Manuel Estabillo Arguilla (1911 – 1944) was an Ilokano writer in English, patriot, and martyr. He is known for his widely anthologized short story "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife," the main story in the collection "How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other Short Stories" which won first prize in the Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1940.
MIDSUMMER
(Manuel E. Arguilla)
AFTER EDSA
He pulled down his hat until the wide brim touched his shoulders. He crouched lower under the cover of his cart and peered ahead. The road seemed to writhe under the lash of the noon-day heat; it swung from side to side, humped and bent itself like a fleeing serpent, and disappeared behind the spur of a low hill on which grew a scrawny thicket of bamboo.
There was not a house in sight. Along the left side of the road ran the deep, dry gorge of a stream, the banks sparsely covered by sunburned cogon grass. In places, the rocky, waterless bed showed aridly. Father, beyond the shimmer of quivering heat waves rose ancient hills not less blue than the cloud-palisaded sky. On the right stretched a sandy waste of low rolling dunes. Scattered clamps of hardy ledda relieved the otherwise barren monotony of the landscape. Far away he could discern a thin indigo line that was the sea.
The grating of the cartwheels on the pebbles of the road and the almost soundless shuffle of the weary bull but emphasized the stillness. Now and then came the dry rustling of falling earth as lumps from the cracked sides of the gorge rolled down to the bottom.
He struck at the bull with the slack of the rope. The animal broke into a heavy trot. The dust stirred slumberously. The bull slowed down, threw up his head, and a glistening thread of saliva spun out into the dry air. The driving rays of the sun were reflected in the point of light on the wet heaving flanks.
The man in the cart did not notice the woman until she had rounded the spur of land and stood unmoving beside the road watching the cart and its occupant come toward her. She was young, surprisingly sweet and fresh amidst her parched surroundings. A gaily-striped kerchief covered her head, the ends tied at the nape of her neck. She wore a homespun bodice of light red cloth with small white checks. Her skirt was also homespun and showed a pattern of white checks with narrow stripes of yellow and red. With both hands she held by the mouth of a large, apparently empty, water jug, the cool red of which blended well with her dress. She was barefoot.
She stood straight and still beside the road and regarded him with frank curiosity. Suddenly she turned and disappeared into the dried gorge. Coming to where she had stood a few moments before, he pulled up the bull and got out of the cart. He saw where a narrow path had been cut into the bank and stood a while lost in thought, absently wiping the perspiration from his face. Then he unhitched his bull and for a few moments, with strong brown fingers, kneaded the hot neck of the beast. Driving the animal before him, he followed the path. It led up the dry bed of the stream; the sharp fragments of the unheated rock were like burning coals under his feet. There was no sign of the young woman.
He came upon her beyond a bend in the gorge, where a big mango tree, which had partly fallen from the side of the ravine, casts its cool shade over a well.
She had filled her jar and was rolling the kerchief around her hand into a flat coil where she placed on her head. Without glancing at him, where she had stopped some distance off, she sat down on her heels, gathering the folds of her skirt between her widespread knees. She tilted the brimful jar to remove part of the water. One hand in the rim, the other supporting the bottom, she began to raise it to her head. She knelt on one knee - resting, for a moment, the jar on the other while she brushed away drop of water from the sides. In one lithe movement she brought the jar onto her head, getting to her feet at the same time. But she staggered a little and water slashed down on her breast. The single bodice instantly clung to her bosom, molding the twin hillocks of her breasts, warmly brown through the wet cloth. One arm remained uplifted holding the jar, while the other shook the clinging cloth free of her drenched flesh. Then not once having raised her eyes, she passed by the young man, who stood mutely gazing beside his bull. The animal had found some grass along the path and was industriously gazing.
He turned to watch the graceful figure beneath the jar until it vanished around a bend in the path leading to the road. Then he led the bull to the well, and tethered it to a root of the mango tree.
"The underpart of her arm is while and smooth," he said to his blurred image on the waters of the well, as he leaned over before lowering the bucket made of half petroleum can. "And her hair is thick and black." The bucket struck with a rattling impact. It filled with one long gurgle. He threw his hat on the grass and pulled the bucket up with both hands. The twisted bamboo rope bit into his hardened palms, and he thought how the same rope must hurt her.
