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By Root 2079 0

their possessions on their backs and often dragging the disabled along with them as best they could. Wherever circumstances permitted, the Bearded Lady, the Idiot, and the Dwarf told their fortunes, recited romances, and performed clown acts, but these people on the road had very little to give in return. As rumors were going about that the Bahia Rural Guard in Monte Santo had blocked off the road to Canudos and was conscripting every man of fighting age, they took the longest way round to Cumbe. Every once in a while they spied clouds of smoke; according to what people told them, it was the work of the jagunços, who were laying waste to the land so that the armies of the Can would die of hunger. They, too, might be victims of this desolation. The Idiot, grown very feeble, had already lost his laugh and his voice.

They pulled the wagon along two by two; the five of them were a pitiful sight to behold, as though they had endured tremendous sufferings.

Every time it came his turn to be a draft animal, the Dwarf grumbled to the Bearded Lady: “You know it’s madness to go to Canudos and yet we’re going. There’s nothing to eat and people there are dying of hunger.” He pointed to Gall, his face contorted with anger. “Why are you listening to him?”

The Dwarf was sweating, and since he was bending over and leaning forward to speak he looked even shorter. How old might he be? He himself didn’t know. His face was already beginning to wrinkle; the little humps on his back and chest had become more pronounced now that he was so much thinner.

The Bearded Lady looked at Gall. “Because he’s a real man!” she exclaimed. “I’m tired of being surrounded by monsters.”

The Dwarf was overcome by a fit of the giggles. “And what about you? What are you?” he said, doubling over with laughter. “Oh, I know the answer to that one. You’re a slave. You enjoy obeying a man—him now and the Gypsy before him.”

The Bearded Lady, who had burst out laughing too, tried to slap him, but the Dwarf dodged her. “You like being a slave,” he shouted. “He bought you the day he felt your head and told you that you’d have been a perfect mother. You believed it, and your eyes filled with tears.”

He was laughing fit to kill and had to take off at a run so the Bearded Lady wouldn’t catch him. She threw stones after him for a while. A few minutes later the Dwarf was back walking at her side again. Their quarrels were always like that, more a game or an unusual way of communicating.

They walked along in silence, with no set system for taking turns pulling the wagon or stopping to rest. They halted when one or another of them was too tired to walk another step, or when they came upon a little stream, a spring, or a shady place where they could spend the hottest hour of the day. As they walked along, they kept a sharp eye out at all times, scanning the environs in search of food, and hence from time to time they had been able to catch game. But this was a rare occurrence, and they had to content themselves with chewing on anything that was green. They looked for imbuzeiros in particular, a tree that Galileo Gall had taught them to appreciate: the sweetish, refreshing taste of its juicy roots made it seem like real food.

That afternoon, after Algodões, they met a group of pilgrims who had stopped to rest. They left their wagon and joined them. Most of them were people from the village who had decided to go off to Canudos. They were being led by an apostle, an elderly man dressed in a tunic over trousers and shod in rope sandals. He was wearing an enormous scapular, and the people following him looked at him with timid veneration in their eyes, as though he were someone from another world. Squatting at the man’s side, Galileo Gall asked him questions. But the apostle looked at him with a distant gaze, not understanding him, and went on talking with his people. Later on, however, the old man spoke of Canudos, of the Holy Books, and of the prophecies of the Counselor, whom he called a messenger of Jesus. His followers would be restored to life in three months and a day,