Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

After saying goodbye to Joao Caio's parents, he and Juliana drove along the street on the left of Central Square in Ernestino Dias as far as the main street, into which they turned right amidst traffic that was lighter than on weekdays. 

'I have a passion for wooden houses,' Juliana was saying. 'And for wood-burning stoves.' She was referring to Joao Caio's grandparents' house in Santa Clara.  

For him as well they retained a quaint, fascinating aura. 

'We have wood-burning stoves in the houses we stay in in our farm,' she went on. 'The houses are built of brick, though.'  

People strolled down the pavements on the relatively quieter Saturday afternoon. A group of youths, boys and girls, walked the other way from Juliana and Joao Caio, on the square pavement, heading for the town centre unhurriedly. Three young men stood on the street corner opposite the square talking. Some people shopped in an atmosphere of languor. A gorgeous sun warmed everything up pleasantly. It cast a golden tinge on the sidewalks, on the walls, on the roofs and drainpipes and car bodyworks. Not a breeze was blowing.  

'The front part is built of brick,' Joao Caio was telling her, 'and the back part is made of wood. Sort of rambling. It was built in 1925.'  

'I'm longing to see the brook at the bottom of the backyard,' Juliana said.  

Just a block from the square, they turned left into a bend in the avenue that ran alongside the railway line. This put them along the other side, in relation to the main street, of the block they had just left. They were now going the opposite way from that in the main street.  

At the end of that block, on the right-hand side of the avenue, there was the level crossing. Despite the sliding barrier being open, the warning light off, and the bells silent, Joao Caio halted and looked both sides to make sure the passage was absolutely free and safe. They drove across and were in the other part of town, the quarter that was beyond the railway line.  

This quarter was called Anunciada. Not long ago several of its side streets were still unpaved. The street along which they were now going was itself paved up only to a certain point some three blocks ahead. Then a dirt stretch started. The houses were old mainly smaller houses. Some large houses, however, could be counted among them, forlorn, some of them with ten, twelve windows at the front, that had been fashionable in their time.  

Children played barefoot in the street. One tiny little boy holding a stick with an L-shaped end, ran to keep pace with a small rubber wheel that rolled ahead of him. He used the stick to control the spin and direction. Juliana looked at him tenderly. She put her hand on Joao Caio's shoulder and drew his attention to the boy.  

'Oh, he's so cute!' she said. Joao Caio acknowledged just as tenderly. 

'He oughtn't to be running in the street, though,' she worried, changing her tone to a tone of strictness.  

At different places here and there women could be seen observing the street through windows or from porches. Middle-aged men wearing white vests or stripped to the waist sat in front of their houses near the gate impassively. All of them, men and women, stared with attention as the car passed. Juliana found this quarter rather similar to the one in Providencia beyond the bridge over the Rio Turvo, the one that went as far as the beginning of the internal road to Ernestino. 

They drove along that street for three blocks and turned left, then right, and right again into the dirt road to Santa Clara, and there was no town anymore, only the road, and the silence of the road, that could be felt or guessed despite the noise of the car and its engine. After three hundred metres, at a bifurcation, they took the right fork.