The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa
“I’ve had to act as doctor and midwife many a time here in Calumbi,” the baroness said in her lilting voice, addressing the doctor perhaps, or perhaps the patient. “But, to tell you the truth, it’s been years since I’ve applied cupping glasses. Am I hurting you, Colonel?”
“Not at all, Baroness.” Moreira César did his best to conceal his pain, but did not succeed. “Please accept my apologies for this invasion, and kindly convey them to your husband as well. It was not my idea.”
“We’re delighted to have you.” The baroness had finished applying the cupping glasses and straightened the pillows. “I was very eager to meet a hero in person. Though, naturally, I would rather it had not been an illness that brought you to Calumbi…”
Her voice was friendly, charming, superficial. Next to the bed was a table with pitchers and porcelain basins decorated with royal peacocks, bandages, balls of cotton, a jar full of leeches, cupping glasses, and many vials. The dawn light was filtering into the cool, clean room through the white curtains. Sebastiana, the baroness’s personal maid, was standing at the door, motionless. Dr. Souza Ferreiro examined the patient’s back, broken out with a rash of cupping glasses, with eyes that showed that he had gone without sleep all night.
“Well, we’ll wait half an hour and then it’s a bath and massages for you. You won’t deny me the fact that you’re feeling better, sir: your color has come back.”
“The bath is ready, and I’ll be here if you need me,” Sebastiana said.
“I’m at your service, too,” the baroness chimed in. “I’ll leave you two now. Oh, I almost forgot. I asked Dr. Souza’s permission for you to have tea with us, Colonel. My husband wants to pay his respects to you. You’re invited too, Doctor. And Captain de Castro, and that very odd young man, what’s his name again?”
The colonel did his best to smile at her, but the moment the wife of Baron de Canabrava, followed by Sebastiana, had left the room, he exploded: “I ought to have you shot, Doctor, for having gotten me caught in this trap.”
“If you fall into a fit of temper, I’ll bleed you and you’ll be obliged to stay in bed for another day.” Dr. Souza Ferreiro collapsed in a rocking chair, drunk with exhaustion. “And now allow me to rest too, for half an hour. Kindly don’t move.”
In precisely half an hour, he opened his eyes, rubbed them hard, and began to remove the cupping glasses. They came off easily, leaving purplish circles where they had gripped the patient’s skin. The colonel lay there face downward, with his head buried in his crossed arms, and barely opened his mouth when Captain Olímpio de Castro entered to give him news of the column. Souza Ferreiro accompanied Moreira César to the bathroom, where Sebastiana had readied everything according to his instructions. The colonel undressed—unlike his deeply tanned face and arms, his little body was very white—climbed straight into the bathtub without a word, and remained in it for a long time, clenching his teeth. Then the doctor massaged him vigorously with alcohol, applied a mustard poultice, and made him inhale the vapor from herbs boiling on a brazier. The entire treatment took place in silence, but once the inhalations were over, the colonel, attempting to relieve the tension in the air, remarked that he had the sensation that he had been subjected to practices of witchcraft. Souza Ferreiro remarked that the borderline separating science from magic was invisible. They had made their peace. Back in the bedroom, a tray with fruit, fresh milk, rolls, ham, and coffee awaited them. Moreira César ate dutifully and then dropped off to sleep. When he awoke, it was midday and the reporter from the Jornal de Notícias was standing at his bedside with a pack of cards in his hand, offering to teach him how to play ombre, a game that was all the rage in bohemian circles in Bahia. They played for some time without exchanging a word, until Souza Ferreiro, bathed and freshly shaved, came to tell the colonel that he could get up. When the latter entered the drawing room to have tea with his host and hostess, he found the baron and his wife, the doctor, Captain de Castro, and the journalist, the only one of their number who had not made his toilet since the night before, already gathered there.
