Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Mila followed Kuya Nick and I behind them, wondering how it would be when the moment came. He patted his mistress softly on the cheek and cast an assuring look in my direction: “Pepe,” he told her, “will know what to do.”

I don’t know how I rated with my audience behind that wide mirror, which occupied almost half of the wall beside the bed. I was sure, however, that Mila had long been denied her needs by her lover, whose mind, if not his values, was beyond my comprehension.

Kuya Nick had been extra kind to us — he did not let us meet our audience, which, he later told me, included a couple of senators, some millionaires, and other assorted members of the upper class. They left immediately when the show was over and, by ourselves, over bottles of beer and cold kimchi, he talked casually about what had happened, how his regular toro had been incapacitated. The toro ’s wife — not his performing partner — had gotten jealous and angry because he was unable to perform in his own bedroom. As a consequence, his wife brought physical logic to the matter; while he was asleep, she simply snipped off that part of him which was denied her.

* Ibagsak ang Pasismo, Marcos Diktador: Down with Marcos!

My one-night stand may have been a smash — I could deduce that from Mila’s exalted and adroit performance, her whispering that she wanted it again and again — but it left me in a state of depression. It simply revealed how detached and cynical I could be. My mind had shut out everyone and everything, and knowing this reinforced my suspicion that though I considered myself human and warm, I was also a gross animal creature. This saddened and disturbed me, for I had considered Kuya Nick as such and I realized that I was cast in the same ugly mold.

By now, too, he had become bothersome, for he was intent on recruiting me, and many a morning he would be parked by the alley, and many a morning, too, he would give me a lift to school with the usual spiel that soon it would be November, the semester was about to end and I should transfer to Ateneo since “that would be closer to Maryknoll — and think of the variety, Pepe, that a young toro like you would get there.”

Damn him and his vitamin E; he could not even satisfy his mistress! But I did not covet Mila, for to do so would be to live dangerously; she was, after all, his property, and what had transpired in Makati was with his consent.

One morning he was peeved, for I had moved the bulky narra cabinet to the wall where the crack was and no longer could they see Lucy and me. I had a plausible excuse: the cabinet was heavy and, where it had been, the beam had started to sag.

“No more shows then,” Kuya Nick shook his head with a smirk.

It was not he and his mistress, however, who made Antipolo so oppressive I could no longer endure being there. Everytime I looked out of my window, I would imagine Father lying there on the tracks. I was in the same room, with the same bed, where he had slept. His memory often dominated the conversations at the table — how good he was, how full of promise, how well he had married, and what a waste it had all been.

But it was Lucy who really pushed me away. At first I tried to stay in Recto the whole afternoon, sweat through karate, read in the library, or devote time to the college paper and the Brotherhood. The Student Council did not require much effort. I was a representative of the freshman class and we had few talky sessions.

Lucy was quick to notice the changes. Maybe she did not expect the pleasant arrangement to end, but it was difficult for me to accept my uncle as the man who made love to her and paid for it. The most I did was buy her a cheap cotton dress at the Central Market and an inexpensive bottle of Intimate, the first perfume she ever had, and for which she was so pleased and grateful, her eyes shone.

From the moment that she revealed my uncle’s perfidy, I had tried to understand, to cast aside the discordant demands of ego and see ourselves as victims. The effort was futile. I had become too enmeshed with her, wanted her for myself alone, or not at all.

By now, Toto and I had also become inseparable; he had helped me much more than I ever could repay him. I did not, however, tell him the real reason why I wanted to leave Antipolo Street — that since I was already making a little money, a hundred and forty pesos a month as literary editor, I should be independent so that I could go home in the late hours if I chose to.

He had suggested that I move in with him. He would talk with Father Jess and I could help in church and have free board and lodging, but we might no longer go to school together in the next semester because if I stayed in the kumbento , I would have to assist in the mass, clean the chapel, list births, marriages, deaths, and do other chores.

The idea of living in a kumbento as an acolyte repelled and fascinated me, but whatever my feelings, they had to be subdued for the more practical purpose of acquiring distance from relatives whose concerns were not mine no matter how well-intentioned they have been. Besides, there was always that lingering belief that priests, like policemen, were never hungry; I would finally be free from the infernal vegetable stew!

I had never been religious, although I liked the religious holidays, the solemnity of Holy Week and its somber processions, the gaiety of Christmas, the dawn mass and the biting cold. God was a personal experience and belief; He fitted in my hierarchy of authority only as a last resort, the ultimate explanation of all the things too recondite for me to grasp. But He was no arbiter of right or wrong; it would seem that He did not care. He did not reward virtue; it was the scheming and the dastardly strong who lived happily ever after. Babies without sin die and so do mothers who are poor and cannot afford medicine or expensive doctors.

But I would work in a church just as unquestioningly as I would work in an abatoir. Besides, I had had experience in the sacristy, although that was long ago and traumatic.

Lakay Benito, the ancient sacristan and dispenser of talismans, had ushered me into this job as acolyte after I was circumcised and my voice had started to change. Much earlier, like most of the children in my village, I had gone through catechism and knew all about the body of Christ and His holy blood. I had tasted the communion wafer but had never had a sip of wine till that afternoon, the second day of my short-lived career as sacristan. I had just finished cleaning the sacristy when I noticed that the cabinet where the vestments and the wine were kept was open, and there it was — the blood of Christ — a half bottle of it, waiting. I was determined to take just one tiny sip, no more, but one tiny sip became two, then three, and before long the whole sweet bottle was empty. With a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

It was already evening, time to toll the Angelus, when I woke up and realized the immensity of what I had done. The bottle had to be refilled for the morning mass and I must do that quickly. I searched the other cabinets, but there were no bottles there. I hurried to the market and, with my hard-earned money, bought half a bottle of cane wine — at least that was what I thought it was. It would be a different wine in the same bottle and, perhaps, it would not have done so much harm had I been more careful. Alas, the bottle I bought was filled with a similarly colored liquid and from the same cane, only the basi *had fermented and had turned to vinegar. I need not recount the high drama that transpired the following morning; needless to say, it ended my brief career in the service of the Lord.

Now, among the few, I was being called again, and this time, if only for the fact that I knew priests eat very well, I heeded the call.