Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“You are moving up in the world,” Father Jess said.

It was my first visit to the Park, and I tried to make myself presentable. I had thought of cutting my hair slightly shorter — it went down past my nape — but I liked it that way; trimming it would be too much of a sacrifice for Betsy. I decided just to shampoo it instead. I now had a barong that I had worn only twice and a new pair of dark, double-knit pants. My shoes were scuffed, but I inked them black then shined them.

At the kumbento door Tia Nena approved and Roger said I did not look like a Barrio boy anymore. I took the bus to Makati and then a taxi to the Park.

We drove through an acacia-shaded street and, at its end, the Park gate, where a blue uniformed guard stopped us. He looked suspiciously at me, then asked where I was going. I gave him the number on Tamarind Road. He noted down the taxi plate number, asked for the driver’s license, then told us to proceed. I cursed him under my breath.

Now I was here, in the gilded precinct of the oligarchy. Now it was all before me, around me — the ivy-covered walls — and through the grilled fences and opened gates, the truculent magnificence of wealth. These are the monuments to untrammeled greed, I knew, but they were lovely to look at, they were impressive in their pretension.

In one of our meetings we had talked about the Park — how convenient it was as a symbol of the oligarchy, how easily it could be taken over. Someone said it should be razed to the ground, but I had thought that was a stupid idea, all this wealth, all this comfort turning to ashes when we could, in some future time, have all of it, and these beautiful homes would then be vacation houses, the dachas of the proletariat. A demonstration against the Park was in the air; it certainly was in my mind. Such a possibility must have frightened its denizens, for, in the first big demonstration that year, they were so scared that they left their homes to be guarded by their hirelings while they trooped to the Makati hotels and waited for the demonstrations to ebb.

They need not have feared, for there was no demonstration against the Park. The demonstrations were in the crowded and poor districts of the city, in Quiapo, in Santa Cruz — places where the rich would not be. In retrospect, we missed an opportunity to confront our enemy. Were we afraid? We knew that, behind those high walls, there were guns against which we could not pit anything except our flesh and our numbers. Or if we were not scared, was it because our leaders were not really with the masses whom they said they championed? At heart, were they with our exploiters? It was so easy to demonstrate against the Americans — they were omnipresent for all to see, and they did not really fight back.

I could not explain why this was so, but I had seen it, what happened in Diliman, at the state university campus, when our cadres finally blockaded it and started manning the checkpoints. They did not stop the air-conditioned cars or demand that the passengers alight to be searched. No, they stopped the buses and the jeepneys instead, the public and dilapidated vehicles that carried the masses.

All through that tumultuous year, it was also the poor shopkeepers in Quiapo, Malate, and Ermita whose windows were stoned and whose stores were looted — not the big department stores in Makati, not the exclusive boutiques of the culture vultures of Pobres Park. I knew even then that there was something basically wrong with our demonstrations, and I would have been critical, but by then, to contest what we were doing was to confront the leadership. I was not prepared to do that, nor was I ready to be labeled a deviationist.

I got off two blocks from Betsy’s house, which was easy to find. It had a low adobe wall and its wide yard was planted to palm and dwarf mango trees. A guard let me in.

The stone driveway was lined with well-trimmed santan hedges that were in bloom, and the garage at the far end, which was open, contained three fat American cars. Betsy’s Volks was parked in the driveway.

It was one of those pleasant, balmy late afternoons, the sinking sun still shiny on the beige marble walls of the house, on the narra paneling and the blue-tile roof. The invitation was for five o’clock. I was thirty minutes late. I walked across the wide, red-tiled porch, and before the massive, ornately carved wooden door I was awkward and self-conscious. I pressed the doorbell.

It was Betsy in jeans as usual. “Happy birthday,” I said, but she did not shake my hand; instead, she stepped back, appraised me, then exclaimed, “Pepe, you are handsome!”

My ears burned, and before I could remonstrate she grasped my hand and drew me into the wide cavern that was the de Jesus living room, refreshingly cool in the April heat. The house had central air-conditioning.

It was suppose to be a birthday party, but there was no one there except a maid in white who peeped in from an open door. To my questioning look Betsy was all smiles; she guided me to an overstuffed sofa and we sat down. “My relatives will not come till after six-thirty or so. I thought that if you came early we, you know, we could talk.”

“About what?”

“About imperialism,” she said with a laugh.

I grunted.

She asked if I was hungry and I lied. She went to the kitchen and a maid in a white starched uniform came out immediately with two glasses of orange juice. I downed mine in a gulp.

She wanted to show me the garden, so we walked out into the last vestiges of day. The sun glinted on the palms, on the dwarf mangoes that bore fruit, bunches of luscious green that sagged to the ground. A wide, well-groomed garden with potted roses in corners. Across a small rock formation, hidden from view by jade vine pergolas and, from the street, by a screen of yellow-green Chinese bamboo, was the swimming pool. There had to be a gardener employed full-time to take care of such a spread.

“I did not like the way we parted in Tagaytay,” Betsy said.

“Me neither.”

“Why did you have to be mean?” She sounded disconsolate. “I did not do you any harm.”

She was right, and it was gracious of her to have invited me, to have told no one that I was a pusher, and I did not even bring her anything — what could I give to someone who has everything?

“Sorry,” I said. “I hope we can start a new chapter.”

“Would you like to come to Negros?”

“I cannot afford it,” I said. “Besides, what would I do there? I have to work in church … especially now that Toto is gone.”

I had not told her about Toto, but now I did, and when I was through, she bit her lip and was silent. “Don’t you believe me?” I asked. “It was in the papers. His name.”

“Oh, Pepe,” she held my hand tightly. “I believe you! I believe you! I was there!”

I wanted to embrace her then. “You fool!” I cried. “You could have been shot, too!”

She looked at me, wordless, and we could have talked more, but cars had begun to fill the driveway, and we hastened back to the house. It was now dark and the huge chandelier in the living room bloomed. I was left alone as Betsy welcomed them — mostly relatives and, just as she told me, about a dozen of her classmates, some with their boyfriends. She singled out a girl, good-looking but a little chubby, and brought her over to where I stood apart from them all, and said, “Belinda, this is Pepe; you have something in common — both of you are addicts.”

She smiled, showing upper teeth in braces, and taking me by the arm, she guided me to a corner dominated by a huge Chinese vase with blue dragons. No one could hear us. “How long have you been at it?” she asked. “Betsy told me her boyfriend was on drugs.”

I grinned and did not know what to say.