The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (67 page)

I read Mother’s letter in Auntie Bettina’s room. It was on a ruled school pad. Some parts of it were in Ilocano, but most of it was in English.

I read the letter twice; if she loved my father, honored his memory, I must respect her wishes. But it would not do for me to regard him as I did Mother, who had sacrificed for me. What had he done for us? What had he done to deserve my respect?

Auntie Bettina had said he was a good man, but his goodness was not imprinted in my mind and heart in deeds that I would remember. Still, he was my father and I must leave this letter in the chest with all the mementos that Mother treasured.

I could not sleep, for they played blackjack and dominoes in the yard the whole night. Father Jess slept well though Auntie and I were worried, for the bed in the room that he used had no mattress. At least it was a bed, and none of our neighbors had one.

We buried Mother early the next morning; all my relatives, our neighbors, and some of the women for whom she made dresses came. They sought me out and said I should study hard; they had all known of Mother’s dream, they knew I was earning my way through school. Auntie Bettina had a black shirt made for me, and she wore a black dress. We walked behind the hearse to the church and, after the prayers, we carried the plain wooden casket to the churchyard, where the town photographer took our picture, Auntie Bettina and I in front and our second and third cousins behind.

The five-piece beat-up brass band from Carmay played the Funeral March as we shuffled out of the church and headed for the cemetery in the southern end of town. It was quite a distance, past the creek, along a narrow road that had begun to muddy in places.
Cadena de amor
bloomed on fences and the
arbol de fuego
showered the road with reds, but in me was a blackness I could not hold.

At the cemetery Mother was brought first to the small chapel and the lid of her coffin was lifted. Old Bebang, a neighbor and a distant aunt, her black veil hiding her face, knelt beside the coffin and started to wail. She recalled how Mother had helped everyone, how selfless she had been in attending to her relatives, and she wailed about how Mother never failed to give her neighbors a bit if there was anything good cooking in our kitchen. Now, it would be a grim and desolate place she had left, for no one would be like her, no one could ever replace her. It was a dramatic performance, but there were no tears in her eyes when she stood up. Auntie Bettina followed after her, but she did not wail; she did not know how, I am sure. She just knelt beside the bier and wept silently. Then it was my turn; I kissed the gnarled, clasped hands for the last time, a cheek lined with wrinkles, and I looked at the dear face—how quiet, how restful Mother looked. I wanted to cry, but no tears came—nothing, nothing but this great and crushing weight upon my chest.

Before it was lowered into the pit, Father Jess blessed the coffin and said a prayer. As they eased the coffin down, Father Jess, Auntie Bettina, and I took lumps of earth and cast them on the wood. Mother, I said softly; forgive me, forgive me.…

We hastened back to the house where another distant aunt had prepared a basin of warm water at the foot of the stairs. We washed our feet before going up. There was coffee still and biscuits.

We were by ourselves finally.

“What will you do now, Auntie?”

“What is to be done, Pepe,” she said. “I will stay here, of course, and continue teaching in San Pedro. I may ask one of our relatives to come and keep house.”

“You can transfer to the city,” I said, “and we can live together. You will not be alone.”

“When you finish college and have a good job, I will do that. Just come here whenever you can.”

She wanted me to take the album Mother treasured. A hundred and twenty pesos was all that was left of Mother’s savings after everything was paid for, and Auntie had another fifty that she did not need. She thrust the money into my pocket, but I gave it back to her.

“Please tell Auntie, Father, that I am making enough.”

Father Jess assured her I was doing well.

Father Jess had brought out his leather shoulder bag where he put his missal, his holy water, and extra shirt.

I turned to the old sewing machine by the window whose sound I had grown up with, whirring late into the night, and beyond it, the begonia pots, now flowering. The old narra furniture, the battered bookcase, the stacks of magazines, the novels of Willa Cather, Faulkner, Camus, all of them, the
Noli
and the
Fili
and, yes,
Don Quixote
—the glass case where Mother had the finished dresses, and beside it, the old wooden chest, its top scratched and etched with my initials, which I carved when I was in grade school and for which I was whipped. Will I come back to this old, cogon-roofed house, will I return to Cabugawan where memory has chained me no matter how much I tried to flee from it? Why did I leave the way I did? It was all too late now to explain to her, and most of all, to tell her that if I came back—and I surely will—it would be to do penance for her who had cared as no one ever did. And as I stepped down just one
rung, all the grief that had been dammed finally broke loose, and I sat down at the top of the stairs, unable to move another step, and my grief became sobs that were torn from me, from my chest, my heart, like they were flesh, and tears came to my eyes, burning and like a flood. I could not stop. I was crying, and I could not stop even if I tried; Father Jess’s hand was on my shoulder, Auntie Bettina whispering, “Pepe, Pepe—” but I cried on.

