HOLY Thursday.
The house loomed over the street. Massive. Windows gaped open like mouths. So this would be summer for me. There were other houses nearby, but not as big and old as this one. As I stood outside the rusty iron gate, Doray came running out of the heavy wooden door. It was almost sundown.
"You're finally here. I've been waiting since morning." She kissed me on the cheek.
"The bus broke down," I sighed and gave her a hug.
She brought me inside the house. The basement was dark. A familiar scent filtered through my nose. I sneezed.
"It's old wood, remember?"
SHE had brought me to Ibajay, Aklan, a year ago for her Lola Conching's 90th birthday. We stayed for a couple of days.
Doray and I usually spend summer at beaches. She suggested that we spend this particular one in her Lola Conching's house. I declined at first, but couldn't bear the thought of going to the beach without her. So we made a deal. An hour's ride from Ibajay was a white sand beach.
"I promise." She held up her hand. "We'll go to Boracay after. You just have to see how they spend Holy Week in my Lola Conching's town."
"But I'm not even a practicing Catholic," I protested.
"Don't deny it Burt Macaraig," Doray pointed her accusing finger at me." Once I saw you lighting all the candles in church so that Rona would live."
Ask and you shall be given. I thought that was the doctrine of the Church. Rona died of abuse three years. ago. She was one of those deaf children we took care of in the Center. The twelve-year old girl was suddenly missing one day. When we finally found her in a cemetery, her body had been battered. She lingered in the hospital for two days. The pain was deeply etched on her face. Even her pleas for comfort had ceased to be human.
"All right, all right." I gave up. "We'll go to your Lola Conching's house first, purify our souls during Holy Week and burn them after in Boracay."
Doray and I have been the best of friends since college. We were drinking buddies. Everybody on campus thought we were a couple. In a way we were, since we were always together. After college we went on to do volunteer work for the deaf. We thought we would be serving the best of humanity. But the truth was we were both reluctant to get an eight-to-five job. We called that a straitjacket.
For some reason I wasn't able to make it on the day Doray and I were supposed to leave for Ibajay.
"You'd better follow, mister," she warned, her hand balled to a fist.
SAN Jose Street, Ibajay. Doray told me that on Holy Week the townspeople follow a certain tradition. Her Lola Conching owned a Santo Entierro, the dead Christ. It had been with the family for years. Every year, during Holy Week, they would bring out the statue and everybody would participate in the preparation. Some people would be in charge of dressing up the statue while others would take care of decorating the carriage that would carry it through the streets.
"What's so exciting about that?"
"It's a feast, Burt, a celebration."
I thought it was ridiculous celebrating death. There was something eerie about the whole idea.
"Lola Conching, do you remember Burt?" Doray asked as we got to the landing.
The old woman sat on a chair carefully lighting candles on the altar in front of her. Her lips reverently moved in silence and her gaze was strange as if she wasn't looking at any of the images in particular. It was this same sight that greeted me a year ago.
"The old woman of the candles," I whispered to Doray on our first visit.
"He's here to help in the activities for the Holy Week."
"It's good to see you again, Lola Conching."
"Did you have a good trip? Perhaps you need to rest."
The old woman stared at me. Her face looked tired. It sagged with wrinkles. But I could see there had been beauty there ages ago. The fine line of her brow softly curved to gray almond eyes. Her nose suggested not Spanish descent. Beside her was a wooden cane bedecked with shells intricately embedded, forming a floral design.
"Come." Doray led me through the living room. Carved lattice frames on walls complemented the chandelier made of brass and cut-glass.
"Where is the rest of the family?"
"They'll be here in the morning," Doray said as she opened the door to the bedroom.
I stepped inside.
"You'll sleep here." She indicated. "That's the washroom."
"And the other door to the right leads to your room," I recalled.
Lola Conching was blind. She suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese. This I came to know last year. Lola Conching was a comfort woman. She had to give in so her parents could be saved. At first she resisted. Then the Japanese hit her on the head with a plank of wood. She became blind. Then she got pregnant.
Was it her story or was it for want of a grandmother that somehow had drawn me to her?
"I think I'll rest for a while," I said quietly.
"Yes, do," she replied as she opened the door to her room. "We'll have dinner later."
The room was replete with old wooden heads of saints. Some had no eyes, but they looked real. I shivered--a familiar feeling. In front of my bed was a cabinet with glass casing. It was empty. The whiff of camphor from the wooden heads made me dizzy and I fell asleep. Soundly.
I WOKE up to the sound of voices. A soft stream of morning light seeped through the gauze of the mosquito net. I hurriedly washed and dressed. Then I opened the door and stepped out of the room. There were people moving around, talking.
"Burt Macaraig?" An elderly woman looked at me knowingly.
"Yes. Burt, you've met Tiya Basyon," Doray began. "And Tiya Patring, Tiyo Lindo, my cousins Ted, Joey, Ina, Elena, Nicky and Damian."
"Well, I'm back." I didn't know what else to say.
"Let's have breakfast." She tugged at my arm. "Everybody has eaten."
The combination of dried fish, scrambled eggs and fried rice sprinkled with chopped onion leaves made me very hungry.
"Nobody here eats meat on Good Friday," Doray explained as we sat down. "It's the belief."
I was too hungry to mind whatever Doray was trying to say.
"I didn't bother to wake you up last night," she said between bites. "You were snoring and I took care not to wake you when I put up your mosquito net."
"I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow."
"Did Burt have a good sleep last night, Doray?" Lola Conching asked as she walked into the dining room.
She sat on the chair at the head of the table. It was uncanny how she could move with just a cane. She seemed to know every inch of space in her house.
"Good morning," I greeted her.
"Ah, there you are." Her head followed the sound of my voice. "Did you sleep well last night?" "Yes, I did."
"You should. You will be doing many things today."
After breakfast, we went downstairs. The light from the bulb coated the basement in amber. I sneezed. In a corner was the carriage. Black. It was lined with leaves of silver. On the carriage was a casing whose sides were made of glass. Angels with dark faces adorned each of the upper four corners. The carriage looked ominous, like a hearse. Tiyo Lindo and Tiya Patring came in.
"Boys, let's do this together." Tiyo Lindo went to the carriage and started pulling it out from the corner. All of us did our share. The wheels creaked.
"It needs oiling," Tiyo Lindo said.
We positioned the carriage under the bulb.
"Why don't we just open the door?" I suggested. "Then we can have light."
"No, don't," Tiya Patring said. "It's a tradition. Nobody should see the Santo Entierro until everything is done."
I helped polish the carriage, shining the leaves of silver lining. With agility Ted climbed the carriage and dusted the wooden top of the casing. Tiyo Lindo wiped the inside of the glass. No way would I go in there, I thought. It would be like going inside a coffin.
"We're ready with the Santo Entierro," one of the girls called out. They had been cleaning the body.
The dead Christ was laid out on a mat. My stomach tumbled over. I felt like I was looking at a corpse in a morgue.
"Are you all right?" Doray approached me. She had been arranging the flowers and leaves of palm.
"Look," I said quietly. "I don't know what this is all about, but I'm not at all comfortable."
"What is it?"
"The dead Christ. I just don't like it." I sneezed. "And this scent of old wood, it's driving my nose nuts."
She laughed.
"What is so funny?" I looked at her squarely.
"That's what you get for being a heretic." She brushed my face with the bouquet she held in her hands.
"Oh, stop that." I wiped my face. "I think I'd better go upstairs for a while and rest."
"Don't be so lazy. Lola Conching won't like that kind of attitude."
"Well, she's not my grandmother in the first place." I made my way up.
Lola Conching was sitting by the altar when I got to the top of the stairs. The subtlety of light coming from the candles caressed the features of her tired face.
