BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: THE OLD WOMAN OF THE CANDLES

THE OLD WOMAN OF THE CANDLES
by Kevin Piamonte

HOLY Thursday.

The house loomed over the street. Massive. Windows gaped open like mouths. So this would be summer for me. There were other houses nearby, but not as big and old as this one. As I stood outside the rusty iron gate, Doray came running out of the heavy wooden door. It was almost sundown.

"You're finally here. I've been waiting since morning." She kissed me on the cheek.

"The bus broke down," I sighed and gave her a hug.

She brought me inside the house. The basement was dark. A familiar scent filtered through my nose. I sneezed.

"It's old wood, remember?"

SHE had brought me to Ibajay, Aklan, a year ago for her Lola Conching's 90th birthday. We stayed for a couple of days.

Doray and I usually spend summer at beaches. She suggested that we spend this particular one in her Lola Conching's house. I declined at first, but couldn't bear the thought of going to the beach without her. So we made a deal. An hour's ride from Ibajay was a white sand beach.

"I promise." She held up her hand. "We'll go to Boracay after. You just have to see how they spend Holy Week in my Lola Conching's town."

"But I'm not even a practicing Catholic," I protested.

"Don't deny it Burt Macaraig," Doray pointed her accusing finger at me." Once I saw you lighting all the candles in church so that Rona would live."

Ask and you shall be given. I thought that was the doctrine of the Church. Rona died of abuse three years. ago. She was one of those deaf children we took care of in the Center. The twelve-year old girl was suddenly missing one day. When we finally found her in a cemetery, her body had been battered. She lingered in the hospital for two days. The pain was deeply etched on her face. Even her pleas for comfort had ceased to be human.

"All right, all right." I gave up. "We'll go to your Lola Conching's house first, purify our souls during Holy Week and burn them after in Boracay."

Doray and I have been the best of friends since college. We were drinking buddies. Everybody on campus thought we were a couple. In a way we were, since we were always together. After college we went on to do volunteer work for the deaf. We thought we would be serving the best of humanity. But the truth was we were both reluctant to get an eight-to-five job. We called that a straitjacket.

For some reason I wasn't able to make it on the day Doray and I were supposed to leave for Ibajay.

"You'd better follow, mister," she warned, her hand balled to a fist.

SAN Jose Street, Ibajay. Doray told me that on Holy Week the townspeople follow a certain tradition. Her Lola Conching owned a Santo Entierro, the dead Christ. It had been with the family for years. Every year, during Holy Week, they would bring out the statue and everybody would participate in the preparation. Some people would be in charge of dressing up the statue while others would take care of decorating the carriage that would carry it through the streets.

"What's so exciting about that?"

"It's a feast, Burt, a celebration."

I thought it was ridiculous celebrating death. There was something eerie about the whole idea.

"Lola Conching, do you remember Burt?" Doray asked as we got to the landing.

The old woman sat on a chair carefully lighting candles on the altar in front of her. Her lips reverently moved in silence and her gaze was strange as if she wasn't looking at any of the images in particular. It was this same sight that greeted me a year ago.

"The old woman of the candles," I whispered to Doray on our first visit.

"He's here to help in the activities for the Holy Week."

"It's good to see you again, Lola Conching."

"Did you have a good trip? Perhaps you need to rest."

The old woman stared at me. Her face looked tired. It sagged with wrinkles. But I could see there had been beauty there ages ago. The fine line of her brow softly curved to gray almond eyes. Her nose suggested not Spanish descent. Beside her was a wooden cane bedecked with shells intricately embedded, forming a floral design.

"Come." Doray led me through the living room. Carved lattice frames on walls complemented the chandelier made of brass and cut-glass.

"Where is the rest of the family?"

"They'll be here in the morning," Doray said as she opened the door to the bedroom.

I stepped inside.

"You'll sleep here." She indicated. "That's the washroom."

"And the other door to the right leads to your room," I recalled.

Lola Conching was blind. She suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese. This I came to know last year. Lola Conching was a comfort woman. She had to give in so her parents could be saved. At first she resisted. Then the Japanese hit her on the head with a plank of wood. She became blind. Then she got pregnant.

Was it her story or was it for want of a grandmother that somehow had drawn me to her?

"I think I'll rest for a while," I said quietly.

"Yes, do," she replied as she opened the door to her room. "We'll have dinner later."

The room was replete with old wooden heads of saints. Some had no eyes, but they looked real. I shivered--a familiar feeling. In front of my bed was a cabinet with glass casing. It was empty. The whiff of camphor from the wooden heads made me dizzy and I fell asleep. Soundly.

I WOKE up to the sound of voices. A soft stream of morning light seeped through the gauze of the mosquito net. I hurriedly washed and dressed. Then I opened the door and stepped out of the room. There were people moving around, talking.

"Burt Macaraig?" An elderly woman looked at me knowingly.

"Yes. Burt, you've met Tiya Basyon," Doray began. "And Tiya Patring, Tiyo Lindo, my cousins Ted, Joey, Ina, Elena, Nicky and Damian."

"Well, I'm back." I didn't know what else to say.

"Let's have breakfast." She tugged at my arm. "Everybody has eaten."

The combination of dried fish, scrambled eggs and fried rice sprinkled with chopped onion leaves made me very hungry.

"Nobody here eats meat on Good Friday," Doray explained as we sat down. "It's the belief."

I was too hungry to mind whatever Doray was trying to say.

"I didn't bother to wake you up last night," she said between bites. "You were snoring and I took care not to wake you when I put up your mosquito net."

"I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow."

"Did Burt have a good sleep last night, Doray?" Lola Conching asked as she walked into the dining room.

She sat on the chair at the head of the table. It was uncanny how she could move with just a cane. She seemed to know every inch of space in her house.

"Good morning," I greeted her.

"Ah, there you are." Her head followed the sound of my voice. "Did you sleep well last night?" "Yes, I did."

"You should. You will be doing many things today."

After breakfast, we went downstairs. The light from the bulb coated the basement in amber. I sneezed. In a corner was the carriage. Black. It was lined with leaves of silver. On the carriage was a casing whose sides were made of glass. Angels with dark faces adorned each of the upper four corners. The carriage looked ominous, like a hearse. Tiyo Lindo and Tiya Patring came in.

"Boys, let's do this together." Tiyo Lindo went to the carriage and started pulling it out from the corner. All of us did our share. The wheels creaked.

"It needs oiling," Tiyo Lindo said.

We positioned the carriage under the bulb.

"Why don't we just open the door?" I suggested. "Then we can have light."

"No, don't," Tiya Patring said. "It's a tradition. Nobody should see the Santo Entierro until everything is done."

I helped polish the carriage, shining the leaves of silver lining. With agility Ted climbed the carriage and dusted the wooden top of the casing. Tiyo Lindo wiped the inside of the glass. No way would I go in there, I thought. It would be like going inside a coffin.

"We're ready with the Santo Entierro," one of the girls called out. They had been cleaning the body.

The dead Christ was laid out on a mat. My stomach tumbled over. I felt like I was looking at a corpse in a morgue.

"Are you all right?" Doray approached me. She had been arranging the flowers and leaves of palm.

"Look," I said quietly. "I don't know what this is all about, but I'm not at all comfortable."

"What is it?"

"The dead Christ. I just don't like it." I sneezed. "And this scent of old wood, it's driving my nose nuts."

She laughed.

"What is so funny?" I looked at her squarely.

"That's what you get for being a heretic." She brushed my face with the bouquet she held in her hands.

"Oh, stop that." I wiped my face. "I think I'd better go upstairs for a while and rest."

"Don't be so lazy. Lola Conching won't like that kind of attitude."

"Well, she's not my grandmother in the first place." I made my way up.

