The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (66 page)

“How will I recognize betrayal?”

“You cannot. Nor will you be warned, unless by some intuition you know that something is going to happen. Feelings are easy to hide. It is not like poverty, which you cannot hide. And when it happens the first time, you will be so surprised it happened at all. It will take some time for you to recover from it, that is if the treachery has not disposed of you physically.”

“What makes men traitors?”

Ka Lucio shook his head. “How can I tell? A hundred reasons, as many as there are men and causes and leaders. It could be envy, money, a woman, pride, hurt feelings, or just plain human cussedness.”

“Tell me about the first time it happened to you,” I asked.

Ka Lucio’s thin face darkened. He shook his head slowly as if wanting to dam the flood of memories that had come. Then, almost in a whisper: “It is too painful to talk about,” he said. “In that ambush, if we had not been more alert, we would all have been killed. But my wife was not so fortunate.” Again, silence. “How did they know we were going to take that route, on that day, at that hour? It was not luck. At least a dozen men knew we were going to pass that way and at least half of them were not with us. So, if you are to lead, lead alone. The general idea you must relay to everyone, but the details you must keep to yourself.”

“But that is so basic, Ka Lucio,” I said.

“Yes, but we forget the basic things. We become overconfident; we think we have done right. It is the details, the small ones, that get us.”

“How did you lose your caution?”

“You live with people. You share the same dangers every day. You think you can trust everyone, you become vulnerable. You start pouring yourself out. You are flattered—oh, not the obvious kind, but small things that imply you are doing well and you are loved. You are the source of all wisdom, of all hope. Without you the whole effort crumbles. The salvation of the group—no, the whole country—depends on you. These make good wine and soon you are drunk. Not so much in believing these things, but knowing that you are esteemed. Respected, ha! That is the final accolade. We really do not look for love from people; we look for respect. Love, that is reserved for the gods. Those who are loved can expect to be hurt and be forgiven their mistakes. That is the nature of love. But those we respect—they are harsher, more demanding. We lose respect for a man and that man is dead. It is enough, I think, that we are believed.”

“How do you avoid deception?”

Ka Lucio was silent again. “I do not know,” he finally said. “I suppose there is no way one can avoid it. But there is one way by which one can make deception and perfidy not the end, but the beginning. I think that with our brothers we should be sincere. Love and respect everyone so they will have little cause for anger. This means looking at their problems in their minutest and protecting them from the embarrassments that come with their shortcomings.
Be a strict disciplinarian but compassionate in the dispensation of punishment.”

“You cannot do that,” I said. “Punishment is always harsh, or it isn’t punishment.”

“But one can forgive.”

“And lose in the end.”

“No,” Ka Lucio said grimly. “That was what the Communists did, and they lost. I was against discipline without compassion, but they said no. They executed one of my commanders for being away from his post—iron discipline, they said. And do you know what he did that they knew but could not forgive? He went to his village to visit his wife who was going to have a baby—their first. It was unfortunate that in his absence there was an encounter. They also executed one of my aides. He was short of funds, it is true, but what they did not consider was that he had given the money to a brother whose wife was going to have an operation. You have to know the details and look at them with your heart, not with a book of rules.”

“Still, you lost in the end,” I insisted. “Like the Colorums, maybe you believed the entire country would rise with you. The same with the Sakdals
^*
—they believed they would also have the whole nation with them merely because most of our people were poor like them.”

“We did not win that particular struggle,” Ka Lucio said, “but as you very well know, we have formed a continuity, a tradition. We did not really lose. We were just humiliated. And I will tell you why they were able to batter our defenses and sap our strength. They used our ideas, our words, to win the people who were our best friends. No, they did not defeat us; it is painful for me to admit and count one by one what we inflicted on ourselves. They had only to offer a little reward, the promise of some land no bigger than a man’s palm. They only had to come with a few artesian wells, a few roads, and a few tins of sardines—and the people were bought. You see, we offered them less in their eyes, although in their minds they knew it was more. But what is a man’s life that would be sacrificed for them? Honor, courage, loyalty—these are all very good, but they cannot buy a
ganta
†
of rice, and that is what they needed. Not beautiful words for their stomachs nor beautiful thoughts for their brains. A
Mexican—Zapata, I think—once said, ‘Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’ You’d be surprised how many would rather eat gruel on their knees.”

