BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: ALL OVER THE WORLD

ALL OVER THE WORLD
by Vicente Rivera, Jr.

ONE evening in August 1941, I came out of a late movie to a silent, cold night. I shivered a little as I stood for a moment in the narrow street, looking up at the distant sky, alive with stars. I stood there, letting the night wind seep through me, and listening. The street was empty, the houses on the street dim—with the kind of ghostly dimness that seems to embrace sleeping houses. I had always liked empty streets in the night; I had always stopped for a while in these streets listening for something I did not quite know what. Perhaps for low, soft cries that empty streets and sleeping houses seem to share in the night.
I lived in an old, nearly crumbling apartment house just across the street from the moviehouse. From the street, I could see into the open courtyard, around which rooms for the tenants, mostly a whole family to a single room, were ranged. My room, like all the other rooms on the groundfloor, opened on this court. Three other boys, my cousins, shared the room with me. As I turned into the courtyard from the street, I noticed that the light over our study-table, which stood on the corridor outside our room, was still burning. Earlier in the evening after supper, I had taken out my books to study, but I went to a movie instead. I must have forgotten to turn off the light; apparently, the boys had forgotten, too.
I went around the low screen that partitioned off our “study” and there was a girl reading at the table. We looked at each other, startled. I had never seen her before. She was about eleven years old, and she wore a faded blue dress. She had long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. She was reading my copy of Greek Myths.
The eyes she had turned to me were wide, darkened a little by apprehension. For a long time neither of us said anything. She was a delicately pretty girl with a fine, smooth. pale olive skin that shone richly in the yellow light. Her nose was straight, small and finely molded. Her lips, full and red, were fixed and tense. And there was something else about her. Something lonely? something lost?
“I know,” I said, “I like stories, too. I read anything good I find lying around. Have you been reading long?”
“Yes,” she said. not looking at me now. She got up slowly, closing the book. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you want to read anymore? I asked her, trying to smile, trying to make her feel that everything was all right.
“No.” she said, “thank you.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the book. “It’s late. You ought to be in bed. But, you can take this along.”
She hesitated, hanging back, then shyly she took the book, brought it to her side. She looked down at her feet uncertain as to where to turn.
“You live here?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“What room?”
She turned her face and nodded towards the far corner, across the courtyard, to a little room near the communal kitchen. It was the room occupied by the janitor: a small square room with no windows except for a transom above the door.
“You live with Mang Lucio?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“How long have you been here? I haven’t seen you before, have I?”
“I’ve always been here. I’ve seen you.”
“Oh. Well, good night—your name?”
“Maria.”
“Good night, Maria.”
She turned quickly, ran across the courtyard, straight to her room, and closed the door without looking back.
I undressed, turned off the light and lay in bed dreaming of far-away things. I was twenty-one and had a job for the first time. The salary was not much and I lived in a house that was slowly coming apart, but life seemed good. And in the evening when the noise of living had died down and you lay safe in bed, you could dream of better times, look back and ahead, and find that life could be gentle—even with the hardness. And afterwards, when the night had grown colder, and suddenly you felt alone in the world, adrift, caught in a current of mystery that came in the hour between sleep and waking, the vaguely frightening loneliness only brought you closer to everything, to the walls and the shadows on the walls, to the other sleeping people in the room, to everything within and beyond this house, this street, this city, everywhere.
I met Maria again one early evening, a week later, as I was coming home from the office. I saw her walking ahead of me, slowly, as if she could not be too careful, and with a kind of grownup poise that was somehow touching. But I did not know it was Maria until she stopped and I overtook her.
She was wearing a white dress that had been old many months ago. She wore a pair of brown sneakers that had been white once. She had stopped to look at the posters of pictures advertised as “Coming” to our neighborhood theater.
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual.
She smiled at me and looked away quickly. She did not say anything nor did she step away. I felt her shyness, but there was no self-consciousness, none of the tenseness and restraint of the night we first met. I stood beside her, looked at the pictures tacked to a tilted board, and tried whistling a tune.
