The Abyss (23 page)

Tarcisio had aimed and fired; the hot bullet had found a place in Gabriel's chest, and he had fallen.

And this is why Clara did not have the time to order Sugar to be brought, or to ride toward her husband and beg him to be happy with her: because just as she arrived in front of the house to ask for the filly, he was being brought to the house in a cart, unconscious, with a bullet in him.

Thirty-Three: Fever

Clara would not know later what took over her, but her mind stayed sharp, and she managed to not start crying over Gabriel's unconscious form once she realized that he was still alive.

Instead, she began to shout instructions: the workers who had brought him were to take him upstairs very carefully, water was to be heated and clean towels brought, and Jiló was to ride after the doctor, who had only just left the plantation.

She walked behind the men carrying Gabriel and saw the shocked faces of the servants, but she did not stop, and only said to Teté, "No crying,
sinhô 
isn't dead!"

Once Gabriel was in bed, she took a pair of scissors that Lucia handed to her and cut his shirt open to reveal a hole in his upper chest, near his shoulder. Tarcisio, whom the workers were blaming in incoherent sentences, had probably aimed for Gabriel's heart and missed. No organs or arteries had been hit, but the bullet was still inside him, and needed to be taken out.

When the water came, Clara cleaned the wound as well as she dared and saw that it still bled, so she applied a folded cloth to it to keep him from losing more blood. It was only then that she really looked at his face: it was extremely pale, as if he were wearing his own death mask.

She could not stop to wring her hands and berate herself, for how could she have known that her attempt to leave would have resulted in tragedy? Gabriel's life was now in danger, and Tarcisio had been seized and taken into the custody of the town guards.

It was not the time to think of  anything, she only sat by Gabriel, pressing a cloth over the wound, and called his name softly. After a while she saw that his eyes were moving behind closed lids and his lashes fluttered. He opened his eyes, at first staring straight up at the ceiling, then moving his head slightly to look at her.

"I'm not dead," he said, and suddenly laughed, wincing in pain at the same time. "How many damned lives will I have?"

"A lot of them, I hope," she said quietly.

"No, not so many..."

His eyes closed again. It was the loss of blood, she knew, that made him feel faint; the bullet must be taken out and the wound sewn quickly.

"Where is that doctor?" she asked

Dr. Pereira had thankfully not been too far away, and he made it to the house in a quarter of an hour. It felt like a lifetime to Clara, but he arrived, set down his bag, washed his hands and started looking at the wound.

"I have to take the bullet out," he told Clara. "And I have nothing to help him with the pain."

"Just do it."

They turned to find that Gabriel was awake again. He looked at them with a calm face, his eyes dark. He nodded once and repeated, "Do it."

The doctor washed his instruments and put them on a little table that Lucia moved next to the bed. "I'll need a needle and some strong thread."

Lucia ran out to get what the doctor had asked for, as he held a large scalpel and looked down at Gabriel, "Do you want to bite on something?"

Gabriel's eyes went to the scalpel and he gave another small laugh as he shook his head. Clara found herself sweating and couldn't look away as the scalpel cut Gabriel's flesh, so that the doctor could reach the bullet without the risk of pushing it in further. Though she winced, she saw that Gabriel lay with his eyes on the ceiling again, as if in a trance, and that he never made a sound. The doctor wiped the blood from the cut and they could now see the bullet; he picked up small tongs and started to pull it out.

Clara's hand took Gabriel's, and she felt his fingers closing around hers, firmly but not tightly. She looked again, and again he had not moved or made a sound. Only a tear had come out of his eye and run down the side of his face to show that he was in pain.

The doctor cleaned the wound as well as he could and Lucia handed him the needle with the thread, and he sewed it. This time Gabriel closed his eyes and lay still, though his hand still held Clara's. She felt that he was trying to comfort her.

Everything had been done quite quickly, and the doctor dressed the wound, showing Clara how she must clean and bind it, at least twice a day.

"You must look at it, to make sure it's not festering," he told her when he had finished and she walked out with him. "The danger now, and it's a very big danger, is that it might get infected. Make sure the dressings are changed and that the wound doesn't smell or look bad. The bullet didn't hit the bone and that is good, as there are no splinters inside."

He was turning to leave, but she held him by the arm, "Will he live, doctor?" she asked.

The doctor glanced inside the room, where Gabriel lay with his eyes closed, "He is very strong and very healthy, and the bullet did no great damage." He patted her hand. "He will develop a fever, if it's not too high and there is no infection then he should live. But watch him carefully."

