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Chapter 5
Dreams and Apprehension
Testing the Signs
Upon returning to Itacambira, they found Gilton with the drilling equipment in the yard. Although he had been disinterested before in what Cristina had to say, he was now very enthusiastic about the crystal mining. He gathered all the equipment on the farm: diesel-engine compressor, driller, borer, hoses, line lubes, pickaxes, hoes, shovels, wheelbarrow, rope, buckets and other tools. Everything was placed on the back of the truck. Slightly excited, he said, “Everything’s here. I thought it would be better to move as early as possible.”
“But the prospectors only come next week.”
“Yes, but let’s take everything to the place right now.”
Obviously, he was anxious to start mining, to take his shot at the chance of finding an easy fortune.
The following morning, helped by Edu and accompanied by Cristina, Gilton hauled everything to the Old Farm Mine. When they got to the old well, she asked them to stop, and all of them climbed down from the truck. Holding a sheet with a small layout and numbers, she led them to a place some twenty meters from the well, where they had found a small crystal pan. With a tape measure, and helped by the two men, she measured and staked out the place. They used wood stakes, about two feet high, buried into the ground close to each other. When they’d finished, the area—if seen from above—looked like a circle with a two-meter radius. Cristina took off her boots, in and out of the staked-out area, and said affirmatively, “It’s right here.”
“But we ain’t gonna dig up the whole place, are we?” Gilton asked.
“We are indeed,” she answered. “Although there is stronger activity in the middle, there’s crystal in the whole area, understand?”
While walking and gesturing in the area, she explained that the itching was stronger in the central stretch, from one side of the circle to the other, and weaker in the adjacent areas.
“There’s this electricity business,” said Gilton. “I came here with Júlia more than once, took off my boots, and walked barefooted all over the mine, the same way you do, and never felt anything! What is it you feel?”
“Itching, as if ants were crawling over my skin. But don’t ask me anymore because it’s too hard to explain. I myself don’t know why I feel this.”
The troubled young man took off his boots and walked barefooted on the area, as the young woman had done, but felt nothing.
“The following is this,” said a smiling Edu, “that to feel it you got to have power, which you don’t.” He paused and finished in a serious tone of voice, “Even then it’s hard to believe.”
“But this is very big,” Gilton said to Cristina. “I reckon you have no idea how hard it is to drill here. It will take a long time. What we could do is drill open a well about five feet wide, just like the others, and if there ain’t no crystal, then we have less work to do.”
“But there is crystal in the entire area,” she insisted assertively.
“Hey, you know how long this is gonna take? Think about it—months. If we dig the well, it’ll go faster and we’ll get to the crystal soon, if there’s any crystal, that is.”
Once the matter was settled, they positioned the equipment and marked off a smaller area in the middle, where the electric activity was more intensive. All they could do now was wait for the prospectors to arrive. Going back to the truck, Cristina stopped, turned around, stared at the staked-out area, and had the clear impression that she was familiar with that panorama.
...
Problems with the Itching Sensation
The two young women and Edu decided on sightseeing, so that Cristina could get to know the rest of the farm while they waited for the three prospectors to arrive. Edu helped them plot some routes. At the start, they walked towards the East, sleeping the first night at the Fox Mine, before proceeding on to three other mines, all of them close to the road. The second day they headed south, towards the Mine creek flatland, then turned north, in order to come back to the farm house. They rode mules, and an additional mule hauled all the camping gear, tools, and food.
At the outset, they passed by the Marsh Mine, at the bank of a brook which had the same name. Marsh was a huge mine, close to an enormous hillside, showing some signs of earth movement throughout nearly the whole area. Cristina walked quickly in several directions and felt intensive piezoelectric activity practically everywhere. She didn’t stop to identify concentrations of this activity because time was short and they had much to do before the day was over. Back on the road, Cristina on the mule, they followed an old trail, close to the hillside. Halfway through it and without dismounting, Edu showed them an abandoned well, some yards below.
