Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

There was no equivocation then about my survival; I loved myself dearly, passionately. Ka Lucio had amassed experience to live this long. He would tell me.

He was writing in longhand, on a yellow ruled pad, when I entered — the door of his house open as usual. He had just finished cooking, and the small dingy kitchen was still smoky. He bade me sit; then, putting his hands on his lap, he asked how the revolution was going.

It embarrassed me, for as it was last time, I could not quite make out whether he was making light of us or was in earnest. I decided to ignore the remark. “It won’t start without you, Ka Lucio,” I said.

He laughed then and asked if I wanted a cup of coffee; he had just heated water and the powdered stuff had hardened — if I did not mind it that way. He stood up; how thin he had become, and it was only a few weeks since I last saw him. I wondered if he was getting any medicine or the right kind of food — he never went inside the church, and though he often greeted Father Jess and talked with him about inanities, he never asked for help although I was sure he needed it.

“I hope you are writing your memoirs,” I said.

“No, Pepe. My last conversation with you has set me thinking. I am writing a manual: how to organize the peasantry, how to raise funds, how to fight — you know, a question-and-answer handbook.”

“Ka Lucio,” I said, “that is perhaps the most useful thing we need right now, particularly organizational guides.” I told him how I brought him up in our committee meeting as the wellspring of wisdom. In our youthful audacity, we had not considered how people like him had so much to give. He looked at me gratefully for having remembered.

“You know many of these things because you came from the village,” he said.

“But you tested them all,” I said, “and what I need is confirmation. Do you trust us enough? Would your former men like to help again — their children in particular?”

“Pepe, of course, they will help. Didn’t you know? Once a rebel, always a rebel. It is in the blood. You don’t join the Huks because you want adventure or money — and even if you did join for these reasons, afterward, the fighting, the living together, they change you.”

I understood what he meant; I had joined the Brotherhood for my own reasons, but I was now, it seemed, slowly being drawn into its vortex. Though I wanted to get out, to be uninvolved in the conspiracy that Professor Hortenso had told me about, I had found myself half wanting to become part of it, maybe because the Brotherhood meant my meeting with Betsy, maybe because I was angry at what had happened to Toto.

“How did you manage to escape the Japanese? Were they really all that bad?”

He sat back, a look of shock on his face. “I keep forgetting,” he said, “that the war was three decades ago, that your generation has not known what it is to live under an occupying army. Yes, Pepe, there would have been no successful guerrilla movement, we would not have been able to organize the peasantry if the people did not suffer under the Japanese. They killed many of us, but we got more of them.”

He recounted how they mounted ambushes in the rivers of Pampanga, how the waters turned red. He did not go into details; it was as if he was merely recounting incidents. He melted with the people he said, and yes, he smiled in recollection, there were many times when he wore women’s clothes.

I would have stayed longer, but Tia Nena was looking for me — I had a visitor — so I hurried back to the kumbento. It was Juan Puneta’s driver asking if I would like to have lunch with Dr. Puneta? The car was out in the street, waiting.

“You are really going up — up,” Father Jess said when I asked his permission.

I wanted to ride with the driver up front, but he said I should stay in the rear. It was my first ride in an air-conditioned Continental, and I was awed. I toyed with the electric knob that raised the window and then sat back. On my side was a panel, and it controlled the radio and cassette player. I turned it on and listened to a noisy announcer urging the destruction of the Marcos regime and another march of students to Malacañang. He had a stentorian voice and must have been in love with it, for he rolled his r ’s, and made those pauses that only actors make. “We cannot tolerate any longer a man who looks with disdain at the people, who makes a mockery of democracy, who has sold this country to the Americans …”—clichés, so I switched to another station. The Bee Gees were beautiful—

How can you mend a broken heart …

How can you stop the sun from shining …

We were crossing Del Pan, into the handsome country of tall, antiseptic buildings, the Rizal Park. He slowed down on the boulevard and turned left to a Spanish-looking building.

“Please,” the driver said, “Don Juan is inside — just ask the waiter.”

The doorman hurried to the car and opened the door. In my jeans and T-shirt, I walked into the bastion of the mestizo elite. Puneta was in the restaurant drinking beer with a couple of mestizos in white pants — an affectation, for white pants were not worn anymore, although, as Uncle Bert once said, before the war everyone went to work in white drill suits even in the heat.

Juan Puneta came to me and squeezed my hand, saying gustily: “Well, Pepito, it is wonderful to have you accept my invitation. I have been wanting to have a long talk with you.” He guided me to the table and introduced me to his companions in Spanish, adding that I was one of the brightest student leaders. I understood everything and, for a moment, I was tempted to speak in Spanish, but I held back. They shook my hand, then asked to be excused. Although I was confident of my Spanish with Tia Nena and Father Jess, I had not tried it with someone born to the language. I kept quiet and sat down as he reverted to English, asking me what I wanted to drink.

From books and magazines, I knew a bit of bar exotica, but beer or gin was all I really knew. I had never been to a place like the Casino, so I asked him to do the ordering. “Sangria,” he said. “I could ask for Jerez, but there is nothing like the Sangria that the bartender here makes.”

Though he was in his early forties, Juan Puneta looked more like thirty. He had obviously taken good care of his body for he did not have a paunch and his arms were muscular and wiry. He kept cracking his fingers.

Our sangria came. “ Salud ,” he said, raising his glass to me, his eyes shining. Then I saw it. The eyes, cagey and shifty, gave him away — not his gait, not his mannerisms. There was in his eyes, now that he was grinning, a certain sharpness. I had never objected to homosexuals — there was no reason for me to do so. In Cabugawan, we had one for a neighbor; he lived with young boys from the other barrios and made a living frying bananas, making rice cakes, and selling them. His cakes — particularly his cochinta and his puto —were superior to any other in our town. To to and I had a couple of classmates, too, and they were entitled to their preferences as long as they did not bother me. I like girls, always did, and I did not care to change.

I was amused by Juan Puneta because he looked so masculine, so very macho, and yet Lily had told me otherwise. He did the ordering — fried squid to start with, then bouillabaisse, which he said was excellent, and tripe, then dessert and coffee.

The squid came, deep fried and cut into small pieces, crunchy, almost like chicharrón. Around us was the babble of businessmen, the denizens of Pobres Park, the social elite, and I could pick up snatches of their talk, prices of minerals, saucy gossip, trips to Europe. “You know, Pepito,” Puneta said, getting serious; he had exhausted all the small talk — the weather, the increasing anarchy. “You must really give attention now to organizational work. I listened to you last time, you know. You can really organize in the rural areas. How do you feel about it?”