Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

My teacher was kind; he said he would not press charges after Auntie Bettina had talked with him, that he would pass me, too, in spite of my low grades, and he even had a few kind words — yes, I was poor in many subjects, but was tops in literature and composition, and that if only I listened, was not absent most of the time, and studied … studied … But what was there to study? At twenty-two I felt I knew enough of the world, that Cabugawan was its asshole, the repository of all its grief and agony, that I must flee it, even if only for a day in Dagupan.

Dust was thick on the street. It had already rained but not enough to bring a touch of green to the dying grass. Though it was only mid-morning, with the heat it seemed as if it was already high noon. I had stripped to my shorts, but it did not help. I wanted ice cream or halo-halo or just iced water, but we did not have a refrigerator. Auntie was cleaning in the kitchen; Mother had gone to town to deliver a dress. She supported me with her sewing; the sounds that I grew up with were the snip of scissors and the whirring of the infernal sewing machine late into the night.

I had read everything in the house, even Auntie’s technical teaching books, and I could not go to the library anymore, nor face any of my teachers. I had even read the scrapbook on Tio Tony that Mother kept under lock as if it were some heirloom. I had wondered why, so I asked her once and it was then that her voice trembled and she showed it to me — articles mostly, on nationalism, on the uses of the past — and I sometimes thought about what Tio Tony had written and concluded it was a waste of time. Although he had long been dead, his memory lingered tenaciously. Of all the Samsons, he had traveled farthest and reached the very top; I sometimes wished I were like him, if only for his travels, and when I told Mother this, she smiled wistfully as if I had made her happy.

It was Don Quixote that really fascinated me. I read it when I was in grade school. We were having difficult times; Mother was working very hard to help send Auntie Bettina to college. We could not afford electricity although the line had already reached our village and many of our neighbors had it. I was so fascinated by that crazy old man; the kerosene lamp I fashioned out of an old pop bottle was often empty so I used to walk to the far corner and there, under the streetlamp, with all the moths and mosquitoes about me, I would follow Don Quixote’s meanderings.

I would often wander to Calanutan, too, follow the railroad tracks, wondering how long it would take if I followed them and walked to Manila, although the trains no longer came to Rosales.

In the mornings, pretending that I was going to school, I went to Carmen and watched the buses as they sped on to Manila. And when I was tired of walking, I would lie in the shade of trees and watch the clouds turn into boats and planes, palaces and faraway snow-capped mountains — all the compass points that I would someday explore.

It was all those books, their sweet poison, their untruths that beguiled me. But I could not go far. Although I was already twenty-two and earned a little polishing shoes and selling newspapers on holidays or gathering firewood and delivering it to regular customers in town, what I earned went to noodles and excursions to Dagupan.

On this particular morning I was just listless and saying again and again, “Life of a shrimp, life of a shrimp …”

Tia Bettina came into the living room, her printed dress quite wet as she had been washing the earthen pots. A few years back she had looked lovely, just like in her photographs, but she had become a teacher and had been assigned to a barrio in the next town. Though there were some suitors, she never paid them any attention, and now she was past forty, an old maid — but without the sour rancour of spinsters.

“What are you saying, Pepe?” she asked. “Why are you like this?”

“Why? Why? Because of this place! Everyone!”

“What wrong have I done?” she said, smiling, trying to humor me.

“You are contented,” I said. “You are a teacher, you are Miss Samson, and you are happy.”

“And you are young, talented. The world is before you. And next month you will go to college. You should be happy,” she said.

She, too, had worked hard and saved to send me to college — no, not in Dagupan, in Manila. In another month I would leave to be the lawyer, doctor, or whatever they fancied me to be. I can understand Mother saving for my education, but Auntie Bettina need not have saved for me even out of gratitude to Mother. It seemed as if there was no meaning to all they did. I never wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor; what I really wanted was to go see a movie, devour a good meal, or tarry in Dagupan just looking at the shops, the new shoes and clothes and denims for men, and go to the dance hall, drink a little beer and hold the girls, then dinner, not the vegetable stew we had at home, but plenty of pork or fried chicken.

“Why do I have to go to college?” I asked.

“Because that is how it will be,” Auntie Bettina said, still trying to humor me.

But I was not to be humored. “Why do you and Mother work so hard for me?” I asked pointedly. “I did not ask you to. I could be an ingrate. I am already a thief. You cannot be proud of me.”

Auntie looked at me, more hurt than angry, then she spoke, making each word sink like stones in a quagmire, without trace or ripple in the dark, opaque surface of my thoughts: “You don’t know many things because you are young. You don’t know how she worked so that you can leave this place and not suffer.”

“I don’t want you to be disappointed,” I said. “All I want is to be happy, to be …” I groped for words. I had never given thought to what I really wanted to be. But now, in this illuminating instant, it was laid lucidly before me, gleaming like a polished morning — the dream, the purpose. “I want to be happy so I must go away. I have known nothing here but sadness. I want to be myself,” I said clearly. “I don’t want to be told what I will never be. I don’t want to have a single worry, and I don’t care about this place. I want to leave and not come back.”

She stared at me as if I were some stranger, and her voice was strained. “I don’t want to hear this. Where will you go; how can you go? You have just finished high school; you don’t know anything, you are not trained for anything.”

“I have hands,” I said defiantly, knowing I was only hurting her more. “I can sweep floors, shine shoes. And if the worst comes, I can steal.”

Those thoughts, submerged for years, were being freed from their moorings.

Her countenance softened as she slumped on the chair before the sewing machine. Tears misted her eyes, rolled down her cheeks, but she made no effort to wipe them.

“Pepe,” she said, “it is all wasted then, the years your mama worked for you. No, I will not talk about myself. And for what? Please think about it again. You can finish college if you only tried, if you stopped playing. There is no future here. You can see that in us. Only through education … if only you knew your father.…” She stopped, shocked at her own revelation, and wiped her tears quickly. But I did not prod her into telling me who my father was, for by then I no longer cared.

* Madre de cacao: A shrub planted as fencing, with lovely cherrylike flowers during the dry season.

† Caimito: Star apple.

‡ Pancit: Noodles.

§ Halo-halo: Literally “to mix,” usually sweets in crushed ice.

Five hundred pesos, that was what Auntie Bettina and Mother gave me — my tuition for the semester. I would still have enough left for the extras. Within the month, Auntie would come to Manila to follow up her promotion at the Department of Education and she would bring me more.