Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

She drew back, her eyes dark with dread.

“Ka Lucio is dead. Professor Hortenso says those of us who are exposed are in danger,” I said.

She lay on her back again. Her breast rose and fell; she just stared at the ceiling, at the stupid red bulb there that I had forgotten to switch off. I moved closer to her, stroked her flat stomach.

“Please, Pepe,” she finally spoke, “think about it carefully. Only three more weeks, then it is America for me. I don’t want to go. I’d rather be here, no matter what happens.”

I touched her cheek, then raised myself on an elbow and gazed at the lustrous eyes, the full lips, the strand of hair on the smooth forehead.

She held my hand, pressed it to her breast. “What have we done? Where are we going? I am afraid.”

“We must live while we can. We must not waste even a moment.”

“How can you say that?” she asked. “You … in that place. That is not a place for people.”

“You despise me then.”

“No, Pepe, how can you say that? All those people crowded there— I am ashamed. The way we live. One dress — it is what one of them would earn in a month. Or even three months. That is why I wear jeans most of the time. Not because it is fashionable, but because I am ashamed.”

“And I wear them to hide my poverty,” I said.

I started laughing; it struck me for the first time — its triteness, its being so bakya. She turned to me and asked: “Is poverty funny?”

“No, sweetheart,” I said, tweaking her nose. “Us — we are funny. When I was a boy, I used to see those silly Tagalog pictures. Rich boy, poor girl. Once, she was a provinsiana. At another time, a bus conductor. It was wonderful entertainment. Now, it is rich girl, poor boy. Can you imagine a sillier situation? It is the kind of story movies and all those radio serials that go on forever are made of. As the poor boy and the rich girl are about to marry, something happens and they break up. Wait for the next installment tomorrow, next week, next month.”

“It is our life.”

“It only hurts, sweetheart, when I laugh,” I told her glibly.

“Stop being clever. Can you not see? I want you to be the best scholar in your university, the best leader in the Brotherhood, the best essayist … better than your father.”

“Don’t bring him into this,” I said sharply. “That is what Auntie Bettina and Mother have pounded into me: be like him. I am not going to live in his shadow. I don’t want to read what he has written any longer, to remember him.”

“Pepe, he is your father!”

“Hell! If he committed suicide that is where he is now anyway.”

“He did — because he had integrity.”

“You cannot say that, you never met him.”

“Reading his book, I feel I know him.”

“Maybe it is him you love.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You know it is you, and it will always be you. And you can be the best. But even if you are the lousiest, the meanest, the ugliest …”

“You wouldn’t have gone out with me.”

“I want you alive, I want you breathing, moving. I don’t want you disappearing, or being killed in a demonstration — like Toto.”

“We have to take risks. That is what we are in the Brotherhood for. You know that. We have to go beyond the demonstrations.”

Slowly she put her arms around me. “I want to live, Pepe, not for myself, but for you.”

I held her close, felt the thumping of her heart, the silky warmth of her legs entwined with mine.

After a long, long while she sat up, then stood before me, all the five feet two of her gleaming and tawny, regal grace, and for an instant, it seemed as if she was burdened with all the sadness in the world. She gathered her clothes on the sofa, slipped into her jeans, her faded, formless blouse.

I had not stirred from the bed. Her back turned to me, she said, “We have been leading up to this. I could see it coming.” She wheeled and her face was in anguish. “But why do it? What difference would it make?”

I rose and picked up my clothes. “I was just thinking. There is a limit to words, you know that. And we cannot depend on words anymore. I did not realize how fast time had gone.”

“Especially for me,” she said ruefully. “Maybe because I think of nothing now but being with you.” She found her shoes, sat before the dresser, and started putting on a little lipstick. She smoothed her hair with the ivory brush she always carried. In another moment, we would part.

“If you go, how will I know where you are?”

“You won’t. I will see you, but it will be far between. They can trace me to you … and I don’t want anything to happen to you. I will miss you … if I go.”

“Oh, Pepe!” her voice broke and she rushed to me, embraced me, and sobs shook her. She would not let me tilt her face, would not let me see her face washed with tears. I hugged her, saying, “My Betsy,” and got my cheeks wet, too, with her crying. She cried for a long time and, when it was over and I drew away, her eyes were swollen.

“See what you have done,” I said. “Now you really need makeup.”

She smiled and kissed me. “What will become of you?”

“I will die,” I said, making light of everything, for I did not want our evening to be gloomier than it already was. “And there will be no grieving widow, nothing, just as it always was, for I came from nothing.”

She embraced me again. “Don’t talk like that!”

“All right,” I said. “I will live to be a hundred. What is that Spanish saying? The weeds live long?”

Afterward, she asked: “What will become of me?”

“You will forget me like you would a bad dream.”

“No. Never.”

“You will,” I said. “And you will fall in love with someone and you will marry him, raise children who will inherit your good looks and your brains, and none of them will ever make the same mistake you made, going around with someone like me.”

“It is not a mistake,” she said. “Why do you degrade yourself? You are everything — my husband.” She started crying again, and I held her. “Pepe,” she said, “I am so miserable.”

I hugged her, a tightening in my chest, a smarting in my eyes. “I love you, Ramona,” my voice sounded strange. “I cannot thank you enough for giving yourself to me.”

I was finally picked up on the last day of the semester, just before the two-week school break. I had just gotten off a jeepney at Bangkusay and was walking toward the Barrio when four sunburned men in their thirties surrounded me; they had revolvers tucked in their waists. They could be from the rival gang of Bangkusay, but I had not done anything to antagonize them if they were.

“ Pare , we will not harm you if you come with us quietly.”

I had no choice; we walked down the street and did not even attract attention. They stopped before a van with the name “Luzon Bakery” on the sides, and we got in — the three on the front seat and the fourth in the back. Once inside, they frisked me; their tone of polite amiability disappeared.

“Lie down flat on your stomach,” the man in the rear ordered and when I was slow at it, he kicked me in the ribs. It hurt but I was not frightened. I was curious about who they were, where they were taking me.

Then, it became sunrise — they were after me because of my work in the Brotherhood. I tried to raise my head, and it was then that the blow came. The man sitting before me pistol-whipped me in the head. For a moment I thought I would pass out as everything darkened.

“Don’t raise your head,” the man warned. “You are not going to find out where you are going. One more movement like that and I am really going to knock you out, tie you up, and blindfold you. You understand?” His Tagalog had an accent, perhaps Visayan, perhaps Ilocano.