The War Of The End Of The World Part 15

She realized that amid the cries of "Long live the Counselor" there were voices calling her by name-"Mother Maria Quadrado! Mother of Men!"-seeking her out, pointing her out. This popularity seemed to her to be a trap set by the Devil. In the beginning, she had told herself that those who sought her intercession were pilgrims from Monte Santo who had known her there. But in the end she realized that she owed the veneration of which she was the object to the many years that she had devoted to serving the Counselor, that people believed that he had thereby imbued her with his own saintliness.

The feverish bustle, the preparations that she could see in the narrow winding paths, and the huts crowded together on Belo Monte gradually made the Superior of the Sacred Choir forget her worries. The spades and hoes, the sounds of hammering meant that Canudos was preparing for war. The village was being transformed, as though a battle were about to take place in each and every dwelling. She saw men erecting on the rooftops those little platforms that she had seen amid the treetops in the caatinga caatinga, where hunters lay in wait for jaguars. Even inside the dwellings, men, women, and children, who stopped their work to cross themselves, were digging pits or filling sacks with earth. And all of them had carbines, blunderbusses, pikes, clubs, knives, bandoleers, or were piling up pebbles, odds and ends of iron, stones.

The path leading down to As Umburanas, an open s.p.a.ce on either side of a little stream, was unrecognizable. The Catholic Guard had to guide the women of the Choir across this terrain riddled with holes and crisscrossed with countless trenches. Because, in addition to the trench that she had seen when the last procession had pa.s.sed by this way, there were now pits dug everywhere, with one or two men inside them, surrounded by parapets to protect their heads and serve as supports for their rifles.

The arrival of the Counselor caused great rejoicing. Those who were digging pits or carrying loads of earth came hurrying over to listen to his words. Standing below the cart that the saint had climbed up on, behind a double row of Catholic Guards, Maria Quadrado could see dozens of armed men in the trench, some of whom, fast asleep in ridiculous postures, did not awaken despite all the commotion. In her mind's eye, she saw them, awake the whole night watching, working, preparing to defend Belo Monte against the Great Dog, and felt affection for all of them, the desire to wipe their foreheads, to give them water and fresh-baked bread and tell them that for their abnegation the Most Holy Mother and the Father would forgive them all their sins.

The Counselor had begun to speak, whereupon all the din ceased. He did not speak of dogs or elect, but of the waves of pain that arose in the Heart of Mary when, in obedience to the law of the Jews, she brought her son to the Temple, eight days after his birth, to shed his blood in the rite of circ.u.mcision. The Counselor was describing, in accents that touched Maria Quadrado's soul-and she could see that all those present were equally moved-how the Christ Child, immediately after being circ.u.mcised, raised his arms toward the Holy Mother, seeking to be comforted, and how his bleatings of a little lamb pierced the soul of Our Lady and tortured her, when suddenly it began to rain. The murmur of the crowd, the people falling on their knees before this proof that even the elements were moved by what the Counselor was recounting, told Maria Quadrado that the brothers and sisters realized that a miracle had just taken place. "Is it a sign, Mother?" Alexandrinha Correa murmured. Maria Quadrado nodded. The Counselor said that they should hear how Mary moaned on seeing so lovely a flower baptized in blood at the dawn of His precious life, and that the tears He shed were a symbol of those Our Lady shed daily for the sins and cowardice of men who, like the priest of the Temple, made Jesus bleed. At that moment the Little Blessed One arrived, followed by a procession bearing the statues from the churches and the gla.s.s case with the countenance of the Blessed Jesus. Among those who had just arrived was the Lion of Natuba, almost lost from sight in the crowd, his back as curved as a scythe, soaking wet. The Little Blessed One and the scribe were lifted up and carried bodily to their rightful places by the Catholic Guard.

When the procession started off again, toward the Vaza-Barris, the rain had turned the ground into a quagmire. The elect floundered in the mud, and in a few moments the statues, standards, canopies, and banners were lead-colored lumps and strips of cloth. As the rain pelted the surface of the river, the Counselor, standing atop an altar of barrels, spoke of something, the war perhaps, in a voice that those closest to him could barely hear, but what they heard they repeated to those behind them, who pa.s.sed it on to those farther back, and so on, in a series of concentric circles.

Referring to G.o.d and His Church, he said that in all things the body must be united to the head, otherwise it would not be a living body nor would it live the life of the head, and Maria Quadrado, her feet buried in the warm mud, feeling the little lamb that Alexandrinha Correa was holding by its rope brush against her knees, understood that he was speaking of the indissoluble union that there must be between the elect and himself and the Father, the Son, and the Divine in the battle. And she had only to look at the faces around her to know that all of them understood, just as she did, that he was thinking of them when he said that the faithful believer had the wariness of the serpent and the innocence of the dove. Maria Quadrado trembled on hearing him psalmodize: "I pour myself out like water and all my bones are dislocated. My heart has turned to wax and is melting into my bowels." She had heard him softly chant this same psalm-was it four, five years ago?-on the heights of Ma.s.sete, the day of the confrontation that put an end to the pilgrimages.

