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By Root 2124 0

after an instant of stunned surprise, was to protect the saint with his body. Abbot João and Big João, the Little Blessed One and Joaquim Macambira and his brother Honório all had the same reaction, so that he found himself standing arm in arm with them, surrounding the Counselor, and calculating the trajectory of the shell, which must have fallen somewhere in São Cipriano, the little street where the healers, sorcerers, practitioners of smoke cures, and herb doctors of Belo Monte lived. Which of the shacks of old women who could ward off the evil eye with potions of jurema and manacá, or of bonesetters who put things back in their place by yanking and pulling on people’s bodies, had been sent flying through the air? The Counselor brought them out of their paralysis: “Let us go to the Temple.” As they headed up Campo Grande, arms linked, in the direction of the churches, Abbot João began to call out to people to darken their houses, for oil lamps and open fires helped the enemy locate their targets. His orders were repeated, passed along from house to house, and obeyed: as they left behind them Espírito Santo, Santo Agostinho, Santo Cristo, Os Papas, and Maria Madalena, narrow little streets meandering off from the edges of Campo Grande, the little shacks were gradually swallowed up in darkness. As they came opposite the slope that had been named the Hill of Martyrs, Antônio Vilanova heard Big João say to the Street Commander: “Go lead the battle. We’ll get him to the Temple safe and sound.” But the former cangaceiro was still with them when the second shell exploded, causing them to let go of each other’s arms and see, in the great flash that lighted up all of Canudos, planks and debris, roof tiles, remains of animals or people suspended for an instant in the air. The shells seemed to have landed in Santa Inês, where the peasants who looked after the fruit orchards lived, or in the section of town next to it where so many cafuzos, mulattoes, and blacks had settled that it was called O Mocambo—the Slave Refuge.

The Counselor separated from the group at the door of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus and went inside, followed by a multitude. In the pitch-dark outside, Antônio Vilanova sensed that the esplanade was crowded with people who had followed the procession, for whom there was no room left in the churches. “Am I afraid?” he thought, surprised at his weakness. No, it was not fear he felt. In his years as a merchant, traveling all through the hinterland transporting goods and carrying money on him, he had run a great many risks and not been afraid. And here in Canudos, as the Counselor reminded him, he had learned to count, to find a meaning in things, an ultimate reason for everything he did, and that had freed him from a fear which, before, on certain sleepless nights, had made icy sweat run down his back. It was not fear but sadness.

A hand shook him roughly. “Can’t you hear, Antônio Vilanova?” Abbot João’s voice said. “Can’t you see that they’re here? Haven’t we been getting ready to greet them? What are you waiting for?”

“Excuse me,” he murmured, rubbing his hand over his half-bald head. “I’m in a daze. Yes, yes, I’m going.”

“These people have to be moved out of here,” the ex-cangaceiro said, shaking him. “Otherwise, they’ll be blown to bits.”

“I’m going, I’m going, don’t worry, everything will go as we planned,” Antônio replied. “I won’t fall down on the job.”

He shouted for his brother as he stumbled through the crowd, and in a moment or two heard him call out: “I’m over here, compadre.” But as he and Honório went into action, exhorting people to go to the shelters they had dug inside their houses and calling to the water carriers to come get stretchers, and then headed back down the Campo Grande toward the store, Antônio was still fighting against a sadness that rent his soul. There were already several water carriers at the store waiting for him. He distributed the stretchers that had been made, of cactus fiber and strips of bark, and sent some of them in the direction that the explosions had come from and