第 三十三 章 · LA ULTIMA RAZÓN [69]

At last the great day arrived. During the morning Simoun had not left

his house, busied as he was in packing his arms and his jewels. His

fabulous wealth was already locked up in the big steel chest with its

canvas cover, there remaining only a few cases containing bracelets and

pins, doubtless gifts that he meant to make. He was going to leave with

the Captain-General, who cared in no way to lengthen his stay, fearful

of what people would say. Malicious ones insinuated that Simoun did not

dare remain alone, since without the General’s support he did not care

to expose himself to the vengeance of the many wretches he had

exploited, all the more reason for which was the fact that the General

who was coming was reported to be a model of rectitude and might make

him disgorge his gains. The superstitious Indians, on the other hand,

believed that Simoun was the devil who did not wish to separate himself

from his prey. The pessimists winked maliciously and said, “The field

laid waste, the locust leaves for other parts!” Only a few, a very few,

smiled and said nothing.

In the afternoon Simoun had given orders to his servant that if there

appeared a young man calling himself Basilio he should be admitted at

once. Then he shut himself up in his room and seemed to become lost in

deep thought. Since his illness the jeweler’s countenance had become

harder and gloomier, while the wrinkles between his eyebrows had

deepened greatly. He did not hold himself so erect as formerly, and his

head was bowed.

So absorbed was he in his meditations that he did not hear a knock at

the door, and it had to be repeated. He shuddered and called out, “Come

in!”

It was Basilio, but how altered! If the change that had taken place in

Simoun during those two months was great, in the young student it was

frightful. His cheeks were hollow, his hair unkempt, his clothing

disordered. The tender melancholy had disappeared from his eyes, and in

its place glittered a dark light, so that it might be said that he had

died and his corpse had revived, horrified with what it had seen in

eternity. If not crime, then the shadow of crime, had fixed itself upon

his whole appearance. Simoun himself was startled and felt pity for the

wretch.

Without any greeting Basilio slowly advanced into the room, and in a

voice that made the jeweler shudder said to him, “Señor Simoun, I’ve

been a wicked son and a bad brother—I’ve overlooked the murder of one

and the tortures of the other, and God has chastised me! Now there

remains to me only one desire, and it is to return evil for evil, crime

for crime, violence for violence!”

Simoun listened in silence, while Basilio continued; “Four months ago

you talked to me about your plans. I refused to take part in them, but

I did wrong, you have been right. Three months and a half ago the

revolution was on the point of breaking out, but I did not then care to

participate in it, and the movement failed. In payment for my conduct

I’ve been arrested and owe my liberty to your efforts only. You are

right and now I’ve come to say to you: put a weapon in my hand and let

the revolution come! I am ready to serve you, along with all the rest

of the unfortunates.”

The cloud that had darkened Simoun’s brow suddenly disappeared, a ray

of triumph darted from his eyes, and like one who has found what he

sought he exclaimed: “I’m right, yes, I’m right! Right and Justice are

on my side, because my cause is that of the persecuted. Thanks, young

man, thanks! You’ve come to clear away my doubts, to end my

hesitation.”

He had risen and his face was beaming. The zeal that had animated him

when four months before he had explained his plans to Basilio in the

wood of his ancestors reappeared in his countenance like a red sunset

after a cloudy day.

“Yes,” he resumed, “the movement failed and many have deserted me

because they saw me disheartened and wavering at the supreme moment. I

still cherished something in my heart, I was not the master of all my

feelings, I still loved! Now everything is dead in me, no longer is

there even a corpse sacred enough for me to respect its sleep. No

longer will there be any vacillation, for you yourself, an idealistic

youth, a gentle dove, understand the necessity and come to spur me to

action. Somewhat late you have opened your eyes, for between you and me

together we might have executed marvelous plans, I above in the higher

circles spreading death amid perfume and gold, brutalizing the vicious

and corrupting or paralyzing the few good, and you below among the

people, among the young men, stirring them to life amid blood and

tears. Our task, instead of being bloody and barbarous, would have been

holy, perfect, artistic, and surely success would have crowned our

efforts. But no intelligence would support me, I encountered fear or

effeminacy among the enlightened classes, selfishness among the rich,

simplicity among the youth, and only in the mountains, in the waste

places, among the outcasts, have I found my men. But no matter now! If

we can’t get a finished statue, rounded out in all its details, of the

rough block we work upon let those to come take charge!”

