The Reign of Greed - 12

Great attention was depicted on all countenances and silence
reigned. The noise and roar of the street could be distinctly heard,
but all were so affected that a snatch of dialogue which reached them
produced no effect.
"Why can't we go in?" asked a woman's voice.
"_Abá_, there's a lot of friars and clerks in there," answered a
man. "The sphinx is for them only."
"The friars are inquisitive too," said the woman's voice, drawing
away. "They don't want us to know how they're being fooled. Why,
is the head a friar's _querida_?"
In the midst of a profound silence the American announced in a tone
of emotion: "Ladies and gentlemen, with a word I am now going to
reanimate the handful of ashes, and you will talk with a being that
knows the past, the present, and much of the future!"
Here the prestidigitator uttered a soft cry, first mournful, then
lively, a medley of sharp sounds like imprecations and hoarse notes
like threats, which made Ben-Zayb's hair stand on end.
"_Deremof_!" cried the American.
The curtains on the wall rustled, the lamps burned low, the table
creaked. A feeble groan responded from the interior of the box. Pale
and uneasy, all stared at one another, while one terrified señora
caught hold of Padre Salvi.
The box then opened of its own accord and presented to the eyes of
the audience a head of cadaverous aspect, surrounded by long and
abundant black hair. It slowly opened its eyes and looked around
the whole audience. Those eyes had a vivid radiance, accentuated by
their cavernous sockets, and, as if deep were calling unto deep,
fixed themselves upon the profound, sunken eyes of the trembling
Padre Salvi, who was staring unnaturally, as though he saw a ghost.
"Sphinx," commanded Mr. Leeds, "tell the audience who you are."
A deep silence prevailed, while a chill wind blew through the room
and made the blue flames of the sepulchral lamps flicker. The most
skeptical shivered.
"I am Imuthis," declared the head in a funereal, but strangely
menacing, voice. "I was born in the time of Amasis and died under the
Persian domination, when Cambyses was returning from his disastrous
expedition into the interior of Libya. I had come to complete my
education after extensive travels through Greece, Assyria, and Persia,
and had returned to my native laud to dwell in it until Thoth should
call me before his terrible tribunal. But to my undoing, on passing
through Babylonia, I discovered an awful secret--the secret of the
false Smerdis who usurped the throne, the bold Magian Gaumata who
governed as an impostor. Fearing that I would betray him to Cambyses,
he determined upon my ruin through the instrumentality of the Egyptian
priests, who at that time ruled my native country. They were the
owners of two-thirds of the land, the monopolizers of learning, they
held the people down in ignorance and tyranny, they brutalized them,
thus making them fit to pass without resistance from one domination
to another. The invaders availed themselves of them, and knowing their
usefulness, protected and enriched them. The rulers not only depended
on their will, but some were reduced to mere instruments of theirs. The
Egyptian priests hastened to execute Gaumata's orders, with greater
zeal from their fear of me, because they were afraid that I would
reveal their impostures to the people. To accomplish their purpose,
they made use of a young priest of Abydos, who passed for a saint."
A painful silence followed these words. That head was talking
of priestly intrigues and impostures, and although referring to
another age and other creeds, all the friars present were annoyed,
possibly because they could see in the general trend of the speech
some analogy to the existing situation. Padre Salvi was in the grip
of convulsive shivering; he worked his lips and with bulging eyes
followed the gaze of the head as though fascinated. Beads of sweat
began to break out on his emaciated face, but no one noticed this,
so deeply absorbed and affected were they.
"What was the plot concocted by the priests of your country against
you?" asked Mr. Leeds.
The head uttered a sorrowful groan, which seemed to come from the
bottom of the heart, and the spectators saw its eyes, those fiery
eyes, clouded and filled with tears. Many shuddered and felt their
hair rise. No, that was not an illusion, it was not a trick: the head
was the victim and what it told was its own story.
