Sapphire Moonlight

Chapter 50

Chapter 50

During that year many things changed in Joao Caio's life.  

He was often seeing Juliana as she lived in Sao Joao D'Acre in the house she shared with her friends. They met on a weekday in the evening when it was possible and went out together or met at each other's houses. They spent the weekends together.  

They went to Joao Caio's parents's house. On longer holidays they went to Providencia do Rio Turvo. Joao Caio stayed at the same hotel, and then he began to stay in Juliana's parents's house. 

Juliana had started to work part time as a trainee in an advertising agency. 

Then the end of the year approached and another Christmas and New Years's Eve and another summer holiday.  

And then there came October again, a year after the elections. 

In the large yellow house in Rua Velha Varsovia in the Cidades, in Sao Joao D'Acre, the lights in the second and third windows from the right upstairs were on.  

Joao Caio and Juliana were in the second room from the right upstairs. Juliana had been reading a book and Joao Caio had been working on engineering problems. Maria Dirce, the maid, had asked them if they wanted anything else. They didn't and she went to sleep. She didnt leave coffee in the thermos flask as Juliana would make it herself later on.  

The large yellow house in the Cidades now had the owner's wife in full charge of it. 

Joao Caio put his pen down, switched off his calculator and looked at Juliana. She put her book aside on the sofa.  

Joao Caio got up from his desk and went to the sofa where Juliana was sitting. 

'Come with me, I must show you something.' He took her by the hand and led her to the window. 

'Look.' 

They looked down at the garden in front of the house and at the street and at the trees that lined it. Everything was quiet in the street. The lights in two of the upstairs windows of the banker's house were on and so were the lights in some of the windows of the French consul's house. Then Joao Caio thought of the night when everything had started. 

'It was here that it all began. It was here that I felt a magnetic force pulling me west.' He held her. 

'It was on the day I had seen a dark woman who passed in front of Tencarlo when I was there with my friends. I guess she was a protector, a godmother fairy, or a Greek goddess, interfering with mortals, a Pallas Athene or Venus. Thoughts came to my mind after I'd seen her. Well, I don't know. Anyway, my destiny was changed. I went to Providencia and I met you.' 

'I am west,' she said.  

He kissed her. 

'I guess you are,' he said. 

'Truly I am.' 

'I felt a pull towards you.' 

'Oh, Joao!' 

'Now I want you to tell me something. Was it you? That passed there in disguise?' he asked her. 

'No, I didn't pass there in disguise. It wasn't me.'  

She smiled at him. 

'Yet I might. Maybe it was me. Passing there. Although I think it was someone else, from the list you've mentioned.' 

'You are my goddess.' 

'I am,' she whispered. 'Your goddess.' 

Joao Caio held Juliana. There was the warm scent of her hair and there was the scent of her perfume, oddly called Degredo, Exile, the same perfume the girls were wearing that summer in Providencia do Rio Turvo, that summer when he saw her for the first time, at the corner of Sinhazinha Ana Joaquina Road and Desembargador Alcindo Oscar Bueno Amancio Street, that night when he made the star a wish, and he thought about it as he kissed her and he realized they completed each other.

THE END