The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library)

by F. Sionil Jose

  We walked from there to a cramped wooden apartment in Dapitan where the meeting was to be held. I had expected a big group, but there were only four of us. Five others straggled in. Perfunctory introductions were made as we came from several nearby schools—Far Eastern, Santo Tomas, PCC, National U, UM. We filled the small living room cluttered with newspapers, pamphlets, and that cheaply varnished furniture found in abundance in Misericordia. We had soft drinks without ice and an open can of chocolate cookies that was soon empty.

  The meeting did not start till after two. I had become restless and told Toto that I wanted to leave, but then a man in his early thirties arrived and everyone stood up. Toto had told me a little about him, so here he was—the epitome of virtue, of intellect—a lean man with a mop of dry, uncombed hair in a cheap cotton shirt that was not properly ironed. He was a political science professor at my university and I recalled a poster in the corridor about his public lecture on nationalism and the oligarchy that was crammed to overflowing when it was held at the Student Hall. He looked undernourished and dried up, but there was this warm smile on his face as he greeted us and tried to have a word with everyone, and for Toto, a patronizing arm around the shoulder. He apologized for being late. The Brotherhood, he said, was now being put through an inquisition. The dean, he said, was particularly vexed with him, with his nonacademic activities, and had wanted him to resign. He was able to convince the dean otherwise, he said, by appealing to his sense of decency, his compassion, but at the same time, implying that the Brotherhood may do something drastic if this happened—a student strike, for instance. He must work quietly now, stay in the background, and henceforth, it was the students who must be in the forefront, doing the hard chores of organization, of demonstration, if the Brotherhood was to thrive.

  I listened with amusement; the man was angling for sympathy. He started talking about the Brotherhood in tones almost sacramental. This is the answer to the problems of the young, of inequality, disunity, and corruption. If the nation had been exploited by imperialists, if the caciques were despoiling the land and making serfs of freemen, it is because the young have not banded together to spell out the future in their own terms. The Brotherhood would make war on the enemies of democracy, and the young could triumph in this war for the Brotherhood is theirs to use.

  The harangue lasted for a while. I looked at the rapt faces around me and then I chanced a glance at Toto and was surprised to see him looking at me; I winked at him and he seemed ill at ease that I had caught him observing my reaction to the speech. I never liked speeches, whether by professional politicians or professors turned politicians. I had lived long enough in a village to know who exploits the little people—the landlord, yes, and the money-lenders, too. But it is the riffraff who really take advantage of their own kin. I had planted vegetables in the yard and when the eggplants were ready, who would come but our neighbors, asking for them when they could easily have planted their own.

  He was through and he looked around. I realized that we were a carefully selected group.

  “Any questions?” he asked perfunctorily and was surprised when I raised my hand. I was the only one to do so. I glanced at Toto, at his shock, as if I had just committed the worst indiscretion. But hell, I am not a robot that will go where it is pushed. The professor turned to me, his eyes expectant: “Yes, please.”

  I asked plainly, “What can we expect from the Brotherhood? Why should I give it loyalty? What do I get in return?”

  I had caught him unaware and he fumbled for words. “Please clarify your question” he said. “Am I to understand that you expect benefits from such a membership? Is that what you want to ask?”

  I nodded. “You see, sir,” I said, “when a politician comes to our village and makes a pretty speech about corruption in government, about how he intends to change things when he gets elected, we know it’s just words. But sometimes, particularly before the election, he gets our muddy road fixed. And of course, there is the five pesos he distributes to those who can vote.”

  They all laughed and even Professor Hortenso smiled. “I cannot promise you these things,” he said. “As a matter of fact, you may not get anything from the Brotherhood. It is you who will give to it. As duty, perhaps, if you can look at it that way.”

  “You cannot ask the poor for sacrifices,” I said. “We are already poor. What can we give? How do you measure the patriotism of the poor?”

  The giggling had stopped and now everyone was listening.

