BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: THE DOLL

THE DOLL
by Egmidio Enriquez

THE was christened Narciso and his mother called him Sising. But when be took a fancy to his mother’s old rag dolls which she preserved with moth balls for the little girls she had expected to have, his father decided to call him Boy. His father was excessively masculine, from the low broad forehead and the thick bushy brows to the wide cleft chest and the ridged abdomen beneath it; and the impotence of his left leg which rheumatic attacks had rendered almost useless only goaded him to assert his maleness by an extravagant display of superiority.
“We’ll call him Boy. He is my son. A male. The offspring of a male.” Don Endong told his wife in a tone as crowy as a rooster’s after pecking a hen. “A man is fashioned by heredity and environment. I’ve given him enough red for his blood, but a lot of good it will do him with the kind of environment you are giving him. That doll you gave him—”
“I didn’t give him that doll,” Doña Enchay explained hastily. “He happened upon it in my aparador when I was clearing it. He took pity on it and drew it out. He said it looked very unhappy because it was naked and lonely. He asked me to make a dress for it—”
“And you made one. You encouraged him to play with it,” he accused her.
Doña Enchay looked at her husband embarrassedly. “I had many cuttings, and I thought I’d make use of them,” she said brushing an imaginary wisp of hair from her forehead. It was still a smooth forehead, clean swept and unlined. It did not match the tired look of her eyes, nor the droop of her heavy mouth.
Don Endong saw the forehead and the gesture, took in the quiver of the delicate nostrils and the single dimple on her cheek. “You are such a child yourself, Enchay,” he told her. “You still want to play with dolls. That is why, I suppose, you refuse to have your son’s hair cut short. You’ll make a sissy out of him!” His eyes hardened, and a pulse ticked under his right ear. “No, I will not allow it,” he said struggling to his feet with his cane and shouting, “Boy! Boy! Boy!”
His wife leapt forward to assist him, but as he steadied himself on his cane she couldn’t touch him. Even in his infirmity she could not give him support. His eyes held her back, melted her strength away, reminded her she was only a woman—the weaker, the inferior, the dependent. She felt like a flame in the wind that had frantically reached out for something to burn and having found nothing to feed itself on, settled back upon its wick to burn itself out. She watched him struggle to the window.
When he had reached it and laid his cane on the sill, she moved close to him and passed an arm around his waist. “The curls will not harm him, Marido,” she said. “They are so pretty. They make him look like the little boys in the story books. Remember the page boys at the feet of queen? His hair does not make him a girl. He looks too much like you. That wide thin-lipped mouth and that stubborn chin, and that manly chest—why you yourself say he has a pecho de paloma.”
Don Endong’s mouth twitched at one corner, looking down at her, he passed an arm across her back and under an arm. His hand spread out on her body like a crab and taking a handful of her soft flesh kneaded it gently. “All right, mujer,” he said, “but not the doll!” And he raised his voice again. “Boy! Boy! Boy!”
The boy was getting the doll ready for bed in the wigwam of coconut fronds he had built in the yard below. The doll was long, slender, rag-bodied with a glossy head of porcelain. He had pulled off its frilly, ribbon trimmed dress, and was thrusting its head into a white cotton slip of a garment that his mother had made and was a little too tight. His father’s stentorian voice drew his brows together. At whom was his father shouting now? His father was always shouting and fuming. He filled the house with his presence, invalid though he was. How could his mother stand him?
“Boy! Boy! Boy!” came his father’s voice again.
Ripping the cotton piece from the head of the doll where the head was caught, he flung the little garment away, and picking up the doll walked hastily towards the house.
His father and mother met him at the head of the stairs. He looked at his father’s angry face and said without flinching: “Were you calling me, Father? My name is not Boy!”
“It is Boy from now on,” his father told him. “That will help you to remember that you are a boy. A boy, understand?”
His father looked ugly when he was mad, but he was not afraid of him. He never beat him. He only cursed and cursed. “I don’t understand, why?” he asked.
“Because little boys don’t play with dolls,” Don Endong thundered at him, “that’s why!” And snatching the doll from the boy, Don Endong flung it viciously to the floor.
Boy was not prepared for his father’s precipitate move. He was not prepared to save his doll. One moment it was cradled snugly in the crook of his arm. The next it was sprawled on the floor, naked, and broken, an arm twisted limp beneath it, another flung across its face. as if to hide the shame of its disaster. Suddenly it was as if he were the doll. There was a broken feeling within him. The blood crept up his face and pinched his ears. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. He could only stare and stare until his mother taking him in her arms cradled his head between her breasts.

ONE day in May his mother came home from a meeting of the “Marias” at the parish rectory in a flurry of excitement. Our Lady of Fatima was coming to town. The image from Portugal was making a tour of the Catholic world and was due in town the following week. Doña Enchay had been unanimously elected chairman of the reception committee. ‘‘What shall I do? What shall I do?” she kept saying.
“To be sure, mujer, I don’t know,” Don Endong told her. “Ask the Lady herself. She’ll tell you. maybe.
“Endong! you mustn’t speak that way of Our Lady of Fatima.” she told him in as severe a tone as she dared. “She’s milagrosa. haven’t you heard how she appeared on the limb of a tree before three little children—”
“Oh, yes! Also the countless novenas you have said in my behalf.”
“Ah,. Endong, it is your lack of faith, I’m sure. If you would only believe! If you would at least keep your peace and allow Our Lady to help you in her own quiet way, maybe—” She sighed.
He couldn’t argue with her when she was suppliant. There was something about feminine weakness which he couldn’t fight. He kept his peace.
But not the boy.
It was like the circus coming to town and he had to know all about the strange Lady. He and his mother kept up an incessant jabber about miracles and angels and saints the whole week through. Boy easily caught his mother’s enthusiasm about the great welcome as he tagged along with her on her rounds every day requesting people living along the route the procession was to take from the air port to the cathedral to decorate their houses with some flags, or candles. or paper lanterns… She fondly suggested paper buntings strung on a line across the street. “Arcos” she called them.
“Don’t deceive yourself,” Don Endong told her. “You know they’re more like clothes-lines than anything else. Does the Lady launder?”
“Que Dos te perdone, Endong!” Doña Enchay exclaimed, crossing herself and looking like she was ready to cry.
Boy wondered why his father loved to taunt his mother about her religious enthusiasm. Sometimes he himself could not help but snicker over the jokes his father made. Like when Mr. Wilson’s ice plant siren blew the hour of twelve and the family was having lunch. His mother would bless herself and intone aloud: “Bendita sea la Hora en que Nuestra Señora del Pilar vino en carne mortal a Zaragoza,” and begin a Dios te Salve. His father would ostentatiously bend over the platter of steaming white rice in the center of the table and watch it intently until someone inquired, “What is it?” Then he would reply, “I want to see by how many grains the rice has increased in the platter.” If Boy had not seen his father’s picture as a little boy dressed in white with a large silk ribbon on one arm and a candle twined with tiny white flowers in one hand, he would think maybe, he was a protestante—like that woman his mother and he happened upon one day on their rounds.
The woman had met them on the stairs of her house and said to his mother: “The Lady of Fatima did you say, Ñora? You mean some woman like you and me, or your little girl here,” pointing at him, “with such pretty hair, who can talk, and walk. and laugh. and cry?” His mother retreated fanning herself frantically and flapping the cola of her black saya. “To be sure she can’t, but she stands as the symbol of one who can!” she explained with difficulty as though a fish bone was caught in her throat. He hated the woman for making his mother feel that way, and on the last rung of the steps vindictively spat her error at her: “I am not a girl. I’m a boy! A boy! You don’t know anything!”
When they arrived home he told his mother he wanted his hair cut short. “1 don’t want the Lady of Fatima to mistake me for a girl like the Protestant woman,” he told his mother.
“But Our Lady knows you are a boy. Her Son tells her. Her Son is all knowing.” But Boy threw himself on the floor and started to kick. “I want my hair cut! I want my hair cut!” he screamed and screamed.

