Bab Bab 22 · THE PERFORMANCE

The interior of the theater presented a lively aspect. It was filled

from top to bottom, with people standing in the corridors and in the

aisles, fighting to withdraw a head from some hole where they had

inserted it, or to shove an eye between a collar and an ear. The open

boxes, occupied for the most part by ladies, looked like baskets of

flowers, whose petals—the fans—shook in a light breeze, wherein hummed

a thousand bees. However, just as there are flowers of strong or

delicate fragrance, flowers that kill and flowers that console, so from

our baskets were exhaled like emanations: there were to be heard

dialogues, conversations, remarks that bit and stung. Three or four

boxes, however, were still vacant, in spite of the lateness of the

hour. The performance had been advertised for half-past eight and it

was already a quarter to nine, but the curtain did not go up, as his

Excellency had not yet arrived. The gallery-gods, impatient and

uncomfortable in their seats, started a racket, clapping their hands

and pounding the floor with their canes.

“Boom—boom—boom! Ring up the curtain! Boom—boom—boom!”

The artillerymen were not the least noisy. Emulators of Mars, as

Ben-Zayb called them, they were not satisfied with this music; thinking

themselves perhaps at a bullfight, they made remarks at the ladies who

passed before them in words that are euphemistically called flowers in

Madrid, although at times they seem more like foul weeds. Without

heeding the furious looks of the husbands, they bandied from one to

another the sentiments and longings inspired by so many beauties.

In the reserved seats, where the ladies seemed to be afraid to venture,

as few were to be seen there, a murmur of voices prevailed amid

suppressed laughter and clouds of tobacco smoke. They discussed the

merits of the players and talked scandal, wondering if his Excellency

had quarreled with the friars, if his presence at such a show was a

defiance or mere curiosity. Others gave no heed to these matters, but

were engaged in attracting the attention of the ladies, throwing

themselves into attitudes more or less interesting and statuesque,

flashing diamond rings, especially when they thought themselves the

foci of insistent opera-glasses, while yet another would address a

respectful salute to this or that señora or señorita, at the same time

lowering his head gravely to whisper to a neighbor, “How ridiculous she

is! And such a bore!”

The lady would respond with one of her most gracious smiles and an

enchanting nod of her head, while murmuring to a friend sitting near,

amid lazy flourishes of her fan, “How impudent he is! He’s madly in

love, my dear.”

Meanwhile, the noise increased. There remained only two vacant boxes,

besides that of his Excellency, which was distinguished by its curtains

of red velvet. The orchestra played another waltz, the audience

protested, when fortunately there arose a charitable hero to distract

their attention and relieve the manager, in the person of a man who had

occupied a reserved seat and refused to give it up to its owner, the

philosopher Don Primitivo. Finding his own arguments useless, Don

Primitivo had appealed to an usher. “I don’t care to,” the hero

responded to the latter’s protests, placidly puffing at his cigarette.

The usher appealed to the manager. “I don’t care to,” was the response,

as he settled back in the seat. The manager went away, while the

artillerymen in the gallery began to sing out encouragement to the

usurper.

Our hero, now that he had attracted general attention, thought that to

yield would be to lower himself, so he held on to the seat, while he

repeated his answer to a pair of guards the manager had called in.

These, in consideration of the rebel’s rank, went in search of their

corporal, while the whole house broke out into applause at the firmness

of the hero, who remained seated like a Roman senator.

Hisses were heard, and the inflexible gentleman turned angrily to see

if they were meant for him, but the galloping of horses resounded and

the stir increased. One might have said that a revolution had broken

out, or at least a riot, but no, the orchestra had suspended the waltz

and was playing the royal march: it was his Excellency, the

Captain-General and Governor of the islands, who was entering. All eyes

sought and followed him, then lost sight of him, until he finally

appeared in his box. After looking all about him and making some

persons happy with a lordly salute, he sat down, as though he were

indeed the man for whom the chair was waiting. The artillerymen then

became silent and the orchestra tore into the prelude.

