DEAD STARS by Paz Marquez Benitez

Photo courtesy of NASA

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.

“Papa, and when will the ‘long table’ be set?”

“I don’t know yet. Alfredo is not very specific, but I understand Esperanza wants it to be next month.”

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.”

“She does not seem to be in much of a hurry either,” Don Julian nasally commented, while his rose scissors
busily snipped away.

“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?”

“In love? With whom?”

“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–”

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.

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.

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.

“What do you think happened?” asked Carmen, pursuing her thought.

“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–”

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 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.

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 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.

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 out-curving 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 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.

“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 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.

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 presidente was 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 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.”

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 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.

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 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.

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.

This is the 1925 short story that gave birth to modern Philippine writing in English.
THE SADNESS COLLECTOR

                                      BY: Merlinda Bobis

The short story, The Sadness Collector is about a girl named Rica who has problems while growi
ng up with her father because her mother works overseas as a domestic helper. After her mother left 
for Paris shes use to send different gifts to Rica just to show her love and presence. To divert Rica’s a
ttention, her father told her a story about a big lady who eats sadness away from houses at night. Her 
dad told her that if the big lady eats all of their mess, the big lady might grow too fast and burst, so Ri
ca has to be a good girl and save the big lady by not being sad. Ever since her mother left, Rica woul
d be so eager listen to all of the sounds at the kitchen and waiting for the big lady to show up. One ni
ght, Rica heard noises again and because of the story that her father made about the lady who eats s
adness, she became nervous and afraid that the big lady might burst but unfortunately it wasn’t even 
the big lady at all, not even her aunties. But it was only her drunk dad. Rica told her dad about her he
sitations and her thoughts about the noise she heard and argued with her dad that it was really the Bi
g Lady. But maybe, because of her dad’s guilt about making a story and about his wreck less actions, 
he said sorry and assured Rica that big lady can’t and won’t get her away from him, and to top it off s
he assured Rica that he really loves her. But due to her young mind, Rica tends to wait patiently for Bi
g Lady to appear. 

II. THESIS STATEMENTS

Merlinda Bobis “The Sadness Collector” was basically revolves on the theme of diaspora and a youn
g girl that name Rica who is lack of affection by her parents and a Big Lady that eats sadness. 

III. BODY

So the following are the basic literary concepts of The Sadness Collector:

PLOT

The plot structure is about the losing of a home by some major reasons, such as separation from 
each other. The techniques of writing is very stylistic and focuses on sociocultural realm of Merlinda's 
story. The climax of the story is the part wherein Rica’s father was drunk one night and unintentionally 
struck her. Rica during that time was really sad in a way where she seemed about to give up. The co
nfusion with regards to the photos her mom sent her and the depression felt by her father seemed mo
re than they can handle. In the end, they only have each other which prompted her father to say “she 
will never take you away from me”.

SETTINGS
 The settings of the said story is revolves around in the house of Rica and the Paris where her mot
her work as a domestic helper. 

CHARACTERIZATION

The characters of this story are Big Lady, Rica, Father and the Mother. 

SYMBOLISM

The symbols being used in this story are as follows:

• BURST-  which is big lady getting Rica from her Father. 

• PARISIENNE WINTER HAT- in which the mother gave to his daughter Rica and wanted her to go to th
e Paris. 

• “Shes licking a spoon for any trace of saltiness” - means the tears of Rica.

• “Rica was not philosophical at all” - this means Rica was gullible. 

• Pots, plates, cups and glasses- heart/ container of feelings 

• LETTERS- decrease of attention

• PICTURE- mother’s new life

METAPHORS

The metaphors of this story are as follows:

-“To Rica, it always tastes salty, like tears, even her fathers funny look each time she asks him to 
read her again the letters from Paris. 

- “Like tonight, when she hoped her father would come home early, as he promised again. 

- “She likes sadness, its food.

GENRE

The type of genre that the author used in the story is in a narrative form. In which, the sadness co
llector is a type of short story. 

Figurative Speech Being Used

Apostrophe- some absent or nonexistent person or thing is addressed as if 
present and capable of understanding.

-“Big Lady” 

Hyperbole- wherein the author uses specific words and phrases that exaggerate and overemphasize 
the basic crux of the statement in order to produce a grander, more noticeable effect.

-“So Big Lady can’t get to them. So she can be saved from bursting.”

Metonymy- the use of a term connected with an object to represent the whole. 

-”She only comes to eat your sadness.”

Simile- the practice of drawing parallels or comparisons between two unrelated and dissimilar things, 
people, beings, places and concepts.
-“No, that sound is not the scurrying of mice – she’s actually checking the plates now, lifting the lid 
off the rice pot, peeking into cups for sadness, both overt  and unspoken.”

