Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

My relatives did not like the idea at first, but Uncle Bert saw its necessity. Lucy was restrained in her objections. We no longer made it frequently and she accepted that, too, with little questioning. As my departure drew near, she exacted a promise that I would visit her during lunchtime as always.

I did not know if I had made the right choice; Antipolo Street could be limbo or purgatory, but the barrio was purely and simply Hell. Yet, as Roger and all its denizens would tell me later, it was much better than the penury, the deadening monotony, and the slow death in the villages in the Visayas that they had left.

There was not much for me to take that could not fit into the old canvas bag; my only new acquisitions were half a dozen books scrounged from the bargain counters on the sidewalks of Avenida, dog-eared rejects from Clark Air Base and some library in the United States, and a couple of books that opened new vistas of Mexico and the civilization of the Andes Indians.

Toto and I walked over to Avenida and took a jeepney to that huge emporium, Divisoria, then transferred from there to a jeepney to Bangkusay, the end of the line. We got off on a narrow street, for the moment expropriated by a covey of children, many of them emaciated and soiled, playing in the dirt, while in front of the battered apartments and houses idle men gathered in small groups, talking away the tepid afternoon.

We entered a narrow street, half submerged in slime, more children playing, screaming, fighting around us, past tables with cooked food and swarms of flies, and more tables with wilted vegetables and dried fish, more men talking, and still more packing-crate houses, sorrier-looking than the ones in Antipolo.

We were in the Barrio.

I had read somewhere that to get into it was to enter a demented world where perspectives changed, as if one saw through cracked lenses or glass smeared with mud.

Years ago, shortly after the war, this whole area was a putrefied expanse of mudflats, the bay foreshore. In one of those rare, foresighted moves of government, this was filled up, and for some seasons weeds and other green things sprouted here, bearing plumes of white. Then the hordes from the provinces came and built shanties from packing crates, bamboo, cardboard, burnt tin, construction debris, anything that would shield them from the rain and the sun.

Not all the Barrio people were poor or from the lowest castes. There were politicians who enriched themselves with their pickings in the slums, and they built houses of stone with high walls, incongruous structures surrounded by dismal shapes and dismal lives. Policemen also built houses, which they rented out, promising protection to their tenants and their neighbors, for here the policeman was not just a man in uniform or a figure of authority, he was also the arbiter of justice.

There were no sewers; if government were more humane, sewerage would be the first thing it would have provided for the Barrio. And because there were no sewers, around us was the pervasive smell of rot, heavy and powerful in the rainy season and much more so when the sun shone. In spots, the waters never drained and planks were laid where the water was deep; otherwise, we would have to take off our shoes and walk in blackish mud.

They came from all over the country — farmers running from the Huk rebellion in Central Luzon, the ravages of typhoons in Samar, the poverty of Bicol, the laziness and inertia of the Visayas. They lived together because they were relatives or because they came from the same benighted place, and it was here in the Barrio where relationships became stronger as, perhaps, they had never been elsewhere. Relationships were a bulwark against disease, unemployment, hunger, and, in some instances, a safe haven from the gangs that preyed on people in the dark and convoluted recesses of the Barrio.

There was religion, too; the folksy kind with its symbols and rituals. Religion was their last hope, and I was not going to deny it to them. With Toto, I was their pusher.

The chapel Father Jess built was at one end of an alley, close to the man-made creek that flowed to the sea. It was fronted by a small, multipurpose plaza, no bigger than the basketball court into which it was often transformed. The plaza was covered with gravel and was actually a street that was not yet filled up and opened.

The chapel was no different from the tawdry shapes that surrounded it. Its uneven sidings were made of salvaged construction materials. A kumbento just as decrepit as the church itself was an extension of the church rear. It was divided into quarters, for Father Jess on the second floor and for the two of us as well as Tia Nena, who was the cook and lavandera , †on the ground. Apart from the church was another building, also made of the same castaway material, and it served as a kindergarten and meeting place for the parish.

Father Jess was in the multipurpose center when we arrived; he was talking before a huddle of young people, most of them with rubber slippers and T-shirts. He himself was in blue T-shirt, sandals, and blue denims, looking more like an overaged bum than a priest. His big hands were gesturing and when he saw us, he beckoned to me: “Children,” he said, “this is Pepe; he will stay with us so that he will be out of harm. Now, remember, he is a provinciano , so you should not immediately convert him to your spoiled city ways.”

They responded with that self-conscious, shy laughter of young village people.

Father Jess ate by himself and Toto and I served him. Between mouthfuls of Tia Nena’s excellent ox tongue at lunch he asked, “Did you notice how those kids this morning seemed so distant? And I have been here seven years! Do you know what that means? I knew most of them when they had bare bottoms, and yet they still cannot feel at ease with me. Is it because I am a priest? Is it because I really do not belong here?”

I could have told him a few truths, but I was going to live with him for some time, share his food, laugh at his jokes, so I said, “I do not know, Father. Honestly, I do not know. But I do know priests are not poor.”

“I know what you mean,” he said sadly. “It had occurred to me many times, and it is true, I was not poor. Even now, I am not poor. I eat better than they and I have choices. I do not have to be here.”

A long gap of silence. “What can I do to be accepted by them?” he asked.

“I just don’t know, Father,” I said.

In another week, I still did not know. There are many things I will never know, and a lifetime in the Barrio would not suffice. There is no ready script I could follow in my relationships with people, in my journey through Tondo. All that I sought was to survive, and to find no difficult answers to the questions that I dared to ask.

The Barrio was not easy to know — this is what all those researchers and scholars believed; they came with their tired questions, their long-winded interviews. I soon realized we were overstudied, with all that fancy data stored in libraries and in computers. Still, nothing changed.

They came — those do-gooder sociologists, those slumming foreigners — maybe because they wanted their troubled consciences salved a bit, that by “studying” us, they would be able to unlock the gates of our hell and welcome us to their paradise.

But they never reached the pith, the core, the heart — it is beyond their perception because they don’t live here, because they are not poor, because there is always a way out for them. Look at this artist, Malang, how prettily, how daintily he pictures our homes. If only he had lived here, even just for a week — I wonder how all his pictures would turn out then!

All they will know will be gathered, concluded from comfortable positions they would not lose no matter how sincere or close they will be to us. Not us; we could not say the many things that strained to be said, that were coiled and seething within.