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By Root 1919 0

the world. People said that inside it the Blessed Jesus reigned, and outside it the Can. Gall said nothing. In the last analysis, names did not matter; they were wrappings, and if they helped uneducated people to identify the contents more easily, it was of little moment that instead of speaking of justice and injustice, freedom and oppression, classless society and class society, they talked in terms of God and the Devil. He thought that when he arrived in Canudos he would see something he’d seen as an adolescent in Paris: a people bubbling over with revolutionary fervor, defending their dignity tooth and nail. If he could manage to make himself heard, understood, he could indeed help them, by at least sharing with them certain things they did not know, things he had learned in his years of roaming the world.

“Doesn’t it really matter to you at all whether Rufino kills your wife or not?” he heard Ulpino ask him. “Why did you steal her from him, then?”

He felt himself choke with anger. Stumbling over his words, he roared that he didn’t have a wife: how dare he ask him something that he’d already answered? He felt hatred of him mounting, and a desire to insult him.

“It’s beyond all understanding,” he heard Ulpino mutter.

His legs ached so and his feet were so swollen that shortly after they started walking again, he said he needed to rest a while more. As he sank to the ground, he thought: “I’m not the man I was.” He had also grown much thinner; as he looked at the bony forearm on which his head was resting, it seemed to be someone else’s.

“I’m going to see if I can find something to eat,” Ulpino said. “Get a little sleep.”

Gall saw him disappear behind some leafless trees. As he closed his eyes he caught sight of a wooden board mounted on a tree trunk, with half the nails fallen out and a faint inscription: Caracatá. The name kept going round and round in his head as he dropped off to sleep.

Pricking up his ears, the Lion of Natuba thought: “He’s going to speak to me.” His little body trembled with joy. The Counselor lay on his pallet, absolutely silent, but the scribe of Canudos could tell from the way he was breathing whether he was awake or asleep. He began to listen again in the darkness. Yes, he was still awake. His deep eyes must be closed, and beneath his eyelids he must be seeing one of those apparitions that descended to speak to him or that he ascended to visit above the tall clouds: the saints, the Virgin, the Blessed Jesus, the Father. Or else he must be thinking of the wise things that he would say the following day, things that the Lion would note down on the paper that Father Joaquim brought him and that believers of the future would read as believers today read the Gospels.

The thought came to him that since Father Joaquim wouldn’t be coming to Canudos any more, his stock of writing paper would run out soon and he would then have to write on those big sheets of wrapping paper from the Vilanovas’ store that made the ink run. Father Joaquim had rarely spoken to him, and ever since the day he first saw him—the morning he entered Cumbe, scooting along at the Counselor’s heels—he had noted in the priest’s eyes, too, many times, that surprise, uneasiness, repugnance that his person always aroused, and that rapid movement of his head to avert his eyes and put the sight of him out of his mind. But the priest’s capture by the Throat-Slitter’s soldiers and his probable death had saddened him because of the effect that the news had had on the Counselor. “Let us rejoice, my sons,” he had said that evening as he gave his counsel from the tower of the new Temple. “Belo Monte has its first saint.” But later, in the Sanctuary, the Lion of Natuba had been aware of the sadness that had come over him. He refused the food that Maria Quadrado brought him, and as the women of the Choir made his toilet he did not stroke, as he usually did, the little lamb that Alexandrinha Correa (her eyes swollen from weeping) held within his reach. On resting his head on the Counselor’s knees, the Lion did not feel his hand on his hair,