“Never mind,” he said, gesturing at the table around which religious robes of all hues clustered. “We’re well protected.”
He spoke the truth, it seemed, despite Maya’s three-day brooding over the problem, for an air of joy hovered over the successive gatherings and the weather remained impeccable for the duration of the feast. This was in June, when the monsoon should have begun its cavort over the city. Instead, the skies remained clear. Each evening, the dancing at the open azotea of the Casa was held beneath a swollen moon and stars as huge as a man’s open hand. Even the sea hid the breath of its beginning decay and released gusts of freshness upon the city, stirring such longings among the wedding guests that a number of loves were consummated without the Church’s blessing. For months after, the rumor went around that Don Carlos Lucas had had a barge of French perfume sunk at the harbor, because he couldn’t abide the thought of anything as stupid as a fishy whiff of wind ruining his wedding.
Even each evening’s two dozen roast pigs, racked against the wall behind the serving table and still hugging the bamboo poles of their demise, looked happy enough in their shiny reddish-brown skins that, truly, the Chinese-Malay maid had no reason to blame herself for having ignored the omens—omens which flashed, like quickly shuffled cards, before her mind’s eye at the instant she kicked a stool from beneath her feet and felt upon her nape the blow of the knot of an awkward hangman’s noose as her eyes had taken in the distillery’s relics on the morning of her death. The day Carlos Lucas informed liis mother of his betrothal, Maya had awakened with a massive headache and the start of a constant complaint about the disintegration of her vision. She could see clearly and in detail at the center of her sight, but objects at the periphery were blurred; their shapes bled into one another and hid behind a white haze. It would grow worse, hampering her scuttling about the distillery, though she remained indefatigable, testing each new batch of gin, opening a bottle at random, sure that a conspiracy was afoot to reduce the name of her house to shame. She could be forgiven for not having seen how, at the end of the first wedding mass, Mayang had placed a hand on her new husband’s shoulder and, leaning her weight on him, had hoisted herself to her feet. A few of the guests did, though, and nodded knowingly at the wisdom of the bride who thus ensured she would dominate her spouse.
But the maid was present when half a dozen Yanqui sailors appeared at the Casa gates and in their eagerness to join the festivities had congratulated Hans. Because Hans looked astonishingly handsome in his white tuxedo and cane, his blond hair brushed and pomaded, his blue eyes aflame with whiskey, for Carlos Lucas had decided to serve imported liquor thus banishing his own gin from the table, the maid accepted as natural he should be mistaken for the groom. It was Hans, of course, who picked up the wedding ring when Carlos Lucas dropped it in his haste to catch his swooning bride.
None of these seemed important at the time, because a million things were going on simultaneously and the poor chinita had to rush from the Casa’s kitchen to the foyer, to the azotea, and then back to the central dining room. There were the newspapermen who arrived en masse, the elite of the profession, including Don Adrian Banyaga, the star of the Tribune. Carlos Lucas and the erstwhile bottle boy failed to recognize each other. The first was too giddy with pride and the second had just been struck by the lightning bolt of his destiny, spying in one corner of the azotea a rather severe young lady by the name of Miss Estela.
The Chinese-Malay maid saw to it that the newsmen were pampered; she had to watch the senora as well, making sure she did not trip over her skirt; she had to check the guest list at the door—in short, she had to be vigilant and thus could be forgiven for shoving aside what seemed to be trivial, could be forgiven even for not having known, until three months later, that Don Carlos Lucas had managed to teach his bride thirty of his forty-two ways of self-indulgence, so she was a virgin all the while Maya and the maid were scrutinizing her for the first signs of pregnancy.
Horrified, realizing that a Catholic education had not included that esoteric knowledge, the maid took Mayang by the hand, sat her down on the dresser stool in her own tiny room, and tried to explain. She used so many euphemisms and circumlocutions it took the whole afternoon to make the bride understand, by which time both were sweating and blushing from head to toe. To seal the instructions in her daughter’s mind, the maid then arranged for them to watch, first, the breeding of pigs, then of dogs, and finally of horses. The sight of the stallion’s magnificent tool threw the girl into such confusion she remained open-mouthed throughout the proceedings and discovered, later, that a portion of her skirt had caught on the heel of her right shoe and ripped when she had kicked out in sympathy with the horses’ thrashings.
