One day a little boy named Elonen sat out in the yard making a bird snare, and as he worked, a little bird called to him:
“Tik-tik-lo-den” (come and catch me).
“I am making a snare for you,” said the boy; but the bird continued to call until the snare was finished.
Then Elonen ran and threw the snare over the bird and caught it, and he put it other boys to swim.
While he was away, his grandmother grew hungry, so she ate the bird, and when Elonen returned and found that his bird was gone, he was so sad that he wished he might go away and never come back.
He went out into the forest and walked a long distance, until finally he came to a big stone and said:
While he was away, his grandmother grew hungry, so she ate the bird, and when Elonen returned and found that his bird was gone, he was so sad that he wished he might go away and never come back.
He went out into the forest and walked a long distance, until finally he came to a big stone and said:
“Stone, open your mouth and eat me.” And the stone opened its mouth and boy.
When
his grandmother missed the boy, she went out and looked everywhere,
hoping to find him. Finally she passed near the stone and it cried out:
“Here he is.”
Then
the old woman tried to open the stone but she could not, so she called
the horses to come and help her. They came and kicked it, but it would
not break.
Then she
called the carabao and they hooked it, but they only broke their horns.
She called the chickens, which pecked it, and the thunder, which shook
it, but nothing could open it, and she had to go home without the boy.
2.) Wedding Dance
By Amador Daguio
Awiyao
reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the
headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one
bound that carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the
cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After some
moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening
darkness.
"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and lights
upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.
"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"
She did not answer him.
"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.
"Yes, I know," she said weakly.
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to you."
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late for both of us."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."
"Yes, I know."
"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls.
Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.
"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best wives in the
whole village."
"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost seemed to smile.
He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he hold her face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."
"I have no use for any field," she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."
"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."
"You know that I cannot."
"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled,
resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to the other side of the mountain.
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of the mountains
five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she had lost him.
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die."
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."
"Then you'll always be fruitless."
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
She was silent.
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."
"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."
"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."
The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.
"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."
"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love you and have nothing to give."
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
"I am not in hurry."
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."
"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."
"It is all right with me."
He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"I know," she said.
He went to the door.
"Awiyao!"
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.
Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her
husband a child.
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not right," she said.
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong as the
river?
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.
Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.
When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.
Lumnay though of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and lights
upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.
"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"
She did not answer him.
"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.
"Yes, I know," she said weakly.
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to you."
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late for both of us."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."
"Yes, I know."
"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls.
Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.
"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best wives in the
whole village."
"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost seemed to smile.
He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he hold her face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."
"I have no use for any field," she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."
"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."
"You know that I cannot."
"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled,
resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to the other side of the mountain.
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body the carved out of the mountains
five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she had lost him.
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die."
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."
"Then you'll always be fruitless."
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
She was silent.
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."
"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."
"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."
The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.
"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."
"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love you and have nothing to give."
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
"I am not in hurry."
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."
"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."
"It is all right with me."
He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"I know," she said.
He went to the door.
"Awiyao!"
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.
Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her
husband a child.
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not right," she said.
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong as the
river?
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.
Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.
When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.
Lumnay though of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
THE little church stood in the
shadow of acacia trees. A narrow gravel path lined with cucharita hedges
led from the street into its cool, quiet yard with the moss on the dim
boles of the trees and the dew on the grasses. The roar of the dusty,
blindingly white city surged and broke like a sea along the concrete
pavements that skirted the churchyard, but went no farther.
At
the whitewashed wooden gate, the young man stood diffidently. Nervously
fingering his battered felt hat, he pushed in the gate, stepped inside,
allowed it to swing back, and then slowly walked down the path.
The
chilly dampness of the place rested like a cool hand upon his fevered
brow, and he expelled a breath of relief. He walked as slowly as he
could, savoring through all the pores of his lean young frame the balm
of this sudden reprieve from the heat and brutal impersonality of the
big city.
Three concrete
steps led up into the vestibule. At the top step he saw the
congregation inside the heavy hardwood doors, and hesitated.
"I
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.
"And
be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing
of your mind, that ye may prove what is that , and acceptable, and
perfect, will of God."
The
voice was long and sonorous, and it struck a responsive chord in the
young man's heart, but he could not see the speaker. The last pew hid
the altar from him. Over the pew he could see the fluted row of organ
pipes, the massive rivet-studded rafters, light that streamed down at a
deep angle from a tall window of colored glass.
"For
I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you,
not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to
think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of
faith."