She turned to go, hesitated, and looked at me full in the eyes. There was again that wide-eyed—and sad? —stare. I smiled, feeling a remote desire to comfort her, as if it would do any good, as if it was comfort she needed.
“I’ll return your book now,” she said.
“You’ve finished it?”
“Yes.”
We walked down the shadowed street. Magallanes Street in Intramuros, like all the other streets there, was not wide enough, hemmed in by old, mostly unpainted houses, clumsy and unlovely, even in the darkening light of the fading day.
We went into the apartment house and I followed her across the court. I stood outside the door which she closed carefully after her. She came out almost immediately and put in my hands the book of Greek myths. She did not look at me as she stood straight and remote.
“My name is Felix,” I said.
She smiled suddenly. It was a little smile, almost an unfinished smile. But, somehow, it felt special, something given from way deep inside in sincere friendship.
I walked away whistling. At the door of my room, I stopped and looked back. Maria was not in sight. Her door was firmly closed.
August, 1941, was a warm month. The hangover of summer still permeated the air, specially in Intramuros. But, like some of the days of late summer, there were afternoons when the weather was soft and clear, the sky a watery green, with a shell-like quality to it that almost made you see through and beyond, so that, watching it made you lightheaded.
I walked out of the office one day into just such an afternoon. The day had been full of grinding work—like all the other days past. I was tired. I walked slowly, towards the far side of the old city, where traffic was not heavy. On the street there were old trees, as old as the walls that enclosed the city. Half-way towards school, I changed my mind and headed for the gate that led out to Bonifacio Drive. I needed stiffer winds, wider skies. I needed all of the afternoon to myself.
Maria was sitting on the first bench, as you went up the sloping drive that curved away from the western gate. She saw me before I saw her. When I looked her way, she was already smiling that half-smile of hers, which even so told you all the truth she knew, without your asking.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s a small world.”
“What?”
“I said it’s nice running into you. Do you always come here?”
“As often as I can. I go to many places.”
“Doesn’t your uncle disapprove?”
“No. He’s never around. Besides, he doesn’t mind anything.”
“Where do you go?”
“Oh, up on the walls. In the gardens up there, near Victoria gate. D’you know?”
“I think so. What do you do up there?”
“Sit down and—”
“And what?”
“Nothing. Just sit down.”
She fell silent. Something seemed to come between us. She was suddenly far-away. It was like the first night again. I decided to change the subject.
“Look,” I said, carefully, “where are your folks?”
“You mean, my mother and father?”
“Yes. And your brothers and sisters, if any.”
“My mother and father are dead. My elder sister is married. She’s in the province. There isn’t anybody else.”
“Did you grow up with your uncle?”
“I think so.”
We were silent again. Maria had answered my questions without embarrassment. almost without emotion, in a cool light voice that had no tone.
“Are you in school, Maria?”
“Yes.”
“What grade?”
“Six.”
“How d’you like it?”
“Oh, I like it.”
“I know you like reading.”
She had no comment. The afternoon had waned. The breeze from the sea had died down. The last lingering warmth of the sun was now edged with cold. The trees and buildings in the distance seemed to flounder in a red-gold mist. It was a time of day that never failed to carry an enchantment for me. Maria and I sat still together, caught in some spell that made the silence between us right, that made our being together on a bench in the boulevard, man and girl, stranger and stranger, a thing not to be wondered at, as natural and inevitable as the lengthening shadows before the setting sun.
Other days came, and soon it was the season of the rain. The city grew dim and gray at the first onslaught of the monsoon. There were no more walks in the sun. I caught a cold.
Maria and I had become friends now, though we saw each other infrequently. I became engrossed in my studies. You could not do anything else in a city caught in the rains. September came and went.
In November, the sun broke through the now ever present clouds, and for three or four days we had bright clear weather. Then, my mind once again began flitting from my desk, to the walls outside the office, to the gardens on the walls and the benches under the trees in the boulevards. Once, while working on a particularly bad copy on the news desk, my mind scattered, the way it sometimes does and, coming together again, went back to that first meeting with Maria. And the remembrance came clear, coming into sharper focus—the electric light, the shadows around us, the stillness. And Maria, with her wide-eyed stare, the lost look in her eyes…

