The Devil Flower

by Emigdio Alvarez Enriquez

  “Ambrosio’s, you mean,” her mother had retorted with vinegar in her tone. “He has no right to prey on her body the way he does. He takes her every night, Choleng tells me.” Ercelia had been sorting soiled clothes behind the bedroom door, and her mother had not known she was close enough to hear. Her mother was going to say more, but her father, spying his daughter, had said warningly, “There are Moros on the coast!”

  “Here is the Moro on the coast,” Ercelia had said with a little laugh to hide the resentment she felt as she hastily left the room. The Moros had plundered the village and raped the women almost a hundred years before and their name had become a traditional note of warning. She did not understand why children were shut out of their elders’ world. She did not understand what their parents were careful about in their children’s presence. She was never allowed to attend wedding parties or to loiter around tables where people played cards during a wake. Didn’t they know, or had they forgotten, how much children already knew at ten or twelve? What children would do to find answers to questions they could not ask? Now she knew they had not forgotten, but had chosen to forget. They were merely playing a game and were going strictly by the rules, even as Aunt Choleng’s children, all of whom came to her party, were going strictly by the rules to win their elders’ acceptance.

  Her children had all wanted to come. Seeing that someone had to stay behind to look after their father’s old rheumatic mother, and nobody was happy to do that, they asked their mother to let them take their grandmother along. They sat the old woman on a straw mat in a large basket on a carabao sledge and surrounded her with pillows to ease the jolts on the way. They shaded her with a black umbrella and followed behind the sledge into town. The muddy mountain trails would be hard on their canvas shoes, and they had to wear shoes at the party, so they carried their shoes in their hands. They stopped at the bamboo gate and washed their feet in the yellow water of the ditch along the road before putting their shoes on. Ercelia heard amused snickers around her as she went to help the old woman out of the basket, but the children were completely unabashed.

  The women of Santa Maria had taken very long to arrive. The sun was high overhead, and the roast pig was almost cold on the spit when they finally came. Even his Reverence, Father Leonardo Anacleto, the old Spanish priest of the parish, had arrived sooner, and he had performed a baptism after High Mass.

  The women were three sisters, cousins, twice removed, of her mother. They were the really important connections of the family, Don Pipong, their father, having been a gobernadorcillo of the town, and Ercelia had always been a little awed by them. They spoke Spanish so glibly, they dressed so daintily, and they looked so thin and frail that they seemed breakable, like her mother’s Chinese teacups in the glass cupboard in the dining room: not to be used, only to be looked at. And their names were so elegant, all ending in the diminutive ita—Josefinita, Romulita, Agustinita. She could never tell who was the older and the oldest. Their youth and beauty were traditional. Ever since she could remember, they were said to be young and beautiful—never otherwise.

  Ercelia seldom saw them, really, although she heard about them often. Every year it was bruited about that one of them was going to marry...a certain officer of the constabulary, a certain captain of a certain ship, a certain wealthy Spanish widower, a certain Chinese proprietor—but the years came and went with no rumors about the wedding of the sisters coming true. Ercelia was always strangely upset about the rumors, and every time they died out, she was strangely relieved. It was as if a pretty piece of embroidery on pineapple cloth would come undone, or a beautiful fairy tale would come to an end, if any of the sisters married. Even then, she could see now, she had been clinging to the past, trying vainly to hold back the flow of time, as it were, with bare hands. For as long as the sisters were unmarried, Ercelia was a child, and problems of life like marrying and not marrying did not concern her at all.

  Father Anacleto must have been quite irritated at being made to wait, or must have been very hungry: when he saw the women alighting from the carromata at the gate, he said in a voice full of martyrdom, “The ladies must be getting weak in the knees. It took them so long to make ready!” Ercelia’s mother, who suffered weakness in the knees during rainy weather, along with various other sporadic ailments that she would not accept as signs of old age, came immediately to their defense. “They have not as yet attained the age of the Lord, which, as your Reverence says, is the perfect age,” she said, hastening down the veranda steps with her daughter to welcome the sisters at the gate. “It is their hair that takes so much time to do.”

