The Reign of Greed
they were defending their homes. [49]
“A strange destiny, that of some peoples!” he mused. “Because a
traveler arrives at their shores, they lose their liberty and become
subjects and slaves, not only of the traveler, not only of his heirs,
but even of all his countrymen, and not for a generation, but for all
time! A strange conception of justice! Such a state of affairs gives
ample right to exterminate every foreigner as the most ferocious
monster that the sea can cast up!”
He reflected that those islanders, against whom his country was waging
war, after all were guilty of no crime other than that of weakness. The
travelers also arrived at the shores of other peoples, but finding them
strong made no display of their strange pretension. With all their
weakness the spectacle they presented seemed beautiful to him, and the
names of the enemies, whom the newspapers did not fail to call cowards
and traitors, appeared glorious to him, as they succumbed with glory
amid the ruins of their crude fortifications, with greater glory even
than the ancient Trojan heroes, for those islanders had carried away no
Philippine Helen! In his poetic enthusiasm he thought of the young men
of those islands who could cover themselves with glory in the eyes of
their women, and in his amorous desperation he envied them because they
could find a brilliant suicide.
“Ah, I should like to die,” he exclaimed, “be reduced to nothingness,
leave to my native land a glorious name, perish in its cause, defending
it from foreign invasion, and then let the sun afterwards illumine my
corpse, like a motionless sentinel on the rocks of the sea!”
The conflict with the Germans [50] came into his mind and he almost
felt sorry that it had been adjusted: he would gladly have died for the
Spanish-Filipino banner before submitting to the foreigner.
“Because, after all,” he mused, “with Spain we are united by firm
bonds—the past, history, religion, language—”
Language, yes, language! A sarcastic smile curled his lips. That very
night they would hold a banquet in the pansitería to celebrate the
demise of the academy of Castilian.
“Ay!” he sighed, “provided the liberals in Spain are like those we have
here, in a little while the mother country will be able to count the
number of the faithful!”
Slowly the night descended, and with it melancholy settled more heavily
upon the heart of the young man, who had almost lost hope of seeing
Paulita. The promenaders one by one left the Malecon for the Luneta,
the music from which was borne to him in snatches of melodies on the
fresh evening breeze; the sailors on a warship anchored in the river
performed their evening drill, skipping about among the slender ropes
like spiders; the boats one by one lighted their lamps, thus giving
signs of life; while the beach,
Do el viento riza las calladas olas
Que con blando murmullo en la ribera
Se deslizan veloces por sí solas. [51]
as Alaejos says, exhaled in the distance thin, vapors that the moon,
now at its full, gradually converted into mysterious transparent gauze.
A distant sound became audible, a noise that rapidly approached.
Isagani turned his head and his heart began to beat violently. A
carriage was coming, drawn by white horses, the white horses that he
would know among a hundred thousand. In the carriage rode Paulita and
her friend of the night before, with Doña Victorina.
Before the young man could take a step, Paulita had leaped to the
ground with sylph-like agility and smiled at him with a smile full of
conciliation. He smiled in return, and it seemed to him that all the
clouds, all the black thoughts that before had beset him, vanished like
smoke, the sky lighted up, the breeze sang, flowers covered the grass
by the roadside. But unfortunately Doña Victorina was there and she
pounced upon the young man to ask him for news of Don Tiburcio, since
Isagani had undertaken to discover his hiding-place by inquiry among
the students he knew.
“No one has been able to tell me up to now,” he answered, and he was
telling the truth, for Don Tiburcio was really hidden in the house of
the youth’s own uncle, Padre Florentino.
“Let him know,” declared Doña Victorina furiously, “that I’ll call in
the Civil Guard. Alive or dead, I want to know where he is—because one
has to wait ten years before marrying again.”
Isagani gazed at her in fright—Doña Victorina was thinking of
remarrying! Who could the unfortunate be?
“What do you think of Juanito Pelaez?” she asked him suddenly.
Juanito! Isagani knew not what to reply. He was tempted to tell all the
evil he knew of Pelaez, but a feeling of delicacy triumphed in his
heart and he spoke well of his rival, for the very reason that he was
such. Doña Victorina, entirely satisfied and becoming enthusiastic,
then broke out into exaggerations of Pelaez’s merits and was already
going to make Isagani a confidant of her new passion when Paulita’s
friend came running to say that the former’s fan had fallen among the
stones of the beach, near the Malecon. Stratagem or accident, the fact
is that this mischance gave an excuse for the friend to remain with the
old woman, while Isagani might talk with Paulita. Moreover, it was a
matter of rejoicing to Doña Victorina, since to get Juanito for herself
she was favoring Isagani’s love.
Paulita had her plan ready. On thanking him she assumed the role of the
offended party, showed resentment, and gave him to understand that she
was surprised to meet him there when everybody was on the Luneta, even
the French actresses.
“You made the appointment for me, how could I be elsewhere?”
“Yet last night you did not even notice that I was in the theater. I
was watching you all the time and you never took your eyes off those
cochers.”