For perhaps an
hour the young man stood at the door, feeling deeply unhappy,
frightened, and lost. He dared not enter. He looked down at his torn,
dusty shoes, his stained clothes, felt the growth of beard on his chin,
and already he could feel the cold eyes of the people in the church
examining him. He retired quietly to one side of the vestibule, where he
could not be seen from the inside, and leaned against the wall to rest
his trembling limbs.
And
then the people began streaming out, and he felt relieved that they did
not even glance his way. After a while, he looked into the door. There
was no one in. He crossed himself quickly and entered.
For
a long time he sat there staring dully at the sounding emptiness before
him, for breaking against the wall still was the reverberation of bells
tolled a long time ago.
Through
all this he could hear his heart beating in a weak slow measure, and
again the beatific sense of completeness and of being filled his soul
like mellow wine. The seat was deep and restful. The wood was firm and
cool. He sank back and fell asleep.
When
he woke up, he saw that his hat had fallen to the floor. The
five-centavo pancit mami that he had eaten last night had already
evaporated, and he felt a shot of pain in his middle as he stooped down
to recover his hat. After the pain, a weakness and trembling seized his
limbs, and cold sweat beaded his forehead. The church swam before his
eyes.
Sunlight streamed
through the west windows. From its angle he knew it must be late in the
afternoon. He had been asleep in the church for the greater part of the
day, and now he felt again vaguely forsaken, and the chill and the
solitude were no longer very soothing but were almost terrifying.
Rocking
from one foot to the other, he got up hastily and made for the door,
and it was then that he saw the girl standing at his back.
"I've
been watching you," she said, smiling gently, and her hair looked like a
halo for the sunlight crowned it with gold. "You've been asleep," she
continued.
"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"
"Yes? But let's take a seat, please."
He licked his dry lips. "I didn't mean to sleep here. I just fell asleep, that's all."
"There's
no harm in that, I'm sure," she said reassuringly taking her seat
beside him and pulling him down. "You're a stranger here?"
"I came to the city about a week ago."
"Staying with relatives?" Her voice was direct and cool.
"No
relatives, ma'am. I thought I could get a job here. I had heard so much
about opportunities here, and I wanted to work myself through college…"
She
listened quietly. The quick responsive look in her eyes brought his
confidence back and made him give details about his life and his recent
misadventures he would not have revealed otherwise.
"We
are from the same province as you," she said. "My father works in the
city hall. He got transferred here because my mother wants to see us
through school. Come home with me, ha? We want you to tell us about the
province. It was five years ago when we were there last. Yes, they will
like to see you. Don't be ashamed. You can't blame people for not
knowing any one in the city."
She
was only sixteen, or thereabouts, he could see in the calesa which they
took; she was dressed in white, simply and cleanly, almost to the point
of the anaesthetic severity of the nurse, but there was a subtle
perfume about her like that of rosal and then again like that of
sampaguita, and the lines of her face were clean and young and sweet.
"Why, I'd be ashamed--" he began again, looking at himself with horror.
"No more of that, ha?" She flashed a smile at him, her lips a light rose like her cheeks, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
The
horses' hoofs beat a tattoo on the street cobbles, round this corner,
round that corner, ancient Spanish houses under acacia trees, rows of
tenements, sounding walls of old Intramuros, a tangle of horse-drawn and
motor traffic.
Everything went suddenly white at once.
The
first thing that he knew was the mildly pungent smell of rubbing
alcohol and liniment. The place he was in was dark, except for a street
light that came in through the billowing curtain in the window. He was
in a bed, a deep wide bed, with mattress and cool covers fragrant with
soap and starch and ironing. From beyond the darkness to one side came
to him the faint sound of voices and the tinkle of a piano.
He
jerked up with a great consciousness of guilt, but he sank back again,
dizziness swamping him back and overpowering him. Lying back there,
accusing himself of imposing on a stranger's hospitality, he began to
cry, but he wiped away his tears quickly when he saw the door slowly
open and a head showed in the opening.
"Oh, you're awake now."
It
was the girl, and she ran softly in. He felt greatly disturbed within.
She was looking down now and her hand was upon his brow and he could
feel the warmth of her and get the smell of her.
"Good!"
she exclaimed and ran lightly out, closing the door behind her. In a
minute, she was back with two other persons. A switch clicked and the
room sprang into light, and he could see there was an elderly woman whom
she resembled closely, and an elderly man in pajamas.
"Well!" said the man heartily. He had a pipe gripped by the bowl in one of his hands. "So this is the cababayan. Well!"