"I will," she said.

"I'll be back in the evening to see how he is."

Clara returned to Gabriel's side, but he seemed to be sleeping now. She pulled a chair and sat by the bed, feeling his forehead. 
Oh, God, why did this have to happen? Let us be at peace, let us love each other.

She felt rebellious against God and the host of saints that she usually prayed to. Though she knew the world was a hard place for too many people, she felt that a lot of what had happened to them might have been avoided.
 I am so tired, 
she thought, and laid her cheek on the bed, still holding Gabriel's hand.

Would it not be an extraordinary love? 
Pai Bernardo had asked.

She closed her eyes and began to weep quietly. After a moment she felt his fingers on her face. "Don't cry," he said.

"No," she said softly. "I won't."

He went in and out of sleep, and developed a fever in the evening, but the doctor pronounced it not high enough to be a serious threat. Clara had taken a moment to wash and change, and had asked that all the bloody clothes and linen be taken away and burned.

As she walked back to Gabriel's room, she heard crying downstairs; it was Iara. She went halfway down the staircase and bent to look inside the drawing room, where Teté was sitting with the girl on her lap and Guelo next to her. Iara sobbed and called, 
"Papai! Papai!"

Clara kept going toward them, leaving Lucia with Gabriel for a moment.

"What is it?" she asked Teté.

"She wants to see her father."

Kneeling next to Iara, Clara brushed the hair away from her face. The girl's cheeks were covered in tears, and she wept as if her heart were breaking.
Poor little girl, who had been taken to so many places and lost so many people.  

"
Papai
is all right," Clara said.

"Não!" 
the girl sobbed.

"Do you want to see him?" Clara asked tenderly. "He is just sleeping."

Iara nodded, her mouth closing, the grimace on her face disappearing. Clara held out her arms and the child went into them. She got up and nodded at Teté, "I will keep her with me." Looking at Guelo she added. "And you, don't be sad. Everything will be all right."

Guelo nodded a few times, biting his lip. Clara repeated, as she went up the stairs with Iara, "Everything will be all right."

Lucia had been as efficient as ever, and the blood had been removed from the room. Gabriel now lay on clean sheets, wearing an open shirt, with a new dressing over his wound. Clara sat down in the chair, holding Iara on her lap.

"You see, he is only sleeping a little."

Iara at first only looked, and dared not touch Gabriel. Clara took her hand and put it on his hair, moving it a little. The girl kept her hand there, "
Faz cafuné
," she said.

Clara smiled, "Yes, do 
cafuné
 on 
papai
. He likes it."

She caressed Gabriel's hair as well; it had been so long since she had been able to touch him. It felt good to have his hair between her fingers.

Iara had leaned forward and put her face next to his. "
Papai?
 Sleeping?"

A slow smile appeared on his lips, "Just sleeping," he said.

She turned to smile at Clara, who smiled as well and nodded.

Gabriel slept deeply that night, and Iara would not consent to be taken away, so she stayed in Clara's lap, both of them in a large armchair that had been brought.

Clara held the girl to her, feeling her small body, her little bones, the wispy hair that was soft as feathers. How could she not have loved Iara? How could she have been so selfish?

Doubt was a terrible thing, to turn a good deed into a reason for hatred and quarrels. Her jealousy had been greater than her compassion for a creature who had already suffered, though she was so small, and Clara felt ashamed as she rocked Iara.

In the morning, Gabriel was still feverish but he ate fruit, drank tea and sat up so that his dressing could be changed. Clara marveled at his strength and control.

Iara then lay with her head on Gabriel's good shoulder and sucked her thumb; Guelo stared at him from the foot of the bed with anxiety in his eyes;  Teté stood by the door miserably, as if she blamed herself

Clara saw that the children were scared, hurt, lost. She looked at her husband, whose throat had been cut, whose father had thought it better to throw him in the street than to let him love a girl.

All of us are broken, and yet love could heal us all,
 she thought. 
Gabriel brought us together,
and we could be happy here, in this beautiful place.

Having spent most of the day with her father, that night Iara agreed to sleep with Teté, and the doctor made his round, seeing that Gabriel's fever had increased a little, but that there was still no sign of infection. "Just keep watching," he repeated.

Clara was left alone with Gabriel as everyone retired, but Lucia was nearby, as were Celso and Sebastião, if anything were needed.

As she sat with Gabriel, Clara did not dare touch him anymore, now that Iara was not there. She only put her hand on his forehead at different intervals, to make sure that the fever wasn't rising. Finally she fell asleep in her chair.

