El Filibusterismo. English

by José Rizal

  CHAPTER X

  WEALTH AND WANT

  On the following day, to the great surprise of the village, the jewelerSimoun, followed by two servants, each carrying a canvas-covered chest,requested the hospitality of Cabesang Tales, who even in the midstof his wretchedness did not forget the good Filipino customs--rather,he was troubled to think that he had no way of properly entertainingthe stranger. But Simoun brought everything with him, servants andprovisions, and merely wished to spend the day and night in the housebecause it was the largest in the village and was situated betweenSan Diego and Tiani, towns where he hoped to find many customers.

  Simoun secured information about the condition of the roads and askedCabesang Tales if his revolver was a sufficient protection againstthe tulisanes.

  "They have rifles that shoot a long way," was the rather absent-mindedreply.

  "This revolver does no less," remarked Simoun, firing at an areca-palmsome two hundred paces away.

  Cabesang Tales noticed that some nuts fell, but remained silentand thoughtful.

  Gradually the families, drawn by the fame of the jeweler's wares,began to collect. They wished one another merry Christmas, theytalked of masses, saints, poor crops, but still were there to spendtheir savings for jewels and trinkets brought from Europe. It wasknown that the jeweler was the friend of the Captain-General, so itwasn't lost labor to get on good terms with him, and thus be preparedfor contingencies.

  Capitan Basilio came with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law, preparedto spend at least three thousand pesos. Sister Penchang was there tobuy a diamond ring she had promised to the Virgin of Antipolo. Shehad left Juli at home memorizing a booklet the curate had sold her forfour cuartos, with forty days of indulgence granted by the Archbishopto every one who read it or listened to it read.

  "_Jesus!_" said the pious woman to Capitana Tika, "that poor girl hasgrown up like a mushroom planted by the _tikbalang._ I've made her readthe book at the top of her voice at least fifty times and she doesn'tremember a single word of it. She has a head like a sieve--full whenit's in the water. All of us hearing her, even the dogs and cats,have won at least twenty years of indulgence."

  Simoun arranged his two chests on the table, one being somewhat largerthan the other. "You don't want plated jewelry or imitation gems. Thislady," turning to Sinang, "wants real diamonds."

  "That's it, yes, sir, diamonds, old diamonds, antique stones, youknow," she responded. "Papa will pay for them, because he likes antiquethings, antique stones." Sinang was accustomed to joke about the greatdeal of Latin her father understood and the little her husband knew.

  "It just happens that I have some antique jewels," replied Simoun,taking the canvas cover from the smaller chest, a polished steelcase with bronze trimmings and stout locks. "I have necklaces ofCleopatra's, real and genuine, discovered in the Pyramids; rings ofRoman senators and knights, found in the ruins of Carthage."

  "Probably those that Hannibal sent back after the battle ofCannae!" exclaimed Capitan Basilio seriously, while he trembled withpleasure. The good man, thought he had read much about the ancients,had never, by reason of the lack of museums in Filipinas, seen anyof the objects of those times.

  "I have brought besides costly earrings of Roman ladies, discoveredin the villa of Annius Mucius Papilinus in Pompeii."

  Capitan Easilio nodded to show that he understood and was eager tosee such precious relics. The women remarked that they also wantedthings from Rome, such as rosaries blessed by the Pope, holy relicsthat would take away sins without the need of confessions, and so on.

  When the chest was opened and the cotton packing removed, there wasexposed a tray filled with rings, reliquaries, lockets, crucifixes,brooches, and such like. The diamonds set in among variously coloredstones flashed out brightly and shimmered among golden flowers ofvaried hues, with petals of enamel, all of peculiar designs and rareArabesque workmanship.

  Simoun lifted the tray and exhibited another filled with quaint jewelsthat would have satisfied the imaginations of seven debutantes on theeves of the balls in their honor. Designs, one more fantastic thanthe other, combinations of precious stones and pearls worked intothe figures of insects with azure backs and transparent forewings,sapphires, emeralds, rubies, turquoises, diamonds, joined to formdragon-flies, wasps, bees, butterflies, beetles, serpents, lizards,fishes, sprays of flowers. There were diadems, necklaces of pearlsand diamonds, so that some of the girls could not withhold a _naku_of admiration, and Sinang gave a cluck with her tongue, whereuponher mother pinched her to prevent her from encouraging the jewelerto raise his prices, for Capitana Tika still pinched her daughtereven after the latter was married.

