“Aren’t you from Negros?”
Carmen’s voice was desperate. “No, Mama. From Pangasinan.”
“Oh well, names really mislead.”
Tony felt his mouth drying up again; one more question, he thought, and I’ll melt. Oh, this terrible heat.
Mrs. Villa rose. “What do you do, young man? I should know because, after all, Carmen is very keen about marrying you. I want to make sure you can support a wife.”
“Mama!”
“I’m through with college,” Tony said bravely.
“At Harvard, as you already know,” Carmen helped him.
“I am going to teach,” he said, turning to Carmen as if to say, I can take care of myself. “I’m also doing a little writing.”
“Writing? Now, that’s really good. I read in the papers about an American writer who sold a sexy book for a million dollars.”
“It’s different here, Mrs. Villa,” Tony said.
“You mean you don’t earn enough? Romulo is a writer, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Mama,” Carmen hurried to Tony’s defense again, “but—”
“I’ll make enough to live on, Mrs. Villa,” Tony said grimly.
“They all say that,” the older woman said with a hint of boredom.
“Carmen,” she faced her daughter, “if only Nena de Jesus didn’t grab Ben. He is back in your father’s office. You left on the same boat for Frisco, didn’t you?”
Carmen glared at her mother. “He is my best friend’s husband, Mama,” she said with striking stiffness. “He is dumb, no good,” she touched Tony’s hand. “I have made my choice.”
“You are insolent,” Mrs. Villa chided her. She dismissed her revolt with another languid swing of the fan. “I give up,” she said, rising, her flabby thighs and her chin quivering. Then she waddled back into the house.
They didn’t speak for a while. He looked at the white wall lined with bougainvillea. Beyond the garden wall, a piano tinkled. A car whined up the road and the afternoon steamed on.
Carmen spoke first: “I’m sorry, darling. But I told you Mama is a character.”
“She wasn’t a bother, really,” he lied.
“She was, too,” Carmen insisted. “But she’s always like that. Just like a child.” She laughed mirthlessly and her eyes as they slid to him were supplicating.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not from Negros and I’m not related to this Samson doctor. Damn it, America was fine on a scholarship, but life would be better if I were a hacendero from Negros, wouldn’t it? Maybe we should elope and then we would have nothing but ourselves—”
“That’s being impractical, darling, but I’ll give it a thought. Besides, it’s just Mama and she can’t do anything. And Papa …”
“He won’t like me, either.”
“He’s different,” she said. “He’s more understanding, less of a scatterbrain than Mama.”
She had barely finished her sentence when a car was heard crunching up the driveway. Carmen’s Thunderbird hogged the way and the new arrival had to park near the gate.
A man in white trousers and white barong Tagalog† stepped out.
“Wait,” Carmen said, leaving Tony. She ran to the driveway, took the man by the arm and kissed him on the cheek. Don Manuel Villa was displeased with his daughter’s bad parking but she did not seem to mind him; she dragged him up the flagstone walk to the garden where Tony had risen and had come forward to meet them.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he greeted Carmen’s father politely.
“Go on, be seated,” Don Manuel grinned, the displeasure now banished from his face.
His skin, like Carmen’s, was fair and his nose was high and straight. His teeth were good and his hair was neatly combed. They shook hands. Don Manuel’s palm was soft and moist. He thrust his chin at his daughter. “Go get me my drink.” He spoke again with authority, but Carmen did not seem to mind the tone.
“Your favorite, Papa?”
“Yes.”
To Tony, before she departed, she gave one look, meaning this is it, be a good boy now because you are on your own.
Manuel Villa spoke lightly. “I hope Carmen didn’t wrap you completely around her little finger. She does that even to me.” He flung himself on the iron chair. “This time I know it’s going to be the last. You are going to be a part of the family.”
Before Tony could speak, Don Manuel droned on. “I know it’s going to be you. Not only because Carmen told me so but because she never acted this way before. I hope you don’t find her very stupid, as I sometimes do. I hear you are a professor.”
