Three Smiles

I was surprised to see a Ray Bradbury anthology which featured The Smile as the main story (see photo above). It's my experience that usually my favorite stories or songs don't get included in collections often called "The Best of . . ."

I first read The Smile in an anthology of Bradbury short stories, A Medicine for Melancholy. It was 1976. It wasn't the first one of Bradbury's that I've read (The October Country was). I was studying then at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman and one of my subjects that semester was Humanities under Prof. Brenda Fajardo. It was my first and major exposure to the Arts. Adding to the aesthetics was a classmate who sat beside me. She was that year's titleholder (for a national dairy products manufacturer) who made it to the cover of Mod Magazine. The smile lingering on her lipsticked lips every time we met in class was a soothing balm to the homesick teen in me. I also became the envy of our male classmates.

When our topic came to the paintings, Prof. Fajardo showed us lots and lots of slides of the Masters. One of them was Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. This painting reminded me that it figured in one unforgettable moment in our family in Gensan. One day, Mama was offered several posters mounted on plywood by an ambulant vendor. She chose the Mona Lisa and hung it among the family pictures on the wall in our living room. After closing our store for the night, Papa retired to the living room with his Chinese newspaper and magazines and noticed the poster. He went near it and examined it closely; his eyes darting from pictures of his and Mama's parents then back to the poster.

Unable to contain his curiosity any further, he called Mama to the living room. When she ambled next to him, he asked out loud: Emy, is she our relative? This question brought on guffaws from us kids while Mama smiled at Papa with a twinkle in her eyes.

On Saturdays, I would take the bus from UP to Quiapo and from there, walk to Avenida Avenue where bookstores like Goodwill, Alemars and National Bookstore were located adjacent to each other. And so I found a revolving rack of Bradbury books at National Bookstore. Out of the savings I made from the monthly allowance sent to me, I bought A Medicine for Melancholy because I was homesick and because of The Smile.

Back in the dorm with my roommates out on dates or home for the weekend, I made several sandwiches of canned sardines and sandwich spread and settled on my bunk to read The Smile.

The futuristic story (set in 2061) started with a description of a town square and a queue that was formed at 5 in the morning. In that line was a little boy named Tom. The line was filled with adults in shabby clothes. They were there, according to Grigsby, the man ahead of Tom, because

. . . it has to do with hate. Hate for everything in the Past
. . . how did we get in such a state, cities all junk, roads like jigsaws from bombs, and half the cornfields glowing with radio-activity at night? You hate whatever it was that got you all knocked down and ruined. That's human nature. Unthinking, maybe, but human nature anyway.

Part of the past scheduled for Hate was a painting. Curious, Tom said: They say she smiles. And when it came time for them to see the painting, Grigsby urged Tom to spit at it as he did.

The woman in the portrait smiled, serenely, secretly, at Tom, and he looked back at her, his heart beating, a kind of music in his ears.

It was a copy of the Mona Lisa and when the authorities announced that the crowd may begin its destruction, Tom joined in and was able to rip a small portion of the canvas. He watched it being torn to shreds, put in the mouth as if it was some food, its frame smashed to pieces. He ran home crying, holding in his hand the small piece of canvas.

Later in bed, still clutching the cloth, Tom felt the moonlight on him. In the faint light, he slowly opened his hand to look at the painted cloth.

All the world was asleep in the moonlight.
And there on his hand was the smile.

An hour later, as he was drowsy with sleep, he could still see the smile in the darkness, warm and gentle.

The Smile made me more appreciative of the Arts. So when Prof. Fajardo required us to write a paper on the local Arts scene, I decided to research on the komiks industry which brought me to Malabon to interview the legendary Mars Ravelo, creator of Darna and Dyesebel. Halfway through writing the paper, I was asked by my seatmate what I was researching on and so I told her. With her killer smile, she asked me if I could write a paper for her too. I told her I really didn't have the time since I was enrolled in 24 units and had to validate the subjects I took in a local college in Gensan. The smile died on her lips. Something also died in me that day. She never sat beside me again for the rest of the semester.

Having watched the Julia Roberts-starrer Mona Lisa Smile, read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and now reading Angus Trimble's A Brief History of the Smile bring back memories of three smiles to me: My seatmate's beguiling smile, Mama smiling at Papa and The Smile.

Book Burning - Fahrenheit 451

Bookstore owner burns books in protest

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero's Books.

His collection ranges from best sellers, such as Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities," to obscure titles, like a bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910. But when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn't even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.

So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society's diminishing support for the printed word.

"This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today," Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.

The fire blazed for about 50 minutes before the Kansas City Fire Department put it out because Wayne didn't have a permit for burning.

Wayne said next time he will get a permit. He said he envisions monthly bonfires until his supply -- estimated at 20,000 books -- is exhausted.

"After slogging through the tens of thousands of books we've slogged through, and to accumulate that many and to have people turn you away when you take them somewhere, it's just kind of a knee-jerk reaction," he said. "And it's a good excuse for fun."

Wayne said he has seen fewer customers in recent years as people more often get their information from television or the Internet. He pointed to a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982.

Kansas City has seen the number of used bookstores decline in recent years, and there are few independent bookstores left in town, said Will Leathem, a co-owner of Prospero's Books.

"There are segments of this city where you go to an estate sale and find five TVs and three books," Leathem said.

The idea of burning the books horrified Marcia Trayford, who paid $20 Sunday to carry away an armload of tomes on art, education and music.

"I've been trying to adopt as many books as I could," she said.

Dozens of other people took advantage of the book-burning, searching through the books waiting to go into the flames for last-minute bargains.

Mike Bechtel paid $10 for a stack of books, including an antique collection of children's literature, which he said he'd save for his 4-year-old son.

"I think, given the fact it is a protest of people not reading books, it's the best way to do it," Bechtel said. "(Wayne has) made the point that not reading a book is as good as burning it."

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a painful book to read if you're a bibliophile (that's booklover for you). Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper starts to burn. The book's plot recalls the censorship of the 1950s and the book burnings by Nazis in Germany. In recent times, we saw laughable versions of book burning by groups who opposed certain books (like The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter series).

Reading the book scared me as a college student and made me appreciate books and the written word all the more. Not surprisingly, the only fire extinguisher at home can be found in my library. I have spent a fortune on insecticides and pest termination to protect the books from termites, but they just k-e-e-p o-n c-o-m-i-n-g. Being the only one in our subdivision with a functioning library, my home has become the favorite destination of these pesky white-butt ants whose tastebuds go for hardbound books but snub newsprint editions. The terminator told me: Sir, if you were a termite, wouldn't you prefer newly-cooked food over reheated leftovers?

I've had my share of book burning. I've cremated good books half-eaten therefore rendered useless by termites. In the process, I've incinerated millions of termites. I've cried while watching cherished books turn to ashes in the pyre.

When I saw the above news on TV, it gave me goosebumps and raised my hackles. What a waste of books and the knowledge they contain! I cheered up at the sight of the bibliophiles who rescued the books. Those books could have been put to good use in Third World countries such as ours. But I've been told by book donors about the prohibitive cost of transporting books. If only the billionaires and millionaires of the First World could spare some of their loose change to buy up all of those used books and ship them to countries who need them the most.

If only. . .