The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Read online

  Her husband’s secretary had been most efficient; she had filed all his papers with skill and precision and told her where everything was, even the bills that had to be paid. She was stunned by the tragedy, and she told the widow that she had never worked for a man as dedicated to his job and as understanding of people as Tony. She was handsome in an antiseptic sort of way, and Carmen wondered momentarily if her husband had ever flirted with her or had appreciated the fact that she had broad hips.

  “I want to be alone,” the widow said. “I would like to go over all his things, so please do not let anyone disturb me.”

  The secretary delivered to her all the keys to the drawers and the filing cabinets and Carmen riffled through them. She examined the expense vouchers and the receipts that Tony had assiduously kept and smiled, remembering again how Tony had lived as honestly and as frugally as always, within the limitations her father had mentioned, although such limitations had never been defined.

  Then, at the bottom drawer of his desk, she found them—the ledgers in which he had written in his clear, precise longhand a sort of diary. Five of them, and four were filled up; the fifth was half full, and the last entry was three months ago. He had not written anything for a long time, although in the others he had something—a paragraph, or even just a line—every day. The entries in the last ledger were about things she knew very well—her family, her husband’s work, his impressions of people he met. Here was Antonio Samson at last—raw, honest, and without pretensions. And yet, he could have told her everything he had written down, if she had just shown an interest, even the slightest. He had even brought his journal home—she remembered this clearly now—and had started to write one evening, but she told him to attend to her rather than to his memoirs. And now that he was gone, these ideas, these thoughts were suddenly alive; she could hear his voice as she read what he had written about himself; his most secret thoughts. The last entry, however, was what interested Carmen most, for it pertained to her, and in a way, it was prophetic.

  Antonio Samson wrote:

  I must now ask myself the purpose, the meaning of my life. Once, long ago, this was never clear to me. If I thought about life’s purpose at all, I did not think of it as something beyond crassness, of which I was terribly ashamed. I did not have the means to think otherwise; I did not enjoy the luxury of contemplation, although I must admit that even in my youth I could be capable of questioning, for instance, the presence of God and the grand design wherein some are exploiters and the rest are the exploited. In those days, my only thoughts were of survival—the stern, physical kind that occupies the soldier when he is on the battlefield. Then, all that occupied me were how to finish school, get a job so that I could earn something to keep myself alive; and keeping alive meant three meals a day, a roof over my head that did not leak, a pair of shoes, clean clothes. It is all changed now and these objectives to which I addressed myself in the past are no longer my objectives. Does this mean then that I have gone very far? Economically, yes. My earliest desires were all economic, the most elementary of needs. Now, I have raised my objectives a little higher. This again is natural. No one really needs six meals a day, or two dozen pairs of shoes; to be crude about it, a man can eat only so much, wear so much. To be dross about it, a man—unless he is a superman or a sex maniac—can have only one sexual intercourse a day, or at the most, two. So what do I want out of life? I want to be justified. Whatever I do, in my heart, I want it to be right, I want to say I did it because it had to be done. I may be proved wrong, but it does not matter; at least, to my own self, I must be true. No Hamlet here, just the simple fact of a human being wanting for himself the integrity that everyone desires in his deepest thoughts, in his fondest dreams. This should be clearest to her who is my wife, who knows me now as no mortal has ever known me, for it is to her that I have voiced my understanding and, most of all, respect. God knows how much I have tried to earn her respect, to have her see that I am a person and not a thing, to have her feel the importance of the ideas, the ends that I have set for myself in the past; they are still valid even if no longer within my grasp. I have tried to define for myself what honor should be, but now it has become vague and formless. I clutch at the air, hoping to hold on to something real, but there is nothing there. And every day seems to be pushing me farther and farther away from what I want, which is not my wife’s body, which is not her family’s regard for me, but the justification that I am doing what should be done in this wretched and despicable land. I see the estrangement although I will not say that it is inevitable. I will not say it is written in the stars, for fate is not as constricted, as unswerving, as all that. I only wish that someday I will be capable of doing something heroic, a deed that would ennoble me not only to myself but, most of all, to her who has accepted me for what I am. If I could be sure, however, even just for one instant, that she chose me because she loved and respected me, then I would know that there is at least one human being to whom I have some value. Otherwise, it is a bleak world indeed where I have paused, and the sooner I leave it, the better.

