THE BEETLE "That boy? Ha!

I think he went swimming in the river again,

by: Consorcio Borje the rascal."

Nana Basiang cooks the rice on the bread, a shallow box filled
Consorcio Borje was born in 1912 in Bana-ao, Mountain with earth and set on a level with the bamboo floor, that
Province and died 1981. He was a first prize winner in the serves as a hearth. The potful of rice soon boils merrily. Red
Commonwealth Literary Contest in 1941 for his collection light and shadows chase across the sooty bamboo rafters and
sooty bamboo walls and across the dark, thin face of Nana
“The Automobile Comes To Town” and other stories. He Basiang.
worked at the Graphic, Evening News, the Daily Mirror, and
the Weekly Nation. There is a noise outside, then feet scurry up the bamboo
ladder of the kitchen. A boyish face, split by a wide, big-
Leaving for the ricefields of Don Tinoso that morning, her toothed grin, hair tumbled down the wet forehead, pokers
Mother had said, "Gela, my child, keep watch until I return. from the darkness into the red, wavering light.
For your noon meal, there is the leftover rice and the fish stew
"It is Pitong!" exclaims Gela.
in the kitchen"
"Aha! So you are here at last!"
So Gela has been playing house in the front yard that morning
and afternoon. Some mud in a can represents cooking rice, a
Pitong steals sheepishly into the kitchen, accepts his mother's
few santol leaves represent vegetables. The front yard is a
scolding meekly, and sits down beside Gela on the floor. He
square patch of violent -red earth, with a bamboo fence
keeps his hand close behind his back.
around it to keep the neighbor pig out.
What do you have in your hand, Pitong?" asks Gela.
Now it is late afternoon but Mother has not yet come home,
already, under the house the chickens are going to roast, and Pitong closes his hand tighter and shakes his head
men and women are coming up the road, their feet caked with uncommunicatively.
mud and on their broad anahaw-leaf hats bundles of fragrant,
newly-harvested rice. Gela edges closer to him and smiles. "Ala Pitong, let me see it".
Gela squats on the ground digging her big toes into the fine Pitong shows her his big teeth but clenches his first more
crust of the rain. The men and the women glance at her. firmly.
"Na-ay, look at the daughter of Kaka Sibbi, widow of Cuan – Gela puts all feminine wile and charm in her smile and, failing
may the priest see his soul to heaven. to impress, she crouches and dives at the hand but clutches
only empty air.
" How quiet the child is!
“We are friends, Pitong. Why don't you show me what you
What a good child!" "Has your mother come home yet, Gela? have in your hand? Just a little peek."
"The answer is No, Nana" or "No, Tata", or "No, Manong", and Pitong starts to shake his head but on second thought
Mother has not yet come home." reconsiders the matter. Give me a kiss, then," he says, placing
a finger on his cheek that is faintly powdered with the mud
"Gela, we go on".
from the river. It."
Gela watches the harvesters go by, their long brown arms
No!"
swinging wide at their sides, the sweat glistering upon the
back of their necks. I’ll not show it to you then!"
"Ay, you, Gela. What are you doing there?" Gela ponders a moment, then says No".
“Nana Basiang, waiting for Mother." "All right," says Pitong, thrusting his fits into his pocket, "you
shall never see it”.
“Your mother has not yet come home? She started home
before me. Your mother said, "My child Gela is alone waiting Gela yells and bursts into tears. "Wah, wah, wah,"
at home for me." Have you cooked the rice?"
Nana Basiang fixes a red, truculent eye upon her son, "Now
No, Nana. Mother has told me I must not cook rice. what have you done to her? What have you done to her, you
son of the devil?"
The old woman contemplates the girl in her muddy little
dress, then turns on her heels and ascends the path that leads "Nothing, Mother," Pitong protests, "Nothing at all."
to a cogon-grass house that stands in thick grove of santol
trees on the rise across the road. Soon smoke seeps through The rice bubbles over and, as Nana Basiang turns away to
the wet grass roof. take the lid off the pot, Pitong kicks sidewise at Gela, who
gives another yell and starts crying afresh.
It is twilight. The slow, lambent tolling of the church bell
announces the Angelus. Men and women pause and cross “Come here, you; come here," shouts the woman, preparing to
themselves piously. me. take Pitong's measure.
"Gela." "But, Mother," expostulates Pitong, who views his mother's
preparations with alarm.
On the child's face the eager look of welcome becomes one of
disappointment "What did you do to Gela? Come here!
"Has your mother still not come home?" Nana Basiang asks Nana Basiang rolls up her sleeves and selects a fair-sized stick
anxiously. from its pile near the hearth. "Come here.”
"Nana Basiang, not yet." Pitong gives Gela, who is watching the proceeding with
interest, a devastating look and edges toward the door. "Na,
"What has happened to that woman? Never mind, I shall cook Mother, Gela is crying because I wouldn't show her the thing
some rice for you. Where do you keep it?" in my hand because she would not.." He stops short.
The rice is in a basket on a bamboo shelf over the fireplace. “What wouldn't she do?"
That is to keep the bokbok out. "Where is Pitong, Nana
Basiang? He did not come to play with me. She would not — “Pitong racks his facile brain in vain”.
Because he asked me for a kiss," Gela puts in. While Gela eats on the floor, Nana Basiang stares over the low
wall of the kitchen after the figure of her son disappearing in
The woman glowers upon Pitong. "What! You son of the the dark. Later on she descries her husband hurrying down
devil!" the path with a lantern in his hand. He vanishes down the
road, the lantern casting huge, swinging shadows. Nana
“Just a little kiss, Mother,' says Pitong. Basiang sits down on the floor beside the girl, only to start up
at the sound of voices on the road. A party of men and women
And when I would not kiss him, he kicked me," Gela adds. are passing by on their way home from threshing rice at the
