PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
KAKANGGATA III -- SAMPLER FROM
PHILIPPINE WRITING IN ENGLISH
Compiled by Alberto Florentino from books he originally
published in Manila for 42 years from 1959 to 2001.
Consisting of gems or excerpts from Prose (excerpts of a
short story or novel), Poetry, Plays
(excerpts), and Essays in English.
KAKANGGATA
PREFACE
for all three Kakanggata's:
KAKANGGATA I -- Mga Tulang Tagalog*
KAKANGGATA II -- Mga Tulang Pambata*
KAKANGGATA III -- Philippine Writing in English
(*previously featured in Ilustrado/ManilaPost
website, March-August 2000)
The Kakanggata's Contain Works by
Anonymous Filipino Folk Poets and Bards,
Modern Fictionists and Playwrights,
from the Last Century and Millennium,
Written in Tagalog, Spanish, and English.
Selected / Compiled by Alberto Florentino
from his Peso Books and other series,
Published under his Imprints within forty years
from 1959 to 1999.
Including Little Gems of Poetry—
Tanaga and Ladino Poems, Folk Poems, and
Folk Songs from the Past—to Modern and Contemporary
Short Stories, Novels, and Drama;
by Writers in Tagalog led by Balagtas, in Spanish led by Jose
Rizal, and in English led by Jose Garcia Villa.
Includes Writers
from Fernando Bagongbanta to Virgilio Almario; from Claro M.
Recto—and Nick Joaquin, Paz Marquez Benitez, Francisco
Arcellana, and N.V.M. Gonzalez—to Wilfrido D. Nolledo
& Jose Lacaba.
Works include such titles as:
Ultimo Adios, Anchored Angel,
and stanzas from Florante at Laura;
a chapter and scenes from
Noli Me Tangere and Solo entre las sombras,
and many others too many to enumerate here.
• Prose /
Excerpt
A Chapter from
America Is In The Heart
by Carlos Bulosan
I had cultivated a friendship with a young boy named John
Custer, a patient in another ward. He came to our ward one
morning and looked at me for a long time, as though he were
afraid to talk.
“Will
you do something for me?” he said finally. He fumbled in
his pockets for a piece of writing paper. It’s for my ma
in Arkansas.” I took the paper from him.
“You
just say I’m okay.”
I
started writing to an American mother in Arkansas. She had
never heard of me, and I had never seen her, but her son was
a common bond between us. I was writing to her what I had had
in my mind and heart for years. The words came effortlessly.
I was no longer writing about this lonely sick boy, but about
myself and my friends in America. I told her about the lean,
the lonely and miserable years. I mentioned places and names.
I was not writing to an unknown mother anymore. I was writing
to my own mother plowing in the muddy fields of Mangusmana:
it was the one letter I should have written before. I was
telling about America. Actually, I was writing to all the
unhappy mothers whose sons left and did not return. There
were years to remember, but they came and went away. I was
telling them about those years. Then it was finished.
I
read the letter slowly. When I had finished reading it, he
was crying.
“I
have never learned to write,” he said. “I had no
time for learning in Arkansas.”
I
realized that this poor American boy had worked all his life.
I could have told him then that I had worked all my life,
too. I could have told him that I came from that part of the
country where there were very few schools. I could have told
him that for a long time the world of books was closed to me.
I could have told him that I had been denied the little
things in life that were denied to him. I could have told him
that I had acquired my education by working hard. Yes, I
could have told him because when I looked at him I knew he
would understand.
Before
he left the hospital, I said to him:
“Rediscover
America. You are still young. Someday I will hear from
you.”
“I
will remember what you said,” he said.
“Yes,
John,” I said. “It’s only in giving the best
we have that we can become a part of America.”
“Thanks.”
And he left.
