DEAD STARS

By Paz Marquez Benitez

THROUGH the open window the air-steeped outdoors passed into his room, quietly enveloping him,
stealing into his very thought. Esperanza, Julia, the sorry mess he had made of life, the years to come
even now beginning to weigh down, to crush--they lost concreteness, diffused into formless melancholy.

SCENE 1 (GARDEN) ( JANNA, JOANA, AKREN, DANILO)

The tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the bricktiled azotea where Donia Juliana and Carmen
were busy puttering away among the rose/flower pots.

Carmen (Janna): "Mama, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
Donia Juliana(Joana): "I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants
it to be next month."
*Carmen sighed impatiently.*
Carmen (Janna): "Why is he not a bit more decided, I wonder. He is over thirty, is he not? And still a
bachelor! Esperanza must be tired waiting."
Donia Juliana(Joana): "She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," *
Donia Juliana nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.*
Carmen (Janna): "How can a woman be in a hurry when the man does not hurry her?"
Carmen (Janna): " at the beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things like
that--"
Carmen (Janna): "What do you think happened?"
Donia Juliana(Joana): "I supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think
they are often cool than warm. The very fact that an engagement has been allowed to prolong itself argues
a certain placidity of temperament--or of affection--on the part of either, or both." *Donia Juliana loved
to philosophize.*

He was talking now with an evident relish in words, his resonant, very nasal voice toned down to
monologue pitch. "That phase you were speaking of is natural enough for a beginning. Besides, that, as I
see it, was Alfredo's last race with escaping youth--" Carmen laughed aloud at the thought of her brother's
perfect physical repose--almost indolence--disturbed in the role suggested by her father's figurative
language. "A last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man. Few certainly would credit Alfredo Salazar
with hot blood. Even his friends had amusedly diagnosed his blood as cool and thin, citing
incontrovertible evidence. Tall and slender, he moved with an indolent ease that verged on grace. Under
straight recalcitrant hair, a thin face with a satisfying breadth of forehead, slow, dreamer's eyes, and
astonishing freshness of lips--indeed Alfredo Salazar's appearance betokened little of exuberant
masculinity; rather a poet with wayward humor, a fastidious artist with keen, clear brain. He rose and
quietly went out of the house. He lingered a moment on the stone steps; then went down the path shaded
by immature acacias, through the little tarred gate which he left swinging back and forth, now opening,
now closing, on the gravel road bordered along the farther side by madre cacao hedge in tardy lavender
bloom. The gravel road narrowed as it slanted up to the house on the hill, whose wide, open porches he
could glimpse through the heat-shrivelled tamarinds in the Martinez yard. Six weeks ago that house
meant nothing to him save that it was the Martinez house, rented and occupied by Judge del Valle and his
family. Six weeks ago Julia Salas meant nothing to him; he did not even know her name; but now-- One
evening he had gone "neighboring" with Don Julian; a rare enough occurrence, since he made it a point to
avoid all appearance of currying favor with the Judge. This particular evening however, he had allowed
himself to be persuaded. "A little mental relaxation now and then is beneficial," the old man had said.
"Besides, a judge's good will, you know;" the rest of the thought--"is worth a rising young lawyer's
trouble"--Don Julian conveyed through a shrug and a smile that derided his own worldly wisdom. A
young woman had met them at the door. It was evident from the excitement of the Judge's children that
she was a recent and very welcome arrival. In the characteristic Filipino way formal introductions had
been omitted--the judge limiting himself to a casual "Ah, ya se conocen?"--with the consequence that
Alfredo called her Miss del Valle throughout the evening. He was puzzled that she should smile with
evident delight every time he addressed her thus. Later Don Julian informed him that she was not the
Judge's sister, as he had supposed, but his sisterin-law, and that her name was Julia Salas. A very dignified
rather austere name, he thought. Still, the young lady should have corrected him. As it was, he was greatly
embarrassed, and felt that he should explain. To his apology, she replied, "That is nothing, Each time I
was about to correct you, but I remembered a similar experience I had once before." "Oh," he drawled
out, vastly relieved. "A man named Manalang--I kept calling him Manalo. After the tenth time or so, the
young man rose from his seat and said suddenly, 'Pardon me, but my name is Manalang, Manalang.' You
know, I never forgave him!" He laughed with her. "The best thing to do under the circumstances, I have
found out," she pursued, "is to pretend not to hear, and to let the other person find out his mistake without
help." "As you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--" "I was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
Don Julian and his uncommunicative friend, the Judge, were absorbed in a game of chess. The young man
had tired of playing appreciative spectator and desultory conversationalist, so he and Julia Salas had gone
off to chat in the vinecovered porch. The lone piano in the neighborhood alternately tinkled and banged
away as the player's moods altered. He listened, and wondered irrelevantly if Miss Salas could sing; she
had such a charming speaking voice. He was mildly surprised to note from her appearance that she was
unmistakably a sister of the Judge's wife, although Doña Adela was of a different type altogether. She was
small and plump, with wide brown eyes, clearly defined eyebrows, and delicately modeled hips--a pretty
woman with the complexion of a baby and the expression of a likable cow. Julia was taller, not so
obviously pretty. She had the same eyebrows and lips, but she was much darker, of a smooth rich brown
with underlying tones of crimson which heightened the impression she gave of abounding vitality. On
Sunday mornings after mass, father and son would go crunching up the gravel road to the house on the
hill. The Judge's wife invariably offered them beer, which Don Julian enjoyed and Alfredo did not. After a
half hour or so, the chessboard would be brought out; then Alfredo and Julia Salas would go out to the
porch to chat. She sat in the low hammock and he in a rocking chair and the hours--warm, quiet March
hours-- sped by. He enjoyed talking with her and it was evident that she liked his company; yet what
feeling there was between them was so undisturbed that it seemed a matter of course. Only when
Esperanza chanced to ask him indirectly about those visits did some uneasiness creep into his thoughts of
the girl next door. Esperanza had wanted to know if he went straight home after mass. Alfredo suddenly
realized that for several Sundays now he had not waited for Esperanza to come out of the church as he
had been wont to do. He had been eager to go "neighboring." He answered that he went home to work.
