nodding "angels' heads," the aerial plants, and the many other
adornments of the terrace. Maria and Crisostomo were there, alone
together for the first time since his return. They began with charming
futilities, so sweet to those who understand, so meaningless to
others. She is sister to Cain, a little jealous; she says to her lover:
"Did you never forget me among the many beautiful women you have seen?"
He too, he is brother to Cain, a bit subtle.
"Could I ever forget you!" he answered, gazing into the dark
eyes. "Your remembrance made powerless that lotus flower, Europe,
which steeps out of the memory of many of my countrymen the hopes and
wrongs of our land. It seemed as if the spirit, the poetic incarnation
of my country was you, frank and lovely daughter of the Philippines! My
love for you and that for her fused in one."
"I know only your pueblo, Manila and Antipolo," replied the young girl,
radiant; "but I have always thought of you, and though my confessor
commanded it, I was never able to forget you. I used to think over
all our childish plays and quarrels. Do you remember the day you were
really angry? Your mother had taken us to wade in the brook, behind
the reeds. You put a crown of orange flowers on my head and called me
Chloe. But your mother took the flowers and ground them with a stone,
to mix with gogo, for washing our hair. You cried. 'Stupid,' said she,
'you shall see how good your hair smells!' I laughed; at that you
were angry and wouldn't speak to me, while I wanted to cry. On the
way home, when the sun was very hot, I picked some sage leaves for
your head. You smiled your thanks, and we were friends again."
Ibarra opened his pocketbook and took out a paper in which were some
leaves, blackened and dry, but fragrant still.
"Your sage leaves," he replied to her questioning look.
In her turn, she drew out a little white satin purse.
"Hands off!" as he reached out for it, "there's a letter in it!"
"My letter of good-by?"
"Have you written me any others, senor mio?"
"What is in it?"
"Lots of fibs, excuses of a bad debtor," she laughed. "If you're good I
will read it to you, suppressing the gallantries, though, so you won't
suffer too much." And lifting the paper to hide her face, she began:
"'My----' I'll not read what follows, because it's a fib"; and she
ran her eyes over several lines. "In spite of my prayers, I must
go. 'You are no longer a boy,' my father said, 'you must think of the
future. You have to learn things your own country cannot teach you, if
you would be useful to her some day. What, almost a man and I see you
in tears?' Upon that I confessed my love for you. He was silent, then
placing his hand on my shoulder he said in a voice full of emotion:
'Do you think you alone know how to love; that it costs your father
nothing to let you go away from him? It is not long since we lost your
mother, and I am growing old, yet I accept my solitude and run the risk
of never seeing you again. For you the future opens, for me it shuts;
the fire of youth is yours, frost touches me, and it is you who weep,
you who do not know how to sacrifice the present to a to-morrow good
for you and for your country."
Ibarra's agitation stopped the reading; he had become very pale and
was walking back and forth.
"What is it? You are ill!" cried Maria, going toward him.
"With you I have forgotten my duty; I should be on my way to the
pueblo. To-morrow is the Feast of the Dead."
Maria was silent. She fixed on him her great, thoughtful eyes, then
turned to pick some flowers.
"Go," she said, and her voice was deep and sweet; "I keep you no
longer. In a few days we shall see each other again. Put these flowers
on your father's grave."
A little later, Captain Tiago found Maria in the chapel, at the foot of
a statue of the Virgin, weeping. "Come, come," said he, to console her;
"burn some candles to St. Roch and St. Michael, patrons of travellers,
for the tulisanes are numerous: better spend four reales for wax than
pay a ransom."
VIII.
REMINISCENCES.
Ibarra's carriage was crossing one of the most animated quarters of
Manila. The street life that had saddened him the night before, now,
in spite of his sorrow, made him smile. Everything awakened a world
of sleeping recollections.
These streets were not yet paved, so if the sun shone two days
continuously, they turned to powder which covered everything. But
let it rain a day, you had a mire, reflecting at night the shifting
lamps of the carriages and bespattering the foot-passengers on the
narrow walks. How many women had lost their embroidered slippers in
these muddy waves!
