The Devil Flower

by Emigdio Alvarez Enriquez

  However, when the Misses Dapdap and Tomasol passed by her door on late afternoons, knocking their heels on the floor of the corridor to attract her attention, she needed no second invitation to walk to the wharf with them to see the sunset, or the colorful Moro vintas coming in from the sea. She never missed a concert of Don Tato’s band at the Plaza Pershing on Sundays, even asking Josefinita to chaperon her when her mother fretted and said the maid Sinforosa could not accompany her. Ercelia mailed her letters in the post office herself, was always working on school projects, and some articles she could find only in the more popular and crowded bazaars of the town. She would not admit it to anyone, but she was very anxious about Larry.

  One evening after one of these trips to town, she arrived home and found her mother’s room crowded with the neighbors: Tina, the washerwoman; Sanang, the wife of the blacksmith; Nena, the rice-cake baker; and many children. Doña Isabel had had a seizure late in the afternoon and the maid had run for Don Valentin in the fodder fields. The women, idling at Boon Ting’s store, had followed Don Valentin to the house, dragging their little ones with them. They had followed Don Valentin in through the main door, leaving their foot marks on the waxed floor.

  Ercelia found Doña Isabel lying in a pile of cushions and pillows on the rattan lounging chair that Don Valentin had settled her in because of its reclining back rest. Under the light of the overhanging Aladdin lamp, Ercelia saw that illness was most becoming to her mother and, indeed, was her best ally. Her spirit seemed to put flames into her heavy-lidded eyes under the straight eyebrows and the square forehead, bringing to life her fading beauty. Her hair, streaming on the white laces of pillows heaped around her, set off the mellow old-ivory complexion of her oval face; and the proud nose inherited from her Spanish parent seemed to curve more softly at the bridge and more sharply at the tip. In spite of the sag under the chin and the slightly heavy lower lip, her mother was, Ercelia realized, the flower, the firefly, the pearl—she, Ercelia, was not the pearl.

  As she stood there looking at her mother, she wondered if in another world, in a different society, her mother would not have chosen to be somebody very interesting like a dancer, an actress, or, God forgive her, even a rich man’s mistress. She wondered if, however much she might have loved Don Valentin, the strong man of the town, she would have settled down to be his housewife. Perhaps her mother’s vigilance over her was a vaguely conscious recognition in her daughter of a volatility of spirit that she suspected in herself. She had wondered about this times before, and she wondered about it now as she met the intensity of her mother’s accusing gaze.

  “You will not have long to wait until you can go vamping. Soon I will die and there will be no one to stop you”—her mother’s pale lips did not move, but her eyes spoke the words. Her mother knew women only as either good or bad, and a fallen woman, in her sight, could have no redemption. But Ercelia did not cower before her now. Her mother was no longer just a symbolic ornament of her origin, but a woman. One whom she had seen in bed with a man. One who was a living, breathing female with the same capacity for enjoying the flesh as any other.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said, compassionately bending over her and raising the thinning hand to her lips. “I did not know you were so ill.”

  “There are illnesses your eyes cannot see,” her mother said reproachfully.

  An angry retort was on Ercelia’s lips, but her father, who had come up and was standing behind the lounging chair, shook his head vigorously with a little scowl on his face, signaling for her not to talk back.

  She had begun to talk back to her parents lately, and, unlike her father who would draw a deep breath and turn away in displeasure, her mother would raise her voice intimidatingly, on the verge of a fit.

  Controlling her voice as best she could, Ercelia inquired if Dr. Biel had been sent for yet.

  “Nora Pilar is here,” said her mother, looking at her defiantly.

  Ercelia caught her breath in her throat. “Nora Pilar!” she exclaimed.

  The washerwoman and the wife of the blacksmith looked at each other in embarrassment, and the wife of the blacksmith, who was massaging Doña Isabel’s feet, said, “I—I suggested, and—and Don Valentin said I must call her.”

