The Reign of Greed
arm and tried to rise, but could not, and then, uttering two groans,
fell heavily back upon the pillow. His eyes were wide open and he was
slavering—but he was dead. The terrified Padre Irene fled, and, as the
dying man had caught hold of him, in his flight he dragged the corpse
from the bed, leaving it sprawling in the middle of the room.
By night the terror had reached a climax. Several incidents had
occurred to make the timorous believe in the presence of secret
agitators.
During a baptism some cuartos were thrown to the boys and naturally
there was a scramble at the door of the church. It happened that at the
time there was passing a bold soldier, who, somewhat preoccupied,
mistook the uproar for a gathering of filibusters and hurled himself,
sword in hand, upon the boys. He went into the church, and had he not
become entangled in the curtains suspended from the choir he would not
have left a single head on shoulders. It was but the matter of a moment
for the timorous to witness this and take to flight, spreading the news
that the revolution had begun. The few shops that had been kept open
were now hastily closed, there being Chinese who even left bolts of
cloth outside, and not a few women lost their slippers in their flight
through the streets. Fortunately, there was only one person wounded and
a few bruised, among them the soldier himself, who suffered a fall
fighting with the curtain, which smelt to him of filibusterism. Such
prowess gained him great renown, and a renown so pure that it is to be
wished all fame could be acquired in like manner—mothers would then
weep less and earth would be more populous!
In a suburb the inhabitants caught two unknown individuals burying arms
under a house, whereupon a tumult arose and the people pursued the
strangers in order to kill them and turn their bodies over to the
authorities, but some one pacified the excited crowd by telling them
that it would be sufficient to hand over the corpora delictorum, which
proved to be some old shotguns that would surely have killed the first
person who tried to fire them.
“All right,” exclaimed one braggart, “if they want us to rebel, let’s
go ahead!” But he was cuffed and kicked into silence, the women
pinching him as though he had been the owner of the shotguns.
In Ermita the affair was more serious, even though there was less
excitement, and that when there were shots fired. A certain cautious
government employee, armed to the teeth, saw at nightfall an object
near his house, and taking it for nothing less than a student, fired at
it twice with a revolver. The object proved to be a policeman, and they
buried him—pax Christi! Mutis!
In Dulumbayan various shots also resounded, from which there resulted
the death of a poor old deaf man, who had not heard the sentinel’s
quién vive, and of a hog that had heard it and had not answered España!
The old man was buried with difficulty, since there was no money to pay
for the obsequies, but the hog was eaten.
In Manila, [59] in a confectionery near the University much frequented
by the students, the arrests were thus commented upon.
“And have they arrested Tadeo?” [60] asked the proprietess.
“Abá!” answered a student who lived in Parian, “he’s already shot!”
“Shot! Nakú! He hasn’t paid what he owes me.”
“Ay, don’t mention that or you’ll be taken for an accomplice. I’ve
already burnt the book [61] you lent me. There might be a search and it
would be found. Be careful!”
“Did you say that Isagani is a prisoner?”
“Crazy fool, too, that Isagani,” replied the indignant student. “They
didn’t try to catch him, but he went and surrendered. Let him bust
himself—he’ll surely be shot.”
The señora shrugged her shoulders. “He doesn’t owe me anything. And
what about Paulita?”
“She won’t lack a husband. Sure, she’ll cry a little, and then marry a
Spaniard.”
The night was one of the gloomiest. In the houses the rosary was
recited and pious women dedicated paternosters and requiems to each of
the souls of their relatives and friends. By eight o’clock hardly a
pedestrian could be seen—only from time to time was heard the galloping
of a horse against whose sides a saber clanked noisily, then the
whistles of the watchmen, and carriages that whirled along at full
speed, as though pursued by mobs of filibusters.
Yet terror did not reign everywhere. In the house of the silversmith,
where Placido Penitente boarded, the events were commented upon and
discussed with some freedom.
“I don’t believe in the pasquinades,” declared a workman, lank and
withered from operating the blowpipe. “To me it looks like Padre
Salvi’s doings.”
“Ahem, ahem!” coughed the silversmith, a very prudent man, who did not
dare to stop the conversation from fear that he would be considered a
coward. The good man had to content himself with coughing, winking to
his helper, and gazing toward the street, as if to say, “They may be
watching us!”
“On account of the operetta,” added another workman.
“Aha!” exclaimed one who had a foolish face, “I told you so!”
“Ahem!” rejoined a clerk, in a tone of compassion, “the affair of the
pasquinades is true, Chichoy, and I can give you the explanation.”
Then he added mysteriously, “It’s a trick of the Chinaman Quiroga’s!”
“Ahem, ahem!” again coughed the silversmith, shifting his quid of buyo
from one cheek to the other.
“Believe me, Chichoy, of Quiroga the Chinaman! I heard it in the
office.”
“Nakú, it’s certain then,” exclaimed the simpleton, believing it at
once.
“Quiroga,” explained the clerk, “has a hundred thousand pesos in
Mexican silver out in the bay. How is he to get it in? Very easily. Fix
up the pasquinades, availing himself of the question of the students,
and, while every-body is excited, grease the officials’ palms, and in
the cases come!”