"Are you done?"
I was startled.
"No, Lola Conching."
"Who are you?" Her voice was stern. "Ah, you're Burt."
"Yes, Lola Conching." I was relieved that she recognized me.
"What are you doing up here?" she curtly asked.
My throat went dry.
"I want to rest for a while. I'm feeling quite sick because of the smell of old wood."
"I light candles for the Santo Entierro because it is most precious to us. It is our indu1gencia," declared Lola Conching. "It protected us during the war. Doray's father was a baby then."
I sat down in front of the old woman.
"You mean the Santo Entierro has some kind of power?" My curiosity started to grow.
"Yes, it does." Lola Conching confirmed. "It protects us from the evil of Good Fridays. Aswang."
I almost snickered. But in her voice was the weight of her belief. Aswangs, witches were myths to my knowledge. They would fly at night using their huge bat-like wings. Their hands had claws for fingers, and their teeth were razor sharp. They would look ghoulish, eyes gleaming bright red. But at daytime they were beautiful.
My gaze was transfixed on the old woman's face. I searched for the delicate features that used to be there.
"They come out on the eve of the death of Christ." Her voice slightly quivered. Was it fright I heard? Or a threat?
I was getting edgy on my seat. Faith, belief, knowledge boiled up, blurring my mind.
"You'll see on Good Friday. When the moon rises, all windows are shut in houses except ours," she proudly declared. "Windows in this house are left wide open."
It dawned on me. The Santo Entierro was not the family's iindulgencia. It was hers--for all the fears she kept inside.
"I thought you went to sleep." Doray had come upstairs.
"No, I was talking to your Lola Conching," I stammered. Cold sweat dripped down my forehead.
"I told him stories about the Santo Entierro," the old woman said with an air of accomplishment.
"Let's go." I grabbed Doray's arm.
For the first time I felt afraid. Yet I could not understand why. I raced downstairs. Doray came after me.
"Wait," she called.
Everybody stared at me blankly when I got to the basement. I turned around and faced Doray. We almost bumped into each other.
"Can we go for a walk?" I panted.
We went to the plaza in front of the church. We were both quiet. I pondered why she brought me to this strange place. I felt she had done it on purpose. I never questioned events, phenomena. I always took them as though they were a natural order of the cosmos, like birth and death. True, I did light candles for Rona, but the girl died nonetheless. I felt humiliated. That menial task was my turning point. Never again did candles burn.
"This is where the procession ends," she said as we sat on a concrete bench. We were facing the church. "The procession goes around, through several streets and it ends here at about seven in the evening."
"Do you believe in your Lola Conching's stories about the Santo Entierro?"
Doray looked lost in thought. She groped for words.
"I don't have any answers, Burt. But this is what I can tell you." Her eyes brightened up. "What I saw was the crowd surging toward the Santo Entierro as it got to the door of the church. It was a mad scramble. Everybody wanted a piece of the Santo. They say its hair or any part of its clothing can be used as an amulet, a protection against evil spirits."
Another mythical explanation.
"I'm hungry." I stood up and we went back to the house.
Lunch was quick. Everybody was rushing to finish the morning's activity for the procession in the afternoon.
I went to sleep. In the first place, vacations were meant for naps. Besides I felt I had done my share already with the carriage.
"Burt." I heard Doray's voice through my slumber. "It's time to get ready."
"Hmmm," I protested. I was too tired to do anything.
"Wake up, sleepyhead." She sat on the bed. "You've been sleeping for hours. Come on." She gave me a gentle slap on my face.
"All right." I rubbed my eyes and got out of bed.
"Call me when you're ready." She stood up and went inside her room.
When Doray and I went downstairs, I gasped at the sight that greeted me. There was the Santo Entierro inside the glass casing of the carriage. Asleep. Its long golden brown hair was spread out like a fan. Its body covered with the richness of white and red velvet was adorned with beads of gold. The carriage was bedecked with sprays of palms and flowers, the ones used for funerals. Trinkets of lights illuminated the whole presentation. Death never had this brilliance.
"Well, we're ready," Tiya Patring said.
The boys--Ted, Joey, Nicky and Damian--opened the door and pulled the carriage out. A small crowd stood outside. They applauded as we made our way into the street behind the image. They made the sign of the cross and followed us. As we neared the church, I could see other carriages lined up, each one carrying a different image representing Lent. We were made to position somewhere at the end of the line. And the procession began. The band with scant composition of trumpets and drums lazily accompanied our strides. I snickered.
"Shhh," Doray warned.
When the sun came down, some people started handing out candles.
"Want to light one?" Doray slyly offered.
The procession went on for about two hours. People lined the streets. There were old people sitting on wheelchairs. Soon they would drown in the shadow of the evening. I thought of Lola Conching left alone in the house seeing the whole procession in her mind as she prayed for her soul. In her house candles burned like tired spirits.
When we neared the end of the procession, the carriages were brought inside the church.
"Let's go." Doray pulled me.
"Where?" I thought this would be the most awaited event of the day.
But her clutch slipped off my arm.
Then I saw a throng of people rushing towards us. Joey, Nicky and Damian struggled to pull the carriage to the entrance of the church. On top of the carriage were Tiyo Lindo and Ted brandishing wooden canes like warriors. Everyone was trying to get near the Santo Entierro. I was trapped. I couldn't get out from the sea of bodies. The wave threatened to crush me. I couldn't breathe. I was drowning. Some people had tears streaming down their faces, sobbing. Others screamed as Tiyo Lindo and Ted hit their hands with their wooden canes.
"The hair," someone shouted. "A strand of hair."
"No, don't!" I could no longer hear myself as I went down, pressed by the rush of wave.
Suddenly Tiyo Lindo and Ted were pulling me up. I slumped on the wooden top of the carriage, catching my breath. Below, the maddened faces of people receded as we entered the portals of the church.
We jumped off the carriage. Sweat pasted my shirt on to my skin. I felt we had gone through a siege. But the carriage was intact. The glass remained unbroken. The leaves of silver lining still glistened. Everything was in place. The rest of the boys, Joey, Nicky and Damian, volunteered to stay behind while we went home for dinner.
"You were lucky you didn't get crushed," said Ted.
I did not bother to say anything. I had not seen raw madness before.
"Is he all right?" Lola Conching asked me as we got to the top of the stairs.
"Burt," Doray came towards me. We need not say anything to each other. Tears were about to fall from my eyes.
"It's all right," I held her hands tight. "I'll be fine."
Later that evening we stayed in my room and drank whiskey.
"I'm sorry, Burt, I tried to get through." She recalled what happened earlier that evening.
We were silent for a while.
"It was so weird. They were scrambling. Those people were fanatics."
"The first time I saw it I thought I would go down on my knees." She smiled in disbelief.
Doray left at midnight to sleep in her room. I tossed in bed. I kept thinking about the mad rush of the crowd towards the Santo Entierro. What awesome power for one made of wood to draw the tide toward himself. My mind reeled. It was Black Saturday. The day of the dead Christ.
