In the Name of Salome

by Julia Alvarez

  In the midst of all this turbulence, Semper Vigilans managed to collect the requisite sum of two hundred pesos. The announcement appeared in the papers: the decoration would take place on Saturday night, December 22, at seven o’clock at the National Library established by Friends of the Country.

  I didn’t know if Pancho was, in fact, Semper Vigilans, but I did know that he and the Friends of the Country were behind this campaign on behalf of my getting this medal. And so, I protested directly to Pancho. Our country was in no condition to be spending money on a gold medal when we were just beginning to recover from a year of fighting.

  We had been poring over the structure of flowers. Pancho sliced open the long white lilies with a small knife on a board on his knees. He had asked my permission to remove his jacket for our dissection lesson. Watching him working in his shirtsleeves, I was reminded of those long-ago afternoon lessons in my father’s garden. Back then, I had thought my father the most handsome man in all the world. But in fact, Papá was not handsome as much as he was engaging, with his broad face and infectious smile and eyes full of naughtiness. Pancho, on the other hand, was out-and-out lovely to behold. Even Ramona called him Absalom, after the handsome lad of the Old Testament. She was full of nicknames for him. But Pancho never cracked a smile. He was the opposite of Papá in that regard: he had no sense of humor at all. But this gravity appealed to me, for it made him seem older than his nineteen years.

  “Salomé, don’t you see? This is precisely what la patria needs, to focus on excellence and nobility and progress.” Pancho gestured with his small knife. Recently, he had begun to talk like all positivists, as if he were delivering speeches even in private conversation.

  “They can focus on those things without spending on such vanity.”

  Pancho laid down his knife on the board. In the last few months of daily lessons, we had raced through mathematics (“You have a remarkably quick mind,” Pancho kept observing) and were presently studying the inorganics. Next week, Pancho had promised, we would start in on astronomy. “Your modesty becomes you, Salomé,” Pancho said.

  There was a softness to his voice, as if it were coming from inside the silky center of the flower he had just cut open.

  I stared down at the paper on which I had been taking notes. I could not help but glance over at Pancho’s arm, strong and bare, with a tangle of blue veins at the wrist. How I yearned to touch him! But I had been raised in a country where national heroines tied their skirts down as they were about to be executed. I did not know that it was possible for a woman to reach over and touch a man’s arm of her own accord.

  “Salomé, I have a confession to make.” Pancho had lowered his voice. “I gave my solemn promise to scale the heights of knowledge with you, did I not?”

  “Yes,” I said, reminding myself to breathe calmly.

  “I must break that promise,” he said, pausing dramatically. Sometimes I wondered if Pancho had read one too many romances. “Hostos has asked me to accompany him around the country for several months, studying schools, seeing what can be done.”

  These, of course, were goals that all of us patriots had been working toward, but it was upsetting to hear that I would have to make a personal sacrifice.

  “I know you can find any number of admirers, much more qualified, who would consider it an honor to take my place. What I ask,” he hesitated, taking up the dissecting board on his knees as if to occupy his restless hands, “is if you would do me the honor of waiting until I return to resume your studies.”

  I looked at those dark eyes, that handsome, ardent face, and I could not believe the man did not see I was in love with him. “I will happily wait until you return, Pancho.”

  He had cut open another flower and was poking at it nervously with his knife. He had explained how the whole mechanism of its propagation worked. The pistil at the center, with its sticky opening, waiting for the pollen from the stamen. As he toyed with the flower, I felt my breath coming short with wonder and desperation.

  THE NIGHT OF THE decoration went by in a blur. Mamá, who never went anywhere anymore, made a concession to the occasion. (“One of your own to be named a national poet! You must go,” our old friend Don Eliseo Grullón urged her.) Ramona had surprised me with a posy of gardenias she had gathered from the bush outside Papá’s old house. I touched her hand in gratitude, for I could not trust myself not to start crying.