  "Here you have some old diamonds," explained the jeweler. "This ringbelonged to the Princess Lamballe and those earrings to one of MarieAntoinette's ladies." They consisted of some beautiful solitairediamonds, as large as grains of corn, with somewhat bluish lights,and pervaded with a severe elegance, as though they still reflectedin their sparkles the shuddering of the Reign of Terror.

  "Those two earrings!" exclaimed Sinang, looking at her father andinstinctively covering the arm next to her mother.

  "Something more ancient yet, something Roman," said Capitan Basiliowith a wink.

  The pious Sister Penchang thought that with such a gift the Virgin ofAntipolo would be softened and grant her her most vehement desire:for some time she had begged for a wonderful miracle to which hername would be attached, so that her name might be immortalized onearth and she then ascend into heaven, like the Capitana Ines of thecurates. She inquired the price and Simoun asked three thousand pesos,which made the good woman cross herself--_'Susmariosep!_

  Simoun now exposed the third tray, which was filled with watches,cigar- and match-cases decorated with the rarest enamels, reliquariesset with diamonds and containing the most elegant miniatures.

  The fourth tray, containing loose gems, stirred a murmur ofadmiration. Sinang again clucked with her tongue, her mother againpinched her, although at the same time herself emitting a _'Susmaria_of wonder.

  No one there had ever before seen so much wealth. In that chest linedwith dark-blue velvet, arranged in trays, were the wonders of the_Arabian Nights,_ the dreams of Oriental fantasies. Diamonds as largeas peas glittered there, throwing out attractive rays as if they wereabout to melt or burn with all the hues of the spectrum; emeralds fromPeru, of varied forms and shapes; rubies from India, red as drops ofblood; sapphires from Ceylon, blue and white; turquoises from Persia;Oriental pearls, some rosy, some lead-colored, others black. Thosewho have at night seen a great rocket burst in the azure darkness ofthe sky into thousands of colored lights, so bright that they makethe eternal stars look dim, can imagine the aspect the tray presented.

  As if to increase the admiration of the beholders, Simoun took thestones out with his tapering brown fingers, gloating over theircrystalline hardness, their luminous stream, as they poured from hishands like drops of water reflecting the tints of the rainbow. Thereflections from so many facets, the thought of their great value,fascinated the gaze of every one.

  Cabesang Tales, who had approached out of curiosity, closed his eyesand drew back hurriedly, as if to drive away an evil thought. Suchgreat riches were an insult to his misfortunes; that man had come thereto make an exhibition of his immense wealth on the very day that he,Tales, for lack of money, for lack of protectors, had to abandon thehouse raised by his own hands.

  "Here you have two black diamonds, among the largest in existence,"explained the jeweler. "They're very difficult to cut because they'rethe very hardest. This somewhat rosy stone is also a diamond, as isthis green one that many take for an emerald. Quiroga the Chinamanoffered me six thousand pesos for it in order to present it to a veryinfluential lady, and yet it is not the green ones that are the mostvaluable, but these blue ones."

  He selected three stones of no great size, but thick and well-cut,of a delicate azure tint.

  "For all that they are smaller than the green," he continued,"they cost
twice as much. Look at this one, the smallest of all,weighing not more than two carats, which cost me twenty thousandpesos and which I won't sell for less than thirty. I had to make aspecial trip to buy it. This other one, from the mines of Golconda,weighs three and a half carats and is worth over seventy thousand. TheViceroy of India, in a letter I received the day before yesterday,offers me twelve thousand pounds sterling for it."

  Before such great wealth, all under the power of that man who talkedso unaffectedly, the spectators felt a kind of awe mingled withdread. Sinang clucked several times and her mother did not pinchher, perhaps because she too was overcome, or perhaps because shereflected that a jeweler like Simoun was not going to try to gainfive pesos more or less as a result of an exclamation more or lessindiscreet. All gazed at the gems, but no one showed any desire tohandle them, they were so awe-inspiring. Curiosity was blunted bywonder. Cabesang Tales stared out into the field, thinking that witha single diamond, perhaps the very smallest there, he could recoverhis daughter, keep his house, and perhaps rent another farm. Couldit be that those gems were worth more than a man's home, the safetyof a maiden, the peace of an old man in his declining days?

  As if he guessed the thought, Simoun remarked to those about him: "Lookhere--with one of these little blue stones, which appear so innocentand inoffensive, pure as sparks scattered over the arch of heaven,with one of these, seasonably presented, a man was able to have hisenemy deported, the father of a family, as a disturber of the peace;and with this other little one like it, red as one's heart-blood,as the feeling of revenge, and bright as an orphan's tears, he wasrestored to liberty, the man was returned to his home, the father tohis children, the husband to the wife, and a whole family saved froma wretched future."

