Sample works of Leoncio P. Deriada

The Dog Eaters ( Leoncio P. Deriada)

Mariana looked out of the window toward the other side of Artiaga Street. A group of men had gathered around a low table in front of Sergio's sari-sari store. It was ten o'clock, Tuesday morning. Yet these men did not find it too early to drink, and worse. They wanted her husband to be with them. Victor was now reaching for his shirt hooked on the wall between Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos. Mariana turned to him, her eyes wild in repulsion and anger.
"Those filthy men!" she snarled. "Whose dog did they slaughter today?"
Victor did not answer. He put on his shirt. Presently, he crawled on the floor and searched for his slippers under the table. Mariana watched him strain his body toward the wall, among the rattan tools. He looked like a dog tracking the smell hidden carrion.
"My God, Victor, do you have to join them every time they stew somebody's pet?"
Victor found his slippers. He emerged from under the table, smoothed his pants and unbutton his shirt. He was sweating. He looked at his wife and smiled faintly, the expression sarcastic, and in an attempt to be funny, "it's barbecue today."
"I'm not in the mood for jokes!" Mariana raised her voice. "It's time you stop going with those good-for-nothing scavengers."

Her words stung. For now she noted an angry glint in Victor's eyes. "They are my friends, Mariana," he said.
"You should have married one of them!" she snapped back. Suddenly, she straightened. She heard Sergio's raspy voice, calling from his store across the street. It was an ugly voice, and it pronounced Victor's name in a triumphant imitation of a dog's bark.
"Victor! Victor! Aw! Aw!" the canine growl floated across Artiaga Street. Mariana glared at her husband as he brushed her aside on his way to the window. She felt like clawing his face, biting his arms, ripping the smelly shirt off his back. "I'm coming," Victor answered, leaning out of the window. Mariana opened her mouth for harsher invectives but a sharp cry from the bedroom arrested her. It was her baby. She rushed to the table, pick a cold bottle of milk, and entered.
In his rattan crib that looked like a rat's nest, the baby cried louder. Mariana shook the crib vehemently. The baby - all mouth and all legs - thrust in awkward arms into the air, blindly searching for accustomed nipple.
The baby sucked the rubber nipple easily. But Mariana's mind was outside the room as she watched her husband lean out of the window to answer the invitation of the dog-eaters of Artiaga Street.
"Aren't you inviting your wife?" she spoke loud, the hostility in her voice unchecked by the dirty plywood wall. "Perhaps your friends have reserved the best morsel for me. Which is the most delicious part of a dog, ha, Victor? Its heart? Its liver? Its brain? Blood? Bone? Ears? Tongue? Tail? I wish to God you'd all die of hydrophobia!"
"Can you feed the baby and talk at the same time?" Victor said. She did not expect him to answer and now that he had, she felt angrier. The heat from the unceilinged roof had become terrible and it had all seeped into her head. She was ready for a fight.
The baby had gone back to sleep. Mariana dashed out of the room, her right hand tight around the empty bottle. She had to have a weapon. She came upon her husband opening the door to little porch. The porch was at the top of the stairs that led out into Artiaga Street.
"Why don't you do something instead of drinking their stinking tuba and eating that filthy meat? Why don't you decent for a change?"
Victor turned her off. It seemed he was also ready for a fight. The glint in his eyes had become sinister.
And what's so indecent about eating dog meat?" His voice sounded canine, too, like Sergio's. "The people of Artiaga Street have been eating dog meat for as long as I can remember."
"No wonder their manners have gone to the dogs!"
"You married one of them."
"Yes, to lead a dog's life!"
Victor stepped closer, breathing hard. Marina did not move. "What's eating you?" he demanded.
"What's eating me?" she yelled. "Dog's! I'm ready to say aw-aw, don't you know?"
Victor repaired his face, amused by this type of quarrel. Again, he tried to be funny.
"Come, come, Mariana darling," he said, smiling condescendingly.
Mariana was not amused. She was all set to proceed with the fight. Now she tried to be acidly ironic.
“Shall I slaughter Ramir for you? That pet of yours does nothing but bark at strangers and dirty the doorstep. Perhaps you can invite your friends tonight. Let’s celebrate.”
“Leave Ramir alone,” Victor said, seriously.
“That dog is enslaving me!”
Victor turned to the door. It was the final insult, Mariana thought. The bastard! How dare he turn his back on her?
“Punyeta!” she screeched and flung the bottle at her husband. Instinctively, Victor turned and parried the object with his arm. The bottle fell to the floor but did not break. It rolled noisily under the table where Victor moment had hunted for his rubber slippers.
He looked at her, but there was no reaction in his face. Perhaps he thought it was all a joke. He opened the door and stepped out into the street.
Mariana ran to the door and banged it once, twice, thrice, all the while shrieking, “Go! Eat and drink until your tongue hangs like a mad dog’s. Then I’ll call a veterinarian.”
Loud after came across the street.
Mariana leaned out of the window and shouted to the men gathered in front of Sergio’s store.
“Why don’t you leave my husband alone? You dogs!”
The men laughed louder, obscenely. Their voices offended the ears just as the stench from the garbage dump at the Artiaga-Mabini junction offended the nostrils. There were five other men aside from the chief drinker, Sergio. Downing a gallon of tuba at ten o’clock in the morning with of Artiaga’s idle men was his idea of brotherhood. It was good for his store, he thought, though his wife languish behind the row of glass jars and open cartons of dried fish – the poor woman deep in notebooks of unpaid bills the neighbors had accumulated these last two years.
Mariana closed the window. The slight darkening of the room intensified the heat on the roof and in her head. She pulled a stool and sat beside the sewing machine under the huge pictures of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, under the altar-like alcove on the wall where a transistor radio was enshrined like an idol.
She felt tired. Once again, her eyes surveyed the room with repulsion. She had stayed in this rented house for two years, tried to paste pictures on the wall, hung up classic curtains that could not completely ward off the stink from the street. Instead of cheering up the house, they made it sadder, emphasizing the lack of the things she had dreamed of having when she eloped with Victor two years ago.
Victor was quite attractive. When he was teen-ager, he was a member of the Gregory Body Building Club on Cortes Street. He dropped out of freshmen year at Harvadian and instead developed his chest and biceps at the club. His was to be Mr. Philippines, until one day, Gregory cancelled his membership. Big Boss Gregory - who was not interested in girls but in club members with the proportions of Mr. Philippines – had discovered that Victor was dating a manicurist named Fely.
Victor found work as a bouncer at Three Diamonds, a candlelit bar at the end of Artiaga, near Jacinto Street. All the hostesses there were Fely’s customers. Mariana, who came from a better neighborhood, was a third year BSE student at Rizal Memorial Colleges. They eloped during the second semester, the very week Fey drowned in the pool behind Three Diamonds. Just as Mariana grew heavy with a child, Victor lost his job at the bar. He quarreled with the manager. An uncle working in a construction company found him a new job. But he showed up only when the man did not report for work

