The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (63 page)

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?”

I shook my head. This was something Professor Hortenso had not told me.

“All the Punetas,” Betsy was saying, “since way back, have sent their children to Europe at the age of puberty so they would not intermarry with mongrels. Here, they are Spaniards, but in Spain, they call themselves Filipinos knowing that being a Filipino there opens doors. That is what Papa says. At least we—This is our home, Pepe. Even if my parents … they are so
burgis.
So very
burgis
!”

“They cannot do anything about that,” I said, trying to sympathize with her.

She did not seem to hear. “Something in me rebels against them,” she continued softly, “even against myself. Believe me. But I love them, Pepe. I really do!”

“We cannot be but what we are,” I said.

The wistful, somber face, the slow shake of her head. “Please don’t misunderstand. It is not guilt feelings. I like being comfortable, and I am happy that I am, as you would say, on the other side of the fence. But I also know what is on the other side. It is so easy to say that I did not make this world the way it is, that my responsibility is first to myself, and with this I would then be able to justify everything. But this also means that I have to be blind, and deaf. And these I don’t want to be. But what can I do, Pepe?”

“Be true,” I said. Platitudes, clichés. “I love my mother, too, but I don’t like her pushing me on to college, being somebody I don’t want to be.” I meant every word, and at that moment, I wondered what Mother was doing, knowing how it was in Cabugawan at this time of day, the sun bright on the leaves of palms and bananas, the day alive with the grunt of hogs, the mooing of carabaos. “Still,” I continued, “whatever she did, whatever she does, you don’t know how much I love her!”

She bent down. “My mother wants to protect me—from you … something like bad luck.”

“The poor are always bad luck,” I said harshly.

“Pepe, please do not be angry. I would not be telling you these things if …” she paused, picked at her omelet. “It had something to do with Carmen Villa, with how she died. Do you know what happened to her?”

“No,” I said, “and I do not care.”

“She became insane and she just, well, just died slowly, not even a year after her husband died. Mama, she says Antonio Samson … he committed suicide—that was what Carmen Villa believed, that was what she told Mama. What a waste … what a waste! Do you know how he died?”

It all came rushing back. “Yes,” I said, almost choking on the word. “I stayed in the room where he had lived for years, used the very bed where he had slept. And every day I would look out of the window at those infernal tracks where he was killed. And I could imagine him lying there in several pieces, I could imagine him …” I could not speak anymore as angry thoughts swooped into my mind.

“If only he were alive,” Betsy said, “I would like to go to him, ask him for help. And explain. I want to belong, Pepe, to help. To do what is right. I would tell him that the
ilustrado
class need not be condemned. I would tell him not to generalize. And because he was such a brilliant man, he would understand, he would know.”

“Betsy,” I said, raising my voice so that the waiters turned to us. She was startled and I was taken aback at the vehemence of my feelings. I gripped the table’s edge, bent over to her, and said calmly, “Antonio Samson, he did me, he did my mother wrong. He was not my uncle, Betsy. Antonio Samson was my father.”

I
decided never to see Betsy again, to avoid her if she came to the Barrio, so I wrote her a letter, worked over it one night:

I kept it for some time and decided that I could do a Spanish version of it later. I was learning quickly.

By June I could converse a bit in colloquial Spanish with Tia Nena. She occupied the room next to the one Toto and I had shared and had heard us talking. I suppose there was little we had discussed that she did not know. She came with Father Jess to the Barrio and was called Tia Nena from the very beginning by everyone, and that was what I called her, too, although Lola would have been more appropriate, for she was in her seventies. But she was still sprightly and hardworking. Father Jess had asked her to stop washing his clothes—Lily’s mother could do it—but she did it just the same, even Toto’s clothes and mine, which had embarrassed me no end, so that once I changed, I washed my clothes immediately.

I never got to ask Father Jess if it was true that he salvaged Tia Nena from the Psychopathic Hospital in Mandaluyong; but if she was insane, it could not have been a serious dementia, for there was nothing in her behavior that was unusual, nothing but her reluctance to talk about herself, her mumbling before her stove about her sons. “My Luis … my Victor …” over and over again.

I went to her once and asked, “Tia, what were you saying? Victor? Luis?”

