The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library)

by F. Sionil Jose

  He stood up and looked out the window, to the now vacant lot where their old house once stood. He could see it now—the pitched grass roof, the buric sidings, and the granary behind it. Where the well used to be was a shallow indention now. Beyond the vacant yard was the alley that dipped down to the banks of the creek where he and the children of Cabugawan used to swim.

  “What is the book like?” she asked.

  “It’s in Latin and I can’t understand all of it. I’ll show it to you when you come to Manila. Would you like to go to Cabugaw one of these days? It’s not a big town, Emy, but it is well-preserved.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’d like to see places—visit Antipolo, too, and Manang Betty, but I can’t. I’m not like you, Tony. Here,” she became apologetic, “here, every centavo means much. You understand …”

  He nodded and sat back. He picked up the glass of warm Coca-Cola and drank all of it.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” he asked.

  “What else? Making a living,” she pointed to the sewing machine—an old Singer—by the window. Beside it was a glass case with a few folded dresses. “You don’t know how fortunate I have been. Almost all the important people here are my customers, even the mayor’s wife. I didn’t know that it was easy to sew.”

  That was not what he wanted to know, so he told her, “I want to help. Please let me.”

  “Help me? I don’t need any help.”

  “Please don’t speak to me like this. I’ve suffered, it’s true.”

  “And I? Father— Before he died he beat me as if I were a beast of burden. But I did not tell him. Or anyone. I kept it all to myself, until Bettina …”

  “Oh, Emy …”

  “There was no other way.”

  “You could have written to me and told me and I would have hurried home. If you had only answered my letters!”

  “Oh, God,” she said, her voice almost a moan. “We are cousins, have you forgotten that? How could I tell you? And besides—”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  She went on, not minding him: “Both of us— We are older now, we can look back. I would have been a weight on your shoulders.”

  “And how did I feel?”

  “That isn’t all,” she said, bending forward. “You were alone in America, and it was your studies that mattered most. Then I learned about you and Carmen Villa.…”

  Even as she spoke, even as she sat beside him, who had now grown thin and ravaged by work, he could still trace the fine contour of her face and, hearing her, he sank back to another time.

  “I did not want to stand in your way,” she said softly.

  “How is the boy?” he asked, not caring to talk about his wife.

  She was filled with pride. “He’s a fine boy—and think, he is in grade one now! He is bright. I don’t help him with his homework.”

  “How does he look?”

  “He has your eyes. And his family name is Samson.”

  The old anguish lashed at him. “Emy, why didn’t you tell me? It would have been so simple and everything would have been all right.”

  “What are you complaining about?” she asked. “You are doing well. And look at us, at Bettina—she can’t even go to college.”

  “Emy …” his voice trailed of into silence. Then he straightened and faced her again. “There must be something I can do.”

  “There’s always something you can do.”

  “Let me take him with me. Let me bring him to the city.”

  Her answer was quick. “And what will your wife say?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  She smiled wryly. “And when you have children, what then?”

  Tony spoke slowly, as if he was ashamed of what he had to say. “Carmen— She does not want a baby. She could have had one, but last July … she aborted.”

  A complaint was stifled in her throat. “And it has to be my child. You can adopt one—it’s so easy nowadays.”

  “I am thinking of the boy. It would mean a load off your back.” He swept the room with one knowing glance. “And besides, I can give him a better education, so many things in life you won’t be able to give. He will go to the best schools—even to the United States afterward. He will not know hunger and want. This is for the best, Emy, I’ll tell Carmen the boy is mine—”

  She cut him off. “It’s all very clear.” Bitterness tinged her voice. “Now money is everything—everything. You came here not because you want to. Tony, what has happened to you? You did not talk like this before. You did not mention hunger and money before as if these were all that mattered.” Then she asked, “What has happened to you? What has changed you.”

  He could not shut off from his ears the words that implied his destruction. “You don’t have to hurt me further,” he said humbly. “Isn’t it enough that I am here, unable to look after the boy and see him grow?”

  “He will grow up properly,” she said.

  “You are strong,” he said. “I would like to say that I’m weak, but I don’t want to make excuses.”

  “Stop talking like that! Look at me, at my hands. What do you see? Years. What have I done? Look at him when he comes. I haven’t complained.”

  “What do you want me to do then, for you and the boy?”

  “Nothing,” she said, the pride shining again in her eyes like jewels. Her hands were on the windowsill. Beyond the window the sun dripped white. She wanted nothing and she was right. She had always been able to take care of herself anywhere, even here in Cabugawan, where dreaming had stopped and the only certitude was the bondage of the fields beyond.

  “Be honest with me,” he asked her.

  “I have never lied to you,” she said. “Have I ever? You were everything. I looked up to you. This place cannot produce another like you. It just won’t happen anymore. Father, before he died, said this, too. We all know this.”

  “Tell me then where I have failed.”

  “It’s too late,” she murmured, looking away.

  “Do you still believe in me?”

  “Yes … yes.” She was alive again. “Why shouldn’t I believe in you?”

  “Will you do what I will ask of you?”

