The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (27 page)

The trip from Paniqui took barely an hour, but it seemed less. I’m going to my son—he turned the words over in his mind—my son, for it was really to his son he was going, and Emy, whose stoic silence he could not fully understand even now. My son—he savored the words again, hoping they would pry from him some new or unusual response, an identifying sentiment perhaps. But no such feeling was evoked, because he had not seen the boy, he had not watched him grow or smelled his sweet baby breath.

My son—and a huge wave of remorse swept over him again, a living sadness reminding him that, maybe, it was not too late to learn to love this child who was his very own. How would the boy receive him? Would the boy rush up to him to be swept up in his arms? Now it was no longer sadness that bridled him but a feeling that was almost fear. He did not want to be hated, not even by a boy who was, after all, no common lad—and who was Emy’s, too.

He went down to the broad cement platform. The station had not changed—it was the same old stone building with galvanized iron roof painted dirty cream. The chicken fence still enclosed a yard planted to rows of
gumamela
^*
and papaya that never bore fruit. He went to the ticket window and asked the clerk when the train would start back for Manila. The clerk peered at him through cracked bifocals. The train would leave at three in the afternoon.

In the palisaded yard at the other end of the platform he boarded a
carretela.
The rig driver took him across the bridge and
through the mounds of rice husks that the mills had spewed out. Then they were in the town, the old skinny mare jogging evenly.

How compact the town appeared—and how small. He saw it once more: the municipal building surrounded by
banaba
^†
trees, the tin roof shining in the sun. It was, of course, not the building that he knew when he was a boy—not the wooden edifice his father and his friends had burned in an evening of senseless, futile fury. The ruins had been quickly cleared away, a new building of stone had been erected, and the saplings that were planted had become these trees, these
banaba
with their purple blossoms, these broad acacia, and these agoho that soared as gracefully as the cypress.

But beyond the
municipio
,
^†
in the wide vacant yard, the ruins of the
Apo
’s house still stood, the broken brick walls covered with
cadena de armor.
^‡
No one had cleared the wide yard, and it was completely shrouded with weeds. The Rich Man’s relatives had never visited Rosales, not after what had happened, and it was just as well that the old brick mansion was never rebuilt, for now these very ruins were here to speak a stern language, a warning and a vicious reminder of a past that could be conjured still. What an arrangement it was then—the municipal building, the Rich Man’s house, the whitewashed monument of Rizal, the stone schoolhouse, and the Catholic church. These were the ageless constructions that made up the Filipino plaza. Now the
hacendero
’s mansion was gone. What would disappear next and what unknown force would demolish the next marker in this ancient grouping?

He did not stay long. His destination was beyond—Cabugawan, the
sitio
his grandfather founded, the corner wherein his father had raised him and told him of other places, of the Ilocos and the frothy sea and of the town of Cabugaw where they all came from. It was after this town in the far-off Ilocos, this ancestral home, that Cabugawan was named. The first settlers had not intended to stop here. They had hoped to cross the Cordillera range to Cagayan Valley, but in Rosales they came across these cogon wastes and still-virgin forest, so they unhitched their bull-carts, unloaded the
sagat
^§
posts of
the houses they had uprooted in the Ilocos, and decided to try their luck in Rosales. The land was kind and the creek that ran through Cabugawan seldom ran dry. In time more Ilocanos came to Rosales. At first they came to help in the cutting of the grain and to glean the already harvested fields, but there was plenty of room for those who wanted to work, and so they lingered to build their own homes and risk the future. Like his grandfather, they did not reckon with the greed of the
ilustrados.
In another generation the settlers had become tenants. The families broke up. Some continued the long march to Cagayan Valley, others dared to cross the sea to the malarial jungles of Mindanao, still others were herded like cattle into cargo ships that took them to the pineapple and sugar plantations of Hawaii and the orange groves of California. But wherever they went they brought with them their traditional industry, thrift, and perseverance, and wherever they sank their posts their communities grew, linking them all with that clannishness they themselves could not explain. Those who stayed behind in Cabugawan were the least fortunate. They were born as tenants and they would die as such, unless they managed to get a little schooling and, with this initial strength, escape the lethargy of Cabugawan, to strike out for the uncertainty of tedious jobs in Manila, to live in dingy
accesorias
, such as those that cluttered Antipolo.

