The War Of The End Of The World Part 29

"He wasn't burned to death and they didn't slit his throat," Antonio the Pyrotechnist answered immediately in a rea.s.suring tone of voice, as though he were happy to be able at last to tell them a piece of good news. "He died of a bullet wound on the barricade at Santo Eloi. He was standing right near me. He also helped people die pious deaths." Serafim the carpenter remarked that perhaps the Father did not look favorably upon his dying on the barricade like that. He wasn't a jagunco jagunco but a priest, right? The Father might not look with favor on a man of the cloth dying with a rifle in his hand. but a priest, right? The Father might not look with favor on a man of the cloth dying with a rifle in his hand.

"The Counselor no doubt explained to Him why Father Joaquim had a rifle in his hand," one of the Sardelinha sisters said. "And the Father probably forgave him."

"There's no doubt of that," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said. "The Father knows what He is about."

Even though there was no fire and the mouth of the cave was hidden beneath bushes and cacti uprooted whole from the ground round about, the clear light of the night-the Dwarf imagined a yellow moon and myriads of bright stars looking down on the sertao sertao in shocked surprise-filtered in to where they were sitting and he could see Antonio the Pyrotechnist's face in profile, his pug nose, his sharply chiseled forehead and chin. He was a in shocked surprise-filtered in to where they were sitting and he could see Antonio the Pyrotechnist's face in profile, his pug nose, his sharply chiseled forehead and chin. He was a jagunco jagunco the Dwarf remembered very well, because he had seen him preparing, back there in Canudos, those fireworks displays that lit up the sky with sparkling arabesques on the nights when there were processions. He remembered his hands covered with powder burns, the scars on his arms, and how, once the war began, he had devoted all his time and effort to making up the dynamite sticks that the the Dwarf remembered very well, because he had seen him preparing, back there in Canudos, those fireworks displays that lit up the sky with sparkling arabesques on the nights when there were processions. He remembered his hands covered with powder burns, the scars on his arms, and how, once the war began, he had devoted all his time and effort to making up the dynamite sticks that the jaguncos jaguncos hurled over the barricades at the soldiers. The Dwarf had been the first to recognize him when he had appeared at the entrance to the cave that afternoon, and had called out that it was the Pyrotechnist, so the Vilanova brothers, pistols in hand, wouldn't shoot. hurled over the barricades at the soldiers. The Dwarf had been the first to recognize him when he had appeared at the entrance to the cave that afternoon, and had called out that it was the Pyrotechnist, so the Vilanova brothers, pistols in hand, wouldn't shoot.

"And why did the Little Blessed One come back?" Antonio Vilanova asked after a while. He was almost the only one who kept asking questions, the one who had quizzed Antonio the Pyrotechnist all afternoon and evening, once they, too, had recognized him and embraced him. "Had he taken leave of his senses?"

"I'm certain of that," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said.

The Dwarf tried to picture the scene in his mind, the tiny pale-faced figure with the burning eyes returning to the little redoubt with his white flag, making his way amid the dead, the rubble, the wounded, the combatants, the burned-out dwellings, the rats which, according to the Pyrotechnist, had suddenly appeared everywhere to feast voraciously on the dead bodies.

"They have agreed," the Little Blessed One said. "You can surrender now."

"We were to come out one by one, with no weapons, with our hands on our heads," the Pyrotechnist explained, in the tone of voice of someone recounting the wildest story or of a drunk babbling nonsense. "We would be considered prisoners and would not be killed."

The Dwarf heard him heave a sigh. He heard one of the Vilanova brothers sigh too, and thought he heard one of the Sardelinha sisters weeping. It was odd: the Vilanova brothers' wives, the two of whom the Dwarf often confused, never burst into tears at the same time. One of them would begin to cry and then the other. But they had not shed a single tear until Antonio the Pyrotechnist had started answering Antonio Vilanova's questions that afternoon; all during the flight from Belo Monte and the days that they had been hiding out here, he had never seen them cry. He was trembling so badly that Jurema put her arm around his shoulders and rubbed him briskly up and down. Was he shivering from the cold here at Cacabu, or because he had fallen ill from hunger, or was it what the Pyrotechnist was recounting that was making him tremble like that?

