The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (5 page)

On the way back to the city, it was the heat that made his homecoming absolute. The boat had left San Francisco in April and the air was fresh and sweet with spring. After that, Hawaii and balmy weather, the informality, the white beaches, the palm trees, and the people in shorts; then Japan and Fujiyama capped with snow, Hong Kong—Victoria Peak and its houses and many-storied buildings
gleaming in the sun. And finally, Manila, in early May simply unbearable. The heat claimed him back the moment they sailed into Philippine waters. The city hadn’t changed really, not its dusty streets, not its Antipolo. Its houses were still unpainted and falling apart, and the children who played in the dirt had the forsaken look he had always remembered. This was the dead end, the street where dreams vanished, and this fact was stamped on the faces of the people, the jeepney drivers, the anemic government clerks, the jobless, the petty racketeers, and the con men. This despondency was etched on the face of Antipolo, and there was no escaping it unless by some miracle one happened to have gone to college, gotten a fellowship, and set his course on distant sights.

In May the body tires quickly, the brow is damp, and the mind is sluggish. The day commingles with the smell of sweat and the fumes of a thousand jeepneys; then dusk descends, and with the coolness that it brings, the fret and drudgery of the day is banished at last. The neon lights sparkle along Rizal Avenue, spewing greens, yellows, and reds at the darkening sky.

Tony felt a kinship with twilight, for it brought him an inner peace no matter how brief, and a reminder, too, that day must end and that, extending this vision, there was a terminus to all the good things that were shaping before him.

Tony got off the jeepney in Blumentritt. The sky was washed with indigo and with a lingering dye of red in the direction of Manila Bay. The walk home would be cool—a healthy excursion down a side street that was muddy during the rainy season but scraggly now with dying weeds.

Home was his sister Betty’s
accesoria.
^§
She taught grade school in Sampaloc and her husband clerked for a Chinese flour importer in Binondo. They had three boys who slept in the living room with the maid now that Tony was back and was occupying his old room. The house stood near a narrow dirt road that seemed to have been totally forgotten by the politicians because it was choked with garbage piles, and farther down the street it was pocked by those small sweet potato patches that squatters with untidy lean-tos tended. There were two ways by which one might reach the house:
the railroad tracks or the narrow alley that curved from the road. The alley was seldom empty of children and housewives and drunks with heavy talk and desperate joys, their lives made more viable and secure by steady doses of devil gin that they bought from the store at the far end of the road.

Tony followed the railroad tracks, stepping away from the little mounds of human waste that those in the vicinity had left, being too lazy to go to the public midden shed down the line.

His sister was busy in the kitchen—a small, dark corner at the other end of the living room. His nephews met him and they were all hands at the comics section of the afternoon paper and a bag of peanuts that he had bought.

“I’ve prepared something special for you,” Betty called out from the kitchen. She turned away from the kerosene stove. She was a short, anemic-looking woman with deep-set eyes and thin lips. She had always been frail, and motherhood, as it had happened with many women, should have endowed her with more flesh, but she was thinner than ever. Her voice, however, had a certain warmth and fullness that somehow made up for her meager frame. “I remember your letters and how you used to crave for
pinakbet
^‖
with broiled mudfish. Well, the mudfish—I stopped by the market this afternoon—”

“Thank you, Manang,” he said. He stood beside her, opened the earthen pot, and the heady smell of eggplants, bitter melons, onions, tomatoes, and mudfish in stew whorled up to him. For a while he let the luxurious aroma engulf him, then he placed the lid back on the bubbling pot.

“I do wish you’d eat more,” Tony said, looking at his sister. She was indeed thin, and now, in the yellow light, she seemed even thinner. But Betty was not pallid in body or spirit, for each muscle in her taut frame was toughened by hard physical work—washing and housecleaning—and by the work in the fields when she was younger.

“How is Father?” Betty asked after a while.

“He is all right, but he thinks he hasn’t long to live,” Tony said. “When was it that you saw him last? He wants to see the children.”

“The children,” Betty sighed. “Tony, you know the children can’t know about their grandfather—it is for the best.”

“Yes,” Tony said quietly.

“They will not understand. No one in this street will understand.”

Tony didn’t speak.

