wearing an arch of sampaguita flowers on her hair. At her command, two servants brought out a gleaming harp from the music room. Only the slightest scraping could be heard because the servants were barefoot. As Aida directed them to place the instrument near the seats we occupied, my heart leaped to my throat. Soon she was lost among the guests, and we played "The Dance of the Glowworms." I kept my eyes closed and held for as long as I could her radiant figure before me. Alicia played on the harp and then, in answer to the deafening applause, she offered an encore. Josefina sang afterward. Her voice, though a little husky, fetched enormous sighs. For her encore, she gave "The Last Rose of Summer"; and the song brought back snatches of the years gone by. Memories of solfeggio lessons eddied about us, as if there were rustling leaves scattered all over the hall. Don Esteban appeared. Earlier, he had greeted the crowd handsomely, twisting his mustache to hide a natural shyness before talkative women. He stayed long enough to listen to the harp again, whispering in his rapture: "Heavenly. Heavenly . . ." By midnight, the merrymaking lagged. We played while the party gathered around the great table at the end of the sala. My mind traveled across the seas to the distant cities I had dreamed about. The sisters sailed among the ladies like two great white liners amid a fleet of tugboats in a bay. Someone had thoughtfully remembered-and at last Pete Saez signaled to us to put our instruments away. We walked in single file across the hall, led by one of the barefoot servants. Behind us a couple of hoarse sopranos sang "La Paloma" to the accompaniment of the harp, but I did not care to find out who they were. The sight of so much silver and china confused me. There was more food before us than I had ever imagined. I searched in my mind for the names of the dishes; but my ignorance appalled me. I wondered what had happened to the boxes of food that the

Buenavista ladies had sent up earlier. In a silver bowl was something, I discovered, that appeared like whole egg yolks that had been dipped in honey and peppermint. The seven of us in the orchestra were all of one mind about the feast; and so, confident that I was with friends, I allowed my covetousness to have its sway and not only stuffed my mouth with this and that confection but also wrapped up a quantity of those egg-yolk things in several sheets of napkin paper. None of my companions had thought of doing the same, and it was with some pride that I slipped the packet under my shirt. There, I knew, it would not bulge. "Have you eaten?" I turned around. It was Aida. My bow tie seemed to tighten around my collar. I mumbled something, I did not know what. "If you wait a little while till they've gone, I'll wrap up a big package for you," she added. I brought a handkerchief to my mouth. I might have honored her solicitude adequately and even relieved myself of any embarrassment; I could not quite believe that she had seen me, and yet I was sure that she knew what I had done, and I felt all ardor for her gone from me entirely. I walked away to the nearest door, praying that the damask curtains might hide me in my shame. The door gave on to the veranda, where once my love had trod on sunbeams. Outside it was dark, and a faint wind was singing in the harbor. With the napkin balled up in my hand, I flung out my arm to scatter the egg-yolk things in the dark. I waited for the soft sound of their fall on the garden-shed roof. Instead, I heard a spatter in the rising night-tide beyond the stone fence. Farther away glimmered the light from Grandmother's window, calling me home. But the party broke up at one or thereabouts. We walked away with our instruments after the matrons were done with their interminable good-byes. Then, to the tune of "Joy to the World," we pulled the Progreso Street shopkeepers out of their beds. The Chinese merchants were especially generous. When Pete divided our collection under a street lamp, there was already a little glow of daybreak. He walked with me part of the way home. We stopped at the baker's when I told him that I wanted to buy with my own money some bread to eat on the way to Grandmother's house at the edge of the sea wall. He laughed, thinking it strange that I should be hungry. We found ourselves alone at the counter; and we watched the bakery assistants at work until our bodies grew warm from the oven across the door. It was not quite five, and the bread was not yet ready. (SOURCE: http://www.nvmgonzalez.org/works/pandesal.pdf)

Estrella D. Alfon
Estrella D. Alfon (July 18, 1917 December 28, 1983) was a well-known prolific Filipina author who wrote in English. Because of continued poor health, she could manage only an A. A. degree from the University of the Philippines. She then became a member of the U. P. writers club and earned and was given the privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. She died in the year 1983 at the age of 66. Estrella Alfon was born in Cebu City in 1917. Unlike other writers of her time, she did not come from the intelligentsia. Her parents were shopkeepers in Cebu. She attended college, and studied medicine. When she was mistakenly diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanitarium, she resigned from her pre-medical education, and left with an Associate of Arts degree. Alfon has several children: Alan Rivera, Esmeralda "Mimi" Rivera, Brian Alfon, Estrella "Twinkie" Alfon, and Rita "Daday" Alfon (deceased). She has 10 grandchildren. Her youngest daughter, was a stewardess for Saudi Arabian Airlines, and was part of the Flight 163 crew on August 19, 1980, when an in-flight fire forced the aircraft to land in Riyadh. A delayed evacuation resulted in the death of everyone aboard the flight. Alfon died on December 28, 1983, following a heart attack suffered on-stage during Awards night of the Manila Film Festival. She was a student in Cebu when she first published her short stories, in periodicals such as Graphic Weekly Magazine, Philippine Magazine, and the Sunday Tribune. She was a storywriter, playwright, and journalist. In spite of being a proud Cebuana, she wrote almost exclusively in English. She published her first story, Grey Confetti, in the Graphic in 1935. She was the only female member of the Veronicans, an avant garde group of writers in the 1930s led by Francisco Arcellana and H.R. Ocampo, she was also regarded as their muse. The Veronicans are recognized as the first group of Filipino writers to write almost exclusively in English and were formed prior to the World War II. She is also reportedly the most prolific Filipina writer prior to World War II. She was a regular contributor to Manila-based national magazines, she had several stories cited in Jose Garcia Villas annual honor rolls. In the 1950s, her short story, "Fairy Tale for the City", was condemned by the Catholic League of the Philippines as being "obscene". She was even brought to court on these charges. While many of her fellow writers did stand by her, many did not. These events hurt her deeply. In spite of having only an A.A. degree, she was eventually appointed as a professor of Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines, Manila. She was a member of the U.P. Writers Club, she held the National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U.P. Creative Writing Center in 1979. She would also serve on the Philippine Board of Tourism in the 1970s.

Magnificence
by 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 pr omise 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.

Nick Joaquin
Nicomedes Mrquez Joaqun (May 4, 1917 April 29, 2004) was a Filipino writer, historian and journalist, best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila. Joaquin was conferred the rank and title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature. Joaqun was born in Paco, Manila, one of ten children of Leocadio Joaqun, a colonel under General Emilio Aguinaldo in the 1896 Revolution, and Salome Mrquez, a teacher of English and Spanish. After being read poems and stories by his mother, the boy Joaqun read widely in his father's library and at the National Library of the Philippines. By then, his father had become a successful lawyer after the revolution. From reading, Joaqun became interested in writing. At age 17, Joaqun had his first piece published, in the literary section of the pre-World War II Tribune, where he worked as a proofreader. It was accepted by the writer and editor Serafn Lanot. After Joaqun won a nationwide essay competition to honor La Naval de Manila, sponsored by the Dominican Order, the University of Santo Tomas awarded him an honorary Associate in Arts (A.A.). They also awarded him a scholarship to St. Albert's Convent, the Dominican monastery in Hong Kong. After returning to the Philippines, Joaqun joined the Philippines Free Press, starting as a proofreader. Soon he attracted notice for his poems, stories and plays, as well as his journalism under the pen name Quijano de Manila. His journalism was both intellectual and provocative, an unknown genre in the Philippines at that time, and he raised the level of reportage in the country. Joaqun deeply admired Jos Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines. Joaqun paid tribute to him in books such as The Storyteller's New Medium - Rizal in Saga, The Complete Poems and Plays of Jose Rizal, and A Question of Heroes: Essays in Criticism on Ten Key Figures of Philippine History. He translated the hero's valedictory poem, in the original Spanish Mi Ultimo Adios, as "Land That I Love, Farewell!" Joaqun represented the Philippines at the International PEN Congress in Tokyo in 1957, and was appointed as a member of the Motion Pictures commission under presidents Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand E. Marcos. After being honored as National Artist, Joaquin used his position to work for intellectual freedom in society. He secured the release of imprisoned writer Jos F. Lacaba. At a ceremony on Mount Makiling attended by First Lady Imelda Marcos, Joaqun delivered an invocation to Mariang Makiling, the mountain's mythical maiden. Joaqun touched on the importance of freedom and the artist. After that, Joaqun was excluded by the Marcos regime as a speaker from important cultural events. Joaqun died of cardiac arrest in the early morning of April 29, 2004, at his home in San Juan, Metro Manila. He was then editor of Philippine Graphic magazine where he worked with Juan P. Dayang, who was the magazine's first publisher. Joaquin was also publisher of its sister publication, Mirror Weekly, a womens magazine. He also wrote the column (Small Beer) for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Isyu, an opinion tabloid.

