Sins

by F. Sionil Jose

  Of course, I was right. Angela had heard of my accident but did not realize it was very serious. She immediately came to see me.

  She brought to my arid suite the effulgence of her youth, her beauty. My Angela, her face flushed, happy and sad all at once. Her mother was not with her; obviously, they had already seen one another.

  “Forgive me, Tito,” she said, bending over to kiss me. She was holding my hand, but I could feel none of the warmth, the softness of her hand. “I am now living with Delf.”

  “In that tiny apartment?”

  “Ummm.” She smiled, the corners of her mouth crinkling. Again, the impish smile. “He loves me, Tito. The day before Mama and I left, I seduced him. I am pregnant and very happy.”

  My Angela happy! I didn’t know that tears had gathered in my eyes and were rolling down my cheeks. She hastily wiped them off, then bent over and kissed me again.

  Corito had flown in six specialists from the United States and they examined me thoroughly. If it was necessary for me to fly to the United States, I would charter a jet.

  But they all said it was not necessary. I was already getting all the medical care I needed, and therapy, too. The possibility of my regaining mobility was remote.

  I shouted at them, “Tell me the truth!” And that is what they said. “The truth.” Complications, too, could easily develop. Will I die soon? They did not speak—in my condition, I was already dead.

  I asked for Angela again and, when she came, I told her my remaining days were few. “I want to see you and Delfin. As soon as possible. This evening, if you can bring him here.”

  So there they were, Jake, my chief counsel, Delfin and Angela. Delfin had aged in the year that I had not seen him. I longed to embrace him, if only these wretched arms could reach out. He was in a barong—he had a hearing in court that afternoon. His face was unsmiling, grim, as he looked at me.

  Was he sad, too?

  Jake and I were classmates at the Ateneo; he knew some of my secrets in business but not my personal ones. Like I said, I never let anyone get very close to me. I had asked him to bring a lot of things and his briefcase bulged with them.

  “Jake,” I told him, “first my will. Read it.”

  Jake was in college dramatics and had a theatrical manner. He started clearly, “Being of sound mind …”

  “The date, Jake,” I interrupted him. “The date.”

  He glanced at it and read it.

  I could, at least, turn my head. I faced Delfin. “So you see, Delfin. Do you remember the day? It was when you enrolled in law school, hijo. That early, I had already made my will—the third time it was changed. And the last time …”

  I asked Jake about my liabilities, the liquidity of my assets. He had brought along the annual statement prepared by my accountants. I was again confirmed; I was, indeed, very, very rich! He continued reading my will.

  Corito would get what remained of the hacienda and all the properties our parents had left. But she had also appended her own will to mine, that those properties would pass on to Angela—most of it, except a little for a couple of nieces whom she liked. And all of mine would go to Delfin and to Angela, with provisions for a couple of pretty cousins who had been particularly good to me, and for people like Jake, who had served me well. A short will, not more than five pages. I asked Jake to leave when he was through.

  All the while, Delfin had stood there, silent, erect like a marble pillar.

  “I warned you about misfits being the offsprings of first cousins marrying,” I told him. How could I ever tell them the truth? And would it really matter now?

  My mind was filled with those awful clichés. “Money—wealth, when was it ever bad? It all depends on how it is used. The acquisition, well, who would now accuse the Rockefellers, the Morgans of the United States—those robber barons as they were called? It was they who made America.”

  “No do-gooding can ever erase history, sir.”

  “But even do-gooding is never enough. What happened to those tenants in the hacienda who were given land? I did that to please you—and also to teach you a lesson. They sold their farms, became tenants again!”

  He was silent, then he said, “Giving them land isn’t enough. Rural credit, farm management training—they should have diese, too.”

  “And you expected me to do these?” I shouted, but what came out was a squeak. “That is the function of government, not me!”

