Araling Pinoy

Damon and Pythias

2009-05-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

Damon and Pythias

Sina Damon at Pythias ay magkaibigang matalik. Sila'y nagmamahalan ng higit pa sa magkapatid. Minsan, may nagawa si Pythias na isang bagay na ikinagalit ng hari. Ang hari ng Roma ng mga panahong iyon ay isang malupit na hari. At wala itong kinikilalang katwiran. Ipinakulong nito so Pythias. Nagmakaawa si Damon sa malupit na hari, alang-alang sa kanyang sa kanyang kaibigan.

"Pakawalan n'yo na po siya," ang hiling niya. Ngunit matigas ang hari sa desisyon nito.

"Hindi ko siya pakakawalan. Sa katunayan, kamatayan ang dapat igawad sa kanya! Tama! Kamatayan nga!" Lalong nahabag si Damon para sa kanyang kaibigan ngunit ano nga ba ang kanyang magagawa?

"Mahal na hari," ang sabi na lang ni Pythias na noon di'y tanggap na ang kapalaran."Kung kamatayan man ang dapat igawad sa akin, malugod kong tatanggapin. Ngunit pahintulutan nyo po sana akong Makita ang aking mahal na asawa at mga anak bago ako mamatay." Nag-isip ang hari.

" Nasa malayong lugar ang iyong pamilya. Papaano ako makatitityak na kapag pinayagan kita'y muli kang magbabalik?" Noon nagsalita si Damon,

"Hayaan ninyong ako ang makulong kapalit ng aking kaibigan, hanggang sa siya'y makabalik."

"At kung hindi na siya magbalik?" ang tanong ng malupit na hari.

"Kung ganoo'y ako ang inyong patayin kapalit niya," tugon ni Damon. Natuwa ang malupit na hari sa pangyayari. Pinayagan nitong makaalis si Pythias para dalawin ang pamilya at ikinulong si Damon kapalit nito. Sa isip-isip ng hari, dito niya ngayon masusubukan ang magkaibigang ito.

Makalipas ang ilang Linggo, iyon na ang sukdulan ng panahong ipinagkaloob ng hari kay Pythias na magbalik ito. Ngunit hindi pa rin ito dumarating noong araw na iyon.

"Tuluyan ka nang pinabayaan ng kaibigan mo. Sinasabi ko na nga ba't hindi na siya magbabalik," ang sabi ng hari kay Damon.

"Naantala lang siya marahil. Ngunit alam kong siya'y magbabalik," tugon ni Damon.

"At paano ka nakatitiyak?" "Dahil si Pythias ay isang mabuti at matalik na kaibigan. Hindi niya ako hahayaang mapahamak." Natawa ang hari,

"Ang taas ng pananampalataya mo sa iyong kaibigan. Isa kang hangal! Kapag hindi nakabalik ang kaibigan mo hanngang sa paglubog ng araw, mamamatay ka kapalit ng buhay niya!" Dumating nga ang paglubog ng araw. Hindi pa rin dumating si Pythias. Tuwang-tuwa ang hari.

"Ngayo'y tanggapin mo ang kamatayan bunga ng pagtataksil ng iyong kaibigan!" ang sabi nito. Ngunit hanggang sa huling sandali; umaasa pa rin si Damon sa pagbabalik ni Pythias.

"Alam kong babalik siya…Babalik siya…" Itinaas na ng malupit na hari ang espada nito upang pugutan ng ulo sa sarili niyang kamay si Damon. Nang biglang may sumigaw sa bukana ng palasyo. "Huwag!" ang sabi nito. Napatingin si Damon sa pinagmulan ng sigaw at laking tuwa niya sa nakita. "Pythias!" "Narito na ako. Pakawalan n'yo na ang kaibigan ko," ang sabi ni Pythias sa hari. "Namatay ang aking kabayo habang ako'y naglalakbay pabalik kung kaya't ako'y naatagalan. Kinakailangan kong tumakbo patungo rito para lamang umabot sa kasunduan at mailigtas ang buhay ng aking kaibigan. Ngayong narito na alo, handa ko nang tanggapin ang aking kamatayan." Ngunit nagsalita agad si Damon, "Hindi. Hindi ka dapat mamatay Pythias. May pamilya ka. Asawang nagmamahal at mga anak na naghihintay sa iyo sa tahanan, samantalang ako'y wala. Ako na lang ank patayin ninyo kapalit ng aking kaibigan, mahal na hari!" Hindi makapaniwala ang malupit na hari sa nasaksihan. Hindi siya makapaniwalang may ganoong klase ng pagkakaibigan na handang ibuwis ang buhay para sa isa't isa. "Kung mayroon lang sana akong kaibigan na tulad ninyo, handa kong ipagpalit ang anumang kapangyarihan o karangyaan. Sige, lumaya kayong dalawa! Wala ni isa man sa inyo ang dapat mamatay." At masaya ngang lumaya sina Pythias at Damon.

MENSAHE:

Ang tunay na magkaibigan ay hindi nag-iiwanan. Ang tunay na kaibigan ay handang mag-alay ng kanyang buhay para sa kapakanan ng kanyang kaibigan. Katulad ng pagmamahal ni Hesus sa atin.

Thumbelina

2009-05-13T21:35:00.002-07:00

Thumbelina

There was once a woman who wished very much to have a little child, but she could not obtain her wish. At last she went to a fairy, and said, "I should so very much like to have a little child; can you tell me where I can find one?"

"Oh, that can be easily managed," said the fairy. "Here is a barleycorn of a different kind to those which grow in the farmer's fields, and which the chickens eat; put it into a flower-pot, and see what will happen."

"Thank you," said the woman, and she gave the fairy twelve shillings, which was the price of the barleycorn. Then she went home and planted it, and immediately there grew up a large handsome flower, something like a tulip in appearance, but with its leaves tightly closed as if it were still a bud.

"It is a beautiful flower," said the woman, and she kissed the red and golden-colored leaves, and while she did so the flower opened, and she could see that it was a real tulip. Within the flower, upon the green velvet stamens, sat a very delicate and graceful little maiden. She was scarcely half as long as a thumb, and they gave her the name of "Thumbelina," or Tiny, because she was so small. A walnut-shell, elegantly polished, served her for a cradle; her bed was formed of blue violet-leaves, with a rose-leaf for a counterpane. Here she slept at night, but during the day she amused herself on a table, where the woman had placed a plateful of water. Round this plate were wreaths of flowers with their stems in the water, and upon it floated a large tulip-leaf, which served Tiny for a boat. Here the little maiden sat and rowed herself from side to side, with two oars made of white horse-hair. It really was a very pretty sight. Tiny could, also, sing so softly and sweetly that nothing like her singing had ever before been heard.

One night, while she lay in her pretty bed, a large, ugly, wet toad crept through a broken pane of glass in the window, and leaped right upon the table where Tiny lay sleeping under her rose-leaf quilt. "What a pretty little wife this would make for my son," said the toad, and she took up the walnut-shell in which little Tiny lay asleep, and jumped through the window with it into the garden.

In the swampy margin of a broad stream in the garden lived the toad, with her son. He was uglier even than his mother, and when he saw the pretty little maiden in her elegant bed, he could only cry, "Croak, croak, croak."

"Don't speak so loud, or she will wake," said the toad, "and then she might run away, for she is as light as swan's down. We will place her on one of the water-lily leaves out in the stream; it will be like an island to her, she is so light and small, and then she cannot escape; and, while she is away, we will make haste and prepare the state-room under the marsh, in which you are to live when you are married."

Far out in the stream grew a number of water-lilies, with broad green leaves, which seemed to float on the top of the water. The largest of these leaves appeared farther off than the rest, and the old toad swam out to it with the walnut-shell, in which little Tiny lay still asleep.

The tiny little creature woke very early in the morning, and began to cry bitterly when she found where she was, for she could see nothing but water on every side of the large green leaf, and no way of reaching the land.

Meanwhile the old toad was very busy under the marsh, decking her room with rushes and wild yellow flowers, to make it look pretty for her new daughter-in-law. Then she swam out with her ugly son to the leaf on which she had placed poor little Tiny. She wanted to fetch the pretty bed, that she might put it in the bridal chamber to be ready for her. The old toad bowed low to her in the water, and said, "Here is my son, he will be your husband, and you will live happily in the marsh by the stream."

"Croak, croak, croak," was all her son could say for himself; so the toad took up the elegant little bed, and swam away with it, leaving Tiny all alone on the green leaf, where she sat and wept. She could not bear to think of living with the old toad, and having her ugly son for a husband.

The little fishes, who swam about in the water beneath, had seen the toad, and heard what she said, so they lifted their heads above the water to look at the little maiden. As soon as they caught sight of her, they saw she was very pretty, and it made them very sorry to think that she must go and live with the ugly toads. "No, it must never be!" So they assembled together in the water, round the green stalk which held the leaf on which the little maiden stood, and gnawed it away at the root with their teeth. Then the leaf floated down the stream, carrying Tiny far away out of reach of land.

Tiny sailed past many towns, and the little birds in the bushes saw her, and sang, "What a lovely little creature;" so the leaf swam away with her farther and farther, till it brought her to other lands.

A graceful little white butterfly constantly fluttered round her, and at last alighted on the leaf. Tiny pleased him, and she was glad of it, for now the toad could not possibly reach her, and the country through which she sailed was beautiful, and the sun shone upon the water, till it glittered like liquid gold. She took off her girdle and tied one end of it round the butterfly, and the other end of the ribbon she fastened to the leaf, which now glided on much faster than ever, taking little Tiny with it as she stood.

Presently a large cockchafer flew by; the moment he caught sight of her, he seized her round her delicate waist with his claws, and flew with her into a tree. The green leaf floated away on the brook, and the butterfly flew with it, for he was fastened to it, and could not get away.

Oh, how frightened little Tiny felt when the cockchafer flew with her to the tree! But especially was she sorry for the beautiful white butterfly which she had fastened to the leaf, for if he could not free himself he would die of hunger. But the cockchafer did not trouble himself at all about the matter. He seated himself by her side on a large green leaf, gave her some honey from the flowers to eat, and told her she was very pretty, though not in the least like a cockchafer.

After a time, all the cockchafers turned up their feelers, and said, "She has only two legs! how ugly that looks."

"She has no feelers," said another. "Her waist is quite slim. Pooh! she is like a human being."

"Oh! she is ugly," said all the lady cockchafers, although Tiny was very pretty. Then the cockchafer who had run away with her, believed all the others when they said she was ugly, and would have nothing more to say to her, and told her she might go where she liked. Then he flew down with her from the tree, and placed her on a daisy, and she wept at the thought that she was so ugly that even the cockchafers would have nothing to say to her. And all the while she was really the loveliest creature that one could imagine, and as tender and delicate as a beautiful rose-leaf.

During the whole summer poor little Tiny lived quite alone in the wide forest. She wove herself a bed with blades of grass, and hung it up under a broad leaf, to protect herself from the rain. She sucked the honey from the flowers for food, and drank the dew from their leaves every morning. So passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the winter - the long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung to her so sweetly were flown away, and the trees and the flowers had withered. The large clover leaf under the shelter of which she had lived, was now rolled together and shrivelled up, nothing remained but a yellow withered stalk. She felt dreadfully cold, for her clothes were torn, and she was herself so frail and delicate, that poor little Tiny was nearly frozen to death.

It began to snow too; and the snow-flakes, as they fell upon her, were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for we are tall, but she was only an inch high. Then she wrapped herself up in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep her warm, and she shivered with cold.

Near the wood in which she had been living lay a corn-field, but the corn had been cut a long time; nothing remained but the bare dry stubble standing up out of the frozen ground. It was to her like struggling through a large wood. Oh! how she shivered with the cold.

She came at last to the door of a field-mouse, who had a little den under the corn-stubble. There dwelt the field-mouse in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of corn, a kitchen, and a beautiful dining room. Poor little Tiny stood before the door just like a little beggar-girl, and begged for a small piece of barley-corn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for two days.

"You poor little creature," said the field-mouse, who was really a good old field-mouse, "come into my warm room and dine with me." She was very pleased with Tiny, so she said, "You are quite welcome to stay with me all the winter, if you like; but you must keep my rooms clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I shall like to hear them very much."

And Tiny did all the field-mouse asked her, and found herself very comfortable.

"We shall have a visitor soon," said the field-mouse one day; "my neighbor pays me a visit once a week. He is better off than I am; he has large rooms, and wears a beautiful black velvet coat. If you could only have him for a husband, you would be well provided for indeed. But he is blind, so you must tell him some of your prettiest stories."

But Tiny did not feel at all interested about this neighbor, for he was a mole. However, he came and paid his visit dressed in his black velvet coat.

"He is very rich and learned, and his house is twenty times larger than mine," said the field-mouse.

He was rich and learned, no doubt, but he always spoke slightingly of the sun and the pretty flowers, because he had never seen them. Tiny was obliged to sing to him, "Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home," and many other pretty songs. And the mole fell in love with her because she had such a sweet voice; but he said nothing yet, for he was very cautious.

A short time before, the mole had dug a long passage under the earth, which led from the dwelling of the field-mouse to his own, and here she had permission to walk with Tiny whenever she liked. But he warned them not to be alarmed at the sight of a dead bird which lay in the passage. It was a perfect bird, with a beak and feathers, and could not have been dead long, and was lying just where the mole had made his passage. The mole took a piece of phosphorescent wood in his mouth, and it glittered like fire in the dark; then he went before them to light them through the long, dark passage. When they came to the spot where lay the dead bird, the mole pushed his broad nose through the ceiling, the earth gave way, so that there was a large hole, and the daylight shone into the passage. In the middle of the floor lay a dead swallow, his beautiful wings pulled close to his sides, his feet and his head drawn up under his feathers; the poor bird had evidently died of the cold. It made little Tiny very sad to see it, she did so love the little birds; all the summer they had sung and twittered for her so beautifully. But the mole pushed it aside with his crooked legs, and said, "He will sing no more now. How miserable it must be to be born a little bird! I am thankful that none of my children will ever be birds, for they can do nothing but cry, 'Tweet, tweet,' and always die of hunger in the winter."

"Yes, you may well say that, as a clever man!" exclaimed the field-mouse, "What is the use of his twittering, for when winter comes he must either starve or be frozen to death. Still birds are very high bred."

Tiny said nothing; but when the two others had turned their backs on the bird, she stooped down and stroked aside the soft feathers which covered the head, and kissed the closed eyelids. "Perhaps this was the one who sang to me so sweetly in the summer," she said; "and how much pleasure it gave me, you dear, pretty bird."

The mole now stopped up the hole through which the daylight shone, and then accompanied the lady home. But during the night Tiny could not sleep; so she got out of bed and wove a large, beautiful carpet of hay; then she carried it to the dead bird, and spread it over him; with some down from the flowers which she had found in the field-mouse's room. It was as soft as wool, and she spread some of it on each side of the bird, so that he might lie warmly in the cold earth.

"Farewell, you pretty little bird," said she, "farewell; thank you for your delightful singing during the summer, when all the trees were green, and the warm sun shone upon us." Then she laid her head on the bird's breast, but she was alarmed immediately, for it seemed as if something inside the bird went "thump, thump." It was the bird's heart; he was not really dead, only benumbed with the cold, and the warmth had restored him to life. In autumn, all the swallows fly away into warm countries, but if one happens to linger, the cold seizes it, it becomes frozen, and falls down as if dead; it remains where it fell, and the cold snow covers it. Tiny trembled very much; she was quite frightened, for the bird was large, a great deal larger than herself, - she was only an inch high. But she took courage, laid the wool more thickly over the poor swallow, and then took a leaf which she had used for her own counterpane, and laid it over the head of the poor bird.

The next morning she again stole out to see him. He was alive but very weak; he could only open his eyes for a moment to look at Tiny, who stood by holding a piece of decayed wood in her hand, for she had no other lantern.

"Thank you, pretty little maiden," said the sick swallow; "I have been so nicely warmed, that I shall soon regain my strength, and be able to fly about again in the warm sunshine."

"Oh," said she, "it is cold out of doors now; it snows and freezes. Stay in your warm bed; I will take care of you."

Then she brought the swallow some water in a flower-leaf, and after he had drank, he told her that he had wounded one of his wings in a thorn-bush, and could not fly as fast as the others, who were soon far away on their journey to warm countries. Then at last he had fallen to the earth, and could remember no more, nor how he came to be where she had found him.

The whole winter the swallow remained underground, and Tiny nursed him with care and love. Neither the mole nor the field-mouse knew anything about it, for they did not like swallows. Very soon the spring time came, and the sun warmed the earth. Then the swallow bade farewell to Tiny, and she opened the hole in the ceiling which the mole had made. The sun shone in upon them so beautifully, that the swallow asked her if she would go with him; she could sit on his back, he said, and he would fly away with her into the green woods. But Tiny knew it would make the field-mouse very grieved if she left her in that manner, so she said, "No, I cannot."

"Farewell, then, farewell, you good, pretty little maiden," said the swallow; and he flew out into the sunshine.

Tiny looked after him, and the tears rose in her eyes. She was very fond of the poor swallow.

"Tweet, tweet," sang the bird, as he flew out into the green woods, and Tiny felt very sad. She was not allowed to go out into the warm sunshine. The corn which had been sown in the field over the house of the field-mouse had grown up high into the air, and formed a thick wood to Tiny, who was only an inch in height.

"You are going to be married, Tiny," said the field-mouse. "My neighbor has asked for you. What good fortune for a poor child like you. Now we will prepare your wedding clothes. They must be both woollen and linen. Nothing must be wanting when you are the mole's wife."

Tiny had to turn the spindle, and the field-mouse hired four spiders, who were to weave day and night. Every evening the mole visited her, and was continually speaking of the time when the summer would be over. Then he would keep his wedding-day with Tiny; but now the heat of the sun was so great that it burned the earth, and made it quite hard, like a stone. As soon as the summer was over, the wedding should take place. But Tiny was not at all pleased; for she did not like the tiresome mole. Every morning when the sun rose, and every evening when it went down, she would creep out at the door, and as the wind blew aside the ears of corn, so that she could see the blue sky, she thought how beautiful and bright it seemed out there, and wished so much to see her dear swallow again. But he never returned; for by this time he had flown far away into the lovely green forest.

When autumn arrived, Tiny had her outfit quite ready; and the field-mouse said to her, "In four weeks the wedding must take place."

Then Tiny wept, and said she would not marry the disagreeable mole.

"Nonsense," replied the field-mouse. "Now don't be obstinate, or I shall bite you with my white teeth. He is a very handsome mole; the queen herself does not wear more beautiful velvets and furs. His kitchen and cellars are quite full. You ought to be very thankful for such good fortune."

So the wedding-day was fixed, on which the mole was to fetch Tiny away to live with him, deep under the earth, and never again to see the warm sun, because he did not like it. The poor child was very unhappy at the thought of saying farewell to the beautiful sun, and as the field-mouse had given her permission to stand at the door, she went to look at it once more.

"Farewell bright sun," she cried, stretching out her arm towards it; and then she walked a short distance from the house; for the corn had been cut, and only the dry stubble remained in the fields. "Farewell, farewell," she repeated, twining her arm round a little red flower that grew just by her side. "Greet the little swallow from me, if you should see him again."

"Tweet, tweet," sounded over her head suddenly. She looked up, and there was the swallow himself flying close by. As soon as he spied Tiny, he was delighted; and then she told him how unwilling she felt to marry the ugly mole, and to live always beneath the earth, and never to see the bright sun any more. And as she told him she wept.

"Cold winter is coming," said the swallow, "and I am going to fly away into warmer countries. Will you go with me? You can sit on my back, and fasten yourself on with your sash. Then we can fly away from the ugly mole and his gloomy rooms, - far away, over the mountains, into warmer countries, where the sun shines more brightly than here; where it is always summer, and the flowers bloom in greater beauty. Fly now with me, dear little Tiny; you saved my life when I lay frozen in that dark passage."

"Yes, I will go with you," said Tiny; and she seated herself on the bird's back, with her feet on his outstretched wings, and tied her girdle to one of his strongest feathers.

Then the swallow rose in the air, and flew over forest and over sea, high above the highest mountains, covered with eternal snow. Tiny would have been frozen in the cold air, but she crept under the bird's warm feathers, keeping her little head uncovered, so that she might admire the beautiful lands over which they passed.

At length they reached the warm countries, where the sun shines brightly, and the sky seems so much higher above the earth. Here, on the hedges, and by the wayside, grew purple, green, and white grapes; lemons and oranges hung from trees in the woods; and the air was fragrant with myrtles and orange blossoms. Beautiful children ran along the country lanes, playing with large gay butterflies; and as the swallow flew farther and farther, every place appeared still more lovely.

At last they came to a blue lake, and by the side of it, shaded by trees of the deepest green, stood a palace of dazzling white marble, built in the olden times. Vines clustered round its lofty pillars, and at the top were many swallows' nests, and one of these was the home of the swallow who carried Tiny.

"This is my house," said the swallow; "but it would not do for you to live there - you would not be comfortable. You must choose for yourself one of those lovely flowers, and I will put you down upon it, and then you shall have everything that you can wish to make you happy."

"That will be delightful," she said, and clapped her little hands for joy.

A large marble pillar lay on the ground, which, in falling, had been broken into three pieces. Between these pieces grew the most beautiful large white flowers; so the swallow flew down with Tiny, and placed her on one of the broad leaves. But how surprised she was to see in the middle of the flower, a tiny little man, as white and transparent as if he had been made of crystal! He had a gold crown on his head, and delicate wings at his shoulders, and was not much larger than Tiny herself. He was the angel of the flower; for a tiny man and a tiny woman dwell in every flower; and this was the king of them all.

"Oh, how beautiful he is!" whispered Tiny to the swallow.

The little prince was at first quite frightened at the bird, who was like a giant, compared to such a delicate little creature as himself; but when he saw Tiny, he was delighted, and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head, and placed it on hers, and asked her name, and if she would be his wife, and queen over all the flowers.

This certainly was a very different sort of husband to the son of a toad, or the mole, with my black velvet and fur; so she said, "Yes," to the handsome prince. Then all the flowers opened, and out of each came a little lady or a tiny lord, all so pretty it was quite a pleasure to look at them. Each of them brought Tiny a present; but the best gift was a pair of beautiful wings, which had belonged to a large white fly and they fastened them to Tiny's shoulders, so that she might fly from flower to flower. Then there was much rejoicing, and the little swallow who sat above them, in his nest, was asked to sing a wedding song, which he did as well as he could; but in his heart he felt sad for he was very fond of Tiny, and would have liked never to part from her again.

"You must not be called Tiny any more," said the spirit of the flowers to her. "It is an ugly name, and you are so very pretty. We will call you Maia."

"Farewell, farewell," said the swallow, with a heavy heart as he left the warm countries to fly back into Denmark. There he had a nest over the window of a house in which dwelt the writer of fairy tales. The swallow sang, "Tweet, tweet," and from his song came the whole story.

May Day Eve

2009-05-13T21:35:00.001-07:00

May Day Eve

By Nick Joaquin

The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten o’clock but it was almost midnight before the carriages came filing up the departing guests, while the girls who were staying were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the young men gathering around to wish them a good night and lamenting their ascent with mock signs and moaning, proclaiming themselves disconsolate but straightway going off to finish the punch and the brandy though they were quite drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment, arrogance and audacity, for they were young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had been in their honor; and they had waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and flirted all night and where in no mood to sleep yet--no, caramba, not on this moist tropic eve! not on this mystic May eve! --with the night still young and so seductive that it was madness not to go out, not to go forth---and serenade the neighbors! cried one; and swim in the Pasid! cried another; and gather fireflies! cried a third—whereupon there arose a great clamor for coats and capes, for hats and canes, and they were a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tile roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wile sky murky with clouds, save where an evil young moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable childhood fragrances or ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously down the street that the girls who were desiring upstairs in the bedrooms catered screaming to the windows, crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over those young men bawling below; over those wicked young men and their handsome apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and their elegant mustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite ravished with love, and began crying to one another how carefree were men but how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was, till old Anastasia plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chases them off to bed---while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobble and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his great voice booming through the night, "Guardia serno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o.

And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said--for it was a night of divination, and night of lovers, and those who cared might peer into a mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it was they were fated to marry, said the old Anastasia as she hobble about picking up the piled crinolines and folding up shawls and raking slippers in corner while the girls climbing into four great poster-beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror, scrambling over each other and imploring the old woman not to frighten them.

"Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!"

"Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!"

"She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of Christmas Eve!"

"St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr."

"Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin, Anastasia?"

"No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!"

"Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell me."

"You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid."

"I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed.

"Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you Anastasia, I command you to shut your mouth and go away!""Your mother told me to stay here all night, my grand lady!"

"And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. "Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do."

"Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls.

The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her eyes on the girl. "You must take a candle," she instructed, "and go into a room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and shy:

Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be. If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry." A silence. Then: "And hat if all does not go right?" asked Agueda. "Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!" "Why." "Because you may see--the Devil!"

The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what nonsense!" cried Agueda. "This is the year 1847. There are no devil anymore!" Nevertheless she had turned pale. "But where could I go, hugh? Yes, I know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and no one is there now." "No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will see the devil!" "I do not care! I am not afraid! I will go!" "Oh, you wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!" "If you do not come to bed, Agueda, I will call my mother." "And if you do I will tell her who came to visit you at the convent last March. Come, old woman---give me that candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me that candle, I go."

