The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (25 page)

The board meeting that followed was short. Not much was discussed except the prospects of speeding up the work. Senator Reyes announced that the latest applications for dollar licenses by Dangmount and Johnny Lee were approved. Don Manuel had a word or two to give Dangmount—he should use his influence with the American community to get more contracts for the firm. The same appeal went to Johnny Lee, who took down notes in Chinese and bared his teeth in futile attempts to smile.

With the business for the day wrapped up, Tony hurried down to Newspaper Row to thank Godo and Charlie.

But the two refused to go out. They had work to do, so they went to the crummy shop below the newspaper office and sat in a sullen corner, smelling the accumulated mustiness of the years. They drank tasteless coffee and ate the same old
siopao
and
mami.
^*

They started lightly enough with Godo trying to match Charlie with one or another of Carmen’s friends.

“I’m not getting married,” Charlie said solemnly. “It’s too much of a risk and, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no future in it. I will not marry and bring to this world children who will be as insecure as I am.”

“But it’s so easy to live,” Godo said brightly. “All you have to do is breathe and slave your guts out. And when you die your body will be taken to the Press Club. Just think of it—those mountains of flowers and all those fine speeches. Even your employer will be there. And as for your widow …” the cheery note had left Godo’s voice, “she will go on living in the stale rooms you’ve never freed yourself from.”

Charlie nodded and did not speak.

“Do you understand, Tony?” Godo asked. “There’s nothing that can enliven me now. I’m aging and I have nothing for my children.”

“We are all insecure,” Tony said. “There’s no one who is secure in this life. We all die—and that is the root of our insecurity.”

“Yes,” Godo said, “but security for me does not mean immortality. All I want is for my wife and children to be healthy and well provided for. But you can’t have security in this bloody country
anymore. The rich won’t let you have it. They wouldn’t even let me have a battered Ford.”

“In America,” Tony said evenly, “everyone has a car. It doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“In America,” Godo sighed. “But here, what do your American friends do? They won’t permit us to industrialize. And what happens? You have the same old bastards at the top. A few years back, when they stole, they justified themselves by saying ‘What are we in power for?’ They have changed the tune. Now they say ‘What’s wrong with providing for your family’s future?’ Visit Congress. Listen to our good friend Senator Reyes. He commits everything now in the name of nationalism.”

“Scoundrels always use patriotism as a last resort.”

“But that’s not the point,” Godo said. “What is important is this. We are all committing suicide. And we can’t stop it because of the uncertainty that hovers above us all. Listen,” he leaned close to Tony. “There is a village in your native Pangasinan. It’s near the sea, and the people there earn a living diving for the bombs that were dumped at the bottom of the gulf in 1945 by the American navy. They extract the powder from these bombs and use it for dynamite fishing. Three months ago a bomb they were opening blew up. Thirty-seven were killed, including women and children. Last week I sent Charlie there for a story. Tell him, Charlie.”

His dark, thin face empty of emotion, Charlie leaned over and spoke softly: “I came across them, near the ruins made by the first blast. And they were opening another bomb. I asked why they were still at it after what happened to the others. And they said there was no other way. Life must go on.”

“I refuse to believe it,” Tony said. “No man, unless he is sick, takes his own life. There must be a sickness, an incurable one. And it must have been there since his birth, secretly growing until that time when it has consumed the love for life and then becomes nothing else but hate. Then the man takes his own life because he has been drained of love. Because there is nothing else in the body but that disease, that cancer of hate. I cannot think of any man wanting to die. Even in pain there is knowledge—and therefore joy.”

Godo was in his best form again. “But, you see, there is no alternative really. They have to live. We have to live. So we raze our forests, we dynamite our fishing grounds. We export all our ore and
our best logs to Japan. And businessmen like your father-in-law say that life must go on. Or if Don Manuel sets up a steel mill he ends up being a dummy.”

Tony leaned back. “You don’t mean what you say; you’re pulling my leg again.”

Godo’s forehead knitted. “Do you mean to tell me that you weren’t able to read between the lines?”

“What do you mean?” Tony sounded incredulous.

“Tell him,” Godo nudged his assistant.