Years
passed and the war came. Then one day I received a letter
from him. He wrote in part:
“I
doubt if you remember me. I met you in the Los Angeles County
Hospital years ago and you wrote a letter for me. I returned
to Arkansas and followed your suggestion. I found a job and
educated myself when I was not working. I have studied
American history, which was your suggestion. Learning to read
and write is knowing America, my country. Knowing America is
actually knowing myself. Knowing myself is also knowing how
to serve my country. Now I’m serving her…”
(pps. 247-48)
• Prose /
Excerpt
The ending of the short story
Dead Stars
by Paz Marquez Benitez
Eight o’clock lugubriously rolled from the bell tower,
found the boat settled into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been
brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be
inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would
walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he picked his
way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven
into the water.
How
peaceful the town was! Here and there a little tienda was
still open, its dim light issuing forlornly through the
single window which served as counter. An occasionaly couple
sauntered by, the women’s chinelas making scraping
sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children
playing games on the street—tubigan perhaps, or
“hawk and chicken.” The thought of Julia Salas in
that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.
How
would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he
meant anything to her? That unforgettable red-and-gold
afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of
incomplete-ness as restless as other unlaid ghosts. She had
not married—why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a
conscious effort at regretful memory.It was something
unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of
irreplaceability. Irrelevant trifles—a cool wind on his
forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a dream—at
times moved him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as
to an insistent, unfinished prayer.
A
few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged
street where the young moon wove indistinct filigrees of
light and shadow. In shadow athwart the low stone wall; and
in the cool, still midnight the cock’s first call rose
in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz.
Somehow
or other, he had known that he would find her house because
she would surely be sitting at the window. Where else, before
bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low and the light
in the sala behind her threw her head into unmistakable
relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid
surprise.
“Good
evening,” he said, raising his hat.
“Good
evening. Oh, are you in town?”
“On
some little business,” he answered with a feeling of
painful constraint.
“Won’t
you come up?”
He
considered. His vague plans had not included this. But Julia
Salas had left the window, calling to her mother as he did
so. After a while, someone came downstairs with a lighted
candle to open the door. At last—he was shaking her
hand.
She
had not changed much—a little less slender, not so
eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting
opposite her, looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes.
She asked him about the hometown, about this and that, in a
sober somewhat meditative tone. He conversed with increasing
ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at
all. He could not take his face from her face. What had she
lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonsl curiosity
creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her
cheek darkened in a blush.
Gently—was
it experimentally?—he pressed her hand at parting; but
his own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she still care?
The answer to the querstion hardly interested him.
The
young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see
one half of the star-studded sky.
So
that was all over.
Why
had he obstinately clung to that dream? So all these
years—since when?—he had been seeing the light of
dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingy still in their
appointed place places in the heavens.
An
immense sadness as of loss invaded his spirit, a vast
homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart far away
where faded flowers bloom again.
• Poetry
Day In the Farm
by Luis Dato
I’ve found you fruits of sweetest taste and found you
Bunches of duhat growing by the hill,
I’ve bound your arms and hair with vine and bound you
With rare wild flowers but you are crying still.
I’ve brought you all the forest ferns and brought you
Wrapped in green leaves cicadas singing sweet,
I’ve caught you in my arms an hour and taught you
Love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet.
Your smiles have died and there is no replying
To all endearments and my gifts are vain;
Come with me, love, you are too old for crying,
The church bells ring and I hear drops of rain.
The Spouse
by Luis Dato
Rose in her hand, and moist eyes young with weeping,
She stands upon the threshold of her house,
Fragrant with scent that wakens love from sleeping,
She looks far down to where her husband plows.
Her hair dishevelled in the night of passion,
Her warm limbs humid with the sacred strife,
What may she know but man and woman fashion
Out of the clay of wrath and sorrow—Life?
She holds no joys beyond the day’s tomorrow,
She finds no worlds beyond her love’s embrace;
She looks upon the Form behind the furrow,
Who is her Mind, her Motion, Time and Space.