Lola Conching was sitting by the altar when I got to the top of the stairs. The subtlety of light coming from the candles caressed the features of her tired face.

"Are you done?"

I was startled.

"No, Lola Conching."

"Who are you?" Her voice was stern. "Ah, you're Burt."

"Yes, Lola Conching." I was relieved that she recognized me.

"What are you doing up here?" she curtly asked.

My throat went dry.

"I want to rest for a while. I'm feeling quite sick because of the smell of old wood."

"I light candles for the Santo Entierro because it is most precious to us. It is our indu1gencia," declared Lola Conching. "It protected us during the war. Doray's father was a baby then."

I sat down in front of the old woman.

"You mean the Santo Entierro has some kind of power?" My curiosity started to grow.

"Yes, it does." Lola Conching confirmed. "It protects us from the evil of Good Fridays. Aswang."

I almost snickered. But in her voice was the weight of her belief. Aswangs, witches were myths to my knowledge. They would fly at night using their huge bat-like wings. Their hands had claws for fingers, and their teeth were razor sharp. They would look ghoulish, eyes gleaming bright red. But at daytime they were beautiful.

My gaze was transfixed on the old woman's face. I searched for the delicate features that used to be there.

"They come out on the eve of the death of Christ." Her voice slightly quivered. Was it fright I heard? Or a threat?

I was getting edgy on my seat. Faith, belief, knowledge boiled up, blurring my mind.

"You'll see on Good Friday. When the moon rises, all windows are shut in houses except ours," she proudly declared. "Windows in this house are left wide open."

It dawned on me. The Santo Entierro was not the family's iindulgencia. It was hers--for all the fears she kept inside.

"I thought you went to sleep." Doray had come upstairs.

"No, I was talking to your Lola Conching," I stammered. Cold sweat dripped down my forehead.

"I told him stories about the Santo Entierro," the old woman said with an air of accomplishment.

"Let's go." I grabbed Doray's arm.

For the first time I felt afraid. Yet I could not understand why. I raced downstairs. Doray came after me.

"Wait," she called.

Everybody stared at me blankly when I got to the basement. I turned around and faced Doray. We almost bumped into each other.

"Can we go for a walk?" I panted.

We went to the plaza in front of the church. We were both quiet. I pondered why she brought me to this strange place. I felt she had done it on purpose. I never questioned events, phenomena. I always took them as though they were a natural order of the cosmos, like birth and death. True, I did light candles for Rona, but the girl died nonetheless. I felt humiliated. That menial task was my turning point. Never again did candles burn.

"This is where the procession ends," she said as we sat on a concrete bench. We were facing the church. "The procession goes around, through several streets and it ends here at about seven in the evening."

"Do you believe in your Lola Conching's stories about the Santo Entierro?"

Doray looked lost in thought. She groped for words.

"I don't have any answers, Burt. But this is what I can tell you." Her eyes brightened up. "What I saw was the crowd surging toward the Santo Entierro as it got to the door of the church. It was a mad scramble. Everybody wanted a piece of the Santo. They say its hair or any part of its clothing can be used as an amulet, a protection against evil spirits."

Another mythical explanation.

"I'm hungry." I stood up and we went back to the house.

Lunch was quick. Everybody was rushing to finish the morning's activity for the procession in the afternoon.

I went to sleep. In the first place, vacations were meant for naps. Besides I felt I had done my share already with the carriage.

"Burt." I heard Doray's voice through my slumber. "It's time to get ready."

"Hmmm," I protested. I was too tired to do anything.

"Wake up, sleepyhead." She sat on the bed. "You've been sleeping for hours. Come on." She gave me a gentle slap on my face.

"All right." I rubbed my eyes and got out of bed.

"Call me when you're ready." She stood up and went inside her room.

When Doray and I went downstairs, I gasped at the sight that greeted me. There was the Santo Entierro inside the glass casing of the carriage. Asleep. Its long golden brown hair was spread out like a fan. Its body covered with the richness of white and red velvet was adorned with beads of gold. The carriage was bedecked with sprays of palms and flowers, the ones used for funerals. Trinkets of lights illuminated the whole presentation. Death never had this brilliance.

"Well, we're ready," Tiya Patring said.

The boys--Ted, Joey, Nicky and Damian--opened the door and pulled the carriage out. A small crowd stood outside. They applauded as we made our way into the street behind the image. They made the sign of the cross and followed us. As we neared the church, I could see other carriages lined up, each one carrying a different image representing Lent. We were made to position somewhere at the end of the line. And the procession began. The band with scant composition of trumpets and drums lazily accompanied our strides. I snickered.

"Shhh," Doray warned.

When the sun came down, some people started handing out candles.

"Want to light one?" Doray slyly offered.

The procession went on for about two hours. People lined the streets. There were old people sitting on wheelchairs. Soon they would drown in the shadow of the evening. I thought of Lola Conching left alone in the house seeing the whole procession in her mind as she prayed for her soul. In her house candles burned like tired spirits.

When we neared the end of the procession, the carriages were brought inside the church.

"Let's go." Doray pulled me.

"Where?" I thought this would be the most awaited event of the day.

But her clutch slipped off my arm.

Then I saw a throng of people rushing towards us. Joey, Nicky and Damian struggled to pull the carriage to the entrance of the church. On top of the carriage were Tiyo Lindo and Ted brandishing wooden canes like warriors. Everyone was trying to get near the Santo Entierro. I was trapped. I couldn't get out from the sea of bodies. The wave threatened to crush me. I couldn't breathe. I was drowning. Some people had tears streaming down their faces, sobbing. Others screamed as Tiyo Lindo and Ted hit their hands with their wooden canes.

"The hair," someone shouted. "A strand of hair."

"No, don't!" I could no longer hear myself as I went down, pressed by the rush of wave.

Suddenly Tiyo Lindo and Ted were pulling me up. I slumped on the wooden top of the carriage, catching my breath. Below, the maddened faces of people receded as we entered the portals of the church.

We jumped off the carriage. Sweat pasted my shirt on to my skin. I felt we had gone through a siege. But the carriage was intact. The glass remained unbroken. The leaves of silver lining still glistened. Everything was in place. The rest of the boys, Joey, Nicky and Damian, volunteered to stay behind while we went home for dinner.

"You were lucky you didn't get crushed," said Ted.

I did not bother to say anything. I had not seen raw madness before.

"Is he all right?" Lola Conching asked me as we got to the top of the stairs.

"Burt," Doray came towards me. We need not say anything to each other. Tears were about to fall from my eyes.

"It's all right," I held her hands tight. "I'll be fine."

Later that evening we stayed in my room and drank whiskey.

"I'm sorry, Burt, I tried to get through." She recalled what happened earlier that evening.

We were silent for a while.

"It was so weird. They were scrambling. Those people were fanatics."

"The first time I saw it I thought I would go down on my knees." She smiled in disbelief.

Doray left at midnight to sleep in her room. I tossed in bed. I kept thinking about the mad rush of the crowd towards the Santo Entierro. What awesome power for one made of wood to draw the tide toward himself. My mind reeled. It was Black Saturday. The day of the dead Christ.

