The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library)

by F. Sionil Jose

  I approached one, told him I was an officer of the Brotherhood, and, yes, he was very glad to talk with me, but first I must know if Toto was alive. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ten are dead—they are lying in the corridor beyond the emergency room waiting to be transferred to the morgue, where they can be claimed; another twenty are on the critical list, and there are many who might have been wounded.”

  He was in his early thirties, and he seemed sympathetic, for all the time he was mumbling, “What a waste, what a waste.” I told him how it started—we were out front; all of a sudden, the shooting, the confusion, the tear gas, the grenades.

  But how is Toto? I couldn’t go in, but he could; Toto had short cropped hair, white shirt, dark pants, and yes, white basketball shoes. “Please go back and tell me he is not dead; he is my best friend, my best friend.”

  It did not take him even five minutes. He asked me to go with him. A policeman let me through into a shabby room lighted by a single bulb. They lay on the tile floor, bathed by the yellow light, their faces, if not bloodied, ashen in death. In a corner, a girl was crumpled on the floor, crying, while a boy stood beside her, tears streaming down his cheeks. Toto was at the far corner, the blood on his shirt already dry. He did not have his glasses and, even in death, there was an ineffable quality of determination on his face, the eyes closed, the mouth slightly open. The intern who came in after me started filling out a form and at the same time asking questions. “Augusto Salcedo. Nineteen. I do not know his parents—he is an orphan. We live together. We will claim him early in the morning.”

  I knelt beside him and held his hand. It was already cold.

  Listen, Toto, my brother, if I were an Ilocano woman, I would now fill this loathsome room with my wailing.

  I will walk home tonight alone, and our room will be quiet and wide. You are dead, but memory lives. I will hear your voice, feel your presence. I will remember. How can I forget? Who will feed me now in the afternoons? No more free siopao, free mami. Who will push me on to new heights where I can see a better view?

  Toto, my brother, I will miss you.

  Here you are, the life snuffed out of you.

  Here I am, with muscles that still move, and eyes that can still see. If it was in my power to command our fate, it should be I who is lying here, my brother, for you have done no wrong. You have always given a part of yourself away, to me, to others. Who then are the spirits you have displeased? There was a purpose to your life while there was none to mine. Is it true then that God is unkind to let the weeds grow? Is it true then that, at birth, we are already condemned? I refuse to believe this because I know, in the end, it is the good who will triumph. You were going to be a saver of lives, you were going to change the ugliness that we know. I was not going to help you. But now, what will I do so that I will at least be able to face my own conscience? You were brave, and I was a coward; if I had just a little more of your courage, a little more of your dream, you would not be here. But this is not so, and I am alive, instead. I will live for you then, Toto, my brother.

  A policeman was waiting for me at the door; he saw the blood on my sleeve and said, “Ha, they missed you,” then he asked me the same questions and I repeated the answers, but in between, I asked, not in anger but in sorrow, “Why did you shoot him? He did not even have a stone … he was unarmed.”

  He became angry. “Do you know,” he asked, “that three policemen are dead? That many were wounded?”

  “I do not know, but you are armed … and Toto was not.”

  “How do you explain those broken shop windows?” He had raised his voice and was waving his truncheon at me. “What have you against those small shopkeepers? Do you know how much damage you have caused?”

  “I did not smash any window,” I said.

  “I did not fire at you,” he said. “My hands are clean.”

  It is past midnight, and I am back at the kumbento—sick, tired, impotently angry. I hate myself; if I had not been afraid, I would have been able to rush to Toto, draw him to safety, and hurry him to the hospital even if he was already hit. But I was a coward, and so my best friend was DOA, dead on arrival. A few minutes more, God, just a few courageous minutes and he could have lived. I could have saved him with my blood. Not a drop of it had been spilled, and Toto was dead.

  I woke up Father Jess; he took the news calmly, then told me to leave in a voice that cracked; he would break down, and he did not want me to see him thus.

