Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“Read the comics,” I said.

He smiled. “That is what I do.”

I no longer had money to splurge on food, so I had to go home at noon to the vegetable stew my aunt had taught Lucy how to cook. The maid was alone most of the time, for my uncle and aunt worked the whole day. She had already finished cooking. She was dark and a little chubby, but her face was warm, friendly. She had finished high school and had wanted to study in Manila, but she did not have enough money. She had worked instead as a maid for one of Aunt Betty’s fellow teachers, but the teacher no longer needed her so she passed Lucy off to my aunt who took her grudgingly although Aunt Betty often complained how difficult the housework was.

“You can eat now if you want to,” Lucy said at the door. I was warm and perspiring, for though the rains had started and the brown weeds along the tracks had started greening, it was still humid.

The shower adjoined the kitchen and I started soaping myself with the laundry bar. I was a virgin. Though I knew all that should be done, the most that had happened was a brief interlude with Marie; she was in section B in my senior year and I often danced with her at our high school parties, holding her so tight her breasts were pressed close against my chest, and I could feel the smooth curve of her thighs. But there were few chances for us to be alone, and though we had some sort of understanding that we would continue the relationship when she got to college in Manila, her family could not raise the money for her tuition and board.

Anyway, I was soaping myself and had to do it again. It did not take long really and, though I enjoyed it, I looked forward to the time when it would be for real.

When I got out, Lucy was at the bathroom door, her face lighted up with mischief. I was very embarrassed when she asked in a bantering manner, “What have you been doing?”

She was slightly older than I, maybe twenty-five, and I asked angrily, “What do you do when you take a bath?”

“It depends,” she said. “I didn’t hear the shower for some time.”

“You do not rub off the dirt or soap yourself?”

“It was not soaping or rubbing,” she said, looking at me, the grin on her face telling me that she knew.

I fumbled and did not know what to say.

Then, confirmation, the laughter crinkling the corners of her mouth.

“You peeped!” and I went after her.

I did not want to hurt her, and I really was not angry, just embarrassed. I grabbed at her, but she was ready, and we were soon wrestling like two children from the kitchen on to the living room. I pinched her buttocks and she yelped aloud, then she grabbed my arm and bit it so hard, I cried at her to stop. When she let go, I held her and dragged her to the floor, then pinned her down, panting. She glared at me, her breasts heaving; I had her legs wide apart, my torso between them. Her arms were pinned down and she could not move except to try to bring her head up. Then, suddenly, I felt this stirring and, bending down but still holding her wrists so that she could not hit back, I kissed her breasts. Almost immediately her struggling ceased, and when I looked at her face, the fight was no longer there — instead, the unerring light of expectation, of wonder. Bending over, releasing her hand, I kissed her, thrust my tongue into her mouth.

I really did not care anymore if a sudden knock exploded on the door or if the windows were open, which they were not because they were always shut more as a matter of precaution against robbers than for privacy.

I thought conquest would be easy, for, by then, the compulsions that were surging in me could no longer be leashed. But Lucy started pushing me, wriggling, and was all arms and elbows and pointed knees. But these, more than anything, served only to heighten my resolve and convinced me afterward that there was a latent rapist in me. Her resistance, it turned out, was temporary; I do not know if it was just to show that she was no easy prey or that she wanted to test how determined I was. Or maybe she found out how physically strong and well beyond calming I was and that there was no further sense in lengthening the struggle.

My entry was gentle and smooth; through her gasps, she said: “Do not hurry … please. No one will be here … we have all the time.”

She did a lot of housework, but her hands were not rough. They were soft, beautiful hands, exquisitely expert and strong; her breasts were firm and after a time she cautioned me, for, as she said, they began to hurt.

After we had lain for a delicious length of time on the tiles, which were cold, we went up to my room. We had become impervious to cold, sweetly unconscious of everything but the rhythm and warmth of our bodies. We took our time upstairs as she had suggested, savoring each other in the light of day, and then it was dusk, time for her to cook dinner. Exhausted, it was an act of will for us to part.

Everything was not in the script, everything was not as I had read in those paperbacks that passed through our hands in high school — explicit American guidebooks to that mysterious domain that is woman. I had thought that I would be clear-minded and would recall everything — the step-by-step preparation, the plateau, the peak, the cozy, cuddling talk and display of tenderness that would cap it all — but I had merely acted out the hasty and irrational beast. I did not forget, however, to ask her if she was happy and in reply she looked at me — those big, black eyes dreamy and half-closed — and nodded.

I had fulfilled a prophecy made when I was thirteen by an aging sacristan named Lakay Benito. He was the oldest acolyte in the church, a tenacious remnant of a bygone age, out of place in a church where they also played guitars and sang Ilocano and English hymns. He was, however, at his best in the novenas held in our houses when he responded in Latin, his rich, sonorous voice booming Ora Pro Nobis. All the way back, as far as memory could drag me, he had been to us not only an acolyte, whose knowledge of Latin opened secret vistas, omnipotent talismans beyond the comprehension of many even in Cabugawan, but was also a brujo , an herbolario , ‡and he looked it. A wisp of a beard dangled from his chin and his white hair framed a dark face pocked by two piercing eyes, a large black mouth, and an eggplant protruberance for a nose. His legs were spindly and bowed and he could not wear shoes except Japanese rubber sandals because his toes were splayed from walking barefoot in the muddy fields for too many years. He performed the ceremony of manhood for all the boys in the village when they reached puberty. That early January morning six of us gathered in his yard, shivering in the cold. He had built a bonfire of dry bamboo slats and coconut leaves and we had sat around it, waiting. He came down the stairs in his cotton carzoncillo † and under his arm, an old, soiled kit and a bundle of young guava leaves. Then he led us to the creek.

Strips of fog floated over the calm, still waters. He picked me to be the first, maybe because he liked me, I think, enough to teach me my first oración , ‖a charm to ward away malevolent dogs — an oración in Latin that I should not repeat to anyone, else it would lose its potency.

We all stripped on the bank of the creek. I squatted before him, surrounded by the other boys, my fear spiced with curiosity as I watched him unsheath the razor, slide back the foreskin with a bamboo stick and then, with one swift whack, cut it off. It hurt a little, no more than a bee sting, but then the blood started to ooze and would not stop. He did not appear worried, but my anxiety now turned to fright. He chewed the guava leaves, then spat them on the wound, mumbling words I could not understand. The blood formed a small puddle on the dry earth. After what seemed like an hour, the bleeding stopped and he looked at me, his craggy face lighted up. “You are a bleeder, and that is very good.”