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By Root 1974 0

that as he was waiting in the boarding house in Queimadas, he had planned to write a letter to L’Etincelle de la révolte explaining that the skyscape in this region was infinitely more varied than the landscape, and that this no doubt had a determining influence on the inhabitants’ religious bent. He could hear Jurema’s breathing, mingled with the crackling of the dying fire. Yes, it had been sniffing death close at hand that had made him fall upon this woman and take her with his stiff penis, twice in the same day. “A strange relationship based on fear and semen and nothing else,” he thought. Why had she saved his life, by interceding just as Caifás was about to give him the coup de grâce? Why had she helped him onto the mule, gone with him, cured him, brought him here? Why was she behaving like this toward someone she must hate?

Fascinated, he recalled that sudden, pressing, uncontrollable urgency, when the animal fell as it was trotting along at full clip, throwing both of them to the ground. “Its heart must have burst open like a ripe fruit,” he thought. How far were they from Queimadas? Was the little stream where he’d washed and bandaged himself the Rio do Peixe? Had they detoured round Riacho da Onça, leaving it behind, or had they not yet reached it? A host of questions were running riot in his head, but his fear had vanished. Had he been badly frightened when the mule collapsed and he realized that he was falling off, that he was rolling on the ground? Yes. That was the explanation: fear. The instant suspicion that the animal had died not of exhaustion but of a shot through the heart fired by the hired assassins who were following him to turn him into an English cadaver. And it must have been because he was instinctively seeking protection that he had leapt on top of the woman, who had fallen off and was rolling on the ground with him. Had Jurema thought him a madman, or the Devil perhaps? Taking her in such circumstances, at that moment, in that state. Ah, the dismay in the woman’s eyes, her trepidation when she realized, from the way that Gall’s hands were pawing at her clothes, what he wanted from her. She had not put up any resistance this time, but neither had she hidden her disgust, or, rather, her indifference. Ah, that quiet resignation of her body, which had remained impressed on Gall’s mind as he lay on the ground, confused, stunned, overwhelmed with something that might be desire, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, or a blind denial of the trap in which he found himself. Through a mist of sweat, with the wounds in his shoulder and neck hurting as though they had reopened and his life were draining away through them, he saw Jurema in the gathering darkness, examining the mule, opening its eyes and mouth. Still lying on the ground, he then saw her collect branches and leaves and light a fire. And without her saying a word to him, he saw her take out the knife tucked in her belt, slice off strips of flesh from the animal’s flanks, thread them on a stick, and put them over the fire to roast. She gave the impression that she was merely performing a routine domestic task, as though nothing out of the way had happened, as though the events of that day had not completely changed her life. He thought: “They’re the most enigmatic people on this planet.” He thought: “Fatalists, brought up to accept whatever life brings them, whether good, bad, or horrendous.” He thought: “For her you’re the horrendous.”

After a while he had been able to sit up, to drink a few swallows of water, and, with a great effort because of the burning pain in his throat, to chew. The pieces of meat seemed like an exquisite delicacy. As they ate, presuming that Jurema was no doubt bewildered by everything that had happened, he had tried to explain everything to her: who Epaminondas Gonçalves was, his proposal regarding the arms, how Gonçalves had been the one who had planned the attack at Rufino’s house so as to steal the rifles he himself had bought and have him, Galileo, killed because he needed a corpse with light skin and red hair. But he realized