Corregidor Island

THE MAP OF CORREGIDOR ISLAND

The Barracks of the Soldiers 

The Train Bus use for tour 

The Memorial of American soldiers 

The Hotel Inn for the Tourist 

Ancient Filipino writers:

Estrella D. Alfon:


(1917-1983), a prolific writer from Cebu City, only managed to get an A.A. degree from U.P. because of poor health. A member of the U.P. Writers Club, she held the National Fellowship in Fiction post at the U.P. Creative Writing Center in 1979.

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Servant Girl 

by: Estrella D. Alfon

ROSA was scrubbing the clothes she was washing slowly. Alone in the washroom of her mistress’ house she could hear the laughter of women washing clothes in the public bathhouse from which she was separated by only a thin wall. She would have liked to be there with the other women to take part in their jokes and their laughter and their merry gossiping, but they paid a centavo for every piece of soiled linen they brought there to wash and her mistress wanted to save this money.

A pin she had failed to remove from a dress sank its point deep into her fin­ger. She cried to herself in surprise and squeezed the finger until the blood came out. She watched the bright red drop fall into the suds of soap and looked in delight at its gradual mingling into the whiteness. Her mistress came upon her thus and, shouting at her, startled her into busily rubbing while she tried not to listen to the scolding words.

When her mistress left her, she fell to doing her work slowly again, and sometimes she paused to listen to the talk in the bathhouse behind her. A little later her mistress’ shrill voice told her to go to the bathhouse for drinking water. Eagerly wiping her hands on her wet wrap, she took the can from the kitchen table and went out quickly.

She was sweating at the defective town pump when strong hands closed over hers and started to help her. The hands pressing down on hers made her wince and she withdrew her hands hastily. The movement was greeted by a shout of laughter from the women washing and Rosa looked at them in surprise. The women said to each other “Rosa does not like to be touched by Sancho” and then slapped their thighs in laughter. Rosa frowned and picked up her can. Sancho made a move to help her but she thrust him away, and the women roared again, saying “Because we are here, Sancho, she is ashamed.”

Rosa carried the can away, her head angrily down, and Sancho followed her, saying “Do not be angry,” in coaxing tones. But she went her slow way with the can.

Her mistress’ voice came to her, calling impatiently, and she tried to hurry. When she arrived, the woman asked her what had kept her so long, and without waiting for an answer she ranted on, saying she had heard the women joking in the bathhouse, and she knew what had kept the girl so long. Her anger mounting with every angry word she said, she finally swung out an arm, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she slapped Rosa’s face.

She was sorry as soon as she realized what she had done. She turned away, muttering still, while Rosa’s eyes filled with sudden tears. The girl poured the water from the can into the earthen jar, a bitter lump in her throat, and thought of what she would do to people like her mistress when she herself, God willing, would be “rich.” Soon however, she thought of Sancho, and the jokes the women had shouted at her. She thought of their laughter and Sancho following her with his coaxing tones, and she smiled slowly.

Getting back to her washing, she gathered the clothes she had to bleach, and piled them into a basin she balanced on her head. Passing her mistress in the kitchen, she said something about going to bleach the clothes and under her breath added an epithet. She had to cross the street to get to the stones gathered about in a whitened circle in a neighbor’s yard where she was wont to lay out the clothes. She passed some women hanging clothes on a barbed-wire fence to dry. They called to her and she smiled at them.

Some dogs chasing each other on the street, she did not notice because the women were praising her for the whiteness of the linen in the basin on her head. She was answering them that she hadn’t even bleached them yet, when one of the dogs passed swiftly very close to her. Looking down, she saw in wide alarm another dog close on the heels of the first. An instinctive fear of animals made her want to dodge the heedlessly running dog, and she stepped gingerly this way and that. The dog, intent on the other it was pursuing, gave her no heed and ran right between her legs as Rosa held on to the basin in frantic fear lest it fall and the clothes get soiled. Her patadiong was tight in their wetness about her legs, and she fell down, in the middle of the street. She heard the other women’s exclamations of alarm and her first thought was for the clothes. Without getting up, she looked at the basin and gave obscene thanks when she saw the clothes still piled secure and undirtied. She tried to get up, hurrying lest her mistress come out and see her thus and slap her again. Already the women were setting up a great to do about what had happened. Some were coming to her, loudly abusing the dogs, solicitousness on their faces. Rosa cried, “Nothing’s the matter with me.” Still struggling to get up, she noticed that her wrap had been loosened and had bared her breasts. She looked around wildly, sudden shame coloring her cheeks, and raised the wrap and tied it securely around herself again.

She could stand but she found she could not walk. The women had gone back to their drying, seeing she was up and apparently nothing the worse for the accident. Rosa looked down at her right foot which twinged with pain. She stooped to pick up the basin and put it on her head again. She tried stepping on the toes of her right foot but it made her wince. She tried the heel but that also made her bite her lip. Already her foot above the ankle was swelling. She thought of the slap her mistress had given her for staying in the bathhouse too long and the slap she was most certain to get now for delaying like this. But she couldn’t walk, that was settled.

