by J. S. Brent
He raised her gown, pulled down her undergarment, took off his pants in an age old disgusting way of ordinary men who want to take a woman without asking her consent. His manhood was released, stiff and free. He let her feel it on her stomach and let it slide down. He breathed deep before entering her.
Dyanela wept and bit her lip until it bled.
***
Cortes stayed on the road. He was in highway route 15 where he was told to wait for someone to pick him up.
The team he formed during the past rescue of his mother once again gathered to plan his entry to Mexico. This time they could only let him slip through the border by car, with papers. Once he was in, he was on his own, because they knew if Cortes did not do as told and involved other people, they would lose Dyanela. Now they were dealing with the head of the snake and it would be a wonder if Dyanela was still alive.
Cortes stood by the road and waited.
The car arrived in time, within he could not see outside for the windows were shaded.
There was no one in the car except the driver who was silent and intent in driving the jeep.
Cortes fell asleep in exhaustion. He slept through the night. Finally he awoke when the driver stopped the jeep. The driver still would not speak but stayed in place. Cortes took it as a sign that he could go out now so he opened the door.
As soon as he stepped outside he found himself in a deserted field. He became confused. Why did the driver bring him here. He thought, he was going to die. This was the open field of death. He could be ambushed here and he had nothing on him to protect himself.
A tall, big Mexican loomed before him from the dark. He had a gun in his hand.
The man pointed the gun to his chest and shot him.
Cortes dropped to the ground and was washed with pain before his eyes closed.
***
Cortes could hear her voice. Dyanela. She was screaming and holding his face. Cortes tried to keep his eyes open but they failed him and he had to fall away, hearing her screams.
What did you do to him, you bastard!
She was talking to someone who wasn’t talking back.
He got lost in the dark again and dreamt of his mother’s rose garden. He could smell the scent of roses.
***
Someone, not Dyanela was wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. He opened his eyes and saw a man in a white coat wearing silver rimmed glasses.
“Cortes Ancheta? Are you alright, senor?”
Cortes’s throat was dry. He was given water to drink. His lips were parched. He sipped the water and realized he had never felt so weak in his entire life. Soon ,however, he was able to gulp the water and finished a whole glass.
He was able to sit up now and observed his surroundings. He was in a massive room, on a comfortable bed.
“I am Doctor Ernesto. You have been taken to the house of Lorenzo because you have been shot in the chest.”
Cortes felt the bandage on his chest. He tried to struggle to get out of bed but he felt too weak. He had to lie down again.
Who was Lorenzo? Easily he surmised he was the head honcho and had him shot to control him. He could not understand why he was left to live?
“You will have to rest for a while before you can move about. I am giving you medicines for pain and to heal your wound. The bullet has been taken out and you will be able to leave after some time.”
Cortes found his voice. N-no, he said weakly, I have to do something.
“I am sorry but you have to stay for now. You are a guest of Lorenzo and I am instructed to see you from time to time until you are better.”
The doctor left the room and he was left with a Mexican woman who kept pressing the damp cloth on his forehead.
He fell asleep. It was night time when he awoke. A man was sitting on a chair near his bed, facing him.
Cortes. The old man said.
Cortes awoke and sat up on the bed.
Cortes Ancheta, Lorenzo said and tapped his hand.You rest for a while. Tomorrow you will have more strength and we can talk. For now you are weak.
Cortes lied down and watched the old man. They looked at each other measuring the other’s power. Cortes realized why he was shot. He was young and he was old. He would have to be weakened to level out the storm of anger between them. As equals they would be able to talk. Just like this, just like this, as friends
Cortes slept under the old man’s gaze.
The following morning, Cortes was entreated to a fine breakfast of plantain and avocadoes. He ate them all and was invigorated. He struggled out of the bed and walked towards a wide window. He had a view of a rose garden. He could smell them from where he was.
He realized he was free to roam around the house. He walked out of his room. The pain in his chest was staggering but he was determined to know where he was.
The Mexican woman came over and gave him a letter.
He opened the folded paper and read it. He was told to dress up and enter the car in the front drive way.
Cortes went back to his room and found an assortment of clothes from a closet. He chose to wear a polo shirt and slacks. It was painful to wear the clothes. When he was done he went down the stairs and surveyed the lower floor. It was expansive with no walls so that everywhere went from one place to another.
He stepped out of the coolness of the house and saw a white sedan. The same driver was there. He opened a door for him. He entered it and was driven out of the hacienda.
He could see now where he was. They passed by fields of green, straight on. He understood that all these fields were owned by Lorenzo.
The car turned to a valley and he heard the tolling of bells. There was an old, crumbling church with crumbling walls with ivy. The car stopped. Children and women were leaving the church. The noon day mass was over. Cortes stepped out of the car and walked inside the church. The church smelt musty and fragrant with flowers. The church was empty except for the old man who was seated in the front pew, knelt down and praying. A woman was beside him. He recognized her immediately and could not move. She was very still as though she could not share the old man’s prayers.