He told them that, soon after returning to the farm, he and a buddy started digging it, to split with Jeremias whatever profits might come from this undertaking. He chose this place because, as a child, he remembered citrine being found here. In fact, prospectors rushed to the place. But the material in the well was too hard and unknown. Furthermore, and unlike what usually happens, no signs of patterns emerged as they dug deeper. All of this, plus the slow pace of the work, made Jeremias fear a loss, and he told them to stop digging when they were about five meters deep. After telling the story, Edu asked Cristina to make a test there.
“Why not later?” she replied. “I’ll have to come back here, anyway, to map out the place, so we can make it then, understand?”
In the Little Palmtree and Closed Palmtree Mines, Cristina commented that the electric activity was small.
...
At sunset, they reached the base of a huge hill, part of the mountain range they had seen before from the Dead Ox location. The Fox Mine was at the top of this hill. Climbing was extremely difficult. Huge rocks, weighing hundreds of tons, were found down below and on the hill itself. Apparently, they had rolled down from the hilltop in prehis toric times. Going through them was like wandering through a labyrinth, but Edu knew the trail as well as anybody. In some places, they had to dismount and walk, pulling the animals behind them. It was getting dark when they arrived at a white-sand plateau.
“It’s right after this sand patch,” Edu told them.
After walking some two hundred meters, they came to firm land on the northern side, where they pitched their tent. Edu unsaddled the animals and took them to some high grass, tying them next to a well.
“We have a problem, Edu,” said Cristina when he came back. “I have this great itching sensation, of incredible intensity, and I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, understand?”
“ Oh, no, that’s all we need.”
They discussed the problem and Júlia’s solution was to improvise a hammock. ...
At dawn, the two young women were able to appreciate the place better. It ran east-west for about two hundred yards. There was a sandstone wall on the East side and some Dog’s teeth on the west side, in the open space through which they had arrived the day before. The height was about fifty meters, with high steep sandstone and Dog’s tooth blocks to the south. The rocks were lower to the north, where the plateau opened in a semicircle of firm soil. This is where they camped down for the night. Cristina was certain that the sand was pure quartzite. Crystal chips were everywhere, left over from ancient mining operations.
After breakfast, while Edu took down the camp and prepared the animals, the two young women went to see the headwaters of the Highgrass Creek. ...
They came back and found that Edu had the animals ready to go. They came down the hill on the west side and took a trail to the left, to the Mine Creek flatland region. They reached the Dame Creek and, prior to fording it, climbed up its right bank for a few meters, reaching a mine that bore the same name as the creek. Electric activity was small there and some remaining crystals found among much trash appeared reddish and smoked.
Having forded the creek, they came to a beautiful place named Candle, at the end of which there was a low hill, which they climbed to see a huge stretch of flatlands with little high grass and no shrubs at all, the Mine Creek flatland. On the way back to the farmhouse, they went by the Burned Hide Mine, which in its heyday had yielded a lot of citrine. Cristina walked around and, sure enough, felt that itching sensation.
Back at last in the main house, she now had a nearly full mental image of the whole property. In fact, as regards the crystal mines themselves, her knowledge was indeed full.
Gilton started drilling by himself the place that had been staked out.
“I don’t believe your stories much,” he said to Cristina, “but since we have to drill and dig, anyway, maybe I can find some crystals before those prospectors arrive here.”
Cristina followed the slow evolution of his work. Only the thought of maybe striking it rich, by finding a fortune at any moment, could justify his solitary and unproductive labor.
The Feeling of Defeats
The hard work Gilton had started picked up speed after the three men hired by Jeremias arrived. Cristina expected to obtain at any time confirmation or denial that she was dealing with phenomena transcending the scientific realm. Her anxiety to find out made her work even harder. She would spend almost all of her time out there in the field, following what the men were doing and even helping them. She mainly rendered support services, providing tools, fuel, and food. On average, the men drilled about two feet a day, but this average would shrink as they reached deeper depths because the sandstone would get harder. Some crystals appeared here and there, no more than three centimeters in length, in small ores that would snake their way through the soil. The crystals were totally transparent, their surfaces well faced and so pure that they seemed made of clear water.
