The Reign of Greed - 01

The Reign of Greed

A Complete English Version of _El Filibusterismo_ from the Spanish of
José Rizal
By
Charles Derbyshire

Manila
Philippine Education Company
1912



Copyright, 1912, by Philippine Education Company.
Entered at Stationers' Hall.
Registrado en las Islas Filipinas.
_All rights reserved_.


TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

El Filibusterismo, the second of José Rizal's novels of Philippine
life, is a story of the last days of the Spanish régime in the
Philippines. Under the name of _The Reign of Greed_ it is for the
first time translated into English. Written some four or five years
after _Noli Me Tangere_, the book represents Rizal's more mature
judgment on political and social conditions in the islands, and in
its graver and less hopeful tone reflects the disappointments and
discouragements which he had encountered in his efforts to lead the
way to reform. Rizal's dedication to the first edition is of special
interest, as the writing of it was one of the grounds of accusation
against him when he was condemned to death in 1896. It reads:

"To the memory of the priests, Don Mariano Gomez (85 years
old), Don José Burgos (30 years old), and Don Jacinto Zamora
(35 years old). Executed in Bagumbayan Field on the 28th of
February, 1872.
"The Church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt
the crime that has been imputed to you; the Government, by
surrounding your trials with mystery and shadows, causes the
belief that there was some error, committed in fatal moments;
and all the Philippines, by worshiping your memory and calling
you martyrs, in no sense recognizes your culpability. In so
far, therefore, as your complicity in the Cavite mutiny is not
clearly proved, as you may or may not have been patriots, and
as you may or may not have cherished sentiments for justice
and for liberty, I have the right to dedicate my work to
you as victims of the evil which I undertake to combat. And
while we await expectantly upon Spain some day to restore
your good name and cease to be answerable for your death,
let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over
your unknown tombs, and let it be understood that every one
who without clear proofs attacks your memory stains his hands
in your blood!
J. Rizal."