THE Lady came on a day that threatened rain. The brows of the hills beyond the rice fields were furious with clouds. The sun cowered out of sight and the Venerable Peter dragged his cart across the heavens continuously drowning all kinds of human utterances—religious, profane, ribald, humorous, sarcastic-from the milling crowd gathered at the air port to see the Lady of Miracles arrive. There were the colegialas in their jumpers and cotton stockings, the Ateneo band and cadets in khaki and white mittens, the Caballeros de Colon with their paunches and their bald heads, the Hijas de Maria with their medals, the Apostolados with their scapulars, the Liga de Mujeres with their beads… there was no panguingue, nor landay, nor poker sessions anywhere in town; nor chapu, nor talang, nor tachi in the coconut groves, for even the bootblacks and the newsboys and the factory boys were there to see the great spectacle. Even Babu Sawang, the Moro woman who fried bananas for the school children. was there, for was not Our Lady of Fatima a Mora like herself, since Fatima was a Moro name?
But when the heavens broke open and rain came tearing down, the people scampered for shelter like chickens on the approach of a hawk. All but a few old women and the priests and the bishop and Doña Enchay and Boy hung on to the Lady on her flowered float intoning hymns and repeating aves.
The bishop laid a hand on Boy’s head and Boy immediately shot up into manhood. His chest filled out, his arms grew thick, and his strides stretched as long as the giant’s of the seven-league boots. He felt a thousand eyes leveled at him, and he gathered those eyes and wore them on his breast as a hero wears his medals in a parade. “You are a brave little boy,” the bishop told him. “Our Lady must be well pleased with you.
Boy took a look at the Lady. She was smiling brightly through tears of happiness. Her eyes spilled water of love, her lips dropped freshets of sweetness. And her checks—they were dew-filled calyxes of kindly care. Suddenly, he was seized with a great thirst. His lips felt cracked and his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. An urgent longing to drink possessed him. He felt he should drink, drink. drink-of the Lady’s eyes, of the Lady’s lips, of the Lady’s cheeks…

AS he grew older his thirst intensified. He felt he should drink also from the cup of her breast, from the hollow of her hands, from the hem of her trailing white gown, from the ends of each strand of her long brown tresses. But when he approached his Lady at various shrines in the town chapel, whether she had a serpent at her feet, a child in her arms, or beads in her hands, his cracking lips climbed no higher than her pink and white toes and his thirst was quenched.
When he was nineteen and graduated from high school, he told his mother he wanted to take Our Lady for a bride. “Que dicha!” his mother said. “To wed the Mother of God. To be a priest and sing her glorias forever. Que dicha!”
But his father said: “A priest? Is that all you will amount to—a sissy, a maricon, a half-man? I’d rather you died. I’d rather I died!”
It was night, and late, when the household was making ready to turn in. The feeble light of a single electric bulb lit the veranda where Boy stood facing his father in his wicker chair; but the yellow light was flat on the boy’s face and Don Endong saw that it was a dead mask except for the eyes which held a pointed brilliance. The boy’s voice was as taut as the string of an instrument that is about to snap. “The priesthood is the noblest profession on earth. Father,” he said. “It is the most manly, too. One who is master of himself, who can leash the lust of his loins to the eye of the spirit. is indeed the man! A man is not measured by the length of his limbs and the breadth of his chest or the depth of his voice, but by the strength of his mind, the depth of his courage, the firmness of his will!”
“God gave you the body of a male to do the functions of a male—not to hide under a skirt!” Don Endong goaded him.
Boy gripped the back of a chair until the knuckles turned white. Sweat broke out on his forehead and a trembling seized his frame.
“Strike! Strike your father! Raise your hand against the man who was man enough to give you the figure of a man!”
“Boy! Boy!” His mother’s voice pierced through his clouding mind, unnerving him, leaving him strengthless. Suddenly, he couldn’t look his father in the face. His mother’s wail followed him as he fled into the night.

ON the little deserted and unlighted dock where the wind was carefree and all was still except for the muffled cry of a hadji in the distant Moro village and the mournful beat of an agong, Boy faced the night and the sea He flung his eyes to the stars above and gave his body up to the wind to soothe…
Fingers touched him lightly on the shoulder, a little nervously, like birds about to take flight at the least sign of danger. Fingers dipped into his sensitive flesh, and melted into the still pounding rivers of his blood. A strong. sweetly pungent scent invaded his nostrils, and his heart picked tip the beat of the distant agong.
“What do you want with me?” he asked the woman without turning around. He had not sensed her coming. She could have sprung like Venus from the foam of the sea—but there she was, and her perfume betrayed her calling.
Her hand dropped from his shoulder to the bulge of his biceps. “You are a large man. You are very strong. And you are lonely,” she said.
Her voice was cool as water from a jar and soft as cotton. And it had a sad tingle. He checked a rough rebuke. Who was he to condemn her for what she was? Had not Christ said to the men outside the city walls who were about to stone the adulterous woman, ‘‘Let him among you that is without sin cast the first stone”?’
He looked up into her face. Stars were beating in her eyes. And on her wet lips were slumbering many more. Her arms were long and white and slender like fragrant azucenas unfolding in the night…
“Yes, I am strong, and I’m lonely,” he said. “And I’m a man. A big man,” he added almost angrily, “am I not?”
“Oh, but of course,” she said. “I can see that. and I can feel that!”
And fragrant azucenas folded about him in the night.

