When I woke up, the sun was already splashing all over the room. Delfin was no longer in his bed, and when I went out, it seemed they had had breakfast, too, for there was only one plate—mine—on the breakfast table. The cook came and gave me my cup of coffee. All of them, she said, were at the other end of the lot. There were people there, she said, from some village.

I hurried with my fried rice, boneless bangus, fried tapa and sliced tomatoes. At the other end of the wide yard, close to the old stable, a small crowd had gathered and I recognized Delfin at once—taller than all the rest—and Angela beside him. Corito had stayed in the house. More than two dozen of them—they had all come from the village, all relatives of Severina, farmers in their shabby clothes, most of them barefoot, dark-skinned children but with good teeth, and that shy smile of peasants. Delfin was talking to them in his heavily accented Tagalog and they seemed amused. Angela beside him was listening. When I approached, all talk stopped and the villagers suddenly became quiet, greeting me at first, then looking down as if they were ashamed to meet my gaze. I did not belong there so I told Delfin to continue and I turned to go. The moment I turned, the ebullient babble resumed.

Only much, much later did I learn that this wasn’t Delfin’s first trip to San Quentin, that he had already visited several times. And as the encargado told me later on, Delfin had been giving money to Hirap, Severina’s village.

I asked Delfin afterward why he never told me.

“You did not ask me, sir,” he said simply. It was just like him, never volunteering information unless asked.

I had revealed too much of myself to my son. My son! This was contrary to what my father had told me. In dealing with people, never be close to anyone, the members of your immediate family excepted. Know the weaknesses of others but never let them know yours. Such a lesson had served me well in business, but with Delfin, I was truly a father seeking closeness, companionship. He had already shown me his independence and, in the hacienda, his feelings for his relatives he did not know till recently. He was close to them, those farmers, and I envied them, for I could never feel close to my second cousins, to my uncles and aunts, and to their daughters who have tried to seduce me, to their sons in my employ who expect to get a piece of the cake when I pass away. A vain hope, for I knew in their fawning attention only their greed. They resented my aloofness, my careful distancing from them and, now, I was surrendering myself to this boy who shunned me, who perhaps in his innermost being not only resented me but hated me as well.

What did my dear Severina teach him? I tried to recall my conversations with her, but I was so young then, and there was so little substance in our talks, enthused as I was only with her beauty, dark though she was, in her unquestioning submission to my demands. Father must have given her some money when she left, I never found out how much, but knowing my father, I am sure it was not enough for Severina and her son to live on. And they were in this far-flung island, this Siquijor, away from San Quentin and the sustenance that relatives could give them.

We were still in San Quentin when I told Delfin not to blame an unhappy childhood on me. I said this, noting that the children from the village of Severina all had happy faces.

“But I did not have an unhappy childhood, sir,” Delfin quickly replied. “I always had enough to eat. Mother worked very hard …”

“What did she do?”

“She had a sister there who had married a local farmer. She helped on the farm first, then she opened a small store. She sold dried fish. I helped. I worked hard because she worked very hard.”

We returned to Manila Sunday afternoon. I felt I had become closer to Delfin in those two days and yet not truly close enough, for though he was quick to answer my questions, he spoke to me without the familiarity that sons have with their fathers, the same familiarity that Angela had with me. It was she, however, who became truly close to Delfin and it seemed he was fond of her, too. Corito sat beside me in the rear and Angela chose to sit beside Delfin in the front seat with the driver.

We reached Diliman in the early evening. Delfin did not want us to take him to where he lived—a small middle-class house owned by a city hall official who, to earn some extra money, had rented out three of the rooms on the lower floor to students. We let him off a block away. He bent down for Angela to kiss him on the cheek. She had elicited a promise from him to help with her homework again.

Now, the witchcraft in Siquijor fascinated me. I asked Professor Adda Bocano from the University of the Philippines to visit; he was my consultant on our indigenous peoples. Early enough, he had made a map of the islands defining the areas where the different tribes lived.

To authenticate his social studies, he had lived in a Tondo slum for six months, worked as a room boy in one of the popular love motels in Pasig—and saw two very embarrassed colleagues there. Once, according to another story, a relative on a Friday novena at the Quiapo church saw Professor Bocano in tatters begging at the church door. Shocked, the relative had excitedly drawn aside the persevering scholar, who asked her to keep quiet. “Had times become so bad that you have become a beggar? Here, this five hundred pesos is all I have now!”

I had always found him enlightening and, that evening in my penthouse, we talked about black magic, the aswangs of the Visayas and other folk beliefs that have persisted even in urban Manila.

“How did the witchcraft in Siquijor originate?”

