The Abyss (8 page)

"I hope," she found herself saying. "I hope you come to visit us?"

It was not proper for her to ask, but he had been insulted the last time he had gone to their house, and he must be invited. His gaze swept beyond her, to her mother, she suspected, the woman who had shrieked at him in her house.

She must not stand talking to him for so long, so she gave him her hand and bowed her head, turning away, and walked back to her family.

"The count has told us that he is immensely rich now," Juliana said in a loud whisper as soon as Clara joined them. "He has a very big farm not too far away. I wonder if he deals in slaves..."

"No!" Clara cried. "He never would!"

Her mother shrugged and said, "He looks different. But his clothes are expensive. I wonder how much money he has, exactly."

"Don’t," Clara begged.

"I am just saying that now you might get what you want," Juliana said. "Now you might…"

"Don’t!” her daughter cried again, glaring at her.

"It's not the place!" Pedro begged both of them.

Clara did not dance with Gabriel that night; neither of them danced. They exchanged looks across the room and didn't speak again, but Clara had asked her father to invite Gabriel to their house and Pedro, a man who found no difficulty in being humble, did so. He went to congratulate Gabriel on his good fortune and apologized for the last time he had been a visitor.

"We would all like to see you, if you have the time to come," Pedro said.

Gabriel inclined his head, "Thank you."

That was all he said, and the two words gave no indication of whether he would go. A man so proud, Clara thought, might never again enter the house of a woman who had spurned him, of a mother who had screamed at him to leave.

At home she put on her nightgown, locked herself in her room and lit so many candles at her altar that she might, after all, provoke the fire she had said she would set.

"Holy Mother, I beg you, I beg you! Allow him to see my heart! Allow him to see how much I have loved him and longed for him all this time. I beg you! Holy Virgin, there is no one in the world for me but him!"

The soft face of the Virgin looking down at her was inscrutable, and gave no more promise that her hopes would be fulfilled than Gabriel's had.

Twelve. Alive

Gabriel had floated down the river with a gash on his neck that had missed his artery. The waters carried him quickly, smashing him against rocks, but by a miracle his head sustained no injury.

Hundreds of feet later, he had hit the fallen trunk of a tree in shallow water and was caught in its branches. He was unconscious by this time, and did not hear how three travelers who had been watering their mules spotted him.

"It's a man, there!"

"Is he dead?"

"Can we get him?"

The men, one 
cabloco
 and two freed slaves, wandered the mountains taking goods between villages for a small profit, without suspecting that a fortune lay so near them on the bed of the river. They had been able to fish Gabriel out and had brought him to the bank of the river, where they ascertained that he was alive. The gash on his throat was not deep, but it needed to be sewn, and one of them, a black man named Bernardo, did it with a needle and common thread.

Gabriel had regained consciousness as Bernardo was tending to him, and had tried to move, but had been kept still with soothing words.

"We are helping you! We won't kill you!" Bernardo said calmly.

The other men had left, because they had places to be, and Bernardo stayed behind to help him. He set Gabriel’s shoulder, and improvised a cast for a broken wrist. There was not much to be done about his nose.

It was fortunate that those were the most serious injuries Gabriel had sustained; it was fortunate that Bernardo was used to accidents and could help him.

“That’s my job,” Bernardo told him calmly. “I mend broken things.”

There were also deep cuts on Gabriel’s legs and arms, the worst of which were cleaned and bound.

He had lost a good amount of blood and was weak, and Bernardo camped there and fed him. After three days there was no reason for them not to keep traveling, as food was scarce where they were.

Though Gabriel had emergency gold coins sewn into the waistband of his breeches, he decided not to pay Bernardo, since he feared that if the man knew that he had money or diamonds, he might turn from good Samaritan into a murderer. He claimed that he had been crossing towards Salvador to see his woman, and then had been robbed and almost killed.

His savior had taken him to the nearest village on the road away from Salvador. Dantas and D'Angelo would always travel toward the city, so they were unlikely to get further into "the wilderness" as they called it.

The village where Bernardo left him was tiny and sleepy, but he managed to get accommodation and food at a humble house. As he sat looking at the fire outside, he reflected that all that he had supposed might happen ─ the treachery and greed of his countrymen, the need for hidden emergency funds ─ had happened.