"Little Blessed One, Little Blessed One, do you realize what you're saying?" Big Joao moaned. "Do you realize what it is you're asking? Do you really want us to lay down our arms, to go out with our hands on our heads to surrender to the Freemasons? Is that what you want, Little Blessed One?"

"Not you," the voice that always seemed to be praying answered. "The innocent victims. The youngsters, the women about to give birth, the aged. May their lives be spared. You can't decide their fate for them. If you don't allow them to escape with their lives, it's as though you killed them. The fault will be yours, there will be innocent blood on your hands, Big Joao. It's a sin against heaven to let innocent people die. They aren't able to defend themselves, Big Joao."

"He said that the Counselor spoke through his mouth," Antonio the Pyrotechnist added. "That he had inspired him, that he had ordered him to save them."

"And Abbot Joao?" Antonio Vilanova asked.

"He wasn't there," the Pyrotechnist explained. "The Little Blessed One came back to Belo Monte by way of the barricade at Madre Igreja. And Abbot Joao was at Santo Eloi. They told him the Little Blessed One had come back, but he couldn't get there right away. He was busy reinforcing that barricade, the weakest one. By the time he arrived, they had already begun to go off with the Little Blessed One. Women, children, the aged, the sick dragging themselves along."

"And n.o.body stopped them?" Antonio Vilanova asked.

"n.o.body dared," the Pyrotechnist said. "He was the Little Blessed One, the Little Blessed One. Not just anyone like you or me, but one who had been with the Counselor from the very beginning. He was the Little Blessed One. Would you have told him that he'd taken leave of his senses, that he didn't know what he was doing? Big Joao didn't dare to, nor I nor anyone else."

"But Abbot Joao dared to," Antonio Vilanova murmured.

"There's no doubt of that," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said. "Abbot Joao dared to."

The Dwarf felt frozen to the bone and his forehead was burning hot. He could easily picture the scene: the tall, supple, st.u.r.dy figure of the former cangaceiro cangaceiro appearing there, his knife and machete tucked in his belt, his rifle slung over his shoulder, the bandoleers around his neck, so tired he was past feeling tired. There he was, seeing the unbelievable file of pregnant women, children, old people, invalids, all those people come back to life, walking toward the soldiers with their hands on their heads. He wasn't imagining it: he could see it, with the clearness and the color of one of the performances of the Gypsy's Circus, the ones back in the good old days, when it was a big, prosperous circus. He was seeing Abbot Joao: his stupefaction, his bewilderment, his anger. appearing there, his knife and machete tucked in his belt, his rifle slung over his shoulder, the bandoleers around his neck, so tired he was past feeling tired. There he was, seeing the unbelievable file of pregnant women, children, old people, invalids, all those people come back to life, walking toward the soldiers with their hands on their heads. He wasn't imagining it: he could see it, with the clearness and the color of one of the performances of the Gypsy's Circus, the ones back in the good old days, when it was a big, prosperous circus. He was seeing Abbot Joao: his stupefaction, his bewilderment, his anger.

"Stop! Stop!" he shouted, beside himself, looking all about, motioning to those who were surrendering, trying to make them come back. "Have you gone out of your minds? Stop! Stop!"

"We explained to him," the Pyrotechnist said. "Big Joao, who was crying and felt responsible, explained to him. Pedrao came too, and Father Joaquim, and others. It took only a few words from them for Abbot Joao to understand exactly what was going on."

"It's not that they're going to kill them," he said, raising his voice, loading his rifle, trying to take aim at those who had already crossed the lines and were heading on. "They're going to kill all of us. They're going to humiliate them, they're going to outrage their dignity like they did with Pajeu. We can't let that happen, precisely because they're innocent. We can't let the atheists slit their throats. We can't let them dishonor them!"

"He was already shooting," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said. "We were all shooting. Pedrao, Big Joao, Father Joaquim, me." The Dwarf noted that his voice, steady until then, was beginning to quaver. "Did we do the wrong thing? Did I do the wrong thing, Antonio Vilanova? Was it wrong of Abbot Joao to make us shoot?"

