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As he walks toward the flames, the woman hears him chanting with his last remaining strength a prayer that she has never heard, in which there is repeated several times the name of a saint she does not recognize either: Almudia.

“A truce?” Antônio Vilanova said.

“That’s what that means,” the Pyrotechnist answered. “That’s what a white cloth on a stick means. I didn’t see him when he left, but many other people did. I saw it when he came back. He was still carrying that piece of white cloth.”

“And why did the Little Blessed One do that?” Honório Vilanova asked.

“He took pity on innocent people when he saw so many being burned to death,” the Pyrotechnist answered. “Children, old people, pregnant women. He went to ask the atheists to let them leave Belo Monte. He didn’t consult Abbot João or Pedrão or Big João, who were all at Santo Elói and at São Pedro Mártir. He made his flag and set out by way of Madre Igreja. The atheists let him through. We thought they’d killed him and were going to give him back to us the way they did Pajeú: with no eyes, tongue, or ears. But he came back, carrying his white cloth. And we had already barricaded Santo Elói and Menino Jesus and Madre Igreja. And put out lots of fires. He came back in two or three hours and during that time the atheists didn’t attack. That’s what a truce is. Father Joaquim explained it.”

The Dwarf curled up next to Jurema. He was shivering from the cold. They were in a cave, where in the past goatherds used to spend the night, not far from the place where, before it burned down, the tiny village of Caçabu had stood, at a turnoff in the trail between Mirandela and Quijingue. They had been hiding out there for twelve days now. They made quick trips outside to bring back grass, roots, anything that could be chewed on, and water from a nearby spring. As the whole region round about was swarming with troops that were withdrawing, in small sections or in large battalions, toward Queimadas, they had decided to remain in hiding there for a while. The temperature went down very low at night, and since the Vilanovas did not allow a fire to be lit for fear that the light would attract a patrol, the Dwarf was dying of cold. Of the three of them, he was the one most sensitive to the cold because he was the smallest and the one who had grown thinnest. The nearsighted man and Jurema had him sleep between them, so as to warm him with their bodies. But, even so, the Dwarf dreaded seeing night fall, for, despite the warmth of his friends’ bodies, his teeth chattered and he felt frozen to the bone. He was sitting between them, listening to the Pyrotechnist, and every other minute his pudgy little hands motioned to Jurema and the nearsighted man to move even closer to him.

“What happened to Father Joaquim?” he heard the nearsighted man ask. “Was he, too…?”

“He wasn’t burned to death and they didn’t slit his throat,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist answered immediately in a reassuring tone of voice, as though he were happy to be able at last to tell them a piece of good news. “He died of a bullet wound on the barricade at Santo Elói. He was standing right near me. He also helped people die pious deaths.” Serafim the carpenter remarked that perhaps the Father did not look favorably upon his dying on the barricade like that. He wasn’t a jagunço but a priest, right? The Father might not look with favor on a man of the cloth dying with a rifle in his hand.

“The Counselor no doubt explained to Him why Father Joaquim had a rifle in his hand,” one of the Sardelinha sisters said. “And the Father probably forgave him.”

“There’s no doubt of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “The Father knows what He is about.”

Even though there was no fire and the mouth of the cave was hidden beneath bushes and cacti uprooted whole from the ground round about, the clear light of the night—the Dwarf imagined a yellow moon and myriads of bright stars looking down on the sertão in shocked surprise—filtered in to where they were sitting and he