There was a queer, uncomfortable feeling inside her that she instinctively covered with a laugh. The moment of disenchantment was brief and fleeting. Nobody even saw it happen, yet it left an indelible imprint on her consciousness. She was glad when they began to talk about Maria Clara.
“La Maria Clara, yes,” her grandaunt Mariana was saying, picking out a tamal from its banana-leaf wrapper. “The girl preferred to remain unmarried. She would not run away with her lover against her parents’ wishes.”
Josefinita was all at once fidgety, acting embarrassed. She looked up and around and finally found a particle of food on her scarf to brush off.
“Huh,” said Ingo. “We know all about your romance with Adolfo, Josefinita. It is no secret that you still keep his letters in a sandalwood box in a shrine in your bedroom. But I think you did a very foolish thing not to enter a nunnery. You see, Maria Clara—as Aunt Mariana will tell you—did.” And there was a round of laughter again.
“Maria Clara did well to enter a nunnery because there was no head sexton to seduce her there,” Agustinita said, directing her eyes squarely at Don Miguel.
A ponderous silence fell over everyone at the table. The guests avoided each other’s eyes. Don Miguel’s face turned porcelain-white under its mustache, then red. But without taking his eyes from Agustinita, and in a voice steady and sure, he said: “In the eternal paradise woman was God’s gift to man. If Adam had eaten of the fruit, it was because the woman had held it up to him. So rather than blame the man, señorita, should not you blame the serpent that gave the fruit to the woman?”
Suddenly, Ercelia felt sure she had at last uncovered the mystery of Don Miguel. He had seduced a nun! As if light had unexpectedly fallen upon a lost jewel, she looked at him with something like awe. A nun! A bride of Christ! He had touched with his man’s hands a bride of Christ!
She had watched the nuns—those lovely creatures—walk in line to the Communion rail at early morning Mass on Sunday, all draped in black with nothing but their hands and faces framed in their white wimples showing. They were the living dead, she had thought. Their bodies did not feel the flesh on their bones, only the wide, wide space in the heart, only the great, great heights of the mind. Now she knew their bodies were like her own. Don Miguel had been one with one of them!
She heard her father clear his throat noisily, uneasily, trying to do something to relieve the tenseness of the moment, but the padre said bluntly: “The devil comes under many guises. You can never tell when he is among you,” and looked significantly at Don Miguel.
Somehow Ercelia could not see Don Miguel as a devil. She saw now, as for the first time, that he was handsome. His nose was pinched at the tip and high at the bridge. His eyes were deep black, almost blue, and so was his hair. His face folded a little on both sides of his mouth when he smiled, and his forehead was high. She did not like the mustache he wore: it made him look a little sinister. Nor did she like the hair on his body. He seemed to have too much of it. It showed under the cuffs of his sleeves and at the open collar of his barong Tagalog. But even her father had worn a mustache before he was married—she had seen a picture of him—and Father Anacleto himself must have as much hair on the body since he was a white man, and he was no devil! The padre must be growing old in the head, she thought. And she felt very sorry for Don Miguel.
“Now, what is this about Maria Clara?” her father persisted, breaking a crisp piece of skin from the roasted suckling in the center of the table. “Will you tell us, Aunt Mariana?”
His aunt Mariana suddenly perked up. The old lady had not read the novel, but her husband—“the deceased, may he rest in peace,” as she would say when talking about him—had read it and had retold it to her many times.
“Well,” she said, licking one finger and then another, “she was very beautiful and the daughter of the opulent Capitan Tiago. She was devoted to San Antonio and went to confession every week.”
“What sins she must have been committing in secret,” Ingo said, as if to himself.
The old lady directed a stem look at him as if to fill his mouth with pepper, the way she did to her grandchildren when they spoke bad words.
“The confession is a sacrament, Ingo; you may avail yourself of its grace any time, even when you have no mortal sins to confess. You should know better. I taught you your catechism when you were a boy,” she told him, looking from the tail of her eye at the padre.
“So you did, Aunt Mariana, but we are anxious to hear the story,” said Ercelia’s father quickly, fearing his aunt would launch a diatribe that would take longer to finish than Father Anacleto’s sermon in the pulpit Sunday mornings.