mill of the rich man Don Tinoso. In reply to Nana Basiang's
The mother glares at pitong. "What! You son of the devil?" shouted inquiry, they say they have not seen the missing
woman.
Just a little kick, Mother," says Pitong. The kick would not
have hurt an ant". The woman's eye rests upon Pitong's Gela finishes her meal, drinks from the coconut dipper,
closed hand. "What is that in your hand?” washes the plates, throw the dish water into the night,
warming away the spirits lurking nearby with a "kayokayo"
Pitong, with a backward glance at Gela, opens his hands
lest they get drenched. Someone outside calls for Nana
before his mother near the fire and closes it again as Gela
Basiang. It is Tata Iban, her husband, looking tired and pale in
steals up behind him.
the dubious light of the lantern. He beckons to Nana Basiang
Ay, just an abal-abal," exclaims the woman. Have you been to come out quietly.
quarreling just because of a beetle?
"She is in the house of Lakay Bansiong. She is dead."
The secret is out. "Ay, just an abal-abal," says Gela
“Dead?"
deprecatingly.
"Yes," the man whispers. “Dead. Bitten by a rice snake."
"Na, but you wanted to see it," Pitong retorts derisively. He
opens his hand and the beetle crawls up one of his fingers. It I did not see her when I passed by the old man's house."
is fat and grayısh-brown, and the firelight gleams on its wings
covers. A length of thread secures it by two hind legs to one There was no one in the house when she got there. I arrived
of the boy’s fingers. with Lakay Bansiong himself and his wife. They had just come
from threshing rice at the mill of Don Tinoso. We found her
“So the abal-abal came out this afternoon , Pitong” asks the there lying on the floor."
mother, “Yes? Have you caught any for supper?"
"And- Gela?"
Yes. Father is already boiling them in vinegar." He turns
around and sticks his tongue out at Gela who is watching the They glance back at the kitchen. Gela is sitting on the small
antics of the beetle enviously. "La! We shall have abal-abal for wooden mortar solemnly watching fireflies at play around the
supper tonight! gumamela bushes.
"La! I do not like abal-abal," lies Gela weakly, her eyes still Nana Basiang decides promptly, "We'll take her home with
glued to the beetle, noticing which Pitong puts it in the center us."
of his palm and closes his fingers over it.
Outside the door, Gela sits newly washed and solemn in a
In the happy anticipation of a meal of beetles boiled in clean white dress stiff with starch. Strange men and women,
vịnegar, Nana Basiang neglects to castigate the errant Pitong in blackS come in out of the door. There are men talking,
and occupies herself with cooking the rice. She rests the pot drinking the sweet sugarcane wine, chewing buyo, and
on a bed of embers on one side of the fireplace and replaces spitting red out of the widow. There are women playing
the lid, first putting a piece of green banana leaf over the panggingge with decks of Spanish cards on mats spread on
cereal. The escaping steam fills the air with fine aroma. the floor. There is loud talking, much acrid smoke going up
into the cobweb-festooned rafters.
"What do you have for supper, Gela?"
"Poor child," says a thin, sallow-complexioned young woman,
The fish stew in the little pot, Nana Basiang." stroking Gela’s head gently, "Poor Child. Where will you stay
now that your mother is dead?”
The woman takes down the pot and examines its contents in
the glow of the embers. She sniffs it. “I don't know, Nana.”
"It is spoiled. Hoy, Pitong, run up to our house and get some of "You come to live with me, ha?"
the boiled beetles. For Gela. Hurry, you son of the devil."
"No, Nana,"
Pitong tarries to give Gela a baleful look, then disappears into
the velvet night which is full of the smell of flowers. Silence Gela begins to cry softly. In the main room of the house, her
settles upon the kitchen. The deep and glow of the embers mother lies very still and very white on her bed-mat on the
pulsates among the soot-black pots, the row of shiny, battered floor. Her wrinkled hands are clasped upon her breast, and a
tin plates, and the black coconut bowls on the bamboo shelf little black across is stuck between the rigid fingers.
hanging from the a left, and one of two five-gallon cans filled
with water. Nana Basiang, squatting before the fireplace, stirs "Don't cry, child. Now, you make me cry also."
restlessly.
Gela sobs louder. Tears stream down her cheeks.
"Are you lonely, child?"
Nana Basiang takes Gela by the hand. "Let us go, Gela," she
"Oh, I am lonely, Nana. Won't my mother come home soon?" says. "That son of the devil of mine will play with you."
There is the noise of bare feet outside. The two look at each Across the road, past the tin cans and the sticks and the dried
other with a glad light in their eyes. Your mother is home shredded santol leaves with which she had played house
now." Angela rushes to the door, crying Mother, Mother." yesterday, now piled into a heap on one side (for Tata Iban)
had come to sweep the yard); up the path, with the butterflies
But it is Pitong standing outside in the dim light coming from flitting among the aso-aso flowers; over the stones which the
the door. He looks at Gela foolishly, holding something rains of years have washed smooth, Gela and Nana Basiang
wrapped in a green banana left in his hand. On his shoulder ago. They arrive at the house of the woman.
the gray-brown boiled beetles with a grand gesture, and his
mother sends him back. "Tell your father," she says, "to see if "Pitong! Pitong! Now, where is that son of - ah, there he is."
your Nana Sibbi is anywhere among the neighbors.
Pitong comes running around the house. In one hand is a
string on which flies the beetle. "Pitong, come play with Gela."
Pitong sniffles obediently. He lifts up a bare foot to show that
one of his toes is hurt. He had bandaged it with a piece of the
cloth used for wiping sooty pots. Nana Basiang leaves for the
house of the dead across the road. Gela is still sobbing.