HE opened his eyes in total darkness. He couldn’t see his hand before him, but the air was thick around him, and he had a feeling he was trapped in a narrow place. He flung an arm out and the body of a woman slithered under his arm. She turned toward him and her breath pushed into his face. He raised himself on his elbow for air. The woman stretched herself awake, and slowly a long clammy coil like the sinuous body of the serpent at the feet of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in her shrine in the town church began to close around his neck. His flesh crawled. With a quick movement he caught the coil in a strong grip, twisting it.
The hoarse cry of a woman lashed out and cracked the stillness of the night. A mouth found his shoulder and sharp vicious teeth sank into his flesh. The stinging pain sent a shiver through the length of his long frame. but he hung on to the squirming limb, squeezing and twisting it… until the clamor of angry voices, and a splintering crash, and a sudden flood of light burst upon him…
Lying at his feet before him was a woman, naked and broken. But a short while before, under the sheet of night, she was cradled in his arms, receiving the reverence of his kisses. Now, under the eye of light, she was but a limp mass of woman flesh, sprawled grotesquely on the floor, an upper limb twisted behind her another flung across her face as if to hide the shame of her disaster.
Two men grabbed him and dragged him out into the street. Angry cries and curses followed him. But as he felt the clean air of morning sweep against his face, his chest filled out, his arms grew thick, and his sturdy legs stretched long like the giant’s of the seven-league boots

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

by Carlos Cortés

NEXT in line was a typical family: man and woman and a kid about two years old, and a baggage cart laden with their boxes and suitcases. The man handed over their tickets and passports. The flight was for Singapore, with many of the passengers having outbound connections: some to Jakarta, others to Cairns, still others to Auckland, Heathrow, or JFK. This family, two Germans and a Filipina, was bound for Frankfurt.

When I say they were Germans and a Filipina I am going by their passports, of course; in my line of work one speaks of these things in a technical manner, disregarding racial and ethnic considerations. The man happened to have the Aryan features associated with the typical German, such as blond hair and blue eyes. For me, however, all that mattered was that he had a German passport.

The boy was German, too, but if I hadn’t seen his passport I would have guessed him to be Filipino. His mother was cooing to him, in babytalk of course, but Cebuano babytalk, in which I detected a faint Boholano accent. The kid was repeating some of her words; he was taking to her language in much the same way he took after her. He had only the slightest hint of the mestizo alemán about him. To be sure, his complexion was rather light and his hair was brownish. But he did not look Nordic at all. He could have been a son of mine: he looked Visayan enough. The only thing German about him was a piece of paper. However, I was trained to give due credit to such pieces of paper.

The kid’s passport was literally a piece of paper. It wasn’t the kind of German passport his father had, the booklet with a hard maroon cover that had the words Europäische Gemeinschaft, then below that Bundesrepublik Deutschland, then below the heraldic eagle the word Reisepass. That kind of passport was sometimes issued to children too, but not often; the German government offered a children’s version of its passport, and since the processing fee for the Kinderausweis, as it was called, was much lower, it was what German children almost always had. A single sheet of green paper folded and refolded upon itself so that one could unfold it into four pages, the Kinderausweis looked like a fun passport; one could imagine it had been made in a gingerbread house, whereas the Reisepass could only have come from an office.

WE used the Departure Control System, DCS for short, a simple and good computer program. Accepting passengers for a flight was a breeze in DCS. For international flights, however, we had to input so many things the entries often became cumbersome. Care was essential. A single typo was all it took for the whole entry to be invalid, and then one would have to start all over again.

I would assign them good seats, one seat by the window for the kid, for both flights. I would tag their baggage for Frankfurt and waive the charge for excess weight of—I checked the readout on the weighing scale—seven kilos. But first things first. Were their documents in order?

The German was at the top of the name list. On my screen he was EFKEMANN/HEINZJUERGENMR and now I entered the supplementary information for him: PASDE6792035487.DOB09OCT67. The code PAS DE meant Passport Deutsch. The numerals were his passport number. DOB was date of birth, 10-09-67 on his Reisepass. The name on the passport, Efkemann, Heinz Jürgen, matched the name on the ticket, except for the spelling of Jürgen. No big deal. I knew the u with an umlaut was usually written as ue on tickets. I idly wondered if they could print out the umlaut on tickets issued in Germany. I could ask this guy, but in this line of work one did not ask too many irrelevant questions.

The kid was EFKEMANN/PETERMSTR and I put in the details from his Kinderausweis: PASDE2057644.DOB07AUG00. His color picture on the inside page showed him to be a beautiful baby, brownish hair topping a face more Visayan than Eurasian. It didn’t seem jarring to me, because brown hair appeared in my family too, about once a generation...we got it from a friar or two somewhere in the family tree; a recessive gene, but one that popped up now and then: my sister’s hair, jet black indoors, blazed with chestnut highlights in afternoon sunshine; my aunt had hair that was nearly auburn; my great-grandmother was supposed to have been a real blonde...my mind was wandering again. I wrenched it back to the present, to this little boy I was accepting for the flight, Master Peter Efkemann. I was glad to see they hadn’t given him one of those uniquely German names like Dietmar, Detlev, Heinrich, or Wolfgang. Peter was a very German name, but it was also very Anglo, very American, very Filipino: a good international name.

ONE had to anticipate how things would be at the destination, in this case Frankfurt. From the German point of view the two males, holders of German passports, would be natives coming home; no problems there. It was different for the woman. As a Philippine passport holder, she would be a visiting alien. Here I had to be careful. If Frankfurt found this one inadmissible, she would be deported and the airline would be fined five thousand Deutschmarks. They wouldn’t deduct that amount from my salary but an investigation would be launched, explanations would have to be submitted, and I would probably wind up getting a week’s suspension. A week’s pay for me wasn’t quite DM5000, but it was hefty enough.

