Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

He was in his early thirties, and he seemed sympathetic, for all the time he was mumbling, “What a waste, what a waste.” I told him how it started — we were out front; all of a sudden, the shooting, the confusion, the tear gas, the grenades.

But how is Toto? I couldn’t go in, but he could; Toto had short cropped hair, white shirt, dark pants, and yes, white basketball shoes. “Please go back and tell me he is not dead; he is my best friend, my best friend.”

It did not take him even five minutes. He asked me to go with him. A policeman let me through into a shabby room lighted by a single bulb. They lay on the tile floor, bathed by the yellow light, their faces, if not bloodied, ashen in death. In a corner, a girl was crumpled on the floor, crying, while a boy stood beside her, tears streaming down his cheeks. Toto was at the far corner, the blood on his shirt already dry. He did not have his glasses and, even in death, there was an ineffable quality of determination on his face, the eyes closed, the mouth slightly open. The intern who came in after me started filling out a form and at the same time asking questions. “Augusto Salcedo. Nineteen. I do not know his parents — he is an orphan. We live together. We will claim him early in the morning.”

I knelt beside him and held his hand. It was already cold.

Listen, Toto, my brother, if I were an Ilocano woman, I would now fill this loathsome room with my wailing.

I will walk home tonight alone, and our room will be quiet and wide. You are dead, but memory lives. I will hear your voice, feel your presence. I will remember. How can I forget? Who will feed me now in the afternoons? No more free siopao , free mami. Who will push me on to new heights where I can see a better view?

Toto, my brother, I will miss you.

Here you are, the life snuffed out of you.

Here I am, with muscles that still move, and eyes that can still see. If it was in my power to command our fate, it should be I who is lying here, my brother, for you have done no wrong. You have always given a part of yourself away, to me, to others. Who then are the spirits you have displeased? There was a purpose to your life while there was none to mine. Is it true then that God is unkind to let the weeds grow? Is it true then that, at birth, we are already condemned? I refuse to believe this because I know, in the end, it is the good who will triumph. You were going to be a saver of lives, you were going to change the ugliness that we know. I was not going to help you. But now, what will I do so that I will at least be able to face my own conscience? You were brave, and I was a coward; if I had just a little more of your courage, a little more of your dream, you would not be here. But this is not so, and I am alive, instead. I will live for you then, Toto, my brother.

A policeman was waiting for me at the door; he saw the blood on my sleeve and said, “Ha, they missed you,” then he asked me the same questions and I repeated the answers, but in between, I asked, not in anger but in sorrow, “Why did you shoot him? He did not even have a stone … he was unarmed.”

He became angry. “Do you know,” he asked, “that three policemen are dead? That many were wounded?”

“I do not know, but you are armed … and Toto was not.”

“How do you explain those broken shop windows?” He had raised his voice and was waving his truncheon at me. “What have you against those small shopkeepers? Do you know how much damage you have caused?”

“I did not smash any window,” I said.

“I did not fire at you,” he said. “My hands are clean.”

It is past midnight, and I am back at the kumbento —sick, tired, impotently angry. I hate myself; if I had not been afraid, I would have been able to rush to Toto, draw him to safety, and hurry him to the hospital even if he was already hit. But I was a coward, and so my best friend was DOA, dead on arrival. A few minutes more, God, just a few courageous minutes and he could have lived. I could have saved him with my blood. Not a drop of it had been spilled, and Toto was dead.

I woke up Father Jess; he took the news calmly, then told me to leave in a voice that cracked; he would break down, and he did not want me to see him thus.

Tia Nena, her eyes red from weeping, woke me up from a short, fitful sleep; there was hot coffee in the kitchen. Father Jess was getting ready upstairs. It was not yet three by the alarm clock on the shelf. I had slept for only an hour at the most. The Barrio was very quiet. On the way to Bangkusay, where we would get a ride — if there were any to be had at this hour — I told Father Jess what had happened.

“He would be alive, Father,” I said, “if I had gone to him.”

“It is not your fault, Pepe,” he said softly, putting an arm on my shoulder.

“He called out my name, I heard him, but I couldn’t go. I was paralyzed with fear. And I–I’m much, much older than he. He was my younger brother.”

“It was not your fault, Pepe,” he repeated. “You did not touch the trigger.”

After a while we reached Bangkusay. We waited silently for a few minutes, but there was no jeepney or taxi, so Father Jess said we should walk on to Juan Luna. There was more traffic there.

As we walked, I could not help but cry out my shame.

“I am a coward,” I repeated. “When we were at Mendiola, facing tear gas and bullets, I was in the ditch, scared. I was thinking of myself. God, there are so many days ahead of me still and I have not even slept on a bed with a mattress.”

“Is this what you dream of? Is this all you can think of? It is not much of a dream, you know.” There was both pity and sarcasm in his voice.

“Because you have never been poor, Father,” I said. “Sometimes, when I see what is in the kitchen, I envy you.”

Father Jess was silent; his being in Tondo was some sacrifice, but even in the harshest of times, as when he was working in Negros among the sugar workers, or among the dockworkers in Tondo, he always had recourse, he could always go back to the comfort of the kumbento or to his folks in Negros, who, I am sure, would take him back.

“Yes,” Father Jess said. “It is easy for me to speak like this. I keep forgetting that I can always get away. Do not begrudge me that.”

“No, Father. I am just saying what I think.”

“Still, there must be some dream, some ambition particularly now. All of us have dreams, you know. We may never make them real, but they are there, prodding us on. Toto wanted very much to be a doctor.”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe, my dream is to finish college and get a job. And maybe, when I have made enough, I will go back to that other Barrio, bring one whole lechon , aa fistful of money, and the best electric sewing machine for my mother … yes, that is what I would like to do.”

But even that was now far from reality. That morning I withdrew all my money from the bank and bought medicine and blood for our wounded, for though many stood in line to donate blood, it was not ready. In hindsight, which is the lowest form of wisdom, I realized that we had not really provided for such catastrophes as had happened in Mendiola. Our marshals were, for the most part, disorganized when the tear gas attack began. But most of all, we did not have teams to give first aid, fledgling doctors from the medical schools, who should have been organized for this. And in the hospitals, it was pure chaos just simply identifying the wounded and the dead. Only a few of our leaders, like Professor Hortenso, remained with us; the rest, like our nationalist Senator Reyes, the loud-mouthed champions of democratic nationalism and revolution, to where had they all vanished?

We brought Toto back to the Barrio before daybreak; the funeral coach could not get into the alley, so we had to carry him to the church. We set up the catafalque in the center aisle, and by the end of the six o’clock mass everyone in the Barrio knew.