SHORT STORY | ‘Ghost Of Christmas Past’

After work that day, on my way to the España gate, I noticed that the campus’ main roads had been closed to vehicles, and there was a long queue of young people waiting by the barrier. Then I noticed the little booths all over the football field, and I realized Paskuhan — the University’s Christmas festival — was about to happen.

So the driver made a right at the university chapel and headed toward the P. Noval gate. It was just before dusk, and the campus had been lit up in anticipation of the evening’s festivities: threads of tiny lights, blue and gold, streaming from the trees... thousands of lights, showers of fairy petals... The familiar buildings, trees, lanes, lamp posts, stone benches, had been transformed. It was an enchanted land.

And I was seventeen and a college sophomore again, helping to set up our college’s booth on the flat stretch of grass that no longer is (having been taken over by a building), the wide open space opposite the football field. Each year, there would be a small carnival here, to celebrate Christmas. With balloons and buntings and confetti, carousel and Ferris wheel and booths selling little trinkets and toys, sandwiches and soft drinks and pastel-shaded stationery, carts dispensing popcorn and dirty ice cream and cotton candy. And Pilita Corrales singing Ang pasko ay sumapit… tayo ay mangagsiawit…

We would sit on the grass and wait for the little procession, which was a re-enactment of the search for an inn on that first Christmas Eve… the Virgin Mary and Joseph, weaving across the campus, preceded by the ROTC band and the Honor Guard in their splendid red and black uniforms, and followed by a long line of tassel-tailed paper lanterns, ruby-red and emerald green, and blue shot with gold… stopping at each building to murmur a prayer before the belen fashioned by the students of each college…

The Christmas that I was seventeen, the Christmas Fair’s theme was International Brotherhood. Our college’s booth was a miniature, slightly crooked replica of the Eiffel Tower, and our costumes reflected what we thought Left Bank bohemian poets and artists wore — black, long-sleeved, turtle-necked shirts, black tights, and berets. And all the time that I was working beside Linda and Rita, only one line kept going round and round in my brain: Will he come? Will he come? For, that year, I thought I had met him — the fair young god of all my dreams.

But, as the night grew deeper, and the breeze grew cooler, I realized, with a sinking feeling, that he wasn’t coming. It wasn’t meant to be. Rita shook her head. Nonsense, she said, you made a wish on our old wishing well in the Pharmacy Garden. You must believe, or it won’t come true. And Linda said, Yes, Christmas is a time for magic. Believe!

And suddenly, there he was. And I felt, again, oddly surprised that he was real, that I had not imagined him. He said something having had to go home to shower and change because he had been in his medical uniform all day, or did he say that he was going home to shower and change because he had been in his medical uniform all day? I couldn’t quite catch the words, because there was a buzzing in my ears. He was wearing a moss-green T-shirt, its collar open at the throat, and slacks… maybe light grey, maybe tan? I no longer recall… But I remember it was the first time I had seen him out of his hospital whites.

He went with Rita and Linda and me to get cokes and popcorn and pink cotton candy. And then to a tent where a girl greeted us with a tambourine. She wore wild gypsy colors, and gleaming golden hoops in her ears, and her long lashes swept her cheeks as she bent to peer into her crystal ball. She spoke in sharp whispers about trips to faraway places with strange-sounding names, and pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and tall, handsome men who would sweep us off our feet and bring us untold happiness. And Rita laughed and said, Why not? the first of our wishes has already been granted, hasn’t it? The magic works! What magic? he asked. Rita told him about our old wishing well. And I looked away, wishing she hadn’t, afraid that the spell would be broken, that it needed to be kept a secret…

Later, we all sat on the grass, beside what looked like a gingerbread house, but was pretending to be a German tavern, and a bahay kubo, with a red and green star swinging from its window… to watch the little parade of lanterns go by. And Linda sang along with the scratchy record playing over the sound system, in her sweet, slightly husky voice, Silver bells… silver bells… it’s Christmas time in the city…under a sky studded with silvery stars.

He turned to me and said, in a low voice, Open your hand. I held out my right hand, its palm up, and he dropped something into it. What is it? I asked. A coin, he said. I found it here, on the grass. Maybe it’s a lucky penny. For your wishing well. Toss it in and make a wish for me too, he said, smiling at me.

And I thought: This is my window/ just now did I so softly wake/ I could believe everything round about was still as I/ transparent as a crystal’s depth, darkened, silent/ I thought I could hold even the stars in me too, so big my heart seemed to be…

But the spell was broken. The magic didn’t last.

Sitting in my car yesterday evening, stuck in España traffic, I wondered, the trace of a shadow clouding my eyes, where did it all go?

This story was first published in the University of Santo Tomas (UST) literary journal Tomás, Vol. 2, Issue 6, 2nd Semester 2014-2015. The author is professor emeritus of the University of the Philippines and incumbent director of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies. In 2020, she received the Southeast Asia WRITE Award from the Kingdom of Thailand.