And, because he was not habitually untruthful, added, "Sometimes I go with Papa to Judge del Valle's."
She dropped the topic. Esperanza was not prone to indulge in unprovoked jealousies. She was a believer
in the regenerative virtue of institutions, in their power to regulate feeling as well as conduct. If a man
were married, why, of course, he loved his wife; if he were engaged, he could not possibly love another
woman. That half-lie told him what he had not admitted openly to himself, that he was giving Julia Salas
something which he was not free to give. He realized that; yet something that would not be denied
beckoned imperiously, and he followed on. It was so easy to forget up there, away from the prying eyes of
the world, so easy and so poignantly sweet. The beloved woman, he standing close to her, the shadows
around, enfolding. "Up here I find--something--" He and Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet
night. Sensing unwanted intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?" "No; youth--its spirit--"
"Are you so old?" "And heart's desire." Was he becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of
every man? "Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is too broad, too
trodden by feet, too barren of mystery." "Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road,
upturned to the stars. In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from
somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream. "Mystery--" she answered lightly,
"that is so brief--" "Not in some," quickly. "Not in you." "You have known me a few weeks; so the
mystery." "I could study you all my life and still not find it." "So long?" "I should like to." Those six
weeks were now so swift--seeming in the memory, yet had they been so deep in the living, so charged
with compelling power and sweetness. Because neither the past nor the future had relevance or meaning,
he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such a willful shutting out of fact as
astounded him in his calmer moments. Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the judge and his
family to spend Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on the beach.
Carmen also came with her four energetic children. She and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors
directing the preparation of the merienda and discussing the likeable absurdities of their husbands--how
Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time off to accompany her on
this visit to her father; how Doña Adela's Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes going
out without his collar, or with unmatched socks. After the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the
judge to show him what a thriving young coconut looked like--"plenty of leaves, close set, rich green"--
while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the
ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of
the outcurving beach. Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were
her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear which he removed
forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand. When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
"I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection. "Very much. It looks like home to
me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach." There was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair
away from her forehead, and whipped the tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the
picture was something of eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her
face was not notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an
inner quality, an achievement of the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind
and body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is sauce to charm. "The
afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the last time--we can visit." "The last?
Why?" "Oh, you will be too busy perhaps." He noted an evasive quality in the answer. "Do I seem
especially industrious to you?" "If you are, you never look it." "Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy
man ought to be." "But--" "Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself. "I wish
that were true," he said after a meditative pause. She waited. "A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm
and placid." "Like a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely "Who? I?" "Oh, no!" "You said I am
calm and placid." "That is what I think." "I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves." It
was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert phrase. "I should like to
see your home town." "There is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on
them, and sometimes squashes." That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated,
yet withal more distant, as if that background claimed her and excluded him. "Nothing? There is you."
"Oh, me? But I am here." "I will not go, of course, until you are there." "Will you come? You will find it
dull. There isn't even one American there!" "Well--Americans are rather essential to my entertainment."
She laughed. "We live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees." "Could I find that?" "If you don't ask for
Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly. "I'll inquire about--" "What?" "The house of the prettiest girl in the
town." "There is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that is not quite sincere."
"It is," he averred slowly, but emphatically. "I thought you, at least, would not say such things." "Pretty--
pretty--a foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that quite--" "Are you
withdrawing the compliment?" "Re-enforcing it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is
more than that when--" "If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily. "Exactly." "It must be ugly." "Always?"
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad, glinting streamer of crimsoned gold.
"No, of course you are right." "Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as they turned
back. "I am going home." The end of an impossible dream! "When?" after a long silence. "Tomorrow. I
received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday. They want me to spend Holy Week at home." She
seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this is the last time." "Can't I come to say
good-bye?" "Oh, you don't need to!" "No, but I want to." "There is no time." The golden streamer was
withdrawing, shortening, until it looked no more than a pool far away at the rim of the world. Stillness, a
vibrant quiet that affects the senses as does solemn harmony; a peace that is not contentment but a
cessation of tumult when all violence of feeling tones down to the wistful serenity of regret. She turned
and looked into his face, in her dark eyes a ghost of sunset sadness. "Home seems so far from here. This
is almost like another life." "I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get rid of the old
things." "Old things?" "Oh, old things, mistakes, encumbrances, old baggage." He said it lightly,
unwilling to mar the hour. He walked close, his hand sometimes touching hers for one whirling second.
Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind. Alfredo gripped the soft hand so near his own. At
his touch, the girl turned her face away, but he heard her voice say very low, "Good-bye." II ALFREDO
Salazar turned to the right where, farther on, the road broadened and entered the heart of the town--heart
of Chinese stores sheltered under low-hung roofs, of indolent drug stores and tailor shops, of dingy shoe-
repairing establishments, and a cluttered goldsmith's cubbyhole where a consumptive bent over a
magnifying lens; heart of old brick-roofed houses with quaint hand-and-ball knockers on the door; heart
of grass-grown plaza reposeful with trees, of ancient church and convento,now circled by swallows
gliding in flight as smooth and soft as the afternoon itself. Into the quickly deepening twilight, the voice
of the biggest of the church bells kept ringing its insistent summons. Flocking came the devout with their
long wax candles, young women in vivid apparel (for this was Holy Thursday and the Lord was still
alive), older women in sober black skirts. Came too the young men in droves, elbowing each other under
the talisay tree near the church door. The gaily decked rice-paper lanterns were again on display while
from the windows of the older houses hung colored glass globes, heirlooms from a day when grasspith
wicks floating in coconut oil were the chief lighting device. Soon a double row of lights emerged from the
church and uncoiled down the length of the street like a huge jewelled band studded with glittering
clusters where the saints' platforms were. Above the measured music rose the untutored voices of the
choir, steeped in incense and the acrid fumes of burning wax. The sight of Esperanza and her mother
sedately pacing behind Our Lady of Sorrows suddenly destroyed the illusion of continuity and broke up
those lines of light into component individuals. Esperanza stiffened self-consciously, tried to look
unaware, and could not. The line moved on. Suddenly, Alfredo's slow blood began to beat violently,
irregularly. A girl was coming down the line--a girl that was striking, and vividly alive, the woman that
could cause violent commotion in his heart, yet had no place in the completed ordering of his life. Her
glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop. The line kept moving on, wending its
circuitous route away from the church and then back again, where, according to the old proverb, all
processions end. At last Our Lady of Sorrows entered the church, and with her the priest and the choir,
whose voices now echoed from the arched ceiling. The bells rang the close of the procession. A round
orange moon, "huge as a winnowing basket," rose lazily into a clear sky, whitening the iron roofs and
dimming the lanterns at the windows. Along the still densely shadowed streets the young women with
their rear guard of males loitered and, maybe, took the longest way home. Toward the end of the row of
Chinese stores, he caught up with Julia Salas. The crowd had dispersed into the side streets, leaving Calle
Real to those who lived farther out. It was past eight, and Esperanza would be expecting him in a little
while: yet the thought did not hurry him as he said "Good evening" and fell into step with the girl. "I had
been thinking all this time that you had gone," he said in a voice that was both excited and troubled. "No,
my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go." "Oh, is the Judge going?" "Yes." The provincial
docket had been cleared, and Judge del Valle had been assigned elsewhere. As lawyer--and as lover--
Alfredo had found that out long before. "Mr. Salazar," she broke into his silence, "I wish to congratulate
you." Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable. "For what?" "For your
approaching wedding." Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would not
offend? "I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know mere visitors are slow about
getting the news," she continued. He listened not so much to what she said as to the nuances in her voice.
He heard nothing to enlighten him, except that she had reverted to the formal tones of early acquaintance.
No revelation there; simply the old voice--cool, almost detached from personality, flexible and vibrant,
suggesting potentialities of song. "Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out quietly "When
they are of friends, yes." "Would you come if I asked you?" "When is it going to be?" "May," he replied
briefly, after a long pause. "May is the month of happiness they say," she said, with what seemed to him a
shade of irony. "They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?" "Why not?" "No reason. I am just
asking. Then you will?" "If you will ask me," she said with disdain. "Then I ask you." "Then I will be
there." The gravel road lay before them; at the road's end the lighted windows of the house on the hill.
There swept over the spirit of Alfredo Salazar a longing so keen that it was pain, a wish that, that house
were his, that all the bewilderments of the present were not, and that this woman by his side were his long
wedded wife, returning with him to the peace of home. "Julita," he said in his slow, thoughtful manner,
"did you ever have to choose between something you wanted to do and something you had to do?" "No!"