In the haze of alcohol, I got out of the room and cautiously made my way down the stairs and out of the house. I went out into the street and walked to the church. The moon had risen, big and bright. Its color oozed beyond its shape and bled the sky. The street was silent. As I neared the church, I heard its door open. It moaned. In the dimness of the surroundings I saw four men coming out of the church. They were carrying something wrapped in white sheets, like a dead man. It was the Santo Entierro! Oblivious of my presence, they struggled with its weight. Slowly I took several steps back. I turned around and cautiously walked back to the house. Then I saw that the windows of the other houses were shut. Tight. I remembered what Lola Conching said about the witches. I ran towards the house, racing against the pounding in my chest. Then I swiftly ascended the stairs. When I got to my room, I threw myself on the bed. At a surprising rate, I tucked the mosquito net in and closed my eyes. The Santo Entierro was stolen, the Santo Entierro was stolen! This I kept repeating to myself. I wanted to get up and tell Doray. But I was feeling too heady. I felt I was going to throw up. I closed my eyes and cascaded down into a labyrinth of darkness. Then I heard a flapping on wings. Wak, wak, wak. It flapped in the breeze blowing through my window. Wak, wak, wak. There it was again. I bolted up, charged with a current of electricity running through my veins. The mosquito net plunged down. I struggled against the mesh of its gauze. Then I saw the Santo Entierro! It stood inside the glass cabinet in front of my bed. I screamed. The shrillness shot through the stillness of San Jose Street.

"Burt," Doray rushed in. I screamed again. She peeled the mosquito net away. Then I felt her hands, her arms holding me close. I was drenched with sweat.

Someone knocked on the door.

I looked at the glass cabinet in front of my bed. It was empty.

"The Santo Entierro was stolen." I breathlessly whispered to Doray.

"The what?" She barely heard me.

"The Santo Entierro." I punctuated each word.

Doray stood up and opened the door. Lola Conching entered the room.

The Santo Entierro was stolen!" I cried. "It was stolen."

Lola Conching covered her face, fingers digging into her skin. Her breathing came in spasms. The rest of her kin stood behind her. I got out of bed.

"Where are you going?" Doray asked.

"To the church."

I grabbed Lola Conching and carried her in my arms as if she were a child. She weakly struggled against my strength.

"Leave her alone!" Doray cried. The rest of the family encircled us like the crowd that earlier surged towards the Santo Entierro.

"No!" I stared at them.

And we all marched down into the darkness of the street, all the way to the church. Lola Conching buried her face my chest. Her resistance was drowned in her sobbing.

The door of the church was open when we got there. Some people had left it open. We made our way through the carriages inside the shadow of the church's belly. Images loomed. Near the altar stood the black carriage with leaves of silver lining. I Set Lola Conching down on the floor She grappled with my feet, whimpering.

"Here." Tiya Patring offered me a candle. I took it.

"Light all the candles, Burt," Doray's voice quivered.

I numbly walked around the church and lit all the candles I could find. My hands shook. Lola Conching wailed Then I saw it. It was there. The Santo Entierro glistened inside the glass casing of its carriage.

"It's here, Lola Conching." My lips trembled. "The Santo Entierro is back!"

We all looked at Lola Conching, still slumped on the floor. She had stopped crying.

"Put out the candles," Lola Conching commanded.

Nobody moved. For a while everybody had stoned expressions on their faces.

"Put out the candles." This time her voice came undaunted.

One at a time her kin blew out the flames. Their somber faces were ghosts extinguished with the past. The Santo Entierro faded into darkness.

I sank to my knees with the last candle in my hands. Lola Conching rose. Layers of tormented skin peeled off her face that came to the light. I saw her real beauty. Immaculate, a flower whose petals would wither with a careless brush of fingers. I saw a girl of eighteen whose face was as fine and gentle as the hair of the wind. Then the features slowly changed with the diminishing flame. And between light and darkness was Rona's face completely devoid of pain.

The light of the candle in my hands flickered and died as Lola Conching's blind eyes gave way to tears that had welled through the years. In the darkness of the church I bowed my head as I convulsed with my own truths. Lola Conching held on to my arms as I held on to the candle. I could smell the pregnant whips of smoke rising from the faint orange glow of its wick.

Black Saturday. And now, Easter Sunday.

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: A NIGHT IN THE HILLS

A NIGHT IN THE HILLS
by Paz Marquez Benitez

HOW Gerardo Luna came by his dream no one could have told, not even he. He was a salesman in a jewelry store on Rosario street and had been little else. His job he had inherited from his father, one might say; for his father before him had leaned behind the self-same counter, also solicitous, also short-sighted and thin of hair.

After office hours, if he was tired, he took the street car to his home in Intramuros. If he was feeling well, he walked; not frequent­ly, however, for he was frail of constitution and not unduly thrifty. The stairs of his house were narrow and dark and rank with charac­teristic odors from a Chinese sari-sari store which occupied part of the ground floor.

He would sit down to a supper which savored strongly of Chinese cooking. He was a fastidious eater. He liked to have the courses spread out where he could survey them all. He would sample each and daintily pick out his favorite portions—the wing tips, the liver, the brains from the chicken course, the tail-end from the fish. He ate appreciatively, but rarely with much appetite. After supper he spent quite a time picking his teeth meditatively, thinking of this and that. On the verge of dozing he would perhaps think of the forest.

For his dream concerned the forest. He wanted to go to the forest. He had wanted to go ever since he could remember. The forest was beautiful. Straight-growing trees. Clear streams. A mountain brook which he might follow back to its source up among the clouds. Perhaps the thought that most charmed and enslaved him was of seeing the image of the forest in the water. He would see the infinitely far blue of the sky in the clear stream, as in his childhood, when playing in his father’s azotea, he saw in the water-jars an image of the sky and of the pomelo tree that bent over the railing, also to look at the sky in the jars.

Only once did he speak of this dream of his. One day, Ambo the gatherer of orchids came up from the provinces to buy some cheap ear-rings for his wife’s store. He had proudly told Gerardo that the orchid season had been good and had netted him over a thousand pesos. Then he talked to him of orchids and where they were to be found and also of the trees that he knew as he knew the palm of his hand. He spoke of sleeping in the forest, of living there for weeks at a time. Gerardo had listened with his prominent eyes staring and with thrills coursing through his spare body. At home he told his wife about the conversation, and she was interested in the business aspect of it.

“It would be nice to go with him once,” he ventured hopefully.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but I doubt if he would let you in on his business.”

“No,” he sounded apologetically. “But just to have the experience, to be out.”

“Out?” doubtfully.

“To be out of doors, in the hills,” he said precipitately.

“Why? That would be just courting discomfort and even sickness. And for nothing.”

He was silent.

He never mentioned the dream again. It was a sensitive, well-mannered dream which nevertheless grew in its quiet way. It lived under Gerardo Luna’s pigeon chest and filled it with something, not warm or sweet, but cool and green and murmurous with waters.

He was under forty. One of these days when he least expected it the dream would come true. How, he did not know. It seemed so unlikely that he would deliberately contrive things so as to make the dream a fact. That would he very difficult.

Then his wife died.

And now, at last, he was to see the forest. For Ambo had come once more, this time with tales of newly opened public land up on a forest plateau where he had been gathering orchids. If Gerardo was interested—he seemed to be—they would go out and locate a good piece. Gerardo was interested—not exactly in land, but Ambo need not be told.

He had big false teeth that did not quite fit into his gums. When he was excited, as he was now, he spluttered and stammered and his teeth got in the way of his words.

“I am leaving town tomorrow morning.” he informed Sotera. “Will—”

“Leaving town? Where are you going?”

“S-someone is inviting me to look at some land in Laguna.”

“Land? What are you going to do with land?”

That question had never occurred to him.

“Why,” he stammered, “Ra-raise something, I-I suppose.”

“How can you raise anything! You don’t know anything about it. You haven’t even seen a carabao!”

“Don’t exaggerate, Ate. You know that is not true.”

“Hitched to a carreton, yes; but hitched to a plow—”

“Never mind!” said Gerardo patiently. “I just want to leave you my keys tomorrow and ask you to look after the house.”

“Who is this man you are going with?”

“Ambo, who came to the store to buy some cheap jewelry. His wife has a little business in jewels. He suggested that I—g-go with him.”