He placed the dripping bucket on a flat stone, and the bull drank. "Son of lightning!" he said, thumping the side of the bull after it had drunk the third bucketful, "you drink like the great Kabuntitiao!" A low, rich rumbling rolled through the cavernous body of the beast. He tied it again to the root, and the animal idly rubbed its horns against the wood. The sun had fallen from the perpendicular, and noticing that the bull stood partly exposed to the sun, he pushed it farther to the shade. He fanned himself with his hat. He whistled to entice the wind from the sea, but not a breeze stirred.
After a while he put on his hat and hurriedly walked the short distance through the gorge up to the road where his cart stood. From inside he took a jute sack which he slung over on shoulder. With the other arm, he gathered part of the hay at the bottom of the cart. He returned to the well, strips of straw falling behind him as he picked his way from one tuft of grass to another, for the broken rocks of the path had grown exceedingly hot.
He gave the hay into the bull. Its rump was again in the sun, and he had to push it back. "Fool, do you want to broil yourself alive?" he said good-humoredly, slapping the thick haunches. It switched its longhaired tail and fell into eating. The dry, sweet-smelling hay made harsh gritting sounds in the mouth of the hungry animal. Saliva rolled out from the corners, clung to the stiff hairs that fringed the thick lower lip, fell and gleamed and evaporated in the heated air.
He took out of the jute sack a polished coconut shell. The top had been sawed off and holes bored at opposite sides, through which a string tied to the lower part of the shell passed in a loop. The smaller piece could thus be slipped up and down as a cover. The coconut shell contained cooked rice still a little warm. Buried on the top was an egg now boiled hard. He next brought out a bamboo tube of salt, a cake of brown sugar wrapped in banana leaf, and some dried shrimps. Then he spread the sack in what remained of the shade, placed his simple meal thereon, and prepared to eat his dinner. But first he drew a bucketful of water from the well, setting the bucket on a rock. He seated himself on another rock and ate with his fingers. From time to time he drank on the bucket. He was half through with his meal when the girl came down the path once more. She had changed the wetted bodice. He watched her with lowered head as she approached, and felt a difficulty in continuing to eat, but went through the motions of filling his mouth nevertheless. He strained his eyes looking at the girl from beneath his eyebrows. How graceful she was! Her hips tapered smoothly down to rounded thighs and supple legs, showing against her skirt and moving straight and free. Her shoulders, small but firm, bore her shapely neck and head with shy pride.
When she was very near, he ate more hurriedly, so that he almost choked. He did not look at her. She placed the jar between three stones. When she picked up the rope of the bucket, he came to himself. He looked up - straight to her face. He saw her eyes. They were brown and were regarding him gravely, without embarrassment; he forgot his own timidity.
"Won't you join me, Ading?" he said simply. He remained seated.
Her lips parted in a half smile and a little dimple appears high up on her right cheek. She shook her head and said: "God reward you, Manong."
"Perhaps the poor food I have is not fit for you?"
"No, no. it isn't that. How can you think of it? I should be ashamed. It is that I have just eaten myself. That is why I came to get water in the middle of the day - we ran out of it. I see you have eggs and shrimps and sugar. Why, we had nothing but rice and salt."
"Salt? Surely you joke."
"I would be ashamed. . ."
"But what is the matter with salt?
'Salt . . . salt . . .
Makes my baby stout'"
He intoned. "My grandmother used to sing that to me when I complained of our food."
They laughed and felt more at ease and regarded each other more openly. He took a long time fingering his rice before raising it to his mouth, the while he gazed up at her and smiled for no reason. She smiled back in turn and gave the rope which she held an absent-minded tug. The bucket came down from its perch of rock in a miniature flood. He leaped to his feet with a surprised yell, and the next instant the jute sack on which lay his meal was drenched. Only the rice inside the coconut shell and the bamboo tube of salt were saved from the water.
She was distressed, but he only laughed.
"Forgive me, Manong," she insisted.
"It was all my fault. Such a clumsy creature I am."