In the haze of alcohol, I got out of the room and cautiously made my way down the stairs and out of the house. I went out into the street and walked to the church. The moon had risen, big and bright. Its color oozed beyond its shape and bled the sky. The street was silent. As I neared the church, I heard its door open. It moaned. In the dimness of the surroundings I saw four men coming out of the church. They were carrying something wrapped in white sheets, like a dead man. It was the Santo Entierro! Oblivious of my presence, they struggled with its weight. Slowly I took several steps back. I turned around and cautiously walked back to the house. Then I saw that the windows of the other houses were shut. Tight. I remembered what Lola Conching said about the witches. I ran towards the house, racing against the pounding in my chest. Then I swiftly ascended the stairs. When I got to my room, I threw myself on the bed. At a surprising rate, I tucked the mosquito net in and closed my eyes. The Santo Entierro was stolen, the Santo Entierro was stolen! This I kept repeating to myself. I wanted to get up and tell Doray. But I was feeling too heady. I felt I was going to throw up. I closed my eyes and cascaded down into a labyrinth of darkness. Then I heard a flapping on wings. Wak, wak, wak. It flapped in the breeze blowing through my window. Wak, wak, wak. There it was again. I bolted up, charged with a current of electricity running through my veins. The mosquito net plunged down. I struggled against the mesh of its gauze. Then I saw the Santo Entierro! It stood inside the glass cabinet in front of my bed. I screamed. The shrillness shot through the stillness of San Jose Street.
"Burt," Doray rushed in. I screamed again. She peeled the mosquito net away. Then I felt her hands, her arms holding me close. I was drenched with sweat.
Someone knocked on the door.
I looked at the glass cabinet in front of my bed. It was empty.
"The Santo Entierro was stolen." I breathlessly whispered to Doray.
"The what?" She barely heard me.
"The Santo Entierro." I punctuated each word.
Doray stood up and opened the door. Lola Conching entered the room.
The Santo Entierro was stolen!" I cried. "It was stolen."
Lola Conching covered her face, fingers digging into her skin. Her breathing came in spasms. The rest of her kin stood behind her. I got out of bed.
"Where are you going?" Doray asked.
"To the church."
I grabbed Lola Conching and carried her in my arms as if she were a child. She weakly struggled against my strength.
"Leave her alone!" Doray cried. The rest of the family encircled us like the crowd that earlier surged towards the Santo Entierro.
"No!" I stared at them.
And we all marched down into the darkness of the street, all the way to the church. Lola Conching buried her face my chest. Her resistance was drowned in her sobbing.
The door of the church was open when we got there. Some people had left it open. We made our way through the carriages inside the shadow of the church's belly. Images loomed. Near the altar stood the black carriage with leaves of silver lining. I Set Lola Conching down on the floor She grappled with my feet, whimpering.
"Here." Tiya Patring offered me a candle. I took it.
"Light all the candles, Burt," Doray's voice quivered.
I numbly walked around the church and lit all the candles I could find. My hands shook. Lola Conching wailed Then I saw it. It was there. The Santo Entierro glistened inside the glass casing of its carriage.
"It's here, Lola Conching." My lips trembled. "The Santo Entierro is back!"
We all looked at Lola Conching, still slumped on the floor. She had stopped crying.
"Put out the candles," Lola Conching commanded.
Nobody moved. For a while everybody had stoned expressions on their faces.
"Put out the candles." This time her voice came undaunted.
One at a time her kin blew out the flames. Their somber faces were ghosts extinguished with the past. The Santo Entierro faded into darkness.
I sank to my knees with the last candle in my hands. Lola Conching rose. Layers of tormented skin peeled off her face that came to the light. I saw her real beauty. Immaculate, a flower whose petals would wither with a careless brush of fingers. I saw a girl of eighteen whose face was as fine and gentle as the hair of the wind. Then the features slowly changed with the diminishing flame. And between light and darkness was Rona's face completely devoid of pain.
The light of the candle in my hands flickered and died as Lola Conching's blind eyes gave way to tears that had welled through the years. In the darkness of the church I bowed my head as I convulsed with my own truths. Lola Conching held on to my arms as I held on to the candle. I could smell the pregnant whips of smoke rising from the faint orange glow of its wick.
Black Saturday. And now, Easter Sunday. 2.)The Other Woman
by Virgilio Samonte
It is almost a month since my uncle died. Nana Cecilia, his widow, has made up with my maiden aunt Cora, and now stays with her in San Nicolas. The suspicions -- for they proved to be mere suspicions after all -- she had entertained concerning Nana Cora and my late uncle, were dispelled at his death. I don't know the truth myself up to now. But I don't want to know. What matters now is that they are no longer young.
Loida, I learned some time ago, is gone from the old house in Laoag. She stayed there for some days after my uncle's burial, and no one could make her go away then. No one knows where she had gone. Anyway it does not matter. She does no t matter anymore.
As for the old house, it now stands bleak and empty, except for the thick, gathering shadows and the inevitable dust; the bats hanging from the tattered eaves like the black patches; the mice scampering freely within ; cockroaches and lizrds; and perhaps ghosts. The flower-laden cadena de amor, draped heavily on the rotting bamboo fence surrounding it, it is a huge funeral wreath around the deserted house.
The same sense of desolation seemed to enshroud the old house even then, about a month ago, when I arrived from the city. I had come ahead of my father after we received the wire from Nana Cecilia, saying that my uncle was seriously ill, and that she needed my father's assistance.
It was a cold grey dawn, and the clatter of the calesa as it left me, sounded loud and sharp in the yet deserted streets. the old house seemed to loom bigger than the others in the neighborhood, and it seemed to stand apart, squat and dark; light filtered through the closed or half opened windows of the other houses where early breakfast fires were already burning. The large, gnarled trunk of an acacia tree beside it, rose like a phantom, its foliage blotting out a portion of the sky overhead. i knocked for what it seemed a long time on the closed door, the sounds echoing hollowly within as though the house was a huge, empty shell before I heard muffled footsteps coming down the stairway. Light glimmered through the cracks of the door. The sliding bar was moved noisily and then the door opened slowly, grating on the scattered pebbles on the cement floor.
The face that appeared in the partly opened door startled me momentarily. Where the upper lip should have been was an inverted V-shape opening, framing a long and pointed yellow tooth. The lip cleft, with repulsively livid gums showing, went up in an angle to a flat nose; the rest of the face was flat as though it had been bashed in by repeated fists blows; and broad and square. Half-illuminated by the light of a candle on one side, it was hideous.
It was only Loida, the harelip. I had not known that she was still staying with my aunt Cecilia. Her black, beady eyes regarded me with anger and suspicion. I told her my name.
"Where is your father?" she asked in a strange nasal twang when she finally recognize me.
"He'll come tomorrow," I said. I gestured impatiently, wanting to get in. I was shivering under my thin jacket in the cold.
She opened the door wider and turned unspeaking, motioning me to follow, holding the candle above her to one side. The brick-walled first floor yawned emptily. There was only the smell of dust, and when we went up the stairs which faced the doorway, the banister left dusty smudges on my fingers after I'd touch it. The stairs creaked under our weight, a stale smell following the wake of the silent figure in front of me. It was almost as sold inside as it had been outside.
There was a smell and look of disuse all around.
There were no curtains in the closed windows no in the doorway leading to the sala, where the dark shapes of the few chairs and a table crouched in the darkness. They threw long, tapering shadows on a dust-coated floor when we went in. Shadows huddled close together in the corners where the light chased them. In the ceiling on one side, immediately above the room where I thought my aunt stayed a soft light as of another candle wavered, scaring out more shadows. The door to the room was closed, but in the silence the sound of harsh, difficult breathing came from it. Loida gave the room a brief, mute glance and went on.
I had expected one of my aunts to meet me, but there was no one in the sala. Asleep, I thought. Loida stopped before one of the rooms on the other side and opened it and entered. I followed her inside.
"Isn't this the room of Tata Manuel?" I asked. I recognized his four poster with the ornately-carved canopy. My words sounded loud and hollow in the quiet room.
"He stays with your Nana Ceiling there," she said, pointing to the dimly-lighted room.
I looked at her inquiringly. My aunt and my uncle had separate rooms, and Nana Cora stayed with my aunt Cecilia.
"She moved him there when he got worse," she said. She sounded indignant.
