The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic

by Nick Joaquin

  “A good husband has constant confidence in the good sense of his wife,” he pronounced grandly, and smiled at her.

  But she drew away; huddled herself in the other corner. “He kissed my feet,” she told him disdainfully, her eyes on his face.

  He frowned and made a gesture of distate. “Do you see? They have the instincts, the style of the canalla! To kiss a woman’s feet, to follow her like a dog, to adore her like a slave—”

  “Is it so shameful for a man to adore women?”

  “A gentleman loves and respects Woman. The cads and lunatics—they ‘adore’ the women.”

  “But maybe we do not want to be loved and respected—but to be adored.”

  “Ah, he has converted you then?”

  “Who knows? But must we talk about it? My head is bursting with the heat.”

  But when they reached home she did not lie down but wandered listlessly through the empty house. When Don Paeng, having bathed and changed, came down from the bedroom, he found her in the dark parlor seated at the harp and plucking out a tune, still in her white frock and shoes.

  “How can you bear those hot clothes, Lupeng? And why the darkness? Order someone to bring a light in here.”

  “There is no one, they have all gone to see the Tadtarin.”

  “A pack of loafers we are feeding!”

  She had risen and gone to the window. He approached and stood behind her, grasped her elbows and, stooping, kissed the nape of her neck. But she stood still, not responding, and he released her sulkily. She turned around to face him.

  “Listen, Paeng. I want to see it, too. The Tadtarin, I mean. I have not seen it since I was a little girl. And tonight is the last night.”

  “You must be crazy! Only low people go there. And I thought you had a headache?” He was still sulking.

  “But I want to go! My head aches worse in the house. For a favor, Paeng.”

  “I told you: No! Go and take those clothes off. But, woman, whatever has got into you!” He strode off to the table, opened the box of cigars, took one, banged the lid shut, bit off an end of the cigar, and glared about for a light.

  She was still standing by the window and her chin was up. “Very well, if you do not want to come, do not come—but I am going.”

  “I warn you, Lupe; do not provoke me!”

  “I will go with Amada. Entoy can take us. You cannot forbid me, Paeng. There is nothing wrong with it. I am not a child.”

  But standing very straight in her white frock, her eyes shining in the dark and her chin thrust up, she looked so young, so fragile, that his heart was touched. He sighed, smiled ruefully, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Yes, the heat has touched you in the head, Lupeng. And since you are so set on it—very well, let us go. Come, have the coach ordered!”

  • • •

  The cult of the Tadtarin is celebrated on three days: the feast of St. John and the two preceding days. On the first night, a young girl heads the procession; on the second, a mature woman; and on the third, a very old woman who dies and comes to life again. In these processions, as in those of Pakil and Obando, everyone dances.

  Around the tiny plaza in front of the barrio chapel, quite a stream of carriages was flowing leisurely. The Moretas were constantly being hailed from the other vehicles. The plaza itself and the sidewalks were filled with chattering, strolling, profusely sweating people. More people were crowded on the balconies and windows of the houses. The moon had not yet risen; the black night smoldered; in the windless sky the lightning’s abruptly branching fire seemed the nerves of the tortured air made visible.

  “Here they come now!” cried the people on the balconies.

  And “Here come the women with their St. John!” cried the people on the sidewalks, surging forth on the street. The carriages halted and their occupants descended. The plaza rang with the shouts of people and the neighing of horses—and with another keener sound: a sound as of sea-waves steadily rolling nearer.

  The crowd parted, and up the street came the prancing, screaming, writhing women, their eyes wild, black shawls flying around their shoulders, and their long hair streaming and covered with leaves and flowers. But the Tadtarin, a small old woman with white hair, walked with calm dignity in the midst of the female tumult, a wand in one hand, a bunch of seedlings in the other. Behind her, a group of girls bore aloft a little black image of the Baptist—a crude, primitive, grotesque image, its big-eyed head too big for its puny naked torso, bobbing and swaying above the hysterical female horde and looking at once so comical and so pathetic that Don Paeng, watching with his wife on the sidewalk, was outraged. The image seemed to be crying for help, to be struggling to escape—a St. John indeed in the hands of the Herodiads; a doomed captive these witches were subjecting first to their derision; a gross and brutal caricature of his sex.

  Don Paeng flushed hotly: he felt that all those women had personally insulted him. He turned to his wife, to take her away—but she was watching greedily, taut and breathless, her head thrust forward and her eyes bulging, the teeth bared in the slack mouth, and the sweat gleaming on her face. Don Paeng was horrified. He grasped her arm—but just then a flash of lightning blazed and the screaming women fell silent: the Tadtarin was about to die.

  The old woman closed her eyes and bowed her head and sank slowly to her knees. A pallet was brought and set on the ground and she was laid in it and her face covered with a shroud. Her hands still clutched the wand and the seedlings. The women drew away, leaving her in a cleared space. They covered their heads with their black shawls and began wailing softly, unhumanly—a hushed, animal keening.

