The Reign of Greed
Great attention was depicted on all countenances and silence reigned.
The noise and roar of the street could be distinctly heard, but all
were so affected that a snatch of dialogue which reached them produced
no effect.
“Why can’t we go in?” asked a woman’s voice.
“Abá, there’s a lot of friars and clerks in there,” answered a man.
“The sphinx is for them only.”
“The friars are inquisitive too,” said the woman’s voice, drawing away.
“They don’t want us to know how they’re being fooled. Why, is the head
a friar’s querida?”
In the midst of a profound silence the American announced in a tone of
emotion: “Ladies and gentlemen, with a word I am now going to reanimate
the handful of ashes, and you will talk with a being that knows the
past, the present, and much of the future!”
Here the prestidigitator uttered a soft cry, first mournful, then
lively, a medley of sharp sounds like imprecations and hoarse notes
like threats, which made Ben-Zayb’s hair stand on end.
“Deremof!” cried the American.
The curtains on the wall rustled, the lamps burned low, the table
creaked. A feeble groan responded from the interior of the box. Pale
and uneasy, all stared at one another, while one terrified señora
caught hold of Padre Salvi.
The box then opened of its own accord and presented to the eyes of the
audience a head of cadaverous aspect, surrounded by long and abundant
black hair. It slowly opened its eyes and looked around the whole
audience. Those eyes had a vivid radiance, accentuated by their
cavernous sockets, and, as if deep were calling unto deep, fixed
themselves upon the profound, sunken eyes of the trembling Padre Salvi,
who was staring unnaturally, as though he saw a ghost.
“Sphinx,” commanded Mr. Leeds, “tell the audience who you are.”
A deep silence prevailed, while a chill wind blew through the room and
made the blue flames of the sepulchral lamps flicker. The most
skeptical shivered.
“I am Imuthis,” declared the head in a funereal, but strangely
menacing, voice. “I was born in the time of Amasis and died under the
Persian domination, when Cambyses was returning from his disastrous
expedition into the interior of Libya. I had come to complete my
education after extensive travels through Greece, Assyria, and Persia,
and had returned to my native laud to dwell in it until Thoth should
call me before his terrible tribunal. But to my undoing, on passing
through Babylonia, I discovered an awful secret—the secret of the false
Smerdis who usurped the throne, the bold Magian Gaumata who governed as
an impostor. Fearing that I would betray him to Cambyses, he determined
upon my ruin through the instrumentality of the Egyptian priests, who
at that time ruled my native country. They were the owners of
two-thirds of the land, the monopolizers of learning, they held the
people down in ignorance and tyranny, they brutalized them, thus making
them fit to pass without resistance from one domination to another. The
invaders availed themselves of them, and knowing their usefulness,
protected and enriched them. The rulers not only depended on their
will, but some were reduced to mere instruments of theirs. The Egyptian
priests hastened to execute Gaumata’s orders, with greater zeal from
their fear of me, because they were afraid that I would reveal their
impostures to the people. To accomplish their purpose, they made use of
a young priest of Abydos, who passed for a saint.”
A painful silence followed these words. That head was talking of
priestly intrigues and impostures, and although referring to another
age and other creeds, all the friars present were annoyed, possibly
because they could see in the general trend of the speech some analogy
to the existing situation. Padre Salvi was in the grip of convulsive
shivering; he worked his lips and with bulging eyes followed the gaze
of the head as though fascinated. Beads of sweat began to break out on
his emaciated face, but no one noticed this, so deeply absorbed and
affected were they.
“What was the plot concocted by the priests of your country against
you?” asked Mr. Leeds.
The head uttered a sorrowful groan, which seemed to come from the
bottom of the heart, and the spectators saw its eyes, those fiery eyes,
clouded and filled with tears. Many shuddered and felt their hair rise.
No, that was not an illusion, it was not a trick: the head was the
victim and what it told was its own story.
“Ay!” it moaned, shaking with affliction, “I loved a maiden, the
daughter of a priest, pure as light, like the freshly opened lotus! The
young priest of Abydos also desired her and planned a rebellion, using
my name and some papyri that he had secured from my beloved. The
rebellion broke out at the time when Cambyses was returning in rage
over the disasters of his unfortunate campaign. I was accused of being
a rebel, was made a prisoner, and having effected my escape was killed
in the chase on Lake Moeris. From out of eternity I saw the imposture
triumph. I saw the priest of Abydos night and day persecuting the
maiden, who had taken refuge in a temple of Isis on the island of
Philae. I saw him persecute and harass her, even in the subterranean
chambers, I saw him drive her mad with terror and suffering, like a
huge bat pursuing a white dove. Ah, priest, priest of Abydos, I have
returned to life to expose your infamy, and after so many years of
silence, I name thee murderer, hypocrite, liar!”
A dry, hollow laugh accompanied these words, while a choked voice
responded, “No! Mercy!”
It was Padre Salvi, who had been overcome with terror and with arms
extended was slipping in collapse to the floor.
“What’s the matter with your Reverence? Are you ill?” asked Padre
Irene.
“The heat of the room—”
“This odor of corpses we’re breathing here—”
“Murderer, slanderer, hypocrite!” repeated the head. “I accuse
you—murderer, murderer, murderer!”
