The Reign of Greed
windows, with its roofs of galvanized iron gleaming in the moonlight
and its somber towers showing dull and gloomy in the midst of the
serene night. He laid aside his blue goggles, and his white hair, like
a frame of silver, surrounded his energetic bronzed features, dimly
lighted by a lamp whose flame was dying out from lack of oil.
Apparently wrapped in thought, he took no notice of the fading light
and impending darkness.
“Within a few days,” he murmured, “when on all sides that accursed city
is burning, den of presumptuous nothingness and impious exploitation of
the ignorant and the distressed, when the tumults break out in the
suburbs and there rush into the terrorized streets my avenging hordes,
engendered by rapacity and wrongs, then will I burst the walls of your
prison, I will tear you from the clutches of fanaticism, and my white
dove, you will be the Phoenix that will rise from the glowing embers! A
revolution plotted by men in darkness tore me from your side—another
revolution will sweep me into your arms and revive me! That moon,
before reaching the apogee of its brilliance, will light the
Philippines cleansed of loathsome filth!”
Simoun, stopped suddenly, as though interrupted. A voice in his inner
consciousness was asking if he, Simoun, were not also a part of the
filth of that accursed city, perhaps its most poisonous ferment. Like
the dead who are to rise at the sound of the last trumpet, a thousand
bloody specters—desperate shades of murdered men, women violated,
fathers torn from their families, vices stimulated and encouraged,
virtues mocked, now rose in answer to the mysterious question. For the
first time in his criminal career, since in Havana he had by means of
corruption and bribery set out to fashion an instrument for the
execution of his plans—a man without faith, patriotism, or
conscience—for the first time in that life, something within rose up
and protested against his actions. He closed his eyes and remained for
some time motionless, then rubbed his hand over his forehead, tried to
be deaf to his conscience, and felt fear creeping over him. No, he must
not analyze himself, he lacked the courage to turn his gaze toward his
past. The idea of his courage, his conviction, his self-confidence
failing him at the very moment when his work was set before him! As the
ghosts of the wretches in whose misfortunes he had taken a hand
continued to hover before his eyes, as if issuing from the shining
surface of the river to invade the room with appeals and hands extended
toward him, as reproaches and laments seemed to fill the air with
threats and cries for vengeance, he turned his gaze from the window and
for the first time began to tremble.
“No, I must be ill, I can’t be feeling well,” he muttered. “There are
many who hate me, who ascribe their misfortunes to me, but—”
He felt his forehead begin to burn, so he arose to approach the window
and inhale the fresh night breeze. Below him the Pasig dragged along
its silvered stream, on whose bright surface the foam glittered,
winding slowly about, receding and advancing, following the course of
the little eddies. The city loomed up on the opposite bank, and its
black walls looked fateful, mysterious, losing their sordidness in the
moonlight that idealizes and embellishes everything. But again Simoun
shivered; he seemed to see before him the severe countenance of his
father, dying in prison, but dying for having done good; then the face
of another man, severer still, who had given his life for him because
he believed that he was going to bring about the regeneration of his
country.
“No, I can’t turn back,” he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his
forehead. “The work is at hand and its success will justify me! If I
had conducted myself as you did, I should have succumbed. Nothing of
idealism, nothing of fallacious theories! Fire and steel to the cancer,
chastisement to vice, and afterwards destroy the instrument, if it be
bad! No, I have planned well, but now I feel feverish, my reason
wavers, it is natural—If I have done ill, it has been that I may do
good, and the end justifies the means. What I will do is not to expose
myself—”
With his thoughts thus confused he lay down, and tried to fall asleep.
On the following morning Placido listened submissively, with a smile on
his lips, to his mother’s preachment. When she spoke of her plan of
interesting the Augustinian procurator he did not protest or object,
but on the contrary offered himself to carry it out, in order to save
trouble for his mother, whom he begged to return at once to the
province, that very day, if possible. Cabesang Andang asked him the
reason for such haste.
“Because—because if the procurator learns that you are here he won’t do
anything until you send him a present and order some masses.”
CHAPTER XX
THE ARBITER
True it was that Padre Irene had said: the question of the academy of
Castilian, so long before broached, was on the road to a solution. Don
Custodio, the active Don Custodio, the most active of all the arbiters
in the world, according to Ben-Zayb, was occupied with it, spending his
days reading the petition and falling asleep without reaching any
decision, waking on the following day to repeat the same performance,
dropping off to sleep again, and so on continuously.
How the good man labored, the most active of all the arbiters in the
world! He wished to get out of the predicament by pleasing
everybody—the friars, the high official, the Countess, Padre Irene, and
his own liberal principles. He had consulted with Señor Pasta, and
Señor Pasta had left him stupefied and confused, after advising him to
do a million contradictory and impossible things. He had consulted with
Pepay the dancing girl, and Pepay, who had no idea what he was talking
about, executed a pirouette and asked him for twenty-five pesos to bury
an aunt of hers who had suddenly died for the fifth time, or the fifth
aunt who had suddenly died, according to fuller explanations, at the
same time requesting that he get a cousin of hers who could read,
write, and play the violin, a job as assistant on the public works—all
things that were far from inspiring Don Custodio with any saving idea.
