The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
virtually a prisoner since Ibarra’s arrest, as told in “Noli Me
Tangere.” The actual situation in the Islands is illuminated by
picturing Simoun as telling some persons that the insurrection is
desired by the governor-general to free himself from the friars, and
telling others that the friars are planning it to rid themselves of the
governor-general. In the chaos through which the social order was
drifting, either story was plausible. Simoun in his ceaseless
intriguing has manœuvered within his power Quiroga, an influential
Chinaman, also a type in those days, who has secret and unseemly
dealings with the Government. Through this connection Simoun is able to
have his rifles passed through the custom-house as some of Quiroga’s
illicit importations. He spreads his nets and lays his plans, tutors
his accomplices, distributes his arms, and when all is ready for his
explosion he is stunned with the news that so far as Maria Clara is
concerned it is too late. She is dead in the convent.
There are two other love-stories in the book, both unhappy, both
reflexes of Rizal’s own great unhappiness.
One is of Basilio and Juli. Basilio is the son of Sisa, the native
woman in “Noli Me Tangere,” driven insane by misfortunes and
persecutions; Juli is the daughter of Cabesang Tales, driven into
brigandage by the exactions of the friars.
So slight a thing as a frolic of students brings Basilio and Juli to
their tragedy. Some of the students have a supper. It is innocent and
insignificant, but the spies watch it. That night pasquinades are
pasted upon the doors of the university, pasquinades that the nervous
authorities deem seditious. To overwrought minds the bad verses and
cheap jocularity of these compositions indicate that the treason must
be connected with the students’ supper. Therefore, arrest all the
students. The order includes Basilio, who had not attended the fiesta,
and whose rooms when searched yield nothing but text-books on medicine.
In the rural region where Juli is living, terrible reports are current
as to the fate of these students. At one moment they are condemned to
be shot; at another the sentence has already been carried out. Then
comes news that with the help of influential and wealthy relatives they
hope to escape the death-penalty; all except Basilio, who has no
wealthy friends nor influence of any kind.
There is in the town where Juli lives a friar, Father Camorra, of great
power in the Government. An old woman urges Juli to go to the convento
[154] and beg the intercession of Father Camorra. A word from him will
be enough to save Basilio’s life. Juli knows well enough what is the
real nature of the sacrifice demanded of her; so many a Filipino girl
has walked or been dragged along that road to destruction. The reports
about the students grow worse. At last it appears that Basilio has been
condemned to death and in twenty-four hours will stand before the
firing-squad. Not a hope remains except through the intercession of
Father Camorra. The old woman beseeches; still Juli refuses. At last
she is forced to the door of the convento. That night a woman,
screaming wildly, throws herself from an upper window of the house.
When help comes to her she is dead. The body is recognized as that of
Juli. [155]
Basilio escapes the executioner. When he learns of the fate of Juli he
joins Simoun, the disguised Ibarra, who has tried in vain to interest
him in the plans for a revolution.
The other story concerns Isagani, type of the educated and ambitious
young Filipino, and Paulita, type of the exquisite native beauty.
Isagani is deeply in love. Nevertheless, he puts fidelity to his
country above even the idol of his heart. He is a leader among the
discontented students. They do not think of sedition but only of
reforms peacefully achieved, the Rizal idea of progress. An opportunity
arising, Isagani speaks with the greatest frankness to Father
Fernandez, a Dominican friar, and one of the instructors at the
university. Their conversation gives the author a chance to expose the
defects in the system of higher education—so called. He does more than
expose it; he blasts and withers it. [156] Isagani never hesitates to
speak his opinions about these things, though always professing perfect
loyalty. He is arrested with the other students in the dog-day fit that
has seized upon the authorities. At the news the relatives of Paulita
insist that she shall cast over a lover so notorious and so dangerous.
It is Rizal and Leonora again. Paulita yields to them; she allows
herself to be engaged to Isagani’s rival and the date is fixed for her
wedding. It is the date that Simoun selects for the consummation of his
plot. Basilio agrees to help him.
Paulita’s relatives are rich; they have invited the most eminent
persons in the colony, including the governor-general himself. Simoun,
the wealthy jeweler, will be there. He has arranged with bands of
tulisanes and certain discontented peasants to gather on that date to
attack the city. An explosion like the firing of a cannon is to be
their signal.