The Summer Solstice

by Nick Joaquin THE MORETAS WERE spending St. Johns Day with the childrens grandfather, whose feast day it was. Doa Lupeng awoke feeling faint with the heat, a sound of screaming in her ears. In the dining room the three boys already attired in their holiday suits, were at breakfast, and came crowding around her, talking all at once. How long you have slept, Mama! We thought you were never getting up! Do we leave at once, huh? Are we going now? Hush, hush I implore you! Now look: your father has a headache, and so have I. So be quiet this instantor no one goes to Grandfather. Though it was only seven by the clock the house was already a furnace, the windows dilating with the harsh light and the air already burning with the immense, intense fever of noon. She found the childrens nurse working in the kitchen. And why is it you who are preparing breakfast? Where is Amada? But without waiting for an answer she went to the backdoor and opened it, and the screaming in her ears became wild screaming in the stables across the yard. Oh my God! she groaned and, grasping her skirts, hurried across the yard. In the stables Entoy, the driver, apparently deaf to the screams, was hitching the pair of piebald ponies to the coach. Not the closed coach, Entoy! The open carriage! shouted Doa Lupeng as she came up. But the dust, seora I know, but better to be dirty than to be boiled alive. And what ails your wife, eh? Have you been beating her again? Oh no, seora: I have not touched her. Then why is she screaming? Is she ill? I do not think so. But how do I know? You can go and see for yourself, seora. She is up there. When Doa Lupeng entered the room, the big half-naked woman sprawled across the bamboo bed stopped screaming. Doa Lupeng was shocked. What is this Amada? Why are you still in bed at this hour? And in such a posture! Come, get up at once. You should be ashamed!

But the woman on the bed merely stared. Her sweat-beaded brows contracted, as if in an effort to understand. Then her face relax her mouth sagged open humorously and, rolling over on her back and spreading out her big soft arms and legs, she began noiselessly quaking with laughterthe mute mirth jerking in her throat; the moist pile of her flesh quivering like brown jelly. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth. Doa Lupeng blushed, looking around helplessly, and seeing that Entoy had followed and was leaning in the doorway, watching stolidly, she blushed again. The room reeked hotly of intimate odors. She averted her eyes from the laughing woman on the bed, in whose nakedness she seemed so to participate that she was ashamed to look directly at the man in the doorway. Tell me, Entoy: has she had been to the Tadtarin? Yes, seora. Last night. But I forbade her to go! And I forbade you to let her go! I could do nothing. Why, you beat her at the least pretext! But now I dare not touch her. Oh, and why not? It is the day of St. John: the spirit is in her. But, man It is true, seora. The spirit is in her. She is the Tadtarin. She must do as she pleases. Otherwise, the grain would not grow, the trees would bear no fruit, the rivers would give no fish, and the animals would die. Naku, I did no know your wife was so powerful, Entoy. At such times she is not my wife: she is the wife of the river, she is the wife of the crocodile, she is the wife of the moon. BUT HOW CAN they still believe such things? demanded Doa Lupeng of her husband as they drove in the open carriage through the pastoral countryside that was the arrabal of Paco in the 1850s. Don Paeng darted a sidelong glance at his wife, by which he intimated that the subject was not a proper one for the children, who were sitting opposite, facing their parents. Don Paeng, drowsily stroking his moustaches, his eyes closed against the hot light, merely shrugged.

And you should have seen that Entoy, continued his wife. You know how the brute treats her: she cannot say a word but he thrashes her. But this morning he stood as meek as a lamb while she screamed and screamed. He seemed actually in awe of her, do you knowactually afraid of her! Oh, look, boyshere comes the St. John! cried Doa Lupeng, and she sprang up in the swaying carriage, propping one hand on her husbands shoulder wile the other she held up her silk parasol. And Here come the men with their St. John! cried voices up and down the countryside. People in wet clothes dripping with well-water, ditch-water and river-water came running across the hot woods and fields and meadows, brandishing cans of water, wetting each other uproariously, and shouting San Juan! San Juan! as they ran to meet the procession. Up the road, stirring a cloud of dust, and gaily bedrenched by the crowds gathered along the wayside, a concourse of young men clad only in soggy trousers were carrying aloft an image of the Precursor. Their teeth flashed white in their laughing faces and their hot bodies glowed crimson as they pranced past, shrouded in fiery dust, singing and shouting and waving their arms: the St. John riding swiftly above the sea of dark heads and glittering in the noon suna fine, blonde, heroic St. John: very male, very arrogant: the Lord of Summer indeed; the Lord of Light and Heaterect and godly virile above the prone and female earthwhile the worshippers danced and the dust thickened and the animals reared and roared and the merciless fires came raining down form the skiesthe relentlessly upon field and river and town and winding road, and upon the joyous throng of young men against whose uproar a couple of seminarians in muddy cassocks vainly intoned the hymn of the noon god: That we, thy servants, in chorus May praise thee, our tongues restore us But Doa Lupeng, standing in the stopped carriage, looking very young and elegant in her white frock, under the twirling parasol, stared down on the passing male horde with increasing annoyance. The insolent man-smell of their bodies rose all about herwave upon wave of it enveloping her, assaulting her senses, till she felt faint with it and pressed a handkerchief to her nose. And as she glanced at her husband and saw with what a smug smile he was watching the revelers, her annoyance deepened. When he bade her sit down because all eyes were turned on her, she pretended not to hear; stood up even straighter, as if to defy those rude creatures flaunting their manhood in the sun. And she wondered peevishly what the braggarts were being so cocky about? For this arrogance, this pride, this bluff male health of theirs was (she told herself) founded on the impregnable virtue of generations of good women. The boobies were so sure of themselves because they had always been sure of their wives. All the sisters being virtuous, all the brothers are brave, thought Doa Lupeng, with a bitterness that rather surprised her. Women had built it up: this poise of the male. Ah, and women could destroy it, too! She recalled, vindictively, this mornings scene at the stables: Amada naked and screaming in bed whiled from the doorway her lord and master looked on in meek silence. And was it not the mystery of a woman in her flowers that had restored the tongue of that old Hebrew prophet? Look, Lupeng, they have all passed now, Don Paeng was saying, Do you mean to stand all the way? She looked around in surprise and hastily sat down. The children tittered, and the carriage started.

Has the heat gone to your head, woman? asked Don Paeng, smiling. The children burst frankly into laughter. Their mother colored and hung her head. She was beginning to feel ashamed of the thoughts that had filled her mind. They seemed improperalmost obsceneand the discovery of such depths of wickedness in herself appalled her. She moved closer to her husband to share the parasol with him. And did you see our young cousin Guido? he asked. Oh, was he in that crowd? A European education does not seem to have spoiled his taste for country pleasures. I did not see him. He waved and waved. The poor boy. He will feel hurt. But truly, Paeng. I did not see him. Well, that is always a womans privilege. BUT WHEN THAT afternoon, at the grandfathers, the young Guido presented himself, properly attired and brushed and scented, Doa Lupeng was so charming and gracious with him that he was enchanted and gazed after her all afternoon with enamored eyes. This was the time when our young men were all going to Europe and bringing back with them, not the Age of Victoria, but the Age of Byron. The young Guido knew nothing of Darwin and evolution; he knew everything about Napoleon and the Revolution. When Doa Lupeng expressed surprise at his presence that morning in the St. Johns crowd, he laughed in her face. But I adore these old fiestas of ours! They are so romantic! Last night, do you know, we walked all the way through the woods, I and some boys, to see the procession of the Tadtarin. And was that romantic too? asked Doa Lupeng. It was weird. It made my flesh crawl. All those women in such a mystic frenzy! And she who was the Tadtarin last nightshe was a figure right out of a flamenco! I fear to disenchant you, Guidobut that woman happens to be our cook. She is beautiful. Our Amada beautiful? But she is old and fat! She is beautifulas that old tree you are leaning on is beautiful, calmly insisted the young man, mocking her with his eyes.

They were out in the buzzing orchard, among the ripe mangoes; Doa Lupeng seated on the grass, her legs tucked beneath her, and the young man sprawled flat on his belly, gazing up at her, his face moist with sweat. The children were chasing dragonflies. The sun stood still in the west. The long day refused to end. From the house came the sudden roaring laughter of the men playing cards. Beautiful! Romantic! Adorable! Are those the only words you learned in Europe? cried Doa Lupeng, feeling very annoyed with this young man whose eyes adored her one moment and mocked her the next. Ah, I also learned to open my eyes over thereto see the holiness and the mystery of what is vulgar. And what is so holy and mysterious aboutabout the Tadtarin, for instance? I do not know. I can only feel it. And it frightens me. Those rituals come to us from the earliest dawn of the world. And the dominant figure is not the male but the female. But they are in honor of St. John. What has your St. John to do with them? Those women worship a more ancient lord. Why, do you know that no man may join those rites unless he first puts on some article of womens apparel and And what did you put on, Guido? How sharp you are! Oh, I made such love to a toothless old hag there that she pulled off her stocking for me. And I pulled it on, over my arm, like a glove. How your husband would have despised me! But what on earth does it mean? I think it is to remind us men that once upon a time you women were supreme and we men were the slaves. But surely there have always been kings? Oh, no. The queen came before the king, and the priestess before the priest, and the moon before the sun. The moon? who is the Lord of the women. Why? Because the tides of women, like the tides of the sea, are tides of the moon. Because the first blood -But what is the matter, Lupe? Oh, have I offended you? Is this how they talk to decent women in Europe?