"Ay!" it moaned, shaking with affliction, "I loved a maiden,
the daughter of a priest, pure as light, like the freshly opened
lotus! The young priest of Abydos also desired her and planned a
rebellion, using my name and some papyri that he had secured from
my beloved. The rebellion broke out at the time when Cambyses was
returning in rage over the disasters of his unfortunate campaign. I was
accused of being a rebel, was made a prisoner, and having effected my
escape was killed in the chase on Lake Moeris. From out of eternity
I saw the imposture triumph. I saw the priest of Abydos night and
day persecuting the maiden, who had taken refuge in a temple of Isis
on the island of Philae. I saw him persecute and harass her, even
in the subterranean chambers, I saw him drive her mad with terror
and suffering, like a huge bat pursuing a white dove. Ah, priest,
priest of Abydos, I have returned to life to expose your infamy, and
after so many years of silence, I name thee murderer, hypocrite, liar!"
A dry, hollow laugh accompanied these words, while a choked voice
responded, "No! Mercy!"
It was Padre Salvi, who had been overcome with terror and with arms
extended was slipping in collapse to the floor.
"What's the matter with your Reverence? Are you ill?" asked Padre
Irene.
"The heat of the room--"
"This odor of corpses we're breathing here--"
"Murderer, slanderer, hypocrite!" repeated the head. "I accuse
you--murderer, murderer, murderer!"
Again the dry laugh, sepulchral and menacing, resounded, as though
that head were so absorbed in contemplation of its wrongs that it
did not see the tumult that prevailed in the room.
"Mercy! She still lives!" groaned Padre Salvi, and then lost
consciousness. He was as pallid as a corpse. Some of the ladies
thought it their duty to faint also, and proceeded to do so.
"He is out of his head! Padre Salvi!"
"I told him not to eat that bird's-nest soup," said Padre Irene. "It
has made him sick."
"But he didn't eat anything," rejoined Don Custodio shivering. "As
the head has been staring at him fixedly, it has mesmerized him."
So disorder prevailed, the room seemed to be a hospital or a
battlefield. Padre Salvi looked like a corpse, and the ladies,
seeing that no one was paying them any attention, made the best of
it by recovering.
Meanwhile, the head had been reduced to ashes, and Mr. Leeds, having
replaced the cloth on the table, bowed his audience out.
"This show must be prohibited," said Don Custodio on leaving. "It's
wicked and highly immoral."
"And above all, because it doesn't use mirrors," added Ben-Zayb,
who before going out of the room tried to assure himself finally,
so he leaped over the rail, went up to the table, and raised the
cloth: nothing, absolutely nothing! [40] On the following day he
wrote an article in which he spoke of occult sciences, spiritualism,
and the like.
An order came immediately from the ecclesiastical governor prohibiting
the show, but Mr. Leeds had already disappeared, carrying his secret
with him to Hongkong.


CHAPTER XIX
THE FUSE

Placido Penitente left the class with his heart overflowing with
bitterness and sullen gloom in his looks. He was worthy of his name
when not driven from his usual course, but once irritated he was a
veritable torrent, a wild beast that could only be stopped by the
death of himself or his foe. So many affronts, so many pinpricks,
day after day, had made his heart quiver, lodging in it to sleep the
sleep of lethargic vipers, and they now were awaking to shake and
hiss with fury. The hisses resounded in his ears with the jesting
epithets of the professor, the phrases in the slang of the markets,
and he seemed to hear blows and laughter. A thousand schemes for
revenge rushed into his brain, crowding one another, only to fade
immediately like phantoms in a dream. His vanity cried out to him
with desperate tenacity that he must do something.
"Placido Penitente," said the voice, "show these youths that you
have dignity, that you are the son of a valiant and noble province,
where wrongs are washed out with blood. You're a Batangan, Placido
Penitente! Avenge yourself, Placido Penitente!"
The youth groaned and gnashed his teeth, stumbling against every
one in the street and on the Bridge of Spain, as if he were seeking
a quarrel. In the latter place he saw a carriage in which was the
Vice-Rector, Padre Sibyla, accompanied by Don Custodio, and he had
a great mind to seize the friar and throw him into the river.
He proceeded along the Escolta and was tempted to assault two
Augustinians who were seated in the doorway of Quiroga's bazaar,
laughing and joking with other friars who must have been inside in
joyous conversation, for their merry voices and sonorous laughter
could be heard. Somewhat farther on, two cadets blocked up the
sidewalk, talking with the clerk of a warehouse, who was in his
shirtsleeves. Penitents moved toward them to force a passage and
they, perceiving his dark intention, good-humoredly made way for
him. Placido was by this time under the influence of the _amok_,
as the Malayists say.
As he approached his home--the house of a silversmith where he lived as
a boarder--he tried to collect his thoughts and make a plan--to return
to his town and avenge himself by showing the friars that they could
not with impunity insult a youth or make a joke of him. He decided to
write a letter immediately to his mother, Cabesang Andang, to inform
her of what had happened and to tell her that the schoolroom had closed
forever for him. Although there was the Ateneo of the Jesuits, where he
might study that year, yet it was not very likely that the Dominicans
would grant him the transfer, and, even though he should secure it,
in the following year he would have to return to the University.
"They say that we don't know how to avenge ourselves!" he
muttered. "Let the lightning strike and we'll see!"
But Placido was not reckoning upon what awaited him in the house
of the silversmith. Cabesang Andang had just arrived from Batangas,
having come to do some shopping, to visit her son, and to bring him
money, jerked venison, and silk handkerchiefs.
The first greetings over, the poor woman, who had at once noticed her
son's gloomy look, could no longer restrain her curiosity and began
to ask questions. His first explanations Cabesang Andang regarded as
some subterfuge, so she smiled and soothed her son, reminding him of
their sacrifices and privations. She spoke of Capitana Simona's son,
who, having entered the seminary, now carried himself in the town like
a bishop, and Capitana Simona already considered herself a Mother of
God, clearly so, for her son was going to be another Christ.
"If the son becomes a priest," said she, "the mother won't have to
pay us what she owes us. Who will collect from her then?"
But on seeing that Placido was speaking seriously and reading in his
eyes the storm that raged within him, she realized that what he was
telling her was unfortunately the strict truth. She remained silent
for a while and then broke out into lamentations.
"Ay!" she exclaimed. "I promised your father that I would care for
you, educate you, and make a lawyer of you! I've deprived myself of
everything so that you might go to school! Instead of joining the
_panguingui_ where the stake is a half peso, I Ve gone only where it's
a half real, enduring the bad smells and the dirty cards. Look at my
patched camisa; for instead of buying new ones I've spent the money in
masses and presents to St. Sebastian, even though I don't have great
confidence in his power, because the curate recites the masses fast
and hurriedly, he's an entirely new saint and doesn't yet know how
to perform miracles, and isn't made of _batikulin_ but of _lanete._
Ay, what will your father say to me when I die and see him again!"
So the poor woman lamented and wept, while Placido became gloomier
and let stifled sighs escape from his breast.
"What would I get out of being a lawyer?" was his response.
"What will become of you?" asked his mother, clasping her
hands. "They'll call you a filibuster and garrote you. I've told you
that you must have patience, that you must be humble. I don't tell
you that you must kiss the hands of the curates, for I know that
you have a delicate sense of smell, like your father, who couldn't
endure European cheese. [41] But we have to suffer, to be silent,
to say yes to everything. What are we going to do? The friars own
everything, and if they are unwilling, no one will become a lawyer
or a doctor. Have patience, my son, have patience!"
"But I've had a great deal, mother, I've suffered for months and
months."
Cabesang Andang then resumed her lamentations. She did not ask that he
declare himself a partizan of the friars, she was not one herself--it
was enough to know that for one good friar there were ten bad, who
took the money from the poor and deported the rich. But one must be
silent, suffer, and endure--there was no other course. She cited this
man and that one, who by being _patient_ and humble, even though in
the bottom of his heart he hated his masters, had risen from servant
of the friars to high office; and such another who was rich and
could commit abuses, secure of having patrons who would protect him
from the law, yet who had been nothing more than a poor sacristan,
humble and obedient, and who had married a pretty girl whose son had
the curate for a godfather. So Cabesang Andang continued her litany
of humble and _patient_ Filipinos, as she called them, and was about
to cite others who by not being so had found themselves persecuted
and exiled, when Placido on some trifling pretext left the house to
wander about the streets.
He passed through Sibakong, [42] Tondo, San Nicolas, and Santo Cristo,
absorbed in his ill-humor, without taking note of the sun or the hour,
and only when he began to feel hungry and discovered that he had no
money, having given it all for celebrations and contributions, did
he return to the house. He had expected that he would not meet his
mother there, as she was in the habit, when in Manila, of going out
at that hour to a neighboring house where _panguingui_ was played,
but Cabesang Andang was waiting to propose her plan. She would avail
herself of the procurator of the Augustinians to restore her son to
the good graces of the Dominicans.
Placido stopped her with a gesture. "I'll throw myself into the sea
first," he declared. "I'll become a tulisan before I'll go back to
the University."
Again his mother began her preachment about patience and humility,
so he went away again without having eaten anything, directing his
steps toward the quay where the steamers tied up. The sight of a
steamer weighing anchor for Hongkong inspired him with an idea--to go
to Hongkong, to run away, get rich there, and make war on the friars.
The thought of Hongkong awoke in his mind the recollection of
a story about frontals, cirials, and candelabra of pure silver,
which the piety of the faithful had led them to present to a certain
church. The friars, so the silversmith told, had sent to Hongkong to
have duplicate frontals, cirials, and candelabra made of German silver,
which they substituted for the genuine ones, these being melted down
and coined into Mexican pesos. Such was the story he had heard, and
though it was no more than a rumor or a story, his resentment gave it
the color of truth and reminded him of other tricks of theirs in that
same style. The desire to live free, and certain half-formed plans,
led him to decide upon Hongkong. If the corporations sent all their
money there, commerce must be flourishing and he could enrich himself.
"I want to be free, to live free!"
Night surprised him wandering along San Fernando, but not meeting any
sailor he knew, he decided to return home. As the night was beautiful,
with a brilliant moon transforming the squalid city into a fantastic
fairy kingdom, he went to the fair. There he wandered back and forth,
passing booths without taking any notice of the articles in them, ever
with the thought of Hongkong, of living free, of enriching himself.
He was about to leave the fair when he thought he recognized the
jeweler Simoun bidding good-by to a foreigner, both of them speaking
in English. To Placido every language spoken in the Philippines
by Europeans, when not Spanish, had to be English, and besides, he
caught the name Hongkong. If only the jeweler would recommend him to
that foreigner, who must be setting out for Hongkong!
Placido paused. He was acquainted with the jeweler, as the latter had
been in his town peddling his wares, and he had accompanied him on
one of his trips, when Simoun had made himself very amiable indeed,
telling him of the life in the universities of the free countries--what
a difference!
So he followed the jeweler. "Señor Simoun, Señor Simoun!" he called.
The jeweler was at that moment entering his carriage. Recognizing
Placido, he checked himself.
"I want to ask a favor of you, to say a few words to you."
Simoun made a sign of impatience which Placido in his perturbation
did not observe. In a few words the youth related what had happened
and made known his desire to go to Hongkong.
"Why?" asked Simoun, staring fixedly at Placido through his blue
goggles.
Placido did not answer, so Simoun threw back his head, smiled his cold,
silent smile and said, "All right! Come with me. To Calle Iris!" he
directed the cochero.
Simoun remained silent throughout the whole drive, apparently absorbed
in meditation of a very important nature. Placido kept quiet, waiting
for him to speak first, and entertained himself in watching the
promenaders who were enjoying the clear moonlight: pairs of infatuated
lovers, followed by watchful mammas or aunts; groups of students
in white clothes that the moonlight made whiter still; half-drunken
soldiers in a carriage, six together, on their way to visit some nipa
temple dedicated to Cytherea; children playing their games and Chinese
selling sugar-cane. All these filled the streets, taking on in the
brilliant moonlight fantastic forms and ideal outlines. In one house
an orchestra was playing waltzes, and couples might be seen dancing
under the bright lamps and chandeliers--what a sordid spectacle they
presented in comparison with the sight the streets afforded! Thinking
of Hongkong, he asked himself if the moonlit nights in that island
were so poetical and sweetly melancholy as those of the Philippines,
and a deep sadness settled down over his heart.