O somber mystery of eyes unspeaking,
O dark enigma of Life’s love forlorn;
The Sphinx beside the river smiles with seeking
The secret answer since the world was born.
• Poetry
Lyric 17 (from Selected Poems
and New)
by Jose Garcia Villa
I can no more hear Love’s
Voice. No more moves
The mouth of her. Birds
No more sing. Words
I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows
Pale. No more blows
The wind. Time tells
No more truth. Bells
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—O my God! I am dead.
Lyric 57 (from Selected Poems
and New)
by Jose Garcia Villa
My most. My most. O my lost!
O my bright, my ineradicable ghost.
At whose bright coast God seeks
Shelter and is lost is lost. O
Coast of Brightness. O cause of
Grief. O rose of purest grief.
O thou in my breast so stark and
Holy-bright. O thou melancholy
Light. Me. Me. My own perfidy.
O my most my most, O the bright
The beautiful the terrible Accost.
Lyric 22 (from Selected Poems
and New)
by Jose Garcia Villa
O lovely. O lovely as panther. O
Creation’s supremest dissenter.
Enter. Teach me thy luminous ire.
O jewelled, pacing, night-displacing
Fire. O night’s nimble-dancing, No-
Saying lyre. Embrace me. Defy me.
Reave me. None shall defend me.
Not God. Not I. Purify me. Consume
Me. Disintegrate me to thy ecstasy.
O lovely and without mercy. O dark-
Footed divinity. O lovely and terrible.
O death irreducible. O unimpeachable.
The first stanza from
Anchored Angel (from Selected
Poems and New)
by Jose Garcia Villa
And,lay,he,down,the,golden,father,
(Genesis’,fist,all,gentle,now),
between,the,Wall,of,China,and,
The,tiger,tree(his,centuries,his,
Aerials,of,light)…
Anchored,entire,angel!
He,in,his,estate,miracle,and,living,dew,
His,fuses,gold,his,cobalts,love,
And,in,his,eyepits,
O,under,the,liontelling,sun—
The,zeta,truth—the,swift,red,Christ.
•
Prosepoem
WITH WORDS: Letter to the Poet
by Francisco Arcellana
Our problem has ever been how to approach the work of art
with words, how fairly to approach the work of art with
words. With words. How to teach, not how to do; how to
verbalise painting, how to touch sculpture with words, how to
denote music.
With
words. It is our doom that we can work only with nothing more
or less than words. It is our sad fate that we have no other
means, no other end. Words are not necessary to love.
But
man is defined no less by the work of art as he is by his use
of words: his humanity is measured by his silence than by his
approach.
How
much of our life is lived in the realm of words? Precious
much. How much is not? Precious little. And how much of our
life that is lived in the realm of words is truly life? The
sea of silence surges everywhere around us.
How
fairly to approach the work of art with words.
With
poetry.
Only
with poetry.
A
decisive, and final, distinction between prose and poetry
suggest itself: prose is that language of man with which he
deals with that part of his life which is verbal, and poetry
is that language with which he deals with that part of his
experience which is not verbal. The things that come to us in
words and the things that don’t: propositions and
emotion, formulations and sensation, statements and feeling:
the world of words and the world of silence. The works of
silence, the words of silence.
Poetry
is the only way we have fairly to approach the work of art:
with poetry we feel we are not so helpless: in fact with
poetry we feel that we are armed, that we are adequately
armed.
It
is only with poetry that we can begin to hope fairly to touch
the heart of the work of art: the verbal icon of the vera
ikon, the verbal image of the true image.
•
Prose / Excerpt
Ending of the short story
The Yellow Shawl
by Francisco Arcellana
The child woke up when her father lifted her from the bed.
She knew it wasn’t morning yet because the lights were
on and they were very bright. She was already ten and she
didn’t like being carried anymore, not even by her
father. She tried to wriggle loose from her father’s
arms but found that she couldn’t. She saw that she had
been bundled up in bedclothes. She was turning in her
father’s arms to ask him where they were going when she
saw the many silent Japanese. She couldn’t ask anymore.
