CHAPTER 57
My joys fell in a well.
Civil guards paced in front of the courthouse door. They had a sinister air, and threatened to thrash with the butt of their rifles the boldest of the little kids who got on tiptoe or on one another’s backs to see something through the bars.
The main room no longer offered the lively atmosphere it had when they were discussing the festival program. Now it is somber, and not at all calming. The civil guards and militiamen inside speak little and, even then, softly, with few words. The town clerk, two scribes, and several soldiers scribble on papers lying on the desk. The ensign paces from one side to the other, from time to time ferociously staring at the door. Themistocles himself had not seemed so proud at the Olympic games after the battle of Salamina.
253 In one corner Doña Consolación yawned, showing off several black fauces and a broken dentifrice, her cold, sinister glare fixed on the jailhouse door, which was covered with indecent drawings. She had succeeded in getting her husband, whose victory had made him amenable, to let her attend the interrogation and perhaps the tortures to follow. The hyena smelled the corpse and any delay in its execution was a bother.
The mayor was compunctious. His chair, that large chair located beneath the portrait of His Majesty, is empty and seems to be meant for someone else.
About nine, the priest arrives, pale and frowning.
“Well, you shouldn’t have made us wait!” the ensign says to him.
“I preferred not to be here,” Father Salví answers softly, paying no attention to his sour tone. “My nerves.”
“No one has come since they did not want to leave their posts, in my judgment your presence . . . you know they are leaving this afternoon.”
“Young Ibarra and the deputy mayor . . .”
The ensign gestured toward the jail.
“There are eight inside,” he said. “Bruno died at midnight, but his statement is recorded.”
The priest greeted Doña Consolación, who responded with a yawn and an “aah,” and sat down in the chair beneath His Majesty’s portrait.
“We can begin,” he replied.
“Bring out the two who are in the stocks!” the ensign ordered in the most terrible voice he could muster and, turning back to the priest, he added, changing his tone, “We have them in the hole-straddles.”
For those not privy to instruments of torture, we will tell them that the stocks are among the most innocent. The holes into which they put the prisoner’s legs measure more or less one palm wide. To straddle two holes, the prisoner finds himself in a somewhat forced position, with a singular discomfort in his ankles, which stretches the lower extremities more than a yard. Death is not quick, as one can imagine.
The jailer, followed by four soldiers, pulled back the bolt and opened the door. A nauseating odor and thick, moist air emerged from the thick darkness; at the same time, several moans and groans could be heard. One soldier lit a match, but the flame went out in the foul and corrupt air, and they had to wait until it was fresher.
In the vague light of a candle a few human forms could be distinguished: men hugging their knees and hiding their heads between them, lying facedown, standing, facing the wall, and so on. One could hear blows and teeth being ground, accompanied by swearing. They opened the stocks.
Doña Consolación was bent half-forward, the muscles in her neck taut, her bulging eyes cleaved to the half-open door.
A somber figure came out between two soldiers: Társilo, Bruno’s brother. He was handcuffed; his clothes were rent, revealing a well-muscled torso. He stared insolently at the ensign’s wife.
“This is the one who defended his friends the most bravely and ordered them to retreat,” the ensign said to Father Salví.
Behind him came another one, looking miserable, moaning and sobbing like a child. He limped, his pants stained with blood.
“Have pity on me, señor, have pity on me! I’ll never enter the patio again!” he shouted.
“He’s a rascal,” the ensign noted, speaking to the priest. “He wanted to run away, but his leg was injured. These two are the only ones we took alive.”
“What’s your name?” the ensign asked Társilo.
“Társilo Alasigan.”
“What did Don Crisóstomo promise you if you attacked the barracks?”
“Don Crisóstomo never had any contact with us.”
“Don’t deny it! That’s why you tried to take us by surprise!”
“You’re wrong. You beat our father to death. We wanted revenge, nothing else. Go ask your two friends.”
The ensign looked at the sergeant with surprise.
“They’re over there, on that rocky crag. That’s where we threw them yesterday. That’s where they’ll rot. Now kill me. You won’t get anything else out of me.”
Silence and general surprise.
“You’re going to tell us who your accomplices are,” the ensign threatened, brandishing a baton.
A scornful smile crept onto the culprit’s lips.
The ensign spoke quietly with the priest for a few moments and then turned back to the soldiers.
