The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (16 page)

W
hen he walked into the department, most of his colleagues were already waiting for the first bell.

“You old dog, we never knew you’d marry—and so soon. And the Villas. Now there’s another man gone wrong correctly. You should have told us so we could have given you a
despedida.
” The words sang in his ears and they sounded sincere. He let the ribbing go on until the bell rang and he had to hurry off to his first class.

His students were but a handful—only twenty-two—and he always had a notion that they could have been brighter if they only tried. He was prepared as usual for an interesting Monday morning and was greeted by smiling faces. Then a girl out front, who was majoring in political science, stood up, “Congratulations, sir. It is all over the campus.”

In the afternoon the ribald jokes became less frequent and he accepted the fact that his marriage was public knowledge. It gave him peace of mind to know that the marriage had been viewed matter-of-factly and was even something he could be proud of. There was none of the knowing looks and the sharp double talk at which his colleagues
were agile, none of the little thrusts that would tell him that they suspected he married Carmen Villa only for her money.

The dean’s office was on the ground floor and he was halfway there when this awful sense of having been remiss came to him: he hadn’t told the old man at all about his wedding. He could easily rationalize that now by explaining that it was a surprise even to himself. But that was not easy to believe and, besides, the first decent thing he should have done this Monday was to go to the dean.

The dean was a small, dark man, and sitting behind his huge narra-wood desk with its small Filipino flag and his name carved in gothic on black hardwood, he looked more like a schoolboy, with his chubby cheeks and pugnacious chin.

He acknowledged Tony’s presence with a quick smile, then he went back to the stapled sheaf of papers he was reading.

It went on like this for about three minutes. Tony started shuffling in his seat. He was now growing aware of the Lopez “treatment.” In the past the old man had used it to put his subordinates and the professors under him in their proper places. Dean Lopez, however, exercised the utmost care in inflicting this kind of punishment. He meted it out only to those he could officially order around, or those who stood to gain from him some benevolence, those tokens of official largesse that he passed out—a good word at the faculty meeting, the promise of a raise or a promotion, an invitation to his house for
merienda.
I’ll give him two minutes, Tony thought, glancing at his watch. Beyond the open window the afternoon was bright. Students idled under the leafy acacias. In a soft, firm voice he said, “I still have to prepare some papers, Dean, and since you seem very busy, I’ll return and see you after five.”

Dean Lopez slowly lowered the sheaf he was holding and looked at him. “My time is important, too, Samson,” he said. The old man had always called him by his first name, but now he was calling him by his family name. “So,” the dean continued, “I hope you don’t mind while I finish this. It won’t take but another five minutes.”

Dean Lopez finally dropped the sheaf.

“Yes,” he said, standing up and, without looking at the young man, turning to the window. “I want to talk to you about your paper on the Ilocos. It is a waste of time and you should not continue it. Work on something more useful, something that has never been touched before. You know I have already done some work on the
subject. Do you think you can dredge up something on it on which I haven’t already dwelt? That’s presumptuous of you, you know.…”

Tony Samson studied the stout, motionless figure and tried to surmise what had come upon him.

“I’m sorry that you should think of it that way, sir,” he said. “You see, I’m doing it on my own. On my own time, too.”

Dean Lopez wheeled and his mouth curled. “You are wrong, Samson,” he said. “Your time is not your own. It’s the university’s. Or didn’t you know that?” His voice was sheathed with bluster.

“I didn’t think it was like that, sir,” Tony said.

“Well, you had better start thinking now the way I want you to think,” Dean Lopez said. “Do you want to be a full professor in five years or do you want to be a mere associate all your life? I decide on that, too, or have you forgotten?”

“No, sir,” Tony said simply. The old man was bared to him in all his rawness. “Is that all you wanted to tell me, sir?”

“No, that’s not all. I will talk to you for as long as I please. About the Socrates Club—you are not qualified for it. Simply because you have a doctorate doesn’t mean you are in. I drafted the rules of the club, you know. And don’t think that I don’t know— There’s such a thing as a Chinese B in Harvard.”

“I don’t know what you are driving at, sir,” Tony said sullenly.

“Well, if you don’t know, let me tell you that Orientals in Harvard get a passing grade as a charitable gesture. After all, they won’t degrade Harvard by staying in the States. It’s that simple, Samson. In other words, we don’t want Chinese B’s in the Socrates Club.”

“I hadn’t expected it to be this way, sir,” Tony said icily. “I don’t think I deserve to be crucified for something I did not really aspire to.”

“Don’t be coy with me and say you didn’t aspire for membership in the club. That’s a lie, Samson, and you know it.”

The blood left Tony’s face and a clamminess came over him.

“That’s the trouble with you,” Dean Lopez said serenely. He went back to his desk. The afternoon sun stole in from the glass windows and fell on its glass top, reflecting onto his ruddy face, his peasant hands, and his shock of white hair. “You presume too many things. Look, I’ve been here for more than two decades and that’s why I am the dean. And look at you, you have just started and you already want to be a regent or the dean. Over my dead body, Samson. Understand that? Over my dead body. You cannot be dean of
this college, not while I am alive. You may have married well and you may have political influence, but you cannot be the dean while I am alive. And all the politicians you know can go to hell for all I care.”

