The War Of The End Of The World Part 18

"The only explanation is that thousands of peasants, including ones from other regions, have joined that band of Sebastianists," the baron said. "Impelled by ignorance, superst.i.tion, hunger. Because there are no restraints these days to keep such madness in check, as there once were. This means war, the Brazilian Army installing itself here, the ruin of Bahia." He grabbed Epaminondas Goncalves by the arm. "That is why you must replace me. Given the present situation, someone with your talents is needed to bring the right people together and defend the interests of Bahia amid the cataclysm. There's resentment in the rest of Brazil against Bahia, because of what happened to Moreira Cesar. They say that the mobs that attacked the monarchist dailies in Rio were shouting 'Down with Bahia.'"

He paused for a long moment, nervously swirling the cognac in his gla.s.s. "There are many who have already been ruined there in the interior," he said. "I've lost two haciendas. A great many more people are going to be wiped out and killed in this civil war. If your people and mine go on destroying each other, what will the result be? We'll lose everything. The exodus toward the South and Maranhao will become vaster still. What will become of the state of Bahia then? We must make our peace, Epaminondas. Forget your shrill Jacobin rhetoric, stop attacking the poor Portuguese, stop demanding the nationalization of businesses, and be practical. Jacobinism died with Moreira Cesar. a.s.sume the governors.h.i.+p and let us defend civil order together amid this hecatomb. Let us keep our Republic from turning into what so many other Latin American republics have: a grotesque witches' sabbath where all is chaos, military uprisings, corruption, demagogy..."

They sat in silence for some time, gla.s.ses in hand, thinking or listening. From time to time, footsteps, voices could be heard somewhere inside the house. A clock struck nine.

"I thank you for inviting me here," Epaminondas said, rising to his feet. "I'll keep everything you've told me well in mind and think it over. I can't give you an answer now."

"Of course not," the baron said, getting to his feet, too. "Give it thought and we'll talk again. I would like to see you before I leave, naturally."

"You will have my answer day after tomorrow," Epaminondas said as he started for the door. As they were going through the reception rooms, the black servant with the oil lamp appeared. The baron accompanied Epaminondas as far as the street.

At the front gate he asked him: "Have you had any news of your journalist, the one who was with Moreira Cesar?"

"The freak?" Epaminondas said. "He hasn't turned up again. I suppose he must have been killed. As you know, he wasn't a man of action."

They took their leave of each other with a bow.

IV.

[I].

When a servant informed him who was asking for him, the Baron de Canabrava, rather than sending him back, as was his habit, to tell the person who had appeared on the doorstep that he neither made nor received unannounced visits, rushed downstairs, walked through the s.p.a.cious rooms that the morning sun was flooding with light, and went to the front door to see if he had heard correctly: it was indeed he, no mistake about it. He shook hands with him without a word and showed him in. There leapt to his mind instantly what he had been trying his best to forget for months: the fire at Calumbi, Canudos, Estela's crisis, his withdrawal from public life.

Overcoming his surprise at this visit and the shock of this resurrection of the past, he silently guided the caller to the room in which all important conversations took place in the town house: the study. Though it was still early in the day, it was hot. In the distance, above the crotons, the branches of the mango, ficus, guava, and pitangueira pitangueira trees in the garden, the sun was turning the sea as blinding white as a sheet of steel. The baron drew the curtain shut and the room fell into shadow. trees in the garden, the sun was turning the sea as blinding white as a sheet of steel. The baron drew the curtain shut and the room fell into shadow.

"I knew that my visit would come as a surprise to you," the caller said, and the baron recognized the little piping voice that always sounded like a comic actor speaking in falsetto. "I learned that you had returned from Europe, and had...this impulse. I'll tell you straight out: I've come to ask you for work."

"Have a seat," the baron said.