He found himself then putting the thing as matter-of-factly and plausibly as he could. He emphasized the immense possibilities of land and waxed eloquently over the idea that land was the only form of wealth that could not he carried away.

“Why, whatever happens, your land will be there. Nothing can possibly take it away. You may lose one crop, two, three. Que importe! The land will still he there.”

Sotera said coldly, “I do not see any sense in it. How can you think of land when a pawnshop is so much more profitable? Think! People coming to you to urge you to accept their business. There’s Peregrina. She would make the right partner for you, the right wife. Why don’t you decide?”

“If I marry her, I’ll keep a pawnshop—no, if I keep a pawnshop I’ll marry her,” he said hurriedly.

He knew quite without vanity that Peregrina would take him the minute he proposed. But he could not propose. Not now that he had visions of himself completely made over, ranging the forest at will, knowing it thoroughly as Ambo knew it, fearless, free. No, not Peregrina for him! Not even for his own sake, much less Sotera’s.

Sotera was Ate Tere to him through a devious reckoning of rela­tionship that was not without ingenuity. For Gerardo Luna was a younger brother to the former mistress of Sotera’s also younger brother, and it was to Sotera’s credit that when her brother died after a death-bed marriage she took Gerardo under her wings and married him off to a poor relation who took good care of him and submitted his problem as well as her own to Sotera’s competent management. Now that Gerardo was a widower she intended to repeat the good office and provide him with another poor relation guaranteed to look after his physical and economic well-being and, in addition, guaranteed to stay healthy and not die on him. “Marrying to play nurse to your wife,” was certainly not Sotera’s idea of a worthwhile marriage.

This time, however, he was not so tractable. He never openly opposed her plans, but he would not commit himself. Not that he failed to realize the disadvantages of widowerhood. How much more comfortable it would be to give up resisting, marry good, fat Peregri­na, and be taken care of until he died for she would surely outlive him.

But he could not, he must not. Uncomfortable though he was, he still looked on his widowerhood as something not fortuitous, but a feat triumphantly achieved. The thought of another marriage was to shed his wings, was to feel himself in a small, warm room, while overhead someone shut down on him an opening that gave him the sky.

So to the hills he went with the gatherer of orchids.



AMONG the foothills noon found them. He was weary and wet with sweat.

“Can’t we get water?” he asked dispiritedly.

“We are coming to water,” said Ambo. “We shall be there in ten minutes.”

Up a huge scorched log Ambo clambered, the party following. Along it they edged precariously to avoid the charred twigs and branches that strewed the ground. Here and there a wisp of smoke still curled feebly out of the ashes.

“A new kaingin,” said Ambo. “The owner will be around, I suppose. He will not be going home before the end of the week. Too far.”

A little farther they came upon the owner, a young man with a cheerful face streaked and smudged from his work. He stood looking at them, his two hands resting on the shaft of his axe.

“Where are you going?” he asked quietly and casually. All these people were casual and quiet.

“Looking at some land,” said Ambo. “Mang Gerardo is from Manila. We are going to sleep up there.”

He looked at Gerardo Luna curiously and reviewed the two por­ters and their load. An admiring look slowly appeared in his likeable eyes.

“There is a spring around here, isn’t there? Or is it dried up?”

“No, there is still water in it. Very little but good.”

They clambered over logs and stumps down a flight of steps cut into the side of the hill. At the foot sheltered by an overhanging fern-covered rock was what at first seemed only a wetness. The young man squatted before it and lifted off a mat of leaves from a tiny little pool. Taking his tin cup he cleared the surface by trailing the bottom of the cup on it. Then he scooped up some of the water. It was cool and clear, with an indescribable tang of leaf and rock. It seemed the very essence of the hills.

He sat with the young man on a fallen log and talked with him. The young man said that he was a high school graduate, that he had taught school for a while and had laid aside some money with which he had bought this land. Then he had got married, and as soon as he could manage it he would build a home here near this spring. His voice was peaceful and even. Gerardo suddenly heard his own voice and was embarrassed. He lowered his tone and tried to capture the other’s quiet.

That house would be like those he had seen on the way—brown, and in time flecked with gray. The surroundings would be stripped bare. There would be san franciscos around it and probably beer bottles stuck in the ground. In the evening the burning leaves in the yard would send a pleasant odor of smoke through the two rooms, driving away the mosquitoes, then wandering out-doors again into the forest. At night the red fire in the kitchen would glow through the door of the batalan and would be visible in the forest,

The forest was there, near enough for his upturned eyes to reach. The way was steep, the path rising ruthlessly from the clearing in an almost straight course. His eyes were wistful, and he sighed tremulously. The student followed his gaze upward.

Then he said, “It must take money to live in Manila. If I had the capital I would have gone into business in Manila.”

“Why?” Gerardo was surprised.

“Why—because the money is there, and if one wishes to fish he must go where the fishes are. However,” he continued slowly after a silence, “it is not likely that I shall ever do that. Well, this little place is all right.”

They left the high school graduate standing on the clearing, his weight resting on one foot, his eyes following them as they toiled up the perpendicular path. At the top of the climb Gerardo sat on the ground and looked down on the green fields far below, the lake in the distance, the clearings on the hill sides, and then on the diminishing figure of the high school graduate now busily hacking away, making the most of the remaining hours of day-light. Perched above them all, he felt an exhilaration in his painfully drumming chest.

Soon they entered the dim forest.

Here was the trail that once was followed by the galleon traders when, to outwit those that lay in wait for them, they landed the treasure on the eastern shores of Luzon, and, crossing the Cordillera on this secret trail, brought it to Laguna. A trail centuries old. Stalwart adventurers, imperious and fearless, treasure coveted by others as imperious and fearless, carriers bent beneath burden almost too great to bear—stuff of ancient splendors and ancient griefs.



ON his bed of twigs and small branches, under a roughly contrived roof Gerardo lay down that evening after automatically crossing himself. He shifted around until at last he settled into a comfortable hollow. The fire was burning brightly, fed occasionally with dead branches that the men had collected into a pile. Ambo and the porters were sitting on the black oilcloth that had served them for a dining table. They sat with their arms hugging their knees and talked together in peaceable tones punctuated with brief laughter. From where he lay Gerardo Luna could feel the warmth of the fire on his face.

He was drifting into deeply contented slumber, lulled by the even tones of his companions. Voices out-doors had a strange quality. They blended with the wind, and, on its waves, flowed gently around and past one who listened. In the haze of new sleep he thought he was listening not to human voices, but to something more elemental. A warm sea on level stretches of beach. Or, if he had ever known such a thing, raindrops on the bamboos.

He awoke uneasily after an hour or two. The men were still talking, but intermittently. The fire was not so bright nor so warm.

Ambo was saying:

“Gather more firewood. We must keep the fire burning all night. You may sleep. I shall wake up once in a while to put on more wood.”

Gerardo was reassured. The thought that he would have to sleep in the dark not knowing whether snakes were crawling towards him was intolerable. He settled once more into light slumber.

The men talked on. They did not sing as boatmen would have done while paddling their bancas in the dark. Perhaps only sea-folk sang and hill-folk kept silence. For sea-folk bear no burdens to weigh them down to the earth. Into whatever wilderness of remote sea their wanderer’s hearts may urge them, they may load their treasures in sturdy craft, pull at the oar or invoke the wind, and raise their voices in song. The depths of ocean beneath, the height of sky above, and between, a song floating out on the darkness. A song in the hills would only add to the lonesomeness a hundredfold.