-”Mouth curved downward, she’s sad like her meals.”

Now, my analysis of this story is I just want to criticize regarding the narration or words being used by 
the author in her story and the way she narrates it to the readers in which for me it was not really clea
r and its not easy to understand at first read. For the first timer like me that reads her story is someho
w I cannot easily understand the story at all because of the unfamiliar words being used in the story. 
As for me who is an average learner, I need to look for a dictionary for me to understand the word. Ho
w about those people that are not much good in English? Especially the children whose starting to lea
rn? I bet they are struggling to understand the story. My point is, the author must used a word that is 
easy to understand by everyone most especially the children, why? Because for me this story was ver
y suitable among the children's especially to those who have an OFW parents. This story teaches a lo
t of moral lesson that the children can get and applied to their selves. The Sadness Collector contains 
so many deep words that you need to read for twice just to understand the story and the author must 
be aware of that. In overall, the story was really good and if I'll rate it from one to ten, I’ll give ten be
cause this story gives us a lot of lesson. The form, theme, characterizations, style and all was for me 
very excellent that’s why I wont be shocked if the author gets a lot of awards from this story. 

So here are the other’s critics opinions:

Author: Maria Nastassja Cordero AB Political Science

The story represents the importance of the specific roles played by each of the members of a Filipino 
family. It is evident that a mother and a father in a Filipino family tends to have a very distant role to p
erform in the household. The father should be the breadwinner while the mother should stay at home 
taking care of the kids. In the story The Sadness Collector they have seemed to break tradition. The 
mother went to Paris to work and actually be the bread winner while the father, although still working, 
stayed at home with Rica. In the absence of the mother, the Filipino perspective that the mother is the 
best person who can look out for the welfare of her child/children was represented in the story seeing 
Rica as a confused and disturbed child because her mom is not by her side. The father was so hard t
o connect with Rica because of the reason that it was hard for himself to accept the fact that he had t
o stay with his child which is for him is not his real role. Seeing this situation, I can say that a Filipino f
amily tends to be more patriarchal and breaking this tradition seemed to be, for the many, ruining of t
he family. What is also evident here in this selection is the perspective of the very big role played by t
he mother in the Filipino family, they keep family ties and a child without a mother by his/her side tend
s to grow out of the way, being an incomplete person inside. 

Author: Ivanheck Gatdula AB Political Science

At first glance "The Sadness Collector" seems to be your typical story of a Filipino family, one of whic
h we see on movies. The mother goes to a foreign country, leaving her children behind, while taking c
are of a stranger's child with the intent to give a comfortable living for the family. However, what seem
s to be the typical story may be classified as a "daily tragedy", Merlinda Bobis depicted the corroding 
of what is said to be the essence of a Filipino family, "Close Knitted Family Bonds". Young girls usuall
y steps within the shadows of their mother, but Rica not like most girls, lost the chance in her growing 
years. Suffering a great loss from the physical distance of the mother from Paris, to the eventual emot
ional distance of the father, who refuses to read her mother's letter an and answer the questions abou
t the baby pictures. In this story it is now obvious that the effects is focused on Rica, a model of every 
Filipino child that never/forgot feeling of the loving touch of their mothers. In Merlinda Bobis' "poetic" s
hort story leaves an alarming message, a child who lost the joy of being her mother's daughter, Filipin
o family seized of its very essence - what do we do now?

IV. CONCLUSION

Merlinda Bobis “The Sadness Collector” doesn't only revolves in the theme of diaspora and Rica's

lack of affection to her parents that many of the authors criticize it. But instead you can also critique
some literary concepts such as plot, genre, characters and even the narration in which I criticize in
the story. My only point is that the author must change her style in using words especially the words
that has a deep meaning and unfamiliar to other readers. I believed that this story could teach us a lot
of moral lesson most especially to the children for them to understand well the situations and reasons
of an OFW parents. And in order to achieve that, the author must use words that can be easy to
understand at first read. 

The Sadness Collector (Merlinda Bobis)

And she will not stop eating, another pot, another plate, another mouthful of sadness, and she will grow bigger
and bigger, and she will burst.

On the bed, six – year – old Rica braces herself, waiting for the dreaded explosion –

Nothing. No big bang. Because she’s been a good girl. Her tears are not even a mouthful tonight. And maybe
their neighbours in the run – down apartment have been careful, too. From every pot and plate, they must have
scraped off their leftover sighs and hidden them somewhere unreachable. So Big Lady can’t get to them. So
she can be saved from bursting.