  He slapped the chest and went on in a loud tone in bad Tagalog: "HereI have, as in a medicine-chest, life and death, poison and balm,and with this handful I can drive to tears all the inhabitants ofthe Philippines!"

  The listeners gazed at him awe-struck, knowing him to be right. Inhis voice there could be detected a strange ring, while sinisterflashes seemed to issue from behind the blue goggles.

  Then as if to relieve the strain of the impression made by the gems onsuch simple folk, he lifted up the tray and exposed at the bottom the_sanctum sanctorum_. Cases of Russian leather, separated by layers ofcotton, covered a bottom lined with gray velvet. All expected wonders,and Sinang's husband thought he saw carbuncles, gems that flashedfire and shone in the midst of the shadows. Capitan Basilio was onthe threshold of immortality: he was going to behold something real,something beyond his dreams.

  "This was a necklace of Cleopatra's," said Simoun, taking out carefullya flat case in the shape of a half-moon. "It's a jewel that can't beappraised, an object for a museum, only for a rich government."

  It was a necklace fashioned of bits of gold representing little idolsamong green and blue beetles, with a vulture's head made from a singlepiece of rare jasper at the center between two extended wings--thesymbol and decoration of Egyptian queens.

  Sinang turned up her nose and made a grimace of childish depreciation,while Capitan Basilio, with all his love for antiquity, could notrestrain an exclamation of disappointment.

  "It's a magnificent jewel, well-preserved, almost two thousandyears old."

  "Pshaw!" Sinang made haste to exclaim, to prevent her father's fallinginto temptation.

  "Fool!" he chided her, after overcoming his first disappointment. "Howdo you know but that to this necklace is due the present conditionof the world? With this Cleopatra may have captivated Caesar, MarkAntony! This has heard the burning declarations of love from thegreatest warriors of their time, it has listened to speeches in thepurest and most elegant Latin, and yet you would want to wear it!"

  "I? I wouldn't give three pesos for it."

  "You could give twenty, silly," said Capitana Tika in a judicialtone. "The gold is good and melted down would serve for other jewelry."

  "This is a ring that must have belonged to Sulla," continued Simoun,exhibiting a heavy ring of solid gold with a seal on it.

  "With that he must have signed the death-wrarrants during hisdictatorship!" exclaimed Capitan Basilio, pale with emotion. Heexamined it and tried to decipher the seal, but though he turnedit over and over he did not understand paleography, so he could notread it.

  "What a finger Sulla had!" he observed finally. "This would fit twoof ours--as I've said, we're degenerating!"

  "I still have many other jewels--"

  "If they're all that kind, never mind!" interrupted Sinang. "I thinkI prefer the modern."

  Each one selected some piece of jewelry, one a ring, another a watch,another a locket. Capitana Tika bought a reliquary that contained afragment of the stone on which Our Saviour rested at his third fall;Sinang a pair of earrings; and Capitan Basilio the watch-chain forthe alferez, the lady's earrings for the curate, and other gifts. Thefamilies from the town of Tiani, not to be outdone by those of SanDiego, in like manner emptied their purses.

  Simoun bought or exchanged old jewelry, brought there by economicalmothers, to whom it was no longer of use.

  "You, haven't you something to sell?" he asked Cabesang Tales,noticing the latter watching the sales and exchanges with covetouseyes, but the reply was that all his daughter's jewels had been sold,nothing of value remained.

  "What about Maria Clara's locket?" inquired Sinang.

  "True!" the man exclaimed, and his eyes blazed for a moment.

  "It's a locket set with diamonds and emeralds," Sinang told thejeweler. "My old friend wore it before she became a nun."

  Simoun said nothing, but anxiously watched Cabesang Tales, who, afteropening several boxes, found the locket. He examined it carefully,opening and shutting it repeatedly. It was the same locket that MariaClara had worn during the fiesta in San Diego and which she had ina moment of compassion given to a leper.

  "I like the design," said Simoun. "How much do you want for it?"

  Cabesang Tales scratched his head in perplexity, then his ear, thenlooked at the women.

  "I've taken a fancy to this locket," Simoun went on. "Will you take ahundred, five hundred pesos? Do you want to exchange it for somethingelse? Take your choice here!"

  Tales stared foolishly at Simoun, as if in doubt of what heheard. "Five hundred pesos?" he murmured.

  "Five hundred," repeated the jeweler in a voice shaking with emotion.

