The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (78 page)

I returned to the range, put the keys in his pocket. Back in the kitchen, I washed the cups and saucers, placed them in the wall cabinet. The kitchen was as spotless as when I got there. When I walked out of the house, there was no one in the quiet mango-lined street. All the neighboring houses had high walls and all their massive iron gates were closed.

The paper bag I was carrying was heavy. On top of the guns and the ammo was the day’s papers. I walked down the street leisurely. At the gate of the Park I had a moment of fright; the private guards were examining a taxicab and opening its trunk.

But they did not bother with me—just another houseboy going to market.

I
  boarded the bus for Quiapo at EDSA. I must see Professor Hortenso, tell him what I had done, then leave Manila for wherever he would send me. I brought to mind our talks, the small confidences he had shared with me, and it was then that I realized with some sadness that he did not really tell me much. Perhaps because I was not trusted; perhaps because my actions were determined by animal needs and not by some unswerving ideal. This should have been clear to me when I was being tortured—and it was just as well, for I would have told my torturers everything. I had skills, I had helped, but the compulsions of my stomach and my gonads, and not the dictates of a committed mind, determined my waking hours. I was an instrument to be manipulated, and though I had the right credentials, I was naive, I was an “adventurist,” not “intellectual” enough to understand and accept the ideological basis for revolution.

It all came to me, the discussions with Ka Lucio about the morality of violence. I was surprised that there was not a single qualm in me when it was my turn to do the ultimate. I had acted in passion, and now that my mind was calmer, I realized that what I
had done really was nothing more than an extension of my desire to live, and that I had simply given back the violence that was inflicted on me, not so much by Puneta himself but by the instruments he created and supported. I may have acted in anger and vengeance, but also in righteousness. It is we or they, Ka Lucio had said. It was I or him, and my knowledge and acceptance of this made everything clear. The gods who manipulated the Brotherhood may mistrust me, may not include me in their councils—my friends and mentors like Professor Hortenso—but now I trusted myself, my instincts. And this, after all, was what really mattered.

But more than this new self-confidence was this feeling I could not quite describe because it was something that had never suffused me before. When I fashioned my first toy gun out of wood, I never thought I would aim and fire a real one at a man and do it without rancor or regret. I should be filled with remorse, but I was not. Instead, this overwhelming, edifying sense of freedom lifted me from the mundane. It had seemed that all my life I was imprisoned and could not break away until I had snuffed my enemy’s life. Now I was being lifted to the skies. A joy that had always eluded me filled me to overflowing, bursting in my heart, gushing in my arteries, drenching me with light. I could soar and touch the clouds!

I did not have time to count the money, the thousands I would bring to my brothers. It was rightfully ours. But I was frightened when I got to Dapitan. On the door of the Hortenso apartment was a handwritten sign:
FOR RENT
. I knocked on the next door. Oh yes, they moved only the other day, but they did not leave a forwarding address. The other occupants had the same reply. I tried to recall what he had told me, that he would get in touch with me at the
kumbento
, but there was no message for me in Tondo. Tia Nena asked if I was hungry, for it was past one, but I was not. There would be no one in Puneta’s house till five and they would not miss him till late evening, when they would start looking. I transferred the guns and the money to my tattered canvas bag; it did not look as if it could contain jewelry and all that cash.

Then I went to see Father Jess. Though it was almost Christmas, it was unusually warm. He was in his underwear and his paunch, big as a drum, drooped on his lap. He looked up from his typewriter, sweat glistening on his brow. His face, as with all those who are in deep thought when interrupted, was blank.

“Yes, Pepe,” he said finally. “It must be very important for you to interrupt me like this.”

“I want to confess, Father,” I said.

“You know I am not dogmatic about it.”

“I killed a man,” I said.

Father Jess drew back and stood his full height, all six feet of him, all fat and paunch and greasy face and yellow buckteeth. The eyes that were always filled with laughter suddenly grew reptilian cold.