Then there came down the street a tartanilla without any occupant except the cochero who rang his bell, but she couldn’t move away from the middle of the street. She looked up at the driver and started angrily to tell him that there was plenty of room at the sides of the street, and that she couldn’t move anyway, even if there weren’t. The man jumped down from his seat and bent down and looked at her foot. The basin was still on Rosa’s head and he took it from her, and put it in his vehicle. Then he squatted down and bidding Rosa put a hand on his shoulders to steady herself, he began to touch with gentle fingers the swelling ankle, pulling at it and massaging it. They were still in the middle of the street. Rosa looked around to see if the women were still there to look at them but they had gone away. There was no one but a small boy licking a candy stick, and he wasn’t paying any attention to them. The cochero looked up at her, the sweat on his face, saw her looking around with pain and embarrassment mingled on her face. Then, so swiftly she found no time to protest, he closed his arms about her knees and lifted her like a child. He carried her to his tartanilla,plumped her down on one of the seats. Then he left her, coming back after a short while with some coconut oil in the hollow of his palm. He rubbed the oil on her foot, and massaged it. He was seated on the seat opposite Rosa’s and had raised the injured foot to his thigh, letting it rest there, despite Rosa’s protest, on his blue faded trousers. The basin of wet clothes was beside Rosa on the seat and she fingered the clothing with fluttering hands. The cochero asked her where she lived and she told him, pointing out the house. He asked what had happened, and she recited the whole thing to him, stopping with embarrassment when she remembered the loosening of her patadiongand the nakedness of her bosom. How glad she was he had not seen her thus. The cochero had finished with her foot, and she slid from the seat, her basin on a hip. But he took it from her, asking her to tell him where the bleaching stones were. He went then, and himself laid out the white linen on the stones, knowing like a woman, which part to turn to the sun.

He came back after a while, just as Rosa heard with frightened ears the call of her mistress. She snatched the basin from the cochero’s hand and despite the pain caused her, limped away.

She told her mistress about the accident. The woman did not do anything save to scold her lightly for being careless. Then she looked at the swollen foot and asked who had put oil on it. Rosa was suddenly shy of having to let anyone know about her cochero, so she said she had asked for a little oil at the store and put it on her foot herself. Her mistress was unusually tolerant, and Rosa forgot about the slapping and said to herself this was a day full of luck!

It was with very sharp regret that she thought of her having forgotten to ask the cochero his name. Now, in the days that followed, she thought of him, the way he had wound an arm around her knees and carried her like a little girl. She dreamed about the gentleness of his fingers. She smiled remembering the way he had laid out the clothes on stones to bleach. She knew that meant he must do his own washing. And she ached in ten­derness over him and his need for a woman like her to do such things for him—things like mending the straight tear she had noticed at the knee of his trousers when her foot had rested on them; like measuring his tartanilla seat cushions for him, and making them, and stringing them on his vehicle. She thought of the names for men she knew and called him by it in thinking of him, ever afterwards. In her thoughts she spoke to him and he always answered.

She found time to come out on the street for a while, every day. Sometimes she would sweep the yard or trim the scraggly hedge of viola bushes; or she would loiter on an errand for tomatoes or vinegar. She said to herself, He dreams of me too, and he thinks of me. He passes here every day wishing to see me. She never saw him pass, but she said to herself, He passes just when I am in the house, that’s why I never see him.

Some tartanilla would pass, and if she could, as soon as she heard the sound of the wheels, she looked out of a window, hoping it would be Angel’s. Sometimes she would sing very loudly, if she felt her mistress was in a good humor and not likely to object. She told herself that if he could not see her, he would at least wish to hear her voice.

She longed no more to be part of the group about the water tank in the bathhouse. She thought of the women there and their jokes and she smiled, in pity, because they did not have what she had, some one by the name of Angel, who knew how to massage injured feet back to being good for walking and who knew how to lay out clothes for bleaching.

When they teased her about Sancho, who insisted on pumping her can full every time she went for drinking water, she smiled at the women and at the man, full of her hidden knowledge about someone picking her up and being gentle with her. She was too full of this secret joy to mind their teasing. Where before she had been openly angry and secretly pleased, now she was indifferent. She looked at Sancho and thought him very rude beside… beside Angel. He always put his hands over hers when she made a move to pump water. He always spoke to her about not being angry with the women’s teasing. She thought he was merely trying to show off. And when one day Sancho said, “Do not mind their teasing; they would tease you more if they knew I really feel like they say I do,” she glared at him and thought him unbearably ill-mannered. She spat out of the corner of her mouth, letting him see the grimace of distaste she made when she did so, and seeing Sancho’s disturbed face, she thought, If Angel knew, he’d strike you a big blow. But she was silent and proud and unsmiling. Sancho looked after her with the heavy can of water held by one hand, the other hand flung out to balance herself against the weight. He waited for her to turn and smile at him as she sometimes did, but she simply went her way. He flung his head up and then laughed snortingly.

