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By Root 2195 0

by a stray bullet as Alexandrinha Correa was holding it one evening, accompanying the Counselor back to the Sanctuary after the counsels. That was one of the last times that the Counselor had left the Sanctuary. “His voice was no longer heard, he was already in the Garden of Olives.” Making a superhuman effort, he still left the Sanctuary every day to climb up the scaffolding, pray, and give counsels. But his voice was a mere whisper, barely understandable even to those who were at his side. The Little Blessed One himself, who remained inside the living wall of Catholic Guards, could catch only a few words now and again. When Mother Maria Quadrado asked the Counselor whether he wanted this little animal sanctified by his caresses to be buried in the Sanctuary, he answered no and directed that it be used to feed the Catholic Guard.

At that moment the Counselor’s right hand moves, searching for something; his gnarled fingers rise and fall on the straw mattress, reach out, contract. What is he looking for, what is it he wants? The Little Blessed One sees his own distress mirrored in the eyes of Maria Quadrado, Big João, Pajeú, the women of the Sacred Choir.

“Lion, are you there?”

He feels a knife thrust in his breast. He would have given anything for the Counselor to have uttered his name, for his hand to have sought him out. The Lion of Natuba rises up and thrusts his huge shaggy head toward that hand to kiss it. But the hand does not give him time, for the moment it senses that that face is close it runs rapidly along it and the fingers sink deep into the thick tangled locks. What is happening is hidden from the Little Blessed One’s eyes by a veil of tears. But he does not need to see: he knows that the Counselor is scratching, delousing, stroking with his last strength, as he has seen him do down through the many long years, the head of the Lion of Natuba.

The tremendous roar that shakes the Sanctuary forces him to close his eyes, to crouch down, to raise his hands to protect himself from what appears to be an avalanche of stones. Blind, he hears the uproar, the shouts, the running footsteps, wonders if he is dead and if it is his soul that is trembling. Finally he hears Abbot João: “The bell tower of Santo Antônio has fallen.” He opens his eyes. The Sanctuary has filled with dust and everyone has changed places. He makes his way to the pallet, knowing what awaits him. Amid the cloud of dust he makes out the hand quietly resting on the head of the Lion of Natuba, who is still kneeling in the same position. And he sees Father Joaquim, his ear glued to the thin chest.

After a moment, the priest rises to his feet, his face pale and drawn. “He has given his soul up to God,” he stammers, and for those present the phrase is more deafening than the din outside.

No one weeps and wails, no one falls to his knees. They all stand there as if turned to stone. They avoid each other’s eyes, as though if they were to meet they would see all the filth in the other’s soul, as though in this supreme moment all their most intimate dirty secrets were welling up through them. Dust is raining down from the ceiling, from the walls, and the Little Blessed One’s ears, as though they were someone else’s, continue to hear from outside, both close at hand and very far away, screams, moans, feet running, walls creaking and collapsing, and the shouts of joy with which the soldiers who have taken the trenches of what were once the streets of São Pedro and São Cipriano and the old cemetery are hailing the fall of the tower of the church that they have been bombarding for so long. And the Little Blessed One’s mind, as though it were someone else’s, pictures the dozens of Catholic Guards who have fallen along with the bell tower, and the dozens of sick, wounded, disabled, women in labor, newborn babies, centenarians who at this moment must be lying crushed to death, smashed to pieces, ground to bits beneath the adobe bricks, the stones, the beams, saved now, glorious bodies now, climbing up the golden stairs of martyrs to the Father’s throne, or perhaps