Her first year as a teacher was the best year of her life. It was full of excitement, and although she was drifting toward a cataract, she did not know it, and enjoyed her course among the rapids. The activities in school were novel: the Garden Day, the charity fair, the health parade, the Red Cross drive. And soon her activities extended outside the school. She was easily the foremost dalaga in town. She was almost as popular as Don Paco Toribio, the politico, who, Father Anacleto said, was godfather to five of every ten babies he baptized and witness to eight of every ten weddings he solemnized. And in the big parties at the municipal building and the town club she found herself between the sisters, taking the place of Agustinita, who had dropped off the social register since her marriage to Don Miguel. That year she was Goddess of the Harvest in June, Muse of the Club Cervantino in August, and beauty queen of the Fiesta del Pilar at Santa Catalina in October.
But the most memorable year for Ercelia was the third year of her teaching, for then it was that she began to run into the rocks and whirlpools of life. Then it was she saw the sordid flotsam of realities threatening to sweep away her dreams. Momentarily stripped of the romantic sun glasses of her imagination, she saw her idols in their anatomical crudities, and she began to recognize the difficulties of pursuing an ideal, particularly one between the covers of a book.
The women of her family had dressed her in the costume of a dead era to make her resemble the heroine of Rizal’s famous novel. Her mother had drawn from her grandmother’s vaulted chest, which till then had not been opened since the old lady had passed away, a richly embroidered camisa of piña cloth and a voluminous saya of black and white stripes. For weeks her aunt Choleng had helped her mother mend little moth holes in the fabric, dyeing the threads to make them look like embroidery patterns.
“If you will remember to lift your skirt a little at the hips before you sit down,” Aunt Choleng said, “the cloth will not stretch and the threads will hold.”
“Do not step on the hem as you climb the platform, or you will find yourself without a skirt,” her mother warned her.
The delicate raiment on her body made her feel as exquisite as a smoke ring shivering in the air, and when Romulita, who had come to help her dress, had hung around her neck the symbolic ornament of Maria Clara—a solitary cameo medallion on a silken ribbon—she felt as if her body had dissolved in air.
The town brass band and a group of people carrying bamboo torches came to her house and escorted her on foot to the monument to Rizal in the heart of the town. The platform in front of the monument was hung with plaited fronds of coconut palms and star lanterns of colored paper. The Provincial Governor himself gave her his arm and led her to the center of the stage, to the high-backed chair that the committee had borrowed from the fanciest photographers studio in town. In a big, stentorian voice, the governor proclaimed her to the throng as the “Philippine paragon of virtue and beauty—Rizal’s own idea of a woman of rose and flesh!” He placed in her hair, in token of the honor, a comb of gold and coral while all the people around looked on clapping their hands, lighting firecrackers, or beating empty cans.
The tears trembled on her lashes as Ercelia surrendered herself to her illusion. How marvelous to be Maria Clara and retreat into the pages of the Noli Me Tangere. How wonderful that Rizal had written this charming novel and, in dying, given it life forever. She well knew the romantic allegory that it was. Maria Clara was Leonor Rivera-Rizal’s own beautiful sweetheart—and Crisostomo Ibarra was indeed the hero himself—Rizal. Ercelia wished she had committed to memory the long, long poem Rizal had written in his cell and hidden in an old oil lamp on the night before he was shot at Bagumbayan. She had never read the poem, but she had heard it recited many times. She remembered the images: a sky without sun turning the color of roses, a grave with weeds and a single flower opening, an unquiet figure sobbing out a prayer, a lonely bird on a wooden cross singing....How beautiful! The tears rose to her eyes and spilled on her cheeks, and she heard the people watching her whisper, “She is thinking of Rizal!”
The coronation was followed by a popular dance at the town club—a big, squat, low-ceilinged house at the foot of the wooden dock where Chinese merchants and Spanish hotel owners and American Army officers and local businessmen discussed politics or talked about the weather, drinking San Miguel whisky, Pedro Domecq, or Pilsen beer, but never the native tuba. Her mother would not go to the club or the dancing. She had never learned to embrace a man other than her husband, she said, and did not enjoy seeing others do so even to music. Besides, the morrow would bring the New Year’s Eve and there were preparations to make. She preferred to retire with her sister Choleng, who had come down from the hills. “Romulita is here and will stay with you,” she told her daughter, picking up her handbag and shawl. “Your father will take me home, but he will be back. He will want to sit at that bar, and stick there like a fly. Don Miguel is coming, and you know how it is when he is with Don Miguel.”
