When they were almost home he turned to her and saw her looking at him intently. She turned away, embarrassed. “How is your guinea pig?” he asked. An uneasy laugh escaped her.
“Looking at you,” she said, “makes me feel you are sometimes just playacting. You have a driver, a fine home, and yet you sound bitter and discontented — and very proletarian.”
He smiled benignly at her. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a single frustration in the world.”
“I do,” she said.
“It’s all a matter of degree,” he said. “Besides, I do not consider myself embittered. Why should I be when I have right now a very pretty girl with me?”
“You are a rogue,” she said, smiling. “You will do anything to steer the discussion away and make a compliment on the side. You are a liar, too. You said that you would come and see me, but it is I who makes all sorts of excuses to come and see you.”
Her outright confession touched him. “I’m sorry, Ester, but we really had so much to do. Besides, we still have years ahead of us.”
“I hope you’ll change a little,” she said, “acquire a more pleasant disposition — in what you write, at least.”
“For you,” he said, “I will.” Sure of himself, he took her hand. It was cold. “But you must like me as I am.”
They were home. He let go of her hand as Simeon swung the car to the left. In the driveway, as soon as he got out, he asked her to come up with him and have a Coke and a piece of cake. He noticed her brief indecision, so he added hastily, “No, don’t bother. I can run upstairs and bring the manuscript down.”
She stepped out quickly and without another word followed him up to the house.
The blinds were raised and the sun flooded the hall. As he went to his study Ester drifted around the room and out to the trellised azotea, where the wind from the sea was coolest. She came back and gazed at his father’s Amorsolos on the walls.
“It’s lovely here,” she said when he came out with the manuscript.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said. “As you know, I live alone. I love the privacy and the independence.”
She walked to the piano, which seemed to bask in the glow of the afternoon, opened the cover, and drew her hand across the keys.
“Do play,” he said, “while I fix up something to drink.”
In the kitchen, as he sliced the chocolate cake and prepared the glasses, he heard snatches of Mozart, sentimental and melodious. When he went back to the living room with the tray, however, she stopped and pulled the lid down.
“You play very well,” he said.
“Tell that to my mother.”
Ester left at dusk. She had asked him not to bother seeing her home, but he had Simeon drive her to San Juan just the same. They had sat in the azotea and watched the sun go down and paint the horizon, the clouds in resplendent ochres, browns, and indigos. They had talked about her paper, classmates, and Trining’s new admirer — a basketball player (Trining had told Luis about him). To this last one he had listened with a mixture of contempt and interest. Ester had also talked about her brothers, who seemed to drift, not knowing what to do. Finally she had voiced her disappointment with her own school, the emptiness of it all, the superficiality of the friendships, the senselessness of girl talk, and how most of her friends were looking forward to nothing but sweet domesticity.
As he watched her get into the car and finally drive away, a strange, dull ache filled him. It was not love, he was sure of that. It was something akin to compassion. He worked until past midnight, and although he was tired, sleep seemed far away. He could not quite forget Ester on the azotea with him — her smile and the way she spoke earnestly, plaintively. She was not like Trining, who was sensual and all woman, who was direct and who knew what she wanted. It was quite clear — and his knowledge of it made him apprehensive — that he was really interested in Ester, now that the wall of indifference with which he had surrounded himself as far as she and her kind were concerned was crumbling. He was kindred to the emotional beast, he was not immune to the feelings that blighted the poor in spirit, but he was also sure that it was not love.
After Marta had done the dishes and Simeon had checked the locks, Luis was alone again. Marta had thoughtfully, as always, filled the thermos jug near his desk with coffee, and listlessly he poured himself a cup. It took him some time to finish it. Traffic on the boulevard was almost gone except for those leaving the nightclubs farther up the street. When he finally lay down he remembered Ester again, her beautiful body, and he was sure that someday he would have her.
As he closed his eyes, however, in the reddish consciousness that flooded his brain he saw an endless array of wailing babies with his features in each shrieking face. He shuddered.
CHAPTER 24
By Christmas talk was rife that the Huks were already in the outskirts of the city, that they could now attack Manila at will. Many provincial capitals in central Luzon had been raided and occupied for at least one night before the constabulary could retake them. Luis was certain that the propaganda arm of the movement was working in Manila. He learned from some of his old college friends that a few of their acquaintances in the interuniversity cultural and press groups had joined the Huks. The tension that was reflected in the press and in the government hierarchy was not, however, the kind that tormented him. He had continued his poetry, but it was to him too prosaic, too pallid, and it did not tally with the realities. He could see the greater contradiction within himself as he helped Dantes become richer, at the same time making himself safe from the cares of living, unlike those whom he sincerely felt he championed. There was freedom, yes, but for whom did it work? Certainly it was working for him but not for Sipnget and his people there, for his grandfather and his mother, to whom he threw occasional crumbs.
He did not drink except socially, but now, in the evenings when he could not sleep, he would fix himself a glass of bourbon and toy with it until it was empty. One evening it came as a surprise even to himself that he took not one but three glasses before he could sleep. I must stop this, he told himself, and he got to writing more poetry. He read Mayakovsky and reread Whitman and even tried experimenting in Tagalog and Ilokano with the kind of poetry that he felt the lower classes would understand. It was all a sham, a mistake, that he was writing in English — a language that was for him and the elite — when there should be no barrier between him and the greater masses. Why should the language of science and culture be denied them? Much as he would have wanted to pursue this line of thinking, however, at the same time he felt secure and superior with the fact that he had mastered English and that he would continue writing in it — if only for his ego and for self-justification. It was not the language, after all, that really mattered — it was the heart of it, the art of it. This contradiction was of course an inanity. What really tormented him, as always, was the past, his past, and his recreance to it.
At Christmas he gave his first real party. Our Time had already piled up a steady circulation, and advertisements were coming in. More important to him, however, was that the magazine had become credible and prestigious, even to those whose views he disagreed with. It was politically left, but the writers of the right recognized it nevertheless for its liberal outlook, its fairness, and this was not lost on Dantes, who was a businessman before anything else. Dantes had suggested that the party be held in his house, which Luis had recently been frequenting because of Ester. Luis said, however, that it would be better in his own house, which, although smaller, had a wide garden and was more accessible. He knew that many of his friends on the left, particularly the college crowd, would never feel at ease in such surroundings as those of the Dantes residence.