  Tia Nena, her eyes red from weeping, woke me up from a short, fitful sleep; there was hot coffee in the kitchen. Father Jess was getting ready upstairs. It was not yet three by the alarm clock on the shelf. I had slept for only an hour at the most. The Barrio was very quiet. On the way to Bangkusay, where we would get a ride—if there were any to be had at this hour—I told Father Jess what had happened.

  “He would be alive, Father,” I said, “if I had gone to him.”

  “It is not your fault, Pepe,” he said softly, putting an arm on my shoulder.

  “He called out my name, I heard him, but I couldn’t go. I was paralyzed with fear. And I—I’m much, much older than he. He was my younger brother.”

  “It was not your fault, Pepe,” he repeated. “You did not touch the trigger.”

  After a while we reached Bangkusay. We waited silently for a few minutes, but there was no jeepney or taxi, so Father Jess said we should walk on to Juan Luna. There was more traffic there.

  As we walked, I could not help but cry out my shame.

  “I am a coward,” I repeated. “When we were at Mendiola, facing tear gas and bullets, I was in the ditch, scared. I was thinking of myself. God, there are so many days ahead of me still and I have not even slept on a bed with a mattress.”

  “Is this what you dream of? Is this all you can think of? It is not much of a dream, you know.” There was both pity and sarcasm in his voice.

  “Because you have never been poor, Father,” I said. “Sometimes, when I see what is in the kitchen, I envy you.”

  Father Jess was silent; his being in Tondo was some sacrifice, but even in the harshest of times, as when he was working in Negros among the sugar workers, or among the dockworkers in Tondo, he always had recourse, he could always go back to the comfort of the kumbento or to his folks in Negros, who, I am sure, would take him back.

  “Yes,” Father Jess said. “It is easy for me to speak like this. I keep forgetting that I can always get away. Do not begrudge me that.”

  “No, Father. I am just saying what I think.”

  “Still, there must be some dream, some ambition particularly now. All of us have dreams, you know. We may never make them real, but they are there, prodding us on. Toto wanted very much to be a doctor.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Maybe, my dream is to finish college and get a job. And maybe, when I have made enough, I will go back to that other Barrio, bring one whole lechon,a a fistful of money, and the best electric sewing machine for my mother … yes, that is what I would like to do.”

  But even that was now far from reality. That morning I withdrew all my money from the bank and bought medicine and blood for our wounded, for though many stood in line to donate blood, it was not ready. In hindsight, which is the lowest form of wisdom, I realized that we had not really provided for such catastrophes as had happened in Mendiola. Our marshals were, for the most part, disorganized when the tear gas attack began. But most of all, we did not have teams to give first aid, fledgling doctors from the medical schools, who should have been organized for this. And in the hospitals, it was pure chaos just simply identifying the wounded and the dead. Only a few of our leaders, like Professor Hortenso, remained with us; the rest, like our nationalist Senator Reyes, the loud-mouthed champions of democratic nationalism and revolution, to where had they all vanished?

  We brought Toto back to the Barrio before daybreak; the funeral coach could not get into the alley, so we had to carry him to the church. We set up the catafalque in the center aisle, and by the end of
the six o’clock mass everyone in the Barrio knew.

  Roger and his gang came and asked me to join them at one of the clapboard community centers that had long been abandoned but which they had converted into a meeting place. It was there that I realized how deeply Roger had felt about the quiet, weak-eyed sacristan whom he often badgered.

  “He is dead, Roger, and no one, not even you, can push him now,” I said.

  His voice trembled. “You don’t understand. I did not mean to hurt him at all. He was like me. He was a friend.”

  It is one of those inexplicable ironies that one’s friends are often unknown till one is dead. “Did you know, Pepe,” Roger was saying as if he were revealing a secret, “Toto and I … we both came from the Hospicio?”

  I nodded. “Will you avenge his death?”

