The Seven Sisters

by Lucinda Riley

  While Floriano sat in my suite and began to read Bel’s letters, I crossed back over the road to Ipanema Beach and went for an exhilarating swim in the fierce waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Drying myself in the sun, I decided that Floriano was right and I mustn’t be frightened of pursuing the story I had travelled halfway across the world to discover.

  As I lay there on the warm sand, I wondered whether my reluctance was something to do with the fact that every step would take me closer to discovering the truth about my real parents. I had no idea if they were alive or dead, or, in fact, why Pa Salt had given me a clue that had led me much further back into the past than logically I needed to go.

  And why was Senhora Carvalho so intent on refusing to admit that her daughter had even had a child? A young woman who had definitely been the right age to be my mother . . .

  Yet again, I remembered Pa Salt’s words engraved on the armillary sphere.

  I couldn’t and shouldn’t run away.

  ‘Are you happy to take a trip back up to the Casa with me to see if Yara will tell us more?’ I asked Floriano as I arrived back in the hotel suite.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, not looking up from the letter he was reading. ‘I’ve only a couple more letters to go.’

  ‘I’ll take a shower while you finish.’

  ‘Okay.’

  After I’d closed the bathroom door behind me and removed my clothes, I stepped into the shower, feeling acutely aware of Floriano’s presence in the next room. Given that he’d been a total stranger to me only two days ago, his easygoing attitude and relaxed manner made me feel as if I’d known him for far longer.

  And yet, his book I’d translated was philosophical, moving and full of human angst. So I supposed I’d expected someone who took himself far more seriously than the man currently sitting only a few feet away from me next door. Emerging from the bathroom, I saw that Floriano had placed the letters neatly in a pile and was staring out of the window towards the beach.

  ‘Do you want to put these in the safe?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  He handed them to me and I moved to open it.

  ‘Thank you, Maia,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What for?’ I asked, as I tapped in my security code.

  ‘For allowing me to be privy to those letters. I’m sure there are many of my colleagues who would love to have had the privilege of reading them. The fact that your great-grandmother was actually there at the time our Cristo was being constructed, staying under the same roof as Heitor da Silva Costa and his family and actually sitting in Landowski’s atelier while he was making the moulds, is really astonishing. I’m honoured, truly,’ he said, offering me a small mock bow.

  ‘It’s you who deserves thanks. You’ve already helped me so much in putting some of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.’

  ‘Well, let’s drive up to the Casa and see if we can add a few more.’

  ‘You would have to wait outside, Floriano. I promised Yara I wouldn’t tell anyone about the letters. I don’t want to break her trust.’

  ‘Then I will simply provide a chauffeur service for the senhorita.’ He grinned at me. ‘Shall we go?’

  We left the suite to walk in the direction of the lift and Floriano pressed the button to call it. As it opened and we stepped inside, I saw he was studying my reflection in the mirrored walls.

  ‘You have a tan. It suits you. Now,’ he added as the doors opened onto the lobby and he marched through it purposefully, ‘onwards and upwards.’

  Twenty minutes later, we were parked on the opposite side of the road from the Casa. The two of us had driven past the rusting iron gates and seen that they had been heavily padlocked since our visit the day before.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I said, as we both climbed out of the car. ‘Do you think it’s because Senhora Carvalho thought we’d be back?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ replied Floriano, walking away from me along the length of the overgrown hedge. ‘I’m going to investigate if there’s another way in, legal or illegal.’

  I stared through the iron bars at the house beyond, disappointment and frustration coursing through my veins. Perhaps our visit had simply been coincidence and there had already been a plan for the old woman and Yara to leave the house – to visit relatives perhaps. But it was in this moment that I realised how desperately I wanted to know the past I was now convinced belonged to me.

  Floriano appeared by my side. ‘The place is like a fortress. I’ve walked all the way around the perimeter and, short of slashing our way through the hedge with a chainsaw, there’s no way in. When I peered through the hedge at the back of the house, I saw that even the rear window shutters are closed. It looks like the place has been shut up completely and there’s no one at home.’

