Noli Me Tángere

he Story of a Mother

Andaba incierto--volaba errante,
Un solo instante--sin descansar. [70]

ALAEJOS.

Sisa ran in the direction of her home with her thoughts in that
confused whirl which is produced in our being when, in the midst of
misfortunes, protection and hope alike are gone. It is then that
everything seems to grow dark around us, and, if we do see some
faint light shining from afar, we run toward it, we follow it,
even though an abyss yawns in our path. The mother wanted to save
her sons, and mothers do not ask about means when their children
are concerned. Precipitately she ran, pursued by fear and dark
forebodings. Had they already arrested her son Basilio? Whither had
her boy Crispin fled?

As she approached her little hut she made out above the garden fence
the caps of two soldiers. It would be impossible to tell what her heart
felt: she forgot everything. She was not ignorant of the boldness of
those men, who did not lower their gaze before even the richest people
of the town. What would they do now to her and to her sons, accused
of theft! The civil-guards are not men, they are civil-guards; they
do not listen to supplications and they are accustomed to see tears.

Sisa instinctively raised her eyes toward the sky, that sky which
smiled with brilliance indescribable, and in whose transparent
blue floated some little fleecy clouds. She stopped to control the
trembling that had seized her whole body. The soldiers were leaving
the house and were alone, as they had arrested nothing more than the
hen which Sisa had been fattening. She breathed more freely and took
heart again. "How good they are and what kind hearts they have!" she
murmured, almost weeping with joy. Had the soldiers burned her house
but left her sons at liberty she would have heaped blessings upon
them! She again looked gratefully toward the sky through which a
flock of herons, those light clouds in the skies of the Philippines,
were cutting their path, and with restored confidence she continued on
her way. As she approached those fearful men she threw her glances in
every direction as if unconcerned and pretended not to see her hen,
which was cackling for help. Scarcely had she passed them when she
wanted to run, but prudence restrained her steps.

She had not gone far when she heard herself called by an imperious
voice. Shuddering, she pretended not to hear, and continued on her
way. They called her again, this time with a yell and an insulting
epithet. She turned toward them, pale and trembling in spite of
herself. One of them beckoned to her. Mechanically Sisa approached
them, her tongue paralyzed with fear and her throat parched.

"Tell us the truth or we'll tie you to that tree and shoot you,"
said one of them in a threatening tone.

The woman stared at the tree.

"You're the mother of the thieves, aren't you?" asked the other.

"Mother of the thieves!" repeated Sisa mechanically.

"Where's the money your sons brought you last night?"

"Ah! The money--"

"Don't deny it or it'll be the worse for you," added the other. "We've
come to arrest your sons, and the older has escaped from us. Where
have you hidden the younger?"

Upon hearing this Sisa breathed more freely and answered, "Sir, it
has been many days since I've seen Crispin. I expected to see him
this morning at the convento, but there they only told me--"

The two soldiers exchanged significant glances. "All right!" exclaimed
one of them. "Give us the money and we'll leave you alone."

"Sir," begged the unfortunate woman, "my sons wouldn't steal
even though they were starving, for we are used to that kind of
suffering. Basilio didn't bring me a single cuarto. Search the whole
house and if you find even a real, do with us what you will. Not all
of us poor folks are thieves!"

"Well then," ordered the soldier slowly, as he fixed his gaze on
Sisa's eyes, "come with us. Your sons will show up and try to get
rid of the money they stole. Come on!"

"I--go with you?" murmured the woman, as she stepped backward and
gazed fearfully at their uniforms. "And why not?"

"Oh, have pity on me!" she begged, almost on her knees. "I'm very
poor, so I've neither gold nor jewels to offer you. The only thing
I had you've already taken, and that is the hen which I was thinking
of selling. Take everything that you find in the house, but leave me
here in peace, leave me here to die!"

"Go ahead! You're got to go, and if you don't move along willingly,
we'll tie you."

Sisa broke out into bitter weeping, but those men were inflexible. "At
least, let me go ahead of you some distance," she begged, when she
felt them take hold of her brutally and push her along.

