CHAPTER XXIV
DREAMS
Amor, que astro eres?
On the following day, Thursday, at the hour of sunset, Isaganiwas walking along the beautiful promenade of Maria Cristina in thedirection of the Malecon to keep an appointment which Paulita had thatmorning given him. The young man had no doubt that they were to talkabout what had happened on the previous night, and as he was determinedto ask for an explanation, and knew how proud and haughty she was,he foresaw an estrangement. In view of this eventuality he had broughtwith him the only two letters he had ever received from Paulita, twoscraps of paper, whereon were merely a few hurriedly written lineswith various blots, but in an even handwriting, things that did notprevent the enamored youth from preserving them with more solicitudethan if they had been the autographs of Sappho and the Muse Polyhymnia.
This decision to sacrifice his love on the altar of dignity, theconsciousness of suffering in the discharge of duty, did not preventa profound melancholy from taking possession of Isagani and broughtback into his mind the beautiful days, and nights more beautifulstill, when they had whispered sweet nothings through the floweredgratings of the entresol, nothings that to the youth took on such acharacter of seriousness and importance that they seemed to him theonly matters worthy of meriting the attention of the most exalted humanunderstanding. He recalled the walks on moonlit nights, the fair, thedark December mornings after the mass of Nativity, the holy water thathe used to offer her, when she would thank him with a look chargedwith a whole epic of love, both of them trembling as their fingerstouched. Heavy sighs, like small rockets, issued from his breastand brought back to him all the verses, all the sayings of poets andwriters about the inconstancy of woman. Inwardly he cursed the creationof theaters, the French operetta, and vowed to get revenge on Pelaez atthe first opportunity. Everything about him appeared under the saddestand somberest colors: the bay, deserted and solitary, seemed moresolitary still on account of the few steamers that were anchored init; the sun was dying behind Mariveles without poetry or enchantment,without the capricious and richly tinted clouds of happier evenings;the Anda monument, in bad taste, mean and squat, without style, withoutgrandeur, looked like a lump of ice-cream or at best a chunk of cake;the people who were promenading along the Malecon, in spite of theircomplacent and contented air, appeared distant, haughty, and vain;mischievous and bad-mannered, the boys that played on the beach,skipping flat stones over the surface of the water or searching inthe sand for mollusks and crustaceans which they caught for the merefun of catching and killed without benefit to themselves; in short,even the eternal port works to which he had dedicated more than threeodes, looked to him absurd, ridiculous child's play.
The port, ah, the port of Manila, a bastard that since its conceptionhad brought tears of humiliation and shame to all! If only after somany tears there were not being brought forth a useless abortion!
Abstractedly he saluted two Jesuits, former teachers of his, andscarcely noticed a tandem in which an American rode and excitedthe envy of the gallants who were in calesas only. Near the Andamonument he heard Ben-Zayb talking with another person aboutSimoun, learning that the latter had on the previous night beentaken suddenly ill, that he refused to see any one, even the veryaides of the General. "Yes!" exclaimed Isagani with a bitter smile,"for him attentions because he is rich. The soldiers return fromtheir expeditions sick and wounded, but no one visits them."
Musing over these expeditions, over the fate of the poor soldiers,over the resistance offered by the islanders to the foreign yoke, hethought that, death for death, if that of the soldiers was gloriousbecause they were obeying orders, that of the islanders was sublimebecause they were defending their homes. [49]
"A strange destiny, that of some peoples!" he mused. "Because atraveler arrives at their shores, they lose their liberty and becomesubjects and slaves, not only of the traveler, not only of his heirs,but even of all his countrymen, and not for a generation, but forall time! A strange conception of justice! Such a state of affairsgives ample right to exterminate every foreigner as the most ferociousmonster that the sea can cast up!"
He reflected that those islanders, against whom his country was wagingwar, after all were guilty of no crime other than that of weakness. Thetravelers also arrived at the shores of other peoples, but findingthem strong made no display of their strange pretension. With alltheir weakness the spectacle they presented seemed beautiful to him,and the names of the enemies, whom the newspapers did not fail to callcowards and traitors, appeared glorious to him, as they succumbed withglory amid the ruins of their crude fortifications, with greater gloryeven than the ancient Trojan heroes, for those islanders had carriedaway no Philippine Helen! In his poetic enthusiasm he thought of theyoung men of those islands who could cover themselves with glory inthe eyes of their women, and in his amorous desperation he enviedthem because they could find a brilliant suicide.
