Philippine Literature

Mill of the Gods (Estrella Alfon)

Mill of the Gods (Estrella Alfon) Among us who lived in Espeleta that street that I love, about whose
people I keep telling tales among us, I say, there was one named Martha, and she was the daughter of
Pio and Engracia. To all of us, life must seem like a road given us to travel, and it is up to Fate, that
convenient blunderer, whether, that road be broad and unwinding, or whether it shall be a tortuous lane,
its path a hard and twisted mat of dust and stones. And each road, whether lane or avenue, shall have its
own landmarks, that only the traveller soul shall recognize and remember, and remembering, continue the
journey again. To Martha, the gods gave this for a first memory: a first scar. She was a girl of twelve, and
in every way she was but a child. A rather dull child, who always lagged behind the others of her age,
whether in study or in play. Life had been so far a question of staying more years in a grade than the
others, of being told she would have to apply herself a little harder if she didnt want the infants catching
up with her. But that was so dismal thing. She had gotten a little bit used to being always behind. To
always being the biggest girl in her class. Even in play there was some part of her that never managed to
take too great a part she was so content if they always made her it in a game of tag, if only they would
let her play. And when she had dolls, she was eager to lend them to other girls, if they would only include
her in the fascinating games she could not play alone. This was she, then. Her hair hung in pigtails each
side of her face, and already it irked a little to have her dresses too short. She could not help in her
mothers kitchen, and could be trusted to keep her room clean, but she was not ready for the thing her
mother told her one night when she was awakened from sleep. It was a sleep untroubled by dreams, then
all of a sudden there was an uproar in the house, and she could hear her mothers frenzied sobbing, and it
was not sobbing that held as much of sorrow as it did of anger. She lay still for a while, thinking perhaps
she was dreaming, until she could hear her fathers grunted answers to the half understood things her
mother was mouthing at him. Then there were sounds that was clearly the sound of two bodies struggling
in terrible fury with each other. She stood up, and like a child, cried into the night. Mother? She wailed
the word, in her panic finding a little relief in her own wailing, Mother? And she heard her mothers voice
call her, panting out, saying, Martha, come quickly, come into this room! Martha got up and stood at the
door of the room, hesitating about opening it, until her mother, the part of a terrible grasp, said Martha!
So Martha pushed in the door, and found her mother and her father locked in an embrace in which both of
them struggled and panted and had almost no breath left for words. Martha stood wide eyed and
frightened, not knowing what to do, just standing there, even though she had seen what it was they
struggled for. A kitchen knife, blade held upwards in her mothers hand. Her arms were pinioned to her
sides by her husband, but her wild eyes, the frenzy with which she stamped her feet on his feet, and
kicked him in the shins, and tried to bite him with her teeth, these were more terrible than the glint of that
shining blade. It was her father who spoke to her saying urgently, Martha, reach for her knife, take it
away. Yet Martha stood there and did not comprehend until her mother spoke, saying No, no; Martha,
your father deserves to be killed. Then it was Martha who realized what she was to do, and slowly,
hesitantly, she went near them, her fear of both of them in this terrible anger they now presented making
her almost too afraid to reach up for the knife. But reach up she did, and with her childs fingers, put her
mothers away from the weapon. And when she had it in her hands she did not know what to do with it,
except look at it. It wasnt a very sharp knife, but its blade was clean, and its hilt firm. And so she looked
at it, until her father said. Throw it out of the window, Martha and without thinking, she went to a
window, opened a casement and threw it away. Then her father released her mother, and once her mother
had gotten her arms free, she swung back her hand, and wordlessly, slapped him; slapped him once,
twice, three times, alternating with her hands, on alternate cheeks, until her father said. Thats enough,
Engracia. And saying so, he took her hands in his, led her resisting to the bed, and made her sit down.
