Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

She turned to me and smiled patronizingly. “I read history, too, Pepe.”

“Now you are castrating me,” I said.

She gave my leg a playful blow then she slowed down. We were now traveling along the line of interisland ships and to our left was a monotonous huddle of shacks similar to what we had left. The smell of copra, of refuse, hung heavy in the air. We approached Del Pan, and I wanted to point out to her the squatter huts on the left side of the bridge, their flimsy roofs held in place by rocks, but I asked instead, “Sociology, too?”

She nodded, giving my leg another playful blow. Then we crossed the bridge; but for the crumbling Intramuros walls and more squatters in the moat of Fort Santiago, we were out in the open, in another country — Rizal Park, Roxas Boulevard, the well-trimmed green, the tall whitewashed buildings.

She turned left, heading to one of the tallest buildings on the boulevard with the initials VDC on the roof, glittering at night in blue neon. Behind it was a huge shaded parking lot, and after she parked, we went to the elevator in the front. The girl who operated it greeted her. “To the restaurant, Miss de Jesus?”

“Oh, Cora,” Betsy frowned. “When will you ever call me Betsy?”

We shot up to the top floor and a doorman in a black jacket over a white frilly shirt and black bow tie opened the door, bowing. “Good morning, Miss de Jesus.”

It was the most luxurious place I had ever been to. The chairs were hand-carved and upholstered in deep blue. The tables had lace tablecloths and silver vases with red roses. The carpet, in paler blue, was wall to wall, and on the walls, which had fleur-de-lis designs, were Philippine paintings — part of the collection of Don Manuel Villa, which, Betsy later told me, had been started and influenced by my father. Crystal chandeliers dropped from an indigo ceiling, and though it was warm outside, I was almost freezing. Three waiters in black jackets with white gloves came forward, but Betsy ignored them; she guided me, instead, to a corner where the drapes of velvet blue were raised by blue braids, and we had an unimpeded view of the bay and the city. The building was not more than ten years old, one of the newest and the tallest, and from twenty stories up, Manila looked neat and clean. Even Tondo, beyond the dark swath of the Pasig, its houses roofed with dull red, seemed antiseptic.

This was the headquarters of the Villa Development Corporation, the giant conglomerate built by Don Manuel Villa, my father’s father-in-law. He had worked here, and if he were alive, he would be here now, handing crumbs to his poor relatives. This was a haven for mestizos — they were given preference because of the lightness of their skins, their capacity for speaking Spanish. Indeed, as Professor Hortenso had said all too often, the higher up you go, the more sugary and whiter it becomes. Now I was here in the bastion of the oligarchy to which my father had attached himself. I wondered how he felt being with them, if he even remembered that he had come from an anonymous corner called Cabugawan.

I knew a little of Betsy by then, enough to realize that she did not bring me here to impress me. The waiter asked what we wanted, and though I had not had breakfast yet, I was not hungry anymore. But she was insistent.

“All right then,” I said. “A cup of coffee and pan de sal. ”

The waiter looked at Betsy and smiled.

“Pepe,” she spoke almost in a whisper. “This is a French-style restaurant … they even have a French chef from Marseilles. There is no pan de sal. ”

My ears burned.

“… but you can have croissants.”

The coffee came, black, steaming, and thick. Betsy started, “I quarreled with Papa and Mama last night, really, even before all the guests had gone. Papa was angry — oh, not at you, Pepe, please believe that — at me.”

Perhaps she thought I knew her father was general manager of the corporation. “No, you don’t have to worry about him coming up here and seeing us. He left early this morning for Zurich and New York.” She stared at her coffee. “Pepe …” almost in a whisper, “I know how you feel, so please do not make it difficult for me. Perhaps one day, when you become a father, you will not be different from Papa. He does not know that I am a member of the Brotherhood, that I go out with people—”

“Like me,” I added quickly.

She smiled sadly then went on, as if she was talking to herself. “But last night, we also talked about … about your uncle. Carmen Villa, his wife, was Mama’s best friend, you know, and they shared many things, girl talk, that sort of thing.” She turned to me again, her eyes bright with expectation. “You must have read The Ilustrados ,” she said.

I shook my head.

“You should — shame on you! Aren’t you proud it was a relative who wrote it? How unfortunate that he is not around. I would have wanted to write a paper on his book, the ideas there. He was very right, you know, about the Filipino elite collaborating with all who are in power or those who are about to be. The last chapter — the nature of the elite — how perceptive he was, how he exposed what had been destroying us from the very beginning.”

“You are making a speech,” I said, unimpressed. “You said I should be wary of speeches.”

She shook her head and laughed. Her omelet had come, and the croissants, which I knew were some pastry, turned out to be a kind of pan de sal , brown and soft.

She was undaunted. “What Antonio Samson wrote is very relevant now. Now!” she slapped the table. “If we are going to have change, there must be some purity to it. It means leadership from below, the lower classes, nothing else. Only in that way will it not be destroyed. The elite will subvert it. That is why, for all his protestations, I mistrust Juan Puneta. His grandfather was one of them.”

I did not speak; the remark that was in my mind was obviously anticipated by her.

“I am burgis , an outsider, you know that,” she said. “But my feelings are not with my crowd, Pepe. Believe me! The poor do not have a monopoly on that sense of outrage.”

“Profound statement of the day,” I said blithely and, looking at the antique clock at a corner, added: “Made at exactly eight forty-eight A.M.”

She breathed deeply and sighed: “Now you really have devastated me.”

I reached across the table and almost spilled the goblet of water, held her hand, and pressed it. She pressed my hand, too, then slowly withdrew it. The waiters were looking at us — the only people in this ritzy restaurant this early.

“How can I tell Puneta he is full of shit?” she said angrily. “I have no authority. He has a Ph.D. from Cambridge. He makes all those speeches. And he contributes generously to the Brotherhood.”

“We will use him,” I said.

“No, he has power, money, brains. He will use us,” she said simply. “Already, he is very close to Malacañang. He wants to be ambassador to France because he speaks French and because he is also good-looking — that is what the First Lady likes. He will get the job. And he will throw lavish parties, which he likes to do, and he will spend plenty of money that his minions earn over here.”

I have read how our ambassadors have so little to spend. “At least he is Filipino,” I said, “and he will be spending his money for us.”

She looked at me incredulously. “Oh, Pepe! You have so much to learn. Puneta is Filipino only because he holds a Philippine passport. He is Spanish, his loyalty is to Spain, where he salts his dollars. Do you know that he has a housing-development in Mallorca? And his wife is Spanish?”

I shook my head. This was something Professor Hortenso had not told me.