"I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could understand a man who was in such a
situation." "You are fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer. "Is--is this man sure of what he
should do?" "I don't know, Julita. Perhaps not. But there is a point where a thing escapes us and rushes
downward of its own weight, dragging us along. Then it is foolish to ask whether one will or will not,
because it no longer depends on him." "But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what do I
know? That is his problem after all." "Doesn't it--interest you?" "Why must it? I--I have to say good-bye,
Mr. Salazar; we are at the house." Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away. Had the
final word been said? He wondered. It had. Yet a feeble flutter of hope trembled in his mind though set
against that hope were three years of engagement, a very near wedding, perfect understanding between
the parents, his own conscience, and Esperanza herself--Esperanza waiting, Esperanza no longer young,
Esperanza the efficient, the literal-minded, the intensely acquisitive. He looked attentively at her where
she sat on the sofa, appraisingly, and with a kind of aversion which he tried to control. She was one of
those fortunate women who have the gift of uniformly acceptable appearance. She never surprised one
with unexpected homeliness nor with startling reserves of beauty. At home, in church, on the street, she
was always herself, a woman past first bloom, light and clear of complexion, spare of arms and of breast,
with a slight convexity to thin throat; a woman dressed with self-conscious care, even elegance; a woman
distinctly not average. She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other, something about
Calixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely halflistened, understanding imperfectly. At a
pause he drawled out to fill in the gap: "Well, what of it?" The remark sounded ruder than he had
intended. "She is not married to him," Esperanza insisted in her thin, nervously pitched voice. "Besides,
she should have thought of us. Nanay practically brought her up. We never thought she would turn out
bad." What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta? "You are very positive about her badness,"
he commented dryly. Esperanza was always positive. "But do you approve?" "Of what?" "What she did."
"No," indifferently. "Well?" He was suddenly impelled by a desire to disturb the unvexed orthodoxy of
her mind. "All I say is that it is not necessarily wicked." "Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--
immoral man. I did not know that your ideas were like that." "My ideas?" he retorted, goaded by a deep,
accumulated exasperation. "The only test I wish to apply to conduct is the test of fairness. Am I injuring
anybody? No? Then I am justified in my conscience. I am right. Living with a man to whom she is not
married--is that it? It may be wrong, and again it may not." "She has injured us. She was ungrateful." Her
voice was tight with resentment. "The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he stopped, appalled
by the passion in his voice. "Why do you get angry? I do not understand you at all! I think I know why
you have been indifferent to me lately. I am not blind, or deaf; I see and hear what perhaps some are
trying to keep from me." The blood surged into his very eyes and his hearing sharpened to points of acute
pain. What would she say next? "Why don't you speak out frankly before it is too late? You need not think
of me and of what people will say." Her voice trembled. Alfredo was suffering as he could not remember
ever having suffered before. What people will say-- what will they not say? What don't they say when
long engagements are broken almost on the eve of the wedding? "Yes," he said hesitatingly, diffidently, as
if merely thinking aloud, "one tries to be fair--according to his lights--but it is hard. One would like to be
fair to one's self first. But that is too easy, one does not dare--" "What do you mean?" she asked with
repressed violence. "Whatever my shortcomings, and no doubt they are many in your eyes, I have never
gone out of my way, of my place, to find a man." Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was
who had sought her; or was that a covert attack on Julia Salas? "Esperanza--" a desperate plea lay in his
stumbling words. "If you--suppose I--" Yet how could a mere man word such a plea? "If you mean you
want to take back your word, if you are tired of--why don't you tell me you are tired of me?" she burst out
in a storm of weeping that left him completely shamed and unnerved. The last word had been said . III AS
Alfredo Salazar leaned against the boat rail to watch the evening settling over the lake, he wondered if
Esperanza would attribute any significance to this trip of his. He was supposed to be in Sta. Cruz whither
the case of the People of the Philippine Islands vs. Belina et al had kept him, and there he would have
been if Brigida Samuy had not been so important to the defense. He had to find that elusive old woman.
That the search was leading him to that particular lake town which was Julia Salas' home should not
disturb him unduly Yet he was disturbed to a degree utterly out of proportion to the prosaicalness of his
errand. That inner tumult was no surprise to him; in the last eight years he had become used to such
occasional storms. He had long realized that he could not forget Julia Salas. Still, he had tried to be
content and not to remember too much. The climber of mountains who has known the backbreak, the
lonesomeness, and the chill, finds a certain restfulness in level paths made easy to his feet. He looks up
sometimes from the valley where settles the dusk of evening, but he knows he must not heed the radiant
beckoning. Maybe, in time, he would cease even to look up. He was not unhappy in his marriage. He felt
no rebellion: only the calm of capitulation to what he recognized as irresistible forces of circumstance and
of character. His life had simply ordered itself; no more struggles, no more stirring up of emotions that
got a man nowhere. From his capacity of complete detachment he derived a strange solace. The essential
himself, the himself that had its being in the core of his thought, would, he reflected, always be free and
alone. When claims encroached too insistently, as sometimes they did, he retreated into the inner fastness,
and from that vantage he saw things and people around him as remote and alien, as incidents that did not
matter. At such times did Esperanza feel baffled and helpless; he was gentle, even tender, but
