The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere
conception of God,' he used to say, 'for in my opinion one evil does
not correct another, nor is a crime to be expiated by vain lamentings
or by giving alms to the Church. Take this example: if I have killed
the father of a family, if I have made of a woman a sorrowing widow
and destitute orphans of some happy children, have I satisfied eternal
Justice by letting myself be hanged, or by entrusting my secret to one
who is obliged to guard it for me, or by giving alms to priests who
are least in need of them, or by buying indulgences and lamenting
night and day? What of the widow and the orphans? My conscience
tells me that I should try to take the place of him whom I killed,
that I should dedicate my whole life to the welfare of the family
whose misfortunes I caused. But even so, who can replace the love of
a husband and a father?' Thus your father reasoned and by this strict
standard of conduct regulated all his actions, so that it can be said
that he never injured anybody. On the contrary, he endeavored by his
good deeds to wipe out some injustices which he said your ancestors
had committed. But to get back to his troubles with the curate--these
took on a serious aspect. Padre Damaso denounced him from the pulpit,
and that he did not expressly name him was a miracle, since anything
might have been expected of such a character. I foresaw that sooner
or later the affair would have serious results."
Again the old lieutenant paused. "There happened to be wandering about
the province an ex-artilleryman who has been discharged from the army
on account of his stupidity and ignorance. As the man had to live and
he was not permitted to engage in manual labor, which would injure
our prestige, he somehow or other obtained a position as collector of
the tax on vehicles. The poor devil had no education at all, a fact of
which the natives soon became aware, as it was a marvel for them to see
a Spaniard who didn't know how to read and write. Every one ridiculed
him and the payment of the tax was the occasion of broad smiles. He
knew that he was an object of ridicule and this tended to sour his
disposition even more, rough and bad as it had formerly been. They
would purposely hand him the papers upside down to see his efforts
to read them, and wherever he found a blank space he would scribble
a lot of pothooks which rather fitly passed for his signature. The
natives mocked while they paid him. He swallowed his pride and made
the collections, but was in such a state of mind that he had no respect
for any one. He even came to have some hard words with your father.
"One day it happened that he was in a shop turning a document over and
over in the effort to get it straight when a schoolboy began to make
signs to his companions and to point laughingly at the collector with
his finger. The fellow heard the laughter and saw the joke reflected
in the solemn faces of the bystanders. He lost his patience and,
turning quickly, started to chase the boys, who ran away shouting _ba,
be, bi, bo, bu_. [30] Blind with rage and unable to catch them, he
threw his cane and struck one of the boys on the head, knocking him
down. He ran up and began to kick the fallen boy, and none of those
who had been laughing had the courage to interfere. Unfortunately,
your father happened to come along just at that time. He ran forward
indignantly, caught the collector by the arm, and reprimanded him
severely. The artilleryman, who was no doubt beside himself with rage,
raised his hand, but your father was too quick for him, and with the
strength of a descendant of the Basques--some say that he struck him,
others that he merely pushed him, but at any rate the man staggered
and fell a little way off, striking his head against a stone. Don
Rafael quietly picked the wounded boy up and carried him to the town
hall. The artilleryman bled freely from the mouth and died a few
moments later without recovering consciousness.
"As was to be expected, the authorities intervened and arrested
your father. All his hidden enemies at once rose up and false
accusations came from all sides. He was accused of being a heretic
and a filibuster. To be a heretic is a great danger anywhere,
but especially so at that time when the province was governed by an
alcalde who made a great show of his piety, who with his servants used
to recite his rosary in the church in a loud voice, perhaps that all
might hear and pray with him. But to be a filibuster is worse than
to be a heretic and to kill three or four tax-collectors who know
how to read, write, and attend to business. Every one abandoned him,
and his books and papers were seized. He was accused of subscribing to
_El Correo de Ultramar_, and to newspapers from Madrid, of having sent
you to Germany, of having in his possession letters and a photograph
of a priest who had been legally executed, and I don't know what
not. Everything served as an accusation, even the fact that he, a
descendant of Peninsulars, wore a camisa. Had it been any one but
your father, it is likely that he would soon have been set free,
as there was a physician who ascribed the death of the unfortunate
collector to a hemorrhage. But his wealth, his confidence in the law,
and his hatred of everything that was not legal and just, wrought his
undoing. In spite of my repugnance to asking for mercy from any one,
I applied personally to the Captain-General--the predecessor of our
present one--and urged upon him that there could not be anything of
the filibuster about a man who took up with all the Spaniards, even
the poor emigrants, and gave them food and shelter, and in whose
veins yet flowed the generous blood of Spain. It was in vain that
I pledged my life and swore by my poverty and my military honor. I
succeeded only in being coldly listened to and roughly sent away with
the epithet of _chiflado_." [31]
The old man paused to take a deep breath, and after noticing the
silence of his companion, who was listening with averted face,
continued: "At your father's request I prepared the defense in the
case. I went first to the celebrated Filipino lawyer, young A----,
but he refused to take the case. 'I should lose it,' he told me,
'and my defending him would furnish the motive for another charge
against him and perhaps one against me. Go to Señor M----, who is a
forceful and fluent speaker and a Peninsular of great influence.' I
did so, and the noted lawyer took charge of the case, and conducted it
with mastery and brilliance. But your father's enemies were numerous,
some of them hidden and unknown. False witnesses abounded, and their
calumnies, which under other circumstances would have melted away
before a sarcastic phrase from the defense, here assumed shape and
substance. If the lawyer succeeded in destroying the force of their
testimony by making them contradict each other and even perjure
themselves, new charges were at once preferred. They accused him of
having illegally taken possession of a great deal of land and demanded
damages. They said that he maintained relations with the tulisanes in
order that his crops and animals might not be molested by them. At
last the case became so confused that at the end of a year no one
understood it. The alcalde had to leave and there came in his place
one who had the reputation of being honest, but unfortunately he stayed
only a few months, and his successor was too fond of good horses.
"The sufferings, the worries, the hard life in the prison, or the pain
of seeing so much ingratitude, broke your father's iron constitution
and he fell ill with that malady which only the tomb can cure. When
the case was almost finished and he was about to be acquitted of the
charge of being an enemy of the fatherland and of being the murderer
of the tax-collector, he died in the prison with no one at his side. I
arrived just in time to see him breathe his last."
The old lieutenant became silent, but still Ibarra said nothing. They
had arrived meanwhile at the door of the barracks, so the soldier
stopped and said, as he grasped the youth's hand, "Young man, for
details ask Capitan Tiago. Now, good night, as I must return to duty
and see that all's well."
Silently, but with great feeling, Ibarra shook the lieutenant's bony
hand and followed him with his eyes until he disappeared. Then he
turned slowly and signaled to a passing carriage. "To Lala's Hotel,"
was the direction he gave in a scarcely audible voice.
"This fellow must have just got out of jail," thought the cochero as
he whipped up his horses.
CHAPTER V
A Star in a Dark Night
Ibarra went to his room, which overlooked the river, and dropping
into a chair gazed out into the vast expanse of the heavens spread
before him through the open window. The house on the opposite bank
was profusely lighted, and gay strains of music, largely from stringed
instruments, were borne across the river even to his room.
If the young man had been less preoccupied, if he had had more
curiosity and had cared to see with his opera glasses what was going
on in that atmosphere of light, he would have been charmed with one of
those magical and fantastic spectacles, the like of which is sometimes
seen in the great theaters of Europe. To the subdued strains of the
orchestra there seems to appear in the midst of a shower of light, a
cascade of gold and diamonds in an Oriental setting, a deity wrapped
in misty gauze, a sylph enveloped in a luminous halo, who moves
forward apparently without touching the floor. In her presence the
flowers bloom, the dance awakens, the music bursts forth, and troops
of devils, nymphs, satyrs, demons, angels, shepherds and shepherdesses,
dance, shake their tambourines, and whirl about in rhythmic evolutions,
each one placing some tribute at the feet of the goddess. Ibarra would
have seen a beautiful and graceful maiden, clothed in the picturesque
garments of the daughters of the Philippines, standing in the center
Of a semicircle made up of every class of people, Chinese, Spaniards,
Filipinos, soldiers, curates, old men and young, all gesticulating
and moving about in a lively manner. Padre Damaso stood at the side
of the beauty, smiling like one especially blessed. Fray Sibyla--yes,
Fray Sibyla himself--was talking to her. Doña Victorina was arranging
in the magnificent hair of the maiden a string of pearls and diamonds
which threw out all the beautiful tints of the rainbow. She was white,
perhaps too much so, and whenever she raised her downcast eyes there
shone forth a spotless soul. When she smiled so as to show her small
white teeth the beholder realized that the rose is only a flower
and ivory but the elephant's tusk. From out the filmy piña draperies
around her white and shapely neck there blinked, as the Tagalogs say,
the bright eyes of a collar of diamonds. One man only in all the crowd
seemed insensible to her radiant influence--a young Franciscan, thin,
wasted, and pale, who watched her from a distance, motionless as a
statue and scarcely breathing.
But Ibarra saw nothing of all this--his eyes were fixed on other
things. A small space was enclosed by four bare and grimy walls, in
one of which was an iron grating. On the filthy and loathsome floor
was a mat upon which an old man lay alone in the throes of death,
an old man breathing with difficulty and turning his head from side
to side as amid his tears he uttered a name. The old man was alone,
but from time to time a groan or the rattle of a chain was heard on
the other side of the wall. Far away there was a merry feast, almost
an orgy; a youth was laughing, shouting, and pouring wine upon the
flowers amid the applause and drunken laughter of his companions. The
old man had the features of _his_ father, the youth was himself, and