The Reign of Greed
carabaos and several hundred pesos, determined to work on his own
account, aided by his father, his wife, and his three children. So they
cut down and cleared away some thick woods which were situated on the
borders of the town and which they believed belonged to no one. During
the labors of cleaning and cultivating the new land, the whole family
fell ill with malaria and the mother died, along with the eldest
daughter, Lucia, in the flower of her age. This, which was the natural
consequence of breaking up new soil infested with various kinds of
bacteria, they attributed to the anger of the woodland spirit, so they
were resigned and went on with their labor, believing him pacified.
But when they began to harvest their first crop a religious
corporation, which owned land in the neighboring town, laid claim to
the fields, alleging that they fell within their boundaries, and to
prove it they at once started to set up their marks. However, the
administrator of the religious order left to them, for humanity’s sake,
the usufruct of the land on condition that they pay a small sum
annually—a mere bagatelle, twenty or thirty pesos. Tales, as peaceful a
man as could be found, was as much opposed to lawsuits as any one and
more submissive to the friars than most people; so, in order not to
smash a palyok against a kawali (as he said, for to him the friars were
iron pots and he a clay jar), he had the weakness to yield to their
claim, remembering that he did not know Spanish and had no money to pay
lawyers.
Besides, Tandang Selo said to him, “Patience! You would spend more in
one year of litigation than in ten years of paying what the white
padres demand. And perhaps they’ll pay you back in masses! Pretend that
those thirty pesos had been lost in gambling or had fallen into the
water and been swallowed by a cayman.”
The harvest was abundant and sold well, so Tales planned to build a
wooden house in the barrio of Sagpang, of the town of Tiani, which
adjoined San Diego.
Another year passed, bringing another good crop, and for this reason
the friars raised the rent to fifty pesos, which Tales paid in order
not to quarrel and because he expected to sell his sugar at a good
price.
“Patience! Pretend that the cayman has grown some,” old Selo consoled
him.
That year he at last saw his dream realized: to live in the barrio of
Sagpang in a wooden house. The father and grandfather then thought of
providing some education for the two children, especially the daughter
Juliana, or Juli, as they called her, for she gave promise of being
accomplished and beautiful. A boy who was a friend of the family,
Basilio, was studying in Manila, and he was of as lowly origin as they.
But this dream seemed destined not to be realized. The first care the
community took when they saw the family prospering was to appoint as
cabeza de barangay its most industrious member, which left only Tano,
the son, who was only fourteen years old. The father was therefore
called Cabesang Tales and had to order a sack coat, buy a felt hat, and
prepare to spend his money. In order to avoid any quarrel with the
curate or the government, he settled from his own pocket the shortages
in the tax-lists, paying for those who had died or moved away, and he
lost considerable time in making the collections and on his trips to
the capital.
“Patience! Pretend that the cayman’s relatives have joined him,”
advised Tandang Selo, smiling placidly.
“Next year you’ll put on a long skirt and go to Manila to study like
the young ladies of the town,” Cabesang Tales told his daughter every
time he heard her talking of Basilio’s progress.
But that next year did not come, and in its stead there was another
increase in the rent. Cabesang Tales became serious and scratched his
head. The clay jar was giving up all its rice to the iron pot.
When the rent had risen to two hundred pesos, Tales was not content
with scratching his head and sighing; he murmured and protested. The
friar-administrator then told him that if he could not pay, some one
else would be assigned to cultivate that land—many who desired it had
offered themselves.
He thought at first that the friar was joking, but the friar was
talking seriously, and indicated a servant of his to take possession of
the land. Poor Tales turned pale, he felt a buzzing in his ears, he saw
in the red mist that rose before his eyes his wife and daughter,
pallid, emaciated, dying, victims of the intermittent fevers—then he
saw the thick forest converted into productive fields, he saw the
stream of sweat watering its furrows, he saw himself plowing under the
hot sun, bruising his feet against the stones and roots, while this
friar had been driving about in his carriage with the wretch who was to
get the land following like a slave behind his master. No, a thousand
times, no! First let the fields sink into the depths of the earth and
bury them all! Who was this intruder that he should have any right to
his land? Had he brought from his own country a single handful of that
soil? Had he crooked a single one of his fingers to pull up the roots
that ran through it?
Exasperated by the threats of the friar, who tried to uphold his
authority at any cost in the presence of the other tenants, Cabesang
Tales rebelled and refused to pay a single cuarto, having ever before
himself that red mist, saying that he would give up his fields to the
first man who could irrigate it with blood drawn from his own veins.
Old Selo, on looking at his son’s face, did not dare to mention the
cayman, but tried to calm him by talking of clay jars, reminding him
that the winner in a lawsuit was left without a shirt to his back.
“We shall all be turned to clay, father, and without shirts we were
born,” was the reply.