  A most awkward silence. I was speaking from the depths of my being, shredding my heart, exposing my very nerves. “Severina—it was so long ago and I was just a teenager. What did I really know about love? But looking back, remembering how I missed her after she had gone, I am now sure that I loved her in my own fashion, young as I was. Why did she not write to me? Tell me about you? I would have come to see her, to hold you. Please, I implore you, believe that. Not everything was my fault. When you came, you cannot know how sincerely, lovingly, I welcomed you. I didn’t ask you for any proof. One look at you and everyone will say, You are a chip off the old block. Do you understand that expression? It is very dated …”

  Delfin nodded, a wry smile on his face at last.

  “You are very proud, hijo. I appreciate that. So am I. But every so often, aware as I am of my tremendous strength, I let the weak be. I live in a jungle—we all do—but what profit does it give us to rampage and trample the weak? Better to use them. Look at my companies. My tenants, my workers, get much, much more than the minimum wage, more privileges than those toiling in those Chinese sweatshops, those creaky establishments owned by the Indios. There is Spanish blood in you—mine. Look at all the successful businesses and organizations in this country. They are all Spanish mestizo, or Chinese mestizo—not Indio. My father and my grandfather believed that the Indio is inferior, that his brain is not big enough for creativity or management. It is us, mestizos, with our mixed blood, who will bring this nation up from the dung heap. You have a big role to play, not just as my son but as a Filipino, for that is what the term originally meant—the Spaniards who were born here—”

  He interrupted me loudly. “Sir, I will not stand for this racist nonsense!”

  “But it is the truth,” I shouted, this time realizing that my voice was no longer a squeak but what it had always been, strong, clear, imperial. “The truth! Look at your guru, the man you idolize. Nojok is mestizo, too!”

  “He is Filipino,” he said with conviction, his eyes blazing.

  “Enough of this,” I said. “I have made my point. Now, you and Angela—if you really love her, you will not want her to live as harshly as you are living. You will want her to have some comfort. You don’t even have a maid!”

  “She told me she wouldn’t mind,” he said meekly. I had touched a raw nerve. I was going to make the most of it.

  “Not mind! Of course she told you that; she loves you. I love Angela, too, like she was my very own. I do not think you really love her, hijo.”

  “You are very wrong, sir,” he replied quickly. “I do. I do!” Then he turned away and faced the window. From my top-floor suite, the new city of Makati spread below. From where I lay, helpless, immobile, I could see my own office building, a tower of gleaming glass in the near distance, my penthouse hidden from view.

  Luisita, she had caused all this. No, it was not my libido. My sins inexorably coming again to visit me. My staff had sent her to her hotel before the ambulance came. Then immediately the following morning, she left for Hong Kong and home. She was traumatized by what had happened, but the hefty sum given her must have salved her somewhat.

  When Delfin turned to me again, his eyes had misted. “Angela told you that she seduced me. That is not true at all, sir. Since she was young, I had watched her, seen her grow, so sensitive, so frail. I thought I would protect her. With all that beauty, I did not want her to be like my mother—bearing an illegitimate child. But now …”

  “Marry her,” I said. “Neither Corito nor I will stand in the way. But in heaven’s name, don’t l
et her suffer. Let her live with some comfort at least. I looked at her hands—they were bruised …”

  “I told her not to wash my clothes …”

  “But she did it just the same. Yes, a woman in love is capable of abnegation. But she is pregnant now and she needs all the care in the world, sickly as she is.”

  He avoided my gaze. I was getting to him at last.

  “I love you both,” I said. “Had I known about you then, I am sure I would have come to claim you, to give your mother some honor. I am stubborn, too. I would have challenged my parents like you are challenging me now. But I would never have hated my parents, my father most of all, not so much for what they left me but because I grew up with their love. Ah, Severina, forgive me. It was not all my fault. Did you raise our son to be proud? He is brilliant, but did you raise him to hate me, too?”

  Emotions I couldn’t control came surging, waves as high as mountains collapsing on me. Paralyzed as I was, I could feel my chest tightening, making it difficult for me to utter another word. I was sobbing like a child, I know, but did not know tears were rolling down my cheeks.