A brief recapitulation of the story in _Noli Me Tangere_ (The Social
Cancer) is essential to an understanding of such plot as there is
in the present work, which the author called a "continuation" of the
first story.
Juan Crisostomo Ibarra is a young Filipino, who, after studying
for seven years in Europe, returns to his native land to find that
his father, a wealthy landowner, has died in prison as the result
of a quarrel with the parish curate, a Franciscan friar named Padre
Damaso. Ibarra is engaged to a beautiful and accomplished girl, Maria
Clara, the supposed daughter and only child of the rich Don Santiago
de los Santos, commonly known as "Capitan Tiago," a typical Filipino
cacique, the predominant character fostered by the friar régime.
Ibarra resolves to forego all quarrels and to work for the betterment
of his people. To show his good intentions, he seeks to establish,
at his own expense, a public school in his native town. He meets with
ostensible support from all, especially Padre Damaso's successor,
a young and gloomy Franciscan named Padre Salvi, for whom Maria Clara
confesses to an instinctive dread.
At the laying of the corner-stone for the new schoolhouse a
suspicious accident, apparently aimed at Ibarra's life, occurs, but
the festivities proceed until the dinner, where Ibarra is grossly and
wantonly insulted over the memory of his father by Fray Damaso. The
young man loses control of himself and is about to kill the friar,
who is saved by the intervention of Maria Clara.
Ibarra is excommunicated, and Capitan Tiago, through his fear of the
friars, is forced to break the engagement and agree to the marriage of
Maria Clara with a young and inoffensive Spaniard provided by Padre
Damaso. Obedient to her reputed father's command and influenced
by her mysterious dread of Padre Salvi, Maria Clara consents to
this arrangement, but becomes seriously ill, only to be saved by
medicines sent secretly by Ibarra and clandestinely administered by
a girl friend.
Ibarra succeeds in having the excommunication removed, but before he
can explain matters an uprising against the Civil Guard is secretly
brought about through agents of Padre Salvi, and the leadership is
ascribed to Ibarra to ruin him. He is warned by a mysterious friend,
an outlaw called Elias, whose life he had accidentally saved; but
desiring first to see Maria Clara, he refuses to make his escape,
and when the outbreak occurs he is arrested as the instigator of it
and thrown into prison in Manila.
On the evening when Capitan Tiago gives a ball in his Manila house to
celebrate his supposed daughter's engagement, Ibarra makes his escape
from prison and succeeds in seeing Maria Clara alone. He begins to
reproach her because it is a letter written to her before he went to
Europe which forms the basis of the charge against him, but she clears
herself of treachery to him. The letter had been secured from her by
false representations and in exchange for two others written by her
mother just before her birth, which prove that Padre Damaso is her
real father. These letters had been accidentally discovered in the
convento by Padre Salvi, who made use of them to intimidate the girl
and get possession of Ibarra's letter, from which he forged others
to incriminate the young man. She tells him that she will marry the
young Spaniard, sacrificing herself thus to save her mother's name
and Capitan Tiago's honor and to prevent a public scandal, but that
she will always remain true to him.
Ibarra's escape had been effected by Elias, who conveys him in a
banka up the Pasig to the Lake, where they are so closely beset by
the Civil Guard that Elias leaps into the water and draws the pursuers
away from the boat, in which Ibarra lies concealed.
On Christmas Eve, at the tomb of the Ibarras in a gloomy wood,
Elias appears, wounded and dying, to find there a boy named Basilio
beside the corpse of his mother, a poor woman who had been driven
to insanity by her husband's neglect and abuses on the part of the
Civil Guard, her younger son having disappeared some time before in
the convento, where he was a sacristan. Basilio, who is ignorant of
Elias's identity, helps him to build a funeral pyre, on which his
corpse and the madwoman's are to be burned.
Upon learning of the reported death of Ibarra in the chase on the Lake,
Maria Clara becomes disconsolate and begs her supposed godfather,
Fray Damaso, to put her in a nunnery. Unconscious of her knowledge of
their true relationship, the friar breaks down and confesses that all
the trouble he has stirred up with the Ibarras has been to prevent her
from marrying a native, which would condemn her and her children to
the oppressed and enslaved class. He finally yields to her entreaties
and she enters the nunnery of St. Clara, to which Padre Salvi is soon
assigned in a ministerial capacity.

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape-;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?

Edwin Markham


CONTENTS

I. On the Upper Deck
II. On the Lower Deck
III. Legends
IV. Cabesang Tales
V. A Cochero's Christmas Eve
VI. Basilio
VII. Simoun
VIII. Merry Christmas
IX. Pilates
X. Wealth and Want
XI. Los Baños
XII. Placido Penitente
XIII. The Class in Physics
XIV. In the House of the Students
XV. Señor Pasta
XVI. The Tribulations of a Chinese
XVII. The Quiapo Pair
XVIII. Legerdemain
XIX. The Fuse
XX. The Arbiter
XXI. Manila Types
XXII. The Performance
XXIII. A Corpse
XXIV. Dreams
XXV. Smiles and Tears
XXVI. Pasquinades
XXVII. The Friar and the Filipino
XXVIII. Tatakut
XXIX. Exit Capitan Tiago
XXX. Juli
XXXI. The High Official
XXXII. Effect of the Pasquinades
XXXIII. La Ultima Razón
XXXIV. The Wedding
XXXV. The Fiesta
XXXVI. Ben-Zayb's Afflictions
XXXVII. The Mystery
XXXVIII. Fatality
XXXIX. Conclusion


CHAPTER I
ON THE UPPER DECK

Sic itur ad astra.

