Read Online Dusk: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks) by F. Sionil Jose - Free Book Online Page A

and yes, his heart thumped—the small pink nipples. She straightened up immediately and caught him, and now, the knowing smile.
    “Am I beautiful, Eustaquio?”
    He could not answer; the blood rushed to his head, to his limbs, burning him, imprinting in his mind that image of her bosom. How shapely were the legs beneath that skirt? The hips?
    “Well, are you not going to tell me?”
    His throat was parched, “Yes, señorita,” he croaked. “You are beautiful.”
    “My foot,” she said gazing at him, witch eyes beckoning while he seemed to sway. “Will you do me a favor? I twisted it this morning. Do you know how to massage a sprain? Weren’t you taught something like that, too?”
    He shook his head.
    “Please massage it,” she said, suddenly thrusting her right foot forward, baring a white, smooth leg up to the knee.
    When he did not move, she repeated, “Please …”
    He moved toward her as if in a daze, and then knelt. With trembling hands, he held her right foot and slowly started to massage it.
    “Higher up the leg,” she said, her voice bright with pleasure. The touch of her flesh kindled in him this want so intense, so deep, it stirred him immediately. When she finally said enough, he still knelt, ashamed to rise knowing that she would see what she had done to him, the proclamation of his manhood.
    He could not sleep that night. Carmencita had actually invited him, teased him, and he was shocked and at the same time ashamed of his feelings—he was a teacher and he had betrayed Padre Jose’s trust. He need not have worried more about temptation and lust and his own willful proclivity for sin. The following day, the young priest arrived, and upon seeing the three sisters that afternoon, he forbade Istak to teach them—he would do that himself now, and when the old priest was transferred to Bantay, the young priest moved the classroom for Capitán Berong’s daughters to the room upstairs, beside his quarters.
    And it was there one afternoon that Istak had gone, and aswas his custom with the old priest, he did not knock on the door; it was there that he saw just the legs—the white, creamy legs and between them, the hirsute legs of the young priest. They were behind the high cabinets where many of the records were filed. Istak did not close the door—he ran down the stairs and on to the church, where he knelt and prayed, telling himself that he did not see anything. And that evening, the young priest called him after the Angelus. He asked no questions, he merely told Istak his services were no longer needed.
    The wheels of the cart, built of solid wood, were not oiled and they squeaked at every indentation in the path. Here was a woman, here was temptation again, and yet it was no longer the old temptation. It seemed as if he had known Dalin for a long time. Here was kinship, as strong as any that could bind two people together. She had listened passively at first, but now she seemed engrossed with everything he had to say. He told her of that inscrutable world whose fringes he had reached, the darkness—or was it light?—that had enticed him, the compulsion to know more, not just about faith and God, but of men, what made them what they were. He told her of his numbing sense of frustration when he was driven out of the
kumbento
, and how he would live in Po-on, to which he had become a stranger.
    He marveled at how easily and quickly he had revealed himself to her, but this new kinship would surely go to waste, for very soon they would part.
    The river was far behind them. They neared the fork of the trail, where she was to leave him. Clouds of dust whirled ahead and a man on horseback was cantering toward them.
    Istak reined in the bull and pulled the cart to the side of thepath. It was only the wealthy or Guardia Civil officers who rode on horses, and as the rider drew near, Istak recognized Capitán Berong in his finery, white coat and silver-studded squash hat.
    The mestizo stopped.
    “Good