“Well, I did research on the cover story, you know,” Charlie said. “I even talked with some people from Mindanao—just to find out about your father-in-law’s investments there.”

“Well?”

Charlie leaned over. “Your grandfather, how was he dispossessed? How did he and all other Ilocano settlers in your town lose their farms?”

“I’ve told you,” Tony said wearily. “But it was different then. My grandfather … he was learned, but he was alone. The landmarks that they had—the mounds, the trees, the creeks—were swallowed up by the landlords when they had the land surveyed for Torrens titles. But I’m not bitter about that anymore.”

“You have a short memory,” Godo said bluntly, “and, of course, that’s understandable. You are living it up, you are a landlord now.”

“I resent that,” Tony said hotly.

“But it is true,” Charlie said evenly. “Why don’t you go to Mindanao as I have? There are hundreds of Ilocano settlers there now. And they are being dispossessed right and left. By learned men like Don Manuel Villa. Ask your father-in-law about his lumber concessions. Check up on the haciendas under his name. You want land reform, don’t you? You said in your thesis that the revolution had agrarian undercurrents, didn’t you?”

“I do not deny that.”

“Well, the beginnings of another revolution are around us again. The Huks may have failed, but there is another uprising coming clearly and surely, and this time there is one unmistakable ideology behind it. The poor against the rich. And it will be a revolution that may wipe out this stinking society from its false moorings. And with the cataclysm, you may have to go,” Godo said.

“You are not frightening me,” Tony said without emotion. “The
circumstances do not support you. Besides, we know better now—all of us. Power does not reside in the poor and it takes more than anger to move the world.”

“Yes, it takes more than anger. But how did the revolution start? What makes you so sure that, right now, there aren’t poor men like me who are plotting, thinking, devising ways for the time when all this rottenness will explode?” Godo asked.

“I will be prepared when that time comes,” Tony said evenly.

“There will also come a time when we will be face-to-face with ourselves not as we want ourselves to be regarded by others but as we really are. When that time comes, I’d sympathize with you,” Godo said.

“I regret nothing,” Tony said.

“Stop being so smug,” Godo told him.

“Stop being angry.”

“We cannot stop being angry,” Charlie said calmly. “We go about our dull routine, we get drunk on a bottle of beer, we look forward to the pleasures of fornication. And when all this is over, we are angry again. We who are trying to write, Tony—you know this, we talked about it in the good old days. We are the real revolutionists not only because we hate this quagmire but because in essence we reject all reality.”

“We must start from there,” Tony said.

“Yes, but just the same, we reject it,” Charlie said. “No, we don’t reject life, we love it. But we do not love hunger and illness and the despair they breed all around us. Hunger is real, Tony. You can see it in the villages, in my own neighborhood. You do not see it in Pobres Park—it is an academic thing to be discussed in the Villa Building and you do not feel it there. It takes the poor to understand poverty, you said that yourself. And whatever you say now, your friends in the Park would not understand, for if they do, they wouldn’t have gone there.”

“They are our people, too,” Tony said. “You know that ours is an open society. You can go up and down, right or left, to any distance or height you may want to reach. Everyone has a chance …”

“You are wrong,” Charlie said. “Not everyone has a chance. We … we are lucky in a way. How many artists, how many geniuses, how many great minds are aborted in the nameless villages and slums of this country because children don’t go on to college? Do you know,
ninety percent of our children don’t go past the fourth grade because they cannot afford to? Universal education—that is one of the biggest jokes.”

“Maybe so,” Tony said. “But still, there are millionaires today who didn’t have a centavo to their name after the war.”

“But what happened after they got to the top?” Charlie asked. “They forgot those at the bottom of the heap. Perhaps we shouldn’t ask them to have a conscience. Perhaps all we need ask of them is vision.”

“Manuel Villa has vision,” Tony said.

“He does not have it anymore than Dangmount and his friends,” Charlie said sadly. “A chicken in every pot, a Ford in every garage. These are meaningless slogans, but the men who fashioned them had vision. America had her share of robber barons, but these same robber barons dreamed big dreams, empires, progress.”

“Pax Filipina,” Tony said.

“No, I don’t mean that,” Charlie said. “I am for Filipino entrepreneurs who can think of progress for this country, and not just of vacations in Europe, marble swimming pools, and a dozen mistresses.”

“I assure you,” Tony said, “there are men in the Park who think of progress for this country, too, because it means progress for them first. The poor do not have a monopoly on virtue, you know.”

Godo picked up the talk in anger again. “Are you trying to be comfortable in a place where you will never have real peace of mind?”

“What do you want me to do?” Tony said desperately. “Go home and run amok? Bring a hand grenade to the next board meeting of the Villa Development Corporation? Is that what you want?”

“Now you are talking sense,” Godo said in mock seriousness. “No, Sonny Boy, I don’t expect such heroics from you. I just want you to know how things stand. I have no illusions. My publisher is no different. Like your Don Manuel, as long as the money keeps pouring in, that’s okay with him. And us? He doesn’t even know I have a dying wife, that I live in an
accesoria
that stinks to high heaven. That’s the social order, Sonny Boy, and don’t you ever forget it!”

“I have enough problems,” Tony said lamely. “I try to be useful in the best way I can.”

“That’s nice to know,” Godo snorted. “It’s nice to hear that you are comfortable being a dummy.”

Tony was in no mood to argue; Godo and Charlie could still be useful to him, and they could help to publicize the steel mill again in another year or two. He held his tongue and said simply, “You are being nasty again.”

Charlie smiled. “There are many things that were left out in that write-up, Tony. And you know just what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” Tony tried to be vehement.

Godo grinned. “You mean to tell me that you don’t know that the Villa steel mill is owned by Japanese, Americans, and Chinese? Do you mean to tell me that you never knew the firms list Senator Reyes as their counsel? Or that Senator Reyes is a member of your board?”

“I know,” Tony said morosely.

Godo rattled off the names. “Dangmount, Saito, and the Chinese millionaire Johnny Lee.”

“They are on the board, but what difference does that make?” he asked, feigning ignorance, remembering what Don Manuel had said about his being in the family now.

“They control the stocks, son,” Godo leveled a finger at him. “And your father-in-law is a dummy in spite of his wealth. Don’t let Senator Reyes and his talk of nationalism fool you as he has fooled almost everyone else. He is in the employ of the monopolists and the sugar people—another vested group. Aside, of course, from working for your father-in-law.”

Tony sneered. “Why didn’t you print the story as you saw it, then?” He leaned over and spoke softly for a moment. “Look, I had thought that perhaps you would do just that. Deep inside I always believed you were brave, Godo, that you wouldn’t pull your punches.” Then, his voice rising, “I’m tired of polemics and excuses. And you’re just giving me one more lousy excuse.”

Charlie smiled laconically again. “Ah, Tony, the things we can’t print. The publisher has to make money and we have to live on the ads your father-in-law and his friends place in the magazine.”

“In other words, you are not pure.”

“I have never claimed purity,” Godo said, “but I’m honest with myself. I hope you can say the same, Tony.”

“Look,” Tony said solemnly. “What is it that you want? My skin?
In college— Let me tell you about my old roommate, Lawrence Bitfogel. The three of you would make excellent bedfellows. He believed in revolution as an alternative. But it is too late for us to engage in that. You know what happened to my grandfather and my father? The Huks. The weapons have changed, but I don’t think you realize that.”

“Yeah,” Godo snickered. “Sex is the weapon. Marry the landlord’s daughter—or Don Manuel’s.”

The blood warmed in Tony’s temples.

“The Ilocano settlers in Mindanao … the pattern is clear,” Charlie repeated.

“I can’t comment on that,” Tony shot back. “Don Manuel has reasons, and everything—I’m sure of that—must be legal.”

“Legal!” Godo exploded. “Yes, corruption is now legal. And tyranny, too. And deception. Everything is legal.”

“I don’t care anymore,” Tony said wearily. “There’s no sense in going against the wave, against all of you. I want to run away.” He checked himself, for Godo was looking at him intently.

“Where will you go? Back to America and its comforts?”

“I just don’t know,” Tony said weakly. “But another revolution is so cheap, so commonplace. Perhaps if we killed ourselves instead …”