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The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten
o'clock but it was almost midnight before the carriages came filing
up the departing guests, while the girls who were staying were
promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the young men gathering
around to wish them a good night and lamenting their ascent with
mock signs and moaning, proclaiming themselves disconsolate but
straightway going off to finish the punch and the brandy though
they were quite drunk already and simply bursting with wild
spirits, merriment, arrogance and audacity, for they were young
bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had been in their honor;
and they had waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and
flirted all night and where in no mood to sleep yet--no, caramba,
not on this moist tropic eve! not on this mystic May eve! --with
the night still young and so seductive that it was madness not to
go out, not to go forth---and serenade the neighbors! cried one;
and swim in the Pasid! cried another; and gather fireflies! cried a
third-whereupon there arose a great clamor for coats and capes, for
hats and canes, and they were a couple of street-lamps flickered
and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind
black houses muttered hush-hush, their tile roofs looming like
sinister chessboards against a wile sky murky with clouds, save
where an evil young moon prowled about in a corner or where a
murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the
sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable childhood
fragrances or ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously
down the street that the girls who were desiring upstairs in the
bedrooms catered screaming to the Windows, crowded giggling at the
Windows, but were soon sighing amorously over those young men
bawling below; over those wicked young men and their handsome
apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and their elegant mustaches so
black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite ravished
with love, and began crying to one another how carefree were men
but how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was,
till old Anastasia plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and
chases them off to bed---while from up the street came the
clackety-clack of the watchman's boots on the cobble and the
clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of
his great voice booming through the night, "Guardia serno-o-o! A
las doce han dado-o-o.
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And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day
of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said--for it was a
night of divination, and night of lovers, and those who cared might
peer into a mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it
was they were fated to marry, said the old Anastasia as she hobble
about picking up the piled crinolines and folding up shawls and
raking slippers in corner while the girls climbing into four great
poster-beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror,
scrambling over each other and imploring the old woman not to
frighten them.
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"Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!"
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"Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!"
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"She is not a witch, she is a maga. She is a maga. She was born of
Christmas Eve!"
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"St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr."
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"Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a
virgin, Anastasia?"
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"No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!"
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"Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy?
Come, tell me."
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"You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid."
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"I am not afraid, I will go," cried the young cousin Agueda,
jumping up in bed.
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"Girls, girls---we are making too much noise! My mother will hear
and will come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you
Anastasia, I command you to shut your mouth and go away!""Your
mother told me to stay here all night, my grand lady!"
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"And I will not lie down!" cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to
the floor. "Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do."
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"Tell her! Tell her!" chimed the other girls.
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The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached
and fixed her eyes on the girl. "You must take a candle," she
instructed, "and go into a room that is dark and that has a mirror
in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and
close your eyes and shy:
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Mirror, mirror, show to me him whose woman I will be. If all goes
right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the
man you will marry." A silence. Then: "And hat if all does not go
right?" asked Agueda. "Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!" "Why."
"Because you may see--the Devil!"
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The girls screamed and clutched one another, shivering. "But what
nonsense!" cried Agueda. "This is the year 1847. There are no devil
anymore!" Nevertheless she had turned pale. "But where could I go,
hugh? Yes, I know! Down to the sala. It has that big mirror and no
one is there now." "No, Agueda, no! It is a mortal sin! You will
see the devil!" "I do not care! I am not afraid! I will go!" "Oh,
you wicked girl! Oh, you mad girl!" "If you do not come to bed,
Agueda, I will call my mother." "And if you do I will tell her who
came to visit you at the convent last March. Come, old woman---give
me that candle. I go." "Oh girls---give me that candle, I go."
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But Agueda had already slipped outside; was already tiptoeing
across the hall; her feet bare and her dark hair falling down her
shoulders and streaming in the wind as she fled down the stairs,
the lighted candle sputtering in one hand while with the other she
pulled up her white gown from her ankles. She paused breathless in
the doorway to the sala and her heart failed her. She tried to
imagine the room filled again with lights, laughter, whirling
couples, and the jolly jerky music of the fiddlers. But, oh, it was
a dark den, a weird cavern for the Windows had been closed and the
furniture stacked up against the walls. She crossed herself and
stepped inside.