Again the dry laugh, sepulchral and menacing, resounded, as though that
head were so absorbed in contemplation of its wrongs that it did not
see the tumult that prevailed in the room.
“Mercy! She still lives!” groaned Padre Salvi, and then lost
consciousness. He was as pallid as a corpse. Some of the ladies thought
it their duty to faint also, and proceeded to do so.
“He is out of his head! Padre Salvi!”
“I told him not to eat that bird’s-nest soup,” said Padre Irene. “It
has made him sick.”
“But he didn’t eat anything,” rejoined Don Custodio shivering. “As the
head has been staring at him fixedly, it has mesmerized him.”
So disorder prevailed, the room seemed to be a hospital or a
battlefield. Padre Salvi looked like a corpse, and the ladies, seeing
that no one was paying them any attention, made the best of it by
recovering.
Meanwhile, the head had been reduced to ashes, and Mr. Leeds, having
replaced the cloth on the table, bowed his audience out.
“This show must be prohibited,” said Don Custodio on leaving. “It’s
wicked and highly immoral.”
“And above all, because it doesn’t use mirrors,” added Ben-Zayb, who
before going out of the room tried to assure himself finally, so he
leaped over the rail, went up to the table, and raised the cloth:
nothing, absolutely nothing! [40] On the following day he wrote an
article in which he spoke of occult sciences, spiritualism, and the
like.
An order came immediately from the ecclesiastical governor prohibiting
the show, but Mr. Leeds had already disappeared, carrying his secret
with him to Hongkong.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FUSE
Placido Penitente left the class with his heart overflowing with
bitterness and sullen gloom in his looks. He was worthy of his name
when not driven from his usual course, but once irritated he was a
veritable torrent, a wild beast that could only be stopped by the death
of himself or his foe. So many affronts, so many pinpricks, day after
day, had made his heart quiver, lodging in it to sleep the sleep of
lethargic vipers, and they now were awaking to shake and hiss with
fury. The hisses resounded in his ears with the jesting epithets of the
professor, the phrases in the slang of the markets, and he seemed to
hear blows and laughter. A thousand schemes for revenge rushed into his
brain, crowding one another, only to fade immediately like phantoms in
a dream. His vanity cried out to him with desperate tenacity that he
must do something.
“Placido Penitente,” said the voice, “show these youths that you have
dignity, that you are the son of a valiant and noble province, where
wrongs are washed out with blood. You’re a Batangan, Placido Penitente!
Avenge yourself, Placido Penitente!”
The youth groaned and gnashed his teeth, stumbling against every one in
the street and on the Bridge of Spain, as if he were seeking a quarrel.
In the latter place he saw a carriage in which was the Vice-Rector,
Padre Sibyla, accompanied by Don Custodio, and he had a great mind to
seize the friar and throw him into the river.
He proceeded along the Escolta and was tempted to assault two
Augustinians who were seated in the doorway of Quiroga’s bazaar,
laughing and joking with other friars who must have been inside in
joyous conversation, for their merry voices and sonorous laughter could
be heard. Somewhat farther on, two cadets blocked up the sidewalk,
talking with the clerk of a warehouse, who was in his shirtsleeves.
Penitents moved toward them to force a passage and they, perceiving his
dark intention, good-humoredly made way for him. Placido was by this
time under the influence of the amok, as the Malayists say.
As he approached his home—the house of a silversmith where he lived as
a boarder—he tried to collect his thoughts and make a plan—to return to
his town and avenge himself by showing the friars that they could not
with impunity insult a youth or make a joke of him. He decided to write
a letter immediately to his mother, Cabesang Andang, to inform her of
what had happened and to tell her that the schoolroom had closed
forever for him. Although there was the Ateneo of the Jesuits, where he
might study that year, yet it was not very likely that the Dominicans
would grant him the transfer, and, even though he should secure it, in
the following year he would have to return to the University.
“They say that we don’t know how to avenge ourselves!” he muttered.
“Let the lightning strike and we’ll see!”
But Placido was not reckoning upon what awaited him in the house of the
silversmith. Cabesang Andang had just arrived from Batangas, having
come to do some shopping, to visit her son, and to bring him money,
jerked venison, and silk handkerchiefs.
The first greetings over, the poor woman, who had at once noticed her
son’s gloomy look, could no longer restrain her curiosity and began to
ask questions. His first explanations Cabesang Andang regarded as some
subterfuge, so she smiled and soothed her son, reminding him of their
sacrifices and privations. She spoke of Capitana Simona’s son, who,
having entered the seminary, now carried himself in the town like a
bishop, and Capitana Simona already considered herself a Mother of God,
clearly so, for her son was going to be another Christ.
“If the son becomes a priest,” said she, “the mother won’t have to pay
us what she owes us. Who will collect from her then?”
But on seeing that Placido was speaking seriously and reading in his
eyes the storm that raged within him, she realized that what he was
telling her was unfortunately the strict truth. She remained silent for
a while and then broke out into lamentations.
“Ay!” she exclaimed. “I promised your father that I would care for you,
educate you, and make a lawyer of you! I’ve deprived myself of
everything so that you might go to school! Instead of joining the