The Reign of Greed
the banquet. There was something extraordinary about the silence.
“Tadeo, deliver your speech,” Makaraig whispered to him.
It had been agreed that Sandoval, who possessed the most oratorical
ability, should deliver the last toast as a summing up.
Tadeo, lazy as ever, had prepared nothing, so he found himself in a
quandary. While disposing of a long string of vermicelli, he meditated
how to get out of the difficulty, until he recalled a speech learned in
school and decided to plagiarize it, with adulterations.
“Beloved brethren in project!” he began, gesticulating with two Chinese
chop-sticks.
“Brute! Keep that chop-stick out of my hair!” cried his neighbor.
“Called by you to fill the void that has been left in—”
“Plagiarism!” Sandoval interrupted him. “That speech was delivered by
the president of our lyceum.”
“Called by your election,” continued the imperturbable Tadeo, “to fill
the void that has been left in my mind”—pointing to his stomach—“by a
man famous for his Christian principles and for his inspirations and
projects, worthy of some little remembrance, what can one like myself
say of him, I who am very hungry, not having breakfasted?”
“Have a neck, my friend!” called a neighbor, offering that portion of a
chicken.
“There is one course, gentlemen, the treasure of a people who are today
a tale and a mockery in the world, wherein have thrust their hands the
greatest gluttons of the western regions of the earth—” Here he pointed
with his chopsticks to Sandoval, who was struggling with a refractory
chicken-wing.
“And eastern!” retorted the latter, describing a circle in the air with
his spoon, in order to include all the banqueters.
“No interruptions!”
“I demand the floor!”
“I demand pickles!” added Isagani.
“Bring on the stew!”
All echoed this request, so Tadeo sat down, contented with having got
out of his quandary.
The dish consecrated to Padre Irene did not appear to be extra good, as
Sandoval cruelly demonstrated thus: “Shining with grease outside and
with pork inside! Bring on the third course, the friar pie!”
The pie was not yet ready, although the sizzling of the grease in the
frying-pan could be heard. They took advantage of the delay to drink,
begging Pecson to talk.
Pecson crossed himself gravely and arose, restraining his clownish
laugh with an effort, at the same time mimicking a certain Augustinian
preacher, then famous, and beginning in a murmur, as though he were
reading a text.
“Si tripa plena laudal Deum, tripa famelica laudabit fratres—if the
full stomach praises God, the hungry stomach will praise the friars.
Words spoken by the Lord Custodio through the mouth of Ben-Zayb, in the
journal El Grito de la Integridad, the second article, absurdity the
one hundred and fifty-seventh.
“Beloved brethren in Christ: Evil blows its foul breath over the
verdant shores of Frailandia, commonly called the Philippine
Archipelago. No day passes but the attack is renewed, but there is
heard some sarcasm against the reverend, venerable, infallible
corporations, defenseless and unsupported. Allow me, brethren, on this
occasion to constitute myself a knight-errant to sally forth in defense
of the unprotected, of the holy corporations that have reared us, thus
again confirming the saving idea of the adage—a full stomach praises
God, which is to say, a hungry stomach will praise the friars.”
“Bravo, bravo!”
“Listen,” said Isagani seriously, “I want you to understand that,
speaking of friars, I respect one.”
Sandoval was getting merry, so he began to sing a shady couplet about
the friars.
“Hear me, brethren!” continued Pecson. “Turn your gaze toward the happy
days of your infancy, endeavor to analyze the present and ask
yourselves about the future. What do you find? Friars, friars, and
friars! A friar baptized you, confirmed you, visited you in school with
loving zeal; a friar heard your first secret; he was the first to bring
you into communion with God, to set your feet upon the pathway of life;
friars were your first and friars will be your last teachers; a friar
it is who opens the hearts of your sweethearts, disposing them to heed
your sighs; a friar marries you, makes you travel over different
islands to afford you changes of climate and diversion; he will attend
your death-bed, and even though you mount the scaffold, there will the
friar be to accompany you with his prayers and tears, and you may rest
assured that he will not desert you until he sees you thoroughly dead.
Nor does his charity end there—dead, he will then endeavor to bury you
with all pomp, he will fight that your corpse pass through the church
to receive his supplications, and he will only rest satisfied when he
can deliver you into the hands of the Creator, purified here on earth,
thanks to temporal punishments, tortures, and humiliations. Learned in
the doctrines of Christ, who closes heaven against the rich, they, our
redeemers and genuine ministers of the Saviour, seek every means to
lift away our sins and bear them far, far off, there where the accursed
Chinese and Protestants dwell, to leave us this air, limpid, pure,
healthful, in such a way that even should we so wish afterwards, we
could not find a real to bring about our condemnation.
“If, then, their existence is necessary to our happiness, if
wheresoever we turn we must encounter their delicate hands, hungering
for kisses, that every day smooth the marks of abuse from our
countenances, why not adore them and fatten them—why demand their
impolitic expulsion? Consider for a moment the immense void that their
absence would leave in our social system. Tireless workers, they
improve and propagate the races! Divided as we are, thanks to our
jealousies and our susceptibilities, the friars unite us in a common
lot, in a firm bond, so firm that many are unable to move their elbows.