  “We will not be still until that is done,” Roger said, his oily face grim, the pugnacity wrung out of him. A murmur of assent sprang around us.

  “I will help you do that,” I said.

  “Do you know who killed him?” They clustered around me, smelling strongly of sweat, their tattoos glistening in the light.

  I nodded. “It was not a soldier nor a policeman, Roger.”

  “Don’t make a fool of me,” he raised his voice.

  “I don’t intend to,” I said. “I am trying to tell you that avenging Toto is very difficult, and what you have in mind is futile, even childish.”

  I then proceeded to tell them as simply as I could about Toto’s involvement with the Brotherhood—the reasons for his commitment, how our enemies wanted to discredit us, how these same enemies created this vast miasma, this Barrio, from which we would never escape if we did not do what should be done.

  “You will have your revenge, and it will be sweet, but only if you don’t make it personal, if you are organized, if you join us.”

  I wanted to give Roger what was left of the Brotherhood money so that they could buy refreshments for the wake, but Roger refused it. They would do that on their own, and it would only be the beginning. The beginning.

  Two elderly nuns came that night, their burdens imprinted on their faces, and one cried like a child. I remembered Toto’s stories about his boyhood, how each of the orphans had his favorite nun and how difficult it was to get her attention, for the orphans numbered more than a hundred. He did not know then what it was to own new clothes, for with the exception of what was their “best” for church or for going out, all their clothes were hand-me-downs. But at least they ate three times a day.

  We buried Toto the following morning in a small plot that belonged to the Church in La Loma. Some of our classmates and officers of the Brotherhood came. I was grateful that Professor Hortenso and his wife were present, and with them was Juan Puneta, the scholar, heir to millions, blasé and elegant, a member of the famous Puneta family of philanthropists, educators, and businessmen. He wanted us to ride in his Continental—a big, black car with a khaki-uniformed chauffeur, but Father Jess demurred, he would be with Toto’s friends; so Puneta joined us in the jeepney that followed the hearse.

  Lily and Roger stared at Juan Puneta in his white double-knit suit, which he did not remove although it was warm and all of us were already perspiring.

  “How did it happen?” he asked no one in particular. Father Jess pointed to me. “He was there. Pepe knows, he is on the National Directorate of the Brotherhood.”

  Juan Puneta looked at me, his eyes noncommittal. He was in his late thirties. His Tagalog was poor, maybe because he spoke Spanish and English more. “Yes, Professor Hortenso told me about you,” he said in a flat voice. “And they are all good things,” he smiled. “How did it happen? Oh, damn the police, damn the Metrocom.”

  “He was one of the first to get hit,” I said. “We were not at the head of the demonstration, we were way back, but we had gone out front when we stalled. Then the firing started—we do not know where it came from.”

  “The Metrocom, who else?” he said bitterly. “The police. They have guns, don’t they?”

  I did not speak. “The bullet hole,” I said, afterward, “is just below his left breast. He died before he could get to the hospital. Loss of blood—that is what the doctor said.”

  “Damn the Metrocom. You should fight back. You should be armed.” Puneta was gesticulating to no one in particular. He had started to perspire and the sweat glistened on his pallid forehead. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and daubed his forehead primly, then folded the handkerchief carefully and placed it back.

  Lily wept when Toto was lowered into the grave. As Father Jess blessed the casket, tears misted my eyes. I felt this weight crushing my chest, and I could not breathe. When it was over, I decided to stay behind to watch the cantero smooth out the cement that marked the grave. I spelled out the inscription he would etch on it: Augusto Salcedo. 1951–1970. The Brotherhood Honors You.

  Lily, who would not be off to her massage parlor in Makati till noon, stayed with me. It was almost eleven when the job was done and we walked to one of the greasy lechon restaurants in La Loma. She was silent in the cemetery. Now, she asked, “Pepe, do you like that Puneta?”

  Her question startled me: “Why do you ask? It is the first time I ever saw him. But I have heard of him; he was talked about in one of the National Directorate meetings. He contributes to the Brotherhood, you know.”

