1) Fr. Sanchez is a young priest and doctor assigned to a remote island. He finds the islanders more in need of his medical skills than his spiritual guidance. 2) Fr. Sanchez recalls past controversies, including criticism of his poetry that led to his transfer. He struggles with loneliness and isolation on the island. 3) During an emergency call, Fr. Sanchez arrives too late to save an injured fisherman. He returns home depressed and has troubled thoughts as he tries to rest.

1. THE EXILE
Ricardo I. Patalinjug
What did they say? Precisely: Alberto Sanchez, the young priest and doctor, couldn't remember. He wasn't
listening; he was thinking. But his pose gave the illusion of a patient and perfect listener. There was a line
of thought he was pursuing, snared in the meshes of some broken images moving in the dark chamber of
his mind. It was unfair: he keeping his silence as if he were deaf and dumb and they: doing all the talking,
trying to keep up connections. Slowly he turned to the young couple, Ramon Aquino and his wife, Teresa,
the look of apology luminous in his face. "I passed by your house yesterday," he said and lit a stick of
cigarette. The white smoke veiled his wan face. They were sitting on a bench hewn out of a white rock and
set under the thick foliage of fruit trees. Ramon Aquino was a rich young man. He owned most of the
fishing boats in the island.
"And why didn't you drop in, Father?" Teresa asked, looking up at the priest's pale face.
"I was in a hurry then," he explained. “It was already dusk and you know how difficult and dangerous it is
to walk in the dark." He dropped the words slowly: pebbles falling into some murky waters.
"Well," Ramon said, "but some of these days you're going to visit us, Father?”
"Of course. I'll be there when Teresa's time comes," he said. He laughed looking at Teresa who was
pregnant. The murky waters were as placid as ever.
Teresa winced and cupped her belly with her palm. "He must be a boy. He kicks a lot."
Fr. Sanchez shifted his gaze to the white sun: a blinding luminance breaking free from the dark fringe of
tall trees upland. A flabellum of dark gray, flanked by a deep growth, marked a headland of rocks. Tall,
mighty rocks scanning the plains: gods whispering high secrets in the wind.
This was a Sunday and already the mass was over. "He's restless and naughty. I only hope he won't kill
me," Teresa intoned jokingly.
Fr. Sanchez laughed again. His hands fluttered to his breast and rested there. His fingers were frail and bony
and white against the big black crucifix he wore. There were shadows, threatening shadows, creeping at the
edge of his thought. Now his listeners were staring at him with a puzzled look. The waters didn't stir.
"You're a very sad and lonely man, Father," Ramon said. “I can't figure out why you are assigned here.”
He didn't answer. He shrugged his shoulders and watched a flock of sea gulls swoop down the barnacled
boulders. The prey, trapped, hissed, and was caught. “The religious are the real loners," he said. Outside
the cluster of huts dotting across the plains off-shore, the nets hung to dry ballooned in the wind but were
soon pressed tight against the bamboo poles. Now the nets looked like black monks: patient, sad, trapped.
"I wonder what will happen to you here, Father," Teresa said once more. He answered her with sad laughter.
Soon the couple bade him goodbye and went away.
Why he was assigned to the island was a question which Fr. Sanchez hadn't the least curiosity to dig into.
For him the question was some sort of a tocsin he shouldn't disturb lest it create a fuss. Or a book labeled
index in the Catholic University library where he used to study and which simply meant: not for circulation.
True, an incident had happened before his assignment but he wasn't prone to believe that it was the root
cause of his sudden transfer. There were other reasons. And one of them was the fact that he was a doctor.
But his good friend, Paulo, considered the incident as the immediate cause of his plight. “Punishment from
the gods!” Paulo had shockedly commented. “And you're a fool if you pretend that it is not!”
After his ordination, his notoriety as a poet had caused a stir in the seminary. The prediction was that his
poetry would perish if submitted to the censor's desk. The prediction came true when his second volume of
poems didn't get the imprimatur.
It was a wake, he remembered, a wake for his art, when the bald and soutaned literati huddled close together
around the glasstopped table. It was a misleading scene. The old critics showed all signs of sensitivity. But
the moment they started talking, they merely exhibited their frayed grasp of the classical theory of art and
logic no stronger than their rheumatic limbs. Their eyes glowed with abortive insights as their withering
wits unhesitatingly tore Fr. Sanchez's manuscripts into shreds. There was only one who defended the art of
the young priest: the old artist, Fr. Tereso Menez. But his sympathy for Fr. Sanchez was easily thwarted by

2. his colleagues' forceful eloquence, impassioned speech, and vehement pounding on the table to reinforce
the strength of a doddering argument. It was a useless fight Fr. Tereso had to put up, but he fought just the
same and it was this which drew admiration from Fr. Sanchez, Fr. Tereso emerged was drained from the
discussion room, lamenting the sad plight of mediocrity. “But I am not through yet," he said to Fr. Sanchez.