Rosa’s mistress made her usual bad-humored sallies against her fancied slowness. Noticing Rosa’s sudden excursions into the street, she made remarks and asked curious questions. Always the girl had an excuse and her mistress soon made no further questions. And unless she was in bad temper, she was amused at her servant’s attempts at singing.

One night she sent the maid to a store for wine. Rosa came back with a broken bottle empty of all its contents. Sudden anger at the waste and the loss made her strike out with closed fists, not caring where her blows landed until the girl was in tears. It often touched her when she saw Rosa crying and cowering, but now the woman was too angry to pity.

It never occurred to Rosa that she could herself strike out and return every blow. Her mistress was thirtyish, with peaked face and thin frame, and Rosa’s strong arms, used to pounding clothes and carrying water, could easily have done her hurt. But Rosa merely cried and cried, saying now and then Aruy! Aruy!, until the woman, exhausted by her own anger left off striking the girl to sit down in a chair, curse loudly about the loss of such good wine, and ask where she was going to get the money to buy another bottle.

Rosa folded her clothes into a neat bundle, wrapped them in her blanket, and getting out her slippers, thrust her feet into them. She crept out of a door without her mistress seeing her and told herself she’d never come back to that house again.

It would have been useless to tell her mistress how the bottle had been broken, and the wine spilled. She had been walking alone in the street hurrying to the wine store, and Sancho had met her. They had talked; he begging her to let him walk with her and she saying her mistress would be angry if she saw. Sancho had insisted and they had gone to the store and bought the wine, and then going home, her foot had struck a sharp stone. She had bent to hold a foot up, looking at the sole to see if the stone had made it bleed. Her dress had a wide, deep neck, and it must have hung away from her body when she bent. Anyway, she had looked up to find Sancho looking into the neck of her dress. His eyes were turned hastily away as soon as she straightened up, and she thought she could do nothing but hold her peace. But after a short distance in their resumed walk home, he had stopped to pick up a long twig lying on the ground. With deft strokes he had drawn twin sharp peaks on the ground. They looked merely like the zigzags one does draw playfully with any stick, but Rosa, having seen him looking into her dress while she bent over, now became so angry that she swung out and with all her force struck him on the check with her open palm. He reeled from the unexpected blow, and quickly steadied himself while Rosa shot name after name at him. Anger rose in his face. It was nearly dark, and there was no one else on the street. He laughed, short angry laughter, and called her back name for name. Rosa approached him and made to slap him again, but Sancho was too quick for her. He had slipped out of her way and himself slapped her instead. The surprise of it angered her into sudden tears. She swung up the bottle of wine she had held tightly in one hand, and ran after the man to strike him with it. Sancho slapped her arm so hard that she dropped the bottle. The man had run away laughing, calling back a final undeserved name at her, leaving her to look with tears at the wine seeping into the ground. Some people had come toward her then, asking what had happened. She had stooped, picked up the biggest piece of glass, and hurried back to her mistress, wondering whether she would be believed and forgiven.

Rosa walked down street after street. She had long ago wiped the tears from her face, and her thoughts were of a place to sleep, for it was late at night. She told herself she would kill Sancho if she ever saw him again. She picked up a stone from the road, saying, I wish a cold wind would strike him dead, and so on; and the stone she grasped tightly, say­ing, If I meet him now, I would throw this at him, and aim so well that I would surely hit him.

She rubbed her arm in memory of the numbing blow the man had dealt it, and touched her face with furious shame for the slap he had dared to give her. Her fists closed more tightly about the stone and she looked about her as if she expected Sancho to appear.

She thought of her mistress. She had been almost a year in the woman’s employ. Usually she stayed in a place, at the most, for four months. Sometimes it was the master’s smirking ways and evil eyes, sometimes it was the children’s bullying demands. She had stayed with this last mistress because in spite of her spells of bad humor, there were periods afterward when she would be generous with money for a dress, or for a cine with other maids. And they had been alone, the two of them. Sometimes the mistress would get so drunk that she would slobber into her drink and mumble of persons that must have died. When she was helpless she might perhaps have starved if Rosa had not forcibly fed her. Now, however, thought of the fierce beating the woman had given her made Rosa cry a little and repeat her vow that she would never step into the house again.

Then she thought of Angel, the cochero who had been gentle, and she lost her tears in thinking how he would never have done what Sancho did. If he knew what had happened to her, he would come running now and take her to his own home, and she would not have to worry about a place to sleep this night. She wandered about, not stopping at those places where she knew she would be accepted if she tried, her mind full of the injustices she had received and of comparisons between Sancho and Angel. She paused every time a tartanilla came her way, peering intently into the face of the cochero, hoping it would be he, ready to break her face into smiles if it were indeed. She carried her bundle on her arm all this while, now clenching a fist about the stone she still had not dropped and gnashing her teeth.

She had been walking about for quite a while, feeling not very tired, having no urgent need to hurry about finding herself a place, so sharp her hopes were of somehow seeing her cochero on the streets. That was all she cared about, that she must walk into whatever street she came to, because only in that way would he see her and learn what they had done to her.