“Take him to where the bodies are!” he ordered.
In a corner of the patio, on an old cart, five bodies were piled up, half covered with a piece of broken, fetid matting. A soldier paced from one end to the other, spitting constantly.
“Do you know them?” the ensign asked, lifting the mat.
Társilo did not respond. He saw the body of the madwoman’s husband with two others, his brother’s, pierced by bayonets, and that of Lucas, a noose around his neck. His expression again became somber and a sigh seemed to come from his chest.
“You know them?” they asked him again.
Társilo remained silent.
A whistling split the air and the baton hit his back. He shuddered, his muscles contracting. The caning was repeated but Társilo remained impassive.
“Beat him until either he bursts open or tells us something!” the ensign shouted in exasperation.
“Talk already!” the town clerk says to him. “They’ll kill you anyway.”
They brought him back to the main room, where the other prisoner was invoking the saints, his teeth chattering, crossing his legs.
“Do you know him?” he asked Father Salví.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him,” Társilo answered, looking at the other man with compassion.
The ensign punched and kicked him.
“Tie him to the bench!”
Without taking off the handcuffs, which were stained with blood, he was tied down to the wooden bench. The unhappy man looked all around him, as if searching for something, and spied Doña Consolación. He laughed sardonically. Surprised, everyone followed his stare and saw the lady, who was gnawing lightly on her lips.
“I’ve never seen an uglier woman,” Társilo exclaimed amid the general silence. “I’d rather lie on this bench than next to her, like the ensign.”
The Muse turned pale.
“You are going to beat me to death, Señor Ensign,” he went on, “but tonight your wife will take revenge for me with her embraces.”
“Gag him!” the ensign shouted, furious and shaking with anger.
It seems that Társilo had wanted to be gagged, since when it was done, his eyes showed a ray of satisfaction.
At the ensign’s signal, a guard armed with a baton began his unhappy task. Társilo’s entire body contracted. Despite the cloth covering his mouth, a repressed and prolonged roaring came out. He lowered his head, his clothes were stained with blood.
Father Salví, pale, his eyes averted, rose with difficulty, gestured with his hand, and left the room, walking unsteadily. In the street he saw a young woman leaning against the wall, stiff, motionless, listening attentively, looking into space, her clenched hands against the old wall. She was bathed in sunlight. She was counting, seemingly without taking a breath, the dry, deaf blows and that heartrending moaning. It was Társilo’s sister.
Meanwhile, in the central room the scene went on. The unhappy man, overcome by pain, was silent, waiting for his executioners to tire. Finally, the soldier dropped his exhausted arm. The ensign, pale with anger and consternation, signaled them to untie him.
Doña Consolación got up and whispered a few words into her husband’s ear; he nodded to show he understood.
“To the well with him!”
Filipinos know what this means. In Tagalog it is translated as timbaín. We don’t know who could possibly have invented the procedure, but we judge it must be fairly old. “Truth emerging from a well” is the sarcastic interpretation, perhaps.
In the center of the courthouse patio the picturesque bushing of a well rises, an ugly fabrication of brilliant stone. A crude bamboo apparatus made in the shape of a lever is used to draw water, viscous, dirty, and malodorous. Broken crockery, rubbish, and other liquids mix there, so the well was like the jail, where whatever society tosses aside or considers unuseful ends up. Whatever falls in, though it may once have been worthwhile, is lost forever. However, they never ignore it completely. At times they condemn the prisoners to dig down to deepen it, not because they expect to take from such punishment something useful, but for the difficulties the work itself provides. Once a prisoner has gone down into it, he develops a fever, and more often than not, he dies.
Társilo contemplated the soldiers’ preparations with a prolonged stare. He was very pale, and either his lips were trembling or he was whispering a prayer. The height of his desperation seemed to have disappeared or, at the least, weakened. Several times his straight neck doubled over and he fixed his stare on the ground, resigned to suffering.
They took him to the side of the bushing, followed by Doña Consolación, who was smiling. The unfortunate man shot a look of envy at the pile of corpses and he let out a sigh.
“Talk already!” the town clerk said to him again. “They’ll hang you anyway. At least you’ll die without suffering so much.”
“They only pull you out of here to die,” a militiaman said to him.
They took off the gag and hung him by his feet. He would descend headfirst and remain some time underwater, the same as they do with a bucket, but a longer time for a man.