"You did the right thing," Antonio Vilanova answered immediately. "They died a merciful death. The heretics would have slit their throats, done what they did to Pajeu. I would have shot, too."

"I don't know," the Pyrotechnist said. "I'm tormented by it. Does the Counselor approve? I'm going to be asking myself that question for the rest of my life, trying to decide whether, after having been with the Counselor for ten years, I'll be eternally d.a.m.ned for making a mistake at the last moment. Sometimes..."

He fell silent and the Dwarf realized that the Sardelinha sisters were crying-at the same time now-one of them with loud, indelicate sobs, the other softly, with little hiccups.

"Sometimes...?" Antonio Vilanova said.

"Sometimes I think that the Father, the Blessed Jesus, or Our Lady wrought the miracle of saving me from among the dead so that I may redeem myself for those shots," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said. "I don't know. Once again, I don't know anything. In Belo Monte everything seemed clear to me, day was day and night night. Until that moment, until we began firing on the innocent and on the Little Blessed One. Now everything's hard to decide again."

He sighed and remained silent, listening, as the Dwarf and the others were, to the Sardelinha sisters weeping for those innocents whom the jaguncos jaguncos had sent to a merciful death. had sent to a merciful death.

"Because maybe the Father wanted them to go to heaven as martyrs," the Pyrotechnist added.

"I'm sweating," the Dwarf thought. Or was he bleeding? "I'm dying," he thought. Drops were running down his forehead, sliding down into his eyebrows and eyelashes, blinding his eyes. But even though he was sweating, the cold was freezing his insides. Every so often Jurema wiped his face.

"And what happened then?" he heard the nearsighted journalist ask. "After Abbot Joao, after you and others..."

He fell silent and the Sardelinha sisters, who had stopped crying in their surprise at this intrusion, began weeping again.

"There wasn't any 'after,'" Antonio the Pyrotechnist said. "The atheists thought we were shooting at them. They were enraged at seeing us take this prey that they thought was theirs away from them." He fell silent, then his voice echoed through the cave: "'Traitors,' they shouted. We'd broken the truce and were going to pay for it. They came at us from all directions. Thousands of atheists. That was a piece of luck."

"A piece of luck?" Antonio Vilanova said.

The Dwarf had understood. A piece of luck to have that torrent of uniforms advancing with rifles and torches to shoot at again, a piece of luck not to have to go on killing innocents to save them from dishonor. He understood, and in the midst of his fever and chills, he saw it. He saw how the exhausted jaguncos jaguncos, who had been sending people to merciful deaths, rubbed their blistered, burned hands in glee, happy to have before them once again a clear, definite, flagrant, unquestionable enemy. He could see that fury advancing, killing everything not yet killed, burning everything left to burn.

"But I'm sure he didn't weep even at that moment," one of the Sardelinhas said, and the Dwarf could not tell whether it was Honorio's wife or Antonio's. "I can imagine Big Joao, Father Joaquim weeping because they had to do that to those innocents. But him? Did he weep?"

"I'm certain of that," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said softly. "Even though I didn't see him."

"I never once saw Abbot Joao weep," the same Sardelinha sister said.

"You never liked him," Antonio Vilanova muttered bitterly, and the Dwarf knew then which of the two sisters was speaking: Antonia.

"Never," she admitted, making no effort to hide her enmity. "And even less now. Now that I know that he ended up not as Abbot Joao but as Satan Joao. The one who killed to be killing, robbed to be robbing, and took pleasure in making people suffer."

There was a deep silence and the Dwarf could feel that the nearsighted man was frightened. He waited, every nerve tense.

"I don't ever want to hear you say that again," Antonio Vilanova said slowly. "You've been my wife for years, forever. We've gone through everything together. But if I ever hear you say that again, it's all over between us. And it will be the end of you, too."

Trembling, sweating, counting the seconds, the Dwarf waited.

"I swear by the Blessed Jesus that I will never say that again," Antonia Sardelinha stammered.

"I saw Abbot Joao weep once," the Dwarf said then. His teeth were chattering and his words came out in spurts, well chewed. He spoke with his face pressed against Jurema's bosom. "Don't you remember, didn't I tell you? When he heard the Terrible and Exemplary Story of Robert the Devil."