"Worse? Is he really very ill?"
She shook her head. "I do not know, but he has become very thin, and he coughs."
I had not known that she was devoted to my uncle. There were actually tears in her eyes.
"You should tell your Nana to leave him alone," she said fiercely.
"Why? I asked. Her sudden change of manner alarmed me.
"He is very sick and she sleeps with him."
"Oh, I thought -- but there's nothing wrong with that. He needs her care."
"Nothing wrong," she repeated bitterly. I could not understand her.
I thought she was going to say something more, but she changed her mind and turned her back on me abruptly and became silently. She seemed to bristle with suppressed anger. She went out after lighting another candle on the windowsill, then came back with some sheets and a fresh pillow. I watched her while in furious haste she worked with the sheets on the bed.
"Where's the room of Nan Cora now?" I asked after a while.
She did not answer immediately.
"Manang Cora stays in San Nicolas now," she said crossly, when she finished making the bed.
I was surprised. I wanted to ask her why, but she went out instantly, leaving me alone in the room. I felt piqued. Her footfalls receded rapidly as she went to some other part of the big house.
I was bothered by the absence of Nana Cora. My father had sent me ahead thinking that with Nana Cora in the house, Nana Cecilia would have no need of him immediately. I put on the light and lay down. Suddenly I felt very tired.
I woke up,having dozed off, feeling the presence of another person in the room. The room was already suffused with the full glow of the sun's ray through the shuttered windows. Nana Cecilia was standing in the doorway eyeing me coldly. I sat up immediately.
She had on a loose, printed housedress which looked stained and unwashed, stressing the thinness and narrowness of her shoulders; her veins appeared clear and blue under her transparent, wrinkled wrists and hands. Her graying hair was stringy, and tied carelessly with a piece of cloth of an uncertain color. She appeared slatternly and she smelled.
"Where is your father?" she demanded in a cranked voice. I could not face her directly for she stared at me with enormous, purple-ringed eyes.
"He'll come tomorrow, Nana," I said.
"I did not call you here. Why did your father not come?"
"He thought with Nana Cora here it would be alright."
She straightened as though I'd slapped her, and grew livid.
"Do not - do not mention that name in this house, understand?" she almost shouted at me, stepping forward.
I stood up, unable to comprehend. She advanced and we stood face to face finally, the redness in her cheeks drained away. She cocked her head suddenly in a listening attitude, as if she had heard something, and her eyes rolled wildly.
"Your uncle," she said frantically, half running to her room. I followed her but hesitated at the door. A dank smell reached me.
The low beds had been pushed together side to side. Beside the nearest bed my aunt knelt. On it the recumbent form of my uncle could be seen, covered up to his chest with blankets. Near the foot of his bed, two new tapers burned before an improvised altar. There was a bronze Christ nailed on a black cross and back of it was a large, glass-encased picture of the Blessed Virgin. On either side of the picture was a vase with cadena de amor flowers. There was also a glass of water covered with cloth. The windows were all closed. My aunt turned her head and motioned me to stand at the foot of the bed facing my uncle.
His eyes were sunken and staring and his bleak-like nose appeared too large in his ghastly thin face. His hands fluttered nervously on the blankets, his breathing was slow and discordant. He did not recognize me. In this house of shadows, he looked like another shadow. His appearance was a far cry from the lusty man that we had known him to be. He already had the ashen look of a corpse.
Healthy, he had possessed a vitality that was insatiable. Servant girls and a succession of mistresses alike were prey to his desires. My aunt had taken Loida in the house as a desperate measure, thinking that a harelip would repel him. The state of penury in which they existed was due to him for he was also a gambler; lands been mortgaged or sold to satisfy his lust and vice. Some had explained his philandering - my father though thought it was more a disease - by blaming my aunt for being barren. Nana Cecilia, however, seemed to have loved him all the more, and when he had insisted on their having separate bedrooms, having tired of her perhaps, she had acted hysterical about it; but he had his way. In her misery she had turned to Nana Cora, her younger sister, who had left the house in San Nicolas to keep her company.
I could not understand though why she had raged when I mentioned Nana Cora. I wondered again why Nana Cora was gone.
My aunt had taken hold of one of his hands and was kneading it, making soothing, baby-like sounds. The intimate, pitifully ardent look on her face made me feel uncomfortable. He started coughing weakly at first then more strongly, each racking cough bringing a look of anguish in his eyes, his thin frame shaking convulsively under the covers. My aunt looked at me with feverish eyes.
"Go out now!" she ordered with nervous urgency.
I backed out instantly in relief, holding my breath in the polluted air. Outside, the thought of Nana Cora came back to confuse me. She must have quarreled with Nana Cecilia, I thought, bu t why? Why?
At noon I was served alone by Loida. She had on a dress that looked well on her surprisingly firm, young body, and not the loose, ill-fitting native blouse and skirt that my aunt had usually imposed on her servants, as a precaution against my uncle's too discerning eyes. Her face was as ugly as ever, and she watched me eat with a proprietary air which I disliked. She did not act like a servant.
My aunt ate all her meals in the room.
"Why doesn't she go out now and then? It's bad her staying indoors like that for whole days," I said when she told me about it.
"Tell her! She stays there all the time afraid to leave him, and she drove away some women on the neighborhood when they came here to offer help. And she sleeps with him, sick as he is!" She sounded bitter again, and contemptuous.
"After all, he is her husband!" I snapped, incensed by her tone and by the unservant-like manner in which she referred to my aunt.
She muttered something and flounced out of the room. I was barely able to control my rage. I felt an irresistible desire to shout at her. I wondered why, if she disliked my aunt, she had not gone away. Besides, I was certain that my aunt could not afford to retain the services of a servant anymore.
Later, I talked to her again, about Nana Cora.
"Look, Loida," I said as easily as I could. "Tell me why Nana Cora went away, will you?"
She looked at me with a sulky expression, then said sullenly, " They quarreled."
"Quarreled? What about?"
I could have wrung her neck, the way she answered.
"Him!" she sneered.
In the afternoon, I took a calesa across the river to San Nicolas. I left the old house unobtrusively. A vague uneasiness grew steadily within me as I kept thinking about what Loida had said and its implication.
Nana Cora was puttering among the zinias and cucharitas, which lined the walk leading to the house, when I arrived. The house, though much smaller than the old one in Laoag, had a neat look about it, and the wire fence disclosed disclosed a well-trimmed row of violets. Behind the house I could see the top of the tamarind tree I used to climb, laden with brownish-green fruit.
She gave a start when she heard me call, dropping the trowel from her hand. I strode with the long steps to her side and touched on of her dirt-stained hands to my forehead. She started to cry suddenly. I could do nothing but hold her, feeling the sting of tears in my own eyes.
"Forgive me, hijo, I am so weak..." she said later.
"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner, Nana," I said.
I put my arm across her shoulders and we walked to the house. They were bony to my touch, and she looked so small and old in her dirt-soiled, faded dress, so defenseless, that I felt a surge of pity for her. I had wanted to ask her why she had left the old house, but I realized that I would only be hurting her by bringing the subject up.
"It is good to work, one forgets unpleasant things," she said, when I remarked that she should not work too hard. A sad, wistful look was in her eyes.
At first, she talked slowly, but gradually, she became less restrained, and we chatted reminiscently for some time. There was, however, an unmistakable sadness about her, and she was careful I thought with misgiving, not to mention Nana Cecilia and my uncle. I did mention them either, for her sake.
Loida, I learned some time ago, is gone from the old house in Laoag. She stayed there for some days after my uncle's burial, and no one could make her go away then. No one knows where she had gone. Anyway it does not matter. She does no t matter anymore.