Simoun ordered the carriage to stop and both alighted, just at the
moment when Isagani and Paulita Gomez passed them murmuring sweet
inanities. Behind them came Doña Victorina with Juanito Pelaez, who
was talking in a loud voice, busily gesticulating, and appearing to
have a larger hump than ever. In his preoccupation Pelaez did not
notice his former schoolmate.
"There's a fellow who's happy!" muttered Placido with a sigh,
as he gazed toward the group, which became converted into vaporous
silhouettes, with Juanito's arms plainly visible, rising and falling
like the arms of a windmill.
"That's all he's good for," observed Simoun. "It's fine to be young!"
To whom did Placido and Simoun each allude?
The jeweler made a sign to the young man, and they left the street
to pick their way through a labyrinth of paths and passageways among
various houses, at times leaping upon stones to avoid the mudholes
or stepping aside from the sidewalks that were badly constructed and
still more badly tended. Placido was surprised to see the rich jeweler
move through such places as if he were familiar with them. They at
length reached an open lot where a wretched hut stood off by itself
surrounded by banana-plants and areca-palms. Some bamboo frames and
sections of the same material led Placido to suspect that they were
approaching the house of a pyrotechnist.
Simoun rapped on the window and a man's face appeared.
"Ah, sir!" he exclaimed, and immediately came outside.
"Is the powder here?" asked Simoun.
"In sacks. I'm waiting for the shells."
"And the bombs?"
"Are all ready."
"All right, then. This very night you must go and inform the lieutenant
and the corporal. Then keep on your way, and in Lamayan you will find a
man in a banka. You will say _Cabesa_ and he will answer _Tales_. It's
necessary that he be here tomorrow. There's no time to be lost."
Saying this, he gave him some gold coins.
"How's this, sir?" the man inquired in very good Spanish. "Is there
any news?"
"Yes, it'll be done within the coming week."
"The coming week!" exclaimed the unknown, stepping backward. "The
suburbs are not yet ready, they hope that the General will withdraw
the decree. I thought it was postponed until the beginning of Lent."
Simoun shook his head. "We won't need the suburbs," he said. "With
Cabesang Tales' people, the ex-carbineers, and a regiment, we'll have
enough. Later, Maria Clara may be dead. Start at once!"
The man disappeared. Placido, who had stood by and heard all of this
brief interview, felt his hair rise and stared with startled eyes at
Simoun, who smiled.
"You're surprised," he said with his icy smile, "that this Indian,
so poorly dressed, speaks Spanish well? He was a schoolmaster who
persisted in teaching Spanish to the children and did not stop until
he had lost his position and had been deported as a disturber of
the public peace, and for having been a friend of the unfortunate
Ibarra. I got him back from his deportation, where he had been working
as a pruner of coconut-palms, and have made him a pyrotechnist."
They returned to the street and set out for Trozo. Before a wooden
house of pleasant and well-kept appearance was a Spaniard on crutches,
enjoying the moonlight. When Simoun accosted him, his attempt to rise
was accompanied by a stifled groan.
"You're ready?" Simoun inquired of him.
"I always am!"
"The coming week?"
"So soon?"
"At the first cannon-shot!"
He moved away, followed by Placido, who was beginning to ask himself
if he were not dreaming.
"Does it surprise you," Simoun asked him, "to see a Spaniard so young
and so afflicted with disease? Two years ago he was as robust as you
are, but his enemies succeeded in sending him to Balabak to work in a
penal settlement, and there he caught the rheumatism and fever that
are dragging him into the grave. The poor devil had married a very
beautiful woman."
As an empty carriage was passing, Simoun hailed it and with Placido
directed it to his house in the Escolta, just at the moment when the
clocks were striking half-past ten.