They do not talk to women, they pray to themas men did in the dawn of the world. Oh, you are mad! mad! Why are you so afraid, Lupe? I afraid? And of whom? My dear boy, you still have your mothers milk in your mouth. I only wish you to remember that I am a married woman. I remember that you are a woman, yes. A beautiful woman. And why not? Did you turn into some dreadful monster when you married? Did you stop being a woman? Did you stop being beautiful? Then why should my eyes not tell you what you arejust because you are married? Ah, this is too much now! cried Doa Lupeng, and she rose to her feet. Do not go, I implore you! Have pity on me! No more of your comedy, Guido! And besideswhere have those children gone to! I must go after them. As she lifted her skirts to walk away, the young man, propping up his elbows, dragged himself forward on the ground and solemnly kissed the tips of her shoes. She stared down in sudden horror, transfixedand he felt her violent shudder. She backed away slowly, still staring; then turned and fled toward the house. ON THE WAY home that evening Don Paeng noticed that his wife was in a mood. They were alone in the carriage: the children were staying overnight at their grandfathers. The heat had not subsided. It was heat without gradations: that knew no twilights and no dawns; that was still there, after the sun had set; that would be there already, before the sun had risen. Has young Guido been annoying you? asked Don Paeng. Yes! All afternoon. These young men todaywhat a disgrace they are! I felt embarrassed as a man to see him following you about with those eyes of a whipped dog. She glanced at him coldly. And was that all you felt, Paeng? embarrassedas a man? A good husband has constant confidence in the good sense of his wife, he pronounced grandly, and smiled at her. But she drew away; huddled herself in the other corner. He kissed my feet, she told him disdainfully, her eyes on his face. He frowned and made a gesture of distaste. Do you see? They have the instincts, the style of the canalla! To kiss a womans feet, to follow her like a dog, to adore her like a slave Is it so shameful for a man to adore women?

A gentleman loves and respects Woman. The cads and lunaticsthey adore the women. But maybe we do not want to be loved and respectedbut to be adored. But when they reached home she did not lie down but wandered listlessly through the empty house. When Don Paeng, having bathed and changed, came down from the bedroom, he found her in the dark parlour seated at the harp and plucking out a tune, still in her white frock and shoes. How can you bear those hot clothes, Lupeng? And why the darkness? Order someone to bring light in here. There is no one, they have all gone to see the Tadtarin. A pack of loafers we are feeding! She had risen and gone to the window. He approached and stood behind her, grasped her elbows and, stooping, kissed the nape of her neck. But she stood still, not responding, and he released her sulkily. She turned around to face him. Listen, Paeng. I want to see it, too. The Tadtarin, I mean. I have not seen it since I was a little girl. And tonight is the last night. You must be crazy! Only low people go there. And I thought you had a headache? He was still sulking. But I want to go! My head aches worse in the house. For a favor, Paeng. I told you: No! go and take those clothes off. But, woman, whatever has got into you! he strode off to the table, opened the box of cigars, took one, banged the lid shut, bit off an end of the cigar, and glared about for a light. She was still standing by the window and her chin was up. Very well, if you do want to come, do not comebut I am going. I warn you, Lupe; do not provoke me! I will go with Amada. Entoy can take us. You cannot forbid me, Paeng. There is nothing wrong with it. I am not a child. But standing very straight in her white frock, her eyes shining in the dark and her chin thrust up, she looked so young, so fragile, that his heart was touched. He sighed, smiled ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders. Yes, the heat ahs touched you in the head, Lupeng. And since you are so set on itvery well, let us go. Come, have the coach ordered!

THE CULT OF the Tadtarin is celebrated on three days: the feast of St. John and the two preceding days. On the first night, a young girl heads the procession; on the second, a mature woman; and on the third, a very old woman who dies and comes to life again. In these processions, as in those of Pakil and Obando, everyone dances. Around the tiny plaza in front of the barrio chapel, quite a stream of carriages was flowing leisurely. The Moretas were constantly being hailed from the other vehicles. The plaza itself and the sidewalks were filled with chattering, strolling, profusely sweating people. More people were crowded on the balconies and windows of the houses. The moon had not yet risen; the black night smoldered; in the windless sky the lightnings abruptly branching fire seemed the nerves of the tortured air made visible. Here they come now! cried the people on the balconies. And Here come the women with their St. John! cried the people on the sidewalks, surging forth on the street. The carriages halted and their occupants descended. The plaza rang with the shouts of people and the neighing of horsesand with another keener sound: a sound as of sea-waves steadily rolling nearer. The crowd parted, and up the street came the prancing, screaming, writhing women, their eyes wild, black shawls flying around their shoulders, and their long hair streaming and covered with leaves and flowers. But the Tadtarin, a small old woman with white hair, walked with calm dignity in the midst of the female tumult, a wand in one hand, a bunch of seedling in the other. Behind her, a group of girls bore aloft a little black image of the Baptista crude, primitive, grotesque image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and swaying above the hysterical female horde and looking at once so comical and so pathetic that Don Paeng, watching with his wife on the sidewalk, was outraged. The image seemed to be crying for help, to be struggling to escape a St. John indeed in the hands of the Herodias; a doomed captive these witches were subjecting first to their derision; a gross and brutal caricature of his sex. Don Paeng flushed hotly: he felt that all those women had personally insulted him. He turned to his wife, to take her awaybut she was watching greedily, taut and breathless, her head thrust forward and her eyes bulging, the teeth bared in the slack mouth, and the sweat gleaning on her face. Don Paeng was horrified. He grasped her armbut just then a flash of lightning blazed and the screaming women fell silent: the Tadtarin was about to die. The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank slowly to her knees. A pallet was brought and set on the ground and she was laid in it and her face covered with a shroud. Her hands still clutched the wand and the seedlings. The women drew away, leaving her in a cleared space. They covered their heads with their black shawls and began wailing softly, unhumanlya hushed, animal keening. Overhead the sky was brightening, silver light defined the rooftops. When the moon rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded square, the black-shawled women stopped wailing and a girl approached and unshrouded the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and sat up, her face lifted to the moonlight. She rose to her feet and extended the wand and the seedlings and the women joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off and waved their shawls and whirled and began dancing againlaughing and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon that the people in the square and on the sidewalk, and even those on the balconies, were soon laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their parents and wives from their husbands to join in the orgy.

Come, let us go now, said Don Paeng to his wife. She was shaking with fascination; tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and allowed herself to be led away. But suddenly she pulled free from his grasp, darted off, and ran into the crowd of dancing women. She flung her hands to her hair and whirled and her hair came undone. Then, planting her arms akimbo, she began to trip a nimble measure, an indistinctive folk-movement. She tossed her head back and her arched throat bloomed whitely. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth with laughter. Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her head and darted deeper into the dense maze of procession, which was moving again, towards the chapel. He followed her, shouting; she eluded him, laughingand through the thick of the female horde they lost and found and lost each other againshe, dancing and he pursuingtill, carried along by the tide, they were both swallowed up into the hot, packed, turbulent darkness of the chapel. Inside poured the entire procession, and Don Paeng, finding himself trapped tight among milling female bodies, struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out. Angry voices rose all about him in the stifling darkness. Hoy you are crushing my feet! And let go of my shawl, my shawl! Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you! Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots! cried Don Paeng. Abah, it is a man! How dare he come in here? Break his head! Throw the animal out! Throw him out! Throw him out! shrieked the voices, and Don Paeng found himself surrounded by a swarm of gleaming eyes. Terror possessed him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his strengthbut they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon him and pinned his arms helpless, while unseen hands struck and struck his face, and ravaged his hair and clothes, and clawed at his flesh, askicked and buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with bloodhe was pushed down, down to his knees, and half-shoved, half-dragged to the doorway and rolled out to the street. He picked himself up at once and walked away with a dignity that forbade the crowd gathered outside to laugh or to pity. Entoy came running to meet him. But what has happened to you, Don Paeng? Nothing. Where is the coach? Just over there, sir. But you are wounded in the face!

No, these are only scratches. Go and get the seora. We are going home. When she entered the coach and saw his bruised face and torn clothing, she smiled coolly. What a sight you are, man! What have you done with yourself? And when he did not answer: Why, have they pulled out his tongue too? she wondered aloud. AND WHEN THEY are home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she was still as lighthearted. What are you going to do, Rafael? I am going to give you a whipping. But why? Because you have behaved tonight like a lewd woman. How I behaved tonight is what I am. If you call that lewd, then I was always a lewd woman and a whipping will not change methough you whipped me till I died. I want this madness to die in you. No, you want me to pay for your bruises. He flushed darkly. How can you say that, Lupe? Because it is true. You have been whipped by the women and now you think to avenge yourself by whipping me. His shoulders sagged and his face dulled. If you can think that of me You could think me a lewd woman! Oh, how do I know what to think of you? I was sure I knew you as I knew myself. But now you are as distant and strange to me as a female Turk in Africa. Yet you would dare whip me Because I love you, because I respect you. And because if you ceased to respect me you would cease to respect yourself? Ah, I did not say that! Then why not say it? It is true. And you want to say it, you want to say it!

