El Filibusterismo. English

by José Rizal

  CHAPTER VII

  SIMOUN

  Over these matters Basilio was pondering as he visited his mother'sgrave. He was about to start back to the town when he thought he sawa light flickering among the trees and heard the snapping of twigs,the sound of feet, and rustling of leaves. The light disappearedbut the noises became more distinct, coming directly toward where hewas. Basilio was not naturally superstitious, especially after havingcarved up so many corpses and watched beside so many death-beds,but the old legends about that ghostly spot, the hour, the darkness,the melancholy sighing of the wind, and certain tales heard in hischildhood, asserted their influence over his mind and made his heartbeat violently.

  The figure stopped on the other side of the balete, but the youthcould see it through an open space between two roots that had grownin the course of time to the proportions of tree-trunks. It producedfrom under its coat a lantern with a powerful reflecting lens, whichit placed on the ground, thereby lighting up a pair of riding-boots,the rest of the figure remaining concealed in the darkness. The figureseemed to search its pockets and then bent over to fix a shovel-bladeon the end of a stout cane. To his great surprise Basilio thought hecould make out some of the features of the jeweler Simoun, who indeedit was.

  The jeweler dug in the ground and from time to time the lanternilluminated his face, on which were not now the blue goggles that socompletely disguised him. Basilio shuddered: that was the same strangerwho thirteen years before had dug his mother's grave there, only nowhe had aged somewhat, his hair had turned white, he wore a beard anda mustache, but yet his look was the same, the bitter expression,the same cloud on his brow, the same muscular arms, though somewhatthinner now, the same violent energy. Old impressions were stirredin the boy: he seemed to feel the heat of the fire, the hunger, theweariness of that time, the smell of freshly turned earth. Yet hisdiscovery terrified him--that jeweler Simoun, who passed for a BritishIndian, a Portuguese, an American, a mulatto, the Brown Cardinal, hisBlack Eminence, the evil genius of the Captain-General as many calledhim, was no other than the mysterious stranger whose appearance anddisappearance coincided with the death of the heir to that land! Butof the two strangers who had appeared, which was Ibarra, the livingor the dead?

  This question, which he had often asked himself whenever Ibarra's deathwas mentioned, again came into his mind in the presence of the humanenigma he now saw before him. The dead man had had two wounds, whichmust have been made by firearms, as he knew from what he had sincestudied, and which would be the result of the chase on the lake. Thenthe dead man must have been Ibarra, who had come to die at the tombof his forefathers, his desire to be cremated being explained by hisresidence in Europe, where cremation is practised. Then who was theother, the living, this jeweler Simoun, at that time with such anappearance of poverty and wretchedness, but who had now returnedloaded with gold and a friend of the authorities? There was themystery, and the student, with his characteristic cold-bloodedness,determined to clear it up at the first opportunity.

  Simoun dug away for some time, but Basilio noticed that his old vigorhad declined--he panted and had to rest every few moments. Fearingthat he might be discovered, the boy made a sudden resolution. Risingfrom his seat and issuing from his hiding-place, he asked in the mostmatter-of-fact tone, "Can I help you, sir?"

  Simoun straightened up with the spring of a tiger attacked at hisprey, thrust his hand in his coat pocket, and stared at the studentwith a pale and lowering gaze.

  "Thirteen years ago you rendered me a great service, sir," went onBasilio unmoved, "in this very place, by burying my mother, and Ishould consider myself happy if I could serve you now."

  Without taking his eyes off the youth Simoun drew a revolver fromhis pocket and the click of a hammer being cocked was heard. "Forwhom do you take me?" he asked, retreating a few paces.

  "For a person who is sacred to me," replied Basilio with some emotion,for he thought his last moment had come. "For a person whom all, exceptme, believe to be dead, and whose misfortunes I have always lamented."

