Their footfalls on the sidewalk were slow and soft, and in a while they were inside an apartment building and going up in an elevator. They paused before the door, still holding hands, and because this was Washington and not Manila, and because his head was still brimming with happiness and confession, he held her, and that was the funny part about it, the delicious part: she did not object one bit. He held her, felt the rustling of her dress, the softness of her body, her shoulders, and then he kissed her gently on the lips and murmured, “Thank you for a very pleasant evening,” and she laughed softly and said, “Thank you, too, and I hope we’ll get around to see each other again.”
When he was in the foyer and out in the street the traffic had suddenly become alive. Wonder of wonders, he had kissed Carmen Villa! Who the hell in Manila would believe him even if he shouted this news until his lungs burst? Fool, he had thought, smashing his fist into the trunk of an elm. And with feet that seemed to float on air, he had danced on aimlessly in the magic summer twilight, bubbling to himself: fool, fool, fool!
Fool—and the self-inflicted stigma was forgotten, for into this May afternoon, into this rendezvous, Carmen walked gracefully. He turned to her as she entered and forgot everything; he was intensely aware only of this girl who had come at his bidding. She came to him like a lissome goddess and a great happiness welled in his chest. She wore an apple-green dress that accentuated her freshness, and smiled that knowing smile of lovers, then sidled close to him, taking care, however, that their arms merely brushed, for she had said, in anticipation of times such as now, when, back in Manila, she would be seen with him: “I have many friends, Tony, and I don’t want them to talk too much.”
“I’m not late, darling,” she said breathlessly as he guided her up the flight of stairs to a table.
A waiter hovered and took their orders—two cups of coffee. Then the crowd disappeared and they were alone. It was just the other day that he last saw her, walking down the gangplank arm in arm with her father. The hunger for her, for the honeyed tang of her lips, her talk, had been whetted; they had taken the ship together and had tried their best to be strangers to each other (it was impossible, of course) because she did not want the Filipinos on the boat to be oversuspicious. Moreover, she had a cabin to herself while he had a tourist berth. The effort at distance had strained the voyage, more so when it ended and she did not even introduce her father to him at the pier when the boat finally docked.
Her cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes mirrored an inner anxiety as they sought his. She leaned forward and spoke softly as if in secret: “Tony, I hate to bring this up again. You forget many things. I’m supposed to have some pride. Tell me now, when are we going to get married?”
He smiled, “I’ve told you, baby. I have to save a little first.” She lowered her gaze and bit her lower lip. She did that every time she was distressed. He leaned forward, “Is something the matter?”
“We should get married now. This week. Tomorrow. Isn’t it important to you?”
“Of course, it is.”
“I don’t want to do this. It’s supposed to be blackmail, but you have to know.”
“A secret?”
“In a few weeks it won’t be. Tony, it’s that important. This month. It was due two weeks ago, but I wasn’t too sure. I thought I was just seasick. On the boat, remember? Well, this morning, I threw up again. And green mangoes …”
Tony reached out and held her hand and all of a sudden he had an urge to pick her up and fondle her. “Baby,” he said, his voice shaky, “I didn’t know. Yes, this month. Don’t worry. Don’t worry …”
He had expected something like this, but the thought that he would soon be a father had never occurred to him so bluntly as it did now. One riddle had resolved itself into something exhilarating and, at the same time, frightening, but he felt no twinge of guilt—only a feeling akin to joy. It was another summer in a place called Washington; it was another place—Carmen’s apartment, its sensual attractions and, most of all, her welcome. Yes, that was it, the lavish welcome—that was what he treasured most.
