I recalled the Directorate sessions; I did not want to disagree openly with him, but it was best that I spoke my mind. I owed him this.
“I cannot accept this form of anti-Americanism, Professor,” I said. “The Americans are not a problem as such. Just look at the hordes at the American embassy every day. Filipinos wanting to immigrate. I would rather work in an American firm than in a Filipino company. I know Americans give better pay, privileges, and I can aspire to a very high post with them. Not with the Spanish mestizo companies. I am not one of them.” I was explicit. I wanted Puneta to know.
“I know what you are going to say,” Professor Hortenso said. “But we have to look at our struggle in a broader perspective.”
“First things first,” I said. “We cannot take on the world. And besides, once you have gotten rid of the oligarchy, it should not be difficult to push the Americans out. The experience of other countries illustrates this. And even if we had a revolution and won in the end, what would we do? We would still have to produce and sell—sell, yes, to America.”
“It is not just for the reason I mentioned,” Professor Hortenso continued evenly. “We have to recognize our being part of Asia, our being Asian.”
“But Asia means backwardness,” I said. “Monuments, religious tradition—why should we worry if we don’t have these? We should be able to create them ourselves. What is an ancient culture embellished with ritual if there is no freedom in that society, not enough food? We will create the new culture, and thank God we will not be shackled by the past.”
“Except that the Americans have shackled us to their concepts, their megalomania.” It was Betsy who spoke.
I had not intended to defend the Americans. They are such a big target and could not be avoided. They are also an overwhelming presence. Wherever one turns, they are there, with their technology, their brands, and their malaise. They are, it is true, an obstruction to legitimate nationalist aspirations, and they don’t need Filipinos to defend them, least of all a self-seeking escapee from that limbo called Cabugawan. They can do that very well with their own hirelings in the elite schools, in Pobres Park—the nationalist bourgeoisie whose fortunes are entwined with theirs. Still, there are things that must be said, not in their behalf but in the interest of truth.
Puneta was very pleased. “See?” he was beaming, his white teeth gleaming, his mestizo eyes crinkling. “See? Really, Pepe, I should have a long, long talk with you. I should go over there and talk with your Ka Lucio, too.”
“Isn’t American imperialism real?” Betsy interrupted Puneta.
“No doubt, no doubt,” I smiled at her. “But the people are pro-American, Betsy. Look at me: I have no ill feelings toward them, toward anyone. But I hate whoever was responsible for the death of Toto … of our thirty-three friends. Whoever killed them is the enemy.”
“Go beyond that,” Betsy said.
“I can. But my friends in the Barrio—their concern is food and jobs. They are not political.”
“We have to be political.” She was insistent.
“I don’t disagree. But even in my university— I don’t know about the schools of the oligarchy.”
“Don’t be patronizing,” she said sharply. It was now she or I.
“I organize on the basis of friendships, on being Ilocano. Most of the students are not really interested in demonstrations, except that they mean no classes. Do you know what their interests really are? To pass, to be able to get a degree, and after that, a job. Politics is a luxury of the rich.”
“This is reverse snobbery,” Betsy countered. “Are you saying that the masses do not need political education?”
“I am the masses,” I flung at her. “Do you want my credentials?”
I had pushed her into a corner, and she scowled at me. I had the floor to myself, and I did not give it away.
“Yes, everyone needs to be politicized, not just the masses. But we are talking about organizing and winning a broader base. This comes first if we are to have the sea. And we can build this sea around us first by talking the people’s language—not the language of conference rooms and seminars. And this language is warm, earthy. Many of my friends in the Barrio,” I continued slowly, “have not even finished grade school. When I organized the chapter there I had a broom—ting-ting, that I used in sweeping the church floor every day. I detached one midrib and snapped it and I said, see, alone, singly, how weak it is? Then I held out the broom to them and challenged anyone to break it. This is what unity brings, I said. Strength, usefulness. And they understood immediately. That is why we were able to get cement for the basketball court. Now we can play even in the rainy season. And we painted the multipurpose center, too. All of us. We are proud of these.”
They were listening eagerly. They were all hopelessly burgis; what did they know about living in Tondo?
“Any day,” I continued, “I can get more than fifty young people from the Barrio. Fifty! You cannot go there and make speeches and expect them to follow you. Do you know that all sorts of politicians go there and make speeches? What makes you think you’re any different?”
They did not speak.
“Look, even Father Jess who has lived there seven years feels they don’t really accept him. And he is right, and not because religion has become very impersonal. We all know that priests are not poor, that they are not really like us. But I—I have been there only a year and I can raise, like I said, fifty followers at any time. Not only do I live there, but I also fight with them. I give them milk, relief goods—though these are not mine. I have taken them to restaurants, got drunk with them. You don’t need speeches in Tondo.”
“There should really be a way for those from the villages who have gone to the cities and become other than what they were—successes, you know—they should go back to the barrios, to their roots …” Juan Puneta spoke to no one in particular.
