Anguish

There were many boys his age in Espeleta. At night they would take Mana
Dolang’s lantay (bamboo bed) that she used to bleach clothes on, and they would all sit
on it, though it would creak protestingly under all their combined weights. They would
have their guitars and ukuleles with them and their banjos, and they would make music
far into the night, taking turns singing songs, and telling each other jokes over which their
laughter would soar into the air.
But sometimes they would tire of playing on their instruments, and they would
make lines with water on the street for a game of water-water. And then the boys would
condescend to let the girls play with them, saying let the girls play, they can at least make
a lot of noise. The girls were very young too, and some of them even younger than the
boys and mostly each of them would have a crush on one or the other of the young lads.
There were, I said, many boys his age, but it was usually Carling the little girls had their
childish crushed on. Carling was not very tall, and the girls looked up at his curly hair, and
his shy smile as at the image of some hero.
They would crowd the sidewalk in front of his father’s shop, for his father was a
tailor. The shop had several very small low chairs, grouped around an also small, low
table on which was inscribed a checkerboard square. On these chairs the little girls would
sit, their chins on their hands, their eager eyes on Carling, who would sit on one of the
chairs and try to teach them the game. But sometimes he would be too busy sewing
seams for his father, and he would not pay any attention to them, merely smiling at them
and telling them to go home. But sometimes too, in the evenings when he would stop
sewing, he’d line the little chairs on the sidewalk, and the little girls would make jealous
count to themselves of how much more often he might smile at any particular girl than at
the rest.
Or else he would balance his father’s heavy lead weights, that were used to keep
the cloths from wrinkling while his father laid them out for cutting, on his outstretched open
palms. They were heavy solid cylinders of lead, like a scale’s set of weights, without
handles. Then the girls would also shyly try to balance these weights on their own
outstretched hands, the lead would prove too heavy for their puny strength. So the little
girls would put them down, laughing with shy little giggles, while Carling laughed too, and
called them the lame.
Carling’s mother sold pickles and salads that she made herself. The pickles would
be of green papayas, sliced and boiled to a transparency in seasoned vinegar, and then
adorned with peppers, tomatoes, and onions. The salad would be of sea plants, called
gozo, cooked also until transparent, its sea taste enhanced by a dressing of vinegar and
bago-ong. She would carry these in a clay pot on her head, and take them from house to
house, or sell them at a rented stall in Pasil, with other sellers, selling such things as
crabs, cooked in their shells, and oyster and clams, and the stomach walls of sea

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cucumbers, pulled out and cleaned. The little girls would convince their mothers to let
them but the salads there. They would find Carling’s mother perhaps just putting the salad
into a pot, and the pickles into a glazed clay jar. And she would offer the girls some snails,
that were special for some days, cooked and strung together on the sharpened midrib of
a coconut lead. The little girls would dawdle and tarry, pretending to be engrossed in a
game of siklot with stones they picked from the ground. After a while, Carling would come,
and carry a tray with the pots, the jars, and the snails, on his head. His mother leading,
he would then accompany her to her stall. The little girls would pick up their stones, or
leave them on the ground and, salad and snails wrapped in a piece of banana lead, walk
home content.
His father, the tailor, was a continually red-faced blotchy skinned man who always
wore thick drawers, and camisetas, and was very bow –legged. He did not have sober
days, merely days in which he was either just a little drunk, merely days in which he was
either just a little drunk or really drunk, or very drunk. When he was just a little drunk he’d
cut and snip and direct the sewing of seams, ad be quite the tailor, an old courageous
out-moded tailor. When he was really drunk, he’d scold his sons, of whom he had three,
Carling being the youngest. And when he was very drunk, he’d sing songs at the top of
his voice and dance nimble little jigs, and keep weaving between his house, and his shop,
walking in his funny bow-legged gait, telling jokes to himself in a buzzing monotone,
giggling like a girl. He’d come to the shop and when told by any of his sons to go home,
he would go obediently, speaking wonderingly to himself until he was almost home, then
he would turn back, deciding to ask his sons why they had sent him home. Were they
angry with him? But they would tell him no, they weren’t angry. And he’d turn right around
and start to go home, again.
They called the place where Carling’s house was, Kalubihan, meaning where
coconuts grow, although there weren’t any coconuts except the warped on that leaned
dispiritedly in its indifferent growth in Carling’s house yard. Kalubihan is a cluster of
houses, set not too close, yet close enough for the people to converse at their wondows
and look into each other’s dwellings. Always, Mang Pedro’s (for Mang Pedro was the
name of Carling’s father,) yard was full of young people, of Carling’ age, or younger or
older, their guitars always with them, the girls only too willing to sing. And they would
break many a lantay with the weight of so many sitting down. They could improvise tunes
on their instruments, sing spontaneous lyrics to those tunes, and before those songs
could even be perfected, other people would be singing them who would not know that a
lantay had been place of their beginning.
In Kalubihan, let me repeat, the houses were close together, as friendly is aspect
as the people that lived in them were friendly with each other. And in Kalubihan many
boys and girls gathered often together, and grew up together. But as always in a group,
there must be one who is the favorite among young and old alike, and Carling was that
one. For he would as willingly take any children to school as if they were his own folk. He
was the one too tired to teach the children their arithmetic or temper their tops, or level
their kites. And in the night, when some baby cried in sick pain, it was Carling the mothers

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would call to run for a doctor. For Kalubihan has no telephones. The houses are of nipa,
in very small yards, sometimes the housewives grow carefully tended shrubs, perhaps
shielding an outhouse from too plain view. And in the mornings, the yards are hard to
pass through, for lines of washing fills the space. It is a place too clean to be slums, too
cramped, too poor to have mansions.
And here Carling grew into young manhood. Early want had made him stop
schooling and help, as his brothers did, in his father’s tailor shop. Or else they accepted
short odd jobs, and thus made a little money to help out their parents. All this time Mana
Tiyang sold her salads and her pickles, and her little snails. And Mang Pedro wove his
bowlegged drunken way from shop to house, house to shop. One cannot believe that
three sons in a house could not rid it of need. But in Mang Pedro’s house it was so.
First, the eldest son got married to a girl who insisted on sleeping with him. Sleep
can be very innocent, but it never sounds so to the girl’s parents, especially if the girl tries
her very best to make it appear certainly anything but innocent. That was something funny
too. Because Mang Pedro’s eldest son was courting one of this girl’s sisters. But the girl
was the youngest in a family that had never known anything either except want. And she
had borne most of the drudgery of housekeeping, and picking up after three older sisters
who never seemed to have any extra suitors to pass on to her. And whose cast-off
dresses besides, by the time they reached her after passing through older’s hands, were
much too worn to be put on. Mang Pedor’s eldest son was the only one who appreciated
the burden of drudgery enough to be kind. So she decided kindness could go further than
a compassionate smile, or a sympathetic word. One night when her mother was unusually
sharp with the tongue that had never known gentleness in the first place, she ran away
to Mang Pedro’s house. To Mang Pedro’s oldest son who had mistaken ideas of gallantry
and decided to marry her when his attempts to return her to her parents the next morning
met with jeers and bolo threats.
Mang Pedro;s oldest son stuck to tailoring. And when your tailoring is not the better
mousetrap kind, no world beats a path to your door.
Then Mang Pedro’s second son, a lad handsomer than Carling, with however
much lesser charm, was sent away to Consolacion. In Consolacion, you should be happy.
Your house is provided you, a cottage of mixed materials. Trees around you, the peace
of a place far from a city’s cries. There are lawns before each cottage, and flowering
plants. There is mostly a plenteous quantity of those tiny plants that grow close to the
ground, spreading its leaves out of the sun, its leaf pattern like the poinsettias, in
miniature, even to the garish red that forms the center of a leaf whorl. They are usually
found where kakawati grow, forming a somewhat bright carper at the trees’ feet. In
Consolacion they are aptly enough luha ni Maria—Mary’s tears. Consolacion is, you see,
the place where they send Cebu’s lepers.
So, there was now only Carling left. Some things, if you do not let them, cannot
very easily cloud a life. And Kalubihan is a kind place, where the neighbors keep each
other’s secret. If Carling’s brother was a leper, that did not take any slight weight off

