The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (28 page)

“About you? They all know that you have become important. But they … they are what they will always be, Tony. You can’t move away from this place. You have known that all along—you and I.”

That was it—both of them understood the great and staggering distance he had finally spanned. “Son,” his father had told him once, “it takes those who have suffered to understand and be kind to the suffering.” Those were the days his father had carried him on his shoulders and they had gone to the caving banks of the creek. There they had caught shrimps and, beyond the creek, in the delta, they
had planted watermelons. It was there that his father had cleared the land and there, too, the sky was kind and the field bountiful. But the
ilustrados
came armed with cadastres and Torrens titles. The
ilustrados
dispossessed his father and his grandfather, and in time the land became anonymous and cramped. Beyond the plain even the infertile hills were plowed, the grass was burned, and at night the hills glowed as flames licked the skies. But even when the hills were bald at last, the grain that was planted there was not enough. False lawyers came to their house and promised aid. Flushed and happy, his mother had busted her bamboo bank open and handed the lawyers her savings—coins grown greenish with mold. The lawyers left and afterward he heard the hollow laughter of his father. They had all been cheated. And then there was more: the Rich Man came and demanded the grain in the granaries. This was when his father had said, “This time, it will be my way.” His father went away for days and when he returned he wore this red band across his chest. He had become a
colorum
, a rebel. It was that way with his father, it was that way with his grandfather, and it would be that way with all men who lose hope.

But it would be different with him. While the old rage was quiet now it still pulsed faintly within him—to remind him that here in Cabugawan was the beginning of perception, and here he should be true. But even Cabugawan had been conveniently forgotten. He did not want to dwell on empty phrases, but he could not bring himself to be blunt, not to Emy. “I could have come here last May when I arrived.…”

“You didn’t,” she said simply.

“There were many things I had to do. The university … well, I told you that education means so much nowadays. I had to make sure of my position there. And then I got into trouble with Dean Lopez. But I haven’t lost the interest I’ve always had. Remember how I used to tell you about going back to the Ilocos to trace our grandfather’s past?”

She leaned toward him, her face alight with expectation. “Yes—and what did you find?”

“A book written by him. He was a wise man, all right—and a brave man, just as Father said.”

He stood up and looked out the window, to the now vacant lot
where their old house once stood. He could see it now—the pitched grass roof, the buri
^c
sidings, and the granary behind it. Where the well used to be was a shallow indention now. Beyond the vacant yard was the alley that dipped down to the banks of the creek where he and the children of Cabugawan used to swim.

“What is the book like?” she asked.

“It’s in Latin and I can’t understand all of it. I’ll show it to you when you come to Manila. Would you like to go to Cabugaw one of these days? It’s not a big town, Emy, but it is well-preserved.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I’d like to see places—visit Antipolo, too, and Manang Betty, but I can’t. I’m not like you, Tony. Here,” she became apologetic, “here, every centavo means much. You understand …”

He nodded and sat back. He picked up the glass of warm Coca-Cola and drank all of it.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” he asked.

“What else? Making a living,” she pointed to the sewing machine—an old Singer—by the window. Beside it was a glass case with a few folded dresses. “You don’t know how fortunate I have been. Almost all the important people here are my customers, even the mayor’s wife. I didn’t know that it was easy to sew.”

That was not what he wanted to know, so he told her, “I want to help. Please let me.”

“Help me? I don’t need any help.”

“Please don’t speak to me like this. I’ve suffered, it’s true.”

“And I? Father— Before he died he beat me as if I were a beast of burden. But I did not tell him. Or anyone. I kept it all to myself, until Bettina …”

“Oh, Emy …”

“There was no other way.”

“You could have written to me and told me and I would have hurried home. If you had only answered my letters!”

“Oh, God,” she said, her voice almost a moan. “We are cousins, have you forgotten that? How could I tell you? And besides—”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

She went on, not minding him: “Both of us— We are older now, we can look back. I would have been a weight on your shoulders.”

“And how did I feel?”

“That isn’t all,” she said, bending forward. “You were alone in America, and it was your studies that mattered most. Then I learned about you and Carmen Villa.…”

Even as she spoke, even as she sat beside him, who had now grown thin and ravaged by work, he could still trace the fine contour of her face and, hearing her, he sank back to another time.

“I did not want to stand in your way,” she said softly.

“How is the boy?” he asked, not caring to talk about his wife.

She was filled with pride. “He’s a fine boy—and think, he is in grade one now! He is bright. I don’t help him with his homework.”

“How does he look?”

“He has your eyes. And his family name is Samson.”

The old anguish lashed at him. “Emy, why didn’t you tell me? It would have been so simple and everything would have been all right.”

“What are you complaining about?” she asked. “You are doing well. And look at us, at Bettina—she can’t even go to college.”

“Emy …” his voice trailed of into silence. Then he straightened and faced her again. “There must be something I can do.”

“There’s always something you can do.”

“Let me take him with me. Let me bring him to the city.”

Her answer was quick. “And what will your wife say?”

“I’ll find a way.”

She smiled wryly. “And when you have children, what then?”

Tony spoke slowly, as if he was ashamed of what he had to say. “Carmen— She does not want a baby. She could have had one, but last July … she aborted.”

A complaint was stifled in her throat. “And it has to be my child. You can adopt one—it’s so easy nowadays.”