The mult.i.tude went along the river's edge, following in the Counselor's footsteps, amid plots of ground that the elect had worked, sowing them with maize and manioc, putting goats, kids, lambs, cows out to pasture. Was all this about to disappear, swept away by heresy? Maria Quadrado also saw pits that had been dug in the middle of the cultivated fields, with armed men in them. From a little rise of ground, the Counselor was now speaking explicitly of the war. Would the rifles of the Freemasons spit out water instead of bullets? She knew that the Counselor's words were not to be taken literally, because they were often comparisons, symbols whose meaning was hard to puzzle out, whose relationship to events could be seen clearly only after the latter had taken place. It had stopped raining and torches were now lit. A smell of freshness filled the air. The Counselor explained that the fact that the Throat-Slitter had a white horse came as no surprise to the believer, for wasn't it written in the Apocalypse that such a horse would come and that its rider would be carrying a bow and a crown so as to conquer and rule? But his conquests would end at the gates of Belo Monte through the intercession of Our Lady.

And he made his way in this fashion from the exit to Jeremoabo to the one to Uaua, from O Cambaio to the Rosario entrance, from the road to Chorrocho to O Curral dos Bois, bringing men and women the fire of his presence. He stopped at all the trenches, and in all of them he was received and sent on his way again with cheers and applause. It was the longest procession that Maria Quadrado could remember, amid heavy downpours that would suddenly start and as suddenly stop, abrupt changes in the sky overhead, ups and downs that matched those of her spirits, which all through the day had gone from panic to serenity and from pessimism to enthusiasm.

It was dark now, and at the Cocorobo exit the Counselor drew a comparison between Eve, in whom curiosity and disobedience predominated, and Mary, all love and willing submission, who had never succ.u.mbed to the temptation of the forbidden fruit responsible for man's Fall. In the faint light, Maria Quadrado saw the Counselor standing amid Abbot Joao, Big Joao, the Little Blessed One, the Vilanovas, and the thought came to her that, just like herself, Mary Magdalene, there in Judea, had seen the Blessed Jesus and his disciples, men as humble and good as these, and had thought, just as she was thinking at this moment, how generous it was of the Lord to elect, so that history might take a different direction, not rich landowners and capangas capangas, but a handful of the humblest of men. She suddenly realized that the Lion of Natuba was not among the apostles. Her heart skipped a beat. Had he fallen and been trampled underfoot, was he lying on the muddy ground somewhere, with his tiny body like a child's and his eyes of a wise man? She reproached herself for not having paid more attention to him and ordered the women of the Choir to go look for him. But they could scarcely move in the dense crowd.

On the way back, Maria Quadrado managed to make her way to Big Joao, and was telling him that he must find the Lion of Natuba when the first cannon report rang out. The mult.i.tude stopped to listen and many pairs of eyes scanned the heavens in consternation. At that moment there came another roar of cannon fire and they saw a dwelling in the cemetery section blow up, reduced to splinters and cinders. In the stampede that ensued round about her, Maria felt a shapeless body press against hers, seeking refuge. She recognized the Lion of Natuba by his great mane and his tiny frame. She put her arms around him, held him close, kissed him tenderly, as she murmured in his ear: "My son, my little son, I thought you were lost, your mother is happy, so happy." A bugle call in the distance, long and lugubrious, spread more panic in the night. The Counselor strode on, at the same pace, toward the heart of Belo Monte. Trying to shield the Lion of Natuba from the pushing and shoving, Maria Quadrado did her best to stay as close as possible to the ring of men who, once the first moment of confusion was past, closed in around the Counselor again. But as the two of them made their way along, stumbling and falling, the crowd pushed and shoved its way past them, and by the time they finally reached the esplanade between the churches, it was filled with people. Drowning out the cries of people calling to each other or pleading for heaven's protection, Abbot Joao's great booming voice ordered all the lamps in Canudos extinguished. Soon the city was a pit of darkness in which Maria Quadrado could not even make out the scribe's features.

"The fear has left me," she thought. The war had begun; at any moment another sh.e.l.l might fall right here and turn her and the Lion into the shapeless heap of bone and muscle that the people who had lived in the destroyed house must now be. And yet she was no longer afraid. "Thank you, Father, Blessed Mother," she prayed. Holding the scribe in her arms, she dropped to the ground, like the others. She listened for gunfire. But there were no shots. Why this darkness, then? She had spoken aloud, for the Lion's voice sang out in answer: "So they can't take aim at us, Mother."

The bells of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus rang out and their metallic echo drowned out the blare of bugles with which the Dog was trying to terrorize Belo Monte. This pealing of bells, which was to go on all the rest of the night, was like a great gale of faith, of relief. "He's up there in the bell tower," Maria Quadrado said. There was a roar of grateful thanks, of affirmation, from the mult.i.tude gathered in the square, as people felt themselves bathed in the defiant, restorative ringing of the bells. And Maria Quadrado thought of how the Counselor in his wisdom had known, amid the panic, precisely what to do to establish order among the believers and bring them hope.

Another sh.e.l.l landing filled the entire square with yellow light. The explosion lifted Maria Quadrado off the ground, set her back down again, and made her head ring. In the second of light she caught a glimpse of the faces of women and children looking up at the sky as though gazing into h.e.l.l. She suddenly realized that the bits and pieces that she had seen flying through the air were what had been the house of Eufrasio the shoemaker, from Chorrocho, who lived close by the cemetery with a swarm of daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. A silence followed the explosion, and this time no one ran. The bells went on pealing as joyously as before. It did her heart good to feel the Lion of Natuba huddling next to her, so close it was as though he were trying to hide inside her aged body.