  The library at the center of the capital was lit up as if for an inauguration. Rumors spread that several ex-presidents were present, but given the many governments we had had, I did not consider this fact so flattering. Pancho had set up a receiving line, and as each new guest arrived, he made the introduction to me. All I could think to say was, You are too kind, You are too kind, You are too kind. Beside me, Pancho was full of extravagant praise for everyone. By the end of the line, I felt as if I had shaken the hand of every great man and every lovely woman on the island.

  Except one. Trini was absent. When I had a free moment with Mamá just before the program got started, I asked if she had seen the Villeta family. “Why of course not, Salomé. The father died yesterday.” I felt a pang of shame at my gladness that my rival was not there to take Pancho’s attention away from me.

  It was when the crowd stood to applaud me as the medal on its satin ribbon was slipped over my head that I finally realized that my life was changed forever. I read my short speech of thank you, everyone leaning forward, straining to hear me, for my voice kept giving out. But when Pancho read my new poem in his full, expressive voice, the crowd came to its feet again. ¡Salomé! ¡Salomé! ¡Salomé! Lines from the poem were recited back to me. I bowed my head, acknowledging the applause, and after it had died down, and rose again, and died down, like a series of waves coming to shore, a man’s voice cried out, “What a man that woman is!” It was meant to be a compliment, I suppose.

  THE NEXT DAY, MAMÁ, Ramona, and I went to pay our respects to the Villetas.

  “I am so sorry I missed your coronation,” Trini said, after we had sat for a while, talking about her father’s loss.

  I had to wonder if Trini intended to hurt me with her mistaken word choices and mistimed comments or if she really was not in command of her language. Perhaps she was just not very smart—though I did not want to think so and add one more example to the theory that women were not very intelligent and education should not be wasted on us.

  “It was a decoration,” I corrected her. Ramona reached in her reticule and gave Trini the medal to hold. We had brought it along to show the Villetas, whose contribution of two pesos had been listed in the papers.

  “I would have liked to have been there,” Trini said wistfully. “Pancho was here this morning and told me how well the evening went. You know, he leaves right after Noche Buena with that odd man Hostos.”

  Of course, I knew all about Pancho’s trip, but the fact that he had come first thing in the morning to tell Trini about our special evening together was painful to hear. Ramona saw my disappointment, and as Trini chatted on, she reached over and squeezed my hand, as I had wanted to squeeze Pancho’s, had I known I was allowed.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE HE left, Pancho stopped by to say goodbye.

  “I will miss our lessons terribly,” he declared, trying to catch my eye.

  Remembering his visit to Trini, I did not betray any feeling about his departure. I spoke only of my work. “I am almost finished with my poem for Emiliano Tejera.”

  It was as if I had mentioned positivism to a priest. Pancho’s jaw tightened. “Emiliano? You’re writing him a poem now?”

  Over a year ago, Columbus’s bones had been found by a caretaker as he cleaned a vault in la catedral. The eminent historian Don Emiliano had asked me for a poem to commemorate the occasion. “I can be tardy with assignments, as you well know.”

  “You write poems for everybody,” Pancho said, pouting. “You even wrote one for my brother.”

  “That’s because Federico wrote me one.”

 
; Pancho reached in his waistcoast and pulled out a folded-up sheaf of papers. “There you go,” he said with a proud look. “I’ve written you one, too.”

  “‘Epistle to Salomé Ureña,’” I read out the title. Epistle! I thought. Why not a sonnet, a love ballad, a lover’s acrostic using the letters of my name?

  “Shall I read it to you?” Pancho offered, taking the pages back. I think Pancho loved the sound of his voice as much as the poems he was always reciting.

  “What do you think?” he asked when he was done. He himself seemed quite pleased with it.

  “It’s a lovely epistle, Pancho,” I assured him. And it was, rousing and martial.

  “So now, it is your turn,” he proposed. “You must write me a poem.”

  I forced a smile. I was not about to commit myself.

  I HAVE TO SAY that I surprised myself when I wrote “Quejas.” It was as if by lifting my pen, I had released the woman inside me and let her free on paper. But even as I wrote, I knew such frank passions in a woman were not permissible. In fact, if poor Papá had not already been dead, he would have died all over again upon reading my poem to Pancho.

