CHAPTER V
“NOLI ME TANGERE”
The story is of a young Filipino, Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra, whose father had wealth, was respected by the Spaniards, and wielded much influence among his own people. Juan, still in his boyhood, is sent to a school in Europe, that his education may be of the best. All prosperous Filipinos hoped to send their sons, if they had any, on this quest for the classical golden fleece. While Juan is gone his father becomes involved in a dispute with the local friar magnate, the virtual dictator of all the region about, as always; but this man brutal, arrogant, revengeful, and lawless beyond the average of his peers. The quarrel is about land; most quarrels with the friars had to do with land or rents or fees or graft or some fancied lack of crawling humility toward overblown pomp. As a rule the ill will of a friar meant for the layman involuntary exile taken at utmost speed or a persecution to the grave and without defense; it being part of the friars’ system of government that of any person that dared to offend them a salutary warning should be made. In the pursuit of this serviceable design, men put to death for alleged sedition but really because they had fallen out with the friars were sometimes quartered and hideous fragments of their bodies nailed up in the towns,[1] as in Spain five hundred years before. [[98]]
Father Damaso is the friar that the elder Ibarra has offended. The power of the System has been put forth. Ibarra, though innocent of any crime, is arrested and thrust into prison, where he is kept without examination or trial until he wilts away and dies, crying out the name of his son. All ignorant of these events, Juan comes home; he knows his father is dead, but he suspects nothing of foul play. Gradually the truth is unfolded to him. He has returned full of hope for the Islands, full of faith in their Government. Gradually he is disillusioned, as one ugly development after another shows him the blight under which his people drag out their lives.
Still he knows nothing against Father Damaso. That dark and scowling figure he greets as his father’s friend.
The views of Island life, sharp, vivid, are like those of a stereopticon or the wizard Zola. There is a native woman, Sisa, married to a worthless dog of a husband who beats her, robs her, and gets drunk. All her life centers in her two boys, Basilio and Crispin. They earn a pittance each, working for the sacristan of a church in another village, ringing the bells and cleaning the chancel. They are to come home to-night, and Sisa has been preparing something to please them, a supper with things they like to eat, earned by her hard work and self-denial. She has bought some small fishes, picked the most beautiful tomatoes in her little garden (for she knows how fond Crispin is of tomatoes), and begged from a neighbor some slices of dried wild boar’s meat and a leg of wild duck. To this she adds [[99]]the whitest of rice, which she herself has gleaned from the threshing-floors.
Then her worthless husband comes in and eats most of the boys’ supper.
Sisa says nothing, although she feels as if she herself were being eaten. His hunger at last appeased, he remembers to ask for the boys. Then Sisa smiles happily and resolves that she will not eat that night because what remains is not enough for three. The father has asked for his sons; for her that is better than a banquet.
The boys do not come, and the father goes away. At the church serious trouble has fallen upon Basilio and Crispin. The curate has accused Crispin of stealing and demands restitution; otherwise, the boy, says the humane curate, will be beaten to death. That night while their mother waits for them they are kept ringing the great bells in the church tower, for a storm is raging and it is well known that the sound of church-bells ringing keeps off the lightning. In the midst of this employment, the sacristan suddenly appears, fines the boys for not ringing in tune, renews the accusation of theft (which is quite groundless), and drags Crispin off to punishment, locking Basilio in the tower. He hears his brother’s cries for help dying out in the distance. Then he climbs the belfry, unties the ropes from the bells, ties them to the railing, lets himself out of a window to the ground, and runs home. But Crispin never appears. He has been shot and killed by a Civil Guard.