The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa
In a fury, shaking his fist at the man lying on the ground, he roared: “You blind, selfish, petty traitor to your class—can’t you see beyond your vainglorious little world? Men’s honor doesn’t lie in faces or in women’s cunts, you idiot. There are thousands of innocents in Canudos. The fate of your brothers is at stake: can’t you understand?”
Rufino shook his head as he came to.
“You try to make him understand,” Gall shouted to Jurema before he walked off. She stared at him as though he were mad, or someone she had never seen in her life before. Again he had the feeling that everything was absurd and unreal. Why hadn’t he killed Rufino? The imbecile would pursue him to the end of the earth, he was certain. He ran, panting, through the scrub, raked by the thorns, amid torrents of rain, getting covered with mud, with no idea where he was going. He still had the stick and his double saddlebag, but he had lost his sombrero and could feel the drops bouncing off his skull. A while later—it might have been a few minutes or an hour—he stopped, then went on again, at a slow walk. There was no sort of trail, no reference point amid the brambles and the cacti, and his feet sank into the mud, holding him back. He could feel that he was sweating beneath the pouring rain. He silently cursed his luck. The light was fading and he could scarcely believe that it was already dusk. He finally realized that he was looking all around as though he were about to plead with those gray, barren trees, with barbs instead of leaves, to help him. He gestured, half in pity and half in desperation, and broke into a run again. But after just a few meters he stopped dead in his tracks, utterly unnerved by his helplessness. A sob escaped his lips.
“Rufinoooo, Rufinoooo!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Come on, come on, I’m here, I need you! Help me, take me to Canudos, let’s do something useful, let’s not be stupid. You can take your revenge, kill me, slap my face afterward. Rufinoooo!”
He heard his shouts echoing amid the splash of the raindrops. He was soaked to the skin, dying of cold. He went on walking aimlessly, his mouth working, slapping his legs with the stick. It was dusk, night would soon be falling, all this was perhaps just a nightmare—and suddenly the earth gave way beneath his feet. Before he hit bottom, he realized that he had stepped on a mat of branches concealing a deep pit. The fall did not knock him senseless: the earth at the bottom of the pit was soft from the rain. He stood up, felt his arms, his legs, his aching shoulder. He fumbled about for Rufino’s knife, which had fallen out of his belt, and the thought occurred to him that he had had a chance to plunge it into Rufino. He tried to climb out of the hole, but his feet slipped and he fell back in. He sat down on the wet dirt, leaned back against the wall, and, with a feeling of something like relief, dropped off to sleep. He was awakened by a faint rustling of branches and leaves being trampled underfoot. He was about to give a shout when he felt a puff of air go past his shoulder and in the semidarkness saw a wooden dart bury itself in the dirt.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he yelled. “I’m a friend, a friend.”
There were murmurs, voices, and he went on shouting till a lighted length of wood was thrust into the hole and he dimly made out human heads behind the flame. They were armed men, camouflaged in long cloaks made of woven grass. Several hands reached down and pulled him to the surface. There was a look of rapturous excitement on Galileo Gall’s face as the jagunços examined him from head to foot by the light of torches sputtering in the dampness left by the recent rain. With their caparisons of grass, their cane whistles around their necks, their carbines, their machetes, their crossbows, their bandoleers, their rags, their scapulars and medals with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, they looked as though they were in disguise. As they peered at him, sniffed at him, with expressions that betrayed their surprise at coming upon this creature whom they were unable to classify as belonging to any of the varieties of humans known to them, Galileo Gall asked insistently to be taken to Canudos: he could be of service to them, help the Counselor, explain to them the machinations of corrupt bourgeois politicians and military officers of which they were victims. He gesticulated violently so as to lend emphasis and eloquence to his words and fill in the gaps in his faltering Portuguese, looking first at one and then at another, wild-eyed with excitement; he had had long experience as a revolutionary, comrades, he had fought many a time at the side of the people, he wanted to share their destiny.
“Praised be the Blessed Jesus,” he seemed to hear someone say.
Were they making fun of him? He began to stammer, to trip over his words, to struggle against the feeling of helplessness that was coming over him little by little as he realized that the things he was saying were not exactly the ones he wanted to say, the ones that they might have been able to understand. He was demoralized, above all, on seeing by the flickering light of the torches that the jagunços were exchanging knowing glances and gestures, and smiling at him pityingly, revealing mouths with either teeth missing or a tooth or two too many. Yes, what he was saying sounded like nonsense, but they had to believe him! He had had incredible difficulties getting to Canudos, but was here now to help them. Thanks to them, a fire that the oppressor believed to have been extinguished in the world had been rekindled. He fell silent again, disconcerted, disheartened by the complacent attitude of the men in the grass cloaks, who showed no signs of anything save curiosity and compassion. He stood there with outstretched hands and felt tears well up in his eyes. What was he doing here? How had he managed to fall into this trap, from which there was no escape, believing the while that he was contributing his mite to the great undertaking of making the world a less barbarous place? Someone said helpfully that he mustn’t be afraid: those people he spoke of were nothing but Freemasons, Protestants, servants of the Antichrist, and the Counselor and the Blessed Jesus had more power than they did. The man who was speaking had a long, narrow face and beady eyes, and pronounced each word slowly and distinctly: when the time came, a king called Sebastião would rise up out of the sea and ascend to Belo Monte. He mustn’t weep, the innocents had been brushed by the wings of the angel and the Father would bring him back to life if the heretics killed him. He would have liked to answer that they were right, that beneath the deceptive verbal formulas they used to express themselves, he was able to hear the overwhelmingly evident truth of a battle under way, between good, represented by the poor, the long-suffering, the despoiled, and evil, championed by the rich and their armies, and that once this battle had ended, an era of universal brotherhood would begin. But he was unable to find the right words and could feel them sympathetically patting him on the back now to console him, for they could see that he was sobbing. He half understood a few words and bits of phrases: the kiss of the elect, someday he’d be rich, he should pray.