"Ah, I should like to die," he exclaimed, "be reduced to nothingness,leave to my native land a glorious name, perish in its cause, defendingit from foreign invasion, and then let the sun afterwards illuminemy corpse, like a motionless sentinel on the rocks of the sea!"
The conflict with the Germans [50] came into his mind and he almostfelt sorry that it had been adjusted: he would gladly have died forthe Spanish-Filipino banner before submitting to the foreigner.
"Because, after all," he mused, "with Spain we are united by firmbonds--the past, history, religion, language--"
Language, yes, language! A sarcastic smile curled his lips. That verynight they would hold a banquet in the _pansiteria_ to _celebrate_the demise of the academy of Castilian.
"Ay!" he sighed, "provided the liberals in Spain are like those wehave here, in a little while the mother country will be able to countthe number of the faithful!"
Slowly the night descended, and with it melancholy settled more heavilyupon the heart of the young man, who had almost lost hope of seeingPaulita. The promenaders one by one left the Malecon for the Luneta,the music from which was borne to him in snatches of melodies on thefresh evening breeze; the sailors on a warship anchored in the riverperformed their evening drill, skipping about among the slender ropeslike spiders; the boats one by one lighted their lamps, thus givingsigns of life; while the beach,
Do el viento riza las calladas olas Que con blando murmullo en la ribera Se deslizan veloces por si solas. [51]
as Alaejos says, exhaled in the distance thin, vapors that the moon,now at its full, gradually converted into mysterious transparent gauze.
A distant sound became audible, a noise that rapidlyapproached. Isagani turned his head and his heart began to beatviolently. A carriage was coming, drawn by white horses, the whitehorses that he would know among a hundred thousand. In the carriagerode Paulita and her friend of the night before, with Dona Victorina.
Before the young man could take a step, Paulita had leaped to theground with sylph-like agility and smiled at him with a smile full ofconciliation. He smiled in return, and it seemed to him that all theclouds, all the black thoughts that before had beset him, vanishedlike smoke, the sky lighted up, the breeze sang, flowers covered thegrass by the roadside. But unfortunately Dona Victorina was there andshe pounced upon the young man to ask him for news of Don Tiburcio,since Isagani had undertaken to discover his hiding-place by inquiryamong the students he knew.
"No one has been able to tell me up to now," he answered, and he wastelling the truth, for Don Tiburcio was really hidden in the houseof the youth's own uncle, Padre Florentino.
"Let him know," declared Dona Victorina furiously, "that I'll call inthe Civil Guard. Alive or dead, I want to know where he is--becauseone has to wait ten years before marrying again."
Isagani gazed at her in fright--Dona Victorina was thinking ofremarrying! Who could the unfortunate be?
"What do you think of Juanito Pelaez?" she asked him suddenly.
Juanito! Isagani knew not what to reply. He was tempted to tell allthe evil he knew o
f Pelaez, but a feeling of delicacy triumphed in hisheart and he spoke well of his rival, for the very reason that he wassuch. Dona Victorina, entirely satisfied and becoming enthusiastic,then broke out into exaggerations of Pelaez's merits and was alreadygoing to make Isagani a confidant of her new passion when Paulita'sfriend came running to say that the former's fan had fallen amongthe stones of the beach, near the Malecon. Stratagem or accident, thefact is that this mischance gave an excuse for the friend to remainwith the old woman, while Isagani might talk with Paulita. Moreover,it was a matter of rejoicing to Dona Victorina, since to get Juanitofor herself she was favoring Isagani's love.
Paulita had her plan ready. On thanking him she assumed the role ofthe offended party, showed resentment, and gave him to understand thatshe was surprised to meet him there when everybody was on the Luneta,even the French actresses.
"You made the appointment for me, how could I be elsewhere?"
"Yet last night you did not even notice that I was in the theater. Iwas watching you all the time and you never took your eyes off those_cochers_."
So they exchanged parts: Isagani, who had come to demand explanations,found himself compelled to give them and considered himself very happywhen Paulita said that she forgave him. In regard to her presenceat the theater, he even had to thank her for that: forced by heraunt, she had decided to go in the hope of seeing him during theperformance. Little she cared for Juanito Pelaez!
