BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: NANKING STORE

NANKING STORE
by Macario D. Tiu

I WAS only three years old then, but I have vivid memories of Peter and Linda's wedding. What I remember most was jumping and romping on their pristine matrimonial bed after the wedding. I would learn later that it was to ensure that their first-born would be a boy. I was chosen to do the honors because I was robust and fat.

I also remember that I got violently sick after drinking endless bottles of soft drinks. I threw up everything that I had eaten, staining Linda's shimmering satin wedding gown. Practically the entire Chinese community of the city was present. There was so much food that some Bisayan children from the squatter's area were allowed to enter the compound to eat in a shed near the kitchen.

During their first year of marriage, Linda often brought me to their house in Bajada. She and Peter would pick me up after nursery school from our store in their car. She would tell Mother it was her way of easing her loneliness, as all her relatives and friends were in Cebu, her hometown. Sometimes I stayed overnight with them.

I liked going there because she pampered me, feeding me fresh fruits as well as preserved Chinese fruits like dikiam, champoy and kiamoy. Peter was fun too, making me ride piggyback. He was very strong and did not complain about my weight.

Tua Poy, that's what she fondly called me. It meant Fatso. I called her Achi, and Peter, Ahiya. They were a happy couple. I would see them chase each other among the furniture and into the rooms. There was much laughter in the house. It was this happy image that played in my mind about Peter and Linda for a long time.

I was six years old when I sensed that something had gone wrong with their marriage. Linda left the Bajada house and moved into the upstairs portions of Nanking Store which was right across from Father's grocery store in Santa Ana. The Bajada residence was the wedding gift of Peter's parents to the couple. It was therefore strange that Linda would choose to live in Santa Ana while Peter would stay in Bajada, a distance of some three kilometers.

In Santa Ana where the Chinese stores were concentrated, the buildings used to be uniformly two storeys high. The first floor was the store; the second floor was the residence. In time some Chinese grew prosperous and moved out to establish little enclaves in different parts of the city and in the suburbs. We remained in Santa Ana.

One late afternoon, after school, I caught Linda at home talking with Mother.

"Hoa, Tua Poya. You've grown very tall!" Linda greeted me, ruffling my hair.

At that age, the show of affection made me feel awkward and I sidled up to Mother. Linda gave me two Mandarin oranges. I stayed at the table in the same room, eating an orange and pretending not to listen to their conversation.

I noticed that Linda's eyes were sad, not the eyes that I remembered. Her eyes used to be full of light and laughter. Now her eyes were somber even when her voice sounded casual and happy.

"I got bored in Bajada," Linda said. "I thought I'd help Peter at the store."

That was how she explained why she had moved to Santa Ana. I wanted to know if she could not do that by going to the store in the morning and returning home to Bajada at night like Peter did. I wished Mother would ask the question, but she did not.

However, at the New Canton Barbershop I learned the real reason. One night Mother told me to fetch Father because it was past eight o'clock and he hadn't had his dinner. As a family we ate early. Like most Chinese, we would close the store by five and go up to the second floor to eat supper.

The New Canton Barbershop served as the recreation center of our block. At night the sidewalk was brightly lighted, serving as the extension of the barbershop's waiting room. People congregated there to play Chinese chess, to read the Orient News or just talk. It was a very informal place. Father and the other elderly males would go there in shorts and sando shirts.

He was playing chess when I got there. He sat on a stool with one leg raised on the stool.

"Mama says you should go home and eat," I said.

Father looked at me and I immediately noticed that he had had a drink. The focus of his eyes was not straight.

"I have eaten. Go home. Tell Mother I'll follow in a short while," he said.

I stayed on and watched the game although I did not understand a thing.

"I said go home," Father said, glowering at me.

I did not budge.

"This is how children behave now. You tell them to do something and they won't obey," he complained to his opponent. Turning to me, he said, "Go home."

"Check," his opponent said.

"Hoakonga!" Father cried, "I turn around and you cheat me."

His opponent laughed aloud, showing toothless gums.

Father studied the chessboard. "Hoakonga! You've defeated me four times in a row!"

"Seven times."

"What? You're a big cheat and you know that. Certainly five times, no more!"

