The Reign of Greed
from his face, arose and began to meditate. Mysterious darkness flooded
the room, so that the moonbeams entering through the window filled it
with vague lights and vaporous reflections.
Into the midst of the silence the priest’s voice broke sad and
deliberate, but consoling: “God will forgive you, Señor—Simoun,” he
said. “He knows that we are fallible, He has seen that you have
suffered, and in ordaining that the chastisement for your faults should
come as death from the very ones you have instigated to crime, we can
see His infinite mercy. He has frustrated your plans one by one, the
best conceived, first by the death of Maria Clara, then by a lack of
preparation, then in some mysterious way. Let us bow to His will and
render Him thanks!”
“According to you, then,” feebly responded the sick man, “His will is
that these islands—”
“Should continue in the condition in which they suffer?” finished the
priest, seeing that the other hesitated. “I don’t know, sir, I can’t
read the thought of the Inscrutable. I know that He has not abandoned
those peoples who in their supreme moments have trusted in Him and made
Him the Judge of their cause, I know that His arm has never failed
when, justice long trampled upon and every recourse gone, the oppressed
have taken up the sword to fight for home and wife and children, for
their inalienable rights, which, as the German poet says, shine ever
there above, unextinguished and inextinguishable, like the eternal
stars themselves. No, God is justice, He cannot abandon His cause, the
cause of liberty, without which no justice is possible.”
“Why then has He denied me His aid?” asked the sick man in a voice
charged with bitter complaint.
“Because you chose means that He could not sanction,” was the severe
reply. “The glory of saving a country is not for him who has
contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and iniquity
have defiled and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can
purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything but monsters and
crime criminals! Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue alone can
save! No, if our country has ever to be free, it will not be through
vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving
some and bribing others, no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue
sacrifice, and sacrifice love!”
“Well, I accept your explanation,” rejoined the sick man, after a
pause. “I have been mistaken, but, because I have been mistaken, will
that God deny liberty to a people and yet save many who are much worse
criminals than I am? What is my mistake compared to the crimes of our
rulers? Why has that God to give more heed to my iniquity than to the
cries of so many innocents? Why has He not stricken me down and then
made the people triumph? Why does He let so many worthy and just ones
suffer and look complacently upon their tortures?”
“The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may be
known and extended! You must shake or shatter the vase to spread its
perfume, you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is something
providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor Simoun!”
“I knew it,” murmured the sick man, “and therefore I encouraged the
tyranny.”
“Yes, my friend, but more corrupt influences than anything else were
spread. You fostered the social rottenness without sowing an idea. From
this fermentation of vices loathing alone could spring, and if anything
were born overnight it would be at best a mushroom, for mushrooms only
can spring spontaneously from filth. True it is that the vices of the
government are fatal to it, they cause its death, but they kill also
the society in whose bosom they are developed. An immoral government
presupposes a demoralized people, a conscienceless administration,
greedy and servile citizens in the settled parts, outlaws and brigands
in the mountains. Like master, like slave! Like government, like
country!”
A brief pause ensued, broken at length by the sick man’s voice. “Then,
what can be done?”
“Suffer and work!”
“Suffer—work!” echoed the sick man bitterly. “Ah, it’s easy to say
that, when you are not suffering, when the work is rewarded. If your
God demands such great sacrifices from man, man who can scarcely count
upon the present and doubts the future, if you had seen what I have,
the miserable, the wretched, suffering unspeakable tortures for crimes
they have not committed, murdered to cover up the faults and incapacity
of others, poor fathers of families torn from their homes to work to no
purpose upon highways that are destroyed each day and seem only to
serve for sinking families into want. Ah, to suffer, to work, is the
will of God! Convince them that their murder is their salvation, that
their work is the prosperity of the home! To suffer, to work! What God
is that?”
“A very just God, Señor Simoun,” replied the priest. “A God who
chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we
hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves
its accomplices, at times we applaud it, and it is just, very just that
we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the
God of liberty, Señor Simoun, who obliges us to love it, by making the
yoke heavy for us—a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us,
betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through
his efforts. The school of suffering tempers, the arena of combat
strengthens the soul.
“I do not mean to say that our liberty will be secured at the sword’s
point, for the sword plays but little part in modern affairs, but that
we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by exalting the
intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice,
right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying for them,—and when a
people reaches that height God will provide a weapon, the idols will be
shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a house of cards and liberty
will shine out like the first dawn.
