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.

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 panicky quality 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!”

The Quarrel 

 by Andres Cristobal Cruz

 

With half-shut eyes he tried in his mind, to make out other things of the objects in the still dim room. His shirt, for instance, hanging from a nail of the post between the bed and small altar of the Sagrada Familia, appeared, against the unmoving faint light of the oil wick, like a man’s severed body, armless in the dark, headless against the blackwood, and like the cellutex curtain drawn to side against the wall seemed cold and mute, as if driven there by the whole night’s darkness which would soon leave, allowing light outside to comment, through the blind eyes of their only window where sashpanes were missing, here and there upon the narrow room, defining in straight rays the reality of the things he had made out –– the still golden finger that was the oil lamp-wick which now looked more like a tiny slit of light, or a small bright leaf of light in the huge wall of darkness, the incomplete form of a man that was his shirt where it should not be, had it been noticed by Nina, on the nail –– all of these the outside light would slowly reintegrate into what they really were.

He heard the first trip dragging itself in the distance, leaving three tortured shrill whistle blasts and the irregular rumbling of iron-wheels to echo in whose consciousness lay listening, echo less and less until what had been one should became only a vague thought, as it was now with him as he turned on his side, getting under the mosquito net to lie beside Nina, his wife. She had her back to him; he had shaken her when she shriek in the nightmare, and since then he had not slept again. He pulled her lovingly by the shoulder, his hand passing over her breast as she turned, still asleep. Had the child lived, that was six months, seven? He tried to remember, had it lived, she would be cradling it now. She moaned, called: Ismael, Nina, he whispered; she yawned after a while, meeting him under the tightening sheet as they pressed the coldness. What time is it? He heard her say. It’s very cold, she said shivering against him. She was awake now; they lay on their backs. Above them, on the second floor, Mrs. Smith, their landlady was up, her cane, she had rheumatism, tapping in long intervals. There was the rent to pay.

“I’ll ask her to wait,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “When did she tell you?”

“Last night,” she said turning once more to him, “she’s very mean, the hag.” Her small laughter tickled his neck. She had little harmless curse worse, hag one of them.

“She’s not very old, nor very ugly,” he said, “forty? Forty-five?”

“I wonder if her husband still remember her,” she said in a little sarcastic voice, “she wants to be Missis Smith’ the wife of an American…”

“Was he a sergeant?” Until now he was not sure.

“A captain, so she told me,” she said, “how she could talk about him! You know, nothing-better-than-American-way talk,” she said “he’s now a civilian in business-s what’s that for?” she asked after he had kissed her on the mouth.

“Good morning,” he said turning on the other side and reaching out a hand for the radiophone on the headtable by the bed. The radio was silent for a while, then a soft tune came out. Chopin. It was Early Morning Classic time. It was the kind of music they liked. He turned back to her. She put her head on his arms and snuggled close…

“I’m asking up Wordsworth today,” he said. The image of the classroom appeared in his mind, there were the young faces before him.

“Do you still like him?” she asked. “In college she was one of your favorites.”

“I still do,” he said, Wordsworth and the rest, and the new ones.”

“Your class understands?”

“A little, and now and then,” he said. He had been having a hard time with the class.

“Pure water gone stale. And tasteless, etcetera,” she said in a mock lecturing voice, “Sir, you have me for an anxious student.” She laughed softly, teasingly.

He pulled her to him. “We’re still young,” he said. He remembered the scene in the City Hall. That was after he got the high school job right after graduation. But she was not able to finish her course. There was a child she was going to have and her parents, quite well-to-do and proper about things in the determined ways of the old, had found out too soon. “Are you sorry, Nina?”

“About what?”

“Us, the child, your parents,” he said. He had asked the same thing a long time ago. He felt like he wanted to really be sure, really sure.

“We have nothing to be sorry about,” she said and her lips on his confirmed deeply for him her words. He embraced her tightly.