  Not that I mentioned his name. To precede that poem with a dedication would have amounted to a proposal of marriage on my part.

  Listen to my desiring!

  Answer the wild longing in my heart!

  Put out my ardent fire with your kisses!

  “My goodness, Salomé!” Ramona said when she read it. Her hand was at her throat. “Remember Don Eloy? This is enough to rouse every woman believed dead from the waist down. Who is this about, by the way?” Since she had not seen Pancho around, she assumed that I had broken with him after my visit to the Villeta’s house. But there were dozens of other young men stopping by the house with bouquets and pledges to serve la poetisa nacional in any way.

  “It’s not about any one person. It’s about what we women feel when we fall in love.”

  “That’s all well and good, Salomé. But you can’t publish this. You’re la musa de la patria, for heaven’s sake,” she reminded me, waving her hand above her head. “Nobody thinks you have a real body.”

  “It’s time they found out,” I declared.

  I REALLY HAD NO intention of publishing “Quejas.” In fact, at night, as I lay in bed and thought of the poem hidden under the mattress, I felt as if a fire had been lit beneath me and I should do everything in my power to put it out.

  One month and a second month went by and still no word from Pancho. He had planned to be gone three whole months, but still I had expected to hear something from him in that time. I reasoned with myself that he had taken the Clyde steamboat east, around the the island, to the north coast—the land trails being too dangerous. Where was he supposed to mail a letter? But still, I don’t care what the positivists say, does a person in love ever listen to reason?

  What convinced me to publish that poem was not Pancho’s silence, but a little-known event that occurred in our neighborhood. I do not want to mention names or go into too much detail, as the poor girl has suffered enough. She was barely fifteen, a child really, from a humble family. When her parents discovered her swelling belly, they threw her out on the street. She was one of Tía Ana’s former charges, and so, not knowing what to do, the distraught girl appeared on our doorstep with her tearful story. The man in question refused to acknowledge the relation. We contacted our relatives in Baní, who agreed to take her in until the birth of the baby. The whole matter was settled quickly and discreetly, but the event made a great impression on me.

  It seemed to me unjust that this young woman’s life should be ruined, whereas the rogue man went on with his engagement to a girl from a fine family with no seeming consequences to be paid. For the first time, I recalled my father’s second family and felt a pang of resentment toward him. Why was it all right for a man to satisfy his passion, but for a woman to do so was as good as signing her death warrant?

  There was another revolution to be fought if our patria was to be truly free.

  I took up my pen and directed the poem to the editors of El Estudio.

  THE POEM CAUSED QUITE a stir. Some readers insisted that it was the work of an impostor, just as years ago, another poet had tried to pass herself off as the real Herminia with a silly poem about snowflakes. For how could the noble, high-minded Salomé Ureña write such a poem to a man? Several ladies demanded that if the poem were indeed mine, the national medal should be taken away from me. But quite a few women confided that I had written down exactly what they felt when they had fallen in love.

  Soon, shock at the poem’s content turned into curiosity about the life of the writer: who was the poem written to? It had no dedication, and since Salomé Ureña had never been engaged to anyone, and the only young man constantly around her was that youngster Pancho who had not been seen in her vicinity lately, then the only conclusion was that Salomé Ureña had written this poem to a married man whose name she had to keep secret.

  So began the guessing game of who Salome’s secret lover might be.

  IN THE MIDST OF this ruckus, Pancho returned. He was met at the dock by his group of friends from Friends of the Country. No doubt they filled him in on the scandalous poem Salomé had written. They were taking bets on who the lover might be. José Joaquín Pérez was in the lead.

  That very evening, Pancho appeared at our front door, El Estudio in hand. He was a sight: his hair wild and windblown, his beard growing out. Coco, who by now adored Pancho, growled at this stranger. I don’t think he had even washed off the dust from the road and the salt and sand from the sea. For a moment I did not know whether to bar the door or let him in.