These last few days, not one of the carpenters got sick. So Victor had to stay home.
Mariana felt a stirring in her womb. She felt her belly with both hands. Her tight faded dress could not quite conceal this most unwanted pregnancy. The baby in the crib in the other room was only eight months, and here she was - carrying another child. She closed her eyes and pressed her belly hard. She felt the uncomfortable swell, and in a moment, she had ridiculous thought. What if she bore a pair or a trio of puppies? She imagined herself as a dog, a spent bitch with hind legs spread out obscenely as her litter of three, or four, or five, fought for her tits while the mongrel who was responsible for all this misery flirted with the other dogs of the neighborhood.
A dog barked. Mariana was startled. It was Ramir. His chain clanked and she could picture the dog going up the stairs, his lethal fangs bared in terrible growl.
“Ay, ay, Mariana!” a familiar, nervous voice rose from the din. “Your dog! He’ll bite me. Shoo! Shoo!”
It was Aling Elpidia, the fish and vegetable vendor.
“Stay away from the beast, Aling Elpidia!” Mariana shouted. She opened the door. Aling Elpidia was in the little yard, her hands nervously holding her basket close to her like a shield. Ramir was at the bottom of the stairs, straining at his chain, barking at the old woman.
Mariana pulled the chain. The dog resisted. But soon he relaxed and stopped barking. He ran upstairs, encircled Mariana once, and then sniffed her hands.
“Come on up, Aling Elpidia. Don’t be afraid. I’m holding Ramir’s leash.”
The old woman rushed upstairs, still shielding herself with her basket of fish and vegetables.
“Naku, Mariana. Why do you keep that crazy dog at the door? He’ll bite a kilo off every visitor. The last time I was here I almost had a heart attack.”
“That’s Victor’s idea of a house guard. Come, sit down.”
Aling Elpidia dragged a stool to the window. “Why, I’m still trembling!” she said. “Why must you close the window, Mariana?”
Mariana opened the window. “Those horrible men across the street, I can’t stand their noise.”
“Where’s Victor?”
“There!” Mariana said contemptuously. “With them.” The old woman looked out of the window.
“He is one of them!”
“One of what?”
“The dog-eaters of Artiaga Street!” Mariana spat out the words, her eyes wild in anger.
Aling Elpidia sat down again. “What is so terrible about that?” she asked.
Mariana looked at the old woman. For the first time she noticed that Aling Elpidia had been dying her hair. But the growth of hair this week had betrayed her.
“Do you eat dog meat, Aling Elpidia?” Mariana asked.
“It’s better than goat’s meat: And a dog is definitely cleaner than a pig. With the price of pork and beef as high as Mount Apo – one would rather eat dog meat. How’s the baby?”
“Asleep”
Aling Elpidia picked up her basket from the floor. “Here’s your day’s supply of vegetables. I also brought some bangus. Cook Victor a pot of sinigang and he’ll forget the most delicious chunk of aw-aw meat. Go, get a basket.”
Mariana went to the kitchen to get a basket as Aling Elpidia busied herself sorting out the vegetables.
“I hope you haven’t forgotten the green mangoes and – and that thing you promised me,” Mariana said, laying her basket on the floor.
“I brought all of them,” assured the old woman. She began transferring the vegetables and fish into Mariana’s basket. Mariana helped her.
“I haven’t told Victor anything,” Mariana said in a low, confidential tone.
“He does not have to know,” Aling Elpidia said.
The old woman produced from the bottom of the basket a tall bottle filled with a dark liquid and some leaves and tiny, gnarled roots. She held the bottle against the light. Mariana regarded it with interest and horror. “I’m afraid, Aling Elpidia,” she whispered.
“Nonsense. Go, take these vegetables to the kitchen.”
Mariana sped to the kitchen. Aling Elpidia moved to the table, pushed the dish rack that held some five or six tin plates, and set the bottle beside a plastic tumbler that contained spoon and forks. She pulled a stool from beneath the table and sat down. Soon Mariana was beside her.
“Is it effective?” Mariana asked nervously.
“Very effective. Come on let me touch you.”
Mariana stood directly in front of the old woman, her belly her belly almost touching the vendor’s face. Aling Elpidia felt Mariana’s belly with both hands.
“Three months did you say, Mariana?”
“Three months and two weeks.”
“Are you sure you don’t want this child?” Aling Elpidia asked one hand flat on Mariana’s belly. “It feels so healthy.”
“I don’t want another child,” Mariana said. And to stress the finality of her decision, she grabbed the bottle and stepped away from the old woman. The bottle looked like atrophy in her hand.
“Well, it’s your decision,” Aling Elpidia said airily. “The bottle is yours.”
“Is it bitter?”
“Yes.”
Mariana squirmed. “How shall I take this?”
“A spoonful before you sleeps in the evening and another spoonful after breakfast.”
“May I take it with a glass of milk or a bottle of coke?”
“No. You must take it pure.”
“It’s not dangerous, is it, Aling Elpidia?”
“Don’t you worry. It is bitter but it is harmless. It will appear as an accident. Like falling down the stairs. Moreover, there will be less pain and blood.”
“Please come everyday. Things might go wrong.”
Aling Elpidia nodded and stood up. “I think I must go now,” she said. Then she lowered her voice and asked, “Do you have the money?”
“Yes, yes,” Mariana said. She went to the sewing machine and opened a drawer. She handed Aling Epidia some crumpled bills.
The vendor counted the bills expertly, and then dropped the little bundle into her breast. She picked up her basket and walked to the door. Suddenly she stopped. “Your dog, Mariana.” Her voice became nervous again.
Mariana held Ramir’s leash as the old woman hurried down the stairs. “You may start taking it tonight.” It was her last piece of medical advice. Loud laughter rose from the store across the street. Mariana stiffened. Her anger returned. Then her baby cried.
She hurried to the bedroom. The tall bottle looked grotesque on the table: tiny, gnarled roots seemed to twist like worms or miniature umbilical cords. With a shudder, she glanced at the bottle. The sharp cry became louder. Mariana rushed inside and discovered that the baby had wetted its clothes.
She heard somebody coming up the stairs. It must be Victor. Ramir did not bark.
“Mariana!” Victor called out. “Mariana!”
“Quiet!” she shouted back. “The baby’s going back to sleep.”
The house had become hotter. Mariana went out of the bedroom, ready to resume the unfinished quarrel. Victor was now in the room, sweating and red-eyed. He had taken off his shirt and his muscular body glistened wit animal attractiveness. But now Mariana was in a different type of heat.
“I met that old witch Elpidia,” Victor said, “What did she bring you today?”
“The same things. Vegetables. Some fish.”
“Fish! Again?”
“You are drunk!”
“I’m not drunk. Come Mariana dear. Let me hold you.”
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “You stink!”
Victor moved back, offended. “I don’t stink and I’m not drunk.”
Mariana stepped closer to her husband. He smelled of cheap pomade, onions, and vinegar.
“Do you have to be like this all the time? Quarreling every day? Why don’t you get a steady job like any decent husband? You would be out the whole day, and perhaps, I would miss you.”
“You don’t have to complain,” Victor said roughly. “True, my work is not permanent but I think we have enough. We are not starving, are we?”
“You call this enough?” her hands gesticulated madly. “You call this rat’s nest, this hell of a neighborhood – enough? You call these tin plates, this plastic curtains – enough? This is not the type of life I expect. I should have continued school. You fooled me!”
“I thought you understood. I-“
“No, no I didn’t understand. And still I don’t understand why you – you –“
“Let’s not quarrel,” Victor said abruptly. I don’t want to quarrel with you.”
“But I want to quarrel with you!” Mariana shouted.
“Be reasonable.”
“You are not reasonable. You never tried to please me. You would rather be with your stinking friends and drink their dirty wine and eat their dirty meat. Oh, how I hate it, Victor!”
