Read A Moment in the Sun for Free Online

suicide .”
    “What do I do?”
    “Tonight at the Zorilla,” said Scipio, smiling, and then was gone.
    But at intermission, the apple successfully bolted from son Walter’s head and Tell imprisoned by the haughty Gessler, Scipio has still not appeared. Diosdado shuffles downstairs in the throng, shoulder to shoulder with a butcher of a militar , a uniformed capitán de cazadores whistling the rousing call to arms that closed the first act.
    “ Elíxer para el alma ,” says the Spaniard, smiling and catching his eye, and Diosdado muses that if the oppressors do in fact have souls, then music must be good for them.
    He follows the university boys across the street for buñuelos and chocolate and talk of music, theater, women, all the things young irresponsible students should be preoccupied with, the militares at the next table laughing a little too loudly as always and both groups pretending to ignore the fact that there is a revolution in progress not so far from Manila, that in a few months, a year at the most, they may be trying to kill those other hijos de puta .
    “I wonder how many will stay, after it is done?” says Kokoy, careful as always to remain vague, in public places, about the exact nature of it.
    “The ones from Madrid or Barcelona will go home,” says Epifánio Cojuanco, who has spent a year studying piano in Spain. “But some of those places, in the bleak mountains—why would you bother?”
    “They’ll have to give up their privileges, of course.” This from Kokoy, who has a manservant who waits outside the classroom door in case his dueño should desire anything.
    “I long for the day,” says Hilario Ibañez. “To breathe our own sweet air again, to walk unburdened on our own fertile soil, among free men.”
    They can rhapsodize about independence for hours, his friends, but Kokoy is too rich and Epifánio too timid and Hilario a poet doomed to unwittingly plagiarize Dr. Rizal’s literary work, from which he no doubt conjured the image of the infernal machine, for the rest of his days. And he, Diosdado Concepción, is still waiting for the call—
    “To a better day,” says Epifánio, and they touch their cups together. It is Scipio’s favorite toast, Scipio who has not yet appeared, most often invoked at a café table like this one, surrounded by Spanish soldiers, looking like any other group of Filipino dandies in white suits and straw skimmers. “ A un día mejor! ” Scipio will say, raising his glass, and then down the throat, all of them smiling with their secret knowledge.
    Until this afternoon it has seemed only naughty.
    The bell sounds and they hurry back and stand just inside the doors to witness the re-entrance of the damas , their fans fluttering in a myriad of gown-matching colors, the students dizzied by passing waves of perfume, and then there is the dress they are waiting for, the dress that has the great fortune to caress the body of Ninfa Benavides, a whisper of organza the color of ripe guayaba , with a border of translucent French lace and a cameo brooch nestled between her artfully displayed twin doves of nubility.
    “If the fakirs are correct and one revisits this earth in different forms,” sighs Hilario Ibañez, “I would end my life now to come back as that cameo.”
    Ninfa, whose father is the Policarpio Benavides who supplies fresh beef to the Spanish army and can destroy men’s lives with a word in the proper official’s ear, whose aunt is the renowned Sister María de la Coronación de Espinas who teaches music and deportment at Santa Isabel, Ninfa carries herself like what she is, a jewel of the nation. There are so many peninsulares seeking her hand, or merely her interest, as well as the countless criollos and filipinos ilustrados , that some nights the crowd under her balcony erupts into terrible rows that warrant the militia being called to action. The rumor, for Diosdado has never been privileged to speak with her, is that she is as intelligent