Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

With her fingers Juliana dug a hole in the sand. It was warm, slightly wet, greyish sand. Although she was left-handed, she was using her right hand. At first it was hard, the sand offered resistance, but then it gave way and got soft; there was no roughness anymore.  

As she persisted in her digging it became thoroughly wet, water, naturally, almost magically, appearing from the recesses of the sand ground, to fill the hollow.  

Juliana tucked her hand into the opening once more and on so doing struck a seashell. It seemed to have been made of very thin, very light yet hard, unshiny porcelain. After examining it, she put the seashell momentarily aside. She held a handful of sand that had been removed from the hole. She pressed it tight until it dried up and it was good to feel the tightly packed sand in the palm of the hand and then to rub it away with only that hand without the help of the other.  

Beside her, Joao Caio lay on his belly. They were both lying on their bellies on the beach. Joao Caio had his face against his right arm, folded underneath, so that his face could not be seen.  

A number of people were on the beach, but the beach was not crowded. It was about a quarter to nine in the morning.  

The sun was shining as if it had stopped in its present position in the sky and as if it would stay there for a long time with a friendly shine. A picture of Joshua on horseback holding the palm of his hand towards the sun as he asked God to stay the sun so that he could go on battling in daylight, came romantically to Juliana's mind. It belonged to a book her father had bought her when she was a child - she couldn't even read at the time -, full of beautiful illustrations. There were articles about the Bible in it, among many other quite interesting articles on a whole variety of different themes.  

There were no clouds in the sky. An artist might have added a few small, very thin, almost non-existent clouds that would hang in the blue, at least a dab of white as it was, only for the sky not to show entirely blue, for it might look like fake sky. But in that real sky that morning there weren't any clouds.  

A boy screamed in the distance for a ball. Another boy squealed with delight while splashing in a very shallow part of the sea close to the beach. Due to the distance it sounded faintly. It was the same with the oscillating intensity of people's talking or screaming as they jumped up and down in the water when the waves came or broke with a rough friendly ongoing sound.  

Ripples reached intermittently the place where Joao Caio and Juliana were lying. As the ripples flowed away they both had a sensation, a pleasant one, as though they were being drawn into the sea, inexorably, by a powerful irresistible force, that the only thing that prevented it from happening was the force of friction from their bellies against an equator of sand. Yet the strength of that pulling was such that it was capable of driving them out of alignment on the ground, either clockwise or anticlockwise, like they were lose handles of a clock gone crazy amid a soft thrilling turbulence. It sounded as if they could feel in their bellies that the earth was round and that they were on top of that roundness, almost falling.  

Fighting to turn round and lie on his back caused Joao Caio to almost lose his balance. Juliana had turned on her side in order to watch him. He looked at her navel. Juliana was wearing a white bikini with a pattern of very light blue almost invisible dots. It was stained here and there with patches of sand. Joao Caio touched her waistline with his left hand.  

The memory came to him of once when he was a boy, four years old. A friend of his mother had taken him to spend the day with her. It was a difficult period in Joao Caio's life. His younger brother - his youngest brother hadn't been born yet - was ill and Joao Caio's parents were giving a great part of their attention to his brother and to taking care of his brother. They lived in Santa Maria da Concepcao but they had come to Sao Joao D'Acre and stayed there because it was the best place where his brother could be treated. This friend, a young woman - she was blonde - still single, took him for a long walk, and a ride by trolleybus and by streetcar. She took him to a shop and bought him some little plastic toy cars - one or two of them were racing cars. He remembered she was a beautiful woman, she smiled at him constantly and was very gentle and kind all the time and took great care of him. At lunchtime she took him to her parents' house, where she lived. Then she went to her bedroom to change clothes. She asked him to stay in the central living room, and went to her bedroom right in front but she did not close the door as she did not want to lose sight of him. He did not do as she had told him, though, to stay there. He went straight to her bedroom's doorway. As he looked in she was just bringing up her skirt at the waistline. Before she hooked it, he saw her navel. It was a very beautiful navel. He would never forget it again. She lifted her gaze and saw him and she smiled at him and said soflty: 

'No, Joao Caio. Don't! You shouldn't. Go back to the other room.' She smiled at him. As he insisted, she said, 'Go. I'm changing clothes. You're not supposed to see it,' she said gently. Now that he thought about it he saw that that had been the softest, most charming, enforcement of a prohibition that had been imposed on him in his life. She wasn't angry with him or strict. She simply said that he was not to do that, she managed in a way he did not see it, and that was all, and she said it all gently, kindly. 

Later they had lunch there in her parents's house - her mother was there -, and in the afternoon she took him for a walk in the streets and at the end of the afternoon she took him back to his parents. 

'Hi,' Juliana smiled at him. 

He looked at her. 

'I said, Hi!' she bent over him and kissed him. 'Hi, there!' she whispered. 

'Hi,' he blinked in the sunlight.  

'Did you get to sleep all right?' she asked him attentively.  

'No, I didn't,' he said. 

'Oh, Joao.' 

He shaded his eyes with the open palm of his right hand turned obliquely to where the sun was. 

'I thought you were asleep,' she said. 

'No, almost. Perhaps a little. Somewhere in that region. That borderline, you know.' 

'That borderline, darling? Oh, poor darling. How did you manage in the borderline?' She kissed him quickly on the forehead. 'Such a narrow place.' 

He didn't know what to answer, he smiled. 

'You don't have to struggle to find an answer when you don't know what to answer.' She kissed him.  

'But if you want to sleep,' she went on. 'Then I'll wake you up later.' She made up her mind, 'Why don't you? After all you should be tired.' 

'No, I'm not tired. But it's fine to lie here. Really fine.' 

'Isn't it? I find it so marvellous.' She busied herself again with the small deep tunnel she was building. 

'You see, honey, I'd no idea playing poker could be so fun,' she said. 

'It can. Although yesterday I wasn't in a mood for playing it thinking. I was lazy.' 

'It was nice.' 

'It was.'  

Joaquim, Thais, Marcelo and Elaine were somewhere else on the beach. The same went for Roberto, Sandra, Denise and Ariovaldo. They had all been together the day before. In the evening they had gone out together. Still early in the evening they had decided to go to Juliana's house to try to find something to do to enjoy themselves. It had been agreed that playing poker might do. It could turn out to do nicely, and it did. Juliana didn't know how to play poker and Joao Caio had to teach her. In the end she could play it relatively well - at least she enjoyed it very much. Both of them played only for fun, though. 

Joao Caio kept looking at Juliana as she dug in the sand.  

'Have a look at the other end of the beach,' he said a moment later. 

'It does look nice. Why don't we drive towards it in the afternoon, as far as we can?'  

'Let's do it,' he said. 

'You feel like going there?' 

'I do.' 

He glanced at the other end of the beach and then he stared at her.  

Joao Caio invited Juliana to come into the water. 

In the background was the continuous splashing sound of the waves as they broke.  

On the beach a man walked by pretty near them selling ice lollies from a very white, portable, thermos box.  

They walked into the water until it came to a little over their knees. As they walked they felt, both of them, the water's resistance and there was a tendency to their losing their balance and they felt the water's coolness and the sand underneath the sole of their feet.