by: CHERYL L. DAYTEC
Let me spread flowers
on the road I traveled
to find you
Because I should not have regrets
But between that road
and where I stand
I will plant thorns
I should not retrace my steps
Let me honor
my memories of you
By forgetting them
until their most resilient ghost
disappears
Because they comfort and hurt
I cannot trust the double-edged
Let me banish my pains
with more tears
Until I will never cry again for you
Then I can cry when
There are other wounds
That I can heal with my tears
Or there are joys that I should celebrate
I traveled mountains and seas
To search for you
I did not find you; I found me
Before I did, I never knew I was lost
And now I know it was myself
I was looking for all along. /cld apr2013, st paul, mn, usa
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
MARITAL INFIDELITY: TO PUNISH OR NOT TO PUNISH (Part I of a Series)
By CHERYL L. DAYTEC
(The contents of this paper were presented
during a policy session with officers of the Department of Social Welfare and
Development facilitated by Atty. Germaine Trittle Leonin. The session was
intended to come out with an output for consideration by the Congress of the
Philippines. )
A. Introduction
Marriage is
a sacred union which obliges the parties
“to live together,
observe mutual love, respect and fidelity, and render mutual help and support.”[1]
To maintain the sanctity of marriage, the parties to it
should remain faithful to each other. Infidelity is regarded as a perversion of
marriage such that in most if not all countries,
it is a ground for divorce. In the Philippines which shares stellar billing with
Vatican as the two member-States of the United Nations without a divorce
legislation, it is a ground for legal
separation. The most extreme way the can law address marital infidelity with the end in view of
curbing it is by defining it as a criminal conduct.
As they began in the dawn of human history,
criminalization projects dealt with
wives more severely than husbands. Adultery is the common term for marital infidelity
regardless of whether it is attributable to the husband or the wife. Gender-based
discrimination has always been the order of the day with harsher sanctions for wives than
husbands who breached their
vows of fidelity. This is
true in the Philippines which is the
only unfaithfulness-penalizing country where the nomenclature for the crime
committed through marital infidelity changes based on the sex of the spouse.
The crime has been baptized by the Revised Penal Code adultery if committed by the wife, and concubinage if committed by the husband.
It is not only in name where the
two crimes differ but also in terms of nature, proof required, and
penalty. Adultery[2]
is committed by a married woman and her paramour aware of her marital status when they engage in carnal relation,
whether discreetly or not. Every single sex act constitutes adultery. Mere
proof of sexual intercourse is sufficient for conviction. The penalty ranges
from 2 years, 4
months and 1 day to 6 years of imprisonment. On
the other hand, concubinage[3] is committed by a husband and his paramour aware of his marital status when
they engage in carnal relations under
scandalous circumstance, or when they cohabit
within the conjugal dwelling or any other
place. Obviously, mere proof of sex does not warrant a conviction. The
penalty for concubinage
ranges from 6 months and 1 day to a maximum of 4 years and 1 day of
imprisonment for the husband and
destierro for his paramour. The light penalty for concubinage
and the stringent proof requirement for
a husband’s conviction speaks the message that the husband is not responsible for breaching his
marital vows because social
expectations shaped him to behave in
that manner.
This brief paper delves into the present proposal to
amend the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines to make its provisions on
marital infidelity gender-neutral and the alternative call for decriminalization. The purpose of this paper
is to provide discussion points in discourses on policies regarding marital
infidelity.
B. The Justification for Gender-Bias in
Infidelity Penal Laws
The
criminalization of adultery must have been a progeny of the privatization of economic goods or property.
According to the Supreme Court of the United States in US v. Mata, “The gist of the crime of adultery under the Spanish
law, as under the common law in force in England and the United States in the
absence of statutory enactment, is the danger of introducing spurious heirs
into the family, whereby the rights of the real heirs may be impaired and a man
may be charged with the maintenance of a family not his own.”[4]
This was echoed in Evans v. Murff[5] where a United States District Court said, “The application of the term to the act appears to
arise from the idea that "criminal intercourse with a married woman ...
tended to adulterate the issue of an
innocent husband ... and to expose him to support and provide for another man's
[children]."
This harkens back to the age of feudalism when
a woman was regarded as chattel, a baby factory
whose function was to produce the heirs to inherit the fruits of her
husband’s labor.
The argument that anchors the
gender bias in our Revised Penal Code
is a relic of the past and has
lost currency. Science and technology
have made steady progress such that they are now available to easily establish
the paternity and filiation of a child.
