Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“What will I do, Pepe? What will we do?”

She had included me. “We—” she said, and I held her hand tightly.

“You must be honest with your mother,” I said. “Tell her everything. Maybe on a day that she is happy, on your day off when you can take her to Divisoria and buy her a few things.”

“That’s bribery, she will not like it.”

“Explain to her the money you need, your brothers and sisters, their schooling, her health,” I said.

“It looks so hopeless.”

“It is.”

“Suppose the neighbors find out?” she asked. “I cannot live in the Barrio anymore.”

“How will they know? I will not tell them anything. I do not think your mother will.”

“It is better that we leave the place.”

“And where will you go? Some expensive place in Makati?”

“You know I will not do that. I will not be able to afford it.”

“It is better in the Barrio. No one among your customers will find you there. No one among us— Shit, we don’t even have money for a haircut. We will never go to the Colonial.”

A salesgirl in the same shop where she clerked went to the Colonial and earned in one day what she made in a month and she did not go beyond masturbating her guests. The training, Lily said, was easy, but it was the clearances, the physical examination that she detested; she went to San Lazaro twice a month, together with the other girls, and was examined by interns from the medical schools. They took vaginal smears, looked and poked into them as if they were hogs.

“I hate it,” she said vehemently.

Sometimes she had only a couple of “guests,” as their customers were called, but on a busy day, she had five or six. She now had several “regulars” who waited for her or sought her and, yes, almost everyone tried to seduce her, and several even offered to put her in a “garage”—to make her a mistress at the monthly rate of two thousand pesos, plus an apartment with all the appliances and furniture.

“And it will last as long as he finds you pretty and interesting,” I said.

She pinched my arm. “I humor them,” she said, “but I make sure they know I would not do it. They ask me to go out with them and I always have nice excuses, about how difficult it is for me to do so. They come back.”

“For sensation.”

She did not speak.

“We make more than the nightclub hostesses on the boulevard, Pepe. And we don’t have to spend on clothes and we are not on display in a glass booth.”

“But you sensation them.”

“It is hard work; sometimes, when I have six guests in a row, my back, my arms ache; sweat pours down.”

“It is honest work,” I said disconsolately.

“Please don’t be harsh,” she said.

“I love you,” I said, “and I cannot make you stop working there.” Her arms went around me, and she kissed me on the cheek.

When we went out, to my surprise, it was already evening — we had been inside for more than three hours and had not really done much talking or touching; it could have been forever and I would not have known.

“Your eyes,” I said. “They are swollen.”

“I know.” She smiled.

After dinner that night I borrowed Father Jess’s typewriter. He was in his khaki shorts, reading one of the new Teilhard de Chardin books that he also wanted Toto and me to read, but I had demurred for I did not like religious books. To please him, though, I did bring down The Phenomenon of Man only to find it unreadable.

He put his book aside, looked at me, and said, grinning, “So you are going to be a writer.”

“No, Father,” I said, “I just want to improve this personal essay — boyhood in a small village.”

He beckoned to me to sit on the chair opposite him. We were going to have another session and I loathed it — it made me think.

“Did you have a happy boyhood?”

There was no telling him lies. The question had never been asked of me before, and without hesitation, I answered. “Yes, Father, a very happy one. I remember the fiestas, the rockets, the first rains of May, the grasshoppers and the frogs, the swimming in the irrigation ditches in the fields. Yes, I had a happy boyhood.”

But what about the stigma of my being a bastard, the jokes I had to endure, the questions I could not answer? He noticed the uncertainty that had come over my face. “But?” he asked tentatively.

“It was also unhappy.”

“Tell me about it.”

I had gone to him for my first confession. He knew about Lucy and the fountain pen I stole when I was in high school, but he did not know of my origins.

“I am a bastard, Father. It is difficult being one, particularly when you are full of doubts, questions that no one, not even your mother, can answer.”

“Remember,” he said softly, “there are no illegitimate children, there are only illegitimate parents — that’s not original. And sometimes it is not even their fault. Like Lily. You know that. And where is her young man now?”

I did not speak.

“There is always a reason,” I said after a while. “And we cannot avoid the most important of all.”

“And what is that?”

“Money, Father,” I said simply.

He smiled benignly. “It is not the most important thing in the world.”

“It is to me.”

“I can understand that,” he said. “Maybe because I come from another place. Did you not say, no priest is poor?”

I was embarrassed to hear him remember, but he kept on talking. “I must be crazy to have selected this parish, or started it anyway. I could die here of hunger and no one would be sorry — not my family, that’s for sure.”

“Why not?”

“You have been with me for almost a year now — that’s a long time — and yet you have never bothered to ask about my family? That is unusual. People gossip and there is no shortage of that, particularly here.”

“Yes, I know about your going to nightclubs and your having gotten drunk.”

He roared with laughter. “Soon they will be saying I have gotten a girl pregnant. One thing I like about the priesthood is the wine. I get a drop of it every morning.” He looked at me and burst out laughing again, this time so long that tears came to his eyes. “So — so, I have no more secrets, ha? You know me like you know the palm of your hand, ha? You and Toto, merely because you live with me, ha?”

I grinned.

“But you don’t know about my family, where I come from.”

“From Negros. I overheard you talking to an American visitor about the sugar workers.”

Father Jess was silent and a smile wreathed his rotund face. He shook his head and said, “You know, Pepe, if my family had not disowned me, I would have had enough money to build a beautiful church right here. And a row of apartments, besides. And we would have the biggest freezer in any kumbento in the country. Do you understand?”

“We can still build a church — you have many friends, you are very good at raising money.”

He sat back and said, almost in anger, “Build a church? Stone, stained glass, padded pews?”

“Why not? Look at the cathedral in Intramuros … the churches of the Iglesia ni Kristo.”

“Those are not churches, hijo. Those are buildings. Don’t you understand?” his voice leaped.

I shook my head.

“The church,” he bellowed, beating his massive chest, “is here. In the heart. Not an air-conditioned building with wooden saints, not people kneeling and crawling to the altar — those stupid people! Not processions. The church is here!” He beat his breast again so strongly, the sounds were loud thuds. His eyes flashed and the corners of his mouth curled as he spoke, “The church that we will build is here, and it will last forever. Buildings crumble, but the church that we will build will last. So look at this humble building that some are ashamed to go to. It is here where God lives, perhaps much, much more than anywhere else, but only if I can convince you and all those around that the real church is in us, in how we live, in the sacrifices we offer to Christ who is also in each of us. Everyone, my brother. But much, much more my kin is he who has nothing and suffers. To him I will give everything I have.”