Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

A little before half past eight she came, dressed in a flowery dress with different tones of blue from light to dark and sparse black against a white background, and the beautiful smile of the night before.  

He went up to her. He had arrived at twenty past.  

'Have you been waiting long?' she asked him. 

'No, not long.'  

He indicated a table.  

'Would you like to sit down?' he said. They were on the sidewalk at Arbela.  

'I was going to invite you for a walk, actually. Would you like to come?' 

'I'd love to. I'm keen on walking.' 

'Let's go up that street at the corner. There's a church up there and a square I'd like to show you. It's near a convent which is on a side street. It's a beautiful square. I'm sure you'll like it.' 

'Let's go then.' 

'Come! This way, come!' 

She told him she had got up a little later in the morning and had breakfast. She asked him what time did he get up. She had gone to Thais's house in the morning and he had gone to Ernestino Dias for a ride. The day before yesterday in the evening, in Sao Joao, he had gone to his friend Bruno Cincinato's house, together with another friend called Miguel Bueno. His two friends had gone to the beach to go sailing as they enjoyed sailing a lot. Juliana had never sailed and Joao Caio had sailed once. 

They had reached the corner of Sinhazinha Ana Joaquina Road and had turned into it. 

He named the beach Bruno and Miguel had gone to, Arinhan-Ropia, and she said wasn't it a coincidence, her family had a house there and they went there on holidays. He, too, knew that beach very well, as he used to go there when he was a boy and when he was a teenager. He went there with his family. He had done lots of things there. She did a lot of things there too, and there were plenty of places she liked a great deal. They talked about the beach being like a very wide crescent - as many beaches are but for them it was as if only that beach was like a wide crescent, and perhaps there was something special about it really, with the beautiful avenue and the elegant buildings, with all the very nice people that went there every summer, and about the bars and restaurants and the streets and the beach itself. She and her family would in fact go there in two or three week's time. 

They went past the church and were approaching Convent Square. They walked into the paved area and moved to a point well into the square where they sat at a bench near the pavilion. 

'There's the convent over there,' she said pointing to a big austere building on a side street opposite them. It stood beyond the trees that limited the square. It was made of red bricks that were exposed and made you think of silence and perennial centuries. 

'It's an architectural beauty,' he said. 

'It is.' 

'Quite imposing.' 

'It really is. Plenty of style.'  

'You know, my mother studied there.' 

'Oh, did she?' 

'Yes.'  

'Later on or some other time we'll go near the convent to have a look. Unless you want to go there now,' she said. 

'No, let's stay here. It's very nice. You were right, it's a beautiful square.' 

The sound of the horn of the twenty forty-five train to Sao Joao that had come from Florenciano Gomes and was now leaving came to them as if from very far, then near, then as if going to a far away point on earth east. They heard the train rumbling carriage by carriage, the carriages rumbled one by one twice in a double rumble with a short interval in between them, four times, sometimes it sounded as if each carriage was carrying a load of steel sheets loosely tied that rattled loosely regularly, only it wasn't, one by one as if there would never be an end to it in that heavy metallic race one carriage another carriage another carriage one more carriage until finally the last carriage passed and went away taking its rattle with it to disappear horn and all round a bend near the mayor's house leaving only an impression, a very lasting one.