Persephone

Donana appeared in her car this morning. Found breakfast on the table, but turned down the meal politely, saying she had already eaten. I had breakfast thinking of how bad it was to have breakfast with someone who didn't want to have breakfast with me. I figured she hadn't exactly come to sit around and turn down my breakfast. She didn't take long to start talking.

"Renan is at home now, he's been so sad these days."

"Why would he?", I was being much of a smart-ass asking that thing.

"He came here yesterday, didn't he? And you talked about him."

"Donana, it's no secret for anyone in town I really got emotionally attached to the kid and the other way round during the month or so he stayed in my house. I think it was even commented during my birthday party I was absent from, no?"

She was in silence. Said that since the boy returned home she had been sad for fim and for everything. I let my psychologist side flow for a while and tried to encourage that poor woman. But I decided I wouldn't hide my reflections on the issue I had had one day before.

"Hey, stop it Donana, you got a husband that loves you and cares for the family, have such handsome, healthy children; count your blessings not your troubles. Reinforce your troubles and they'll take over you. You got everything in your hands, my friend. Don't let it go to waste, don't let it slip through your fingers!"

"I'm really sad this all has happened. My husband acted motivated by rage and cast out the boy. I was shocked too by what had happened, all that shouting and screaming in front of Anderson's store. He could only find shelter in your house. You took care of him like I'd do, it was natural that you'd develop the same feelings. I'm so very sad, really so very sad with what happened. I'm sorry it's made you suffer, Miss Grisam."

"Donana, even in a town like Taurinos, do you what it means to make a ten-year-old child a homeless desperately looking for shelter? Were you really going to leave Renan on the streets even knowing that, wrong as he might be, he is still one of your children?"

Well, I made her cry. No sound, only tears. I felt sorry for Donana. For her, for the kid and for myself. Far from self-pity, but the affair really got the better of me. The process left deep scars on her too, I could see now. She herself a victim of the chauvinist mentality dominating the town, without the attitude of asserting herself, opposing the process, avoiding the situation we have now. The kid ended up divided between two mother figures, what turned out to be one more of the sequels in the whole episode. I woke up the mother that I didn't even know existed in me only to kill her at close range on the day he said goodbye. I saw myself resurrecting that mother eternally to be able to kill her at close range again and again.

Guilherme showed up in the afternoon. When I most expected him to sermonize me over the gifts I turned down, he sat at the porch with me and was in silence for some time. Then he stared at me and asked the only thing he managed to.

"Why?"

"Just what are you talking about, Guilherme?"

"Why all this business of my family and you around Renan? Why does everybody only care about Renan? What about me? Does no one care about me?"

"Course we do. A lot. But your brother has lived through very hard times, Guilherme. Your parents' attitude of casting him out forced him to come here. I'd never leave your brother on the streets. I grew attached to him and this caused a lot of trouble as everything else in this town."

"You sure find correct what he did on that day", the elder brother stared at me with eyes full of reproach.

"I wasn't going to be your brother's judge. I only saw someone who needed a roof over his head. He was so desperate those days; all he had planned fell through when Anderson refused to continue as his friend. At the time we didn't know what caused Anderson to act like that, but we knew he hadn't been in his normal since the Obscure Police ritual. Your brother couldn't understand why he was doing it and was desperate. Don't think I approve of what he did, but the moment didn't let him think clearly. If you ask me, that's what I think."

And after a pause, I said to him, "I can't believe you're jealous of your younger brother, Guilherme."

He was sullen and turned challenging eyes to me as a young rooster preparing for fight, "what if I am? What's the matter? You didn't even want my gift!"

"Guilherme, both your box and Bruno's were empty."

"They were empty because you turned the garden down. You turned down everything! If Renan had given you the gift it'd be heaven to you, right? See the gift he gave you, much worse than an empty box!", he screamed, punching the wall on top of his anger, totally infuriated.

"What was there inside the box?"

"Now it doesn't matter anymore!", he gazed at me furious and started to cry, "spent hours and hours in Varginha to choose the fucking present and what for?"

A jealous Guilherme now, how cute. But I was sad for him and for all that happened. He was so right. What difference would it make now? Anyhow, the circumstances around the events these last days ended up talking louder than anything else. I tried to touch his shoulder but he pulled it out of my reach with anger.

"Don't touch me. Don't even come close."