IN December, I had a little fever. On sick leave, I went home to the province. I stayed three days. I felt restless, as if I had strayed and lost contact with myself. I suppose you got that way from being sick,
A pouring rain followed our train all the way back to Manila. Outside my window, the landscape was a series of dissolved hills and fields. What is it in the click of the wheels of a train that makes you feel gray inside? What is it in being sick, in lying abed that makes you feel you are awake in a dream, and that you are just an occurrence in the crying grief of streets and houses and people?
In December, we had our first air-raid practice.
I came home one night through darkened streets, peopled by shadows. There was a ragged look to everything, as if no one and nothing cared any more for appearances.
I reached my room just as the siren shrilled. I undressed and got into my old clothes. It was dark, darker than the moment after moon-set. I went out on the corridor and sat in a chair. All around me were movements and voices. anonymous and hushed, even when they laughed.
I sat still, afraid and cold.
“Is that you. Felix?”
“Yes. Maria.”
She was standing beside my chair, close to the wall. Her voice was small and disembodied in the darkness. A chill went through me, She said nothing more for a long time.
“I don’t like the darkness,” she said.
“Oh, come now. When you sleep, you turn the lights off, don’t you?”
“It’s not like this darkness,” she said, softly. “It’s all over the world.”
We did not speak again until the lights went on. Then she was gone.
The war happened not long after.
At first, everything was unreal. It was like living on a motion picture screen, with yourself as actor and audience. But the sounds of bombs exploding were real enough, thudding dully against the unready ear.
In Intramuros, the people left their homes the first night of the war. Many of them slept in the niches of the old walls the first time they heard the sirens scream in earnest. That evening, I returned home to find the apartment house empty. The janitor was there. My cousin who worked in the army was there. But the rest of the tenants were gone.
I asked Mang Lucio, “Maria?”
“She’s gone with your aunt to the walls.” he told me. “They will sleep there tonight.”
My cousin told me that in the morning we would transfer to Singalong. There was a house available. The only reason he was staying, he said, was because they were unable to move our things. Tomorrow that would be taken care of immediately.
“And you, Mang Lucio?”
“I don’t know where I could go.”
We ate canned pork and beans and bread. We slept on the floor, with the lights swathed in black cloth. The house creaked in the night and sent off hollow echoes. We slept uneasily.
I woke up early. It was disquieting to wake up to stillness in that house which rang with children’s voices and laughter the whole day everyday. In the kitchen, there were sounds and smells of cooking.
“Hello,” I said.
It was Maria, frying rice. She turned from the stove and looked at me for a long time. Then, without a word, she turned back to her cooking.
“Are you and your uncle going away?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he not tell you?”
“No.”
“We’re moving to Singalong.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll come back tonight. Maybe this afternoon. We’ll not have to say goodbye till then.”
She did not say anything. I finished washing and went back to my room. I dressed and went out.
At noon, I went to Singalong to eat. All our things were there already, and the folks were busy putting the house in order. As soon as I finished lunch, I went back to the office. There were few vehicles about. Air-raid alerts were frequent. The brightness of the day seemed glaring. The faces of people were all pale and drawn.
In the evening, I went back down the familiar street. I was stopped many times by air-raid volunteers. The house was dark. I walked back to the street. I stood for a long time before the house. Something did not want me to go away just yet. A light burst in my face. It was a volunteer.
“Do you live here?”
“I used to. Up to yesterday. I’m looking for the janitor.”
“Why, did you leave something behind?”
“Yes, I did. But I think I’ve lost it now.”
“Well, you better get along, son. This place, the whole area. has been ordered evacuated. Nobody lives here anymore.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Nobody.”

