by Lara Blunte
"Help sinhá!" Gabriel cried.
Celso put the boy behind him on land and reached out again, but Clara shrank back. "No, the basket!" she cried.
"I will get it, but you must get out. I can’t worry about you and the baby! Get out and get the boy off the banks. The water that's coming will destroy everything!"
Clara looked at him terror, "No, I can’t leave you!"
Have you not told me you will? he thought. But he still had a very brief moment to kiss her lips. "Minha vida," he said. "Please go to Celso. I won't let this child die, but I need you to be safe."
“Promise me you can get out!” she begged, still holding on to him.
“I promise!”
He had called her my life and she meant life to him, she always had. He saw Celso help her out as well, and she looked back at him from the bank, as he turned to face the rapids. It took all the power he had to push forward, and he knew that his wound was being torn open, and that he was not as strong as he should have been.
Yet he was strong enough if he tried, and he defied the rapids like a bull, pushing with his wide chest and strong legs under the water until he could touch the basket. He saw that it was a miracle that it should have been caught on such a weak twig; at any moment it might have broken and the baby would have been crushed against the rocks.
"Here you are," Gabriel said to the child, who smiled serenely at him. "I will get you out!"
He could hear the roaring waters approach, and he knew that he only had a moment. It took his last strength, to turn and hold the basket steadily, and move it towards Celso, who had found another tree closer to him and reached out as far as he could.
"Take him!" Gabriel cried.
Celso's hand had almost reached the basket and Gabriel pushed it further. The footman finally had the boy.
Gabriel would have followed, but the effort of leaning forward had displaced the soil under him. His foot was now stuck between two rocks. The water was coming, he could feel the spray: it smelled of mud, as the river demolished the banks on its way.
Just don't live near a river, Heinrich had said years before, in Bahia. Gabriel suddenly remembered the old slave who had told him he was like the angry Ogun, the African god of war. He had never left the offerings to him under a big old tree as she had advised him.
Clara stopped scampering up the slope when she realized that he was not following, “Gabriel! Gabriel!"
"Climb!" Gabriel shouted at her. He could see the water already; there would be no time for him, though he just then managed to free his foot.
"Gabriel!" she screamed above the roaring.
He heard the despair in his wife's voice and knew that she had lied once in her life, when she had said that day that she no longer loved him. But that was all that he had time to think, before he was caught in the irresistible onslaught of the river.
Thirty-Eight: Three
"He is so strong, he is so strong!"
Clara kept repeating this after the river took Gabriel. She had not finished climbing to safety and it would have carried her away as well, if Celso had not taken her arm and pulled her up before the banks were destroyed.
She had turned to find that Gabriel was gone, and there was only muddy water running swiftly in the place where he had stood. Her scream must have been heard all over his land; she was hoarse with how much she had screamed, watching as the waters, indifferent to the despair of the woman above them, continued their destruction. She had run along the upper ridge, trying to see if Gabriel would put his head out, or a hand, but he never did, and the river was running very fast.
Clara had fallen to her knees, still screaming and crying. "He can't be gone, he can't!"
Celso had reached her, and Jiló was now with him. They tried to raise her from the ground, but she knew that they wanted to take her back to the house, and she would not go. "He is so strong," she told them. "You know it! He is like a rock, he would not drown."
Jiló and Celso still took her hands and tried to raise her, but she shook her head and sat on the ground. "Call more people! We will search for him!"
"Sinhá..." Jiló started.
She leapt up and looked at them, her hair falling like wet ropes around her face. "No! Not a word! We will find him!"
"Sometimes, sinhá, it's impossible, at least until the river goes down," Jiló said.
"We will find him alive!" she cried stubbornly.
She saw the boy they had saved, who did now understand what had happened to him, or where Moema was. Clara went to the basket and looked at the child inside: it was beautiful. All three of them were perfect: how could a mother want them dead?
She smiled at the children, though her heart felt like a beast trying to claw its way out of her chest. He can't be gone, he can't be gone! she kept repeating. She did not remember that all people in shock repeated the same thing, over and over again.
"Dona Clara..." Celso started.
"No, Celso!" she said, standing up. "I would know it if he were dead. I would know it!"
Her eyes were strong, and Celso nodded. "All right. We will look for him."
"I will go with you," she said.
"But Dona Clara..."
"I will!" she repeated.
Where else would she go, she wondered, when her husband was missing, when everyone would tell her that he was dead? Jiló went back to the house with the children, to call more men to help with the search, but she knew that they were humoring her.
What they don't understand is that I would know if he were dead, Clara kept thinking as they moved down the ridge, their eyes searching carefully for any trace of Gabriel. The river had become almost twice as wide as before, and it was now a reddish brown, like the earth from the banks that was mixed with it.
The water had moved swiftly and powerfully. She saw in Celso's face that there was no hope, and still she hoped. She hoped without praying; she thought she need not ask God for Gabriel's life because in all the world there was no one who loved him as she did, and she would find him.