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Carling’s popularity. The little girls that had crushes on him grew up. There was one who
when she grew up, found herself somehow on a plane quite beyond him. But she had
even grown taller, and her education had made her somewhat of a soft cynic, and she
remembered how so many of the girls, like herself, had adored Carling as a boy, but now
that they were big, they had almost all of them outgrown him who had been older than
they were, and so childishly adored.
Carling’s mother all this time sold her pickles and her salad. The boys that gathered
in Mang Pedro’s yard were men with wives and children. And sentiment gone, rebellion
setting in, one wonders why they had so much time to sing songs, so little time to look for
money in. not for money to keep, but money to spend. They had neither.
Sometimes Carling hired out as a carpenter. Sometimes also a tailor odd jobs, for
odd money. You do not need much when you cannot have much. Mang Pedro was often
very drunk.
His second son came home. A long time has passed and he is judged well. But his
ears are thick at the lobe, and his fingers are dark at the ends. A pleasant lad, one eager
to help his parents win the daily bread. Only before long, he had to be sent back again.
This is Carling’s story. One day he flexes his fingers and the cold fear that never
really sleeps in him is magnified a thousand fold, setting his heart wildly beating and his
mind frantically groping for the right prayers to say to his saints, so that what he is afraid
of might not happen to him. With subtle questions and guarded inquiries he tries to verify
that his fears are false, or, to end the doubting torment, that they are true.
Far into the sleepless nights, he lies with the fear gnawing at him, saying it is true,
it is true. Far into the same nights, his labored prayers hold out the hope that it could not
be. And then on one of those nights, he creeps away from sleeping, builds a fire, and
heats his knife, sharp-bladed, in the red blaze. His face is stony in the flame’s glare, hard
with the realization of the pain that must come. His mother’s chopping block is on the
stove, near him. Drawing the knife out of the fire watching the angry red of its heated
blade, he bites his lips, lays his little finger on the chopping block, and quickly, strongly
brings the knife clean down, sizzling, smoking as it cuts through the flesh, through the
bone, down to the wood of the block.
The smell of burned flesh fills the air, and he sniffs it in, telling himself its acridness
is his deliverance. The tears stand in his eyes roll down in his cheeks, and he wiped them
away with the undamaged hand, while he looks at the other, with the stump of the little
finger, red were the cut is, but not bleeding. Then he puts out the fire, and goes to bed,
and all through the rest of the night is thankful for the aching pain even as he stifles his
groans over it.
In the morning, crying like a boy now, he shows his hands to his mother, and
together they cry about it. But his mother tells him to tell no one else about it, not even
his father. And when he tells her that it is alright, he certainly cut the danger off, she says,
nothing, nothing of the reassurance he would have liked to hear. The weeks go by, and

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the fear is gone. On his hand is a stump, symbol to him of a foe defeated. His mother
says nothing.
In the night, her husband is usually too drunk to hear the sound of her tears, the
echoing protest in her long drawn sighs. Neither Carling knows that she weeps, for to him
now, what is there to weep about?
Some of the neighbors must notice the stump, but his explanation of its having
been caught in some machinery gets him by without further question. But one day Carling
looks at his fingers, and the fear that he had thought he had killed leaped up stronger
than it had even been, and he wept sobbingly in the uncomforting nights. And when he
tells his mother, she says nothing still. for hers was not the gift of words, but this had been
the reason for her tears. Hers usually not even the comfort of voiced complaint, so that
now she merely beat her breast, and sighed. Two sons, two sons!
In her laborious handwriting, she wrote secretly to second son, the one who had
come home, and then had to go back again to Consolacion, saying to him: Carling has
cut off his finger; explain to him; I cannot.
And so the second son wrote to his younger brother, saying, it does not grow in
form without. It manifests itself out from within. Carling crumpled the paper, and looked
at his fingers. He would have been willing to cut them all off. But now, what could be the
use?
Somehow the neighbors knew. Perhaps from Mang Pedro, whose tongue he was
too drunk to guard. Or perhaps from Carling himself. For these neighbors were his friends,
sure they know of some way to help him. They were kind, they were compassionate. But
Carling noticed— or did he imagine it? —that they no longer wanted him to attend to their
children. And his mother’s salads, and her pickles that had been so popular—not the pots
always came home still a little filled, and his mother, who did not know any eloquent
words, was so eloquent with her tears. Whoever he approached of his friends, they told
him, Go to Conslolacion, you will be alright there.
He took to keeping himself from the company of others, for even the slightest
remarks, even the ones not addressed to him, seemed to his sorely sensitive feelings
meant to hurt, meant to drive. He would review in his solitude the days of boyhood, the
songs in the night, the little girls he had teased who had grown up and gone some of
them, beyond him. And he wondered how they would feel if they knew. He had never had
a girl, in spite of the fact that there had been those he had liked well enough to have
wanted them. But he hadn’t had much time for courting.
Like somebody who keeps gnawing at a sore tooth, in the mistaken illusion of the
immediate pain’s lessening the underlying deep ache, he told himself he would court a
girl. And the next morning he dressed and looked at himself in the mirror, and told himself
with some little pride that he looked rather well. And then he reached up to smooth his
curling hair, and he looked at the stump of his little finger, and despair took him, so that

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he gripped the ends of his necktie and pulled at them right savagely, his teeth ground
together.
There was a letter from his brother. Another letter that said, Come to Consolacion,
you will be comfortable, not knowing he was being dramatic while he laughed and
laughed. He packed his few things, and wiped away the few tears that stood in his eyes.
He bade his mother and his father goodbye, and also his older brother. He told them he
was going to Consolacion, and he also said, I will be comfortable there.

