Literature During the American Regime

A New Language
Unlike the Spaniards, the American went into intensive effort to propagate their language –
American English. American teachers were sent to the Philippines to teach English to the Filipinos

An Egalitarian Public School System

The establishment of the public school system, egalitarian in nature, was as added factor that
facilitated the linguistic change - over–from Spanish and the various vernaculars into the new
language. The schools were open to anyone who could afford it – rich or poor alike.
The University of the Philippines was established in 1908, and initially had American
Professors who taught many Filipinos to write in English. In less than two (2) decades, Filipinos were
writing literary works about the daily lives of the Filipinos using English language as their medium.
The Philippine Collegian, a U.P. school organ, provided an outlet for the literature produced by the
students and the faculty as well.

Newspapers and Periodicals

The publication of quite a number of newspapers and periodicals gave added impetus to the
development of Philippine literature in English and sprinkling of Spanish and the vernaculars.
Among the Filipino–owned periodicals were The Philippine Review (1916), The Citizen
(1918), Philippine National Weekly (1917), The Rising Philippines (1918), and The Philippine
Republic (1923).
The College Folio, published by the students of the College of Philosophy, Science, and Letters
of U.P. was the first student publication of the state university. It contained some of the better
production of the Filipino writers in 1920’s.
The Philippine Free Press, in many ways, was the most popular periodical publication in
English. It was the first magazine that gave serious attention to the development of the short story.

Period of Imitation, Changes in Content, and Style

The early literary outputs were characterized as parochial in content. Fiction and drama dealt
with simple conflict in one’s self and romantic love affairs.
In the beginning, writers tried to imitate models both from England and the United States –
Hemingway, O. Henry, Saroyan, etc.
Dr. George Pope Shannon, writing in The Literary Apprentice of 1982 listed the “inexcusables”
imputed to the nascent Filipino Literature in English as follows: slovenly versification, bad grammar
and idiom inappropriate or meaningless diction, vague or confused imagery.

A Steady Growth in Form

Novel writing was among the first arts to be attempted by the Filipino writers. Among the early
writers were: Steven Javellana – Without Seeing the Dawn published in 1947 and N. V. Gonzales –
The Winds of April in 1941.

Source: Vinuya, Remedios V. (2011) Philippine Literature a Statement of Ourselves. Granbooks Publishing Inc. Metro, Manila.
My Father Goes To Court
by Carlos Bulosan

When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of
Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so for several
years afterward we all lived in the town, though he preferred living in the country. We had a next-door
neighbor, a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While we boys
and girls played and sand in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. His house
was so tall that his children could look in the windows of our house and watch us as we played, or
slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.

Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of the
food was wafted down to us from the windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the
wonderful smell of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood
outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of
bacon or ham. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbor’s servants roasted three chickens. The
chickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting
odor. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted out
to us.

Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one by one,
as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun every day and
bathed in the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes we
wrestled with one another in the house before we went out to play.

We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other neighbors who passed by
our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in our laughter.

Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go in to the living room and stand
in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers and making faces
at himself, and then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.

There was plenty to make us laugh. There was, for instance, the day one of my brothers came home
and brought a small bundle under his arm, pretending that he brought something to eat, maybe a leg of
lamb or something as extravagant as that to make our mouths water. He rushed to mother and through
the bundle into her lap. We all stood around, watching mother undo the complicated strings. Suddenly
a black cat leaped out of the bundle and ran wildly around the house. Mother chased my brother and
beat him with her little fists, while the rest of us bent double, choking with laughter.

Another time one of my sisters suddenly started screaming in the middle of the night. Mother reached
her first and tried to calm her. My sister cried and groaned. When father lifted the lamp, my sister
stared at us with shame in her eyes.

“What is it?” other asked.

“I’m pregnant!” she cried.

“Don’t be a fool!” Father shouted.

“You’re only a child,” Mother said.

“I’m pregnant, I tell you!” she cried.

Father knelt by my sister. He put his hand on her belly and rubbed it gently. “How do you know you
are pregnant?” he asked.

“Feel it!” she cried.

