bring the women disciples to their feet, and some of them screaming, others crossing themselves, they rush to the door, pushing him, shoving him aside, pinning him against the wall. Where are his glove-sandals, those little rawhide soles without which he can hardly hunch along for any distance at all without injuring his palms? He feels all about in the darkened room without finding them, and aware that all the women have left, that even Mother Maria Quadrado has left, he trots hurriedly to the door. He doggedly focuses all his energy, his lively intelligence on the task of reaching the Temple of the Blessed Jesus as Abbot João has ordered, and as he lurches along through the maze of defenses surrounding the Sanctuary, bumping into things, getting all scratched and bruised, he notes that the men of the Catholic Guard are no longer there, not the ones who are still alive at any rate, because here and there, lying on top of, between, under the bags and boxes of sand are human beings whose feet, arms, heads his hands and feet keep tripping over. When he emerges from the labyrinth of barricades onto the esplanade and is about to venture across it, the instinct of self-preservation, which is more acute in him than in almost anyone else, which has taught him since he was a child to sense danger before anyone else, better than anyone else, and also to know instantly which danger to confront when faced with several at once, makes him stop short and crouch down amid a pile of barrels riddled with bullet holes through which the sand is pouring. He is never going to reach the Temple under construction: he will be swept off his feet, trampled on, crushed by the crowd frantically bolting in that direction, and—the huge, bright, piercing eyes of the scribe see at one glance—even if he manages to reach the door of the Temple he will never be able to make his way through that swarm of bodies shoving and pushing to get past the bottleneck that the door has become: the entrance to the only solid refuge, with stone walls, still standing in Belo Monte. Better to remain here, to await death here, than to go seek it in that crush that would be the end of his frail bones, that crush that is the thing he has feared most ever since he has been involved, willy-nilly, in the gregarious, collective, processional, ceremonial life of Canudos. He is thinking: “I don’t blame you for having abandoned me, Mother of Men. You have the right to fight for your life, to try to hold out for one day more, one hour more.” But there is a great ache in his heart: this moment would not be so hard, so bitter, if she, or any of the women of the Sacred Choir, were here.
Sitting hunched over amid barrels and sacks, peeking out first in one direction and then in another, he little by little gathers some idea of what is happening on the esplanade bounded by the churches and the Sanctuary. The barricade that was erected behind the cemetery barely two days ago, the one that protected the Church of Santo Antônio, has been taken and the dogs have entered, are entering the dwellings in Santa Inês, which is right next to the church. It is from Santa Inês that all the people who are trying to take refuge in the Temple have come: old men, old women, mothers with suckling babes in their arms, on their shoulders, cradled on their bosoms. But there are many people in the city who are still fighting. Opposite him, there are still continuous bursts of gunfire coming from the towers and scaffoldings of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, and the Lion of Natuba can make out the sparks as the jagunços ignite the black-powder charges of their blunderbusses, can see the impacts of the balls that chip the stones, the roof tiles, the beams of everything around him. At the same time that he came to warn the disciples to run for their lives, Abbot João no doubt also came to take the men of the Catholic Guard protecting the Sanctuary off with him, and now all of them are doubtless fighting in Santa Inês, or erecting another barricade, tightening a little more that circle of which the Counselor so