So they exchanged parts: Isagani, who had come to demand explanations,
found himself compelled to give them and considered himself very happy
when Paulita said that she forgave him. In regard to her presence at
the theater, he even had to thank her for that: forced by her aunt, she
had decided to go in the hope of seeing him during the performance.
Little she cared for Juanito Pelaez!
“My aunt’s the one who is in love with him,” she said with a merry
laugh.
Then they both laughed, for the marriage of Pelaez with Doña Victorina
made them really happy, and they saw it already an accomplished fact,
until Isagani remembered that Don Tiburcio was still living and
confided the secret to his sweetheart, after exacting her promise that
she would tell no one. Paulita promised, with the mental reservation of
relating it to her friend.
This led the conversation to Isagani’s town, surrounded by forests,
situated on the shore of the sea which roared at the base of the high
cliffs. Isagani’s gaze lighted up when he spoke of that obscure spot, a
flush of pride overspread his cheeks, his voice trembled, his poetic
imagination glowed, his words poured forth burning, charged with
enthusiasm, as if he were talking of love to his love, and he could not
but exclaim:
“Oh, in the solitude of my mountains I feel free, free as the air, as
the light that shoots unbridled through space! A thousand cities, a
thousand palaces, would I give for that spot in the Philippines, where,
far from men, I could feel myself to have genuine liberty. There, face
to face with nature, in the presence of the mysterious and the
infinite, the forest and the sea, I think, speak, and work like a man
who knows not tyrants.”
In the presence of such enthusiasm for his native place, an enthusiasm
that she did not comprehend, for she was accustomed to hear her country
spoken ill of, and sometimes joined in the chorus herself, Paulita
manifested some jealousy, as usual making herself the offended party.
But Isagani very quickly pacified her. “Yes,” he said, “I loved it
above all things before I knew you! It was my delight to wander through
the thickets, to sleep in the shade of the trees, to seat myself upon a
cliff to take in with my gaze the Pacific which rolled its blue waves
before me, bringing to me echoes of songs learned on the shores of free
America. Before knowing you, that sea was for me my world, my delight,
my love, my dream! When it slept in calm with the sun shining overhead,
it was my delight to gaze into the abyss hundreds of feet below me,
seeking monsters in the forests of madrepores and coral that were
revealed through the limpid blue, enormous serpents that the country
folk say leave the forests to dwell in the sea, and there take on
frightful forms. Evening, they say, is the time when the sirens appear,
and I saw them between the waves—so great was my eagerness that once I
thought I could discern them amid the foam, busy in their divine
sports, I distinctly heard their songs, songs of liberty, and I made
out the sounds of their silvery harps. Formerly I spent hours and hours
watching the transformations in the clouds, or gazing at a solitary
tree in the plain or a high rock, without knowing why, without being
able to explain the vague feelings they awoke in me. My uncle used to
preach long sermons to me, and fearing that I would become a
hypochondriac, talked of placing me under a doctor’s care. But I met
you, I loved you, and during the last vacation it seemed that something
was lacking there, the forest was gloomy, sad the river that glides
through the shadows, dreary the sea, deserted the sky. Ah, if you
should go there once, if your feet should press those paths, if you
should stir the waters of the rivulet with your fingers, if you should
gaze upon the sea, sit upon the cliff, or make the air ring with your
melodious songs, my forest would be transformed into an Eden, the
ripples of the brook would sing, light would burst from the dark
leaves, into diamonds would be converted the dewdrops and into pearls
the foam of the sea.”
But Paulita had heard that to reach Isagani’s home it was necessary to
cross mountains where little leeches abounded, and at the mere thought
of them the little coward shivered convulsively. Humored and petted,
she declared that she would travel only in a carriage or a railway
train.
Having now forgotten all his pessimism and seeing only thornless roses
about him, Isagani answered, “Within a short time all the islands are
going to be crossed with networks of iron rails.
“‘Por donde rápidas
Y voladoras
Locomotoras
Corriendo irán,’ [52]
as some one said. Then the most beautiful spots of the islands will be
accessible to all.”
“Then, but when? When I’m an old woman?”
“Ah, you don’t know what we can do in a few years,” replied the youth.
“You don’t realize the energy and enthusiasm that are awakening in the
country after the sleep of centuries. Spain heeds us; our young men in
Madrid are working day and night, dedicating to the fatherland all
their intelligence, all their time, all their strength. Generous voices
there are mingled with ours, statesmen who realize that there is no
better bond than community of thought and interest. Justice will be
meted out to us, and everything points to a brilliant future for all.
It’s true that we’ve just met with a slight rebuff, we students, but
victory is rolling along the whole line, it is in the consciousness of
all! The traitorous repulse that we have suffered indicates the last
gasp, the final convulsions of the dying. Tomorrow we shall be citizens
of the Philippines, whose destiny will be a glorious one, because it
will be in loving hands. Ah, yes, the future is ours! I see it
rose-tinted, I see the movement that stirs the life of these regions so
long dead, lethargic. I see towns arise along the railroads, and
factories everywhere, edifices like that of Mandaloyan! I hear the