The Reign of Greed
seemed to search its pockets and then bent over to fix a shovel-blade
on the end of a stout cane. To his great surprise Basilio thought he
could make out some of the features of the jeweler Simoun, who indeed
it was.
The jeweler dug in the ground and from time to time the lantern
illuminated his face, on which were not now the blue goggles that so
completely disguised him. Basilio shuddered: that was the same stranger
who thirteen years before had dug his mother’s grave there, only now he
had aged somewhat, his hair had turned white, he wore a beard and a
mustache, but yet his look was the same, the bitter expression, the
same cloud on his brow, the same muscular arms, though somewhat thinner
now, the same violent energy. Old impressions were stirred in the boy:
he seemed to feel the heat of the fire, the hunger, the weariness of
that time, the smell of freshly turned earth. Yet his discovery
terrified him—that jeweler Simoun, who passed for a British Indian, a
Portuguese, an American, a mulatto, the Brown Cardinal, his Black
Eminence, the evil genius of the Captain-General as many called him,
was no other than the mysterious stranger whose appearance and
disappearance coincided with the death of the heir to that land! But of
the two strangers who had appeared, which was Ibarra, the living or the
dead?
This question, which he had often asked himself whenever Ibarra’s death
was mentioned, again came into his mind in the presence of the human
enigma he now saw before him. The dead man had had two wounds, which
must have been made by firearms, as he knew from what he had since
studied, and which would be the result of the chase on the lake. Then
the dead man must have been Ibarra, who had come to die at the tomb of
his forefathers, his desire to be cremated being explained by his
residence in Europe, where cremation is practised. Then who was the
other, the living, this jeweler Simoun, at that time with such an
appearance of poverty and wretchedness, but who had now returned loaded
with gold and a friend of the authorities? There was the mystery, and
the student, with his characteristic cold-bloodedness, determined to
clear it up at the first opportunity.
Simoun dug away for some time, but Basilio noticed that his old vigor
had declined—he panted and had to rest every few moments. Fearing that
he might be discovered, the boy made a sudden resolution. Rising from
his seat and issuing from his hiding-place, he asked in the most
matter-of-fact tone, “Can I help you, sir?”
Simoun straightened up with the spring of a tiger attacked at his prey,
thrust his hand in his coat pocket, and stared at the student with a
pale and lowering gaze.
“Thirteen years ago you rendered me a great service, sir,” went on
Basilio unmoved, “in this very place, by burying my mother, and I
should consider myself happy if I could serve you now.”
Without taking his eyes off the youth Simoun drew a revolver from his
pocket and the click of a hammer being cocked was heard. “For whom do
you take me?” he asked, retreating a few paces.
“For a person who is sacred to me,” replied Basilio with some emotion,
for he thought his last moment had come. “For a person whom all, except
me, believe to be dead, and whose misfortunes I have always lamented.”
An impressive silence followed these words, a silence that to the youth
seemed to suggest eternity. But Simoun, after some hesitation,
approached him and placing a hand on his shoulder said in a moving
tone: “Basilio, you possess a secret that can ruin me and now you have
just surprised me in another, which puts me completely in your hands,
the divulging of which would upset all my plans. For my own security
and for the good of the cause in which I labor, I ought to seal your
lips forever, for what is the life of one man compared to the end I
seek? The occasion is fitting; no one knows that I have come here; I am
armed; you are defenceless; your death would be attributed to the
outlaws, if not to more supernatural causes—yet I’ll let you live and
trust that I shall not regret it. You have toiled, you have struggled
with energetic perseverance, and like myself, you have your scores to
settle with society. Your brother was murdered, your mother driven to
insanity, and society has prosecuted neither the assassin nor the
executioner. You and I are the dregs of justice and instead of
destroying we ought to aid each other.”
Simoun paused with a repressed sigh, and then slowly resumed, while his
gaze wandered about: “Yes, I am he who came here thirteen years ago,
sick and wretched, to pay the last tribute to a great and noble soul
that was willing to die for me. The victim of a vicious system, I have
wandered over the world, working night and day to amass a fortune and
carry out my plan. Now I have returned to destroy that system, to
precipitate its downfall, to hurl it into the abyss toward which it is
senselessly rushing, even though I may have to shed oceans of tears and
blood. It has condemned itself, it stands condemned, and I don’t want
to die before I have seen it in fragments at the foot of the
precipice!”
Simoun extended both his arms toward the earth, as if with that gesture
he would like to hold there the broken remains. His voice took on a
sinister, even lugubrious tone, which made the student shudder.
