Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 29

Chapter 29

They were in Church Square sitting on a bench that was at right angles with Marechal Clemente Street where the Town Hall was across the street from the square. The bench was in the shade of trees-of-heaven and a black oak. Behind it were a geranium bed and a petunia bed. A sapucaia tree stood a few metres away opposite, to the right, and skyline honeylocusts and magnolias were about. One or two clouds were visible in the sky that were not exactly clouds but little more than mist. The sky was finely tuned, something between slightly paler blue and limpid blue, due to propitious, beautifully inspired atmospheric conditions. The sun shone conspicuously and yet inconspicuously. You felt its presence if you directed your attention to it, otherwise you would forget it, despite it shining brightly since it was summer. A faint breeze blew sporadically. 

She liked all the something that was about him, though she hadn't been able to define clearly yet what that something was. She touched his left hand. He had his right arm round her shoulder. 

'You're gentle,' she said. 

'You are too,' he added. 'You're tender.'  

'I like your perfume,' she said. 

'I'm glad you like it.' 

'I like the way you smell.' 

'It's a French perfume,' he said. 

'I like all the smell.' 

A number of people were in the square, with several benches taken and people standing close by when there was no place for them in the benches with their friends, or further away in circles on the paved area either standing or sitting on the ground. They were at home in the square. It was second-nature to them to behave like its owners and this had nothing to do with their parents being taxpayers. Many of the people that had been at Arbela or at The Seagull or at any other of the bars in town on Friday night and Saturday night or that had been driving around, were there now, dressed in casual clothes, talking languidly. Another fraction of that contingent kept passing in the streets around in cars, pick-up trucks and four-by-fours. Their mood was a mood of remembrance and assessment of events from the previous nights. As no remarkable adventures should be expected from the Sunday night as usual, they didn't look into the near future, but focused on what was happening right now in the square or in the streets surrounding it as the weekend was ebbing away. United there, any enjoyment the Sunday afternoon might yet afford them would be considered an extra-profit. 

'Your eyes,' Joao Caio said. 

'What about my eyes?' she said. 

'They are not hard.' 

'I'm not hard myself.' 

The church bell chimed four. Joao Caio would leave in two hours' time. His mood was not a melancholy one for leaving. When a teenager or a young adult in Ernestino Dias on holidays, that would have been a melancholy time as he would return to Sao Joao, though he liked Sao Joao very much and wouldn't live anywhere else apart from that city. Time for coming back would be next holidays only, except for the long weekends such as Easter, Corpus Christi or Independence Day. If it was a Sunday in the middle of the holidays there wouldn't be any melancholy feeling. Now Joao Caio's mood was quite the reverse, as he would return next weekend. He was already looking forward to that weekend. 

'Will you come next Friday?' Juliana had asked him. 

'Of course I will. Not in a month of Sundays I would not come.'  

'You're cute.' 

'Do you want me to come?' 

'Of course I do. Don't you know I do?'