Three Filipino Women

ONE

It is difficult for me to relate this story because it concerns a woman for whom I have always had the deepest affection. Also because it concerns me and the dilemmas that I had to face, not in our relationship, but in the very probing questions she had raised, not so much by what she asked as by the way she had lived.

I am convinced that I loved her as I had never loved anyone. If I did leave my easy life to be with her in the end as I told her I would, it was because of her. I know now that she was right and yet, I have not really changed. Is it because I am a coward? Too much a creature of habit, of comfort? Or — and I don’t want to answer this question — did I really love her enough?

Every day, I go through the numbing monotony, doing what I have been doing for the last six years. I have prospered by any measure in spite of inflation, the energy crisis, and all those pernicious dislocations that threatened business under martial law. And still I persist although no longer believing in what I am doing. Why then? For the family tradition? Out of momentum or plain, cussed stubbornness?

But I am young and there is time ahead.

Is it because I don’t want to stake my life in a venture which may not bring forth the justice Malu had searched for? I don’t want to think anymore. My mind is in turmoil and I wish Malu were here to confirm me.

I met Malu — short for Maria Luisa — in my senior year when I was contributing to the college journal. I was majoring in business and economics, but I had dabbled in sociology. Thinking about it now, Malu must have regarded me as an incorrigible rightist. I was about to leave the office of Professor Galvez, having submitted a twenty-page manuscript on the multinational corporations and how they were plundering Mindanao, when she came in.

She was tall — almost as tall as I — very fair, and slim. Her hair was neatly combed, hanging loose over her shoulders. She did not have a bit of makeup. But even without cosmetics, her face seemed aglow — that was the first thing one noticed about Malu. She had high cheekbones, full lips, and eyes that shone. Her chest was almost flat, and a fine down covered her arms.

Professor Galvez, who was the journal’s editor, attended to her at once. “Ah, Malu, I suppose you’ve already finished the piece. About time we had something spiritually lifting in this arid little journal.”

Her face was mobile; she was plainly peeved.

“Your article on faith healing and spirits,” Professor Galvez went on blithely, “should really make the next issue more interesting.”

“That is what I came to tell you, sir.” Her voice was mellow. “I’m hesitant about it. I wrote it in the first person and it doesn’t have the objectivity you demand.”

Professor Galvez had a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He was also an excellent writer. In his late forties, his hair had turned prematurely gray and he looked venerable. “Well, isn’t that the best way to handle something that cannot be explained in the usual scholarly fashion? But we can always break ground the way Carlos Castañeda does.”

Again, the displeasure on her face which the professor missed entirely.

We went out together. I wanted to know her more and what she was doing. She was free the rest of the morning so we went to the cafeteria for coffee.

I was pretentious then, going on pompous. I believed in economic nationalism and was researching the policies of government that were inimical to our interests. It was 1970 and though I did not agree with the student demonstrators and their lofty, radical slogans, I sympathized with their objectives. Malu told me later that I was just expressing the “constipated” view of the nationalist bourgeoisie which wanted the whole cake for itself.

She listened patiently nonetheless to how I was grappling with such weighty subjects as history, progress, and alienation. Thinking back, had Malu been plain, I would not have been interested in her or what she was doing. Faith healing was old news to me, although I wasn’t one to go around writing about spirits.

“It is not that he lacks empathy, because he is good,” she said, still irritated by Professor Galvez’s remarks which, she said, were patronizing. “He is less a Filipino — like all the rest who have gone to the United States and brought back all those inappropriate ideas about research and methodology. Look, all over the country, in spite of our science and our Christianity, a belief in the world of the spirit persists. This world is open to everyone who wants to enter it. Nothing exotic or mysterious. All of us have experienced an inkling, a premonition. Extrasensory perception they call it now. The early Christians were mystics. And Saint Theresa of Avila levitated. The Bible is full of miracles — and why not? Is mysticism Christian when even Christians hardly believe in it anymore? Those who flock to Baclaran or Quiapo praying to those images for favors, that’s not mysticism. It is just simple human need, a natural reaching out to the supernatural …”

I liked the way she explained it. I knew how right she was. In my senior year in high school, I was in the library one afternoon when I distinctly heard Father’s voice. I turned, expecting to see him. But there was no one. As a matter of fact, I was alone except for the clerks at the far end.

I was very disturbed and since it was already late in the day and I had no more classes, I decided to go home instead of playing basketball. Only the maids were in; Mother had rushed to the hospital. Father had had a heart attack and had died at about the same time I heard his voice.

“That is not unusual,” Malu said. “It has been documented. The air is charged with energy, the spirits of people, and sometimes, in cases of great urgency, contact is made.”

The semester was about over; it was a faultless October morning and the sun shone brilliant on the campus, washing the grass and the cream-colored buildings with dazzling light. She did not want to linger in the cafeteria so we crossed the street to the library and beyond it to this huge acacia tree — perhaps the biggest in the entire campus. She liked its cool shade and we were to meet again and again beneath it.

I was flattered that she had read my article listing the economic imperatives of nationalism. She said it was well argued, but then she added that it lacked social purpose. What was nationalism for? What did it mean to the lower classes, to those who worked the land?

So her interests were also in the here and now. Aside from her involvement with ESP and spirits, she turned out to be a political activist.

We had barely seated ourselves on a protruding root of the tree when she asked if I had joined any of the student demonstrations that were sweeping the city. I had not bothered with them. With a touch of melancholy, she said, “I think you’re a dilettante … engrossed with the veneer and not with the pith.”

I reminded her about what a Frenchman once said: if one is not a communist when one is eighteen, he has no heart; but if he is still a communist when he is forty, he has no head. She retorted that I was neither eighteen nor forty — so what did that make me? And then she railed against the inequities that surrounded us, this girl who lived in an exclusive Makati village, who went to an expensive school. She was going to teach me, she said with some levity, what social awareness was.

Malu was majoring in clinical psychology and was, I am sure, never short of subjects. I suppose that she considered me one, given the manner she asked questions. Often she would be quiet as if my answers were being studied and fitted into her equations. She had a tendency to be patronizing like Professor Galvez. She called me “Teng-ga,” meaning lead, which could have easily been “Tanga,” meaning stupid. I was ponderous, capable of thought, but when all was said, the profundity was without value. I was not concerned with the kind of justice that could only be brought about by a mass movement.

At first, I resented the nickname. I decided to give her one in kind.

“I know myself,” I said. “And the man who knows himself is not only secure but wise.”

“But there are things you don’t know about yourself,” she insisted. “And knowing oneself is not being profound. It is being conceited.”

“And you are not?”

“I don’t think I am the center of the universe.”

“I suppose you consider yourself some sort of precious metal then. Like gold.”

She shook her head. “I am not expensive.”

“But you are,” I said. “With your ideas, who is the man who can afford to love you? Imagine what you will do to his psyche, if not his wallet.”

As if on impulse, she stretched out her hand and held mine.

