The Devil on Her Tongue (60 page)

Summer arrived, and I was filled with anticipation about the coming harvest and my second season of work in the
adega
.

One hot evening, Cristiano was at the stables and I sat sewing in the light of the candle on the table. Candelária was on the floor nearby, playing with her rag dollies.

Bonifacio came from his bedroom and stood in front of me. I looked up at him, the needle poised above the cotton. Something in his expression gave me a whispering sense of approaching upheaval.

“The sham of our marriage cannot continue,” he said with no preamble.

The needle was suddenly cold in my fingers, in spite of the steamy air. “What do you mean?”

“Marriage is a sacrament, a contract with God. In God’s eyes
we are joined forevermore. But the deception … You brought a bastard child into our home. Every day it’s a burden difficult for me to bear.”

I glanced at Candelária and tried to swallow, but I had no saliva. As if I had called her, she left her dollies and came to me. She put her hand on my knee, watching my face.

“The ordination of a priest is permanent,” Bonifacio said. “It is not a sin to leave the priesthood, but it is a sin to break vows. I have struggled with keeping my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. I am no longer living in poverty. I strive to be obedient. As for the third …” He stopped. “As for chastity, I fell into temptation, and this led me to take irreversible action. When alone and denying myself food, my powers of perception were sharpened. I had visions. I relied on 1 Corinthians 10:13:
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it
.”

I steeled myself for his confession, thinking of the self-inflicted disfigurement he lived with now.
Not like this, Bonifacio, in front of the child
. I picked up Candelária’s hand.

But he said nothing more of that horror. “When I took my vows, I received a spiritual mark that cannot be erased. I have decided that I will begin the process to be reinstated into the priesthood.”

I opened my mouth then closed it, still holding Candelária’s hand.

“I am going to apply for dispensation from the Superior of the Order of the Diocese of Rio de Janeiro. I will put my faith in God’s understanding to allow me to return to my life’s work of bringing God to the indigenous people of Brazil.”

My mind was spinning. I was an employee of Kipling’s now. Dona Beatriz liked me living on the quinta. Even if Bonifacio left the Counting House, surely she would allow me to stay here.

I had my diamonds.

“It will take a full year or more for all of this to be resolved. But I am confident of God’s plan for me. And when I leave, I will take Cristiano back to his home.” At this I stood, dropping Candelária’s hand, my sewing falling to the floor. “Perhaps I’ll find him a position
at the mission. In this way he has a better chance at growing up to live by God’s holy rules.”

“No. No, you can’t take Cristiano, Bonifacio,” I said.

He looked at the floor. “This is another of my sorrows. I have not been able to help him as I hoped.”

“This is his home now,” I said firmly, waving my hand towards the walls of the cottage.

“It will never be my home.” As his voice rose, Candelária moved closer against me. “It’s a place of evil.”

I clicked my tongue impatiently. “What do you mean, evil? It’s a beautiful place.”

“Evil lives here,” he said, and looked at Candelária.

I drew a deep breath and put my hand on Candelária’s hair. “Run into the bedroom and play with your dollies there,” I told her. She looked up at me, unblinking. She understood so much. “Go, darling,” I urged, attempting a smile, and she slowly left me, picking up her dolls and going into the bedroom.

Bonifacio had waited to continue. “I need to take Cristiano back to Brazil before too much more time passes. He’s becoming too soft, too much a carefree Portuguese, instead of what he really is.”

“A slave?” I said very quietly.

“No. As I just said, he could work in a mission, assisting his own people.”

“Do you really care about his future, Bonifacio? You don’t care about her, and I can accept that,” I said, just above a whisper, glancing at the bedroom. “But Cristiano cannot help you find your way. This is his life now. You can’t take him back there.”

Bonifacio’s face was worn and troubled.

“He can have a good life in Funchal,” I said. “He speaks English well. With all the English here, it’s beneficial to him—and to Candelária—to know the language.”

“Beneficial? What is beneficial for the girl is to know my influence. She came into this world at a disadvantage, born of sin. As I just said, of evil. I have to make sure she’s on the right path.”

“She’s two and a half years old. Stop talking about evil.”

“It’s never too early for one to start knowing God. I must make
things right. Keeping Candelária on the path of righteousness is the start. Going back to Brazil with Cristiano will come next.”

He looked at me with sudden hope on his face. I knew it was the hope of escaping the muddle of our lives to restart his own, clean and forgiven. “But things can never be as they were, Bonifacio. Time has changed them. Cristiano is not the boy he was when you took him away. And you are not the man you were.”

He turned from me and went down the hall, and I heard the sound of his door closing. I didn’t know how he’d interpreted my words.

At a creak in the floorboards, I looked towards the open doorway. Cristiano stood on the verandah there. I went to him. There was an odd pallor to his skin. “Cristiano,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away from my touch, and ran across the sitting room and into his own room, slamming the door.

I got Candelária into her nightdress, and once she was settled in her small bed near mine, I knocked softly on Cristiano’s door.

“Go away,” he called, and so I left him.