“Well,” the old lady said, wiping her fingers in a handkerchief, “Maria Clara never married Ibarra, much though she loved him. Her parents did not approve of the man as a suitor, and she was a dutiful daughter. He was very handsome. Ay, like San Antonio. And he had also plenty in the head,” and she tapped her temple with a finger, “having studied in Madrid like Don Miguel here. He could have been a governor or a chief of the civil guard, but he was as stubborn as a mule. He would not go to confession. And so, as was his just desert, he was denounced by the Church as a heretic. And like the good and virtuous girl she was, Maria Clara sent him away from her and would not have anything to do with him ever! That is not all, of course; the novel is very long. It would take until tomorrow morning to tell it all,” she finished in a matter-of-fact tone, and tightening her wrap-around skirt at the waist, began to look about for her tobacco pouch.
Father Anacleto, who had been nibbling on the leg of a chicken, suddenly looked interested. Dropping the half-picked bone to the ground, he wiped his greasy lips with a handkerchief, tucked it into the sleeve of his black robe, and said: “I fear, Doña Mariana, that the novel is not how you tell it.” The apology in his tone was eager, almost suppliant. Evidently, he did not want to hurt the feelings of the family. He had been asked to the party because he was considered a member, having poured the baptismal water on Ercelia’s head as an infant. But he was the spiritual counselor of his parish, and must have felt that he had a duty to perform. These simple people were beginning to see in Maria Clara the image of the Virgin Mary. “There was nothing about the confession in the novel, and Maria Clara was not just exactly what you make her to be,” he said.
The noisy hustling about was suddenly hushed. Ingo was wrapping some pieces of chicken adobo in banana leaves to take home. Her mother was giving out mangoes to the children at the foot of the mango tree. Agustinita was playing with the cat on her lap. All, as if at a given signal, ceased their activities and turned expectantly toward the padre.
Shaking an imaginary crumb off his long black robe to avoid looking at the company, the padre said: “Maria Clara received her lover on the back porch of her home one night without her parents’ knowledge. The house was on the bank of the river Pasig, and Ibarra had come to her concealed under a pile of grass fodder in a little river boat.”
Ercelia was shocked, as were all the women.
“Did she do that?” Josefinita said.
“And she never married him?” Ercelia’s aunt said. “I can’t believe it!” Aunt Choleng had married Ambrosio, a poor farmer, and had gone to live with him in the hills because she had let him kiss her on the back porch of her house one night during a rice festival for her grandfathers tenants. That Maria Clara had been so indiscreet must have left her aunt aghast, chagrined, and even feeling foolish.
“What’s more,” the priest continued, “she never put her lover out of her mind. Even in the nunnery she thought of him. Her body never really left the world. She lived in dreams of sensuality. On moonlight nights she was seen walking on the roof of the nunnery”—he lifted his eyes to the heavens as if to implore mercy for her impudence—“and giving herself into the arms of her phantom lover.”
“Hai!” said the women.
If the reverend father had dumped a jar of baptismal water on the heads of everyone present, it would n
ot have aroused more animation in them. For a time, nobody spoke or looked at another. Then, as if to wash their hands of the responsibility of their error, they turned their eyes to the catechism teacher who had now left the table and was rolling a cigarette on a flat stone near the stone well where the older children were playing with the pig’s bladder that they had blown up into a balloon. Even the children seemed to sense that something important was going on and that Grandaunt Mariana had the answer to it. They stopped playing and turned to look at the old lady. Enjoying her momentary importance, she carefully completed the rolling of a cigarette. She carried it to her mouth slowly and delicately ran her tongue along the paper to make it stick. She put it between her lips and lit it with a match almost ceremoniously. After blowing through the cigarette once, she took it out of her mouth and in a very casual tone inquired, “Did you read the book, Father?”
The question was like an accidental punch on the slightly protruding stomach of the aging priest. He blinked his eyes and uttered stuttering noises, anxious to speak but undecided where to start.
