CHAPTER 45
THE PERSECUTED
By the weak light the moon casts among the thick branches of the trees a man picks his way through the forest, with a slow and gentle step. From time to time, in order to reorient himself, he whistles a particular melody, which is more often than not answered by someone far off, who whistles the same air. The man listens attentively, and then continues on his way, toward that far-off sound.
Finally, past the thousand hurdles a virgin forest offers by night, he reaches a small clearing bathed in the light of a first-quarter moon. Rising about him are high rocks, crowned by trees, which form a sort of amphitheater of ruins. New-cut timber fills the center, its trunks scorched, mixed in with enormous boulders, which nature has half-covered with a mantle of greenery.
The stranger had barely arrived when another figure suddenly popped out from behind a rock. He comes forward and, taking out a revolver, asks in Tagalog, “Who’s there?” His voice is imperious. He cocks the weapon’s hammer.
“Is old Pablo with you?” the first man asked in a calm voice, without answering the question, and without being intimidated.
“You mean the captain? Yes, he’s here.”
“Tell him Elías is looking for him,” said the man, who was none other than the mysterious boatman.
“Is that you, Elías?” the other man asked with a certain respect. He came closer, still keeping him at gunpoint. “Okay, come on.”
Elías followed him.
They went into a kind of cave, which descended into the depths of the earth. The guide knew the way, and warned the boatman whenever it was necessary to head downward, duck, or bend over. Even so, they were not long in coming to a kind of open room poorly lit by tar torches and occupied by twelve or fifteen armed men with dirty faces and ragged clothing, some sitting, others lying down, barely talking to one another. His elbows perched on a rock, which served him as a table, and thoughtfully contemplating the light that illuminated so little because of so much smoke, an old man with a sad face came into focus, his head wrapped in a bloody rag. If we didn’t know this was a bandits’ cave, we would say, by the look of desperation on the old man’s face, that it was the Tower of Hunger on the eve of Ugolino’s devouring his young.
235When Elías and his guide came in, the men rose en masse, but at the latter’s signal they quieted down, and were content to simply stare at the unarmed boatman.
The old man slowly turned his head, and came upon Elías’s serious expression, at which he stared, bareheaded, full of sadness and curiosity.
“Is it you?” asked the old man, whose face lit up when he recognized the young man.
“What conditions to find you in!” whispered Elías softly, shaking his head.
The old man hung his head in silence. He gave the men a sign, and they got up and left, but not without first looking over to take the measure of the boatman’s height and muscularity.
“Yes,” the old man said to Elías when they were alone. “Six months ago, when I hid you in my home, it was I who felt sorry for you. Now our fortunes are reversed and you feel sorry for me. But sit down and tell me what brings you here.”
“Fifteen days ago I was told about your misfortune,” the young man answered softly, looking at the light. “I immediately took to the road and I’ve been looking for you all through the mountains. I’ve scoured almost two provinces.”
“I had to get away so innocent blood would not be shed. My enemies were afraid to face me so they used a few unfortunate - people, but they didn’t do me the least harm.”
Elías took advantage of a brief pause to read the thoughts in the shadows of the old man’s face, and began again.
“I’ve come to propose something to you. After having looked all over for the remnants of the family that caused my own such misfortune, I’ve decided to leave the province in which I live, to emigrate to the north and live among the free, pagan tribes. Would you like to quit this life you’ve begun and come with me? I’ll be your son, since you’ve lost your own, and I, who have no family, will find a father in you.”
The old man shook his head and said, “At my age, when you make a decision out of desperation, it’s because there’s no other way. A man who, like me, has spent his youth and maturity working for his own future and for that of his children, a man who has been at the beck and call of his superiors, who has carried out difficult tasks conscientiously, who has suffered his whole life in peace and in the possibility of tranquility, when this man, whose blood has been made cold by time, renounces at the brink of the grave his entire past and his entire future, it’s because he’s made the mature judgment that peacefulness neither exists nor is the supreme good. Why would I live out such miserable days in a foreign land? I had two sons and one daughter, a home, a fortune. I benefited from respect and esteem. But now I’m like a tree shorn of its limbs, a wandering fugitive, hunted like a wild animal in the forest, and everything that goes along with it. And why? Because a man undid my daughter, because her brothers demanded this man make restitution, and because the man’s station was above everyone else’s, with the title of God’s minister. Even with all that, I, a father, I, dishonored in my old age, I forgave that injury, I indulged the passions of youth and the weaknesses of the flesh, and in the face of an irreparable injury, what could I do but keep my mouth shut and hang on to what I had left? But that criminal feared some forthcoming revenge, so he sought to have my sons condemned. Do you know what he did? No? Do you know he faked a robbery in the parish house, and one of my sons was among the accused? They couldn’t include the other one because he wasn’t there. Do you know the tortures they submitted him to? Of course you know them because they are the same in every town. I myself saw my son hung by his hair, I heard his screams, I heard him calling out to me, and I, a coward accustomed to his peacefulness, had neither the strength to kill or to be killed. Do you know the robbery was never proven, that the calumny was unmasked and the priest was transferred to another town, and that my son died as a result of those tortures? The other one, the one whom I had left, unlike his father, was not a coward; the executioner was afraid he might avenge his brother’s death, so under the pretext of his not having his identity papers, which he had forgotten for the moment, he was arrested by the Civil Guard, mistreated, abused, and the severity of his injuries brought him to the point of suicide. And I, I have survived, though after so much shame, and I haven’t a father’s strength to defend my sons, would that enough heart remained to me to avenge my sons! The disaffected ones are coming together under my command, my enemies themselves increase my armies, and the day I consider myself strong, I will go down onto the plains and put out the fire of my vengeance and my own existence! That day will come, or there is no God!”