For EFKEMANN/CHERILYNMS I typed in PASPHZZ395624. The passport had been issued in Cebu on February 20, 1998. Philippine passports were valid for five years, and hers would expire in 2003: good enough. As a general rule, anyone going to a foreign country had to have at least six months’ validity left in his passport.

After doing DOB24AUG75 I glanced at her to check if she was indeed 26 going on 27. She actually looked somewhat younger, but it had to be because she was a very lovely girl. I noticed the passport had been issued to Dayonot, Cherilyn Hawak, place of birth Talibon, Bohol. I turned to page 4 and sure enough the amendment was there: a change of name from Dayonot to Efkemann due to marriage to Efkemann, Heinz Jurgen, on 28 January 2000. The DFA official who signed the amendment hadn’t put the umlaut over the u in Jürgen, but I supposed he had merely copied the name from the marriage contract. If the wedding had been in Bohol there was little chance an umlaut would have appeared on that marriage certificate.

There would be a German visa inside that passport, I knew. I didn’t think it would be the one called the Aufenhaltsberechtigung, as I knew that kind of visa got issued only to foreigners who had been in Germany for some time. It was roughly the German equivalent of the American green card: it had no expiry date, and it doubled as a work permit. I had no idea how the word Aufenhaltsberechtigung translated, only that people who had that visa could speak German very well and knew their way around the country.

Perhaps her visa would be the Aufenhaltserlaubnis. This one had an expiration date, found in the space after gültig bis (“valid until”). In many cases, instead of a date there would be the word unbefristet. This meant something like “indefinite” and was what I most often saw on the visas of Filipinas married to Germans. This unbefristet was usually written on the visa in longhand, by someone with a Teutonic scrawl.

There were entry and exit stamps showing she had been to Hong Kong and Taipei but I barely glanced at those; they were irrelevant. She had an expired visa for Dubai with corresponding entry/exit stamps: she must have been an OFW not too long ago, but this too was none of my concern. When I found it, her German visa was the Schengen Staten type, which is valid for only a few months. All right, this probably meant she was going to Germany for the first time. Married three years and never yet been to her husband’s homeland? A question for the curious, but one I did not ask; it wasn’t politic to ask too many impertinent questions in this business.

Unlike the Aufenhalstserlaubnis, which was valid as soon as it was issued, the Schengen Staten visa did not become valid until a certain date, which might be a month or more from its date of issuance. The words to look for were gültig vom and gültig bis, “valid from” and “valid until.” On Cherilyn’s visa I saw a gültig für Schengener Staten, then below that a vom 04-05-02, which was tomorrow’s date, and a bis 07-07-02, which was months away in the future, as the expiration date should be.

So now the entry for EFKEMANN/CHERILYNMS was PASPHBB335622.DOB08 JAN 75.VISD13581677. The visa number belonged more or less to the same series I had seen on other Schengen Staten visas. Everything about this visa looked and felt authentic, down to the imprinted curlicues and the holograph.

Efkemann had waited in silence as I pounded the computer keys but now, from the amount of time I had spent scrutinizing the visa, he must have thought I looked unsure of the German words in it.

“Issued yesterday,” he said, “by ze Cherman Embassy in Manila.”

“Sus, kapoya gyud uy,” said Cherilyn. “We flew back from Manila last night, and now we are flying off again. Give us seats near the front, won’t you? I get seasick when I sit at the back, and Singapore to Frankfurt is such a long flight.”

“Ja, ja,” said Efkemann, “give us seats by ze emerchency exit. I haf fery long legs.”

Today was April 4; by the time their connecting flight landed in Frankfurt it would be early in the morning of April 5, the first day Cherilyn’s visa was valid. That was all right, then. I couldn’t assign them to seats in any of the exit rows, as they had a child with them. Safety regulations required that only able-bodied adults be put in those rows. Nor could I put them in front, as all the seats there were taken. I would have to explain these things tactfully and put them where I could.

An itch in my groin bothered me. I pushed the irritation away from the forefront of my consciousness and concentrated on the task at hand. Had I missed anything? Was there something not quite right? I was glad Cherilyn was a very poised young lady. I had been nonchalant, and so had she. I had never seen her before. She had never seen me before. I was just the guy at the counter and she was just another passenger...

They were all passengers: veteran travellers, first timers, it was always passengers and more passengers. Every day I sat there and took on long lines of passengers: rich tourists, backpackers, businessmen, contract workers, domestic helpers, emigrants, nuns, monks, refugees, laissez-passiers, diplomats, envoys, mercenaries; Sikhs, Arabs, Orthodox Jews, Amish, Hottentots, Lapps, Australian aborigines; Koreans, Czechs, Rwandans, Turks, Brazilians, Swedes, Zambians, Greeks...I had seen them all, I would see many more of them tomorrow, it was all one long line, stretching on across the years I had spent in this job, an endless line that snaked around the globe, passengers joining the line in Timbuktu and Xanadu and Cuzco and Urumqi and inching forward until one day they reached me at the counter...

THE difference between the American and the European styles of writing dates all in numbers was what had been bothering me. Only now did I remember that a date written as 01-02-03 would mean January 2, 2003 to an American, but would be read as 01 February 2003 by a European. I for that matter would tend to read it as January 2, as I had learned this shortcut for writing dates in elementary school, and it was the American system that had been taught to us.

I looked at the visa again. Of course, why hadn’t I seen it before? The gültig für Schengener Staten vom 04-05-02 did not mean April 5; it meant 04 May. I had been blind. I had wanted to see a visa that would become valid only a few hours before its holder entered German airspace. I had trusted Efkemann: like any methodical German, he would have made sure everything was in order. If their flight would bring them to Frankfurt on April 5, his wife’s visa would be valid on April 5. Unthinkable for it not to be.

Yet there it was, staring me right in the face, gültig vom 04-05-02, and it seemed the height of silliness to point it out, but this visa was definitely not in order. No doubt about it. The German immigration officer who would be looking at this visa in Frankfurt would interpret 04-05-02 as 04 Mai and inform Herr Efkemann that Frau Efkemann’s visa was not valid, would not be valid for another month, and very sorry about this, mein Herr, but we are only doing our duty. We must deport her.

My finger was about to hit ENTER but now I desisted. I would have to break the information to them as succinctly as I could. You just did not pussyfoot around a German. You had to come right to the point.

“Very sorry, Herr Efkemann,” I said, “but this visa is not yet valid. It will be valid on May fourth, a month from now.”

I showed it to him.