When she deemed Mayang ready, the maid caught hold of her arm as she rose from the dining table. “Do it,” she hissed into the girl’s ear, “now!” That evening, as the house settled into sleep, Carlos Lucas felt his bride’s caresses stop and when he lifted his head to see what the problem was, she gave him an enigmatic smile and shook her head. “Not that way,” she said gently, “this way.” And she proceeded to instruct him in the way of dogs, pigs, and horses, infusing the lesson with such vigor that Carlos Lucas forgot where his head was and where his feet, which his right arm and which his left, forgot even his name or that he was a human being, for he heard himself snorting, barking, and, at the end, whinnying as though he had run a tremendous race and was breasting the ribbon of victory. He fell asleep instantly, releasing a volley of snores, not even noticing that his bride made a face as she left for the bathroom.
Carlos Lucas was so bemused by the evening’s experience he walked like a man possessed throughout the next day, absentmindedly approving everything his workers did or asked for. At breakfast, he stole glances at Mayang, wondering how she could sit there with equanimity, speaking about this and that to the others, never missing her cue: the tone of respect to Maya, the friendly distance with Hans. She was the same and yet not the same, and he couldn’t reconcile her daytime grace with the previous evening’s mystery. This contradiction so haunted him that, by dinnertime, his bones felt like soup and it was all he could do to finish his meal. When dessert was over and Mayang pushed back her chair, a sudden fear gripped Carlos Lucas. He thought she would disappear and in his anxiety, he caught and held on to the edge of her sleeve and said, unaware of how Maya and the maid exchanged looks equal to a handshake: “Show me that again.” Thereafter, until he lost his strength, this was to be a signal between them. Carlos Lucas would say “Show me again” and, nodding, she would give that enigmatic smile.
Two months later, the house echoed with the moans of her first pregnancy. The Chinese-Malay maid ordered bushels of green mangoes which she pickled for the long siege of irrational demands that were a pregnant woman’s due—yellow-green slivers, sour and salty, which Mayang chewed like peanuts, between sips of black beer. When Clara Villaverde was born, squalling with rage one Friday morning, Carlos Lucas bought out the entire stock of a candy store and had himself driven around Manila, peppering everyone with the red- and green-wrapped sweets. Hans, on the other hand, nearly swallowed arsenic in his frustration, for the once-promised papers of the partnership continued to recede to never-never land. He could not know that Clara Villaverde would see only the year of her menarche before the great cholera epidemic of the depression would tear life away from her emaciated and pain-wracked body.
Two months after the birth, Carlos Lucas held his wife’s hand and said: “Show me again.” Maya and the Chinese-Malay maid uncorked a bottle of champagne that night and celebrated. Nothing, it seemed, would touch the perfection of their plan, though it had gone a little awry with the birth of Clara who was supposed to be a boy. But so long as Carlos Lucas could manage, the possibility of a male heir to carry the Villaverde name remained.
“Give them time,” Maya said, “he’s my son and I had nothing but sons.”
The maid nodded. To herself, she vowed to guard against the untoward b
y making the rounds of all the churches once a month for this pregnancy’s duration. She would light candles, give alms, and harass all the saints with prayers and promises.
All to no avail, alas, for the second child was a girl, Clarissa Villaverde, and she was so tiny it appeared she wouldn’t even survive. By this time, the disappointment was palpable. Mayang felt herself in disgrace. Carlos Lucas contented himself with the purchase of an immense amount of clothing for the baby, a quiet baptism, and went about his business. Maya complained from dusk to dawn about her eyesight and pretended not to see her daughter-in-law even when she was merely three feet away, causing her to flee to her Chinese-Malay mother for comfort. Here she found impatience, instead.
“But your child was a girl—me,” she remonstrated in vain.
“Don’t make me responsible,” the maid said harshly, “I’m not the one sleeping with the Don.”
“He’s not even doing anything anymore!”
At which, the maid threw up her hands, a gesture of surrender for neither she nor Maya knew the wiles of seduction and she had no advice for her daughter.
“Give him time,” she said, “he’ll get around to it.”
