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“That was great sport for the soldiers of course, a diversion in the midst of their boring life from day to day,” he said. “Posting themselves at Fazenda Velha and waiting for the light of the moon to reveal the shadows creeping up to get water. We could hear the shots, the sound when a bullet pierced the tin drum, the container, the earthenware jug. In the morning the ground around the wells was strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. But, but…”

“But you didn’t see any of this,” the baron broke in. His visitor’s agitation vastly annoyed him.

“Jurema and the Dwarf saw them,” the nearsighted journalist answered. “I heard them. I heard the women and the youngsters as they left for Fazenda Velha with their tin drums, canteens, pitchers, bottles, bidding their husbands or their parents farewell, exchanging blessings, promising each other that they would meet in heaven. And I heard what happened when they managed to get back alive. The tin drum, the bucket, the pitcher was not offered to dying oldsters, to babies frantic from thirst. No. It was taken straight to the trenches, so that those who could still hold a rifle could hold one for a few hours or minutes more.”

“And what about you?” the baron asked, scarcely able to contain his growing annoyance at this mixture of reverence and terror with which the nearsighted journalist spoke of the jagunços. “Why is it you didn’t die of thirst? You weren’t a combatant, were you?”

“I wonder myself why I didn’t,” the journalist answered. “If there were any logic to this story, there are any number of times when I should have died in Canudos.”

“Love doesn’t quench thirst,” the baron said, trying to wound his feelings.

“No, it doesn’t quench it,” he agreed. “But it gives one strength to endure it. Moreover, we had a little something to drink. What we could get by sucking or chewing. The blood of birds, even black vultures. And leaves, stems, roots, anything that had juice. And urine, of coarse.” His eyes sought the baron’s and again the latter thought: “As though to accuse me.”

“Didn’t you know that? Even though a person doesn’t drink any liquids, he continues to urinate. That was an important discovery, there in Canudos.”

“Tell me about Pajeú, if you will,” the baron said. “What became of him?”

The nearsighted journalist suddenly slid down onto the floor. He had done so several times in the course of the conversation, and the baron wondered whether these changes of position were due to inner turmoil or to numbness in his limbs.

“Did I hear you say that he was in love with Jurema?” the baron pressed him. He suddenly had the absurd feeling that the former maidservant of Calumbi was the only woman in the sertão, a female under whose fateful spell all the men with any sort of connection to Canudos unconsciously fell sooner or later. “Why didn’t he carry her off with him?”

“Because of the war, perhaps,” the nearsighted journalist answered. “He was one of the leaders. As the enemy began to close the ring, he had less time. And less inclination, I imagine.”

He burst into such painful laughter that the baron deduced that this time it would end in a fit not of sneezing but of weeping. But neither sneezes nor tears were forthcoming.

“As a result, I found myself wishing at times that the war would go on and even that the fighting would get worse so that it would keep Pajeú occupied.” He took a deep breath. “Wishing that he’d get killed in the war or some other way.”

“What became of him?” the baron said insistently. The journalist paid no attention.

“But despite the war, he might very well have carried her off with him and taken her for his woman,” he said, lost in thought or in fantasy, his eyes fixed on the floor. “Didn’t other jagunços do that? Didn’t I hear them, in the midst of all the shooting, day or night, mounting their women in hammocks, or pallets, or on the floors of their houses?”

The baron felt his face turn beet-red. He had never allowed certain subjects, which so often come up among men