Baron de Canabrava came over to shake hands with the colonel. The vast room with a red-and-white-tiled floor was furnished in matching jacaranda pieces, straight-backed wooden chairs with woven straw seats that went by the name of “Austrian chairs,” little tables with kerosene lamps and photographs, glass cabinets with crystalware and porcelain, and butterflies mounted in velvet-lined cases. The walls were decorated with watercolors showing country scenes. The baron asked how his guest was feeling, and the two of them exchanged the usual polite remarks, a game that the baron was more skilled at than the army officer. The windows, flung open to the twilight, afforded a view of the stone columns at the entrance, a well, and on either side of the esplanade opposite, lined with tamarinds and royal palms, what had once been the slave quarter and was now that of the peons who worked on the hacienda. Sebastiana and a maidservant in a checkered apron busied themselves setting out teapots, cups, sweet biscuits, and cakes. As the baroness recounted to the doctor, the journalist, and Olímpio de Castro how difficult it had been down through the years to transport all the materials and furnishings of this house to Calumbi, the baron showed Moreira César an herbarium, remarking that as a young man he had dreamed of science and of spending his life in laboratories and dissecting rooms. But man proposes and God disposes; in the end he had devoted his life to agriculture, diplomacy, and politics, things which never interested him when he was growing up. And what about the colonel? Had he always wanted to be in the military? Yes, an army career had been his ambition ever since he had reached the age of reason, and perhaps even before, back in the little town in the state of São Paulo where he was born: Pindamonhangaba. The reporter had left the other group and was now standing next to them, brazenly listening in on their conversation. “It came as a surprise to me to see this young man arriving with you.” The baron smiled, pointing to the nearsighted journalist. “Has he told you that he once worked for me? At the time he admired Victor Hugo and wanted to be a dramatist. He had a very low opinion of journalism in those days.”
“I still do,” the high-pitched, unpleasant voice said.
“That’s an outright lie!” the baron exclaimed. “The truth is that he has a vocation for gossip, treachery, calumny, the cunning attack. He was my protégé, and when he went over to my adversary’s paper, he turned into my most contemptible critic. Be on your guard, Colonel. This man is dangerous.”
The nearsighted journalist was radiant, as though he were being showered with praise.
“All intellectuals are dangerous,” Moreira César replied. “Weak, sentimental, capable of making use of the best of ideas to justify the worst mischief. The country needs them, but they must be handled like animals that can’t be trusted.”
The journalist burst into such delighted laughter that the baroness, the doctor, and the captain looked over at him. Sebastiana was serving the tea.
The baron took Moreira César by the arm and led him to a cabinet. “I have a present for you. It’s the custom here in the sertão to offer a present to a guest.” He took out a dusty bottle of cognac and with a sly wink showed him the label. “I know that you are eager to root out all European influences in Brazil, but I presume that your hatred of all things foreign does not extend to cognac.”
Once they were seated, the baroness handed the colonel a cup of tea and slipped two lumps of sugar into it.
“My rifles are French and my cannons German,” Moreira César said in such a solemn tone of voice that the others broke off their conversation. “I do not hate Europe, nor do I hate cognac. But since I do not take alcohol, it’s best not to waste such a gift on someone who is unable to appreciate it.”
“Keep it as a souvenir, then,” the baroness interjected.
“I hate the local landowners and the English merchants who kept this region in the dark ages,” the colonel went on in an icy voice. “I hate those to whom sugar meant more than the people of Brazil.”
The baroness went on serving her guests, her face not changing expression.
The master of the house, on the other hand, had stopped smiling. His voice, nonetheless, remained cordial. “Are the Yankee traders that the South is receiving with open arms interested in the people or only in coffee?” he asked.
Moreira César had a ready answer. “They bring with them the machines, the technology, and the money that Brazil needs in order to progress. Because progress means industry, work, capital, as the United States has demonstrated.” His cold little eyes blinked as he added: “That is something that slaveowners will never understand, Baron.”
In the silence that fell after these words, spoons were heard stirring cups, and sips that sounded like gargles as the journalist downed his tea.
“It wasn’t the Republic that abolished slavery. It was the monarchy,” the baroness recalled, smiling as though the remark were charmingly witty repartee as she offered her guest sweet biscuits. “By the way, did you know that on my husband’s haciendas the slaves were freed five years before the emancipation decree?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” the colonel replied. “A praiseworthy act, certainly.”
