“Nothing,” Tony said.
“Please be more understanding …”
“What more do you want? I am leaving without touching a hair on you.” He strode to the tall narra cabinet and opened it. When she followed, he barked at her, “Leave me alone. I have a lot to pack.”
Carmen lingered. Strange, there was no high drama, no passionate remonstrances. This was the Big Scene in his life and he was, like her, acting “civilized.” This was what she wanted and he was acting according to her script.
“Will it matter if I explain, if I tell you how it happened? You must know at least how I feel—there were so many things we did together, told each other.…” Her voice suddenly had the warmth and tenderness he had missed all these months.
“Well,” he said, looking briefly at her, “I suppose I shouldn’t mind the background music. Go ahead, shoot your mouth off.”
“Tony,” she was imploring him. “Listen and do not hate me for what I am going to tell you.”
“I can’t hate you enough,” he said.
Her voice was quivering. “Once upon a time, I knew I would do anything for you. I’d do what you would command me to do. If you had wanted, we could have gone together wherever you wanted to go, lived where you wanted to live. I would have missed many things and I would have objected strongly. But I would have gone with you just the same … if you had put your mind to it, if you did not fall so easily to Father’s bait—and to mine. I love the things I’m accustomed to, but I would have gone with you.…”
“But it’s different now. Is that what you’re saying?”
She turned away. “So many things have changed. Now I see nothing of value. And you, I don’t blame you, because a man’s ambition is different, and because Father wanted you—honestly, sincerely … and I … I pushed you …”
“You know damn well this wasn’t what I wanted,” he said hotly. “Not all this, not all—” Then he stopped, suddenly aware that he was lying. He had coveted this, this comfort, this bigness, this power.
“I pushed you, that’s what I did,” she said quietly.
“No, no one did,” he told her. “My fate, my reasons, are mine alone. Now that you have made your excuses please leave me alone …”
She stood by as he carried another suitcase from the closet and laid it open on the bed.
“Believe me,” her voice betrayed a real disconsolation. “It won’t happen again. I’m bad. I guess I had forgotten, I’ve always been bad. I will never be a saint.”
“It’s not simply a matter of forgetting. So don’t talk about sin.”
“I imagine you are sorry for yourself,” Carmen said. “If it were Emy you had married, it wouldn’t have turned out like this. I must see her sometime and learn from her.”
“She has suffered enough without your seeing her.”
“But it’s true,” Carmen said hollowly. “She is different. She’s good in spite of all that happened. Maybe that has been in the back of my mind all the time—her goodness and my rottenness.”
“It happened long ago,” Tony said, going back to the closet. She followed him there.
“You can forgive me,” she said desperately.
“I can, but it won’t be the same again.” He paused. “And most of all, how can I forgive myself?”
“Are you going back to her?”
“To Emy?”
“Who else? You have always been sentimental about her.”
“Even if I did she wouldn’t take me. No, I’m returning to Antipolo, that’s all.”
“You don’t have to go. Do you want me to explain how it happened?”
“You don’t have to. It happens to the best people.”
“Don’t say that. I’m not the best. Father is not the best. You said so yourself once. You said he is a scoundrel, a patriot for convenience. Maybe that’s the reason. For convenience we do so many things.”
“Don’t explain life,” he said. “Please, I don’t want to hear another word from you. I despise you.”
Carmen shuffled to the door but did not close it after her.
Then he was ready. He surveyed the room, wondering if he had forgotten anything. All that he wanted to bring were in these two suitcases, bulging now with his old clothes. The rest he left behind, and if Carmen should send them to him he would write her a thank-you note. That, too, was the civilized thing to do.
He lifted the two suitcases. They were heavy and he was amazed, since they did not really hold much. He remembered that he had not done any manual labor in months and had not lifted anything heavier than a portfolio. He smiled at himself and, flexing his muscles once, carried the suitcases to the door.
Mrs. Villa stood there, her flabby form barring the way. She was still dressed in blue denim overalls, her party costume. The theme was industry and she represented a typical steelworker. Her voice sounded old and it lacked the acidity with which it always dripped. “Carmen’s crying. She didn’t tell me what you quarreled about and I don’t think I can find out from either of you. You are both old enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Are you really leaving, Tony?”
“Yes, Mama,” he said, putting down the suitcases.
“Is it because I have been mean to you?”
Tony studied the painted lips, the fleshy chin, the wide, inquiring eyes. “I’ve learned to like you, although I know you never liked me. You wore no mask. You were yourself.”
“That was not everything, son.” It was the first time she referred to him as a son and the word touched him. “I’m sorry if I made you think I didn’t like you.”
“It’s all right, Mama,” he said. “With you I didn’t have to be on guard. That’s the truth.”
“I’m such a scatterbrain, Tony.”
“But you are sincere. You didn’t try to be good to me, because you didn’t like me. And I didn’t have to be jolted by the way you acted, because from the beginning— Remember, Mama, when I first came here?”
“That’s past,” she said. “We should all learn to keep the past where it should be.”
“But the past is important. It’s linked with the present.”
