It was suppose to be a birthday party, but there was no one there except a maid in white who peeped in from an open door. To my questioning look Betsy was all smiles; she guided me to an overstuffed sofa and we sat down. “My relatives will not come till after six-thirty or so. I thought that if you came early we, you know, we could talk.”
“About what?”
“About imperialism,” she said with a laugh.
I grunted.
She asked if I was hungry and I lied. She went to the kitchen and a maid in a white starched uniform came out immediately with two glasses of orange juice. I downed mine in a gulp.
She wanted to show me the garden, so we walked out into the last vestiges of day. The sun glinted on the palms, on the dwarf mangoes that bore fruit, bunches of luscious green that sagged to the ground. A wide, well-groomed garden with potted roses in corners. Across a small rock formation, hidden from view by jade vine pergolas and, from the street, by a screen of yellow-green Chinese bamboo, was the swimming pool. There had to be a gardener employed full-time to take care of such a spread.
“I did not like the way we parted in Tagaytay,” Betsy said.
“Me neither.”
“Why did you have to be mean?” She sounded disconsolate. “I did not do you any harm.”
She was right, and it was gracious of her to have invited me, to have told no one that I was a pusher, and I did not even bring her anything—what could I give to someone who has everything?
“Sorry,” I said. “I hope we can start a new chapter.”
“Would you like to come to Negros?”
“I cannot afford it,” I said. “Besides, what would I do there? I have to work in church … especially now that Toto is gone.”
I had not told her about Toto, but now I did, and when I was through, she bit her lip and was silent. “Don’t you believe me?” I asked. “It was in the papers. His name.”
“Oh, Pepe,” she held my hand tightly. “I believe you! I believe you! I was there!”
I wanted to embrace her then. “You fool!” I cried. “You could have been shot, too!”
She looked at me, wordless, and we could have talked more, but cars had begun to fill the driveway, and we hastened back to the house. It was now dark and the huge chandelier in the living room bloomed. I was left alone as Betsy welcomed them—mostly relatives and, just as she told me, about a dozen of her classmates, some with their boyfriends. She singled out a girl, good-looking but a little chubby, and brought her over to where I stood apart from them all, and said, “Belinda, this is Pepe; you have something in common—both of you are addicts.”
She smiled, showing upper teeth in braces, and taking me by the arm, she guided me to a corner dominated by a huge Chinese vase with blue dragons. No one could hear us. “How long have you been at it?” she asked. “Betsy told me her boyfriend was on drugs.”
I grinned and did not know what to say.
“We started together, you know, but she did not like it. Then she told my mama, and we had to go to a doctor. Did you have difficulty stopping?”
“Not really,” I said. “Just a little willpower.”
“And that is what I don’t have,” she said. “Now I am addicted to food. I am very fat, no?”
“You are not, Belinda,” I said. “You are very pretty—even with your braces.”
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Come,” she took my arm again and drew me to the dining room where the buffet table was ready; no one seemed anxious to eat except us.
They call it merienda cena—some fancy name for afternoon tea or snack, but it was a Rabelaisian spread, giant prawns already shelled, tenderloin strips, fresh asparagus sautéed in butter, finger sandwiches, several dip bowls of eggplant, tomato, and avocado concoctions. On one side were a variety of cheeses I had never seen before, including our own white cheese in its banana leaf wrapping.
Belinda did not bother with a plate and neither did I; we just idled around the long table, picking up pieces of fried chicken, mussels baked in butter, slices of sweet ham and turkey. And the fruit trays at the other end of the table, together with the assortment of pastries and sweets, simply overflowed with big, red apples and grapes of ebony and rose. I had never tasted grapes before, and now here they were as I had always imagined them. If I were nearer Cabugawan, I would certainly pocket a bunch for Mother.
I do not think Belinda noticed it, nor Betsy, how I ate very fast so that, in just a while, I had already tasted almost everything on that table that I had never eaten before, while close by was this gushing talk in Spanish, Visayan, and English.