There was a sudden stir, shadows clearing a path before them and shouting: "Water carriers! Water carriers!" She recognized Antonio and Honorio Vilanova and realized where they were going. Two or three days before, the storekeeper had explained to the Counselor that, among the other measures being taken in preparation for combat, the water carriers had been instructed that when the fighting began they were to pick up the wounded and take them to the Health Houses and take the dead to a stable that had been converted into a morgue, so as to give them Christian burial later. Stretcher-bearers and gravediggers now, the water carriers were setting to work. Maria Quadrado prayed for them, thinking: "Everything is happening as we were told it would."

Not far off, someone was weeping. There was, apparently, no one in the square except women and children. Where were the men? They must have run to clamber up onto the platforms in the trees, to crouch down in the trenches and behind the parapets, and had doubtless now joined Abbot Joao, Macambira, Pajeu, Big Joao, Pedrao, Taramela, and the other leaders, armed with their carbines and rifles, with their pikes, knives, machetes, and clubs, out somewhere peering into the darkness, waiting for the Antichrist. She felt grat.i.tude, love for these men who were about to be bitten by the Dog and perhaps die. Lulled by the bells in the tower, she prayed for them.

And so the night pa.s.sed, amid brief thunderstorms that drowned out the pealing of the bells, and s.p.a.ced cannon shots that pulverized one or two shacks and started fires that the next thunderstorm put out. A cloud of smoke that made people's throats and eyes burn drifted over the city, and Maria Quadrado, as she drowsed with the Lion of Natuba cradled in her arms, could hear people around her coughing and hawking. Suddenly someone shook her. She opened her eyes and saw that she was surrounded by the women of the Sacred Choir, in a light as yet still very faint, struggling to dispel the darkness. The Lion of Natuba was propped up against her knees, fast asleep. The bells were still ringing. The women embraced her; they had been looking for her, calling her in the darkness; she was so weary and numb she could barely hear them. She woke the Lion up: his huge eyes gazed at her, gleaming brightly, from behind the jungle of his wild locks. The two of them struggled to their feet.

Part of the square was empty now, and Alexandrinha Correa explained to her that Antonio Vilanova had ordered those women for whom no more room was left in the churches to go back to their houses, to hide in the trenches, because now that day was about to break, cannonades would rake the esplanade. Surrounded by the women of the Choir, the Lion of Natuba and Maria Quadrado made their way to the Temple of the Blessed Jesus. The Catholic Guard let them in. It was still dark within the labyrinth of beams and half-erected walls. But the Superior of the Sacred Choir could make out, not only women and children curled up like cats, but armed men as well, and Big Joao, running about with a carbine and bandoleers about his neck. She felt herself being pushed, dragged, guided toward the scaffolding with knots of people standing on it peering out. She climbed up, aided by strong sinewy arms, hearing people call her Mother, without letting go of the Lion, who every so often very nearly slipped out of her arms. Before reaching the bell tower, she heard yet another burst of cannon fire, very far off.

Finally she spied the Counselor, on the bell platform. He was on his knees, praying, inside a barrier of men who were allowing no one to climb up the little ladder leading to the platform. But they let her and the Lion come up. She threw herself on the planks and kissed the Counselor's feet, or rather, the crust of dried mud on them, for he had long since lost his sandals. When she stood up again she noted that it was fast growing light. She walked over to the embrasure of stone and wood, and, blinking her eyes, saw on the hills a dim gray-red-blue blur, with bright glints here and there, coming down toward Canudos. She did not ask the silent, frowning men taking turns ringing the bells what the blur was, for her heart told her that it was the dogs. Filled with hatred, they were descending on Belo Monte to perpetrate another ma.s.sacre of the innocents.

"They're not going to kill me," Jurema thinks. She allows herself to be dragged along by the soldiers who are holding her wrists in an iron grip and force her to enter the labyrinth of branches, thorns, tree trunks, and mud. She slips and scrambles to her feet again, looking apologetically at the men in ragged uniforms in whose eyes and on whose parted lips she perceives what she first came to know on that morning that changed her life, there in Queimadas, when after the shooting Galileo Gall threw himself upon her. She thinks, with a serenity that astonishes her: "As long as they have that look in their eyes, as long as that's what they want, they won't kill me." She forgets Rufino and Gall and thinks only of saving her life, of holding them up for a while, of pleasing them, of pleading with them, of doing anything she has to so that they won't kill her. She slips again, and this time one of them lets go of her and falls on top of her, on his knees with his legs open. The other one also lets go of her and steps back a pace to watch, all excited. The one who is on top of her brandishes his rifle, warning her that he'll beat her face to a pulp if she screams. Clear-sighted, obedient, she calms down instantly, goes limp, nods gently to rea.s.sure him. It is the same look, the same ravenous, b.e.s.t.i.a.l expression as that other time. With her eyes half closed she sees him feel about inside his trousers, unb.u.t.ton them, as he tries to lift her skirt up with the hand that has just let go of the rifle. She helps him as best she can, hunching up, stretching out one leg, but even so it gets in his way and finally he rips it away. All sorts of ideas sputter in her head and she also hears thunder, bugles, bells, behind the soldier's panting. He is lying on top of her, hitting her with one of his elbows until she understands and moves the leg that is in his way aside, and now she feels, between her thighs, the hard, wet rod, struggling to enter her. She feels asphyxiated by the weight of the man, and each of his movements seems to break one of her bones. She makes an intense effort not to betray the repugnance that comes over her when the bearded face rubs against hers, and a mouth, green from the blades of gra.s.s that it is still chewing, flattens itself against hers and forces her to separate her lips so as to voraciously shove in a tongue that works hers over. She is concentrating so hard on not doing anything that might irritate him that she does not see the men draped in cloaks of gra.s.s arrive, nor does she notice when they put a knife to the soldier's throat and give him a kick that rolls him off her. It is only when she feels free of the weight of him and can breathe again that she sees them. There are twenty, thirty of them, perhaps more, and they fill the entire caatinga caatinga around her. They bend down, pull her skirt around her, cover her, help her to sit up, to rise to her feet. She hears kind words, sees faces that are trying their best to appear friendly. around her. They bend down, pull her skirt around her, cover her, help her to sit up, to rise to her feet. She hears kind words, sees faces that are trying their best to appear friendly.