So he resolutely refused to pay or to give up a single span of his land
unless the friars should first prove the legality of their claim by
exhibiting a title-deed of some kind. As they had none, a lawsuit
followed, and Cabesang Tales entered into it, confiding that some at
least, if not all, were lovers of justice and respecters of the law.
“I serve and have been serving the King with my money and my services,”
he said to those who remonstrated with him. “I’m asking for justice and
he is obliged to give it to me.”
Drawn on by fatality, and as if he had put into play in the lawsuit the
whole future of himself and his children, he went on spending his
savings to pay lawyers, notaries, and solicitors, not to mention the
officials and clerks who exploited his ignorance and his needs. He
moved to and fro between the village and the capital, passed his days
without eating and his nights without sleeping, while his talk was
always about briefs, exhibits, and appeals. There was then seen a
struggle such as was never before carried on under the skies of the
Philippines: that of a poor Indian, ignorant and friendless, confiding
in the justness and righteousness of his cause, fighting against a
powerful corporation before which Justice bowed her head, while the
judges let fall the scales and surrendered the sword. He fought as
tenaciously as the ant which bites when it knows that it is going to be
crushed, as does the fly which looks into space only through a pane of
glass. Yet the clay jar defying the iron pot and smashing itself into a
thousand pieces bad in it something impressive—it had the sublimeness
of desperation!
On the days when his journeys left him free he patrolled his fields
armed with a shotgun, saying that the tulisanes were hovering around
and he had need of defending himself in order not to fall into their
hands and thus lose his lawsuit. As if to improve his marksmanship, he
shot at birds and fruits, even the butterflies, with such accurate aim
that the friar-administrator did not dare to go to Sagpang without an
escort of civil-guards, while the friar’s hireling, who gazed from afar
at the threatening figure of Tales wandering over the fields like a
sentinel upon the walls, was terror stricken and refused to take the
property away from him.
But the local judges and those at the capital, warned by the experience
of one of their number who had been summarily dismissed, dared not give
him the decision, fearing their own dismissal. Yet they were not really
bad men, those judges, they were upright and conscientious, good
citizens, excellent fathers, dutiful sons—and they were able to
appreciate poor Tales’ situation better than Tales himself could. Many
of them were versed in the scientific and historical basis of property,
they knew that the friars by their own statutes could not own property,
but they also knew that to come from far across the sea with an
appointment secured with great difficulty, to undertake the duties of
the position with the best intentions, and now to lose it because an
Indian fancied that justice had to be done on earth as in heaven—that
surely was an idea! They had their families and greater needs surely
than that Indian: one had a mother to provide for, and what duty is
more sacred than that of caring for a mother? Another had sisters, all
of marriageable age; that other there had many little children who
expected their daily bread and who, like fledglings in a nest, would
surely die of hunger the day he was out of a job; even the very least
of them had there, far away, a wife who would be in distress if the
monthly remittance failed. All these moral and conscientious judges
tried everything in their power in the way of counsel, advising
Cabesang Tales to pay the rent demanded. But Tales, like all simple
souls, once he had seen what was just, went straight toward it. He
demanded proofs, documents, papers, title-deeds, but the friars had
none of these, resting their case on his concessions in the past.
Cabesang Tales’ constant reply was: “If every day I give alms to a
beggar to escape annoyance, who will oblige me to continue my gifts if
he abuses my generosity?”
From this stand no one could draw him, nor were there any threats that
could intimidate him. In vain Governor M—— made a trip expressly to
talk to him and frighten him. His reply to it all was: “You may do what
you like, Mr. Governor, I’m ignorant and powerless. But I’ve cultivated
those fields, my wife and daughter died while helping me clear them,
and I won’t give them up to any one but him who can do more with them
than I’ve done. Let him first irrigate them with his blood and bury in
them his wife and daughter!”
The upshot of this obstinacy was that the honorable judges gave the
decision to the friars, and everybody laughed at him, saying that
lawsuits are not won by justice. But Cabesang Tales appealed, loaded
his shotgun, and patrolled his fields with deliberation.
During this period his life seemed to be a wild dream. His son, Tano, a
youth as tall as his father and as good as his sister, was conscripted,
but he let the boy go rather than purchase a substitute.
“I have to pay the lawyers,” he told his weeping daughter. “If I win
the case I’ll find a way to get him back, and if I lose it I won’t have
any need for sons.”
So the son went away and nothing more was heard of him except that his
hair had been cropped and that he slept under a cart. Six months later
it was rumored that he had been seen embarking for the Carolines;
another report was that he had been seen in the uniform of the Civil
Guard.
“Tano in the Civil Guard! ’Susmariosep!” exclaimed several, clasping
their hands. “Tano, who was so good and so honest! Requimternam!”
The grandfather went many days without speaking to the father, Juli
fell sick, but Cabesang Tales did not shed a single tear, although for
two days he never left the house, as if he feared the looks of reproach