Chapter Chapter 4 · CABESANG TALES

Those who have read the first part of this story will perhaps remember

an old wood-cutter who lived in the depths of the forest. [12] Tandang

Selo is still alive, and though his hair has turned completely white,

he yet preserves his good health. He no longer hunts or cuts firewood,

for his fortunes have improved and he works only at making brooms.

His son Tales (abbreviation of Telesforo) had worked at first on shares

on the lands of a capitalist, but later, having become the owner of two

carabaos and several hundred pesos, determined to work on his own

account, aided by his father, his wife, and his three children. So they

cut down and cleared away some thick woods which were situated on the

borders of the town and which they believed belonged to no one. During

the labors of cleaning and cultivating the new land, the whole family

fell ill with malaria and the mother died, along with the eldest

daughter, Lucia, in the flower of her age. This, which was the natural

consequence of breaking up new soil infested with various kinds of

bacteria, they attributed to the anger of the woodland spirit, so they

were resigned and went on with their labor, believing him pacified.

But when they began to harvest their first crop a religious

corporation, which owned land in the neighboring town, laid claim to

the fields, alleging that they fell within their boundaries, and to

prove it they at once started to set up their marks. However, the

administrator of the religious order left to them, for humanity’s sake,

the usufruct of the land on condition that they pay a small sum

annually—a mere bagatelle, twenty or thirty pesos. Tales, as peaceful a

man as could be found, was as much opposed to lawsuits as any one and

more submissive to the friars than most people; so, in order not to

smash a palyok against a kawali (as he said, for to him the friars were

iron pots and he a clay jar), he had the weakness to yield to their

claim, remembering that he did not know Spanish and had no money to pay

lawyers.

Besides, Tandang Selo said to him, “Patience! You would spend more in

one year of litigation than in ten years of paying what the white

padres demand. And perhaps they’ll pay you back in masses! Pretend that

those thirty pesos had been lost in gambling or had fallen into the

water and been swallowed by a cayman.”

The harvest was abundant and sold well, so Tales planned to build a

wooden house in the barrio of Sagpang, of the town of Tiani, which

adjoined San Diego.

Another year passed, bringing another good crop, and for this reason

the friars raised the rent to fifty pesos, which Tales paid in order

not to quarrel and because he expected to sell his sugar at a good

price.

“Patience! Pretend that the cayman has grown some,” old Selo consoled

him.

That year he at last saw his dream realized: to live in the barrio of

Sagpang in a wooden house. The father and grandfather then thought of

providing some education for the two children, especially the daughter

Juliana, or Juli, as they called her, for she gave promise of being

accomplished and beautiful. A boy who was a friend of the family,

Basilio, was studying in Manila, and he was of as lowly origin as they.

But this dream seemed destined not to be realized. The first care the

community took when they saw the family prospering was to appoint as

cabeza de barangay its most industrious member, which left only Tano,

the son, who was only fourteen years old. The father was therefore

called Cabesang Tales and had to order a sack coat, buy a felt hat, and

prepare to spend his money. In order to avoid any quarrel with the

curate or the government, he settled from his own pocket the shortages

in the tax-lists, paying for those who had died or moved away, and he

lost considerable time in making the collections and on his trips to

the capital.

“Patience! Pretend that the cayman’s relatives have joined him,”

advised Tandang Selo, smiling placidly.

“Next year you’ll put on a long skirt and go to Manila to study like

the young ladies of the town,” Cabesang Tales told his daughter every

time he heard her talking of Basilio’s progress.

But that next year did not come, and in its stead there was another

increase in the rent. Cabesang Tales became serious and scratched his

head. The clay jar was giving up all its rice to the iron pot.

When the rent had risen to two hundred pesos, Tales was not content

with scratching his head and sighing; he murmured and protested. The

friar-administrator then told him that if he could not pay, some one

else would be assigned to cultivate that land—many who desired it had

offered themselves.

He thought at first that the friar was joking, but the friar was

talking seriously, and indicated a servant of his to take possession of

the land. Poor Tales turned pale, he felt a buzzing in his ears, he saw

in the red mist that rose before his eyes his wife and daughter,

pallid, emaciated, dying, victims of the intermittent fevers—then he

saw the thick forest converted into productive fields, he saw the

stream of sweat watering its furrows, he saw himself plowing under the

hot sun, bruising his feet against the stones and roots, while this

friar had been driving about in his carriage with the wretch who was to

get the land following like a slave behind his master. No, a thousand

times, no! First let the fields sink into the depths of the earth and

bury them all! Who was this intruder that he should have any right to

his land? Had he brought from his own country a single handful of that

soil? Had he crooked a single one of his fingers to pull up the roots

that ran through it?