One morning in December the steamer _Tabo_ was laboriously ascending
the tortuous course of the Pasig, carrying a large crowd of passengers
toward the province of La Laguna. She was a heavily built steamer,
almost round, like the _tabú_ from which she derived her name,
quite dirty in spite of her pretensions to whiteness, majestic and
grave from her leisurely motion. Altogether, she was held in great
affection in that region, perhaps from her Tagalog name, or from the
fact that she bore the characteristic impress of things in the country,
representing something like a triumph over progress, a steamer that was
not a steamer at all, an organism, stolid, imperfect yet unimpeachable,
which, when it wished to pose as being rankly progressive, proudly
contented itself with putting on a fresh coat of paint. Indeed, the
happy steamer was genuinely Filipino! If a person were only reasonably
considerate, she might even have been taken for the Ship of State,
constructed, as she had been, under the inspection of _Reverendos_
and _Ilustrísimos_....
Bathed in the sunlight of a morning that made the waters of the river
sparkle and the breezes rustle in the bending bamboo on its banks,
there she goes with her white silhouette throwing out great clouds
of smoke--the Ship of State, so the joke runs, also has the vice of
smoking! The whistle shrieks at every moment, hoarse and commanding
like a tyrant who would rule by shouting, so that no one on board
can hear his own thoughts. She menaces everything she meets: now she
looks as though she would grind to bits the _salambaw_, insecure
fishing apparatus which in their movements resemble skeletons of
giants saluting an antediluvian tortoise; now she speeds straight
toward the clumps of bamboo or against the amphibian structures,
_karihan_, or wayside lunch-stands, which, amid _gumamelas_ and other
flowers, look like indecisive bathers who with their feet already in
the water cannot bring themselves to make the final plunge; at times,
following a sort of channel marked out in the river by tree-trunks,
she moves along with a satisfied air, except when a sudden shock
disturbs the passengers and throws them off their balance, all the
result of a collision with a sand-bar which no one dreamed was there.
Moreover, if the comparison with the Ship of State is not yet complete,
note the arrangement of the passengers. On the lower deck appear brown
faces and black heads, types of Indians, [1] Chinese, and mestizos,
wedged in between bales of merchandise and boxes, while there on the
upper deck, beneath an awning that protects them from the sun, are
seated in comfortable chairs a few passengers dressed in the fashion of
Europeans, friars, and government clerks, each with his _puro_ cigar,
and gazing at the landscape apparently without heeding the efforts
of the captain and the sailors to overcome the obstacles in the river.
The captain was a man of kindly aspect, well along in years, an old
sailor who in his youth had plunged into far vaster seas, but who now
in his age had to exercise much greater attention, care, and vigilance
to avoid dangers of a trivial character. And they were the same for
each day: the same sand-bars, the same hulk of unwieldy steamer wedged
into the same curves, like a corpulent dame in a jammed throng. So,
at each moment, the good man had to stop, to back up, to go forward at
half speed, sending--now to port, now to starboard--the five sailors
equipped with long bamboo poles to give force to the turn the rudder
had suggested. He was like a veteran who, after leading men through
hazardous campaigns, had in his age become the tutor of a capricious,
disobedient, and lazy boy.
Doña Victorina, the only lady seated in the European group, could say
whether the _Tabo_ was not lazy, disobedient, and capricious--Doña
Victorina, who, nervous as ever, was hurling invectives against the
cascos, bankas, rafts of coconuts, the Indians paddling about, and
even the washerwomen and bathers, who fretted her with their mirth and
chatter. Yes, the _Tabo_ would move along very well if there were no
Indians in the river, no Indians in the country, yes, if there were
not a single Indian in the world--regardless of the fact that the
helmsmen were Indians, the sailors Indians, Indians the engineers,
Indians ninety-nine per cent, of the passengers, and she herself also
an Indian if the rouge were scratched off and her pretentious gown
removed. That morning Doña Victorina was more irritated than usual
