"All right, sir. I told you that you may do whatever you think best." Then the doctor injected medicine into Kileto's body. Kileto, because of the results of this injection, was displeased with the doctor, for he could hardly walk home.
One day as Kileto's wife was looking in a mirror, she found the image of her large papillae, which were like her husband's. Of course, she was very much frightened, lest she also had "Sampaga." She took her small boy of ten years to the window and looking at his tongue, found out that he also had papillae. "These sampagas," she said, "must be common." So she examined the tongues of everybody who came near her. "Ah!" she exclaimed, "these things must be natural. Oh, God, you save my husband! But I will fool my husband. I will tell him I have the same disease that he has."
When her husband came, she immediately led him to the window and showed her papillae. "You see," she said, "I have the same disease as you have. How now? Then we shall die together." To frighten her husband more, she said, "Open your mouth, and let me see how your 'sampagas' are getting along." Then Kileto opened his mouth. His wife examined then, and said to him, "Your sampagas are increasing." At this statement Kileto jumped with great horror, and said, "Oh, yes, my end is coming." "Now I see," replied the wife, "how like a small boy you are. I have been told by a student that with these 'red bodies' we taste our food. So you need not be afraid. Just look at the tongues of everybody, and you will see that they have the 'papillae,' as the student calls them."
Kileto was convinced, and regretted the great error he had committed. He had spent on medicine all his and his wife's earnings for two years.
One day Kileto, when left alone in the house, said to himself, "I know now the reason why the doctor said that I would die when my 'sampagas' burst. Of course, these are not 'sampagas'; and how could they burst? These things grow with the man. I am uncertain, however, whether the doctor had a private purpose in not telling me at once that the things I have on my tongue are 'papillae,' or whether he had not acquired enough knowledge in his medical studies to be able to distinguish the papillae from the disease called 'sampaga.'
"But in spite of all the trouble he gave me—injecting medicine into my limbs, which made me lame for three days, wringing, as it were, all my money from my hands—I am grateful to him. Why? Because I was made religious, going to church once every two days. I abstained from chewing betel-nut, and smoking cigarettes, and now I care no more for them."
Whenever the members of the family are in good humor, they talk of this story and laugh until they are out of breath.
—Lorenzo Licup.
A FILIPINO FABLEAU[6]
The Lame Man and the Deaf Family
One cloudy afternoon while I was wandering along the road between Paco and Pandacan, I met a lame man limping down the way. The man seemed very tired, and he was carrying on his head a pot which I thought contained water. The fellow was a mestizo and was dressed in a white suit. Seeing me, he said, "Will you please show me a house where I can ask for a drink of water?" I could not answer him at once, because I nearly laughed in his face when I saw it was only his long bigote that made his split upper-lip unnoticed at a distance. Wishing to have some fun out of him I showed him the house that stood in an orchard on one side of the road.