  Ercelia knew the legend about their hair. Like the Magdalena’s, it would touch the ground if they let it down.

  “Look at the knots their hair makes,” her mother said, plucking up the drooping sleeves of her renque camisa. She spoke in a low voice but loud enough for the ladies to hear as they carefully picked their way down from their freshly painted and brightly polished conveyance.

  Ercelia took a look at their hair and her heart sank heavily within her. On Agustinita’s forehead was a cluster of little curls artfully fluffed to conceal a receding hairline. Ercelia’s mother did the same thing with her hair when she dressed it—was it possible Agustinita and her sisters were about as old as her mother? They were cousins, and had played together as children. But her mother was more than thirty-five! How awful to be thirty-five and not yet married!

  The people walking about impatiently in the yard came straggling up behind her and her mother. There were sounds from their lips like a hard broom sweeping dry leaves off a dirt floor, but she distinguished only her fathers words. “Look at all that trapping and all that shine,” he was saying. “I am surprised that they did not have their uncle Oñong drive them down himself.”

  A snicker and a giggle and a cough tumbled one upon the other. Ercelia turned around in alarm. She knew that Uncle Oñong was a sensitive com on the ladies’ feet. Uncle Oñong was their father’s youngest brother, and he drove a carromata for a living. While the ladies did not consider his occupation thoroughly disgraceful, owning, as he did, the carromata he drove, still Uncle Oñong had acquired a reputation for versifying that was not at all flattering to his relatives. He could talk only in rhymes and rhythms and had acquired so great a fondness for the quill that he always wore a rooster’s feather in his hat.

  Ercelia did not quite like the remark that her father made, but looking at him standing there, so complacently proud in the Chinese silk shirt that she had sewn for him, she could only say chidingly, “Father!”

  “Look, look,” her father said in extremely good humor, “don’t you think all that’s wanting is velvet shoes for the horses?”

  “Valentin—“ her mother said with threatening impatience in her tone, and her father clapped a fat cigar into his mouth with a chuckle. But Ingo had caught his brother’s mood and, cupping his mouth with his hands, cried out, “Make way for the Princesses of Kulingtangan!”

  And true enough, they were like princesses. All three had heavy gold combs set with pearls stuck in their hair. All three wore large cameo medallions on black silken cords around their necks, and over their skirts each wore the embroidered black tulle apron that was the fashion of the day. But Kulingtangan was the fictitious realm of a spurious princess, who, by her exceptional beauty, had hoped to seduce the prince of the land. She had appeared at the king’s ball at the palace in regal raiments but unfortunately had been recognized by one of the courtiers as the musician of a mountain village who entertained at festivals with the native instrument of brass bells—the kulingtangan. That Ingo should use the name on the sisters made Ercelia feel panicky. The name implied something false and pretentious. But Agustinita, ignoring his insinuation, laughed gaily, holding up her hands to the carromata driver for a big round basket of black nito fiber.

  “Well said, Ingo, the Princesses of Kulingtangan!” she said in a high-pitched voice, catching the basket and undoing the string on the lid. Romulita an
d Josefinita gathered around the basket, talking excitedly and laughing as over a big joke. Then suddenly Ercelia, too, was very happy and excited. Agustinita had opened up the basket, and in it sat a large gray cat with a pink ribbon around its neck.

  Somehow, Ingo must have known the sisters were bringing their cat to the party, because she remembered there was a cat somewhere in the story of Kulingtangan. The spurious princess was turned into a cat until the prince was safely married to a real princess. Of course, it was no secret that the sisters kept a cat. It was a pedigreed cat, and the cat’s lineage was in some way mixed up with their own.

