Three Filipino Women

by F. Sionil Jose

Mita Guzman was a slight acquaintance; so was the husband, a small, henpecked man who was once my classmate in political science but who had dropped out to take a job as PR man for one of the congressmen. She was a woman to be feared both physically and otherwise for she had the face and the muscle of a sumo wrestler and the nastiness to skewer anything that crossed her path. Now, in her column: “She is young, pretty, and able. She has a Columbia degree and she sings well in a modern musical. Watch out for this girl now for though her father died a drunk and her mother sold meat (not rotten) in the old hometown, she has claims to royalty and will yet make it to the Senate next election …”

  When I finished the item, which was encircled in red, Narita said: “Why can’t they forget where I came from? Did I commit a crime? We were poor, Eddie, but not starving. You know that …”

  I went to her and held her shoulders. “You should expect these things. Remember, Narita, you’re in politics now. There will be more when you campaign. It will not stop.”

  “I will get her, I tell you,” she said grimly, then quavered and tears ran from her eyes. I held her close and could feel her heart thrashing. She clung to me as if I were a raft and cried, the sobs stifled. I did not know whether it was in anger or grief. I said: “There is nothing to be ashamed of, Narita. How many Filipinos are poor? This is your capital, if you want to make it work for you. Cinderella story. Girl from the sticks makes it in New York. Is there a more romantic theme?”

  She stopped crying abruptly and drew away, a look of surprise, of resentment, on her tear-washed face. “What?” her voice leaped. “Expose myself to more ridicule? That’s unthinkable! I’ll have none of it. Poverty is not something to be proud of. It is degrading and don’t ask me to think otherwise.”

  She did get Mita Guzman, in her own way. One morning I came upon Guzman waiting in Narita’s Forbes Park living room, a bunch of red roses in her hand. When Narita came out, she attended to me first as if Mita did not exist. And only after she had put Mita in place did Narita go to her, kiss her on the cheek, and thank her for the flowers. Mita waited outside while Narita and I had coffee leisurely in the kitchen where she told me how she did it.

  The Guzmans had hocked their house to the Philippine Bank to buy a small press. Having learned of this, Narita—through the Senate President—turned the screws and Mita had no alternative but to come a-visiting. Mita had been to see her more than a dozen times, enriching some florist with the roses she always brought.

  To complete the noose, Narita suggested that with her help, the Guzmans should have a larger press capability and they should not worry about printing jobs. There was so much in the Senate that they could do. And then, there was this election campaign that was coming. And yes, she was such a good writer, it would be great if she did Narita’s official biography—and of course, Narita would pay for it all and reward their publishing company handsomely.

  “She is also cuckolding her husband,” Narita said. “It’s all in the computer now. She is no different … the whole bunch …”

  I wanted to say that her father-in-law and she made them that way, but by then, I had decided to keep such thoughts to myself.

  If the Party convention was lutong makaw (prearranged), so was the election. I watched the campaign and sometimes helped distribute those envelopes with money in them. She had exhausted most of us just keeping up with her. I don’t know where her iron energy came from—it certainly was not the yogurt, nor the pills. She would be up mapping out the next meeting with her flip cards and notebooks while we were still asleep. I would have recorded more of her techniques and performance but my leave from the department was up.

  She had all the handbills that she needed but there was one picture-poster of her, printed in Japan through the courtesy of Senator Reyes’ Japanese contacts, a big 16″ X 24″ in full color, a prim, almost Mona Lisa-like smile on her face, so elfin, yet so innocent like the Virgin Mary’s as well. There was no name on the picture but in those few months, it had become the most popular election material. She autographed it and it was displayed—just like a magazine cover—which it had been earlier for all the vernacular weekly magazines whose editors she had bought. I saw it inside sari-sari stores, in farm homes, in offices long after the campaign and I presume that to this day, there are rural houses adorned with it.

  Those flip cards really helped. Before she went into a new territory, the team zeroed in on it, the important people, personal details—hobbies, deaths, birthdays, relatives—all these came in handy. She did not upstage the other candidates but sometimes the clamor for her was just too loud to be ignored. By now, they were calling, Manang, Narita! When it was her turn, she would start in the local language. She could converse passably in tongue twisters like Pangasinan and Zambal and she even picked up a bit of Tausug.

  There was nothing intellectual or explosive about her speeches on the road. Soon, the audience would clamor for her to sing and she always gave them “Lahat ng Araw” which she included in her zarzuela. She even had different versions of it; a university poet whom she flattered wrote Ilokano lyrics and she had a journalist from Cebu do it in Cebuano as well. The song became a hit and look at all the record companies doing it in instrumental and vocals now.

  But it was a case of overkill and I don’t know whose idea it was—Senator Reyes’ or Narita’s. Underneath the glossy exterior of that campaign, the music, the fanfare, there was something sinister. And that first meeting with Senator Reyes came to mind.

  I am fully aware of course that to go deeper into this is to tread on dark, unfamiliar terra infirma. I can only guess her views on poverty developed because of her childhood; her rejection of the slums afterwards was based not on a sense of moral outrage but on aesthetics. She could not stand the unsightly around her, whether it was a man like me who did not comb his hair or a slum dweller’s barong-barong. Her view of the world was, therefore, cosmetic although she, herself, would not admit it.

