The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

CHAPTER LVII 261
In the center of the yard rose the picturesque curb of a well, roughly fashioned from living rock. A rude
apparatus of bamboo in the form of a well-sweep served for drawing up the thick, slimy, foul-smelling water.
Broken pieces of pottery, manure, and other refuse were collected there, since this well was like the jail, being
the place for what society rejected or found useless, and any object that fell into it, however good it might
have been, was then a thing lost. Yet it was never closed up, and even at times the prisoners were condemned
to go down and deepen it, not because there was any thought of getting anything useful out of such
punishment, but because of the difficulties the work offered. A prisoner who once went down there would
contract a fever from which he would surely die.
Tarsilo gazed upon all the preparations of the soldiers with a fixed look. He was pale, and his lips trembled or
murmured a prayer. The haughtiness of his desperation seemed to have disappeared or, at least, to have
weakened. Several times he bent his stiff neck and fixed his gaze on the ground as though resigned to his
sufferings. They led him to the well-curb, followed by the smiling Doña Consolacion. In his misery he cast a
glance of envy toward the heap of corpses and a sigh escaped from his breast.
"Talk now," the directorcillo again advised him. "They'll hang you anyhow. You'll at least die without
suffering so much."
"You'll come out of this only to die," added a cuadrillero.
They took away the gag and hung him up by his feet, for he must go down head foremost and remain some
time under the water, just as the bucket does, only that the man is left a longer time. While the alferez was
gone to look for a watch to count the minutes, Tarsilo hung with his long hair streaming down and his eyes
half closed.
"If you are Christians, if you have any heart," he begged in a low voice, "let me down quickly or make my
head strike against the sides so that I'll die. God will reward you for this good deed--perhaps some day you
may be as I am!"
The alferez returned, watch in hand, to superintend the lowering.
"Slowly, slowly!" cried Doña Consolacion, as she kept her gaze fixed on the wretch. "Be careful!"
The well-sweep moved gently downwards. Tarsilo rubbed against the jutting stones and filthy weeds that
grew in the crevices. Then the sweep stopped while the alferez counted the seconds.
"Lift him up!" he ordered, at the end of a half-minute. The silvery and harmonious tinkling of the drops of
water falling back indicated the prisoner's return to the light. Now that the sweep was heavier he rose rapidly.
Pieces of stone and pebbles torn from the walls fell noisily. His forehead and hair smeared with filthy slime,
his face covered with cuts and bruises, his body wet and dripping, he appeared to the eyes of the silent crowd.
The wind made him shiver with cold.
"Will you talk?" he was asked.
"Take care of my sister," murmured the unhappy boy as he gazed beseechingly toward one of the cuadrilleros.
The bamboo sweep again creaked, and the condemned boy once more disappeared. Doña Consolacion
observed that the water remained quiet. The alferez counted a minute.
When Tarsilo again came up his features were contracted and livid. With his bloodshot eyes wide open, he
looked at the bystanders.