He woke up again feeling that the little twigs underneath him had suddenly acquired uncomfortable proportions. Surely when he lay down they were almost unnoticeable. He raised himself on his elbow and carefully scrutinized his mat for snakes. He shook his blanket out and once more eased himself into a new and smoother corner. The men were now absolutely quiet, except for their snoring. The fire was burning low. Ambo evidently had failed to wake up in time to feed it.

He thought of getting up to attend to the fire, but hesitated. He lay listening to the forest and sensing the darkness. How vast that darkness! Mile upon mile of it all around. Lost somewhere in it, a little flicker, a little warmth.

He got up. He found his limbs stiff and his muscles sore. He ­could not straighten his back without discomfort. He went out of the tent and carefully arranged two small logs on the fire. The air was chilly. He looked about him at the sleeping men huddled together and doubled up for warmth. He looked toward his tent, fit­fully lighted by the fire that was now crackling and rising higher. And at last his gaze lifted to look into the forest. Straight white trunks gleaming dimly in the darkness. The startling glimmer of a firefly. Outside of the circle of the fire was the measureless unknown, hostile now, he felt. Or was it he who was hostile? This fire was the only protection, the only thing that isolated this little strip of space and made it shelter for defenseless man. Let the fire go out and the unknown would roll in and engulf them all in darkness. He hastily placed four more logs on the fire and retreated to his tent.

He could not sleep. He felt absolutely alone. Aloneness was like hunger in that it drove away sleep.

He remembered his wife. He had a fleeting thought of God. Then he remembered his wife again. Probably not his wife as her­self, as a definite personality, but merely as a companion and a minis­terer to his comfort. Not his wife, but a wife. His mind recreated a scene which had no reason at all for persisting as a memory. There was very little to it. He had waked one midnight to find his wife sit­ting up in the bed they shared. She had on her flannel camisa de chino, always more or less dingy, and she was telling her beads. “What are you doing?” he had asked. “I forgot to say my prayers,” she had answered.

He was oppressed by nostalgia. And because he did not know what it was he wanted his longing became keener. Not for his wife, nor for his life in the city. Not for his parents nor even for his lost childhood. What was there in these that could provoke anything remotely resembling this regret? What was not within the life span could not be memories. Something more remote even than race memory. His longing went farther back, to some age in Paradise maybe when the soul of man was limitless and unshackled: when it embraced the infinite and did not hunger because it had the inexhaustible at its command.

When he woke again the fire was smoldering. But there was a light in the forest, an eerie light. It was diffused and cold. He wondered what it was. There were noises now where before had seemed only the silence itself. There were a continuous trilling, strange night-calls and a peculiar, soft clinking which recurred at regular intervals. Forest noises. There was the noise, too, of nearby waters.

One of the men woke up and said something to another who was also evidently awake, Gerardo called out.

“What noise is that?”

“Which noise?”

“That queer, ringing noise.”

“That? That’s caused by tree worms, I have been told.”

He had a sudden vision of long, strong worms drumming with their heads on the barks of trees.

“The other noise is the worm noise,” corrected Ambo. “That hissing. That noise you are talking about is made by crickets.”

“What is that light?” he presently asked.

“That is the moon,” said Ambo.

“The moon!” Gerardo exclaimed and fell silent. He would never understand the forest.

Later he asked, “Where is that water that I hear?”

“A little farther and lower, I did not wish to camp there because of the leeches. At daylight we shall stop there, if you wish.”

When he awoke again it was to find the dawn invading the forest. He knew the feel of the dawn from the many misas de gallo that he had gone to on December mornings. The approach of day-light gave him a feeling of relief. And he was saddened.

He sat quietly on a flat stone with his legs in the water and looked around. He was still sore all over. His neck ached, his back hurt, his joints troubled him. He sat there, his wet shirt tightly plastered over his meager form and wondered confusedly about many things. The sky showed overhead through the rift in the trees. The sun looked through that opening on the rushing water. The sky was high and blue. It was as it always had been in his dreams, beau­tiful as he had always thought it would be. But he would never come back. This little corner of the earth hidden in the hills would never again be before his gaze.

He looked up again at the blue sky and thought of God. God for him was always up in the sky. Only the God he thought of now was not the God he had always known. This God he was thinking of was another God. He was wondering if when man died and moved on to another life he would not find there the things he missed and so wished to have. He had a deep certainty that that would be so, that after his mortal life was over and we came against that obstruc­tion called death, our lives, like a stream that runs up against a dam, would still flow on, in courses fuller and smoother. This must be so. He had a feeling, almost an instinct, that he was not wrong. And a Being, all wise and compassionate, would enable us to remedy our frustrations and heartaches.

HE went straight to Sotera’s to get the key to his house. In the half light of the stairs he met Peregrina, who in the solicitous expression of her eyes saw the dust on his face, his hands, and his hair, saw the unkempt air of the whole of him. He muttered something polite and hurried up stairs, self-consciousness hampering his feet. Peregrina, quite without embarrassment, turned and climbed the stairs after him.

On his way out with the keys in his hand he saw her at the head of the stairs anxiously lingering. He stopped and considered her thoughtfully.

“Pereg, as soon as I get these clothes off I shall come to ask you a question that is very—very important to me.”

As she smiled eagerly but uncertainly into his face, he heard a jangling in his hand. He felt, queerly, that something was closing above his hand, and that whoever was closing it, was rattling the keys.

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: NANKING STORE

NANKING STORE
by Macario D. Tiu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did not budge.

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

"Check," his opponent said.

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

His opponent laughed aloud, showing toothless gums.

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

"Seven times."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ah Kong! Ah Kong!" somebody said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At the barbershop."

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

"Well, what does it mean?"

"It means Ah Kong cannot produce a son."

"And what is a bad stock?"

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

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

"They say Peter is a bad stock."

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

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

That was why Linda had moved in to Santa Ana.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How old are you now?"

"Twelve," I said.

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

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

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

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

"So tall," she said.

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

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: MEETING

MEETING
by Consorcio Borje

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything went suddenly white at once.

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

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

"Oh, you're awake now."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I cannot understand the cosine of--"

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

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

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

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

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

"Good afternoon, Mister Deño."

"Er, Lita"

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

"You did."

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

"But why?" asked Pedro incredulously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll not see you again?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: MEDITATIONS OF A PISS ARTIST

MEDITATIONS OF A PISS ARTIST
by Menchu Aquino Sarmiento

JOJO was idly tracing arcs and swirls on the rooftop of the Faculty Center. He was alone and his urine fizzled slightly on the pleasantly warm concrete with the hiss of rain. As in the unforeseen workings of mimetic magic, there did then arise from the heat-swollen earth, the vapors of a slight precipitation to come. Jojo felt triumphant, a personal sense of accomplishment. Maybe he was some kind of shaman, and he didn’t even know it: a still untapped power which was his by right of his Indo-Malay cultural heritage and through the divine workings of that mythical hole in the sky, the same one through which government subsidized psychics during the fabulary Marcos regime had discovered supernatural powers streamed forth. Maybe it was because his was an astrological water sign, Pisces, that he could make water with such skill, channeling through well-considered sphincter and priapic muscle control, the purposeful and selective release of his electromagnetically charged bodily fluids, delicately balancing the rise and ebb of ions and protons in the atmosphere. A few minor adjustments and with enough practice, he could raise up a storm or even a light summer drizzle. He bestowed a genial benediction upon the acacia trees whose susurrant leaves and splayed, interlacing black branches always made him grateful he had gotten into the Diliman campus.

