The War Of The End Of The World Part 24

"Teotonio?" Pires Ferreira says again. The bandages cover half his face, but not his mouth or his chin.

"Yes," the medical student says, sitting down alongside him. He motions to the two aides with the medicine kit and the canteens of water to take a rest; they go off a few paces and collapse on the gravel. "I'll keep you company for a while, Manuel da Silva. Is there anything you need?"

"Can they hear us?" the officer in bandages says in a low voice. "This is confidential, Teotonio."

At that moment the bells ring out on the hillside opposite. Young Leal Cavalcanti looks up at the sky: yes, it is getting dark, it is time for the bells calling the people of Canudos together for the Rosary. They peal every evening, with a magic punctuality, and without fail, a little while later, if there are no fusillades and no cannonades, the fanatics' Ave Marias can be heard even up in the camps on A Favela and Monte Mario. A respectful cessation of all activity occurs at this hour in the field hospital; many of the sick and wounded cross themselves on hearing the bells ring and their lips move, reciting the Rosary at the same time as their enemies. Even Teotonio, who has been a lukewarm Catholic, cannot help feeling a curious, indefinable sensation each evening, what with all the prayers and ringing bells, something that, if it is not faith, is a nostalgia for faith.

"That means the bell ringer is still alive," he murmurs, without answering First Lieutenant Pires Ferreira. "They still haven't been able to pick him off."

Captain Alfredo Gama used to talk a lot about the bell ringer. Several times he had caught sight of him climbing up to the belfry of the little chapel. He said that he was an insignificant, imperturbable little old man, swinging back and forth pulling on the clapper, indifferent to the fusillade from the soldiers in answer to the bells. Dr. Gama had told him that knocking down those defiant bell towers and silencing that provoking bell ringer is the obsessive ambition of all the artillerymen up there on the Alto do Mario, and that all of them shoulder their rifles to take aim at him at the hour of Angelus. Haven't they been able to kill him yet, or is it a new bell ringer?

"What I'm going to ask you is not the product of despair," Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says. "It is not the request of a man who has lost his reason."

His voice is firm and calm. He is lying completely motionless on the blanket separating him from the stony ground, with his head resting on a pillow of straw, and the bandaged stumps of his arms on his belly.

"You mustn't despair," Teotonio says. "You'll be among the very first to be evacuated. The moment the reinforcements arrive and the convoy heads back, they'll take you in an ambulance cart to Monte Santo, to Queimadas, to your home. General Oscar promised as much the day he visited the field hospital. Don't despair, Manuel da Silva."

"I beg you in the name of what you respect most in this world," Pires Ferreira's mouth says, in a low, firm voice. "In the name of G.o.d, your father, your vocation. Of that fiancee to whom you write verses, Teotonio."

"What is it you want, Manuel da Silva?" the young medical student from Sao Paulo murmurs, turning his eyes away from the wounded man, deeply upset, absolutely certain what the words he is about to hear will be.

"A bullet in the head," the firm, quiet voice says. "I beg you from the depths of my soul."

He is not the first to have begged him to do such a thing and Teotonio knows that he will not be the last. But he is the first to have begged him so serenely, so undramatically.

"I can't do it when I've no hands," the man in bandages explains. "You do it for me."

"A little courage, Manuel da Silva," Teotonio says, noting that he is the one whose voice is charged with emotion. "Don't ask me to do something that's against my principles, against the oath of my profession."

"One of your aides, then," Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says. "Offer them my wallet. There must be some fifty milreis in it. And my boots, which don't have any holes in them."

"Death may be worse than what has happened to you already," Teotonio says. "You'll be evacuated. You'll recover, you'll come to love life again."

"With no eyes and no hands?" he asks quietly. Teotonio feels ashamed. The lieutenant's mouth is half open. "That isn't the worst part, Teotonio. It's the flies. I've always hated them, I've always been revolted by them. And now I'm at their mercy. They walk all over my face, they get in my mouth, they crawl in under the bandages to my wounds." He falls silent.

Teotonio sees him run his tongue over his lips. He has been so moved at hearing these words from this exemplary patient that it hasn't even occurred to him to ask the aides for the canteen of water to quench the wounded man's thirst.

"It has become a personal matter between the bandits and me," Pires Ferreira says. "I don't want them to get away with this. I won't allow them to have turned me into this creature before you, Teotonio, I refuse to be a useless monster. Ever since Uaua, I've known that something tragic crossed my path. A curse, an evil spell."

"Would you like some water?" Teotonio says gently.

"It's not easy to kill yourself when you have no hands and no eyes," Pires Ferreira goes on. "I've tried hitting my head against the rock. It didn't work. Nor does licking the ground, because there aren't any stones the right size to swallow, and..."

"Be quiet, Manuel da Silva," Teotonio says, putting his hand on his shoulder. But he finds it absurd to be calming someone who seems to be the calmest man in the world, who never raises his voice, whose words are never hurried, who speaks of himself as though he were another person.