It was a faith in herself, in Gabriel, in Celso that was helping her now. It made her certain that her husband was still alive.
Celso helped her search, and she could see that something of her faith had been transferred to him, that he was beginning to believe that they would find Gabriel. They walked tirelessly, stopping to look carefully at the trees that, brought by the swell, were now stuck along the sides of the river.
"There!"
She heard the incredulity in Celso's voice and looked where he was pointing, and there was Gabriel, lying on a bed of green leaves that had been formed on a bend in the river, where the water was now calm.
"Gabriel!" she called as she ran towards him. She started to go down towards the water as Celso, behind her, begged her to be careful.
She didn't listen; she threw herself at the branches, wading chest deep in water toward her husband.
There he was, lying on a bed of green with his eyes closed, almost as if he were a present for her. Of course he was alive!
"Gabriel," she cried when she was by his side.
She took his hand, but there was no response. "Gabriel," she called softly. "Open your eyes!"
He would not open them. She saw that he was unconscious and that there was blood on the leaves. It had come out of a wound on his head. "You will be all right," she kept saying. "You will be all right, my love!"
Celso had run up and was waving to the people coming with Jiló on horseback. A cart was behind them. Soon men entered the water to take Gabriel. "Be careful," she said. "Don't move him too much!"
It had been less than three weeks since they had carried him home with a bullet through him, and now they placed him on a similar cart with a wound that might have killed him. Clara sat next to him, unable to let go of his hand.
"If he feels that I am here he will stay," she thought. "He would not leave me alone, not now, not anymore."
There were shrieks from poor Teté when they arrived at th
e house, and Lucia ran forward to help as they brought Gabriel down from the cart. Clara nodded at her, "We will help him again."
Lucia nodded as well, pressing Clara's hand. Sinhô had not yet recovered from a bullet wound, and Jiló had told them that he had been carried by the river; it was a miracle that he should be alive. They took Gabriel upstairs and laid him on the bed once more, and Lucia brought water and towels to help Clara clean the mud out of his hair, so that she could see the wound.
"It isn't as bad as the blood makes it look," Clara said. She pressed the cloth against it and showed it, "Look, he has stopped bleeding."
When Dr. Pereira arrived, horrified to find his patient in bed again with a completely different wound, they had prepared everything he might need. He examined Gabriel and said that his pulse was steady, and his lungs sounded clear; there seemed to be no water in them. The wound on his chest had partially opened, and he cleaned it, as well as the one on his head, then sewed them again.
"If I understand correctly, he was hurt trying to save the child of the man who shot him?" Dr. Pereira asked as he cut the thread. He looked at Clara over his pince-nez. She was still holding her husband's hand, caressing it as if she had never seen it before. He wondered if Dona Clara was at the brink of a breakdown; but the face she turned up to him was calm.
"Yes," she said. "He would never allow a child to die."
After everyone had left, Iara was brought by Teté, not weeping this time, and climbed on the bed to kiss Gabriel. Clara once more sat with the little girl on her lap and Teté at her feet, and they waited for Gabriel to open his eyes.
He did not do it that night, or the next day. The doctor told Clara that some people stayed in that state months, or even years, when they suffered a head wound.
"He won't," she said. "He will wake up."
It rained that night, and Clara was glad that everyone was safe in the house, and that she could lay her head by her husband's and wait for him to come back. In the middle of the night she was awakened by something that sounded like laughter. She sat up to listen, and heard it again.
It was coming from Gabriel.
"Gabriel!" she cried, leaning over him. "Gabriel, can you hear me?"
He laughed with his eyes closed, then said, "Three."
Clara did not understand for a moment, and then she did. It was his third brush with death, but he was there, and he was alive.
She kissed his lips. "Yes, three." She laughed with him. "And no more! No more!"
He smiled at her and opened his eyes. An expression of puzzlement appeared on his face, and he turned his head to one side, then the other.
"What is it, my darling?" she asked, the smile still on her lips. She took his chin and turned his face toward her; his eyes seemed very dark, and stared at nothing. "What is it, Gabriel?"
He put his hand out and it found her cheek after a moment. He laughed again, as if in disbelief, then he said, "I can't see."
Thirty-Nine: The Quality of Mercy
It was difficult for Gabriel to hear Clara blame herself for the loss of his sight, when he believed that she ought to hate him for all the pain he had caused her.
It kept him from thinking too much of himself, or sinking into the dread of what his life would be from then on. His marriage had so far been ruled by the dark corners of his mind, and now that he might at last have reason to despair he did not, because he could not allow Clara to go on suffering.
"If only I had not fought with you that morning," she said as they sat together in her bedroom. He had moved in with her once more.
"I deserved it," he said. "You know I did."
"But if I had done it before, or after..." she said, and he knew that she was weeping. "If only I had stopped Moema at the house…”
He found her hand, "My darling, I can do without my sight, but you will break my heart if you go on like that!"
"You were shot because of me, and then dragged by the waters because I would not do what you said..."
