The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (75 page)

The Brotherhood had been very active, and Roger and his boys had drawn up a list of the poorest of our poor. They had started making the rounds of the offices in Santa Cruz and Binondo asking for gift pledges.

Even Tia Nena, now that Toto was no longer with us, had to think far ahead; this morning, she was aglow—not that absent-minded expression she had on her face sometimes, but a beatific smile that radiated warmth. She came to my room and started poking into the boxes that were piled in one corner, the Christmas lights that we would string in front of the church, the lanterns that folded that were to be dusted and hung in the lobby of the
kumbento.
She had been flitting about with this happy countenance the whole morning and it seemed as if she had gotten over the death of Toto.

She had found the colored lights, the sockets, and tested them. She sat on the stool opposite me, folding her gnarled, thin hands on her lap, her eyes squinting in the sunlight that poured down the alley into our room.

“Pepe, you have been here a long time. And you have done many things, made changes …”

“Not really, Tia,” I said, wondering what was in her mind.

“Well, you have. Padre Jesus is happy with the Brotherhood—the young people working together, their attendance in church, their activities.”

“It is nothing,” I said. “I just befriended them, that’s all.”

“No,” she said, “it is not just being friends. You know them, you understand them.”

“Because I come from a village, Tia. I never really left it.”

After some silence, “Pepe, there is something you do not know and I do not think Padre Jesus ever told you. I come from the same town as you.”

I looked at her incredulously.

“You do not believe it?” she asked, her eyes crinkling. She was now speaking in Ilocano. “I do not speak like this often. There are many things I want to forget. Padre Jesus can tell you—he picked me up in Divisoria where I was staying, sleeping in the empty stalls, helping whoever wanted to be helped. It is not difficult for an old woman to stay alive.”

“I pity you, Tia.”

“There are events I don’t remember now—months I was not well, that I was not myself as they would say. But everything is clearer now and I am grateful to Padre Jesus. You said you came from Cabugawan? Of course, I knew people there. I am from Sipnget. We—my father— They came from the Ilocos, too. Did you know that there was a big brick house in the town? It was burned, rebuilt, then burned again. Did you know that?”

I nodded.

“I worked there,” she said, her eyes downcast. “The first house, that was where I learned Spanish—I was very young.” Then she was quiet and her eyes misted.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Tia.”

“I had two sons, Victor and Luis, but I lost them both. And my father, too. So I have nothing—nothing but memories. And when I lost them my mind gave way. But even now, I still carry with me their letters. And sometimes, when I want to go back to the past, I read them one by one. One by one.”

She stood up and went to the open window; outside, the sun was a flood upon the Barrio.

“How is it now in Sipnget?” she asked, but did not expect a reply. “The fields must be golden, the rice as high as a man. I remember the palms, the martins there. In the dry season we used to tap them for sap that we sold as drink or boiled into sugar. You know that, don’t you?”

I nodded again.

“And the tobacco fields in Carmay. I wonder if they still plant tobacco
there. They used to grow so tall, their leaves so huge. We would string them and dry them below the houses. Ours were the best, good enough to be
ba-ac.
You know that?”

I nodded although I was not too sure. “This Christmas, would you like to go to Rosales again, Tia? A short visit?” I asked.

“And whom would I see there? I don’t know where my sons are buried, or my father. I don’t know where to go and pray for their souls.”

“You can come home with me.”

“Yes,” she said, turning to me, her face agleam. “I should go back. I hope that day will come very soon.”

With Toto gone, she was drawn closer to me as we consoled each other with our presence, our thoughts. She had asked about Betsy, how she was, and because I told her that Betsy was in the Brotherhood, that she was in the same demonstration where Toto had been killed, she now regarded her with some affection.

“How does the future look to you, Pepe?” she asked after a while. “If you go back to Rosales, will you bring Betsy with you?”

I shook my head.

“Her family, I am sure, looks down on you,” she said. “But you are smart; you will flourish without help from anyone, least of all her family. When you have done that, then they will respect you.”

