“Stênio, Edu, and Reymundo are among who have stayed here this weekend.”
Sebastien didn’t have much trouble reading between the lines of this apparent non sequitur on Estevao’s part.
“We will see them at the dinner tomorrow, then,” Sebastien said.
“Or before then, perhaps.”
“Really, Estevao, you must lose this habit of yours of speaking to me in riddles. Say what you mean, plainly.”
“I am only suggesting that, with so many of the other men gone, our three friends might take advantage of the fact to amuse themselves in private tonight.”
“And you’d like to join them, I suppose. Well, feel free to do so. You may have the evening off.”
“Thank you. And would you care to join us, mestre? Assuming of course, there will be anything worth participating in…which has not yet been determined.”
“This seems like a very odd way to celebrate Holy Saturday.”
“Ah, but you have already shown yourself to be so open-minded, mestre,” Estevao said, slyly. “You are a man of the world. And you are the mestre of—”
“—Of the fazenda, yes. I know. No need to remind me.”
“And as such, you may do as you wish, under your own roof.”
“No doubt. Well, keep me informed of any developments, Estevao,” Sebastien replied, affecting carelessness. “I know you are eager to indulge yourself, after the deprivation you endured last night. If any opportunity for a little harmless amusement presents itself—I may or may not join in, as the mood takes me. We’ll leave it at that, for now.”
“We are all here to serve you, senhor.”
Throughout the rest of the afternoon and early evening, Sebastien struggled—not with complete success—to put his lewd thoughts out of his mind. After dinner, he spent a little time in the study, going over the accounts.
Estevao, as usual, brought him coffee, but lingered after serving it.
“You have worked enough for one day, senhor,” Estevao said, in that take-charge way of his. “Surely you deserve some recreation.”
“And what form might that recreation take?” Sebastien asked, with a smile. “Have you heard anything definite?”
“Nothing definite, senhor, but I do have my suspicions. I thought we might go to the bunkhouse, to see what the men are doing to amuse themselves this evening.”
“Don’t think for a moment that you’re fooling me, Estevao. I can see right through you.”
“Can you, senhor?”
“Yes. As though you were made of glass. You want to go to the bunkhouse because you hope you can catch some of the men in the act, and wrangle an invitation to join them.”
“Really, senhor Sebastien. You do me an injustice. I had no such thoughts. I swear it by the blessed St. Martin. May the flood waters sweep me away if I lie.”
“Be careful what you swear by, Estevao. Is it my imagination, or is it already becoming a little damp in here?”
“It amuses you to jest at my expense, mestre,” the valet said, with great dignity. “But I take no offense. Because today is Holy Saturday, I must forgive you.”
“All right, Estevao. I humbly beg your pardon. And I must admit that you’ve piqued my curiosity. Let us pay the men a visit. If you think they won’t mind us dropping in on them, uninvited?”
“You are the mestre of the fazenda. You need no invitation to set foot anywhere on your property, at any time.”
“I suppose that’s true. Let’s go, then.”
They crossed the compound. As they approached the bunkhouse, Sebastien noticed that, although the porch light was on above its main entrance, most of the other windows were dark.
“No one may be at home,” Sebastien said.
“They may be in the back room,” Estevao suggested.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Estevao stood back, allowing Sebastien to open the door and cross the threshold first. As he did so, the lights went on, and he was greeted by boisterous cries of “Surpresa, surpresa!”
“What’s all this?” Sebastien asked, as a gleeful-looking Joaquin stepped forward, followed by Uver and several of the other men.
“It is una festa surpresa, ‘a surprise party,’ as you say in English, senhor Sebastien,” Joaquin told him.
“And it is in your honor,” Uver added. “We were watching from the windows…we began to wonder what was taking so long. We thought Estevao would never lure you here.”
“Estevao!” Sebastien exclaimed. “Ah, you sly little scamp, you! So you set me up, did you?”
“Yes, I did. And you never suspected a thing, did you, senhor? I told you men the mestre is putty in my hands,” Estevao boasted.