“I am thinking of the boy. It would mean a load off your back.” He swept the room with one knowing glance. “And besides, I can give him a better education, so many things in life you won’t be able to give. He will go to the best schools—even to the United States afterward. He will not know hunger and want. This is for the best, Emy, I’ll tell Carmen the boy is mine—”

She cut him off. “It’s all very clear.” Bitterness tinged her voice. “Now money is everything—everything. You came here not because
you want to. Tony, what has happened to you? You did not talk like this before. You did not mention hunger and money before as if these were all that mattered.” Then she asked, “What has happened to you? What has changed you.”

He could not shut off from his ears the words that implied his destruction. “You don’t have to hurt me further,” he said humbly. “Isn’t it enough that I am here, unable to look after the boy and see him grow?”

“He will grow up properly,” she said.

“You are strong,” he said. “I would like to say that I’m weak, but I don’t want to make excuses.”

“Stop talking like that! Look at me, at my hands. What do you see? Years. What have I done? Look at him when he comes. I haven’t complained.”

“What do you want me to do then, for you and the boy?”

“Nothing,” she said, the pride shining again in her eyes like jewels. Her hands were on the windowsill. Beyond the window the sun dripped white. She wanted nothing and she was right. She had always been able to take care of herself anywhere, even here in Cabugawan, where dreaming had stopped and the only certitude was the bondage of the fields beyond.

“Be honest with me,” he asked her.

“I have never lied to you,” she said. “Have I ever? You were everything. I looked up to you. This place cannot produce another like you. It just won’t happen anymore. Father, before he died, said this, too. We all know this.”

“Tell me then where I have failed.”

“It’s too late,” she murmured, looking away.

“Do you still believe in me?”

“Yes … yes.” She was alive again. “Why shouldn’t I believe in you?”

“Will you do what I will ask of you?”

“Anything,” she said with alacrity. “I’ll do anything, but please, Tony, don’t ask me to give up the boy. He is all that I have. Please believe that.”

“Even if it would be for the best?”

“You are not the one to decide that,” she said. “Look at you, the years that you were away. I slaved for the boy. I want him to grow up
like you, Tony. And someday he will leave Cabugawan, too. And when he does I’ll see to it that he doesn’t forget where he came from.”

“I haven’t forgotten anyone,” Tony said lamely.

“I’m sure of that,” she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

Tony glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve and in a while the shrill blast of the rice-mill whistle near the railroad station came to them.

“He will be here soon,” Emy said. “It’s a short walk from the school—if he hasn’t stopped to play.”

His legs felt watery again and his heart thumped. “What will I tell him?” he asked, hoping that she would help him.

Emy did not answer. She clasped her hands and looked away.

“Tell me that I’m useless,” he stumbled on the words.

“You aren’t,” she said.

He got up and stood by the window, remembering the schoolhouse, the stone porch, and the
gumamela
hedges, the mango tree in the yard, Emy in pigtails when she was young and in bare feet, cleaning the schoolroom with coconut husk.

“There he is now,” Emy said behind him. He turned to see at the far end of the street the boy walking toward the house, a bundle of books under his arm. He asked in a strangled voice, “Tell me, what should I tell him?” He turned to her and her face was calm.

“The truth,” she said. “Someday he will find out, and when he does I want him to know it from you. He has asked me and I’ve told him what there is to tell.”

“And what is that?”

“I used to hope that when you returned you would remember. So I told him that his father was in some distant land. That was what I could honestly say. And then …” she stopped and looked away, her lips trembling, “and then I found out that you had gotten married. I wished you well, Tony. But the boy— When he asked me again I said that I did not know where his father was. I hadn’t heard and perhaps I would never hear from his father again. I told him to get used to that, growing up without having his father around.”

As the footsteps sounded on the gravel path, as the rungs of the bamboo ladder creaked under his puny weight, in Tony’s mind the words formed: I am your father. I am your father.…

But he did not speak aloud when the boy was finally before him, slender of build, with soft hair and eyes as dark and lustrous as his mother’s; any man would have been proud to have someone like this young thing, barefoot and brown from the sun, with a firm chin. Yes, anyone would have been proud to claim this boy as his son.

Tony was proud, but only for an instant, for his pride turned quickly into confusion and even despair as the boy turned to his mother and kissed her lightly on the cheek. To the boy Emy said quietly, “Go to him, Pepe, and kiss his hand.”

Their eyes met and there could have been recognition and that spark of genuine affinity that comes only between a father and his son, but when their eyes met he only felt that he was a stranger to this boy and that he no longer belonged to this small, stifling room.

To him the boy went, but Tony did not extend his right hand as Emy had wanted. Kneeling down, he held the boy instead, held him close to his chest, felt the boy’s quick breathing upon his face and smelled the sun upon his son’s skin. Much as he wanted to proclaim to this boy that he had found his father, the words in his mind would not take shape, and he could only say, in a voice filled with emotion and tenderness, “Son, son,” and this boy, this six-year-old innocent, escaped from his clumsy embrace and rushed back to his mother. Then, wordless, the young eyes still questioning. What is in his young mind now? What does he think of me? Is it time to tell him everything or must he find out the truth in his own time and in his own way?

The question was like thunder in the narrow room: “Is he my father, Mama?”

An eternity slipped by, and in this eternity Antonio Samson died. He did not speak, and when the silence was broken it was Emy who said, “No, Pepe. He is not your father. He is a dear, old friend, a relative, someone from this place who thinks he loves all of us.”