The Abyss

by Lara Blunte

  The stalks, representing the whole of the production that had been harvested and was going to be milled, were blessed by the priest in Latin and Portuguese. The cane was run through the mill, to mark the beginning of sugar production.

  There were cheers from the crowd, but then they became silent and solemn as the priest conducted mass in the open air. Gabriel stood next to Clara through the ceremony and the priest had time, this year, to bless all the workers, the servants and the land.

  After the mass it was time to eat, and everyone moved to the tables that had been set in the welcome shade of very large and old trees. Some of the workers preferred to sit on the ground, as they found chairs too hard, and they placed themselves on roots or trunks, or on the dirt. Gabriel and Clara shared their table with Padre Arenal, Tarcisio, Lucia and Pai Bernardo. Moema had not accepted the invitation to the feast, and Tarcisio proffered false excuses so as to not slight Clara.

  Maninha and the kitchen maids, as well as Celso and Sebastião, appeared with so much good food that it only encouraged everyone to pile wooden plates as high as possible.

  "Their eyes are bigger than their stomach!" Tarcisio said, shaking his head. "And they have to mill that cane on Monday!"

  "They'll be there!" Lucia said.

  She had gold earrings on, as did Teté, Maninha and the kitchen maids; they were presents from Clara. The farm women wore the lace they had been given; they had also received thin gold chains with medals of the Virgin to protect them, and leather sandals.

  Cachaça was brought in big bottles and distributed. Padre Arenal, a Spanish priest with a short temper and long sermons, requested his glass to be filled several times.

  "At least he will fall asleep soon and stop talking," Gabriel remarked dryly.

  Clara laughed at this, covering her mouth. She had had two tiny glasses of cachaça and found everything amusing. Gabriel had had three glasses; his blue eyes were twinkling in his tanned face as they had not done since the early days of their marriage.

  Laughing again, Clara lowered her eyes when she found him gazing at her. Celso had come to their table, looking a bit the worse for wear and yet more expansive than Clara had ever seen him, and insisted on pouring them another drink.

  "You can't say no today, patrão!" he told Gabriel.

  Gabriel only smiled. The priest's glass was filled to the brim and he bent his head and slurped loudly from the top. Clara tried to hide more laughter behind a napkin.

  Then the batucada, the impromptu drumming by the workers, started: the Angolans and Congolese had taken hold of spoons and were beating them against metal dishes. Some had brought drums. The Brazilian servants joined them, well used to the African beat. Some men and women stood up and started to dance.

  Teté, her eyes shining, her white teeth showing, left Guelo's side and went to pull Clara, "Sinhá, you have to try!"

  The sinhá let herself be dragged and tried her best to dance as the others, but it was a movement so different than any she knew that she did not think she was succeeding. Teté put her hands on Clara's hips, "From here!"

  "In front of the priest!" Clara cried.

  However, Padre Arenal was more fascinated by some sweets made with egg yolk that were set down near him. Guelo had also made his way to the sweets and sat under the table, reaching up every now and again to grab one or two.

  It was Gabriel who was again looking at her, a lock of hair falling over his eye, making him seem younger than the stern man who had been her husband for months. Clara did not see that Tarcisio, who was standing in the shade of a tree, was also watching her closely, because she only had eyes for Gabriel, and he had been staring at her all day.

  She stopped dancing and pushed her hair back, flushing with something else than the heat.

  "Let's hear how they sing across the water," Bernardo said, approaching with the Portuguese guitar that he had brought with him and handing it to Gabriel.

  "Oh, no!" Gabriel exclaimed, shaking his head. "It's very sad across the water, we'll ruin your feast!"

  There was an outcry, "Please sinhô, sing for us!"

  "Sing, sing!" Padre Arenal requested, licking his fingers.

  People were now sitting down, still breathing hard from dancing. They formed a semicircle in front of the master and mistress of the house.

  "All right, but you must ask Dona Clarinha to sing," Gabriel said. "She has a much better voice than mine."

  Another chorus rose, begging Clara to sing. She was not normally shy, and was even less so after her third glass of cachaça. Gabriel looked at her and played a few notes, "Do you know it?" There was a wicked little smile on his lips.

  "Camões!" she laughed. He was the great poet whose epic masterpiece had bored her years ago, to Gabriel's despair. But in that song, adapted to use the poet’s words, he was speaking of love.

  The clear, trilling sound of the guitar was heard, and Clara stood with her hands on her waist and began to sing.

  Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver;

  É ferida que dói, e não se sente;

  É um contentamento descontente;

  É dor que desatina sem doer.

  É um não querer mais que bem querer;

  É um andar solitário entre a gente;

  É nunca contentar-se e contente;

  É um cuidar que ganha em se perder;

  Love is a fire that burns unseen,

  A wound that aches yet isn't felt,

  A contentment full of discontent

  A pain that rages without hurting,

  A longing for nothing but too long,

  A loneliness in the midst of others,

  A never feeling pleased when pleased,

  A passion that gains when lost in thought…

  The applause rose as soon as they finished. "It's different," some of the Africans said, though it was not clear whether they liked it or not. The house servants, more used to Europeans, repeated some of the lines of the song to each other.

