The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (60 page)

It is one of those inexplicable ironies that one’s friends are often unknown till one is dead. “Did you know, Pepe,” Roger was saying as if he were revealing a secret, “Toto and I … we both came from the Hospicio?”

I nodded. “Will you avenge his death?”

“We will not be still until that is done,” Roger said, his oily face grim, the pugnacity wrung out of him. A murmur of assent sprang around us.

“I will help you do that,” I said.

“Do you know who killed him?” They clustered around me, smelling strongly of sweat, their tattoos glistening in the light.

I nodded. “It was not a soldier nor a policeman, Roger.”

“Don’t make a fool of me,” he raised his voice.

“I don’t intend to,” I said. “I am trying to tell you that avenging Toto is very difficult, and what you have in mind is futile, even childish.”

I then proceeded to tell them as simply as I could about Toto’s involvement with the Brotherhood—the reasons for his commitment, how our enemies wanted to discredit us, how these same enemies created this vast miasma, this Barrio, from which we would never escape if we did not do what should be done.

“You will have your revenge, and it will be sweet, but only if you don’t make it personal, if you are organized, if you join us.”

I wanted to give Roger what was left of the Brotherhood money so that they could buy refreshments for the wake, but Roger refused it. They would do that on their own, and it would only be the beginning. The beginning.

Two elderly nuns came that night, their burdens imprinted on their faces, and one cried like a child. I remembered Toto’s stories about his boyhood, how each of the orphans had his favorite nun and how difficult it was to get her attention, for the orphans numbered more than a hundred. He did not know then what it was to own new clothes, for with the exception of what was their “best” for church or for going out, all their clothes were hand-me-downs. But at least they ate three times a day.

We buried Toto the following morning in a small plot that belonged to the Church in La Loma. Some of our classmates and officers of the Brotherhood came. I was grateful that Professor Hortenso and his wife were present, and with them was Juan Puneta, the scholar, heir to millions, blasé and elegant, a member of the famous Puneta family of philanthropists, educators, and businessmen. He wanted us to ride in his Continental—a big, black car with a khaki-uniformed chauffeur, but Father Jess demurred, he would be with Toto’s friends; so Puneta joined us in the jeepney that followed the hearse.

Lily and Roger stared at Juan Puneta in his white double-knit suit, which he did not remove although it was warm and all of us were already perspiring.

“How did it happen?” he asked no one in particular. Father Jess pointed to me. “He was there. Pepe knows, he is on the National Directorate of the Brotherhood.”

Juan Puneta looked at me, his eyes noncommittal. He was in his
late thirties. His Tagalog was poor, maybe because he spoke Spanish and English more. “Yes, Professor Hortenso told me about you,” he said in a flat voice. “And they are all good things,” he smiled. “How did it happen? Oh, damn the police, damn the Metrocom.”

“He was one of the first to get hit,” I said. “We were not at the head of the demonstration, we were way back, but we had gone out front when we stalled. Then the firing started—we do not know where it came from.”

“The Metrocom, who else?” he said bitterly. “The police. They have guns, don’t they?”

I did not speak. “The bullet hole,” I said, afterward, “is just below his left breast. He died before he could get to the hospital. Loss of blood—that is what the doctor said.”

“Damn the Metrocom. You should fight back. You should be armed.” Puneta was gesticulating to no one in particular. He had started to perspire and the sweat glistened on his pallid forehead. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and daubed his forehead primly, then folded the handkerchief carefully and placed it back.

Lily wept when Toto was lowered into the grave. As Father Jess blessed the casket, tears misted my eyes. I felt this weight crushing my chest, and I could not breathe. When it was over, I decided to stay behind to watch the
cantero
smooth out the cement that marked the grave. I spelled out the inscription he would etch on it:
Augusto Salcedo. 1951–1970. The Brotherhood Honors You.

Lily, who would not be off to her massage parlor in Makati till noon, stayed with me. It was almost eleven when the job was done and we walked to one of the greasy
lechon
restaurants in La Loma. She was silent in the cemetery. Now, she asked, “Pepe, do you like that Puneta?”

Her question startled me: “Why do you ask? It is the first time I ever saw him. But I have heard of him; he was talked about in one of the National Directorate meetings. He contributes to the Brotherhood, you know.”

She was silent for a while. “It is not good money,” she said. “I don’t trust him.”

“There is no dirty money, Lily,” I said.

“I know him.”

To my look of surprise, she smiled: “No, he does not know me at all. But he comes to the Colonial—almost every day. He is
syoki.
”

“He is married,” I said, remembering his elegant society wedding, how his family and three children were featured in magazines, riding horses, target-shooting.

“That does not make a difference,” she said. “He is
syoki.
When he goes to the Colonial, he never has a massage. He has a ‘regular’ and she never gives him one—or ‘sensation’ him. She just sits there and tells him of the men she has handled. And you know what he does? He goes to the shower, to the steam room when the traffic is heaviest, he just goes there pretending to shower when really he is enjoying himself, looking.”

“You are too imaginative,” I said. “You should write for
Liway-way.
”

“This is the truth,” she said. “A month at the Colonial and you have a lifetime, ten lifetimes, of sex education. All sorts of men and we … we talk about them, compare experiences, and have a good laugh now and then.”

“I will never go there then.”

“Good for you,” she said.

I did not have any appetite and neither did she. Toto was too much on our minds.

“Toto was in love with me,” Lily said.

“I love you, too.”

“I did not reciprocate, and he realized that. But he was a good friend, though he seemed distant. And now he is dead and I never got to know him very well, to really thank him for the many things he had given my mother, my brothers and sisters. Did you know, Pepe, he paid Boyet’s tuition fee last year?”

I was not surprised.