"Are you going to help me? I beg you in the name of our friends.h.i.+p. A friends.h.i.+p born here is something sacred. Are you going to help me?"

"Yes," Teotonio Leal Cavalcanti whispers. "I'm going to help you, Manuel da Silva."

[IV].

"His head?" the Baron de Canabrava repeated. He was standing at the window overlooking the garden; he had walked over to it on the pretext of opening it because the study was growing warmer and warmer, but in reality he wanted to locate the chameleon, whose absence worried him. His eyes searched the garden in all directions, looking for it. It had become invisible again, as though it were playing a game with him. "They decapitated him. There was an article in The Times The Times about it. I read it, in London." about it. I read it, in London."

"They decapitated his corpse," the nearsighted journalist corrected him.

The baron went back to his armchair. He felt distressed, but nonetheless found that what his visitor was saying had attracted his interest once again. Was he a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t? All this brought back memories, scratched the wound and reopened it. Nevertheless, he wanted to hear it.

"Did you ever find yourself alone with him and talk to him?" he asked, his eyes seeking the journalist's. "Were you able to gather any impression of what sort of man he was?"

They had found the grave only two days after the last redoubt fell. They managed to get the Little Blessed One to tell them where he was buried. Under torture, naturally. But not just any torture. The Little Blessed One was a born martyr and he would not have talked had he been subjected to such ordinary brutalities as being kicked, burned, castrated, or having his tongue cut off or his eyes put out-because they sometimes sent jagunco jagunco prisoners back that way, without eyes, a tongue, s.e.x organs, thinking that such a spectacle would demoralize those who were still holding out. It had precisely the opposite effect, of course. But for the Little Blessed One they hit upon the one torture that he was unable to withstand: dogs. prisoners back that way, without eyes, a tongue, s.e.x organs, thinking that such a spectacle would demoralize those who were still holding out. It had precisely the opposite effect, of course. But for the Little Blessed One they hit upon the one torture that he was unable to withstand: dogs.

"I thought I knew all the leaders of that band of villains," the baron said. "Pajeu, Abbot Joao, Big Joao, Taramela, Pedrao, Macambira. But the Little Blessed One?"

Dogs were another matter. So much human flesh, so many dead bodies to feast on during the long months of siege, had made them as fierce as wolves and hyenas. Packs of bloodthirsty dogs made their way into Canudos, and doubtless into the camp of the besiegers as well, in search of human flesh.

"Weren't those packs of dogs the fulfillment of the prophecies, the infernal beasts of the Apocalypse?" the nearsighted journalist muttered, clutching his stomach. "Someone must have told them that the Little Blessed One had a particular horror of dogs, or rather of the Dog, Evil Incarnate. They no doubt confronted him with a rabid pack of the beasts, and faced with the threat of being dragged down to h.e.l.l in pieces by the Can's messengers, he guided them to the place where he'd been buried."

The baron forgot the chameleon and Baroness Estela. In his mind, raging packs of mad dogs pawed through heaps of corpses, buried their muzzles in bellies gnawed by worms, sank their fangs in skinny kneecaps, fought, snarling, over tibias, spines, skulls. In addition to ravaging the dead, other packs suddenly descended on villages, hurling themselves upon cowherds, shepherds, washerwomen, in search of fresh flesh and bones.

They might have guessed that he was buried in the Sanctuary. Where else could they have buried him? They dug where the Little Blessed One told them to and at a depth of some ten feet-that deep-they found him, dressed in his dark purple tunic and rawhide sandals, with a straw mat wrapped around him. His hair had grown and was wavy: this is what is stated in the notarized certificate of exhumation. All the top army officers were there, beginning with General Artur Oscar, who ordered the artist-photographer of the first column, Senhor Flavio de Barros, to photograph the corpse. This took half an hour, during which all of them remained in the Sanctuary despite the stench.

"Can you imagine what those generals and colonels must have felt on seeing, at last, the corpse of the enemy of the Republic, of the insurgent who ma.s.sacred three military expeditions and shook the state to its foundations, of the ally of England and the House of Braganca?"

"I met him," the baron murmured and his visitor remained silent, his watery eyes gazing at him inquisitively. "But more or less the same thing happens with me as happened to you in Canudos, because of your gla.s.ses. I can't picture him clearly, my image of him is blurred. It was some fifteen or twenty years ago. He turned up at Calumbi, with a little band of followers, and it seems we gave them something to eat and some old clothes, because they'd tidied up the tombs and cleaned the chapel. I remember them more as a collection of rags than as a group of men and women. Too many people pa.s.sing themselves off as saints came by Calumbi. How could I have guessed that, of all of them, he was the important one, the one that would make people forget all the others, the one who would attract to him thousands upon thousands of sertanejos? sertanejos?"

"The land of the Bible was also full of illuminati, of heretics," the nearsighted journalist said. "That's why so many people were taken to be the Christ. You didn't understand, you didn't see..."

"Are you serious?" The baron thrust his head forward. "Do you believe that the Counselor was really sent by G.o.d?"

