The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

CHAPTER VI 45
weeping piously, when, to the sorrow of our soul, a sacristan assured us that it was all a joke, that the blood
was that of a chicken which had been roasted and eaten on the spot in spite of the fact that it was Good
Friday--and the sacristan was fat! So Capitan Tiago, even though he was a prudent and pious individual, took
care not to approach the kris of St. Michael. "Let's take no chances," he would say to himself, "I know that
he's an archangel, but I don't trust him, no, I don't trust him."
Not a year passed without his joining with an orchestra in the pilgrimage to the wealthy shrine of Antipolo.
He paid for two thanksgiving masses of the many that make up the three novenas, and also for the days when
there are no novenas, and washed himself afterwards in the famous bátis, or pool, where the sacred Image
herself had bathed. Her votaries can even yet discern the tracks of her feet and the traces of her locks in the
hard rock, where she dried them, resembling exactly those made by any woman who uses coconut-oil, and just
as if her hair had been steel or diamonds and she had weighed a thousand tons. We should like to see the
terrible Image once shake her sacred hair in the eyes of those credulous persons and put her foot upon their
tongues or their heads. There at the very edge of the pool Capitan Tiago made it his duty to eat roast pig,
sinigang of dalag with alibambang leaves, and other more or less appetizing dishes. The two masses would
cost him over four hundred pesos, but it was cheap, after all, if one considered the glory that the Mother of the
Lord would acquire from the pin-wheels, rockets, bombs, and mortars, and also the increased profits which,
thanks to these masses, would come to one during the year.
But Antipolo was not the only theater of his ostentatious devotion. In Binondo, in Pampanga, and in the town
of San Diego, when he was about to put up a fighting-cock with large wagers, he would send gold moneys to
the curate for propitiatory masses and, just as the Romans consulted the augurs before a battle, giving food to
the sacred fowls, so Capitan Tiago would also consult his augurs, with the modifications befitting the times
and the new truths, tie would watch closely the flame of the tapers, the smoke from the incense, the voice of
the priest, and from it all attempt to forecast his luck. It was an admitted fact that he lost very few wagers, and
in those cases it was due to the unlucky circumstance that the officiating priest was hoarse, or that the
altar-candles were few or contained too much tallow, or that a bad piece of money had slipped in with the rest.
The warden of the Brotherhood would then assure him that such reverses were tests to which he was subjected
by Heaven to receive assurance of his fidelity and devotion. So, beloved by the priests, respected by the
sacristans, humored by the Chinese chandlers and the dealers in fireworks, he was a man happy in the religion
of this world, and persons of discernment and great piety even claimed for him great influence in the celestial
court.
That he was at peace with the government cannot be doubted, however difficult an achievement it may seem.
Incapable of any new idea and satisfied with his modus vivendi, he was ever ready to gratify the desires of the
last official of the fifth class in every one of the offices, to make presents of hams, capons, turkeys, and
Chinese fruits at all seasons of the year. If he heard any one speak ill of the natives, he, who did not consider
himself as such, would join in the chorus and speak worse of them; if any one aspersed the Chinese or Spanish
mestizos, he would do the same, perhaps because he considered himself become a full-blooded Iberian. He
was ever first to talk in favor of any new imposition of taxes, or special assessment, especially when he
smelled a contract or a farming assignment behind it. He always had an orchestra ready for congratulating and
serenading the governors, judges, and other officials on their name-days and birthdays, at the birth or death of
a relative, and in fact at every variation from the usual monotony. For such occasions he would secure
laudatory poems and hymns in which were celebrated "the kind and loving governor," "the brave and
courageous judge for whom there awaits in heaven the palm of the just," with many other things of the same
kind.
He was the president of the rich guild of mestizos in spite of the protests of many of them, who did not regard
him as one of themselves. In the two years that he held this office he wore out ten frock coats, an equal
number of high hats, and half a dozen canes. The frock coat and the high hat were in evidence at the
Ayuntamiento, in the governor-general's palace, and at military headquarters; the high hat and the frock coat
might have been noticed in the cockpit, in the market, in the processions, in the Chinese shops, and under the