"I was out of my mind. I was angry and nervous, Guilherme. When Arthur said the seeds would…"

"The seeds the birds sowed around your house were the seeds of that garden that you saw and that I could never see! We'd never tear down your house! Not that we could not, but we'd never do it to you! Do you think we'd tear down my house just because my brother took you to the Sanctuary!? Would we tear down Adriano's house when he was fully supporting us???", and he buried his head in his arms crossed, like Arthur did when I turned down the garden he built.

"But I supported you. I did support the Celestial Gardener. If I only knew where I was being taken to and what it meant for the town, I'd never have set foot there. I was the first to scold the two for the joke. If you don't believe me, ask them two. I only grasped the meaning of it and that I had invaded a biological reservation when talking to Anderson and master Danilo at the Conselheiros' barbecue party almost one month ago. So I talked to them here in my house, scolded them real hard. Do you think I'd know if what you were telling me was true or not?"

It took me ages but I raised him from the chair and took him in. Offered him coffee. He accepted and we sat at the table. I changed subjects a little bit and asked him too what Arthur meant by coming here with a white handkerchief in his hand. Only to have a second version of that tradition and its strange meaning, since master Danilo and I had already talked about it. Guilherme stared at me and this was one of the only moments when curiosity was stronger than anger in him.

"He was trying to tell you he didn't come to fight. Did he?"

"He did."

"Eh, Arthur…", and he smiled a tiny little smile.

He relaxed a bit, I could see. But this didn't solve any matter. Only drove the issues away for some time before they came back pestering us in full force. Of course it would never erase the insult it was to turn down their gifts. What good would it be to ask them if having the garden here in my house would make them happy. Probably setting the garden here was important at that moment in time but now it wouldn't make any difference any longer. Adding to the issue with Renan it was no surprise Guilherme felt so neglected.

"What Arthur said was that I create these situations, like this eternal fight of the Celestial Gardener with Andrés…"

"If not you, who else would?", Guilherme tried to corner me.

"I told them maybe I had "just" set the wheel in motion, it was exactly what I said, verbatim"

There was a huge pause. What could he say to me? What else could anyone come up with but beliefs? "I believe it's you, Miss Grisam.", "Well, I can't believe it's really me." Even though master Danilo told me there were no beliefs in Taurinos, these were some of them. The belief we knew what was causing this random behavior. The belief it was this or that.

"Even if it's me who's doing it, it's not for my pleasure, I must say, Guilherme. Since I first set foot here there's no resting, only been running here and there trying to put out the fires."

"There has been no fire here since you first came to town", he retorted naively.

"It was just an expression, no? It seems this town is one second from being annihilated every day."

"You've created the Celestial Gardener to protect the nature of Taurinos from your very self and from outsiders. As you've created the Obscure Police to protect Taurinos from outsiders. This is what I know. And I know no further than this."

Tried to learn more details about the Celestial Gardener from that trustworthy source but the trustworthy source was still a bit sullen and said nothing else until he went away.

In the evening, the whole of the clan Teixeira dropped by. They of course came to talk about their youngest. Without further ado, because I can't stand writing about this all anymore but even the patriarch of the clan Teixeira wept and there was a collective mea culpa, of the kind that never solves any issue but also never deceives anyone.

One of the problems was that Renan had had two mothers and loved the experience. The other issue was that Guilherme was jealous of his brother and would go wherever he went to. If Renan wanted to have two mothers, Guilherme wanted to have two mothers too. "Sêo" Octávio and Donana just could not believe what they heard. To calm down the duo, we had to arrange that they would go back to their house on the first of July and come to mine on the first of January. As if they were Persephone, living six months in Olympus and six in Hades. But just where is Olympus and where is Hades?

It should still be earlier than nine p.m. when "sêo" Danilo dropped by. It had been fifteen minutes since the clan Teixeira had left my house. I told him about the day and he was astonished at what happened, though he was not so astonished at the solution we had all agreed on.

"Yes, the musician and the policeman, you got everything in only one package, "sá" Stella", then he looked like he regretted joking about the issue, though I didn't care and even came to find it funny in the current status of the town.

We closed the issue with the Celestial Gardener like this, at least for this issue. Nothing went right for any of the sides, but there's always remedy where there's no remedy at all. Now we are sure of the young guardians of nature here and their aggressive raids against nature molesters who might pose any threat to natural resources in town. An amazing conflict between nature and progress I myself might have created in less than twenty days. How time takes me here I don't know. Maybe it's just, as master Danilo says, that I value time too much.