He had heard the voice as in a dream, paying no attention to the words, entirely absorbed in studying the man's physical appearance and comparing it with his mental image of what he had looked like the last time he had set eyes on him: the scarecrow he had watched leaving Calumbi that morning with Colonel Moreira Cesar and his little escort. "It's the same person and it isn't," he thought. Because the journalist who had worked for the Diario da Bahia Diario da Bahia and later for the and later for the Jornal de Noticias Jornal de Noticias had been a youngster and this man with the thick gla.s.ses, who on sitting down appeared to collapse into four or six sections, was an old man. His face was lined with myriad wrinkles, his hair was streaked with gray, his body looked brittle. He was wearing an unb.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, a sleeveless jacket with worn spots or grease stains, a pair of trousers with frayed cuffs, and big clumsy cowherd's boots. had been a youngster and this man with the thick gla.s.ses, who on sitting down appeared to collapse into four or six sections, was an old man. His face was lined with myriad wrinkles, his hair was streaked with gray, his body looked brittle. He was wearing an unb.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, a sleeveless jacket with worn spots or grease stains, a pair of trousers with frayed cuffs, and big clumsy cowherd's boots.

"I remember now," the baron said. "Someone wrote me that you were still alive. I was in Europe when I received the letter. 'A ghost has turned up.' That's what it said. Nonetheless, I continued to think of you as having disappeared, as having died."

"I didn't die, nor did I disappear," the thin, nasal voice said, without a trace of humor. "After hearing ten times a day the same thing that you've just said, I realized people were disappointed that I was still in this world."

"If I may say so frankly, I don't give a d.a.m.n whether you're alive or dead," the baron heard himself say, surprised at his own rudeness. "I might even prefer you to be dead. I detest everything that reminds me of Canudos."

"I heard about your wife," the nearsighted journalist said, and the baron sensed that an impertinent remark would inevitably follow. "That she lost her mind, that it's a great tragedy in your life."

The baron looked at him in such a way that he was cowed and shut his mouth. He cleared his throat, blinked, and took off his gla.s.ses to wipe them on the tail of his s.h.i.+rt.

The baron was glad that he had resisted the impulse to throw him out. "It's all coming back to me now," he said amiably. "The letter was from Epaminondas Goncalves, two months or so ago. It was from him that I learned you'd returned to Salvador."

"Do you correspond with that miserable wretch?" the thin nasal voice piped. "Ah, yes, it's true that the two of you are allies now."

"Is that any way to speak of the Governor of Bahia?" The baron smiled. "Did he refuse to take you back at the Jornal de Noticias? Jornal de Noticias?"

"On the contrary: he even offered to raise my salary," the nearsighted journalist retorted. "On condition, however, that I forget all about the story of Canudos."

He gave a little laugh, like that of an exotic bird, and the baron saw it turn into a gale of sneezes that made him bounce up and down in his chair.

"In other words, Canudos made a real journalist out of you," the baron said mockingly. "Or else you've changed. Because my ally Epaminondas is the same as he's always been. He hasn't changed one iota."

He waited for the journalist to blow his nose on a blue rag that he quickly pulled out of his pocket.

"In that letter, Epaminondas said that you turned up with a strange person. A dwarf or something of the sort, is that right?"

The nearsighted journalist nodded. "He's my friend. I'm indebted to him. He saved my life. Shall I tell you how? By telling me about Charlemagne, the Twelve Peers of France, Queen Maguelone. By reciting the Terrible and Exemplary Story of Robert the Devil."

He spoke rapidly, rubbing his hands together, twisting and turning in his chair. The baron was reminded of Professor Tales de Azevedo, a scholar friend of his who had visited him in Calumbi many years before: he would spend hour after hour listening, in rapt fascination, to the minstrels at fairs, have them dictate to him the words that he heard them sing and recite, and a.s.sured him that they were medieval romances, brought to the New World by the first Portuguese and preserved in the oral tradition of the backlands. He noticed the look of anguish on his visitor's face.

"His life can still be saved," he heard him say, a pleading look in his ambiguous eyes. "He has tuberculosis, but it's operable. Dr. Magalhaes, at the Portuguese Hospital, has saved many people. I want to do that for him. It's another reason why I need work. But above all...in order to eat."

The baron saw the look of shame that came over his face, as though he had confessed to some ignominious sin.

"I don't know of any reason why I should help that dwarf," the baron murmured. "Nor why I should help you."