“What do you want me to do – stay here and boil the baby’s milk?”
“I wish you would!”
“That’s your job. You’re a woman.”
“Oh, how are you admire yourself for being a man,” Mariana sneered in utter sarcasm. “You miserable-“
“Don’t yell. You wake up the baby.”
“To hell with your baby!”
“You are mad, Mariana.”
“And so I’m mad. I’m mad because I don’t eat dog meat. I’m mad because I want my husband to make a man of himself, I’m mad because – “
“Stop it!”
“Punyeta!”
“Relax, Mariana. You are excited. That’s not good for you. I want my second baby healthy.”
“There will be no second baby.”
“What do you mean?”
“You met Aling Elpidia on your way.”
“And what did that witch do? Curse my baby? Is a vampire?”
“She came to help me.”
Mariana went to the table and snatched the bottle. She held high in Victor’s face. “See this, Victor?” she taunted him. Victor was not interested. “You don’t want me to drink tuba, and here you are with a bottle of sioktong.”
“How dull you are!” her lips twisted in derision. “See those leaves? See those roots? They are very potent, Victor.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One spoonful in the morning and one spoonful in the evening. It’s bitter, Victor, but I will bear it.”
Like a retarded, Victor stared at his wife. Then the truth dawned upon him and exclaimed in horror, “What? What? My baby!”
Mariana faced her husband squarely. “Yes! And I’m not afraid!” she jeered.
“You won’t do it.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Give me that bottle.”
“No!”
“What kind of woman are you?”
“And what kind of man are you?”
“It’s my baby!”
“It’s mine. I have the right to dispose of it, I don’t want another child.”
“Why, Mariana, why?”
“Because you cannot afford it! What would you feed your another child, ha, Victor? Tuba milk? Dog meat for rice?”
“We shall manage, Mariana. Everything will be all right.”
“Sure, sure, everything will be all right – for you. I don’t believe in that anymore.”
“Give me that bottle!”
“No!”
They grappled for a moment. Mariana fought like an untamed animal. At last Victor took hold the bottle. He pushed his wife against the wall and ran to the window, his right hand holding the bottle above his head.
And like a man possessed, he hurled the bottle out f the window. The crash of the glass against the gravel on the road rendered Mariana speechless. But she recovered. She dashed to the window and gave out almost inhuman scream at what she saw. The bottle was broken into countless splinters and the dark liquid stained the dry gravel street. Bits of leaves and roots stuck to the dust. Presently, a dog came along and sniffed the wet ground suspiciously, then left with his tail between his legs.
Mariana screamed again in horror and frustration. In the glare of the late morning sun she had a momentary image of the men – now faceless and voiceless – in front of the store across the street. This time they did not laugh, but they watched her from certain blankness. She turned to her husband and flung herself at him, raising her arms, her fingers poised like claws. She scratched his face and pounded his chest with her fists.
“Damn you! Damn you!” she shrieked in fury.
Victor caught her arms and shook her. “Stop it, Mariana!” he mumbled under his breath.
“Let me go! You are hurting me!”
“Behave you woman!” Victor shook her harder.
Mariana spat on his face. Then she bit on the right arm. She spat again, for she had a quick taste of salt and dirt.
Victor released her. She moved back, her uncontrollable rage shaking her. “You threw it away! You destroy it! I paid forty pesos for it and it’s not your money!”
“Forty pesos,” Victor murmured. “That is a lot of milk.”
Mariana caught her breath. She allowed dryly and said, “What do you want me to do now – cut children’s dresses?”
“You are unnatural. You don’t act like a mother, you want to kill your own child.”
“It’s my own child.”
“It’s murder!”
“Nobody will know.”
“I will know. You will know. And God – and God – will know!”
“Ahhh!” Mariana sneered sontemptuously. “Now who’s talking? When was the last time you went to church, ha Victor? That was the time the Legion of Mary brought us to Fatima Church to be married and you fought with the priest in the confessional. And now here you are mentioning God’s name to me.”
“Please, please, Mariana,” Victor was begging now. “That’s our child!”
“I told you I didn’t want another child. You broke that bottle but I’ll look for other means. I’ll starve myself. I’ll jump out of the window. I’ll fall down the stairs.”
“Mariana!”
“You cannot afford to buy pills or hire a doctor.”
“I want a child.”
“You men can talk because you don’t have to bear the children. You coward!”
Victor raised his hand to strike her. Mariana offered her face, daring him to complete his own humiliation. Victor dropped his hand. He was lost, totally unmanned.
A bit of his male vanity stirred inside him. He raised his hand again, but Mariana was quick with the nearest weapon. She seized a stool with both hands, and with the strength all her arms could muster, throws the stool at him. Victor caught the object with his strong shoulder. The stool dropped to the floor as Mariana made ready with another weapon, a vase of plastic flowers.
“Go away from me! Get out! Get out!”
Victor went out of the room. Mariana was left panting, giving vent to her anger by pulling down the plastic curtains and the printed cover of the sewing machine. She stooped to the table and with a furious sweep of her hand, cleared it of dish rack, tin plates, spoons, and forks. Then she went to the kitchen and tossed the basket of vegetables and fish out of the kitchen window. A trio of dogs rushed in from nowhere and fought over the fish strewn in the muddy space under the sink.
Then Ramir barked.
“Shut up, you miserable dog!”
Ramir continued barking.
Mariana paused. Ramir, she taught. Victor’s dog. A cruel thought crossed her mind and stayed there. Now she knew exactly what to do. She reached for the big kitchen knife of a shelf above the sink. Kicking the scattered tin plates on the floor, she crossed the main room to the porch.
Downstairs, Ramir was barking at some object in the street. Noticing Mariana’s presence, he stopped barking. Mariana stared at the dog. The dog stared back, and Mariana noticed the change in the animal’s eyes. They became fiery, dangerous. My God, Mariana thought. This creature knew! Ramir’s ears stood. The hair on the back of its neck stood, too. Then he bared his fangs viscously and growled.
Mariana dropped the knife. She did not know how to use it at this moment. She was beginning to be afraid.
Slowly, she climbed up the stairs. He moved softly but menacingly. Like a hunter sizing up his quarry. His yellowing fangs dropped with saliva.
Meanwhile, Mariana was untying the chain on the top of the stairs.
And the dog rushed into the roaring attack. Quicker than she thought she was, Mariana slipped the end of the chain under the makeshift railing of the stairway and pulled the leash with all her might. As she had expected, the dog hurtled into the space between the broken banisters and fell. The weight of the animal pulled her to her knees, but she was prepared for that, too. She braced herself against the rails of the porch, and now, the dog was dangling below her. A crowd had now gathered in front of the house to witness the unexpected execution. But Mariana neither saw their faces nor heard their voices.
Ramir gave a final yelp and stopped kicking the air.
Mariana laughed deliriously. She watches the hanging animal and addressed it in triumph: “I’ll slit your throat and drink your blood and cut you to pieces and stew you and eat you! Damn you Victor. Damn this child. Damn everything. I’ll cook you, Ramir. I’ll cook you and eat you and eat you and eat you!”
She released the chain and the canine carcass dropped with a thud on the ground below.
Mariana sat on the topmost step of the stairs; she put her hands between her legs and stared blankly at the rusty rooftops in front of her. And for the first in all her life on the Artiaga Street, Mariana cried.

