The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library)

by F. Sionil Jose

  Senator Reyes faced Tony with an expansive mien. “You’ll be big there, son. You have the qualifications and, most important, the best connections …” His laughter was like the crack of splitting bamboo. “And you can even be the dean of your college if you like, let me see to that. And if you have complaints …”

  Don Manuel shook hands with the Japanese and then with Senator Reyes. The door was open. “My son, Compadre, I’m sorry to tell you, has already left the university. He will start working with me.”

  Senator Reyes paused. He looked disappointed. After a pause, “Well, that’s a lot better. At any rate,” he turned to Don Manuel again, “don’t tell me I didn’t try.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Tony said automatically. Now it was all clear why Dean Lopez hated him. But it was beyond explaining now and no thought could shape in his mind, no thought, only revulsion.

  He followed Don Manuel, who had returned to his wide steel desk. “I didn’t know, Papa,” Tony said, “that you had asked Senator Reyes to intercede for me.”

  Don Manuel avoided him. “Wouldn’t you like being a regent? Or dean? Don’t you like the fact that I’m interested in your welfare?”

  “I appreciate it, Papa,” he said, the fight ebbing out of him. “But I wish you would understand. I can go up on my own … it may take longer, but I can go up.”

  Don Manuel stopped arranging the papers on his desk and faced Tony. “That’s what I like about you,” he said paternally. “You have pride. But remember, you are now in the family. And if I can help you get ahead I’ll do it.”

  Then Don Manuel drifted back to the visitors who had gone and his tone became jovial again. “Politicians,” he said, “are a species you have to understand. No, they aren’t difficult at all. All that you must remember is that they are after one thing—money. Once you know that, you can’t be wrong. They are very brassy about it. Gentleman’s language—don’t waste this on politicians. They name their price and it’s up to you to haggle.”

  Tony did not speak.

  “That’s distasteful to you, isn’t it?” Don Manuel laughed slightly. “Well, that’s how it is. These are the realities. Maybe when this country has become industrialized these politicians will give jobs to their constituents. And if they can’t give jobs, they must help in another way. That’s where a little of their money goes.”

  “Just like one big happy family,” Tony said.

  “Don’t be so sarcastic about the family,” Don Manuel said. “In this organization, for instance, all the employees are related to one another. The family system—oh yes, I’ve heard young punks in the business underrating it. And they are right, too. I am all for efficiency. That’s why I’m going all out for this mill. But as long as there’s no substitute for the family, it stays. Besides, what substitute have you for loyalty? You can’t expect loyalty from the politicians. Not even at the price you pay them.”

  “So money isn’t everything then,” Tony said happily, as if one last pinnacle of his own beliefs had stood up to the rich man’s battering reason.

  “Of course money isn’t everything.” Don Manuel leaned back on his chair and beamed. “The price is not always money. But if you want to know what the price of a man is, or his services, you must be wise.” Don Manuel brought his forefinger to his right temple and tapped twice. “It’s all a matter of understanding what a man wants most. If you can give him that, then he is yours to command. Don’t expect that he will be eternally grateful, because all men hate to be indebted. Every man wants to be independent. As for the price, some men want friendship. If you can give them that, well and good. Money cannot buy friendship but it can create friendship. See? It can create the atmosphere. It can create the conditions for all the reasons you need. But, as I said, don’t expect gratitude. You’ll be terribly disappointed. All men act in self-interest. Even the conduct of nations is guided by this unerring rule. It was George Washington who said that, no?”

  Tony nodded.

  Don Manuel went back to his monologue. “It’s the truth. Everyone has a price. Christ had a price—the Cross and the salvation of mankind. I have a price—the future of the Villas and of everyone in the family. You have a price—and don’t feel that I’m insulting you. Your self-respect. I’m just stating a fact. You are vulnerable where you are most sincere. And I think that is why Carmen likes you. You have self-respect. As long as you know these vulnerable points you will know also how to deal with people. Even our highly touted press has its price. I know. I get my way around business editors. Everyone in this racket can be bought. I have yet to see one who cannot be bought.”

