The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (70 page)

He laughed heartily, took me to his car, and drove me off to Recto. As we neared the university and its traffic, he took some fifty-peso bills out of his wallet and handed them to me. I did not want to take them, but he thrust them into my pocket. “It’s not for you,” he said, grinning, “for the Brotherhood. Go to saunas—look for the best, then be my teacher. And after that the target practice.”

I did not feel that I should tell Professor Hortenso what had transpired—the talk about sex techniques and target-shooting—it was too incredible to recount. But at least Puneta did not proposition me. When I got to my class, I counted the money—it was exactly five hundred pesos. It was the second time I had that much money, and for sure, within the week, Roger and the boys would have another feast in Panciteria Asia or some place fancier. And maybe, at long last, I would also be able to visit Lily where she worked.

The Colonial is in a three-story boxlike building with a red neon sign in Gothic on its facade. A blue-uniformed guard stood by the ornately filigreed door. He opened it as I got out of the taxi and greeted me, “Good afternoon, sir.” I stepped into a red-carpeted lobby. Giant shell lamps illumined the reception area, and though it was only half past two in the afternoon, it already seemed like dusk, for all the heavy maroon drapes were drawn.

The reception desk was crowded with business types. It was rush hour, as many of the “guests” had arrived from their lunches in nearby restaurants.

I walked up to the desk after the crowd had thinned. Two girls were manning it and one asked without smiling, “What is it, sir? Executive or VIP?” Lily had told me the Executive cubicles were more expensive, but what did I care? I had Puneta’s money.

“Executive,” I said. I took one fifty-peso bill and handed it to her, then asked, “Is seventeen busy?”

She looked at the listing before her and said, “No.” She picked up a microphone and called: “Seventeen, ready.” A boy behind the desk handed me a key with a big, white plastic holder.

“Third floor, sir,” the girl said.

I went up the carpeted flight; at the landing a boy asked if I
would like to shower and steam first. He guessed, I suppose, that this was my first time in the Colonial. “What is your number, sir?”

I showed my key, and he guided me to the cubicle—so dim I could not see anything. “I am blind here,” I said. The boy laughed; he opened a cabinet at a corner and in a sudden flood of yellow light, they jumped up—the low platform with a foam rubber mattress, an extra towel, rubber slippers encased in plastic.

“You put your things here, sir,” the boy explained, pointing to the cabinet. “Lock it and bring your key. The shower and steam bath are in front of the door where you came in.”

I thanked him, then sat on the pad. I closed the cabinet with the lightbulb, and the room was thrown into darkness again. I took off my shoes but did not strip; I had no intention of taking a shower, much less a massage. The door had a small glass window, but a piece of cardboard had been taped over it so that I had some privacy. The door, however, had no latch and could be opened at any time; the panels between the cubicles did not go all the way down to the floor; there was a narrow slit between.

I lay on the pad, wondering how Lily would react when she came in. It did not take long. The door opened. “Sir,” she asked tentatively. “Will it be oil? Or lotion?”

“Saliva,” I whispered.

She paused, edged closer and peered down. She was used to the darkness and now so was I. Her dark eyes grew wide, then she bent down and embraced me, saying huskily; “Pepe, Pepe.” She started laughing. “Now, sir, would you like your sensation first or the massage?”

I kissed her, and she responded warmly, her lips tasting of promises. Her hand wandered down.

“Hell,” I said under my breath. “You do that to everyone!”

“Pepe,” she said pushing me away. “It is my job, I told you!”

“Hell,” I repeated.

“Are we going to quarrel? Did you come here to insult me? You paid fifty pesos for this, have you forgotten?”

“It was not my money,” I said. It was senseless being sullen over something I could do nothing about. My anger left quickly. I had come here to see her; I knew what to expect. And she had kissed me. After some silence, “Two nights from now, after my last exam, I will
take Roger and the rest out—we will have a wonderful dinner—and if you want to come …”

“I cannot leave till midnight, Pepe. You are my first guest,” she said. “I don’t really like teenagers, and you look like one with your long hair. The boy told me.”

“What’s wrong with teenagers?”

“TY, that’s what. Thank you. No tips.
Gorios
, that’s what we call them. We’d rather have them fat and old—they tip well, most of them anyway.”