“Well, I don’t care about the past. Why should I?”
“I know, Mama.”
“Did Carmen tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“She never did tell you what my family was?”
“Never, but I know. I’ve known it for a long time now and, frankly, I never cared.”
“Well, it was more by accident, but why should I tell you what you already know? And after all the things that I’ve done to you?”
“I understand, Mama.”
“You don’t,” Mrs. Villa said, “for if you did, you’d unpack your things now.”
“I wish what you just told me made a difference, but it doesn’t. It merely explains your distaste for me. I remind you of yourself.”
“Don’t try to talk smart,” Mrs. Villa scolded him.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Don’t be a fool. I’m not saying that you should stay here because I like you. I’m a selfish woman, Tony. What’s going to happen to Carmen? You are the first good thing that she has had, the first good thing this family ever had—if I may flatter you. Somehow, well, let’s admit it, my friends often talk about you. They say you have another kind of brains, something the Villas never had—unless, of course, you mean brains for making money.… And your papa, he’s my husband and I know—nights he’d lie awake, saying, ‘Tony is right. Tony is right …’ ”
“I didn’t know I had a market value or that I had some snob appeal,” Tony said.
“Don’t talk smart, I said. What I’m trying to say,” Mrs. Villa came forward and shook a pudgy finger at him, “is: have some sense. Someday you’ll find that what’s good for the Villas is also good for you.”
Tony could not face Mrs. Villa anymore. “I’m leaving, Mama,” he said with finality. “I don’t know, but if I change my mind, you’ll be the first to know.”
Mrs. Villa shook her head. “I know your kind,” she said softly. “When you make up your mind it’s made up. Once you’ve gone through that door you’ll never return.”
“Am I such an open book?”
Her hand drifted to his arm, held him tightly but her grip relaxed as Tony moved to the door.
“It will never be the same again, Tony,” she said sadly. She followed him to the hall.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he said, holding the suitcases firmly. They seemed lighter now and he carried them, almost blithely, down the rear stairway and to the back entrance, where he called a cab.
The night was quieter when he reached Antipolo. Traffic had not cluttered Blumentritt yet, and beyond the asphalt and the weeds, the street where he once lived was what it had always been—narrow, incongruous, wooden frame buildings thrusting their ugly roofs, their shapeless forms, from the black earth. A few jeepney drivers who lived in the shanties farther up the narrowings and curvings of the road were at Mang Simeon’s store, drinking cheap coffee, their jeepneys parked before the store, waiting for the meager traffic that would stir when the Bicol Express arrived.
It had been weeks since he was here last and he remembered with a dull ache how he had tried to forget the street. Now he was back like some criminal returning to the scene of his crime, for it was here where he had done people wrong—his sister Betty, Emy, and, finally, himself.
He carried his suitcases across the narrow alley flanked with scraggly weeds. The door to which he went was closed, but within the house a faint light burned. He knocked twice, wondering how he would tell his sister what had happened. His knocking did not stir anyone in the house, so he rapped again, this time a little louder, calling out, “Manang Betty, Manang Betty,” his voice resonant in the night.
Finally, a stirring sounded from within. A lightbulb above the door went on and, at the door, Betty’s squeaky voice: “Who is it?”
“Tony,” he said. The door opened and Betty stood before him, looking thinner. He had not seen her since she told him of their father’s death, and the shame that nagged at him now formed an impossible barrier to all that he wanted to say, the words of entreaty and regret. He stood in the light, the suitcases on the ground. The sight of him in the night must have startled his sister and, for a while, they just stood there, wordless. Then Betty spoke, as if this was Tony coming home from school or a binge: “Come in with your things before some rascal picks them up. It’s good you remembered to visit us.”
Tony could glean the sarcasm. He had expected it, for had he not really forgotten them—his sister who had sent him to school and this wooden crate that was home? And yet it did not hurt as much as he had imagined it would, because it was his sister who spoke. She had a right to feel aggrieved. Never had he realized it as fully as he did now that he had really strayed away and forsaken them all the while that he was in Santa Mesa, all the while that he roamed in an ethereal region that was never meant to be his.
Wordless, he followed Betty to the living room. It had not changed, either—the battered bejuco furniture with the knife marks inflicted by his young nephews; the starched white doilies that Emy had left behind; the Ocampo painting that still hung by the staircase, dominating everything in the house with its splurge of color. Yes, nothing in Antipolo was altered.
“I’m not here on a visit, Manang,” he said humbly. “I’m here to stay, and I hope you will take me back.”
Now Betty’s sarcasm was more defined: “What has happened now? Have you at last decided that you belong here and not in that palace in Santa Mesa?” Triumph tinged her voice.
“I don’t know how you will take it,” Tony said, not caring really about what Betty’s answer would be. “Maybe I’m foolish, but I have left Carmen.”
Betty sat on the rattan sofa beside the stairway and regarded her brother. She had become amiable again and she smiled. “Your Manong still snores like a hog, and so do the children. Listen to them now. They didn’t even hear you knocking, although the whole neighborhood has been roused.”
