Philippine Literature Post-War Period

MAGNIFICENCE
ESTRELLA D. ALFON

There was nothing to fear, for the man was always so gentle, so kind. At night when the little girl and her brother were bathed in the light of the big shaded bulb that hung over the big study table in the downstairs hall, the man would knock gently on the door, and come in. he would stand for a while just beyond the pool of light, his feet in the circle of illumination, the rest of him in shadow. The little girl and her brother would look up at him where they sat at the big table, their eyes bright in the bright light, and watch him come fully into the light, but his voice soft, his manner slow. He would smell very faintly of sweat and pomade, but the children didn’t mind although they did notice, for they waited for him every evening as they sat at their lessons like this. He’d throw his visored cap on the table, and it would fall down with a soft plop, then he’d nod his head to say one was right, or shake it to say one was wrong.It was not always that he came. They could remember perhaps two weeks when he remarked to their mother that he had never seen two children looking so smart. The praise had made their mother look over them as they stood around listening to the goings-on at the meeting of the neighborhood association, of which their mother was president. Two children, one a girl of seven, and a boy of eight. They were both very tall for their age, and their legs were the long gangly legs of fine spirited colts. Their mother saw them with eyes that held pride, and then to partly gloss over the maternal gloating she exhibited, she said to the man, in answer to his praise, But their homework. They’re so lazy with them. And the man said, I have nothing to do in the evenings, let me help them. Mother nodded her head and said, if you want to bother yourself. And the thing rested there, and the man came in the evenings therefore, and he helped solve fractions for the boy, and write correct phrases in language for the little girl.In those days, the rage was for pencils. School children always have rages going at one time or another. Sometimes for paper butterflies that are held on sticks, and whirr in the wind. The Japanese bazaars promoted a rage for those. Sometimes it is for little lead toys found in the folded waffles that Japanese confection-makers had such light hands with. At this particular time, it was for pencils. Pencils big but light in circumference not smaller than a man’s thumb. They were unwieldy in a child’s hands, but in all schools then, where Japanese bazaars clustered there were all colors of these pencils selling for very low, but unattainable to a child budgeted at a baon of a centavo a day. They were all of five centavos each, and one pencil was not at all what one had ambitions for. In rages, one kept a collection. Four or five pencils, of different colors, to tie with strings near the eraser end, to dangle from one’s book-basket, to arouse the envy of the other children who probably possessed less.Add to the man’s gentleness and his kindness in knowing a child’s desires, his promise that he would give each of them not one pencil but two. And for the little girl who he said was very bright and deserved more, ho would get the biggest pencil he could find.One evening he did bring them. The evenings of waiting had made them look forward to this final giving, and when they got the pencils they whooped with joy. The little boy had tow pencils, one green, one blue. And the little girl had three pencils, two of the same circumference as the little boy’s but colored red and yellow. And the third pencil, a jumbo size pencil really, was white, and had been sharpened, and the little girl jumped up and down, and shouted with glee. Until their mother called from down the stairs. What are you shouting about? And they told her, shouting gladly, Vicente, for that was his name. Vicente had brought the pencils he had promised them.Thank him, their mother called. The little boy smiled and said, Thank you. And the little girl smiled, and said, Thank you, too. But the man said, Are you not going to kiss me for those pencils? They both came forward, the little girl and the little boy, and they both made to kiss him but Vicente slapped the boy smartly on his lean hips, and said, Boys do not kiss boys. And the little boy laughed and scampered away, and then ran back and kissed him anyway.The little girl went up to the man shyly, put her arms about his neck as he crouched to receive her embrace, and kissed him on the cheeks.The man’s arms tightened suddenly about the little girl until the little girl squirmed out of his arms, and laughed a little breathlessly, disturbed but innocent, looking at the man with a smiling little question of puzzlement.The next evening, he came around again. All through that day, they had been very proud in school showing off their brand new pencils. All the little girls and boys had been envying them. And their mother had finally to tell them to stop talking about the pencils, pencils, for now that they had, the boy two, and the girl three, they were asking their mother to buy more, so they could each have five, and three at least in the jumbo size that the little girl’s third pencil was. Their mother said, Oh stop it, what will you do with so many pencils, you can only write with one at a time.And the little girl muttered under her breath, I’ll ask Vicente for some more.Their mother replied, He’s only a bus conductor, don’t ask him for too many things. It’s a pity. And this observation their mother said to their father, who was eating his evening meal between paragraphs of the book on masonry rites that he was reading. It is a pity, said their mother, People like those, they make friends with people like us, and they feel it is nice to give us gifts, or the children toys and things. You’d think they wouldn’t be able to afford it.The father grunted, and said, the man probably needed a new job, and was softening his way through to him by going at the children like that. And the mother said, No, I don’t think so, he’s a rather queer young man, I think he doesn’t have many friends, but I have watched him with the children, and he seems to dote on them.The father grunted again, and did not pay any further attention.Vicente was earlier than usual that evening. The children immediately put their lessons down, telling him of the envy of their schoolmates, and would he buy them more please?Vicente said to the little boy, Go and ask if you