"So don't worry."
“…But we are worried about you, Fr. Sanchez,” the Rector said, flushing hard and shaking. “However,
please don’t get us wrong. You see ... I am not a literary critic," he wagged his head awkwardly and leaned
back,
“but I think I can justify the censor's decision.”
Fr. Sanchez kept his silence across the table. What should he say? He opened his mouth to speak, but before
he could say a word the Rector waved his hand for total silence. Fr. Sanchez sulked in his seat with a long
face. "Art and religion are not two opposing ends, Sanchez," the Rector went on, trying to sound
authoritative on the
subject on the subject to far away for his reach, too elusive for his weak aesthetics, too complicated for his
mind nearing the point of senility. "I bet you know that.”
Of course I do. He looked up at the Rector's furrowed face. It was a hideously contorted face: prominent
jaws tensely set, the watery eyes lucent beneath the thick glasses. The face reminded him of some gothic
mask fashioned by medieval artisans.
"Art and religion can easily be reconciled. God himself is an artist, you should know that. The point of
reconciliation is not hard to find as long as you are conscious of your religion. What is so disgraceful about
your poems is the subtle manipulation of subjects and themes-a subterfuge, I would say—so that what are
essentially pagan and obscene assume the appearance of being Christian and moral. In our time, Art hungers
for a purpose. And the purpose, the ideal purpose, is to draw men toward God. But in your case-I can hardly
believe it myself--you are doing exactly the opposite!" He paused for effect and heaved a deep breath. "No,
I really can't understand why you discuss Christ and Prometheus in the same breath, Parsifal as an absurd
hero and, oh-this blasphemous portrayal of man as Sisyphus after the Fall ... it's disgusting!” Now the Rector
was sweating profusely. His face sagged with the heat.
It took the young priest a long time to frame his answer. He was looking out the window when he spoke:
"I wrote most of those poems before I entered the seminary."
"But you believe in what you have written, don't you?”
“They are a private vision-my poems I mean. And you see..." How to explain himself without working into
a passion? “You see ..."
The Rector waved his hand for silence again and Fr. Sanchez fell to studying the floor.
"If what you said in your poems are the things you believe in, then why you decided to become a priest
passes my comprehension. What made you enter the seminary in the first place?”
“... It's this acute feeling of emptiness,” he said, his hand gripping the glass: tight and kind of angry.
"And because of that you're going to enter the seminary?” Paulo asked, faceless behind the screen of
cigarette smoke. Already it was late in the evening. The wind was cool and heavy and the sounds of the
city had turned into a muffled noise drumming dully against the concrete walls of the apartment.
“You see, I need ... I am through with ...” he faltered, groped for words and stopped altogether.
"Emptiness! There are many things in this world that will fill it up." "What for instance?”
"This-these monthly sessions we have ...Oh, boy! You should not have stopped attending them. But the
priesthood! ---"
He didn't stir from his seat. He looked at his glass: the yellowish liquid, the white bubbles shimmering at
the edge. Cigarette smoke spread, shreds of white ribbons teasing the eyes, veiling things, coaxing the mind
to remember even as it coaxed the eyes to close.
It was a circular lawn of thick Bermuda grass. A high concrete wall topped with spearheads of broken glass
surrounded the place protectively. Facing the driveway across a bed of pebbles and dry leaves, rose a marble
angel with broken wings and a battered face. In the center of the lawn was an exposed square surrounded

3. with broken columns, and there: the flames leaped, throbbed to the rhythm of a wild Beat music, and they:
dancing wildly, madly, their eyes smouldering, gleaming like embers, and their exposed bodies golden in
the raging, crackling fire and he: seemingly out of his mind, dancing with a little woman with small brave
breasts, who, at the height of the revel, clung to him passionately, mumbling words that didn't mean
anything, and he: remembering himself, suddenly trembled, felt sick and nauseated while the woman kept
on clinging to him, waiting to be loved, and didn't understand when he suddenly screamed; No, not this!
and ran out of the garden into the night, leaving behind the mouldering fire and the embers glowing in the
dark like frightened eyes. ...
“It's defeating! Disgusting! You'll rot there... your art ..." His head swirled with the images and the sounds
of the city. But before he could ask the images has fled in the dark corners and were gone. He fell silent
before the Tincing face, at once embarrassed by his sterile silence. Now he became aware of a vague, sour
heaviness rolling his stomach. It was something nauseating which, he thought with pain, couldn't be washed
out by the contents of the glass he held. Conversation had become a ritual to their group in the University,
mere cursory jabs at their unfeeling selves. But now it was different. Words were blows, severe blows
aimed to knock him down, leaving behind an imprint almost of heat. He fastened his eyes to his friend's
lean face and said in a voice slightly tremolous: "No, this won't disrupt anything. I will continue to write.
