The Reign of Greed - 05

vitals, the corruption, the ptomaine, the poison of the tombs, to
kill the foul bird? The corpse was letting itself be consumed, the
vulture was gorging itself with meat, and because it was not possible
for me to give it life so that it might turn against its destroyer,
and because the corruption developed slowly, I have stimulated greed,
I have abetted it. The cases of injustice and the abuses multiplied
themselves; I have instigated crime and acts of cruelty, so that the
people might become accustomed to the idea of death. I have stirred up
trouble so that to escape from it some remedy might be found; I have
placed obstacles in the way of trade so that the country, impoverished
and reduced to misery, might no longer be afraid of anything; I have
excited desires to plunder the treasury, and as this has not been
enough to bring about a popular uprising, I have wounded the people
in their most sensitive fiber; I have made the vulture itself insult
the very corpse that it feeds upon and hasten the corruption.
"Now, when I was about to get the supreme rottenness, the supreme
filth, the mixture of such foul products brewing poison, when the
greed was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seize
whatever came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration,
here you come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidence
in the government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a body
palpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing with
blood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth to offer itself again as
fresh food!
"Ah, youth is ever inexperienced and dreamy, always running after
the butterflies and flowers! You have united, so that by your efforts
you may bind your fatherland to Spain with garlands of roses when in
reality you are forging upon it chains harder than the diamond! You
ask for equal rights, the Hispanization of your customs, and you don't
see that what you are begging for is suicide, the destruction of your
nationality, the annihilation of your fatherland, the consecration of
tyranny! What will you be in the future? A people without character,
a nation without liberty--everything you have will be borrowed, even
your very defects! You beg for Hispanization, and do not pale with
shame when they deny it you! And even if they should grant it to you,
what then--what have you gained? At best, a country of pronunciamentos,
a land of civil wars, a republic of the greedy and the malcontents,
like some of the republics of South America! To what are you tending
now, with your instruction in Castilian, a pretension that would be
ridiculous were it not for its deplorable consequences! You wish to
add one more language to the forty odd that are spoken in the islands,
so that you may understand one another less and less."
"On the contrary," replied Basilio, "if the knowledge of Castilian
may bind us to the government, in exchange it may also unite the
islands among themselves."
"A gross error!" rejoined Simoun. "You are letting yourselves be
deceived by big words and never go to the bottom of things to examine
the results in their final analysis. Spanish will never be the general
language of the country, the people will never talk it, because the
conceptions of their brains and the feelings of their hearts cannot
be expressed in that language--each people has its own tongue, as it
has its own way of thinking! What are you going to do with Castilian,
the few of you who will speak it? Kill off your own originality,
subordinate your thoughts to other brains, and instead of freeing
yourselves, make yourselves slaves indeed! Nine-tenths of those of
you who pretend to be enlightened are renegades to your country! He
among you who talks that language neglects his own in such a way that
he neither writes nor understands it, and how many have I not seen
who pretended not to know a single word of it! But fortunately, you
have an imbecile government! While Russia enslaves Poland by forcing
the Russian language upon it, while Germany prohibits French in the
conquered provinces, your government strives to preserve yours, and
you in return, a remarkable people under an incredible government, you
are trying to despoil yourselves of your own nationality! One and all
you forget that while a people preserves its language, it preserves
the marks of its liberty, as a man preserves his independence while
he holds to his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of the
peoples. Luckily, your independence is assured; human passions are
looking out for that!"
Simoun paused and rubbed his hand over his forehead. The waning moon
was rising and sent its faint light down through the branches of the
trees, and with his white locks and severe features, illuminated from
below by the lantern, the jeweler appeared to be the fateful spirit
of the wood planning some evil.
Basilio was silent before such bitter reproaches and listened with
bowed head, while Simoun resumed: "I saw this movement started and have
passed whole nights of anguish, because I understood that among those
youths there were exceptional minds and hearts, sacrificing themselves
for what they thought to be a good cause, when in reality they were
working against their own country. How many times have I wished
to speak to you young men, to reveal myself and undeceive you! But
in view of the reputation I enjoy, my words would have been wrongly
interpreted and would perhaps have had a counter effect. How many times
have I not longed to approach your Makaraig, your Isagani! Sometimes
I thought of their death, I wished to destroy them--"
Simoun checked himself.
