Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Father Jess was in his room, waiting. “Well,” he asked, “what have you decided?”

“I cannot do it, Father,” I said. “What can I offer her? What kind of life would she live?”

He was silent even as we went down to the reception room. Betsy had stood up and was looking out of the window, into the alleys, the decrepit homes, the laundry flapping in the morning breeze, the bare-bottomed and skinny children playing in the multipurpose center.

They talked in Visayan, some of which I understood, then they switched to Spanish, saying good-bye, and Father Jess asked when she would be back, and she said, “If Pepe wants me back, immediately!” And I said in Spanish, “I will always want you here, but life decrees that you should be there.”

It was the first time she heard me speak in Spanish and she was delighted. “Pepe, you never told me!”

Father Jess said, “He is now trying to write in Spanish, too.”

He followed us to the door. “I will perform the wedding gladly, Betsy,” he said. “It would be an honor. So hurry back.”

We drove quietly to Malate. Again, she parked at the churchyard and we walked over to the Mabini coffee shop. It was the second time we were there, and as in the first, we were again beset by this impermeable gloom. “We will miss you not only in the committee,” I said, trying to cheer her up, “but when we plan the big demonstration in January.”

“Write to me about it. Write to me every day if you can. I will write to you every day.”

“It costs money,” I said. “I will write often, but mail the letters once a week.”

She settled for that. Our hamburgers and coffee came. The coffee shop wallpaper was in green, so was the upholstery.

“And my thoughts,” I told her, “are also green.”

We would go to our first motel again. “You will see the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Write to me about it.”

“With my blood,” she said, and we laughed for the first time. We laughed so hard, the waitress looked at us, puzzled; the last time we were here, we had not bothered to eat. Now, we ate with ravenous appetites. I ordered two more hamburgers to take out.

I had somehow hoped that we would get the same room, but we did not. We were here in the beginning and, now, the end. We took our time; she lay beside me in that soft wide bed and we just kissed and talked, savoring our nearness. Her flight the following day would be in the late afternoon. She did not want me at the airport, but I said I would go, that I would keep to the shadows and watch her from a distance, far from her friends and her parents. Even if I did get close, they would probably not recognize me, but hell, I did not want Betsy to leave with me unable to see her.

The hamburgers came in handy before noon, but we were still hungry, so we ordered soft drinks and fried chicken. When the boy came with our order and asked us how long we would stay, I told him, till dusk. She was supposed to be out with friends, saying good-bye; it did not matter anymore if her parents found out. They would have their way anyway.

I was not going to make the day more bleak. “One day,” I said, “I would like to take you to a place I used to go to. Nothing like your hilltop. But it is also isolated — on a hill with no one there.”

“Your favorite spot?”

“You can call it that. An old steel bridge spans this creek and there were once rails on it. The train no longer comes so the rails were torn up, stolen and sold as scrap, but the high mound is there still. You walk on its crest, the grass thick upon it. Then you come to this black, rusting bridge and, below, the calmest, clearest pond, with reeds and lotuses. I used to swim there, gather snails, and I would sleep below the bridge, on one of the big, black girders. The whole world is quiet. Nothing but the wind rippling the water, the chirp of birds, and, above, the blue sky. Down the slope of the hill is a thatch-roofed shack with a split bamboo floor. The farmers rest in it during the harvesting or planting. I slept there once all night.”

“You were not afraid?”

“Mother was angry and she scolded me when I returned the next morning. What was there to be afraid of? The crickets, the dogs howling in the distant village? The cocks crowing?”

“We could sleep there one night,” she said.

“It may no longer be there,” I said. She was dreaming, as I was; she had never slept on a bamboo floor.

She opened her bag. “I wonder if your father did the same thing,” she said, bringing out her copy of Father’s book, and she let me read her inscription: To my dear husband — whose past, present, and future, I hope, may also be mine.

“Be kind to his memory,” she said. “I asked a lot of questions about him from Mama. That is why she is so concerned. He really did not have a chance. He committed suicide, that I now believe.”

“I will never do that,” I said.

“Live for me,” she said.

I pressed her hand.

“Read the last chapter again. It is the most perceptive commentary on us.”

“I will,” I promised her.

She drew out from her bag a small packet of black velvet. It contained two rings, silvery and shiny. She brought them close so I could see the inside. The bigger one had her name and the small one had mine. “Look at the date,” she said.

I had difficulty reading it.

“Remember?”

I do not have a good memory for dates but I knew.

“The first time,” she said.

I kissed her as she gave me her ring to slip onto her finger. It was quite heavy and I asked why.

“Platinum,” she said.

She took my left hand and slipped the ring on my finger. It fit snugly. “I was too optimistic, I guess,” she said. “But we are one nonetheless.”

I embraced her and promised myself I would never take it off. My chest was tightening. “There are things I will never understand,” I said, my throat sandpapery. “Simple things like … like breathing. And these precious things I will lose not to some enemy but to my own cowardice.”

“You are wrong,” she said. “It is not cowardice. It is honesty.”

“I am not honest. I have been selfish, and as your mother said, if I loved you, I would let you go, because with me there is no future.”

“I have made the choice,” she said, clinging to me.

“It is fate,” I said humbly.

“Don’t hide behind words.”

“I wish I could still hide,” I said. “But not anymore. I must face it. Here I am — unable to be with you, to have an open relationship. I must do what is right.”

“And what is that?”

“It sounds so melodramatic,” I said, “as if it is all lifted from those cheap Tagalog movies, the dialogues those nitwits are churning out for the housemaids. Let me tell you how and I’d like to listen to it myself, this big moment. Now really is the time for us to say good-bye—”

“You do not mean it,” she said, pressing her face to my chest.

“Of course, I mean it. But how can I forget? You are now part of my life,” the words were pouring out. “You are here within me, in my blood, the air in my lungs, the juices in my stomach. Listen now, what your mother wants is for you to have a good life, marry well— even someone ugly — but someone not like me, a castaway. What future is there with me? Nothing but sorrow. Your place is there, among your kind. You are asleep now, and when you wake up, what then?”

She said simply, “I want to be with you, awake or asleep.”

I disregarded her. “You will grow older and someone soon enough will come knocking on your door.”

She did not speak.

“Thank you, Betsy, for everything.”

She hugged me, her heart thrashing against my chest, her body shaking as she cried soundlessly. That would help ease this last sorrow I had inflicted on her.