It elicited another round of laughter from the toothless man. Several people in the adjoining tables joined in the laughter. Father reset the chess pieces to start another game.

"You beat me in chess, but I have six children. All boys. Can you beat that?" he announced.

Father's laughter was very loud. When he had had a drink he was very talkative.

"See this?" he hooked his arm around my waist and drew me to his side. "This is my youngest. Can you beat this?"

The men laughed. They laughed very hard. I did not know what was funny, but it must be because of the incongruous sight of the two of us. He was very thin and I was very fat.

"Well, I have I seven children!" the toothless man said.

"Ah, four daughters. Not counted," Father said.

"Ah Kong! Ah Kong!" somebody said.

The laughter was deafening. Ah Kong lived several blocks away. He had ten children, all daughters, and his wife was pregnant again.

They laughed at their communal joke, but the laughter slowly died down until there was absolute silence. It was a very curious thing. Father saw Peter coming around the corner and he suddenly stopped laughing. The toothless man turned, saw Peter, and he stopped laughing, too. Anybody who saw Peter became instantly quiet so that by the time he was near the barbershop the group was absolutely silent.

It was Peter who broke the silence by greeting Father. He also greeted some people, and suddenly they were alive again. The chess pieces made scraping noises on the board, the newspapers rustled, and people began to talk.

"Hoa, Tua Poya, you've grown very tall!" he said, ruffling my hair.

I smiled shyly at him. He exchanged a few words with Father and then, ruffling my hair once more, he went away. It struck me that he was not the Peter I knew, vigorous and alert. This Peter looked tired, and his shoulders sagged.

I followed him with my eyes. Down the road I noted that his car was parked in front of Nanking Store. But he did not get into his car; instead he went inside the store. It was one of those nights when he would sleep in the store.

"A bad stock," the toothless man said, shaking his head. "Ah Kong has no bones. But Peter is a bad stock. A pity. After four years, still no son. Not even a daughter."

"It's the woman, not Peter," said a man from a neighboring table. "I heard they tried everything. She even had regular massage by a Bisayan medicine woman."

"It's sad. It's very sad," the toothless man said. "His parents want him to junk her, but he loves her."

When Father and I got home, I went to my First Brother's room.

"Why do they say that Ah Kong has no bones?" I asked my brother.

"Where did you learn that?" my brother asked.

"At the barbershop."

"Don't listen in on adult talk," he said. "It's bad manners."

"Well, what does it mean?"

"It means Ah Kong cannot produce a son."

"And what is a bad stock?"

My brother told me to go to sleep, but I persisted.

"It means you cannot produce any children. It's like a seed, see? It won't grow. Why do you ask?" he said.

"They say Peter is a bad stock."

"Well, that's what's going to happen to him if he won't produce a child. But it's not really Peter's problem. It is Linda's problem. She had an appendectomy when she was still single. It could have affected her."

Somehow I felt responsible for their having no children. I worried that I could be the cause. I hoped nobody remembered that I jumped on their matrimonial bed to give them good luck. I failed to give them a son. I failed to give them even a daughter. But nobody really blamed me for it. Everybody agreed it was Linda's problem.

That was why Linda had moved in to Santa Ana.

But the problem was more complicated than this. First Brother explained it all to me patiently. Peter's father was the sole survivor of the Zhin family. He had a brother but he died when still young. The family name was therefore in danger of dying out. It was the worst thing that could happen to a Chinese family, for the bloodline to vanish from the world. Who would pay respects to the ancestors? It was unthinkable. Peter was the family's only hope to carry on the family name, and he still remained childless.

But while everybody agreed that it was Linda's fault, some people also doubted Peter's virility. At the New Canton Barbershop it was the subject of drunken bantering. He was aware that people were talking behind his back. From a very gregarious man, he became withdrawn and no longer socialized.

Instead he put his energies into Nanking Store. His father had retired and had given him full authority. Under his management, Nanking Store expanded, eating up two adjacent doors. It was rumored he had bought a large chunk of Santa Ana and was diversifying into manufacturing and mining.

Once, I met him in the street and I smiled at him but he did not return my greeting. He did not ruffle my hair. He had become a very different man. His mouth was set very hard. He looked like he was angry at something.