The good and honorable pontoon bridge, so characteristically Filipino,
doing its best to be useful in spite of natural faults, and rising
or falling with the caprices of the Pasig,--that brave bridge was no
more. The new Spanish bridge drew Ibarra's attention. Carriages passed
continuously, drawn by groups of dwarf horses, in splendid harness. In
these sat at ease government clerks going to their bureaus, officers,
Chinese, self-satisfied and ridiculously grave monks, canons. In an
elegant victoria, Ibarra thought he recognized Father Damaso, deep
in thought. From an open carriage, where his wife and two daughters
accompanied him, Captain Tinong waved a friendly greeting.
Then came the Botanical Gardens, then old Manila, still enclosed in its
ditches and walls; beyond that the sea; beyond that, Europe, thought
Ibarra. But the little hill of Bagumbayan drove away all fancies. He
remembered the man who had opened the eyes of his intelligence,
taught him to find out the true and the just. It was an old priest,
and the holy man had died there, on that field of execution!
To these thoughts he replied by murmuring: "No, after all, first
the country, first the Philippines, daughters of Spain, first the
Spanish home-land!"
His carriage rolled on. It passed a cart drawn by two horses whose
hempen harness told of the back country. Sometimes there sounded the
slow and heavy tread of a pensive carabao, drawing a great tumbrel;
its conductor, on his buffalo skin, accompanying, with a monotonous and
melancholy chant, the strident creaking of the wheels. Sometimes there
was the dull sound of a native sledge's worn runners. In the fields
grazed the herds, and among them white herons gravely promenaded, or
sat tranquil on the backs of sleepy oxen beatifically chewing their
cuds of prairie grass. Let us leave the young man, wholly occupied
now with his thoughts. The sun which makes the tree-tops burn, and
sends the peasants running, when they feel the hot ground through
their thick shoes; the sun which halts the countrywoman under a clump
of great reeds, and makes her think of things vague and strange--that
sun has no enchantment for him.
While the carriage, staggering like a drunken man over the uneven
ground, passes a bamboo bridge, mounts a rough hillside or descends
its steep slope, let us return to Manila.
IX.
AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY.
Ibarra had not been mistaken. It was indeed Father Damaso he had seen,
on his way to the house which he himself had just left.
Maria Clara and Aunt Isabel were entering their carriage when the monk
arrived. "Where are you going?" he asked, and in his preoccupation
he gently tapped the young girl's cheek.
"To the convent to get my things," said she.
"Ah! ah! well, well! we shall see who is the stronger, we shall
see!" he murmured, as he left the two women somewhat surprised and
went up the steps.
"He's probably committing his sermon," said Aunt Isabel. "Come,
we are late!"
We cannot say whether Father Damaso was committing a sermon, but he
must have been absorbed in important things, for he did not offer
his hand to Captain Tiago.
"Santiago," he said, "we must have a serious talk. Come into your
office."
Captain Tiago felt uneasy. He answered nothing, but followed the
gigantic priest, who closed the door behind them.
While they talk, let us see what has become of Father Sibyla.
The learned Dominican, his mass once said, had set out for the
convent of his order, which stands at the entrance to the city,
near the gate bearing alternately, according to the family reigning
at Madrid, the name of Magellan or Isabella II.
Brother Sibyla entered, crossed several halls, and knocked at a door.
"Come in," said a faint voice.
"God give health to your reverence," said the young Dominican,
entering. Seated in a great armchair was an old priest, meagre,
jaundiced, like Rivera's saints. His eyes, deep-sunken in their
orbits, were arched with heavy brows, intensifying the flashes of
their dying light.
Brother Sibyla was moved. He inclined his head, and seemed to wait.
"Ah!" gasped the sick man, "they recommend an operation! An operation
at my age! Oh, this country, this terrible country! You see what it
does for all of us, Hernando!"
"And what has your reverence decided?"
"To die! Could I do otherwise? I suffer too much, but--I've made
others suffer. I'm paying my debt. And you? How are you? What do you
bring me?"
"I came to talk of the mission you gave me."
"Ah! and what is there to say?"
"They've told us fairy tales," answered Brother Sibyla wearily. "Young
Ibarra seems a sensible fellow. He is not stupid at all, and thoroughly
manly."
"Is it so!"
"Hostilities began yesterday."
"Ah! and how?"
Brother Sibyla briefly recounted what had passed between Brother
Damaso and Crisostomo.
"Besides," he said in conclusion, "the young man is going to marry
the daughter of Captain Tiago, who was educated at the convent of
our sisters. He is rich; he would not go about making himself enemies
and compromise at once his happiness and his fortune."
The sick man moved his hand in sign of assent.
