WHERE'S THE PATIS? Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil Travel has become the great Filipino dream.

In the same way what an American dreams of becoming a millionaire or an English boy dreams of going to one of the great universities, the Filipino dreams of going abroad. His most constant vision is that of himself as a tourist. To visit Hong Kong, Tokyo, and other cities of Asia, per chance, to catch a glimpse of Rome, Paris, or London and to go to America( even if only for a week in a fly- specked motel in California) in the sum of all delights. Yet having left the Manila International Airport in a pink cloud of despedidas and sampaguita garlands and pabilin, the dream turns into nightmare very quickly. But why? Because the first bastion of the Filipino spirit was the palate. And in all the palaces and flesh pots and skycrapers of that magic world called "abroad" there is no par/5 to be have. Consider the Piony abroad, he has discarded barong tagalog or "polo" for a sleek, dark western suit. He takes to the habiliments from Tlong Kong Brooks Brothers or Savile Row with the greatest of ease. He has also shed the casual informality of manner that is characteristically Filipino. He gives himself the airs of cosmopolite to the credit- card born. He is extravagantly courteous (especially in a borrowed language) and has taken to handkissing and too plenty of American "D'you mind?" 's. He hardly misses the heat, the native accent of Tagalog or llonggo or the company of his brown-skinned cheerful compatriots. He takes, like a duck to water, to the skyscrapers, the temperate climate, the strange landscape and the fabled refinement of another world. How nice, after all, to be away from old RP for a change! But as he sits down to meal, no matter how sumptuous, his heart sinks. His stomach juices, he discovers, are much less cosmopolitan than the rest of him. They are much less adaptable that his sartorial or social habits. They have remained in that dear barrio in Bulacan or in that little town in llocos and nothing that is set on the table before him can summon them to London or Paris. There he is in the most expensive restaurant in Europe, surrounded by beautiful women and impeccably dressed men bending over their rich meal. Waiters in black ties and tails stand at his elbow ready to cater to his smallest wish. An array of glass, silver, china, and artistic blooms is set before him. An elegant wagon of hors d'oeuvres approaches: pink salmon from Scotland, golden English herring, sensuous anchovies from France, green salad from a Belgian farm, mounds of Italian pasta, Russian caviar on ice, melon halves, stuffed eggs, shrimp smothered in piquant red sauce. At that precise moment the Pinoy is overcome with a yearning for a mound of white rice, a bowl of sinigang and a little saucer of patis. What would happen, he asked himself, if I shouted for sinigang na bangus? The thought that perishes as he catches sight of the world-weary hauteur on the face of the waiter. With a sigh, he applies himself to the foreign delicacies. The herring, after a few mouthfuls tastes almost like tinapa. The shrimp would be excellent if he had some white sukang lloko to soak it in but the melon is never half as good as the ones his wife buys from her suki in San Andres. Now he must make another choice. The waiter, with an air of prime minister approaching a concordat murmurs, something about choosing a soup. The menu is in French and to be safe, our hero asks the waiter to recommend the specialty of the

house. A clear consomme! When it comes, the Pinoy discovers that it is merely the kind of soup Filipinos sip when they are convalescing from "tifus" or "trancazo". Tomato soup is almost an emetic. Onion soup with bits of bread and cheese is too odd for words but palatable. If he is lucky, the waiter brings bouillabaisse with a flourish. A French classic? Nonsense. We Filipinos invented it. It is sinigang, he tells the astonished waiter, only not quite as good as we do it at home. And where, for heaven's sake is the patis? The entree or the main course is quite another problem. Poulet is chicken. Fillet de sole is fish, though recognizable neither as apahap nor lapu-lapu. Tournedos is meat done in a barbarian way, thick and barely cooked with red juices still oozing out. The safest choice is steak. If the Pinoy can get it, well done enough and slice thinly enough, it might remind him of tapa. If the waiter only knew enough about Philippine cuisine, he might suggest venison which is really something like tapang usa, or escargots which the unstylish poor on Philippine beaches know as snails. Or even frogs legs which are a Pampango delight. But this is the crux of the problem- where is the rice? A silver tray offers varieties of bread: slices of crusty French bread, soft yellow rolls, rye bread, crescents studded with sesame seeds. There are also potatoes in every conceivable manner, fried mashed, boiled, buttered. But no rice. The Pinoys learn that rice is considered a vegetable in Europe and America. The staff of life a vegetable! And when it comes- a special order which takes at least half an hour- the grains are large, oval, and foreign-looking and what's more, yellow with butter. And oh horrors! - One must shove it with pork or piled it with one's knife on the back of another fork. After a few days of these debacles, the Pinoy, sick with longing, decides to comb the strange city for a Chinese Restaurant, the closest thing to the beloved, gastronomic country. There in the company of other Asian exiles, he will put his nose finally in a bowl of rice and find it mire fragrant than an English rose garden, more exciting than a castle on the Rhine and more delicious than pink champagne. To go with rice, there is siopao (not so rich as at Salazar) pansit guisado reeking with garlic (but never so good as any that can be had in the sidewalks of Quiapo) fried lumpia with the incorrect sauce, and even mami (but nothing like the downtown wanton) Better than a Chinese restaurant is the kitchen of a kababayan. When in a foreign city, a Pinoy searches every busy sidewalks, theater, restaurant for the well- remembered golden features of a fellow- Pinoy. But make no mistake. It is only because he is in desperate need of Filipino meal and, like a homing pigeon, he follows his nose to a Filipino kitchen that is well stocked with bagoong, patis, garlic, balat ng lumpia, gabi leaves and misua. When the Pinoy finally finds such a treasure- house, he will have every meal with his kababayan. Forgotten are the bistros and the smart restaurant. The back of his hand to the Four Seasons and the Tour d' Argent. Ah, the regular orgies of cooking and eating the ensue. He may never have known his host before. In Manila, if he saw him again, they would hardly exchange two words. But here in this odd, barbarian land where people eat inedible things and have never heard of patis, they are brothers forever. The Filipino may denationalized himself but not his stomach. He may travel over the seven seas and the five continents and the two hemispheres and lose the savor of home and forget his identity and believe himself a citizen of the world. But he remainsthe astronomically, at least- always a Filipino. For, if in no other way, the Filipino loves his country with his stoma

FINDER LOSER Ofelia Dimalanta More than half of my life I spend searching for lost objects ( papers, receipts, old letters, pills and whatever else) and causes and the rest, losing and finding, and losing them again, found or otherwise; losing what I have in good measure, finding what I cant almost haveOne perpetual lifetime probe, Forever rummaging through Bureaus and drawers and pages Of my lifes past disarray And so when I finally go keep vault unlidded for I shall surely sit up and look around to pursue this search, holding on to dear life, or to dear death, does it matterthey are one in the proper time but not till then, I shall go on seeking out lost faces and faiths in the cold, collecting, calculating crowd, sadly aware that later but an unbreath away I shall lose them all again; as I was wont, losing all in this final irretrievable lose of my death time or perhaps, possibly, yes, death will be kinder and oh, yes allow me at last this flowing final find.

Now, on this December dawn, Sam Christie was on his way to Ifugao with his native assistant. It was last month in the Philippines and in a matter of days he would return to Boston for that leave which he had not had in years. The bus station was actually a narrow sidestreet which sloped down to a deserted plaza, one of the many in the summer capital. Sam could make out the shapes of the stone buildings huddled, it seemed, in the cold, their narrow windows shuttered and the frames advertising Coca Cola above their doorways indistinct in the dark. Philip Latak seemed listless. They had been in the station for over half an hour and still there was no bus. He zipped his old suede jacket up to his neck. It had been four years that he had lived in Manila and during all these years he had never gone home. Now, the cold of the pine clad mountains seemed to bother him. He turned to Sam and, with a hint of urgency One favour, Sam. Let me take a swig. Sam and Christie said, Sure, you are welcome to it. Just make sure we have some left when we get Ifugao. He stopped, brought out a bottle of White Label one of the four in the bag which also contained bars of candy and cartons of cigarettes and matches for the natives. He removed the tinfoil and handed the bottle to his companion. Phil raised it to his lips and made happy gurgling sounds. Rice wine I hope theres still a jar around when we get to my grandfathers. He couldnt be as seriously sick as my brother wrote. As long as he has wine he will live. Hell, its not as potent as this, but it can knock out a man, too. Sam Christie kidded his companion about the weather. They had arrived in the summer capital the previous day and the bracing air and the scent of pine had invigorated him. Its like New England in the spring, he said. In winter, when it really gets cold, I can still go around quite naked by your standards. I sent home a clipping this week, something in the Manila papers about it being chilly. And it was only 68! My old man will get a kick out of that. But its really cold! Philip Latak said ruefully. He handed the bottle back to Sam Christie, who took a swig, too. You dont know how good it is to have that along. Do you know how much it costs nowadays? Twenty four bucks. Its cheaper at the commissary, Sam Christie said simply. He threw his chest out, flexed his lean arms and inhaled. He wore a white, dacron shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Im glad you didnt fall for those carvings in Manila, Phil said after a while. A Grecian urn, a Japanese sword, a Siamese mask and now, an Ifugao God. The Siamese mask, Sam spoke in a monotone, it was really a bargain. A student was going to Boston. He needed the dollars, so I told him he could get the money from my father. Forty dollars and the mask was worth more than that. Now, the gray buildings around them emerged from the dark with white, definite shapes. The east was starting to glow and more people had arrived with crates and battered rattan suitcases. In the chill most of them were quiet. A coffee shop opened along the street

THE GOD STEALER Fransico Sionil Jose They were the best of friends and that was possible because they worked in the same office and both were young and imbued with a freshness in outlook. Sam Christie was twenty eight and his Filipino assistant, Philip Latak, was twenty six and was just as Sam had been at the Agency before he assumed his post intelligent and industrious. That is to be expected, the official whom Sam replaced explained because Philip is Ifugao and you dont know patience until you have seen the rice terraces his ancestors built. You will find, Sam Christie was also told, that the Igorots, like the Ilocanos, no matter how urbanized they already are, entertain a sense of inferiority. Not Philip. He is proud of his being Ifugao. He talks about it the first chance he gets.