C. Decriminalization Movements Around the Globe
In several jurisdictions
in the world, marital infidelity has been decriminalized although maintained as
a ground for divorce. It is no longer a
crime in any European country..[6]
Then called criminal conversation, it
was decriminalized in England as early as in 1857, and in predominantly
Catholic Ireland in 1976.[7]
The latter was one of the last European countries to
strike adultery from their penal codes.[8]
Decriminalization
movements invoked equality guarantees of domestic and international laws. In
1996, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court decriminalized
marital infidelity or adultery holding that it was repugnant to the constitutionally
protected equality of sexes.[9]
The landmark decision also stressed Guatemala’s need to honor its human rights treaty
obligations including those under the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW)..[10]
Turkey’s adultery law was declared unconstitutional
in 1996 because it was deemed discriminatory as it differentiated
between women and men.[11]
In 2007, the
Ugandan Constitutional Court also hurled into the dustbins of history
the State’s adultery law penalizing
women but not their male partners. The latest to take marital
infidelity off the penal statute
books is South Korea. This year, its Constitutional Court struck down
its law against adultery declaring
that it
is a private matter which should not be invaded by the State.[12]
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
[1] Art. 68,
Family Code of the Philippines.
[2] See, Article 333 of the Revised Penal Code.
[3] See, Article 334 of the Revised Penal Code.
[4] US v. Mata,
G.R. No.
L-6300, 2 March 1911.
[5] 135 F. Supp. 907, 911 (1955).
[6] Prof. Frances Raday,
Chair of the WG on Discrimination against Women, Background Information on
the Statement Issued by the Working Goup on Discrimation Against Women.
Accessed through: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=12672&LangID=E
[7] Id.
[8]. Id.
[9] See, “Joint Statement by the
United Nations Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in
practice” of 18 October 2012, available at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=12672&LangID=E.
[10] Id.
[11] BBC News: Europe, Turkey signals U-turn
on adultery, 14 September, 2004. Accessed from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3654650.stm.
|
[12] Hail
Ji, South Korea and Adultery, The New
York Times, 1 April 2015. Accessed from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/opinion/south-koreans-and-adultery.html.
MAITA GOMEZ, 64
by: Cheryl L. Daytec
So
you were on your way to the huge hippodrome
You
moved with the grace of a swan
Twenty
million people waited for the wave
of
your dainty hands on black-and -white TVs
That
was what you were supposed to do
Alas,
you rolled down the car window
The
stench of existence deterged of freedom
pervaded
the air
You
looked straight into the eyes of a child
hawking
her tender flesh to wrinkled strangers
not
quite comprehending her tragedy
You
saw her haggard mother
holding
with one thin hand a boil-infected baby
letting
go of hope with the other
You
saw her jobless father burn his self-deprecation
with
a bottle of cheap alcohol
Hungry
peasants carried full harvests to lay down
At
the feet of an indolent landlord chewing cigar
There
were millions of them
There
were just a few of you
The
soft bed, the flashy cars, the banquets,
The
promises of fame: their glitter was illusion
Subdued
by the sudden flash of enlightenment
It
was a time when opulence was a badge of shame
-an
era when hope was heresy to the wretched
Freedom
was a word inside the lexicon
devoid
of form outside of it
a
rhetoric of tyranny to mask injustice
a
birthright without duty-bearer
calling
for vanguards to unchain it
You
heard the call the moment you knew
One
cannot fully enjoy a world
that
despoils the laughter of others
So
you turned the car around
Slipping
out of your gown
You
dropped
the
circlet of fame around your head
the
rogue lipstick into the garbage bin
It
was war; you picked up a gun and rushed
to
the battlefields - a soldier of the people
Power
started to lose balance
when
you and comrades cast arrows into apathy
creating
a hole through which sunshine could pass
to
grace that young girl’s pallid life
to
give her mother strength to collect hope
to
put color on her father’s waxen face
You
never put down the freedom torch
You
made more torches
passing
them on to the toiling masses
They
found their way out of the darkness
of
apathy and victimhood
To
the light of consciousness
To
the parliament of the streets
To
the corners of the countryside
To
the slums, to the prisons
Confronting
the throne
Crumbling
the cornerstone of injustice
Winning
victories for the oppressed class
There
are virtues more solid than beauty
-Love
for the unloved, love for the masses
Sacrifice
for society’s dregs
Choosing
them all,
You
turned your back on a crown of beauty,
the
fancy dresses, the limelight
and
became more beautiful
Now,
from where the struggle goes on
We
watch you ride into the sunset
Beautifully
as
only you could/chytdaytec
14jul2012
MAITA GOMEZ: THE REBEL WITH A LOT OF CAUSES
 |
| Maita and I delivered lectures in the University of the Philippines-Baguio in 2011. |
The
following article by Filomeno Sta. Ana III is a beautiful piece on Maita Gomez,
the woman who should have been known more for being a
revolutionary/activist than for being a beauty queen. She should have read this. Sadly, she passed on to the next life
yesterday.