  Tony looked at the ceiling and a thought crossed his mind. Godo—he had always been insufferable, but Godo was someone who would not bend to something as crass as money. He had gotten into trouble because of this single virtue—integrity—and he brimmed with it. He was cynical and brassy, vulgar, loud-mouthed. He was a peasant in manners and attitudes, but he was an aristocrat when it came to honor. Tony shook his head.

  “You don’t agree, huh?” Don Manuel asked.

  Tony nodded. Godo would yet be his redeemer, the one who could prove to Don Manuel that the price tag does not apply to all human beings. Godo would be his final proof that a man’s reward is in heaven. “I’m not very sure, Papa,” Tony said. “But if there’s anyone I can trust it’s Godo Soler, an editor and an old friend. He may have faults, but one thing I know, you can’t buy him.”

  Don Manuel became silent. “Godo,” he said, twiddling his thumbs. “Well, I’ll remember that. Bring him to me someday. Next time there’s a party in the house, ask him to come. No, bring him to lunch—or dinner. I’ll yet find his price, and because he is your friend, I’ll be extra generous with him. It’s not that I want to prove you wrong, Tony. It’s simply I’ve never been wrong.”

  One of the office boys came in apparently at the ring of a buzzer, and Don Manuel said, “Bring me a Coke—and Tony, is it coffee?”

  Tony nodded. As the boy disappeared at the other end of the room, Don Manuel continued in the same serious vein: “I cannot find it in me to dispute the usefulness of the family system. For the moment it’s doing wonders. You get loyalty because of it—and efficiency. I have heard it said that with industrialization the family system will have to go.”

  “I think that’s true, Papa,” Tony Samson said. “In the United States family corporations are a thing of the past.”

  “In the United States,” Don Manuel repeated in an annoyed tone. “Must you always bring the United States into the conversation? The conditions in this country are different—that is the first thing you should know, Tony. This isn’t America; this is Asia.”

  “I know, Papa,” Tony said, “but the family has to go if there must be industrialization. I remember in college we had a discussion along this line …”

  “This isn’t college anymore, son,” Don Manuel said softly.

  “I know that, too, Papa.”

  “I hope I am not being a bore,” Don Manuel said apologetically. “No, I don’t think it’s wrong for people to be idealistic. I just ask that people like you be realistic enough to know that the real world is full of compromise.”

  Tony loved Don Manuel’s clichés. His father-in-law was being emphatic.

  “What I’m trying to say,” Don Manuel said, “is that poverty has its place, but what would happen if poverty were to become a symbol of the elite? Then there would be no more reason for people to want to work harder.”

  “I know, Papa,” Tony said. “Poverty is degrading.”

  Don Manuel stood up and paced the floor. “I knew poverty. I’ll tell you how it was when my father was just starting to build his furniture factory. He had to wake up at dawn to count the lumber that came in. We had to walk to school, all the way from Ermita to Intramuros. That’s a good long walk, even now. I’ve known how it is to be hungry, to be broke, and to be unhappy. Father would give us no more than five centavos a day. Five centavos! And one pair of shoes until they were w
orn out and our toes and soles stuck out.”

  The rich man cracked his knuckles. “He was a tyrant, but he taught us well.” A long pause, then the talk veered quietly to what Tony had to do. The simplicity of his job amazed him; he was to be the official spokesman of the Villas. Henceforth, there would be no business negotiations unless he had spoken on the plausibility of having these negotiations exploited for the good name of the Villas. He was to be a troubleshooter and a member of the brain trust. He was to be a public relations man, he was to be a facade-builder.

  “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, Papa,” Tony said, latching on to every word, “but there must be some other thing I can do.”