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The mirror hung on the wall before her; a big antique mirror with a
gold frame carved into leaves and flowers and mysterious curlicues.
She saw herself approaching fearfully in it: a small while ghost
that the darkness bodied forth---but not willingly, not completely,
for her eyes and hair were so dark that the face approaching in the
mirror seemed only a mask that floated forward; a bright mask with
two holes gaping in it, blown forward by the white cloud of her
gown. But when she stood before the mirror she lifted the candle
level with her chin and the dead mask bloomed into her living
face.
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She closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. When she had
finished such a terror took hold of her that she felt unable to
move, unable to open her eyes and thought she would stand there
forever, enchanted. But she heard a step behind her, and a
smothered giggle, and instantly opened her eyes.
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"And what did you see, Mama? Oh, what was it?" But Dona Agueda had
forgotten the little girl on her lap: she was staring pass the
curly head nestling at her breast and seeing herself in the big
mirror hanging in the room. It was the same room and the same
mirror out the face she now saw in it was an old face---a hard,
bitter, vengeful face, framed in graying hair, and so sadly
altered, so sadly different from that other face like a white mask,
that fresh young face like a pure mask than she had brought before
this mirror one wild May Day midnight years and years ago.... "But
what was it Mama? Oh please go on! What did you see?" Dona Agueda
looked down at her daughter but her face did not soften though her
eyes filled with tears. "I saw the devil." she said bitterly. The
child blanched. "The devil, Mama? Oh... Oh..." "Yes, my love. I
opened my eyes and there in the mirror, smiling at me over my left
shoulder, was the face of the devil." "Oh, my poor little Mama! And
were you very frightened?" "You can imagine. And that is why good
little girls do not look into mirrors except when their mothers
tell them. You must stop this naughty habit, darling, of admiring
yourself in every mirror you pass- or you may see something
frightful some day." "But the devil, Mama---what did he look like?"
"Well, let me see... he has curly hair and a scar on his cheek---"
"Like the scar of Papa?" "Well, yes. But this of the devil was a
scar of sin, while that of your Papa is a scar of honor. Or so he
says." "Go on about the devil." "Well, he had mustaches." "Like
those of Papa?" "Oh, no. Those of your Papa are dirty and graying
and smell horribly of tobacco, while these of the devil were very
black and elegant--oh, how elegant!" "And did he speak to you,
Mama?" "Yes… Yes, he spoke to me," said Dona Agueda. And bowing her
graying head; she wept.
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"Charms like yours have no need for a candle, fair one," he had
said, smiling at her in the mirror and stepping back to give her a
low mocking bow. She had whirled around and glared at him and he
had burst into laughter. "But I remember you!" he cried. "You are
Agueda, whom I left a mere infant and came home to find a
tremendous beauty, and I danced a waltz with you but you would not
give me the polka." "Let me pass," she muttered fiercely, for he
was barring the way. "But I want to dance the polka with you, fair
one," he said. So they stood before the mirror; their panting
breath the only sound in the dark room; the candle shining between
them and flinging their shadows to the wall. And young Badoy
Montiya (who had crept home very drunk to pass out quietly in bed)
suddenly found himself cold sober and very much awake and ready for
anything. His eyes sparkled and the scar on his face gleamed
scarlet. "Let me pass!" she cried again, in a voice of fury, but he
grasped her by the wrist. "No," he smiled. "Not until we have
danced." "Go to the devil!" "What a temper has my serrana!" "I am
not your serrana!" "Whose, then? Someone I know? Someone I have
offended grievously? Because you treat me, you treat all my friends
like your mortal enemies." "And why not?" she demanded, jerking her
wrist away and flashing her teeth in his face. "Oh, how I detest
you, you pompous young men! You go to Europe and you come back
elegant lords and we poor girls are too tame to please you. We have
no grace like the Parisiennes, we have no fire like the Sevillians,
and we have no salt, no salt, no salt! Aie, how you weary me, how
you bore me, you fastidious men!" "Come, come---how do you know
about us?"