Twenty days of drilling went by, and they had reached a depth of only some twenty-five feet. Gilton and the workers were disappointed because at this same depth, in the old well, pay dirt had been struck. Cristina requested to go down and take a look. With a lamp connected to a battery, she examined the place, repeated the ritual, and noticed an extraordinary amount of itching.
“Let’s not be discouraged, guys, the crystal is near, understand? It’s very near!” she said quite excitedly.
Two and a half days went by and then the man working down below announced that he had found some rock.
“Of the quartzdrum type?” someone asked from up above.
“Wait a sec, it’s hard to tell yet. I’ll have to clean up down here first ‘cause there’s a whole lot of sand and gravel.”
Once he had cleaned up the bottom, everybody went down, one at the time, to analyze what was there.
“This ain’t crystal nor quartzdrum, sure looks like granite. Only the devil knows how large and thick it is,” said a disappointed Gilton.
They kept working in rotation, so that there would be two people on the bottom at one time. Everybody agreed that the find was granite, and they all felt as disappointed and frustrated as Gilton. Even Cristina herself looked a bit downcast at the find. They hit the rock with the lever and there was a sharp sound, typical of the com pact rock underneath. They all looked at each other in discouragement.
“We’ll have to shoot some bullets here,” one of the men said, meaning that they would need to use explosives. Everyone agreed.
However, when they were all back on top, Cristina suggested they talk some more, and she started by saying, “ Look, the violent shaking, the pressure and force of an explosion, could damage the crystal underneath, couldn’t it?”
“It’s possible, assuming there is crystal, but there’s no other way ‘cept to use them explosives,” replied Gilton.
“But wait, can’t we just cut the rock slowly and steadily, using a sharp pointer and a heavy sledgehammer?” asked one of the men.
There followed a discussion, in which the men tried to figure out the best way to do the job. Cristina acted as the moderator. Gilton offered a proposal: “How about if we do it this way? I’m gonna use the small drill on that stone. If it don’t work, then I try a larger drill and another, till we find out how thick that rock is. Longest drill we have here is about five feet long. If that still don’t work, I’ll just leave it up to you folks. I mean, if that big rock is that thick, over five feet, then it’s your problem ‘cause you’re the one who’s gonna pay them men here,” he concluded, turning to Cristina.
This was agreed to and Gilton went down the hole with the drilling machine and the drillers. He probed for quite a while because the granite was very hard. When even the longest drill wouldn’t hit pay dirt, he gave up, climbed back up, and said irritably, “It’s up to you people now. I quit ‘cause I ain’t patient ‘nough to keep smitin’ no rock. When you guys find somethin’, which you ain’t gonna find, you all just call me.”
The three men started working patiently, and Cristina followed what they were doing, every step of the way. They kept chipping at the rock. They drilled four holes about twenty centimeters deep, some forty centimeters from each other, formed a square, and placed little amounts of explosives in the holes. Then they chipped away at the resulting walls and repeated the operation.
At the farm, people had begun to disbelieve Cristina’s previous forecasts. Gilton went so far as to maliciously imply that the itching Cristina felt was from granite `power`.
How come there is all that granite down there if it is not found anywhere else on the farm? Cristina wondered. What if it is a huge boulder?
The rock just sat there, a threat to her. It could be a hose of cold water dampening her enthusiasm; it could mean a major disappointment. The crystal might not exist, and everything connected to it would crumble. The itching could be a bodily problem of hers and not a consequence of the piezoelectric effect. That granite could well mean that her mission was but a dream. Puzzled and astounded, she reflected, How tenuous is the line dividing a dream from reality.
She entered into a funk, her mind drifting off into a vicious circle of “what ifs.” If she had opposed Gilton’s advice and insisted on opening the entire area, maybe the granite wouldn’t be an obstacle now. If she had been less full of herself, more humble, she would have placed the center of the hole on ...