  Nora Pilar was the midwife of the neighborhood and she took pride in the license to practice granted her by the Health Center of the town. She was also the self-appointed general practitioner among the poor families. Don Valentin had had old Dr. Pena for a family physician and had never used the midwife’s services, but Dr. Pena had passed away four months ago, and Doña Isabel could find no faith in the ability of Dr. Biel, his young assistant. “I saw him with a running nose and scabies on his legs as a boy in Kaburihan,” she said; “I cannot believe he is a doctor.”

  “But Nora Pilar is a midwife, Papa,” Ercelia pleaded. “What could she know?”

  Somebody cleared a throat behind her, and Ercelia tinned to see Nora Pilar standing in the doorway with a glass of some dark brown substance in her hand. She had been in the kitchen preparing it, Ercelia realized. The midwife’s white hair was combed tightly back from her high forehead and she wore an expression of offended dignity on her wrinkled face.

  “This is the silk of com, a sure cure for bad kidneys,” she announced with a challenging quaver in her voice. “I learned to make this from a pharmacist on Calle Nunez. I have cured many people in this town. Petra, the wife of the postman, will tell you how I saved the life of her daughter when she was given up for dead by the doctors, and I made well the husband of Berta Villares, the schoolteacher of Recodo, after the Moro herb doctor had shaken his head over him. But, as I told you, Sanang, I am only a substitute for a hospital doctor. Only the poor who cannot afford to pay send for me.” The old woman’s eyes were fixed on the glass in her hands as if to bury the insult to her powers in its murky depths.

  Ercelia felt her mother’s eyes burning into her as she said, “You are more than good enough for me, Nora Pilar. I am putting myself in your hands. Don’t you listen to my daughter. She has learned too much in Manila. Please, give me your drink.”

  “Well,” the midwife said, “if you insist Doña Isabel. But I cannot make patients well who have no faith in my cures. As the saying goes, ‘It is faith that is the best healer.’”

  “I agree, Nora Pilar,” said Don Valentin, looking apologetically at his daughter. As he raised his wife’s head from the pillow, the old woman put the glass to Doña Isabel’s lips, cupping a hand under her chin to catch the droplets.

  But the drink the Pilar woman gave Doña Isabel did not improve her condition, nor lessen her pains. The Pilar woman tried everything, including prescribing medicines from the Chinese drugstore—medicines the townsfolk said contained opium and were sure pain-killers because they put the patient to sleep. But Doña Isabel grew steadily worse. The pains in her hips came more and more often, worrying Don Valentin almost out of his mind, making him forget even to feed his gamecocks—“A thing he has never forgotten to do, not even when the sea threatened to swallow the earth during the quake of 1910,” his brother Ingo said.

  When Don Valentin heard that in the hills of Curuan a boy of twelve was effecting cures by strumming a guitar given him by some ant-hill dwellers, he sent Ingo to bring him down to town.

  Doña Isabel had a horror of superstitious treatments and necromancy. “This is sinful, Valentin,” she protested weakly from her bed. “Father Anacleto will denounce us as heretics; and the ladies of the Apostolado who come to visit me, what will they say?”

  “I do not care what they say. All I want is for you to be well. If the saints will not help, maybe the devil will!” he told her.

  “Valentin!” Her voice was horrified and pleading all at the same time. But Don Valentin was firm, and one day, Ercelia came home from school to find a sad-faced boy with a sickly body strumming a monotonous dirge on a guitar while Sinforosa, in clamorous tones, led the neighbors in a novena prayer before the image of St. Roque, the dirge and t
he prayer trying to muffle out each other.

  Her grandaunt Mariana, who was visiting that day, described the situation very aptly. “A candle to the devil and a candle to St. Roque,” she said, shaking her head disapprovingly.

  “A fair game to fool the devil!” Ingo told his aunt. “If the cure is effected, we can all attribute it to St. Roque.”

  But neither St. Roque nor the devil came to the succor of Doña, Isabel, and when finally Ercelia prevailed upon her father to send for Dr. Biel, the young man came only to say that her kidneys were very bad and her heart was too weak to stand an operation.

