“As what might a sexton do in a cockpit on a Sunday?” Josefinita demanded of Agustinita, cocking her head to one side and tapping a teaspoon on a saucer.
“Well,” said the other, “I would give more credit to facts than to a water-carrier’s gossip.”
The story did not seem quite coherent to Ercelia. The fabric the sisters were weaving was loose in many places. The conjectures and assumptions and contradictions were tangled yams on the loom of her understanding. Yet was the story all the more beautiful to her for its lack of clarity. Unshackled, as it were, by incontrovertible facts, her imagination had lifted her freely to heights where she could see all and everything as she pleased. She saw Don Miguel and his little nun hiding in some island or mountain cave for weeks before they finally presented themselves before the bishop and asked his forgiveness. She saw the venerable ancient hearing the lovers’ confessions, then Sister Claribel going through the ritual of renunciation before marrying her earthly lover.
Nobody had witnessed the tragic ceremony. It was performed at three o’clock in the morning at a side altar of the chapel in strict privacy. Only the principals had been present. But Ercelia did not have to be there to know what took place. In her mind’s eye, she saw Claribel dressed once again in her black habit, kneeling before the tabernacle with the candle of penitence in her hand—the candle that was meant to be lighted at the head of her bed when she was preparing to die. Ercelia saw the bishop in a simple surplice anointing Claribel on the forehead, on the lips, on the ears, on the hands—as in extreme unction. She saw the bishop solemnly lift the black veil from the penitent’s head. She saw him give back to her on a silver platter the long black hair that she herself had cut off and presented to the Lord when she had taken her vows. She saw Sister Claribel pick up her tresses, weeping bitterly.
She saw all this in a moment. But what affected her even more than this painful scene of rejection was the manner in which Sister Claribel came to her end. It seemed that she had contracted a fever from the festering sores on her knees that had developed after she had knelt on tiny bits of broken shells—a penance she had inflicted on herself for retracting her vows. “Oh, how terrible!” Ercelia said. “How terrible!”
Her mother sent her a look and her voice snapped. “She did a terrible thing; only terrible suffering may mitigate a terrible deed. The body must be made to suffer to keep the spirit clean.”
Her voice was terrible to hear, and Ercelia wondered about her mother then. Was that why her knees were ugly with calluses? Was that why she heard Masses from beginning to end on her knees? Was she, too, doing penance for something she had done in the past? But Romulita was voicing an agreement. “The surest thing,” she was saying. “As Father Anacleto would say, ‘A fat body, a lean soul.’”
And Ercelia watched her stir her coffee with a spoon very daintily, her little finger lifted delicately away from the rest of her hand like the horn of the mythical unicorn in the fairy-tale books.
When Celerina came to the porch again and asked Ercelia how many chupas of rice the maid was to cook for the evening meal, the ladies once more picked up Rosal-Jasmin and returned her to the basket. Back in the parlor, however, as Ercelia watched them pirouetting once again between the mirrors, touching up their faces with the little sweet-smelling cakes of Chinese powder in pink glass-topped boxes, pressing long double-pronged hairpins into the fat knots of their hair, Ercelia no longer felt apart from the sisters, no longer different or afraid.
The sun had now moved from behind the coconut palms and was throwing brilliant splinters of light through the bamboo screens across the wide windows of the room. The pallid sheen of the datu’s brass pots on the pedestals in the comers had turned a golden yellow, the varicolored bead curtains above the doors had cast off their veil of dust, and suddenly it was as if the room had been refurbished. The dull, black chairs with their skillfully patched velvet cushions and mended crocheted covers, and even the round table standing on its one shaky leg, seemed to have assumed in the golden light of sunset, a new dignity, a new meaning, a new life.
Ercelia did not really note any difference. She only felt the change as one would feel the body growing under the skin. She did not know that she had begun to stir in her mind the ashes of the past and was watching it rise and spread a curtain of illusion around the present even as mist at the foot of mountains made the valleys look like the floor of heaven. She saw only that the sisters belonged in that room as if a talented painter with an eye for color and harmony had put them there with the sure, deft strokes of his masterful brush. She knew them better and was not ashamed of the room any more.