immeasurably far away, beyond her reach. Lights were springing into life on the shore. That was the
town, a little up-tilted town nestling in the dark greenness of the groves. A snubcrested belfry stood beside
the ancient church. On the outskirts the evening smudges glowed red through the sinuous mists of smoke
that rose and lost themselves in the purple shadows of the hills. There was a young moon which grew
slowly luminous as the coral tints in the sky yielded to the darker blues of evening. The vessel approached
the landing quietly, trailing a wake of long golden ripples on the dark water. Peculiar hill inflections came
to his ears from the crowd assembled to meet the boat--slow, singing cadences, characteristic of the
Laguna lake-shore speech. From where he stood he could not distinguish faces, so he had no way of
knowing whether the presidentewas there to meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted. "Is the abogado
there? Abogado!" "What abogado?" someone irately asked. That must be the presidente, he thought, and
went down to the landing. It was a policeman, a tall pock-marked individual. The presidente had left with
Brigida Samuy-- Tandang "Binday"--that noon for Santa Cruz. Señor Salazar's second letter had arrived
late, but the wife had read it and said, "Go and meet the abogado and invite him to our house." Alfredo
Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on board since the boat would leave at four
the next morning anyway. So thepresidente had received his first letter? Alfredo did not know because
that official had not sent an answer. "Yes," the policeman replied, "but he could not write because we
heard that Tandang Binday was in San Antonio so we went there to find her." San Antonio was up in the
hills! Good man, the presidente! He, Alfredo, must do something for him. It was not every day that one
met with such willingness to help. Eight o'clock, lugubriously tolled from the bell tower, found the boat
settled into a somnolent quiet. A cot had been brought out and spread for him, but it was too bare to be
inviting at that hour. It was too early to sleep: he would walk around the town. His heart beat faster as he
picked his way to shore over the rafts made fast to sundry piles driven into the water. How peaceful the
town was! Here and there a little tienda was still open, its dim light issuing forlornly through the single
window which served as counter. An occasional couple sauntered by, the women's chinelasmaking
scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing games on the street--tubigan
perhaps, or "hawkand-chicken." The thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying
sadness. How would life seem now if he had married Julia Salas? Had he meant anything to her? That
unforgettable red-and-gold afternoon in early April haunted him with a sense of incompleteness as restless
as other unlaid ghosts. She had not married--why? Faithfulness, he reflected, was not a conscious effort at
regretful memory. It was something unvolitional, maybe a recurrent awareness of irreplaceability.
Irrelevant trifles--a cool wind on his forehead, far-away sounds as of voices in a dream--at times moved
him to an oddly irresistible impulse to listen as to an insistent, unfinished prayer. A few inquiries led him
to a certain little treeceilinged street where the young moon wove indistinct filigrees of fight and shadow.
In the gardens the cotton tree threw its angular shadow athwart the low stone wall; and in the cool, stilly
midnight the cock's first call rose in tall, soaring jets of sound. Calle Luz. Somehow or other, he had
known that he would find her house because she would surely be sitting at the window. Where else,
before bedtime on a moonlit night? The house was low and the light in the sala behind her threw her head
into unmistakable relief. He sensed rather than saw her start of vivid surprise. "Good evening," he said,
raising his hat. "Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?" "On some little business," he answered with a
feeling of painful constraint. "Won't you come up?" He considered. His vague plans had not included this.
But Julia Salas had left the window, calling to her mother as she did so. After a while, someone came
downstairs with a lighted candle to open the door. At last--he was shaking her hand. She had not changed
much--a little less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet something had gone. He missed it, sitting opposite her,
looking thoughtfully into her fine dark eyes. She asked him about the home town, about this and that, in a
sober, somewhat meditative tone.

He conversed with increasing ease, though with a growing wonder that he should be there at all. He could
not take his eyes from her face. What had she lost? Or was the loss his? He felt an impersonal curiosity
creeping into his gaze. The girl must have noticed, for her cheek darkened in a blush. Gently--was it
experimentally?--he pressed her hand at parting; but his own felt undisturbed and emotionless. Did she
still care? The answer to the question hardly interested him. The young moon had set, and from the
uninviting cot he could see one half of a star-studded sky. So that was all over. Why had he obstinately
clung to that dream? So all these years--since when?--he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long
extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens. An immense sadness as of loss
invaded his spirit, a vast homesickness for some immutable refuge of the heart far away where faded
gardens bloom again, and where live on in unchanging freshness, the dear, dead loves of vanished youth.
The Bread of Salt by NVM Gonzalez (1958) Usually I was in bed by ten and up by five and thus was
ready for one more day of my fourteenth year. Unless Grandmother had forgotten, the fifteen centavos for
the baker down Progreso Street - and how I enjoyed jingling those coins in my pocket!- would be in the
empty fruit jar in the cupboard. I would remember then that rolls were what Grandmother wanted because
recently she had lost three molars. For young people like my cousins and myself, she had always said that
the kind called pan de sal ought to be quite all right. The bread of salt! How did it get that name? From
where did its flavor come, through what secret action of flour and yeast? At the risk of being jostled from
the counter by early buyers, I would push my way into the shop so that I might watch the men who,
stripped to the waist, worked their long flat wooden spades in and out of the glowing maw of the oven.