"Yes, you are right. He should be ours, body and soul. But if he
declare himself our enemy, so much the better!"
Brother Sibyla looked at the old man in surprise.
"For the good of our sacred order, you understand," he added, breathing
with difficulty; "I prefer attack to the flatteries and adulations
of friends; besides, those are bought."
"Your reverence believes that?"
The old man looked at him sadly.
"Remember this well," he went on, catching his breath; "our power lasts
as long as it's believed in. If we're attacked, the Government reasons:
'They are assailed because in them is seen an obstacle to liberty:
therefore we must support them!'"
"But if the Government should listen to our enemies, if it should
come to covet what we have amassed--if there should be a man hardy
enough----"
"Ah! then beware!"
Both were silent.
"And too," the sick man continued, "we have need of attack to show
us our faults and make us better them. Too much flattery deceives
us; we sleep; and more, it makes us ridiculous, and the day we
become ridiculous we fall as we have fallen in Europe. Money will no
longer come to our churches. No one will buy scapulary, penitential
cords, anything; and when we cease to be rich, we can no longer
convince the conscience. And the worst is, that we're working our own
destruction. For one thing, this immoderate thirst for gain, which I've
combated in vain in all our chapters, this thirst will be our ruin. I
fear we are already declining. God blinds whom He will destroy."
"We shall always have our lands."
"But every year we raise their price, and force the Indian to buy of
others. The people are beginning to murmur. We ought not to increase
the burdens we've already laid on their shoulders."
"So your reverence believes that the revenues----"
"Talk no more of money," interrupted the old man with aversion. "You
say the lieutenant threatened Father Damaso?"
"Yes, Father," replied Sibyla, half smiling; "but this morning he
told me the sherry had mounted to his head, and he thought it must
have been the same with Brother Damaso. 'And your threat?' I asked
jestingly. 'Father,' said he, 'I know how to keep my word when it
doesn't smirch my honor; I was never an informer--and that's why I
am only a lieutenant.'"
Though the lieutenant had not carried out his threat to go to
Malacanang, the captain-general none the less knew what had happened. A
young officer told the story.
"From whom do you have it?" demanded His Excellency, smiling.
"From De Laruja."
The captain-general smiled again, and added:
"Woman's tongue, monk's tongue doesn't wound. I don't wish to get
entangled with these men in skirts. Besides, the provincial made
light of my orders; to punish this priest I demanded that his parish
be changed. Well, they gave him a better. Monkishness! as we say
in Spain."
Alone, His Excellency ceased to smile.
"Oh! if the people were not so dense, how easy to bridle their
reverences! But every nation merits its lot!"
Meanwhile Captain Tiago finished his conference with Father Damaso.
"And now you are warned," said the Franciscan upon leaving. "This
would have been avoided if you hadn't equivocated when I asked you
how the matter stood. Don't make any more false moves, and trust
her godfather."
Captain Tiago took two or three turns about the room, reflecting
and sighing. Then suddenly, as if a happy thought had struck him,
running to the oratory, he extinguished the two candles lighted for
the safeguard of Ibarra.
X.
THE PUEBLO.
Almost on the banks of the lake, in the midst of meadows and streams,
is the pueblo of San Diego. It exports sugar, rice, coffee, and
fruits, or sells these articles of merchandise at low prices to
Chinese traders.
When, on a clear day, the children climb to the top stage
of the moss-grown and vine-clad church tower, there are joyous
exclamations. Each picks out his own little roof of nipa, tile, zinc,
or palm. Beyond they see the rio, a monstrous crystal serpent asleep
on a carpet of green. Trunks of palm trees, dipping and swaying, join
the two banks, and if, as bridges, they leave much to be desired for
trembling old men and poor women who must cross with heavy baskets
on their heads, on the other hand they make fine gymnastic apparatus
for the young.
But what besides the rio the children never fail to talk about is a
certain wooded peninsula in this sea of cultivated land. Its ancient
trees never die, unless the lightning strikes their high tops. Dust
gathers layer on layer in their hollow trunks, the rain makes soil of
it, the birds bring seeds, a tropical vegetation grows there in wild
freedom: bushes, briers, curtains of netted bind-weed, spring from
the roots, reach from tree to tree, hang swaying from the branches,
and Flora, as if yet unsatisfied, sows on the trees themselves; mosses
and fungi live on the creased bark, and graceful aerial guests pierce
with their tendrils the hospitable branches.