“Just an instructor, sir,” Tony said quietly.
“It’s always wise to start from somewhere. My grandfather, do you know how he started? I like telling this to everyone—how the old man went about repairing furniture in Intramuros. But he was a good businessman, mind you. And when the revolution came, the stakes became bigger. And my father … it’s a long story and someday I’m going to tell you.”
“I’ll be very happy to hear it, sir.”
Don Manuel did not seem to care about what Tony said, for he interrupted him. “Are you in love with her?”
Before Tony could answer, Don Manuel bent forward, placed a hand on Tony’s knee. “What a foolish question. I’m sure you are.”
An uneasy silence, then Carmen returned with a tray. She gave her father a glass of fresh orange juice.
“Thank you, my dear. Now go over to the car and sort out my mail in the briefcase while I talk things over with your young man.”
Carmen smiled, patted her father’s hand, and, before leaving, looked at Tony meaningfully again. Don Manuel turned to Tony. “I don’t like hard drinks. Never did.” He was expansive. “Of all my daughters, Carmen is the most practical. With a good business mind, I might say, if she will only put her heart to it. Before she left last year, for instance, she convinced me to invest in Philippine Oil. Just thirty thousand. She was visiting the daughter of the firm’s president and she came upon him excitedly answering a radiophone call about a strike in Palawan. The following day the stocks shot up and I made a hundred thousand.”
“I would say, sir,” Tony said affably, “that Carmen uses her ears properly.”
Don Manuel slapped the tabletop and laughed. “You have a sense of humor,” but somehow, his voice failed to relay his blitheness and he sounded hurt instead.
He sat back and sipped his drink. His nails were carefully manicured and on one finger was a simple wedding band. “Have you met her mother already?” he asked and when Tony said, “Yes,” Don Manuel had another question: “I have forgotten, but where do you come from.”
“From the North, sir.”
“Yes, you are Ilocano, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. From Pangasinan. My grandfather migrated there about a hundred years ago. He came from Ilocos Sur, walked all the way. I’d like to follow his trail someday to see if I still have relatives in the North.”
“And what do you expect to find?”
“I’m not sure,” Tony said. “You see, my grandfather left with his whole clan. He was a teacher when teachers were few.”
“Some sort of aristocrat, eh?”
Tony measured his words. “Not in the sense that some people today are aristocrats, sir.”
“Why should you be doing such a thing?”
“A personal dream,” Tony said with a tinge of embarrassment. “I think the past is necessary, particularly to one like me who is rootless now.”
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of that,” Manuel Villa became pensive. “Tradition—it’s another name for nationalism, isn’t it?”
“If you choose to call it that, sir.”
“Are you aware of my background?”
“Carmen has told me a little.”
“I’m not saying I’m proud of it,” he said, emptying his glass of orange juice. “Less than a hundred years ago my grandfather … I’ve told you he was poor.…”
Tony nodded.
“I might just as well admit it: he and all the rest, they were opportunists. They are called heroes now, but actually they sold their services to the highest bidder—to the revolutionists, to the Spaniards. It didn’t matter to whom, as long as they made money.”
“Sir, I don’t want to pry …”
“Now, don’t try to stop me. I don’t know what you young people are thinking of, although sometimes you amaze me. But this is one thing I know: all this rot about tradition—no, I don’t mean you, my boy, I mean the professional patriots—how can I believe them? I feel just as they feel. There’s too much hypocrisy around. Frankly, I know which side my bread is buttered on. Only two years ago, for instance, I was entertaining a Japanese contractor. He had his eyes on my construction facilities. We and some local boys, including Senator Reyes and Alfred Dangmount, were planning an integrated steel mill in Bataan. The Japanese approached me. Now he is in on the deal.”
“If it’s a business deal …”
“That’s what I mean! For us, where does patriotism begin and where does business end?”
