The Abyss (5 page)

"No, 
you 
are a slave to 
her
!" the woman cried. "She represents your spirit, in chains to a woman! She always follows you, she is always there! She is there now, by your shoulder!"

Gabriel made an impatient movement, as if to get up, but the woman cackled once more and drank the coffee, then said fixing him with clever, cloudy eyes, "Invest in land!"

"What?" he asked. He hadn't expected her to sound practical all of a sudden.

She finished her coffee, set it down with a smack of her lips, and began to lean on her staff to get up. "Invest in land," she repeated. "Food, animals. Ogun will help you, he watches over these things, and you are his creature! You will do very well! But you must leave him something under a tree, a big tree, not a weak one. He likes tobacco, and drink!"

She started moving away and he stood up, fishing for a coin in his pocket. She waved a hand, "I don't want your money. The coffee was enough!"

On his way home Gabriel thought that the old lady had not spoken only nonsense. Land was the future!  Had not the explorer Pero Vaz de Caminha written to the king of Portugal in 1500, to tell him that anything that was planted would grow there? 
Águas são muitas, infinitas
, he had written. 
There is infinite water...

The diamonds in the mountains would be discovered sooner or later, and he already had enough of them to be a very rich man. He would invest in land. The people in the provinces would need meat, tobacco, leather, coffee, sugar, vegetables. It was a good occupation for a lifetime, an occupation he would like.

"Land," he told himself.

On the way back he told Heinrich about what he was going to do, and his friend thought it was a good idea. "There are no bad natural disasters here," he said. "No earthquakes, no typhoons or hurricanes. There are storms, and there can be floods, or a river may rise. Stay away from rivers."

They talked about the different places where land would be good, where it would be best connected to reach the people willing to pay for produce.

Gabriel felt at once that there was a different atmosphere at the camp upon their return. Dantas and D'Ajuda, who were always lazier than them, now exhibited a complete unconcern for sharing tasks. They had stopped cleaning or even gathering wood and water. They had brought a good quantity of dried meat with them from their last trip and chewed it, instead of helping to hunt or find fruit. Sometimes they looked at each other with a secret smile.

"Hide your diamonds," Gabriel told Heinrich after checking that his were intact. He hid his bag inside a hollow mud brick in the wall.

"But why?" Heinrich asked. "No one comes here!"

"There are people here already," Gabriel said grimly.

"Oh, you have a very bad opinion of men!" Heinrich said. “They would never steal our diamonds. We are all friends."

Friends.
 Gabriel sometimes wanted to smash the heads of those two idiots together, and he probably would, if he had not been so near his objective. He insisted that Heinrich should listen to him, and left pebbles in the sack where he normally kept his diamonds. He waited until everyone was asleep to put the real diamonds away in a hiding place in the woods.

Something was brewing, and he would not be a victim to it. If one mistrusted people, they could only turn out better than one thought. Those two countrymen of his could be thinking of scampering with his diamonds, and they would be sorry if they tried.

However, things gradually went back to normal, with Dantas and D'Ajuda becoming more helpful again, and complaining less.

"We are almost there, eh?" D'Ajuda would say. "We are almost very, very, very rich!"

They left for Salvador and came back with bottles of 
cachaça
, or Brazilian rum, and drank it almost every night.

One morning soon after the four of them worked silently, as usual, with only a remark or another. They stopped to rest and eat, and then worked more. When the sun climbed high they started making their way back to their mules, the sacks with the day's takings tied to their belts.

As Gabriel and Heinrich walked side by side up the slope, the Austrian was suddenly pulled back, as if by a great force. Gabriel had no time to turn around and find out what was happening to his friend; a heavy blow landed on his cheek.

The pain took longer to be felt than the fact that all sounds had become muffled. He was falling, but had the presence of spirit to put his knee out to land on it. It was D'Ajuda who had hit him, and had obviously expected him to be thrown flat on the ground. As he looked up, Gabriel saw that he had a machete in his hand.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just cut me down, you fool? 
Gabriel thought.