The
woman came over and laid her hand on his forehead. A wedding ring shone
on one finger. He looked up into her eyes, and all at once he knew he
need not be afraid…
The
girl's parents, it later developed, were among the more influential of
the parishioners, and he was able to get a job through them as church
janitor, with bed and board provided free in the servants' quarters of
the rectory. Besides sprucing up the church, he had charge of the lawn
which he mowed and the hedges which he trimmed. Out of his pay of twenty
pesos a month he managed to send home ten pesos to his mother in the
month's-end mail.
"Good
morning," he would say humbly to the girl, Lita, when Sundays came and
she was in the church. Then he would hurry before her to dust the pew
she always took with her parents.
"How
do you do?" Lita would ask, and sometimes she would say, "Pedro, you
must come and get your Sunday dinner with us. You don't do it so
regularly, now."
From
the back of the congregation, dressed in his best white-cotton suit, his
eighty-centavo necktie, his tan-and-white Gandara shoes, he would
listen raptly to her sing in the choir. He could always tell her voice,
and he could always see her lovely radiant face magnified among the rows
of others.
Three
afternoons a week, a calesa would halt at the church gate, and Lita
would alight in her plain white dress. She would come down the
cucharita-lined path, and she would enter the church where for an hour
she would sit or kneel, just looking at the altar, and her lips would
move silently. Then would Pedro hush his steps, and he would put aside
his lawnmower and his shears and look at Lita longingly through the
window, at her profile outlined against the lighted side of the church.
On
her seventeenth birthday, Lita gave Pedro a picture. It showed her with
eyelashes swept up and lips half-parted in a smile. A stray lock fell
against one cheek. One dainty end of a lace bow curled against the
straight line of her throat, while the other reclined against the swell
of her bosom.
"I can
keep this?" asked Pedro wonderingly, and Lita said with a thrill of
laughter. "Why yes, it's yours. Why do you have to ask?"
He
had enrolled in a night collegiate course prepared especially for
working students, but out of the money for school fees and books he
managed to save as much as fifty centavos at a time. He spent his
savings for a neat little picture frame, painted black and silver, and
put Lita's picture before him as he pored over his textbooks at home.
"How are you getting along in school?" said Lita one afternoon, after she came out of the church.
"At least I passed in all my subjects last semester."
"That's
fine. I'm sure you'll make an engineer yet." She hesitated at the gate,
and turned back to him slowly. "Don't let anything distract you from
your work," she said. "put your mind on it and keep it there."
He
thought, she looks very young, but too deadly serious. That frown on
her face. That mature cast of her mouth. But he only said, "Thank you,
Miss Miel."
"Miss,
still?" She laughed again, and the world was shining once more, no
longer full of problems and dark and weighty hues, but full of the
silvery ringing of bells and the light patter of dancing feet.
"I think I can help you," she went on. "About trigonometry now. It's my favorite subject."
"I cannot understand the cosine of--"
"You
mean Thomas' theory? It's easy. Like this." And thereupon she knelt on
the path and with a twig traced figures in the light fluff.
"You should make a good engineer, there are such things as women engineers, you know," he ventured.
"My
father said I should," Lita confided. "But my greatest interest does
not lie in that way, Pedro. It lies somewhere else. Should I tell you?"
She crinkled her nose at him, but again she was suddenly grave. After a
pause: "I've never wanted to grow up," she suddenly shot at him and
hurriedly picked herself up, ran out of the gate, hailed a calesa and
drove away.
Pedro's
perplexity was solved the following afternoon when Lita came again to
the church to pray. It was Saturday afternoon and Pedro was dusting.
This time she had on a black veil that fell to the tip of her nose. She
was a tiny figure kneeling at the far end of the church. Her head was
bowed low, but he thought he could see her lips moving. He moved about
on tiptoe, used his mop gently.
He
was on the floor reaching under a remote corner when he heard her light
"H'lo" behind him. He rose up hastily and nodded his greeting, "Good
afternoon, Miss Miel."
"Good afternoon, Mister Deño."
"Er, Lita"
"That's better. Did I startle you yesterday afternoon?"
"You did."
Then Lita was telling him she was going to be a nun.
"But why?" asked Pedro incredulously.
"Does
it sound foolish to you?" Her lashes swept down on her cheek, and for
the first time he noticed that she had the pallid look as of one in
cloistered, moss-grown nunneries.
"I
don't know," he said, "I don't know." And then he went on, feeling
foolish, "But you can't want to give up all this for life imprisonment."