And Martha was too young to wonder that her father, who was a big man, should have surrendered to the
repeated slapping from her mother who was a very small frail woman. Her father said, Arent you
ashamed now Martha has seen? And immediately her mother screamed to him, Ashamed? Me,
ashamed? Ill tell Martha about you! Her father looked at Martha still standing dumbly by the window

out of which she had thrown the knife, and said, No, Aciang, she is just a child. And to her: Martha, go
back to bed. But now her mother jumped up from the bed, and clutched at Martha, and brought her to
bed with her. And deliberately without looking at Marthas father, she said, Martha you are not too young
to know. And so, the words falling from her lips with a terrible quiet, she told Martha. The words that
were strange to her ears, Martha heard them, and listened to them, and looked from her mother to her
father, and without knowing it, wetting her cheeks with her tears that fell. And then her mother stopped
talking, and looking at her husband, she spat on him, and Martha saw the saliva spatter on the front of the
dark shirt he wore. She watched while her father strode over them, and slowly, also deliberately, slapped
her mother on the cheek. Martha watched his open palm as he did it, and felt the blow as though it had
been she who had been hit. Then her father strode out of the room, saying nothing, leaving them alone.
When her father had gone, Marthas mother began to cry, saying brokenly to Martha, It is that woman,
that woman! And making excuses to Martha for her father, saying it was never completely the mans
fault. And Martha listened bewildered, because this was so different from the venomous words her
mother had told her while her father was in the room. And then her mother, still weeping, directed her to
look for her father and Martha went out of the room. Her father was not in the house. The night was very
dark as she peered out of the windows to see is she could find him outside, but he was nowhere. So she
went back to her mother, and told her she could not find her father. Her mother cried silently, the tears
coursing down her cheeks, and her sobs tearing through her throat. Martha cried with her, and caressed
her mothers back with her hands, but she had no words to offer, nothing to say. When her mother at last
was able to talk again, she told Martha to go back to bed. But it wasnt the child that entered who went
out of that room. And yet the terror of that night was not so great because it was only a terror half
understood. It wasnt until she was eighteen, that the hurt of that night was invested with its full measure.
For when she was eighteen, she fell in love. She was a girl of placid appearance, in her eyes the dreaming
stolid night of the unawakened. She still was slow to learn, still not prone to brilliance. And when she fell
in love she chose the brightest boy of her limited acquaintance to fall in love with. He was slightly older
than herself, a little too handsome, a trifle too given to laughter. Espeleta did not like him; he was too
different from the other young me n on the street. But Martha loved him. You could see that in the way
she looked at him, the way she listened to him. Marthas pigtails had lengthened. She now wore her
braids coiled on the top of her head like a coronet, and it went well with the placid features, the rather full
figure. She was easily one of our prettier maidens. It was well that she was not too brilliant. That she did
not have any too modern ideas. The air of shyness, the awkward lack of sparkling conversation suited her
Madonna like face and calm. And her seriousness with love was also part of the calm waiting nature. It
did not enter her head that there are such things as play, and a game. And a mans eagerness for sport.
And so when she noticed that his attentions seemed to be wandering, even after he had admitted to a lot of
people that they were engaged, she asked him, with the eager desperation of the inexperienced, about
their marriage. He laughed at her. Laughed gently, teasingly, saying they could not get married for a long
time yet; he must repay his parents first for all that they had done for him. He must first be sure to be able
to afford the things she deserved. Well turned phrases he said his excuses with. Charming little evasions.
And if she did not see through them while he spoke them, his frequent absences, where his visits had been
as a habit; his excuses to stay away when once no amount of sending him off could make him stay away;
these but made her see. And understand. And then the way neighbours will, they tried to be kind to her.
For they could see her heart was breaking and they tried to say sweet things to her, things like her being
far too good for him. And then they heard that he had married. Another girl. And they saw her grief, and
thought it strange that a girl should grieve over an undeserving lover or so. She lost a little of the
plumpness that was one of her charms. And into her eyes crept a hurt look to replace the dreaming. And
Espeleta, with all the good people, strove to be even kinder to her. Watched her grief and pitied her. And
told her that whatever mistakes she had committed to make her grieve so, to make her suffer so, they
understood and forgave. And they did not blame her. But now that she had learned her lesson, she must
beware. She knew her own father as much as they knew about him. And it was in the Fates that his sins
must be paid for. If not by himself, then by whom but she who was begotten by him? So, didnt she see?
How careful she should be? Because you could, they said it to her gently, kindly, cruelly, because she

could if she were careful, turn aside the vengeance of the implacable fates. And she believed them kind
although she hated their suspicions. She believed them kind, and so she started, then, to hate her father.