Our students occupied a box directly facing that of Pepay, the dancing

girl. Her box was a present from Makaraig, who had already got on good

terms with her in order to propitiate Don Custodio. Pepay had that very

afternoon written a note to the illustrious arbiter, asking for an

answer and appointing an interview in the theater. For this reason, Don

Custodio, in spite of the active opposition he had manifested toward

the French operetta, had gone to the theater, which action won him some

caustic remarks on the part of Don Manuel, his ancient adversary in the

sessions of the Ayuntamiento.

“I’ve come to judge the operetta,” he had replied in the tone of a Cato

whose conscience was clear.

So Makaraig was exchanging looks of intelligence with Pepay, who was

giving him to understand that she had something to tell him. As the

dancing girl’s face wore a happy expression, the students augured that

a favorable outcome was assured. Sandoval, who had just returned from

making calls in other boxes, also assured them that the decision had

been favorable, that that very afternoon the Superior Commission had

considered and approved it. Every one was jubilant, even Pecson having

laid aside his pessimism when he saw the smiling Pepay display a note.

Sandoval and Makaraig congratulated one another, Isagani alone

remaining cold and unsmiling. What had happened to this young man?

Upon entering the theater, Isagani had caught sight of Paulita in a

box, with Juanito Pelaez talking to her. He had turned pale, thinking

that he must be mistaken. But no, it was she herself, she who greeted

him with a gracious smile, while her beautiful eyes seemed to be asking

pardon and promising explanations. The fact was that they had agreed

upon Isagani’s going first to the theater to see if the show contained

anything improper for a young woman, but now he found her there, and in

no other company than that of his rival. What passed in his mind is

indescribable: wrath, jealousy, humiliation, resentment raged within

him, and there were moments even when he wished that the theater would

fall in; he had a violent desire to laugh aloud, to insult his

sweetheart, to challenge his rival, to make a scene, but finally

contented himself with sitting quiet and not looking at her at all. He

was conscious of the beautiful plans Makaraig and Sandoval were making,

but they sounded like distant echoes, while the notes of the waltz

seemed sad and lugubrious, the whole audience stupid and foolish, and

several times he had to make an effort to keep back the tears. Of the

trouble stirred up by the hero who refused to give up the seat, of the

arrival of the Captain-General, he was scarcely conscious. He stared

toward the drop-curtain, on which was depicted a kind of gallery with

sumptuous red hangings, affording a view of a garden in which a

fountain played, yet how sad the gallery looked to him and how

melancholy the painted landscape! A thousand vague recollections surged

into his memory like distant echoes of music heard in the night, like

songs of infancy, the murmur of lonely forests and gloomy rivulets,

moonlit nights on the shore of the sea spread wide before his eyes. So

the enamored youth considered himself very wretched and stared fixedly

at the ceiling so that the tears should not fall from his eyes.

A burst of applause drew him from these meditations. The curtain had

just risen, and the merry chorus of peasants of Corneville was

presented, all dressed in cotton caps, with heavy wooden sabots on

their feet. Some six or seven girls, well-rouged on the lips and

cheeks, with large black circles around their eyes to increase their

brilliance, displayed white arms, fingers covered with diamonds, round

and shapely limbs. While they were chanting the Norman phrase “Allez,

marchez! Allez, marchez!” they smiled at their different admirers in

the reserved seats with such openness that Don Custodio, after looking

toward Pepay’s box to assure himself that she was not doing the same

thing with some other admirer, set down in his note-book this

indecency, and to make sure of it lowered his head a little to see if

the actresses were not showing their knees.

“Oh, these Frenchwomen!” he muttered, while his imagination lost itself

in considerations somewhat more elevated, as he made comparisons and

projects.

“Quoi v’la tous les cancans d’la s’maine!” sang Gertrude, a proud

damsel, who was looking roguishly askance at the Captain-General.

“We’re going to have the cancan!” exclaimed Tadeo, the winner of the

first prize in the French class, who had managed to make out this word.

“Makaraig, they’re going to dance the cancan!”

He rubbed his hands gleefully. From the moment the curtain rose, Tadeo

had been heedless of the music. He was looking only for the prurient,

the indecent, the immoral in actions and dress, and with his scanty

French was sharpening his ears to catch the obscenities that the

austere guardians of the fatherland had foretold.