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ERCELIA left the town for the big city without seeing the sisters again. Santa Maria, the family seat of Don Pipong de los Reyes, was a good six kilometers out of town—half an hour by pony rig, and a quarter by bus—and the sisters, never disposed to suffer the discomforts of the dusty road, kept at home as usual in their father’s house. Except during processions when their colorful costumes attracted more attention than the rich garments of the icons on their chariots, and the really exclusive socials in the clubhouse where they served as ornamental hostesses, their persons were hardly ever seen in public—which was very well, as Ercelia’s mother would say, inasmuch as a woman’s beauty was made cheap by the stare of the rabble.
Ercelia did not chance upon Miguel either. Her mother had liked him even less after the party and her father had not asked him to the house again. But Don Miguel had already dropped a pebble in the placid pool of her imagination and crystal rings were forming in her eyes, catching dreams of many colors. All the way from her pearly little town at the tip of Mindanao, past the coral-bound islands of the Visayas to the mouth of the Pasig River in Manila, the man Miguel who had married a nun had followed her. He would intrude in her mind at every unguarded moment—while she watched from the deck of the ship the flying fish scuttling across the face of the sea, or listened to the labored chugging of the motor from her little berth on a lower deck. He had stopped chasing her fancy only when she arrived in the big city, and then only for a time.
Manila was all new to her and exciting. It claimed all her living moments: the churches, the huge buildings, the Luneta, the botanical gardens and zoo, the great hanging bridge and wide streets, and the many cars and carromatas that followed one another as in a parade or a funeral. Everybody seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere—she did not know where—and when she went anywhere she found herself hurrying along with them. There was something frightening about the city. It was so unfamiliar. As unfamiliar as the other end of the earth. The people all about her spoke a strange tongue. The noises they made were a barrage of sounds without meaning in her ears. She felt lost and alone.
Of course she was not alone, nor unprotected. She lived in an exclusive dormitory for girls, surrounded by high walls, and closely watched over by the nuns of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Her mother would not hear of her staying anywhere but in a house of nuns, not even in the house of Don Valentin’s lawyer-cousin. The house of the nuns was the only proper boardinghouse for nice girls in the big city of sin, Father Anacleto had told her mother, and her mother had talked to her father, and her father had made arrangements for her to live with the nuns. The nuns had met her at the dock in a beautiful horse-drawn rig and were very kind to her. They had even brought a house girl to help her with her trunks; and on the first Sunday after her arrival, they had shown her the city in their vehicle. They had also accompanied her to school and helped her with her enrollment. It was a shame, they told her, that she had to go to a normal school and study to become a teacher. If she had chosen the general high-school course instead, she could have gone to their own school just across the street from the dormitory, and the sisters who taught there could accompany her to school every day. Yes, she thought, it was such a shame too, because she was very proud to walk with the nuns, and it was very exciting to be living with them. To be close to them, to hear them talk and laugh was a joy
for her—and the only joy. Soon her days settled down to mere routine—the same old routine as in her little town—to church, to school, and home. Very soon she was homesick and lonely, and in her loneliness Don Miguel began to haunt her dreams again.
One dream that she had of him was very strange. It made her afraid and left her wondering. She dreamed that she was in an enormous hall, and that it was very still—like a mouth without speech. Slivers of light were coming in from above jagged rocks that were like teeth. Then there was a hissing as of water falling on a blade of hot iron and a tongue of fire leaped into the room saying: “Sister Claribel, I have sinned against you. My lips have befouled the prayer of your lips, my breath has sullied the flower of your innocence, and I am lost—I am lost—I am lost!” Suddenly, the fire went out and in its place was Don Miguel, his dark hair luminous as with unseen fire, casting shadows like long lean fingers on his face.
