As I watched my father drink, the realization came: within the breathless span of a few minutes, I had seen and listened to a tragedy in his life, as is in a play. But it was a play so condensed and yet - it was all there, ended as far as the words went but still there, glowing now over the edges of silence like an awakened sun. I was a main character without lines. I asked myself: why did he have to tell me all that? I knew all about that - was that my reason

for going away? Maybe, I was thinking, maybe my father had to tell me because I went away. Because I went away, yes, I knew something, yes, I understood him, yet I was the only one who could understand him, yes, I was the only one with whom he had a chance to be understood. My mother never did; my brothers married; my sister now occupied the old house; but I went away. Because I went away, because I never became a teacher, because I never looked for a girl and got married, because I occupied a small bed and lived alone, filling up calendars of loneliness and wandering - was that the reason for telling me? So that there could be stopping somewhere, a beginning somewhere, a look, a hand, a sky, a flower?

The waitress came with the food.

In her presence, once again, my father was again my father. He had put away his seriousness and was watching the waitress setting the menu on the table.

"You'll enjoy your stay in Ligao, son" he was talking to be heard by her. "The girls there are as pretty as this pretty Miss here..."

He watched her reaction for it was an obvious pass. The waitress smiled, but it was only a dry short smile; she was perhaps used to being called pretty. But the flattery must have touched a flame in her, for she spread out the food with a conscious warmth and was showing off. She bent so low in front of us that if I had stood up, I would have seen her breasts. My father kept staring at her. I speared my steak with my fork and began to eat. I was hungry.

Eating, we didn't talk much. My father only repeated what he had said before; I merely nodded and grunted, showing I was listening to him. Once in a while, I formed a sentence or two, to get him to elaborate some more. The waitress waited nearby, attending to us, my father looking up to her occasionally. Looks and smiles were the queer language they communicated in. after the lunch, I asked for coffee. My father ordered ice cream. But when the waitress came back with them, he pushed the ice cream towards me. "Eat this too," he said. "It's good for you, I'm already full." He grew quiet all over again. The waitress was nowhere. When he spoke, it became another tone. I thought: so there is more he wanted to tell

me.

"You're coming with me to see Betsy," he said. He stopped momentarily, as though to watch me and see if I knew who Betsy was.

Of course, I knew; Betsy was a new woman had been living with. I knew that from my sister; she had told me about a child too.

"You must know Betsy. She lives in San Juan. My wife doesn't know about it. But I need it, son. I can't help it. My body needs it. That's what your mother never understood. But its better to have a woman like that rather than to go to night clubs where you aren't sure about the woman..."

He trailed off, perhaps to allow the shock, if it was a shock for me, or the truth, for it was the truth, to be absorbed by me. Then he spoke again, and it was another thing:

"But before we see her, we'll go back and send that telegraphic transfer. And well, since we're already here, let's go first to Quiapo Church."

"Quiapo Church?" It was like the first time that I had spoken my and my voice was a strangely unused to speech. "What for?"

"Well, I must offer something to the Lord," he said without blinking, "since I've received some money today. I always do that, you know."

Yes, I knew that - but only rather vaguely, the knowledge seemed suddenly a new thing as if it had come the wrong time, intruded into the wrong conversation.

But he went on, not minding what I thought. "You know - I don't forget giving something to the Lord every time I get some money. I do this even in Ligao - I'm quite popular in town you know that, son? You know why? I buy the best food. The fishermen come to the house and offer their catch. I know the mayor; I play poker with him. I know also the parish priest. You know, I make offerings in his church. I buy candles for his altar every time I arrive there. It gives me luck as well as peace of mind. You know what I did last Christmas, son - all throughout the Misa de Gallo? Do not be surprised at your father, son. But I bought so many candles and had them placed on every wall outside the church, so the people could see their way to Mass. For ten nights, son - candles burned in darkness until it was dawn and morning."

He looked at me and smiled. "Tell me, son," he said, "Tell me if that's not one way of offering back to the Lord a share of what you receive from Him. Well - that's the way my life goes, son.

He was finished; after a while, he turned and signaled to the waitress.

She came, with the bill, with a smile. My father looked at the bill and her smile, then picked out his wallet. He laid the amount on the table and another piece close to her hand, let it fall, and held her hand. He smiled, "That's for you, Miss." The waitress didn't withdraw her hand and until her smile disappeared upon my father's own. Then it was still all over.

Once we stepped outside, I felt like a Kabuki actor in full costume, for the heavy lunch seemed to have expanded my frame, giving me that funny, bloated feeling; I felt drugged. I looked back from where we came out; how ugly the ruins showed in the afternoon sun, a scar of the past that held a beautiful memory of operas and music.

"Let's just walk It to Quiapo, O.K., son?" he said. "It helps the digestion if one walks after lunch. Besides, it's just across the bridge. I often walk there.'

Just across the bridge lay the church. We walked across the street-islands, past the Brewery building now used for cold storage, and now up the first length of the bridge. Suddenly, without knowing why, I felt good walking with my father. I realized it was the first

time I felt that way and it was the first time I walked with him, since childhood. In childhood, coming out of the Metropolitan Theater, there was always the botanical garden to go to, with all the birds and animals to watch or feed. My father often took me there, his hand holding mine and we swung our arms in unison. Now we were walking up the bridge, and I was taller than my father. But for all moments I felt proud walking up with him. Cars came down facing us I searched the faces inside the rushing vehicles, instinctively ready to wave to anybody who would recognize me walking with my father. The wind fanned freshly down on us, from the open, looming sky.