“I wish Father would understand,” Betty was saying, “but he seems unchangeable. I can’t do much for him. I never did much for him. Six years you were away, maybe I saw him only twice a year.”

Tony quickly veered away from the nettlesome subject. “Where is Manong?” he asked.

“Upstairs. Go ask him to come down,” Betty said, laying the chipped china on the table beyond the stove. “He likes pinakbet, too.”

Tony climbed the narrow stairs dusty with afternoon, to the room that faced the street. Bert, his brother-in-law, was there, plucking hair from his armpits and grimacing properly before the cracked glass of the
aparador.
^a

“We are having
pinakbet
this evening,” Tony said.

Bert grunted. He was short like his wife, but massively built, and his short-cropped hair accentuated the shortness of his neck and the squareness of his chin. He was Ilocano, too, with thick lips and deep brown skin. While he clerked for a Chinese flour importer in Binondo district, he studied law at night. He followed Tony down the darkened stairway, his steps heavy.

Betty’s boys were already at the table, noisy as pigs, and the maid darted about, attending to their every whim.

Tony had never discussed the subject of marriage before with his sister, although they had touched on its fringes in the past, bantering about the girls in Rosales who had shown him inordinate attention. And remembering Rosales, thoughts of his cousin Emy thrust themselves once more on his consciousness. She had been with him in this very house, studying to be a teacher because that seemed to be the cheapest course for her to take, although it was not the limit of her talent.

He wondered how his sister would react to what he had to say. No, he was not shirking his responsibility of sending her children to school in gratitude for the assistance she had given him. There would
be no shirking—the duty was his, he being a younger brother, and it was as natural as birth itself.

“Manang,” he started, searching Betty’s face for a sign of reproach or approval, but Betty was attending to the food. “I’m getting married.”

Even the boys stopped eating and turned to him.

“To whom?” Betty asked, leaning forward, her spoon motionless in her hand.

It was Bert’s turn. “Carmen Villa? The girl in the pictures you sent us from Washington?”

Tony nodded.

“This is wonderful!” Bert was enthusiastic. “Isn’t she the daughter of the Villas? Do they already know and have they accepted you?”

“Carmen has. As for her parents, I don’t think there will be any trouble.”

“When will you get married?” Betty asked.

“In a year—maybe even less.”

Bert stirred in his chair. “There has to be more time. Preparations. After all, the Villas … you know what I mean.”

“That’s why I’m telling you now.”

“This is foolish,” Betty said, aghast and overjoyed at the same time. “Tony, what can we do?”

“You don’t have to do anything. Don’t worry.”

“How easy it is for you to say that!” Betty said. “You know we have to think of the sponsors.”

Tony had never given the embellishments of the wedding serious thought, and to his sister he said simply, “You’ll be one, Manang.”

“Me? Me?” Betty objected shrilly. “Let’s get the governor. After all, he is from our town and he knows you. We have to show we know someone important, have influential acquaintances. I’m not saying that we can ever equal the Villas, but we can put on an appearance.”

Tony laughed hollowly. “There is no sense in that,” he said. “Carmen knows everything about me. My income. I’ve told her everything.”

“So what if she knows.” Betty was insistent. “There are her parents, her relatives—people who don’t know. It’s for them that we will put on an appearance.”

“There will be no people. Just us—and the members of her family. It’s already settled. It’s going to be very quiet. Besides, I don’t want us to spend. You know I have no money.”

“But we can get the investment back. Oh yes, Tony, we can,” Betty said. “Just don’t forget us when you are there. The Villas … I haven’t really stopped hoping. Maybe, someday, I’ll go back to college and get a master’s degree or something, and then I’ll be able to get a better job. But so much will have to depend on you.”

“Even I, someday, may come to you for assistance,” Bert said. “But this does not have to be said. I will—particularly when I’m through with law. It’s so hard to get a position these days, even when you are a lawyer. You know what I mean.”

“But how can I be of help?” Tony asked. “I am not even sure if I’ll be able to live on my salary. Certainly I’m not going to live on Carmen’s money. Oh no.”

“Throw
delicadeza
^b
out of the window,” Betty said. “Maybe I will yet be able to leave that public school. Ten years—can you imagine that? Ten years and not a single raise.”