A while later she woke with a start. The candles still burned brightly on both sides of the bed, so she could not have slept very long. As she turned to look at Gabriel, she saw that his eyes were open and that, it seemed, he had been watching her for a while.

"What is it?" she asked, when he didn't say anything. She got up and moved to the bed, bending over him. "Are you all right?"

His eyes seemed feverish, but when she reached out to feel his forehead he took her wrist.

"What is it?" she asked again, sitting next to him.

He looked at the bracelet, and only then did she realize that she was still wearing it. He tugged on it, the fastening broke again, and he threw it on the floor. Then he pulled her, made her lie on the bed, and turned on his side. His eyes scanned her face as his thumb caressed her cheek, then her lips.

"You have a fever," she whispered. "You have lost a lot of blood."

He gave no indication that he was listening to her; instead he lowered his head, his lips closed over hers, and he began to kiss her as he used to do, when he had loved her.

She wanted to protest and say that he might hurt himself, but had she not thought, upon seeing him again in Rio, that he was as strong as an oak, and that nothing could cut him down?

He is so strong,
 she thought, reaching up to hold his head so that he would not stop kissing her. 
Nothing can harm him.

Gabriel opened her dress, and touched her breast, and she held his hand over it. He felt hot even when he entered her, but she kept him inside with her thighs to feel as much of him as she could. It had been so long, so long, and she had so yearned for him.

Perhaps he did not know what he was doing, he did not know that he hated her ─ and she could not remember either that she had been angry at him. She burned in the heat of his fever, and she knew no harm would come to him.

Thirty-Four: Hard Hearts

Gabriel was aware that the fever had made him lose his usual control over himself, and that he had made love to his wife. However, as soon as he woke up the next morning, his doubts were pecking at him like a flock of crows once more.

Sensitive as she was to others, Clara had probably understood that it might be the case, and she was not in bed with him. It was Lucia who came in with his breakfast, and Clara only walked in a quarter of an hour later to change his bandage.

Her eyes were evading his, which was not like her. He wondered if she felt guilty that he had almost died because of a man who had fallen in love with her, a man she had encouraged─ or worse. Or did she feel ashamed that they had been intimate the night before, in spite of the fact that no real reconciliation had been made? Did she remember that she had been wearing the gold bracelet, probably to anger and defy him?

Yet when she was changing his dressing her eyes flew to his, and there was something different than shame in them; there was joy, and even a little mischief.

This was always when she was most irresistible to him: when she was the combination of the girl he had known in Lisbon, witty and playful, and the woman she had become.

Yet she had confessed that she had been the Baron's mistress. He was intelligent enough to know that she might have wanted to hurt him, and her words had hurt almost as much as the bullet. They had also fed a doubt that had hardly needed any fuel.

More importantly, he had found her with Tarcisio, even as she tried to leave him behind.

How could he know what was the truth? He had allowed himself to be lulled into trusting her again after observing her for months, only to find her running away with a man under his nose.

That very mischievous look she had just thrown him ─which had made him turn his head so that she would not see the smile it provoked─ might have been used to entice other men to do as she willed.

He was tired of his own mind; the 
cachaça
 at the 
Botada
 and the fever had made him push every terrible possibility aside and concentrate only on how much he wanted Clara, how much he yearned to be happy with her.

"If you look long enough at people you will find something bad in them," Pai Bernardo had told him before the feast." If you don't find it, you will imagine it."

He wished that he could always suspend his judgment, as if he were always drunk, always feverish: was not love precisely that, a sickness of the blood, a loss of control?

His thoughts did not leave him alone, and Clara saw it. The tenderness in her touch as she wrapped his bandage, and her eyes now cast down in sadness tugged at his heart and made him want to beg her once more
: Just tell me the truth, and I will still find a way to love you. I want to love you!

She might be using an arsenal of wiles to get him to capitulate. He had almost died, and a man was now in prison for trying to kill him: had she caused all of this just to get her way?

Who was she?

In any case, he would not stay in the room anymore, though the wound still hurt and he must be careful not to pull at the stitches. He had a little fever, but he could sit outside in the garden.

As he reached a chair under the shade of the big tree, Clara came out of the house holding Iara by the hand. The little girl's face lit up like a sun when she saw him, and Clara let go of her hand so that she could run to him.

He let Iara climb on his lap and held her. He glanced at Clara and saw that she was smiling and standing back, as if to let him have his moment with the girl. Though he could see that she had begun to love the child, she had clearly understood that he needed to have Iara to himself, at least for now.