He did not say anything. He took the passport and peered at the visa. Then, handing the passport to Cherilyn, he stepped off to the side and whipped out a cell phone. Soon he was talking in rapid German.

“It’s a mistake!” Cherilyn said. “We told the people at the Embassy we had a booking for April 4, we would arrive in Germany on April 5! Susmariosep, I’m sure somebody inverted those numbers!”

Germans, I reflected, obeyed traffic lights and all kinds of signs. That one there had seen a sign that said gültig vom 04-05-02, and it never occurred to him that it should not be obeyed. Filipinos on the other hand always looked for exemptions, for a way out. This one in front of me was trying to put it all down to some clerical error.

I went to apprise my supervisor of the situation. When he came out with me, Efkmann was still talking on his phone. We waited for him to finish.

“Gott in Himmel,” he muttered as he put the phone back into his pocket.

“Mr. Efkemann?” my supervisor began, “Very sorry, but we cannot check in Mrs. Efkemann all the way to Frankfurt. We could check her in, but up to Singapore only. Do you still want to take the flight? Maybe it would be better if you rebook for May 3 or 4.”

He was outlining the options. None of those scenarios had been in this family’s mind a few minutes ago. But the German, I could see, was adjusting his thinking to the changed situation as quickly as anyone could.

“It’s those Filipina office workers at the German Embassy,” Cherilyn said. “They must have mixed up the date. We told them we were leaving April 4, nicht wahr, mein schatz?”

I didn’t know about that. I had a couple of friends who had been to Germany; if I understood it right, there was a space in the visa application form where one filled in one’s desired date of entry in DD/MM/YR form. In most cases the Embassy, if it could, simply gave you what you wanted. Was that the most likely explanation, then? That Cherilyn herself had mixed up the date? She had gone to school in Bohol: she must have learned to write dates in number format the American way. The confounded date was a dumb mistake, but quite natural in this context. I might have made the same mistake myself, and the chances were I wouldn’t have noticed it until it was too late to do anything about it.

What Cherilyn did not fully appreciate was that Germans would follow the letter of the law in things like this. It would be of no moment that some silly mistake had been made; what had been written was written and that was that. She seemed to be holding on to the hope that a spoken word from some German Embassy official would make everything all right and they could then get on the flight and reach Frankfurt to find the mistake smoothed over. She looked at her husband expectantly.

“Ach, to make in ze visa a refision ve must haf to go to ze Cherman Embassy in Manila, ja? No, I zink ve must rebook.”

“Very well, Mr. Efkemann,” said my supervisor, “would you come inside the office please? We will rebook your tickets now.”

CHERILYN remained in front of me at the counter, her little boy in her arms; most of the booked passengers had checked in by now and gone on to the Immigration counters.

“That’s probably what happened,” I said. “Some Filipino wrote April 4 the Filipino way.”

“God, how dumb. And it turns out to be May 4 to the Germans.”

“Yeah, all of them in Europe write it that way.”

“Oh, I guess we were dummies, too. We looked at the visa when we got it yesterday, but we never saw that. Jürgen should have seen it. I don’t know why he didn’t. But we were in a hurry. We had to catch the flight back to Cebu.”

“Things like that, everything looks okay...until you read the fine print.”

“Bitaw, ma-o gyud! It’s the fine print that gets you every time. The devil is in the details.”

“Handsome boy you’ve got there. Takes after the father, doesn’t he?”

“Hoy, abi nimo, when he came out I was relieved to see he had light hair. Up until that moment I was afraid he might take after you.”

“Well, he didn’t, did he?”

“He’s got your eyes.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“But it’s his hair that clinches it. Your hair’s black. His is brown.”

“Right. I guess that’s the clincher all right.”

“No doubt about it.”

There was no point in mentioning that brown hair popped up in my family every now and then. That would be the height of silliness. In this business, one did not say too many unnecessary things.

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: DEAD STARS

DEAD STARS

by Paz Marquez Benitez

THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him, stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy. The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.

"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"

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

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

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

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

"In love? With whom?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh," he drawled out, vastly relieved.

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

He laughed with her.

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

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

"I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Up here I find--something--"

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

"No; youth--its spirit--"

"Are you so old?"

"And heart's desire."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So long?"

"I should like to."

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

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

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

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

When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.

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

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

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

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

"The last? Why?"

"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."

He noted an evasive quality in the answer.

"Do I seem especially industrious to you?"

"If you are, you never look it."

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

"But--"

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

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

She waited.

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

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

"Who? I?"

"Oh, no!"

"You said I am calm and placid."

"That is what I think."

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

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

"I should like to see your home town."

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

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

"Nothing? There is you."

"Oh, me? But I am here."

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

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

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

She laughed.

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

"Could I find that?"

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

"I'll inquire about--"

"What?"

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

"There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is not quite sincere."

"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.

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

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

"Are you withdrawing the compliment?"

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

"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.

"Exactly."

"It must be ugly."

"Always?"

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

"No, of course you are right."

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

"I am going home."

The end of an impossible dream!

"When?" after a long silence.

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

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

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

"Oh, you don't need to!"

"No, but I want to."

"There is no time."

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

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

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

"Old things?"

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

The line moved on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, is the Judge going?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

"For what?"

"For your approaching wedding."

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

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

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

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

"When they are of friends, yes."

"Would you come if I asked you?"

"When is it going to be?"

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

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

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

"Why not?"

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

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

"Then I ask you."

"Then I will be there."

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

"Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner, "did you ever have to choose between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?"

"No!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Doesn't it--interest you?"

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

Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But do you approve?"

"Of what?"

"What she did."

"No," indifferently.

"Well?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last word had been said.

III

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

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

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

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

"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"

"What abogado?" someone irately asked.

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

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

Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the presidente had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because that official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman replied, "but he could not write because we heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her."

San Antonio was up in the hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do something for him. It was not every day that one met with such willingness to help.

Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat settled into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water.

How peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issuing forlornly through the single window which served as counter. An occasional couple sauntered by, the women's chinelas making scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street--tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.

How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer.

A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged street where the young moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow. In the gardens the cotton tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.

Somehow or other, he had known that he would find her house because she would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise.

"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.

"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?"

"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of painful constraint.

"Won't you come up?"

He considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia Salas had left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last--he was shaking her hand.

She had not changed much--a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her, looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a sober, somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could not take his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush.

Gently--was it experimentally?--he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care? The answer to the question hardly interested him.

The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-studded sky.

So that was all over.

Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?

So all these years--since when?--he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.

An immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded gardens bloom again, and where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: CLAY

CLAY

by Juan T. Gatbonton

IT was beginning to get light when I awoke. Feeling the bamboo slats of the floor hard against my back through the mat, I looked up to where the bamboo rafters made light lines against the darker shade of the nipa roofing. Outside, a square of brightening sky was framed by the open window. Afraid Clay would be waiting, I got up, rolled the mat and walked to the kitchen to wash my face. Coming out into the open kitchen, I felt the wind: cold, sharp when I breathed too deeply. A light mist made the other houses gray and indistinct. The split bamboos that made up the kitchen floor were moist and the water in the earthen jar that stood near the stairs was like ice. The water was numbing to the hands and made the skin of my face tighten. I brushed my arms across my face and walked to the stove. The pot held rice left over from supper; although the barracks were only a few minutes’ run, I did not stop to eat. I went down the steps, the rungs wet and cold under my bare feet, and ran out through the still-dark street towards the barracks. The army camp was on the east side of the main street, a few houses away from the river. Clay would probably be sitting on the rail bamboo rungs nailed parallel on upright wooden posts that fenced the camp, his long legs swinging, the tips of his boots almost touching the ground, one big hand holding on to the rail and the other waving, his voice ringing: “Hey Kid!” as I came near.

As I ran on past the dark houses of the town, past veiled women going to early mass, I hoped that he would not be too impatient from waiting.

Clay was not at the fence. The big acacia tree near the road, a few steps away from the fence, threw a shadow across the gate to the camp. The gate was of steel matting; a big chain held it fastened to a log post. The yard was littered with colored paper, wine bottles, and cigarette butts from last night’s dance. The gray, two-story building of concrete and galvanized iron that was the army barracks was silent. The window near where Clay’s cot stood was closed. I walked to the foot of the acacia tree and sat down to wait. Leaning my head on the cool, rough trunk, I could see the light in the tower of the church near the western end of the town sparkle in the dark. Then, the bells tolled for mass. In the distance, shadowy figures were walking towards the church door from which light now streamed into the darkness. The rest of the town had not awakened.

Sitting under the tree, I looked at the road that was Candaba’s main street. It was short and even, barely a kilometer long from where it started at the river bank to where it faded into the clump of trees that hid the cemetery. The Americans had built a bridge and gouged out a new road on the left bank of the river. This hard asphalt road ran up to the far-off Arayat mountain where the fighting was. Now in the early morning, with the mist slowly lifting as the sun rose, the blue head of the mountain lay buried in the clouds. The new road was empty. The steel bridge, silent after the movements of’ the night, was dull brown in the early daylight.

Still Clay had not opened his window to laugh and shout: Hey Kid! I moved from the tree and sat on the fence near the gate. The bamboo rails, wet with the mist, were rapidly drying in the rising sun. The grass growing thick along the fence smelled fresh and clean. In the forest, the trees would be green; the flowers of the bankal trees would fill the air with their fragrance and the water would be very cool. We would have good swimming today, I thought. The pool would be very clear. I wished Clay would come.

 CLAY was one of the army mechanics. He was my best friend. Sometimes I could not understand him: he talked too fast that I could not always get what he meant. Then I would say: I beg your. pardon? the way Miss Rosete said one should. Clay would laugh and shout: For gosh sakes! You people are sure polite! And he would laugh and laugh. He would curse too, but with Miss Rosete the day I introduced him, his language was all right.

Miss Rosete was my teacher at the high school. She was from the city and she stayed in a boarding house near the school building. She and I had found the pool in the forest together. That was the day our class was going to hold a program, and she and I went into the woods to gather flowers for the stage. She was singing and smiling all the way and she looked very beautiful. There was a light wind that morning and it blew her curls and carried the smell of her perfume to me as I walked before her to clear the path of thorns and creepers. After we had gathered flowers, she sat down under a tree to wipe away the fine beads of sweat that crowned her brow. I stood looking at her while she passed her white handkerchief across her face. Then she stood up and we walked through thick bushes deeper into the forest. Carrying the flowers cradled in her arm, she followed me up a winding path scarcely visible among the thick leaves of the bushes. She stopped and said: Look! My eyes followed where her hand pointed, through a column of trees on the right side of the path. There was the pool: jewelling the forest with its whiteness. We left the path and walked slowly towards it. She sat down on a rock at the water’s edge and made me sit near her. She said: It’s beautiful; very softly. We looked into the pool. You could see the bottom, it was so clear: with white pebbles on its bed. She took off her shoes and dipped her feet in the water. She said: I wish we could go swimming, the water looks so beautiful! She was gently swinging her feet, her legs running like silver in the water. Then she dipped the flowers we had gathered in the pool and gave them to me to carry back to town.

After that, I went to the pool in the forest often. I would sit at the foot of the rock where she had sat and listen to the little forest noises: the water trickling among the stones where the pool was shallow, and above, the trees with their crickets and birds singing. No other noises. The quiet would make me feel I was in church, all the people gone away and I alone, praying: not really praying, but just listening for the sounds of God—not minding the ache of the knees from the kneeling—listening to the birds in the eaves and the children playing in the convent-yard. I would take off my clothes, enter the water and swim quietly, sometimes diving deep, deep into the pool’s heart. I would pretend that she was there, sitting on the rock, smiling at me, her feet silver in the water.

There at the pool I met Clay. I was diving for the white stones at the bottom of the pool and did not see him until he came through the last line of flowering bushes that hid the pool. I looked up as he came near. The early sun struck his face and made his blonde hair glisten. He stood there and smiled at me. Then he laughed. Hey Kid! he said. Nice place you got here. He walked nearer, sat down at the foot of the rock where Miss Rosete had sat, and leaned his head on the stone. He. said: Good swimming huh? I was embarrassed and remembered her teaching. I smiled: Won’t you join me, sir? He laughed and said: Well, what d’ya know? He’s educated! I felt proud. He took off his clothes, put them near the rock and dived in. He said his name was Clayton but everybody called him Clay. He offered to shake hands but I was so shy I merely smiled and told him my name. Let’s come back here again, Clay said.

We went to the pool almost everyday after that. One morning I went to the motor pool to fetch him. He was working on a truck and he asked me to wait. I sat on the fender of the car and watched him work. His face was greasy and flecked with dust; sweat dripped from his face and fell on his arms as he strained, tightening the bolts, running his dirty hands over the engine.