Sandoval, pretending to know French, had converted himself into a kind

of interpreter for his friends. He knew as much about it as Tadeo, but

the published synopsis helped him and his fancy supplied the rest.

“Yes,” he said, “they’re going to dance the cancan—she’s going to lead

it.”

Makaraig and Pecson redoubled their attention, smiling in anticipation,

while Isagani looked away, mortified to think that Paulita should be

present at such a show and reflecting that it was his duty to challenge

Juanito Pelaez the next day.

But the young men waited in vain. Serpolette came on, a charming girl,

in her cotton cap, provoking and challenging. “Hein, qui parle de

Serpolette?” she demanded of the gossips, with her arms akimbo in a

combative attitude. Some one applauded, and after him all those in the

reserved seats. Without changing her girlish attitude, Serpolette gazed

at the person who had started the applause and paid him with a smile,

displaying rows of little teeth that looked like a string of pearls in

a case of red velvet.

Tadeo followed her gaze and saw a man in a false mustache with an

extraordinarily large nose. “By the monk’s cowl!” he exclaimed. “It’s

Irene!”

“Yes,” corroborated Sandoval, “I saw him behind the scenes talking with

the actresses.”

The truth was that Padre Irene, who was a melomaniac of the first

degree and knew French well, had been sent to the theater by Padre

Salvi as a sort of religious detective, or so at least he told the

persons who recognized him. As a faithful critic, who should not be

satisfied with viewing the piece from a distance, he wished to examine

the actresses at first hand, so he had mingled in the groups of

admirers and gallants, had penetrated into the greenroom, where was

whispered and talked a French required by the situation, a market

French, a language that is readily comprehensible for the vender when

the buyer seems disposed to pay well.

Serpolette was surrounded by two gallant officers, a sailor, and a

lawyer, when she caught sight of him moving about, sticking the tip of

his long nose into all the nooks and corners, as though with it he were

ferreting out all the mysteries of the stage. She ceased her chatter,

knitted her eyebrows, then raised them, opened her lips and with the

vivacity of a Parisienne left her admirers to hurl herself like a

torpedo upon our critic.

“Tiens, tiens, Toutou! Mon lapin!” she cried, catching Padre Irene’s

arm and shaking it merrily, while the air rang with her silvery laugh.

“Tut, tut!” objected Padre Irene, endeavoring to conceal himself.

“Mais, comment! Toi ici, grosse bête! Et moi qui t’croyais—”

“’Tais pas d’tapage, Lily! Il faut m’respecter! ’Suis ici l’Pape!”

With great difficulty Padre Irene made her listen to reason, for Lily

was enchanteé to meet in Manila an old friend who reminded her of the

coulisses of the Grand Opera House. So it was that Padre Irene,

fulfilling at the same time his duties as a friend and a critic, had

initiated the applause to encourage her, for Serpolette deserved it.

Meanwhile, the young men were waiting for the cancan. Pecson became all

eyes, but there was everything except cancan. There was presented the

scene in which, but for the timely arrival of the representatives of

the law, the women would have come to blows and torn one another’s hair

out, incited thereto by the mischievous peasants, who, like our

students, hoped to see something more than the cancan.

Scit, scit, scit, scit, scit, scit,

Disputez-vous, battez-vous,

Scit, scit, scit, scit, scit, scit,

Nous allons compter les coups.

The music ceased, the men went away, the women returned, a few at a

time, and started a conversation among themselves, of which our friends

understood nothing. They were slandering some absent person.

“They look like the Chinamen of the pansiteria!” whispered Pecson.

“But, the cancan?” asked Makaraig.

“They’re talking about the most suitable place to dance it,” gravely

responded Sandoval.

“They look like the Chinamen of the pansiteria,” repeated Pecson in

disgust.