It took all the strength he had, from his core, to go up again instead of falling. He stood up very quickly and threw himself forward, butting his forehead violently against D'Ajuda's. He heard bone crack and saw the man fly back onto the ground. Gabriel's nose had begun to bleed; he must have broken it.

When he managed to look around, he saw that there were two other men there, apart from Dantas. He recognized Chica's brothers.

D'Ajuda was on the ground, his hand covering a mouth that was bleeding. Gabriel quickly picked up his machete and began turning again, but he felt something behind him, over his shoulder. 
Where the beautiful slave stands,
he thought. He realized it was a hand, and saw the knife gleaming in it. He tried to put his own wrist up as a shield, but it was too late.

There was the cold feeling of steel across his neck, and a gash that smarted in the air. He felt the blood begin to flow as he was kneed in the back and fell forward on his face.

His blood flowed quickly. He lay on the ground, trying not to move. The three men left standing clearly considered him gone, as they took the bag of diamonds and ruffled his pockets. He could hear them talking,

"Is he dead?" Dantas was asking. "Nobody can know about this! You two have to do it!"

"I cut his throat," one of Chica's brothers said.

"We need to get rid of him."

He was being lifted up and carried towards the river. He saw Heinrich's lifeless body and sightless eyes as they passed him. 
In a minute I will be like that
, he thought.

He heard the splash as he was thrown in, and he felt the cold water envelop him. As it carried him away, he thought: 
Clara.

Seven. The No-No

"So, do you intend to go after the No-No today?" the Count of Olmeda asked his friend José Miranda Valente, Baron of Ramos, on an October afternoon of 1807.

Ramos nodded. "I think she will be saying Yes-Yes very soon!"

The other men sitting around the table started to laugh, and wish the Baron luck, while he only smiled confidently and tapped the floor with his cane.

To avoid discussing Napoleon and his threats, they were instead talking about Clara, who had become known as 
Não-Não
, or No-No, because of the amount of times she had said
no
to her suitors in the last four years.

"What makes you think you'll succeed where others have failed?" Olmeda asked.

"Ah! I have an accomplice!" the Baron said with a satisfied smirk.

"An accomplice! Don't tell me it's that mother or hers. Well, the way 
Não-Não
 is getting on in age the mother must be getting quite desperate. Perhaps she will end up saying Yes-Yes to any number of us!" Olmeda drawled, and his friends laughed again and clapped.

Juliana could imagine such talk, and she had become more aggressive, if possible, in her efforts to marry Clara. There could be an invasion of the country by the French, the deposing of their royal house and a very hard life for all of them very soon.

She had been pushing Clara toward the men she knew held properties abroad, whose entire fortune would not be compromised if a war began. Portugal had no chance to defend itself against the most brilliant general since Julius Caesar; Napoleon had already deposed other monarchs, and a lot of Europe now lay at his feet.

"What does he want with our little sliver of land?" Juliana had cried, as if Napoleon had decided to spite her in particular.

"Ports," her husband had said. "And Brazil."

Juliana's eyes had spat fire at the mention of the colony. The British had been trying to convince Prince John to go to Brazil and secure the richest of his territories, leaving Lisbon to be defended by them.

The friendship between Portugal and Great Britain went back centuries, and John would hardly have been left out of the struggle for hegemony between the British and the French. Britain wanted to put its mighty navy in the Tagus and the Atlantic, and use it to bomb Napoleon's forces when they arrived in Lisbon, probably destroying the city in the process.

The prince was in his usual state of indecision, now promising Napoleon that he would side with him, now telling the British that he would do what they said, only to finally assure his own people that he would never leave or surrender. He probably had meant all three promises at different times.

Pedro's opinion was that John would decide to go to Brazil and, as usual with tragically indecisive people, he would do so suddenly.

"It's better to be prepared!" he warned his wife and daughter.

But Juliana, taking the prince's indecision and the possibility of having to move across the ocean as a personal injury to her once more, refused to accept the idea and ordered her husband to tell the regent that he must stay put!