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"I was not admiring myself, sir!" "You were admiring the moon
perhaps?" "Oh!" she gasped, and burst into tears. The candle
dropped from her hand and she covered her face and sobbed
piteously. The candle had gone out and they stood in darkness, and
young Badoy was conscience-stricken. "Oh, do not cry, little one!"
Oh, please forgive me! Please do not cry! But what a brute I am! I
was drunk, little one, I was drunk and knew not what I said." He
groped and found her hand and touched it to his lips. She shuddered
in her white gown. "Let me go," she moaned, and tugged feebly. "No.
Say you forgive me first. Say you forgive me, Agueda." But instead
she pulled his hand to her mouth and bit it - bit so sharply in the
knuckles that he cried with pain and lashed cut with his other
hand--lashed out and hit the air, for she was gone, she had fled,
and he heard the rustling of her skirts up the stairs as he
furiously sucked his bleeding fingers. Cruel thoughts raced through
his head: he would go and tell his mother and make her turn the
savage girl out of the house--or he would go himself to the girl's
room and drag her out of bed and slap, slap, slap her silly face!
But at the same time he was thinking that they were all going to
Antipolo in the morning and was already planning how he would
maneuver himself into the same boat with her. Oh, he would have his
revenge, he would make her pay, that little harlot! She should
suffer for this, he thought greedily, licking his bleeding
knuckles. But---Judas! He remembered her bare shoulders: gold in
her candlelight and delicately furred. He saw the mobile insolence
of her neck, and her taut breasts steady in the fluid gown. Son of
a Turk, but she was quite enchanting! How could she think she had
no fire or grace? And no salt? An arroba she had of it!
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"... No lack of salt in the chrism At the moment of thy baptism!"
He sang aloud in the dark room and suddenly realized that he had
fallen madly in love with her. He ached intensely to see her
again---at once! ---to touch her hands and her hair; to hear her
harsh voice. He ran to the window and flung open the casements and
the beauty of the night struck him back like a blow. It was May, it
was summer, and he was young---young! ---and deliriously in love.
Such a happiness welled up within him that the tears spurted from
his eyes. But he did not forgive her--no! He would still make her
pay, he would still have his revenge, he thought viciously, and
kissed his wounded fingers. But what a night it had been! "I will
never forge this night! he thought aloud in an awed voice, standing
by the window in the dark room, the tears in his eyes and the wind
in his hair and his bleeding knuckles pressed to his mouth.
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But, alas, the heart forgets; the heart is distracted; and May time
passes; summer lends; the storms break over the rot-tipe orchards
and the heart grows old; while the hours, the days, the months, and
the years pile up and pile up, till the mind becomes too crowded,
too confused: dust gathers in it; cobwebs multiply; the walls
darken and fall into ruin and decay; the memory perished...and
there came a time when Don Badoy Montiya walked home through a May
Day midnight without remembering, without even caring to remember;
being merely concerned in feeling his way across the street with
his cane; his eyes having grown quite dim and his legs
uncertain--for he was old; he was over sixty; he was a very stopped
and shivered old man with white hair and mustaches coming home from
a secret meeting of conspirators; his mind still resounding with
the speeches and his patriot heart still exultant as he picked his
way up the steps to the front door and inside into the slumbering
darkness of the house; wholly unconscious of the May night, till on
his way down the hall, chancing to glance into the sala, he
shuddered, he stopped, his blood ran cold-- for he had seen a face
in the mirror there---a ghostly candlelight face with the eyes
closed and the lips moving, a face that he suddenly felt he had
been there before though it was a full minutes before the lost
memory came flowing, came tiding back, so overflooding the actual
moment and so swiftly washing away the piled hours and days and
months and years that he was left suddenly young again; he was a
gay young buck again, lately came from Europe; he had been dancing
all night; he was very drunk; he s stepped in the doorway; he saw a
face in the dark; he called out...and the lad standing before the
mirror (for it was a lad in a night go jumped with fright and
almost dropped his candle, but looking around and seeing the old
man, laughed out with relief and came running.
