The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (31 page)

Two men were up on the tile roof, stringing lines of colored lightbulbs from there to a bough of the acacia tree, on which another worker had nimbly perched himself. The acacia would blaze tonight—like a foundry, as Mrs. Villa described it.

Apparently pleased with the work, Don Manuel sighed. Then, turning to Tony, he put an arm around his son-in-law’s shoulder: “I know,” he said in a jocund voice, “the mill never got your whole-hearted approval.” A slight laugh. “I know that for a fact although you never said it aloud.”

Tony felt embarrassed. “That is not fair, Papa,” he said.

“Don’t apologize. I know you are capable of swearing, and tonight—since there will be a lot of foreigners around—I hope you’ll
stop being so educated and polite. I’d like to hear a few swear words for a change. Don’t think of them as people. Just think of them as business partners.”

“The term is rather misleading, Papa.”

“See what I mean? You don’t approve,” Don Manuel said with a hint of annoyance. “Didn’t we settle this long ago when I asked you to stop teaching? At the salary they were giving you, you were being exploited. I’m glad you changed your mind. I admit that with your connections with the papers and with your own capabilities as a writer …”

“A writer of press releases, Papa.”

“Hell,” the older man laughed, “you can call it what you wish, but I must thank you for the good that you have done. The opposition was terrific but, somehow, you helped allay all the misgivings. In the meantime, just think of tomorrow. The new factory will mean just that: more employment, cheaper goods.”

“Papa,” he said, realizing again how alien, how strange the word sounded every time he disagreed with Don Manuel, “there are other things you can do. Perhaps—this is just a suggestion …”

“Tony, you know very well that you can speak your mind. After all, once my mind is made up, no one—not even your mama—can change it.”

“Well, since you are already in a position to do as you please …”

“Correction, Tony. I’m not in a position to do as I please. A man cannot be a builder and be free. A builder always has to compromise. He has to be friendly with senators and banking officials. That is obvious. Even in America many builders have to depend on government contracts. And government means politicians.”

“There are other ways,” Tony insisted. “Compromise means slavery. If it is not the politicians—the bad ones, I mean—who will control this country, then it will be the Chinese or the Japanese. The Americans already do.”

“Can we escape that?” Don Manuel asked. “Talk to the others who are less fortunate than we. We would all like to be straight, Tony. Would you rather close shop and throw to the streets the many workers who remained loyal to you in the black years when you were not doing well?”

“Still, with courage …”

Don Manuel flopped down on one of the stone benches that
stood on the side of the pathway that led away from the pool. He shook a manicured forefinger at Tony. “Listen to me,” he said sadly. “When you are in business you can’t borrow without collateral. Courage and a good heart—what are these when banks demand figures? Ask Dangmount and Johnny Lee. Why are we partners.”

“Life would be empty if there was no courage in it,” Tony said.

“Yes,” Don Manuel said. “Life and the world would be empty. But think, hasn’t it always been empty since the world began? And do not tell me, as Godo and some of your newspaper friends are insinuating, that our cold-bloodedness was brought here by the Americans and their materialism. Or by the last war and its wantonness. It’s been here since time began. The original sin is as menacing as ever. We are all beasts. There is no man who can claim he isn’t. He can’t have integrity for breakfast. Progress comes not because there are people who are free but because there are people who are happily enslaved by their desire to own Cadillacs.”

“After one has satisfied the baser instincts, one can try to be human,” Tony said with conviction. “But here you’ll be—” the words were difficult in coming, “a dummy.…”

“Is there anything wrong with that?” Don Manuel asked in a voice more surprised than hurt. “I’m after money, am I not?”

“Yes. And Senator Reyes and Lee?”

“They are after money, too, aren’t they? Although, of course, they won’t make as much as I will.”

“And what about Dangmount and the Japanese?”

“The Japanese must expand or die. Do you want another war? With us the losers?”