Don Miguel! Ercelia felt flustered. She had heard from Romulita that Don Miguel and Agustinita had moved back into town from Cotabato and she found herself very anxious to see him again. How would he find her? Would he still think she was pretty? He had played with her—teased her as one would a cat with a rubber ball. She would show the old reprobate she was not a silly little girl any more but a full-grown dalaga, and a match for his wits.
Ercelia picked him out as soon as he came into the light at the main entrance of the hall a little later that night. She was pleased to see that he was the same splendid figure of a man he always had been. He came in with a swagger, swinging a black mahogany cane. Agustinita clung on his arm like a Chinese dragonfly with drooping wings.
“Aren’t they a splendid couple?” She tinned to Romulita but Romulita was suddenly restive, fanning herself rapidly. “Josefinita is not with them,” she said, ignoring Ercelia’s remark.
Romulita had expected to meet Josefinita at the dance. The sisters had been given separate duties by the ladies’ civic committee in charge of celebrations. Romulita had been assigned to dress Ercelia, and Josefinita had been asked to assist the governor’s wife in distributing prizes at the monument after the early-morning parade. The sisters were to meet at the dance, and spend the night at Agustinita’s house.
“In whose company did you leave Josefinita?” Romulita demanded of the pair as soon as they were close enough.
“I’m sure nobody has stolen the poor girl away, Romulita,” Don Miguel said, giving the word “girl” an extravagant sweetness, and winking at Ercelia. “The little dear is safe in bed.” Ercelia could tell by his tone that he had not changed, and yet there was something about him that somehow did not seem right.
“She asked to be excused,” explained Agustinita with perfect insouciance, kissing Ercelia on both cheeks. “She was with the governor’s wife on the reviewing stand after the parade, you know, and the strong sun must have brought on a headache. We left her with a lot of oregano and mayana leaves for her temples—the drugstores are closed, you know—”
“Oh, I see,” one of the women said. “That is why the wife of the governor herself has not come. She also must have caught a headache.”
Romulita, however, did not seem satisfied. She blew her nose, and beat her fan more rapidly.
As Ercelia whirled away with Don Miguel—he had come toward her directly, bowed, and asked her for a dance—she caught sight of Romulita and Agustinita putting their heads together in animated conversation. But Miguel was saying, “You have grown into a beautiful woman in so short a time, Ercelia,” and that was all that she could listen to.
“So short a time? The last time you saw me I was only fifteen. I studied four years in Manila, and I have been teaching three years now,” she said, refreshing his memory.
“You are still Don Valentin’s little girl to me,” he said, smiling, “but I must admit, now a full flower of full fragrance.”
“You are a married man, Don Miguel,” she said coquettishly. “I can
not accept compliments, however subtle, from you any more.”
“I claim the privilege as your father’s friend and your cousin’s husband. Oh, no, what cousin?” Suddenly, he was laughing. “Agustinita is your mother’s cousin. Your aunt, really. Why, I am your uncle. You should kiss my hand and ask for my blessing.”
There was the faint smell of Pedro Domecq on his breath, but his legs were steady and swung in perfect rhythm to the music, and his body was firm under his thin shirt. She had never been so close to him and her heart began to thump loudly as his strong legs brushed against hers. She was angry with herself for feeling excited and she held herself a little away from him for fear he would hear her heart.
“You are every young man’s pride tonight, Ercelia,” he told her.
“You are mistaken, Don Miguel—”
“Uncle Miguel, I insist—”
“All right, Uncle Miguel,” she continued with a false laugh, “you are absolutely wrong. Not one young man of the town has yet asked me for a dance. Except for the governor, the judge, old attorney Blanco—”
“They must stand in awe of you, poor boys. If I were their age—”
“Uncle Miguel,” she told him teasingly, “you are a married man.”