Another name for acacia was raintree. Miss Farrin, his third year high school English teacher in Masbate had taught him that. She had asked him to read a sentimental love story about rain trees set in Baguio. Jojo had been aware that she was watching him read all the while with a moist, intent earnestness as though she had handed him a treasured memento, a part of her soul, and now wanted to see how he would receive it. With a lazy spitefulness, he’d told her that acacia timber was also known as monkey pod wood. A hint of pained distaste creased her perpetually anxious features. It was as though he had profaned a shrine, so he had considerately added that he liked the name raintree better. She had tremulously pronounced him sensitive, telling him that she sensed in him from the start a special vibration and had asked him to walk her home as she had all the five sections’ final quarter exams and reports to carry.

It had rained, just like in the story they’d read, and he had to wait it out in the little room she rented behind the provincial bus station. After helping her arrange the piles of test papers and book reports according to section and in alphabetical order, they had sat side by side on her army surplus cot with the faded, blue-flowered Chinese cotton coverlet and the line of troll dolls and stuffed toys. Neil Young was wailing away on her portable audiocassette player and she had leaned gently against him, her frail body redolent of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum and Johnson’s Baby Cologne and told him of all sorts of insights she’d had into his character that he had never even realized were there. Then for lack of anything better to say or do in response to her utterances, and wanting to see besides how she, an older woman and a figure of authority, would react to such overtures, he had boldly grabbed her, suddenly turning and landing so heavily on her, he practically squeezed the breath out of her as he pressed her against the thin mattress. The bedsprings shrieked while his smooth large hands cupped her bony buttocks through her nylon bikini panties.

“Sus ginoo—Arru-uy! Agu-uy!” Miss Farrin had interjected, forgetting the carefully enunciated English that she had cultivated all those years since she’d been a Rotary scholar. And that had been Jojo’s first time, when he was just a boy of fifteen, and he was proud of it. They had done it three times that afternoon. He was proudest though of not having had to pay for it and that it was with a woman who was eight years older, had been baccalaureated in a Manila university and passed the government licensure exams. It was as though being with her would allow some of her accomplishments to pass through in some weird form of capillary action into his own underachieving being.

Miss Farrin gave him money to take a tricycle home, fussing over him with a reverent and diffident tenderness that made him want to laugh. That was also the first time he’d been kissed on the ears. He didn’t like that part, and had recoiled at her tongue lathering warm saliva along the ridges and hollows of his ears. The next week, Miss Farrin bought him two T-shirts from the town viajera, genuine Bossinni and Giordano, and black hightop Converse sneakers. They had gone on seeing each other for a while until she left to take up post-graduate courses at FEU. Miss Farrin had written to him hopefully several times during his senior year and sent him more T-shirts. She must have heard that he was in Manila, too, but he had never gotten in touch with her there and expected that one day, when he was home on vacation, he would learn that she’d married, or even better, gotten the teaching position she’d dreamed of in Guam or Brunei.

On hindsight, Miss Farrin’s judgment may have been as good a reason as any for Jojo’s decision to be an artist, besides not being smart enough to get into one of those quota courses on the UP College Admission Tests. He had gotten in on a certificate course but had planned to shift to a bachelor’s degree program later. During the talent test, they’d been asked to draw a human figure in charcoal, a detail from a calendar reproduction of Luna’s Spolarium. He’d noticed the college dean staring intently at him and had insolently spread his legs, adjusted his crotch and stared right back. The old man’s mouth had made a little “o” of schoolgirlish surprise. Later, all a-dither with avuncular good will, he’d offered to give Jojo a private scholarship. Jojo accepted. He had been quite an innocent then. The only gay men in Masbate had been, as expected, hairdressers and dressmakers and the Boy Scout Master. He’d never expected to meet one in such an exalted position and was frankly curious. Besides, the dean always made it a point to be seen with young girls at discos and to be photographed bussing some high society lovely at an artsy event.

The summer before that freshman schoolyear, Jojo had gone with the dean and his current favorite, Ferdie Danao, to one of those gay Santacruzans in Malabon. Ferdie, a somewhat pudgy bemoustached mestizo who looked like a Super Mario Brother (he was also an advertising model) and had tried to paint like Anita Magsaysay-Ho, had chattered cheerfully about this up and coming couturier who had a heavy crush on him. Dean Batumbacal’s skin rash shone through the layers of his makeup foundation under the acidic gleam of multicolored incandescent bulbs strung along the streets. Several times, he discreetly rubbed his paunch against Jojo’s rump, and just to tease him, Jojo had wriggled ever so slightly back. That was as far as he went for now. He believed there was integrity that on principle, he would never do it with another man although he enjoyed their unabashed admiration. Otherwise, he was bored. The spectacle of these urban queens with their well-defined, overarched eyebrows and tricolored hairdos, demurely parading in clouds of lime and fuchsia organza and ruffles, or black satin sheathes and tulle was disheartening. It was so safe, so predictable and provincial, looking for all the world like a Masbate cotillion. This was his first outing with the beau monde and it was like he had never left home.

Jojo wasn’t even supposed to be up on the Faculty Center roof. Too many horny kids and freaks were using it to make out, to drink tequila or vodka and to smoke grass, so the Blue Guards had hammered a waist-high wooden barrier at the foot of the stairs. But so what—there was no door at the top anyway—it had long been ripped off its hinges—so everyone just climbed over that practically useless fence. Right now though, it was still broad daylight, so he had the place all to himself. He’d just been to a screening of a French documentary about that American expressionist artist Jackson Pollock who’d killed himself way back in the fifties. Jojo wondered why Filipino artists so rarely committed suicide. A deficit of angst? Offhand, he couldn’t think of even one.

On one of the walls of the Faculty Center roof deck, someone, probably a colegiala, had scribbled some lines from Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince in a wavery, sensitive colored chalk script. Miss Farrin had been gaga over The Little Prince and had been disappointed that he hadn’t shared this passion. She’d insisted that everything in the slender little book had some deeper esoteric symbolic meaning, including the three volcanoes on the Little Prince’s planet. The one that was dormant, she interpreted to be his sex drive. Jojo couldn’t remember what the other two were supposed to be and wondered why it was even important that they be about anything. Those academics who were forever analyzing and categorizing and setting limits and gradations on thought amused him. The integrity of their footnotes and their bibliographies left him cold. He had no qualms about stealing other people’s ideas if he could. He had no respect for intellectual property, especially not Third World intellectual property. He wondered how someone from Masbate could be such a snob and was amused by his own presumptuousness.

Jojo tapped the head of his dick expertly and the last tiny drops spattered close to his foot like a signature. With insouciant grace, he zipped himself up. He had given up wearing underwear because it saved him money, was less laundry for him to do and more of a turn on for some girls. It worked for him that he resembled a bulol icon with his angular features and the glints of verdigris in his skin, an effect he’d since learned to emphasize with layers of brass slave bracelets that reached midway up his sinewy forearms, rings strategically pierced through one earlobe, and tattoos around his wrist. A real chick boy, agreed the guys who had called themselves S.M.E.G.M.A.—Ang Samahan ng mga Egoy at Gago na Matitigas ang Ari. Ginayuma mo ‘ata, p’re, they joked with a trace of envy and admiration. He never had to pay for it and even had to avoid them when they waited for him, uninvited at his dorm. Since Miss Farrin, there had been more girls than he could count on his fingers and toes. Not bad for a guy who was not yet eighteen.



AS he left the building, Jojo mulled over a project proposal to cover the entire rooftop of the Faculty Center with the bodily fluids of one hundred Filipino artists in celebration of the Centennial, sort of like a liquid Cristo, that Greek guy who he’d heard got Fortune 500 corporations and governments to give him a lot of money just to wrap things in tarpaulins or parachute silk. Bodily fluids being as ephemeral and transient as time and serving as a metaphor for the corresponding illusory nature of our freedom and nationhood, which were likewise ephemeral and transient, ever changing and impermanent and all that, along with some kind of profound statement about political and artistic consciousness in the Third World being as ephemeral and transient as bodily fluids etc. He just needed to find the right Derrida-ish—or was that Foucault?—diction for it and hoped Mr. Beltran the art theory professor had the right texts.

