Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

Sadness touched his face, his eyes now darkened, the ape hands now folded in repose. “I sometimes feel that I am in the wrong vocation. I am so involved with the things I do, and yet I feel that I am not doing enough. Take this place for instance.” He paused and looked out of the window, at the Barrio shrouded by night, at the relentless poverty that spread wherever we turned, the narrow passageways choked with refuse, cluttered with big bellied and dirty children in the daytime and, over everything, flies that never seemed to die. “I think of the place where I was born, of the houses of my relatives and of my former students — they are all comfortable and, yes, very rich … and here I am trying to move the world.”

“You have the body for it,” I said. “You can push it one inch.”

“Let’s make it two inches.” For a moment Father Jess regained his humor, his eyes narrowing into slits, his mouth wide open, baring yellow, uneven teeth. Then he was quiet again, the wide brow furrowed. “If only I had more resources, more money.”

I did not know till now of his frustrations, having presumed that, as a priest, his job was easy: he did not have to worry about food and clothing, and when he was old, there was always the Church — omnipresent, omnipotent — to take care of him.

“I hope,” I said lightly, “that someday — joke only, Father — that priests like you would be allowed to marry. It must be terrible, not being able to live like a normal man.”

He shook his head and replied quickly. “That is a misconception that gets said again and again. Pepe, it is not the absence of sexual life that makes the priesthood difficult. We get used to it.”

“Yes, I hear they feed you papayas in the seminary morning, noon, and night till you are as limp as a squid.”

“Still, it is not sex,” he said. “I will tell you what is the most difficult about the priesthood. Obedience, that’s what. Damn, blind obedience. We have to obey, and if we cannot, we have to learn how to obey; we have to force ourselves to obey until in our conscience we have been conditioned to do so.”

“Like the army?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like you to go into retreat this year. Not so much to study your conscience as to be alone with yourself.”

“You can be alone in a crowd, Father.”

“Not that. But a chance to look at what you do. Do you think you have a conscience, Pepe?”

I fumbled; the question pushed me to the wall. “Doesn’t every man have one?” I asked instead.

“You are very clever,” he grinned. “What you are trying to say is, as a priest, perhaps, I don’t even have to bother with it. In the end, Pepe, we are all victims of circumstance. A world without injustice is not here; if it were, there would be no policemen, no courts — and yes, no priests. But there are things we do that give us happiness. That is one measure of a man.” He thrust a finger at me. “What gives you happiness?”

Without hesitation, “Food.”

He stood his full height, puckered his lips in mock anger, and pointed to the door.

So we aspired, we sweated to build a church here in Tondo, sought to bring light to its chicken-intestine alleys strewn with aborted hopes, slimy with crime; where no heavenly music floats above its rusting tin, and its flotsam soul drifts to the sea — not a sea of shining surf but muck and driftwood marsh awash with the turds of corruption. Look down here, those of you whose antiseptic residences will never be touched by our filthy hands, because it is not far off when the stench we breathe will give us the strength to surge beyond this dungheap into your perfumed enclaves, and with us the volcanic fires of vengeance; we will seep into each crack of your high and solid walls, flood over them like destiny, and you will not be able to hide, you will be transfixed.

Speed dreams, they have no place in my compass. I am here to survive and Tondo is just a way station, another rung in my climb from one garbage pile to another garbage pile. But we build from the past, and be it damned forever. We can never escape it so how can I now flee the old thatched house of Cabugawan, the scent of newly harvested grain, of fresh-cut grass; how can I flee the browned fields of May stirring at last to the touch of rain, the weeds thrusting up, the river finally alive, and the croak of frogs at night?

Toward the end of the schoolyear my past, which I had not told to anyone except Father Jess, finally hounded me in school; I don’t know how it came about — perhaps there were those in the Brotherhood who did not like me and the attention Professor Hortenso was giving me. The national election of the Brotherhood was going to be held and I was now being groomed by him for a seat in the National Directorate.

“You are one of the most popular student leaders,” he said, “and as you very well know, there will be candidates from UP who will try to get all the positions.”

I balked at the prospects. In the first place, I would not have tried to run for any of the posts in school were it not for the proddings of people. But looking back, it had not been completely without benefits. There was this job that paid, the invitations to seminars — all expenses paid — and, of course, the free dinners and parties to which I was invited. Without admitting it, I had always felt inferior to those people at UP, not because they could afford to study there, but simply because they had always seemed brighter than most; they always seemed to top the board exams, in law, in medicine.

After supper that evening, I strolled onto the empty basketball court and lay on one of the cement benches we had installed. It was oppressively hot in the kumbento and Father Jess would be in his shorts, the electric fan on high speed. He could have had his bedroom air-conditioned but had rejected it; there was not one air conditioner in the entire Barrio, and he was not going to be the first to have one.

Above, the sky arched luminous and was dusted with stars, and the sounds of the Barrio had started to peter out. Some time back, on an equally warm evening like this, I had come here and had dozed off, then woke up with a chill. It was past midnight and I rushed back to the kumbento , rattling the tin siding so that Toto would let me in. I was not sleepy; I was thinking of Lucy. I had had a busy year politicking, writing essays, going over asinine manuscripts and mushy poetry. I had now very little time for myself. I did not even go home for Christmas, and I wondered how it would be with Mother now. I remembered our house, the living room and its clutter of cloth, the sewing machine in one corner, the potted begonias on the windowsill, the polished bamboo floor, shiny even in the dark; Auntie Bettina working over her lesson plan far into the night. I wondered how it would be when they were old and could no longer earn their keep. Would I still be around to care for them, to return a bit of their love? I did not even write as often as I should have, and I only sent Mother and Auntie Christmas cards — as an afterthought.

I was depressed, recalling my callousness, when footsteps crunched on the gravel and, turning, I saw that Toto was there. “I thought you were asleep,” he said.

I rose and he sat beside me. “I have been wanting to tell you something since yesterday.”

“Now, Toto,” I said lightly, “has there been a time that you could not tell me anything?”

“This … this is very personal. You may not like to hear it.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Well, you know, the campaign for the Brotherhood Directorate is very … very keen, and the candidates, they are behaving like old politicians.”

“Like father, like son,” I said.

He was quiet again.

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me?” I prodded him.