The Devil on Her Tongue

by Linda Holeman

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  He shrugged, patting his chest. “She has trouble breathing sometimes. She’s very weak.”

  “Is it the bloody cough?”

  “No. Not that. I don’t know what it is.”

  “Do you think he’ll come soon?”

  Again he shrugged.

  As February approached, my patience stretched thin. I wanted so badly to have the letter sent. And I worried daily over Papa’s worsening condition.

  I could barely stand to look at Bonifacio. He grew increasingly sullen, but watched me more and more closely, even when I sat reading or sewing. At times his cheeks flushed, and he got up and went outdoors. I chose not to think about his battle; I suspected he either walked among the higher rocks, shouting his anger into the wind, or gave in to his human needs in a frustrated, solitary way. I knew which it was by his behaviour when he returned. When he deprived himself, he came home more anxious, sometimes short-tempered with Cristiano if the child got underfoot. When he had given in to temptation, he returned chastened and visibly distraught. These times he would punish himself even more severely with his whip in the sitting room at night, and the whispered praying would go on far longer than usual.

  One evening, as I reached for the bread across the table, my arm hit his full soup bowl. As the hot liquid sloshed onto his breeches, he jumped up. “Watch what you’re doing!” he said angrily. “How can you be so clumsy?”

  I stared at him. “It was an accident. I’m sorry,” I said loudly, and threw a dishcloth at him. “Here.”

  He caught it, but instead of wiping his trousers, he flung it back at me. “If you are so unhappy here, then I release you from the marriage, and will send you back to Porto Santo. You obviously have no interest in learning to control yourself through prayer and confession and penance. I cannot allow you to stay if you’re going to show me so little respect, and think you can speak to me in this manner.”

  His words about me returning to Porto Santo chilled me. I wrapped my arms around myself. Even once I managed to send the letter to my father, I had to wait to hear back from him. I would have to be a little more careful.

  When Espirito walked through the yard, I was so happy to see him I beamed. “It’s been so long, Espirito. Over six weeks, since Christmas.”

  “How is Papa?” He put his hand on Cristiano’s head. The boy had, as usual, run to him.

  My smile faded. “I’m sorry,” I said, glancing behind me, through the open door into the house. “He can barely eat now, and spends most of his time in bed. He has a few hours of relief when I give him the poppy.”

  “I’ve thought of hiring men to carry him out on a litter and bring him to our home, although I doubt he’ll agree. But perhaps one of the English physicians in Funchal could help him.”

  I knew Papa was dying, and I doubted there was anything anyone could do. “I think it’s just his time, Espirito.” Instinctively I put my hand on his arm, and he looked down and covered my hand with his. His fingers were long and slender, so warm on mine in spite of the chill in the air.

  “Thank you, Diamantina. I know Papa is grateful for your help. As am I.”

  After dinner, I put my letter and the coins on the table, asking Espirito to send it on the next ship to Brazil.

  He looked at the name on it. “Arie ten Brink,” he said.

  “My father.”

  “I thought you were the daughter of the Dutch innkeeper at—” He stopped, glancing at me and then at Bonifacio. But I didn’t care now what he said about my past, or what Bonifacio thought of me. “Your father lives in São Paulo,” he stated.

  “Yes. He left Porto Santo five years ago. I just … I only recently found out how to reach him.”

  “Of course I’ll send it for you,” he said. He took the letter, but left the réis.

  “Diamantina.” Bonifacio spoke through the sheets that divided us, waking me before dawn a week after Espirito’s visit. “Lent is almost here, and I want you to start preparing for Easter. I know you’ve never had to deny yourself anything, but you’re a Catholic now, and as a believer you must prepare for this, the holiest of times, through prayer, penance, repentance and self-denial.”

  I threw back my blanket and made a sound in my throat, annoyed by his condescending tone. “What would you suggest I repent, Bonifacio?” I cleared my throat, scratchy from sleep. “And what, besides some of our food, do I have to give up? Exactly what will I deny myself?” My voice was mocking.