can let me have a glass of water. And the little boy ran away to comply, saying behind him, But buy us some more pencils, huh, buy us more pencils, and then went up to stairs to their mother.Vicente held the little girl by the arm, and said gently, Of course I will buy you more pencils, as many as you wantAnd the little girl giggled and said, Oh, then I will tell my friends, and they will envy me, for they don’t have as many or as pretty.Vicente took the girl up lightly in his arms, holding her under the armpits, and held her to sit down on his lap and he said, still gently, What are your lessons for tomorrow? And the little girl turned to the paper on the table where she had been writing with the jumbo pencil, and she told him that that was her lesson but it was easy.Then go ahead and write, and I will watch you.Don’t hold me on your lap, said the little girl, I am very heavy, you will get very tired.The man shook his head, and said nothing, but held her on his lap just the same.The little girl kept squirming, for somehow she felt uncomfortable to be held thus, her mother and father always treated her like a big girl, she was always told never to act like a baby. She looked around at Vicente, interrupting her careful writing to twist around.His face was all in sweat, and his eyes looked very strange, and he indicated to her that she must turn around, attend to the homework she was writing.But the little girl felt very queer, she didn’t know why, all of a sudden she was immensely frightened, and she jumped up away from Vicente’s lap.She stood looking at him, feeling that queer frightened feeling, not knowing what to do. By and by, in a very short while her mother came down the stairs, holding in her hand a glass of sarsaparilla, Vicente.But Vicente had jumped up too soon as the little girl had jumped from his lap. He snatched at the papers that lay on the table and held them to his stomach, turning away from the mother’s coming.The mother looked at him, stopped in her tracks, and advanced into the light. She had been in the shadow. Her voice had been like a bell of safety to the little girl. But now she advanced into glare of the light that held like a tableau the figures of Vicente holding the little girl’s papers to him, and the little girl looking up at him frightenedly, in her eyes dark pools of wonder and fear and question.The little girl looked at her mother, and saw the beloved face transfigured by some sort of glow. The mother kept coming into the light, and when Vicente made as if to move away into the shadow, she said, very low, but very heavily, Do not move.She put the glass of soft drink down on the table, where in the light one could watch the little bubbles go up and down in the dark liquid. The mother said to the boy, Oscar, finish your lessons. And turning to the little girl, she said, Come here. The little girl went to her, and the mother knelt down, for she was a tall woman and she said, Turn around. Obediently the little girl turned around, and her mother passed her hands over the little girl’s back.Go upstairs, she said.The mother’s voice was of such a heavy quality and of such awful timbre that the girl could only nod her head, and without looking at Vicente again, she raced up the stairs. The mother went to the cowering man, and marched him with a glance out of the circle of light that held the little boy. Once in the shadow, she extended her hand, and without any opposition took away the papers that Vicente was holding to himself. She stood there saying nothing as the man fumbled with his hands and with his fingers, and she waited until he had finished. She was going to open her mouth but she glanced at the boy and closed it, and with a look and an inclination of the head, she bade Vicente go up the stairs.The man said nothing, for she said nothing either. Up the stairs went the man, and the mother followed behind. When they had reached the upper landing, the woman called down to her son, Son, come up and go to your room.The little boy did as he was told, asking no questions, for indeed he was feeling sleepy already.As soon as the boy was gone, the mother turned on Vicente. There was a pause.Finally, the woman raised her hand and slapped him full hard in the face. Her retreated down one tread of the stairs with the force of the blow, but the mother followed him. With her other hand she slapped him on the other side of the face again. And so down the stairs they went, the man backwards, his face continually open to the force of the woman’s slapping. Alternately she lifted her right hand and made him retreat before her until they reached the bottom landing.He made no resistance, offered no defense. Before the silence and the grimness of her attack he cowered, retreating, until out of his mouth issued something like a whimper.The mother thus shut his mouth, and with those hard forceful slaps she escorted him right to the other door. As soon as the cool air of the free night touched him, he recovered enough to turn away and run, into the shadows that ate him up. The woman looked after him, and closed the door. She turned off the blazing light over the study table, and went slowly up the stairs and out into the dark night.When her mother reached her, the woman, held her hand out to the child. Always also, with the terrible indelibility that one associated with terror, the girl was to remember the touch of that hand on her shoulder, heavy, kneading at her flesh, the woman herself stricken almost dumb, but her eyes eloquent with that angered fire. She knelt, She felt the little girl’s dress and took it off with haste that was almost frantic, tearing at the buttons and imparting a terror to the little girl that almost made her sob. Hush, the mother said. Take a bath quickly.Her mother presided over the bath the little girl took, scrubbed her, and soaped her, and then wiped her gently all over and changed her into new clothes that smelt of the clean fresh smell of clothes that had hung in the light of the sun. The clothes that she had taken off the little girl, she bundled into a tight wrenched bunch, which she threw into the kitchen range.Take also the pencils, said the mother to the watching newly bathed, newly changed child. Take them and throw them into the fire. But when the girl turned to comply, the mother said, No, tomorrow will do. And taking the little girl by the hand, she led her to her little girl’s bed, made her lie down and tucked the covers gently about her as the girl dropped off into quick slumber.

