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By Root 2014 0

could see Antônio the Pyrotechnist’s face in profile, his pug nose, his sharply chiseled forehead and chin. He was a jagunço the Dwarf remembered very well, because he had seen him preparing, back there in Canudos, those fireworks displays that lit up the sky with sparkling arabesques on the nights when there were processions. He remembered his hands covered with powder burns, the scars on his arms, and how, once the war began, he had devoted all his time and effort to making up the dynamite sticks that the jagunços hurled over the barricades at the soldiers. The Dwarf had been the first to recognize him when he had appeared at the entrance to the cave that afternoon, and had called out that it was the Pyrotechnist, so the Vilanova brothers, pistols in hand, wouldn’t shoot.

“And why did the Little Blessed One come back?” Antônio Vilanova asked after a while. He was almost the only one who kept asking questions, the one who had quizzed Antônio the Pyrotechnist all afternoon and evening, once they, too, had recognized him and embraced him. “Had he taken leave of his senses?”

“I’m certain of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said.

The Dwarf tried to picture the scene in his mind, the tiny pale-faced figure with the burning eyes returning to the little redoubt with his white flag, making his way amid the dead, the rubble, the wounded, the combatants, the burned-out dwellings, the rats which, according to the Pyrotechnist, had suddenly appeared everywhere to feast voraciously on the dead bodies.

“They have agreed,” the Little Blessed One said. “You can surrender now.”

“We were to come out one by one, with no weapons, with our hands on our heads,” the Pyrotechnist explained, in the tone of voice of someone recounting the wildest story or of a drunk babbling nonsense. “We would be considered prisoners and would not be killed.”

The Dwarf heard him heave a sigh. He heard one of the Vilanova brothers sigh too, and thought he heard one of the Sardelinha sisters weeping. It was odd: the Vilanova brothers’ wives, the two of whom the Dwarf often confused, never burst into tears at the same time. One of them would begin to cry and then the other. But they had not shed a single tear until Antônio the Pyrotechnist had started answering Antônio Vilanova’s questions that afternoon; all during the flight from Belo Monte and the days that they had been hiding out here, he had never seen them cry. He was trembling so badly that Jurema put her arm around his shoulders and rubbed him briskly up and down. Was he shivering from the cold here at Caçabu, or because he had fallen ill from hunger, or was it what the Pyrotechnist was recounting that was making him tremble like that?

“Little Blessed One, Little Blessed One, do you realize what you’re saying?” Big João moaned. “Do you realize what it is you’re asking? Do you really want us to lay down our arms, to go out with our hands on our heads to surrender to the Freemasons? Is that what you want, Little Blessed One?”

“Not you,” the voice that always seemed to be praying answered. “The innocent victims. The youngsters, the women about to give birth, the aged. May their lives be spared. You can’t decide their fate for them. If you don’t allow them to escape with their lives, it’s as though you killed them. The fault will be yours, there will be innocent blood on your hands, Big João. It’s a sin against heaven to let innocent people die. They aren’t able to defend themselves, Big João.”

“He said that the Counselor spoke through his mouth,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist added. “That he had inspired him, that he had ordered him to save them.”

“And Abbot João?” Antônio Vilanova asked.

“He wasn’t there,” the Pyrotechnist explained. “The Little Blessed One came back to Belo Monte by way of the barricade at Madre Igreja. And Abbot João was at Santo Elói. They told him the Little Blessed One had come back, but he couldn’t get there right away. He was busy reinforcing that barricade, the weakest one. By the time he arrived, they had already begun to go off with the Little Blessed One. Women, children, the