Then she saw her mother: how pale she was, and distraught.
Her father told her to go to sleep right in his arms. She
tried to but couldn’t. The Japanese said: Come. At the
door, her mother saw the lovely vivid yellow shawl and her
mother asked the Japanese if she might take it along with
her. The Japanese said: all right. Her mother wrapped the
shawl about her; the night was cold, the air struck at her
face where it was exposed. It became even harder to try to
get to sleep. She watched the many silent Japanese from her
father’s shoulder. They walked a long time; they reached
a big house. The Japanese took them to a large room and left
them there. In the room it was very bright; it was also very
bare. There was nothing in it except a cot which was set
against the wall facing the door. Her mother took the shawl
off her. Her father set her down in the cot and told her to
go to sleep. She tried to but couldn’t. She watched her
mother walk around the enormous room. Her mother stopped
beside the door and stood on tiptoe and reached up with her
arms to hang the shawl from a peg high up on the wall. Then
she tried looking without blinking at the big bulk hanging by
a cord from the roof. Her eyes hurt. She tried to sleep but
couldn’t sleep. She told her father, then her mother,
that she couldn’t sleep. They sat on the cot beside her
to lull her to sleep. The light was too bright; the room was
big and strange. Then the Japanese returned. Her mother stood
up, stooped and kissed her, told her to be a good girl and
sleep; and left with the Japanese. She looked at the shawl on
the peg high up on the wall beside the shut door. Then her
father told her to go to sleep. She heard her mother scream.
It was so loud she thought her mother was back in the room
with them. Suddenly her father was no longer beside her but
was pacing up and down the middle of the room from the window
to the wall. Every time her father crossed the room she saw
how the shawl beat like a wing in the garish light above his
head. Her mother stopped screaming and her father stopped
pacing and stood still and tense, waiting. Her mother was
screaming again and her father fell to pacing the floor once
more and every time he crossed the room he walked beneath her
mother’s shawl that hovered like a wing above him; her
mother stopped screaming and her father stopped pacing and
stood transfixed and tense, waiting. Her mother screamed
again and her father, released, lurched up and down the
enormous room again. The screams came and went, grew fainter
and fainter, and then the child couldn’t hear them
anymore. Her father stood beneath the shawl that brooded like
a wing over him, still and tense and waiting, but the screams
didn’t come again. The child stared, sleepless, at her
father petrified beneath the yellow shawl. She saw her father
sway and rock; she saw his incredibly coherent face break and
crumble. The child didn’t even start at the sound of the
animal cry that tore savagely through her father’s body
and his throat. She watched her father fold and fall. She
heard him whimper. Her eyes were wild and wide upon, her
father’s body broken beneath the shadow of the yellow
shawl when the Japanese came and carried her father’s
body away. She felt very wide awake. Her sleepless eyes hurt
and felt very dry. She blinked her wakeful eyes long and hard
many times trying to make the tears come but the tears
wouldn’t come no matter how hard and how long she tried.
• Poem
The Innocence of Solomon
by Nick Joaquin
Sheba, Sheba, open your eyes!
the apes defile the ivory temple,
the peacocks chant dark blasphemies;
but I take your body for mind to trample,
I laugh where once I bent the knees.
Yea, I take your mouth for mine to crumple,
drunk with the wisdom of your flesh.
But wisdom never was content
and flesh when ripened falls at last:
what will I have when the seasons mint
your golden breasts into golden dust?
Let me arise and follow the river
back to its source. I would bathe my bones
among the chaste rivulets that quiver
out of the clean primeval stones.
Yea, bathe me again in the early vision
my soul tongued forth before your mouth
made of a kiss a fierce contrition,
salting the waters of my youth…
Sheba, Sheba, close my eyes!