In the middle of the night, I was still awake. I went to Cristiano’s room and silently opened the door and crossed to his bed. He slept, but his breath came quickly, his lips pursing, uttering tiny threads of sound, a dream-whisper. Although he hadn’t had even one nightmare for well over a year, I wondered if his hearing Bonifacio’s words had allowed the demons to begin their haunting again.

I stayed there for the rest of the night, watching over him should the nightmare come. I thought of his bright smile and his straight white teeth, the dimple in his left cheek. Only yesterday I had seen his patience and gentleness as he sat on the floor across from Candelária and tried to teach her to catch a ball he rolled to her, and how to roll it back to him. I hated thinking of him frightened and confused by what he’d overheard.

As the first light of morning came, he stirred and sat up, blinking at me in surprise. And then his face cleared, and I knew he was remembering what had happened the evening before. “I’m not going
with him,” he said, his voice foggy with sleep. “I’ll run away. I hate him,” he said, his voice clear now. “I hate him, sister.”

I sat on the edge of his bed and picked up his hand. I had never spoken to Cristiano of what Bonifacio had told me had happened in Tejuco. Now I felt I must. “I’m so, so sorry for what you have suffered. Bonifacio suffers also, because he knows he did the wrong thing, and should not have allowed that to happen to your mother. It’s part of what makes him … how he is. But he thought it was the right thing to take you away from there.”

“But why does he want to take me back?”

I took a deep breath. “I think he’s confused about right and wrong. He wants to fix mistakes, but he doesn’t know how.”

“It won’t fix anything to take me away from here. From you, and Candelária, and … and everyone. I’m not going,” he said more loudly, his voice suddenly a shade deeper, his face so grave. At that moment I knew what he would look like when he was a man.

“I know,” I said, leaning closer and speaking softly. “You’re not going. I will never let him take you.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise, Cristiano. You will stay with me, no matter what.”

“Will he try to take Candelária?”

I put my hand on my throat, shocked at the thought. “No! Oh no. He’ll never take her. She’s mine,” I said, and then put my arms around him and spoke against his head. “As you are mine, my own little brother.” His curls were soft, and smelled of the sun and dust and growing boy.

O
ver the next few months, Bonifacio spoke more and more about returning to Brazil. In July, he told me he’d written the letter and sent it to Rio de Janeiro and would wait patiently for the ship that would bring his message from God.

I was not as patient, for as soon as he had announced his plan to leave, I felt a growing anticipation. As I had promised Cristiano, Bonifacio would not take him. He could not bully Cristiano into going with him.

Thinking of my life without Bonifacio felt like a gift. I would be free of his suspicions and increasingly troubling conduct. I was often on edge, as he had acquired a habit of silently appearing where and when I didn’t expect him. When we were in the presence of others, he now kept a hand on me—on my shoulder or forearm or the back of my neck, as if claiming his ownership of me.

He began praying at the foot of Candelária’s bed as she fell asleep every night. I asked him to stop, but he wouldn’t, and Candelária was confused by his presence and whispered prayers. I would lie beside her, holding her until she was asleep, anxious about Bonifacio’s concern with what he saw as my daughter’s inborn evil.

Quinta Isabella’s harvest of Malvasia Babosa had been successful. The day the grapes were pressed, Candelária and I watched the pickers hired by Espirito carry huge baskets of grapes to the
lagar
.

There was room for four men to work in the rectangular wooden trough raised above the ground. In the centre was a huge hinged crossbeam balanced by a stone so heavy it must have been transported there by dozens of oxen. As the first group of four men climbed into the trough, two more strummed a slow, steady melody on small
cítaras
, and the workers, knee-deep in the grapes, lifted their legs high to step in rhythm. The
mosto
began flowing along a gutter, through a strainer and into a wide, low barrel. It was then dumped back into the
lagar
for the second treading. When the workers had extracted all they could with their feet, the stalks, skins and remaining pulp were raked into the centre of the trough and bound by thick rope. By the turning of the massive stone wheel, the crossbeam was slowly lowered onto the coiled rope of grape leavings, forcing out the liquid known as “wine of the rope.” By now the workers were covered in sweat and breathing heavily.

The remaining grape skins and residue were put into clean water and strained, and the resulting refreshing drink was given to the pressers. One of them brought a hornful to Cristiano. He tasted it and licked his lips, and Candelária jumped up and down and said, “Me, me too,” and was also given a sip of the sweet grape juice.

Then the pulpy debris still left in the
lagar
was cleaned out to be mixed into manure for fertilizer. Another quantity of grapes was dumped into the
lagar
, and the second group of men began the next pressing, giving the first men time to rest. The pressing went on through the day.

That night, as I lay in bed, the music and rhythm of the treading remained a steady beat in my head. When I brought my hand to my face, I still smelled the sweetness of the pressed grapes. I thought of Espirito’s long, slender fingers on the baskets as he helped dump the grapes into the
lagar
in the pressing house with the ease of someone who seemed at home in every room he entered. As he worked, his face lost the stiffness that had been there since Olívia’s death, and he had, for a short while, looked like the old Espirito, full of life.