“And you think you’re heavy, too,” I said.

I remembered my parents’ wedding rings — they were heavy and they looked plain, like silver, or even lead, but they were expensive. “Platinum. That’s what you think you are. I will call you Plat.”

“Male revenge!” she exclaimed. “And I am thin, my breasts are no bigger than kalamansi!”

Her candor touched me. “But their smallness cannot diminish your beauty, Plat. And I would like to make them grow.”

“Into pomelos.” She laughed.

I wanted to take her home the next afternoon so that I could meet her parents, but she demurred. She guessed what I had in mind. “You are so square,” she said, crinkling her nose as if some bad odor assailed her. “You would like to pay court in the traditional way and ask Father for my hand. You should work in our house then, chop firewood, draw water from the well. After all these sacrifices, are you sure you will have a virgin?” She was putting it lightly, but then she came close and breathed into my face. “But I like the way you are doing it.”

She would not give me her address. This I found out soon enough from the registrar’s office where I had a friend. I went there on a Sunday morning and since her house was in Dasmariñas Village, I was not surprised that it was grand. Unlike most of the houses in this expensive Makati area, it was done in the old colonial style — red-tile roof, thick adobe walls, intricate ironwork on the sash windows and balustrades, and a heavy gate of solid molave with iron braces and filigrees. I also realized why she did not want me to visit her — this girl who always rode in buses and jeepneys, who dressed in T-shirt and faded jeans and formless katsa—a fabric similar to cheesecloth — blouses; she was trying to live down the fact that she was rich.

“But in the beginning we were not,” she explained.

My visit had surprised her, but she had asked me in. We proceeded to the patio that overlooked a wide, well-groomed garden, and she served me coffee and the chocolate cake her mother had baked.

“It was all my father’s doing. He is a good businessman. He had this land in Bataan which later became very expensive property. He is a genius in real estate — no one can steal him blind …”

It was meant to be a pun of sorts. Her father was tortured by the Japanese during the war and had lost his sight. He had given Malu as a child a sense of inferiority; she was particularly annoyed when her classmates called him “Antiojos” because of the dark glasses he always wore, even on that evening when she graduated (as valedictorian) in grade school. She went with him on trips, describing places and people, reading the papers to him. She had become adept at description and at intuition by being his perceptive eyes.

I felt that she reluctantly brought me up to the house afterwards because she did not want me to see its rich interior. But I wanted to meet her father, this man who had taught her vision and forebearance. He sat before a TV set, listening to a documentary on Japanese culture. When we entered the room, he turned to the sound of our entry. His eyes were unblinking, glimpsed through the dark glasses. He extended his hand and I grasped it. His grip was strong and warm. Malu was right — if I did not know, I would have thought he was not blind at all. “So, at last” he turned to her. “You have brought a young man home. I suppose it is serious then.”

Malu pinched my arm. “Yes, sir,” I said, not minding her.

“Well, Malu has one more year in college. I suppose both of you can wait.”

Malu was glaring at me even as I said, “Hardly, sir.”

There was exuberant closeness in the family. Malu was the youngest and was the favorite. She had a way with almost anyone and was headstrong. I knew they accepted me when her father told me to forgive Malu’s vaulting enthusiasms. And boys, it seemed, were not one of them. He tolerated her politics; she was doing, he said, what he would do were he young again.

The audience over, Malu took me to the garden.

Again, the familiar cliches about the working class, the blighted rural areas.

“But do you really know how it is over there? In the most depressed parts of the country?” I questioned the factual basis of her judgments. “You have never lived on a farm,” I said, badgering her.

“Do you know how I can be in one?” she asked. “I will bring a team — all girls, at least a dozen of us.”

Uncle Bert had this farm in Albay, but if they stayed with him, they would be comfortable. I asked him to arrange for the “education” of a dozen colegialas, that they be exposed to the worst conditions in Bicol. Uncle Bert laughed and said he would see to that.

After the semestral break, she returned from Albay sunburned, her hands blistered. But there was a radiance in her face. They had paid economy fare at Tutuban station. They did not bring any food because they thought they would have their meals in the first-class restaurant on the train. They were herded into a dusty coach which pitched and loped when they were finally on the way. Vegetables and crates were piled on the corridors and platforms. There was no place for them to sit except on the crates. They got hungry and there was no restaurant in third class.

Some passengers offered them their food — cold chunks of rice with pieces of dried fish wrapped in banana leaves. They bought additional food from vendors in the stations.

The farm she was assigned to was at the foot of a mountain, and isolated. Many days she felt she would simply go mad. She would wander beyond the house and shout her lungs dry just so she could hear herself. After mundane conversations with the family, she had no one to talk with, nothing to read. She did not bring a novel, not even a writing pad, and the family did not have a transistor radio. There was no flush toilet and worse, she forgot to bring toilet paper.

The family’s lack of interest in politics of the kind she believed in did not faze her; she had met the same skepticism and even suspicion in the slum families of Tondo when she started teach-ins. She had to talk with them in terms of their needs, what they could relate to in their daily lives — why prices of copra were low, who made the money in the trade, and why they worked so hard and yet earned so little.

She was amazed at their endurance. They would climb the foothills to gather coconuts then bring them to the yard where they were husked. The two youngsters in the family who were not even in their teens carried four coconuts each and she carried only two. By the time she reached the top of the hill, she was so tired and breathless from crawling on her knees and hands, while her young companions would still be bouncing ahead of her. She also helped in the harvesting in the valley. Bent over in the field, she could only work briefly in the morning when it was not too hot. She would be drenched with sweat, she itched horribly, and her back ached so much she thought it would break.

She had brought some canned food and was sure the family fed her with the best they could afford. She did not want to appear conspicuous so she brought her oldest clothes. There was a funeral in the village, but even with her rags, she was the best dressed.

Still, she was when she returned home, as I said, radiant.

TWO

It was not my intention to wean Malu from her politics, just see to it that she saw the other side, that progress was not a result of a class war, that motivation was important, and that as a student of psychology, she should recognize this.

I saw her almost daily during lunch when school started again if she was not in the slums or in demonstrations at the American embassy and Malacañang. I was going to graduate in a few months and had already started working in the family business. Perhaps it sounded flippant when I asked if she was now ready, after all her experiences, to move out of Dasmariñas and lead the revolution.

She was not usually given to flare-ups, but this time, she all but screamed, “Damn your money! How much do you pay your workers?”

I did not let that pass. I asked if she ever understood why so many generations stayed on in Tondo which had been there in Bonifacio’s time, and even earlier. “They are lazy, they lack initiative,” I told her. “You can love humanity — but it will not change.”

“And why should they not be lazy?” she flung back. “This is the whole debilitating effect of colonialism. They work so hard and still don’t make enough. Or eat enough.”

“In our furniture factory,” I said, “there is a lot of absenteeism after payday. What do they do? They get drunk and don’t report for work for three days. They don’t save. I can go through a long list.”