“Whoever gave you the idea I wanted to be dean and that I’m taking over your post?” he stammered.

Dean Lopez was smiling now. “I know, I know,” he said sarcastically. “That’s just the problem with people who get too big for their breeches and who want to go up fast. Did America do these things to you? And you can’t even qualify for the Socrates Club.”

Tony Samson felt like slapping the old man’s face. “I don’t like to disagree with you, sir,” he said faintly, “but you said you submitted my name. And I didn’t even know it until you told me before I left for Baguio.”

“Now, now,” Dean Lopez said. “Let us not be like women. Everyone knows of the honor that goes with joining the club. Think of it: in the country there are only forty members and in the university there are only ten. Do not tell me that you aren’t interested.…”

“I am, sir,” Tony said. “I’d be a hypocrite if I said I was not. It’s just that I did not apply.”

Dean Lopez exploded. “Damn you!” he said, his eyes darting fire. “If the club does not want you, you should take it with grace.”

He had never expected that a moment as rife with anger as now would come, for he had never made an allowance for the time when he would glare back at his benefactor and damn him. But in a voice that was hoarse and almost a whisper: “Don’t ever talk to me about grace. Or scholarship! You have no right—you plagiarist!” And trembling with unspoken rage, he wheeled out of the dean’s office into the raw, sun-flooded afternoon.

That evening Tony wrote to Lawrence Bitfogel again. He did not say, however, that he had quit the university. That would have been too painful to relate and Larry would never understand. He had worked so hard for the chance to be a teacher, and now all the anguish, all the privation, six years, six long years of starving, of wandering and despairing—all this had gone to waste.

Dear Larry, he started, I would have invited you to my wedding, but it caught even me by surprise. We eloped and up to now I’m still in a daze. No, it’s not someone you know or someone I’ve told you about. I met her in Washington and, of course, she’s Filipina. You know very well my views on mixed marriages and you know I’m too
much of a coward to attempt something as radical as a mixed marriage. But at least you can grant me some imagination—I eloped, didn’t I? This isn’t the only reason I’m writing this letter, though. I must tell you, too, that I have acquired new interests. Perhaps these interests have to go with marriage and my new status. I do wish very much that you were here now, so that we could talk things over. It’s not the marriage that has me all dazed and confused, far from it. It’s the university and the host of problems that it has dumped upon my lap. At any rate, I am doing all right, and don’t … don’t ever loathe me if someday I mellow or change into an arch-conservative. Come to Manila soon.

The letter was the last he mailed to Lawrence Bitfogel.

There were other letters, of course, wherein he expressed his thoughts candidly, and this he could do easily, objectively, because he had always been analytical and even ruthless with himself when he sought the bedrock of truth, the soft shale of emotion, of egoism having been eroded by his own relentless questioning. But when all these letters were written, he could not mail them and he placed them all in that folder where he had compiled personal notes—not to be read by anyone, he told himself wryly, until I am dead.

I
t was Carmen who announced it a week afterward at the breakfast table. “Well, Papa,” she said airily. “Tony has quit the university. I think we should celebrate.”

Tony raised a hand to stop her, but she ignored him. “Papa, don’t you think it’s about time Tony started learning how you operate, too?”

“I don’t think my quitting the university is something to be taken lightly,” Tony said petulantly. “You must understand, Papa,” he turned to Don Manuel, who had set his glass of orange juice down and was now looking at him, “that the university was what I had prepared for. Teaching is in my system. It wasn’t an easy decision.”

“We all have to make decisions.” Don Manuel sounded sympathetic. He picked up his glass. “The decisions are sometimes difficult, but it’s better that we choose to make them rather than be forced to make them. A good soldier, I always say, selects his fights.”

“I wish I could say that, Papa,” Tony said. “I was forced and that’s what I hate.”

“Well,” Carmen said, “there’s always a silver lining even in the darkest cloud. Or at least silver-plated.”

“Of course, of course,” Don Manuel said equably. “And I must tell you that this development pleases me. One man’s loss, after all, is another man’s gain. I’ve told you, Tony. I need someone I can trust, someone with perception and talent.”

The flattery was pleasant to his ears. How pat, how neatly everything was falling into place.

After breakfast Don Manuel beckoned Tony to the terrace. In the shade of the green canvas awning, looking down on the rain-drenched city, Tony listened to his father-in-law speak with almost childlike simplicity. “Today, Tony, I’d like you to see the office, get the feel of the place.” He discoursed further on such mundane topics as knowing how to get along with people, praising them when praise was needed, and showing a firm hand when this, too, was necessary. They parted on such platitudes. It was too late to retrace his steps; he was trapped in a maze where the Villas were the minotaurs, and somehow, though he should have detested the entrapment, it was not as distasteful as he once thought it would be.

The morning wore on in a drizzle. Beyond the patio glazed with rain the bougainvillea drooped and a murkiness cloaked the acacias, the garden, and, in fact, the whole world. Somewhere in the caverns of the house Tony could hear Mrs. Villa ordering someone in her brisk manner to do the marketing early. The very sound of her voice, the thought of having to sit with her at lunch again, riled him. And yet Tony did not really hate her. He was aware of this the first time he met her and the incapacity to loathe her came about not because she was Carmen’s mother but because Mrs. Villa, in spite of her grossness, was herself.