Vicente Rivera, Jr.
ONE evening in August
1941, I came out of a late movie to a silent, cold night. I shivered a little
as I stood for a moment in the narrow street, looking up at the distant sky,
alive with stars. I stood there, letting the night wind seep through me, and listening.
The street was empty, the houses on the street dim—with the kind of ghostly
dimness that seems to embrace sleeping houses. I had always liked empty streets
in the night; I had always stopped for a while in these streets listening for
something I did not quite know what. Perhaps for low, soft cries that empty
streets and sleeping houses seem to share in the night.
I lived in an old,
nearly crumbling apartment house just across the street from the moviehouse.
From the street, I could see into the open courtyard, around which rooms for
the tenants, mostly a whole family to a single room, were ranged.
My room, like all the
other rooms on the groundfloor, opened on this court. Three other boys, my
cousins, shared the room with me. As I turned into the courtyard from the
street, I noticed that the light over our study-table, which stood on the
corridor outside our room, was still burning. Earlier in the evening after
supper, I had taken out my books to study, but I went to a movie instead. I
must have forgotten to turn off the light; apparently, the boys had forgotten,
too.
I went around the low
screen that partitioned off our “study” and there was a girl reading at the
table. We looked at each other, startled. I had never seen her before. She was
about eleven years old, and she wore a faded blue dress. She had long, straight
hair falling to her shoulders. She was reading my copy of Greek Myths.
The eyes she had
turned to me were wide, darkened a little by apprehension. For a long time
neither of us said anything. She was a delicately pretty girl with a fine,
smooth. pale olive skin that shone richly in the yellow light. Her nose was
straight, small and finely molded. Her lips, full and red, were fixed and
tense. And there was something else about her. Something lonely? something
lost?
“I know,” I said, “I
like stories, too. I read anything good I find lying around. Have you been
reading long?”
“Yes,” she said. not looking at me now. She got up slowly, closing the book.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you want to
read anymore? I asked her, trying to smile, trying to make her feel that
everything was all right.
“No.” she said, “thank
you.”
“Oh, yes,” I said,
picking up the book. “It’s late. You ought to be in bed. But, you can take this
along.”
She hesitated, hanging back, then shyly she took the book, brought it to her
side. She looked down at her feet uncertain as to where to turn.
“You live here?” I
asked her.
“Yes.”
“What room?”
She turned her face
and nodded towards the far corner, across the courtyard, to a little room near
the communal kitchen. It was the room occupied by the janitor: a small square
room with no windows except for a transom above the door.
“You live with Mang Lucio?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“How long have you
been here? I haven’t seen you before, have I?”
“I’ve always been
here. I’ve seen you.”
“Oh. Well, good
night—your name?”
“Maria.”
“Good night, Maria.”
She turned quickly,
ran across the courtyard, straight to her room, and closed the door without
looking back.
I undressed, turned
off the light and lay in bed dreaming of far-away things. I was twenty-one and
had a job for the first time. The salary was not much and I lived in a house
that was slowly coming apart, but life seemed good. And in the evening when the
noise of living had died down and you lay safe in bed, you could dream of
better times, look back and ahead, and find that life could be gentle—even with
the hardness. And afterwards, when the night had grown colder, and suddenly you
felt alone in the world, adrift, caught in a current of mystery that came in
the hour between sleep and waking, the vaguely frightening loneliness only
brought you closer to everything, to the walls and the shadows on the walls, to
the other sleeping people in the room, to everything within and beyond this
house, this street, this city, everywhere.
I met Maria again one
early evening, a week later, as I was coming home from the office. I saw her
walking ahead of me, slowly, as if she could not be too careful, and with a
kind of grownup poise that was somehow touching. But I did not know it was
Maria until she stopped and I overtook her.
She was wearing a
white dress that had been old many months ago. She wore a pair of brown
sneakers that had been white once. She had stopped to look at the posters of
pictures advertised as “Coming” to our neighborhood theater.
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual.
She smiled at me and
looked away quickly. She did not say anything nor did she step away. I felt her
shyness, but there was no self-consciousness, none of the tenseness and
restraint of the night we first met. I stood beside her, looked at the pictures
tacked to a tilted board, and tried whistling a tune.