  The violence—and I had reports of it—was committed in many places, in our own town, mostly in our province. A former clerk in the municipio had dredged up the fact that her father had absconded with some money. The poor man was beaten up and Father had to treat him for lacerations. She was perhaps determined that in her homeground, she should be on top—which she was not only because Senator Reyes poured a lot of money but because she was the local girl who made good. The opposition mayor of Tubas, close to our town, was killed. It was a shooting “accident” and although people had come to Manila to say it was not, there was no mention of it in the papers. That was the extent to which the papers were manipulated. And vote-buying, bribery, dumping—I will not recite these. It is enough that I knew they happened not because she and her father-in-law were insecure but because they believed in overkill.

  With both of them now in the Senate, I thought it was time to push through government programs such as those which we had worked so hard to shape. After the euphoria had died, I got the whole sheaf of proposals together one Saturday morning. It was a full two weeks after the election and I knew that the time was opportune to discuss them for soon the Senate sessions would start.

  It was not that I personally was filled with love for the downtrodden, but in that small Negros town, Father had attended to the workers in the farm with free professional care. Mother taught school before she married Father and she tried her best to teach the children who did not attend public school the rudiments at least of writing and reading. Father had always hammered into us that the workers, though they were not as educated as we were, had the same blood. I was not about to organize them into a militant and radical labor union nor was I inclined to shout revolution like some of my colleagues at the university. I think I was too comfortable to do that, but I was not going to see them mired in either perpetual ignorance or poverty. I saw enough evidence in America to show that wealth—when spread around—would do everyone a bit of good.

  Narita always called when she needed me, which was often. It was one of those
few instances when I called her. “All right, Eddie. Come early enough so we can have lunch,” she said brightly.

  I had already bought a Volks. Her money was useful and because she was happy with the group, she upped my consultancy fee as she called it to four thousand a month, much, much more than I was making at the university. I had difficulty convincing myself that I really earned it.

  She was not yet up when I arrived and it was already past eleven. She had earlier gone horseback riding at the Polo Club then gone back to sleep. By noon, I was served coffee and a plateful of sandwiches and cold yogurt. I was halfway through when she came down in her dressing gown, a shimmery kind, her breasts showing through.

  “That is a very sexy dress,” I said, thinking about New York again. In the almost three years since, we never had any kind of real intimacy and all the reward I got was an occasional kiss on the mouth, the pressing of bodies, a lingering handclasp. I was in a position where I couldn’t expect more.

  She took the sandwiches away and told the cook to prepare the table at once. But I already had enough and I barely touched the Chateaubriand. It was a leisurely lunch and I could see that the arduous campaign had not ravaged her; she was as fresh and as lovely as ever. With our coffee, we went to the library. She noticed my bulky portfolio. “It is business then”, she smiled.

  I recalled our first meeting with the senator in the same room, how we had talked about responsive government and that as she probably saw in her provincial sallies, the first priority was rural poverty, agrarian reform, anything to improve the lives of the rural poor. She listened for a few minutes while I mapped out the parameters of legislative action, but soon I could see that she was not concentrating.

  “You are not interested,” I said with irritation.

  “Because I know everything you are saying, Eddie, and right now, I am not really interested.”

  I never felt as futile and as helpless as I did then, to be told that I was talking to a stone. I gathered the folders and dumped them into my briefcase. Then, more in sadness than in anger: “I had hoped you would remember not just Santa Ana but the things you told me. Am I wrong in hoping you won’t be like the rest? There should be conscience in politics, else we would be nothing but pigs …”

  “Then let us be pigs,” she said with a vehemence that startled me. “Conscience, duty—all those virtues that you hear bandied about—my duty is not to God and country. It is to me—myself first, because without myself, what would there be? And look at you, you and your … genteel morality—what is it that you look forward to first? Your career, no less. I’m not here to clean the stables, to change tradition—the tradition in corruption. I am part of the herd although very much above the herd. Who can say this with the honesty that I am saying it?”

  I could not speak.

  She went on. “Listen, Eddie. In these four years, I will do what I can. Only a bit—for my image, for patronage. I am aiming beyond the Senate. Nothing but the top, the Presidency. You understand that? And when I’m there, that’s when we can go to town, do all the things you want to do. You think Papa is all that powerful? No, and neither will I be. I would be very pleased if you boys paid some attention to that. Focus on the next election because that’s where I’m headed. And I will use everything I can to get there.”

  “Power has gone to your head,” I said. “You’re using people as if they were things. Objects. I thought you didn’t like America because it is like that.”

  “I pay them well. I pay you very well. No one can top what I am giving them, or you.”

  “I’ll go back there. To hell with your money.”

  “You will rot there,” she said, trying to be conciliatory.

  “That is where I prefer to be. I am a scholar.”

  “What is scholarship if it is not used?”

  “The search for truth is sometimes without use from your point of view. But truth is always useful to humanity at large.”

  “The hell with humanity. You can love humanity without loving one single individual.”