The older man smiled gravely, then turned and walked back to the terrace. The brief encounter, like others he had had with Don Manuel, was over.

“Is there anything you want in the press release about tonight, Papa?” Tony asked as they mounted the marble steps.

Don Manuel seemed lost in thought. “Just say it’s your mama’s party—and no one else’s. This is purely social.”

By mid-afternoon the whole lawn of the Villa mansion had changed. A minor miracle had transformed the terrace into a stage that was part forge and foundry. Beyond the swimming pool, gleaming
posts of aluminum shone in the sunlight, and along the paths and at the base of the acacia trees were bundles of tinsel-covered lamps. The members of the household staff—all of them—were on the lawn, arranging the tables and the drinking glasses. In a shed, at the far end of the garden, coolers were stationed, and beside them were piled cases of Coca-Cola and San Miguel Beer.

Carmen was not in when he returned from the office. And, somehow, he did not miss her. Mrs. Villa was at home and she had lunch with him—a quiet lunch—then she went to her beauty shop where she would spend the whole afternoon until she was ready for the evening’s show.

Tony wanted a nap, but the air-conditioning would not let him. The coolness sharpened his mind, and he welcomed this sharp edge, which had long been denied him. It was here, in the solitude of this room, that he must recapture the discipline he had abjured. He strode to his desk and lifted the cover of the electric typewriter. He switched it on, then started to work on the manuscript he had left the night before.

On the paper he had already written: “There is something in the future of the Ilocano that renders him capable of sacrifice. Of all the ethnic groups in the country, he is endowed with the most protestant ethos. This has been superbly illustrated, of course, in the heroic figures of Isabelo de los Reyes and Gregorio Aglipay, who founded the Philippine Independent Church. With this capacity for sacrifice the Ilocano has thus given himself a vision of life, and it is generally a tragic vision.

“The Ilocano has two alternatives: survival or suicide. Almost always he chooses the former. The latter comes only after he has pondered all the constrictions that enfeeble him and learned that there is no other way. If, however, he finds a small hole—even though it is no bigger than the eye of the needle—he will still try …”

He sat back and turned the thought over in his mind: sacrifice, sacrifice. How did his grandfather come to live in Rosales, how did the family flee the barren land of the Ilocos after they were persecuted by the Spaniards? They ended up being enslaved by the very hungers and the oppressors they had sought to flee from—the mestizos, the
ilustrados
who knew the arts of government and deception.

This was what he had always wanted to write about—the fleeing, the struggling away from a beginning that somehow always
caught up with the runaways in the end. These are the truths, but what can a man do? The limitations are everywhere and a man has but two puny hands and a brain that sometimes cannot function well because it has been fouled up by the excesses of the heart itself.

Tony did not add anything to what he had already written. He studied the page, then got up and lay down on the wide bed. The pink chandelier reflected bits of the afternoon sun. Above the low, steady hum of the air-conditioner the pounding of the carpenters still at work below came to him, reminded him that tonight would be the most important event in the life of Don Manuel. This was the beginning, “the dawn of a new era.” Tony dwelt on the cliché, but he knew, too, that as far as he was concerned, the new factory of the Villas was neither beginning nor end. It was a form of bondage, and the factory would continue to be such as long as he stayed in this wonderful prison cushioned with Carmen’s love.

Love—the thought rode on his mind. Was it really love? When they met in Washington, was it not loneliness for him and rebellion for her that had brought them together?

He finally dropped off to sleep, and when he woke up the room was already darkening and the sounds of working carpenters had ceased. He went to the washroom and freshened up, then changed into a gray polo shirt with red printed flowers.

Out in the hall the flowers had arrived—mountains of them—dahlias, gladioli, orchids, bunches of roses, and Benguet lilies in wicker baskets, all of them with ribbons and cards. A sickening fragrance, almost funereal, clogged his nose. He picked up one of the envelopes. It was from one of his father-in-law’s poker cronies, a former cabinet man, and it said, “
Compadre
, may the smelting be good.”