"My aunt's the one who is in love with him," she said with a merrylaugh.
Then they both laughed, for the marriage of Pelaez with Dona Victorinamade them really happy, and they saw it already an accomplishedfact, until Isagani remembered that Don Tiburcio was still living andconfided the secret to his sweetheart, after exacting her promise thatshe would tell no one. Paulita promised, with the mental reservationof relating it to her friend.
This led the conversation to Isagani's town, surrounded by forests,situated on the shore of the sea which roared at the base of thehigh cliffs. Isagani's gaze lighted up when he spoke of that obscurespot, a flush of pride overspread his cheeks, his voice trembled,his poetic imagination glowed, his words poured forth burning,charged with enthusiasm, as if he were talking of love to his love,and he could not but exclaim:
"Oh, in the solitude of my mountains I feel free, free as the air,as the light that shoots unbridled through space! A thousand cities, athousand palaces, would I give for that spot in the Philippines, where,far from men, I could feel myself to have genuine liberty. There,face to face with nature, in the presence of the mysterious and theinfinite, the forest and the sea, I think, speak, and work like aman who knows not tyrants."
In the presence of such enthusiasm for his native place, an enthusiasmthat she did not comprehend, for she was accustomed to hear her countryspoken ill of, and sometimes joined in the chorus herself, Paulitamanifested some jealousy, as usual making herself the offended party.
But Isagani very quickly pacified her. "Yes," he said, "I loved itabove all things before I knew you! It was my delight to wander throughthe thickets, to sleep in the shade of the trees, to seat myself upona cliff to take in with my gaze the Pacific which rolled its bluewaves before me, bringing to me echoes of songs learned on the shoresof free America. Before knowing you, that sea was for me my world,my delight, my love, my dream! When it slept in calm with the sunshining overhead, it was my delight to gaze into the abyss hundredsof feet below me, seeking monsters in the forests of madrepores andcoral that were revealed through the limpid blue, enormous serpentsthat the country folk say leave the forests to dwell in the sea, andthere take on frightful forms. Evening, they say, is the time whenthe sirens appear, and I saw them between the waves--so great wasmy eagerness that once I thought I could discern them amid the foam,busy in their divine sports, I distinctly heard their songs, songs ofliberty, and I made out the sounds of their silvery harps. FormerlyI spent hours and hours watching the transformations in the clouds,or gazing at a solitary tree in the plain or a high rock, withoutknowing why, without being able to explain the vague feelings theyawoke in me. My uncle used to preach long sermons to me, and fearingthat I would become a hypochondriac, talked of placing me undera doctor's care. But I met you, I loved you, and during the lastvacation it seemed that something was lacking there, the forest wasgloomy, sad the river that glides through the shadows, dreary the sea,deserted the sky. Ah, if you should go there once, if your feet shouldpress those paths, if you should stir the waters of the rivulet withyour fingers, if you should gaze upon the sea, sit upon the cliff,or make the air ring with your melodious songs, my forest would betransformed into an Eden, the ripples of the brook would sing, lightwould burst from the dark leaves, into diamonds would be convertedthe dewdrops and into pearls the foam of the sea."
But Paulita had heard that to reach Isagani's home it was necessaryto cross mountains where little leeches abounded, and at the merethought of them the little coward shivered convulsively. Humored andpetted, she declared that she would travel only in a carriage or arailway train.
Having now forgotten all his pessimism and seeing only thornlessroses about him, Isagani answered, "Within a short time all theislands are going to be crossed with networks of iron rails.
"'Por donde rapidas Y voladoras Locomotoras Corriendo iran,' [52]
as some one said. Then the most beautiful spots of the islands willbe accessible to all."
"Then, but when? When I'm an old woman?"