But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing across the hall; her feet bare and her dark hair falling down her shoulders and streaming in the wind as she fled down the stairs, the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while with the other she pulled up her white gown from her ankles. She paused breathless in the doorway to the sala and her heart failed her. She tried to imagine the room filled again with lights, laughter, whirling couples, and the jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh, it was a dark den, a weird cavern for the windows had been closed and the furniture stacked up against the walls. She crossed herself and stepped inside.

The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a gold frame carved into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues. She saw herself approaching fearfully in it: a small while ghost that the darkness bodied forth---but not willingly, not completely, for her eyes and hair were so dark that the face approaching in the mirror seemed only a mask that floated forward; a bright mask with two holes gaping in it, blown forward by the white cloud of her gown. But when she stood before the mirror she lifted the candle level with her chin and the dead mask bloomed into her living face.

She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had finished such a terror took hold of her that she felt unable to move, unable to open her eyes and thought she would stand there forever, enchanted. But she heard a step behind her, and a smothered giggle, and instantly opened her eyes.

"And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had forgotten the little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the curly head nestling at her breast and seeing herself in the big mirror hanging in the room. It was the same room and the same mirror out the face she now saw in it was an old face---a hard, bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying hair, and so sadly altered, so sadly different from that other face like a white mask, that fresh young face like a pure mask than she had brought before this mirror one wild May Day midnight years and years ago.... "But what was it Mama? Oh please go on! What did you see?" Dona Agueda looked down at her daughter but her face did not soften though her eyes filled with tears. "I saw the devil." she said bitterly. The child blanched. "The devil, Mama? Oh... Oh..." "Yes, my love. I opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over my left shoulder, was the face of the devil." "Oh, my poor little Mama! And were you very frightened?" "You can imagine. And that is why good little girls do not look into mirrors except when their mothers tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling, of admiring yourself in every mirror you pass- or you may see something frightful some day." "But the devil, Mama---what did he look like?" "Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---" "Like the scar of Papa?" "Well, yes. But this of the devil was a scar of sin, while that of your Papa is a scar of honor. Or so he says." "Go on about the devil." "Well, he had mustaches." "Like those of Papa?" "Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and graying and smell horribly of tobacco, while these of the devil were very black and elegant--oh, how elegant!" "And did he speak to you, Mama?" "Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And bowing her graying head; she wept.

"Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had said, smiling at her in the mirror and stepping back to give her a low mocking bow. She had whirled around and glared at him and he had burst into laughter. "But I remember you!" he cried. "You are Agueda, whom I left a mere infant and came home to find a tremendous beauty, and I danced a waltz with you but you would not give me the polka." "Let me pass," she muttered fiercely, for he was barring the way. "But I want to dance the polka with you, fair one," he said. So they stood before the mirror; their panting breath the only sound in the dark room; the candle shining between them and flinging their shadows to the wall. And young Badoy Montiya (who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed) suddenly found himself cold sober and very much awake and ready for anything. His eyes sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed scarlet. "Let me pass!" she cried again, in a voice of fury, but he grasped her by the wrist. "No," he smiled. "Not until we have danced." "Go to the devil!" "What a temper has my serrana!" "I am not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends like your mortal enemies." "And why not?" she demanded, jerking her wrist away and flashing her teeth in his face. "Oh, how I detest you, you pompous young men! You go to Europe and you come back elegant lords and we poor girls are too tame to please you. We have no grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians, and we have no salt, no salt, no salt! Aie, how you weary me, how you bore me, you fastidious men!" "Come, come---how do you know about us?"

"I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon perhaps?" "Oh!" she gasped, and burst into tears. The candle dropped from her hand and she covered her face and sobbed piteously. The candle had gone out and they stood in darkness, and young Badoy was conscience-stricken. "Oh, do not cry, little one!" Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But what a brute I am! I was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I said." He groped and found her hand and touched it to his lips. She shuddered in her white gown. "Let me go," she moaned, and tugged feebly. "No. Say you forgive me first. Say you forgive me, Agueda." But instead she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it - bit so sharply in the knuckles that he cried with pain and lashed cut with his other hand--lashed out and hit the air, for she was gone, she had fled, and he heard the rustling of her skirts up the stairs as he furiously sucked his bleeding fingers. Cruel thoughts raced through his head: he would go and tell his mother and make her turn the savage girl out of the house--or he would go himself to the girl’s room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face! But at the same time he was thinking that they were all going to Antipolo in the morning and was already planning how he would maneuver himself into the same boat with her. Oh, he would have his revenge, he would make her pay, that little harlot! She should suffer for this, he thought greedily, licking his bleeding knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold in her candlelight and delicately furred. He saw the mobile insolence of her neck, and her taut breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of a Turk, but she was quite enchanting! How could she think she had no fire or grace? And no salt? An arroba she had of it!

"... No lack of salt in the chrism At the moment of thy baptism!" He sang aloud in the dark room and suddenly realized that he had fallen madly in love with her. He ached intensely to see her again---at once! ---to touch her hands and her hair; to hear her harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung open the casements and the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow. It was May, it was summer, and he was young---young! ---and deliriously in love. Such a happiness welled up within him that the tears spurted from his eyes. But he did not forgive her--no! He would still make her pay, he would still have his revenge, he thought viciously, and kissed his wounded fingers. But what a night it had been! "I will never forge this night! he thought aloud in an awed voice, standing by the window in the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the wind in his hair and his bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth.

But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time passes; summer lends; the storms break over the rot-tipe orchards and the heart grows old; while the hours, the days, the months, and the years pile up and pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded, too confused: dust gathers in it; cobwebs multiply; the walls darken and fall into ruin and decay; the memory perished...and there came a time when Don Badoy Montiya walked home through a May Day midnight without remembering, without even caring to remember; being merely concerned in feeling his way across the street with his cane; his eyes having grown quite dim and his legs uncertain--for he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stopped and shivered old man with white hair and mustaches coming home from a secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with the speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his way up the steps to the front door and inside into the slumbering darkness of the house; wholly unconscious of the May night, till on his way down the hall, chancing to glance into the sala, he shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold-- for he had seen a face in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes closed and the lips moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had been there before though it was a full minutes before the lost memory came flowing, came tiding back, so overflooding the actual moment and so swiftly washing away the piled hours and days and months and years that he was left suddenly young again; he was a gay young buck again, lately came from Europe; he had been dancing all night; he was very drunk; he s stepped in the doorway; he saw a face in the dark; he called out...and the lad standing before the mirror (for it was a lad in a night go jumped with fright and almost dropped his candle, but looking around and seeing the old man, laughed out with relief and came running.

"Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me. Don Badoy had turned very pale. "So it was you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What are you doing down here at this hour?" "Nothing, Grandpa. I was only... I am only ..." "Yes, you are the great Señor only and how delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Señor Only! But if I break this cane on your head you maga wish you were someone else, Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me I would see my wife."

"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her if I looked in a mirror tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me her whose lover I will be.

Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him along into the room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between his knees. "Now, put your cane down the floor, son, and let us talk this over. So you want your wife already, hey? You want to see her in advance, hey? But so you know that these are wicked games and that wicked boys who play them are in danger of seeing horrors?"

"Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead."

"Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will be witch you, she will torture you, she will eat

your heart and drink your blood!"

"Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches anymore."

"Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself have seen a witch.

"You? Where?

"Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man, and his playful voice had turned savage.

"When, Grandpa?"

"Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain fellow and though I was feeling very sick that night and merely wanted to lie down somewhere and die I could not pass that doorway of course without stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like when dying. But when I poked my head in what should I see in the mirror but...but..."

"The witch?"

"Exactly!"

"And then she bewitch you, Grandpa!"

"She bewitched me and she tortured me. l She ate my heart and drank my blood." said the old man bitterly.

"Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she very horrible?

"Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen! Her eyes were somewhat like yours but her hair was like black waters and her golden shoulders were bare. My God, she was enchanting! But I should have known---I should have known even then---the dark and fatal creature she was!"

A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered the boy.

"What makes you slay that, hey?"

"Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma once told her that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was it of the scare that Grandma died?"

Don Badoy started. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead, that she had perished---the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at last, the two of them, her tired body at rest; her broken body set free at last from the brutal pranks of the earth---from the trap of a May night; from the snare of summer; from the terrible silver nets of the moon. She had been a mere heap of white hair and bones in the end: a whimpering withered consumptive, lashing out with her cruel tongue; her eye like live coals; her face like ashes... Now, nothing--- nothing save a name on a stone; save a stone in a graveyard---nothing! was left of the young girl who had flamed so vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight, long, long ago.

And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how she had bitten his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the dark room and surprised his heart in the instant of falling in love: such a grief tore up his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed before the boy; pushed the boy away; stood up and looked out----looked out upon the medieval shadows of the foul street where a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage was rattling away upon the cobbles, while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tiled roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable the window; the bowed old man sobbing so bitterly at the window; the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wind in his hair and one hand pressed to his mouth---while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through the night:

"Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!"

A Coward

2009-05-13T21:34:00.002-07:00

A Coward

Society called him Handsome Signoles. His name was Viscount Gontran-Joseph de Signoles.

An orphan, and possessed of an adequate income, he cut a dash, as the saying is. He had a good figure and a good carriage, a sufficient flow of words to pass for wit, a certain natural grace, an air of nobility and pride, a gallant moustache and an eloquent eye, attributes which women like.

He was in demand in drawing-rooms, sought after for valses, and in men he inspired that smiling hostility which is reserved for vital and attractive rivals. He had been suspected of several love-affairs of a sort calculated to create a good opinion of a youngster. He lived a happy, care-free life, in the most complete well-being of body and mind. He was known to be a fine swordsman and a still finer shot with the pistol.

"When I come to fight a duel," he would say, "I shall choose pistols. With that weapon, I'm sure of killing my man."

One evening, he went to the theatre with two ladies, quite young, friends of his, whose husbands were also of the party, and after the performance he invited them to take ices at Tortoni's.

They had been sitting there for a few minutes when he noticed a gentleman at a neighbouring table staring obstinately at one of the ladies of the party. She seemed embarrassed and ill at ease, and bent her head. At last she said to her husband:

"There's a man staring at me. I don't know him; do you?"

The husband, who had seen nothing, raised his eyes, but declared:

"No, not in the least."

Half smiling, half in anger, she replied:

"It's very annoying; the creature's spoiling my ice."

Her husband shrugged his shoulders.

"Deuce take him, don't appear to notice it. If we had to deal with all the discourteous people one meets, we'd never have done with them."

But the Viscount had risen abruptly. He could not permit this stranger to spoil an ice of his giving. It was to him that the insult was addressed, since it was at his invitation and on his account that his friends had come to the cafe. The affair was no business of anyone but himself.

He went up to the man and said:

"You have a way of looking at those ladies, sir, which I cannot stomach. Please be so good as to set a limit to your persistence."

"You hold your tongue," replied the other.

"Take care, sir," retorted the Viscount, clenching his teeth;" you'll force me to overstep the bounds of common politeness."

The gentleman replied with a single word, a vile word which rang across the cafe from one end to the other, and, like the release of a spring, jerked every person present into an abrupt movement. All those with their backs towards him turned round, all the rest raised their heads; three waiters spun round on their heels like tops; the two ladies behind the counter started, then the whole upper half of their bodies twisted round, as though they were a couple of automata worked by the same handle.

There was a profound silence. Then suddenly a sharp noise resounded in the air. The Viscount had boxed his adversary's ears. Every one rose to intervene. Cards were exchanged.

Back in his home, the Viscount walked for several minutes up and down his room with long quick strides. He was too excited to think. A solitary idea dominated his mind: "a duel"; but as yet the idea stirred in him no emotion of any kind. He had done what he was compelled to do; he had shown himself to be what he ought to be. People would talk of it, would approve of him, congratulate him. He repeated aloud, speaking as a man speaks in severe mental distress:

"What a hound the fellow is!"

Then he sat down and began to reflect. In the morning he must find seconds. Whom should he choose? He searched his mind for the most important and celebrated names of his acquaintance. At last he decided on the Marquis de la Tour-Noire and Colonel Bourdin, an aristocrat and a soldier; they would do excellently. Their names would look well in the papers. He realised that he was thirsty, and drank three glasses of water one after the other; then he began to walk up and down again. He felt full of energy. If he played the gallant, showed himself determined, insisted on the most strict and dangerous arrangements, demanded a serious duel, a thoroughly serious duel, a positively terrible duel, his adversary would probably retire an apologist.

He took up once more the card which he had taken from his pocket and thrown down upon the table, and read it again as he had read it before, in the cafe, at a glance, and in the cab, by the light of each gas-lamp, on his way home.

"Georges Lamil, 51 rue Moncey." Nothing more.

He examined the grouped letters; they seemed to him mysterious, full of confused meaning. Georges Lamil? Who was this man? What did he do? Why had he looked at the woman in that way? Was it not revolting that a stranger, an unknown man, could thus disturb a man's life, without warning, just because he chose to fix his insolent eyes upon a woman? Again the Viscount repeated aloud:

"What a hound!"

Then he remained standing stock-still, lost in thought, his eyes still fixed upon the card. A fury against this scrap of paper awoke in him, a fury of hatred in which was mingled a queer sensation of uneasiness. This sort of thing was so stupid! He took up an open knife which lay close at hand and thrust it through the middle of the printed name, as though he had stabbed a man.

So he must fight. Should he choose swords or pistols?--for he regarded himself as the insulted party. With swords there would be less risk, but with pistols there was a chance that his adversary might withdraw. It is very rare that a duel with swords is fatal, for mutual prudence is apt to restrain combatants from engaging at sufficiently close quarters for a point to penetrate deeply. With pistols he ran a grave risk of death; but he might also extricate himself from the affair with all the honours of the situation and without actually coming to a meeting.

"I must be firm," he said. "He will take fright."

The sound of his voice set him trembling, and he looked round. He felt very nervous. He drank another glass of water, then began to undress for bed.

As soon as he was in bed, he blew out the light and closed his eyes.

"I've the whole of to-morrow," he thought, "in which to set my affairs in order. I'd better sleep now, so that I shall be quite calm."

He was very warm in the blankets, but he could not manage to compose himself to sleep. He turned this way and that, lay for five minutes upon his back, turned on to his left side, then rolled over on to his right.

He was still thirsty. He got up to get a drink. A feeling of uneasiness crept over him:

"Is it possible that I'm afraid?"

Why did his heart beat madly at each familiar sound in his room? When the clock was about to strike, the faint squeak of the rising spring made him start; so shaken he was that for several seconds afterwards he had to open his mouth to get his breath.

He began to reason with himself on the possibility of his being afraid.

"Shall I be afraid?"

No, of course he would not be afraid, since he was resolved to see the matter through, and had duly made up his mind to fight and not to tremble. But he felt so profoundly distressed that he wondered:

"Can a man be afraid in spite of himself?"

He was attacked by this doubt, this uneasiness, this terror; suppose a force more powerful than himself, masterful, irresistible, overcame him, what would happen? Yes, what might not happen? Assuredly he would go to the place of the meeting, since he was quite ready to go. But supposing he trembled? Supposing he fainted? He thought of the scene, of his reputation, his good name.

There came upon him a strange need to get up and look at himself in the mirror. He relit his candle. When he saw his face reflected in the polished glass, he scarcely recognised it, it seemed to him as though he had never yet seen himself. His eyes looked to him enormous; and he was pale; yes, without doubt he was pale, very pale.

He remained standing in front of the mirror. He put out his tongue, as though to ascertain the state of his health, and abruptly the thought struck him like a bullet:

"The day after to-morrow, at this very hour, I may be dead."

His heart began again its furious beating.

"The day after to-morrow, at this very hour, I may be dead. This person facing me, this me I see in the mirror, will be no more. Why, here I am, I look at myself, I feel myself alive, and in twenty-four hours I shall be lying in that bed, dead, my eyes closed, cold, inanimate, vanished."

He turned back towards the bed, and distinctly saw himself lying on his back in the very sheets he had just left. He had the hollow face of a corpse, his hands had the slackness of hands that will never make another movement.

At that he was afraid of his bed, and, to get rid of the sight of it, went into the smoking-room. Mechanically he picked up a cigar, lit it, and began to walk up and down again. He was cold; he went to the bell to wake his valet; but he stopped, even as he raised his hand to the rope.

"He will see that I am afraid."

He did not ring; he lit the fire. His hands shook a little, with a nervous tremor, whenever they touched anything. His brain whirled, his troubled thoughts became elusive, transitory, and gloomy; his mind suffered all the effects of intoxication, as though he were actually drunk.

Over and over again he thought:

"What shall I do? What is to become of me?"

His whole body trembled, seized with a jerky shuddering; he got up and, going to the window, drew back the curtains.

Dawn was at hand, a summer dawn. The rosy sky touched the town, its roofs and walls, with its own hue. A broad descending ray, like the caress of the rising sun, enveloped the awakened world; and with the light, hope--a gay, swift, fierce hope--filled the Viscount's heart! Was he mad, that he had allowed himself to be struck down by fear, before anything was settled even, before his seconds had seen those of this Georges Lamil, before he knew whether he was going to fight?

He washed, dressed, and walked out with a firm step.

He repeated to himself, as he walked:

"I must be energetic, very energetic. I must prove that I am not afraid."

His seconds, the Marquis and the Colonel, placed themselves at his disposal, and after hearty handshakes discussed the conditions.

"You are anxious for a serious duel? " asked the Colonel.

"Yes, a very serious one," replied the Viscount.

"You still insist on pistols?" said the Marquis.

"Yes."

"You will leave us free to arrange the rest?"

In a dry, jerky voice the Viscount stated:

"Twenty paces; at the signal, raising the arm, and not lowering it. Exchange of shots till one is seriously wounded."

"They are excellent conditions," declared the Colonel in a tone of satisfaction. "You shoot well, you have every chance."

They departed. The Viscount went home to wait for them. His agitation, momentarily quietened, was now growing minute by minute. He felt a strange shivering, a ceaseless vibration, down his arms, down his legs, in his chest; he could not keep still in one place, neither seated nor standing. There was not the least moistening of saliva in his mouth, and at every instant he made a violent movement of his tongue, as though to prevent it sticking to his palate.

He was eager to have breakfast, but could not eat. Then the idea came to him to drink in order to give himself courage, and he sent for a decanter of rum, of which he swallowed six liqueur glasses full one after the other.

A burning warmth flooded through his body, followed immediately by a sudden dizziness of the mind and spirit.

"Now I know what to do," he thought. "Now it is all right."

But by the end of an hour he had emptied the decanter, and his state of agitation had once more become intolerable. He was conscious of a wild need to roll on the ground, to scream, to bite. Night was falling.

The ringing of a bell gave him such a shock that he had not strength to rise and welcome his seconds.

He did not even dare to speak to them, to say "Good evening" to them, to utter a single word, for fear they guessed the whole thing by the alteration in his voice.

"Everything is arranged in accordance with the conditions you fixed," observed the Colonel. "At first your adversary claimed the privileges of the insulted party, but he yielded almost at once, and has accepted everything. His seconds are two military men."

"Thank you," said the Viscount.

"Pardon us," interposed the Marquis, "if we merely come in and leave again immediately, but we have a thousand things to see to. We must have a good doctor, since the combat is not to end until a serious wound is inflicted, and you know that pistol bullets are no laughing-matter. We must appoint the ground, near a house to which we may carry the wounded man if necessary, etc. In fact, we shall be occupied for two or three hours arranging all that there is to arrange."

"Thank you," said the Viscount a second time.

"You are all right?" asked the Colonel. "You are calm?"

"Yes, quite calm, thank you."

The two men retired.

When he realised that he was once more alone, he thought that he was going mad. His servant had lit the lamps, and he sat down at the table to write letters. After tracing, at the head of a sheet: "This is my will," he rose shivering and walked away, feeling incapable of connecting two ideas, of taking a resolution, of making any decision whatever.

So he was going to fight! He could no longer avoid it. Then what was the matter with him? He wished to fight, he had absolutely decided upon this plan of action and taken his resolve, and he now felt clearly, in spite of every effort of mind and forcing of will, that he could not retain even the strength necessary to get him to the place of meeting. He tried to picture the duel, his own attitude and the bearing of his adversary.

From time to time his teeth chattered in his mouth with a slight clicking noise. He tried to read, and took down Chateauvillard's code of duelling. Then he wondered:

"Does my adversary go to shooting-galleries? Is he well known? Is he classified anywhere? How can I find out?"

He bethought himself of Baron Vaux's book on marksmen with the pistol, and ran through it from end to end. Georges Lamil was not mentioned in it. Yet if the man were not a good shot, he would surely not have promptly agreed to that dangerous weapon and those fatal conditions?

He opened, in passing, a case by Gastinne Renette standing on a small table, and took out one of the pistols, then placed himself as though to shoot and raised his arm. But he was trembling from head to foot and the barrel moved in every direction.

At that, he said to himself:

"It's impossible. I cannot fight in this state."

He looked at the end of the barrel, at the little, black, deep hole that spits death; he thought of the disgrace, of the whispers at the club, of the laughter in drawing-rooms, of the contempt of women, of the allusions in the papers, of the insults which cowards would fling at him.

He was still looking at the weapon, and, raising the hammer, caught a glimpse of a cap gleaming beneath it like a tiny red flame. By good fortune or forgetfulness, the pistol had been left loaded. At the knowledge, he was filled with a confused inexplicable sense of joy.

If, when face to face with the other man, he did not show a proper gallantry and calm, he would be lost for ever. He would be sullied, branded with a mark of infamy, hounded out of society. And he would not be able to achieve that calm, that swaggering poise; he knew it, he felt it. Yet he was brave, since he wanted to fight I ... He was brave, since....

The thought which hovered in him did not even fulfil itself in his mind; but, opening his mouth wide, he thrust in the barrel of his pistol with savage gesture until it reached his throat, and pressed on the trigger.

When his valet ran in, at the sound of the report, he found him lying dead upon his back. A shower of blood had splashed the white paper on the table, and made a great red mark beneath these four words:

"This is my will."

How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife

2009-05-13T21:34:00.001-07:00

How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife

(American Colonial Literature)

By 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 saw-tooth 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.

"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?"

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.

Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:

"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.

"---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our 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.

Wedding Dance

2009-05-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

Wedding Dance

By Amador Daguio

Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.

"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."

The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.

But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.

"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and lights

upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.

"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."

"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."

He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"

She did not answer him.

"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.

"Yes, I know," she said weakly.

"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to you."

"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.

"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late for both of us."

This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.

"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."

"Yes, I know."

"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"

"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.

Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls.

Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.

"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best wives in the

whole village."

"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost seemed to smile.

He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he hold her face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.

"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."

"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."

"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."

"I have no use for any field," she said.

He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.

"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."

"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."

"You know that I cannot."

"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."

"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."

She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.

She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled,

resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.

They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to the other side of the mountain.

She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of the mountains

five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she had lost him.

She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die."

"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.

"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."

"Then you'll always be fruitless."

"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."

"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."

She was silent.

"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."

"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."

"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."

The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.

"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.

"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."

"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love you and have nothing to give."

She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"

"I am not in hurry."

"The elders will scold you. You had better go."

"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."

"It is all right with me."

He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.

"I know," she said.

He went to the door.

"Awiyao!"

He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.

"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.

"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his neck.

The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.

Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.

She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully

timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her

husband a child.

"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not right," she said.

Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong as the

river?

She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?

She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.

Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.

When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.

When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her

sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.

Lumnay though of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.

The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.

A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.

Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.

Hansel and Gretel

2009-05-13T21:32:00.002-07:00

Hansel and Gretel

Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once, when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread.

Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety. He groaned and said to his wife, "What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?"

"I'll tell you what, husband," answered the woman, "early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest. There we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them."

"No, wife," said the man, "I will not do that. How can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest? The wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces."

"Oh! you fool," said she, "then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins," and she left him no peace until he consented.

"But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same," said the man.

The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their step-mother had said to their father. Gretel wept bitter tears, and said to Hansel, "Now all is over with us."

"Be quiet, Gretel," said Hansel, "do not distress yourself, I will soon find a way to help us." And when the old folks had fallen asleep, he got up, put on his little coat, opened the door below, and crept outside.

The moon shone brightly, and the white pebbles which lay in front of the house glittered like real silver pennies. Hansel stooped and stuffed the little pocket of his coat with as many as he could get in. Then he went back and said to Gretel, "Be comforted, dear little sister, and sleep in peace, God will not forsake us," and he lay down again in his bed.

When day dawned, but before the sun had risen, the woman came and awoke the two children, saying, "Get up, you sluggards. We are going into the forest to fetch wood." She gave each a little piece of bread, and said, "There is something for your dinner, but do not eat it up before then, for you will get nothing else."

Gretel took the bread under her apron, as Hansel had the pebbles in his pocket. Then they all set out together on the way to the forest.

When they had walked a short time, Hansel stood still and peeped back at the house, and did so again and again. His father said, "Hansel, what are you looking at there and staying behind for? Pay attention, and do not forget how to use your legs."

"Ah, father," said Hansel, "I am looking at my little white cat, which is sitting up on the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me."

The wife said, "Fool, that is not your little cat, that is the morning sun which is shining on the chimneys."

Hansel, however, had not been looking back at the cat, but had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his pocket on the road.

When they had reached the middle of the forest, the father said, "Now, children, pile up some wood, and I will light a fire that you may not be cold."

Hansel and Gretel gathered brushwood together, as high as a little hill. The brushwood was lighted, and when the flames were burning very high, the woman said, "Now, children, lay yourselves down by the fire and rest, we will go into the forest and cut some wood. When we have done, we will come back and fetch you away."

Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire, and when noon came, each ate a little piece of bread, and as they heard the strokes of the wood-axe they believed that their father was near. It was not the axe, however, but a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was blowing backwards and forwards. And as they had been sitting such a long time, their eyes closed with fatigue, and they fell fast asleep.

When at last they awoke, it was already dark night. Gretel began to cry and said, "How are we to get out of the forest now?"

But Hansel comforted her and said, "Just wait a little, until the moon has risen, and then we will soon find the way." And when the full moon had risen, Hansel took his little sister by the hand, and followed the pebbles which shone like newly-coined silver pieces, and showed them the way.

They walked the whole night long, and by break of day came once more to their father's house. They knocked at the door, and when the woman opened it and saw that it was Hansel and Gretel, she said, "You naughty children, why have you slept so long in the forest? We thought you were never coming back at all."

The father, however, rejoiced, for it had cut him to the heart to leave them behind alone.

Not long afterwards, there was once more great dearth throughout the land, and the children heard their mother saying at night to their father:

"Everything is eaten again, we have one half loaf left, and that is the end. The children must go, we will take them farther into the wood, so that they will not find their way out again. There is no other means of saving ourselves."

The man's heart was heavy, and he thought, "It would be better for you to share the last mouthful with your children." The woman, however, would listen to nothing that he had to say, but scolded and reproached him. He who says a must say b, likewise, and as he had yielded the first time, he had to do so a second time also.

The children, however, were still awake and had heard the conversation. When the old folks were asleep, Hansel again got up, and wanted to go out and pick up pebbles as he had done before, but the woman had locked the door, and Hansel could not get out. Nevertheless he comforted his little sister, and said, "Do not cry, Gretel, go to sleep quietly, the good God will help us."

Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of their beds. Their piece of bread was given to them, but it was still smaller than the time before. On the way into the forest Hansel crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel on the ground.

"Hansel, why do you stop and look round?" Said the father. "Go on."

"I am looking back at my little pigeon which is sitting on the roof, and wants to say good-bye to me, answered Hansel.

"Fool." Said the woman, "That is not your little pigeon, that is the morning sun that is shining on the chimney."

Hansel, however, little by little, threw all the crumbs on the path. The woman led the children still deeper into the forest, where they had never in their lives been before.

Then a great fire was again made, and the mother said, "Just sit there, you children, and when you are tired you may sleep a little. We are going into the forest to cut wood, and in the evening when we are done, we will come and fetch you away."

When it was noon, Gretel shared her piece of bread with Hansel, who had scattered his by the way. Then they fell asleep and evening passed, but no one came to the poor children.

They did not awake until it was dark night, and Hansel comforted his little sister and said, "Just wait, Gretel, until the moon rises, and then we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have strewn about, they will show us our way home again."

When the moon came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked them all up. Hansel said to Gretel, "We shall soon find the way."

But they did not find it. They walked the whole night and all the next day too from morning till evening, but they did not get out of the forest, and were very hungry, for they had nothing to eat but two or three berries, which grew on the ground. And as they were so weary that their legs would carry them no longer, they lay down beneath a tree and fell asleep.

It was now three mornings since they had left their father's house. They began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the forest, and if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness. When it was mid-day, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting on a bough, which sang so delightfully that they stood still and listened to it. And when its song was over, it spread its wings and flew away before them, and they followed it until they reached a little house, on the roof of which it alighted. And when they approached the little house they saw that it was built of bread and covered with cakes, but that the windows were of clear sugar.

"We will set to work on that," said Hansel, "and have a good meal. I will eat a bit of the roof, and you Gretel, can eat some of the window, it will taste sweet."

Hansel reached up above, and broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Gretel leant against the window and nibbled at the panes. Then a soft voice cried from the parlor -

"Nibble, nibble, gnaw

who is nibbling at my little house?"

The children answered -

"The wind, the wind,

the heaven-born wind,"

and went on eating without disturbing themselves. Hansel, who liked the taste of the roof, tore down a great piece of it, and Gretel pushed out the whole of one round window-pane, sat down, and enjoyed herself with it.

Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out. Hansel and Gretel were so terribly frightened that they let fall what they had in their hands.

The old woman, however, nodded her head, and said, "Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here? Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you."

She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them, and thought they were in heaven.

The old woman had only pretended to be so kind. She was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw near. When Hansel and Gretel came into her neighborhood, she laughed with malice, and said mockingly, "I have them, they shall not escape me again."

Early in the morning before the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw both of them sleeping and looking so pretty, with their plump and rosy cheeks, she muttered to herself, that will be a dainty mouthful.

Then she seized Hansel with her shrivelled hand, carried him into a little stable, and locked him in behind a grated door. Scream as he might, it would not help him. Then she went to Gretel, shook her till she awoke, and cried, "Get up, lazy thing, fetch some water, and cook something good for your brother, he is in the stable outside, and is to be made fat. When he is fat, I will eat him."

Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain, for she was forced to do what the wicked witch commanded. And now the best food was cooked for poor Hansel, but Gretel got nothing but crab-shells. Every morning the woman crept to the little stable, and cried, "Hansel, stretch out your finger that I may feel if you will soon be fat."

Hansel, however, stretched out a little bone to her, and the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not see it, and thought it was Hansel's finger, and was astonished that there was no way of fattening him.

When four weeks had gone by, and Hansel still remained thin, she was seized with impatience and would not wait any longer.

"Now, then, Gretel," she cried to the girl, "stir yourself, and bring some water. Let Hansel be fat or lean, to-morrow I will kill him, and cook him."

Ah, how the poor little sister did lament when she had to fetch the water, and how her tears did flow down her cheeks. "Dear God, do help us," she cried. "If the wild beasts in the forest had but devoured us, we should at any rate have died together."

"Just keep your noise to yourself," said the old woman, "it won't help you at all."

Early in the morning, Gretel had to go out and hang up the cauldron with the water, and light the fire.

"We will bake first," said the old woman, "I have already heated the oven, and kneaded the dough." She pushed poor Gretel out to the oven, from which flames of fire were already darting. "Creep in," said the witch, "and see if it properly heated, so that we can put the bread in." And once Gretel was inside, she intended to shut the oven and let her bake in it, and then she would eat her, too.

But Gretel saw what she had in mind, and said, "I do not know how I am to do it. How do I get in?"

"Silly goose," said the old woman, "the door is big enough. Just look, I can get in myself." And she crept up and thrust her head into the oven.

Then Gretel gave her a push that drove her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh. Then she began to howl quite horribly, but Gretel ran away, and the godless witch was miserably burnt to death. Gretel, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little stable, and cried, "Hansel, we are saved. The old witch is dead."

Then Hansel sprang like a bird from its cage when the door is opened. How they did rejoice and embrace each other, and dance about and kiss each other. And as they had no longer any need to fear her, they went into the witch's house, and in every corner there stood chests full of pearls and jewels.

"These are far better than pebbles." Said Hansel, and thrust into his pockets whatever could be got in.

And Gretel said, "I, too, will take something home with me," and filled her pinafore full.

"But now we must be off," said Hansel, "that we may get out of the witch's forest."

When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great stretch of water.

"We cannot cross," said Hansel, "I see no foot-plank, and no bridge.

"And there is also no ferry," answered Gretel, "but a white duck is swimming there. If I ask her, she will help us over." Then she cried -

"Little duck, little duck, dost thou see,

Hansel and Gretel are waiting for thee.

There's never a plank, or bridge in sight,

take us across on thy back so white."

The duck came to them, and Hansel seated himself on its back, and told his sister to sit by him.

"No," replied Gretel, "that will be too heavy for the little duck. She shall take us across, one after the other."

The good little duck did so, and when they were once safely across and had walked for a short time, the forest seemed to be more and more familiar to them, and at length they saw from afar their father's house. Then they began to run, rushed into the parlor, and threw themselves round their father's neck. The man had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest. The woman, however, was dead. Gretel emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room, and Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to them. Then all anxiety was at an end, and they lived together in perfect happiness.

The Witch

2009-05-13T21:32:00.001-07:00

The Witch

By Edilberto K. Tiempo

When I was twelve years old, I used to go to Libas, about nine kilometers from the town, to visit my favorite uncle, Tio Sabelo, the head teacher of the barrio school there. I like going to Libas because of the many things to eat at my uncle’s house: cane sugar syrup, candied meat of young coconut, corn and rice cakes, ripe jackfruit, guavas from trees growing wild on a hill not far from Tio Sabelo’s

house. It was through these visits that I heard many strange stories about Minggay Awok. Awok is the word for witch in southern Leyte. Minggay was known as a witch even beyond Libas, in five outlying sitios, and considering that not uncommonly a man’s nearest neighbor was two or three hills away, her notoriety was wide. Minggay lived in a small, low hut as the back of the creek separating the barrios of Libas and Sinit-an. It squatted like a soaked hen on a steep incline and below it, six or seven meters away, two trails forked, one going to Libas and the other to Mahangin, a mountain sitio. The hut leaned dangerously to the side where the creek water ate away large chunks of earth during the rainy season. It had two small openings, a small door through which Minggay probably had to stoop to pass, and a window about two feet square facing the creek. The window was screened by a frayed jute sacking which fluttered eerily even in the daytime.

What she had in the hut nobody seemed to know definitely. One daring fellow who boasted of having gone inside it when Minggay was out in her clearing on a hill nearby said he had seen dirty stoppered bottles hanging from the bamboo slats of the cogon thatch. Some of the bottles contained scorpions, centipedes, beetles, bumble bees, and other insects; others were filled with ash-colored powder and dark liquids. These bottles contained the paraphernalia of her witchcraft. Two or three small bottles she always had with her hanging on her waistband with a bunch of iron keys, whether she went to her clearing or to the creek to catch shrimps or gather fresh-water shells, or even when she slept.

It was said that those who had done her wrong never escaped her vengeance, in the form of festering carbuncles, chronic fevers that caused withering of the skin, or a certain disease of the nose that eventually ate the nose out. Using an incantation known only to her, Minggay would take out one insect from a bottle, soak it in colored liquid or roll it in powder, and with a curse let it go to the body of her victim; the insect might be removed and the disease cured only rarely through intricate rituals of an expensive tambalan.

Thus Minggay was feared in Libas and the surrounding barrios. There had been attempts to murder her, but in some mysterious way she always came out unscathed. A man set fire to her hut one night, thinking to burn her with it. The hut quickly burned down, but Minggay was unharmed. On another occasion a man openly declared that he had killed her, showing the blood-stained bolo with which he had stabbed her; a week later she was seen hobbling to her clearing. This man believed Minggay was the cause of the rash that his only child had been carrying for over a year. One day, so the story went, meeting his wife, Minggay asked to hold her child. She didn’t want to offend Minggay. As the witch gave the child back she said, “He has a very smooth skin.” A few days later the boy had skin eruptions all over his body that never left him.

Minggay’s only companions were a lean, barren sow and a few chickens, all of them charcoal black. The sow and the chickens were allowed to wander in the fields, and even if the sow dug up sweet potatoes and the chickens pecked rice or corn grain drying in the sun, they were not driven away by the neighbors because they were afraid to arouse Minggay’s wrath.

Besides the sow and the chickens, Minggay was known to have a wakwak and a sigbin. Those who claimed to have seen the sigbin described it as a queer animal resembling a kangaroo: the forelegs were shorter than the hind ones: its fanlike ears made a flapping sound when it walked. The wakwak was a nocturnal bird, as big and black as a crow. It gave out raucous cries when a person in the neighborhood had just died. The bird was supposed to be Minggay’s messenger, and the sigbin caried her to the grave; then the witch dug up the corpse and feasted on it. The times when I passed by the hut and saw her lean sow and her black chickens, I wondered if they transformed themselves into fantastic creatures at night. Even in the daytime I dreaded the possibility of meeting her; she might accost me on the trail near her hut, say something about my face or any part of it, and then I might live the rest of my life with a harelip, a sunken nose, or crossed eyes. But I never saw Minggay in her house or near the premises. There were times when I thought she was only a legend, a name to frighten children from doing mischief. But then I almost always saw her sow digging banana roots or wallowing near the trail and the black chickens scratching for worms or pecking grains in her yard, and the witch became very real indeed.

Once I was told to go to Libas with a bottle of medicine for Tio Sabelo’s sick wife. I started from the town at half past five and by the time I saw the balete tree across the creek from Minggay’s hut, I could hardly see the trail before me. The balete was called Minggay’s tree, for she was known to sit on one of the numerous twisting vines that formed its grotesque trunk to wait for a belated passer-by. The balete was a towering monstrous shadow; a firefly that flitted among the vines was an evil eye plucked out searching for its socket. I wanted to run back, but the medicine had to get to Tio Sabelo’s wife that night. I wanted to push through the thick underbrush to the dry part of the creek to avoid the balete, but I was afraid of snakes. I had discarded the idea of a coconut frond torch because the light would catch the attention of the witch, and when she saw it was only a little boy... Steeling myself I tried to whistle as I passed in the shadow of the balete, its overhanging vines like hairy arms ready to hoist and strangle me among the branches.

Emerging into the stony bed of the creek, I saw Minggay’s hut. The screen in the window waved in the faint light of the room and I thought I saw the witch peering behind it. As I started going up the trail by the hut, each moving clump and shadow was a crouching old woman. I had heard stories of Minggay’s attempts to waylay travelers in the dark and suck their blood. Closing my eyes twenty yards from the hut of the witch, I ran up the hill. A few meters past the hut I stumbled on a low stump. I got up at once and ran again. When I reached Tio Sabelo’s house I was very tired and badly shaken.

Somehow after the terror of the balete and the hut of the witch had lessened, although I always had the goose flesh whenever I passed by them after dusk. One moonlight night going home to town I heard a splashing of the water below Minggay’s house. I thought the sound was made by the witch, for she was seen to bathe on moonlit nights in the creek, her loose hair falling on her face. It was not Minggay I saw. It was a huge animal. I was about to run thinking it was the sigbin of the witch, but when I looked at it again, I saw that it was a carabao wallowing in the creek.

One morning I thought of bringing home shrimps to my mother, and so I went to a creek a hundred yards from Tio Sabelo’s house. I had with me my cousin’s pana, made of a long steel rod pointed at one end and cleft at the other and shot through the hollow of a bamboo joint the size of a finger by means of a rubber band attached to one end of the joint. After wading for two hours in the creek which meandered around bamboo groves and banban and ipil clumps with only three small shrimps strung on a coconut midrib dangling from my belt, I came upon an old woman taking a bath in the shade of a catmon tree. A brown tapis was wound around her to three fingers width above her thin chest. The bank of her left was a foot-wide ledge of unbroken boulder on which she had set a wooden basin half full of wet but still unwashed clothes.

In front of her was a submerged stone pile topped by a platter size rock; on it were a heap of shredded coconut meat, a small discolored tin basin, a few lemon rinds, and bits of pounded gogo bark. The woman was soaking her sparse gray hair with the gogo suds. She must have seen me coming because she did not look surprised.

Seeing the three small shrimps hanging at my side she said, “You have a poor catch.”

She looked kind. She was probably as old as my grandmother; smaller, for this old woman was two or three inches below five feet. Her eyes looked surprisingly young, but her mouth, just a thin line above the little chin, seemed to have tasted many bitter years.

“Why don’t you bait them out of their hiding? Take some of this.” She gave me a handful of shredded coconut meat whose milk she had squeezed out and with the gogo suds used on her hair.

She exuded a sweet wood fragrance of gogo bark and the rind of lemons. “Beyond the first bend,” she said pointing, “the water is still. Scatter the shreds there. That’s where I get my shrimps. You will see some traps. If you find shrimps in them they are yours.”

I mumbled my thanks and waded to the bend she had indicated. That part of the creek was like a small lake. One bank was lined by huge boulders showing long, deep fissures where the roots of gnarled dapdap trees had penetrated. The other bank was sandy, with bamboo and catmon trees leaning over, their roots sticking out in the water. There was good shade and the air had a twilight chilliness. The water was shallow except on the rocky side, which was deep and murky.

I scattered the coconut shreds around, and not long after they had settled down shrimps crawled from boles under the bamboo and catmon roots and from crevices of the boulders. It did not take me an hour to catch a midribful, some hairy with age, some heavy with eggs, moulters, dark magus, leaf-green shrimps, speckled.

I saw three traps of woven bamboo strips, round-bellied and about two feet long, two hidden behind a catmon root. I did not disturb them because I had enough shrimps for myself.

“No, no, iti. Your mother will need them. You don’t have enough. Besides I have freshwater crabs at home.” She looked up at me with her strange young eyes and asked, “Do you still have a mother?”

I told her I had, and a grandmother, too.

“You are not from Libas, I think. This is the first time I have seen you.”

I said I was from the town and my uncle was the head teacher of the Libas barrio school.

“You remind me of my son when he was your age. He had bright eyes like you, and his voice was soft like yours. I think you are a good boy.”

“Where is your son now?”

“I have not heard from him since he left. He went away when he was seventeen. He left in anger, because I didn’t want him to marry so young. I don’t know where he went, where he is.”

She spread the length of a kimona on the water for a last rinsing. The flesh hanging from her skinny arms was loose and flabby.

“If he’s still living,” she went on, “he’d be as old as your father maybe. Many times I feel in my bones he is alive, and will come back before I die.”

“Your husband is still living?”

“He died a long time ago, when my boy was eleven.”

She twisted the kimona like a rope to wring out the water.

“I’m glad he died early. He was very cruel.”

I looked at her, at the thin mouth, wondering about her husband’s cruelty, disturbed by the manner she spoke about it.

“Do you have other children?”

“I wish I had. Then I wouldn’t be living alone.”

A woman her age, I thought, should be a grandmother and live among many children.

“Where do you live?”

She did not speak, but her strange young eyes were probing and looked grotesque in the old woman’s face. “Not far from here--the house on the high bank, across the balete.”

She must have seen the fright that suddenly leaped into my face, for I thought she smiled at me queerly.

“I’m going now,” I said.

I felt her following me with her eyes; indeed they seemed to bore a hot hole between my shoulder blades. I did not look back. Don’t run, I told myself. But at the first bend of the creek, when I knew she couldn’t see me, I ran. After a while I stopped, feeling a little foolish. Such a helpless-looking little old woman couldn’t be Minggay, couldn’t be the witch. I remembered her kind voice and the woodfragrance. She could be my own grandmother.

As I walked the string of shrimps kept brushing against the side of my leg. I detached it from my belt and looked at the shrimps. Except for the three small ones, all of them belonged to the old woman. Her coconut shreds had coaxed them as by magic out of their hiding. The protruding eyes of the biggest, which was still alive, seemed to glare at me---and then they became the eyes of the witch. Angrily, I hurled the shrimps back into the creek.

Midsummer

2009-05-13T21:31:00.002-07:00

Midsummer

(American Colonial Literature)

By Manuel E. Arguilla

He pulled down his hat until the wide brim touched his shoulders. He crouched lower under the cover of his cart and peered ahead. The road seemed to writhe under the lash of the noon-day heat; it swum from side to side, humped and bent itself like a feeling serpent, and disappeared behind the spur of a low hill on which grew a scrawny thicket of bamboo.

There was not a house in sight. Along the left side of the road ran the deep, dry gorge of a stream, the banks sparsely covered by sun-burned cogon grass. In places, the rocky, waterless bed showed aridly. Farther, beyond the shimmer of quivering heat waves rose ancient hills not less blue than the cloud-palisaded sky. On the right stretched a land waste of low rolling dunes. Scattered clumps of hardy ledda relieved the otherwise barren monotony of the landscape. Far away he could discern a thin indigo line that was the sea.

The grating of the cartwheels on the pebbles of the road and the almost soundless shuffle of the weary bull but emphasized the stillness. Now and then came the dry rustling of falling earth as lumps from the cracked sides of the gorge fell down to the bottom.

He struck at the bull with the slack of the rope. The animal broke into a heavy trot. The dust stirred slumbrously. The bull slowed down, threw up his head, and a glistening thread of saliva spun out into the dry air. The dying rays of the sun were reflected in points of light on the wet, heaving flanks.

The man in the cart did not notice the woman until she had rounded the spur of land and stood unmoving beside the road, watching the cart and its occupant come toward her. She was young, surprisingly sweet and fresh amidst her parched surroundings. A gaily stripped kerchief covered her head, the ends tied at the nape of her neck. She wore a homespun bodice of light red cloth with small white checks. Her skirt was also homespun and showed a pattern of white checks with narrow stripes of yellow and red. With both hands she held by the mouth a large, apparently empty, water jug, the cool red of which blended well with her dress. She was barefoot.

She stood straight and still beside the road and regarded him with frank curiosity. Suddenly she turned and disappeared into the dry gorge. Coming to where she had stood a few moments before, he pulled up the bull and got out of the cart. He saw where a narrow path had been cut into the bank and stood a while lost in thought, absently wiping the perspiration from his face. Then he unhitched his bull and for a few moments, with strong brown fingers, kneaded the hot neck of the beast. Driving the animal before him, he followed the path. It led up the dry bed of the stream; the sharp fragments of sun-heated rocks were like burning coals under his feet. There was no sign of the young woman.

He came upon her beyond a bed in the gorge, where a big mango tree, which had partly fallen from the side of the ravine, cast its cool shade over a well.

She had filled her jar and was rolling the kerchief around her hand into a flat coil which she placed on her head. Without glancing at him, where he had stopped some distance off, she sat down of her heels, gathering the fold of her skirt between her wide-spread knees. She tilted the brimful jar to remove part of the water. One hand on the rim, the other supporting the bottom, she began to raise it to her head. She knelt on one kneeresting, for a moment, the jar onto her head, getting to her feet at the same time. But she staggered a little and water splashed down on her breast. The single bodice instantly clung to her bosom molding the twin hillocks of her breasts warmly brown through the wet cloth. One arm remained uplifted, holding the jar, while the other shook the clinging cloth free of her drenched flesh. Then not once having raised her eyes, she passed by the young man, who stood mutely gazing beside his bull. The animal had found some grass along the path and was industriously grazing.

He turned to watch the graceful figure beneath the jar until it vanished around a bend in the path leading to the road. Then he led the bull to the well, and tethered it to a root of the mango tree.

"The underpart of her arm is white and smooth," he said to his blurred image on the water of the well, as he leaned over before lowering the bucket made of half a petroleum can. "And her hair is thick and black." The bucket struck with a rattling impact. It filled with one long gurgle. He threw his hat on the grass and pulled the bucket up with both hands.

The twisted bamboo rope bit into his hardened palms, and he thought how... the same rope must hurt her.

He placed the dripping bucket on a flat stone, and the bull drank. "Son of lightning!" he said, thumping the side of the bull after it had drunk the third bucketful, "you drink like the great Kuantitao!" A low, rich rumbling rolled through the cavernous body of the beast. He tied it again to the root, and the animal idly rubbed its horns against the wood. The sun had fallen from the perpendicular, and noticing that the bull stood partly exposed to the sun, he pushed it farther into shade. He fanned himself with his hat. He whistled to entice the wind from the sea, but not a breeze stirred.

After a while he put on his hat and hurriedly walked the short distance through the gorge up to the road where his cart stood. From inside he took a jute sack which he slung over one shoulder. With the other arm, he gathered part of the hay at the bottom of the cart. He returned to the well, slips of straw falling behind him as he picked his way from one tuft of grass to another, for the broken rocks of the path has grown exceedingly hot.

He gave the hay to the bull, Its rump was again in the sun, and he had to push it back. "Fool, do you want to broil yourself alive?" he said good-humoredly, slapping the thick haunches. It switched its long-haired tail and fell to eating. The dry, sweet-smelling hay made harsh gritting sounds in the mouth of the hungry animal. Saliva rolled out from the corners, clung to the stiff hairs that fringed the thick lower lip, fell and gleamed and evaporated in the heated air.

He took out of the jute sack a polished coconut shell. The top had been sawed off and holes bored at opposite sides, through which a string tied to the lower part of the shell passed in a loop. The smaller piece could thus be slipped up and down as a cover. The coconut shell contained cooked rice still a little warm. Buried on the top was an egg now boiled hard. He next brought out a bamboo tube of salt, a cake of brown sugar wrapped in banana leaf, and some dried shrimps. Then he spread the sack in what remained of the shade, placed his simple meal thereon, and prepared to eat his dinner. But first he drew a bucketful of water from the well, setting the bucket on a rock. He seated himself on another rock and ate with his fingers. From time to time he drank from the bucket.

He was half through with his meal when the girl came down the path once more. She had changed the wetted bodice. He watched her with lowered head as she approached, and felt a difficulty in continuing to eat, but went through the motions of filling his mouth nevertheless. He strained his eyes looking at the girl from beneath his eyebrows. How graceful she was! Her hips tapered smoothly down to round thighs and supple legs, showing against her skirt and moving straight and free. Her shoulders, small but firm, bore her shapely neck and head with shy pride.

When she was very near, he ate more hurriedly, so that he almost choked. He did not look at her. She placed the jar between three stones. When she picked up the rope of the bucket, he came to himself. He looked up--straight into her face. He saw her eyes. They were brown and were regarding him gravely, without embarrassment; he forget his own timidity.

"Won't you join me, Ading?" he said simply. He remained seated.

Her lips parted in a half smile and a little dimple appeared high upon her right cheek. She shook her head and said: "God reward you, Manong."

"Perhaps the poor food I have is not fit for you?"

"No, no. It isn't that. How can you think of it? I should be ashamed. It is that I have must eaten myself. That is why I came to get water in the middle of the day--we ran out of it. I see you have eggs and shrimps and sugar. Why, be had nothing but rice and salt."