“Get up, get up,” she said after a long while, playfully trying to push him off the bed. “We can’t live on it, alone.” She was in her joking mood, and he felt glad about it, sometimes he wondered if she had completely forgotten about the child. She was such a brave little woman…

Sunlight fell slicing through the narrow passages between the houses on the other side of the estero; it was warm on his face as he stood gurgling water inside the roofless makeshift bathroom that jutted over the sloping edge of the estero. Opening his mouth as his head bent the gurgled water splashed on the thick board flooring, the smell of dead animal rose from under –– it was bloated pig with a mass of active worms on its pale yellow and blue belly –– he looked around instinctively for something to dislodge it out with the post of the bathroom and mossy concrete edge. There was nothing handy for the purpose. He washed his face, he seldom took his bath here; seeing the black water moving under him he thought of the white-tiled bathroom in the school, and the shower, of the swimming pools and Nina went to Sunday mornings, the beach in the province; Nina and his mother preparing the picnic food while he and his kid brothers built sand castles while Judge, his father, stood nearby taking the sea wind… His face tightened, the dead pig under, worm and smell, assailed his nostrils; not this, he said to himself, somebody outside the door coughed; Not this! He flushed the water in the small coffee can he had dipped in gasoline drum that was half-filled ; the wall, a rusty sheet of corrugated iron dripped with the wash of water carrying the urine and rust. Another cough outside the door.

“Will they give up, Maestro?” It was Mang Jose, the old carpenter. He was standing out on the narrow lot between the back of the small four-door accesoria and the common bathroom.

“I don’t know,” he said opening the door wider and stepping out. It’s up to the President, I guess.”

“It’s up to us, Maestro,” Mang Jose said. “What I mean to say is it is really up to us, isn’t it Maestro?”. In the sunlight, the carpenter’s face appeared older, even pained where the wrinkles stood out. He always had something to say something: Huks, politics, the ‘merkanos, the fellowmen soldiers fighting in the far-away island. The old man was an ispiritista, Rizal, Quezon, Saint Peter, he had talked to them, and they all wanted peace, so Mang Jose told him. “Peace is what God wants,” the old man said pulling the door of the bathroom after him, “peace!” He must have seen the bloated pig. “The devil of a pig!” he heard the old man saying aloud. From the row of kitchens to each of the ground rooms of the accesoria, smoke floated in different shapes.

He stood out in the sunlight, wiping his face with a towel, in his mind reciting “The world is too much”– he wondered if the class understand the poem. But that is something he must see about it. A part of his job. He could hear the jeeps warming up on the small street in front of the accesoria. As usual Mrs. Smith was barking out orders to the men who were to take out her jeeps for the routes, “Sooner or later,” he recited aloud, “but stopped after we lay waste our powers.” Nina had appeared by the narrow backdoor, a coconut midrib broom in her hand fighting the hard earth with a regular swishing noise. Mrs. Smith’s passenger jeeps roared. “A phantom of delight,” he teased her loudly. She looked up from her sweeping and made a funny face. He walked up to her and giving her a pat on the cheek went up to their room asking, “What’s breakfast?” on the way.

“As-you-like-it eggs,” she said to him. He could hear her broom swishing on the ground towards the backyard. Inside the bedroom claimed from the kitchen-dining space by the cellutex curtain printed with blue birds in gay flight he listened to the music, turned the volume knob, and the rich voice of a tenor poured out louder song. Intermezzo. He took up the clean shirt lying on the already made-up bed. His shirt on the nail was no longer there. He smiled. Nina was such a fast housekeeper. She went about her chores with what he sometimes thought of as her punitive fury against disorder of any kind. She had never lost her next-to-Godliness mind she was brought up in. Everywhere in their room the mark of her hands was in the a chair was set, a pillow cased and smoothed out invitingly again, his lesson plan notebook and the books neatly placed on the small study table; she was humming in the kitchen; the shell of an egg distinctly broke on the edge of a frying pan… and then another. It was going to be as-you-like-it for them. He looked out of the window. He caught sight of a hand quickly disappearing on the upper edge of the bathroom wall of the house on the other side of the estero, there was the splash. On the scummy water a big ball of newspaper moved slowly, unfolding as it followed on the tide of procession of bits of driftwood and a mass of house manure from the nearby stables. A daily occurrence. Now, they seemed used to it. They could even tell, if they liked, what had been dropped or what had been thrown. He had felt sorry the first days they started living in this almost a slum place, but then, there was Nina. He put on his shirt.

“We need a little,” Nina had said, “let us not feel sorry about what we must face.” That face was also her, aside from the Nina that was his young wife with the large dark eyes, a dimple-slit on one cheek, long hair, lips that were full of flesh as they were with the soul of words.