"It was not your fault," he assured her. "I am to be blame for placing the bucket of water where I did."
"I will draw you another bucketful," she said, beginning to coil the rope.
"I will draw the water myself," he said. "I am stronger than you."
"No, you must let me do it."
But when he caught hold of the bucket and stretched forth a brawny arm for the coil of rope in her hands, she surrendered both to him quickly and drew back a step as though shy of his touch. He lowered the bucket with his back to her, and she had time to take in the tallness of him, the breadth of his shoulders, the sinewy length of his legs. Down below in the small of his back, two parallel ridges of rope-like muscle stuck out against the wet shirt. As he hauled up the bucket, muscles rippled all over his body. His hair, which was wavy, cut short behind but long in front, fell in a cluster over his forehead.
"Let me hold the bucket while you drink," she offered.
He flashed her a smile over his shoulders as he poured the water into her jar, and again lowered the bucket.
"No, no, you must not do that." She hurried to his side and held one of his arms. "I couldn't let you, a stranger . . ."
"Why not?" He smiled down at her, and notice a slight film of moisture clinging to the down on her upper lip and experienced a sudden desire to wipe it away with his forefinger. He continued to lowered the bucket while she had to stand by.
"Hadn't you better to move over to the shade?" he suggested, as the bucket struck the water.
"What shall I do there?" she asked sharply, as though the idea of seeking protection from the heat were contemptible to her.
"You will get roasted standing here in the sun," he said, and began to haul up the bucket.
But she remained beside him, catching the rope as it fell from his hands, combing it carefully. The jar was filled, with plenty to spare. Then he gave her the bucket and she held it up and told him to drink as she tilted the half-filled can until the water lapped the rim. He gulped a mouthful, gurgled noisily, spewed it out, then commenced to drink in earnest. He took long, deep droughts of the sweetish water, for he was more thirsty than he had thought. A chuckling sound persisted in forming inside his throat at every shallow. It made him self-conscious. He was breathless when though, and red in the face.
"I don't know why it makes that sound," he said, fingering his throat and laughed shamefacedly.
"Father also makes that sound when he drinks, and Mother laughs at him," she said. She untied the handkerchief over her hair and started to roll it.
The sun had descended considerably and there was now hardly any shade under the tree. The bull was gathering with his tongue stray slips of straw. He untied the animal to lead it to the other side of the gorge, where the high bank was beginning to throw some shade, when the girl spoke: "Manong, why don't you come to our house and bring your animal with you? There is shade and you can sleep, though our house is very poor."
She had already placed the jar on her head and stood, half-turned toward him, waiting for his answer.
"It would be troubling you, Ading."
"No. You come. I have told Mother about it." She turned and went down the path.
He sent the bull after her with a smart slap on its side. Then he quickly gathered the remains of his meal, put them inside the jute sack which had almost dried, and himself followed. Then seeing that the bull stopped the nibble the tufts of grass that dotted the bottom of the gorge, he picked up the dragging rope and urged the animal on into a trot. They caught up with the girl near the cart. She had stopped to wait.
"Our house is just beyond that point," she said, indicating the spur of land topped by the sickly bamboo. "We have no neighbors."
He did not volunteer a word. He walked a step behind, the bull lumbering in front. More than ever he was conscious of her person. She carried the jar on her head without holding it. Her hands swung to her even steps. He threw back his square shoulders, lifted his chin, and sniffed the motionless air. There was a flourish in the way he flicked the rump of the bull with rope on his hand. He felt strong. He felt that he could follow the slender, lithe figure ahead of him to the ends of the world.
Carlos Sampayan Bulosan (born in Binalonan, Pangasinan, Luzon, Philippines, November 24, 1913,died in Seattle Washington on September 11, 1956), a Filipino an English-Language novelist and poet who spent most of his life in the United States. His story " My Father Goes To Court"depicts the typical warmth and closenesss one can find in a filipino home.
