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The train left amidst confused noises. Shouts of boys selling newspapers and magazines. Mabuhay, ma’am, Mabuhay Extra. Hera-a-a-Id, sir. Foto News, Foto News, anyone? Clamour of leave-takings and last-minute reminders. Don’t forget, Sindo, you are to alight at Sta. Isabel, watch the stations. Temiong, don’t ever let that bag out of your hands, there are thieves everywhere, be careful. Give Ka Uweng my regards, Sela tell him we’ll go home for the Holy Week. Your pass, Kiko, it might be mislaid. Happy trip, Mrs. Enriquez. Smile just once, Ben, I won’t stay there long and I’ll write every day. Remember me to the folks. Goodbye. Goodbye. ‘Till we meet again. Sudden and sharp hiss of the engine. Clanking of the jolted cars. A long whistle and the uncertain chug, chug, of the pistons. The train throbbed into life and slowly began to move. H-s-s-s-sss. Chug, chug, chug.

The darkness of Tutuban receded behind Danding and his companions as they went forth into the light and the fresh air of early morning. His Aunt Juana took a deep breath and said, “Thank God we got started at last. It was so warm inside the station.” His Uncle Collo was already looking out of the window at the houses and trees along the tracks.

The movement of the engine was now swift and sure, like the beat of a heart no longer beset by doubt. The noise and confusion of leaving passed like a cloud from Danding’s mind, and he recalled why they were going to Malawig. His Aunt Juana was speaking again. “The dead one is your Uncle Inong, a nephew of your Grandmother Asyang and cousin to your father. He was a good man.”

Danding felt a touch of sadness, although he had never seen the dead kinsman. The mention of his father stifled the depths of his heart; he felt strangely drawn to the unknown dead. He remembered that his father was born in Malawig, that he grew up and spent his early youth in that small village. He turned to his Aunt Juana and asked what the village looked like, whether it was rich or poor, remote or near the town. And while the good woman probed her memory there was being formed in his mind an enticing picture of the village and his heart was filling with an eagerness he rarely felt.

*  *  *  *  *

At first glance, Malawig was like any other village in Central Luzon. A narrow, winding road covered with thick, yellowish dust. Rows of bamboo groves, mango, coconut and acacia trees. Nipa houses, most of them old and with sunburnt roofs and sides. Here and there, a wooden house, tall and unpainted, or a store which defied detection until one came up against it. Beyond the sparse rows of houses, glimpsed now and then, the bountiful, life-giving fields. And over all, smiling and full of the morning’s splendour, the vast blue cloudless sky.

“There’s nothing beautiful here except the sky, the driver of the caretela in which they were riding remarked jokingly. Danding stifled the surge of disappointment in his heart. “No . . .” he protested softly. He was thinking that it was in such villages as Malawig that Del Pilar and other heroes of his race were born, that it was from such fields as he was now gazing upon that the spirit of the Revolution drew much of its purity and strength. The thought solaced him and gave a new aspect to all the things around him.

*  *  *  *  *

He had so many relatives in the village. It seemed as if his Aunt Juana would never finish introducing them to him. He is your Grandfather Tasyo and she is your Grandmother Ines. Your cousins Juan, Seling, Maria and Asias. Your Aunt Bito. Your Uncle Enteng. Bows and smiles and kissing of hands. Relatives near and distant, blood relations and in-laws, relatives old and young. All the people in the house, it seemed, were related to Danding. “It’s good that my nose is naturally flat,” he thought. “It would have been flattened, anyway, by the kissing of so many hands.”

Because they were the only ones who had come all the way from Manila, Danding, his uncle and his aunt became the center of interest. Everyone wanted to know how they were faring in the city. Danding was deluged with questions about his sick father and his mother who was now the sole support of the family. His Aunt Juana glanced at Danding and tried to answer the insistent queries. She knew how sensitive her nephew was, knew that the tragedy of his father’s illness was an ever-fresh wound in his heart. But Danding answered every question before she could say a word; he seemed eager to talk and already at ease amidst relatives whom he had come to know only now.

A thin sawali partition separated the sala from the room in which the dead one lay. Through the open door, which was decorated on both sides with white curtains tied at the ends with strips of black ribbon, an endless stream of people passed: mourners and neighbors who had come to offer their condolences to the family and to pay their last respects to the dead. But the moment Danding entered the room he had a strange sensation. The silence of death seemed to envelop his whole being, drowning out all awareness of the noise around him. Slowly he approached the coffin and gazed at the dead man’s face. Light-brown and comely, it was a countenance in which goodness and loyalty were written in clear, strong lines. Danding saw in the breadth of the forehead, in the eyes which were not completely closed, and in the shape of the nose a faint resemblance with his father. Pity and sorrow gripped his heart.

“You haven’t greeted your Aunt Maria,” his Aunt Juana reminded him softly. “And your cousin Bining,” she whispered. Danding kissed the widow’s hand and sat beside Bining, but he couldn’t say a word; his heart was full. After a while he reached for an album on the table beside him, opened it, and meditated on the mysterious and powerful ties of blood which bound men together.