  The cafuzos from the northeast also had guitars, and they began playing them for the others to dance country quadrilles. Gabriel and Clara were among the dancers. The servants clapped, happy to see their master smile at his wife before taking her by the waist to whirl with her.

  Tarcisio dropped his hat, stepped forward and, having drunk a few glasses of cachaça himself, he walked into the dance to take Clara by the hand and turn with her. But the quadrille obliged him to let her go, and her husband took her hand again. Gabriel put his arm around his wife as they turned several times.

  The foreman saw that she laughed, and that Gabriel was laughing with her, and he felt the sharp sting of jealousy. He ought not to stand in the middle of a dance by himself like an oaf, so he left the quadrille. He realized that he was angry, and told himself that it was best to just keep walking away from the feast, and not look back.

  The evening was falling, and though the workers would continue the celebration until they had eaten all the food, drunk all the cachaça and exhausted themselves dancing, Clara thought that it was time to go. She hardly knew why, but she started walking and then running through the trees toward the river. She heard someone following her, and knew that it was Gabriel.

  As she leapt over fallen trunks and roots she could feel him gaining upon her, so she ran faster and faster. She did not know what would happen next, but she needed him to catch her.

  They were almost by the river when he took hold of her arm, made her stop, and turned her around. Her back was now against a strong tree and she looked up at him, her hair falling free of the pins and over her shoulders.

  Gabriel had become serious and intense and Clara waited, her breasts rising and falling. He brought his face very close to hers, as if he had to feel his way back to her slowly, as if this were their first kiss. He bent his head and their lips were almost touching.

  Clara closed her eyes, but he was not quick to kiss her; instead she felt his breath as his nose brushed hers. They stood cheek to cheek for a moment, his lashes
on her face. Then he moved suddenly, and his mouth closed over hers. She felt an almost painful rush of desire through her body.

  She was not really thinking, only feeling his lips and his hands on her hair, pulling her closer to him.

  "I told you that you were going to be sick! Mãe Lucia told you!"

  Husband and wife broke apart and stood away from each other, like two children caught red-handed. It was Teté's voice, and when she appeared they saw that she was holding a very unhappy Guelo by the hand. There was a stain of vomit on his white shirt.

  "What happened?" Clara asked.

  Teté put one hand on her waist while she held on to Guelo with the other. "He kept eating sweets, stealing them when I was not looking. No one can eat that many egg yolks and not feel sick. Padre Arenal is quite ill too..."

  Guelo was moving towards Clara, misery on his face. She ran a hand through his forehead, "Poor sweetheart, you're all hot!"

  "He has thrown up everything and still feels sick," Teté said, shaking her head.

  The boy had his arms around Clara's waist and kept moaning.

  "Let's take him to the house ─ is Maninha back there already? She will know what to give him."

  Clara looked around for Gabriel, but he was gone; he had left as silently as a thief. She felt her heart beat quickly again, wondering if he would be in her room or outside the house, waiting for her to finish helping Guelo.

  But when she arrived at the house he was not outside, and when she managed to put Guelo to sleep he was not in her room. She looked at the door of his bedroom: it was closed, and there was no light coming from the crack beneath it. He had gone to sleep.

  She stood in the corridor wondering if she should just go to him; he had kissed her, and when people drank, they did what they truly wanted to do. But as she took a step the floor under her feet creaked loudly and she felt almost as if it were rebuking her, telling her that it was he who should come to her.

  Would he try to kiss her the next day? She couldn't know, so she walked into her room and closed the door behind her.

  Twenty-Seven: Near and Far

  The next morning Clara woke up much later than she had meant to.

  She had wanted to be up at the crack of dawn, to loiter around the stairs so that Gabriel would come out of his room, see her in a pretty lace nightgown and finish what he had started.

  It did not matter that she was tempting a man, she told St Claire a little drunkenly as she knelt before the altar at night, after all that man was her husband, and it was for the best.

  "I'm sure you don't think it's so bad," Clara said to her patron saint, "though you probably did die a virgin. Perhaps you were wise, as you didn't have to think all day what a fine man your husband was, and how his kiss was just..."

  Clara put a hand to her lips and hiccoughed. Meu Deus, she must not be talking to a saint about what it was like to be in bed with her husband. But she leaned forward to peer into the saint's face and saw something familiar there. The smile and the eyes told her that Saint Claire understood.

  I want my husband, she thought after blowing out the candles and climbing into bed. And if that is a sin, then let me know!

  But her plan ─ to get up very early, brush her hair, put on her most fetching robe, go to the stairs and act surprised when he came out of his room ─ was thwarted by her sleeping very deeply after all the cachaça she had drunk and the long day at the Botada. When she woke up and peeped through the keyhole, she saw that Gabriel's door was already open, and that he was gone.

  But it was Sunday! She whirled and leaned her back against the door, crossing her arms. Saint Claire looked as innocent as ever on her pedestal, though Clara frowned and pouted at her. Well, really, would it have been so hard for you to wake me up?

  When she looked at herself in the mirror, however, she dissolved into peals of laughter. Her face was so marked by the pillow that Gabriel would have found a monster on the stairs, and would have probably either leapt past her or run to lock himself in his room.

