Page 42 of The Seven Sisters
However, although Antonio was now closer to Rio, this had still not been enough for him. She remembered having supper with her parents one night, and listening to her father explaining to her mother why they must one day move to the city itself.
‘Rio is the capital, the seat of all power in Brazil. And we must be a part of it.’
As Antonio’s business grew, so did his pot of gold. Three years ago, her father had arrived home and announced that he’d bought a house in Cosme Velho, one of the most exclusive districts in Rio.
‘So now the Portuguese aristocrats will no longer be able to ignore me because they will be our neighbours!’ Antonio had crowed as he’d thumped the table in triumph.
Bel and her mother had shared a horrified glance at the thought of leaving their mountain home and moving to the big city. However, her normally gentle mother was adamant that the Fazenda Santa Tereza must not be sold, so that at least there was sanctuary if they needed to escape the heat of a Rio summer.
‘Why, Mãe, why?’ Bel had wept later that evening as her mother had entered her room to kiss her goodnight. ‘I love it here. I don’t want to move to the city.’
‘Because it is not enough for your father to be as rich as any of the Portuguese nobility in Rio. He wishes to be their equal in society. And to gain their respect.’
‘But, Mãe, even I understand how the Portuguese in Rio look down on us Italianpaulistas. Surely he will never achieve his aim?’
‘Well,’ her mother had said wearily, ‘Antonio has achieved everything he has wished for so far.’
‘But how will you and I know how to behave?’ she’d asked. ‘I have lived in the mountains for most of my life. We will never fit in as Pai wishes us to.’
‘Your father is already talking about us meeting with Senhora Nathalia Santos, a woman from Portuguese aristocracy whose family has fallen on hard times. She earns a living by teaching families such as ours how to conduct themselves in Rio society. And she can make introductions for them too.’
‘So we’re to be turned into dolls, who wear the best clothes and say the right things and use the right cutlery? I think I would rather die.’ Bel had made a choking noise to express her displeasure.
‘That is about right, yes,’ Carla had agreed, chuckling at her daughter’s assessment, her warm brown eyes sparkling with amusement. ‘And of course, Izabela, you, his beloved only daughter, are his goose who may lay the golden egg. You are already very beautiful, Bel, and your father thinks your looks will bring you a good marriage.’
Bel had looked up at her mother in horror. ‘I am to be used as currency by Pai to gain social acceptance? Well, I won’t do it!’ She’d rolled over and thumped her pillows with her fists.
Carla walked towards the bed and settled her rotund figure on the edge of it, patting her daughter’s rigid back with a plump hand. ‘It’s not as bad as it seems,querida,’ she comforted.
‘But I’m only fifteen! I want to marry for love, not for position. And besides, the Portuguese men are pale and scrawny and lazy. I prefer Italian men.’
‘Come now, Bel, you cannot say that. Every race has its mixture of good and bad. I’m sure your father will find someone that you like. Rio is a big city.’
‘I won’t go!’
Carla bent forwards and kissed her daughter’s shiny dark hair. ‘Well, I’ll say one thing for you, you have certainly inherited your father’s spirit. Goodnight,querida.’
*
That had been three years ago and not a single thought that Bel had uttered to her mother then had changed since. Her father was still ambitious, her mother still gentle, Rio society as unbending in its traditions as it had been two hundred years ago, and the Portuguese men still deeply unattractive.
And yet, their current house in Cosme Velho was spectacular. Its smooth ochre-coloured walls and tall sash windows housed beautifully proportioned rooms that had been completely redecorated to her father’s specifications. He had also insisted on installing every possible modern convenience, such as a telephone and upstairs bathrooms. Outside, the perfectly landscaped grounds could rival the splendour of Rio’s magnificent Botanical Gardens.
The house was named Mansão da Princesa after Princess Isabel, who had once come to drink the waters of the Carioca River that ran through the grounds and were purported to have healing properties.
Yet despite the undeniable luxury of her surroundings, Bel found the brooding presence of Corcovado Mountain – which rose directly behind the house and towered over it – oppressive. She often found herself longing for the wide open spaces and fresh clear air of the mountains.
Since arriving in the city, Senhora Santos, her etiquette tutor, had become part of Bel’s daily life. She’d learned from her how to enter a room – shoulders back, head held high,float– and had the family trees of every important Portuguese family in Rio drummed into her head. And as she’d received instruction in French, piano, history of art, and European literature, Bel began to dream of travelling to the Old World herself.
The hardest part of her tutelage, however, was that Senhora Santos had insisted she forget the native language of her family which her mother had taught her from the crib. Bel still struggled to speak Portuguese without an Italian accent.
She often looked in the mirror and allowed herself a wry chuckle. For, whatever pains Nathalia Santos had taken to erase where she came from, her true heritage betrayed itself in her features. Her flawless skin, which up in the mountains had taken only a hint of sunshine to darken to a deep glowing bronze – Senhora Santos had warned her time and again to steer clear of the sun – was the perfect foil for the rich waves of dark hair and enormous brown eyes that spoke of passionate Tuscan nights in the hills of her true homeland.
Her full lips hinted at the sensuality of her nature, and her breasts protested daily when they were restrained inside a stiffly wired corset. As Loen tugged each morning at the back fastenings, endeavouring to tame the outward signs of femininity, Bel often felt that the constricting garment was the perfect metaphor for her own circumstances. She was like a wild animal, full of fire and passion, trapped in a cage.
She watched a tiny gecko run like a streak of lightning from one corner of the ceiling to the other and mused that, at any moment, it could make its getaway through the open window, just as thesaguihad done. Whereas she would spend another day trussed up like a chicken ready to be placed in the burning heat of Rio’s social oven, learning to ignore her God-given nature and instead become the society lady her father wished her to be.
And only next week, her father’s plans for her future were to reach their crescendo. She would be eighteen, and launched into Rio society with a spectacular party at the beautiful Copacabana Palace Hotel.