"My Father Goes To Court"
(by Carlos Bulosan)
(by Carlos Bulosan)
When I was four, I lived with my mother and brothers and sisters in a small town on the island of Luzon. Father’s farm had been destroyed in 1918 by one of our sudden Philippine floods, so for several years afterward we all lived in the town, though he preffered living in the country. We had a next-door neighbor, a very rich man, whose sons and daughters seldom came out of the house. While we boys and girls played and sand in the sun, his children stayed inside and kept the windows closed. His house was so tall that his children could look in the windows of our house and watch us as we played, or slept, or ate, when there was any food in the house to eat.
Now, this rich man’s servants were always frying and cooking something good, and the aroma of the food was wafted down to us from the windows of the big house. We hung about and took all the wonderful smell of the food into our beings. Sometimes, in the morning, our whole family stood outside the windows of the rich man’s house and listened to the musical sizzling of thick strips of bacon or ham. I can remember one afternoon when our neighbor’s servants roasted three chickens. The chickens were young and tender and the fat that dripped into the burning coals gave off an enchanting odor. We watched the servants turn the beautiful birds and inhaled the heavenly spirit that drifted out to us.
Some days the rich man appeared at a window and glowered down at us. He looked at us one by one, as though he were condemning us. We were all healthy because we went out in the sun every day and bathed in the cool water of the river that flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes we wrestled with one another in the house before we went out to play.
We were always in the best of spirits and our laughter was contagious. Other neighbors who passed by our house often stopped in our yard and joined us in our laughter.
Laughter was our only wealth. Father was a laughing man. He would go in to the living room and stand in front of the tall mirror, stretching his mouth into grotesque shapes with his fingers and making faces at himself, and then he would rush into the kitchen, roaring with laughter.
There was plenty to make us laugh. There was, for instance, the day one of my brothers came home and brought a small bundle under his arm, pretending that he brought something to eat, maybe a leg of lamb or something as extravagant as that to make our mouths water. He rushed to mother and through the bundle into her lap. We all stood around, watching mother undo the complicated strings. Suddenly a black cat leaped out of the bundle and ran wildly around the house. Mother chased my brother and beat him with her little fists, while the rest of us bent double, choking with laughter.
Another time one of my sisters suddenly started screaming in the middle of the night. Mother reached her first and tried to calm her. My sister criedand groaned. When father lifted the lamp, my sister stared at us with shame in her eyes.
“What is it?” <other asked.
“I’m pregnant!” she cried.
“Don’t be a fool!” Father shouted.
“You’re only a child,” Mother said.
“I’m pregnant, I tell you!” she cried.
Father knelt by my sister. He put his hand on her belly and rubbed it gently. “How do you know you are pregnant?” he asked.
“Feel it!” she cried.
We put our hands on her belly. There was something moving inside. Father was frightened. Mother was shocked. “Who’s the man?” she asked.
“There’s no man,” my sister said.
‘What is it then?” Father asked.
Suddenly my sister opened her blouse and a bullfrog jumped out. Mother fainted, father dropped the lamp, the oil spilled on the floor, and my sister’s blanket caught fire. One of my brothers laughed so hard he rolled on the floor.
When the fire was extinguished and Mother was revived, we turned to bed and tried to sleep, but Father kept on laughing so loud we could not sleep any more. Mother got up again and lighted the oil lamp; we rolled up the mats on the floor and began dancing about and laughing with all our might. We made so much noise that all our neighbors except the rich family came into the yard and joined us in loud, genuine laughter.
It was like that for years.
As time went on, the rich man’s children became thin and anemic, while we grew even more robust and full of fire. Our faces were bright and rosy, but theirs were pale and sad. The rich man started to cough at night; then he coughed day and night. His wife began coughing too. Then the children started to cough one after the other. At night their coughing sounded like barking of a herd of seals. We hung outside their windows and listened to them. We wondered what had happened to them. We knew that they were not sick from lack of nourishing food because they were still always frying something delicious to eat.
One day the rich man appeared at a window and stood there a long time. He looked at my sisters, who had grown fat with laughing, then at my brothers, whose arms and legs were like the molave, which is the sturdiest tree in the Philippines. He banged down the window and ran through the house, shutting all the windows.