Manuel Villa slapped the tabletop again as if to emphasize his point. Then, settling back in his chair, his aggressive and cynical tone changed and he spoke as if in a whisper: “I’m always a practical man.” He spoke without taking his eyes off Tony. “You must excuse me now if I am frank. I know Carmen has made up her mind.”
“I hope you don’t object.”
“And if I object, what can I do? Disown her? You have to admit it, we are not like those Negros hacenderos. Cousins marrying cousins. Incest! That’s what it is—and do you know why?”
Tony nodded.
“Because they don’t want their wealth to be shared by strangers. And look what has happened to their children. Nitwits—that’s what has become of them. Have you anything to say?”
Tony shook his head.
“Well, I have a lot to say. I’ve made inquiries. Tried to know as much as I could about you.”
Tony stammered senselessly.
“You are not a businessman yet, but I’ll make you one. I don’t know if you love Carmen for herself or for her money. Excuse the bluntness,” Don Manuel spoke blandly. “But if we are going to be friends we must have frankness. The less secrets in the family, the better.”
“I’m poor, sir,” Tony said, his temper starting to rise. “Perhaps you also know how much I’ll make. I intend to live on that. And Carmen, too, if she’s willing. And as for your money …”
Don Manuel stood up, a grin on his face, and placed an arm on Tony’s shoulder. “I like one who fights back,” he said, pleased with himself. “At least my son-in-law is going to stand up and fight.”
Before Tony could speak again, Don Manuel boomed: “You wonder why I can talk freely? I have influence and, more important, money. These give me a sense of true freedom. I see nothing wrong in appreciating money. Even priests appreciate money.”
Manuel Villa, the satisfied look still on his lean, handsome face, patted Tony paternally on the shoulder. “If the wedding will be next month—or any time you two decide—we can talk again. We may yet become very good friends.”
Speechless, Tony watched him disappear behind the sliding glass door of the terrace. A hundred things crowded his mind, a hundred important things that he could have said. The candor of Don Manuel both repelled and fascinated him, and yet the businessman had strength of conviction. Was Tony never interested in Carmen’s money, was he right in sounding so self-righteous and proud? The wedding, Don Manuel had said, would be next month and that was not far away.
Carmen appeared on the terrace, and when she drew near, her eyes were shining. “How did you like him, darling?” she asked, caressing the hair on the nape of his neck.
He stood up and smiled. They walked slowly to the driveway. He held her hand, squeezed it at the gate, and replying to her insistent “Oye, tell me,” he gazed at her radiant face, and because he loved her and because she would be the mother of his child, he replied, “An admirable man. A most unusual father, too.
“Of course I like him, baby.”
* Bejuco: Rattan.
† Barong Tagalog: A loose-fitting, long-sleeved shirt—the national dress of the Philippines for men—made from gauzy pineapple-fiber fabric, often embroidered on the collar and facing.
CHAPTER
5
Tony came to know what a headstrong girl Carmen was the afternoon she picked him up at the university. She had parked under the acacias that fronted the main building and had apparently waited there, watching those coming out of the hall. The moment he stepped down the main stairway she drove up to him, opened the door of her car, and beckoned him to get in. A student had impudently whistled; blood spread warmly over his face and she was flippant about it: “At your age, darling, you shouldn’t blush when a wicked female like me picks you up.”
She shifted into first gear and they were off.
“You should have told me you were coming,” Tony objected weakly.
“It wouldn’t have been fun,” she said. They were slipping out of the campus into the broad avenue lined with acacia saplings. “I wanted to surprise you.”
They drove quietly. After having known each other for so long, there did not seem to be much to talk about.
In a while the ancient obsession returned. “I wish I really could take a breather from school,” he said. “Not a long breather, just a month or so, so I could go to the Ilocos. You with your excellent Spanish—you know how poor I am in the language.…”
“Oh, no, not again,” she said in mock disappointment. “No more of that crazy old man who walked to Pangasinan.”
He placed an arm on her shoulder. “Yes, that old man,” he said.