  I heard a rustle, and unexpectedly Bonifacio pulled the sheets apart. He was fully dressed. When he stared at me, I looked down at his mother’s medallion, its chain tangled with the thin thong of my father’s talisman, which lay between my exposed breasts.

  I clutched the front of my nightdress, covering my nakedness.

  “Is that a heathen icon you wear with the Blessed Virgin? You desecrate my sainted mother’s memory,” he said in a loud voice.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Cristiano sit up on his pallet. And then Bonifacio came towards me, breathing heavily, and I scrambled off my bed. Although at first I thought it was lust I saw on his face, I almost immediately realized it was rage. Rage at me, and surely at himself, for I had seen that he was tempted.

  “Get away from me,” I said, and at that he lifted his hand and hit me with his open palm, hard enough to make me lose my balance. I fell back onto the bed.

  And then Cristiano was between us, striking Bonifacio with his fists, kicking him, screaming with a high, desperate sound. “No! No no no no!” he shrieked, trying to protect me.

  Bonifacio stepped back.

  “Stop, Cristiano,” I said, standing again, pulling him away from Bonifacio. “I’m all right.”

  Cristiano was rigid, staring into Bonifacio’s face.

  “Do you see yourself as Delilah, scheming to bring me down?” Bonifacio asked then, his voice low.

  “I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said, but quietly, not wanting to incite his wrath again.

  “I’ve seen how you look at my brother,” he said. “You are a temptress as evil as Jezebel.”

  “Your brother? What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll teach you to repent,” he said with that same flushed, angry look, and then left, slamming the door behind him.

  My cheek smarting, I looked at Cristiano. His face was so bleak my heart lurched.

  “We’re not staying here with him anymore,” I told him, caught in my fury at Bonifacio’s treatment. I couldn’t think clearly.

  I put on my skirt and blouse and boots and looped my medicine bag across my chest. I wrapped my shawl around my shoulders, then spread my extra shawl on the bed and laid everything I’d brought with me on it as Cristiano watched.

  “Bring me your things,” I said, and he handed me his few pieces of clothing and the torn cloth that had been his mother’s dress and the little box of wooden animals. I added them to my shawl and tied it firmly.

  “Come on.” He followed me into the sitting room, and I stopped only long enough for him to put on his jacket and hat. I looked at Papa’s closed door. He would be all right for a few days.

  I was going to Espirito. He would do as he had said, and have Papa brought out of the valley and into Funchal. Olívia and I would care for him.

  I didn’t know what had caused the rift between the brothers, but I had to believe that Espirito and Olívia would understand how impossible it was for me to live with Bonifacio when I told them about my father and the letters and money. Surely they would allow Cristiano and me to stay until more money came from my father. Maybe they would even buy us our passage, and Cristiano and I could leave right away. I would repay them once I was with my father.

  It was raining as we left. I didn’t see Bonifacio, and didn’t care if he saw me leaving. He couldn’t stop me. My brain was racing, and I felt strong and full of energy in spite of my heavy shawl slung over one shoulder. Cristiano and I started up the steep incline. The rain had made the mud trail slic
k, and more than once we both slid, or fell to one knee. I looked behind me at Cristiano, and his face was now resolute. “Good boy,” I said, encouraging him, and he nodded.

  And then, when we were perhaps halfway up the steepest trail, I half jumped over a root in the path. My boot slipped and I went over on the side of my right foot, and I heard a crack, and the pain was so sharp and unexpected that I cried out as I fell. I lay stunned for a moment, then sat up. I held my leg just above the ankle, grimacing.

  “Sister!” Cristiano said. “Sister, what happened?”

  “I hurt my ankle,” I said, furious with myself. Driven by my anger, I had rushed ahead carelessly, forgetting the weakness in my once-injured ankle. “Find me a stick,” I said. “Something I can lean on.”

  Cristiano looked around, then reached into the brambles at the side of the path. He pulled out a short, sturdy stick.

  “No, it’s too short. Something longer,” I said, and he went into the bushes. After a few minutes he emerged with a gnarled, longer stick. “Help me up.”