Then, turning into a street full of stores set side by side, she felt the swish of a horse almost brushing against her. She looked up angrily at the cochero’s laughing remark about his whip missing her beautiful bust. An offense like that, so soon after all her grief at what Sancho had done, inflamed her into passionate anger, and mouthing a quick curse, she flung the stone in her hand at the cochero on his seat. It was rather dark and she did not quite see his face. But apparently she hit something, for he suddenly yelled a stop at the horse, clambered down, and ran back to her, demanding the reason for her throwing the stone. She exclaimed hotly at his offense with the whip, and then looking up into his face, she gasped. She gasped and said, “Angel!”

For it was he. He was wearing a striped shirt, like so many other people were wearing, and he had on the very same trousers of dark blue he had worn when he massaged her foot. But he gazed at her in nothing but anger, asking whether her body was so precious that she would kill his horse. Also, why did she keep saying Angel; that was not his name!

Rosa kept looking up at him not hearing a word of his threats about taking her to the municipio, saying only Angel, Angel, in spite of his protests that that was not his name. At last she understood that thecochero did not even remember her and she realized how empty her thoughts of him now were. Even his name was not Angel. She turned suddenly to walk away from him, saying, “You do not even remember me.”

The cochero peered at her face and exclaimed after a while, “Oh yes! the girl with the swollen foot!” Rosa forgot all the emptiness, forgot the sudden sinking of her heart when she had realized that even he would flick his whip at a girl alone on the road, and lifted her smiling face at him, stopping suddenly to tell him her foot had healed very quickly. The cochero asked her after a while where she was going, and she said breathlessly, without knowing just why she answered so, “I am going home!” He asked no questions about where she had been, why she was so late. He bade her ride in his vehicle, grandly saying he would not make her pay, and then, with many a loud exclamation to his horse, he drove her to her mistress’ house.

Rosa didn’t tell him what had happened. Nor anything about her dreams. She merely answered the questions the cochero asked her about how she had been. “With the grace of God, all right, thank you.” Once he made her a sly joke about his knowing there were simply lots of men courting her. Rosa laughed breathlessly and denied it. She wished they would never arrive, but they soon did. The cochero waited for her to get out, and then drove off, saying “Don’t mention it” to her many thanks. She ran after the tartanilla when it had gone off a little way, and asked, running beside the moving vehicle, looking up into his face, “What is your name?”

The cochero shouted, without stopping his horse, “Pedro” and continued to drive away.

Rosa went into the house without hesitation, forgetting all her vows about never stepping into it again and wondering why it was so still. She turned on the lights and found her mistress sleeping at a table with her head cradled in her arms, a new wine bottle before her, empty now of all its contents. With an arm about the thin woman’s waist, she half dragged her into her bed. When the woman would wake, she would say nothing, remembering nothing. Rosa turned on the light in the kitchen and hummed her preparations for a meal.

Ancient Filipino writers:

Francisco Baltazar:

              Si Baltazar ay ipinanganak sa Panginay, Bigaa, Bulacan noong 2 Abril 1788. Ang kaniyang mga magulang ay sina Juana dela Cruz at Juan Balagtas na isang panday. Siya ay may palayaw na Kiko at may tatlong kapatid: sina Felipe, Concha, at Nicholasa.

Matapos na makapag-aral ng katekismo, nagtungo siya Tondo noong 1799 upang manilbihan sa kanyang tiyahin na si Doña Trinidad, na siyang nagpaaral sa kanya sa Colegio de San Juan de Letran at sa Colegio de San Jose. Nagpakadalubhasa sa mga kursong Latin, Español, humanidades, at batas, si Baltazar ay nakapagtapos pag-aaral noong 1812. Malaki ang naging impluwensiya ni Jose dela Cruz (o Huseng Sisiw), kilalang makata mula Tondo at magaling na guro ni Baltazar, sa kanyang pagsusulat ng mga tula, awit, at moro-moro.

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Florante at Laura

by: Francisco Baltazar

Sa umpisa ng Florante at Laura, matatagpuan natin si Florante (anak nina Duke Briseo at ni Prinsesa Floresca) na nakagapos sa puno ng higuera (Fig Tree) sa kagubatan sa labas ng Albanya. Napapaligiran siya ng dalawang leon, na handa nang dambahan si Florante.

Sa kabutihang palad, naglalakad din sa kagubatan si Aladin, isang Morong taga-Persya. Anak siya ni Sultan Ali-Adab. Nilisan niya ang kanyang sariling bayan, sapagkat inagaw sa kanya ng sariling ama si Flerida, ang kasintahan ni Aladin.

Narinig ni Aladin sa mga sigaw ni Florante ang mga kuwento ng mga kasamaang ginawa sa Albanya, ang pagpatay sa hari at ng mga ka-alyado nito, at ang di umano’y pagtataksil ni Laura (kasintahan ni Florante). Natagpuan ni Aladin si Florante, at pinatay niya ang mga leon bago pa nila nasaktan si Florante.

