The War Of The End Of The World Read Free Page B

weeks before. Father Moraes of the Lazarist mission had thrown cold water on his fondest dreams by informing him that he couldn’t be a priest because he had been born out of wedlock. He consoled him by explaining to him that a person could still serve God even without receiving Holy Orders, and promised him to take whatever steps he could on his behalf at a Capuchin monastery that might be willing to take him in as a lay brother. The Little Blessed One wept that night with such heartfelt sobs that One-Eye flew into a rage and for the first time in many years beat him badly. Twenty days later, beneath the glaring midday sun, there appeared on the main street of Pombal a lanky, dark-skinned figure, with black hair and gleaming eyes, enveloped in a dark purple tunic; followed by half a dozen people who looked like beggars and yet had happy faces, he strode through the town and headed straight for the old adobe chapel with curved roof tiles which had fallen into such a sorry state of disrepair following Dom Casimiro’s death that birds had made their nests amid the statues. The Little Blessed One, like many of the villagers, saw the pilgrim stretch out face down on the ground to pray, and his followers do likewise, and that afternoon he heard him give counsel as to the salvation of the soul, condemn the ungodly, and predict the future.
    That night the Little Blessed One did not sleep in the shoemaker’s shop but in the public square of Pombal, along with the pilgrims, who had lain on the bare ground around the saint. And the following morning and afternoon, and every day that the saint remained in Pombal, the Little Blessed One worked alongside him and his followers, repairing the legs and backs of the broken-down benches in the chapel, leveling its floor, and erecting a stone wall to enclose the cemetery, which up until then had been a tongue of land creeping out into the town itself. And every night he squatted on his heels before him, listening in rapt absorption to the truths that fell from his lips.
    But when, on the Counselor’s next-to-last night in Pombal, Antônio the Little Blessed One asked his permission to accompany him wherever his pilgrimage might take him, the saint’s eyes first of all—at once intense and icy—and then his mouth said no. Kneeling before the Counselor, the Little Blessed One wept bitterly. It was very late at night, Pombal was fast asleep, as were the pilgrims in rags and tatters, all huddled up next to each other. The bonfires had gone out but the stars were gleaming brightly overhead and the chirring of cicadas could be heard. The Counselor let him weep, allowed him to kiss the hem of his tunic, and did not change expression when the Little Blessed One begged him again to let him follow him, since his heart told him that by doing so he would be serving the Good Lord Jesus better. The youngster clung to the Counselor’s ankles and kissed his callused feet again and again. When he saw that the boy was exhausted, the Counselor took his head in his two hands and forced him to look at him. Bringing his face down close to his, he asked him in a solemn voice if he loved God so much that he would suffer pain so as to offer it to Him in sacrifice. The Little Blessed One nodded yes, several times. The Counselor raised his tunic, and the boy could see, in the first faint light of dawn, that he was removing from around his waist a wire that was lacerating his flesh. “You wear it now,” he heard him say. The Counselor himself helped the Little Blessed One unfasten his clothes, cinch the wire tightly around his waist, and knot it.
    When, seven months later, the Counselor and his followers—a few of the faces had changed, their numbers had grown, among them there was now an enormous, half-naked black, but their poverty and the happiness in their eyes were those of the pilgrims of the past—appeared again in Pombal, enveloped in a cloud of dust, the wire was still around the Little Blessed One’s