Back at the
kumbento
, I mulled over what Ka Lucio had said. Always, Betsy came to mind, her defenselessness when I said “I am the masses.” Was she the enemy? How could I ever think of her that way? She was in the same demonstration as Toto and me; she could have been killed like two other girls who were in that same demonstration. There were many questions I wanted to ask her, but I kept them to myself, flattering myself that she wanted me for what I am. She was the only one, aside from Toto, who knew Antonio Samson was my father; was she really convinced that he had committed suicide? And if she was, would she want to have a
malas
in her family, too? She would be a masochist if that was what she wanted. I had to see her again, my arms ached to hold her again. She was the dream I could never afford; if she gave herself to me, it would be charity.

Charity—then it struck me! She attended to me because she pitied me, and I could not accept that from anyone, not from Professor Hortenso, not even from Father Jess. For the first time at this old age of twenty-four, I found out that I did not want it, would never want it, that I was José Samson, strong enough to be alone, to fling damnation at everyone. I may have come from world’s end—Cabugawan—immersed myself in stench, stolen, and lied, but I am me, honest with myself. That is all I had to be; when I saw her again, I would tell her. Suddenly I felt a great desire to go home.

My desire was prophetic. As I was serving Father Jess’s lunch, Roger came. “There is a woman looking for you, Pepe,” he said. “She was all over the Barrio, looking for the church—and you. She says she is your aunt.”

Father Jess told me to prepare another plate and have her come in and lunch with us. I expected Tia Betty, maybe with a letter or an important message from home, but it was Auntie Bettina, and when she saw me, she broke down immediately.

“Pepe, your mother is dead.”

It was as if someone had struck me; my stomach churned and became a bag of cold air, my feet became pillars of lead, and my breath was being choked out of me. “No, Auntie, no!” was all I could mumble. I should cry, but no tears sprang to my eyes, only this dazed feeling, this heaviness upon my chest. I am a worthless son, an ingrate—the most terrible loss—I was not my mother’s son but the worthless bastard that I am, because I could not cry.

Tia Bettina did not eat. “I am sorry, Father,” she said. “I have to go back. There is no one at home but the neighbors and distant relatives.”

Father Jess—I will always be indebted to him—stood up without taking his dessert. “Eat quickly, Pepe,” he said. “I will go to your town with you.”

I was going home after two years, and in those two years, I had perhaps written only ten times, telling her what I was doing, that I already earned a little money, that she should no longer save for me. I even sent her a copy of the essay that had won me a job on the school paper. I never told her of the demonstrations that I had participated in, of Toto being killed; I never told her that I now knew who my father was.

The bus was not crowded, for it was a local run and not the express to Dagupan. Father Jess and Auntie Bettina sat together in front; I had the seat behind them to myself, listening, Father Jess telling her about the Barrio, what I did, that I had become a scholar. Her eyes became swollen from crying, but she turned to me, smiling; yes, I had not disappointed her after all, and Mother, too, if only I had told her.

“He speaks a little Spanish now,” Father Jess was saying. “He is a student leader … and he attends parties in Pobres Park. Didn’t you know all this?”

Auntie Bettina turned to me again. “You never wrote to us about these,” she said. “If your mother knew, she would have been happier.”

I was immersed in my own grief, going over the things I should have written to Mother, what I would have bought for her—the electric sewing machine, a gas stove such as the one Tia Nena used, and yes, a bed with a mattress, not the old rattan bed that hurt her back. A bed with a mattress.

Bits of their talk came to me. Auntie Bettina was telling Father
Jess that there were no more Samsons left in Cabugawan, just she. There were relatives—second cousins, third cousins, tenants—in the other barrios. All had gone—to Mindanao, to Palawan, and, of course, to Manila.

