Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

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He went out of the college cafeteria, the senseless palaver still in his head: Who are these tyrant regents dictating who shall get promotions this year? Politicians were hounding the deans who did not pass out appointments to their protégés — all the damnation that had long been embedded in the matrix of the university was out in the open again. And he was glad that he leaned on no less a personage than Dean Lopez; that blustery old man had given him a full load in the coming school year, plus that imposing title, associate professor, and the invitation to join the Socrates Club.

From the bus Tony surveyed the scene fondly, the white antiseptic buildings, the grass grown mangy and tan under the sun. In the afternoon the campus slept. Now the conductress, a short plump girl with flat-heeled shoes, screeched again: Quiapo derecho ! §The driver idled the motor, and as the bus stood in the sun, Tony could feel waves of heat lapping the interior of the vehicle. Only a handful of summer students were in the bus, and when the conductress saw no more prospective passengers coming, she thumped on the side of the vehicle and shouted, “Roll!”

Beyond the campus, suburbia bloomed: the new California bungalows, the well-tended gardens, the bougainvillea, the TV antennas; then the city flowed by: the wooden buildings, the gasoline stations, the atrocious billboards — how depressing they all were! And yet, one must accept these cheapnesses that America had inflicted upon his hapless country. Hapless — he had to define his country as such and insinuate, too, the gutlessness of his people and of himself.

In a while, Quiapo — the mass of jeepneys, the burning asphalt, and the smell of the living city. The heat coagulated again like an elemental fluid that submerged all — the nondescript crowds, Quiapo Church impiously painted cream against the pale, smoky sky.

He hurried across the plaza to the shaded sidewalk, where the sun was not as raw. It would be hot anywhere and it would be hottest now in the newspaper office where he was going. Godo’s last letter cursed this heat and at the same time lyrically reminisced about the New England he had known in his brief visit to America.

Godo Solar and Charlie worked on a magazine. They were his friends, members of that undefined fraternity he had been drawn to when he was in college. The two had chosen newspapering and had lavish hopes, both of them, of writing the Great Filipino Novel, while he elected to be a history teacher because teaching was far more creative and challenging than newspaper journalism.

You could see at once — Tony had explained — the effect of your ideas upon young, pliable minds. It isn’t so with newspapering; you cannot know if your message gets across. The only praise you might receive would be from crazy letter-writers or from friends who won’t hurt your feelings. You have no way of finding out whether or not you are understood.

It was, however, Dean Lopez who made up his mind for him. To be in the periphery of newsmakers, to be hounded by deadlines, the dean had said, is to acquire some dubious glamour. Maybe Tony would have enjoyed the work, but he had had a taste of newspapers in college and he could not stomach the merciless dictation of deadlines and the very act of writing, which, though it meant a liberal education, was drudgery in itself.

The choice had not bothered him, and once or twice he had speculated on what would have happened if he had heeded the beckonings of Newspaper Row. He could turn to Charlie and Godo now for the answer, but it had been six years since he saw them last. How well off were they? Had marriage sobered Godo? Did they own their houses or cars now? Such questions were shallow and yet there seemed to be no other way by which success could be measured.

He had never done this before, measure success in such gross, material terms, not in those years when he had little to eat and but one pair of shoes, when the three of them were in college and bound together by a friendship that seemed enduring. And now that he remembered, this knowledge disturbed him.

They all contributed to the university paper, for which Godo also wrote an angry column that always damned the equal rights granted to Americans, the disparity between the rich and the poor, the corruption of high government officials, and the abdication of responsibility by the middle class — the little there was of it. The highest accolade they could hope for then was a word of approval from Miss Josephine Tinio, that fabulous woman, the epitome of understanding and tutorial genius, who conducted a class in creative writing. Under her wing they had found sympathy and knowledge for more than two semesters after they went on to higher grades and could only wedge into their schedules a course or two in the humanities under her. She had understood their problems and had inspired them, and they often visited her at her home in Pandacan, the three of them, or as it sometimes happened with two other student-writers who were drawn to them. One was Angel, a soft-spoken engineering student from Iloilo who wrote poetry, the other was Jacinto, a sturdy peasant from Nueva Ecija whose one obsession in life was to get back the five hectares his father had pawned so that he might go on to college.

After a visit to Miss Tinio, and a merienda of tea and galletas , ‖they often walked to Quiapo, and while waiting for a ride to their homes, they would talk on and on about Jefferson, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Del Pilar. aIf it was at the university where they met, it was usually in the dimly lighted cafeteria in one of the old World War II Quonset huts; they would sit there toying with their empty ten-centavo cups of coffee till the owner closed for the night. If the weather was good and their stomachs could hold, they would go on talking at the bus stop, or sprawl on the grass, and they would agree always on the bleakness of the future, of the terrible challenge that was handed down to them by their fathers who were either betrayed or beguiled by destiny. They felt deeply about duty and responsibility and were convinced that the salvation of the race could only be earned by sacrifice. Then, toward the end of their junior year, Jacinto came with a proposal that tested their conscience as well as their dedication. He had stated it simply one evening in March: he was leaving school, he was going to the hills to join the Huks bbecause he was convinced there was no other way. Did they want to join him? They need not bring anything except the clothes on their backs.…

Tony had balked at the idea because in the back of his mind he had always held in reserve the final acquiescence to revolt. He knew what it meant; his father was ever in his thoughts as the final and painful proof of that failure.

When Angel and Jacinto did not show up the following school year, he knew what had happened, and much later, the three who had remained received identical letters written “in the field.” The letters were not hortatory; they were, as a matter of fact, even apologetic. They asked for help, and if this was not possible, “then we ask that you do not lose hope.” He never heard from them again and he was quite sure, after all these years, that they were dead, or if they were alive, they could not now return to the life they had left.

Remembering all this afterward, Tony sometimes loathed himself for having been such a coward. But then, Charlie and Godo did not flee to the hills, either; like him, they had elected to conform, to glean the ravaged land of whatever token of grace and beneficence was left in it after the dinosaurs had trampled everything.

At Rizal Avenue he turned away from the crowds to a narrow asphalted side street dusty with horse manure, its sidewalks reminiscent of the Walled City and composed of the ballast stones of galleons that returned centuries ago from Acapulco in Mexico.