The Devil on Her Tongue Read online

  The money I earned was worth being winked at or treated to a foul joke by the hard-drinking sailors. Occasionally the way one of them smiled at me reminded me of Abílio, and at those moments I would pour myself a cup of wine to wash away the memories. Because Rooi and I spoke Dutch to each other, the sailors assumed I was his daughter. When they wanted me to serve them, they snapped their fingers and called out for the Dutchman’s daughter.

  One afternoon as I was washing the floor, Rooi filled a jug with wine from a newly opened cask.

  As the fumes wafted towards me, I called, “That one’s got something wrong with it, Rooi.” I leaned back on my heels, dropping the rag into the scummy grey water. “I can smell it from here. Who sold it to you? Was it Henry Duncan?”

  “This one and a keg of Sercial.”

  English merchants came from Funchal to sell to Rooi, and Mr. Duncan was his main supplier. He was even-featured, his blue eyes bright in a youngish face, his rich brown hair streaked early with grey. He liked me to serve him, always entreating me to sit and talk to him for a few minutes. He patiently let me practise English with him, never making fun of me like some of the English sailors did.

  “Nee, mijn meisje,” Rooi said now. “You can’t tell there’s something wrong with the wine from all the way across the room.” Every time Rooi called me “my girl,” as my father had, I felt a twinge of both pleasure and sadness.

  He poured himself a cup and took a swig. As he swallowed, he made a face and shook his head. “Acch. You’re right. Tangy as horse’s piss.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t matter. Most of the sailors will drink anything.”

  “Maybe the Portuguese or the Spanish or North African sailors. But not the English—they’re fussier.” I got up and came to him, taking the tin cup from his hand. I stuck my nose in it and took a great whiff, then sipped it. “A Boal from the north side of Madeira. Maybe São Vicente. Get me some of our surdo, Rooi.” Because of the intense heat of the sun on the island, Porto Santo’s grapes were very sweet, and their juice produced a strong, syrupy liqueur. Rooi brought me that surdo, and I poured a bit into the cup of Boal, tried it, then added a bit more, swirling it to mix it and taking another sip. “There,” I said, handing it to him.

  He tasted it and nodded. “Much better.” A sudden warm wind blew in through the open door. Rooi took another swallow and smacked his lips appreciatively. “Leave the floor and come make your magic on this keg,” he said.

  That evening, Henry Duncan arrived, and asked me for a cup of his own Sercial. Instead, I brought him the wine I’d blended, and watched as he lifted the cup to drink. As he breathed in the wine, he looked at me quizzically. “I said Sercial, Diamantina. This is a Boal.”

  “Could you try it, Mr. Duncan? I won’t charge you for it.”

  He looked at me with surprise. “For you, of course.” He took a sip, rolling it around in his mouth. “Caramel, coffee, but there’s something different about it.” He took a second mouthful, and when he’d swallowed, he said, “I can’t say I love it, but I will admit it’s interesting. I can identify most of the Funchal blenders by their signature palate. Who’s the merchant?”

  I smiled. “You are, Mr. Duncan. It is your Boal, slightly spoiled in the keg. So I added some surdo to sweeten it and bring out its fullness.”

  “Rooi,” he called with a laugh, “your girl could teach you a lesson or two.” He pressed a few réis into my hand. “Now bring me the Sercial.”

  The money Rooi paid me was enough so that my mother and I didn’t want for food, but still there was no extra. Without money, my dream of leaving Porto Santo could never be anything more than a dream. After I was let go from the church, I had still regularly gone to the priest asking if there was a letter from my father. Each time, Father da Chagos just shook his head, closing the front doors where I had stood waiting for him. He appeared angry with me for asking, and this in turn angered me. I wished my father had arranged to send the letters to Rooi, but Rooi was drunk most of the time, and there was no sense of order anywhere in his life. My father wouldn’t have trusted him.