"Ah, you don't know what we can do in a few years," replied theyouth. "You don't realize the energy and enthusiasm that are awakeningin the country after the sleep of centuries. Spain heeds us; our youngmen in Madrid are working day and night, dedicating to the fatherlandall their intelligence, all their time, all their strength. Generousvoices there are mingled with ours, statesmen who realize that thereis no better bond than community of thought and interest. Justice willbe meted out to us, and everything points to a brilliant future forall. It's true that we've just met with a slight rebuff, we students,but victory is rolling along the whole line, it is in the consciousnessof all! The traitorous repulse that we have suffered indicates thelast gasp, the final convulsions of the dying. Tomorrow we shall becitizens of the Philippines, whose destiny will be a glorious one,because it will be in loving hands. Ah, yes, the future is ours! Isee it rose-tinted, I see the movement that stirs the life of theseregions so long dead, lethargic. I see towns arise along the railroads,and factories everywhere, edifices like that of Mandaloyan! I hearthe steam hiss, the trains roar, the engines rattle! I see the smokerise--their heavy breathing; I smell the oil--the sweat of monstersbusy at incessant toil. This port, so slow and laborious of creation,this river where commerce is in its death agony, we shall see coveredwith masts, giving us an idea of the forests of Europe in winter. Thispure air, and these stones, now so clean, will be crowded with coal,with boxes and barrels, the products of human industry, but let itnot matter, for we shall move about rapidly in comfortable coaches toseek in the interior other air, other scenes on other shores, coolertemperatures on the slopes of the mountains. The warships of our navywill guard our coasts, the Spaniard and the Filipino will rival eachother in zeal to repel all foreign invasion, to defend our homes, andlet you bask in peace and smiles, loved and respected. Free from thesystem of exploitation, without hatred or distrust, the people willlabor because then labor will cease to be a despicable thing, it willno longer be servile, imposed upon a slave. Then the Spaniard willnot embitter his character with ridiculous pretensions of despotism,but with a frank look and a stout heart we shall extend our handsto one another, and commerce, industry, agriculture, the sciences,will develop under the mantle of liberty, with wise and just laws,as in prosperous England." [53]
Paulita smiled dubiously and shook her head. "Dreams, dreams!" shesighed. "I've heard it said that you have many enemies. Aunt saysthat this country must always be enslaved."
"Because your aunt is a fool, because she can't live withoutslaves! When she hasn't them she dream
s of them in the future, and ifthey are not obtainable she forces them into her imagination. Trueit is that we have enemies, that there will be a struggle, but weshall conquer. The old system may convert the ruins of its castleinto formless barricades, but we will take them singing hymns ofliberty, in the light of the eyes of you women, to the applauseof your lovely hands. But do not be uneasy--the struggle will be apacific one. Enough that you spur us to zeal, that you awake in usnoble and elevated thoughts and encourage us to constancy, to heroism,with your affection for our reward."
Paulita preserved her enigmatic smile and seemed thoughtful, as shegazed toward the river, patting her cheek lightly with her fan. "Butif you accomplish nothing?" she asked abstractedly.
The question hurt Isagani. He fixed his eyes on his sweetheart,caught her lightly by the hand, and began: "Listen, if we accomplishnothing--"
He paused in doubt, then resumed: "You know how I love you, how Iadore you, you know that I feel myself a different creature whenyour gaze enfolds me, when I surprise in it the flash of love,but yet if we accomplish nothing, I would dream of another look ofyours and would die happy, because the light of pride could burnin your eyes when you pointed to my corpse and said to the world:'My love died fighting for the rights of my fatherland!' "
"Come home, child, you're going to catch cold," screeched DonaVictorina at that instant, and the voice brought them back toreality. It was time to return, and they kindly invited him toenter the carriage, an invitation which the young man did not givethem cause to repeat. As it was Paulita's carriage, naturally DonaVictorina and the friend occupied the back seat, while the two loverssat on the smaller one in front.
To ride in the same carriage, to have her at his side, to breatheher perfume, to rub against the silk of her dress, to see her pensivewith folded arms, lighted by the moon of the Philippines that lends tothe meanest things idealism and enchantment, were all dreams beyondIsagani's hopes! What wretches they who were returning alone on footand had to give way to the swift carriage! In the whole course of thedrive, along the beach and down the length of La Sabana, across theBridge of Spain, Isagani saw nothing but a sweet profile, gracefullyset off by beautiful hair, ending in an arching neck that lost itselfamid the gauzy pina. A diamond winked at him from the lobe of thelittle ear, like a star among silvery clouds. He heard faint echoesinquiring for Don Tiburcio de Espadana, the name of Juanito Pelaez,but they sounded to him like distant bells, the confused noises heardin a dream. It was necessary to tell him that they had reached PlazaSanta Cruz.