Kabanata Kabanata 24 · DREAMS

Amor, qué astro eres?

On the following day, Thursday, at the hour of sunset, Isagani was

walking along the beautiful promenade of Maria Cristina in the

direction of the Malecon to keep an appointment which Paulita had that

morning given him. The young man had no doubt that they were to talk

about what had happened on the previous night, and as he was determined

to ask for an explanation, and knew how proud and haughty she was, he

foresaw an estrangement. In view of this eventuality he had brought

with him the only two letters he had ever received from Paulita, two

scraps of paper, whereon were merely a few hurriedly written lines with

various blots, but in an even handwriting, things that did not prevent

the enamored youth from preserving them with more solicitude than if

they had been the autographs of Sappho and the Muse Polyhymnia.

This decision to sacrifice his love on the altar of dignity, the

consciousness of suffering in the discharge of duty, did not prevent a

profound melancholy from taking possession of Isagani and brought back

into his mind the beautiful days, and nights more beautiful still, when

they had whispered sweet nothings through the flowered gratings of the

entresol, nothings that to the youth took on such a character of

seriousness and importance that they seemed to him the only matters

worthy of meriting the attention of the most exalted human

understanding. He recalled the walks on moonlit nights, the fair, the

dark December mornings after the mass of Nativity, the holy water that

he used to offer her, when she would thank him with a look charged with

a whole epic of love, both of them trembling as their fingers touched.

Heavy sighs, like small rockets, issued from his breast and brought

back to him all the verses, all the sayings of poets and writers about

the inconstancy of woman. Inwardly he cursed the creation of theaters,

the French operetta, and vowed to get revenge on Pelaez at the first

opportunity. Everything about him appeared under the saddest and

somberest colors: the bay, deserted and solitary, seemed more solitary

still on account of the few steamers that were anchored in it; 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, without

grandeur, 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 their

complacent 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 in the

sand for mollusks and crustaceans which they caught for the mere fun of

catching and killed without benefit to themselves; in short, even the

eternal port works to which he had dedicated more than three odes,

looked to him absurd, ridiculous child’s play.

The port, ah, the port of Manila, a bastard that since its conception

had brought tears of humiliation and shame to all! If only after so

many tears there were not being brought forth a useless abortion!

Abstractedly he saluted two Jesuits, former teachers of his, and

scarcely noticed a tandem in which an American rode and excited the

envy of the gallants who were in calesas only. Near the Anda monument

he heard Ben-Zayb talking with another person about Simoun, learning

that the latter had on the previous night been taken suddenly ill, that

he refused to see any one, even the very aides of the General. “Yes!”

exclaimed Isagani with a bitter smile, “for him attentions because he

is rich. The soldiers return from their 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, he thought

that, death for death, if that of the soldiers was glorious because

they were obeying orders, that of the islanders was sublime because

they were defending their homes. [49]

“A strange destiny, that of some peoples!” he mused. “Because a

traveler arrives at their shores, they lose their liberty and become

subjects and slaves, not only of the traveler, not only of his heirs,

but even of all his countrymen, and not for a generation, but for all

time! A strange conception of justice! Such a state of affairs gives

ample right to exterminate every foreigner as the most ferocious

monster that the sea can cast up!”

He reflected that those islanders, against whom his country was waging

war, after all were guilty of no crime other than that of weakness. The

travelers also arrived at the shores of other peoples, but finding them

strong made no display of their strange pretension. With all their

weakness the spectacle they presented seemed beautiful to him, and the

names of the enemies, whom the newspapers did not fail to call cowards

and traitors, appeared glorious to him, as they succumbed with glory

amid the ruins of their crude fortifications, with greater glory even

than the ancient Trojan heroes, for those islanders had carried away no

Philippine Helen! In his poetic enthusiasm he thought of the young men

of those islands who could cover themselves with glory in the eyes of

their women, and in his amorous desperation he envied them 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, defending

it from foreign invasion, and then let the sun afterwards illumine my

corpse, like a motionless sentinel on the rocks of the sea!”

The conflict with the Germans [50] came into his mind and he almost

felt sorry that it had been adjusted: he would gladly have died for the

Spanish-Filipino banner before submitting to the foreigner.

“Because, after all,” he mused, “with Spain we are united by firm

bonds—the past, history, religion, language—”

Language, yes, language! A sarcastic smile curled his lips. That very

night they would hold a banquet in the pansitería to celebrate the

demise of the academy of Castilian.

“Ay!” he sighed, “provided the liberals in Spain are like those we have

here, in a little while the mother country will be able to count the

number of the faithful!”