Sebastien laughed. “Oh, I am, am I? We’ll see about that. I’ll take care of you later. Well, here I am. And I couldn’t be more surprised. But what is the occasion?”
“No special occasion,” Joaquin said. “But look—the new television set, and some of the new furniture you ordered, were delivered this morning. You were busy out in the fields at the time, so I checked the invoice, and signed the receipt. The men wanted to thank you. They were very excited when the truck came and began to be unloaded. That’s when we had the idea of putting together a little party, tonight.”
“Yes, and won’t the other men be surprised when they come back tomorrow or Monday, and find all these new things here?” Reymundo said. “We will have a real party then. This is only a ‘down payment,’ as they say.”
“It’s nothing special, senhor Sebastien,” Uver said. “Only beer and wine, and pizzas. But we hope you will join us.”
“Don’t you dare apologize. This is wonderful, Uver. I’ll have a glass of that wine, if I may,” Sebastien declared.
“Sit down here, mestre, on one of the new chairs,” Estevao urged him, “and we will serve you.”
“The first pizza is almost ready,” one of the other men, Tiago, reported from a doorway that led to the bunkhouse’s kitchen.
“Yes, I can smell it,” Sebastien said.
“They’re baking the pies in the old brick-lined oven,” Joaquin explained. “That’s one thing the men wouldn’t want to give up. No modern appliance could possibly replace it.”
Sebastien had already discovered that Brazilians loved pizza every much as North Americans did. One difference, however, was the Brazilians’ predilection for toppings that a foreigner might consider exotic.
The first pizza brought out of the oven looked familiar enough, however. It had a deep-dish, flaky crust, and was loaded with cheese, pepperoni, and what looked like bits of ground beef, all smothered in a layer of thick spicy tomato sauce.
“Oh, that smells delicious,” Sebastien commented. “I can’t wait to taste it. Is that beef from our cows?”
“It isn’t beef, senhor Sebastien,” Uver informed him, as he began to cut the pie into wedges. “It is water buffalo.”
”Really?”
“Yes. Their meat can be a little tough, but it has been tenderized.”
“Well, I’ll try anything once.”
His first, cautious taste of the slice Uver offered him made him an instant convert.
“Oh, my God,” Sebastien moaned, happily. “This is heavenly. Or sinful—I’m not sure which.”
The second pizza, if anything, smelled even more tempting. It was topped with sliced bananas, cinnamon, and caramelized brown sugar.
“All right,” Sebastien declared, after his first bite of this second offering. “This one is definitely sinful.”
As the evening progressed, he found himself sitting in a corner with Reymundo, both of them trying out the new armchairs, with a bottle of wine and two glasses within easy reach. Sebastien found himself asking his employee—in a low, discreet voice, so the others in the room could not hear—about his relationship with his two special friends. Reymundo, perhaps as a result of the wine, was quite forthcoming.
“I grew up in a house with two sisters, but no brother,” the husky cowboy said. �
��I always wanted a brother. Now I have not one, but two. Edu and Stênio and I are like this—” Reymundo struck his left pectoral muscle, hard, through his shirt with a clenched fist. He smiled at Sebastien. “It is perhaps not so very complicated, senhor Sebastien.”
“But you would like to be married, one day,” Sebastien suggested. “And then it might become complicated, might it not?”
“A sensible wife allows her husband his freedom, and accepts her husband’s friends.”
“I see. But somehow I doubt that this arrangement works both ways. Most men would not want their wives to have too much in the way of freedom—or to have their own male friends.”
“That depends on the man. Some domestic arrangements are more fluid than others. It may surprise you, mestre, to know that you norte-americanos do not necessarily have a monopoly on the equality of the sexes.”
“Or on what you call ‘fluidity,’ obviously, Reymundo,” Sebastien conceded, with a laugh.
The ranch hand was observing him over the rim of his wine glass, as he took a sip. “Why don’t you? But no, senhor, it is perhaps too personal a question. Forgive me.”