My second book of poems. . . I'm not through with it yet.” The words cleared from his mouth languidly like
wounded birds.
Paulo finished his drink, shook his head and said: "I think we're going to lose you forever." His voice came
out faintly as though he were talking from afar.
"Perhaps," he said. He watched Paulo keep his uneasy silence across the table. “But you see, I think I have
the calling, the vocation. You will not understand this, but you see ..." once more he sought the right words
to express himself but failed. His mind was blank. There was, instead, the sound of unfamiliar syllables
vibrating in his brain as though someone had struck a wrong cord somewhere. "You're a fool! Priesthood.
You can't revolutionize poetry by chanting hymns!" "You don't understand me,” he said. His voice: soft,
resigned.
"Of course I don't understand you!” Paulo was angry. His voice told him that. It was a deeply hurt voice:
sharp, sudden, cutting the ribbons of smoke that bound them tight.
"I have made my mind," he said. "I am convinced. To run away from this is to betray my conviction." He
felt the anger across the table; felt the pain that was also his. He steadied himself in his seat. He felt as
though something had weighed him down..
Impatience strained to surface across Paulo's face. He rose, flailed his arms helplessly in the air and shouted:
“This is getting on my nerves! ...."
"... Now don't let these things get on your nerves,” the Rector said leaning forward, searching the young
priest's face: blank, bland, withdrawn. And seeing himself not there, he reached him again, now with his
comforting voice: "We can also make allowances, you see. Our Order tolerates talents and we have artists
to boot.” He named them. “As for your poems, well you can
“Throw them into the furnace!" A month later, Fr. Sanchez was assigned to the island. It was a barren
island. Sunswept. Windlashed. Most of the islanders lived by fishing. ne decrepit stone church summed up
the spiritual condition of the people. The islanders had more use for him as a doctor than as a priest. But
unless armed with a Justification, they wouldn't come to him. He had tried, how hard he had tried, to become
one with the islanders themselves. But almost always, he ended up sulking in his room and his name
hovering gently between two nameless faces discussing a vague legend.
Although his mind conspired to make him think that he had wandered disastrously into a wrong world, yet
there never was a time when he failed to feel the strength of the unfamiliar but palpable force of kinship
with the islanders.
Which was the very reason why he forgave them all, nursed no resentment against them.
Naked to the waist, he was aware of beads of sweat rolling down his hairy chest. The wind coming in from
the wide, grilled window was thin and trembling. He kept to his bed in spite of the heat, reading Weston's
From Ritual to Romance. Suddenly he slammed the book shut. Face lined with sweat, he watched the ceiling

4. with a far and vacant gaze. Images danced within the field of his vision: Parsifal searching for the Holy
Grail, the wounded Fisher King, the vast expanse of the whimpering Wasteland, the trees skeletal and brittle
under the brooding sky. He rose to his feet and looked out the window. It was a blistering noon with a fatal
air, and the high sun was a blinding luminance in the sky. Beyond the huddled houses the free stretch of the
barren earth, strewn with the stubble of the year's lean harvest, looked stunned and desolate. The heat! The
heat! He felt that something in him was burning too. He winced as he lit a stick of cigarette. Nearby, yellow
leaves fell onto the porous ground with a whispering sound. Someone called out his name, and when he
turned back he saw Roque's face: tight, sweating. "There's an emergency call, Father," the altar boy said.
Once more he winced.
He felt the violet dusk deepen the color of his sadness as he walked down the low and narrow hallway
toward his room. As he had expected, his trip that afternoon had been useless. At the back of his mind he
could still see the fisherman's mangled body—the bloodshot eyes, the broken limbs, the insides all ripped
out-and he standing helplessly because there was nothing else he could do. He had arrived too late. The air
was heavy with the smell of explosives. As soon as he entered his room he lit the kerosene lamp. Then he
took off his cassock wearily and hung it on a rack set against the wall. The wind from the sea blew nicely
at his exposed body. He closed his eyes and heaved a deep breath. When he opened them he saw a gray
smudge staining the whiteness of his cassock. He wondered if he was seeing things. He closed his eyes for
the second time and then fastened them on his cassock once more. There was no change. His cassock, a
brilliant white, was diffused with a gray smudge. Well, he thought, I must have gotten it somewhere.
Now stretched on his back with an arm across his eyes, he tried to focus his mind on some comforting thing.
But his thought could only move within the perimeter of a circleful of broken images. He noted, more than
anything else, the image of himself in a circle of violet light, fishing in a dull canal. The eerie scene swung
across the broad, indeterminate landscape of his mind. Suddenly he was moved by some dark thought which
swept within him like fear. He felt weak and drained in the ebbing heat.
