Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

The night was quieter when he reached Antipolo. Traffic had not cluttered Blumentritt yet, and beyond the asphalt and the weeds, the street where he once lived was what it had always been — narrow, incongruous, wooden frame buildings thrusting their ugly roofs, their shapeless forms, from the black earth. A few jeepney drivers who lived in the shanties farther up the narrowings and curvings of the road were at Mang Simeon’s store, drinking cheap coffee, their jeepneys parked before the store, waiting for the meager traffic that would stir when the Bicol Express arrived.

It had been weeks since he was here last and he remembered with a dull ache how he had tried to forget the street. Now he was back like some criminal returning to the scene of his crime, for it was here where he had done people wrong — his sister Betty, Emy, and, finally, himself.

He carried his suitcases across the narrow alley flanked with scraggly weeds. The door to which he went was closed, but within the house a faint light burned. He knocked twice, wondering how he would tell his sister what had happened. His knocking did not stir anyone in the house, so he rapped again, this time a little louder, calling out, “Manang Betty, Manang Betty,” his voice resonant in the night.

Finally, a stirring sounded from within. A lightbulb above the door went on and, at the door, Betty’s squeaky voice: “Who is it?”

“Tony,” he said. The door opened and Betty stood before him, looking thinner. He had not seen her since she told him of their father’s death, and the shame that nagged at him now formed an impossible barrier to all that he wanted to say, the words of entreaty and regret. He stood in the light, the suitcases on the ground. The sight of him in the night must have startled his sister and, for a while, they just stood there, wordless. Then Betty spoke, as if this was Tony coming home from school or a binge: “Come in with your things before some rascal picks them up. It’s good you remembered to visit us.”

Tony could glean the sarcasm. He had expected it, for had he not really forgotten them — his sister who had sent him to school and this wooden crate that was home? And yet it did not hurt as much as he had imagined it would, because it was his sister who spoke. She had a right to feel aggrieved. Never had he realized it as fully as he did now that he had really strayed away and forsaken them all the while that he was in Santa Mesa, all the while that he roamed in an ethereal region that was never meant to be his.

Wordless, he followed Betty to the living room. It had not changed, either — the battered bejuco furniture with the knife marks inflicted by his young nephews; the starched white doilies that Emy had left behind; the Ocampo painting that still hung by the staircase, dominating everything in the house with its splurge of color. Yes, nothing in Antipolo was altered.

“I’m not here on a visit, Manang,” he said humbly. “I’m here to stay, and I hope you will take me back.”

Now Betty’s sarcasm was more defined: “What has happened now? Have you at last decided that you belong here and not in that palace in Santa Mesa?” Triumph tinged her voice.

“I don’t know how you will take it,” Tony said, not caring really about what Betty’s answer would be. “Maybe I’m foolish, but I have left Carmen.”

Betty sat on the rattan sofa beside the stairway and regarded her brother. She had become amiable again and she smiled. “Your Manong still snores like a hog, and so do the children. Listen to them now. They didn’t even hear you knocking, although the whole neighborhood has been roused.”

But Tony did not want to talk light. “Tell me, Manang,” he said, “did I do right? Don’t bother about the reason. Did I do right?”

“You have to tell me why you left her,” Betty said.

Tony turned away. “It does not matter, really,” he said. “I quarreled with Carmen, that’s all.” Deep within him what he wanted was confirmation, not denial. What he wanted was sympathy, not the truth.

“You were wrong,” his sister said evenly. “You were wrong to leave. I was trying to tell you: your beginning is there. Not here. This is the end, Tony. You’ll never get the same chance again.”

“But I’m free now,” he insisted, his voice faltering with emotion.

Betty laughed bitterly. “Pride is not for us, it’s for the wealthy. How many times have I told you that?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I mean it,” Betty said. She stood and listened to the snoring from upstairs. She turned to Tony. “How long are you staying here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, rising, too. “Maybe I’ll stay here for as long as you will let me.”

“It will be crowded,” Betty said, her displeasure completely banished. “You’ll be needing quiet. Are you going back to teach at the university? Have you any savings?”

He shook his head. “I will not teach and, of course, I have no money.”

“You will not find this neighborhood quiet anymore. And what will the neighbors say? Everyone knows how well you have married. Everyone teases me when I wear my old rags, or when we have nothing but tuyo for lunch.”

“You are right. I’ll stay here until I find a new place. And, most important, after I find a job.”

“Is that what you will do in the meantime? Look for a job?”

He nodded. “I need the money not only for myself but also for my pledge to you.”

“You can forget that,” Betty said amiably. “As long as your Manong and I have jobs we will be able to send the children to school.”

“I know my duties,” Tony said. “And that’s final. But, really, it’s Emy who worries me most. Her son …”

“She shouldn’t worry you. She can take care of herself and her boy.”

“Yes, she can. But her son … he’s mine, Manang. I didn’t know it until last week when I went to Rosales.”

Betty bent forward, not quite convinced by what she had heard.

“Yes,” Tony repeated, “the boy is mine. Six years — how she has suffered!”

“But Tony, what can you do now?” she asked after a long silence.

“I don’t know.”

“What did she say?”

“She despises me. She didn’t say so, but I felt it.”

“I wouldn’t be so harsh if I were you,” Betty said. “If I know Emy, she would never be that harsh.…”

“She has a right to be harsh,” Tony said.

“But what will you do now? Marry her? You know you can’t do that. We don’t divorce, and Carmen — Will she let you go?”

“I don’t care anymore what she does. And as for Emy, I want to do right by her.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know. Give her things, perhaps — the things she never had. And more so now that there’s the boy. I don’t want him to grow up hating me. I’m his father and it feels so different being one.”

“Still, you can’t marry Emy.”

“I know.”

“I’d like to help you,” Betty said with feeling. He had not asked for her assistance and her offer touched him. “I may have been a little impossible — that’s the schoolteacher for you. But I want to help.”

“The family, we … we will always stick together.”

“You are my brother. You may steal, you may murder, but you are still my brother. I’ll fix you a place to sleep.” She turned and went up the wooden stairs.

Alone in the house where he had known possession and its haunting joy, it finally occurred to him that he was, after all, part of the herd — the herd with the gross instincts of self-preservation.

He stood up and walked to the window. Through the iron bars he looked into Antipolo, which was as dark and disreputable as ever. This is corruption, this is decay of both the spirit and the body, this is home. Then, above his own musings, he heard his brother-in-law, Bert, saying thickly, “I’m sorry, Tony. I was sound asleep, I didn’t know.”