She motioned around her living room, which she had spent twenty five years furnishing, "How do you expect me to take all this?" She opened a cupboard to show the fine china and crystal glasses that she inordinately loved "And this?"

Pedro must convince the prince to stay and fight, or make an alliance with Napoleon and send the British to their own waters, she said in high rage.

Clara had a much clearer view of what was happening, and it was another good reason for her to send her suitors packing. "We don't even know where we will be, months from now," she would say.

She had no idea that she was being called “
Não-Não
", and if she did, she would have been glad. It had been difficult enough to refuse the men who kept coming to her, or the ones her mother would bring. She was running out of reasons to not marry and Juliana had more than once screamed at her that she would be a 
solteirona
, an old maid, the worst of all fates for a woman.

She was almost twenty-three, and had been "in the market" for five years. She was old merchandise. Some even whispered that she was second-hand goods, that Gabriel Almada de Castro had already "been there" and then run away.

"
Encalhada!
 "Juliana screamed at Clara. "You are stuck like a wrecked boat on the rocks. You are getting old, and less and less men will want you!"

The relationship between mother and daughter, which had been close years before, had reached a point of permanent war. Juliana became angrier and angrier at the thought that her masterpiece, the lovely Clara, had been created in vain. The girl was supposed to elevate them all into another life, and instead she sat, moped, and refused rich men.

Juliana knew the reason for her actions too well, and had hissed at Clara more than once, "He must be dead by now of some fever, or married to someone else!"

It was like a knife twisting in her gut for Clara to hear such things. She was waiting for Gabriel, who had disappeared without a trace after the morning when he had asked her to leave with him, over four years before. To hear that he might have died alone in some terrible place broke her heart; to hear that he might be married, and have children with another woman made her want to die.

Having been partially educated in a convent, Clara would resort to a host of protectors when she begged like a child, "Please, God, please Holy Virgin, please Saint Anthony, please Saint Claire! Please let him be alive and well, please, bring him back. I will do anything, but please!"

All she wanted was to see Gabriel again and, if he were angry, to explain that she had never meant what she had said, that she had been dying inside, and that she had since wished every day, all day long, that she had left with him.

She could still see his hand extended, waiting for hers, his blue eyes clouding, his whole face hardening when he had understood that she was not going to accept his offer.

Since he had left, her life had been hell, with her mother shrieking at her to accept man after man, and she disliking them all. None of them could compare to Gabriel. None of them inspired the slightest affection in her, while Gabriel still occupied her thoughts every day.

Was there a worse thing, she wondered, than to be near a man one didn't love? Would a man not want to kiss her, if she were his wife, and do other things that she still didn't know enough about ─ intimate things? Would she not have to spend a lifetime looking at a man she did not love, listening to him, taking care of his household, giving birth to his children?

How could she bear such things?

Because every woman bore them, Juliana would say. "Do you think I was in love with your father?" she asked. "It was the right thing to do!"

Clara had the result of "the right thing to do" in front of her eyes every day: parents who did not know the first thing about each other, who avoided meeting unless it was, in Juliana's case, to browbeat her husband.

She knew that there could not have been passion between them, as there had been between Gabriel and her ─ but there was not even affection and understanding, as one might hope after twenty-five years together.

Why would such a terrible existence, devoid of any beautiful feeling, be worth leading? Juliana had never trusted her own prosperity and still thought in terms of surviving and thriving. To materially thrive meant that Clara must say yes to a man as soon as possible. And Juliana's standards had fallen, because Europe was at war and Clara was getting older; now her husband could be any man with enough money.

She did not forget that Clara's intransigence had brought about the end of her dreams. The foolish girl did not understand anything, still less the fact that love was a story for fools, that it didn't exist, that even if a pale shadow of it appeared, it would soon dissipate in the face of reality.

Reality was that one must have a good roof over one's head and things, one must eat well, have servants, be able to afford good doctors and medicine. 
One must matter
, one must not be swallowed up in the middle of the crowd of people who were expendable.