  “Are you describing yourself? Remember the Caesars. Sic transit gloria mundi, all that sort of thing.”

  “I am not building an empire.”

  “There is no difference. You are in love with power. Caesar, when he was paraded in Rome, there was always this man following him, whispering, chanting: ‘Remember, thou art mortal.’ So Narita, remember—you are full of shit.”

  “I will have you fired,” she said under her breath.

  “You will have me flogged. But does that destroy the truth? And the truth is that you’re no different from the politicians you despise, from those girls at Assumption who snubbed you. You are snubbing man—and you cannot do that unless you resign from the human race.”

  “Get out of my sight,” she shouted.

  “Gladly,” I said.

  She did not stop me.

  Driving on the highway, I was so angry, so frustrated, I started to cry. I decided then that I would not have anything more to do with her. The four-thousand-peso loss would be a real sacrifice. It had helped with the mortgage on the house. There would also be less money for my sisters who were still in school. To help them was one of my duties as the eldest.

  I also got frightened. She could very well carry out her threat to have me kicked out of the university. I had tenure but what was tenure if people with no compassion were in power?

  I need not have worried. The following day, bright and early, there she was in her new Mercedes 300. I was having breakfast when I saw the car park in front of the gate. I rushed to my room upstairs and told my sisters to tell her that I was not in.

  I could hear her downstairs, her disbelief that I would leave so early on a Sunday morning. She said, “Well, I have nothing to do. I can wait the whole day if it comes to that. And I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

  There was a scramble to prepare for breakfast and I knew how embarrassed and uneasy my sisters were. Then she asked to go to my study. She wanted to look at my books and get something to read while waiting. My attempt at evasion had ended and I padded down the stairs. She grinned, shook a finger, and said, “Eddie—not on a Sunday morning …”

  She stood up and said she wanted to see my study or my room anyway and before I could object, she was up the flight and holding on to my arm, my sisters looking at us with amusement.

  My room was a mess as usual, my rubber shoes in the doorway, my dirty underwear under the desk, my books all over the place, my diploma still unframed and stuck on the wall with pins. As soon as we went in, she turned the latch. Then Narita kissed me deeply, passionately, murmuring, “I am sorry, darling, about yesterday. I hurt you, didn’t I? I’m here now to apologize and make up.”

  And what could I say when drowning in her sweetness?

  We fell on my bed. She had taken off her dress and tossed it on the floor. My sisters were probably listening in the other room so I made nonsensical small talk. The bed began to squeak and she said, “Damn!” She pulled me to the floor. It would have been uncomfortable but she rode me expertly and all the anxiety, all the anger were gone. There was only this woman as I had imagined her.

  For a while, I fantasized about us living together.

  We lay on the floor for a long time, talking, remembering New York, the campaign. We went over the few mistakes that were made and how they would be rectified next time. The challenge to her ambition was formidable when we finally came to it—the Presidency. She said it was within her grasp. She could convince the President not to run for reelection and perhaps jokingly, I am not sure now, she said: “If he will not accede to that, I will just put a few drops of cyanide in his coffee. He drinks it black so he won’t recognize the bitter taste.”

  “How can you talk so complacently and with such familiarity about him?” I asked, turning on my side to face her.

  She poked me in the ribs then. “Oh, Eddie, you were really born yesterday! Didn’t you know? The President and I—we became lovers during the campaig
n.”

  …

  At first, I had thought of limiting my interview with Senator Reyes to his comments about Narita, to his observations on national politics and the contribution his daughter-in-law had made. But I soon realized that this was a mistake for the senator—it’s obvious now—shadowed Narita all her life, not like some protective umbrella but as a pall, a fate that started on its course at the time the senator first came to Santa Ana and saw the young mestiza.

  The interview with Senator Reyes, therefore, is not just central to this story but a document in itself about an era, of the thinking which shaped a generation and the future, and also made the new definition of nationalism and the new public morality. Senator Reyes knew all the prewar political figures from Quezon onwards. He himself had collaborated with the Japanese in World War II and like all the collaborators of that period, justified his acts in the larger interests of the people. He had seen how the same collaborators like him became rich.

  To the very end, when he was already approaching senility, he justified himself, what he had done with politics and his brand of self-seeking nationalism. He sometimes castigated the elite to which he belonged for its depradation of the country, for not bringing alternatives to the corrupt political system. But his criticisms were mild and they were not really intended to sink the boat, not even to rock it. He was for the status quo and nationalism would preserve it. But though it is easy to pass judgment on men like him now, Senator Reyes was elevated to his lofty niche in free elections. It was the people who made the likes of him possible and, perhaps, inevitable.

  TAPE FOUR

  Senator Reyes:

  I stand on top of a mountain—I know that you are perhaps thinking, on top of a heap—and you are not wrong, either. You will ask how does one get to the top? Well, it takes a lot of money to do that, and guts. And cleverness, one must never forget that. Those who profess a high degree of virtue, of morality as indicated in the holy writ have no business trying to be leaders or nation builders. They should work in cemeteries, among the dead who cannot complain. I did a lot of complaining, bitching, haranguing in my time. And I am still doing it.