The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

CHAPTER LVI 256
"We mustn't touch him until some officer of the law arrives," he said aloud. "He's already stiff, he's been dead
for some time."
The women gradually moved closer.
"He's the fellow who lived in that little house there. He came here two weeks ago. Look at the scar on his
face."
"Ave Maria!" exclaimed some of the women.
"Shall we pray for his soul?" asked a young woman, after she had finished staring and examining the body.
"Fool, heretic!" scolded Sister Puté. "Don't you know what Padre Damaso said? It's tempting God to pray for
one of the damned. Whoever commits suicide is irrevocably damned and therefore he isn't buried in holy
ground."
Then she added, "I knew that this man was coming to a bad end; I never could find out how he lived."
"I saw him twice talking with the senior sacristan," observed a young woman.
"It wouldn't be to confess himself or to order a mass!"
Other neighbors came up until a large group surrounded the corpse, which was still swinging about. After half
an hour, an alguazil and the directorcillo arrived with two cuadrilleros, who took the body down and placed it
on a stretcher.
"People are getting in a hurry to die," remarked the directorcillo with a smile, as he took a pen from behind his
ear.
He made captious inquiries, and took down the statement of the maidservant, whom he tried to confuse, now
looking at her fiercely, now threatening her, now attributing to her things that she had not said, so much so
that she, thinking that she would have to go to jail, began to cry and wound up by declaring that she wasn't
looking for peas but and she called Teo as a witness.
While this was taking place, a rustic in a wide salakot with a big bandage on his neck was examining the
corpse and the rope. The face was not more livid than the rest of the body, two scratches and two red spots
were to be seen above the noose, the strands of the rope were white and had no blood on them. The curious
rustic carefully examined the camisa and pantaloons, and noticed that they were very dusty and freshly torn in
some parts. But what most caught his attention were the seeds of amores-secos that were sticking on the
camisa even up to the collar.
"What are you looking at?" the directorcillo asked him. "I was looking, sir, to see if I could recognize him,"
stammered the rustic, partly uncovering, but in such a way that his salakot fell lower.
"But haven't you heard that it's a certain Lucas? Were you asleep?"
The crowd laughed, while the abashed rustic muttered a few words and moved away slowly with his head
down.
"Here, where you going?" cried the old man after him.
"That's not the way out. That's the way to the dead man's house."