"It
is not life imprisonment," she said gravely, "but the essence of what
I've always wanted. All my life I've wanted complete communion with
God."
He shook his head
to clear it of the cobweb of pain and dizziness, and her hand crept to
his. The touch of it sent an electric shock through his whole frame.
"Even
as a child," she went on, "I had always wanted to have a room that
looked much like a church, with a hard, bare floor, and hard, bare
seats, and an altar, and an image of Mother and Child."
She
was looking down kindly at him, red spots in her white cheeks. "Now, as
I live from day to day, it seems as if I'm being swept farther and
farther away from that childhood dream. I want my childhood back. I
hunger for its simplicity and its faith. It seems as if deep inside me
I'm parched and thirsty, and I need the coolness and dampness of
seclusion. You understand, don't you?"
Again
it seemed as if the church rustled with the prayer and devoutness of a
congregation, and there was again, that sonorous voice saying, "I
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God."
"Good-bye," said Lita, her long, white, shapely fingers tightening on his rough, dark ones.
"I'll not see you again?"
She
shook her head slowly. Suddenly she bent down and kissed him on the
cheek, and as suddenly she ran down the aisle and out of the door.
As
he sat in a pew, the bells were silent, but still they seemed to be
tolling from far away, the air vibrating with their ringing. He sat in
the pew and stared dully in front of him. Light streamed in from an
eastern window. The ghostly congregation still rustled with its faith
and sacrifice. On his cheek her lips were still warm.
But suppose, he thought, it had been some other way. Suppose:
"I'VE been watching you," she said,
smiling gently, and her hair looked like a halo with the sunlight
crowning it with gold. "You've been asleep," she continued.
"I'm sorry," he began weakly. "I didn't mean to--"
And
then they were walking down to the whitewashed gate, and he was vaguely
surprised that there was no calesa waiting there. But he went on to
cross the street nevertheless, keeping in his eyes the slim, white
figure, with the clean, young lines of face.
Outside
the churchyard, the traffic was heavy as usual, and the lorry drivers
swore mightily at the broken-down old man, with that vague half-smile on
his face, who was crossing the street and breaking all rules of
pedestrian traffic and all the laws of self-preservation.
"That
engineer, Pedro Deño, you know," said one of a couple driving a car
near the scene. "Dirty rich, but damned absent-minded, too."
"That's
the matter with these successful people," said the other. "They put
their mind on a thing and keep it there, to the exclusion of all others,
even motor traffic."
"Yeh, Deño, for instance. Must be thinking of house plans and bridges."
4.) Quietness
by Amador T. Daguio
I am lovers of all quietness
unechoed songs within a silent heart,
a silver pond, a statued loveness
where words can take no part.
i love the quiet ways of memory
the quiet looks to give you loving praise,
the quite secrets of my misery
through quiet nights and days.
The quiet mountains of the earth i love,
the moving clouds the sun, the dewy leaf
my quiet questioning of god above,
my quite, tearless grief.
5.)The Creation
Igorot
In the
beginning there were no people on the earth. Lumawig, the Great Spirit,
came down from the sky and cut many reeds. He divided these into pairs
which he placed in different parts of the world, and then he said to
them, “You must speak.”
Immediately
the reeds became people, and in each place was a man and a woman who
could talk, but the language of each couple differed from that of the
others.
Then
Lumawig commanded each man and woman to marry, which they did. By and
by there were many children, all speaking the same language as their
parents. These, in turn, married and had many children. In this way
there came to be many people on the earth.
Now
Lumawig saw that there were several things which the people on the
earth needed to use, so he set to work to supply them. He created salt,
and told the inhabitants of one place to boil it down and sell it to
their neighbors. But these people could not understand the directions of
the Great Spirit, and the next time he visited them, they had not
touched the salt.
Then
he took it away from them and gave it to the people of a place called
Mayinit. These did as he directed, and because of this he told them that
they should always be owners of the salt, and that the other peoples
must buy of them.
Then
Lumawig went to the people of Bontoc and told them to get clay and make
pots. They got the clay, but they did not understand the moulding, and
the jars were not well shaped. Because of their failure, Lumawig told
them that they would always have to buy their jars, and he removed the
to Samoki.
When
he told the people there what to do, they did just as he said, and
their jars were well shaped and beautiful. Then the Great Spirit saw
that they were fit owners of the pottery, and he told them that they
should always make many jars to sell.
In this way Lumawig taught the people and brought to them all the things which they now have.
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