  His eyes turned upward, to the unpainted ceiling; his words were soft but clear, as if he had searched his conscience for them: “I ask,” he said finally, his eyes roving around the room to each of us, “that you give faith, your presence, your little support—centavos, if they are needed—your muscle, your time, your numbers. When there is a demonstration, you should be there, leading because you are the leaders. When there are petitions, you should sign them. When there are errands, run them. What can the Brotherhood give you in return? I tell you: nothing, nothing but strength. Alone, you are nobody. The Brotherhood gives you numbers. Unity. And with the masses with whom you will be welded, for whom you will be working … you will be doing something for the future that is yours to shape in any way you like. It will not be for people like me; we are getting on in years. It will not be for your parents. It will be for you because you are young and the whole world is ahead of you. The Brotherhood will ask you to work till you sweat blood. And your reward is not here, now, but in the future—if you live that long.” A long pause. “If you believe in yourselves then do not deny yourselves … this is all that I can say, and I am sorry,” he turned to me, “that I cannot, myself, promise you something more substantial. But,” he smiled, “you are always welcome at my house and there is always coffee and cookies.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. I did not like speeches, but Professor Hortenso was honest. I clapped and the others followed.

  We started to break up, and as we headed for the door Hortenso came to me, placed an arm on my shoulder. “I am glad you asked that question,” he said. “It enabled me to reexamine my own premises.” He was shaking his head, grinning. “I can get carried away by rhetoric, like most politicians. There’s nothing like a good question to bring one back to earth.” He then asked if I would join him for a cup of coffee.

  Almost everyone had filed out into the street. Toto and I were the only ones left in the room. I could feel his nudge on my back.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Very much.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen, talked to someone there, and a woman emerged. “My wife,” he said, and she smiled at us, a tiny woman in her early thirties, beauty in her full lips, thin straight nose, high cheekbones, and eyes that sparkled. She must have been listening to everything, for her eyes were on me. So this is where they really lived, this dingy apartment no better than my auntie’s in Antipolo, and I wondered how much he made teaching and why he had time to serve us coffee. It must have been brewed over thrice for it was very weak. There was also a stained saucer with a few limp cookies, but the siopao still held. It was already four in the afternoon and Professor Hortenso was going to talk on. Toto obviously wanted to stay longer, but now my thoughts were straying to Lucy, who would be waiting and her welcome would be far better, more to my liking than this cup of stale coffee and soggy cookie.

  Sheer patience and deference to Toto made me stay and listen to his prattle about the economic classes, the need for hothouse ideology and all that razzle-dazzle about the future of Filipino society. Though I had grown to like him for his forthrightness, for his hospitality, instinct told me I did not have to listen to him. I was from Cabugawan; he was not telling me anything I did not know—the exploitation, the squalid hypocrisies. And much as I appreciated his candor and honesty, the kind of activism he was proposing was not for me, it was for Toto, perhaps, quiet, introspective, his eyes always burning. I was concerned with more earthy matters, mami espesyal and Lucy, than in battering the bastion of Pob
res Park or the high walls of Malacañang.

  He finally came around to asking my name—the dreaded question that would fling me back to that harsh and brutal past I had tried to leave behind. A pain more ancient than memory, as once again: “Are you related to Antonio Samson?” He must have gleaned it from the membership form Toto had asked me to fill out. “Yes,” I mumbled, expecting the next question. “I— He is an uncle, my mother’s first cousin.” Under my breath I cursed the lie I had to live. Toto regarded me as though I was as pure as virtue, glowing with kindness and honesty. While this turmoil raged within, Professor Hortenso went on equably: “I hope that you have read it—his classic on the ilustrados. What shall I call you? What do your friends call you?”

  “Everyone calls me Pepe.”