  She was silent for a while. “It is not good money,” she said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “There is no dirty money, Lily,” I said.

  “I know him.”

  To my look of surprise, she smiled: “No, he does not know me at all. But he comes to the Colonial—almost every day. He is syoki.”

  “He is married,” I said, remembering his elegant society wedding, how his family and three children were featured in magazines, riding horses, target-shooting.

  “That does not make a difference,” she said. “He is syoki. When he goes to the Colonial, he never has a massage. He has a ‘regular’ and she never gives him one—or ‘sensation’ him. She just sits there and tells him of the men she has handled. And you know what he does? He goes to the shower, to the steam room when the traffic is heaviest, he just goes there pretending to shower when really he is enjoying himself, looking.”

  “You are too imaginative,” I said. “You should write for Liway-way.”

  “This is the truth,” she said. “A month at the Colonial and you have a lifetime, ten lifetimes, of sex education. All sorts of men and we … we talk about them, compare experiences, and have a good laugh now and then.”

  “I will never go there then.”

  “Good for you,” she said.

  I did not have any appetite and neither did she. Toto was too much on our minds.

  “Toto was in love with me,” Lily said.

  “I love you, too.”

  “I did not reciprocate, and he realized that. But he was a good friend, though he seemed distant. And now he is dead and I never got to know him very well, to really thank him for the many things he had given my mother, my brothers and sisters. Did you know, Pepe, he paid Boyet’s tuition fee last year?”

  I was not surprised.

  Lily decided not to go to the Colonial. “Let us go to a place where we can be alone and forget the Barrio.”

  “To a movie,” I suggested. I had money and this time I would spend on her.

  “No,” she said. “I have never been to the zoo. Let us go there.”

  It was past noon. We boarded a jeepney for Quiapo. From Plaza Miranda on to Plaza Santa Cruz the sidewalks were plastered with our posters, and plywood shutters were now over all the shop windows. Garbage was piled on Plaza Miranda, and Carriedo was taken over by sidewalk vendors. In Avenida we boarded another jeepney for Mabini.

  The zoo was almost deserted; we had a bench and the greenery to ourselves. Lily had looked at the giraffes and elephants with perfunctory interest. She wanted to talk.

  “I did what you told me,” she finally said. “I took Mot
her and the young ones out. We went by taxi to the Luneta. For fresh air, I said. Toward evening we went to the Aristocrat and had fried chicken. We were very happy … then I told Mother. The young ones were too busy eating to listen.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She cried, right there in the restaurant, not loud, the tears just falling down her cheeks. She said I was the best person to decide, that she would pray no harm would come to me, that I would remain honorable.”

  “You will have difficulty doing that, Lily. You are on a precipice, just one nudge and you will keel over.”

  “I know,” she said sadly.

  “You have known how it is to be embraced by a man. What happens when you have a customer you like, and you are there … in the dark?”

  “It has not happened yet.”

  “But it will happen!”

  Silence, the bustle of children nearby, the tinkle of an ice cream vendor’s bell.

  “I wish I could have you stop, Lily.”

  She held my hand.

  “When we are together like this, are you Number Seventeen or yourself?”

  “I am myself, of course,” she said, eyes flashing. “I know you are not trying to garaje me.”

  “I cannot afford it.”

  “It is not that. I would not let you.”

  “Because you do not care.”

  Tenderness in her eyes, she opened her mouth as if to speak, but she stopped. After a while, she asked quietly, “What is it you really want from me? Do not joke now. Everyone who has been to the Colonial wants one thing.”

  I wanted to assure her I was no different, that I wanted her, but I could not bring myself to tell her this although I was sure she knew.

  “You will only leave me dangling,” she continued.

  “I am not impotent!”

  “That is not what I meant,” she said quickly. “You know, there will be many things on our minds, I will be thinking of my past, my job, how it will be, and it will not be enjoyable anymore.”