because the members of the group took very little notice of her,
reason for which was not lacking; for just consider--there could be
found three friars, convinced that the world would move backwards the
very day they should take a single step to the right; an indefatigable
Don Custodio who was sleeping peacefully, satisfied with his projects;
a prolific writer like Ben-Zayb (anagram of Ibañez), who believed that
the people of Manila thought because he, Ben-Zayb, was a thinker;
a canon like Padre Irene, who added luster to the clergy with his
rubicund face, carefully shaven, from which towered a beautiful Jewish
nose, and his silken cassock of neat cut and small buttons; and a
wealthy jeweler like Simoun, who was reputed to be the adviser and
inspirer of all the acts of his Excellency, the Captain-General--just
consider the presence there of these pillars _sine quibus non_ of the
country, seated there in agreeable discourse, showing little sympathy
for a renegade Filipina who dyed her hair red! Now wasn't this enough
to exhaust the patience of a female Job--a sobriquet Doña Victorina
always applied to herself when put out with any one!
The ill-humor of the señora increased every time the captain shouted
"Port," "Starboard" to the sailors, who then hastily seized their
poles and thrust them against the banks, thus with the strength of
their legs and shoulders preventing the steamer from shoving its hull
ashore at that particular point. Seen under these circumstances the
Ship of State might be said to have been converted from a tortoise
into a crab every time any danger threatened.
"But, captain, why don't your stupid steersmen go in that
direction?" asked the lady with great indignation.
"Because it's very shallow in the other, señora," answered the captain,
deliberately, slowly winking one eye, a little habit which he had
cultivated as if to say to his words on their way out, "Slowly,
slowly!"
"Half speed! Botheration, half speed!" protested Doña Victorina
disdainfully. "Why not full?"
"Because we should then be traveling over those ricefields, señora,"
replied the imperturbable captain, pursing his lips to indicate the
cultivated fields and indulging in two circumspect winks.
This Doña Victorina was well known in the country for her caprices and
extravagances. She was often seen in society, where she was tolerated
whenever she appeared in the company of her niece, Paulita Gomez,
a very beautiful and wealthy orphan, to whom she was a kind of
guardian. At a rather advanced age she had married a poor wretch
named Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, and at the time we now see her,
carried upon herself fifteen years of wedded life, false frizzes, and a
half-European costume--for her whole ambition had been to Europeanize
herself, with the result that from the ill-omened day of her wedding
she had gradually, thanks to her criminal attempts, succeeded in
so transforming herself that at the present time Quatrefages and
Virchow together could not have told where to classify her among the
known races.
Her husband, who had borne all her impositions with the resignation of
a fakir through so many years of married life, at last on one luckless
day had had his bad half-hour and administered to her a superb whack
with his crutch. The surprise of Madam Job at such an inconsistency
of character made her insensible to the immediate effects, and only
after she had recovered from her astonishment and her husband had
fled did she take notice of the pain, then remaining in bed for
several days, to the great delight of Paulita, who was very fond
of joking and laughing at her aunt. As for her husband, horrified
at the impiety of what appeared to him to be a terrific parricide,
he took to flight, pursued by the matrimonial furies (two curs and a
parrot), with all the speed his lameness permitted, climbed into the
first carriage he encountered, jumped into the first banka he saw on
the river, and, a Philippine Ulysses, began to wander from town to
town, from province to province, from island to island, pursued and
persecuted by his bespectacled Calypso, who bored every one that had
the misfortune to travel in her company. She had received a report of
his being in the province of La Laguna, concealed in one of the towns,
so thither she was bound to seduce him back with her dyed frizzes.
Her fellow travelers had taken measures of defense by keeping up
among themselves a lively conversation on any topic whatsoever. At
that moment the windings and turnings of the river led them to talk
