The Dwarf had finished the story. The journalist heard scattered applause and the audience began to wander off. Tensely, he tried to make out whether people stretched out a hand, left them a little something before going off, but he had the distressing impression that no one did so.
“Nothing?” he murmured, when he sensed that they were alone.
“Nothing,” the woman answered with her usual indifference, rising to her feet.
The nearsighted journalist stood up too, and on noting that she had begun walking—a slight little figure, with her hair hanging and her blouse in tatters, whom he could see in his mind’s eye—he followed along after her. The Dwarf came scrambling along at his side, his head at the height of his elbow.
“They’re scrawnier than we are,” he heard the Dwarf mutter. “Do you remember Cipó, Jurema? There are even more human wrecks here. Have you ever seen so many people who are one-armed, blind, crippled, palsied, albinos, so many who are missing ears, a nose, hair, so full of scabs and blotches? You haven’t noticed, Jurema. But I have. Because here I feel normal.”
He laughed merrily, and the nearsighted journalist heard him whistle a happy tune for some time as they walked along.
“Will they give us maize flour again today?” he asked all of a sudden in an anxious voice. But he was thinking of something else, and added bitterly: “If it’s true that Father Joaquim has gone off somewhere, we don’t have anybody who’ll help us now. Why did he do that to us? Why did he abandon us?”
“Why wouldn’t he abandon us?” the Dwarf said. “What are we to him? Did he know us? Be grateful that we have a roof over our heads at night to sleep under, thanks to him.”
It was true, he had helped them; thanks to him, they had a roof over their heads. It was surely thanks to his intercession that the morning after they had slept out in the open all night, as they were waking up with all their bones and muscles aching, a powerful, efficient-sounding voice, which appeared to belong to the solid bulk, the bearded face above them, had said: “Come on, you can sleep in the storehouse. But don’t leave Belo Monte.”
Were they prisoners? Neither he nor Jurema nor the Dwarf asked any questions of this man with the commanding air who, with a simple phrase, took over their lives. Without another word he took them to a place the nearsighted journalist sensed was vast, dark, warm, and chock-full of things, and before disappearing—without questioning them as to who they were, or what they were doing there, or what they wanted to do—told them once more that they could not leave Canudos and warned them not to touch the arms. The Dwarf and Jurema explained to him that they were surrounded by rifles, powder, mortars, sticks of dynamite. He realized that these were the arms that had been seized from the Seventh Regiment. Wasn’t it absurd that they were going to sleep there in the middle of all these spoils of war? No, life had ceased to be logical, and therefore nothing was absurd. It was life: one had to accept it as it was or kill oneself.
He had had the thought that, here, something different from reason governed things, men, time, death, something that it would be unfair to call madness and too general to call faith, superstition, ever since the night on which he had first heard the Counselor, immersed in that multitude which, as it listened to the deep, booming, strangely impersonal voice, had taken on a granite immobility, amid a silence one could touch. More than by the man’s words and his majestic voice, the journalist was struck, stunned, overwhelmed by that stillness, that silence in which they listened to him. It was like…it was like…He searched desperately for that similarity with something that he knew lay stored in the depths of his memory, because, he was sure, once it came to the surface it would explain what he was feeling. Yes: the candomblés. Sometimes, in those humble huts of the blacks of Salvador, or in the narrow streets behind the Calçada Railroad Station, attending the frenetic rites of those sects that sang in forgotten African languages, he had caught a glimpse of an organization of life, a collusion of things and men, of time, space, and human experience as totally devoid of logic, of common sense, of reason, as the one which, in that rapidly falling darkness that was beginning to blur people’s silhouettes, he perceived in these creatures who were being given comfort, strength, and a sense of roots by that deep, cavernous hoarse voice, so contemptuous of material necessities, so proudly centered on the spirit, on everything that could not be eaten or worn or used: thoughts, emotions, feelings, virtues. As he listened to that voice, the nearsighted journalist thought he had a sudden intuitive understanding of the why of Canudos, the why of the continued existence of that aberration, Canudos. But when the voice ceased and the crowd emerged from its ecstasy, his bewilderment was again as great as it had been before.
“Here’s a little flour for you,” he heard the wife of either Antônio or Honório Vilanova saying: their voices were identical. “And some milk.”
He stopped thinking, letting his mind wander, and was nothing but a ravenous creature who raised little mouthfuls of maize flour to his lips with his fingertips, wet them with saliva, and kept them between his palate and his tongue for a long time before swallowing them, an organism that felt gratitude each time a sip of goat’s milk brought this feeling of well-being to his insides.