  She went over the last journal as avidly as she did the first dirty book Conchita Reyes gave her, and when she was through it seemed as if some heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders. It was as if she knew not only her husband but the whole mystery of life; she was alive, she could pass her palms over tabletops and feel the smoothness; she could feel a dry martini scorch her throat, smell the fumes of traffic, hear the minutest tick of the clock, the scampering of some lonely cockroach across the bedroom floor. She was alive, she could explain herself, her father and mother, all her friends; she could understand why they breathed the same foul air every day, but she could not understand why Tony was dead.

  Then she remembered the torn manuscripts that she had packed in the shoe boxes, and she fell to sorting them out, arranging them page by page. For days, she worked at it feverishly, barely eating anything while she was at it, not accepting condolences or telephone calls. But when everything was ready, taped, and arranged, she was as much in the dark as ever.

  One evening, during a dinner at which she had not spoken a word, her father asked if she was feeling well. Her mother had been concerned about how little she had been eating and had ordered the cook to stock her room with fruits so that she could nibble on something if she were hungry.

  “I am all right, Papa,” she said, turning to her father. She noticed at once that he looked tired, that there were deepening lines in his lean, handsome face.

  “I just don’t have the appetite I used to have.”

  “We were all under strain, hija,” Manuel Villa said languidly. “I hope you realize that. Oh, it’s not money problems—how wonderful it would be if all our problems were about money! They wouldn’t be difficult to solve, you know. But you and I, we understand each other clearly.”

  She smiled at him and continued toying with the broiled tuna before her.

  Don Manuel Villa brightened up. “I am tired of fish. The sauce is not good, and tonight I feel like having a good piece of steak.” He turned to his wife for approval. “I have a suggestion. Let us go to Alba’s. I hear there’s a new flamenco singer, too.”

  She did not really want to go out; she would have preferred to go up to her room and reread the ledgers her husband had left, to know him better now that it was impossible to know him in the flesh; but there was a hint of pleading in her father’s voice, and her mother, too, had looked at her as if her very life depended on going out. She stood up and went to her room to dress.

  They had, as usual, the best table in the supper club. The floor show had already started, a mimic from Europe who did imitations of Charlie Chaplin, Charles Boyer, and Humphrey Bogart. Their drinks came when the Spanish singer appeared on the stage—a short, olive-skinned woman accompanied by a lean, dark guitarist. She did not start with the flamencos for which she was famous, as spelled out in neon on the marquee. Her voice was metallic and yet there was a polish and mellowness to it, particular
ly when she lingered on the upper notes. She was not a trouper; she did not play with the microphone or emote with her hands; she just stood upright and pronounced the words clear as parchment. Her first number was inconsequential—unrequited love, death without end, God’s reward to those who have suffered. Applause was polite, but even then, Carmen knew she was listening to an artist, perhaps not a showman and an egoist, but one who could carry a message of love or grief straight to the heart. The guitar spoke again, and this time the singer’s words were meant only for her and for no other; these were the words Tony had uttered to her, the only Spanish song he had known and sung to her long, long ago, and it all came back—the memories of summer, the quiet walks under the elms, the unspoken acquiescence, the almost sacred tenderness, and all the love that now seemed wasted. There is no time, there is only eternity and the implacable reality that even life can be ephemeral, nothing more than a season, another summer grown cold. And with the sunlight gone, night is here.

