Reflection #2Our emphasis has largely been on Laura. Now consider the character of Braggioni. How does Porter characterize him? Do you think he is indeed capable of redemption? Remember always when re
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Flowering Judas
Braggioni sits heaped upon the edge of a straight-backed chair much too small for him, and sings to Laura in a furry,
mournful voice. Laura has begun to find reasons for a voiding her own house until the latest possible moment, for
Braggioni is there almost every night. No matter how la te she is, he will be sitting there with a surly, waiting
expression, pulling at his kinky yellow hair, thumbin g the strings of his guitar, snarling a tune under h is breath. Lupe
the Indian maid meets Laura at the door, and says wit h a flicker of a glance towards the upper room, 'He wai ts.'
Laura wishes to lie down, she is tired of her hairpins and the feel of her long tight sleeves, but she says to him, 'Have
you a new song for me this evening?' If he says yes, she asks him to sing it. If he says no, she remembers his
favorite one, and asks him to sing it again. Lupe bri ngs her a cup of chocolate and a plate of rice, and L aura eats at
the small table under the lamp, first inviting Braggio ni, whose answer is always the same: 'I have eaten, and besides,
chocolate thickens the voice.'
Laura says, 'Sing, then,' and Braggioni heaves himself into song. He scratches the guitar familiarly as though it were
a pet animal, and sings passionately off key, takin g the high notes in a prolonged painful squeal. Laur a, who haunts
the markets listening to the ballad singers, and stop s every day to hear the blind boy playing his reed -flute in
Sixteenth of September Street, listens to Braggioni with pitiless courtesy, because she dares not smile at his
miserable performance. Nobody dares to smile at him. Br aggioni is cruel to everyone, with a kind of specialized
insolence, but he is so vain of his talents, and so sensitive to slights, it would require a cruelty and vanity greater than
his own to lay a finger on the vast cureless wound of his self-esteem. It would require courage, too, for it is dangerous
to offend him, and nobody has this courage.
Braggioni loves himself with such tenderness and ampli tude and eternal charity that his followers - for he is a leader
of men, a
skilled revolutionist, and his skin has been puncture d in honorable warfare - warm themselves in the
reflected glow, and say to each other: 'He has a real nobility, a love of humanity raised above mere personal
affections.' The excess of this self-love has flowe d out, inconveniently for her, over Laura, who, with s o many
others, owes her comfortable situation and her salary t o him. When he is in a very good humor, he tells her, 'I
am tempted to forgive you for being a gringa. Gringita/' and Laura, burning, imagines herself leaning forward
suddenly, and with a sound back-handed slap wiping the suety smile from his face. If he notices her eyes at
these moments he gives no sign.
She knows what Braggioni would offer her, and she mu st resist tenaciously without appearing to resist, and if
she could avoid it she would not admit even to hers elf the slow drift of his intention. During these long evenings
which have spoiled a long month for her, she sits in her deep chair with an open book on her knees,
resting her eyes on the consoling rigidity of the prin ted page when the sight and sound of Braggioni sing ing
threaten to identify themselves with all her remember ed afflictions and to add their weight to her uneasy
premonitions of the future. The gluttonous bulk of Br aggioni has become a symbol of her many disillusions , for
a revolutionist should be lean, animated by heroic f aith, a vessel of abstract virtues. This is nonsense, she
knows it now and is ashamed of it. Revolution must have leaders, and leadership is a career for energeti c men.
She is, her comrades tell her, full of romantic error, for what she defines as cynicism in them is merely 'a
developed sense of reality'. She is almost too will ing to say, 'I am wrong, I suppose I don't really un derstand the
principles', and afterward she makes a secret truce wi th herself, determined not to surrender her will to such
expedient logic. But she cannot help feeling that s he has been betrayed irreparably by the disunion bet ween
her way of living and her feeling of what life should be, and at times she is almost contented to rest in this
sense of grievance as a private store of consolation. Sometimes she wishes to run away, but she stays. Now
she longs to fly out of this room, down the narrow stairs, and into the street where the houses lean to gether like
conspirators under a single mottled lamp, and leave B raggioni singing to himself.
