The Reign of Greed
“If they’re all that kind, never mind!” interrupted Sinang. “I think I
prefer the modern.”
Each one selected some piece of jewelry, one a ring, another a watch,
another a locket. Capitana Tika bought a reliquary that contained a
fragment of the stone on which Our Saviour rested at his third fall;
Sinang a pair of earrings; and Capitan Basilio the watch-chain for the
alferez, the lady’s earrings for the curate, and other gifts. The
families from the town of Tiani, not to be outdone by those of San
Diego, in like manner emptied their purses.
Simoun bought or exchanged old jewelry, brought there by economical
mothers, to whom it was no longer of use.
“You, haven’t you something to sell?” he asked Cabesang Tales, noticing
the latter watching the sales and exchanges with covetous eyes, but the
reply was that all his daughter’s jewels had been sold, nothing of
value remained.
“What about Maria Clara’s locket?” inquired Sinang.
“True!” the man exclaimed, and his eyes blazed for a moment.
“It’s a locket set with diamonds and emeralds,” Sinang told the
jeweler. “My old friend wore it before she became a nun.”
Simoun said nothing, but anxiously watched Cabesang Tales, who, after
opening several boxes, found the locket. He examined it carefully,
opening and shutting it repeatedly. It was the same locket that Maria
Clara had worn during the fiesta in San Diego and which she had in a
moment of compassion given to a leper.
“I like the design,” said Simoun. “How much do you want for it?”
Cabesang Tales scratched his head in perplexity, then his ear, then
looked at the women.
“I’ve taken a fancy to this locket,” Simoun went on. “Will you take a
hundred, five hundred pesos? Do you want to exchange it for something
else? Take your choice here!”
Tales stared foolishly at Simoun, as if in doubt of what he heard.
“Five hundred pesos?” he murmured.
“Five hundred,” repeated the jeweler in a voice shaking with emotion.
Cabesang Tales took the locket and made several turns about the room,
with his heart beating violently and his hands trembling. Dared he ask
more? That locket could save him, this was an excellent opportunity,
such as might not again present itself.
The women winked at him to encourage him to make the sale, excepting
Penchang, who, fearing that Juli would be ransomed, observed piously:
“I would keep it as a relic. Those who have seen Maria Clara in the
nunnery say she has got so thin and weak that she can scarcely talk and
it’s thought that she’ll die a saint. Padre Salvi speaks very highly of
her and he’s her confessor. That’s why Juli didn’t want ito give it up,
but rather preferred to pawn herself.”
This speech had its effect—the thought of his daughter restrained
Tales. “If you will allow me,” he said, “I’ll go to the town to consult
my daughter. I’ll be back before night.”
This was agreed upon and Tales set out at once. But when he found
himself outside of the village, he made out at a distance, on a path,
that entered the woods, the friar-administrator and a man whom he
recognized as the usurper of his land. A husband seeing his wife enter
a private room with another man could not feel more wrath or jealousy
than Cabesang Tales experienced when he saw them moving over his
fields, the fields cleared by him, which he had thought to leave to his
children. It seemed to him that they were mocking him, laughing at his
powerlessness. There flashed into his memory what he had said about
never giving up his fields except to him who irrigated them with his
own blood and buried in them his wife and daughter.
He stopped, rubbed his hand over his forehead, and shut his eyes. When
he again opened them, he saw that the man had turned to laugh and that
the friar had caught his sides as though to save himself from bursting
with merriment, then he saw them point toward his house and laugh
again.
A buzz sounded in his ears, he felt the crack of a whip around his
chest, the red mist reappeared before his eyes, he again saw the
corpses of his wife and daughter, and beside them the usurper with the
friar laughing and holding his sides. Forgetting everything else, he
turned aside into the path they had taken, the one leading to his
fields.
Simoun waited in vain for Cabesang Tales to return that night. But the
next morning when he arose he noticed that the leather holster of his
revolver was empty. Opening it he found inside a scrap of paper wrapped
around the locket set with emeralds and diamonds, with these few lines
written on it in Tagalog:
“Pardon, sir, that in my own house I relieve you of what belongs to
you, but necessity drives me to it. In exchange for your revolver I
leave the locket you desired so much. I need the weapon, for I am
going out to join the tulisanes.
“I advise you not to keep on your present road, because if you fall
into our power, not then being my guest, we will require of you a
large ransom.
Telesforo Juan de Dios.”
“At last I’ve found my man!” muttered Simoun with a deep breath. “He’s
somewhat scrupulous, but so much the better—he’ll keep his promises.”
He then ordered a servant to go by boat over the lake to Los Baños with
the larger chest and await him there. He would go on overland, taking
the smaller chest, the one containing his famous jewels. The arrival of
four civil-guards completed his good humor. They came to arrest
Cabesang Tales and not finding him took Tandang Selo away instead.
Three murders had been committed during the night. The
friar-administrator and the new tenant of Cabesang Tales’ land had been
found dead, with their heads split open and their mouths full of earth,
on the border of the fields. In the town the wife of the usurper was
found dead at dawn, her mouth also filled with earth and her throat
cut, with a fragment of paper beside her, on which was the name Tales,
written in blood as though traced by a finger.