The changes in Linda occurred over a period of time. At first, she seemed to be in equal command with Peter in Nanking Store. She had her own desk and sometimes acted as cashier. Later she began to serve customers directly as if she were one of the salesgirls.

Then her personal maid was fired. Gossip blamed this on Peter's parents. She lived pretty much like the three stay-in salesgirls and the young mestizo driver who cooked their own meals and washed their own clothes.

Members of the community whose opinions mattered began to sympathize with her because her in-laws were becoming hostile towards her openly. The mother-in-law made it known to everybody she was unhappy with her. She began to scold Linda in public. "That worthless, barren woman," she would spit out. Linda became a very jittery person. One time, she served tea to her mother-in-law and the cup slid off the saucer. It gave the mother-in-law a perfect excuse to slap Linda in the face in public.

Peter did not help her when it was a matter between his parents and herself. I think at that time he still loved Linda, but he always deferred to the wishes of his parents. When it was that he stopped loving her I would not know. But he had learned to go to night spots and the talk began that he was dating a Bisayan bar girl. First Brother saw this woman and had nothing but contempt for her.

"A bad woman," First brother told me one night about this woman. "All make-up. I don't know what he sees in her."

It seemed that Peter did not even try to hide his affair because he would occasionally bring the girl to a very expensive restaurant in Matina. Matina was somewhat far from Santa Ana, but the rich and mobile young generation Chinese no longer confined themselves to Santa Ana. Many of them saw Peter with the woman. As if to lend credence to the rumor, the occasional night visits he made at Nanking Store stopped. I would not see his car parked there at night again.

One day, Peter brought First Brother to a house in a subdivision in Mandug where he proudly showed him a baby boy. It was now an open secret that he kept his woman there and visited her frequently. First Brother told me about it after swearing me to secrecy, the way Peter had sworn him to secrecy.

"Well, that settles the question. Peter is no bad stock after all. It had been Linda all along," First Brother said.

It turned out Peter showed his baby boy to several other people and made them swear to keep it a secret. In no time at all everybody in the community knew he had finally produced a son. People talked about the scandal in whispers. A son by a Bisayan woman? And a bad woman at that? But they no longer joked about his being a bad stock.

All in all people were happy for Peter. Once again his prestige rose. Peter basked in this renewed respect. He regained his old self; he now walked with his shoulders straight, and looked openly into people's eyes. He also began to socialize at New Canton Barbershop. And whenever we met, he would ruffle my hair.

As for his parents, they acted as if nothing had happened. Perhaps they knew about the scandal, but pretended not to know. They were caught in a dilemma. On one hand, it should make them happy that Peter finally produced a son. On the other hand, they did not relish the idea of having a half-breed for a grandson, the old generation Chinese being conscious of racial purity. What was certain though was that they remained unkind to Linda.

So there came a time when nobody was paying any attention anymore to Linda, not even Peter. Our neighbors began to accept her fate. It was natural for her to get scolded by her mother-in-law in public. It was natural that she should stay with the salesgirls and the driver. She no longer visited with Mother. She rarely went out, and when she did, she wore a scarf over her head, as if she were ashamed for people to see her. Once in the street I greeted her--she looked at me with panic in her eyes, mumbled something, drew her scarf down to cover her face, and hurriedly walked away.

First Brother had told me once that Linda's degradation was rather a strange case. She was an educated girl, and although her family was not rich, it was not poor either. Why she allowed herself to be treated that way was something that baffled people. She was not that submissive before. Once, I was witness to how she stood her ground. Her mother-in-law had ordered her to remove a painting of an eagle from a living room wall of their Bajada house, saying it was bad feng shui. With great courtesy, Linda refused, saying it was beautiful. But the mother-in-law won in the end. She nagged Peter about it, and he removed the painting.

When the Bisayan woman gave Peter a second son, it no longer created a stir in the community. What created a minor stir was that late one night, when the New Canton Barbershop was about to close and there were only a few people left, Peter dropped by with his eldest son whom he carried piggyback. First Brother was there. He said everybody pretended the boy did not exist.

Then Peter died in a car accident in the Buhangin Diversion Road. He was returning from Mandug and a truck rammed his car, killing him instantly. I cried when I heard about it, remembering how he had been good to me.