“Just it! Just it!” cried the credulous fool, striking the table with
his fist. “Just it! That’s why Quiroga did it! That’s why—” But he had
to relapse into silence as he really did not know what to say about
Quiroga.
“And we must pay the damages?” asked the indignant Chichoy.
“Ahem, ahem, a-h-hem!” coughed the silversmith, hearing steps in the
street.
The footsteps approached and all in the shop fell silent.
“St. Pascual Bailon is a great saint,” declared the silversmith
hypocritically, in a loud voice, at the same time winking to the
others. “St. Pascual Bailon—”
At that moment there appeared the face of Placido Penitente, who was
accompanied by the pyrotechnician that we saw receiving orders from
Simoun. The newcomers were surrounded and importuned for news.
“I haven’t been able to talk with the prisoners,” explained Placido.
“There are some thirty of them.”
“Be on your guard,” cautioned the pyrotechnician, exchanging a knowing
look with Placido. “They say that to-night there’s going to be a
massacre.”
“Aha! Thunder!” exclaimed Chichoy, looking about for a weapon. Seeing
none, he caught up his blowpipe.
The silversmith sat down, trembling in every limb. The credulous
simpleton already saw himself beheaded and wept in anticipation over
the fate of his family.
“No,” contradicted the clerk, “there’s not going to be any massacre.
The adviser of”—he made a mysterious gesture—“is fortunately sick.”
“Simoun!”
“Ahem, ahem, a-h-hem!”
Placido and the pyrotechnician exchanged another look.
“If he hadn’t got sick—”
“It would look like a revolution,” added the pyrotechnician
negligently, as he lighted a cigarette in the lamp chimney. “And what
should we do then?”
“Then we’d start a real one, now that they’re going to massacre us
anyhow—”
The violent fit of coughing that seized the silversmith prevented the
rest of this speech from being heard, but Chichoy must have been saying
terrible things, to judge from his murderous gestures with the blowpipe
and the face of a Japanese tragedian that he put on.
“Rather say that he’s playing off sick because he’s afraid to go out.
As may be seen—”
The silversmith was attacked by another fit of coughing so severe that
he finally asked all to retire.
“Nevertheless, get ready,” warned the pyrotechnician. “If they want to
force us to kill or be killed—”
Another fit of coughing on the part of the poor silversmith prevented
further conversation, so the workmen and apprentices retired to their
homes, carrying with them hammers and saws, and other implements, more
or less cutting, more or less bruising, disposed to sell their lives
dearly. Placido and the pyrotechnician went out again.
“Prudence, prudence!” cautioned the silversmith in a tearful voice.
“You’ll take care of my widow and orphans!” begged the credulous
simpleton in a still more tearful voice, for he already saw himself
riddled with bullets and buried.
That night the guards at the city gates were replaced with Peninsular
artillerymen, and on the following morning as the sun rose, Ben-Zayb,
who had ventured to take a morning stroll to examine the condition of
the fortifications, found on the glacis near the Luneta the corpse of a
native girl, half-naked and abandoned. Ben-Zayb was horrified, but
after touching it with his cane and gazing toward the gates proceeded
on his way, musing over a sentimental tale he might base upon the
incident.
However, no allusion to it appeared in the newspapers on the following
days, engrossed as they were with the falls and slippings caused by
banana-peels. In the dearth of news Ben-Zayb had to comment at length
on a cyclone that had destroyed in America whole towns, causing the
death of more than two thousand persons. Among other beautiful things
he said:
“The sentiment of charity, MORE PREVALENT IN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
THAN IN OTHERS, and the thought of Him who, influenced by that same
feeling, sacrificed himself for humanity, moves (sic) us to
compassion over the misfortunes of our kind and to render thanks
that in this country, so scourged by cyclones, there are not
enacted scenes so desolating as that which the inhabitants of the
United States mus have witnessed!”
Horatius did not miss the opportunity, and, also without mentioning the
dead, or the murdered native girl, or the assaults, answered him in his
Pirotecnia:
“After such great charity and such great humanity, Fray Ibañez—I
mean, Ben-Zayb—brings himself to pray for the Philippines.
But he is understood.
Because he is not Catholic, and the sentiment of charity is most
prevalent,” etc. [62]
CHAPTER XXIX
EXIT CAPITAN TIAGO
Talis vita, finis ita
Capitan Tiago had a good end—that is, a quite exceptional funeral. True
it is that the curate of the parish had ventured the observation to
Padre Irene that Capitan Tiago had died without confession, but the
good priest, smiling sardonically, had rubbed the tip of his nose and
answered:
“Why say that to me? If we had to deny the obsequies to all who die
without confession, we should forget the De profundis! These
restrictions, as you well know, are enforced when the impenitent is
also insolvent. But Capitan Tiago—out on you! You’ve buried infidel
Chinamen, and with a requiem mass!”
Capitan Tiago had named Padre Irene as his executor and willed his
property in part to St. Clara, part to the Pope, to the Archbishop, the
religious corporations, leaving twenty pesos for the matriculation of
poor students. This last clause had been dictated at the suggestion of
Padre Irene, in his capacity as protector of studious youths. Capitan
Tiago had annulled a legacy of twenty-five pesos that he had left to
Basilio, in view of the ungrateful conduct of the boy during the last
few days, but Padre Irene had restored it and announced that he would