And that night long ago came back to her, and she wished she had not thrown that knife away. Espeleta
saw Martha turn religious. More religious than Iya Andia and Iya Nesia, who were old and saw death
coming close, and wanted to be assured of the easing of the gates of heaven. Espeleta approved. Because
Espeleta did not know what she prayed for. Because they saw only the downcast eyes under the light veil,
the coil of shining hair as it bowed over the communion rail. Yet Marthas mother and father still lived
together. They never had separated. Even after that night, when she was twelve years old and frightened,
and she had called for him and looked for him and not found him. The next day he had come back, and
between her mother and him there was a silence. They slept in the same bed, and spent the nights in the
same room, and yet Martha and Espeleta knew he had another bed, another chamber. Espeleta praised
Marthas mother for being so patient. After Martha had fallen in love, when she began hating her father
truly then also she began despising her mother. You did not know it to look at Martha. For her coil of
braided hair was still there, and the shy way of speaking, and the charming awkwardness at conversation.
And Martha made up her earlier lack of lustre by shining in her class now. She was eighteen and not
through high school yet. But she made up for it by graduating with high honours. Espeleta clapped its
hands when she graduated. Gave her flowers. Her mother and father were there, too. And they were
proud. And to look at Martha, you would think she was proud too, if a little too shy still. Martha studied
nursing. And started having visitors in her mothers house again. Doctors this time. Older men, to whom
her gravity of manner appealed, and the innate good sense that seemed so patient in her quiet demeanour.
Espeleta was now rather proud of Martha. She seemed everything a girl should be, and they cited her as
an example of what religion could do. Lift you out of the shadow of your inheritance. For look at Martha.
See how different she is from what should be her fathers daughter. But what they did not know was that
all of these doctors Martha had to choose someone slightly older than the rest. And where the girl of
eighteen that she had been almost a child unschooled, now she was a woman wise and wary. Where the
other nurses knew this doctor only as someone who did not like their dances as much as the younger ones,
who did not speak as lightly, as flippantly of love as the younger ones, Martha knew why he didnt.
Between the two of them there had been, form the very start, a quick lifting of the pulse, an immediate
quickening of the breath. From the very start. And where he could have concealed the secrets of life, he
chose the very first time they were able to talk to each other, to tell her that he was not free. He had a
wife, and whether he loved her or not, whether she was unfaithful to him or not, which she was, there had
been the irrevocable ceremony to bind them, to always make his love for any other woman, if he ever fell
in love again, something that must be hidden, something that might not see light. She was a woman now,
Martha was. Wise and wary. But there is no wisdom, no weariness against love. Not the kind of deep love
she knew she bore him. And as even she him, she found within herself the old deep abiding secret hate.
Against her father. Against the laws of man and church. Against the very fates that seemed rejoiced in
making her pay for a sin she had not committed. She now learned of bitterness. Because she could not
help thinking of that night, long ago, when her mother had sat on the bed, and in deliberate words told her
just what kind of a father she had. It had been as though her mother had shifted on to her unwilling,
unready shoulders the burden of the sorrows, the goad of the grief. Espeleta, that was so quick to censure,
and to condemn; even Espeleta had taken the situation in Marthas house as something that could not be
helped. And as long as there was no open strife, Espeleta made excuses for a thing that, they said, had
been designed by Fate. Marthas father came home. Acted, on the surface, the good husband. And since
he was married to Marthas mother, so must Marthas mother bear it, and welcome him home again.
Because she would rather he came home, then went to the other one, wouldnt she? Espeleta cited
heavenly rewards. For Marthas mother. And Martha went to church regularly, and was a good nurse.
And still called her father, Father. You have heard that one of course, about the mill of the gods, how they
grind exceedingly fine, and grind exceedingly slow. Espeleta hadnt heard that one, nor had Martha.