We put our hands on her belly. There was something moving inside. Father was frightened. Mother
was shocked. “Who’s the man?” she asked.

“There’s no man,” my sister said.

‘What is it then?” Father asked.

Suddenly my sister opened her blouse and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother fainted, father dropped the
lamp, the oil spilled on the floor, and my sister’s blanket caught fire. One of my brothers laughed so
hard he rolled on the floor.

When the fire was extinguished and Mother was revived, we turned to bed and tried to sleep, but Father
kept on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more. Mother got up again and lighted the oil lamp;
we rolled up the mats on the floor and began dancing about and laughing with all our might. We made
so much noise that all our neighbors except the rich family came into the yard and joined us in loud,
genuine laughter.

It was like that for years.

As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anemic, while we grew even more robust
and full of fire. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich man started to
cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children started
to cough one after the other. At night their coughing sounded like barking of a herd of seals. We hung
outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what had happened to them. We knew that
they were not sick from lack of nourishing food because they were still always frying something
delicious to eat.

One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He looked at my sisters, who
had grown fat with laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave, which is
the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and ran through the house, shutting
all the windows.

From that day on, the windows of our neighbor’s house were closed. The children did not come
outdoors anymore. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight the
windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our
house.

One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich man
had filled a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and asked
him what it was all about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit
of his wealth and food.

When the day came for us to appear in court, Father brushed his old army uniform and borrowed a pair
of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the center of the
courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall. Father
kept jumping up his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though he were defending himself
before an imaginary jury.

The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With him
was his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the room and
sat on a high chair. We stood up in a hurry and sat down again.

After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge took at father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.

“I don’t need a lawyer judge.” He said.

“Proceed,” said the judge.

The rich man’s lawyer jumped and pointed his finger at Father, “Do you or do you not agree that you
have been stealing the spirit of the complainant’s wealth and food?”

“I do not!” Father said.

“Do you or do you not agree that while the complainant’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of lambs
and young chicken breasts, you and your family hung outside your windows and inhaled the heavenly
spirit of the food?”

“I agree,” Father said.

“How do you account for that?”

Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to see
the children of the complainant, Judge.”

“Bring the children of the complainant.”

They came shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands. They were so amazed to see
the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down without looking
up. They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.
Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he said, “I
should like to cross-examine the complainant.”

“Proceed.”

“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours became
morose and sad?” Father asked.

“Yes.”

“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children were
sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo pieces that
he took out his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw in
their small change.

“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a minutes, Judge?” Father asked.

“As you wish.”

“Thank you,” Father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost full of
coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.

“Are you ready?” Father called.

“Proceed.” The judge said.

The sweet tinkle of coins carried beautifully into the room. The spectators turned their faces toward
the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complainant.

“Did you hear it?” he asked.

“Hear what?” the man asked.

“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you are paid.” Father said.

The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer rushed to
his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.

“Case dismissed,” he said.

Father strutted around the courtroom. The judge even came down to his high chair to shake hands with
him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”
“You like to hear my family laugh, judge?” Father asked.

“Why not?”

Did you hear that children?” Father said.

My sister started it. The rest of us followed them and soon the spectators were laughing with us, holding
their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest of all.

Source:gabrielslibrary.blogspot.com
How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife
By Manuel E. Arguilla

She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. She was
tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth.

"You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they
were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple
appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She
held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing
his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a
drum.

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

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

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

"Maria---" my brother Leon said.

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

"Yes, Noel."

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

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

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

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

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

We stood alone on the roadside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything."
Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand Labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed
as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the
back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road
echoed in my ears.
She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them
so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. Her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I
saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt
on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I
made him turn around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

His fingers bit into my shoulder.

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

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

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

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

I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees.
Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the
deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim,
grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell
of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots
exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.
"Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west,
almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.

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

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

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

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

"Making fun of me, Maria?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So near already."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Noel," she said.

"Yes, Maria."

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

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

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

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

"Father... where is he?"

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

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

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

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

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

He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.

"She is very beautiful, Father."