From that day on, the windows of our neighbor’s house were closed. The children did not come outdoors anymore. We could still hear the servants cooking in the kitchen, and no matter how tight the windows were shut, the aroma of the food came to us in the wind and drifted gratuitously into our house.
One morning a policeman from the presidencia came to our house with a sealed paper. The rich man had filled a complaint against us. Father took me with him when he went to the town clerk and asked him what it was all about. He told Father the man claimed that for years we had been stealing the spirit of his wealth and food.
When the day came for us to appear in court, Father brushed his old army uniform and borrowed a pair of shoes from one of my brothers. We were the first to arrive. Father sat on a chair in the center of the courtroom. Mother occupied a chair by the door. We children sat on a long bench by the wall. Father kept jumping up his chair and stabbing the air with his arms, as though he were defending himself before an imaginary jury.
The rich man arrived. He had grown old and feeble; his face was scarred with deep lines. With him was his young lawyer. Spectators came in and almost filled the chairs. The judge entered the room and sat on a high chair. We stood up in a hurry and sat down again.
After the courtroom preliminaries, the judge took at father. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“I don’t need a lawyer judge.” He said.
“Proceed,” said the judge.
The rich man’s lawyer jumped and pointed his finger at Father, “Do you or do you not agree that you have been stealing the spirit of the complainant’s wealth and food?”
“I do not!” Father said.
“Do you or do you not agree that while the complainant’s servants cooked and fried fat legs of lambs and young chicken breasts, you and your family hung outside your windows and inhaled the heavenly spirit of the food?”
“I agree,” Father said.
“How do you account for that?”
Father got up and paced around, scratching his head thoughtfully. Then he said, “I would like to see the children of the complainant, Judge.”
“Bring the children of the complainant.”
They came shyly. The spectators covered their mouths with their hands. They were so amazed to see the children so thin and pale. The children walked silently to a bench and sat down without looking up. They stared at the floor and moved their hands uneasily.
Father could not say anything at first. He just stood by his chair and looked at them. Finally he said, “I should like to cross-examine the complainant.”
“Proceed.”
“Do you claim that we stole the spirit of your wealth and became a laughing family while yours became morose and sad?” Father asked.
“Yes.”
“Then we are going to pay you right now,” Father said. He walked over to where we children were sitting on the bench and took my straw hat off my lap and began filling it up with centavo pieces that he took out his pockets. He went to Mother, who added a fistful of silver coins. My brothers threw in their small change.
“May I walk to the room across the hall and stay there for a minutes, Judge?” Father asked.
“As you wish.”
“Thank you,” Father said. He strode into the other room with the hat in his hands. It was almost full of coins. The doors of both rooms were wide open.
“Are you ready?” Father called.
“Proceed.” The judge said.
The sweet tinkle of coins carried beautifully into the room. The spectators turned their faces toward the sound with wonder. Father came back and stood before the complainant.
“Did you hear it?” he asked.
“Hear what?” the man asked.
“The spirit of the money when I shook this hat?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you are paid.” Father said.
The rich man opened his mouth to speak and fell to the floor without a sound. The lawyer rushed to his aid. The judge pounded his gravel.
“Case dismissed,” he said.
Father strutted around the courtroom. The judge even came down to his high chair to shake hands with him. “By the way,” he whispered, “I had an uncle who died laughing.”
“You like to hear my family laugh, judge?” Father asked.
“Why not?”
Did you hear that children?” Father said.
My sister started it. The rest of us followed them and soon the spectators were laughing with us, holding their bellies and bending over the chairs. And the laughter of the judge was the loudest of all.
Gregorio C. Brillantes, a Palanca Award Hall of Famer and a multi-awarded fiction writer, is one of the Philippines' most popular writers in English. Brillantes is a native of Camiling, Tarlac. He obtained his Litt. B. degree in the Ateneo de Manila University. He has edited Sunburst, The Manila Review, Focus, Asia-Philippines Leader and the Philippines Free Press. Among his published collections of short stories are: The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories, The Apollo Centennial, Help, and On a Clear Day in November Shortly Before the Millennium, Stories for a Quarter Century. He also has published collections of essays: Looking for Rizal in Madrid, Chronicles of Interesting Times, and The Cardinal's Sins, the General's Cross, the Martyr's Testimony and other Affirmations. He acted as one of the judges of the Philippine Graphic Novel Awards in 2007.