  I leaned on his shoulder as I stood on my uninjured foot, holding the other a few inches above the ground. Cristiano picked up my bundled shawl and hugged it; he could barely see over. I propped the stick into the mud and held it with both hands and tried to hop, but after a few steps I slid to the ground again. I looked up at Cristiano. We were both soaked and covered in mud.

  “What will we do?” he asked, shivering. I looked away, not wanting him to see my tears of pain and exasperation.

  “Let me think,” I said, realizing how foolish I’d been. I’d started on the long, arduous journey in the cold rain with no food or water. Had I really thought Cristiano could walk all the way to Funchal?

  Once more I tried to rise, but sucked in my breath at the pain of just lifting my foot. I cautiously pulled off my boot, wincing. My ankle and the top of my foot were swollen, the skin darkening. It hurt too much to get the boot on again.

  And then Bonifacio stood below us on the path.

  Cristiano faced him, his hands clenched. “Go away! Go away from us.”

  “Go home, Cristiano,” Bonifacio said evenly, and Cristiano looked back at me.

  I took a deep breath, and looked from him to Bonifacio, and then back at Cristiano. We had no choice. “Do as he says,” I told him.

  Still carrying my shawl, he edged cautiously past Bonifacio. I saw the back of his long, slender neck, the set of his small, straight spine.

  Bonifacio held out his hand, and I took it. He pulled me up and, with me leaning on his arm and my stick, slowly we descended into the valley.

  “Where did you think you were going?” he asked me later. I had managed to change into dry clothes, and now lay on my bed with my foot propped on a stack of blankets. Cristiano, also in dry clothes, sat cross-legged on his pallet.

  “To Funchal. To Espirito and Olívia.”

  “What are you talking about? Do you really think Espirito would allow you to leave me, and stay with him?”

  “Him and Olívia,” I said.

  He stared at me, then clicked his tongue. “He’s my brother. He would support me, not you.” He paced beside my bed, looking down at me. “Don’t you ever, ever do something like this again. Do you understand?”

  As I pushed myself up on the bed, trying to ease my discomfort, my skirt fell back over my knees. He stared at my bare legs.

  “Cover yourself.” He shoved the draped sheets aside and knelt beside his bed, reaching under it to pull out the sack with his cat-o’-nine tails. I was instantly alert, fearful he might beat me.

  But he put the sack under his arm. “You’re not leaving. I am,” he said. “I don’t want to be around you during Lent. I’m going into the mountains. Like Christ, I’ll retreat from temptation for forty days. I’ll fast and put you out of my mind.” He stomped out. The front door slammed behind him.

  I closed my eyes. After a while I grew aware of Cristiano pressed against me, quivering. I covered us with the blanket and put my arms around him. After some time his trembling slowed, and then stopped, and he slept.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I must have slept too, for when I opened my eyes, Papa was standing in the doorway. He had been sitting at the table when I hobbled in with Bonifacio, muddy and soaked. I didn’t know what he thought of all that had happened.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, struggling to sit up, and Cristiano stirred and sat up as well. “Go to the kitchen and bring bread and cheese for you and Papa,” I told the boy, and he left.

  “What happened?” Papa asked, looking at my bulging shawl beside the bed.

  “I … I fell. It was muddy,” I said, not wanting to tell him I had been running away, in spite of the obviousness of the shawl. “I hurt my ankle.”

  “Where did Bonifacio go?”

  “Into the mountains. He said he’ll stay there, fasting for Lent.”

  Papa frowned. “He did this his first year in the seminary. None of the others acted in such a drastic way, Father Monteiro told me. But Bonifacio was always like this. When he gets an idea in his head, he cannot let it go.” He shook his own head. “I will make you a crutch.”

  Cristiano got into my bed every night after that, and allowed me to put my arms around him as he fell asleep. With Bonifacio gone, the nightmares were fewer, and lesser in intensity. The bedwetting had stopped long ago. His small, warm body was a comfort, but in spite of it, sleep was difficult. I was always listening, conscious that Bonifacio might return in the dark even though he had said he would stay away until the end of Lent.