about straightening the channel and, as a matter of course, about the
port works. Ben-Zayb, the journalist with the countenance of a friar,
was disputing with a young friar who in turn had the countenance of an
artilleryman. Both were shouting, gesticulating, waving their arms,
spreading out their hands, stamping their feet, talking of levels,
fish-corrals, the San Mateo River, [2] of cascos, of Indians, and so
on, to the great satisfaction of their listeners and the undisguised
disgust of an elderly Franciscan, remarkably thin and withered,
and a handsome Dominican about whose lips flitted constantly a
scornful smile.
The thin Franciscan, understanding the Dominican's smile, decided
to intervene and stop the argument. He was undoubtedly respected,
for with a wave of his hand he cut short the speech of both at the
moment when the friar-artilleryman was talking about experience and
the journalist-friar about scientists.
"Scientists, Ben-Zayb--do you know what they are?" asked the Franciscan
in a hollow voice, scarcely stirring in his seat and making only a
faint gesture with his skinny hand. "Here you have in the province
a bridge, constructed by a brother of ours, which was not completed
because the scientists, relying on their theories, condemned it as
weak and scarcely safe--yet look, it is the bridge that has withstood
all the floods and earthquakes!" [3]
"That's it, _puñales,_ that very thing, that was exactly what I was
going to say!" exclaimed the friar-artilleryman, thumping his fists
down on the arms of his bamboo chair. "That's it, that bridge and
the scientists! That was just what I was going to mention, Padre
Salvi--_puñales!_"
Ben-Zayb remained silent, half smiling, either out of respect or
because he really did not know what to reply, and yet his was the only
thinking head in the Philippines! Padre Irene nodded his approval as
he rubbed his long nose.
Padre Salvi, the thin and withered cleric, appeared to be satisfied
with such submissiveness and went on in the midst of the silence:
"But this does not mean that you may not be as near right as Padre
Camorra" (the friar-artilleryman). "The trouble is in the lake--"
"The fact is there isn't a single decent lake in this country,"
interrupted Doña Victorina, highly indignant, and getting ready for
a return to the assault upon the citadel.
The besieged gazed at one another in terror, but with the promptitude
of a general, the jeweler Simoun rushed in to the rescue. "The remedy
is very simple," he said in a strange accent, a mixture of English
and South American. "And I really don't understand why it hasn't
occurred to somebody."
All turned to give him careful attention, even the Dominican. The
jeweler was a tall, meager, nervous man, very dark, dressed in the
English fashion and wearing a pith helmet. Remarkable about him was
his long white hair contrasted with a sparse black beard, indicating a
mestizo origin. To avoid the glare of the sun he wore constantly a pair
of enormous blue goggles, which completely hid his eyes and a portion
of his cheeks, thus giving him the aspect of a blind or weak-sighted
person. He was standing with his legs apart as if to maintain his
balance, with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat.
"The remedy is very simple," he repeated, "and wouldn't cost a cuarto."
The attention now redoubled, for it was whispered in Manila that this
man controlled the Captain-General, and all saw the remedy in process
of execution. Even Don Custodio himself turned to listen.
"Dig a canal straight from the source to the mouth of the river,
passing through Manila; that is, make a new river-channel and fill
up the old Pasig. That would save land, shorten communication, and
prevent the formation of sandbars."
The project left all his hearers astounded, accustomed as they were
to palliative measures.
"It's a Yankee plan!" observed Ben-Zayb, to ingratiate himself with
Simoun, who had spent a long time in North America.
All considered the plan wonderful and so indicated by the movements
of their heads. Only Don Custodio, the liberal Don Custodio, owing to
his independent position and his high offices, thought it his duty
to attack a project that did not emanate from himself--that was a
usurpation! He coughed, stroked the ends of his mustache, and with
a voice as important as though he were at a formal session of the
Ayuntamiento, said, "Excuse me, Señor Simoun, my respected friend,
if I should say that I am not of your opinion. It would cost a great