He was returning her to her seat when an undercurrent of excitement followed by suppressed laughter directed her attention to the main entrance of the hall. There in the archway of nipa palms under the brilliant light of a Petromax lamp were two American sailors—Johnnies, the townsfolk called them—and the Banegas women! Ercelia did not recognize the women at first glance. She had not seen them in a long time and now they had cut their hair short and no longer wore the long skirt and the fiber-cloth blouse of the women of their generation, but the vestido that the Westerners wore. Their dresses hung on their bodies like clothes on the line—their frames were too spare. And their knees showed, and they wore no sleeves. Their dresses were of an expensive material, probably chiffon, with plenty of shirrs, and bordered with streamers of sequins. Around their necks hung ropes of imitation pearls.
“Behold the mirrors of fashion!” Romulita exclaimed, forgetting her agitation momentarily.
“The paragons of European beauty!” Agustinita declared, accenting “European” on the second syllable in the quaint native style to sound like “ugly dog” in the vernacular, a pun Miguel himself often used on people who imitated Westerners ridiculously.
“What a scandal this is!” Romulita exclaimed as she snapped her fan shut. “What is the governor going to do about this?”
“What can he do about it?” Miguel said. “This is a public dance to celebrate a public holiday. Everyone is welcome here.”
“They are Miguel’s friends, you forget, Romulita,” Agustinita said. “He has not forgotten them.”
Ercelia felt alarmed, but Don Miguel laughed and grunted as if he had been paid a compliment.
The Banegas women stood hesitantly at the entrance looking timidly around like stray animals that had wandered into the wrong pasture, looking anxiously for a familiar face. They looked pathetically lost, Ercelia thought. Monona turned to her stocky sailor, putting her arms around his body as if to drag him out of the room, but the sailor stood his ground and said something angrily and pulled her back in.
The orchestra struck up a waltz and couples began to drift onto the floor. The two sailors put their arms around their women and started to dance. The heavily built one glided smoothly enough in time with the music, but the younger one, who was much taller, could do no better than drag Charito around clumsily, stepping on her toes. As the music picked up tempo, however, the women began to warm up and gather courage, and by the time they whirled close to Ercelia’s dais, they had lost their self-consciousness and were laughing. Catching sight of Don Miguel, Charito called out merrily, “Hey there, Don Miguel! Welcome back to town. Come and see us!” Then, indicating her Johnny, “He is all legs, we tangle up,” and, turning to her Johnny, indicating Miguel, she said in broken English, “He, Don Miguel, dance very good.”
The Johnny laughed and said, “He climb greased pole very good, too?”
By some inexplicable means, climbing the greased pole had become a common expression among the men of the town. The men standing around threw frankly apprehensive glances at the women and one member of the orchestra began to giggle in his flute so that he had to stop playing.
Haughtily drawing herself up and picking up her train with a deft sweep of a hand, Agustinita said superciliously, “Vamos, Romulita, this atmosphere is suffocating me. Miguel, you will take us home!”
“Not yet, Agustinita, this is Ercelia’s night. The sailors drunk, please,” Don Miguel pleaded.
“I am sure he is; still, I prefer to go home,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. “There is Josefinita to think about. Unless you are thinking of celebrating a reunion with the Banegas—”
Monona was not one yard away with her Johnny, and everybody’s eyes turned to her expectantly. Ercelia was shocked at Agustinita’s vulgarity. She had seen some of the veneer rubbed off her character at the roast-pig party, but she had not known how coarse the fibers of her nature really were.
“What did you say, Doña Agustinita?” Monona was suddenly in front of Agustinita.
“I was talking to my husband,” Agustinita said, firmly meeting her stare.
“Whom did you call Banegas?”
Don Miguel took hold of Monona by the wrist and pulled her gently away. Gathering strength from her husband’s gesture, Agustinita raised her voice and said evenly, “Monona, Banegas are bananas that are indispensable in your diet.” With the fierceness of a pregnant cat, Monona broke from Don Miguel’s hold and lunged at Agustinita. Don Miguel grabbed her around the waist and tried to pull her away, but Monona’s Johnny, who had been watching the women with fists on his hips, took a swing at Don Miguel, grunting, “Leave ‘em alone, damn it!”