with a great deal of clatter and in its warm, golden light Sam Christie could see the heavy, peasant faces, their happy anticipation as the steaming cups were pushed before them. The bus finally came and Sam Christie, because he was a foreigner, was given the seat of honour, next to the driver. It was an old bus, with woven rattan seats and side entrances that admitted not only people, but cargo, fowl, and pigs. They did not wait long, for the bats filled up quickly with government clerks going to their posts and hefty Igorots, in their bare feet or with canvas shoes who sat in the rear, talking and smelling of earth and strong tobacco. After the bus had started, for the first time during their stay in Baguio, Sam Christie felt sleepy. He dozed, his head knocking intermittently against the hard edge of his seat and in that limbo between wakefulness and sleep he hurtled briefly to his home in Boston, to that basement study his father had tidied up, in it the mementoes of his years with the Agency. Sam had not actually intended to serve in the Agency, but he had always wanted to travel and, after college, a career with the Agency offered him the best chance of seeing the world. Soon it was light. The bus hugged the thin line of a road that was carved on the mountainside. Pine trees studded both sides of the road and beyond their green, across the ravines and the gray socks, was shimmery sky and endless ranges also draped with this mist that swirled, pervasive and alive, to their very faces. And Sam Christie, in the midst of all this whiteness and life, was quiet. Someone in the bus recognized Philip and he called out in the native tongue, Ip pig! the name did not jell at once and the man shouted again. Philip turned to the man and acknowledged the greeting and to Sam he explained: Thats my name up here and thats why I was baptized Philip. Sam Christie realized there were many things he did not know about Phil. Tell me more about your grandfather, he said. There isnt much worth knowing about him, Philip said. How old is he? Eighty or more. He must be a character, Sam Christie said. And the village doctor, Philip said. Mumbo jumbo stuff, you know. I was taken ill when I was young something I ate, perhaps. I had to go to the Mission Hospital and that evening he came and right there in the ward he danced to drive away the evil spirit that had gotten hold of me. And the doctor? He was broad minded, Philip said, still laughing. They withstood it, the gongs and stamping. It must be have been quite a night. Hell, I was never so embarrassed in my life, Philip Latak said, shaking his head, Much later, thinking of it, his voice became soft and a smile lingered in his thick lidded eyes, I realized that the old

man never did that thing again for anyone, not even when his own son my father lay dying. Now they were in the heart of the highlands. The pine trees were bigger, loftier than those in Baguio, and most were wreathing with hoary moss. Sunflowers burst on the slopes, bright yellow against the grass. The sun rode over the mountains and the rocks shone and over everything the mist, as fine as powder, danced. The bus swung around the curves and it paused, twice or thrice to allow them to take coffee. It was past noon when they reached the feral fringes of the Ifugao country. The trip had not been exhausting, for there was much to see. Sam Christie, gazing down at the ravines, at the geometric patterns of the sweet potato patches there and the crystal waters that cascaded down the mountainsides and the streams below, remembered the Alpine roads of Europe and those of his own New England and about these he talked effusively. See how vegetation changes. The people, too. The mountains, Sam Christie said, breed independence. Mountain people are always self reliant. Then, at turn of a hill, they came, without warning upon the water filled rice terraces stretched out in the sun and laid out tier upon shining tier to the very summit of the mountains. And in the face of that achievement, Sam Christie did not speak. After a while he nudged Philip. Yeah, the terraces are colossal. And he wished he had expressed his admiration better, for he had sounded so empty and trite. The first view of the terraces left in Sams mind a kind of stupefaction which, when it had cleared, was replaced by a sense of wastefulness. He mused on whether or not these terraces were necessary, since he knew that beyond these hand carved genealogical monuments were plains that could be had for the asking. And you say that these terraces do not produce enough food for the people? Philip Latak turned quizzically to him. Hell, if I can live here, would I go to Manila? Their destination was no more than a cluster of houses beyond the gleaming tiers. A creek ran through the town, white with froth among the rocks, and across the creek, beyond the town, was a hill, on top of which stood the Mission four red roofed buildings the chapel, the school, the hospital, and residence. Thats where I first learned about Jesus Christ and scotch, Philip Latak said. They marked me for success. Another peal of laughter. The bus shuddered into first gear as it dipped down the gravel road and in a while they were in the town, along its main street lined with wooden frame houses. It conformed with the usual small town arrangement and was properly palisaded with stores, whose fronts were plastered with impieties of soft drink and patent medicine signs. And in the stores were crowds of people, heavy jowled Ifugaos in G string and tattered Western coats that must have reached them in relief packages from the United States. The women wore the native gay blouses and skirts. The two travellers got down from the bus and walked to one of the bigger houses, a shapeless wooden building with rusting tin proof

and cheap, printed curtains. It was a boarding house and a small curio store was on the ground floor, together with the usual merchandise of country shops: canned sardines and squid, milk, soap, matches, kerosene, a few bolts and twine. The landlady, an acquaintance of Philip Latak, assigned them a bare room, which overlooked the creek and the mountain terraced to the very summit. We could stay in my brothers place, Philip Latak reiterated apologetically as they brought their things up, but there is no plumbing there. Past noon, after a plentiful lunch of fried highland rice and venison, they headed for the footpath that broke from the street and disappeared behind a turn of hillside. The walk to Philip Lataks village itself was not far from the town and wherever they turned the terraces were sheets of mirror that dogged them. The village was no more than ten houses in a valley, which were no different from the other Ifugao homes. They stood on stilts and all their four posts were crowned with circular rat guards. A lone house roofed with tin stood at one end of the village. My brothers, Philip said. Shall I bring the candies out now? Sam asked. He had, at Phils suggestion, brought them along, together with matches and cheap cigarettes, for his private assistance program. Sadek, Philips brother, was home. You have decided to visit us after all he greeted Philip in English and with a tinge of sarcasm. He was older and spoke with authority. I thought the city had won you so completely that you have forgotten this humble place and its humble people. Then, turning to Sam, Sadek said, I must apologize, sir, for my brother, for his bringing you to this poor house. His deed embarrasses us... We work in the same office, Sam said simply, feeling uneasy at hearing the speech. I know, sir, Sadek said. Philip Latak held his brother by the shoulder. You see, Sam, he said, my brother dislikes me. Like my grandfather, he feels that I shouldnt have left this place, that I should rot here. Hell, everyone knows the terraces are good for the eye, but they cant produce enough for the stomach. Thats not a nice thing to say, Sam said warily, not wanting to be drawn into a family quarrel. But its true, Philip Latak said with a nervous laugh. My brother dislikes me. All of them here dislike me. They think that by living in Manila for a few years I have forgotten what is to be an Ifugao. I cant help it, Sam. I like it down there. Hell, they will never understand. My grandfather do you know that on the day I left he followed me to the town, to the bus, pleading with me and at the same time scolding me? He said Id get all his terraces. But I like it down there, Sam, he threw his chest and yawned.

Unmindful of his younger brothers ribbing Sadek dragged in some battered chairs from within the house and set them in the living room. He was a farmer and the weariness of working the terraces showed in his massive arms, in his sunburned and stolid face. His wife, who was an Ifugao like him, with high cheekbones and firm, dumpy legs, came out and served them Coca Cola. Sam Christie accepted the drink, washed it down his throat politely, excruciatingly, for it was the first time that he took warm Coke and it curdled his tongue. Sadek said, Grandfather had a high fever and we all thought the end was near. I didnt want to bother you, but the old man said you should come. He is no longer angry with you for leaving, Ip pig. He has forgiven you... Theres nothing to forgive, my brother, Philip Latak said, but if he wants to he can show his forgiveness by opening his wine jar. Is he drinking still? He has abandoned the jar for some time now, Sadek said, but now that you are here, he will drink again. Then the children started stealing in, five of them with grime on their faces, their feet caked with mud, their bellies shiny and disproportionately rounded and big. They stood, wide eyed, near the sagging wall. The tallest and the oldest, a boy of thirteen or twelve, Sadek pointed out as Philips namesake. Philip bent down and thrust a fistful of candy at his nephews and nieces. They did not move. They hedged closer to one another, their brows, their simple faces empty of recognition, of that simple spark that would tell him, Ip Pig, that he belonged here. He spoke in the native tongue, but that did not help either. The children held their scrawny hands behind them and stepped back until their backs were pressed against the wall. Hell, you are all my relatives, arent you? he asked. Turning to Sam, Give it to them. Maybe, they like you better. His open palm brimming with the tinsel wrapped sweets, Sam strode to the oldest, to Philips namesake, and tousled the youngsters black, matted hair. He knelt, pinched the cheeks of the dirty child next to the oldest and placed a candy in his small hand. In another moment it was all noise, the children scrambling over the young American and about the floor, where the candy had spilled. Philip Latak watched them, and above the happy sounds, the squeals of children, Sadek said, You see now that even your relatives do not know you, Ip pig. You speak our tongue, you have our blood but you are a stranger nevertheless. See what I mean, Sam? Philip Latak said. He strode to the door. Beyond the betel nut plams in the yard, up a sharp incline, was his grandfathers house. It stood on four stilts like all the rest and below its roof were the bleached skulls of goats, dogs, pigs, and carabaos which the old man had butchered in past feats. He had the most number of skulls in the village to show his social position. Now new skulls would be added to this collection. Well, he will recognize and I wont be a stranger to him. Come, Philip Latak turned to his friend, let us see the old man.

They toiled up the hill, which was greasy although steps had been gouged out on it for easier climbing. Before going up the slender rungs of the old house Philip Latak called his grandfather twice. Sam Christie waited under the grass marquee that extended above the doorway. He couldnt see what transpired inside and there was no invitation for him to come up. However, some could hear, Philip speaking in his native tongue and there was also a crackled, old voice, high pitched with excitement and pleasure. And, listening to the pleasant sounds of the homecoming, he smiled and called to mind the homecomings, he, too, had known, and he thought how the next vacation would be, his father and his mother at the Back Bay station, the luggage in the back seat, and on his lap this wooden idol which he now sought. But after a while, the visions he conjured were dispelled. The effusion within the hut had subsided into some sort of spirited talking and Philip was saying Americano Americano. Sam heard the old man raise his voice, this time in anger and not in pleasure. Then silence, a rustling within the house, the door stirring and Philip easing himself down the ladder, on his face a numbed, crestfallen look. And, without another word, he hurried down the hill, the American behind him. Philip Latak explained later on the way back to the town: I had asked him where we could get a god and he said he didnt know. And when I told him it was for an American friend he got mad. He never liked strangers, Sam. He said they took everything away from him tranquillity, me. Hell, you cant do anything to an old man, Sam. We shouldnt have bothered with him at all. Now, tell me, have I spoiled your first day here? Sam objected vehemently. The old man wants a feast tomorrow night. My bienvenida of course. You will be a damned fool if you dont go, Sam said. Im thinking about you. You shouldnt come, Philip said. It will be a bore and a ghastly sight. But Sam Christies interest had been piqued and even when he realized that Philip Latak really did not want him to come he decided that this was one party he would not miss. They visited the Mission the following day after having hiked to the villages. As Philip Latak had warned, their search was fruitless. They struggled up terraces and were met by howling dogs and barebottomed children and old Ifugaos, who offered them sweet potatoes and rice wine. To all of them Sam Christie was impeccably polite and charitable with his matches and his candies. And after this initial amenity, Philip would start talking and always sullen silence would answer him, and he would turn to Sam, a foolish, optimistic grin on his face. Reverend Doone, who managed the Mission, invited them for lunch. He was quite pleased to have a fellow American as guest. He was a San Fransiscan, and one consolation of his assignment was its meagre similarity to San Francisco. In the afternoons, he said with nostalgia, when the mist drifts in and starts to wrap the terraces and the hills, Im reminded of the ocean fog which steals over the white hills of San Francisco and then I feel like Im home.