She turned to go,
hesitated, and looked at me full in the eyes. There was again that
wide-eyed—and sad? —stare. I smiled, feeling a remote desire to comfort her, as
if it would do any good, as if it was comfort she needed.
“I’ll return your book now,” she said.
“You’ve finished it?”
“Yes.”
We walked down the
shadowed street. Magallanes Street in Intramuros, like all the other streets
there, was not wide enough, hemmed in by old, mostly unpainted houses, clumsy
and unlovely, even in the darkening light of the fading day.
We went into the apartment house and I followed her across the court. I stood
outside the door which she closed carefully after her. She came out almost
immediately and put in my hands the book of Greek myths. She did not look at me
as she stood straight and remote.
“My name is Felix,” I
said.
She smiled suddenly.
It was a little smile, almost an unfinished smile. But, somehow, it felt
special, something given from way deep inside in sincere friendship.
I walked away
whistling. At the door of my room, I stopped and looked back. Maria was not in
sight. Her door was firmly closed.
August, 1941, was a
warm month. The hangover of summer still permeated the air, specially in
Intramuros. But, like some of the days of late summer, there were afternoons
when the weather was soft and clear, the sky a watery green, with a shell-like
quality to it that almost made you see through and beyond, so that, watching it
made you lightheaded.
I walked out of the
office one day into just such an afternoon. The day had been full of grinding
work—like all the other days past. I was tired. I walked slowly, towards the
far side of the old city, where traffic was not heavy. On the street there were
old trees, as old as the walls that enclosed the city. Half-way towards school,
I changed my mind and headed for the gate that led out to Bonifacio Drive. I
needed stiffer winds, wider skies. I needed all of the afternoon to myself.
Maria was sitting on the first bench, as you went up the sloping drive that
curved away from the western gate. She saw me before I saw her. When I looked
her way, she was already smiling that half-smile of hers, which even so told
you all the truth she knew, without your asking.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s
a small world.”
“What?”
“I said it’s nice
running into you. Do you always come here?”
“As often as I can. I
go to many places.”
“Doesn’t your uncle
disapprove?”
“No. He’s never
around. Besides, he doesn’t mind anything.”
“Where do you go?”
“Oh, up on the walls.
In the gardens up there, near Victoria gate. D’you know?”
“I think so. What do
you do up there?”
“Sit down and—”
“And what?”
“Nothing. Just sit
down.”
She fell silent.
Something seemed to come between us. She was suddenly far-away. It was like the
first night again. I decided to change the subject.
“Look,” I said,
carefully, “where are your folks?”
“You mean, my mother
and father?”
“Yes. And your
brothers and sisters, if any.”
“My mother and father
are dead. My elder sister is married. She’s in the province. There isn’t
anybody else.”
“Did you grow up with
your uncle?”
“I think so.”
We were silent again.
Maria had answered my questions without embarrassment. almost without emotion,
in a cool light voice that had no tone.
“Are you in school, Maria?”
“Yes.”
“What grade?”
“Six.”
“How d’you like it?”
“Oh, I like it.”
“I know you like
reading.”
She had no comment.
The afternoon had waned. The breeze from the sea had died down. The last
lingering warmth of the sun was now edged with cold. The trees and buildings in
the distance seemed to flounder in a red-gold mist. It was a time of day that
never failed to carry an enchantment for me. Maria and I sat still together,
caught in some spell that made the silence between us right, that made our
being together on a bench in the boulevard, man and girl, stranger and
stranger, a thing not to be wondered at, as natural and inevitable as the
lengthening shadows before the setting sun.
Other days came, and
soon it was the season of the rain. The city grew dim and gray at the first
onslaught of the monsoon. There were no more walks in the sun. I caught a cold.
Maria and I had become
friends now, though we saw each other infrequently. I became engrossed in my
studies. You could not do anything else in a city caught in the rains.
September came and went.