“Nonsense. We’re all friends here. This is a party. We’re not employer and employee, as we sit here tonight. What did you want to ask me?”
“To speak frankly…I wonder why you do not form your own arranjo da casa.”
“My own ménage? An interesting idea.”
“Do not misunderstand me, mestre. The men respect you. But that does not prevent them from talking among themselves, in private. The one thing has nothing to do with the other. We respect you because you care about the fazenda, and because you are fair. On the job, you treat everyone equally. When the day’s work is done”—Reymundo shrugged, most eloquently—“then you may have your favorites, as is only to be expected, and is your right.”
“I can see I have few secrets from you and the other men,” Sebastien joked.
“We respect your privacy. As you respect ours. As for ‘secrets’…I do not think of my love for Edu and Stênio as a secret, in the sense that it is something I feel ashamed of. On the contrary, I take pride in it.”
“You’ve given me a great deal to think about. Thank you, Reymundo.”
The party, Sebastien saw, was beginning to break up. Tomorrow might be Easter Sunday, but it was still a day on a cattle ranch, and there would be work to be done, beginning at the first light of dawn.
His hosts firmly refused his offer to assist them with the clean-up, which admittedly looked as though it would be minimal.
“I won’t need you any more tonight, Estevao,” Sebastien told him, after noticing that he was deep in conversation with Uver and some of the other men. “Stay here and talk to your friends for a little while longer, if you want to.”
Alone, Sebastien left the bunkhouse, crossed the compound, and entered the main house. Once again, he was struck by how quiet his surroundings were, at this time of the night.
He felt an almost absurd sense of self-satisfaction as he got ready for bed, without Estevao’s supervision or assistance—for once!
It’s Easter Sunday…morning, on Easter Sunday. I suppose I’m a sinner, Sebastien thought, when he was comfortably installed in his bed. A terrible reprobate, who deserves to be whipped. For some reason, though, the thought did not particularly trouble him. Especially after the intriguing man-to-man conversation he and Reymundo had shared.
My own ménage…is it possible to love more than one man, at the same time? An interesting concept…I’m going to have to sleep on it.
The wild orchids Cristiano had given still looked fresh in their little vase on the nightstand. They had no scent, but—even after he had turned out his light—Sebastien remained aware of their presence, beside his bed. He slept, underneath the necklace of wooden beads dangling over his pillow, and he dreamed—dreamed about a certain long-haired, black-bearded man of extraordinary beauty and charm, who took him by the hand and led him into a cool, shady woods, where the dense foliage overhead blocked out the bright Brazilian sun, and butterflies circled in the air.
“Come, primo,” Cristiano urged him, in the dream. “We will go looking for the wild orchids together. And then we will go for a swim.”
The rest of the dream was a blur of indistinct images and sensations, but Sebastien did remember that, at one point, his cousin was kissing him.
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Moonlight Madness
The Easter dinner hosted by senhor and senhora Rocha was a great success. Most of the guests had attended Mass earlier in the day, and almost as though they needed some relief from the solemn mood of the religious observance, their behavior at the table tended to be boisterous. Sebastien, already slightly embarrassed when Anibal insisted that he sit at the head of the table in his house, as the guest of honor, became even more flustered when the conversation took an unexpected turn.
“Everyone in church this morning was talking about the flagellations on Friday night,” Clara, Anibal’s wife, announced, quite matter-of-factly. “They were astonished that senhor Sebastien took part. They could speak of nothing else.”
“Oh dear,” Sebastien said. “I certainly didn’t intend to make myself the center of attention, and distract anyone from the ceremony. Do you think what I did was inappropriate?”
“Not at all,” Anibal assured him. “But it was unprecedented. No mestre of Saõ Martinho has ever submitted to the lash.”
“Well, not in public, on Good Friday, so far as we know,” Sebastien joked, rather feebly. “What may have gone on in private in the past is another matter. I’m sure there were masters, in the past, whose employees thought they deserved a good whipping.”