Agitated, the old man stood up. With flashing eyes and a booming voice he added, tearing at his hair, “A curse, a curse on me! I held back my sons’ vengeful hand! I killed them! The guilty one should have died. I might have believed less in God’s justice and in man’s justice, but I would have my sons now, fugitives perhaps, but I would have them and they would not have died in torture! I was not born to be a father, that’s why I don’t have them! A curse on me for not learning to know the medium in which I lived for all these years! But with fire and blood and my own death I will now learn how to take revenge!”
The unfortunate father ripped off his bandage in a fury of pain, reopening the wound on his forehead, and a well of blood gushed out.
“I respect your pain,” Elías replied, “and I understand your revenge. I am like you. However, for fear of hurting an innocent person, I prefer to forget my unhappiness.”
“You’re able to forget because you’re young and you haven’t lost a son, your ultimate hope! But I assure you I won’t harm any innocent people. Do you see this wound? I let this happen in order to avoid killing a poor militiaman who was only doing his duty.”
“But look,” Elías said after a moment of silence, “look at what a terrifying conflagration you’re going to unleash on our poor - people. If you carry out your revenge by your own hand, your enemies will make terrible reprisals, not against you, not against those who are armed, but against the people who are always accused, and then, how many injustices will there be!”
“The people should learn to defend themselves. Everyone should learn to defend himself.”
“You know that’s impossible. I knew you in other times, when you were happy, and when your advice to me was judicious. If you will allow me . . .”
The old man crossed his arms, as if he were waiting.
“I have had,” Elías went on, measuring his words, “the good fortune to have been able to provide a service to a rich young man with a good, noble heart, who seeks the well-being of his country. They say this young man has friends in Madrid. I don’t know, but I can assure you he’s a good friend of the Captain General. What would you say if we made him spokesman for the people’s complaints, if we can interest him in the cause of those who are discontented?”
The old man shook his head.
“You say he’s rich. Rich people only think about getting richer. Pride and pomp make them blind, and though in general they are all right, and especially when they have powerful friends, none of them bothers about the less fortunate. I know, because I was rich.”
“But the man I’m talking about is not like the others. He’s the son of a man whose memory has been trampled on. He is a young man, and since he is going to have a family soon he is thinking about the future, a bright future for his children.”
“Then he’s a man who is going to be happy. Our cause is not for happy men.”
“But he’s a man with heart!”
“So?” the old man replied as he sat down. “Suppose he agrees to speak on our behalf to the Captain General. Suppose he finds deputies in the legislature who advocate on our behalf, do you think that will bring us justice?”
“Let’s try it before we use bloodier means,” Elías answered. “It must seem odd to you that I, wretched like you, and young and strong, am proposing peaceful measures to you, a weak, old man. But I have seen so much misery, caused as much by us as by these tyrants. It’s the defenseless who pay the price.”
“And if we accomplish nothing?”
“We’ll accomplish something, believe me. Not everyone in power is unjust. And if we accomplish nothing, if they refuse to hear our voice, if man has become deaf to the pain of his fellow citizens, then you will have me to command.”
The old man, full of enthusiasm, hugged the young man.
“I accept your proposal, Elías. I know you’ll keep your word. Come to me and I will help you avenge your ancestors. You will help me avenge my children, my children who were so much like you.”
“In the meantime, we’ll avoid violence.”
“You outline the people’s complaints, which you already know. When will you get an answer?”
“In four days send a man to the beach at San Diego and I’ll tell him what the person in whom I’ve placed my hopes has afforded me . . . If he accepts, there will be justice and if not, I will be the first one to fall in for the struggle we will undertake.”
“Elías will not die, and when Captain Pablo falls, satisfied by his revenge, Elías will lead,” the old man said.
He himself accompanied the young man until he was outside.