"Here's why I let you live, Basilio, and by such imprudence I expose
myself to the risk of being some day betrayed by you. But you know
who I am, you know how much I must have suffered--then believe in
me! You are not of the common crowd, which sees in the jeweler Simoun
the trader who incites the authorities to commit abuses in order that
the abused may buy jewels. I am the Judge who wishes to castigate
this system by making use of its own defects, to make war on it by
flattering it. I need your help, your influence among the youth, to
combat these senseless desires for Hispanization, for assimilation,
for equal rights. By that road you will become only a poor copy,
and the people should look higher. It is madness to attempt to
influence the thoughts of the rulers--they have their plan outlined,
the bandage covers their eyes, and besides losing time uselessly, you
are deceiving the people with vain hopes and are helping to bend their
necks before the tyrant. What you should do is to take advantage of
their prejudices to serve your needs. Are they unwilling that you
be assimilated with the Spanish people? Good enough! Distinguish
yourselves then by revealing yourselves in your own character, try
to lay the foundations of the Philippine fatherland! Do they deny you
hope? Good! Don't depend on them, depend upon yourselves and work! Do
they deny you representation in their Cortes? So much the better! Even
should you succeed in sending representatives of your own choice,
what are you going to accomplish there except to be overwhelmed among
so many voices, and sanction with your presence the abuses and wrongs
that are afterwards perpetrated? The fewer rights they allow you,
the more reason you will have later to throw off the yoke, and return
evil for evil. If they are unwilling to teach you their language,
cultivate your own, extend it, preserve to the people their own way
of thinking, and instead of aspiring to be a province, aspire to be
a nation! Instead of subordinate thoughts, think independently, to
the end that neither by right, nor custom, nor language, the Spaniard
can be considered the master here, nor even be looked upon as a part
of the country, but ever as an invader, a foreigner, and sooner or
later you will have your liberty! Here's why I let you live!"
Basilio breathed freely, as though a great weight had been lifted from
him, and after a brief pause, replied: "Sir, the honor you do me in
confiding your plans to me is too great for me not to be frank with
you, and tell you that what you ask of me is beyond my power. I am
no politician, and if I have signed the petition for instruction in
Castilian it has been because I saw in it an advantage to our studies
and nothing more. My destiny is different; my aspiration reduces
itself to alleviating the physical sufferings of my fellow men."
The jeweler smiled. "What are physical sufferings compared to moral
tortures? What is the death of a man in the presence of the death of a
society? Some day you will perhaps be a great physician, if they let
you go your way in peace, but greater yet will be he who can inject
a new idea into this anemic people! You, what are you doing for the
land that gave you existence, that supports your life, that affords
you knowledge? Don't you realize that that is a useless life which is
not consecrated to a great idea? It is a stone wasted in the fields
without becoming a part of any edifice."
"No, no, sir!" replied Basilio modestly, "I'm not folding my arms,
I'm working like all the rest to raise up from the ruins of the past
a people whose units will be bound together--that each one may feel
in himself the conscience and the life of the whole. But however
enthusiastic our generation may be, we understand that in this great
social fabric there must be a division of labor. I have chosen my
task and will devote myself to science."
"Science is not the end of man," declared Simoun.
"The most civilized nations are tending toward it."
"Yes, but only as a means of seeking their welfare."
"Science is more eternal, it's more human, it's more
universal!" exclaimed the youth in a transport of enthusiasm. "Within a
few centuries, when humanity has become redeemed and enlightened, when
there are no races, when all peoples are free, when there are neither
tyrants nor slaves, colonies nor mother countries, when justice rules
and man is a citizen of the world, the pursuit of science alone will
remain, the word patriotism will be equivalent to fanaticism, and he
who prides himself on patriotic ideas will doubtless be isolated as
a dangerous disease, as a menace to the social order."
Simoun smiled sadly. "Yes, yes," he said with a shake of his head,
"yet to reach that condition it is necessary that there be no
tyrannical and no enslaved peoples, it is necessary that man go about
freely, that he know how to respect the rights of others in their own
individuality, and for this there is yet much blood to be shed, the
struggle forces itself forward. To overcome the ancient fanaticism
that bound consciences it was necessary that many should perish in
the holocausts, so that the social conscience in horror declared
the individual conscience free. It is also necessary that all answer
the question which with each day the fatherland asks them, with its
fettered hands extended! Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannical
people, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but however
perfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue among
oppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice,
of liberty, of personal dignity--nothing of chimerical dreams, of
effeminate idyls! The greatness of a man is not in living before his
time, a thing almost impossible, but in understanding its desires,
in responding to its needs, and in guiding it on its forward way. The
geniuses that are commonly believed to have existed before their time,
only appear so because those who judge them see from a great distance,
or take as representative of the age the line of stragglers!"