  Cabesang Tales took the locket and made several turns about the room,with his heart beating violently and his hands trembling. Dared he askmore? That locket could save him, this was an excellent opportunity,such as might not again present itself.

  The women winked at him to encourage him to make the sale, exceptingPenchang, who, fearing that Juli would be ransomed, observed piously:"I would keep it as a relic. Those who have seen Maria Clara in thenunnery say she has got so thin and weak that she can scarcely talkand it's thought that she'll die a saint. Padre Salvi speaks veryhighly of her and he's her confessor. That's why Juli didn't wantito give it up, but rather preferred to pawn herself."

  This speech had its effect--the thought of his daughter restrainedTales. "If you will allow me," he said, "I'll go to the town toconsult my daughter. I'll be back before night."

  This was agreed upon and Tales set out at once. But when he foundhimself outside of the village, he made out at a distance, on a path,that entered the woods, the friar-administrator and a man whom herecognized as the usurper of his land. A husband seeing his wifeenter a private room with another man could not feel more wrath orjealousy than Cabesang Tales experienced when he saw them movingover his fields, the fields cleared by him, which he had thought toleave to his children. It seemed to him that they were mocking him,laughing at his powerlessness. There flashed into his memory what hehad said about never giving up his fields except to him who irrigatedthem with his own blood and buried in them his wife and daughter.

  He stopped, rubbed his hand over his forehead, and shut his eyes. Whenhe again opened them, h
e saw that the man had turned to laugh andthat the friar had caught his sides as though to save himself frombursting with merriment, then he saw them point toward his house andlaugh again.

  A buzz sounded in his ears, he felt the crack of a whip around hischest, the red mist reappeared before his eyes, he again saw thecorpses of his wife and daughter, and beside them the usurper withthe friar laughing and holding his sides. Forgetting everything else,he turned aside into the path they had taken, the one leading tohis fields.

  Simoun waited in vain for Cabesang Tales to return that night. Butthe next morning when he arose he noticed that the leather holster ofhis revolver was empty. Opening it he found inside a scrap of paperwrapped around the locket set with emeralds and diamonds, with thesefew lines written on it in Tagalog:

  "Pardon, sir, that in my own house I relieve you of what belongs to you, but necessity drives me to it. In exchange for your revolver I leave the locket you desired so much. I need the weapon, for I am going out to join the tulisanes.

  "I advise you not to keep on your present road, because if you fall into our power, not then being my guest, we will require of you a large ransom.

  Telesforo Juan de Dios."

  "At last I've found my man!" muttered Simoun with a deep breath. "He'ssomewhat scrupulous, but so much the better--he'll keep his promises."

  He then ordered a servant to go by boat over the lake to Los Banos withthe larger chest and await him there. He would go on overland, takingthe smaller chest, the one containing his famous jewels. The arrivalof four civil-guards completed his good humor. They came to arrestCabesang Tales and not finding him took Tandang Selo away instead.

  Three murders had been committed during the night. Thefriar-administrator and the new tenant of Cabesang Tales' land hadbeen found dead, with their heads split open and their mouths fullof earth, on the border of the fields. In the town the wife of theusurper was found dead at dawn, her mouth also filled with earth andher throat cut, with a fragment of paper beside her, on which wasthe name _Tales_, written in blood as though traced by a finger.

  Calm yourselves, peaceful inhabitants of Kalamba! None of you arenamed Tales, none of you have committed any crime! You are calledLuis Habana, Matias Belarmino, Nicasio Eigasani, Cayetano de Jesus,Mateo Elejorde, Leandro Lopez, Antonino Lopez, Silvestre Ubaldo,Manuel Hidalgo, Paciano Mercado, your name is the whole village ofKalamba. [19] You cleared your fields, on them you have spent thelabor of your whole lives, your savings, your vigils and privations,and you have been despoiled of them, driven from your homes, with therest forbidden to show you hospitality! Not content with outragingjustice, they [20] have trampled upon the sacred traditions of yourcountry! You have served Spain and the King, and when in their nameyou have asked for justice, you were banished without trial, tornfrom your wives' arms and your children's caresses! Any one of you hassuffered more than Cabesang Tales, and yet none, not one of you, hasreceived justice! Neither pity nor humanity has been shown you--youhave been persecuted beyond the tomb, as was Mariano Herbosa! [21]Weep or laugh, there in those lonely isles where you wander vaguely,uncertain of the future! Spain, the generous Spain, is watching overyou, and sooner or later you will have justice!