Beyond the houses were clumps of bamboo, and beyond the bamboo were the fields his grandfather had cleared.

Cabugawan was the past and the present, never the future. The immensity of this fact was all around him—the cluster of thatched houses, the smell of slow decay under the kitchens, the manure of pigs and work animals, the broken-down fences.

The house where Emy lived was bigger than most of the houses in the
sitio.
It was roofed with cogon like the rest, but its posts were broad and solid
parunapin
;
^a
and the bamboo for the floor had been carefully selected and dried. Emy’s father, who was his father’s brother, had boasted once that not even termites as big as cockroaches could bite into it. Now, to him whose mind was inured to the broad, soaring dimensions of the city, the house appeared pathetically small, and smaller yet were the houses around it.

The lone dirt road of Cabugawan was quiet. A few pigs grunted
and wallowed in a side ditch. The sun played on the
marunggay
trees and the
gumamela
hedges. Nearing Emy’s house at the far end of the road, his legs became wobbly and his heart thumped so loud he could hear it.

He pushed the bamboo gate and walked up the gravel path. The San Francisco hedge that lined it was taller now. Within the house a figure scurried to the door.

“Manong, come up,” Bettina said happily, going down two rungs of the ladder.

“It’s good to be here,” he said lightly.

He went up with her and at the top of the flight, his eyes still unused to the dimness of corners, he looked around him. At one end of the house, in the kitchen, were the earthen drinking jars, the sooty cubicle where the stoves slumped, and to his right was the living room, its door bright with cotton curtains. Across the shiny bamboo floor two wide sash windows framed dangling pots of begonia. The wall clock on the bare post was no longer ticking. Its pendulum was still. On the sawali
^b
wall that separated the living room from the single bedroom of the house hung Emy’s high school diploma. The whole house smelled clean and lived-in.

Bettina led him to the living room and bade him sit on the rattan sofa by the window. Before him was a glass-topped table with a crocheted doily, an album of pictures, and tattered magazines.

“And Emy?” he asked.

“She’s not at home right now, and I’m glad.” The girl sat beside him. “I’m sorry I ever went to Manila to see you. I shouldn’t have gone at all.”

“It was best that you did.”

Bettina drew away. “No,” she said. “I had to tell her that I saw you. It would change things, I hoped. I doubt it now.”

From the direction of the stairs: “Tina, did Mrs. Salcedo come for her dress? I’m so tired. I couldn’t finish it today.”

Bettina stood up. He followed her to the door but didn’t go beyond the curtains. Emy stood there, big as life, grown older now and slimmer, and on her face were the cares of motherhood that had come too soon.

“Tony, you haven’t changed at all,” she said almost in a whisper, the recognition in her voice dull and empty, as if she did not want to utter his name. She stood there, her hands limp at her sides, her fragile face a shadow of her youth. And in that instant, as the truth clawed at him, he wanted to hold her, to touch her face and trace the lines on it with his fingers, and tilt her chin to feel the warmth of her lips. But it would not be right anymore; he had become another man and was not who he had once been. He had come looking for what he had lost in another time and another land or, perhaps, in his own mind. He could not be sure now. He was sure only of this woman before him, not the girl he had known but a woman who had suffered alone. It was not my fault, it was not my fault, he thought, attempting to exculpate himself.

“Tony,” she repeated, “you didn’t have to come—or believe Bettina.” To her sister, who hovered wordless nearby, she said, serenely: “And you, what is cooking in the kitchen? Oh, you should prepare something, something …”

“I’m not staying for lunch.” Tony wanted to be polite, but Emy would have none of it. She did not even let him finish. She turned, saying, “I must go down and get something for you—a soft drink and, yes, you must have lunch with us.”

