The Abyss (10 page)

She gasped and sat up, "Gabriel, what is that?"

He caught her hand before she could touch it. "Nothing," he said. "An accident."

"What sort of accident?"

"The only sort that exists," he shrugged. "Something happened that wasn't supposed to happen. But it's healed, there were no consequences."

There was one good one, that she was now almost in his arms, although he was not wearing a shirt. As he had made no move to pull her closer, she started to feel safe and asked, "What are you wearing?"

"They seem to be trousers," he said.

"Do you sleep in them?"

"Yes. A custom I acquired in the wilderness. One needs to avoid things crawling up one's nightgown."

She leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. She thought she could do that. She thought she could turn up her face to his.

"Do you think you can kiss me as before, not as you did just now?"

He nodded and his lips touched hers again for a moment, then for a longer moment. It was nice.

Finding no resistance he kept kissing her, lifting his lips so that they would touch one corner of her mouth, then the other, then all of his lips were over hers. His hand was caressing her hair, so her hand went up to touch his.

"You have such lovely hair," she said.

He took a pillow and put it between them

"Why are you doing that?" she asked

"It’s just best if I do," he said.

She looked puzzled and a little alarmed, but he just smiled again.

"Kiss me," she asked.

He did. It felt as if the heat in the room were increasing, though it was a winter night and the window was open. There was certainly a lot of heat coming from him, and she felt flushed.

After a while his hand moved to her waist and she started, but he was only placing it there. By dint of kissing so much her lips had opened a little. It suddenly didn't seem like such a horrible thing that their tongues should touch, so she ventured the tip of hers beyond her teeth and touched his.

She thought the feeling was not displeasing. The tip of her tongue touched his lips, his hand moved over her waist to bring her closer, though the pillow still divided them, and his tongue pressed its advantage.

Clara closed her eyes and let him do what he wanted. Was he not her husband? Maybe he knew how things were meant to be, better than she did. He had said he wouldn't do anything that she didn't like.

And when he began to kiss her in earnest she did like it. There was a muffled sound from her as his tongue mingled with hers and a strange ache took over her stomach. Her skin seemed to tingle and her hand brought his head closer to hers.

But when his hand moved up to her breast she jumped up like a coiled spring let loose. "Gabriel!"

He lay back holding his hands up, and started to laugh. "I think I will need to be as good a general as Napoleon to conquer you!"

She was again clutching her robe to her as if it were a shield.

"I think we should go to sleep," her husband said.

"Oh?"

Why did she sound a little disappointed? She would not have minded kissing a little longer, though now she felt strange, as if something were unfinished or missing.

But how was one expected to go from never being alone with a man to being in bed with one, and he able to roam all over a body that had never been touched?

Clara put her head on the pillow and frowned, and found her husband's eyes on her. They were still amused. "Good night," he said

"Good night," she whispered.

He blew out the candles.

Fourteen. Experience

The day after her wedding, Clara dearly wanted to ask someone other than Gabriel about what was supposed to happen next in their marriage, but she had no idea whom to approach.

Juliana had told her no decent woman could like what had to take place, and yet Clara had enjoyed kissing. She even thought, as she and her husband had breakfast, that she wouldn't mind if he kissed her again.

He buttered her bread, poured her coffee and cut her fruit, then he started feeding her. Was this his strategy, to get her to feel cozy and then
... And then what?

She had her bath and got dressed. Gabriel also had a bath, another consequence of living in the wilderness, he said: he had grown fond of water.

They walked together in the garden and talked.

“We will never go back to Portugal, will we?” she asked.

He leaned against a tree and looked at her. “Will it be very hard for you?”

Clara thought about it for a moment, “Not if I am with you, and our children. I don’t know what it’s like where we will live, but I think I love this country. It feels so vast and new…”

Gabriel gave a half smile at this, “It is a place so much richer than Portugal, yet it has been strangled by thoughtless policies. The British, the French, the Dutch have wanted to take bites out of it and I wonder if that would have been a bad thing…”

“Do you? Why?”

“I imagine these other nations would have been as greedy as we are, taking all the riches out, and I know for certain they would have treated the Indians and the slaves much worse ─but I also think they would have left something behind. Our prince is frightened of a revolution like France’s, so he keeps the provinces unconnected by having no roads built; he hasn’t allowed a printing press so that people don’t get ideas; he has closed the ports to any country but ours, and allowed few people to come; he has filled Brazil with slaves, creating a large class of people who are bound to one day rebel.  It is a place with an almost dizzying wealth of resources, and yet it is run like a medieval fiefdom.”

