Luna: New Moon

She turns her eyes to the Earth. Traitor. Yemanja showed her the shining path, drawn across the sea, out from that world to the moon. She followed it. It was a trap. There is no path back. No line of light across this dry sea.

‘Lucas.’

He looks up from his work. His smile is a delight. Small things.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’ Lucas says.

‘For bringing you here.’

‘You didn’t bring me here.’

‘Don’t be so literal. Why must you always take against things?’

‘That’s not my world up there. This is my world.’

‘World. Not home.’

‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Mamãe.’

Adriana reaches for the coffee on the table but the cup is cold.

‘I’ll have fresh made up,’ Lucas says.

‘Please.’

The terminator of the crescent Earth sweeps down across the Atlantic; the whorl of a tropical cyclone spinning north by north-west, the paisley-pattern cloud-avenues of the inter-tropical convergence zone disappearing silently into night. An edge of green, the tip of north-eastern Brazil, draws over the horizon. The night-side of the planet is edged in a lace-work of lights. Clusters and whorls; they mirror the patterns of meteorology. Those lives down there.

‘Do you know what happened to them?’

‘Who, Lucas?’

‘I know when you look at Earth like that, you’re thinking about them.’

‘They failed like everyone fails down there. What else could they do?’

‘It’s no easy world, this,’ Lucas says.

‘Neither is theirs. I’ve been thinking about my mãe, Lucas. In the apartment, singing; and Pai in the dealership, polishing his cars. They were so brilliant in the sun. I can see Caio. None of the others. Not even Achi clearly any more.’

‘You had courage,’ Lucas says. ‘There is only one Iron Hand.’

‘That stupid name!’ Adriana says. ‘It’s a curse, not a name. Play me that music again, Lucas.’

Adriana settles into the chair. Jorge’s whispering voice and agile guitar surround her. Lucas watches his mother drift down through the words and chords into shallow sleep. Still breathing. The coffee is here, Toquinho says. Lucas takes it from the maid and as he sets it on the table he sees that his mother is not breathing.

He takes her hand.

Toquinho shows him vital signs.

Gone.

Lucas feels his breath tremble in his chest, but it is not as terrible as he imagined; not so terrible at all. Yemanja slowly fades to white and folds in on itself. The crescent Earth stands eternally on the eastern horizon.

Luna, in a red dress, picking barefoot over the boulders and through the empty pools of Boa Vista. The streams have run dry, the water no longer falls from the eyes and lips of the ten orixas. Rafa can’t express why he shut down Boa Vista’s waters but no one except Luna objected. The only way he could articulate it was that Boa Vista needed to say something.

The memorial was ramshackle and disappointing. The guests could not outshine the Cortas in their eulogies, the Cortas had no valedictory tradition so their tributes were sincere but stumbling and poorly stage-managed and the Sisterhood, who understood religious theatre, had been barred from attending. The words were said, the handful of compost that was all the LDC would permit of Adriana Corta’s carbon for private ceremonials was scattered, the representatives of the great families made their way to the tram. Throughout the short ceremony, Luna wandered blithe as water, exploring her strange dry world.

‘Papai!’

‘Leave him, oheneba,’ Lousika Asamoah says. Like her daughter she wears a red dress; a funeral colour among the Asamoahs. ‘He has to get used to things.’

Rafa takes the stepping stones over the dry river, enters the bamboo. He looks up at the open-lipped, wide-eyed faces of the orixas. Small feet have drawn a path between the canes: Luna’s feet. She knows this place and all its secrets better than he. But it is his now, he is Senhor of Boa Vista. There is a universe of difference between living somewhere and owning it. Rafa runs the long, rough-edged bamboo leaves through his fingers. He had thought he would cry. He had thought he would be disconsolate, sobbing like a child. Rafa knows how easily his emotions are stirred, to anger or joy or exultation. Your mother has died. What he felt: shock, yes; the futile paralysis of needing to do something, a hundred things, knowing that none of them can change the truth of death. Anger – some; at the suddenness, at the revelation that Adriana had been sick for a long time, terminal since the moon-run party. Guilty that the whirlpool of events after the assassination attempt had drowned any signals Adriana might have given about her condition. Resentment that it was Lucas who had spent the final hours with her. Not disconsolate; not overwhelmed: no tears.