Francisco Jose - The Samsons - Two Novels

“You will not … you will not get angry with me?”

“Hell, Toto. Tell me!”

“It will not make any difference — no difference at all,” he said, his voice lifting. “Why are people like this? They think it is dirty so they pass it around. They do not say it … they do not say it in the open … like … like men. They talk about it like … like girls.…”

“What are you talking about?”

“About … about you, Pepe. Someone does not like you … in the Brotherhood — he must have started it. But … but I want you to know … you have nothing to worry about. In fact … in fact, it is to your … your advantage.”

“Tell me!” My chest tightened.

“Dirty politics … very dirty,” he said. “The gossip is that you … you …” He paused and could not go on.

“Say it!” I shouted.

“A bastard …” almost in a whisper, then he turned away.

A great sense of relief filled me, and I laughed at the irony of it.

He turned back to me and asked, “You are not angry?”

I placed an arm on his shoulder. “It is no secret, Toto,” I said. “Everyone in my village knows about it. But do I have to go around shouting it? Telling everyone?”

He did not reply.

“Of course, it was difficult to bear, particularly when I was young and I asked questions, and my classmates — you know how kids are — often joked about it. There were times I wished I was not born … and my father, I know him now, all those years, I never knew him. He wronged my mother—” the words came easily, “and I hate him.”

“Do not say that.”

“I hate him,” I repeated flatly.

He turned away. “It is enough that we are here. Life is good; it has problems, but it is wonderful to be here, even in this Barrio.…”

“This hellhole?”

“We make it the way it is.”

“You are so full of hope,” I said.

“What else must we have? Revolutions are not made by pessimists, and even pessimists have hope. There is no sense in their being pessimists otherwise.”

“Still,” I said, “there are times I wish I was not born.”

It was then that Toto raised his voice. “Who do you think you are? God’s loneliest man? Job? Look around you, there are hundreds of talented young people who do not go to college. They have no way of doing it. Look around us, here, in the Barrio. How many sick people do you know? With tuberculosis? Look at the children. Still, life goes on.”

He was not stammering anymore because he was angry. “Look at yourself. At least you know your mother and father and you have relatives. Look at me, Pepe, look at me! Do you know where I came from? I don’t know my father or my mother. No relatives! The children I grew up with were all orphans. At least my mother did not flush me down the toilet or strangle me and put me in the garbage can! They do that, you know. And you are sorry for yourself, sorry for being a bastard!”

Again, I put my arm on his shoulder, but he brushed it away brusquely. “The world is ahead of us, Pepe. We make it. Not our parents. And there is no past, just the future!”

I put an arm on his shoulder again and this time he did not push it away. “I am sorry,” I said. “I am too self-centered. Everything I do I do for myself, for a reason. I have never done anything for anyone — not for my mother, for my Auntie … for you. Forgive me, Toto.”

We went back to the kumbento in silence, lay in our beds and continued talking quietly. “I feel better, Toto,” I said. “Thank you for talking to me.”

After some time he asked: “Do you … do you know now what you want to be?”

“To be happy,” I said simply.

He laughed softly. “No, that is not what I meant. What will you be? A writer?”

“Hell, no,” I said.

“You have talent.”

“But I will not be one. Maybe I will be a politician.”

“The different kind,” he said. “You are too honest. And when you are older …”

“I will not grow old. And you? Will you be a scientist with your skills in math?”

“No, no,” Toto was emphatic. “I have known what I would like to be for a long time now. But it is very difficult and very expensive. I only hope Father Jess can help.”

“He will help,” I said. “He likes you very much.”

“He has many responsibilities. And besides, he is not really healthy. He has a heart problem.”

“He will not die very soon,” I said. “What do you want to be really? A revolutionary like Ka Lucio? You will not get anywhere. Look at him.”

Toto laughed again. “I will do it differently,” he said. “I will be a doctor.”

* * *

I did not campaign very hard for the National Directorate at the convention in Diliman. There was not much for me to do except distribute the mimeographed handbills that Toto and I had prepared. The delegates from Mindanao were mostly Ilocanos, and I think that my being one helped. Professor Hortenso saw to it that in both the bulletin and program my “Memo to Youth,” which got me the literary editorship of my college paper, was reprinted. The two-day convention was filled with blustery speeches that left me numb and reeling. I was glad when the end came, and would have been even if I had lost. That did not seem likely, and my victory — membership in the National Directorate — was not the chest-thumping kind of achievement I would have been proud of. There was something shadowy and stage-managed about the whole election, but certainly I was not one to question its outcome. Perhaps I was a bit naive to expect that young politicians were going to be different from their elders, that they would display more candor and be less concerned with meaningless argot. The first meetings of the National Directorate showed that this was not so. We would argue out the minutest point when the Brotherhood Constitution was invoked; everyone seemed anxious to show that only he saw or possessed the true light. Diliman was no longer my territory; we were not in Professor Hortenso’s cramped apartment, drinking stale coffee and devouring musty cookies. Now we were meeting in a conference room while outside the musclemen of the Brotherhood kept intruders out, although I couldn’t see anything secret or conspiratorial about the discussions. They were really just bloated repetitions of what was discussed in the seminars. I did not remind them of this; I did not know the members of the Directorate well, least of all the chairman — an ascetic-looking Ph.D. who certainly was not a student. I did not want to lose the privileges that came with my new post. I also wanted to feel them out, to learn what drove them and to remember, most of all, how they could be useful later.

The chairman intrigued me at first, but soon I found him quite transparent. He talked very little; instead, he was listening and guiding the discussions to where he wanted them to go: to a consensus that supported his views, some of which I did not agree with. For example, his emphasis on creating the atmosphere that would bring about armed violence, revolution, before its scheduled time — if there was even a schedule for it as evolved by social forces and events. Then, there was his fanatical hatred of the Americans. I wondered if he really knew the poor whom he wanted to be his revolutionary fodder, if he was not indulging in book-learned fantasies. Whatever thoughts I had I kept to myself for the time being. I did not want to antagonize him, to be labeled afterward as a deviationist — his usual retort to anyone who disagreed with him.

Of all the decisions we made, what I looked forward to was the demonstration we were to mount immediately, before the schools closed. The convention was actually a preparation for it. The Brotherhood was not poor, although our dues were minimal. We had a good finance committee raising money for publications, posters, and this demonstration. I was given three hundred pesos to spend, no accounting.