"Salt? Surely you joke."

"I would be ashamed..."

"But what is the matter with salt?"

"Salt...salt...Makes baby stout," he intoned. "My grandmother used to sing that to me when I complained of our food."

They laughed and felt more at ease and regarded each other more openly. He took a long time fingering his rice before raising it to his mouth, the while he gazed up at her and smiled for no reason. She smile back in turn and gave the rope which she held an absent-minded tug. The bucket came down from its perch of rock in a miniature flood. He leaped to his feet with a surprised yell, and the next instant the jute sack on which he lay his meal was drenched. Only the rice inside the coconut shell and the bamboo of tube of salt were saved from

the water.

She was distressed, but he only laughed.

"It is nothing," he said. "It was time I stopped eating. I have filled up to my neck."

"Forgive me, Manong," she insisted. "It was all my fault. Such a clumsy creature I am."

"It was not your fault," she assured him. "I am to blame for placing the bucket of water where I did."

"I will draw you another bucketful," he said. "I am stronger than you."

"No, you must let me do it."

But when he caught hold of the bucket and stretched forth a brawny arm for the coil of rope in her hands, she surrendered both to him quickly and drew back a step as though shy of his touch. He lowered the bucket with his back to her, and she had time to take in the tallness of him, the breadth of his shoulders, the sinewy strength of his legs. Down below in the small of his back, two parallel ridges of rope-like muscle stuck out against the wet shirt. As he hauled up the bucket, muscles rippled all over his body. His hair, which was wavy, cut short behind but long in fronts fell in a cluster over his forehead.

"Let me hold the bucket while you drink," she offered.

He flashed her a smile over his shoulders as he poured the water into her jar, and again lowered the bucket.

"No, no, you must not do that." She hurried to his side and held one of his arms. "I couldn't let you, a stranger..."

"Why not?" He smiled down at her, and noticed a slight film of moisture clinging to the down on her upper lip and experienced a sudden desire to wipe it away with his forefinger. He continued to lower the bucket while she had to stand by.

"Hadn't you better move over to the shade?" he suggested, as the bucket struck the water.

"What shall I do there?" she asked sharply, as though the idea of seeking protection from the heat were contemptible to her.

"You will get roasted standing here in the sun," he said, and began to haul up the bucket.

But she remained beside him, catching the rope as it feel from his hands, coiling it carefully. The jar was filled, with plenty to drink as she tilted the half-filled can until the water lapped the rim. He gulped a mouthful, gargled noisily, spewed it out, then commenced to drink in earnest. He took long, deep droughts of the sweetish water, for he was more thirsty than he had thought. A chuckling sound persisted in forming inside his throat at every swallow. It made him self-conscious. He was breathless when through, and red in the face.

"I don't know why it makes that sound," he said, fingering his throat and laughing shamefacedly.

"Father also makes that sound when he drinks, and mother always laughs at him," she said. She untied the headkerchief over her hair and started to roll it.

Then sun had descended considerably and there was now hardly any shade under the tree. The bull was gathering with its tongue stray slips of straw. He untied the animal to lead it to the other side of the girl who spoke; "Manong, why don't you come to our house and bring your animal with you? There is shade and you can sleep, though our house is very poor."

She had already placed the jar on her head and stood, half-turned to him, waiting for his answer.

"I would be troubling you, Ading."

"No. You come. I have told mother about you." She turned and went down the path.

He sent the bull after her with smart slap on its side. Then he quickly gathered the remains of his meal, put them inside the jute sack which had almost dried, and himself followed. Then seeing that the bull had stopped to nibble the tufts of grass that dotted the bottom of the gorge, he picked up the dragging rope and urged the animal on into a trot. They caught up with the girl near the cart. She stopped to wait.

He did not volunteer a word. He walked a step behind, the bull lumbering in front. More than ever he was conscious of her person. She carried the jar on her head without holding it. Her hands swung to her even steps. He drew back his square shoulders, lifted his chin, and sniffed the motionless air. There was a flourish in the way he flicked the rump of the bull with the rope in his hand. He felt strong. He felt very strong. He felt that he could follow the slender, lithe figure to the end of the world.

The Mats

2009-05-13T21:31:00.001-07:00

The Mats

By Francisco Arcellana

For the Angeles family, Mr. Angeles'; homecoming from his periodic inspection trips was always an occasion for celebration. But his homecoming--from a trip to the South--was fated to be more memorable than, say, of the others.

He had written from Mariveles: "I have just met a marvelous matweaver--a real artist--and I shall have a surprise for you. I asked him to weave a sleeping-mat for every one of the family. He is using many different colors and for each mat the dominant color is that of our respective birthstones. I am sure that the children will be very pleased. I know you will be. I can hardly wait to show them to you."

Nana Emilia read the letter that morning, and again and again every time she had a chance to leave the kitchen. In the evening when all the children were home from school she asked her oldest son, José, to read the letter at dinner table. The children became very much excited about the mats, and talked about them until late into the night. This she wrote her husband when she labored over a reply to him. For days after that, mats continued to be the chief topic of conversation among the children.

Finally, from Lopez, Mr. Angeles wrote again: "I am taking the Bicol Express tomorrow. I have the mats with me, and they are beautiful. God willing, I shall be home to join you at dinner."

The letter was read aloud during the noon meal. Talk about the mats flared up again like wildfire.

"I like the feel of mats," Antonio, the third child, said. "I like the smell of new mats."

"Oh, but these mats are different," interposed Susanna, the fifth child. "They have our names woven into them, and in our ascribed colors, too."

The children knew what they were talking about: they knew just what a decorative mat was like; it was not anything new or strange in their experience. That was why they were so excited about the matter. They had such a mat in the house, one they seldom used, a mat older than any one of them.

This mat had been given to Nana Emilia by her mother when she and Mr. Angeles were married, and it had been with them ever since. It had served on the wedding night, and had not since been used except on special occasions.

It was a very beautiful mat, not really meant to be ordinarily used. It had green leaf borders, and a lot of gigantic red roses woven into it. In the middle, running the whole length of the mat, was the lettering: Emilia y Jaime Recuerdo

The letters were in gold.

Nana Emilia always kept that mat in her trunk. When any one of the family was taken ill, the mat was brought out and the patient slept on it, had it all to himself. Every one of the children had some time in their lives slept on it; not a few had slept on it more than once.

Most of the time the mat was kept in Nana Emilia's trunk, and when it was taken out and spread on the floor the children were always around to watch. At first there had been only Nana Emilia to see the mat spread. Then a child--a girl--watched with them. The number of watchers increased as more children came.

The mat did not seem to age. It seemed to Nana Emilia always as new as when it had been laid on the nuptial bed. To the children it seemed as new as the first time it was spread before them. The folds and creases always new and fresh. The smell was always the smell of a new mat. Watching the intricate design was an endless joy. The children's pleasure at the golden letters even before they could work out the meaning was boundless. Somehow they were always pleasantly shocked by the sight of the mat: so delicate and so consummate the artistry of its weave.

Now, taking out that mat to spread had become a kind of ritual. The process had become associated with illness in the family. Illness, even serious illness, had not been infrequent. There had been deaths...

In the evening Mr. Angeles was with his family. He had brought the usual things home with him. There was a lot of fruits, as always (his itinerary carried him through the fruit-growing provinces): pineapples, lanzones, chicos, atis, santol, sandia, guyabano, avocado, according to the season. He had also brought home a jar of preserved sweets from Lopez.

Putting away the fruit, sampling them, was as usual accomplished with animation and lively talk. Dinner was a long affair. Mr. Angeles was full of stories about his trip but would interrupt his tales with: "I could not sleep nights thinking of the young ones. They should never be allowed to play in the streets. And you older ones should not stay out too late at night."

The stories petered out and dinner was over. Putting away the dishes and wiping the dishes and wiping the table clean did not at all seem tedious. Yet Nana and the children, although they did not show it, were all on edge about the mats.

Finally, after a long time over his cigar, Mr. Angeles rose from his seat at the head of the table and crossed the room to the corner where his luggage had been piled. From the heap he disengaged a ponderous bundle.

Taking it under one arm, he walked to the middle of the room where the light was brightest. He dropped the bundle and, bending over and balancing himself on his toes, he strained at the cord that bound it. It was strong, it would not break, it would not give way. He tried working at the knots. His fingers were clumsy, they had begun shaking.

He raised his head, breathing heavily, to ask for the scissors. Alfonso, his youngest boy, was to one side of him with the scissors ready.

Nana Emilia and her eldest girl who had long returned from the kitchen were watching the proceedings quietly.

One swift movement with the scissors, snip! and the bundle was loose.

Turning to Nana Emilia, Mr. Angeles joyfully cried: "These are the mats, Miling." Mr. Angeles picked up the topmost mat in the bundle.

"This, I believe, is yours, Miling."

Nana Emilia stepped forward to the light, wiping her still moist hands against the folds of her skirt, and with a strange young shyness received the mat. The children watched the spectacle silently and then broke into delighted, though a little self-conscious, laughter. Nana Emilia unfolded the mat without a word. It was a beautiful mat: to her mind, even more beautiful than the one she received from her mother on her wedding. There was a name in the very center of it: EMILIA. The letters were large, done in green. Flowers--cadena-de-amor--were woven in and out among the letters. The border was a long winding twig of cadena-de-amor.

The children stood about the spreading mat. The air was punctuated by their breathless exclamations of delight.

"It is beautiful, Jaime; it is beautiful!" Nana Emilia's voice broke, and she could not say any more.

"And this, I know, is my own," said Mr. Angeles of the next mat in the bundle. The mat was rather simply decorated, the design almost austere, and the only colors used were purple and gold. The letters of the name Jaime were in purple.

"And this, for your, Marcelina."

Marcelina was the oldest child. She had always thought her name too long; it had been one of her worries with regard to the mat. "How on earth are they going to weave all of the letters of my name into my mat?" she had asked of almost everyone in the family. Now it delighted her to see her whole name spelled out on the mat, even if the letters were a little small. Besides, there was a device above her name which pleased Marcelina very much. It was in the form of a lyre, finely done in three colors. Marcelina was a student of music and was quite a proficient pianist.

"And this is for you, José."

José was the second child. He was a medical student already in the third year of medical school. Over his name the symbol of Aesculapius was woven into the mat.

"You are not to use this mat until the year of your internship," Mr. Angeles was saying.

"This is yours, Antonia."

"And this is yours, Juan."

"And this is yours, Jesus."

Mat after mat was unfolded. On each of the children's mats there was somehow an appropriate device.

At least all the children had been shown their individual mats. The air was filled with their excited talk, and through it all Mr. Angeles was saying over and over again in his deep voice:

"You are not to use these mats until you go to the University."

Then Nana Emilia noticed bewilderingly that there were some more mats remaining to be unfolded.

"But Jaime," Nana Emilia said, wondering, with evident repudiation, "there are some more mats."

Only Mr. Angeles seemed to have heard Nana Emilia's words. He suddenly stopped talking, as if he had been jerked away from a pleasant fantasy. A puzzled, reminiscent look came into his eyes, superseding the deep and quiet delight that had been briefly there, and when he spoke his voice was different.

"Yes, Emilia," said Mr. Angeles, "There are three more mats to unfold. The others who aren't here..."

Nana Emilia caught her breath; there was a swift constriction in her throat; her face paled and she could not say anything.

The self-centered talk of the children also died. There was a silence as Mr. Angeles picked up the first of the remaining mats and began slowly unfolding it.

The mat was almost as austere in design as Mr. Angeles' own, and it had a name. There was no symbol or device above the name; only a blank space, emptiness.

The children knew the name. But somehow the name, the letters spelling the name, seemed strange to them.

Then Nana Emilia found her voice.

"You know, Jaime, you didn't have to," Nana Emilia said, her voice hurt and surely frightened.

Mr. Angeles held his tears back; there was something swift and savage in the movement.

"Do you think I'd forgotten? Do you think I had forgotten them? Do you think I could forget them?

"This is for you, Josefina!

"And this is for you, Victoria!

"And this is for you, Concepcion."

Mr. Angeles called the names rather than uttered them.

"Don't, Jaime, please don't," was all that Nana Emilia managed to say.

"Is it fair to forget them? Would it be just to disregard them?" Mr. Angeles demanded rather than asked.

His voice had risen shrill, almost hysterical; it was also stern and sad, and somehow vindictive. Mr. Angeles had spoken almost as if he were a stranger.

Also, he had spoken as if from a deep, grudgingly-silent, long-bewildered sorrow.

The children heard the words exploding in the silence. They wanted to turn away and not see the face of their father. But they could neither move nor look away; his eyes held them, his voice held them where they were. They seemed rooted to the spot.

Nana Emilia shivered once or twice, bowed her head, gripped her clasped hands between her thighs.

There was a terrible hush. The remaining mats were unfolded in silence. The names which were with infinite slowness revealed, seemed strange and stranger still; the colors not bright but deathly dull; the separate letters, spelling out the names of the dead among them, did not seem to glow or shine with a festive sheen as did the other living names.

The White Cat

2009-05-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

The White Cat

THERE was once a King who had three sons, and because they were all so good and so handsome, he could not make up his mind to which of them to give his kingdom. For he was growing an old man, and began to think it would soon be time for him to let one of them reign in his stead.

So he determined to set them a task to perform, and whichever should be the most successful was to have the kingdoms his reward.

It was some time before he could decide what the task should be. But at last he told them that he had a fancy for a very beautiful little dog, and that they were all to set out to find one for him. They were to have a whole year in which to search, and were all to return to the castle on the same day, a and present the various dogs they had chosen at the same hour.

The three Princes were greatly surprised by their father's sudden fancy for a little dog, but when they heard that whichever of them brought back the prettiest little animal was to succeed his father on the throne, they made no further objection, for it gave the two younger sons a chance they would not otherwise have had of being King.

So they bade their father good-bye, and after agreeing to be back at the castle at the same hour, and on the same day, when a year should have passed away, the three brothers all started together.

A great number of lords and servants accompanied them out of the city, but when they had ridden about a league they sent everyone back, and after embracing one another affectionately, they all set out to try their luck in different directions.

The two eldest met with many adventures on their travels, but the youngest saw the most wonderful sights of all.

He was young and handsome, and as clever as a Prince should be, besides being brave.

Wherever he went he inquired for dogs, and hardly a day passed without his buying several, big and little, greyhounds, spaniels, lap-dogs, and sheep-dogs‹in fact, every kind of dog that you could think of, and very soon he had a troop of fifty or sixty trotting along behind him, one of which he thought would surely win the prize.

So he journeyed on from day to day, not knowing where he was going, until one night he lost his way in a thick dark forest, and after wandering many weary miles in the wind and rain he was glad to see at last a bright light shining through the trees. He thought he must be near some woodcutter's cottage, but what was his surprise when he found himself before the gateway of a splendid castle!

At first he hesitated about entering, for his garments were travel stained, and he was drenched with rain, so that no one could have possibly taken him for a Prince. All the beautiful little dogs he had taken so much trouble to collect had been lost in the forest, and he was thoroughly weary and disheartened.

However, something seemed to bid him enter the castle, so he pulled the bell. Immediately the gateway flew open, and a number of beautiful white hands appeared, and beckoned to him to cross the courtyard and enter the great hall.

Here he found a splendid fire blazing, beside which stood a comfortable armchair; the hands pointed invitingly towards it, and as soon as the Prince had seated himself they proceeded to take off his wet, muddy clothes, and dress him in a magnificent suit of silk and velvet.

When he was ready, the hands led him into a brilliantly lighted room, in which was a table spread for supper. At the end of the room was a raised platform, upon which a number of cats were seated, all playing different musical instruments.

The Prince began to think he must be dreaming, when the door opened, and a lovely little White Cat came in. She wore a long black veil, and was accompanied by a number of cats, dressed in black, and carrying swords.

She came straight up to the Prince, and in a sweet, sad little voice bade him welcome. Then she ordered supper to be served, and the whole company sat down together.

They were waited upon by the mysterious hands, but many of the dishes were not to the Prince's liking. Stewed rats and mice may be a first-rate meal for a cat, but the Prince did not feel inclined to try them.

However, the White Cat ordered the hands to serve the Prince with the dishes he liked best, and at once, without his even mentioning his favorite food, he was supplied with every dainty he could think of.

After the Prince had satisfied his hunger, he noticed that the Cat wore a bracelet upon her paw, in which was set a miniature of himself; but when he questioned her about it, she sighed, and seemed so sad that, like a well-behaved Prince, he said no more about the matter.

Soon after supper, the hands conducted him to bed, when he at once fell fast asleep, and did not awaken until late the next morning. On looking out of his window, he saw that the White Cat and her attendants were about to start out on a hunting expedition.

As soon as the hands had dressed him in a hunting suit of green, he hurried down to join his hostess.

The hands led him up to a wooden horse, and seemed to expect him to mount. At first the Prince was inclined to be angry, but the White Cat told him so gently that she had no better steed to offer him, that he at once mounted, feeling very much ashamed of his ill humor.

They had an excellent day's sport. The White Cat, who rode a monkey, proved herself a clever huntress, climbing the tallest trees with the greatest ease, and without once falling from her steed.

Never was there a pleasanter hunting party, and day after day the time passed so happily away that the Prince forgot all about the little dog he was searching for, and even forgot his own home and his father's promise.

At length the White Cat reminded him that in three days he must appear at court, and the Prince was terribly upset to think that he had now no chance of winning his father's kingdom. But the White Cat told him that all would be well, and giving him an acorn, bade him mount the wooden horse and ride away. The Prince thought she must be mocking him, but when she held the acorn to his ear, he heard quite plainly a little dog's bark.

"Inside this acorn," she said, "is the prettiest little dog in the world. But be sure you do not open the fruit until you are in the King's presence."

The Prince thanked her, and having bidden her a sorrowful farewell, mounted his wooden steed and rode away.

Before he reached the castle, he met his two brothers, who made fine fun of the wooden horse, and also of the big ugly dog which trotted by his side.

They imagined this to be the one their brother had brought back from his travels, hoping that it would gain the prize.

When they reached the palace, everyone was loud in praise of the two lovely little dogs the elder brothers had brought back with them, but when the youngest opened his acorn and showed a tiny dog, lying upon a white satin cushion, they knew that this must be the prettiest little dog in the world.

However, the King did not feel inclined to give up his throne just yet, so he told the brothers that there was one more task they must first perform: they must bring him a piece of muslin so fine that it would pass through the eye of a needle.

So once more the brothers set out upon their travels. As for the youngest, he mounted his wooden horse and rode straight back to his dear White Cat.

She was delighted to welcome him, and when the Prince told her that the King had now ordered him to find a piece of muslin fine enough to go through the eye of a needle, she smiled at him very sweetly, and told him to be of good cheer.

"In my palace I have some very clever spinners," she said, "and I will set them to work upon the muslin."

The Prince had begun to suspect by this time that the White Cat was no ordinary cat, but whenever he begged her to tell him her history, she only shook her head mournfully and sighed.

Well, the second year passed away as quickly as the first, and the night before the day on which the three Princes were expected at their father's court, the White Cat gave the young Prince a walnut, telling him that it contained the muslin. Then she bade him good-by, and he mounted the wooden horse and rode away.

This time the young Prince was so late that his brothers had already begun to display their pieces of muslin to the King when he arrived at the castle gates. The materials they had brought were of extremely fine texture, and passed easily through the eye of a darning-needle, but through the small needle the King had provided they would not pass. Then the youngest Prince stepped into the great hall and produced his walnut. He cracked it carefully, and found inside a hazel-nut. This when cracked held a cherrystone, inside the cherrystone was a grain of wheat, and in the wheat a millet-seed. The Prince himself began to mistrust the White Cat, but he instantly felt a cat's claw scratch him gently, so he persevered, opened the millet-seed, and found inside a beautiful piece of soft white muslin that was four hundred ells long at the very least. It passed with the greatest ease through the eye of the smallest needle in the kingdom, and the Prince felt that now the prize must be his.

But the old King was still very loath to give up ruling, so he told the Princes that before any one of them could become King he must find a Princess to marry him who would be lovely enough to grace her high station; and whichever of the Princes brought home the most beautiful bride should really have the kingdom for his own.

Of course, the Prince went back to the White Cat, and told her how very unfairly his father had behaved to him. She comforted him as best she could, and told him not to be afraid, for she would introduce him to the loveliest Princess the sun had ever shone upon.

The appointed time passed happily away, and one evening the White Cat reminded the Prince that on the next day he must return home.

"Alas!" said he, "where shall I find a Princess now? The time is so short that I cannot even look for one."

Then the White Cat told him that if only he would do as she bade him all would be well.

"Take your sword, cut off my head and my tail, and cast them into the flames," she said.

The Prince declared that on no account would he treat her so cruelly; but she begged him so earnestly to do as she asked that at last he consented.

No sooner had he cast the head and the tail into the fire than a beautiful Princess appeared where the body of the cat had been. The spell that had been cast upon her was broken, and at the same time her courtiers and attendants, who had also been changed into cats, hastened in their proper forms again, to pay their respects to their mistress.

The Prince at once fell deeply in love with the charming Princess, and begged her to accompany him to his father's court as his bride.

She consented, and together they rode away. During the journey, the Princess told her husband the story of her enchantment.

She had been brought up by the fairies, who treated her with great kindness until she offended them by falling in love with the young man whose portrait the Prince had seen upon her paw, and who exactly resembled him.

Now, the fairies wished her to marry the King of the Dwarfs, and were so angry when she declared she would marry no one but her own true love, that they changed her into a White Cat as a punishment.

When the Prince and his bride reached the court, all were bound to acknowledge that the Princess was by far the loveliest lady they had ever seen.

So the poor old King felt that now he would be obliged to give up his kingdom. But the Princess knelt by his side, kissed his hand gently, and told him that there was no reason for him to cease ruling, for she was rich enough to give a mighty kingdom to each of his elder sons, and still have three left for herself and her dear husband.

So everyone was pleased, and there was a great rejoicing and feasting in the King's palace, and they all lived happily ever after.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 May 2008 )

A Dark Brown Dog

2009-05-13T21:29:00.002-07:00

A Dark Brown Dog

A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, the while kicking carelessly at the gravel.

Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.

After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.

He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic manner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head.

This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child's feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition in childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offered a small prayer to the child.

He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and petitioned him, and offered more prayers.

At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating form.

Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. The latter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at times to investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discovered the little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of a footpad.

The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog lay down and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again.

On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as an unimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this quality of animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret, but he continued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so very guilty that he slunk like an assassin.

When the child reached his door-step, the dog was industriously ambling a few yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he again confronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped upon it and fell forward.

The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview. During it the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He performed a few gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw him to be a valuable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and seized the rope.

He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a dark tenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble very skilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at last the pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog became panic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his head frantically and to brace his legs.

The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. The child was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose, and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to the door of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold.

No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to the dog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon his new friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades.

When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog was examined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at him from all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like a scorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor, and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that he was roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck, when the father of the family came in from work.

The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kid howl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted to introduce a disreputable dog into the family.

A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in no way heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child's dress.

The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, was in a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived that it would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took his friend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while the father quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass that the dog was a member of the household.

He and the child were associated together at all times save when the child slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folk kicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violent objections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tears raining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the hand of his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Ever after, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. In a small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, he would display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting and scuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four people armed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all their ingenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom that they could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint.

But when the child was present, these scenes did not occur. It came to be recognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst into sobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practically unquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard.

However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he was asleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite lowliness and despair, that would go shuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and cause people to swear. At these times the singer would often be chased all over the kitchen and hit with a great variety of articles.

Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it is not known that he ever had what could be truly called a just cause. The dog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. He was too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave his friend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress the child's hand with his little red tongue.

When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed head on the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to be supposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjust beatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him.

He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other members of the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that he would express at their casual approach often exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding him, but finally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in secret for himself.

So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrously from such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as from pain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he encountered huge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully.

His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He wagged at his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He could detect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of the neighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him.

The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived for an instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hidden fields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith.

The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observe strange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usually jogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. This necessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure the child was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance of these journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud to be the retainer of so great a monarch.

One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionally drunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when the child, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They were returning from their voyages.

The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He dived under the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safe place. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unaware of the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at his friend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. He started to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of a little dark-brown dog en route to a friend.

The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl of joy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yelling in supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve as if caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon the floor.

Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice in swift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. He rolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At the same time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer.

But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him that it would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So he reached down and grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and then flung him with great accuracy through the window.

The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plants in an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flight of the dog. A woman, who had been hanging out clothes in a yard, began to caper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gave vent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gagged prisoner. Children ran whooping.

The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five stories below. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway.

The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirgelike cry, and toddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach the alley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, one step at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above.

When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of his dark-brown friend.

Cinderella

2009-05-13T21:29:00.001-07:00

Cinderella

Once upon a time there lived a noble gentleman who had one dear little daughter. Poor child! her own kind mother was dead, and her father, who loved her very dearly, was afraid that his little girl was sometimes lonely. So he married a grand lady who had two daughters of her own, and who, he thought, would be kind and good to his little one. But no sooner did the stepmother enter her new home than she began to show her true character. Her stepdaughter was so much prettier and sweeter than her own children, that she was jealous of her, and gave her all the hard work of the house to do, whilst the two proud sisters spent their time at pleasant parties and entertainments.The only pleasure the poor child had was to spend her evenings siting in the chimney-corner, resting her weary limbs, and for this reason her sisters mockingly nicknamed her "Cinderella." The sisters' fine clothes made Cinderella feel very shabby; but, in her little torn frock and ragged shoes, she was a thousand times more lovely than they.Now it chanced that the King's son gave a grand ball, to which he invited all the lords and ladies in the country, and, amongst the rest, Cinderella's two sisters were asked. How pleased and excited they were when the invitation arrived! For days they could talk of nothing but the clothes they should wear and the grand folk they hoped to meet.When at last the grand day arrived, Cinderella was kept running about from early till late, decking the sisters, and dressing their hair.