“But not in the farms where your uncle sent us.”

“They are not his farms. All of us, we give justice to our workers.”

“They work very hard,” she went on. “Without rest, and when all is done, there is still very little for them.” Then she challenged me. “I bet you have never been in a slum, you have never been inside a poor man’s house, in Tondo or anywhere.”

She trapped me, all right, and that very afternoon, it was my turn. We drove to Barrio Magsaysay where her group was organizing action teams.

We parked in the bay boulevard because we could not get through the maze of alleys. It was late November, the rains had paused; otherwise, as she explained it, we would have to wear boots because the alleys became rivulets of fetid mud. When we got there, what disturbed me really was not the sorry construction, the pigsty atmosphere — it was the eagerness, the dedication on her face as we entered this misshapen world of people who greeted her with warmth.

She introduced me to Charlie — a frail boy of fifteen who looked much older, and like all youths in the slum, he had dirty skin and bad teeth. He was in faded shorts and his rubber slippers were about to break apart. Wherever we went, he followed. He adored Malu and for a while, I was jealous.

“He is the brightest boy in the Barrio,” she said, enthusiastically. He had organized the youngsters and got them to clean the alleys, keep order. He was out of school; he would have been a high school junior had he enrolled, but his tuition money went to the hospital when his father fell ill. He helped at a stall in Divisoria, got three pesos a day plus some leftover, wilted vegetables.

There were many things that Malu could have done for them but she felt they must do a lot for themselves and I agreed. Still I knew that someday, if it had not already happened, they would possess her and I did not want that. I coveted her.

It was late afternoon when we left the Barrio. We went to the Hilton. I had thought of walking around the Luneta but she was hungry.

We sat together in the coffee shop and I held her hand under the table. Her closeness was intoxicating, an invitation; I was now sure she had some affection for me. I relished that Sunday morning when I visited her, warmed to the memory of her pinching me when I told her father how serious my intentions were. I just loved looking at her, the sinuous line of her jaw, those eyes, expressive of joy and yet seeing sorrow everywhere. I loved listening to her even when she was like some broken record repeating the same phrases about the oppression of the poor which, really, no single person could change for as long as we lived within the iron logic of capitalism.

“I am miserable, Teng-ga,” she said, pressing my hand. “I can’t find peace of mind. Oh, no, not the spiritual kind. It seems as if I’m at ease only when I am trying to help people.”

She moved closer. I desired her then, imagined her naked under me, crushing those lips in a kiss. Looking at her, composed and serene, I wondered how she would look in surrender, her self-assurance completely sundered.

I did something stupid that day which, as it turned out, was a revelation not only about myself but about her. We had finished our hamburgers. The late afternoon was untarnished and driving along the boulevard, the smell of the sea wafting into the car, she sat close to me, silent, as if her mind were far away. Soon, it would be dark. As we turned left through Cuneta to get to Makati, the motels lined up on both sides on the narrow road.

“Let’s go into one,” I said, and before she could object, I had turned left to an entrance. She tugged at my sleeve briefly as if to stop me, but it was too late. I swung the car to an open garage which one of the boys who had risen from a bench pointed to.

I had expected her to object, perhaps just a little. She looked at me, shaking her head, then she rolled up the window and together, we went up the stairs. It was obviously her first time in a motel and now, she was all curiosity as she studied the room, the huge mirrors that surrounded the wide bed, the knobs that controlled the red lights and the piped-in music. When the buzzer rang and the boy came, she went out to the anteroom and watched me sign the smudged register with a fictitious name.

After the boy had gone, she sat on the wide bed, looked disapprovingly at me, and asked, “Are you going to rape me?”

I shook my head. “I am not going to do anything you don’t want.”

“I am glad you said that,” she said, “because I’m not ready for this. Oh, I know that by the time you are a junior in the university, you are no longer supposed to be a virgin. But I still am — whatever you may think of my manners.”

“And you’re proud of holding on to it?”

“Maybe, but that is not the reason. I would like to give it to someone I really care for.”

I do not know of her intention but what she said dampened my ardor.

“I suppose I am not the first girl you brought to a motel?”

“No,” I said with some honesty.

“I am getting to like you,” she said with a slight laugh. “And who knows …” she stood up, came to me, and kissed my cheek. I flung my arms around her, kissed the lobes of her ears, felt her body warm and close, her silky thighs. But she was like a block of wood. I let her go.

“You’re a tease,” I said. “You lead me on and let me think …”

“I am not a tease,” her voice rose. “Can’t you see that I like you, but not enough to engage in simple fornication? That is what you want — and if you love me, then you know that love is more than that.”

“Shit,” I said, turning. “Even the church dissolves a marriage if it is not consummated. Spiritual love — that is foolish, for nuns. And even nuns have physical needs. Don’t you realize that I want to marry you?”

“Thank you for the nice thought.” Her tone changed immediately. She shucked off her shoes, then lay down. “Come,” she said. “Let’s not waste this bed and all these mirrors. Let us just talk.”

I could not help but laugh. Desire had really cooled. I lay beside her and gazed at the mirror in the ceiling, at the two of us, fully clothed.

“No one would believe this,” I said. Then I asked her what it was that she really wanted to do.

“To be alive,” she said quietly. “To see that time is not wasted. I don’t want to grow old without having lived usefully.”

“Loving is living,” I said. “So I love you and in loving you I am alive.” I lay still, her hand warm and soft in mine, the blisters from Albay already gone. “But suppose I died tomorrow; what is it that you will remember of me?”

She turned on her side and pressed her hand quickly to my mouth. “Don’t talk like this. As if you always look at the dark side of things.”

“There can be a car accident tomorrow. Or a building may collapse on me. These we cannot foresee. Living is always risking.”

She lay back. Even when we did not speak, I could feel myself flow out to her in calm, blue waves. We reminisced about ourselves, her childhood, those days when she had been so self-conscious with her father and how, by that experience, she had learned to use her eyes better and see beneath the patina, the superficiality of appearances and of speech. It was deeds that mattered.

I reiterated; I would soon be through with school and would then take on more duties in our business. It was time to get married.

And that was when she said we could just live together and find out if we were compatible so that, afterwards, if we weren’t, or if we outgrew each other, we could always part and still be friends.

I was shocked. She was a modern, liberated woman, but I did not know she thought so lightly of the institution of marriage.

“You are fooling, Plat.”

“No,” she said amiably. “Marriage is a lifetime commitment and that is what I want to make when I am sure.”

The telephone jangled. The clerk said our “short time” was up. Four hours! Time had gone so fast, it was almost midnight. I wanted to stay longer since there were many things still unsaid, many questions unasked.

We put on our shoes. She brushed her hair and straightened her blouse. I went behind her and encircled her waist. Turning to me, she kissed me again lightly, this time on the lips.

“So, at least,” she whispered, “you will not say that nothing happened.”

We drove to Dasmariñas hardly talking. Her mother opened the door saying, “Hurry, your father needs you.”

