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“We’re delighted to have you.” The baroness had finished applying the cupping glasses and straightened the pillows. “I was very eager to meet a hero in person. Though, naturally, I would rather it had not been an illness that brought you to Calumbi…”

Her voice was friendly, charming, superficial. Next to the bed was a table with pitchers and porcelain basins decorated with royal peacocks, bandages, balls of cotton, a jar full of leeches, cupping glasses, and many vials. The dawn light was filtering into the cool, clean room through the white curtains. Sebastiana, the baroness’s personal maid, was standing at the door, motionless. Dr. Souza Ferreiro examined the patient’s back, broken out with a rash of cupping glasses, with eyes that showed that he had gone without sleep all night.

“Well, we’ll wait half an hour and then it’s a bath and massages for you. You won’t deny me the fact that you’re feeling better, sir: your color has come back.”

“The bath is ready, and I’ll be here if you need me,” Sebastiana said.

“I’m at your service, too,” the baroness chimed in. “I’ll leave you two now. Oh, I almost forgot. I asked Dr. Souza’s permission for you to have tea with us, Colonel. My husband wants to pay his respects to you. You’re invited too, Doctor. And Captain de Castro, and that very odd young man, what’s his name again?”

The colonel did his best to smile at her, but the moment the wife of Baron de Canabrava, followed by Sebastiana, had left the room, he exploded: “I ought to have you shot, Doctor, for having gotten me caught in this trap.”

“If you fall into a fit of temper, I’ll bleed you and you’ll be obliged to stay in bed for another day.” Dr. Souza Ferreiro collapsed in a rocking chair, drunk with exhaustion. “And now allow me to rest too, for half an hour. Kindly don’t move.”

In precisely half an hour, he opened his eyes, rubbed them hard, and began to remove the cupping glasses. They came off easily, leaving purplish circles where they had gripped the patient’s skin. The colonel lay there face downward, with his head buried in his crossed arms, and barely opened his mouth when Captain Olímpio de Castro entered to give him news of the column. Souza Ferreiro accompanied Moreira César to the bathroom, where Sebastiana had readied everything according to his instructions. The colonel undressed—unlike his deeply tanned face and arms, his little body was very white—climbed straight into the bathtub without a word, and remained in it for a long time, clenching his teeth. Then the doctor massaged him vigorously with alcohol, applied a mustard poultice, and made him inhale the vapor from herbs boiling on a brazier. The entire treatment took place in silence, but once the inhalations were over, the colonel, attempting to relieve the tension in the air, remarked that he had the sensation that he had been subjected to practices of witchcraft. Souza Ferreiro remarked that the borderline separating science from magic was invisible. They had made their peace. Back in the bedroom, a tray with fruit, fresh milk, rolls, ham, and coffee awaited them. Moreira César ate dutifully and then dropped off to sleep. When he awoke, it was midday and the reporter from the Jornal de Notícias was standing at his bedside with a pack of cards in his hand, offering to teach him how to play ombre, a game that was all the rage in bohemian circles in Bahia. They played for some time without exchanging a word, until Souza Ferreiro, bathed and freshly shaved, came to tell the colonel that he could get up. When the latter entered the drawing room to have tea with his host and hostess, he found the baron and his wife, the doctor, Captain de Castro, and the journalist, the only one of their number who had not made his toilet since the night before, already gathered there.

Baron de Canabrava came over to shake hands with the colonel. The vast room with a red-and-white-tiled floor was furnished in matching jacaranda pieces, straight-backed wooden chairs with woven straw seats that went by the name of “Austrian