Seizing the arm of Basilio, who was listening without comprehending all

he said, he led him to the laboratory where he kept his chemical

mixtures. Upon the table was placed a large case made of dark shagreen,

similar to those that hold the silver plate exchanged as gifts among

the rich and powerful. Opening this, Simoun revealed to sight, upon a

bottom of red satin, a lamp of very peculiar shape, Its body was in the

form of a pomegranate as large as a man’s head, with fissures in it

exposing to view the seeds inside, which were fashioned of enormous

carnelians. The covering was of oxidized gold in exact imitation of the

wrinkles on the fruit.

Simoun took it out with great care and, removing the burner, exposed to

view the interior of the tank, which was lined with steel two

centimeters in thickness and which had a capacity of over a liter.

Basilio questioned him with his eyes, for as yet he comprehended

nothing. Without entering upon explanations, Simoun carefully took from

a cabinet a flask and showed the young man the formula written upon it.

“Nitro-glycerin!” murmured Basilio, stepping backward and instinctively

thrusting his hands behind him. “Nitro-glycerin! Dynamite!” Beginning

now to understand, he felt his hair stand on end.

“Yes, nitro-glycerin!” repeated Simoun slowly, with his cold smile and

a look of delight at the glass flask. “It’s also something more than

nitro-glycerin—it’s concentrated tears, repressed hatred, wrongs,

injustice, outrage. It’s the last resort of the weak, force against

force, violence against violence. A moment ago I was hesitating, but

you have come and decided me. This night the most dangerous tyrants

will be blown to pieces, the irresponsible rulers that hide themselves

behind God and the State, whose abuses remain unpunished because no one

can bring them to justice. This night the Philippines will hear the

explosion that will convert into rubbish the formless monument whose

decay I have fostered.”

Basilio was so terrified that his lips worked without producing any

sound, his tongue was paralyzed, his throat parched. For the first time

he was looking at the powerful liquid which he had heard talked of as a

thing distilled in gloom by gloomy men, in open war against society.

Now he had it before him, transparent and slightly yellowish, poured

with great caution into the artistic pomegranate. Simoun looked to him

like the jinnee of the Arabian Nights that sprang from the sea, he took

on gigantic proportions, his head touched the sky, he made the house

tremble and shook the whole city with a shrug of his shoulders. The

pomegranate assumed the form of a colossal sphere, the fissures became

hellish grins whence escaped names and glowing cinders. For the first

time in his life Basilio was overcome with fright and completely lost

his composure.

Simoun, meanwhile, screwed on solidly a curious and complicated

mechanism, put in place a glass chimney, then the bomb, and crowned the

whole with an elegant shade. Then he moved away some distance to

contemplate the effect, inclining his head now to one side, now to the

other, thus better to appreciate its magnificent appearance.

Noticing that Basilio was watching him with questioning and suspicious

eyes, he said, “Tonight there will be a fiesta and this lamp will be

placed in a little dining-kiosk that I’ve had constructed for the

purpose. The lamp will give a brilliant light, bright enough to suffice

for the illumination of the whole place by itself, but at the end of

twenty minutes the light will fade, and then when some one tries to

turn up the wick a cap of fulminate of mercury will explode, the

pomegranate will blow up and with it the dining-room, in the roof and

floor of which I have concealed sacks of powder, so that no one shall

escape.”

There wras a moment’s silence, while Simoun stared at his mechanism and

Basilio scarcely breathed.

“So my assistance is not needed,” observed the young man.

“No, you have another mission to fulfill,” replied Simoun thoughtfully.

“At nine the mechanism will have exploded and the report will have been

heard in the country round, in the mountains, in the caves. The

uprising that I had arranged with the artillerymen was a failure from

lack of plan and timeliness, but this time it won’t be so. Upon hearing

the explosion, the wretched and the oppressed, those who wander about

pursued by force, will sally forth armed to join Cabesang Tales in

Santa Mesa, whence they will fall upon the city, [70] while the

soldiers, whom I have made to believe that the General is shamming an

insurrection in order to remain, will issue from their barracks ready

to fire upon whomsoever I may designate. Meanwhile, the cowed populace,

thinking that the hour of massacre has come, will rush out prepared to

kill or be killed, and as they have neither arms nor organization, you

with some others will put yourself at their head and direct them to the

warehouses of Quiroga, where I keep my rifles. Cabesang Tales and I

will join one another in the city and take possession of it, while you

in the suburbs will seize the bridges and throw up barricades, and then

be ready to come to our aid to butcher not only those opposing the

revolution but also every man who refuses to take up arms and join us.”