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 Man with a Camera

Of all the pictures he had taken of the old beggar, it was the one he had stolen that
gave him what he sought. He took the enlarged print out of the solution and looked at it,
and a deep surge of pride possessed him over his own work.
Yes, it was all here. The eyes rheumy and bloodshot. The lips curling with disdain.
The straggly unkempt moustache on the upper lip like deeper etchings on a face lined
with many wrinkles.
He had posed that beggar in the courtyard of the church. He had tried to entice
many expressions from that face. Yet none of the other pictures had come out with the
revelations in this one. This one picture he had stolen, before the beggar had noticed him
and had bee that he was trying to get a picture. Later, when for a fee, the beggar posed
in a corner of the churchyard, attended by all the other mendicants and hangers-on that
assemble at that particular church, he had tried to beguile the old actor into the poses
that are tokens of the beggar trade the hand-dog look the outstretched hand. But it was
this one picture that showed the beggar for what he was.
If the eyes were indeed the windows to a man’s soul, here one shuddered to look
into these eyes and see there should so revealed. Here was evil reflected in a face.
There were other pictures in his studio. Prints of the beautiful things that his eyes
had seen, that his camera had recorded for him. There were details of beauty that his
enamored eyes had tried to show with his camera’s help, the beautiful things that made
him feel beautiful just to look at them. Skies showing clouds and variations of light in the
different aspects of one man’s day. The airy branches of lonely trees limned against
immense skies. He had sought to express with his pictures the things in his soul, the little
moments of quiet and peace and ecstasy he had himself known. How did one without
words say the things one wanted to say? He had tried by depicting the veins of a leaf, the
dew on a petal, the fleeting remembrance of a heaven left behind, seen in a baby’s smile.
What delight there had been in trying to catch beauty’s fleeting moment!
But how different from the feeling of pride that surged through himas he looked at
the wet picture he now held up for his own perusal! All the things of beauty I have pictured
he said to himself, were things perhaps only I could see, no one perhaps could really see
what I saw, nor react to it the way I reacted. I and my camera tried to depict it, tried to
catch it. But this man here, in this portrait of evil, is still in that churchyard. Where neither
atmosphere of worship, nor propinquity with candle or hyssop, nor hymn nor prayer can
ever change what he has become, here on his face shown like a recorded story: the evil
he has known and done, the hate he diffuses against man, the utter lack of regret or
resolution.
He hung up the picture with two clips, and then paused to look around at the other
pictures on his studio wall. What a hypocrite he had been, when even as he took those

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other pictures of beauty and loveliness and sweetness and sunshine, he had all the while
really been looking for the look of evil, the ugliness in the face of the beggar he had
portrayed. He had haunted churchyards and street corners in his search for the look on
the face of this beggar.
It had started when he had covered that assignment about the beggar situation
with Luisa. She would write, he was to take the pictures. He had not been working for the
paper very long, and it was his first assignment with Luisa. She was a name on the paper,
a big name. He had noticed thw way she worked, the familiarity she affected with stranger
or friend the intense way she reacted out facts and figures, and then the whirlwind way
she flew at her typewriter seeming to be actually angry with typewriter because it couldn’t
type fast enough for her.
They went, in the course of assignment, to the social welfare office, had ferreted
through the files, and had found several facts that made them laugh because as far as he
was concerned it was a confirmation of the things he had suspected. Beggars were a
loutish lot, playing on the sympathies of weak persons, unwilling to work, and preferring
the easy way: to live by begging.
They had a schedule of hand-out days. On Mondays, they went to the Hospocio
near the big bridge; on Tuesdays, they were guests of the San Antonio parish in
Sampaloc; Wednesdays, of course was the day they went to Baclaran; Thursdays, they
could be found early at the Archbishop’s Palace; Friday was the day they visited Quiapo;
Saturdays were for the Lourdes church in Quezon City and the ladies’ associations’ dols
in Paco; Sundays, you’d think they would rest, but that was the day they went to Sto.
Domingo.
There were other churches, other patios and, of course, the easy stands at street
corners and in restaurants; in a pinch, they went to the social welfare office on San Rafael
and bamboozled the investigators with tales of woe and sickness and starvation. But,
according to the SWA, they refused to go into institutions, or to be employed. Once, when
they were rounded up in a campaign to rid the city of beggars, they were taken before a
woman judge who lectured the law officers for not having pity. And they ended up getting
money from her too.
In the course of their assignment, he and Luisa had sat down at a little pub on a
busy street; it was a hot day and they were trying to enjoy a coke. And, inevitably, a
beggar approached their table and held out his hand. He was an oldish man, but not thin
at all; the arms that stuck out of the white coat he wore with its sleeves cut off were sinewy
and firm with flesh. They looked at his palm, then up at his face. Under a dirty old-
fashioned flat straw hat, his face looked lethargic, as though he did not really know too
much of what was going on. He had on rubber shoes that looked surprisingly clean. He
stood there patiently, holding out his palm to them, not saying anything.
Luisa looked down at his palm again, and then just when the beggar was about to
move away, she took a ten centavo bill from her blouse pocket and gave it to the man,

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putting it flat on his dirty palm. He looked at the small bull, bowed slightly to Luisa, put
away the moneu, then held out his palm to the man with the camera. The young man’s
reactions, quick and spontaneous, was to lift his arm as though to brush the beggar away;
and the beggar raised his eyebrows at him, shrugged his shoulders and shuffled away.\
“Just you wait, now”, the cameraman said. “They’ll come in droves, the cousins,
the wives, the children of that one beggar.
Indeed, a steady flow of them came, and the cameraman cooked his eyebrows at
Luisa and grimaced. They had to escape finally in a taxi.
In a flat voice, he quoted, by rote; “Some of them are professionals who refuse
offers to work, and do not wish to be committed to welfare associations for the destitute.
Investigation reveals that they sometimes make as much as 6 pesos on an ordinary day,
and 11 pesos on holidays. Some of them own houses; some lend money at interest to
other beggars, some are procurers for beggar girls and other prostitute; most of them
steal when there is an opportunity.”
“Shut up!” Luisa hissed.
When she did write the article, illustrated with his pictures, they received
congratulations from the social welfare and other charities. The article had ended with a
warning to the citizen that to drop a coin or a bill into a beggar’s hand is to abet a practice
that is an eyesore to the city, a disgrace to the country, and an encouragement to
parasites. His pictures had shown several lines of beggars in churchyards identifiable as
the same faces in other lines churchyards. There were other pictures he had not used—
of a blind man and blind woman with their children. His mind had been filled with the
obscene as he took that picture. Blind, yet they had children. And the children begged on
the streets, and their conversations with their parents—he had overheard them—had
filled his mind with angry shame.
The other pictures, too, of children with sly faces, trained to whine, trained to
pander, silent at their begging trade except for the expertly piteous wail, but when they
talked, off guard as it were, the things they said had made his flesh crawl.
And yet Luisa would not stop that special habit she had of giving pennies to
beggars. The few times they had been thrown together, how ready she was to reach in
her bag and dole out her coins to any outstretched palm. “Look”, he said to her, “if and
when you and I should ever need coin, can you imagine us holding our palms and
begging?”
“Of course not!”
“Sure, we have to work at it, Sweat at it. Then why are you so soft with them?”
“Look,” she had pointed out to him “it is my coin, isn’t it? You keep your coin of you
want, and let me dole out my coins if I want. Agreed?”

