ALL OVER THE WORLD long time neither of us said anything.
She was
by Vicente Rivera, Jr.
ONE evening in August 1941, I came out of a
late movie to a silent, cold night. I shivered a
little as I stood for a moment in the narrow
street, looking up at the distant sky, alive with
stars. I stood there, letting the night wind
seep through me, and listening. The street
was empty, the houses on the street dim—
with the kind of ghostly dimness that seems
to embrace sleeping houses. I had always
liked empty streets in the night; I had always
stopped for a while in these streets listening
for something I did not quite know what.
Perhaps for low, soft cries that empty streets
and sleeping houses seem to share in the
night.
I lived in an old, nearly crumbling
apartment house just across the street from
the moviehouse. From the street, I could see
into the open courtyard, around which rooms
for the tenants, mostly a whole family to a
single room, were ranged. My room, like all
the other rooms on the groundfloor, opened
on this court. Three other boys, my cousins,
shared the room with me. As I turned into the
courtyard from the street, I noticed that the
light over our study-table, which stood on the
corridor outside our room, was still burning.
Earlier in the evening after supper, I had
taken out my books to study, but I went to a
movie instead. I must have forgotten to turn
off the light; apparently, the boys had
forgotten, too.
I went around the low screen that
partitioned off our “study” and there was a
girl reading at the table. We looked at each
other, startled. I had never seen her before.
She was about eleven years old, and she wore
a faded blue dress. She had long, straight hair
falling to her shoulders. She was reading my
copy of Greek Myths.
The eyes she had turned to me were
wide, darkened a little by apprehension. For a
a delicately pretty girl with a fine, smooth.
pale olive skin that shone richly in the yellow
light. Her nose was straight, small and finely
molded. Her lips, full and red, were fixed and
tense. And there was something else about
her. Something lonely? something lost?
“I know,” I said, “I like stories, too. I read
anything good I find lying around. Have you
been reading long?”
“Yes,” she said. not looking at me now.
She got up slowly, closing the book. “I’m
sorry.”
“Don’t you want to read anymore? I
asked her, trying to smile, trying to make her
feel that everything was all right.
“No.” she said, “thank you.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, picking up the book. “It’s
late. You ought to be in bed. But, you can take
this along.”
She hesitated, hanging back, then shyly
she took the book, brought it to her side. She
looked down at her feet uncertain as to
where to turn.
“You live here?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“What room?”
She turned her face and nodded towards
the far corner, across the courtyard, to a little
room near the communal kitchen. It was the
room occupied by the janitor: a small square
room with no windows except for a transom
above the door.
“You live with Mang Lucio?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“How long have you been here? I haven’t
seen you before, have I?”
“I’ve always been here. I’ve seen you.”
“Oh. Well, good night—your name?”
“Maria.”
“Good night, Maria.”
She turned quickly, ran across the
courtyard, straight to her room, and closed
the door without looking back.
I undressed, turned off the light and lay in
bed dreaming of far-away things. I was
twenty-one and had a job for the first time.
The salary was not much and I lived in a
house that was slowly coming apart, but life
seemed good. And in the evening when the
noise of living had died down and you lay safe
in bed, you could dream of better times, look
back and ahead, and find that life could be
gentle—even with the hardness. And
afterwards, when the night had grown colder,
and suddenly you felt alone in the world,
adrift, caught in a current of mystery that
came in the hour between sleep and waking,
the vaguely frightening loneliness only
brought you closer to everything, to the walls
and the shadows on the walls, to the other
sleeping people in the room, to everything
within and beyond this house, this street, this
city, everywhere.
I met Maria again one early evening, a
week later, as I was coming home from the
office. I saw her walking ahead of me, slowly,
as if she could not be too careful, and with a
kind of grownup poise that was somehow
touching. But I did not know it was Maria until
she stopped and I overtook her.
She was wearing a white dress that had
been old many months ago. She wore a pair
of brown sneakers that had been white once.
She had stopped to look at the posters of
pictures advertised as “Coming” to our
neighborhood theater.
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual.
She smiled at me and looked away
quickly. She did not say anything nor did she
step away. I felt her shyness, but there was
no self-consciousness, none of the tenseness
and restraint of the night we first met. I stood
beside her, looked at the pictures tacked to a
tilted board, and tried whistling a tune.