Figures of Speech

Metaphor:

Is an implied comparison between two unlike things, so alike in one way that they’re identified. “Their legs were long gangly legs of spirited colts” There is direct comparison between the children’s legs and the long gangly legs of spirited colts.

Hyperbole:

Is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated or extravagant. It may be used due to strong feelings or is used to create a strong impression and is not meant to be taken literally. “Watch him bathed in brightness” It is exaggeration to say that brightness can really bathe a man, but nevertheless, the statement presented a strong impression.

Simile:

Is an expressed comparison between 2 objects unlike in most ways, but strikingly alike in one way. It uses like, as, than to compare. “In circumference, not smaller than a man’s thumb” In this statement, the size of man’s thumb is compared to the circumference of a pencil.

About the Author

Estrella D. Alfon (1917) – December 28, 1983) was a well-known Filipina author who wrote almost exclusively in English. As a Filipino writer, Estrella Alfon lived her life of being a prolific writer who hailed from Cebu. Because of unwavering and poor health, she could manage only an A. A. degree from the University of the Philippines. She then became a member of the U. P. writers club and earned and was given the privileged post of National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U. P. Creative Writing Center. She died in the year 1983 at the age of 66.

Personal
Estrella Alfon was born in Cebu City in 1917. Unlike other writers of her time, she did not come from the intelligensia. Her parents were shopkeepers in Cebu.[1] She attended college, and studied medicine. When she was mistakenly diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanitarium, she resigned from her pre-medical education, and left with an Associate of Arts degree.
Alfon has several children: Alan Rivera, Esmeralda "Mimi" Rivera, Brian Alfon, Estrella "Twinkie" Alfon, and Rita "Daday" Alfon (deceased). She has 10 grandchildren.
Her youngest daughter, was a stewardess for Saudi Arabian Airlines, and was part of the Flight 163 crew on August 19, 1980, when an in-flight fire forced the aircraft to land in Riyadh. A delayed evacuation resulted in the death of everyone aboard the flight.
Alfon died on December, 28 1983, following a heart attack suffered on-stage during Awards night of the Manila Film Festival

Professional
She was a storywriter, playwright, and journalist. In spite of being a proud Cebuana, she wrote almost exclusively in English. She published her first story, “Grey Confetti”, in the Graphic in 1935. [2]
She was the only female member of the Veronicans, an avant garde group of writers in the 1930s led by Francisco Arcellana and H.R. Ocampo, she was also regarded as their muse. The Veronicans are recognized as the first group of Filipino writers to write almost exclusively in English and were formed prior to the World War II. She is also reportedly the most prolific Filipina writer prior to World War II. She was a regular contributor to Manila-based national magazines, she had several stories cited in Jose Garcia Villa’s annual honor rolls.
“
Alfon was one writer who unashamedly drew from her own real-life experiences. In some stories, the first-person narrator is “Estrella” or “Esther.” She is not just a writer, but one who consciously refers to her act of writing the stories. In other stories, Alfon is still easily identifiable in her first-person reminiscences of the past: evacuation during the Japanese occupation; estrangement from a husband; life after the war. In the Espeleta stories, Alfon uses the editorial “we” to indicate that as a member of that community, she shares their feelings and responses towards the incidents in the story. But she sometimes slips back to being a first-person narrator. The impression is that although she shares the sentiments of her neighbors, she is still a distinct personality who detaches her self from the scene in order to understand it better. This device of separating herself as narrator from the other characters is contained within the larger strategy of ?distantiation? that of the writer from her strongly autobiographical material. - Thelma E. Arambulo[3]
”
In the 1950s, her short story, "Fairy Tale for the City", was condemned by the Catholic League of the Philippines as being "obscene"[4]. She was even brought to court on these charges. While many of her fellow writers did stand by her, many did not. These events hurt her deeply.[5]
In spite of having only an A.A. degree, she was eventually appointed as a professor of Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines, Manila. She was a member of the U.P. Writers Club, she held the National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U.P. Creative Writing Center in 1979.[6]
She would also serve on the Philippine Board of Tourism in the 1970s.