At the wake, Linda took her place two rows behind her mother-in-law who completely ignored her. People passed by her and expressed their condolences very quickly, as if they were afraid of being seen doing so by the mother-in-law. At the burial, Linda stood stoically throughout the ceremony, and when Peter was finally interred, she swooned.

A few weeks after Peter's burial, we learned that Linda's mother-in-law wanted her out of Nanking Store. She offered Linda a tempting amount of money. People thought it was a vicious thing to do, but none could help her. It was a purely family affair. However, a month or two passed and Linda was still in Nanking Store. In fact, Linda was now taking over Peter's work.

I was happy to see that she had begun to stir herself to life. It was ironic that she would do so only after her husband's death. But at the same time, we feared for her. Her mother-in-law's hostility was implacable. She blamed Linda for everything. She knew about the scandal all along, and she never forgave Linda for making Peter the laughing stock of the community, forcing him into the arms of a Bisayan girl of an unsavory reputation and producing half-breed bastard sons.

We waited keenly for the showdown that was coming. A flurry of emissaries went to Nanking Store but Linda stood pat on her decision to stay. Then one morning, her mother-in-law herself came in her flashy Mercedes. We learned about what actually happened through our domestic helper who got her story from the stay-in salesgirls. That was how the entire community learned the details of the confrontation.

According to them, Linda ran upstairs to avoid talking to her mother-in-law. But the older woman followed and started berating her and calling her names. Linda kept her composure. She did not even retaliate when the older woman slapped her. But when the mother-in-law grabbed Linda's hair, intending to drag her down the stairs, Linda kicked her in the shin. The old woman went wild and flayed at Linda. Linda at first fought back defensively, but as the older woman kept on, she finally slapped her mother-in-law hard in the face. Stunned, the older woman retreated, shouting threats at her. She never showed her face in Santa Ana again.

While some conservative parties in the community did not approve of Linda's actions, many others cheered her secretly. They were sad, though, that the mother-in-law, otherwise a good woman, would become a cruel woman out of desperation to protect and perpetuate the family name.

Since the enmity had become violent, the break was now total and absolute. This family quarrel provided an interesting diversion in the entire community; we followed each and every twist of its development like a TV soap opera. When the in-laws hired a lawyer, Linda also hired her own lawyer. It was going to be an ugly fight over property.

Meanwhile, Linda's transformation fascinated the entire community. She had removed her scarf and made herself visible in the community again. I was glad that every time I saw her she was getting back to her old self. Indeed it was only then that I noticed how beautiful she was. She had well-shaped lips that needed no lipstick. Her eyes sparkled. Color had returned to her cheeks, accentuating her fine complexion. Blooming, the women said, seeming to thrive on the fight to remain in Nanking Store. The young men sat up whenever she passed by. But they would shake their heads, and say "What a pity, she's barren."

Then without warning the in-laws suddenly moved to Manila, bringing with them the two bastard sons. They made it known to everybody that it was to show their contempt for Linda. It was said that the other woman received a handsome amount so she would never disturb them again.

We all thought that was that. For several months an uneasy peace settled down in Nanking Store as the struggle shifted to the courts. People pursued other interests. Then to the utter horror of the community, they realized Linda was pregnant.

Like most people, I thought at first that she was just getting fat. But everyday it was getting obvious that her body was growing. People had mixed reactions. When she could not bear a child she was a disgrace. Now that she was pregnant, she was still a disgrace. But she did not care about what people thought or said about her. Wearing a pair of elastic pants that highlighted her swollen belly, she walked all over Santa Ana. She dropped by every store on our block and chatted with the storeowners, as if to make sure that everybody knew she was pregnant.

There was no other suspect for her condition but the driver. Nobody had ever paid him any attention before, and now they watched him closely. He was a shy mestizo about Peter's age. A very dependable fellow, yes. And good-looking, they now grudgingly admitted.

"Naughty, naughty," the young men teased him, some of whom turned unfriendly. Unused to attention, the driver went on leave to visit his parents in Iligan City.

One night, I arrived home to find Linda talking with Mother.

"Hoa, Tua Poya! You're so tall!" she greeted me. "Here are some oranges. I know you like them."

I said my thanks. How heavy with child she was!

"How old are you now?"

"Twelve," I said.

