The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (82 page)

I had meant the title
Mass
to represent the Catholic mass, and the
masa
, as in EDSA in 1986. The offertory, the sacrifice—it’s all there, and so is the
masa
that should usher our salvation. But, as we can see in the top officials, we had elected our damnation.

Come to think of it, on occasion I miss Marcos; he was there, the epitome of greed and moral depravity. It was so easy to mark him as the enemy who gave us—who despised him—a cause, a reason for being and unity. And listen now to the shameless arrogance of his widow and children. How could we welcome them back?

One thing is sure: Marcos defined with unerring clarity the shattered Filipino intellectual community. He clearly demarcated the line between those who pandered to him, served him, and oppressed their fellow writers, and those who remained steadfast in their integrity. Today, many of those who toadied to him are back in power, befouling media and gloating at having returned like worms that have surfaced from the woodwork. No one among them has come out to say contritely, “mea culpa, maxima mea culpa”—no, they swagger instead like untarnished paragons. This is what ails us all—we do not ostracize them, we do not punish them; we anoint these vermin instead.

How I envy some of my characters, Tia Nena and Ka Lucio in
Mass
, whom I re-created from Rizal’s
Sisa
and
Cabesang Tales
, the young and old who acted with great fortitude and courage, who did not compromise as I have done. So here I am on the fringes and yet very much a part of this rotten structure I want to destroy, chained as I am to it by comfort and human frailty.

In writing my novels, I had dreamed of giving my countrymen memory, an iron sense of our heroic past that would exalt and ennoble us so that even in our poverty we could somehow hold our heads high, remembering that greatest of all Filipino writers—Rizal—who was my inspiration.

Forty years ago, in that village in the Basque country where I wrote the first novel in the Rosales saga, memory and my conscience compelled me to accept revolution; with it I also chose the pen as the instrument to help bring justice to my unhappy country.

Every so often, I bring writer friends and some of my students to that barrio where I was born. I show them the creek where as a boy I had swum, the fields where I had helped in the harvest, and my few surviving childhood friends—how shriveled and defeated they look. Through the years, I have seen my barrio become a rural slum. And so, looking around me, at the debris of our youthful dreams, the old man that I have become knows now the futility of words.

Short Stories

The God Stealer and Other Stories
Waywaya: Eleven Filipino Short Stories
Platinum: Ten Filipino Stories
Olvidon and Other Short Stories
Puppy Love and Other Stories

Novellas

Three Filipino Women

Novels

Ermita
Gagamba
Viajero
Sins

The Rosales Saga
Published in the United States as:
Don Vicente
, comprising
Tree
and
My Brother, My Executioner
Dusk
The Samsons
, comprising
The Pretenders
and
Mass

Verse

Questions

Nonfiction

In Search of the Word
We Filipinos: Our Moral Malaise, Our Heroic Heritage
A Memoir of Japan
Hindsight Perceptions on Nation and Culture

F. Sionil José is the author of more than fifteen books—novels, stories, essays, and verse—and is one of the leading literary voices of Asia and the Pacific Rim. He is a publisher of books and of the journal
Solidarity
, a bookseller, a teacher, and a founding member of the PEN Center in the Philippines.

José studied medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, and then the liberal arts, working part-time for the U.S. Army and at newspaper jobs. Afterward, he joined the United States Information Service as an assistant editor and ultimately spent ten years with the
Manila Times
. His writings won three Palanca Awards and three from the National Press Club. In time he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communications Arts. To date, his work has been published in fifteen countries.

José (called “Frankie”) and his wife, Teresita (“Tessie”) have four sons and two daughters, most living in California.