Tinulungan niya si Florante sa pagkagapos nito, ang magdamag niyang binantayan.

Ikinuwento ni Florante na pinadala siya sa Atenas nuong siya’y 11 taong gulang upang mag-aral. Duon niya nakilala ang kanyang kababayang si Adolfo, na siyang anak ni Conde Sileno. Si Adolfo ay hinahangaan ng kanyang mga guro, pati na rin ng sampu niyang kamag-aral, sapagkat si Adolfo ay mabait at napakatalino.

Subalit pagkaraan ng anim na taon, nahigitan ni Florante si Adolfo at duon lumabas ang tunay na kulay nito. Sa isang dula-dulaan, tinangka ni Adolfo na totohanang tagain si Florante. Mabuti na lang at niligtas si Florante ni Menandro, ang pamangkin ng gurong si Antenor. Kinabukasan, pinauwi si Adolfo sa Albanya.

Nanatili si Florante sa Atenas ng isa pang taon, nang makatanggap siya ng sulat mula sa kanyang ama. Ang balita ay pumanaw na raw ang ina ni Florante. Pagkaraan ng dalawa pang buwan, nakatanggap muli ng liham si Florante — pinapauwi na siya sa Albanya.

Nung pauwi na si Florante, humingi ng saklolo sa kanya ang hari ng Krotona, sapagkat ang kaharian nila ay sinasalakay ng hukbong Persiya, sa pamumuno ni Heneral Osmalik. Ipinakilala ni Duke Briseo si Florante kay Haring Linceo, at si Florante ay ginawang kumander ng hukbong Krotona.

Sa palasyo, nakilala ni Florante si Laura, ang napakagandang anak ni Haring Linceo. Bago siya sumali sa digmaan, ipinahayag ni Florante kay Laura ang kanyang saloobin.

Nagapi ni Florante si Heneral Osmalik sa loob ng limang oras. Nanatili naman si Florante sa Krotona ng limang buwan pa.

Dahil sa nais na niyang makapiling si Laura muli, bumalik si Florante sa Albanya. Nagtaka siyan nang madatnan niyang nagwawagayway ang bandilang Moro sa kanyang kaharian. Laking gulat na lang niya nang makita niyang pupugutan na ng ulo ang isang babae.

Kinalaban ni Florante ang hukbong Persya (sa pamumuno ni Aladin), at pinalaya niya ang kanyang bayan, pati na rin sina Haring Linceo, Duke Briseo, at Adolfo (na nakapiit nuon sa kulungan).

Sinalakay naman ni Miramolin ang Albanya, ngunit nabigo sila kay Florante. Pagkatapos ng labanan, 17 na hari ang sumuko kay Florante.

Siguro napagod si Florante, kaya nagbakasyon muna siya sa Etolia.

Isang araw, nakatanggap muli siya ng sulat mula sa hari — pinapabalik siya muli sa Albanya.

Pagbalik ni Florante sa kanyang kaharian, hinuli siya ng hukbong Albanya (30,000 ang bilang ng mga sundalo). Malamang kinakabahan sila gawa ng military record ni Florante, kung kaya’t medyo “overkill” ang paghuli sa kanya.

Ipiniit si Florante sa kulungan (utos ni Adolfo, na siyang pasimuno ng kudeta, at siya ring pumatay kay Haring Linceo at Duke Briseo habang malayo si Florante).

Pagkaraan ng 18 na araw, pinagapos si Florante sa puno duon sa gubat upang kainin siya ng mga mababangis na hayop. Masuwerte siya at kahit dalawang araw nang nakalilipas, hindi pa siya kinakain ng mga hayop. At higit na mapalad siya nang dumating si Aladin, sapagkat nagugutom pala ang leon kapag dalawang araw na silang hindi kumakain.

Habang nagkwekwentuhan si Florante at Aladin, nakarinig sila ng dalawang babaeng nag-uusap.

Unang Babae: “Nung narinig ko na pupugutan ang aking kasintahan, pumayag ako na magpakasal sa Sultan basta’t hindi na matutuloy ang parusang kamatayan. Buti na lang ang pinalaya ang mahal ko. Nung gabing iyon, nagsuot sundalo ako at tumakas ako. Ilang taon na rin akong pagala-gala bago kita natagpuan dito sa gubat.”

Ikinuwento naman ni Laura ang mga nangyari sa Albanya habang wala si Florante: Inagaw ni Adolfo ang trono, pinugutan ng ulo ang hari at ang mga ka-alyado nito. Sinabi rin ni Laura na sinubukan niyang padalhan ng liham si Florante para malaman niya ang mga kaganapan sa Albanya.

Sinabi rin niya na naghayag ng pag-ibig si Adolfo, at humingi si Laura ng 5 buwan upang pag-isipan ito. Dahil sa hindi makuha ni Adolfo ang puso ni Laura, pinagtangkaan na lang niyang gahasain ito… sa gubat. Makalipas ang dalawang araw lamang mula nung ipinagapos si Florante sa puno. Mga 20 araw lamang matapos na mahuli si Florante.