One must always assume the worst about people, he thought; though he had been thankful to the men who had saved him, to Bernardo for “mending” him, he had no desire for his situation to be known. He thought of poor Heinrich, probably the best man he had met in a great while, lying dead on the ground. As the stitches on his neck smarted, he thought of what it was like to have one's throat cut only to be thrown like trash into a river. He would not soon forget.

The tiny town did not harbor him for long, just time enough for Dantas and D'Angelo to find Heinrich's money and leave. They would be frustrated not to find his stash, but eventually they would give up; they were impatient and had no control over their worst impulses. They would go to Salvador to spend money and celebrate what they had earned from their crime.

He managed to rent a thin, mangy horse and go back to the mud houses above the river, making sure that he was not being followed. The place was deserted and bore evidence of the frantic search for his diamonds: his house had been taken apart, with each single brick broken to make sure he had hidden nothing inside.

Heinrich's diamonds were gone, of course. He found his in the hiding place where he had left them, though the woods around it had also been searched: the ground had been dug up in several places, and tree trunks split.

But Gabriel would certainly not let the men who had tried to kill him and who had murdered Heinrich flourish. He shaved his head and grew a beard, and with his broken nose he was different enough that he might not be spotted in a crowd in Salvador by the assassins who wanted him dead. He did not go to Iaci; instead he lay low by himself. He knew that Dantas and D'Angelo were stupid enough to sell their diamonds in the city and stay there boasting about their riches.

He formed a plan to cause maximum havoc. First, he sent an anonymous letter to the authorities, informing them that D'Angelo had smuggled diamonds in his possession. If there was one thing the police would not ignore was information about men who were stealing from the crown.

The authorities found the diamonds at D'Angelo's quarters and promptly arrested him. As Gabriel suspected, D'Angelo denounced Chica's two brothers, hoping to get a more lenient sentence; they in turn believed that this was a plot by Dantas to keep the whole sum, and cut his throat on the spot.

Though the brothers tried to escape, they were caught and hung for murder. D'Angelo and Chica, who was considered an accomplice to the whole scheme, were sent to Angola to spend their life in a jail that was the closest thing to hell on earth. Gabriel thought they got what they deserved.

All the diamonds, except the ones now in his possession, were found and confiscated, as well as the money from what had already been sold. Gabriel imagined that at least some of the rocks ended up in the pockets of the police. The trail of greed that men left behind them only multiplied, it never ended.

It was hardly important to him whether or not D'Angelo or the brothers had spoken of the river bed in the mountains while trying to be absolved of the crime of smuggling. Gabriel would not be returning there; he had what he had set out to get.

He was not a fool, and did not sell his diamonds in Brazil. He boarded a ship to England and from there to Amsterdam and sold them there, where he did not expect to be killed for having them, or denounced to anyone, though nothing that people did would have surprised him anymore.

Then he returned to Brazil. Iniquity was everywhere, but there he would be in a vast country, and he would buy enough land to make it unlikely that he should meet anyone except the people he employed. He thought about bringing Iaci and Iara to live with him, and then realized that he did not want to be close to anyone, though the thought of the little girl tugged at his heart. He sent them a good amount of money instead, explaining that he would not go back to Salvador.

There was just one man whose company he would not mind: Bernardo. He wanted to pay him back for his kindness, now that he was in a less vulnerable position, and his agents did find the man, still going from one town to another on his mule. Asked whether he wanted a place to live, and permanent work, Bernardo had taken his pipe out of his mouth and said, “I will think about it.”

For three years Gabriel farmed his land, which was near the port of Paraty. He planted sugar cane, cotton, cocoa and coffee; then, unlike other landowners, he built mills, looms and abattoirs near Rio and Vila Rica so that his cows could be killed close to these main cities and arrive fresh at the market. He supplied two of the biggest populations in the country with the meat, sugar, leather and fabric that they craved, and a fortune in diamonds became a bigger fortune in land more quickly than he hoped.

It was exactly the sort of life that he wanted, exhilarating and physically tiring. At night he would sit in his house reading books that he had brought with him on his last trip, or playing a Portuguese guitar. He would sleep soundly, forgetting the nightmares that had haunted him. The next day he would wake up at four, drink his coffee, eat heartily, then climb on his horse and ride over his land. He would always stop to look at the sunrise.

It was a life without love, until he saw Clara across a room.

Like many other rich people in Brazil, he had contributed lavishly to cover the prince's expenses, and had been invited to Quinta da Boa Vista several times. It would have been better to stay away, he had thought, but he could not make himself conspicuous through eternal absence and silence, as that would only bring him more unwelcome attention, so he had eventually accepted the invitation.