The Distance to Andromeda
(by Gregorio C. Brillantes)
The Boy Ben, thirteen years old, sits there and wide-eyed before the screen of the theater, in the town of Tarlac, his heart thumps in awe and excitement, and his hands are balled into unconscious fists, as the spaceship burns its blue-flamed journey through the night of the universe that is forever silent with a high metallic hum.
Enclosed in time within the rocket, the ship itself surrounded by timelessness, which is in turn framed by the boundaries of the cinema screen, the last men and women and children of Earth watch the asteroids, the stream of cosmic dust, the barren planets drift past the portholes like luminous flowers at once beautiful and monstrous, floating in the ocean of space. The traveler search the night for another world of air and greenness, remembering the end of the Earth, the Final War, the flickering radioactive fires upon the lifeless continents. Beyond the dead seas of Mars, and beyond the ice-bound tomb of Neptune, past the orbit of Pluto and out into the black immeasurable depths, the rocket flashes onward, through years of space and time: a moving speck among the twinkling stars, propelled by the flame of its engine and a certain destiny. A sun looms up from the blackness, more golden and more gentle than the star they have always known; and as a globe of shining water and green-shadowed land appears through the viewports; they break out into jubilant cries and dazed whispers of thanks to God. Cradled by a final blast of power, the spacecraft lands on the meadow: a quiet moment before the airlocks open, a sigh of wind in the nearby trees. The survivors of the Earth climb down onto the grass, and the filmed prophecy ends with them gathered as on a pilgrimage beneath the vertical cylinder of their rocket, looking out across the plain to the hills green in the light of the new sun.
The curtains close the window of the screen; an amplified phonograph scratches out a tired rhumba; there is a brief scramble for vacated seats, the usual reluctant shuffling towards the exit after the show. Ben thinks of staying for one more screening but his friend Pepe stood up to leave, waving to him from the aisle.
He and Pepe go up the aisle, stepping on brittle peanut shells and candy tinfoil; in the diffused light, the audience waits for the lovely and terrible dream.
The two boys linger before the moviehouse and look up at the photo stills tacked on the display board: the nuclear-bombed cities, New York and Paris and London, where no man would ever breath and walk again; tomorrow’s spaceship, flaming meteor-like in the night of space; the faces of the last people, brave before the unexplored night.
Ben looks up at the pictures, and he feels again, deep in a silence within him, like the vibration of invisible wires, the hum of the universe, the movement of the planets and stars. He turns to his friend in a kind impatience, his eyes bright, his chest tightening; he begins to speak, but the hum and movement cannot be uttered. “C’mon, Ben,” says Pepe, and they cross the street away from the sound and glare of the theater, through the small belling tinkle of the calesas and the warm gasoline dust, while the strangeness within him strains almost like a pain for utterance.
They saunter down the main street in the manner of boys who have no immediate reason for hurry, lazy-legged and curious-eyed. They come to the plaza; children are roller-skating around the kiosko, and the stars are clear in the sudden night over the town.
The two boys get up on the bench and sit on the back rest and watch the skating children. In the white light of the neon lamps, the continuous rumbling sound of the skaters rises and falls with the quality of the cemented rink: now hollow and receding, now full and ascending, going around, seemingly unending. Tito comes by and join them atop the bench; and they talk of a swim in San Miguel tomorrow morning; they agree to meet here, at the kiosko, after the last Mass. After a few random topics, from basketball to the new swept-winged jets that passed over the town during the day, the talk shifts to the movie Ben and Pepe have just seen. Tito does not go for that kind of picture, so fantastic he says, so untrue to life.
With every second the night deepens in the sky. As though in obedience to some secret signal, Ben looks up at the stars. The Southern Cross hangs in the meridian; the half-man and the half-horse in Centaurus rides over the acacias, and the Milky Way is a pale misted river dividing the sky. The stars are faraway suns… The strangeness stirs in silence within him: the unknowable words die stillborn in his mind, and the boy joins in the casual conversation, while the rumble of the skates rises and falls, around and around, as if forever, and the stars swing across the sky.