Lunacy

by Leoncio Deriada

Suddenly he was awake. But the sound of the sea still echoed and he saw that the moonlight was in the room.  It filtered through the pomelo tree in the window.

The dream. He was on the beach throwing pebbles at the moon. He hit it, and like fireworks, its face burst into rainbow flames. The peacock splinters filled the heavens. he poised his hands to catch the drops of blue and red and green, but they all fell into the sea in sizzling magnificence. He watched the pageant in a mixture of fear and admiration, till there was no more of the moon but the moan of the tide… the darkness screamed. He was lost, afraid.

He woke up and saved himself from that chaos.

He felt his face and his mouth with his trembling hands. He was not dead. It was great to be alive somehow, to rediscover that he was one of the inhabitants of this room of hanging shirts, unplanned lesson plans, and the smell of tempera.

Alex’s tempera of trees and hills were carelessly thumb-tacked above Dardo’s cot. The moonbeams did not hit the paintings but they concentrated on Dardo’s prosaic figure, zebra like in his pajamas. Inside his mosquito net, he must be dreaming of the preserved animals in his biology room.

Alex hated biology back in college and so he ended up teaching grammar and economics. Economics! There was nothing to dream about the law of diminishing returns; he would rather dream of prehistoric flora and fauna. But there must be color and movement in all: tangerine toads jumping on ponds of blue bordered by dragon-green thalophytes and bryophytes, while in the background, Van Gogh inspired paramecia danced a bayanihan of mammoth slippers all fiery in Martian red.