"Am I only able to love children," he wondered, "because they are still innocent? Will I, like my father, not love this little girl if one day she does what I don't like?"

His hand tightened around Iara; could he ever throw her out and hate her?

He realized that Clara was still a little girl to her father, and knew that Pedro would have forgiven anything she might have done, such was his love for her. He almost sighed: his head hurt, his chest hurt in more than one way, and it was not the first time he wished that his nature were simpler.

Two weeks after the shooting, the commissary of police came to the house. It irked Gabriel to be forced to give an account of what had happened, but everyone for miles knew that he had found his wife and the foreman in the forest and that he had given the man a beating. The commissary was apologetic when he asked to speak to Dona Clara, and Gabriel insisted that they do so in his presence.

The man had understood that there had been a quarrel between husband and wife, and a misunderstanding about the nature of Dona Clara's escape which led to Tarcisio's beating. The beating had then led to the attempted murder. They were no strangers to such things in the heartland: there men tried to kill each other over women, over honor, over land, or just out of boredom.

But Dom Gabriel was immensely rich, and a friend of Prince John, so they tread lightly. There would be a trial, they said as they left.

"What will happen to Tarcisio?" Clara wondered when they were alone.

"Am I to believe that you are still speaking in his favor?" Gabriel asked quietly after a moment.

"I hate him for trying to kill you," she said. "I think he deserves to be in jail for that. But his children..."

"They are not your responsibility."

She would not be discouraged from asking, "Are you throwing Moema out?"

"I will pay what I owe that murderer to her and help her go somewhere else. But she can't stay here. I will give her enough time to leave."

Gabriel's tone was final and some anger had crept into his voice.  Clara did not want to insist that she was concerned for the children without their father.

However, she was not a woman who could put matters so important to others aside. As the subject must not be discussed with her husband, she decided to go to Moema's house and see if she could help with money, or with a letter to her father in Rio asking that he find her employment and a home.

She had seen Moema, though they had never spoken, and she knew that the woman might think the same thing Gabriel had thought: that she and Tarcisio had been lovers. Clara wanted to assure her that it wasn't true. It did not surprise her that Moema should frown at her, or that her eyes should be full of suspicion and disdain. It was her penance for having involved Tarcisio in her escape.

"I could not ever express how much I repent asking Tarcisio to help me," she said, standing in Moema's kitchen.

Two pretty little boys and a baby, the children whose father was now in jail, had been bundled out of the room, and Clara had not been asked to sit down. She continued, "I know it's no consolation for you to know that he was simply helping me get to Paraty, and that there were never a word or deed..."

"Are you really that naive?"

The question came like a quick, dry slap. Clara was surprised, not only because Moema owed her respect as the wife of the estate owner, but because she had hardly ever been addressed so abruptly by a stranger. She had to remind herself of the terrible turn the woman’s life had taken.

"Do you think that men do favors for ladies who look like you and expect nothing?" Moema added. "Men are very foolish, and expect something from even the most impossible situation. He was in love with you."

Clara was taken aback, "You must not speak like that. I am married!"

"Yes, and in love with your husband, I told Tarcisio so. I told him he was a fool. But perhaps he ought not to have been invited to go anywhere with you!"

"How can anyone believe there might be a reason for what he did?" Clara asked, flushing. "He tried to kill a man!"

"A man who had beaten and humiliated him. Do you think that the people you pay have no pride?"

Clara could clearly see that pride was the most important thing to the woman before her; there was no sadness, no compassion for Tarcisio in her face.

"We had better not talk about these things," she said. "Tarcisio faces the gravest accusation there can be against anyone, only made less serious by the fact that my husband survived. It's not out of concern for him, but for you and your children that I am here."

Moema was looking at her quietly and her eyes were like two black pebbles, dead and hard. "You need have no concern for us."

"But I do," Clara insisted, "I can help you find work, a house. My father can help you in Rio."

"I am not going to Rio," Moema stated flatly.

"Where will you go, then?"

"Allow me to decide that."

"And the children?"

The woman was silent for such a long moment that it seemed as if she would not reply, but then she said, "There is a place for them." She was almost smiling, but her eyes were still hard. "There is a place for all of us. I am taking them there tomorrow, when I leave here."

"If you need more time..."

"I don't. I will be gone tomorrow."

Clara saw that there was nothing else to be said. Moema would not let her help them; she understood that the stern woman standing there with her arms crossed wished for her life to be as difficult as possible, so that she could keep nourishing the sense of having been wronged.