  An impressive silence followed these words, a silence that to theyouth seemed to suggest eternity. But Simoun, after some hesitation,approached him and placing a hand on his shoulder said in a movingtone: "Basilio, you possess a secret that can ruin me and now you havejust surprised me in another, which puts me completely in your hands,the divulging of which would upset all my plans. For my own securityand for the good of the cause in which I labor, I ought to seal yourlips forever, for what is the life of one man compared to the end Iseek? The occasion is fitting; no one knows that I have come here;I am armed; you are defenceless; your death would be attributed tothe outlaws, if not to more supernatural causes--yet I'll let youlive and trust that I shall not regret it. You have toiled, you havestruggled with energetic perseverance, and like myself, you have yourscores to settle with society. Your brother was murdered, your motherdriven to insanity, and society has prosecuted neither the assassinnor the executioner. You and I are the dregs of justice and insteadof destroying we ought to aid each other."

  Simoun paused with a repressed sigh, and then slowly resumed, whilehis gaze wandered about: "Yes, I am he who came here thirteen yearsago, sick and wretched, to pay the last tribute to a great and noblesoul that was willing to die for me. The victim of a vicious system, Ihave wandered over the world, working night and day to amass a fortuneand carry out my plan. Now I have returned to destroy that system,to precipitate its downfall, to hurl it into the abyss toward whichit is senselessly rushing, even though I may have to shed oceansof tears and blood. It has condemned itself, it stands condemned,and I don't want to die before I have seen it in fragments at thefoot of the precipice!"

  Simoun extended both his arms toward the earth, as if with that gesturehe would like to hold there the broken remains. His voice took on asinister, even lugubrious tone, which made the student shudder.

  "Called by the vices of the rulers, I have returned to these islands,and under the cloak of a merchant have visited the towns. My goldhas opened a way for me and wheresoever I have beheld greed in themost execrable forms, sometimes hypocritical, sometimes shameless,sometimes cruel, fatten on the dead organism, like a vulture on acorpse, I have asked myself--why was there not, festering in itsvitals, the corruption, the ptomaine, the poison of the tombs, tokill the foul bird? The corpse was letting itself be consumed, thevulture was gorging itself with meat, and because it was not possiblefor me to give it life so that it might turn against its destroyer,and because the corruption developed slowly, I have stimulated greed,I have abetted it. The cases of injustice and the abuses multipliedthemselves; I have instigated crime and acts of cruelty, so that thepeople might become accustomed to the idea of death. I have stirred uptrouble so that to escape from it some remedy might be found; I haveplaced obstacles in the way of trade so that the country, impoverishedand reduced to misery, might no longer be afraid of anything; I haveexcited desires to plunder the treasury, and as this has not beenenough to bring about a popular uprising, I have wounded the peoplein their most sensitive fiber; I have made the vulture itself insultthe very corpse that it feeds upon and hasten the corruption.

  "Now, when I was about to get the supreme rottenness, the supremefilth, the mixture of such foul products brewing poison, when thegreed was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seizewhatever came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration,here you come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidencein the government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a bodypalpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing withblood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth to offer itself again asfresh food!

  "Ah, youth is ever inexperienced and dreamy, always running afterthe butterflies and flowers! You have united, so that by your effortsyou may bind your fatherland to Spain with garlands of roses when inreality you are forging upon it chains harder than the diamond! Youask for equal rights, the Hispanization of your customs, and you don'tsee that what you are begging for
is suicide, the destruction of yournationality, the annihilation of your fatherland, the consecration oftyranny! What will you be in the future? A people without character,a nation without liberty--everything you have will be borrowed, evenyour very defects! You beg for Hispanization, and do not pale withshame when they deny it you! And even if they should grant it to you,what then--what have you gained? At best, a country of pronunciamentos,a land of civil wars, a republic of the greedy and the malcontents,like some of the republics of South America! To what are you tendingnow, with your instruction in Castilian, a pretension that would beridiculous were it not for its deplorable consequences! You wish toadd one more language to the forty odd that are spoken in the islands,so that you may understand one another less and less."