He woke up with the sun. That morning he had the feeling of waiting for something he didn't know. He
swung out of bed, threw open the window and looked out. Farther west, beyond the drag of the rocky
peninsula, a boat with fat red sails ripped the belly of the huge blue water with the swiftness and grace of a
swordfish. Tensely it nosed its way landward. The sails quivered in the close path of wind, burst into
brilliant purple when touched by the long fingers of the sun. Sea gulls flecked the bare sky like toy balloons.
They flashed westward over hills and plains.
After the mass he cleaned his room. He was shocked to discover how the termites had eaten up most of his
important manuscripts, notes, medical and philosophy books. He searched for some insecticide but couldn't
find any. He went out and took a dip in the sea. Then he ate his breakfast. After that he set out to visit his
patients. It was an exceptionally beautiful morning. The early bursting brightness spread across the full and
restless sea. Beyond the channel the mainland faded into a disjointed blur. Upland, trees touched by the sun
burst brilliant green. The mighty rocks lay crouched, still like dead gods.
A dove cut a neat path across a patch of sunlight. Beneath, disturbed by the swift, sudden passage, gaudy
butterflies dispersed, then regrouped symmetrically.
Multicolored flowers danced on the wending way: teased the eyes with their consuming beauty. He was in
a state of pure wakefulness. And precisely: he noted the terrain and the disturbing beauty with careful
passion. Felt: Nature's tender fingers touching the finer sensibilities of the poet in him.
I am human, not vegetal, he recalled the letter he had sent to Paulo a month after his arrival in the island,
and as such, the beauty of the place stirs my senses, coaxes the poet in me to come to life. Only idiots do
not respond to the disturbing beauty of the island. True. I am constantly haunted with the poems I failed to
write, the literary experiments I didn't pursue. But you see, poetry here has no meaning; art; a language
nobody understands. I am no longer an artist. The artist in me has become a ghost: cold and separate,
abstract like love. Priest and doctor, that's what I am now. I believe that spiritual and medical alleviations
are legitimate approaches to solve the problems of individual transcience. And I won't quote the Bible to
bore you.
Nearby a bird burst out of an ancient tree festooned with vines and ferns, shattering the brooding silence of
the dim interior with its shriek. The cry-it was a kind of pained persistence slicing across the air eerie

5. lightness. From an abandoned quay, the echo bounced back, then strained to surface across his drawn face
like an ugly stain. At the bend of the cove children and women were waiting for the morning catch. He was
breathing harshly, his chest pained in the effort. He waited for his mind to clear and respond to the flow of
images and voices fanned inland by the wind. ...
Already it was evening when he reached the port. At the end of the long, narrow pier the boat was ready to
pull anchor. He turned around and at once saw Paulo's composed face illumined by the faint light cast from
a nearby lamppost. He appeared bland in the eerie atmosphere, a dreamy figure looking sick and defeated.
After a while the figure spoke: "I am afraid." And he answered: "I can take care of myself." The fact
wavered, turned white as smoke. For a moment he was aware of his feeling him only at the edge of his
benumbed consciousness. He half listened to him talking about the Fisher King alone in his wasteland.
When he finished, already the implication was clear in his mind. So he said: "I will probably discover it for
myself. You see, there are lots of possibilities.” The face winced. The mouth opened like a wound to drop
names: Parsifal. Sisyphus. Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Which made him think of the necessity of explanation. He said: "Understand I don't have a cheerful
certainty of the world, you know," and when he didn't answer, he went on: "Speculation always captures
the interest of an active mind. However, there are certain things knowable only after the passage of time."
The face looked up and said: "In your case, the possibilities are few. I have mentioned them"
"Son of Cassandra, you!” he said and laughed to break the tension between them.
In the island itself, after leaving the progressive town of the mainland and crossing the 18-mile channel, Fr.
Sanchez was at once aware of having left behind the complexities of modern life. In entering this new
world, so remote, so devoid of the edificies of civilization with which he had so little direct contact, he
thought he had fallen into a vacuum, free-a temptation which encountered little opposition-to create,
asserting some kind of kinship with his finer sensibilities. But this sort of kinship was purely of a
disturbingly impersonal quality so that the sweeping anguish, the kind that could be fashioned only by
loneliness, had all the chances in the world to annihilate it. So he had to bring his nerves to heel, steady his
mind, and keep some order in his thoughts.
Practically nothing happened that day. The hours took on a boring languor and he
426 could feel himself gently washed by the game of being bored. His patients appeared fine enough to go
out fishing but, as always, they wouldn't talk. The blank look on their bland faces challenged to be reached.
Armlength of wariness. Shuttered minds: dumb as stone. In the absence of communication, the full threat
of exclusion descended on him.
Now walking down on the uneven face of the dry, rocky earth, he was terrified to admit the accuracy of his
own observation that he was a stranger in the island, an outsider ensconced within the walls of subtle
indifference. No, there was no one to blame but himself. He had misjudged the seriousness of the matter by
clinging to the illusion that a minister's devotion to his parish is just like a fire in a cold, windlashed forest
crawling with shivering people. The warmth of the fire, he thought, would surely draw the trembling crowd.