  “This is Rosal-Jasmin, the daughter of Mama-Grandma’s Agitos-Clavel, who was one of the daughters of Violeta-Amapola, who was given her on her birthday by the Captain General Don Sergio Miraflor who, you know, was her sponsor at baptism because he was a cousin of her father’s father, really, remembering, as you must, Mama-Grandma’s papa was a Spaniard of the full blood,” Agustinita or Romulita or Josefinita would say. One could not really know whose lineage they were tracing, their cat’s or their own. Ercelia somehow felt that the cat was important. She didn’t know why or how, but she felt even then that the cat was a kind of buoy to the sisters, that it was saving them from something, that they were clinging to it with desperate hands, and that she was helping them hang on by sharing in their laughter and gaiety.

  The last to arrive at the party was Don Miguel Santa Romana, her father’s constant companion, his compinche, as her mother called him. The guests were ready to eat when he arrived at the gate, making a lot of noise with his black Ford automobile. Her father’s face lit up brightly at sight of him but her mother’s face fell like a stone, and the smile she put on to welcome him was pathetic to see.

  Her mother had hoped that Don Miguel would not come. She had not wanted to ask him. “He drinks too much, he dresses too well, and talks too much,” she had said. “As if the people did not know what block he is the chip of.”

  “There, there, ‘Sabel, he is not as bad as that, really,” her father had said, “and I very seldom ask him to the house, you know that.”

  “Very seldom is too often. I don’t see how you can put up with him even if he buys you all your drinks at the tavern,” she had said. “But I know why he has attached himself to you like a leech. Because nobody else will have him.”

  “Well, all the more reason, ‘Sabel. A fellow needs a friend. Besides, he is the chief buyer of the fodder we sell. He buys from no one else, and he has thirteen horses in his stables.” “But we have asked the padre and the Santa Maria women to come,” her mother had insisted. And then in a hushed voice, “You have now a growing daughter!”

  The remark had piqued Ercelia. She had never given a thought to Don Miguel. He was about as old as her father, and her father had been forty-two on his last birthday. How ridiculous! She did not understand how anybody could think Don Miguel was dangerous to the girls. There seemed to be an aura of mystery about him that she did not see. She knew that he was part Spanish. He had lived as a sexton in a convent in Cotabato until he was twenty-two, and there was gossip that he was the son of a priest by his laundrywoman, and that the priest had left him very much money. He had been to Madrid and had learned to say “carajo” like a Spaniard. He made extravagant show of distaste for Filipinos who adopted Spanish or American ways and “his tongue was full of flowers,” as the women said about him, but that did not make him any younger or more interesting to her.

  Ercelia watched him as he swung out of the car in a heavily embroidered Tagalog shirt, swinging a camagong walking stick, and she had to admit he did cut a young figure. There seemed to be a light-footedness about him that made him look almost like a boy. There was a sudden hush among the guests as if each felt impending disaster, and she saw the sisters touch up their hair and their scarves. Suddenly there was a growling, immediately followed by a sharp snap, and a big black collie leaped out of the car on the tracks of Don Miguel.

  “When Brother Valentin throws a party, even the cats and dogs have their day!” Ingo announced, laughing loudly, and everybody joined him. Even the women of Santa Maria, even Ercelia’s mother.

  “I brought my dog along to keep it away from the hen house. The hens are sitting,” Don Miguel tried to explain.

  “Don’t mind my brother,” her father said, putting an arm around his friend and drawing him to the table. “He is only fooling.”

  “As you say, my brother,” Ingo rejoined. “We do not have heads of tadpoles on our shoulders. A man of gentility and refinement like Don Miguel would not bring his dog along to feed it under the table like the rest of us would.”

  And everybody laughed again.

  The guests ate together in the yard under a jerry-built shed of bamboo thatched with coconut palms. Her father had built it in the yard “because,” he explained to no one in particular, “if all the guests come up to the house, old as it is, I’ll have to build another one tomorrow.”

  The house was very strong. Its corner posts were so big around that Ercelia could never run her arms around one and touch fingers. It had belonged to a Spanish jail warden from whom her grandfather had bought it because it had withstood the earthquake of ‘82. But her father had a naive kind of humor that people took for wit. They saw no veiled irony in his speech, no bombast in his nature. They accepted his speech as they did his food and drink.