Why did the bread come nutbrown and the size of my little fist? And why did it have a pair of lips
convulsed into a painful frown? In the half light of the street, and hurrying, the paper bag pressed to my
chest, I felt my curiosity a little gratified by the oven-fresh warmth of the bread I was proudly bringing
home for breakfast. Well I knew how Grandmother would not mind if I nibbled away at one piece;
perhaps, I might even eat two, to be charged later against my share at the table. But that would be
betraying a trust; and so, indeed, I kept my purchase intact. To guard it from harm, I watched my steps
and avoided the dark street corners. For my reward, I had only to look in the direction of the sea wall and
the fifty yards or so of riverbed beyond it, where an old Spaniard's house stood. At lowtide, when the bed
was dry and the rocks glinted with broken bottles, the stone fence of the Spaniard's compound set off the
house as if it were a castle. Sunrise brought a wash of silver upon the roofs of the laundry and garden
sheds which had been built low and close to the fence. On dull mornings the light dripped from the
bamboo screen which covered the veranda and hung some four or five yards from the ground. Unless it
was August, when the damp, northeast monsoon had to be kept away from the rooms, three servants
raised the screen promptly at six-thirty until it was completely hidden under the veranda eaves. From the
sound of the pulleys, I knew it was time to set out for school. It was in his service, as a coconut plantation
overseer, that Grandfather had spent the last thirty years of his life. Grandmother had been widowed three
years now. I often wondered whether I was being depended upon to spend the years ahead in the service
of this great house. One day I learned that Aida, a classmate in high school, was the old Spaniard's niece.
All my doubts disappeared. It was as if, before his death, Grandfather had spoken to me about her,
concealing the seriousness of the matter by putting it over as a joke. If now I kept true to the virtues, she
would step out of her bedroom ostensibly to say Good Morning to her uncle. Her real purpose, I knew,
was to reveal thus her assent to my desire. On quiet mornings I imagined the patter of her shoes upon the
wooden veranda floor as a further sign, and I would hurry off to school, taking the route she had fixed for
me past the post office, the town plaza and the church, the health center east of the plaza, and at last the
school grounds. I asked myself whether I would try to walk with her and decided it would be the height of
rudeness. Enough that in her blue skirt and white middy she would be half a block ahead and, from that
distance, perhaps throw a glance in my direction, to bestow upon my heart a deserved and abundant
blessing. I believed it was but right that, in some such way as this, her mission in my life was disguised.
Her name, I was to learn many years later, was a convenient mnemonic for the qualities to which
argument might aspire. But in those days it was a living voice. "Oh that you might be worthy of uttering
me," it said. And how I endeavored to build my body so that I might live long to honor her. With every
victory at singles at the handball court the game was then the craze at school -- I could feel my body glow
in the sun as though it had instantly been cast in bronze. I guarded my mind and did not let my wits go
astray. In class I would not allow a lesson to pass unmastered. Our English teacher could put no question
before us that did not have a ready answer in my head. One day he read Robert Louis Stevenson's The
Sire de Maletroit's Door, and we were so enthralled that our breaths trembled. I knew then that
somewhere, sometime in the not too improbable future, a benign old man with a lantern in his hand would
also detain me in a secret room, and there daybreak would find me thrilled by the sudden certainty that I
had won Aida's hand. It was perhaps on my violin that her name wrought such a tender spell. Maestro
Antonino remarked the dexterity of my stubby fingers. Quickly I raced through Alard-until I had all but
committed two thirds of the book to memory. My short, brown arm learned at last to draw the bow with
grace. Sometimes, when practising my scales in the early evening, I wondered if the sea wind carrying the
straggling notes across the pebbled river did not transform them into Schubert's "Serenade." At last Mr.
Custodio, who was in charge of our school orchestra, became aware of my progress. He moved me from
second to first violin. During the Thanksgiving Day program he bade me render a number, complete with
pizzicato and harmonics. "Another Vallejo! Our own Albert Spalding!" I heard from the front row. Aida, I
thought, would be in the audience. I looked around quickly but could not see her. As I retired to my place
in the orchestra I heard Pete Saez, the trombone player, call my name. "You must join my band," he said.
