“Wonderful country,” Senator Reyes said. “And Sevilla—were you ever there?”
“Yes, sir,” Tony said. “I did some research in the Sevilla archives.”
The waiter came and took their orders—paella for both—and Senator Reyes made desultory remarks about the bad paella in Barcelona. From there the politician guided the talk to where he deemed it should go. “Politicians have no time to think,” he said, and Tony could sense real regret in the senator’s voice. “What I’m trying to say is that I have ideas, but I have no time to thresh them out. For instance,” the senator leaned over and tried to sound like a conspirator, “how I would like to make a speech on nationalism as a cultural instrument, as an ideology creating a oneness in this country. But what materials can I cite? What antecedents will support me? It’s easy to speak, but I must have historical authority. Even one in my position must have that.”
Tony Samson sat back and above the clatter of silver at the next table, above the sensuous guitar-strumming near the bar, he could make out the sound of the flute, the wide ring of young Catalans dancing the saldana before the cathedral in Barcelona.
After a long pause, he said he had come across the problem many times and had found partial answers in Barcelona when he was there tracing the footsteps of Rizal, Del Pilar, Lopez-Jaena, and all the ilustrados who propagandized for reforms. “There must be some merit in the Spanish people,” he said with feeling. He almost said, there must be some merit in tyrants. “After all, Rizal and his friends worked for reforms not in Manila but in Barcelona and Madrid.”
“Yes,” Senator Reyes said excitedly; “this is an aspect of our history that is not quite understood. And what else did you find? Did Rizal and Del Pilar have anything special to say about what I’m thinking of?”
“The ilustrados,” Tony Samson brightened up. “I think I can speak about them with authority. I studied them—what they did, what they wrote. They created a national unity, Senator. Without them, there would perhaps be no Filipinas as we know it today. But they made errors, of course—and it was a matter of attitude, more than anything. Let me tell you how they tried to define the limits of freedom, how desperately they tried to prove that there was a true and indigenous Filipino culture so they could claim equality with the Spaniards. That was it—all they wanted was equality. Oh no, I’m not saying that they were not sincere, that they did not love their country, but you must realize that in those days they were second-class citizens even though they had studied in the best schools in Europe. You see, they were not Spaniards, their skins were not white, their noses were not high, and because of these shortcomings, they could never be rulers.”
“But you could be barking up the wrong tree,” Senator Reyes said. “My dear fellow, look at my skin. It is as dark as the bottom of a pot, my nose is like that of a prizefighter.” He laughed raucously.
“You are missing the whole point, Senator,” Tony said. “Equality could be won on paper. But once it was won, that was the end of it. Freedom and the fight for it must be constant. It must never cease. And do not forget that men can be enslaved by their own people, by their own prejudices, by their own rulers.… What I am saying is that the ilustrados were not the real patriots. They wanted nothing more than equality. They didn’t want freedom. It was enough that they could dine with their rulers, could argue with them. But it is another thing to be free. And that is why I do not consider Rizal a hero. He was great in his way, but Marcelo H. del Pilar was a greater man. He died a pauper in Spain. In the end, none of the ilustrados could approximate the stature, the heroism of Bonifacio. There was a man—he was far more heroic than Rizal. He was a laborer, he was illiterate compared to Rizal. But he fought for freedom. Rizal merely wanted equality. Perhaps the new nationalism can address itself to this, create a new sense of values.”
Senator Reyes was pensive and, for a while, an expression of seriousness came over his flabby face. “I do not want to be old-fashioned,” he finally said. “Revolutionaries are a dime a dozen now. You get them everywhere. And what happens—revolutionists do not live; they are eaten up, just as Bonifacio was eaten up.”
“How right you are!” Tony exclaimed. “But that is what I have always said. A revolution does not have to eat its children. In fact, it is those who are in power who could very well initiate revolutions—oh, let us not be old-fashioned and think only of armed uprisings of minorities as revolutions. Any movement that seeks to overhaul established attitudes is, I think, revolutionary. I’d hate to listen to another address extolling Rizal’s virtues; I’d hate to read the inanities written about how many women he had, how he frequented this bar or this toilet.”
