Read Online The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) by F. Sionil Jose - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: F. Sionil Jose
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taught government—and after more amenities, they started talking spiritedly about what Dean Lopez had started. The summer session was almost over. A new board of regents would soon take over the university administration and new promotions were being contemplated. Sometimes, almost in condescension, they directed a word or two in his direction. The full professors, his seniors by twenty years, had about them an aura of intellectual impregnability.
“Well, what we lack is national discipline and nothing else,” Dean Lopez said. “We are apt to blame our leaders for the mess we are in, but if we had discipline as a people such a mess would never have happened.”
“I think we don’t really know how to make democracy work,” Dr. Gomez said. He wore his gray hair long and he took pride in having served as technical assistant to no less than the president of the republic. “We are all fond of elections, but we don’t put the result of the ballot to work once elections are over.”
“You are thinking like an American adviser,” Dean Lopez said. “The American definition of democracy cannot work in benighted areas of Asia. Why, that’s a fact. Now listen, when I was in Germany …”
Tony knew what would come next. Listen now to Lopez bluff and bully his colleagues around, listen to him boast that only he, because he happened to have taken one summer course in a German university, could have the final word.
Now the talk became unbearable as the old men spewed big words about the mess at the university and in the whole country. They ranted about the challenges to the academic life that the school could not meet because the young teachers were cowardly or were not imbued with enough wisdom—ah, how they took liberties with words like academic freedom. And truth. And obligation. Tony knew all along, of course, that what they were trying to say with their abominable half-truths was that they were important, that age matteredbecause it meant wisdom and experience. They did not say that they were frustrated and embittered with their small pay, their bleak future, and the fact that, in the university, with no other strength to boast of, they were prisoners of their own meager talents. What he heard now was not different from what he remembered about them six years ago.
“Am I not right, Dr. Samson”—he was being addressed as “doctor” by no less than the dean himself—“when I say that we are debased in spirit because we have not yet properly exorcised our colonial past?”
“Of course, sir,” he was saying, not quite sure that he was in pious agreement. He would have said more but Lopez had already returned to the other professors.
He must get used to that title, doctor, professor—associate professor, which the dean had conferred on him. After the other professors had left, the blustery voice was once more directed to him. “Hell, Tony, you’ll be a full professor before you are forty, and if you play your cards right you’ll be president of the university before you know it. And as a starter, you should be a member of the Socrates Club—I’ll see to that. Hell, not every Ph.D. can be a member of the club, but you are an exception. You are Ilocano.…” He roared good-naturedly.
Dean Lopez was short, but he made up for his lack of stature with a brusqueness in manner and speech. He was supposed to be an authority on English literature, too, but his diction was coarse and his speech full of clichés. In the two years that Tony had served him before going abroad, he knew that the dean was displeased with his writing popular articles for the magazines. Now the subject came up again: “You’ve got to make up your mind now, whether you want to be a pulp writer or a scholar.”
He had wanted to disagree, but he did not want to fall into the rut of an argument or antagonize his true benefactor. They were both Ilocanos—that was the finality to consider. The dean had, in fact, filled his faculty with
“Well, what we lack is national discipline and nothing else,” Dean Lopez said. “We are apt to blame our leaders for the mess we are in, but if we had discipline as a people such a mess would never have happened.”
“I think we don’t really know how to make democracy work,” Dr. Gomez said. He wore his gray hair long and he took pride in having served as technical assistant to no less than the president of the republic. “We are all fond of elections, but we don’t put the result of the ballot to work once elections are over.”
“You are thinking like an American adviser,” Dean Lopez said. “The American definition of democracy cannot work in benighted areas of Asia. Why, that’s a fact. Now listen, when I was in Germany …”
Tony knew what would come next. Listen now to Lopez bluff and bully his colleagues around, listen to him boast that only he, because he happened to have taken one summer course in a German university, could have the final word.
Now the talk became unbearable as the old men spewed big words about the mess at the university and in the whole country. They ranted about the challenges to the academic life that the school could not meet because the young teachers were cowardly or were not imbued with enough wisdom—ah, how they took liberties with words like academic freedom. And truth. And obligation. Tony knew all along, of course, that what they were trying to say with their abominable half-truths was that they were important, that age matteredbecause it meant wisdom and experience. They did not say that they were frustrated and embittered with their small pay, their bleak future, and the fact that, in the university, with no other strength to boast of, they were prisoners of their own meager talents. What he heard now was not different from what he remembered about them six years ago.
“Am I not right, Dr. Samson”—he was being addressed as “doctor” by no less than the dean himself—“when I say that we are debased in spirit because we have not yet properly exorcised our colonial past?”
“Of course, sir,” he was saying, not quite sure that he was in pious agreement. He would have said more but Lopez had already returned to the other professors.
He must get used to that title, doctor, professor—associate professor, which the dean had conferred on him. After the other professors had left, the blustery voice was once more directed to him. “Hell, Tony, you’ll be a full professor before you are forty, and if you play your cards right you’ll be president of the university before you know it. And as a starter, you should be a member of the Socrates Club—I’ll see to that. Hell, not every Ph.D. can be a member of the club, but you are an exception. You are Ilocano.…” He roared good-naturedly.
Dean Lopez was short, but he made up for his lack of stature with a brusqueness in manner and speech. He was supposed to be an authority on English literature, too, but his diction was coarse and his speech full of clichés. In the two years that Tony had served him before going abroad, he knew that the dean was displeased with his writing popular articles for the magazines. Now the subject came up again: “You’ve got to make up your mind now, whether you want to be a pulp writer or a scholar.”
He had wanted to disagree, but he did not want to fall into the rut of an argument or antagonize his true benefactor. They were both Ilocanos—that was the finality to consider. The dean had, in fact, filled his faculty with
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