This wood is the subject of a legend.
When the pueblo was but a group of poor cabins, there arrived one
day a strange old Spaniard with marvellous eyes, who scarcely spoke
the Tagal. He wished to buy lands having thermal springs, and did
so, paying in money, dress, and jewelry. Suddenly he disappeared,
leaving no trace. The people of the pueblo had begun to think of him
as a magician, when one day his body was found hanging high to the
branch of a giant fig tree. After it had been buried at the foot of
the tree, no one cared much to venture in that quarter.
A few months later there arrived a young Spanish halfbreed, who
claimed to be the old man's son. He settled, and gave himself to
agriculture. Don Saturnino was taciturn and of violent temper,
but very industrious. Late in life he married a woman of Manila,
who bore him Don Rafael, the father of Crisostomo.
Don Rafael, from his youth, was much beloved. He rapidly developed
his father's lands, the population multiplied, the Chinese came, the
hamlet grew to a pueblo, the native curate died and was replaced by
Father Damaso. And all this time the people respected the sepulchre
of the old Spaniard, and held it in superstitious awe. Sometimes,
armed with sticks and stones, the children dared run near it to gather
wild fruits; but while they were busy at this, or stood gazing at
the bit of rope still dangling from the limb, a stone or two would
fall from no one knew where. Then with cries of "The old man! the
old man!" they threw down sticks and fruit, ran in all directions,
between the rocks and bushes, and did not stop till they were out of
the woods, all pale and breathless, some crying, few daring to laugh.
XI.
THE SOVEREIGNS.
Who was the ruler of the pueblo? Not Don Rafael during his lifetime,
though he possessed the most land, and nearly every one owed him. As
he was modest, and gave little value to his deeds, no party formed
around him, and we have seen how he was deserted and attacked when
his fortunes fell.
Was it Captain Tiago? It is true his arrival was always heralded with
music, he was given banquets by his debtors, and loaded with presents;
but he was laughed at in secret, and called Sacristan Tiago.
Was it by chance the town mayor, the gobernadorcillo? Alas! he was
an unfortunate, who governed not, but obeyed; did not dispose, but
was disposed of. And yet he had to answer to the alcalde for all
these dispositions, as if they emanated from his own brain. Be it
said in his favor that he had neither stolen nor usurped his honors,
but that they cost him five thousand pesos and much humiliation.
Perhaps then it was God? But to most of these good people, God seemed
one of those poor kings surrounded by favorites to whom their subjects
always take their supplications, never to them.
No, San Diego was a sort of modern Rome. The curate was the pope
at the Vatican; the alferez of the civil guard, the King in the
Quirinal. Here as there, difficulties arose from the situation.
The present curate, Brother Bernardo Salvi, was the young and silent
Franciscan we have already seen. In mode of life and in appearance
he was very unlike his predecessor, Brother Damaso. He seemed ill,
was always thoughtful, accomplished strictly his religious duties,
and was careful of his reputation. Through his zeal, almost all
his parishioners had speedily become members of the Third Order of
St. Francis, to the great dismay of the rival order, that of the Holy
Rosary. Four or five scapularies were suspended around every neck,
knotted cords encircled all the waists, and the innumerable processions
of the order were a joy to see. The head sacristan took in a small
fortune, selling--or giving as alms, to put it more correctly--all
the paraphernalia necessary to save the soul and combat the devil. It
is well known that this evil spirit, who once dared attack God face
to face, and accuse His divine word, as the book of Job tells us,
is now so cowardly and feeble that he flees at sight of a bit of
painted cloth, and fears a knotted cord.
Brother Salvi again greatly differed from Brother Damaso--who set
everything right with fists or ferrule, believing it the only way to
reach the Indian--in that he punished with fines the faults of his
subordinates, rarely striking them.
From his struggles with the curate, the alferez had a bad reputation
among the devout, which he deserved, and shared with his wife,
a hideous and vile old Filipino woman named Dona Consolacion. The
husband avenged his conjugal woes on himself by drinking like a fish;
on his subordinates, by making them exercise in the sun; and most
frequently on his wife, by kicks and drubbings. The two fought famously
between themselves, but were of one mind when it was a question of
the curate. Inspired by his wife, the officer ordered that no one
be abroad in the streets after nine at night. The priest, who did
not like this restriction, retorted in lengthy sermons, whenever
the alferez went to church. Like all impenitents, the alferez did
not mend his ways for that, but went out swearing under his breath,
arrested the first sacristan he met, and made him clean the yard of
the barracks. So the war went on. All this, however, did not prevent
the alferez and the curate chatting courteously enough when they met.