"There isn't any reason, of course," his myopic visitor said, pulling on his fingers. "I just decided to try my luck. I thought I might be able to touch your heart. In the past you were known to be a generous man."

"A ba.n.a.l tactic employed by a politician," the baron said. "I have no further need of it now that I've retired from politics."

And at that moment, through the window overlooking the garden, he spied the chameleon. He very seldom caught a glimpse of it, or, better put, seldom recognized it, since it always blended so perfectly with the stones, the gra.s.s, or the bushes and branches of the garden that more than once he had nearly stepped on it. The evening before, he had taken Estela, accompanied by Sebastiana, out of doors for a breath of fresh air, beneath the mango trees and ficuses, and the chameleon had been a wonderful diversion for the baroness, who, from her wicker rocking chair, had amused herself by pointing out exactly where the creature was, recognizing it amid the plants and on the bark of trees as readily as in days gone by. The baron and Sebastiana had seen her smile when it ran off as they approached it to see if she had guessed correctly. It was there now, at the foot of one of the mangoes, an iridescent greenish-brown, barely distinguishable from the gra.s.s, its little throat palpitating. He spoke to it, in his mind: "Beloved chameleon, elusive little creature, my good friend. I thank you with all my heart for having made my wife laugh."

"The only things I own are the clothes on my back," the nearsighted journalist said. "When I returned from Canudos I found that the woman who owned my place had sold all my things to get the rent I owed. The Jornal de Noticias Jornal de Noticias refused to pay for the upkeep while I was gone." He fell silent for a moment and then added: "She also sold off my books. Sometimes I recognize one or another of them in the Santa Barbara market." refused to pay for the upkeep while I was gone." He fell silent for a moment and then added: "She also sold off my books. Sometimes I recognize one or another of them in the Santa Barbara market."

The thought crossed the baron's mind that the loss of his books must have been heartbreaking for this man who ten or twelve years before had a.s.sured him that he would someday be the Oscar Wilde of Brazil.

"Very well," he said. "You may have your old job back at the Diario da Bahia Diario da Bahia. All in all, you weren't a bad writer."

The nearsighted journalist removed his gla.s.ses and nodded several times, his face very pale, unable to express his thanks in any other way. "It's a matter of little importance," the baron thought. "Am I doing this for him or for that dwarf? I'm doing it for the chameleon." He looked out the window, searching for it, and felt disappointed: it was no longer there, or else, sensing that it was being spied on, it had disguised itself perfectly by blending with the colors round it.

"He's someone who's terrified at the thought of dying," the nearsighted journalist murmured, putting his gla.s.ses back on. "It's not out of a love of life, you understand. He's had a miserable existence. He was sold as a child to a gypsy for whom he was a circus attraction, a freak to be put on exhibition. But he has such a great, such a fabulous fear of death that it has enabled him to survive. And me as well, incidentally."

The baron suddenly regretted having given him work, for in some indefinable way this established a bond between him and this individual. And he did not want to feel any sort of tie to anyone so closely linked to the memory of Canudos. But, instead of intimating to his caller that their conversation had ended, he blurted out: "You must have seen terrible things." He cleared his throat, feeling uncomfortable at having yielded to his curiosity, but added nonetheless: "When you were up there in Canudos."

"As a matter of fact, I didn't see anything at all," the emaciated little figure replied immediately, doubling over and then straightening up. "I broke my gla.s.ses the day they destroyed the Seventh Regiment. I stayed up there for four months, seeing nothing but shadows, vague shapes, phantoms."

His voice was so ironic that the baron wondered whether he was saying this to irritate him, or whether it was his rude, unfriendly way of letting him know that he didn't want to talk about it.

"I don't know why you haven't laughed at me," he heard him say in an even more aggressive tone of voice. "Everybody laughs when I tell them that I didn't see what happened in Canudos because I broke my gla.s.ses. It's quite comical, I'm sure."

"Yes, it is," the baron said, rising to his feet. "But it's something that doesn't interest me. Hence..."

"But even though I didn't see them, I felt, heard, smelled the things that happened," the journalist said, his eyes following him from behind his gla.s.ses. "And I intuitively sensed the rest."

