Sins

by F. Sionil Jose

  After dinner, before we parted for the evening, Choonja was pensive. “No one has ever given me a gift this expensive,” she said. “I suppose you expect some form of repayment?” she asked, laughter in her eyes.

  “No,” I said, and meant it. “I do not expect anything, just your companionship, or your friendship.”

  She asked me when I would leave Seoul.

  “When you want me to,” I said.

  It was she who asked me to stay on, which I decided to do. The next day, after my boys had gone to Koji in the south to visit the shipbuilding facilities—I had been there six months earlier—and, from there, home, she came to the hotel to have breakfast with me. It was Saturday and she did not have to work.

  I did not want to appear overly amorous, so I said, “I have yet to look at the antiques shops. I have a few pieces of Silla pottery …”

  Her eyes brightened. “So you are interested in our past, too,” she said.

  “I am interested in antiques, yes,” I said. “But I am more interested in the present, its challenges and possibilities.”

  “We must go to Kyŏngju then,” she suggested. “That is the old capital of Silla. And that may be where you can find some beautiful stuff. Although you may not take it out. There’s a government edict against that.”

  We left soon after in a hired car; a new highway stretched from Seoul all the way to the port of Pusan in the south, and the railroad to Pusan, too, had been improved to take on express trains. We passed several cities and towns, their names familiar to those who knew the Korean War—Suwŏon, Ch’ŏnan, Taejŏn. The fields were amber with the rice harvest, and within the yards of the new tile-roofed farmhouses, the persimmon trees were laden with ripening fruit. We reached Kyŏngju shortly after midday and had lunch in a new hotel. We spent the afternoon driving around, visiting temples that wouldn’t register in my mind, my attention claimed by this magnificent creature sitting beside me. We paused in a couple of antique shops where I did buy a celadon vase and a bowl at her suggestion. We dined on the hotel terrace overlooking the ancient city, talking very little, my mind focused on how it will be, the sweet expectation.

  That night, alone with her in my suite at last, she teased. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

  I said yes. I was honest. “But I didn’t ask for this, please keep that in mind. I gave you a gift, gave it with all my heart—and that’s it. Thank you, my dear Choonja, for being with me tonight.”

  That night was a disaster. I couldn’t explain it. Here I was, expectant, all revved up, healthy and mentally primed. She was all that I imagined her to be, her skin so pure, like cream in the light. At twenty-one, she looked much younger, a girl in her late teens. We had kissed with passion, and she was all ready, and so was I but when the moment came, I couldn’t do it!

  The following day, I tried to analyze my failure. She said I was tired, perhaps my mind was on business all the time. How did I perform with the girl from the Blue Cloud Restaurant?

  “She just gave me a massage,” I said. She did not believe me.

  We went that Sunday to P’anmunjŏm where the Armistice was signed, the North Koreans on one side of the 38th parallel, the South Koreans and the Americans on the other side. It was the first time for both of us; the trees had grown and cranes had built their nests in the trees. There wasn’t really much to see—those grim North Korean faces, barbed wire and men ready with their guns. It was depressing, and it was so good to be back in Seoul. That evening, we went across the Han and had dinner in one of those restaurants on its banks. I was told that some of the restaurant patrons purposely went across the river at night; in the event that the North Koreans attacked, they could be in Seoul in a matter of hours. Those across the river would then be able to escape the first waves of invaders. But we went back to the hotel, my last night in Seoul, although, of course, I could stay longer if I wanted to.

  Again, the same frustration that had so angered me and curdled my mind. How could it be? And then, I realized, it was perhaps because Choonja reminded me so much of Adela. That was the most logical explanation. When she left me in the morning, after we had slept embracing one another and enjoying the warmth of our bodies in the autumn cold, I told her what I suspected was the reason, the profound obstruction in my mind, my memory of Adela still very much alive in my heart.