The ensign went off to get a watch and count the minutes.
Meanwhile Társilo hung, his long hair waving in the breeze, his eyes half-shut.
“If you are Christians, if you have a heart,” he begged softly, “lower me quickly or in a way that my head hits a wall and I die. God will reward such good deeds . . . Maybe someday you’ll be in my position!”
The ensign returned and presided over the descent, watch in hand.
“Slowly, slowly,” Doña Consolación shouted as she followed the unhappy man with her eyes. “Careful!”
The lever went down slowly. Társilo scraped against the protruding rocks and the filthy plants that grew in the cracks. Then the lever stopped moving. The ensign counted the seconds.
“Up!” he ordered the corporal dryly, after a half minute.
The silvery and harmonious sound of drops of water falling into water announced the prisoner’s return to light. This time, since the weight of the balance was greater, it came up quickly. The rough stones and cobbles pulled from the walls fell with a crash.
His forehead and hair covered with disgusting muck, his face full of cuts and scrapes, his body wet and dripping, he came into view for the silent gathering. The wind made him shiver from the cold.
“Do you want to tell us anything?” they asked him.
“Take care of my sister!” the unfortunate man murmured, with a pleading look at a militiaman.
The bamboo lever creaked anew and the condemned man again disappeared. Doña Consolación noted that the water remained calm. The ensign counted off one minute.
When Társilo came back up, his features were constricted and purple. He looked toward the people standing around, his eyes staying open, filled with blood.
“Are you going to tell us anything?” the ensign asked again breathlessly.
Társilo shook his head and they sent him down again. His eyelids closed slowly, the pupils continued staring at the sky where white clouds floated by. He craned his neck to see the daylight, but soon he had to lower it into the water, and the spectacle of the world dropped its notorious curtain.
A minute passed. The Muse, ever watchful, saw thick bubbles rise to the surface.
“He’s thirsty!” she said, laughing.
The water again became calm.
This time it lasted a minute and a half until the ensign signaled.
Társilo’s features were no longer constricted. His half-open eyelids let them see the bottom of the whites of his eyes. Watery muck with threads of blood dripped from his mouth. The cold wind blew, but his body no longer shivered.
Everyone looked on in silence, pale and dismayed. The ensign signaled to take him down and then went off pensively. Doña Consolación stubbed the burning butt of her cigarette against his naked legs, but the body did not shake and the fire went out.
“He choked himself!” a militiaman murmured. “Look how his tongue is folded back, as if he were trying to swallow it.”
The other prisoner contemplated the scene, trembling and sweating. He looked around every which way, like a madman.
The ensign charged the town clerk with interrogating him.
“Señor, señor,” he moaned, “I’ll say anything you want!”
“Fine. Let’s see. What’s your name!”
“Andong, señor.”
“Bernardo . . . Leonardo . . . Ricardo . . . Eduardo . . . Gerardo . . . or what?”
“Andong, señor!” the imbecile repeated.
“Mark down Bernardo or whatever,” the ensign decided.
“Last name?”
The man looked at him, terrified.
“What name do you have, what do they add to the name Andong?”
“Ah, señor, Andong Half-wit, señor!”
The onlookers could not contain their laughter. The ensign himself stopped pacing.
“Occupation?”
“Coconut tree pruner and my mother-in-law’s servant.”
“Who told you to attack the barracks?”
“No one, señor!”
“What do you mean ‘no one’? Don’t lie, or we’ll put you in the well. Who told you to do it? Tell the truth!”
“The truth, señor!”
“Who?”
“Who, señor?”
“I ask you who ordered you to revolt?”
“What revolt, señor?”
“All right, why were you on the barracks patio last night?”
“Ah, señor!” Andong exclaimed, turning red.
“Who is guilty of that?”
“My mother-in-law, señor!”
Laughter and surprise followed these words. The ensign stopped and without any harshness in his eyes he looked at the unfortunate man, who, thinking his words had produced good effect, went on with ever more animation.
“Yes, señor. My mother-in-law only gives me rotten, inedible food to eat. Last night, when I came home, my stomach hurt. I saw the barracks patio nearby and I said to myself, ‘It’s nighttime. No one will see you.’ I went in . . . and when I got up, shots were being fired. I tied my shoes . . .”
A blow from the baton cut him off.
“To the cell!” the commander commanded. “And this afternoon to the executioner!”