The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (73 page)

Then it stopped, and, gasping, sweating and weak, I begged my tormentors not to do it again, in the name of God, of human decency, that I did not know anything, that I would tell them anything they wanted to know if I knew it, but please, not again, not again.

“All right then,” White Sidewall said, a smile lacing his lean, iron face. “Tell us slowly, very clearly, who are those in Manila who are in the shadow directorate—those who are not known to the public. You know, Mr. Samson, that you are a member of a conspiracy to overthrow by force a democratically elected government. You know that your National Directorate is just a front, that underneath is another organization. You might be a member of it.”

Again, I thought hard, our meetings, our discussions, my talks
with Professor Hortenso, even with Puneta. No matter how hard I tried, I could not tell him anything about a shadow directorate.

“Sir, I don’t know. Please, I don’t know.”

That is the last I remember, for the pain came in a horrible explosion and I blacked out.

When I regained consciousness, it was already dark, and I was back in the room, cold and naked. I groped for my clothes; they were nowhere. Weak and with no one outside knowing where I was, I decided that I would never be subjected to that kind of torture again, that at the first opportunity, I would attack and try to escape—die perhaps, but I would try. I remembered the scream I heard the first night and realized that there was no mercy here; if they could do what they did to me to a woman who could not fight, they would be capable of doing worse than they had already done. I was not going to find out what that would be.

I tried to reconstruct the ride. It had taken about half an hour in afternoon traffic. We must be somewhere in Caloocan, or No-valiches; the van had not taken too many turns and the ride had been smooth most of the way. Now, there was no sound of traffic, not even of habitation, of people, and in the stillness of the night I shuddered with the dread that already possessed me. There was nothing to identify them, and if I lived through this torture, I am sure that there would be no wound on my body. If I died they would most probably dispose of my body here.

I was hungry, but no longer did I crave food or water. They did not matter anymore, and I wondered if those who fasted really missed food or suffered the pangs of hunger.

I decided that if I were to get out of this, I would write about it, tell all not just to the Brotherhood, or in the school paper, but to the editors of the national papers who had been sympathetic to us. But who would believe me? What evidence would I bring? To whom would I point?

I should have gone to sleep, to conserve whatever strength I had left, but I could not, for thoughts of revenge, of escape crowded my mind. As in the first night, it was a long, long time before I dropped off into a listless sleep.

When I woke the room was already bright, and by the door was
the usual plastic cup of stale coffee, some soggy
pan de sal
, a piece of fried meat, a plastic pitcher filled with water, and a small hand towel.

I ate everything and then went to sleep again. I was roused in the afternoon. Tarzan was at the door, and the very sight of him chilled me. I had grown to hate him with all my heart, and if I ever saw him again I would most certainly kill him. But this time, he came with another plastic tray of food, and there was even a bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola on the tray. My first impulse was to knock him down with a flying kick, but I knew that the place and the time were not opportune.

He placed the tray on the floor without a word then slammed the door. By the early evening I was filled with misgivings, and I began to wonder what was behind the new and kindly treatment. Were they softening me up for another session with the electric generator? Was this a psychological trick that would leave me wide open and ready to admit everything and anything? I had read about mind-conditioning in the Korean war, in the Communist countries, and I realized how easy it was to bend the mind. Yes, I would admit anything, the worst crimes they could ascribe to me, if only to be free from the devil machine. I realized I was not made of steel, I was not going to be a hero for the Brotherhood.

It all came back, too, what Ka Lucio had said: the Huks who were captured by the Japanese, the Constabulary, or civilian guards did not talk. He had told Toto and myself of the water cure, how slivers of bamboo were driven into their hands and, still, not a word from them. Was it the same with us? I doubted it. Why weren’t we made of stronger stuff? Had we been weaned too late? Did we lead such soft, pampered lives? Or did we not believe in what we said, in the purpose for which we had banded together?