Lily decided not to go to the Colonial. “Let us go to a place where we can be alone and forget the Barrio.”

“To a movie,” I suggested. I had money and this time I would spend on her.

“No,” she said. “I have never been to the zoo. Let us go there.”

It was past noon. We boarded a jeepney for Quiapo. From Plaza Miranda on to Plaza Santa Cruz the sidewalks were plastered with our posters, and plywood shutters were now over all the shop windows. Garbage was piled on Plaza Miranda, and Carriedo was taken over by sidewalk vendors. In Avenida we boarded another jeepney for Mabini.

The zoo was almost deserted; we had a bench and the greenery to ourselves. Lily had looked at the giraffes and elephants with perfunctory interest. She wanted to talk.

“I did what you told me,” she finally said. “I took Mother and the young ones out. We went by taxi to the Luneta. For fresh air, I said. Toward evening we went to the Aristocrat and had fried chicken. We were very happy … then I told Mother. The young ones were too busy eating to listen.”

“What did she say?”

“She cried, right there in the restaurant, not loud, the tears just falling down her cheeks. She said I was the best person to decide, that she would pray no harm would come to me, that I would remain honorable.”

“You will have difficulty doing that, Lily. You are on a precipice, just one nudge and you will keel over.”

“I know,” she said sadly.

“You have known how it is to be embraced by a man. What happens when you have a customer you like, and you are there … in the dark?”

“It has not happened yet.”

“But it will happen!”

Silence, the bustle of children nearby, the tinkle of an ice cream vendor’s bell.

“I wish I could have you stop, Lily.”

She held my hand.

“When we are together like this, are you Number Seventeen or yourself?”

“I am myself, of course,” she said, eyes flashing. “I know you are not trying to
garaje
me.”

“I cannot afford it.”

“It is not that. I would not let you.”

“Because you do not care.”

Tenderness in her eyes, she opened her mouth as if to speak, but she stopped. After a while, she asked quietly, “What is it you really want from me? Do not joke now. Everyone who has been to the Colonial wants one thing.”

I wanted to assure her I was no different, that I wanted her, but I could not bring myself to tell her this although I was sure she knew.

“You will only leave me dangling,” she continued.

“I am not impotent!”

“That is not what I meant,” she said quickly. “You know, there will be many things on our minds, I will be thinking of my past, my job, how it will be, and it will not be enjoyable anymore.”

“I try to live for now,” I said.

“I have my mother, my brothers and sisters.”

“I know.”

“With us, nothing serious, that’s all.”

“I cannot be flippant with you,” I said. “I am sincere. Remember that.”

“But why me?” she asked. “There are so many girls in your school. They are not unwed mothers, and they do not have families to support. And most of all, they don’t work in massage parlors where they give sensation to six, eight men every day—old men, teenagers, businessmen. Why me? Why can you not be clear-headed?”

“I am.”

“Then keep away from me.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” she said, but without conviction.

I kissed her hand that had grasped a hundred penises.

“I don’t understand, Pepe,” she said.

“It’s fate.”

I was silent for a while, contemplating her face, the sad eyes, the small pert nose, the lips, and the soft line of her jaw.

“Ramona,” I breathed.

“What?”

“I am dreaming again,” I said. “Even with people, I sometimes forget I am here, here in Manila, here in this Barrio, here.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“Do not laugh. Ever since I was young I have always held one girl in my heart. You know, those crushes when you are a teenager. But this one has lasted.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She is dark brown—very
kayumanggi
,
^b
as they say. Usually, the girl boys dream of are fair, mestiza.”

“But she is dark.”

“Yes, as dark as you. I will recognize her when I see her.”

“You mean you have not met her?”

“Yes, I have—but here, only in my mind.”

“Something like an ideal?”

“More than that. She is very real to me. I can hear her voice, and it is melodious and soft. I can see her, slim but not thin. And her breasts are small. She is slightly bowlegged. And her skin is clear and richly toned. And her eyebrows are unplucked.”

“But she does not exist.”

“She does, here,” I gestured toward my breast.

“
Ligaw tingin, kantot hanging.
^c
But this is worse because she does not even exist,” she sighed.

“I told you, she is here.”

“How did you first meet her?”

“In some melody Mother hummed when I was young. Ramona—if only she would be real someday.”

“Ramona—she even has a name. But it isn’t a very romantic name.”

“It is to me.”

“How did she get that name?”

“I don’t know all the words, ‘I hear the mission bells above … I dread the dawn when I wake to find you are gone …’ ”

“She isn’t here,” she said. “But I am.”

“And so is the night,” I said, “and it is a long, long night.”

“What are you trying to say?”

How could I tell her? Describe the murk where I had been, in my mind more than in what was around us?

“The world is dark,” I said, instead. Her hand tightened on mine. The sun blazed down, a boy selling ice cream came to us, but we did not want any. She had a new wristwatch, it was almost four. We had clung to words as if they were nuggets of wisdom, but the only truth was that we were together in this dismal place. How does the song go? “It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away …” And now, while I was rich with words, I could not speak the right ones to impress upon her that sitting on this edge of perdition or clinging to this razor’s edge, as the old saying goes, is our only alternative.

A
lthough Auntie Bettina said I could be a scholar if I only tried, I was surprised to get the highest grades and to be eligible for free tuition in the next school year. There would be two months of Brotherhood inactivity; we would not have any demonstrations till June or July when the universities would be full again and most of our members had returned to Manila from the provinces. I also found out that I had a talent for Spanish, and I studied it in the summer session, determined that after those two months—by June—I should at least be able to understand and converse a bit in it.

My determination was wrought out of anger. When I met Betsy, although I had already had a year of Spanish—grammar and such—I still could not speak the language. She was born to it; her family spoke it at home, together with English, Visayan, and Tagalog.