I could not let it pass. “Sir, I am no success, but do you mean I should go back to my village in Pangasinan? That is unthinkable! Why should I? Life in Tondo is harsh, but life in Cabugawan is harsher. That is why I am here, this is the reason the farmer would sell his only carabao to send his son to college. If he had a chance, he would not be a farmer.”
This was what Auntie Bettina and Mother had hammered into me, I wanted to tell them, for now, more than at any other time, all that I heard from them came with ringing clarity.
“You are saying then that once we industrialize, once we have a chicken in every pot, there would be no need for revolution, there would be no problem even in organizing people,” Professor Hortenso concluded.
“We will organize so we will have a chicken in every pot,” I said. “But we are incapable of truly uniting. It is not just the ningas cogon, the lightning enthusiasm that dies once the speeches are done with. Look at us. How many youth organizations are there now? It is not the Americans or the oligarchy whom we really hate most; it is those who do not belong to the Brotherhood. We call them clerico-fascists, deviationists, CIA agents. And God, we are fighting for the same cause! It is just that our names are different. How many organizations are there of lawyers, teachers, doctors? Perhaps as many as there are people who want to lead them, people who cannot go beyond their petty personal ambitions, who think they are the only true bearers of light. You find this thinking in the village, so we use the techniques that are useful in the village, but the leaders, Professor, they should be able to go beyond the psychology of our villages.”
Betsy now spoke with passion: “But why do you have to look down on the village? At least, even if the people there are poor, they and the village have a certain integrity.”
I did not let that pass. Briefly, there swooped into my mind the miserable lives that I have known in Tondo, the unending violence, the latent viciousness under the gloss of neighborliness that everyone seemed to exhude.
“Betsy,” I faced her, shaking my head sadly. “Thank you for the kind thought, but that is a lot of bull.” She turned away, and
I was immediately sorry I had spoken so harshly.
“Sorry for the language,” I continued contritely. “But I just want you to know there is no honor among the poor. In the Barrio, who are the thieves? Our own neighbors who take the laundry we hang outside our hovels. They steal them to sell to secondhand clothing stores. It is not the cats who get the fish we dry on our roofs; again, it is the neighbors who have nothing to eat. The Barrio is full of cheats, liars, drunks, sadists, perverts—and yes, we steal, we cheat, we lie because we don’t know where the next meal will come from. We grab what we can, from anyone. I ask you not to look at the village, at the poor, with rose-colored glasses. There is nothing romantic about poverty. It is totally, absolutely degrading.”
When the meeting was over Professor Hortenso sought me. “Pepe, that was a revelation! We will have to rely more on you.” He was complimenting me, and I was uneasy, for I did not like speeches even though they were mine, and most of all, I did not relish being a politician.
I did not want to leave with Betsy, but I had made her angry, and I wanted to tell her I was sorry; also, I was not resolute enough in my plan to avoid her. It was dusk. As we eased into the rain-drenched boulevard, she said: “I really should have kept my mouth shut, but then …” she laughed slightly. “If I did, you wouldn’t have opened up. It is all in my notes, Pepe. You said much more than a lecture on political science.”
Were we going again to that fancy restaurant? “No,” she said. “We are going to Angono.”
The rain had stopped, but the acacia trees still dripped and glistened in the fading light. The asphalt was as black as the thoughts that crowded my mind. Juan Puneta had drawn me out, he had made me speak against my wishes.
It was as if Betsy had divined my thoughts. “And I noticed, too, that Puneta was looking at you,” she said, glancing at me.
“Do you like him?” I asked.
She was silent for a time. She shifted gears as we neared the traffic lights at Padre Faura. “I don’t trust him,” she said.
“How can you say that of someone who has helped the Brotherhood generously?” I asked. “We have just eaten his sandwiches.”
She turned to me sullenly. “I suppose this is a personal feeling. He is very slick. There is something in his manner that is not sincere. I can feel it in his voice, in the way he conducts himself—as if he were studying everyone so that he will know how to use them. But my father— We once talked about ethical business practices. I remember Papa saying Puneta’s flour company mixes cassava flour with wheat. Oh, I know that he should not be singled out.… I also hear he has a private army, what with all the guns he has. And that is no secret.”
“He goes around without a bodyguard,” I said, knowing that many wealthy Filipinos did not go to public places alone.
“He does not need protection from us,” Betsy said. “It is us who need protection from him. Did not your father warn us against men like him?”
I did not speak. I wanted to banish Juan Puneta into some unreachable corner of my mind. I wanted only the nearness of this girl in this rain-washed night that now bloomed with neon lights and the last purples of sunset. The clangor of traffic was around us, and it was a long, crooked way to Angono, but nothing mattered anymore. We crossed over Nagtahan, took Santa Mesa to Cubao, then turned right to EDSA. The road to Angono was jammed; it took a full hour to reach the environs of Marikina. We did not go to Angono, however; instead, she turned left onto a private paved road and continued until we reached the golf club to which her family belonged. She asked if I was hungry. I was, so we went to the restaurant and ordered chicken and ham sandwiches, which she asked the waiter to wrap up. Back in her car, we went through a gate with a sentry and up a slope, through ascending paved roads that traversed empty lots given to weeds till we reached a promontory. She stopped. Below us was Manila spread like a vast, splendored carpet; a million lights twinkled, jewels flashing in the soft dark. Overhead a jet whined in its descent.