Don Miguel took his chance of using the whip on the padre. “Of course not,” he said with a twist of sardonic amusement on his lips. “How could he have? The book is forbidden reading by the Church.”
“So I thought,” said the lady, looking like a hen that had just scared off a hawk from her brood. “Whoever told you the story, your Reverence, withheld the truth, and but naturally. My deceased husband, may he rest in peace notwithstanding he read it, kept nothing from me.” And turning to Don Miguel, “You, who are a literate from Spain, what say you Maria Clara was like?”
Don Miguel reached for a flower in the gaping mouth of the roast pig. “I am not sure now about the details of the story. I read it when I was very young, and only cursorily,” he said, looking intently at the flower in his hand, as if struggling with a memory that the flower would release. “I had to return the book to a friend. I was living then, as you know, in a convent.” He twirled the flower in his hand, and dropped it to the ground. “But I am quite sure,” he said, picking up his walking stick, “that Maria Clara never allowed her maidenhood to be violated by her lover, and for that”—he tapped the head of the stick on the edge of the table—“she is still worthy of our highest regard and admiration.”
Ercelia saw her mother look at her father with eyes that said, “Look at him, hear him, did I not tell you so?” Agustinita raised quizzical eyebrows and looked at Miguel askance, but the rest of the group seemed much relieved that Don Miguel had thrown a life line to their drowning ideal. They looked at Father Anacleto as if to challenge him to speak more.
“I did not read the book myself,” the padre decided to say, “but a friend, a friend who has read it, spoke to me about it in detail.”
“Ah, your Reverence, that is quite another thing,” said the old catechism teacher triumphantly.
And everybody joined her in a vindictive chuckle.
Ercelia thought they were being cruel and disrespectful. “Anyway, I shall have no lover on the back porch, Father Anacleto,” she said, “and I shall want a big feast for my wedding. Pigs, cows, ducks, and chickens!”
Throats gurgled laughter again, and Grandaunt Mariana, catching hold of her, pulled her close, and taking her nose between two crooked fingers, said: “Flat nose, flat nose, who will marry a flat nose?”
Suddenly Ercelia was terribly embarrassed. She had never minded being teased about her nose before. The family called her chata. Her nose was a little too low on the bridge for the granddaughter of a Spaniard of the full blood. She had more of the physical traits of her father’s native stock. It had never bothered her before. She would proudly say, “I am chata because my father is a purebred Malay from the great ancient kingdom of the Shri-Visayas.” And then, a little jauntily, she would add, “For all I know I am a direct descendant of Lapu-Lapu, the great warrior who killed Magellan on the island of Mactan.” But now her face felt swollen. It was if she did not have a nose at all, and she wanted to have one to be pretty. “Please don’t,” she said, wrenching herself free of the old woman’s hands. “I am not a child any more.”
Then again there was Don Miguel’s voice coming to her across the general laughter. “But Ercelia has the seeds of sunshine buried in her cheeks, and her mouth is as red and pulpy as the ripening fruit of the macopa. And as a ripening fruit she may not be pointed at with the finger but with the lips to preserve her sweetness.”
She looked at Don Miguel and this time his beautiful black eyes were on her. And he was smiling boyishly, showing his deep dimples, and he winked at her as if they were sharing a big secret. She forgot she did not have a nose on her face and began to laugh as if over a very funny story.
And all at once there was something enormously funny to laugh at. She never knew how it really started, but there was a snarling and a growling and a sudden guttural wrangling under the table that sent the padre and the ladies collecting their skirts, half lifting them, and running away. Somebody tripped and caught at the table, upsetting dishes. There was a scramble to save the food that spilled into the laps of those too slow to get away. “Rosal-Jasmin! Rosal-Jasmin! Oh, our poor Rosal-Jasmin!” the sisters were screaming.
