The Taste of a Woman Read online

  Mostly she suffered in silence.

  Rodolpho came Mondays and Thursdays, except some Mondays recently when he was asked to help out at the schoolyard project. They’d added a wing to the primary grades and in the process heavy equipment had torn the yard to hell. School session would be starting soon and only Rodolpho could have the place looking decent by then.

  Occasionally on Thursday his brother, Carlos, came along, long enough to clarify some idea or explain a new design Rodolpho had in mind but needed the master’s approval.

  During the discussion this day Carlos noticed Allye fretting over her rash, scratching it, seemingly trying to rub it into oblivion. “You know,” he said. “Rodolpho is an excellent herbologist. His knowledge of plants extends to the medicinal. You should let him give that rash a try.”

  Shyness was powerful in Allye but no match for a chance at cure. She had little trouble saying yes to an idea that on the surface would speak volumes of danger to her. She gave in. She showed him her rash.

  Rodolpho set to work gathering leaves and bark from around the yard. He paused, waved one finger in the air, pointed to himself, pointed out the garden gate and then was gone. Twenty minutes later he returned with several strange looking specimens in his arms and set about grinding them up in a stone bowl then mixing in water and alcohol. What resulted was an ugly looking gorp, something that resembled tar dissolved in gutter water.

  He signaled to Allye pointing to the potion, pointing to the rash, back to the potion, a little tumbling motion with his fingers in between, and then to her rash again.

  She nodded.

  He took a cotton swab and painted the spot until he was satisfied, waving his hands over the newly formed escar he’d made, drying it to a disc the texture of a Tiddlywink. He patted four fingers to his own forearm to signal, “leave it in place,” then a tumbling motion of his hand and forefinger to indicate the passage of time, then prayer hands to the side of his tilted face to signal sleep.

  Ten o clock that night she washed away the potion and went to bed, shivering from contact that long with the dirty disgusting unknown attached on her so intimately and for so long. She dreamed large, brown ticks sticking to her body.

  The spot was gone next morning.

  Life returned to normal. Which for Allye meant poetry in the morning, house tidying in the afternoon, kids before supper and a little time reading in the evening. She would tell Rodolpho his success. But there remained a larger issue. Trouble was, she couldn’t decide how or if even her shyness would allow her to tell him this secret.

  Being shy, she put the struggle aside and became intrigued instead with his communication skills. How was he was able to accomplish conversation without language or the signs that are usually substituted for words?

  She started sitting on the patio, late mornings. She showed interest in his work. Unable to walk up to him and start a conversation her presence there was partly a ruse to place her in his way and spark some manner of interaction.

  The prospect of engaging in any type of conversation with a gardener frightened her but there was something about Rudolpho that cut through her fears. It wasn’t his muscular physique, earned by hours of lifting, digging, wrestling with trees and shrubs and flagstones. It certainly wasn’t delightful conversation. There was none. But she was uncomfortable. Her organized world was fraying at the edges and it bothered her. Even so, she returned again and again to the patio.

  Enough, she thought. I’ll just sit here. No need to speak. Just remain on the patio, soaking in the sun. Good. That’s settled.

  She jumped. Suddenly. Involuntarily, like that ballistic motion that jolts you out of sleep and you find yourself awake and upright without knowing why.

  She was awake, awake from her daydreaming, but this was not about some erratic electrical discharges from the deep recesses in her primitive brain. It was about a sudden blast of water.

  She jumped up, scrambled out of range and stood, soaking wet, in the sunshine at the patio’s edge. Rudolpho didn’t notice immediately, but when he turned to examine the reach of his sprinkler in the yard, he found an image of a miserable Allye, wet all over.

  He jumped up, raced across the lawn, and began gesturing wildly with his hands, placing them to his forehead, waving them about, banging a fist on his skull...

  Allye laughed and placed two hands face down in the space between the two of them and patted an invisible mound of anxiety down, down, slowly down to a place below her waist.

  Rudolpho understood. Nodded. Kneeled. Looked forlorn.

  Alice touched his shoulder with two fingers and smiled. She picked up a sopping strand of her light blue blouse and rung it out like a dish rag. Rudolpho laughed. Alice went inside to change.

  Dry, she returned to her post. No conversation but she remembered the feel of his shoulder against her fingertips.

  At the dinner table that night, Rudolpho’s name came up. Carrie was complaining. “He gives me the creeps,” she said. “All that silence he hides behind. No one can ever tell what he’s thinking.”

  Don looked at her with a wry smile and challenged her. “You can’t tell what anybody’s thinking, Carrie, language or no language.”

  “You’ve missed the point.”

  “No I haven’t. Rudolpho is a simple man. He does great gardening. Fabulous gardening. As far as I know he never bothers anyone.”

  Allye was glad she’d told no one about the sprinkler episode.

  The energy died down and conversation turned to homework, finances, plans for the summer vacation. The argument wasn’t settled and neither side had budged.

  The following afternoon Mr. Dortmeyer came to call. He timed the visit to miss Allye’s morning writing and to arrive before the kids home from school.