  Ercelia felt all her hopes wash away like little snail tracks under a wave on the beach. Now she must think only of her mother who was not going to be with her for long. She must not think of Larry. She must not be disloyal to her mother even in thought. To atone for her neglect, she came home every day with fruit or candy or flowers. She dismissed her classes earlier, and to avoid meeting Larry never went to town. At first there was suspicion in her mother’s eyes at all her demonstration of care and affection, but after some time the light came back into her mother’s eyes as she looked at her, and the thin hand was soft when Ercelia picked it up to kiss.

  Then one day, long before the class was over, a black shadow fell on the golden patch of sunlight on her classroom floor, and she looked up to see Larry standing at the door with the familiar grin on his handsome face. She did not ask him to come in, but he waited on the porch until the school bell rang, making her furious because the girls giggled and poked at one another, looking now at her, now at him. The Misses Dapdap and Tomasol went by several times, knocking their heels ostentatiously as they passed her door, clearing their throats, or winking at her. Ercelia watched Larry, from the corner of her eye as he settled himself against a post, posing with studied grace. He was dressed entirely in white and he made a very striking picture, and she was very nervous.

  She did not ask him in when class was dismissed either, and she kept the three big girls who were cleaning the room for the week longer than usual, hoping he would leave, but when the sun had gone under the sea and the shadows were creeping up and he was still waiting, she decided to send the girls home and face him.

  She went to her desk by the window and pretended to work on her lesson plan in the fast-dimming light. She heard his steps as he came in, but she refused to look up. When the room became darker and she heard the muffled sound of the door closing and the click of the lock as it fell in place, her heart began to beat wildly and she began to write very fast.

  His shadow fell across the notebook she was writing in, shutting off the light from the window. “Why haven’t you sent for me, Ercelia? I have waited and waited and waited,” he said, his voice sounding angry.

  “I did not want to see you,” she said very calmly, surprisingly calmly, setting down her pencil and closing her notebook. “If you kiss me again, I will scream. You better leave me and open that door.” She looked at him and was frightened at the pallor of his face. There were sharp-pointed lights in his eyes, and the smile on his lips had no humor, no mirth. The thin lips of his wide mouth were compressed in a straight line and the lower lip twitched as in pain.

  Her heart softened inside her. “Is anything the matter?” she said. “Are you ill?”

  Without a word, he slipped onto a desk and sat staring at the floor as if fascinated by its polish, balling his fists. “I’m not ill in the body, Ercelia,” he said, his voice big and strong. “I am only sick inside—here!” and he pounded his fist against his chest. The sudden change in his manner and his violent gesture frightened her. She couldn’t fight him as she had planned. She had never seen him like this before. She said nothing, she couldn’t say anything. There was thick silence between them.

  “I am leaving, Ercelia. My transfer came this morning,” he said finally.

  The words splashed over her like cold water.

  “So soon, Larry!” The words escaped her unguardedly. In the sudden clash of their eyes, she realized that she had lost the battle.

  “I am leaving on the next ship that comes in.”

  “Oh, but you can’t, Larry, I—I—“ she stammered. “I mean, you said you were staying a year, and here it is not even March.”

  He got up and seated himself on the edge of the table in front of her. “I didn’t want to come, Ercelia.” His voice sounded sad and hollow. “I thought I’d just slip away, without telling you, but I couldn’t. I had to see you.” He raised a hand and laid it lightly, almost reverently on her head. “I love you, Ercelia. If you could only come with me. You see, as I told you, I had no time—”

  His legs and his body were so close to her face that she could smell the clean freshness of his starched clothes. His hand upon her head made her shiver. Suddenly, she knew she had to get away, away. She stumbled to her feet. His arms caught her instantly at the waist, and her hand grabbed his shoulder for support. For a breathless instant they stood immobile like figures in a movie still, staring at each other, then Larry drew her to him between his legs, pressing her against him, burying her face in his chest.

  “I love you, I love you, Ercelia. I cannot go away from you. Say you will come with me, please!” he whispered in her ear.

  She couldn’t bring herself to put her arms around him and kiss his lips and fondle him, but she could not push him away either. Her body trembled inside and she closed her eyes. “I can’t, Larry. Even if I want to, I can’t.”