He was wrong. In the island the fire was regarded with silence.
His mind coursed on with the wind. The heat. There was something he could not isolate with the heat: the
tendency to brood over the slightest thoughts. Now he was thinking what in life would define his existence.
The name Jean Genet invaded his thoughts. But suppose . . . Bah! Why should he imperil himself by asking
risky questions? Would it not be easier for him to just kneel before the altar, bow his head and pray?
Brethen, the words of their Order's founder drummed in the frail chambers of his ear. Brethen, when doubts
cross your mind, pray to God to strengthen your Faith. But such an act is ... is downright stupid, he thought.
It is one way, and the easiest, to evade the crucial issues of life. To be a priest is not to shirk questions
concerning the immediate and the physical. One should, as the cliché goes, face the music. But what if the
music is unbearable? He could feel the pain gather in his chest. He could feel it tighten into a searing knot
that made him wince. No, he couldn't say he was a minister for nothing. If his estrangement from his parish
and superiors would continue beyond all aid, still he could afford to be benign, accept his lot and perhaps
spend the rest of his time searching for clues that would help unravel the ramifications of the mess in which
he had acquiescently participated. Lately, more and more questions had started hemming him in. And while
it was true that he had withdrawn deeper and deeper into himself, still he couldn't say he had deteriorated.

6. No, he couldn't say he had deteriorated. He felt a bit satisfied. He could pride himself in having stayed in
the island longer than any other priest. There were not many priests in the diocese who would accept his
assignment without grumbling. And for this reason, he humorously considered himself a hero of some sort,
doing a vicarious task while praying to God that he would be given enough strength and patience to carry
on with the job.
Already it was dusk when he reached the church. This was the last part of summer and the violent hour
lingered for a while on the windlashed island: now smelling of brine and seaweed. About a hundred meters
offshore the boat with red sails was anchored.
When he entered his room, he willed himself to stillness. The turn of consciousness was tired but precise.
Bent low over the yellow pages of the book which recorded the cost of his physical existence in the island,
he watched the old priest, Benigno, with the intentness of an artist sketching his model with careful aplomb.
When Fr. Benigno noticed the presence of Fr. Sanchez in the room, he crossed his short legs, threw back
his immense bald head and fixed his eyes, which were a dull glow in a nest of wrinkles, on the young man's
pale face. It was the old, strong, probing, demanding stare. "Your penmanship ... it's horrible!” he grunted.
His voice: like the sputtering of a radio in a stormy weather.
The remark didn't surprise the young priest at all, for it had become a part of the old op himself, like the
dirt beneath his fingernails. It was an old remark repeated over and over (his visit was inconceivable without
it), reminding Fr. Sanchez as to how long he had been entrenched in the island. The truth was that it wouldn't
make any difference at all whether Sanchez's handwriting was good or bad because the old priest was half-
blind.
Same needs?” he closed the book and looked up. "Any complaints?" he pursued with impatience.
Fr Sanchez didn't answer. It would be useless: Fr. Benigno was deaf.
The old priest rose to his feet, vaguely irritated. Sanchez knew why. It was because he had no complaint.
Fr. Benigno had been the inspector of this part of the diocese for a long time and his mind was an aggregate
of complaints left behind by Fr. Sanchez's predecessors. He had always been irked by the young priest's
disturbing silence, his stoical serenity, his tacit acceptance of things dreaded by the others. It was so because
Fr. Sanchez had understood his situation earlier. He knew that clichés like Are you contented with your life
here? Would you like to move to another place? What are your complaints?-were just formalities, stupid
formalities. A negative answer to the first question would lead to a lengthy sermon how paltry the
assignment in the island was compared to the precarious mission of their brothers living among the
cannibals in the wilderness of Africa; a positive answer to the second would mean inability to cope with
commonplace problems; and the submission of a list in answer to the third would be a disgrace, an obvious
proof of weak asceticism and ignorance of the lives of martyrs which Fr. Benigno had always the passion
to vaunt before his departure.
"Your monthly needs ... they'll be sent here soon,” the old priest spoke again.
"Thank you, Father,” a useless answer that had to be said just the same to complete the illusion of
communication. He watched the old priest amble toward the room adjoining his.
Summer ended one violet morning. A rainbow arched over the island and the sky, heavy with dark clouds,
murmured some wordless lamentation to the gathering wind.
Thunder. Flashes of searing lightning.
And then the rains came. Heavy rains pattering in torrents on the nipa-roofed houses, scaring the birds in
their nests atop the cliffs.
The rainy season in the island would be the time when the fishermen had to beach their boats, repair the
hulls and mend their nets. Some would just stay in their houses: smoked in silence, listened to the roaring
of the angry sea and watched the rain with secret sadness. In the early evening they would spend their time
drinking cheap bottled wine in a nearby store.