  They ate with their hands from plates cut from the bark of the banana plant, and drank from polished coconut shells. Romulita and Josefinita, flicking their fingers, looked around hopelessly for china and silver. They touched the polished shell cups as daintily as they would the thinnest wine goblets at the governor’s annual banquet, but Agustinita made no show of embarrassment or displeasure. Taking the situation in at a glance, and knowing her cousin Valentin as she did, she decided to enjoy the party for what it was. Clapping her hands like a little girl over an unexpected present, she exclaimed: “Now we are going to eat like Filipinos!”

  They forgot to ask Father Anacleto to say grace, but they did not forget why they were eating, and between mouthfuls and merry sallies, each tried to tell Ercelia how he or she thought she should behave in the strange and far-off city. She was, it seemed to her, a piece of dough that they were kneading into bread. All were anxious to give a hand, not so much that they wanted the bread to taste good, as to see the marks of their fingers upon it.

  “You must not forget your prayers before going to bed, your rosary every Saturday, and the Sacrament once a week,” the padre cautioned, picking the wing of a chicken with deft fingers and dipping it into a native sauce that he had learned to relish. He mumbled his words, never looking up, the way he said his prayers after Mass at the foot of the altar.

  “And your hair. You must not be so foolish as to cut it,” Romulita told her. “You have a wealth of it already. Let those who do not have enough bob theirs.”

  “Well said,” Ingo declared emphatically, “and that way you can keep parties waiting while you comb your hair.” “Ingo!” her mother said.

  “It was not my hair that took me so long,” Agustinita said, “but the vinegar bath for my heels.” Agustinita was proud of her smooth, pink heels, and her face was wreathed with laughter.

  Ercelia began to wonder about Agustinita then. There was some kind of lightheartedness about her that did not seem to be in place. In her grandmother’s days, the test of a lady was the texture of the skin of her heels, showing in the open-heeled slippers that she wore. The peasant girls who worked in the fields bathed their heels in vinegar to soften the skin and remove the calluses when they put on slippers and went into town.

  “And your face, Ercelia, Daughter,” said her grandaunt Mariana, “do not paint it. A painted house is a house to let.” “That is true, Ercelia,” Agustinita assented with a chuckle, “look at me. No paint, no callers, no roomers!” Josefinita pinched her on the thigh and said, “The padre,” but even the padre was shaking with laughter, and Romulita, as if in apology for Agustinita
’s imprudence, recited: “If to marry is to suffer, stay a maiden and have laughter.”

  Ercelia saw Romulita throw a glance at Don Miguel as if to challenge him to say something, and Don Miguel turned his eyes fully on Ercelia as he said, “Remember always you are a Filipina. You are a virgin pearl in a native shell, a pearl of the Orient sea. A woman is like a jewel, most beautiful in its own setting. The coral is blacker beside silver even as the pearl is made paler.”

  Ercelia thought she heard a little buzz as of bees disturbed in their hive to her right and to her left, and she seemed to sense eyes leaping all about her, clashing against one another, some amused, some watchful, some questioning, some resentful. She was seated between her mother and her grandaunt Mariana, and did not dare look up at Miguel.

  The blood had for some reason climbed into her cheeks, and there was a feeling of something being lifted within her, and it was as if she were growing taller and bigger than anybody at the table. She was suddenly important—and in danger because she had caught the attention of a mysteriously dangerous man!

  She heard Don Miguel’s voice come through to her as if from the farthest end of the church, the largest building she had ever been in, and the sound of it was like that of the big bell in the tower filling her ears. “The Filipina has her model in Jose Rizal’s heroine of the Noli Me Tangere—Maria Clara, the paragon of beauty and virtue. A beautiful girl like you must remember that to keep your spirit clean and pure.” She felt she must say something. She lifted her eyes to his, and suddenly it was as if a soap bubble she was blowing had burst in her face. Don Miguel was not even looking at her, but at Agustinita!