“Do you think so?”
“Why not! Nowadays they grant one for anything whatsoever. I know of a fellow who got one for less. He wrote a cheap little work demonstrating that the Indians are not capable of being anything but mechanics. Pshaw, old-fogyisms!”
“That’s right! So much favoritism injures Religion!” exclaimed another. “If the miters only had eyes and could see what heads they were upon—”
“If the miters were natural objects,” added another in a nasal tone, “Natura abhorrer vacuum.”
“That’s why they grab for them, their emptiness attracts!” responded another.
These and many more things were said in the convents, but we will spare our reader other comments of a political, metaphysical, or piquant nature and conduct him to a private house. As we have few acquaintances in Manila, let us enter the home of Capitan Tinong, the polite individual whom we saw so profusely inviting Ibarra to honor him with a visit.
In the rich and spacious sala of his Tondo house, Capitan Tinong was seated in a wide armchair, rubbing his hands in a gesture of despair over his face and the nape of his neck, while his wife, Capitana Tinchang, was weeping and preaching to him. From the corner their two daughters listened silently and stupidly, yet greatly affected.
“Ay, Virgin of Antipolo!” cried the woman. “Ay, Virgin of the Rosary and of the Girdle!4 Ay, ay! Our Lady of Novaliches!”
“Mother!” responded the elder of the daughters.
“I told you so!” continued the wife in an accusing tone. “I told you so! Ay, Virgin of Carmen,5 ay!”
“But you didn’t tell me anything,” Capitan Tinong dared to answer tearfully. “On the contrary, you told me that I was doing well to frequent Capitan Tiago’s house and cultivate friendship with him, because he’s rich—and you told me—”
“What! What did I tell you? I didn’t tell you that, I didn’t tell you anything! Ay, if you had only listened to me!”
“Now you’re throwing the blame on me,” he replied bitterly, slapping the arm of his chair. “Didn’t you tell me that I had done well to invite him to dine with us, because he was wealthy? Didn’t you say that we ought to have friends only among the wealthy? Abá! ”
“It’s true that I told you so, because—because there wasn’t anything else for me to do. You did nothing but sing his praises: Don Ibarra here, Don Ibarra there, Don Ibarra everywhere. Abaá! But I didn’t advise you to hunt him up and talk to him at that reception! You can’t deny that!”
“Did I know that he was to be there, perhaps?”
“But you ought to have known it!”
“How so, if I didn’t even know him?”
“But you ought to have known him!”
“But, Tinchang, it was the first time that I ever saw him, that I ever heard him spoken of!”
“Well then, you ought to have known him before and heard him spoken of.
That’s what you’re a man for and wear trousers and read El Diario de Manila, ”6
answered his unterrified spouse, casting on him a terrible look.
To this Capitan Tinong did not know what to reply. Capitana Tinchang, however, was not satisfied with this victory, but wished to silence him completely. So she approached him with clenched fists. “Is this what I’ve worked for, year after year, toiling and saving, that you by your stupidity may throw away the fruits of my labor?” she scolded. “Now they’ll come to deport you, they’ll take away all our property, just as they did from the wife of—Oh, if I were a man, if I were a man!”
Seeing that her husband bowed his head, she again fell to sobbing, but still repeating, “Ay, if I were a man, if I were a man!”
“Well, if you were a man,” the provoked husband at length asked, “what would you do?”
“What would I do? Well—well—well, this very minute I’d go to the Captain-General and offer to fight against the rebels, this very minute!”
“But haven’t you seen what the Diario says? Read it: ‘The vile and infamous treason has been suppressed with energy, strength, and vigor, and soon the rebellious enemies of the Fatherland and their accomplices will feel all the weight and severity of the law.’ Don’t you see it? There isn’t any more rebellion.”
“That doesn’t matter! You ought to offer yourself as they did in ’72;7 they saved themselves.”
“Yes, that’s what was done by Padre Burg—”
But he was unable to finish this name, for his wife ran to him and slapped her hand over his mouth. “Shut up! Are you saying that name so that they may garrote you tomorrow on Bagumbayan? Don’t you know that to pronounce it is enough to get yourself condemned without trial? Keep quiet!”
However Capitan Tinong may have felt about obeying her, he could hardly have done otherwise, for she had his mouth covered with both her hands, pressing his little head against the back of the chair, so that the poor fellow might have been smothered to death had not a new personage appeared on the scene. This was their cousin, Don Primitivo, who had memorized the “Amat,” a man of some forty years, plump, big-paunched, and elegantly dressed.
“Quid video? ” he exclaimed as he entered. “What’s happening? Quare? ” 8
“Ay, cousin!” cried the woman, running toward him in tears, “I’ve sent for you because I don’t know what’s going to become of us. What do you advise? Speak, you’ve studied Latin and know how to argue.”
“But first, quid quaeritis? Nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu; nihil volitum quin praecognitum.” 9
He sat down gravely and, just as if the Latin phrases had possessed a soothing
virtue, the couple ceased weeping and drew nearer to him to hang upon the advice from his lips, as at one time the Greeks did before the words of salvation from the oracle that was to free them from the Persian invaders.
“Why do you weep? Ubinam gentium sumus? ” 10
“You’ve already heard of the uprising?”
“Alzamentum Ibarrae ab alferesio Guardiae Civilis destructum? Et nunc? 11
What! Does Don Crisostomo owe you anything?”