"Hmm, you're a man already. I should start calling you Napoleon, huh? Well, Napoleon, I've come here to say goodbye to your mother, and to you, too."

She smiled; it was the smile I remembered when I was still very young, the smile of my childhood.

"Tomorrow, I'm going to Iligan to fetch Oliver. Then we'll proceed to Cebu to visit my parents. Would you like to go with me?"

I looked at Mother. She was teary eyed. Linda stood up and ruffled my hair.

"So tall," she said.

That was two years ago. We have not heard from Linda again. Nanking Store remains closed. The store sign has streaked into pastel colors like a stale wedding cake. First Brother says it is best for Linda to stay away. As for me, I am happy for her but I keep wondering if she had given birth to a boy.

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: MEETING

MEETING
by Consorcio Borje

THE little church stood in the shadow of acacia trees. A narrow gravel path lined with cucharita hedges led from the street into its cool, quiet yard with the moss on the dim boles of the trees and the dew on the grasses. The roar of the dusty, blindingly white city surged and broke like a sea along the concrete pavements that skirted the churchyard, but went no farther.

At the whitewashed wooden gate, the young man stood diffidently. Nervously fingering his battered felt hat, he pushed in the gate, stepped inside, allowed it to swing back, and then slowly walked down the path.

The chilly dampness of the place rested like a cool hand upon his fevered brow, and he expelled a breath of relief. He walked as slowly as he could, savoring through all the pores of his lean young frame the balm of this sudden reprieve from the heat and brutal impersonality of the big city.

Three concrete steps led up into the vestibule. At the top step he saw the congregation inside the heavy hardwood doors, and hesitated.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that , and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

The voice was long and sonorous, and it struck a responsive chord in the young man's heart, but he could not see the speaker. The last pew hid the altar from him. Over the pew he could see the fluted row of organ pipes, the massive rivet-studded rafters, light that streamed down at a deep angle from a tall window of colored glass.

"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."

For perhaps an hour the young man stood at the door, feeling deeply unhappy, frightened, and lost. He dared not enter. He looked down at his torn, dusty shoes, his stained clothes, felt the growth of beard on his chin, and already he could feel the cold eyes of the people in the church examining him. He retired quietly to one side of the vestibule, where he could not be seen from the inside, and leaned against the wall to rest his trembling limbs.

And then the people began streaming out, and he felt relieved that they did not even glance his way. After a while, he looked into the door. There was no one in. He crossed himself quickly and entered.

For a long time he sat there staring dully at the sounding emptiness before him, for breaking against the wall still was the reverberation of bells tolled a long time ago.

Through all this he could hear his heart beating in a weak slow measure, and again the beatific sense of completeness and of being filled his soul like mellow wine. The seat was deep and restful. The wood was firm and cool. He sank back and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he saw that his hat had fallen to the floor. The five-centavo pancit mami that he had eaten last night had already evaporated, and he felt a shot of pain in his middle as he stooped down to recover his hat. After the pain, a weakness and trembling seized his limbs, and cold sweat beaded his forehead. The church swam before his eyes.

Sunlight streamed through the west windows. From its angle he knew it must be late in the afternoon. He had been asleep in the church for the greater part of the day, and now he felt again vaguely forsaken, and the chill and the solitude were no longer very soothing but were almost terrifying.

Rocking from one foot to the other, he got up hastily and made for the door, and it was then that he saw the girl standing at his back.

"I've been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo for the sunlight crowned it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.

"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"

"Yes? But let's take a seat, please."

He licked his dry lips. "I didn't mean to sleep here. I just fell asleep, that's all."

"There's no harm in that, I'm sure," she said reassuringly taking her seat beside him and pulling him down. "You're a stranger here?"

"I came to the city about a week ago."

"Staying with relatives?" Her voice was direct and cool.

"No relatives, ma'am. I thought I could get a job here. I had heard so much about opportunities here, and I wanted to work myself through college…"

She listened quietly. The quick responsive look in her eyes brought his confidence back and made him give details about his life and his recent misadventures he would not have revealed otherwise.

"We are from the same province as you," she said. "My father works in the city hall. He got transferred here because my mother wants to see us through school. Come home with me, ha? We want you to tell us about the province. It was five years ago when we were there last. Yes, they will like to see you. Don't be ashamed. You can't blame people for not knowing any one in the city."

