Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“Oh, Tony! How could you believe such things?” she said softly and tears filled her eyes. “How could you think of me that way?”

He turned away, unable to look at her. “Forgive me,” he stammered. “Emy, please forgive me.”

She was sobbing quietly now. “Those days,” she said after a while, “I was so alone. I couldn’t tell anyone — no one.” She turned to him, the tears glistening in her eyes. “At first I wanted to have the baby removed. I wanted that desperately. I thought about it. I stayed out late, even hoping that some accident would happen to me. Then I thought of you and how you would feel. And somehow it wasn’t so dark anymore. I knew that someday you would find out, someday you would return. That was why I went home, not caring anymore about what people would think.”

“Believe me,” he said tremulously, Tm sorry. I prayed for you. I thought of you. I was lonely and frightened many times. But when I thought of you …”

Her hand slid into his, but she did not clasp it. Her touch was not a caress. It was just a gesture that she understood. “I always knew that you’d be somebody and that you’d come back important, someone we could all look up to.”

This was Emy — the Emy he knew. She had not quite freed herself from the embrace of an old, banished dream.

“What do the neighbors say?” he asked after a while.

“About you? They all know that you have become important. But they … they are what they will always be, Tony. You can’t move away from this place. You have known that all along — you and I.”

That was it — both of them understood the great and staggering distance he had finally spanned. “Son,” his father had told him once, “it takes those who have suffered to understand and be kind to the suffering.” Those were the days his father had carried him on his shoulders and they had gone to the caving banks of the creek. There they had caught shrimps and, beyond the creek, in the delta, they had planted watermelons. It was there that his father had cleared the land and there, too, the sky was kind and the field bountiful. But the ilustrados came armed with cadastres and Torrens titles. The ilustrados dispossessed his father and his grandfather, and in time the land became anonymous and cramped. Beyond the plain even the infertile hills were plowed, the grass was burned, and at night the hills glowed as flames licked the skies. But even when the hills were bald at last, the grain that was planted there was not enough. False lawyers came to their house and promised aid. Flushed and happy, his mother had busted her bamboo bank open and handed the lawyers her savings — coins grown greenish with mold. The lawyers left and afterward he heard the hollow laughter of his father. They had all been cheated. And then there was more: the Rich Man came and demanded the grain in the granaries. This was when his father had said, “This time, it will be my way.” His father went away for days and when he returned he wore this red band across his chest. He had become a colorum , a rebel. It was that way with his father, it was that way with his grandfather, and it would be that way with all men who lose hope.

But it would be different with him. While the old rage was quiet now it still pulsed faintly within him — to remind him that here in Cabugawan was the beginning of perception, and here he should be true. But even Cabugawan had been conveniently forgotten. He did not want to dwell on empty phrases, but he could not bring himself to be blunt, not to Emy. “I could have come here last May when I arrived.…”

“You didn’t,” she said simply.

“There were many things I had to do. The university … well, I told you that education means so much nowadays. I had to make sure of my position there. And then I got into trouble with Dean Lopez. But I haven’t lost the interest I’ve always had. Remember how I used to tell you about going back to the Ilocos to trace our grandfather’s past?”

She leaned toward him, her face alight with expectation. “Yes — and what did you find?”

“A book written by him. He was a wise man, all right — and a brave man, just as Father said.”

He stood up and looked out the window, to the now vacant lot where their old house once stood. He could see it now — the pitched grass roof, the buri csidings, and the granary behind it. Where the well used to be was a shallow indention now. Beyond the vacant yard was the alley that dipped down to the banks of the creek where he and the children of Cabugawan used to swim.

“What is the book like?” she asked.

“It’s in Latin and I can’t understand all of it. I’ll show it to you when you come to Manila. Would you like to go to Cabugaw one of these days? It’s not a big town, Emy, but it is well-preserved.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I’d like to see places — visit Antipolo, too, and Manang Betty, but I can’t. I’m not like you, Tony. Here,” she became apologetic, “here, every centavo means much. You understand …”

He nodded and sat back. He picked up the glass of warm Coca-Cola and drank all of it.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” he asked.

“What else? Making a living,” she pointed to the sewing machine — an old Singer — by the window. Beside it was a glass case with a few folded dresses. “You don’t know how fortunate I have been. Almost all the important people here are my customers, even the mayor’s wife. I didn’t know that it was easy to sew.”

That was not what he wanted to know, so he told her, “I want to help. Please let me.”

“Help me? I don’t need any help.”

“Please don’t speak to me like this. I’ve suffered, it’s true.”

“And I? Father— Before he died he beat me as if I were a beast of burden. But I did not tell him. Or anyone. I kept it all to myself, until Bettina …”

“Oh, Emy …”

“There was no other way.”

“You could have written to me and told me and I would have hurried home. If you had only answered my letters!”

“Oh, God,” she said, her voice almost a moan. “We are cousins, have you forgotten that? How could I tell you? And besides—”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

She went on, not minding him: “Both of us— We are older now, we can look back. I would have been a weight on your shoulders.”

“And how did I feel?”

“That isn’t all,” she said, bending forward. “You were alone in America, and it was your studies that mattered most. Then I learned about you and Carmen Villa.…”

Even as she spoke, even as she sat beside him, who had now grown thin and ravaged by work, he could still trace the fine contour of her face and, hearing her, he sank back to another time.

“I did not want to stand in your way,” she said softly.

“How is the boy?” he asked, not caring to talk about his wife.

She was filled with pride. “He’s a fine boy — and think, he is in grade one now! He is bright. I don’t help him with his homework.”

“How does he look?”

“He has your eyes. And his family name is Samson.”

The old anguish lashed at him. “Emy, why didn’t you tell me? It would have been so simple and everything would have been all right.”

“What are you complaining about?” she asked. “You are doing well. And look at us, at Bettina — she can’t even go to college.”

“Emy …” his voice trailed of into silence. Then he straightened and faced her again. “There must be something I can do.”

“There’s always something you can do.”

“Let me take him with me. Let me bring him to the city.”

Her answer was quick. “And what will your wife say?”

“I’ll find a way.”