  "You are so happy, sinhá," Teté said, when she came to dress her, and found Clara humming the love song from the day before.

  Teté had missed the rest of the celebrations, which went on until the early hours of the morning, as she had been caring for a quite nauseous Guelo. She was also sleepy.

  "How is Guelo?" Clara asked.

  Teté looked concerned.

  "What is it?"

  "Well, sinhá, the sinhô took him away this morning!"

  "Took him away? Where? Why?"

  "He said that Guelo is being treated like a little girl and that's enough now, that it will be worse for him later..."

  Clara had stood up, her hair in a long braid which Teté still needed to pin up.

  "But where did he take the boy?"

  Teté shrugged. "I don't know, sinhá!"

  Clara had started to wring her hands a little, "When will he bring him back?"

  "I hope he brings him back!"

  "What! You don't even know?"

  Clara went past Teté and down the stairs. The house was quieter than usual, as the few servants about were still yawning and recovering from the feast. The heat would begin in earnest in two more hours, and everyone would find it even harder to move about doing hard work. Clara had instructed Lucia to give lighter tasks to the house servants, and for only a small luncheon to be served to them that day.

  She found Lucia downstairs, looking as immaculate and ready to work as ever.

  "Lucia, where did Dom Gabriel take Guelo?"

  "You must not worry, sinhá. He won't harm the boy," Lucia said calmly.

  "I know that, but I...I..."

  Clara couldn't finish the sentence. Though Teté was downcast and missing Guelo, she knew that Lucia thought it a bad thing that they should coddle him. Clara also knew that she and Gabriel were right, but only the night before poor Guelo had been sick!

  Lucia was shaking her head slightly as if she could read Clara's mind, "He was not so sick, sinhá. He was fine when he walked out with sinhô."

  Nevertheless, Clara did not go to her studio, but instead stayed by the window of her room, looking out every now and again. There was so much less movement today that she supposed she would hear them as soon as they were anywhere near the house.

  And surely enough, before luncheon she heard Guelo's high voice and Gabriel's low one in conversation, and she ran to the window again.

  They were walking together toward the house, both of them with damp heads and shirts. They must have been swimming! Guelo had a little branch which he was using to swipe the air in front of him, and every now and again he stopped to hitch up his trousers, until Gabriel picked him up by the seat and shook him in the air.

  Guelo's laughter rang through the garden, and Clara could not help smiling. Gabriel had taken him for a swim, probably having had enough of seeing him by her skirt or Teté's all the time. He was far too sensitive to the plight of slaves to be harsh on a little boy who had seen his parents die, or to treat him with anything but affection.

  Her heart did contract a little as she thought that Gabriel would make a wonderful father, since he had just the right measure of love and firmness: his children would have a parent who would care a great deal for them, who would give them his time, and who would not allow them to become soft or spoiled.

  And yet they were nowhere near having children, not unless she managed to break down the terrible wall he had built between them, not unless he managed to see what she was, and not what a spiteful, vengeful man had made him see.

  Clara believed, as she watched Gabriel, that they were near a reconciliation: they must be! He had kissed her, and no amount of cachaça in the world would have made him do so if he had not been longing for her.

  Yet, as she watched him, a thing happened.

  There was the noise of a cart and Gabriel turned to see who was coming up the drive. Her eyes also went to the vehicle that had appeared around the curve and she saw a man she had never se
en before, a mulatto with glasses and elegant bearing, being driven to the house with a little girl about four years old by his side.

  Gabriel was facing the cart as it stopped right underneath Clara's window. She had a good view of the child, who was very pretty, with golden skin and light brown hair.

  The man with her said, "Here she is, Dom Gabriel!"

  Clara saw the look in Gabriel's face: it was the look of profound love. He approached the girl slowly, as if scared that she might try to escape him, and smiled at her.

  "Sabes quem eu sou?" he asked in a soft voice.

  "Meu pai?" she asked.

  "Sim," he said, "eu sou o teu pai!"

  He reached his arms to her and she jumped eagerly into them, and he held her very closely as she put her face against his neck; then he walked into the house with her, his hand on her back, followed by the man and Guelo.

  Clara left the window to stand against a corner of the room. She felt as though she could not breathe, such was the pain in her stomach. She thought of what had been said, sinking slowly to the floor.

  "Do you know who I am?" Gabriel had asked.

  "My father?" the little girl had said.

  And Gabriel had replied, "Yes, I am your father."

  Twenty-Eight: The Wide Abyss

  A storm was unleashed that day, a storm that had been brewing for months in a woman who had borne her husband's scorn, while waiting for him to realize that he had misjudged her.

  There had been anger inside that woman, because it would hardly be human for her not to feel it: there had been anger against the nobleman who had reviled her, against the brother who had sent a lie from across the sea, against the husband who, having married her, was yet ready to believe the worst of her.

  There had also been understanding. Clara did not know what Gabriel had been through, but what she suspected was enough: he had been thrown out by an arrogant father for loving her, and he had had to create himself anew. Even before all that, he had always held people to a high standard which he also expected of himself.