through the transparent mosquito netting, filled with an indefinable emotion. He felt tenderness, melancholy, gratitude, and a vague anxiety. He was walking toward the door to the hallway, where he had stripped off his clothes the evening before, when, on passing by the balcony, he was stopped short by the sight of the bay set aflame by the rising sun. It was something he had seen countless times and yet never grew tired of: Salvador at the hour when the sun is rising or setting. He went out onto the balcony and stood contemplating the majestic spectacle: the avid green of the island of Itaparica, the grace and the whiteness of the sailboats setting out to sea, the bright blue of the sky and the gray-green of the water, and closer by, at his feet, the broken, bright-red horizon of the roof tiles of houses in which he could picture in his mind the people waking up, the beginning of their day’s routine. With bittersweet nostalgia he amused himself trying to identify, by the roofs of the Desterro and Nazareth districts, the family mansions of his former political cronies, those friends he didn’t see any more these days: that of the Baron de Cotegipe, the Baron de Macaúba, the Viscount de São Lourenço, the Baron de São Francisco, the Marquis de Barbacena, the Baron de Maragogipe, the Count de Sergimirim, the Viscount de Oliveira. His sweeping gaze took in different points of the city: the rooftops of the seminary, and As Ladeiras, covered with greenery, the old Jesuit school, the hydraulic elevator, the customhouse, and he stood there for a time admiring the sun’s bright reflections on the golden stones of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Praia which had been brought, already dressed and carved, from Portugal by sailors grateful to the Virgin, and though he could not see it, he sensed what a multicolored anthill the fish market at the beach would be at this hour of the morning. But suddenly something attracted his attention and he stood there looking very intently, straining his eyes, leaning out over the balcony railing. After a moment, he hurried inside to the chest of drawers where he knew Estela kept the little pair of tortoiseshell opera glasses that she used at the theater.
He went back out onto the balcony and looked, with a growing feeling of puzzlement and uneasiness. Yes, the boats were there, midway between the island of Itaparica and the round Fort of São Marcelo, and, indeed, the people in the boats were not fishing but tossing flowers into the sea, scattering petals, blossoms, bouquets on the water, crossing themselves, and though he could not hear them—his heart was pounding—he was certain that those people were also praying and perhaps singing.
The Lion of Natuba hears that it is the first of October, the Little Blessed One’s birthday, that the soldiers are attacking Canudos from three sides trying to breach the barricades on Madre Igreja, the one on São Pedro, and the one at the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, but it is the other thing that keeps ringing in his great shaggy head: that Pajeú’s head, without eyes or a tongue or ears, has been for some hours balanced on the end of a stake planted in the dogs’ trenches, out by Fazenda Velha. They’ve killed Pajeú. They’ve doubtless also killed all those who stole into the atheists’ camp with him to help the Vilanovas and the strangers get out of Canudos, and they’ve doubtless also tortured and decapitated these latter. How much longer will it be before the same thing happens to him, to the Mother of Men, and to all the women of the Sacred Choir who have knelt to pray for the martyred Pajeú?
The shooting and the shouting outside deafen the Lion of Natuba as Abbot João pushes open the little door of the Sanctuary.
“Come out! Come out! Get out of there!” the Street Commander roars, gesturing with both hands for them to hurry. “To the Temple of the Blessed Jesus! Run!”
He turns around and disappears in the cloud of dust that has entered the Sanctuary with him. The Lion of Natuba hasn’t time to become frightened, to think, to imagine. Abbot João’s words