I was uneasy, wondering what scolding she would get. Her mother asked me to stay for a cup of coffee. She was a handsome woman in her fifties, without the matronly bulge of most women her age. In her blue housedress, there was a patrician quality about her, and her eyes, like Malu’s, were alive. Look at a girl’s mother, I remember reading, and this is how the daughter will look.

I asked permission to leave, but Malu returned to the living room and told me to wait, her father wanted to talk with me.

“I told him we went to a motel,” she said, laughing.

Her mother must have seen me blush. She smiled at my discomfiture and said Malu was always making those risque jokes. But she is a good girl, she assured me.

“I know that, Ma’am” I said.

She left for the kitchen and returned with the coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.

“She is giving her father a head massage,” she explained. “He is not feeling well.”

“I did not know she was also a masseuse.”

“Not really,” she explained. “She just lays her hand on her father’s brow then prays.”

I wanted to know more, but by then Malu came out and said I should talk with her father. I was nervous — did she really tell him we went to a motel? And would he tell me now never again to come to this house?

She led me across the wide expanse of carpet and upholstered furniture and all that “burgis crockery” as she described it, to the library. By an old writing desk with several tape recorders, Malu’s father sat on an overstuffed leather easy chair. His dark glasses were not on and when he looked at me, his eyes had that blank, unseeing stare. He must have felt that I was standing for he said, “Please sit down,” pointing to the rattan chair before him.

He asked if I was served something and when he was assured that I was, he sighed, “I had this headache again and Malu is the only one who can relieve me of it.”

“She is a wonderful girl, sir.”

He nodded. “She has special gifts. She is the brightest of my children. I know her values are right. She tells me about those teach-ins, those demonstrations, the idealism of it all. I worry about her, her safety, her well-being. If she were only a boy — do you understand what I am trying to say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you believe in what she is doing?”

“Not all the way, sir,” I said. “Neither demonstrations nor guns will do away with the injustice around us. Education will — I told her that.”

He slapped his thigh as if he agreed, drew his chest in and breathed deeply. He was past sixty, but there was still stamina in him. “But how can I dissuade her? I believe in her goals, too, and that is why I am worried. But I’m glad that you are rooted in solid ground and you can be some sort of anchor to … reason and sanity. Now, let me tell you something you don’t know. She is also a spiritista. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, sir. She let me read a paper she wrote which she did not want published.”

He shook his head, sadly. “Since 1949—nothing but darkness. Many specialists, even in Europe, have seen me. Do you understand? I was prepared for a life of darkness. I have even forgiven the Japanese for it. I have adjusted to it, although I miss many things. The shape of trees, of houses, the colors … and Malu — my dear child! I have never seen her. If only I could! Sometimes, I touch her face, imagining how she looks. She always tells me she is ugly.”

“No, sir,” I said quickly. “She is the prettiest girl I know. Her eyes, her cheeks …” I was gushing and pitying him at the same time. And I was glad that I could see her and hoped to God that I would know her far better, know the grace that suffused her personality.

“You love her?”

“Very much, sir.”

“We all love her,” he said. “But I have a feeling that we will lose her.”

“Oh, no!”

The sightless eyes locked with mine. “You may not know it, but when she became a spiritista two years ago … Oh — I never found out how she got into it and she has not told me yet. During this last year that she began ministering to me, touching my eyes, praying for me … I could not believe it at first. After all those years of total darkness. But now, I can tell when it is daylight. The reds come flooding into my eyes. Do you know what this means? For a man who knew nothing but night for more than twenty years? I have hope again. And now, when I sit in front of a window, when people pass in front of me, I see shadows. Shadows!”

Malu came to the acacia after her last class; she wore the same old jeans and loose blouse — they were her uniform. She shared with me the chocolate cake her mother had baked and when we were finished, I asked about the spiritistas in Navotas.

“And why are you so interested in them all of a sudden?”

“I want to find out what is in them that attracts you. What are you really looking for? What do you want?”

“Hey!” She playfully shoved a fist into my stomach. “One at a time. I am no computer. What do you want me to be?”

“My wife,” I said immediately. “I want you to raise my children, to keep house, help me be what I want to be …”

“How conventional,” she sighed. “The woman’s place is in the home.”

“It is a major responsibility, Plat. No small matter.”

“I don’t deny that,” she said. “But it is like condemning a woman to prison.”

“A home a prison? Do you want to be free like a bird? But even birds have nests.”

“I know, but you asked what I want. I want peace.”

“It is so abstract, Plat. It is like saying I want truth, beauty …”

“I want those, too, and they are not abstract.”

“Tell me, are you uncomfortable in Dasmariñas Village?”

She did not speak. I had touched the root of it all. She turned to me and said evenly, “My father did not cheat anyone. He worked very hard all his life. My mother, too. I don’t have to explain our kind of life.”

“I am not asking you to,” I said. “People deserve the fruits of their labor.”

“That’s what Father said. The only things I knew were parties, clothes. Oh, yes, Father told us about the poor, but I was protected from real knowledge. Then, when I was a junior in high school, I had a very good teacher in literature. She made us read Rizal, all those stories by our own writers that would waken us. We asked questions. She took us to the Philippine General Hospital and saw all those people in the corridors who were going to die because they had no money. I have been only to the best hospitals — the Makati Center, those in the United States. We read stories about the slums, so we visited — not Tondo — but Malibay in Pasay. And you know, what I used to spend for one dress — that was what one family needed to live on for three months! I was shocked. I felt guilty that I had so much, that I was comfortable and there are so many people who are not. And my teacher, when the nuns learned about what she was doing, they fired her. I really hated them for that.”

“You cannot be Santa Claus,” I said. “This is a job for government. Besides, the poor will always be with us.”

“They are people!” she said emphatically. “That I cannot forget. I wanted to think only of myself, of the fun I used to have. I just couldn’t anymore. And that was when I went into meditation. To ease my mind — not to run away or to seek some enlightenment. Don’t you have mental or emotional problems at all?”

“Yes,” I said. “Lots of them. But the one that gives me the most frustration — is you.”

Her brows arched in mock surprise. “You trouble me a lot, too,” she said. “We should meditate together then. I have my own mantra which is just like saying the rosary over and over.”

“Om ni pad ni om …”

“Not that esoteric,” she said. “What I want the world to have: love … light, love … light.”

She said there must be a way the sick can be helped without going to fancy hospitals and buying those expensive medicines. Many of man’s diseases were psychosomatic and most ailments could be cured by the human body itself. She went searching for faith healers, found most of them were fakes taking advantage of the ignorant, just as many specialists in medicine took advantage of their patients.

All these led her to the spiritistas.

“Can you take me to Navotas to see them?”

“So you can laugh at us, or look at us as if we were freaks?”

I told her then what her father had told me.

“I believe, Plat,” I said simply.