But the nearsighted journalist's dull voice plodded on.

A notarized statement was drawn up describing the exhumed corpse, which was so decomposed that they were all sick to their stomachs and had to hold their hands and their handkerchiefs over their noses. The four doctors present measured him, noted down that he was 1.78 meters tall, that he had lost all his teeth, and had not died of a bullet wound since the only mark on his skeleton-thin body was a bruise on his left leg, caused by the friction of a bone splinter or a stone. After a brief consultation, it was decided that he should be decapitated, so that science might study his cranium. It was brought to the medical school of the University of Bahia in order that Dr. Nina Rodrigues might examine it. But before beginning to saw the Counselor's head off, they slit the throat of the Little Blessed One. They did so right there in the Sanctuary, while the artist-photographer Flavio de Barros took a photograph, and then threw his body into the hole dug in the floor, along with the Counselor's headless corpse. A happy fate for the Little Blessed One, no doubt: to be buried together with the person he so revered and so faithfully served. But there was one thing that must have terrified him at the last instant: knowing that he was about to be buried like an animal, without any sort of wood covering him. Because those were the things that preyed on people's minds up there.

He was interrupted by another fit of sneezing. But once he recovered from it he went on talking, more and more excitedly, until at times he couldn't even manage to get the words out and his eyes rolled in desperate agitation behind the lenses of his gla.s.ses.

There had been some argument as to which of the four doctors was to do it. It was Major Miranda Curio, the chief of the medical field corps, who took saw in hand, while the three others held the body down. They tried to submerge the head in a container full of alcohol, but since the remains of hair and flesh were beginning to fall apart, they placed it in a sack of lime. That is how it was transported to Salvador. The delicate mission of transporting it was entrusted to First Lieutenant Pinto Souza, the hero of the Third Infantry Battalion, one of the few surviving officers of this unit, which had been decimated by Pajeu in the first encounter. Lieutenant Pinto Souza delivered it to the Faculty of Medicine and Dr. Nina Rodrigues headed the committee of scientists which observed it, measured it, and weighed it. There are no reliable reports as to what was said in the dissecting room during the examination. The official announcement was irritatingly brief. The person responsible for this was apparently none other than Dr. Nina Rodrigues himself. It was he who drafted the few scant lines that so disappointed the public since the announcement merely stated that science had noted no evident abnormality in the conformation of the cranium of Antonio Conselheiro.

"All that reminds me of Galileo Gall," the baron said, glancing hopefully at the garden. "He, too, had a mad faith in craniums as indexes of character."

But Dr. Nina Rodrigues's opinion was not shared by all his colleagues in Salvador. Dr. Honorato de Albuquerque, for instance, was about to publish a study disagreeing with the conclusion reached in the report of the committee of scientists. He maintained that, according to the cla.s.sification of the Swedish naturalist Retzius, the cranium was typically brachycephalic, with tendencies toward mental rigidity and linearity (fanaticism, for example). Moreover, the cranial curvature was precisely the same as that pointed out by Benedikt as typical of those epileptics who, as Samt wrote, had the missal in their hands, the name of G.o.d on their lips, and the stigmata of crime and brigandage in their hearts.

"Don't you see?" the nearsighted journalist said, breathing as though he were exhausted from some tremendous physical effort. "Canudos isn't a story; it's a tree of stories."

"Do you feel ill?" the baron inquired coldly. "I see that it's not good for you either to speak of these things. Have you been going around visiting all those doctors?"

The nearsighted journalist was bent double like an inchworm, all hunched over and looking as though he were freezing to death. Once the medical examination was over, a problem had arisen. What to do with the bones? Someone proposed that the skull be sent to the National Museum, as a historic curiosity. But there had been violent opposition. On the part of whom? The Freemasons. People already had Our Lord of Bonfim, they said, and that was quite enough; there was no need for another orthodox place of pilgrimage. If that skull was exposed in a gla.s.s case in the National Museum, it would become a second Church of Bonfim, a heterodox shrine. The army agreed: it was necessary to keep the skull from becoming a relic, a seed of future uprisings. It had to be made to disappear. How? How?

"Not by burying it, obviously," the baron murmured.

Obviously, since the fanaticized people would sooner or later discover where it had been buried. What safer and more remote place than the bottom of the sea? The skull was placed in a gunnysack weighted with rocks, sewed up, and spirited away, by night in a boat, by an army officer, to a place in the Atlantic equidistant from the Fort of Sao Marcelo and the island of Itaparica, and sent to the muddy sea bottom for coral to build on. The officer entrusted with this secret operation was none other than Lieutenant Pinto Souza: and that's the end of the story.

He was sweating so hard and had turned so pale that the baron thought to himself: "He's about to faint." What did this ridiculous jumping jack feel for the Counselor? A morbid fascination? The simple curiosity of the gossipmongering journalist? Had he really come to believe him to be a messenger from heaven? Why was he suffering and torturing himself so over Canudos? Why didn't he do what everyone else had done-try to forget?

