(In which I transferred and extended.)
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Oh what a shame! I haven’t posted anything for a long time. Though I did not want to blame it to the fact that I was recently buried in a terrible work load and a painful school schedule made more complicated by tasks and deadlines, I just can’t. But come to think of it, it won’t hurt if I post the summaries and reviews that hinder me from reading and blogging, will it? Besides, they’re still literature!
Dead Stars by Paz Marquez-Benitez
Alfredo Salazar was betrothed to Esperanza, his girlfriend for four years. The start of their relationship was relatively “warm”, with Alfredo wooing Esperanza like a man in dire lovesickness. But as the years went by, the warm love’s fire slowly flickered. And it was because of Julia Salas.
She was charming and gleeful. He shared moments of light but sometimes deep conversations with her when the lawyer Alfredo visited Julia’s brother-in-law, who was a judge. He always went there with his father and since it was his father who needed to talk to the judge, he was always left to Julia’s company. He never told her he was engaged. At first he didn’t notice that a change in his heart was taking form. But then he started keeping details of his activities to his fiancée and then the guilty feeling crept in. When he found out that Julia was about to head back to her distant hometown, he felt blue and frightened.
He met her in church after the Holy Thursday procession, although he knew that Esperanza was already waiting for him. He approached her and she conversed with him with an expression that told him she finally knew. She congratulated him and said she will be at his wedding. Then they parted.
When he visited Esperanza in her house, he overheard her talking to another woman about infidelity and immorality, to which he reasoned in favor of the condemned. The statement caused an intense fury to Esperanza and she told him that she knew. She dared Alfredo to abandon her, along with morality and reason and her dignity as a woman as well as her image before the society all for the sake of his “being fair to himself”.
Eventually the wedding took place. And after several years, Alfredo was sent to a distant village due to a legal assignment. It bothered him so much because it was near Julia’s hometown. But he still found himself making his way to her house despite of himself. And he found her there, just as how and where he expected her to be. She never married. And he wondered how life would be if he ended up with her. But all was too late and he could never bring things back. He also noticed that Julia lost something, albeit the fact that he didn’t know what that is – youth, love, luster? And when he looked at her he doubted if she ever cared for him, if he has mistaken the past light in her eyes as manifestations of a possible romance. But now they’re all gone. And so it was indeed all done.
Full Text:Dead Stars by Paz Marquez-Benitez