In the days that followed the young priest became restless. The death rate in the Island increased to
considerable, though not alarming, proportions. Being the only priest and doctor in the island, he was at
once beleaguered with sick calls more than his poor body could meet. What sickened him most, however,
was not his lack of rest but the futility of his trips. Almost always he would arrive at the caller's house only
to see the patient dead and the relatives crying. Seeing the worried face of the caller pleading for help with

7. cogency and watching it break at the end of the journey was a horrifying experience darkly touching the
core of his widening sensitivity. Suddenly he had become a watcher of human anguish and was himself a
victim of it. Now lying in bed. Eyes closed. Feeling sick and nauseated. He felt the burden of the
of his spirit. A colossus of despair-himself-loomed darkly in the arena of his mind. And when this image
dwindled, he saw himself again, this time kneeling in a circle of violet light, and about him a streaming
mass of silent people. Their ugly and contorted faces towered before his praying figure: And their wild eyes
spoke: Fool!
He started speculating nervously on what would have happened to him if he hadn't entered the seminary.
Then he remembered Paulo and all the intense-looking angry young men in the University where he had
studied. Their art. Their ambitions. Those people, he thought, could mock him with their success. He
thought of them with secret envy. For he-what would he show to his friends if he were to meet them one of
these days? The question, like a sharp pendulum, hung tremulously in the air ready to inflict a wound.
Then one day he received a letter from Paulo. It wasn't the kind of letter he had expected. As a matter of
fact, reading it gave him the shock of non-recognition. How great the discrepancy was between his
speculation and the reality. I've given up my studies altogether. I've come to dislike the academic. The
campus is peopled with pretenders, know-alls, cheap critics and hopeless writers. Believe me, they have no
life of their own behind their propagandism. I don't like the Administration either. You propose an idea to
them: they fall back and watch you break. Help is a metaphor they can't understand. They have a special
term for us now: underachievers. I'm wondering, though, what those stern people behind the professorial
tables have achieved. Only the talented ones, the humble ones, are silent. But they too are leaving the
University.
It's always painful to see so many bright minds groping about, confused, after a series of disillusionments,
he thought. Only God knew what would happen next. Life, it seemed, could be lived only so intensely, so
passionately, as long as the pattern which you helped take shape was still intact. The moment the pattern
breaks, at once the spirit resigned even before the body rotted.
His nervous belief that some unfavorable development was going on in Paulo's life in the city wasn't
betrayed when he received his friend's second letter. At this time, he thought it odd to remain silent. It was
a disturbing letter, a pain in the crotch: No, I'm not indulging in self-pity, but to an artist the loss of
individuality is a terrible thing. I want to define myself the best I can, know the limit of my reach, grasp the
forces of human transcience, understand the qualities of the immediate and the physical. I won't describe
to you what's happening to me, that would be boring. But still I can't believe in spiritual consolation. What
I believe is the mortal, the temporal life. I am positive that one of these days I can find a solution: a human
solution to a human problem.
That night Fr. Sanchez penned his answer: The human dilemma is not mitigated by mere awareness of
human transcience. This awareness might lead to a solution, a possibility which is not farfetched because
the human mind is prone to answer problems of this sort. But in the meantime, i.e., the period before the
solution is found, tension is aggravated. Like a tightrope walker you will find yourself balancing
precariously on a thin line. I am not happy here. But in the island I am aware of my separate individuality
in a way I haven't experienced before. But his isn't a blessing, you see. In this alien milieu I have become a
metaphysical outcast! Suddenly I am tortured by the terrifying, unnerving anguish of a misfit! But all these
things are not enough to drive me howling to my God.
Paulo's third letter sowed seeds of terror in the young priest's heart: Life is a perpetual toil to slough off
the burden-set upon our shoulders by this corrosively malignant world. I will put an end to this absurd toil.
And I am not afraid. Remember me. But without grief...
That morning, mass was a loneliness mocked by the large, full voice of the sea. The hymns he solemnly
chanted rose blindly like bats, floundered freely, then fell on him like burning coals. The Hanged Man
wavered in the field of his gaze, but it was the frozen stare of the bloody, twisted face that troubled him. It
fixed him bare, touched his soul coldly, probed the enormity of his emptiness, explored the magnitude of
his mute terror which, of late, had begun to mark the character of his nervous footsteps. For a long time he
fought to resist the tremendous impulse to stop the sacred ceremony and cry. Go down! Down! Look for
the congealed God in you! Beads of sweat dotted across his forehead, filling the fine lines webbing there.

8. "Panem caelestem accipiam et nomen Domini invocabo,"He struck his breast. "Domine non sum dignus,
ut entres sub tectum, meum"-He felt his body tremble, drift. A lump lodged in his throat. Truly I am not
worthy. He struck his breast again and his face, taut and tense, winced. A sharp pain sliced across his heart.
"Sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea,” he pursed. But this isn't right, he thought. When his voice
faded, silence was a hooded stranger leaning against the wall in the corner, making faces at him. "Quod ore
sumpsimus Domine ..." he flung the words drily: pebbles rising up an incline, then rolled back upon
reaching the dark top. He felt himself as hollow as his church, as decrepit as his sacristy. "Ite misa est.”He
closed his eyes as the stray wind lashed him in the face.
A heavy rain came in with the darkness. In his room Fr. Sanchez lit the kerosene lamp dangling from a dirty
cord. He was feeling very weak and his muscles and bones were aching. His legs were numbed, his feet
swollen. He had journeyed much that day. In the half dark his ashen face appeared twisted as though he
was about to cry. Outside the wind whistled. And judging from the sound that came in through the closed
door, it had risen to a storm pitch. He was only too glad he wasn't caught by the rain and the dark in the
open. The moment the room rested into focus, two neat envelopes lying on his writing table arrested his
attention. Absently he picked up one. It was a short letter and it came from Paulo's mother. He held the
letter close to the light. But he wasn't able to read past the first paragraph. A pain tore through him. Paulo
is dead. God forgive him. He hanged himself. The opening sentences read. A sudden dull ache throbbed
blindly in his head as though an inside force was feverishly trying to break through the skull that enclosed
his brain. He dropped his tired body onto the bed and closed his eyes. Now he was painfully aware of how
disastrously and intimately he and Paulo were bound together. Paulo was more than just a friend. The pain
he felt told him that. He was bound to him by affection and respect, by loneliness and pain.
How long he lay in bed he didn't know, but soon he remembered the other letter and he rose to his feet to
pick it up. It came from the bishop. We congratulate you for the good job you have done in the island, the
letter read. Lately, we have finally decided to let you work in the seminary. Someone will take your place
in the island. Come here at your earliest convenience. He folded the letter slowly, shoved it into his pocket
and lit a cigarette. The light, screened by the smoke, appeared fuzzy violet. Before he could regain his
proper composure, somebody knocked on the door. "Come in,” he said.
Slowly the heavy door opened. ...
Someone with an unfamiliar voice spoke softly in the half dark: "I am Fr. Jose Montes. The bishop's letter
... it explains my presence here."
Fr. Sanchez swayed but didn't speak. The intentness of his gaze, pure as silence, made the stranger tremble.
Then he faced the wall, his back to the light. The distrubing silence deepened in the room. And when Fr.
Jose spoke again in the middle of that long silence, they were both startled: "The bishop's letter ... it's good
news. Aren't you happy?"
“Who is happy?" His voice was thick and bitter. He tried to cast about in his mind for some words that
might explain everything but he found only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes; it's impossible to explain. He
leaned against the wall like a tired slave of the gods. There was a sudden terrible isolation in his rigid
posture. He reeled to the window and opened it. What's happening to me? he asked himself.
"Our superiors are impressed because you feel so at home in the island. They haven't received any complaint
from you. They said you have the makings of a good priest."
Fr. Sanchez gave out a dry laugh. Something in his tired eyes convulsed: a bloody bird baring its wounded
breast. His face was rigid, tight like a rubber strap strained to its limit. Unresentfully, he looked at the
stranger's half-open mouth and for a few moments listened to his deep-drawn breath. "We all make
mistakes," he said. Then he laughed again. “Yes, we all make mistakes. You see, there are only two who
know the kind of life I lead in the island: myself and God!” God! he said the word softly to himself. He
wondered why the word sounded so strange to him, as if this were the first time he was aware of its meaning.
“God.” His voice was dry and hollow. His mind shook itself free from the word with an effort of reason.
Fr. Jose threw him a quick, impatient look, and sensing that he wasn't really wanted in the room, he
mumbled a goodnight and went out.
Fr. Sanchez put out the light.

9. He tried to sleep but couldn't. He was thinking of so many things. His head was full and yet he felt himself
empty and somehow ridiculous. Soon he would be out of the island. But what of it? Would it make him a
different man? Then he fell to thinking about walls and closed doors. Where was the way out? Was there
really a way out? He had grown progressively rigid. He was jolted when he heard a nervous, frantic
knocking at the door. Let me rest, his mind screamed. But he rose just the same, lit the lamp and went out.
It was Roque at the door. Beside him stood a man panting like a mad dog. "Esteban wants to see you,
Father," the boy said.
Esteban cringed under the priest's steady gaze. "I... was sent by Ramon Aquino, Father," he started. "His
wife, Teresa, is in birth pains.”
He closed his eyes and shivered in the half dark. "Father..."
"Yes, I'm going." He turned toward his room to prepare his things.
When Fr. Sanchez stepped into the room, his vision wavered and narrowed down to a man pacing up and
down the wide sala. The rosary beads dangled in his hand like an intolerable chain of tears. When Ramon
saw him, he halted from where he was, and without saying a word he raised his trembling hand and pointed
to a dubious closed room where the faint groaning could be heard. Fr. Sanchez hurried to the inner room.