Simoun fell silent. Seeing that he could awake no enthusiasm in
that unresponsive mind, he turned to another subject and asked with
a change of tone: "And what are you doing for the memory of your
mother and your brother? Is it enough that you come here every year,
to weep like a woman over a grave?" And he smiled sarcastically.
The shot hit the mark. Basilio changed color and advanced a step.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked angrily.
"Without means, without social position, how may I bring their
murderers to justice? I would merely be another victim, shattered like
a piece of glass hurled against a rock. Ah, you do ill to recall this
to me, since it is wantonly reopening a wound!"
"But what if I should offer you my aid?"
Basilio shook his head and remained pensive. "All the tardy
vindications of justice, all the revenge in the world, will not restore
a single hair of my mother's head, or recall a smile to my brother's
lips. Let them rest in peace--what should I gain now by avenging them?"
"Prevent others from suffering what you have suffered, that in
the future there be no brothers murdered or mothers driven to
madness. Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it
encourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves! Man
is in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance. I
thought as you do, and you know what my fate was. Those who caused
your misfortunes are watching you day and night, they suspect that
you are only biding your time, they take your eagerness to learn,
your love of study, your very complaisance, for burning desires for
revenge. The day they can get rid of you they will do with you as
they did with me, and they will not let you grow to manhood, because
they fear and hate you!"
"Hate me? Still hate me after the wrong they have done me?" asked
the youth in surprise.
Simoun burst into a laugh. "'It is natural for man to hate those
whom he has wronged,' said Tacitus, confirming the _quos laeserunt et
oderunt_ of Seneca. When you wish to gauge the evil or the good that
one people has done to another, you have only to observe whether
it hates or loves. Thus is explained the reason why many who have
enriched themselves here in the high offices they have filled, on
their return to the Peninsula relieve themselves by slanders and
insults against those who have been their victims. _Proprium humani
ingenii est odisse quern laeseris!"_
"But if the world is large, if one leaves them to the peaceful
enjoyment of power, if I ask only to be allowed to work, to live--"
"And to rear meek-natured sons to send them afterwards to submit to
the yoke," continued Simoun, cruelly mimicking Basilio's tone. "A fine
future you prepare for them, and they have to thank you for a life
of humiliation and suffering! Good enough, young man! When a body
is inert, it is useless to galvanize it. Twenty years of continuous
slavery, of systematic humiliation, of constant prostration, finally
create in the mind a twist that cannot be straightened by the labor
of a day. Good and evil instincts are inherited and transmitted from
father to son. Then let your idylic ideas live, your dreams of a
slave who asks only for a bandage to wrap the chain so that it may
rattle less and not ulcerate his skin! You hope for a little home
and some ease, a wife and a handful of rice--here is your ideal man
of the Philippines! Well, if they give it to you, consider yourself
fortunate."
Basilio, accustomed to obey and bear with the caprices and humors
of Capitan Tiago. was now dominated by Simoun, who appeared to him
terrible and sinister on a background bathed in tears and blood. He
tried to explain himself by saying that he did not consider himself
fit to mix in politics, that he had no political opinions because
he had never studied the question, but that he was always ready to
lend his services the day they might be needed, that for the moment
he saw only one need, the enlightenment of the people.
Simoun stopped him with a gesture, and, as the dawn was coming,
said to him: "Young man, I am not warning you to keep my secret,
because I know that discretion is one of your good qualities, and
even though you might wish to sell me, the jeweler Simoun, the friend
of the authorities and of the religious corporations, will always
be given more credit than the student Basilio, already suspected
of filibusterism, and, being a native, so much the more marked and
watched, and because in the profession you are entering upon you
will encounter powerful rivals. After all, even though you have not
corresponded to my hopes, the day on which you change your mind,
look me up at my house in the Escolta, and I'll be glad to help you."
Basilio thanked him briefly and went away.
"Have I really made a mistake?" mused Simoun, when he found himself
alone. "Is it that he doubts me and meditates his plan of revenge
so secretly that he fears to tell it even in the solitude of the
night? Or can it be that the years of servitude have extinguished
in his heart every human sentiment and there remain only the animal
desires to live and reproduce? In that case the type is deformed
and will have to be cast over again. Then the hecatomb is preparing:
let the unfit perish and only the strongest survive!"