Joaquin smiled. “Everyone was impressed. They are saying that the new mestre of the fazenda must be a young man of extraordinary piety.”
Glancing a bit self-consciously around the table, Sebastien suddenly realized that he had recently had sex, in one way or another, with no fewer than three of the men who were present—namely, Estevao, Uver—and Cristiano, who responded to Joaquin’s remark by giggling at Sebastien’s expense.
“Ah yes. Saint Sebastien, indeed!” Cristiano quipped.
“I’m afraid the reports of my piety are greatly exaggerated,” Sebastien said primly. He was busy doing some mental calculations, trying to decide how many of the other men seated around the table he had lusted after, at one time or another, and was still interested in pursuing. When he happened to catch Oranjinho’s eye, and the handsome young cowboy smiled shyly at him, Sebastien returned the smile—feeling deliciously guilty, as his thoughts suddenly became anything but pious. Cristiano observed their interaction.
“I don’t know,” Cristiano mused. “I can see Padre Valentin recruiting Sebastien, given enough time, and inspiring him to renounce the world and become a monk.”
“You are cruising for a bruising,” Sebastien warned Cristiano, in English—although his attempt to direct an angry look at his cousin fell short of conviction.
“‘Cruising for a bruising?’” Anibal asked. “What a curious expression. What does it mean?”
Sebastien did his best to explain.
“If it were to come to a fight, I think I would bet my money on Cristiano,” Joaquin said.
“Ah, but senhor Sebastien is very strong,” Estevao insisted, coming to his master’s defense. “Give me a little more time, to teach him how to rope and wrestle with the steers, and I believe he and Cristiano will be equally matched.”
The two cousins smiled at each other across the table but said nothing.
After dinner, there was coffee and liqueurs, and conversation, in the Rochas’ living room. One by one, eventually, the men excused themselves. Tomorrow, after all, was another working day. Cristiano and Estevao also thanked their host and hostess, said good night, and left together. They walked slowly toward the main house. A full moon had risen just above the distant horizon, bathing the fazenda in an unreal silvery light.
“I
sn’t the moonlight beautiful?” Sebastien remarked.
“Yes.”
“It seems to cast a magical glow over the landscape—to transform it.”
“Some people believe that the moon can drive men mad—or, at least, influence their behavior. That it controls us, as it controls the tides.”
“Do you believe that, Cristiano? And, if you do, how do you think the moon will influence the two of us?”
“It may cause us to stop thinking, and to act on our instincts, instead.”
“And would that be a good thing…or a bad thing?”
“A bad thing, if our selfish desires were to lead us astray, and tempt us to do harm to others. But a good thing, if our instincts…tell us we should grow closer to each other, and care for each other.”
“I feel very close to you, Cristiano, and I hope you realize how much I care about you.”
“Yes. Ever since that rainy night when you let me into your bedroom, and we slept together—I have felt the same way.”
“That was a nice night. I wouldn’t mind repeating the experience.”
“Dearest Sebastien. Dearest primo. I have given the question of—of you and I—much thought. To tell you the truth, I have been able to think of little else. And I have concluded that I love you, and that I want to be with you, and that I must have you. Assuming, of course, that you want me,” Cristiano added, awkwardly.
“You know I want you. You know I am willing to give myself to you. In any way and to whatever extent you choose.”
“I want to make love to you in every way that two men can love one another,” Cristiano blurted out. “You will have to teach me—you will have to show me, what you like, and what to do to satisfy you.”
“I promise you, Cristiano, you won’t have to exert yourself very much to satisfy me. Just being with you gives me so much pleasure.”
They had reached the terrace of the main house, with its big pots of plants, and Sebastien once again inhaled the scent of jasmine. The fragrance was always especially strong at night—it was not for nothing that the plants were often called “night-blooming jasmine.” He remembered something Estevao had once said to him. The night has its mysteries, which the day need not know.
Brazilian Cattle Baron (Siren Publishing Ménage and More ManLove) Page 45
