Summary

Bitoy Camacho introduces the audience to Intramuros, a walled city within Manila, which he remembers fondly from his boyhood as "splendid" and "mighty" but is now "dying" (294) as the Philippines approaches the second World War. Bitoy comes across Don Lorenzo Marasigan's house, which now "dismally shows its age" (295) and Bitoy recalls Don Lorenzo as a once famous and profitable painter. Inside his house is a large portrait entitled "A Portrait of the Artist as a Filipino" (296). Bitoy explains how he visited the Marasigan family before the war broke out, greeted first by Candida Maragisan, one of Lorenzo's spinster daughters who are in their mid-forties, who have not seen Bitoy in ten years. The other daughter, Paula, joins them and they engage in a childish game of make believe where they are each their younger selves...