The Betrayed by Reine Arcache Melvin

Author:Reine Arcache Melvin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2022-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

The sky, violet blue and cloudless, stretched high over the fields. Shadows shrouded the flame trees. Pilar gripped the window ledge, looking into the night. She imagined a child inside her, a life to nourish, something that belonged to her, something that made her belong to life.

“Pilar?” Arturo was standing at the doorway, in trousers but no shirt, his hair uncombed.

How easy it was to not ask questions. To not think, not feel, not recognize what she was doing in one part of herself. How easy to enter that separate chamber in her heart.

“Tomorrow you’re going back to Manila,” he said. “It’s too dangerous here.”

She carried the candle from the dresser to the bedside table, then reached for his hand. This time he didn’t protest. He seemed shaken, in need of comfort.

They lay next to each other, facing the ceiling. As a child, in the minutes before sleep, she had imagined tiny shadows crawling in and out of the cracks above her. She couldn’t see them now.

“Benedicto’s men arrived ten minutes after we left that old man’s house,” Arturo said. His voice was hoarse, unsteady. She had never heard him sound so upset. “They rounded up everyone who was still there.”

Don’t tell me this, she thought.

“They set the house on fire,” he said.

She covered her eyes. “And the people?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“The old man, the owner?”

“We don’t know.”

She looked at the ceiling again. She imagined the fire, the fires, the people in the village, the old man in red pajamas and the young maids in shorts and T-shirts, their sleepy, surprised faces.

His fingers grasped hers. He brought her hand to her stomach, just above her navel. Flat and smooth. He pressed her fingertips into her lower belly. The flesh was softer there, yielding.

He tugged her nightgown up over her hips.

The sex was rough, hard, almost without tenderness. He had never made love to her like that. His skin and smell and weight, the repeated impact of his hips against hers. She wished he would finish. He was hurting her. She worried that they hadn’t closed the shutters. She worried someone could hear them. He was murmuring things she couldn’t understand.

Minutes later, he collapsed against her. She shifted under his weight.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

He lifted himself off her. After a while, he said, “I’m sorry.”

A small, sharp ache in her belly. “I’m not asking for anything.” Her voice was hushed, fierce. “You know, I’m not even asking anything.”

“Relax. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“You don’t know.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I wish I could have two wives.”

He might as well have struck her.

They hadn’t spoken about Lali since the river. Now the muscle in his cheek twitched, as it did whenever he was upset or angry.

And my anger, she thought. And my distress?

And the village on fire? And all the other questions I’m not supposed to ask?

She twisted away from him to blow out the candle.

His hand on her belly, blocking her. “Leave it on,” he said.

From behind, he cradled her against him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.