Achievements
1940: A collection of her early short stories, “Dear Esmeralda,” won Honorable Mention in the Commonwealth Literary Award.
1961-1962: Four of her one-act plays won all the prizes in the Arena Theater Play Writing Contest: “Losers Keepers” (first prize), “Strangers” (second prize), “Rice” (third prize), and “Beggar” (fourth prize).
1961-1962: Won top prize in the Palanca Contest for “With Patches of Many Hues.”
1974: Second place Palanca Award for her short story, "The White Dress".[7]
1979: National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U.P. Creative Writing CPalanca Award\

Estrella Alfon has won the Palanca Awards a number of times

Forever Witches, One-act Play (Third place, 1960)
With Patches of Many Hues, One-act Play (First place, 1962)
Tubig, One-act Play (Second place, 1963)
The Knitting Straw, One-act Play, (Third place, 1968)
The White Dress, Short Story (Second place, 1974)

Stories
Magnificence and Other Stories (1960)
Stories of Estrella Alfon (1994) (published posthumously)
Servant Girt (short story)

Influence
“
Estrella Alfon writes about everyday life, but she captures the details in this dazzling, intense light. She could write about the ordinary and make it extraordinary. She could write about a day on the farm or a picnic with friends or a poor laundry woman wishing that her life were different because she was being abused by her mistress. They were very simple stories about ordinary people, whose lives we don't know until she uncovers them in the stories. I was just hooked. Whatever designs my mother may have had, they worked. I feel so much more fulfilled because I had that early gift. - Luisa Igloria interview[9]

