The Reign of Greed
He again opened the register, sought out the name, and entered the
mark. “Come, only one mark,” he said, “since you hadn’t any before.”
“But, Padre,” exclaimed Placido, restraining himself, “if your
Reverence puts a mark against me for failing in the lesson, your
Reverence owes it to me to erase the one for absence that you have put
against me for today.”
His Reverence made no answer. First he slowly entered the mark, then
contemplated it with his head on one side,—the mark must be
artistic,—closed the register, and asked with great sarcasm, “Abá, and
why so, sir?”
“Because I can’t conceive, Padre, how one can be absent from the class
and at the same time recite the lesson in it. Your Reverence is saying
that to be is not to be.”
“Nakú, a metaphysician, but a rather premature one! So you can’t
conceive of it, eh? Sed patet experientia and contra experientiam
negantem, fusilibus est arguendum, do you understand? And can’t you
conceive, with your philosophical head, that one can be absent from the
class and not know the lesson at the same time? Is it a fact that
absence necessarily implies knowledge? What do you say to that,
philosophaster?”
This last epithet was the drop of water that made the full cup
overflow. Placido enjoyed among his friends the reputation of being a
philosopher, so he lost his patience, threw down his book, arose, and
faced the professor.
“Enough, Padre, enough! Your Reverence can put all the marks against me
that you wish, but you haven’t the right to insult me. Your Reverence
may stay with the class, I can’t stand any more.” Without further
farewell, he stalked away.
The class was astounded; such an assumption of dignity had scarcely
ever been seen, and who would have thought it of Placido Penitente? The
surprised professor bit his lips and shook his head threateningly as he
watched him depart. Then in a trembling voice he began his preachment
on the same old theme, delivered however with more energy and more
eloquence. It dealt with the growing arrogance, the innate ingratitude,
the presumption, the lack of respect for superiors, the pride that the
spirit of darkness infused in the young, the lack of manners, the
absence of courtesy, and so on. From this he passed to coarse jests and
sarcasm over the presumption which some good-for-nothing “prompters”
had of teaching their teachers by establishing an academy for
instruction in Castilian.
“Aha, aha!” he moralized, “those who the day before yesterday scarcely
knew how to say, ‘Yes, Padre,’ ‘No, Padre,’ now want to know more than
those who have grown gray teaching them. He who wishes to learn, will
learn, academies or no academies! Undoubtedly that fellow who has just
gone out is one of those in the project. Castilian is in good hands
with such guardians! When are you going to get the time to attend the
academy if you have scarcely enough to fulfill your duties in the
regular classes? We wish that you may all know Spanish and that you
pronounce it well, so that you won’t split our ear-drums with your
twist of expression and your ‘p’s’; [32] but first business and then
pleasure: finish your studies first, and afterwards learn Castilian,
and all become clerks, if you so wish.”
So he went on with his harangue until the bell rang and the class was
over. The two hundred and thirty-four students, after reciting their
prayers, went out as ignorant as when they went in, but breathing more
freely, as if a great weight had been lifted from them. Each youth had
lost another hour of his life and with it a portion of his dignity and
self-respect, and in exchange there was an increase of discontent, of
aversion to study, of resentment in their hearts. After all this ask
for knowledge, dignity, gratitude!
De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur!
Just as the two hundred and thirty-four spent their class hours, so the
thousands of students who preceded them have spent theirs, and, if
matters do not mend, so will those yet to come spend theirs, and be
brutalized, while wounded dignity and youthful enthusiasm will be
converted into hatred and sloth, like the waves that become polluted
along one part of the shore and roll on one after another, each in
succession depositing a larger sediment of filth. But yet He who from
eternity watches the consequences of a deed develop like a thread
through the loom of the centuries, He who weighs the value of a second
and has ordained for His creatures as an elemental law progress and
development, He, if He is just, will demand a strict accounting from
those who must render it, of the millions of intelligences darkened and
blinded, of human dignity trampled upon in millions of His creatures,
and of the incalculable time lost and effort wasted! And if the
teachings of the Gospel are based on truth, so also will these have to
answer—the millions and millions who do not know how to preserve the
light of their intelligences and their dignity of mind, as the master
demanded an accounting from the cowardly servant for the talent that he
let be taken from him.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE HOUSE OF THE STUDENTS
The house where Makaraig lived was worth visiting. Large and spacious,
with two entresols provided with elegant gratings, it seemed to be a
school during the first hours of the morning and pandemonium from ten
o’clock on. During the boarders’ recreation hours, from the lower
hallway of the spacious entrance up to the main floor, there was a
bubbling of laughter, shouts, and movement. Boys in scanty clothing
played sipa or practised gymnastic exercises on improvised trapezes,
while on the staircase a fight was in progress between eight or nine
armed with canes, sticks, and ropes, but neither attackers nor attacked
did any great damage, their blows generally falling sidewise upon the
shoulders of the Chinese pedler who was there selling his outlandish
mixtures and indigestible pastries. Crowds of boys surrounded him,
pulled at his already disordered queue, snatched pies from him, haggled
over the prices, and committed a thousand deviltries. The Chinese
yelled, swore, forswore, in all the languages he could jabber, not
omitting his own; he whimpered, laughed, pleaded, put on a smiling face
when an ugly one would not serve, or the reverse.
