The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (4 page)

It took more than a month for the wounds to heal, and during all this time that he could not lie on his back, he learned to sleep lying on his stomach. When the wounds finally healed, his mother often looked at them and broke into tears again and again.

Not once, however, did he see a sign that the old man was sorry; not once—and it was only years afterward that he realized why his father had whipped him. Then he understood the tortured emotions that had propelled his father to anger and violence. Then, too, were all his suspicions about his father’s incapacity for warmth and understanding dispelled.

The last time he saw the old man seemed ages ago, but the pain that past meetings evoked always seemed raw. When he and his sister first moved to Manila from Rosales after his mother had died, he visited his father frequently—once a week, if he had fare money. Those occasions were planned, and because of the poor provisions of the inmates he always brought something—a new handkerchief, a cake of soap, a piece of fried fish or pie—anything that would improve his life and cheer him up. It was Tony who talked then, recounting freely what was happening to him, his scholarship and the future spread out at his feet, waiting to be reaped. If the conversation turned to Rosales at all, it was with some proprietary feeling and nostalgia that he spoke of home; they would all go back someday and live again among friends and relatives. But soon his visits to Muntinlupa became less frequent, and each had to be prefaced with embarrassed explanations that were, of course, true. After all, Muntinlupa was far from Manila. There was work in the university
and a scholarship that had to be maintained by diligence; he was tired, and when Sunday came he usually slept the whole day and rested for the grind that followed week after week. And then, between the uneasy silences, it was the old man who talked, not about life in prison but about what Rosales could have been, what things they could have possessed.

Tony had always avoided talking about his father. To friends, he had vaguely indicated that his father was dead. He had been greatly troubled that morning filling out his application for the university, but after a pause, he wrote that both parents were dead. He should have been proud to admit that his father was in Muntinlupa; he should have worn his old man’s life sentence like a decoration on his breast: my father did what was right; he killed in righteous anger. How many people could do the same? But the time for heroism had passed; they are no more—the brave men who courted stigma, privation, and even death for their beliefs. In the end, his father did not get what he wanted and it was this, perhaps, that riled the old man most.

There were instances when he was tempted to argue with his father, to tell him that the weapons the old man had chosen were obsolete, but it embarrassed him to do so, for his father spoke from the swirling depths of passion. Perhaps it would have turned out differently if his father had acted with restraint and held back the angry hand. But then the family would not have left Rosales; it would have sunk into the implacable destiny of small towns and he would never have known the colors of autumn, the refreshing mental exercises in the apartment on Maple Street, and, most of all, he would never have met Carmen Villa.

His old man’s sacrifice was not wasted then; it had exiled the family to the sullen warren of Antipolo, and from there, the vision was without limit, and for all this, Tony had his father to thank, an old man tortured with years and blinded with rage, a man who was brave when bravery was not the need, but intelligence—and cleverness.

The street to the penitentiary from the main highway had not changed in the years since he had last visited—the same fruit stalls, dilapidated shops and houses, the same bleak uniformity of small towns. His sister had not told the old man that his scholarship was over, that Tony would soon be home. There were a host of things he
would talk about: the job at the university, that was the first, and then Carmen.

The fortress-like facade of the prison’s main building had been whitewashed, and the hedges and well-trimmed grass that fronted the gate shone in the harsh May sun. The prison’s surroundings were green compared to the dead fields below the high, whitewashed walls. The parked jeepneys and
carretelas
^*
near the gate, the brothers and sons and daughters in their Sunday best crowded around the waiting benches in reception—the day was a fiesta even to him.

He did not wait very long. Shortly after he had filled out the visitor’s form, and given it to the guard at one of the several reception desks, the iron door leading beyond the cement hall opened with a clang.

In the bright light inside the huge visiting pavilion he recognized his father at once, a short man with white hair, past sixty now, with an almost imperceptible stoop. Tony bolted up from the wooden bench and went to his father, who had walked into the airy center of the hall, scanning the faces around him, his face anxious and drawn. How he had changed! Now there was a yellowish pallor in his skin and he no longer held his head high. His orange uniform was not only faded, it was patched and needed washing, and when he moved, he dragged his wooden shoes noisily across the rough cement floor.

He went to his father, whispered hoarsely, “Father,” then he grasped the horned hand and brought it to his lips. I’m back, Father,” he said thickly. “I’m back and I’m glad to see that you are healthy.…”

The old man turned to him; he did not speak at first, but his lips quivered and a mistiness gathered in the hollow, blinking eyes. Holding his father’s hand, Tony led him to the bench at one end of the hall and they sat together. The old man was still wordless but on his face a smile started.

“I thought I would never see you again,” he finally said.

“You knew I would come back.”

The old man nodded. “I know—that I know. But I thought you would come back to claim a corpse.” The old man shook his head. “I do not want to speak like this … but it is the truth. I am glad you
came before I died. I am dying, son.” He was stating a fact that did not need to be glossed over. “But it has been a good life. I see you tall and straight, grown up and able to stand alone. Your sister is well—how I would like to see my grandchildren! It has been a good life, and that takes out some of the sting of death.”

It was the first time the old man had spoken about dying; his father had always talked of past angers or delighted in describing the truck garden he was tending, the milking cow he was pasturing. He had not expected to hear this in his first meeting with his father in six years. “You’ll live to be a hundred,” he said lightly, not wanting to be morbid.

The old man shook his head. “I’m not sad, my son,” he said, his voice grown brittle. Soon he was coughing, a deep raspy cough. When it was over, “And your sister? And her children? She has never brought them to me. Tell her to bring the children, even just once so I can see them before I die.”

“I’ll do that, Father.”

“You have changed.” The old man drew away and looked at his son. “You have grown more stout, and your hands … how soft they have become. Well, what did you bring home from America? What did you do there?” The small, wrinkled eyes seemed serious.

“I studied to be a teacher, just as you said I should,” Tony said.

“I have always been proud of you and your sister,” the old man said, looking away, a new smile lighting up his face. “Many times I’ve been sorry I haven’t shared your life more. I know that you are not proud of me. No one is proud of us—” he paused and swept the hall with a glance; the other inmates in orange uniforms were receiving visitors, too. “But someday you and your sister will understand.”

“Please, Father,” Tony said in feeble protest.

The old man sighed. He leaned against the rough adobe wall and lifted his eyes to the asbestos ceiling. Around them was the noise of people, the happy talk of relatives and children.

“I brought something for you,” Tony said. He took out of his pocket the cigarette lighter he had bought in Hong Kong.

The old man fondled the lighter. “I can’t use it,” he said quickly. “It’s much too good for me. But Bastian—one of the guards, a nice young man who calls me
Ama
—I’ll give it to him and he will be grateful.”

Tony wanted to say no but he nodded instead. “Is there anything
I can do, Father? I’ve made some friends in America who might be able to help us. It is not too late to hope that someday you will be out and …”

The old man reached for his son’s hand and pressed it. “What is there for me to do outside? I won’t live another year, son. And sometimes, if you and your Manang
^†
Betty have time, do come and see me. If you ever go to Rosales again, don’t forget to visit your mother’s grave. And when you get married, try to get one who will stand by you.”

Tony stood up. He had thought about this reunion, had tried to shape the words, all the proper things to say, even if his father was this sorry shadow of a man; this old, withered man who had soaked suffering into his bones and numbness from his years in this prison. “I also came to tell you something very important,” Tony said. “I ask your permission that I may get married soon.”

For awhile they just looked at each other. Then the old man stood up and placed an arm around his son’s waist. “You know very well you don’t have to ask my permission about anything you do. But thank you for honoring me still. Is she like you? Where did you meet her?”

No, she is not like us. She is a Villa and all that the name implies. I met her in Washington; I was lonely and she was kind. It may be a mistake because she is not one of us, but I’m bound to her now and not only by love.

