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

Nudging Godo, Charlie said, “Tell him about your pickups in that staid, puritan city of Boston. Compare notes.”
    Godo had gone to Boston two years back on a fellowship of sorts and had not stopped talking about the trip. But this afternoon he seemed rather reticent. “It’s not necessary,” Godo said. “I’d rather Tony tell us of his experiences. As for America, I still have hopes for its people. Otherwise I feel they are wrong, trying to buy friendship with dollars and scholarships. But we shouldn’t object too much—beggars can’t be choosers, you know. Cliché, but hell, it’s true.”
    Tony wanted to steer the talk away from the forthrightness of Godo, which had always exasperated him. “If I only knew you were coming to Boston,” he said, “I could have entertained you.”
    “Did you get my card?” Godo asked. “I left one, you know. Youwere out in Vermont, enjoying the New England scenery no doubt”—another gale of laughter.
    “It was a summer job really and I had no choice,” Tony said. “My fellowship was never enough.”
    “Be on the lookout now,” Godo said. “Anyone who was in the United States as a freeloader is suspect or is an apologist for American policy.”
    “And that includes you,” Charlie said, grinning at his colleague.
    “Of course!” Godo said. “Have I ever said I don’t like freeloading? But I’m an ingrate and you know that I accept all that I can and I suffer no compunctions about being ungrateful afterward. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
    “I can’t understand,” Tony said gravely, “this new nationalism. Haven’t we always been Filipinos? In the university the talk is confusing. And I am suspicious of anything that’s worn on the sleeve.”
    “There you go again, mouthing platitudes,” Godo said with a hint of irritation. “When will you and your kind—the bright boys who loudly proclaim themselves intellectuals—stop talking and start working?”
    “I have written articles for you,” Tony said. “That’s action within my limitations.”
    “Oh yes,” Godo said. He loved speeches and in his formalistic style was ready to perorate again. “I appreciated your last one—the uses of the past. The writers in the universities, the teachers—I am bowled over by their nationalistic talk. You have everything tagged and placed in a compartment. Go ahead, and while you write facetiously about high and ghostly matters, I go out and meet the people. Ah, the people! And what do I find? Something you never knew and will never understand because you have never been a part of them. Here you are, cooped up in Manila, in your sewing circles, in your coffee clubs, while the people seethe. I know because it’s my job to know. And some day the whole country will blow up before your eyes. It won’t be nationalism and you won’t even realize it, because you have lost touch.”
    Godo had not changed, nor had his speeches. Tony felt a touch of superiority not only because of his new doctorate but because he could look at things more dispassionately now than either of them. And so the talk dropped again to the hoary and angry themes thathe had long discarded. Oh yes, they tried to be trivial about it, but the distinction between sarcasm and wit became thin and, hearing them talk about culture, the economic chaos, and their insecurity, he couldn’t help pitying them. Look at them, grasping at ideals long outdated because these were what they understood, because it was with such ideals that they could justify their lives. They held on to beliefs that were bigger than they: once it was the Common Man, pervasive and purposeful because the Common Man was salvation. Then it was the Barrios, and now Nationalism, because they had finally gotten down to essentials, groping for identities they all had lost.
    “But damnit,” Tony said, “I’ve never doubted my identity. I’ve never lost sight of the fact that I’m Asiatic.”
    “Filthy word. It’s Asian, not Asiatic,”