Cristina allowed the men to continue working and sought to deal with her silent drama. How long should she insist on cutting through that rock? Feeling hopelessly dejected, she even thought of giving up and going back home. How would she be received? She was sure everyone would be very happy to see her again, would hug her and welcome her back with open arms. Perhaps the sole negative point would be an I-told-you-so glimmer in Aunt Luci’s eyes, which she wouldn’t know how to handle because that accusing look could last a lifetime. On second thought, she told herself that her aunt’s reaction was a rather minor matter, maybe just a figment of her imagination. The far tougher problem would be internal: she would have to learn to cope with her sense of defeat. She could envision herself sorrowful, deeply repentant, and holding her head low, regretting the consequences her trip to the gerais had brought. Yet, the biggest problem of all was her loss of self-confidence. She had planned the trip carefully, talked to God and to just about everybody else, prepared everything with good planning. How could she ever again believe in her own conclusions, in her thoughts, and make other major decisions in her life? This was a frightening doubt.
Nevertheless, Cristina, being reflective, was soon looking at the issue in a different light. I will go back and start over again, she thought. What is wrong with starting again? I will be neither the first nor the last person to do so. This whole thing was not in vain. I learned many things, met other people. If I hadn’t tried, had I stayed in my easy Belo Horizonte life, perhaps then I would feel sorry —and sorry for the rest of my life.
Although it was hard to face what seemed like a defeat, the young woman understood that, after the Friday episode in the camp, the best choice had indeed been to come to the gerais. It would be easier for her to deal with eventual failure than to know that she had never tried to reach her dream. It would be easier to cope with unsuccessful attempts than to be always imprisoned by the stability that protected her from all risks. It would be easier to accept errors and mistakes, provided she knew she had strived to succeed, than it would be to live a linear, change-free life.
But how long would she try to cut through that granite? That persistent question wouldn’t go away and was like a nightmare. She thought she should talk to Edu about it. He invited her to go to an area hard to get to, by Marsh Creek. On the way there, she lapsed again into the What if Ihad... trap, but Edu cut her off and rebuked her three times. “That’s plain silly. ‘Cause the following is this, if folks knew ‘fore what was gonna happen, nobody would never make no mistake.
“If it was just diggin’ and drillin’ and finding’ them minerals, it would be no fun. ‘Cause the following is this, the good part is more than just findin’ the ore, it’s knowin’ the ore is there, waiting to be found, and we don’t know if it’s a lot or it’s little, if it’s good or bad merchandise, not knowin’ any of that is what’s so good about it.
“If it was just drillin’ holes and findin’ gems, there would be no more ore around now. Folks long before us would’ve taken it all from the guts of the earth.”
By the banks of Marsh Creek, there were some odd-looking round rocks, roughly four meters in length with a maximum diameter of one meter. They were loose and separate from each other, amidst a sea of more common stones.
“Look here,” Edu called out to her, coming close to the sharp end of one of them. He bashed it with a hammer and sparks flew. “See how hard it is. This sure is granite.”
“So, what is in there could be like these, except a little bigger!” she remarked, feeling now a little better.
“I reckon, ‘cause here on the farm there’s only loose granite.”
Cristina felt much livelier and more comforted now. There was a great likelihood that that rock, albeit thicker than the ones in Marsh, wouldn’t be as huge as she had imagined.
The work moved along slowly, no more than twenty centimeters of drilling a day. Cristina took advantage of this slow pace and fulfilled a long-held desire to camp at the base of the Dead Ox foothill. She took all her gear and set up two tents, some twenty yards from each other, one for herself and the other one for her lab. Nothing new would happen in less than one week, for that rock had a diameter of over five feet—Gilton’s longest driller had shown that—and she could use part of this time to meditate and to study. She wanted to rethink what she was doing, in case she became convinced that it would be impossible to go through that tough rock.
Jeremias and her friend Edu helped her to set up camp, Jeremias loaning her his favorite mule. Edu prepared a veritable verdant feeding place in a depression, right by a cool, fresh water stream, a place with abundant green high grass. The happy mule parked herself there constantly. The lodgings were about a hundred yards from this lush depression, in an area free of electric activity.
...
She felt so good about her new lifestyle. She would check the work every day and encourage the workers to persevere. She would walk in the small forest and be visited by her friend Júlia who, after three days, decided to move there herself.
