The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) by F. Sionil Jose Page A

below his shoulder blades. How delightful, how soft her hands felt, and as she bent lower, her breath murmured in his ear and warmed his neck, her thighs pressed close to him, he turned on his side and saw her young face, traces of sleep still on it, her eyes gazing down on him, full of care. Then it was all blurred, Emy in his arms uncomplaining, the stumbling to the table to switch off the lamp, the quiet remonstrations, the final surrender. It had happened without prelude, as if the moment was something inevitable and expected. The following morning he woke while the dawn was not yet aliveupon the city to find a delicious ache in his bones, and Emy cuddled close to him in his narrow bed, still asleep; the fragrance of her hair and her breath swirled all around him.
    He had kissed her, tasted her mouth, and she had wakened with a start, stared at him, frightened and confused. Then she had turned away from him when realization came to her in all its happy, terrifying completeness, and she sobbed quietly. It was the first time a woman had cried before him and he didn’t know what to do except fumble and stammer and clasp her hand and tell her he loved her. And he said it with a thickness in his voice, for his cold had developed quickly and “I love you” sounded like a rusty whisper: “I love you, I love you.” And he kissed her again, telling her that she would catch his cold, too, and she stopped crying then and kissed him in that shy, wary manner of women who had finally discovered this first but lasting knowledge.
    Love? Was it really love, and if it was, was he old enough to have understood its consequences? Emy had always been more firm, more sure of herself, and before he left, on the last hour that they were alone, she had told him: “Tony, you have to be sure. You have to be sure.”
    It had sounded so dramatic and mushy afterward, and how often had he relived it, seen himself in that frustrating mirror called conscience. He was sure he loved her; he was sure that he would return to her, claim her, and take her away from the intractable damnation of Antipolo. He was so sure of all this, but time and distance conspired against him, and in the end he was no longer sure. He developed this sense of frustration about her, and in time the frustration turned to indifference. He had done what was expected of him—written to her religiously, avoiding those endearments that lovers shared, dropping but a few stray insinuations, fond recollections of the Mentholatum rub, the lamp on the table, the Igorot blanket. But to all his letters she had given but one reply, then all was silence.
    He had once asked Betty where Emy was. Betty wrote briefly, told him that Emy was all right and back in the province, that her father had died. Emy was alive and she did not care.
    Now he knew why Emy had not written.
    Still, how could one escape the past? It had dogged him before and he had fled it only because there were other consuming interests—Americaand its neuroses and its preoccupation with order and new and gleaming things—and then there was Carmen, who by herself had meant all that was unattainable. Her very name created visions of the gracious life, the air-conditioning, the air-foam mattresses, the automatic refrigerators and Florsheim shoes—all that he was alien to, even now. Now all these things and the bountiful life were his for the picking. The past be damned then, for what really mattered was now. He asked himself to what infinite reaches had he staked his claims? From the depths of him he heard his own voice saying: Accept, accept! The words ticked in his head like the strikings of a pendulum, measured, persistent, confirming loudly the fact that he was still possessed of a conscience and a capacity to study himself, a capacity for humility, too, and with the humility, a readiness to search the wild, unending landscape of his vision for that single and vivid spark that would tell him he was a success. In all ways he