  "On the contrary," replied Basilio, "if the knowledge of Castilianmay bind us to the government, in exchange it may also unite theislands among themselves."

  "A gross error!" rejoined Simoun. "You are letting yourselves bedeceived by big words and never go to the bottom of things to examinethe results in their final analysis. Spanish will never be the generallanguage of the country, the people will never talk it, because theconceptions of their brains and the feelings of their hearts cannotbe expressed in that language--each people has its own tongue, as ithas its own way of thinking! What are you going to do with Castilian,the few of you who will speak it? Kill off your own originality,subordinate your thoughts to other brains, and instead of freeingyourselves, make yourselves slaves indeed! Nine-tenths of those ofyou who pretend to be enlightened are renegades to your country! Heamong you who talks that language neglects his own in such a way thathe neither writes nor understands it, and how many have I not seenwho pretended not to know a single word of it! But fortunately, youhave an imbecile government! While Russia enslaves Poland by forcingthe Russian language upon it, while Germany prohibits French in theconquered provinces, your government strives to preserve yours, andyou in return, a remarkable people under an incredible government, youare trying to despoil yourselves of your own nationality! One and allyou forget that while a people preserves its language, it preservesthe marks of its liberty, as a man preserves his independence whilehe holds to his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of thepeoples. Luckily, your independence is assured; human passions arelooking out for that!"

  Simoun paused and rubbed his hand over his forehead. The waning moonwas rising and sent its faint light down through the branches of thetrees, and with his white locks and severe features, illuminated frombelow by the lantern, the jeweler appeared to be the fateful spiritof the wood planning some evil.

  Basilio was silent before such bitter reproaches and listened withbowed head, while Simoun resumed: "I saw this movement started and havepassed whole nights of anguish, because I understood that among thoseyouths there were exceptional minds and hearts, sacrificing themselvesfor what they thought to be a good cause, when in reality they wereworking against their own country. How many times have I wishedto speak to you young men, to reveal myself and undeceive you! Butin view of the reputation I enjoy, my words would have been wronglyinterpreted and would perhaps have had a counter effect. How many timeshave I not longed to approach your Makaraig, your Isagani! SometimesI thought of their death, I wished to destroy them--"

  Simoun checked himself.

  "Here's why I let you live, Basilio, and by such imprudence I exposemyself to the risk of being some day betrayed by you. But you knowwho I am, you know how much I must have suffered--then believe inme! You are not of the common crowd, which sees in the jeweler Simounthe trader who incites the authorities to commit abuses in order thatthe abused may buy jewels. I am the Judge who wishes to castigatethis system by making use of its own defects, to make war on it byflattering it. I need your help, your influence among the youth, tocombat these senseless desires for Hispanization, for assimilation,for equal rights. By that road you will become only a poor copy,and the people should look higher. It is madness to attempt toinfluence the thoughts of the rulers--they have their plan outlined,the bandage covers their eyes, and besides losing time uselessly, youare deceiving the people with vain hopes and are helping to bend theirnecks before the tyrant. What you should do is to take advantage oftheir prejudices to serve your needs. Are they unwilling that yoube assimilated with the Spanish people? Good enough! Distinguishyourselves then by revealing yourselves in your own character, tryto lay the foundations of the Philippine fatherland! Do they deny youhope? Good! Don't depend on them, depend upon yourselves and work! Dothey deny you representation in their Cortes? So much the better! Evenshould you succeed in sending representatives of your own choice,what are you going to accomplish there except to be overwhelmed amongso many voices, and sanction with your presence the abuses and wrongsthat are afterwards perpetrated? The fewer rights they allow you,the more reason you will have later to throw off the yoke, and returnevil for evil. If they are unwilling to teach you their language,cultivate your own, extend it, preserve to the people their own wayof thinking, and instead of aspiring to be a province, aspire to bea nation! Instead of subordinate thoughts, think independently, tothe end that neither by right, nor custom, nor language, the Spaniardcan be considered the master here, nor even be looked upon as a partof the country, but ever as an invader, a foreigner, and sooner orlater you will have your liberty! Here's why I let you live!"