  “Anything,” she said with alacrity. “I’ll do anything, but please, Tony, don’t ask me to give up the boy. He is all that I have. Please believe that.”

  “Even if it would be for the best?”

  “You are not the one to decide that,” she said. “Look at you, the years that you were away. I slaved for the boy. I want him to grow up like you, Tony. And someday he will leave Cabugawan, too. And when he does I’ll see to it that he doesn’t forget where he came from.”

  “I haven’t forgotten anyone,” Tony said lamely.

  “I’m sure of that,” she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

  Tony glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve and in a while the shrill blast of the rice-mill whistle near the railroad station came to them.

  “He will be here soon,” Emy said. “It’s a short walk from the school—if he hasn’t stopped to play.”

  His legs felt watery again and his heart thumped. “What will I tell him?” he asked, hoping that she would help him.

  Emy did not answer. She clasped her hands and looked away.

  “Tell me that I’m useless,” he stumbled on the words.

  “You aren’t,” she said.

  He got up and stood by the window, remembering the schoolhouse, the stone porch, and the gumamela hedges, the mango tree in the yard, Emy in pigtails when she was young and in bare feet, cleaning the schoolroom with coconut husk.

  “There he is now,” Emy said behind him. He turned to see at the far end of the street the boy walking toward the house, a bundle of books under his arm. He asked in a strangled voice, “Tell me, what should I tell him?” He turned to her and her face was calm.

  “The truth,” she said. “Someday he will find out, and when he does I want him to know it from you.
He has asked me and I’ve told him what there is to tell.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I used to hope that when you returned you would remember. So I told him that his father was in some distant land. That was what I could honestly say. And then …” she stopped and looked away, her lips trembling, “and then I found out that you had gotten married. I wished you well, Tony. But the boy— When he asked me again I said that I did not know where his father was. I hadn’t heard and perhaps I would never hear from his father again. I told him to get used to that, growing up without having his father around.”

  As the footsteps sounded on the gravel path, as the rungs of the bamboo ladder creaked under his puny weight, in Tony’s mind the words formed: I am your father. I am your father.…

  But he did not speak aloud when the boy was finally before him, slender of build, with soft hair and eyes as dark and lustrous as his mother’s; any man would have been proud to have someone like this young thing, barefoot and brown from the sun, with a firm chin. Yes, anyone would have been proud to claim this boy as his son.

  Tony was proud, but only for an instant, for his pride turned quickly into confusion and even despair as the boy turned to his mother and kissed her lightly on the cheek. To the boy Emy said quietly, “Go to him, Pepe, and kiss his hand.”

  Their eyes met and there could have been recognition and that spark of genuine affinity that comes only between a father and his son, but when their eyes met he only felt that he was a stranger to this boy and that he no longer belonged to this small, stifling room.

  To him the boy went, but Tony did not extend his right hand as Emy had wanted. Kneeling down, he held the boy instead, held him close to his chest, felt the boy’s quick breathing upon his face and smelled the sun upon his son’s skin. Much as he wanted to proclaim to this boy that he had found his father, the words in his mind would not take shape, and he could only say, in a voice filled with emotion and tenderness, “Son, son,” and this boy, this six-year-old innocent, escaped from his clumsy embrace and rushed back to his mother. Then, wordless, the young eyes still questioning. What is in his young mind now? What does he think of me? Is it time to tell him everything or must he find out the truth in his own time and in his own way?

  The question was like thunder in the narrow room: “Is he my father, Mama?”

  An eternity slipped by, and in this eternity Antonio Samson died. He did not speak, and when the silence was broken it was Emy who said, “No, Pepe. He is not your father. He is a dear, old friend, a relative, someone from this place who thinks he loves all of us.”

  * Gumamela: Hibiscus.

  † Banaba: A tree with medicinal leaves and flowers.

  ‡ Municipio: The town hall.

  § Cadena de amor: A climbing vine with small pink flowers (literally “chain of love,” Sp.).

  ‖ Sagat: The hardest Philippine wood; it is used for house posts and railroad ties.

  a Parunapin: A type of hardwood tree.

  b Sawali: A coarse twilled matting of flattened bamboo strips used in the Philippines for partitions, walls, and baskets.

  c Buri: Talipot palm; a showy fan palm of the Philippines.

  CHAPTER

  14

  It was early evening when Tony reached home. Carmen was out and the maid simply said that Ben had picked her up at sundown. He brought his manuscripts out and went through them again, but the urge to work escaped him. At suppertime, when Carmen was not yet back, he went down to dinner without her.

  “Ah, Tony,” Don Manuel looked up from a batch of papers beside his soup. “I thought you wouldn’t return tonight. Remind me to show you something tomorrow.”

  “There wasn’t much to do in the old hometown, Papa.” He had lied about the trip and said that he would stand as sponsor at a baptism. “I think I wasted my time. You know how baptisms are.”

  Mrs. Villa, her hair done up in pins, her flabby face oily with cleansing cream, nudged her husband. “Better tell Tony that, with the factory almost finished, there’s got to be something social about it. A big party. I’ll think up one. And this means that there will be more work for him. And the opening celebration—that’s the most important thing. Let’s get the President and the First Lady.”