As for the old house, it now stands bleak and empty, except for the thick, gathering shadows and the inevitable dust; the bats hanging from the tattered eaves like the black patches; the mice scampering freely within ; cockroaches and lizrds; and perhaps ghosts. The flower-laden cadena de amor, draped heavily on the rotting bamboo fence surrounding it, it is a huge funeral wreath around the deserted house.
The same sense of desolation seemed to enshroud the old house even then, about a month ago, when I arrived from the city. I had come ahead of my father after we received the wire from Nana Cecilia, saying that my uncle was seriously ill, and that she needed my father's assistance.
It was a cold grey dawn, and the clatter of the calesa as it left me, sounded loud and sharp in the yet deserted streets. the old house seemed to loom bigger than the others in the neighborhood, and it seemed to stand apart, squat and dark; light filtered through the closed or half opened windows of the other houses where early breakfast fires were already burning. The large, gnarled trunk of an acacia tree beside it, rose like a phantom, its foliage blotting out a portion of the sky overhead. i knocked for what it seemed a long time on the closed door, the sounds echoing hollowly within as though the house was a huge, empty shell before I heard muffled footsteps coming down the stairway. Light glimmered through the cracks of the door. The sliding bar was moved noisily and then the door opened slowly, grating on the scattered pebbles on the cement floor.
The face that appeared in the partly opened door startled me momentarily. Where the upper lip should have been was an inverted V-shape opening, framing a long and pointed yellow tooth. The lip cleft, with repulsively livid gums showing, went up in an angle to a flat nose; the rest of the face was flat as though it had been bashed in by repeated fists blows; and broad and square. Half-illuminated by the light of a candle on one side, it was hideous.
It was only Loida, the harelip. I had not known that she was still staying with my aunt Cecilia. Her black, beady eyes regarded me with anger and suspicion. I told her my name.
"Where is your father?" she asked in a strange nasal twang when she finally recognize me.
"He'll come tomorrow," I said. I gestured impatiently, wanting to get in. I was shivering under my thin jacket in the cold.
She opened the door wider and turned unspeaking, motioning me to follow, holding the candle above her to one side. The brick-walled first floor yawned emptily. There was only the smell of dust, and when we went up the stairs which faced the doorway, the banister left dusty smudges on my fingers after I'd touch it. The stairs creaked under our weight, a stale smell following the wake of the silent figure in front of me. It was almost as sold inside as it had been outside.
There was a smell and look of disuse all around.
There were no curtains in the closed windows no in the doorway leading to the sala, where the dark shapes of the few chairs and a table crouched in the darkness. They threw long, tapering shadows on a dust-coated floor when we went in. Shadows huddled close together in the corners where the light chased them. In the ceiling on one side, immediately above the room where I thought my aunt stayed a soft light as of another candle wavered, scaring out more shadows. The door to the room was closed, but in the silence the sound of harsh, difficult breathing came from it. Loida gave the room a brief, mute glance and went on.
I had expected one of my aunts to meet me, but there was no one in the sala. Asleep, I thought. Loida stopped before one of the rooms on the other side and opened it and entered. I followed her inside.
"Isn't this the room of Tata Manuel?" I asked. I recognized his four poster with the ornately-carved canopy. My words sounded loud and hollow in the quiet room.
"He stays with your Nana Ceiling there," she said, pointing to the dimly-lighted room.
I looked at her inquiringly. My aunt and my uncle had separate rooms, and Nana Cora stayed with my aunt Cecilia.
"She moved him there when he got worse," she said. She sounded indignant.
"Worse? Is he really very ill?"
She shook her head. "I do not know, but he has become very thin, and he coughs."
I had not known that she was devoted to my uncle. There were actually tears in her eyes.
"You should tell your Nana to leave him alone," she said fiercely.
"Why? I asked. Her sudden change of manner alarmed me.
"He is very sick and she sleeps with him."
"Oh, I thought -- but there's nothing wrong with that. He needs her care."
"Nothing wrong," she repeated bitterly. I could not understand her.
I thought she was going to say something more, but she changed her mind and turned her back on me abruptly and became silently. She seemed to bristle with suppressed anger. She went out after lighting another candle on the windowsill, then came back with some sheets and a fresh pillow. I watched her while in furious haste she worked with the sheets on the bed.
"Where's the room of Nan Cora now?" I asked after a while.
She did not answer immediately.
"Manang Cora stays in San Nicolas now," she said crossly, when she finished making the bed.
I was surprised. I wanted to ask her why, but she went out instantly, leaving me alone in the room. I felt piqued. Her footfalls receded rapidly as she went to some other part of the big house.
I was bothered by the absence of Nana Cora. My father had sent me ahead thinking that with Nana Cora in the house, Nana Cecilia would have no need of him immediately. I put on the light and lay down. Suddenly I felt very tired.
I woke up,having dozed off, feeling the presence of another person in the room. The room was already suffused with the full glow of the sun's ray through the shuttered windows. Nana Cecilia was standing in the doorway eyeing me coldly. I sat up immediately.
She had on a loose, printed housedress which looked stained and unwashed, stressing the thinness and narrowness of her shoulders; her veins appeared clear and blue under her transparent, wrinkled wrists and hands. Her graying hair was stringy, and tied carelessly with a piece of cloth of an uncertain color. She appeared slatternly and she smelled.
"Where is your father?" she demanded in a cranked voice. I could not face her directly for she stared at me with enormous, purple-ringed eyes.
"He'll come tomorrow, Nana," I said.
"I did not call you here. Why did your father not come?"
"He thought with Nana Cora here it would be alright."
She straightened as though I'd slapped her, and grew livid.
"Do not - do not mention that name in this house, understand?" she almost shouted at me, stepping forward.
I stood up, unable to comprehend. She advanced and we stood face to face finally, the redness in her cheeks drained away. She cocked her head suddenly in a listening attitude, as if she had heard something, and her eyes rolled wildly.
"Your uncle," she said frantically, half running to her room. I followed her but hesitated at the door. A dank smell reached me.
The low beds had been pushed together side to side. Beside the nearest bed my aunt knelt. On it the recumbent form of my uncle could be seen, covered up to his chest with blankets. Near the foot of his bed, two new tapers burned before an improvised altar. There was a bronze Christ nailed on a black cross and back of it was a large, glass-encased picture of the Blessed Virgin. On either side of the picture was a vase with cadena de amor flowers. There was also a glass of water covered with cloth. The windows were all closed. My aunt turned her head and motioned me to stand at the foot of the bed facing my uncle.
His eyes were sunken and staring and his bleak-like nose appeared too large in his ghastly thin face. His hands fluttered nervously on the blankets, his breathing was slow and discordant. He did not recognize me. In this house of shadows, he looked like another shadow. His appearance was a far cry from the lusty man that we had known him to be. He already had the ashen look of a corpse.
Healthy, he had possessed a vitality that was insatiable. Servant girls and a succession of mistresses alike were prey to his desires. My aunt had taken Loida in the house as a desperate measure, thinking that a harelip would repel him. The state of penury in which they existed was due to him for he was also a gambler; lands been mortgaged or sold to satisfy his lust and vice. Some had explained his philandering - my father though thought it was more a disease - by blaming my aunt for being barren. Nana Cecilia, however, seemed to have loved him all the more, and when he had insisted on their having separate bedrooms, having tired of her perhaps, she had acted hysterical about it; but he had his way. In her misery she had turned to Nana Cora, her younger sister, who had left the house in San Nicolas to keep her company.
I could not understand though why she had raged when I mentioned Nana Cora. I wondered again why Nana Cora was gone.