  Yo sin su amor no soy nada

  Deten el tiempo en tus manos

  Haz esta noche perpetua

  Para que nunca se vaya de mi …

  The words were like the ringing of a bell, then they faded, slowly, very slowly; the singer’s lips moved but no sound came forth; the guitar was muted although the fingers still strummed; there came this silence, vast and sepulchral and so frightening, she could feel her arms and legs become clammy, her whole body taut. She strained her ears. This is not true, this is not real, she told herself, but the club was dead, and the whole world, too. She opened her mouth and she knew she was speaking but she could not hear herself. She turned to her father, shouted “Papa!,” and her father bolted up. But there was no sound. She screamed again, twice, but nothing, nothing but this silence. Her father rushed to her and slapped her hard across the face and she fell into his arms, sobbing, while her mother went to her and they took her out.

  At home her father gave her a couple of pills and warm milk to drink. She fell asleep shortly after. She woke up in the morning, afraid and cold: the world, for the first time, was deathly quiet and still. The room had suddenly become alien; the clutter of magazines on the writing desk, the line of cosmetics at her table, her open cabinets and her clothes spilling out assured her she was indeed in her room, but she missed the old, familiar feeling of security, of being safe, as in the past when her husband was here, padding around in his shorts or snoring in bed. No living sound came from the life beyond the glass windows or the locked door.

  The maid came in with a glass of warm milk and, shortly after, her parents, as solicitous as ever, came inquiring about how she felt. She cupped her ears and shook her head. She was not hearing anything, not a whisper, not a stir in this big and empty room.

  Her mother helped her dress while her father made some hurried telephone calls. They drove to Ermita, to Dr. Clavecilla, an EENT specialist who was a friend of the family. He was very charming; he had traveled extensively in Europe and he greeted them affably, even made a joke as was his style, for her father and mother, as she could see, were laughing. She must now learn how to read lips if she wanted to understand or, at least, be part of the human race. But the effort that she must make would be great, and as she dwelled on the thought, it repelled her. The doctor led them all to his clinic—a room with all sorts of impressive-looking equipment—and in the background two nurses stood at ease ever ready to jump at the doctor’s bidding. She was led to a chair, much like a dentist’s, and the doctor probed into her ears, poked something cool and smooth into them. He talked desultorily with her parents and they shook their heads at each question. Then the doctor wrote on a pad and showed it to her: Have you had streptomycin injections recently, in huge quantities?

  She smiled and shook her head.

  The doctor called in the receptionist, who took down notes in shorthand, and after a short while the receptionist returned with the note neatly typed.

  She read it slowly: “Deafness can be caused by a hundred reasons, almost all of them having to do with the eardrum and the auditory nerve, which relays sound to the brain. Sound that is received by the external ear and relayed via the middle ear to the internal ear may be blocked by wax. Many who complain that they are deaf usually have too much wax in their ear canal. The eardrum may be perforated and, therefore, can no longer record sound. Perforation may be remedied. There may be infection, too. Neither of these affects both your ears. The auditory nerve may be destroyed by an overdose of streptomycin or a severe disease. This is not so with your case. I can have X-rays made but I do not think this is necessary. I am quite convinced that your sense of hearing is normal but that there is something—perhaps in your mind, I am not sure—that is blocking your sense of hearing. People can be deaf because, in their subconscious, they do not want to hear.”

  She read the note twice, then she asked for a pen and a pad. The nurse took her to the doctor’s table and she sat down and wrote with deliberation: “I know now why this happened and I also know what else will happen soon. I will lose my sense of smell, and after that, my sense of touch. Then I will lose my sight, I will be alive but only because I will still be breathing. I realize there is no cure for what ails me.”

  She paused and wondered if she should put down the monstrous thought: I wish I were dead! But it was better not to state it. She turned to her dear father, who waited patiently before her, and the bleary eyes that met her gaze were beseeching. She could see the same troubled expression on her mother’s face and she wondered how deeply worried she was about her. Her mother had always seemed too detached from human travail; her tragedies were parties that did not turn out dazzling enough, the extra folds of fat on her stomach, thighs, and arms that she could not get rid of. Once, Carmen herself was nagged by the thought that she, too, would develop into the tub of lard that her mother was. Now, both her parents seemed like two ordinary people—familiar, yes, but without any special attachment to her, without any niche in her heart.