But Tony did not want to talk light. “Tell me, Manang,” he said, “did I do right? Don’t bother about the reason. Did I do right?”
“You have to tell me why you left her,” Betty said.
Tony turned away. “It does not matter, really,” he said. “I quarreled with Carmen, that’s all.” Deep within him what he wanted was confirmation, not denial. What he wanted was sympathy, not the truth.
“You were wrong,” his sister said evenly. “You were wrong to leave. I was trying to tell you: your beginning is there. Not here. This is the end, Tony. You’ll never get the same chance again.”
“But I’m free now,” he insisted, his voice faltering with emotion.
Betty laughed bitterly. “Pride is not for us, it’s for the wealthy. How many times have I told you that?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I mean it,” Betty said. She stood and listened to the snoring from upstairs. She turned to Tony. “How long are you staying here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, rising, too. “Maybe I’ll stay here for as long as you will let me.”
“It will be crowded,” Betty said, her displeasure completely banished. “You’ll be needing quiet. Are you going back to teach at the university? Have you any savings?”
He shook his head. “I will not teach and, of course, I have no money.”
“You will not find this neighborhood quiet anymore. And what will the neighbors say? Everyone knows how well you have married. Everyone teases me when I wear my old rags, or when we have nothing but tuyo for lunch.”
“You are right. I’ll stay here until I find a new place. And, most important, after I find a job.”
“Is that what you will do in the meantime? Look for a job?”
He nodded. “I need the money not only for myself but also for my pledge to you.”
“You can forget that,” Betty said amiably. “As long as your Manong and I have jobs we will be able to send the children to school.”
“I know my duties,” Tony said. “And that’s final. But, really, it’s Emy who worries me most. Her son …”
“She shouldn’t worry you. She can take care of herself and her boy.”
“Yes, she can. But her son … he’s mine, Manang. I didn’t know it until last week when I went to Rosales.”
Betty bent forward, not quite convinced by what she had heard.
“Yes,” Tony repeated, “the boy is mine. Six years—how she has suffered!”
“But Tony, what can you do now?” she asked after a long silence.
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
“She despises me. She didn’t say so, but I felt it.”
“I wouldn’t be so harsh if I were you,” Betty said. “If I know Emy, she would never be that harsh.…”
“She has a right to be harsh,” Tony said.
“But what will you do now? Marry her? You know you can’t do that. We don’t divorce, and Carmen—Will she let you go?”
“I don’t care anymore what she does. And as for Emy, I want to do right by her.”
“And what is that?”
“I don’t know. Give her things, perhaps—the things she never had. And more so now that there’s the boy. I don’t want him to grow up hating me. I’m his father and it feels so different being one.”
“Still, you can’t marry Emy.”
“I know.”
“I’d like to help you,” Betty said with feeling. He had not asked for her assistance and her offer touched him. “I may have been a little impossible—that’s the schoolteacher for you. But I want to help.”
“The family, we … we will always stick together.”
“You are my brother. You may steal, you may murder, but you are still my brother. I’ll fix you a place to sleep.” She turned and went up the wooden stairs.
Alone in the house where he had known possession and its haunting joy, it finally occurred to him that
he was, after all, part of the herd—the herd with the gross instincts of self-preservation.
He stood up and walked to the window. Through the iron bars he looked into Antipolo, which was as dark and disreputable as ever. This is corruption, this is decay of both the spirit and the body, this is home. Then, above his own musings, he heard his brother-in-law, Bert, saying thickly, “I’m sorry, Tony. I was sound asleep, I didn’t know.”
Bert was standing beside him in his underwear as chubby as ever. His hair was still cropped short and his face shone swarthy and full in the light.
“It’s I who should be sorry, Manong. Waking you up at such an hour.”
“Betty told me about your leaving Carmen. It’s a big mistake. You know what I mean.”
He smiled. “I don’t think it’s a mistake, Manong.”
Betty joined them. “Go on up and sleep,” she said, tugging at his sleeve.
Tony sat down on the sofa instead. All of you have a reason to go on living, he thought, but I have lost everything that is good and true. Emy, the future—I’ve lost all of it because there is inherent corruption in me. It’s something entwined with my flesh and I can’t wash it off. My God, I should have known this long ago. I should have known then that I was weak and that I hadn’t suffered enough. He turned the words over in his mind, and because they were true, he pounced on them as if they were the only nuggets his soul could treasure.
“I am not really sleepy,” he said, laying a hand on the old narra sofa. It had a lot of bedbugs once and he remembered how he took it out in the sun between the railroad tracks and poured boiling water on it, then left it there, exposed, the whole, hot afternoon.
“Your bed upstairs is being used by the boys now,” Betty said, “but I will spread a mat for you on the floor. It’s not soft—you haven’t slept on the floor for years, I know. But it will be daylight soon.”
“It’s all right,” Tony said. “I’ll go out and take a walk and maybe I’ll be able to think better.” He lied, of course, because never before had his mind been as clear as it was now. He moved to the door.
“You need sleep,” Bert said.
“It’s all right, Manong,” he said. “I need the walk more.”
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 25