But he struggled against her power. Why should I want to? he demanded peevishly. Because, either you must say itor you must whip me, she taunted. Her eyes were upon him and the shameful fear that had unmanned him in the dark chapel possessed him again. His legs had turned to water; it was a monstrous agony to remain standing. But she was waiting for him to speak, forcing him to speak. No, I cannot whip you! he confessed miserably. Then say it! Say it! she cried, pounding her clenched fists together. Why suffer and suffer? And in the end you would only submit. But he still struggled stubbornly. Is it not enough that you have me helpless? Is it not enough that I feel what you want me feel? But she shook her head furiously. Until you have said to me, there can be no peace between us. He was exhausted at last; he sank heavily to his knees, breathing hard and streaming with sweat, his fine body curiously diminished now in its ravaged apparel. I adore you, Lupe, he said tonelessly. She strained forward avidly, What? What did you say? she screamed. And he, in his dead voice: That I adore you. That I adore you. That I worship you. That the air you breathe and the ground you tread is so holy to me. That I am your dog, your slave... But it was still not enough. Her fists were still clenched, and she cried: Then come, crawl on the floor, and kiss my feet! Without moments hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his arms and legs, gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great agonized lizard, the woman steadily backing away as he approached, her eyes watching him avidly, her nostrils dilating, till behind her loomed the open window, the huge glittering moon, the rapid flashes of lightning. she stopped, panting, and leaned against the sill. He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the floor. She raised her skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his dripping face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and kiss it savagely - kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle - while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the whole windowsill her body and her loose hair streaming out the window - streaming fluid and black in the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon. (SOURCE: www.freewebs.com/nosref/The%20Summer%20Solstice.doc)

Aida L. Rivera
Aida Rivera Ford was born on January 22, 1929 in Jolo, Sulu. She graduated A.B. English, cum laude at Silliman University in 1949. In 1954, she obtained M.A. in English Language and Literature at University of Michigan where she was awarded the Jules and Avery Hopwood Award for Fiction for stories published by Benipayo Press entitled Now and at the Hour and Other Stories (1957). In 1997, UP Press released her collection entitled Born in the Year 1900 and Other Stories which included ''Love in the Cornhusks and The Chieftiest Mourner'', her most anthologized stories. She is the founding president of the Ford Academy of the Arts, Inc.

Love in Cornhusks
by Aida L. Rivera Tinang stopped before the Seoras gate and adjusted the babys cap. The dogs that came to bark at the gate were strange dogs, big-mouthed animals with a sense of superiority. They stuck their heads through the hogfence, lolling their tongues and straining. Suddenly, from the gumamela row, a little black mongrel emerged and slithered through the fence with ease. It came to her, head down and body quivering. Bantay. Ay, Bantay! she exclaimed as the little dog laid its paws upon her shirt to sniff the baby on her arm. The baby was afraid and cried. The big animals barked with displeasure. Tito, the young master, had seen her and was calling to his mother. Ma, its Tinang. Ma, Ma, its Tinang. He came running down to open the gate. Aba, you are so tall now, Tito. He smiled his girls smile as he stood by, warding the dogs off. Tinang passed quickly up the veranda stairs lined with ferns and many-colored bougainville. On landing, she paused to wipe her shoes carefully. About her, the Seoras white and lavender butterfly orchids fluttered delicately in the sunshine. She noticed though that the purple waling-waling that had once been her task to shade from the hot sun with banana leaves and to water with mixture of charcoal and eggs and water was not in bloom. Is no one covering the waling-waling now? Tinang asked. It will die. Oh, the maid will come to cover the orchids later. The Seora called from inside. Tinang, let me see your baby. Is it a boy?

Yes, Ma, Tito shouted from downstairs. And the ears are huge! What do you expect, replied his mother; the father is a Bagobo. Even Tinang looks like a Bagobo now. Tinang laughed and felt warmness for her former mistress and the boy Tito. She sat self-consciously on the black narra sofa, for the first time a visitor. Her eyes clouded. The sight of the Seoras flaccidly plump figure, swathed in a loose waist-less housedress that came down to her ankles, and the faint scent of agua de colonia blended with kitchen spice, seemed to her the essence of the comfortable world, and she sighed thinking of the long walk home through the mud, the babys legs straddled to her waist, and Inggo, her husband, waiting for her, his body stinking of tuba and sweat, squatting on the floor, clad only in his foul undergarments. Ano, Tinang, is it not a good thing to be married? the Seora asked, pitying Tinang because her dress gave way at the placket and pressed at her swollen breasts. It was, as a matter of fact, a dress she had given Tinang a long time ago. It is hard, Seora, very hard. Better that I were working here again. There! the Seora said. Didnt I tell you what it would be like, huh? . . . that you would be a slave to your husband and that you would work a baby eternally strapped to you. Are you not pregnant again? Tinang squirmed at the Seoras directness but admitted she was. Hala! You will have a dozen before long. The Seora got up. Come, I will give you some dresses and an old blanket that you can cut into things for the baby. They went into a cluttered room which looked like a huge closet and as the Seora sorted out some clothes, Tinang asked, How is Seor? Ay, he is always losing his temper over the tractor drivers. It is not the way it was when Amado was here. You remember what a good driver he was. The tractors were always kept in working condition. But now . . . I wonder why he left all of a sudden. He said he would be gone for only two days . . . . I dont know, Tinang said. The baby began to cry. Tinang shushed him with irritation. Oy, Tinang, come to the kitchen; your Bagobito is hungry. For the next hour, Tinang sat in the kitchen with an odd feeling; she watched the girl who was now in possession of the kitchen work around with a handkerchief clutched I one hand. She had lipstick on too, Tinang noted. the girl looked at her briefly but did not smile. She set down a can of evaporated milk for the baby and served her coffee and cake. The Seora drank coffee with her and lectured about keeping the babys stomach bound and training it to stay by itself so she could work. Finally, Tinang brought up, haltingly, with phrases like if it will not offend you and if you are not too busy the purpose of her visitwhich was to ask Seora to be a madrina in baptism. The Seora readily assented and said she would provide the baptismal clothes and the fee for the priest. It was time to go.

When are you coming again, Tinang? the Seore asked as Tinang got the baby ready. Dont forget the bundle of clothes and . . . oh, Tinang, you better stop by the drugstore. They asked me once whether you were still with us. You have a letter there and I was going to open it to see if there was bad news but I thought you would be coming. A letter! Tinangs heart beat violently. Somebody is dead; I know somebody is dead, she thought. She crossed herself and after thanking the Seora profusely, she hurried down. The dogs came forward and Tito had to restrain them. Bring me some young corn next time, Tinang, he called after her. Tinang waited a while at the drugstore which was also the post office of the barrio. Finally, the man turned to her: Mrs., do you want medicine for your baby or for yourself? No, I came for my letter. I was told I have a letter. And what is your name, Mrs.? He drawled. Constantina Tirol. The man pulled a box and slowly went through the pile of envelopes most of which were scribbled in pencil, Tirol, Tirol, Tirol. . . . He finally pulled out a letter and handed it to her. She stared at the unfamiliar scrawl. It was not from her sister and she could think of no one else who could write to her. Santa Maria, she thought; maybe something has happened to my sister. Do you want me to read it for you? No, no. She hurried from the drugstore, crushed that he should think her illiterate. With the baby on one arm and the bundle of clothes on the other and the letter clutched in her hand she found herself walking toward home. The rains had made a deep slough of the clay road and Tinang followed the prints left by the men and the carabaos that had gone before her to keep from sinking mud up to her knees. She was deep in the road before she became conscious of her shoes. In horror, she saw that they were coated with thick, black clay. Gingerly, she pulled off one shoe after the other with the hand still clutching to the letter. When she had tied the shoes together with the laces and had slung them on an arm, the baby, the bundle, and the letter were all smeared with mud. There must be a place to put the baby down, she thought, desperate now about the letter. She walked on until she spotted a corner of a field where cornhusks were scattered under a kamansi tree. She shoved together a pile of husks with her foot and laid the baby down upon it. With a sigh, she drew the letter from the envelope. She stared at the letter which was written in English. My dearest Tinay, Hello, how is life getting along? Are you still in good condition? As for myself, the same as usual. But youre far from my side. It is not easy to be far from our lover.

Tinay, do you still love me? I hope your kind and generous heart will never fade. Someday or somehow Ill be there again to fulfill our promise. Many weeks and months have elapsed. Still I remember our bygone days. Especially when I was suffering with the heat of the tractor under the heat of the sun. I was always in despair until I imagine your personal appearance coming forward bearing the sweetest smile that enabled me to view the distant horizon. Tinay, I could not return because I found that my mother was very ill. That is why I was not able to take you as a partner of life. Please respond to my missive at once so that I know whether you still love me or not. I hope you did not love anybody except myself. I think I am going beyond the limit of your leisure hours, so I close with best wishes to you, my friends Gonding, Sefarin, Bondio, etc. Yours forever, Amado P.S. My mother died last month.