  As I passed sixteen, I stopped asking Father da Chagos about a letter. It had been three years since my father left. Why hadn’t he written? Certainly some letters could have gone astray between Brazil and Portugal, floating to the bottom of the ocean in a ship that had sunk, or lost when the ship was pirated. But this couldn’t have happened to every letter, could it? Perhaps my father had been unable to save the money as he had promised, and was too embarrassed to write to tell me this fact.

  I thought of Abílio’s brothers, who surely still did not know of their parents’ deaths. I didn’t allow myself to think that my father was dead, and I didn’t stop dreaming about sailing to Brazil and looking for him in São Paulo.

  I knew I had to earn more réis. I watched how the sailors gambled over cards as they drank, tossing their coins recklessly. I reasoned I could take advantage of their willingness to part with their money for sport.

  The set of domino tiles my father had left behind had been made from the bones of a dead monk seal he found on the beach after a two-day storm. He had laid the bones in the sun to bleach them, then cut them into small rectangles and smoothed their edges with a piece of coral. To make the pips, he drilled into the bone with the tip of his knife. He stained each tiny indentation with the red blood of the dragon tree, and made a box from the hard wood of the same tree to house them.

  He showed me how to play dominoes when I was very young. When I was older, he pointed out the tiny clues he had created on the backs of the bone tiles. The clues, imperceptible to anyone not looking for them, ensured that I knew the number of pips each half of the tile possessed. He also made three extra bones, hidden under a fake lid in the box, to be concealed in a sleeve or pocket while playing. He said he had made a similar set while on the ships, and in this way won extra tobacco on the long voyages.

  I told Rooi I wanted to play dominoes with the sailors. If we worked together, I said, we would both profit.

  He looked skeptical, and only said, “We’ll see, Diamantina.”

  I spent the next few days studying the tiles, memorizing each secret mark. And then I carried my box into Rooi’s and surveyed the room carefully, picking a sailor who looked free with his money.

  I bet him a cup of rum and let him win. Then I suggested we play for money, showing him a few coins in my pocket, proof that I would pay up if I lost. But I didn’t. Each time I won, the sailor had to pay me the bet, as well as buy me a cup of wine. Rooi brought me water with a drop of wine to colour it, although the sailor paid the full price.

  By the end of the evening, I had played with three sailors, and Rooi and I were both surprised at the profit.

  I gambled most nights after that. I learned the ways of men, and how easy it was, after they’d had a few drinks, to make them laugh and feel taller and more handsome. I remembered Abílio’s words to me the last time I saw him: It’s just part of the game. I can’t help it if you’re too naive to see the world as it really is. I assumed that this was what he meant. I was seeing the world as it was now.

  Each night was a new crowd of sailors. I joked with them in their own languages: Dutch and Spanish and French and English. I opened every game with, “Have you ever met a Dutch sailor named Arie ten Brink?” Some kept me guessing, toying with me as I toyed with them, acting as though they might remember him if I bestowed a kiss upon their cheek.

  All assumed Arie ten Brink was a lost lover, not a missing father.

  Although I never allowed a sailor to touch me, avoiding their drunken, clumsy attempts to kiss me or grab my breasts, my work at the inn, along with the knowledge of my behaviour with Abílio, marked me as the lowest woman on Porto Santo.

  As I walked through the square, the men who spent hours under the shade of the palms and dragon trees felt they had the right to stare at me openly, making rude comments and ugly suggestions. Depending on my mood, I would act as though I hadn’t h
eard, or stop and look straight into the man’s face and tell him to go home to his wife and ask her if she’d enjoy what he’d suggested to me.

  Although a few of the women still smiled at me, most of them viewed me as a temptress, either turning their faces away from me or muttering loudly enough so I could hear them—a disgrace, she’ll get what she deserves, a sinner in the eyes of God—as I shopped in the market or crossed the square.