The guy in the movie had piously divided Pollock’s work into style periods: le drip, le dribble and le splatter, and he really meant it. The French are so serious about everything especially high culture. A very attractive man, Pollock, Jojo decided and wondered if it was true that he had swung both ways. Ferdie Dayao, being half-white himself, claimed that although Caucasian penises were generally larger, they were not as stiff as Oriental ones. He had preened prettily before Jojo during their last outing, when they went skinnydipping at Pansol. Jojo had looked on politely, with detached curiosity. He wondered if piss, puke and spit would pass for a project as hallowed as the coming Centennial. To enhance the whole project, he would put in a background of ethnic music and maybe some tribal dancers. Then he could call it a multimedia experience.

Once he’d asked Mr. Beltran what the whole art thing was all about and he’d stared coldly back at him, like a bilious fish through his rimless oval reading glasses then rumbled deep in his narrow scholar’s chest, his rounded shoulders hunching up aggressively: “What do you think it’s about, Cruz? I’m sick of all these pretentious pseudo intellectuals who read art reviews then pass off the opinions in them as if they were their own. What about it, Cruz? Why don’t you tell me what you think it’s all about?”

“Well, sir, I guess I’m just another pseudo-intellectual myself,” Jojo had softly said, and he really meant it. He was not insulted. That sort of got Mr. Beltran off balance, like by a mental jiujitsu trick. Jojo was not about to get into a discussion with a guy who probably jerked off to Art News. He felt that it was a really Zen experience, except that if he could say it, then it probably wasn’t, and he probably was not Zen either. But it was good just the same to have everybody slapping his back and giving him high fives after the class, and saying “Okay ka, pare,” like he’d done something really heroic. What a lot of shit that was but still kind of fun anyway.

In one instance that was meant to partake of an unaccustomed confidence, Mr. Beltran had told his class in his gruff, somewhat muffled voice which was his normal way of speaking how he had been turned on to painting by those photo essays in Life magazine about the New York art scene. That had been just after the Second World War. There were no glossy art magazines in Manila then. It was not unlike seeing the world by the light of dead stars and Jojo had found it all quite touching. It reminded him of how it had been for him in Masbate, how he had rented used books and remaindered magazines and had devoured TV shows at the only home with a satellite dish in those years before cable TV. He tried to imagine Mr. Beltran as a young man like himself in the throes of a just revealed passion, albeit an intellectual one and only vicariously experienced from the pages of a pictorial weekly. Or had Mr. Beltran as a young man been as turgid and stultified as Mr. Beltran the old man, parsing his opinions, measuring his reactions, calculating their correctness against a standard greater and higher than any known of in Masbate, or even Metro Manila for that matter.

“It was this whole idea of flatness—the flatness of the actual painting as well as the flatness of the mechanical means used to reproduce it, meaning the photograph,” Beltran had tried to explain himself. He always seemed driven by the need to hypothesize, to formulate a theory which was why they must have had him teaching art theory anyway. He was made for it. Every M-W-F, Jojo came into the classroom to find paragraphs culled from art critics, painstakingly printed out in neat block letters on the chalk board. Like a mother pelican feeding its young, Mr. Beltran had thoughtfully distilled and regurgitated these for their edification. They should have been more grateful to him and tried to understand him instead of speculating on his sexual orientation and gossiping about his ostensible mates.

This girl that Jojo really liked also took the Art Theory class. He always came in after her so that he could sit in the row behind her, a little to the side where he could watch her profile, the soft curve of her slender young arms. He had to keep his sketchpad or a jacket on his lap because sometimes just looking at her made him hard. Makati girl, he called her in private. That was his way of saying that she was everything fine and above him. She wasn’t even from Makati but Jojo just thought that she had real style and class just the same.

Funny, but her friend Aenid Blanco who had won the Miss Photogenic title in one of the past year’s beauty pageants thought it was she whom Jojo liked. She assumed that all heterosexual men desired her above all other women. She was from Silay and was always volunteering details about her privileged upbringing. For one thing, the servants in their household outnumbered the family members.

“You know, it’s so different where I come from. We have three cooks because my mom and dad are gourmets. Then there’s a gardener for the orchids and a gardener for the lawn and the other ornamentals,” she said in her irritating singsong. Every now and then she would pause expectantly, waiting for the usual exclamations of polite awe. She knew that most of them did not even have maids. She made no secret of it that she was drawn to what she saw as feral and lumpen in Jojo. She thrilled at the contrast he presented to the somewhat soft exclusive school boys with their puerile speech.

Makati Girl was genuinely nice to talk to. Jojo had never heard her start a sentence with Shit! the way the other girls say it with the short “e” sound in the middle which he found especially contrived and irritating. She didn’t punctuate her sentences with Fuck in that coy and petulant way the other girls did when they wanted you to think they were cool. Makati Girl laughed at the stories and jokes that the other guys would tell—stories that would gross out the other girls who had all these hang-ups about their being colegialas. She lacked the convoluted prudishness that afflicted most. When the Figure Drawing class had to submit their life-size nude self-portraits, she was the only one who did hers with full frontal nudity. Even the boys in class coyly masked their genitalia with carefully placed hands or a bent leg. Jojo felt his insides churning as he looked at the way she saw herself. She was so honest, she had drawn herself with one breast slightly smaller and higher than the other, and the lotus labia of her tender pudenda clearly outlined through the fine fronds of her pubic hair.

Makati Girl talked to just about anyone. There was a coño kid who was so in love with her, he would come all the way from De la Salle to Diliman in his rich father’s Beemer just to look at her and to tell her about all the shit he was taking and the sinkhole that his life had become. Jojo seethed whenever he saw them together, Makati Girl sitting on the cream colored stone ledge by the library steps, framed by bamboo, santan and hibiscus blooms, like a virgin in a grotto, and the junky standing a little below her, leaning on the ledge, looking longingly up at her. He was telling her how ashamed he was about being so deep into drugs. She listened to him with such a rapt, solemn and gentle look, that he had to go and get stoned because she actually made him feel worse about himself. All the metaamphetamines and cough syrup had clogged up his lungs and pitted his nose and cheeks. He sniffed constantly at a mentholated inhaler. She had such perfect skin and clear, calm eyes that still held that pure, direct look of childhood. She hardly wore any makeup. That poor junky just wanted her to stay pure forever. He never touched her. Jojo was almost certain that she was a virgin and the thought was alarmingly poignant.



A CROWD was milling about the College of Fine Arts lobby. It was odd because artists generally do not mill. If anything, there was a customary desultoriness, a muted fragmentary quality—almost like single-stop animation—about their movements. Then Jojo heard: Benny Grajeda had killed himself. It just blew his mind. There he had been, just a scant half hour ago, mulling over why so few Filipino artists were suicidal and now one of his classmates had actually jumped off the top floor of the Palma Hall and left some of his teeth embedded in the asphalt below. Boboy Encantado, the aged madman of Mt. Makiling, was down there now, trying to pry Benny’s bicuspids out of the hot sticky blacktop with an etching stylus. He wanted to use them for a retablo that he had conceptualized as an installation piece.

“Jojo, you knew him, didn’t you? You were friends,” it was Makati Girl actually talking to him.

Jojo felt a rush. It was one thing to piss and conjure up an afternoon drizzle, but this was actual life and death. He nodded. “He was always kind of weird.” he said. It sounded lame.