She was only sixteen, or thereabouts, he could see in the calesa which they took; she was dressed in white, simply and cleanly, almost to the point of the anaesthetic severity of the nurse, but there was a subtle perfume about her like that of rosal and then again like that of sampaguita, and the lines of her face were clean and young and sweet.

"Why, I'd be ashamed--" he began again, looking at himself with horror.

"No more of that, ha?" She flashed a smile at him, her lips a light rose like her cheeks, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

The horses' hoofs beat a tattoo on the street cobbles, round this corner, round that corner, ancient Spanish houses under acacia trees, rows of tenements, sounding walls of old Intramuros, a tangle of horse-drawn and motor traffic.

Everything went suddenly white at once.

The first thing that he knew was the mildly pungent smell of rubbing alcohol and liniment. The place he was in was dark, except for a street light that came in through the billowing curtain in the window. He was in a bed, a deep wide bed, with mattress and cool covers fragrant with soap and starch and ironing. From beyond the darkness to one side came to him the faint sound of voices and the tinkle of a piano.

He jerked up with a great consciousness of guilt, but he sank back again, dizziness swamping him back and overpowering him. Lying back there, accusing himself of imposing on a stranger's hospitality, he began to cry, but he wiped away his tears quickly when he saw the door slowly open and a head showed in the opening.

"Oh, you're awake now."

It was the girl, and she ran softly in. He felt greatly disturbed within. She was looking down now and her hand was upon his brow and he could feel the warmth of her and get the smell of her.

"Good!" she exclaimed and ran lightly out, closing the door behind her. In a minute, she was back with two other persons. A switch clicked and the room sprang into light, and he could see there was an elderly woman whom she resembled closely, and an elderly man in pajamas.

"Well!" said the man heartily. He had a pipe gripped by the bowl in one of his hands. "So this is the cababayan. Well!"

The woman came over and laid her hand on his forehead. A wedding ring shone on one finger. He looked up into her eyes, and all at once he knew he need not be afraid…

The girl's parents, it later developed, were among the more influential of the parishioners, and he was able to get a job through them as church janitor, with bed and board provided free in the servants' quarters of the rectory. Besides sprucing up the church, he had charge of the lawn which he mowed and the hedges which he trimmed. Out of his pay of twenty pesos a month he managed to send home ten pesos to his mother in the month's-end mail.

"Good morning," he would say humbly to the girl, Lita, when Sundays came and she was in the church. Then he would hurry before her to dust the pew she always took with her parents.

"How do you do?" Lita would ask, and sometimes she would say, "Pedro, you must come and get your Sunday dinner with us. You don't do it so regularly, now."

From the back of the congregation, dressed in his best white-cotton suit, his eighty-centavo necktie, his tan-and-white Gandara shoes, he would listen raptly to her sing in the choir. He could always tell her voice, and he could always see her lovely radiant face magnified among the rows of others.

Three afternoons a week, a calesa would halt at the church gate, and Lita would alight in her plain white dress. She would come down the cucharita-lined path, and she would enter the church where for an hour she would sit or kneel, just looking at the altar, and her lips would move silently. Then would Pedro hush his steps, and he would put aside his lawnmower and his shears and look at Lita longingly through the window, at her profile outlined against the lighted side of the church.

On her seventeenth birthday, Lita gave Pedro a picture. It showed her with eyelashes swept up and lips half-parted in a smile. A stray lock fell against one cheek. One dainty end of a lace bow curled against the straight line of her throat, while the other reclined against the swell of her bosom.

"I can keep this?" asked Pedro wonderingly, and Lita said with a thrill of laughter. "Why yes, it's yours. Why do you have to ask?"

He had enrolled in a night collegiate course prepared especially for working students, but out of the money for school fees and books he managed to save as much as fifty centavos at a time. He spent his savings for a neat little picture frame, painted black and silver, and put Lita's picture before him as he pored over his textbooks at home.

"How are you getting along in school?" said Lita one afternoon, after she came out of the church.

"At least I passed in all my subjects last semester."

"That's fine. I'm sure you'll make an engineer yet." She hesitated at the gate, and turned back to him slowly. "Don't let anything distract you from your work," she said. "put your mind on it and keep it there."