The baron heard him laugh once more, with a sort of impishness now, fearlessly looking him straight in the eye. He sat down again. "Did you really come here to ask me for work and talk to me about that dwarf?" he said. "Does that dwarf dying of tuberculosis exist?"

"He's spitting up blood and I want to help him," the visitor said. "But I came for another reason as well."

He bowed his head, and as the baron's gaze fell upon his disheveled salt-and-pepper locks flecked with dandruff, he visualized in his mind his watery eyes fixed on the floor. He had the inexplicable intuition that his visitor was bringing him a message from Galileo Gall.

"People are forgetting Canudos," the nearsighted journalist said, in a voice that sounded like an echo. "The last lingering memories of what happened there will fade in the air and mingle with the music of the next carnival ball in the Politeama Theater."

"Canudos?" the baron murmured. "Epaminondas is right not to want people to talk about what happened there. It's better to forget it. It's an unfortunate, unclear episode. It's not good for anything. History must be instructive, exemplary. In this war, n.o.body has covered himself with glory. And n.o.body has understood what happened. People have decided to ring down a curtain on it. And that's a sensible, healthy reaction."

"I shall not allow them to forget," the journalist said, his dim eyes gazing steadily up at him. "That's a promise I've made myself."

The baron smiled. Not because of his visitor's sudden solemnity but because the chameleon had just materialized, beyond the desk and the curtains, in the bright green of the plants in the garden, beneath the gnarled branches of the pitangueira pitangueira tree. Long, motionless, greenish, with its profile reminiscent of the topography of sharp mountain peaks, almost transparent, it gleamed like a precious stone. "Welcome, friend," the baron thought. tree. Long, motionless, greenish, with its profile reminiscent of the topography of sharp mountain peaks, almost transparent, it gleamed like a precious stone. "Welcome, friend," the baron thought.

"How will you do that?" he said, for no particular reason, simply to fill the silence.

"In the only way in which things are preserved," he heard his caller growl. "By writing of them."

The baron nodded. "I remember that, too. You wanted to be a poet, a dramatist. And you're going to write the story of Canudos that you didn't see?"

"What fault of this poor devil is it that Estela is no longer that lucid, intelligent creature she once was?" the baron thought.

"As soon as I was able to get rid of the cheeky and curious strangers who besieged me, I started going to the Reading Room of the Academy of History," the myopic journalist said. "To look through the papers, all the news items about Canudos. The Jornal da Noticias Jornal da Noticias, the Diario de Bahia, O Republicano Diario de Bahia, O Republicano. I've read everything written about it, everything I wrote. It's something...difficult to put into words. Too unreal, do you follow me? It seems like a conspiracy in which everyone played a role, a total misunderstanding on the part of all concerned, from beginning to end."

"I don't understand." The baron had forgotten the chameleon and even Estela and was watching in fascination this person sitting all doubled over, his chin brus.h.i.+ng his knee, as though he were straining to get his words out.

"Hordes of fanatics, bloodthirsty killers, cannibals of the backlands, racial mongrels, contemptible monsters, human sc.u.m, base lunatics, filicides, spiritual degenerates," the visitor recited, lingering over each syllable. "Some of those terms were mine. I not only wrote them, I also believed them."

"Are you going to pen an apology for Canudos?" the baron asked. "You always did strike me as being a bit crazy. But I find it hard to believe that you're crazy enough to ask my help in such an undertaking. You're aware of what Canudos cost me, are you not? That I lost half my possessions? That on account of Canudos the worst misfortune of all happened to me, since Estela..."

He could hear his voice quavering and fell silent. He looked out the window, searching for help. And he found it: the creature was still there, perfectly still, beautiful, prehistoric, eternal, halfway between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, serene in the radiant morning light.