IDEAS, EXPERIENCES, WORK, SCHOOL AND FUTURE

I've never taught myself to worry about future but sometimes the reality would force me to. In fact, what I am today, will really affect of who I might become in the future. That is a very simple truth. The struggles about solving problems on Algebra, Physics and Chemistry are just a simple fact of preparing oneself to be a good individual. Majority of students are supported by their parents both morally and financially but some have been supporting themselves to overcome financial problems like me. I have been supporting myself since high school and have finished four (4) years ago. Even at present situation, I still have to sweat not just for me but also for my sister. We didn't expect much from our parents regarding financial aspects because they really need to support our younger siblings and I want to teach myself that something would happen after all these struggles. It's not bad to dream it's just a simple thing that will help me motivate to continue living.

I am very pressured today, there's a long to-do-list and I have thought that I can't bear all these. Yes, life is not easy in general but sometimes I dreamed about being the one who do not even fight for survival. Actually, life is not easy if we try to consider the Creation, after it, man should fight for survival with all his sweat and hardships. I'll just share ideas or just an update about living. I've said that I am pressured because we (our class section) was given a project - a Collections of Softwares which needed ten (10) Compact Disc (CD) and five (5) DVD's. The softwares were provided by our instructor, we'll just need to burn those. In our room, we only have two (2) CD/DVD Writers that are working and we don't have enough much time. Each of us has fifteen (2) CDs/DVDs and it took five (5) minutes and ten (10) minutes, CD and DVD respectively. And we really need to submit the project tomorrow afternoon. I am not done with mine either. I still have my daily routine... work and school. Well, I'm doing fine here and I need to face the real world, no more fantasizing.

AWESOME EXPERIENCE

Last week, the grandfather of my girlfriend had passed away. Her grandfather was really old enough and was known for being a good person in the place. My girlfriend wanted to go home to attend the funeral rites. It's a little bit far and it took 1 hr. to travel. I asked her if I could go with her and she said yes. We're planning about going few months ago. It is on the mountain, so, the place might not surprise me because I was born on the mountain too. But it was almost 12 years that I've been living on the town. I have adapted a different environment during that 12 years and I thought going back to the mountain would surprise me. On the place where I was born, few years ago, if we wanted to go to the town, we needed to walk for at least 1 1/2 hr. But that was few years ago. Today, if I want to go to the mountain, motorcycles would take me on the front of our house. Going back to my girlfriend's case. There are two ways to get there. 1. two rides, which means we need to ride a bus and stop at the neighboring town to the south and look for a motorcycle to bring us uphill, or 2. wait a bus coming from the city which route is directly to the place where we're going. We took the 2nd option... The place I am talking about is Mantalongon - a mountain barangay in the Municipality of Dalaguete which is located southward from Cebu City. It is called "Little Baguio" because of its climate which is closely similar to Baguio City. I was a little bit scared because I heard stories that going to that place is so risky - an accident prone area. This is all about the road carved on the side of cliffs. There's one particular area where the road is very narrow which is good for only one mini-bus.

This was written two weeks ago... I need to publish this even it is not yet done. :D

