Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

He had never expected that a moment as rife with anger as now would come, for he had never made an allowance for the time when he would glare back at his benefactor and damn him. But in a voice that was hoarse and almost a whisper: “Don’t ever talk to me about grace. Or scholarship! You have no right — you plagiarist!” And trembling with unspoken rage, he wheeled out of the dean’s office into the raw, sun-flooded afternoon.

That evening Tony wrote to Lawrence Bitfogel again. He did not say, however, that he had quit the university. That would have been too painful to relate and Larry would never understand. He had worked so hard for the chance to be a teacher, and now all the anguish, all the privation, six years, six long years of starving, of wandering and despairing — all this had gone to waste.

Dear Larry, he started, I would have invited you to my wedding, but it caught even me by surprise. We eloped and up to now I’m still in a daze. No, it’s not someone you know or someone I’ve told you about. I met her in Washington and, of course, she’s Filipina. You know very well my views on mixed marriages and you know I’m too much of a coward to attempt something as radical as a mixed marriage. But at least you can grant me some imagination — I eloped, didn’t I? This isn’t the only reason I’m writing this letter, though. I must tell you, too, that I have acquired new interests. Perhaps these interests have to go with marriage and my new status. I do wish very much that you were here now, so that we could talk things over. It’s not the marriage that has me all dazed and confused, far from it. It’s the university and the host of problems that it has dumped upon my lap. At any rate, I am doing all right, and don’t … don’t ever loathe me if someday I mellow or change into an arch-conservative. Come to Manila soon.

The letter was the last he mailed to Lawrence Bitfogel.

There were other letters, of course, wherein he expressed his thoughts candidly, and this he could do easily, objectively, because he had always been analytical and even ruthless with himself when he sought the bedrock of truth, the soft shale of emotion, of egoism having been eroded by his own relentless questioning. But when all these letters were written, he could not mail them and he placed them all in that folder where he had compiled personal notes — not to be read by anyone, he told himself wryly, until I am dead.

It was Carmen who announced it a week afterward at the breakfast table. “Well, Papa,” she said airily. “Tony has quit the university. I think we should celebrate.”

Tony raised a hand to stop her, but she ignored him. “Papa, don’t you think it’s about time Tony started learning how you operate, too?”

“I don’t think my quitting the university is something to be taken lightly,” Tony said petulantly. “You must understand, Papa,” he turned to Don Manuel, who had set his glass of orange juice down and was now looking at him, “that the university was what I had prepared for. Teaching is in my system. It wasn’t an easy decision.”

“We all have to make decisions.” Don Manuel sounded sympathetic. He picked up his glass. “The decisions are sometimes difficult, but it’s better that we choose to make them rather than be forced to make them. A good soldier, I always say, selects his fights.”

“I wish I could say that, Papa,” Tony said. “I was forced and that’s what I hate.”

“Well,” Carmen said, “there’s always a silver lining even in the darkest cloud. Or at least silver-plated.”

“Of course, of course,” Don Manuel said equably. “And I must tell you that this development pleases me. One man’s loss, after all, is another man’s gain. I’ve told you, Tony. I need someone I can trust, someone with perception and talent.”

The flattery was pleasant to his ears. How pat, how neatly everything was falling into place.

After breakfast Don Manuel beckoned Tony to the terrace. In the shade of the green canvas awning, looking down on the rain-drenched city, Tony listened to his father-in-law speak with almost childlike simplicity. “Today, Tony, I’d like you to see the office, get the feel of the place.” He discoursed further on such mundane topics as knowing how to get along with people, praising them when praise was needed, and showing a firm hand when this, too, was necessary. They parted on such platitudes. It was too late to retrace his steps; he was trapped in a maze where the Villas were the minotaurs, and somehow, though he should have detested the entrapment, it was not as distasteful as he once thought it would be.

The morning wore on in a drizzle. Beyond the patio glazed with rain the bougainvillea drooped and a murkiness cloaked the acacias, the garden, and, in fact, the whole world. Somewhere in the caverns of the house Tony could hear Mrs. Villa ordering someone in her brisk manner to do the marketing early. The very sound of her voice, the thought of having to sit with her at lunch again, riled him. And yet Tony did not really hate her. He was aware of this the first time he met her and the incapacity to loathe her came about not because she was Carmen’s mother but because Mrs. Villa, in spite of her grossness, was herself.

He went to their room, where Carmen was reading the papers in bed, and he sat down beside her. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Baby,” he said, “when I start working for Papa, don’t you think we should start living alone? Not that I don’t like it here, but we should be able to live our own lives.”

She looked up. “All right, darling. Promise me we will not talk about this subject anymore, because if you do I’m going to say yes.”

He bent over and bit her ear.

“Papa is going to build a cottage at the end of the lot beyond the pool. It will be for us.”

He shook his head. “I mean, if we leave this house we should live away from here.”

“You give me a good reason, darling. If it’s mother you don’t want to see, well, you don’t have to see her at all once the cottage is finished. Esto , the entrance will be from the rear, from the other side of the street …”

It was still raining when he reached the boulevard, and the asphalt glistened like a mirror through the dreary, slanting rain. The Villa Building stood alone on a wide lot planted to grass and aroma trees. Its five stories were shielded from the sun, for the building was one of the first in Manila to use horizontal sun-breakers. It was painted in soft cream, was fully air-conditioned, and could have easily passed for a box — well-proportioned and neat — if it did not have an unusual facade that featured a long, sweeping cantilever marquee flanked by two columns of gray Romblon marble. The foyer, too, with its floor and walls of marble, was quietly elegant.

Don Manuel’s office was on the fifth floor or “executive country,” and there was an express elevator to it. Tony was quickly ushered in by the efficient matronly secretary, who often came to the house with Don Manuel’s homework.

A Japanese, whom Don Manuel introduced as a steel expert, and Senator Reyes were getting ready to leave when he went in; they were already at the door, engaged in parting niceties. The senator and his Japanese companion had one thing in common: the porcine face of a man well-fed and contented. The senator’s cheeks were white with talc and he grinned meaninglessly when Don Manuel introduced Tony.

“Ah—” Senator Reyes sighed. His eyes were pouched and flinty. “It’s a pleasure meeting you, Dr. Samson. I respect Ph.D.’s, you know. Well,” he turned to Don Manuel and slapped the entrepreneur on the back, “I hope everything at the university turns out fine. I was there last Monday as you requested. Dr. Samson will surely be a regent next month. Two regents will vacate their posts. Their terms have expired.”