"But those terms were preferable. They at least kept people thinking about Canudos," the journalist said, as though he had not heard him. "And now, not a word. Is there talk of Canudos in the cafes on the Rua Chile, in the marketplaces, in the taverns? No, people are talking instead of the orphan girls deflowered by the director of the Santa Rita de Ca.s.sia hospice. Or of Dr. Silva Lima's anti-syphilis pill or of the latest s.h.i.+pment of Russian soap and English shoes just arrived at Clark's Department Store." He looked the baron straight in the eye and the latter saw that there was fury and panic in those myopic orbs. "The last news item about Canudos appeared in the papers two days ago. Do you know what it was about?"

"I don't read the papers now that I've left politics," the baron said. "Not even my own."

"The return to Rio de Janeiro of the commission sent by the Spiritualist Center of the capital to aid the forces of law and order, through the use of its mediumistic powers, to wipe out the jaguncos jaguncos. Well, the commission has now come back to Rio, on the steamer Rio Vermelho Rio Vermelho, with its ouija boards and its crystal b.a.l.l.s and what have you. Since then, not a single line. And it hasn't even been three months yet."

"I don't want to hear any more," the baron said. "I've already told you that Canudos is a painful subject to me."

"I need to know what you know," the journalist interrupted him in a hurried, conspiratorial voice. "You know many things. You sent them flour and also cattle. You had contacts with them. You talked with Pajeu."

Blackmail? Had he come to threaten him, to get money out of him? The baron was disappointed that the explanation of all that enigmatic, empty talk had turned out to be something so vulgar.

"Did you really give Antonio Vilanova that message for me?" Abbot Joao asks, rousing himself from the warm drowsiness he feels as Catarina's long slender fingers bury themselves in his mane, searching for nits.

"I don't know what message he gave you," Catarina answers, her fingers continuing to explore his head.

"She's happy," Abbot Joao thinks. He knows her well enough to sense, from furtive inflections of her voice or sparks in her dark eyes, when she is feeling unhappy. He is aware that people talk of Catarina's mortal sadness, since no one has ever seen her laugh and very few have ever heard her say a word. But why try to show them that they're wrong? He knows: he has seen her smile and laugh, though always as if in secret.

"That if I'm condemned to eternal d.a.m.nation, you want to be, too," he murmurs.

His wife's fingers stop moving, just as they do each time they come across a louse nesting in his hair, whereupon she crushes it between her fingernails. After a moment, they go on with their task and Joao again immerses himself in the welcome peace of simply being where he is, without his shoes on, his torso bare, lying on the rush pallet of the tiny dwelling made of boards held together with mud, on the Rua do Menino Jesus, with his wife kneeling at his back, removing the lice from his hair. He feels pity for the blindness of others. Feeling no need to speak to each other, he and Catarina tell each other more things than the worst chatterboxes in Canudos. It is mid-morning and the sunlight filtering in through the cracks between the planks of the door and the tiny holes in the length of blue cloth covering the only window brightens the one room of the cabin. Outside, voices can be heard, the sound of children running about, the hustle and bustle of people going about their business, as though this were a world at peace, as though there had not been so many people killed that it took Canudos an entire week to bury its dead and carry off to the outskirts of town all the soldiers' corpses so the vultures would devour them.

"It's true," Catarina says in his ear, her breath tickling it. "If you go to h.e.l.l, I want to go there with you."

Joao reaches out his arm, takes Catarina by the waist, and sits her on his knees. He does so with the greatest possible gentleness, as always when he touches her, for, because she is so thin or because he feels such remorse, he always has the distressing feeling that he is going to hurt her, and because the thought always crosses his mind that he must let go of her immediately since he will encounter that resistance that always is evident the moment he even tries to take her by the arm. He knows that she finds physical contact unbearable and he has learned to respect her feelings, fighting his own impulses, because he loves her. Although they have lived together for many years, they have very seldom made love together, or at least given themselves to each other completely, Abbot Joao thinks, without those interruptions on her part that leave him panting, bathed in sweat, his heart pounding. But this morning, to his surprise, Catarina does not push him away. On the contrary, she curls up on his lap and he feels her frail body, with its protruding ribs, its nearly nonexistent b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pressing against his.

"There in the Health House, I was afraid for you," Catarina says. "As we were caring for the wounded, as we saw the soldiers pa.s.sing by, shooting and throwing torches. I was afraid. For you."