LET'S TALK ABOUT FAIRNESS

This is not to offend anybody. I just want clarify about fairness or favoritism... etc. What I am writing about is only a response on what I've encountered that I personally get affected - when there is a stimuli, there is always a response. It's all started when our drawing instructor checked our activities. He emphasized about lettering with specific measurement. He always reminds us that "it doesn't matter how neat is the drawing is if the lettering is poor, the whole drawing will be spoiled". And not just that, there's a lot more rules on how to make the activity properly. I really appreciate all those rules, although we had those rules already in our minds but not as strict as that of present. This would be a great help for us that we could at least make our activities with certain guidelines and rules to be followed. We were very careful doing our activities last time. The great thing was, our instructor kept watching us on how we did our activity so that we would be guided. When I already done mine, I didn't consult him first because I knew that it'd be alright. Not to boast, my activity if perfectly done not talking about the lettering. I was having a poor lettering with my activity that time, honestly. So, no questions about the object - the Isometric and Orthographic Drawing. Our drawing instructor didn't check mine and some others because of our poor lettering. Without any complain, I took mine back and I will do it again. The bad thing was there were some activities that objects are questionable. The three views of Orthographic drawing are not properly constructed and our instructor already gave rating to it with 90, while he didn't check mine which the orthographic drawing properly constructed. Well, lettering matters not the objects? I am willing to redo my activity again but how about the one which the drawing was constructed imperfectly? Is this favoritism or what? It's not only this thing. Instructors have specific subjects to handle and should discuss everything related the subjects. But it's totally different on what had happened just recently. Our instructor talked and talked which were not related to the drawing subject until we didn't have much time to redo our activities. This happened many times and I never complained but I think this is the time to talk about fairness.

Again, this is not to offend anybody. I just want to clarify.

DON'T HAVE ANY TROUBLE YET

Last school year, I've find it difficult to learn with Math and Chemistry subjects. Yes, those lessons were taught during my High School but that was four (4) years ago. I got lower grades last school year of those two (2) subjects. During those times I didn't feel any discouragement but still have the courage that somehow I could learn despite of the fact that it's hard. I used to encourage somebody to be optimist and so must I.

This school year, I still have Math and Physics instead of Chemistry. So far so good. I feel very much enjoy with the lessons. Our Physics will deal with computations in the next lessons and I feel very much ready for it. We are studying Philippine Literatures too. At first, I really don't have any idea about it. I thought it's only just writings and just read them. But I felt excited as we discussed about the different approaches on literatures. Literatures are written with great distinctions depending to whom the literatures addressed and the main goal of the author of writing them. Before the different approaches on literatures we studied different figurative speeches. That was interesting because I never learned it from high school, maybe I was absent during that time. I only learned 5 or 6 figurative languages but there's more. That is why I really appreciate teachings, because, even I tell myself that I've learned a lot but learning goes on and the capacity to learn is not limited. There's a lot more on this earth that I must learn.

Just recently, during our major, we're learning how to create a batch file. I never learned such thing when I study computer technician course. It is a great advantage for me because I already a background on how batch file works. So, I don't have any trouble with it but my classmates instead. It's not really hard because we're given step by step instruction but others were not paying too much attention never ask questions while they don't really get clearly the step by step instruction on how to create a batch file. [To readers: Maybe you try to wonder what a batch file is, you can just try to google it. :D]

VISION AND MISSION OF OUR SCHOOL - CTU ARGAO CAMPUS

Source

Vision

The center of excellence and development in research, instruction, production, and extension services for progressive leadership transcending global and technological, business and industry – driven education.

Mission

Provides advanced professional and technical instruction for special purposes, industrial trade, teacher education, agriculture, fishery, forestry, engineering, aeronautics and land-based programs, arts and sciences, health science, information technology and other relevant field of study. It shall undertake research, production and extension services, and provide progressive leadership across the areas of specialization for global empowerment.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Three days left, I'll be going back to school. I'm a little bit excited about different people from different places. I've started to set priorities and I am more motivated to finish school. Mostly, I am four years older than my classmates. No wonder that they will give me little respect for it. But I don't take the advantage of being older than them. Sometimes I used to think that I should act like a man, like an adult but it depends on the environment. At school I'm gonna do some adjustments so that I could go with them but I should put  some boundaries.

Just this school year, our school added three courses. I got interested to shift from my previous course to the new one but it wasn't that easy. I should go on process to do that. So, I'm gonna do my best for my course although I have learned much from my current job and from my previous experiences. But, I'm gonna learn more. 

I am thinking about writing something about what's gonna happen not necessarily in school about  life also. So, let's see.