Alex’s hand dangled out of the mosquito net (ah, Durer’s hand of the artist!), limp and graceful in a ballet of its own. The wall above him was a wilderness of canvases  – cardboard, cartolina, Manila paper, formal theme notebook sheets – enough to shame any thin bloodied impressionist.

Three men in the room. They would have been four, but Rolly’s girl got him in mid-August before the poor boy could find a boardinghouse for honeymooners. So right now, in the other room, Rolly and Tina dreamed married people’s dreams. Children perhaps. Or a house of their own.

The dreamer of the moon got up. His cot creaked. He had slept with all his day clothes on. The mosquito net was not hung; the tiny suckers must have feasted on his moon-maddened blood. It did not matter anyway. Nobody thought of malaria in the moonlight.

For now his blood was thick, surging, boiling. The full moon had stirred a high tide in him, a passion or a curse more intense than a vampire’s. There was a hunger in him, a thirst for something he did not know yet was there reflected on the leaves the moment the moon painted the town white with silence.

And this silence roared with the strength of an ocean against a coral beach.

The beach was far away (90 kilometers) and long ago (five years), when he was still a college junior tired of class meetings, lectures, and the school paper that printed his sobbing poems. During those days a vacation or a sound sleep was as precious as diamonds. And when the summer vacation came, the diamonds were found on the beach.

Moonlight on the beach in mid-May never became part of the lost summers. It cam again and again – long after he had thrown all those tearful verses into the fire and Alex had become editor of the school paper, long after a girl who could sing told him over barbecue and coke he had been a very good boy and she liked him very much but sorry she loved somebody else very very much.

He could have cried. He could have screamed why didn’t you tell me long ago damn you damn you damn you! But he was a good boy and he said I wish you all the luck in the world. The girl smiled and he walked her home in the moonlight.

He did cry later, not because of his lost first love (that was something to laugh at), but because the moonlight was so beautiful and the world wasted it by sleeping. That was the mid-May on the beach far away and long ago.

Teaching poetry to high school seniors was a matter of God’s grace, he foolishly thought more than thrice, or else he would not have stayed in this dusty-muddy town for four years. Then Alex and Dardo came. These gum-chewing boys in college were now teachers! With some extra gift from the Holy Ghost, they were all ready to set the town and the world on fire with their liberal arts and ratio studiorum. You better start from the ABC, he warned them. This is not the Ateneo or La Salle. Rolly said be careful you don’t stay old bachelors (as if 25 were an age). Look at Nonong. And soon he’ll lose his moon to the Russians. Laughter. I’m twenty, Alex said, and the first day of class he reported that five of his 1A students were older than he. Dardo had something more sensational to say: he was the smallest boy in 2A. Congratulations, Alex said.

The school year dragged on – his fourth – and for the fourth time, he resigned himself to the fate of correcting themes and reading “The Raven” and Rizal’s good-bye in the most insipid translation. Rolly’s marriage broke the companionship started in English 1, Room 21, first year A.B. Rolly was barely fifteen then but he was quite a companion in playing charade and condemning Filipino movies. Together, they fairly gave justice to the Jesuits.

Rolly knew how to conjugate Latin and he wanted to go to the seminary. He told Rolly: you’ll get married at twenty-four. Rolly became Tina’s husband at twenty-two. Indeed, love was blind and lovers could not hear.

This year Alex and Dardo were there to share his room in Mrs. Edillon’s house on top of a low hill overlooking the town. The bachelors, people referred to them as they marched off to school or to church – intent and invulnerable to all acts of God: floods, thunder and lightning, winds, women – yards ahead of Rolly who had just had an appendectomy and a wife.

With his brushes, easel, palette, and bottled and boxed colors, Alex brought a scrabble set. They played deep into the night – inventing words, quarreling over them, intimately mocking one another for ignorance of a certain term. Thinking of the sandwiches he would lose at Foa Yee’s, Dardo usually said, this is a term in biology. Proof, Alex said, his voice taunting with the authority of a pocket Webster. The biologist searched the indices of his pile of textbooks while he man named Nonong struggled over his addition of the points, now and then watching the moon filter through the pomelo leaves.

Now the moon stared harder from its solo eyehood, stirring him to madness, drawing him to somewhere he did not know but was reflected on the leaves the moment the moon painted the world with white silence.

He opened the window wider and without a second thought, stepped out onto the roof under the window where the pomelo tree extended branches inviting enough to wake up the boy in every man. And the boy swung the man over the branches noiselessly like the tread of the moon on the clouds.

Soon he was sitting on the grass with all his day clothes on. His feet were bare and he felt the moisture on the grass but he sat there watching the moon, feeling an undefinable ecstasy, thinking of the beaches of the future, waiting for anything, probably a vision of himself who, for so long, had been alien and remote.

He was a madman.

Nonong.

And he saw the vision. Alex was beside him, with all his day clothes on, barefooted and lean-faced and smiling and serene, and he felt like embracing his nearness, aching all over with the brotherhood. He looked at Alex but said nothing. Silence made the strongest bond, even outside monasteries.

But Alex was not a madman. Was he?

And so they conversed in silence:

Why are you here?

Didn’t you wake me up many times to see your moon?

I didn’t wake you up tonight.

That’s why I woke up.

Silly. How did you come?

Through the window.

Two men in the moonlight. Did Alex see the moonlight on the beach far away and long ago? Did Alex weep because the night was beautiful and the world wasted it by sleeping? Did Alex lose a girl because he was always very good? Did Alex teach in this dusty-muddy town because of God’s grace?

They said nothing. They sat on the grass and watched the moon.

Alex wrote verses about the life of men and the death of cigarettes. (he wrote verses, too, and burned them.)

Alex painted trees and hills. (He painted, too. The crazy portrait of a farm boy devouring a pile of durian done on black cartolina with crayola and Myrisia pomade was still hanging somewhere in the law library.)

Alex came from Claveria Street (damn the men who changed it to Claro Recto!), a neighbor to three banks, a moviehouse for first-run run Filipino cowboy pictures, a girl’ college where he studied up to the fourth grade, and a blockful of offices. I live on Wall Street, Alex would say. Haha, Dardo would say.