But soon he appeared in the sala again, his face hideously twisted. He announced to the worried husband
that an operation was necessary. "This operation," he began to say, and stopped as though he had difficulty
with his breathing. "This operation is a risky one,” he pursued, dropping the words nervously in the
quietness. "I ... I can't promise anything. The safety of both ... There's no assurance.” His ashen face was
deeply sad and tired in the faint wash of light.
Ramon hid his face. "I'll pray for God's help,” he said and withdrew in the darkness. With the help of an
old midwife Fr. Sanchez performed the operation.
Teresa was very pale. She lay in bed: crumpled up like a rag doll. Her breath came in short gasps. He saw
the mouth open but no words came, only the feel of cutting pains, the pulsing pallid color of the trembling
lips, the mouth: a dark hole which tugged at the mind like a thumb. Fr. Sanchez started the operation as
calmly as he could. But he was thinking all the time about the bishop's letter. Would his stay in the city
really matter? Was it the way out? Suddenly he felt as if he were walking heedlessly toward a strange,
perilous brink. ...
The wind was cool but his face was lined with sweat. The turn of consciousness was abrupt. He was drifting-
he thought he was drifting-into a world where all abstractions were made concrete and saw himself in a
wasteland again fishing in a dull canal, and he raised his hand high above his head in the frantic arc of a
message to the listening sky. The reply was silence, silence, solid and cold as rock, cold as the dead trees
and the wet, barren earth. And he faced the voiceless people moving about him and said: Understand-please
understand. It is the pain, the pain of my wounds, and he pointed to them his bleeding wounds, and then
burst into tears because they didn't understand.
The baby cried. The operation was over. The priest heaved a deep breath. Once more the baby cried. Teresa
lay still. There was no sign of life in her long, gaunt face. The door swung open. Ramon lurched in. The
priest gave him a languid look. “I did my best," he said coldly. “But you see ... it is like this . . . it was a
risky operation." He looked warningly at Ramon. "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry."
Ramon didn't speak for a long time. He just stared at the priest, the light gleaming in his eyes. Then he burst
out, very loud: “I prayed! How hard I prayed!” The rosary in his hands broke.
The words cut through the priest. “I did my best," he said again and gestured wearily because, now, words
failed him and even the catch of his voice proved too much for him. He felt he was also responsible for the
misery in the room, the hopelessness. Ramon began to sway and rock. Then he broke and crumbled. An
animal cry tore savagely from his throat.
Fr. Sanchez made for the door.
A sudden wind sprang rainlike and was lost in the trees massed behind the sprawling house.
It was almost dawn when he picked his way back to the church. It wasn't raining any more but the chilly
wind presaged the coming of another tremendous downpour. Torch in hand, he moved with difficulty over
slippery boulders and on the uneven footpath broken by porous coral. He turned to a low ridge and started
up some hidden footpath among the flower bushes. Stubbing a toe he made a bold step forward. The right

10. foot touched a slippery rock, slid. He staggered, reeled crazily, and fell into a muddy pool of water.
Darkness caught him unaware. He winced as he rose to his feet. The dark, dreaming world lay still,
cocooned in a white, sleepy mist.
There was a wound in his head, and when he touched it he shivered. He felt the blood flowing in tiny rivers
down his nape, staining his clayed cassock. Here in the open space the horror of the great universe confined
him, possessed him purely like a lonely absolution in the dark.
The heavy sky brooded and watched him.
He moved. Stopped. A hushness gathered about his feet. Leaves clung to him wetly and he could feel them
as the free wind coursed on gently.
A formless anger began to throb in his aching head when, upon wiping himself, he found out that he had
lost the big black crucifix he wore. He looked around: the uneven ground yielded nothing but his medical
bag lying beside the brackish pool of water. In the absence of anything dry to burn, he took the bishop's
letter from his pocket and lit it.
The flame flickered hesitantly in the dark. He bent low and moved about with a grim grace, searching with
painful terror the precious thing he had lost.
The flame swiftly consumed the piece of paper. He did not find the crucifix.
For a moment he stood rigid on the disturbed ground and didn't know what to do. The sudden roll of thunder
shook the earth and his heart and once more he moved Sharp flashes of lightning sliced across the brooding
face of the sky. He groped his way in the darkness, in the thick darkness of a hostile world, his body
shivering in the coursing wind. Broken images assaulted his vision with the suddenness of an ambush:
himself unvesting; a child crying (terrified by the irrational confusion of the world); hanged men. With a
painful effort he shook himself free from the vague terror that had seized him. He walked on: now a man
sure of himself, ready to face the dark forces lurking in ambush in the darkness ahead. And as he took the
last knoll, he felt like an escapee with a bold heart for a new adventure.