Gela, sobbing tearlessly, stares interestedly at the beetle. The

beetle alights upon her arm. "Oh, oh, oh.."

See, it is going up your arm," says Pitong.

"It scratches!" Gela's swollen face brightens, but she is

sobbing. "See, it is clasping its hands."

The beetle spreads its wings as if to fly away but folds them
again.

"It likes me," says Gela. She glances at Pitong hopefully. "It
does not want to fly away from me."

"Ay, it did the same thing with me also." "May I hold the string
for a while, Pitong?"

Pitong considers for a moment, then grandly delivers to her

custody the beetle which resumes its low journey up her arm.
Between her sobs Gela giggles delightedly.

Pitong looks down the hill, across the road. into the house of
Gela. Lakay Doro the carpenter is carrying the newly finished
wooden casket up the stairs. The casket is of one of the
windows. He will use the little nails which Pitong bought tor
him at the Chinese store with his own mother's two centavos.

"Oh, oh, oh! sobs Gela. She blows lightly on the beetle, pursing
her lips, and crinkling her tear-stained cheeks.

You may have the beetle, Gela," says Pitong, his small heart
swelling with a new bigness. "You may have the beetle all for
your own.

Ah Pitong! Do you mean it?"

"Ehm-m"! Pitong nods his head vigorously.

"Ah, Pitong," Gela steals up to him and still sobbing, suddenly

gives him a hearty smack on the closer cheek. On the cheek of
Pitong a wet little round "0" leaves a ring of brown on a field
of grayish-dried mud.