We reached the top and it was different there, all at once the bridge leveled off. It spanned the Pasig River, a dirty wideness of flowing accumulations, browning in the sun. A barge was seen at one edge, swaying but not hacking away a pathway of water with long sticks. Then we found ourselves passing through a roofed compartment that exposed a sharp stench of urine. I held my breath and felt sick, but went on walking, without a word. The bridge swung down, and we hurried forward upon a vague gravity as is we were losing our balance, quickening our steps. Below now was the market; in a sweep of the eye it was a dirty place, littered with ash cans, vendors, overcome by the smells of chicken waste, dead animal flesh, rotten garbage. Across the end of the bridge and beyond the plaza was Quiapo, the church of the Black Nazarene; a dark and miraculous patron that had'attracted more fanatics than devotees to overflow the place, more on Fridays than on Sundays too; to make them walk on their knees from the front door to the altar, where they fell with upraised fingers to kiss the floor. I rarely went to that church for it was never a quiet church to meditate and seek peace in, with hawker rasping in and out, the staged programs outsides bellowing crack- voiced announcements of political meetings, desperate speeches and jungle music.

But my father and all were walking towards it now, with the afternoon sun a little slanted above us.

We reached the gate, brushing aside ticket vendors and medal pinners. The church door was thick-lipped with beggars; I looked straight in and saw the altar, vague with candlelight blurring over statues and flowers. I moved forward but my father was not following me.

"Not here," he said.

"Where are we going?" My question stunned me.

"Follow me," and he had turned away without stopping.

Now I felt afraid but I followed him. We skirted the side of the church, went through another gate pushed into a market. It was a market of toys and clothes and statues and among them, assorted biscuits. The ceiling pressed down low and dangled patterns of rosaries, fans bags and candles. It was dark: there were no windows for the sun: small yellow bulbs and red candles mixed their lights against the wall shadows and moving faces. I pushed in hurriedly, not wanting to sight of my father's head. An old woman was sleeping on a bench; a child played in and out of empty boxes; a thin loafer in a torn undershirt stared at me from the pause over his bowl of soup. Stumbling through the narrow path, I sensed that we were now at the other end of the church. It was still dark there, dark with humanity and strange furniture, with market cries.

My father finally stopped at a door: a small door shrunk narrower by encrumping it. The men looked like hangers-on waiting for anything to happen. One called for dollars to be changed to pesos. One stopped me and asked for ten centavos. But I followed my father who had wedged in through the door.

The door was a corridor that swung up darkly into stairs. My father disappeared from sight as I moved up with hesitation. The wall that I held to keep me from stumbling was sharp on its surface. I reached the top of the stairs.

There was a built-in space, almost like a room carved out from the wall. I stopped at the edge of the stairs looking in. there was a structure shaped like a V at the left; only, from where I stood, the V-shaped was the other way around. It formed a passageway for one to walk to the center and move out on the other side. The center was a wall but what was on the wall was the whole reason for everything there. A foot larger than man's jutted out from an opening. It was the foot of the Black Nazarene.

The sight held me breathless for some seconds before my eyes took in the other details. The foot was positioned on the movement of the leg about to kneel, the heel showed roundly above, the toes pressed down to a wooden support. I thought: Is this strange room the back of the altar in front? And the thought formed an image of the altar inside the church where the Black Nazarene stood above the tabernacle, caught in the pressure of carrying a crowd. But candles burned now before my eyes, on the ledges of the V-structure; hidden down was a deep box with a slit on its surface. To my left a crowd stood praying: all facing the wall where and fingerprints made their mortal saints.

And my father was there, before their eyes. He had walked to the center now he And my stood before the jutted foot of a dark God. He took out a clean white handkerchief and flapped it open like a wing. Then he bent over the wooden foot and began to wipe it all over, tenderly, like a sad woman. Slowly, he went down, fine suit and all, and knelt with both knees. It was almost a strange ritual: he kissed the heel once, twice, a third time. Then wiping his kisses with the handkerchief, he made the sign of the cross, stood up, dug into his wallet, placed a twenty-peso bill into the slit of the deep box and was gone. I saw it all and I felt suddenly it was my turn. I couldn't go forward; the jutted foot held me in the strangest hypnosis of hesitation. My whole body stiffened: my thought penetrated me in the dimension of the wall, burst into a living figure before the altar inside the church: this is the way I am, this is the way I face God, kneeling at the pew in the silence of prayer, looking at the tabernacle.

But the thought broke. I was standing there and the candles danced sharply. There was no way back. Several persons were already behind me, waiting. The men and the pretty woman continued praying. I went forward. I stood before the foot. I did not get my handkerchief, I simply bent over and kissed the heel.

It was cool to my touch. I saw the wound on the white of the foot; it was discolored, shaped like the wound that was once a boxer's lips.

I didn't know I was out of the church until I saw my father smiling at me at the gate, and his look meant it was time for us to go and send that telegraphic transfer to his wife, and then to see Betsy, that woman by whom he had another child.