deal of money and might perhaps destroy some towns."
"Then destroy them!" rejoined Simoun coldly.
"And the money to pay the laborers?"
"Don't pay them! Use the prisoners and convicts!"
"But there aren't enough, Señor Simoun!"
"Then, if there aren't enough, let all the villagers, the old men,
the youths, the boys, work. Instead of the fifteen days of obligatory
service, let them work three, four, five months for the State, with the
additional obligation that each one provide his own food and tools."
The startled Don Custodio turned his head to see if there was any
Indian within ear-shot, but fortunately those nearby were rustics,
and the two helmsmen seemed to be very much occupied with the windings
of the river.
"But, Señor Simoun--"
"Don't fool yourself, Don Custodio," continued Simoun dryly, "only in
this way are great enterprises carried out with small means. Thus
were constructed the Pyramids, Lake Moeris, and the Colosseum
in Rome. Entire provinces came in from the desert, bringing their
tubers to feed on. Old men, youths, and boys labored in transporting
stones, hewing them, and carrying them on their shoulders under
the direction of the official lash, and afterwards, the survivors
returned to their homes or perished in the sands of the desert. Then
came other provinces, then others, succeeding one another in the work
during years. Thus the task was finished, and now we admire them,
we travel, we go to Egypt and to Home, we extol the Pharaohs and the
Antonines. Don't fool yourself--the dead remain dead, and might only
is considered right by posterity."
"But, Señor Simoun, such measures might provoke uprisings," objected
Don Custodio, rather uneasy over the turn the affair had taken.
"Uprisings, ha, ha! Did the Egyptian people ever rebel, I wonder? Did
the Jewish prisoners rebel against the pious Titus? Man, I thought
you were better informed in history!"
Clearly Simoun was either very presumptuous or disregarded
conventionalities! To say to Don Custodio's face that he did not know
history! It was enough to make any one lose his temper! So it seemed,
for Don Custodio forgot himself and retorted, "But the fact is that
you're not among Egyptians or Jews!"
"And these people have rebelled more than once," added the Dominican,
somewhat timidly. "In the times when they were forced to transport
heavy timbers for the construction of ships, if it hadn't been for
the clerics--"
"Those times are far away," answered Simoun, with a laugh even drier
than usual. "These islands will never again rebel, no matter how much
work and taxes they have. Haven't you lauded to me, Padre Salvi,"
he added, turning to the Franciscan, "the house and hospital at Los
Baños, where his Excellency is at present?"
Padre Salvi gave a nod and looked up, evading the question.
"Well, didn't you tell me that both buildings were constructed
by forcing the people to work on them under the whip of a
lay-brother? Perhaps that wonderful bridge was built in the same
way. Now tell me, did these people rebel?"
"The fact is--they have rebelled before," replied the Dominican,
"and _ab actu ad posse valet illatio!_"
"No, no, nothing of the kind," continued Simoun, starting down a
hatchway to the cabin. "What's said, is said! And you, Padre Sibyla,
don't talk either Latin or nonsense. What are you friars good for if
the people can rebel?"
Taking no notice of the replies and protests, Simoun descended the
small companionway that led below, repeating disdainfully, "Bosh,
bosh!"
Padre Sibyla turned pale; this was the first time that he, Vice-Rector
of the University, had ever been credited with nonsense. Don Custodio
turned green; at no meeting in which he had ever found himself had
he encountered such an adversary.
"An American mulatto!" he fumed.
"A British Indian," observed Ben-Zayb in a low tone.
"An American, I tell you, and shouldn't I know?" retorted Don Custodio
in ill-humor. "His Excellency has told me so. He's a jeweler whom
the latter knew in Havana, and, as I suspect, the one who got him
advancement by lending him money. So to repay him he has had him come
here to let him have a chance and increase his fortune by selling
diamonds--imitations, who knows? And he so ungrateful, that, after
getting money from the Indians, he wishes--huh!" The sentence was
concluded by a significant wave of the hand.
No one dared to join in this diatribe. Don Custodio could discredit
himself with his Excellency, if he wished, but neither Ben-Zayb,
nor Padre Irene, nor Padre Salvi, nor the offended Padre Sibyla had