Two hours later Placido left the jeweler's house and walked gravely
and thoughtfully along the Escolta, then almost deserted, in spite
of the fact that the cafés were still quite animated. Now and then
a carriage passed rapidly, clattering noisily over the worn pavement.
From a room in his house that overlooked the Pasig, Simoun turned
his gaze toward the Walled City, which could be seen through the open
windows, with its roofs of galvanized iron gleaming in the moonlight
and its somber towers showing dull and gloomy in the midst of the
serene night. He laid aside his blue goggles, and his white hair,
like a frame of silver, surrounded his energetic bronzed features,
dimly lighted by a lamp whose flame was dying out from lack of
oil. Apparently wrapped in thought, he took no notice of the fading
light and impending darkness.
"Within a few days," he murmured, "when on all sides that accursed city
is burning, den of presumptuous nothingness and impious exploitation
of the ignorant and the distressed, when the tumults break out in the
suburbs and there rush into the terrorized streets my avenging hordes,
engendered by rapacity and wrongs, then will I burst the walls of
your prison, I will tear you from the clutches of fanaticism, and my
white dove, you will be the Phoenix that will rise from the glowing
embers! A revolution plotted by men in darkness tore me from your
side--another revolution will sweep me into your arms and revive
me! That moon, before reaching the apogee of its brilliance, will
light the Philippines cleansed of loathsome filth!"
Simoun, stopped suddenly, as though interrupted. A voice in his inner
consciousness was asking if he, Simoun, were not also a part of the
filth of that accursed city, perhaps its most poisonous ferment. Like
the dead who are to rise at the sound of the last trumpet, a thousand
bloody specters--desperate shades of murdered men, women violated,
fathers torn from their families, vices stimulated and encouraged,
virtues mocked, now rose in answer to the mysterious question. For
the first time in his criminal career, since in Havana he had by
means of corruption and bribery set out to fashion an instrument
for the execution of his plans--a man without faith, patriotism, or
conscience--for the first time in that life, something within rose up
and protested against his actions. He closed his eyes and remained
for some time motionless, then rubbed his hand over his forehead,
tried to be deaf to his conscience, and felt fear creeping over
him. No, he must not analyze himself, he lacked the courage to turn
his gaze toward his past. The idea of his courage, his conviction,
his self-confidence failing him at the very moment when his work was
set before him! As the ghosts of the wretches in whose misfortunes
he had taken a hand continued to hover before his eyes, as if issuing
from the shining surface of the river to invade the room with appeals
and hands extended toward him, as reproaches and laments seemed to
fill the air with threats and cries for vengeance, he turned his gaze
from the window and for the first time began to tremble.
"No, I must be ill, I can't be feeling well," he muttered. "There
are many who hate me, who ascribe their misfortunes to me, but--"
He felt his forehead begin to burn, so he arose to approach the window
and inhale the fresh night breeze. Below him the Pasig dragged along
its silvered stream, on whose bright surface the foam glittered,
winding slowly about, receding and advancing, following the course of
the little eddies. The city loomed up on the opposite bank, and its
black walls looked fateful, mysterious, losing their sordidness in
the moonlight that idealizes and embellishes everything. But again
Simoun shivered; he seemed to see before him the severe countenance
of his father, dying in prison, but dying for having done good; then
the face of another man, severer still, who had given his life for him
because he believed that he was going to bring about the regeneration
of his country.
"No, I can't turn back," he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from
his forehead. "The work is at hand and its success will justify me! If
I had conducted myself as you did, I should have succumbed. Nothing
of idealism, nothing of fallacious theories! Fire and steel to the
cancer, chastisement to vice, and afterwards destroy the instrument,
if it be bad! No, I have planned well, but now I feel feverish, my
reason wavers, it is natural--If I have done ill, it has been that I
may do good, and the end justifies the means. What I will do is not
to expose myself--"
With his thoughts thus confused he lay down, and tried to fall asleep.
On the following morning Placido listened submissively, with a smile