It seems to her that she is waking up, that she is coming back from a very long journey, that no more than a few minutes have gone by since the soldiers fell upon her. What has become of Rufino, Gall, the Dwarf? As though it were a dream, she remembers the two men fighting, remembers the soldiers shooting at them. A few paces away, the soldier who had been on top of her is being interrogated by a short, st.u.r.dy caboclo caboclo well along in years, whose dull yellowish-gray features are cruelly mutilated by a scar running from his mouth to his eyes. She thinks: Pajeu. For the first time that day she feels afraid. A look of terror has come over the soldier's face, he is answering every question he is asked as fast as he can get the words out, and is begging, pleading, with his eyes, mouth, hands, for as Pajeu interrogates him others are stripping him naked. They remove his tattered tunic, his frayed trousers, without manhandling him, and Jurema-feeling neither happy nor sad, as though she were still dreaming-sees the well along in years, whose dull yellowish-gray features are cruelly mutilated by a scar running from his mouth to his eyes. She thinks: Pajeu. For the first time that day she feels afraid. A look of terror has come over the soldier's face, he is answering every question he is asked as fast as he can get the words out, and is begging, pleading, with his eyes, mouth, hands, for as Pajeu interrogates him others are stripping him naked. They remove his tattered tunic, his frayed trousers, without manhandling him, and Jurema-feeling neither happy nor sad, as though she were still dreaming-sees the jaguncos jaguncos, once they have stripped him naked, at a simple gesture from that caboclo caboclo people tell such terrible stories about, plunge several knives into him, in the belly, in the back, in the neck, and sees the soldier topple over dead without even having had the time to scream. She sees one of the people tell such terrible stories about, plunge several knives into him, in the belly, in the back, in the neck, and sees the soldier topple over dead without even having had the time to scream. She sees one of the jaguncos jaguncos bend down, take hold of the soldier's p.e.n.i.s, soft and now very small, cut it off with one stroke of his knife and in the same motion stuff it into his mouth. He then wipes his knife on the corpse and thrusts it back into his belt. She feels neither joy nor sadness nor revulsion. bend down, take hold of the soldier's p.e.n.i.s, soft and now very small, cut it off with one stroke of his knife and in the same motion stuff it into his mouth. He then wipes his knife on the corpse and thrusts it back into his belt. She feels neither joy nor sadness nor revulsion.

She realizes that the caboclo caboclo without a nose is speaking to her. "Are you on your way to Belo Monte alone or with other pilgrims?" He p.r.o.nounces each word slowly, as though she might not understand him, hear him. "Where are you from?" without a nose is speaking to her. "Are you on your way to Belo Monte alone or with other pilgrims?" He p.r.o.nounces each word slowly, as though she might not understand him, hear him. "Where are you from?"

She finds it hard to speak. In a voice that seems to be another woman's, she stammers that she has come from Queimadas.

"A long journey," the caboclo caboclo says, looking her up and down, obviously curious. "And what's more, by the same route the soldiers were following." says, looking her up and down, obviously curious. "And what's more, by the same route the soldiers were following."

Jurema nods. She ought to thank him, say something nice to him for having rescued her, but she is too terrified of this famous outlaw. All the other jaguncos jaguncos are standing round about her, and with their gra.s.s cloaks, their weapons, their whistles, they impress her as being not real live men but creatures out of a fairy tale or a nightmare. are standing round about her, and with their gra.s.s cloaks, their weapons, their whistles, they impress her as being not real live men but creatures out of a fairy tale or a nightmare.

"You can't get to Belo Monte from this direction," Pajeu tells her, with a grimace that must be his way of smiling. "There are Protestants all about in these hills. Go around them instead, till you get to the road from Jeremoabo. There aren't any soldiers on that side."

"My husband," Jurema murmurs, pointing to the thicket.