Then he added sadly, as if apostrophizing some one: "Have patience, you
who left me a name and a home, have patience! I have lost all--country,
future, prosperity, your very tomb, but have patience! And thou,
noble spirit, great soul, generous heart, who didst live with only one
thought and didst sacrifice thy life without asking the gratitude or
applause of any one, have patience, have patience! The methods that I
use may perhaps not be thine, but they are the most direct. The day
is coming, and when it brightens I myself will come to announce it
to you who are now indifferent. Have patience!"


CHAPTER VIII
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

When Juli opened her sorrowing eyes, she saw that the house was still
dark, but the cocks were crowing. Her first thought was that perhaps
the Virgin had performed the miracle and the sun was not going to rise,
in spite of the invocations of the cocks. She rose, crossed herself,
recited her morning prayers with great devotion, and with as little
noise as possible went out on the _batalan._
There was no miracle--the sun was rising and promised a magnificent
morning, the breeze was delightfully cool, the stars were paling
in the east, and the cocks were crowing as if to see who could crow
best and loudest. That had been too much to ask--it were much easier
to request the Virgin to send the two hundred and fifty pesos. What
would it cost the Mother of the Lord to give them? But underneath the
image she found only the letter of her father asking for the ransom of
five hundred pesos. There was nothing to do but go, so, seeing that
her grandfather was not stirring, she thought him asleep and began
to prepare breakfast. Strange, she was calm, she even had a desire
to laugh! What had she had last night to afflict her so? She was not
going very far, she could come every second day to visit the house,
her grandfather could see her, and as for Basilio, he had known for
some time the bad turn her father's affairs had taken, since he had
often said to her, "When I'm a physician and we are married, your
father won't need his fields."
"What a fool I was to cry so much," she said to herself as she packed
her _tampipi._ Her fingers struck against the locket and she pressed
it to her lips, but immediately wiped them from fear of contagion, for
that locket set with diamonds and emeralds had come from a leper. Ah,
then, if she should catch that disease she could not get married.
As it became lighter, she could see her grandfather seated in a
corner, following all her movements with his eyes, so she caught up her
_tampipi_ of clothes and approached him smilingly to kiss his hand. The
old man blessed her silently, while she tried to appear merry. "When
father comes back, tell him that I have at last gone to college--my
mistress talks Spanish. It's the cheapest college I could find."
Seeing the old man's eyes fill with tears, she placed the _tampipi_
on her head and hastily went downstairs, her slippers slapping merrily
on the wooden steps. But when she turned her head to look again at
the house, the house wherein had faded her childhood dreams and her
maiden illusions, when she saw it sad, lonely, deserted, with the
windows half closed, vacant and dark like a dead man's eyes, when
she heard the low rustling of the bamboos, and saw them nodding in
the fresh morning breeze as though bidding her farewell, then her
vivacity disappeared; she stopped, her eyes filled with tears, and
letting herself fall in a sitting posture on a log by the wayside
she broke out into disconsolate tears.
Juli had been gone several hours and the sun was quite high overhead
when Tandang Selo gazed from the window at the people in their festival
garments going to the town to attend the high mass. Nearly all led
by the hand or carried in their arms a little boy or girl decked out
as if for a fiesta.
Christmas day in the Philippines is, according to the elders, a fiesta
for the children, who are perhaps not of the same opinion and who,
it may be supposed, have for it an instinctive dread. They are roused
early, washed, dressed, and decked out with everything new, dear,
and precious that they possess--high silk shoes, big hats, woolen or
velvet suits, without overlooking four or five scapularies, which
contain texts from St. John, and thus burdened they are carried to
the high mass, where for almost an hour they are subjected to the heat
and the human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if
they are not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored,
or asleep. At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing
they are pinched and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh
or feel happy, while in their round eyes can be read a protest against
so much embroidery and a longing for the old shirt of week-days.
Afterwards, they are dragged from house to house to kiss their
relatives' hands. There they have to dance, sing, and recite all
the amusing things they know, whether in the humor or not, whether
comfortable or not in their fine clothes, with the eternal pinchings
and scoldings if they play any of their tricks. Their relatives give
them cuartos which their parents seize upon and of which they hear
nothing more. The only positive results they are accustomed to get from
the fiesta are the marks of the aforesaid pinchings, the vexations,
and at best an attack of indigestion from gorging themselves with
candy and cake in the houses of kind relatives. But such is the
custom, and Filipino children enter the world through these ordeals,
which afterwards prove the least sad, the least hard, of their lives.