  ‘What if they don’t come back?’ I asked, hearing the frustration in my voice.

  ‘There’s no saying they won’t, Maia. It could simply be a case of bad timing. Look, at least there’s a post box for the house, so I suggest you leave Yara a note with the address of your hotel and a contact number.’

  ‘But what if the old woman is the one to find it?’

  ‘I can absolutely guarantee that Senhora Carvalho will not arrive back and rifle through the contents of her post box. She’s a woman from a different era and that’s her maid’s job. It’s probably handed to her on a silver salver,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘All right,’ I agreed reluctantly, as I dug my notebook and pen out from my handbag before scribbling a note to Yara as Floriano had suggested.

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do here. Come on,’ he said as I opened the rusty metal flap and dropped the note inside.

  I was initially silent on the twenty-minute journey back to downtown Rio, deflated after the excitement of reading the letters and wanting to know more.

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of giving up.’ Floriano read my thoughts as we drove along Ipanema Beach.

  ‘Of course not. But I really don’t know where I should go from here.’

  ‘Patience is the key, Maia. We will simply have to wait and see if Yara responds to your note. And of course we must continue to check on the Casa to see whether they reappear. Normally under these circumstances there’s no great mystery, just a perfectly rational reason. So, in the meantime, I suggest we think of what the explanation could be.’

  ‘They’ve gone away to visit relatives?’ I voiced my earlier thought.

  ‘A possibility, but given how frail the old woman seemed, I doubt she was up to long journeys. Or any pleasant small talk once she’d arrived.’

  ‘Then maybe they’ve left because they’re scared we’ll return?’

  ‘Again, a possibility, but unlikely. Senhora Carvalho has lived in that house for all of her life, and even though she didn’t seem keen to discuss your possible relationship to her, we were hardly wielding guns and knives,’ he mused as he drove. ‘Personally, I think there’s only one reason that neither mistress nor servant are at home at present.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That Senhora Carvalho has been taken ill, and has had to be moved to a hospital. So, I think I shall call the local ones and see if my dear “great-aunt” has been admitted to any of them in the past twenty-four hours.’

  I looked at Floriano in admiration. ‘You could well be right.’

  ‘We’ll go back to my apartment and I’ll look up the local hospital numbers, then call around them,’ he said, taking a right turn off the Avenida Vieira Souto instead of continuing along the seafront to my hotel.

  ‘Please, Floriano, I don’t want to bother you. I can do it on my laptop.’

  ‘Maia, will you please shut up. The letters I read this morning are some of the most interesting I’ve ever laid eyes on as an historian. There’s also something else in them that I haven’t told you about yet, which makes them still more fascinating. And perhaps even solves a long-standing mystery about the Cristo. So please believe that we are helping each
other. I’m warning you, though, my home isn’t exactly the Copacabana Palace,’ he cautioned as we continued to head away from Ipanema Beach.

  Shortly afterwards, Floriano made a sharp right turn and pulled his car up on a small concrete strip in front of a crumbling apartment building. It was probably only five or ten minutes’ walk from the hotel, yet it felt like a different world.

  ‘So,’ he said, as we got out of the car and climbed up the steps to the front door. ‘Welcome to chez moi. There’s no lift, I’m afraid.’ He opened the front door and began to bound up the narrow staircase two steps at a time.

  I followed him up and up, and up again, until we arrived on a small landing and unlocked the door.

  ‘I’m not the world’s greatest domestic, but it’s home,’ he warned me again. ‘Please come in.’

  Floriano walked through the door as I stood on the threshold, experiencing a fleeting moment of trepidation that I was entering the apartment of a man who was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger. I pushed the thought away, remembering the first night we’d met, when he’d had to return home to let in the girl he lived with, and followed him inside.

  The sitting room we entered was as Floriano had described: a jumbled melange of objects used and never returned to their rightful place. A battered leather sofa and armchair formed a seating arrangement and a coffee table overflowed with books, papers, a food-encrusted bowl and a brimming ashtray.