Address your letter: Mr. Amado Galauran Binalunan, Cotabato It was Tinangs first love letter. A flush spread over her face and crept into her body. She read the letter again. It is not easy to be far from our lover. . . . I imagine your personal appearance coming forward. . . . Someday, somehow Ill be there to fulfill our promise. . . . Tinang was intoxicated. She pressed herself against the kamansi tree. My lover is true to me. He never meant to desert me. Amado, she thought. Amado. And she cried, remembering the young girl she was less than two years ago when she would take food to Seor in the field and the laborers would eye her furtively. She thought herself above them for she was always neat and clean in her hometown, before she went away to work, she had gone to school and had reached sixth grade. Her skin, too, was not as dark as those of the girls who worked in the fields weeding around the clumps of abaca. Her lower lip jutted out disdainfully when the farm hands spoke to her with many flattering words. She laughed when a Bagobo with two hectares of land asked her to marry him. It was only Amado, the tractor driver, who could look at her and make her lower her eyes. He was very dark and wore filthy and torn clothes on the farm but on Saturdays when he came up to the house for his weeks salary, his hair was slicked do wn and he would be dressed as well as Mr. Jacinto, the schoolteacher. Once he told her he would study in the city night-schools and take up mechanical engineering someday. He had not said much more to her but one afternoon when she was bidden to take some bolts and tools to him in the field, a great excitement came over her. The shadows moved fitfully in the bamboo groves she passed and the

cool November air edged into her nostrils sharply. He stood unmoving beside the tractor with tools and parts scattered on the ground around him. His eyes were a black glow as he watched her draw near. When she held out the bolts, he seized her wrist and said: Come, pulling her to the screen of trees beyond. She resisted but his arms were strong. He embraced her roughly and awkwardly, and she trembled and gasped and clung to him. . . . A little green snake slithered languidly into the tall grass a few yards from the kamansi tree. Tinang started violently and remembered her child. It lay motionless on the mat of husk. With a shriek she grabbed it wildly and hugged it close. The baby awoke from its sleep and cries lustily. Ave Maria Santisima. Do not punish me, she prayed, searching the babys skin for marks. Among the cornhusks, the letter fell unnoticed. (SOURCE: http://ischoolsericsonalieto.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/love-in-the-cornhusks-byaida-l-rivera/)

Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero

Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero (January 22, 1911 - April 28, 1995) was a Filipino playwright, director, teacher and theater artist. He has written well over a hundred plays, 41 of which have been published. His unpublished plays have either been broadcast over the radio or staged in various parts of the Philippines. His publications include 13 Plays (first published in 1947), 8 Other Plays (1952), 7 More Plays (1962), 12 New Plays (1975), My Favorite 11 Plays (1976), 4 Latest Plays (1980), Retribution and eight other selected plays (1990) and The Guerreros of Ermita (1988). He has been the teacher of some of the most famous people in the Performing Arts at present: Behn Cervantes, Celia Diaz-Laurel, Joy Virata, and Joonee Gamboa. Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero was born in Ermita, Manila. At the Age 14, he has already written his first play in Spanish, entitled, "No Todo Es Risa." This play was produced at the Ateneo de Manila University when he was 15. Aside from becoming a reporter and a proofreader for La Vanguardia, a Spanish newspaper, and a drama critic for the Manila Tribune, he also worked for some time in Philippine Films as a scriptwriter. He also became the director Filipino Players from 1941-1947. In 1947 he was appointed as the University of the Philippines Dramatic Club director despite lacking a degree, a position he served for sixteen years. In 1962, he organized and directed the U.P. Mobile Theater that goes on the road all over the Philippines to for performances. Several Guerrero plays have been translated into and produced in Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano and Waray. Six of his plays have been produced abroad: "Half an Hour in a Convent" at the Pasadena Playhouse, California; "Three Rats" at the University of Kansas; "Condemned" in Oahu, Hawaii; "One, Two, Three" (premiere performance) at the University of Washington, Seattle; "Wanted: A Chaperon" at the University of Hawaii; and "Conflict" in Sydney, Australia. He is the first Filipino to have a theater named after him within his lifetime: The Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater of the University of the Philippines. Wilfrido grew up from a wealthy family. His father, Dr. Manuel, was considered the most renowned doctor of his time, his reputation based on his clinical eye which could diagnose a persons illness by just studying that persons outside appearance. Among his clients were some of Manilas richest, like Brias Roxas, the Ayalas, Pardo de Taveras, Zobels, Roceses, Osmeas, Alberts, etc. Thus, his father could afford to give them all the comforts of life. They were not allowed to eat with their hands and they were forbidden to speak Tagalog. He had a totally comfortable life. He was nearly seven when his father died. They were left with the big house at Plaza Ferguson, two cars (which his mother sold), and a Php10,000 life insurance. Five months after the funeral, they rented the first floor of his cousins the Mossesgelds house for Php50.00. His mother had their house rented to an American family and they lived on the monthly income. All of them

being To be able to study high school in Ateneo in Intramuros, he and his brothers, Edmundo, Lorenzo, Manuel became choristers. They got free tuition which was Php60.00 a semester, but they had to buy their textbooks. When he reached third-year high school, being sick and fed up with having to hear daily Mass, he took the courage to go to Don Alejandro Roces, Sr., who had been one of his fathers patients and whose wife was a close friend of their mother. He went to Roces office at the Manila Tribune and stated his purpose. Don Alejandro readily agreed, and he paid for his tuition for his last two years in high school. His favorite aunt, Maria Araceli, discovered his writing ability. When he was around 12 or 13, she noticed him writing on scraps of paper, then hiding them inside his cabinet drawer. He wrote his first complete one-act play, No Todo Es Risa, while in his second year high school. He showed it to the late Father Juan Trinidad, S.J. (who at that time was translating the Bible into Tagalog) and he liked it. The priest said his Spanish was idiomatic and decided to stage it for their Father Rectors (Fr. OBrien) birthday. And yet soon after his aunts death, he wrote some of his most popular comedies, like Movie Artists, Basketball Fight, and Wanted: A Chaperon. Years later, he made his aunt the principal character in Forever as Maria Teresa and later as Maria Araceli in Frustrations. Both women are like my aunt: imperious, strong-willed, wise, but also humane, he wrote. He has received three national awards: the Rizal Pro-Patria Award in 1961, the Araw ng Maynila Award in 1969, and the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1972. The U.P. Mobile Theater has been a recipient of two awards when he was its director: The Citizen's Council for Mass Media Trophy (1966) and the Balagtas Award (1969). In 1997, Guerrero was posthumously distinguished as a National Artist for Philippine Theatre

Wanted: A Chaperone
by Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero First Performance: The Filipino Players, under the authors direction, at St. Cecilias Hall, November 21, 1940 CHARACTERS: DON FRANCISCO (the father) DOA PETRA (the mother) NENA (their daughter) ROBERTING (their son) DOA DOLORES FRED (her son) FRANCISCO (the servant) PABLO (the mayordomo) TIME : One Sunday morning, at about eleven. SCENE: The living-room. Simply furnished. A window on the right. At the rear, a corridor. A door on the left Sofa, chairs, etc. at the discretion of the director. When the curtain rises, DON FRANCISCO, about sixty, is seen sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigar He wears a nice-looking lounging robe. PresentlyROBERTING, his twenty-year old son, good-looking,

well-dressed, enters. He wants to ask some. thing from his father, but before he gathers enough courage, he maneuvers about the stage and clears his throat several times before he finally approaches him. ROBERTING (Clearing his throat). Ehem-ehem-ehem! FRANCISCO (Looking up briefly). Ehem ROBERTING. -FatherFRANCISCO (Without looking at him). What? ROBERTING. FatherFRANCISCO. Well? ROBERTING. FatherFRANCISCO. Again? ROBERTING. Well, you see it's like thisFRANCISCO. Like what? ROBERTING. It's not easy to explain, Father FRANCISCO. If it isn't then come back when I'm through with the paper ROBERTING. Better now, Father. It's about-money. FRANCISCO. Money! What money? ROBERTING. Well, you seeFRANCISCO (imitating his tone). Well, you see-I'm busy! ROBERTING. I need money. FRANCISCO (Dropping the paper). Need money! Aren't you working already? ROBERTING. Yes, but-it isn't enough. FRANCISCO. How much are you earning? ROBERTING. Eight hundred, Father. FRANCISCO. Eight hundred! Why, you're earning almost as much as your father! ROBERTING. You don't understand, Father. FRANCISCO. Humph! I don't understand! ROBERTING. Don't misunderstand me, Father. FRANCISCO. Aba! You just said I don't understand-that means I'm not capable of understanding. Now you say not to misunderstand you-meaning I'm capable of understanding pala. Make up your mind, Roberting! ROBERTING. You see, Father, what I'm driving at I~ I want-er -I want-my old allowance. FRANCISCO (jumping). Diablos! You want your old allowance! Youre working and earning eight hundred, you don't pay me a single centavo for your board and lodging in my house-and now you re asking for your old allowance! ROBERTING. I have so many expenses, Father. FRANCISCO. How much have you got saved up in the bank? ROBERTING. How can I save anything? FRANCISCO. So you have nothing in the bank! What kind of gifts do you give your girl-friend? ROBERTING (Embarrassed). I-IFRANCISCO. Flowers? (ROBERTING nods.) Twenty-or thirty-peso flowers? (ROBERTING nods again.) Que hombre este! When I was courting your mother I used to give her only mani or balut. (DONA PETRA, about fifty-five,. enters and catches his last words.) PETRA. Yes, I remember quite well, If you only knew what my mother used to say after you used to give me mani or balut. "Ka kuriput naman!" she'd say. FRANCISCO. Pero, Petra, this son of ours is earning eight hundred. He doesn't give us a centavo for house expenses, and on top of that he's asking for his old allowance. Where in the world have you heard such a thing? PETRA I know a place where the children work and don't give their-parents any money and still ask for their allowance.

