while two of the actors were singing the incarnatus est in the church at the celebration of mass on the last day of the fiesta, and all were kneeling and the priests were bowing their heads, a man whispered in ibarra’s ear: “during the ceremony of the blessing of the corner stone, do not go near the priest, do not go in the ditch, do not approach the corner stone. your life will depend on it.”
ibarra looked and saw that it was elias, the pilot, but, as soon as he had spoken, he lost himself in the crowd.
the yellow-skinned man kept his word. it was not a simple lifting crane which he had built over the ditch for the purpose of lowering the enormous block of granite. it was not the mere tripod which ?or juan had wanted for holding a tackle-block. it was something more. it was at the same time a machine and an ornament, grand and imposing.
the confusing and complicated scaffolding had been raised to a height of more than eight meters. four heavy timbers buried in the ground and supporting each other with colossal, diagonal braces, served as the base. the braces were joined to each other by immense nails, about half driven into the wood, perhaps because the apparatus was only of a provisional nature, and it could then be more easily taken down. enormous cables were hanging from all sides, giving the entire apparatus an aspect of solidity and grandeur. the top was gay with flags and banners of various colors, floating pennants, and massive garlands of flowers and leaves, all artistically interwoven.
on high, in the shade of the projecting timbers, banners and wreaths, a large three-wheeled tackle-block was suspended by ropes and iron hooks. over the shining [93]rims of these pulleys great cables passed, holding suspended in the air a massive stone. the center of this stone had been chiseled out so that when lowered upon the hollowed stone, which had already been placed in the ditch, a small enclosure would be formed between the two. this space was to contain an account of the ceremonies, newspapers, manuscripts and coins, to be transmitted, perhaps, to other generations, in the far distant future. from this tackle-block at the top of the structure, the cable passed down to another smaller pulley which was fastened at the base of the apparatus. through this pulley, the cable passed to the cylinder of a windlass which was held to the ground by massive beams. this windlass which can be operated by only two hands, multiplies man’s strength by means of a series of cog-wheels. although there is a gain in force, there is of course a loss in velocity.
“look!” said the yellow-skinned man, as he gave the crank a turn. “look, ?or juan, with my strength alone, i can raise and lower that massive block of stone. this is so nicely arranged that i can control the ascent or descent of the stone by inches. thus one man below can arrange the two stones in place, while i manipulate the apparatus from here.”
?or juan could but admire the man as he smiled in such a peculiar manner. the curious people standing about made comments and praised the yellow-skinned man for his work.
“who taught you the mechanism?” asked ?or juan.
“my father, my father who is now dead,” he replied, with that same peculiar smile.
“and who taught your father?”
“don saturnino, the grandfather of don crisostomo.”
“i did not know that don saturnino——”
“oh, he knew a good many things. not only did he know how to whip well and how to expose his workmen to the rays of the sun, but he knew also how to awaken the sleeping and how to make those awake sleep. in time, you will see what my father has taught me, you will see!”
and the yellow fellow smiled in a strange manner.
at two eating stands, there was now being prepared a sumptuous and abundant breakfast. however, on the [94]table designated for the little ones of the school, there was no wine, but instead a larger amount of fruit. in a covered passage which joined the two stands, there were seats for the musicians and a table covered with sweetmeats, candies and flasks of water, ornamented with leaves and flowers, for the thirsty public.
the crowd, resplendent in gay-colored clothes, was already fleeing from the hot rays of the sun and gathering under the shade of the trees or of the covering. the small boys climbed the trees near the place, in order to get a better view of the ceremony, and looked with envy upon the school children, who, clean and well dressed, were occupying a place designated for them. the fathers of the school children were enthusiastic. they, poor countrymen that they were, would have the pleasure of seeing their children eat on a white table cloth, just like the curate and the alcalde. merely to think of it was enough to drive away their hunger.
soon strains of music were heard in the distance. a promiscuous crowd of persons of all ages and dress was preceding the band. the yellow-looking man was uneasy and was examining the whole apparatus. a curious countryman was also following his glances and was observing every movement he made. this countryman was elias, who had also come to attend the ceremony. his hat and his style of dress almost concealed his identity. he had secured the best possible place for himself, right up close to the crane, on the edge of the excavation.
with the band of music came the alcalde, the officials of the town, the friars, with the exception of father dámaso, and the spanish employees of the government. ibarra was conversing with the alcalde, for they had become quite friendly from the time the young man paid him some high compliments on his insignia, decorations and cordon. pride in belonging to an aristocratic family was a weakness of his excellency. captain tiago, the alferez and several wealthy persons, with their shining silk hats, walked along, surrounded by a group of youngsters. father salví followed, the same as ever, silent and pensive.