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 But he had seen too much of what he couldn’t talk to her about. He tried to tell her
about it, but she just turned from him saying, “I’ve been around too kid. Don’t tell me”.
“Then why cater to them? What makes you such a sucker for every begging hand?”
“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “Maybe I am happy that they are begging from me,
I am not the one begging from them. Will you accept that?”
You could, in the end, not argue with a woman who seemed to know more than
you did, yet did foolish things because she liked to.
The picture was for her. He’d show it to her.
She stood it on her desk after she had unwrapped it. She looked long and quietly
at it, very long, very quietly.
“There’s your beggar,” he said. “Look at that face! If he would tell me his life story,
he would tell me he has done everything, broken every one of God’s commandments.
Look! You’ve probably given him your share of pennies. With those pennies he has
probably enticed some young beggar girl to an assignation. Or whored with some
unwashed lass. Maybe he has been able to buy some bread with which he has lured
some other beggar into adding to her own sins, somewhere, in one of the churchyards
they are always defiling!”
Luisa looked up at him. She stopped his hysterical trade to ask, “You know this
man?”
“Me? No!”
“Then why do you hate him so?”
When the photo exhibition was announced, he knew he would win the portrait
group with his beggar picture. No one could resist the impact of that look: that
recognizable tracing of a man’s life lived every wrong way. It was only Luisa who had ever
kept quiet in front of that picture. All the others saw in it what he saw, and praised him for
capturing a soul in dishabille.
The prize for winning was check for P500. As soon as he received it, he gave it
with some ceremony, recorded by cameras for the morrow’s papers, to his wife. A funny
little thing happened to him as he handed her the check. His wife was big with child. The
cameras, for a change, were trained on him, and they asked him to hold that pose, he
giving his check to his wife, and she opening her palm to receive it. There, it was recorded,
the flash bulbs had flared. Then a little thought came to him. There was a reminiscent air
to the act of his handing over the check, his wife’s opening her palm to receive it. And he
thought to himself: Luisa. Then the moment was over, his wife left him to enjoy the drinks
on which he and almost of other photographers hoped to get drunk that night.
And then, disturbed that he should be thinking of Luisa, he had stood at the door
of the studio where the exhibition was being held and he had seen a beggar looking at

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the huge blown-up photograph of his which had won the prize. He tapped the old man on
the shoulder: “Do you like yourself?”
The old man looked at him. How long had he been standing there? Had he seen
how he looked? Had he himself been appalled by the loo of evil there on his portrait, for
all the world to see, for all the world to read?
The beggar had thrown a single expletive at him. The beggar said: “Thief!”
What had he stolen? But the word made him think even more strongly of Luisa.
What had Luisa said? “Do you know him: why do you hate him?”
The other photographers came out: they recognized the beggar and they laughed
at him and made him angry; and the angrier he got, the more he looked like his portrait.
But he was not violently angry, just shaken inside him, just disturbed. You could see that
by the way he did not speak. Then after a while one of them noticed he was crying.
“Look”, they said, “he is crying”. They thought it was another trick, that he was just
putting on a new act. So they started a collection of what money they could spare, and
they put it in a paper bag. They gave it to the beggar and they praised him for being so
handy with his tears, and they left him for being so handy with his tears, and they left him
on the sidewalk clutching his paper bag.
The photograph himself felt good. He was only twenty-nine, he had just won a
prize, and he felt he was going places. Except for a disturbing thought about Luisa that
he didn’t want to pursue, he felt he was not such a bad fellow, and was entitled to get
drunk.
Drunk, he looked out again, and saw as in a haze, the same beggar looking at
himself—still ludicrously clutching his paper bag. How old was that beggar? He should
ask. But he was too drunk to ask; besides, what the hell, the old scrounger seemed such
a kill-joy. How queer. That beggar— oh! That beggar! —was looking at himself, and
crying!

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 The Photographed Beggar

There could be no mistake. The beggar in the huge enlarged photograph on exhibit
in the window was himself.
So he looked like that, that man with the baleful expression: eyes sharp with
suspicion, the mouth sneering, the mustache on the upper lip dirtier deeper etchings than
the many lines that crisscrossed his face. Unconsciously, as he looked at himself, he took
on the very expression of the beggar in the himself, he took on the very expression of the
beggar in the photograph. The photographer had caught him in a moment of especial
malevolence, a displeasure at his fellow men, a cunning against them displayed so
patently on the face caught by the click of soul stealing camera.
This beggar in the photograph looking at himself, he was nevertheless of the
feeling that he was looking at another man. Someone else. A man whose secrets
somehow he knew, yet never as fully, as completely as now face to face with a picture
blown larger than life, the face of a man whose journey through all the days since he was
born, he, the man looking into the window knew. Traveled, detoured, not arrived.
He looked down at the rags that clothed him. Except for the shoulders, the
photograph did not take anymore of him than his face. Yet it was as though he were there,
fully displayed, in the raiment he usually used to proclaim his lack of estate. Anyone
looking at the photograph would have known that his hands at the movement when that
shutter clicked to picture him forever in his beggar state, were extended like claws. That
his feet, encased in the conceit of soles tied on to his feet with rags, were ready to shuffle
after some adamant passerby.
He put up a hand to his chin, where no beard grew because when there were no
people passing by his chosen stand, he liked to pull out the hairs that grew on his lower
face, dirty nails efficient and sure, each abrupt rewarded gesture sometimes sign of his
very vindictiveness when people would not respond to his whine. Even now as he
contemplated his own picture, he picked at the sparse growth on his chin, and he tried to
remember when this photograph had been taken.
He had been on the overpass over Quezon Boulevard. Right in the middle of the
wooden structure, in the very stream of the people hurrying in the noonday heat. He had
been holding out his right hand, his left held to his chest in manner to suggest that it was
defective, useless, and he therefore—he had learned to curse the people who did not
respond to his own malevolent kind of harassment with a stream of low mouthed words
that they never fully heard but they understood, nevertheless, for his meanings would be
unmistakable in the flash of his evil eyes, in the curl of his foul lips.
He especially liked to hold out his hand to the better dressed men, although it
wasn’t they who really liked to be generous. The generous ones were actually the women,
not the richly clad either, nor the successful looking, but the ones who were dowdy, who

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looked as though they themselves found it hard to feed their families. These kind of
women he didn’t whine at, for them he reserved a look of dull-eyed apathy, a shake of his
head, a licking of his lips as though the heat and hunger had parched him near to
desperation. Then the housewives sometimes staggering under heavy market baskets or
perhaps hurrying to catch a contraband morning Tagalog movie in spite of all the
housework, would fish hurriedly in their dress pockets, or in their market bags, one saying
perhaps, sounding almost annoyed. Well, don’t stay in the sun! and the other perhaps in
tones of compassion, I still have a five left me and hand him a ragged five-centavo bill.
But the better dressed men, they looked at him with a contempt they did not bother
to disguise, and when in quick method to get rid of him they gave him a bill they carefully
separated from neatly folded bills in their pocket, or perhaps from a wallet, they did not
like to meet his eyes, and they brushed aside from his person, disdaining contact with his
rags. He had a method of passing in front of men like that, so that he obstructed them,
and in the crowds that daily used the overpass, there was nothing better je liked than to
know he had annoyed these men, looking so well pressed, and in such hurry to reach
their offices, or wherever their business took them.
Then he had noticed this photographer stand still.
He had been, a favorite pastime of his, looking at the young girls against the sun,
so that their legs showed through their clothes, revealed to him by stun’s glare. He kept
his eyes lowered, but his pleasure showed on his face, and it was therefore with some
kind of guilty shock that he noticed this cameraman looking at him.
He had his camera slung over his shoulders but as he watched the beggar, he
began to hold it, to open it, to look inside it, walking slowly, glancing around him and up
at the sky, playing with gadgets he got out of his pocket, with which he fiddled as he tried
his best not to let the beggar know that he had noticed the beggar’s little game of sun
against the girl’s legs.
They had kept at it for a little while more, the man with a camera pretending it
wasn’t the beggar he was interested in, and the beggar pretending to go about his
business of making the world pay him alms. But after he had almost reached the other
end of the overpass, he came back to where the beggar was plying his trade, sat on the
wooden rail perched there like a giant bird, and nodded at the beggar as if to say Go
ahead don’t let me bother you. But he kept aiming his camera at people and things, the
church spire, the heads of the crowds down in the square, the rushing traffic. Only, now
and then, when he thought the beggar was not watching, aiming it at the ragged
mendicant.
It was the beggar who had finally placed the game out in the open, when he sidled
to the cameraman and sneered. You’re taking pictures of me but don’t want to let me
know.
The cameraman grinned at him, saying You have any objections?

