Father Jess sank on his seat shaking his head. “No, Pepe; this is not so. This cannot be. I don’t believe it!”
“It will be in the newspapers in the morning. You can go to his house right now.”
Father Jess shook his head again. The fact had settled fully. “Did anyone see you?”
“I did it in the firing range under his house. All the maids were out. No one was there except us.”
“Not even his wife and children?”
“I think he purposely sent them away. He wanted me alone with him.”
“But why?”
“Father! Did you not know? He was syoki. He was propositioning me, I could perhaps earn a lot, letting those syokis and dressmakers—But I vomit just thinking about it.”
“That was no reason, Pepe. The world is full of perverts and they ought to be pitied, not condemned. They do not mean harm. They need to be helped. Not stigmatized. Not killed.”
“Shit, Father.”
“Pepe, I have tried my best to show you the way, to make you forgive … and love.”
“And that is why I killed him. I love my friends, even this godforsaken place, and I do not want Puneta misleading us, cheating us, corrupting us!”
“It is not your right to make the final judgment, to condemn him because he is a homosexual.”
I faced Father Jess squarely. “It was not a homosexual I killed. I am not opposed to syokis. He was a cheat, an exploiter. Yes, Father, I have finally done it. I can now look my enemy in the eye, point the gun at him. I couldn’t do this before. I was enjoying his bribery.”
“This is the end, Pepe.”
“No, Father. The beginning. The beginning! I do not feel guilty at all. A great weight has been lifted from me. It is as if I could fly … and I am happy. Can you understand? Happy! I have done it. It was a great test. And I passed. I never felt like this before.”
“You will be killing more, and there will be no stopping.”
“Father, it is not the killing that makes me light here,” I pounded my chest. I could not describe it, this lifting of the spirit, the final liberation, the freedom that we had talked about and sought. “If I should kill, I will without compunction. I am free, Father Jess. Free—as you will never imagine. They can chain me and starve me and beat me. But they cannot harm me anymore. God, how wonderful it feels!”
Then I told him what I heard on the telephone. Puneta may not have pulled the trigger, but it was his money, his orders that did it, and now Toto and Ka Lucio were dead.
“I did it for myself,” I said.
“No man has any right to take another man’s life. This is basic, this I have always believed.”
“Am I guilty then?” I asked.
“Do not let me be the judge. I have, myself, often wanted to kill, to strangle with my hands, but I never had enough courage or hate to do that. I have asked my God, who am I to have such thoughts.”
“I do not feel guilty at all.”
“Why do you confess then?”
“Not to ask for absolution, but to let you know because you are someone I can confide in and for you to confirm, if you can, that I did no wrong.”
“I cannot do that, Pepe. I am mortal, I commit sins, I am filled with remorse. I cannot tell you you are right. What will you do now?”
“In the back of my mind, Father,” I told him, “I knew that someday I would do something that would make me really happy. I did not know it would be this. I thought it would be something”—I had difficulty looking for the words—“something sensual. Something that would satisfy my eyes, my stomach …”
Father Jess nodded. “We really never know what we are capable of,” he said. “That is the riddle of man, his virtue as well as his damnation.”
For some time now, I had wanted to put it to him in its rawest terms, that as a priest, leader of the flock, and Christian, he must infuse his faith with life, see to it that truth is justice not in the abstract but in stone-hard reality that all can see and feel. The only way to achieve this was with the same commitment to violence with which Christ gave Himself to man. “Can you come with me?”
He bowed and was silent; when he spoke again, his words were long in coming, as if they had to be unraveled one by one from the knots into which they had all been tangled. “I asked myself this question long ago, Pepe. And I could explain my staying here by saying I am needed here, or that I am too fat to be running around with boys in the mountains, where I would be an easy target, just like an elephant is an easy target in the densest jungle. I have also told myself, each to his own vocation, that all of us have some contribution to make toward this … this revolution that you now seek as one would the Holy Grail. But all these are rationalizations. Yes, the priest who believes in social justice must pursue that belief to its logical action—and here, and now, it is only with violence that it can be brought about. And God, I believe this, and I should go with you. But—” his voice faltered and he turned away, mumbling in his breath, “I am not made of steel. I am human.” Then abruptly, “But you must not waste your life. The young are impulsive, they do not think things out carefully and their efforts are often rendered useless.”
“It is better than procrastinating, Father,” I said.
A scowl spread over his face. “It is not just procrastination, Pepe, or rationalization, or cowardice—remember that. These are true if you are comfortable and you don’t want to leave your comforts anymore. It is one of the most corrupting of all feelings. We get used to it.”
“I’d like to be comfortable myself,” I said.
“If I hold back,” Father Jess continued, “it is also because I can see the risks. But more than this, I want to be sure that your blood, my blood, anyone else’s blood, is not poured in the desert, and this is often done because there was not enough planning, enough studying of what is to be done, the need for organization that will bring revolution to its successful conclusion. And this is most important: that its gains are made permanent, that revolution need not degenerate into something vicious that we will all abhor. Violence breeds more violence, but if there is enough planning and commitment to ends that are not violent—”
“You are seeking the impossible, Father,” I said. “You are segurista,* and at times like this, there is nothing sure except our readiness to risk everything.”