We reached Barrio Santa Clara late in the day. It was not a long way from the boulevard that skirted the bay. We passed new housing areas that were being built on land that was once fish ponds. We turned right into a narrow, cemented street, the wooden houses intruding into the street itself. I drove slowly for people had spilled out into the street, loafing, taking in the late afternoon sun.

The chapel was within a compound of shoddy wooden frame houses and we parked in the driveway cluttered with laundry lines, empty fish baskets, and old lumber. Beyond the driveway, the chapel was just another decrepit building with an open foyer through which I could see no pews but an enclosure with several women and men. They greeted Malu warmly. She introduced me as her future husband and they beamed at me and shook my hand.

We did not stay with them; she led me out to one of the houses by the chapel, across an alley heaped with cooking pots, stacked firewood, and empty chicken coops. The whole place smelled of sweat and tired people. In the dim, almost sepulchral living room, a corpulent woman was stretched on an iron bed stacked with pillows that needed washing, her hair grayish and stringy. When she saw Malu, she half rose and grinned, baring a set of bad teeth stained with betel nut. Malu greeted her politely. She was the priestess, the leader of the congregation.

Dusk was now upon us. Back in the chapel, a single fluorescent tube in the nave was on and several candles in the altar with the image of Christ were lighted. They were all within the enclosure now. I sat just outside on one of the benches by the railing. They started with the national anthem, not the anthem sung in the schools with its exotic Tagalog. The melody was the same, but the words were simpler, more beautiful. The woman whom we had met in the house intoned a prayer first and all the members, not more than fifty and mostly women, stood silently. They were working-class people; their clothes were shabby, and their skins were dark with sun and toil. Now, their eyes closed, they started praying, Malu with them. After a while, many started to sway and tremble; the fat woman walked around, stood before each member, praying. I was transfixed, watching Malu. She had closed her eyes and her arms started to quiver. Each one spoke, not in unison but singly, in a Tagalog I could hardly understand, not the Tagalog of the sidewalk but the Tagalog of the poets. They thanked God and promised they would work for His glory. Then it was Malu’s turn — the priestess was in front of her. Malu was in a deep trance and, perhaps, did not know what she was saying. Her voice was resonant, and her Tagalog was beautiful and frightening and I feared for her, for she said, “Dear God, Your poor and Your weak — Who will help them? When You said You gave us not peace but the sword, where now is the sword so that we may bring justice to Your people?”

For all her radical verbiage, Malu was not one to carry arms; she was scared of them and of military men. Her threshold for physical pain was low. She once suffered through a horrible toothache because she felt it was more torture to sit on a dentist’s chair. Her childhood memories of her visit to one were indelible — the drill, it had seemed to her then, was going right through her tooth, into her being. I accompanied her to my dentist who was an excellent and understanding woman with a calm, soothing manner. Still, she paled visibly with the first shot of Novocain in her gums.

“How can you be a revolutionary when you cannot even visit a dentist without trembling? How will it be then when you get shot at? Or when you see blood?”

“You are no different — you’re just like all of them,” she said. “Did it over occur to you that revolution is not just shooting and dying? It is also cooking, typing, keeping files, planning, teaching — and organizing.”

I knew she was doing a lot of this and during the Christmas break that year, I saw her less, but I phoned every day. She was busy in the slums, worried that those driftwood houses would soon be bulldozed by the government.

“It is for the greater good, Plat,” I said. “That place was meant for harbor facilities, for storehouses.”

“But there is no place where they can be relocated,” she said angrily. “And more than that, the government will not start any construction for two years. I know, I researched it.”

I could not argue. Perhaps, I was just being jealous of Charlie who was now with her every day. I knew the slum needed not just simple housing but sewage disposal, garbage collection and a water system. Burned into my mind was that afternoon we went there, the pigpens that passed for homes, the unmistakable imprint of harsh living in the mottled skins of people, the big bellies of children, the rancid smell of rotting garbage and human waste in the alleys.

“I think you are in love with Charlie,” I blurted out.

“Don’t be funny,” she retorted, and banged the phone.

I visited her on Christmas day — her mother had called and said I should have lunch with them and she hinted that Malu needed to see me.

It was a memorable day. I brought this engagement ring hoping it would make her happy. It was not much, a simple.32 carat diamond in white gold setting. It was also a bleak day and I did not give her the ring though she gave me a gold-filled ball pen. I couldn’t give the ring because for the first time, I saw her cry, the tears just welling in her eyes and down her cheeks.

We were out in the garden by ourselves, under the golden shower pergola. I held her, tried to comfort her. Charlie was dead; they had buried him that morning.

“He had so much promise,” she said. He was going back to school so that someday he would be a lawyer and would know how to fight for the “little people” who had no defense; they knew neither the law nor big men.

They were already bulldozing the settlement. The slum dwellers had organized a picket line and Charlie was a leader in the picket. He had left the line to plead with the Metrocom who had now brought the bulldozers. He did not even taunt them. He merely left the line to tell them that all of them, soldiers and squatters alike, were “little people.” They shot him instead.

“I ran to him and they would have shot me, too” Malu said, “had the others not rushed with me to the fallen boy.”

I was now busy with exams and term papers, but I religiously went to the acacia at noon. Sometimes she joined me, though briefly. At one time, she said she was going to India just to be alone. I remember witnessing a Hindu festival in Singapore: men paraded in the streets, their tongues, their cheeks punctured with long thick needles. A bearded man pulled a cart with ropes fastened to his back muscles by iron hooks. There was no blood and my eyes were not fooling me. It was self-hypnosis again, of this I was sure. Now, serious doubts crowded my mind and I worried about Malu coming back, garbed in saffron and chanting on street corners.

It was during the small graduation dinner Mother gave that I presented the ring to her, told her not to open the package till she got home. That same evening, she called and said she would give it back. I asked why and she said she wanted to be fair with me. She said, “Truly, I love you.”

A warm and glorious glow engulfed me. It was the first time she uttered it. Why then give the ring back? I could not understand. How could I compete with something I could not vanquish, least of all touch?

“There is this cause,” these were her exact words, “that will take most of my time, my energies, my precious Teng-ga.”

Malu disappeared during the two-month school vacation and frightened her parents and me. Her mother often called to find out if she had gotten in touch. She had gone to the province, she had told her mother, for another of those teach-ins. She would be away for just a couple of weeks, but on the third, when she did not return, we started looking. She had said she would go again to Bicol; I hastily called Uncle Bert, but neither she nor her group was there. I did not inquire of the army or the constabulary — they were the last people to ask about Malu.

By then, too, I had taken on more responsibilities in our business. I had a desk in Operations and Planning. Mother and my older brothers had thought it best to let me work for a couple of years before going to Wharton for an MBA. It was just as well. I could not concentrate, I brooded over the times Malu and I shared, the conversations and, most of all, that evening in a motel when we held hands and dreamed.

She returned in the first week of June, shortly before classes began. It was her mother who told me she was back. I asked to talk with Malu. Her mother suddenly seemed ill at ease, as if Malu was beside her telling her to say she was not in, for that was what her mother said. I went to her house immediately and was told by the maid who opened the door — she did not let me in — that Malu was still out.