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 The beggar looked at the crowd and the clock advertising a soft drink, calculating
in his mind how much he would make that day, temper of the crowd and heat of the day
taken into account. He looked at the cameraman and boldly proposed What is in it for
me?
Correctly guessing at his own thoughts, the cameraman asked him, Up to you.
Shrewdly, the beggar said You.
The cameraman eased himself off the guard rail, pushed a free hand into a pocket,
housed his camera back in its case, used both hands to dig into all his pockets and came
out with all the money he had on him. A count under the hot sun, as diligently attended to
by the owner of camera and the beggar made it some seventy centavos over three pesos.
The beggar said. Five.
The cameraman pocketed the seventy cents, slapped the three pesos into the old
man’s outstretched hand and said You’re lucky I have that much on me!
They went into churchyard and in a corner attended by almost all the other
mendicants and peddlers and vagrants who noticed them, had a session of it.
But he knew he had not posed for this picture on exhibit at the window. This pictre
had been taken when he wasn’t looking, he had been told to look weary, to look beggarly,
but he had not remembered having been made to pose like the man in the window.
Depraved, malicious, sly, by heaven abandoned to sin and sinning—How long had
he stood there? He knew some time must have passed by when he felt a hand give him
a tap on the shoulder and a voice say. You like yourself?
He looked up. The man who had come out of the shop with the window displaying
the beggar picture was the very cameraman who had taken it. He looked at the young
man, not knowing how to feel, nor how to answer the question he had just asked. He
looked at the picture again.
Had this young man then seen in him what the picture showed so clearly? There
was no apology in the young man’s manner. There was no hint that he was sorry or that
he felt he should not have done this thing to him.
You have no right, the beggar said, and although he tried to make his voice
arrogant and angry, he couldn’t. He could only say, displeased but unmanned. You have
no right.
Today the young man was jaunty and flaunty. Specially when other young men
came out of the shop and recognizing him for the beggar in the picture, grouped around
them, interested in their conversation.
The young man said, so that the others heard him. You don’t like yourself, huh?
Picture tell the truth too much, huh?

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 Something in him told the beggar he should keep quiet, but something in the
manner of the young man, arrogance he recognized because he had it himself, a lack of
feeling for others, a wish to hurt and to be admired for something cruel, made the beggar
angry. He was so angry he was shaking his own self. He said, You are a thief!
The words surprised his own self. What had the young man stolen from him?
The young man threw back his head and laughed. Thief? I? He shoved the other
young men away, and rashly put his hands on the beggar’s arms so he could turn the
mendicant around and face himself, enlarged, looming like something unnatural in the
blown up proportions of the print.
Look at you. Thief. Rapist. Glutton! Everything else! Look!
He looked. Shaking, and shaken. He looked. At that man whose secrets he knew,
but never as fully, as completely as now. That man there, that beggar in the photograph,
he.
He tore from the young man’s grasp. He had to say something yet he who had so
many words to throw and mutter at the people from whom he had cadged and
bamboozled the pennies with which he had managed to live, he could only say, without
the vehemence he so wanted, Thief!
The young man laughed insensately. He turned his eyes on them and their
laughter became louder, near to screaming. Look, they said. Look at the old so-and-so
imitate himself.
He no longer knew how to control his shaking. He was sick to his stomach to realize
that indeed, at this very moment, he probably looked every line, every expression, like
that old reprobate, that lecherous beggar in the picture, that so-and-so who was better off
dead!
Then one of the young men stopped laughing long enough to point at him saying,
Look! He is crying.
The beggar put up a shaking hand, and touched his cheeks and was shocked to
find them wet. He was crying. Why was he crying?
But they all started to laugh again, and now they crowded around him and slapped
him on the back and gave him playful nudges. They fished inside their pockets and pooled
some money together. They got a paper bag from somewhere and put the money in it
and they gave the bag to him, clinking and bulging.
You don’t miss a trick, do you? The man who had taken his picture said to him.
Even tears!
They turned him away, as they all went into the shop. They said to him. For the
tears, there! Naka supot pa ang pera mo. Ang galing mo, talaga!

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 And as he held on to the money in the bag, he still looked at his picture. There in
the terrible quiet from the absence of their laughter. They could not see that he had not
yet stopped crying.

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 English

Marco opened the magazine and began to read. Sometimes he stuck his tongue
between his teeth as he endeavored to form in his mind the sound he thought the English
words on the paper should have. Unconsciously, he even started to utter them aloud, his
tongue clumsy over them, but his heart pound that he could say them at all—until he
came to himself, remembering he had been hurrying to his work, and that he was on a
busy street corner where people could hear him and would perhaps laugh at him.

He licked his lips and looked around at the people who hurried by him on their way
to work much as he hurried until the newsboy at the corner had thrust that paper at him.
There were students going to school smaller they were, the more laden with books, it
seemed. There were men, some young, some old, wearing clothes that had been slept
in, rolling their shirt sleeves higher up on their arms. There were others, relatively better
dressed, who hurried just as much, and tugged at coat sleeves to make them cover dirty
shirt cuffs. But many there were too who bore the stamp of good living, who pressed
palms over breast pockets and hip pockets, as if feeling of pencil therein, or wallets,
perhaps, lest they had left these at home. And even these hurried. Even the cocheros
flourished their whips, it seemed with much impatience. And the drivers of some
automobiles expressed their irritation at the slowness of the traffic with the grate and noise
of their gear shifting.
Marco licked his lips again, and looked at the newsboy who stood near him,
thrusting papers at all the passerby. The boy’s eyes still showed signs of sleep when
Marco gave him the small coin for his paper, he looked at it a while, tinkled it on the
sidewalk, picked it up, then shoved it into his pocket. As Marco walked on, the newsboy
continued to thrust papers at the hurrying people, and his ‘Paper, Sir?’ reminded Marco
that Marcela would be right to scold him for buying a paper in language he could not read.

He arrived at the bodega in time and immediately took off the coat he wore over
his undershirt and wrapped it around the magazine. His search for a place to lay the coat
in, revealed only dusty corners, and piled up bales of maguey, and finally he hung the
coat up on a nail in the wall, hoping no one would see the paper it concealed.