But Carlos Lucas was entangled once again in his fight with the Capuchins whose brewery was showing recovery. He paid attention to Hans once more, which both buoyed and frightened the German for he had spent the years at the Binondo house not on beer but on the philosopher’s stone, on rigorous exercise, and on seducing the young servants one after another, sending them away with money as soon as they showed signs of rendering his indiscretion visible. He thought vaguely of sailing on to China but comfort had made his soul lazy and he had no wish to risk a sure thing for what was at best a hope. Besides, the Capuchins still talked to him, asking about the gin; they were always oblique about it, so Hans never felt his loyalty compromised. When he asked about beer, though, the monks gave him so much information, so many details, that he lost track of the myriad of ingredients they named and had to hazard guesses. As a result, the one keg of beer he managed to brew smelled of old shoes and was rancid.
Carlos Lucas, though, grew ebullient and said it was a beginning. To make things easier for Hans, he bought a small warehouse. He had it stocked with kegs and barrels, with malt and barley, a long table for Hans’s research, and a rocking chair for the hours the scientist needed to mull over his formulas. He even found ancient books on beer, mildewed, with pages missing here and there, no mean feat for the Capuchins were jealous of information. And to make sure that Hans would not be disturbed, he gave the German all the keys to the warehouse.
Thus, every morning, Hans rose from his bed, did his exercise while stark naked, slipped on his robe afterward, took a shower, returned to his room to dress, had breakfast with the household, and then left for the warehouse. He never varied this schedule even during weekends when Don Carlos Lucas urged him to go to the cockfights. These had replaced early Sunday mass as far as the Don was concerned. “No priests, no women,” he would say. “Besides which, it’s the best way to build a political constituency.” For there was talk now of a Constitutional Convention under the Commonwealth and Carlos Lucas had received vague intimations from one party or another about a possible candidacy.
“You—a politician?” Maya snorted. “What do you know about it?”
“I’m rich,” Carlos Lucas boomed back. “That’s the only requirement.”
Mayang hung at the edge of the conversation and others like it, poor lost soul, ignored by everyone. Clarissa was three months old already and Carlos Lucas hadn’t given the signal yet. Mayang, on the other hand, could not bring herself to initiate anything. The very thought of it, of her taking the edge of his sleeve and saying “I want to show you again” or perhaps, “Let me show you again” or “Will you let me show you now?”—any of an infinite number of variations—caused her to wring her hands in horror. The nuns of Laguna had laid such strict injunction against the expression of desire that rather than violate it, Mayang bit her nails, hugged a small cushion to her chest, and moaned in her rocking chair. She had sleepless nights. Once, she spent hours listening to the canal waters lapping. She dozed off and on, hid her head under the covers to escape Carlos Lucas’s snores, and woke up suddenly when the gray sky was translucent with tentative light. Like a sleepwalker, she rose, began walking through the house, breathing in consonance with its walls, checking on her children who were cared for by servants, wondering why at the age of seventeen it was her destiny to be imprisoned in this lay convent. From the children’s room, she walked to the dining room, to the kitchen, through a tiny passage leading to the servants’ hall at the back. The open door showed her a number of bundles on the floor—all the girls cocooned in blankets, stretched out on their sleeping mats. The sight filled her with unbearable melancholia.
She walked to her mother’s room but its door was closed and though she pressed an ear to the keyhole, she heard nothing. Restless, her heart stammering its aloneness, she walked on and found herself in front of Hans’s room. The door was open and the dawn’s ghost light showed her the nude German engaged in a stiff dance, flinging his arms overhead, bending his body to the right, then to the left, bringing his hands down to his waist, to his knees, to his toes.
The sight transfixed her. It took a while for Hans to notice her presence, for he was half facing the windows at the lower side of the room. Then, gradually, perhaps her gaze nudging him, he turned toward the door, revealing to her the awesome size of his Teutonic equipment. Their eyes locked. But because she could not help it, could not control it for all her convent-bred modesty, her eyes wavered, slid down, down his body, while the image of a stallion rose in her mind and her jaw dropped in admiration. Her right leg twitched; she took a step forward.
Hans met her midway into the room—a force that engulfed her and bore her back to the writing desk against the wall. By the time her cotton shift had slithered up her hips and her thighs had spread apart, she had lost all consciousness of who or where she was, knowing only that this would be the biggest, the best ever in her life, that henceforth she would suffer if he were not in her, beside her, on her, under her, holy mother of God who must have known the same pleasure once, forgive her.