“Many years ago,” he explained, “during the early days of the galleons, some Filipino seamen got stranded in Mexico. They strayed in the Caribbean, to the island of Haiti, and there they learned about voodoo practices. Some returned—they were from Siquijor, and on the island, they put to practice what they had learned in Haiti.”

I sat back, sipping my cognac, amazed at his story.

“But mind you,” Professor Bocano said, and shook a finger at me. “This is not documented. This is folk belief. There has been an effort in Silliman University to be scientific about it. In the museum there are some artifacts of this witchcraft.”

“Do you believe in it?”

He smiled. “When I see the empirical evidence, then I have no choice. The truth is, if witchcraft is embedded in a particular culture, its efficacy is soon taken for granted.”

“The witches, are there women?”

“Very few,” Profesor Bocano explained. “Most of them are males. But the aswang—”

I remembered vaguely that the aswang, too, came from the Visayas, a malevolent creature who hovered at night over the homes of pregnant women and with her long tongue sucked the blood of the fetus.

“The story is that they come from Panay island. Mostly women. At night, the upper portion of their bodies is separated from the waist down; then they fly. If anyone comes across the separate lower half and sprinkles it with salt, the aswang will not be able to resume its human shape. It dies.”

Professor Bocano was silent for a while, his eyes half-closed as if in deep thought. Then his face lit up. “But do not think of our women only in this manner. In our past, in our tradition, they were also leaders, warriors. And most of all, healers and priestesses—the link between the spiritual and the temporal …”

I thought of Severina, my sweet and poignant memories of her, and all the more did I realize how much I had loved her and, at the same time, how unfeeling and crass I had been.

“How does a stranger—someone who visits Siquijor—protect himself?”

Again, that noncommittal smile. “You are not supposed to leave behind anything that you have used. A lock of your hair, a bit of fingernail—these can be used to cast a spell on you.… There are charms, of course, to ward off such spells, amulets, pendants. Similar to those sold on the sides of Quiapo church.”

I did not press for more details; I was acutely remembering the pendant Severina wore, which now adorned Delfin’s chest. Did I need one myself?

I tried to see Delfin more often, once a month. He did not avoid me but he did not welcome my presence, for he was always in a hurry to get away. His suits had long been delivered but I never saw him wear them or the Italian shoes from Francesco’s. He had bought instead a pair of jeans that was now his uniform.

I could see that he did not like going to the Polo Club, so every time I took him to lunch or dinner, it was at some inconspicuous restaurant near the university or, if Angela came along, in Sta. Mesa, where he stayed longer after dinner or lunch. When it was time for him to go, the car always took him to where he wished, but the driver said he did not go beyond the main street, where he would then board a bus or a jeepney.

I opened a checking account for him at a bank on the campus so he did not have to receive any cash from me. I was also waiting for any report on amorous developments, but my aide said there weren’t any, just the usual group dates with classmates and with some girls from nearby Maryknoll. I started worrying about his being a homosexual, although his shadow did not think so. He simply was too devoted to his studies and, indeed, all through those years in law school, he kept his scholarship. That took some doing and I was truly proud of him.

Come February 14 in his senior year, when young people celebrated Valentine’s Day, I found he had no party to go to. I had invited four of my prettiest young nieces, none of whom I had fornicated with. We went to the Polo Club for dinner and some dancing. I had asked him to put on one of the tropical suits Francesco had made, but he came in the same old khakis, freshly laundered for sure, and a cheap synthetic fiber barong Tagalog. He had also had a haircut. I made sure that he joined us—I had him picked up at his residence by one of the drivers, and when he arrived, Angela, growing up very fast, rushed to the door and greeted him with a loud kiss.

“Delf!” she exclaimed. “You are very handsome!”

She led him to our table. Corito and the girls were chatting happily in Spanish but all conversation stopped when Delfin arrived at the table. It must have been obvious to him, to Corito and to Angela that the four girls were there so he could meet them. The introductions over, they vied for his attention, chattering in English with him but switching to Spanish when they talked among themselves. I now realized by the expression on his face that Delfin understood every word, but he refused to speak with them, or to me and Corito, in Spanish. It was only with Angela, I learned later, when it was just the two of them, that he spoke Spanish with some diffidence. Dutifully, he danced with all my pretty nieces, and took them back to our table, impassive and silent. Then he brightened up when Angela asked him to dance with her. She was around ten, and tall; she danced awkwardly, gawkily, and we looked at them, extremely amused. She seemed, however, to be very happy. Indeed, she would tell me later that it was the most beautiful Valentine’s Day she had ever had.