Then, a tall, handsome mestizo in a gray suit, in his fifties, accompanied by a fat, waddling mestiza of about the same age came in. Betsy rushed to them, kissed them both.
“Happy birthday, hija,” the man said, bending over and kissing Betsy on the cheek. She came to me, took me to them, whispering, “Papa and Mama.”
Betsy’s father shook my hand, so did her mother.
“We met in Tagaytay during that seminar, Papa,” she said.
“May I know your name, hijo?” Mr. de Jesus asked, his eyes wandering up from my newly shined black shoes to my mane. His wife, her diamond pendant earrings flashing, was studying me, too.
“José Samson, sir,” I said.
“Samson … Samson. Related to Antonio Samson, the writer?”
“Yes, yes, sir,” I stammered. “An uncle.”
“Ah, no wonder,” Betsy’s mother smiled, her double chin quivered. “You reminded me of him. As a matter of fact, you looked just like him then, except for the long hair. I knew him. My husband, too. His wife—she was my best friend. I even stood as witness at their wedding. What a girl she was. You know, she died not long after the death of Tony. Did you ever know her? I don’t think so.”
“No, Mrs. de Jesus,” I said. “I know very little about my uncle’s life.”
Then without warning, Mr. de Jesus talked to me in Spanish and, when he paused, I looked at him, bewildered. “I am sorry, sir, I don’t speak Spanish.”
“But Tony did,” Mr. de Jesus said. “And he wrote in Spanish, too.”
“He went to Harvard, sir,” I said. “My school is in Recto.”
Mrs. de Jesus looked at me again, then at Betsy, and to her she spoke in Spanish; I could not get every word, but it was obvious she was talking about me.
Betsy blushed and seemed uneasy, and when she replied, it was in English: “Mama, the educated man does not even have to go to school. Education is not Maryknoll or Ateneo—or even Harvard—”
Mr. de Jesus took it from there, and from the drift of their conversation, as he wheeled around, followed by his wife, so that they could greet the other guests, I knew that they had dismissed me, that they did not want me in Tamarind Road again.
Betsy followed them, waving her hand, her face grim as if she was on the verge of tears, then she came back to me. “Djahe*—djahe,” she said, “and on my birthday, too.”
“They do not like me,” I said softly.
“Oh, Pepe, don’t say that,” she beseeched me. “This is my party, and I invited you.”
“But they are your parents and they mean much to you.”
“They cannot select my friends,” she said angrily.
“Don’t tell them, but I must leave,” I said quickly and headed for the door.
“Pepe, please stay. I want you to meet my other friends.”
“From La Salle, Maryknoll, and Ateneo,” I said.
She held my hand tightly as we walked to the door. It would be an unlit, gloomy distance to the gate of Pobres Park and then to the bus station, and my shoes were newly shined.
“How was the party?” Father Jess wanted to know.
I did not want to rail against Betsy’s parents. “Very good, Father,” I said.
“Then why the hell are you back so soon?”
“I was ill at ease. I did not know anyone there except Betsy.”
“You will get to know mo
re of that class,” Father Jess said. “And if you study hard, someday you will join them.”
“That is not so grim a fate, Father,” I said.
As I was serving him coffee after supper, I asked if he had any books in Spanish.
He was surprised at my new interest. “No, but I can teach you a bit if you want to learn.” Then, as if lightning struck, “Ha, the de Jesus family impressed you! Now you must learn their language!”
I did not speak.
“It is always good, Pepe, to know what people are saying. Henceforth,” he said, shaking a finger at me, “I will talk to you in Spanish.”
Tia Nena came in with a piece of banana cake she had baked. And for the first time I also heard her speak in Spanish.
In the morning, as I was serving in the six o’clock daily mass—a chore I took on since the death of Toto—going out of the sacristy, I looked at the attendance, which was always small except on Sundays, when we had three masses and the church really overflowed, and there, in the front pew, was Betsy. I could not imagine how she had come at such a time when she should be asleep. When mass was over, Father Jess greeted her and asked her to join us at the kumbento. But Father Jess knew she did not come to Tondo to hear mass. He left us alone.
