The War of the End of the World

Canudos learns from a group of pilgrims that soldiers are on their way to capture the Counselor. They march out to meet them, carrying religious relics and a wooden cross, ambushing the army at dawn. Many die, but the soldiers are put to flight. To honor the victory, a street in Canudos is named after Big João, who led the attack.

Galileo Gall and Epaminondas Gonçalves discuss Canudos the night before Gall is meant to pick up the weapons. Gall mentions that Rufino used to work for the Baron de Canabrava. He gives Gonçalves another article to post to France.

Antônio and Honório Vilanova are brothers who work as merchants in Bahia, having fled a smallpox epidemic in their hometown. Antônio travels, supplying sugar, cloth and other goods to villages and haciendas, while Honório runs their store at home with their wives, the Sardelinha sisters. The 1877 drought destroys their business. Their store is looted and they lose everything they have built. They wander the parched backlands surviving on scraps. Both Honório’s sons die. As they are interring the second, the Counselor arrives and demands they give him a proper burial. When Antônio tries to pay him, the Counselor refuses the Republic’s money: “You haven’t learned to count, my son” (79). They build a new business dealing in animals and salt, but a flood destroys that one too. Antônio considers it the third “warning” sent so that they would do something, “but I don’t know what” (80). Wandering once more, they settle in the hacienda at Canudos. When the Counselor arrives, Antônio falls to his knees. He asks, “Have you learned to count yet?” (81).

The chapter’s last section is the article Gall gave to Gonçalves. He celebrates Canudos’s victory over the army detachment and reveals that he has met an emissary, an impassive man who says all land belongs to God. Gall tries to persuade his readers that Canudos is not a reactionary movement and wonders at the Counselor’s buried motivations.

In response to the embarrassing defeat at Uauá the army sends a much bigger force, armed with cannons, to Queimadas. Unprepared for the conditions, they are near starving not long after beginning the march.

Galileo Gall rants at Jurema, Rufino’s wife, because her husband has taken another job that has delayed their departure. She defends the Baron de Canabrava for having looked after them and doesn’t understand Gall’s position on Canudos. She identifies the emissary from his article as Pajeú, a feared bandit. Suddenly, the house is attacked; Gall shoots two men but others escape with the rifles. Comforting the hysterical Jurema, Gall is seized by an “ambiguous, urgent, intense” urge, and rapes her (94).

In the town of Natuba, a baby is born with short legs and a grotesquely enlarged head. His thick hair gives him the appearance of a lion, which becomes his nickname. Rumors abound that he is the son of the devil, which intensify when he reads a poster despite never receiving a single lesson. He soon begins writing correspondence for the villagers, but this doesn’t stop people bullying him. The tinsmith’s daughter is taken sick, and a healer claims she is the victim of a curse; because the Lion was seen talking to her, he is identified as the one who cast the spell. The girl dies and her father prepares to burn the Lion at the stake the next morning. This is when the Counselor arrives. He ensures the girl has been buried properly, before rebuking the tinsmith for his “ungodly” superstition (100). The tinsmith unties the Lion and when the Counselor leaves Natuba, he is seen following.

Galileo Gall awakens on Jurema’s floor, amazed at what he has done. For 10 years he had kept a vow made with a fellow anarchist who was a compulsive sadist, not to touch another woman. This impulsiveness goes against his belief in rationality. But Gall has no pity for Jurema. He hopes it was Pajeú who stole the rifles. Then he hears footsteps and a voice.

Guides helping Major Febrônio de Brito’s column desert the soldiers and arrive in Canudos, begging forgiveness. After the Counselor has finished preaching, he sends Abbot João and Pajeú with their men to the mountains where the guides say the army is located. The army’s artillery proves deadly, and the jagunços beat a retreat. Victorious, the soldiers stretch out on an open plain. Realizing their guard is down, Abbot João counterattacks. The soldiers are slaughtered, their corpses looted, and the wounded jagunços taken back to the Health Houses.

The voice at Jurema’s belongs to Caifás, the guide who brought Galileo Gall to Epaminondas Gonçalves. He has come to warn Rufino that Major Brito’s army is recruiting guides to Canudos by force. Gall thinks the men earlier were not only there for the guns; but also to kill him. Suddenly Caifás lashes out, stabbing him and wounding him in the face with a pistol shot. As he is about to kill Gall, Caifás reveals that Gonçalves sent him, because “[h]e needs an English corpse” (113). But Jurema seizes his hand; after a struggle, Gall gets the pistol and she does the same thing, stopping him killing Caifás.

The parish priest of Cumbe, Dom Joaquim, has a weakness for drink and women. He establishes a relationship with Alexandrinha Correa, a water divineress who lives with him as his “caretaker” (117). One day the Counselor preaches in church, railing against “bad shepherds,” humiliating Dom Joaquim (118). He leaves town whenever the Counselor is there, whereas Alexandrinha grows ever more devout, finally departing with his followers.

Galileo Gall and Jurema are huddled around a fire in the wilderness, having escaped Queimadas. Earlier, their mule died and Gall fell on top of Jurema, raping her a second time. She simply lay there and when it was over gathered branches for the fire. Gall remembers that the rifles were English, not French as Epaminondas Gonçalves had promised. He starts to suspect the plot is connected with England. His wounds are causing him immense pain, but he vows to reach Canudos and join the fight against everything the “bourgeois” Gonçalves represents (123).