They had finished lunch and were in the living room of the Mission, sipping coffee, while Philip Latak was in the kitchen, where he had gone to joke with old friends. Sams knowledge of San Francisco was limited to a drizzly afternoon at the airport, an iron cold rain and a nasty wind that crept under the top coat, clammy and gripping, and he kept quiet while Reverend Doone reminisced. The missionary was a short man with a bulbous nose and heavy brows and homesickness written all over his pallid face. Then it was Sams turn and he rambled about the places he had seen Greece ans the marble ruins glinting in the sun, the urn; Japan, the small green country, and the samurai sword. And now, an Ifugao God. Reverend Doone reiterated what Philip had said. You must understand their religion, he said, and if you understand it, then youll know why its difficult to get this god. Then youll know why the Ifugaos are so attached to it. Its a religion based on fear, retribution. Every calamity or every luck which happens to them is based on this relief. A good harvest means the gods are pleased. A bad one means they are angered. Its not different from Christianity then, Sam said. Christianity is based on fear, too fear of hell and final judgment. Reverend Doone drew back, laid his cup of coffee on the well worn table and spoke sternly. Christianity is based on love. Thats the difference. You are in the Agency and you should know the significance of this distinction. Reverend Doone became thoughtful again. Besides, he said, Christianity is based on the belief that man has a soul and that soul is eternal. What happens when a man loses his soul? Sam asked. I wish I could answer that, Reverend Doone said humbly. All I can say is that a man without a soul is nothing. A pig in the sty that lives only for food. Without a soul... Does the Ifugao believe in a soul? Reverend Doone smiled gravely, His god he believes in them. Can a man lose his soul? Sam insisted. You have seen examples, Reverend Doone smiled wanly. In the city people are corrupted by easy living, the pleasures of senses and the flesh, the mass corruption that is seeping into the government and everything. A generation of soulless men is growing up and dictating the future... How can one who loses his soul regain it? Sam came back with sudden life. It takes cataclysm, something tragic to knock a man back to his wits, to make him realize his loss... They are all human beings. But look what is in this mountain locked country. It is poor let there be no doubt about it. They dont make enough to eat. But there is less greed here and pettiness here. There are no land grabbers, no scandals.

Going down the hill, Sam decided to bare his mind to Philip who was below him, teetering on the sleepy trail, he said with finality. Phil, I must not leave Ifugao without that god. Its more than just a souvenir. It will remind me of you, of this place. The samurai sword you should have seen the place where I got it and the people I had to deal with to get it. Its not just some souvenir, mind you. It belonged to a soldier who had fought in the South Pacific and had managed somehow to save the thing when he was made prisoner. But his daughter its a sad story she had to go to college, she was majoring English and she didnt have tuition money. In the comfort of their little room back in the town, Sam brought out his liquor. Well, he said as he poured a glass for Philip. At least the hike did me good. All that walking and all these people how nice they were, how they offered us wine and sweet potatoes. You get a lot better in cocktail parties, Philip Latak said. How many people in Manila would feel honoured to attend the parties you go to? They are a bore, Sam said. And I have to be there thats the difference. I have to be there to spread sweetness and light. Sometimes, it makes me sick, but I have to be there. Phil was silent. He emptied the glass and raised his muddy shoes to the woollen sheet on his cot. Toying with his empty glass, he asks the question Sam loathed most: Why are you with the Agency, Sam? He did not hesitate. Because I have to be somewhere, just as you have to be somewhere. Its that simple. Im glad you are in the Agency, Sam. We need people like you. Sam emptied his glass, too, and sank into his cot. Dust had gathered outside. Fireflies ignited the grove of pine on the ledge below the house and farther, across the creek, above the brooding terraces, the stars shone. After a while Philip Latak spoke again: We will be luckier tomorrow, I know. Youll have your god, Sam. Theres a way. I can steal one for you. Sam stood up and waved his lean hands. You cant do that, he said with great solemnity. Thats not fair. And what will happen to you or to the man whose god you will steal? Lots if you believe all that trash, Philip said lightly Ill be afflicted with pain, same with the owner. But he can always make another. Its not so difficult to carve a new one. I tried it when I was young, before I went to the Mission. You cannot steal a god, not even for me, Sam said. Philip laughed. Lets not be bull headed about this. Its the least I can do for you. You made this vacation possible and that raise. Do you know that I have been with the Agency for four years and I never got a raise until you came? You had it coming. Its that simple. Youll have your god. Philip Latak said gravely.

They did not have supper at the boarding house because in a while Sadek arrived to fetch them. He wore an old straw hat, a faded flannel coat and old denim pants. The butchers are ready and the guests are waiting and Grandfather has opened his wine jar. The hike to the village was not difficult as it had been the previous day. Sam had become an expert in scaling the dikes, in balancing himself on the strips of slippery earth that formed the terrace embankment, in jumping across the conduits of spring water that continuously gushed from springs higher up in the mountain to the terraces. When they reached the village many people had already gathered and on the crest of the hill, on which the old mans house stood, a huge fire bloomed and the flames crackled and threw quivering shadows upon the betel palms. In the orange light Sam, could discern the unsmiling faces of men carrying spears, the women and the children, and beyond the scattered groups, near the slope, inside a bamboo corral, were about a dozen squealing pigs, dogs, and goats, all ready for the sacrificial knife. Philip Latak acknowledged the greetings, then breaking away from the tenuous groups, he went to his grandfathers hut. Waiting outside, Sam heard the same words of endearment. A pause, then the wooden door opened and Philip peeped out. Its okay, Sam. Come up. And Sam, pleased with the prospect of being inside an Ifugao house for the first time, dashed up the ladder. The old man really looked ancient and, in the light of the stove fire that lived and died at one end of the one room house, Sam could see the careworn face, stoic and unsmiling. Sam took in everything; the hollow cheeks, the white, scraggly hair, the horn hands and the big boned knees. The patriarch was half naked like the other Ifugaos, but his loin cloth had a belt with circular bone embellishments and around his neck dangled a necklace of bronze. To Sam the old man extended a bowl of rice wine and Sam took it and lifted it to his lips, savoured the gentle tang and acridness of it. He then sat down on the mud splattered floor. Beyond the open door, in the blaze of the bonfire, the pigs were already being butchered and someone had started beating the gongs and their deep, sonorous whang rang sharp and clear above the grunts of the dying animals. The light in the hut became alive again and showed the artefacts within: an old, gray pillow, dirty with use, a few rusty tipped spears, fish traps and a small wooden trunk. The whole house smelled of filth, of chicken droppings, and dank earth, but Sam Christie ignored these smells and attended only to the old man, who had now risen, his bony frame shaking, and from a compartment in the roof, brought out his black and ghastly looking god, no taller than two feet, and set it before the fire before his grandson. Someone called at the door and thrust to them a wooden bowl of blood. Philip Latak picked it up and gave it to the old man, who was kneeling. Slowly, piously, the old man poured the living, frothy blood on the idols head and the blood washed down the ugly head to its arms and legs, to its very feet and as he poured the blood, in his crackled voice, he recited a prayer. Philip turned to his American friend and, with usual levity said: My

grandfather is thanking his god that Im here. He says he can die now because he has seen me again. Outside, the rhythm of the gongs quickened and fierce chanting started, filled the air, the hut, crept under the very skin and into the subconscious. The old man picked up the idol again and, standing, he returned to its niche. Lets go down, Philip said. They made their way to the iron cauldrons, where rice was cooking, and to the butchers table where big chunks of pork and dog meat were being distributed to the guests. For some time, Sam Christie watched the dancers and the singers, but the steps and the tune did not have any variation and soon he was bored completely so. The hiking that had preoccupied them during the day began to weigh on his spirits and he told Philip Latak who was with the old man before newly opened wine jar, that he would like to return to the boarding house. No, he did not need any guide. He knew the way, having gone through the route thrice. But Sadek would not let him go alone and, after more senseless palaver, Sam finally broke away from the party and headed for the town with Sadek behind him. The night was cool, as all nights in the Ifugao country are and that evening, as he lay on his cot, he mused. In his ears the din of gongs still rang, in his minds eye loomed the shrunken, unsmiling face of the Ifugao. He saw again the dancers, their brown, sweating bodies whirling before the fire, their guttural voices rising as one, and finally, the wooden god, dirty and black and drenched with blood. And recalling all this in vivid sharpness, he thought he smelled, too, that peculiar odour of blood and the dirt of many years that had gathered in the old mans house. Sam Christie went to sleep with the wind soughing the pines, the cicadas whirring in the grass. He had no idea what time it was, but it must have been past midnight. The clatter woke him up and, without risking, he groped for the flashlight under his pillow. He lifted the mosquito net and beamed the light at the dark from which had paused at the door. It was Philip Latak, swaying and holding on to a black, bloody mass. Sam let the ray play on Phils face, at the splotch on his breast the sacrificial blood and finally, on the thing. I told you Id get it, Philip Latak said with drunken triumph. I told you Id steal a god, and staggering forward, he shoved his grandfathers idol at his friend. Sam Christie, too surprised to speak, pushed the idol away and it fell with a thud on the floor. You shouldnt have done it! was all he could say. Philip Latak stumbled, the flashlight beam still on his shiny, porcine face. He fumbled with the stub of candle on the table and in a while the room was bright. What a night, he crowed, heaving himself in his cot. No, you dont have to worry. No one saw me. I did it when all were busy dancing and drinking. I danced a little, too, you know with the old man. He is going to give me everything, his terraces, his spears, his wine jars. We danced and my legs they are not rusty at all. Philip Latak stood up and started prancing. Sam bolted up, too, and held him by the shoulder. Youll be waking