His name had been under Pedro Tavares' eyes for months, on the list of people to be thanked, but Pedro had not connected Gabriel Maia to Gabriel Almada de Castro. Afterwards his wife called him an idiot for not realizing that it was the same man: did he not know the deceased Marquise's maiden name?

Pedro told his wife and daughter, "He was set down to receive a title, as the prince has been so prodigal with them here. He was going to be a Count, but he refused!"

"Refused!" Juliana's face had become dark red. "Who does he think he is? Always trying to do something different, only to stand out!"

Clara had stayed quiet at this, thinking that her mother would never understand a man like Gabriel.  She loved him precisely because he was like no one else, and had no desire to stand out.

"In any case, the new titles in this place, given out to anybody..." Juliana made a face of disdain. "Maybe that is why he refuses, because his family is older than the prince’s."

Gabriel had known for a while that Clara was in Rio from letters that his brother sent. Manuel had stayed in Lisbon with the Marquis, who refused to leave his own country to the French as the mad queen, the prince ("a coward") and the other nobles ("poltroons") had done.

Manuel wrote about living under the arrogance of the French, though Gabriel thought it could hardly be greater arrogance than their father's. He also wrote about those who had stayed, and those who had left.

"Since you insist on living there you might be meeting your former paramour." 
Manuel had written, "
Of course Pedro Tavares Moreira got into the first ship he could find; what would he be here, without Prince John? A fishmonger? A shoemaker? His lovely wife must have gone thinking there would be a whole new world of men on whom she might push Clara. She had become known as
Não-Não
here for saying no to too many suitors who ought to have been out of her reach. Apparently not one of them was rich and noble enough for mother and daughter. Considering how impoverished Europe is now, I am sure they will settle for a cattle rancher in Brazil, before the girl becomes as stale as old bread..."

Gabriel had long understood that his defiance of his father had as much to do with his own pride and stubbornness as love for Clara. He had also understood that she had been right in refusing him; she would have been able to bear the difficulties he had been through, and it would have been selfish and irresponsible of him to have brought her along.

He would have had to find a slower path to wealth so as to keep her with him, or left her behind alone in some inhospitable city as he hunted for diamonds. It still stung that she had so swiftly abandoned him when he had preferred to lose everything rather than forsake her, but he knew that it had been for the best.

Yet when she had crossed the room a few nights before to greet him, her face lit with joy, he had felt drawn to her again. She was lovelier than ever, since in the past four years she had known anxiety and hardship, and there was a new depth to her.

It was the frankness with which she had looked at him, as if she did not care what others thought, as if she did not even care whether he was angry, that had made him put down his guard. She had walked to him with a face so naked and full of emotion that he had immediately begun to love her again.

If he did not go to her house in the days that followed, it was because he did not know whether he could find room in his life for this overwhelming feeling. He had grown accustomed to being alone; he liked it. He thought that a man might make a life on his own, and depend only on himself and not on the unreliable emotions of others.

But the memory of bright black eyes that promised happiness sent him to her again, on the fifth day after the evening at the prince's.

He was well received by Pedro, and managed to ignore Juliana's somewhat tart expression and a tightly closed mouth that denoted doubt. He also felt doubt, after all.

At the end, it was again Clara who demolished his fears. His moments with her in the verandah of her home, watched from afar by one of the parents as they talked of nothing and everything, made her irresistible to him. There was a new scope to her mind, a courage in the face of change, a generosity towards others which she could not have feigned. And he had clearly seen that she loved Brazil, the home he had chosen.

One morning, returning with a smile on his lips to his rented house high above Guanabara Bay, Gabriel stopped and chided himself: Why are you smiling? Why do you love her again? Have you not learned that it is better to be alone?

Have you not understood?

However, the young man who still existed in Gabriel, eager to be happy, to share his life, to give and receive love, overcame the man who had had his throat cut and who had wanted nothing to do with other people anymore.

Clara was like the morning, waiting to bathe him in her light. Nothing could go wrong.

So he went back to her on the tenth day, and perhaps his new wealth had also won Juliana over. Perhaps, as Manuel had written, she was happy now to aim lower and marry Clara to a man of wealth and pedigree, even without a title. In any case, on that day Juliana was all beaming smiles as she led him to Clara, and he did not like her any better in this new unctuous form, but he assumed she would at least present no difficulty to their union this time.