Slowly the night descended, and with it melancholy settled more heavily

upon the heart of the young man, who had almost lost hope of seeing

Paulita. The promenaders one by one left the Malecon for the Luneta,

the music from which was borne to him in snatches of melodies on the

fresh evening breeze; the sailors on a warship anchored in the river

performed their evening drill, skipping about among the slender ropes

like spiders; the boats one by one lighted their lamps, thus giving

signs of life; while the beach,

Do el viento riza las calladas olas

Que con blando murmullo en la ribera

Se deslizan veloces por sí 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 rapidly approached.

Isagani turned his head and his heart began to beat violently. A

carriage was coming, drawn by white horses, the white horses that he

would know among a hundred thousand. In the carriage rode Paulita and

her friend of the night before, with Doña Victorina.

Before the young man could take a step, Paulita had leaped to the

ground with sylph-like agility and smiled at him with a smile full of

conciliation. He smiled in return, and it seemed to him that all the

clouds, all the black thoughts that before had beset him, vanished like

smoke, the sky lighted up, the breeze sang, flowers covered the grass

by the roadside. But unfortunately Doña Victorina was there and she

pounced upon the young man to ask him for news of Don Tiburcio, since

Isagani had undertaken to discover his hiding-place by inquiry among

the students he knew.

“No one has been able to tell me up to now,” he answered, and he was

telling the truth, for Don Tiburcio was really hidden in the house of

the youth’s own uncle, Padre Florentino.

“Let him know,” declared Doña Victorina furiously, “that I’ll call in

the Civil Guard. Alive or dead, I want to know where he is—because one

has to wait ten years before marrying again.”

Isagani gazed at her in fright—Doña Victorina was thinking of

remarrying! 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 all the

evil he knew of Pelaez, but a feeling of delicacy triumphed in his

heart and he spoke well of his rival, for the very reason that he was

such. Doña Victorina, entirely satisfied and becoming enthusiastic,

then broke out into exaggerations of Pelaez’s merits and was already

going to make Isagani a confidant of her new passion when Paulita’s

friend came running to say that the former’s fan had fallen among the

stones of the beach, near the Malecon. Stratagem or accident, the fact

is that this mischance gave an excuse for the friend to remain with the

old woman, while Isagani might talk with Paulita. Moreover, it was a

matter of rejoicing to Doña Victorina, since to get Juanito for herself

she was favoring Isagani’s love.

Paulita had her plan ready. On thanking him she assumed the role of the

offended party, showed resentment, and gave him to understand that she

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. I

was 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 happy

when Paulita said that she forgave him. In regard to her presence at

the theater, he even had to thank her for that: forced by her aunt, she

had decided to go in the hope of seeing him during the performance.

Little she cared for Juanito Pelaez!

“My aunt’s the one who is in love with him,” she said with a merry

laugh.

Then they both laughed, for the marriage of Pelaez with Doña Victorina

made them really happy, and they saw it already an accomplished fact,

until Isagani remembered that Don Tiburcio was still living and

confided the secret to his sweetheart, after exacting her promise that

she would tell no one. Paulita promised, with the mental reservation of

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 the high

cliffs. Isagani’s gaze lighted up when he spoke of that obscure spot, 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, a

thousand 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 the

infinite, the forest and the sea, I think, speak, and work like a man

who knows not tyrants.”

In the presence of such enthusiasm for his native place, an enthusiasm

that she did not comprehend, for she was accustomed to hear her country

spoken ill of, and sometimes joined in the chorus herself, Paulita

manifested some jealousy, as usual making herself the offended party.

But Isagani very quickly pacified her. “Yes,” he said, “I loved it

above all things before I knew you! It was my delight to wander through

the thickets, to sleep in the shade of the trees, to seat myself upon a

cliff to take in with my gaze the Pacific which rolled its blue waves

before me, bringing to me echoes of songs learned on the shores of 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 sun shining overhead,

it was my delight to gaze into the abyss hundreds of feet below me,

seeking monsters in the forests of madrepores and coral that were

revealed through the limpid blue, enormous serpents that the country

folk say leave the forests to dwell in the sea, and there take on

frightful forms. Evening, they say, is the time when the sirens appear,

and I saw them between the waves—so great was my eagerness that once I

thought I could discern them amid the foam, busy in their divine

sports, I distinctly heard their songs, songs of liberty, and I made

out the sounds of their silvery harps. Formerly I spent hours and hours

watching the transformations in the clouds, or gazing at a solitary

tree in the plain or a high rock, without knowing why, without being

able to explain the vague feelings they awoke in me. My uncle used to

preach long sermons to me, and fearing that I would become a

hypochondriac, talked of placing me under a doctor’s care. But I met

you, I loved you, and during the last vacation it seemed that something

was lacking there, the forest was gloomy, sad the river that glides

through the shadows, dreary the sea, deserted the sky. Ah, if you

should go there once, if your feet should press those paths, if you

should stir the waters of the rivulet with your fingers, if you should

gaze upon the sea, sit upon the cliff, or make the air ring with your

melodious songs, my forest would be transformed into an Eden, the

ripples of the brook would sing, light would burst from the dark

leaves, into diamonds would be converted the dewdrops and into pearls

the foam of the sea.”