  I told myself I didn’t care. Those who damned me—as they’d damned my mother when she arrived on the island—did not live in my situation. My way was the only option open to a woman without father or husband or any family to provide for her. At least one who wished to eat, and keep herself and her strange, silent mother alive. And maybe, one day, leave.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I sought out news of the wider world, reading the Gazeta de Lisboa brought by packet ship, and regretted that I had no one to speak to of the events I discovered: the births, baptisms, marriages and deaths of the noble dignitaries of Portugal, the representation of the royal family at court ceremonies, the sinking of a brigantine off the coast of the Algarve, or a play on the lives of saints written by Baltazar Dias and enacted in the Salitre theatre. My head filled with images of grand buildings and life in the huge city of Lisboa.

  I did tell my mother about what I’d read. She listened, smiling slightly and nodding encouragement for me to continue. But she had nothing to add, and never asked a question. I wished I could speak to Sister Amélia. I missed her, and hoped she did not fall too often into her bouts of melancholy

  I could have spoken to Rooi as I cleaned the inn before the first customers arrived, but he was usually suffering too much from his drinking the night before to concentrate on serious conversation. I sometimes brought him a mixture of raw eel and bitter almonds to help dispel the shaking and headache; he said it didn’t help but ate it anyway. The sailors didn’t want to talk of the world when they played dominoes with me. They wanted to have a good time, for me to laugh at their jokes and pretend I had purposefully touched their hands as I reached for a tile.

  The only person who would speak to me of life outside the island was Henry Duncan. He too played dominoes with me, good-naturedly handing over the réis I won without making me pretend I was drinking the watered wine he had paid full price for. Occasionally he brought along a bottle of one of his own special vintages, and Rooi pretended he didn’t notice Mr. Duncan sharing it with me as we played.

  When I came home late every night, my clothes smelled of alcohol and tobacco. I finally admitted to myself how much I liked these evenings, the noise and camaraderie, feeling attractive and important in a way I had never been made to feel by the righteous of Vila Baleira. I liked the taste of the watered wine on my lips and the weight of the coins on my palm. I liked the thud of the tiles on the wooden tables, and the way a sailor looked at me with surprise or grudging admiration as I triumphantly threw down my final bone.

  My mother always waited up for me in the flickering candlelight, her ever-present smoking bowl of wormwood before her on the table. She would study me, her features fierce in that half-light, and I felt she saw right through me. And yet she never asked me anything.

  Of course, I intended to save as much of the money as I could. I was playing dominoes so I could leave Porto Santo. But after buying the food we needed, other temptations proved great. I bought books and sweet pastries and pretty decorated plates. I bought soft cloth that I made into skirts and blouses, and bright embroidery floss to decorate them. I bought more ribbons to weave into my hair. The first time I brought home a book for myself and a bracelet for my mother, she fingered the double circle of shiny metal etched with a leafy design, then handed it back to me. “Buy yourself what you like. But don’t buy me anything.”

  “You don’t want the bracelet?”

  She shook her head. “I have all I need.”

  But when I brought home a pair of green-feathered, red-headed lovebirds in a finely worked wooden cage, my mother, lying on her pallet, sat up and looked at them. I hung the cage near the window so the noisy little lovers could enjoy the fresh air.

  She slowly got to her feet and put her hands on the intricate carvings, leaning her face against the cage and breathing deeply, as if pulling its smell into her lungs.

  “I’ve named them Zarco and Blanca,” I said.

  The birds fluttered off their perch, hopping in distress on the bottom of the cage at my mother’s face so close to them.

  “Mama?”

  She turned to me, her eyes bright in a way I hadn’t witnessed for so long, and I smiled, pleased that I had made her happy.

  “The shopkeeper said they can live ten or even fifteen years.”

  “They’re African birds,” she said. “And this”—she gently traced one of the carvings of the cage—“is from Algeria. From home.” Then she sat back down, still smiling as she stared at the cage.

  I waited a moment. “Do you ever dream of going back? Going home?”

  She was still smiling. “I will go, Diamantina. Soon.” Her soft words sent a tremor through me, and I questioned her no more.

  My mother grew ever more silent, ever more slender, her nose sharper, her lips thinning, her skin the texture of a parched fruit, although her hair remained black.