I called again that night and was told she was asleep — although it was only eight. She was avoiding me, she could have easily called. When school opened, I waited for her and this time, there was no escape. She was in the same jeans and formless blouse. She had grown darker and there was a look of unease about her.

“Why don’t you want to see me?” I asked bluntly.

She turned around. We were in the vicinity of the registrar’s office and students were milling about, looking at bulletin boards, checking their schedules. “I will see you in half an hour at the acacia,” she mumbled, her eyes downcast.

“No!” I was angry then. “I will not leave you. I’ll follow you till you tell me what is wrong.”

She bit her lip. She was in trouble and I wanted to help her, if she would only let me.

We walked out into the street, onward to the library, to our tree. The grass was green now, the dead brown of the dry season banished; the first rains of June had done their job and a freshness perfumed the air. Everything about the world seemed bright, except for this gloom which now encompassed us.

We sat on the old and twisted root. She began slowly. She had no more tears to shed. “They are dead, Teng-ga. All five of them. And I am the only one who got out.”

“Who are dead?”

“Bubut, Eddie, Lina, Tom and Alex …” She looked at me, beseeched me. I could not quite grasp it at first, but in the back of my mind was a huge, oncoming wave of fear. What had she done? What had she been sucked into?

They had gone to the south, somewhere in the mountains of Quezon, and joined another group for the duration of the school vacation. Familiarization and training, that is what they called it.

On their way back, they had been particularly careful because they were all unarmed. Alex, a medical student, was an old hand and their guide. They bivouacked in an abandoned farmhouse for the night with Alex outside as sentry. That early morning, a shout erupted from the surrounding green ordering them to come out. Even as they filed out of the hut, their hands in the air, they were mowed down.

Malu had dropped quickly to the ground in abject fear and that was how she was spared.

The armed men swarmed around them. A lean man in jeans, with crew cut, pulled her up from the grass where she was cowering. The men were laughing; they were not in uniform, but they were obviously a commando team. “Leave us alone for a moment,” the crew-cut man said, and the men dispersed to the bushes. The man yanked her inside the hut and told her to undress. She begged that she be allowed to look at her friends, they might still be alive, but he just laughed at her. “If they are, we will kill them all before we leave this place. And, of course, we will kill you, too.”

She said, “My first thought was one of shame. He started to touch me. I drew away and he barked: ‘One more move like that and I will shoot you.’ I tried to push him away but he was strong. He was laughing. He held my hands and repeated his threat. I wanted to live. It was painful at first and I thought I would not be able to endure it. But he took his time before he started pushing. I don’t know how long it took — I was afraid he would kill me when he got through. I thought I would cooperate so he would let me live. And I started pushing, too. He kissed me and I kissed back. I did! Oh, it was disgusting. He seemed surprised and pleased and he said he would not kill me because I was good, but that if I was not gone in another hour, his men would return and surely use me as he had done, then kill me.

“You just don’t know how I hated myself afterwards for doing what I had to do in order to live. Even now, when I remember, I am so ashamed of myself. How can I live with the thought that I am alive, that I was a coward? And after what had happened, I don’t want to see you, ever. I have nothing to give you now …”

Her hand was cold and trembling. I had listened with anger mingled with sorrow, anger at the men who had killed her friends without reason, at the man who had violated her, and even at Malu herself for having brought this upon herself; sorrow at the wrenching pain that she had to endure and which, I was sure, would scar her always. I wanted to scream at her, but she looked so helpless, like a child who needed sympathy, and I realized it was not just sympathy that I had to give; I loved her truly in a manner I had not realized. I could live with what had happened and help her live, too, if she would let me.

“Plat, the ring which you returned — I would like to give it to you still. I want to marry you. With me, nothing has changed.”

THREE

We went to the same motel and decided to get married—“live together” as she put it, with no particular obligations except that we would be faithful to each other. Mother was building a block of duplex apartments in our old compound in Santa Mesa and we could move into the first one finished. She knew of Malu from the beginning and had met her and liked her, but would not approve of the live-in arrangement and neither would her parents. We would lie to them, tell them we had gotten married by a judge in Pasig, that the church wedding would follow after she finished college and we would then leave for the States together.

Because of her trauma, I was prepared to suffer the coldness that she had hinted at. In the apartment, I could sense the tension in her labored breathing, the clamminess in her arms as they encircled me. She tried to be the woman I desired; her kisses, though not passionate, were woman enough, warm enough, and I savored them, gloried in them.

Soon, she began to relax, even to move sensuously. After a time, I throbbed to the strength of her embrace, the quickening thrust of her hips, the contracting and fluttering of her stomach, and the long drawn gasp at the peak — what I was finally giving her, getting from her. When her movements ceased and she came to rest, I drew away to look at her. Her eyes were bright with repressed laughter. I thought I would begin again; I could feel her twitching, pulsing, and roughly, she pushed me away, saying she was so sensitive she could not bear me moving inside her.

She had phoned home and said she’d be away the whole day. We talked far into the night. We had our meals brought in and after brief snatches of sleep, we sought each other again and again. I finally found the completeness that had eluded me all these years.

I promised not to ask what she did during those two months, who her friends were. My ignorance was protection for everyone, she explained. It was she who brought the sad news to the parents of her friends who, like her, lived very comfortably. They never understood why their children gave up their lives so recklessly.

I decided to draw her away from her commitment, to “domesticate” her, make her a mother and tie her to the home or to a normal career, perhaps dreary but safe and never again would she be close to the vortex of death.

I wanted to tell her father about us, but she refused. “I will just move in with you,” she said. “But let us draw some rules.” She said there would be a time when I would get bored with her. One night a week, I should go out, be on my own, do anything I liked. “Drag to bed any woman — even a whore — and you can tell me if you want to. I will not be angry. I promise. But do not take a mistress, do not get involved with any woman emotionally. And don’t bring home any bugs.”

I listened to her dumbly.

“Will you permit me to have a night out, too?”

That she asked me at all touched me. I had no choice. “But no affairs,” I said.

She nodded. “And someday,” she went on, reiterating what she told me earlier, “if we part, it should be as friends.”

We moved to Santa Mesa without ceremony. She enjoyed decorating the two-bedroom apartment. She bought the drapes in Divisoria — light green fabrics that went very well with the furniture. She also bought the appliances and started learning how to “cook Spanish” to please me. I went to her father and we had a long talk. I assured him the church wedding would be very soon. I could tell that he was glad Malu was with me, that I would snatch her away from the crowd that threatened to push her to an anonymous and lonely end. Her mother came and looked at our place. She brought a lot of linens and saw to it that our refrigerator was always stocked. She also sent one of her maids to help, but Malu did not want her to sleep in the apartment; she wanted just the two of us since it was not difficult, she said, to keep house.

My night out was Saturday and hers was Sunday. I felt awkward at first, going out alone, and in time I did see a former girlfriend. I visited my old haunts in Ermita and wandered along the boulevard, but always, a feeling of guilt hounded me as if I was shutting out a part of myself from her, which was not what I wanted for I longed to share everything with her — my time, my possessions. In the end, I gave up going out alone.

She continued, however, to go out every Sunday night. Sometimes, she returned just before daybreak. I would lie awake waiting for the taxi or the car that would bring her home, pretending I was asleep, listening to her undress and finally cuddle close to me, her breath smelling not of wine or of cigarettes but of the same familiar scent. I was curious and jealous every time I heard a man outside saying good night, although sometimes it was a woman, for I always peered out and watched but did not ask.

I went to Cebu every so often to check up on our subsidiary there and called her twice a day, sometimes three, just to hear her voice. If she was not in the apartment, she was in school. Sometimes, we would be unable to connect because she was calling me.

We continued the little debates; I asked her once what her group was doing now and she said, “Don’t bother your reactionary head with proletarian politics.”

I reminded her again that it was not a crime to be wealthy. I cited how our employees were getting much more than the minimum wage, that they had health and insurance benefits and paid vacations without their asking.

“Paternalism,” she said, cutting me short.

No matter, it was a year of blessed happiness which flitted by so quickly that I was hardly aware of the time passing.

I wanted her pregnant so that she would, by force of circumstance, be cut off from all those demonstrations that have now become massive, intermittent, and fraught with danger. All the shops in Ermita were now boarded with plywood and the electric posts and embankments all over downtown Manila screamed with the posters of revolution. Chaos pervaded the universities and classes were haphazard and often suspended.

With my motive urging me on, there was no night that we did not embrace. When a long weekend came, we motored to Baguio. Our house, which we seldom used except during Holy Week or when we had guests, frightened her a bit … six rooms upstairs and two downstairs and we were the only occupants because Mang Pedring, the caretaker, and his family had their own quarters above the garage in the rear. We turned on all the lights.

It must have been the Baguio cold, and remembering our first night there afterwards, she said, “Dios ko, the whole night. I was never so tired in all my life.”

A month after our short vacation, she was pregnant. She could not believe it; she waited for the second month. She consulted three doctors and all the tests were positive. I was ecstatic.

I bought several books on prenatal care and continually asked Mother’s advice. Malu’s parents were very happy, too, and they often asked when we were finally going to be married in church.

We discussed it once; if we did not get married, her baby would be a bastard. She thought it was very funny, but I did not. “We will have it simultaneously then,” she said gaily. “First the wedding, then the baptism.”

I looked after her diet carefully and worried that she might start smoking. I told her that whatever she took in, her baby would take it, too. That early, I started buying baby things — diapers, baby powder, safety pins. She said it was all too soon, her stomach did not even show. It was noticeable to me, though, and soon her belt would no longer buckle. She took to wearing larger blouses. She went to school much later and came home earlier. She had cut down some of her activities, even her visits to the spiritista chapel in Navotas. But her Sunday evenings were still hers and she kept them all.

One evening, after she had returned from her “free” night out, we talked about the baby’s name. I meant it as a joke when I asked, “Are you sure it is mine?”

She glared at me. “Now, what the hell do you mean by that?”

I was still in a joking mood, but I suppose my niggling doubts came through. “Oh, your Sunday nights, you know.”

She turned away and in a while, she was shaking violently and when I went to her, sobs were torn out of her in anguish and bitterness. I cradled her in my arms, kissed her hair, assured her that I knew I should not have even hinted that I did not trust her.

I don’t really know what happened. She was under expert medical care and I tried my best to make allowances for her moods. Could it be that what I had said bothered her so much? Could it have been caused by the disappearance of many of her friends? At the end of the third month, she started bleeding one afternoon after she got back from school. I rushed her to the hospital where she stayed for a week after she lost her baby, then another two weeks in bed at home to regain her strength before the doctor permitted her to move about.

Now, she was listless and there were times when she was cold to me. I could sense that she was blaming me for the loss. There was milk in her breasts — they were no longer “as small as kalamansi.” The loss of her baby — it was a boy — was a deep affliction of the soul and I consoled her by saying we could always return to Baguio. We were, as a matter of fact, planning it. I was anxious that she become pregnant again and the doctor said there would be no problem, but that we should be more careful now.

We were to leave that morning. But the papers did not appear and there was no radio either. Something was wrong — so we did not move. When martial law was finally announced on TV, Malu was white-faced. She made some hasty phone calls and talked guardedly. By midday, she said she would go to the university. All she took was her handbag. When she did not return in the afternoon, I called her department. They had not seen her. In the evening, I hurried to Dasmariñas; her parents had not heard from her either. A week later, I received a letter postmarked Manila.

My Precious Teng-ga,

I am very sorry that I had to leave without explanation, without good-bye. Please believe me when I say that I love you and that I will always love you. But duty calls and I have to go. If I don’t see you again, just remember that I have always been true. Please forgive me.

Plat

I realized then that she had not abandoned the cause and that it was far more important than I.

Without Malu, I should not have remained in the apartment but I did, hoping she would return. I could not attend fully to our business, but fortunately, we had hired good people. Oh, so many hours alone, going over her books, the papers she wrote, bringing out her clothes, rearranging them in the cabinet — the old and faded jeans, the battered sneakers, and the cotton blouses.

I went to the university. Now, I regretted that I did not know her friends, that I had considered them muddle-headed adolescents unfamiliar with the realities of power — things that an economist or a businessman like myself understood almost as second nature.

Alone, confined to the prison of this skin, this skeletal frame, this net of nerves which relayed nothing but my own despair, I wondered about what I did not know so that I could have restrained her. I was nagged by lassitude, by feelings of worthlessness. Mornings: hard-boiled eggs, sugarless coffee, the prattle of people, the noxious gases of a deadened city, and a vigil in the morgue of evening. I would lie in the dark aching for the phone to ring, a taxi to stop before the house, wondering where she was and the hopes that we had fed on.

Alone, I would wander around Ermita and go to my favorite bar. I never stayed long; the roasted squid and the San Miguel were tasteless, and the jokes I heard were stale. The curfew was an excuse to go home early and though the apartment depressed me, it also sustained me. I developed a tightness in the chest which Dr. Alvarez said was a heart condition that given my youth, I should not have. My legs seemed edemic and my feet were always cold. I was absentminded, I could not function well and I easily forgot names, words, places. I suffered hallucinations and would see things from the corner of my eye which were not really there. Sometimes, I imagined things moving on my desk, the pencil holder, the stapler. Was this what love could do? Its ineffable essence? Malu was right, after all; the mind could afflict the body, too.

Alone, I really had nothing to covet but memories and they came alive at the mere mention of places or names; with them, I was often mesmerized, oblivious to the turmoil around me, the clatter of living. Where could she be now? With whom was she sharing the night? Who was listening to her laughter? Once, driving in Makati, I saw her — or someone like her — hurrying on the sidewalk across the street. I slammed on the brakes, left the car where I had stopped and crossed over, unmindful of the traffic that bore down on me, but when I reached the corner where I thought I saw her, she was gone.