  “I think that’s your department, Tony,” Don Manuel said. “Tomorrow we will have the last transformer installed and then in the afternoon we hope to have a trial run of all units. I leave it all to you—the plans for the opening, all the ballyhoo you can cook up.”

  “The plans will be tentative, Papa …”

  “It’s all yours as long as you show me your plans tomorrow and we can talk them over.”

  Tony idled through the meal, and when it was over he rushed back to the room and took a warm shower. The shower should have relaxed him, but it didn’t. If Carmen were only here now, perhaps she would understand and be sympathetic, tell him to do what was right.

  He tried once more to attend to the manuscripts on which he had been working, but the words would not take shape, and the cohesion that would string his thoughts in an orderly fashion just would not come. The notes on the migration to Mindanao, for instance, did not jell and he found himself repeating the same tired phrases about the courage of the Ilocanos, their adventurous nature and their capacity to retain their identity even when they were surrounded by a polyglot of Muslim and Visayan farmers.

  He went to bed with a detective story, but that was useless, too. He was already asleep when Carmen switched on the chandelier, which flooded the room with its bright, pinkish glow.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, blinking in the light. He glanced at the clock near the bed. It was two o’clock in the morning.

  “Stop it,” she said hotly. “Do you have to know everything I do, examine everything I tell you to see if I’m lying? I’ve been with Ben. He had to take me to the rehearsal because you weren’t in—you were in that hick town of yours.”

  He rose and found his slippers. He walked to her. “I’m not cross-examining you. I just want to know where you have been. I’m your husband, am I not?”

  There was no belligerence in his voice and he laid a hand softly on her shoulders. She shook the hand off and faced him. “I have to be frank with you, Tony,” she said, frowning. “You know damn well I’ve a life to live, too, and I’m not to be cooped up here. I have to have interests. If they keep me out the whole night, you have to be understanding. I understood you enough to have gone with you to look up your crummy ancestors.”

  Her manner defied explanation. It annoyed him but only for an instant, because he had something much more important to tell her.

  He held her and looked into her eyes and said, “Baby, listen now. I meant to tell you this earlier, but I wasn’t sure. I’m sure now because … well, I have been there.”

  “You are talking in riddles,” she said, unmindful of what he was saying. She took off her earrings and laid them on the dresser, then started undressing.

  “This is important, baby.”

  “All right,” she said, unbuttoning her dress with a hint of annoyance. “Is it something you have already done or something you are planning to do?”

  “It has been done.…”

  “Water under the bridge. Esto, if it’s done, then what’s the use telling me about it?”

  “This is important—this thing I have to tell you. Listen, there was something in the past that I never told you. Seven years ago, before we met, when I was just a mere graduate assistant at the university, there was a girl …”

  Carmen didn’t even look up. She had started brushing her hair.

  “This doesn’t interest you?” he said.

  “Of course it does, darling,” she said. “Everything you do interests me. Now go on with your delightful little story. Esto, I was beginning to think you had lived a puritanical life.”

  “This girl, you must understand— I didn’t even know you then. And I didn’t expect it to happen, either.…”

  “Those are f
amous last words.”

  “It’s the truth. But that isn’t as bad as the fact that this girl is my cousin.”

  Carmen turned to him and laughed merrily. “You need not feel so guilty about it, honey. It’s done all the time. Have you met Nora Lardizabal? Well, she’s married to her first cousin. Oye, you told me once about this being done by the hacenderos in your part of the country.… Well, it just happens that Nora’s parents are sugar planters. She isn’t a social outcast. She is very respectable.”

  “You don’t understand, baby,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t understand at all.”

  “But I do, honey.”

  “Would you still be smug if I told you there’s a child?”

  She bolted up.

  “There’s a boy,” he said, as if he were again at the confessional, and the confession was a growing flame in his throat. He waited for her to speak, but she did not. She merely looked at him, the beginning of a smirk playing on her face. Then she sat back and was silent.

  “You don’t even want to know what happened? You don’t care about children and this particular child, my child?”

  “Is there anything you want me to say—or do?”

  “You can be angry with me, you can do something,” he said in quiet desperation. “After all, I had gone to Rosales to see for myself. It is true, honey. I saw Emy again and this child—this son of mine.”

  “Well, can you change that?” she asked with hint of impatience. “If it’s your son, well, let him be your son. You are not going to turn away from him, are you?”

  “No,” he said, amazed at her indifference.

  “I’m not angry,” she said with a yawn, “and I’m sleepy now. Maybe we can talk more about it in the morning.”

  He let it go at that, but, somehow, he could not quite banish the thought that Carmen did not care about his son, about children, or even about him. She had sounded so uninvolved and there was something about her attitude that now recalled to him the girl he had met in Washington, the young dreamy-eyed girl who was warm, not this woman who was now with him. Or had she simply camouflaged her feelings so well that he was unable to recognize them? Could there be some depth in her that he could not reach? He was telling her about his son; he was being truthful to her; he was conceding to her his fallibility, and all she did was say that she was sleepy. Her attitude baffled him. Still, Carmen was human—not a cold, unfeeling hunk of stone.