  Using the sturdy crutch Papa had made for me, my armpit first bruising and then toughening, I slowly made my way around the house and yard. Cristiano helped me in every way he could, running and fetching. Twice a day I wrapped my ankle in a poultice. Within a week the worst of the swelling was down, but I still couldn’t put my weight on my foot without discomfort.

  We didn’t go to church. Papa stayed in his bed most days. After the second week, Father Monteiro came to call.

  “I haven’t seen Bonifacio at morning Mass for a while,” he said, “and when none of you attended Mass last Sunday or this, I grew concerned.”

  “Bonifacio went to the mountains to fast for Lent. I hurt my ankle,” I said, “and Papa isn’t well at all.”

  “Bonifacio is going to fast the whole forty days again?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Are you all right here?” He looked at Papa’s closed door. “Shall I ask Rafaela to come and look at Vitorino?”

  I shook my head. “She knows I’m doing what I can for him,” I told him. “But thank you.”

  “I can hear your confessions here,” he said. “You don’t have to come to me.”

  “I’ll ask Papa,” I said, and went into his bedroom. He nodded when I told him about Father Monteiro’s offer.

  When Father Monteiro finished with Papa, he sat at the table with Cristiano and me and ate the food I had set out for him. “Will you make confession, Diamantina?”

  I shook my head.

  Before he left, he made the sign of the cross and patted Cristiano’s head.

  With the passing of each day, I dreaded Bonifacio’s return.

  As Papa grew more ill, Cristiano was growing taller and stronger. He sometimes hummed as he helped me plant in the garden. The full warm weather of March was upon us, and new shoots rose in the neat rows. One sunny day Cristiano and I helped Papa walk to the garden, and he sat on the chair Cristiano brought for him, looking at the new greenery and nodding his approval.

  A few days later, Cristiano asked if he could go and play with Rafaela’s granddaughter, and I took him. Rafaela and I ground seeds as the children laughed and scampered about.

  Papa’s door was shut when we got back. I opened it, calling, “Papa? How are—”

  He was curled on his side on the floor near the door, his knees drawn to his chest. The chamber pot was overturned, its contents spilled on the
floor.

  “Papa,” I said, kneeling beside him. I called Cristiano, and between us we were able to get him back to his bed. His body was now like that of a strange, twisted boy, his head too large for his frame.

  He attempted to smile, patting my hand. “I’m sorry for the mess,” he whispered.

  “Papa,” I said. “Oh, Papa.”

  He opened his mouth, and I leaned closer.

  “Bury me next to my Telma. I will lie beside my Telma in death, as I did in life.”

  “Shhh. Don’t think about that.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I told him, and he closed his eyes.

  I brought him warm broth and helped him drink. I ground the seeds of the poppy and put some of the tiny balls I formed into bits of soft bread, which he was able to swallow with a mouthful of warm broth. I sat beside him all night, bathing his face and hands with cool water made sweet with mint leaves.

  The next morning, I gave him more of the poppy, and when he was asleep, I left Cristiano to watch over him. I went to Father Monteiro and asked if he could send someone to Kipling’s Wine Merchants in Funchal to tell Espirito that his father was gravely ill.

  Father Monteiro clasped his hands, his face sorrowful. “I’ll send one of the village boys. You’ll tell me when last rites are needed,” he said, and I nodded.

  I hoped Espirito would arrive before Papa died, so one of his sons could be with him for his last days. I stayed beside him, continually giving him the poppy and gently rubbing his hands and feet. “I’m sure Espirito and Bonifacio will be here soon,” I said loudly, a few times each day. I didn’t believe my own words about Bonifacio.

  Papa did not speak, but when he was awake, he always looked at me with a tender expression.

  Early on the morning of the third day, before the sun had fully risen, I held his hand and knew, by the thin, dry texture of his skin, that he would die that day. I went to the church to tell Father Monteiro it was time.

  “I don’t know why Espirito hasn’t come,” I said, as we walked back to the house together. “You sent the boy?”