  ‘I’ll take you upstairs. It’s far more pleasant up there, I swear,’ he said, walking along the corridor.

  Climbing another flight of stairs, we arrived on a tiny landing which had two doors. Floriano opened one of them to reveal a terrace, the majority of which was protected by a sloping roof. Beneath it was a sofa, a table and chairs and a desk in the corner which held a laptop, above which was a shelf of books. The front of the terrace beyond the overhang of the roof was open to the elements, and all along the balcony edge pots full of flowers added vibrancy and colour to the atmosphere.

  ‘This is where I live and work. Make yourself comfortable,’ he said, strolling to his desk, opening his laptop and sitting down.

  I walked to the edge of the terrace and immediately felt the burning sun on my face. Leaning on my elbows, I looked upwards to see a small city of buildings tumbling haphazardly down the hill only a few hundred metres away. From the tops of the buildings, I could see kites flying in the breeze and hear the muffled thrum of what sounded like drums.

  After the sterility of my hotel room, I suddenly felt I had a finger on the real, throbbing pulse of the city. ‘It’s beautiful here,’ I breathed. ‘Is that a favela?’ I pointed into the air at the houses on the mountainside beyond us.

  ‘Yes, and until a few years ago, a very dangerous one. Drugs and murders were commonplace, and even though it backs onto Ipanema, one of the most exclusive areas in Rio, no one would live in the streets nearby,’ Floriano explained. ‘But now it’s been cleaned up and the government has even provided a lift for its residents. Some said the money would have been better used for some kind of basic healthcare provision for them, but at least it’s a start.’

  ‘But Brazil is becoming very prosperous, isn’t it?’ I queried.

  ‘Yes, but as with any fast-growing economy, to begin with it’s a tiny percentage of the population that gains from the new-found wealth, and little changes for the vast majority who are poor. It’s the same in India and Russia at present. Anyway,’ Floriano sighed, ‘let’s not get onto the topic of social injustice here in Brazil. It’s my favourite hobby horse, and we have other things to discuss.’ He turned his attention back to the computer. ‘Now, I’m assuming that Senhora Carvalho is one of the lucky few who can afford to avoid the appalling public hospitals here in Rio. So I’m looking for a list of the private ones and then we can call them. Here we are.’ I walked back towards him and leant over his shoulder to study the screen. ‘So, we have approximately ten. I’ll print off their telephone numbers.’

  ‘Why don’t we take half each?’ I suggested.

  ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘But just make sure you announce yourself as a close relative to the switchboard, maybe a granddaughter’ – Floriano shot me an ironic glance – ‘otherwise they won’t give you any information.’

  For the next fifteen minutes, Floriano disappeared downstairs with his mobile and I remained up on the terrace with mine, working through the list of numbers. None of them brought any joy, with everyone we spoke to confirming that a Senhora Carvalho had not been admitted in the past twenty-four hours. When Floriano eventually reappeared carrying a tray, his face told a similar story.

  ‘Don’t look so downhearted, Maia,’ he said as he placed a platter of different kinds of cheeses, salamis and a fresh baguette onto the table. ‘Let’s eat and think.’

  I ate hungrily, realising it was now past six in the evening and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. ‘What was the mystery you thought might be solved by something you’d read in Bel’s letters?’ I prompted him, as he finished eating and wandered across to the open part of the terrace to light a cigarette.

  ‘Well,’ he said, leaning over the balcony and gazing out into the descending dusk. ‘The young woman whom Bel mentions in her letters, Margarida Lopes de Almeida, was always thought to have been the model that Landowski used for the Cristo’s hands. In the letters, Bel confirms that Margarida was indeed in Landowski’s atelier and was also a gifted pianist. For her entire life, Margarida never denied the rumour that they were indeed her hands that graced the sculpture. And then, on her deathbed a few years ago, she retracted, saying that they were not her hands Landowski had used.’

  Floriano watched me to see if I could follow where he was leading.

