The Abyss

by Lara Blunte

  "And this?"

  "That's Doctor Pereira. He takes care of them when they get chigger, or malaria ─ some might get bitten by snakes."

  Clara frowned. "Can't something be done to avoid all that?"

  Tarcisio shrugged, "I am afraid that is part and parcel of working in the plantation. Dom Gabriel himself is not immune to snake bite, especially when he gets in among the workers."

  "Oh!" She reflected for a moment. "But he has boots, and a mosquito net at home. Do all the workers have mosquito nets?"

  "They are all given one, but often let it rip and don't mend it."

  "Well, we must keep teaching them how to avoid these diseases," she said decisively.

  One corner of Tarcisio's mouth went up at this; she supposed he had dealt with slaves and now with free workers for a while, and he didn't have many illusions about their capacity to follow rules. She, however, was certain that if things were explained and shown enough times, especially to the women, there would be less chance of accidents and illness.

  They rode on to the mill, an open barn with a red tiled roof and a gigantic wheel that would be turned by donkeys so as to grind the sugar cane. Another wheel would separate the juice from the bagasse. The liquid would have to be strained, purified, and the syrup would be boiled until it crystallized.

  "During the Botada the workers will get presents," Clara told Tarcisio as they rode back to Jiló. "Please think what would be of most use to them?"

  He nodded as she joined Jiló, who had stood up from a nap under a tree and had mounted his own horse.

  "I shall do so," he said, tipping his hat.

  "But don't take long," she smiled at him. "I have such little time to prepare everything."

  "I won't!" he assured her, tipping his hat again.

  Clara saw that a woman with a beautiful but serious face was waiting for Tarcisio, holding a covered dish in her hands. Her burnished skin, oblique dark eyes and long black hair showed her to be a cabocla. She smiled at the girl, but only got a nod back.

  As she rode away, Clara asked Jiló, "Who was that?"

  Jiló looked behind. "That's Tarcisio's woman," he said half sleepily. "Moema."

  The sinhá couldn't help turning in the saddle a second, only to see that Tarcisio was watching her ride away, while Moema was watching him.

  "Why do you say 'woman'?" she asked Jiló, turning forward sharply. "Are they not married?"

  Jiló shrugged, "I don't think they are. The half Indian women sometimes don't ever bother, and the men take advantage of that."

  "Do they have children?"

  "Two or three, I think..."

  The sun was now too hot for them to go through the valley, so they rode through the forest again. Clara forgot about Tarcisio and his woman, and thought again of the Botada, and of how much she longed for a feast.

  Twenty-Three: Findings

  "We have found her," Assis told Gabriel. "But I fear the news is not good."

  "Is she dead?" Gabriel asked quietly.

  Assis pushed the glasses back over his nose, "I am afraid so."

  Gabriel took a deep breath, then asked, "Where is the child?"

  "The child is in the hands of a stepfather. It's a loose term for the man, the mother was never married to him."

  Assis seemed to be considering how to proceed.

  "Just tell me everything," Gabriel commanded.

  "He seems to be a dissolute man now living near Rio, and upon contact with my agent he has understood that the little girl's well being is important to someone of means, and he has said..."

  Gabriel interrupted him. "He wants money in exchange for her."

  "In short, yes. I don't know to what extent you would like to be involved."

  "The child needs to be immediately rescued from this man and brought to me," Gabriel said forcefully. "It is essential that she should not stay in the care of a scoundrel willing to trade her for money a second longer than necessary. I would go there myself if I didn't fear what I might do. I must entrust this mission directly to you."

  "Are you then willing to become her parent?" Assis asked.

  "I am," Gabriel said. "But I don't want to reward this man's iniquity. I want you to go with two agents and frighten the hell out of him. Tell him there is someone very near the prince who wants the girl to be his ward, and that if he interferes, he will be sorry. Be sure to walk out with her or call the police. I would have the better of him even from here."

