Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Beyond the houses were clumps of bamboo, and beyond the bamboo were the fields his grandfather had cleared.

Cabugawan was the past and the present, never the future. The immensity of this fact was all around him — the cluster of thatched houses, the smell of slow decay under the kitchens, the manure of pigs and work animals, the broken-down fences.

The house where Emy lived was bigger than most of the houses in the sitio. It was roofed with cogon like the rest, but its posts were broad and solid parunapin ; aand the bamboo for the floor had been carefully selected and dried. Emy’s father, who was his father’s brother, had boasted once that not even termites as big as cockroaches could bite into it. Now, to him whose mind was inured to the broad, soaring dimensions of the city, the house appeared pathetically small, and smaller yet were the houses around it.

The lone dirt road of Cabugawan was quiet. A few pigs grunted and wallowed in a side ditch. The sun played on the marunggay trees and the gumamela hedges. Nearing Emy’s house at the far end of the road, his legs became wobbly and his heart thumped so loud he could hear it.

He pushed the bamboo gate and walked up the gravel path. The San Francisco hedge that lined it was taller now. Within the house a figure scurried to the door.

“Manong, come up,” Bettina said happily, going down two rungs of the ladder.

“It’s good to be here,” he said lightly.

He went up with her and at the top of the flight, his eyes still unused to the dimness of corners, he looked around him. At one end of the house, in the kitchen, were the earthen drinking jars, the sooty cubicle where the stoves slumped, and to his right was the living room, its door bright with cotton curtains. Across the shiny bamboo floor two wide sash windows framed dangling pots of begonia. The wall clock on the bare post was no longer ticking. Its pendulum was still. On the sawali bwall that separated the living room from the single bedroom of the house hung Emy’s high school diploma. The whole house smelled clean and lived-in.

Bettina led him to the living room and bade him sit on the rattan sofa by the window. Before him was a glass-topped table with a crocheted doily, an album of pictures, and tattered magazines.

“And Emy?” he asked.

“She’s not at home right now, and I’m glad.” The girl sat beside him. “I’m sorry I ever went to Manila to see you. I shouldn’t have gone at all.”

“It was best that you did.”

Bettina drew away. “No,” she said. “I had to tell her that I saw you. It would change things, I hoped. I doubt it now.”

From the direction of the stairs: “Tina, did Mrs. Salcedo come for her dress? I’m so tired. I couldn’t finish it today.”

Bettina stood up. He followed her to the door but didn’t go beyond the curtains. Emy stood there, big as life, grown older now and slimmer, and on her face were the cares of motherhood that had come too soon.

“Tony, you haven’t changed at all,” she said almost in a whisper, the recognition in her voice dull and empty, as if she did not want to utter his name. She stood there, her hands limp at her sides, her fragile face a shadow of her youth. And in that instant, as the truth clawed at him, he wanted to hold her, to touch her face and trace the lines on it with his fingers, and tilt her chin to feel the warmth of her lips. But it would not be right anymore; he had become another man and was not who he had once been. He had come looking for what he had lost in another time and another land or, perhaps, in his own mind. He could not be sure now. He was sure only of this woman before him, not the girl he had known but a woman who had suffered alone. It was not my fault, it was not my fault, he thought, attempting to exculpate himself.

“Tony,” she repeated, “you didn’t have to come — or believe Bettina.” To her sister, who hovered wordless nearby, she said, serenely: “And you, what is cooking in the kitchen? Oh, you should prepare something, something …”

“I’m not staying for lunch.” Tony wanted to be polite, but Emy would have none of it. She did not even let him finish. She turned, saying, “I must go down and get something for you — a soft drink and, yes, you must have lunch with us.”

She ran down the stairs, her handkerchief pressed to her mouth.

Tony sat back amid the noiseless whirl of welcome. Bettina was enthusiastic again: “I have been reading the things you wrote and, of course, Manang Emy has clipped them all. You should see the scrapbook she made. Ask her when she returns. She locks it in there,” she said, pointing to the aparador with a glass door at one end of the living room. “But you haven’t written anything for a long time.”

“A year,” he told her.

“What’s the matter? You don’t have the time anymore?”

“It isn’t that,” he said. Gathering courage, he asked, “How is he?”

“Who?”

“The boy.”

“Pepe? He is fine. But he won’t be here until lunch time. School, you know.”

“What grade is he in?”

“First. A very smart boy. You are not going to teach again?”

“Not anymore,” he said dully.

She betrayed her disappointment. “Manong,” Bettina said, “you should keep on writing.” A hissing sound came from the kitchen and the girl stood up. “It’s the rice I’m cooking,” she said.

She did not join them when Emy returned with a bottle of Coca-Cola. It was warm and it was only out of politeness that he accepted the drink. She sat on the chair opposite him — dear Emy — and her eyes were lustrous.

She spoke naturally and with ease. “Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing? Bettina tells me that you are no longer at the university. And you worked so hard for that job. What are you doing now?” She piled the questions one on top of the other and did not give him much of a chance to talk.

“I’m working in an office,” he said, looking at her, thinking of her as he knew her, and his answers were too concise, but she did not seem to care.

“How long ago did you return? You’ve stopped writing, I heard. No, it’s not your fault. I understand. You said that you wanted to go to Spain. Tell me about Spain. Oh, Tony, you have so many things to tell me. And I’m so eager to hear. Remember all the plans you had, the places you wanted to visit? How you would go sailing up the Volga and the Yangtze if you had your way? How many great rivers did you cross?”

“Not many,” he said. “Yes, I remember all that I told you in Antipolo.”

Then silence came between them, a heavy and meaningful silence.

When she spoke again her voice was wistful. “I’m happy for you. Don’t feel sorry for me. Life is difficult — that’s to be expected. But you know how life in Rosales always is.”

“I had difficult times, too,” Tony said. “There was a winter I almost starved. I had to walk great distances. It was not easy living in America. The fellowship was not enough. I had to work in the summers. It was hard work.”

“I wish I could have helped you,” Emy said with sympathy. “But I couldn’t, Tony. I couldn’t …” and her voice trailed off into silence again.

“I thought of you a lot of times. Many times,” Tony said after a while, and, speaking thus, he could not look at this woman who had borne his child, who had loved him and cherished his memory. “I couldn’t understand why it turned out this way. I should have come to you right away when I got back. But Manong Bert … when I got home,” he paused and the words knotted in his throat, “he said many things. Manang Betty, too. That you had gone wild. You never wrote to me and it was so easy to believe all that I heard.…”