"Did you say Galileo Gall?" he heard him say.

"Yes." The baron nodded, seeing those mad eyes, that shaved head, hearing his apocalyptic speeches. "Gall would have understood that story. He thought that the secret of character lay in the bones of people's heads. Did he ever get to Canudos, I wonder. If he did, it would have been terrible for him to discover that that wasn't the revolution he'd been dreaming of."

"It wasn't, and yet it was," the nearsighted journalist said. "It was the realm of obscurantism, and at the same time a world of brotherhood, of a very special sort of freedom. Perhaps he wouldn't have been all that disappointed."

"Did you ever find out what happened to him?"

"He died somewhere not very far from Canudos," the journalist answered. "I saw a lot of him, before all this. In 'The Fort,' a tavern in the lower town. He was a great talker, a picturesque character, a madman; he felt people's heads, he prophesied vast upheavals. I thought he was a fraud. n.o.body would have guessed that he would turn out to be a tragic figure."

"I have some papers of his," the baron said. "A sort of memoir, or testament, that he wrote in my house, at Calumbi. I was to have seen that it got to some fellow revolutionaries of his. But I wasn't able to. It's not that I wasn't willing to, because I even went to Lyons to do as he'd asked."

Why had he taken that trip, from London to Lyons, to hand Gall's text over personally to the editors of L'Etincelle de la revolte? L'Etincelle de la revolte? Not out of affection for the phrenologist, in any event; what he had felt for him in the end was curiosity, a scientific interest in this unsuspected variety of the human species. He had taken the trouble to go to Lyons to see what those revolutionary comrades of his looked like, to hear them talk, to find out whether they were like him, whether they said and believed the same things he did. But the trip had been a waste of time. The only thing he was able to find out was that Not out of affection for the phrenologist, in any event; what he had felt for him in the end was curiosity, a scientific interest in this unsuspected variety of the human species. He had taken the trouble to go to Lyons to see what those revolutionary comrades of his looked like, to hear them talk, to find out whether they were like him, whether they said and believed the same things he did. But the trip had been a waste of time. The only thing he was able to find out was that L'Etincelle de la revolte L'Etincelle de la revolte, a sheet that appeared irregularly, had ceased publication altogether some time before, and that it had been put out by a small press whose owner had been sent to prison for printing counterfeit bills, some three or four years earlier. It fitted Gall's destiny very well to have sent articles to what might well have been ghosts and to have died without anyone he'd known during his life in Europe ever finding out where, how, and why he died.

"A story of madmen," he muttered. "The Counselor, Moreira Cesar, Gall. Canudos drove all those people mad. And you, too, of course."

But a thought made him shut his mouth and not say a word more. "No, they were mad before that. It was only Estela who lost her mind because of Canudos." He had to keep a tight rein on himself so as not to burst into tears. He didn't remember having cried as a child, or as a young man. But after what had happened to the baroness, he had wept many a time, in his study, on nights when he couldn't sleep.

"It's not so much a story of madmen as a story of misunderstandings," the nearsighted journalist corrected him again. "I'd like to know one thing, Baron. I beg you to tell me the truth."

"Ever since I left politics, I almost always tell the truth," the baron murmured. "What is it you'd like to know?"

"Whether there were contacts between the Counselor and the monarchists," he answered, watching the baron's reaction closely. "I don't mean the little group who missed the Empire and were naive enough to proclaim that fact in public, people such as Gentil de Castro. I'm talking about people like you and your party, the Autonomists, the monarchists through and through who nonetheless hid that fact. Did they have contacts with the Counselor? Did they encourage him?"

The baron, who had listened with a look of cynical amus.e.m.e.nt on his face, burst out laughing. "Didn't you find out the answer to that in all those months in Canudos? Did you see any politicians from Bahia, Sao Paulo, Rio among the jaguncos? jaguncos?"

"I've already told you that I didn't see much of anything," the unpleasant voice answered. "But I did find out that you had sent maize, sugar, livestock from Calumbi."

"Well then, you doubtless also know that I did so against my will, that I was forced to do so," the baron said. "All of us landowners in the region had to, so that they wouldn't burn our haciendas down. Isn't that how we deal with bandits in the sertao? sertao? If you can't kill them, you buy them off. If I'd had the least influence on them, they wouldn't have destroyed Calumbi and my wife would be of sound mind. The fanatics weren't monarchists and they didn't even know what the Empire was. It's beyond belief that you didn't see that, despite..." If you can't kill them, you buy them off. If I'd had the least influence on them, they wouldn't have destroyed Calumbi and my wife would be of sound mind. The fanatics weren't monarchists and they didn't even know what the Empire was. It's beyond belief that you didn't see that, despite..."

The nearsighted journalist didn't allow him to go on this time either. "They didn't know what it was, but they were monarchists nonetheless-in their own way, which no monarchist would have understood," he blurted, blinking. "They knew that the monarchy had abolished slavery. The Counselor praised Princess Isabel for having granted the slaves their freedom. He seemed convinced that the monarchy fell because it abolished slavery. Everyone in Canudos believed that the Republic was against abolition, that it wanted to restore slavery."