But Paulita had heard that to reach Isagani’s home it was necessary to

cross mountains where little leeches abounded, and at the mere thought

of them the little coward shivered convulsively. Humored and petted,

she declared that she would travel only in a carriage or a railway

train.

Having now forgotten all his pessimism and seeing only thornless roses

about him, Isagani answered, “Within a short time all the islands are

going to be crossed with networks of iron rails.

“‘Por donde rápidas

Y voladoras

Locomotoras

Corriendo irán,’ [52]

as some one said. Then the most beautiful spots of the islands will be

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 the youth.

“You don’t realize the energy and enthusiasm that are awakening in the

country after the sleep of centuries. Spain heeds us; our young men in

Madrid are working day and night, dedicating to the fatherland all

their intelligence, all their time, all their strength. Generous voices

there are mingled with ours, statesmen who realize that there is no

better bond than community of thought and interest. Justice will be

meted out to us, and everything points to a brilliant future for all.

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 consciousness of

all! The traitorous repulse that we have suffered indicates the last

gasp, the final convulsions of the dying. Tomorrow we shall be citizens

of the Philippines, whose destiny will be a glorious one, because it

will be in loving hands. Ah, yes, the future is ours! I see it

rose-tinted, I see the movement that stirs the life of these regions so

long dead, lethargic. I see towns arise along the railroads, and

factories everywhere, edifices like that of Mandaloyan! I hear the

steam hiss, the trains roar, the engines rattle! I see the smoke

rise—their heavy breathing; I smell the oil—the sweat of monsters busy

at incessant toil. This port, so slow and laborious of creation, this

river where commerce is in its death agony, we shall see covered with

masts, giving us an idea of the forests of Europe in winter. This pure

air, and these stones, now so clean, will be crowded with coal, with

boxes and barrels, the products of human industry, but let it not

matter, for we shall move about rapidly in comfortable coaches to seek

in the interior other air, other scenes on other shores, cooler

temperatures on the slopes of the mountains. The warships of our navy

will guard our coasts, the Spaniard and the Filipino will rival each

other in zeal to repel all foreign invasion, to defend our homes, and

let you bask in peace and smiles, loved and respected. Free from the

system of exploitation, without hatred or distrust, the people will

labor because then labor will cease to be a despicable thing, it will

no longer be servile, imposed upon a slave. Then the Spaniard will not

embitter his character with ridiculous pretensions of despotism, but

with a frank look and a stout heart we shall extend our hands to 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!” she

sighed. “I’ve heard it said that you have many enemies. Aunt says that

this country must always be enslaved.”

“Because your aunt is a fool, because she can’t live without slaves!

When she hasn’t them she dreams of them in the future, and if they are

not obtainable she forces them into her imagination. True it is that we

have enemies, that there will be a struggle, but we shall conquer. The

old system may convert the ruins of its castle into formless

barricades, but we will take them singing hymns of liberty, in the

light of the eyes of you women, to the applause of your lovely hands.

But do not be uneasy—the struggle will be a pacific one. Enough that

you spur us to zeal, that you awake in us noble 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 she

gazed toward the river, patting her cheek lightly with her fan. “But if

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 accomplish nothing—”

He paused in doubt, then resumed: “You know how I love you, how I adore

you, you know that I feel myself a different creature when your gaze

enfolds me, when I surprise in it the flash of love, but yet if we

accomplish nothing, I would dream of another look of yours and would

die happy, because the light of pride could burn in 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 Doña

Victorina at that instant, and the voice brought them back to reality.

It was time to return, and they kindly invited him to enter the

carriage, an invitation which the young man did not give them cause to

repeat. As it was Paulita’s carriage, naturally Doña Victorina and the

friend occupied the back seat, while the two lovers sat on the smaller

one in front.

To ride in the same carriage, to have her at his side, to breathe her

perfume, to rub against the silk of her dress, to see her pensive with

folded arms, lighted by the moon of the Philippines that lends to the

meanest things idealism and enchantment, were all dreams beyond

Isagani’s hopes! What wretches they who were returning alone on foot

and had to give way to the swift carriage! In the whole course of the

drive, along the beach and down the length of La Sabana, across the

Bridge of Spain, Isagani saw nothing but a sweet profile, gracefully

set off by beautiful hair, ending in an arching neck that lost itself

amid the gauzy piña. A diamond winked at him from the lobe of the

little ear, like a star among silvery clouds. He heard faint echoes

inquiring for Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, the name of Juanito Pelaez, but

they sounded to him like distant bells, the confused noises heard in a

dream. It was necessary to tell him that they had reached Plaza Santa

Cruz.