  ‘Bel writes that she also had her hands cast by Landowski at the same time as Margarida,’ I answered.

  ‘Exactly. Of course, it may be that neither of the moulds Landowski took were used in his final sculpture, but perhaps Margarida always knew there was some doubt. Who knows? Maybe instead the hands were those of Izabela, the young woman who was with her at the atelier at the time.’

  ‘My God,’ I breathed, hardly able to compute the enormity of what Floriano was suggesting. That it might actually be my great-grandmother’s hands that reached out so iconically, loving and protecting the world beneath them.

  ‘To be honest, I doubt we will ever be able to ascertain the truth of the matter, but you can understand why the letters have excited me so much,’ said Floriano. ‘And would excite many others too, if Yara ever agrees to you sharing their contents with the world. So, not just for the sake of discovering your own heritage, Maia, but for that of Brazil’s too, we must not give up on trying to find out more.’

  ‘No, we mustn’t,’ I agreed. ‘But surely now we’ve come to a dead end?’

  ‘Which we have simply to reverse out of before planning another route forward.’

  ‘Well, there was one other thing I was thinking earlier,’ I said.

  ‘And what would that be?’ Floriano encouraged.

  ‘Yara made it very clear that her mistress was seriously ill. That Senhora Carvalho was dying. At the time, I thought that Yara was perhaps using this as an excuse to get rid of us. But Senhora Carvalho certainly looked frail and the table next to her was full of pill bottles. What I’m trying to say is that in Switzerland, if someone was reaching the end of their life and they were in terrible pain, they would go into a hospice. Do you have those here in Brazil?’

  ‘For the rich, yes, we do. As a matter of fact, there’s one just outside Rio which is run by nuns. And certainly the Aires Cabrals were a devout Catholic family. You know, Maia, you could be right.’ Floriano stood up and was just making his way across to his computer when the door burst open. A small, dark-eyed child in a Hello Kitty T-shirt and pink shorts hurtled across the room and threw herself into his arms.

  ‘Papai!’

  ‘Hello, minha pequena. How was your day?’ he asked, smiling down at her.

  ‘It was good,
but I missed you.’

  My eyes then turned to the open door where a young, willowy female was standing. Her eyes fell on me briefly and she smiled a ‘hello’, then turned back to the child. ‘Come now, Valentina, your father is busy and you need a shower. We went to the beach after school as the weather was so warm,’ the woman added to neither of us in particular.

  ‘Can’t I stay up here with you for a while, Papai?’ Valentina pouted as her father set her back down on the floor.

  ‘You go and take a shower and when you’re ready for bed, bring up your book and I’ll read the next chapter to you.’ He kissed her tenderly on the top of her dark head before nudging her gently towards the young woman. ‘See you later, querida.’

  ‘I must go too,’ I said, standing up as the door closed behind them. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time already.’

  ‘Not until we’ve contacted the convent hospice I’m thinking of,’ said Floriano, sitting down at his laptop.

  ‘Your daughter is beautiful. She looks like you,’ I commented. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Six,’ he replied as he tapped away on the keyboard. ‘Right, here we are. There’s a telephone number, although I doubt they’d have a manned reception at this time of night. However, I’ll try it.’

  I watched him as he dialled the number from the screen into his mobile and put it to his ear. A few seconds later, he tapped it off. ‘As I thought, there’s an emergency out-of-hours number, but I think it would alert too much suspicion for us to use it. A worried relative calling a hospital when they can’t locate their nearest and dearest is one thing, but it’s pretty unlikely that close family members wouldn’t be aware that their relative had entered a hospice. So, I suggest we simply present ourselves in person there tomorrow.’

  ‘It may well be another blind alley.’

  ‘Yes, it might be, but my instinct tells me it’s the only thing that makes sense. Well done, Maia,’ he said, giving me a warm smile of approval. ‘I’ll turn you into an historical detective yet.’

  ‘We will see tomorrow. And for now, I’ll leave you in peace,’ I said, standing up.