The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (38 page)

He stood up and lingered before the window. He could not see what lay beyond the glass, for the light of the table lamp diffused all images in the room. He turned the lamp off and the images before him jumped out—the lights of the ships that sat in the bay, the acacia trees brooding over the boulevard, the glistening mercury lamps, and the star lanterns of the shops and eateries. It suddenly seemed strange that he was here, alone in this distant, tropical land now undergoing the turmoil of change. How will it end? Lawrence Bitfogel wanted to divine the answer, and what immediately formed in his mind was unpleasant. But the big men he had met tonight were not representative of the race, for there were also other people to consider—the Gay Blades, for instance—and there was the pervasive malleability of the race itself that could always absorb a shock or be relied upon in a moment of need. Yes, the Villas and the Reyeses were not representative, but unless they were changed, and made impotent, weren’t they the people who controlled the country? Wealth dictates government, and in this fair Oriental land, wealth resided in a few hands, in the hands of people like Manuel Villa and Ben de Jesus.

And where were the young people like Antonio Samson, who had gone to the United States and to its fountainhead of wisdom if not of courage? They were destroyed because they were bribed. And because they were destroyed, the country and the beneficent change they would have brought were lost. The future that once seemed
evocative and real when it was but an academic subject to be tossed around in a crowded room on Maple Street had been aborted in the dank bowels of the earth. Knowing the dark immensity of this fact, Larry felt all joy leave him. A tautness clutched at his heart, and in the quiet of this room he could hear his own grief welling up. He thought of Tony, fought back the tears that scalded his eyes, and when they stopped, when his hands were no longer shaking, he had one consolation left: he had told Ben de Jesus just what he thought.

He could not quite understand why the young businessman had been needlessly riled by the Gay Blades after they had helped change the tire. When they arrived at the hotel, Ben had checked the car’s hubcaps. As for the youngsters with those outlandish uniforms, he had dismissed them: “Juvenile delinquents, that’s what they are. They would have robbed us, too, of more than just the hubcaps if they had a chance. See what’s happening to our young people? They go about in the craziest costumes and they have lost all sense of respect.”

“I’m glad they came along,” Lawrence Bitfogel had said.

Now that he thought about the Gay Blades some more, and of their singing on the road just outside Pobres Park, he marveled at their capacity to improvise. The bass fiddle, for instance, and that jeepney they rode in, that omnipresent carrier in the narrow streets of Manila, gaudily painted, driven by impious individualists, rakishly modern with chrome and the most atrocious-looking fins—where else could one find something like it but in a country where ingenuity thrives and where the young people are capable of almost anything?

But de Jesus had chosen not to look at it that way, and he had snorted instead. “They are thieves, and they will kill you if you don’t give them what they want.”

It was then that Lawrence Bitfogel could not hold back the anger coiled within him, and when it sprang, it was clear and loud: “Damn you! Those kids are not thieves. The robbers in this country, the real murderers, are people like you. All of you—you conspired, you killed Antonio Samson. Why, the poor guy didn’t have a chance! You had snuffed out his life before he could fling himself on the tracks!”

He had left them speechless in the driveway, in the shadow of the acacias that fronted the hotel, and he did not even close the door of the car. He had raced up to his room and, alone at last, he had
cried—something he had not done in years. Now, when was it that he had cried last? Was it when his father died? In a way he was glad that he had spoken his mind when the need for it finally came. This thought, though it all seemed so futile afterward, brought back to him that sense of peace that had eluded him all through the frantic evening. And he knew that if Tony Samson were aware of this, if Tony had seen him and heard him speak out loud, that dear old friend would have applauded.

—
Marquina, Vizcaya

June 1, 1960
        

They lied to us in their newspapers, in the books they wrote for us to memorize in school, in their honeyed speeches when they courted our votes. They lied to us because they did not want us to rise from the dungheap to confront them. We know the truth now; we have finally emptied our minds of their lies, discovered their corruption and our weaknesses as well. But this truth as perceived by us is not enough. Truth is, above all, justice. With determination then, and cunning and violence, we must destroy them for only after doing so will we really be free.…

—J
OSÉ
S
AMSON
,
Memo to Youth

M
y name is Samson. I have long hair, but there is nothing symbolic or biblical about it; most people my age just have it as a matter of inclination, and nobody really cares. My long hair is a form of self-expression, of a desire to conform, to be with
them.
It is a measure of my indifference to remarks, even to Father Jess’s, to which I had countered that Christ had long hair and if God had intended us not to have it, He would not have given the likes of me a shaggy mane. I could let it grow down to my shoulders so I could tie it in a knot and then shave most of it off, leaving just a lock, a pigtail, such as Chinese gentlemen did generations ago. And look at the Chinese now, at Chairman Mao, whom so many of us revere—but it would perhaps only set me off as a freak, and that is not what I want, for I desire to be anonymous, to be simply the me nobody knows, for this me, this José Samson, a figure of no-good plastic that should be burned or buried under tons of scum. But plastic seems to survive all sorts of punishment. Please, I have self-respect and I know my sterling potential and what I am worth (which isn’t much), but this is how I was, this is what I am, how Mother knows me, and cutting my hair would not erase my stigma, my shame, or dim the glaring blunders of my past.

