The Reign of Greed
to death, for he’ll free us from the Civil Guard.” With a melancholy
gaze he watched the Three Kings move on.
The boys came behind in two files, sad and serious as though they were
there under compulsion. They lighted their way, some with torches,
others with tapers, and others with paper lanterns on bamboo poles,
while they recited the rosary at the top of their voices, as though
quarreling with somebody. Afterwards came St. Joseph on a modest float,
with a look of sadness and resignation on his face, carrying his stalk
of lilies, as he moved along between two civil-guards as though he were
a prisoner. This enabled the cochero to understand the expression on
the saint’s face, but whether the sight of the guards troubled him or
he had no great respect for a saint who would travel in such company,
he did not recite a single requiem.
Behind St. Joseph came the girls bearing lights, their heads covered
with handkerchiefs knotted under their chins, also reciting the rosary,
but with less wrath than the boys. In their midst were to be seen
several lads dragging along little rabbits made of Japanese paper,
lighted by red candles, with their short paper tails erect. The lads
brought those toys into the procession to enliven the birth of the
Messiah. The little animals, fat and round as eggs, seemed to be so
pleased that at times they would take a leap, lose their balance, fall,
and catch fire. The owner would then hasten to extinguish such burning
enthusiasm, puffing and blowing until he finally beat out the fire, and
then, seeing his toy destroyed, would fall to weeping. The cochero
observed with sadness that the race of little paper animals disappeared
each year, as if they had been attacked by the pest like the living
animals. He, the abused Sinong, remembered his two magnificent horses,
which, at the advice of the curate, he had caused to be blessed to save
them from plague, spending therefor ten pesos—for neither the
government nor the curates have found any better remedy for the
epizootic—and they had died after all. Yet he consoled himself by
remembering also that after the shower of holy water, the Latin phrases
of the padre, and the ceremonies, the horses had become so vain and
self-important that they would not even allow him, Sinong, a good
Christian, to put them in harness, and he had not dared to whip them,
because a tertiary sister had said that they were sanctified.
The procession was closed by the Virgin dressed as the Divine Shepherd,
with a pilgrim’s hat of wide brim and long plumes to indicate the
journey to Jerusalem. That the birth might be made more explicable, the
curate had ordered her figure to be stuffed with rags and cotton under
her skirt, so that no one could be in any doubt as to her condition. It
was a very beautiful image, with the same sad expression of all the
images that the Filipinos make, and a mien somewhat ashamed, doubtless
at the way in which the curate had arranged her. In front came several
singers and behind, some musicians with the usual civil-guards. The
curate, as was to be expected after what he had done, was not in his
place, for that year he was greatly displeased at having to use all his
diplomacy and shrewdness to convince the townspeople that they should
pay thirty pesos for each Christmas mass instead of the usual twenty.
“You’re turning filibusters!” he had said to them.
The cochero must have been greatly preoccupied with the sights of the
procession, for when it had passed and Basilio ordered him to go on, he
did not notice that the lamp on his carromata had gone out. Neither did
Basilio notice it, his attention being devoted to gazing at the houses,
which were illuminated inside and out with little paper lanterns of
fantastic shapes and colors, stars surrounded by hoops with long
streamers which produced a pleasant murmur when shaken by the wind, and
fishes of movable heads and tails, having a glass of oil inside,
suspended from the eaves of the windows in the delightful fashion of a
happy and homelike fiesta. But he also noticed that the lights were
flickering, that the stars were being eclipsed, that this year had
fewer ornaments and hangings than the former, which in turn had had
even fewer than the year preceding it. There was scarcely any music in
the streets, while the agreeable noises of the kitchen were not to be
heard in all the houses, which the youth ascribed to the fact that for
some time things had been going badly, the sugar did not bring a good
price, the rice crops had failed, over half the live stock had died,
but the taxes rose and increased for some inexplicable reason, while
the abuses of the Civil Guard became more frequent to kill off the
happiness of the people in the towns.
He was just pondering over this when an energetic “Halt!” resounded.
They were passing in front of the barracks and one of the guards had
noticed the extinguished lamp of the carromata, which could not go on
without it. A hail of insults fell about the poor cochero, who vainly
excused himself with the length of the procession. He would be arrested
for violating the ordinances and afterwards advertised in the
newspapers, so the peaceful and prudent Basilio left the carromata and
went his way on foot, carrying his valise. This was San Diego, his
native town, where he had not a single relative.
The only, house wherein there seemed to be any mirth was Capitan
Basilio’s. Hens and chickens cackled their death chant to the
accompaniment of dry and repeated strokes, as of meat pounded on a
chopping-block, and the sizzling of grease in the frying-pans. A feast
was going on in the house, and even into the street there passed a
certain draught of air, saturated with the succulent odors of stews and
confections. In the entresol Basilio saw Sinang, as small as when our
readers knew her before, [14] although a little rounder and plumper
since her marriage. Then to his great surprise he made out, further in
at the back of the room, chatting with Capitan Basilio, the curate, and
the alferez of the Civil Guard, no less than the jeweler Simoun, as
ever with his blue goggles and his nonchalant air.
“It’s understood, Señor Simoun,” Capitan Basilio was saying, “that
we’ll go to Tiani to see your jewels.”
“I would also go,” remarked the alferez, “because I need a watch-chain,
but I’m so busy—if Capitan Basilio would undertake—”
Capitan Basilio would do so with the greatest pleasure, and as he
wished to propitiate the soldier in order that he might not be molested
in the persons of his laborers, he refused to accept the money which
the alferez was trying to get out of his pocket.
“It’s my Christmas gift!”
“I can’t allow you, Capitan, I can’t permit it!”
“All right! We’ll settle up afterwards,” replied Capitan Basilio with a
lordly gesture.
Also, the curate wanted a pair of lady’s earrings and requested the
capitan to buy them for him. “I want them first class. Later we’ll fix
up the account.”
“Don’t worry about that, Padre,” said the good man, who wished to be at
peace with the Church also. An unfavorable report on the curate’s part
could do him great damage and cause him double the expense, for those
earrings were a forced present. Simoun in the meantime was praising his
jewels.
“That fellow is fierce!” mused the student. “He does business
everywhere. And if I can believe a certain person, he buys from some
gentlemen for a half of their value the same jewels that he himself has
sold for presents. Everybody in this country prospers but us!”
He made his way to his house, or rather Capitan Tiago’s, now occupied
by a trustworthy man who had held him in great esteem since the day
when he had seen him perform a surgical operation with the same
coolness that he would cut up a chicken. This man was now waiting to
give him the news. Two of the laborers were prisoners, one was to be
deported, and a number of carabaos had died.
“The same old story,” exclaimed Basilio, in a bad humor. “You always
receive me with the same complaints.” The youth was not overbearing,
but as he was at times scolded by Capitan Tiago, he liked in his turn
to chide those under his orders.
The old man cast about for something new. “One of our tenants has died,
the old fellow who took care of the woods, and the curate refused to
bury him as a pauper, saying that his master is a rich man.”
“What did he die of?”
“Of old age.”
“Get out! To die of old age! It must at least have been some disease.”
Basilio in his zeal for making autopsies wanted diseases.
“Haven’t you anything new to tell me? You take away my appetite
relating the same old things. Do you know anything of Sagpang?”
The old man then told him about the kidnapping of Cabesang Tales.
Basilio became thoughtful and said nothing more—his appetite had
completely left him.
CHAPTER VI
BASILIO
When the bells began their chimes for the midnight mass and those who
preferred a good sleep to fiestas and ceremonies arose grumbling at the
noise and movement, Basilio cautiously left the house, took two or
three turns through the streets to see that he was not watched or
followed, and then made his way by unfrequented paths to the road that
led to the ancient wood of the Ibarras, which had been acquired by
Capitan Tiago when their property was confiscated and sold. As
Christmas fell under the waning moon that year, the place was wrapped
in darkness. The chimes had ceased, and only the tolling sounded
through the darkness of the night amid the murmur of the breeze-stirred
branches and the measured roar of the waves on the neighboring lake,
like the deep respiration of nature sunk in profound sleep.
Awed by the time and place, the youth moved along with his head down,
as if endeavoring to see through the darkness. But from time to time he
raised it to gaze at the stars through the open spaces between the
treetops and went forward parting the bushes or tearing away the lianas
that obstructed his path. At times he retraced his steps, his foot
would get caught among the plants, he stumbled over a projecting root
or a fallen log. At the end of a half-hour he reached a small brook on
the opposite side of which arose a hillock, a black and shapeless mass
that in the darkness took on the proportions of a mountain. Basilio
crossed the brook on the stones that showed black against the shining
surface of the water, ascended the hill, and made his way to a small
space enclosed by old and crumbling walls. He approached the balete
tree that rose in the center, huge, mysterious, venerable, formed of
roots that extended up and down among the confusedly-interlaced trunks.
Pausing before a heap of stones he took off his hat and seemed to be
praying. There his mother was buried, and every time he came to the
town his first visit was to that neglected and unknown grave. Since he
must visit Cabesang Tales’ family the next day, he had taken advantage
of the night to perform this duty. Seated on a stone, he seemed to fall
into deep thought. His past rose before him like a long black film,
rosy at first, then shadowy with spots of blood, then black, black,
gray, and then light, ever lighter. The end could not be seen, hidden
as it was by a cloud through which shone lights and the hues of dawn.
Thirteen years before to the day, almost to the hour, his mother had
died there in the deepest distress, on a glorious night when the moon
shone brightly and the Christians of the world were engaged in
rejoicing. Wounded and limping, he had reached there in pursuit of
her—she mad and terrified, fleeing from her son as from a ghost. There
she had died, and there had come a stranger who had commanded him to
build a funeral pyre. He had obeyed mechanically and when he returned