  That night, I dreamed, too, not of Adela but of Severina. I was young again and so was she. We were in the kitchen at the cook’s table eating with our hands, just as I used to, enjoying the honest simplicity of the servants’ peasant food, rice fried with garlic, strong Benguet coffee and thick strips of salted fish and sliced, ripe tomatoes. In my dream, I found Severina more beautiful than Adela, than Choonja, and I could swear the food tasted better than any I have had in those gourmet restaurants.

  In Manila, I often dialed Seoul knowing Choonja would have to clear the call. I had nothing important to say, I just wanted to hear her voice. She would laugh gently, knowing the truth, and if her boss was not around, we would talk at length. In this way, I learned of her engagement to one of the company’s engineers a year later.

  It was January and cold in Seoul but pleasant in Manila. I asked her to spend her honeymoon in the Philippines and I sent her two airline tickets so she wouldn’t be able to say no. They were met at the airport by my travel people and brought to the Dasmariñas house. I gave a small dinner for them that evening and invited the Korean ambassador and his deputy chief of mission who, as it turned out, had been the groom’s classmate at Seoul National University.

  Choonja was in a pastel green cotton dress and her cheeks were pinkish with youth. I didn’t pay much attention to her husband, but I did have a brief conversation with him to make him feel comfortable. He knew about the mink coat—in fact, her whole office knew about it, and they had considered her very lucky indeed. And now, this honeymoon trip. I sent them to Baguio for a couple of days, then the yacht took them to Palawan for a week of fishing, lolling on the beach and snorkeling. They returned to Manila sunburned but happy.

  On their last Sunday, the deputy chief of mission took Choonja’s husband for a game of golf in Marikina. They were to be there the whole day and, in the evening, the classmate was giving a dinner for them.

  “I will see to it that Choonja is entertained,” I assured him.

  I took her to the Club for breakfast, then we motored to Tagaytay. We reminisced on the way, and I held her hand, which she did not draw away, her hands so soft, the fingers tapering, her nails clipped and unpolished.

  My visit to Tagaytay also enabled me to look at the real estate I had bought there—three hundred contiguous hectares, some on the plateau overlooking the lake and the volcano and extending across the national highway. All of this would someday be developed as either residential area or intensively cultivated farms, planted to vegetables not possible to grow in the lowland heat.

  As we ascended the plateau, Choonja noted the perceptible greening of the land although the rainy season had passed. On both sides of the road, interspersed among the coconut palms, were low papayas, rows of daisies, and pineapples. It was the first time Choonja had seen pineapple plants. They were far sweeter, I told her, when picked ripe, unlike those that were exported to her country and to Japan—pineapples from Hawaii, harvested while still unripe.

  We passed a long stretch of fallow land—all of it mine—that was to be developed soon. Again, I got all of it cheaply by adding credibility to the well-known reputation of this region as bandit country, plagued by many unsolved murders, and that many of the earlier landowners were forced to leave because of threats from these “bandits,” some of them in my employ in my security agency.

  I had support from the public officials who stood to profit because they knew that Cobello y Cia would eventually come to the rescue of this desolate land.

  At the time, I had not yet built a house in Tagaytay; that would have sent the wrong signal to upper-class Filipinos who appreciated Tagaytay’s climate and isolat
ion from Manila, a scarce thirty miles away.

  We drove over to the old lodge that had been built before the war. As we neared it, Choonja gasped in awe and wonder: to our left, like some blue mirage, Taal Lake suddenly appeared through a screen of grass and trees, glittering in the noonday sun. At its center rose the green cone of the volcano.

  “It is beautiful,” she murmured.

  At the lodge grounds, I took a picture of her standing against the ledge that overlooked the lake. She wore a skyblue ramie dress that I had asked Christian—Manila’s best couturier—to make; had she been in Spain, I would have asked Balenciaga to design a few dresses for her. She brightened the frame—she would be photogenic; even in closeups, that beauty would shine through.

  We went to the lodge coffee shop. We just had coffee, then went to the Mercedes and drove back to Manila. She dozed in the car and I put an arm around her. She leaned on me, her fragrance swirling around me. I had wanted to ask her about her husband then, but I did not want the driver to hear an intimate conversation.