"Do you think my friends and I planted such a notion in the Counselor's head?" The baron smiled again. "If anyone had proposed any such thing to us we would have taken him for an imbecile."

"That, nonetheless, explains many things," the journalist said, his voice rising. "Such as the hatred of the census. I racked my brains, trying to understand the reason for it, and that's the explanation. Race, color, religion. Why would the Republic want to know what race and color people are, if not to enslave blacks again? And why ask their religion if not to identify believers before the slaughter?"

"Is that the misunderstanding that explains Canudos?" the baron asked.

"One of them." The nearsighted journalist panted. "I knew that the jaguncos jaguncos hadn't been taken in by just any petty politician. I merely wanted to hear you say so." hadn't been taken in by just any petty politician. I merely wanted to hear you say so."

"Well, there you are," the baron answered. What would his friends have said had they been able to foresee such a thing? The humble men and women of the sertao sertao rising up in arms to attack the Republic, with the name of the Infanta Dona Isabel on their lips! No, such a thing was too farfetched for it to have occurred to any Brazilian monarchist, even in his dreams. rising up in arms to attack the Republic, with the name of the Infanta Dona Isabel on their lips! No, such a thing was too farfetched for it to have occurred to any Brazilian monarchist, even in his dreams.

Abbot Joao's messenger catches up with Antonio Vilanova on the outskirts of Juete, where the former storekeeper is lying in ambush with fourteen jaguncos jaguncos, waiting for a convoy of cattle and goats. The news the messenger brings is so serious that Antonio decides to return to Canudos before he has finished the task that has brought him there: securing food supplies. It is one that he has set out to do three times now since the soldiers arrived, and been successful each time: twenty-five head of cattle and several dozen kids the first time, eight head the second, and a dozen the third, plus a wagonload of manioc flour, coffee, sugar, and salt. He has insisted on leading these raids to procure food for the jaguncos jaguncos himself, claiming that Abbot Joao, Pajeu, Pedrao, and Big Joao are indispensable in Belo Monte. For three weeks now he has been attacking the convoys that leave from Queimadas and Monte Santo to bring provisions to A Favela via Rosario. himself, claiming that Abbot Joao, Pajeu, Pedrao, and Big Joao are indispensable in Belo Monte. For three weeks now he has been attacking the convoys that leave from Queimadas and Monte Santo to bring provisions to A Favela via Rosario.

It is a relatively easy operation, which the former storekeeper, in his methodical and scrupulous way and with his talent for organization, has perfected to the point that it has become a science. He owes his success above all to the information he receives, to the men serving as the soldiers' guides and porters, the majority of whom are jaguncos jaguncos who have hired themselves out to the army or been conscripted in various localities, from Tucano to Itapicuru. They keep him posted on the convoy's movements and help him decide where to provoke the stampede, the key to the whole operation. In the place that they have chosen-usually the bottom of a ravine or a section of the mountains with dense brush-and always at night, Antonio and his men suddenly descend on the herd, raising a terrible racket with their blunderbusses, setting off sticks of dynamite, and blowing their whistles so that the animals will panic and bolt off into the who have hired themselves out to the army or been conscripted in various localities, from Tucano to Itapicuru. They keep him posted on the convoy's movements and help him decide where to provoke the stampede, the key to the whole operation. In the place that they have chosen-usually the bottom of a ravine or a section of the mountains with dense brush-and always at night, Antonio and his men suddenly descend on the herd, raising a terrible racket with their blunderbusses, setting off sticks of dynamite, and blowing their whistles so that the animals will panic and bolt off into the caatinga caatinga. As Antonio and his band distract the troops by sniping at them, the guides and porters round up all the animals they can and herd them along shortcuts that they've decided on beforehand-the shortest and safest trail, the one from Calumbi, has yet to be discovered by the soldiers-to Canudos. Antonio and the others catch up with them later.

This is what would have happened this time, too, if the messenger hadn't brought the news he had: that the dogs will be attacking Canudos at any moment. With clenched teeth and furrowed brows, hurrying along as fast as their legs will carry them, Antonio and his fourteen men have but a single thought in their minds which spurs them on: to be back in Belo Monte with the others, surrounding the Counselor, when the atheists attack. How has the Street Commander learned that they plan to attack? The messenger, an old guide marching along at his side, tells Antonio Vilanova that two jaguncos jaguncos dressed in soldiers' uniforms who have been prowling about A Favela have brought the news. He tells this simply and straightforwardly, as though it were quite natural for the sons of the Blessed Jesus to go about among devils disguised as devils. dressed in soldiers' uniforms who have been prowling about A Favela have brought the news. He tells this simply and straightforwardly, as though it were quite natural for the sons of the Blessed Jesus to go about among devils disguised as devils.