Instead she looks at Braggioni, frankly and clearly , like a good child who understands the rules of beh avior. Her
knees cling together under sound blue serge, and her ro und white collar is not purposely nun-like. She wears
the uniform of an idea, and has renounced vanities. She was born Roman Catholic, and in spite of her fear of
being seen by someone who might make a scandal of i t, she slips now and again into some crumbling little
church, kneels on the chilly stone, and says a Hail Mary on the gold rosary she bought in Tehuantepec. It is no
good and she ends by examining the altar with its ti nsel flowers and ragged brocades, and feels tender abo ut
the battered doll-shape of some real saint whose whi te, lace-trimmed drawers hang limply around his ankles
below the hieratic dignity of his velvet robe. She ha s encased herself in a set of principles derived from her
early training, leaving no detail of gesture or of pers onal taste untouched, and for this reason she will not wear lace made on machines. This is her private heresy, for in her special group the machine is sacred,
and will be the salvation of the workers. She loves f ine lace, and there is a tiny edge of fluted cobweb on this
collar, which is one of twenty precisely alike, folde d in blue tissue paper in the upper drawer of her cloth es
chest.
Braggioni catches her glance solidly as if he had be en waiting for it, leans forward, balancing his paunch
between his spread knees, and sings with tremendous e mphasis, weighing his words. He has, the song
relates, no father and no mother, nor even a friend to console him; lonely as a wave of the sea he come s and
goes, lonely as a wave. His mouth opens round and y earns sideways, his balloon cheeks grow oily with the
labor of song. He bulges marvelously in his expensiv e garments. Over his lavender collar, crushed upon a
purple necktie, held by a diamond hoop: over his ammu nition belt of tooled leather worked in silver, buckled
cruelly around his gasping middle: over the tops of h is glossy yellow shoes Braggioni swells with ominous
ripeness, his mauve silk hose stretched taut, his a nkles bound with the stout leather thongs of his sho es.
When he stretches his eyelids at Laura she notes aga in that his eyes are the true tawny yellow cat's eyes. He
is rich, not in money, he tells her, but in power, a nd this power brings with it the blameless ownership of things,
and the right to indulge his love of small luxuries . 'I have a taste for the elegant refinements,' he said once,
flourishing a yellow silk handkerchief before her nose . 'Smell that? It is Jockey Club, imported from New York.'
Nonetheless he is wounded by life. He will say so p resently. 'It is true everything turns to dust in the hand, to
gall on the tongue.' He sighs and his leather belt c reaks like a saddle girth. 'I am disappointed in everything as
it comes. Everything.' He shakes his head. 'You, poo r thing, you will be disappointed too. You are born for it.
We are more alike than you realize in some things. Wai t and see. Some day you will remember what I have
told you, you will know that Braggioni was your frie nd.'
Laura feels a slow chill, a purely physical sense of danger, a warning in her blood that violence, mutila tion, a
shocking death, wait for her with lessening patience . She has translated this fear into something homely,
immediate, and sometimes hesitates before crossing th e street. 'My personal fate is nothing, except as the
testimony of a mental attitude,' she reminds herself, quoting from some forgotten philosophic primer, and i s
sensible enough to add, 'Anyhow, I shall not be kil led by an automobile if I can help it.'
'It may be true I am as corrupt, in another way, as Braggioni,' she thinks in spite of herself, 'as callous, as
incomplete,' and if this is so, any kind of death s eems preferable. Still she sits quietly, she does no t run. Where
could she go? Uninvited she has promised herself to this place; she can no longer imagine herself as living in
another country, and there is no pleasure in rememberin g her life before she came here.
Precisely what is the nature of this devotion, its true motives, and what are its obligations? Laura ca nnot say.
She spends part of her days in Xochimilco, near by, te aching Indian children to say in English, 'The cat is on
the mat.' When she appears in the classroom they cr owd about her with smiles on their wise, innocent, clay-
colored faces, crying, 'Good morning, my titcher!' in immaculate voices, and they make of her desk a fresh
garden of flowers every day.
During her leisure she goes to union meetings and lis tens to busy important voices quarreling over tactics,
methods, internal politics. She visits the prisoners o f her own political faith in their cells, where they entertain
themselves with counting cockroaches, repenting of t heir indiscretions, composing their memoirs, writing
out manifestoes and plans for their comrades who ar e still walking about free, hands in pockets, sniffing fresh
air. Laura brings them food and cigarettes and a litt le money, and she brings messages disguised in equi vocal
phrases from the men outside who dare not set foot in the prison for fear of disappearing into the cells kept
empty for them. If the prisoners confuse night and day , and complain, 'Dear little Laura, time doesn't pass in
this infernal hole, and I won't know when it is time to sleep unless I have a reminder,' she brings them t heir
favorite narcotics, and says in a tone that does not wound them with pity, 'Tonight will really be night for you,'
and though her Spanish amuses them, they find her co mforting, useful. If they lose patience and all faith, and
curse the slowness of their friends in coming to the ir rescue with money and influence, they trust her no t to
repeat everything, and if she inquires, 'Where do y ou think we can find money, or influence?' they are certain to
answer, 'Well, there is Braggioni, why doesn't he d o something?'
She smuggles letters from headquarters to men hiding from firing squads in back streets in mildewed houses,
where they sit in tumbled beds and talk bitterly as i f all Mexico were at their heels, when Laura knows po sitively
they might appear at the band concert in the Alamed a on Sunday morning, and no one would notice them. B ut
Braggioni says, 'Let them sweat a little. The next time they may be careful. It is very restful to have them out of the way for a while.' She is not afraid to knock on any door in the street after midnight, and enter in the
darkness, and say to one of these men who is really in danger: 'They will be looking for you - seriously –
tomorrow morning after six. Here is some money from V incente. Go to Vera Cruz and wait.'
She borrows money from the Romanian agitator to give to his bitter enemy the Polish agitator. The favor of
Braggioni is their disputed territory, and Braggioni holds the balance nicely, for he can use them both. The
Polish agitator talks love to her over café tables, ho ping to exploit what he believes is her secret sentimental
preference for him, and he gives her misinformation whic h he begs her to repeat as the solemn truth to certain
persons. The Romanian is more adroit. He is generous w ith his money in all good causes, and lies to her with
an air of ingenuous candor, as if he were her good friend and confidant. She never repeats anything the y may
say. Braggioni never asks questions. He has other wa ys to discover all that he wishes to know about them.
Nobody touches her, but all praise her gray eyes, and the soft, round under lip which promises gaiety, yet is
always grave, nearly always firmly closed: and they cannot understand why she is in Mexico. She walks ba ck
and forth on her errands, with puzzled eyebrows, ca rrying her little folder of drawings and music and
school papers. No dancer dances more beautifully than Laura walks, and she inspires some amusing,
unexpected ardors, which cause little gossip, becaus e nothing comes of them. A young captain who had be en
a soldier in Zapata's army attempted, during a horseba ck ride near Cuernavaca, to express his desire for her
with the noble simplicity befitting a rude folk-hero : but gently, because he was gentle. This gentlenes s was his
defeat, for when he alighted, and removed her foot from the stirrup, and essayed to draw her down into his
arms, her horse, ordinarily a tame one, shied fiercely, reared and plunged away. The young hero's horse
careered blindly after his stablemate, and the hero di d not return to the hotel until rather late that evening. At
breakfast he came to her table in full charro dress, gra y buckskin jacket, and trousers with strings of silver
buttons down the leg, and he was in a humorous, carel ess mood. 'May I sit with you?' and 'You are a wonderful
rider. I was terrified that you might be thrown and d ragged. I should never have forgiven myself. But I ca nnot
admire you enough for your riding!'
'I learned to ride in Arizona,' said Laura.
'If you will ride with me again this morning, I promi se you a horse that will not shy with you,' he said. But Laura
remembered that she must return to Mexico City at no on.
Next morning the children made a celebration and spent their playtime writing on the blackboard, 'We lov ar
titcher', and with tinted chalks they drew wreaths of flowers around the words. The young hero wrote her a
letter: 'I am a very foolish, wasteful, impulsive ma n. I should have first said I love you, and then you would
not have run away. But you shall see me again.' Laur a thought, 'I must send him a box of colored crayons,' but
she was trying to forgive herself for having spurred he r horse at the wrong moment.
A brown, shock-haired youth came and stood in her pa tio one night and sang like a lost soul for two hours, but
Laura could think of nothing to do about it. The moo nlight spread a wash of gauzy silver over the clear spa ces
of the garden, and the shadows were cobalt blue. The scarlet blossoms of the Judas tree were dull purple, and
the names of the colors repeated themselves automati cally in her mind, while she watched not the boy, but his
shadow, fallen like a dark garment across the fount ain rim, trailing in the water. Lupe came silently and
whispered expert counsel in her ear: if you will throw him one little flower, he will sing another song or two and
go away.' Laura threw the flower, and he sang a last s ong and went away with the flower tucked in the band of
his hat. Lupe said, 'He is one of the organizers of t he Typographers Union, and before that
he sold corridos in the Merced market, and before that, he came from Guanajuato, where I was born. I would
not trust any man, but I trust least those from Gua najuato.'
She did not tell Laura that he would be back again the next night, and the next, nor that he would follow her at a
certain fixed distance around the Merced market, through the Zocolo, up Francisco I Madero Avenue, and so
along the Paseo de la Reforma to Chapultepec Park, an d into the Philosopher's Footpath, still with that flower
withering in his hat, and an indivisible attention i n his eyes.
Now Laura is accustomed to him, it means nothing ex cept that he is nineteen years old and is observing a
convention with all propriety, as though it were foun ded on a law of nature, which in the end it might well prove
to be. He is beginning to write poems which he prin ts on a wooden press, and he leaves them stuck like
handbills in her door. She is pleasantly disturbed b y the abstract, unhurried watchfulness of his black eyes
which will in time turn easily towards another object . She tells herself that throwing the flower was a mistake, for she is twenty-two years old and knows better; but she refuses to regret it, and persuades herself that her
negation of all external events as they occur is a si gn that she is gradually perfecting herself in the sto icism she
strives to cultivate against that disaster she fears, though she cannot name it.
She is not at home in the world. Every day she teache s children who remain strangers to her, though she lov es
their tender round hands and their charming opportunis t savagery. She knocks at unfamiliar doors not knowing
whether a friend or a stranger shall answer, and even if a known face emerges from the sour gloom of that
unknown interior, still it is the face of a stranger. No matter what this stranger says to her, nor what h er
message to him, the very cells of her flesh reject kno wledge and kinship in one monotonous word. No. No. No.
She draws her strength from this one holy talismanic word which does not suffer her to be led into evil. Denying
everything, she may walk anywhere in safety, she loo ks at everything without amazement.
No, repeats this firm unchanging voice of her blood; and she looks at Braggioni without amazement. He is a
great man, he wishes to impress this simple girl who covers her great round breasts with thick dark cloth, and
who hides long, invaluably beautiful legs under a he avy skirt. She is almost thin except for the
incomprehensible fullness of her breasts, like a nursing mother's, and Braggioni, who considers himself a judge
of women, speculates again on the puzzle of her notorious virginity, and t akes the liberty of speech which she
permits without a sign of modesty, indeed, without any sort of sign, which is disconcerting.
'You think you are so cold, gringita! Wait and see. You will surprise yourself some day! May I be there to advise
you!' He stretches his eyelids at her, and his ill-h umored cat's eyes waver in a separate glance for the tw o
points of light marking the opposite ends of a smoot hly drawn path between the swollen curve of her breast s.
He is not put off by that blue serge, nor by her reso lutely fixed gaze. There is all the time in the world. His
cheeks are bellying with the wind of song. 'O girl w ith the dark eyes', he sings, and reconsiders. 'But y ours are
not dark. I can change all that. O girl with the gree n eyes, you have stolen my heart away!' then his mi nd
wanders to the song, and Laura feels the weight of his attention being shifted elsewhere. Singing thus, he
seems harmless, he is quite harmless, there is nothin g to do but sit patiently and say 'No', when the moment
comes. She draws a full breath, and her mind wanders also, but not far. She dares not wander too far.
Not for nothing has Braggioni taken pains to be a go od revolutionist and a professional lover of humanity. He
will never die of it. He has the malice, the cleverne ss, the wickedness, the sharpness of wit, the hardnes s of
heart, stipulated for loving the world profitably. He will never die of it. He will live to see himself kicked out from
his feeding trough by other hungry world-saviours. Tra ditionally he must sing in spite of his life which drives him
to bloodshed, he tells Laura, for his father was a T uscany peasant who drifted to Yucatan and married a Maya
woman: a woman of race, an aristocrat. They gave him the love and knowledge of music, thus: and under the
rip of his thumb-nail, the strings of the instrumen t complain like exposed nerves.
