Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
and to tell the world the story of their miseries; the other was blithe
of air, gay with the uniforms of officers and the bright dresses of
Spanish ladies, the men jesting and laughing, the women shamelessly
applauding with waving handkerchiefs and clapping palms, all alike
triumphing openly in the death of the hated 'Indian,' the 'brother
of the water-buffalo,' whose insolence had wounded their pride.
* * * Turning away, sick at heart, from the contemplation of this
bitter tragedy, it is with a thrill of almost vindictive satisfaction
that one remembers that less than eighteen months later the Luneta
echoed once more to the sound of a mightier fusillade--the roar of
the great guns with which the battle of Manila Bay was fought and won.
* * * And if in the moment of his last supreme agony the power to probe
the future had been vouchsafed to Jose Rizal, would he not have died
happy in the knowledge that the land he loved so dearly was very soon
to be transferred into such safekeeping?"
CHAPTER XI
The After-Life in Memory
An hour or so after the shooting a dead-wagon from San Juan de Dios
Hospital took Rizal's body to Paco Cemetery. The civil governor of
Manila was in charge and there also were present the members of a
Church society whose duty it was to attend executions.
Rizal had been wearing a black suit which he had obtained for his
European trip, and a derby hat, not only appropriate for a funeral
occasion because of their somber color, but also more desirable
than white both for the full day's wear, since they had to be put
on before the twenty-four hours in the chapel, and for the lying on
the ground which would follow the execution of the sentence. A plain
box inclosed the remains thus dressed, for even the hat was picked
up and encoffined.
No visitors were admitted to the cemetery while the interment was
going on, and for several weeks after guards watched over the grave,
lest Filipinos might come by night to steal away the body and apportion
the clothing among themselves as relics of a martyr. Even the exact
spot of the interment was intended to be unknown, but friends of the
family were among the attendants at the burial and dropped into the
grave a marble slab which had been furnished them, bearing the initials
of the full baptismal name, Jose Protasio Rizal, in reversed order.
The entry of the burial, like that of three of his followers of the
Liga Filipina who were among the dozen executed a fortnight later,
was on the back flyleaf of the cemetery register, with three or four
words of explanation later erased and now unknown. On the previous
page was the entry of a suicide's death, and following it is that of
the British Consul who died on the eve of Manila's surrender and whose
body, by the Archbishop's permission, was stored in a Paco niche till
it could be removed to the Protestant (foreigners') cemetery at San
Pedro Macati.
The day of Rizal's execution, the day of his birth and the day of
his first leaving his native land was a Wednesday. All that night,
and the next day, the celebration continued the volunteers, who
were particularly responsible, like their fellows in Cuba, for the
atrocities which disgraced Spain's rule in the Philippines, being
especially in evidence. It was their clamor that had made the bringing
back of Rizal possible, their demands for his death had been most
prominent in his so-called trial, and now they were praising themselves
for their "patriotism." The landlords had objected to having their land
titles questioned and their taxes raised. The other friar orders, as
well as these, were opposed to a campaign which sought their transfer
from profitable parishes to self-sacrificing missionary labors. But
probably none of them as organizations desired Rizal's death.
Rizal's old teachers wished for the restoration of their former
pupil to the faith of his childhood, from which they believed he had
departed. Through Despujol they seem to have worked for an opportunity
for influencing him, yet his death was certainly not in their plans.
Some Filipinos, to save themselves, tried to complicate Rizal with the
Katipunan uprising by palpable falsehoods. But not every man is heroic
and these can hardly be blamed, for if all the alleged confessions
were not secured by actual torture, they were made through fear of
it, since in 1896 there was in Manila the legal practice of causing
bodily suffering by mediaeval methods supplemented by torments devised
by modern science.
Among the Spaniards in Manila then, reenforced by those whom
the uprising had frightened out of the provinces, were a few who
realized that they belonged among the classes caricatured in Rizal's
novels--some incompetent, others dishonest, cruel ones, the illiterate,
wretched specimens that had married outside their race to get money
and find wives who would not know them for what they were, or drunken
husbands of viragoes. They came to the Philippines because they were
below the standard of their homeland. These talked the loudest and
thus dominated the undisciplined volunteers. With nothing divine about
them, since they had not forgotten, they did not forgive. So when the
Tondo "discoverer" of the Katipunan fancied he saw opportunity for
promotion in fanning their flame of wrath, they claimed their victims,
and neither the panic-stricken populace nor the weak-kneed government
could withstand them.
Once more it must be repeated that Spain has no monopoly of bad
characters, nor suffers in the comparison of her honorable citizenship
with that of other nationalities, but her system in the Philippines
permitted abuses which good governments seek to avoid or, in the
rare occasions when this is impossible, aim to punish. Here was the
Spanish shortcoming, for these were the defects which made possible
so strange a story as this biography unfolds. "Jose Rizal," said a
recent Spanish writer, "was the living indictment of Spain's wretched
colonial system."
Rizal's family were scattered among the homes of friends brave enough
to risk the popular resentment against everyone in any way identified
with the victim of their prejudice.
As New Year's eve approached, the bands ceased playing and the marchers
stopped parading. Their enthusiasm had worn itself out in the two
continuous days of celebration, and there was a lessening of the
hospitality with which these "heroes" who had "saved the fatherland"
at first had been entertained. Their great day of the year became of
more interest than further remembrance of the bloody occurrence on
Bagumbayan Field. To those who mourned a son and a brother the change
must have come as a welcome relief, for even sorrow has its degrees,
and the exultation over the death embittered their grief.
To the remote and humble home where Rizal's widow and the sister
to whom he had promised a parting gift were sheltered, the Dapitan
schoolboy who had attended his imprisoned teacher brought an alcohol
cooking-lamp. It was midnight before they dared seek the "something"
which Rizal had said was inside. The alcohol was emptied from the tank
and, with a convenient hairpin, a tightly folded and doubled piece of
paper was dislodged from where it had been wedged in, out of sight,
so that its rattling might not betray it.
It was a single sheet of notepaper bearing verses in Rizal's well-known
handwriting and familiar style. Hastily the young boy copied them,
making some minor mistakes owing to his agitation and unfamiliarity
with the language, and the copy, without explanation, was mailed to
Mr. Basa in Hongkong. Then the original was taken by the two women with
their few possessions and they fled to join the insurgents in Cavite.
The following translation of these verses was made by Charles
Derbyshire:
My Last Farewell
Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress'd,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life's best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.
On the field of battle, 'mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not--cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold of open plain, combat or martyrdom's plight,
'Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country's need.
I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour'd out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.
My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov'd face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye
Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity's long night.
If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath's warm power.
Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.
Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o'er my untimely fate sigh,
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.
Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur'd pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.
And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,
With only the dead in their vigil to see;
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
'Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.
When even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark'd by never a cross nor a stone;
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o'er,
That my ashes may carpet thy earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.
Then will oblivion bring to me no care,
As over thy vales and plains I sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.
My Fatherland ador'd, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e'er on high!
Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!
For some time such belongings of Rizal as had been intrusted to
Josefina had been in the care of the American Consul in Manila
for as the adopted daughter of the American Taufer she had claimed
his protection. Stories are told of her as a second Joan of Arc,
but it is not likely that one of the few rifles which the insurgents
had would be turned over to a woman. After a short experience in the
field, much of it spent in nursing her sister-in-law through a fever,