  “Well, Pepe, there you are, your own uncle providing you many of the answers, perhaps the answers to all the questions you are asking. He explains why the revolution failed and he reminds us, and clearly, too, what mistakes to avoid. The most perceptive book on our history ever written, and it was written by your uncle. You should be proud, Pepe, the way I am proud that his nephew is now a member of the Brotherhood. He is dead and I was told it was a horrible accident. It is a shame, really, that he was only able to write one book when he could have written more. I am sure he must have manuscripts lying around. You must look into that and see if they can be brought out. He could have easily been the brains of the Second Revolution—its genuine ideologue. I have very little to contribute, really”—he sounded so humble—“except my little time and that is not enough.” His eyes shone and I could not look at him straight for I was uneasy. I looked down instead at my battered shoes, at the doormat of shredded old tire that had gone awry, the rubber slippers there—probably his—the scuffed tile floor that was dirtied with the comings and goings of people. He enthused: “Antonio Samson had proven one thing—and you should know it and be proud of it: that with his background we know for sure leadership need not come from the social and economic elite, that it should spring from the masses.”

  In a sense he was justifying himself, but I really did not know much about him then, how he graduated from a splendid English university. I resented it, his implication that it was good to be poor, that the poor had superior virtues, qualities to be rhapsodized about because they were poor; there was nothing noble, nothing exalted about going hungry, about having to live in Cabugawan, and though I had not meant to be rude, I think that was how I sounded when I said, “He married a very wealthy girl. Perhaps that was what he was working for all the time.”

  The professor drew away; shock was splattered all over his face, and it stayed there for some time. Then, perhaps thinking I was just making light of a relative, he ignored my remark and went on: “There is nothing wrong with being wealthy—I hope you did not misunderstand. We all want to be comfortable, that is a common human aspiration. But precisely, it is not possible for as long as the ceiling to our aspirations is low. It is actually limited by our rich, by our oligarchy, and our government, which serves the upper classes but not the people.”

  No need for me to linger; his words bored me to my very bones and made me feel sorry for him, for he was sincere and he would die at the barricades together with Toto. I made another move to the door but Professor Hortenso held my arm. “Pepe, we need your help.” I did not want to embarrass Toto, and for his sake—mustering all the light and sweetness I was capable of, although I was about to retch the putrid words of valor, of commitment—I said, “You can depend on me.” He and his wife obviously believed me, for they both grabbed my arm and shook it so hard I thought they would wrench it off.

  Yet I was sorry to leave them, their small, lightless apartment that probably flooded when the rains came; I was sorry that I was bored, that I had not been more attentive and was just thinking of myself, but who would do that for me? I was silent, walking with Toto on the sidewalk, avoiding the piles of garbage that had not been collected for days, remembering how he had asked me about my father and how I had lied again.

  “Isn’t he good?” Toto was gushing, keeping in step with me, for I was really hurrying. We would both go to Quezon Boulevard, where he would take his ride for Quiapo, then Tondo, and I would catch the first jeepney there for Dimasalang. “He likes you. He is very sharp and he knows the bright ones, the ones who think and who care.” He nudged me and I turned to him briefly and snorted, but he would not be bothered now by any snide remark I made.

  “Yes,” I said dully.

  “Do you know,” Toto spoke with wonder, “that he spends his own pay—the little he can afford—for the Brotherhood? I have known him for a long time—he and Father Jess are very good friends and each does his own thing. He is very dedicated.”

  “I can see that,” I said glumly.

  “You made a good impression,” Toto hit me playfully on the arm. “I am sure you will be somebody in the Brotherhood.”

  “I always make a good impression,” I said lightly.

  “Let us go to Tondo. I want you to meet Father Jess, too.”

  “And impress him just as well? No, I have done enough impressing today.”

  But he missed the sarcasm, for he hit me lightly on the arm again. His ride came and I pushed him toward it lest he tarry. “Tomorrow,” he called, but I did not look back; I had started to run toward the boulevard to catch my jeepney.