Hindi niya binigyan si Laura ng 5 buwan. Ni panugit na isang buwan.

Mabuti na lang at naglakad si Flerida sa gubat. Nakita niya si Adolfo, at dahil batid niya ang mga hangarin nito, ay pinana niya si Adolfo, at dahil batid niya ang mga hangarin nito, ay pinana niya si Adolfo haggang ito’y namatay.

Nagkita-kita ang apat na magkasintahan.

Natagpuan silang apat ni Menandro at ng hukbong naghahanap kay Adolfo. Laking tuwa na lamang nina Menandro nang matagpuan nilang buhay pa sina Florante at Laura.

Hindi nagtagal, nagpakasal si Florante at Laura, at sila’y naging hari at reyna ng Albanya. Nagpabinyag naman sina Aladin at Flerida, nagpakasal din, at bumalik sa Persya upang mamuno sa kanilang kaharian.

Ancient Filipino writers:

Nick Joaquin:

Poet, fictitious, essayist, biographer, playwright, and National Artist, decided to quit after three years of secondary education at the Mapa High School. Classroom work simply bored him. He thought his teachers didn't know enough. He discovered that he could learn more by reading books on his own, and his father's library had many of the books he cared to read. He read all the fiction he could lay his hands on, plus the lives of saints, medieval and ancient history, the poems of Walter de la Mare and Ruben Dario. He knew his Bible from Genesis to Revelations. Of him actress-professor Sarah K. Joaquin once wrote: "Nick is so modest, so humble, so unassuming . . .his chief fault is his rabid and insane love for books. He likes long walks and worn out shoes. Before Intramuros was burned down, he used to make the rounds of the churches when he did not have anything to do or any place to go. Except when his work interferes, he receives daily communion." He doesn't like fish, sports, and dressing up. He is a bookworm with a gift of total recall.He was born "at about 6:00 a.m." in Paco, Manila, on 04 May 1917. The moment he emerged from his mother's womb, the baby Nicomedes--or Onching, to his kin--made a "big howling noise" to announce his arrival. That noise still characterizes his arrival at literary soirees. He started writing short stories, poems, and essays in 1934. Many of them were published in Manila magazines, and a few found their way into foreign journals. His essay La Naval de Manila (1943) won in a contest sponsored by the Dominicans whose university, the UST, awarded him an A.A. (Associate in Arts) certificate on the strength of his literary talents. The Dominicans also offered him a two-year scholarship to the Albert College in Hong Kong, and he accepted. Unable to follow the rigid rules imposed upon those studying for the priesthood, however, he left the seminary in 1950.
He is included in Heart of the Island (1947) and Philippine Poetry Annual: 1947 - 1949 (1950), both edited by Manuel A. Viray.


The following are Joaquin's published books:

Prose and Poems (1952) The Woman Who Had Two Navels (1961) Selected Stories (1962) La Naval de Manila and Other Essays (1964) The Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1966) Tropical Gothic (1972) The Complete Poems and Plays of Jose Rizal (1976) Reportage on Crime (1977) Reportage on Lovers (1977) Nora Aunor and Other Profiles (1977) Ronnie Poe and Other Silhouettes (1977) Amalia Fuentes and Other Etchings (1977) Gloria Diaz and Other Delineations (1977) Doveglion and Other Cameos (1977) A Question of Heroes (1977) Stories for Groovy Kids (1979) Almanac for Manileños (1979) Manila: Sin City and Other Chronicles (1980) Language of the Street and Other Essays (1980) Reportage on the Marcoses (1979, 1981)

From the jacket of A Question of Heroes: "Along with the author's recent 'culture as History,' [this book is] a gentle polemical inquiry into thecharacter of the Filipinos' national culture, these essays constitute perhaps the most coherent picture of the revolutionary heritage most Filipinos claim for themselves today."
"Nick Joaquin is, in my opinion," wrote Jose Garcia Villa, "the only Filipino writer with a real imagination--that imagination of power and depth and great metaphysical seeing--and which knows how to express itself in great language, who writes poetry, and who reveals behind his writings a genuine first-rate mind."
"Joaquin has proven the truism," said Alejandro R. Roces, "that to understand the present, you have to first know the past. And by presenting the present as a continuation of the future, he has traced the roots of our rotting society to our moral confusion. He is doing for the Philippines what Faulkner has done for the [U.S.] South."
"Nick Joaquin," said Manuel A. Viray, "a gifted stylist, has used his sensitive style and his exciting evocations in portraying the peculiar evil, social and moral, we see around us and in proving that passion as well as reason can never be quenched."
After the death of his father, Joaquin went to live with his brother Enrique ("Ike"). With the encouragement of his sister-in-law, Sarah, he submitted a story to the Herald Mid-Week Magazine and it was published. He soon sent out more stories to other magazines. In 1949 "Guardia de Honor" was declared the best story of the year in the Philipines Free Press.
He was designated manager of his sister-in-law Sarah's dramatic organization after WWII. Later he joined the Philippines Free Press as proofreader and subsequently became a rewrite man. He wrote feature articles he bylined as "Quijano de Manila." They were a great hit. Soon they appeared regularly and Quijano de Manila became one of the most famous journalists in the country.
Because of labor problems in the Free Press, he left and edited Asia-Philippine Leader. He had been with the Free Press for 27 years (1950-77). Nicomedes "Onching" M. Joaquin, today just "Nick," who came into the world howling, lives quietly in San Juan del Monte writing, among others, kiddie books. And "he survives on sheer genius," remarks one admirer of his.