He came from a house on top of a cliff, in Calinan, overlooking a river, his river. Last Christmas vacation he brought Alex and Dardo there. They spent days in the river, not bathing, just sitting on the boulders and watching the water form into eddies to spin forever. You should see my river in the moonlight, he said. But it was December and it rained.

Dardo came from Bansalan, in the far south, where people planted corn and killed each other on the wayside. I’m a pacifist, he said and carried a knife to the barber ship the first week he was in this northern town.

He looked at Alex’s profile against the glossy leaves of Mrs. Edillon’s potted plants. He opened his mouth to say something but he forgot what to say. For he saw something. Deeper than the younger man’s well etched silhouette he saw again, and well-defined now, the terrible identity that arrested him anew. He saw himself! And suddenly, the alien and the remote became so fearfully familiar, so near he wanted to hold it and crush it till it escaped no more. He must destroy this hound, this reminder, this mirror before it made him completely mad.

And Alex almost screamed for he saw a transfiguration. His companion stood tall blocking the moonlight. There was an instant change in his face: his eyes grew dull and blank and heavy like a somnambulist’s, his lean veined arms extended as if to embrace him.

And Alex saw the hands, the fingers flexed like talons towards his throat…

The moon was in his eyes!

They grappled on the grass in the moonlight. In the maze of images in his pulsating moon-maddened mind, he was aware of the struggle: but it was not against a concrete though protean form of some voluminous fear. It was a struggle against an abstraction that had been given texture and dimensions such as he could perceive in his innumerable nightmares.

Alex gripped the two slender wrists before those hands could touch him further and shook the other man with all his might.

You are mad, Nonong! Alex’s voice was a repressed fear. You are hurting me. Wake up! Wake up!

And the madman woke up from the trance. He did not hear Alex’s voice but the sudden burst of piano notes from the house. Mrs. Edillon was playing the piano in the middle of the night. Was it Schubert Serenade?  No. Orchids in the Moonlight? No. I’ll Be Seeing You? No. Just notes, exercises, now straining into a magnificent  crescendo, now fading…

And he knew he was sick, mad.

Are you all right? Alex was worried. You wanted to kill me!

I wanted to destroy something,  some monster that has been hounding me all these years!

But why me – me?

Because you remind me of many things. Because I see myself in you!

You are mad!

He said nothing.

You scared me. And you are not even sorry for it!

Sorry. Please forget it.

Forget it! My God, I don’t understand you!

You do! You do! He turned him with a sudden violence in his voice. You understand me! You think my thoughts, you dream my dreams; you feel my pain, my joy. Don’t you see? You are mad with my own madness!

Alex stared at him puzzled.

Why in hell are you with me? He shouted. Why aren’t you asleep like all the rest?

I can’t sleep.

Because like me you are mad! Because like me you are ruled by the moon. Because like me you hunger for another world!

He paused. Alex looked at him long. Slowly, in an instinctive gesture of recognition and understanding, he laid his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

I see, he said simply, sincerely.

They left the grass and the moon for the house, saying nothing but feeling the loudness of each other’s presence. They remembered that the house was locked from inside and to knock at the door would be a scandal: imagine, boarders leaving the house through the window and knocking in the middle of the night to be let in!

They looked at each other and with faint familiar smiles walked around the house to where the pomelo tree extended branches inviting enough to wake up the boys in men. Mrs. Edillon’s fingers were mad on the piano keys, as if aware of something unnatural happening in this world ruled by the moon.

Was Mrs. Edillon also mad? No. She slept the whole afternoon and could not sleep at night so she played the piano to wake up lunatics from their trance.

Yes, he had met other madmen and madwomen before. But where were they now? Some had wakened up into sanity by selling floor wax and insurance, but just the same: they had been mad, crazed by color and sound, by sunset and moonlight, by voices in the night…

Lourdes Padilla.

Choy Escano.

Butch Garcia.

Cecilia Bacani.

Samy Borgaily.

Lydia Lascano.

Where were they now? Choy, Butch, Cely and Samy were married. Paddy was dead. Cancer. She was buried among the dead of the Assumption nuns of Herran. Lydia was the maddest of all. She finished chemistry and joined the Belgian Sisters. Now she was teaching grade Four at St. Theresa’s.

The moon was now on the other side of the eaves. The darkness in the room was soft and the piano notes sounded loud but far and haunting like a memory. In the honeymooners’ room, Rolly mumbled meaningless syllables in his sleep. Dardo stirred in his cot but did not wake up to see the two men arrive from an unmeasurable journey. Inside his mosquito net, he must be dreaming of the preserved animals in his biology room.

For Dardo was not a madman. For Dardo was not of the brotherhood. So was Rolly – and so were all the faces of men and women he had met but seen nothing through them – the men and women who were not mad, who slept while the  moon painted the world with white silence.

Close the window, Alex.

The man from Claveria Street slowly, reluctantly, closed the window, his movements like a ritual. In the dark, the loudness of their thoughts rhymed with all the mad piano notes in the town.

Outside, the moon painted the world with white silence.

For Death is Dead in December

by Leoncio P. Deriada

1958.

It was December and the wind was cold over the pines in the park.

It was December and Dario said, I want to die.

But his friend Leo said, dream Dario dream. For death is dead in December.

Dead in December.

Leo wrote poetry. Dario wrote love letters and later he wanted to die. It was not because of a poetic impulse but because he felt so alone – so alone in spite of Leo and Rolly and Henry and Miss Cobangbang who taught him T.S. Eliot and Shakespeare and Descartes and Thomas Aquinas. It was not once he had wished to die – to dissolve with the wind and wail over the pines in the park. The wind was always a sadness and Dario fancied that to be one with the wind was to be away from the sadness that it was.