“Called by the vices of the rulers, I have returned to these islands,
and under the cloak of a merchant have visited the towns. My gold has
opened a way for me and wheresoever I have beheld greed in the most
execrable forms, sometimes hypocritical, sometimes shameless, sometimes
cruel, fatten on the dead organism, like a vulture on a corpse, I have
asked myself—why was there not, festering in its vitals, the
corruption, the ptomaine, the poison of the tombs, to kill the foul
bird? The corpse was letting itself be consumed, the vulture was
gorging itself with meat, and because it was not possible for me to
give it life so that it might turn against its destroyer, and because
the corruption developed slowly, I have stimulated greed, I have
abetted it. The cases of injustice and the abuses multiplied
themselves; I have instigated crime and acts of cruelty, so that the
people might become accustomed to the idea of death. I have stirred up
trouble so that to escape from it some remedy might be found; I have
placed obstacles in the way of trade so that the country, impoverished
and reduced to misery, might no longer be afraid of anything; I have
excited desires to plunder the treasury, and as this has not been
enough to bring about a popular uprising, I have wounded the people in
their most sensitive fiber; I have made the vulture itself insult the
very corpse that it feeds upon and hasten the corruption.
“Now, when I was about to get the supreme rottenness, the supreme
filth, the mixture of such foul products brewing poison, when the greed
was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seize whatever
came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration, here you
come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidence in the
government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a body
palpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing with
blood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth to offer itself again as
fresh food!
“Ah, youth is ever inexperienced and dreamy, always running after the
butterflies and flowers! You have united, so that by your efforts you
may bind your fatherland to Spain with garlands of roses when in
reality you are forging upon it chains harder than the diamond! You ask
for equal rights, the Hispanization of your customs, and you don’t see
that what you are begging for is suicide, the destruction of your
nationality, the annihilation of your fatherland, the consecration of
tyranny! What will you be in the future? A people without character, a
nation without liberty—everything you have will be borrowed, even your
very defects! You beg for Hispanization, and do not pale with shame
when they deny it you! And even if they should grant it to you, what
then—what have you gained? At best, a country of pronunciamentos, a
land of civil wars, a republic of the greedy and the malcontents, like
some of the republics of South America! To what are you tending now,
with your instruction in Castilian, a pretension that would be
ridiculous were it not for its deplorable consequences! You wish to add
one more language to the forty odd that are spoken in the islands, so
that you may understand one another less and less.”
“On the contrary,” replied Basilio, “if the knowledge of Castilian may
bind us to the government, in exchange it may also unite the islands
among themselves.”
“A gross error!” rejoined Simoun. “You are letting yourselves be
deceived by big words and never go to the bottom of things to examine
the results in their final analysis. Spanish will never be the general
language of the country, the people will never talk it, because the
conceptions of their brains and the feelings of their hearts cannot be
expressed in that language—each people has its own tongue, as it has
its own way of thinking! What are you going to do with Castilian, the
few of you who will speak it? Kill off your own originality,
subordinate your thoughts to other brains, and instead of freeing
yourselves, make yourselves slaves indeed! Nine-tenths of those of you
who pretend to be enlightened are renegades to your country! He among
you who talks that language neglects his own in such a way that he
neither writes nor understands it, and how many have I not seen who
pretended not to know a single word of it! But fortunately, you have an
imbecile government! While Russia enslaves Poland by forcing the
Russian language upon it, while Germany prohibits French in the
conquered provinces, your government strives to preserve yours, and you
in return, a remarkable people under an incredible government, you are
trying to despoil yourselves of your own nationality! One and all you
forget that while a people preserves its language, it preserves the
marks of its liberty, as a man preserves his independence while he
holds to his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of the
peoples. Luckily, your independence is assured; human passions are
looking out for that!”
Simoun paused and rubbed his hand over his forehead. The waning moon
was rising and sent its faint light down through the branches of the
trees, and with his white locks and severe features, illuminated from
below by the lantern, the jeweler appeared to be the fateful spirit of
the wood planning some evil.
Basilio was silent before such bitter reproaches and listened with
bowed head, while Simoun resumed: “I saw this movement started and have
passed whole nights of anguish, because I understood that among those
youths there were exceptional minds and hearts, sacrificing themselves
for what they thought to be a good cause, when in reality they were
working against their own country. How many times have I wished to
speak to you young men, to reveal myself and undeceive you! But in view
of the reputation I enjoy, my words would have been wrongly interpreted
and would perhaps have had a counter effect. How many times have I not
longed to approach your Makaraig, your Isagani! Sometimes I thought of
their death, I wished to destroy them—”
Simoun checked himself.
“Here’s why I let you live, Basilio, and by such imprudence I expose
myself to the risk of being some day betrayed by you. But you know who
I am, you know how much I must have suffered—then believe in me! You
are not of the common crowd, which sees in the jeweler Simoun the
trader who incites the authorities to commit abuses in order that the
abused may buy jewels. I am the Judge who wishes to castigate this