Sunset by Paz Latorena

The Man
She came to him out of the rain like a rabbit of flotsam washed from the distant seas to the shore
by uncertain tides. The wind blew from the east that night and as the door of the rustly shop
opened westward, it slammed shut behind her with a sort of vicious cheated force when she
hurried in. The whole place rocked with the impact and startled him as he sat on a stool mending
a pair of brown shoes in the dim light of a small, red lamp that hung from the blackened sawali
ceiling.
Outside the shop, the rain lashed down the narrow street with the fury of an aroused maniac, a
steady flood from a sky of impenetrable darkness. The water streamed along the gutters, foaming
at the heaps of filth congested there, rejected scraps of food, bits of yellow paper, pieces of rags,
and untidy dirt. In that weather, no lights shone along Barranco, the heart of the slums of the
northern district, early as the hour still was.
He stood up and eyed her uncertainly as she leaned heavily against the threshold, a slender halfdrowned wisp of a woman clutching a faded violet scarf tightly around her narrow chest.
Yes? he said with rising inflection.
She looked around the small shop- it was shabby but it was clean- and then at him as he stood
under the red lamp, tall in his sleeveless undershirt and dark-blue trousers with white stripes.
I was caught by the rain, she exclaimed in a voice hardly above a whisper, this was the only
place with a light.
She coughed a dry, unnatural sound that shook her small body from head to foot.
So I came in, she gasped on, but now I shall go.
She turned to the door and opened it. The rain darted in and awoke him from his trance- like
immobility and silence.
Dont, he protested, striding to the door and closing it with finality. Sit down and wait for the
rain to stop.
She looked up and a tired smile of gratitude lighted up her face for a moment.
There was his stool in the middle of the small shop, directly under the red lamp, and there was a
small papag in a corner by the small, tightly closed window. He led her to that. The only chair in
the shop had been borrowed that afternoon by a neighbor and had not yet been returned; he
apologized with an embarrassed laugh.
The papag creaked unpleasantly as she sat down without a word. She cast off the wet scarf from
her shoulders with a quick movement, as if its dampness had suddenly become oppressive and
intolerable.
He sat on the stool once more and resumed his work.
Did she live far? was his tentative query.
She nodded.
Was she looking for someone living in the neighborhood?
Again the mute answer.

There were other things he wanted to know but the questions that surged to his lips were stilled
by her reticence.
He glanced at her furtively. There was something vaguely disturbing in her stillness; her feet
barely touched the floor, her hands were quietly folded on her lap, her eyes were turned down,
seemingly intent on the pattern of her red chinelas.
The silence deepened, lengthened into minutes. A musty odor of damp earth and humid air hung
heavily in the room. Dark wetness crept in through the slits in the nipa wall. The wind continued
the havoc without, and in all the world there seemed to be no other sound but the drip, drip on
the roof.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the rain stopped. From somewhere in the distance a church
bell made itself heard and tolled the hour.
He looked up. The woman had fallen asleep. She had dropped on one side, and one of her arms
pillowed her head while the other was carelessly thrown across her breast.
He put his work down and lighted a stumpy candlestick.
He stood up and made his way to the corner to wake her up.
Drops of water still glistened on the mass of black hair that was knotted loosely at that back of
her head. A stray tendril threw its shadow across her sleeping face. The large mouth with its full
but colorless lips was slightly parted by her irregular breathing.
He gazed at her for a long while- the mass of black hair, the closed eyes with their long lashes
the tips of which touched the soft brown of her cheeks. And a sudden desire to touch her face
overwhelmed him as he stood above her. She was so small, so soft, so still in the flickering
candle light.
He remembered that she had looked at him from the door with eyes made enormous by dark
circles under them. In the dim light of the lamp he had not discerned the color of those eyes.
Were they black? Or brown?
They were dark-brown in the clear morning when Barranco woke up to find a strange woman in
the cobblers shop. And they were sad as they met his in the cold and cruel light.
But could anything else have happened, he asked himself hopelessly. He closed his eyes and saw
her again in the frail and haunting loveliness that had been hers in the flickering candlelight.
A long silence bridged the charm of speech. When she spoke it was almost as if her words were
so many pebbles flung into that chasm for themer purpose of sound, as full of hopeless regret
was her voice.
I suppose, I should . . .the words halted there.
It was many days later when he learned how she came to him that night of wind and rain. She
had been working in the house of a vaudeville star. She had been happy, she assured him,
because the seorita was kind. But the younger brother, coming home only that night, had been
nasty in his drunkenness. She had fled from the house, from evil eyes and evil lips and evil hands
that had seared her flesh with their touch. She had wandered through unfamiliar streets- from the
boat she had gone straight to the seoritas house, upon her arrival from the province only a few
months before- until the sudden rain had driven her to his door.
From mud to mud, he thought as he listened to her story and watched her trembling hands. A
sense of the enormous wrong he had done her troubled him, also an intangible responsibility and
a vague desire to atone.
He would marry her. He said that aloud, feeling he not only should but wanted to.

But we have to wait, he told her one evening across their frugal meal; marriage costs money.
The license . . . other fees. . .
The seorita . . . she ventured timidly.
I do not want you to go back to that house, he reminded her, and I shall pay for the
license,he added in cold voice.
She was silent.
The Woman
Barranco was horrified even the slums had a code of morals, however loose but not for long.
The poor people had too many other things and personal affairs to worry about for example,
how to feed seven children every day on twenty centavos.
In time the neighbors forgot, for they rarely saw her. It was the cobbler who went to the market;
it was the cobbler who hung the wet clothes in the backyard every morning. And something in
her voice, something gay and undaunted, made them stop their work for a while to listen to her
and to notice how lovely the day was.
For beautiful mornings came after that night of rain soft sunshine, blue skies, tender breezes
kind days during which she learned to love her tall cobbler who made barely enough money to
keep them both in rice and fish every day.
Often she would sit quietly on the papag and watch him as he sat on his stool mending a pair of
shoes that would bring them a days meal or standing by the door talking to a neighbor across the
narrow street while waiting for a customer to come in. And the night.
So they were not only lovely but happy days as well. Yet she counted them, for if work became
steady, they might save the money to marry on.
Somehow nothing had been said about marriage since the night he had forbidden her to go back
to the house of her former seorita. But how could he talk about it, she argued with herself
impatiently whenever the question furtively intruded into her thoughts, when there were times
when they did not have enough money for the market?
Once or twice she was tempted to go to the seorita without his knowledge, but she could not
think of a good excuse to leave the house for a long time. And she had learned his anger which
was swift and silent and somehow terrible. She had incurred it once by making a friend of the
wife of a neighbor and chatting for hours across the back fence for the sheer pleasure of hearing
another womans voice. He had not said anything but she had cried because he had eaten his
meal without her.
She was sweeping the shop one morning the cobbler had left to deliver a pair of shoes to its
owner when a small gray car made its way through the narrow street and a girl in a gaudy
sweater came down, staring with bewildered eyes at the small protection.
Seorita, she exclaimed joyfully as a shadow darkened the threshold.
Yes, the girl in the gaudy sweater hastened inside. What are you doing in this shop?
I live here, seorita, she said, dusting the only chair with a sleeve of her camisa and offering it
to the unexpected visitor.
I have come to take you back, crossing her silk-clad legs, because Pepe is now living with
Mother. He told me what happened the night you left. But the detective I hired took a long time
to locate you.