Bending forward, he whispered, “Baby, I love you”—meaning: Baby, I love your welcome, your warmth. And this was what he shared with her, for Carmen loved her body, too, she loved her skin and her patrician features, more than the ordinary woman. He had, at first, taken her beauty for granted, just as he had taken for granted the generous attributes of other girls. And certainly Carmen was not fairer than some Mediterranean types he had seen on the Boston campus and in his Spanish summer study tour later on. On their first night she brought to him the attention and pride that she lavished on herself. “Touch me gently,” she had told him while the lamp in the corner bathed her with a soft, even light. He had made a move to switch the light off, thinking she might be embarrassed. But she stopped him and said, “You can turn on all the lights if you want to.” The suggestion had pleased him and he did turn them on—the twin fluorescent lamps above flooded her bedroom, and in their cool, bluish scrutiny he marveled at the luster of her skin, the velvety yielding of her breast to his touch. She stood there, basking in the light and smiling.
His throat was parched and his voice, which he heard only dimly, rasped, “You are so beautiful!” And as he thought of this and lived it all over again, the welcome and the abandon, sin no longer was sin but fulfillment.
“We will get married soon,” he said. “Even if we have to elope. I can’t stand it—meeting you like this, missing you and unable to do anything.”
Creases appeared quickly on her brow as she pouted. “My folks, Tony, you have to meet them. I’ve told them about us.”
“Everything?”
“Don’t be a fool,” she said, smiling.
* Hacendero: A landlord or owner of a hacienda or big tract of land.
CHAPTER
4
They agreed to meet at Boie’s again at three. He toyed with a cup of coffee without cream and sugar—a sophistication he had acquired in Cambridge—and wished that the ordeal would soon be over. He knew he would meet Carmen’s parents someday, but in the past this expectation had not bothered him or filled him with foreboding as it did now, with the meeting so near.
It would have been vastly simpler if her parents were ordinary people and not mestizos. In the beginning, his awareness of this fact had been conveniently ignored, only to be resuscitated now that he was home. But before a host of equally depressing images could shape in his mind, Carmen arrived. She was prompt and Tony had not finished his cup.
She refused to sit down—no, they must leave right away. Her mother was home at the moment, and Don Manuel would be home before five—he was scheduled to play a round of golf before sunset. They sailed out, Carmen filled with banter, Tony uneasy and serious, into the sparkling sunlight.
Her Thunderbird, which had arrived with them on the ship, had been unloaded and serviced and was parked at the riverside lot. “The traffic is awful,” she said as they got into the low-slung thing, flaming red and a beauty among the old cars parked alongside it. “It’s like learning how to drive again.”
In a while they were free from the knot of traffic and the car hummed evenly on the asphalt. She had always been a careful driver and she was more so now because her car was new. There was no disconcerting shift of gears, no jerky stops. As the coupe hummed up the Santa Mesa incline, she placed a hand on his thigh.
“Oye, remember now,” she said with a slight, knowing pressure, “Mama always goes by first impressions. It’s not that what she thinks matters. But, you see, she is my mother and yours, too, now. You may just as well get used to that fact. My family isn’t so bad, Tony, not half as bad as some people may have already made you think.”
He had not been attentive to her chatter, for he had been engrossed in what was ahead, in the scene that would probably be created, and he did not realize that, at last, a cool wind had swooped down upon them, clean and fresh, now that they had risen above the level of Manila and ascended the hilly su
burb.
“Yes,” Carmen repeated with emphasis. “We aren’t the monsters some people think.”
“Who said that?” Tony asked, moving closer to her. The drift of her talk caught up with him.
She said seriously, “We are always supposed to have more malice and wickedness simply because we have money. That’s the proletarian way of thinking, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be too free with such words,” he chided. “This isn’t Washington anymore.”
Her hand went back to the wheel and she turned onto a road that branched from the wide street. Both sides of it were flanked by tall and leafy acacias that curtained the sun from the houses. They were all surrounded with high stone fences, with gates of wrought iron, and some even boasted guard houses. No jeepneys blundered into this street.
“Here we are,” Carmen sighed. They had stopped before a massive iron gate that stood at the end of a high adobe wall. Carmen blew the horn once and a servant ran up the driveway and opened the gate.