“Our ills we owe to ourselves alone, so let us blame no one. If Spain
should see that we were less complaisant with tyranny and more disposed
to struggle and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to
grant us liberty, because when the fruit of the womb reaches maturity
woe unto the mother who would stifle it! So, while the Filipino people
has not sufficient energy to proclaim, with head erect and bosom bared,
its rights to social life, and to guarantee it with its sacrifices,
with its own blood; while we see our countrymen in private life ashamed
within themselves, hear the voice of conscience roar in rebellion and
protest, yet in public life keep silence or even echo the words of him
who abuses them in order to mock the abused; while we see them wrap
themselves up in their egotism and with a forced smile praise the most
iniquitous actions, begging with their eyes a portion of the booty—why
grant them liberty? With Spain or without Spain they would always be
the same, and perhaps worse! Why independence, if the slaves of today
will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to
be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.
“Señor Simoun, when our people is unprepared, when it enters the fight
through fraud and force, without a clear understanding of what it is
doing, the wisest attempts will fail, and better that they do fail,
since why commit the wife to the husband if he does not sufficiently
love her, if he is not ready to die for her?”
Padre Florentino felt the sick man catch and press his hand, so he
became silent, hoping that the other might speak, but he merely felt a
stronger pressure of the hand, heard a sigh, and then profound silence
reigned in the room. Only the sea, whose waves were rippled by the
night breeze, as though awaking from the heat of the day, sent its
hoarse roar, its eternal chant, as it rolled against the jagged rocks.
The moon, now free from the sun’s rivalry, peacefully commanded the
sky, and the trees of the forest bent down toward one another, telling
their ancient legends in mysterious murmurs borne on the wings of the
wind.
The sick man said nothing, so Padre Florentino, deeply thoughtful,
murmured: “Where are the youth who will consecrate their golden hours,
their illusions, and their enthusiasm to the welfare of their native
land? Where are the youth who will generously pour out their blood to
wash away so much shame, so much crime, so much abomination? Pure and
spotless must the victim be that the sacrifice may be acceptable! Where
are you, youth, who will embody in yourselves the vigor of life that
has left our veins, the purity of ideas that has been contaminated in
our brains, the fire of enthusiasm that has been quenched in our
hearts? We await you, O youth! Come, for we await you!”
Feeling his eyes moisten he withdrew his hand from that of the sick
man, arose, and went to the window to gaze out upon the wide surface of
the sea. He was drawn from his meditation by gentle raps at the door.
It was the servant asking if he should bring a light.
When the priest returned to the sick man and looked at him in the light
of the lamp, motionless, his eyes closed, the hand that had pressed his
lying open and extended along the edge of the bed, he thought for a
moment that he was sleeping, but noticing that he was not breathing
touched him gently, and then realized that he was dead. His body had
already commenced to turn cold. The priest fell upon his knees and
prayed.
When he arose and contemplated the corpse, in whose features were
depicted the deepest grief, the tragedy of a whole wasted life which he
was carrying over there beyond death, the old man shuddered and
murmured, “God have mercy on those who turned him from the straight
path!”
While the servants summoned by him fell upon their knees and prayed for
the dead man, curious and bewildered as they gazed toward the bed,
reciting requiem after requiem, Padre Florentino took from a cabinet
the celebrated steel chest that contained Simoun’s fabulous wealth. He
hesitated for a moment, then resolutely descended the stairs and made
his way to the cliff where Isagani was accustomed to sit and gaze into
the depths of the sea.
Padre Florentino looked down at his feet. There below he saw the dark
billows of the Pacific beating into the hollows of the cliff, producing
sonorous thunder, at the same time that, smitten by the moonbeams, the
waves and foam glittered like sparks of fire, like handfuls of diamonds
hurled into the air by some jinnee of the abyss. He gazed about him. He
was alone. The solitary coast was lost in the distance amid the dim
cloud that the moonbeams played through, until it mingled with the
horizon. The forest murmured unintelligible sounds.
Then the old man, with an effort of his herculean arms, hurled the
chest into space, throwing it toward the sea. It whirled over and over
several times and descended rapidly in a slight curve, reflecting the
moonlight on its polished surface. The old man saw the drops of water
fly and heard a loud splash as the abyss closed over and swallowed up
the treasure. He waited for a few moments to see if the depths would
restore anything, but the wave rolled on as mysteriously as before,
without adding a fold to its rippling surface, as though into the
immensity of the sea a pebble only had been dropped.
“May Nature guard you in her deep abysses among the pearls and corals
of her eternal seas,” then said the priest, solemnly extending his
hands. “When for some holy and sublime purpose man may need you, God
will in his wisdom draw you from the bosom of the waves. Meanwhile,
there you will not work woe, you will not distort justice, you will not
foment avarice!”
GLOSSARY