The Summer Solstice
Nick Joaquin

THE MORETAS WERE spending St. John's Day with the children's grandfather, whose feast day it was. Doña Lupeng awoke feeling faint with the heat, a sound of screaming in her ears. In the dining room the three boys already attired in their holiday suits, were at breakfast, and came crowding around her, talking all at once.
"How long you have slept, Mama!"
"We thought you were never getting up!"
"Do we leave at once, huh? Are we going now?"
"Hush, hush I implore you! Now look: your father has a headache, and so have I. So be quiet this instant—or no one goes to Grandfather."
Though it was only seven by the clock the house was already a furnace, the windows dilating with the harsh light and the air already burning with the immense, intense fever of noon.
She found the children's nurse working in the kitchen. "And why is it you who are preparing breakfast? Where is Amada?" But without waiting for an answer she went to the backdoor and opened it, and the screaming in her ears became wild screaming in the stables across the yard. "Oh my God!" she groaned and, grasping her skirts, hurried across the yard.
In the stables Entoy, the driver, apparently deaf to the screams, was hitching the pair of piebald ponies to the coach.
"Not the closed coach, Entoy! The open carriage!" shouted Doña Lupeng as she came up.
"But the dust, señora—"
"I know, but better to be dirty than to be boiled alive. And what ails your wife, eh? Have you been beating her again?"
"Oh no, señora: I have not touched her."
"Then why is she screaming? Is she ill?"
"I do not think so. But how do I know? You can go and see for yourself, señora. She is up there."
When Doña Lupeng entered the room, the big half-naked woman sprawled across the bamboo bed stopped screaming. Doña Lupeng was shocked.
"What is this Amada? Why are you still in bed at this hour? And in such a posture! Come, get up at once. You should be ashamed!"
But the woman on the bed merely stared. Her sweat-beaded brows contracted, as if in an effort to understand. Then her face relax her mouth sagged open humorously and, rolling over on her back and spreading out her big soft arms and legs, she began noiselessly quaking with laughter—the mute mirth jerking in her throat; the moist pile of her flesh quivering like brown jelly. Saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth.
Doña Lupeng blushed, looking around helplessly, and seeing that Entoy had followed and was leaning in the doorway, watching stolidly, she blushed again. The room reeked hotly of intimate odors. She averted her eyes from the laughing woman on the bed, in whose nakedness she seemed so to participate that she was ashamed to look directly at the man in the doorway.
"Tell me, Entoy: has she had been to the Tadtarin?"
"Yes, señora. Last night."
"But I forbade her to go! And I forbade you to let her go!"
"I could do nothing."
"Why, you beat her at the least pretext!"
"But now I dare not touch her."
"Oh, and why not?"
"It is the day of St. John: the spirit is in her."
"But, man?"
"It is true, señora. The spirit is in her. She is the Tadtarin. She must do as she pleases. Otherwise, the grain would not grow, the trees would bear no fruit, the rivers would give no fish, and the animals would die."
"Naku, I did no know your wife was so powerful, Entoy."
"At such times she is not my wife: she is the wife of the river, she is the wife of the crocodile, she is the wife of the moon."
"BUT HOW CAN they still believe such things?" demanded Doña Lupeng of her husband as they drove in the open carriage through the pastoral countryside that was the arrabal of Paco in the 1850's.
Don Paeng darted a sidelong glance at his wife, by which he intimated that the subject was not a proper one for the children, who were sitting opposite, facing their parents.
Don Paeng, drowsily stroking his moustaches, his eyes closed against the hot light, merely shrugged.
"And you should have seen that Entoy," continued his wife. "You know how the brute treats her: she cannot say a word but he thrashes her. But this morning he stood as meek as a lamb while she screamed and screamed. He seemed actually in awe of her, do you know—actually afraid of her!"
"Oh, look, boys—here comes the St. John!" cried Doña Lupeng, and she sprang up in the swaying carriage, propping one hand on her husband's shoulder wile the other she held up her silk parasol.
And "Here come the men with their St. John!" cried voices up and down the countryside. People in wet clothes dripping with well-water, ditch-water and river-water came running across the hot woods and fields and meadows, brandishing cans of water, wetting each other uproariously, and shouting San Juan! San Juan! as they ran to meet the procession.
Up the road, stirring a cloud of dust, and gaily bedrenched by the crowds gathered along the wayside, a concourse of young men clad only in soggy trousers were carrying aloft an image of the Precursor. Their teeth flashed white in their laughing faces and their hot bodies glowed crimson as they pranced past, shrouded in fiery dust, singing and shouting and waving their arms: the St. John riding swiftly above the sea of dark heads and glittering in the noon sun—a fine, blonde, heroic St. John: very male, very arrogant: the Lord of Summer indeed; the Lord of Light and Heat—erect and godly virile above the prone and female earth—while the worshippers danced and the dust thickened and the animals reared and roared and the merciless fires came raining down form the skies—the relentlessly upon field and river and town and winding road, and upon the joyous throng of young men against whose uproar a couple of seminarians in muddy cassocks vainly intoned the hymn of the noon god:
That we, thy servants, in chorusMay praise thee, our tongues restore us...
But Doña Lupeng, standing in the stopped carriage, looking very young and elegant in her white frock, under the twirling parasol, stared down on the passing male horde with increasing annoyance. The insolent man-smell of their bodies rose all about her—wave upon wave of it—enveloping her, assaulting her senses, till she felt faint with it and pressed a handkerchief to her nose. And as she glanced at her husband and saw with what a smug smile he was watching the revelers, her annoyance deepened. When he bade her sit down because all eyes were turned on her, she pretended not to hear; stood up even straighter, as if to defy those rude creatures flaunting their manhood in the sun.
