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By Root 2023 0

of the Duke of Normandy who, after committing all manner of evil deeds, repented and went about on all fours, barking instead of speaking, and sleeping with the animals, until, having been granted the mercy of the Blessed Jesus, he saved the Emperor from attack by the Moors and married the Queen of Brazil. The youngster insisted that the cantadores tell it without omitting a single detail: how, in his days of wickedness, Robert the Devil had plunged his knife with the curved blade into countless throats of damsels and hermits simply for the pleasure of seeing them suffer, and how, in his days as a servant of God, he wandered far and wide in search of his victims’ kin, kissing their feet when he found them and begging them to torture him. The townspeople of Custódia thought that João would one day be a backlands minstrel, going from town to town with his guitar on his shoulder, bringing messages and making people happy with his songs and tales.

João helped Zé Faustino in his store, which supplied the whole countryside round about with cloth, grain, things to drink, farm tools, sweets, and trinkets. Zé Faustino traveled about a great deal, taking merchandise to the haciendas or going to the city to buy it, and in his absence Dona Angela minded the store, a hut of kneaded mud with a poultry yard. The woman had made her nephew the object of all the affection that she was unable to give the children she had not had. She had made João promise that he would take her to Salvador someday so that she might throw herself at the feet of the miraculous statue of O Senhor de Bonfim, of whom she had a collection of colored prints pinned above the head of her bed.

As much as drought and epidemics, the inhabitants of Custódia feared two other calamities that impoverished the town: cangaceiros and flying brigades of the National Guard. In the beginning the former had been bands gotten together from among their peons and kinfolk by the “colonels” who owned haciendas, to settle by force the quarrels that broke out among them over property boundaries, water rights, and grazing lands, or over conflicting political ambitions, but as time went by, many of these bands armed with blunderbusses and machetes had freed themselves from the “colonels” who had organized them and had begun running about loose, living by killing, robbing, and plundering. The flying brigades had come into being in order to combat them. Cangaceiros and flying brigades alike ate up the provisions of the townspeople of Custódia, got drunk on their cane brandy, and tried to rape their women. Before he even reached the age of reason, João had learned that the moment the warning shout was given all the bottles, food, and merchandise in the store had to be stowed away immediately in the hiding places that Zé Faustino had readied. The rumor went around that the storekeeper was a coiteiro—a man who did business with the bandits and provided them with information and hiding places. He was furious. Hadn’t people seen how they robbed his store? Didn’t they make off with clothes and tobacco without paying a cent? João heard his uncle complain many times about these stupid stories that the people of Custódia made up about him, out of envy. “If they keep on, they’re going to get me into trouble,” he would mutter. And that was exactly what happened.

One morning a flying brigade of thirty guards arrived in Custódia, under the command of Second Lieutenant Geraldo Macedo, a young Indian half-breed known far and wide for his bloodthirstiness. They were chasing down Antônia Silvino’s gang of outlaws. The cangaceiros had not passed through Custódia, but the lieutenant stubbornly insisted that they had. He was tall and solidly built, slightly cross-eyed, and forever licking a gold tooth that he had. It was said that he chased down bandits so mercilessly because they had raped a sweetheart of his. As his men searched the huts, the lieutenant personally interrogated everyone in town. As night was falling, he strode into the store, beaming in triumph, and ordered Zé Faustina to take him to Silvino