"They've gotten used to the idea; they don't even notice any more," Antonio Vilanova thinks to himself. But the first time that Abbot Joao tried to persuade the jaguncos jaguncos to wear soldiers' uniforms to disguise themselves he had very nearly had a rebellion on his hands. The proposal left Antonio himself with a taste of ashes in his mouth. The thought of putting on the very symbol of everything that was wicked, heartless, and hostile in this world turned his stomach, and he understood very well why the men of Canudos should violently resist dying decked out as dogs. "And yet we were wrong," he thinks. "And, as usual, Abbot Joao was right." For the information that the valiant "youngsters" who stole into the camps to let ants, snakes, scorpions loose, to throw poison in the troops' leather canteens, could never be as accurate as that of full-grown men, especially those who had been let out of the army or had deserted. It had been Pajeu who had solved the problem, in the trenches of Rancho do Vigario one night when they were having an argument, by turning up dressed in a corporal's uniform and announcing that he was going to slip through the enemy lines. Everyone knew that Pajeu of all people would not get through unnoticed. Abbot Joao asked the to wear soldiers' uniforms to disguise themselves he had very nearly had a rebellion on his hands. The proposal left Antonio himself with a taste of ashes in his mouth. The thought of putting on the very symbol of everything that was wicked, heartless, and hostile in this world turned his stomach, and he understood very well why the men of Canudos should violently resist dying decked out as dogs. "And yet we were wrong," he thinks. "And, as usual, Abbot Joao was right." For the information that the valiant "youngsters" who stole into the camps to let ants, snakes, scorpions loose, to throw poison in the troops' leather canteens, could never be as accurate as that of full-grown men, especially those who had been let out of the army or had deserted. It had been Pajeu who had solved the problem, in the trenches of Rancho do Vigario one night when they were having an argument, by turning up dressed in a corporal's uniform and announcing that he was going to slip through the enemy lines. Everyone knew that Pajeu of all people would not get through unnoticed. Abbot Joao asked the jaguncos jaguncos then if it seemed right to them that Pajeu should sacrifice his life so as to set them an example and rid them of their fear of a few rags with b.u.t.tons. Several men from Pajeu's old then if it seemed right to them that Pajeu should sacrifice his life so as to set them an example and rid them of their fear of a few rags with b.u.t.tons. Several men from Pajeu's old cangaco cangaco then offered to disguise themselves in uniforms. From that day on, the Street Commander had no difficulty sneaking then offered to disguise themselves in uniforms. From that day on, the Street Commander had no difficulty sneaking jaguncos jaguncos into the camps. into the camps.

After a few hours, they halt to rest and eat. It is beginning to get dark, and they can just make out O Cambaio and the jagged Serra da Canabrava standing out against the leaden sky. Sitting in a circle with their legs crossed, the jaguncos jaguncos open their sacks of woven rope and take out handfuls of hardtack and jerky. They eat in silence. Antonio Vilanova feels the tiredness in his cramped, swollen legs. Is he getting old? It's a feeling he's begun to have in these last months. Or is it the tension, the frantic activity brought on by the war? He has lost so much weight that he has punched new holes in his belt, and Antonia Sardelinha has had to take in his two s.h.i.+rts, which fitted him as loosely as nights.h.i.+rts. But isn't the same thing happening to all the men and women in Belo Monte? Haven't Big Joao and Pedrao, those two st.u.r.dy giants, become as skinny as beanpoles? Isn't Honorio stoop-shouldered and gray-haired now? And don't Abbot Joao and Pajeu look older, too? open their sacks of woven rope and take out handfuls of hardtack and jerky. They eat in silence. Antonio Vilanova feels the tiredness in his cramped, swollen legs. Is he getting old? It's a feeling he's begun to have in these last months. Or is it the tension, the frantic activity brought on by the war? He has lost so much weight that he has punched new holes in his belt, and Antonia Sardelinha has had to take in his two s.h.i.+rts, which fitted him as loosely as nights.h.i.+rts. But isn't the same thing happening to all the men and women in Belo Monte? Haven't Big Joao and Pedrao, those two st.u.r.dy giants, become as skinny as beanpoles? Isn't Honorio stoop-shouldered and gray-haired now? And don't Abbot Joao and Pajeu look older, too?

He listens to the roar of the cannon, toward the north. A brief pause, and then several cannon reports in a row. Antonio and the jaguncos jaguncos leap to their feet and set off again, loping along in long strides. leap to their feet and set off again, loping along in long strides.

They approach the city by way of O Taboleirinho, as dawn is breaking, after five hours during which the rounds of cannon fire have followed one upon the other almost without a break. At the water source, where the first houses are, they find a messenger waiting to take them to Abbot Joao. He is in the trenches at Fazenda Velha, now manned by twice as many jaguncos jaguncos as before, all of them with their finger on the trigger of their rifle or their long-barreled musket, keeping a close watch on the foothills of A Favela in the dim dawn light, waiting to see if the Freemasons will come pouring down from there. "Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor," Antonio murmurs, and without answering him Abbot Joao asks if he has seen soldiers along the way. "No, not even a patrol." as before, all of them with their finger on the trigger of their rifle or their long-barreled musket, keeping a close watch on the foothills of A Favela in the dim dawn light, waiting to see if the Freemasons will come pouring down from there. "Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor," Antonio murmurs, and without answering him Abbot Joao asks if he has seen soldiers along the way. "No, not even a patrol."