FRANCISCO. Were? PETRA. In the Philippines. FRANCISCO. Aba! How ilustrada you are, Petra! PETRA. (To ROBERTING). You're not going to get a centavo. ROBERTING. But, MotherPETRA If you've no money to ride in a taxi, take a jeepney. ROBERTING. Jeepney to visit a girl! Ay! PETRA.. (imitating him). Ay what? (ROBERTING goes out mumbling.) PETRA. (Calling). Francisco! FRANCISCO. Ha? PETRA. I'm calling the servant! FRANCISCO. Demontres with that Servant! Having the same name as the owner of the house! PETRA. I'm going to kick him out soon. He broke your plate again. FRANCISCO. Again! I don't know why he always breaks my plates. He never breaks your plates, or Roberting's, or Nena's. No, he breaks only my plates? (FRANCISCO, the servant, enters. He is a dark, tall, thin boy. He looks foolish and is. He has his mouth open all the time.) SERVANT. Opo, senora. PETRA. Did you make that sign I told you? SERVANT. The one you told me to make? PETRA. (Emphatically). Of course! SERVANT. The one you told me to write: "Wanted: a Muchacho?" PETRA. (irritated). Yes, Don Francisco! FRANCISCO. Ha? PETRA. I'm talking to the servant. Well, did you do it? SERVANT. No, senora. I didn't make it yet. PETRA. And why not? SERVANT. I forgot how it should be worded. I suddenly remember now., PETRA. Que estupido! Hala, go out and make it immediately! (SERVANT goes out.) FRANCISCO. Where's Nena? PETRA. Asleep in her room. FRANCISCO. At this time? It's eleven o'clock. PETRA Anyhow it's Sunday. FRANCISCO. Has she heard Mass? PETRA. I suppose she did at four FRANCISCO, And so Nena went to the party last night without a chaperon? PETRA. It was the first time. FRANCISCO. I hope nothing happened. PETRA. What could have happened? We discussed this already yesterday. FRANCISCO. Yes, I know, but imagine a Filipino girl going to a party without a chaperon. PETRA. After all, she didn't go out with Fred alone. She went with her friends, Lolita and Luding. FRANCISCO. Yes, those two girls, since they arrived from abroad, they've been trying to teach our daughter all the wrong things they learned from those places. PETRA. Wrong things? Ay, you exaggerate, Francisco! (FRANCISCO, the servant enters with a sign in his hands.) PETRA. Are you through with that? So soon? SERVANT. I finished it last night, senora. PETRA. Last night! SERVANT. Opo, seora, but I forgot where I placed it.

PETRA. Estupido itong taong ito! Let me see it. (She takes hold Of the sign, reads aloud.) Wanted: A Muchacho." All right, hang it out there at the window. (The SERVANT hangs it out side the window sill but with the sign facing inside.) I said outside-not inside! FRANCISCO. Ay, Francisco, he had to be my namesake! (The SERVANT, after placing the sign, stays by the window, making signs and faces to somebody outside.) PETRA. As I was saying. Francisco-FRANCISCO. Were you talking to me, Petra, or to the servant? PETRA (Addressing the SERVANT). Francisco! What are you still doing here? Go back to the kitchen! (SERVANT goes out.) FRANCISCO. You were saying, PetraPETRA. As I was saying, I think you're being very unfair to Nena. After all, she's grown up FRANCISCO. Petra, my dear, virtue is ageless. PETRA. I know that, Francisco, but chaperoning is rather old-fashioned. FRANCISCO. Old-fashioned, maybe, in some other civilized countries. PETRA. But isn't the Philippines civilized? FRANCISCO. In many ways, yes,-but in some ways it's uncivilized. PETRA. Ay. Francisco, if Saturnino Balagtas, our great patriot, should hear you now! FRANCISCO. Where did you get the idea that Balagtas' first name is Saturnino? You mean Francisco. PETRA. Saturnino-Francisco-both end in o. FRANCISCO. Yes, that's why when you call out my name, Francisco the muchacho rushes in. PETRA. Anyhow our women can take care of themselves., FRANCISCO. Are you sure? PETRA. Especially if they've received an education. For instance, our Nena is, in her senior year in education at the University of Santo Tomas. She's even taking some courses in home economics. FRANCISCO. I suppose that makes her immune from any moral falls. PETRA. Moral falls, Francisco! Ay, que exagerada naman tu! No,. what I mean is that Nena is better educated and more enlightened to take care of herself. FRANCISCO. (Annoyed). This Petra naman! You don't see the point. Education, even a university education, with all the letters of the alphabet after a graduate's name AB, BSE LLB, PhD, is not moral education. Training the mind is not training the heart. PETRA. But if the mind is trained, why, the heart will be ruled by the mind. FRANCISCO. No, Petra, if a person is intellectual, it doesn't ipso facto make' him moral. PETRA. Ipso facto. That's very. deep for me naman, Francisco. FRANCISCO. Very deep! Our daughter Nena will fall in deep water if you don't watch out! PETRA (Exaggeratedly, just like a woman). Ay, you're so apprehensive, Francisco,. (The SERVANT rushes in.) SERVANT. Did you call me, senora? FRANCISCO. Hoy- you! SERVANT. Yes, senorito. FRANCISCO. I'm married to the senora, therefore I'm not the senorito anymore, but the senor, understand? SERVANT. Opo, senorito. FRANCISCO. I'm going to change your name. From now on you'll be called Francis. SERVANT. Francis, po? FRANCISCO. Yes, Francis, understand? SERVANT. Why not Paquito, senor? Or Paco or Francisquito? FRANCISCO. Because I don't want it! Now get out! (SERVANT goes out. ROBERTING comes in.) ROBERTING. Father, I couldn't get a taxi. FRANCISCO. Your mother told you to take a jeepney.

ROBERTING. But I'm visiting my girl-friend. FRANCISCO. Visiting girls at this time of the day? It's nearly lunch time ROBERTING. She called me up. She says I must see her, right away. It's very important. FRANCISCO. Roberting, you went to the party last night? ROBERTING. Yes, Father, with Lia. FRANCISCO. You went to the party unchaperoned? PETRA. Does Roberting need a chaperon? FRANCISCO. I'm not talking about Roberting! I'm talking about the girl he took out! PETRA. Well, if you're going to lose your temper, I might as well be in the kitchen. (She goes out.) ROBERTING. Yes, Father. FRANCISCO. Yes, what? ROBERTING. I took Lia to the party alone. FRANCISCO. You young modern people. Do you realize that in my time when I was courting your mother, her father, her mother, her three sisters, her young brother., her grandmother, five first cousins and two distant relatives sat in the sala with us? ROBERTING. But why so many, Father? FRANCISCO, Because in those days we were more careful about a woman's reputation. ROBERTING. But in those daysFRANCISCO. Don't tell me those days were different. Outward things change, like the styles of women's dresses and men's ties, but the human heart remains the same. ROBERTING. But in other countries, FatherFRANCISCO. There you go, in other countries. The Philippines is different, my son. Our climate, our traditions, our innate psychology-- all these make our people different from foreigners. ROBERTING. But my girl friend has studied abroad-- Columbia University pa. Filipino girls who have studied in other countries acquire the outward customs and mannerisms of people with traditions and temperament different from ours. But a Filipino girl can't easily change her temperament. It is inborn. (A knock is heard.) FRANCISCO. Somebody's at the door. Francisc-er-Francis! Francis! ROBERTING. Who's Francis? FRANCISCO. The servant. I gave him a new name. (Calling again.) Paquito! (No answer) Francisquito! (The SERVANT tip pears. FRANCISCO stares at him.) SERVANT. Yes, senorito. FRANCISCO. No, no, my son Roberting here is the senorito, but I'm the senor! See who is knocking. Tell him to sit down. (SERVANT goes out. ROBERTING and FRANCISCO go to their rooms. Presently SERVANT comes in, followed by PABLO. He is a fat, dark fellow. He is all dressed up-- wears a tie and everything He smokes a cigar. PABLO and the SERVANT stare at each other, the SERVANT open-mouthed as usual.) SERVANT. what do you want? PABLO What do I want? Haven't you got any manners? SERVANT. I said whom do you want to we? PABLO. Why don't you speak more dearly?. SERVANT. What shall I tell the owner of the hour? PABLO. Who's the owner of the house? SERVANT. The senora, of course. PABLO. Why, is she a widow? SERVANT. Not yet. PABLO. Tell your senora I want to see her. SERVANT. Which senora? PABLO. How many senoras do you have In this home? SERVANT. There's senora Petra, senorita Nena-

