Tong

TONG by F. Sionil José

Conrado Lopez fell deeply in love for the first time when he was thirty. It was one of those beautiful things destined to bleakness and from the very beginning, he had an inkling that this was how it would be. And all because Alice Tan was Chinese.

When he first saw her, it seemed as if she had blossomed straight out of a Chinese art book; she had a complexion as clear as it was fair. When he got to know her better, he used to trace the blue veins in her arms, the blood vessels in her cheeks. Her nose was perfect, and her Chinese eyes had a brightness that could dispel the gloom which came over him. Long afterwards, when he remembered her eyes, how she looks, how she smiled, an intense feeling akin to physical pain would lance him.

Alice Tan’s parents used to run a small grocery store in Ongpin; both came from Fookien and Alice could trace her family back to Amoy. Conrado Lopez did not know his lineage beyond his great grandfather and not interested in the Chinese traditional kinship system. But he got so interested afterwards, he started to delve into his own background. He lived with his spinster sister, Remedios, in a small house in Makati, a sidestreet parallel to Rizal Avanue in Santa Cruz. He had inherited the house with its pocket-size yard from his parents. The lower floor which had its own entrance was rented out to a lawyer who was adept at fixing things at City Hall. He and his sister lived in the second floor which had two bedrooms, a living-dining room and a toilet and kitchen with antique fixtures. His sister looked after the house, his clothes and his general well being. Conrado had finished accounting at one of the Azcarraga universities and would have accounted to something more than being an accountant in Makati and his older sister whom he supported. It was because of such a responsibility that he had never really been serious with any girl.

He was unprepared for Alice Tan; in fact, in the beginning, he was not sure...