Every night, no big bang really, but Rica listens anyway.

The house is quiet again. She breathes easier, lifting the sheets slowly from her face – a brow just unfurrowing,
but eyes still wary and a mouth forming the old silent question – are you really there? She turns on the lamp.
It’s girlie kitsch like the rest of the decor, from the dancing lady wallpaper to the row of Barbie dolls on a
roseate plastic table. The tiny room is all pink bravado, hoping to compensate for the warped ceiling and
stained floor. Even the unhinged window flaunts a family of pink paper rabbits.

Are you there?

Her father says she never shows herself to anyone. Big Lady only comes when you’re asleep to eat your
sadness. She goes from house to house and eats the sadness of everyone, so she gets too fat. But there’s a
lot of sadness in many houses, it just keeps on growing each day, so she can’t stop eating, and she can’t stop
growing too.

Are you really that bid? How do you wear your hair?

Dios ko, if she eats all our mess, Rica, she might grow too fat and burst, so be a good girl and save her by not
being sad – hoy, stop whimpering, I said, and go to bed. Her father is not always patient with his storytelling.

All quiet now. She’s gone.

Since Rica was three, when her father told her about Big Lady just after her mother left for Paris, she was
always listening intently to all the night – noises from the kitchen. No, that sound is not the scurrying of mice –
she’s actually checking the plates now, lifting the lid off the rice pot, peeking into cups for sadness, both overt
and unspoken. To Rica, it always tastes salty, like tears, even her father’s funny look each time she asks him
to read her again the letters from Paris.

She has three boxes of them, one for each year, though the third box is not even half – full. All of them tied
with Paris ribbons. The first year, her mother sent all colours of the rainbow for her long, unruly hair, maybe
because her father did not know how to make it more graceful. He must have written her long letters, asking
about how to pull the mass of curls away from the face and tie them neatly the way he gathered, into some
semblance of order, his own nightly longings.

It took some time for him to perfect the art of making a pony – tail. Then he discovered a trick unknown to even
the best hairdressers. Instead of twisting the bunch of hair to make sure it does not come undone before it’s
tied, one can rotate the whole body. Rica simply had to turn around in place, while her father held the gathered
hair above her head. Just like dancing, really.

She never forgets, talaga naman, the aunties whisper among themselves these days. A remarkable child. She
was only a little thing then, but she noticed all, didn’t she, never missed anything, committed even details to
memory. A very smart kid, but too serious, a sad kid.

They must have guessed that, recently, she has cheated on her promise to behave and save Big Lady. But
only on nights when her father comes home late and drunk, and refuses to read the old letters from Paris –
indeed, she has been a very good girl. She’s six and grown up now, so, even if his refusal has multiplied
beyond her ten fingers, she always makes sure that her nightly tears remained small and few. Like tonight,
when she hoped her father would come home early, as he promised again. Earlier, Rica watched TV to forget,
to make sure the tears won’t amount to a mouthful. She hates waiting. Big Lady hates that, too, because then
she’ll have to clean up till the early hours of the morning.

Why Paris? Why three years – and even more? Aba, this is getting too much now. The aunties never agree
with her mother’s decision to work there, on a fake visa, as a domestic helper – ay naku, taking care of other
people’s children, while, across the ocean, her own baby cries herself to sleep? Talaga naman! She wants to
earn good money and build us a house. Remember, I only work in a factory... Her father had always defended
his wife, until recently, when all talk about her return was shelved. It seems she must extend her stay, because
her employer might help her to become “legal.” Then she can come home for a visit and go back there to work
some more –

The lid clatters off the pot. Beneath her room, the kitchen is stirring again. Rica sits up on the bed – the big one
has returned? But she made sure the pot and plates were clean, even the cups, before she went to bed. She
turns off the lamp to listen in the dark. Expectant ears, hungry for the phone’s overseas beep. Her mother used
to call each month and write her postcards, also long love letters, even if she couldn’t read yet. With happy
snaps, of course. Earlier this year, she sent one of herself and the new baby of her employer.

Cutlery noise. Does she also check them? This has never happened before, her coming back after a lean
meal. Perhaps, she’s licking a spoon for any trace of saltiness, searching between the prongs of a fork.
Unknown to Rica, Big Lady is wise, an old hand in this business. She senses that there’s more to a mouthful of
sadness than meets the tongue. A whisper of salt, even the smallest nudge to the palate, can betray a century
of hidden grief. Perhaps, she understands that, for all its practice, humanity can never conceal the daily act of
futility at the dinner table. As we feed continually, we also acknowledge the perennial nature of our hunger.
Each time we bring food to our mouths, the gut – emptiness that we attempt to fill inevitably contaminates our
cutlery, plates, cups, glasses, our whole table. It is this residual contamination, our individual portions of grief,
that she eats, so we do not die from them – but what if we don’t eat? Then we can claim self – sufficiency, a
fullness from birth, perhaps. Then we won’t betray our hunger.

