The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere
captivity of the devil, upon the intrepid Gideon, upon the valiant
David, upon the triumphant Roland of Christianity, upon the celestial
Civil Guard, more powerful than all the Civil Guards together, now
existing or to exist!" (The alferez frowned.) "Yes, señor alferez,
more valiant and powerful, he who with no other weapon than a wooden
cross boldly vanquishes the eternal tulisan of the shades and all
the hosts of Lucifer, and who would have exterminated them forever,
were not the spirits immortal! This marvel of divine creation, this
wonderful prodigy, is the blessed Diego of Alcala, who, if I may avail
myself of a comparison, since comparisons aid in the comprehension of
incomprehensible things, as another has said, I say then that this
great saint is merely a private soldier, a steward in the powerful
company which our seraphic father, St. Francis, sends from Heaven,
and to which I have the honor to belong as a corporal or sergeant,
by the grace of God!"
The "rude Indians," as the correspondent would say, caught nothing
more from this paragraph than the words "Civil Guard," "tulisan,"
"San Diego," and "St. Francis," so, observing the wry face of the
alferez and the bellicose gestures of the preacher, they deduced that
the latter was reprehending him for not running down the tulisanes. San
Diego and St. Francis would be commissioned in this duty and justly
so, as is proved by a picture existing in the convento at Manila,
representing St. Francis, by means of his girdle only, holding back the
Chinese invasion in the first years after the discovery. The devout
were accordingly not a little rejoiced and thanked God for this aid,
not doubting that once the tulisanes had disappeared, St. Francis would
also destroy the Civil Guard. With redoubled attention, therefore,
they listened to Padre Damaso, as he continued:
"Most honorable sir" Great affairs are great affairs even by the side
of the small and the small are always small even by the side of the
great. So History says, but since History hits the nail on the head
only once in a hundred times, being a thing made by men, and men make
mistakes--_errarle es hominum_, [89] as Cicero said--he who opens his
mouth makes mistakes, as they say in my country then the result is
that there are profound truths which History does not record. These
truths, most honorable sir, the divine Spirit spoke with that supreme
wisdom which human intelligence has not comprehended since the times
of Seneca and Aristotle, those wise priests of antiquity, even to our
sinful days, and these truths are that not always are small affairs
small, but that they are great, not by the side of the little things,
but by the side of the grandest of the earth and of the heavens and
of the air and of the clouds and of the waters and of space and of
life and of death!"
"Amen!" exclaimed the leader of the Tertiaries, crossing himself.
With this figure of rhetoric, which he had learned from a famous
preacher in Manila, Padre Damaso wished to startle his audience,
and in fact his holy ghost was so fascinated with such great truths
that it was necessary to kick him to remind him of his business.
"Patent to your eyes--" prompted the holy ghost below.
"Patent to your eyes is the conclusive and impressive proof of this
eternal philosophical truth! Patent is that sun of virtue, and I say
sun and not moon, for there is no great merit in the fact that the
moon shines during the night,--in the land of the blind the one-eyed
man is king; by night may shine a light, a tiny star,--so the greatest
merit is to be able to shine even in the middle of the day, as the sun
does; so shines our brother Diego even in the midst of the greatest
saints! Here you have patent to your eyes, in your impious disbelief,
the masterpiece of the Highest for the confusion of the great of the
earth, yes, my brethren, patent, _patent_ to all, PATENT!"
A man rose pale and trembling and hid himself in a confessional. He was
a liquor dealer who had been dozing and dreaming that the carbineers
were demanding the patent, or license, that he did not have. It may
safely be affirmed that he did not come out from his hiding-place
while the sermon lasted.
"Humble and lowly saint, thy wooden cross" (the one that the image held
was of silver), "thy modest gown, honors the great Francis whose sons
and imitators we are. We propagate thy holy race in the whole world,
in the remote places, in the cities, in the towns, without distinction
between black and white" (the alcalde held his breath), "suffering
hardships and martyrdoms, thy holy race of faith and religion militant"
("Ah!" breathed the alcalde) "which holds the world in balance and
prevents it from falling into the depths of perdition."
His hearers, including even Capitan Tiago, yawned little by
little. Maria Clara was not listening to the sermon, for she knew
that Ibarra was near and was thinking about him while she fanned
herself and gazed at an evangelical bull that had all the outlines
of a small carabao.
"All should know by heart the Holy Scriptures and the lives of the
saints and then I should not have to preach to you, O sinners! You
should know such important and necessary things as the Lord's
Prayer, although many of you have forgotten it, living now as do
the Protestants or heretics, who, like the Chinese, respect not the
ministers of God. But the worse for you, O ye accursed, moving as
you are toward damnation!"
"_Abá_, Pale Lamaso, what!" [90] muttered Carlos, the Chinese,
looking angrily at the preacher, who continued to extemporize,
emitting a series of apostrophes and imprecations.