My name is Samson, and I have always known I was different no matter how often Mother had repeated to me, shrieked at me, or told me in soothing and dulcet words that I have an honorable name. But José Samson, Pepe, Pepito, Joe Samson is simply, honestly, irrevocably, and perhaps resolutely a bastard. It is not difficult to bear this indelible yet invisible tattoo, but not an Igorot facial emblem or a deep, keloid surgical scar can erase—thank God (do I utter His name in vain?)—the origins that have not been wrought on my face, nor deformed my physical being. Yet this is me, unerring in the devastation of the inner self.

Sometimes, I wish I were never born.

Still, I like being here, transfixed on this plain, this vast limbo without rim called living. I like being here, feeling the wind and the sun upon my skin, the fullness of my stomach, and the electric surge of an orgasm—now that I know it.

The only times I was really depressed was when I filled out those awful forms which demanded that I name my father and I would put “deceased.” As far as I was concerned he died long ago because I never knew about him then, although Mother—and she is an honorable woman—loves him still, his memory. Auntie Bettina, too—she worships him though she never told me who he was no matter what wiles I used. The way they had quarreled, Mother always telling her to shut up for my sake. I knew Auntie Bettina had known him well, that something in the dark shriveled past went awry. No, as Auntie had hinted, it was not Mother’s fault, nor anyone else’s. It was in the stars, written with precision and clarity, infallible and inescapable, this, my damnation: to be in Cabugawan forever, a destiny that would hound me because a crime had been committed not by my mother and her sister but by my father. I need no proof of this, for I am here, wearied and rotting with self-pity and misshapen under a burden too heavy to bear.

Yet I am Sagittarius, and I am supposedly easygoing and frivolous. The planets cannot chain me to any spot for I am fated to strike out, but to where? Is Tondo any better? Here, where for a year I have lived and known this warren of tin shacks and fouled air as I knew Cabugawan, too? But I am no bastard here; no shadow hounds me, for I am Pepe the scholar, the loyal comrade who will rise to any challenge, scour faraway places, and if I choose to be a priest, I would certainly be archbishop, or if I veer the other way, I would be
the czar of crime of the barrio, mightier than Roger will ever be. After all, I organized the Brotherhood here, extracted the mindless ferocity from the gang and gave it a purpose other than thievery and drinking bouts. With this Brotherhood, I showed them how they could extort gin money, contributions for the fiesta from flinty politicians in the name of charity, civic pride, and all those shibboleths that plastic nationalists swear by.

My career as a politician is assured if I so decide to become one, that is what Father Jess had said, shaking his ponderous head at the prospect. But I will never be a politician. Though interested in people, I detest being friendly to those I feel no vibes with, not because I am not hypocritical, which I easily can be, but because it takes so much effort, so much violence to one’s self to attempt friendliness where there is nothing but indifference or contempt. Sagittarius—I am friendly—this is my nature; I am open to anything. I have a mind like a sponge that absorbs oil, water, muck, and dirt, a cast-iron stomach; I eat anything. They also say I am an achiever, that I can do what I set my mind to; in the two years I have been in Manila, what wonders have I done to my mind, to my body, to me? Two years—how many light years is it to the nearest galaxy, and even if we got there, in the end, will the trip be worth it? How long did it take the pterodactyl to disappear from the swamp, for the diamond to be? A baby feeds on its mother’s womb for nine months and is strangled slowly after birth because it does not have milk or proteins. Does it make any difference if it dies in nine months or before the age of nine? I have long known that time is an enemy rather than a friend, a deceiver, because it lulls us into thinking it can solve everything and, therefore, nothing. So it has been two years here in Manila, and what can I show for those years? Calloused knuckles of a novice karatista, the muddled brain of an aspiring politician?

If I deprecate myself too much, then this is also my nature, for I really cannot understand myself sometimes. For instance, why was I glad to leave Cabugawan where I was born, where I knew people and where people had been good to me? I don’t know why I had been unkind to Auntie Bettina and to Mother most of all, for it had never been my intention to hurt them, but that was what I did when I left.

Home. But where is home to this free mind, to this heart that throbs and expands beyond its prison of flesh? I could very well forget this home, this blob of black upon the green side of the earth; here, where dreams are slaughtered, and having buried them, I could strike out to other reaches and lift myself away from this Cabugawan, this enclave to which I was doomed as were those before me—those stunted people from the North who first came to this village and are now but memories, their presence ever with us when we talk before our meager meals, when we unfold the buri mats and prepare for the night. They hover around us, their remembered images blurred by years—uncles and aunts and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, their names, their lineage, their ghosts drifting up the grass roof with the soot and smoke of the kerosene lamp, and out into the night. Who are they but names of old men who fought with bolos, whose blood washed this land and whose bones are now embedded in the soil, their hatreds forgotten and unresolved, their ambitions unresurrected by those they left behind, certainly not by me, least of all, who could fancy an armalite spraying the sky not in anger but in wonderment that I could ever possess a two-thousand-peso toy and, with it, perhaps rob some bank so that once and for all I would finally be away from this blob of black, this home.…