  Overhead the sky was brightening; silver light defined the rooftops. When the moon rose and flooded with hot brilliance the moveless crowded square, the black-shawled women stopped wailing and a girl approached and unshrouded the Tadtarin, who opened her eyes and sat up, her face lifted to the moonlight. She rose to her feet and extended the wand and the seedlings and the women joined in a mighty shout. They pulled off and waved their shawls and whirled and began dancing again—laughing and dancing with such joyous exciting abandon that the people in the square and on the sidewalks, and even those on the balconies, were soon laughing and dancing, too. Girls broke away from their parents and wives from their husbands to join in the orgy.

  “Come, let us go now,” said Don Paeng to his wife. She was shaking with fascination; tears trembled on her lashes; but she nodded meekly and allowed herself to be led away. But suddenly she pulled free from his grasp, darted off, and ran into the crowd of dancing women.

  She flung her hands to her hair and whirled and her hair came undone. Then, planting her arms akimbo, she began to trip a nimble measure, an instinctive folk movement. She tossed her head back and her arched throat bloomed whitely. Her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth with laughter.

  Don Paeng ran after her, shouting her name, but she laughed and shook her head and darted deeper into the dense maze of the procession, which was moving again, toward the chapel. He followed her, shouting; she eluded him, laughing—and through the thick of the female horde they lost and found and lost each other again—she dancing and he pursuing—till, carried along by the tide, they were both swallowed up into the hot, packed, turbulent darkness of the chapel. Inside poured the entire procession, and Don Paeng, finding himself trapped tight among milling female bodies, struggled with sudden panic to fight his way out. Angry voices rose all about him in the stifling darkness.

  “Hoy, you are crushing my feet!”

  “And let go of my shawl, my shawl!”

  “Stop pushing, shameless one, or I kick you!”

  “Let me pass, let me pass, you harlots!” cried Don Paeng.

  “Abah, it is a man!”

  “How dare he come in here?”

  “Break his head!”

  “Throw the animal out!”

>   “Throw him out! Throw him out!” shrieked the voices, and Don Paeng found himself surrounded by a swarm of gleaming eyes.

  Terror possessed him and he struck out savagely with both fists, with all his strength—but they closed in as savagely: solid walls of flesh that crushed upon him and pinned his arms helpless, while unseen hands struck and struck his face, and ravaged his hair and clothes, and clawed at his flesh, as—kicked and buffeted, his eyes blind and his torn mouth salty with blood—he was pushed down, down to his knees, and half-shoved, half-dragged to the doorway and rolled out to the street. He picked himself up at once and walked away with a dignity that forbade the crowd gathered outside to laugh or to pity. Entoy came running to meet him.

  “But what has happened to you, Don Paeng?”

  “Nothing. Where is the coach?”

  “Just over there, sir. But you are wounded in the face!”

  “No, these are only scratches. Go and get the señora. We are going home.”

  When she entered the coach and saw his bruised face and torn clothing, she smiled coolly.

  “What a sight you are, man! What have you done with yourself?” And when he did not answer: “Why, have they pulled out his tongue too?” she wondered aloud.

  • • •

  And when they were home and stood facing each other in the bedroom, she was still as light-hearted.

  “What are you going to do, Rafael?”

  “I am going to give you a whipping.”

  “But why?”

  “Because you have behaved tonight like a lewd woman.”

  “How I behaved tonight is what I am. If you call that lewd, then I was always a lewd woman and a whipping will not change me—though you whipped me till I died.”

  “I want this madness to die in you.”

  “No, you want me to pay for your bruises.”

  He flushed darkly. “How can you say that, Lupe?”

  “Because it is true. You have been whipped by the women and now you think to avenge yourself by whipping me.”

  His shoulders sagged and his face dulled. “If you can think that of me—”

  “You could think me a lewd woman!”

  “Oh, how do I know what to think of you? I was sure I knew you as I knew myself. But now you are as distant and strange to me as a female Turk in Africa!”

  “Yet you would dare whip me—”

  “Because I love you, because I respect you—”

  “And because if you ceased to respect me you would cease to respect yourself?”

  “Ah, I did not say that!”

  “Then why not say it? It is true. And you want to say it, you want to say it!”

  But he struggled against her power. “Why should I want to?” he demanded peevishly.

  “Because, either you must say it—or you must whip me,” she taunted.

  Her eyes were upon him and the shameful fear that had unmanned him in the dark chapel possessed him again. His legs had turned to water; it was a monstrous agony to remain standing.

  But she was waiting for him to speak, forcing him to speak.

  “No, I cannot whip you!” he confessed miserably.

  “Then say it! Say it!” she cried, pounding her clenched fists together. “Why suffer and suffer? And in the end you would only submit.”

  But he still struggled stubbornly. “Is it not enough that you have me helpless? Is it not enough that I feel what you want me to feel?”

  But she shook her head furiously. “Until you have said it to me, there can be no peace between us.”

  He was exhausted at last: he sank heavily to his knees, breathing hard and streaming with sweat, his fine body curiously diminished now in its ravaged apparel.

  “I adore you, Lupe,” he said tonelessly.

  She strained forward avidly. “What? What did you say?” she screamed.

  And he, in his dead voice: “That I adore you. That I adore you. That I worship you. That the air you breathe and the ground you tread is holy to me. That I am your dog, your slave . . .”

  But it was still not enough. Her fists were still clenched, and she cried: “Then come, crawl on the floor, and kiss my feet!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprawled down flat and, working his arms and legs, gaspingly clawed his way across the floor, like a great agonized lizard, the woman steadily backing away as he approached, her eyes watching him avidly, her nostrils dilating, till behind her loomed the open window, the huge glittering moon, the rapid flashes of lightning. She stopped, panting, and leaned against the sill. He lay exhausted at her feet, his face flat on the floor.

  She raised her skirts and contemptuously thrust out a naked foot. He lifted his dripping face and touched his bruised lips to her toes; lifted his hands and grasped the white foot and kissed it savagely—kissed the step, the sole, the frail ankle—while she bit her lips and clutched in pain at the windowsill, her body distended and wracked by horrible shivers, her head flung back and her loose hair streaming out the window—streaming fluid and black in the white night where the huge moon glowed like a sun and the dry air flamed into lightning and the pure heat burned with the immense intense fever of noon.

  MAY DAY EVE

  The old people had ordered that the dancing should stop at ten o’clock but it was almost midnight before the carriages came filing up to the front door, the servants running to and fro with torches to light the departing guests, while the girls who were staying were promptly herded upstairs to the bedrooms, the young men gathering around to wish them a good night and lamenting their ascent with mock sighs and moanings, proclaiming themselves disconsolate but straightway going off to finish the punch and the brandy though they were quite drunk already and simply bursting with wild spirits, merriment, arrogance, and audacity, for they were young bucks newly arrived from Europe; the ball had been in their honor; and they had waltzed and polka-ed and bragged and swaggered and flirted all night and were in no mood to sleep yet—no, caramba, not on this moist tropic eve! Not on this mystic May eve!—with the night still young and so seductive that it was madness not to go out, not to go forth—and serenade the neighbors! cried one; and swim in the Pasig! cried another; and gather fireflies! cried a third—whereupon there arose a great clamor for coats and capes, for hats and canes and they were presently stumbling out among the medieval shadows of the foul street where a couple of street lamps flickered and a last carriage rattled away upon the cobbles while the blind black houses muttered hush-hush, their tiled roofs looming like sinister chessboards against a wild sky murky with clouds, save where an evil young moon prowled about in a corner or where a murderous wind whirled, whistling and whining, smelling now of the sea and now of the summer orchards and wafting unbearable childhood fragrances of ripe guavas to the young men trooping so uproariously down the street that the girls who were disrobing upstairs in the bedrooms scattered screaming to the windows, crowded giggling at the windows, but were soon sighing amorously over those young men bawling below; over those wicked young men and their handsome apparel, their proud flashing eyes, and their elegant mustaches so black and vivid in the moonlight that the girls were quite ravished with love, and began crying to one another how carefree were men but how awful to be a girl and what a horrid, horrid world it was, till old Anastasia plucked them off by the ear or the pigtail and chased them off to bed—while from up the street came the clackety-clack of the watchman’s boots on the cobbles, and the clang-clang of his lantern against his knee, and the mighty roll of his great voice booming through the night: “Guardia sereno-o-o! A las doce han dado-o-o!”

  And it was May again, said the old Anastasia. It was the first day of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said—for it was a night of divination, a night of lovers, and those who cared might peer in a mirror and would there behold the face of whoever it was they were fated to marry, said the old Anastasia as she h
obbled about picking up the piled crinolines and folding up shawls and raking slippers to a corner while the girls climbing into the four great poster beds that overwhelmed the room began shrieking with terror, scrambling over each other and imploring the old woman not to frighten them.

  “Enough, enough, Anastasia! We want to sleep!”

  “Go scare the boys instead, you old witch!”

  “She is not a witch, she is a maga. She was born on Christmas Eve!”

  “St. Anastasia, virgin and martyr.”

  “Huh? Impossible! She has conquered seven husbands! Are you a virgin, Anastasia?”

  “No, but I am seven times a martyr because of you girls!”

  “Let her prophesy, let her prophesy! Whom will I marry, old gypsy? Come, tell me.”

  “You may learn in a mirror if you are not afraid.”

  “I am not afraid, I will go!” cried the young cousin Agueda, jumping up in bed.

  “Girls, girls—we are making too much noise! My mother will hear and will come and pinch us all. Agueda, lie down! And you, Anastasia, I command you to shut your mouth and go away!”

  “Your mother told me to stay here all night, my grand lady!”

  “And I will not lie down!” cried the rebellious Agueda, leaping to the floor. “Stay, old woman. Tell me what I have to do.”

  “Tell her! Tell her!” chimed the other girls.

  The old woman dropped the clothes she had gathered and approached and fixed her eyes on the girl. “You must take a candle,” she instructed, “and go into a room that is dark and that has a mirror in it and you must be alone in the room. Go up to the mirror and close your eyes and say:

  Mirror, mirror,

  show to me

  him whose woman

  I will be.

  If all goes right, just above your left shoulder will appear the face of the man you will marry.”

  A silence. Then: “And what if all does not go right?” asked Agueda.

  “Ah, then the Lord have mercy on you!”