For Dario was 17 and did not know what it was to be young. Philosophy could not make much of youth. Literature only deepened melancholia and made intense the desire to die, to cease within the midnight with no pain, to say, oh death where is thy sting!

For Dario was 17 and Nena said she didn’t love him.

For Dario was 17 and his father was dead. Long ago.

And December was the month of winds. There was a two-week vacation though – away from Miss Cobangbang and the thick books and the blackboards that were not black but green and forever powdered with chalk. Miss Cobangbang did not write much on the board and Henry and Rolly always made use of the space by sketching legs and priests during the class breaks while Leo bent out of the window and reached for the acacia blossoms.

Leo, Rolly and Henry wee the best friends in the world. And he went with them, laughed at them.

Ha ha ha!

Cut classes with them. But he would die alone.

It was December 24 and Dario was in the park. He sat on a bench under a pine tree. Above, the wind strummed the pine needles into a peculiar thin sound that was neither noise nor music but a sadness. He saw people, probably trying to be lost like him. But they talked, they laughed.

They sat on benches and ate ice cream and peanuts. Children ran around with balloons pregnant with helium, on which Santa Claus said in colored greetings: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Tomorrow is Christmas Day, Dario thought. But there was no excitement in it; the celebration had been there since December 1 and the anticipation made the Day cheap, ordinary, uninteresting like Christmas trees thick with tinsel leaves and bulbs that winked mischievously, even maliciously. Christmas was nothing but bargain sales and populated parks and winds, sad winds.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. The song was cold like the wind.

Sad.

The world was people, places, things. It was the wooden white building in Jacinto Street with acacia trees and benches of wood. It was pens and compositions and debates and exams. It was the beach at Kabacan and Talomo and Dumoy – white, free, forever related to sunburn. It was Nena – beautiful, proud, tall and slim like the silhouette of a palm. The simile was Leo’s. One day in the beach:

That old pagatpat is Fr. Malasmas, said Rolly.

That rugged rock is Miss Cobangbang, said Henry.

That palm is Nena. Tall, proud, slim, beautiful, said Leo.

Let’s swim, said Dario.

Yes, the world was quite enjoyable, what with these crazy friends and Miss Cobangbang and her popped eyes and her awful name and epistemology and romantic poetry. Apparently, Dario remembered nothing but Byron’s defective foot and Keat’s nightingale. Henry called him Ram. Rolly called him Dar. The arid instructors (except Miss Cobangbang – she wasn’t dry in spite of her pistol of a name) called him Mr. Ramos. People were funny. Nobody called him by his pet name. At home his mother called him Boy. At home, Mr. Santos, his mother’s husband, called him Boy. The neighbors referred to him as Boy Santos or Santos Boy. Imagine to be called Boy when you were 17 and a campus sensation. Only Leo called him Dario. There was a certain beauty in his name when said by someone, not necessarily Nena. It sounded strange the way Leo said it. It sounded strange, unfamiliar, but real – with a farawayness and a sadness like the wind over the pines. Dario Dario Dario.

Dario!

All of a sudden, the noise of the park was there. Dario looked up. Leo was in front of him – smiling, tall, in a blue shirt with ink stains on the left pocket.

Hi, he said and moved to the right. Leo sat beside him.

What would they talk about? Nothing. They had had a good share of ideas and always ended up with Leo’s sham scolding: You cynic!

Once on the campus, after Nena.

Dream Dario, dream. For death is dead.

What shall I dream about? He snapped. He was angry, miserable.

Many things.

I’m not a poet. He stressed poet with obvious malice.

You are a man.

I want to die!

Nonsense! Everybody is a poet. You are a poet. Poets don’t die. They just pretend to die for dramatic effect. Man is empty. He needs something to fill him up. Gloom empties the heart. And dreams heal the inner scars. You are sick, Dario, with a sickness of your own making. Cure yourself, Dario baby. Think of love, not Nena. Love is deep, deeper than the ocean floors, depper than any woman’s face.

You talk too much, he told Leo.

We are good friends, Leo told Dario.

Stop playing big brother! He shouted inside him but he could not say it. for the truth was he had been wishing he had a brother.

We are good friends, Leo said. So Rolly, Henry and I will get you tonight for the midnight Mass. Okay?

They hastily left the park and headed towards the city’s mini-zoo. They passed the cage of monkeys that amused people (or was it the monkeys that were amused?), passed the shop with windows with their gaudy displays, passed some beggars, and finally over crackers and Coke:

You are not happy, Dario.

I remember my father.

Your father?

My father.

They listened to the soft drink running hoarsely through the straw.

You are tired, Dario. Go home and sleep.

I will, Dario said.

They went home.

During supper, Dario surprised Mrs. Felisa Santos.

Mama, tell me about my father.

At the head of the table Mr. Santos looked up but Dario did not wait for his mother to answer. He drank two glasses of water and hurried to his room unaware of the new magic of the Christmas tree in the sala.

Boy!

Mama.

He didn’t open his door.

Dario stood in front of the mirror. He smiled at the man there and his eyes laughed. Crew cut, proud nose, a pimple on the forehead. The small mouth opened slightly, rehearsing kisses for all flowers – the rose, the acacia, the gumamela, the azucena, the cogon, the mimosa – everyone, even the lotus… he had been shaving long before ROTC and now a blue shadow rainbowed faintly above his lips – beautiful, asserting manhood that would love all but die alone.

The night before Dario dreamed that he had died.

But he woke up.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. The neighborhood children were singing carols.

Dream Dario dream – for death is dead in December…

Damn Leo and his ideas!

He switched off the light, opened the window wide and sat in the window beside flower pots the Christmas moon was still on the other side of the roof.

Dario Ramos Sr. was a lawyer. He died when Dario Jr. was in the nursery. In the sala was a set of law books and a collegiate dictionary which Dario searched page by page looking for weird words and invisible marks that were his father’s.

Mr. Santos, his step-father, was two hundred pounds, the manager of a bottling company, and a Knight of Columbus.

