For a while Velho renounced the pleasures of wine, but then had it tasted before he drank and was soon drinking again as he always had, sometimes with a vague uneasiness at the first draught, but finally convinced that just as water could not really be turned into wine, the wine on his lips could not turn to vinegar.
II
RONQUILHO COULD NOT wait for evening. From the ramparts of the citadel he kept looking through his telescope at the house. Just as dusk was starting to fall he saw the Procurador leave home; he waited for a further half-hour and then set out. In the Rua do Bom Jesus he tied up his horse in a deserted garden and continued on foot.
The back gate was open. He went from the mild evening light into the chilly twilight; the densely planted and rather overgrown garden was full of shadows, and between the wall and the trees it was completely dark. After searching for a while he found the narrow path that led to the back of the house; it was silent and deserted, and most windows were closed, except for the three of Dona Pilar’s room on the third floor.
Ronquilho saw that there was a ladder standing against the tree, as if the fruit had been picked that afternoon. Tonight the supreme fruit would be picked, he thought, as he climbed the ladder leaning against the olive tree, glad that things were being made so easy for his heavy frame. He reached the branch opposite the balcony. There stood Pilar; he could not move a muscle, or she would see him. He waited like that, sitting on the branch, his foot on the top rung of the ladder. And Pilar simply remained on the balcony, staring into the evening sky. His limbs began to hurt and stiffen from the enforced period of sitting, pressed against the dark branch, and the longer he saw Pilar standing there, the more unattainable she appeared to him. He almost rejected his abduction plan. It had seemed so easy: putting Pilar, half resisting, half helpless with surprise in his arms, into a litter, taking her on board the lorcha of his friend Ramirez, raising anchor and in a gondola voyage across the bay claiming what he longed for by entreaty or by force. Or better: entering the room, standing by her bed and simply, as if it had long since been decided, taking her in his arms and not allowing her to come to her senses until the irrevocable had happened. But how was he to enter so softly and naturally? His limbs were becoming stiffer, his blood had cooled and in his heavy, damp clothing he felt more like a pathetic bandit than a triumphant lover.
Suddenly she looked up, and he tucked his head in, but Pilar, with a last look at the evening sky, went into the room. This was the moment. He slid laboriously along the branch he had chosen over the balcony; as the tip was already bending he was just able to grasp the railings of the balustrade, but could not make his way upwards without a din. When he reached the balcony the room was dark, and he could make out only a bouquet of white flowers on the table. He wriggled his way inside and immediately fell full length on the carpet in a pool of water and fragments of the vases over which he had tripped.
He got up hurriedly, but heard a key turn in the lock and a short laugh. He leapt back to the balcony, but the big branch had broken off. No way out! Desperate and suddenly dog-tired, he threw himself on the bed, but immediately got up again: to lie there alone was a disgrace that caused the blood to rush to his face. He still felt Pilar’s presence everywhere, in the robes that hung around him, in the mirror where she had looked at herself so much, in the flowers on the table.
He banged his fist on the table. Yet another vase smashed on the carpet; the confusion in the room was an indictment of him; he tied silk blankets, dresses, sheets together, did not estimate the distance but lowered himself down and found himself hanging by two sleeves over twenty feet above the ground. He let go, landed with a thump, and was able to hobble away groaning with an injured ankle to where his horse was tethered. There he hoisted himself into the saddle, realizing that she would be far away by now, and had perhaps sought sanctuary in the Dominican monastery. But she wasn’t as safe or invisible there as she thought. He knew of the Procurador’s hatred of the Dominicans, since that very morning he had witnessed the fury of Campos at the impudent Belchior. They would clean out that wasps’ nest, smoke it out if necessary. He rode back to the citadel at a jog, and had to be carried up the steps; he ordered wine and bread and told them to leave him alone, and then bandaged his ankle himself. The pain became more intense. He sat there thinking, more and more convinced that Pilar had fled to the monastery. He drank lots of wine. If they were able to banish the Dominicans, the monastery would be pulled down. Tao Hsao, the viceroy of Canton, still kept threatening to starve the colony out, the traditional, endlessly applied method, if the seminaries and the monasteries, which he saw as disguised forts, were not demolished. Why should they not do that right away? He imagined how the outer walls would be demolished, then the main building, and how Pilar would appear, surrounded by nuns. He imagined how he would grab her; he held her tight, but it was the jug of wine; he sank back, and the wine flowed over his boots onto the floor.
III
CAMPOS CREPT CAUTIOUSLY upstairs and stopped outside the door. He listened; not a sound. He debated with himself for a moment whether to enter, but when he went in, he would appear to be complicit. All he could see through the keyhole was a fallen vase in the faint moonlight. He went back downstairs, stared into a grey garden and saw the snapped-off branch. So Ronquilho had got in, he could set his mind at rest: their alliance had been sealed, and together they would subdue the merchants. Who had founded this city, a merchant or a priest? No, a soldier. Campos again thought of his favourite story: the triumph of Alexander. But in those days the merchants were fighting men and the Jesuits hadn’t yet been invented. So both groups must be wiped out, at all costs and using any means, as both of them, in their own way, taught. Then, once they were rid of them, a reign of terror along the Chinese coast, an advance with a force of ten thousand, straight to Beijing. It was as if he could hear what Farria had said on his deathbed: “Don’t admit any priests, or merchants, otherwise Macao will soon be burnt, like Lian Po, or slowly consumed by strife. Farmers and soldiers, no one else. A royal monopoly of trade. Portugal is too far away, they are too slow in sending reinforcements. Then you can found a kingdom of your own.”
These words, like all the adventures of the old pioneer, had become one with Campos’s being; sometimes he felt Farria living on in him, but mostly, oppressed by the usual slow progress of events, he mocked himself for what he called his heroic fantasies.
He slept badly, woke early and waited for Ronquilho, bragging and triumphant, or Pilar, pale and tearful, to appear, but no one came. At six o’clock he crept upstairs again, peered through the keyhole and again saw nothing but overturned furniture. She had put up a fight, had his daughter! They mustn’t think that a woman of his line would surrender like a meek sacrificial lamb. But his impatience became too much for him. He opened the door with his own key: he saw even greater devastation, but an empty bed. Across the window sill ran a colourful strip; he went closer, carefully hauled in the tied blankets and dresses and untied them. But the traces of the heavy weight they had borne could not be erased: everything was twisted and torn. Furiously he kicked everything into a wall cupboard and sent a messenger to the fort. He had had to abduct her, very well, but why in such a crazy way? The stairs creaked, the front door slammed, but surely Ronquilho could be confident that he had removed the servants, or had the romances of chivalry turned his head too?