In November, the sun
broke through the now ever present clouds, and for three or four days we had
bright clear weather. Then, my mind once again began flitting from my desk, to
the walls outside the office, to the gardens on the walls and the benches under
the trees in the boulevards. Once, while working on a particularly bad copy on
the news desk, my mind scattered, the way it sometimes does and, coming
together again, went back to that first meeting with Maria. And the remembrance
came clear, coming into sharper focus—the electric light, the shadows around us,
the stillness. And Maria, with her wide-eyed stare, the lost look in her eyes…
IN December, I had a
little fever. On sick leave, I went home to the province. I stayed three days.
I felt restless, as if I had strayed and lost contact with myself. I suppose
you got that way from being sick,
A pouring rain followed our train all the way back to Manila. Outside my
window, the landscape was a series of dissolved hills and fields. What is it in
the click of the wheels of a train that makes you feel gray inside? What is it
in being sick, in lying abed that makes you feel you are awake in a dream, and
that you are just an occurrence in the crying grief of streets and houses and
people?
In December, we had our first air-raid practice.
I came home one night through darkened streets, peopled by shadows. There was a
ragged look to everything, as if no one and nothing cared any more for
appearances.
I reached my room just as the siren shrilled. I undressed and got into my old
clothes. It was dark, darker than the moment after moon-set. I went out on the
corridor and sat in a chair. All around me were movements and voices. anonymous
and hushed, even when they laughed.
I sat still, afraid and cold.
“Is that you. Felix?”
“Yes. Maria.”
She was standing beside my chair, close to the wall. Her voice was small and
disembodied in the darkness. A chill went through me, She said nothing more for
a long time.
“I don’t like the darkness,” she said.
“Oh, come now. When you sleep, you turn the lights off, don’t you?”
“It’s not like this darkness,” she said, softly. “It’s all over the world.”
We did not speak again until the lights went on. Then she was gone.
The war happened not long after.
At first, everything was unreal. It was like living on a motion picture screen,
with yourself as actor and audience. But the sounds of bombs exploding were
real enough, thudding dully against the unready ear.
In Intramuros, the people left their homes the first night of the war. Many of
them slept in the niches of the old walls the first time they heard the sirens
scream in earnest. That evening, I returned home to find the apartment house
empty. The janitor was there. My cousin who worked in the army was there. But
the rest of the tenants were gone.
I asked Mang Lucio, “Maria?”
“She’s gone with your aunt to the walls.” he told me. “They will sleep there
tonight.”
My cousin told me that in the morning we would transfer to Singalong. There was
a house available. The only reason he was staying, he said, was because they
were unable to move our things. Tomorrow that would be taken care of
immediately.
“And you, Mang Lucio?”
“I don’t know where I could go.”
We ate canned pork and beans and bread. We slept on the floor, with the lights
swathed in black cloth. The house creaked in the night and sent off hollow
echoes. We slept uneasily.
I woke up early. It was disquieting to wake up to stillness in that house which
rang with children’s voices and laughter the whole day everyday. In the
kitchen, there were sounds and smells of cooking.
“Hello,” I said.
It was Maria, frying rice. She turned from the stove and looked at me for a
long time. Then, without a word, she turned back to her cooking.
“Are you and your uncle going away?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he not tell you?”
“No.”
“We’re moving to Singalong.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll
come back tonight. Maybe this afternoon. We’ll not have to say goodbye till
then.”
She did not say anything. I finished washing and went back to my room. I
dressed and went out.
At noon, I went to Singalong to eat. All our things were there already, and the
folks were busy putting the house in order. As soon as I finished lunch, I went
back to the office. There were few vehicles about. Air-raid alerts were
frequent. The brightness of the day seemed glaring. The faces of people were
all pale and drawn.
In the evening, I went back down the familiar street. I was stopped many times
by air-raid volunteers. The house was dark. I walked back to the street. I
stood for a long time before the house. Something did not want me to go away
just yet. A light burst in my face. It was a volunteer.
“Do you live here?”
“I used to. Up to
yesterday. I’m looking for the janitor.”
“Why, did you leave
something behind?”
“Yes, I did. But I
think I’ve lost it now.”
“Well, you better get
along, son. This place, the whole area. has been ordered evacuated.
Nobody lives
here anymore.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“Nobody.”