Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Yet I was sorry to leave them, their small, lightless apartment that probably flooded when the rains came; I was sorry that I was bored, that I had not been more attentive and was just thinking of myself, but who would do that for me? I was silent, walking with Toto on the sidewalk, avoiding the piles of garbage that had not been collected for days, remembering how he had asked me about my father and how I had lied again.

“Isn’t he good?” Toto was gushing, keeping in step with me, for I was really hurrying. We would both go to Quezon Boulevard, where he would take his ride for Quiapo, then Tondo, and I would catch the first jeepney there for Dimasalang. “He likes you. He is very sharp and he knows the bright ones, the ones who think and who care.” He nudged me and I turned to him briefly and snorted, but he would not be bothered now by any snide remark I made.

“Yes,” I said dully.

“Do you know,” Toto spoke with wonder, “that he spends his own pay — the little he can afford — for the Brotherhood? I have known him for a long time — he and Father Jess are very good friends and each does his own thing. He is very dedicated.”

“I can see that,” I said glumly.

“You made a good impression,” Toto hit me playfully on the arm. “I am sure you will be somebody in the Brotherhood.”

“I always make a good impression,” I said lightly.

“Let us go to Tondo. I want you to meet Father Jess, too.”

“And impress him just as well? No, I have done enough impressing today.”

But he missed the sarcasm, for he hit me lightly on the arm again. His ride came and I pushed him toward it lest he tarry. “Tomorrow,” he called, but I did not look back; I had started to run toward the boulevard to catch my jeepney.

The house was padlocked when I arrived; Lucy must have gone to market to buy vegetables for the abominable stew again. I sat on the hollow blocks lining the small greenery before the apartment and waited. Across the patch of grass, from the alley, the green Mercedes of the tenant next to us was parked and the apartment door was open. When he saw me, he gave one of those meaningless smiles that was supposed to be neighborly. We never really knew his kind of living except that he always wore brightly printed shirts, his hair slick and well-groomed, his fingernails manicured, and he sported a ring with a big sparkler. And on his hip always, if his shirt was tucked in, was the butt of a revolver. We had surmised that he must be a detective, but Uncle Bert said he must be a fixer at the Bureau of Customs or a customs broker, for he often saw him there on the several occasions my uncle followed up the papers of his Chinese boss. Obviously, neither his mistress nor her maid was in. She rarely came out of the apartment, except at night when the Mercedes was parked in the alley and he came to pick her up. She seemed to pass the hours watching television or reading the comics that a newsboy always slipped under her door.

Now he stood up, walked toward the door, and leaned on it. He was no taller than I, but he was well-built, tautly muscular, and had a bull neck that his long hair could not quite hide. He was in his early fifties but had the easygoing manner of a much younger person. “Well, you are locked out and I am locked in,” he laughed. “We can talk together while waiting. No use being alone.”

I did not rise from the hollow block I sat on. I was really in no mood to talk; I was eager for Lucy and nothing more.

“What college?” he glanced at my notebooks and the new pamphlet from Professor Hortenso.

I replied in the polite language.

He shook his head. “You should have gone to UP — or Ateneo, La Salle …”

His implication about my school’s inferiority vexed me; in the short time that I was at Recto, I had grown to like my university, my crowd. “If I had the money, that is where I would have gone,” I said, not looking at him. “How could anyone who lives in this alley afford those schools?”

He laughed lightly. “That is the problem with young people nowadays,” he said. “You think only of difficulties. There are so many ways to make money. What I was going to say is that if you were studying there, I could even give you a job, perhaps with more than enough to pay for your tuition. After all, I feel that I already know you, your being a next-door neighbor. And more than that …” he shook his head and grinned, “You are really a toro. ”

I was surprised by what he had implied; we had talked about the toro once in school, although I had never seen one at work. He is the male performer in the sex shows that they stage in Pasay, in Caloocan, and in Ermita — for only ten pesos. I ignored his remark.

“Which is good,” he continued. “You will have many chances with women and you will make a good salesman. I am really serious,” he said, nudging my knee with his shoe for I was not looking at him.

“Think about it,” he said as I turned. “If you can manage, you should transfer to La Salle or Ateneo next semester. I just had this idea, you know. I will pay for your tuition, but you can pay it back in a month — I assure you — and then you will be earning money. You look bright, you are good-looking — and most important, you are a toro !”

I stood up, irritated and not quite sure what he was really trying to say. Continuing in the polite language, I asked what a toro was. He smiled, took me by the arm, and drew me inside the apartment.

It was my first time inside. With the upholstered furniture in the living room, I realized immediately what a cozy, well-furnished apartment it was. The refrigerator, big, shiny, and new; the electric oven; the pictures on the wall. He took me up the flight to the two rooms upstairs, painted in cool blue, in one another set of chairs upholstered in blue velvet, a Sony color TV, a stereo set like the expensive ones displayed in Avenida, and then, to the other room, the massive, mahogany bed, a glass cabinet filled with his mistress’s clothes and his suits and shirts, and on one side of the room, the air conditioner humming. How comfortable the whole place appeared compared to the drab appointments that were ours behind the wooden wall. Here then was what money can do even in Antipolo.

He shucked off his shoes and asked me to do the same, then he went up the bed and pointed to a portion of the wall just below the ceiling. He beckoned to me to look. A narrow crack in the panel showed clearly the floor of my room — just where Lucy and I had lain.

He went down the bed, chortling. “Mila discovered it,” he said. “She has been comparing you with me. After all, I am a full thirty years older than you. I cannot do it twice anymore like I used to. Ah, when I was younger! Now, not even with vitamin E and KH3 and all that sort of thing — they aren’t much help.”

His words, every nuance, were mirror-clear. He was not telling me that he enjoyed watching, he was saying that he envied me, for his mistress was young and she must have desires he could no longer satisfy. We went down to the living room and he opened the refrigerator. It was stocked with food — enough to last a month, cheeses I had never seen, preserved meats, candies. He opened a bottle of San Miguel, but I never liked beer and told him so. He hastily opened a Coke, which I took, together with a cold leg of fried chicken. I was beginning to feel comfortable after my embarrassment when I had looked down the crack in the wall.

We went back to the door and its unchanging view of weeds and dilapidated houses. He asked me my name and when I told him, he said, “Pepe, do not po-po *me. Just call me kuya † if you can’t muster enough will to call me Nick.”

“All right, kuya. ”