PABLO. Gago! Call senora Petra then. SERVANT. Opo. Sit down. Here are some cigars (SERVANT goes out. PABLO, looking about, gets one cigar-then a second--when about to get a third,PETRA comes in.) PETRA. Yes? PABLO. Good morning. PETRA. Good morning. PABLO. I saw that sign at the window. PETRA. Yes? PABLO. It says "Wanted: A Muchacho." PETRA. Why, yes. Are you by any chance a detective? PABLO. (Giggling). You flatter me, senora! A girl told me mw that I am very good-looking. PETRA. Really? That is very interesting. PABLO Women sometimes tell the sweetest lies. PETRA. Do you mind ifPABLO. Of course I don't mind. Go ahead and ask any questions PETRA. Do you mind if I ask what I can do you PABLO (Blushing). I'm applyingPETRA. Applying for what? PABLO (After mustering enough courage). Im applying for the job! PETRA. What job? PABLO (Pointing at the sign outside, significantly). That. PETRA (Looking towards the sign and at PABLO. Incredulous). You meanPABLO (Joyfully). Yes, I'm offering my services PETRA. You mean-you wish to be a muchacho? PABLO. I wish you wouldn't be so insulting, senora, but I want to be what they call in Europe a mayordomo. PETRA. A what? PABLO. A mayordomo. You knowPETRA. Oh. You mean-? PABLO. Yes, that's what I mean. PETRA (After giving him a dirty look). Well, for a minute I mistook you for an hacendero or a movie actor. PABLO. That's right. I don't look like a muchacho~ er-mayordomo My mother always used to say I would amount to something. (Cupping his hand towards PETRA's ears.) Confidentially, my mother wanted me to marry one of the President's daughters. PETRA. President's daughters? You mean the President of the Philippines? PABLO. Yes, why not? Is there anything wrong in that? PETRA. And you wish to work here as a-er-as a mayordomo? PABLO. That's it! PETRA. What can you do? PABLO. I can watch the house when you're out, accompany the children, if you've any, to the movies or to parties. PETRA. What else? PABLO. I can do many other things. I can even sing. PETRA. Never mind your social accomplishments. What's your name? PABLO. I was baptized Marcelino, but my mother calls me Pablo because I remind her of her brother who spent two years jail. But my friends that is, my intimate friends. call me Paul. PETRA. I'll pay you eighty pesos. including board and lodging. PABLO (Jumping). I'll take the job! (PETRA stands up and looks at him frigidly.) PETRA. Good. You Can start by washing the dishes.

PABLO. The dishes! But it's time for lunch. Haven't the dishes you used for breakfast been washed yet? PETRA. No, because our servant Francisco always breaks the plates. So I told him this morning after breakfast not to wash them yet. PABLO. I wish I had come after the dishes had been washed. PETRA. All right, ask Francisco for instructions. (PETRA goes out. PABLO lights a cigar and throughout the following scene drops the ashes everywhere. FRANCISCO enters.) FRANCISCO. Oh, good morning. Have you been waiting long? PABLO Staring at him insolently). No, I just talked to the senora. FRANCISCO. Oh, yes. why don't you sit down? PABLO. I will. (And PABLO sprawls Cleopatra-like on the sofa.) FRANCISCO. Did you come on some business? PABLO. Business? Oh, business of a sort. FRANCISCO. That's good. PABLO. That's a nice lounging robe you're wearing. FRANCISCO. You like it? PABLO. I certainly am going to buy one exactly like that FRANCISCO. Thank you. Imitation, they say, is the subtlest form of flattery. PABLO. Of course mine will be more expensive. FRANCISCO. Undoubtedly. You must be a man of means. PABLO. Of means? Well, sort of- Hm, I wonder what's delaying Francisco. FRANCISCO. Francisco? I am Francisco. PABLO (Laughing). You are Francisco? FRANCISCO. Yes. PABLO. Well, if you're Francisco, the senora told me to ask you for the instructions. FRANCISCO. Instructions? What kind of instructions? PABLO. I suppose she meant the instructions for washing the dishes and all that sort of thing FRANCISCO (Puzzled). Dishes-all that sort of thing? What do you mean? PABLO. Aren't you the servant here? FRANCISCO (Flabbergasted). Servant! I am the owner of the house! PABLO (Jumping). Oh-the owner! Excuse me! (Gliding away.) I suppose this is the way to the kitchen! (He runs out to the kitchen) FRANCISCO. Petra! Petra! (He exits, PETRA enters and arranges the chairs. NENA comes in. NENA is about eighteen, and she's wearing a nice-looking Pair of slacks. She obviously has just risen from bed for she keeps yawning atrociously.) NENA. Wheres the Sunday paper? PETRA. Oh, so you're awake. How was the party last night? NENA. (Sitting on sofa). So-so. Mother, where's the movie page? PETRA. Probably your brother Roberting is looking at it. -(FRANCISCO enters.) FRANCISCO. You're awake at last. Have you had breakfast? PETRA. Breakfast when it's nearly twelve? FRANCISCO. How was the party? NENA. So-so. (FRANCISCO looks for some cigars on the table.) FRANCISCO. Aba! Where are the cigars, Petra? PETRA. Why, I placed half a dozen there this morning! FRANCISCO. Half a dozen! I've smoked only one s6 far! PETRA. I wonder. FRANCISCO. Hm- I'm wondering, too! NENA. (Standing and yawning). I'm still sleepy.

FRANCISCO. Wait a minute, Nena. Sit down. NENA. What is it, Father? FRANCISCO. So you went to the party alone last night? PETRA. This Francisco naman! I told you she was out with Fred. FRANCISCO. Anyhow I hope thats the first and last time you go to a party unchaperoned. NENA. But there's nothing wrong, Father. After all Im an educated girl. (NENA yawns so desperately that she looks like an acrobat. PETRA andFRANCISCO stare at each other.) PETRA. Yes, Francisco. She can take care of herself. Can't you see she's educated? (FRANCISCO gulps and wonders if his wife is crazy. ROBERTINGenters.) ROBERTING. (To NENA.) So you're awake! How was the party last night? NENA. So-so. FRANCISCO. Why are you here? ROBERTING. I couldn't hire a taxi. No money. PETRA. I told you to take a jeepney. ROBERTIlNG. Anyhow I can see her this afternoon. Incidentally I met Fred's mother a short while ago. NENA. Fred's mother? ROBERTING. She was near Martini's taxi station. PETRA. What were you doing at the taxi station? FRANCISCO. Trying to get a taxi on credit, I suppose. ROBERTING. Anyhow Fred's motherNENA. What about her? ROBERTING. She said she was coming today. PETRA. What for? ROBERTING. She didn't tell me. FRANCISCO. Fred's mother? You mean the young fellow Nena went out with last night? ROBERTING Yes, Father. NENA Did she say why she was coming? ROBERTING. No.. But she seemed sore at me. In fact she seemed sort at you, too, Father. FRANCISCO. At me? ROBERTING (Imitating Dolores' voice) . She said, "Tell your father Kiko I'm going to see him!" FRANCISCO. She called me Kiko? ROBERTING. Yes FRANCISCO. Didn't she say Don Kiko at least? ROBERTING. No. She simply said Kiko. FRANCISCO. Aba! (PABLO's head is seen sticking out by the door) PABLO (Shouting at the top of his lungs). Dinner is served! FRANCISCO. Hay! Don't shout that loud! (PABLO exits.) ROBERTING. Who's he, Mother? PETRA. The new mayordomo. ROBERTING. Mayor what? PETRA. He's the new servant! (They all go out. But NENA lingers for a. while, and there's an expression of worry on her face. Then she exits. PABLO and the SERVANT come in.) SERVANT. Hoy! PABLO. What do you mean hay? My name is Pablo. You may call me Paul. SERVANT. My name is Francisca The senor calls me Francis, but I prefer Paquito. I once had another amo who used to call me Frankie. PABLO. What do you. want? SERVANT. The senora wants you in the dining room

PABLO. What for? SERVANT. To serve the dishes. PABLO. That's your job. I'm not a muchacho! I'm a mayordomo! SERVANT. Didn't you. answer that sign over there at the window-"Wanted: A Muchacho"? PABLO. Yet why? SERVANT. Then you're a muchacho, like me! PABLO. (Threatening him with his fist) I want you to understand that I am not a muchacho! SERVANT. Hal You look like a common muchacho to me PABLO. (Threatening him with the cigar he holds) Don't let me catch you using that word again! SERVANT. Soplado! (PETRA enters.) PETRA. What are you two doing here? Don't you know we're already eating? (PABLO and SERVANT go out. Presently NENA comes in and goes to the window She sees somebody coming, and runs out. Several knocks are heard. PABLO is seen crossing the corridor Then PABLO enters first trying to cover his face, followed by DONA DOLORES, a fat arrogant woman of forty, wearing the Filipina dress and sporting more jewels than a pawn shop. Her twenty-year-old son FRED follows hen FRED is so dumb 'and as dumb-looking nobody would believe it. PABLO is still trying to hide his face.) DOLORES (Fanning herself vigorously). Where's Dona Petra? PABLO. She's eating. Sit down. DOLORES. Call the senora-and 'mind your own business! (Recognizing him.) Che! So it's you! Youyou! Working here! How much are you earning? PABLO (Insolently). Why? DOLORES. After treating you so well at home as a muchacho, now you come to work here without even leaving me a farewell note. Che! PABLO (With arms akimbo). I'm not a muchacho! I am a mayordomo! DOLORES. Mayordomo! Mayor tonto! Che! i(PABLO, who is now all sprinkled with DOLORES' saliva, gets his handkerchief. PETRA and FRANCISCOenter) PETRA. You may go, Paul. DOLORES. Paul? (PABLO leaves.) PETRA. Good morning. FRANCISCO. You wanted to see me? DOLORES. Yes! You and Petra! PETRA. Won't you sit down? DOLORES. I'd rather remain standing! Che? FRANCISCO. This-this is your son Fred, I imagine. DOLORES. Don't imagine-He is my son! PETRA. Ah! So he is your son! DOLORES. Supposing he is- what's that to you? FRANCISCO. I was just thinking he doesn't look a bit like you. DOLORES. Certainly not. He's the spitting image of my third husband! PETRA. Do sit down. DOLORES. Are you trying to insult me by implying I've no chairs at home? Che! FRANCISCO. What can we do for you? DOLORES (Pointing to FRED). Ask him! PETRA What is it, Fred? FRED (Pointing to his mother). Ask her! FRANCISCO. Speak up; my son! DOLORES. Your son!. Your son, eh? So you and your daughter Nena have designs on my son, eh? Well, you won't hook him! PETRA. What are you. talking about?