And she wondered peevishly what the braggarts were being so cocky about? For this arrogance, this pride, this bluff male health of theirs was (she told herself) founded on the impregnable virtue of generations of good women. The boobies were so sure of themselves because they had always been sure of their wives. "All the sisters being virtuous, all the brothers are brave," thought Doña Lupeng, with a bitterness that rather surprised her. Women had built it up: this poise of the male. Ah, and women could destroy it, too! She recalled, vindictively, this morning's scene at the stables: Amada naked and screaming in bed whiled from the doorway her lord and master looked on in meek silence. And was it not the mystery of a woman in her flowers that had restored the tongue of that old Hebrew prophet?
"Look, Lupeng, they have all passed now," Don Paeng was saying, "Do you mean to stand all the way?"
She looked around in surprise and hastily sat down. The children tittered, and the carriage started.
"Has the heat gone to your head, woman?" asked Don Paeng, smiling. The children burst frankly into laughter.
Their mother colored and hung her head. She was beginning to feel ashamed of the thoughts that had filled her mind. They seemed improper—almost obscene—and the discovery of such depths of wickedness in herself appalled her. She moved closer to her husband to share the parasol with him.
"And did you see our young cousin Guido?" he asked.
"Oh, was he in that crowd?"
"A European education does not seem to have spoiled his taste for country pleasures."
"I did not see him."
"He waved and waved."
"The poor boy. He will feel hurt. But truly, Paeng. I did not see him."
"Well, that is always a woman's privilege."
BUT WHEN THAT afternoon, at the grandfather's, the young Guido presented himself, properly attired and brushed and scented, Doña Lupeng was so charming and gracious with him that he was enchanted and gazed after her all afternoon with enamored eyes.
This was the time when our young men were all going to Europe and bringing back with them, not the Age of Victoria, but the Age of Byron. The young Guido knew nothing of Darwin and evolution; he knew everything about Napoleon and the Revolution. When Doña Lupeng expressed surprise at his presence that morning in the St. John's crowd, he laughed in her face.
"But I adore these old fiestas of ours! They are so romantic! Last night, do you know, we walked all the way through the woods, I and some boys, to see the procession of the Tadtarin."
"And was that romantic too?" asked Doña Lupeng.
"It was weird. It made my flesh crawl. All those women in such a mystic frenzy! And she who was the Tadtarin last night—she was a figure right out of a flamenco!"
"I fear to disenchant you, Guido—but that woman happens to be our cook."
"She is beautiful."
"Our Amada beautiful? But she is old and fat!"
"She is beautiful—as that old tree you are leaning on is beautiful," calmly insisted the young man, mocking her with his eyes.
They were out in the buzzing orchard, among the ripe mangoes; Doña Lupeng seated on the grass, her legs tucked beneath her, and the young man sprawled flat on his belly, gazing up at her, his face moist with sweat. The children were chasing dragonflies. The sun stood still in the west. The long day refused to end. From the house came the sudden roaring laughter of the men playing cards.
"Beautiful! Romantic! Adorable! Are those the only words you learned in Europe?" cried Doña Lupeng, feeling very annoyed with this young man whose eyes adored her one moment and mocked her the next.
"Ah, I also learned to open my eyes over there—to see the holiness and the mystery of what is vulgar."
"And what is so holy and mysterious about—about the Tadtarin, for instance?"
"I do not know. I can only feel it. And it frightens me. Those rituals come to us from the earliest dawn of the world. And the dominant figure is not the male but the female."
"But they are in honor of St. John."
"What has your St. John to do with them? Those women worship a more ancient lord. Why, do you know that no man may join those rites unless he first puts on some article of women's apparel and—"
"And what did you put on, Guido?"
"How sharp you are! Oh, I made such love to a toothless old hag there that she pulled off her stocking for me. And I pulled it on, over my arm, like a glove. How your husband would have despised me!"
"But what on earth does it mean?"
"I think it is to remind us men that once upon a time you women were supreme and we men were the slaves."
"But surely there have always been kings?"
"Oh, no. The queen came before the king, and the priestess before the priest, and the moon before the sun."
"The moon?"
"—who is the Lord of the women."
"Why?"
"Because the tides of women, like the tides of the sea, are tides of the moon. Because the first blood -But what is the matter, Lupe? Oh, have I offended you?"
"Is this how they talk to decent women in Europe?"
"They do not talk to women, they pray to them—as men did in the dawn of the world."
"Oh, you are mad! mad!"
"Why are you so afraid, Lupe?"
"I afraid? And of whom? My dear boy, you still have your mother's milk in your mouth. I only wish you to remember that I am a married woman."
"I remember that you are a woman, yes. A beautiful woman. And why not? Did you turn into some dreadful monster when you married? Did you stop being a woman? Did you stop being beautiful? Then why should my eyes not tell you what you are—just because you are married?"
"Ah, this is too much now!" cried Doña Lupeng, and she rose to her feet.
"Do not go, I implore you! Have pity on me!"
"No more of your comedy, Guido! And besides—where have those children gone to! I must go after them."
As she lifted her skirts to walk away, the young man, propping up his elbows, dragged himself forward on the ground and solemnly kissed the tips of her shoes. She stared down in sudden horror, transfixed—and he felt her violent shudder. She backed away slowly, still staring; then turned and fled toward the house.
ON THE WAY home that evening Don Paeng noticed that his wife was in a mood. They were alone in the carriage: the children were staying overnight at their grandfather's. The heat had not subsided. It was heat without gradations: that knew no twilights and no dawns; that was still there, after the sun had set; that would be there already, before the sun had risen.