up everyone up. Go to bed now and we will talk in the morning. Philip Latak sank back on his cot. The air around him was heavy with the smell of sweat, rice wine, and earth. He will be surprised, he repeated. He will be surprised and when he does he will perhaps get drunk and make a new one. Then there will be another feast to celebrate the new god and another god to steal... You are lucky to have someone who loves you so much. And you did him wrong, Sam said sullenly. He sat on the edge of his cot and looked down at the dirty thing that lay his feet. He did himself wrong, Philip said. He was wrong in being so attached to me who no longer believes in these idols. Sadek you have seen his house. Its different. And not because he has the money to build a different house. Its because he doesnt believe in the old things any more. He cannot say that aloud. Phil whacked his stomach. Not while he lives with a hundred ignorant natives. Its a miserable thing to do, Sam said. Take it back tomorrow. Take it back? Phil turned to him with a mocking leer. Now, thats good of you. Hell, after my trouble... Yes, Sam said. Take it back. But there was no conviction in him, because in the back of his mind he was grateful that Philip Latak had brought him this dirty god, because it was real, because it had significance and meaning and was no cheap tourist bait, such as those that were displayed in the hotel lobbies in Manila. I wont, Philip said resolutely. If I do, Ill look bad. That would be the death of my grandfather. Ill take it back if you wont, Sam said almost inaudibly. He will kill you. Dont frighten me. Hell, Im just stating a fact, Phil said. Do you think he would be happy to know that his god had been fondled by a stranger? Its no time for jokes, Sam said, lying down. That isnt funny at all. And in his minds resolute eye, there crowded again one irrefrangible darkness and in it, like a light, was the old mans wrinkled face, dirtied with the mud of the terraces, the eyes narrow and gleaming with wisdom, with hate. He wished he knew more about him, for to know him would be to discover this miserly land and the hardiness (or was it foolhardiness?) which it nourished. And it was these thoughts that were rankling his mind when he heard Philip Latak snore, heard his slow, pleasant breathing and with his hand, Sam picked up the taper and quashed its flame. At the same time Sam Christie woke up it was already daylight and the sun lay pure and dazzling on the rough pine sidings of the room. It was Philip Latak who had stirred him, his voice shrill and grating. Sam blinked, then sat up and walked to the door, where Philip was talking with a boy. Im sorry I woke you up, he said, turning momentarily to him, My nephew, a pause. Its grandfather. His voice was no longer drunken. I have to leave you here.

Anything the matter? Philip had already packed his things and the boy held them, the canvas bag and the old suede jacket. My grandfather is dying, Sam. He collapsed an attack. When Sam found words again, all he could ask was, Why... how... Hell, that should be no riddle, Philip said. The feast last night. The dancing and the drinking. It must have been too much for his heart. And at his age... Im sorry... Ill be back as soon as I can, but dont wait, whatever your plans are. After the two had gone, Sam returned to the room and picked up the idol. In the light he saw that the blood had dried and had lost its colour. The idol was heavy, so Sam quickly deduced that it must be made of good hardwood. It was crudely shaped and its proportions were almost grotesque. The arms were too long and the legs were mere stumps. The feet, on other hand, were huge. It was not very different, Sam concluded lightly, from the creations of sculptors who called themselves modernists. And wrapping it up in an old newspaper, he pushed it under his cot near his mud caked shoes. The next day, Sam Christie idled in the town and developed the acquaintance of the Chief of Police, a small man with a pinched, anonymous face that gained character only when he smiled, for then he bared a set of buckteeth reddened from chewing betel nut. He was extremely hospitable and had volunteered to guide him to wherever he wanted to hike. They had tried the villages farther up the mountains. It was early afternoon when they returned and the mist, white as starch in the sum, had started to crawl again down into town. The Chief of Police had been very helpful almost to the point of obsequiousness and Sam asked him to come up for a drink. After the Chief had savoured every drop in his glass, he declaimed. Indeed, I am honoured to taste this most wonderful hospitality, which should be reserved only for important people... The party could have gone further, but it was at this moment that Sadek arrived. Philips brother did not waste words. Its about my brother, he said. He looked down self consciously at his shoes they were a trifle big and Sam saw immediately that the pair was not Sadeks but Philips. He saw, too, that the jacket which Sadek wore was Philips old suede. And as if Sams unspoken scrutiny bothered him, Sadek took the jacket off and held it behind him. How is he? Sam asked. He did not wait for an answer. Come, lets have a drink. He held the Ifugao by the arm, but Sadek squirmed free from his grasp. I still have a half bottle of scotch, Sam said brightly. Its the best in the world, Sadek said humbly, but he did not move. Nothing but the best for Americans. Sam did not press. When is Phil coming back? he asked.

There was nothing we could do, Sadek said. He did not face the young American and a faraway gaze was in his eyes. Our grandfather... He is dead? Sadek nodded. Sam took the news calmly. He did not find it, its finality, depressing and he was surprised even that the death of someone who was dear to a friend had not affected him at all. In the back of his mind, he even found himself thinking that, perhaps, it was best that the old man had died, so that his passing would seal, forever, as far as Philip Latak was concerned, the familys concern with the idols dubious grace. And Phil? Sam asked. He isnt going back to Manila, Sadek said simply, smiling again that meaningless grin of peasants. And why not? Sadek did not speak. Tell me more, Sam insisted. Does his decision have something to do with burial customs and all that sort of thing? Its not matter of custom, sir! I must see him. Sadek faced the American squarely now. Mr. Christie, you cannot do anything now. You must go back to Manila. And wheeling round, the Ifugao walked out in the street. Sam followed him, rifled by the unexpected show of rudeness. I cannot leave like this, Sadek. Im sorry about what happened to your grandfather. In a time of grief I should at least be able to express my... my condolence. You have already done that, sir. Sadek paused again. All right then, he said sharply. Do come, then softly, supplicatingly, Please, please dont think we are being unreasonable and dont make me responsible for what will happen. Sam Christie was now troubled. How did the old man die? That was the question he wanted to ask and when he did it seemed as if the words were strangled from his throat. Walking slowly, Sadek glanced at the stranger keeping step behind him. It happened in the morning after the feast. He had a lot of wine. Of course, of course, Sam said. I saw him gulp it like water. A man his age shouldnt have indulged in drinking like he did. But it wasnt the drink that did it, sir, Sadek said emphatically. It was the loss of the god. It was stolen.

It was not the god, Sam said aloud and the words were not for Sadek alone, but for himself that he was not involved, that his hands were unsoiled. And a pang of regret, of sadness, touched him. No, he said. It wasnt the god. It couldnt be as simple as that. The liquor, the dancing, the exertion these did it. Sadek did not answer. They went down the incline and at the base of the terraces the path was wide and level again. Then, softly, My grandfather always love Ip pig Philip more than anyone of us. He wanted to see Ip pig before he died. He died in Ip pigs arms. Near the hill on which stood the old mans house Sadek paused again. We buried him there, he pointed to a new digging on the side of the hill, and we held another feast this morning. Two feasts in so short a time. One was a welcome to a youth gone astray, the other a farewell to him who gave us blood in us... At the edge of the hilltop the open pits which had served as stoves still smoked and the dried blood of the butchered animals stained the earth. Sadek faced Sam. My brother... he will not starve here, but he will no longer have the pleasures that he knew. Will that be good to him, Mr. Christie? He did not wait for an answer and he droned, As long as he works... but he is no longer a farmer of course. We are not learned like him and we have never been to Manila. But my brother... and, shaking his head as if a great weight had fallen on his shoulders, Sadek left the young American. Now there was nothing to do but go up the Ifugao hut, this flimsy thing of straw hat had survived all of times ravages, this house that was also granary and altar, which had retained its shape through hungry years and was, as it stood on this patch of earth, everything that endured. And as he approached it, Sam Christie found himself asking why he was here, among these primitive monuments, when he could very well be in his apartment in Manila, enjoying his liquor and his books and, maybe, a mestiza thrown in, too. Phil? Sam Christie stood in the sun, crinkling his brow and wondering if he had spoken a bit too harshly or too loudly to disturb the silence within. Phil, are you there? No answer. Phil, he repeated, raising his voice. I heard you, Philip Lataks reply from within the hut was abrupt and gruff. I thought you would forget. Remember, tomorrow morning, we are leaving. Ive already packed and I was waiting. You didnt even send word. We will still shop, Phil. And that woven stuff and the utensils do you know if we can get them before we leave tomorrow? You cant mean what you say, Sam said. Come on, we still have many things to do. But if its against the custom that is, if you have to stay here for more weeks after the burial The words exploded from the hut with a viciousness that jolted Sam: Damn it. Im not coming! It was no longer voice. It was something

elemental and distressing. Im not going back, do you hear? You can bring the whole mountain with you if you care. The god, my grandfathers god isnt it enough payment for your kindness? The words, their keenness, their meaning, bit deep. Let us be reasonable, Sam said, his voice starting to quiver. I didnt want you to steal the idol, Phil. You would have gotten it anyway, the voice quieted down, because you are always curious and determined. I could forgive myself for having stolen it, but the old man he had always been wise, Sam. I killed him because I wanted to be free from these... these terraces, because I wanted to be grateful. I killed him who loved me most... a faltering and a stifled sob. Dont blame me Phil. Sam choked on the words. I didnt want to steal it. Remember, I even wanted to return it? Besides, I could have gone on searching until I found one I could buy... Thats it! the voice within the hut had become a shriek. Thats it! Youll always find a way because you have all the money. You can buy everything, even gods. His face burning with bewilderment and shame, Sam Christie moved towards the ladder. Phil, lets talk this over. We are friends, Phil, he said in a low, anguished voice. You are not a friend, the voice within the grass hut had become a wail. If you are, you wouldnt have come here searching for gods to buy. We are friends, Sam insisted, toiling up the ladder and at the top rung, he pushed aside the flimsy bamboo door. In the semi darkness, amid the poverty and the soot of many years, Sam Christie saw Philip Latak squatting before the same earthen stove aglow with embers. And in this glow Sam Christie saw his friend not the Philip Latak with a suede jacket, but a well built Ifugao attired in the simple costume of the highlands, his broad flanks uncovered, and around his waist was the black and red breech cloth with yellow tassels. From his neck dangled the bronze necklace of an Ifugao warrior. Philip Latak did not, even face Sam. He seemed completely absorbed in his work and, with the sharp blade in his hands, he started scraping again the block of wood which he held tightly between his knees. Leave me alone, Sam, Philip Latak said softly, as if all grief had been squeezed from him. I have to finish this and it will take time. Sam Christies ever observant eyes lingered on the face. Where he had seen it before? Was it Greece or in Japan or in Siam? The recognition came swiftly, savagely; with waterly legs and trembling hands, he stepped down and let the door slide quietly back into place. He knew then that Philip Latak really had work to do and it would take some time before he could finish a new god to replace the old one, the stolen idol which he was bringing home to America to take its place among his souvenirs of benighted and faraway places.