They laughed. “I see, I see,” Senator Reyes said, grinning.
“Now, when we escalate Bonifacio’s greatness—after all, he really started the revolution against Spain—that is revolutionary. People think of Rizal always as the greatest merely because he was martyred and Bonifacio was killed by his own people,” Tony said. He remembered again the protracted discussions on Maple Street, Larry Bitfogel’s intellectual argot and his own deft reasoning piercing the maze of contradictions. He continued: “How can one be a revolutionary in an age when revolutions have become commonplace? There is only one way, and that’s by creating an entirely new definition of revolution itself and knowing your position once you have made your definition. If we talked about cultural revolution, we would be giving both culture and revolution an entirely new emphasis.”
“Good!” Senator Reyes exclaimed. He sat back and rubbed his stomach with his chubby hand. Supreme contentment spread over his dark, corpulent face. “You are the man, then, who can help me—the only man, Tony.” It was the first time the senator called him by his nickname. “This will be a favor, something I can never repay. Write me a speech for next Sunday. I am going to speak before the Socrates Club at the university. Nationalism is going haywire and I want its proper cultural definition. Only you can do that.”
They parted on that nicety.
Back at his office Tony sat before his typewriter, pondered his quarrel with Dean Lopez and how he would have been a member of the Socrates Club. It was ironic that he should now be writing Senator Reyes’s speech before the club. He felt no regret, no gnawing feeling of being left out; he did not really care about being a member of the club now that he was here in the comfortable confines of the Villa Building. He dwelt again on the old theme, the bedraggled subject that he had not quite really resolved: Were the ilustrados really patriots? Or was the real hero of the revolution that almost illiterate laborer, Andres Bonifacio, who grew up in Tondo?
His own past reached out to him in this uncluttered room and it seemed as if his father were beside him again, saying that courage was not enough. There was no way by which they could rise from the dung heap. It was easy to sharpen a bolo until its blade could split a hair, but without a mind sharper than a blade.… And so, when his father went to jail, his mother slaved and sent him and his sister to school and college. She took in laundry and worked herself to a hopeless case of consumption and a slow, sure death. This was the sacrifice she had made, and in Barcelona, recalling what she had done, he had wept that morning when he went to the bleak, gloomy cathedral to place a candle at the altar of the Virgin on the anniversary of her death. From the cathedral he had meandered to the Ramblas and sat on one of the wooden benches there, watching the people pass. He had mused about the young Filipinos in Barcelona in another time, and he envied them for the good they had done, although he did not see the monuments of tyranny against which they had flung their young bodies. And then he saw the impossibility of it all: the revolution the young men in Spain had inspired did not end as a true revolution should.
He finished Senator Reyes’s speech on time and it was printed in full in the newspapers and even editorialized for giving new proportions to nationalism. And when Don Manuel learned that it was his son-in-law who wrote the speech, he did not hide his pleasure from his wife and Carmen.
“Today,” Don Manuel said that morning at breakfast, “you will be with us during the board meeting. Everyone must profit from what you know.”
On the way to the office Don Manuel became more open and he impressed upon Tony how the Villa fortune was not built overnight. Don Manuel’s grandfather had a furniture shop in Intramuros and it started everything. Don Manuel’s grandfather was, of course, Spanish; and in the last days of the Spanish regime and the early days of the American occupation, the narra aparadors, the sala sets embossed with mother-of-pearl, and the ornate kamagong chests of the Villa furniture shop acquired an appeal with the ilustrados. No aristocratic home was complete without Villa furniture. After the illustrious grandfather died, Don Manuel’s father built up the business. In time it expanded to include lumber. Then the Villas branched out into construction and were soon building magnificent residences in Malate and Ermita and in the new posh suburb of Santa Mesa. And as they built and decorated these homes they also moved into a wider and more affluent circle.