Two days after the events in the Quiapo fair, Don Custodio was as usual
busily studying the petition, without hitting upon the happy solution.
While he yawns, coughs, smokes, and thinks about Pepay’s legs and her
pirouettes, let us give some account of this exalted personage, in
order to understand Padre Sibyla’s reason for proposing him as the
arbiter of such a vexatious matter and why the other clique accepted
him.
Don Custodio de Salazar y Sanchez de Monteredondo, often referred to as
Good Authority, belonged to that class of Manila society which cannot
take a step without having the newspapers heap titles upon them,
calling each indedefatigable, distinguished, zealous, active, profound,
intelligent, well-informed, influential, and so on, as if they feared
that he might be confused with some idle and ignorant possessor of the
same name. Besides, no harm resulted from it, and the watchful censor
was not disturbed. The Good Authority resulted from his friendship with
Ben-Zayb, when the latter, in his two noisiest controversies, which he
carried on for weeks and months in the columns of the newspapers about
whether it was proper to wear a high hat, a derby, or a salakot, and
whether the plural of carácter should be carácteres or caractéres, in
order to strengthen his argument always came out with, “We have this on
good authority,” “We learn this from good authority,” later letting it
be known, for in Manila everything becomes known, that this Good
Authority was no other than Don Custodio de Salazar y Sanchez de
Monteredondo.
He had come to Manila very young, with a good position that had enabled
him to marry a pretty mestiza belonging to one of the wealthiest
families of the city. As he had natural talent, boldness, and great
self-possession, and knew how to make use of the society in which he
found himself, he launched into business with his wife’s money, filling
contracts for the government, by reason of which he was made alderman,
afterwards alcalde, member of the Economic Society, [43] councilor of
the administration, president of the directory of the Obras Pias, [44]
member of the Society of Mercy, director of the Spanish-Filipino Bank,
etc., etc. Nor are these etceteras to be taken like those ordinarily
placed after a long enumeration of titles: Don Custodio, although never
having seen a treatise on hygiene, came to be vice-chairman of the
Board of Health, for the truth was that of the eight who composed this
board only one had to be a physician and he could not be that one. So
also he was a member of the Vaccination Board, which was composed of
three physicians and seven laymen, among these being the Archbishop and
three Provincials. He was a brother in all the confraternities of the
common and of the most exalted dignity, and, as we have seen, director
of the Superior Commission of Primary Instruction, which usually did
not do anything—all these being quite sufficient reason for the
newspapers to heap adjectives upon him no less when he traveled than
when he sneezed.
In spite of so many offices, Don Custodio was not among those who slept
through the sessions, contenting themselves, like lazy and timid
delegates, in voting with the majority. The opposite of the numerous
kings of Europe who bear the title of King of Jerusalem, Don Custodio
made his dignity felt and got from it all the benefit possible, often
frowning, making his voice impressive, coughing out his words, often
taking up the whole session telling a story, presenting a project, or
disputing with a colleague who had placed himself in open opposition to
him. Although not past forty, he already talked of acting with
circumspection, of letting the figs ripen (adding under his breath
“pumpkins”), of pondering deeply and of stepping with careful tread, of
the necessity for understanding the country, because the nature of the
Indians, because the prestige of the Spanish name, because they were
first of all Spaniards, because religion—and so on. Remembered yet in
Manila is a speech of his when for the first time it was proposed to
light the city with kerosene in place of the old coconut oil: in such
an innovation, far from seeing the extinction of the coconut-oil
industry, he merely discerned the interests of a certain
alderman—because Don Custodio saw a long way—and opposed it with all
the resonance of his bucal cavity, considering the project too
premature and predicting great social cataclysms. No less celebrated
was his opposition to a sentimental serenade that some wished to tender
a certain governor on the eve of his departure. Don Custodio, who felt
a little resentment over some slight or other, succeeded in insinuating
the idea that the rising star was the mortal enemy of the setting one,
whereat the frightened promoters of the serenade gave it up.
One day he was advised to return to Spain to be cured of a liver
complaint, and the newspapers spoke of him as an Antaeus who had to set
foot in the mother country to gain new strength. But the Manila Antaeus
found himself a small and insignificant person at the capital. There he
was nobody, and he missed his beloved adjectives. He did not mingle
with the upper set, and his lack of education prevented him from
amounting to much in the academies and scientific centers, while his
backwardness and his parish-house politics drove him from the clubs
disgusted, vexed, seeing nothing clearly but that there they were
forever borrowing money and gambling heavily. He missed the submissive