Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Mother embraced me before we went down the steps; then she started to cry. We walked to the bus station in the early morning, my stomach filled with fried rice, coffee, and salted fish; all my clothes — three knit shirts, three denim pants, and some underwear — in a shapeless canvas bag that belonged to Auntie Bettina.

As we crossed the creek, I looked down the wooden bridge at the sandy riverbed; it would be a long time before I would return here to swim. Some of our neighbors were up early, sweeping their yards. They asked where we were going and Mother said proudly that I was going to college, in Manila.

Before I boarded the bus, she reminded me, “My son, whatever course you take, do not forget Cabugawan. You can only leave it if you study hard.”

Her printed dress was frayed at the hem and her slippers were soiled. Looking at her careworn face, her hands hardened with work, my chest tightened. I pressed her hand to my lips. I wanted to ask her for forgiveness I did not deserve, to embrace her again, but I was twenty-two and on this morning I was on the threshold of a new life and should not be sentimental. “Mother,” I said, “thank you.”

The bus crunched out of the dirt driveway. I looked back as we neared the highway. She still stood there, watching.

Auntie Bettina had taken me to Manila when I was thirteen — a two-day visit, all of which was now a haze. The land we passed was parched with sun, all through Central Luzon, and the towns were stirring with unrest. It was the dry season’s beginning, and before the heat came and seared everything, the last lingering coolness of March brought with it, as if in some stubborn but futile protest, the burning red cascade of flowers from the fire trees.

The grass, ready to die, had started to brown. The smell of rot, of decay, the familiar odors of garlic and dried fish permeated the small restaurants in the towns. The heat had baked the mud, which the pounding of feet and the slashing of tires had ground into dust that now hovered over everything like morning mist; it was the dull glaze on rooftops, a pattern on the roadsides, the patina over trees. And with the dust came the heat that went deeper, through the skin and into the bowels, and festered there, to be released not at dusk, when the heat diminished, but with the magic of cuatro cantos *or San Miguel, and when released turned to violence. Be wary of Filipinos who are drunk — I read once that our amiable ways are a veneer that, when peeled away, uncover the real frustrations, the dormant angers; in vino veritas.

I was both thirsty and famished when the bus rolled into its terminal at noon, noisy and awash with weary travelers from all over the north. The air around us was soggy with fumes and sweat. I had a quick lunch of siopao and noodles in the squalid restaurant within the terminal. Though I heard about how provincianos like myself were preyed upon by porters and taxi drivers, I was not apprehensive. As for pickpockets, I had my money, as instructed by Mother, pinned inside my shirt, and I would have to strip to take it out. I had only twenty pesos in my plastic wallet, no watch, no ring. It would be a foolish pickpocket who would consider me good picking.

Auntie Bettina’s instructions were clear. I boarded a bus for Quiapo; through the steaming, clogged streets, I kept wondering how I would be welcomed in Antipolo Street, how relatives to whom I had never been close would take in a vagabond.

Manila — here I am at last, eager to wallow in your corrupt embrace and drink from your polluted veins. Manila, Queen City, Pearl of the Orient, Jaded Harlot, and cheap, plastic bauble — luminous with the good life, I am here to feast on your graces, admire your splendor, your longevity. Be kind as a whore is kind to a virgin man. Lead me through your dispirited streets, your dank and festering neighborhoods into the core of your warm, affectionate heart.

All of the city was warm and Quiapo was the cauldron, bubbling with people, the spillover from all over the country, spewed into Plaza Miranda like sewage from the innards beneath it. They are all here, the evacuees from the folds and recesses of the villages and the small towns, all drawn to Manila as flys are drawn to carrion.

I walked around Quiapo, crossed the burning asphalt, took in the acid breath of the city, and sought the shelter of the sidewalks filled with the swell of people, soot and grayness above me, the peeling, garish signs of stores, the pungent smell of cheap restaurants — the troughs where we would feed.

The length of Rizal Avenue was quite a walk. Although it was warm, my shirt was barely wet with sweat when I reached the Antipolo crossing. As Auntie Bettina said, the railroad tracks were the best guide, so I followed them.

The whole neighborhood smelled of urine, or refuse that had accumulated too long. On both sides were squatter homes, and the canals that lined the tracks were strangled with weeds, black with washings and the garbage of years.

The second railroad crossing — Isagani, then the house where Uncle Bert and Auntie Betty lived, a three-door apartment, reached through the street that narrowed into an alley flanked with weeds. The apartment had not been painted in years, the wooden sidings had started to fall apart and were reset by galvanized iron sheets. The fronts were festooned with hedges of gumamela. I remembered the apartment — it was in the middle and it bore Uncle Bert’s brass sign: ATTORNEY-AT-LAW AND NOTARY PUBLIC. I knocked on the door.

No answer. It was Sunday and my relatives should be in. I rapped again, this time louder. Almost imperceptibly, the window at the right opened a little, and someone — a woman with a sharp, shrill voice — called out: “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Tia?”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I am Pepe, Emy’s son, from Cabugawan.”

“What Emy?”

I was puzzled. “She wrote to you and also told you a year ago that I would be coming.”

“What Emy?”

“Your cousin, the sister of Bettina.”

The window opened wider. I had not seen her in years and my memory held on to a woman past fifty with quiet but pinched features. The eyes, suspicious at first, finally glowed and she opened the door. “Yes, yes — Pepe, come in, hijo. Come in.” And to someone upstairs, she called aloud: “Bert, your nephew is here.

“I had to be sure,” she said, her voice had grown very warm. “I was in the kitchen cooking … we eat very late, you know, and besides, I cannot open the door at once. So many holdups, even here. What can they get from people like us? Me, a poor schoolteacher?”

“Mother wrote to you, Auntie,” I said. “Last week …”

“Last week!” she laughed. “It will be another month before we get it.”

My uncle waddled down in his long cotton shorts, fat and dark and balding, and he shook my hand firmly. He drew back and appraised me. “I hope you will like it here.”

It was cramped, almost airless within. The red-tile floor had cracked in places, but it was polished to a sheen and the whole place smelled of wax and careful attention. The chairs were old narra and woven rattan, and at one end of the living room was a black-and-white television set with a crocheted cover. The center table was topped with glass and several weekly women’s magazines. Potted begonias sat on pedestals in solemn corners and beyond the living room furniture, by the turn of the stairs, was the dining table. Their maid came in from the kitchen and looked me over briefly, then returned to her work, setting the noonday meal. She was dark, about my age, and pretty in a provinciana manner.

In a while we sat down to a lunch of fried milkfish and vegetable stew. My auntie and uncle lived by themselves; their sons had married and one had migrated to San Francisco.