Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

At half past four Joao Caio arrived at the small village of Santa Clara da Protecao dos Viajantes.  

The entrance to the village looked no different from the way it always had since he remembered going there. It was in the shape of a fork with the left-hand track standing on a higher level on a bank that raised gradually, and the right-hand track on a lower level on a light descent. Some darkened wooden poles, as if charred by the action of time, stood as an out-of-alignment rickety fence, marking the division. He knew that the road on the left would develop into the main street, where some shops and bars were located on the right and the Catholic Church on the left. Also on the left was an area that was used for putting up kiosks when outdoor parties like Saint John's or Saint Peter's were held. On these occasions in each kiosk there would be a game or things such as the shooting gallery, in which prizes would be offered, or something would be sold so that money would be raised to help fund the church charities.  

Joao Caio took the right-hand track, parallel to the main street. A large frame house stood on the right, with a big yard that opened beside it. It was just past the place where in old times the dynamo was sited. There was no fence. The house front was sideways, it didn't face the street. A shed was located nearby and some trees. A cart was among the trees, the shafts pointing upwards as the horse wasn't tied to it. The horse was a few metres away, grazing. A number of houses came in succession as Joao Caio advanced, and they formed a street. Joao Caio drove past the Protestant Church on his left, and three blocks after the entrance to Santa Clara, he came to a large wooden house which had a brickwork front and stood on the right-hand side of the street. At the front, a window was on the left, and four high narrow rectangular wooden double doors were to the right as you looked at the house. The front was white and the window shutters and the doors were dark brown. To the right of the house a large gate led to a very large backyard from which only a part could be seen. The house was both a house and a shop. It had belonged to Joao Caio's grandparents, his father's parents. Now his aunt who had remained single lived there. Her brother who was married lived in a house nearby. Joao Caio's aunt had run the shop ever since Joao Caio's grandfather had died.  

Joao Caio parked his car close to a small wooden gate to the left of the house. To his left, two corners marked the end of a street at right angles with his grandparents' street. Two bars had stood, one on each of those corners in the past, but now they were closed. This street crossed the main street further away at right angles too. Joao Caio looked ahead towards where his car was facing and after his grandparents' house, along their street, there were some four or five more houses on the right and none on the left, and then an open field in descent and then the bridge over the creek, downhill, some two hundred metres ahead. From where he was, the creek was not visible. After the creek some more houses formed as if a second village, although they were all part of the same village.  

Joao Caio left his luggage in the car and opened the gate. To his left was the garden that had belonged to his grandmother, with the arbours and flower beds, and beyond the garden to the left, and past the garden ahead of him, the orchard that sloped downwards to the brook. He passed the gate and went through a paved pathway that led to a domed clay oven where his grandmother used to bake bread. Behind the oven was the entrance to the orchard. The oven was placed opposite the kitchen, and the kitchen was in the wooden part of the house. To his right he could see the window from the bedroom that had been built for his parents when his parents got married. This belonged to the brickwork part of the house. Joao Caio's parents had lived there for a short while before moving to the town of Santa Maria da Concepcao. Going through the kitchen door a small staircase on the right led to a drawing room on a raised floor, where to the right was the door to the bedroom he had just seen from outside, which his father had built before he got married, and to the left was the door to the shop. The drawing room had a wooden floor and the shop had a brick-made floor. Inside the shop the four doors which opened to the street would be kept open during the day and shut at six o'clock every day. It had been this way at the time Joao Caio's grandfather was alive and ever since he had died.