• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The shop is a cube with holes through which tongues of sunlight enter. Candles and tapers hang from nails and lie lined up on the counter. The walls are covered with ex-votos and with saints, Christs, Virgins, and devotional prints. Rufino kneels to kiss the old woman’s hand: “Good day, Mother.” She traces the sign of the cross on his forehead with her gnarled fingers with dirty nails. She is a gaunt, grim-faced old woman with hard eyes, all bundled up in a shawl despite the stifling heat. She is holding a rosary with large beads in one hand.

“Caifás wants to see you, to explain to you,” she says. She has difficulty getting the words out, either because she finds the subject painful or because she has no teeth. “He’ll be coming to the Saturday market. He’s come every Saturday to see if you’re back yet. It’s a long journey, but he’s come anyway. He’s your friend—he wants to explain to you.”

“Meanwhile, Mother, tell me what you know,” the guide mutters.

“They didn’t come to kill you,” the little old woman answers straightaway. “Or her either. They were only out to kill the stranger. But he put up a fight and killed two of them. Did you see the crosses there in front of your house?” Rufino nods. “Nobody claimed the bodies and they buried them there.” She crosses herself. “May they be received in Thy holy glory, Lord. Did you find your house in order? I’ve been going out there every so often. So you wouldn’t find it all dirty.”

“You shouldn’t have gone,” Rufino says. He stands there with his head bowed dejectedly, his sombrero in his hand. “You can hardly walk. And besides, that house is dirty forever now.”

“So you already know,” the old woman murmurs, her gaze seeking his, but he avoids her eyes and continues to stare down at the floor. The woman sighs. After a moment’s silence, she adds: “I’ve sold your sheep so they wouldn’t be stolen, the way the chickens were. Your money’s in that drawer.” She pauses once more, trying to postpone the inevitable, to avoid talking about the only subject that interests her, the only one that interests Rufino. “People are malicious. They said you weren’t going to come back. That they’d conscripted you in the army perhaps, that you’d died in the battle perhaps. Have you seen how many soldiers there are in Queimadas? There were lots of them that died back there, it seems. Major Febrônio de Brito’s here, too.”

But Rufino interrupts her. “The ones who came to kill him—do you know who their leader was?”

“Caifás,” the old woman answers. “He brought them there. He’ll explain to you. He explained to me. He’s your friend. They weren’t out to kill you. Or her. Just the redhead, the stranger.”

She falls silent, as does Rufino, and in the burning-hot, dark redoubt the buzzing of bluebottles, of the swarms of flies circling about among the images, can be heard.

Finally the old woman makes up her mind to speak again. “Lots of people saw them,” she exclaims in a trembling voice, her eyes suddenly blazing. “Caifás saw them. When he told me, I thought: I’ve sinned, and God is punishing me. I brought my son misfortune. Yes, Rufino: Jurema, Jurema. She saved his life, she grabbed Caifás’s hands. She went off with him, with her arm around him, leaning on him.” She stretches out a hand and points in the direction of the street. “Everybody knows. We can’t live here any longer, son.”

There is not a twitch of a muscle, the blink of an eye in the angular, beardless face darkened by the deep shadow in the room.

The little old woman shakes her tiny gnarled fist and spits scornfully in the direction of the street. “They came to commiserate with me, to talk to me about you. Their every word was a knife in my heart. They’re vipers, my son!” She passes the black shawl across her eyes, as though she were wiping away tears, but her eyes are dry. “You’ll clear your name of the filth they’ve heaped upon it, won’t you? It’s worse than if they’d plucked out your eyes, worse than if they’d killed me. Talk with Caifás. He knows the insult to your name, he knows what honor is. He’ll explain to