Her voice catches in a sob. She hurries off, overcome with anxiety as the memory of what was happening when the soldiers arrived on the scene suddenly comes back to her and she recognizes the other one, the one who was watching as he waited for his turn: he is the naked, b.l.o.o.d.y corpse hanged by the neck from a tree, swaying back and forth alongside his uniform, which has also been hung up in the branches. Jurema knows which way to go, for she hears a noise to guide her, and indeed in just a few moments she comes upon Galileo Gall and Rufino, in the part of the caatinga caatinga decorated with uniforms. The two men have taken on the same color as the muddy earth, and must be dying, yet they are still fighting. They are tattered wrecks locked together, hitting out at each other with their heads, with their feet, biting and scratching each other, but so slowly it is as if they are playing. Jurema halts in front of them and the decorated with uniforms. The two men have taken on the same color as the muddy earth, and must be dying, yet they are still fighting. They are tattered wrecks locked together, hitting out at each other with their heads, with their feet, biting and scratching each other, but so slowly it is as if they are playing. Jurema halts in front of them and the caboclo caboclo and the and the jaguncos jaguncos gather round in a circle to watch the fight. It is a contest that is nearing its end, two shapes covered with mud, unrecognizable, inseparable, who are barely moving and give no sign that they have noticed that they are surrounded by dozens of people who have just arrived on the scene. They lie there panting, bleeding, ripping off bits and pieces of each other's clothes. gather round in a circle to watch the fight. It is a contest that is nearing its end, two shapes covered with mud, unrecognizable, inseparable, who are barely moving and give no sign that they have noticed that they are surrounded by dozens of people who have just arrived on the scene. They lie there panting, bleeding, ripping off bits and pieces of each other's clothes.

"You're Jurema, you're the wife of the guide from Queimadas," Pajeu says at her side, in an excited voice. "He found you, then. And found that poor fool who was at Calumbi."

"That's the lunatic who fell into the trap last night," someone on the other side of the circle says. "The one who was so terrified of the soldiers."

Jurema feels a hand in hers, a tiny chubby one, squeezing tightly. It is the Dwarf. He looks at her with eyes full of hope and joy, as though she were about to save his life. Covered with mud, he clings to her.

"Stop them, stop them, Pajeu," Jurema says. "Save my husband, save..."

"Do you want me to save both of them?" Pajeu says mockingly. "Do you want to stay with both of them?"

Jurema hears other jaguncos jaguncos laugh at these words from the laugh at these words from the caboclo caboclo without a nose. without a nose.

"This is men's business, Jurema," Pajeu calmly explains to her. "You got them into this. Leave them in the mess you got them into, and let them settle the matter between them the way two men should. If your husband gets out of it alive, he'll kill you, and if he dies you'll be to blame for his death and you'll have to account for yourself to the Father. In Belo Monte the Counselor will tell you what you must do to redeem yourself. So be off with you now, because war is coming this way. Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor!"

The caatinga caatinga stirs, and in seconds the stirs, and in seconds the jaguncos jaguncos disappear in the scrub. The Dwarf continues to squeeze her hand as he stands there watching with her. Jurema sees that there is a knife plunged halfway into Gall's ribs. She can still hear bugles, bells, whistles. Suddenly the struggle ends, for with a roar Gall rolls a few yards away from Rufino. Jurema sees him grab hold of the knife and pull it out of his side with another roar. She looks at Rufino, who looks back at her as he lies there in the mud, his mouth open, his eyes lifeless. disappear in the scrub. The Dwarf continues to squeeze her hand as he stands there watching with her. Jurema sees that there is a knife plunged halfway into Gall's ribs. She can still hear bugles, bells, whistles. Suddenly the struggle ends, for with a roar Gall rolls a few yards away from Rufino. Jurema sees him grab hold of the knife and pull it out of his side with another roar. She looks at Rufino, who looks back at her as he lies there in the mud, his mouth open, his eyes lifeless.

"You still haven't slapped my face," she hears Galileo say, urging Rufino on with the hand that is clutching the knife.

Jurema sees Rufino nod and thinks: "They understand each other." She doesn't know what the thought means and yet she feels that it is altogether true. Rufino drags himself toward Gall, very slowly. Will he reach him? He pushes himself along with his elbows, with his knees, rubs his face in the mud, like an earthworm, and Gall urges him on, waving the knife. "Men's business," Jurema thinks. She thinks: "The blame will fall on me." Rufino reaches Gall, who tries to plunge the knife into him, as the guide strikes him in the face. But the slap has no momentum behind it by the time it lands, for Rufino has no energy left or has entirely lost heart. The hand lingers on Gall's face, like a sort of caress. Gall strikes too, once, twice, and then his hand rests quietly on the guide's head. They lie dying in each other's arms, gazing into each other's eyes. Jurema has the impression that the two faces, a fraction of an inch apart, are smiling at each other. The bugle calls and the whistles have been succeeded now by heavy gunfire. The Dwarf says something that she does not understand.

"You struck him in the face, Rufino," Jurema thinks. "What did you gain by that, Rufino? What use was there in getting your revenge if you've died, if you've left me all alone in the world, Rufino?" She does not weep, she does not move, she does not take her eyes from the two motionless men. That hand on Rufino's head reminds her that in Queimadas, when to the misfortune of all of them G.o.d willed that the stranger should come to offer her husband work, he had once felt Rufino's head and read its secrets for him, just as Porffrio the sorcerer read them in coffee grounds and Dona Cacilda in a basin of water.

"Did I tell you who turned up in Calumbi among the people accompanying Moreira Cesar?" the Baron de Canabrava said. "That reporter who once worked for me and was lured away by Epaminondas to the Jornal de Noticias Jornal de Noticias. That disaster on two feet with gla.s.ses like the goggles of a diving suit who stumbled about scribbling and wore some sort of clown costume. Do you remember him, Adalberto? He wrote poetry and smoked opium."