“He is making changes now…” Clara said. “But I suppose not enough?”

“And not fast enough. Still, I am sorry for our country, but it’s at present a bone of contention between the English and the French, and not a place of its own.”

“But someone must put a stop to Napoleon!” Clara cried, feeling more sentimental and patriotic than Gabriel about their native land.

She wondered if he felt the same about Portugal as he did about his father. He seemed to have a highly pragmatic spirit, or he would not have become rich so quickly, but he had a tendency to be uncompromising in his ideas; these facets of his mind might lead him to dismiss both father and country as
things to be left behind
, when no one ever truly stopped being a son, or the native of a place.

His accent had changed and he sounded a little more like a Brazilian, probably because he had had to make an effort to be understood by a people unused to their emphasis on consonants; yet he had strong roots in Portugal, and it would be impossible for him to ignore them completely.

“Someone will stop Napoleon,” he was saying. “He is a greedy man, he will bite off more than he can chew, eventually. But in any case I feel that now this is my country, perhaps because at home everything seemed to be already decided, whereas there is still so much to do here, and I have the energy to do it…”

Clara smiled as she put her head on his shoulder, “Yes, I have it too!”

Finally, he started to kiss her, and she liked it so much that she forgot that they were in the garden, and that one of the servants might see them. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom, though it was only five o'clock.

He won't do anything I don't like, he promised,
 she told herself.

They lay in bed again, kissing. Then he started to kiss her neck and after the initial shock it began to feel good, then better than good. There seemed to be a connection between the places where his lips rested and her belly again, and again she felt almost restless, as if something else were missing.

So when he unbuttoned her dress and took it off she let him, after all her chemise was still covering her. But as he kept kissing her neck and shoulder and the wonderful feeling became more urgent, he slipped his hand inside her chemise and over her naked breast.

Her shock was immense, but he had closed his lips over hers by that time, and the double sensation of his lips and hands were something she had never felt before, and now it was as if she were burning between her legs.

No decent woman liked this!

She sat bolt upright again and cried, "No, no, no!"

He propped his head up on his elbow. The pillow was back between them."All right."

"I am sure that it isn't necessary to do that," she said, blushing to the roots of her hair and feeling all sorts of things she would never have been able to describe.

"Necessary for what?” He was smiling again, as if he knew things she did not know, but was bound to find out.

"For...for a husband and wife...For, you know, a marriage.'

He moved a lock of hair away from her cheek. "You seem to think that  marriage has to be a very dull thing," he remarked. "But I am famished, aren't you? Let's have supper!"

There was no more kissing that night, and Clara, after having begged God, His Son and the Virgin to not let her feel anything wrong, went to bed a little disappointed that Gabriel should be sleeping like a child instead of trying to make her do bad things.

The next morning was Sunday, and she asked to be taken to mass. She wanted to attend it in the same place where they had become husband and wife. Gabriel left her at the door of Nossa Senhora da Gloria and said he would be waiting outside.

"Will you not attend mass?' she asked.

"I have lost the custom," he told her.

She was disturbed by this, but thought she would ask him about it later. Now she went in, covered her head and prayed. Then she entered the line to the confessional. She could not see the priest inside, there was only the wooden grid where she should speak as he sat on the other side of the partition.

"Father I have sinned," she said.

"
Sim, minha filha?"

By his accent, he was a countryman of hers. Maybe he would understand. She spoke in a low voice, cupping her hands over her lips near the grid. "Father I am recently married. I don't know how I should feel in relation to my husband."

There was a silence, and then he asked. "Do you not love the man you married?"

"Oh, I love him so much! Oh, Father, you can’t imagine!”

"Then what is it that you don't understand?"

"Some...things that, being married, I must do."

The priest sighed. "Ah, a woman is seldom prepared for the facts of life and marriage. You must understand that your union has been blessed by God. What takes place between you and your husband is ordained by Him..."

Clara started to smile.

"...to ensure fruitfulness and the happiness that children bring." She stopped smiling, as the priest droned on, "You must obey your husband, unless what he asks is unnatural, and you must accept it with as much forbearance as you can. You will, God willing, have a long life together, and it's a sacrifice that you must make."