  Basilio breathed freely, as though a great weight had been lifted fromhim, and after a brief pause, replied: "Sir, the honor you do me inconfiding your plans to me is too great for me not to be frank withyou, and tell you that what you ask of me is beyond my power. I amno politician, and if I have signed the petition for instruction inCastilian it has been because I saw in it an advantage to our studiesand nothing more. My destiny is different; my aspiration reducesitself to alleviating the physical sufferings of my fellow men."

  The jeweler smiled. "What are physical sufferings compared to moraltortures? What is the death of a man in the presence of the death of asociety? Some day you will perhaps be a great physician, if they letyou go your way in peace, but greater yet will be he who can injecta new idea into this anemic people! You, what are you doing for theland that gave you existence, that supports your life, that affordsyou knowledge? Don't you realize that that is a useless life which isnot consecrated to a great idea? It is a stone wasted in the fieldswithout becoming a part of any edifice."

  "No, no, sir!" replied Basilio modestly, "I'm not folding my arms,I'm working like all the rest to raise up from the ruins of the pasta people whose units will be bound together--that each one may feelin himself the conscience and the life of the whole. But howeverenthusiastic our generation may be, we understand that in this greatsocial fabric there must be a division of labor. I have chosen mytask and will devote myself to science."

  "Science is not the end of man," declared Simoun.

  "The most civilized nations are tending toward it."

  "Yes, but only as a means of seeking their welfare."

  "Science is more eternal, it's more human, it's moreuniversal!" exclaimed the youth in a transport of enthusiasm. "Within afew centuries, when humanity has become redeemed and enlightened, whenthere are no races, when all peoples are free, when there are neithertyrants nor slaves, colonies nor mother countries, when justice rulesand man is a citizen of the world, the pursuit of science alone willremain, the word patriotism will be equivalent to fanaticism, and hewho prides himself on patriotic ideas will doubtless be isolated asa dangerous disease, as a menace to the social order."

  Simoun smiled sadly. "Yes, yes," he said with a shake of his head,"yet to reach that condition it is necessary that there be notyrannical and no enslaved peoples, it is necessary that man go aboutfreely, that he know how to respect the rights of others in their ownindividuality, and for this there is yet much blood to be shed, thestruggle forces itself forward. To overcome the ancient fanaticismthat bound consciences it was necessary that many should perish inthe holocausts, so that the social conscience in horror declaredthe ind
ividual conscience free. It is also necessary that all answerthe question which with each day the fatherland asks them, with itsfettered hands extended! Patriotism can only be a crime in a tyrannicalpeople, because then it is rapine under a beautiful name, but howeverperfect humanity may become, patriotism will always be a virtue amongoppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice,of liberty, of personal dignity--nothing of chimerical dreams, ofeffeminate idyls! The greatness of a man is not in living before histime, a thing almost impossible, but in understanding its desires,in responding to its needs, and in guiding it on its forward way. Thegeniuses that are commonly believed to have existed before their time,only appear so because those who judge them see from a great distance,or take as representative of the age the line of stragglers!"

  Simoun fell silent. Seeing that he could awake no enthusiasm inthat unresponsive mind, he turned to another subject and asked witha change of tone: "And what are you doing for the memory of yourmother and your brother? Is it enough that you come here every year,to weep like a woman over a grave?" And he smiled sarcastically.

  The shot hit the mark. Basilio changed color and advanced a step.

  "What do you want me to do?" he asked angrily.

  "Without means, without social position, how may I bring theirmurderers to justice? I would merely be another victim, shattered likea piece of glass hurled against a rock. Ah, you do ill to recall thisto me, since it is wantonly reopening a wound!"

  "But what if I should offer you my aid?"

  Basilio shook his head and remained pensive. "All the tardyvindications of justice, all the revenge in the world, will not restorea single hair of my mother's head, or recall a smile to my brother'slips. Let them rest in peace--what should I gain now by avenging them?"