"Look, we'll have many engagements soon. It'll be vacation time." Pete pressed my arm. He had for some
time now been asking me to join the Minviluz Orchestra, his private band. All I had been able to tell him
was that I had my schoolwork to mind. He was twentytwo. I was perhaps too young to be going around
with him. He earned his school fees and supported his mother hiring out his band at least three or four
times a month. He now said: "Tomorrow we play at the funeral of a Chinesefour to six in the afternoon; in
the evening, judge Roldan's silver wedding anniversary; Sunday, the municipal dance." My head began to
whirl. On the stage, in front of us, the principal had begun a speech about America. Nothing he could say
about the Pilgrim Fathers and the American custom of feasting on turkey seemed interesting. I thought of
the money I would earn. For several days now I had but one wish, to buy a box of linen stationery. At
night when the house was quiet I would fill the sheets with words that would tell Aida how much I adored
her. One of these mornings, perhaps before school closed for the holidays, I would borrow her algebra
book and there, upon a good pageful of equations, there I would slip my message, tenderly pressing the
leaves of the book. She would perhaps never write back. Neither by post nor by hand would a reply reach
me. But no matter; it would be a silence full of voices. That night I dreamed I had returned from a tour of
the world's music centers; the newspapers of Manila had been generous with praise. I saw my picture on
the cover of a magazine. A writer had described how, many years ago, I used to trudge the streets of
Buenavista with my violin in a battered black cardboard case. In New York, he reported, a millionaire had
offered me a Stradivarius violin, with a card that bore the inscription: "In admiration of a genius your own
people must surely be proud of." I dreamed I spent a weekend at the millionaire's country house by the
Hudson. A young girl in a blue skirt and white middy clapped her lily-white hands and, her voice
trembling, cried "Bravo!" What people now observed at home was the diligence with which I attended to
my violin lessons. My aunt, who had come from the farm to join her children for the holidays, brought
with her a maidservant, and to the poor girl was given the chore of taking the money to the baker's for
rolls and pan de sal. I realized at once that it would be no longer becoming on my part to make these
morning trips to the baker's. I could not thank my aunt enough. I began to chafe on being given other
errands. Suspecting my violin to be the excuse, my aunt remarked: "What do you want to be a musician
for? At parties, musicians always eat last." Perhaps, I said to myself, she was thinking of a pack of dogs
scrambling for scraps tossed over the fence by some careless kitchen maid. She was the sort you could
depend on to say such vulgar things. For that reason, I thought, she ought not to be taken seriously at all.
But the remark hurt me. Although Grandmother had counseled me kindly to mind my work at school, I
went again and again to Pete Saez's house for rehearsals. She had demanded that I deposit with her my
earnings; I had felt too weak to refuse. Secretly, I counted the money and decided not to ask for it until I
had enough with which to buy a brooch. Why this time I wanted to give Aida a brooch, I didn't know. But
I had set my heart on it. I searched the downtown shops. The Chinese clerks, seeing me so young, were
annoyed when I inquired about prices. At last the Christmas season began. I had not counted on Aida's
leaving home, and remembering that her parents lived in Badajoz, my torment was almost unbearable.
Not once had I tried to tell her of my love. My letters had remained unwritten, and the algebra book
unborrowed. There was still the brooch to find, but I could not decide on the sort of brooch I really
wanted. And the money, in any case, was in Grandmother's purse, which smelled of "Tiger Balm." I grew
somewhat feverish as our class Christmas program drew near. Finally it came; it was a warm December
afternoon. I decided to leave the room when our English teacher announced that members of the class
might exchange gifts. I felt fortunate; Pete was at the door, beckoning to me. We walked out to the porch
where, Pete said, he would tell me a secret. It was about an asalto the next Sunday which the Buenavista
Women's Club wished to give Don Esteban's daughters, Josefina and Alicia, who were arriving on the
morning steamer from Manila. The spinsters were much loved by the ladies. Years ago, when they were
younger, these ladies studied solfeggio with Josefina and the piano and harp with Alicia. As Pete told me
all this, his lips ashgray from practising all morning on his trombone, I saw in my mind the sisters in their
silk dresses, shuffling off to church for theevening benediction. They were very devout, and the
Buenavista ladies admired that. I had almost forgotten that they were twins and, despite their age, often
dressed alike. In low-bosomed voile bodices and white summer hats, I remembered, the pair had attended
Grandfather's funeral, at old Don Esteban's behest. I wondered how successful they had been in Manila
during the past three years in the matter of finding suitable husbands. "This party will be a complete
surprise," Pete said, looking around the porch as if to swear me to secrecy. "They've hired our band." I
joined my classmates in the room, greeting everyone with a Merry Christmas jollier than that of the
others. When I saw Aida in one corner unwrapping something two girls had given her, I found the
boldness to greet her also. "Merry Christmas," I said in English, as a hairbrush and a powder case
emerged from the fancy wrapping. It seemed to me rather apt that such gifts went to her. Already several
girls were gathered around Aida. Their eyes glowed with envy, it seemed to me, for those fair cheeks and
the bobbed dark-brown hair which lineage had denied them. I was too dumbstruck by my own meanness
to hear exactly what Aida said in answer to my greeting. But I recovered shortly and asked: "Will you be
away during the vacation?" "No, I'll be staying here," she said. When she added that her cousins were
arriving and that a big party in their honor was being planned, I remarked: "So you know all about it?" I
felt I had to explain that the party was meant to be a surprise, an asalto. And now it would be nothing of
the kind, really. The women's club matrons would hustle about, disguising their scurrying around for
cakes and candies as for some baptismal party or other. In the end, the Rivas sisters would outdo them.
Boxes of meringues, bonbons, ladyfingers, and cinnamon buns that only the Swiss bakers in Manila could
make were perhaps coming on the boat with them. I imagined a table glimmering with long-stemmed
punch glasses; enthroned in that array would be a huge brick-red bowl of gleaming china with golden
flowers around the brim. The local matrons, however hard they tried, however sincere their efforts, were
bound to fail in their aspiration to rise to the level of Don Esteban's daughters. Perhaps, I thought, Aida
knew all this. And that I should share in a foreknowledge of the matrons' hopes was a matter beyond love.
