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By Root 2103 0

that was licking his hand. He stroked the creature’s woolly head and it allowed him to do so without bolting in fear. The other sound was the voices of two people talking together alongside him. He raised to his eye his monocle of glass shards, which he had clutched tightly in his fist as he slept. In the dim light he recognized the vague silhouette of Father Joaquim and that of a barefoot woman dressed in a white tunic with a blue kerchief on her head. The curé of Cumbe was holding a rifle between his legs and was wearing a bandoleer of bullets around his neck. As well as he could make out, Father Joaquim had the look of a man who had been fighting: his spare locks were disheveled and matted with dirt, his cassock in tatters, one sandal was tied round his foot with a length of twine rather than a leather thong, and he was obviously completely exhausted. He was speaking of someone named Joaquinzinho.

“He went out with Antônio Vilanova to get food,” he heard him saying dejectedly. “I heard from Abbot João that the whole group that was out in the trenches along the Vaza-Barris got back safely.” His voice choked up and he cleared his throat. “The ones who survived the attack.”

“What about Joaquinzinho?” the woman said again.

It was Alexandrinha Correa, the woman people told so many stories about: that she knew how to find underground water sources, that she had been Father Joaquim’s concubine. He was unable to make out her face. She and the curé were sitting on the floor. The inner door of the Sanctuary was open and there did not appear to be anyone inside.

“He didn’t make it back,” the little priest said softly. “Antônio did, and Honório, and many of the others who were at Vaza-Barris. But he didn’t. Nobody could tell me what happened to him, nobody’s seen him since.”

“I’d at least like to be able to bury him,” the woman said. “Not just leave him lying there in the open, like an animal with no master.”

“He may not be dead,” the curé of Cumbe answered. “If the Vilanova brothers and others got back, why shouldn’t Joaquinzinho? Maybe he’s on the towers now, or on the barricade at São Pedro, or with his brother at Fazenda Velha. The soldiers haven’t been able to take the trenches there either.”

The nearsighted journalist suddenly felt overjoyed and wanted to ask about Jurema and the Dwarf, but he contained himself: he sensed that he ought not to intrude upon the couple’s privacy at this intimate moment. The voices of the curé and the devout disciple were those of calm acceptance of fate, not at all dramatic. The little lamb was nibbling at his hand. He raised himself to a sitting position, but neither Father Joaquim nor the woman seemed to mind that he was there awake, listening.

“If Joaquinzinho is dead, it’s better if Atanásio dies, too,” the woman said. “So they can keep each other company in death.”

He suddenly had gooseflesh across the nape of his neck. Was it because of what the woman had said, or the pealing of the bells? He could hear them ringing, very close by, and heard Ave Marias chorused by countless voices. It was dusk, then. The battle had already gone on for almost an entire day. He listened. It was not over yet: mingled with the sound of prayers and bells were salvos of artillery fire. Some of the shells were bursting just above their heads. Death was more important to these people than life. They had lived in utter dereliction and their one ambition was to be given a decent burial. How to understand them? Perhaps, however, if a person were living the sort of life that he was at this moment, death would be his only hope of a reward, a “fiesta,” as the Counselor always called it.

The curé of Cumbe was looking his way. “It’s sad that children must kill and die fighting,” he heard him murmur. “Atanásio is fourteen, and Joaquinzinho isn’t yet thirteen. They’ve been killing and risking being killed for a year now. Isn’t that sad?”

“Yes, it is,” the nearsighted journalist stammered. “Indeed it is. I fell asleep. How’s the battle going, Father?”

“They’ve been stopped at São Pedro,” the parish priest of Cumbe