Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Tony turned away and the air suddenly felt watery. The words gouged at him until it seemed impossible for him to retain a secret thought, and his innermost cerebrations were in the open, raw and exposed. He balled his fists and under his breath he said, “Damn you and damn your pretensions! You’d give your right arm to be in my place.”

And then he regretted every word the moment all had tumbled out.

An uncomfortable silence, and Charlie, his small voice sharp as a blade, said, “Now, both of you, this is supposed to be my evening, so let’s get moving.”

They stood up and morosely went down the flight of stairs to the dusty street, where they got into a cab. Conversation was bare. In Ermita they entered the first bar they saw.

Godo, toying with his glass of beer, started it again. “You should have married your cousin Emy, Tony. That was your mistake. You should have carried her off, then lived — just the two of you.”

“You are dreaming,” Tony said curtly. “This country is so small that you can’t hide a needle in it.”

“I’m sure it would have turned out better for you,” Godo insisted.

“Don’t talk like that,” Tony said, shaking his head. “It’s bad enough as it is.”

The name, loved and lingering yet, stirred the imperishable hurt. His head slightly dizzy with drink, he drifted again to another place and time, to that high noon in Rosales when, after seven long years, he finally saw Emy and the boy, her son, his son — Emy braving everything, the world, because these were her real treasures: faith and courage and this boy who might someday grow to loathe him, to spit at the very mention of his name. He did not tell them what had happened long ago in that small wooden house by the railroad tracks in Antipolo, the Igorot blanket that was flung across the room that he and Emy shared.

“So what if you are cousins,” Godo pursued the subject. “You should have gone right ahead and gotten a dispensation from the pope. Those Negros hacenderos would marry their sisters just to keep their haciendas from breaking apart. Now I’m not saying it’s incest. If it were love …”

“It’s not incest,” Tony said, breathing deeply, hoping that Godo would stop. Then he could not dam the words anymore, and, looking away, he spoke barely above a whisper, “I saw Emy only last week. Emy has a child. And the child …”

“Oh, well,” Godo said expansively, and bluntly, “I was just saying how much better it would have been if Emy were already married, then there’d be no more problem. But Carmen, hell, Tony, you are worlds apart. Art, truth, beauty — these are never in the world of the Villas, and you … you had so much promise. You still could fulfill that promise if—”

Tony glared at his inquisitor and said aloud, almost for everyone in the bar to hear, “Emy’s son is six years old — the time I was in America, all the time I was there.… Can’t you see? The child is mine! And that’s not all.” The words flowed freely now and he could not stop. “My father— I never told you about him. I never told anyone about him, not even you whom I call my closest friends. He had rotted in jail and I let him die there. I didn’t even claim his body. And do you know who he was and what he did? Listen, he was a brave man, braver than all of us. He burned down our town hall; he killed a hacendero and three soldiers. He was as brave as no one among us will ever be. And I … I’m a coward because I’ll never be able to whisper my father’s name without recoiling at my own shame. Now do you know what I really am?”

Silence, the hum of an air-conditioning unit, the clinking of glasses at the counter, and the squeaky laughter of a girl somewhere in the shadowed cubicles.

Then Charlie spoke. “Life is always sad. That’s what makes suicide so tempting, because life is all that we really have and haven’t. Death makes us equals, too, because the foul and the good all die. The past, the present, and the future — what escape is there from these? None. And yet sometimes we are life’s happy victims.”

“What are you trying to say?” Godo asked with a smirk. “That we should all commit suicide?”

“No,” Charlie said resolutely, “that we should accept life and live it. Life is to be lived. It’s that simple.”

Godo turned to Tony. “Does Carmen know?”

Tony nodded without looking up. “She had a right to know. I told her the moment I returned from Rosales.”

“How did she take it?” Charlie asked.

“Civilized,” Tony said. “Carmen is always like that. It’s her passion to have people act civilized.”

Silence again, then Charlie tried to salvage what little exuberant mood was left. He called a waitress who was seated on one of the stools near the bar and asked her to join them.

She was pert and young and talkative, a Cebuana, according to her, who had finished home economics in one of the exclusive convent schools in the city and would have gone places had she not become too trusting with men. Now, look where she was, talking with slobs who did not care about her feelings, who considered her no more than someone who could be pawed all over in one evening and forgotten the next.

Tony ignored her prattle. The night was suddenly a senseless void. What he had hidden in his private consciousness had finally been exposed. The long skein had been unraveled and in the end was this: people knew, and no amount of protestation could prove how sincerely he had loved Carmen, that he would have willingly hied back to the university, to the hopeless drudgery of it all if only to show that he did not care for her money but only for her.

He did not care for Carmen’s money?

He lingered on the thought and found that it was not as absolute as he had wanted it. All his life he had known that dead end called Antipolo, he had known hunger — and not just the spiritual kind but also that merciless and embarrassing physical hunger, not just for food but also for all the things he could not possess.

After trying to caress the obstinate waitress, Godo suggested that they go find someplace where the women were more reasonable if not cooperative. But the brief encounter could not be forgotten, and shortly before midnight, after more senseless palaver in an Ermita bar called Surrender, Tony stood up. Holding his wallet, he said, “I feel guilty. You know how it is. It’s my in-laws’ big day. Carmen’s father — you understand, don’t you, Charlie?”

Charlie nodded. Tony motioned to the waiter, but Godo stopped him. “You don’t have to pick up the tab every time you are with us just because you are an ersatz Villa now,” he said with a boisterous laugh. “We still have some money and self-respect.”

He could not hold his contempt for Godo any longer. He had always been nice to him, particularly after his marriage, because Godo could be useful to the Villas and to himself, but tonight the insult must not pass.

“Don’t talk to me about self-respect,” he said with quiet fury. “You haven’t got any. You accept bribes just like the people you condemn — and don’t say that you didn’t get two thousand from Don Manuel for that lousy story you wrote about him. I have the canceled check and I can hang it on your neck anytime I want.”

He had said what he wanted most to say for the last few days, and a great and solemn peace filled him.

Godo jabbed a finger at him. Charlie’s glass of beer in the middle of the table toppled, but no one moved to escape the spreading blot.

“Is that your view of corruption?” Godo asked with a sneer. “You really have come a long way, Tony. You identify yourself with the Villas now. I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry for your children, and I’m sorry for this goddam country that permits people like you to go to college and then go about speaking as you do. Hell, you haven’t been educated at all. Nor have you grown up. I pity you.”