the young man could feel his heart beat as they approached [95]the designated place. instinctively, he glanced at the strange-looking scaffolding which had been raised there. he saw, too, the yellow-looking man who saluted him with respect, and, for a moment, ibarra fixed his eyes on him. to his surprise, ibarra also discovered elias on the edge of the excavation. he gave the young pilot a significant look, letting him understand that he remembered what he had said in the church.
the curate put on his sacerdotal vestments and began the ceremony. the one-eyed sacristan mayor held the book and a choir boy was charged with the water-sprinkler and the vessel of blessed water. the others who stood around about, their heads uncovered, maintained a deep silence. in spite of the fact that father salví read in a low tone, it could be noticed that his voice trembled.
in the meantime the articles, such as manuscripts, newspapers, medals and coins, which were to be placed in the corner stone had been enclosed in a little glass box, and hermetically sealed in a leaden cylinder.
“se?or ibarra, do you wish to put the box in its place? the curate awaits it,” said the alcalde to ibarra.
“i would do so with much pleasure,” replied he, “but i would be usurping the honorable duty of the se?or notary. the notary ought to attest the act.”
the notary took it seriously, descended the carpeted stairs to the bottom of the excavation and, with fitting solemnity, deposited the box in the hollow which had been made in the stone. the curate then took up the sprinkler and sprinkled the stones with holy water.
the time had now come for each one to put his trowelful of mortar on the surface of the stone, which lay in the ditch, so that the other stone might fit upon it and be made to adhere to it.
ibarra presented the alcalde with a trowel, upon whose wide silver blade was engraved the date. but his excellency first delivered an address in spanish.
“citizens of san diego,” he said in a solemn tone. “i have the honor to preside at a ceremony the importance of which you already understand. a school is being founded. the school is the base of society. the school is the book in which is written the future of the people. show me [96]the schools of a people and i will tell you what those people are.
“citizens of san diego! thank god that he has given you virtuous priests; and the mother country that she untiringly diffuses her civilization over these fertile islands, protected by her glorious flag. thank god that she has had pity for you, bringing you these humble priests that they may enlighten you and teach you the divine word. thank the government for the great sacrifices it has made, makes now and will make in the future for you and your sons.
“and now that the first stone of this great edifice has been blessed, i, alcalde mayor of this province, in the name of his majesty, the king, whom god guard, king of the spains, in the name of the illustrious spanish government, and under its spotless and ever victorious banner, i consecrate this act and begin the building of this school.
“citizens of san diego! long live the king! long live spain! long live the church! long live the priests! long live the catholic religion!”
“viva! viva!” replied the others. “long live the alcalde!”
the alcalde majestically descended to the accompaniment of the music which had begun to play. he placed some trowels of mortar on the stone and with equal majesty ascended the stairs.
the government employees applauded.
ibarra offered another silver trowel to the curate, who, after fixing his eyes on him for a moment, descended slowly to the bottom of the excavation. when about half way down the stairs, he raised his eyes to look at the stone which hung suspended in the air by the powerful cables, but he only looked at it for a second and then descended. he did the same as the alcalde had done, but this time more applause was heard, for the government employees were assisted by the other friars and captain tiago.
father salví seemed to be searching for some one to whom to hand the trowel. he looked with hesitation toward maria clara, but, changing his mind, he offered [97]it to the notary. the latter, for the sake of gallantry, approached maria clara, who declined it with a smile. the friars, the government employees and the alferez, one after another went down and repeated the ceremony. captain tiago was not forgotten.
ibarra had been omitted. he was about to order the yellow man to lower the other stone, when the curate remembered him. in a pleasant tone and, with an affectation of familiarity, he said to him. “aren’t you going to put on your trowelful, se?or ibarra?”
“i would be like the fellow who made the stew and then ate it,” replied the young man in the same tone.