"We don't know where the attack will come from," Abbot Joao says, and the former storekeeper sees how deeply worried he is. "We know everything, except the most important thing of all."

The Street Commander calculates that they are going to attack in this sector, the shortest way into Belo Monte, and hence he has come with three hundred jaguncos jaguncos to reinforce Pajeu in this line of trenches that stretches in a curve, a quarter of a league long, from the foot of Monte Mario to O Taboleirinho. to reinforce Pajeu in this line of trenches that stretches in a curve, a quarter of a league long, from the foot of Monte Mario to O Taboleirinho.

Abbot Joao explains to him that Pedrao is covering the eastern flank of Belo Monte, the area in which the corrals and the cultivated fields are located, and the wooded slopes up which the trails to Trabubu, Macambira, Cocorobo, and Jeremoabo wind their way. The city, defended by Big Joao's Catholic Guard, has been further fortified by new parapets of stone and sandbags erected in the narrow alleyways and at the intersections of the main streets and the square bounded by the churches and the Sanctuary, that center on which the a.s.sault troops will converge, as will the sh.e.l.ls of their cannons.

Although he is eager to ply him with questions, Vilanova realizes that there isn't time. What is it that he must do? Abbot Joao tells him that he and Honorio will be responsible for defending the area parallel to the ravines of the Vaza-Barris, to the east of the Alto do Mario and the exit leading to Jeremoabo. Without taking time to explain in more detail, he asks him to send word immediately if soldiers appear in that sector, because what is most important is to discover from which direction they are going to try to enter the city. Vilanova and the fourteen men take off at a run.

His fatigue has disappeared as if by magic. It must be another sign of the divine presence, another manifestation of the supernatural within his person. How otherwise to explain it, if it is not the work of the Father, of the Divine, or of the Blessed Jesus? Ever since he first learned of the attack, he has done nothing but walk or run as fast as he possibly could. A little while ago, as he was crossing the Lagoa do Cipo, his legs started to give way and his heart was pounding so hard he was afraid he'd collapse in a dead faint. And here he is now, running over this rugged stony ground, up hill and down dale, at the end of a long night now filled with the blinding light and deafening thunder of the sudden intense barrages being laid down by the enemy troops. Yet he feels rested, full of energy, capable of any and every effort, and he knows that the fourteen men running at his side feel exactly the same way. Who but the Father could bring about such a change, renew their strength in this way, when circ.u.mstances so require? This is not the first time that such a thing has happened to him. Many times in these last weeks, when he has thought that he was about to collapse, he has suddenly felt a great surge of strength that seemed to lift him up, to renew him, to breathe a great gust of life into him.

In the half hour that it takes them to reach the trenches along the Vaza-Barris-running, walking, running-Antonio Vilanova sees the flames of fires flare up back in Canudos. His first concern is not whether one of the fires may be burning his house to the ground, but rather: is the system that he has thought of so that fires won't spread working? For that purpose, hundreds of barrels and boxes of sand have been placed along the streets and at the intersections. The people who have remained in the city know that the moment a sh.e.l.l explodes they must run to put out the flames by throwing pailfuls of sand on them. Antonio himself has organized things so that in each block of dwellings there are women, children, and old men responsible for this task.

In the trenches, he finds his brother Honorio and his wife and sister-in-law as well. The Sardelinha sisters are installed with other women in a lean-to, amid things to eat and drink, medicines and bandages. "Welcome, compadre compadre," Honorio says, embracing him. Antonio lingers with him for a moment as he downs with relish the food that the Sardelinha sisters ladle out to the men who have just arrived. Once he finishes this brief repast, the former trader posts his fourteen comrades round about, advises them to get some sleep, and goes with Honorio to have a look around the area.

Why has Abbot Joao entrusted this front to them, of all the warriors, the two men least experienced in the ways of war? Doubtless because this is the front farthest away from A Favela: the enemy will not come this way. They would have three or four times farther to go than if they went straight down the slopes and attacked Fazenda Velha; moreover, before reaching the river, they would have to cross rough terrain bristling with th.o.r.n.y brush that would force the battalions to break ranks and scatter. And that is not the way the atheists fight. They do so in compact blocks, forming those squares of theirs that make such a good target for the jaguncos jaguncos holed up in their trenches. holed up in their trenches.

"We're the ones who dug these trenches," Honorio says. "Do you remember, compadre? compadre?"

"Of course I remember. Thus far, they haven't had their baptism of fire."

