Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Instinctively, I remembered Lucy and Lily, and much as I loathed thinking of what they had to go through to live, I knew deep within me that they had acted with courage and fortitude, and I can only curse myself for my incapacity to understand them.

I had been wrapped up in a fine gauze of a dream through which I could neither see nor break away. I had deluded myself without being quite aware, and, thank God, there had been an awakening.

My father’s book now seemed clear to me. Reading him now, knowing the people he had to live with, I could imagine how he felt, the dilemmas he had to wrestle with so that the comforts that he knew would not blind him and bind him when, all along, memory kept shunting him back to the Antipolo that we both knew and beyond, Cabugawan, which was the beginning.

Yet it had never really occurred to me, in spite of Betsy’s promise and Puneta’s clever urgings, to join them no matter how I longed for the ease, the comfort of which their world had a surfeit. No matter how sincere Betsy was, I knew now that I would lose her in spite of herself, and only time would tell how soon. I could easily be lulled into thinking that she would be constant, and she would be, but I belonged to Cabugawan, not to Pobres Park, and as long as I kept that in mind, what happened to Father would never happen to me. But I did not deride him now; I had learned from him. The end that he chose for himself was not an act of pride or of despair. It was courage, which I must surpass if the son is to be better than the father, if the child is to become a man.

I could look now beyond his shoulder, to his father, my grandfather, whom I had never seen though I knew what he had done, what he and the rest whom they called Colorums had wrought in one evening of anger. Now they crowded my thoughts, not wraiths that are formless but living men who are strong, whose voices urge me on. And I believe them because I know where they came from.

And beyond them that great-grandfather, about whom Mother had spoken, who had led his clan from the Ilocos to Rosales. Who else had their blood in me? What had they dreamt of? Pepe Samson then is just a name; I had come from afar and was simply born in a corner of the world called Cabugawan. I was someone, yet no one, for I was no longer living for myself, for this bundle of nerves and flesh; I was part of those who had perished and those who were yet to come. I belonged no longer to this casement of skin, I was part of the earth, the water, the air.

The door opened and in the light Tia Nena, her eyes blinking. “So you are leaving,” she said quietly.

“I will miss you, Tia,” I said.

She came in and sat on the stool before my small reading table. There was something sprightly about her tonight.

“And you were going to leave without saying good-bye.”

“I think it is better that way,” I said.

After some silence, “Pepe, do not ask how I found out, but I know what is in your mind. I will soon be leaving, too, to go back to Rosales now that I can look at everything there without fear.”

I turned to her, startled at what she had said.

She smiled. “Yes, I know how you feel and you may even tell yourself I am, indeed, a crazy old woman. I had nothing, too, and nothing to look forward to. Padre Jesus does not really need me to cook and do his laundry. But my home is there — the village, the hills.”

“No, Tia, do not waste your life. Stay here where at least you can have food when you are hungry. And when you get sick, there will be at least some neighbors who can take you to the hospital.”

“Where I will die nonetheless because I am poor.”

I did not speak.

“Come to me if you need help,” she said. “If you get sick, I will try and nurse you back to health. And if you get hungry, I will beg to feed you.”

“And when I die?”

“Then,” Tia Nena said with determination, “I will bury you and pray by your grave and put flowers there.”

“I am not a patriot, Tia Nena. Please don’t make it look as if I am trying to be one.”

“You will never get rich,” she said.

I was ready. “First, I am going back to Cabugawan, Tia Nena,” I said. “That is where I will start.”

“The village, that is where Victor started,” she said. Her eyes were shining. “My sons, that is where they started, too. Oh, you don’t know them. You never knew them. But Rosales is any town, and your village any village. We start where we know best.”

I went upstairs to Father Jess. Tia Nena followed me.

“I have a letter for Betsy, Father,” I said. “And if Professor Hortenso comes and looks for me, please ask him to leave his address with you. I will be going back to Cabugawan. And Betsy, if she returns, tell her …” I could not shape the words. “When it is over, and if I live through it, I will look for her.”

Father Jess said, “I will pray for you.”

He looked at Tia Nena. “There is no one now in Rosales whom you know. Your place is here.”

Tia Nena merely smiled at him.

Father Jess tried again: “You must consider what will happen. You cannot run anymore.”

“But I am not running, Padre,” she said quickly.

Father Jess was impatient; he dismissed her remark with a wave of his hand. “I know what you are going to say, that you never ran away and you are not running away now. But where you go …”

Tia Nena shook her head. “They will not harm me. They cannot harm me. All the hurt was done to me long ago. I am beyond hurting now.”

“I do not understand,” Father Jess said.

Tia Nena turned to me. “You build a church here,” she brought her closed fist to her breast.

“You are using my own words,” Father Jess said.

“But they are not yours alone,” Tia Nena flattered him. “The truth belongs to all who know it.”

“Speeches!” I said. Time to go, and the Tondo I will leave will be brightly lit with Christmas-star lanterns, colored lights strung before windows, boisterous drinking of cuatro cantos and San Miguel in the tiendas , children with harmonicas and plaintive voices caroling. But the distance that beckoned was dark. I was afraid.

So I leave behind those who see the sword but refuse to raise it. “Bless me, Father,” I said nonetheless. “I cannot leave without your blessing.”

“I am mortal, Pepe,” he said. As he raised his right hand, I dropped to my knees.

He helped me to my feet, and we went down. At the door, he wrapped an arm around my shoulder and hugged me briefly. Tia Nena kissed me on the cheek.

“ Hoy , you have to cut your hair now,” he said as I left them at the kumbento door.

I was afraid but I felt very light. I knew I could go very far without tiring.

June 30, 1976

Rue d’Echaude, Paris

* Segurista : A crazy person.

† Tayo-tayo : We-we.

I was with the journalists Johnny Gatbonton and Arnold Moss and my wife the other day at the Emerald on Dewey (now Roxas) Boulevard, when we got to reminiscing, marking out our past. We have known each other from way back in our student days at the University of Santo Tomas. They sometimes come to Padre Faura and we talk shop. I told them of a significant decision in my life, made after I had looked carefully into my own being.

It came in 1960, when I was putting my novel The Pretenders into final shape in a village called Marquina, close to the port of Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain.

Rafael Zabala, a young businessman, helped me find cheap lodging in the village which was about half an hour away by car from Bilbao. I met Rafael, or Paeng, as I called him at the Kissinger Seminar at Harvard in 1955 and asked him to help me find a hide-away where I could write. He located a small inn for which I was charged two dollars a day, including meals. I remember my breakfasts — the large pitcher of fresh milk, bread and cheese, and for lunch or dinner, merluza — fish from the Bay of Biscay.