The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) by F. Sionil Jose Read Free Book Online Page B

it—when she had expressed it to him, in this very room, the evening before he was to leave. And now, if Emy knew what was going to happen to him, would she approve? What she thought of him meant so much, even now, and within him he could feel a flickering tenderness, tenderness for the girl who was the first, an indefinable feeling that was both sorrow and joy, for Emy now belonged to the past. This was not final—it could never be final. He was faithful to her—if not to her person at least to her memory. He had long wanted to ask Bert how she was. He couldn’t tell Bert that he had written to her and she had never answered; he just wanted to find out what she was doing, if she was well and happy or if she had married.
    But the question as he would have worded it wouldn’t take shape, and the guilt that he had felt about her fed his anxiety instead. “I wonder how Rosales is. And Emy, too. Is she already teaching?” Just like that, matter-of-factly, as if she were someone who had merely touched the edges of his life.
    “Well, not much has happened to Rosales,” Bert said. “I’ve never been there—you know that. And as for Emy …”
    “I hope she has already found a job.”
    “She is not teaching.” Bert spoke with some difficulty, as if he did not want to talk about her.
    “Why not? She should have approached some politician—”
    “It’s not that way,” Bert said. “That girl—Your Manang and I, we were disappointed with her. Something … something happened to her. Well, she had it coming, and you wouldn’t think it possible. Shewas such an intelligent girl. She has a child and she’s not married. You know what I mean.”
    Fear, sadness, and a hundred other feelings engulfed him. Not this, not the magnitude of this tragedy could befall Emy.
    “She wouldn’t say who he was,” Bert continued. “But that girl did change a lot. You wouldn’t recognize her afterward. Remember how she used to be very well mannered? Well, she often went out alone. At night, too. After school, God knows where she went. This was after you had gone. We tried to talk to her, and we told her that nothing good would come out of her habits, but she refused to listen. There must have been a man she had been meeting some place all those nights that she stayed out late—sometimes past midnight. We warned her. But that girl— Why didn’t she have the man come to the house? Your Manang Betty said we would like to meet him. A wild one she turned out to be.”
    Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but somehow the truth of it seeped slowly in, and the pity that he felt for her vanished and in its place was something akin to loathing, not only for what had happened but for this city, which had destroyed her. In his heart there rose a helpless hatred for the street and all that it was—the repository of everything ugly and dark.
    “She went home that Christmas for the vacation,” Bert continued, “and she never returned. She didn’t even write to your
manang.
We just learned afterward that she had this baby.”
    “What’s she doing now?” Tony asked.
    “Nothing. Tending the house and looking after her son and Bettina, the younger sister. Remember her? I hope nothing similar will happen to her. Since their father died …”
    “Yes,” Tony said, “Manang Betty wrote to me about it.”
    “Didn’t Emy write to you about it?”
    “No,” he said. “I did write to her, then … I stopped.”
    “I came upon her reading your letter,” Bert said with a smile. “She seemed absorbed in it. I tried to ask her what was in it, but she didn’t even answer. Well, fate is fate. Nothing can be done now.” Bert stood up and idled at the door, his bulk filling the frame. “I overestimated Emy. I always thought she was smarter than most girls. But when a woman is titillated, her mind becomes useless. You know what I mean?”
    “Yes,” Tony said, walking to the window. Across the tracks the night was pocked with