She turned to go, hesitated, and looked at
me full in the eyes. There was again that
wide-eyed—and sad? —stare. I smiled,
feeling a remote desire to comfort her, as if it
would do any good, as if it was comfort she
needed.
“I’ll return your book now,” she said.
“You’ve finished it?”
“Yes.”
We walked down the shadowed street.
Magallanes Street in Intramuros, like all the
other streets there, was not wide enough,
hemmed in by old, mostly unpainted houses,
clumsy and unlovely, even in the darkening
light of the fading day.
We went into the apartment house and I
followed her across the court. I stood outside
the door which she closed carefully after her.
She came out almost immediately and put in
my hands the book of Greek myths. She did
not look at me as she stood straight and
remote.
“My name is Felix,” I said.
She smiled suddenly. It was a little smile,
almost an unfinished smile. But, somehow, it
felt special, something given from way deep
inside in sincere friendship.
I walked away whistling. At the door of
my room, I stopped and looked back. Maria
was not in sight. Her door was firmly closed.
August, 1941, was a warm month. The
hangover of summer still permeated the air,
specially in Intramuros. But, like some of the
days of late summer, there were afternoons
when the weather was soft and clear, the sky
a watery green, with a shell-like quality to it
that almost made you see through and
beyond, so that, watching it made you
lightheaded.
I walked out of the office one day into just
such an afternoon. The day had been full of
grinding work—like all the other days past. I
was tired. I walked slowly, towards the far
side of the old city, where traffic was not
heavy. On the street there were old trees, as
old as the walls that enclosed the city. Half-
way towards school, I changed my mind and
headed for the gate that led out to Bonifacio
Drive. I needed stiffer winds, wider skies. I
needed all of the afternoon to myself.
Maria was sitting on the first bench, as
you went up the sloping drive that curved
away from the western gate. She saw me
before I saw her. When I looked her way, she
was already smiling that half-smile of hers,
which even so told you all the truth she knew,
without your asking.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s a small world.”
“What?”
“I said it’s nice running into you. Do you
always come here?”
“As often as I can. I go to many places.”
“Doesn’t your uncle disapprove?”
“No. He’s never around. Besides, he
doesn’t mind anything.”
“Where do you go?”
“Oh, up on the walls. In the gardens up
there, near Victoria gate. D’you know?”
“I think so. What do you do up there?”
“Sit down and—”
“And what?”
“Nothing. Just sit down.”
She fell silent. Something seemed to
come between us. She was suddenly far-
away. It was like the first night again. I
decided to change the subject.
“Look,” I said, carefully, “where are your
folks?”
“You mean, my mother and father?”
“Yes. And your brothers and sisters, if
any.”
“My mother and father are dead. My
elder sister is married. She’s in the province.
There isn’t anybody else.”
“Did you grow up with your uncle?”
“I think so.”
We were silent again. Maria had
answered my questions without
embarrassment. almost without emotion, in a
cool light voice that had no tone.
“Are you in school, Maria?”
“Yes.”
“What grade?”
“Six.”
“How d’you like it?”
“Oh, I like it.”
“I know you like reading.”
She had no comment. The afternoon had
waned. The breeze from the sea had died
down. The last lingering warmth of the sun
was now edged with cold. The trees and
buildings in the distance seemed to flounder
in a red-gold mist. It was a time of day that
never failed to carry an enchantment for me.
Maria and I sat still together, caught in some
spell that made the silence between us right,
that made our being together on a bench in
the boulevard, man and girl, stranger and
stranger, a thing not to be wondered at, as
natural and inevitable as the lengthening
shadows before the setting sun.
Other days came, and soon it was the
season of the rain. The city grew dim and gray
at the first onslaught of the monsoon. There
were no more walks in the sun. I caught a
cold.
Maria and I had become friends now,
though we saw each other infrequently. I
became engrossed in my studies. You could
not do anything else in a city caught in the
rains. September came and went.
In November, the sun broke through the
now ever present clouds, and for three or
four days we had bright clear weather. Then,
my mind once again began flitting from my
desk, to the walls outside the office, to the
gardens on the walls and the benches under
the trees in the boulevards. Once, while
working on a particularly bad copy on the
news desk, my mind scattered, the way it
sometimes does and, coming together again,
went back to that first meeting with Maria.
And the remembrance came clear, coming
into sharper focus—the electric light, the
shadows around us, the stillness. And Maria,
with her wide-eyed stare, the lost look in her
eyes…
IN December, I had a little fever. On sick
leave, I went home to the province. I stayed
three days. I felt restless, as if I had strayed
and lost contact with myself. I suppose you
got that way from being sick,
A pouring rain followed our train all the
way back to Manila. Outside my window, the
landscape was a series of dissolved hills and
fields. What is it in the click of the wheels of a
train that makes you feel gray inside? What is
it in being sick, in lying abed that makes you
feel you are awake in a dream, and that you
are just an occurrence in the crying grief of
streets and houses and people?
In December, we had our first air-raid
practice.
I came home one night through darkened
streets, peopled by shadows. There was a
ragged look to everything, as if no one and
nothing cared any more for appearances.
I reached my room just as the siren
shrilled. I undressed and got into my old
clothes. It was dark, darker than the moment
after moon-set. I went out on the corridor
and sat in a chair. All around me were
movements and voices. anonymous and
hushed, even when they laughed.
I sat still, afraid and cold.
“Is that you. Felix?”
“Yes. Maria.”
She was standing beside my chair, close
to the wall. Her voice was small and
disembodied in the darkness. A chill went
through me, She said nothing more for a long
time.
“I don’t like the darkness,” she said.
“Oh, come now. When you sleep, you
turn the lights off, don’t you?”
“It’s not like this darkness,” she said,
softly. “It’s all over the world.”
We did not speak again until the lights
went on. Then she was gone.
The war happened not long after.
At first, everything was unreal. It was like
living on a motion picture screen, with
yourself as actor and audience. But the
sounds of bombs exploding were real enough,
thudding dully against the unready ear.
In Intramuros, the people left their homes
the first night of the war. Many of them slept
in the niches of the old walls the first time
they heard the sirens scream in earnest. That
evening, I returned home to find the
apartment house empty. The janitor was
there. My cousin who worked in the army
was there. But the rest of the tenants were
gone.
I asked Mang Lucio, “Maria?”
“She’s gone with your aunt to the walls.”
he told me. “They will sleep there tonight.”
My cousin told me that in the morning we
would transfer to Singalong. There was a
house available. The only reason he was
staying, he said, was because they were
unable to move our things. Tomorrow that
would be taken care of immediately.
“And you, Mang Lucio?”
“I don’t know where I could go.”
We ate canned pork and beans and
bread. We slept on the floor, with the lights
swathed in black cloth. The house creaked in
the night and sent off hollow echoes. We
slept uneasily.
I woke up early. It was disquieting to
wake up to stillness in that house which rang
with children’s voices and laughter the whole
day everyday. In the kitchen, there were
sounds and smells of cooking.
“Hello,” I said.
It was Maria, frying rice. She turned from
the stove and looked at me for a long time.
Then, without a word, she turned back to her
cooking.
“Are you and your uncle going away?” I
asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he not tell you?”
“No.”
“We’re moving to Singalong.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll come back tonight.
Maybe this afternoon. We’ll not have to say
goodbye till then.”
She did not say anything. I finished
washing and went back to my room. I dressed
and went out.
At noon, I went to Singalong to eat. All
our things were there already, and the folks
were busy putting the house in order. As soon
as I finished lunch, I went back to the office. Vicente Rivera Jr. is a writer from the
There were few vehicles about. Air-raid alerts
were frequent. The brightness of the day Bicol region who
seemed glaring. The faces of people were all
pale and drawn. started writing in the 1930s and best
In the evening, I went back down the known as the editor of the Evening
familiar street. I was stopped many times by
News
air-raid volunteers. The house was dark. I
walked back to the street. I stood for a long Magazine. He also wrote the famous
time before the house. Something did not short story entitled, All Over the
want me to go away just yet. A light burst in
my face. It was a volunteer. World,
“Do you live here?” and the serialized novel, Some
“I used to. Up to yesterday. I’m looking
Passing Winds.
for the janitor.”
“Why, did you leave something behind?”
“Yes, I did. But I think I’ve lost it now.”
“Well, you better get along, son. This
place, the whole area. has been ordered
evacuated. Nobody lives here anymore.” He was born in Daraga, Albay on 20
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Nobody.”
September 1920 and
finished his undergraduate studies at
the University of the Philippines, Far
Eastern University, and Adamson
University. He died in the US in 1999.