She does not say this in a fervent, pa.s.sionate tone of voice, but rather in a cold, impersonal one, as though she were speaking of other people's reactions. But Abbot Joao feels deeply moved, and then a sudden desire for her. He thrusts his hand beneath Catarina's wrapper and caresses her back, her sides, her tiny nipples, as his mouth with all its front teeth missing brushes her neck, her cheek, seeking her lips. Catarina allows him to kiss her, but she does not open her mouth, and when Joao tries to lay her down on the pallet, her body stiffens. He immediately frees her from his embrace, breathing deeply, closing his eyes. Catarina rises to her feet, pulls her wrapper about her, picks up the blue cloth that has fallen to the floor, and covers her head with it once again. The roof of the cabin is so low that she is obliged to bend over in the corner of the room where provisions are stored (when there are any): beef jerky, manioc flour, beans, raw brown sugar. Joao watches her preparing the meal and calculates how many days-or weeks?-it has been since he has had the opportunity to be alone with her like this, with no thought in either of their minds of the war and of the Antichrist.

Shortly thereafter, Catarina comes over and sits down beside him on the pallet, with a wooden bowl full of beans sprinkled with manioc and a wooden spoon in her hands. They eat, handing the spoon to each other, with him taking two or three mouthfuls to her one.

"Is it true that Belo Monte was saved from the Throat-Slitter by the Indians from Mirandela?" Catarina murmurs. "That's what Joaquim Macambira says."

"And also by the blacks from the Mocambo and the others," Abbot Joao answers. "But it's quite true, the Indians from Mirandela were really brave. They had neither carbines nor rifles."

They had not wanted to have them, out of caprice, superst.i.tion, mistrust, or some other unfathomable reason. He himself, the Vilanova brothers, Pedrao, Big Joao, the Macambiras had tried several times to give them firearms, petards, explosives. The chief shook his head emphatically, thrusting his hands out before him with something like disgust. Shortly before the arrival of Throat-Slitter, he himself had offered to show them how to load, clean, and shoot muskets, shotguns, rifles. The answer had been no. Abbot Joao concluded that the Cariri Indians would not fight this time either. They had not gone to confront the dogs at Uaua, and when the expedition had come by way of O Cambaio they had not even left their huts, as though that battle had been no business of theirs either. "Belo Monte is not defended on that flank," Abbot Joao had said. "Let's pray to the Blessed Jesus that they don't come from that direction." But they had also come from that way. "The only side where they were unable to break through," Abbot Joao thinks. It had been those surly, distant, incomprehensible creatures, fighting with only bows and arrows, lances, and knives, who had stopped them. A miracle perhaps?

His eyes seeking his wife's, Joao asks: "Do you remember when we entered Mirandela for the first time, with the Counselor?"

She nods. They have finished eating and Catarina takes the bowl and the spoon to the corner of the stove. Then Joao sees her come back toward him-very thin, grave, barefoot, her head brus.h.i.+ng the ceiling covered with soot-and lie down beside him on the pallet. He places his arm underneath her back and carefully makes room for her to settle down comfortably. They lie there quietly, listening to the sounds of Canudos, near and far. They can lie that way for hours and these are perhaps the most profound moments of the life they share.

"At that time I hated you as much as you used to hate Custodia," Catarina murmurs.