It was the first time he would see her home and his future in-laws—if they would accept him as a son. They would subject him to scrutiny and ask, perhaps, who is this servant that Carmen brings home? Is he after the money of the Villas or is he simply a lonely student to whom Carmen took a fancy while in Washington?
It was neither; he was here because it was the honorable thing to do, and besides, there was no sense in arguing with Carmen, who always had her way. She got out of her car below the wide sweep of the creamy marquee. The stairway was black Italian marble. From there Carmen led him into the wide hall, with its parquet floor. The hugeness of the house was now evident. The lamps were all huge and the sunburst at one end of the hall was massive; the hall was amply stocked with heavy, cream-colored upholstered chairs, and it had none of the antique and bejuco* furniture that many of the elegant houses he remembered had. In almost every panel, on every table or gleaming lattice, there was some memento of a country the Villas had visited: a Swiss cuckoo clock, Scandinavian earthenware, Venetian glass, African carvings, and even an Ifugao god from the Mountain Province—Tony recognized it immediately—in one corner of the room.
A maid in white appeared at one of the doors that opened to the hall and Carmen asked where her mother was. Holding Tony’s hand, she led him to the terrace and, cutting through a break in the hedge, they went down to the garden, an invigorating flood of Bermuda grass.
Tony took one of the iron garden chairs and gazed at the scene—the tile roof, the grand sweep of the rear wing of the house—while Carmen called, “Julia, Julia!,” and when the maid appeared again ordered her to bring cold drinks and cookies.
“This damned heat,” Carmen said. “I can feel it again—the nausea. It’s back. The sooner I get over this, the better. For a full week now, ever since we arrived. Tony, I miss spring most. And here we are, in midsummer. We should have stayed in San Francisco until June.”
“Please,” Tony sounded a little peeved. “Let’s not go into that again. I’ve obligations, you know that. I have to be here before the school prospectus is made. My classes …”
“Esto, your classes,” Carmen said hotly. “And look at me. It’s been my death and God knows how long it will last.”
Tony was sympathetic. “It won’t be long, baby. My sister, when she had her first baby, she said the feeling lasted only until the third month.”
“My God,” Carmen said. “Just hope that I won’t feel this rotten at our wedding, Tony.”
He suppressed a desire to laugh at what was now a ridiculous situation. Here he was in her house to ask for her hand in marriage and he was already assured of fatherhood. Briefly, in his mind’s eye, he saw again her apartment in Washington, the tap that pelted like thunder in the dead of night, the wide handsome bed that squeaked.
With a sense of discovery, he also recalled the ulog of the Bontoc Igorots, which he had visited in one of his excursions to the north years before, remembered the smell of pine splinters burning in the chill dark, the young Igorot girls huddled around the flame and the frisky youths talking with them quietly. The ulog was not big; it was no more than a thatched granary sitting on a shelf overlooking a creek, and that evening it seemed even smaller. In the morning, when he revisited with his guide, he saw its dim interior—the cold ashes in the hearth at one end of the hut, the flat broad stones that were laid in some sort of mosaic as a floor, and the years of soot that clung to the walls and covered the floor, marking all those who visited it with a badge of black just as his khaki had already been marked. The ulog where the Bontoc youths met for trial marriage had one entrance and no window at all, but even in the dim light he could see it shorn of the exotic sensuality that had pervaded it the evening before.
And finally, sweetly, there was Washington again, and Carmen on that frozen Sunday morning preparing breakfast in the kitchenette, her lipstick all gone, her hair mussed, and her face oily and flat with the wash of sleep. She smelled more strongly than ever of woman and fulfillment, acutely so, and seeing her thus and smelling her thus, he dragged her back to the bedroom. What was the difference? This, this thing that had happened, was nothing but a sophisticated copy of the custom of those sturdy hill people in Bontoc, whose life he had tried to understand; the same, the same—they who practiced trial marriage and who made the union binding only when the woman was finally with child were no different from him and Carmen. Civilization simply had more refinements—the apartment on Massachusetts Avenue, this girl, twenty-four years old, with her Spanish ancestry glowing in her clear skin, her exquisite nose and imperious chin, the rich endowments in her limbs.