But neither Colonel Jose Bernardo Murau nor Adalberto de Gumucio was listening. The latter was rereading the papers that the baron had just translated for them, bringing them up close to the candelabrum lighting the dining-room table, from which their empty coffee cups had not yet been removed. Old Murau, swaying back and forth in his high-backed chair at the table as though he were still in his rocking chair in the little sitting room, appeared to have fallen asleep. But the baron knew that he was thinking about what his guest had read to the two of them.

"I'm going to see Estela," the baron said, rising to his feet.

As he walked through the ramshackle manor house, plunged in shadow, to the bedroom where they had put the baroness to bed shortly before dinner, he calculated the impression that that sort of testament left with him by the Scottish adventurer had made on his friends. As he stumbled on a broken tile in the hallway onto which bedrooms on either side opened, he thought: "There will be more questions in Salvador. And each time I explain why I let him go, I'll have the same feeling that I'm lying." Why exactly had he let Galileo Gall go? Out of stupidity? Out of weariness? Out of disgust at everything that had happened? Out of sympathy? "I have a weak spot in my heart for odd specimens, for what's abnormal," he thought, remembering Gall and the nearsighted journalist.

From the doorway, in the feeble reddish glow of the night lamp on the bedside table, he saw Sebastiana's profile. She was sitting at the foot of the bed, in an armchair with cushions, and though she had never been a cheerful, smiling woman, her expression now was so grave that the baron was alarmed. She had risen to her feet on seeing him enter the room.

"Has she gone on sleeping quietly?" the baron asked, raising the mosquito netting and bending over to look at his wife. Her eyes were closed and in the semidarkness her face, though very pale, looked serene. The sheets rose and fell gently with her breathing.

"Sleeping, yes, but not all that quietly," Sebastiana said in a low voice, accompanying him to the door of the bedroom. She lowered her voice even more, and the baron noted the concern lurking deep in her black eyes. "She's dreaming. She keeps talking in her sleep-always about the same thing."

"Sebastiana doesn't dare mention the words 'burning down,' 'fire,' 'flames,'" the baron thought with a heavy heart. Would they become taboo, would he be obliged to give orders that any words that Estela might a.s.sociate with the holocaust at Calumbi never be uttered in their home? He had taken her by the arm, trying to calm her, but could find nothing to say to her. He felt the maidservant's smooth, warm skin beneath his fingers.

"My mistress cannot stay here," she muttered. "Take her to Salvador. Doctors must see her, give her something, free her mind of those memories. She can't go on suffering such anguish night and day."

"I know, Sebastiana," the baron a.s.sured her. "But it's such a long, hard journey. It strikes me as too great a risk to expose her to more traveling in the state she's in. Though I grant that it may be even more dangerous to keep her from getting medical treatment. We'll see tomorrow. You must go get some rest now. You haven't slept a wink either for several days now."

"I'm going to spend the night here with my mistress," Sebastian answered in a defiant tone of voice.

As he saw her settle herself in the armchair at Estela's bedside, the thought ran through the baron's mind that she was still a woman with a firm, beautiful, admirably preserved figure. "Just like Estela," he said to himself. And in a wave of nostalgia he remembered that in the first years of their marriage he had come to feel such intense jealousy that it kept him awake nights on seeing the camaraderie, the inviolable intimacy that existed between the two women. He went back to the dining room, and saw through a window that the night sky was covered with clouds that hid the stars. He remembered, smiling, that because of his feelings of jealousy he had one day asked Estela to dismiss Sebastiana; the argument that had ensued had been the most serious one of their entire married life. He entered the dining room with the vivid, painful image, still intact, of the baroness, her cheeks on fire, defending her maidservant and repeating over and over that if Sebastiana left, she was leaving, too. This memory, which had long remained a spark setting his desire aflame, moved him to the depths now. He felt like weeping. He found his friends absorbed in conjectures as to whether what he had read to them could possibly be true.

"A braggart, a dreamer, a rascal with a lively imagination, a first-rate confidence man," Colonel Murau was saying. "Even heroes in novels don't have that many adventures. The only part I believe is where he tells about the agreement with Epaminondas to take arms to Canudos. A smuggler who invented that story about anarchism as a pretext and a justification."

"A pretext and a justification?" Adalberto de Gumucio bounced up and down in his chair. "An aggravating circ.u.mstance, rather."

The baron sat down next to him and tried to take an interest in the discussion.

"Does attempting to do away with property, religion, marriage, morality impress you as being a mitigating circ.u.mstance?" Gumucio said, pressing his point. "That's far more serious than trafficking in arms."

"Marriage, morality," the baron thought. And he wondered if Adalberto would have permitted in his home as intimate a relationship as that between Estela and Sebastiana. His heart sank again as he thought about his wife. He decided to leave the following morning. He poured himself a gla.s.s of port and took a long sip of it.

"I'm inclined to believe that the story is true," Gumucio said. "Because of the natural way in which he tells of all those extraordinary things-the escapes, the murders, his voyages as a freebooter, his s.e.xual abstinence. He doesn't realize that there is anything out of the ordinary about them. This makes me think that he really experienced them and that he believes the horrendous things he says against G.o.d, the family, and society."

"There's no doubt that he believes them," the baron said, savoring the sweetish afterglow left by the port. "I heard him tell them many times, at Calumbi."

Old Murau filled their gla.s.ses again. They had not drunk during dinner, but after the coffee their host had brought out this decanter full of port that was now nearly half empty. Was drinking till he fell into a stupor what he needed to keep his mind off Estela's health? the baron wondered.