They began work even before the whistle. Marco ought to have been used to the
stifle of the bodega, its dust, its tang of the sea that rose from the maguey, the spoiled,
moldy odor of copra, and the smell of sweat from bodies unwashed; but every once in a
while, he still had to leave his place at the weighing scales to go out and gasp his fill of
air in the alley that ran by the bodega. How thankful he had been when the American
boss had put him on as pesador, taking him from the ranks of the bale-carriers where he
had been.

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 He had been married two years and Marcela had given him Paul, that day at the
bodega when he had the bale taken from his shoulder by the others, and they had carried
him off to one corner where he had indulged the bubbling in his throat. They had taken
him to his wife then, and left him with many admonitions about not being afraid, he would
be all right.

But when they had gone, he had cried, a weakness he couldn’t prevent, and lain
with his face to the wall; while Marcela, who was older than he was, wiped away her own
tears and talked to him brusquely about not angering her by being so afraid. And Paul
had cried in the cradle that Cela had improvised by folding a blanket and tying the corners
with strips of cloth to the wall. He had cried some more then, and had sobbed aloud, and
he had prayed to God that he would soon be well enough for the two who depended on
him.

He had been up un a short while. And he had grown stout on tuba—the dregs left
in the cask after the clear liquid has been drawn of. This was what he had drunk, beaten
into froth with raw eggs and hot chocolates; he had taken walks in the early morning and
bought milk, seven centavos a glass, from a woman who let him watch while she milked
the cow. He had gotten well on that, or well enough at least to make him and the others
believe so; that simple food, and the earnest, almost fierce determination he had to get
well.

The American boss had sent him word then that he could come to work if he were
able to, and he could be pesador. He had, ever after that, always glowing words for the
Americans as a people.

And now here he was. He had also Vicente now; Vicente, who had Cela’s
brownness and her round face, and his love for churches and crying. And he ought to
have been used to the bodega and its heat by now, but there still were moments, as he
now did, although the air in the alley was little better that the air in the casa.

He returned to his work and laughed with the others at the obscene remarks the
bale-carriers shouted each other. But they were finished before the noon hour. The bale-
carriers rode away on the trucks, and dust rose in the alley. The rest of them sat around
on stools with canvas seats and talked, fanning themselves and wiping the sweat from
their foreheads with small towels that they thrust into their pockets wet, after using. Marco
saw Martin discover the paper in his coat. The escujedor called to their other companions
about Marco’s knowing English, what did they know of that! Blushing was something that
even the bodega had not cured Marco of, and he flushed now, with his explanations that
a niece had asked him to but it for her.

They railed him for a while and then forgot him in the telling of their stories. Marco
followed Martin, who had taken the paper, and now walked with it to a bale that he had

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sat down on. Martin started to read the paper aloud, just as Marco had in the street. And
Marco looked over his shoulder and read with him. They came to pictures, and Martin
read the captions with the wrinkling of his forehead. He would point to a picture and say,
“It says here that this is the man that went with Quezon,” and Marco would ask, “Where,
pare”. Martin would point again, “There, there, don’t you see!” Marco would wipe his face
with his towel and say, “Ah, yes, so it says, ha, P’re?”

Thus they spent the rest of the time until the noon whistle blew. They disagreed
amicably about some points, and agreed again, and others that they couldn’t seem to be
able to say or agree on, they told themselves they would ask someone about later.
They had even got to the point where they spoke to each other of the English
phrases they had learned. Perhaps Marco would say, “Pare, in English one says ‘—My
work is not very hard— ‘“. And Martin would reply,” Yes, and one also says—‘ I throw
away the hemp because it is no good any more—‘ “. They used their hands sometimes,
and sometimes they scratched their heads. And when the blast of the noon-whistle did
stop them, they promised each other that they would continue these talks because it
would help them.

They walked home together, since they lived near each other. Marco did not ty to
hide his paper anymore. He held it rolled up in one hand, and while they hurried, he
sometimes slapped it on his leg.

Near a school house, they passed a group of loitering children. They had
abandoned a game of biko-biko marked in lines on the ground, and now had grouped
around a little girl who read very loud and fast from a primer in her hands. They listened
for a while, Marco and Martin, and then smiled at each other. And then Marco asked the
little girl what grade she was in and what her age was. In the shrill voice that all little girls
have, she said, “Eight, second grade”. Marco said to Martin then, “My Paul is eight, but
he is in first grade yet.” And they hurried on again. After a while, Marco said again, “He
failed, Pare, in his first year at school.” He paused, then, said, “You see, he is so young.”
Martin, whose children weren’t yet of school-age, said, “Na, P’re, if they are too young—
“. They parted there, since Marco had reached his home.

At his meal, with his family, Marco regaled Marcela with the story of his morning.
He strung before her admiring ears all the phrases and sentences that had been in his
store, enriched with what Martin had contributed. Sometimes he would pick up objects on
the table and say, “This, Cela, is a glass—for drinking,” and maybe he would turn to Paul
and ask, “What, Paul, is not that right?” And Paul, who was busy teasing Vicente by
stealing the adobo from his plate, would look up and nod, and say, “Yes, glass, for
drinking.” And Vicente, who was now in the same class as Paul, would say, “Pa, this is
plate, this is table, and this is water, unsa no?” And Marcela would say, “Why, how good
that you know,” then brusquely, “But go on with your eating.”

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 After the meal, Vicente gave his father the school primer when he asked for it.
Marco opened it and read to them hesitatingly and heavily, but his sons nodded at the
sound of the words from his lips and at the explanation what he gave about what he had
read, Marco was an enthralled as his sons about the pictures, and he was especially
pleased by the names of the children in it: Rita, Clara, Juan, Jose; these were names he
could say without embarrassment and they pleased him.

He was sorry that Paul had still to be in the same grade as Vicente. Paul took after
him. Somewhere back, he had had high-nosed ancestors, and Paul had his brown,
transparent eyes from them, the fine lines of his lips, his nose, his love for mischief. When
Paul had brought home the school certificate with the failed mark on it, Marco had said,
“This what comes of playing with marbles so much.” That had been the bulk of his
reproaches,-- that Paul liked to play better than study.

He had been a little ashamed upon the reopening of school, when he had to go
around in the stores with the list of supplies in his hands. Sometimes he had had to point
to an article on the list and say humbly to the clerk who waited on him with hard eyes,
“Please see what this says, and give me of it.” He had borne it for the ringing dream in
his mind that someday, some very near day, his sons would rise above people like him,
God help him!

There had been teachers who had snapped at him, who had tried to dismiss his
pleas by saying repeaters were placed on the “waiting list”. And the tones of their voices
had seemed to mean good riddance to them! Marco had pleaded with these, had
quarreled with them, and thought all the effort worthwhile when he saw both his sons in
the classroom at last.

Cela had been inclined to scold Paul for not studying, thus putting his father to all
trouble. But he had quieted her by saying, “No, Cela, it is only because he is so young.”

He read to them out of the primer and asked them questions, and was delighted
when they could answer him, a little angry when they couldn’t.
He read to them out of the primer and asked them questions, and was delighted
when they could answer him, a little angry when they couldn’t.