  But Mamá knew, with that unerring sense of mothers, that this was the moment we had been waiting for. She asked Ramona to please come help her finish hemming Trini Villeta’s new mourning frock. “How is Trini?” I expected Pancho to ask. But he seemed not to have heard the name at all. He was looking directly at me as if no one else were in the room.

  “Did your journey go well?” I began. I wanted to talk trivialities: the steamboat’s rocking, Hostos’s snoring, the delicious crabs in Puerto Plata. I had never been looked at so nakedly by a man. It was unsettling.

  But Pancho did not want to talk about his journey. He stared at me, his eyes like the knife blade with which he had dissected those lilies, cutting through my composure.

  “Salomé,” he finally spoke, holding up the newspaper in his hand, “I just need to know who you wrote this poem for.”

  “Someone I love,” I said simply.

  “But you promised me a poem,” he went on peevishly. He had lost weight; his face was leaner. He had an older, more manly look. “I can’t bear thinking you would feel this way about another man.”

  “I don’t,” I said, looking directly at him.

  Slowly, like a liquid spilling, I saw the realization spreading across his face, his mouth falling open with surprise. “This poem is for me?” he whispered.

  I took the newspaper from him and laid it on the table. I moved toward him with a confidence that surprised me. Perhaps by writing my poem, I had discovered that I had a body. Then as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a woman to do to the man she loves, I reached for his hands and touched my lips first to one palm and then to the other one.

  FOUR

  Shadows

  Havana, Cuba, 1935

  SHE IS IN THE conference room, printing up placards for a demonstration, when Nora comes to the door. “There’s a man to see you,” she says in a careful voice as if she suspects she is being overheard. Over Nora’s shoulder, Camila sees the shadow of someone waiting in the hall.

  Her group of women exchange glances. “Shall we go with you?” several of them whisper.

  “Keep working, ladies,” she says, trying to control the quaver in her voice. Years of studying opera and she still can’t master that simple art. “I’ll be back soon,” she promises so whoever is waiting for her will know she is expected to
return. As if such a simple ruse would work on Batista’s thugs!

  Dusting off her smock, she surveys the room: fellow Lyceum ladies are working away in small groups, hammering sticks, stitching banners, handprinting slogans. They are fighting the monster with toy swords, bright banners that announce, GIVE US THE VOTE! FREE CUBA! MARTÍ’S AMERICA NOW! But what else have they to fight with? she wonders. Even her heroine mother could only come up with poems.

  Out in the hall, she is surprised to find it almost deserted. No guardias in their shiny black boots and corded caps wait to hurry her away to one of Batista’s interrogation centers. Instead, a large mulatto with a handsome, big-featured face and a body that, because she has been printing placards, she instantly thinks of as “all in capital letters” comes forward and introduces himself. “Domingo,” he says in a voice that could sing a beautiful Otello, rich and full, “I’m here t-t-to sculpt your father.”

  “My father is dead,” she tells him simply. Perhaps he is a Batista thug, after all, a rookie undercover agent who hasn’t done his research. “He died a month ago.”

  “I can w-w-wait if this is an intrusion,” he offers. The white shirt is rumpled; the string tie is undoubtedly an attempt at formality. “T-t-tell m-m-me when it would be c-c-convenient.”

  A stammer—a pity with such a beautiful, throaty voice. She feels a rush of tenderness as she would for a stagestruck student who cannot answer a simple question. “Is there something I can help you with, Don Domingo.”

  “Domingo,” he corrects her, “plain Domingo.” It turns out he is a Cuban sculptor who has been hired by some historical committee to sculpt a bust of Don Pancho. “It is to be a g-g-gift to ow-w-w-er neighbor c-c-country.”

  “I see,” she says, wondering what this is all about. No doubt, Max has arranged some tribute without letting her know about it. Perhaps he doubted that his sister would go along with anything involving the Trujillo’s dictatorship at home or Batista’s virtual dictatorship here. At any rate, the question still stands. “And so, what can I help you with, Don Domingo?”