  The house was padlocked when I arrived; Lucy must have gone to market to buy vegetables for the abominable stew again. I sat on the hollow blocks lining the small greenery before the apartment and waited. Across the patch of grass, from the alley, the green Mercedes of the tenant next to us was parked and the apartment door was open. When he saw me, he gave one of those meaningless smiles that was supposed to be neighborly. We never really knew his kind of living except that he always wore brightly printed shirts, his hair slick and well-groomed, his fingernails manicured, and he sported a ring with a big sparkler. And on his hip always, if his shirt was tucked in, was the butt of a revolver. We had surmised that he must be a detective, but Uncle Bert said he must be a fixer at the Bureau of Customs or a customs broker, for he often saw him there on the several occasions my uncle followed up the papers of his Chinese boss. Obviously, neither his mistress nor her maid was in. She rarely came out of the apartment, except at night when the Mercedes was parked in the alley and he came to pick her up. She seemed to pass the hours watching television or reading the comics that a newsboy always slipped under her door.

  Now he stood up, walked toward the door, and leaned on it. He was no taller than I, but he was well-built, tautly muscular, and had a bull neck that his long hair could not quite hide. He was in his early fifties but had the easygoing manner of a much younger person. “Well, you are locked out and I am locked in,” he laughed. “We can talk together while waiting. No use being alone.”

  I did not rise from the hollow block I sat on. I was really in no mood to talk; I was eager for Lucy and nothing more.

  “What college?” he glanced at my notebooks and the new pamphlet from Professor Hortenso.

  I replied in the polite language.

  He shook his head. “You should have gone to UP—or Ateneo, La Salle …”

  His implication about my school’s inferiority vexed me; in the short time that I was at Recto, I had grown to like my university, my crowd. “If I had the money, that is where I would have gone,” I said, not looking at him. “How could anyone who lives in this alley afford those schools?”

  He laughed lightly. “That is the problem with young people nowadays,” he said. “You think only of difficulties. There are so many ways to make money. What I was going to say is that if you were studying there, I could even give you a job, perhaps with more than enough to pay for your tuition. After all, I feel that I already know you, your being a next-door neighbor. And more than that …” he shook his head and grinned, “You are really a toro.”

  I was surprised by what he had implied; we had talked about the toro once in school
, although I had never seen one at work. He is the male performer in the sex shows that they stage in Pasay, in Caloocan, and in Ermita—for only ten pesos. I ignored his remark.

  “Which is good,” he continued. “You will have many chances with women and you will make a good salesman. I am really serious,” he said, nudging my knee with his shoe for I was not looking at him.

  “Think about it,” he said as I turned. “If you can manage, you should transfer to La Salle or Ateneo next semester. I just had this idea, you know. I will pay for your tuition, but you can pay it back in a month—I assure you—and then you will be earning money. You look bright, you are good-looking—and most important, you are a toro!”

  I stood up, irritated and not quite sure what he was really trying to say. Continuing in the polite language, I asked what a toro was. He smiled, took me by the arm, and drew me inside the apartment.

  It was my first time inside. With the upholstered furniture in the living room, I realized immediately what a cozy, well-furnished apartment it was. The refrigerator, big, shiny, and new; the electric oven; the pictures on the wall. He took me up the flight to the two rooms upstairs, painted in cool blue, in one another set of chairs upholstered in blue velvet, a Sony color TV, a stereo set like the expensive ones displayed in Avenida, and then, to the other room, the massive, mahogany bed, a glass cabinet filled with his mistress’s clothes and his suits and shirts, and on one side of the room, the air conditioner humming. How comfortable the whole place appeared compared to the drab appointments that were ours behind the wooden wall. Here then was what money can do even in Antipolo.

  He shucked off his shoes and asked me to do the same, then he went up the bed and pointed to a portion of the wall just below the ceiling. He beckoned to me to look. A narrow crack in the panel showed clearly the floor of my room—just where Lucy and I had lain.