  “That’s honest of you,” Don Manuel said kindly. “Not many people can say that, Tony. Well, there aren’t many like you. But you are different. We are all crude moneymakers, but you, you are different. And you can start making yourself useful right now by telling me if there’s anything wrong with teaming up with the Chinese, Japanese, and Americans. I want an honest opinion, Tony. You can give me the answer next week.”

  Don Manuel led Tony to the door at the left side of the room. It led to a room with cream-colored drapes and a thick rug. The businessman tugged at a line and the draperies opened to a rain-shrouded view of the bay and the boulevard.

  The desk was not as modern as Don Manuel’s, but it was huge. One side of the room was lined with empty, glass-fronted shelves. And on a low table beside the desk was the latest electric typewriter—its soft red color glowing handsomely in the light.

  “You’ll love working here,” Don Manuel stated proudly. “All this is yours. Your secretary will be outside. Look for one right away—that’s your decision. When I need you I’ll just buzz you, and son, do please jump when I do.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Tony said.

  Alone in this comfortable room, Tony felt lost for a moment. He sat in his upholstered swivel chair and turned around. Those shelves—they would soon be filled with his books. His hand caressed the electric machine. It did not seem real, his being in a place as comfortable, as conducive to easeful thinking as this. How supremely convenient it was for him simply to accept the fact that now he was no longer a Samson but someone drawn into the magnetic circle of the Villas and therefore a nonentity without a mind all his own.

  He could see his personal landscape and in it there was nothing extraneous. Everything fitted handsomely. He would probably build a house in Pobres Park like Ben de Jesus, Senator Reyes, Alfred Dangmount, and all the rest, and see how well Carmen had learned interior decorating in the United States. He would not interfere with her plans; all he would require would be a small room, a study where he would be able to work. And someday he would grow a paunch in his job and learn to play golf. He would have money stashed away somewhere—that was most certain because he had married Carmen Villa. He would have an affair, too, probably a dozen at that, not because such affairs were necessary but because they were inevitable concomitants of his status. A beautiful secretary, perhaps? Or one of Carmen’s close friends? Or the wife of one of his associates in the office? These were the handsome possibilities. As for children, there would be at least five—and several more who would naturally be illegitimate. Carmen would send the girls to the Assumption Convent, where they would learn French—or to Madrid, where they would polish their Spanish and acquire a European accent. As for the boys, they would go to La Salle, of course, or to the American School, or to San Beda. Not Ateneo—my God! That school had become too common and too crowded with plebeian characters. And after La Salle there would be trips to Europe, not America. Going to America—that was also now too common. Everyone, absolutely everyone, had gone there. And then when the children had grown up they would have to take their pick from the Villa crowd. That was the only way to perpetuate the system that he had joined. There was no fighting against it because the system, which afforded him such delicious comforts as he had never known before, was bigger and more formidable than Antonio Samson.

  He stood up and went to the window. The sea again, the rain, memories rushing in and stirring up and about, inchoate and yet alive. When he was in Antipolo, or when he was in the States, wandering in the gilded wilderness of that continent, he seldom looked at the sea. And at night, if there was no rain, there would be stars. How long had it been since he last looked at the stars? He knew them when he was in Rosales, going home in the dark or playing in the dusty street where the lamps were not strong enough to banish the vast attraction of the sky. How was Rosales now? And Emy?

  A dull ache passed through him and he assured himself that this was what he had always wanted—this progress, this change. The world was changing and if in the process he was changed, too, well, he could not stop the inevitable any more than he could stop time. I’ll be all right. Tony Samson repeated the words carefully in his mind. I’ll be all right—and he wished to God that he would be.

  CHAPTER

  9

  When Senator Reyes invited Tony to lunch, it had never occurred to Tony that there would be a measure of rapport between him and the politician who had made a career of nationalism.

  Don Manuel bantered with them in the foyer. “Be careful, Tony. He might take you to one of those joints where they serve nothing but peasant food.”

  “I’ll take him to a place where they sprinkle cyanide on those who don’t know what Filipinism means,” Senator Reyes chortled.