  “Please, sir, believe me. Mother … she never told me to hate you. Never!”

  “Hijo,” I said between sobs that were wrenched from me like tendons stripped off my bones. “When are you going to stop calling me ‘sir’? When Americans say ‘sir’ they do it to put some distance between them and those they address as sir. Call me anything, hijo, anything but ‘sir.’ ”

  It was then that he came to me, took a handkerchief from his pocket and, bending over me, wiped the tears on my cheeks. My son, my son, in this first act of kindness, and all the more did this feeling of sadness, diluted now with some joy, sweep over me again and again, and it would seem that my sorrow could not be contained anymore, till my whole body, inert and unfeeling, was squeezed dry of it.

  But as he leaned over, the amulet he had always worn on his neck slid out of his shirt. Was it an uncanny trick of light? Or my eyes, diseased as they may already be, playing a shocking trick on me? It dangled close, almost touching my face, taunting and mocking me, no longer hematein. It had changed color. Now, it was a shiny, even glittering, triangle of the deepest black.

  Two decorations in one day! This morning, after my ablutions, the Spanish ambassador came and presented me with Spain’s highest decoration, “The Grand Cross of Isabella.” Now it’s out. I have Spanish citizenship, too! He gave a short speech that my loyal staff applauded gustily. Then he bent over and hung around my neck this gold medallion with a thick yellow sash. It was a little early for Dom Perignon but, just the same, it was passed around and a joyous mood suffused my suite. In the late afternoon, the Leader himself came and also made a short sweet speech and then he hung on my neck another gold medallion, “The Order of Lapu-lapu,” the highest honor the government can bestow on one of its citizens.

  I knew it—the decorations were meant to be my epitaph. And there was no Angela, no Corito, no Delfin to witness my triumph—and my passing.

  I suddenly remembered that unique interview in Esquire some years back with Groucho Marx when, like me, in his senility, he was being decorated by foreign governments. The interviewer had asked him for a comment on his latest decoration from the French government and the old rascal, without a second thought, said, “I’ll give them all up for just one erection!” End of interview.

  Not me, not me. I’d give them all up for two erections!

  This was what brightened my mind and I started laughing uproariously till I realized the impossibility of it all. The sluices of sadness opened and I began to weep, then sob just as loudly. The Leader came to me, patted me on the shoulder. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and started to wipe my cheeks.

  I cried out, “No, Mr. President. No!”

  Perhaps he thought I was being modest, that I didn’t want that presidential attention. That was not the reason. His handkerchief smelled! Really smelled!

  Dying and crippled as I am, I had thought I could now be at peace with myself, with the demons that have hounded me, with my sister, in spite of her lascivious appetites—and my dear children.

  I had carefully laid down my succession; my trusted lieutenants like Jake would see to that. Although I am now nailed to this wheelchair, they can move me about. Two special vans, like ambulances with special ramps to ease me down or clamp me in place beside the driver’s seat, enable me to move about, to see the edifices I have built, the multitude that do my bidding. Wherever I go, my people cheer me, indomitable in spirit—that is what they think I am. They do not see the anxieties that canker me, corrode and slowly destroy me.

  Are they telling me the truth when I question them about the viability of their enterprises? Can I trust them really as I trusted them once? I rant and shout—I think I do—and they simply smile and nod in acquiescence, or is it obeisance? Even Jake, without whom I could not operate, is that contempt in his bland mestizo face? Or is it pity?

  “Jake!” I snarl at him. “Would you jump into a vat of boiling oil if I told you to?”

  He grins. It is an old joke between us. “I will push you in first, then follow—” he repeats the scripted reply and laughs. He will push me in first, and that’s that, of this I am now sure. To him will go so much of the fortune I have built; he is very clever; will he be able to go around my will? To cheat Delfin and Angela of their legacy? I am almost sure he would be capable—he had done so many things with me in the past that would land us both in jail if he blabbered. I do not think I can trust him anymore.