"Has young Guido been annoying you?" asked Don Paeng.
"Yes! All afternoon."
"These young men today—what a disgrace they are! I felt embarrassed as a man to see him following you about with those eyes of a whipped dog."
She glanced at him coldly. "And was that all you felt, Paeng? embarrassed—as a man?"
"A good husband has constant confidence in the good sense of his wife," he pronounced grandly, and smiled at her.
But she drew away; huddled herself in the other corner. "He kissed my feet," she told him disdainfully, her eyes on his face.
He frowned and made a gesture of distaste. "Do you see? They have the instincts, the style of the canalla! To kiss a woman's feet, to follow her like a dog, to adore her like a slave—"
"Is it so shameful for a man to adore women?"
"A gentleman loves and respects Woman. The cads and lunatics—they 'adore' the women."
"But maybe we do not want to be loved and respected—but to be adored."
But when they reached home she did not lie down but wandered listlessly through the empty house. When Don Paeng, having bathed and changed, came down from the bedroom, he found her in the dark parlour seated at the harp and plucking out a tune, still in her white frock and shoes.
"How can you bear those hot clothes, Lupeng? And why the darkness? Order someone to bring light in here."
"There is no one, they have all gone to see the Tadtarin."
"A pack of loafers we are feeding!"
She had risen and gone to the window. He approached and stood behind her, grasped her elbows and, stooping, kissed the nape of her neck. But she stood still, not responding, and he released her sulkily. She turned around to face him.
"Listen, Paeng. I want to see it, too. The Tadtarin, I mean. I have not seen it since I was a little girl. And tonight is the last night."
"You must be crazy! Only low people go there. And I thought you had a headache?" He was still sulking.
"But I want to go! My head aches worse in the house. For a favor, Paeng."
"I told you: No! go and take those clothes off. But, woman, whatever has got into you!" he strode off to the table, opened the box of cigars, took one, banged the lid shut, bit off an end of the cigar, and glared about for a light.
She was still standing by the window and her chin was up.
"Very well, if you do want to come, do not come—but I am going."
"I warn you, Lupe; do not provoke me!"
"I will go with Amada. Entoy can take us. You cannot forbid me, Paeng. There is nothing wrong with it. I am not a child."
But standing very straight in her white frock, her eyes shining in the dark and her chin thrust up, she looked so young, so fragile, that his heart was touched. He sighed, smiled ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Yes, the heat has touched you in the head, Lupeng. And since you are so set on it—very well, let us go. Come, have the coach ordered!"
THE CULT OF the Tadtarin is celebrated on three days: the feast of St. John and the two preceding days. On the first night, a young girl heads the procession; on the second, a mature woman; and on the third, a very old woman who dies and comes to life again. In these processions, as in those of Pakil and Obando, everyone dances.
Around the tiny plaza in front of the barrio chapel, quite a stream of carriages was flowing leisurely. The Moretas were constantly being hailed from the other vehicles. The plaza itself and the sidewalks were filled with chattering, strolling, profusely sweating people. More people were crowded on the balconies and windows of the houses. The moon had not yet risen; the black night smoldered; in the windless sky the lightning's abruptly branching fire seemed the nerves of the tortured air made visible.
"Here they come now!" cried the people on the balconies.
And "Here come the women with their St. John!" cried the people on the sidewalks, surging forth on the street. The carriages halted and their occupants descended. The plaza rang with the shouts of people and the neighing of horses—and with another keener sound: a sound as of sea-waves steadily rolling nearer.
The crowd parted, and up the street came the prancing, screaming, writhing women, their eyes wild, black shawls flying around their shoulders, and their long hair streaming and covered with leaves and flowers. But the Tadtarin, a small old woman with white hair, walked with calm dignity in the midst of the female tumult, a wand in one hand, a bunch of seedling in the other. Behind her, a group of girls bore aloft a little black image of the Baptist—a crude, primitive, grotesque image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and swaying above the hysterical female horde and looking at once so comical and so pathetic that Don Paeng, watching with his wife on the sidewalk, was outraged. The image seemed to be crying for help, to be struggling to escape—a St. John indeed in the hands of the Herodias; a doomed captive these witches were subjecting first to their derision; a gross and brutal caricature of his sex.
Don Paeng flushed hotly: he felt that all those women had personally insulted him. He turned to his wife, to take her away—but she was watching greedily, taut and breathless, her head thrust forward and her eyes bulging, the teeth bared in the slack mouth, and the sweat gleaning on her face. Don Paeng was horrified. He grasped her arm—but just then a flash of lightning blazed and the screaming women fell silent: the Tadtarin was about to die.
The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank slowly to her knees. A pallet was brought and set on the ground and she was laid in it and her face covered with a shroud. Her hands still clutched the wand and the seedlings. The women drew away, leaving her in a cleared space. They covered their heads with their black shawls and began wailing softly, unhumanly—a hushed, animal keening.
Overhead the sky was brightening, silver light defined the rooftops. When the moon rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded square, the black-shawled women stopped wailing and a girl approached and unshrouded the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and sat up, her face lifted to the moonlight. She rose to her feet and extended the wand and the seedlings and the women joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off and waved their shawls and whirled and began dancing again—laughing and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon that the people in the square and on the sidewalk, and even those on the balconies, were soon laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their parents and wives from their husbands to join in the orgy.