Exasperated by the threats of the friar, who tried to uphold his

authority at any cost in the presence of the other tenants, Cabesang

Tales rebelled and refused to pay a single cuarto, having ever before

himself that red mist, saying that he would give up his fields to the

first man who could irrigate it with blood drawn from his own veins.

Old Selo, on looking at his son’s face, did not dare to mention the

cayman, but tried to calm him by talking of clay jars, reminding him

that the winner in a lawsuit was left without a shirt to his back.

“We shall all be turned to clay, father, and without shirts we were

born,” was the reply.

So he resolutely refused to pay or to give up a single span of his land

unless the friars should first prove the legality of their claim by

exhibiting a title-deed of some kind. As they had none, a lawsuit

followed, and Cabesang Tales entered into it, confiding that some at

least, if not all, were lovers of justice and respecters of the law.

“I serve and have been serving the King with my money and my services,”

he said to those who remonstrated with him. “I’m asking for justice and

he is obliged to give it to me.”

Drawn on by fatality, and as if he had put into play in the lawsuit the

whole future of himself and his children, he went on spending his

savings to pay lawyers, notaries, and solicitors, not to mention the

officials and clerks who exploited his ignorance and his needs. He

moved to and fro between the village and the capital, passed his days

without eating and his nights without sleeping, while his talk was

always about briefs, exhibits, and appeals. There was then seen a

struggle such as was never before carried on under the skies of the

Philippines: that of a poor Indian, ignorant and friendless, confiding

in the justness and righteousness of his cause, fighting against a

powerful corporation before which Justice bowed her head, while the

judges let fall the scales and surrendered the sword. He fought as

tenaciously as the ant which bites when it knows that it is going to be

crushed, as does the fly which looks into space only through a pane of

glass. Yet the clay jar defying the iron pot and smashing itself into a

thousand pieces bad in it something impressive—it had the sublimeness

of desperation!

On the days when his journeys left him free he patrolled his fields

armed with a shotgun, saying that the tulisanes were hovering around

and he had need of defending himself in order not to fall into their

hands and thus lose his lawsuit. As if to improve his marksmanship, he

shot at birds and fruits, even the butterflies, with such accurate aim

that the friar-administrator did not dare to go to Sagpang without an

escort of civil-guards, while the friar’s hireling, who gazed from afar

at the threatening figure of Tales wandering over the fields like a

sentinel upon the walls, was terror stricken and refused to take the

property away from him.

But the local judges and those at the capital, warned by the experience

of one of their number who had been summarily dismissed, dared not give

him the decision, fearing their own dismissal. Yet they were not really

bad men, those judges, they were upright and conscientious, good

citizens, excellent fathers, dutiful sons—and they were able to

appreciate poor Tales’ situation better than Tales himself could. Many

of them were versed in the scientific and historical basis of property,

they knew that the friars by their own statutes could not own property,

but they also knew that to come from far across the sea with an

appointment secured with great difficulty, to undertake the duties of

the position with the best intentions, and now to lose it because an

Indian fancied that justice had to be done on earth as in heaven—that

surely was an idea! They had their families and greater needs surely

than that Indian: one had a mother to provide for, and what duty is

more sacred than that of caring for a mother? Another had sisters, all

of marriageable age; that other there had many little children who

expected their daily bread and who, like fledglings in a nest, would

surely die of hunger the day he was out of a job; even the very least

of them had there, far away, a wife who would be in distress if the

monthly remittance failed. All these moral and conscientious judges

tried everything in their power in the way of counsel, advising

Cabesang Tales to pay the rent demanded. But Tales, like all simple

souls, once he had seen what was just, went straight toward it. He

demanded proofs, documents, papers, title-deeds, but the friars had

none of these, resting their case on his concessions in the past.

Cabesang Tales’ constant reply was: “If every day I give alms to a

beggar to escape annoyance, who will oblige me to continue my gifts if

he abuses my generosity?”

From this stand no one could draw him, nor were there any threats that

could intimidate him. In vain Governor M—— made a trip expressly to

talk to him and frighten him. His reply to it all was: “You may do what

you like, Mr. Governor, I’m ignorant and powerless. But I’ve cultivated

those fields, my wife and daughter died while helping me clear them,

and I won’t give them up to any one but him who can do more with them

than I’ve done. Let him first irrigate them with his blood and bury in

them his wife and daughter!”

The upshot of this obstinacy was that the honorable judges gave the

decision to the friars, and everybody laughed at him, saying that

lawsuits are not won by justice. But Cabesang Tales appealed, loaded

his shotgun, and patrolled his fields with deliberation.

During this period his life seemed to be a wild dream. His son, Tano, a

youth as tall as his father and as good as his sister, was conscripted,

but he let the boy go rather than purchase a substitute.

“I have to pay the lawyers,” he told his weeping daughter. “If I win

the case I’ll find a way to get him back, and if I lose it I won’t have

any need for sons.”

So the son went away and nothing more was heard of him except that his

hair had been cropped and that he slept under a cart. Six months later

it was rumored that he had been seen embarking for the Carolines;

another report was that he had been seen in the uniform of the Civil

Guard.

“Tano in the Civil Guard! ’Susmariosep!” exclaimed several, clasping

their hands. “Tano, who was so good and so honest! Requimternam!”

The grandfather went many days without speaking to the father, Juli

fell sick, but Cabesang Tales did not shed a single tear, although for

two days he never left the house, as if he feared the looks of reproach

from the whole village or that he would be called the executioner of

his son. But on the third day he again sallied forth with his shotgun.

Murderous intentions were attributed to him, and there were

well-meaning persons who whispered about that he had been heard to

threaten that he would bury the friar-administrator in the furrows of

his fields, whereat the friar was frightened at him in earnest. As a

result of this, there came a decree from the Captain-General forbidding

the use of firearms and ordering that they be taken up. Cabesang Tales

had to hand over his shotgun but he continued his rounds armed with a

long bolo.

“What are you going to do with that bolo when the tulisanes have

firearms?” old Selo asked him.

“I must watch my crops,” was the answer. “Every stalk of cane growing

there is one of my wife’s bones.”

The bolo was taken up on the pretext that it was too long. He then took

his father’s old ax and with it on his shoulder continued his sullen

rounds.

Every time he left the house Tandang Selo and Juli trembled for his

life. The latter would get up from her loom, go to the window, pray,

make vows to the saints, and recite novenas. The grandfather was at

times unable to finish the handle of a broom and talked of returning to

the forest—life in that house was unbearable.

At last their fears were realized. As the fields were some distance

from the village, Cabesang Tales, in spite of his ax, fell into the

hands of tulisanes who had revolvers and rifles. They told him that

since he had money to pay judges and lawyers he must have some also for

the outcasts and the hunted. They therefore demanded a ransom of five

hundred pesos through the medium of a rustic, with the warning that if

anything happened to their messenger, the captive would pay for it with

his life. Two days of grace were allowed.

This news threw the poor family into the wildest terror, which was

augmented when they learned that the Civil Guard was going out in

pursuit of the bandits. In case of an encounter, the first victim would

be the captive—this they all knew. The old man was paralyzed, while the

pale and frightened daughter tried often to talk but could not. Still,

another thought more terrible, an idea more cruel, roused them from

their stupor. The rustic sent by the tulisanes said that the band would

probably have to move on, and if they were slow in sending the ransom

the two days would elapse and Cabesang Tales would have his throat cut.

This drove those two beings to madness, weak and powerless as they

were. Tandang Selo got up, sat down, went outside, came back again,

knowing not where to go, where to seek aid. Juli appealed to her

images, counted and recounted her money, but her two hundred pesos did

not increase or multiply. Soon she dressed herself, gathered together

all her jewels, and asked the advice of her grandfather, if she should

go to see the gobernadorcillo, the judge, the notary, the lieutenant of

the Civil Guard. The old man said yes to everything, or when she said

no, he too said no. At length came the neighbors, their relatives and

friends, some poorer than others, in their simplicity magnifying the

fears. The most active of all was Sister Bali, a great panguinguera,

who had been to Manila to practise religious exercises in the nunnery

of the Sodality.

Juli was willing to sell all her jewels, except a locket set with

diamonds and emeralds which Basilio had given her, for this locket had

a history: a nun, the daughter of Capitan Tiago, had given it to a

leper, who, in return for professional treatment, had made a present of

it to Basilio. So she could not sell it without first consulting him.

Quickly the shell-combs and earrings were sold, as well as Juli’s

rosary, to their richest neighbor, and thus fifty pesos were added, but

two hundred and fifty were still lacking. The locket might be pawned,

but Juli shook her head. A neighbor suggested that the house be sold

and Tandang Selo approved the idea, satisfied to return to the forest

and cut firewood as of old, but Sister Bali observed that this could

not be done because the owner was not present.

“The judge’s wife once sold me her tapis for a peso, but her husband

said that the sale did not hold because it hadn’t received his

approval. Abá! He took back the tapis and she hasn’t returned the peso

yet, but I don’t pay her when she wins at panguingui, abá! In that way

I’ve collected twelve cuartos, and for that alone I’m going to play

with her. I can’t bear to have people fail to pay what they owe me,

abá!”

Another neighbor was going to ask Sister Bali why then did not she

settle a little account with her, but the quick panguinguera suspected

this and added at once: “Do you know, Juli, what you can do? Borrow two

hundred and fifty pesos on the house, payable when the lawsuit is won.”

This seemed to be the best proposition, so they decided to act upon it

that same day. Sister Bali offered to accompany her, and together they

visited the houses of all the rich folks in Tiani, but no one would

accept the proposal. The case, they said, was already lost, and to show

favors to an enemy of the friars was to expose themselves to their

vengeance. At last a pious woman took pity on the girl and lent the

money on condition that Juli should remain with her as a servant until

the debt was paid. Juli would not have so very much to do: sew, pray,

accompany her to mass, and fast for her now and then. The girl accepted

with tears in her eyes, received the money, and promised to enter her

service on the following day, Christmas.

When the grandfather heard of that sale he fell to weeping like a

child. What, that granddaughter whom he had not allowed to walk in the

sun lest her skin should be burned, Juli, she of the delicate fingers

and rosy feet! What, that girl, the prettiest in the village and

perhaps in the whole town, before whose window many gallants had vainly

passed the night playing and singing! What, his only granddaughter, the

sole joy of his fading eyes, she whom he had dreamed of seeing dressed

in a long skirt, talking Spanish, and holding herself erect waving a

painted fan like the daughters of the wealthy—she to become a servant,

to be scolded and reprimanded, to ruin her fingers, to sleep anywhere,

to rise in any manner whatsoever!

So the old grandfather wept and talked of hanging or starving himself

to death. “If you go,” he declared, “I’m going back to the forest and

will never set foot in the town.”

Juli soothed him by saying that it was necessary for her father to

return, that the suit would be won, and they could then ransom her from

her servitude.

The night was a sad one. Neither of the two could taste a bite and the

old man refused to lie down, passing the whole night seated in a

corner, silent and motionless. Juli on her part tried to sleep, but for

a long time could not close her eyes. Somewhat relieved about her

father’s fate, she now thought of herself and fell to weeping, but

stifled her sobs so that the old man might not hear them. The next day

she would be a servant, and it was the very day Basilio was accustomed

to come from Manila with presents for her. Henceforward she would have

to give up that love; Basilio, who was going to be a doctor, couldn’t

marry a pauper. In fancy she saw him going to the church in company

with the prettiest and richest girl in the town, both well-dressed,

happy and smiling, while she, Juli, followed her mistress, carrying

novenas, buyos, and the cuspidor. Here the girl felt a lump rise in her

throat, a sinking at her heart, and begged the Virgin to let her die

first.

But—said her conscience—he will at least know that I preferred to pawn

myself rather than the locket he gave me.

This thought consoled her a little and brought on empty dreams. Who

knows but that a miracle might happen? She might find the two hundred

and fifty pesos under the image of the Virgin—she had read of many

similar miracles. The sun might not rise nor morning come, and

meanwhile the suit would be won. Her father might return, or Basilio

put in his appearance, she might find a bag of gold in the garden, the

tulisanes would send the bag of gold, the curate, Padre Camorra, who

was always teasing her, would come with the tulisanes. So her ideas

became more and more confused, until at length, worn out by fatigue and

sorrow, she went to sleep with dreams of her childhood in the depths of

the forest: she was bathing in the torrent along with her two brothers,

there were little fishes of all colors that let themselves be caught

like fools, and she became impatient because she found no pleasure in

catchnig such foolish little fishes! Basilio was under the water, but

Basilio for some reason had the face of her brother Tano. Her new

mistress was watching them from the bank.