The soldiers seemed to be somewhat affected and, after whispering
apart, one of them said: "All right, since from here until we get into
the town, you might be able to escape, you'll walk between us. Once
there you may walk ahead twenty paces, but take care that you don't
delay and that you don't go into any shop, and don't stop. Go ahead,
quickly!"

Vain were her supplications and arguments, useless her promises. The
soldiers said that they had already compromised themselves by having
conceded too much. Upon finding herself between them she felt as if
she would die of shame. No one indeed was coming along the road, but
how about the air and the light of day? True shame encounters eyes
everywhere. She covered her face with her pañuelo and walked along
blindly, weeping in silence at her disgrace. She had felt misery and
knew what it was to be abandoned by every one, even her own husband,
but until now she had considered herself honored and respected: up
to this time she had looked with compassion on those boldly dressed
women whom the town knew as the concubines of the soldiers. Now it
seemed to her that she had fallen even a step lower than they in the
social scale.

The sound of hoofs was heard, proceeding from a small train of men
and women mounted on poor nags, each between two baskets hung over
the back of his mount; it was a party carrying fish to the interior
towns. Some of them on passing her hut had often asked for a drink of
water and had presented her with some fishes. Now as they passed her
they seemed to beat and trample upon her while their compassionate
or disdainful looks penetrated through her pañuelo and stung her
face. When these travelers had finally passed she sighed and raised the
pañuelo an instant to see how far she still was from the town. There
yet remained a few telegraph poles to be passed before reaching the
bantayan, or little watch-house, at the entrance to the town. Never
had that distance seemed so great to her.

Beside the road there grew a leafy bamboo thicket in whose shade she
had rested at other times, and where her lover had talked so sweetly as
he helped her carry her basket of fruit and vegetables. Alas, all that
was past, like a dream! The lover had become her husband and a cabeza
de barangay, and then trouble had commenced to knock at her door. As
the sun was beginning to shine hotly, the soldiers asked her if she did
not want to rest there. "Thanks, no!" was the horrified woman's answer.

Real terror seized her when they neared the town. She threw her
anguished gaze in all directions, but no refuge offered itself,
only wide rice-fields, a small irrigating ditch, and some stunted
trees; there was not a cliff or even a rock upon which she might dash
herself to pieces! Now she regretted that she had come so far with
the soldiers; she longed for the deep river that flowed by her hut,
whose high and rock-strewn banks would have offered such a sweet
death. But again the thought of her sons, especially of Crispin, of
whose fate she was still ignorant, lightened the darkness of her night,
and she was able to murmur resignedly, "Afterwards--afterwards--we'll
go and live in the depths of the forest."

Drying her eyes and trying to look calm, she turned to her guards and
said in a low voice, with an indefinable accent that was a complaint
and a lament, a prayer and a reproach, sorrow condensed into sound,
"Now we're in the town." Even the soldiers seemed touched as they
answered her with a gesture. She struggled to affect a calm bearing
while she went forward quickly.

At that moment the church bells began to peal out, announcing the end
of the high mass. Sisa hurried her steps so as to avoid, if possible,
meeting the people who were coming out, but in vain, for no means
offered to escape encountering them. With a bitter smile she saluted
two of her acquaintances, who merely turned inquiring glances upon
her, so that to avoid further mortification she fixed her gaze on
the ground, and yet, strange to say, she stumbled over the stones in
the road! Upon seeing her, people paused for a moment and conversed
among themselves as they gazed at her, all of which she saw and felt
in spite of her downcast eyes.

She heard the shameless tones of a woman who asked from behind at the
top of her voice, "Where did you catch her? And the money?" It was a
woman without a tapis, or tunic, dressed in a green and yellow skirt
and a camisa of blue gauze, easily recognizable from her costume as
a querida of the soldiery. Sisa felt as if she had received a slap
in the face, for that woman had exposed her before the crowd. She
raised her eyes for a moment to get her fill of scorn and hate, but
saw the people far, far away. Yet she felt the chill of their stares
and heard their whispers as she moved over the ground almost without
knowing that she touched it.