He cursed them as devils, savages, no kilistanos [33] but that mattered
nothing. A whack would bring his face around smiling, and if the blow
fell only upon his shoulders he would calmly continue his business
transactions, contenting himself with crying out to them that he was
not in the game, but if it struck the flat basket on which were placed
his wares, then he would swear never to come again, as he poured out
upon them all the imprecations and anathemas imaginable. Then the boys
would redouble their efforts to make him rage the more, and when at
last his vocabulary was exhausted and they were satiated with his
fearful mixtures, they paid him religiously, and sent him away happy,
winking, chuckling to himself, and receiving as caresses the light
blows from their canes that the students gave him as tokens of
farewell.
Concerts on the piano and violin, the guitar, and the accordion,
alternated with the continual clashing of blades from the fencing
lessons. Around a long, wide table the students of the Ateneo prepared
their compositions or solved their problems by the side of others
writing to their sweethearts on pink perforated note-paper covered with
drawings. Here one was composing a melodrama at the side of another
practising on the flute, from which he drew wheezy notes. Over there,
the older boys, students in professional courses, who affected silk
socks and embroidered slippers, amused themselves in teasing the
smaller boys by pulling their ears, already red from repeated fillips,
while two or three held down a little fellow who yelled and cried,
defending himself with his feet against being reduced to the condition
in which he was born, kicking and howling. In one room, around a small
table, four were playing revesino with laughter and jokes, to the great
annoyance of another who pretended to be studying his lesson but who
was in reality waiting his turn to play.
Still another came in with exaggerated wonder, scandalized as he
approached the table. “How wicked you are! So early in the morning and
already gambling! Let’s see, let’s see! You fool, take it with the
three of spades!” Closing his book, he too joined in the game.
Cries and blows were heard. Two boys were fighting in the adjoining
room—a lame student who was very sensitive about his infirmity and an
unhappy newcomer from the provinces who was just commencing his
studies. He was working over a treatise on philosophy and reading
innocently in a loud voice, with a wrong accent, the Cartesian
principle: “Cogito, ergo sum!”
The little lame boy (el cojito) took this as an insult and the others
intervened to restore peace, but in reality only to sow discord and
come to blows themselves.
In the dining-room a young man with a can of sardines, a bottle of
wine, and the provisions that he had just brought from his town, was
making heroic efforts to the end that his friends might participate in
his lunch, while they were offering in their turn heroic resistance to
his invitation. Others were bathing on the azotea, playing firemen with
the water from the well, and joining in combats with pails of water, to
the great delight of the spectators.
But the noise and shouts gradually died away with the coming of leading
students, summoned by Makaraig to report to them the progress of the
academy of Castilian. Isagani was cordially greeted, as was also the
Peninsular, Sandoval, who had come to Manila as a government employee
and was finishing his studies, and who had completely identified
himself with the cause of the Filipino students. The barriers that
politics had established between the races had disappeared in the
schoolroom as though dissolved by the zeal of science and youth.
From lack of lyceums and scientific, literary, or political centers,
Sandoval took advantage of all the meetings to cultivate his great
oratorical gifts, delivering speeches and arguing on any subject, to
draw forth applause from his friends and listeners. At that moment the
subject of conversation was the instruction in Castilian, but as
Makaraig had not yet arrived conjecture was still the order of the day.
“What can have happened?”
“What has the General decided?”
“Has he refused the permit?”
“Has Padre Irene or Padre Sibyla won?”
Such were the questions they asked one another, questions that could be
answered only by Makaraig.
Among the young men gathered together there were optimists like Isagani
and Sandoval, who saw the thing already accomplished and talked of
congratulations and praise from the government for the patriotism of
the students—outbursts of optimism that led Juanito Pelaez to claim for
himself a large part of the glory of founding the society.
All this was answered by the pessimist Pecson, a chubby youth with a
wide, clownish grin, who spoke of outside influences, whether the
Bishop A., the Padre B., or the Provincial C., had been consulted or
not, whether or not they had advised that the whole association should
be put in jail—a suggestion that made Juanito Pelaez so uneasy that he
stammered out, “Carambas, don’t you drag me into—”
Sandoval, as a Peninsular and a liberal, became furious at this. “But
pshaw!” he exclaimed, “that is holding a bad opinion of his Excellency!
I know that he’s quite a friar-lover, but in such a matter as this he
won’t let the friars interfere. Will you tell me, Pecson, on what you
base your belief that the General has no judgment of his own?”
“I didn’t say that, Sandoval,” replied Pecson, grinning until he