The voice of the seorita was very kind, so were the eyes, and before she realized what she was
doing, she had sobbed the whole story.
;But he is going to marry me, seorita, she smiled through her tears, as soon as we have
enough money with which to pay the license and other fees.
The girls face softened, became almost beautiful.
Well, here is the salary you forgot to ask for in your hurry to leave, opening a beaded handbag
and drawing out two ten-peso bills and a small card, and here is my new address, in case you
should change your mind.
But seorita. . .she stared at the bills in her hand.
The other bill is my gift to the bride, she said smiling. And now is there anything else I can do
for you?
Yes, there is, seorita, she clutched the girls arm in her excitement. Wait for him. And do not
tell him you have seen me. Say that you have heard about us from the detective you hired to
locate me, that you are giving him this gift of money so he can marry me.
But why? the girl was puzzled.
Because I love him, seorita, and I want him to think he is paying for the license, not I, she
explained as she snatched a scarf the same faded violet scarf with which she had come to her
cobbler out of the night and the rain and hurried out.
The small gray car no longer blocked the narrow street when she returned about an hour later.
Inside the shop the cobbler was regarding a dirty pair of black shoes perched on his low table
with evident dislike.
Where have you been? he asked casually as she came in.
Looking for isis with which to polish our table, she answered in a happy voice, waving a branch
of rough leaves before his eyes.
You should not leave the shop when I am out, he remarked thoughtfully. People might come
in, he added.
Did any? she challenged gayly. She stood before him expectantly, her eyes starry bright.
Well . . . no, he spoke slowly as he resumed the scrutiny of the black shoes.
A bit of the radiance left her eyes. Rather puzzled, she picked up the isis that had fallen to the
ground and went inside the kitchen to prepare the midday meal.
Throughout the rest of the morning she resolutely kept calm and refrained from thinking. She
would not let anything, not even curiosity, master her into unnecessary doubts, until he himself
should, consciously or unconsciously, give the clue to his rather strange behavior.
I have a surprise for you, he told her drowsily as he curled up for his usual afternoon nap.
The relief was so sudden and so sharp that it almost brought tears to her eyes. She did not speak
because she knew her voice would betray her.
He was keeping the news as a surprise. He would tell her about it tonight and she hoped there
would be rain to remind him of the night she had come to him. And in a rush of penitence for the
ugly and furtive thoughts that had troubled her in spite of herself, she ran her fingers through his
hair. He was fast asleep.

With renewed buoyancy, she moved about the shop the rest of the afternoon, excited, humming a
tune as she worked. She made fun of the dirty black shoes the cobbler began mending after his
brief nap. She laughed over the very long needle and the very thick thread he chose for his work.
But even the night brought nothing. Close to him in the dark she waited in vain for the words that
would make of their life together a beautiful symphony, not the sordid interlude it was
threatening to be.
Seen through the little window, the sky of night, so smooth, so bestarred, looked wrinkled
through her screen of unshed tears. Her thoughts released at last, kept her company through the
long night like so many shadow specters. And something she could only feel but not name
assumed definite proportions with the dawn.
The new day brought his surprise it was carefully wrapped in fine white paper, and he had it in
his pocket when he arrived home from the market. At first she did not want to unwrap the small
package. Truth hung by a hair and as long as it hung, she could swear it was a lie. When she
finally did, she was conscious of a sharp and indignant agony.
She did not ask questions about it. And she noticed that he was relieved as he was surprised by
her strange lack of curiosity.
It was a pretty although inexpensive little thing a square violet scarf of thin silk with a small
tassels all around. But she wore the old faded one when, three days later, she told him she had
found another job.
But why? he wanted to know. I am not earning much but . . .
We cannot go on like this, she spoke low to keep the bitterness out of her voice; it is not
right.
You mean . . .
Yes. Let us both work and save money. Then perhaps . . .
She watched his face keenly. There was not even the flicker of an eyelash to betray him.
Where will you work this time? he asked after a long silence. She had only to show the card
the seorita had given her. But her knowledge of the whole torturing incident prevented her from
doing so.
Somewhere not very far from here, she told him lightly.
A gift was a gift, she reminded herself fiercely. She had given him that money through the
seorita without his asking for it, freely, to do with it as he liked. And he chose to let her go.
She left late the next afternoon. He wanted to go with her but she asked him not to, promising to
send him word and her address later.
The fish is under the basin, near the stove, she reminded him as he helped her into the carretela
that was waiting for her.
He gave her a bundle, the clothes of his dead mother which he had insisted on her taking with
her. His face was pale in the late afternoon light; his hands were none too steady.
She smiled compassionate divinity looking down on the puny sins of man.
She was still smiling as the horse started. At the end of the street she turned her head and waved
her hand to him as he stood by the gate in the falling darkness.