Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

But she was walking beside him now doggedly as a wife should. He wondered if she still recalled Washington and he took her hand. “Remember our first hike?” he asked.

There was no humor in her answer. “Of course,” she said. “I just hope all this is well worth the trouble.”

He did not reply, for he himself was not yet sure. Why was he here among the new hay and what force was it that propelled him beyond the precious confines of the Villa executive country, that made him break out of the full life into this past that was anonymous and dead?

He could not recall when it all started. Maybe, when he was working on his research papers on the Philippine Revolution, or when he was young and his father told him of barren hills and wicked fields and the churning sea, carried him on his shoulder and told him in a pious whisper of still another man, his grandfather, who led them away from the wasteland to the plains, a learned man who could read Latin and speak it like a monastic scholar, who wrote about death and life and the suffering in between. Istak — that was what he was called — and Eustaquio was his Christian name. “Mark him,” his father had said, “for you are descended from a big root.”

“Look,” She said edgily, holding his hand as they went down the margin of the village with their guide ahead of them. “Will we really get something from this? I doubt if this old man has the qualities of a chronicler.”

He smiled inwardly at her prediction. “It’s a quality of the rich,” he said evenly, “to be skeptical, but not of us, we who were made to choose between the sea and the bald hills.” With his hand he made a sweep of the hills at their left — barren and dying. “We always expect the worst and still we are able to laugh.”

“You are talking in poetry again,” she said sourly. “Can’t you stop being so pretty about your tribe?”

The path dipped down a newly harvested field with the bundled grain spread out in the sun. It curved through the field and disappeared into a cluster of marunggay †trees. Within the cluster stood a house.

The man they sought was perched on one of the rungs of the bamboo ladder. He, too, like many of the men they had seen in the region, was spinning cotton. He was barefoot and his trousers of blue Ilocano cloth were frayed at the knees. His toes, unused to shoes, were spread out. He was probably seventy, but his short, white hair made him appear too venerable to have something as trivial as age. He stopped spinning and peered at the faces of his three visitors.

“It’s I, Simang, Grandfather,” the woman who accompanied them said. She took the patriarch’s wrinkled hand and pressed it to her lips. “We have visitors from Manila and they would like to talk to you because you are the oldest here and you know many things.”

Tony greeted the old man amiably, but the eyes that regarded him were cold.

“Yes, I know many things,” the old fellow coughed. “And everything is here, stored in my mind.” He brought his forefinger to his temple and gestured. “Everything there is to know I know.” His beady eyes closed, the old man turned and climbed up.

Tony stood dumbly before the crude ladder, waiting for him to reappear, and when the old man did not return, Carmen nudged Tony. “Perhaps we’d better go.”

Their guide, aware of their discomfiture, mumbled an apology, then went up into the house. In a while she returned and behind her hobbled the old man, looking at them dourly.

“I hope I’m not a bother, Apo ,” he started suavely again.

“Of course you are,” the old man said.

“Don’t mind him, please,” their guide told them and, to the old man, raised her voice. “They were from this place once, Grandfather, and they want to know if some of their relatives are still in our midst.”

The angry countenance vanished. “Who were they, my children?” he bent forward, eager to know. The arrogant chin had dropped and the cracked voice had become warm.

“They left about a hundred years ago,” Tony Samson said simply.

The old man picked up the talk. “A hundred years! I’m not that old, but I know there were many who left in search of better land. I was one of the few who stayed and now I’m alone. I could have gone, too, but my place was destined to be here.”

Tony groped for the proper words. “He was an acolyte, Apo ,” he said, searching the crumpled face for a sign of recognition. “The family name was Samson. My grandfather … he migrated to Rosales. That’s in Pangasinan. He had wanted to go to Cagayan Valley but the land in Pangasinan tempted him. He couldn’t resist.”

“Yes, Pangasinan,” the old man eased his back against the rung. “All of them wanted to go there, where they said rice grew taller than a man. Fate shackled me to this land. Maybe I was not strong enough to cut the umbilical cord that tied me to this place. But there’s no cause for regret. God willing, this land still produces and its kindness still suffices.”

The talk was drifting away and Tony quickly salvaged it. “The family name was Samson, Apo. Surely you know of some people who bear it.”

The old man faced him again. “Samson?” His brow crinkled. “There’s not one Samson in all Cabugaw whom I know. So your grandfather went to Pangasinan, eh? The first trips were difficult, or so I was told, and some were killed by the Igorots. A few drowned in crossing the bloated rivers. I knew of their problems in the new land. I would have joined them, too, but I didn’t feel the need. It’s only now that my days are numbered that I do.”

“You never heard of him, Apo ?” Tony leaned forward and smelled the old man’s sour breath. His voice was impatient, demanding. “He was a scholar, a teacher. All Cabugaw knew him. He started as an acolyte and wrote in Latin, too. That’s what my father remembers.”

“Oh yes,” the old farmer continued. “There were some learned men among those who left.”

“You didn’t know of a Samson among them? Or if there is a Samson left behind?”

The venerable head shook.

“We should have gone to the church first when we passed through the town,” Carmen said sharply as they drove out of the village. He nodded and gazed fondly at the scene once more, the yellow fields, the catuday trees with their edible white flowers, and Po-on itself unchanged and everlasting.

Dusk fell slowly as if it had lengthened the day for him to sum up all — the quiet trees, the blurred shapes of houses. I must find him, press my feet upon his footprints and feel the solid, permanent things his hands shaped. What am I? he had once asked Carmen in a moment of self-scrutiny. Impossible, that’s what you are, she had told him. They had gotten married after some misgivings, but she had always reassured him of his own competence. “Every time I introduce you to my friends I say, I’ve married a man whose wealth does not jingle.” What a condescending cliché! But she believed in it, even before she met him at that cocktail party. She had gone to America ostensibly to take up interior decoration and public relations, but actually, she admitted to him sheepishly later, “to hook a man, since the best hunting ground is no longer Manila or Hong Kong, but America. Look at all my friends or look at the men my sisters bagged — oafs and loafers,” she often told him, “that’s what they are. Why, they can’t even use the word eclectic ; to them, all Marxists are people who should be lined up against a wall.”

She swung the car out of the gravel road and now, on the stone highway, the engine purred steadily. The landscape was flat again and to the right, in the direction of the sea, the sky was a purple ribbon stretched along the far horizon.