"He confuses reality and illusion, he has no idea where the one ends and the other begins," he said. "It may be that he recounts those things in all sincerity and believes every word. It doesn't matter. Because he doesn't see them with his eyes but through the filter of his ideas, his beliefs. Don't you recall what he says about Canudos, about the jaguncos? jaguncos? It must be the same with all the rest. It's quite possible that to him a street fight among ruffians in Barcelona or a raid on smugglers by the police in Ma.r.s.eilles is a battle waged by the oppressed against the oppressors in the war to shatter the chains binding humanity." It must be the same with all the rest. It's quite possible that to him a street fight among ruffians in Barcelona or a raid on smugglers by the police in Ma.r.s.eilles is a battle waged by the oppressed against the oppressors in the war to shatter the chains binding humanity."

"And what about s.e.x?" Jose Bernardo Murau said: his face was congested, his little eyes gleaming, his tongue thick. "Do you two swallow that story about his ten years of chast.i.ty? Ten years of chast.i.ty to store up energy to be released in revolution?"

His tone of voice was such that the baron suspected that at any moment he would begin to tell off-color stories.

"What about priests?" he asked. "Don't they live in chast.i.ty out of love of G.o.d? Gall is a sort of priest."

"Jose Bernardo judges men by his own example," Gumucio joked, turning to their host. "You couldn't have remained chaste for ten years for anything in the world."

"Not for anything in the world." Murau laughed. "Isn't it stupid to give up one of the few compensations life has to offer?"

One of the tapers in the candelabrum began to sputter and give off a little cloud of smoke, and Murau rose to his feet to blow it out. While he was up, he poured all of them another gla.s.s of port, leaving the decanter completely empty.

"During all those years of abstinence he must have acc.u.mulated enough energy to cover a she-donkey and leave her pregnant," he said, his eyes aglow. He gave a vulgar laugh and staggered over to a buffet to get out another bottle of port. The remaining tapers in the candelabrum were going out and the room had grown dark. "What does the guide's wife, the woman who caused him to renounce chast.i.ty, look like?"

"I haven't seen her for some time," the baron said. "She was a little bit of a thing, docile and timid."

"A good behind?" Colonel Murau said thickly, raising his gla.s.s to his lips with a trembling hand. "In these parts, that's the best thing they've got. They're weak little things and they age fast. But they all have first-cla.s.s a.s.ses."

Adalberto de Gumucio hurriedly changed the subject. "It's going to be hard to make a peace pact with the Jacobins as you suggest," he remarked to the baron. "Our friends won't want to work with those who have been attacking us for so many years."

"Of course it's going to be hard," the baron answered, grateful to Adalberto for bringing up another subject. "Above all, persuading Epaminondas, who thinks he's won. But in the end they'll all realize that there's no other way. It's a question of survival..."

He was interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats and whinnies very close by and, a moment later, by loud knocking at the door. Jose Bernardo Murau frowned in irritation. "What the devil is going on?" he grumbled, struggling to his feet. He shuffled out of the dining room, and the baron filled their gla.s.ses again.

"You drinking: that's something new, I must say," Gumucio commented. "Is it because Calumbi was burned down? That's not the end of the world, you know. Just a temporary setback."

"It's on account of Estela," the baron said. "I'll never forgive myself. It was my fault, Adalberto. I asked too much of her. I shouldn't have taken her to Calumbi, just as you and Viana warned me. It was selfish, stupid of me."

They heard the bolt of the front door slide open, and men's voices.

"It's a pa.s.sing crisis that she'll soon recover from," Gumurio said. "It's absurd of you to blame yourself."

"I've decided to go on to Salvador tomorrow," the baron said. "It's more of a risk keeping her here, without medical attention."

Jose Bernardo Murau reappeared in the doorway. He seemed to have sobered up all of a sudden, and had such an odd expression on his face that Gumucio and the baron hurried to his side.

"News of Moreira Cesar?" The baron took him by the arm, trying to bring him back to reality.

"Incredible, incredible," the old cattle breeder muttered, as though he'd just seen ghosts.

[VII].

The first thing the nearsighted journalist notices in the early dawn light as he shakes the crusted mud off himself is that his body aches more than it did the evening before, as though he had received a terrible beating during his sleepless night. Secondly, the feverish activity, the movement of uniforms that is taking place without any orders being given, in a silence that is a sharp contrast to the sound of cannon fire, bells, and bugles that has a.s.sailed his ears all night long. He throws his big leather pouch over his shoulder, tucks the portable writing desk under his arm, and, with pins and needles in his legs and the tickle of an imminent sneeze in his nose, begins to climb the slope toward Colonel Moreira Cesar's tent. "The humidity," he thinks, overcome by a fit of sneezing that makes him forget the war and everything save those internal explosions that bring tears to his eyes, stop up his ears, dizzy his brain, and turn his nostrils into anthills. Soldiers brush by him and push him aside as they hurry past, buckling on their knapsacks, rifles in hand, and he can now hear voices shouting orders.