  Gabriel rode to Quinta da Boa Vista to see Prince John after his meeting with Assis, and his head was boiling as the summer sun beat on it.

  Manuel had once told their mother that by naming him after an avenging angel she had all but put a flaming sword in his hand, as he had gone on to believe that he had to rid the world of evil single-handedly.

  There was no ridding the world of evil, Gabriel thought. It was a pit of snakes, a cauldron of vileness and corruption; that a man should hold a child hostage for money instead of protecting an innocent creature whose mother had died! It made him very angry, and sometimes he had to use all his forbearance to deal in the moral repulsiveness where people thought it normal to live.

  At the Quinta, Pedro came out to meet him with a sincere smile, taking him by the arm as they walked to the prince's waiting room, asking many questions about Clara and how she was adjusting to life in the estate.

  After they had drunk a coffee together and talked for a while, Pedro cleared his throat and said, "His Royal Highness gets embarrassed nowadays by the talk about slavery..."

  "As well he ought," Gabriel replied, with even less patience than usual for the justifications people found for the terrible things they did.

  "But you know well that the issue is not that cut and dried," Pedro said, moving his head to one side and another, like a balance weighing good and bad.

  "I beg to differ," Gabriel said sternly, "though I don't do it to vex you or His Highness. I think that slavery is the greatest crime against mankind, and nothing can justify it. Nothing."

  "There are too many people against the abolition of slavery," Pedro said. "Many of the greatest fortunes here have been built on it..."

  "And the crown's no less, in its mines and plantations. If I am happy about anything I did, it was to show that a man can make a fortune while treating all people fairly."

  Pedro nodded eagerly, "I am glad that you have shown the naysayers to be wrong. And I am especially glad for Clarinha. Much as she loved you, I don't think she could ever have married a man who kept slaves..."

  Gabriel shot his father-in-law a sharp look. Pedro was shaking his head in disbelief, "I don't think she could ever have borne it. From a child she was always so considerate of everyone...But after that voyage, after what we suffered at sea...Only a heart made of flint could bear to inflict such things on anyone, after having suffered them."

  Pedro was now looking at Gabriel with a smile, "You have proven that human beings can be treated fairly, and that there can be money left over for anything that is needed."

  There will be enough money for everything.

  Gabriel turned almost pale and he suddenly felt that he was standing in the corridor again, hearing Clara's voice as she talked to her mother. If Pedro was speaking the truth, then Clara must indeed have asked if he kept slaves, but only so that she could decide whether she would marry him. Juliana must have added the question: how much money would be left over, if he paid the workers?

  Clara's laugh hadn't then been the triumph of a woman who had achieved her objective, that of marrying a rich man; it had been the incredulous laugh of a daughter facing her mother's greed.

  There would be, she must have thought, enough money to live well, to be rich, even, without committing the unspeakable crime of imprisoning human beings, and forcing them to work until they died.

  Pedro must mean what he said, otherwise how could Clara be so generous that he even wanted to remind her, at times, that the servants might take advantage of her? How could she be so belove
d of all, if she were not expressing her true nature: that of a woman unable to witness injustice or the suffering of others?

  And his injunctions would have been unnecessary, because not one servant, not even the worst malingerer, had taken advantage of her. She was Dona Clarinha to them, even to Bernardo, who had not been able to help giving her features to the saint that he was carving.

  As the prince's private secretary entered to announce that His Royal Highness was ready to receive him, Gabriel felt a burning in his chest. The mystery was solved, and if he had trusted his first instinct, which had told him that Clara must have meant something else by what she had told her mother, there would have been no misunderstanding.

  He had arrived at the prince's door and only had time for the fleeting thought: She is guiltless of a crime that I might not have been able to forgive.

  The door had opened and the prince was there, waiting with a somewhat preoccupied smile and anxious eyes. It was said that he saw less and less people, and liked to take long walks in comfortable old clothes.

  Gabriel bowed, and the prince invited him to sit. John complained about the English and their hypocrisy, about their wanting to flood the country with their useless goods and buy Brazil's riches for ridiculously low prices. He talked about the situation in Lisbon, and wondered what Gabriel's brother was saying in his letters. He then thanked the young man for his loyalty, which was a roundabout way of thanking him for his money.

  "But Maia, honors are being given out in this new world of ours, and no one deserves a title more than you!" the prince cried. "It would only be an extension of your family's old name, it would be putting things back where they belong. Why will you not accept, I could make you a Marquis!"

  "The Marquis of Jabuticaba," Gabriel smiled. "Or the Count of Tucano?"

  The prince's belly moved as he laughed, "You mock the poor titles at my disposal here. There is so much land, I am sure I could find something better than a fruit or a bird!"

  "I could never mock your intentions Your Royal Highness, I mock my incapacity to ever attach anything else to my name. I have employed such decided efforts to make it shorter. It was tedious work to be Gabriel Alexandre José Paulo Santiago, etc, etc. Everything is simpler now, and I like it."

  "What about me?" the prince asked, brightening up, “João Maria José Francisco Xavier de Paula Luís António Domingos Rafael de Bragança! Thank heavens I don't have to sign all that! Do you know, I even forgot some names on the day I got married. But my children have no less of them!"

  "Certainly our parents thought it necessary to have every saint on our side!"

  Both men smiled affably.

  "But then," the prince asked, pulling at his Hapsburg lip, “is there nothing that I can do for you, when you do so much for the crown?"

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes as he glanced out the window, then he looked at the prince, "There may be something," he said. "If Your Royal Highness will allow me, I might impose upon you to send a present to my wife."

  Twenty-Four: Sunday

  On Sunday Tarcisio bathed in the morning, put on a good suit, polished his boots, washed his hair and then stood drying it in the sun.

  Moema came out of their house, which was separate from the servants’ quarters and had its own garden. It was a good house with seven rooms, and they even had a maid. She stood watching him with the smallest of their three children in her arms as he combed his hair, looking at his reflection in the window.

  "All this for mass?" she asked with a mixture of disdain and mistrust.

  He shrugged. "I don't force you to go. Why do you have to bother me?"

  She said nothing else, but she still looked at him with her inscrutable face. He shrugged again internally, and when it was time for mass he got on his horse and rode toward church.

  It was already almost full, but he liked to wait outside till Dona Clara arrived in her smart phaeton, accompanied by Teté and Mãe Lucia. She was like a queen among the people, and so beautiful that even the women wanted to look at her. She never forgot to smile at everyone as she passed, to stop and inquire after a sick husband or child.

  Tarcisio smiled at her and tipped his hat when she nodded in his direction, and he walked in after she did, taking his place in a row towards the middle of the nave.

  He committed sin during the whole of mass, because he did nothing but look at Dona Clara. She had put a lace mantilla on her head and he could not see the back of her neck, with the gold chain and a tiny mole that he would have kissed a thousand times in one night. She dressed more conservatively for church than she did at home, but he could not keep his thoughts away from her.

  One of these days he would have to confess to lust. The priest was so bored with this type of confession that he would not even demand more than a few Ave Marias from him. What man was not filled with lust, especially at the sight of a woman like Dona Clara?

  When she walked out of church, she smiled at him again, then climbed onto the phaeton and laughed at Teté, who was clumsily getting onto the seat. She was always laughing, and perhaps that was part of the reason he wanted her so much. She was different from Moema, whose surly looks had interested him at first, as they had made her seem mysterious. Then they had started to live together and have children, and there had been no other mystery to her than a permanent sulk, a complete refusal to see the good things in life and enjoy them, a total incapacity to be happy.

  He had three boys with Moema, and he meant to do his duty by her and by them, but she had never insisted on being married, and after a while, her terrible character had made him think that it might not be a good thing to make their union official.

