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By Root 2027 0

that he glimpses is waiting for him in order to put an end to his mad dash. But he keeps running amid clouds of dust, glimpsing now and again the robust little figure of the curé of Cumbe, his arms and legs whirling like windmill blades, losing him from sight, spying him again. Suddenly he loses sight of him altogether. As he curses and rages, he thinks: “Where is he going, why is he running like that, why does he want to get himself killed and get us killed?” Though he is completely out of breath—he runs along with his tongue hanging out, swallowing dust, almost unable to see because his glasses are now covered with dirt—he goes on running for all he is worth; the little strength he has left tells him that his life depends on Father Joaquim.

When he falls to the ground, because he stumbles or because his legs give way from fatigue, he has a curious feeling of relief. He leans his head on his arms, tries to force air into his lungs, listens to his heart beat. Better to die than keep on running. Little by little he recovers, feels the pounding in his temples slow down. He is sick to his stomach and retches, but does not vomit. He takes his glasses off and cleans them. He puts them back on. He is surrounded by people. He is not afraid, and nothing really matters. His exhaustion has freed him from fears, uncertainties, chimeras. Moreover, no one appears to be paying any attention to him. Men are gathering up the rifles, the ammunition, the bayonets, but his eyes are not deceived and from the first moment he knows that the groups of jagunços here, there, everywhere, are also beheading the corpses with their machetes, with the same diligence with which they decapitate oxen and goats, and throwing the heads in burlap bags, threading them on pikes and on the same bayonets that the dead were carrying to run jagunços through, or carrying them off by the hair, while others light fires where the headless corpses are already beginning to sizzle, crackle, curl up, burst open, char. One fire is very close by and he sees that men with blue headcloths are throwing other remains on top of the two bodies already roasting on it. “It’s my turn now,” he thinks. “They’ll come, cut my head off, carry it away on a pole, and toss my body in that fire.” He goes on drowsing, immunized against everything by his utter exhaustion. Even though the jagunços are talking, he doesn’t understand a word they are saying.

At that moment he spies Father Joaquim. He is not going but coming, he is not running but walking, in long strides, emerging from that cloud of wind-blown dirt that has already begun to produce that tickling in the journalist’s nostrils that precedes a sneezing fit, still making gestures, grimaces, signs, to anybody and everybody, including the dead that are roasting. He is spattered with mud, his clothes are in tatters, his hair disheveled. The nearsighted journalist rises up as the priest walks by him and says: “Don’t go, take me with you, don’t let them chop my head off, don’t let them burn me…” Does the curé of Cumbe hear him? He is talking to himself or with ghosts, repeating incomprehensible things, unrecognizable names, making sweeping gestures. He walks along at his side, very close to him, feeling his proximity revive him. He notes that the barefoot woman and the Dwarf are walking along with them on the right. Pale and wan, covered with dirt, worn out, they look to him like sleepwalkers.

Nothing of what he is seeing and hearing surprises him or frightens him or interests him. Is this what ecstasy is? He thinks: “Not even opium, in Salvador…” He sees as he passes by that jagunços are hanging kepis, tunics, canteens, capes, blankets, cartridge belts, boots on the thornbushes dotting both sides of the path, as though they were decorating Christmas trees, but the sight leaves him completely indifferent. And when, as they descend toward the sea of rooftops and rubble that is Canudos, he sees heads of dead soldiers lined up on either side of the trail, looking across at each other, being riddled by insects, his heart does not pound wildly,