When they finished, the Dwarf belched and the nearsighted journalist heard him give a happy laugh. “If he eats he’s happy, and if he doesn’t he’s sad,” he thought. It was the same with him: his happiness or unhappiness now largely depended on his gut. That elemental truth reigned in Canudos, and yet could these people be called materialists? Because another persistent idea of his in recent days was that this society had come, by way of obscure paths and perhaps through simple error or accident, to rid itself of concerns about bodily needs, about economics, about everyday life, and everything that was primordial in the world he had come from. Would this sorry paradise of spirituality and wretchedness be his grave? During his first days in Canudos he had had illusions, had imagined that the little curé of Cumbe would remember him, would secure him guides, a horse, and that he would be able to get back to Salvador. But Father Joaquim had not come back to see them, and people now said that he was away on a journey. He no longer appeared at dusk on the scaffolding of the Temple under construction, and no longer celebrated Mass in the mornings. He had never been able to get close to him, to make his way through the group of armed men and women with blue headcloths standing shoulder to shoulder to guard the Counselor and his most intimate disciples, and now nobody knew if Father Joaquim would be back. Would his lot have been different if he had managed to speak with him? What would he have said to him? “Father Joaquim, I’m afraid of staying here amid jagunços, get me out of here, take me where there are soldiers and police who will offer me some security”? He could almost hear the little curé’s answer: “And what security do they offer me, senhor journalist? Have you forgotten that only a miracle kept me from losing my life at the hands of Throat-Slitter? Do you really imagine that I could go back where there are soldiers and police?” He burst out laughing uncontrollably, hysterically. He heard his laughter, and immediately took fright, thinking that it might offend those blurred beings who lived in this place. Finding his laughter infectious, the Dwarf, too, burst into a loud guffaw. He could see him in his mind, a tiny, deformed creature, contorted with merriment. It irritated him that Jurema remained as sober as ever.
“Well, it’s a small world! We meet again,” a rasping male voice said, and the nearsighted journalist was aware that dim silhouettes were approaching. One of them, the shorter of the two, with a red patch that must be a neckerchief, planted himself in front of Jurema. “I thought the dogs had killed you up there on the mountain.”
“They didn’t kill me,” Jurema answered.
“I’m glad,” the man said. “That would have been too bad.”
“He wants her for himself. He’s going to take her off with him,” the nearsighted journalist thought instantly. The palms of his hands began to sweat. He would take her away with him and the Dwarf would tag alo
ng after them. He started to tremble: he imagined how it would be all by himself, totally helpless in his semi-blindness, dying of starvation, of crashing into things, of terror.
“I see you’ve gotten yourself another escort besides the dwarf,” he heard the man say in a half-fawning, half-mocking tone of voice. “Well, see you later. Praised be the Blessed Jesus.”
Jurema didn’t answer and the nearsighted journalist stood there, his body tense, on the alert, expecting—he didn’t know why—a kick, a slap, spit in his face.
“These aren’t all,” said a voice different from the one that had been speaking, and after a second he realized that it was Abbot João. “There are more in the storeroom where the hides are.”
“These are enough,” the first man said, his tone of voice neutral now.
“No, they’re not,” Abbot João replied. “They’re not enough if eight or nine thousand men are coming. Even two or three times as many wouldn’t be enough.”
“That’s true,” the first voice said.
He heard them moving about in front of them and behind them, and guessed that they were fingering the rifles, hefting them, handling them, raising them to their eyes to see if the sights were properly lined up and the bores clean. Eight, nine thousand troops were coming?
“And besides, some of these can’t even be used, Pajeú,” Abbot João said. “See this one? The barrel’s twisted, the trigger’s broken, the breech is split.”
Pajeú? So the one who was there moving about, having a conversation with Abbot João, the one who had been talking to Jurema, was Pajeú. The two men were saying something about the Virgin’s jewels, speaking of someone named Dr. Águiar do Nascimento; their voices came and went along with their footsteps. All the bandits of the sertão were here; they’d all turned into fervent believers. How could that be explained? They walked past him and the nearsighted journalist could see two pairs of legs within reach of his hand.
“Do you want to hear the Terrible and Exemplary Story of Robert the Devil?” he heard the Dwarf ask. “I know it, I’ve told it a thousand times. Shall I recite it to you, sir?”
“Not now,” Abbot João answered. “But I’d be pleased to hear it some other day. Why do you call me sir, though? Don’t you know my name?”
“Yes, I know it,” the Dwarf murmured. “I beg your pardon…”
The sound of the men’s footsteps died away. The nearsighted journalist had been set to thinking: “The man who cut off ears and noses, the one who castrated his enemies and tattooed them with his initials. The one that murdered everyone in a village to prove he was Satan. And Pajeú, the butcher, the cattle rustler, the killer, the rogue.” They’d been right there next to him. He was dumfounded, and wanted badly to write.
“Did you see how he talked to you, how he looked at you?” he heard the Dwarf say. “How lucky you are, Jurema. He’ll take you to live with him and you’ll have a house and food on the table. Because Pajeú is one of those in charge here.”
But what was going to happen to him?
“There aren’t ten flies per inhabitant—there are a thousand,” Lieutenant Pires Ferreira thinks. “They know nobody can kill them all. That’s why they don’t budge when the naïve newcomer tries to shoo them away.” They were the only flies in the world that didn’t move when a hand waved past within millimeters of them, trying to chase them away. Their multiple eyes looked at the miserable wretch, defying him. He could easily squash them, without the least bit of trouble. But what would be gained by such a disgusting act? Ten, twenty of them inevitably materialized in the place of the one crushed to death. It was better to resign oneself to their company, the way the sertanejos did. They allowed them to walk all over their clothing and dishes, leave their houses and food black with flyspecks, live on the bodies of their newborn babes, confining themselves to brushing them off the raw sugar lump they were about to bite into or spitting them out if they got into their mouths. They were bigger than the ones in Salvador, the only fat creatures in this country where men and beasts appeared to be reduced to their minimal expression.
He is lying naked on his bed at the Hotel Continental. Through the window he can see the station and the sign: Vila Bela de Santo Antônio das Queimadas. Which does he hate more: the flies or Queimadas, where he has the feeling that he is going to spend the rest of his days, bored to death, disillusioned, whiling away the hours philosophizing about flies? This is one of those moments in which bitterness makes him forget that he is a privileged man, for he has a little room all to himself here in the Hotel Continental which is the envy of thousands of officers and men who are squeezed in together, by twos, by fours, in houses requisitioned or rented by the army, and of those—the great majority—quartered in huts erected on the banks of the Itapicuru. He has the good fortune to occupy a room in the Hotel Continental by right of seniority. He has been here ever since the Seventh Regiment passed through Queimadas and Colonel Moreira César limited his responsibilities to the humiliating duty of taking care of the sick, in the rear guard. From this window he has witnessed the events that have convulsed the backlands, Bahia, Brazil in the last three months: Moreira César’s departure in the direction of Monte Santo and the sudden return of the survivors from the disaster, still wide-eyed with panic or stupefaction; since then he has seen the train from Salvador spew out, week after week, professional soldiers, brigades of police, and regiments of volunteers come from every part of the country to this town held in thrall by flies, to avenge the dead patriots, vindicate the honor of humiliated institutions, and restore the sovereignty of the Republic. And, from this same Hotel Continental, Lieutenant Pires Ferreira has seen how those dozens and dozens of companies, so high-spirited, so eager for action, have been caught in a spiderweb that is keeping them inactive, immobilized, distracted by nagging problems that have nothing to do with the generous ideals that have brought them here: incidents, thefts, the lack of lodging, food, transport, enemies, women. The evening before, Lieutenant Pires Ferreira attended a staff meeting of officers of the Third Infantry Battalion, called because of a major scandal—the disappearance of a hundred Comblain rifles and twenty-five cases of ammunition—and Colonel Joaquim Manuel de Medeiros, after reading an order warning that unless they were returned immediately those found responsible for this robbery would be summarily executed, has told them that the great problem—transporting to Canudos the tremendous amount of matériel accompanying the expeditionary force—has still not been resolved and that therefore no definite date has been set for departure.
There is a knock at the door and Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says: “Come in.” It is his orderly, come to remind him that Private Queluz is awaiting punishment. As he dresses, yawning, he tries to remember the face of this infantryman whom he has already flogged once, he is sure, a week or a month or so before, perhaps for the same offense. Which one? He knows them all: petty thefts from the regiment or the families that have not yet cleared out of Queimadas, fights with soldiers from other corps, attempted desertion. The captain of the company often orders him to administer the floggings with which he tries to preserve discipline, which is deteriorating by the day because of the boredom and the privations his men are suffering. Giving a man a lashing is not something that Lieutenant Pires Ferreira ordinarily likes doing. But now it is something that he does not dislike doing, either. It has become part of the daily routine here in Queimadas, along with sleeping, dressing and undressing, eating, teaching the men the nomenclature of a Mannlicher or a Comblain, explaining what a defensive or offensive square is, or philosophizing about flies.
On leaving the Hotel Continental, Lieutenant Pires Ferreira takes the Avenida de Itapicuru, the name of the stony incline that leads up to the Church of Santo Antônio, his eyes surveying, above the rooftops of the little houses painted green, white, or blue, the hillsides covered with bone-dry brush surrounding Queimadas, and pitying the poor infantry companies being drilled on those burning-hot slopes. He has taken recruits out there a hundred times t
o practice digging in, and has seen them run with sweat and sometimes faint dead away. Most often it is the volunteers from cold country who topple over like tenpins after just a few hours of marching through this desert terrain with their knapsacks on their backs and their rifles slung over their shoulders.
At this time of day the streets of Queimadas are not the teeming anthill of uniforms, the sample collection of all the accents of Brazil that they turn into at night, when officers and men pour out into them to chat together, to strum guitars, to listen to songs from their villages, to enjoy a few sips of cane brandy that they have managed to come by at exorbitant prices. Here and there he comes across knots of soldiers with their blouses unbuttoned, but he does not spy a single townsman as he makes his way to the main square, with towering ouricuri palms that are always swarming with birds. There are hardly any townspeople around. Except for a handful of cowhands here and there, too elderly, ailing, or apathetic to have left, who stand looking out with undisguised hatred from the doorways of the houses they are forced to share with the intruders, everyone else in Queimadas has gradually taken off.