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By Root 2239 0

cheat death. But to whom are they offering this sacrifice of themselves, of all of us?” He was pleased to note that the baroness was yawning. Ah, if only she could sleep, it would be the best possible thing to quiet her nerves. Estela hadn’t slept a wink in these last few days. When they had stopped over in Monte Santo, she had refused even to stretch out on the bed in the parish house and had sat weeping in Sebastiana’s arms all night long. That was when the baron began to be alarmed, for Estela was not a woman given to weeping.

“It’s curious,” Murau said, exchanging a look of relief with the baron and Gumúcio, for the baroness had closed her eyes. “When you came by here on your way to Calumbi, my hatred was principally directed against Moreira César. But now I almost feel sorry for him. I have a more violent hatred of the jagunços than I ever had of Epaminondas and the Jacobins.” When he was very upset, he moved his hands in a circle and scratched his chin: the baron was waiting for him to do so. But the old man just sat there with his arms crossed in a hieratic posture. “What they’ve done to Calumbi, to Poço da Pedra, to Suçurana, to Juá and Curral Novo, to Penedo and Lagoa is heinous, beyond belief! Destroying the haciendas that provide them with food, the centers of civilization of the entire region! God will not forgive such a thing. It’s the work of details, of monsters.”

“Well, at last,” the baron thought: Murau had finally made his usual gesture. A swift circle traced in the air with his gnarled hand and his outstretched index finger, and now he was furiously scratching his goatee.

“Don’t raise your voice like that, José Bernardo,” Gumúcio interrupted him, pointing to the baroness. “Shall we carry her to her bedroom?”

“When she’s sleeping more soundly,” the baron answered. He had risen to his feet and was arranging the cushion so that his wife could lie back against it. He then knelt and put her feet up on a footstool.

“I thought the best thing would be to take her back to Salvador as quickly as possible,” Adalberto de Gumúcio said in a low voice. “But I wonder if it’s not imprudent to subject her to another long journey.”

“We’ll see how she feels when she wakes up in the morning.” The baron had sat back down and synchronized the swaying of his rocking chair with that of his host.

“Burning down Calumbi! People who owe you so much!” Murau again traced one of his circles in the air and scratched his chin. “I hope that Moreira César makes them pay dearly for it. I’d like to be there when he starts slitting throats.”

“Isn’t there any news of him yet?” Gumúcio interrupted him. “He should have finished off Canudos some time ago.”

“Yes, I’ve been making calculations,” the baron said, nodding. “Even with lead in his feet, he must have reached Canudos many days ago. Unless…” He noted that his friends were looking at him, intrigued. “I mean to say, another attack, like the one that forced him to seek refuge in Calumbi. Perhaps he’s had yet another one.”

“That’s all we need—to have Moreira César die of illness before he’s put an end to this iniquity,” José Bernardo Murau growled.

“It’s also possible that there aren’t any telegraph lines left in the region,” Gumúcio said. “If the jagunços burn the fields so as to let them have a little nap, they doubtless destroy the telegraph wires and the poles so as to keep them from having headaches. The colonel may have no way of getting a message out.”

The baron gave a labored smile. The last time they had been gathered together here, Moreira César’s arrival had seemed like the death announcement of the Bahia Autonomist Party.

And now they were consumed with impatience to learn the details of the colonel’s victory against those whom he was trying his best to pass off as restorationists and agents of the English Crown. The baron reflected on all this without taking his eyes off the sleeping baroness: she was pale, but the expression on her face was calm.

“Agents of the English Crown?” he suddenly exclaimed. “Horsemen who burn down haciendas so that the earth may have a rest!