The apes have ravished the inner temple,
the peacocks rend the sacred veil
and on the manna feast their fill—
but chaliced drowsily in your ample
arms, with its brief bliss that dies,
my own deep sepulchre I seal.
• Prose /
Excerpt
From the short story
May Day Eve
by Nick Joaquin
But, alas, the heart forgets, the heart is distracted; and
Maytime passes; summer ends; the storms break over the
rot-ripe orchards and the heart grows old; while the hours
and days and months and years 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;
memory perishes. . . .
• Prose /
Excerpt
From the short story
The Transparent Sun
by Linda Ty-Casper
"That woman is back," Zenaida said, her voice at
the near edge of contempt. She swung away from the window
that looked across to the governor's office at the provincial
capitol. Before the full-length mirror on the wall, she
stopped to check her teased hair. Her knees were white and
smooth beneath the tight pink jersey. Then she entered her
room, pulling the door severely.
A
plaster crucifix near the entry trembled with the closing.
Her cat, a ball of petulant sun, jumped up onto the piano
stool and with pink eyes peered timidly about the long hall
adorned with old portraits so faded they looked like sun
stains on the shellacked walls of narra.
Don
Julio glanced up from the morning papers which had just
arrived from Manila, and looked after the closing of the
door, trying to decide what his wife had said. The precise
click of the door lock alerted him. He had married each of
his three wives when they were barely twenty but now at
seventy, he could no longer understand youth or Zenaida, a
white skinned mestiza who had been cashier at his theatre,
the only moviehouse in the capital.
"What
is it?" he asked, leaning forward in the rattan chair
against the wide restarms of narra, the newspaper creased
between his belly and knees, his fingers marking the obituary
page which he consulted first and last to follow the demise
of friends long scattered about the islands.
"That
woman," Zenaida shouted from her room, her voice clear
and as sharp as claws.
Don
Julio lifted himself above the window sill, peered through
the vines of pink and white cadena de amor that hung over the
window grilles like the scattering hair of the woman who
stood at the gate, in plain brown skirt, faded overskirt and
loose white camisa. Her feet, encased in brown plastic
slippers, were trying to find balance over the gravel
driveway.
"Open
the gate," Don Julio called to a servant and placed the
newspaper on the sidetable, carefully folded on the
obituaries. A quick eye disclosed the death of Don
Esteban… fallecio en Manila… se ruega no envien
flores… Because he believed a debt of honor binds a man
more strictly, being a measure of his manhood and life,
Esteban had repaid a wartime debt that, unwritten, could have
been annulled in court…
Don
Julio walked over to his wife's room and stood outside.
"It's my cousin. Don't call her 'that woman.'" He
waited for her answer. When none came he took the courage to
try her lock…
The
smell of stale perfume crumbled about his face as
entered… the yellow drapes, sunstreaked and brittle,
salvaged from past housekeepings, shut the room from
malicious eyes at the capitol. He avoided the dresser mirror;
no longer relishing any sight of himself… Zenaida was
brushing her fingernails, her back against an impressive
collection of jerseys printed in the colors and foliage of
some overripe garden.
"Don't
call her that woman," he said in the same voice he
coaxed her to bed.
She
looked up at him, around him to their huge wedding portrait:
Don Julio secure on a red cushioned chair and she, the young
succulent wife, looking to the side, distracted.
"She's
your cousin, not mine," she finally said, blowing at her
cuticles, and dangling a leg over the newspaper spread with
pictures of society ladies, a pink satin slipper caught
deliriously over her toes, an amused smile playing on her
face.
"Return
the necklace," Don Julio said, approaching his wife
slowly so as not to startle her, a hand extended to touch the
hair brittle with applications of hairspray, a special
concoction of beer and essences from Jolo.
She
flounced her eyes at him.