But Espeleta of course would have a more winded version of it. Anyhow, one day at the hospital, Martha
was attendant nurse at an emergency case. A man had been shot. There were three bullets through his
chest, but he was still alive. Martha laughed queerly to herself, saying I must be dreaming, I am imagining

that man has my fathers face. It was the doctor she loved who was in charge. With a queer dreaming
feeling, she raised her eyes to meet his, and was shocked to see him drop his gaze, and over his face steal
a twist as of pain, as of pity. They were instantly their efficient selves again, cloaking themselves in the
impersonal masks of physician and nurse. It was as if he who lay there beneath their instruments and their
probing fingers was any man, the way it could be any man. Not her father. But all while, training and
discipline unavailing. Martha said to herself, but it is my father. He died on the table. He never gained
consciousness. Martha drew the sheet over his face and form. And watched as they wheeled him out of
the room. She still had the instruments to put away and the room to put in order. But this did not take long
and when she went out into the corridor, she found her mother weeping beside the shrouded form on the
wheeled table. There was a policeman beside her awkwardly trying with gruff words to console the little
woman over her loss. Beside the policeman stood also the doctor, who passed an arm around the shoulder
of Marthas mother, saying simply, we tried to save him. Martha joined them, knowing that she should be
in tears, yet finding that she had none to shed. It would ease the tightness within her, would loosen the
hard knot in her heart to cry. But you cannot summon tears when you feel no grief, and the pain you feel
is not of sorrow but of the cruel justness of things. She could not even put her arms around her weeping
mother. When the doctor told her that she would be excused from duty the rest of the day, that he would
arrange it for her, she did not thank him. She did not say anything for indeed she no longer had any
words, nor any emotions that required speech. Or should be given speech. For one cannot say, how right!
How just! When ones father has just died. Her mother and she took a taxi together to accompany the
hearse that took her father home. There was a crowd awaiting them. Espeleta in tears. Espeleta crying
condolence and opprobrium in the same breath. It was from them their good neighbours, their kind
neighbours that Martha learned how Gods justice had overtaken the sinner. Colon is not as intimate
as Espeleta. For it is a long street and broad street. But where the railroad crosses it, the houses group
together in intimate warmth and neighbourly closeness and its families live each others lives almost as
meddlingly as Espeleta does. And is as avid for scandals as Espeleta is. Among the people in Marthas
house were some from Colon. And it was they who supplied the grimmer details, the more lucid picture.
In that other womans house and Martha did not even know the other womans name there had existed
the stalemate state of affairs that had existed in Marthas house. Only where in Marthas house it had been
a wife who was patient, in that other womans house it had been the husband who had bided his time.
And yet the neighbours had thought he had not cared. For indeed he had seemed like a man blind and
deaf, and if he raised his voice against his wife, it was not so they could hear it. Yet today, he had come
home, after he had said he was going away somewhere. And had come upon Marthas father in the house,
and had, without saying anything, taken out his revolver, and shot at him. Martha heard all these. And
thought you know often life seems like an old fashioned melodrama, guns and all. And yet the gun had
not gone off. It had jammed, and Marthas father had been able to run. And running, even as he seemed
far enough from the house to be safe, the gun in the husbands hand had come right again. The man had
gone out in the street, aimed at the fleeing figure. That explained why the bullets had gone in through his
back and out through his chest. They said that the street was spattered with blood and where he fell, there
was a pool of gory red. The killer had surrendered himself at once. But everyone knew he would not pay
with his life he had taken. For the woman was his wife and he had come upon them in his own home.
Martha stayed with the kind condolers only a while. She left her mother for them to comfort as best as
they could. They would have praises like The good God knows best; they would have words like,
Your grief is ended, let your other grief commence. She went to look at her father lying well arranged
now in his bier. Already in spite of the manner of his death, there were flowers for him. Death had left no
glare in the eyes that the doctor at the hospital had mercifully closed, over the features lingered no
evidence of pain. And Martha said, Death was kind to you. In Marthas room there hung a crucifix. Upon
the crossed wood was the agonized Christ, His eyes soft and deep and tender, even in his agony. But as
Martha knelt, and lighted her candles, and prayed, in her eyes was no softness, and on her lips no words
appealing for pity for him who had died. There was only the glitter of a justice meted out at last, and the
thankfulness for a punishment fulfilled. So she gave thanks, very fervent thanks. For now, she hoped, she
would cease to pay.

Wedding Dance
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 the 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 though 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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