He could not say these words, so he said instead, “She is Tagalog, Father. I met her in the United States and we took the same boat home.”

The old man moved to one of the windows and Tony followed him. Beyond the iron bars, a portion of the penitentiary grounds lay before them, the well-tended grass and the whitewashed walls and, to their right, the rows and rows of
pechay
^‡
and beans—deep green in the sunlight. Prisoners tended the truck garden, and even on this Sunday, which was a visiting day, prisoners in yellow uniforms worked the vegetable plots.

“When will the wedding be?” the old man asked.

“I don’t know, Father,” Tony said. “Maybe in a year, when I have saved enough. I just wanted you to be the first to know. I haven’t told Manang Betty yet.”

The old man looked thoughtful. Again, a smile turned the corners of his mouth. “Of course, you don’t know how much I’d like to be present when you get married. And when you have children, I hope you will be able to understand that I’m not sorry for what I did. If I were given the chance, I’d do it again. There is no other way.”

Tony did not want to argue with his father again, but the old man had started on the ancient recitation that must be listened to, to the end. “I know that you are learned, but some day I hope you can go to Cabugaw. Find your root and my root. I did not start with myself. I had a father, too, and he was a brave man.”

“I know, Father,” Tony said fervently. “Someday I’ll go there.”

“You will find,” the old man continued quietly, “how even your grandfather changed his mind.”

They sat on the bench again. The old man shook his head. “I’ll die soon and that is why you must know what to do in case I die. This is what will happen, son. They will sell my body to a medical school in Manila and students will cut me up. They will learn all about me. But not what is in my heart—they will never find out about that. They will not know what I did in Rosales. No one will know now, no one except you and your mother in heaven and your Manang Betty and those who are in Rosales still. Are you angry that I did what had to be done?”

Tony shook his head. “It is not for me to judge, Father.”

The old man leaned on the cement wall and sighed. He clasped his gnarled hands and spoke almost in a whisper: “That night, I remember. But you were very small then.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Tony said.

“Would you have done what I did?” the old man asked, but he didn’t really care for an answer; he stared at the cement floor, at his handmade wooden clogs with rubber thongs.

Tony did not speak; he had been asked this question many times and the next would fall neatly into place.

“Yes, all those years— All those years that your grandfather and I cleaned the land, all those years …” the voice trembled and Tony thought it would break into a sob. But the old man steadied himself. “We found that the land we cleared and planted was not ours. The
wilderness we tamed was not ours. Nor yours. It was the Rich Man’s, and after all those years … we were his tenants.”

The strong over the weak, intelligence subverting ignorance. “There was nothing you could do, Father,” he said.

The old man said placidly, “Your grandfather’s sweat, my sweat, my blood were mixed with every particle of soil in that land. But they were not satisfied with getting it. They emptied our granaries, too.”

“It’s different now, Father.”

The old man smiled again, then coughed—a deep, thin cough that seemed to wrench life from within him, and he doubled up as one in pain. Tony sidled close to him and hugged the shoulders, the wasted body, until the old man straightened up again. He looked at his son and his eyes were misty.

“Let us not talk like this again, Father,” Tony said.

“All right,” the old man said weakly. “But grant me one last request, son. Don’t let them cut me up. Just promise me that.”

“I’ll do all I can,” Tony said with feeling.

“Take me back to Rosales when I die. Bury me beside your mother.”

“I’ll do that, Father,” Tony said.

“I’m not working in the fields anymore. They have transferred me to the offices and I clean desks and books. My legs and arms feel numb. Pain shoots up my spine. But now that I’ve told you what I want most, I’m glad. And when you get married, bring her to see me. And I hope I’ll see my grandchildren before I die.”

“You will, Father.”

The old man ran a nervous hand across his white hair. The bell above the iron door to the barracks rang. The visiting hour was over. Tony held the horned hand to his lips again. “I’ll come and see you again, Father,” he said as the old man turned away.