A lady accompanied by her husband entered at that moment and took her

place in one of the two vacant boxes. She had the air of a queen and

gazed disdainfully at the whole house, as if to say, “I’ve come later

than all of you, you crowd of upstarts and provincials, I’ve come later

than you!” There are persons who go to the theater like the contestants

in a mule-race: the last one in, wins, and we know very sensible men

who would ascend the scaffold rather than enter a theater before the

first act. But the lady’s triumph was of short duration—she caught

sight of the other box that was still empty, and began to scold her

better half, thus starting such a disturbance that many were annoyed.

“Ssh! Ssh!”

“The blockheads! As if they understood French!” remarked the lady,

gazing with supreme disdain in all directions, finally fixing her

attention on Juanito’s box, whence she thought she had heard an

impudent hiss.

Juanito was in fact guilty, for he had been pretending to understand

everything, holding himself up proudly and applauding at times as

though nothing that was said escaped him, and this too without guiding

himself by the actors’ pantomime, because he scarcely looked toward the

stage. The rogue had intentionally remarked to Paulita that, as there

was so much more beautiful a woman close at hand, he did not care to

strain his eyes looking beyond her. Paulita had blushed, covered her

face with her fan, and glanced stealthily toward where Isagani, silent

and morose, was abstractedly watching the show.

Paulita felt nettled and jealous. Would Isagani fall in love with any

of those alluring actresses? The thought put her in a bad humor, so she

scarcely heard the praises that Doña Victorina was heaping upon her own

favorite.

Juanito was playing his part well: he shook his head at times in sign

of disapproval, and then there could be heard coughs and murmurs in

some parts, at other times he smiled in approbation, and a second later

applause resounded. Doña Victorina was charmed, even conceiving some

vague ideas of marrying the young man the day Don Tiburcio should

die—Juanito knew French and De Espadaña didn’t! Then she began to

flatter him, nor did he perceive the change in the drift of her talk,

so occupied was he in watching a Catalan merchant who was sitting next

to the Swiss consul. Having observed that they were conversing in

French, Juanito was getting his inspiration from their countenances,

and thus grandly giving the cue to those about him.

Scene followed scene, character succeeded character, comic and

ridiculous like the bailiff and Grenicheux, imposing and winsome like

the marquis and Germaine. The audience laughed heartily at the slap

delivered by Gaspard and intended for the coward Grenicheux, which was

received by the grave bailiff, whose wig went flying through the air,

producing disorder and confusion as the curtain dropped.

“Where’s the cancan?” inquired Tadeo.

But the curtain rose again immediately, revealing a scene in a servant

market, with three posts on which were affixed signs bearing the

announcements: servantes, cochers, and domestiques. Juanito, to improve

the opportunity, turned to Doña Victorina and said in a loud voice, so

that Paulita might hear and be convinced of his learning:

“Servantes means servants, domestiques domestics.”

“And in what way do the servantes differ from the domestiques?” asked

Paulita.

Juanito was not found wanting. “Domestiques are those that are

domesticated—haven’t you noticed that some of them have the air of

savages? Those are the servantes.”

“That’s right,” added Doña Victorina, “some have very bad manners—and

yet I thought that in Europe everybody was cultivated. But as it

happens in France,—well, I see!”

“Ssh! Ssh!”

But what was Juanito’s predicament when the time came for the opening

of the market and the beginning of the sale, and the servants who were

to be hired placed themselves beside the signs that indicated their

class! The men, some ten or twelve rough characters in livery, carrying

branches in their hands, took their place under the sign domestiques!

“Those are the domestics,” explained Juanito.

“Really, they have the appearance of being only recently domesticated,”

observed Doña Victorina. “Now let’s have a look at the savages.”

Then the dozen girls headed by the lively and merry Serpolette, decked

out in their best clothes, each wearing a big bouquet of flowers at the

waist, laughing, smiling, fresh and attractive, placed themselves, to

Juanito’s great desperation, beside the post of the servantes.

“How’s this?” asked Paulita guilelessly. “Are those the savages that

you spoke of?”

“No,” replied the imperturbable Juanito, “there’s a mistake—they’ve got

their places mixed—those coming behind—”

“Those with the whips?”

Juanito nodded assent, but he was rather perplexed and uneasy.

“So those girls are the cochers?”

