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“And nobody stopped them?” Antônio Vilanova asked.

“Nobody dared,” the Pyrotechnist said. “He was the Little Blessed One, the Little Blessed One. Not just anyone like you or me, but one who had been with the Counselor from the very beginning. He was the Little Blessed One. Would you have told him that he’d taken leave of his senses, that he didn’t know what he was doing? Big João didn’t dare to, nor I nor anyone else.”

“But Abbot João dared to,” Antônio Vilanova murmured.

“There’s no doubt of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “Abbot João dared to.”

The Dwarf felt frozen to the bone and his forehead was burning hot. He could easily picture the scene: the tall, supple, sturdy figure of the former cangaceiro appearing there, his knife and machete tucked in his belt, his rifle slung over his shoulder, the bandoleers around his neck, so tired he was past feeling tired. There he was, seeing the unbelievable file of pregnant women, children, old people, invalids, all those people come back to life, walking toward the soldiers with their hands on their heads. He wasn’t imagining it: he could see it, with the clearness and the color of one of the performances of the Gypsy’s Circus, the ones back in the good old days, when it was a big, prosperous circus. He was seeing Abbot João: his stupefaction, his bewilderment, his anger.

“Stop! Stop!” he shouted, beside himself, looking all about, motioning to those who were surrendering, trying to make them come back. “Have you gone out of your minds? Stop! Stop!”

“We explained to him,” the Pyrotechnist said. “Big João, who was crying and felt responsible, explained to him. Pedrão came too, and Father Joaquim, and others. It took only a few words from them for Abbot João to understand exactly what was going on.”

“It’s not that they’re going to kill them,” he said, raising his voice, loading his rifle, trying to take aim at those who had already crossed the lines and were heading on. “They’re going to kill all of us. They’re going to humiliate them, they’re going to outrage their dignity like they did with Pajeú. We can’t let that happen, precisely because they’re innocent. We can’t let the atheists slit their throats. We can’t let them dishonor them!”

“He was already shooting,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “We were all shooting. Pedrão, Big João, Father Joaquim, me.” The Dwarf noted that his voice, steady until then, was beginning to quaver. “Did we do the wrong thing? Did I do the wrong thing, Antônio Vilanova? Was it wrong of Abbot João to make us shoot?”

“You did the right thing,” Antônio Vilanova answered immediately. “They died a merciful death. The heretics would have slit their throats, done what they did to Pajeú. I would have shot, too.”

“I don’t know,” the Pyrotechnist said. “I’m tormented by it. Does the Counselor approve? I’m going to be asking myself that question for the rest of my life, trying to decide whether, after having been with the Counselor for ten years, I’ll be eternally damned for making a mistake at the last moment. Sometimes…”

He fell silent and the Dwarf realized that the Sardelinha sisters were crying—at the same time now—one of them with loud, indelicate sobs, the other softly, with little hiccups.

“Sometimes…?” Antônio Vilanova said.

“Sometimes I think that the Father, the Blessed Jesus, or Our Lady wrought the miracle of saving me from among the dead so that I may redeem myself for those shots,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “I don’t know. Once again, I don’t know anything. In Belo Monte everything seemed clear to me, day was day and night night. Until that moment, until we began firing on the innocent and on the Little Blessed One. Now everything’s hard to decide again.”

He sighed and remained silent, listening, as the Dwarf and the others were, to the Sardelinha sisters weeping for those innocents whom the jagunços had sent to a merciful death.

“Because maybe the Father wanted them to go to heaven as martyrs,” the Pyrotechnist added.

“I’m sweating,” the Dwarf thought. Or was he bleeding? “I