"Don't you wish you were going to the ball?" said one of them.

"Indeed I do," sighed the poor little maid. The sisters burst out laughing. "A pretty spectacle you would be," they said rudely. "Go back to your cinders - they are fit company for rags." Then, stepping carefully into their carriage so that they might not crush their fine clothes, they drove away to the ball.Cinderella went back to her chimney-corner, and tried not to feel envious, but the tears would gather in the pretty eyes, and trickle down the sorrowful little face."What are you crying for, child?" cried a silvery voice.Cinderella started, and raised her eyes. Who could it be? Then in a moment she knew - it was her fairy godmother! "I do so want --" began Cinderella; then her sobs stopped her."To go to the ball," finished the godmother. Cinderella nodded. "Well, leave off crying - be a good girl, and you shall go. Run quickly into the garden, and bring the largest pumpkin you can find."Cinderella could not imagine how a pumpkin could help her go to the ball, but her only thought was to obey her godmother. In a few moments she was back again, with a splendid pumpkin. Her godmother scooped out the inside - one touch of the wand, and the pumpkin was a golden coach, lined with white satin."Now, godchild, quick - the mouse-trap from the pantry!""Here it is, godmother," said Cinderella breathlessly.One by one six fat sleek mice passed through the trap door. As each appeared, a touch of the wand transformed it into a cream-colored horse, fit for a queen."Now, Cinderella, can you find a coachman?""There is a large gray rat in the rat-trap - would he do, godmother?""Run and fetch him, child, and then I can judge." So Cinderella ran to fetch the rat, and her godmother said he was just made for a coachman; and I think you would have agreed with her had you seen him a moment later, with his powdered wig and silk stockings.Six lizards from behind the pumpkin-frame became six footmen in splendid liveries - you would have thought they had been footmen all their lives. Cinderella was so excited that she could scarcely speak."Oh! godmother," she cried, "it is all so lovely!" Then suddenly she thought of her shabby frock. "There is my white muslin," she said wistfully, "if - do you think --"But before Cinderella could realize what was happening, her godmother's wand tapped her lightly on the shoulder, and in place of the shabby frock, there was a gleam of satin, silver, and pearls.Ah! who can describe a robe made by the fairies? It was white as snow, and as dazzling; round the hem hung a fringe of diamonds, sparkling like dew-drops in the sunshine. The lace about the throat and arms could only have been spun by fairy spiders. Surely it was a dream! Cinderella put her daintily-gloved hand to her throat, and softly touched the pearls that encircled her neck."Come, child," said the godmother, "or you will be late."As Cinderella moved, the firelight shone upon her dainty shoes. "They are of diamonds," she said."No," answered her godmother, smiling; "they are better than that - they are of glass, made by the fairies. And now, child, go, and enjoy yourself to your hearts content. Only remember, if you stay at the palace one instant after midnight your coach and servants will vanish, and you will be the gray Cinderella once more!"

A few moments later, the coach dashed into the royal courtyard, the door was flung open, and Cinderella alighted. As she walked slowly up the richly-carpeted staircase, there was a murmur of admiration, and the King's son hastened to meet her. "Never," said he to himself, "have I seen anyone so lovely!" He led her into the ball-room, where the King, who was much taken with her sweet face and pretty, modest manner, whispered to the Queen that she must surely be a foreign Princess.

The evening passed away in a dream of delight, Cinderella dancing with no one but the handsome young Prince, and being waited on by his own hands at the supper-table. The two sisters could not recognize their ragged little sister in the beautiful and graceful lady to whom the Prince paid so much attention, and felt quite pleased and flattered when she addressed a few words to them.Presently a clock chimed the three quarters past eleven, and, remembering her godmother's warning, Cinderella at once took leave of the Prince, and, jumping into her coach, was driven rapidly home. Here she found her godmother waiting to hear all about the ball. "It was lovely," said Cinderella; "and oh! Godmother, there is to be another to-morrow night, and I should so much like to go to it!""Then you shall," replied the kind fairy, and kissing her godchild tenderly, she vanished. When the sisters returned from the ball, they found a sleepy little maiden sitting in the chimney-corner, waiting for them."How late you are!" cried Cinderella, yawning. "Are you not very tired?""Not in the least," they answered, and then they told her what a delightful ball it had been, and how the loveliest Princess in the world had been there, and had spoken to them, and admired their pretty dresses."Who was she?" asked Cinderella."That we cannot say," answered the sisters. "She would not tell her name, though the Prince begged her to do so on bended knees."Dear sister," said Cinderella, "I, too, should like to see the beautiful Princess. Will you not lend me your old yellow gown, that I may go to the ball to-morrow with you?""What!" cried her sister angrily; "lend one of my dresses to a little cinder-maid? Don't talk nonsense, child!"The next night, the sisters were more particular than ever about their attire, but at last they were dressed, and as soon as their carriage had driven away, the godmother appeared. Once more she touched her godchild with her wand, and in a moment she was arrayed in a beautiful dress that seemed as though it had been woven of moon-beams and sunshine, so radiantly did it gleam and shimmer. She put her arms round her godmother's neck and kissed and thanked her. "Good-bye childie; enjoy yourself, but whatever you do, remember to leave the ball before the clock strikes twelve," the godmother said, and Cinderella promised.But the hours flew by so happily and so swiftly that Cinderella forgot her promise, until she happened to look at a clock and saw that it was on the stroke of twelve. With a cry of alarm she fled from the room, dropping, in her haste, one of the little glass slippers; but, with the sound of the clock strokes in her ears, she dared not wait to pick it up. The Prince hurried after her in alarm, but when he reached the entrance hall, the beautiful Princess had vanished, and there was no one to be seen but a forlorn little beggar-maid creeping away into the darkness.Poor little Cinderella! - she hurried home through the dark streets, weary, and overwhelmed with shame.The fire was out when she reached her home, and there was no godmother waiting to receive her; but she sat down in the chimney-corner to wait her sister's return. When they came in they could speak of nothing but the wonderful things that had happened at the ball.The beautiful Princess had been there again, they said, but had disappeared just as the clock struck twelve, and though the Prince had searched everywhere for her, he had been unable to find her. "He was quite beside himself with grief," said the elder sister, "for there is no doubt he hoped to make her his bride."Cinderella listened in silence to all they had to say, and, slipping her hand into her pocket, felt that the one remaining glass slipper was safe, for it was the only thing of all her grand apparel that remained to her.On the following morning there as a great noise of trumpets and drums, and a procession passed through the town, at the head of which rode the King's son. Behind him came a herald, bearing a velvet cushion, upon which rested a little glass slipper. The herald blew a blast upon the trumpet, and then read a proclamation saying that the King's son would wed any lady in the land who could fit the slipper upon her foot, if she could produce another to match it.Of course, the sisters tried to squeeze their feet into the slipper, but it was of no use - they were much too large. Then Cinderella shyly begged that she might try. How the sisters laughed with scorn when the Prince knelt to fit the slipper on the cinder-maid's foot; but what was their surprise when it slipped on with the greatest ease, and the next moment Cinderella produced the other from her pocket. Once more she stood in the slippers, and once more the sisters saw before them the lovely Princess who was to be the Prince's bride. For at the touch of the magic shoes, the little gray flock disappeared for ever, and in place of it she wore the beautiful robe the fairy godmother had given to her.The sisters hung their heads with sorrow and vexation; but kind little Cinderella put her arms around their necks, kissed them, and forgave them for all their unkindness, so that they could not help but love her.The Prince could not bear to part from his little love again, so he carried her back to the palace in his grand coach, and they were married that very day. Cinderella's step sisters were present at the feast, but in the place of honor sat the fairy godmother.So the poor little cinder-maid married the Prince, and in time they came to be King and Queen, and lived happily ever after.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

2009-05-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

There was a king who had twelve beautiful daughters. They slept in twelve beds all in one room and when they went to bed, the doors were shut and locked up. However, every morning their shoes were found to be quite worn through as if they had been danced in all night. Nobody could find out how it happened, or where the princesses had been.

So the king made it known to all the land that if any person could discover the secret and find out where it was that the princesses danced in the night, he would have the one he liked best to take as his wife, and would be king after his death. But whoever tried and did not succeed, after three days and nights, they would be put to death.

A king's son soon came. He was well entertained, and in the evening was taken to the chamber next to the one where the princesses lay in their twelve beds. There he was to sit and watch where they went to dance; and, in order that nothing could happen without him hearing it, the door of his chamber was left open. But the king's son soon fell asleep; and when he awoke in the morning he found that the princesses had all been dancing, for the soles of their shoes were full of holes.

The same thing happened the second and third night and so the king ordered his head to be cut off.

After him came several others; but they all had the same luck, and all lost their lives in the same way.

Now it happened that an old soldier, who had been wounded in battle and could fight no longer, passed through the country where this king reigned, and as he was travelling through a wood, he met an old woman, who asked him where he was going.

'I hardly know where I am going, or what I had better do,' said the soldier; 'but I think I would like to find out where it is that the princesses dance, and then in time I might be a king.'

'Well,' said the old woman, 'that is not a very hard task: only take care not to drink any of the wine which one of the princesses will bring to you in the evening; and as soon as she leaves you pretend to be fast asleep.'

Then she gave him a cloak, and said, 'As soon as you put that on you will become invisible, and you will then be able to follow the princesses wherever they go.' When the soldier heard all this good advice, he was determined to try his luck, so he went to the king, and said he was willing to undertake the task.

He was as well received as the others had been, and the king ordered fine royal robes to be given him; and when the evening came he was led to the outer chamber.

Just as he was going to lie down, the eldest of the princesses brought him a cup of wine; but the soldier threw it all away secretly, taking care not to drink a drop. Then he laid himself down on his bed, and in a little while began to snore very loudly as if he was fast asleep.

When the twelve princesses heard this they laughed heartily; and the eldest said, 'This fellow too might have done a wiser thing than lose his life in this way!' Then they rose and opened their drawers and boxes, and took out all their fine clothes, and dressed themselves at the mirror, and skipped about as if they were eager to begin dancing.

But the youngest said, 'I don't know why it is, but while you are so happy I feel very uneasy; I am sure some mischance will befall us.'

'You simpleton,' said the eldest, 'you are always afraid; have you forgotten how many kings' sons have already watched in vain? And as for this soldier, even if I had not given him his sleeping draught, he would have slept soundly enough.'

When they were all ready, they went and looked at the soldier; but he snored on, and did not stir hand or foot: so they thought they were quite safe.

Then the eldest went up to her own bed and clapped her hands, and the bed sank into the floor and a trap-door flew open. The soldier saw them going down through the trap-door one after another, the eldest leading the way; and thinking he had no time to lose, he jumped up, put on the cloak which the old woman had given him, and followed them.

However, in the middle of the stairs he trod on the gown of the youngest princess, and she cried out to her sisters, 'All is not right; someone took hold of my gown.'

'You silly creature!' said the eldest, 'it is nothing but a nail in the wall.'

Down they all went, and at the bottom they found themselves in a most delightful grove of trees; and the leaves were all of silver, and glittered and sparkled beautifully. The soldier wished to take away some token of the place; so he broke off a little branch, and there came a loud noise from the tree. Then the youngest daughter said again, 'I am sure all is not right -- did not you hear that noise? That never happened before.'

But the eldest said, 'It is only our princes, who are shouting for joy at our approach.'

They came to another grove of trees, where all the leaves were of gold; and afterwards to a third, where the leaves were all glittering diamonds. And the soldier broke a branch from each; and every time there was a loud noise, which made the youngest sister tremble with fear. But the eldest still said it was only the princes, who were crying for joy.

They went on till they came to a great lake; and at the side of the lake there lay twelve little boats with twelve handsome princes in them, who seemed to be waiting there for the princesses.

One of the princesses went into each boat, and the soldier stepped into the same boat as the youngest. As they were rowing over the lake, the prince who was in the boat with the youngest princess and the soldier said, 'I do not know why it is, but though I am rowing with all my might we do not get on so fast as usual, and I am quite tired: the boat seems very heavy today.'

'It is only the heat of the weather,' said the princess, 'I am very warm, too.'

On the other side of the lake stood a fine, illuminated castle from which came the merry music of horns and trumpets. There they all landed, and went into the castle, and each prince danced with his princess; and the soldier, who was still invisible, danced with them too. When any of the princesses had a cup of wine set by her, he drank it all up, so that when she put the cup to her mouth it was empty. At this, too, the youngest sister was terribly frightened, but the eldest always silenced her.

They danced on till three o'clock in the morning, and then all their shoes were worn out, so that they were obliged to leave. The princes rowed them back again over the lake (but this time the soldier placed himself in the boat with the eldest princess); and on the opposite shore they took leave of each other, the princesses promising to come again the next night.

When they came to the stairs, the soldier ran on before the princesses, and laid himself down. And as the twelve, tired sisters slowly came up, they heard him snoring in his bed and they said, 'Now all is quite safe'. Then they undressed themselves, put away their fine clothes, pulled off their shoes, and went to bed.

In the morning the soldier said nothing about what had happened, but determined to see more of this strange adventure, and went again on the second and third nights. Everything happened just as before: the princesses danced till their shoes were worn to pieces, and then returned home. On the third night the soldier carried away one of the golden cups as a token of where he had been.

As soon as the time came when he was to declare the secret, he was taken before the king with the three branches and the golden cup; and the twelve princesses stood listening behind the door to hear what he would say.

The king asked him. 'Where do my twelve daughters dance at night?'

The soldier answered, 'With twelve princes in a castle underground.' And then he told the king all that had happened, and showed him the three branches and the golden cup which he had brought with him.

The king called for the princesses, and asked them whether what the soldier said was true and when they saw that they were discovered, and that it was of no use to deny what had happened, they confessed it all.

So the king asked the soldier which of the princesses he would choose for his wife; and he answered, 'I am not very young, so I will have the eldest.' -- and they were married that very day, and the soldier was chosen to be the king's heir.

The Happiest Boy in the World

2009-05-13T21:27:00.000-07:00

The Happiest Boy in the World

Julio, who had come from Tables to settle in Barok, was writing a letter to, of all people, ka Ponso, his landlord, one warm June night. It was about his son,Jose, who wanted to go to school in Mansalay that year. Jose was in the fifth grade when julio and his family had left Tablas the year before and migrated to mindoro. Because the father had to stop schooling for a year. As it was, julio though himself lucky enough to have ka ponso to take him as tenant. Later when julio's wife, fidela, gave birth to a baby.Ka Ponso, who happened to be visiting his property then, offered to became its godfather. After that they began to call each other compadre.

"Dear Compadre,"Julio started to write in tagalog bending earnestly over a piece of paper which he had torn out of Jose's notebook.It was many months ago when,just as now, he had sat down with a writing implement in his hand. That was when he had gone to the municipio in Mansalay to file a homestead applicatio, and he had used a pen, and to his great surprise filled in the blank forms neatly.Nothing came of the application and talked with the officials concerned .Now, with a pencil instead of a pen to write wit,julio was sure that he could make his letter legible enough for ka Ponso.

"It's about my boy Jose,"he wrote on."I want him to study this june in mansalay. He's in the sixth grade now, and since he's quite a poor hand at looking after your carabaos, I thought it would be best that he goes to school in the town."

He sat back and learned against the wall. He had been writing on a low wooden bench, the sole piece of furniture in the one-room house.There he sat in one corner. A little way across stood the stove; to his right fidela and the baby girl, felipa lay under the hempen mosquito net. Jose,who had been out all afternoon looking for one of Ka Ponso's carabaos that he had strayed away to the newly-planted rice clearings along the other side of the barok river, was here too, sprawing beside a sack of palay by the doorway. He snored lightl;y,like a tired youth; but he was only twelve.

The kerosene lamp's yellow flame flickered easelessly. The danksmell of food,of fish broth particularly, that had been spilled from many a bowl and had dried on the floor seemed to rise from the very texture of the wood itself. The satark truth about their poverty, if julio's nature had been sensitive to it, might have struck him with a hard and sudden blow then; but as it was, he just looked about the room,even as the smell assailed his nostrils,and stared now at the mosquito net,now at Jose as he lay there by the door. Then he continued with his letter.

"This boy,Jose,compadre,"he went on,"is quite an industrious lad. If you can only let him stay in your big house. Compadre,you can make him do anything you wish-any work. He can cook rice, and I'm sure he'll do well washing dishes."

Julio recalled his last visit to ka ponso's about three months ago, during the fiesta . he had seen that it was a big house with many servants; the floor were so polished you could almost see your own image under your feet as you walked; and always there was a servant who followed you about with a piece of rag to wipe away the smudges of dirt which your feet had left on the floor.

"I hope you will not think of his as great bother."Julio continued, tryng his best to phrase this thoughts. He had a vague far that ka Ponso might not favorably regard his letter. But he wrote on,slowly and steadly,stopping only to read what he had put down."We shall repay you for watever you can do for us,compadre.It's true we already owe you for many things, but your comadre and I will do all we can indeed to repay you."

Read the last sentence and realizing that he had made mention of his wife,julio recalled that during the very first month after their arrival from tablas thay had received five cavanes of rice from ka ponso.

And that later he had been told that at harvest time he should pay back twice the number of cavanes. This was usurious but was strictly after the custom in those parts, and julio was not thesort who would complain.Besides, he had never thought of ka ponso as anything else than his compadre espiritual, as they called it, a true friend.

Suddenly he began wonderng how jose would move about in Ka ponso's household, being unaccustomed to so many things there.The boy might even stumble over a chair and break some dishes…he feared for the boy.

"And I wish you would treat jose as to would your own son, compadre. You may beat him if he should commit some wrong and indeed I want him to look up to you as a second father."

Julio felt he had nothing more to say and that he had written the longest letter in his life.For a moment the fingers of his hand felt numb. And this was a funny thing. he thought, because he had scarcely filled the page. He sat back again and smiled to himself.

About six o'clock the following morning,a boy of twelve was riding a carabao along the riverbed road to own to town. He was a very puny lad on the carabao's broad back.

Walking close behind the carabao, the father accommpanied him up to the bend of the river. When the beast hesitated in crossing the small rivulet that cut the road as it passed a clump of bamboo, the man picked.

Up a stick and prodded the animal. Then he handed the stick to the boy, as one might give a precious gift.

The father did not cross the stream but only stood there by the bank."Mind to look after the letter,"he called out from where he was,"Do you have it there, in your shirt pocket?"

The boy fumbled for it, When he had found it, he said,"No Tatay, I won't lose it".

"And take good care of the carabao," julio added. " I'll come to town myself in a day or two to get that carabao back. I just want to get through first the planting."

Then Juli started to get back to his house, thinking of the work that awaited him in his clearing that day.but he thought more to tell his son, and so he stopped and call him out again.

"And the letter," he shouted. " give it to Ka Ponso as soon as you get back to the town. Then be good , and do everything he asks you to do. Remember…….everything".

from atop the carabao, Jose yelled, "Yes, tatay, yes," and rode away. A stand of abaca plants, their green leaves glimmering in the morning sun, soon conceiled him from the view.

Fastened to his saddle was his bundle of clothes and the little package of rice, food for his week in town. It was customary for the school boys from the barrio or farm to provide themselves in this simple manner; in Jose's case, although he was going to live at Ka Ponso's, it could not be said that his father had forgotten about this little manner concerning food.

Thinking of his father, Jose grew curious about the letter he carried in his shirt pocket. He stopped his carabao under a shady tree by the roadside.

A bird sang in a bush nearby. Jose could hear it even as he read the letter, junping from down from word to word; for him the vernacular was quite difficult. But the meaning of each sentence became clear to him, he xperinced a curious exaltation. It was though he were the happiest boy in the world was snging for him. He heard the rumbling of the stream far away. There he and his father parted. The world seemed full of bird song and music from the stream.

The Adventures of Juan

2009-05-13T21:26:00.002-07:00

The Adventures of Juan

Juan was always getting into trouble. He was a lazy boy, and more than that, he did not have good sense. When he tried to do things, he made such dreadful mistakes that he might better not have tried.

His family grew very impatient with him, scolding and beating him whenever he did anything wrong. One day his mother, who was almost discouraged with him, gave him a bolo and sent him to the forest, for she thought he could at least cut firewood. Juan walked leisurely along, contemplating some means of escape. At last he came to a tree that seemed easy to cut, and then he drew his long knife and prepared to work.

Now it happened that this was a magic tree and it said to Juan:

"If you do not cut me I will give you a goat that shakes silver from its whiskers."

This pleased Juan wonderfully, both because he was curious to see the goat, and because he would not have to chop the wood. He agreed at once to spare the tree, whereupon the bark separated and a goat stepped out. Juan commanded it to shake its whiskers, and when the money began to drop he was so delighted that he took the animal and started home to show his treasure to his mother.

On the way he met a friend who was more cunning than Juan, and when he heard of the boy's rich goat he decided to rob him. Knowing Juan's fondness for tuba he persuaded him to drink, and while he was drunk, the friend substituted another goat for the magic one. As soon as he was sober again, Juan hastened home with the goat and told his people of the wonderful tree, but when he commanded the animal to shake its whiskers, no money fell out. The family, believing it to be another of Juan's tricks, beat and scolded the poor boy.

The went back to the tree and threatened to cut it down for lying to him, but the tree said :

"No, do not cut me down and I will give you a not which you may cast on dry ground, or even in the tree tops, and it will return full of fish."

So Juan spared the tree and started home with his precious net, but on the way he met the same friend who again persuaded him to drink tuba. While he was drunk, the friend replaced the magic net with a common one, so that when Juan reached home and tried to show his power, he was again the subject of ridicule.

Once more Juan went to his tree, this time determined to cut it down. But the offer of a magic pot, always full of rice and spoons which provided wbatever he wished to eat with his rice, dissuaded him, and he started home happier than ever. Before reaching home, however, he met with the same fate as before, and his folks, who were becoming tired of his pranks, beat him harder than ever.

Thoroughly angered, Juan sought the tree a fourth time and was on the point of cutting it down when once more it arrested his attention. After some discussion, he consented to accept a stick to which he had only to say, "Boombye, Boomba," and it would beat and kill anything he wished.

When he met his friend on this trip, he was asked what he had and he replied:

"Oh, it is only a stick, but if I say 'Boombye, Boomba' it will beat you to death."

At the sound of the magic words the stick leaped from his hands and began beating his friend until he cried:

"Oh, stop it and I will give back everything that I stole from you." Juan ordered the stick to stop, and then he compelled the man to lead the goat and to carry the net and the jar and spoons to his home.

There Juan commanded the goat, and it shook its whiskers until his mother and brothers had all the silver they could carry. Then they ate from the magic jar and spoons until they were filled. And this time Juan was not scolded. After they had finished Juan said:

"You have beaten me and scolded me all my life, and now you are glad to accept my good things. I am going to show you something else: "Boombye, Boomba'." Immediately the stick leaped out and beat them all until they begged for mercy and promised that Juan should ever after be head of the house.

From that time Juan was rich and powerful, but he never went anywhere without his stick. One night, when some thieves came to his house, he would have been robbed and killed had it not been for the magic words "Boombye, Boomba," which caused the death of all the robbers.

Some time after this he married a beautiful princess, and because of the kindness of the magic tree they always lived happily.

The Wolf and the Seven Kids

2009-05-13T21:26:00.001-07:00

The Wolf and the Seven Kids

William and Jacob Grimm

THERE was once an old goat who had seven little kids.She loved them all as much as any mother ever loved her children.One day the old goat wished to go into the woods to get food for her kids.

Before she started she called them all to her and said:"Dear children, I am going into the woods. Now do not open the door while I am away. If the old wolf should get into our hut, he would eat you all up, and not a hair would be left.You can easily tell him by his rough voice and his black feet."

"Dear mother," cried all the young kids, " we will be very careful not to let the old wolf in. You need not think of us at all, for we shall be quite safe." So the old goat went on her way into the dark woods. She had not been gone long when there came a loud rap at the door, and a voice cried: "Open the door, my dear children. I have something for each of you."But the young kids knew by the rough voice that this was the old wolf. So one of them said, "We shall not open the door. Our mother's voice is soft and gentle. Your voice is rough. You are a wolf."

The old wolf ran away to a shop, where he ate a piece of white chalk to make his voice soft. Then he went back to the goat's hut and rapped at the door. He spoke in a soft voice and said, "Open the door to me, my dear children. I am your mother." But the oldest little goat thought of what her mother had said. "If you are our mother, put your foot on the window sill, that we may see it. "When the wolf had done this, all the little goats cried out, "No, you are not our mother. We shall not open the door. Our mother's feet are white and yours are black. Go away; you are the wolf."

Then the wolf went to the miller's, and said to him, "Mr. Miller, put some flour on my foot, for I have hurt it." The miller was so afraid of the wolf that he did as he was told. Then the wicked wolf went to the goat's house again and said, "Open the door, dear children, for I am your mother." "Show us your foot," said the little kids. So the wolf put his one white foot on the window sill.

