Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Arriving home, Juliana went to the living room in the middle. There was no one in there. She found no one in the living room at the front of the house either. Everything was quiet and it seemed the same upstairs too. So she went to the kitchen. There she found one of the maids, Zila.  

Zila had just finished cleaning the dining room and the kitchen from lunch. Everything looked bright and polished. A sweet smell of soap was in the air. Now Zila was going to tidy one of the cupboards in the kitchen. She would have to take the dishes and plates out of it. The second maid was in the smaller house outside ironing clothes.  

Juliana asked Zila where everybody had gone and Zila told her her parents were out on a visit to Dr Claudio. From there they would drop in on Juliana's mother's parents. As for Luiza and Otavio Sergio, they were at the club swimming. Joaquim had gone to the farm with his new girlfriend. 

'It's Thais his new girlfriend,' Juliana informed Zila. 

'You don't tell me,' Zila said.  

Juliana smiled with her eyes. 

'She's so lovely!' Zila said. 'She's a sweet girl.'  

'She's very sweet.' 

'I do like her. And she's so pretty. I think there isn't a better match for Joaquim.' 

'I don't suppose there is,' Juliana said. 

'And you, Juliana?'  

'Well, I haven't found any suitable boyfriend yet.' 

'Because you don't want to. Sure plenty of them can be yours by the asking.' 

'Zila, you're exaggerating.' 

'No, I'm not. It's real true.' 

Juliana moved about to get a cup and then another. She kept waiting for Zila to say more. She poured the two cups. She gave one to Zila, she kept the other for herself. 

'I guess I know the way things are,' said Zila taking the cup of coffee Juliana had handed her. 'You're absolutely right. You have to be patient. No such a thing as rushing,' she said and sipped her coffee. 'Just don't date just anyone.' 

With her eyes Juliana told Zila she agreed. 

'There must be something,' Zila said. 

'Without it there isn't any point,' Juliana said quietly. 

Zila had been with them for nine years. She was now twenty-seven. She didn't sleep in the house, she came every morning and went home every evening. Once she slept in the house, though, as there was an emergency. On that day Juliana's father happened to be travelling on business and Luiza had fallen ill with an infection and had fever. Juliana's mother then asked Zila whether she could sleep there that night. A neighbour took Zila to her house so she could get a change of clothes and so she could tell her parents she would sleep in Mrs Danta's house that night.  

'And what about your boyfriend?' Juliana asked. 'How's everything going?'  

'Oh quite all right.' It pleased Zila to talk about her boyfriend. Her eyes gleamed. 'Tonight we're going out.' Her date was a young man from Dejanira, it had been going on for six months already. They met every Saturday night and on Sundays. They had first met at a Saint John's party in Providencia, a kind of party that's called a quermesse. This is a fair that takes place in a large area in which there are a number of canvas-covered wooden stalls where different kinds of food are sold, and drinks, and other stalls where prizes can be won in different ways, such as by shooting balls through rings, or by fishing a numbered tag tucked into sand using a rod equipped with a hook, by throwing a ring that has to fall upon a numbered pin, or by hitting targets at a shooting gallery, and so on. There were Saint Peter's parties as well, and Saint Anthony, all three of them in the month of June. 

'Has he been to your house yet?' Juliana asked. 

'Yes, my parents know him already. They like him. My brother and my sister also approve of him. This coffee is from lunchtime. I'll make some more, if you just wait a moment, Juliana. Do you want some?' The coffee they were drinking was from a Thermos flask. 

'Please, Zila,' Juliana said. 'It tastes good. Where is it from?'  

'From the supermarket. They got it from one of the farms nearby. There isn't anymore left of that other one we used last week, that came from the Torricelli's farm.' 

'That one tasted nice.' 

'Quite.' They used coffee straight from Juliana's father's farm, or from some friend's farm or else they bought it at the supermarket.  

They carried on talking about the subject of dating and about some of the people they knew who were now dating and whom they were dating, and about some for whom everything had gone wrong and those who had parted and those who had started afresh. Some beautiful girls were discussed as were some good-looking young men. Those who were notorious for their unreliability and for behaving badly, those who were totally unrecommendable as either boyfriend or girlfriend were also discussed. They drank the fresh coffee Zila made. Then Juliana decided to let Zila finish her work with the cupboard and went to the backyard.  

She went to a place near a wall on the right where the trunk of the mango tree lay, that had been cut many years ago. It lay on the ground close to the wall. She found a nice comfortable place for her somewhere along the tree trunk where there was more or less a concavity, a slight one, and sat down taking care with her skirt not to be torn, although the wood was basically smooth. It was so nice and quiet in the backyard, there were several trees there, with different arrangements of branches and leaves and different shades of green, and there were the tree tops. Patches of blue sky and white clouds filtered through the foliage or could be seen plainly in between trees. The backyard was unpaved and it was so nice that it was unpaved that it was soil, with earth that you could touch with your hands and there were pebbles and gravels in certain parts and grass in certain areas and parts like the one where she was sitting where it was only earth. She remembered vaguely a giant in Greek mythology of whom she had read about when she was a child, who drew his force from the earth by being in contact with the earth, as the Earth, Geo, came to be his mother. If lifted, the giant would run out of power for being out of touch with his source of energy, Geo, his mother. It made sense to Juliana. She felt as though she was drawing strength from everything around her, not only the earth, but the trees, the sky and from that tree trunk itself. Yes, mainly from the tree trunk. 

'O tree trunk, tree trunk just tell me what is going to happen at the party tonight or in the next few days and in the near future if you have any power to soothsay things in general and I think you do though I don't think there is a verb to soothsay so in this case you foretell.'  

She stayed there thinking about all this until she decided to go into the house upstairs. She got the novel she had been reading lately, and went to the drawing room at the front of the house to read it.