He gave a forced smile and took a sip of tea. The atmosphere was tense now, despite the baroness’s smiles and Dr. Souza Ferreiro’s sudden interest in the butterfly collection and Captain Olímpio de Castro’s story of a Rio barrister who had been murdered by his wife.
The tension mounted further as Souza Ferreiro offered the baron a polite compliment. “The landowners in these parts are abandoning their estates because the jagunços are setting fire to them,” he said. “You, however, are setting an example by returning to Calumbi.”
“I returned so as to place the hacienda at the disposal of the Seventh Regiment,” the baron replied. “I regret that my aid has not been accepted.”
“Seeing the peace that reigns here, no one would ever suspect that a war is being waged so close at hand,” Colonel Moreira César murmured. “The jagunços haven’t touched you. You’re a lucky man.”
“Appearances are deceiving,” the baron answered, his tone of voice still calm. “Many families at Calumbi have left and the land under cultivation has been reduced by half. Moreover, Canudos is land that belongs to me, is that not so? I’ve had my share of sacrifices forced upon me—more than anyone else in the region.”
The baron was managing to hide the wrath that the colonel’s words no doubt aroused in him, but the baroness had turned into another person when she spoke up again. “I trust you don’t believe all that slander about my husband’s having supposedly handed Canudos over to the jagunços,” she said, her eyes narrowing in indignation.
The colonel took another sip of tea, neither confirming nor denying her statement.
“So they’ve persuaded you that that infamous lie is true,” the baron murmured. “Do you really believe I help mad heretics, arsonists, and thieves who steal haciendas?”
Moreira César sat his cup down on the table. He looked at the baron with an icy gaze and ran his tongue rapidly over his lips. “Those madmen kill soldiers with explosive bullets,” he said very slowly and deliberately, as though fearing that someone might miss a syllable. “Those arsonists have very modern rifles. Those thieves receive aid from English agents. Who besides the monarchists would be conspiring to stir up an insurrection against the Republic?” He had turned pale and the little cup began to tremble in his hands. Everyone except the journalist looked down at the floor.
“Those people don’t steal or murder or set fires when they feel that order reigns, when they see that the world is organized, because nobody has more respect for hierarchy than they,” the baron said in a firm voice. “But the Republic destroyed our system through unrealistic laws, substituting unwarranted enthusiasms for the principle of obedience. An error of Marshal Floriano’s, Colonel, for the social ideal is rooted in tranquillity, not enthusiasm.”
“Are you feeling ill, sir?” Dr. Souza Ferreiro interrupted him, rising to his feet.
But a look from Moreira César made him keep his distance. The colonel was livid now, his forehead beaded with sweat, his lips purplish, as though he had bitten them. He rose from his chair and addressed the baroness, his voice scarcely more than a mumble: “I beg you to excuse me, Baroness. I know that my manners leave a great deal to be desired. I come from a humble background and the only social circle I have ever frequented is the barracks room.”
He staggered out of the drawing room, weaving from side to side between the pieces of furniture and the glass cabinets. At his back, the voice of the journalist rudely asked for another cup of tea. He and Olímpio de Castro remained in the room, but the doctor went to see what had happened to the commanding officer of the Seventh Regiment. He found him in bed, panting for breath, in a state of great fatigue. He helped him undress, gave him a sedative, and heard him say that he would rejoin the regiment at dawn the next morning: he would entertain no discussion of the matter. This said, he allowed the doctor to apply the cupping glasses again and plunged once more into a tub of cold water, from which he emerged shivering. Massages with turpentine and mustard warmed him up. He ate in his bedroom, but then got up in his bathrobe and spent a few minutes in the drawing room, thanking the baron and baroness for their hospitality. He awoke at five the following morning. As he drank a cup of coffee, he assured Dr. Souza Ferreiro that he had never felt better in his life and warned the nearsighted journalist, who was just waking up, disheveled and yawning, as he sat at his side, that if there was the least little news item about his illness in any paper, he would hold him responsible. As he was about to leave, a manservant came to tell him that the baron would like him to come by his study. He led him to a small room with a large wooden writing desk on top of which a device for rolling cigarettes occupied the place of honor; on the walls, in addition to shelves lined with books, were knives, whips, leather gloves, and sombreros and harnesses. The room had windows with a view, and in the dawning light the men in the colonel’s escort could be seen talking with the journalist from Bahia.