“All?” stammered Basilio in a choking voice.

“All!” repeated Simoun in a sinister tone. “All—Indians, mestizos,

Chinese, Spaniards, all who are found to be without courage, without

energy. The race must be renewed! Cowardly fathers will only breed

slavish sons, and it wouldn’t be worth while to destroy and then try to

rebuild with rotten materials. What, do you shudder? Do you tremble, do

you fear to scatter death? What is death? What does a hecatomb of

twenty thousand wretches signify? Twenty thousand miseries less, and

millions of wretches saved from birth! The most timid ruler does not

hesitate to dictate a law that produces misery and lingering death for

thousands and thousands of prosperous and industrious subjects, happy

perchance, merely to satisfy a caprice, a whim, his pride, and yet you

shudder because in one night are to be ended forever the mental

tortures of many helots, because a vitiated and paralytic people has to

die to give place to another, young, active, full of energy!

“What is death? Nothingness, or a dream? Can its specters be compared

to the reality of the agonies of a whole miserable generation? The

needful thing is to destroy the evil, to kill the dragon and bathe the

new people in the blood, in order to make it strong and invulnerable.

What else is the inexorable law of Nature, the law of strife in which

the weak has to succumb so that the vitiated species be not perpetuated

and creation thus travel backwards? Away then with effeminate scruples!

Fulfill the eternal laws, foster them, and then the earth will be so

much the more fecund the more it is fertilized with blood, and the

thrones the more solid the more they rest upon crimes and corpses. Let

there be no hesitation, no doubtings! What is the pain of death? A

momentary sensation, perhaps confused, perhaps agreeable, like the

transition from waking to sleep. What is it that is being destroyed?

Evil, suffering—feeble weeds, in order to set in their place luxuriant

plants. Do you call that destruction? I should call it creating,

producing, nourishing, vivifying!”

Such bloody sophisms, uttered with conviction and coolness, overwhelmed

the youth, weakened as he was by more than three months in prison and

blinded by his passion for revenge, so he was not in a mood to analyze

the moral basis of the matter. Instead of replying that the worst and

cowardliest of men is always something more than a plant, because he

has a soul and an intelligence, which, however vitiated and brutalized

they may be, can be redeemed; instead of replying that man has no right

to dispose of one life for the benefit of another, that the right to

life is inherent in every individual like the right to liberty and to

light; instead of replying that if it is an abuse on the part of

governments to punish in a culprit the faults and crimes to which they

have driven him by their own negligence or stupidity, how much more so

would it be in a man, however great and however unfortunate he might

be, to punish in a wretched people the faults of its governments and

its ancestors; instead of declaring that God alone can use such

methods, that God can destroy because He can create, God who holds in

His hands recompense, eternity, and the future, to justify His acts,

and man never; instead of these reflections, Basilio merely interposed

a cant reflection.

“What will the world say at the sight of such butchery?”

“The world will applaud, as usual, conceding the right of the

strongest, the most violent!” replied Simoun with his cruel smile.

“Europe applauded when the western nations sacrificed millions of

Indians in America, and not by any means to found nations much more

moral or more pacific: there is the North with its egotistic liberty,

its lynch-law, its political frauds—the South with its turbulent

republics, its barbarous revolutions, civil wars, pronunciamientos, as

in its mother Spain! Europe applauded when the powerful Portugal

despoiled the Moluccas, it applauds while England is destroying the

primitive races in the Pacific to make room for its emigrants. Europe

will applaud as the end of a drama, the close of a tragedy, is

applauded, for the vulgar do not fix their attention on principles,

they look only at results. Commit the crime well, and you will be

admired and have more partizans than if you had carried out virtuous

actions with modesty and timidity.”

“Exactly,” rejoined the youth, “what does it matter to me, after all,

whether they praise or censure, when this world takes no care of the

oppressed, of the poor, and of weak womankind? What obligations have I

to recognize toward society when it has recognized none toward me?”

“That’s what I like to hear,” declared the tempter triumphantly. He

took a revolver from a case and gave it to Basilio, saying, “At ten

o’clock wait for me in front of the church of St. Sebastian to receive

my final instructions. Ah, at nine you must be far, very far from Calle

Anloague.”

Basilio examined the weapon, loaded it, and placed it in the inside

pocket of his coat, then took his leave with a curt, “I’ll see you

later.”