The instant of fate was sudden and swift. When they fell apart, breathless with pleasure and shock, both found it unbearable to be asunder. Hans, his rear end chilled by the floor, knew himself immediately for what he was and cursed himself, saying his daughters would be born whores. The self-loathing was not for the betrayal of his host, but arose out of the certainty, even at this instant of his being sure that he loved this woman absolutely and without reservation, that he would use and betray her for the sake of his own comfort. “I am a beast,” he mumbled, at which Mayang said “yes” and slid off the desk, tumbling toward where he half-reclined. There was no resisting it. His body lunged forward, loving her independent of his volition, and he had to stuff strands of her hair into his mouth to keep from bellowing as she rode him, her hands with their wrists of iron clinging to his shoulders.
Panting, drenched with sweat, her gown stained by copious love, Mayang’s first words afterward were: “The door!” It was still open, had remained open, with neither of them noticing, and anyone could have looked in on them. The danger alerted Hans at once. He went to the desk, took out a key, and gave it to Mayang.
“The warehouse,” he said. “Afternoons. Vespers.”
Mayang clasped the key and fled. Carlos Lucas’s snores were still setting the mosquito net aquiver when she climbed into bed, stretched out beside him, and fell asleep, her fingers curled about the warehouse key. When she opened her eyes again, it was noon, Carlos Lucas was gone, and the house floated in the heat rays of summer. Mayang sang under her breath as she took her bath, her limbs loose as she sat on a low stool beside the cistern and poured water over her shoulders by means of a small porcelain pitcher. She sang as she dressed, sang as she entered the dining room, and kept the silly melody in her mind througho
ut her meal. She was alone, served by a girl of ten who brought her a dish of fish stewed in tamarind shoots, grilled dried beef, steamed okra, and rice. Mayang ate everything. She had never felt as ravenous nor as healthy in her entire life.
That day began Mayang’s devotion to St. Francis, to whose Capuchin church she went Monday to Friday. A thunderous rage possessed Carlos Lucas when he found out but he was stunned and eventually overwhelmed by the cold fierce resistance of his wife. To make matters worse, Maya approved of it, saying that perhaps that would square things between him and the monks, whose enmity had grown with the years. Besides, this was the modern age; no woman should be as cooped up in the house as she had been. The Chinese-Malay maid, on the other hand, was puzzled. Her daughter had never looked as happy or as beautiful, her body so supple it recalled exotic fruits. The maid could only surmise that Mayang’s rebellion had stirred Carlos Lucas’s lust. So she threw the weight of her judgment on Mayang’s side, giving her the freedom to come and go as she pleased. This was a period of great joy for the girl.
She did go to church thrice a week, to familiarize the parish priest with her presence. The other two afternoons—she made sure she staggered her disappearances through the five weekdays—she hurried to Hans, clutching key instead of rosary, taking the public bus, walking like a woman at home in the world through alleys and streets, arriving breathless with lust at the warehouse. She would open the pedestrian door carved within the larger gate, slip in, let veil, missal, crucifix, and purse drop to the floor, and hurl herself across the room, into Hans’s arms.
Hans led her through an infinite permutations of love, himself stirred by her amazement that there was more to it than the ways of pigs, dogs, and horses. The stink of malt and barley in fermentation, the acrid odor of chemicals, mixed with the chlorine-sea scent of their exertions, taunted them with half-glimpsed, half-imagined pleasures so that as the days passed, they grew more and more inventive, Mayang’s wild cries and Hans’s bellows ricocheting back and forth between the warehouse walls. They played at being cats and licked and sucked each other from head to foot, until Mayang was convinced that one more minute of such intensity would kill her, while Hans wanted no more than to crawl into her womb, never to emerge again. He knew the talcum odors of the skinfolds between her toes, her armpits with their bristly black short curls, the secret indentations that defined her sex which gave off an almond exudation and tasted of amaretto. Mayang, on the other hand, ran her nose over his body, sniffing at his scalp’s sweat, his jaws’ bristles, his chest’s tangle of hair, the dimple of his navel, and the soft hairs surrounding the base of his sex which, at the sound of the key in the lock, was instantly alert and remained so for the tryst’s duration.
State of War Page 20
