Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Bert was standing beside him in his underwear as chubby as ever. His hair was still cropped short and his face shone swarthy and full in the light.

“It’s I who should be sorry, Manong. Waking you up at such an hour.”

“Betty told me about your leaving Carmen. It’s a big mistake. You know what I mean.”

He smiled. “I don’t think it’s a mistake, Manong.”

Betty joined them. “Go on up and sleep,” she said, tugging at his sleeve.

Tony sat down on the sofa instead. All of you have a reason to go on living, he thought, but I have lost everything that is good and true. Emy, the future — I’ve lost all of it because there is inherent corruption in me. It’s something entwined with my flesh and I can’t wash it off. My God, I should have known this long ago. I should have known then that I was weak and that I hadn’t suffered enough. He turned the words over in his mind, and because they were true, he pounced on them as if they were the only nuggets his soul could treasure.

“I am not really sleepy,” he said, laying a hand on the old narra sofa. It had a lot of bedbugs once and he remembered how he took it out in the sun between the railroad tracks and poured boiling water on it, then left it there, exposed, the whole, hot afternoon.

“Your bed upstairs is being used by the boys now,” Betty said, “but I will spread a mat for you on the floor. It’s not soft — you haven’t slept on the floor for years, I know. But it will be daylight soon.”

“It’s all right,” Tony said. “I’ll go out and take a walk and maybe I’ll be able to think better.” He lied, of course, because never before had his mind been as clear as it was now. He moved to the door.

“You need sleep,” Bert said.

“It’s all right, Manong,” he said. “I need the walk more.”

They accompanied him to the door, telling him to be careful because this was Antipolo and not Rosales, and danger lurked in the crevices and alleys. He stepped out into the night after appropriate assurances that he could really take care of himself here in Antipolo, which was the beginning. Would this also be the end?

The realization that it was swept over him and strangled all hope, all sense of enduring life. He had gone so far, trying to leave Rosales and then Antipolo. He could not return to Rosales now, not anymore, for he could not face Emy, whom he had wronged, or look into the eyes of his son, who would grow up in a world he might not want and might never be able to change. But the boy would be different. He would take after his mother, who would dote on him, teach him, and imbue him with a courage as true as blood. That was it: the boy would be rooted in the land, unlike him who had severed his roots. And while he could hope for the boy and keep him always in his thoughts, Tony could not reach out to him, hold his hand, claim kinship with him. He had sinned not only against Emy but also against this son and, from the depths of him, the agony was wrenched out: Emy, forgive me, forgive me.

There was no warm hand to touch him and tell him everything was going to be all right. There was no Emy to loosen the deadening grip of what he had discovered — that it was she whom he really loved; it was Emy after all who was a part of him, who could have been his salvation if he had possessed but a fraction of her faith.

He was here in this desolate and meaningless geography, this Antipolo. Yes, this would be the end, when all his life he had tried to run away from it, repudiate it, this ugly street and its clinging smell of old ammonia and foul decay. And now he was back, inexorably, it seemed, because there was nowhere else he could turn, not Rosales and Emy, who had sent him away, not the university, which he had discarded, and not Newspaper Row, either, because there his frustration would rekindle itself into that wild, consuming fire that had already burned out men of more vigor and vision than he. Would he end up like Godo and Charlie, afraid of the slightest stirring of the wind, who had sublimated their fears and their insecurity with senseless bravado? No, none of these alternatives were for him.

The knowledge that he had been rejected implicitly by everyone, that there was really no place he could turn to now for one single, saving bit of peace, of belonging, shriveled all his pride. He had never felt as lonely as he felt now — not even in America, in that iron-cold winter, nothing of this terrible loneliness had ever touched him before, for it was too huge, too engulfing to be defined. Although, of course, it was not new, for this loneliness was actually the final growth of that greater loneliness called truth or living that had corroded him from the start without him actually being aware.

Perhaps it would help if he cried just a while. Then the ache would be eased. But only a sob broke in his throat. No tears came to his eyes, and the tightening vise upon his chest seemed to choke all blood and breath.

He turned to the alley that ended in the railroad tracks, and from the distance he heard the unmistakable whistle of the train — the Bicol Express, perhaps — echoing in the early dawn.

Now the vision was clear and reassuring, as if he had vaulted the last terrifying abyss of doubt. It was not so much really what Carmen had done that tortured his mind; he could forgive her easily, for he was, after all, broad-minded and capable of taking a less personal attitude to her treachery — did he not believe in the ulog and in the primordial faithlessness of man’s urges? Perhaps they could still make something out of their marriage and he could still live with her and share with her the beneficence of the Villas, making believe that this was what he wanted, this surfeit of ease.

But it was not as simple as that; it was not so much what she did that was the gentle nudge, the flimsy straw, the last turn of the screw — it was what she had told him, what was behind the act, inconsequential in its implication but too damning, too grievous in magnitude and meaning to be ignored; the act had peeled off the last skein that had shielded him from the truth.

What he would do now was not for Carmen, that would be granting her too much value. It would be for himself more than anyone. It would be the only act by which he could illustrate to himself his own brand of courage. He was, after all, his father’s son.

He brought to mind the grandfather he had never seen, the acolyte who served God and had written in Latin of ambition and humility. And he wondered how that brave and illustrious forefather had died, if in that last moment of lucidity and conscience he had believed, had no cankering doubts, as Tony now doubted — not only the wisdom but the very existence of a just and powerful God who rewarded virtue and goodness so that these might be perpetuated and spread like blessings upon the face of a land that was damned. You kill Him who doubt Him. The thought came briefly, but in this hour, surrounded by poverty’s bleak conquest, by need’s sorriest shapes, he could feel no piety, not the slightest twinge of regret for what he must do. It was no sin. It was no sin, and if there was sin, it was not his but those of his fellow men who had shaped him, who had molded him so that in the end he had no choice but to succumb to the illusions of his own righteousness when he was neither right nor beyond cavil. He could still atone for all this, could still wipe out the huge and shameful blot, could be contrite and win virtue again, but he could not pray. My God, he repeated in anguish, I am doing no wrong; I cannot repent, I cannot pray!

There was no shred of doubt in his mind now. He had been deluded; for he was human after all, and the desires that were stirred in him were really as ancient as life itself. He was not the first to have succumbed to them. He accepted his humanity now and, therefore, recognized his capacity for sin. With a little more striving — and courage — he would have been redeemed not from God’s hell but from the endless turmoil only conscience could make. There was honor in death, and if he was a traitor, or a weakling, he would not depart as one.