“It is beautiful,” I said. “You don’t see the dirt.” I held her hand and she let me.
Then I was suddenly apprehensive; I was not armed, and though I knew a little karate it was not enough. “Isn’t it dangerous here?”
She smiled. “No,” she said, “this is patrolled and no car can come up here unless you pass the gate.”
“I am worried just the same,” I said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I always come here when I am troubled and I want to think. I know this place very well—it belongs to my father.”
I was immediately silent and she noticed it. “I did not mean to brag,” she said quietly.
It was hopeless. What was I doing here with a girl who was beyond my reach? “Betsy,” I finally said, “I am not lying; I did write to you, but thought it better not to mail it.”
“And why not?”
I had to tell her. “I said good-bye to you in that letter. I was determined not to see you again. But I am a weakling, always have been. And this afternoon, when I saw you, God knows how happy I was.”
“I was, too,” she said simply.
Then I told her, but not about Lucy or Lily. “There is another girl.”
She bolted up, turned to me quickly; her eyes were expectant.
“I suppose you may say she was my first love. I grew up with her. She is dark, not fair like you. But you have her eyes—” I looked at her, “Yes, you have the same eyes as Ramona … clear, dark, brooding … but when she smiles, it would seem like daybreak.”
She turned away. “You must love her very much,” she said softly. “Will I ever meet her?”
I laughed. “You will never meet her.”
“Is she … is she dead?”
“No,” I said. “She is very much alive. I can see her now.” I closed my eyes and held her hand tighter. “But I can only love her in my mind. It is impossible. Like you, she is up there, and I, I am down here. Still, it is wonderful to be with you like this. Thank you for taking me along.”
“Why compare me with Ramona?” There was a sharp edge to her voice.
It was then that I told her of Mother’s humming the song “Ramona,” how I imagined Ramona hovering over me, unreachable like her.
She leaned closer. “This place is real,” she said. “The view may look unreal, but we know it is there. I have never brought anyone here or invited anyone before.”
“No one would believe we are here,” I said. “And it is just as well, for this is not really happening, except in my imagination.”
Her breath upon my face was warm and sweet. “But I am real!” she said huskily.
I touched her face and kissed her, her hair, her eyes. Softly.
We would have tarried, but I told her, although it was not true, that Father Jess and I were going to make a house call.
On the way back she was quiet; words could build walls between us so that this would never happen again. She wanted to take me to Bangkusay, but it was late, and I did not want anything happening to her. I got off at Mandaluyong, where I could catch a bus for Divisoria, and she went on to the Park.
The Placard Is Bloody
It was not really my desire to sit at Ka Lucio’s feet and learn from him the odious truths of the past, but I had brought his name up at the meeting and I would be asked questions about him. I had not been to his house again, although it was just across the alley, since Toto and I visited him. He often smiled when I passed. He would sometimes be out in the churchyard sunning himself or talking with the older men in front of the small sari-sari store of Roger’s father, but he had never gone to church although he did talk sometimes with Father Jess.
This morning I walked over to his house after I was through with my chores. His two nieces were out, and he was in the kitchen, cooking. He appeared paler, but not once during my visit did he cough. “Ah, my young brother,” he said when he turned to the open door and saw me. “Come in and make yourself at home.”
He joined me in the cramped living room and asked if I wa
nted to watch television, but I barely looked at the set in the kumbento.
“No,” I said quickly. “I came here—I hope you don’t mind my learning from you.”
He appeared pleased; with a wave of his hand, he said, “All that I know I’ll try to impart to you.”
“Some of us,” I said, “have decided that the time for revolution is now.” And if it comes, we would not surrender—this was what we had talked about. Why did he give up? After all those years fighting the Japanese, then the Constabulary? Was he tired, was he disillusioned, and where had his surrender brought him? This shack?
He looked at me, his eyes bright with understanding. He spoke softly, as always, without bitterness. “I must tell you—if this is the only thing that I can tell you—that this is not the time.”
“There would never be another time, and if you tell me now that we should wait, I tell you that we cannot. If the time is not ripe, we will help make it ripe. To believe otherwise is to have no faith.”
“Big words,” Ka Lucio said. His benign smile made me uneasy. “But what are the facts? I thought my time was the right one, too. But where did it get me? And how many years were wasted in remorse that I cannot express? But do not tell me that I had fought in vain, that I did not take one forward step.”
“We will make it three,” I said.
“No, you will be making three steps backward and only two forward. This is not the time. The people are not ready to accept violence. Do you know what they want? Just peace—peace so that we can continue our miserable lives. More than that, the Americans are here. They will interfere. The oligarchy will convince them your revolution is Communist even if it is not. And the rich … they are very strong, they are in power, in government. Where will you get the guns? The money? You will have to get them from the rich, and in the end, they will lead, not you. No, this is not the time.”
“Rizal said that, too,” I said. “Did you ask yourself when you went to the hills if it was time? Did the Huks get money from the rich?”
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 49