That afternoon Rafael came to listen to them. Rafael was a boy whose dwarfish
look belied his twelve years. He was in the sixth grade, and was a distant cousin of
Marco’s sons. He hadn’t been there very long before he started to taunt Paul for being in
only the same grade as Vicente.

Marco said, “Shut up, Pa-ing, we are reading.” And he read on, but after a while
Pa-ing, with lips curled, said, “Do you think English is the dialect, to read it like that?” He
snatched the book from Marco’s hands and read it, swiftly, easily, and to Marco, very

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beautifully. But Marco took the book back and said, “This Rafael, he was always a
hambugiro!” Which made Rafael turn to him and ask, “Well, can you tell me what is the
meaning of mansion? Intuition? Invisible?” Marco said, “I know invisible”, and he gave the
meaning for it. But the other words he said he had heard but could not remember what
they meant. Rafael danced around at that, in his glee, and said, “Tell me, how much is 18
x 89”. Marco’s brow wrinkled, and he asked, “Say the numbers in the dialect…” But Rafael
threw back his head and laughed aloud and Marco was silent.

Rafael stopped laughing then, and said, “Ba! The reasons Paul did not ass is that
you don’t know anything yourself! And he went away at that, because Marco’s sons began
to chant something about his looking like a cat with his slant eyes.

Marco’s sons asked him to read on, but he said the one o’clock whistle would soon
blow. He shrugged himself into the coat he had taken off at the meal, and finding the
magazine in the pocket, he said to his sons, “Here, look at the pictures.”

He hurried back to his work again. There were the people who hurried with him,
just as in the morning, only a little dirtier perhaps, and wearier. Sometimes he caught
himself in flying glimpses, and the people like a stream around him, in the glass of the
shop-windows. There were people infinitely poorer dressed than he was, and also people
infinitely richer. He passed a number of churches. At the first he did a genuflection made
mechanical by habit. It was only a short way to the second, mad shorter by his hurry. But
at the door of this second place of God, hot tears sprang to his eyes, and the flexing of
his knees was part only of his stride as he hurried on even faster than he had hurried
before.

In the bodega that afternoon, the men took a respite, feeling so washed out by the
heat. Martin and Marco eagerly sought each other Marco said, “How much is 18 x 89?”
artin scratched his head and said, “Where did you get that, Pare? Say it in Spanish—“
But Marco did not know. They went back to saying small sentences in English, and Marco
was happy again. But some of the others had gone up to them, and then these others
laughed when Martin included a dialect expression in what was to be an English sentence.
Marco flushed at their laughter and said, “Let’s go back to work. It is late.” They all went
back to work after that.

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 Chump

Everybody loves a champion. The champion himself thinks so. Jonny (Tiger)
Conde. Featherweight champion of the Philippines.

He looks like Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata. The same slow smile, the same long
look to the eyes, lowered lids, slit glance, head held to the side, lips twisted in a three
cornered grin. I suspect he practices that smile in a mirror. H has a way of looking at
people while they are speaking to him, with his head slightly averted, the eyes lifted, so
that he looks like a brown angel. I watch him do that, and I say to myself, the son of a—
I hate the big bum. Maybe because I love his manager.

I remember Jes. No, Jes wasn’t the one I loved. You know, Jes with a glass of
scotch and soda in his hand. Sitting in the Rose Room, playing peek-a-boo although he
could hardly see the markings on the dice, saying in the slurred blurred way of Jes: Don’t
love a fighter. Protect him because he is your property. Protect him but don’t love him.

You can say that to any other manager and he would know what you mean and
agree with you. Not Nene.
Funny name for a big man. Big, like house. He was a quite a man. But his name
is Nene, and he is soft -spoken, gentle-mannered ad utterly improbable as a fight
manager.
I love that big lid, he loves me, but the loves Jonny too.

Nene loves Jonny Conde. Nene taught him to be a fighter. He was jjust a big bum.
He had had nine fights, lost all of them, before Nene got him. He’d get into the ring, put
op his hands, wait for his opponent to come to him and punch him, and not throw one
punch of his own at the man. A human punching bag. He couldn’t hit because he never
tried.

Nene loves fighting. Boxing. He was an amateur boxer himself when h was in
highschool. He had learned self-defense in the hard school of street brawls, with a gang
of young toughs who used to be called the Eden boys.

He like wandering into gyms, watching professional boxer train. He would have
become one himself if his father had not begged him to put away his gloves, after he had
fought several professional curtain raisers. (His father was a boxing fan himself, and one
night almost had heart failure as he watched a handsome boy beat a rugged opponent
into submission even as the crowd yelled affectionate catcalls at the ‘mestizo’ who looked
like a girl and yet could hit so hard. Immediately after the fight had ended the father had

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gone into the dressing rooms, and led his son away from resin, canvas, sweaty gloves
and liniment rubbed into bruised flesh.)

On one of those gym executions, he had been approached by one of those

characters who make up the many who cluster around training gyms: has-beens who are
willing to pic hip a little money sparring with the boxers in training. Other has-beens who
stand by for a handout, even if it is only a cup of coffee, a slug of gin. Young boys
wondering if boxing is the way to make a living, hoping that the fight managers will tell
them Yes. And then there are aficionados of the sport, like Nene, or unlike him, because
they think of boxing as just another kind of race, and the men in the ring, punching at the
bag, or skipping rope, as the horses. To lose money on, or to win bets on.

But this has-been had been begging other fight managers to give him another fight.
He would not believe them when they told him he was through he would only be hurting
himself. Nene who listened to his story of not having enough to eat, not knowing where
to get work, and not knowing anything except boxing. So Nene promised to get him a
fight, and undertook the training of the has-been himself to get him back into condition for
a match.

The most that the poor guy managed was a draw. Years of not having enough to
eat. Reflexes too slow. Punches too weak. He was lucky it was a draw. Nene found him
a job and made him retire. But Nene still had a ‘show ‘em’ chore. So he picked Jonny.
Saw in bum’s ox-like resistance to a punch, his dogged determination to stay on his feet,
although his eyes were mere slits in this foolish face, and his body one big bruise, the
promise of a good fighter, given the right training, the right push.

The sportswriters helped him in the build-up. They wrote a line or two, made
predictions, praised the punch he was developing in the gyms. They played it up big when
he knocked down some bums.

Nene will tell you about the other build-up though. The one he had to do bu his
own self. With Jonny. No words. Mostly motions. Up in the early morning to run the miles
it is necessary to run to increase a fighter’s wind, and strengthening his leg, Nene running
beside Jonny. Sitting with him on the rocks at the Boulevard, taking breathing exercises
with him. Shadow-boxing then. Teaching him how to throw his punches, reminding him
all the time to keep his chin down, down on your chest, you big lug and don’t round that
right, throw it straight from your shoulder! Move your feet, you flat-foot! Move! Breathe!

Calisthenics, To limber up. Skipping rope, raise your legs, skip! The punching
bags. The sand bag. Coordination, flexes, resistance, power. His diet, the sleeping he
did, the sitting around, even the drinking of water, the going with girls—these were all
watched and regulated. And most important, his attitude toward an opponent had to be
changed.

