Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Charity — then it struck me! She attended to me because she pitied me, and I could not accept that from anyone, not from Professor Hortenso, not even from Father Jess. For the first time at this old age of twenty-four, I found out that I did not want it, would never want it, that I was José Samson, strong enough to be alone, to fling damnation at everyone. I may have come from world’s end — Cabugawan — immersed myself in stench, stolen, and lied, but I am me, honest with myself. That is all I had to be; when I saw her again, I would tell her. Suddenly I felt a great desire to go home.

My desire was prophetic. As I was serving Father Jess’s lunch, Roger came. “There is a woman looking for you, Pepe,” he said. “She was all over the Barrio, looking for the church — and you. She says she is your aunt.”

Father Jess told me to prepare another plate and have her come in and lunch with us. I expected Tia Betty, maybe with a letter or an important message from home, but it was Auntie Bettina, and when she saw me, she broke down immediately.

“Pepe, your mother is dead.”

It was as if someone had struck me; my stomach churned and became a bag of cold air, my feet became pillars of lead, and my breath was being choked out of me. “No, Auntie, no!” was all I could mumble. I should cry, but no tears sprang to my eyes, only this dazed feeling, this heaviness upon my chest. I am a worthless son, an ingrate — the most terrible loss — I was not my mother’s son but the worthless bastard that I am, because I could not cry.

Tia Bettina did not eat. “I am sorry, Father,” she said. “I have to go back. There is no one at home but the neighbors and distant relatives.”

Father Jess — I will always be indebted to him — stood up without taking his dessert. “Eat quickly, Pepe,” he said. “I will go to your town with you.”

I was going home after two years, and in those two years, I had perhaps written only ten times, telling her what I was doing, that I already earned a little money, that she should no longer save for me. I even sent her a copy of the essay that had won me a job on the school paper. I never told her of the demonstrations that I had participated in, of Toto being killed; I never told her that I now knew who my father was.

The bus was not crowded, for it was a local run and not the express to Dagupan. Father Jess and Auntie Bettina sat together in front; I had the seat behind them to myself, listening, Father Jess telling her about the Barrio, what I did, that I had become a scholar. Her eyes became swollen from crying, but she turned to me, smiling; yes, I had not disappointed her after all, and Mother, too, if only I had told her.

“He speaks a little Spanish now,” Father Jess was saying. “He is a student leader … and he attends parties in Pobres Park. Didn’t you know all this?”

Auntie Bettina turned to me again. “You never wrote to us about these,” she said. “If your mother knew, she would have been happier.”

I was immersed in my own grief, going over the things I should have written to Mother, what I would have bought for her — the electric sewing machine, a gas stove such as the one Tia Nena used, and yes, a bed with a mattress, not the old rattan bed that hurt her back. A bed with a mattress.

Bits of their talk came to me. Auntie Bettina was telling Father Jess that there were no more Samsons left in Cabugawan, just she. There were relatives — second cousins, third cousins, tenants — in the other barrios. All had gone — to Mindanao, to Palawan, and, of course, to Manila.

Father Jess was saying, “You are good-looking, why have you not married?” and she said, “No man ever proposed …” and Father Jess teased her, “No man is perfect, Miss Samson. If he does not have athlete’s foot, he has dandruff; if not dandruff, it’s bad breath. And sometimes, it is all three!”

Tia Bettina laughed, that delightful, silver laughter, then they were quiet again.

Father Jess’s huge head was in the way and I could not see the road ahead. But it did not matter — the monotonous green of the rainy season, the small towns with their plazas and their main streets plastered with soft-drink signs, the pompous churches of the Iglesia ni Kristo, the battered schoolhouses. Then, in the dimming afternoon, the plains of Rosales spread to our right, and beyond, the mountain of Balungao, greenish blue in the distance. Again, memory: the edible snails, the string of green papayas I brought back and Mother reproaching me for being away all day without her knowing. I had lain under the trees in the foothills, listening to the wind in the grass, the murmur of the water over the shallows, to my heart.

I tapped Father Jess’s shoulder and pointed to the town far beyond the line of trees on the horizon, its yellow water tank thrust like a knob of gold. “Cabugawan there, Father,” I said. “And that mountain — I used to go there.”

We stopped briefly at the Carmen junction but did not get off; the bus was headed for San Nicolas, all the way to the Caraballo foothills, and it would pass Rosales. Vendors crowded around the bus, thrusting bundles of coconut candy, rice cakes, and bunches of eggplants to us. Rosales was five kilometers away.

The town had not changed — the smallness of it, the rundown market, the plaza with its solitary kiosk and tangle of weeds, and the statue of a farmer with a plow before the unpainted municipio that people said was burned by Grandfather long ago. We got off at the bus station and walked.

“Our house is very small, Father,” Auntie Bettina was saying. “And no real bed.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Father Jess said.

It was not a long walk; we came to the wooden bridge that spanned the creek. The waters were muddy brown and sections of the bank had caved in. We walked on and the houses now were infrequent, then we turned to a small side road, really a lane, flanked by cogon-roofed houses, their yards planted to fruit trees. I knew everyone here.

Our house came into view, the split bamboo fence falling apart, the buri palm sidings now frayed and weathered, the cogon roofing disheveled where the last typhoon had messed it. We should have had the whole house roofed with tin, but there was not enough money, so only the kitchen roof was galvanized iron. The front gate was planted to hibiscus, the narrow lane graveled, flanked with purplish hedges of San Francisco. People were in the house, mostly neighbors and second cousins whom I recognized. They met us smiling wanly, and I shook their hands. Distant aunts kissed me. They smelled of betel nut and sun and I kissed their brown, gnarled hands, then went up into the house.

Mother was in the middle of the small living room, and I went to her at once, bent over her, and kissed her cold cheek. Her face was careworn and lined; a strand of hair lay on her forehead and I brushed it back into place. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep, the lips pressed together but not grimly; her hands were folded, clasping a small wooden cross — those hands that worked the sewing machine — and though I wanted to cry there was only this tightness upon my chest.

The women were cooking rice in earthen pots in the yard. One went to Auntie Bettina and told her there was not enough coffee and pan de sal for the night. She gestured to me, and we went back to town. We did not have time to talk before; all I knew was that Mother had had a heart attack, that she was sewing when it happened, and she fell from her stool.

There were many things I never knew and now Auntie told me — how Mother had suffered for years, how she had not gone to the doctor or bought medicine because there was no money, and the little there was she saved.

This I knew — Auntie Bettina did not have to say it. A month previous, Mother had an attack and for a week her left arm was paralyzed. Auntie Bettina wanted to write, but Mother had said, “No, don’t give him worries.”