Back in Tondo two messages were waiting, and Father Jess said that I was a successful social climber because one was from Juan Puneta—he left his card with a note for me to ring him up at once. The other was from Betsy. Her letter, written on Father Jess’s stationery, was sealed. She said she was very sorry to hear about Mother’s death, that she would have come along, too, if she knew; that she wanted very much to talk with me about something very personal and very important, and would I please call her at this number that day or the following day and that, if she did not get the call, she would return to the Barrio.

Tia Nena said Betsy had come after nine that evening and seemed extremely distraught that I was not in. It was brave of her and risky—Tia Nena said she was alone—and I did not want her visiting us again. So at eight the following morning—she had said to call between seven and nine—I rang her up.

“I am sorry, Pepe, about your mama,” she said quietly. “I never knew her, and I will never know her now. I am sorry—is there anything I can do?”

I thanked her and said life must go on.

“I must see you immediately. It is very important. I hope you understand. Can you do it? See me?”

I was calling from a drugstore in Bangkusay; there was no telephone in the Barrio, not one. “I am here in Tondo,” I said. “I have work in church, you know that. And this afternoon, I have to go to school.” I did not want to be involved with her further. No, no pity from her or from anyone.

“Please, I can go there, now.”

“You are crazy,” I said. “Coming here last night. Did you come alone?”

She did not speak.

“You could have been robbed. I warned you before.”

“Shall I go there now?”

I did not want Father Jess to tease me about her. “No, I will go wherever you want,” I said. “Where shall we go this time? Back to that hill?”

“No, no,” she sounded aghast. “Anywhere but there.” She was going to pick me up, if that was all right, downtown, perhaps in front of the Avenue Theater. We discussed it briefly, then decided that it should be at the Recto entrance of the university.

When I got there, her mustard-colored Volks was already parked before a line of cars and jeepneys. She saw me and she honked several times, anxious that I would miss her. How could I—her car was so conspicuous.

She opened the door and let me in. “Thank you,” she said as we drove off.

“What is so important,” I asked, “that you had to go to the Barrio late at night?” Now I was really vexed with her. “Don’t you ever try that again. Do you know that I, myself, am uneasy there even in the daytime?”

She did not reply; she reached for my hand and pressed it. She asked me about Cabugawan, how it was, how Father Jess had reacted to my village. “He surely liked going home with you,” she said. She had made up her mind where we would go, for when I asked her what it was that she wanted to talk about, she said, “Wait till we get there.”

The bay, and I thought we would go to the French restaurant again, with its menus that I could not understand before but would now, for French is similar to Spanish, and in the back of my mind I thought I would try French the following year. But she did not drive into the compound of the Villa Development Corporation; she turned left instead, to the Malate church.

I thought we were going to hear mass, but she just parked in the churchyard, and I followed her to a nearby coffee shop in Mabini where she often went because a friend owned it.

The place was empty; the furnishings were native but elaborate, handwoven drapes, fine narra chairs, and I wondered how it could make money. The waitress in a bright green, checkered dress recognized her and took our orders—two hamburgers, two coffees.

“Neither Mama nor Papa comes here,” she said. I was wondering what she was implying and afterward I knew the reason for her anxiety, for our being together. “I am going to the United States,” she announced simply.

Perhaps it was best that way. “Good for you,” I said, really sorry that she was leaving. I would certainly miss her in spite of my resolve not to get involved with her.

“We will miss you in the Committee,” I continued. “Who will take down notes and ask those sharp, biting questions?”

“You are mean,” she said bitterly. “You don’t understand.”

“You are going to the United States,” I repeated.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“You can afford it,” I said. “Should there be a reason? Shopping? Whatever it is.”

“Mama and Papa are sending me—immediately if that were possible. But since the semester is almost over …”

“A month more.”

“I will have just a month in Manila then. Just a month.”

“I would leave immediately if I were you,” I said. “Imagine, going to the United States.”

She bit her lower lip. “I’ve been there several times,” she said. Then, without looking at me, she continued quietly, “They think that by sending me there now, I will no longer see you. That is the reason.”

“What have I got to do with your leaving?” I glared at her. “I am nothing in your life. I am a nobody from the Barrio studying in that Diploma Mill. Have they forgotten?”

“Oh, Pepe,” she said, entreaty in her eyes.

I did not speak.

“Mama went to the club the other day. She goes there three times a week to play with friends, and the guard told her I had been there. She asked who I was with, going there at night, and he described you, long hair, wide forehead—” she smiled in spite of herself, “and good-looking. We had a nasty quarrel when I got home. She called up Papa in Zurich … and they decided right there.”