"Eh, this way!" a guard called to her. Like an automaton whose
mechanism is breaking, she whirled about rapidly on her heels, then
without seeing or thinking of anything ran to hide herself. She
made out a door where a sentinel stood and tried to enter it, but
a still more imperious voice called her aside. With wavering steps
she sought the direction of that voice, then felt herself pushed
along by the shoulders; she shut her eyes, took a couple of steps,
and lacking further strength, let herself fall to the ground, first
on her knees and then in a sitting posture. Dry and voiceless sobs
shook her frame convulsively.

Now she was in the barracks among the soldiers, women, hogs, and
chickens. Some of the men were sewing at their clothes while their
thighs furnished pillows for their queridas, who were reclining
on benches, smoking and gazing wearily at the ceiling. Other women
were helping some of the men clean their ornaments and arms, humming
doubtful songs the while.

"It seems that the chicks have escaped, for you've brought only the
old hen!" commented one woman to the new arrivals,--whether alluding
to Sisa or the still clucking hen is not certain.

"Yes, the hen is always worth more than the chicks," Sisa herself
answered when she observed that the soldiers were silent.

"Where's the sergeant?" asked one of the guards in a disgusted
tone. "Has report been made to the alferez yet?"

A general shrugging of shoulders was his answer, for no one was going
to trouble himself inquiring about the fate of a poor woman.

There Sisa spent two hours in a state of semi-idiocy, huddled in a
corner with her head hidden in her arms and her hair falling down in
disorder. At noon the alferez was informed, and the first thing that
he did was to discredit the curate's accusation.

"Bah! Tricks of that rascally friar," he commented, as he ordered
that the woman be released and that no one should pay any attention
to the matter. "If he wants to get back what he's lost, let him ask
St. Anthony or complain to the nuncio. Out with her!"

Consequently, Sisa was ejected from the barracks almost violently,
as she did not try to move herself. Finding herself in the street, she
instinctively started to hurry toward her house, with her head bared,
her hair disheveled, and her gaze fixed on the distant horizon. The sun
burned in its zenith with never a cloud to shade its flashing disk;
the wind shook the leaves of the trees lightly along the dry road,
while no bird dared stir from the shade of their branches.

At last Sisa reached her hut and entered it in silence, She walked all
about it and ran in and out for a time. Then she hurried to old Tasio's
house and knocked at the door, but he was not at home. The unhappy
woman then returned to her hut and began to call loudly for Basilio
and Crispin, stopping every few minutes to listen attentively. Her
voice came back in an echo, for the soft murmur of the water in the
neighboring river and the rustling of the bamboo leaves were the
only sounds that broke the stillness. She called again and again as
she climbed the low cliffs, or went down into a gully, or descended
to the river. Her eyes rolled about with a sinister expression, now
flashing up with brilliant gleams, now becoming obscured like the
sky on a stormy night; it might be said that the light of reason was
flickering and about to be extinguished.

Again returning to her hut, she sat down on the mat where she had
lain the night before. Raising her eyes, she saw a twisted remnant
from Basilio's camisa at the end of the bamboo post in the dinding,
or wall, that overlooked the precipice. She seized and examined it
in the sunlight. There were blood stains on it, but Sisa hardly saw
them, for she went outside and continued to raise and lower it before
her eyes to examine it in the burning sunlight. The light was failing
and everything beginning to grow dark around her. She gazed wide-eyed
and unblinkingly straight at the sun.

Still wandering about here and there, crying and wailing, she would
have frightened any listener, for her voice now uttered rare notes such
as are not often produced in the human throat. In a night of roaring
tempest, when the whirling winds beat with invisible wings against
the crowding shadows that ride upon it, if you should find yourself
in a solitary and ruined building, you would hear moans and sighs
which you might suppose to be the soughing of the wind as it beats
on the high towers and moldering walls to fill you with terror and
make you shudder in spite of yourself; as mournful as those unknown
sounds of the dark night when the tempest roars were the accents of
that mother. In this condition night came upon her. Perhaps Heaven
had granted some hours of sleep while the invisible wing of an angel,
brushing over her pallid countenance, might wipe out the sorrows
from her memory; perhaps such suffering was too great for weak human
endurance, and Providence had intervened with its sweet remedy,
forgetfulness. However that may be, the next day Sisa wandered about
smiling, singing, and talking with all the creatures of wood and field.