"He was the son of a king and his mother's hair was already white when he was born," Abbot Joao remembered. "He was born through a miracle, if the work of the Devil can also be called a miracle. She had made a pact so as to give birth to Robert. Isn't that how it begins?"

"No," the Dwarf said, with a certainty that came from having told this story all his life, one he had known for so long he couldn't remember where or when he had learned it, one he had taken about from village to village, told hundreds, thousands of times, making it longer, making it shorter, making it sadder or happier or more dramatic to fit the mood of his ever-changing audience. Not even Abbot Joao could tell him how it really began. His mother was old and barren and had to make a pact so as to give birth to Robert, yes. But he wasn't the son of a king. He was the son of a duke.

"Of the Duke of Normandy," Abbot Joao agreed. "Go ahead-tell it the way it really was."

"He wept?" he heard a voice say as though from the next world, that voice he knew so well, always frightened, yet at the same time curious, prying, meddlesome. "Listening to the story of Robert the Devil?"

Yes, he had wept. At one point or another, perhaps at the moment when he was committing his worst ma.s.sacres, his worst iniquities, when, possessed, impelled, overpowered by the spirit of destruction, an invisible force that he was unable to resist, Robert plunged his knife into the bellies of pregnant women or slit the throats of newborn babes ("Which means that he was from the South, not the Northeast," the Dwarf explained) and impaled peasants and set fire to huts where families were sleeping, he had noticed that the Street Commander's eyes were gleaming, his cheeks glistening, his chin trembling, his chest heaving. Disconcerted, terrified, the Dwarf fell silent-what mistake had he made, what had he left out?-and looked anxiously at Catarina, that little figure so thin that she seemed to occupy no s.p.a.ce at all in the redoubt on Menino Jesus, where Abbot Joao had taken him. Catarina motioned to him to go on.

But Abbot Joao didn't let him. "Was what he did his fault?" he said, transfixed. "Was it his fault that he committed countless cruelties? Could he do otherwise? Wasn't he paying his mother's debt? From whom should the Father have sought retribution for those wicked deeds? From him or from the d.u.c.h.ess?" His eyes were riveted on the Dwarf, in terrible anguish. "Answer me, answer me."

"I don't know, I don't know," the Dwarf said, trembling. "It's not in the story. It's not my fault, don't do anything to me, I'm only the one who's telling the story."

"He's not going to do anything to you," the woman who seemed to be a wraith said softly. "Go on with the story, go on."

He had gone on with the story, as Catarina dried Abbot Joao's eyes with the hem of her skirt, squatted at his feet and clasped his legs with her hands and leaned her head against his knees so as to make him feel that he wasn't alone. He had not wept again, or moved, or interrupted him till the end, which sometimes came with the death of Robert the Saint become a hermit, and sometimes with Robert placing on his head the crown that had become rightfully his on discovering that he was the son of Richard of Normandy, one of the Twelve Peers of France. He remembered that when he had finished the story that afternoon-or that night?-Abbot Joao had thanked him for telling it. But when, at what moment exactly had that been? Before the soldiers came, when life was peaceful and Belo Monte seemed the ideal place to live in? Or when life became death, hunger, holocaust, fear?

"When was it, Jurema?" he asked anxiously, not knowing why it was so urgent to situate it exactly in time. Then, turning to the nearsighted man: "Was it at the beginning or the end of the performance?"

"What's the matter with him?" he heard one of the Sardelinha sisters say.

"Fever," Jurema answered, putting her arms around him.

"When was it?" the Dwarf asked. "When was it?"

"He's delirious," he heard the nearsighted man say and felt him touch his forehead, stroke his hair and his back.

He heard him sneeze, twice, three times, as he always did when something surprised him, amused him, or frightened him. He could sneeze if he wanted to now. But he had not done so the night they had escaped, that night when one sneeze would have cost him his life. He imagined him at a circus performance in a village somewhere, sneezing twenty, fifty, a hundred times, as the Bearded Lady farted in the clown number, in every imaginable register and cadence, high, low, long, short, and it made him feel like laughing too, like the audience attending the performance. But he didn't have the strength.