“You are not wrong, Tia,” I said. “Her parents loathe me. They are sending Betsy away, very soon, to America, so that she will no longer see me.”

Tia Nena shook her head. “I hope she loves you enough to wait, maybe a long time, but you never know how steadfast women can be. You will see. And someday, I hope she will marry you.”

But Betsy did not marry me. She came to Tondo for the last time in late November; her father had returned and her mother was going to take her to New York the next day. She had just returned from Bacolod, where she had spent the semester break.

I had gone to Divisoria with Tia Nena to help carry the food that she bought for the week, and when we got to the Barrio, Betsy’s Volks was parked in the alley that led to the church. She had enough problems; I decided not to tell her about my torture and the city jail.

Father Jess was with her in the
kumbento.
She had had a long
talk with him, for he looked serious and said we should be alone. She had acquired a bit of a tan and her hand, when she held mine, had roughened a little.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“What I came to tell you.”

The receiving room of the
kumbento
was shabby—a cracked cement floor, uneven, wooden sidings, images of the Virgin and the Nazarene, a shelf of religious publications and high-backed rattan chairs that had begun to fall apart. But everything was clean, Roger and I saw to that—no mud, no dust, even the cement floor was polished. Although the cool season had started and there was a long pause in the rains, it was still gummy and warm, and beads of sweat glistened on her brow. I reached out, caressed her forehead and brought my wet fingertip to my tongue, tasting her sweat. “Very stale,” I said.

She smiled, shaking her head. “I am so tense not knowing what to think, and you keep teasing me.”

Though she was perspiring, her hand was cold.

“Pepe,” she finally said, blushing and unable to look at me. “Please marry me.”

I wanted to embrace her then—how precious little time we had! I tried to suppress the tremor in my voice. “Betsy, I do not have a job. I am not even finished with college …”

“I don’t want to go to New York,” she whispered. “And I don’t want you to go to the mountains. I want you with me.”

I shook my head.

“I have some savings, about twenty thousand. I have been quite frugal, you know, and I am from Negros. No new dresses the last three years unless Mama bought them. Or Papa. I have some jewelry. And the Volks is in my name—I can sell it.”

I shook my head again. “Please don’t be angry. I don’t want it this way.”

“I knew you would say that. But we can live cheaply anywhere. I will not complain … I promise.”

I leaned over and pressed her hand. It was still cold.

“You will not mind in the beginning,” I said. “Then you will be missing many things—comforts you have been used to. And I don’t want you to make sacrifices for me. You … you caring, it is more than enough. Besides, you are very young.”

“I am twenty. I do not need their permission anymore.”

“Not that,” I said. “You will be angry with me later. That is in the cards. You will regret what you have done. You don’t know how it is to be hungry. How to live in places like this. I want you to have a good life. I want no regrets.”

“I know what I am doing,” she was determined.

“Did you tell Father Jess?”

She nodded.

“Everything?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “But he guessed. No, Pepe, I am not pregnant, but I wish I were so I can have a hold on you”—she pinched my arm—“then you would have to make an honorable woman out of me.”

I would not have shirked that responsibility, but I also did not want to appear as having taken advantage of her. Always, I could not forget Carmen Villa and my father.

“Betsy,” I said, “we are one.”

She looked at me gratefully and whispered, “Thank you … thank you.”

“We must wait. You will go to New York and be there for a year, two years. You may forget me, but I will not forget you.”

We were silent again.

She knew I had made up my mind. “Tell Father Jess I am leaving. And come with me. We cannot part like this.”

Father Jess was in his room, waiting. “Well,” he asked, “what have you decided?”

“I cannot do it, Father,” I said. “What can I offer her? What kind of life would she live?”

He was silent even as we went down to the reception room. Betsy had stood up and was looking out of the window, into the alleys, the decrepit homes, the laundry flapping in the morning breeze, the bare-bottomed and skinny children playing in the multipurpose center.