The guests come bearing or sending beautiful gifts. Simoun presents a
lamp of strange and beautiful design—burning. In it is a charge of
dynamite sufficient to blow up the house and all in it. This will
furnish the signal for the attack. He has told this to Basilio. Outside
the house of festival, Isagani lingers, hoping to catch one farewell
glimpse of the sweetheart he has lost. Basilio sees him and tries to
lead him away before the explosion. Isagani refuses to move. In despair
Basilio tells him what is afoot about the lamp. Isagani, overwhelmed
with horror at the thought that the woman he loves is about to perish,
runs into the house, seizes the lighted lamp, throws it into the river,
and follows it there before any one has a chance to stop him. [157]
Great excitement follows, in which something of the plot is revealed;
and Simoun is unmasked, but not until he has had a chance to escape. He
is pursued and wounded. He dies in the house of a Filipino family where
he has found refuge. On his death-bed he confesses to a priest his real
name and story. [158]
“God will forgive you, Señor Simoun,” says the priest. “He knows that
we are fallible. He has seen that you have suffered, and in ordaining
that the chastisement of your faults should come as death from the very
ones you have instigated to crime, we can see His infinite mercy. He
has frustrated your plans one by one, the best conceived, first by the
death of Maria Clara, then by a lack of preparation, then in some
mysterious way. Let us bow to His will and render Him thanks!”
“According to you, then,” feebly responded the sick man, “His will
is that these Islands——”
“Should continue in the condition in which they suffer?” continued
the priest, seeing that the other hesitated. “I don’t know, sir, I
can’t read the thought of the Inscrutable. I know that he has not
abandoned those peoples who in their supreme moments have trusted
in Him and made Him the judge of their cause. I know His arm has
never failed when, justice long trampled upon and every recourse
gone, the oppressed have taken up the sword to fight for home and
wife and children, for their inalienable rights, which, as the
German poet says, shine ever there above, unextinguished and
inextinguishable, like the eternal stars themselves. No, God is
justice; He cannot abandon His cause, the cause of liberty, without
which no justice is possible.”
Nothing could be plainer: Rizal is enforcing with a final warning the
lesson of his book.
“Why, then, has He denied me His aid?” asked the sick man in a
voice charged with bitter complaint.
“Because you chose means that He could not sanction,” was the
severe reply. “The glory of saving a country is not for him that
has contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and
iniquity have defiled and deformed another crime and another
iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything
but monsters; crime never produces anything but criminals. Love
alone realizes wonderful works; virtue alone can save! No, if our
country is ever to be free it will not be through vice and crime;
it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and
bribing others; no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue
sacrifice, and sacrifice love!”
“Well, I accept your explanation,” rejoined the sick man, after a
pause. “I have been mistaken, but, because I have been mistaken,
will that God deny liberty to a people and yet save many who are
much worse criminals than I am? What is my mistake compared to the
crimes of our rulers? Why has that God to give more heed to my
iniquity than to the cries of so many innocents? Why has He not
stricken me down and then made the people triumph? Why does He let
so many worthy and just ones suffer and look complacently upon
their tortures?”
“The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may
be known and extended! You must shake or shatter the vase to spread
its perfume; you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is
something providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor
Simoun!”
“I knew it,” murmured the sick man, “and therefore I encouraged the
tyranny.”
“Yes, my friend, but more corrupt influences than anything else
were spread. You fostered the social rottenness without sowing an
idea. From this fermentation of vices loathing alone could spring,
and if anything were born overnight it would be at best a mushroom,
for mushrooms only can spring spontaneously from filth. True it is
that the vices of the government are fatal to it; they cause its
death, but they kill also the society in whose bosom they are
developed. An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people,
a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the
settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains. Like master,
like slave! Like government, like country!”
A brief pause ensued, broken at length by the sick man’s voice.
“Then, what can be done?”
“Suffer and work!”
“Suffer—work!” echoed the sick man bitterly. “Ah, it’s easy to say
that, when you are not suffering, when the work is rewarded. If
your God demands such sacrifices from man, man who can scarcely
count upon the present and doubts the future, if you had seen what
I have, the miserable, the wretched, suffering unspeakable tortures
for crimes they have not committed, murdered to cover up the faults
and incapacity of others, poor fathers of families torn from their
homes to work to no purpose upon highways that are destroyed each
day and seem only to serve for sinking families into want. Ah, to
suffer, to work, is the will of God! Convince them that their
murder is their salvation, that their work is the prosperity of the
home! To suffer, to work! What God is that?”
“A very just God, Señor Simoun,” replied the priest. “A God who
chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which
we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make
ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it; and it is just,
very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer
them. It is the God of liberty, Señor Simoun, who obliges us to
love it, by making the yoke heavy for us—a God of mercy, of equity,
who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to
him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering
tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul.