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By Root 1928 0

that she wasn’t at all interested in what he was telling her. As she listened, she nibbled the meat with her tiny, even teeth and chased the flies away, without nodding to show she understood or asking a single question, meeting his gaze every so often with eyes that were gradually being swallowed up by the darkness and that were making him feel stupid. He thought: “I am stupid.” That was true; he had amply proved that fact. He had the moral and political obligation to be mistrustful, to suspect that an ambitious bourgeois, capable of mounting a conspiracy against his enemies such as the one involving the arms, was equally capable of mounting another one against him. An English corpse! In other words, what Gonçalves had said about the rifles had not been a mistake, a slip of the tongue: he had told him that they were French, knowing full well that they were English. Galileo had discovered this on arriving at Rufino’s cabin, as he was loading the cases in the wagon. The factory mark on the butt leapt to his eye: “Liverpool, 1891.” The discovery had made him joke to himself: “France hasn’t yet invaded England, as far as I know. These are English rifles, not French ones.” English rifles, an English corpse. What was Gonçalves up to? He could well imagine: his idea was a cold, cruel, daring one, and mayhap even a brilliant one. His chest tightened with anxiety once again and he thought: “He’ll kill me.” This was unknown territory to him, he was wounded, he was an outsider whose trail could easily be pointed out by anyone and everyone in the region. Where was he going to be able to hide out? “In Canudos.” Yes, of course. He would be safe there, or at least he would not die there with the rueful feeling that he had been stupid. The thought came to him: “Canudos will justify you, comrade.”

He was shivering from the cold, and his shoulder, his neck, his head hurt. To take his mind off his wounds, he tried to turn his thoughts to the troops under the command of Major Febrônio de Brito. Had they already left Queimadas and headed for Monte Santo? Would they wipe out that hypothetical refuge before he reached it? He thought: “The bullet isn’t lodged in my body, it didn’t break the skin, its red-hot fire barely grazed it. The bullet, moreover, must have been very small caliber, like the revolver, meant for killing sparrows.” The serious wound was not the one from the bullet but from the knife thrust: it had penetrated deeply, severing veins, nerves, and that was the source of the burning, stabbing pains mounting to his ear, his eyes, the nape of his neck. Hot and cold shivers were making him shake from head to foot. Are you about to die, Gall? All of a sudden he remembered the snowfalls in Europe, its landscape so thoroughly domesticated by comparison with this untamed nature. He thought: “Is there geography anywhere in Europe as hostile as this?” In the south of Spain, in Turkey surely, in Russia. He remembered Bakunin’s escape, after being chained to the wall of a prison for eleven months. His father had sat him on his lap and told him the story of it: the epic journey across Siberia, the Amur River, California, then back to Europe, and on his arrival in London, the burning question: “Are there oysters in this country?” He remembered the inns scattered along the roadsides of Europe, where there was always a fire smoking on the hearth, hot soup, and other travelers to smoke a pipe with and share the events of the day’s journey. He thought: “Nostalgia is an act of cowardice, Gall.”

He was allowing himself to be overcome by self-pity and melancholy. Shame on you, Gall! Haven’t you even learned yet to die with dignity? What did it matter if it was in Europe, Brazil, or any other bit of ground on this earth! Wouldn’t the result be precisely the same? He thought: “Disintegration, decomposition, the rotting place, the worm brood, and if hungry scavengers don’t play their role, a frail frame of yellowish bones covered with a dried-out skin.” He thought: “You’re burning up and dying of cold and that is what is known as fever.” It was not fear,