“You are not making up another story,” he asked, half-expecting perhaps that what I told him was not true.

“I am speaking the truth,” I said, unwavering before the eyes that were probing into me. “I killed a man. I drew the gun and pointed it, straight at his chest, then fired. He looked very surprised as he fell in front of me—you know, like a drunk. There was not much blood. I thought it would splatter all over the place.”

“He is dead then?”

“As dead as anyone in the cemetery.”

“Do I know him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“God, do not make it difficult. Do not tell me things like this.”

“It was difficult for me, too,” I said. “But now that it is over, I knew it had to be done. From the very beginning, although I was not so sure then.”

“And who—”

I did not let him finish. “Who else but Juan Puneta?”

Father Jess sank on his seat shaking his head. “No, Pepe; this is not so. This cannot be. I don’t believe it!”

“It will be in the newspapers in the morning. You can go to his house right now.”

Father Jess shook his head again. The fact had settled fully. “Did anyone see you?”

“I did it in the firing range under his house. All the maids were out. No one was there except us.”

“Not even his wife and children?”

“I think he purposely sent them away. He wanted me alone with him.”

“But why?”

“Father! Did you not know? He was
syoki
. He was propositioning me, I could perhaps earn a lot, letting those
syokis
and dressmakers—But I vomit just thinking about it.”

“That was no reason, Pepe. The world is full of perverts and they ought to be pitied, not condemned. They do not mean harm. They need to be helped. Not stigmatized. Not killed.”

“Shit, Father.”

“Pepe, I have tried my best to show you the way, to make you forgive … and love.”

“And that is why I killed him. I love my friends, even this godforsaken place, and I do not want Puneta misleading us, cheating us, corrupting us!”

“It is not your right to make the final judgment, to condemn him because he is a homosexual.”

I faced Father Jess squarely. “It was not a homosexual I killed. I am not opposed to
syokis
. He was a cheat, an exploiter. Yes, Father, I have finally done it. I can now look my enemy in the eye, point the gun at him. I couldn’t do this before. I was enjoying his bribery.”

“This is the end, Pepe.”

“No, Father. The beginning. The beginning! I do not feel guilty at all. A great weight has been lifted from me. It is as if I could fly … and I am happy. Can you understand? Happy! I have done it. It was a great test. And I passed. I never felt like this before.”

“You will be killing more, and there will be no stopping.”

“Father, it is not the killing that makes me light here,” I pounded my chest. I could not describe it, this lifting of the spirit, the final liberation, the freedom that we had talked about and sought. “If I should kill, I will without compunction. I am free, Father Jess. Free—as you will never imagine. They can chain me and starve me and beat me. But they cannot harm me anymore. God, how wonderful it feels!”

Then I told him what I heard on the telephone. Puneta may not have pulled the trigger, but it was his money, his orders that did it, and now Toto and Ka Lucio were dead.

“I did it for myself,” I said.

“No man has any right to take another man’s life. This is basic, this I have always believed.”

“Am I guilty then?” I asked.

“Do not let me be the judge. I have, myself, often wanted to kill, to strangle with my hands, but I never had enough courage or hate to do that. I have asked my God, who am I to have such thoughts.”

“I do not feel guilty at all.”

“Why do you confess then?”

“Not to ask for absolution, but to let you know because you are someone I can confide in and for you to confirm, if you can, that I did no wrong.”

“I cannot do that, Pepe. I am mortal, I commit sins, I am filled with remorse. I cannot tell you you are right. What will you do now?”

“In the back of my mind, Father,” I told him, “I knew that someday I would do something that would make me really happy. I did not know it would be this. I thought it would be something”—I had difficulty looking for the words—“something sensual. Something that would satisfy my eyes, my stomach …”

Father Jess nodded. “We really never know what we are capable of,” he said. “That is the riddle of man, his virtue as well as his damnation.”

