“Justifications,” Luis said. “You are right, of course, but I am tired of justifications. Those who rationalize — and God knows how often I do that myself — are merely draining their blood, and bloodless, they get corrupted.”
“Call it justification,” Eddie said edgily. He had finished eating and was apparently getting bored. He stared out of the shop door into the street that lighted up with green when the neon sign of the newspaper office flashed. “But doing what we are doing is not exactly a cowardly thing, Luis. Maybe for you it is, for you have everything — but what about people like me? I will be branded the rest of my life, I am sure — and I really cannot afford it.”
“You will end up as executive vice-president of the Dantes Shipping Company when the time comes,” Luis said, humoring him. “Don’t worry. At least you will deserve it, but look around you and who do you see? It’s the scum who are getting the largest part of the cake — the thieves, the grafters — and we know it. The traitors, those who collaborated with the Japanese — and it’s only five years after the war — it is they who are now in power, and they even call themselves patriots.” Luis paused and a chill passed through him. He was merely parroting what his father had told him. The old man was not wrong, he was affirming the truth. He said sadly now, “Yes, it was always the opportunists who destroyed the revolution. It was they who sided with the Spaniards. It was they who shaped our relationship with the Americans and who sold the Filipinos to the Japanese. I am sure that even now, as the Huks grow in strength, a lot of them are pandering to the Huks.”
“But this is nothing exceptional,” Eddie said. “I am sure that the Romans found the same kind of panderers when they were building their empire. It is simply survival and preservation of interests.”
“The revolution lives, but the dream dies — and we cannot do anything, we who were nourished on that dream, for we are too puny or too involved in the system itself. So my dearly beloved and dying father keeps a company of civilian guards and deems it a necessity, even when his guards kill innocent villagers. We cannot even perish in leisure, for the pain of waiting will be worse than death itself. If we must die — pardon the heroics — death must come, swift and painless, in the manner in which we were reared, afraid of pain.”
“I am sure that those whose memories of the Occupation are bitter will disagree with you,” Eddie said. “They knew what pain was.”
“Not that kind, not that kind,” Luis said. “Physical pain is much too simple, although there is nothing quite like it.”
“Whatever it is,” Eddie said boorishly, “keep it away from me.” Then seriously: “Luis, I hope that you will get over it very soon. Just remember, the magazine is your baby now. You gave it life. Of course I can always put it out, but then it will no longer have the personality that you have given it.”
Luis stirred his coffee. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like some damned preacher, giving me motivation and all that jazz.”
“I mean it,” Eddie said. “Perhaps I’m also thinking of myself, but I am really trying to tell you that there is no sense in your acting like this. It was not your fault any more than it was Ester’s. No one in the office blames you.”
Luis leaned forward and glared. “But it was mine, more than Ester will ever know,” he said. “I did not give her strength, sympathy when she needed it. I was just too damned concerned with myself.” He stood up, went to the counter, and paid the check. Eddie followed him to the door, and in the lobby Luis said, “All right, I will try and make it tomorrow.”
When they parted, they shook hands, which they rarely did. The rain started again — a slight drizzle — and Luis ducked in the shade of the marquee. Holding the jacket closer to his chest, he sat on the base of one of the columns. Beyond the ebony pavement came the clop-clop of horses’ hooves on the asphalt. Every once in a while a car sloshed past, its lights flat and bright on his face. When the rain finally stopped he crossed the street and walked toward Plaza Goiti. He looked up; it was midnight and Eddie was still upstairs, working. It had become chilly, and at Plaza Goiti he hailed a cab and gave up the idea of walking until he was tired and could easily go to sleep. He did not stop before his house. He got off a long way from it and walked the deserted seawall. Beside him was the sea, black and formless but heaving and alive. The walk would be long, and it would end in the gumamela-lined driveway. He would go up to the porch, unlock the door, and walk past the silent living room, with its muted piano, which Ester used to play, and its record racks, and beyond, to the bedroom, where he would lie listening to his breathing, to the click of lizards on the wall and the scurrying of mice in the recesses of the ceiling. He would remember what Ester had told him, recall the warmth of her arms around him, the taste of her tears and the thrashing of her heart against his own. God — we were one, as close as no other two people have been, and she had to run away, not so much from life as from me.
He sank on the rain-drenched seawall, and bending over, he gave way and finally found release in a grief that wrenched from him a moaning loud and unmanly. He was still sobbing when a policeman emerged from the shadows, tapped him lightly on the shoulders with his truncheon, and asked him if he was drunk. He turned to the anonymous face, and in the first flush of turquoise dawn — for it was almost daybreak — he rose slowly and murmured a flat and level “No.” He went up the boulevard and straight and steadily to his house, as if drawn to it by the power that makes a criminal hie back to the scene of his crime.
CHAPTER 31
In the five days that Luis did not go to work there had piled up on his desk letters, telegrams, and other messages, most of which he would have enjoyed, for many of them were congratulatory. Seeing them now, he felt no sense of fulfillment, no affirmation of his righteousness. They were merely reminders of a turmoil that had uncoiled. He went over them perfunctorily, then dumped them all in a side drawer.
The phone rang and Eddie answered it. “It’s the Old Man,” he said. “He wants to see you.”
The publisher’s voice sounded relieved. “Ah, so you have finally come,” he said as soon as Luis was on.
“I wasn’t well, sir. I hope I didn’t inconvenience you.”
“I understand,” the publisher said. “If it was a blow to you, Luis, just remember, it was much, much more to us. Have you written to your wife, or called her up and told her? They were such good friends, you know.”
“No, sir, I haven’t,” he said, feeling a pang of guilt. He should have told Trining, but then it was probably just as well that she did not know. Perhaps Marta and Simeon had mentioned the tragedy to her, but the fact that she had not called him up was indication that she still didn’t know.
“I hope you are all right now,” Dantes said. “Can you come to my office immediately? There are officers who will be here in an hour, and they want to clarify a few things about your special issue.”
When he hung up, Eddie was looking at him expectantly. “It’s the constabulary,” Luis said simply.
“Patience,” Eddie told him as he opened the door.
A few of the men at the desks turned to him. Perhaps they knew what was in store for him in the publisher’s office, perhaps they envied his courage, which they, in their conformity, in their middle age, no longer had, but he walked on, not wanting to talk even with those who knew him well. This was his problem, and he must handle it alone.
Miss Vale was waiting for him, and she smiled perfunctorily as he paused before her desk. She was efficient, not given to office gossip, and she was one of Dantes’s most trusted workers. It was rumored that she was an illegitimate sister of Dantes, but Miss Vale was dark and Ilokano, while Dantes was fair-skinned and Negrense. “Go right in,” she said, smiling at Luis. He was pleased to find that with that single smile she could still look like a young girl.