*  *  *  *  *

After lunch Danding went to the field in back of the house. Harvest-time was over and the palay had been stacked up in sheaves. The bare earth seemed to smoulder in the heat of the noon-day sun. Danding sat down in the shade of a bamboo grove and looked around him.

Not far off his Grandfather Tasio was whittling at a piece of bamboo. The blade of his bolo flashed like a jewel in the sun. Danding stood up and approached the old man. Lolo Tasio spoke first. “You are like your father,” he said.

“Why, Grandfather?”

“You are ill at ease in a crowd; you prefer being alone.”

“There are times when a man needs to be alone, Grandfather.”

“Your father also talked that way; he spoke like an old man even when he was still quite young.”

“Did you see his youth?”

“See!” Lolo Tasio burst out laughing. “Of course, son! It was I who cut your father’s umbilical cord. I made his first toys. His father died soon after his birth.”

Lolo Tasio stood up suddenly and pointed with his bolo at the other end of the field. “Your father flew his kites there when he was a little boy. Once he went plowing with me and fell off a carabao in that paddy. He was hurt then; I thought he would never stop crying.”

The old man turned and looked up at the mango tree behind him. “I made your father climb up that tree one afternoon at the height of the Revolution, when I heard that some desperate Spaniards were coming our way. And there, right where you were sitting a while ago, he wrote his first poem — a brief ode to one of the girls he had met in the town. Your father had a streak of devilry in him.”

Danding smiled. “Was that girl the cause of his coming to Manila?”

“Yes.” Lolo Tasio paused as though savoring the memory of the incident “They were caught playing beside a rice-stack”

“Playing?”

“Yes — in the light of a few flickering stars.”

There were many other things Danding wanted to ask, but he remembered the dead one and the people in the house; they might be looking for him. Reluctantly he ended the conversation and left Lolo Tasio to his memories.

“What did you watch in the fields?” one of his newfound cousins asked banteringly.

“The sun,” Danding answered, closing his eyes to readjust his vision to the semi-darkness which seemed to shroud the house.

*  *  *  *  *

The graveyard lay beside the church, a fact which recalled to Danding God’s curse upon Adam and his children, and of mankind’s long, tragic exile that ends only in death. He remembered, too, that in this little sanctuary of the dead reposed the dust of his ancestors, the humble remains of the collective hopes, loves, joys and sorrows, of the proud dreams and the disappointments which his family had bequeathed to him as his heritage. He stepped lightly on the soft earth and tried not to tread upon even the smallest plants.

The grave was ready. There was nothing left to do but lower the coffin and cover it up with earth. But at the last moment the dead man’s face was uncovered, so that the mourners might gaze upon it once more. The silence was broken and the air filled with suppressed sobs and cries more heartrending than loud weeping. Danding bit his lips; in spite of himself he felt tears welling out of his eyes.

For a moment he was overwhelmed with grief, and by the vague feeling that he, too, was undergoing a kind of death. Troubled and full of a strange unrest, he gently withdrew and went back to the house.

He wanted to be alone. When he saw that there were still people in the house, he went to the fields instead. The sun was setting and the wind was tipped with cold. Already there was a hint of evening in the air. Danding stopped near the bamboo grove and wiped the sweat off his face.

The peace of the fields caressed his hot face like a mother’s hand. He took a deep breath, sat down on the warm earth and closed his eyes. He stretched out his legs, pressed his palms upon the earth, and raised his face to the gentle wind.

How cool, how fragrant was the wind.

Slowly sorrow and agitation left him, and a feeling of repose suffused his tired body. On that small piece of earth, whereon his father was born, his heart found peace.

Stronger blew the wind, which bore the smell of earth and the fragrance of ripe grain. Danding remembered Lolo Tasio’s stories about his father. How he flew kites in the fields, how he fell off a carabao, how he hid from the Spanish desperados, the girl beside the rice-stack — everything came back to him fraught with a new meaning. Danding laughed softly and pressed his hands deeper into the soil. Like a tree rooted there, he felt a mysterious kinship with the earth which had been wet by his father’s tears and had resounded to his laughter.

At that moment Danding seemed to hold in his hand the secret of what is called love of country. He understood why exiled is a punishment so difficult to bear, and why the exiled sons will venture forth in the teeth of storm and flood just to be able to go home to their Motherland. Why Rizal and Bonifacio unhesitatingly offered up their lives for their country.

Back of the noble phrases, of the sublime sacrifices and the death of the heroes, Danding saw a bit of land upon which stood their homes, on which their families lived and which shared their secrets and served as repository of the heritage of their race. Again he smiled.

From the direction of the house he heard voices, heard his name being called. Slowly he stood up. Night had come, darkness covered the fields. There was no moon and the sky was overcast. But Danding could still discern the tips of the bamboos in the shade of which his father’s first poem had been composed, and above them the flickering stars which had witnessed his first love.