“It need not be all that risky, if you planned more,” Father Jess said. “And the first thing really is organization, a network that reaches everywhere, the farthest village, the highest mountain.”
“That is what we are already doing, Father,” I said.
“Build some more,” he said. “Life is so precious, and you lose it only once.”
I went down to the room where I had lived for two years, the words of Father Jess like our own posters etched in my mind. Now, in this shabby room, the memory of Toto gripped me; his voice seemed to echo within these musty walls and I could imagine him as he moved about, the glow of his character, the exuberance of his silences. These came back as if to prod me on, confirming how right I had been, his redemption.
Yet I have never felt so alone as I do now, and though I could lay claim to the fealty of friends, everyone now seemed distant and far away. I had tried to seek in them—Roger, my classmates, and my comrades in the Brotherhood—those ties that would bind us so that I did not have to think or rationalize what I had done or will do. As one of them, I could withstand the punishment that circumstance would mete out. Where had I slept in the past? Where had I slaked my thirst? Will I always be alone?
I had tried to write down my innermost thoughts, but what I wrote were platitudes. I did this because it was what was expected of me, because what I had to say was like the rosary, and by invoking the heavenly phrases, I had hoped to numb my conscience.
Did I do this because I did not know? Indeed, what could I grow but my hair? Some of us could not even grow beards except a wispy broom like Uncle Ho’s, nothing bushy like Fidel’s.
I need not be told th
at it is not easy to go beyond my station no matter how capable I am; in the end, although the rules are not written down, I cannot join them up there unless I am prepared to accept the very same ends to which they have aspired, to bear the same brand or tattoo that marks them off from the common herd. The tayo-tayo† mentality in the back alleys and the grim confines of Muntinlupa is no different from what prevails in Pobres Park.
It should not be difficult to erode the constructions of sand whereon the mighty are perched. And who am I to attempt this? I would, in all likelihood, be lost or swallowed up, a pebble in a bog, with not even a splash or a ripple. But why should I make this splash? This ripple? Each is a step forward, in the right direction, said Ka Lucio; but why was it not three steps or ten? Those who made them, those behind me, those with me, they failed, I think, because they wanted to be more than men, invulnerable, incapable of venial sin. They failed because, as Ka Lucio said, they were textbook robots who fancied themselves as the sole bringers of light, the infallible harbingers of grace, unswerving and self-righteous. As Kuya Nick said, they are not “in the compass.” They lost direction because they were bloated with self-importance. If they only knew how to enjoy themselves, if they only knew how it is to love and, therefore, to forgive! I will not be like them, and even if I should die, which I surely will, even in the ennui, in the tawdry futility of it all, I will live as I have always lived, amassing memories.
Leaving this Barrio, then, is not leaving at all; it is an act of being welded deeper, stronger, with all those nameless people of my boyhood, these faceless people here who will live and die without knowing what it is to be alive.
And how about Bing-Bong, Chicken, Tarzan, White Sidewall, and all those demons of the other world that I had glimpsed? Could they be recycled from the junkyard like Roger? It had often come to me like a bad recurrent dream, and it always brought a quiet chill to my heart—my torture, how my flesh and mind were ripped apart. Was there any design to it other than to jar me, to wake me up? They were all creatures of circumstance, but this circumstance can now be changed. It should be changed! And all that pain—it was part of living after all, and it made me know the limits of experience, and the limits are yet to be enlarged.
I lay in my cot and waited for the dark; the shuffle of mah-jongg chips, Silent Night on someone’s radio disturbed the quiet. I thought of waiting for Lily, to say good-bye to her, but she’d be back close to midnight and would be very tired; she would most probably not understand and would rather hurry to her dreamless sleep. Lily, only twenty but hardened by the Barrio and fallen down the abyss. No, I will not bother her, I will wish her sweet dreams so that in the morning she will wake up fresh and ready again to tackle the hordes at the Colonial. I hoped to God that she would make enough money in five years so that she could quit.
I thought of Betsy, my Betsy, away from all the niggling frustrations that had tormented us. I had lain awake nights after she had gone, remembering those tenuous moments we had shared. At the airport I had tried to keep away, but she had scanned the crowd and seen me behind one of the pillars. She had run to me, away from her friends, and in a final and futile gesture she kissed me, suppressing a sob as she did. “Pepe, thank you for coming!” Then she went back to her parents, her friends, as if nothing had happened, and I fled from them onto the viewing roof, lost in the crowd, and watched her trim figure in yellow go up the ramp, her eyes searching the waving crowds, searching…
Her letters had started to come. She wrote every day, but for how long? She wrote of her loneliness, of the ghastly and impersonal city to which she had been exiled, the nondescript course she was taking and how, after the New Year, she would return and go straight to the Barrio, not to the Park. But she would not find me and she would not know where to look.
It had become dark. Around me were familiar things—my small cabinet, the cracked cement floor that was now dry but during the rainy season was wet from the water that seeped in and was ankle-deep, and we had to walk around in rubber boots. How many times had I lain on this wooden cot, my pillow smelling of my sweat, the palm leaf mat scratching against my back where it had frayed, and listened to the sounds of the Barrio, the blare of a jukebox across the yard, the quarrel of couples, the tinkling of an ice cream cart.