Once he was called Delgadito by all the girls and m arried women who ran after him; he was so scrawny all his
bones showed under his thin cotton clothing, and he could squeeze his emptiness to the very backbone wi th
his two hands. He was a poet and the revolution was only a dream then; too many women loved him and
sapped away his youth, and he could never find enoug h to eat anywhere, anywhere! Now he is a leader of
men, crafty men who whisper in his ear, hungry men wh o wait for hours outside his office for a word with him,
emaciated men with wild faces who waylay him at the street gate with a timid, 'Comrade, let me tell you . . . '
and they blow the foul breath from their empty stoma chs in his face.
He is always sympathetic. He gives them handfuls of small coins from his own pocket, he promises them w ork,
there will be demonstrations, they must join the uni ons and attend the meetings, above all they must be on the
watch for spies. They are closer to him than his own b rothers, without them he can do nothing — until
tomorrow, comrade!
Until tomorrow. 'They are stupid, they are lazy, they are treacherous, they would cut my throat for nothin g,' he
says to Laura. He has good food and abundant drink, he hires an automobile and drives in the Paseo on
Sunday morning, and enjoys plenty of sleep in a soft bed beside a wife who dares not disturb him; and he sits
pampering his bones in easy billows of fat, singing to Laura, who knows and thinks these things about h im.
When he was fifteen, he tried to drown himself becau se he loved a girl, his first love, and she laughed at him.
'A thousand women have paid for that,' and his tight little mouth turns down at the corners. Now he perfum es
his hair with Jockey Club, and confides to Laura: 'O ne woman is really as good as another for me, in the dark. I
prefer them all.' His wife organizes unions among the girls in the cigarette factories, and walks in picket lines, and even speaks
at meetings in the evening. But she cannot be brough t to acknowledge the benefits of true liberty. 'I tell her I
must have my freedom, net. She does not understand my point of view.' Laura has heard this many times.
Braggioni scratches the guitar and meditates. 'She is an instinctively virtuous woman, pure gold, no do ubt of
that. If she were not, I should lock her up, and she knows it.'
His wife, who works so hard for the good of the fact ory girls, employs part of her leisure lying on the floor
weeping because there are so many women in the world, and only one husband for her, and she never knows
where nor when to look for him. He told her 'Unless yo u can learn to cry when I am not here, I must go away
for good.' That day he went away and took a room at t he Hotel Madrid.
It is this month of separation for the sake of highe r principles that has been spoiled not only for Mrs. Braggioni,
whose sense of reality is beyond criticism, but for Laura, who feels herself bogged in a nightmare. Tonig ht
Laura envies Mrs. Braggioni, who is alone, and free to weep as much as she pleases about a concrete wrong.
Laura has just come from a visit to the prison, and she is waiting for tomorrow with a bitter anxiety as if
tomorrow may not come, but time may be caught immova bly in this hour, with herself transfixed, Braggioni
singing on forever, and Eugenio's body not yet discov ered by the guard.
Braggioni says: 'Are you going to sleep?' Almost be fore she can shake her head, he begins telling her a bout
the May-day disturbances coming on in Morelia, for th e Catholics hold a festival in honor of the Blessed Virgin,
and the Socialists celebrate their martyrs on that d ay. 'There will be two independent processions start ing from
either end of town, and they will march until they me et, and the rest depends. . . .' He asks her to oil and load
his pistols. Standing up, he unbuckles his ammuniti on belt, and spreads it laden across her knees. Laur a sits
with the shells slipping through the cleaning cloth dipped in oil, and he says again he cannot understa nd why
she works so hard for the revolutionary idea unless she loves some man who is in it. 'Are you not in love with
someone?' 'No,' says Laura. 'And no one is in love with you?' 'No.' 'Then it is your own fault. No woman need
go begging. Why, what is the matter with you? The le gless beggar woman in the Alameda has a perfectly
faithful lover. Did you know that?'
