Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

It had always been that way, and I have always known it, better perhaps than you ever will. My perception of the world is different from yours; it is not just a matter of age, or of different geographies. It is just that you are up there and I am down here .

I do not want to say good-bye again, or to repeat what I have said, that in these two years you have become a part of my life, and I feel for you what I feel for myself, these tissues, this skin. I have grown so familiar with you, the contour of your body, the smell of your breath, the soft, warm crevices of your mouth and the whole wonder of you. I know now how difficult it is to be alone, to be here in this senseless confine not only of my own being but of this wretched city, and to know that you are not here where I can glory not just in your nearness but in the thought that you did love me.

And at night I lie awake, and I speak your name as if it were some incantation that would dispel this loneliness, for now I am really alone. I whisper to these cold, rusting walls; to the damp, cement floor; to the emptiness around me, Betsy, Betsy … but I can only hear the echo within me and so I wonder how you are, if you are happy as I hope you will be, and I pray that you be not tormented as I am, that your nights are slept and your days are bright, and if you remember, may they be those times that we shared, the coffee shop, the tawdry rooms and the sheet that was stained with red, the books that had to be read, and Tondo where I had tasted your sweat; yes, so many of these now crowd my mind, and they are all crystal clear, pictures, events, places — all of them important only because we knew them, lived them, and they have become us .

I did not want to write this letter, but it is one way by which I can escape this bleakness that now encompasses me. Now, too, I know how it is to be what I am and to remember what you are, life-giver, my joy and my sorrow .

You will forget, not because you are young, but because you are far away, and having forgotten, it will all be over and you may, on some occasion, remember, perhaps, because this is the way things are and we cannot change them. I don’t know if I will forget; one can never be sure, but I know that you are now my wife, not because God or a priest has sanctified our union but because this is how I regard you. Though I may sleep with other women, I know there will always be you, separate from all the rest, not just because I feel that you have given me yourself, or your faith and trust, all of which I do not deserve, but because I have given myself to you as I will never give myself to anyone.

I will be leaving Tondo now and I wish I knew my final destination, but I do not. The compulsions that we have talked about will take me to regions I will not recognize, but wherever they may be, there will be a light to guide me, a talisman that will make me endure and you are all of these .

But above all, you are the proof I will always hold precious and true. Thank you, dear Betsy, for being with us in thought and deed. There are a few like you, comfortable and secure, who have chosen to be with us; I will doubt them in a way I once doubted you and they must bear the burden of proving themselves as you have done. Only time will tell and time, alas, is fickle in a way I will never be, now that I know who I am, now that I know what to do.

So let me go away loving you, and losing you, for, in the end, we will lose all those we love.

I merely signed, JS.

I folded the letter, Father Jess would have to mail it for me; he would also be my only link with Betsy and with all the others whose lives I have touched and who would, perhaps, surrender themselves lightheartedly to the end that awaits us.

I unzipped the canvas bag and on top of the guns and the money I placed my clothes, my pen knife, and a notebook. I would have many thoughts to jot down and they will not have anything to do with what I am and what I will be; the past is stored here in my mind, inviolate, days when I was young, when I marveled at how the leaves of the acacia trees close at dusk, how it would have been if there was a father to explain to me why this was so, what was it that closed the leaves of the bain-bain if I as much as breathed into them? Where could all this wisdom be? I saw Man’s Fate , which was Betsy’s gift, then Father’s The Ilustrados ; she had told me to read the last chapter and reluctantly, I sat back, remembering what Professor Hortenso had also said.

“Your father committed suicide,” Betsy had told me. “Mama is convinced that what Carmen Villa said is true. That is why Carmen Villa died, too — slowly, insanely.”

The Filipino elite is flawed because the individuals who comprise it, even though they come from diverse backgrounds, do not really see themselves as leaders of a nation. They see themselves as leaders of factions, of families, of cozy coteries. Their rhetoric will deny, even attack, this assumption — but their deeds will bear their parochial, factional, and, therefore, antinationalistic loyalties .

“—it is a great book and only a great mind is capable of writing it …”

The Filipino elite in its present composition is doomed not because of the inexorable march of history, not because the dialectic of change has condemned it. It is doomed because dinosaurs were doomed. But even the last dinosaur, in its death throes, trampled the grass .

“Why do you hate him? You were young, Pepe; you didn’t know. Please give him a chance.”

The corruption of the ilustrado class was accomplished not by bribery from the Spaniards, nor by the high offices that the Americans or the Japanese gave them. Their corruption started when they started believing — with great righteousness and pride — that they were equal to their rulers. By aspiring for equality they became imbued, therefore, with the same values as their masters, values that perpetuated the very injustices they sought to avenge .

The ilustrados— the intellectuals — should have no role in the revolution, in any revolution. They equivocate, they argue, they procrastinate. Writers and academics who think they have a role in revolution are flattering themselves; what they really want to do is to be part of it, to lead it, without having to raise the sword. Only those with the sword can participate in revolution, for revolution means destruction, not contemplation .

“Even if he did not see your mother as you said, why did she love him to the end? Why did she ask you to honor and respect him? She would have been the first to hate him — because he married another.…”

Revolution can only succeed when men who believe in it can translate their beliefs into a conspiracy — all-embracing in its call for adherents. But to admit into the leadership of the revolution the old elite, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, would be to condemn the revolution to suspicion and even betrayal. A class war is precisely that — a class war. The revolution failed because it did not adhere to this basic requirement; a class is weakened not by the identified enemy but by the unidentified subverter who dilutes and weakens its leadership .

“He had integrity, Pepe. He saw how rotten the system and the people he had joined were; he had to cleanse himself. Carmen Villa was right: his suicide was an act of courage.”

Courage, integrity — what frightening words! How many are there who can really carry them without being crushed? They had never really meant much to me, but now I understood not only what they meant but also the horrendous burden they were.

But how does one measure their weight upon the poor? Who can point with an unerring finger to those among us who have borne them?