“o, go on!” said the alcalde, giving him a gentle push. “if you don’t, i will order them not to lower the stone and then we will have to wait here till judgment day.”
so terrible a threat forced ibarra to obey. he exchanged the small silver trowel for a larger iron one, which made some of the people smile. he advanced quietly and descended the stairs. elias looked at him with an indescribable expression. if you had seen him, you would have thought that all his life was concentrated in his eyes. the yellow man looked down into the abyss opening at his feet.
ibarra, after glancing at the stone which hung over his head, and then at elias and the yellow man, said to ?or juan in a trembling voice: “give me the bucket of mortar and find another trowel for me above.”
the young man stood alone. elias was no longer looking at him; his eyes instead were riveted on the yellow man’s hand, while the latter leaned over the ditch and followed with anxiety the movements of ibarra.
the noise of the trowel removing a mass of sand and lime was heard, accompanied by the low murmur of the employees who were congratulating the alcalde on his address.
suddenly there was a frightful creaking. the pulley which was tied to the base of the crane jumped and then the windlass struck the apparatus like a battering-ram. the timbers swayed, ropes flew into the air and, in a second, all came down with a terrible crash. a cloud of dust was raised, and a thousand cries filled the air. [98]nearly all fled; a few hurried to the ditch. only maria clara and father salví remained in their places without moving, both pale and silent.
when the cloud of dust had partially cleared away, ibarra could be seen standing among a mass of beams, bamboos, and cables, between the windlass and the massive stone, which in its descent had shaken and crushed everything. the young man was still holding the trowel in his hand, his eyes staring with fright at the dead body of a man which was lying at his feet, half buried under the timbers.
“are you hurt?—are you still alive? for god’s sake speak!” said some of the employees, full of terror.
“miracle! a miracle!” cried some.
“come and remove the body of this unfortunate man,” said ibarra, as if awakening from a dream.
on hearing his voice, maria clara felt her strength giving way and she fell, half fainting, into the arms of her friends.
great confusion reigned. everybody was talking, gesticulating, and running from one side to the other, up and down the stairs, all stupefied and full of consternation.
“who is the dead man? is he still alive?” asked the alferez.
the body was identified as the yellow workman who had been standing beside the windlass.
“let proceedings be brought against the superintendent of the work,” was the first thing that the alcalde said.
they examined the body, felt of the heart, but it was no longer beating. the blow had fallen on the head and blood was oozing from the nose, ears and mouth. some strange marks were seen on the man’s neck. there were four deep dents on one side and a single but deeper one on the other. it looked as though an iron hand had grasped it like a pair of pinchers.
the priests warmly congratulated the young man and shook his hand.
“when i think that only a few moments ago i was standing there,” said one of the employees. “say! if i had been the last! jesús!” [99]
“it makes my hair stand on end,” said another, who was bald.
ibarra had departed, to ascertain the condition of maria clara.
“let this not prevent the festival from continuing,” said the alcalde. “god be praised! the dead man is neither a priest nor a spaniard! your escape must be celebrated! just think—if the stone had fallen on you!”
“there is such a thing as a presentiment!” said the notary. “i said so. se?or ibarra was reluctant to descend. i saw it!”
“let the festival go on! give us some music! weeping will not bring the dead man to life. captain, serve warrants right here! let the clerk of the tribunal come. arrest the superintendent of the work!”
“put him in the stocks!”
“put him in the stocks! eh? some music, music! put the maestrillo in the stocks.”
“se?or alcalde,” replied ibarra gravely, “if weeping cannot bring the dead man back to life, neither can anything be gained by putting a man in prison when we do not know that he is culpable. i will give bail for him and ask that he be given liberty for some days at least.”
“well, well! but such a misfortune must not be repeated!”
all kinds of comments were circulating among the people. the theory that it was a miracle was already accepted. father salví, however, seemed to rejoice very little over the miracle, which the people attributed to a saint of his order and of his parish.
there were some who claimed to have seen, as the crane was falling, a figure dressed in black like the franciscans, go down in the ditch. it was without doubt san diego himself. it was supposed, too, that ibarra had heard mass and that the yellow man had not. it was all as clear as the light of the sun.
ibarra went home to change his clothes.
“hm! bad beginning,” said old tasio as he left the place.
ibarra had just finished dressing when a servant announced that a countryman was asking for him. supposing [100]that it was one of his laborers, the young man ordered that they show him into his study, which also served as a library and a chemical laboratory. but, to his great surprise, he met the muscular figure of the mysterious elias.
“you recently saved my life,” said he in tagalog, at once comprehending ibarra’s movement. “i have paid you only half of the debt, and you are not indebted to me; rather the contrary. i have come to ask a favor of you....”
“speak out!” replied the young man, in the same language and somewhat surprised at the gravity of the peasant.
for some seconds, elias looked fixedly into ibarra’s eyes and then replied: “if human justice should ever wish to clear up this mystery, i beg of you not to speak to any one about the warning that i gave you in the church.”