Mirandela, a village of Indians herded together there in the eighteenth century by the Capuchin missionaries of the Ma.s.sacara mission, was a strange enclave in the backlands of Canudos, separated from Pombal by four leagues of sandy ground, dense and th.o.r.n.y scrub impenetrable in places, and air so burning hot that it chapped people's lips and turned their skin to parchment. Since time immemorial the village of Cariri Indians, perched on top of a mountain, in rugged country, had been the scene of b.l.o.o.d.y fights-sometimes turning into veritable ma.s.sacres-between the Indians and the whites of the region for the possession of the best pieces of land. The Indians lived grouped together in the village, in scattered cabins around the Church of the Ascension of Our Lord, a stone building two centuries old, with a straw roof and a blue door and windows, and the bare stretch of ground that was the village square, in which there was nothing but a handful of coconut palms and a wooden cross. The whites stayed on their haciendas round about the village and this proximity was not coexistence but rather a permanent state of undeclared war that periodically took the form of reciprocal incursions, violent incidents, sackings, and murders. The few hundred Indians of Mirandela went around half naked, speaking a local dialect seasoned with little spurts of spit, and hunting with bows and poisoned arrows. They were surly, wretched specimens of humanity, who kept entirely to themselves within their circle of huts thatched with ico ico leaves, with their maize fields between, and so poor that neither the bandits nor the flying brigades of Rural Police entered Mirandela to sack it. They had become heathens again. It had been years since the Capuchin and Lazarist Fathers had been able to preach a Holy Mission in the village, for the moment the missionaries appeared in the vicinity, the Indians and their wives and children vanished into the leaves, with their maize fields between, and so poor that neither the bandits nor the flying brigades of Rural Police entered Mirandela to sack it. They had become heathens again. It had been years since the Capuchin and Lazarist Fathers had been able to preach a Holy Mission in the village, for the moment the missionaries appeared in the vicinity, the Indians and their wives and children vanished into the caatinga caatinga, till the Fathers finally gave up and resigned themselves to preaching the mission only for the whites. Abbot Joao doesn't remember when it was that the Counselor decided to go to Mirandela. For him the disciples' time of wandering is not linear, with a before before and an and an after after, but circular, a repet.i.tion of interchangeable days and events. He does remember, on the other hand, how it came about. After having restored the chapel of Pombal, the Counselor took off toward the North one morning, heading across a succession of razor-backed hills that led directly to the Indian redoubt, where a family of whites had just been ma.s.sacred. No one said a word to him, for no one, ever, questioned the Counselor's decisions. But during the long day's journey, with the blazing sun seemingly trepanning their skulls, many of the disciples, Abbot Joao among them, thought that they would be greeted by a deserted village or by a shower of arrows.

Neither thing happened. The Counselor and his followers climbed up the mountainside at dusk and entered the village in procession, singing hymns in praise of Mary. The Indians received them without taking fright, without hostility, in an att.i.tude of apparent indifference. They saw the pilgrims install themselves on the open s.p.a.ce in front of their huts, light a bonfire, and throng round it. Then they saw them enter the Church of the Ascension of Our Lord and pray at the stations of the cross, and then later, from their cabins and little animal pens and fields, those men whose faces were covered with ritual scars and green-and-white stripes listened to the Counselor give his evening counsel. They heard him speak of the Holy Spirit, which is freedom, and of Mary's sorrow, extol the virtues of frugality, poverty, and sacrifice, explain that every suffering offered to G.o.d becomes a reward in the life to come. They then heard the pilgrims of the Blessed Jesus recite a Rosary to the Mother of Christ. And the next morning, still without having approached them, still without giving them so much as a smile or making a single friendly gesture, the Indians saw them leave by the path to the cemetery, where they stopped to tidy the graves and cut the gra.s.s.

"The Counselor was inspired by the Father to go to Mirandela that time," Abbot Joao says. "He sowed a seed and it finally flowered."

Catarina doesn't say anything, but Joao knows that she is remembering, as he is, how one day some hundred Indians suddenly turned up in Belo Monte, bringing with them, along the road from Bendengo, their belongings, their old people, some of them on stretchers, their wives and their children. Years had gone by, but no one doubted that the surprising appearance of these half-naked people daubed with paint meant that they were returning the Counselor's visit. The Cariris entered Canudos, accompanied by a white from Mirandela, Antonio the Pyrotechnist, as though they were entering their own house, and installed themselves in the open country adjoining the Mocambo that Antonio Vilanova a.s.signed them. They built huts there and planted their crops between them. They went to hear the counsels and spoke just enough broken Portuguese to make themselves understood by the others, but they remained a world apart. The Counselor often used to go to see them-they would receive him by stamping their feet on the ground, that strange way of theirs of dancing-as did the Vilanova brothers, through whom they traded their produce for other provisions. Abbot Joao had always thought of them as strangers. But not any more. Because the day of the invasion by Throat-Slitter had seen them withstand three infantry charges launched directly on their quarter, two from the Vaza-Barris side and the other via the road from Jeremoabo. When he and some twenty men from the Catholic Guard went to reinforce this sector, he had been astonished at the number of attackers circulating among the huts and at the Indians' stubborn resistance, riddling them with arrows from the rooftops, shooting rocks at them with their slings, flinging themselves upon them with their stone axes and wooden pikes. The Cariris fought hand-to-hand with the invaders, and their women leapt upon them too, biting them and scratching them and trying to s.n.a.t.c.h their rifles and bayonets out of their hands, forthrightly shouting insults and curses at them the while. At least a third of the infantrymen had been killed or wounded by the end of the encounter.

