Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Tony said. “I hope it will be better tomorrow. It’s good, though, that it came out.”

“Well, this is going to be an important party. The first mill of its kind in the country. Don’t you think that’s important? And look at the motif that I designed. Steel Party — don’t you think that’s novel enough?”

Don Manuel looked up from his paper. His tone was paternal: “The mill is important, hija , but its place is in the construction or industrial pages of the newspapers. You should thank Tony that he was able to do something about it.”

Mrs. Villa dropped the paper and said to Tony, “I don’t have to thank you. You know that I’m grateful — if what you do is right.”

Tony smiled. “I know, Mama,” he said.

Mrs. Villa stirred the cup of chocolate the maid had placed before her. “I wish you’d invite those friends of yours in the newspapers. And your sister in Antipolo, too. What’s her name again?”

“Betty, Mama.”

“Don’t forget now. I asked you to invite them. They may think you have forgotten them. And did you tell them that they are welcome in this house? I want you to know that your friends are welcome here.”

“I’ve told them that, too, Mama, but I don’t think they will come.”

Mrs. Villa lowered her cup and turned back to Tony severely. “Isn’t this house, isn’t this party good enough for them?”

Tony grinned. “One of them, Charlie — you remember him, I hope, the thin fellow — well, he is getting married and tonight we are giving him a party.”

“So you won’t come to the party, either?”

“I will, Mama, of course. But it will be later in the evening. I hope you understand …”

“No, I don’t,” Mrs. Villa said crisply. “Aren’t you proud of your papa’s work?”

Manuel Villa tapped his wife lightly on the hand. “Tony has already told me. And if it would make you feel better, he has taken no chances with the press photographers. They will be here, won’t they, Tony?”

He had given them fifty pesos each for “taxi fare.” “Yes, Papa,” he said simply.

“Well, bring your friends just the same. Even if it’s late. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mama.”

Mrs. Villa sipped her chocolate gingerly. With the vitamin pill in a cup before her, the chocolate was her only breakfast. She had long been trying to lose weight. She even attended sessions in a reducing salon and consulted a hypnotist who had been, for a few months, the rage among the flabby women in her circle, but she did not seem capable of losing a single ounce, and she looked stouter now than she did when Tony first met her.

When she finished her cup she stood up. “Your friends, don’t forget, they may think we have forgotten them simply because this party is for your papa’s friends.” She turned and waddled out to the garden.

Don Manuel laid the papers aside and looked at Tony, who had finished breakfast and was reading the paper Mrs. Villa had not finished.

“Try to be here,” Don Manuel reminded him. “And the press release — I hope you’ll use real influence this time. You know how your mama is. The society page is her life. You must do something to make tonight memorable.”

“I’ll try my best, Papa,” he said.

The older man stood up and beckoned to him. They walked to the terrace and down the lawn. “I wonder if the kind of decor your mama has selected can be made.” Don Manuel paused and gave the balcony above the terrace and the massive rear of the house a careful look, followed by a little head shaking.

Two men were up on the tile roof, stringing lines of colored lightbulbs from there to a bough of the acacia tree, on which another worker had nimbly perched himself. The acacia would blaze tonight — like a foundry, as Mrs. Villa described it.

Apparently pleased with the work, Don Manuel sighed. Then, turning to Tony, he put an arm around his son-in-law’s shoulder: “I know,” he said in a jocund voice, “the mill never got your whole-hearted approval.” A slight laugh. “I know that for a fact although you never said it aloud.”

Tony felt embarrassed. “That is not fair, Papa,” he said.

“Don’t apologize. I know you are capable of swearing, and tonight — since there will be a lot of foreigners around — I hope you’ll stop being so educated and polite. I’d like to hear a few swear words for a change. Don’t think of them as people. Just think of them as business partners.”

“The term is rather misleading, Papa.”

“See what I mean? You don’t approve,” Don Manuel said with a hint of annoyance. “Didn’t we settle this long ago when I asked you to stop teaching? At the salary they were giving you, you were being exploited. I’m glad you changed your mind. I admit that with your connections with the papers and with your own capabilities as a writer …”

“A writer of press releases, Papa.”

“Hell,” the older man laughed, “you can call it what you wish, but I must thank you for the good that you have done. The opposition was terrific but, somehow, you helped allay all the misgivings. In the meantime, just think of tomorrow. The new factory will mean just that: more employment, cheaper goods.”

“Papa,” he said, realizing again how alien, how strange the word sounded every time he disagreed with Don Manuel, “there are other things you can do. Perhaps — this is just a suggestion …”

“Tony, you know very well that you can speak your mind. After all, once my mind is made up, no one — not even your mama — can change it.”

“Well, since you are already in a position to do as you please …”

“Correction, Tony. I’m not in a position to do as I please. A man cannot be a builder and be free. A builder always has to compromise. He has to be friendly with senators and banking officials. That is obvious. Even in America many builders have to depend on government contracts. And government means politicians.”

“There are other ways,” Tony insisted. “Compromise means slavery. If it is not the politicians — the bad ones, I mean — who will control this country, then it will be the Chinese or the Japanese. The Americans already do.”

“Can we escape that?” Don Manuel asked. “Talk to the others who are less fortunate than we. We would all like to be straight, Tony. Would you rather close shop and throw to the streets the many workers who remained loyal to you in the black years when you were not doing well?”

“Still, with courage …”

Don Manuel flopped down on one of the stone benches that stood on the side of the pathway that led away from the pool. He shook a manicured forefinger at Tony. “Listen to me,” he said sadly. “When you are in business you can’t borrow without collateral. Courage and a good heart — what are these when banks demand figures? Ask Dangmount and Johnny Lee. Why are we partners.”

“Life would be empty if there was no courage in it,” Tony said.

“Yes,” Don Manuel said. “Life and the world would be empty. But think, hasn’t it always been empty since the world began? And do not tell me, as Godo and some of your newspaper friends are insinuating, that our cold-bloodedness was brought here by the Americans and their materialism. Or by the last war and its wantonness. It’s been here since time began. The original sin is as menacing as ever. We are all beasts. There is no man who can claim he isn’t. He can’t have integrity for breakfast. Progress comes not because there are people who are free but because there are people who are happily enslaved by their desire to own Cadillacs.”

“After one has satisfied the baser instincts, one can try to be human,” Tony said with conviction. “But here you’ll be—” the words were difficult in coming, “a dummy.…”