Here Juanito was attacked by such a violent fit of coughing that some

of the spectators became annoyed.

“Put him out! Put the consumptive out!” called a voice.

Consumptive! To be called a consumptive before Paulita! Juanito wanted

to find the blackguard and make him swallow that “consumptive.”

Observing that the women were trying to hold him back, his bravado

increased, and he became more conspicuously ferocious. But fortunately

it was Don Custodio who had made the diagnosis, and he, fearful of

attracting attention to himself, pretended to hear nothing, apparently

busy with his criticism of the play.

“If it weren’t that I am with you,” remarked Juanito, rolling his eyes

like some dolls that are moved by clockwork, and to make the

resemblance more real he stuck out his tongue occasionally.

Thus that night he acquired in Doña Victorina’s eyes the reputation of

being brave and punctilious, so she decided in her heart that she would

marry him just as soon as Don Tiburcio was out of the way. Paulita

became sadder and sadder in thinking about how the girls called cochers

could occupy Isagani’s attention, for the name had certain disagreeable

associations that came from the slang of her convent school-days.

At length the first act was concluded, the marquis taking away as

servants Serpolette and Germaine, the representative of timid beauty in

the troupe, and for coachman the stupid Grenicheux. A burst of applause

brought them out again holding hands, those who five seconds before had

been tormenting one another and were about to come to blows, bowing and

smiling here and there to the gallant Manila public and exchanging

knowing looks with various spectators.

While there prevailed the passing tumult occasioned by those who

crowded one another to get into the greenroom and felicitate the

actresses and by those who were going to make calls on the ladies in

the boxes, some expressed their opinions of the play and the players.

“Undoubtedly, Serpolette is the best,” said one with a knowing air.

“I prefer Germaine, she’s an ideal blonde.”

“But she hasn’t any voice.”

“What do I care about the voice?”

“Well, for shape, the tall one.”

“Pshaw,” said Ben-Zayb, “not a one is worth a straw, not a one is an

artist!”

Ben-Zayb was the critic for El Grito de la Integridad, and his

disdainful air gave him great importance in the eyes of those who were

satisfied with so little.

“Serpolette hasn’t any voice, nor Germaine grace, nor is that music,

nor is it art, nor is it anything!” he concluded with marked contempt.

To set oneself up as a great critic there is nothing like appearing to

be discontented with everything. Besides, the management had sent only

two seats for the newspaper staff.

In the boxes curiosity was aroused as to who could be the possessor of

the empty one, for that person, would surpass every one in chic, since

he would be the last to arrive. The rumor started somewhere that it

belonged to Simoun, and was confirmed: no one had seen the jeweler in

the reserved seats, the greenroom, or anywhere else.

“Yet I saw him this afternoon with Mr. Jouay,” some one said. “He

presented a necklace to one of the actresses.”

“To which one?” asked some of the inquisitive ladies.

“To the finest of all, the one who made eyes at his Excellency.”

This information was received with looks of intelligence, winks,

exclamations of doubt, of confirmation, and half-uttered commentaries.

“He’s trying to play the Monte Cristo,” remarked a lady who prided

herself on being literary.

“Or purveyor to the Palace!” added her escort, jealous of Simoun.

In the students’ box, Pecson, Sandoval, and Isagani had remained, while

Tadeo had gone to engage Don Custodio in conversation about his

projects, and Makaraig to hold an interview with Pepay.

“In no way, as I have observed to you before, friend Isagani,” declared

Sandoval with violent gestures and a sonorous voice, so that the ladies

near the box, the daughters of the rich man who was in debt to Tadeo,

might hear him, “in no way does the French language possess the rich

sonorousness or the varied and elegant cadence of the Castilian tongue.

I cannot conceive, I cannot imagine, I cannot form any idea of French

orators, and I doubt that they have ever had any or can have any now in

the strict construction of the term orator, because we must not confuse

the name orator with the words babbler and charlatan, for these can

exist in any country, in all the regions of the inhabited world, among

the cold and curt Englishmen as among the lively and impressionable

Frenchmen.”