"He's dropped off to sleep," he heard Jurema say, cradling his head in her lap. "He'll be all right tomorrow."

He was not asleep. From the depths of that ambiguous reality of fire and ice, his body hunched over in the darkness of the cave, he went on listening to Antonio the Pyrotechnist's story, reproducing, seeing that end of the world that he had already antic.i.p.ated, known, without any need to hear this man brought back to life from amid burning coals and corpses tell of it. And yet, despite how sick he felt, how badly he was shivering, how far away those who were speaking there beside him, in the dark of the night in the backlands of Bahia, in that world where there was no Canudos any more and no jaguncos jaguncos, where soon there would be no soldiers either, when those who had accomplished their mission left at last and the sertao sertao returned to its eternal proud and miserable solitude, the Dwarf had been interested, impressed, and amazed to hear what Antonio the Pyrotechnist was relating. returned to its eternal proud and miserable solitude, the Dwarf had been interested, impressed, and amazed to hear what Antonio the Pyrotechnist was relating.

"You might say that you've been restored to life," he heard Honorio say-the Vilanova who spoke so rarely that, when he did, it seemed to be his brother.

"Perhaps so," the Pyrotechnist answered. "But I wasn't dead. Not even wounded. I don't know. I don't know that, either. There was no blood on my body. Maybe a stone fell on my head. But I didn't hurt anywhere, either."

"You fell into a faint," Antonio Vilanova said. "The way people did in Belo Monte. They thought you were dead and that saved you."

"That saved me," the Pyrotechnist repeated. "But that wasn't all. Because when I came to and found myself in the midst of all those dead, I also saw that the atheists were finishing off with their bayonets those who had fallen, or shooting them if they moved. Lots of them went right by me, and not one of them bent over me to see if I was dead."

"In other words, you spent an entire day playing dead," Antonio Vilanova said.

"Hearing them pa.s.s by, killing off those who were still alive, knifing the prisoners to death, dynamiting the walls," the Pyrotechnist said. "But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was the dogs, the rats, the black vultures. They were devouring the dead. I could hear them pawing, biting, pecking. Animals don't make mistakes. They know who's dead and who isn't. Vultures, rats don't devour people who are still alive. My fear was the dogs. That was the miracle: they, too, left me alone."

"You were lucky," Antonio Vilanova said. "And what are you going to do now?"

"Go back to Mirandela," the Pyrotechnist said. "I was born there, I grew up there, I learned how to make skyrockets there. Maybe. I don't know. What about you?"

"We'll go far away from here," the former storekeeper said. "To a.s.sare, maybe. We came from there, we began this life there, fleeing from the plague, as we're doing now. From another plague. Maybe we'll end up where it all began. What else can we do?"

"Nothing, I'm certain of that," Antonio the Pyrotechnist said.

Not even when they tell him to hasten to General Artur Oscar's command post if he wants to have a look at the Counselor's head before First Lieutenant Pinto Souza takes it to Bahia does Colonel Geraldo Macedo, commanding officer of the Bahia Police Volunteer Battalion, stop thinking about what has obsessed him ever since the end of the war: "Has anyone seen him? Where is he?" But like all the brigade, regimental, and battalion commanders (officers of lesser rank are not accorded this privilege), he goes to have a look at the remains of the man who has been the death of so many people and yet, according to all witnesses, was never once seen to take up a rifle or a knife in his own hands. He doesn't see very much, however, because they have put the head in a sackful of lime inasmuch as it is very badly decomposed: just a few shocks of grayish hair. He merely puts in an appearance at General Oscar's hut for form's sake, unlike other officers, who stay on and on, congratulating each other on the end of the war and making plans for the future now that they will be going back to their home bases and their families. Colonel Macedo's eyes rest for a brief moment on the tangle of hair, then he leaves without a single comment and returns to the smoking heap of ruins and corpses.