There they were perfectly at home and at ease to talk to each other. It was during one of these conversations that Cristina learned some peculiar things about Gilton.
...
A Treasure of Major Importance
It would be at least four days before the prospectors reached the full depth of the granite boulder, so Júlia suggested that they go on horseback to the Macaúbas River region. Cristina gladly accepted the suggestion because she wanted to see how diamonds were mined. Likewise, she hadn’t forgotten the suggestion made by one of the Itacambira women to go and meet this character nicknamed Zé Roxo. The Macaúbas region was fifteen kilometers away, so they could come back the same day.
They left in the morning, heading west on a horse trail. They had barely started when they had to dismount and pull the horses through some high irregular stones and boulders. Somewhat confused, Cristina inquired whether they were on the farm’s limits.
“We are indeed,” answered Júlia. “This place is known as Little Hill Middle. Here, too, the border dividing two farms is a watershed divider, but why are you asking?”
Cristina reported what she felt every time they entered or left the border of farm.
“Good Lord, if you hadn’t told me, I would never have believed this,” commented Júlia.
While they walked, pulling the horses behind them, Júlia told her about Zé Roxo. ...
...
At the door of a two-room shack, the young women were greeted by a slow-moving, elderly man, weighed down by his age but sporting a permanent smile on his lips. He greeted Júlia enthusiastically and was just as extroverted when she introduced him to Cristina. The three of them sat down outside the house, under a shady tree, the two young women on a small wooden bench and the man facing them on a stool.
Cristina started the conversation. “So how’s the tunnel going?”
“It’s longer than fifteen meters already,” he answered with a proud smile.
“And what do you expect to find?”
“A treasure, of course, a very important treasure.”
“But what kind of treasure? Diamonds, gold, crystal? Something else?”
“A treasure of major importance. I don’t know yet myself exactly what it is, but there is a treasure and I’m now very close to finding it,” he said, smiling constantly.
“And what are you going to do, when you find it?”
“Well, I’m going to help my brothers, who live down in São Paulo. I’m also going to help the local people here, who have to struggle so much to scratch a living. That’s it, I’m going to help everybody. I’ll help even the government. We have to help the government too, see? It’s not just a one-way deal with the government helping us.”
“And when all the money is gone, what will you do?”
“I’ll dig another tunnel; that’s it, I’ll just dig another one.”
“And start all over again?”
“Yes, that’s right,” he answered, the habitual happy grin never leaving his face.
“For how many years have you been digging this tunnel?”
“Nearly fifteen years. Yes,” he seemed to be counting mentally, “almost fifteen years.”
“ Are you single or married?”
“Single, but I will be fourteen years old again.”
“Say again, you’re going back to the age of fourteen?” Cristina thought he was joking.
“Yes, that’s right. I’ll be fourteen again and find a young woman, perhaps one just like you, and I’ll get married.”
“ Are you sure about that?” she insisted.
“Absolutely dead-set sure.”
“When you first came to our farm you were already saying things like that, remember?” Júlia joined in the conversation. “But you keep getting older and haven’t found a girlfriend in all these years.”
“But I will be fourteen years old again,” he insisted.
“And when is that going to happen?” Cristina inquired.
“Right after I open the Seventh Seal.”
“Pardon me, but what Seventh Seal?”
“In the Apocalypse.”
“You never stop talking nonsense, do you?” Júlia rebuked him.
Cristina insisted, however, that he explain some more about this Apocalypse thing, but he only spoke vaguely about two angels, saying that one of them was the third angel and the other was the fourth angel. She finally changed the subject, figuring that he was just plain crazy. Realizing that he was no longer capable of doing strenuous physical work, she asked whether he was retired.
“No, and I don’t want to retire. If I don’t retire, I am helping the government. If I retire, the government will have to spend money on me. One day, His Honor the Mayor of Itacambira came here to my house and asked me for my documents, so that he could get me to retire, but I said no, thanks. The thing I have to do is find this treasure soon and help the government.”
