DEAD STARS
by Paz Marquez Benitez
 |
| Julia Salas with Alfredo Salazar. (Image courtesy of ThePhilippineLiterature.Blogspot.Com) |
I.
1.
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. The
tranquil murmur of conversation issued from the brick-tiled azotea where Don
Julian and Carmen were busy puttering away among the rose pots.
2.
"Papa, and when will the 'long table' be set?"
3.
"I don't know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand
Esperanza wants it to be next month."
4.
Carmen sighed impatiently. "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."
5.
"She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either," Don
Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors busily snipped away.
6.
"How can a woman be in
a hurry when the man does not hurry her?" Carmen returned, pinching off a
worm with a careful, somewhat absent air. "Papa, do you remember how much
in love he was?"
7.
"In love? With whom?"
8.
"With Esperanza, of course. He has not had another love affair that
I know of," she said with good-natured contempt. "What I mean is that
at the beginning he was enthusiastic--flowers, serenades, notes, and things
like that--"
9.
Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame.
That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a
great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had
seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled
shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life?
Love--he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a
mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace,
a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a
combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days
love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a
stranger to love as he divined it might be.
10. Sitting
quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days,
the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when
something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in
time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it," someone had seemed
to urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded
himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the
meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.
11. Why would
men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many.
Greed--the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to
squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when
but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to
the craving for immediate excitement. Greed--mortgaging the future--forcing the
hand of Time, or of Fate.
12. "What
do you think happened?" asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.
13. "I
supposed long-engaged people are like that; warm now, cool tomorrow. I think
they are oftener 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." Don Julian 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--"
14. 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.
15. "A
last spurt of hot blood," finished the old man.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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--
20. 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.
21. 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?"[So, you know
each other already?--Ed.]--with the consequence that Alfredo called her Miss
del Valle throughout the evening.
22. 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 sister-in-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.
23. 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."
24. "Oh,"
he drawled out, vastly relieved.
25. "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!"
26. He
laughed with her.
27. "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."
28. "As
you did this time. Still, you looked amused every time I--"
29. "I
was thinking of Mr. Manalang."
30. 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
vine-covered 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.
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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."
34. 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."
35. 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.
36. 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.
37. 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.
38. "Up
here I find--something--"
39. He and
Julia Salas stood looking out into the she quiet night. Sensing unwanted
intensity, laughed, woman-like, asking, "Amusement?"
40. "No;
youth--its spirit--"
41. "Are
you so old?"
42. "And
heart's desire."
43. Was he
becoming a poet, or is there a poet lurking in the heart of every man?
44. "Down
there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is
too broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery."
45. "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.
46. "Mystery--"
she answered lightly, "that is so brief--"
47. "Not
in some," quickly. "Not in you."
48. "You
have known me a few weeks; so the mystery."
49. "I
could study you all my life and still not find it."
50. "So
long?"
51. "I
should like to."
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. 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
out-curving beach.
55. 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.
56. When he
came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.
57. "I
hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection.
58. "Very
much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely
beach."
59. 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.
60. "The
afternoon has seemed very short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is
the last time--we can visit."
61. "The
last? Why?"
62. "Oh,
you will be too busy perhaps."
63. He noted
an evasive quality in the answer.
64. "Do
I seem especially industrious to you?"
65. "If
you are, you never look it."
66. "Not
perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be."
67. "But--"
68. "Always
unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself.
69. "I
wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause.
70. She
waited.
71. "A
man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid."
72. "Like
a carabao in a mud pool," she retorted perversely.
73. "Who?
I?"
74. "Oh,
no!"
75. "You
said I am calm and placid."
76. That is
what I think."
77. "I
used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves."
78. It was
strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with tone and look and covert
phrase.
79. "I
should like to see your home town."
80. "There
is nothing to see--little crooked streets, bunut roofs with ferns growing on
them, and sometimes squashes."
81. 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.
82. "Nothing?
There is you."
83. "Oh,
me? But I am here."
84. "I
will not go, of course, until you are there."
85. "Will
you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one American there!"
86. "Well--Americans
are rather essential to my entertainment."
87. She
laughed.
88. "We
live on Calle Luz, a little street with trees."
89. "Could
I find that?"
90. "If
you don't ask for Miss del Valle," she smiled teasingly.
91. "I'll
inquire about--"
92. "What?"
93. "The
house of the prettiest girl in the town."
94. "There
is where you will lose your way." Then she turned serious. "Now, that
is not quite sincere."
95. "It
is," he averred slowly, but emphatically.
96. "I
thought you, at least, would not say such things."
97. "Pretty--pretty--a
foolish word! But there is none other more handy I did not mean that
quite--"
98. "Are
you withdrawing the compliment?"
99. "Re-enforcing
it, maybe. Something is pretty when it pleases the eye--it is more than that
when--"
100.
"If it saddens?" she interrupted hastily.
101.
"Exactly."
102.
"It must be ugly."
103.
"Always?"
104.
Toward the west, the sunlight lay on the dimming waters in a broad,
glinting streamer of crimsoned gold.
105.
"No, of course you are right."
106.
"Why did you say this is the last time?" he asked quietly as
they turned back.
107.
"I am going home."
108.