"Return
them, hija and I will make it up to you…The necklace is
old anyway. Old and tarnished… It does not become
you…"
"What
necklace?" Zenaida sprung away from the intended touch,
leaving Don Julio poised to caress the vacated air. She
laughed at his discomfiture, a tiny kitty laugh that
disclosed her fine teeth and exquisite darting tongue.
"She must have told you lies, I know of no
necklace… that belongs to her you say, to an old
woman?"…
Don
Julio restored his hands to his sides, groped the pockets of
his purple dressing gown…the waist sash, tied
indifferently, sagged over his hips.
"Give
it to her, hija; you do what I tell you and you will receive
something several times in value… something young and
precious, something new… you can choose it
yourself."
"I
still don't know what necklace." Zenaida paused before
the dresser to pat her hair and spray her ears with Gloria de
Paris. The spray hit her eyes. She grimaced and rubbed them
hard, like a child waking up from an afternoon sleep. She
peered at herself. No lines on the forehead, none around the
eyes. She was barely twenty, barely beginning to live. She
smiled at herself, her eyes glinting as though to coax a
secret lover who provoked her in the presence of the old
man…
Suddenly
the mirror wings of her dresser disclosed Don Julio
struggling across the distance between them. She moved away
from their reflection on the mirror and watched him, amused
at the way his wrinkled feet slid in and out of his purple
slippers when he walked…
"What
do you want then? Anything…" Don Julio hunched his
shoulders o restrain his lungs, leaning onto the back of the
chair on which Zenaida had sat, unable to lift his feet
farther.
"This,"
Zanaida said, opening the wardrobe with the dragon lock, her
fragile fingers long and white against the mahogany.
Don
Julio looked up, his eyes consumed by the gold filigree
necklace, by the glass pendant that contained a relic, by the
cross inlaid with green bits of glass.
Zenaida
held it up, swung it before him' watched him follow with
frayed eyes the flaring trace of sun it left in the air.
* * *
"It's an old
necklace," Don Julio said, looking at his cousin Sepa
who sat at the edge of her chair in the living room, her old
face more faded than the portraits on the walls. He could no
longer recall her young face. He had not seen her in years,
not since his firs wife, Gloria died in childbirth.
Sepa
did not speak, as though to hold intact the pieces of her
face. Head inclined to one side she stared at the cup of
chocolate before her, not following the flight over it of a
large green fly, not interested in anything that fell outside
the fixed arc of her sight. Her hands on her lap, she rubbed
the fingers slowly as if trying to feel the texture of her
own skin. She sighed and inclined her head to the other side
and closed her eyes to the glint of sunlight on the waxed
floor.
Sepa
came prepared to redeem the necklace she had come to the
house the month before to pawn. She could have gone to one of
the agencias but she did not trust them. She told her
granddaughter, Antonia, "Julio will give me more and
will let me buy the necklace back as soon as I am able."
She had sold various pieces of her inheritance, but the
necklace, the only piece left, the one she had coveted from
childhood, she could only pawn. She had pledged it once to
Gloria, the first wife. They had all grown up together…
Julio was not in the house when she came to pledge it again,
for a small loan for Antonia's tuition. Zenaida in his stead,
had generously offered the money… Sepa watched her try
it on, negligently viewing herself in the full-length
mirror… the long white fingers enclosed the gold
filigree necklace that hung wantonly from the young neck, the
way Sepa had often dreamed of it hanging upon herself; though
she never dared to put it on… "Take your time
repaying, Sepa. We trust you. And come anytime you need us.
If you have any more old pieces… jewels in your family
for years… I would like to see them."
"Is
there anything you need?" Julio asked.
"Antonia… I can support her through school. My son,
Gloria's first born and mine… you remember
Federico… he is now a school superintendent and he will
hire Antonia at my slightest word. So let her have the
necklace…"
"I
have come to redeem the necklace," Sepa said, her voice
quiet and apologetic… She pulled out a handkerchief
secured to the inside of her camisa with a large safety pin.
She looked at it for sometime before untying the knotted
ends. Carefully she unrolled it, pressing it onto her lap.