She ran down the stairs, her handkerchief pressed to her mouth.

Tony sat back amid the noiseless whirl of welcome. Bettina was enthusiastic again: “I have been reading the things you wrote and, of course, Manang Emy has clipped them all. You should see the scrapbook she made. Ask her when she returns. She locks it in there,” she said, pointing to the
aparador
with a glass door at one end of the living room. “But you haven’t written anything for a long time.”

“A year,” he told her.

“What’s the matter? You don’t have the time anymore?”

“It isn’t that,” he said. Gathering courage, he asked, “How is he?”

“Who?”

“The boy.”

“Pepe? He is fine. But he won’t be here until lunch time. School, you know.”

“What grade is he in?”

“First. A very smart boy. You are not going to teach again?”

“Not anymore,” he said dully.

She betrayed her disappointment. “Manong,” Bettina said, “you should keep on writing.” A hissing sound came from the kitchen and the girl stood up. “It’s the rice I’m cooking,” she said.

She did not join them when Emy returned with a bottle of Coca-Cola. It was warm and it was only out of politeness that he accepted the drink. She sat on the chair opposite him—dear Emy—and her eyes were lustrous.

She spoke naturally and with ease. “Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing? Bettina tells me that you are no longer at the university. And you worked so hard for that job. What are you doing now?” She piled the questions one on top of the other and did not give him much of a chance to talk.

“I’m working in an office,” he said, looking at her, thinking of her as he knew her, and his answers were too concise, but she did not seem to care.

“How long ago did you return? You’ve stopped writing, I heard. No, it’s not your fault. I understand. You said that you wanted to go to Spain. Tell me about Spain. Oh, Tony, you have so many things to tell me. And I’m so eager to hear. Remember all the plans you had, the places you wanted to visit? How you would go sailing up the Volga and the Yangtze if you had your way? How many great rivers did you cross?”

“Not many,” he said. “Yes, I remember all that I told you in Antipolo.”

Then silence came between them, a heavy and meaningful silence.

When she spoke again her voice was wistful. “I’m happy for you. Don’t feel sorry for me. Life is difficult—that’s to be expected. But you know how life in Rosales always is.”

“I had difficult times, too,” Tony said. “There was a winter I almost starved. I had to walk great distances. It was not easy living in America. The fellowship was not enough. I had to work in the summers. It was hard work.”

“I wish I could have helped you,” Emy said with sympathy. “But I couldn’t, Tony. I couldn’t …” and her voice trailed off into silence again.

“I thought of you a lot of times. Many times,” Tony said after a while, and, speaking thus, he could not look at this woman who had borne his child, who had loved him and cherished his memory. “I
couldn’t understand why it turned out this way. I should have come to you right away when I got back. But Manong Bert … when I got home,” he paused and the words knotted in his throat, “he said many things. Manang Betty, too. That you had gone wild. You never wrote to me and it was so easy to believe all that I heard.…”

“Oh, Tony! How could you believe such things?” she said softly and tears filled her eyes. “How could you think of me that way?”

He turned away, unable to look at her. “Forgive me,” he stammered. “Emy, please forgive me.”

She was sobbing quietly now. “Those days,” she said after a while, “I was so alone. I couldn’t tell anyone—no one.” She turned to him, the tears glistening in her eyes. “At first I wanted to have the baby removed. I wanted that desperately. I thought about it. I stayed out late, even hoping that some accident would happen to me. Then I thought of you and how you would feel. And somehow it wasn’t so dark anymore. I knew that someday you would find out, someday you would return. That was why I went home, not caring anymore about what people would think.”

“Believe me,” he said tremulously, Tm sorry. I prayed for you. I thought of you. I was lonely and frightened many times. But when I thought of you …”

Her hand slid into his, but she did not clasp it. Her touch was not a caress. It was just a gesture that she understood. “I always knew that you’d be somebody and that you’d come back important, someone we could all look up to.”

This was Emy—the Emy he knew. She had not quite freed herself from the embrace of an old, banished dream.

“What do the neighbors say?” he asked after a while.