She turned abruptly to me, a faraway look in her eyes. “I had two sons,” she said, in a voice that was almost sepulchral. “One was white, the other was black …”

“I have two hands,” I tried to humor her, “the left and the right.”

She went back to her cooking as if I were not there at all.

Toto’s death had affected her. Sometimes she came into our room, looked at the things in Toto’s cabinet, and shook her head. Father Jess told me to use Toto’s clothes—we were, after all, about the
same height—but I could not, I simply could not. So one day, Father Jess put them in a cardboard box and said he would give them away, but Tia Nena retrieved a shirt, a pair of pants, and together with Toto’s pictures and notebooks, she put them in a plastic bag with naphthalene balls, then sealed everything in a milk carton, and put them atop Toto’s empty cabinet.

When she was young, Tia Nena had worked for a Spanish family as a maid. Her conjugation was correct. She knew English, too, though she seldom spoke it. I was learning Spanish from her better than in school; I was sure that, by the opening of the school year, Mr. Ben de Jesus could no longer insult me to my face.

Being the new managing editor of the school paper meant an increase in pay—two hundred pesos a month. My partial scholarship was also made full; my grades had been very good, and now I started researching Philippine history, even going to original sources in Spanish. I went to see Professor Hortenso more often, not only for his books but for advice. I did not, however, tell the world that I had crammed on my Spanish. I was never a show-off. What could I be proud of? I was much, much older than most of my classmates—a sophomore at twenty-four, I should have a degree by now—and it embarrassed me no end when I thought of Betsy. She was a senior, she would be graduating at the end of the school year, and I would be there for another two years.

I did not see her for two months. I would not bring her
malas
—bad luck—like her mother had surmised, the way my father had brought
malas
to Carmen Villa. When she came back, however, we were simply fated to see each other again. I was now a member of the Educational Committee of the Brotherhood; Professor Hortenso was its chairman. We had to meet twice a month, often at Hortenso’s house—just eight of us—not only to map out the information campaign for our growing membership but also to counter the now insidious propaganda of rival youth organizations that envied us, and the fact that thirty-three of our members had already succumbed to Metrocom and police guns. We kept this roster in all our publications to illustrate how committed we were.

A week after my appointment as managing editor, Professor Hortenso invited me to lunch. Mrs. Hortenso had cooked goat
caldereta
and I felt guilty, eating like a hog because it was very good;
it may have been for their supper, too. “But there is more, Pepe,” she said when I hesitated after the third helping. She stood up, went to the kitchen, and brought out the pan, which was, indeed, still half full.

“It is my favorite, Mrs. Hortenso,” I complimented her. “And you cook very well. The only other cook I know who can do it well is Tia Nena in the
kumbento.
”

“I always knew priests ate well,” she said. “Maybe you should add Juan Puneta to your list of
caldereta
cooks. He said once, didn’t he, Dad,” she asked her husband, “that his
caldereta
is excellent.”

Professor Hortenso continued eating. “You don’t have to believe everything he says,” he said under his breath.

“Ha!” Mrs. Hortenso exclaimed. “Look who’s talking. You believe everything he says.”

Professor Hortenso looked up from his plate and glared at his wife. I did not want to witness a family quarrel, but I could not stand up and leave.

Mrs. Hortenso was undaunted. She turned to me, wanting me to be her ally. “I hope you do not misunderstand, Pepe,” she said. “I believe in these things you are doing, else I would not want to live here,” she cast a condescending look around her, the unpainted and grimy adobe walls, the naked lightbulb above us, the cracked cement floor, the cheap Binondo furniture. “He finished with honors, you know—the first Filipino to do so at Cambridge. He—You know, we are not poor. And he was offered a good job here with a British company—old-boy ties … fraternities, that is what you call them here.”

“Please, honey,” Professor Hortenso said, “don’t talk like this.”

“But he refused. He refused help from his parents. He refused to teach even in the State University where he would be getting twice what he is getting now. Teach at the diploma mill, that is where he feels he is needed. And I agree with him, of course. Over there at UP, those pampered rich, they do not need an education.…”

“Honey,” Professor Hortenso protested again, “please, don’t make us look like martyrs.”