Now a Filipino artist was dead, although Benny wasn’t famous and was barely half-formed as an artist. Actually, Jojo thought his paintings really sucked, no disrespect intended for the dead, not that it would matter to him now anyway, or even then, as pig-headed and tasteless as he was. Reasoning that retro was in, Benny had been into this pattern painting thing, all precious-like with the masking taped grids and the airbrushes. Boring blah blah statements about the qualities of color and light. The kind of stuff you see in the reception rooms of people who think they’re so slick because they’ve got abstract art, and to go with it all this dark leather and bright chrome Bauhaus style furniture set against distressed paint finishes, soapstone sculpture, shiny Italian granite tabletops, onyx obelisks, faux ionic pillars for pedestals, all for what their decorators hoped was a post-modernist effect.

“I feel so sad for him. Maybe he just didn’t have anyone to talk to, to share his thoughts and feelings with,” Makati Girl said, and she really looked like she meant it about being sad for him. Jojo felt his heart going out to her and casually positioned his sketch pad before his groin.

And then again, Benny was basically a bastard, a real sadist, and everyone at the College knew it. Every time it rained, he would be down by the lagoon, systematically stomping with his steel-toed boots on the little brown and green frogs that came hopping out of the rank matted talahib. Those frogs must have been evolutionally unprepared for such an unnatural enemy as Benny because they were so easy to catch and to kill. They never knew what hit them. Benny even had a pet, a rhesus monkey with a belt and chain around its middle. He would swing it around and around way over his head while it screeched in wild terror. That tiny emaciated creature was so scared of him that whenever it saw him coming it would vomit and defecate in mindless panic. Jojo wondered what would become of the monkey now that Benny was dead. If he had known that in some African provinces, they made monkey meat into a kind of tapa, smoked or salted and air-dried, what vile recipe might he have come up with?

Just two months ago, Benny had brought cat meat asado siopao to the college on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday. He was mechanically inclined and had made a machine to electroshock stray cats so they’d pass out, then he would skin them alive. He’d sniggered over his cleverness as he’d told his disbelieving classmates how there really was more than one way to skin a cat. He’d handstitched the cat fur into a Davey Crocket style cap, except his had three stringy cattails, instead of a fat coonskin one hanging from behind. Some of the fur, he’d made into watercolor paint brushes. On what turned out to be his last birthday, he’d come to school, wearing his catskin cap and with his cat meat asado siopao in a green plastic sando bag, looking very pleased with himself. At least he was decent enough to tell them what was in the siopao.

The girls were so upset and offended by Benny that one of them reported him to the Assistant Dean, Miss Caymo. However, Benny was perversely pleased at getting so much attention on his birthday that he stapled a Kotex pad to the fly of his blue jeans. He declared that this signified his solidarity with women and his realization of the female principle inherent in every man. The little provincianas just walked past him with averted eyes. He gave them quite a giggle though in private and something to tell their friends back home about how bad and crazy the Manila boys were. Then a husky frat guy threatened to make Benny eat the Kotex pad and push all his cat fur paintbrushes up his ass, so he took it off that same afternoon. Miss Caymo was at a loss about what to do with him. The Kotex pad had been flushed away, and bringing asado siopao to school or wearing a fur cap were not causes for disciplinary action. She’d tried to share the Gospel with Benny instead believing that he may have been possessed by Satan’s minions. When he killed himself, she was more than convinced and asked the Jesuit priest at the parish office to bless all the premises that Benny had frequented in his short troubled existence in order to make sure that he would not return to haunt them. Miss Caymo was also going to have all the locker doors painted over as Benny had covered these with poetry fraught with ill feelings and apocalyptic images of death, dismemberment and the coming chastisement. For diminishing the number of starcrossed artists, his death had a kind of purpose and nobility after all.

“I think we should go to the wake after classes,” Makati Girl now said, looking appealingly at Jojo. Of course, he would go with her.

“Yes, let’s,” echoed Aenid, looking at him, too. Inwardly, Jojo rolled his eyes, not feeling ready for Aenid just then. But still it was a chance to go somewhere with Makati Girl. Also he was curious to see what Benny looked like after a fall like that.



BENNY was laid out in his high school graduation barong, with his catskin cap on. They had left the coffin open even if he had lost most of his teeth in the fall. Jojo was amazed at how ordinary Benny’s family was: the dad, a civil engineer who’d gone to Saudi; the mom, a math and science teacher at an exclusive girls’ school, the other three siblings, forgettable and unremarkably plain. They smiled wanly at their condolences but seemed cheerful enough, if a bit baffled about his sudden death. They seemed to have no idea of what Benjamin had been really like. Only the first page of the guest book had any writing still. Miss Caymo had sent a mass card but no one else from the College had been there yet. The three of them stood in respectful silence looking at Benny in repose. Makati Girl then went to kneel at a pew with her head bowed. She must be praying for poor Benny. Aenid asked Jojo to stay with her outside while she smoked. She was the most pruriently suggestive smoker Jojo had ever seen, continually tossing her head, shifting her hips and arching her neck backward to call attention to how she had left the top three buttons of her shirt undone.

After the wake, they decided they’d go to a movie. Aenid gave Jojo some money to get her a kilo of lanzones from a fruit vendor at the pedestrian flyover. She was full of coy gratitude when he returned and acted as though it meant something special and intimate had transpired between them. She took his arm and placed it around her waist while they walked through the mall, as she giddily swung the bag of lanzones. Jojo gently disengaged as they stepped onto the escalator, Aenid on the higher step and himself just below her. Then Aenid turned, and with a melodramatic flip of her pre-Raphaelite curls, lunged at his throat and shoved her pointed little tongue in his mouth. He was nearly bowled over. They were quite a spectacle, Jojo striving to keep his balance as they rocked back and forth. Aenid had twisted her limbs around his, and entwined her fingers in his hair while the plastic bag of lanzones that she still held went wumpph-wumpph against his nape. He practically had to carry her off the escalator. Makati Girl looked puzzled and stooped to pick up some of the lanzones that had rolled out of the bag onto the tiles. The fruit were brown and bruised from all the excitement.

“What’s the matter with you?” Jojo asked Aenid, in exasperation and alarm. Just as abruptly, she composed herself. The people sitting on the benches to one side were smirking and whispering among themselves.

“What are you looking at?” she tartly asked them “Don’t you have anything better to do with your lives than to mind other people’s business?” Then grabbing Makati Girl’s arm, she walked on in quiet dignity to the theater with Jojo following behind them. They each paid for their own tickets. No one spoke throughout the movie. Jojo’s only consolation was that Makati Girl sat in between Aenid and him. After a while, he was able to discreetly press his leg against hers and she did not draw away. It was less than perfect. If Aenid ever came on to him again, he guessed he might give her a tumble. She was a good kisser, after all. Also, her father was an haciendero and she did have a beauty contest title and that was worth some points. It would be a shallow triumph getting to her first. Before that Chinese casino operator who was nearly twice her age got to her anyway. Her mother was trying to diversify and expand their financial interests through marriage now that the sugar trade was down.

To make up for the escalator scene, Jojo offered to take Aenid home. Her eyes brimmed with tears but she let him. They rode the taxi in silence to her condo. She kept her arms around him all throughout the ride, with her hands clasped as though she were praying and her face pressed against his chest. Occasionally she mumbled what did sound like praying. His hands rested limply on her hip.

In bed with Aenid, he pictured Makati Girl as he usually did even when he was with some other girl and felt a little weepy. Instead, he banged away even harder so that beneath him, Aenid arched her back, clawed and bit him. She wailed despairingly that she really loved him, no matter what happened. When it was over, he shut his eyes, trying to imagine what he would do if he had Makati Girl with him instead of her best friend: how he would hold her, how she would look up at him as she lay in the crook of his arm. They would laugh about nearly nothing in that irrationally happy and secret way that only those who are very much in love do.

Mostly, they’d just kiss.