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 His first fight under Nene, Jonny knocked out the other guy with a series of punches
that proves the winning formula for most of the Conde fights after that. He had a terrific
right.

Jonny Conde, a tiger in the ring, the sportswriters said. Jonny the terrible. Now he
didn’t wait for his opponent. He sailed out at the sound of the bell and tore into the man.

It was inevitable that the time would come when Jonny would be scheduled to meet
the champion in the ring. To that end, Nene studied every punch, every little ring gesture
of the champion. By this time, Nene had a stable. Young boys, who would follow
instructions and training rules. Nene like them all, but you could see how Jonny had all
his heart. Jonny would be champion someday. The championship fight was something in
a fight-crazy city like this. Jonny was the boy to pitch against the slugging champ. Nene
had it all mapped out. He knew the champion’s strength, he knew this weaknesses.
Meanwhile, Nene’s trainer would try to talk to Jonny, telling him to punch the bag,
or skip rope, and Jonny would gesture with his hand, meaning Nothing doing, or say he
knew what to do, he’d just do light calisthenics. Or maybe he punch the bag, but he would
pose and posture, hoping a photographer would be nearby. That is when I started saying
to myself, the big baboon!

Nene would ask Jonny why he wasn’t training and the boy would answer with a
shrug: I’m tip-top.

Some managers make a living off their fighters. Nene was a sucker for his. He led
them to the gym, mixed cologne with their wintergreen so that they wouldn’t smell too
much like horses, outfitted them in natty green-and -white ring wear that made them look
like college boys, rah-rah kids.
And the prized kid of all, the Tiger, was acting up like a big ape. I tried talking to
him. I said Who, and What were you before Nene picked you up? Nothing! Not until Nene
stood in your corner and thought for you. You damn fool. Now you think you’re so big you
an do without him. He listened. Oh, he listened, all right. But I could see by the little flicker
in his eyes, and the amused way he looked at me just what he thought.

They finally had a showdown. Nene brought one of the sportswriters, the one that
looks like a handsome Turk, who touted Jonny so much, who predicted he’d become a
champion, who plastered him over his paper. The said Turk, telling me about it afterward,
he thought Nene would knock Jonny’s teeth out, and Nene being all of two hundred and
ten pounds, and a yard wide, he could have done it. I wish he had.

You think you’re a champion already. You’re real good! Saud Nene. Look, I can
cancel your fight, and send you back to the gutter I took you from.. Wise up, Jonny.

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 Ah, the wonderful days after that. Jonny actually behaved. He obeyed training
rules. He trained, lived, slept, talked like a good Joe.

He won the fight. No boxing fan will ever forget that night. The roaring crowd. The
challenger calmly, coolly, relentlessly breaking down the champion’s resistance; smiling
a little even, gauging the champion’s weaknesses, taking advantage of them, pressing
his own young strength against the tired champion’s buckling knees and glazing eyes and
hanging arms.

Jonny was wonderful to watch. Nobody can take that from him. There was a round
when the champion went all out for Jonny’s middle section. Those that were for the
champion shouted, He’s weal in the bodega! Knock him down! Kill him!

But Jonny broke away, smiling a little, not even winded, The crowd roared, they
saw him duck his chin into his chest with that little head bob of hi that is so graceful, and
they waited.

A solid right felled the champion. He took a count of eight, then stood up. Jonny
rushed him, jabbed, and followed with three straight rights. The champion went down on
his back, tried to get up. He crawled on all fours like a baby. Then he collapsed. The
referee raised Jonny’s hand.

I remember Nene’s white face as he watched Jonny’s every move, guiding him,
steady and gentle. Then, finally, the nod, the gesture of the emperor to the gladiator, the
signal to get in there and kill.

Jonny—the Tiger—Conde. For a little while the championship sweetened him up.
He seemed to love Nene as much as Nene loved him.

Then, the promoted a fight for him with an imported Negro southpaw. That was
when I met Jes ad that was when I heard the motto. High time too because the tiger was
himself again, a first class bum.
In the fight, he showed it. The crows believed in him, they thought he was waiting,
the way he always did, waiting for that moment when he could flash his deadly rocking
right. But I could tell. He was lost. He didn’t know how to handle a southpaw. In the sixth
round, the Negro butted Jonny in the left eye. Jonny signaled to the referee that he had
been cut. The doctor said it was a bad one, and the fight was called a draw.

That night, I watched Nene cry into his scotch, and tried to prevent a quarrel
between him and Jes, who had imported the Negro.

Again, the purse from the with sweetened up Jonny. He trained, worked hard. Then
the trainer began to mumble. Jonny would miss days at the gym. Go away without a word.
When he came back, he’d whine and yes Boss Nene ad they’d be pals again.

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 A champion has to defend his title only every six months. But if your champion is
Jonny, you look for a fight for him so he can have the money he needs. It was difficult
finding anyone to fight him. And for a promoter to be able to afford the price a champion
commands the card should bill a challenger who will draw a big gate.
Finally, a fight was arranged, Jonny (tiger) Conde versus Little Nero.

Little Nero was the idol of a whole Laguna town, and it was not to be wondered at.
The boy had a lion’s heart, that will to win. People had forgiven Jonny for the disappointing
fight with the Negro. They liked Nero. Certainly, they liked the gore that the fight promised.

It’s history now. the fight between Little Nero and Jonny Conde. Nero entering the
ring, cool but savage, every punch packed with dynamite. And Jonny. He was a clumsy
bum, a palooka, from the start. Nene told him to get it over with quick. But no the Tiger.
He held off. he back-tracked. It was horrible. Between rounds, he shook his head
stubbornly at Nene’s desperate instructions to mix it up and said he was going to tire Nero
out. But Little Nero was in shape. Jonny wasn’t. the challenger carried the fight all the
way. He knocked Jonny out in the fourth.

You saw the Tiger hanging on the ropes, forgetting to look beautiful, face puffed
up like pastry, putting up ineffectual hands to protect himself from a berserk Nero. Nene
had said, Get in there and fight, or by God, I’ll slug you myself. But Nene wouldn’t slug a
fighter who had just lost his title, and all his glory, and all his world. You look at him, and
listen to his puffed lips, making with alibis, and you patched him up with collodion, arnica
and tape. You massage him and wipe away his tears while you don’t dare let your own
come out. You’re his manager and you loved the heart you thought he had, and then you
saw him become the bum he had always been. You still nurse him along and you promise
him a rematch.
Rematch, nuts!

Instead we sold him. At a low price. Not half the investment put in him. Not that
you can pay for it with money. The hours of teaching, the hours of caring for him: food,
sleep exercise. The nursing, the babying, the hours of talking to make him feel like God
and Vengeance. Tiger, Fighter, In the end, Bum.

Nene gave up boxing. I told him he had proven his point. He had made a champion.
That was enough. He had built a champion out of a bum. Jonny (Tiger) Conde whom
Nene had loved like a son, a brother, a dream. We sold the rights to him to the only man
who would have bought him. Not because he was a fighter. But because he was a bum.
And good to keep around for the laughs. A man who wouldn’t baby him. I bet he gets
kicked around.

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 I bet he doesn’t like it. Jonny Conde was used to Nene who loved him. We sold
him to Jes.

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