HOW MY BROTHER LEON BROUGHT A WIFE Manuel E. Arguilla She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth. "You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek. "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum. I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now." She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily. My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her. "Maria---" my brother Leon said. He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name. "Yes, Noel." Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way. "There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west. She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly. "You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?" Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel. We stood alone on the roadside. The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the sawtooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge

masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had wshed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire. He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer. "Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders. "Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it." "There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him." She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek. "If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous." My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them. I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top. She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away. "Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instand labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears. She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent togther to one side, her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.

"What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said. I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow fires. When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly: "Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?" His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig. "Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?" His fingers bit into my shoulder. Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly: "Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong." Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said: "And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with Castano and the calesa." Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?" I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart. "Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky. "I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?" "Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach." "The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke." "So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath. "Making fun of me, Maria?" "---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our "Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong." "So near already." I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again. Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes. "But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly. "You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing. "Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here." With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real. She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face. I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels. "Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant. Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart. "Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked. "Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him." "I am asking you, Baldo," she said.

house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home." "Noel," she said. "Yes, Maria." "I am afraid. He may not like me." "Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know." We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels. I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were: "Father... where is he?" "He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again." I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them. There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking. "Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked. "No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night." He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair. "She is very beautiful, Father." "Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on

the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders. "No, Father, she was not afraid." "On the way---" "She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang." "What did he sing?" "---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him." He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside. The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in. "Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me. I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn. "It is time you watered him, my son," my father said. I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.

ZITA Arturo B. Rotor TURONG brought him from Pauambang in his small sailboat, for the coastwise steamer did not stop at any little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms. It was almost midday; they had been standing in that white glare where the tiniest pebble and fluted conch had become points of light, piercing-bright--the municipal president, the parish priest, Don Eliodoro who owned almost all the coconuts, the herb doctor, the village character. Their mild surprise over when he spoke in their native dialect, they looked at him more closely and his easy manner did not deceive them. His head was uncovered and he had a way of bringing the back of his hand to his brow or mouth; they read behind that too, it was not a gesture of protection. "An exile has come to Anayat and he is so young, so young." So young and lonely and sufficient unto himself. There was no mistaking the stamp of a strong decision on that brow, the brow of those who have to be cold and haughty, those shoulders stooped slightly, less from the burden that they bore than from a carefully cultivated air of unconcern; no common school-teacher could dress so carelessly and not appear shoddy. They had prepared a room for him in Don Eliodoro's house so that he would not have to walk far to school every morning, but he gave nothing more than a glance at the big stone building with its Spanish azotea, its arched doorways, its flagged courtyard.

He chose instead Turong's home, a shaky hut near the sea. Was the sea rough and dangerous at times? He did not mind it. Was the place far from the church and the schoolhouse? The walk would do him good. Would he not feel lonely with nobody but an illiterate fisherman for a companion? He was used to living alone. And they let him do as he wanted, for the old men knew that it was not so much the nearness of the sea that he desired as its silence so that he might tell it secrets he could not tell anyone else. They thought of nobody but him; they talked about him in the barber shop, in the cockpit, in the sari-sari store, the way he walked, the way he looked at you, his unruly hair. They dressed him in purple and linen, in myth and mystery, put him astride a black stallion, at the wheel of a blue automobile. Mr. Reteche? Mr. Reteche! The name suggested the fantasy and the glitter of a place and people they never would see; he was the scion of a powerful family, a poet and artist, a prince. That night, Don Eliodoro had the story from his daughter of his first day in the classroom; she perched wide-eyed, low-voiced, short of breath on the arm of his chair. "He strode into the room, very tall and serious and polite, stood in front of us and looked at us all over and yet did not seem to see us. " 'Good morning, teacher,' we said timidly. "He bowed as if we were his equals. He asked for the fist of our names and as he read off each one we looked at him long. When he came to my name, Father, the most surprising thing happened. He started pronouncing it and then he stopped as if he had forgotten something and just stared and stared at the paper in his hand. I heard my name repeated three times through his halfclosed lips, 'Zita. Zita. Zita.' " 'Yes sir, I am Zita.' "He looked at me uncomprehendingly, inarticulate, and it seemed to me, Father, it actually seemed that he was begging me to tell him that that was not my name, that I was deceiving him. He looked so miserable and sick I felt like sinking down or running away. " 'Zita is not your name; it is just a pet name, no?' " 'My father has always called me that, sir.' " 'It can't be; maybe it is Pacita or Luisa or--' "His voice was scarcely above a whisper, Father, and all the while he looked at me begging, begging. I shook my head determinedly. My answer must have angered him. He must have thought I was very hard-headed, for he said, 'A thousand miles, Mother of Mercy it is not possible.' He kept on looking at me; he was hurt perhaps that he should have such a stubborn pupil. But I am not really so, Father?" "Yes, you are, my dear. But you must try to please him, he is a gentleman; he comes from the city. I was thinking Private lessons, perhaps, if he won't ask too much." Don Eliodoro had his dreams and she was his only daughter. Turong had his own story to tell in the barber shop that night, a story as vividly etched as the lone coconut palm in front of the shop that shot up straight into the darkness of the night, as vaguely disturbing as the secrets that the sea whispered into the night. "He did not sleep a wink, I am sure of it. When I came from the market the stars were already out and I saw that he had not touched the food I had prepared. I asked him to eat and he said he was not hungry. He sat by the window that faces the sea and just looked out hour after hour. I woke up three times during the night and saw that he had not so much as changed his position. I thought once that he was asleep and came near, but he motioned me away.

When I awoke at dawn to prepare the nets, he was still there." "Maybe he wants to go home already." They looked up with concern. "He is sick. You remember Father Fernando? He had a way of looking like that, into space, seeing nobody, just before he died." Every month there was a letter that came for him, sometimes two or three; large, blue envelopes with a gold design in the upper left hand comer, and addressed in broad, angular, sweeping handwriting. One time Turong brought one of them to him in the classroom. The students were busy writing a composition on a subject that he had given them, "The Things That I Love Most." Carelessly he had opened the letter, carelessly read it, and carelessly tossed it aside. Zita was all aflutter when the students handed in their work for he had promised that he would read aloud the best. He went over the pile two times, and once again, absently, a deep frown on his brow, as if he were displeased with their work. Then he stopped and picked up one. Her heart sank when she saw that it was not hers, she hardly heard him reading: "I did not know any better. Moths are not supposed to know; they only come to the light. And the light looked so inviting, there was no resisting it. Moths are not supposed to know, one does not even know one is a moth until one's wings are burned." It was incomprehensible, no beginning, no end. It did not have unity, coherence, emphasis. Why did he choose that one? What did he see in it? And she had worked so hard, she had wanted to please, she had written about the flowers that she loved most. Who could have written what he had read aloud? She did not know that any of her classmates could write so, use such words, sentences, use a blue paper to write her lessons on. But then there was little in Mr. Reteche that the young people there could understand. Even his words were so difficult, just like those dark and dismaying things that they came across in their readers, which took them hour after hour in the dictionary. She had learned like a good student to pick out the words she did not recognize, writing them down as she heard them, but it was a thankless task. She had a whole notebook filled now, two columns to each page: esurient greedy. Amaranth a flower that never fades. peacock a large bird with lovely gold and green feathers. Mirash The last word was not in the dictionary. And what did such things as original sin, selfishness, insatiable, actress of a thousand faces mean, and who were Sirse, Lorelay, other names she could not find anywhere? She meant to ask him someday, someday when his eyes were kinder. He never went to church, but then, that always went with learning and education, did it not? One night Bue saw him coming out of the dim doorway. He watched again and the following night he saw him again. They would not believe it, they must see it with their own eyes and so they came. He did not go in every night, but he could be seen at the most unusual hours, sometimes at dusk, sometimes at dawn, once when it was storming and the lightning etched ragged paths from heaven to earth. Sometimes he stayed for a few minutes, sometimes he came twice or thrice in one evening. They reported it to Father Cesareo but it seemed that he already knew. "Let a peaceful man alone in his prayers." The answer had surprised them. The sky hangs over Anayat, in the middle of the Anayat Sea, like an inverted wineglass, a glass whose wine had been

