Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

The newspaper office was in a bleak, gray building, a gothic edifice that had somehow escaped destruction during the war. He went up three oily flights to the sanctum, a room alive with the whirr of electric fans and the racket of typewriters and teletypes.

The magazine section had not changed — it was still the same dusty corner with drab, unpainted walls, mahogany-varnished tables, and antique typewriters. His friends were at their desks. Charlie saw him first and yelled, “Tony! How’s the Oriental American?” Then it was all noise, Godo standing and slapping him on the back, the usual greetings and the handshakes and ribald remarks about American girls and the inevitable invitation to the squalid Chinese coffee shop downstairs.

They hustled down the cracked stairway, Tony in the middle, Godo — fat, wobbly with flesh and talk — at his right, and at his left Charlie, lean and quiet. The coffee shop had not changed, either. Its red-tile floor was as dirty as ever, and the corners reeked with the implacable smell of cockroaches and ammonia and were as dark as secrets. The shop was called Newsmen’s Corner and it lived up to its name, a nook as greasy-looking as some of the characters who frequented it.

They found an empty table still sodden with spilled Coke and cigarette ash. A waitress, short and dowdy, her lips flaring red, took their orders (soda for Godo, who said coffee made him nervous).

“You are going back to the university?” Godo asked. The exuberance of greeting had subsided and they spoke in even tones. They seemed to soak in impressions, alert, taking in all words as if they were truths to live by.

“There’s no place like home,” Tony said.

“The profound comment of the afternoon,” Charlie said. It was his favorite joke—“profound comment”—and Godo, jocular and looking more like a landlord than a writer, laughed loudly.

“Well, the university is an easy life,” Godo said.

“It is a rat race,” Tony said lightly, but he meant every word.

“Doing any writing?” Charlie asked.

“I never stopped,” Tony said. “Right now I’m on a very ambitious project. A cultural history of the Ilocos. It’s something that has never been attempted before. Someday I’m going there to trace my ancestry. Find out things about my grandfather. The great Ilocano migration, you know. Saw a lot of my people in California, Chicago, New York.”

“Wonderful project,” Godo said. “Show us some chapters when you are through. We may run them in a series.”

Then the talk turned to a familiar theme. “Now, about American women,” Charlie said, a leer spreading across his dark, pimply face. “I haven’t been abroad so I’d like to listen to your wonderful lies.” Nudging Godo, Charlie said, “Tell him about your pickups in that staid, puritan city of Boston. Compare notes.”

Godo had gone to Boston two years back on a fellowship of sorts and had not stopped talking about the trip. But this afternoon he seemed rather reticent. “It’s not necessary,” Godo said. “I’d rather Tony tell us of his experiences. As for America, I still have hopes for its people. Otherwise I feel they are wrong, trying to buy friendship with dollars and scholarships. But we shouldn’t object too much — beggars can’t be choosers, you know. Cliché, but hell, it’s true.”

Tony wanted to steer the talk away from the forthrightness of Godo, which had always exasperated him. “If I only knew you were coming to Boston,” he said, “I could have entertained you.”

“Did you get my card?” Godo asked. “I left one, you know. You were out in Vermont, enjoying the New England scenery no doubt”—another gale of laughter.

“It was a summer job really and I had no choice,” Tony said. “My fellowship was never enough.”

“Be on the lookout now,” Godo said. “Anyone who was in the United States as a freeloader is suspect or is an apologist for American policy.”

“And that includes you,” Charlie said, grinning at his colleague.

“Of course!” Godo said. “Have I ever said I don’t like freeloading? But I’m an ingrate and you know that I accept all that I can and I suffer no compunctions about being ungrateful afterward. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“I can’t understand,” Tony said gravely, “this new nationalism. Haven’t we always been Filipinos? In the university the talk is confusing. And I am suspicious of anything that’s worn on the sleeve.”

“There you go again, mouthing platitudes,” Godo said with a hint of irritation. “When will you and your kind — the bright boys who loudly proclaim themselves intellectuals — stop talking and start working?”

“I have written articles for you,” Tony said. “That’s action within my limitations.”

“Oh yes,” Godo said. He loved speeches and in his formalistic style was ready to perorate again. “I appreciated your last one — the uses of the past. The writers in the universities, the teachers — I am bowled over by their nationalistic talk. You have everything tagged and placed in a compartment. Go ahead, and while you write facetiously about high and ghostly matters, I go out and meet the people. Ah, the people! And what do I find? Something you never knew and will never understand because you have never been a part of them. Here you are, cooped up in Manila, in your sewing circles, in your coffee clubs, while the people seethe. I know because it’s my job to know. And some day the whole country will blow up before your eyes. It won’t be nationalism and you won’t even realize it, because you have lost touch.”

Godo had not changed, nor had his speeches. Tony felt a touch of superiority not only because of his new doctorate but because he could look at things more dispassionately now than either of them. And so the talk dropped again to the hoary and angry themes that he had long discarded. Oh yes, they tried to be trivial about it, but the distinction between sarcasm and wit became thin and, hearing them talk about culture, the economic chaos, and their insecurity, he couldn’t help pitying them. Look at them, grasping at ideals long outdated because these were what they understood, because it was with such ideals that they could justify their lives. They held on to beliefs that were bigger than they: once it was the Common Man, pervasive and purposeful because the Common Man was salvation. Then it was the Barrios, and now Nationalism, because they had finally gotten down to essentials, groping for identities they all had lost.

“But damnit,” Tony said, “I’ve never doubted my identity. I’ve never lost sight of the fact that I’m Asiatic.”

“Filthy word. It’s Asian, not Asiatic,” Godo reprimanded him.

“Semantics — that’s for gutless aesthetes,” Charlie said. He spoke seldom, but when he did his opinions were strong and his words had a sure, unrelenting sharpness.

“I do hope all this noise will die down,” Tony said. “Then maybe we will be less conscious about being Filipinos. I wish I could write on that. Could you use it if I did?”

“You are always welcome to our pages,” Charlie said. “And more so now that we can attach a Ph.D. to your byline. It’s good for the magazine. Gives us snob appeal.”

“I liked your last piece,” Godo said, “about the uses of the past. But I doubt if you believe all you said. You are always trying to pull someone’s leg, and sometimes it is your own. I gather that the piece constituted your doctoral thesis.”

“Yes,” Tony said proudly. “The ilustrados had much to contribute to the Revolution of 1896, you know. They knew the past and its meaning.”

“It’s not the complete truth,” Godo said firmly. “I disagree with you when you say it’s the whole truth. The ilustrados were not the heroes, nor were they brave. It was the masses who were brave. They were the heroes. Not your Rizal, cwho wanted to help the Spaniards frustrate the Cuban revolutionists. Not your Rizal, who loathed revolution. He and his kind — they were not the real heroes. It’s always the small men who are. Bonifacio dand the farmers at Balintawak. The people — you call them contemptible, don’t you.”