“don’t be troubled about that,” replied the young man with a certain note of displeasure in his voice. “i know that they are hunting you, but i am no informer.”
“oh, it is not for my sake, it is not for me!” exclaimed elias, not without some pride. “it is for your sake. i have nothing to fear from men.”
ibarra’s surprise increased. the tone in which the countryman was speaking was new to him and did not seem to be in accord either with his state or his fortune.
“what do you mean?” asked ibarra, interrogating the mysterious man with his look.
“i do not speak in enigmas; i try to express myself clearly. for your greater security, it is necessary that your enemies think you unsuspecting and off your guard.”
ibarra stepped back.
“my enemies? have i enemies?”
“all of us have, sir, all from the lowest insect to man, from the poorest to the richest and most powerful. enmity is the law of life. you have enemies in the highest and in the lowest ranks. you are planning a great undertaking; you have a past; your father, your grandfather had enemies because they had passion. in life it is not criminals who provoke the most hatred, but rather honorable men.”
“do you know my enemies?” [101]
elias did not reply at once, but meditated.
“i knew one, the one who has died,” he replied. “last night i discovered that something was being plotted against you, through some words that were exchanged between him and an unknown man who lost himself in the crowd. ‘the fish will not eat this one as they did his father; you will see to-morrow,’ said he. these words attracted my attention, not only on account of their meaning but because they were spoken by this man, who only a few days ago had presented himself to the superintendent of the work with the express desire that he be given charge of the work of placing the corner stone. he did not ask for a large wage, but made a great show of his knowledge. i had no sufficient reasons to attribute evil designs to him, but something told me that my suspicions were right. for this reason, in order to warn you, i chose a moment and an occasion when you could not ask me any questions. you already know the rest.”
elias was then silent for some moments; yet ibarra did not reply nor utter a word. he was meditating.
“i am sorry that the man is dead,” he replied at last. “we might have been able to learn something more about it from him.”
“if he had lived he would have escaped from the trembling hand of blind, human justice. god has now judged him! god has killed him! let god be the only judge!”
crisostomo looked a moment at the man who was speaking to him in this manner. he noticed that his muscular arms were covered with bruises and black and blue spots.
“do you also believe in the miracle version of the affair?” he said, smiling—“this miracle of which the people speak?”
“if i believed in miracles, i would not believe in god. i would believe in a deified man. in fact, i would believe that man had created god after his image and likeness,” he replied solemnly. “but i believe in him. more than once i have felt his hand. when all was falling headlong, threatening destruction for everything which was in the [102]place, i held the criminal. i put myself by his side. he was struck and i am safe and sound.”
“you? so that you...?”
“yes! i held him when he wanted to escape, once he had begun his fatal work. i saw his crime. i say: ‘let god be the only judge among men. let him be the only one who has the right to take away life. let man never think of substituting himself for him!’”
“and, still you this time....”
“no!” interrupted elias, foreseeing the objection that he was going to raise. “it is not the same thing. when a man as judge condemns another to death or destroys his future forever, he does it with impunity and makes use of the force of other men to carry out his sentence. yet, after all, the sentence may be wrong and unjust. but i, in exposing the criminal to the same danger which he had prepared for others, ran the same risks. i did not kill him. i allowed the hand of god to kill him.”
“do you not believe in chance?”
“to believe in chance is like believing in miracles. both theories suppose that god does not know the future. what is a casualty? a happening which absolutely nobody knows beforehand. what is a miracle? a contradiction, a contortion of the laws of nature. lack of foresight and contradiction in the all knowing, who directs the machinery of the world, are two great imperfections.”
“who are you?” ibarra asked again, with a certain dread. “have you studied?”
“i have had to believe in god a great deal because i have lost my faith in men,” replied the pilot, evading the question.
ibarra thought that he understood this man; young and proscribed, he disregarded human justice; denied the right of man to judge his equals, he protested against power and superiority of certain classes of men over others.
“but you must admit the necessity of human justice, however imperfect it may be,” he replied. “god, although he has ministers on the earth, cannot, that is to say, cannot clearly give his judgment upon the millions of contentions which are stirred up by our passions. it [103]is necessary, it is just, that a man should sometimes judge his fellows.”
“for good, yes; for bad, no. to correct and improve, yes; but not to destroy, for if he fails in his judgment, there is no power that can remedy the evil that has been done. but,” he added, changing his tone, “this discussion is beyond and above me, and i am keeping you from those who are now awaiting you. but do not forget what i have just said: you have enemies. take care of yourself for the good of your country!”
