Page 4 of An Immaculate Deception

We cross the square and come upon a group of quadrille dancers. A drizzle has started, but it’s light enough to ignore, and even offers some relief from the heat. “It’s raining,” I say when he starts to look like he wants to join in on the dance. “We should get moving.” But Leandro takes me by the hand and draws me into the fray. I try to resist, but it’s impossible when he’s glowing like that. I find myself drawn into his orbit of joy and succumb to the dance, though I hardly know the steps. He doesn’t know the steps, either, but moves so fluidly that he blends right in, and I start to have fun, too. After the dance is over, I’m exhausted but happy. Eloisa beams at us when we rejoin her.

When I’m with Leandro I feel light as a feather. Everyone in my family is so uptight and rigid, I’m not even sure they know that this happier side of me exists. It only seems to come out when I’m with him and our friends. Perhaps we all have different sides to our personalities and certain people evoke certain sides according to the weight of their expectations, the gravity of their assumptions.

But when we get married, this will be my new life. This happiness, this looser, blithe spirit will be the norm. I see myself walking down the aisle at church in a cream lace dress. Together we’ll go to the theater, balls, fairs, festivals, church events, opera, the beach, the Jaqueira Park. The kitchen will always smell like freshly baked cake, and we’ll fit together like rice and beans (I’m rice, he’s beans).

“When will renovations at the sugar mill be ready?” I ask lightly, as though I’m making conversation, but I’m really probing for when the fazenda will be ready to house a family.

For the past half year, the comendador put Leandro in charge of renovating one of the older properties, a sugar mill that had been abandoned since the moenda broke, which prevented the distilling of sugarcane. The Fazenda Santa Tereza was neglected for several years until recently, when the comendador decided to pour resources into the restoration of the mill. But I do suspect he’s doing this in part to give Leandro a path in life. At first, the comendador encouraged Leandro to pursue commerce, but Leandro did not take to it, feeling instead an artistic calling to music and poetry. Leandro even composed several songs in the style of modinhas, and penned the first chapter of a poetry book. None of this swayed the comendador, however, who finally assigned Leandro the oversight of the fazenda and its sugar mill. It’s not at all Leandro’s style to live in an isolated farmhouse alone, but once ready, it will become lively and profitable and will be a marvelous place to raise our family.

“Maybe by year’s end,” he says and smiles. He explains that he already arranged for masons to mend the broken moenda and patch up the outbuildings, and procured the funds for the laborers to tend the sugarcane fields, making all the necessary provisions. He’s having glass shipped from Chile and Paraguay to install beautiful windows with navy-blue frames. The veranda railings and pillars will be painted in the same navy-blue shade, and the gardens will have topiaries.

“Topiaries?”

“Just like the emperor’s. Did you know, Dom Pedro II has topiaries in his gardens?”

“Is that so?”

“I have no idea, but it seems like something he would have, doesn’t it?”

I laugh. “Shall we call it the Imperial Gardens, then?”

“Consider it done. And in the parlor,” he continues cheerily, “we’ll have bright floral wallpaper and wall-embedded cabinets. They’re very fashionable nowadays, and we can fill them with polished china and coffee cups with mustache catchers.”

“But you don’t have a mustache.”

“Someday I will, and when I do, I don’t want it dipping into my coffee.”

“Fair,” I concur. “A sugar baron ought to have a mustache that is entirely free of coffee drips.”

He goes on about restoration and renovations while I calculate the timeline of events in my head. The wedding must take place before I start showing, in a few months perhaps. Surely, Leandro will understand the need for urgency. I can remain with my parents until the mill is operational and the fazenda is in good enough shape to house the three of us. Depending on the state of the Santa Tereza, I may even be able to move there right after the wedding.

It can all work out.

Suddenly, an explosion in the sky makes me jump. Bright light flashes from above, and a moment later, heavy rain gushes down on us, the kind that makes your bones shiver. I wrap my arms around myself. People start rushing in all directions, seeking shelter, elbowing one another. The group of quadrille dancers quickly disperses into the chaos.

“Eloisa!” I cry. “I can’t find Eloisa!”

I spin around, searching for her in the frenzy. I call her name, but the downpour drowns out my voice. Water pools on my eyelids and brows, and I have to keep blinking to see. My feet are soaked, my head feels icy. It seems like Leandro and I are the only ones not rushing to some determined location, the only ones standing still. Already a dense crowd shelters under the modest cover of the tram stop, while others head to their carriages to go home. Puddles start forming along the curb, and the few covered areas are already packed tight with people. The dying bonfires leave ashes and embers in their wakes. The stalls are quickly shuttering.

Nowhere do I see Eloisa.

“Poor Eloisa,” I mutter as a heavy feeling settles in my gut. When she arrives home without me Mother will scold her, even though she didn’t do anything wrong.

The rushing bodies, the frantic energy, the disarray, all make me ill at ease. That’s when it starts. Underneath the din and disorder a familiar chorus echoes. Sighing, sobbing, moaning, plaintive wailing, discordant tongues, tormented words, the twang of rage, strident voices, smacking hands…

Whimpering tongues, foul profanities bellowing across the wind, and a thousand shades writhe under the roar of thunder. The third circle, where the condemned are battered into the ground by massive hailstones of scorched rain. Some sink into the filthy mud of their own tombs, twisting the features of their already disfigured faces, reaching out their hands for help that will never come. Others run over the heads of the fallen who lie drowning. They are all guilty of gullet sins.

I cover my ears, squeeze my eyes shut, and start counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…

A gentle hand lands on my shoulder.

“Here.” Leandro’s voice is tender. I look up at him. His honey-brown eyes are earnest and kind. “Let’s find my carriage.”

He points to the other end of the plaza where a line of carriages is moving along, with people rushing to take off.

“I’ll take you home,” Leandro says. “Eloisa might already be on the tram headed that direction. If we keep running around in circles, we’ll catch our deaths.”

He’s right. She might have already given up finding us. And besides, Leandro and I will be alone in his carriage. It’s the perfect time to finally tell him about our baby.