A long night, faces aglow with love, scenes of my childhood—the brown irrigation ditches brightened with the purple of water lilies, dew-washed mornings. What was I doing in this abysmal place? What evil force pitched me here?

I held my penis; it was no longer numb, but was extremely tender. Even a feather touch seemed to inflame it. What had they done to me? Had they castrated me in flesh and in spirit?

I went to sleep, now used to the mosquitoes. Sometime in the night it drizzled and was iron cold, but there was no blanket to
warm me. I woke up late in the day, and the coffee at my door was no longer warm. Toward afternoon voices rasped outside my door, and when it opened, White Sidewall and his gang were there.

It was always White Sidewall who talked to me throughout, and now he sounded contrite: “I am very sorry, Mr. Samson. But since we have decided to free you, I hope that you will forgive us for what happened. If you were in our place, you would understand.”

Shit, I said to myself.

“You will now shower. When you are ready, we will take you back to Tondo.”

They took me to the toilet that I had cleaned; it was spotless, just as I had left it. The water felt delicious and I lingered under it.

My clothes were on the chair outside the bathroom and I put them on. They blindfolded me, this time tightly. They walked me outside and helped me into the van—I knew its smell by now.

But they did not take me back to Tondo; they lied to me, cheated me, for when they removed my blindfold and opened the van doors, I recognized immediately the surroundings, the atmosphere. We were in the Ermita police station.

A line of brown Metrocom buses, windows covered with wire mesh, clogged the street and were filled with young people, some of them with white headbands, some with bandages on their faces. There had been a demonstration at the American embassy and the demonstrators were being hauled to Crame.
^‡
Now the buses were pulling out and the spillover crowd of students were waiting for their ride.

“The station is full; you can see we have no more room here,” the policeman at the desk was saying. “They have to go to the city jail. Why don’t you take him to Crame? You have all the room there.”

White Sidewall shook his head. “I have a date and I am already late. No, just do whatever you must with him.”

Another policeman in civilian clothes asked me questions, which he typed, and after that, I was fingerprinted, then they hustled me off to a mosquito-infested corner where I waited for the next hour.

Should I have protested then? Should I have screamed and lashed away at the police pigs and my torturers? I thought about it
later; I did right appearing meek and submissive. I was a prisoner no matter what the law said; I did not carry a gun—they did.

A police van finally came at dusk, and together with the leftovers that could not be taken by the Metrocom buses, we were herded off to the city jail.

A brief ride, through Quiapo and its environs, the shops shuttered with plywood, the sidewalks piled with garbage, the low stone embankments in the middle of the street plastered with our slogans and posters.

We went down the underpass then made a U-turn; I had not realized that the city jail was here, beyond a cratered street and crumbling, old buildings roofed with rusting tin.

I must get in touch with someone and the first person who came to mind was Betsy. At the jail reception, I rang her number and was told by the maid that she was still in Bacolod for the semester break, which I knew but had hoped that she had not gone or had returned. Father Jess—but there was no phone in the
kumbento.
Professor Hortenso had no phone either, and at this time of the school year there would be no one in his office. I tried it nonetheless, but there was no reply. Then I thought of Puneta. But I did not want to be beholden to him, not even in this moment of need.

The policemen in civilian clothes at the reception desk were not pleased that we had to come in at night. They separated the girls and sent them to the brigade close to the entrance. We had to strip and be examined for drugs and weapons, then we were shunted off to the different brigades.

By now I had become inured to the discomfort of not having a mat or a blanket, but some of the boys were grumbling, saying they were not criminals, that they should see their lawyers. The sergeant who manned the desk and glowered at us said we could do that in the morning, that at least we had a roof over our heads.

I walked through a dimly lighted courtyard and crossed over through a barbed-wire gate that was padlocked for the night, then shown the building where I was to sleep.

