Hamlet’s Lament - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 378

relations, and had been made craven by gossip,” and he ordered her not to write him be-
cause “he wasn't sure where he would reside.” 15
Dilermando regarded the next phase of the feud as a kind of social conspiracy, where,
stimulated both by the military concept of honor imbued in young cadets and by the da
Cunha clan's yearning for revenge, Euclides Jr.'s friends and the broader public opinion
inflamed the young man's utter loathing of his stepfather. His sense of his own (and his
brothers') failure to settle things and his ideas about distortions of justice cannot have
helped. Quidinho was likely manipulated into becoming an angel of vengeance. In the
normal day to day, he would have had no idea of Dilermando's movements; someone
had to inform him, after all, of where Dilermando would be on July 4, and that someone
was probably Nestor.
After hearing testimony from Manoel Afonso and Dilermando, the judge had reques-
ted that Dilermando go to the Varas do Órfões—the Orphans' Services Administra-
tion—and fill out some forms and declarations in reference to this case so that the child
could have a new tutor. It was there, on July 4, 1916, that Quidinho and Dilermando met
forthelasttime.Quidinhohadleftafarewellletter:“I'mgoingtodothis,whateverIdo,
from sentiments of honor. I need do nothing more than act!!” 16 Hamlet, indeed.
. . .
It was shortly after noon, and Dilermando had just started reading the documents in the
Vara dos Órfões when he heard an explosion, felt a bullet, and saw Quidinho about two
meters away, dressed in his formal uniform. Quidinho fired again; both shots entered
Dilermando's lungs. The others in the room—a scribe and a bureaucrat—were para-
lyzed, terrified. Dilermando moved away from his assailant, opened his military tunic,
and took out his revolver, which contained only three bullets. As he fell, another bullet
perforated his liver and diaphragm. He was seriously wounded, and the Vara was now
the scene, as the papers put it, of a “duel to the death.”
Dilermando stated later that he thought he was probably going to die and that he at
leasthadtherighttodefendhimselfandhisname.Hismilitarydisciplinehadtaughthim
nevertoflee.Quidinho,agoodshot,hadperhapsloweredhisguardinlightofhisaccur-
ate shots into Dilermando's torso, and probably did not expect him to rise and start his
own attack. The first two bullets from Dilermando hit Quidinho's arm, and then, when
he turned in surprise, a last volley from the Brazilian sharpshooting champion smashed
into his brain. He fell dead to the floor. Quidinho, like his father, had badly wounded
Dilermando but not survived him.
On hearing the news of the murder of her son by her husband, Ana went into prema-
ture labor, and her child, almost at term, was stillborn.