Rising to his feet, he held out to her a long black whip that was covered with coarse grainy scales. It was like the tail of the horrid pagui fish—the scourge of runaway slaves and lunatics and sorcerers of long ago—and it made her hair stand on end. Then he turned his back to her and fell on his knees, and she saw him throw off the white surplice he wore and unbutton from the collar down to the waist the dark robe he had on. She watched the robe fall on his lap, his naked torso rising out of its folds like a worm pushing itself out of its cocoon. His naked back was fascinating to see. She stared at the muscles under his arms that were like the folded wings of an angel carved from stone. His body filled her with awe. He was strong with an all-male hardness, neatly hewn and put together, and a sensuous thrill entered her body as she watched him. Was he flesh and blood? Would he quiver to her touch? Would he bleed to the lash? She raised the whip and brought it down on his bare back with all the strength of her body. A moan of agony came from his lips as his body slowly turned and twisted like a beaten serpent.
Her body tensed with pleasure while the bruise on his flesh rose and swelled into an ugly welt. It grew bigger and uglier, like a thing with life wanting to break from under the skin. But as his blood leaped out and mixed with the sweat on his body, she began to feel that she had beaten an angel—a fallen angel, an angel with wings of stone, an angel become man by sin—and she bent over him calling tremblingly, “Miguel! Miguel!”
Facing her, he rose to his feet, and the red robe slid from his lap, uncovering his body to her gaze. She had never actually seen a full-grown man uncovered, she had only imagined how one would look from what she had heard, and Don Miguel’s raw body with its coarse, dark hair filled her with fear and revulsion. Cold sweat wet her forehead. Her arms became as empty sleeves on her garment, and her feet became as two sticks bound with cobwebs.
“The devil comes under many guises.” Father Anacleto’s warning seemed to have taken the form of a slimy serpent slowly stretching out of its viscous coil, rearing its full-spread head, poised to strike, and she woke up screaming.
Her screaming roused all the girls on her side of the hall; old Mother Anna, the keeper of the keys, came stumbling down the hall, thinking a man had broken into her room. The dream was so vivid that for many days after, she could not think of it without blushing. It was some time before she could tell her father counselor about it in confession.
But other dreams she had of Don Miguel were beautiful: dreams in which he came to her like a storybook prince to his sleeping beauty, in which she would watch him make love to herself or somebody who was like herself, for while she felt all the fire of his closeness, and was happy for his closeness, yet she saw him far off—away, like a picture on the wall—and she was not afraid. Sometimes, she would close her eyes and see him the way she thought Sister Claribel had seen him in his youth. She would slip out of bed and make her body bare. With her eyes on her finger tips, she would watch with lascivious joy the bedroom lamp running its light all round her firm young breasts, her softly rising abdomen, her full round thighs. Then she would cover her head with a white bed sheet, feeling the touch of the fabric against her skin as a man’s hands searching her body—and telling herself she was Sister Claribel, she would lie down in bed and surrender to a dream of Miguel.
However, she never allowed herself to think of Miguel seriously, to hope that one day she would be his wife. The thought was never in her mind. His age, and his close friendship with her father, made the idea even shameful, and when seven months later her mother wrote her telling about Don Miguel’s marriage to Agustinita, the news did not disturb her. She had seen Agustinita throw him the challenge and she had seen him accept it with pleasure.
Her mother’s letter about the wedding was short and casual, mentioning only one detail: that Don Pipong had given away the bright ornament of his household to Don Miguel with utmost reluctance. No word was written about the courtship, about which Ercelia was inordinately curious, remembering how Agustinita had made a display of her dislike for Don Miguel at the roast-pig party. Ercelia knew how her mother felt about Miguel and she did not pry the lid of her reserve. She learned the interesting sidelights of the courtship when she returned to the town at the end of her first school year in the city for a two-month vacation.