  Delfin should now be constantly by my side, but he does not come to see me. Has Jake ringed me with an insurmountable wall of steel? That bastard son, that bastard son, after all that I have done for him! And my Angela, my precious Angela, where is she? That little bitch, that pretty little bitch, she, too, has forsaken me. And my sister, Corito, you blasted whore! It is all your fault!

  The world around me becomes gray, then black, and I close my eyes as tightly as I can, and the images that form in the hollow of my brain, fragmented and overlapping one another, are rough-edged slabs of gold, now silver, now ebony, and then laser flashes of deep red piercing my soul and I know I am again about to be seized by panic.

  I dare not open my eyes. I cry out, “Severina, Severina, stop it! Lift this curse you have damned me with. I do not deserve it. Have I not been mortified enough? Have I not pleaded with you long enough? Forgive me, Severina. Forgive me!”

  But it cannot be. I see everything I have built slowly collapse like sand castles lapped by the waves. I open anxiously my pyxis of memories but find nothing of value there. I see instead the world’s end coming, blacker than night, and all I can do is wait.

  When was the last time I saw Delfin? Corito? They are nowhere now. And my Angela, where is she? The last time I saw her—how can I forget it? I had thought that in my hapless condition I would grieve no more, that I would no longer regret my inability to move and to act. She had come to me so pale and distraught, those big brown eyes languid with sorrow, with anger, and whatever else was deeply troubling her. “Oh, Tito,” she wailed. “Is it true? Is it true?”

  I waited for her to utter the words, the final acknowledgment of what she truly was and I as well.

  “They—” then she broke down and cried. She flung herself upon me, and though I could not embrace her I could feel her shudder on my nerveless body as sobs were torn out of her.

  “What is it Angela, hija?” I asked in a voice that quavered.

  She went on crying. Briefly, she was aware of the four nurses on duty and, through her tears, she told them to leave, that she wanted to be alone with me. When they did not move, I barked at them, “Out! Out!”

  We were finally alone. Between sobs, she told me how she had found Corito and Delfin in a sexual embrace in their apartment, how Corito had told her that she and Delfin could not get married because they were brother and sister.

  “Is it true, Tito?” She turned to me, her large eyes gazing, probi
ng deep into me.

  I had to look away and couldn’t speak.

  She half rose and embraced me, kissed me on the cheek, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and all the while she was mumbling, “Oh, Tito. Oh, Tito. But you were always a father to me. Yet I find it so difficult now to call you Papa. Oh, Tito, thank you just the same for having been so good to me …” Then she stood up, smiled at me through her tears and slowly walked to the door.

  “Angela,” I called in my raspy, croaking voice, “Angela! It was not my fault! It’s fate—fate, believe me, dearest! And those infernal witches. Brujas!”

  But I do not think she heard or cared.

  FOR EDWIN THUMBOO

  GLOSSARY

  accesorias Apartments; literally, “outbuildings” (Sp.). Word used widely until the 1950s.

  bangus Milkfish.

  chitcharon Fried pork skin (Sp.).

  cuedao Filipinized variation of cuidado, “be careful” or “beware” (Sp.).

  dokar Two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage; word used only during World War II.

  encargado Person in charge; administrator of a plantation (Sp.).

  ganta Measure of grain; term no longer used, as grain is measured in kilos.

  hacendero Landlord; owner of a big plot of land, from hacienda (Sp.).

  Huks Communist-led revolutionary group that fought for agrarian reform in the Philippines after World War II; it grew out of an anti-Japanese resistance movement in Luzon during the war.

  ilustrados The first Filipinos, usually of means, who studied in Europe (beginning in the 1880s) in order to become “enlightened”; literally, “learned” or “well-informed” (Sp.).

  jusi barong A loose-fitting, long-sleeved man’s shirt—the national dress of the Philippines—made from fine, sheer fabric, often embroidered on the collar and facing.

  kundiman A sad folk song, usually Tagalog.

  merienda Afternoon snack (Sp.).