Miguel’s black dog was fighting with the sisters’ beribboned cat under the table. Other dogs had come up surreptitiously during the meal, and there was chaos among them. The men tried to break up the mad fracas, but Agustinita grabbed a piece of firewood and picked on Miguel’s collie alone. The beast remained stolid against her beatings, holding his position against the cat with his forelegs rooted to the ground, moving only his flanks from side to side. As her snarling cat made ready to take another leap at the collie, Agustinita made a quick dart under the table and snatched the cat away. Suddenly there was something awfully wrong with her hair. Her head had brushed against a slat under the table, pushing the huge knot of hair back. The knot did not seem to belong on the back of her head. The hairpins were hanging half out, and the Spanish gold comb was ready to fall off.
Ercelia felt as if the shed itself were about to fall on her head as she realized that the fat knot of hair on Agustinita’s head was a false one. With desperate anxiousness she sprang to her aid, pressing the pins and the comb in place with swift, deft fingers. She saw the horrified look on Agustinita’s face, her frantic glances at the excited company about her. She sensed the feeling of relief that came over Agustinita as she realized that in the melee the tragedy of her false hair had passed unnoticed. Not even Josefinita and Romulita had seen it happen. Their concern was their cat whose fur they were ruffing from head to tail, inspecting its flesh for cuts.
“Puñema!” Ercelia’s father exclaimed, picking up a half-picked bone from the ground. “This is what must have caused the brawl. Who could have done it?”
He turned the bone over, studying the piece of meat that had by some miracle escaped the ferocious canine jaws. There was an amused smile on his face as if the bone were telling him its story.
The sisters concertedly lifted their eyes and accused Don Miguel without speaking. Like their cat, they were ready with their claws even before the soft rumble was heard in their throats. But Don Miguel looked back at them serenely, with a look that asked for mercy, and announced in elegant Castilian: “I must beg your permission to call on you tonight, señoritas. I want to offer my formal apologies and make equitable reparation.” Ercelia could have sworn with her fingers crossed behind her that Don Miguel was not serious, that he was laughing at the sisters. But there was not a glint of mischief in his eyes as he bent his head to the women, very much like the protagonist in the zarzuela that the town staged on the eve of a fiesta.
And Agustinita was all at once different—prim and delicate like her mama-grandma’s silk and ivory fan. She raised her chin a little and touched the sleeves of her camisa and said succinctly. “You may save yourself the trouble, señor. Our company will be required elsewhere tonight as all other nights.”
It was all so comic, bu
t nobody laughed. Agustinita was serious.
And none knew better than Father Anacleto. Raising himself with difficulty from the stone foundation of the veranda steps, where he had dropped to escape the cat and dog fight, the padre interposed: “Let him come, my daughter. Forgiveness was never denied the penitent by Christ himself. Dying on the cross on Calvary between two thieves”—his voice began to take an oratorical lift—“the Man-God said—”
“Yes, yes, your Reverence,” Agustinita hastened to say, “he may come.” And the old priest fetched a deep sigh as though he had performed a baptism, said Mass, absolved a penitent, or buried the dead. Then, touching his cuffs to his wet forehead, he said: “Now, I must go. I must. Doña ‘Sabel, Don Valentin—”
Dropping the bone of contention to the ground, Ercelia’s father helped the priest to the gate, and Don Miguel buried the bone by offering to drive him home in his noisy Ford.
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THE car had hardly chugged away when the three women started making ready to leave. Like a piece of priceless salvage, they returned Rosal-Jasmin to the basket and tied down the lid over her with scrupulous care. Then they went up the house, to the parlor, and inspected themselves meticulously between two pier glasses.
Ercelia followed the sisters to help them with their toiletry, but moving between the mirrors, she carefully avoided looking at her reflections. The mirrors, hanging directly across the hall from each other, threw their images into each other’s faces, affecting her very strangely. They made her feel too rudely stared at, front and back, and peculiarly displaced. Looking at her back from over her own shoulders as if it belonged to another person walking ahead of her, and seeing her face beyond her back staring back at her, filled her with confusion. It was as if she were looking at her past in the future or at her future in the past, and she did not know exactly where she was, ahead or behind. Her images, standing in line in front of and behind her, seemed to crowd her, and she had a feeling that she was trapped. She felt as if she were being absorbed into the identity of the many reflections that looked and acted precisely as she did, catching every little flicker of her eyes, every little twitching of her lips.
The Devil Flower Page 4