I lay down again.

“I’d really like to give you a massage,” she said, holding my hand. “I am very good, you know. Hard. I have several Japanese guests; they come really for the massage, and they like me because they say I am
ichi bang.
^§
”

“I just wanted to see you,” I said. “Now that I can afford it. Juan Puneta gave me the money for this.”

She drew back in surprise, then said, “You should have showered and taken a steam bath. He is there! Now!”

“He told me he has never been to a sauna.”

“Shit!” she said. “You want to surprise him?” She stood up and headed for the door, but I held her back.

“I’ll see Girlie,” she said. “She is his regular. I told you, he just talks with her.”

“Don’t tell him, promise.”

She laughed then went out.

In another minute, she was back. “We are in luck,” she said. “They will be in the next cubicle. We can eavesdrop or even peep.”

She lay beside me; we were cramped, but that was what I wanted.

“I have been thinking, Pepe,” she said after a while. “Mostly about myself—what I will do. I’ll go back to school and finish fine arts. But I have forgotten how to draw. I am in demand now—all of us who are young and good-looking. But how long will that be?”

“You study in the morning,” I said. “Don’t hurry, even if it will take six years. At least you will be prepared for a better job. I hope you have been saving.”

“What will you finally take?” It was my turn to be questioned, but before I could answer, the door next to ours opened. The girl was saying, “I will really try my best, but very few teenagers come here.”

The cracking of knuckles was enough to convince me. Puneta’s voice when he replied was so low I could not understand a word.

Lily whispered, “Didn’t I tell you? He has been asking Girlie to proposition teenagers for him. Five hundred pesos—as high as that!”

I shuddered; it was five hundred pesos he had given me. “What really does he do here?” I asked.

“I told you,” she said. “He comes here almost every day, at this time, when we have the most number of guests, or shortly after five, rush hour. He takes time in the steam room, in the shower, looking at all those pricks. Then he comes in, but refuses a massage. He always takes Girlie, waits for her if she is busy.” She got off the pad again, motioned me to peep through the slit between the rooms.

I bent over; the other cubicle was as dark as ours, but I could see the girl sitting on the pad, and the pale, handsome profile of Juan Puneta.

“Enough,” I said, pulling her back to my side.

Her face was close to mine. “Even your hair smells sweet,” I said.

“Wait till I have had five guests,” she said. Then, seriously, “Pepe, I am worried about you. There is a general— Army officers come here, you know. This general, he is very proud of his prick. They call him a general’s general. I have never serviced him, but the girls who have say it is really big. Well, he told one of the girls that the army is really going to be harsh on the demonstrators.”

“They are already doing that.”

“It could be worse. What will happen to you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe, in the end, I will go to the mountains.”

“You will be alone and you will be hungry.”

“That would not be anything new,” I said. “I can live on coconuts, green bananas, and papayas.”

“The mosquitoes and the leeches will finish you. And you will have malaria and other fevers.”

“At least I will not be getting gonorrhea. No saunas there.”

“You are wrong,” she raised her voice above the whisper we were conversing in.

I kissed her chin. “No nightclubs then,” I said.

“And no fucking.”

“I can always masturbate.”

“Suppose I did that for you? Suppose I went with you?”

“Is that all you will do? You have no skills, really. You cannot take dictation and type. I don’t think you can carry loads.”

“You make me feel so worthless,” she said.

“But you are good enough for me.”

“Will you really take me if I came along?”

She sounded serious. “No,” I said.

“I will wait for you then.”

“Shit,” I said. “You will wait forever.”

The other room was now aglow; Juan Puneta was finished and was obviously dressing. I was tempted to rise and go to his room and confront him, but it was his money that I was using, and besides, I was not ready to make an enemy of him.

“We can peep through our door,” Lily said, standing, and that was what we did. Puneta went out quickly, and I wondered if he had his Continental with him.

“No,” Lily said, “he always comes here alone, by taxi, I think.”

I had time so I tarried even after Lily had changed the sheets. She had asked me to linger—there was no one waiting for her. She would have been informed if there was.