"Come, let us go now," said Don Paeng to his wife. She was shaking with fascination; tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and allowed herself to be led away. But suddenly she pulled free from his grasp, darted off, and ran into the crowd of dancing women.
She flung her hands to her hair and whirled and her hair came undone. Then, planting her arms akimbo, she began to trip a nimble measure, an indistinctive folk-movement. She tossed her head back and her arched throat bloomed whitely. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth with laughter.
Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her head and darted deeper into the dense maze of procession, which was moving again, towards the chapel. He followed her, shouting; she eluded him, laughing—and through the thick of the female horde they lost and found and lost each other again—she, dancing and he pursuing—till, carried along by the tide, they were both swallowed up into the hot, packed, turbulent darkness of the chapel. Inside poured the entire procession, and Don Paeng, finding himself trapped tight among milling female bodies, struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out. Angry voices rose all about him in the stifling darkness.
"Hoy you are crushing my feet!"
"And let go of my shawl, my shawl!"
"Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you!"
"Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots!" cried Don Paeng.
"Abah, it is a man!"
"How dare he come in here?"
"Break his head!"
"Throw the animal out!"
"Throw him out! Throw him out!" shrieked the voices, and Don Paeng found himself surrounded by a swarm of gleaming eyes.
Terror possessed him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his strength—but they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon him and pinned his arms helpless, while unseen hands struck and struck his face, and ravaged his hair and clothes, and clawed at his flesh, as—kicked and buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with blood—he was pushed down, down to his knees, and half-shoved, half-dragged to the doorway and rolled out to the street. He picked himself up at once and walked away with a dignity that forbade the crowd gathered outside to laugh or to pity. Entoy came running to meet him.
"But what has happened to you, Don Paeng?"
"Nothing. Where is the coach?"
"Just over there, sir. But you are wounded in the face!"
"No, these are only scratches. Go and get the señora. We are going home."
When she entered the coach and saw his bruised face and torn clothing, she smiled coolly.
"What a sight you are, man! What have you done with yourself?"
And when he did not answer: "Why, have they pulled out his tongue too?" she wondered aloud.
AND WHEN THEY are home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she was still as light-hearted.
"What are you going to do, Rafael?"
"I am going to give you a whipping."
"But why?"
"Because you have behaved tonight like a lewd woman."
"How I behaved tonight is what I am. If you call that lewd, then I was always a lewd woman and a whipping will not change me—though you whipped me till I died."
"I want this madness to die in you."
"No, you want me to pay for your bruises."
He flushed darkly. "How can you say that, Lupe?"
"Because it is true. You have been whipped by the women and now you think to avenge yourself by whipping me."
His shoulders sagged and his face dulled. "If you can think that of me—"
"You could think me a lewd woman!"
"Oh, how do I know what to think of you? I was sure I knew you as I knew myself. But now you are as distant and strange to me as a female Turk in Africa."
"Yet you would dare whip me—"
"Because I love you, because I respect you."
"And because if you ceased to respect me you would cease to respect yourself?"
"Ah, I did not say that!"
"Then why not say it? It is true. And you want to say it, you want to say it!"
But he struggled against her power. "Why should I want to?" he demanded peevishly.
"Because, either you must say it—or you must whip me," she taunted.
Her eyes were upon him and the shameful fear that had unmanned him in the dark chapel possessed him again. His legs had turned to water; it was a monstrous agony to remain standing.
But she was waiting for him to speak, forcing him to speak.
"No, I cannot whip you!" he confessed miserably.
"Then say it! Say it!" she cried, pounding her clenched fists together. "Why suffer and suffer? And in the end you would only submit."
But he still struggled stubbornly. "Is it not enough that you have me helpless? Is it not enough that I feel what you want me feel?"
But she shook her head furiously. "Until you have said to me, there can be no peace between us."
He was exhausted at last; he sank heavily to his knees, breathing hard and streaming with sweat, his fine body curiously diminished now in its ravaged apparel.
"I adore you, Lupe," he said tonelessly.
She strained forward avidly, "What? What did you say?" she screamed.
And he, in his dead voice: "That I adore you. That I adore you. That I worship you. That the air you breathe and the ground you tread is so holy to me. That I am your dog, your slave..."
But it was still not enough. Her fists were still clenched, and she cried: "Then come, crawl on the floor, and kiss my feet!"
Without moment's hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his arms and legs, gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great agonized lizard, the woman steadily backing away as he approached, her eyes watching him avidly, her nostrils dilating, till behind her loomed the open window, the huge glittering moon, the rapid flashes of lightning. she stopped, panting, and leaned against the sill. He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the floor.
She raised her skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his dripping face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and kiss it savagely—kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle—while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the whole windowsill her body and her loose hair streaming out the window—streaming fluid and black in the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon.

Philippine Literature Post-War Period

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