It was dimly lighted, but I could make out the shapes of those asleep on the wooden bunks, stretched like carcasses, most of them half naked. Though it was already November, the heat and the humidity were still oppressive even at night, and the heat, particularly, seemed to cling like some stringent glue to the very pores of the skin.
No one stirred and there did not seem to be any place for me. I squatted on the stone floor. Clothes were strung on wires, and beyond the grilled windows I could see the rooftops of Recto, some still ablaze with neon. Mosquitoes and the sounds of the city drifted in. I thought I would never be able to sleep, but reclining against the cement wall, I dozed off only to waken in the night to a wild screaming in the next brigade—as if a man was going through what I underwent. No one was disturbed, no one stirred. I was, indeed, in another dimension.

It was still dark when the brigade started stirring, and by daybreak we were all up. A single line formed at the toilet at the end of the brigade and I joined it. A middle-aged man, perhaps forty or so, was behind me; he grinned, “So you are the one who arrived last night.” I nodded.

The young inmates studied me. “You can put your clothes in that corner and sleep at the far end if you wish,” the man said. “You are new here, so you must know the rules. The king is Bing-Bong over there—” he pointed to a sturdy, bald-shaved man of thirty at the gate; he was looking at me and smiling. “You do whatever he tells you. We do whatever he tells us. To disobey is to be punished. No harm will come to you if you do what you are told.”

I wanted to tell him to shut up, but he seemed so friendly, and I did not really know what new ordeal I was to go through. He also had that look of having lived a long time; there was that tiredness and dumb resignation in his thin, pinched face, as if he were a chicken caught in the rain, all wet and with no shelter to go to.

I was the only one thrown into this brigade; the others were assigned to another building. Now I could see the whole jail. The battered buildings were arranged like spokes in a wheel with the main office and reception area, through which we entered, in the middle, topped by a low rusting tower. This was the Old Bilibid prison—the National Penitentiary—before it was transferred to Muntinglupa, as Chicken explained again.

The day wore on in tedious idleness, for there was nothing to do, nothing to read. We stayed in the cement courtyard, most of us in shorts, and I could see now the tattoos on arms, legs, chests, and backs, just as I had seen them in the Barrio, emblems of that other world which Roger himself wore with pride. One even kept his head perpetually shaved, for it was there that the tail of a snake was curled
and the body ran down the back of his neck, coiled around his torso and down to his penis—the snake’s head being the penis head itself.

Chicken was some sort of emissary or chief clerk, and it was his job to acquaint all newcomers with the rules of the brigade—rules the prisoners themselves enforced because within the jail there was another law—not the law of those who guarded us.

There were no tattoos on Chicken’s skinny arms or chest. “I am too old for that,” he said, laughing. Then he told me why he was in jail. A rich man’s son who loved women and fast cars and was drunk most of the time had run over and killed someone. He did not stop. The people who saw the accident had taken down his license plate number and that was how he was tracked down; the victim’s relatives did not want any settlement, the bastard must go to jail, and because he was a rich man’s son that could not be. But justice must be done, the crime must be punished. It did not matter that Chicken did not even know how to drive—that was not important; what mattered was his confession.

“I was given five thousand pesos. Five thousand pesos!” Chicken said. “And then, of course, there is the thousand pesos every month—every month. For the duration of my being here. And my son, he comes here every week you know, together with my wife, to bring me things. You know, we don’t eat enough here and one gets tired of fish and
kangkong
, fish and
kangkong.
You know.”

I nodded.

“And then, of course, the best lawyers defended me. When I get out there will be another five thousand. Where else can you find something like that? Here, I can eat regularly. And when I get sick, at least there is some medicine.”

“How do I get out of here?” I asked.

“If you are poor you cannot get out. There are no rich people in jail. They can afford bail, the best lawyers. They can even buy judges.”

“I am poor,” I said. “A self-supporting student. But I am innocent. I have not committed any crime. I swear to you …”

Chicken looked at me, his small sad eyes crinkling in a smile. “Who is innocent and who is guilty?” He shook his head. “The poor are always guilty and the rich are always innocent. Get some lawyer to stand for you. But while you are here, you must follow the rules—theirs and ours.”