“No, but you know, Tinong invited him to dinner and spoke to him on the Bridge of Spain—in broad daylight! They’ll say that he’s a friend of his!”
“A friend of his!” exclaimed the startled Latinist, rising. “Amice, amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas. Birds of a feather flock together. Malum est negotium et est timendum rerum istarum horrendissimum resultatum! 12 Ahem!”
Capitan Tinong turned deathly pale at hearing so many words in um; such a sound presaged ill. His wife clasped her hands supplicatingly and said:
“Cousin, don’t talk to us in Latin now. You know that we’re not philosophers like you. Let’s talk in Spanish or Tagalog. Give us some advice.”
“It’s a pity that you don’t understand Latin, cousin. Truths in Latin are lies in Tagalog; for example, contra principia negantem fustibus est arguendum 13 in Latin is a truth like Noah’s ark, but I put it into practise once and I was the one who got whipped. So, it’s a pity that you don’t know Latin. In Latin everything would be straightened out.”
“We, too, know many oremus, parcenobis, and Agnus Dei Catolis, 14 but now we shouldn’t understand one another. Provide Tinong with an argument so that they won’t hang him!”
“You’re done wrong, very wrong, cousin, in cultivating friendship with that young man,” replied the Latinist.
“The righteous suffer for the sinners. I was almost going to advise you to make your will. Vae illis! Ubi est fumus ibi est ignis! Similis simili audet; atqui Ibarra
ahorcatur, ergo ahorcaberis—” 15 With this he shook his head from side to side disgustedly.
“Saturnino, what’s the matter?” cried Capitana Tinchang in dismay. “Ay, he’s dead! A doctor! Tinong, Tinongoy!”
The two daughters ran to her, and all three fell to weeping. “It’s nothing more than a swoon, cousin! I would have been more pleased that—that—but unfortunately it’s only a swoon. Non timeo mortem in catre sed super espaldonem Bagumbayanis.16 Get some water!”
“Don’t die!” sobbed the wife. “Don’t die, for they’ll come and arrest you! Ay, if you die and the soldiers come, ay, ay!”
The learned cousin rubbed the victim’s face with water until he recovered consciousness. “Come, don’t cry. Inveni remedium: I’ve found a remedy. Let’s carry him to bed. Come, take courage! Here I am with you—and all the wisdom of the ancients. Call a doctor, and you, cousin, go right away to the Captain-General and take him a present—a gold ring, a chain. Dadivae quebrantant peñas. 17 Say that it’s a Christmas gift. Close the windows, the doors, and if any one asks for my cousin, say that he is seriously ill. Meanwhile, I’ll burn all his letters, papers, and books, so that they can’t find anything, just as Don Crisostomo did. Scripti testes sunt! Quod medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat, quod ferrum non sanat, ignis sanat. ” 18
“Yes, do so, cousin, burn everything!” said Capitana Tinchang. “Here are the keys, here are the letters from Capitan Tiago. Burn them! Don’t leave a single European newspaper, for they’re very dangerous. Here are the copies of The Times that I’ve kept for wrapping up soap and old clothes. Here are the books.”
“Go to the Captain-General, cousin,” said Don Primitivo, “and leave us alone. In extremis extrema. 19 Give me the authority of a Roman dictator, and you’ll see how soon I’ll save the coun—I mean, my cousin.”
He began to give orders and more orders, to upset bookcases, to tear up papers, books, and letters. Soon a big fire was burning in the kitchen. Old shotguns were smashed with axes, rusty revolvers were thrown away. The maidservant who wanted to keep the barrel of one for a blowpipe received a reprimand:
“Conservare etiam sperasti, perfida? 20 Into the fire!” So he continued his auto da fé. Seeing an old volume in vellum, he read the title, Revolutions of the Celestial Globes, by Copernicus. Whew! “Ite, maledicti, in ignem kalanis! ” 21 he exclaimed, hurling it into the flames. “Revolutions and Copernicus! Crimes on crimes! If I hadn’t come in time! Liberty in the Philippines! Ta, ta, ta! What books! Into the fire!”
Harmless books, written by simple authors, were burned; not even the most innocent work escaped. Cousin Primitivo was right: the righteous suffer for the sinners.
Four or five hours later, at a pretentious reception in the Walled City, current events were being commented upon. There were present a lot of old women and maidens of marriageable age, the wives and daughters of government employees, dressed in loose gowns, fanning themselves and yawning. Among the men, who, like the women, showed in their faces their education and origin, was an elderly gentleman, small and one-armed, whom the others treated with great respect. He himself maintained a disdainful silence.
“To tell the truth, formerly I couldn’t endure the friars and the civil-guards, they’re so rude,” said a corpulent dame, “but now that I see their usefulness and their services, I would almost marry any one of them gladly. I’m a patriot.”
“That’s what I say!” added a thin lady. “What a pity that we haven’t our former governor. He would leave the country as clean as a platter.”
“And the whole race of filibusters would be exterminated!”
“Don’t they say that there are still a lot of islands to be populated? Why don’t they deport all these crazy Indians to them? If I were the Captain-General—”
“Señoras,” interrupted the one-armed individual, “the Captain-General knows his duty. As I’ve heard, he’s very much irritated, for he had heaped favors on that Ibarra.”
“Heaped favors on him!” echoed the thin lady, fanning herself furiously. “Look how ungrateful these Indians are! Is it possible to treat them as if they were human beings? Jesús! ”
“Do you know what I’ve heard?” asked a military official.
“What’s that?”
“Let’s hear it!”
“What do they say?”
“Reputable persons,” replied the officer in the midst of a profound silence, “state that this agitation for building a schoolhouse was a pure fairy tale.”
“Jesús! Just see that!” the señoras exclaimed, already believing in the trick.
“The school was a pretext. What he wanted to build was a fort from which he could safely defend himself when we should come to attack him.”
“What infamy! Only an Indian is capable of such cowardly thoughts,” exclaimed the fat lady. “If I were the Captain-General they would soon seem they would soon see—”
“That’s what I say!” exclaimed the thin lady, turning to the one-armed man.
“Arrest all the little lawyers, priestlings, merchants, and without trial banish or deport them! Tear out the evil by the roots!”
“But it’s said that this filibuster is the descendant of Spaniards,” observed the one-armed man, without looking at any one in particular.
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed the fat lady, unterrified. “It’s always the creoles! No Indian knows anything about revolution! Rear crows, rear crows! ”22
“Do you know what I’ve heard?” asked a creole lady, to change the topic of conversation. “The wife of Capitan Tinong, you remember her, the woman in whose house we danced and dined during the fiesta of Tondo—”
“The one who has two daughters? What about her?”
“Well, that woman just this afternoon presented the Captain-General with a ring worth a thousand pesos!”