He washed up and changed his clothes. I’m too tired to go to the pool, Clay said. There must be some nice girls in this town; let’s go meet them. He said, teasing me, I ought to let him meet my girl and did I think old Clay was going to take her away from me? I said I had no girl but I took him to see Miss Rosete at the high school. Classes had not begun and she was in the room preparing the next day’s lesson. The door was open and we stood there for a moment, watching her. She saw us and she smiled at me, then, not smiling, turned to look at Clay. I walked in and stood in front of her desk. Clay came into the room, his heavy boots loud against the cement floor. I said: Miss Rosete, this is Clay; and Clay put out his hand, smiled and said: How are you? Now she smiled. She extended her hand. Her hand looked small in his big hairy hand. She quickly drew her hand away and she said she was sorry, she had lots of things to do, but she smiled at me and then smiled at Clay and said she was glad to have met him. We tiptoed out of the room and all the way to the street, Clay was striking his fist against my shoulder and saying: Jesuschrist!! Jesuschrist!

 THE sun was growing hotter. Somebody struggled with the nearest window and then it was open and Clay was there, blinking as the light struck his face. Hey Kid! He waved his hand. He was trying to put on his shirt. You are damned early, he said and disappeared into the darkness of the building. After a few minutes, the gray door of the barracks opened and Clay walked to where I sat, waiting.

We started down the road towards the river. The clay path was hot under my feet and the grass, now that the sun had dried the dew, was turning brown with dust. Clay said: Damn hot, ain’t it? He took off his khaki shirt. We walked on, he in his gray undershirt, his shirt dangling from his right hand. Where the undershirt left off, his skin was red and blotched with freckles. Already, drops of sweat were beginning to form on his forehead from the walking.

Just before the bridge, we turned left and climbed up the mound behind which lay the woods. The path winding up to the top of the hillock rose steeply; we clutched at the bushes along it for support. At the top of the mound, we stopped to rest. Below, we could see the road and the ugly bridge, now alive with trucks and people crossing. The noise of their passing came to us low and indistinct. The river flowed brown, foaming along some logs that were tied near the bridge. Looking away from the road to the woods, we could see knee-high cogon growing where the hillock sloped and the first low trees began. Clay and I ran down the slope and into the forest. Clay’s heavy boots crushed fallen leaves and rustled against dead branches from the trees above. The sun came through the leafy sky in bright patches that flashed as the trees stirred in the wind.

Clay said: Let’s sit down a while. He pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket. His face was pale red. There were little dark lines under his eyes. He wiped away the drops of sweat that glistened on his nose and gathered in furrows on his forehead. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket and sat down heavily on the ground. Sit down, he said. He rubbed his eyes. Boy, but am I tired! Raking leaves together, he bundled his shirt over the pile they made and there pillowed his head. He closed his eyes. Nice dance last night, Clay said. He grinned. He sat up suddenly, put out a big hand and rumpled my hair. Say, did I ever thank you for introducin’ me to that dame who teaches you or something? His hand balled into a fist and softly struck my shoulder. Clay chuckled and rolled his eyes, making strange noises with his tongue. Boy, he laughed. But is she good! Boy, did old Clay have a good time! His hand, rough and moist. rubbed on the back of my neck. Seeing the look on my face, he laughed. Say, how old are you anyway? he asked. I said nearly sixteen. Aw, you are too young, junior! Clay said. You wouldn’t get what I mean! His harsh laughter tore the silence of the forest.

Still laughing, he got up and we walked on towards the pool. The wind had risen a bit. and under the tree where the sun could not get through, it was chilly. Clay put his arm around my shoulders. His arm was big and hairy, little drops of sweat clinging to it. Boy oh boy, Clay said. But did I have a helluva time last night! He laughed, showing his teeth, his face close to mine smelling of pomade and perspiration. Jesuschrist, Clay said. Jesuschrist!

Clay suddenly let go of my shoulder and leaped up to grab at the branch of a guava tree that grew along the path. He clung to the branch. swaying his body, sending flowers from the tree falling to the ground in flurries of whiteness. Yippeeee! Clay shouted. Yippeeee! Birds flew up and, chirping, fluttered above the trees. Clay dropped to the ground beside me. He was breathing heavily.

Here Kid, he said. Have a guava. You look hungry. He laughed, bowed elaborately and opened his palm where a guava lay small arid white, its flesh exposed where bats had dug at its core, the marks of their teeth leaving red gashes on its skin. I broke the guava open. It smelled sweet and over-ripe. Little worms stirred in its core. I threw the guava away. Clay laughed. Get ya ’nother one. I said never mind, I was not hungry. Well, come on then, he said. Let’s not keep the old pool waiting. He ran ahead of me, his big body swaying from side to side, his boots tramping the bushes along the path.

Now the path narrowed and was lost among the thick undergrowth. The bushes that hid it were here and there stained with mud stray carabaos had left behind them. Brown grass grew in tangles, their blades sharp, drawing white scratches on the skin. The ground, where the sun never shone, was muddy. But where the pool began, the grass thinned, the trees were taller than in any other part of the forest: straight, white-limbed columns with singing life in their branches, below them the water breaking into a million separate diamonds.

Clay was taking off his undershirt as he ran. Reaching the water’s edge, he flung his clothes on a bush and, stamping his muddy boots on the rock, fumbled with their laces. After he had pulled the shoes off, he scraped them against the side of the rock to clean them of the mud they had gathered from the walking. Hurry up, Kid, he shouted. The water looks good! He sat down at the edge of the stone and dangled his legs in the water. The water swirled darkly where his feet touched bottom. Clay lit a cigarette and started to chant softly something about a blonde who couldn’t say no. His voice rose and fell in a grating monotone.

The sun lay hidden behind the trees and I was a long time taking off my clothes. The water’s going to be cold, I thought. What the heck’s taking you such a long time? Clay shouted. He flipped his cigarette butt into the middle of the pool and dived noisily after it. Then he was splashing water, making a lot of noise, shouting: Yippeeee! Yippeeee! Hey come on! Hey come on! I went into the water slowly, first wetting my feet and chest. The water was cold. Come where it is deeper, Clay said. He arched and dived into the pool’s writhing heart. His feet thrashed the water wildly. Then his body broke the water. Look, he said. Black sand filled his open hand. Water dripped from his face. A thin trickle of mucus ran down the corner of his nose. Clay laughed; I touched bottom! He spat and laughed. Let’s see you do it, Kid. Let’s see you do it. I said I couldn’t. Clay threw the sand at me. You gotta learn, he laughed. You gotta learn. He laughed again and began swimming towards me, his arms and feet flailing the water.