He thought, she looks very young, but too deadly serious. That frown on her face. That mature cast of her mouth. But he only said, "Thank you, Miss Miel."

"Miss, still?" She laughed again, and the world was shining once more, no longer full of problems and dark and weighty hues, but full of the silvery ringing of bells and the light patter of dancing feet.

"I think I can help you," she went on. "About trigonometry now. It's my favorite subject."

"I cannot understand the cosine of--"

"You mean Thomas' theory? It's easy. Like this." And thereupon she knelt on the path and with a twig traced figures in the light fluff.

"You should make a good engineer, there are such things as women engineers, you know," he ventured.

"My father said I should," Lita confided. "But my greatest interest does not lie in that way, Pedro. It lies somewhere else. Should I tell you?" She crinkled her nose at him, but again she was suddenly grave. After a pause: "I've never wanted to grow up," she suddenly shot at him and hurriedly picked herself up, ran out of the gate, hailed a calesa and drove away.

Pedro's perplexity was solved the following afternoon when Lita came again to the church to pray. It was Saturday afternoon and Pedro was dusting. This time she had on a black veil that fell to the tip of her nose. She was a tiny figure kneeling at the far end of the church. Her head was bowed low, but he thought he could see her lips moving. He moved about on tiptoe, used his mop gently.

He was on the floor reaching under a remote corner when he heard her light "H'lo" behind him. He rose up hastily and nodded his greeting, "Good afternoon, Miss Miel."

"Good afternoon, Mister Deño."

"Er, Lita"

"That's better. Did I startle you yesterday afternoon?"

"You did."

Then Lita was telling him she was going to be a nun.

"But why?" asked Pedro incredulously.

"Does it sound foolish to you?" Her lashes swept down on her cheek, and for the first time he noticed that she had the pallid look as of one in cloistered, moss-grown nunneries.

"I don't know," he said, "I don't know." And then he went on, feeling foolish, "But you can't want to give up all this for life imprisonment."

"It is not life imprisonment," she said gravely, "but the essence of what I've always wanted. All my life I've wanted complete communion with God."

He shook his head to clear it of the cobweb of pain and dizziness, and her hand crept to his. The touch of it sent an electric shock through his whole frame.

"Even as a child," she went on, "I had always wanted to have a room that looked much like a church, with a hard, bare floor, and hard, bare seats, and an altar, and an image of Mother and Child."

She was looking down kindly at him, red spots in her white cheeks. "Now, as I live from day to day, it seems as if I'm being swept farther and farther away from that childhood dream. I want my childhood back. I hunger for its simplicity and its faith. It seems as if deep inside me I'm parched and thirsty, and I need the coolness and dampness of seclusion. You understand, don't you?"

Again it seemed as if the church rustled with the prayer and devoutness of a congregation, and there was again, that sonorous voice saying, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God."

"Good-bye," said Lita, her long, white, shapely fingers tightening on his rough, dark ones.

"I'll not see you again?"

She shook her head slowly. Suddenly she bent down and kissed him on the cheek, and as suddenly she ran down the aisle and out of the door.

As he sat in a pew, the bells were silent, but still they seemed to be tolling from far away, the air vibrating with their ringing. He sat in the pew and stared dully in front of him. Light streamed in from an eastern window. The ghostly congregation still rustled with its faith and sacrifice. On his cheek her lips were still warm.

But suppose, he thought, it had been some other way. Suppose:

"I'VE been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo with the sunlight crowning it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.

"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"

And then they were walking down to the whitewashed gate, and he was vaguely surprised that there was no calesa waiting there. But he went on to cross the street nevertheless, keeping in his eyes the slim, white figure, with the clean, young lines of face.

Outside the churchyard, the traffic was heavy as usual, and the lorry drivers swore mightily at the broken-down old man, with that vague half-smile on his face, who was crossing the street and breaking all rules of pedestrian traffic and all the laws of self-preservation.

"That engineer, Pedro Deño, you know," said one of a couple driving a car near the scene. "Dirty rich, but damned absent-minded, too."

"That's the matter with these successful people," said the other. "They put their mind on a thing and keep it there, to the exclusion of all others, even motor traffic."

"Yeh, Deño, for instance. Must be thinking of house plans and bridges."