Yes, they were the ones who had directed the crews that had dotted this plot of ground that winds between the river and the cemetery, without a single tree or clump of brush, with little holes big enough for two or three sharpshooters. They had dug the first of these shelters a year ago, after the encounter at Uaua. After each enemy expedition they have made more holes, and lately little pa.s.sageways between each of them that allow the men to crawl from one to the other without being seen. They are indeed defenses that have never undergone their baptism of fire: never once has there been any fighting in this sector.

A bluish light, with yellow tinges at the edges, creeps down from the horizon. c.o.c.ks can be heard crowing. "The cannon salvos have stopped," Honorio says, guessing the thought in Antonio's mind. Antonio finishes his brother's sentence: "That means that they're on their way, compadre compadre." The dugouts are some fifteen to twenty feet apart, spread out over an area half a kilometer long and a hundred or so meters wide. The jaguncos jaguncos, crouching down elbow to elbow in the holes by twos and threes, are so well hidden that the Vilanova brothers can see them only when they lean down to exchange a few words with them. Many of them have lengths of pipe, thick cane stalks, and hollowed-out tree trunks that allow them to see outside without poking their heads out. Most of them are sleeping or dozing, curled up in a ball with their Mannlichers, Mausers, and blunderbusses, and their bullet pouch or powder horn within reach of their hand. Honorio has posted lookouts along the Vaza-Barris; several of them have gone scouting along the ravines and the riverbed-completely dry there-and on the other side without running into any enemy patrols.

They return to the lean-to, talking together as they walk back. The silence broken only by the crowing of the c.o.c.ks seems strange after the many hours of bombardment. Antonio remarks that the attack on Canudos has appeared to him to be inevitable ever since the column of reinforcements-more than five hundred troops, apparently-arrived at A Favela intact, despite desperate efforts on the part of Pajeu, who had harried them all the way from Caldeirao but had managed only to steal a few head of their cattle. Honorio asks if it is true that the expeditionary force has left companies posted at Juete and Rosario, places they merely pa.s.sed through before. Yes, it is true.

Antonio unbuckles his belt and, using his arm as a pillow and covering his face with his sombrero, curls up in the dugout that he is sharing with his brother. His body relaxes, grateful for the rest, but his ears remain alert, listening for any sound of soldiers in the day that is dawning. In a little while he forgets about them, and after drifting along on different fuzzy images, his mind suddenly focuses on this man whose body is touching his. Two years younger than he, with light curly hair, calm, self-effacing, Honorio is more than his brother twice over, by blood and by marriage: he is also his comrade, his crony, his confidant, his best friend. They have never separated, they have never had a serious disagreement. Is Honorio in Belo Monte, as he is, because he believes with all his heart in the Counselor and everything he represents, religion, truth, salvation, justice? Or is he here only out of loyalty to his brother? In all the years that they have been in Canudos, the question has never entered his mind before. When the angel's wing brushed him and he abandoned his own affairs to take those of Canudos in hand, he naturally presumed that his brother and sister-in-law, like his wife, would willingly accept this change in their lives, as they had each time that misfortune had made them set out in new directions. And that was what had happened: Honorio and a.s.suncao acceded to his will without the slightest complaint. It had been when Moreira Cesar attacked Canudos, on that endless day that he spent fighting in the streets, that for the first time he began to have the gnawing suspicion that perhaps Honorio was going to die there at his side, not because of something he believed in, but out of respect for his older brother. Whenever he ventures to discuss the subject with Honorio, his brother pokes fun at him: "Do you think I'd risk my neck just to be with you? How vain you've become, compadre! compadre!" But instead of placating his doubts, these jibes only make him all the more troubled. He has told the Counselor: "Out of selfishness, I have done as I pleased with Honorio and his family without ever finding out what it was that they wanted, as though they were pieces of furniture or goats." The Counselor provided balm for this wound: "If that is how it has been, you have helped them acc.u.mulate merit to gain heaven."

He feels someone shaking him, but it takes him a while to open his eyes. The sun is up, s.h.i.+ning brightly, and Honorio is standing there with his finger on his lips, motioning him to be still. "They're here, compadre compadre," he says in a very soft voice. "It's fallen to our lot to receive them."

"What an honor, compadre compadre," he answers in a voice thick with sleep.

He kneels down in the dugout. From the ravines on the other side of the Vaza-Barris a sea of blue, lead-gray, red uniforms, with glints of sunlight glancing off their bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and their swords and bayonets, is sweeping toward them in the bright morning light. So that is what his ears have been hearing for some time now: the roll of drums, the blare of bugles. "It looks as though they're coming straight toward us," he thinks. The air is clear, and though they are still a long way away, he can see the troops very distinctly; they are deployed in three corps, one of which, the one in the center, appears to be heading directly toward the trenches. Something in his mouth that feels pasty keeps him from getting a single word out. Honorio tells him that he has already sent two "youngsters" to Fazenda Velha and to the Trabubu exit to bring Abbot Joao and Pedrao the news that the enemy troops are coming this way.

"We have to hold them off," he hears himself say. "Hold them off as best we can till Abbot Joao and Pedrao can fall back to Belo Monte."