Misa de Gallo
by: Manuel E. Arguilla
The cold woke me up. lt flowed in through the sawali wall; between the bamboo slats of the floor floor; under the eaves. Roosters were crowing as I dressed shiveringly in the dark, for the petroleum lamp had burned out in the night. Before going down, I put my blanket over Baldo, my younger brother. He was bent doubled, knees drawn up to the chin. The roosters had ceased to crow and had gone to sleep again.
Outside, a nipping breeze blew from the maw of Old Kabayang, black against the eastern sky.
Castila followed me to the street, but I sent him back. The pebbles were cold and sharp against my bare feet. Little stars shone thinly.
There was light inside the house of Lacay Julian. Moning and her sisters were awake and were dressing. I stood in the lamplight that escaped through a narrow opening between the closed window shutter and the wall and flung itself across the road.
"Hurry up and dress!" I shouted.
"Hoy," Moning said, "go wake up Nana Albin, Ca Ciano and Ca Celin. Everybody!"
"It is cold," I said. I ran about and the wind whipped around my naked ankles.
"Hold on to your ears, they might fall off."
We gathered under the Duhat tree opposite our house. The darkness was lifting. Moning looked warm and slim in a red sweater. Nana Albin smoked a big homemade cigar. Ca Ciano and Ca Celin had put on coat and shoes and cravat. They talked of a dance at the house of the town president after the mass.
My cousin Artemio, who lived with Nana Albin, chased Moning because she called him "martillo." I ran after him and dropped a pebble wet with dew inside his shirt down his back.
He yelled as the cold stone rolled down his back.
A group from Santiago, a barrio farther South iron town than ours went by. They walked fast and breathed hard and talked in low voices. The rasping of their slippers on the gravel of the road was loud against the quiet of the early dawn. A young girl laughed musically.
"We pass you by; we pass you by," they said.
"God go with you," we answered.
Mang Ose and Tinang, his wife of a year, joined us. Mang Ose was tall and very wide at the shoulders. He had high, narrow hips and the waste of girl. He was the strongest man in Nagrebcan.
"Let us go," he said, and his Voice was big like him. "What do we wait for?"
"Meliang; she has not come down."
Whereupon, he cupped his hands to his mouth and called out. "Susmariosep, Meliang, God will grow white hair waiting for you!"
"Hoy, Mang Ose," Meliang said, "you will wake up the dead with your noise.
We laughed and Mang Ose laughed loudest.
Meliang appeared and we were soon on our way. The road lay faintly white between the dark shapes of unlighted houses and unstirring trees on either side. We were crossing the dry sandy bed of the river when the sound of bells came to our ears.We walked faster, and dust rose under our feet. The breeze irom Old Kayabang struck us numbingly.
Mass had begun when we reached the church.
The girls knelt with Nana Albin near a confessional, well toward the front. Ca Ciano and Ca Celin stayed at the back. Artemio and I stood under the pulpit. The wind blew in through a Side door and it was very cold. We put our hands under our armpits. I rubbed by feet over each other, but after a while, they seemed devoid of feeling. Near us, by candlelight, an old man knelt before a guttering candle. Beside him, gleaming in the candlelight, lay his hat of white squash rind. Around us spread the sounds of praying, and incense mingled with the odor of many people. A baby cried and its mother hushed it softly.
The altar was radiant in contrast to the dim nave where the people knelt and prayed. The priest intoned his words in a deep, solemn voice that rolled out like a flooding stream and filled the whole church. The choir of half a dozen middle-aged men chanted back the responses and their ceaseless twittering wove a pattern through the ebb and flow of the rosary below. And far away, beyond the thick walls of the church, roosters were crowing to the stars.
I sought out Moning in her red sweater. She was bowed meekly in prayer and the light of the candles was bright on her hair. Sight of her thus always made me uneasy. She seemed a different person from the Moning I knew. was glad when mass finally ended.
A slow rising moon had dispelled the reluctant twilight. Mist descended irom the hills and the plaza
Moning walked sedately beside her sisters. I kicked her slippers off her feet, and she chased me, holding one overhead. I ran into the sand. She followed me, threatening to kill me if I did not stop. I doubled and she caught me by the waist. We wrestled and fell panting on the sand. I was underneath, and her breath was warm on my face. She got up laughing and began strewing me with sand. My cousin Artemio came from behind and pulled her hair. I leaped to my leet and caught him and sat on him while Moning poured handfuls ot sand on his head. After that we walked side by side, silent till we could catch our breath. I kept a wary eye on cousin Artemio, who hovered in our rear.
"Today, we make suman," Moning said.
In the evening, Artemio and I and the other boys will come to play with our bamboo instruments before your house."
"We shall give you suman to eat."
"Do you want to come with us to the other house? You could sing..."
"Mother would not permit me. Besides I will have to help serve visitors."
"Then we shall return for you, and we shall all go to midnight mass."
We came to the bridge and our feet were loud on the wooden planks. On the slow-moving river, the moon laid a silver path that kept step with us till we reach the street. I looked back and except where little noiseless ripples caught the moon rays evanescently on their crests, the river was once more dark.
"You should hear my bamboo flute, Moning," I said, "I cut the reed at midday on Good Friday last year.
"When I grow up," she said slowly, "I shall play the piano."
The moon traveled through the trees, slipping from twig to twig with incredible ease, over big branches, across thick leaves, as fast as we sent. We were racing with the moon, and it was laughing at us. We stopped breathless and perspiring. We sat on a small mound of gravel by the roadside, our back to the moon shining clear and strong and tireless. We sat there throwing stones aimlessly, watching them catch up with their shadows.
"You act like you have not just been in church," Nana Albin said when the rest overtook us.
"You are like goats," Mang Ose laughed, "young goats let loose."
Near our house, in the shadow of the Duhat, I touched Moning's arm.
I wanted to say that when I grew up I would go to America and buy her a piano, but the thought of it was big within me and very bright it seemed like a flash of lightning, and I could not say it aloud.
She turned away and joined her sisters.
Father and Mother and Baldo had not awakened. Cocks crowed, flapped their wings, and flew down. They pecked at random on the ground and strutted. I swept the yard with the broom and coconut-leaf midribs. Castila came out of his hole under the heap of firewood piled against the hole of the Camachile that shaded our house. He yawned widely, showing his sharp white teeth and stretched himself, and ran to me wagging his tail. I put my arms around his neck and hugged him tight, and he was warm and affectionate against my body.
Later, I set fire to the mound of dead leaves I had accumulated under the trellis of the squash, and Castila and I warmed ourselves.
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