FRANCISCO. Call Nena! (Aloud) Nena! Nena! (ROBERTING appears.) Roberting, call Nena! (ROBERTING goes out.) FRANCISCO. If you don't mind, I will sit down. PETRA I will sit down, too. I'm tired. (FRED tries to sit down too but his mother yanks him out of the chain. NENA, wearing a sports dress, comes in; followed by ROBERTING) FRANCISCO. Nena, this lad? wants to talk to you. DOLORES (Nudging FRED). Tell her! FRED Ten: her what? PETRA What is all the mystery about? DOLORES (Ominously). My son-and your daughter-. FRANCISCO. They went to the patty last night, didn't they?. DOLORES. Of course they went to the party. But how did they go? FRANCISCO. Has your son a car? Maybe they went in his ear. DOLORES. My son has a car, and it's all paid for. But that isn't the point! FRANCISCO. What's the point then? DOLORES. That's what I came to find out! PETRA. Nena, what happened? NENA. Happened? DOLORES. Yes, last night! NENA. What happened? DOLORES. I'm asking you! PETRA. What happened, Nena? NENA. Why. nothing, Mother PETRA. Nothing? NENA. Nothing, Mother DOLORES. Nothing. che! A girl going to a party unchaperoned and nothing happened! PETRA. What really happened, Nena? NENA (Approaching DOLORES and practically screaming at her). Nothing happened and you know it! DOLORES. Che! How dare you shout at mc! FRED. Don't talk to my mother like that, Nena! NENA (Approaching FRED). Bobo! Estupido! Standing there like a statue! FRED. Statue? What statue? NENA. The statue of a dumb-bell, dumb bell! FRED. Gaga! ROBERTING. (Approaching FRED and holding him by the neck) Hey, you! Don't start calling my sister names! FRED. She started it! PETRA (Approaching DOLORES). Your son took my daughter out to the party last night DOLORES. Why do you allow your daughter to go out alone? FRED. Nena insisted there was nothing wrong! But my intuition told me it might be wrong. DOLORES. Shut up, Fred! FRED. Why, mama? DOLORES. (To PETRA). Why do you allow your daughter to go out alone with my respectable son? NENA. What's respectable about him? (DOLORES gives her a poisonous look.) DOLORES. People saw them come and go unchaperoned. Yes, unchaperoned! Imagine-imagine a girl going to a party alone! FRANCISCO. (Advancing). She was with your son, wasn't she? DOLORES. Unfortunately! FRANCISCO. Then if my daughter was with your son, what danger was there?

DOLORES. People are talking about last nightPETRA. But what happened? DOLORES. (To FRED). What happened, Fred dear? FRED (Tearfully). Nothing, mama! DOLORES. Try to think! Something must have happened! FRED. Nothing. nothing! (DOLORES notices that the group's hostile eyes are fastened on her) DOLORES (Pinching FRED, but hard). Torpe! FRED. (Twisting with pain). Aruy! DOLORES. You-you-you son of my third husband! Why didn't you tell me nothing happened? FRED. Ive been trying to tell you since this morning, but you gave me no chance. (Embarrassed, DOLORES tries hard to regain her dignity.) FRANCISCO. (Approaching DOLORES). You mean to tell me you came here and raised all this rumpus when nothing, absolutely nothing, happened? DOLORES. Well! I wouldn't be too sure about absolutely nothing! Besides, I have to be careful- yes, very careful-about my beloved son's upbringing. FRANCISCO. Your son! Your Son is very stupid! FRED. What! DOLORES. My son stupid! PETRA (Shouting). And definitely! FRANCISCO. As stupid as you are! DOLORES. As me! PETRA. And positively! FRED. (Approaching NENA). It's your fault! NENA. What do you mean my fault, dumbbell! FRED. I'd slap your face if I weren't a gentleman; (ROBERTING flies across the stage and faces FRED.) ROBERTING. I'll slap you even if Mother says I'm no gentleman at times! DOLORES. (To ROBERTING). Don't you dare touch my son! Che! NENA. (To DOLORES). You can have that human jellyfish! Coming here to say what might have happened! (NENA grunts so savagely that DOLORESretreats in terror.) DOLORES. (To FRANCISCO). You should advise your daughter to stop going to parties unchaperoned! People gossip and include my son! FRANCISCO. Mind your own business! (Raising his fist to her head) Tell your son to stop looking dumb! DOLORES. Che! I never saw such people, che! FRANCISCO. Get out of here before I call the police! FRED. The police! Mama, the police! DOLORES. We're going, che! PETRA. Paul! Paul! FRANCISCO. Who's Paul, Petra? (PABLO appears.) PABLO. Yes, Don Francisco? PETRA. Paul, kindly escort these-- these people to the door! FRANCISCO. Roughly, Paul, roughly! DOLORES. (Facing PABLO). Canalla! (To PETRA.) I suppose you enticed my muchacho to come here! PABLO (Touching DOLORES on the shoulder). Hoy, I am no muchacho! I'm a mayordomo! Furthermore, Dona Petra gives me eighty pesos a month while you used to give me fifty pesos only! DOLORES. Eighty a month! Where will they get that much! PETRA. Dona Dolores! Dolores de cabeza! DOLORES. Eighty a month! Che! (Going to the door.) Che! (Turning again.) Che! (She comes back to recover her son who has remained like a statue.)

PETRA. Can you imagine! The insolence! Che! (Everybody stares at her.) FRANCISCO. That's what Nena got for going out unchaperoned. I was already telling you, PetraPETRA. How could I, know this Dolores would make all that awful fuss? ROBERTING. You want me to break Fred's neck? FRANCISCO. You should -have done that when he was here. Your muscle reflexes are tardy in working, my son. ROBERTING (Unconsciously). Che!, (They all look at him. NENA has sat on the so/a and begins to cry.) PETRA. Don't cry, Nena. Its over. NENA (Between sobs). Making all that fuss for nothing! The truth is that I quarreled with Fred during the party and left him. PETRA. Left him! Where did you go? NENA. I came home with Luding and Lolita. Fred's mother had been trying to interest me in her son-that's why-he told his mother-and FRANCISCO. Ay, hija mia, go in now and let this be a lesson to you. NENA (As she's near the door-unconsciously) Che! (They all stare at her and at each other.) PETRA. Finish eating. Roberting. FRANCISCO. Incidentally, Roberting, I hope nothing happened with you last night. ROBERTING. Last night? FRANCISCO. You went out with Lia, didn't you? ROBERTJNG. Yes, but nothing happened-- I think. PETRA. You think! (PABLO comes in, smoking a cigar.) PABLO. I escorted them out already. senora. What do I do now? PETRA. You may wash more dishes. PABLO. Ha? (He is about to go.) FRANCISCO. Hoy! Where did you get that cigar? PABLO. Ha? Er-why, somebody gave it to me. FRANCISCO. Who? PABLO. Francis, senor. FRANCISCO. So! Mayordomo smokes owner's cigars. Owner kicks mayordomo out. (He makes a gesture of kicking PABLO, but the latter runs outside into the street. The SERVANT is seen coming in from the corridor. He disappears and comes back with a coat which he throws out of the window.) SERVANT. Hoy-- your coat! Mayordomo-mayor yabang! PETRA. Get back to the kitchen, Francis! SERVANT. Am I still the servant here, senora? PETRA. Yes, I suppose we'll have to bear with you for a while. SERVANT. I won't have to put out the sign anymore-"Wanted A Muchacho"? FRANCISCO. No! Make another and put "Wanted: A Chaperon"! PETRA. Wanted a Chaperon? FRANCISCO. Yes, for our daughter Nena. PETRA. Que verguenza! I, her mother, will chaperon Nena (She stares out the window. She sees somebody coming.) Roberting! Roberting! (ROBERTINGappears.) ROBERTING. What is it, Mother? PETRA (Pointing outside). Isn't that your girl-friend Lia? ROBERTING. Why, yes? PETRA. And who is that old man along with her? ROBERTING (Swallowing). That's-er-that's her father! PETRA. And he's carrying something! ROBERTING. Yes-yes! He's Carrying-a gun!! (Running outside.) Tell them I'm out! FRANCISCO. Ay, Petra! We need two chaperons! Che! (PETRA stares at him.)

CURTAIN (SOURCE: http://upreplib.tripod.com/chaperon.htm)