  “Why not, Ercelia? Don’t you love me enough?”

  “You don’t understand, Larry. My mother is sick, very sick. She is going to die.” She felt his body warming, hardening against her, and she tried to pull herself away.

  “No, Ercelia, she is only feigning illness because she does not want to let you go, and she does not like me,” he said, drawing her closer still.

  “No, no, you don’t understand, Larry. It is the doctor who said so. She is going to die.” Her fingers clutched his shoulder frantically. “She is going to die!”

  The intimate pressure of her finger tips ran the length of Larry’s body, making it grow and push under the skin like a full fruit about to burst with sweetness. And his arms climbed around her like strong clinging vines.

  She stiffened against him; the blood was like wind in her ears.

  “Please, don’t be afraid, Ercelia, I want to marry you. I will, this minute, now, any time you say,” he said, seeking her lips.

  She couldn’t answer after the kiss. Her mouth was dry.

  “Believe me, please, believe,” he cried, his voice desperate with desire as he locked his legs around her.

  “You are going away, Larry.” She finally found her voice. “We are parting.”

  “But I am yours, Ercelia. Always. We are parting only because your mother is keeping us apart. But I will be back for you any time you want. Please don’t draw away from me. This is the last time I will be with you in a long, long time,” he pleaded, passing one hand to her breast, clutching it as if with fear that it would dissolve and leave his hand empty.

  Her hand sprang to his wrist, grabbing it tightly. “I’m afraid, Larry,” she said, looking at him nervously. “You are so-so big. Please do not hurt me.”

  “How can I hurt you? How can I hurt someone I love? Can’t you see how gently I love you?” His hand released her breast slowly, and pressed it very gently, very tenderly, as if trying to make the clutching fingers talk to the flesh.

  For a moment there was only the noisy hammering of Ercelia’s heart in her ears, then her hand slipped gently from his wrist to his forearm, feeling the tapering, corded column of his limb. Every pore of his flesh seemed to awaken at her touch. His eyes avidly followed her fingers inching along the sleeve to his elbow.

  “You have no hairs,” she told him, smiling shyly. “You’re clean.”

  “Yes, I’m clean,” he said huskily. “You—you don’t like hairs?”

  “No,” she said, touching his chest lightly. “Not on the body. I—I thi
nk they are ugly. And they make me feel afraid.”

  His hands flew to the collar of his shirt. “I have no hairs on the body. Look,” he said, quickly undoing the buttons and pulling out his shirt tails. His hard-fleshed chest looked massive above the sculptured ridges of his abdomen. He took her hand and laid it on his chest.

  Her arm was as limp as a child’s in sleep, but her fingers were like a flock of frightened birds perilously perched on a shaky twig.

  “Feel it, feel my heart with your hand,” he said. “How can you be afraid of me when I love you so?”

  The left-over sunset light cast shadows on the little downy hairs meeting between the blocks of his chest, forming a thin dark trail down to his waist. Timidly, she traced the fine little line with the nail of a finger down to where it disappeared under the bright metal buckle at his waist.

  Chuckling nervously, he drew her to him. “If you don’t go in the dark, you will meet with no ghost,” he whispered in her ear. “It lives in the dark, you know.”

  She laughed softly against his naked chest. The sound of his heart pounding close, the coaxing tease in his laughter overwhelmed her with tenderness for him, and she passed trusting arms around him under his shirt.

  With a happy little cry, he tilted her face with a fist under the chin and set his mouth to hers; then his hand dropped to the buckle of his belt.

  Her hand was a tight fist as he took it and pressed it against his moist flesh, but under his guiding hand, her fingers opened up slowly like morning petals to a shaft of sun. The song of his blood beat bold notes in her hand, the musk of his sweat swung censers in her face, as she felt his supple fingers searching her body like deer for herbs among the hills, or satyrs plucking the sweet seeds of the dulce mujer from the clinging vine, and she trembled against him in the shadows.

  “You are trembling,” he said, feeling the quiver of her body.

  “I have never been like this with a man, and—and—you are built so big.”