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

"No, Father, she was not afraid."

"On the way---"

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

"What did he sing?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: http://www.seasite.niu.edu/
FOOTNOTE to YOUTH
Jose Garcia Villa
The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about
Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it to its shed and
fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of
serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought
came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who
chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong’s grandmother.

I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.

The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many
slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short
colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong’s foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and
jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought
of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more.

Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head
to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal walked alongside
him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at
it without interests.

Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry,
Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already was
dark–these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man–he was a man. Dodong felt
insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man
grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.

He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he
dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool
sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown
face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream
even during the day.

Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field
work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he
had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.

Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass.
The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing,
then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.

It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the
low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around the
table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.
Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one
held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his
glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the
remainder for his parents.

Dodong’s mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash
them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he
was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his
mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.
His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew.

Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father
was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if
he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his
father.

Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he
had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and
without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent
moon outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His
father looked old now.

“I am going to marry Teang,” Dodong said.

His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense
and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was
uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.

“I will marry Teang,” Dodong repeated. “I will marry Teang.”

His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.

“I asked her last night to marry me and she said…yes. I want your permission. I… want… it….” There
was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong
looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke
dully the night stillness.

“Must you marry, Dodong?”

Dodong resented his father’s questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick
impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.

“You are very young, Dodong.”

“I’m… seventeen.”

“That’s very young to get married at.”

“I… I want to marry…Teang’s a good girl.”

“Tell your mother,” his father said.

“You tell her, tatay.”

“Dodong, you tell your inay.”

“You tell her.”

“All right, Dodong.”

“You will let me marry Teang?”

“Son, if that is your wish… of course…” There was a strange helpless light in his father’s eyes. Dodong
did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.

Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while
he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang
and himself. Sweet young dream….
——————————————-
Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was
still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he
had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the
house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang.

Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to
scream like that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth
was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.

In a few moments he would be a father. “Father, father,” he whispered the word with awe, with
strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable…
“Your son,” people would soon be telling him. “Your son, Dodong.”

Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his
callused toes. Suppose he had ten children… What made him think that? What was the matter with
him? God!

He heard his mother’s voice from the house:

“Come up, Dodong. It is over.”

Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of
his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no properly his. He dropped
his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.
“Dodong,” his mother called again. “Dodong.”

He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.

“It is a boy,” his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.

Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents’ eyes seemed
to pierce him through and he felt limp.

He wanted to hide from them, to run away.

“Dodong, you come up. You come up,” he mother said.

Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.

“Dodong. Dodong.”

“I’ll… come up.”

Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His
heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so
that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and
his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to
punish him.

His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.

“Son,” his father said.

And his mother: “Dodong…”

How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.

“Teang?” Dodong said.

“She’s sleeping. But you go on…”

His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag
with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.

Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that
feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative.

The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could
not control the swelling of happiness in him.
“You give him to me. You give him to me,” Dodong said.
——————————————-

Blas was not Dodong’s only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a new child
came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of children
could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.

Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even
if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The
children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing
him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has
been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong.
Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was
childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children.

Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong…

Dodong whom life had made ugly.

One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight,
tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He wanted to be wise
about many things.

One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth’s dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was
forsaken… after Love.

Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make
youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house
humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.

When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and
Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas’s steps, for he could not sleep well of
nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could
not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.

“You better go to sleep. It is late,” Dodong said.

Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.

Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

“Itay …,” Blas called softly.

Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.

“
I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight.”
Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.

“Itay, you think it over.”

Dodong lay silent.

“I love Tona and… I want her.”

Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything
was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.

“You want to marry Tona,” Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young.
The life that would follow marriage would be hard…

“Yes.”

“Must you marry?”

Blas’s voice stilled with resentment. “I will marry Tona.”

Dodong kept silent, hurt.

“You have objections, Itay?” Blas asked acridly.

“Son… n-none…” (But truly, God, I don’t want Blas to marry yet… not yet. I don’t want Blas to marry
yet….)

But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph… now. Love must triumph…
now. Afterwards… it will be life.

As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong… and then Life.

Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.