But Rica was not philosophical at four years old, when she had to be cajoled, tricked, ordered, then scolded
severely before she finished her meal, if she touched it at all. Rica understood her occasional hunger strikes
quite simply. She knew that these dinner quarrels with her father, and sometimes her aunties, ensured dire
consequences. Each following day, she always made stick drawings of Big Lady with an ever – increasing
girth, as she was sure the lady had had a big meal the night before.

Mouth curved downward, she’s sad like her meals. No, she wears a smile, she’s happy because she’s always
full. Sharp eyes, they can see in the dark, light – bulb eyes, and big teeth for chewing forever. She can hardly
walk, because her belly’s so heavy, she’s pregnant with leftovers. No, she doesn’t walk, she flies like a giant
cloud and she’s not heavy at all, she only looks heavy. And she doesn’t want us to be sad, so she eats all our
tears and sighs. But she can’t starve, can she? Of course, she likes sadness, it’s food.

Fascination, fear and a kinship drawn from trying to save each other. Big Lady saves Rica from sadness; Rica
saves Big Lady from bursting by not being sad. An ambivalent relationship, confusing, but certainly a source of
comfort. And always Big Lady as object of attention. Those days when Rica drew stick – drawings of her, she
made sure the big one was always adorned with pretty baubles and make – up. She even drew her with a
Paris ribbon to tighten her belly. Then she added a chic hat to complete the picture.

Crimson velvet with a black satin bow. Quite a change from all the girlie kitsch – that her mother had dredged
from Paris’ unfashionable side of town? The day it arrived in the mail, Rica was about to turn six. A perfect
Parisienne winter hat for a tiny head in the tropics. It came with a bank – draft for her party.

She did not try it on, it looked strange, so different from the Barbies and pink paper rabbits. This latest gift was
unlike her mother, something was missing. Rica turned it inside out, searching – on TV, Magic Man can easily
pull a rabbit or a dove out of his hat, just like that, always. But this tale was not part of her father’s repertoire.
He told her not to be silly when she asked him to be Magic Man and pull out Paris – but can she eat as far as
Paris? Can she fly from here to there overnight? Are their rice pots also full of sad leftovers? How salty?

Nowadays, her father makes sure he comes home late each night, so he won’t have to answer the questions,
especially about the baby in the photograph. So he need not to improvise further on his three – year – old tall
tale.

There it is again, the cutlery clunking against a plate – or scraping the bottom of a cup? She’s searching for the
hidden mouthfuls and platefuls and potfuls. Cupboards are opened. No, nothing there, big one, nothing –
Rica’s eyes are glued shut. The sheets rise and fall with her breathing. She wants to leave the bed, sneak into
the kitchen and check out this most unusual return and thoroughness.
That’s the rice pot being overturned –

Her breaths make and unmake a hillock on the streets –

A plate shatters on the floor –

Back to a foetal curl, knees almost brushing chin –

Another plate crushes –

She screams –

The pot is hurled against the wall –

She keeps screaming as she ruins out of the room, down to the kitchen –

And the cutlery, glasses, cups, more plates –

Big Lady’s angry, Big Lady’s hungry, Big Lady’s turning the house upside down –

Breaking it everywhere –

Her throat is weaving sound, as if it were all that it never knew –

“SHUT UP – !”

Big Lady wants to break all to get to the heart of the matter, where it’s the saltiest. In the vein of a plate, within
the aluminium bottom of a pot, in the copper fold of a spoon, deep in the curve of a cup’s handle –

Ropes and ropes of scream –

“I SAID, SHUT UP!”

Her cheek stings. She collapses on the floor before his feet.

“I didn’t mean to, Dios ko po, I never meant to –“

Her dazed eyes make out the broken plates, the dented pot, the shards of cups, glasses, the cutlery
everywhere –

He’s hiccupping drunkenly all over her –

“I didn’t mean to, Rica, I love you, baby, I’ll never let you go –“ His voice is hoarse with anger and remorse.

“She came back, Papa –“

“She can’t take you away from me –“

“She’s here again –“

“Just because she’s ‘legal’ now –“

“She might burst, Papa –“

“That whore - !” His hands curl into fists on her back.

Big Lady knows, has always known. This feast will last her a lifetime, if she does not burst tonight.