Calm yourselves, peaceful inhabitants of Kalamba! None of you are named
Tales, none of you have committed any crime! You are called Luis
Habaña, Matías Belarmino, Nicasio Eigasani, Cayetano de Jesús, Mateo
Elejorde, Leandro Lopez, Antonino Lopez, Silvestre Ubaldo, Manuel
Hidalgo, Paciano Mercado, your name is the whole village of Kalamba.
[19] You cleared your fields, on them you have spent the labor of your
whole lives, your savings, your vigils and privations, and you have
been despoiled of them, driven from your homes, with the rest forbidden
to show you hospitality! Not content with outraging justice, they [20]
have trampled upon the sacred traditions of your country! You have
served Spain and the King, and when in their name you have asked for
justice, you were banished without trial, torn from your wives’ arms
and your children’s caresses! Any one of you has suffered more than
Cabesang Tales, and yet none, not one of you, has received justice!
Neither pity nor humanity has been shown you—you have been persecuted
beyond the tomb, as was Mariano Herbosa! [21] Weep or laugh, there in
those lonely isles where you wander vaguely, uncertain of the future!
Spain, the generous Spain, is watching over you, and sooner or later
you will have justice!
CHAPTER XI
LOS BAÑOS
His Excellency, the Captain-General and Governor of the Philippine
Islands, had been hunting in Bosoboso. But as he had to be accompanied
by a band of music,—since such an exalted personage was not to be
esteemed less than the wooden images carried in the processions,—and as
devotion to the divine art of St. Cecilia has not yet been popularized
among the deer and wild boars of Bosoboso, his Excellency, with the
band of music and train of friars, soldiers, and clerks, had not been
able to catch a single rat or a solitary bird.
The provincial authorities foresaw dismissals and transfers, the poor
gobernadorcillos and cabezas de barangay were restless and sleepless,
fearing that the mighty hunter in his wrath might have a notion to make
up with their persons for the lack of submissiveness on the part of the
beasts of the forest, as had been done years before by an alcalde who
had traveled on the shoulders of impressed porters because he found no
horses gentle enough to guarantee his safety. There was not lacking an
evil rumor that his Excellency had decided to take some action, since
in this he saw the first symptoms of a rebellion which should be
strangled in its infancy, that a fruitless hunt hurt the prestige of
the Spanish name, that he already had his eye on a wretch to be dressed
up as a deer, when his Excellency, with clemency that Ben-Zayb lacked
words to extol sufficiently, dispelled all the fears by declaring that
it pained him to sacrifice to his pleasure the beasts of the forest.
But to tell the truth, his Excellency was secretly very well satisfied,
for what would have happened had he missed a shot at a deer, one of
those not familiar with political etiquette? What would the prestige of
the sovereign power have come to then? A Captain-General of the
Philippines missing a shot, like a raw hunter? What would have been
said by the Indians, among whom there were some fair huntsmen? The
integrity of the fatherland would have been endangered.
So it was that his Excellency, with a sheepish smile, and posing as a
disappointed hunter, ordered an immediate return to Los Baños. During
the journey he related with an indifferent air his hunting exploits in
this or that forest of the Peninsula, adopting a tone somewhat
depreciative, as suited the case, toward hunting in Filipinas. The bath
in Dampalit, the hot springs on the shore of the lake, card-games in
the palace, with an occasional excursion to some neighboring waterfall,
or the lake infested with caymans, offered more attractions and fewer
risks to the integrity of the fatherland.
Thus on one of the last days of December, his Excellency found himself
in the sala, taking a hand at cards while he awaited the breakfast
hour. He had come from the bath, with the usual glass of coconut-milk
and its soft meat, so he was in the best of humors for granting favors
and privileges. His good humor was increased by his winning a good many
hands, for Padre Irene and Padre Sibyla, with whom he was playing, were
exercising all their skill in secretly trying to lose, to the great
irritation of Padre Camorra, who on account of his late arrival only
that morning was not informed as to the game they were playing on the
General. The friar-artilleryman was playing in good faith and with
great care, so he turned red and bit his lip every time Padre Sibyla
seemed inattentive or blundered, but he dared not say a word by reason
of the respect he felt for the Dominican. In exchange he took his
revenge out on Padre Irene, whom he looked upon as a base fawner and
despised for his coarseness. Padre Sibyla let him scold, while the
humbler Padre Irene tried to excuse himself by rubbing his long nose.
His Excellency was enjoying it and took advantage, like the good
tactician that the Canon hinted he was, of all the mistakes of his
opponents. Padre Camorra was ignorant of the fact that across the table
they were playing for the intellectual development of the Filipinos,
the instruction in Castilian, but had he known it he would doubtless
have joyfully entered into that game.
The open balcony admitted the fresh, pure breeze and revealed the lake,
whose waters murmured sweetly around the base of the edifice, as if
rendering homage. On the right, at a distance, appeared Talim Island, a
deep blue in the midst of the lake, while almost in front lay the green
and deserted islet of Kalamba, in the shape of a half-moon. To the left
the picturesque shores were fringed with clumps of bamboo, then a hill