The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
It may be profitable to follow this farther. It is a page of Rizal’s
own revealing always overlooked by those that insist he was opposed to
Philippine independence.
“You may say [the pilot goes on] that you are only slightly
acquainted with your country, and I believe you. You don’t see the
struggle that is preparing; you don’t see the cloud on the horizon.
The fight is beginning in the sphere of ideas, to descend later
into the arena, which will be dyed with blood. I hear the voice of
God—woe unto them who would oppose it! For them history has not
been written!”
No one can believe Rizal wrote this without feeling it in his heart and
soul.
Elias was transfigured; standing uncovered, with his manly face
illuminated by the moon, there was something extraordinary about
him. He shook his long hair and went on:
“Don’t you see how everything is awakening? The sleep has lasted
for centuries, but one day the thunderbolt struck, and, in
striking, infused life.”
He means the slaying of the guiltless priests, Fathers Burgos, Gomez,
and Zamora, victims to the homicidal mania that descended upon the
Government after the revolt of 1872.
“Since then [the pilot continues] new tendencies are stirring our
spirits, and these tendencies, to-day scattered, will some day be
united, guided by the God who has not failed other peoples, and who
will not fail us, for his cause is the cause of liberty!” [76]
The trap the friars have prepared for Ibarra is a thing infamous in
Philippine history, and yet so common that in fact and not in fiction
it has sent scores of innocent men to their deaths. It had never been
known to fail. Agents provocateurs stage a pretended revolt. Nothing is
easier; the materials are always to hand; likewise the occasion. It is
but necessary to take the latest outrage by the Civil Guard and stir
some one to object to it. The rest follows automatically. In this
instance Ibarra is the pretended instigator, although he has never
heard of the wrong he is supposed to resent.
Elias warns him of what is afoot and urges him to escape; innocent as
he is, he shall have no chance for his life before the tribunal that
will try him if he waits for arrest. He will not go until he has had
word with Maria Clara. The last scene between them is excellent drama;
he gets under her window in a boat and climbs up the vines. For the
charge of complicity in the stage rebellion is no basis except a letter
that seven years before he had written to her. Some phrases that might
be construed to suggest a vague discontent with conditions in the
Philippines make up the entire case. On slighter evidence many a man
has been tortured first and gone next to the Golgotha at Bagumbayan
Field. The friars have this letter. How did they get it when for so
many years it had been one of the dearest possessions of Maria Clara?
Ibarra can surmise only that she has willingly surrendered it and so
betrayed him. In that last interview he learns that it was filched from
her by the friar Silva, whose interest in her has been more than
ecclesiastical and who on the same occasion has disclosed to her the
facts as to her own parentage.
She is not the daughter of Capitán Tiago but of Father Damaso—an
illegitimate daughter.
Satisfied that she is innocent, Ibarra now consents to escape from his
foes. Elias, the pilot, who has so often befriended him, is waiting
below in the banca. They row up the Pasig River. When they approach a
soldier, Ibarra hides himself in the bottom of the boat under the
freight. At last the Civil Guards are in pursuit. Elias tries to escape
by hard rowing. The Guards begin to fire. Elias slips overboard. Taking
him for Ibarra, the Guards follow in their banca, firing constantly.
The hunted man is seen to sink. When the Guards come up they think they
see blood. They take the news back to Manila that Ibarra, the desperate
revolutionist, trying to escape, has been shot and killed. At the word
Maria Clara gives up all earthly hope and flees to a nunnery.
CHAPTER VI
LEONORA RIVERA
By the title of his novel Rizal meant not that he was touching a person
forbidden, but a subject. The words he had found in a Latin version of
the New Testament in the passage where the risen Christ is beheld by
Mary Magdalene; but he used these words in a sense wholly different
from the scriptural significance. Conditions in the Philippines he had
thought of as having become a social cancer that persisted first
because of a notion that nobody must treat or touch it. Of all the men
of his times and country, he was the only man that had the courage to
break through this barrier and the skill and perfect knowledge to
dissect the hideous growth behind.
With one of the first copies that came from the press he wrote to his
close friend, Dr. Blumentritt, a letter in which he lays bare his own
idea of his work: [77]
The novel [he says] tells of many things that until now have not
been touched upon. They are so peculiar to ourselves that we have
been sensitive about them. In this book I have attempted what no
one else seems to have been willing to do. For one thing, I have
dared to answer the calumnies that for centuries have been heaped
upon us and upon our country. I have written of the social
condition of the Philippines and of the life of the Filipinos. I
have told the truth about our beliefs, our hopes, our longings, our
complaints, and our sorrows. I have tried to show the difference
between real religion and the hypocrisy that under its cloak has
impoverished and brutalized us. I have brought out the real meaning
of the dazzling and deceptive words of our countrymen. I have
related our mistakes, our vices, and our faults. I have exposed how
weakly we accept miseries as inevitable. Where there has been
reason for it, I have given praise. I have not wept over our
misfortunes, but rather laughed at them.