Don Miguel fell back against a Chinese wooden screen, knocking it down with a crash that frightened the orchestra into silence. Romulita reached for Monona, beating at her with her fan, and Charito reached for Romulita’s long train, tripping her to the floor. Romulita uttered a shriek as she hit the waxed boards, and the shriek stirred Ercelia into action. Without care or reflection she leaped at Charito, grabbing her ropes of pearls, breaking them, spilling the paste jewels all over the floor. She felt hands and bodies pulling and pushing at her as she whirled frantically in the thick of the fight. She did not see her father and other men come running up from the bar, nor the taller Johnny swinging indiscriminately all around getting other people involved in the fray. She did not even hear police whistles cutting the air again and again, until khaki-clad men from the street below came leaping up the stairs and rushed into the panic-filled hall. She only felt strong arms pulling her away from Charito and pushing her into the women’s dressing room.
When a semblance of order was restored in the hall, Ercelia found Romulita slumped in a corner sobbing, her hair disarrayed, her camisa and her pretty apron of glass beads a disheveled heap. It was only then that Ercelia appraised herself and realized to her dismay that her Maria Clara costume was a complete ruin, her camisa and skirt hanging in tatters. Resentment against Agustinita took root within her. Agustinita had been responsible for this imbroglio. She had started the quarrel with Monona with her vulgarity and superciliousness, and had treated Don Miguel like a doormat. And from all this she had emerged unscathed. Hardly a pin was out of place in her camisa, not a strand of hair seemed askew on her well-groomed head.
“Oh, what a shame, what a shame!” Romulita moaned, as Don Valentin hurried them into Don Miguel’s automobile a little later. “What will the people say?”
“You will learn tomorrow in the afternoon papers,” Agustinita told her, with unusual composure. “Don Goyo Suarez will give us a good stewing in his ‘Agna Caliente’ column, you can be sure. What a wonderful welcome back to town.”
I will get. And that reminds me, I have never been stewed, not even
when I married you, Miguel,” and she laughed mirthlessly.
When the rickety vehicle grated to a stop in front of her fathers house, Ercelia alighted without a word, and her father slammed the door of the car, making it rattle like an old tin can.
Ercelia’s mother and Aunt Choleng were on the porch to meet them when they arrived. All the lights were on in the house. Even her aunt’s children had left their beds and were sitting huddled on the steps, wrapped in their blankets, unmindful of their mother’s scoldings.
The excitement at the club had spilled out into the streets of the town, Ercelia learned later. Somebody excitable and nervous had thought a Moro had gone berserk in the club with his barong knife, and had shouted “Juramentado!” The dread word had coursed through the town like an electric shock and doors and windows had banged shut one after another, reaching even Don Valentin’s house in the suburbs. The women had wailed and lamented for Ercelia and Don Valentin at the clubhouse until Sixto, the house boy, arrived with the news that the juramentado had been only Monona Banegas. However, as Ercelia came up the steps of the veranda, Doña Isabel and Doña Choleng rushed toward her and took her in their arms, weeping and exclaiming over her as if she had resurrected from the dead. Ercelia retold the incidents as calmly as she could, while Doña Isabel passed her palms across her face, making little moaning sounds, and her sister Choleng blessed herself with the sign of the cross, slapping her lips with her thumb repeatedly.
“Don Miguel, it is always the accursed Don Miguel that is at the root of all the trouble,” Doña Isabel exclaimed, throwing eloquent glances at her husband. But Ercelia, feeling like a rubber band that had stretched to its fullest length, snapped inside and cried, “By God and the saints, Mama!” and, picking up her skirts, rushed into her room, leaving the women and the children with lifted eyebrows and open mouths.
She had scarcely finished peeling the ruined costume from her body and slipping into a soft cotton nightgown, when a clatter of hoof beats halted on the street outside. From her half-open window, she saw the shadowy form of a woman alighting from a carromata in front of the house. Sixto went down to open the gate for her and when she came into the light of the porch, Ercelia recognized Romulita.
The Devil Flower Page 8