He thinks no more about the Counselor or the exultant officers that he has left in the command post, officers whom, moreover, he has never considered to be his equals, and whose disdain for him he has reciprocated ever since he arrived on the slopes of Canudos with the battalion of Bahia police. He knows what his nickname is, what they call him behind his back: Bandit-Chaser. It doesn't bother him. He is proud of having spent thirty years of his life repeatedly cleaning out bands of cangaceiros cangaceiros from the backlands of Bahia, of having won all the gold braid he has and reached the rank of colonel-he, a humble from the backlands of Bahia, of having won all the gold braid he has and reached the rank of colonel-he, a humble mestizo mestizo born in Mulungo do Morro, a tiny village that none of these officers could even locate on the map-for having risked his neck hunting down the sc.u.m of the earth. born in Mulungo do Morro, a tiny village that none of these officers could even locate on the map-for having risked his neck hunting down the sc.u.m of the earth.

But it bothers his men. The Bahia police who four months ago agreed, out of personal loyalty to him, to come here to fight the Counselor-he had told them that the Governor of Bahia had asked him to take on this mission, that it was indispensable that Bahia state police should volunteer to go to Canudos so as to put an end to the perfidious talk going the rounds in the rest of the country to the effect that Bahians were soft toward, indifferent to, and even sympathetic secret allies of the jaguncos jaguncos, so as to demonstrate to the federal government and all of Brazil that Bahians were as ready as anyone else to make any and every sacrifice in the defense of the Republic-are naturally offended and hurt by the snubs and affronts that they have had to put up with ever since they joined the column. Unlike him, they are unable to contain themselves: they answer insults with insults, nicknames with nicknames, and in these four months they have been involved in countless incidents with the soldiers from other regiments. What exasperates them most is that the High Command also discriminates against them. In all the attacks, the Bahia Police Volunteer Battalion has been kept on the sidelines, in the rear guard, as though even the General Staff gave credence to the infamy that in their heart of hearts Bahians are restorationists, crypto-Conselheirists.

The stench is so overpowering that he is obliged to get out his handkerchief and cover his nose. Although many of the fires have burned out, the air is still full of soot, cinders, and ashes, and the colonel's eyes are irritated as he explores, searches about, kicks the bodies of the dead jaguncos jaguncos to separate them and have a look at their faces. The majority of them are charred or so disfigured by the flames that even if he came across him he would not be able to identify him. Moreover, even if his corpse is intact, how is he going to recognize it? After all, he has never seen him, and the descriptions he has had of him are not sufficiently detailed. What he is doing is stupid, of course. "Of course," he thinks. Though it is contrary to all reason, he can't help himself: it's that odd instinct that has served him so well in the past, that sudden flash of intuition that in the old days used to make him hurry his flying brigade along for two or three days on an inexplicable forced march to reach a village where, it would turn out, they surprised bandits that they had been searching for with no luck at all for weeks and months. It's the same now. Colonel Geraldo Macedo keeps poking about amid the stinking corpses, his one hand holding the handkerchief over his nose and mouth and the other chasing away the swarms of flies, kicking away the rats that climb up his legs, because, in the face of all logic, something tells him that when he comes across the face, the body, even the mere bones of Abbot Joao, he will know that they are his. to separate them and have a look at their faces. The majority of them are charred or so disfigured by the flames that even if he came across him he would not be able to identify him. Moreover, even if his corpse is intact, how is he going to recognize it? After all, he has never seen him, and the descriptions he has had of him are not sufficiently detailed. What he is doing is stupid, of course. "Of course," he thinks. Though it is contrary to all reason, he can't help himself: it's that odd instinct that has served him so well in the past, that sudden flash of intuition that in the old days used to make him hurry his flying brigade along for two or three days on an inexplicable forced march to reach a village where, it would turn out, they surprised bandits that they had been searching for with no luck at all for weeks and months. It's the same now. Colonel Geraldo Macedo keeps poking about amid the stinking corpses, his one hand holding the handkerchief over his nose and mouth and the other chasing away the swarms of flies, kicking away the rats that climb up his legs, because, in the face of all logic, something tells him that when he comes across the face, the body, even the mere bones of Abbot Joao, he will know that they are his.

"Sir, sir!" It is his adjutant, Lieutenant Soares, running toward him with his face, too, covered with his handkerchief.

"Have the men found him?" Colonel Macedo says excitedly.

"Not yet, sir. General Oscar says you must get out of here because the demolition squad is about to begin work."