“This heat,” Carmen interrupted his thoughts again. She took the seat beside him. “I hope the air-conditioning in my room, our room, is doubled soon. That cannot wait, can it? Lovemaking in this heat. It’s just like being pigs, no?”
He leaned over, pressed her hand, and laughed at her little obscenity.
The maid returned with a tray of drinks. “Tell Mama and Papa we are here.”
“Your papa is not yet in, señorita.” The girl returned to the grilled door of the terrace.
“Mama is a character,” Carmen said. “You’ll adore her.”
His drink, relaxing and complete, sank down his burning throat.
“Should I worry about her?”
“No,” she whispered. “You have nothing to worry about now.”
It was not different—his being here was like the Igorot ritual a thousand years old. A young man expressing suit went to the house of the girl and cast his spear at her stairway. If the girl’s father came down and brought the spear up, he was welcome; if, however, the father grabbed the lance and hurled it away or, as sometimes happened, flung it at the young man himself, that meant his rejection. He was here now with a primeval want, to see if the spear would be picked up and brought into the house, or if he would feel its blade upon his flesh.
In a while the sliding door of the terrace opened again and a woman in a short red playsuit, pudgy-looking and in her early fifties, padded out, an ice bag on her head. She was swinging a palm fan languidly across her face.
“Carmen, this damned heat. Did you see the invitation to the fashion show this Sunday?”
“No, Mama.”
“You never are a help,” the older woman pouted and kept swinging the fan as she waddled down. She flopped into the chair opposite Tony, who had risen and said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Villa.” The chair creaked and sagged under her weight. She was not really enormous, but she was solid and she struck a ridiculous picture in her briefs, her thighs bulging out in folds like those of a chubby child. Her eyes glanced off Tony and in that brief encounter he knew she had probed through him.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Villa,” he repeated.
She looked again at Tony indifferently.
“This is Tony, Mama,” Carmen said.
“Of course,” she said, swinging the fan. “Oh, it’s warm, really warm. Where do you stay?”
“In Antipolo, Mrs. Villa.
”
“There?” incredulously. “Why, how can all those people ever live in that place. I remember passing that way last All Souls’ Day. It was warm then. It must be broiling there now.”
“One gets used to the heat.”
“Don’t tell me,” Carmen’s mother apparently did not brook dissent. “Our bedroom is air-conditioned and it’s still warm. Heaven knows how I can ever live without air-conditioning.”
“The old houses, Mrs. Villa,” Tony said, trying to make conversation, “were built to be cool. The old architects, they did something about the weather. The houses they made had wide windows and high ceilings …”
“Air-conditioning is unbeatable. I hope the air-conditioning in Mr. Villa’s car is repaired soon. Then he wouldn’t want the driver to drive fast. Come to think of it, don’t drive fast, young man. Simply because it’s hot is no reason for you to drive fast.”
Carmen threw an uneasy glance at Tony. Then, to her mother: “Tony doesn’t drive, Mama.”
“I don’t have a car,” Tony said flatly.
The older woman sat back. “What did you say your name was?”
Carmen answered for him. “Mama, I told you already. Tony Samson.”
“Ah, yes, I remember. You must be a relative of Dr. Alfonso Samson, no? That man! He certainly gets around. Remember, Carmen? Have I told you how we met him—your pa and I—in New York last summer? And then on the boat to France? There he was on the America—and I could have sworn he followed us. And did I delight in your father’s show of jealousy!” Turning to Tony, she went on with amazing lightness: “Do you know where he is now?”
Tony Samson looked at his shoes. “No, Mrs. Villa,” he said hopelessly. “He isn’t a relative. I just know him from what I read in the papers.”
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 8