Tight as little dried worms the rolled money emerged. One by
one she placed them on the palm of one hand, balanced them
there tentatively before extending them to him… the
shades of brown and orange and white becoming blurs in her
eyes. Then she brought the handkerchief to her face, rubbed
her eyes with it. Sobbing quietly, not knowing how to make
him accept the money, she sobbed quietly, rocking herself at
the edge of her chair.
"Stop,
Sepa, you're too old for that," Don Julio said, glancing
about the hall, eyes darting to Zenaida's room. The door was
closed. He reached over to pat Sepa on the hand. "Don't
cry. Let us talk this over…"
"I
remember your father," he told Sepa…. "Don
Macario used to take me in his quelis the horses golden in
their bronze harnesses… He looked up to the portrait of
Sepa's mother on the wall. When Don Macario's house burned
down, Gloria borrowed those portraits… claimed Don
Julio's non-existent ancestry through them in order to
impress friends. Don Julio himself never disclosed that he
was brought to Don Macario's house as a servant, a distant
relative whom Don Macario raised as a companion to his own
son…
"Remember,
Julio, when Mother died and her jewels were being distributed
among us?" Sepa asked, her fingers tight around the
rolled money in her palm. "I asked only for that
necklace, but Ate, being older, acquired it. Remember you
promised to get it back for me?"
Though
he was barely thirteen then, the pride of growing manhood
demanded that gesture of gallantry.
"Remember,
Julio, you bought the necklace from Ate with the first big
money you made? It was your wedding and you laughed as you
handed it to me, and said, instead of my giving you a gift,
you were giving me one. That's why I pawned it you, first
when Gloria was still alive… then now."
Don
Julio saw the warped fingers extending the tightly rolled
bills and looked away quickly. Sternly, a man bent in
repaying a debt of honor, he walked over to Zenaida's room.
The lock would not turn.
"Zenaida"
he shouted. "Bring that necklace. Now."
Zenaida
remained in her room.
Don
Julio's hands clutched the knob, tried to force it. It
sounded like his bones rattling. He released the knob,
started to turn away but unable to look at Sepa, he knocked
softly, with his head bowed against the door.
"Zenaida,"
he said, his voice crumbling against the wood. "Someone
is here to see you."
Then
he walked to his own room across the hall and waited for
Zenaida's clear voice, like sharp claws tearing the long
hall's silence.
• Prose
/ Excerpt
From
The Stream
by Narciso Reyes
It is surprising how an accidental word, accent or gesture
can sweep aside civilization and lay bare the essential
springs of thought and action. People have always believed
Noel's death was purely an accident, one of those stark and
simple cruelties of life ascribable to no human cause and
consequently a matter not for questioning that it was not.
Something profound and elemental as hunger and love impelled
him to cross that stream. He knew it was dangerous; and had
no intention of crossing it. But I said something that roused
the eternal masculine in him, not so much the words as the
tone in which they were uttered. Watching Noel pushing
through the rush of the current, his lips wet and his eyes
alight and eager, like a boy taking up a dare, I had a sudden
and vivid sense of the primitive. I felt that in crossing
that stream, Noel was not only a husband braving danger to
retrieve his wife's scarf. I felt that he was a man proving
his manhood to a woman.
• Prose
/ Excerpt
From
Rice Wine
by Wilfrido Nolledo
And when Santiago fell—falling like a tear from a man's
grief—he fell(,) not on a pile of jute sacks in a
sawdust yard above the estero, but on a cool moonscape of
grass in a long ago September, in the hollow of belief, in
the pool of all their blood, in the mountains whose
loneliness became his fall; whose loveliness became his
absence. So still he died, the bullet that took him almost
seemed a gift, once given seemed absolute, seemed somehow a
god of peace, a feast to God. Then alone, in a quiver of
rice, he lay there with no one, save a sword and the sequins
in the sky.
