Chương Chương 8 · MERRY CHRISTMAS!

When Juli opened her sorrowing eyes, she saw that the house was still

dark, but the cocks were crowing. Her first thought was that perhaps

the Virgin had performed the miracle and the sun was not going to rise,

in spite of the invocations of the cocks. She rose, crossed herself,

recited her morning prayers with great devotion, and with as little

noise as possible went out on the batalan.

There was no miracle—the sun was rising and promised a magnificent

morning, the breeze was delightfully cool, the stars were paling in the

east, and the cocks were crowing as if to see who could crow best and

loudest. That had been too much to ask—it were much easier to request

the Virgin to send the two hundred and fifty pesos. What would it cost

the Mother of the Lord to give them? But underneath the image she found

only the letter of her father asking for the ransom of five hundred

pesos. There was nothing to do but go, so, seeing that her grandfather

was not stirring, she thought him asleep and began to prepare

breakfast. Strange, she was calm, she even had a desire to laugh! What

had she had last night to afflict her so? She was not going very far,

she could come every second day to visit the house, her grandfather

could see her, and as for Basilio, he had known for some time the bad

turn her father’s affairs had taken, since he had often said to her,

“When I’m a physician and we are married, your father won’t need his

fields.”

“What a fool I was to cry so much,” she said to herself as she packed

her tampipi. Her fingers struck against the locket and she pressed it

to her lips, but immediately wiped them from fear of contagion, for

that locket set with diamonds and emeralds had come from a leper. Ah,

then, if she should catch that disease she could not get married.

As it became lighter, she could see her grandfather seated in a corner,

following all her movements with his eyes, so she caught up her tampipi

of clothes and approached him smilingly to kiss his hand. The old man

blessed her silently, while she tried to appear merry. “When father

comes back, tell him that I have at last gone to college—my mistress

talks Spanish. It’s the cheapest college I could find.”

Seeing the old man’s eyes fill with tears, she placed the tampipi on

her head and hastily went downstairs, her slippers slapping merrily on

the wooden steps. But when she turned her head to look again at the

house, the house wherein had faded her childhood dreams and her maiden

illusions, when she saw it sad, lonely, deserted, with the windows half

closed, vacant and dark like a dead man’s eyes, when she heard the low

rustling of the bamboos, and saw them nodding in the fresh morning

breeze as though bidding her farewell, then her vivacity disappeared;

she stopped, her eyes filled with tears, and letting herself fall in a

sitting posture on a log by the wayside she broke out into disconsolate

tears.

Juli had been gone several hours and the sun was quite high overhead

when Tandang Selo gazed from the window at the people in their festival

garments going to the town to attend the high mass. Nearly all led by

the hand or carried in their arms a little boy or girl decked out as if

for a fiesta.

Christmas day in the Philippines is, according to the elders, a fiesta

for the children, who are perhaps not of the same opinion and who, it

may be supposed, have for it an instinctive dread. They are roused

early, washed, dressed, and decked out with everything new, dear, and

precious that they possess—high silk shoes, big hats, woolen or velvet

suits, without overlooking four or five scapularies, which contain

texts from St. John, and thus burdened they are carried to the high

mass, where for almost an hour they are subjected to the heat and the

human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if they are

not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored, or asleep.

At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing they are pinched

and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh or feel happy, while

in their round eyes can be read a protest against so much embroidery

and a longing for the old shirt of week-days.

Afterwards, they are dragged from house to house to kiss their

relatives’ hands. There they have to dance, sing, and recite all the

amusing things they know, whether in the humor or not, whether

comfortable or not in their fine clothes, with the eternal pinchings

and scoldings if they play any of their tricks. Their relatives give

them cuartos which their parents seize upon and of which they hear

nothing more. The only positive results they are accustomed to get from

the fiesta are the marks of the aforesaid pinchings, the vexations, and

at best an attack of indigestion from gorging themselves with candy and

cake in the houses of kind relatives. But such is the custom, and

Filipino children enter the world through these ordeals, which

afterwards prove the least sad, the least hard, of their lives.

Adult persons who live independently also share in this fiesta, by

visiting their parents and their parents’ relatives, crooking their

knees, and wishing them a merry Christmas. Their Christmas gift

consists of a sweetmeat, some fruit, a glass of water, or some

insignificant present.

Tandang Selo saw all his friends pass and thought sadly that this year

he had no Christmas gift for anybody, while his granddaughter had gone

without hers, without wishing him a merry Christinas. Was it delicacy

on Juli’s part or pure forgetfulness?

When he tried to greet the relatives who called on him, bringing their

children, he found to his great surprise that he could not articulate a

word. Vainly he tried, but no sound could he utter. He placed his hands

on his throat, shook his head, but without effect. When he tried to

laugh, his lips trembled convulsively and the only noise produced was a

hoarse wheeze like the blowing of bellows.

The women gazed at him in consternation. “He’s dumb, he’s dumb!” they

cried in astonishment, raising at once a literal pandemonium.