And they were the rulers of the pueblo of San Diego.
XII.
ALL SAINTS' DAY.
The cemetery of San Diego is in the midst of rice-fields. It is
approached by a narrow path, powdery on sunny days, navigable on
rainy. A wooden gate and a wall half stone, half bamboo stalks,
succeed in keeping out men, but not the curate's goats, nor the
pigs of his neighbors. In the middle of the enclosure is a stone
pedestal supporting a great wooden cross. Storms have bent the strip
of tin on which were the I. N. R. I., and the rain has washed off
the letters. At the foot of the cross is a confused heap of bones
and skulls thrown out by the grave-digger. Everywhere grow in all
their vigor the bitter-sweet and rose-bay. Some tiny flowerets, too,
tint the ground--blossoms which, like the mounded bones, are known to
their Creator only. They are like little pale smiles, and their odor
scents of the tomb. Grass and climbing plants fill the corners, cover
the walls, adorning this otherwise bare ugliness; they even penetrate
the tombs, through earthquake fissures, and fill their yawning gaps.
At this hour two men are digging near the crumbling wall. One, the
grave-digger, works with the utmost indifference, throwing aside
a skull as a gardener would a stone. The other is preoccupied; he
perspires, he breathes hard.
"Oh!" he says at length in Tagalo. "Hadn't we better dig in some
other place? This grave is too recent."
"All the graves are the same, one is as recent as another."
"I can't endure this!"
"What a woman! You should go and be a clerk! If you had dug up,
as I did, a boy of twenty days, at night, in the rain----"
"Uh-h-h! And why did you do that?"
The grave-digger seemed surprised.
"Why? How do I know, I was ordered to."
"Who ordered you?"
At this question the grave-digger straightened himself, and examined
the rash young man from head to foot.
"Come! come! You're curious as a Spaniard. A Spaniard asked me the
same question, but in secret. I'm going to say to you what I said to
him: the curate ordered it."
"Oh! and what did you do with the body?"
"The devil! if I didn't know you, I should take you for the police. The
curate told me to bury it in the Chinese cemetery, but it's a long way
there, and the body was heavy. 'Better be drowned,' I said to myself,
'than lie with the Chinese,' and I threw it into the lake."
"No, no, stop digging!" interrupted the younger man, with a cry of
horror, and throwing down his spade he sprang out of the grave.
The grave-digger watched him run off signing himself, laughed, and
went to work again.
The cemetery began to fill with men and women in mourning. Some
of them came for a moment to the open grave, discussed some matter,
seemed not to be agreed, and separated, kneeling here and there. Others
were lighting candles; all began to pray devoutly. One heard sighing
and sobs, and over all a confused murmur of "requiem aeternam."
A little old man, with piercing eyes, entered uncovered. At sight
of him some laughed, others frowned. The old man seemed to take no
account of this. He went to the heap of skulls, knelt, and searched
with his eyes. Then with the greatest care he lifted the skulls one
by one, wrinkling his brows, shaking his head, and looking on all
sides. At length he rose and approached the grave-digger.
"Ho!" said he.
The other raised his eyes.
"Did you see a beautiful skull, white as the inside of a cocoanut?"
The grave-digger shrugged his shoulders.
"Look," said the old man, showing a piece of money; "it's all I have,
but I'll give it to you if you find it."
The gleam of silver made the man reflect. He looked toward the heap
and said:
"It isn't there? No? Then I don't know where it is."
"You don't know? When those who owe me pay, I'll give you more. 'Twas
the skull of my wife, and if you find it----"
"It isn't there? Then I know nothing about it, but I can give you
another."
"You are like the grave you dig," cried the old man, furious. "You
know not the value of what you destroy! For whom is this grave?"
"How do I know? For a dead man!" replied the other with temper.
"Like the grave, like the grave," the old man repeated with
a dry laugh. "You know neither what you cast out nor what you
keep. Dig! dig!" And he went toward the gate.
Meanwhile the grave-digger had finished his task, and two mounds of
fresh, reddish earth rose beside the grave. Drawing from his pocket
some buyo, he regarded dully what was going on around him, sat down,
and began to chew.