Love stories from the country’s best writers

If we would be asked to name the best writers in the country, without batting an eyelash we would say Nick Joaquin and F. Sionil Jose. Not only do they have the right grammar but also the imagination that would make grammar almost less of a necessity. In our book collection is Nick Joaquin’s Reportage on Lovers — A Medley of Factual Romances, Happy or Tragic, Most of which made News.

Joaquin’s Reportage using his nom-de-plume Quijano de Manila has been with us for so long that it has almost grown wings to fly. We recall following him along the corridors of almost all the tacky bars in San Juan where he lived, in order to get him sign this book. He was then such a big name in the writing field. There was no subject matter beyond his reach that he couldn’t comment on and have the populace accept as gospel truth.

The preface titled Love in the Philippines begins with a throwback to the Romans and the Christians in ancient times to the latter-day Pinoys who make “the most imperious of husbands, but the meekest of lovers.” A Filipino interested in a local girl to become his wife will have to go through what is tantamount to a university initiation. However, in this case, it is a tribal initiation with the help of barrio witch doctors who make use of love potions (gayuma) that will soften the hearts of the most disinterested woman.

We had already written about the popular story titled Boy Meets Girl: or The Sweet Old Story Retold. How could anyone resist the love story of a Japanese girl and a poor Pinoy boxer with Doroy Valencia as their sponsor in love?

Another love story we read and re-read is titled Love Me, Love My War: Or L’Amour Among the Activists. In the love story, the major cast is Elnora Estrada (Babbete), a corporal of the Women’s Auxiliary Corps of the Armed Forces, and Antonio Tayco (Tony), chairman of the Lyceum chapter of Kabataang Makabayan. They are thrown together at a camp-out in Pangasinan organized by the UE KMs, and there they fall in love. During the demonstrations, they are inseparable. Through Babbete’s illnesses in the pelvic bone, breast cyst, liver and stomach ulcers and fits of depression, Tony is by her side.

Then comes her revelation in court that while she is with the KM, she has also been spying on it for the army. It is a sad case of a love story gone sour.

F. Sionil Jose, on the other hand, tells his love stories with a flush and a sparkle. Sometimes, he makes you cry for a love lost forever; some other times he is the victim of love’s unfairness, as we discovered in a compilation of 13 short stories under the main title Puppy Love. F. Sionil Jose relates the story of childhood friends Jacobo from a poor family and Gina of a rich clan who fall for each other without realizing what this attraction means. F. Sionil writes, “It was a feeling so undefined and yet so tender and as real as breathing. It is often called ‘Puppy Love.’ They continued seeing each other onto high school, holding each other’s hands, embracing each other and experimenting with tentative kisses. Gina must have realized the futility of it all. It was another poor boy-rich girl story like the fate of the lovers in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, her favorite novel. There was no way this would-be love story could prosper. And it didn’t. The second World War took care of that.”

After the war, Gina and Jacobo’s stations in life have gotten reversed. He has now adopted the name of Jake. Through education and hard work, Jake is now rich and can afford a good life. He often thinks of Gina, in fact couldn’t get her out of his mind even if he is already married to Jenny. Then one day, a story is carried on the news of a woman who was imprisoned for cutting off the penis of her husband whom she caught being unfaithful. Jake rushes to the prison cell to see Gina for the very last time. It’s a sad, sad love story like Wuthering Heights. We found ourselves shedding tears.

Another story from the Puppy Love book is titled The Female Principle which could very well be an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Throughout the story, the male lead Dodo feels he has the upper hand, beginning with the relationship he has with Doña Alicia who is a rich bitch, a nymphomaniac, and whose mouth smells of sour breath. After her comes Edna who is frigid and can’t make love to her husband; then Tina, who plays Bach on the piano, gets pregnant with his child and then never forgives him for being forced into an abortion. The last victim Dodo meets is Linda, a waitress whom he feels has given him special attention, until she introduces him to her real love, a trumpet player. That is the last straw. Dodo invites both Linda and her trumpet player to his home, and there kills them both in cold blood.                  

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