Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

They did not speak.

“Look, even Father Jess who has lived there seven years feels they don’t really accept him. And he is right, and not because religion has become very impersonal. We all know that priests are not poor, that they are not really like us. But I–I have been there only a year and I can raise, like I said, fifty followers at any time. Not only do I live there, but I also fight with them. I give them milk, relief goods — though these are not mine. I have taken them to restaurants, got drunk with them. You don’t need speeches in Tondo.”

“There should really be a way for those from the villages who have gone to the cities and become other than what they were — successes, you know — they should go back to the barrios, to their roots …” Juan Puneta spoke to no one in particular.

I could not let it pass. “Sir, I am no success, but do you mean I should go back to my village in Pangasinan? That is unthinkable! Why should I? Life in Tondo is harsh, but life in Cabugawan is harsher. That is why I am here, this is the reason the farmer would sell his only carabao to send his son to college. If he had a chance, he would not be a farmer.”

This was what Auntie Bettina and Mother had hammered into me, I wanted to tell them, for now, more than at any other time, all that I heard from them came with ringing clarity.

“You are saying then that once we industrialize, once we have a chicken in every pot, there would be no need for revolution, there would be no problem even in organizing people,” Professor Hortenso concluded.

“We will organize so we will have a chicken in every pot,” I said. “But we are incapable of truly uniting. It is not just the ningas cogon , the lightning enthusiasm that dies once the speeches are done with. Look at us. How many youth organizations are there now? It is not the Americans or the oligarchy whom we really hate most; it is those who do not belong to the Brotherhood. We call them clerico-fascists, deviationists, CIA agents. And God, we are fighting for the same cause! It is just that our names are different. How many organizations are there of lawyers, teachers, doctors? Perhaps as many as there are people who want to lead them, people who cannot go beyond their petty personal ambitions, who think they are the only true bearers of light. You find this thinking in the village, so we use the techniques that are useful in the village, but the leaders, Professor, they should be able to go beyond the psychology of our villages.”

Betsy now spoke with passion: “But why do you have to look down on the village? At least, even if the people there are poor, they and the village have a certain integrity.”

I did not let that pass. Briefly, there swooped into my mind the miserable lives that I have known in Tondo, the unending violence, the latent viciousness under the gloss of neighborliness that everyone seemed to exhude.

“Betsy,” I faced her, shaking my head sadly. “Thank you for the kind thought, but that is a lot of bull.” She turned away, and I was immediately sorry I had spoken so harshly.

“Sorry for the language,” I continued contritely. “But I just want you to know there is no honor among the poor. In the Barrio, who are the thieves? Our own neighbors who take the laundry we hang outside our hovels. They steal them to sell to secondhand clothing stores. It is not the cats who get the fish we dry on our roofs; again, it is the neighbors who have nothing to eat. The Barrio is full of cheats, liars, drunks, sadists, perverts — and yes, we steal, we cheat, we lie because we don’t know where the next meal will come from. We grab what we can, from anyone. I ask you not to look at the village, at the poor, with rose-colored glasses. There is nothing romantic about poverty. It is totally, absolutely degrading.”

When the meeting was over Professor Hortenso sought me. “Pepe, that was a revelation! We will have to rely more on you.” He was complimenting me, and I was uneasy, for I did not like speeches even though they were mine, and most of all, I did not relish being a politician.

I did not want to leave with Betsy, but I had made her angry, and I wanted to tell her I was sorry; also, I was not resolute enough in my plan to avoid her. It was dusk. As we eased into the rain-drenched boulevard, she said: “I really should have kept my mouth shut, but then …” she laughed slightly. “If I did, you wouldn’t have opened up. It is all in my notes, Pepe. You said much more than a lecture on political science.”

Were we going again to that fancy restaurant? “No,” she said. “We are going to Angono.”

The rain had stopped, but the acacia trees still dripped and glistened in the fading light. The asphalt was as black as the thoughts that crowded my mind. Juan Puneta had drawn me out, he had made me speak against my wishes.

It was as if Betsy had divined my thoughts. “And I noticed, too, that Puneta was looking at you,” she said, glancing at me.

“Do you like him?” I asked.

She was silent for a time. She shifted gears as we neared the traffic lights at Padre Faura. “I don’t trust him,” she said.

“How can you say that of someone who has helped the Brotherhood generously?” I asked. “We have just eaten his sandwiches.”

She turned to me sullenly. “I suppose this is a personal feeling. He is very slick. There is something in his manner that is not sincere. I can feel it in his voice, in the way he conducts himself — as if he were studying everyone so that he will know how to use them. But my father— We once talked about ethical business practices. I remember Papa saying Puneta’s flour company mixes cassava flour with wheat. Oh, I know that he should not be singled out.… I also hear he has a private army, what with all the guns he has. And that is no secret.”

“He goes around without a bodyguard,” I said, knowing that many wealthy Filipinos did not go to public places alone.

“He does not need protection from us,” Betsy said. “It is us who need protection from him. Did not your father warn us against men like him?”

I did not speak. I wanted to banish Juan Puneta into some unreachable corner of my mind. I wanted only the nearness of this girl in this rain-washed night that now bloomed with neon lights and the last purples of sunset. The clangor of traffic was around us, and it was a long, crooked way to Angono, but nothing mattered anymore. We crossed over Nagtahan, took Santa Mesa to Cubao, then turned right to EDSA. The road to Angono was jammed; it took a full hour to reach the environs of Marikina. We did not go to Angono, however; instead, she turned left onto a private paved road and continued until we reached the golf club to which her family belonged. She asked if I was hungry. I was, so we went to the restaurant and ordered chicken and ham sandwiches, which she asked the waiter to wrap up. Back in her car, we went through a gate with a sentry and up a slope, through ascending paved roads that traversed empty lots given to weeds till we reached a promontory. She stopped. Below us was Manila spread like a vast, splendored carpet; a million lights twinkled, jewels flashing in the soft dark. Overhead a jet whined in its descent.

“It is beautiful,” I said. “You don’t see the dirt.” I held her hand and she let me.

Then I was suddenly apprehensive; I was not armed, and though I knew a little karate it was not enough. “Isn’t it dangerous here?”

She smiled. “No,” she said, “this is patrolled and no car can come up here unless you pass the gate.”

“I am worried just the same,” I said.

“Don’t be,” she said. “I always come here when I am troubled and I want to think. I know this place very well — it belongs to my father.”

I was immediately silent and she noticed it. “I did not mean to brag,” she said quietly.