  Now, all my drivers—in fact, my entire household staff—are discreet and trustworthy. And my drivers are also trained mechanics and are my bodyguards as well, experts in the martial arts, fully armed and skilled marksmen. I don’t believe in going around with a platoon of bodyguards; just one, well trained and loyal, will do, particularly since, I am quite sure, I have no real atrasos—that is to say, people who would really want to do me in are few and wouldn’t have the determination and courage to do it anyway.

  As we neared Manila, she woke up, and realizing that my arm was around her, she snuggled closer. I had remembered only too well my Seoul misadventure, my disastrous failure that certainly lessened my self-esteem. I wondered how she had felt on those two nights that we had embraced, both of us anxious, and I couldn’t do it! I had never felt such humiliation before, such a damning sense of impotence, and thinking back, I was thankful for her expression of sympathy rather than ridicule, how she had kissed me so tenderly, as if such expression of affection would banish the bone-deep anger and frustration that shriveled me.

  We returned to the penthouse.

  While the cook was preparing our lunch, we drank some red wine in the living room.

  It occurred to me then to ask about her husband.

  “Did you enjoy Baguio? It is quite cool there.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  Without warning I asked, “Is he a good lover?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “When he made love to you, did he please you? Was he good in bed?”

  Again, that impish smile. “Charlie—I really don’t know. I never knew any man other than my husband. In fact”—she leaned over, held my hand and pressed it—“you would have been the first …”

  For some time, I couldn’t speak. I finally said, a knot in my throat, “I am very sorry—oh, not for you, but for myself …”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek—no insinuation of passion, just a simple, domestic kiss.

  A leisurely lunch on the terrace, Korean barbecue—prawns, thin strips of beef and chicken—on the brass brazier I had brought back from Seoul, and the kimchi she had not forgotten to bring. When it was over, I asked her if she wanted to nap—my bed was ready. But she said she was not tired. I took her to the bedroom. We were now alone and I kissed her. She responded, but her kiss was sterile, a habit.

  I let go, then told her that I wanted to take her portrait, to which she gladly acceded, knowing that I enjoyed photography.

  Let me again be immodest and say that some of my best pictures would be envied by Cecil Beaton and my portraits can equal if not surpass those of Richard Avedon. I had been taking pictures since before World War II with those simple box cameras and, afterward, with the more sophisticated models from Germany and, after the war, with the first Japanese imitations of the Leica and the Contax. Some critics have pointed out that my reputation as a photographer is enhanced by my being rich. That even with my expensive equipment, most of my pictures are lifeless. They have perhaps seen only my still lifes, not the portraits and the other “living” pictures I have taken of anonymous people at their chores. Yes, I have a roomful of cameras, including those antiques that are still serviceable and the latest models including the Japanese electronic gee-gaws. But people do not normally know how hard I work in the darkroom, sometimes the whole night when I have taken some pictures that I think are experimental or great. The darkroom! That’s where pictures are created, and the photographer who does not know a developer from a fixer is a phony. There are men of means who call themselves photographer-artists but have never been inside a darkroom!

  We went to the game room with the skylight; it was meant to be my studio as well. I lowered several screens for background and positioned the strobe lights and the shades. I posed her seated on a sofa, standing by a wooden pillar, holding a rose. These being over, I said I wanted to photograph her in the nude.

  For an instant, hesitation clouded her face.

  “I have seen you twice in your glory,” I said. “I want to record that. Are you ashamed, Choonja?”

  She smiled and said, “No. But this picture, only you will see it?”

  I assured her so. I showed her the file of nudes I had taken, all of them under lock and key, the safe where the negatives were stored. “You can keep the negatives if you wish,” I said.

  Again, that beatific smile. “Will you tell my husband?”

  “That is your decision.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “He does not know anything.”

