476
PARTISAN REVIEW
His father would have had supper by now and would be in bed,
but not sleeping. He hardly slept at night; just lay there very still,
with staring eyes, in the dark room-as Paco now lay very still on
his face, with eyes open, down there on the grass. His father had said
little about what he had seen on the other side of the mirror. But that
was hardly Father who came back, thought Pepe, remembering the
stranger's footfalls he had been alarmed to hear in his father's room
when his father should still have been in Manila.
When the great news came that the flag of his country waved at
last in sovereign solitude, his father was
ill
and could not attend the
inauguration of the Republic. It was a year before he could make the
momentous voyage home. He had wanted no one to accompany him;
this voyage, the great dream of a lifetime, he desired to make alone.
Pepe had deferred his marriage-he and Rita Lopez had been engaged
since the end of the war-because the old man had expressed the wish
that they should be married in their old house in Manila. His father
would arrange to have the house rebuilt at once; Pepe was to follow
with his bride. The old man, when he set off, looked like a young
bridegroom himself: stiff and vigorous; and waving at last to his sons
with unconcealed exultation as his ship pulled off from the wharves,
bearing him home again after half a century of exile.
Less than a month later, he was back, suddenly and unannounced.
Pepe, one stormy afternoon, after a muddy round at the racetrack
stables in Happy Valley, came home and heard someone moving about
in his father's room. He did not recognize the fumbling footsteps. With–
out waiting to take off his dripping coat and galoshes, he hurried to
the room and found the old man there, shakily pushing a chair around,
and looking so frail, so altered, he might have been away for years,
not for a month. Pepe, after one look at his father's face was careful
not to express surprise.
"When did you arrive, Papa?" he asked as he kissed the old man's
cheek.
"Just this afternoon. I took an airplane."
"You should have cabled."
"I left in great haste."
Pepe, stripping off his rubbers, waited for explanations. None came.
His father complained about the dust in his room; hearing the quaver
in his voice, Pepe started. Besides, the room was clean.
"I'll tell the boy to tidy up here," he said. "Let's go and have tea."
"I must wash first," said the old man.
But when Pepe came back to the room he found the old man asleep,
folded up in a chair, his head fallen on the chair's arm. Pepe called