After winning a beauty
title, Maita could have chosen a comfortable life. She could have become a
product endorser, a movie star, a rich man's mistress, or anything that would
have assured her a life of comfort and plenty. But she chose a different path,
a radically different one, the one less traveled. She resolved to live among
the masses and to fight for freedom and justice especially during the dark
years of the Marcos dictatorship. Surely, it was not an easy life. It was
sacrifice. Yet she chose that.
Up to her last days, she was living her life for others. She was very active in exposing the lies of the mining industry and big business.
Ride on to the sunset, Maita. You will always be remembered.
Maita Gomez, lovely soul: Rebel-intellectual will always be a beauty queen
Maita Gomez in Paris, 2011.
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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
The online news portal of TV5
(Editor’s note: Filomeno Sta. Ana III wrote this piece on Maita sometime in March 2011, but it went unpublished. Sta. Ana shares it now with InterAksyon.com readers so they can, he says, get to know more about Maita Gomez, "always described as the beauty queen turned revolutionary." He adds: "She was more than that, and there was no contradiction in her being a fashion model/beauty queen and being an activist.")
Friends or acquaintances, those born in the 1950s and 1960s, remember Maita as the fashion model and beauty queen turned revolutionary. And Maita has been described and stereotyped in that manner through the years, elevating her to the status of a living legend or heroine. Maita feels uncomfortable being described as such. It is not that she is embarrassed about her colorful past. Neither does she want friends to forget her transition from high society to living a dangerous life. It is just that the stereotype is restrictive and can even be a liability.
I recall for example that I recommended Maita to be a resource person on the economics of mining for a public affairs broadcast. Maita knows this field well; she’s the current coordinator of Bantay Kita, a non-governmental organization whose mission is to have transparency of contracts and revenues in the extractive industries. The show’s producer thought I wasn’t serious about my recommendation. She said: “But she’s a beauty queen,” suggesting that Maita’s image as a beauty queen is what the audience will pick up, not why mining is harming development.
The stereotyping is likewise unfair to Maita, for it conceals her other qualities. Singling out her past—her being a beauty queen and an amazon sidetracks us from appreciating that she’s a hardworking professional; that she’s good at performing simultaneous tasks; that she has the uncanny ability to produce the resources to make both ends meet; that she is generous to a fault even to strangers (she’d buy all the remaining sampaguita garlands peddled by syndicated street children so they could retire early from the night’s work); that she has a pusong mamon; and above all, that she’s a protective daughter, mother and lola.
Maita has received awards for her beauty and for her activism, yet she’s nonchalant about this. But one honor that Maita will greatly value is being recognized as a good and outstanding mom. She’s a caring, loving mom. She encourages her children to be independent and treats them as herbarkada. When her children are in trouble, she prays for them and even asks friends like my wife Mae to offer novenas for them.
But when any of her children are wronged or mistreated, the motherly Maita is transformed into a fighter. Her being a fighter is thus essentially about fighting injustice and subjugation. She has fought for her daughter and her sons in the same manner that she has fought for the Filipino masses.
Maita’s life as a celebrated fashion model and her life as an armed underground activist were not contradictory at all. Her experience as a fashion model prepared her for the sacrifices and rigor of revolutionary life. After all, being a fashion model entailed long hours of work, perseverance, and tenacity. For Maita, it was not at all glamorous.
Some of Maita’s old friends observe that the pre-activist Maita they knew was no different from the radicalized Maita. Yael, whom Maita fondly treats as her niece, thinks that Maita is at heart an Assumptionista. That is, a convent-bred woman disposed to virtue, innocence, compassion, and charity. It just happens that these traits can make dedicated revolutionaries.
And so, we can see a continuum in Maita’s life as a colegiala and a society-page celebrity on the one hand and her life as a rebel and now as a civil society advocate.