  She handed the note to Dr. Clavecilla, and as the three started to read it, she wondered what they would do now that they knew what had truly ailed her all these years. If only—the thought crossed her mind briefly—if only they, too, could realize what was wrong with them!

  CHAPTER

  1

  It was not the visit that bothered Tony, because it was as inevitable as the genuflection of the faithful and was the first thing to do once he was home. The visit was more than a duty. But he also knew that it was just a gesture; he had been honest with himself and what he was going to see was an old man who had been given up, forgotten, and denied. It appalled him, of course, to think of his father this way, yet there was no denying the reality; the past was, after all, not a pool of total darkness but a clear spring. In it he often saw his reflection, and what he saw sometimes frightened him. To recall those incidents that had battered the soul was like flagellating oneself and yielding to phantoms. There was, after all, warmth and friendship in this world, and all the niggling sins committed against him and his father might now be ignored. There were alternatives open to those who recognized them. A man could still fashion his life to his specifications. As for the poor, there would always be a lot of them, in varying degrees of destitution and corruption.

  The stone highway to the penitentiary was flanked by flat, brown fields with huge blobs of black, for at this time of year the straw from last year’s harvest that had been left in the fields was burned, and the patches of black were thickest where grain had been most abundant the previous year. It was much easier to plow the soil when there was no straw to obstruct the plowshare. Also, the farmer considered the ashes fertilizer. In the distance, from the speeding bus, he could make out the dried water holes near the irrigation ditches. The fields were no different from those in Rosales, where he had hunted for frogs in the fissures of the earth, baked and cracked by the sun. In the late afternoons he brought home a string of frogs, and his mother always said he would not starve anywhere in the world because h
e knew how to look for food. But Rosales and its fields and Cabugawan where he was born were but a memory now, he had left the town forever, and the old house and the farm were no longer there.

  And yet, the thought of going back was always in his mind; it stirred the old aches, brought back to the inner eye the images of dew-washed mornings and fields lavished with green after the first rain of May; now came a loneliness that gnawed at the heart and made Antipolo and all the remembered places—Cambridge and Barcelona—alien and spiritless. He loved his beginnings, but the boy was no more, for he had been vanquished by the man.

  It was this same man who felt superior to his father; it was a sinful thought, but Tony felt he could live contentedly, even smugly, with his limitations. He knew, however, that his father was his moral superior, and as a son, he could never aspire to the heroism the old man had shown.

  He had regarded his father with awe and even fear in his younger days—a fear that pushed between them a silence that was torn away only after his father went to prison. He recoiled with dread and self-pity every time he remembered how he had gone to the Rich Man’s house for the first time. One of his grade school classmates was the Rich Man’s son. There was no school that afternoon, for it was the start of the Christmas season, and they had spent the whole morning cleaning their classroom and setting up a Christmas tree of agoho pine that they had cut from the Rich Man’s yard. They were friends—the Rich Man’s son and he. They ate in the Rich Man’s kitchen and, after lunch, played in the dark caverns of the bodega where sacks of grain were stored, piled high to the very rafters. He had never before seen so much grain all in one place, and the abundance had overwhelmed him. When he returned home late that afternoon, he gushed about what he had seen, and then mentioned that he had eaten in the Rich Man’s kitchen. He had never seen his father angry before; the old man did not talk much but neither did he seem to be remiss in his affection. But now his father dragged him down the house to the yard and shoved him to the sled. He lay still, his feet dangling on one end, his stomach pressed to the bamboo floor of the sled. The first lash of the horsewhip cut across his back with a sharp, cruel pain, followed by another and still another until it didn’t hurt any more. His mother had cried helplessly, “Kill him, kill him, your own flesh and blood, kill him if you cannot kill your mortal enemy.”