  “Have you given consideration to my offer,” he said.

  “Yes and no,” Allye said.

  “May I be hopeful?”

  Allye reflected, looking for the right words. Instinctively she almost put her hand up between the two of them palm outward, then realized that was a Rudolpho gesture.

  She began cautiously. “I love your bookstore,” she said. “When I go out - I almost never go out - but when I do I always want to go there.” She paused, gathering thoughts. “It’s such a good atmosphere being surrounded by all that intelligence and creativity.”

  Dortmeyer nodded but his face revealed his thoughts. He could see what was coming.

  “But I am not ready to go public with my poems.”

  Dortmeyer showed disappointment but decided to restate the offer. “As you know, your friend Gina showed me three poems which I thought were terrific. Maybe you didn’t want her to. But I was just thinking that such good work should be shared with other people. I’m still hoping you might come and read for our monthly poetry series. I know the audience would be pleased.”

  She blushed. “I don’t think I could do that,” she said. “I just don’t see myself doing that. But thank you so much for thinking of me.”

  Polite conversation followed. Dortmeyer went away.

  Allye returned to her obsessive project about language. She wondered if having no names for plants would put him at disadvantage as a gardener. Maybe names weren’t important. Who needs names anyway? Maybe names could even act as an impediment, an interference distancing him from the thing itself by the sound the word makes in our ears or the image the sight of its spelling on the page makes in our eyes.

  She imagined a world without names, Rudolpho’s world, working with roses and lemon trees, and Peonies - her favorite. What she saw was the plants stepping forward with their own ways of making themselves known: aroma, waxy leaves, brittle branches, distinctive ways of painting themselves with color, resourcefulness during hard winters, resilience in wind storms, drought ... .

  Without names, each plant must cr
eate a distinction of its own making and would be recognized not by a moniker some human applied to it but by its nascent characteristics, recognized not through symbols but by knowledge.

  This idea fascinated her. Poets use words but they are always trying to get behind the words to a deeper cut of meaning. Isn’t that what Rilke did spending days and days at the zoo watching the panther, absorbing its every move and attitude before he wrote a single line of his famous poem? Or the sculptor, Rodin? The way he sat in a calculated angle of apprehension as he studied his subject. Even his body position was important to the process of clarifying his vision. Both artists were attempting to get behind names to the under-language of things.

  Words are just approximations, she thought. “Stone,” though it brings up images of the thing it represents is not that thing and is therefore already inaccurate. That one step of distance exists even in the onomatopoeias of “hit,” “clash,” “zoom.” Poets are always trying to close that gap. Rodolpho lives inside it.

  She felt her trust for Rodolpho expanding. That’s how she decided to reveal her secret.

  The following Thursday she found herself standing in front of him trying to communicate. She wanted to say, “remember the rash I had in the crook of my elbow?” She thought for a moment. How to say this?

  She pointed to her head and then to her elbow.

  Rodolpho looked confused.

  She made repeated pointing motions to the spot that was now gone.

  He looked a little more connected.

  She pinched herself and raised a red spot which she pointed to and outlined with her finger.

  Rodolpho became suddenly animated. He made a claw of his hand and clamped it on the hollow of his elbow and started clawing there, looking at her as if to say, is this it?

  She nodded.

  He was pleased. Nodded back.

  Now she paused. Waited for courage. Rodolpho was staring at her. She felt safe. She forged ahead.

  She waved as if erasing what had gone before. She pointed to her spot then drew her hand behind her and pointed to a spot just below her hip where the curve meets the thigh.

  No response.

  She repeated the gesture.

  Still nothing.

  She pinched her elbow then turned and pinched the spot on her hip.

  A burst of daylight radiated from his face. He clawed his elbow and then clawed his bottom.

  She nodded.

  Conversation stopped. Each was thinking. The next step would be the most difficult. She turned and went away.

  But came back making one hand into a cup, the other a pestle with a rotating motion, dip one finger, paste the spot...

  Rodolpho got it.

  Allye repeated the process this time pointing to her bottom.

  Rodolpho looked serious. A moment passed. He nodded his head.

  He pointed to himself, made circles with his hands drawing them into himself, tumbled his hands over each other for time passing. He would bring the potion next week.

  Allye nodded.

  When he returned he was carrying a little glass bottle shaped like a maple syrup pitcher with a ground-glass stopper. Inside was the medicinal gorp Allye had seen before. She nodded and turned into the house.

  Rodolpho followed a ways behind.

  Allye went up the winding stairs to her room and without ceremony lay face down on the bed. Then in one graceful motion she dropped her pants and panties together down below her butt line. To her surprise, and his, she didn’t stop at the site of the rash but continued beyond which presented Rodolpho a clear view.

  She closed her eyes. To take away vision in favor of imagination was a far, far better place.

  She waited, not minding the wait, as if the reason for this exposure had provided an opportunity to find within herself urges ignored, passions untouched. She felt the presence of air on herself, the presence of Rudolpho’s gaze. It was not frightening. She was in no hurry.

