Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

It was hopeless. What was I doing here with a girl who was beyond my reach? “Betsy,” I finally said, “I am not lying; I did write to you, but thought it better not to mail it.”

“And why not?”

I had to tell her. “I said good-bye to you in that letter. I was determined not to see you again. But I am a weakling, always have been. And this afternoon, when I saw you, God knows how happy I was.”

“I was, too,” she said simply.

Then I told her, but not about Lucy or Lily. “There is another girl.”

She bolted up, turned to me quickly; her eyes were expectant.

“I suppose you may say she was my first love. I grew up with her. She is dark, not fair like you. But you have her eyes—” I looked at her, “Yes, you have the same eyes as Ramona … clear, dark, brooding … but when she smiles, it would seem like daybreak.”

She turned away. “You must love her very much,” she said softly. “Will I ever meet her?”

I laughed. “You will never meet her.”

“Is she … is she dead?”

“No,” I said. “She is very much alive. I can see her now.” I closed my eyes and held her hand tighter. “But I can only love her in my mind. It is impossible. Like you, she is up there, and I, I am down here. Still, it is wonderful to be with you like this. Thank you for taking me along.”

“Why compare me with Ramona?” There was a sharp edge to her voice.

It was then that I told her of Mother’s humming the song “Ramona,” how I imagined Ramona hovering over me, unreachable like her.

She leaned closer. “This place is real,” she said. “The view may look unreal, but we know it is there. I have never brought anyone here or invited anyone before.”

“No one would believe we are here,” I said. “And it is just as well, for this is not really happening, except in my imagination.”

Her breath upon my face was warm and sweet. “But I am real!” she said huskily.

I touched her face and kissed her, her hair, her eyes. Softly.

We would have tarried, but I told her, although it was not true, that Father Jess and I were going to make a house call.

On the way back she was quiet; words could build walls between us so that this would never happen again. She wanted to take me to Bangkusay, but it was late, and I did not want anything happening to her. I got off at Mandaluyong, where I could catch a bus for Divisoria, and she went on to the Park.

It was not really my desire to sit at Ka Lucio’s feet and learn from him the odious truths of the past, but I had brought his name up at the meeting and I would be asked questions about him. I had not been to his house again, although it was just across the alley, since Toto and I visited him. He often smiled when I passed. He would sometimes be out in the churchyard sunning himself or talking with the older men in front of the small sari-sari store of Roger’s father, but he had never gone to church although he did talk sometimes with Father Jess.

This morning I walked over to his house after I was through with my chores. His two nieces were out, and he was in the kitchen, cooking. He appeared paler, but not once during my visit did he cough. “Ah, my young brother,” he said when he turned to the open door and saw me. “Come in and make yourself at home.”

He joined me in the cramped living room and asked if I wanted to watch television, but I barely looked at the set in the kumbento.

“No,” I said quickly. “I came here — I hope you don’t mind my learning from you.”

He appeared pleased; with a wave of his hand, he said, “All that I know I’ll try to impart to you.”

“Some of us,” I said, “have decided that the time for revolution is now.” And if it comes, we would not surrender — this was what we had talked about. Why did he give up? After all those years fighting the Japanese, then the Constabulary? Was he tired, was he disillusioned, and where had his surrender brought him? This shack?

He looked at me, his eyes bright with understanding. He spoke softly, as always, without bitterness. “I must tell you — if this is the only thing that I can tell you — that this is not the time.”

“There would never be another time, and if you tell me now that we should wait, I tell you that we cannot. If the time is not ripe, we will help make it ripe. To believe otherwise is to have no faith.”

“Big words,” Ka Lucio said. His benign smile made me uneasy. “But what are the facts? I thought my time was the right one, too. But where did it get me? And how many years were wasted in remorse that I cannot express? But do not tell me that I had fought in vain, that I did not take one forward step.”

“We will make it three,” I said.

“No, you will be making three steps backward and only two forward. This is not the time. The people are not ready to accept violence. Do you know what they want? Just peace — peace so that we can continue our miserable lives. More than that, the Americans are here. They will interfere. The oligarchy will convince them your revolution is Communist even if it is not. And the rich … they are very strong, they are in power, in government. Where will you get the guns? The money? You will have to get them from the rich, and in the end, they will lead, not you. No, this is not the time.”

“Rizal said that, too,” I said. “Did you ask yourself when you went to the hills if it was time? Did the Huks get money from the rich?”

Ka Lucio bowed, as if in deep thought. “Everything you say, it all sounds familiar … very familiar.”

The pot in the kitchen started to hiss and boil, and he jumped up and took off the lid. He was cooking rice; when it had simmered, he returned to me

“Yes,” he said, “it is all very familiar. And I cannot argue against passion. There is no reasoning against the heart. But remember, Pepe, we fought the Japanese, an alien enemy. You will be fighting your own people, your own brother.”

“He is worse,” I said, “because he is brown like me. The Japanese were foreigners.”

“You are saying all that we said. So we did not fight our brothers — and we got tortured and killed. If you must do it, do not forget: the pain cannot be endured. The pain …” he went on as if in a reverie: “Sometimes I wish I had died long ago in those hills. Of malaria, of hunger, of bullets. It does not matter. I courted death many times. I had seen my comrades die — three of them in my arms. I know when life finally ebbs away and the body grows limp, and the heart throbs no more. Though the eyes remain open, they no longer see. I know …”

He turned away as his voice cracked. He breathed deeply, shuddered, and with his palm, wiped off the tears that smudged his face.

“But I loved life — no matter how bitter, no matter how harsh. I would wake up at night out there in the fields and look at the stars and listen to the sounds in the darkness. Everything would be very quiet. I could hear my heart, the voices of the dead. And when I woke up at dawn, I knew there was some reason for me to go on living, not merely because I loved life, but because I have lived through many dangers and I could, perhaps, impart some of what I have learned. Life is a learning and not much more. It is not loving because there is more hate in this world than love.”

“What have you to teach us then?”

“First, stay alive.”

“And live long enough to be disillusioned? Or despised?”

“Yes. And do not commit the same mistakes we made — and there were many of them.”

“What are they?” I was anxious to know. I was assailed with doubts from the very beginning. I had talked too much, I realized that now, without knowing the books, relying on my own intuition as if that were enough.