  "Prevent others from suffering what you have suffered, that inthe future there be no brothers murdered or mothers driven tomadness. Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when itencourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves! Manis in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance. Ithought as you do, and you know what my fate was. Those who causedyour misfortunes are watching you day and night, they suspect thatyou are only biding your time, they take your eagerness to learn,your love of study, your very complaisance, for burning desires forrevenge. The day they can get rid of you they will do with you asthey did with me, and they will not let you grow to manhood, becausethey fear and hate you!"

  "Hate me? Still hate me after the wrong they have done me?" askedthe youth in surprise.

  Simoun burst into a laugh. "'It is natural for man to hate thosewhom he has wronged,' said Tacitus, confirming the _quos laeserunt etoderunt_ of Seneca. When you wish to gauge the evil or the good thatone people has done to another, you have only to observe whetherit hates or loves. Thus is explained the reason why many who haveenriched themselves here in the high offices they have filled, ontheir return to the Peninsula relieve themselves by slanders andinsults against those who have been their victims. _Proprium humaniingenii est odisse quern laeseris!"_

  "But if the world is large, if one leaves them to the peacefulenjoyment of power, if I ask only to be allowed to work, to live--"

  "And to rear meek-natured sons to send them afterwards to submit tothe yoke," continued Simoun, cruelly mimicking Basilio's tone. "A finefuture you prepare for them, and they have to thank you for a lifeof humiliation and suffering! Good enough, young man! When a bodyis inert, it is useless to galvanize it. Twenty years of continuousslavery, of systematic humiliation, of constant prostration, finallycreate in the mind a twist that cannot be straightened by the laborof a day. Good and evil instincts are inherited and transmitted fromfather to son. Then let your idylic ideas live, your dreams of aslave who asks only for a bandage to wrap the chain so that it mayrattle less and not ulcerate his skin! You hope for a little homeand some ease, a wife and a handful of rice--here is your ideal manof the Philippines! Well, if they give it to you, consider yourselffortunate."

  Basilio, accustomed to obey and bear with the caprices and humorsof Capitan Tiago. was now dominated by Simoun, who appeared to himterrible and sinister on a background bathed in tears and blood. Hetried to explain himself by saying that he did not consider himselffit to mix in politics, that he had no political opinions becausehe had never studied the question, but that he was always ready tolend his services the day they might be needed, that for the momenthe saw only one need, the enlightenment of the people.

  Simoun stopped him with a gesture, and, as the dawn was coming,said to him: "Young man, I am not warning you to keep my secret,because I know that discretion is one of your good qualities, andeven though you might wish to sell me, the jeweler Simoun, the friendof the authorities and of the religious corporations, will alwaysbe given more credit than the student Basilio, already suspectedof filibusterism, and, being a native, so much the more marked andwatched, and because in the profession you are entering upon youwill encounter powerful rivals. After all, even though you have notcorresponded to my hopes, the day on which you change your mind,look me up at my house in the Escolta, and I'll be glad to help you."

  Basilio thanked him briefly and went away.

  "Have I really made a mistake?" mused Simoun, when he found himselfalone. "Is it that he doubts me and meditates his plan of revengeso secretly that he fears to tell it even in the solitude of thenight? Or can it be that the years of servitude have extinguishedin his heart every human sentiment and there remain only the animaldesires to live and reproduce? In that case the type is deformedand will have to be cast over again. Then the hecatomb is preparing:let the unfit perish and only the strongest survive!"

  Then he added sadly, as if apostrophizing some one: "Have patience, youwho left me a name and a home, have patience! I have lost all--country,future, prosperity, your very tomb, but have patience! And thou,noble spirit, great soul, generous heart, who didst live with only onethought and didst sacrifice thy life without asking the gratitude orapplause of any one, have patience, have patience! The methods that Iuse may perhaps not be thine, but they are the most direct. The dayis coming, and when it brightens I myself will come to announce itto you who are now indifferent. Have patience!"