The end of an impossible dream!
109.
"When?" after a long silence.
110.
"Tomorrow. I received a letter from Father and Mother yesterday.
They want me to spend Holy Week at home."
111.
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. "That is why I said this
is the last time."
112.
"Can't I come to say good-bye?"
113.
"Oh, you don't need to!"
114.
"No, but I want to."
115.
"There is no time."
116.
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.
117.
"Home seems so far from here. This is almost like another
life."
118.
"I know. This is Elsewhere, and yet strange enough, I cannot get
rid of the old things."
119.
"Old things?"
120.
"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.
121.
Don Julian's nasal summons came to them on the wind.
122.
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
123.
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.
124.
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.
125.
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.
126.
The line moved on.
127.
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.
128.
Her glance of abstracted devotion fell on him and came to a brief stop.
129.
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.
130.
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.
131.
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.
132.
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.
133.
"I had been thinking all this time that you had gone," he said
in a voice that was both excited and troubled.
134.
"No, my sister asked me to stay until they are ready to go."
135.
"Oh, is the Judge going?"
136.
"Yes."
137.
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.
138.
"Mr. Salazar," she broke into his silence, "I wish to
congratulate you."
139.
Her tone told him that she had learned, at last. That was inevitable.
140.
"For what?"
141.
"For your approaching wedding."
142.
Some explanation was due her, surely. Yet what could he say that would
not offend?
143.
"I should have offered congratulations long before, but you know
mere visitors are slow about getting the news," she continued.
144.
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.
145.
"Are weddings interesting to you?" he finally brought out
quietly
146.
"When they are of friends, yes."
147.
"Would you come if I asked you?"
148.
"When is it going to be?"
149.
"May," he replied briefly, after a long pause.
150.
"May is the month of happiness they say," she said, with what
seemed to him a shade of irony.
151.
"They say," slowly, indifferently. "Would you come?"
152.
"Why not?"
153.
"No reason. I am just asking. Then you will?"
154.
"If you will ask me," she said with disdain.
155.
"Then I ask you."
156.
"Then I will be there."
157.
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.
158.
"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?"
159.
"No!"
160.
"I thought maybe you had had that experience; then you could
understand a man who was in such a situation."
161.
"You are fortunate," he pursued when she did not answer.
162.
"Is--is this man sure of what he should do?"
163.
"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."
164.
"But then why--why--" her muffled voice came. "Oh, what
do I know? That is his problem after all."
165.
"Doesn't it--interest you?"
166.
"Why must it? I--I have to say good-bye, Mr. Salazar; we are at the
house."
167.
Without lifting her eyes she quickly turned and walked away.
168.
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.
169.
He looked attentively at her where she sat on the sofa, appraisingly,
and with a kind of aversion which he tried to control.
170.
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.
171.
She was pursuing an indignant relation about something or other,
something about Calixta, their note-carrier, Alfredo perceived, so he merely
half-listened, 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.
172.
"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."
173.
What had Calixta done? Homely, middle-aged Calixta?
174.
"You are very positive about her badness," he commented dryly.
Esperanza was always positive.
175.
"But do you approve?"
176.
"Of what?"
177.
"What she did."
178.
"No," indifferently.
179.
"Well?"
180.
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."
181.
"Why shouldn't it be? You talked like an--immoral man. I did not
know that your ideas were like that."
182.
"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."
183.
"She has injured us. She was ungrateful." Her voice was tight
with resentment.
184.
"The trouble with you, Esperanza, is that you are--" he
stopped, appalled by the passion in his voice.
185.
"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?
186.
"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.
187.
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?
188.
"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--"
189.
"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."
190.
Did she mean by this irrelevant remark that he it was who had sought
her; or was that a covert attack on Julia Salas?
191.
"Esperanza--" a desperate plea lay in his stumbling words.
"If you--suppose I--" Yet how could a mere man word such a plea?
192.
"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.
193.
The last word had been said.
III
194.
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 back-break, 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.
195.
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.
196.
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
snub-crested 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.
197.
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 presidente was
there to meet him or not. Just then a voice shouted.
198.
"Is the abogado there? Abogado!"
199.
"What abogado?" someone irately asked.
200.
That must be the presidente, he thought, and went down to the landing.
201.
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."
202.
Alfredo Salazar courteously declined the invitation. He would sleep on
board since the boat would leave at four the next morning anyway. So the
presidente 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."
203.
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.
204.
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.
205.
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 chinelas making
scraping sounds. From a distance came the shrill voices of children playing
games on the street--tubigan perhaps, or "hawk-and-chicken." The
thought of Julia Salas in that quiet place filled him with a pitying sadness.
206.
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.
207.
A few inquiries led him to a certain little tree-ceilinged 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.
208.
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.
209.
"Good evening," he said, raising his hat.
210.
"Good evening. Oh! Are you in town?"
211.
"On some little business," he answered with a feeling of
painful constraint.
212.
"Won't you come up?"
213.
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.
214.
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?
215.
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.
216.
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.
217.
The young moon had set, and from the uninviting cot he could see one
half of a star-studded sky.
218.
So that was all over.
219.
Why had he obstinately clung to that dream?
220.
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.
221.
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.
A scientifically factual picture from 9Gag.
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