Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Sitting on a white wooden chair in the veranda at the front, Juliana watched the two other houses up the track on her left. Left was the same thing as west. She had arrived at the farm half an hour before. In the veranda where she was, other similar chairs were about, placed around each of the three round wooden tables that used to be there - all made of boards that were aligned side by side in a row, both the chairs and the tables, and all coated with opaque, smooth and brilliant white lacquer. There was also a hammock, on the right-hand side, permanently hung on a hook on the front wall and on another hook on a porch post, diagonally. The walls were white and the porch posts and balustrade were dark green. Today's newspapers lay on the table on her right.  

Juliana was at the same house where Joaquim had stayed when he had come to Santa Ines with Thais. She and her family occupied either this house or the ones up the track when they were at the farm. The houses up the track were fashionably rambling. They were also comfortable, orderly and well kept. Above them the sun was shining, still high in the sky. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Juliana quit looking at the houses and stared ahead. The big yard where coffee was put to dry in the sun lay in front. The cowshed could be seen in the distance just after the yard across the path. Behind the cowshed a dirt road slanted up across pasture land, made a slight curve to the left and stretched as far as the horizon with eucalyptus trees on either side. Green wooded hills were seen more to the left. Juliana was happy she had come. The farm was home, just as much as the house in town was home. 

The night before Juliana had arrived at one o'clock from Denise's party. When she arrived she heard her parents's voices as they were speaking upstairs in their bedroom. She could hear their voices but she couldn't make out what they were saying. They had left the door ajar. Otavio Sergio was certainly asleep in his bedroom and so must be Luiza in hers. Juliana's bedroom was upstairs past Otavio Sergio's and past Luiza's. It was the last bedroom in the corridor, opposite Joaquim's. She heard the swish of her parents' bedroom door as it swung wide open. 

'Juliana, is that you?' she heard her mother call near the banisters. 

'Yes, mother, it's me.' She waited. Perhaps her mother would come down. She heard the light footsteps of her mother as she came down the staircase. Her father came after. 

'We had just watched a film on TV and we were talking,' Mrs Dantas said. 'We heard you coming. Isn't your brother with you?' 

'No, mother, he will come later.' 

'How was the party?' her father asked her. 

'Great, father. Very nice.' 

'Did you enjoy yourself?' 

'Oh, very much, father. There were plenty of people and there was a band. You should have seen it. You should have been there both of you,' she said although she knew her parents definitely preferred to stay home. 

'I'm glad you had a nice time, honey.' 

'Thank you, mother.' 

'Aren't you hungry?' Mrs Dantas asked her. 'I'll make you something to eat.'  

'No, mother, I've eaten enough. There was plenty of food there.' 

'Well, in this case I shall make us some coffee,' Mrs Dantas said. 

'Yes, mother, please.' And Mrs Dantas went over to the kitchen. Juliana and her father followed her. They walked past the entrance hall, then through a door to the right, then past the dining room, half lit at that hour. They stopped near the kitchen door. Mrs Dantas lit all the kitchen lights and promptly started filling a milk pot with water. Deftly, she took a filter paper out of a cardboard box and set it inside the brown plastic container which she put on top of the glass coffee pot, immaculately transparent, crystal clear. Next she put four soup spoons of coffee in the filter and four soup spoons of sugar into the coffee pot, the amount of sugar in the spoon being half the one of coffee. She put the milk pot almost full of water, which meant about a litre, on the cooker and switched on the gas ring. She opened the kitchen cupboard to get cups and saucers.