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Cave and Shadows

by: Nick Joaquin 

The story is all about the mysterious death of a girl Named Nenita Coogan. The American girl who had been hated by many because of being so talkative and she often tell story or secrets of a person to the world, others call her a compulsive liar. (Why was her death considered mysterious?) It is because she had been found dead in a cave which had been closed to the public and guarded by the mayor's guards so that nobody could enter into that cave she's bare naked when found and so fragrant which caught the of attention of Mr. Pocholo Gatmaitan that's why her body was found. Mr. Jack Henson, former husband of Alfreda was told by the latter to investigate about the case of her daughter because she cannot get easily encourage that her daughter only died in cardiac arrest and not been murdered nor raped. So, Jack, from Davao planned to Manila and there Nenitas ghost haunted him, as if for him, Nenita wanted to say something. He investigate it all his might, he went to Nenita's whereabouts and interviewed her friends and even ask the oldest person in Barrio Bato because in his mind, there's a secret passage in the cave where Nenita has been found, that might be the passage where Nenita entered to be able to enter the cave, non might been used by the murderer. After all the information's he got and the persons he met, he found out the killer and how he planned to do the killing but all that he guessed where just conclusions and some of it were true and definitely true yet at the end when he went to the Hermana, the priestess of the cult there. He found the answers though mystically told or unbelievable but Hermana has point and proved it to him. According to Hermana, Pocholo is whom Jack found out to be the murderer because of the plan Pocholo admit to him,but the ghost of Nenita herself talked to the Hermana saying that she died with love which she found out inside the cave where in the goddesses of the cave gave her, she has been awake when Pocholo carried her in the cave and she found the cave bright and fragrant and the goddess spoke to her that if she wanted to stay she could stay forever in the cave with the goddess or she could also went out to the world where she always run away and hurt by the people around her and Nenita just decided to stay, the fragrance of Nenitas body is not because of the car full of flowers where Nenita has laid inside Pocholo's car compartment because he fragrance wont last overnight, the fragrance was from the goddess of the cave Jack was puzzled because Pocholo admitted that he staged Nenitas apparition, he is the one who paid Yvette in order to act as Nenita and Hermana told Jack that Yvette was miles and miles away when Jack saw Nenits ghost, it means that Yvette didn't do the instruction of Pocholo, the ghost is Nenita herself and the goddesses planed it because of reason. Why was Pocholo wanted to kill Nenita? Because Nenita found out the secrets of Pocholo and then he just tried to stop her but actually Pocholo only slapped Nenita because she was hysterical that time, maybe because she has gone in pot orgy and very exhausted that time, then, Nenita fe fell from a deep sleep and didn't wake up anymore, even when she was carried inside the cave.

Ancient Filipino writers: Jose Garcia Villa

Jose Garcia Villa:

Poet, critic, short story writer, and painter, Jose Garcia Villa was a consummate artist in poetry and in person as well. At parties given him by friends and admirers whenever he came home for a brief visit, things memorable usually happened. Take that scene many years ago at the home of the late Federico Mangahas, a close friend of Villa's. The poet, resplendent in his shiny attire, his belt an ordinary knotted cow's rope, stood at a corner talking with a young woman. Someone in the crowd remarked: "What's the idea wearing a belt like that?" No answer. Only the faint laughter of a woman was heard. Or was it a giggle perhaps? Then there was one evening, with few people around, when he sat down Buddha-like on a semi-marble bench under Dalupan Hall at UE waiting for somebody. That was the year he came home from America to receive a doctor's degree, honoris causa, from FEU. Somebody asked: "What are you doing?" He looked up slowly and answered bemused: "I am just catching up trying to be immoral." Sounded something like that. There was only murmuring among the crowd. They were not sure whether the man was joking or serious. They were awed to learn that he was the famed Jose Garcia Villa. What did the people remember? The Buddha-like posture? Or what he said?That was Villa the artist. There's something about his person or what he does or says that makes people gravitate toward him. Stare at him or listen to him.
Villa is the undisputed Filipino supremo of the practitioners of the "artsakists." His followers have diminished in number but are still considerable.
Villa was born in Singalong, Manila, on 05 August 1908. His parents were Simeon Villa, personal physician of revolutionary general Emilio Aguinaldo, and Guia Garcia. He graduated from the UP High School in 1925 and enrolled in the pre-med course. He didn't enjoy working on cadavers and so he switched to pre-law, which he didn't like either. A short biography prepared by the Foreign Service Institute said Villa was first interested in painting but turned to writing after reading Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio."
Meanwhile, he devoted a good part of his time writing short stories and poems. Soon he started exerting his leadership among the UP writers.
His ideas on literature were provocative. He stirred strong feelings. He was thought too individualistic. He published his series of erotic poems, "Man Songs" in 1929. It was too bold for the staid UP administrators, who summarily suspended Villa from the university. He was even fined P70 for "obscenity" by the Manila Court of First Instance.
With the P1,000 he won as a prize from the Philippines Free Press for his "Mir-i-Nisa," adjudged the best short story that year (1929), he migrated to the United States. He enrolled at the University of New Mexico where he edited and published a mimeographed literary magazine he founded: Clay. Several young American writers who eventually became famous contributed. Villa wrote several short stories published in prestigious American magazines and anthologies.
Here is a partial list of his published books:

• Philippine Short Stories, best 25 stories of 1928 (1929)
• Footnote to Youth, short stories (1933)
• Many Voices, poems (1939)
• Poems (1941)
• Have Come Am Here, poems ((1941)
• Selected Poems and New (1942)
• A Doveglion Book of Philippine Poetry (1962)

Through the sponsorship of Conrad Aiken, noted American poet and critic, Villa was granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing. He was also awarded $1,000 for "outstanding work in American literature." He won first prize in poetry at the UP Golden Jubilee Literary Contests (1958) and was conferred the degree Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, by FEU (1959); the Pro Patria Award for literature (1961); Heritage Awards for literature, for poetry and short stories (1962); and National Artist Award for Literature (1973).
On 07 February 1997, Jose Garcia Villa died at a New York hospital, two days after he was found unconscious in his apartment. He was 88.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said Villa, popularly known as the "comma poet," died at 12:37 a.m. (New York time) of "cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia" at the St. Vincent Hospital in Greenwich.
He is survived by his two sons, Randy and Lance, and three grandchildren.
Interment was scheduled on Feb. 10 in New York, the DFA said. It added that Villa had expressed the wish to be buried wearing a barong. Though he lived in New York for 67 years, he remained happily a Filipino citizen.

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Footnote to Youth 

by Jose Garcia Villa

The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong's grandmother.

I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him.

The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong's foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more.

Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests.

Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already was dark--these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man--he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do anything.

He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day.

Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field

work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek.

Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool.

It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar.

Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents.

Dodong's mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone.

His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father.

Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His father looked old now.

"I am going to marry Teang," Dodong said.

His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything.

"I will marry Teang," Dodong repeated. "I will marry Teang."

His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat.

"I asked her last night to marry me and she said...yes. I want your permission. I... want... it...." There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness.

"Must you marry, Dodong?"

Dodong resented his father's questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused.

"You are very young, Dodong."

"I'm... seventeen."

"That's very young to get married at."

"I... I want to marry...Teang's a good girl."

"Tell your mother," his father said.

"You tell her, tatay."

"Dodong, you tell your inay."

"You tell her."

"All right, Dodong."

"You will let me marry Teang?"

"Son, if that is your wish... of course..." There was a strange helpless light in his father's eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself.

Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream....

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Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry.

In a few moments he would be a father. "Father, father," he whispered the word with awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable... "Your son," people would soon be telling him. "Your son, Dodong."

Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children... What made him think that? What was the matter with him? God!

He heard his mother's voice from the house:

"Come up, Dodong. It is over."

Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.

"Dodong," his mother called again. "Dodong."

He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother.

"It is a boy," his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up.

Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents' eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp.

He wanted to hide from them, to run away.

"Dodong, you come up. You come up," he mother said.

Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun.

"Dodong. Dodong."

"I'll... come up."

Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him.

His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently.

"Son," his father said.

And his mother: "Dodong..."

How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong.

"Teang?" Dodong said.

"She's sleeping. But you go on..."

His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.

Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative.

The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him.

“You give him to me. You give him to me," Dodong said.

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Blas was not Dodong's only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes.

Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong...

Dodong whom life had made ugly.

One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He w anted to be wise about many things.

One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth's dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken... after Love.

Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it.

When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas's steps, for he could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep.

"You better go to sleep. It is late," Dodong said.

Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice.

Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep.

"Itay ...," Blas called softly.

Dodong stirred and asked him what it was.

"I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight."

Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving.

"Itay, you think it over."

Dodong lay silent.

"I love Tona and... I want her."

Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white.

"You want to marry Tona," Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard...

"Yes."

"Must you marry?"

Blas's voice stilled with resentment. "I will marry Tona."

Dodong kept silent, hurt.

"You have objections, Itay?" Blas asked acridly.

"Son... n-none..." (But truly, God, I don't want Blas to marry yet... not yet. I don't want Blas to marry yet....)

But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph... now. Love must triumph... now. Afterwards... it will be life.

As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong... and then Life.

Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.