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

leaving, too, and was walking out with her, and he had said, “I really want to see you again, but tomorrow, I don’t think I’ll be there.…” It could have ended on the spot and he would not have known anything more about her, but he saw her again, because in Washington, Filipino students often saw one another. He had no time for parties—he did not have the money—because he was busy finishing his doctoral thesis on the
ilustrados
* and the Philippine Revolution; yes, he would like to show her the town if she would care to have him for company. And one afternoon she even went to his boardinghouse, because he knew people at the International Center and she wanted to visit the place, and some day the Library of Congress, too—if he would take her there. It had seemed as if love could not sprout from such a prosaic beginning, and thinking now of all this, Tony Samson wished that his conquest had encountered more difficulties and was not as easy as it turned out to be.
    He was glad to find Dean Lopez in. His office was still on the ground floor of the main building and its frosted-glass windows were open to a faint breeze. The ceiling fans were unchanged and squeaky. When he was a graduate assistant he used to work in this office, and he remembered, with a sense of lightness, bringing the dean his lunch in an aluminum
fiambrera
† when the dean worked overtime. He ate his lunch here, too, after all the doors were closedand he was alone. His lunch often consisted of nothing but three pieces of
pan de sal
‡ with Spanish sardines or a slice of native cheese, and these he downed with a bottle of Coke that he got from the vending machine down the hall. After lunch he often stole a nap on the bench reserved for visitors until the one o’clock bell jarred him back to his chores.
    The old man seemed genuinely pleased to see him. “Tony, you don’t look like an Ilocano anymore!” The dean leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at him. “Your complexion has become fairer. And you have been overfed—look at your waistline!”
    The old man’s tone, his fraternal remarks, touched Tony. He had finally established rapport with the dean.
    “I brought something for you, sir,” he said. “I bought it in Frankfurt over a year ago on my way back to Boston and kept it so that I could give it to you personally.”
    It was a meerschaum pipe. Dean Lopez, stout and past sixty, stood up and held it in the light, his eyes crinkling. “It must have cost you a fortune.… How much did you pay for it?”
    Tony felt uneasy; he had saved the money scrimping on meals in Madrid and taking buses instead of planes on his return from Madrid to Hamburg, where he took a freighter back to Boston. “It isn’t really expensive, sir. But I knew you smoked pipes, so I thought I’d get you one.”
    “Come on, I want to know how much,” the dean sounded stern.
    “Well, it was only eight dollars, sir.…”
    “Eight dollars, ha! Listen, Tony,” he took him by the arm. “I’m grateful for this. But don’t mention it to anyone, ha? I’ll go around showing it to other pipe-smokers and I’ll say it cost me a hundred and fifty pesos. That’s how much it costs at the Escolta. Here’s one Ilocano smoking a meerschaum pipe. We’ll play a joke on everyone, ha?”
    Tony smiled. “Yes, sir, we will play a joke on everyone.”
    Tony wanted to leave, but Lopez kept him. He was again talking to himself and Tony listened to the old, familiar tune. “Everything in this school is going to the dogs. I’ll never get to be university president as long as the politicians interfere. They are even trying to appointprotégés as professors. But not in my college; I’ll not permit that sort of thing. So be at my side, Tony, and you will go places. We will teach these interlopers what we Ilocanos can do. Remember that.”
    Tony smiled politely. In a while the other professors started filtering in—Dr. Santos, who taught Oriental history; Dr. Gomez, who