Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

The directors started arriving at nine-thirty. The first was Johnny Lee, an ascetic-looking, fiftyish Chinese who spoke pidgin English. He was born in Amoy, China, and talk had it that he started as a junk peddler. He had built up his business well, and during the Occupation he collaborated with the Japanese by providing them with gasoline and diesel engines. He had been a most astute businessman. So well did he manage that after the war his junkyard became a huge automotive shop. He bought American surplus equipment, particularly heavy machinery, by the thousands and then resold these to the government and raked in huge profits by being friendly with government officials. Now his hands were in every kind of moneymaking enterprise. He kept a respectable front, of course, by managing an automotive assembly plant and a chemical factory in Mandaluyong. It was also said that he owned a chain of motels in Pasay City, and these motels were actually classy prostitution dens that catered to politicians, newspapermen, and visiting firemen. Lee knew that he would live and die in the Philippines, and even before World War II he had himself naturalized. He had married his former help — an unlettered Cebuana — and raised a dozen children. His wife was never seen in public and that was to his advantage, because she was reportedly homely and no one would understand why a millionaire like Lee had an ugly wife. She served him more than a wife should serve her husband. Lee registered many of his properties in her name. The fact that Lee was naturalized and had a Cebuana wife and a dozen children rendered him immune to the deportation laws. When the Manila nationalists became vehement with their nationalism, Lee provided them with money. The ads he placed in the newspapers sold not only his automobiles and chemicals, but also decried how aliens were exploiting Filipinos.

The last director to arrive was Senator Reyes. He explained his breathless entrance: there was an important bill on tobacco, which would affect the businesses of Johnny Lee and Alfred Dangmount, and he did not want to be absent from the deliberations of his special committee until he had the bill safely pigeonholed to oblivion for “further study.”

All eight of the board members were present. Lee was complaining about the surveillance that the Bureau of Internal Revenue was placing on his cigarette factory in Pasay. It was simply unthinkable. Did he not contribute more than three hundred thousand pesos to the party so that Senator Reyes and all their friends would win?

“I’ll look into that,” Senator Reyes said, making notes on the pad before him. Johnny Lee settled back on his swivel chair, a grin spreading across his boyish face. “Thank you, Senador ,” he said. That was the only English he spoke during the meeting and “thank you” seemed to be the only words he spoke with a smile. Always, when he spoke, an inscrutable expression clouded his face and his even tone somehow gave the impression that beneath his blandness was cunning and determination.

“Include me, too,” Dangmount groaned from the other end of the table. A southerner, he had come to the Philippines during the Liberation and married into a wealthy family from Negros. With the initial capital he thus acquired and some financial sleight of hand, he built an octopuslike business.

“I’m having a helluva lot of trouble with the bank,” Dangmount snapped at Senator Reyes. “Look, Compadre ,” he turned to Don Manuel with a knowing wink, “I’m getting a lot of questions about that plywood machinery we’re buying for increased operations in Mindanao. Now, if we don’t get that license soon …”

It became clear to Tony that the interests of each were enmeshed in those of the others. The distinction between government, business, and politics was demolished. The controls on dollar exchange were meaningless; Dangmount had worked out a convenient system. The machinery, for instance, was highly overpriced through collusion with the American supplier, in this way the dollars saved from the transaction could be stashed away in Switzerland. It was the same with Johnny Lee and the other board members. The brilliant senator and nationalist was their legal counsel.

Tony tried to justify himself; the capitalists were creating many new jobs. Dangmount, for instance, had started another tile factory and Lee had gone into the manufacture of electronics equipment with transistors imported from Japan and Hong Kong. And there was no one in Congress, of course, more vociferous in his nationalist protestations than Senator Reyes. “I’m doing this for my country and people” was his favorite battle cry.

* * *

“How did you like the members of the board?” Don Manuel asked Tony that same gloomy afternoon in July. “Come on, be honest with me.”

Inside the cool sterility of executive country, inside Don Manuel’s regal office, the mind could be free. The fluorescent lamp burned like liquid silver and the new rug of abaca gleamed like soft gold. Tony said, “Dinosaurs, prehistoric monsters feeding on the weak.”

Don Manuel’s lean, handsome face was emotionless, but his voice was rimmed with disdain: “Well, you should have spoken up at the meeting, Tony. You were free, no one was holding you back.”

“I did not mean to be impolite, Papa,” he said with apprehension for having spoken thus. “But you asked me what I thought.”

Don Manuel shook his head. “Should I be glad now that you kept your trap shut? Just the same, let me remind you, Tony, that you are part of the family now. Don’t you ever, ever forget that.”

“I won’t, Papa,” Tony said solemnly. “I knew that on the day you first talked with me.”

“We understand each other then,” Don Manuel said, smiling. “But when there’s something on your mind, tell me. You know I like discussions …” He was about to say more, but the phone jangled. When Tony left the room Don Manuel was still busy at the phone, emphatically telling Saito San at the other end of the line that the installation of the machinery for the mill should be speeded up even if bottoms had to be chartered to dispatch the machinery from Japan.

Back in his own office Tony gazed through the glass window. Yes, the rainy season had finally come.

The rain was no longer just a brief afternoon shower but part of the seasonal downpour. It would last nine days. The bay churned with white caps and waves leaped up and sprayed the seawall. The boulevard was no longer the ebony black it was when the sun drenched the city. The rain had washed the oil away and the asphalt had lost its sheen. The grass on the boulevard islands, on the hotel fronts, no longer had a bedraggled look. It had turned green. The banaba trees bloomed and their clusters of purple brought throbbing color to the green. His first rainy season after six years evoked many images and odors, the smell of grass, of carabao dung, and of the earth being broken for the seed. These came to him in remembered whiffs whenever he strolled along the boulevard and the scent of the new grass under the feet of other strollers reached his nostrils. But the rain and the seed were no longer within his vision; in this land of dinosaurs nothing would grow.

The job Don Manuel gave Tony did not require technical training or an exemplary business sense. It was, as the entrepreneur had said, public relations. He bought a dozen books on the subject to augment Carmen’s books and he went through them earnestly. The books were all loaded with unblushing seriousness on the necessity of not telling everything and of practicing Dale Carnegie’s approach to life.

He had hired a secretary, too — a pretty Ilocana his sister Betty had recommended. She was twenty-one and was taking political science at the university but had to stop schooling because her parents in La Union could no longer pay her tuition.