In college, Dario was president of this and vice president of that: Debating club, Sodality, Credit Union, Club Cervantino, et cetera. He did not make the Art Club, for his grasp of art was as bad as his handwriting which looked like a doctor’s that baffled even the most sophisticated pharmacist. In fact Dario started as a pre-med student but changed to a pre-law after one of his instructors, a balding scholar who never learned the art of public speaking in his Augustinian alma mater, flunked him in organic chemistry.

Above all, Dario was a Consonant – a member of a four-man club named Consonants for reasons even Athene would not think of. Leo wanted to be president. Rolly wanted to be president. Henry wanted to be president. So Dario wanted to be president. They made 36 Valentine cards last February. Miss Cobangbang said thank you very much L.D.R.H.  Those were their initials. Dinky gave Henry a shy grin. Nilo, the school’s best actor, tore the card they gave to Inez. Bobby and Letty quarreled: the student pilot thought Rolly still wrote love letters to her. Samira, who received the one with the gold thumb tack, gave Leo a Lebanese grin that reminded him of cedars and Fr. Wieman’s nose. Nena made a book marker out of the red heart and a doodle sheet out of the envelope.

Tonight the Consonants would go to midnight Mass.

I will sleep, Dario said to his pajamas. And so he slept.

Dario dreamed.

He was sitting on the cement base of the stairs, biting his nails. In the house Perry Como was loud with the smell of cooking pans in the kitchen.

Boy.

Mr. Santos was at the top of the stairs. Dario did not look up.

Papa.

You are sad. Don’t you like the things I bought you for Christmas? The scooter, the shotgun, the pingpong set, the-

Will you stop spoiling me! He shouted, surprised at the rise of his voice. You are not my father. Why don’t you beat me up? You are so good good good. You make me forget my own father.

Boy!

Don’t call me Boy!  I’m Dario Ramos Jr. Dario Ramos Jr.!

Soon his mother was there – flushed by the tonic of the kitchen, worried, still young, beautiful.

I’ll go away, he said.

For at the gate somebody was waiting for him. He was tall, with the crew cut, with the proud nose, with the laughing eyes. A thin, blue shadow rainbowed above his lips which were half-parted as if poising kisses to all flowers, even the lotus…

Papa Papa Papa!

And his arms were around his father. He kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, and then his forehead again and his cheeks again and his chin again with a passion that was more intense than the thirst of deserts and a thousand fatherless sons.

But the eternity in his embrace ended just there, the cloud of sleep melted and presently disclosed an obese face – prosaic and benign, the face he had been afraid of because it was always kind and good. Under the light, Mr. Santos glistened like a Buddha and Dario, in his trance, saw an oasis.

And again it just ended there. He was now in his senses and the discovery of his arms around this commonplace man was an embarrassment. He pulled his arms away instinctively. Behind he saw his mother and he had a momentary feeling of guilt.

Dario!

Papa.

Dario was hoarse and hearing his own voice with relief.

Boy?

Mama.

Are you sick, Dario?

No, Papa.

He must have talked in his sleep and he felt something odd, something undefinable that was almost a sense of guilt for something that could not be named. His step-father called him Dario and, in an instant, he felt so ashamed of his inadequacy in all these years of morbid introspection and silent rebellion.

I’m going to midnight Mass, he said.

The moon was now on the west side of the roof. The Consonants would be knocking at the door any minute, singing their greetings and their joy. He wondered how they would look tonight. It seemed that they suddenly became remote, as remote as his fear and love for the dark somewhere far away, farther than the silhouette of palms, farther than the source of the wind in the park…

Henry and Rolly would be loquacious forever, but tonight, it would be different. He would not hear them. For Leo would speak to him like a nemesis or a reminder or a conscience or a ghost that haunted him forever. Dario. Dario. Dario.

Tonight God is born. Death is dead. Dream Dario –

Leo would not be different. For he had always been different. He had always seen through people and, worse, he would tell what he had seen there.

Did Leo lose his father? He didn’t ask. Did Leo lose Teresita? He didn’t ask. A tall palm was in Dario’s mind in a moment. He never lost Nena. She had never really belonged to him.

Yet something was lost. It was not his father. He had never belonged to him.

A noisy knock startled Dario. His friends were there and here he still was in his pajamas.  Mrs. Santos hurried out of the room to answer the call. Her husband stayed.

Dario jumped from his bed to dress up. Outside, the world was bright and noisy with carolers. It was Christmas. The moon was bright; it was obese, benign, like the face he had been afraid of not long ago…

And Mr. Santos smiled.

The Pig

Translation by Leoncio P. Deriada

I am willing to be a pig

Provided my pen is your arms.

As long as you feed me

With your smile and kiss

Morning, afternoon.

It is easy to make me fat.

Your promise

Not to abandon me

Is the vitamins

I take.

And during nighttime

It’s your touch

On my back and breast

That can make me snore.

Letter

Translation by Leoncio P. Deriada

Mother,

I dropped your letter when the postman

handed it

it was very heavy even if it was only a

page

the charcoal-black ink was too

concentrated

maybe it seeped through the paper

and stained your kitchen table

but at the bottom of the paper

the other words changed color

like islands when beheld

I looked which part was Antique

Mother, I could not read your letter

anymore

many more islands appeared

the page was filled

whatever you said about Father

and my younger brothers and sisters

may God have pity on them

Mother, don’t write to me anymore

let us not overwork the postman

some more

save on ink

so that your kitchen table will not stain

and the islands

I don’t want to see them again.

lovingly,

your child.

WORKS CITED

Deriada, Leoncio P., ed. Patubas An Anthology of West Visayan Poetry: 1986-1994. Manila: The National 

Commission for Culture and the Arts, 1995.

Sources:

http://compilationofphilippineliterature.blogspot.com/2011/04/dog-eaters-leoncio-p-deriada.html

http://lefthandedsnake.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/lunacy-by-leoncio-p-deriada/

http://lefthandedsnake.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/for-death-is-dead-in-december-by-leoncio-p-deriada/