“I wonder if there are people on Mars – like in the comics.”
“If there are any,” says Tito, “they’d look like Mr. Cruz.”
“Just because he flunked you in algebra.”
“Do you think people will ever get to the moon?”
F. Sionil José or in full Francisco Sionil José (born December 3, 1924) is one of the most widely-read Filipino writers in the English language. His novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society. José's works - written in English - have been translated into 22 languages, including Korean, Indonesian, Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian and Dutch. "The God Stealer" is a short story by Filipino National Artist F. Sionil Jose. It is Jose's most anthologized work of fiction. It is not just a tale about an Ifugao stealing a religious idol, but also about the friendship that developed between a Filipino and an American, a representation of the relationship that developed between the "colonized" and the "colonizer". The story was a first prize winner during the 1959 Palanca awards in the Philippines. It is included in the book by Jose with a similar title, The God Stealer and Other Stories.
The God Stealer: Filipino Identity in Fiction
(By F. Sionil Jose)
The story begins with two officemates Philip Latak (an Ifugao from the Mountain Province now working in Manila) and Sam Cristie, an American on the bus to Baguio.
Philip (Ip-pig) now lives in Manila against the wishes of his immediate family, particularly his grandfather who intended to bequeth to Philip his share of the famous rice terraces. They are on their way to Baguio for one purpose: Sam wants to buy a genuine Ifugao god as souvenir and Philip was to help him find an authentic one through his local connections.
Philip is a Christian who no longer has any respect or affection for the Ifugao customs and religion.
He considers himself a city boy and has no inclination to return to mountain life. Despite this attitude, his grandfather is pleased to see him and decides to throw a big party in his honor. On the day of the party, Sam and Philip discover that no Ifugao is willing to sell his god. And as a last resort, Philip offers to steal the god of his grandfather because he feels it would be his way of showing his gratitude to Sam for giving him a rise at work. The consequences of this act are severe.
The next day, his grandfather died because he discovered that his god was stolen. He also informs Sam that Philip will no longer be going back to Manila. Curious, Sam looks for Philip and found him working in his grandfather's house. Philip poignantly explains his reasons for choosing to stay in the mountains:
"I could forgive myself for having stolen it. But the old man- he had always been wise, Sam. He knew that it was I who did it from the very start. He wanted so much to believe that it wasn't I. But he couldn't pretend - and neither can I. I killed him, Sam. I killed him because I wanted to be free from these. These cursed terraces. Because I wanted to be grateful. I killed him who loved me most...” a faltering and stifled sob.
In the dark hut, Sam noticed that Philip is now attired in G-string, the traditional costume of the Ifugao. Furthermore, Philip is busy carving another idol, a new god to replace the old one which Sam will take to America as a souvenir. Philip's repudiation of his Ifugao heritage may be extrapolated to mean that Filipino's rejection of his own roots and its replacement with colonial values.
Philip- Philippines
Sam- American (Uncle Sam)
It is significant that Philip steals the God for Sam out of gratitude.
Thus is it the Filipino gave up his most precious symbol of his past traditions to the Americans as an expression of gratitude?
And by giving this symbol away, the Filipino murders his own roots. Again, we see Jose's thesis:
The colonial culture has been a negative force in the Philippine History and hence, the tru Filipino is the tribal Filipino, or the poor Filipino least touched by colonial culture.
Jose presents the Filipino as confused, emotionally disturbed and helpless, plagued by the fact that he repudiated his past, or that he could not do anything to help the suffering.
Leona Florentino was a great Filipino poetess. Her writings were known and praised not only in the Philipines but also in Europe.
The poem was written for Emilia, one of Leona’s friends, on her birthday. It expressed Leona’s good wishes.
EMILIA
(by Leona Florentino)
Essem quen yamanco
Diac mayebcas
No addaca laeng a sicacoes
ti salum-at
Naipangena itoy aldao a
ingret gasat
a pannag casangay mo
cas umis-urayco a
nabay-bayag.