She was in her usual jeans. “I came here to see you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “But there is really no need, Betsy. I understand everything.”
“No, you don’t,” she said.
I did not want to talk about her party, her parents. “How did you get here?” I asked quickly.
“You gave me your address, didn’t you? I simply asked the driver who came here with the invitation to give me directions.”
“And you came alone and so early?”
“Yes,” she said. “I parked down the vacant lot. I couldn’t get in.” She meant the deeply rutted main street that had yet to be asphalted.
“You can get robbed here, you know. And raped.”
“I had to see you,” she said simply.
I hurried with the broom as she stood by. When I was through, she said, “Let me invite you to breakfast. Please.”
There was no running away from her, and I followed her to where she had parked. She drove a little recklessly, but it was her style. She was a good driver. I did not ask where we were going, I was completely in her hands. She drove up Bangkusay, alive with the riot of children, through Herbosa, then Juan Luna past the Tondo church toward the North Harbor. She drove confidently as if she had been in Tondo all her life.
“This is where the Katipunan was born,” I said. “Even now, this is a radical district. Do you know that during the Huk uprising, there were gun battles here? We have a neighbor who was a Huk commander—more than twelve years he was in jail.”
She turned to me and smiled patronizingly. “I read history, too, Pepe.”
“Now you are castrating me,” I said.
She gave my leg a playful blow then she slowed down. We were now traveling along the line of interisland ships and to our left was a monotonous huddle of shacks similar to what we had left. The smell of copra, of refuse, hung heavy in the air. We approached Del Pan, and I wanted to point out to her the squatter huts on the left side of the bridge, their flimsy roofs held in place by rocks, but I asked instead, “Sociology, too?”
She nodded, giving my leg another playful blow. Then we crossed the bridge; but for the crumbling Intramuros walls and more squatters in the moat of Fort Santiago, we were out in the open, in another country—Rizal Park, Roxas Boulevard, the well-trimmed green, the tall whitewashed buildings.
She turned left, heading to one of the tallest buildings on the boulevard with the initials VDC on the roof, glittering at night in blue neon. Behind it was a huge shaded parking lot, and after she parked, we went to the elevator in the front. The girl who operated it greeted her. “To the restaurant, Miss de Jesus?”
“Oh, Cora,” Betsy frowned. “When will you ever call me Betsy?”
We shot up to the top floor and a doorman in a black jacket over a white frilly shirt and black bow tie opened the door, bowing. “Good morning, Miss de Jesus.”
It was the most luxurious place I had ever been to. The chairs were hand-carved and upholstered in deep blue. The tables had lace tablecloths and silver vases with red roses. The carpet, in paler blue, was wall to wall, and on the walls, which had fleur-de-lis designs, were Philippine paintings—part of the collection of Don Manuel Villa, which, Betsy later told me, had been started and influenced by my father. Crystal chandeliers dropped from an indigo ceiling, and though it was warm outside, I was almost freezing. Three waiters in black jackets with white gloves came forward, but Betsy ignored them; she guided me, instead, to a corner where the drapes of velvet blue were raised by blue braids, and we had an unimpeded view of the bay and the city. The building was not more than ten years old, one of the newest and the tallest, and from twenty stories up, Manila looked neat and clean. Even Tondo, beyond the dark swath of the Pasig, its houses roofed with dull red, seemed antiseptic.
This was the headquarters of the Villa Development Corporation, the giant conglomerate built by Don Manuel Villa, my father’s father-in-law. He had worked here, and if he were alive, he would be here now, handing crumbs to his poor relatives. This was a haven for mestizos—they were given preference because of the lightness of their skins, their capacity for speaking Spanish. Indeed, as Professor Hortenso had said all too often, the higher up you go, the more sugary and whiter it becomes. Now I was here in the bastion of the oligarchy to which my father had attached himself. I wondered how he felt being with them, if he even remembered that he had come from an anonymous corner called Cabugawan.