You decided your life, Nina’s mother had said that evening when they found out about the baby she was going to have, live it then with him…And here ther were in a rented room she made with her heart and hands: into a room distinct from the others in the same accesoria, distinct from the just-so-there-are-walls-floor-to-lie-on others: a radiophono they bought after the child died, the books, the few but good clothes –– and there was her extracurricular job of teaching the kids in the accesoria, they came to her for extra lessons (I’m an educational system, she would tell him when he felt jealous of her attention to the kids), the wives who came now and then to borrow money and utensils. With the small salary he had, Nina managed commendably to make ends of their wants and means just meet. Except for the times, and they were so few and negligible, when he sent necessary amounts to his kid brothers, or when their friends didn’t live up to their promise to pay punctually – but they could always wait and make adjustments. And what a budget commissioner Nina could be at such times. She would always skimp; or haggle to the amused despair of the market vendors. Thanks to my charm! She would say and wink across their small round dining table, or you won’t be eating that. He tucked his shirt, zippered himself there, hearing Strauss? It must be Strauss, he guessed, gay, light, nymphy almost. There! He said looking at himself on the large round mirror of the dresser. From the kitchen she called.

“Coming,” he answered. He set the phono put several records. Breakfast music. That was what the modern science can do. The birds on the curtain seemed to fly as a stray wind flapped across and made little vertical waves. The table was set just for two, the as-you-like-it still smelled with the flavor of her cooking. He instantly felt hungry. Behind him she was patting in a bulge on his shirt. There! She said pushing him towards the chair.

“We thanked thee…” Nina’s voice saying the grace struck him as oddly beautiful each morning. They made the sign of the cross.

“you had a nightmare,” he said smiling as she poured him coffee in his cup. “Must be something you ate last night.”

“That’s superstition,” she answered reproaching with a distorted smile. She had pigtailed her hair and seeing her thus – the coffee was hot – he put down the cup, looked at her. There was a serves-you-right look in her eyes. She laughed softly. “Don’t forget to tell Missis Smith about the money,” she said, “it was due yesterday, you know.” Behind the curtain another record dropped.

“My pretty phantom of delight,” he said. He mashed the egg with the fried rice. The catsup was taking time to flow, he shook the bottle harder.

The jeeps had gone, and as he ate he could hear the voices of the other tenants. “Don’t be a bother!” that was Aling Pepang to her youngest child with the neck goiter and who was wailing. From the bathroom came the pouring of water for the clothes wash. Nina was half listening to the music while eating. An instant picture of her appeared in his thought. She was sweating as she worked without any expression in her face… Until she tapped his plate with a spoon he did not have an awareness of himself before the table. “What’s wrong?” Nina’s voice sounded frantic. He had opened his eyes. “Nothing,” he said. The dimple appeared on her cheek, her smile seemed to fight what he suddenly thought of. It was foolish thought. About getting Nina to live with his parents in the province. She would surely say No again. Mrs. Smith was on the sidewalk outside talking loudly to somebody. Gossiping, talking of how much she spent for marketing… Her voice came nearer and nearer in the narrow passage between the ground rooms. Nina looked at him. She was going to say something when, without knocking, Mrs. Smith came in by the backdoor, her cane tapping against the polished rungs of the low stairs.

“Come in,” Nina said, “have breakfast Missis.”

“I came for the rent, it’s due today.” The landlady’s voice was cutting.

“We would like to give it now,” Nina said with a humbly apologizing tone.

“Yes, Missis,” he said, “my friend forgot to pay me yesterday, and I just sent money to the province.”

“I’ve no business with your friend,” the landlady said putting a fist to her large ugly hip and keeping her head cocked.

“The school I’m teaching in is private, a small school, it so happened they couldn’t pay the full salaries,” he said. That was the truth.

“I have only one say, today’s today, I need the money!” the rise of the landldy’s voice shook him unguardedly, the cane kept tapping the floor with authority.

Under the table he stepped on Nina’s foot. “But tomorrow or next day I can give it,” he said trying to suppress an inexplicable mass of sudden hatred that rose in him, even as his legs shook for a moment beneath the table; he gripped the spoon and fork until his fists felt about to bursts, hearing: “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” and other words, words that smashed the music turning behind the curtain of birds, falling past his ears, struck obscenely at the plates, the coffee cups, and amidst them he caught a glimpse of Nina’s face, her mouth open as if she had just been slapped, her eyes struck wide with a wordless astonishment; “Tomorrow! He says! Tomorrow!” he heard while he felt in his breast the tortured beatings of many wings in the hardening air of disgust and hate that welled and fell with words that were neither his nor Nina’s. “How long? How long?” his mind cried wanting to laugh and at the same time shout, just shout: “STOP IT!” he only heard words, he was no longer listening. Nina was struggling to free her foot. And there was the gasp.