"Demolition squad?" Colonel Macedo looks glumly about him. "Is there anything left to demolish?"

"The general promised that not a single stone would be left standing," Lieutenant Soares says. "He's ordered the sappers to dynamite the walls that haven't fallen in yet."

"What a waste of effort," the colonel murmurs. His mouth is partway open beneath the handkerchief, and as always when he is deep in thought, he is licking at his gold tooth. He regretfully contemplates the vast expanse of rubble, stench, and carrion. Finally he shrugs. "Well, we'll leave without ever knowing if he died or got away."

Still holding his nose, he and his adjutant begin making their way back to the cantonment. Shortly thereafter, the dynamiting begins.

"Might I ask you a question, sir?" Lieutenant Soares tw.a.n.gs from beneath his handkerchief. Colonel Macedo nods his head. "Why is Abbot Joao's corpse so important to you?"

"It's a story that goes back a long way," the colonel growls. His voice sounds tw.a.n.gy, too. His dark little eyes take a quick glance all about. "A story that I began, apparently. That's what people say, anyway. Because I killed Abbot Joao's father, some thirty years ago, at least. He was a coiteiro coiteiro of Antonio Silvino's in Custodia. They say that Abbot Joao became a of Antonio Silvino's in Custodia. They say that Abbot Joao became a cangaceiro cangaceiro to avenge his father. And afterward, well..." He looks at his adjutant and suddenly feels old. "How old are you?" to avenge his father. And afterward, well..." He looks at his adjutant and suddenly feels old. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two, sir."

"So you wouldn't know who Abbot Joao was," Colonel Macedo growls.

"The military leader of Canudos, a heartless monster," Lieutenant Soares says immediately.

"A heartless monster, all right," Colonel Macedo agrees. "The fiercest outlaw in all Bahia. The one that always got away from me. I hunted him for ten years. I very nearly got my hands on him several times, but he always slipped through my fingers. They said he'd made a pact. He was known as Satan in those days."

"I understand now why you want to find him." Lieutenant Soares smiles. "To see with your own eyes that he didn't get away from you this time."

"I don't really know why, to tell you the truth," Colonel Macedo growls, shrugging his shoulders. "Because it brings back the days of my youth, maybe. Chasing bandits was better than this tedium."

There is a series of explosions and Colonel Macedo can see thousands of people on the slopes and brows of the hills, standing watching as the last walls of Canudos are blown sky high. It is not a spectacle that interests him and he does not even bother to watch; he continues on toward the cantonment of the Bahia Volunteer Battalion at the foot of A Favela, immediately behind the trenches along the Vaza-Barris.

"I don't mind telling you that there are certain things that would never enter a normal person's head, no matter how big it might be," he says, spitting out the bad taste left in his mouth by his aborted exploration. "First off, ordering a house count when there aren't any houses left, only ruins. And now, ordering stones and bricks dynamited. Do you you understand why that commission under the command of Colonel Dantas Barreto was out counting the houses?" understand why that commission under the command of Colonel Dantas Barreto was out counting the houses?"

They had spent all morning amid the stinking, smoking ruins and determined that there were five thousand two hundred dwellings in Canudos.

"They had a terrible time. None of their figures came out right," Lieutenant Soares scoffs. "They calculated that there were at least five inhabitants per dwelling. In other words, some thirty thousand jaguncos jaguncos. But Colonel Dantas Barreto's commission was able to find only six hundred forty-seven corpses, no matter how hard they searched."

"Because they only counted corpses that were intact," Colonel Macedo growls. "They overlooked the hunks of flesh, the scattered bones, which is what most of the people of Canudos ended up as. To every madman his own cherished mania."

Back in the camp, a drama awaits Colonel Geraldo Macedo, one of the many that have marked the presence of the Bahia police at the siege of Canudos. The officers are trying to calm the men, ordering them to disperse and to stop talking among themselves about what has happened. They have posted guards all around the perimeter of the cantonment, fearing that the Bahia volunteers will rush out en ma.s.se to give those who have provoked them what is coming to them. By the smoldering anger in his men's eyes and the sinister expressions on their faces, Colonel Macedo realizes immediately that the incident has been an extremely grave one.