News of the marriage had leaped from tongue to tongue in the town with the urgency of a posted notice of a dysentery or of a smallpox epidemic, she was told. The men who had gathered that day to bet on fighting cocks behind the kiln in the coconut grove had lamented about it, saying, “Poor Don Miguel, a cock of fine talons but of poor eyesight.” And the women who had gathered for a card game in the woodshed behind the pigpen of Teng Koo, had laughed in utter derision, saying, “Rayo, when an old hen itches for a cock-a-doodle-doo, anyone will do, anyone will do!” But in her father’s house, the scurrilous talk had never been repeated. Don Valentin, in the words of the town’s wise men, had put a spoon unwashed into somebody else’s dish, having played matchmaker for Don Miguel. Doña Isabel had protested vociferously against it, but Don Valentin had only laughed and said, “Agustinita is post meridian, and I have my fodder to sell!” At which Doña Isabel had promptly fallen ill.
The major details of the courtship, Ercelia heard from Romulita herself, who came to visit a few days after Ercelia’s return. Her father had warned the household never to make reference in any way whatsoever to Don Miguel within hearing of the sisters if they should come to call. “Not one word about Miguel, if you don’t want to raise the roof of the house,” he had said.
But Romulita was eager to talk about Don Miguel. After embracing and touching cheeks with Ercelia, exclaiming over her, and turning her round for a full appraisal, Romulita burst out like water from a floodgate. “Josefinita cannot come because Papa is indisposed, but don’t ask about Agustinita. She is too well occupied in spying on Don Miguel to do anything else. She hardly even comes to see us any more. Don Valentin’s dear friend Don Miguel,” she said, accepting a glass of sarsaparilla from the maid, “has been behaving, if you don’t yet know, like the Datu of Pikit.” “What happened?” Ercelia said, trying to sound casual. “Does he have no affection for her any more?”
“Affection? He has too much of it, if that is what you call the thing that’s consuming him,” she said taking a delicate sip of the soft drink. “Affection, ha!” She took a long drink, her throat convulsing, making soft little sounds. “It is dog itch he has,” she said viciously, setting the glass down and hastily bringing a hand to her mouth to cover a burp.
The blood colored Ercelia’s cheeks, but she managed to say, “If she has affection for him, she can surely please him. After all she is his wife.”
Romulita waited for the maid to leave and then fixed on Ercelia a frank, inquisitorial look. “You surely have learned to talk,” she said. “But you really have no idea, Ercelia, and neither have I. You see, in matters of this nature, as the ancients say, we still have our thumbs in our mouths.”
Ercelia wondered if this was indeed true. She had learned so much in matters of this nature in school in the city; less
from books than from girls of her acquaintance. She would never speak about such things to a man—she would die at the thought that he knew that she knew—but Romulita need not underrate her. She was about to make a reply when her mother came in, dragging her slippers noisily, and she had to hold back her words.
After exclaiming her delight over seeing Romulita, her mother had hastened to her room and brought out a saya and camisa. The sisters were the fashion plates of the town and the best consultants in dress styles and costuming. Her daughter had come from the city with interesting ideas like the skirt without a train, and she was just not sure about its good taste. What did Romulita think about it? Romulita took one look at the garments and turned her lower lip out. “Ptttt!” she said, “like a bird with the tail chopped off,” and released such a diatribe on the odd and silly new fashions of the city that it frightened her mother back to the kitchen, thus permitting Romulita to continue her story.
If Ercelia remembered, Agustinita had taken a very strong dislike to Don Miguel at Ercelia’s send-off party. Well, Agustinita continued to dislike him. When he had come to the house that night to tender his apologies, Agustinita had kept to her room, and Papa would not have accepted his call if Josefinita and she had not assured Papa that good Father Anacleto had interceded in the matter. Josefinita and she endured the many unpleasant hours he stayed in the house. And one night, not very long after, when Papa was up in the country, the don had come under their window singing love songs like a country bumpkin. It made Agustinita so furious that she threatened to empty her chamber pot on him if Josefinita would not set the dog upon him.
“But how did Agustinita come to marry him then?” Ercelia insisted, now more perplexed than ever.
“Well, against a devil like Miguel, a woman is just helpless because she cannot use her will. He persisted so. And as the ancients say, ‘A constant dripping will wear away the hardest stone.’ Agustinita became less watchful, and Miguel finally succeeded in using his devil charm on her.”
The Devil Flower Page 6