Cortes walked out of the church and told the driver to bring him home because his chest ached. He was driven home and he went back to his room.
He prowled the room like a trapped animal.
He spent a restless afternoon with only a few books in the room as companion. His mind was fazed. That night the woman told him to go down to the veranda for dinner.
He chose a black suit with a tie. He went down and walked straight to the veranda.
Dyanela wore a low cut red dress. Her lips were painted red. Cortes thought she looked like a whore. He was angry, not at the old man, but unreasonably, at Dyanela.
They spent the night eating a roasted lamb and drinking sangria. Dyanela laughed at the old man’s antics, the sound of her laughter was hollow and thin. Lorenzo entreated them to stories about how the natives survived the drought. He built them a water system from the nearest waterfall which he bought for them. He laughed at how the native children washed themselves and jumped with delight at the water pumps he built for them. Dyanela laughed and clapped her hands like a child. Cortes observed her from afar and would look away when she would look his way. He could not stand the sight of her. So, this is how she survived, he thought. He wanted to kill her. When he thought this, her eyes met his, strong and proud and it was agreed between them that this was how he was allowed to live too.
Lorenzo had turned her into a witch.
***
When dinner was over, Dyanela left the table to go upstairs.
The Mexican woman brought Lorenzo a box of cigars. He took two and offered the other to him. Cortes accepted it and Lorenzo lit it for him with a gold lighter. They puffed their cigars for a while relishing its masculine flavor.
We can do business together, Cortes. I am not a bad man. I am just old and I have seen enough therefore I want to stop the trade and do something else. I would
like to buy much of your shares. I have dinero. I want to retire in style.
Go ahead, Lorenzo, take some of my shares, my company is in the open market now.
But I want to take a big chunk of it and I wanted to tell you in person. I admire you. In fact, I know you better than you know yourself.
And who am I, Lorenzo?
You are a killer.
Why do you say that, Lorenzo.
You have killed my men. You do not belong to the new technological bourgeois class. You are a physical man, with physical needs. She has turned you into an animal.
Cortes chose to ignore this.
You were untouchable before, continued Lorenzo. Now you let a woman drag you down to the middle of Guadalajara with nothing but a bullet to your chest.
I am sorry about your father, said Lorenzo, I can be a father to you. My children have gone away and left me to answer for all the years of dirt I had to go through to raise them in wealth and luxury. I answer to no one now. Not even to my wife. I will do as I please and I have taken a liking to you, you who has risen into power from the depths of the shit I’ve given your country.
You will change, for me? Cortes looked him in the eye.
The old man looked at him and nodded. It was a gentleman’s promise.
You will take away all your drug tradings all over the world? Cortes asked again.
Lorenzo nodded again.
Did you touch her?
Lorenzo turned pale and gripped the arms of his chair.
Cortes stood up and pulled a pistol from his pocket and stood before the old man who was suddenly very still and weak before him. For a moment Cortes saw his father, the old man was another victim of the drug trade he created and the victim was himself in his last years. He had no legacy to leave therefore he felt inconsequential, a man who could easily be tossed aside and left to die. In the final years of his life, this man wanted to buy back his soul or at least die in the most respectable manner and Cortes knew it was his role to kill him to give him the pleasure of knowing he had died in the hands of an honorable man, as a gift, as a ridiculous gift.
Dyanela stepped down from the stairs, slowly and deliberately like a snake shedding its skin. Cortes wept when he saw her and dropped to a chair with a derisive laugh. He wasn’t going to kill him, he would never give him that.
Dyanela walked towards them and took the cocked gun from Cortes.
She pointed it at the old man.
She shot him once, in the chest.
Blood seeped through Lorenzo’s white shirt. He looked down at his chest and saw that the blood had blossomed into a painting of a rose.
***
It was easy enough for Dyanela and Cortes to take a car from the garage. The sentries were nowhere to be seen. The Rose had fallen and there was no one to tell them what to do. No one was in charge now.
They took the car and sped towards the nearest town. There they asked directions to the nearest pier.
They spent the night driving away from the Guadalajara. A new head would rear up, perhaps a brother, or a son, or a cousin and he would ascend very fast to avenge the death of the patriarch of the biggest drug cartel in Mexico.
They moved fast. There were boats in the coast of a small, obscure town. A small, rickety boat vessel agreed to take them on but they would land in the East which was ideal for them. They decided to go home to the Philippines in the meantime.
Inside the boat, they were given a small room. Cortes took off his shirt and Dyanela checked his wound.
He watched her nursing him, touching his skin with her bare hands. He turned her concern towards him, his need to be with her, his agonizing journey to find her and bring her back, the pain of knowing she had been hurt in the most intimate of ways.
He kissed her and she kissed him back.
Tears flowed from their eyes. They found each other again.
***
Paulo surveyed the scene of the crime in the mansion of Lorenzo. He was the closest brother and he had done dealings for his brother, small dealings that were inconsequential to the old man who considered him a lazy son of a bitch. But now, he watched his brother with his neck broken from the intensity of the blast that sent his head reeling back, his mouth agape. He looked at his older brother contemptuously.
So this is how you die, brother, over a piece of lingerie.
***
The Taking of Dyanela
Dyanela watched the boats from the balcony of the hotel suite in Manila. The sun was setting and she wished she had married Cortes before any of those things happened in recent past. She would have had his children and they would have been happy.
They could still have those dreams, Dyanela thought but failed to feel good about it. Her tears were dry. She didn’t realize in the boat to Manila that she would be unable to forget what happened to her. Now, the pain of her rape was a scourging pain inside her. It was slow and insidious. She could say it had meant something by the way she was able to save Cortes’s life, by giving in to the Rose’s demand for pleasure. But it would have felt that way if she had died. But she didn’t die, she lived and she felt ashamed to look into Cortes’s eyes. His own eyes could not seem to understand why she looked away.
Dyanela was afraid to look inside her heart. She was afraid of what was in there. There was a monster gnawing in there and it was growing bigger and bigger like a monsoon selfishly demanding more wind. But as the sun set on the belt of the horizon she realized she had to open the hidden inside of her.
Similar to the way she pulled Cortes’s bandage from his skin during their boat ride, Dyanela peeled layers to listen to her heart. The images flashed inside her mind like lightning: the thorn of a rose embedding on her breast, the heaving, the pulling, the sound of her voice diminished into humiliating whimpers. The Rose entering her where no man should ever, where only her children should ever pass through in their short journey from womb to the outside world into her arms.
Dyanela placed her hands to her face as though she were seeing everything happening again and she was cornered, sealed by fate never to know happiness again. Her skin was nothing more but a slight film infiltrated to reach her very soul. She had no more soul to speak of. The sun was a melting orange orb now, soft and pliant, melding to the sea. The boats floated slowly in tune with the setting russet sun.
There it was, the wound.
She could not even say it was her fault. There was no one to blame now and she so badly wanted to blame someone, even her own self. The Rose was dead. She killed him because he loved her so much, too much, he lost his sense of decency, the one thing he held on to all his life to keep at bay the monster he had become to reach the pinnacle of wealth and power.
She wanted to kill him some more. She wanted to kill him again and again. Killing him did not sadden her, it was a palliative for her. It was the best part of it all. She was angry at Cortes. Cortes could not kill him, not even for her so she did it herself. A red splotch of blood bloomed on the old man’s shirt like a batik rose, so fitting for a man who claimed himself a lover, the Rose. She could still feel the pain of the rose’s thorn on her breast when he took her. He deliberately hurt her to plant the memory of their coition, indelibly in her mind.
***
Upon landing in Manila, Cortes paid the boatmen with his gold wristwatch. He was able to funnel money quickly to where they were. He planned on taking Dyanela back to Siquijor but she didn’t seem to want to. They first went to a hospital where he was attended to for his wound in the chest. They stayed there for awhile until he was well enough to decide to bring Dyanela out to the luxury Manila Hotel. He intended to take care of her for she seemed very exhausted taking care of him in the hospital.
Manila Hotel was one of the oldest structures in Manila. It was historical and beautiful. It had seen many presidents in its time. He wanted to pamper Dyanela after what she had gone through. There were times though when he could not bear to even look at her. He had difficulty confronting his emotions about w
hat happened to her. He could not even kill the old man. He felt the old man would have won if he did. This, Dyanela could not seem to understand. Men understood this. It was an act of war that went beyond the demarcations of the grave. The old man would be haunted by his failure to take from him what he wanted, to die by Cortes’s own hand. The old man would become a ghost, neither here nor there but lingering to seek that one final act that he wanted, an honorable death. The old man had taken Dyanela like a whore and when she killed him, his death was diminished for him. She was used and dolled up humiliatingly at his dinner table, laughing, eating, a caricature of herself. She had meant nothing to the old man by then. She was the least person the old man would have wanted to kill him. And yet there she was, Cortes’s goddess, resplendent in red, pointing the gun at the old man and shot him.
Cortes was in bed asleep. When he woke up, the room was a somber color of sunset. Dyanela wasn’t by his side on the bed. She was in the balcony, precariously by the iron balustrade watching the sun set. Her silhouette was frighteningly still. He watched her and could not move, not a moment more. The sun had become blood red and hungry to sink into the sea and impale itself with its color. Soon, the sky was a confusing color of differently toned purples. In the dark, he could move, silently, quickly, towards her.