Father Jess was saying, “You are good-looking, why have you not married?” and she said, “No man ever proposed …” and Father Jess teased her, “No man is perfect, Miss Samson. If he does not have athlete’s foot, he has dandruff; if not dandruff, it’s bad breath. And sometimes, it is all three!”

Tia Bettina laughed, that delightful, silver laughter, then they were quiet again.

Father Jess’s huge head was in the way and I could not see the road ahead. But it did not matter—the monotonous green of the rainy season, the small towns with their plazas and their main streets plastered with soft-drink signs, the pompous churches of the Iglesia ni Kristo, the battered schoolhouses. Then, in the dimming afternoon, the plains of Rosales spread to our right, and beyond, the mountain of Balungao, greenish blue in the distance. Again, memory: the edible snails, the string of green papayas I brought back and Mother reproaching me for being away all day without her knowing. I had lain under the trees in the foothills, listening to the wind in the grass, the murmur of the water over the shallows, to my heart.

I tapped Father Jess’s shoulder and pointed to the town far beyond the line of trees on the horizon, its yellow water tank thrust like a knob of gold. “Cabugawan there, Father,” I said. “And that mountain—I used to go there.”

We stopped briefly at the Carmen junction but did not get off; the bus was headed for San Nicolas, all the way to the Caraballo foothills, and it would pass Rosales. Vendors crowded around the bus, thrusting bundles of coconut candy, rice cakes, and bunches of eggplants to us. Rosales was five kilometers away.

The town had not changed—the smallness of it, the rundown market, the plaza with its solitary kiosk and tangle of weeds, and the statue of a farmer with a plow before the unpainted
municipio
that people said was burned by Grandfather long ago. We got off at the bus station and walked.

“Our house is very small, Father,” Auntie Bettina was saying. “And no real bed.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Father Jess said.

It was not a long walk; we came to the wooden bridge that spanned the creek. The waters were muddy brown and sections of the bank had caved in. We walked on and the houses now were infrequent, then we turned to a small side road, really a lane, flanked by cogon-roofed houses, their yards planted to fruit trees. I knew everyone here.

Our house came into view, the split bamboo fence falling apart, the buri palm sidings now frayed and weathered, the cogon roofing disheveled where the last typhoon had messed it. We should have had the whole house roofed with tin, but there was not enough money, so only the kitchen roof was galvanized iron. The front gate was planted to hibiscus, the narrow lane graveled, flanked with purplish hedges of San Francisco. People were in the house, mostly neighbors and second cousins whom I recognized. They met us smiling wanly, and I shook their hands. Distant aunts kissed me. They smelled of betel nut and sun and I kissed their brown, gnarled hands, then went up into the house.

Mother was in the middle of the small living room, and I went to her at once, bent over her, and kissed her cold cheek. Her face was careworn and lined; a strand of hair lay on her forehead and I brushed it back into place. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep, the lips pressed together but not grimly; her hands were folded, clasping a small wooden cross—those hands that worked the sewing machine—and though I wanted to cry there was only this tightness upon my chest.

The women were cooking rice in earthen pots in the yard. One went to Auntie Bettina and told her there was not enough coffee and
pan de sal
for the night. She gestured to me, and we went back to town. We did not have time to talk before; all I knew was that Mother had had a heart attack, that she was sewing when it happened, and she fell from her stool.

There were many things I never knew and now Auntie told me—how Mother had suffered for years, how she had not gone to the doctor or bought medicine because there was no money, and the little there was she saved.

This I knew—Auntie Bettina did not have to say it. A month previous, Mother had an attack and for a week her left arm was paralyzed. Auntie Bettina wanted to write, but Mother had said, “No, don’t give him worries.”

“I never told her, Pepe, that you knew,” she said. “If you had to know about your father, it should have been from her. And last week she felt that, perhaps, she was not going to live much longer … so she wrote to you. She let me read it; I wanted to mail it, but she said, no, this Christmas, when he comes home.”

Father Jess was more than kind; he gave Auntie Bettina three hundred pesos—three hundred pesos!—for the wake. From Ming Tay’s grocery, bags of cookies, tinned milk, and three bottles of powdered coffee.