A knock at the door rouses Abbot Joao from his thoughts. Catarina removes the plank, held fast by a length of wire, that bars the door, and one of Honorio Vilanova's children appears amid a cloud of dust, white light, and noise.

"My uncle Antonio wants to see the Street Commander," he says.

"Tell him I'll be right there," Abbot Joao replies.

Such happiness was bound not to last, he thinks, and he can tell from his wife's face that she is thinking the same thing. He pulls on his coa.r.s.e cotton pants fastened with leather thongs, his rope sandals, his blouse, and goes out into the street. The bright light of midday blinds him. As always, the women, children, old people sitting at the doors of the dwellings greet him and he waves back. He walks on amid knots of women grinding maize in their mortars together, men conversing in loud voices as they a.s.semble reed flats and fill in the c.h.i.n.ks with handfuls of mud to replace walls that have fallen. He even hears a guitar somewhere. He does not need to see them to know that at this moment hundreds of other people are on the banks of the Vaza-Barris and at the Jeremoabo exit, squatting on their haunches clearing the land, tidying up the orchards, ridding the animal pens of rubble. There is almost no debris in the streets, and many huts that were burned down have been rebuilt. "That's Antonio Vilanova's doing," he thinks. The moment the procession celebrating the triumph of Belo Monte over the heretics of the Republic was ended, Antonio Vilanova had taken charge of the squads of volunteers and people from the Catholic Guard, and was out organizing the burial of the dead, the removal of rubble, the rebuilding of the huts and workshops, and the rescue of the sheep, goats, and kids that had scattered in terror. "It's their doing, too," Abbot Joao thinks. "They've accepted the situation. They're heroes." There they are, untroubled, greeting, smiling at him, and this evening they will hurry to the Temple of the Blessed Jesus to hear the Counselor, as if nothing had happened, as if all these families did not have someone who had been shot to death, run through with a lance, or burned to death in this war, and someone among the countless wounded lying moaning in the Health Houses and in the Church of Santo Antonio now turned into an infirmary.

And then something makes him stop short. He closes his eyes to listen. He is not mistaken; he is not dreaming. The even, harmonious voice goes on reciting. From the depths of his memory, a cascade that swells and becomes a river, something stirring takes shape, materializes in a rush of swords and a dazzle of palaces and luxurious chambers. "The battle of Sir Olivier with Fierabras," he thinks. It is one of the episodes from the tales of the Twelve Peers of France that he is fondest of, a duel that he hasn't heard the story of for years and years. The voice of the minstrel is coming from the intersection of Campo Grande and Divino, where many people have gathered. He draws closer, and on recognizing him, people move aside for him. The one who is singing of Olivier's imprisonment and his duel with Fierabras is a child. No, a dwarf. Tiny, very thin, he is pretending to be strumming a guitar and at the same time is miming the clash of the lances, the knights galloping on their steeds, the courtly bows to Charlemagne the Great. Seated on the ground, with a tin can on her lap, is a woman with long hair, and at her side a bony, bent, mud-spattered creature with the sightless gaze of blind men. He recognizes them: they are the three who appeared with Father Joaquim, the ones whom Antonio Vilanova allows to sleep in the store. He reaches out and touches the little man, who immediately falls silent.

"Do you know the Terrible and Exemplary Story of Robert the Devil?" he asks him.

After a moment's hesitation, the Dwarf nods.