Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 27

Dedicated to the girl from the Poli USP volleyball team who gave my message to Barbara in 2012 or so - I love you

Chapter 27

Lying on her back, Juliana felt the touch of her head on the pillow. It was soft and very comfortable. She had just woken up. The pillow case was flowered in pastel colours on a white background and had a scent of new linen. The main events from the previous night came to her mind.  

They came rather as a sum total of everything, perhaps in the form of some evanescent note, written on the fly leaf of a fairy tale book. It didn't take her any effort to realize it was no dream. A faint fragrance of the perfume she had worn the night before still remained in the skin on her shoulder. The T-shirt she was wearing had caught its scent. She roved her eyes over the semi-darkness in her bedroom. Daylight, which inevitably filtered through the slits in the shuttered window, spelt the harbinger of many happy prospects yet to come. A bird sang an intermittent - like it was produced by rotation -, delightful distant call, a low but distinct hootlike sound. It came from some intangible nook somewhere outside, not far away, though it sounded distant, uncharted. Other birds swung past, singing in quick succession in the tall trees that bordered the house, but for a fleeting moment. The echoes of their chirps suggested lofty heights and distances beyond comparison.  

Eventually, Juliana felt as if she had been given a delicate - delicate as a nest - charming present.  

As it is quite natural on such occasions, Juliana had a compulsion to talk to Thais, because Thais had taken part in her meeting with Joao Caio. She wished to recall with her what had happened, or if not so, at least to be together with her. In fact, it wasn't the talk that would matter very much, but their mere presence and their shared knowledge. After breakfast she would pay her friend a visit.  

Later, downstairs in the dining room, she saw the breakfast table had remained laid for her exclusively. Otavio Sergio and Luiza had already had breakfast. They must have got up earlier to go to the club for a swim.  

As usual, something designer fashion was about the way the breakfast table had been laid. It showed her mother's signature on it and her mother's touch, as well as the maid's well trained carrying out of all instructions. Upon a cream table cloth were the plates, at the place she used to sit at table, different shining forks and knives and glittering spoons of different sizes, extra-white napkins, two equally shining very transparent glasses, two cups, and an apricot coloured mug. In front of it all, arranged in a semicircle, were two milk pots, one containing hot milk - which had certainly been brought two or three minutes ago with striking precision -, the other containing chilled milk. There were also a thermos coffee pot and a jug of orange juice. Bread, butter, margarine, cereal, cheese, jam, chocolate powder, and papaya were placed nearby.  

Juliana took a bread roll from a mustard paper bag that rustled nicely as she handled it. She cut the bread roll diagonally in two separate parts and then each of the parts in two halves. The crust was brown and crunchy. It cracked to the touch. It had been bought in the baker's near the bus station. They had Bus Station Bakery written in green on a neon sign above the three tall entrance doors. They made remarkably good bread there. Juliana carefully took the margarine packet, which had the name Bull Horn written on it. It had the picture of a bull on its label. It had a taste that was different from the tastes of all the other margarines she had ever tried. It was a salty tang, savoury, undefinably exotic, and slightly cheddar like. That was her favourite margarine. She didn't find Bull Horn margarine at any of the supermarkets in Sao Joao D'Acre. Her father had told her it was sold only in the region of Providencia and perhaps in some towns in the region.  

The lights were off and the room was sufficiently illuminated by daylight. It came through a French window fitted with frosted glass that opened onto a garden. There was no one to be seen, the door which led to the kitchen was shut, and the dining room would be perfectly quiet if it were not for her mother's and the maids's voices that came muffled from either the kitchen, or the backyard, from time to time.