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At what moment had his caller risen to his feet? He was now standing in front of the bookshelves, bent over, contorted, a human puzzle, looking at him—in fury?—from behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

“It’s easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand,” the baron murmured. “When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It is not easy to be moved by abstract things.”

“Unless one has seen first one, then ten, a hundred, a thousand, thousands suffer,” the nearsighted journalist answered. “If the death of Gentil de Castro was absurd, many of those in Canudos died for reasons no less absurd.”

“How many?” the baron said in a low voice. He knew that the number would never be known, that, as with all the rest of history, the figure would be one that historians and politicians would increase and decrease in accordance with their doctrines and the advantage they could extract from it. But he could not help wondering nonetheless.

“I’ve tried to find out,” the journalist said, walking toward him with his usual unsteady gait and collapsing in the armchair. “No precise figure has been arrived at.”

“Three thousand? Five thousand dead?” the baron murmured, his eyes seeking his.

“Between twenty-five and thirty thousand.”

“Are you including the wounded, the sick, in that figure?” the baron muttered testily.

“I’m not talking about the army dead,” the journalist said. “There exists an exact accounting of them. Eight hundred twenty-three, including the victims of epidemics and accidents.”

A silence fell. The baron lowered his eyes. He poured himself a little fruit punch, but scarcely touched it because it had lost its chill and reminded him of lukewarm broth.

“There couldn’t have been thirty thousand souls living in Canudos,” he said. “No settlement in the sertão can house that many people.”

“It’s a relatively simple calculation,” the journalist answered. “General Oscar had a count made of the dwellings. You didn’t know that? The number has been published in the papers: five thousand seven hundred eighty-three. How many people lived in each one? Five or six at the very least. In other words, between twenty-five and thirty thousand dead.”

There was another silence, a long one, broken by the buzzing of bluebottle flies.

“There were no wounded in Canudos,” the journalist said. “The so-called survivors, those women and children that the Patriotic Committee organized by your friend Lélis Piedades parceled out all over Brazil, had not been in Canudos but in localities in the vicinity. Only seven people escaped from the siege.”

“Are you certain of that, too?” the baron said, raising his eyes.

“I was one of the seven,” the nearsighted journalist said. And as though to avoid a question, he quickly added: “It was a different statistic that was of greatest concern to the jagunços. How many of them would be killed by bullets and how many finished off by the knife.”

He remained silent for some time; he tossed his head to chase away an insect. “It’s a figure that it’s impossible to arrive at, naturally,” he continued, wringing his hands. “But there is someone who could give us a clue. An interesting individual, Baron. He was in Moreira César’s regiment and returned with the fourth expeditionary force as commanding officer of a company from Rio Grande do Sul. Second Lieutenant Maranhão.”

The baron looked at the journalist. He could almost guess what he was about to say.

“Did you know that slitting throats is a gaucho specialty? Second Lieutenant Maranhão and his men were specialists. It was something the lieutenant was both skilled at and greatly enjoyed doing. He would grab the jagunço by the nose with his left hand, lift his head up, and draw his knife across his throat. A fifteen-inch slash that cut through the carotid: the head fell off like a rag doll’s.”

“Are you trying to move me to pity?” the baron asked.

“If Second Lieutenant Maranhão told us how many jagunços he and his men slit the throats of, we’d be able to know how many jagunços went to heaven and