The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home
The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home
The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home
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CHAPTER V 42<br />
CHAPTER V<br />
A Star in a Dark Night<br />
Ibarra went to his room, which overlooked the river, and dropping into a chair gazed out into the vast expanse<br />
of the heavens spread before him through the open window. <strong>The</strong> house on the opposite bank was profusely<br />
lighted, and gay strains of music, largely from stringed instruments, were borne across the river even to his<br />
room.<br />
If the young man had been less preoccupied, if he had had more curiosity and had cared to see with his opera<br />
glasses what was going on in that atmosphere of light, he would have been charmed with one of those magical<br />
and fantastic spectacles, the like of which is sometimes seen in the great theaters of Europe. To the subdued<br />
strains of the orchestra there seems to appear in the midst of a shower of light, a cascade of gold and diamonds<br />
in an Oriental setting, a deity wrapped in misty gauze, a sylph enveloped in a luminous halo, who moves<br />
forward apparently without touching the floor. In her presence the flowers bloom, the dance awakens, the<br />
music bursts forth, and troops of devils, nymphs, satyrs, demons, angels, shepherds and shepherdesses, dance,<br />
shake their tambourines, and whirl about in rhythmic evolutions, each one placing some tribute at the feet of<br />
the goddess. Ibarra would have seen a beautiful and graceful maiden, clothed in the picturesque garments of<br />
the daughters of the Philippines, standing in the center Of a semicircle made up of every class of people,<br />
Chinese, Spaniards, Filipinos, soldiers, curates, old men and young, all gesticulating and moving about in a<br />
lively manner. Padre Damaso stood at the side of the beauty, smiling like one especially blessed. Fray<br />
Si<strong>by</strong>la--yes, Fray Si<strong>by</strong>la himself--was talking to her. Doña Victorina was arranging in the magnificent hair of<br />
the maiden a string of pearls and diamonds which threw out all the beautiful tints of the rainbow. She was<br />
white, perhaps too much so, and whenever she raised her downcast eyes there shone forth a spotless soul.<br />
When she smiled so as to show her small white teeth the beholder realized that the rose is only a flower and<br />
ivory but the elephant's tusk. From out the filmy piña draperies around her white and shapely neck there<br />
blinked, as the Tagalogs say, the bright eyes of a collar of diamonds. One man only in all the crowd seemed<br />
insensible to her radiant influence--a young Franciscan, thin, wasted, and pale, who watched her from a<br />
distance, motionless as a statue and scarcely breathing.<br />
But Ibarra saw nothing of all this--his eyes were fixed on other things. A small space was enclosed <strong>by</strong> four<br />
bare and grimy walls, in one of which was an iron grating. On the filthy and loathsome floor was a mat upon<br />
which an old man lay alone in the throes of death, an old man breathing with difficulty and turning his head<br />
from side to side as amid his tears he uttered a name. <strong>The</strong> old man was alone, but from time to time a groan or<br />
the rattle of a chain was heard on the other side of the wall. Far away there was a merry feast, almost an orgy;<br />
a youth was laughing, shouting, and pouring wine upon the flowers amid the applause and drunken laughter of<br />
his companions. <strong>The</strong> old man had the features of his father, the youth was himself, and the name that the old<br />
man uttered with tears was his own name! This was what the wretched young man saw before him. <strong>The</strong> lights<br />
in the house opposite were extinguished, the music and the noises ceased, but Ibarra still heard the anguished<br />
cry of his father calling upon his son in the hour of his death.<br />
Silence had now blown its hollow breath over the city, and all things seemed to sleep in the embrace of<br />
nothingness. <strong>The</strong> cock-crow alternated with the strokes of the clocks in the church towers and the mournful<br />
cries of the weary sentinels. A waning moon began to appear, and everything seemed to be at rest; even Ibarra<br />
himself, worn out <strong>by</strong> his sad thoughts or <strong>by</strong> his journey, now slept.<br />
Only the young Franciscan whom we saw not so long ago standing motionless and silent in the midst of the<br />
gaiety of the ballroom slept not, but kept vigil. In his cell, with his elbow upon the window sill and his pale,<br />
worn cheek resting on the palm of his hand, he was gazing silently into the distance where a bright star<br />
glittered in the dark sky. <strong>The</strong> star paled and disappeared, the dim light of the waning moon faded, but the friar<br />
did not move from his place--he was gazing out over the field of Bagumbayan and the sleeping sea at the far<br />
horizon wrapped in the morning mist.