Thus he delivered a magnificent review of the nations, with his

poetical characterizations and most resounding epithets. Isagani nodded

assent, with his thoughts fixed on Paulita, whom he had surprised

gazing at him with an expressive look which contained a wealth of

meaning. He tried to divine what those eyes were expressing—those eyes

that were so eloquent and not at all deceptive.

“Now you who are a poet, a slave to rhyme and meter, a son of the

Muses,” continued Sandoval, with an elegant wave of his hand, as though

he were saluting, on the horizon, the Nine Sisters, “do you comprehend,

can you conceive, how a language so harsh and unmusical as French can

give birth to poets of such gigantic stature as our Garcilasos, our

Herreras, our Esproncedas, our Calderons?”

“Nevertheless,” objected Pecson, “Victor Hugo—”

“Victor Hugo, my friend Pecson, if Victor Hugo is a poet, it is because

he owes it to Spain, because it is an established fact, it is a matter

beyond all doubt, a thing admitted even by the Frenchmen themselves, so

envious of Spain, that if Victor Hugo has genius, if he really is a

poet, it is because his childhood was spent in Madrid; there he drank

in his first impressions, there his brain was molded, there his

imagination was colored, his heart modeled, and the most beautiful

concepts of his mind born. And after all, who is Victor Hugo? Is he to

be compared at all with our modern—”

This peroration was cut short by the return of Makaraig with a

despondent air and a bitter smile on his lips, carrying in his hand a

note, which he offered silently to Sandoval, who read:

“MY DOVE: Your letter has reached me late, for I have already

handed in my decision, and it has been approved. However, as if I

had guessed your wish, I have decided the matter according to the

desires of your protégés. I’ll be at the theater and wait for you

after the performance.

“Your duckling,

“CUSTODINING.”

“How tender the man is!” exclaimed Tadeo with emotion.

“Well?” said Sandoval. “I don’t see anything wrong about this—quite the

reverse!”

“Yes,” rejoined Makaraig with his bitter smile, “decided favorably!

I’ve just seen Padre Irene.”

“What does Padre Irene say?” inquired Pecson.

“The same as Don Custodio, and the rascal still had the audacity to

congratulate me. The Commission, which has taken as its own the

decision of the arbiter, approves the idea and felicitates the students

on their patriotism and their thirst for knowledge—”

“Well?”

“Only that, considering our duties—in short, it says that in order that

the idea may not be lost, it concludes that the direction and execution

of the plan should be placed in charge of one of the religious

corporations, in case the Dominicans do not wish to incorporate the

academy with the University.”

Exclamations of disappointment greeted the announcement. Isagani rose,

but said nothing.

“And in order that we may participate in the management of the

academy,” Makaraig went on, “we are intrusted with the collection of

contributions and dues, with the obligation of turning them over to the

treasurer whom the corporation may designate, which treasurer will

issue us receipts.”

“Then we’re tax-collectors!” remarked Tadeo.

“Sandoval,” said Pecson, “there’s the gauntlet—take it up!”

“Huh! That’s not a gauntlet—from its odor it seems more like a sock.”

“The funniest, part of it,” Makaraig added, “is that Padre Irene has

advised us to celebrate the event with a banquet or a torchlight

procession—a public demonstration of the students en masse to render

thanks to all the persons who have intervened in the affair.”

“Yes, after the blow, let’s sing and give thanks. Super flumina

Babylonis sedimus!”

“Yes, a banquet like that of the convicts,” said Tadeo.

“A banquet at which we all wear mourning and deliver funeral orations,”

added Sandoval.

“A serenade with the Marseillaise and funeral marches,” proposed

Isagani.

“No, gentlemen,” observed Pecson with his clownish grin, “to celebrate

the event there’s nothing like a banquet in a pansitería, served by the

Chinamen without camisas. I insist, without camisas!”

The sarcasm and grotesqueness of this idea won it ready acceptance,

Sandoval being the first to applaud it, for he had long wished to see

the interior of one of those establishments which at night appeared to

be so merry and cheerful.

Just as the orchestra struck up for the second act, the young men arose

and left the theater, to the scandal of the whole house.