"You will die in final unrepentance, O race of heretics! God punishes
you even on this earth with jails and prisons! Women should flee from
you, the rulers should hang all of you so that the seed of Satan
be not multiplied in the vineyard of the Lord! Jesus Christ said:
'If you have an evil member that leads you to sin, cut it off, and
cast it into the fire--'"
Having forgotten both his sermon and his rhetoric, Fray Damaso began to
be nervous. Ibarra became uneasy and looked about for a quiet corner,
but the church was crowded. Maria Clara neither heard nor saw anything
as she was analyzing a picture, of the blessed souls in purgatory,
souls in the shape of men and women dressed in hides, with miters,
hoods, and cowls, all roasting in the fire and clutching St. Francis'
girdle, which did not break even with such great weight. With that
improvisation on the preacher's part, the holy-ghost friar lost the
thread of the sermon and skipped over three long paragraphs, giving
the wrong cue to the now laboriously-panting Fray Damaso.
"Who of you, O sinners, would lick the sores of a poor and ragged
beggar? Who? Let him answer by raising his hand! None! That I knew, for
only a saint like Diego de Alcala would do it. He licked all the sores,
saying to an astonished brother, 'Thus is this sick one cured!' O
Christian charity! O matchless example! O virtue of virtues! O
inimitable pattern! O spotless talisman!" Here he continued a long
series of exclamations, the while crossing his arms and raising and
lowering them as though he wished to fly or to frighten the birds away.
"Before dying he spoke in Latin, without knowing Latin! Marvel, O
sinners! You, in spite of what you study, for which blows are given
to you, you do not speak Latin, and you will die without speaking
it! To speak Latin is a gift of God and therefore the Church uses
Latin! I, too, speak Latin! Was God going to deny this consolation
to His beloved Diego? Could he die, could he be permitted to die,
without speaking Latin? Impossible! God wouldn't be just, He Wouldn't
be God! So he talked in Latin, and of that fact the writers of his
time bear witness!"
He ended this exordium with the passage which had cost him the most
toil and which he had plagiarized from a great writer, Sinibaldo de
Mas. "Therefore, I salute thee, illustrious Diego, the glory of our
Order! Thou art the pattern of virtue, meek with honor, humble with
nobility, compliant with fortitude, temperate with ambition, hostile
with loyalty, compassionate with pardon, holy with conscientiousness,
full of faith with devotion, credulous with sincerity, chaste with
love, reserved with secrecy; long-suffering with patience, brave
with timidity, moderate with desire, bold with resolution, obedient
with subjection., modest with pride, zealous with disinterestedness,
skilful with capability, ceremonious with politeness, astute with
sagacity, merciful with piety, secretive with modesty, revengeful with
valor, poor on account of thy labors with true conformity, prodigal
with economy, active with ease, economical with liberality, innocent
with sagacity, reformer with consistency, indifferent with zeal for
learning: God created thee to feel the raptures of Platonic love! Aid
me in singing thy greatness and thy name higher than the stars and
clearer than the sun itself that circles about thy feet! Aid me, all
of you, as you appeal to God for sufficient inspiration by reciting
the Ave Maria!"
All fell upon their knees and raised a murmur like the humming of a
thousand bees. The alcalde laboriously bent one knee and wagged his
head in a disgusted manner, while the alferez looked pale and penitent.
"To the devil with the curate!" muttered one of two youths who had
come from Manila.
"Keep still!" admonished his companion. "His woman might hear us."
Meanwhile, Padre Damaso, instead of reciting the Ave Maria,
was scolding his holy ghost for having skipped three of his best
paragraphs; at the same time he consumed a couple of cakes and a
glass of Malaga, secure of encountering therein greater inspiration
than in all the holy ghosts, whether of wood in the form of a dove
or of flesh in the shape of an inattentive friar.
Then he began the sermon in Tagalog. The devout old woman again gave
her granddaughter a hearty slap. The child awoke ill-naturedly and
asked, "Is it time to cry now?"
"Not yet, O lost one, but don't go to sleep again!" answered the
good grandmother.
Of the second part of the sermon--that in Tagalog--we have only a
few rough notes, for Padre Damaso extemporized in this language,
not because he knew it better, but because, holding the provincial
Filipinos ignorant of rhetoric, he was not afraid of making blunders
before them. With Spaniards the case was different; he had heard
rules of oratory spoken of, and it was possible that among his hearers
some one had been in college-halls, perhaps the alcalde, so he wrote
out his sermons, corrected and polished them, and then memorized and
rehearsed them for several days beforehand.
It is common knowledge that none of those present understood the drift
of the sermon. They were so dull of understanding and the preacher
was so profound, as Sister Rufa said, that the audience waited in
vain for an opportunity to weep, and the lost grandchild of the
blessed old woman went to sleep again. Nevertheless, this part had
greater consequences than the first, at least for certain hearers,
as we shall see later.
He began with a "_Mana capatir con cristiano_," [91] followed by an
avalanche of untranslatable phrases. He talked of the soul, of Hell,
of "_mahal na santo pintacasi_," [92] of the Indian sinners and of
the virtuous Franciscan Fathers.
"The devil!" exclaimed one of the two irreverent Manilans to his
companion. "That's all Greek to me. I'm going." Seeing the doors
closed, he went out through the sacristy, to the great scandal of
the people and especially of the preacher, who turned pale and paused
in the midst of his sentence. Some looked for a violent apostrophe,
but Padre Damaso contented himself with watching the delinquent,
and then he went on with his sermon.