Why had Clara been born so beautiful, if not to 
matter
?

On that October morning Juliana still refused to think of the French and insisted that Clara should go to the park with her and ride a little. "You need some air!" she told her daughter. "You need to put color on your cheeks."

Clara decided not to resist, but it was clear to her when they arrived at the park and the Baron of Ramos met them, that this had been somehow arranged.

She stood scowling in her riding habit, holding her horse by the bridle, while her mother smiled, nodded at the Baron and practically rubbed her hands.

Ramos! 
Clara thought. Even if she knew nothing of the man, she would immediately have been able to tell that he was a 
roué
: he was not even thirty years-old and already looked forty, with a face bloated by drink and a knowing smile that almost always accompanied his hooded stare.

She felt her back stiffen as Juliana continued her conversation with the man and he looked her up and down with a liberty no gentleman would have shown. Clara was fuming when the Baron asked for the pleasure of escorting her on her ride, and Juliana beamed and motioned for her to get on her horse.

It would not do to refuse, since he knew that she had just arrived with the intention of going for a ride: everything, it seemed, had been agreed between him and Juliana, and her mother would not insist on a chaperone. But as she got on her saddle with Ramos' help and his hand lingered on her arm, Clara could not help throwing Juliana a bitter look.

How can you send me off with a man such as this?
 she was asking silently. Everyone knew Ramos' only purpose in life was to seduce women, and yet because he had a fortune and a title, her mother was content to let her be seen with him.
When I was never left alone two minutes with Gabriel, 
she thought, 
an honest man worth ten million of this Baron.

 As they rode away from Juliana and further into the park, Clara was nevertheless thinking she ought to have pleaded a headache or dizziness. She could not help worrying as they rode through the trees and saw less and less people. Ramos obviously knew the park better than she did and was luring her away from the busiest paths.

"It's a beautiful day," he said as they trotted, throwing a glance at her which lingered on her waist, then her breasts. Clara could feel herself flushing, but his eyes, now on her face, were shining with lust.

"I would like to be nearer the path," she said, incapable of pretending that she felt comfortable.

"Why?" he asked outright. "You're not afraid of me?"

Clara turned to look at him. "Not of you, no. Of your reputation."

"Ah!" he exclaimed, laughing. "How refreshing! A woman who says what she thinks."

"Please let us return to the path," she asked again, and began pulling on the reins until Ramos took hold of them with a gloved hand and stopped her.

Clara gasped. His hand was touching hers, but she did not want to let go of the reins, as he would then lead her horse wherever he wanted.

"Please let go!" she said.

"Come, come," Ramos said, pulling the bridle towards him and bringing her closer. "Don't be afraid!"

"I have told you, I am not afraid!"

"Good," he said, his face already near hers. She could smell his nauseatingly sweet cologne and the pomade he had used on his hair, as well as the wax on his mustache. He had absurdly long droopy lashes for a man, and there was already wine on his breath, though it was only ten o'clock.

Clara's whole being revolted against him, and she moved her face away so that he had to let go of the bridle to put his arm around her waist as he tried to kiss her.

Turning back to him Clara put her hand on his chest and pushed him away. Her riding stick was in her other hand and she used it to hit the flank of his horse sharply with a loud cry.

The horse started nervously, then bolted, and the Baron shouted in fright. Clara watched as the man swayed perilously in his saddle, trying to grab the reins that had fallen from his hand to stop the animal's mad race.

She started laughing very hard; she could not help it. She didn't care if the story were all over Lisbon soon, as it would be a good warning to any other shameless rakes. 
Let them all look to themselves
, she thought mutinously. 
One of them may even end up dead!

No one should touch me but Gabriel, 
she said to herself as she rode back to her mother.
No one ever will! 
 She hoped that Ramos would be ashamed enough not to appear again, not even to glower at her for almost killing him and then laughing. When she returned to Juliana, she showed her puzzlement with a frown.

"Where is the Baron?"

"He just suddenly bolted," Clara said angelically.