Take away the friar, gentlemen, and you will see how the Philippine
edifice will totter; lacking robust shoulders and hairy limbs to
sustain it, Philippine life will again become monotonous, without the
merry note of the playful and gracious friar, without the booklets and
sermons that split our sides with laughter, without the amusing
contrast between grand pretensions and small brains, without the
actual, daily representations of the tales of Boccaccio and La
Fontaine! Without the girdles and scapularies, what would you have our
women do in the future—save that money and perhaps become miserly and
covetous? Without the masses, novenaries, and processions, where will
you find games of panguingui to entertain them in their hours of
leisure? They would then have to devote themselves to their household
duties and instead of reading diverting stories of miracles, we should
then have to get them works that are not extant.
“Take away the friar and heroism will disappear, the political virtues
will fall under the control of the vulgar. Take him away and the Indian
will cease to exist, for the friar is the Father, the Indian is the
Word! The former is the sculptor, the latter the statue, because all
that we are, think, or do, we owe to the friar—to his patience, his
toil, his perseverance of three centuries to modify the form Nature
gave us. The Philippines without the friar and without the Indian—what
then would become of the unfortunate government in the hands of the
Chinamen?”
“It will eat lobster pie,” suggested Isagani, whom Pecson’s speech
bored.
“And that’s what we ought to be doing. Enough of speeches!”
As the Chinese who should have served the courses did not put in his
appearance, one of the students arose and went to the rear, toward the
balcony that overlooked the river. But he returned at once, making
mysterious signs.
“We’re watched! I’ve seen Padre Sibyla’s pet!”
“Yes?” ejaculated Isagani, rising.
“It’s no use now. When he saw me he disappeared.”
Approaching the window he looked toward the plaza, then made signs to
his companions to come nearer. They saw a young man leave the door of
the pansitería, gaze all about him, then with some unknown person enter
a carriage that waited at the curb. It was Simoun’s carriage.
“Ah!” exclaimed Makaraig. “The slave of the Vice-Rector attended by the
Master of the General!”
CHAPTER XXVI
PASQUINADES
Very early the next morning Basilio arose to go to the hospital. He had
his plans made: to visit his patients, to go afterwards to the
University to see about his licentiateship, and then have an interview
with Makaraig about the expense this would entail, for he had used up
the greater part of his savings in ransoming Juli and in securing a
house where she and her grandfather might live, and he had not dared to
apply to Capitan Tiago, fearing that such a move would be construed as
an advance on the legacy so often promised him.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, he paid no attention to the groups of
students who were at such an early hour returning from the Walled City,
as though the classrooms had been closed, nor did he even note the
abstracted air of some of them, their whispered conversations, or the
mysterious signals exchanged among them. So it was that when he reached
San Juan de Dios and his friends asked him about the conspiracy, he
gave a start, remembering what Simoun had planned, but which had
miscarried, owing to the unexplained accident to the jeweler.
Terrified, he asked in a trembling voice, at the same time endeavoring
to feign ignorance, “Ah, yes, what conspiracy?”
“It’s been discovered,” replied one, “and it seems that many are
implicated in it.”
With an effort Basilio controlled himself. “Many implicated?” he
echoed, trying to learn something from the looks of the others. “Who?”
“Students, a lot of students.”
Basilio did not think it prudent to ask more, fearing that he would
give himself away, so on the pretext of visiting his patients he left
the group. One of the clinical professors met him and placing his hand
mysteriously on the youth’s shoulder—the professor was a friend of
his—asked him in a low voice, “Were you at that supper last night?”
In his excited frame of mind Basilio thought the professor had said
night before last, which was the time of his interview with Simoun. He
tried to explain. “I assure you,” he stammered, “that as Capitan Tiago
was worse—and besides I had to finish that book—”
“You did well not to attend it,” said the professor. “But you’re a
member of the students’ association?”
“I pay my dues.”
“Well then, a piece of advice: go home at once and destroy any papers
you have that may compromise you.”
Basilio shrugged his shoulders—he had no papers, nothing more than his
clinical notes.
“Has Señor Simoun—”
“Simoun has nothing to do with the affair, thank God!” interrupted the
physician. “He was opportunely wounded by some unknown hand and is now
confined to his bed. No, other hands are concerned in this, but hands
no less terrible.”
Basilio drew a breath of relief. Simoun was the only one who could
compromise him, although he thought of Cabesang Tales.
“Are there tulisanes—”
“No, man, nothing more than students.”
Basilio recovered his serenity. “What has happened then?” he made bold
to ask.
“Seditious pasquinades have been found; didn’t you know about them?”
“Where?”
“In the University.”
“Nothing more than that?”
“Whew! What more do you want?” asked the professor, almost in a rage.
“The pasquinades are attributed to the students of the association—but,
keep quiet!”
The professor of pathology came along, a man who had more the look of a
sacristan than of a physician. Appointed by the powerful mandate of the
Vice-Rector, without other merit than unconditional servility to the
corporation, he passed for a spy and an informer in the eyes of the
rest of the faculty.