Gabriel pulled Clara to him, and kissed her cheek," Chega, meu amor," he told her. It's enough. "What if I had not been proud and stubborn, what if I had believed you and not others? Would we not have been happy for months?"
"But I put on that bracelet on purpose…”
The corner of his mouth went up, “If I had been in your place I would have flaunted that bracelet from the first day.”
She had to smile as well; she knew that it was true. He would have been an intractable woman.
"Do you not understand that I am so ashamed that I am almost glad that I am blind?" he asked.
"Oh, don't say that! Touch wood, please."
"Yes," he said. "I will touch wood in a second, and I need to leave some cigars and cachaça under a tree to someone called Ogun as well."
"A macumba, Gabriel?" Clara was shocked.
He laughed. "I was warned by a tiny old lady. She told me that I was proud and always looking for strife, and I didn't listen." He gave another small laugh. "She even talked about my eyes...I remember now."
"What did she say?"
"That she saw a terrible man in me..."
"It's not true..."
"Oh, no? I would say you described me fairly well that day."
"Don’t remind me," she asked sadly.
"I will always remind myself that, almost as soon as I met you, I knew that my happiness lay with you. I thought in Lisbon: that is the only girl for me." He kissed the top of her head. "And so you were."
He could feel that Clara was turning her face up to his, and that she was smiling.
"I don't know how I knew it," he went on, as if he were telling her a fairy tale. "Some jealous people got between us, as they always do. I thought of you for years and when I saw you again at the prince's you were so beautiful! I remembered everything then, how happy we were going to be. Except that I did not believe it. It will only matter that I am blind if you get tired of finding my things..."
"I won't..." she muttered.
"And," he added, pulling her up to him and kissing her lips. "I will tell you what else that wise old lady said to me..."
"Yes?"
"She said that she could see in my eyes that I ought to be very good at something...something we have not practiced nearly enough..."
Clara threw her head back to laugh and he started kissing her neck, and it was only too true that there had been corridors and tables and whole plantations between them, but now there need never be again. They made love twice, spending almost the whole afternoon in bed, and then they lay breathless, still kissing. They could hear children shrieking and laughing outside, and both stopped to listen.
Gabriel made a wry face. "I find it ironic that during the few weeks after our wedding I was making a concerted effort not to get you with child..."
"Were you? Is that what that was?"
"...because I wanted you all to myself for a little while, after waiting for so long..."
Clara had started laughing again, "And we now have five children!"
They laughed together, then she said, "But the boys aren't ours. And Guelo can absolutely not be spoiled; so there is only Iara. That is a modest amount of children."
There was a silence, and then Gabriel said, "You ought to know that I have asked the prince to intervene on Tarcisio's behalf."
He felt that Clara had sat up and now regretted that he couldn't see how beautiful she must look, naked next to him.
"You did? Oh, but Gabriel, he might have killed you!"
"We have all made terrible mistakes, Clara. All, except you. The anger I felt is past, because I know I did an injustice to him. I think he did dream of you, what man would not, but you were not running away together, as I thought then. I don't want Teté to go around in misery, or for Tarcisio to rot in jail for the rest of his life when he has three children, and he is not a bad man."
She lay down again, and again her cheek found his neck. "Are you truly able to show this much mercy, my love, and be content?"
&n
bsp; "I think I have spent my life looking at justice the wrong way," he said. "I don't mean to let every scoundrel flourish now, but when you see so many lives about to be ruined...Does not that big book tell us to temper justice with mercy?"
She sighed, "Life is a difficult thing at times, and it becomes easy to make mistakes, so we all need mercy.”
"Tarcisio has asked me to see him in prison," Gabriel added after a moment.
Clara bit her lip, reflecting for a second. "He must want to thank you."
"I don't know. I don't know if I am going there."
Gabriel in fact knew that he was going, and two days later he did. He had learned how to move, slowly and carefully, with the help of a cane, and he used it to climb the steps of the jail with Jiló at his elbow. "Just make sure I don't fall on my face," he said dryly. Jiló tried not to snort with laughter at the thought, and failed. How they liked to laugh, the Brazilians…
Once inside, Gabriel was taken into a room that felt cool in a very hot day; he suspected that it was made of stone.
He sat holding the cane between his hands and passing it swiftly from one to the other, his eyes lost. He heard the door open and the noise of the shackles as Tarcisio was brought forward. He knew that the guards had sat him down across the table from him, and that they would remain by the door.
"Dom Gabriel?"
Gabriel raised his face and looked toward the man who had shot him, without being able to see him. Tarcisio probably knew that he was blind, but he felt no shame.
"I asked you to come so as to thank you," Tarcisio said, "not just because you have asked the prince to grant me pardon. I am not sure I deserve it... I wanted to thank you because you saved my children."
Tarcisio's voice broke and Gabriel could tell that he was trying not to weep. He waited in silence, and finally the foreman began again, "I did a terrible thing, and yet you risked your life to save my boys."