My aunt had taken hold of one of his hands and was kneading it, making soothing, baby-like sounds. The intimate, pitifully ardent look on her face made me feel uncomfortable. He started coughing weakly at first then more strongly, each racking cough bringing a look of anguish in his eyes, his thin frame shaking convulsively under the covers. My aunt looked at me with feverish eyes.
"Go out now!" she ordered with nervous urgency.
I backed out instantly in relief, holding my breath in the polluted air. Outside, the thought of Nana Cora came back to confuse me. She must have quarreled with Nana Cecilia, I thought, bu t why? Why?
At noon I was served alone by Loida. She had on a dress that looked well on her surprisingly firm, young body, and not the loose, ill-fitting native blouse and skirt that my aunt had usually imposed on her servants, as a precaution against my uncle's too discerning eyes. Her face was as ugly as ever, and she watched me eat with a proprietary air which I disliked. She did not act like a servant.
My aunt ate all her meals in the room.
"Why doesn't she go out now and then? It's bad her staying indoors like that for whole days," I said when she told me about it.
"Tell her! She stays there all the time afraid to leave him, and she drove away some women on the neighborhood when they came here to offer help. And she sleeps with him, sick as he is!" She sounded bitter again, and contemptuous.
"After all, he is her husband!" I snapped, incensed by her tone and by the unservant-like manner in which she referred to my aunt.
She muttered something and flounced out of the room. I was barely able to control my rage. I felt an irresistible desire to shout at her. I wondered why, if she disliked my aunt, she had not gone away. Besides, I was certain that my aunt could not afford to retain the services of a servant anymore.
Later, I talked to her again, about Nana Cora.
"Look, Loida," I said as easily as I could. "Tell me why Nana Cora went away, will you?"
She looked at me with a sulky expression, then said sullenly, " They quarreled."
"Quarreled? What about?"
I could have wrung her neck, the way she answered.
"Him!" she sneered.
In the afternoon, I took a calesa across the river to San Nicolas. I left the old house unobtrusively. A vague uneasiness grew steadily within me as I kept thinking about what Loida had said and its implication.
Nana Cora was puttering among the zinias and cucharitas, which lined the walk leading to the house, when I arrived. The house, though much smaller than the old one in Laoag, had a neat look about it, and the wire fence disclosed disclosed a well-trimmed row of violets. Behind the house I could see the top of the tamarind tree I used to climb, laden with brownish-green fruit.
She gave a start when she heard me call, dropping the trowel from her hand. I strode with the long steps to her side and touched on of her dirt-stained hands to my forehead. She started to cry suddenly. I could do nothing but hold her, feeling the sting of tears in my own eyes.
"Forgive me, hijo, I am so weak..." she said later.
"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner, Nana," I said.
I put my arm across her shoulders and we walked to the house. They were bony to my touch, and she looked so small and old in her dirt-soiled, faded dress, so defenseless, that I felt a surge of pity for her. I had wanted to ask her why she had left the old house, but I realized that I would only be hurting her by bringing the subject up.
"It is good to work, one forgets unpleasant things," she said, when I remarked that she should not work too hard. A sad, wistful look was in her eyes.
At first, she talked slowly, but gradually, she became less restrained, and we chatted reminiscently for some time. There was, however, an unmistakable sadness about her, and she was careful I thought with misgiving, not to mention Nana Cecilia and my uncle. I did mention them either, for her sake.
It was much later, when I decided to go, that she asked me about Nana Cecilia.
“How is your Nana Celing?” she asked hesitantly. I could not detect, however, any coldness, in her tone or in her mien; and when I lied that Nana Cecilia seemed in good health she brightened perceptibly.
She did not ask after my uncle though. When I looked after I’d taken my ride, she was still standing by the gate; in the distance she appeared frail and forlorn. An intense feeling of loathing for the sick man in the old house rushed over me.
The old church bell was ringing the Angelus when I reach the old house. Only the room where the sick man was staying lighted.
I met Loida coming from the kitchen with a glass of water at the head of the stairway. There was a scared look about her.
“Where have you been?” she asked, pausing before the sick man’s room.
“San Nicolas,” I said.
“She has been calling for you. The priest was here.”
“Is he dying?” I asked quickly. I felt no compassion whatsoever.
“No -No!” Her eyes widened and stared at me frenziedly.
The door to the room opened then. My aunt stood framed in the doorway, the light of a gas lamp streaming behind her. I felt, more than I saw, the glare of her eyes on me. Her hair was loose, and with the light at her back, seemed like outspread, thin wires, glinting.
“Where have you been, loco?” she inquired in a strident voice, and there was a panickyquality to it.
Loida walked noiselessly behind her to the room with the hasty steps.
“I went to San Nicolas!” I said.
“San Nicolas!” she repeated angrily. “Did you come here only to disappear when I needed you?”
“I thought you would need help from Nana Cora.”
“What? What did you say?”
I repeated what I said.
“You had no right to do that, understand? No right!” she shrieked.
In the growing dusk and in the gloomy stillness of the house, her voice was piercing. She shook with fury, her arms held by her sides with clenched hands, while she bent forward mouthing obscenities.
“All my life,” she continued, dropping her voice to a savage, tremulous whisper, “all my life, I have had to put up with whores. Your uncle is a weak man and I could do nothing to stop it. I could not tolerate it, understand! I will not have any whore in this house after him! He is all mine now! Understand! ALL MINE!”
Then I heard the scream behind her, and it came again and again, rising to high-pitched, eerie crescendo, then breaking and rising again, higher, eerier – filled with a deep and uncontrollable grief. The house seemed to jump alive with echoes of it. My aunt, arrested in her speech, flung herself madly into the room. I dashed right after her.
Loida was holding the inert form of the man who was my uncle in her arms, her split mouth opened grotesquely, screaming, while tears flowed down her face. The man’s eyes were open and sightless, his mouth hung agape.
“Bruja! Release him!” my aunt screamed at her. She tried to pull away the lifeless body from the wailing woman, but she could not. Then, fiercely, she struck her with successive, resounding slaps, crying insanely for her to release him.
While the lamplight shone in her upraised, gaping face, the nasal twang in her voice crazier than ever, saliva flying from her mouth, Loida shrilled back:
“No, No! I will not! He is mine, too! He loved me! He loved me!”
3.)Why are Filipinos so Poor?
In the ’50s and ’60s, the Philippines was the most envied country in Southeast Asia. What happened?
By F. Sionil Jose
What did South Korea look like after the Korean War in 1953? Battered, poor – but look at Korea now. In the Fifties, the traffic in Taipei was composed of bicycles and army trucks, the streets flanked by tile-roofed low buildings. Jakarta was a giant village and Kuala Lumpur a small village surrounded by jungle and rubber plantations. Bangkok was criss-crossed with canals, the tallest structure was the Wat Arun, the Temple of the Sun, and it dominated the city’s skyline. Ricefields all the way from Don Muang airport — then a huddle of galvanized iron-roofed bodegas, to the Victory monument.Visit these cities today and weep — for they are more beautiful, cleaner and prosperous than Manila. In the Fifties and Sixties we were the most envied country in Southeast Asia. Remember further that when Indonesia got its independence in 1949, it had only 114 university graduates compared with the hundreds of Ph.D.’s that were already in our universities. Why then were we left behind? The economic explanation is simple. We did not produce cheaper and better products.
The basic question really is why we did not modernize fast enough and thereby doomed our people to poverty. This is the harsh truth about us today. Just consider these: some 15 years ago a survey showed that half of all grade school pupils dropped out after grade 5 because they had no money to continue schooling.Thousands of young adults today are therefore unable to find jobs. Our natural resources have been ravaged and they are not renewable. Our tremendous population increase eats up all of our economic gains. There is hunger in this country now; our poorest eat only once a day.But this physical poverty is really not as serious as the greater poverty that afflicts us and this is the poverty of the spirit.
Why then are we poor? More than ten years ago, James Fallows, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, came to the Philippines and wrote about our damaged culture which, he asserted, impeded our development. Many disagreed with him but I do find a great deal of truth in his analysis.This is not to say that I blame our social and moral malaise on colonialism alone. But we did inherit from Spain a social system and an elite that, on purpose, exploited the masses. Then, too, in the Iberian peninsula, to work with one’s hands is frowned upon and we inherited that vice as well. Colonialism by foreigners may no longer be what it was, but we are now a colony of our own elite.
We are poor because we are poor — this is not a tautology. The culture of poverty is self-perpetuating. We are poor because our people are lazy. I pass by a slum area every morning – dozens of adults do nothing but idle, gossip and drink. We do not save. Look at the Japanese and how they save in spite of the fact that the interest given them by their banks is so little. They work very hard too.
We are great show-offs. Look at our women, how overdressed, over-coiffed they are, and Imelda epitomizes that extravagance. Look at our men, their manicured nails, their personal jewelry, their diamond rings. Yabang – that is what we are, and all that money expended on status symbols, on yabang. How much better if it were channeled into production.
We are poor because our nationalism is inward looking. Under its guise we protect inefficient industries and monopolies. We did not pursue agrarian reform like Japan and Taiwan. It is not so much the development of the rural sector, making it productive and a good market as well. Agrarian reform releases the energies of the landlords who, before the reform, merely waited for the harvest. They become entrepreneurs, the harbingers of change.
Our nationalist icons like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tanada opposed agrarian reform, the single most important factor that would have altered the rural areas and lifted the peasant from poverty. Both of them were merely anti-American.
And finally, we are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings. We condone cronyism and corruption and we don’t ostracize or punish the crooks in our midst. Both cronyism and corruption are wasteful but we allow their practice because our loyalty is to family or friend, not to the larger good.
We can tackle our poverty in two very distinct ways. The first choice: a nationalist revolution, a continuation of the revolution in 1896. But even before we can use violence to change inequities in our society, we must first have a profound change in our way of thinking, in our culture. My regret about EDSA is that change would have been possible then with a minimum of bloodshed. In fact, a revolution may not be bloody at all if something like EDSA would present itself again. Or a dictator unlike Marcos.
The second is through education, perhaps a longer and more complex process. The only problem is that it may take so long and by the time conditions have changed, we may be back where we were, caught up with this tremendous population explosion which the Catholic Church exacerbates in its conformity with doctrinal purity.We are faced with a growing compulsion to violence, but even if the communists won, they will rule as badly because they will be hostage to the same obstructions in our culture, the barkada, the vaulting egos that sundered the revolution in 1896, the Huk revolt in 1949-53.
To repeat, neither education nor revolution can succeed if we do not internalize new attitudes, new ways of thinking. Let us go back to basics and remember those American slogans: A Ford in every garage. A chicken in every pot. Money is like fertilizer: to do any good it must be spread around.Some Filipinos, taunted wherever they are, are shamed to admit they are Filipinos. I have, myself, been embarrassed to explain, for instance, why Imelda, her children and the Marcos cronies are back, and in positions of power. Are there redeeming features in our country that we can be proud of? Of course, lots of them. When people say, for instance, that our corruption will never be banished, just remember that Arsenio Lacson as mayor of Manila and Ramon Magsaysay as president brought a clean government.We do not have the classical arts that brought Hinduism and Buddhism to continental and archipelagic Southeast Asia, but our artists have now ranged the world, showing what we have done with Western art forms, enriched with our own ethnic traditions. Our professionals, not just our domestics, are all over, showing how accomplished a people we are!
Look at our history. We are the first in Asia to rise against Western colonialism, the first to establish a republic. Recall the Battle of Tirad Pass and glory in the heroism of Gregorio del Pilar and the 48 Filipinos who died but stopped the Texas Rangers from capturing the president of that First Republic. Its equivalent in ancient history is the Battle of Thermopylae where the Spartans and their king Leonidas, died to a man, defending the pass against the invading Persians. Rizal — what nation on earth has produced a man like him? At 35, he was a novelist, a poet, an anthropologist, a sculptor, a medical doctor, a teacher and martyr.We are now 80 million and in another two decades we will pass the 100 million mark.
Eighty million — that is a mass market in any language, a mass market that should absorb our increased production in goods and services – a mass market which any entrepreneur can hope to exploit, like the proverbial oil for the lamps of China.
Japan was only 70 million when it had confidence enough and the wherewithal to challenge the United States and almost won. It is the same confidence that enabled Japan to flourish from the rubble of defeat in World War II.
I am not looking for a foreign power for us to challenge. But we have a real and insidious enemy that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power. We are our own enemy. And we must have the courage, the will, to change ourselves.
Japan was only 70 million when it had confidence enough and the wherewithal to challenge the United States and almost won. It is the same confidence that enabled Japan to flourish from the rubble of defeat in World War II.
I am not looking for a foreign power for us to challenge. But we have a real and insidious enemy that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power. We are our own enemy. And we must have the courage, the will, to change ourselves.
4.)Biag ni Lam-Ang
By: Pedro Bukaneg
Sina Don Juan t Namongan ay taga Nalbuan, ngayon ay sakop ng La Union. May isa silang anak na lalaki. Ito'y si Lam-ang. Bago pa isilan si Lam-ang, ang ama nito ay pumunta na sa bundok upang parusahan ang isang pangkat ng mga Igorota na kalaban nila.
Nang isilang si Lam-ang, apat na hilot ang nagtulong-tulong. Ugali na nga mga Ilokano noong una na tumulong sa mga hilot kung manganganak ang maybahy nila ngunit dahil nga wala si Don Juan, mga kasambahay nila ang tumulong sa pagsilang ni Namongan.
Pagkasilang, nagsalita agad ang sanggol at siya ang humiling na "Lam-ang" ang ipangalan sa kaniya. Siya rin ang pumili ng magiging ninong niya sa binyag. Itinanong pa rin niya sa ina ang ama, kung saan naroron ito, na di pa niya nakikita simula pa sa kanyang pagkasilang. Sinabi na ina ang kinaroroonan ng ama.
Makaraan ang siyam na buwan, nainip na si Lam-ang sa di pagdating ng ama kaya't sinundan niya ito sa kabundukan. May dala siyang iba't- ibang sandata at mga antng-anting na makapag-bibigay-lakas sa kamiya at maaaring gawin siyang hindi makikita. Talagang pinaghandaan niya ang lakad na ito.
Sa kaniyang paglalakbay, inabot siya ng pagkahapo kaya't namahinga sandali. Naidlip siya at napangarap niyang ang pugot na ulo ng ama ay pinagpipistahan na ng mga Igorote. Galit na galit si Lam-ang s nabatid na sinapit ng ama kaya mabilis na nilakbay ang tirahan ng mga Igorote. Pinagpupuksa niya ang mga ito sa pamamagitan ng dalang mga sandata at anting-anting. Ang isa sy kaniyang pinahirapan lamang saka inalpasan upang siyang magbalita sa iba pang Igorote ng kaniyang tapang, lakas at talino. Umuwi si Lam-ang nang nasisiyahan dahil sa nipaghiganti niya an pagkamatay ng ama niya.
Nang siya'y magbalik sa Nalbuan, taglt ang tagumpay, pinaliguan siya ng ilang babaing kaibigan sa ilog ng Amburayan, dahil ito'y naging ugali na noon, na pagdating ng isang mandirigma, naliligo siya. Matapos na paliguan si Lam-ang, nanagmatay ang mga isda at iba pang bagay na may buhay na nakatira sa tubig dahil sa kapal ng libag at sama ng amoy na nahugasan sa katawan nito.
Sa kabutihan naman may isang dalagang balita sa kagandahan na nagngangalang Ines Kannoyan. Ito'y pinuntahan ng binatang si Lam-ang upang ligawan, kasama ang kaniyang putting tandang at abuhing aso. Isang masugid na manliligaw ni Ines ang nakasalubong nila, Si Sumarang, na kumutya kay Lam-ang, kaya't sila'y nag-away at dito'y muling nagwagi si Lam-ang.
Napakaraming nanliligaw ang nasa bakuran nina Ines kaya't gumawa sila ng paraan upang sila ay makatawag ng pansin. Ang tandang ay tumilaok at isang bahay ang nabuwal sa tabi. Si Ines ay dumungaw. Ang aso naman ang pinatahol niya at sa isang igalp, tumindig uli ang bahay na natumba. Nakita rin ng magulang ni Ines ang lahat ng iyon at siya'y ipinatawag niyon. Ang pag-ibig ni Lam-an kay Ines ay ipinahayag ng tandang. Sumagot ang mga magulang ng dalaga na sila'y payag na maging manugang si Lam-ang kun ito'y makapagbibigay ng boteng may dobleng halaga ng sariling ari-arian ng magulang ng dalaga.
Nang magbalik si Lam-ang sa Kalanutian, kasama si Namongan at mga kababayan, sila Ines ay ikinasal. Dala nila ang lahat ng kailangan para sa maringal na kasalan pati ang dote. Ang masayang pagdiriwang ay sinimulan s Kalanutian at tinapos sa Nalbuan, kung saan nanirahan ang mag-asawa pagkatapos ng kasal nila.
Isa parin s kaugalian sa Kailukuhan, na pagkatapos ng kasal, ang lalaki ay kinakalilangang sumisid s ilog upang humuli ng rarang (isda). Sinunod ni Lam-ang subalit siya ay sinamang palad na makagat t mapatay ng berkakan (isang urinng pating). Ang mga buto ni Lam-ang na nasa pusod ng dagat ay ipinasisid at pinatapon ni Donya Ines sa isang kalansay at tinakpan ng tela. Ang tandang ay tumilaok, ang aso ay kumahol at sa bisa ng engkanto, unti-unting kumilos ang mga buto.
Sa muling pagkabuhay ni Lam-ang, ang mag-asawa ay namuhay nang maligaya, maluwalhati at matiwasay sa piling ng alagang putting tandang at abuhing aso.
Nang isilang si Lam-ang, apat na hilot ang nagtulong-tulong. Ugali na nga mga Ilokano noong una na tumulong sa mga hilot kung manganganak ang maybahy nila ngunit dahil nga wala si Don Juan, mga kasambahay nila ang tumulong sa pagsilang ni Namongan.
Pagkasilang, nagsalita agad ang sanggol at siya ang humiling na "Lam-ang" ang ipangalan sa kaniya. Siya rin ang pumili ng magiging ninong niya sa binyag. Itinanong pa rin niya sa ina ang ama, kung saan naroron ito, na di pa niya nakikita simula pa sa kanyang pagkasilang. Sinabi na ina ang kinaroroonan ng ama.
Makaraan ang siyam na buwan, nainip na si Lam-ang sa di pagdating ng ama kaya't sinundan niya ito sa kabundukan. May dala siyang iba't- ibang sandata at mga antng-anting na makapag-bibigay-lakas sa kamiya at maaaring gawin siyang hindi makikita. Talagang pinaghandaan niya ang lakad na ito.
Sa kaniyang paglalakbay, inabot siya ng pagkahapo kaya't namahinga sandali. Naidlip siya at napangarap niyang ang pugot na ulo ng ama ay pinagpipistahan na ng mga Igorote. Galit na galit si Lam-ang s nabatid na sinapit ng ama kaya mabilis na nilakbay ang tirahan ng mga Igorote. Pinagpupuksa niya ang mga ito sa pamamagitan ng dalang mga sandata at anting-anting. Ang isa sy kaniyang pinahirapan lamang saka inalpasan upang siyang magbalita sa iba pang Igorote ng kaniyang tapang, lakas at talino. Umuwi si Lam-ang nang nasisiyahan dahil sa nipaghiganti niya an pagkamatay ng ama niya.
Nang siya'y magbalik sa Nalbuan, taglt ang tagumpay, pinaliguan siya ng ilang babaing kaibigan sa ilog ng Amburayan, dahil ito'y naging ugali na noon, na pagdating ng isang mandirigma, naliligo siya. Matapos na paliguan si Lam-ang, nanagmatay ang mga isda at iba pang bagay na may buhay na nakatira sa tubig dahil sa kapal ng libag at sama ng amoy na nahugasan sa katawan nito.
Sa kabutihan naman may isang dalagang balita sa kagandahan na nagngangalang Ines Kannoyan. Ito'y pinuntahan ng binatang si Lam-ang upang ligawan, kasama ang kaniyang putting tandang at abuhing aso. Isang masugid na manliligaw ni Ines ang nakasalubong nila, Si Sumarang, na kumutya kay Lam-ang, kaya't sila'y nag-away at dito'y muling nagwagi si Lam-ang.
Napakaraming nanliligaw ang nasa bakuran nina Ines kaya't gumawa sila ng paraan upang sila ay makatawag ng pansin. Ang tandang ay tumilaok at isang bahay ang nabuwal sa tabi. Si Ines ay dumungaw. Ang aso naman ang pinatahol niya at sa isang igalp, tumindig uli ang bahay na natumba. Nakita rin ng magulang ni Ines ang lahat ng iyon at siya'y ipinatawag niyon. Ang pag-ibig ni Lam-an kay Ines ay ipinahayag ng tandang. Sumagot ang mga magulang ng dalaga na sila'y payag na maging manugang si Lam-ang kun ito'y makapagbibigay ng boteng may dobleng halaga ng sariling ari-arian ng magulang ng dalaga.
Nang magbalik si Lam-ang sa Kalanutian, kasama si Namongan at mga kababayan, sila Ines ay ikinasal. Dala nila ang lahat ng kailangan para sa maringal na kasalan pati ang dote. Ang masayang pagdiriwang ay sinimulan s Kalanutian at tinapos sa Nalbuan, kung saan nanirahan ang mag-asawa pagkatapos ng kasal nila.
Isa parin s kaugalian sa Kailukuhan, na pagkatapos ng kasal, ang lalaki ay kinakalilangang sumisid s ilog upang humuli ng rarang (isda). Sinunod ni Lam-ang subalit siya ay sinamang palad na makagat t mapatay ng berkakan (isang urinng pating). Ang mga buto ni Lam-ang na nasa pusod ng dagat ay ipinasisid at pinatapon ni Donya Ines sa isang kalansay at tinakpan ng tela. Ang tandang ay tumilaok, ang aso ay kumahol at sa bisa ng engkanto, unti-unting kumilos ang mga buto.
Sa muling pagkabuhay ni Lam-ang, ang mag-asawa ay namuhay nang maligaya, maluwalhati at matiwasay sa piling ng alagang putting tandang at abuhing aso.
5.)INK
by: Guillermo Castillo
Ink
bottled in glass prison
meaningless in itself
black and mute without a language
silent but strongly urged
to speak.
Ink
chance-impressed on white
inarticulate unintelligible chaotic
welcome on the bareness of white
but still foreign excommunicate.
But ink
pen-lifted pen-impressed
on black white paper
Will-ordered
Interprets intensifies clarifies
expresses
Life.