The baron was in his bathrobe and slippers. “Despite our differences of opinion, I believe you to be a patriot who has Brazil’s best interests at heart, Colonel,” he said by way of greeting. “No, I am not trying to win your sympathies by flattering you. Nor do I wish to waste your time. I need to know whether the army, or at least you yourself, are aware of the underhanded maneuver being used against me and against my friends by our adversaries.”
“The army doesn’t interfere in local political quarrels,” Moreira César interrupted him. “I have come to the state of Bahia to put down an insurrection that is endangering the Republic. That is my sole purpose in coming.”
They were standing very close to each other, looking each other straight in the eye.
“That’s precisely what their maneuvering has been aimed at,” the baron said. “Making Rio, the government, the army believe that this is the danger that Canudos represents. Those miserable wretches don’t have any sort of modern weapons. The explosive bullets are limonite projectiles, or brown hematite if you prefer the technical term, a mineral found everywhere in the Serra de Bendengó that the people in the backlands have always used as shotgun pellets.”
“Are the defeats undergone by the army in Uauá and on O Cambaio also a maneuver?” the colonel asked. “And the rifles shipped from Liverpool and smuggled into the region by English agents?”
The baron scrutinized the officer’s fearless face, his hostile eyes, his scornful smile. Was he a cynic? At this point he couldn’t tell yet: the only thing that was entirely clear was that Moreira César detested him.
“The English rifles are indeed a part of their scheme,” he answered. “Epaminondas Gonçalves, your most fervent supporter in Bahia, had them brought here so as to accuse us of conspiring with a foreign power and with the jagunços. And as for the English spy in Ipupiará, he manufactured him too, by giving men in his hire orders to kill a poor devil
Moreira César didn’t blink, didn’t move a muscle. Nor did he open his mouth. He continued to stare straight back at the baron, a look that told the baron more eloquently than words what he thought of him and of the things he had just said.
“So you do know, you’re a co-conspirator and perhaps the Gray Eminence of the entire plot.” The baron averted his eyes and stood for a moment with his head down, as though he were thinking hard, but in truth his mind was a blank. Finally recovering from his daze, he said: “Do you think all this is worth the trouble? All these lies, these intrigues, all these crimes even, in order to establish the Dictatorial Republic? Do you really believe that something born of all that will be the panacea for Brazil’s many ills?”
A few seconds passed without Moreira César’s opening his mouth. Outside, a reddish glow heralded the rising of the sun; voices and the whinnying of horses were heard; from upstairs came the sound of shuffling feet.
“There are people up in arms here who are refusing to accept the Republic and have routed two military expeditions,” the colonel said suddenly, his firm, curt, impersonal tone of voice not changing in the slightest. “Objectively, these people are the instruments of those who, like yourself, have accepted the Republic the better to betray it, to seize the reins of power, and by changing a few names maintain the traditional system. You were well on your way to attaining your goal, I grant you. There is now a civilian president, a party rule that divides and paralyzes the country, a parliament where every effort to change things can be delayed and distorted thanks to the ruses of which you people are past masters. You were already crowing in triumph, isn’t that true? There is even talk of reducing the army’s troop strength by half, isn’t that true? What a victory! Well, you people are mistaken. Brazil will not go on being the fief that you have been exploiting for centuries. That’s what the army is for. To bring about national unity, to bring progress, to establish equality among all Brazilians, to create a strong, modern country. We are going to remove the obstacles in the way, I promise you: Canudos, you, the English merchants, whoever blocks our path. I am not going to explain to you what we true republicans mean by a republic. You wouldn’t understand, because you belong to the past, you are someone who is looking backward. Don’t you realize how ridiculous it is to be a baron when in just four years it will be the beginning of the twentieth century? You and I are mortal enemies, the war between us is without quarter, and we have nothing to say to each other.”