  She started peeling off her clothes; her skin much, much fairer where the bathing suit had covered it. It would make a stark contrast, particularly since I was photographing her in black and white. Seeing her thus, my throat ached, the blood in my ears thundered. I had to wait a little for the welts on her skin made by her bra and panty to disappear. I took a bottle of lotion from the shelf to apply to portions of the skin that seemed shiny and, as I touched her, I could feel myself coming to life at last. I embraced her then and kissed her with passion. For a while she clung to me, thrusting a leg forward so she could feel my manhood audaciously, unashamedly proclaiming itself. Then she pushed me away, gently. Her voice was tinged with sorrow and regret when she said, “I am sorry, Charlie. But I want to be faithful to my husband.”

  I did not persist; I understood.

  That evening, after I had delivered Choonja to her husband, her virtue intact, I returned in haste to the penthouse and worked frenziedly in the darkroom till long past midnight. First, I developed the negatives with utmost care, dried them, then made contact prints. I have always been partial to the Hasselblad; its square format simplified composition. The negative is also sharper. The Leica’s has more depth. I then enlarged the portraits—this took the longest; I made fourteen-by-nineteen enlargements, a dozen of them. Eagerly, I waited for the images to form in the developer. There was Choonja, finally, the shy smile, the lips half parted as if she were teasing me, the eyes brilliant as usual.

  It occurred to me then to bring out the other portraits of the women I was most attracted to—half a dozen who had graced my bed, and half a dozen more who would have done the same had I persevered beyond disrobing and photographing them. I ranged the portraits around the studio, against the walls, perched them on the sofa, on the writing desk. Then I turned on all the floodlights and, slowly, like a gourmet surveying a splendid buffet table, I regaled myself with that luscious variety. I studied all the faces, mostly Asian with a bit of Caucasian mix. A black-and-white photograph is more exacting, more precise in character delineation because it is bereft of the cloying exaggeration of color. The starkness of truth prevails, probes through the fine gloss of the lens and beauty glitters in its purest essence as expressed by the eyes. The eyes! I went around again and finally came to Choonja, and nostalgia suddenly came crashing over me like a mighty surf; poignant tears started to mist my vision. The eyes, yes, th
e eyes! These were what had attracted me to all of them and all had magic—mysterious, brooding, deep—in their eyes, the same eyes as Severina’s that had beckoned to me through all the years. I knew then it was not these women, and in the future, not Ann or Yoshiko, loved though they were, for whom I had pined and ached and truly cherished. It was Severina all along, the girl of my youth whom I had wronged!

  Thus endeth another melancholy chapter of my life.

  I started visiting Japan in the fifties as my enterprises developed. Indeed, Japan was poor, its population hungry and with the peso at two to a dollar, the exchange rate being 360 yen to the dollar, every Filipino who went to Tokyo at the time was a profligate prince. I stayed at a hotel near the Imperial Palace, the Nikkatsu and, sometimes, in the afternoons, when General MacArthur left his office nearby, I went there to watch him, as did many Japanese who wanted a glimpse of the man who now ruled them. He had been to our Sta. Mesa house several times and had even talked with me; had I greeted him and reminded him of those dinners in Sta. Mesa I am sure he would have remembered. After all, it was also he who signed the commendation that made my father a colonel in the U.S. Army! But I contented myself with one of his senior aides whom I had also met in Sta. Mesa and, once, the general did pause when we met in the corridor by his office and said hello, but he was too big to bother with a young businessman from Manila.

  To millions of Filipinos and to the now docile Japanese, he was more than ten feet tall; indeed, he was physically impressive—that stern jaw, that wide brow, that heroic stance—they were theatrical, they endowed him with glamor and charisma. But looking back, he was an ordinary mortal, loyal to his friends in Manila. I would not be surprised to find out that Father had introduced him to a couple, maybe a dozen even, of beautiful Manila mestizas while he lived in the Manila Hotel. If all those guerrilla records were to be believed, then Father had served his country well in spite of his pimping for the Japanese and serving in the Laurel government. He was never brought to trial for collaboration, unlike the others—that was their luck, a result of their inability to understand the primordial rule for survival: create personal bonds with those in power; pander to them. Human beings that they are, they will reciprocate.