Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

No, she is not like us. She is a Villa and all that the name implies. I met her in Washington; I was lonely and she was kind. It may be a mistake because she is not one of us, but I’m bound to her now and not only by love.

He could not say these words, so he said instead, “She is Tagalog, Father. I met her in the United States and we took the same boat home.”

The old man moved to one of the windows and Tony followed him. Beyond the iron bars, a portion of the penitentiary grounds lay before them, the well-tended grass and the whitewashed walls and, to their right, the rows and rows of pechay ‡and beans — deep green in the sunlight. Prisoners tended the truck garden, and even on this Sunday, which was a visiting day, prisoners in yellow uniforms worked the vegetable plots.

“When will the wedding be?” the old man asked.

“I don’t know, Father,” Tony said. “Maybe in a year, when I have saved enough. I just wanted you to be the first to know. I haven’t told Manang Betty yet.”

The old man looked thoughtful. Again, a smile turned the corners of his mouth. “Of course, you don’t know how much I’d like to be present when you get married. And when you have children, I hope you will be able to understand that I’m not sorry for what I did. If I were given the chance, I’d do it again. There is no other way.”

Tony did not want to argue with his father again, but the old man had started on the ancient recitation that must be listened to, to the end. “I know that you are learned, but some day I hope you can go to Cabugaw. Find your root and my root. I did not start with myself. I had a father, too, and he was a brave man.”

“I know, Father,” Tony said fervently. “Someday I’ll go there.”

“You will find,” the old man continued quietly, “how even your grandfather changed his mind.”

They sat on the bench again. The old man shook his head. “I’ll die soon and that is why you must know what to do in case I die. This is what will happen, son. They will sell my body to a medical school in Manila and students will cut me up. They will learn all about me. But not what is in my heart — they will never find out about that. They will not know what I did in Rosales. No one will know now, no one except you and your mother in heaven and your Manang Betty and those who are in Rosales still. Are you angry that I did what had to be done?”

Tony shook his head. “It is not for me to judge, Father.”

The old man leaned on the cement wall and sighed. He clasped his gnarled hands and spoke almost in a whisper: “That night, I remember. But you were very small then.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Tony said.

“Would you have done what I did?” the old man asked, but he didn’t really care for an answer; he stared at the cement floor, at his handmade wooden clogs with rubber thongs.

Tony did not speak; he had been asked this question many times and the next would fall neatly into place.

“Yes, all those years— All those years that your grandfather and I cleaned the land, all those years …” the voice trembled and Tony thought it would break into a sob. But the old man steadied himself. “We found that the land we cleared and planted was not ours. The wilderness we tamed was not ours. Nor yours. It was the Rich Man’s, and after all those years … we were his tenants.”

The strong over the weak, intelligence subverting ignorance. “There was nothing you could do, Father,” he said.

The old man said placidly, “Your grandfather’s sweat, my sweat, my blood were mixed with every particle of soil in that land. But they were not satisfied with getting it. They emptied our granaries, too.”

“It’s different now, Father.”

The old man smiled again, then coughed — a deep, thin cough that seemed to wrench life from within him, and he doubled up as one in pain. Tony sidled close to him and hugged the shoulders, the wasted body, until the old man straightened up again. He looked at his son and his eyes were misty.

“Let us not talk like this again, Father,” Tony said.

“All right,” the old man said weakly. “But grant me one last request, son. Don’t let them cut me up. Just promise me that.”

“I’ll do all I can,” Tony said with feeling.

“Take me back to Rosales when I die. Bury me beside your mother.”

“I’ll do that, Father,” Tony said.

“I’m not working in the fields anymore. They have transferred me to the offices and I clean desks and books. My legs and arms feel numb. Pain shoots up my spine. But now that I’ve told you what I want most, I’m glad. And when you get married, bring her to see me. And I hope I’ll see my grandchildren before I die.”

“You will, Father.”

The old man ran a nervous hand across his white hair. The bell above the iron door to the barracks rang. The visiting hour was over. Tony held the horned hand to his lips again. “I’ll come and see you again, Father,” he said as the old man turned away.

On the way back to the city, it was the heat that made his homecoming absolute. The boat had left San Francisco in April and the air was fresh and sweet with spring. After that, Hawaii and balmy weather, the informality, the white beaches, the palm trees, and the people in shorts; then Japan and Fujiyama capped with snow, Hong Kong — Victoria Peak and its houses and many-storied buildings gleaming in the sun. And finally, Manila, in early May simply unbearable. The heat claimed him back the moment they sailed into Philippine waters. The city hadn’t changed really, not its dusty streets, not its Antipolo. Its houses were still unpainted and falling apart, and the children who played in the dirt had the forsaken look he had always remembered. This was the dead end, the street where dreams vanished, and this fact was stamped on the faces of the people, the jeepney drivers, the anemic government clerks, the jobless, the petty racketeers, and the con men. This despondency was etched on the face of Antipolo, and there was no escaping it unless by some miracle one happened to have gone to college, gotten a fellowship, and set his course on distant sights.

In May the body tires quickly, the brow is damp, and the mind is sluggish. The day commingles with the smell of sweat and the fumes of a thousand jeepneys; then dusk descends, and with the coolness that it brings, the fret and drudgery of the day is banished at last. The neon lights sparkle along Rizal Avenue, spewing greens, yellows, and reds at the darkening sky.

Tony felt a kinship with twilight, for it brought him an inner peace no matter how brief, and a reminder, too, that day must end and that, extending this vision, there was a terminus to all the good things that were shaping before him.

Tony got off the jeepney in Blumentritt. The sky was washed with indigo and with a lingering dye of red in the direction of Manila Bay. The walk home would be cool — a healthy excursion down a side street that was muddy during the rainy season but scraggly now with dying weeds.

Home was his sister Betty’s accesoria. §She taught grade school in Sampaloc and her husband clerked for a Chinese flour importer in Binondo. They had three boys who slept in the living room with the maid now that Tony was back and was occupying his old room. The house stood near a narrow dirt road that seemed to have been totally forgotten by the politicians because it was choked with garbage piles, and farther down the street it was pocked by those small sweet potato patches that squatters with untidy lean-tos tended. There were two ways by which one might reach the house: the railroad tracks or the narrow alley that curved from the road. The alley was seldom empty of children and housewives and drunks with heavy talk and desperate joys, their lives made more viable and secure by steady doses of devil gin that they bought from the store at the far end of the road.