They talked in Visayan, some of which I understood, then they switched to Spanish, saying good-bye, and Father Jess asked when she would be back, and she said, “If Pepe wants me back, immediately!” And I said in Spanish, “I will always want you here, but life decrees that you should be there.”

It was the first time she heard me speak in Spanish and she was delighted. “Pepe, you never told me!”

Father Jess said, “He is now trying to write in Spanish, too.”

He followed us to the door. “I will perform the wedding gladly, Betsy,” he said. “It would be an honor. So hurry back.”

We drove quietly to Malate. Again, she parked at the churchyard and we walked over to the Mabini coffee shop. It was the second time we were there, and as in the first, we were again beset by this impermeable gloom. “We will miss you not only in the committee,” I said, trying to cheer her up, “but when we plan the big demonstration in January.”

“Write to me about it. Write to me every day if you can. I will write to you every day.”

“It costs money,” I said. “I will write often, but mail the letters once a week.”

She settled for that. Our hamburgers and coffee came. The coffee shop wallpaper was in green, so was the upholstery.

“And my thoughts,” I told her, “are also green.”

We would go to our first motel again. “You will see the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Write to me about it.”

“With my blood,” she said, and we laughed for the first time. We laughed so hard, the waitress looked at us, puzzled; the last time we were here, we had not bothered to eat. Now, we ate with ravenous appetites. I ordered two more hamburgers to take out.

I had somehow hoped that we would get the same room, but we did not. We were here in the beginning and, now, the end. We took our time; she lay beside me in that soft wide bed and we just kissed and talked, savoring our nearness. Her flight the following day would be in the late afternoon. She did not want me at the airport, but I said I would go, that I would keep to the shadows and watch her from a distance, far from her friends and her parents. Even if I did get close, they would probably not recognize me, but hell, I did not want Betsy to leave with me unable to see her.

The hamburgers came in handy before noon, but we were still hungry, so we ordered soft drinks and fried chicken. When the boy came with our order and asked us how long we would stay, I told
him, till dusk. She was supposed to be out with friends, saying good-bye; it did not matter anymore if her parents found out. They would have their way anyway.

I was not going to make the day more bleak. “One day,” I said, “I would like to take you to a place I used to go to. Nothing like your hilltop. But it is also isolated—on a hill with no one there.”

“Your favorite spot?”

“You can call it that. An old steel bridge spans this creek and there were once rails on it. The train no longer comes so the rails were torn up, stolen and sold as scrap, but the high mound is there still. You walk on its crest, the grass thick upon it. Then you come to this black, rusting bridge and, below, the calmest, clearest pond, with reeds and lotuses. I used to swim there, gather snails, and I would sleep below the bridge, on one of the big, black girders. The whole world is quiet. Nothing but the wind rippling the water, the chirp of birds, and, above, the blue sky. Down the slope of the hill is a thatch-roofed shack with a split bamboo floor. The farmers rest in it during the harvesting or planting. I slept there once all night.”

“You were not afraid?”

“Mother was angry and she scolded me when I returned the next morning. What was there to be afraid of? The crickets, the dogs howling in the distant village? The cocks crowing?”

“We could sleep there one night,” she said.

“It may no longer be there,” I said. She was dreaming, as I was; she had never slept on a bamboo floor.

She opened her bag. “I wonder if your father did the same thing,” she said, bringing out her copy of Father’s book, and she let me read her inscription:
To my dear husband—whose past, present, and future, I hope, may also be mine.

“Be kind to his memory,” she said. “I asked a lot of questions about him from Mama. That is why she is so concerned. He really did not have a chance. He committed suicide, that I now believe.”

“I will never do that,” I said.

“Live for me,” she said.

I pressed her hand.

“Read the last chapter again. It is the most perceptive commentary on us.”

“I will,” I promised her.

She drew out from her bag a small packet of black velvet. It contained
two rings, silvery and shiny. She brought them close so I could see the inside. The bigger one had her name and the small one had mine. “Look at the date,” she said.

I had difficulty reading it.