spilled, a purple wine of which Anayat was the last precious drop. For that is Anayat in the crepuscule, purple and mellow, sparkling and warm and effulgent when there is a moon, cool and heady and sensuous when there is no moon. One may drink of it and forget what lies beyond a thousand miles, beyond a thousand years; one may sip it at the top of a jagged cliff, nearer peace, nearer God, where one can see the ocean dashing against the rocks in eternal frustration, more moving, more terrible than man's; or touch it to his lips in the lush shadows of the dama de noche, its blossoms iridescent like a thousand fireflies, its bouquet the fragrance of flowers that know no fading. Zita sat by her open window, half asleep, half dreaming. Francisco B. Reteche; what a name! What could his nickname be. Paking, Frank, Pa The night lay silent and expectant, a fairy princess waiting for the whispered words of a lover. She was not a bit sleepy; already she had counted three stars that had fallen to earth, one almost directly into that bush of dama de noche at their garden gate, where it had lighted the lamps of a thousand fireflies. He was not so forbidding now, he spoke less frequently to himself, more frequently to her; his eyes were still unseeing, but now they rested on her. She loved to remember those moments she had caught him looking when he thought she did not know. The knowledge came keenly, bitingly, like the sea breeze at dawn, like the prick of the rose's thorn, or--yes, like the purple liquid that her father gave the visitors during pintakasi which made them red and noisy. She had stolen a few drops one day, because she wanted to know, to taste, and that little sip had made her head whirl. Suddenly she stiffened; a shadow had emerged from the shrubs and had been lost in the other shadows. Her pulses raced, she strained forward. Was she dreaming? Who was it? A lost soul, an unvoiced thought, the shadow of a shadow, the prince from his tryst with the fairy princess? What were the words that he whispered to her? They who have been young once say that only youth can make youth forget itself; that life is a river bed; the water passes over it, sometimes it encounters obstacles and cannot go on, sometimes it flows unencumbered with a song in every bubble and ripple, but always it goes forward. When its way is obstructed it burrows deeply or swerves aside and leaves its impression, and whether the impress will be shallow and transient, or deep and searing, only God determines. The people remembered the day when he went up Don Eliodoro's house, the light of a great decision in his eyes, and finally accepted the father's request that he teach his daughter "to be a lady." "We are going to the city soon, after the next harvest perhaps; I want her not to feel like a 'provinciana' when we get there." They remembered the time when his walks by the seashore became less solitary, for now of afternoons, he would draw the whole crowd of village boys from their game of leapfrog or patintero and bring them with him. And they would go home hours after sunset with the wonderful things that Mr. Reteche had told them, why the sea is green, the sky blue, what one who is strong and fearless might find at that exact place where the sky meets the sea. They would be flushed and happy and bright-eyed, for he could stand on his head longer than any of them, catch more crabs, send a pebble skimming over the breast of Anayat Bay farthest. Turong still remembered those ominous, terrifying nights when he had got up cold and trembling to listen to the aching groan of the bamboo floor, as somebody in the other room restlessly paced to and fro. And his pupils still remember those mornings he received their flowers, the camia which had fainted away at her own

fragrance, the kampupot, with the night dew still trembling in its heart; receive them with a smile and forget the lessons of the day and tell them all about those princesses and fairies who dwelt in flowers; why the dama de noche must have the darkness of the night to bring out its fragrance; how the petals of the ylang-ylang, crushed and soaked in some liquid, would one day touch the lips of some wondrous creature in some faraway land whose eyes were blue and hair golden. Those were days of surprises for Zita. Box after box came in Turong's sailboat and each time they contained things that took the words from her lips. Silk as sheer and perishable as gossamer, or heavy and shiny and tinted like the sunset sky; slippers with bright stones which twinkled with the least movement of her feet; a necklace of green, flat, polished stone, whose feel against her throat sent a curious choking sensation there; perfume that she must touch her lips with. If only there would always be such things in Turong's sailboat, and none of those horrid blue envelopes that he always brought. And yet--the Virgin have pity on her selfish soul--suppose one day Turong brought not only those letters but the writer as well? She shuddered, not because she feared it but because she knew it would be. "Why are these dresses so tight fitting?" Her father wanted to know. "In society, women use clothes to reveal, not to hide." Was that a sneer or a smile in his eyes? The gown showed her arms and shoulders and she had never known how round and fair they were, how they could express so many things. "Why do these dresses have such bright colors?" "Because the peacock has bright feathers." "They paint their lips" "So that they can smile when they do not want to." "And their eyelashes are long." "To hide deception." He was not pleased like her father; she saw it, he had turned his face toward the window. And as she came nearer, swaying like a lily atop its stalk she heard the harsh, muttered words: "One would think she'd feel shy or uncomfortable, but no oh no not a bit all alike comes naturally." There were books to read; pictures, names to learn; lessons in everything; how to polish the nails, how to use a fan, even how to walk. How did these days come, how did they go? What does one do when one is so happy, so breathless? Sometimes they were a memory, sometimes a dream. "Look, Zita, a society girl does not smile so openly; her eyes don't seek one's so--that reveals your true feelings." "But if I am glad and happy and I want to show it?" "Don't. If you must show it by smiling, let your eyes be mocking; if you would invite with your eyes, repulse with your lips." That was a memory. She was in a great drawing room whose floor was so polished it reflected the myriad red and green and blue fights above, the arches of flowers and ribbons and streamers. All the great names of the capital were there, stately ladies in wonderful gowns who walked so, waved their fans so, who said one thing with their eyes and another with their lips. And she was among them and every young and good-looking man wanted to dance with her. They were all so clever and charming but she answered: "Please, I am tired." For beyond them she had seen him alone, he whose eyes were dark and brooding and disapproving and she was waiting for him to take her. That was a dream. Sometimes though, she could not tell

so easily which was the dream and which the memory. If only those letters would not bother him now, he might be happy and at peace. True he never answered them, but every time Turong brought him one, he would still become thoughtful and distracted. Like that time he was teaching her a dance, a Spanish dance, he said, and had told her to dress accordingly. Her heavy hair hung in a big, carelessly tied knot that always threatened to come loose but never did; its dark, deep shadows showing off in startling vividness how red a rose can be, how like velvet its petals. Her earrings--two circlets of precious stones, red like the pigeon's blood--almost touched her shoulders. The heavy Spanish shawl gave her the most trouble--she had nothing to help her but some pictures and magazines--she could not put it on just as she wanted. Like this, it revealed her shoulder too much; that way, it hampered the free movement of the legs. But she had done her best; for hours she had stood before her mirror and for hours it had told her that she was beautiful, that red lips and tragic eyes were becoming to her. She'd never forget that look on his face when she came out. It was not surprise, joy, admiration. It was as if he saw somebody there whom he was expecting, for whom he had waited, prayed. "Zita!" It was a cry of recognition. She blushed even under her rouge when he took her in his arms and taught her to step this way, glide so, turn about; she looked half questioningly at her father for disapproval, but she saw that there was nothing there but admiration too. Mr. Reteche seemed so serious and so intent that she should learn quickly; but he did not deceive her, for once she happened to lean close and she felt how wildly his heart was beating. It frightened her and she drew away, but when she saw how unconcerned he seemed, as if he did not even know that she was in his arms, she smiled knowingly and drew close again. Dreamily she closed her eyes and dimly wondered if his were shut too, whether he was thinking the same thoughts, breathing the same prayer. Turong came up and after his respectful "Good evening" he handed an envelope to the school teacher. It was large and blue and had a gold design in one comer; the handwriting was broad, angular, sweeping. "Thank you, Turong." His voice was drawling, heavy, the voice of one who has just awakened. With one movement he tore the unopened envelope slowly, unconsciously, it seemed to her, to pieces. "I thought I had forgotten," he murmured dully. That changed the whole evening. His eyes lost their sparkle, his gaze wandered from time to time. Something powerful and dark had come between them, something which shut out the light, brought in a chill. The tears came to her eyes for she felt utterly powerless. When her sight cleared she saw that he was sitting down and trying to piece the letter together. "Why do you tear up a letter if you must put it together again?" rebelliously. He looked at her kindly. "Someday, Zita, you will do it too, and then you will understand." One day Turong came from Pauambang and this time he brought a stranger. They knew at once that he came from where the teacher came--his clothes, his features, his politeness--and that he had come for the teacher. This one did not speak their dialect, and as he was led through the dusty, crooked streets, he kept forever wiping his face, gazing at the wobbly, thatched huts and muttering short, vehement phrases to himself. Zita heard his knock before Mr. Reteche did and she knew what he had come for. She must have been as pale as her teacher, as shaken, as rebellious. And yet the

stranger was so cordial; there was nothing but gladness in his greeting, gladness at meeting an old friend. How strong he was; even at that moment he did not forget himself, but turned to his class and dismissed them for the day. The door was thick and she did not dare lean against the jamb too much, so sometimes their voices floated away before they reached her. "like children making yourselves so unhappy." "happiness? Her idea of happiness" Mr. Reteche's voice was more low-pitched, hoarse, so that it didn't carry at all. She shuddered as he laughed, it was that way when he first came. "She's been did not mean understand." "learning to forget" There were periods when they both became excited and talked fast and hard; she heard somebody's restless pacing, somebody sitting down heavily. "I never realized what she meant to me until I began trying to seek from others what she would not give me." She knew what was coming now, knew it before the stranger asked the question: "Tomorrow?" She fled; she could not wait for the answer. He did not sleep that night, she knew he did not, she told herself fiercely. And it was not only his preparations that kept him awake, she knew it, she knew it. With the first flicker of light she ran to her mirror. She must not show her feeling, it was not in good form, she must manage somehow. If her lips quivered, her eyes must smile, if in her eyes there were tears She heard her father go out, but she did not go; although she knew his purpose, she had more important things to do. Little boys came up to the house and she wiped away their tears and told them that he was coming back, coming back, soon, soon. The minutes flew, she was almost done now; her lips were red and her eyebrows penciled; the crimson shawl thrown over her shoulders just right. Everything must be like that day he had first seen her in a Spanish dress. Still he did not come, he must be bidding farewell now to Father Cesareo; now he was in Doa Ramona's house; now he was shaking the barber's hand. He would soon be through and come to her house. She glanced at the mirror and decided that her lips were not red enough; she put on more color. The rose in her hair had too long a stem; she tried to trim it with her fingers and a thorn dug deeply into her flesh. Who knows? Perhaps they would soon meet again in the city; she wondered if she could not wheedle her father into going earlier. But she must know now what were the words he had wanted to whisper that night under the dama de noche, what he had wanted to say that day he held her in his arms; other things, questions whose answers she knew. She smiled. How well she knew them! The big house was silent as death; the little village seemed deserted, everybody had gone to the seashore. Again she looked at the mirror. She was too pale, she must put on more rouge. She tried to keep from counting the minutes, the seconds, from getting up and pacing. But she was getting chilly and she must do it to keep warm. The steps creaked. She bit her lips to stifle a wild cry there. The door opened. "Turong!" "Mr. Reteche bade me give you this. He said you would understand." In one bound she had reached the open window. But dimly, for the sun was too bright, or was her sight failing?--she saw a

blur of white moving out to sea, then disappearing behind a point of land so that she could no longer follow it; and then, clearly against a horizon suddenly drawn out of perspective, "Mr. Reteche," tall, lean, brooding, looking at her with eyes that told her somebody had hurt him. It was like that when he first came, and now he was gone. The tears came freely now. What matter, what matter? There was nobody to see and criticize her breeding. They came down unchecked and when she tried to brush them off with her hand, the color came away too from her cheeks, leaving them bloodless, cold. Sometimes they got into her mouth and they tasted bitter. Her hands worked convulsively; there was a sound of tearing paper, once, twice. She became suddenly aware of what she had done when she looked at the pieces, wet and brightly stained with uneven streaks of red. Slowly, painfully, she tried to put the pieces together and as she did so a sob escaped deep from her breast--a great understanding had come to her THE VIRGIN Kerima Polotan Tuvera He went to where Miss Mijares sat, a tall, big man, walking with an economy of movement, graceful and light, a man who knew his body and used it well. He sat in the low chair worn decrepit by countless other interviewers and laid all ten fingerprints carefully on the edge of her desk. She pushed a sheet towards him, rolling a pencil along with it. While he read the question and wrote down his answers, she glanced at her watch and saw that it was ten. "I shall be coming back quickly," she said, speaking distinctly in the dialect (you were never sure about these people on their first visit, if they could speak English, or even write at all, the poor were always proud and to use the dialect with them was an act of charity), "you will wait for me." As she walked to the cafeteria, Miss Mijares thought how she could easily have said, Please wait for me, or will you wait for me? But years of working for the placement section had dulled the edges of her instinct for courtesy. She spoke now peremtorily, with an abruptness she knew annoyed the people about her. When she talked with the jobless across her desk, asking them the damning questions that completed their humiliation, watching pale tongues run over dry lips, dirt crusted handkerchiefs flutter in trembling hands, she was filled with an impatience she could not understand. Sign here, she had said thousands of times, pushing the familiar form across, her finger held to a line, feeling the impatience grow at sight of the man or woman tracing a wavering "X" or laying the impress of a thumb. Invariably, Miss Mijares would turn away to touch the delicate edge of the handkerchief she wore on her breast. Where she sat alone at one of the cafeteria tables, Miss Mijares did not look 34. She was slight, almost bony, but she had learned early how to dress herself to achieve an illusion of hips and bosom. She liked poufs and shirrings and little girlish pastel colors. On her bodice, astride or lengthwise, there sat an inevitable row of thick camouflaging ruffles that made her look almost as though she had a bosom, if she bent her shoulders slightly and inconspicuously drew her neckline open to puff some air into her bodice. Her brow was smooth and clear and she was always pushing off it the hair she kept in tight curls at night. She had thin cheeks, small

and angular, falling down to what would have been a nondescript, receding chin, but Nature's hand had erred and given her a jaw instead. When displeased, she had a lippy, almost sensual pout, surprising on such a small face. So while not exactly an ugly woman, she was no beauty. She teetered precariously on the border line to which belonged countless others who you found, if they were not working at some job, in the kitchen of some married sister's house shushing a brood of devilish little nephews. And yet Miss Mijares did think of love. Secret, short-lived thoughts flitted through her mind in the jeepneys she took to work when a man pressed down beside her and through her dress she felt the curve of his thigh; when she held a baby in her arms, a married friend's baby or a relative's, holding in her hands the tiny, pulsing body, what thoughts did she not think, her eyes straying against her will to the bedroom door and then to her friend's laughing, talking face, to think: how did it look now, spread upon a pillow, unmasked of the little wayward coquetries, how went the lines about the mouth and beneath the eyes: (did they close? did they open?) in the one final, fatal coquetry of all? to finally, miserably bury her face in the baby's hair. And in the movies, to sink into a seat as into an embrace, in the darkness with a hundred shadowy figures about her and high on the screen, a man kissing a woman's mouth while her own fingers stole unconsciously to her unbruised lips. When she was younger, there had been other things to do--- college to finish, a niece to put through school, a mother to care for. She had gone through all these with singular patience, for it had seemed to her that love stood behind her, biding her time, a quiet hand upon her shoulder (I wait. Do not despair) so that if she wished she had but to turn from her mother's bed to see the man and all her timid, pure dreams would burst into glory. But it had taken her parent many years to die. Towards the end, it had become a thankless chore, kneading her mother's loose flesh, hour after hour, struggling to awaken the cold, sluggish blood in her drying body. In the end, she had died --- her toothless, thin-haired, flabby-fleshed mother --and Miss Mijares had pushed against the bed in grief and also in gratitude. But neither love nor glory stood behind her, only the empty shadows, and nine years gone, nine years. In the room for her unburied dead, she had held up her hands to the light, noting the thick, durable fingers, thinking in a mixture of shame and bitterness and guilt that they had never touched a man. When she returned to the bleak replacement office, the man stood by a window, his back to her, half-bending over something he held in his hands. "Here," she said, approaching, "have you signed this?" "Yes," he replied, facing her. In his hands, he held her paperweight, an old gift from long ago, a heavy wooden block on which stood, as though poised for flight, an undistinguished, badly done bird. It had come apart recently. The screws beneath the block had loosened so that lately it had stood upon her desk with one wing tilted unevenly, a miniature eagle or swallow? felled by time before it could spread its wings. She had laughed and laughed that day it had fallen on her desk, plop! "What happened? What happened?" they had asked her, beginning to laugh, and she had said, caught between amusement and sharp despair, "Some one shot it," and she had laughed and laughed till

faces turned and eyebrows rose and she told herself, whoa, get a hold, a hold, a hold! He had turned it and with a penknife tightened the screws and dusted it. In this man's hands, cupped like that, it looked suddenly like a dove. She took it away from him and put it down on her table. Then she picked up his paper and read it. He was a high school graduate. He was also a carpenter. He was not starved, like the rest. His clothes, though old, were pressed and she could see the cuffs of his shirt buttoned and wrapped about big, strong wrists. "I heard about this place," he said, "from a friend you got a job at the pier." Seated, he towered over her, "I'm not starving yet," he said with a quick smile. "I still got some money from that last job, but my team broke up after that and you got too many jobs if you're working alone. You know carpentering," he continued, "you can't finish a job quickly enough if you got to do the planing and sawing and nailing all by your lone self. You got to be on a team." Perhaps he was not meaning to be impolite? But for a jobseeker, Miss Mijares thought, he talked too much and without call. He was bursting all over with an obtruding insolence that at once disarmed and annoyed her. So then she drew a slip and wrote his name on it. "Since you are not starving yet," she said, speaking in English now, wanting to put him in his place, "you will not mind working in our woodcraft section, three times a week at two-fifty to four a day, depending on your skill and the foreman's discretion, for two or three months after which there might be a call from outside we may hold for you." "Thank you," he said. He came on the odd days, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. She was often down at the shanty that housed their bureau's woodcraft, talking with Ato, his foreman, going over with him the list of old hands due for release. They hired their men on a rotation basis and three months was the longest one could stay. "The new one there, hey," Ato said once. "We're breaking him in proper." And he looked across several shirted backs to where he stopped, planing what was to become the side of a bookcase. How much was he going to get? Miss Mijares asked Ato on Wednesday. "Three," the old man said, chewing away on a cud. She looked at the list in her hands, quickly running a pencil down. "But he's filling a four-peso vacancy," she said. "Come now," surprised that she should wheedle so, "give him the extra peso." "Only a half," the stubborn foreman shook his head, "three-fifty." "Ato says I have you to thank," he said, stopping Miss Mijares along a pathway in the compound. It was noon, that unhappy hour of the day when she was oldest, tiredest, when it seemed the sun put forth cruel fingers to search out the signs of age on her thin, pinched face. The crow's feet showed

unmistakably beneath her eyes and she smiled widely to cover them up and aquinting a little, said, "Only a half-peso --- Ato would have given it to you eventually." "Yes, but you spoke for me," he said, his big body heaving before her. "Thank you, though I don't need it as badly as the rest, for to look at me, you would knew I have no wife --- yet." She looked at him sharply, feeling the malice in his voice. "I'd do it for any one," she said and turned away, angry and also ashamed, as though he had found out suddenly that the ruffles on her dress rested on a flat chest. The following week, something happened to her: she lost her way home. Miss Mijares was quite sure she had boarded the right jeepneys but the driver, hoping to beat traffic, had detoured down a side alley, and then seeing he was low on gas, he took still another shortcut to a filling station. After that, he rode through alien country. The houses were low and dark, the people shadowy, and even the driver, who earlier had been an amiable, talkative fellow, now loomed like a sinister stranger over the wheel. Through it all, she sat tightly, feeling oddly that she had dreamed of this, that some night not very long ago, she had taken a ride in her sleep and lost her way. Again and again, in that dream, she had changed direction, losing her way each time, for something huge and bewildering stood blocking the old, familiar road home. But that evening, she was lost only for a while. The driver stopped at a corner that looked like a little known part of the boulevard she passed each day and she alighted and stood on a street island, the passing headlights playing on her, a tired, shaken woman, the ruffles on her skirt crumpled, the hemline of her skirt awry. The new hand was absent for a week. Miss Mijares waited on that Tuesday he first failed to report for some word from him sent to Ato and then to her. That was regulation. Briefly though they were held, the bureau jobs were not ones to take chances with. When a man was absent and he sent no word, it upset the system. In the absence of a definite notice, someone else who needed a job badly was kept away from it. "I went to the province, ma'am," he said, on his return. "You could have sent someone to tell us," she said. "It was an emergency, ma'am," he said. "My son died." "How so?" A slow bitter anger began to form inside her. "But you said you were not married!" "No, ma'am," he said gesturing. "Are you married?" she asked loudly. "No, ma'am."

"But you have -- you had a son!" she said. "I am not married to his mother," he said, grinning stupidly, and for the first time she noticed his two front teeth were set widely apart. A flush had climbed to his face, suffusing it, and two large throbbing veins crawled along his temples. She looked away, sick all at once. "You should told us everything," she said and she put forth hands to restrain her anger but it slipped away she stood shaking despite herself. "I did not think," he said. "Your lives are our business here," she shouted. It rained that afternoon in one of the city's fierce, unexpected thunder-storms. Without warning, it seemed to shine outside Miss Mijares' window a gray, unhappy look. It was past six when Miss Mijares, ventured outside the office. Night had come swiftly and from the dark sky the thick, black, rainy curtain continued to fall. She stood on the curb, telling herself she must not lose her way tonight. When she flagged a jeepney and got in, somebody jumped in after her. She looked up into the carpenter's faintly smiling eyes. She nodded her head once in recognition and then turned away. The cold tight fear of the old dream was upon her. Before she had time to think, the driver had swerved his vehicle and swung into a side street. Perhaps it was a different alley this time. But it wound itself in the same tortuous manner as before, now by the banks of overflowing esteros, again behind faintly familiar buildings. She bent her tiny, distraught face, conjuring in her heart the lonely safety of the street island she had stood on for an hour that night of her confusion. "Only this far, folks," the driver spoke, stopping his vehicle. "Main street's a block straight ahead." "But it's raining," someone protested. "Sorry. But if I got into a traffic, I won't come out of it in a year. Sorry." One by one the passengers got off, walking swiftly, disappearing in the night. Miss Mijares stepped down to a sidewalk in front of a boarded store. The wind had begun again and she could hear it whipping in the eaves above her head. "Ma'am," the man's voice sounded at her shoulders, "I am sorry if you thought I lied." She gestured, bestowing pardon. Up and down the empty, rain-beaten street she looked. It was as though all at once everyone else had died and they were alone in the world, in the dark. In her secret heart, Miss Mijares' young dreams fluttered faintly to life, seeming monstrous in the rain, near this man --- seeming

monstrous but sweet overwhelming. I must get away, she thought wildly, but he had moved and brushed against her, and where his touch had fallen, her flesh leaped, and she recalled how his hands had looked that first day, lain tenderly on the edge of her desk and about the wooden bird (that had looked like a moving, shining dove) and she turned to him with her ruffles wet and wilted, in the dark she turned to him.