When the little kids saw that it was white, they thought this was really their mother, and they opened the door. In jumped the ugly old wolf, and all the little kids ran to hide themselves. The first hid under the table, the second in the bed, the third in the oven, the fourth in the kitchen, the fifth in the cupboard, the sixth under the washtub, and the seventh, who was the smallest of all, in the tall clock.The wolf quickly found and gobbled up all but the youngest, who was in the clock.

Then the wolf, who felt sleepy, went out and lay down on the green grass. Soon he was fast asleep. Not long after this the old goat come home from the woods. Ah, what did she see! The house door was wide open; the tables and chairs were upset. The washtub was broken in pieces, and the bed was tipped over.

"Where are my dear children?" cried the poor goat. At last she heard a little voice crying, "Dear mother, here I am in the tall clock. "The old goat helped the little goat out. Soon she learned how the wolf had eaten her dear children. Then she went out of the hut, and there on the grass lay the wolf sound asleep.

As the goat looked at the wicked old wolf, she thought she saw something jumping about inside him."Ah," she said, "it may be that my poor children are still alive. "So she sent the little kid into the house for a pair of scissors and a needle and some thread.She quickly cut a hole in the side of the wicked old wolf. At the first snip of the scissors, one of the kids stuck out his head.As the old goat cut, more and more heads popped out.At last all six of the kids jumped out upon the grass. They went hopping and skipping about their mother.

Then the old goat said to them, "Go and bring me some large stones from the brook. "The seven little kids ran off to the brook and soon came back with seven large stones. They put these stones inside the wicked old wolf. The old goat sewed up the wolf's side so gently and quietly that he did not wake up nor move.When at last the wicked wolf did wake up, the great stones inside him made him feel very heavy. He was thirsty, too, so he walked down to the brook to drink.

The stones were so heavy that they tipped him over the edge of the bank into the deep water, and he was drowned.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 May 2008 )

The Monkey and the Turtle

2009-05-13T21:25:00.003-07:00

The Monkey and the Turtle

A Monkey, looking very sad and dejected, was walking along the bank of the river one day when he met a turtle.

"How are you?" asked the turtle, noticing that he looked sad.

The monkey replied, "Oh, my friend, I am very hungry. The squash of Mr. Farmer were all taken by the other monkeys, and now I am about to die from want of food."

"Do not be discouraged," said the turtle; "take a bob and follow me and we will steal some banana plants."

So they walked along together until they found some nice plants which they dug up, and then they looked for a place to set them. Finally the monkey climbed a tree and planted his in it, but as the turtle could not climb he dug a hole in the ground and set his there.

When their work was finished they went away, planning what they should do with their crop. The monkey said:

"When my tree bears fruit, I shall sell it and have a great deal of money."

And the turtle said: "When my tree bears fruit, I shall sell it and buy three varas of cloth to wear in place of this cracked shell."

A few weeks later they went back to the place to see their plants and found that that of the monkey was dead, for its roots had had no soil in the tree, but that of the turtle was tall and bearing fruit.

"I will climb to the top so that we can get the fruit," said the monkey. And he sprang up the tree, leaving the poor turtle on the ground alone.

"Please give me some to eat," called the turtle, but the monkey threw him only a green one and ate all the the ripe ones himself.

When he had eaten all the good bananas, the monkey stretched his arms around the tree and went to sleep. The turtle, seeing this, was very angry and considered how he might punish the thief. Having decided on a scheme, he gathered some sharp bamboo which he all around under the tree, and then he exclaimed:

Crocodile is coming! Crocodile is coming!"

The monkey was so startled at the cry that he fell upon the sharp bamboo and was killed.

Then the turtle cut the dead monkey into pieces, put on it, and dried it in the sun. The next day, he went to the mountains and sold his meat to other monkeys who gladly gave him squash in return. As he was leaving them he called back:

"Lazy fellows, you are now eating your own body; you are now eating your own body."

Then the monkeys ran and caught him and carried to their own home.

Let us take a hatchet," said one old monkey, "and cut him into very small pieces."

But the turtle laughed and said: "That is just what I like. I have been struck with a hatchet many times. Do you not see the black scars on my shell?"

Then one of the other monkeys said: "Let us throw him into the water."

At this the turtle cried and begged them to spare his life, but they paid no heed to his pleadings and threw him into the water. He sank to the bottom, but very soon came up with a lobster. The monkeys were greatly surprised at this and begged him to tell them how to catch lobsters.

"I tied one end of a string around my waist," said the turtle. "To the other end of the string I tied a stone so that I would sink."

The monkeys immediately tied strings around themselves as the turtle said, and when all was ready they plunged into the water never to come up again.

And to this day monkeys do not like to eat meat, because they remember the ancient story.

The King and the Tortoise

2009-05-13T21:25:00.001-07:00

The King and the Tortoise

Long ago there lived in India a king who talked too much.

"I am the greatest king in India. My palace is the finest. My horses are the swiftest. I have more treasures than any other king." Thus he would talk from morning till night.

Such talk was only silly chatter. But sometimes the king told things that he should have kept secret, and this made trouble for his people.

Several of the wise men in India had told the king at different times that he talked too much. This always threw him into a great rage.

"Off with their heads!" he would cry. When his cruel order had been obeyed, he would glare on the other wise men, as though to say, "Would any of you like to offer unwelcome advice?"

Now the oldest and wisest of the king's advisers was Adulla. He often shook his wise old head and muttered: "I but bide my time. Someday I shall teach the king a lesson."

One morning the king and Adulla were walking in the courtyard of the palace Suddenly the king stopped, and pointing to a black object on the stones, said, "What is that, Adulla?"

"That, Sire," said Adulla, "is a dead tortoise."

"How came it here?" asked the king."

O sire," replied Adulla, "know that in the pond, White Lotus, live many tortoises. One was larger and stronger than his fellows, so he ruled over them. He was a great chatterer. 'I am the biggest tortoise in the pond. My shell is the broadest. My eyes are the brightest. I can dive deepest.' Thus he talked continually.

"Now it chanced that two wild geese spent some weeks at White Lotus. They and the tortoise became great friends. When they were ready to return to their home, one goose said, 'O Great Tortoise, how we wish we might take you with us!'

"'Alas!' answered the other, 'he cannot fly.'

"'I know how it can be managed,' said the tortoise. 'I will take hold of the middle of this stick. If each of you will take hold of an end, you can easily fly with me to your home.'

"'But remember, friend Tortoise,' said the geese, 'you must not speak a word while we are flying. If you do, you will fall to the earth and be dashed to pieces.'

"All went well until the geese were flying over this courtyard. Then the sentry near yonder door chanced to look up. When he saw the two geese flying along and carrying a tortoise between them, he was filled with amazement.

"'I wish I knew which of the three was bright enough to think of that scheme,' he said aloud.

"The temptation to tell of his brightness was too strong to be resisted. The tortoise opened his mouth to say, 'I thought of this clever scheme,' but he had spoken once too often, as you may see," said Adulla, pointing to the crushed tortoise.

For a moment the king looked keenly at Adulla. Then he nodded his head and muttered, "Yes, I see."

Turning quickly, he walked into the palace. But that day it was noticed that the king talked less and listened more to his advisers, especially to Adulla. And Adulla was often heard muttering: "I bided my time, and my time came. My time came. The king has learned his lesson."

Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 May 2008 )

Toads and Diamonds

2009-05-13T21:24:00.002-07:00

Toads and Diamonds

A BAD-TEMPERED widow had two daughters. The eldest was like her mother, both in feature and disposition, while the youngest resembled her father. She was sweet-natured always, and as pretty as she was amiable.

The widow doted on the daughter who was so like herself, but had no love for the other, whom she compelled to work hard all day, and to live upon the leavings of her elder sister. Among her other hard tasks, she was obliged to carry water every day from a great distance.

One day when she had just filled her pitcher at the fountain, an old woman asked to drink from it. "With all my heart," replied the pretty girl. Glad to show a kindness to one old and infirm, she held the pitcher while the woman slaked her thirst.

Now, this was not a trembling old peasant, as she appeared, but a fairy who rewarded good deeds. "Your face is pretty and your heart is gentle," said she. "For your kindness to a poor old woman, I will make you a gift. Every time you speak, from your mouth shall come a flower or a jewel." When the girl reached home her mother scolded her for her long absence. "Pardon me for being away so long," she sweetly replied.

As she spoke some pearls and diamonds issued from her lips. "What is this I see, child?" asked the astonished widow. The forlorn girl was so happy to be called a child by her mother that she eagerly related her experience with the old woman at the fountain, while, with her words, dropped precious stones and roses.

The widow immediately called her favorite daughter to her. "Fanny, wouldst thou have the same gift as thy sister?" asked she. "Go thou to the fountain and fetch water. And if an old woman asks thee for a drink, mind thou treat her civilly." The girl refused to perform the menial task, until the widow lost patience and drove her to it.

Finally, she took the silver tankard and sullenly obeyed. No sooner was she at the fountain than from the wood came a lady most handsomely attired, who asked the haughty girl for a drink from her pitcher. "I have not come here to serve you," she rudely replied, "but take the pitcher and help yourself, for all I care. I would have you know that I am as good as you."

The lady was the fairy, who had taken the appearance of a princess to see how far the girl's insolence would go. "I will make you a gift," she said, "to equal your discourtesy and ill breeding. Every time you speak, there shall come from your mouth a snake or a toad." The girl ran home to her mother, who met her at the door. "Well, daughter," she said, impatient to hear her speak.

When she opened her mouth, to the mother's horror, two vipers and two toads sprang from it. "This is the fault of your wretched sister," the unhappy mother cried. She ran to beat the poor younger sister, who fled to the forest to escape the cruel blows.

When she was past pursuit, she threw herself upon the green grass and wept bitterly. The King's son, returning from the hunt, found her thus, and asked the cause of her tears."My mother has driven me from my home," she told him.

She was so pretty that he fell in love with her at once, and pressed her to tell him more. She then related to him the whole story, while pearls and diamonds kept falling from her lips. Enraptured, he took her to the King, who gave his consent to their immediate marriage. Meanwhile the ugly and selfish sister had made herself so disagreeable that even her own mother turned against her. She, too, was driven forth into the forest, where she died miserable and alone.

Legend of the Dama de Noche

2009-05-13T21:24:00.001-07:00

Legend of the Dama de Noche

A thousand years ago,there was a rich maharlika, or nobleman, who spent his early bachelor days recklessly, wining and dining in the company of nobility. He drank the finest wines, ate the most delectable food and enjoyed the company of the loveliest, perfumed and bejewelled women of the noble class.

After years of this kind of life, the maharlika finally felt it was time to settle down and marry the woman of his choice. "But who is the woman to choose?" he asked himself as he sat in the rich splendour of his home, "All the women I know are beautiful and charming, but I am tired of the glitter of their jewels and the richness of their clothes!" He wanted a woman different from all the women he saw day and night, and found this in a simple village lass. She was charming in her own unaffected ways, and her name was Dama.

They married and lived contentedly. She loved him and took care of him. She pampered him with the most delicious dishes, and kept his home and his clothes in order. But soon, the newness wore off for the maharlika. He started to long for the company of his friends. He took a good look at his wife and thought, she is not beautiful and she does not have the air of nobility abouther, she does not talk with wisdom. And so the maharlika returned to his own world of glitter and splendor. He spent his evenings sitting around with his friends in their noble homes , drank and talked till the first rays of the sun peeped from the iron grills of their ornate windows.

Poor Dama felt that she was losing her husband. She wept in the silence of their bedroom. "I cannot give my husband anything but the delights of my kitchen and the warmth of my bed. He is tired of me." She looked to the heavens. "Oh, friendly spirits! Help me. Give me a magic charm. Just one little magic charm to make my husband come home again, that he will never want to leave my side, forever!"

It was midnight when the maharlika came home. He opened the door of their bedroom and called for Dama to tell her to prepare his nightclothes. "Dama! Dama, where are you?" he called. He shouted all around the bedroom. He sarched the whole house. Still the nobleman could not find his simple wife. Finally the nobleman returned to their bedroom, tired and cross. But, as he opened the door, he stopped.

A are scent, sweet and fragrant, drifted to him. It was a scent he had never smelled before. He entered the room and crossed to the window where the scent seemed to be floating from. A strange bush was growing outside the window. Some of its thin branches had aleady reached the iron grills and were twisting around. And all over the bush were thousands of tiny starlike, white flowers, from which burst forth a heavenly, enchanting scent!

He stood there, completely enraptured by the glorious smell. "Dama..." he whispered softly, onderingly, could this be Dama? The rich maharlika sat by the window, and waited for the return of his loving simple wife. But she did not come back. She never returned to him again. Only the fragrance of the flowers stayed with him, casting a spell over his whole being.

In the moonlight, Dama of the night, or Dama de Noche would be in full bloom, capturing the rich maharlika, making him never want to leave her side, forever.

The Story of the Monkey

2009-05-13T21:23:00.002-07:00

The Story of the Monkey

One day when a monkey was climbing a tree in the forest in which he lived, he ran a thorn into his tail. Try as he would, he could not get it out, so he went to a barber in the town and said:

"Friend Barber, I have a thorn in the end of my tail. Pull it out, and I will pay you well."

The barber tried to pull out the thorn with his razor, but in doing so he cut off the end of the tail. The monkey was very angry and cried:

"Barber, Barber, give me back my tail, or give me your razor!"

The barber could not put back the end of the monkey's tail, so he gave him his razor.

On the way home the monkey met an old woman who was cutting wood for fuel, and he said to her:

"Grandmother, Grandmother, that is very hard. Use this razor and then it will cut easily."

The old woman was very pleased with the offer and began to cut with the razor, but before she had used it long it broke. Then the monkey cried:

"Grandmother, Grandmother, you have broken my razor! You must get a new one for me or else give me all the firewood."

The old woman could not get a new razor so she gave him the firewood.

The monkey took the wood and was going back to town to sell it, when he saw a woman sitting beside the road making cakes.

"Grandmother, Grandmother," said he, "your wood is most gone; takt this of mine and bake more cakes."

The woman took the wood and thanked him for his kindness, but when the last stick was burned, the monkey cried out:

"Grandmother, Grandmother, you have burned up all my wood! Now you must give me all your cakes to pay for it."

The old woman could not cut more dry wood at once, so she gave him all the cakes.

The monkey took the cakes and started for the town, but on the way he met a dog which bit him so that he died. And the dog ate all the cakes.

The Poor Fisherman and His Wife

2009-05-13T21:23:00.001-07:00

The Poor Fisherman and His Wife

Many, many years ago a poor fisherman and his wife lived with their three sons in a village by the sea. One day the old man set his snare in the water not far from his house, and at night when he went to look at it, he found that he had caught a great white fish. This startled the old man very much, for had never seen a fish like this before, and it occurred him that it was the priest of the town.

He ran to his wife as fast as he could and cried:

"My wife, I have caught the priest."

"What?" said the old woman, terrified at the sight her frightened husband.

"I have caught the priest," said the old man again.

T hey hurried together to the river where the snare was set, and when the old woman saw the fish, she cried:

"Oh, it is not the priest but the governor."

"No, it is the priest," insisted the old man, and they went home trembling with fear.

That night neither of them was able to sleep for thought of the terrible thing that had happened and wondering what they should do. Now the next day was a great holiday in the town. At four o'clock in morning cannons were fired and bells rang loudly. The old man and woman, hearing all the noise and not knowing the reason for it, thought that their crime had been discovered, and the people were searching for them to punish them, so they set out as fast as they could to hide in the woods. On and on they went, stopping only to rest so as to enable them to resume their flight.

The next morning they reached the woods near Pilar, where there also was a great holiday, and the sexton was ringing the bells to call the people to mass. As soon as the old man and woman heard the bells they thought the people there had been notified of their escape, and that they, too, were trying to catch them. So they turned and started home again.

As they reached their house, the three sons came home with their one horse and tied it to the trunk of the caramay tree. Presently the bells began to ring again, for it was twelve o'clock at noon. Not thinking what time of day it was, the old man and woman ran out of doors in terror, and seeing the horse jumped on its back with the intention of riding to the next town before anyone could catch them. When they had mounted they began to whip the horse. In their haste, they had forgotten to untie the rope which was around the trunk of the caramay tree. As the horse pulled at the rope fruit fell from the tree upon the old man and woman. Believing they were shot, they were so frightened that they died.

Legend of the Banana Plant

2009-05-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Legend of the Banana Plant

In the early days when the world was new, spirits and ghosts lurked everywhere. They lived in gloomy caves, they hid in anthills and tree trunks they frolicked in nooks and corners under the houses. In the dark, sometimes their tiny voices could be heard dimly, or their ghostly presence be felt. But they were never seen.

It was during these days of phantoms and unseen spirits that a young and beautiful girl lived. Her name was Raya, and she was a girl bold and daring. She was never afraid of spirits. She would walk in the shadowy forests, bringing along a lighted candle.

Then she would tiptoe into dark and dirty caves, searching the place for spirits. Raya only felt or heard them never having seen them. But Raya always felt the presence of one kind spirit, whenever she walked in the forest the spirit was with her at all times.

One day she heard someone call her name, and she looked up to see a young handsome man. She asked him who he was, and he replied that his name was Sag-in, and he was the spirit who followed her around, and even confessed that he had fallen in love with a mortal.

They married had a child and lived happily, but Sag-in knew that his time on earth was short for he was a spirit-man, and would have to return to the spirit world soon. When he knew his time had come, he called Raya and explained why he had to leave. As he was slowly vanishing, he told Raya that he would leave her a part of him. Raya looked down and saw a bleeding heart on the ground. She took the heart and planted it. She watched it night and day. A plant with long green leaves sprouted from the grave.

One day, the tree bore fruit shaped like a heart. She touched the fruit and caressed it. Thinking could this be Sag-in's heart? Slowly the fruit opened , Long golden fruits sprouted from it. Raya picked one, peeled it and bit into it. Then, she heard Sag-in's voice floating in the air:

"Yes, Raya, it is my heart. I have reappeared to show you that I will never forsake you and our child. Take care of this plant, and it will take care of you in return. It's trunk and leaves will give you shelter and clothing. The heart and fruits will be your food. And when you sleep at night, I will stand and watch by your window. I will stay by your side forever!"

The Sun and the Moon

2009-05-13T21:21:00.002-07:00

The Sun and the Moon

The Sun and the Moon were married, but the Sun was very ugly and quarrelsome. One day he becamee angry at thc Moon and started to chase her. She ran very fast until she was some distance ahead of him, when she grew tired and he almost caught her. Ever since he has been chasing her, at times almost reaching her, and again falling far behind.

The first child of the Sun and Moon was a large star, and he was like a man. One time the Sun becoming angry at the Star, cut him up into small pieces and scattered him over the whole sky just as a woman scatters rice, and ever since there have been many Stars.

Another child of the Sun and Moon was a gigantic crab. He still lives and is so powerful that every time he opens and closes his eyes there is a flash of lightning. Most of the time the crab Iives in a large hole in the bottom of the Sea, and when he is there we have high tide; but when he leaves the hole, the waters rush in and there is low tide. His moving about also causes great waves on the surface of the sea.

The crab is qarrelsome like his father; and he sometimes becomes so angry with his mother, the Moon, that he tries to swallow her. When the people on earth, who are fond of the Moon, see the crab near her, they run out of doors and shout and beat on gongs until he is frightened away, and thus the Moon is saved.

The Spider and the Fly

2009-05-13T21:21:00.001-07:00

The Spider and the Fly

Mr. Spider wanted to marry Miss Fly. Many times he told her of his love and begged her to become his wife, but she always refused for she did not like him.

One day when she saw Mr. Spider coming again Miss Fly closed all the doors and windows of her house and made ready a pot of boiling water. Then she waited, and when Mr. Spider called, begging her to allow him to enter, she answered hy throwing boiling water at him.

This made Mr. Spider very angry and he cried:

"I will never forgive you for this, but I and may descendants will always despise you. We will never give you any peace."

Mr. Spider kept his word, and even today one can see the hatred of the spider for the fly.

Si Tatang at ang Himala ng Ating Panahon

2009-05-13T21:18:00.002-07:00

Si Tatang at ang Himala ng Ating Panahon

1. A-beinte uno de Mayo, sa aking lupang tinubuan.

Nagsimula ang ideya na sulatin ko ang kuwentong ito noong 1967, apat na taon na ang nakararaan isang panahon iyong ang tingin ko sa pagsusulat ay isang indibidwal na akto Isang bagay na ako lamang at ilang piling nilalang sa daigdig ang makagagawa. nagsusulat kami sa isang makasining at matulaing paraang aabot sa isang pamantayang kami lamang ang nakaiintindi. Ang buong daigdig, ang lipunan noon, para sa aking, ay ang sarili ko lamang. Kaya ang pagsusulat ko noon ay ang paglalahad ng sarili.

Noon Gabi ang buhay para sa aking noon Kasama ng mga kapwa ko manunulat na sina Rol, Freddie, at Bong, palilipasin ko ang mga magdamag sa isang tagong coffee shop sa Pasay sa paglulunoy sa pagkaawa sa sarili pag-aari ito ni Rol.. Sa gitna ng coiffee shop ay buong kapanglawang nakadukmo sa yakap-yakap na gitara ang isang hippie habang kinakanta ang kanyang dalit ng alyenasyon. Kami naman nin Freddie, sa isang tasang kape ay ilalagay naming kasama ng asukal lipunang di makauawa sa amin, sa isang daigdig na di namin maintindihan ang galaw, sa isang buhay na para sa amin ay walang pinaggalinagan at walang patutunguhan.

Sapagka pare-pareho kaming nagdaan sa isang buhay na wasak-wasak (magulong pamilya, amang lasenggo, tiyang masungit, at iba pang mga putahe ng isang maguloing buhay), lumalangoiy kamin noon sa paniniwalang kami'y maraming nalalaman at nararamdaman kaysa karaniwang tao. Kaya nakapagsusulat kami. kaya may karapatan kaming buhat sa malayo at tingnan ang galaw ng buhay sa lipunan, saka buhat sa malayo din, nang di nakikisangkot, ay isulat namin ang karanasang itong lipunan nang ayon sa aming mga indibidwal na buhay.

At kung mga magdamang na medyo mabait an gkunday ng halos mamatay nang kandila sa mesa, kapag wala pa ang paminsan-minsang bugso sa amin ng pagnanasang basta na lamang umuwi at magkulong sa kuwarto at magbrarill sa sarili, pinag-uusapan namin ang nag-iisang dahilan ng pagtitiyaga naming maklangkas sa buhay: ang pangarap naming makapagsulat ng isang obra maestra. Lyong yayanig sa daigdig. Iyong hahalukay sa pinakaibuturan ng digdig ng tao.

Mag-iisang taon na kaming pawang di nakapugsusulat, kung sa bagay, at ako nang mga araw na iyon ay wala nang nagagawa kundi basa-basahin baka makahulagpos sa mga kamay koang kaalaman ko sa pagsulat at malkulon ako ng pnagtatrabahuhan kong magasin. Sa drawer ng mesa ko sa munting apartment n ainaarkila ko sa isang eskinita sa Sampaloc nagkalat ang mga panimula ng mga kuwentong di na siguro matatapos, at mga pangunahing uhang di ko na siguro mabibigyang buhay: isang tring di ko pa malaman Rung ano ang ibibigay kong inapon, isang boksingerong wala pang laban, isang magsasakang di pa napapatay sa Maliwalu, isangsayang utusang di pa napaglalalangan ng lhay-lungsod, isang putang wala pang bugaw. Disila makagalaw at siguro'y di na makagagalaw pa.

Hanggang isang gabing mabait na naman anginday ng kandila sa mesa, noong a-beinte uno ng ayo ng 1967. Medyo lango sa isang dosenang beer iniwan namin ang coffee shop upang saiubungin ig madaling araw sa mga kalsada ng Pasay.Huwag ng aalis diyan, baby. ha, huwag kang sisibat, ani eddie sa pinto ng coffee shop nang paalis na kami. sstisong Kastila si Freddie, at pinalayaw ng enderong ama, kaya mahina ang loob. Kaya karirinig pa lang kami ng isang putok sa may isang isolinahan sa Pasay ay nagsimula nang manginig, smutla. magyayang umuwi na kami, sige na naman, ga bok, o, halika na kayo.

Sinundan namin ang agos ng mga taong igtatakbuhan habang hila-hila namin si Freddie. ikita namin ang isang pangkat ng matatanda at ng kabinataang nakarayadilyo, may wasiwas na a bolo sa hangin at nagsisigawang tumatakbo daluhong sa isang pangkat naman ng mga PC na ilang puknat ang pagpapaputok ng mga karbin at nalayt.

Napakapit sa akin si Freddie, at narinig ko ang ralgal at nagmamakaawang pagbulong niya, wag, huwag, huwag. Nag-aatrasan na noon ang ja nakarayadilyong matatanda, nataranta na't gkakapatung-patong halos sa pagkakadapa sa tuhang kalsada, pero patuloy pa ring lapuputukan ng mga PC, pawasiwas ang asinta ng ril. Isang bus na punung-puno ng mga babae at ta at ilang nakarayadilyo pa ring matatanda ang mating, sandaling huminto, ngunit nang makita g nangyayari ay hintakot na umusad ding palayo. ro isang matandang sakay nito ang nakababa na, sa kalituhan ay napatakbo sa direksyon ng mga PC nagkikisay na napahumindig sa gitna ng kalsada, ka nalugmok ang mukha sa sumabog na la-dalang bayong ng bigas.