For some time now, I had wanted to put it to him in its rawest terms, that as a priest, leader of the flock, and Christian, he must infuse his faith with life, see to it that truth is justice not in the abstract but in stone-hard reality that all can see and feel. The only way to achieve this was with the same commitment to violence with which Christ gave Himself to man. “Can you come with me?”

He bowed and was silent; when he spoke again, his words were long in coming, as if they had to be unraveled one by one from the knots into which they had all been tangled. “I asked myself this question long ago, Pepe. And I could explain my staying here by saying I am needed here, or that I am too fat to be running around with boys in the mountains, where I would be an easy target, just like an elephant is an easy target in the densest jungle. I have also told myself, each to his own vocation, that all of us have some contribution to make toward this … this revolution that you now seek as one would the Holy Grail. But all these are rationalizations. Yes, the priest who believes in social justice must pursue that belief to its logical action—and here, and now, it is only with violence that it can be brought about. And God, I believe this, and I should go with you. But—” his voice faltered and he turned away, mumbling in his
breath, “I am not made of steel. I am human.” Then abruptly, “But you must not waste your life. The young are impulsive, they do not think things out carefully and their efforts are often rendered useless.”

“It is better than procrastinating, Father,” I said.

A scowl spread over his face. “It is not just procrastination, Pepe, or rationalization, or cowardice—remember that. These are true if you are comfortable and you don’t want to leave your comforts anymore. It is one of the most corrupting of all feelings. We get used to it.”

“I’d like to be comfortable myself,” I said.

“If I hold back,” Father Jess continued, “it is also because I can see the risks. But more than this, I want to be sure that your blood, my blood, anyone else’s blood, is not poured in the desert, and this is often done because there was not enough planning, enough studying of what is to be done, the need for organization that will bring revolution to its successful conclusion. And this is most important: that its gains are made permanent, that revolution need not degenerate into something vicious that we will all abhor. Violence breeds more violence, but if there is enough planning and commitment to ends that are not violent—”

“You are seeking the impossible, Father,” I said. “You are
segurista
,
^*
and at times like this, there is nothing sure except our readiness to risk everything.”

“It need not be all that risky, if you planned more,” Father Jess said. “And the first thing really is organization, a network that reaches everywhere, the farthest village, the highest mountain.”

“That is what we are already doing, Father,” I said.

“Build some more,” he said. “Life is so precious, and you lose it only once.”

I went down to the room where I had lived for two years, the words of Father Jess like our own posters etched in my mind. Now, in this shabby room, the memory of Toto gripped me; his voice seemed to echo within these musty walls and I could imagine him as he moved about, the glow of his character, the exuberance of his silences.
These came back as if to prod me on, confirming how right I had been, his redemption.

Yet I have never felt so alone as I do now, and though I could lay claim to the fealty of friends, everyone now seemed distant and far away. I had tried to seek in them—Roger, my classmates, and my comrades in the Brotherhood—those ties that would bind us so that I did not have to think or rationalize what I had done or will do. As one of them, I could withstand the punishment that circumstance would mete out. Where had I slept in the past? Where had I slaked my thirst? Will I always be alone?

I had tried to write down my innermost thoughts, but what I wrote were platitudes. I did this because it was what was expected of me, because what I had to say was like the rosary, and by invoking the heavenly phrases, I had hoped to numb my conscience.

Did I do this because I did not know? Indeed, what could I grow but my hair? Some of us could not even grow beards except a wispy broom like Uncle Ho’s, nothing bushy like Fidel’s.

I need not be told that it is not easy to go beyond my station no matter how capable I am; in the end, although the rules are not written down, I cannot join them up there unless I am prepared to accept the very same ends to which they have aspired, to bear the same brand or tattoo that marks them off from the common herd. The
tayo-tayo
^†
mentality in the back alleys and the grim confines of Muntinlupa is no different from what prevails in Pobres Park.