When Don Manuel was old enough to help his father, the Santa Mesa residence of the Villas was already finished, but the family did not move into it. The Villas still lived in Intramuros and kept the new Villa house as a showcase. By then, too, the business had already spread out to include transportation and shipping. It was only when Don Manuel’s father died of a heart attack while in the bedroom of his mistress in Malate that the whole family decided to move over to Santa Mesa—a change from their antique and cramped appointments in the Walled City—and discovered the handsome refinements of suburban living. This was, of course, when Santa Mesa was still considered a suburb and the fast-growing city had not encroached upon its rusticity yet. As the eldest, Don Manuel became manager of the bigger and more profitable branches of the Villa interests. The business was not damaged much by the war. In fact, the war was a blessing to the Villas and to Don Manuel in particular. He had readily foreseen the construction needs of the country and the shortages that would be difficult to fill. He did not slip in his planning nor did he fail to see the importance of developing the friendship and the loyalty of political leaders like professed nationalists of the caliber of Senator Reyes. Now Don Manuel’s eldest son managed a new plywood factory and lumber concessions in Mindanao. Another son became interested in textiles and Don Manuel set up a mill in Marikina. The mill produced fishing nets, cotton fabrics, and upholstery material for the furniture factory that had expanded and was attended to by Don Manuel himself, since it was the progenitor of the Villa fortune. The husbands of two daughters managed the construction branch of the Villa Development Corporation. As for Carmen, she had gone to the United States to study interior decoration, public relations, and advertising, so that she would be able to assist in the family business.
All the Villa children had married according to their choices, and Don Manuel took immense pride in this fact. There were enough executive jobs for his sons-in-law and there was nothing he asked from them except loyalty.
The board met on Wednesdays from nine in the morning until lunchtime. The boardroom was on the fifth floor, in the executive country—a handsome dao-paneled hall with a long table made of one solid piece of narra and surrounded by high-backed swivel chairs upholstered in genuine cowhide. All the furniture in the Villa Building and in the homes of most of the Villa employees and executives was, of course, produced by the Villa furniture factory. At one end of the boardroom was a special panel that included, among other things, a well-stocked bar, a kitchenette, a high-fidelity set, and several tape-recording machines. Don Manuel did not have extraneous interests other than golf and high-fidelity record-changers, and the electronic equipment of the conference room was his idea. On his desk in the boardroom was a series of switches that enabled him to pipe high-fidelity music to the room or to record what was said—to the consternation and delight of the other members when the recording was played. He did not drink—he didn’t even touch beer, and during social functions he always asked for ginger ale because it looked like Scotch. The bar in the boardroom was his concession to his brothers and to Senator Reyes, in particular, for the senator was an excessive drinker.
The directors started arriving at nine-thirty. The first was Johnny Lee, an ascetic-looking, fiftyish Chinese who spoke pidgin English. He was born in Amoy, China, and talk had it that he started as a junk peddler. He had built up his business well, and during the Occupation he collaborated with the Japanese by providing them with gasoline and diesel engines. He had been a most astute businessman. So well did he manage that after the war his junkyard became a huge automotive shop. He bought American surplus equipment, particularly heavy machinery, by the thousands and then resold these to the government and raked in huge profits by being friendly with government officials. Now his hands were in every kind of moneymaking enterprise. He kept a respectable front, of course, by managing an automotive assembly plant and a chemical factory in Mandaluyong. It was also said that he owned a chain of motels in Pasay City, and these motels were actually classy prostitution dens that catered to politicians, newspapermen, and visiting firemen. Lee knew that he would live and die in the Philippines, and even before World War II he had himself naturalized. He had married his former help—an unlettered Cebuana—and raised a dozen children. His wife was never seen in public and that was to his advantage, because she was reportedly homely and no one would understand why a millionaire like Lee had an ugly wife. She served him more than a wife should serve her husband. Lee registered many of his properties in her name. The fact that Lee was naturalized and had a Cebuana wife and a dozen children rendered him immune to the deportation laws. When the Manila nationalists became vehement with their nationalism, Lee provided them with money. The ads he placed in the newspapers sold not only his automobiles and chemicals, but also decried how aliens were exploiting Filipinos.
