In the midst of his busy employments, there fell upon him, early in 1888, a summons to Manila to appear before Governor-General Terrero. [[140]]
This ominous message was the first repercussion from “Noli Me Tangere”; the classes affronted in that book and burning for revenge were moving to secure it. Here between the claws of their System was the man they hated; it would go hard if he escaped where so many lesser men had perished. With what feelings he obeyed the summons he has not told us, but there can be hardly a doubt that he knew by whose manœuvers he was now in the toils. It is the most singular fact in his whole strange career that he never betrayed the least concern as to what should become of him and throughout whatsoever process might be instituted against him behaved as if it were the trial of another person of which he was only the moderately interested witness. It was so now. With unruffled self-possession he passed before the governor-general. Terrero told him bluntly of the report of the committee appointed to examine “Noli Me Tangere.” Rizal observed that the examination must have been faulty, for the book was not what the committee had called it but innocent. He made so able a defense that Terrero said finally that as for himself he had read no more of it than the extracts the committee had cited in its report, but now he should like to read it all and judge for himself, and asked for a copy of it. This modest request being (despite all fierce decrees) complied with, the governor-general hemmed a little and said he feared that great enmity had been aroused against Rizal among the classes he had described. It was enmity that might even go so far as to attempt the author’s life. For his safety, therefore, [[141]]it had been deemed wise to assign to him a body-guard so long as he should remain in the Islands.
Of this labored device Rizal might have said that it was but glass, and the very sun shone through it. Henceforth every movement he made was to be watched and reported, and here was the spy provided by the Government, clumsy-clever, as usual, and forcible-feeble.[10]
Yet even this incident, as things fell out, was to contribute something to his fame and little joy to his enemies. The body-guard assigned to him was a young Spaniard, Lieutenant José de Andrade, born into the governing class and fulfilled with all Spanish prejudices. Although his associates were of the type that Rizal had so mercilessly pilloried, so that in “Noli Me Tangere” he could hardly fail to recognize portraits of intimate friends, Lieutenant de Andrade could not more than other men withstand the singularly magnetic charm of this unusual personality.[11] From his initial status as official spy and watch-dog, he became Rizal’s devoted friend. Together they took long walking trips into the country, climbed mountains, compared notes and experiences, and recited verses. It is to be supposed that the lieutenant returned the reports he was assigned to make, but reasonably certain that they contained no matter that gratified the hatred of the reactionary element.
We have noted what frenzy of consternation seized upon that element at the lightest whisper of revolt [[142]]among the oppressed people. It was one of the invariable characteristics of the Spanish domination, an intermittent fever under the empire of which all reason or semblance of reason went to the winds and men outside the asylums acted like raving maniacs. Such manifestations of this strange psychology (only to be explained by recalling the Spaniard’s total misunderstanding of the Filipino nature) as followed the uprising of 1872 were still remembered by oppressor and oppressed. It was now revived for both as knowledge spread of this strange and powerful book. Besides the unendurable smart of its lash, the governing class saw in it consequences of the gravest import. It was standing and irrefutable evidence that the contempt for the native upon which Spanish rule proceeded was baseless; a native had created literature of the highest order. Still more alarming, it threatened to lead the way, to offer the example, to pioneer ceaseless ambuscades of the same kind, to show that the thing superstitiously held to be above all attack could be attacked safely and even with ridicule and this deadly laughter. If the author of “Noli Me Tangere” should escape without punishment, imitators might be expected on every side. Any native anywhere might take up similar weapons; hence, the white man’s supremacy in all the East was in jeopardy.
It is not easy for the Occidental mind to grasp the power this suggestion has upon men charged with the holding in subjection of vast Asiatic populations; but it is to such men always the first consideration. It must be, in fact; because their situation is so abnormal that in times of cool reflection they must wonder [[143]]at themselves. With bands of soldiers insignificant in numbers they are required to impose upon millions a sovereignty that the millions generally loathe. Diligently, then, they must support the fiction of the white man’s superiority, support it day and night without ceasing and be not too finical about means or manner. Doubtless, to many the task soon becomes congenial, so easily is race hatred bred in places out of the observation of Europe, and so strong is the addiction to it in some hearts not yet well removed from the stone age. Yet there have often appeared in these grimy scenes Europeans that instinctively hated the business and knew well enough that at bottom the real reason for dominating these subject peoples was dirty profits dirtily obtained.[12] But these very men, again and again, by the clamors about them and by the panic nature of the fears of what the aroused brown millions might do, have been swept despite themselves into acts at which their better natures revolted.
Governor-General Terrero was of this order, and even above its average. He was willing at the instigation of angry friars to assign a spy to watch Rizal but was determined to avoid the silly and stupid crime of shooting or garroting or even exiling a man whose offense was that he had written a novel some persons did not like. In other days and other administrations men had been shot or garroted or exiled on charges as flimsy, but light was breaking in Spain; even in the face of tradition and old frowning privilege, light was breaking. The first rift in the medieval eclipse was [[144]]driven by the sword of Napoleon. Slowly ever since it has been widening to echoes of the world’s advance elsewhere. In 1888 the governing class in Spain had become aware of the scorn of that world and began to feel a little the sting of it. Not much, then, nor since, as we are to see in this narrative, and might illustrate by other citations. Lo, it was this same Spain, and so late as 1909, that murdered Francisco Ferrer, the most learned man in her dominions, for but teaching her children in the manner of other nations—nations so far in the front of her that, looking back, they could scarce descry the dust of her sluggard footsteps!
PHOTOGRAPH OF AN OIL PAINTING OF HIS SISTER BY RIZAL—MISS SATURNINA RIZAL
Terrero, at least, was not indifferent to the verdict of enlightened mankind; yet the pressure upon him to take some action against this atrocious leveler and dangerous character was greater than he could withstand. It came from the power that made or broke governor-generals, the power of the orders, supreme in the Islands, supreme in Spain on any matter that related to the Islands. By the beginning of 1888 their demand had reached a point where he must compromise with it, and he “advised” Rizal to leave the Philippines at once. The word is equivocal and was meant so to be; the real significance of “advice” in this instance was an unofficial order of deportation.[13]