Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

She smiled wryly. “And when you have children, what then?”

Tony spoke slowly, as if he was ashamed of what he had to say. “Carmen— She does not want a baby. She could have had one, but last July … she aborted.”

A complaint was stifled in her throat. “And it has to be my child. You can adopt one — it’s so easy nowadays.”

“I am thinking of the boy. It would mean a load off your back.” He swept the room with one knowing glance. “And besides, I can give him a better education, so many things in life you won’t be able to give. He will go to the best schools — even to the United States afterward. He will not know hunger and want. This is for the best, Emy, I’ll tell Carmen the boy is mine—”

She cut him off. “It’s all very clear.” Bitterness tinged her voice. “Now money is everything — everything. You came here not because you want to. Tony, what has happened to you? You did not talk like this before. You did not mention hunger and money before as if these were all that mattered.” Then she asked, “What has happened to you? What has changed you.”

He could not shut off from his ears the words that implied his destruction. “You don’t have to hurt me further,” he said humbly. “Isn’t it enough that I am here, unable to look after the boy and see him grow?”

“He will grow up properly,” she said.

“You are strong,” he said. “I would like to say that I’m weak, but I don’t want to make excuses.”

“Stop talking like that! Look at me, at my hands. What do you see? Years. What have I done? Look at him when he comes. I haven’t complained.”

“What do you want me to do then, for you and the boy?”

“Nothing,” she said, the pride shining again in her eyes like jewels. Her hands were on the windowsill. Beyond the window the sun dripped white. She wanted nothing and she was right. She had always been able to take care of herself anywhere, even here in Cabugawan, where dreaming had stopped and the only certitude was the bondage of the fields beyond.

“Be honest with me,” he asked her.

“I have never lied to you,” she said. “Have I ever? You were everything. I looked up to you. This place cannot produce another like you. It just won’t happen anymore. Father, before he died, said this, too. We all know this.”

“Tell me then where I have failed.”

“It’s too late,” she murmured, looking away.

“Do you still believe in me?”

“Yes … yes.” She was alive again. “Why shouldn’t I believe in you?”

“Will you do what I will ask of you?”

“Anything,” she said with alacrity. “I’ll do anything, but please, Tony, don’t ask me to give up the boy. He is all that I have. Please believe that.”

“Even if it would be for the best?”

“You are not the one to decide that,” she said. “Look at you, the years that you were away. I slaved for the boy. I want him to grow up like you, Tony. And someday he will leave Cabugawan, too. And when he does I’ll see to it that he doesn’t forget where he came from.”

“I haven’t forgotten anyone,” Tony said lamely.

“I’m sure of that,” she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

Tony glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve and in a while the shrill blast of the rice-mill whistle near the railroad station came to them.

“He will be here soon,” Emy said. “It’s a short walk from the school — if he hasn’t stopped to play.”

His legs felt watery again and his heart thumped. “What will I tell him?” he asked, hoping that she would help him.

Emy did not answer. She clasped her hands and looked away.

“Tell me that I’m useless,” he stumbled on the words.

“You aren’t,” she said.

He got up and stood by the window, remembering the schoolhouse, the stone porch, and the gumamela hedges, the mango tree in the yard, Emy in pigtails when she was young and in bare feet, cleaning the schoolroom with coconut husk.

“There he is now,” Emy said behind him. He turned to see at the far end of the street the boy walking toward the house, a bundle of books under his arm. He asked in a strangled voice, “Tell me, what should I tell him?” He turned to her and her face was calm.

“The truth,” she said. “Someday he will find out, and when he does I want him to know it from you. He has asked me and I’ve told him what there is to tell.”

“And what is that?”

“I used to hope that when you returned you would remember. So I told him that his father was in some distant land. That was what I could honestly say. And then …” she stopped and looked away, her lips trembling, “and then I found out that you had gotten married. I wished you well, Tony. But the boy— When he asked me again I said that I did not know where his father was. I hadn’t heard and perhaps I would never hear from his father again. I told him to get used to that, growing up without having his father around.”

As the footsteps sounded on the gravel path, as the rungs of the bamboo ladder creaked under his puny weight, in Tony’s mind the words formed: I am your father. I am your father.…

But he did not speak aloud when the boy was finally before him, slender of build, with soft hair and eyes as dark and lustrous as his mother’s; any man would have been proud to have someone like this young thing, barefoot and brown from the sun, with a firm chin. Yes, anyone would have been proud to claim this boy as his son.

Tony was proud, but only for an instant, for his pride turned quickly into confusion and even despair as the boy turned to his mother and kissed her lightly on the cheek. To the boy Emy said quietly, “Go to him, Pepe, and kiss his hand.”

Their eyes met and there could have been recognition and that spark of genuine affinity that comes only between a father and his son, but when their eyes met he only felt that he was a stranger to this boy and that he no longer belonged to this small, stifling room.

To him the boy went, but Tony did not extend his right hand as Emy had wanted. Kneeling down, he held the boy instead, held him close to his chest, felt the boy’s quick breathing upon his face and smelled the sun upon his son’s skin. Much as he wanted to proclaim to this boy that he had found his father, the words in his mind would not take shape, and he could only say, in a voice filled with emotion and tenderness, “Son, son,” and this boy, this six-year-old innocent, escaped from his clumsy embrace and rushed back to his mother. Then, wordless, the young eyes still questioning. What is in his young mind now? What does he think of me? Is it time to tell him everything or must he find out the truth in his own time and in his own way?

The question was like thunder in the narrow room: “Is he my father, Mama?”

An eternity slipped by, and in this eternity Antonio Samson died. He did not speak, and when the silence was broken it was Emy who said, “No, Pepe. He is not your father. He is a dear, old friend, a relative, someone from this place who thinks he loves all of us.”

* Gumamela: Hibiscus.

† Banaba: A tree with medicinal leaves and flowers.

‡ Municipio: The town hall.

§ Cadena de amor: A climbing vine with small pink flowers (literally “chain of love,” Sp.).

‖ Sagat: The hardest Philippine wood; it is used for house posts and railroad ties.

a Parunapin: A type of hardwood tree.

b Sawali: A coarse twilled matting of flattened bamboo strips used in the Philippines for partitions, walls, and baskets.

c Buri: Talipot palm; a showy fan palm of the Philippines.

It was early evening when Tony reached home. Carmen was out and the maid simply said that Ben had picked her up at sundown. He brought his manuscripts out and went through them again, but the urge to work escaped him. At suppertime, when Carmen was not yet back, he went down to dinner without her.