Adult persons who live independently also share in this fiesta,
by visiting their parents and their parents' relatives, crooking
their knees, and wishing them a merry Christmas. Their Christmas
gift consists of a sweetmeat, some fruit, a glass of water, or some
insignificant present.
Tandang Selo saw all his friends pass and thought sadly that this
year he had no Christmas gift for anybody, while his granddaughter
had gone without hers, without wishing him a merry Christinas. Was
it delicacy on Juli's part or pure forgetfulness?
When he tried to greet the relatives who called on him, bringing their
children, he found to his great surprise that he could not articulate
a word. Vainly he tried, but no sound could he utter. He placed his
hands on his throat, shook his head, but without effect. When he tried
to laugh, his lips trembled convulsively and the only noise produced
was a hoarse wheeze like the blowing of bellows.
The women gazed at him in consternation. "He's dumb, he's dumb!" they
cried in astonishment, raising at once a literal pandemonium.


CHAPTER IX
PILATES

When the news of this misfortune became known in the town, some
lamented it and others shrugged their shoulders. No one was to blame,
and no one need lay it on his conscience.
The lieutenant of the Civil Guard gave no sign: he had received an
order to take up all the arms and he had performed his duty. He had
chased the tulisanes whenever he could, and when they captured Cabesang
Tales he had organized an expedition and brought into the town,
with their arms bound behind them, five or six rustics who looked
suspicious, so if Cabesang Tales did not show up it was because he
was not in the pockets or under the skins of the prisoners, who were
thoroughly shaken out.
The friar-administrator shrugged his shoulders: he had nothing to
do with it, it was a matter of tulisanes and he had merely done his
duty. True it was that if he had not entered the complaint, perhaps the
arms would not have been taken up, and poor Tales would not have been
captured; but he, Fray Clemente, had to look after his own safety,
and that Tales had a way of staring at him as if picking out a good
target in some part of his body. Self-defense is natural. If there
are tulisanes, the fault is not his, it is not his duty to run them
down--that belongs to the Civil Guard. If Cabesang Tales, instead
of wandering about his fields, had stayed at home, he would not have
been captured. In short, that was a punishment from heaven upon those
who resisted the demands of his corporation.
When Sister Penchang, the pious old woman in whose service Juli
had entered, learned of it, she ejaculated several _'Susmarioseps_,
crossed herself, and remarked, "Often God sends these trials because
we are sinners or have sinning relatives, to whom we should have
taught piety and we haven't done so."
Those _sinning relatives_ referred to Juliana, for to this pious
woman Juli was a great sinner. "Think of a girl of marriageable age
who doesn't yet know how to pray! _Jesús_, how scandalous! If the
wretch doesn't say the _Diós te salve María_ without stopping at _es
contigo_, and the _Santa María_ without a pause after _pecadores_, as
every good Christian who fears God ought to do! She doesn't know the
_oremus gratiam_, and says _mentíbus_ for _méntibus_. Anybody hearing
her would think she was talking about something else. _'Susmariosep!_"
Greatly scandalized, she made the sign of the cross and thanked God,
who had permitted the capture of the father in order that the daughter
might be snatched from sin and learn the virtues which, according
to the curates, should adorn every Christian woman. She therefore
kept the girl constantly at work, not allowing her to return to the
village to look after her grandfather. Juli had to learn how to pray,
to read the books distributed by the friars, and to work until the
two hundred and fifty pesos should be paid.
When she learned that Basilio had gone to Manila to get his savings
and ransom Juli from her servitude, the good woman believed that the
girl was forever lost and that the devil had presented himself in
the guise of the student. Dreadful as it all was, how true was that
little book the curate had given her! Youths who go to Manila to
study are ruined and then ruin the others. Thinking to rescue Juli,
she made her read and re-read the book called _Tandang Basio Macunat_,
[17] charging her always to go and see the curate in the convento,
[18] as did the heroine, who is so praised by the author, a friar.
Meanwhile, the friars had gained their point. They had certainly
won the suit, so they took advantage of Cabesang Tales' captivity
to turn the fields over to the one who had asked for them, without
the least thought of honor or the faintest twinge of shame. When
the former owner returned and learned what had happened, when he saw
his fields in another's possession,--those fields that had cost the
lives of his wife and daughter,--when he saw his father dumb and his
daughter working as a servant, and when he himself received an order
from the town council, transmitted through the headman of the village,
to move out of the house within three days, he said nothing; he sat
down at his father's side and spoke scarcely once during the whole day.


CHAPTER X
WEALTH AND WANT