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By Root 2157 0

next morning. He was so hungry that he forgot all about the guide for a good while and spent a fair time chewing on grasses till he had calmed the empty feeling in his belly. Then he explored his surroundings, convinced that the only solution was to find his own way. After all, it should not be all that difficult: all he needed to do was find a group of pilgrims and follow them. But where were they to be found? The thought that Ulpino had deliberately gotten him lost upset him so much that the moment this suspicion crossed his mind he instantly rejected it. In order to clear a path through the vegetation he had a stout branch; his double saddlebag was slung over his shoulder. Suddenly it began to rain. Drunk with elation, he was licking the drops falling on his face when he caught sight of figures amid the trees. He shouted to them and ran toward them, splashing through the water, muttering “At last” to himself, when he recognized Jurema. And Rufino. He stopped dead in his tracks. Through a curtain of water, he saw the calm expression on the tracker’s face and noted that he was leading Jurema along by a rope tied around her neck, like an animal. He saw him let go of the rope and spied the terrified face of the Dwarf. The three of them looked at him and he suddenly felt totally disconcerted, unreal. Rufino had a knife in his hand; his eyes were gleaming like burning coals.

“If it had been you, you wouldn’t have come to defend your wife,” he heard him say to him, with more scorn than rage. “You have no honor, Gall.”

His feeling of unreality grew even more intense. He raised his free hand and made a peaceable, friendly gesture. “There’s no time for this, Rufino. I can explain to you what happened. There’s something that’s much more urgent now. There are thousands of men and women who risk being killed because of a handful of ambitious politicians. It’s your duty…”

But he realized he was speaking in English. Rufino was coming toward him and Galileo began to step back. The ground between them was a sea of mud. Behind Rufino, the Dwarf was trying to untie Jurema. “I’m not going to kill you yet,” he thought he heard Rufino say, and apparently he added that he was going to slap him full in the face to dishonor him. Galileo felt like laughing. The distance between the two of them was growing shorter by the moment and he thought: “He’s deaf to reason and he always will be.” Hatred, like desire, canceled out intelligence and reduced man to a creature of sheer instinct. Was he about to die on account of such a stupid thing as a woman’s cunt? He continued to make pacifying gestures and assumed a fearful, pleading expression. At the same time, he calculated the distance, and when Rufino was almost upon him, he suddenly lashed out at him with the stout stick he was clutching in his fist. The guide fell to the ground. He heard Jurema scream, but by the time she reached his side, he had already hit Rufino over the head twice more; the latter, stunned, had let go of his knife, which Gall picked up. He held Jurema off, indicating with a wave of his hand that he was not going to kill Rufino.

In a fury, shaking his fist at the man lying on the ground, he roared: “You blind, selfish, petty traitor to your class—can’t you see beyond your vainglorious little world? Men’s honor doesn’t lie in faces or in women’s cunts, you idiot. There are thousands of innocents in Canudos. The fate of your brothers is at stake: can’t you understand?”

Rufino shook his head as he came to.

“You try to make him understand,” Gall shouted to Jurema before he walked off. She stared at him as though he were mad, or someone she had never seen in her life before. Again he had the feeling that everything was absurd and unreal. Why hadn’t he killed Rufino? The imbecile would pursue him to the end of the earth, he was certain. He ran, panting, through the scrub, raked by the thorns, amid torrents of rain, getting covered with mud, with no idea where he was going. He still had the stick and his double saddlebag, but he had lost his sombrero and could feel the drops bouncing