  “Ahhh …” grunted Alfred Dangmount. He was on his way to his car, too; the board meeting had just ended and the directors were filing out of the elevator. “Take him to that place where they spike the drinks with cantaritas,” the American said, grunting again.

  The American’s sally raised more remarks, but Tony didn’t catch them; by this time he had already gotten into Senator Reyes’s air-conditioned Cadillac. Within, the scent of cologne was a refreshing change from the antiseptic smell of his office.

  Senator Reyes was a master politician. “It is seldom that I have a scholar, a Ph.D., with me. So don’t be alarmed if I ask too many questions and pick your brains,” he said, flashing what seemed to be a genuine smile. The senator’s eyes crinkled. His teeth were yellowish from cigar-smoking.

  “The pleasure is all mine, Senator,” Tony said.

  They went to one of the new Spanish restaurants on the boulevard—a low, adobe building that was air-conditioned. Its interior was dim, and although it was high noon, the cartwheel lamp that dangled from the low ceiling was lit. Senator Reyes guided his guest to a corner table, but before reaching the place he had to stop at a table to slap an anonymous back.

  They sat down without ceremony, and as the headwaiter rushed to them, Senator Reyes ordered two dry sherries. “I shouldn’t have any complaints,” he turned to Tony, shaking his head. “And I don’t want to sound hypocritical, but I do have troubles and I sometimes wish I could earn a living without having to pay too heavy a price.”

  “Whatever the price,” Tony said, “I am sure that you can afford it.”

  Senator Reyes became somber and again he shook his head. “I suppose that I should be envied then? People are blaming us for the mess in this country, but people should blame themselves occasionally. Who is to blame? Politicians for giving the people what they want? They expect us to do the impossible, to cast aside all morals, all concepts of justice. And when we do, we are pounced upon. A man comes to me and says, Senator, please see to it that my boy gets accommodated in the Foreign Service. That’s where I want him, because there his views will be broadened and he will be able to travel free. I want someone in my family to be an ambassador someday! I ask this man if his son is qualified, if he has passed the Foreign Service examinations. And this man—one of my trusted friends and leaders—says to me angrily: Senator, if my son were qualified, I would not have to come to you for assistance!”

  Tony knew the rest and he could have told the senator why the road to power was often covered with slime. But the owner of the restaurant came to their table; he was a swar
thy, pot-bellied Spaniard, and he greeted the senator effusively in Spanish, then started talking about his difficulty in getting dollar licenses that would enable him to import the senator’s favorite sherry. To this, Senator Reyes said, also in Spanish, “You can save the sherry for me; as for your other customers, you can serve them goat urine—they wouldn’t know the difference.”

  Tony Samson laughed and was joined heartily by the Spaniard, who, after more pleasantries, moved away from his most important customer of the day.

  “You speak Spanish?” Senator Reyes turned to his guest.

  “Not really, sir,” Tony said. “Crammed for three months, that’s all—and then, of course, there’s the two years in the university, which no one can escape.”

  “Tell me about the cram course,” the senator said. “I am interested about attitudes toward the Spanish language.”

  “It was a matter of urgent necessity,” Tony said. “Before I left the country on this scholarship, I knew that the basic documents I would have to go through would be in Spanish. I taught myself. Then, at Harvard, well, the three-month cramming did help. But I have to think first when I speak, although I can say without being immodest that I do read Spanish very well and, perhaps, write a little, too. Of course, I cannot hope to approximate your skills.”

  The senator thrust his hands at Tony in protest. “No flatteries, no flatteries, please, or else it’s you who will have to pay for this lunch!”

  While they sipped their sherry, Senator Reyes reminisced. “I am supposed to be a Spanish scholar—that is to say one of my interests is Spanish literature. Did a little writing in the language. Were you ever in Spain?”

  “Yes, Senator,” Tony said. Now there drifted to his mind the remembered places: Barcelona and its Gothic quarter, the narrow streets and the bars of Barrio Chino, the painted tiles in the doorways.