Aida and I could laugh together with the gods. At seven, on the appointed evening, our small band
gathered quietly at the gate of Don Esteban's house, and when the ladies arrived in their heavy shawls and
trim panuelo, twittering with excitement, we were commanded to play the Poet and Peasant overture. As
Pete directed the band, his eyes glowed with pride for his having been part of the big event. The
multicolored lights that the old Spaniard's gardeners had strung along the vine-covered fence were
switched on, and the women remarked that Don Esteban's daughters might have made some preparations
after all. Pete hid his face from the glare. If the women felt let down, they did not show it. The overture
shuffled along to its climax while five men in white shirts bore huge boxes of goods into the house. I
recognized one of the bakers in spite of the uniform. A chorus of confused greetings, and the women
trooped into the house; and before we had settled in the sala to play "A Basket of Roses," the heavy
damask curtains at the far end of the room were drawn and a long table richly spread was revealed under
the chandeliers. I remembered that, in our haste to be on hand for the asalto, Pete and I had discouraged
the members of the band from taking their suppers. "You've done us a great honor!" Josefina, the more
buxom of the twins, greeted the ladies. "Oh, but you have not allowed us to take you by surprise!" the
ladies demurred in a chorus. There were sighs and further protestations amid a rustle of skirts and the
glitter of earrings. I saw Aida in a long, flowing white gown and wearing an arch of sampaguita flowers
on her hair. At her command, two servants brought out a gleaming harp from the music room. Only the
slightest scraping could be heard because the servants were barefoot. As Aida directed them to place the
instrument near the seats we occupied, my heart leaped to my throat. Soon she was lost among the guests,
and we played "The Dance of the Glowworms." I kept my eyes closed and held for as long as I could her
radiant figure before me. Alicia played on the harp and then, in answer to the deafening applause, she
offered an encore. Josefina sang afterward. Her voice, though a little husky, fetched enormous sighs. For
her encore, she gave "The Last Rose of Summer"; and the song brought back snatches of the years gone
by. Memories of solfeggio lessons eddied about us, as if there were rustling leaves scattered all over the
hall. Don Esteban appeared. Earlier, he had greeted the crowd handsomely, twisting his mustache to hide
a natural shyness before talkative women. He stayed long enough to listen to the harp again, whispering
in his rapture: "Heavenly. Heavenly . . ." By midnight, the merrymaking lagged. We played while the
party gathered around the great table at the end of the sala. My mind traveled across the seas to the distant
cities I had dreamed about. The sisters sailed among the ladies like two great white liners amid a fleet of
tugboats in a bay. Someone had thoughtfully remembered-and at last Pete Saez signaled to us to put our
instruments away. We walked in single file across the hall, led by one of the barefoot servants. Behind us
a couple of hoarse sopranos sang "La Paloma" to the accompaniment of the harp, but I did not care to find
out who they were. The sight of so much silver and china confused me. There was more food before us
than I had ever imagined. I searched in my mind for the names of the dishes; but my ignorance appalled
me. I wondered what had happened to the boxes of food that the Buenavista ladies had sent up earlier. In
a silver bowl was something, I discovered, that appeared like whole egg yolks that had been dipped in
honey and peppermint. The seven of us in the orchestra were all of one mind about the feast; and so,
confident that I was with friends, I allowed my covetousness to have its sway and not only stuffed my
mouth with this and that confection but also wrapped up a quantity of those egg-yolk things in several
sheets of napkin paper. None of my companions had thought of doing the same, and it was with some
pride that I slipped the packet under my shirt. There, I knew, it would not bulge. "Have you eaten?" I
turned around. It was Aida. My bow tie seemed to tighten around my collar. I mumbled something, I did
not know what. "If you wait a little while till they've gone, I'll wrap up a big package for you," she added.
I brought a handkerchief to my mouth. I might have honored her solicitude adequately and even relieved
myself of any embarrassment; I could not quite believe that she had seen me, and yet I was sure that she
knew what I had done, and I felt all ardor for her gone from me entirely. I walked away to the nearest
door, praying that the damask curtains might hide me in my shame. The door gave on to the veranda,
where once my love had trod on sunbeams. Outside it was dark, and a faint wind was singing in the
harbor. With the napkin balled up in my hand, I flung out my arm to scatter the egg-yolk things in the
dark. I waited for the soft sound of their fall on the garden-shed roof. Instead, I heard a spatter in the
rising night-tide beyond the stone fence. Farther away glimmered the light from Grandmother's window,
calling me home. But the party broke up at one or thereabouts. We walked away with our instruments
after the matrons were done with their interminable goodbyes. Then, to the tune of "Joy to the World," we
pulled the Progreso Street shopkeepers out of their beds. The Chinese merchants were especially
generous. When Pete divided our collection under a street lamp, there was already a little glow of
daybreak. He walked with me part of the way home. We stopped at the baker's when I told him that I
wanted to buy with my own money some bread to eat on the way to Grandmother's house at the edge of
the sea wall. He laughed, thinking it strange that I should be hungry. We found ourselves alone at the
counter; and we watched the bakery assistants at work until our bodies grew warm from the oven across
the door. It was not quite five, and the bread was not yet ready.