“Your unlucky day,” I said. I gave her a fifty-peso tip, which she did not want to take, but I thrust it down the pocket of her white skirt. Before we reached the reception area, she kissed me; then I stepped out into the blinding sunlight.

I went to Professor Hortenso’s house the next day, for he had left word for me in the office of the school paper. Mrs. Hortenso opened the door, but before she did she peered out of the grilled window into the street.

“Come in, Pepe,” she said as if she was in a hurry, then bolted the door. “Have you eaten?” She knew I had rushed from school to Dapitan and the plates were ready on the table. She was thoughtful and kind. Someday, I told myself, if and when I got married, it would be to someone like her.

Professor Hortenso sat beside me while Mrs. Hortenso came out with a plate of steaming rice, fried
bangus
and shrimp
sinigang.
I was really hungry. He watched me eat, and between gaps of silence he talked about the finals we were going through. No, I found the examinations
easy, and I did not even have all the textbooks; I just listened to the lectures instead of letting my mind wander.

“You will maintain your scholarship then,” he said happily. “You have to. The university will no longer accept activists who are not bona fide students, and those who are on the leadership list are under surveillance; they have to be good to stay, not only in the scholarship rolls but in the university itself. The army is applying pressure.”

I was silent. “And be careful, Pepe,” Mrs. Hortenso said. “Do you know that they have been watching us for the last two days? They were there—” she thrust her chin toward the street corner. “In a jeep. They had cameras. I noticed them yesterday when I went to market. I am not naturally suspicious, but I saw them; they were watching the house.”

I turned to Professor Hortenso. He nodded slowly.

When I had finished, he stood up and said, “Let us go out for a walk.”

Mrs. Hortenso followed us to the door. “Careful, Dad,” she said, her face dark with apprehension.

We walked toward the boulevard, and once in a while, Professor Hortenso would abruptly turn around. There was no one following us. I had not seen him for almost a week. Now I told him about Juan Puneta, how he had taken me to the Casino for lunch, how he had talked about politics—just a little—nothing more, about Ka Lucio.

“He is making a list of people we should contact, and they are all over the country,” I said.

“Good! Good!” Professor Hortenso exclaimed. Then he told me how worried he was; another of the Diliman boys in the Brotherhood had disappeared. That made it five student leaders without a trace. The parents had come to Manila, made inquiries with the police, the army, but there were no leads.

“They must have gone underground already,” I suggested.

“No,” Professor Hortenso said. “I would know. Someone in the Brotherhood would know.”

We had reached the boulevard. “Pepe,” he said, “I don’t know, but I think you should stop seeing Puneta. It is not a question of mistrusting him—I have no evidence for that. But I think he will do us more harm than good; I reread what your uncle wrote, and he is right. We cannot afford to be misled again. Worse, misused—and know it.”

It was almost midnight when I got back to Tondo. I was tempted to take a taxi—I still had three hundred pesos of Puneta’s money—but I was in no hurry and I wanted to be alone to think clearly of what had transpired. I was to meet Puneta in a day at the Casino, as we had agreed, but after Professor Hortenso had warned me, I decided not to see him.

The muddied alleys of the barrio had dried, and in places they were already cemented. We had raised money for the basketball court as well. The church was lighted up, and people were there, the neighbors mostly. And in the center aisle was a coffin. When she saw me, Cora, the older of the two sisters who lived with Ka Lucio, came to me and started to cry.

“Pepe, it’s uncle—”

I had greeted him that morning when I left for the university to review before my exams, and even asked him if he would care to join us at Panciteria Asia. “I will be out of place, Pepe,” he had told me.

And now he was dead.

“Did he have a heart attack? Did he—”

She could not explain; it was Roger who did. Cora had already left for work and it was Nene, the younger sister, who came home from school at noon for lunch. Ka Lucio was prostrate in the living room, his head bathed in blood. Someone had come in and bashed his head. Most probably he never knew who or what hit him. In his old age, he had become so trusting that he always kept the front door open. No one had seen the killer. No noise, no scream, no struggle; it was swift and painless. He had known some peace and quiet here in the Barrio, but death stalked him here, this accursed jungle of tin and rubble and driftwood. He lived through twelve years of jail, through ambushes and travail, only to succumb to a faceless murderer.