  Life wasn't as simple as one thought when one started out. One might make a silly mistake and never recover from it. He had, in fact, made a mistake: he no longer loved Moema. He wondered if he ever had, or if his existence as a foreman in different estates, working six days a week, had just made it difficult for him to meet enough women so that he could find one to love.

  He followed Dona Clara's phaeton from the distance, thinking that he would have chosen a woman like her: a beautiful creature, kind, joyful and generous. What would a man not do for such a woman? She would brighten his days and warm his nights.

  And Dom Gabriel, for some inexplicable reason, did not even sleep in her bed. It was whispered that he didn't sleep with her at all.

  Tarcisio shook his head: how was that possible, unless the man had some terrible problem? It was true that Dom Gabriel refused to take advantage of the female servants and workers on his estate, even when they would gladly have jumped into bed with him. He was the patrão, for one thing, and rich ─ and a lot of the girls in Caprichosa knew well what it meant to be the favorite of the master. Tarcisio had seen them provoke Dom Gabriel in the river, showing their breasts as they pretended to wash, or lifting their skirts over their knees as they walked in the forest.

  A red-blooded man would have done something to one or more of those girls, or would at least not leave the most beautiful wife in the world alone at night.

  For God's sake, Tarcisio thought, shaking his head, what he would not do, if Dona Clara were his wife? It would be hard to get up from her bed. He could not pretend to know what went on between a couple, or to understand, and he was not so devoid of judgment as to think that Dona Clara would ever return his desire for her. He just wanted to go to the house and look at her.

  He was in love like a silly boy, though he was thirty -years old, and had never had trouble finding a woman. He was easy on the eyes, strong, and he made a good living, but he loved the one person who would not be impressed by any of that.

  Dona Clara had asked Tarcisio to come to the house, and he went that Sunday. He went before Dom Gabriel returned from Rio, reflecting that she did not even understand that she should not ask a white foreman to come to the house in her husband's absence.

  "Good morning, Tarcisio," she said with a smile when he was taken to the porch, where she was sitting. "Will you have
some passion fruit juice?"

  She whispered to Guelo, the boy who followed her like a shadow, and sent him off to the kitchen.

  "I am training him with Teté," she laughed. "I hope he understood what I said."

  He must have done, because ten minutes later a kitchen maid arrived with the juice and some cakes. Tarcisio accepted a glass, placing his hat on the floor, but did not want anything to eat.

  "What do you think I should give as presents, then?" Clara asked.

  "Ma'am, cotton clothes for work would be much appreciated by them, and new straw hats. It's very hot now, and they have to change often. It would get expensive for them to have enough to wear on their wages. Plantations normally dress the workers, and Dom Gabriel does give them clothes, they would just need more."

  "What about shoes? Do you think they would wear them? It will keep them from getting bugs in their feet..."

  The foreman shrugged, "Some of them have wide feet from walking barefoot all the time. They don't much like shoes, but I think they would like sandals."

  "Yes, sandals! What about the women?"

  "Ah, the ones without children would certainly want to prettify themselves," Tarcisio laughed easily. "Once they become mothers, they only want things for their little ones!"

  "And how do they prettify themselves?"

  "They all dream of lace!" Tarcisio said. "They think only rich people have it, and yet it can be quite inexpensive."

  "It's true, such pretty lace is made here, especially by the women from the north!" Clara said. "Some of them come to the door selling it. I will have to buy it by the yard, and make sure all the women have some! There will be things for the children too!"

  Tarcisio left not long after that, and on his way back, he only thought more of Clara. What would it be like to ride home to a woman like that, a woman with such lovely arms to wrap around his neck, with such red lips to kiss him, with such a body for him to cover with his own?

  He almost sighed when he arrived at his house and Moema threw him a dirty look without saying anything. She would probably say nothing all night, or for days, he thought. She would submit to him, her face to one side, and look as if she were cursing him as he walked around his own home.