Bab Bab 5 · Chapter V

A Star in a Dark Night

Ibarra went to his room, which overlooked the river, and dropping

into a chair gazed out into the vast expanse of the heavens spread

before him through the open window. The house on the opposite bank

was profusely lighted, and gay strains of music, largely from stringed

instruments, were borne across the river even to his room.

If the young man had been less preoccupied, if he had had more

curiosity and had cared to see with his opera glasses what was going

on in that atmosphere of light, he would have been charmed with one of

those magical and fantastic spectacles, the like of which is sometimes

seen in the great theaters of Europe. To the subdued strains of the

orchestra there seems to appear in the midst of a shower of light, a

cascade of gold and diamonds in an Oriental setting, a deity wrapped

in misty gauze, a sylph enveloped in a luminous halo, who moves

forward apparently without touching the floor. In her presence the

flowers bloom, the dance awakens, the music bursts forth, and troops

of devils, nymphs, satyrs, demons, angels, shepherds and shepherdesses,

dance, shake their tambourines, and whirl about in rhythmic evolutions,

each one placing some tribute at the feet of the goddess. Ibarra would

have seen a beautiful and graceful maiden, clothed in the picturesque

garments of the daughters of the Philippines, standing in the center

Of a semicircle made up of every class of people, Chinese, Spaniards,

Filipinos, soldiers, curates, old men and young, all gesticulating

and moving about in a lively manner. Padre Damaso stood at the side

of the beauty, smiling like one especially blessed. Fray Sibyla--yes,

Fray Sibyla himself--was talking to her. Doña Victorina was arranging

in the magnificent hair of the maiden a string of pearls and diamonds

which threw out all the beautiful tints of the rainbow. She was white,

perhaps too much so, and whenever she raised her downcast eyes there

shone forth a spotless soul. When she smiled so as to show her small

white teeth the beholder realized that the rose is only a flower

and ivory but the elephant's tusk. From out the filmy piña draperies

around her white and shapely neck there blinked, as the Tagalogs say,

the bright eyes of a collar of diamonds. One man only in all the crowd

seemed insensible to her radiant influence--a young Franciscan, thin,

wasted, and pale, who watched her from a distance, motionless as a

statue and scarcely breathing.

But Ibarra saw nothing of all this--his eyes were fixed on other

things. A small space was enclosed by four bare and grimy walls, in

one of which was an iron grating. On the filthy and loathsome floor

was a mat upon which an old man lay alone in the throes of death,

an old man breathing with difficulty and turning his head from side

to side as amid his tears he uttered a name. The old man was alone,

but from time to time a groan or the rattle of a chain was heard on

the other side of the wall. Far away there was a merry feast, almost

an orgy; a youth was laughing, shouting, and pouring wine upon the

flowers amid the applause and drunken laughter of his companions. The

old man had the features of _his_ father, the youth was himself, and

the name that the old man uttered with tears was _his own_ name! This

was what the wretched young man saw before him. The lights in the

house opposite were extinguished, the music and the noises ceased,

but Ibarra still heard the anguished cry of his father calling upon

his son in the hour of his death.

Silence had now blown its hollow breath over the city, and all

things seemed to sleep in the embrace of nothingness. The cock-crow

alternated with the strokes of the clocks in the church towers and

the mournful cries of the weary sentinels. A waning moon began to

appear, and everything seemed to be at rest; even Ibarra himself,

worn out by his sad thoughts or by his journey, now slept.

Only the young Franciscan whom we saw not so long ago standing

motionless and silent in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom slept

not, but kept vigil. In his cell, with his elbow upon the window

sill and his pale, worn cheek resting on the palm of his hand, he

was gazing silently into the distance where a bright star glittered

in the dark sky. The star paled and disappeared, the dim light of the

waning moon faded, but the friar did not move from his place--he was

gazing out over the field of Bagumbayan and the sleeping sea at the

far horizon wrapped in the morning mist.