Friars and Filipinos Part 42

"Let us go and see it," said the old man, rising. "Take us there."

"Don't go!" cried Sister Pute, seizing him by the shirt.

"You'll get into trouble! He has hanged himself? Then all the worse for him!"

"Let me see it, wife! Go to the tribunal, Juan, and report it. Perhaps he is not dead yet."

And he went ino[typo, should be into?] the orchard, followed by the servant, who kept hid behind him. The women and Sister Pute herself came along behind, full of terror and curiosity.

"There it is, Senor," said the servant stopping him and pointing with her finger.

The group stopped at a respectful distance, allowing the old man to advance alone.

The body of a man, hanging from the limb of a santol tree, was swinging slowly in the breeze. The old man contemplated it for some time. He looked at the rigid feet, the arms, the stained clothing and the drooping head.

"We ought not to touch the corpse until some official has arrived,"

said he, in a loud voice. "He is already stiff. He has been dead for some time."

The women approached hesitatingly.

"It is the neighbor who lived in that little house; the one who arrived only 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 girl as soon as she had finished looking at the dead body from all directions.

"You fool! You heretic!" Sister Pute scolded her. "Don't you know what Father Damaso said? To pray for a d.a.m.ned person is to tempt G.o.d. He who commits suicide is irrevocably condemned. For this reason, he cannot be buried in a sacred place. I had begun to think that this man was going to have a bad ending. I never could guess what he lived on."

"I saw him twice speaking with the sacristan mayor," observed a girl.

"It couldn't have been to confess himself or to order a ma.s.s!"

The neighbors gathered together and a large circle surrounded the corpse which was still swinging. In half an hour some officers and two cuaderilleros arrived. They took the body down and put it in a wheelbarrow.

"Some people are in a hurry to die," said one of the officers, laughing, while he took out the pen from behind his ear.

He asked some trifling questions; took the declaration of the servant, whom he tried to implicate, now looking at her with evil in his eyes, now threatening her and now attributing to her words which she did not say--so much so that the servant, believing that she was going to be taken to jail, began to weep and finished by declaring that she was looking for peas, but that ... and she called Teo to witness.

In the meantime, a peasant with a wide hat and a large plaster on his neck, was examining the body, and the rope by which it was hanging.

The face was no more livid than the rest of the body. Above the rope could be seen two scars and two small bruises. Where the rope had rubbed, there was no blood and the skin was white. The curious peasant examined closely the camisa and the pantaloons. He noted that they were full of dust and recently torn in some places. But what most attracted his attention were the "stick-tights" [22] on his clothing, even up to his neck.

"What do you see?" asked the officer.

"I was trying to identify him, senor," stammered the peasant, lowering his hat further from his uncovered head.

"But haven't you heard that it was one Lucas? Were you sleeping?"

All began to laugh. The peasant, embarra.s.sed, muttered a few words, and went away with head down, walking slowly.

"Here! Where are you going?" cried the old man. "You can't get out that way. That's the way to the dead man's house."

"That fellow is still asleep," said the officer with a jeer. "We'll have to throw some water on him!"

Those standing around laughed again.

The peasant left the place where he had played so poor a part and directed his steps toward the church. In the sacristy, he asked for the sacristan mayor.

"He is still sleeping!" they replied gruffly. "Don't you know that they sacked the convent last night?"

"I will wait till he awakes."

The sacristans looked at him with that rudeness characteristic of people who are in the habit of being ill-treated.

In a dark corner, the one-eyed sacristan mayor was sleeping in a large chair. His spectacles were across his forehead among his long locks of hair. His squalid, bony breast was bare, and rose and fell with regularity.

The peasant sat down near by, disposed to wait patiently, but a coin fell on the floor and he began looking for it with the aid of a candle, under the sacristan mayor's big chair. The peasant also noted "stick-tights" on the sleeping man's pantaloons and on the arms of his camisa. The sacristan awoke at last, rubbed his good eye, and, in a very bad humor, reproached the man.

"I would like to order a ma.s.s said, senor," replied he in a tone of excuse.

"They have already finished all the ma.s.ses," said the one-eyed man, softening his accent a little. "If you want it for to-morrow.... Is it for souls in Purgatory?"

"No, senor;" replied the peasant, giving him a peso.

And looking fixedly in his one eye, he added:

"It is for a person who is going to die soon." And he left the sacristy. "I could have seized him last night," he added, sighingly as he removed the plaster from his neck. And he straightened up and regained the stature and appearance of Elias.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

VAE VICTIS!

Civil Guards were pa.s.sing with a sinister air to and fro in front of the door of the tribunal, threatening with the b.u.t.ts of their guns the daring boys who stood on tip-toe or raised each other up in order to look through the grates in the windows.

The sala did not present that same joyful aspect as it did when the program for the festival was being discussed. It was gloomy and the silence was almost death-like. The Civil Guards and the cuaderilleros who were occupying the room scarcely spoke and the few words that they did p.r.o.nounce were in a low tone. Around the table sat the directorcillo, two writers and some soldiers scribbling papers. The alferez walked from one side to the other, looking from time to time ferociously toward the door. Themistocles after the battle of Salamis could not have shown more pride at the Olympic games. Dona Consolacion yawned in one corner of the room, and disclosed her black palate and her crooked teeth. Her cold and evil look was fixed on the door of the jail, covered with indecent pictures. Her husband, made amiable by the victory, had yielded to her request to be allowed to witness the interrogation and, perhaps, the tortures which were to follow. The hyena smelled the dead body, she licked her chops and was wearied at the delay in the punishment.

The gobernadorcillo's chair, that large chair under the portrait of His Majesty, was empty and seemed destined for some other person.

At nearly nine o'clock, the curate, pale and with eyebrows knit, arrived.

"Well, you haven't made any one wait!" said the alferez sarcastically to the friar.