Ang lahat, para sa amin, ay isang nakabibiglang noorin. Lalo na kay Freddie. Isang banyagang awang biglang pumasok at gumambala sa aming malayan. Kaya kahft nang nakasiksik na kami sa igding ng isang tindahang turu-turo na dali-daling gsasara noon ay di pa rin namin lubusang isakyan kung ano talaga ang nangyari. Parang isa mga tula mo, Freddie, sasabihin ni Bong kapag malayu-layo na kami, nambubuntal at nakabibigia pero di naman maintindihan.

Nahihilo si Freddie't anyong magsusuka na, kaya bumalik kami, nakiusap sa coffee shop na tanggapin kaming muli. Sa loob habang bubuntu-buntung-hininga na lamang na nakamata si Freddie sa sulok, pinalipas muna namin ang mahabang sandali ng katahimikan bago namin tinangkang lagumin ang mga pangyayari nang madaling-araw na iyon. Ano nga ba,ang nangyari? tanong ni Bong. Watak-watak pa ang mga larawan. Mga bangkay na nakalublob sa duguang kanal. Parang mga tipaklong na haging ng baril sa aspalto. Karbin ng mga PC na nakaumang pa rin sa di na gumagalaw na mga bangkay. Ilang matatandang babaeng nagngunguynguyan sa gilid ng isang dyip. Isang nanlilitid na matandang lalaking tiklop ang sombrero sa dibdib habang nanggagalaiti sa pagsigaw ng putang ina n'yo putang ina n'yo sa mga PC na tumitisod patihaya sa Hang nakataob na bangkay. Isang matandang mag-ootsenta anyos na yata na kinakaladkad ng mga PC pababa ng isang hagdan. Mga taong nakamata lamang sa bangketa Mga usap-usapan.

"Nagnonobena daw slla kanina dahil kabilugan ng buwan."

"Karbin at armalayt."

"Saka lulusubin daw nila ang Malakanyang."

"Lapiang Malaya."

"Pinasusuko daw nila si Marcos."

"Tatang de los Santos."

"Pustahan tayo," ani Rol, sa lasing na tinig.

"Magkita-kita tayo sa isang taon dito, a-beinte uno de

Mayo din. Kung sino ang makagagawa ng isang magandang kuwento tungkol sa nangyari kanina ay paiinumin ko ng beer, libreng beer, hanggang madaling araw, okey?"

"Mahirap," reklamo ni Bong. "Santaon na 'kong di nakaaamo ng peryodiko."

"Sabagay," patianod ni Rol.

"Pero kaya nga pustahan e, mahirap," sambot ko naman.

"Kung gayo'y payag ka?" waring gusto na rin umatras ni Rol. Tumango ako.

"Ayoko ng topic," ani Freddie, na mukhang masusuka na naman. "Iba na lang."

Hanggang noon, ang nasusulat pa lamang ni Freddie ay walong kuwentong ang mga pangunahing tauhan ay pawang mga batang lilimahing taong gulang, na parang matatanda na kung kumilos, malulungkot at di tumatawa, tiwalag sa mga kapwa bata. Namatay ang ina ni Freddie noong limang taong gulang palamang siya, at mulang pagkabata'y ikinulong siya ng ama sa kanilang asyenda sa Pampanga hanggang lumaki siya at magkalakas-loob lumayas. Nagkikita na lamang silang mag-ama, walang kibuan, kung humihingi siya r'rto ng linggu-linggong allowance. Pangarap niyang magkatrabaho, kahit ubod siya ng tamad, para matupad ang lagi niyang minimithing pag-ampon ng isang bata.

Bago natapos ang gab! ay napatianod na rin sa pagsang-ayon sa pustahan sina Freddie. Sa lamlam ng kandila ay biglang bumalatay sa aming mga isipan ang konting pangamba, at nagkatinginan kaming apat. Paano kung sa isang taong pagtigil naming sumulat ay bigia naming matuklasang di na pala talaga kami makapagsusulat pa? Tatawa ka marahil, pero noon, unawain mo, ang buhay namin ay umiikot lamang sa ilang boteng beer, isang makinilyang kung kaninong kaibigan nahiram, ilang tula at kuwentong mga buwan ang binibilang bago namin matapos dahilan sa masusing pagsusuri sa bawat salita at tuldok, at isang maliit na kandilahg aandap-andap sa lamig at dilim ng coffee shop, na sa munting hihip lang ng hangin ay maaaring mamatay.

2. Hunyo dose, araw ng mga baliw.

Matapos ang nakahihilong pagkakasunud-sunod ng pagpunta ko sa headquarters ng Lapiang Malaya sa Pasay, sa National Mental Hospital na pinagkulungan sa maraming kasapi ng Lapiang Malaya dahil nga baliw daw ang mga ko ayon sa gobyernong pinaghimagsikan nito, pag-interbyu ko sa kanilang Supremo na si Tatang de los Santos, pakikinobena ko sa mga tauhan niya't pakikipagtalakayan, matapos ang lahat ng ito'y nalunod ako sa mga kongkretong detalye ng mga tunay na pangyayari sa kapaligiran. Atako, akong nahirating magsulat nang batay lamang sa imahinasyon, ay sandaling nawalan ng panimbang, di malaman kung paanong susulatin ang buhay ng isang tunay na tao. Ano meron si Tatang at nagawa niyang pasugurin ang ilang daang matatandang walang dala kundi bolo sa mga karbin at armalayt ng PC?

Pinuntahan ko siya sa Mental Hospital isang araw. Sa Pavilion 4. Nang dalhin siya roon kinaumagahan noon ng pagpaslang sa mga tauhan niya ay tumutol siya, nanlaban sa mga PC at nars, ba't n'yo ako ikukulong, anong akala n'yo sa'kin, luku-iuko? Basta ba tumututol sa palakad ng gobyernong ito ay iuku-luko at dapat ikulong?

Mababa lamang si Tatang. Ballngkinitan ang pangangatawan bagamat siksik sa laman at lakas bisig-boksingerong kahit sa gulang na otsenta ay makapagpapallanlang pa rin ng isang PC sa bigwas lamang. Pero medyo mahiyain siya. palatandaan, anang mga estudyanteng jdi-malaunan ay ininterbyo ko rin, ng panggagaling ni sa isa sa pinakamatitibay na base ng piyudalismo sa Pilipinas. Pero galing din ako sa Bikol, ang impormasyong "rto ay saglit ko munang pinag-alinlanganan. Matagal bago ko naamin na ano nga ba ang nalalaman ko sa buhay sa bukid doon samantalang sa kabayanan ako lumaki? Talamak ba ang pang-aapi sa amin? Ang tanging nalalaman ko lamang noon ay ang mga larawang lagi nakikita sa mahig'rt na labinllmang taong ginugol sa pagbabantay sa tindahan ng alak ng tiya kong umampon sa akin: mga magsasaka at mangingisda drayber at kanto boy na wala nang ginawa kundi tigreng beer-gin-coke sa umaga't magbangayan naman sa gabi, saka aalis nang di nagbabayad kaya ako ang pagagalltan ng tiya ko.

"Karamihan ng mga kasapi namin," ani Tatang kausapin ko siya sa mental hospital, "hanggang ay mga magsasakang galing pa sa Bikol. Napakalakas ng relihiyon doon, di ba?"

Tumango uli ako. Ang naaaiala kong larawan ay bata pa ako, sa mga tulay ng Daet, kapa na't kumakalembang na ang kampana. Lahat tao, pati ako, kahit mga sasakyan, umaandar man, aytumitigil para sa sandaling panalangin.

"Nag-aaral ka pa ba?"

Umiling ako. "Proofreader ho ako sa isang magasin."

"E ano naman ang kailangan mo sa akin?"

"Me sinusulat ho akong kuwento."

Hindi noon, kundi sa sumusunod pang mga araw walang sawa kong pagbalik-balik kay Tatang sa mentel "^P1^1' nagsimula ang walang tigil niyang pag-amin sa kanyang naging napakalaking pagkakamaling natutuhan niya sa pagkakapaslang sa tauhan niya sa Lapiang Malaya't sa Ipagkakakulong niya. Paulit-ulit, sa !oob ng maraming ay pipilitin niyang maintindihan ko, na, hindi lang pala sapat ang gutom upang mag-alsa't tumutol sa pang-aapi ng kasalukuyang sistema, kailangan din kapangyarihan sa dulo ng baril at itak. Ill Uhti-unting mawawala sa mukha niya ang dating amo at ang hahalili'y ang determinasyon ng isang nakaunawa na.

Noon daw niya unang naisip, ano na nga ba ang naituro niya sa kanyang mga kasamahang dumayo pa muiang Kabikulan upang idaing ang kahungkagan kanilang mga sikmura't isipan, ano nga ba?

Wala, amang, wala kundi pagmamahal, pagmamahal lamang sa kapwa't pagsamba sa Diyos. Saka mga pamahiin. Dapat, aniya, na sana'y nakiisa ang Lapiang Malaya sa mas malaki pang kilusan noon ng manggagawa't magsasaka, dapat sana'y nakaigpaw pa ang pang-unawa nila sa kalagayan ng bansa mula sa isang akala nila'y mesiyas na kagaya ni Tatang, hilot at tagagawa ng mga anting-anting, tagabigay ng tinapay at tagaalo kapag nagdadalamhati sila. Pero ano ang magagawa ko noon? daing ni Tatang. Ang nalalaman ko lamang ay araw-gabing nagtitinda ng bangos ang asawa ko sa palengke, at sinalubong ng mga sundalo ng gobyerno ang mga tauhan kong walang dala-dala kundi bdo at anting-anting. At mga hungkag na sikmura.

Isinalaysay niya na isang gabi'y naalimpungatan siya't nagising, nang maalala niyang nakalimutan niya ang tuwing hatinggabi'y ginagawang pagdarasal. Kaya bumangon siya. Sa ngalan ng Deyos Ama, Deyos Ena, Deyos Espiritu Santong Wagas... saka napalunok siya, anong nangyayari sa kanya, nakalimutan niya ang sariling dasal na Itinuro sa mga kasamahan. Deyos Espiritung Wagas... Deyos.,. Deyos Omnipotente? Nahiga siyang muli, pinilit na huwag mabalisa. Makapagdasal muli. Pero natagpuan na lamang niya ang sariling nakasandig ang ulo sa dingding, nakamata na lamang sa pagdaraan ng mga alaala ng mga nakaraang pagkakamali sa buhay niya. Noong bata pa siya't sa panahon ng rebolusyon ay isang magdaragat ang ama niyang napatay nang di kinukusang mapasabak sa labanan. Noong ampunin siya ng isang pari, pag-aralin sa seminaryo't isang dapithapon ay pagpakitaan ni Hesukristo, nagtatanong sa kanya, ba't ka andtto. Valentin, nasa labas ang mga nagugutom at nangangailangan sila ng iyong tulong, ikaw, Valentin, ang pangalawang Mesiyas. Noong maghubad siya ng sirtana, at maging boksingero, at habang nakikipaglaban ay napaudlot, naisipang ba't ba niya kinakaaway ang isang kapwa niya naghahanapbuhay, at di na makaganti sa walang tigil na kasusuntok ng kalaban habang ang asawa niya'y walang tigil pa rin sa umaga't hapong pagtitinda ng bangos sa palengke. Noong sa paghahangad na makita kung sa papaanong paraan siya higit na makatutulong sa mga kababayan ay kumandidato siya sa pagkapangulo laban kay Carios P. Garcia sa platapormang anti-imperyalismong Amerikano. At matalo siya. Noong anim na.sa pitong anak.niya ang sunud-sunod na mangamatay-anong salot ito, panaghoy ng asawa niya-at Isa-isa niyang tanggaping parang tunay na mga anak ang parami nang paraming mga kababayang dumayo pa mulang probinsiya upang sa kanya'y magpahilot at magpagamot. 0 di kaya'y upang tingnan ang kanyang kamisetang di nilalabhan dahil umano'y sa pamamagitan lamang nito niya nakakausap si Hesukristo. 0 di kaya'y upang makinig sa mga itinuturo niyang dasal, at tuloy ay umanib sa itinatag niyang Lapiang Malaya. Napakarami nila, doon na natutulog, sa labas ng kanilang bahay sa Pasay, sa mga bangketa, sa bunton ng mga dalang balutan ng damit, pagkatapos ng Hang gabing pagnonobena sa kabilugan ng buwan, mga matatanda karamihan, lyong mga di na makaugaod sa kahirapan, mga magsasaka at mangingisda at manggagapas at sastre at panday at karplntero na ayon kay Tatang ay pawang di na nakatiis sa hirap ng buhay sa probinsiya, at dito sa lungsod ay naghanap ng mapapanganlungan, ng isang simpleng kaayusang maiintindihan nila't tatanggap sa kanila. Lahat sila'y napapagod, at naroroon si Tatang upang tanggapin sila.

Kinausap sila ni Tatang. At sapagkat sila'y pawang di nakalampas ng ikatlong grado sa elementarya, walang binanggit si Tatang kundi mga bagay na madaling maintindihan, na kagaya ng Diyos at palengke at kulog at kanin. Hanggang sa ang makita niya'y libu-libo, libu-libong buhat sa buong kapuluan ay papalapit sa kanya, napakukupkop.

"Ang nakita ko sa mga mukha nila, amang, e si Inang."

Una kong nakilala si Ricky sa mga pahlna ng Pitlptno Free Press. Naasiwa ako sa kanyang parianagalog (noon ko lamang nasimulang mamalayan na ang NOTES Wikang Pambansa pala ay nagbabago na), na hindi lagi umaayon sa kinagawiang personal na gamit ko sa Tagalog. Ang pagkaasiwang iyon ay madaling nahalinhan ng paghanga sa eksperimental na pagbubuo niya ng mga talata, na nagpahiwatig ng mapangahas na pagtatangkang hutukin ang lengguwahe ayon sa pangangailangan ng tema at karakter. Na epektibo ang kanyang eksperimento ay naging katunayan para sa akin, nang hindi ko namamalayan ay pinaluha ako ng kuwento ni Dong sa "Dapithapon ng Isang Mesiyas." Hinanap ko ang dahilan kung bakit ganoon ang naging tugon ko sa kuwento, at nagagap ko tyon sa mga pangungusap na hitik sa mga detalyeng habang nagpapalalim sa tema ay kumukurot sa damdamin at alaala. Pinahanga rip ako ng istruktura ng mga kahulugang maingat na pinaglangkap-langkap at pinagsuson- suson. Narito, wika ko, ang isang manunulat na ayaw paawat, desididong mag-iwan ng sariling tatak sa malMing kuwento ng kanyang henerasyon.

Nang magkapulitika si Ricky, tinalikdan niya nang walang kaabog-abog ang anyo ng mga kuwentong papaloob ang takbo. Upang maihatid nang buong linawang mensaheng pampulitika, hinawan niya ang masalimuot na istruktura at ginawang payak ang retorika. Ang resulta: "81 Tatang, si Freddie, si Tandang Senyong at Iba Pang Tauhan ng Aking Kuwento." Isa Kong pagsusuri ng awtor sa kanyang sarlli bilang manunulat at pagsusuri na rin sa lipunang kanyang tinalikdan at muling binalikan. Sa "Si Tatang" pa man ay may mga palatandaan nang nasisikipan na si Ricky sa lipunan ng kanyang maikling kuwento. Nakalaya si Ricky sa pahina nang pasukin niya ang pagsusulat para sa pelikuia. Makallang beses nang nagbanta siyang lisanin Ito, pero naroroon.pa rin slya't nagtitiyaga sa mga assignment niya. Oo nga, mahirap humanap ng ikabubuhay sa ating panahon, pero sapalagay ko hindi hanapbuhay lamang ang pumipigil sa kanya. Naroroon ang "iba pang tauhan" ng kanyang kuwento na magagawang buhayin lamang sa maluwag na daigdig ng iskrip pampelikula. Para sa ibang kuwentista, ang susunod na hakbang ay tungo sa nobela. lilang manunulat ang nagkakapalad tulad ni Ricky. Nakasumpong siya ng ibang daigdig at pinupuno pa niya iyon hg mga taong makasabay niya sa paglalakbay.

BIENVENIDO LUMBERA

"Ang Ina n'yo?"

"Oo."

Maamo raw ang mga mata ng kanyang ina. Makipot ang bibig. Di makasulat ng sariling pangalan at natataranta makakita lamang ng puti, pagkalalaki r naman, pagkalalaki. Sa isang panahon ng kabataan ni Tatang ay tumakbo siyang payakap dito noon, nakakorto't sabit ang schodbag sa likuran, Inang, Inang, bagong lesson namin sa eskuwela, turo ng mga 'Merkano, demokrasya raw ang bagay sa Piliplnas. Pero namilog lamang ang mga mata nito't ngumiting walang naiintindihan. Saka nagpatuloy sa panunulsi. Demokrasya, Nang, demokrasya raw, teka, isusulat ko. Pero pangiti-ngiti lang na ginusot ng ina ang buhok niya, saka bumalik sa pagsusulsi.

Kaya nang malaunan, nang itatag niya ang Lapian, sa mga mukha ng mga dukha't matatandang probinsiyanong sumasapi'y may pagkasentimental na makikita niya ang ina. Dahil ang gusto niya noo'y isa lamang lipunang magtuturo sa kanyang ina at sa mga kagaya nito na magsulat ng sariling pangalan. Noong una'y nagtatanong pa siya sa mga sumasali sa lapian. Sino ang tinyente del baryo senyo, mabait ba siya? (Tinyente del baryo? sino ba 'yon?) Alam n'yo ba kung anong katraiduran ang ginawa at ginagawa sa atin ng mga Amerikano? Anong grado ba'ng gatapos n'yo? (Three lang naman, Tatang, kaya nga usto kong makatapos 'long si Boy ko, ang bobo aman, 'yung si Bebot nga ng kapitbahay namin, onse anyos pa lang pero kung maka-lngles mo e anak ng Kano.) Anong palagay n'yo sa obyerno nl Marcos? Pero di malaunan ay tumigil na in siya sa pagtatanong sa mga taong itong ni di lakaaamoy ng peryodiko't nagsakripisyo ngayong lumiyahe't gumasta makarinig lang ng isang klase ng angarap na simple at di masyadong komplikado't naiintindihan nila: pagkain para sa lahat.

At ang mga simpleng taong ito, ang mga gutom at napamahiing taong (to, ang isang madaling araw natapos magnobena, ay pinagbabaril ng mga PC, iindi, hindi, hindi kami tatablan ng bala, sabi sa amin Tatang ay anting-anting daw ang dala namin. Kaya valang nagawa ang mga ito kundi ang magkikisay na mahg sa gilid ng mga bangketa't malugmok sa ng kapwa kasaping nakatimbuwang na rin sa anal, hawak-hawak pa rin ang umano'y nting-anting na binasbasan ni Tatang. Sapagkat siyang ttinuro sa mga ito kundi pagmamahal, Pagpapakumbaba at pagmamahal sa kapwa. Saka ng mga pamahiin.

At iyon, iyon ang kanyang naging napakalaking agkakamali. Paano mo mababago ang isang stema sa pamamagitan lamang ng bolo't ng walang amang sikmura? Paano mo pababagsakin ang isang obyerno sa pamamagitan ng isang dasal?

3. Hulyo 4, flores para los yuertos.

Dumating ang panahong Isang hapon, nang ako sa harap ng makinilya matapos pagkulong sa kuwarto, ay natuklasan kong agbabago na ang pananaw ko, dl ko na napanghawakan ang mga nakagawian kong paraan pagsusulat, ni di ako makapagsulat ngayon. alilitong napasugod ako sa coffee shop, at doon. Rol, inihanap ko ng kasagutan ang pagkalito.

"Sobra ka naman, Rico," anila sa akin. "Kalimutan o na ang kuwentong iyan. Baka kung ano na ang nuturo sa'yo ng Tatang na iyon."

"At paano'ng pustahan?"

H Pinipigil ni Rol ang mapabulalas ng tawa. "Di mo la alam, matagal na naming napagpasiyahan ditong nang ituloy ang pustahan. Hinanap ka namin lag! ka raw wala sa bahay ngayon, dinidibdib mo ta ang research mo sa Lapiang Malaya a."

"Interesado pa rin ako sa kuwento.''

"Di ituloy mo ang sinusulat mo," ani Freddie.

"At ikaw? Magdadalawang taon ka nang walang naisusulat."

"Mayroon ako ngayon. Tungkd ke Papa. Ipababasa ko sa'yo pag natapos."

Matagal nang paulit-ulit na sinasabi ni Freddie na may sinusulat siyang kuwento tungkd sa Papa niyang asendero Pero wala siyang rnatapus-tapos. DI na ako kumibo.

Naramdaman ko ang hininga ni Freddie sa kaliwang tainga ko. "Takbo tayo sa labas," bulong niya. "Tumakbo tayo nang tumakbo sa kalsada hanggang sa maktta nating sumikat ang araw."

"Ano?"

Biglang umatras ang ulo ni Freddie, at nakita ko, nakaramdam agad siya ng hinanakit. "Wala," aniya. Pero nagsuspetsa na ako. Depressed na naman kaya siya? Karaniwan na sa akin ang mga pabigla-biglang pasiya ni Freddie kapag sinusumpong siya ng di maintindihang kapanglawan, takbo tayo, pustahan tayo, sige na, suntukin mo ako, sige na naman o. At karaniwan na rin sa akin ang mga hatinggabing hahangos na lamang sa tirahan ko si Freddie, walang tigil ng kahahagod ng buhok sa noo, sinasabing nakaistorbo raw ba siya, napadaan lang naman siya, wala naman talaga siyang kailangan, wala, talagang wala. At kapag pinilit mo'y biglang mapapabulalas ng hikbi, tulungan mo ako, Rico, tulungan mo ako, kanlna'y takot na takot ako, akala ko'y di kita daratnan dito, tulungan mo ako.

"Kailangan mo ng tulong?" bulong ko kay Freddie. "Nagbago ka na," aniya. Saka niya Ibinaling ang tingin sa baso ng beer. "Sino 'yong matandang nakita namin sa kuwarto mo?" tanong ni Rol. Natawa ako. "A, si Tandang Senyong. Dati raw siyang tauhan ng Lapiang Malaya. Baka kako makatulong sa kuwento ko, kaya sa amin ko na muna pinatuloy." "Tandang Senyong?" Napakunut-noo si Tatang nang bumalik ako sa Mental.

"Oho. Me kasapi ba kayong ganoon?" Umiling si Tatang.

"Kung sa bagay ho, di 'yun ang tunay niyang pangalan."

Ikinuwento ko na tuloy kung paano ko natagpuan si Tandang Senyong. Kung papaanong isang hapon sa laging pagpunta-punta ko sa mga lugar na malapit sa kinamatayan noon ng mga Lapiang Malaya sa Pasay ay nakita ko sa hagdan ng isang bahay doon, nakaupong siksik ang ulo sa tuhod, nanginginig sa di ko mawawaang takot sa kung anong di makita sa paligid, halos hubad ang katawang natatakpan lamang ng punit-punit na pantalon, magpipitumpo na marahil, si Tandang Senyong. Ipinakilala siya sa akin ng isang kapftbahay doon. Natagpuan daw na umiiyak sa bunton ng mga bangkay ng kasapi ng Lapiang Malaya noong madaling araw ng Mayo 21 Pero di naman malaman kung sino doon ang iniiyakan dahil ayaw magsalita kapag tinatanong, at palipat-lipat lang sa mga bangkay doon, lahat ay iniiyakan, hinahagod ang mukha. Muntik na tuloy mahuli ng mga PC kung di pa naitago ng isang kapitbahay.

Mula noon ay naging pangkaraniwang tanawin na siya sa lugar na iyon. Kung saan siya abutin ng tanghali'y doon pinakakain. Kung saan abutin ng gabi'y doon pinatutulog. Kung nakakatulog nga siya. Dahil kung mga gabi'y wala naman siyang ginagawa kundi humikbi. Laging itinataghoy ang isang mahabang litanya ng mga pangalan. Mga pangalan ng kung sinu-sinong napatay sa kalsada noon. Igme, Juan, Jose, Romulo, Anton, por diyos por santo, Igme, Julian, Miguel, putang gobyerno, Miguel, Jose, Anton, Igme ... Ang mga tagaroon na ang nagbinyag sa kanya ng Tandang Senyong.

Nang hapong iyong makita ko siya'y naalala ko ang mga sinabi sa akin ni Tatang tungkol sa mga probinsiyanong kasapi ng Lapiang Malaya, at ipinasiya kong sa bahay ko na muna patuluyin si

Tandang Senyong, baka makatulong pa sa materyal ng kuwento ko. Pero mula umaga hanggang gabi'y tahimik lang siyang mauupo sa isang sulok. Di kakain kung di mo hilahin, kain ho kayo, kahit lugaw, ang payat n'yo na. Di magbibihis kung di mo pilitin, sige na ho, bagong bili ko "to sa inyo, medyo masikip nga lang ho 'ata. Di mahihiga kung di mo batakin buhat sa laging pagkakaupo sa sulok, kagat-kagat ang anting-anting niya na anang kapitbahay niya noon ay bigay daw sa kanya ni Tatang. Nawalan daw ito ng bisa nang paslangin sa Pasay ang mga kasamahan niya, at lagi niyang dala-dala ngayon dahil hinihintay niya ang panunumbalik ng bisa.

Kapag nagngunguyngoy na si Tandang Senyong kung gabi'y aaluin ko siya pero susukot lang siyang lalo sa dingding, takot na takot sa kung anong di ko makita sa hangin, yakap-yakap ang sariling katawang patpatin na halos ay isang mahabang hibia na lamang ng buto at laman na may mga latay pa't pilat ng tama ng latigong nakuha niya marahil sa pagiging isang magsasaka. Wala pa ring tigil sa katataghoy ng pangalan ng mga napatay sa Pasay noon.

