Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

They laughed. “I see, I see,” Senator Reyes said, grinning.

“Now, when we escalate Bonifacio’s greatness — after all, he really started the revolution against Spain — that is revolutionary. People think of Rizal always as the greatest merely because he was martyred and Bonifacio was killed by his own people,” Tony said. He remembered again the protracted discussions on Maple Street, Larry Bitfogel’s intellectual argot and his own deft reasoning piercing the maze of contradictions. He continued: “How can one be a revolutionary in an age when revolutions have become commonplace? There is only one way, and that’s by creating an entirely new definition of revolution itself and knowing your position once you have made your definition. If we talked about cultural revolution, we would be giving both culture and revolution an entirely new emphasis.”

“Good!” Senator Reyes exclaimed. He sat back and rubbed his stomach with his chubby hand. Supreme contentment spread over his dark, corpulent face. “You are the man, then, who can help me — the only man, Tony.” It was the first time the senator called him by his nickname. “This will be a favor, something I can never repay. Write me a speech for next Sunday. I am going to speak before the Socrates Club at the university. Nationalism is going haywire and I want its proper cultural definition. Only you can do that.”

They parted on that nicety.

Back at his office Tony sat before his typewriter, pondered his quarrel with Dean Lopez and how he would have been a member of the Socrates Club. It was ironic that he should now be writing Senator Reyes’s speech before the club. He felt no regret, no gnawing feeling of being left out; he did not really care about being a member of the club now that he was here in the comfortable confines of the Villa Building. He dwelt again on the old theme, the bedraggled subject that he had not quite really resolved: Were the ilustrados really patriots? Or was the real hero of the revolution that almost illiterate laborer, Andres Bonifacio, who grew up in Tondo?

His own past reached out to him in this uncluttered room and it seemed as if his father were beside him again, saying that courage was not enough. There was no way by which they could rise from the dung heap. It was easy to sharpen a bolo until its blade could split a hair, but without a mind sharper than a blade.… And so, when his father went to jail, his mother slaved and sent him and his sister to school and college. She took in laundry and worked herself to a hopeless case of consumption and a slow, sure death. This was the sacrifice she had made, and in Barcelona, recalling what she had done, he had wept that morning when he went to the bleak, gloomy cathedral to place a candle at the altar of the Virgin on the anniversary of her death. From the cathedral he had meandered to the Ramblas and sat on one of the wooden benches there, watching the people pass. He had mused about the young Filipinos in Barcelona in another time, and he envied them for the good they had done, although he did not see the monuments of tyranny against which they had flung their young bodies. And then he saw the impossibility of it all: the revolution the young men in Spain had inspired did not end as a true revolution should.

He finished Senator Reyes’s speech on time and it was printed in full in the newspapers and even editorialized for giving new proportions to nationalism. And when Don Manuel learned that it was his son-in-law who wrote the speech, he did not hide his pleasure from his wife and Carmen.

“Today,” Don Manuel said that morning at breakfast, “you will be with us during the board meeting. Everyone must profit from what you know.”

On the way to the office Don Manuel became more open and he impressed upon Tony how the Villa fortune was not built overnight. Don Manuel’s grandfather had a furniture shop in Intramuros and it started everything. Don Manuel’s grandfather was, of course, Spanish; and in the last days of the Spanish regime and the early days of the American occupation, the narra aparadors , the sala sets embossed with mother-of-pearl, and the ornate kamagong chests of the Villa furniture shop acquired an appeal with the ilustrados. No aristocratic home was complete without Villa furniture. After the illustrious grandfather died, Don Manuel’s father built up the business. In time it expanded to include lumber. Then the Villas branched out into construction and were soon building magnificent residences in Malate and Ermita and in the new posh suburb of Santa Mesa. And as they built and decorated these homes they also moved into a wider and more affluent circle.

When Don Manuel was old enough to help his father, the Santa Mesa residence of the Villas was already finished, but the family did not move into it. The Villas still lived in Intramuros and kept the new Villa house as a showcase. By then, too, the business had already spread out to include transportation and shipping. It was only when Don Manuel’s father died of a heart attack while in the bedroom of his mistress in Malate that the whole family decided to move over to Santa Mesa — a change from their antique and cramped appointments in the Walled City — and discovered the handsome refinements of suburban living. This was, of course, when Santa Mesa was still considered a suburb and the fast-growing city had not encroached upon its rusticity yet. As the eldest, Don Manuel became manager of the bigger and more profitable branches of the Villa interests. The business was not damaged much by the war. In fact, the war was a blessing to the Villas and to Don Manuel in particular. He had readily foreseen the construction needs of the country and the shortages that would be difficult to fill. He did not slip in his planning nor did he fail to see the importance of developing the friendship and the loyalty of political leaders like professed nationalists of the caliber of Senator Reyes. Now Don Manuel’s eldest son managed a new plywood factory and lumber concessions in Mindanao. Another son became interested in textiles and Don Manuel set up a mill in Marikina. The mill produced fishing nets, cotton fabrics, and upholstery material for the furniture factory that had expanded and was attended to by Don Manuel himself, since it was the progenitor of the Villa fortune. The husbands of two daughters managed the construction branch of the Villa Development Corporation. As for Carmen, she had gone to the United States to study interior decoration, public relations, and advertising, so that she would be able to assist in the family business.

All the Villa children had married according to their choices, and Don Manuel took immense pride in this fact. There were enough executive jobs for his sons-in-law and there was nothing he asked from them except loyalty.

The board met on Wednesdays from nine in the morning until lunchtime. The boardroom was on the fifth floor, in the executive country — a handsome dao-paneled hall with a long table made of one solid piece of narra and surrounded by high-backed swivel chairs upholstered in genuine cowhide. All the furniture in the Villa Building and in the homes of most of the Villa employees and executives was, of course, produced by the Villa furniture factory. At one end of the boardroom was a special panel that included, among other things, a well-stocked bar, a kitchenette, a high-fidelity set, and several tape-recording machines. Don Manuel did not have extraneous interests other than golf and high-fidelity record-changers, and the electronic equipment of the conference room was his idea. On his desk in the boardroom was a series of switches that enabled him to pipe high-fidelity music to the room or to record what was said — to the consternation and delight of the other members when the recording was played. He did not drink — he didn’t even touch beer, and during social functions he always asked for ginger ale because it looked like Scotch. The bar in the boardroom was his concession to his brothers and to Senator Reyes, in particular, for the senator was an excessive drinker.