Clara left the church without the courage to insist on knowing whether it were normal and decent that she should enjoy what had happened. She rather thought the priest would think her a hopeless sinner, the whore of Babylon, and that she might be consumed by flames the next time she entered church.

She found Gabriel outside, contemplating the sea below with eyes that seemed to be lost. He was scowling as if thinking terrible things.

"What is it, my darling?" she asked, taking his arm.

He looked down at her, still serious, then his face opened in a smile. "Nothing."

"Your head does take you away sometimes..."

He put his hand on her cheek, "Less and less," he said.

Clara was reduced to praying at home, before going to bed, and asking that she should know whether what she was feeling were natural or an abomination. Gabriel seemed to think it was natural, but he would not even step into a church! If she followed his ideas she might end up in the eternal fire of hell.

But then it was evening and she was in his arms again, in her nightgown now, and again he was kissing her and touching her breasts, and she was writhing half in shame and half in pleasure at the new sensation, until she felt his hand move underneath the gown. This time she shut her eyes hard and did not resist.

His hand had closed over her buttocks and she was again caught between a feeling of wrongdoing and pleasure.

She only protested when he moved towards the place between her legs, "No, no!"

He lay back again, and again he held up his hands. "I will stop!"

She did not allow him to go where he wanted for three nights, and on the third everything else that he was doing became so pleasurable that he went where he willed. Clara felt that her whole body was beating to the tune of the blood pounding in her ears.

He threw the pillow that always divided them out of the bed and brought her close to him. She felt something hard against her body.

"What is it?"

Her hand went down to investigate and she sat up screaming.

Gabriel lay back and began to laugh very hard, covering himself with the sheet. He fell asleep still laughing.

The next morning she walked into the breakfast room with a determined face, and after a cup of coffee she said, "I must know what is meant to happen."

He considered her. "Will you have me give you an anatomical lesson?"

"I have to know!" she insisted.

"True. We may have less than seventy years together." He leaned forward, "Why don't you trust me a little?"

"My mother said... that no decent woman enjoys it."

"Do you find that your mother has always been right?"

Clara shook her head, "She is very often wrong."

"Well?"

"But she knows the womanly side of things!"

"Does she?" he wondered.

Gabriel suddenly made a terrible grimace and Clara understood that, for a moment, he had not been able to help seeing her mother in bed. She started to laugh.

He was shaking his head at her with a smile, "I can say this, my love,  that some feelings would not exist if they were not natural."

She played with her spoon, "I think even a husband...even a husband who might desire his wife might feel that she is a loose creature if she behaves a certain way."

"Not this husband. Of 
that
 you can be certain,” he said adamantly. “You are not a prude by nature, Clara, you have been taught to be one by nuns who still follow the Inquisition. A belief in God does not necessarily mean that you can’t enjoy your body, and mine."

That night she was only in her nightgown and her hair fell over her shoulders as she lay in bed waiting for him. He got in by her side.

"Blow out the candles," she asked.

He did, and then did everything she liked to her again, and this time she didn't stop him as he raised her nightgown, parted her legs and entered her. It hurt, though he was careful. Then he moved inside her, but she could feel nothing but the pain, and the dread that this was the something terrible that would haunt her all her life.

Clara slept against his shoulder, but she now knew that the conjugal act hurt and made her bleed, and that such would be her life.

He had seen her disappointment, though she tried to hide it, and the next night he only kissed her for a long time, and again she felt that something else was needed, but it could not be what had happened the night before.

Two nights later they kissed and touched for so long that when he lifted her nightgown and opened her legs she didn't resist, and when he entered her it didn't hurt. He kissed her while inside her, and then began to move, and she realized that this was what had been missing all the while. She hardly realized that she was putting her legs around him, and there was something in her like a wave rising, rising, rising so much that she felt it had nowhere to go and screamed, feeling as though she would burst.

She then lay so spent that she could not even move. Gabriel still kissed her, and she felt as if everything that he did brought her a terrible pleasure.

"He made me like it! He forced me!" she told Paula after many starts and stops two days later.

Paula threw her head back and gave a high trilling laugh, then managed to say, "Thank God!"

"How can I thank God for such a thing?" Clara asked, horrified.

"Because He is the one who created this feeling, it's a present to us, to feel connected to our husbands!" Paula said happily. "But not all women are fortunate enough to be married to a man who 
makes them feel it!
 If I weren't so happy with my husband, I would be dying of envy of yours!"