DESIRE Paz Latorena She was homely. A very broad forehead gave her face an unpleasant, masculine look. Her eyes, which were small, slanted at the corners and made many of her acquaintances wonder if perchance she had a few drops of celestial blood in her veins. Her nose was broad and flat, and its nostrils were always dilated, as if breathing were an effort. Her mouth, with thick lips, was a long, straight; gash across her face made angular by her unusually big jaws. But nature, as if ashamed of her meanness in fashioning the face, moulded a body of unusual beauty. From her neck to her small feet, she was perfect. Her bust was full, and her breast rose up like twin roses in full bloom. Her waist was slim as a young girls her hips seemed to have stolen the curve of the crescent moon. Her arms were shapely ending in small hands with fine tapering fingers that were the envy of her friends. Her legs with their trim ankles reminded one of those lifeless things seen in shop windows displaying the latest silk stockings. Hers was a body of a sculptor, athirst for glory, might have dreamt of and moulded in a feverish frenzy of creation, with hand atremble with a vision of the fame in store for him. Hers was a body that might have been the delight and despair of a painter whose feelings faltering brush tried in vain to depict on the canvass such a beautiful harmony of curves and lines. Hers was a body a poet might have raved over and immortalized in musical, fanciful verses. Hers was a body men would gladly have gone to hell for. And they did. Men looked at her face and turned their eyes away; they looked at her body and were enslaved. They forget the broad masculine forehead, the small eyes that slanted at the corners, the unpleasant mouth, the aggressive jaws. All they had eyes for was that body, those hips that has stolen the curve of the crescent moon. But she hated her body hated that gift which Nature, in a fit of remorse for the wrong done to her face, had given her. She hated her body because it made men look at her with an unbeautiful light in their eyes married eyes, single eyes. She wanted love, was starved for it. But she did not want that love that her body inspired in men. She wanted something purer, cleaner. She was disgusted. And hurt. For men told other women that they loved them looking deep into their eyes to the soul beneath their voices low and soft, their hands quivering with the weight of their tenderness. But men told her that they loved her body with eyes that made her feel as if she were naked, stripped bare of their simple eyes to gaze upon. They told her that with voices made thick with

desire, touched her with hand afire, that scared her flesh, filling her with scorn and loathing. She wanted to be loved as other women were loved. She was as good as pure as they. And some of them were as homely as she was. But they did not have beautiful bodies. And so they were loved for themselves. Deliberately she set out to hide from the eyes of men the beautiful body that to her was a curse rather than a blessing. She started wearing long, wide dresses that completely disfigured her. She gave up wearing the Filipino costume which outlined her body with startling accuracy. It took quite a time to make men forget that body that had once been their delight. But after a time they became accustomed to the disfiguring dresses and concluded she had become fate and shapeless. She accomplished the desired result. And more.. For there came a time when men look at her and turned their eyes away, not with the unbeautiful light of former days but with something akin to pity mirrored there pity for a homely face and a shapeless mass of flesh. At first she was glad. Glad that she had succeeded in extinguishing that unbeautiful light in the eyes of men when they looked at her. After some time, she became rebellious. For she was a woman and she wanted to be loved and to love. But it seemed that men would not have anything to do with a woman with a homely face and an apparently shapeless mass of flesh. But she became reconciled to her fate. And rather than bring back that unbeautiful light in mens eyes, she chose to go with the farce. She turned to writing to while away the long nights spent brooding all alone. Little things. Little lyrics. Little sketches. Sometimes they were the heart throbs of a woman who wanted love and sweet things whispered to her in the dark.. Sometimes, they were the ironies of one who sees all the weaknesses and stupidities of men and the world through eye made bitter by loneliness. She sent them to papers which found the little things acceptable and published them, To fill space, she told herself. But she continued to write because it made her forget once in a while how drab her life was. And then came into her life a man with white blood in his veins. He was one of those who believed in the inferiority of colored races. But he found something unusual in the light, ironic tirades from the pen of the unknown writer. Not in the little lyrics. No, he thought that those were superfluous effusions of a woman belonging to a race of people who could not think of writing about anything except love. But he liked the light airy sketches. They were like those of the people of his race. One day, when he had nothing to do, he sent her, to encourage her, a note of appreciation. It was brief, but the first glance showed her that it came from cultured man.

She answered it, a light, nonsensical answer that touched the sense of humor of the white man. That started a correspondence. In the course of time, she came to watch for the mail carrier for the gray tinted stationery that was his. He asked to see her to know her personally. Letters were so tantalizing. Her first impulse was to say no. A bitter smile hovered about her lips as she surveyed her face before the mirror. He would be disappointed, she told herself. But she consented. They would have to meet sooner or later. The first meeting would surely be trial and the sooner it was over, the better. He, the white man, coming from a land of fair, blue-eyed women, was shocked. Perhaps, he found it a bit difficult to associate this homely woman with one who could write such delightful sketches, such delightful letters. But she could talk rather well. There was a light vein of humor, faintly ironical at times, in everything she said. And that delighted him. He asked her to come out with him again. By the shore of Manila Bay one early evening, when her homely face was softened by the darkness around them, he forgot that he was a white man, that she was a brown maiden a homely and to all appearances, shapeless creature at that. Her silence, as with half closed eyes she gazed at the distance, was very soothing and under the spell of her understanding sympathy, he found himself telling her of his home way over the seas, how he loved the blue of the sea on early morning because it reminded of the blue of the eyes of the women of his native land. He told her of his love of the sea, for the waves that dashed against the rocks in impotent fury, how he could spend his life on the water, sailing on and on, to unknown and uncharted seas. She listened to him silently. Then he woke up from the spell and, as if ashamed of the outburst of confidence, added irrelevantly: But you are different from the other women of your race, looking deep into her small eyes that slanted at the corners. She smiled. Of course she was, the homely and shapeless mass of flesh that he saw her to be. No, I do not mean that, he protested, divining her thoughts, you do not seem to care much for convention. No Filipino girl would go out unchaperoned with a man, a white mad at that. A homely woman can very well afford to break conventions. Nobody minds her if she does. That is one consolation of being homely, was her calmly reply. He laughed. You have some very queer ideas, he observed. I should have, she retorted. If I didnt nobody would notice me with my face and my my figure, she hated herself for stammering the last words.

He looked at her impersonally, as if trying to find some beauty in her. But I like you, was his verdict, uttered with the almost brutal frankness in his race. I have not come across a more interesting girl for a long time. They met, again. And again. Thoughts, pleasant thoughts, began to fill her mind. Had she at last found one who liked her sincerely? For he liked her, that she was ready to believe. As a friend, a pal who understood him. And the though gave her happiness a friend, a pal who understood him such as she had never experienced before. One day, an idea took hold of her simply obsesses her. He was such a lover of beautiful things of beauty in any form. She noticed that in all his conversations, in very look, every gesture of his. A desire to show him that she was not entirely devoid of beauty which he worshipped came over her. It would not do any harm, she told herself. He had learned to like her for herself. He had leaned to value their friendship, homely as she was shapeless as he thought her to be. Her body would matter not at all now. It would please the aesthete in him perhaps, but it certainly would not matter much to the man. From the bottom of a very old truck, she unearthed one of those flimsy, shapedly things tha had lain there unused for many years. As she looked at herself in the mirror before the appointment, she grudgingly admitted that her body had lost nothing of its hated beauty. He was surprised. Pleasantly so. Accustomed as he was to the beautiful bodies of the women of his race, he had to confess that there was something of unusual beauty. Why have you been hiding such a beautiful figure all this time, he demanded in mock anger. I did not know it was beautiful, she lied. Pouff! I know it is not polite to tell a young lady she is a liar so I wont do it. But but But fear was beginning to creep into her voice. Well Let us talk of something else. She heaved in a deep sigh. She was right. She had found a man to whom her body mattered little if anything at all. She need not take warning. He had learned to like her for herself. At their next meeting she wore a pale rose Filipino dress that softened the brown of her skin. His eyes lighted up when they rested on her, but whether it was the unbeautiful light that she dreaded so much, she could not determine for it quickly disappeared. No, it could not be the unbeautiful light. He liked her for herself. This belief she treasured fondly. They had a nice long ride out in the country, where the winds were soft and faintly scented and the bamboo tress sighed love to the breeze. They visited a little our of the way nipa chapel by the

roadside where a naked Man, nailed to the Cross, looked at them with eyes which held all the tragedy and sorrow of the world for the sins of sinning men. She gazed at the figure feeling something vague and incomprehensible stirring within her. She turned to him for sympathy and found him staring at her at her body. He turned slightly red. In silence they left the little chapel. He helped her inside the car but did not start it at once. I I love he stammered after some moment, as if impelled by an irresistible force. Then he stopped. The small eyes that slanted at the corners were almost beautiful with a tender, soft light as she turned them on hi. So he loved her. Had he learned not only to like her but to love her? For herself. And the half finished confession found an echo in the heart of the woman who was starved for love. Yes there was a pleading note in her voice. He swallowed hard. I love. Your body. He finished with a thick voice: And the blue eyes flared with the dreaded, hateful light. She uttered an involuntary cry of protest, of pain of disillusion. And then a sob escaped her. And dimly the man from the West realized that he had wronged this little brown maiden with a homely face and the beautiful body as she never had been wronged before. And he felt sorry, infinitely so. When they stopped before the door of her house, he got out to open the door for her. I am sorry, was all he said. There was a world of regret in the eyes she turned on him. For what? she asked in a tired voice. You have just been yourself like other men. He winced. And with a weary smile she passed within.