The darkness had started to hide everything, the misshapen dwellings of rusting tin, driftwood, and packing crates, the alleys rank with decay. Will there ever be a good roof over my head? I turned to the strip of sky above my window now flecked with stars—how luminous, how eternal the heavens were.
On the shelf beside my bed were my old books from Father Jess, a dozen from Betsy, and at the foot of my bed, propped up by hollow blocks so that the water would not touch them, my clothes. I can count them—five undershirts, five jockey shorts, two denim pants, one khaki and olive green for ROTC, one black double knit, a barong, five shirts, the white in need of stitching where the collar had frayed. They would all fit into the old canvas bag.
I switched on the light and got a sheet of paper from my drawer; the Sheaffer pen I was going to use was Betsy’s birthday gift. What can I tell her now? It was after she had gone that it came, a longing for her so intense that the ache was almost physical. Many times in a crowd, although I knew she was far away, a turn of a head, the color of green, a dash of scarf, and all would come back—the coffee shop, that night on the hill overlooking Manila, and here in Tondo. Dear Betsy, I would like to tell you now how much I need you. I have purposely held off writing this to you, and in doing so, I had turned over and over in my mind, all these past few days, why I am here and you are there—so far and so beyond my reach …
It had always been that way, and I have always known it, better perhaps than you ever will. My perception of the world is different from yours; it is not just a matter of age, or of different geographies. It is just that you are up there and I am down here.
I do not want to say good-bye again, or to repeat what I have said, that in these two years you have become a part of my life, and I feel for you what I feel for myself, these tissues, this skin. I have grown so familiar with you, the contour of your body, the smell of your breath, the soft, warm crevices of your mouth and the whole wonder of you. I know now how difficult it is to be alone, to be here in this senseless confine not only of my own being but of this wretched city, and to know that you are not here where I can glory not just in your nearness but in the thought that you did love me.
And at night I lie awake, and I speak your name as if it were some incantation that would dispel this loneliness, for now I am really alone. I whisper to these cold, rusting walls; to the damp, cement floor; to the emptiness around me, Betsy, Betsy … but I can only hear the echo within me and so I wonder how you are, if you are happy as I hope you will be, and I pray that you be not tormented as I am, that your nights are slept and your days are bright, and if you remember, may they be those times that we shared, the coffee shop, the tawdry rooms and the sheet that was stained with red, the books that had to be read, and Tondo where I had tasted your sweat; yes, so many of these now crowd my mind, and they are all crystal clear, pictures, events, places—all of them important only because we knew them, lived them, and they have become us.
I did not want to write this letter, but it is one way by which I can escape this bleakness that now encompasses me. Now, too, I know how it is to be what I am and to remember what you are, life-giver, my joy and my sorrow.
You will forget, not because you are young, but because you are far away, and having forgotten, it will all be over and you may, on some occasion, remember, perhaps, because this is the way things are and we cannot change them. I don’t know if I will forget; one can never be sure, but I know that you are now my wife, not because God or a priest has sanctified our union but because this is how I regard you. Though I may sleep with other women, I know there will always be you, separate from all the rest, not just because I feel that you have given me yourself, or your faith and trust, all of which I do not deserve, bu
t because I have given myself to you as I will never give myself to anyone.
I will be leaving Tondo now and I wish I knew my final destination, but I do not. The compulsions that we have talked about will take me to regions I will not recognize, but wherever they may be, there will be a light to guide me, a talisman that will make me endure and you are all of these.
But above all, you are the proof I will always hold precious and true. Thank you, dear Betsy, for being with us in thought and deed. There are a few like you, comfortable and secure, who have chosen to be with us; I will doubt them in a way I once doubted you and they must bear the burden of proving themselves as you have done. Only time will tell and time, alas, is fickle in a way I will never be, now that I know who I am, now that I know what to do.
So let me go away loving you, and losing you, for, in the end, we will lose all those we love.
I merely signed, JS.
I folded the letter, Father Jess would have to mail it for me; he would also be my only link with Betsy and with all the others whose lives I have touched and who would, perhaps, surrender themselves lightheartedly to the end that awaits us.
I unzipped the canvas bag and on top of the guns and the money I placed my clothes, my pen knife, and a notebook. I would have many thoughts to jot down and they will not have anything to do with what I am and what I will be; the past is stored here in my mind, inviolate, days when I was young, when I marveled at how the leaves of the acacia trees close at dusk, how it would have been if there was a father to explain to me why this was so, what was it that closed the leaves of the bain-bain if I as much as breathed into them? Where could all this wisdom be? I saw Man’s Fate, which was Betsy’s gift, then Father’s The Ilustrados; she had told me to read the last chapter and reluctantly, I sat back, remembering what Professor Hortenso had also said.
“Your father committed suicide,” Betsy had told me. “Mama is convinced that what Carmen Villa said is true. That is why Carmen Villa died, too—slowly, insanely.”
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 60