Isang hapon ay dinala ko siya kay Tatang sa Mental Hospital. Nagtago siya sa likuran ko, naglalaway. Di niya nakilala si Tatang. Di rin siya nito kinilala.lnilapit ko siyang pilit dito at ipinaliwanag kong muli ang mga pangyayari noon, pero ako na rin ang napatigil sa pagsasalita, matagal lamang silang nagtinginan, walang imikan, talagang di magkakilala. At noon ako nainis kay Tandang Senyong, naisip na nalinlang niya ako. Kailanman ay di siya naging kasapi ng Lapiang Malaya.

At naisip kong mabuti pa siguro'y ipakulong ko na lang siya sa mental hospital. Doon naman talaga siya; nababagay.

4. Hulyo 29, at kung mag- susulat ka tungkol sa pang- aapFy kaninong panig ka?

Nang sabihin ko isang gabi kay Tandang Senyong na ibibigay ko na siya sa mental hospital, nang sabihin kong magkakasama sila roon ni Tatang, at nang ipakita ko sa kanya ang mga binalot kong damit, niya, nagpakita siya ng reaksiyon sa kauna-unahang pagkakataon magmula nang kunin ko siya. Matigas siyang umiling-iling, tumitilapon ang uhog sa ilong at namimilog ang mga mata. Pinakakain ko siya ngunit ayaw. Pinatutulog ngunit bumangon din. At isang gabi, nang umuwi ako'y Iniabot niya sa akin ang tsinelas ko, pinaupo niya ako sa sopa, at sa laki ng pagtataka ko'y nagsalita siya.

Ang isinalaysay niya'y ang buhay ng libong mga magsasakang katulad niya'y nagdumugan dito sa Maynila't sumali sa iapian ni Tatang. Wala siyang matandaang tiyak na lugar, at tiyak na panahon, pero alam niya kung ilang magsasaka ang natagpuang patay sa isang kanal sa Kabikulan bilang reaksyon ng asendero sa reklamo nilang panggagahasa ng anak nito sa isang tagabaryo; alam niya kung ano ang kinain ng kanyang anak isang gabing di na ito nakatiis ng gutom at lumabas sa tumana; at kung ilang bangkay uli ang natagpuang nakatimbuwang sa talahiban nang magpulong upang magkaisa-isa ang mga magsasaka sa nayon at karatig-nayon. Magdamag siyang nagsalita, walang tigil na hinahabi ang kasaysayan ng pagkaapi ng kanyang mga kababaryo na ang ibang di na makatiis ay lumuwas ng Maynila't nang malamang masahol pa pala rito kaysa sa nayon ay sumapi sa Lapiang Malaya ni Tatang. Sapagkat matatanda silang di mapalagay at takot sa komplikadong galaw ng lipunang di nila maintindihan. At ilan sila sa mga tinuruan ni Tatang ng pagmamahat, ng pagmamahal sa kapwa't ng pagpapakumbaba. Ng paglaban sa mga karbin at armalayt ng mga PC sa pamamagitan ng bolo't pagdaing ng sikmurang gutom.

Habang nagsasalita si Tandang Senyong ay walang tigil naman ako ng kasusulat, kasusulat nang kasusulat sa lahat ng mga sinasabi niyang para sa akin ay mga karit at kamao at dugo at talahiban at masinggang magiging mga tauhan ng gagawin kong kuwento.

Kayat di ko napigilan ang pagsilakbo ng galit ko isang gabi nang maratnan kong umliyak na naman si Tandang Senyong, habang sa harapan niya'y nagkalat, pun'rt-punit na't wala nang pag-asa pang mapagtagni-tagnl, ang mga manuskrito kong sinulat tungkol sa mga karanasang ikinuwento niya. At ang Isinisigaw niya, nangangatal sa dalamhati, ay ang dating por diyos por santo, Igme, Julian, Anton, Jose, putang gobyerno, Igme, Julian, Anton, Jose...

At sa gayo'y nakallmutan ko ang sarili ko, at sinunggaban ko siya sa bisig, 'rtinayong pilit ang napakagaang na katawan, hanggang sa mapalitan ng sindak ang mga gatia ng dalamhati sa mukha niya at mapanganga siyang naglalaway sa pagkabigia, napasukot na lalo sa dingding nang isalya ko siya rito, at walang tigil nang nag-iiyak nang hablutin ko sa pagkakasaklot ntya ang anting-anting niya. At noon siya nanlaban. Buong tatag na inipon ang natitira pang lakas ng kanyang mahigit na pitumpong taong katawang patpatin at nanlaban siya, nangalmot, nangagat, nanipa, nandaluhong na parang isang hayop upang mabawi ang kanyang anting-anting na itinataas naman ng kanang kamay ko sa hangin. Napuno ng uhog niya't laway at luha ang aking katawan, nanghina na ako't naisip kong ano bang kahangalan itong ginagawa ko sa isang matanda, pero kailanman ay di ko ibinaba ang kanan kong kamay, nakapagpasimula na ako sa pakikipaglaban sa kanya at di na ako maaari pang umurong.

Kaya nanatili akong walang nararamdaman maging nang humihingal na habulin niya ang paghinga. Maging nang manginig na ang kanyang katawan sa suko sa langit na galif. Maging nang mawalan na ng kontrol at katuturan ang pagbangga niya ng manipis na katawan sa akin. Maging nang sa wakas ay parang asong uungul-ungol at pahagu-hagulgol na lamanana umurong siya palayo't muling naupong nakasukot sa kanyang sulok.

Kinaumagahan noon, di ko na siya nakita pa. Sa sahig, lahat ng ibinigay kong damit at tsinelas at sipiiyo at komiks ay iniwan niyang lahat, kung di punit-punit ay sira-sirang nagkalat. Kasama ng mga ito'y ang mga pahlna ng manuskrito kong pinagpasta-pasta ng mga butil ng kanin na pinagtiyagaan niya marahll, sa isang bugso ng pagsisisi, na maipantagni. Mali nga lang ang pagkakadik'rt-dikit ng mga pahina. Di marunong bumasa si Tandang Senyong at bali-baligtad ang lumabas na mga letra't salita.

Noon muling umahon sa dibdib ko ang dati-rati kong pagnanasang tumakas na naman sa lahat ng komplikadong bagay na ito, magkulong na lamang sa coffee shop kasama sina Rol at Bong at Freddie, magpatianod sa pagkaawang muli sa sarili't malunod sa sariling luha, maghintay na tuluyang mamatay ang napakagandang kandila sa mesa. Pero napakarami ko nang natutunan kay Tatang at sa pakikisangkot ko sa mga materyal ko, at alam kong kailanman ay di na ako maaari pang tumakas na lang nang tumakas sa katotohanan.

Noon ko rin naunawaan kung bakit naging halos obsesyon ko na angwiatin ang kuwento tungkol sa Lapiang Malaya at kay Tatang sa Mental Hospital: ako at si Bong at si Rol at si Freddie at ang mga kasapi ng Lapiang Malaya at si Tatang at si Tandang Senyong, lahat kaming mga posibleng tauhan ng gagawin kong kuwento'y walang pinag-ibhan. Pare-pareho kami. Lahat kami ay pawang tumatakas sa lipunan, naduwag na lumaban sa isang mapang-aping sistema, pero sa pagtakas sa sistemang ito ay nakulong naman sa isa pang uri ng kulungan, tawagin mo man 'rtong coffee shop o Lapiang Malaya o Mental Hospital. Sina Rol at Freddie at Bong ang aking Lapiang Malaya. At ang coffee shop ang aming mental hospital.

Maguguluhan pa rin ako noon, kung sa bagay. Sa mesa ko'y nagkalat na ang unang mga pahina ng kuwento ko, pero bawat gabing maupo ako'y laging hanggang doon na lang. Di ko matapus-tapos ang kuwento ko. Natukiasan ko na habang nagsusulat ako'y nagbabago naman ang mga materyal ko. Ang Tatang na isinulat ko sa unang pahina'y di na ang Tatang na nakausap ko sa huli kong pagpunta sa Mental. At maging ako man, natuklasan kong simbilis ng pagtipa ko ng makinilya ang pagbabago ng pananaw ko't paniniwala.

Ang dati kong pagnanasang sa isang kuwento'y makapagiahad ng isang taiagang indibidwal na pangunahing tauhan, isang memorableng tauhang may mga naiibang katangiang di makakalimutan ng mga mambabasa, ay wala na ngayon. imposible na nga ngayon. Sapagkat di ko na matingnan ngayon si Tatang bilang tauhan ko, o ang mga kasapi niyang pinaslang, o si Tandang Senyong, o si Freddie, nang di ko naiisip ang kanilang mga ginagawa sa lipunan. Nang-aapi ba sila, o sila ang inaapi? Tumatakas ba sila o tinatakasan?

Pero mabuway ang mga unang hakbang sa pagpipilit makaunawa. May mga gabi rin namang malalamukos ko ang mga manuskrito kong di matapus-tapos, at magtatanong ako sa sarili, ano talaga rito ang tama, at ano talaga rito ang mail? Saka humahangos na darating sina Ro! at Bong ibabalitang nakipag-away na naman daw sa kalsada si Freddie, iyong payatot na iyon, talung-talo na ng mga maton ay wala pa ring tigil ng kababangga ng palpating katawan sa mga kalaban, umiiyak na'y nakikipaglaban pa fin. At lalo ak-ong maguguluhan.

5. Agosto 23, araw at buwan ng isang pugad- lawin

Nang isang unyon ang 'rtatag sa aming palimbagan ay bagu-bago pa iamang sa akin ang mga katagang kagaya ng collective bargaining o unfair labor practice, o scabs. Pero nakikita ko ang punto ng mga manggagawa nang sabihin nilang sa walong oras isang araw na paggamd niia ng mga mata sa tanglaw ng nangingitim nang bombilya, sa pasahod na kulang pa sa minimum, ay waring unti-unti nang sinisipsip ang dugo't laman nila ng makinang kanilang pinaaandar. Kaya sumaii ako.

"De pawelga-welga ka na pala ngayon," napapatawa si Rol.

"Oo."

"Kung anu-ano pala'ng itinuro sa'yo ni Tatang, ano?"

Di na ako kumibo.

Kung saan-saan napunta ang usapan, sa mga demonstrasyong dumadalas na noon, sa nangyaring

panggagahasa kay Maggie deia Riva, sa pagkatay kay Lucila Lalu, sa mga mang-aawit na banyagang Simon and Garfunkel na kinalolokohan ni Freddie, sa mabilis na pagtatapos ng taong 1967. "Ang bilis-bilis," ani Freddie, na akala mo'y ang baso ang kinakausap. "alis nang alis ang mga araw, wala namang iniiwan."

Saka balik sa mga tanong nila sa akin. na akala mo'y isa akong kakatwang nilalang na napadpad sa coffee shop.

"Paano ako makapagsusulat tungkol sa mga pangyayari kung di naman ako makikisangkot doon," pagtatanggol ko.

"Paano mong maisusulat ang isang bagay kung kasama ka rito at walang aesthetic distance?" ani Rol naman.

"At sinong magkakagustong magbasa tungkol sa mga luku-lukong gaya ni Tata Senyong at Tatang, o kaya e sa weiga?" ani Bong naman.

"Sawang-sawa na ako sa mga pinagsusulat ko noon." aniko, "mga dapithapon, mga inaagiw na

mansyon, mga batang di lumalaki-Iaki. Gusto ko namang makapagsulat tungkol sa'mga totoo nang nangyayari, hind! iyong mga kuwentong pampamilya lang."

"At sinong me sabing ang mga kuwento ko e pampamilya lang?"galit kaagad si Freddie.

"Freddie, dl puwedeng habang buhay e..."

Tinalikuran niya ako.

Lalo akong naggugol ng panahon sa piket sa aming palimbagan. Ang dating panahong ibinababad ko lagi noon sa coffee shop ay nahati sa pakikipag-usap ko kay Tatang sa Mental Hospital, sa pakikihalubilo ko sa mga manggagawa ng aming paiimbagan. Saka kung mga gabing aalis sandali sa aming piket, nililibot ko ang mga kalyehon ng Pasay, dala-dala sa dibdib ay ang pagsisisi sa ginawa ko kay Tandang Senyong, at umaasam na muli ko siyang matatagpuang nakaupo sa isang hagdan doon, nakasiksik ang ulo sa dalawang tuhod, iniiyakan uli ang mga pinasiang sa kaisada ng Pasay. Di na ako makapagsusulat pa muna. Di na makapagsusulat pa hanggang isang hapon, nang hangos akong pumanhik ng bahay nina Tatang sa Pasay at doon, sa sala nila, ay datnan ko ang pagkarami-raming mga naka'rtim na mga kasapi ng " Laplang Malaya, Him sa buong sala, itim sa lahat ng

dingding, itim sa telang nakabalot sa kabaong. At itim, Him ang mga gatia at sugat at kalmot sa mukha ni Tatang na ang kamao, kahit sa kamatayan, ay nakakuyom pa rin sa pagtutol.

"Ipinabugbog si Tatang sa mental hospital, hanggang sa mamatay," aniko kina Freddie sa coffee shop matapos ang aking pakikipaglamay.

"Bakit naman gagawin iyon ng gobyerno?" tanong ni Freddie.

"Sapagkat kagaya ng mga tauhan niyang pinasiang noong a-beinte uno ng Mayo ay tumututol din siya, tumututol pa rin siya sa sistema."

"Di ka namin maintindihan," umiling si Rol.

"Sapagkat ayaw n'yo akong intindihin. Hang ulit na akong nagpapaliwanag sa inyo, pero mas gusto n'yo pang magbumabad dito sa coffeeshop. Mahirap daw gisingin ang nagtutulug-tuiugan."

Naghihinanakit na sumandig sl Rol sa dingding. "Nagbago ka na nga. PatI tono ng pagsasalita mo ngayon, ibang-iba na rin. Ano bang ginawa sa'yo ng sinusulat mong kuwento kay Tatang? Pati raw'long coffee shop ko binabatikos mo na rin sa mga sinusulat mo sa magasin n'yo. Kesyo umasenso ka na't staff writer na."

"Hindi."

"Anong hindi. Ano ba talaga ang nangyari? Nagpustahan tayo isang Mayo beinte uno, dahil nakakita tayo ng maraming patay sa kaisada. Saka umatras kami, laro lang naman iyon. Pero ikaw, maski anong gawin mo, ginagawa mong totohanan. Ba't mo 'to ginagawa sa amin, Rico, ba't mo kami nilalayuan ngayon?"

"Di rin kita maintindihan, Rol, pero isang bagay ang naiintindihan ko na ngayon. At totoong may Hkinalaman dito sina Tatang at ang welga sa aming opisina. Sawang-sawa na ako sa walang

angyayaring magdamagan nating pagbubumabad sa iyong shop, nagbibilang ng mga bote ng beer,

nagkukuwentuhan ng mga hinagpis, na paulit-ulit naman, salita nang salita tungkol sa mga obra inaestrang isusulat pero wala namang maibuga kundi pulos buntung-hininga. Gusto ko namang may magawa, may maitulong sa iba."

ye, Parang pagong na umusad ang mga sandaii at nag-alumpihit ako sa upuan. Muling nagkuwento si gpreddie, di na mapigilan, tunQkol sa obra maestrang sinusulat niya, honest talaga, Rico, meron, gusto ko patunayan ke Papa na may mangyayari din naman sa akin kahit wala siya. Nakamata lang naman Bong sa kisame at pinaiikut-ikot naman ni Rol ang sa yelo sa baso ng beer. Saka bigia na lamang, laramdaman kong nakayupyop na sa baiikat ko si reddie, ang iyaking si Freddie, humahagulgol, niyuyugyog ang buong katawan. Gusto ko uling makapagsuiat, brod, singhot niya, gusto ko uling makapagsulat'.

Nang gabing iyon, apat na taon na ang nakalilipas, ng kamatayan ni Tatang, lumabas ako ng coffee na kasama si Freddie, at di na kami bumaiik pa. at nagsimula ang iahat sa pagtalikod ko sa coffee shop. Kasama ang susuray-suray na si Freddie, na namumula na sa kalasingan at

hihikbi-hikbi pa rin noong gabing iyon. Dinala ko siya amin. Pinahihiga ko siya sa kama noon, pero Jmatigas ang ulong umiling-lling siya. Parang si Tandang Senyong. Pinaupo ko siya, pinunasan, kiriuwentuhan nang Kinuwentuhan. Tungkol sa napakabait na si Tatang at sa ginawa niyang pagkupkop sa mga matatandang probinsiyanong kagaya ni Tandang Senyong. Tungkol sa aming Sbayan sa BIkol at sa mga relihiyosang manang nito. Tungkol sa pagkababait na mga kasamahang manggagawa sa welga namin sa paiimbagan. Tungkol sa kuwento kong di ko pa rin matapus-tapos dami ng mga natutuklasan kong bagong kaalamang nais kong mailagay doon. Tungkol sa isang samahan ng mga progreslbong manunuiat na kong samahan para '.along makatuiong ako sa pagbabago ng isang sistemang nang-api sa mga Tatang at Tandang Senyong at mga kapwa ko nagtatrabaho sa aming magasin.

Saka napatigil ako, nagsasalita si Freddie, paputol-putol, parang bata na nakalungayngay ang

sa baiikat habang sumusubo ang bibig sa alak. ikinukuwento na lumayas siya sa kanilang asyenda, di na siya babalik pa. Nakaaway daw niya ang Papa niya nang bugbugin nito sa harapan niya ang isang kasama. Bago nahambalos ng Papa niya ang matandang kasama'y nadaluhong na niya ang Papa niya, at naitulak. Humihingal ang matabang katawang

napasadsad ito sa dingding. Tumilapon sa sahig ang kuwako. Saka di makapaniwalang napatingala na lamang sa anak.

"Di na ako uuwi pa sa amin," ani Freddie. Kinaumagahan noon, apat na taon na ang nakararaan, isiiiama ko siya sa aming welga, sa aming welga na maaring natalo nga, na kagaya ng

kadalasang nangyayari, sapagkat lahat kami sa paiimbagan ay pawang nagsisimula pa Samang matuto ng mga ganitong bagay, at ang management ay may mga katuiong na puittiko sa gobyerno't napakadaii sa kaniia ang paghakot ng mga tatuang scabs na sumira sa aming welga. Pero ang mga natutuhan ko at ni Freddie sa iiang iinggong pagwewelgang iyon, at maging ang mga natutuhan din ng mga kasama kong manggagawa doon, ang natutuhan namin sa isa't isa. ay di matutumbasan, naisip namin, ng ilan taon mang pagbabasa ng magasing iyon. Lalo na sa amin ni Freddie, na bilang manunulat ay noon pa iamang, 1967 at noon pa lamang, gumawa ng mga una naming mabubuway na paghakbang sa pagkamulat.

1967 noon at 1971 na ngayon. Sa pagitan ng mga taong umusad ay napakaraming pangyayari ang

pumagitna, pero para sa akin, at kahit na kay Freddie, kailanman ay di natabunan ang alaala nina Tatang at ng unang larawan ng pang-aaping sinagisag niya sa akin. Napakarami na rin naman ng mga kuwentong nasuiat ko mula noon, at may mga gabi, kapag himbing na himbing na si Freddie, sa pagkakaupo ko sa harap ng makinilya ay muling sisibasibin ako ng pagnanasang sana'y makita kong muli si Tandang Senyong, sana'y maakbayan ko siyang muli para maipaunawa ko sa kanyang nagsisisi na ako sa ginawa kong paggamit, at pagsasamantaia, sa kanya noon, para maipaunawa rin sa kanyang aiam ko na ngayong higit na mahalaga kaysa sa materyal ng kuwento't sa pinunit na manuskrito ay ang tao, ang tao.

Kahapon, napagawi kami nl Freddie sa kaisada ng. Pasay na kinapasiangan sa mga tauhan ni Tatang noon, upang muling salubungin ang madaling araw doon matapos ang pagsama namin sa isang overnight vigii sa Plaza Miranda para sa mga napatay na demonstrador. Napatigil kami sa harap ng coffee shop ni Rol. Nakasara na ito, at sa malas ay di na mabubuksan pa kailanman. Napakarami nang mga nakapakong playwud sa harapan, na kinasusulatan ng kung anu-anong malalaswang salita. Hang linggo pa lamang ang nakalilipas nang mabalitaan naming ang may-ari nitong si Rol, ang aming si Rol, ay natagpuang patay, parang batang nakasukot, sa Ang sumusunod ay isang diary entry ko noong 1971 matapos ang first draft ng "Si Tatang."

Ang unang kapansin-pansin sigurosa"Si Tatang" ay ang pangyayaring ang binigyang-diin ko

dito ay ang maintindihan ito kaagad. na ang malalabo at maliligoy na paraan ng pagsusulat ko noon. Di na baleng di malaman ng iba kung ito ay maikling kuwento nga o artikulo o talambuhay o reporting o documentary. Ang importante ay may mga sinasabi ako, at maintindihan ito ng babasa. Kaya wala na ring halaga sa akin kung wala sa kuwentong ito ang mga lumang katangian ng isang maikling kuwento na natutunan ko sa mga writing classes: isang unified emotion, halimbawa, o unified plot, o peculiar character na ang buhay lamang niya ang iniikutan ng kuwento. Sa "Si Tatang" ay napakaraming plots, na pawang di naman lubusang binigyang-wakas. Hiwa-hiwalay at yugtu-yugto pero magkakakonekta ang mga pangyayari. Matapos ang bawat pangyayari ay ipinaliliwanag at sinusuri ang kahulugan. Ibig sabihin, matapos ang isang kongkretong aksyon ay isang abstraksyon naman tungkol sa pangyayaring ito. Naipakikita ang praktika sa isang insidente. saka ang abstraksyon nito sa isang teorya. Nagsasanib ang estilong kuwento at journalism. Ang kaibhan nga lang, ang writer sa journalism ay ginawang isang tauhan din sa kuwentong tto, kaya habang sinasala niya ang mga pangyayari sa palibot niya para lalong maintindihan ito ng mambabasa, ay sinasala din siya't sinusuri rig mambabasa. Wala na rin sa "Si Tatang" ang dating baha-bahagdan ng mga pangyayari hanggang sa climax, at saka denouement. Ayaw ko na ng dating pagpupurga ng emosyon ng mambabasa. Di tuloy siya makapag-isip. Masisiyahan na siya at makakahinga pagkatapos ng kuwento. Tapos na pala. E ang totoo'y di pa naman tapes. Simula pa nga lang siguro. Played down ang mga emosyonal na insidente sa kuwento. Paano makapag-iisip nang maayos ang

mambabasa kung nalulunod siya sa emosyon? Kaya sa halip ng dating endlng-binugbog si Tatang sa mental hospital at namatay- pinasadahan lang nang konti ang pagkakabugbog at napunta lahat sa isang rasyonal at parang artikulong pagsusuri sa resulta ng pagbugbog. Pero naririto pa rin ang dating kaisahan ng mensahe sa isang maikling kuwento. Dito, ang tinutukoy ay ang iba't fbang anyo ng karahasan mula sa matagal at di nakikitang karahasan sa mental hospital, hanggang sa subtle at sophisticated na violence ng isang manunulat na gumagamit lamang sa kanyang mga tauhan para sa sarili niyang advancement, hanggang sa violence na hubad at bulgar ng estado, hanggang sa violence sa sarili ng mga escapists sa coffee shop. Ang mgadetalyeng ginamit ko tungkol sa buhay ng narrator na si Rico ay tptoong mga nangyari sa akin. Gayundin ang mga detalye tungkol kay Tatang. Ang fictional ay ang pagtatagpo namin. Nalaman ko na lamang ang nangyari kay Tatang de los Santos

nang mabasa ko sa diyaryo. Nagsaliksik ako at ininterbyu ko ang asawa niya at ibang mga nakasama nfya. Fictional din ang character nl Tandang Senyong.

ilalim ng isang silya doon, uminom ng sobrang sleeping tablets. "Namatay na sila, si Rol at ang coffee shop," aniko habang lumalakad kaming palayo.

"Namatay na ang magandang kandila sa mesa," ani Freddie. "Ang subo ng beer, ang mga gabing ayaw umalis, ang mga tulang umiiyak, wala na silang lahat. Kahit siguro si Bong wala na rin."

"Pero naririto pa rin tayo," aniko.

"At ang mga bagong akda natin," nakatawang wika ni Freddie.

"At ang mga welga at piket."

"At ang mga plakard at demonstrasyon."

"At ang mga kasamahan nating naghihintay sa headquarters."

"At ang Simula ng pagkamulat."

"Paalam," ani Freddie, "paalam sa lahat ng coffee shops sa buong mundo." Saka parang komikong sumaludo pa siya. At nagpatuloy kami ng paglalakad, pabalik sa aming mga kasamahan sa headquarters, apat na taon na sa pagkamulat at maaaring di na muling makakita pa ng Tatang at Tandang Senyong at ng gaya nilang mga tauhan ng aming kuwento - mga tauhan din ng aming pagkamulat - sa mga madaiing araw ng beinte-uno ng Mayo sa aming paglalakad sa

mga kaisada ng Pasay pero panatag na ang aming loob, panatag na ang aming loob sa pagkaunawang nagsimula na, napakaganda't nagsimula na, bilang mga manunulat, ang aming paglaya.

1971

Oktubre 8-15 Asia-Philippines Leader