Alone, I sometimes walked the palm-shaded lane by the seawall. The breeze would waft the acrid tang of the sea, now polluted by tidal wash. We had been here several times, usually after visiting Mother in the old Ermita house, and here we watched the sun go down in a splash of reds and golds, waited for the night to take over and the bay and the night above it become one vast blackness sprinkled with stars. All over the world it was dark, so why then could I not live with this gloom? This was the order of things and I should not let it frighten me, intimidate me into thinking that I could not escape it. Her father, after all, had hope and very soon, he would walk in the light again.

I visited the chapel in Navotas. Aling Atang, the priestess, could not tell me where she was other than that she was with friends and that she was always in great danger. But they would try and bring her back. The next time I visited, I could not understand at first when she made-believe and talked to an imaginary Malu with me. She asked how she was, how her father was getting along. She conducted the conversation as if Malu was there answering all her questions.

We went to the prayer meeting and it was the same — all the members acted as if she was with me, as if nothing was wrong. Aling Atang told me afterwards that they had done this every week, prayed as if Malu was in their midst. They would reach out to her and she would then return.

Following their example, I imagined her at the breakfast table, beside me in the car, in bed when I went to sleep. Once the maid who cleaned the apartment and brought the food which Mother always sent, caught me talking alone. She must have thought my mind had snapped for Mother came that evening. She tried to persuade me to return to the house in Ermita.

Like a man with terminal cancer, I was ready to try anything.

Maybe the ritual worked after all. It took an eternity. The fourth year of martial law; one evening in May — I had by then taken to meditation as she had suggested — the phone rang.

“Teng-ga, I am glad I reached you!”

“Plat!” All the nerves in my body sang, my voice a squeak. “Thank God …”

“Listen carefully.”

“Yes …”

“Teng-ga, I owe a friend some money. Can you lend me …”

“Of course!”

“Now?”

“Yes!”

“I will be at the acacia in half an hour.”

The acacia. I was happy we had a rendezvous about which no one knew. There was no time for me to go to Mother or to her parents. A thousand pesos were in my wallet and about a thousand more were in my drawer. I did not keep money in the apartment and now I wished I did. What else was there of value? The engagement ring which she had left, my watch. I brought them.

I did not even bother putting on shoes. I drove fast, aware that I had little time, filled as I was with joy that I would see her again. See her again! The very thought surged through me, lifted me, I could fly.

The university streets were empty; classes had long ended. I parked, then went down the grassy lawn and on to the tree beyond the library building. When I reached it, there was no one. Had I missed her instructions? Did I hear right? Then in a short while from the shadow of the library, she came. I could not miss her, that height, that build, but she walked slowly as if she was limping.

I rushed to her, kissed her, held her tight and long, smelled the sun on her hair, her face, saw the happiness glistening in her eyes. She was slimmer now and though it was not very bright, I could see she was no longer fair. When I held her hand, I was surprised at how hard and callused it had become.

“Did someone follow you?”

I was in such a hurry that I did not notice, but I was sure no one followed me to the campus.

“Any strangers near the apartment? Any cars you don’t recognize parked there?”

I shook my head. “The money,” I said, “it may not be enough. I can get more in the morning. But now, I just want to look at you, to hold you. Four years — I have stayed in the apartment alone and waited and waited. Four years …” I started to cry.

Her arms tightened around me. “Thank you, my precious Teng-ga.” Her voice quavered. “I hope that you have learned to trust me the way I always trusted you. Remember? All those Sunday nights — I was working …” She paused and brushed my tears away. “I thought of you, and could not tell you that I was with our group. I know you tried to keep me away from them. I understood.”

She did not have to tell me; I had long been convinced of her unblemished constancy. She clasped my hand. “Let us go to the motel again. I need to lie down — even just for a few moments.”

“And why not the apartment?”

She did not want to go there; it was dangerous.

I remembered her limp. “Are you hurt?”

“Just a little,” she mumbled. “We can talk about other things afterwards.”

We walked across the green enveloped by night. A car turned at the far corner and briefly lighted her features. Under the street lamp, she still looked as pretty as ever. I helped her into the car then drove off to Pasay. Once upstairs in the motel, I examined her in the light. She was pale and the brutal life showed in her arms, her face. There was this big blotch on her right thigh. I knew at once what it was.

“You are wounded!”

“It’s small,” she said, shaking her head.

“Let me see it.”

“It will heal when I get back.”

“I must find a doctor.”

She sat on the bed. “No.” she said firmly. “I will be all right.”

“You are not all right,” I said. “Let me look at it.”

She consented after awhile. She lay down with great effort. Around her thigh was a bandage made with her green T-shirt, which she had shredded. She had just a bra beneath her old nylon jacket. The dressing — poorly done and locked with a safety pin — was drenched with dried blood. Beneath was a deep wound which cut across her thigh, the beautiful thigh that I had often caressed, still fair, unlike her lower limbs which were dark with sun and specked with insect bites.

“I was able to run,” she said, breathing deeply. “So I was able to call you. I just had a few coins for the phone and the bus.”

I carefully put the bandage back. “It must hurt a lot,” I said hoarsely, my throat gone dry. She did not reply. Physical pain was not her worry now.

She had to be in the hospital immediately. There was the possibility of infection and the wound had to be closed. She had to have a transfusion, too. But I could not take her to a hospital and to call a doctor to the motel was out of the question. The apartment — that was the best place. In the years that I was alone, I had noticed nothing unusual. I was now keen to the possibility that the house would be watched, but I was positive this was not done. No one knew of the acacia, and I doubted if any of her friends or mine knew our private nicknames.

“I will bring you to the apartment where you will stay until you are strong again.” Then, I said it and was surprised how easily the words came. “I will go with you now, wherever you will go.”

Her eyes misted. She was tired and in pain and did not argue anymore. God, I don’t know how long she had endured it.

“You know best,” she said weakly, then passed out.

I was amazed at my self-control. After I had calmly phoned the desk that we were leaving, I carried her down to the car, wondering if Dr. Alvarez, who was a family friend, would be at home, and who would be a good alternative if he was not available.

She revived when we reached the highway and she snuggled close, whimpering like a child.

Who was it who said that we all hurt the ones we love? With Malu, I did not hurt her; I killed her. Why did I have to bring her home?

We were going up the incline toward the compound when a car blocked our way. It must have been with her last reserve of strength that she swung the door open and sprinted out, limping, and to the men who had rushed out of their cars, guns drawn, I shouted “Don’t shoot! She is wounded! She cannot run!”

Flashes of fire spurted from the snouts of their guns and the bullets winked like fireflies as they hit the asphalt. Malu, my dear wife, crumpled and even when she was already dead, they still fired at her.