  One warm day she had me hollow out a shallow bed in the sand for her. The sand of Porto Santo was known for its healing qualities, and many island people would lie covered in it for hours, hoping to ease the discomfort of rheumatism or skin disorders or general malaise. After I scooped sand over her, I sat beside her as she dozed. We did this every few days, and sometimes she fell deeply asleep in the warm peacefulness of the sand, with the foamy waves gently washing up at a slight distance. When she awoke, she often spoke in her secret language, as if in conversation with an unseen friend.

  Otherwise she spent most of her time on her pallet, often staring at the carved cage and the twittering birds. When I asked her if she felt ill, she shook her head, but no longer showed an interest in burning herbs and watching the smoke.

  It felt as though we were suspended in time, each of us waiting. I waited for the letter from my father. I didn’t like to think of what my mother waited for.

  And then, shortly after I turned seventeen, Abílio Perez returned. I never expected to see him again, and a young married couple now lived in the Perez hut. And yet there he was, staring at me in the inn as I laughed with a sailor and tucked the coins I’d won into the pocket of my skirt.

  I struggled to control my breathing as Abílio came towards me. When he was in front of me, I lifted my chin and stared at him. On his face was the same strained expression I felt on mine. We looked at each other for mere seconds, and then, as if his uncertainty had been a trick of the light, his face took on a knowing, superior look, his teeth white as he smiled at me. He leaned so close his thigh touched mine, and he put his hand on my waist to pull me towards him as he whispered into my ear. “I’m only here for a few days, for the wedding of Estevo Da Luz. I know you’ve missed me. Meet me on the beach when you’re finished here.”

  Prickly heat rose up my neck into my cheeks.

  “I’m sure no one else has satisfied you as I did,” he added, no longer smiling.

  His words thudded inside me, and I was glad for my anger. I wanted to shout at him that there had been no one else. I wanted to slap him as I had the day we’d parted. I wanted to lean forward and kiss him. “So you haven’t set off for Brazil, then,” I said. “Still in Funchal. And there you’ll stay, as I predicted.”

  He took a step back, his eyes narrowing. “I already have my passage booked. I’m leaving next month. But you, Diamantina, you are still on Porto Santo, and my estimation of you has turned out to be correct.”

  I fought to maintain my composure as I walked into the back room of the inn, ripe with the odour of its kegs and pipes of wine and barrels of rum. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my ragged breathing.

  I couldn’t face goi
ng back into the hot, noisy room. I hurried out the back door, sickness rising into my throat. I smelled the cheap rum and bitter pipe smoke on my clothing and in my hair, and shuddered at the thought of the tarry roughness of one sailor or another’s fingers on me. I ran down to the beach and waded out into the sea, floating under the moon as though the cool salty water and thin white light could cleanse me.

  I floated for a long time, looking to the starry night sky as if it might give me the answer as to how my life had come to this.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  That night, I was pulled from sleep by Abílio, shouting my name down the beach; surely he was drunk. I didn’t know if he’d come to my door, or what I would do if he did.

  I sat in the darkness until he stopped calling. Then I pulled my blanket tightly around me and lay awake, and troubled, for the rest of the night.

  My mother did not speak of it.

  The next day, I gave a child of the beach a coin to run to Rooi’s and tell him I was ill. I’d decided not to go to work for the next few days. I stayed away from Vila Baleira too, until I knew the Da Luz wedding was over and Abílio would be gone.

  When I returned on the fourth day, Rooi asked, “You feel better, Diamantina?”

  I nodded.

  The inn was more crowded than usual; I had noticed two big caravels sitting out in the deep water beyond the wharf. I looked around me with new eyes, imagining the inn as Abílio had seen it—and me: the coarse laughter and shouted curses, the splintered tables and benches, the sloping dirt floor, the dull flicker of candles melting in their own tallow, and Rooi, red-faced and drunk, spilling more wine than he poured.

  The smells of the sailors who came to collect their tankards from me were particularly strong that day: salt and tar, unwashed flesh and hair and greasy clothes and rotting teeth. I stayed behind the counter, uninterested in bringing out my dominoes.