In our recent trip to Paris (this piece was written in March last year), that continuum played out. Maita was serious about our participation in a conference on the extractive industries. She woke up early to register and to attend pre-conference briefings. She reprimanded me for not joining her in the meetings as I opted to visit Auvers-Sur-Oise. She phoned me, and asked me to immediately return to Paris.
But on another occasion, she got bored with a plenary session and proposed to me that we go to Montmarte. And at Montmarte, she bought an attractive painting, though I discouraged her because of the cost, which she intended to give to her son. Not armed with enough cash, she had to withdraw money from the ATM, making her poorer by several hundred euros.
Maita is galante, even when she doesn’t have money. In Paris, she did not hesitate to spend. On my birthday, she and another friend, Rina, treated me to a splendid dinner at a high-end Parisian bistro.
But the best moment of the trip was about her encounter with a young and hip African musician donning loose, multi-colored trousers. They met while smoking outside the hotel premises. The man initiated the conversation, obviously interested in Maita. He even managed to get Maita’s room number, leading to his next question: “Would you like to have sex with me?”
Maita’s quick retort: “Hey, I could be your grandma.” Not disheartened, the musician said, “I like older women, and I honestly thought you are in your 30s.” That of course flattered the senior citizen Maita. Pressing on, the musician said, “you’ll like me because a young man doesn’t get tired having sex.”
To end the conversation, Maita curtly told the dude to back off because at her age, she no longer enjoys sex.
Be that as it may, the story only shows that in the eyes of the young generation, and even among strangers, Maita remains a beauty queen.
Poem: DEFERRED ENLIGHTENMENT
DEFERRED ENLIGHTENMENT
by Cheryl L. Daytec
Love is patient, but should it be gullible, too?
Several minutes after the appointed time
A second resembles an ominous eternity
The gates are still gaping, bolts clutching
at the last hair-thin straws of their patience
The piqued microwave grudgingly stands by
to rescue carefully prepared food from cold
Sympathetic walls glow with motley reflections
Of her; he sees them with a content inner eye
Even the monochromatic curtains pirouette
With an endless stream of happy memories
He savors each one, each one, till they run out
The gardening magazine in his hand thickens
And the mundane articles seduce his attention
till his anxiety vanishes in the colorful pictures
Of course, she will arrive when she will arrive
But the gentle breeze from the open window
Diffuses a fraught whisper of rebuke, taunting,
Counting the big mugs of coffee he consumed
Counting the sticks of cigarette turned ashes
Counting the times he glanced at the clock
The times he dialed a number beyond reach
The many times he was let down in days past
Love made him forget the rudiments of math
Slowly, the wide room becomes too narrow
for the sudden flood of his tormented thoughts
The walls mutate into a boring vision of white
Till they morph into a brilliance of grim reality
With the speed of a lover tailing his beloved
He scurries to the long-agape wide gates
And locks them./ chytdaytec
PROSECUTED FOR DARING TO MARRY
PROSECUTED FOR DARING TO MARRY
A Gay-affirming Community Church carried out a mass wedding for gay and lesbian families in the Philippine city of Baguio, recently. Now the city government is considering whether to prosecute those who participated.
The event was part of the city’s Pride Month celebrations. The mass wedding drew sharp criticism from leaders of other religious traditions, the newspaper reported.
Before the wedding took place, a Catholic cleric, Bishop Carlito Cenzon, condemned the plan, saying, "Same-sex wedding is wrong and cannot be called a holy union," the local newspaper, Sun-Star reported in a June 23 article.
"We pity them, they love each other, but they cannot be wed," the bishop added.
But the wedding ceremony went forward at the Metropolitan Community Church, to the displeasure of local government officials. Eight couples were wed. Among the celebrants were even a few Americans.
The three pastors who officiated faced threats of having their licenses to officiate at weddings yanked, CBCP News.com reported on June 29.
"Councilor Richard Cariño said the City Council could declare a person unwelcome if he or she is found violating laws and his actions are contrary to the principles and ordinances of the city, and if his actions are oppressive to the community".
Cariño indicated that the couples and Metropolitan Community Church clergy alike could face censure.
Another city council member, Edison Bilog, suggested that the city government might pass a resolution against the participants in order to level charges at them, and claimed that the wedding was violation of Philippines law, specifically, Revised Penal Code section 352.
But attorney Cheryl Daytec said that the wedding was not a violation of any law, since it was not legally binding and not portrayed as such.
Daytec may not find much support from the local legal community. The Sun-Star reported that the city’s chapter of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines had condemned the marriage ceremony and posited that the wedding was a legal infraction.
