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By Root 2176 0

off his skull. A while later—it might have been a few minutes or an hour—he stopped, then went on again, at a slow walk. There was no sort of trail, no reference point amid the brambles and the cacti, and his feet sank into the mud, holding him back. He could feel that he was sweating beneath the pouring rain. He silently cursed his luck. The light was fading and he could scarcely believe that it was already dusk. He finally realized that he was looking all around as though he were about to plead with those gray, barren trees, with barbs instead of leaves, to help him. He gestured, half in pity and half in desperation, and broke into a run again. But after just a few meters he stopped dead in his tracks, utterly unnerved by his helplessness. A sob escaped his lips.

“Rufinoooo, Rufinoooo!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Come on, come on, I’m here, I need you! Help me, take me to Canudos, let’s do something useful, let’s not be stupid. You can take your revenge, kill me, slap my face afterward. Rufinoooo!”

He heard his shouts echoing amid the splash of the raindrops. He was soaked to the skin, dying of cold. He went on walking aimlessly, his mouth working, slapping his legs with the stick. It was dusk, night would soon be falling, all this was perhaps just a nightmare—and suddenly the earth gave way beneath his feet. Before he hit bottom, he realized that he had stepped on a mat of branches concealing a deep pit. The fall did not knock him senseless: the earth at the bottom of the pit was soft from the rain. He stood up, felt his arms, his legs, his aching shoulder. He fumbled about for Rufino’s knife, which had fallen out of his belt, and the thought occurred to him that he had had a chance to plunge it into Rufino. He tried to climb out of the hole, but his feet slipped and he fell back in. He sat down on the wet dirt, leaned back against the wall, and, with a feeling of something like relief, dropped off to sleep. He was awakened by a faint rustling of branches and leaves being trampled underfoot. He was about to give a shout when he felt a puff of air go past his shoulder and in the semidarkness saw a wooden dart bury itself in the dirt.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he yelled. “I’m a friend, a friend.”

There were murmurs, voices, and he went on shouting till a lighted length of wood was thrust into the hole and he dimly made out human heads behind the flame. They were armed men, camouflaged in long cloaks made of woven grass. Several hands reached down and pulled him to the surface. There was a look of rapturous excitement on Galileo Gall’s face as the jagunços examined him from head to foot by the light of torches sputtering in the dampness left by the recent rain. With their caparisons of grass, their cane whistles around their necks, their carbines, their machetes, their crossbows, their bandoleers, their rags, their scapulars and medals with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, they looked as though they were in disguise. As they peered at him, sniffed at him, with expressions that betrayed their surprise at coming upon this creature whom they were unable to classify as belonging to any of the varieties of humans known to them, Galileo Gall asked insistently to be taken to Canudos: he could be of service to them, help the Counselor, explain to them the machinations of corrupt bourgeois politicians and military officers of which they were victims. He gesticulated violently so as to lend emphasis and eloquence to his words and fill in the gaps in his faltering Portuguese, looking first at one and then at another, wild-eyed with excitement; he had had long experience as a revolutionary, comrades, he had fought many a time at the side of the people, he wanted to share their destiny.

“Praised be the Blessed Jesus,” he seemed to hear someone say.

Were they making fun of him? He began to stammer, to trip over his words, to struggle against the feeling of helplessness that was coming over him little by little as he realized that the things he was saying were not exactly the ones he wanted to say, the ones that