“Can you believe all this, Cristina?” Júlia asked. “And his brothers keep sending him clothes —good clothes too—but he gives them away to other people and just wears those old rags,” she finished, again in a scolding tone of voice.
“Other folks need them more than I do,” he said, trying to explain and justify his actions. “They need them more; that’s why I give the clothes to them. We have to help the local people here. I figure that I myself can always scratch a living, have some food to eat. Other than that, I only need the lighting oil, so I can see inside that dark tunnel. But the people are not so lucky and that’s why I have to find this important treasure, so that I can help my brothers and the government.”
Cristina asked him to show her the tunnel. With an oil lamp in one hand and a match box in the other, walking slowly but speaking enthusiastically, he led them to the tunnel. First of all, they crossed a dry river bed, full of sand and pebbles. There was also some water, but never higher than half a foot deep. They came to the base of a foothill, to the right side of the river, and walked some twenty meters. They climbed a little slope and reached a steep rock.
About three feet up, there was an opening in the rock, roughly two and a half feet in diameter. Full of joy, the man lighted the oil lamp and said that he was going in. He stuck his head and part of his chest in. He forced his arms to move, but he couldn’t get in. Cristina decided to help him, using her hands and arms to support his feet. Thus, helped by her, he managed at last to get inside the tunnel.
Once inside, he started crawling, the lamp in front of him, and disappeared into the darkness. It became obvious to the two young women that, regardless of what the man said, he no longer worked in the tunnel. They became very concerned that he might not be able to come back.
“I’m sorry that I helped him get inside,” Cristina said.
After a few minutes, very worried, she started shouting into the tunnel, “Zé Roxo!” They heard some muffled, unintelligible words. More worry-filled minutes went by, and then they saw him crawling backwards towards the tunnel’s mouth. He simply couldn’t manage to turn himself around inside the tunnel.
“I’m so close! I’m getting there!” he said, happier than ever, once he had climbed down. “It’s such a beauty, you just have to see it, such a beautiful thing!”
Her curiosity made Cristina go in and see. “You’re just as crazy as he is,” Júlia remarked. Cristina didn’t care, grabbed the lighted oil lamp, climbed inside, and started crawling. On the way, she noticed that the walls were very smooth, but all she could detect were sandstone and a few traces of quartz, here and there. She came to the end of the tunnel and there was nothing any different. She figured she might have crawled close to twenty meters. She then crawled backwards and out of the tunnel.
“Isn’t it beautiful? What did I tell you?” the man asked her as soon as she started climbing down from the tunnel opening. “All you have to do is look. There are signs of the treasure all around the tunnel, right?”
“That’s true, it’s very beautiful. The treasure in there is really very important.”
Going back to the camp, Júlia asked Cristina about this lie she had uttered.
“No one has the right to shatter other people’s dreams,” she an swered. “The treasure exists in his mind, in his imagination, understand? He is happy with this dream. What else does he need? What else does anybody need?”
Outraged
By two o’clock in the afternoon, João had arrived at the farm. Juca knew that he would arrive any day, and, when he saw the jeep on the road, in the Palmland, he left what he was doing and followed the jeep on horseback.
Around the main house, João found out that he would have to wait for the young women to come back, which should happen in the late afternoon.
No one noticed when Juca arrived in the yard, tied the animal to a fence, and entered the house of one of his friends. He quickly greeted the man’s wife and stood at the window, looking at the yard and waiting. Then João left the main house and headed to the cattle pen. Juca went to meet him. Some women were there, including Filó, and they became very worried. Filó walked towards the two men, but, before she could get to them, they talked briefly in the center of the yard. “You João?”
“I am.”
“Have a good trip?”
“Yes. This last stretch of the road is very bad.”
“But your car can handle anything.”
“Cristina had already warned me.”
“You...you her boyfriend?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Name’s Juca. I work here. Is she a good dancer?”
“Dancer?” João hadn’t understood the question.
“Yeah, sure, dancer, she a good dancer?”
“Yes, sure. She dances very well.”
“You known her a long time?”
“About two years.”
