• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2057 0

used to grow, as Pajeú remembers very well from having spent many a night in one or other of the little farmhouses now burned to the ground. There is only one with the façade still intact and a complete roof. One of his jagunços, a man with Indian features, points to it and says that the roof tiles could be used for the Temple of the Blessed Jesus. No roof tiles are being turned out in Belo Monte these days because all the kilns are being used to make bullets. Pajeú nods and orders the tiles taken down. He stations his men all round the house. He is giving instructions to the tracker that he is about to send to Canudos when he hears hoofbeats and a whinny. He drops to the ground and slips away among the rocks. Once under cover, he sees that the men have had time to take cover, too, before the patrol appeared—all of them except the ones removing the tiles from the roof of the little house. He sees a dozen troopers pursuing three jagunços who are running off in a zigzag line in different directions. They disappear amid the rocks, apparently without being wounded. But the fourth one does not have time to leap down from the roof. Pajeú tries to see who it is: no, he can’t, he is too far away. After looking down for a few moments at the cavalrymen aiming their rifles at him, the man raises his hands to his head as though he were surrendering. But all of a sudden he leaps down on top of one of the cavalrymen. Was he trying to get possession of the horse and gallop off to safety? If so, his trick doesn’t come off, for the cavalryman drags him to the ground with him. The jagunço hits out right and left till the squad leader fires at him point-blank. It is obvious that he is annoyed at having had to kill him, that he would rather have taken a prisoner to bring in to his superiors. The patrol rides off, followed by the eyes of those hiding in the brush. Pajeú tells himself, in satisfaction, that the men have resisted the temptation to kill that bunch of dogs.

He leaves Taramela in Lagoa da Laje to bury the dead man, and goes to take up a position on the heights halfway to Aracati. He does not allow his men to advance in groups now; he orders them to stay a fair distance apart and well off to the side of the road. Shortly after reaching the crags—a good lookout point—he spies the avant-garde approaching. Pajeú can feel the scar on his face: a drawing sensation, as though the old wound were about to open again. This happens to him at crucial moments, when he is having some extraordinary experience. Soldiers armed with picks, shovels, machetes, and handsaws are clearing the trail, leveling it, felling trees, removing rocks. They must have had hard work of it in the Serra de Aracati, a steep, rugged climb; they are moving along with their torsos bared and their blouses tied around their waists, three abreast, with officers on horseback at the head of the column. There are lots and lots of dogs coming, that’s certain, if more than two hundred have been sent ahead to clear the way for them. Pajeú also spies one of Felício’s trackers following close behind these engineer corpsmen.

It is early in the afternoon when the first of the nine army corps comes by. When the last one passes, the sky is full of stars scattered about a round moon that bathes the sertão in a soft yellow glow. They have been passing by, grouped together at times, at times separated by kilometers, dressed in uniforms that vary in color and type—gray-green, blue with red stripes, gray, with gilt buttons, with leather bandoleers, with kepis, with cowboy hats, with boots, with shoes, with rope sandals—on foot and on horseback. In the middle of each corps, cannon drawn by oxen. Pajeú—he has not ceased for a moment to be aware of the scar on his face—tots up the train of ammunition and supplies: seven wagons drawn by bullocks, forty-three donkey carts, some two hundred bearers (many of them jagunços) bent double beneath their burdens. He knows that these wooden cases are full of rifle bullets, and his head whirls trying to calculate how many bullets per inhabitant of Belo