A maid came down and started hauling the flowers out to the tables, which were now draped with red linen. He asked if Carmen had already arrived. No, the señorita had not shown up yet.

“Well, when she comes,” Tony said, “tell her that I’m going downtown and that I’ll probably call her from there later. She knows where I’m going.”

The newspaper office pulsed with life. It was always in a state of frenzy at seven in the evening, for by this time the reporters had started filtering in with their stories. All the typewriters clacked and there was more alacrity and more tension in the movement of all the people at the desk. A few greetings, a few remarks about the heat of the office, then he shuffled out of the newsroom to an equally warm cubicle beyond it, where Godo and Charlie worked.

They were waiting for him and were apparently getting bored, for the moment he showed up, Godo greeted him in his usual boisterous manner. “Hell, how can we see the girls at their cleanest when you come in after every damned son-of-a-bitch with twenty bucks has visited them?”

He laughed Godo off: “I really don’t see why we have to go out when we can go to my in-laws’ place.” He always regarded home with guarded distance—my in-laws’ place.

“I know that the drinks there will be superior. No imitation Scotch. The food will be from the best caterer in town, too, and the women—why, they are also the best bitches in town. But I’m a snob, Tony, a reverse kind of a snob.” Godo was perorating again. “You can have all your Scotch and your rich, clutching women, but this is one time we have to pay for the fun. It’s more satisfying. It doesn’t make you feel obligated to anyone, be they society matrons or racketeering tycoons.”

“Cut the speech,” Charlie said, rising from his swivel chair. “This is my execution.”

The bantering continued for a while, then Tony remembered Carmen and he picked up the telephone and dialed the private line to their room. Carmen answered. She sounded matter-of-fact and wanted to know if he would return in time to catch the tail-end of the party.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “You know how it is. Charlie’s last night as a bachelor …”

She grumbled about his bad manners, then he said, feeling a little peeved himself, that he would be home as soon as his party was over.

He returned the telephone to its cradle. “Well, that’s that,” he turned to his friends with a look of triumph. “Now the evening is all ours.”

Godo looked at Tony thoughtfully. His balding head shone in
the light and the creases on his brow deepened. “That’s the example you are setting before one who is about to join the herd? Sometimes I wonder if you are really happy, Tony. You get ordered around, writing releases for your in-laws. You don’t believe all that rot, do you.”

Tony turned away and the air suddenly felt watery. The words gouged at him until it seemed impossible for him to retain a secret thought, and his innermost cerebrations were in the open, raw and exposed. He balled his fists and under his breath he said, “Damn you and damn your pretensions! You’d give your right arm to be in my place.”

And then he regretted every word the moment all had tumbled out.

An uncomfortable silence, and Charlie, his small voice sharp as a blade, said, “Now, both of you, this is supposed to be my evening, so let’s get moving.”

They stood up and morosely went down the flight of stairs to the dusty street, where they got into a cab. Conversation was bare. In Ermita they entered the first bar they saw.

Godo, toying with his glass of beer, started it again. “You should have married your cousin Emy, Tony. That was your mistake. You should have carried her off, then lived—just the two of you.”

“You are dreaming,” Tony said curtly. “This country is so small that you can’t hide a needle in it.”

“I’m sure it would have turned out better for you,” Godo insisted.

“Don’t talk like that,” Tony said, shaking his head. “It’s bad enough as it is.”

The name, loved and lingering yet, stirred the imperishable hurt. His head slightly dizzy with drink, he drifted again to another place and time, to that high noon in Rosales when, after seven long years, he finally saw Emy and the boy, her son, his son—Emy braving everything, the world, because these were her real treasures: faith and courage and this boy who might someday grow to loathe him, to spit at the very mention of his name. He did not tell them what had happened long ago in that small wooden house by the railroad tracks in Antipolo, the Igorot blanket that was flung across the room that he and Emy shared.