Arriving at the top, he spies Moreira Cesar, surrounded by officers, standing on something, looking down the mountainside through field gla.s.ses. Round about him, enormous confusion reigns. The white horse, saddled and ready, rears amid soldiers and buglers who b.u.mp into officers coming or going on the run, shouting phrases that the journalist, his ears buzzing from his sneezes, barely catches. He hears the colonel's voice: "What's happening with the artillery, Cunha Matos?" The reply is drowned out by the blare of bugle calls. Ridding himself of his pouch and writing desk, the journalist steps forward to have a look at Canudos below.

He has not seen it the night before, and the thought crosses his mind that within minutes or hours no one will ever see it again. He hurriedly wipes the fogged lenses of his gla.s.ses on the tail of his undershirt and observes the scene that lies at his feet. The light, of a hue between dark blue and leaden, suffusing the mountain peaks, has not yet reached the hollow in which Canudos lies. He finds it hard to make out where the hillsides, the fields, and the stony ground end and the jumble of huts and shacks, huddled together one atop the other over a wide area, begins. But he immediately spies two churches, one of them small and the other very tall, with imposing towers, separated by a quadrangular open s.p.a.ce. He is squinting, trying to make out in the half light the area bounded by a river which appears to be at high water, when a cannonade begins that makes him start and clap his hands over his ears. But he does not close his eyes, staring in fascination as flames suddenly appear below and several shacks are reduced to a shower of planks, bricks, laths, straw mats, unidentifiable objects that fly to pieces and disappear. The cannon fire grows heavier and Canudos vanishes from sight beneath a cloud of smoke that ascends the hillsides and opens up, here and there, to form craters from which there come flying out bits of rooftops and walls blown to pieces by exploding sh.e.l.ls. The stupid thought crosses his mind that if the cloud of smoke continues to rise it will reach his nose and send him into another fit of sneezing.

"What is the Seventh waiting for! And the Ninth! And the Sixteenth!" he hears Moreira Cesar's voice say, so close to him that he turns around to look, and finds the colonel and the group around him practically at his side.

"The Seventh is charging down there, sir," Captain Olimpio de Castro answers just a few steps away.

"And the Ninth and the Sixteenth," someone hastily adds from behind him.

"You are witness to a spectacle that will make you famous." Colonel Moreira Cesar claps him on the back as he pa.s.ses him. He is left no time to answer, for the colonel and his staff leave him standing there and proceed to station themselves a bit farther down the mountainside, on a little promontory.

"The Seventh, the Ninth, the Sixteenth," he thinks. "Battalions? Platoons? Companies?" But the light dawns immediately. From three directions on the mountainsides round about, regimental corps are descending-bayonets gleaming-toward the smoke-filled hollow in which Canudos lies. The cannons have ceased to roar, and in the silence the nearsighted journalist suddenly hears bells pealing. The troops are running, slipping, leaping down the hillsides, shooting. The slopes, too, begin to be covered with smoke. Moreira Cesar's red-and-blue kepi nods approvingly. The journalist picks up his leather pouch and his portable writing desk and walks down the few yards that separate him from the commander of the Seventh Regiment; he settles down in a cleft in the rock, between the colonel and his staff and the white horse that an orderly is holding by the bridle. He feels strange, hypnotized, and the absurd idea pa.s.ses through his mind that he is not really seeing what he is seeing.

A breeze begins to dispel the lumpy leaden-colored clouds that veil the city; he sees them grow wispier, break up, move off, driven by the wind in the direction of the open terrain where the road from Jeremoabo must be. He is now able to follow the movements of the troops. Those on his right have reached the bank of the river and are crossing it; the little red, green, blue figures are turning gray, disappearing and reappearing on the other bank, when suddenly a wall of dust rises between them and Canudos. A number of the figures fall to the ground.

"Trenches," someone says.

The nearsighted journalist decides to approach the group surrounding the colonel, who has taken a few steps downhill and is observing the scene below, having exchanged his field gla.s.ses for a spygla.s.s. The red ball of the sun has risen a few moments before and is now illuminating the theater of operations. Almost without realizing what he is doing, the correspondent from the Jornal de Noticias Jornal de Noticias, who has not stopped trembling, clambers up onto a projecting rock in order to see better. He then has at least a vague idea of what is going on. The first ranks of soldiers to ford the river have been blown to bits from a series of hidden defenses, and there is now heavy gunfire down there. Another of the a.s.sault units, which is deploying almost at his feet as it attacks, is also being stopped by a heavy burst of fire from ground level. The sharpshooters are entrenched in holes dug in the earth. He sees the jaguncos jaguncos. They are those heads-wearing hats? headcloths?-that suddenly pop up out of the ground, emitting smoke, and although the cloud of dust blurs their features and silhouettes, he can make out men who have been hit by the rounds of fire or are sliding down into the holes where they are no doubt already engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

He is convulsed by a fit of sneezing so prolonged that for a moment he thinks he is going to faint. Doubled over, with his eyes closed, his gla.s.ses in his hand, he sneezes, opens his mouth, gasps desperately for air. He is finally able to straighten up, to breathe, and realizes that he is being pounded on the back. He puts his gla.s.ses back on and sees the colonel.

"We thought you'd been wounded," Moreira Cesar says, to all appearances in an excellent humor.

The journalist is surrounded by officers and doesn't know what to say, for the idea that anyone could think he was wounded amazes him, as though it never would have entered his head that he, too, is part of this war, that he, too, is under fire.

"What's happening? What's happening?" he stammers.

"The Ninth has entered Canudos and now the Seventh is going in," the colonel says, the field gla.s.ses at his eyes.