Tony ate in silence.

“Well, you can do something,” Betty insisted.

“I don’t know,” Tony said sullenly. “It all seems confusing now.”

“The Villas are rich, aren’t they? I’m not saying that you should be grasping, but look at how we have suffered. Don’t you remember any more?”

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” Tony said, his appetite gone.

“It’s not your fault that she is rich,” Betty was determined. “After all, not every girl can have a prize like you. Do you remember how those girls back home vied for your attention? You can write to Emy and she’ll tell you about all those who are there waiting. She knows, and here you are worrying about what people, particularly the Villas, would say. They wouldn’t ask questions, my dear.”

Emy—and the caverns of the past were lighted up again; memories, sharp and shining as if they were minted only yesterday, lingered in his mind, and briefly he wondered where his cousin was, what she was doing, and if she still cared. But the wondering was quickly pushed aside by his sister’s insistent, “The Villas are rich … rich …”

“I just want to show them that we don’t need their money,” Tony said. “We have to keep a little of what face we have.”

“Face? Face?” Betty was grim. “Do the poor have any face or the right to it? It’s too late now to think of that. A hundred years ago maybe—then it would have been different. There were opportunities then for people to succeed with industry, honesty, and pride. Not anymore, Tony. In school I repeat all these things, but I know I’m lying to those children, and they themselves see what’s happening. The poor cannot be proud.”

“They can at least have self-respect. They don’t have to be so ingratiating,” Tony said faintly. He saw how useless it was to argue. His nephews, too, had lost all interest in the squabble, and they now tackled their food with happy noises.

“It would be different,” Betty continued, “if we didn’t lose everything—and most of it went to you.”

“It’s not for you to say that,” Bert came to Tony’s defense.

“It’s true,” Betty glared at her husband. “When he was in college he never had to worry about his fees. I helped.”

Betty turned to Tony. “I’m not saying that you didn’t deserve to be helped. You have always been bright. That’s why it’s up to you to help us.” The edge was gone from her voice, but she impressed upon him now the fact that he was no longer a part of the family, that he had grown far beyond their conception of him. Now he was salvation, a symbol of the elusive dream they never could attain.

“Do not forget,” Betty measured her words. “The land—it was precious, but your career was more important.”

“You went to college, too, Manang,” he said sullenly. “And Mother slaved for you, too.”

“But I’m a woman, Tony, and I’m not as bright as you. Don’t think of repaying me. Think of Mother. Think of how we all came to Manila because there was nothing left in the province for us. Nothing but old people and tenant relatives who couldn’t help us.”

“I know, I know,” he said dully. “But it’s still wrong.”

“Go ahead then,” Betty said, “be righteous, because you have never suffered. Can’t you see that you are our only hope?”

Tony shook his head. “What you are trying to tell me is probably the same thing that bothers Carmen’s parents. Where’s your pride?”

“Talk to me about pride,” Betty raised her voice again. “You didn’t talk to me about it when I was giving you my pay.”

“That’s not the way to talk,” Bert said.

“Now you accuse me of ingratitude,” Tony said bitterly. “You know I’m aware of my debts and that I’ll pay—not all of them, but I’ll pay.”

He could have said more, but he was the younger. A silence laden with remonstrances descended upon them, broken only by the boys slurping their food. There was no sense in staying at the table longer. “I’m full,” Tony said, not turning to his sister, and rose.

He went up to his room. It was stuffy. Its wooden sidings were bare but for a calendar with the picture of a man happily guzzling a bottle of beer. His iron cot was on one side along with the writing table, which was piled with books and his old typewriter.

Tony went to the only window that opened on the railroad tracks, four bands shining in the afterglow.

Now loneliness welled within him and magnified the words he had just heard. Pride, poverty—they trashed at the chest and emptied it of other feelings; they dulled the mind after one had heard them over and over again. Yet in this ugly room they seemed to belong like beckonings he could not ignore. It was as if the words evoked an ancient world where he had gotten lost, and now he must go and find the place where he had started, the small town, the rain-washed field, and the muddied river; find the locusts on the wing, the farmer boy calling the stray calf home, the brass bands in the early morning, and the acacia leaves closing.