I knew a little of Betsy by then, enough to realize that she did not bring me here to impress me. The waiter asked what we wanted, and though I had not had breakfast yet, I was not hungry anymore. But she was insistent.
“All right then,” I said. “A cup of coffee and pan de sal.”
The waiter looked at Betsy and smiled.
“Pepe,” she spoke almost in a whisper. “This is a French-style restaurant … they even have a French chef from Marseilles. There is no pan de sal.”
My ears burned.
“… but you can have croissants.”
The coffee came, black, steaming, and thick. Betsy started, “I quarreled with Papa and Mama last night, really, even before all the guests had gone. Papa was angry—oh, not at you, Pepe, please believe that—at me.”
Perhaps she thought I knew her father was general manager of the corporation. “No, you don’t have to worry about him coming up here and seeing us. He left early this morning for Zurich and New York.” She stared at her coffee. “Pepe …” almost in a whisper, “I know how you feel, so please do not make it difficult for me. Perhaps one day, when you become a father, you will not be different from Papa. He does not know that I am a member of the Brotherhood, that I go out with people—”
“Like me,” I added quickly.
She smiled sadly then went on, as if she was talking to herself. “But last night, we also talked about … about your uncle. Carmen Villa, his wife, was Mama’s best friend, you know, and they shared many things, girl talk, that sort of thing.” She turned to me again, her eyes bright with expectation. “You must have read The Ilustrados,” she said.
I shook my head.
“You should—shame on you! Aren’t you proud it was a relative who wrote it? How unfortunate that he is not around. I would have wanted to write a paper on his book, the ideas there. He was very right, you know, about the Filipino elite collaborating with all who are in power or those who are about to be. The last chapter—the nature of the elite—how perceptive he was, how he exposed what had been destroying us from the very beginning.”
“You are making a speech,” I said, unimpressed. “You said I should be wary of speeches.”
She shook her head and laughed. Her omelet had come, and the croissants, which I knew were some pastry, turned out to
be a kind of pan de sal, brown and soft.
She was undaunted. “What Antonio Samson wrote is very relevant now. Now!” she slapped the table. “If we are going to have change, there must be some purity to it. It means leadership from below, the lower classes, nothing else. Only in that way will it not be destroyed. The elite will subvert it. That is why, for all his protestations, I mistrust Juan Puneta. His grandfather was one of them.”
I did not speak; the remark that was in my mind was obviously anticipated by her.
“I am burgis, an outsider, you know that,” she said. “But my feelings are not with my crowd, Pepe. Believe me! The poor do not have a monopoly on that sense of outrage.”
“Profound statement of the day,” I said blithely and, looking at the antique clock at a corner, added: “Made at exactly eight forty-eight A.M.”
She breathed deeply and sighed: “Now you really have devastated me.”
I reached across the table and almost spilled the goblet of water, held her hand, and pressed it. She pressed my hand, too, then slowly withdrew it. The waiters were looking at us—the only people in this ritzy restaurant this early.
“How can I tell Puneta he is full of shit?” she said angrily. “I have no authority. He has a Ph.D. from Cambridge. He makes all those speeches. And he contributes generously to the Brotherhood.”
“We will use him,” I said.
“No, he has power, money, brains. He will use us,” she said simply. “Already, he is very close to Malacañang. He wants to be ambassador to France because he speaks French and because he is also good-looking—that is what the First Lady likes. He will get the job. And he will throw lavish parties, which he likes to do, and he will spend plenty of money that his minions earn over here.”
I have read how our ambassadors have so little to spend. “At least he is Filipino,” I said, “and he will be spending his money for us.”
She looked at me incredulously. “Oh, Pepe! You have so much to learn. Puneta is Filipino only because he holds a Philippine passport. He is Spanish, his loyalty is to Spain, where he salts his dollars. Do you know that he has a housing-development in Mallorca? And his wife is Spanish?”
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 47