Now he was only aware of holding Nina back, the two of them pushing each other away, bodily he tried to get her safely behind the curtain of birds. “Too much! Too much!” Nina was shouting too: words clashed with words, there was long ripping sound of something, and he found himself brushing away something that felt like a net on him or Nina.

“What good people you are! How clean! What saints!” the words came clear and insulting in his ears.

“You’re envious, you hag! Leech! LEECH!” and there was Nina faying him; now he was pulling her, now pushing her, the room seemed to be turning and he saw now and then the faces of anonymous people that appeared from nowhere, children, women, men, in the light and shadows of the walls and window then the door, here a sudden piece of nearby roofs and sky, hearing words, there the sudden fragment of dimming faces, colorless sky, dark, light, eyes that swept around; himself and Nina flashing off and on in the round mirror. “Nina! Nina!” He shouted, shaking her as if in a terrible nightmare, pushing and pulling, holding her in his frantic arms, noise and music scratched the air, rasped through him, other hands swiftly appeared and disappeared in the turning room. “You’re envious, you hag! Who comes to our kitchen and looks at our food! You give me this! Give me that! You! You think you’re the richest around! Leech! Let me go! Let me go! Ismael! Let me!” And when he was pulling Nina back, shouting: “Enough! Enough!” he saw Mang Jose holding Mrs. Smith back, her black cane cutting the air up and down as if she were a mad woman conducting noise; “Maestro! Missis! Nina, child!” His fingers reached wildly behind Nina, he twisted a knob and the music blared, hearing at the same instant Mrs. Smith’s: “Ha! Yes! Yes! Turn it loud! Turn it loud! I’ll shout! Shout! Everybody will hear!” Voices screeched and shrieked with his own. He had half-dragged and pushed Nina down on the bed when he felt something strike his shoulder with a sharp pain, and the music stopped dead while something clattered down the floor. “Leech! Leech!” Nina kept on shouting. Suddenly his palm stung on something soft. “Nina!” and then he was bursting his lungs. “Get out!” LEECH! GET OUT! Get out! Leech!”

He closed the window and the door, then sat down tired and weak on the edge of the bed, passing the small open bottle of ammonia spirit over Nina’s quivering nostrils as her head rolled from side to side; she was sobbing and tears and the sliver of saliva from her mouth mixed where she rubbed her face with agony on the pillow. “Nina,” he called, “Nina.”

Shivers crept and passed under her skin as if the closed room chilled him. He looked at the floor that was scratched and ugly with the pervading presence of crazy and formless streaks of dust and the dark smudges of feet. Through the spaces of the window light fell carrying a broad band of thin whirling smoke, a page on the volume of Wordsworth lying open on the floor stood upright and rigid as if an invisible hand were turning it, and then a page fell gray and looking blank, on the headtable by the bed the last record on the phono was broken, a black incomplete disc that carried a fragment of music, he ranged hid eyes around the room, feeling like a confused survivor of a nightmare that had racked his body; his eyes fell on the black cane that was leaning against the table, its shook coiled oddly on the neck of the phono arm, he disinterestedly gave it a short kick on its lower end and it fell clattering for a moment down the floor, he smirked bitterly at its rattling sound. Across the floor the curtain lay like a tent crushed by the stampede of beasts; he saw the birds only as a disordered mass of dark dots on white, a broken cup shone dully under the table, from its gaping shattered mouth was a dark pool.

He tightly shut his eyes for a moment, passing a cold palm breaking with sweat heavily across on his face, shaking vigorously his head because he wanted to uproot the images that struck out in his mind; but they were there: the torn, shattered, dirtied, smashed, and cluttered objects that were once whole and neat within their room’s privacy and order; the cries, the screaming, yelling, shouting, raging words that now seemed remote and vague under the splashing of water of kids bathing outside and the loud regular hammering of Mang Jose in the other room across the dim narrow passage. The floor was cold; he picked up the volume of poetry that he had thrown in fury blindly at the landlady, closed it between his hands and with it thrust open the window that almost slapped back on hinges that momentarily screamed in his hearing, the sudden light outside binding him with its harsh brightness.

It was not the rent to be paid that he could think about. The quarrel and the noise seemed to be intruding in the room. He remembered Mang Jose pulling away Mrs. Smith. He saw himself shouting. He had slapped Nina to quiet her, slapped her out of practical necessity. Had he struck the landlady? Leech, he thought, the dark whitish scabs on the surface of the ester moved slowly in the shadow of the house on the other side, then in the bright light, then another shadow blackened them before his eyes, a dead large trunk was drifting with bits of papers and leaves clinging on its emerged skeletal twigs. He looked back at Nina lying on the crumpled bed. He had never thought she could be that violent and strong. “Maestro,” somebody called behind him. It was Mang Jose washing his hands on the tap outside the bathroom. The old carpenter was approaching him walking under the shade of the eaves.