She turned to him briefly and he saw the cool, laughing eyes, the patrician nose, and the full lips parted in a smile.
“I wish you’d believe me when I say it’s important,” he said softly.
But she was Carmen Villa, self-centered and secure; she would never understand his inner tumult, and there was no way by which he could impress upon her the tenacity of his dream.
The afternoon shed a pleasant warmth and a light that was spread like tinfoil on the bay. At the right, etched white against the blue waters, was the naval base of Cavite. She had stopped talking and he saw a secret smile crinkling her eyes. Then she laughed—that quiet, contented laughter of women used to having their way, as if she did not have a care, although she had told him there was one, the life embedded in her belly that would someday betray her sin.
She turned at a corner to a church and stopped on the asphalt churchyard before the entrance to the sacristy. She pressed his hand: “Darling, you won’t run away, will you? You wanted to elope—you said so—and I have shanghaied you.”
He had, at first, thought of the whole thing as a joke; he had already given his word that they would be married in a month’s time at the most, after routine had settled in at the university and he had found them a house.
A flush colored her cheeks; her white pumps, her white lace dress, the happiness written all over her face—all these marked her, indeed, as a bride. “You are all roped and branded, darling,” she said.
As they stepped out of the car, a matronly mestiza was upon them, gushing: “Carmen, how really romantic! I was talking with Mr. Soler in the sacristy, and with Father Brown. I’ve never seen anything like this. Darling, you have imagination.”
The introductions were hurried; the stout woman was Nena de Jesus, a friend of Carmen’s from convent school, who was married to one of Don Manuel’s junior partners. She was of Carmen’s age, but the leisurely life or a surfeit of sweets had spoiled her and she was now twice Carmen’s weight. “You look the pretty bride—slim and fair. Oh, Carmen, keep your figure that way. Look at me.” And then there was Godo, too, shaking a finger at Tony and grinning, and Carmen telling him, “I’m glad you are on time,” but he was not listening for he was pumping Tony’s hand and exclaiming, “Tony, I didn’t know
you would do it, but boy, you are doing it.”
“Who brought you here?” Tony asked and Godo turned to Carmen. “I couldn’t say no to her.”
They all fell to laughing. “I wanted Charlie to come, too, but only Godo was in the office when I went there,” Carmen said. The two women left them in the churchyard and went to the parochial office where the priest was waiting.
Godo was pleased. Everything had been taken care of. Carmen had been very thoughtful and precise, and had polished off the smallest detail. “I had to take this barong Tagalog out of mothballs,” Godo said, explaining his clothes. “I never thought I’d see a wedding like this. She is some girl, Tony. A lot of spunk—that’s what she has. She came to the office five days ago and swore me to secrecy. How can you say no to a girl like her? Boy, you sure got yourself a classy female.”
Tony laughed inwardly and slapped his friend on the belly. “I’m glad you like her,” he said. I like her, too, he reassured himself. But the surprise had waned and for a moment he had a chance to think soberly. How would his sister take the news? She would surely be disappointed; she had long ago taken on the role of guardian angel, and now she was being left out of this most significant event in his life. She would not understand what Carmen did; in spite of her having stayed in the city for a long time she was provincial and still had all the peasant attitudes of Rosales. She would never believe that a woman like Carmen Villa would literally drag a man to church. But he could take care of his sister—they were blood relations and, in the end, he would appeal to this infrangible fact. But where would they go after the wedding? He could not take Carmen to Antipolo to share that narrow, unpainted room and to awaken in the night when the trains roared by. They could not possibly live in a hotel, not on his meager savings of one hundred and fifty dollars (that would bring more than five hundred pesos in the black market—the thought was of little solace). And her parents, particularly her mother, they would never let him step into their house, and worse, Don Manuel might yet disown her. But Don Manuel seemed to be a reasonable man and, besides, this was Carmen’s doing, not his. You silly girl, you unpredictable, impulsive woman, look at what you have done to me, but I love every hair, every single pore of you. Carmen, I worship you.…
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 9