Local queer equality activists refused to back down, issuing their own statement and decrying anti-gay animus.
"We believe that the combined pronouncements and actions made by the aforementioned parties are clearly discriminatory and violate the human rights of the LGBT persons, their families and entire communities," the Baguio Pride Network said in a June 30 media conference.
Though acceptance of queer folk has been increasing in the Philippines, as in many nations globally, there are no legal protections for sexual minorities or their families. Sexual encounters between consenting adults of the same gender are not illegal, and the Philippines discarded its ban on openly gay and lesbian military members two years ago. But a statute prohibiting "grave scandal" gives authorities in the Philippines some leverage for prosecuting gays, according to a Wikipedia article.
Metropolitan Community Churches preach acceptance for queer folk in many nations with anti-gay laws, including African nations, Eastern European countries, the United States, and Jamaica.
POEM: RELUCTANT DEPARTURE
Reluctant Departure(for Y and S)
by Cheryl L. Daytec
for the last time I reconnoiter the hotel lobby
someone takes our picture in front of the ficus
now taller than it was one calendar ago
with recalcitrance, we draggle the weight
of three hundred forty-one days of my life…
fifty kilograms cramped in two black suitcases-
assorted books, clothes and overused shoes
two laptops, a camera, even a cheap trinket
her thin silver spoon we shared for months
digging through ice cream or a bowl of cereals
as we dissected the body of truths and lies
about Darfur, Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Bosnia
the unheard wails of the Roma and my people
always, the rhetoric of justice was gripping
oh, yes, she graciously bestowed on me
a brown teapot- a legacy from her mother
it now travels to where my fate takes me
suppressing tears, we sit across each other
in the almost empty airport coffee shop
absently, she stirs her hot chocolate
my camera seizes her struggle to smile
and then I go after a lingering hug and a kiss..
as I brace to be frisked for security check
I look beyond the long queue behind me
among strangers she stands in her blue shirt
brandishing her sorrow with a slow hand
I wave back… then abruptly, I turn away
as the corners of my mouth curve downward
a woman runs a detector through my body
does it descry the deep twinge in my chest?
I rush to the departure lounge where I weep
I weep even more when she calls my mobile
voice cracking, she says she did not divine pain
oh…the best words have been uttered last
when time and distance are now our enemies.
A SHORT LOVE STORY
By Amador Daguio
Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as the edge of the headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one bound that carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside, then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments during which he seemed to wait, he talked to the listening darkness.
"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help it."
The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her. She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.
But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow, Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.
"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt a pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the room, leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and lights upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.
"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."
"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other man."
He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"
She did not answer him.
"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.
"Yes, I know," she said weakly.
"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I have been a good husband to you."
"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.
"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long. We should have another chance before it is too late for both of us."
This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She wound the blanket more snugly around herself.
"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."
"Yes, I know."
"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"
"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the ceiling.
Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers clamorously called in her care through the walls.
Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from the mountain creek early that evening.
"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best wives in the whole village."
"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly. She almost seemed to smile.
He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would he hold her face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.
"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live in it as long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."
"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the rice."
"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for the two of us."
"I have no use for any field," she said.
He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.
"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be here. They will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the dance."
"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas are playing."
"You know that I cannot."
"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked me behind my back. You know that."
"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and Madulimay."
She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.
She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb, the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled, resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.
They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final climb to the other side of the mountain.
She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were. She looked at his body that carved out of the mountains five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she had lost him.
She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I must die."
"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.
"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I don't care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."
"Then you'll always be fruitless."
"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."
"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."
She was silent.
"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody will get the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."
"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice was a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."
"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die together. Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."
The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.
"I'll keep my beads," she said. "Awiyao, let me keep my beads," she half-whispered.
"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are worth twenty fields."
"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said. "I love you. I love you and have nothing to give."
She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside. "Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"
"I am not in hurry."
"The elders will scold you. You had better go."
"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."
"It is all right with me."
He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.
"I know," she said.
He went to the door.
"Awiyao!"
He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony. It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest, in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like taking away of his life to leave her like this.
"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The beads!" He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him, clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.
"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her face in his neck.
The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the night.
Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.
She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance. Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who counted, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her husband a child.
"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can anybody know? It is not right," she said.
Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely would relent. Was not their love as strong as the river?
She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now, and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break into the wedding feast.
Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She followed the trail above the village.
When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.
When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.
Lumnay thought of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.
The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.
A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting petals would go on.
Lumnay's fingers moved a long, long time among the growing bean pods.
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