“Maestro, you can understand more, you know more,” the old man said.

He nodded, smiling bitterly to himself, “It’s useless,” he said, “it’s almost noon, I’m late.”

Mang Jose went into the bathroom. “I’ve taken out the dead pig.” He heard the old man saying aloud.

“Ismael, Ismael.”

He sat again on the edge of the bed. He patted her cheeks where her tears had dried. He helped her up off the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked. She nodded, she swayed a little against him, and after a while she straightened herself back. She walked away and picked up the curtain, spreading it as far as her hands could reach to the sides. His feet touched the black cane. He stooped and picked up the cane; it broke easily on his knees. “You’ll be late, Ismael,” he heard Nina saying, “I’ll pick up things.” He threw the broken pieces far out of the window. The pieces jabbed into the water of the estero. They made up of the surface and drifted with the ebb. Behind him, he was aware of Nina putting things in order. It was going to take a long time to clean up things again. Before they could go out and take a long walk. He knew that like him she was thinking of a new place. “I’ll help,” he said touching her hand that held one end of the curtain. He took the other end and pulled it across the room.

He saw fingering the torn edges of the rip that made an empty between them. He heard the sharp, clear sounds of many things outside. “We don’t need it anymore,” he said holding off the limp curtain from him. She was clearing her nose through the pinch of her fingers.

 

ANG ALAMAT NG PALENDAG

Salin ni Elvira B. Estravo ng “The Legend of Palendag”

 Ang palendag ay isang instrumentong pang-musika ng mga Magindanaw. Ito’y galing sa salitang Magindanaw na lendag, na nangangahulugang “paghikbi.”

Gawa ito sa isang uri ng kawayang tinatawag na bakayawan ang mga katutubo. Ito’y may habang dalawa hanggang tatlong talampakan, may tigdadalawang butas sa magkabilang gilid na isang pulgada ang pagitan. Tinutugtog ito na gaya ng plauta.

Karaniwang tinutugtog ito ng isang nabigong mangingibig upang aliwin ang sarili. Nabibigyang-kahulugan ng isang mahusay na tumugtog sa palendag ang iba’t ibang damdamin at nakalilikha ng isang maganda at makaantig- damdaming musika.

Ayon sa alamat, may isang binatang umibig sa pinakamagandang dalaga sa pook. Nagkakaisa ang kanilang damdamin, ngunit dahil sa ipinagbabawal ng tradisyong. Magindanaw ang pagliligawan, ang kanilang pagmamahalan ay nanatiling lihim. Lihim man ang pag-iibigan, waring walang hanggan ito.

Isang araw, tinawag ng datu ang binata. Bilang isang kawal ng sultan, binigyan siya ng misyon sa isang malayong lugar. Sa pamamagitan ng isang kaibigan, nagkita ang dalawa bago makaalis ang binata. Nalungkot ang dalaga sa nalamang misyon ng lalaki.
Inaliw siyang aalalahanin at uuwi agad pagkatapos ng misyon. Ipinangako rin niyang
susulat nang madalas.

Sa unang ilang linggo, panay ang dating ng sulat na punung-puno ng pagmamahal at pag-aalaala. Pagkatapos ng ilang buwan, dumalang ang dating ng sulat hanggang sa ito’y tuluyang nawala.

Isang araw, nabalitaan niya sa isang pinsan ang nakalulungkot na balitang ang binata ay ikinasal sa ibang babae, sa lugar ng kanyang misyon.

Lubhang nasaktan ang dalagang manghahabi. Upang maitago ang kalungkutan sa mga magulang, maraming oras ang ginugugol niya sa kanyang habihan. Parati siyang umiiyak nang tahimik. Ang kanyang luha’y laging pumapatak sa kapirasong kawayang
ginagamit sa paghabi. Nagkabutas ang kawayandahil sa laging pagpatak dito ng luha ng dalaga. Isang araw, sa di sinasadyang pagkakataon, nahipan niya ito at lumabas ang isang matamis at malungkot na tunog. Mula noon, inaliw niya ang sarili sa pagtugtog ng palendag, ang pangalang ibinigay sa kakaibang instrumentong pangmusika.