“She a good cook?”
“No, not really, though she can cook well enough.”
“You gonna marry her?”
“Yes.”
“You are? But she don’t like you.”
“Really? What are you saying?”
“You feel real light when you’re with her, do you?”
“ Light? What the heck are you taking about?”
“I feel real light like, ‘cause she likes me.”
Noticing Filó ’s approach, Juca moved away quickly, leaving João standing there and wondering what that conversation had been all about.
“He’s just a cowhand. Pay no attention to what he says,” Filó told João, attempting to minimize any possible disturbance Juca might have caused.
Around 3 p.m., after talking to Filó, João went back to the camp, left the Jeep where the road ended, and walked the rest of the way. There was no one around, so he sat outside and decided to just wait.
Juca, who had started back to Palmland, changed his mind halfway and took the road to the Fern Mine, heading south from there, and, after crossing the horse trail where the two young women would come through, he turned southwest and went around the Dead Ox flatland. About where there was a depression and some woods, he got off his horse and tied it to a shrub, behind some rocks. From where he was now, he could see the whole camp without being seen.
The two men kept waiting and the two young women arrived after four o’clock. Cristina, in fact, arrived first, on mule-back, got down from the mule, and threw herself into João’s arms. Juca observed everything. Júlia arrived next, stayed for a short while, and left for the main house. Cristina and João walked, pulling the mule behind them, and returned some forty minutes later, with some luggage tied to the animal’s saddle.
After a few minutes in the lodge, they went outside, un saddled the mule, and walked towards the pigpen by the creek side. Finally, they sat down on the grass, near the woods, talked, and exchanged tender touches. Juca could now see them more closely.
Some time passed and he left his observation post and went back to the animal, got on it, and headed towards Palmland, using powerful strokes of the spurs to make the horse race. When he entered the house, Vilma noticed his deep frown.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Go to hell!”
The woman went to the front door and saw the horse breathing deeply, bathed in sweat, with blood on either side drawn by the spurs.
“Were you working with some animals?”
“I told you to go to hell and not to pester me!”
Juca didn’t go out to round up the calves that should spend the night confined in the cattle pen. Vilma reminded him of that, but he said it was too late for that now and again cursed her. Not knowing what was going on, the young woman decided to be quiet and not talk to him again.
Juca’s attitude and actions revealed how enormously irritated he was. He complained about simple things, yelled at the children several times, violently split logs with the axe, and cursed at the axe, at the firewood, at life itself. He didn’t sleep at night, getting up several times to drink coffee. Vilma was puzzled, for she had never seen him so mad.
In the morning, Juca’s mood was so vile that he even beat up some calves. Vilma then decided, after lunch, to find out what was going on. She went to a mango-grove area known as Highgrass, where some men were working, and learned about João’s arrival. Her female sensitivity promptly made her understand everything. The presence of Cristina’s boyfriend had enraged Juca. At first, Vilma feared this could mean big trouble. But later she felt joyful, though it was a restrained joy. Her husband’s irritation could, in a weird sort of way, spell the nightmare’s end, now that he knew that the young woman belonged to another man.
Buy The Book
Chapter 1 – The Number Forty in the Bible
The Mysterious Blue Light
Conflict in the Family
Number Forty in the Bible
The Number Forty in Astronomy
Chapter 2 - The Unknown Mission
Preparations for the Unknown Mission
Fear and Courage
A Vision of the Gerais
Genes and Chromosomes
Adoption
The Choice
On the Way to her Destiny
Chapter 3 – Quartz Crystal
A Young Woman of the Gerais
First Expression of Power
Rupture
Adaptation
The Work Starts
Electricity from Crystals
Quartz
Piezoelectric Effect
Hidden Calf
An Angry Cow
Chapter 4 – The Entrails of the Gerais
First Results of Soil Analyses
Agricultural Soil
Into the Bowels of the Gerais
Quartz Crystal
The Pain for the Lost Love
Map of the Entrails of the Soil
Soil Multiplication
Clays
Edu’s Story
Vereda and Oasis
Cristina Takes Off
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