Laura peers down the pistol barrel and says nothing, but a long, slow faintness rises and subsides in her;
Braggioni curves his swollen fingers around the throat of the guitar and softly smothers the music out of it, and
when she hears him again he seems to have forgotten h er, and is speaking in the hypnotic voice he uses when
talking in small rooms to a listening, close-gathere d crowd. Some day this world, now seemingly so compo sed
and eternal, to the edges of every sea shall be mere ly a tangle of gaping trenches, of crashing walls and
broken bodies. Everything must be torn from its accust omed place where it has rotted for centuries, hurled
skyward and distributed, cast down again clean as r ain, without separate identity. Nothing shall survive that the
stiffened hands of poverty have created for the rich and no one shall be left alive except the elect spirits
destined to procreate a new world cleansed of cruelt y and injustice, ruled by benevolent anarchy: 'Pistols are
good, I love them, cannon are even better, but in th e end I pin my faith to good dynamite,' he concludes, and
strokes the pistol lying in her hands. 'Once I drea med of destroying this city, in case it offered resistance to
General Ortiz, but it fell into his hands like an ov erripe pear.'
He is made restless by his own words, rises and stand s waiting. Laura holds up the belt to him: 'Put that on,
and go kill somebody in Morelia, and you will be ha ppier,' she says softly. The presence of death in the room
makes her bold. 'Today, I found Eugenio going into a stupor. He refused to allow me to call the prison doctor.
He had taken all the tablets I brought him yesterday. He said he took them because he was bored.'
'He is a fool, and his death is his own business,' says Braggioni, fastening his belt carefully.
'I told him if he had waited only a little while lo nger, you would have got him set free,' says Laura. 'He said he
did not want to wait.'
'He is a fool and we are well rid of him,' says Brag gioni, reaching for his hat.
He goes away. Laura knows his mood has changed, she will not see him any more for a while. He will send
word when he needs her to go on errands into strange streets, to speak to the strange faces that will appear,
like clay masks with the power of human speech, to m utter their thanks to Braggioni for his help. Now she is
free, and she thinks, I must run while there is time . But she does not go.
Braggioni enters his own house where for a month his wife has spent many hours every night weeping and
tangling her hair upon her pillow. She is weeping now , and she weeps more at the sight of him, the cause of all
her sorrows. He looks about the room. Nothing is chang ed, the smells are good and familiar, he is well
acquainted with the woman who comes toward him with no reproach except grief on her face. He says to her
tenderly: 'You are so good, please don't cry any mor e, you dear good creature.' She says, 'Are you tired, my
angel? Sit here and I will wash your feet.' She bring s a bowl of water, and kneeling, unlaces his shoes, and
when from her knees she raises her sad eyes under her b lackened lids, he is sorry for everything, and bursts
into tears. 'Ah, yes, I am hungry, I am tired, let us eat something together,' he says, between sobs. His wife
leans her head on his arm and says, 'Forgive me!' and this time he is refreshed by the solemn, endless rain of
her tears.
Laura takes off her serge dress and puts on a white li nen night gown and goes to bed. She turns her head a
little to one side, and lying still, reminds herself that it is time to sleep . Numbers tick in her brain like little clocks,
soundless doors close of themselves around her. If you would sleep, you must not remember anything, the
children will say tomorrow, good morning, my teacher, th e poor prisoners who come every day bringing flowers
to their jailor. It is monstrous to confuse love wi th revolution, night with day, life with death — ah, Eugenio!
The tolling of the midnight bell is a signal, but w hat does it mean? Get up, Laura, and follow me: com e out of
your sleep, out of your bed, out of this strange hous e. What are you doing in this house? Without a word,
without fear she rose and reached for Eugenio's hand, b ut he eluded her with a sharp, sly smile and drifted
away. This is not all, you shall see - Murderer, he s aid, follow me, I will show you a new country, but it is far
away and we must hurry. No, said Laura, not unless yo u take my hand, no; and she clung first to the stair rail,
and then to the topmost branch of the Judas tree tha t bent down slowly and set her upon the earth, and
then to the rocky ledge of a cliff, and then to the jagged wave of a sea that was not water but a deser t of
crumbling stone. Where are you taking me, she asked in wonder but without fear. To death, and it is a long way
off, and we must hurry, said Eugenio. No, said Laura, not unless you take my hand. Then eat these flowers ,
poor prisoner, said Eugenio in a voice of pity, take a nd eat: and from the Judas tree he stripped the warm
bleeding flowers, and held them to her lips. She saw that his hand was fleshless, a cluster of small white
petrified branches, and his eye sockets were without light, but she ate the flowers greedily for they satisfied
both hunger and thirst. Murderer! said Eugenio, and Cannibal! This is my body and my blood. Laura cried No!
and at the sound of her own voice, she awoke tremblin g, and was afraid to sleep again.