No one would want to read a book full of tears, and then, too,
laughter is the best means of concealing sorrow.
The incidents that I have related are all true and have actually
occurred.
But for his habitual reticence about himself he might have said much
more; if he had known his own powers he might have spoken of his
lifelike delineations; he might have urged a gift like prophecy. All
the impression of a strong personal relation one has throughout the
reading of “Noli Me Tangere” is well founded. Into it Rizal was writing
himself. Ibarra was a prefiguration, in some respects marvelously
accurate, of himself in the days at hand when he should return to his
native country. Of the material of the book the greater part had been
verified in his own experiences. The imprisonment of Ibarra’s father
was the story of Rizal’s own mother. Father Damaso he had seen and
watched, and Father Silva no less. In Tasio, the philosophical
evolutionist, he had but drawn his own elder brother, Paciano. But
above all, the story of Maria Clara was a tragedy from his own life; at
that time a tragedy he might have feared but had not as yet
experienced, strange as that may seem.
Maria Clara is Rizal’s cousin, Leonora Rivera, his sweetheart and first
great disappointment. She was born in Camiling, province of Tarlac, on
April 11, 1867, the daughter of Antonio Rivera, who was Rizal’s uncle,
benefactor, and ardent partisan. [78] She was twelve years old when the
family moved to Manila, where they rented lodgings to students in Santo
Tomas and the Ateneo. Among these, after a time, came Cousin José
Rizal, at about the third shifting of his quarters in Manila. Leonora
was enrolled as an undergraduate at Concordia College for girls, where
Rizal’s youngest sister, Soledad, was likewise a student. He would
sometimes spend a half-holiday at Concordia to see and to amuse his
sister, whereupon he and his beautiful cousin became good friends,
although she was six years his junior. She was not only beautiful, but
she seems to have had an unusual intellect of the kind that would be
likely to attract Rizal; for she was in fact, and not by repute alone,
studious, thoughtful, of the Malay seriousness, but with also the Malay
delight in music. She sang well; she is said to have played the piano
with a skill that distinguished her even in the corps of able pianists
of which Concordia was proud. If so, the eminence was not lightly won;
for the worthy Sisters that conducted that institution taught music
thoroughly and well.
She must have been also of a sweet and gentle spirit; all the memories
extant of her twenty years after her death included this tribute. The
various commentators that have differed often about other phases of
Philippine life have been of one mind in praising the typical educated
Filipino woman and yet have not exaggerated her worth. In a world
wearied of artificiality, her simple sincerity shines to cheer as much
as to charm. Visitors that have observed her well have usually noted
the excellence of her mind, the honesty of her walk, and the reserve
strength of her character. Rizal’s mother was of this order, the
diligent ruler of the household, the laborious instructor of her
children; and, when the blows of the Spanish tyranny fell upon her
head, bearing them with the proud fortitude of a Roman matron of the
republic. Doubtless, the halo of Rizal and Leonora’s own romantic story
have magnified her intellectual stature; yet when all allowance is made
for exaggeration that may color the work of a friendly biographer, the
fact is apparent that she also was of this same admirable womanhood.
The first time she seems to have suspected in herself a feeling for her
handsome young cousin stronger than cousinly regard was on a day at her
father’s house when the young leader of the Filipino forces at the
Ateneo was brought in with a broken head and covered with dust, blood,
and glory. It was not the first time he had been so ornamented, but
only the first time she had seen him thus. At the sight of the youthful
champion of the Filipino people disabled early in the fray, Leonora ran
with speed to get warm water and bandages to dress his hurts. The rest
was easy and according to the formulæ for such cases well known and
accepted. She loved him for the battles he waged, and he loved her that
she nursed him so tenderly.
A year later with the full approbation of their parents they were
betrothed. Mr. Rivera was fond of his nephew; to the aunt, José was at
least not objectionable, though she seems to have been a lady of a
captious and changeable temperament. It was the uncle that first
suggested Rizal’s withdrawal from the Philippines when it became
evident that the governing class had marked him as a young man to be
suppressed. Mr. Rivera knew well enough what that would mean in Santo
Tomas and elsewhere: every avenue closed, every possible obstacle
thrown in his way. The malice he had aroused he could hope to defeat in
some measure if he could win in Europe a training and a distinction
that would on his return provide him with a practice in spite of
Spanish opposition. Mr. Rivera assisted his flight, sent him money
while he was pursuing his studies in Madrid, and showed at all times a
sincere interest in his welfare. The lovers had a tender parting just
before Rizal went aboard his ship that night; as a sign or image of his
presence when he should be far away he left with her a poem that began:
The summons sounds, predestinate and grim,
The iron clanging of the tongue of fate,
That drives me on a pathway strange and dim
And strikes my flowers of hope all desolate.
Thou know’st,—thou other, dearer soul of mine—