The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lonely and she was kind. It may be a mistake because she is not one of us, but I’m bound to her now and not only by love.
    He could not say these words, so he said instead, “She is Tagalog, Father. I met her in the United States and we took the same boat home.”
    The old man moved to one of the windows and Tony followed him. Beyond the iron bars, a portion of the penitentiary grounds lay before them, the well-tended grass and the whitewashed walls and, to their right, the rows and rows of
pechay
‡ and beans—deep green in the sunlight. Prisoners tended the truck garden, and even on this Sunday, which was a visiting day, prisoners in yellow uniforms worked the vegetable plots.
    “When will the wedding be?” the old man asked.
    “I don’t know, Father,” Tony said. “Maybe in a year, when I have saved enough. I just wanted you to be the first to know. I haven’t told Manang Betty yet.”
    The old man looked thoughtful. Again, a smile turned the corners of his mouth. “Of course, you don’t know how much I’d like to be present when you get married. And when you have children, I hope you will be able to understand that I’m not sorry for what I did. If I were given the chance, I’d do it again. There is no other way.”
    Tony did not want to argue with his father again, but the old man had started on the ancient recitation that must be listened to, to the end. “I know that you are learned, but some day I hope you can go to Cabugaw. Find your root and my root. I did not start with myself. I had a father, too, and he was a brave man.”
    “I know, Father,” Tony said fervently. “Someday I’ll go there.”
    “You will find,” the old man continued quietly, “how even your grandfather changed his mind.”
    They sat on the bench again. The old man shook his head. “I’ll die soon and that is why you must know what to do in case I die. This is what will happen, son. They will sell my body to a medical school in Manila and students will cut me up. They will learn all about me. But not what is in my heart—they will never find out about that. They will not know what I did in Rosales. No one will know now, no one except you and your mother in heaven and your Manang Betty and those who are in Rosales still. Are you angry that I did what had to be done?”
    Tony shook his head. “It is not for me to judge, Father.”
    The old man leaned on the cement wall and sighed. He clasped his gnarled hands and spoke almost in a whisper: “That night, I remember. But you were very small then.”
    “I haven’t forgotten,” Tony said.
    “Would you have done what I did?” the old man asked, but he didn’t really care for an answer; he stared at the cement floor, at his handmade wooden clogs with rubber thongs.
    Tony did not speak; he had been asked this question many times and the next would fall neatly into place.
    “Yes, all those years— All those years that your grandfather and I cleaned the land, all those years …” the voice trembled and Tony thought it would break into a sob. But the old man steadied himself. “We found that the land we cleared and planted was not ours. Thewilderness we tamed was not ours. Nor yours. It was the Rich Man’s, and after all those years … we were his tenants.”
    The strong over the weak, intelligence subverting ignorance. “There was nothing you could do, Father,” he said.
    The old man said placidly, “Your grandfather’s sweat, my sweat, my blood were mixed with every particle of soil in that land. But they were not satisfied with getting it. They emptied our granaries, too.”
    “It’s different now, Father.”
    The old man smiled again, then coughed—a deep, thin cough that seemed to wrench life from within him, and he doubled up as one in pain. Tony sidled close to him and hugged the shoulders, the wasted body, until the old man straightened up again. He looked at his son and his eyes were misty.
    “Let us not talk like this again, Father,” Tony