But for Angela, it was a disastrous evening for Delfin; he ignored the other young ladies completely and barely talked with them, preferring instead to talk to Angela and to Corito and, occasionally, to me.

I wondered what was wrong with the girls—they were all good-looking, three of them seniors at the Assumption, one had just finished college in California. They were sophisticated and adept in all the social graces. No, there was nothing wrong with them. Delfin, reared in that village in Siquijor, was still a country boy and did not fit in. By nine, after dinner, Angela said she was sleepy and wanted to go home. Corito wanted to stay.

“I will accompany her,” Delfin said. He must have been so bored he wanted to leave.

I decided to leave, too, so I could be with my son. Corito would take care of the girls; there were many bachelors at the Club, the girls could easily find dancing partners.

The three of us sat in the rear. Angela, in the middle, was already asleep, her head resting on my arm. Could she be listening if I talked with Delfin about women? I asked what was wrong with the girls I invited.

“They are snobs, sir,” he said flatly. “I know their kind. Some are in my own school.”

What could I say? Maybe I was a snob myself, since I did not see anything wrong with them.

“I had hoped that you would find at least one of them interesting,” I said. “I had invited them just so you could meet them.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said quickly. “I know that. I am sorry that I had to call them snobs …”

“Maybe you are right,” I said. Then I asked if there was a girl in Siquijor.

“Yes, sir,” he said quickly. In glimpses of his face lighted by passing cars and streetlamps, I could see he was smiling.

“Would you like to tell me about her?”

“There isn’t much to tell, sir. She finished high school but couldn’t go on to college. Her family could not afford it.”

“She—you, what are your plans?”

“None, sir. How could …” But he did not go on.

“You wanted to say something.”

Angela stirred and we stopped talking. After a while, Angela seemed to be asleep again.

We had reached Sta. Mesa. “Carry your cousin to her room,” I said. He scooped Angela up in his arms and carried her up the steps.

I wanted to know more about the girl in Siquijor. We went to the library. I asked one of the maids who was up to bring some cold cuts. I hadn’t eaten much at the Club. From the bar, I got myself a glass of Pedro Domecq, another for Delfin. I suspected he had never had brandy, so I told him to sip it.

I sprang the question without warning. “Are you still a virgin, hijo?”

He laughed slightly. No tone of embarrassment in his reply, but he was not looking at me when he spoke. His eyes were on the shelves bulging with books, some of them leather-bound.

“No, sir.”

“That girl in Siquijor?”

He nodded, but did not speak.

“You did not get her pregnant?”

He shook his head.

“You owe her some loyalty then.”

“More than that, sir.”

“Well, you are in Manila now. Here the temptations are everywhere. But I am sure you know how to protect yourself? Condoms and all those things. Disease can be infectious. You will be hurting not just yourself but others if you are not careful.” I was now speaking of myself, with authority, with the hope that this boy would not make the same mistake I had.

“I know well enough of that, sir,” he assured me. “It is really better to abstain, and to keep away from the professionals.”

I was relieved. I was finally having a man-to-man talk with my son and, that evening, I felt as close to him as any father could to his son. Knowing, too, how strong-willed he was, he would surely be able to stay celibate, or if he ever surrendered to the flesh, he would be dressed for the occasion.

Did I trust too much his sense of personal discipline, propriety? Only time, of course, would tell how he would stand when finally subjected to the test.

I had fallen asleep, pleased and at peace with the world, confident that my relations with my son were growing closer, warmer, and that I had slowly widened the once narrow corridor where we both trod. It must have been long past midnight—I was wakened by Corito who had returned from the dance. In the dimness, I could make her out as she slipped into my bed and lay beside me, still in her party frock. She kissed me on the cheek, a sisterly kiss, smelling a little of wine, and feminine fragrance. She had put on some weight, was now buxom, but still very good-looking. She was not going to extract her pleasure from me tonight—if that was her intent, she would have come in her negligee with nothing underneath. There were times when I really liked her beside me like this, comfortable, undemanding, and full of domestic chitchat.

“Did you notice that Delfin and I danced twice tonight?” she asked.

I had noticed, of course.

“Oye, Carling,” she said, “you know what I did? I gave Delfin a terrific hard-on.”

I turned to her. I could not believe what I heard.

Her hand wandered down my stomach, slipped under my pajama and held the stem firmly, tightly. She croaked, “I rubbed against his groin. I could feel it really hard, and he pressed it to me …”

“I don’t believe it,” I said, not reacting at all to her caress.

She drew her hand away and sat up.

“Ask him,” she said. “Ask him,” she repeated with a gloating laugh as she headed for the door.