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"Oh Grandpa, how you frightened me. Don Badoy had turned very pale.
"So it was you, you young bandit! And what is all this, hey? What
are you doing down here at this hour?" "Nothing, Grandpa. I was
only... I am only ..." "Yes, you are the great Señor only and how
delighted I am to make your acquaintance, Señor Only! But if I
break this cane on your head you maga wish you were someone else,
Sir!" "It was just foolishness, Grandpa. They told me I would see
my wife."
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"Wife? What wife?" "Mine. The boys at school said I would see her
if I looked in a mirror tonight and said: Mirror, mirror show to me
her whose lover I will be.
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Don Badoy cackled ruefully. He took the boy by the hair, pulled him
along into the room, sat down on a chair, and drew the boy between
his knees. "Now, put your cane down the floor, son, and let us talk
this over. So you want your wife already, hey? You want to see her
in advance, hey? But so you know that these are wicked games and
that wicked boys who play them are in danger of seeing
horrors?"
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"Well, the boys did warn me I might see a witch instead."
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"Exactly! A witch so horrible you may die of fright. And she will
be witch you, she will torture you, she will eat
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your heart and drink your blood!"
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"Oh, come now Grandpa. This is 1890. There are no witches
anymore."
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"Oh-ho, my young Voltaire! And what if I tell you that I myself
have seen a witch.
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"You? Where?
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"Right in this room land right in that mirror," said the old man,
and his playful voice had turned savage.
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"When, Grandpa?"
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"Not so long ago. When I was a bit older than you. Oh, I was a vain
fellow and though I was feeling very sick that night and merely
wanted to lie down somewhere and die I could not pass that doorway
of course without stopping to see in the mirror what I looked like
when dying. But when I poked my head in what should I see in the
mirror but...but..."
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"The witch?"
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"Exactly!"
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"And then she bewitch you, Grandpa!"
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"She bewitched me and she tortured me. l She ate my heart and drank
my blood." said the old man bitterly.
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"Oh, my poor little Grandpa! Why have you never told me! And she
very horrible?
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"Horrible? God, no--- she was the most beautiful creature I have
ever seen! Her eyes were somewhat like yours but her hair was like
black waters and her golden shoulders were bare. My God, she was
enchanting! But I should have known---I should have known even
then---the dark and fatal creature she was!"
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A silence. Then: "What a horrid mirror this is, Grandpa," whispered
the boy.
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"What makes you slay that, hey?"
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"Well, you saw this witch in it. And Mama once told me that Grandma
once told her that Grandma once saw the devil in this mirror. Was
it of the scare that Grandma died?"
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Don Badoy started. For a moment he had forgotten that she was dead,
that she had perished---the poor Agueda; that they were at peace at
last, the two of them, her tired body at rest; her broken body set
free at last from the brutal pranks of the earth---from the trap of
a May night; from the snare of summer; from the terrible silver
nets of the moon. She had been a mere heap of white hair and bones
in the end: a whimpering withered consumptive, lashing out with her
cruel tongue; her eye like live coals; her face like ashes... Now,
nothing--- nothing save a name on a stone; save a stone in a
graveyard---nothing! was left of the young girl who had flamed so
vividly in a mirror one wild May Day midnight, long, long ago.
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And remembering how she had sobbed so piteously; remembering how
she had bitten his hand and fled and how he had sung aloud in the
dark room and surprised his heart in the instant of falling in
love: such a grief tore up his throat and eyes that he felt ashamed
before the boy; pushed the boy away; stood up and looked
out----looked out upon the medieval shadows of the foul street
where a couple of street-lamps flickered and a last carriage was
rattling away upon the cobbles, while the blind black houses
muttered hush-hush, their tiled roofs looming like sinister
chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an
evil old moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind
whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of
the summer orchards and wafting unbearable the window; the bowed
old man sobbing so bitterly at the window; the tears streaming down
his cheeks and the wind in his hair and one hand pressed to his
mouth---while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the
watchman's boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang of his lantern
against his knee, and the mighty roll of his voice booming through
the night:
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"Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!"
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