Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“You are seeking the impossible, Father,” I said. “You are segurista , *and at times like this, there is nothing sure except our readiness to risk everything.”

“It need not be all that risky, if you planned more,” Father Jess said. “And the first thing really is organization, a network that reaches everywhere, the farthest village, the highest mountain.”

“That is what we are already doing, Father,” I said.

“Build some more,” he said. “Life is so precious, and you lose it only once.”

I went down to the room where I had lived for two years, the words of Father Jess like our own posters etched in my mind. Now, in this shabby room, the memory of Toto gripped me; his voice seemed to echo within these musty walls and I could imagine him as he moved about, the glow of his character, the exuberance of his silences. These came back as if to prod me on, confirming how right I had been, his redemption.

Yet I have never felt so alone as I do now, and though I could lay claim to the fealty of friends, everyone now seemed distant and far away. I had tried to seek in them — Roger, my classmates, and my comrades in the Brotherhood — those ties that would bind us so that I did not have to think or rationalize what I had done or will do. As one of them, I could withstand the punishment that circumstance would mete out. Where had I slept in the past? Where had I slaked my thirst? Will I always be alone?

I had tried to write down my innermost thoughts, but what I wrote were platitudes. I did this because it was what was expected of me, because what I had to say was like the rosary, and by invoking the heavenly phrases, I had hoped to numb my conscience.

Did I do this because I did not know? Indeed, what could I grow but my hair? Some of us could not even grow beards except a wispy broom like Uncle Ho’s, nothing bushy like Fidel’s.

I need not be told that it is not easy to go beyond my station no matter how capable I am; in the end, although the rules are not written down, I cannot join them up there unless I am prepared to accept the very same ends to which they have aspired, to bear the same brand or tattoo that marks them off from the common herd. The tayo-tayo †mentality in the back alleys and the grim confines of Muntinlupa is no different from what prevails in Pobres Park.

It should not be difficult to erode the constructions of sand whereon the mighty are perched. And who am I to attempt this? I would, in all likelihood, be lost or swallowed up, a pebble in a bog, with not even a splash or a ripple. But why should I make this splash? This ripple? Each is a step forward, in the right direction, said Ka Lucio; but why was it not three steps or ten? Those who made them, those behind me, those with me, they failed, I think, because they wanted to be more than men, invulnerable, incapable of venial sin. They failed because, as Ka Lucio said, they were textbook robots who fancied themselves as the sole bringers of light, the infallible harbingers of grace, unswerving and self-righteous. As Kuya Nick said, they are not “in the compass.” They lost direction because they were bloated with self-importance. If they only knew how to enjoy themselves, if they only knew how it is to love and, therefore, to forgive! I will not be like them, and even if I should die, which I surely will, even in the ennui, in the tawdry futility of it all, I will live as I have always lived, amassing memories.

Leaving this Barrio, then, is not leaving at all; it is an act of being welded deeper, stronger, with all those nameless people of my boyhood, these faceless people here who will live and die without knowing what it is to be alive.

And how about Bing-Bong, Chicken, Tarzan, White Sidewall, and all those demons of the other world that I had glimpsed? Could they be recycled from the junkyard like Roger? It had often come to me like a bad recurrent dream, and it always brought a quiet chill to my heart — my torture, how my flesh and mind were ripped apart. Was there any design to it other than to jar me, to wake me up? They were all creatures of circumstance, but this circumstance can now be changed. It should be changed! And all that pain — it was part of living after all, and it made me know the limits of experience, and the limits are yet to be enlarged.

I lay in my cot and waited for the dark; the shuffle of mah-jongg chips, Silent Night on someone’s radio disturbed the quiet. I thought of waiting for Lily, to say good-bye to her, but she’d be back close to midnight and would be very tired; she would most probably not understand and would rather hurry to her dreamless sleep. Lily, only twenty but hardened by the Barrio and fallen down the abyss. No, I will not bother her, I will wish her sweet dreams so that in the morning she will wake up fresh and ready again to tackle the hordes at the Colonial. I hoped to God that she would make enough money in five years so that she could quit.

I thought of Betsy, my Betsy, away from all the niggling frustrations that had tormented us. I had lain awake nights after she had gone, remembering those tenuous moments we had shared. At the airport I had tried to keep away, but she had scanned the crowd and seen me behind one of the pillars. She had run to me, away from her friends, and in a final and futile gesture she kissed me, suppressing a sob as she did. “Pepe, thank you for coming!” Then she went back to her parents, her friends, as if nothing had happened, and I fled from them onto the viewing roof, lost in the crowd, and watched her trim figure in yellow go up the ramp, her eyes searching the waving crowds, searching…

Her letters had started to come. She wrote every day, but for how long? She wrote of her loneliness, of the ghastly and impersonal city to which she had been exiled, the nondescript course she was taking and how, after the New Year, she would return and go straight to the Barrio, not to the Park. But she would not find me and she would not know where to look.

It had become dark. Around me were familiar things — my small cabinet, the cracked cement floor that was now dry but during the rainy season was wet from the water that seeped in and was ankle-deep, and we had to walk around in rubber boots. How many times had I lain on this wooden cot, my pillow smelling of my sweat, the palm leaf mat scratching against my back where it had frayed, and listened to the sounds of the Barrio, the blare of a jukebox across the yard, the quarrel of couples, the tinkling of an ice cream cart.

The darkness had started to hide everything, the misshapen dwellings of rusting tin, driftwood, and packing crates, the alleys rank with decay. Will there ever be a good roof over my head? I turned to the strip of sky above my window now flecked with stars — how luminous, how eternal the heavens were.

On the shelf beside my bed were my old books from Father Jess, a dozen from Betsy, and at the foot of my bed, propped up by hollow blocks so that the water would not touch them, my clothes. I can count them — five undershirts, five jockey shorts, two denim pants, one khaki and olive green for ROTC, one black double knit, a barong, five shirts, the white in need of stitching where the collar had frayed. They would all fit into the old canvas bag.

I switched on the light and got a sheet of paper from my drawer; the Sheaffer pen I was going to use was Betsy’s birthday gift. What can I tell her now? It was after she had gone that it came, a longing for her so intense that the ache was almost physical. Many times in a crowd, although I knew she was far away, a turn of a head, the color of green, a dash of scarf, and all would come back — the coffee shop, that night on the hill overlooking Manila, and here in Tondo. Dear Betsy, I would like to tell you now how much I need you. I have purposely held off writing this to you, and in doing so, I had turned over and over in my mind, all these past few days, why I am here and you are there — so far and so beyond my reach …