The last director to arrive was Senator Reyes. He explained his breathless entrance: there was an important bill on tobacco, which would affect the businesses of Johnny Lee and Alfred Dangmount, and he did not want to be absent from the deliberations of his special committee until he had the bill safely pigeonholed to oblivion for “further study.”
All eight of the board members were present. Lee was complaining about the surveillance that the Bureau of Internal Revenue was placing on his cigarette factory in Pasay. It was simply unthinkable. Did he not contribute more than three hundred thousand pesos to the party so that Senator Reyes and all their friends would win?
“I’ll look into that,” Senator Reyes said, making notes on the pad before him. Johnny Lee settled back on his swivel chair, a grin spreading across his boyish face. “Thank you, Senador,” he said. That was the only English he spoke during the meeting and “thank you” seemed to be the only words he spoke with a smile. Always, when he spoke, an inscrutable expression clouded his face and his even tone somehow gave the impression that beneath his blandness was cunning and determination.
“Include me, too,” Dangmount groaned from the other end of the table. A southerner, he had come to the Philippines during the Liberation and married into a wealthy family from Negros. With the initial capital he thus acquired and some financial sleight of hand, he built an octopuslike business.
“I’m having a helluva lot of trouble with the bank,” Dangmount snapped at Senator Reyes. “Look, Compadre,” he turned to Don Manuel with a knowing wink, “I’m getting a lot of questions about that plywood machinery we’re buying for increased operations in Mindanao. Now, if we don’t get that license soon …”
It became clear to Tony that the interests of each were enmeshed in those of the others. The distinction between government, business, and politics was demolished. The controls on dollar exchange were meaningless; Dangmount had worked out a convenient system. The machinery, for instance, was highly overpriced through collusion with the American supplier, in this way the dollars saved from the transaction could be stashed away in Switzerland. It was the same with Johnny Lee and the other board members. The
brilliant senator and nationalist was their legal counsel.
Tony tried to justify himself; the capitalists were creating many new jobs. Dangmount, for instance, had started another tile factory and Lee had gone into the manufacture of electronics equipment with transistors imported from Japan and Hong Kong. And there was no one in Congress, of course, more vociferous in his nationalist protestations than Senator Reyes. “I’m doing this for my country and people” was his favorite battle cry.
“How did you like the members of the board?” Don Manuel asked Tony that same gloomy afternoon in July. “Come on, be honest with me.”
Inside the cool sterility of executive country, inside Don Manuel’s regal office, the mind could be free. The fluorescent lamp burned like liquid silver and the new rug of abaca gleamed like soft gold. Tony said, “Dinosaurs, prehistoric monsters feeding on the weak.”
Don Manuel’s lean, handsome face was emotionless, but his voice was rimmed with disdain: “Well, you should have spoken up at the meeting, Tony. You were free, no one was holding you back.”
“I did not mean to be impolite, Papa,” he said with apprehension for having spoken thus. “But you asked me what I thought.”
Don Manuel shook his head. “Should I be glad now that you kept your trap shut? Just the same, let me remind you, Tony, that you are part of the family now. Don’t you ever, ever forget that.”
“I won’t, Papa,” Tony said solemnly. “I knew that on the day you first talked with me.”
“We understand each other then,” Don Manuel said, smiling. “But when there’s something on your mind, tell me. You know I like discussions …” He was about to say more, but the phone jangled. When Tony left the room Don Manuel was still busy at the phone, emphatically telling Saito San at the other end of the line that the installation of the machinery for the mill should be speeded up even if bottoms had to be chartered to dispatch the machinery from Japan.
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 14