  When Rudolpho got over his paralysis he began stirring his potion

  Allye waited in a mesmerizing miasma of anxiety and pleasure.

  She felt his finger upon the rash in the place where the arc of the buttocks meets the upper thigh. It hovered there a second, then returned with the slime of redemption. He used his hand to smear it over her rash and a little beyond, lingering there, stroking it into the skin.

  He stopped.

  She waited.

  The sound of stopper clinking against the bottle neck. The sound of the door closing.

  Allye stood and facing the mirror saw her pants half way down her thigh. She chuckled with embarrassment. Glad I didn’t watch, she thought.

  She pulled up her clothing and went about her daily tasks, the deposit from Rodolpho sliding in her crease.

  Their ritual repeated itself three times. One day the rash was gone.

  Even so, Allye beckoned to him and when they entered the house and arrived at the bedroom door she presented him with oil in a fragrant light blue cache.

  He looked puzzled.

  She pointed to the bottle, pointed toward her bottom.

  She lay across the bed.

  Some chafing had appeared at the spot of the rash but the rash was gone.

  Rodolpho rubbed his hands in the riches of the oil, which reminded him of tropical breezes off the coast of Guatemala, and slathered it over the place where the rash had been. He rubbed the crease crossways, then in fan like arcs he spread the slippery fragrance over the dome of her hip rising before him.

  She kept her eyes closed. Remained still. She began breathing deeply.

  Rudolpho watched her body, saw her feet relax, her jaw droop, her breathing deepen. He extended the massage to the small of her back, to the other cheek. Allye descended deeper in her haze.

  He returned to the oil bottle and slathered lots of it on her thighs, cooling the backs of her knees, her ankles, upward under her blouse, then into the crease between the round mounds of her hips.

  He got more oil but paused to read her face.

  Finding no impediment he slathered her crease edging toward her front side of her then back. He rubbed her forward and back. Forward and back.

  He paused.

  Allye had allowed herself to stop thinking and zone into the trusted comfort of the moment, assimilating each sensual stimulus into a compressed imagination of what was happening to her. It was not intellectual, details were unimportant. It had more to do with the emotional stream, what lived there, where it carried her as she turned herself loose in the rushing current.

  She felt him at her opening and gasped but remained where she was, forgiving in advance what was to come. He entered her. It was not as she had imagined.

  There was intensity. Electricity. There was a surge of heartbeats and inhalations out of control. Her toes curled. Her arms gripped the bed. Riding under her soaring surging high was. . what was it?... pain, that was it. But pain was not distinct from pleasure but linked to it, as if it was the engine to amplify the experience.

  She stayed with her journey. Rudolpho withdrew. He left the room.

  She rose, examined herself, showered, washed and dried the sheets and put them back on the bed. The small hand towel she used on her way to the shower, she rolled up and put under her pillow.

  That night the subject of Rudolpno came up again at the dinner table.

  “Creeps, Carrie said. “That’s what I get every time I look at that guy.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” chided Don.

  “I’m not. And I can’t stand it.” She paused, then delivered the blow. “I think I’m going to fire him.”

  What happened next was as unpredictable as earthquakes in California and a lot more out of character.

  Allye practically jumped out of her chair. “
No you’re not!” She shouted. “He’s wonderful. His plants love him. They respond to him when he’s in the yard. He’s kind and intelligent. He wouldn’t hurt a soul. Just because he doesn’t speak your language doesn’t mean you should hate him.”

  Dead silence.

  The shock included Allye who could not hold back her tears.

  Never had in anyone’s memory has she erupted like this.

  Carrie eyed her with new eyes.

  “Okay, okay, Carrie said. “Keep your damn freaky gardener. But I will be watching.” And with that she made the “eyes on you” sign.

  The following Thursday Rodolpho didn’t show.

  Allye paced.

  Had Carrie gotten to him? Allye would kill her.

  Noon came. He was never late. She simply must find out what happened. But he has no phone, no way to contact him. She didn’t even know where he lived. And no language. There was no choice but to wait it out among her growing apprehensions.

  Three o’ clock and Carlos came. He read her swollen eyes. “He’s dead,” he said.

  The shock was so great she heard little of what followed. Something about a cement truck backing up at the schoolyard site, missing the target. “The driver couldn’t see very well.” Carlos said. “Rodolpho was working nearby. He’s deaf. He couldn’t hear the warning beep beep beep.

  She stayed in her room for days, on her bed, head and open palm on her pillow. The family thought it was an unusually strong reaction and were getting seriously worried but on the fifth day she came down. Life resumed, reluctantly, but she was numb all over.

  Mornings she spent in the garden with his plants. She opened her mind to them, trying to pick up some trace of him, to enter into some of his communication pathways. She took away their names: ivy, lemon, maple... instead she thought green, yellow surge, bitter in the center... then went away from words altogether, all the way to the core.

  Her poetry was no longer about words but how the words reflected what was going on deep inside. She liked the change. She even thought she might have something to offer Mr. Dortmeyer: