The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
triumphs, he saw once more the green tide of the Pasig.
As soon as he landed he hastened to his mother at Calamba and, laying
aside every other business, devoted himself to the care of her eyes.
With entire success he performed the operation he had intended, the
first of the kind ever done in the Philippines. The fame of Mrs.
Mercado’s healing speedily went throughout all the Islands and beyond.
In the opinion of most persons of that day and region it meant that, by
a miracle as of old, sight had been restored to the blind; and, at a
word, Rizal stepped into eminence and a great practice. Of this he was
not unworthy. As we shall have occasion to see later, he was well aware
of his skill and learning; and, so far as the Orient was concerned, he
eclipsed all previous practitioners. Patients came to him with
confidence from all parts of the Philippines and even from China.
He had time to renew some of his old friendships, notably with Fernando
Canon, who had been fellow-student with him in old Spain and later one
of the most effective agents in getting “Noli Me Tangere” into the
Islands, whither he had lately returned. Some of the boxes that
contained copies of the book had been passed in as Mr. Canon’s stores.
One day, walking up and down with him at Calamba, Rizal revealed how
nearly the world had come to the loss of this work:
“I did not believe ‘Noli Me Tangere’ would ever be published. I was in
Berlin, heartbroken with sadness [91] and weakened and discouraged from
hunger and deprivation. I was on the point of throwing my work into the
fire as a thing accursed and fit only to die. And then came the
telegram from Viola. It revived me; it gave me new hope. I went to the
station to receive him and spoke to him about my work. He said he might
be able to help me. I reflected and then decided to shorten the book
and eliminated whole chapters. So he found it much more concise than it
had been. This accounts for the loose pages of manuscript to which you
have referred. But these will have a place in the continuation.
“I will publish seven volumes about Philippine conditions. Then if I do
not succeed in awakening my countrymen, I will shoot myself.” [92]
To his account of this incident Mr. Canon adds:
“Still there vibrates in my ears the inflections of his voice as he
said this. One could recognize Rizal anywhere by the tones of his
voice.”
In the midst of his busy employments, there fell upon him, early in
1888, a summons to Manila to appear before Governor-General Terrero.
This ominous message was the first repercussion from “Noli Me Tangere”;
the classes affronted in that book and burning for revenge were moving
to secure it. Here between the claws of their System was the man they
hated; it would go hard if he escaped where so many lesser men had
perished. With what feelings he obeyed the summons he has not told us,
but there can be hardly a doubt that he knew by whose manœuvers he was
now in the toils. It is the most singular fact in his whole strange
career that he never betrayed the least concern as to what should
become of him and throughout whatsoever process might be instituted
against him behaved as if it were the trial of another person of which
he was only the moderately interested witness. It was so now. With
unruffled self-possession he passed before the governor-general.
Terrero told him bluntly of the report of the committee appointed to
examine “Noli Me Tangere.” Rizal observed that the examination must
have been faulty, for the book was not what the committee had called it
but innocent. He made so able a defense that Terrero said finally that
as for himself he had read no more of it than the extracts the
committee had cited in its report, but now he should like to read it
all and judge for himself, and asked for a copy of it. This modest
request being (despite all fierce decrees) complied with, the
governor-general hemmed a little and said he feared that great enmity
had been aroused against Rizal among the classes he had described. It
was enmity that might even go so far as to attempt the author’s life.
For his safety, therefore, it had been deemed wise to assign to him a
body-guard so long as he should remain in the Islands.
Of this labored device Rizal might have said that it was but glass, and
the very sun shone through it. Henceforth every movement he made was to
be watched and reported, and here was the spy provided by the
Government, clumsy-clever, as usual, and forcible-feeble. [93]
Yet even this incident, as things fell out, was to contribute something
to his fame and little joy to his enemies. The body-guard assigned to
him was a young Spaniard, Lieutenant José de Andrade, born into the
governing class and fulfilled with all Spanish prejudices. Although his
associates were of the type that Rizal had so mercilessly pilloried, so
that in “Noli Me Tangere” he could hardly fail to recognize portraits
of intimate friends, Lieutenant de Andrade could not more than other
men withstand the singularly magnetic charm of this unusual
personality. [94] From his initial status as official spy and
watch-dog, he became Rizal’s devoted friend. Together they took long
walking trips into the country, climbed mountains, compared notes and
experiences, and recited verses. It is to be supposed that the
lieutenant returned the reports he was assigned to make, but reasonably
certain that they contained no matter that gratified the hatred of the
reactionary element.
We have noted what frenzy of consternation seized upon that element at
the lightest whisper of revolt among the oppressed people. It was one
of the invariable characteristics of the Spanish domination, an
intermittent fever under the empire of which all reason or semblance of
reason went to the winds and men outside the asylums acted like raving
maniacs. Such manifestations of this strange psychology (only to be
explained by recalling the Spaniard’s total misunderstanding of the
Filipino nature) as followed the uprising of 1872 were still remembered
by oppressor and oppressed. It was now revived for both as knowledge
spread of this strange and powerful book. Besides the unendurable smart
of its lash, the governing class saw in it consequences of the gravest
import. It was standing and irrefutable evidence that the contempt for
the native upon which Spanish rule proceeded was baseless; a native had
created literature of the highest order. Still more alarming, it
threatened to lead the way, to offer the example, to pioneer ceaseless
ambuscades of the same kind, to show that the thing superstitiously
held to be above all attack could be attacked safely and even with
ridicule and this deadly laughter. If the author of “Noli Me Tangere”
should escape without punishment, imitators might be expected on every
side. Any native anywhere might take up similar weapons; hence, the
white man’s supremacy in all the East was in jeopardy.
It is not easy for the Occidental mind to grasp the power this
suggestion has upon men charged with the holding in subjection of vast
Asiatic populations; but it is to such men always the first
consideration. It must be, in fact; because their situation is so
abnormal that in times of cool reflection they must wonder at
themselves. With bands of soldiers insignificant in numbers they are
required to impose upon millions a sovereignty that the millions
generally loathe. Diligently, then, they must support the fiction of
the white man’s superiority, support it day and night without ceasing
and be not too finical about means or manner. Doubtless, to many the
task soon becomes congenial, so easily is race hatred bred in places
out of the observation of Europe, and so strong is the addiction to it
in some hearts not yet well removed from the stone age. Yet there have
often appeared in these grimy scenes Europeans that instinctively hated
the business and knew well enough that at bottom the real reason for
dominating these subject peoples was dirty profits dirtily obtained.
[95] But these very men, again and again, by the clamors about them and
by the panic nature of the fears of what the aroused brown millions
might do, have been swept despite themselves into acts at which their
better natures revolted.
Governor-General Terrero was of this order, and even above its average.
He was willing at the instigation of angry friars to assign a spy to
watch Rizal but was determined to avoid the silly and stupid crime of
shooting or garroting or even exiling a man whose offense was that he
had written a novel some persons did not like. In other days and other
administrations men had been shot or garroted or exiled on charges as
flimsy, but light was breaking in Spain; even in the face of tradition
and old frowning privilege, light was breaking. The first rift in the
medieval eclipse was driven by the sword of Napoleon. Slowly ever since
it has been widening to echoes of the world’s advance elsewhere. In
1888 the governing class in Spain had become aware of the scorn of that
world and began to feel a little the sting of it. Not much, then, nor
since, as we are to see in this narrative, and might illustrate by
other citations. Lo, it was this same Spain, and so late as 1909, that
murdered Francisco Ferrer, the most learned man in her dominions, for
but teaching her children in the manner of other nations—nations so far
in the front of her that, looking back, they could scarce descry the
dust of her sluggard footsteps!
Terrero, at least, was not indifferent to the verdict of enlightened
mankind; yet the pressure upon him to take some action against this
atrocious leveler and dangerous character was greater than he could
withstand. It came from the power that made or broke governor-generals,
the power of the orders, supreme in the Islands, supreme in Spain on
any matter that related to the Islands. By the beginning of 1888 their
demand had reached a point where he must compromise with it, and he
“advised” Rizal to leave the Philippines at once. The word is equivocal
and was meant so to be; the real significance of “advice” in this
instance was an unofficial order of deportation. [96]
Rizal obeyed, but not until he had given to the world new evidence of
the versatility of a genius to which there is scarcely a companion in
human records. We are to remember, first of all, he was a physician
that had chosen diseases of the eye for his specialty, wherein he stood
in a place of distinction before his profession. He was next an artist
in sculpture and painting; a poet; a master of terse and nervous prose
in Spanish, in his native Tagalog, and in ten other languages. He was
next a scientist, distinguished in original research, already honored
with the regard of leading European minds in many branches of recondite
knowledge. This, it will be admitted, is a most unusual range of
pursuits. From them economics might be regarded as far removed and
negligible. Yet he now showed that his many-sided mind could enlist its
energies in even the “dismal science” and his skill in expression could
illuminate it.
Taxes in the Philippines had always been haphazard. They were levied
without system or anything akin to system. Only one feature about them
could be said to be uniform: everywhere the wealthy evaded their just
share of the taxation burden; everywhere the poor bore more than was
right for them to bear. The history of Spanish rule was a succession of
promises of reform, usually wrenched by an insurrection from the
unwilling lips of a governor-general and ignored when the time of
danger had passed. In the year of grace 1888 came such a reformatory
spasm about taxes. When it reached Calamba it was received with
exceptional interest for the reason that the Dominicans, with whom the