Birds in the trees flew away as something heavy came stumbling up the path. Then a young bull carabao lumbered past the bushes and walked towards us, its feet leaving muddy tracks on the grass. Standing at the edge of the water, the carabao gazed at us with red, heavy-lidded eyes. Flies hovered over its head and settled on the black mud that encrusted its back. The carabao looked mean. I climbed up the bank, picked up one of the stones gleaming there and threw it at the beast. The stone hit the carabao between the horns, bounced, and fell back at my feet. Flecks of foam and saliva dripped down the carabao’s mouth as it snorted at me and bellowed angrily. I dipped my hands in the pool and threw water at it. Still bellowing, the carabao turned and silently went away, crashing down the undergrowth.

It would have made the water dirty, I told Clay. Probably strayed from its herd down the hill.

Come on Kid, Clay said. He splashed water at me and ran into the pond, his feet sending clouds of mud swirling up the water’s surface. A dull-brown circle rose and spread from around his body.

When we had dressed and gone back down the path, carefully avoiding the mud flecks the carabao had left on the bushes, Clay said: We are gonna have ’nother party tonight. He grinned, showing his white teeth. I’m bringing Imacool-ada again. He had trouble pronouncing Miss Rosete’s first name. Come to the barracks, Kid, Clay said. We are gonna have real ice-cream. He put his hand around my shoulder. I’ll get ya some. Clay smiled at me and winked his eyes. I’ll get you some cake too.

After lunch, I dressed for school. The sun was hot and the street was empty. I kept to the side of the road where the fences of the houses offered shade against the sun. Near the school building, a squat one-story building near the town square, there were a few figures walking. Students, boys and girls, were gathered on the stairway, talking and laughing. They turned to look at me as I brushed past them and walked up the low concrete stairs. The sudden darkness of the corridor, after the brilliance of noon, brought flashes of light to my eyes as I walked toward the classroom in the western end of the building. The stone slabs of the floor echoed my footsteps. The door creaked as I pushed it open. The room was dark and empty. Big chalk markings on the blackboard spelled: No Classes.

I went in and sat down in the front row near the table. Sitting in the half-dark, I could smell the odor of old dust heavy in the air.

I got up and pushed the dusty window open. Even with the sunlight coming in, the room was still empty. A shaft of light struck the empty chair where Miss Rosete should be, smiling and talking to me. The flowers in the vase at her table had not been replaced with fresh ones. I wished I had remembered to pick flowers at the pool. As I sat silently in the empty room, the patch of light rose higher and was caught among the dusty cobwebs that laced the eastern corner.

The church bells tolled three o’clock. The last silver sound of their ringing was still in the air when the old janitor came in. He walked so silently I did not see him until he was at the door. Peering into the room where I sat, he said: Miss Rosete is not coming.

I rose and walked out of the room. The old man closed the window and the door behind him and melted into the shadows of the corridor. In the light of the afternoon sun, my shadow crept along the stone floor ahead or me as I went out into the street. In the classroom nearest the stairway, they were having a program and somebody was singing.

I walked to the town square and sat down on a bench. I wanted to go to the pool but I was afraid it might rain.

Later, going homeward, I passed the house where Miss Rosete stayed. The iron gate at the head of the walk gaped open. The door of the house was closed. The windows of her room returned my look with a stolid, unseeing stare.

I lay in bed until it was dark. Then I dressed and walked to the army barracks.

The camp was ablaze with lights. The acacia tree, slumped in the darkness facing the road end, seemed to shrink from the sound of the soldiers’ merry-making. Through the dark barracks door, music blared out into the night. I crept through the open gate into the yard and peered through one of the windows on the ground floor. The glass on the window was dusty and I could not see into the room clearly. A thick haze of smoke whirled and made weird patterns over the heads of the soldiers and the women gathered there. The girls of most of the soldiers were there but I could not see Miss Rosete in the room. In a corner, a woman was sitting on a soldier’s lap. The soldier was nuzzling her nape with his mouth. She was giggling shrilly.

In the yard near the door, several men were sitting in the dark, talking and smoking. As I neared them. they laughed loudly. Somebody slapped his thigh and shouted: Looks like old Clay’s been stood up. Our pretty boy’s been stood up! Everybody guffawed. Then I heard Clay’s voice. It sounded hoarse and thick. He laughed. Aw, he said. She don’t worry me none. But I sure convinced her last night, he said. I sure convinced her. Once ya get one of those babes convinced, they’re just like the girls here.

His cigarette glowed in a red arc as he waved a hand in derision. The little babe’s just playin’ hard to get, that’s all. She can’t stay away from me. After I get through with them, they can’t stay away. Everybody laughed.

Clay, somebody said through gusts of laughter. Clay, you sure are a fast one. Clay threw his cigarette butt through the fence to where the moonlight made the road a pale ribbon against the dark. You guys known old Clay, he said. Old Clay always convinces them. She didn’t even know how to kiss. Boy, I sure learned her!

I turned back toward the gate. Clay rose and walked towards me. Hey Kid, he shouted. I didn’t see ya. Com’ here. I got somethin’ for ya. I ran to the road. Hey Kid. Com’ here. What’s the matter wi’ ya. His big body lurched against the gate as he clung to it for support. The soldiers laughed. Clay was clinging to the gate, the chain rattling as he swayed. Hey Kid! Here’s your ice-cream!

I ran and ran. The voices and the drunken laughter grew faint in my ears. I ran swaying from side to side, not knowing where I was going. Then I was stumbling up to the hillock. The mist had settled and the bushes were cold and rough against my hands clutching for support. Below me, the lights on the bridge made reddish circles against the mist rising thick from the river. Music from the camp came faint and strange to my ears. I ran down the slope, the cogon grass lashing at my legs. Brambles along the trail clutched at my body and an owl hooted in a tree as I ran past its lair. The darkness of the forest swallowed me.

When I stopped, there was the pool, white in the moonlight. Breathing heavily, smelling the sickly sweetness of the flowering bankal trees, I stood at the water’s edge. Something dark stirred and rose out of the water. It was the carabao. Raising its dark head, it snorted at me. Its eyes glowed fiery red in the darkness. Dark water trickled down its nostrils and mingled with the slaver from its mouth as it glared at me. I threw stones at the carabao again and again, but it only moaned and refused to go away.