“I want to go to Canudos,” he managed to say, grabbing the arm of the man who was speaking. “Take me with you. May I follow you?”
“That’s not possible,” one of the jagunços answered, pointing in the direction of the mountaintop. “The dogs are up there. They’d slit your throat. Hide somewhere. You can come to Canudos later, when they’re dead.”
With reassuring gestures, they vanished round about him, leaving him in the dark of night, bewildered, with a phrase echoing in his ears like a mocking joke: “Praised be the Blessed Jesus.” He took a few steps, trying to follow them, but all of a sudden a meteor blocked his path and knocked him to the ground. He realized it was Rufino only after he was already fighting with him, and as he hit out and was hit back, the thought came to him that the little bright spots gleaming like quicksilver that he had glimpsed behind the jagunços had been the tracker’s eyes. Had he been waiting until the men from Canudos left, so as to attack him? They did not exchange insults as they struck each other, panting in the mire of the caatinga. It was raining again and Gall heard the thunder, the splashing drops, and for some reason the animal violence of the two of them freed him of his despair and for the moment gave his life meaning. As he bit, kicked, scratched, butted, he heard a
“Opinionated fool! Madman! Conceited, pigheaded bastard!” he shouted, choking with rage. “I’m not your enemy, your enemies are the men who are blowing those bugles. Can’t you hear them? That’s more important than my semen, than your wife’s cunt, where you’ve placed your honor, like a stupid bourgeois.”
He realized that, once again, he’d spoken in English. With an effort he rose to his feet. It was raining buckets and the water that fell into his open mouth felt good. Limping because he’d hurt his leg, perhaps when he fell into the pit, perhaps in the fight, he walked on through the caatinga, feeling his way through the branches and sharp thorns of the trees, stumbling. He tried to take his bearings from the slow, sad, funereal call of the bugles or the solemn peal of the bells, but the sounds seemed to keep shifting direction. And at that moment something grabbed his feet and sent him rolling on the ground, feeling mud between his teeth. He kicked, trying to free himself, and heard the Dwarf moan.
Clinging to him in terror, the Dwarf cried in his shrill voice: “Don’t abandon me, Gall, don’t leave me by myself. Don’t you hear those whooshing sounds? Don’t you see what they are, Gall?”
Once again he experienced that sensation that it was all a nightmare, unreal, absurd. He remembered that the Dwarf could see in the dark and that sometimes the Bearded Lady called him “cat” and “owl.” He was so exhausted that he continued to lie there, letting the Dwarf cling to him, listening to him whimper over and over that he didn’t want to die. He raised a hand to his shoulder and rubbed it as he strained his ears to hear. There was no doubt about it: they were cannon reports. He had been hearing them at intervals for some time now, thinking that they were deep drumrolls, but now he was certain that they were artillery fire. From cannons, no doubt small ones, or perhaps only mortars, but even so they were enough to blow Canudos sky-high. He was so worn out that he either fainted or fell dead asleep.
The next thing he knew, he was trembling with cold in the feeblest of first light. He heard the Dwarf’s teeth chattering and saw his big eyes rolling in terror. The little fellow must have slept propped up on Gall’s right leg, for it had gone numb. He gradually roused himself, blinked, looked around: hanging from the trees were bits and pieces of uniforms, kepis, field boots, greatcoats, canteens, knapsacks, saber and bayonet scabbards, and a few crude crosses. It was these tattered objects hanging from the trees that the Dwarf was staring at spellbound, as though he were not seeing these belongings but the ghosts of those who had worn them. “At least they defeated these men,” he thought.
He listened. Yes, more cannon fire. It had stopped raining a good many hours before, since everything around him was dry by now, but the cold gnawed his very bones. Weak and aching all over, he managed to struggle to his feet. He spied the knife in his belt and thought to himself that it had never crossed his mind to use it as he was fighting with Rufino. Why had he not tried to kill him this second time either? He heard yet another cannonade, very distinctly now, and a din of bugles, that lugubrious call that sounded like funeral taps. As though in a dream, he saw Rufino and Jurema appear from between the trees. The tracker was badly hurt, or exhausted, for he was leaning on her for support, and Gall knew intuitively that Rufino had spent the night tirelessly searching for him in the darkness of the thicket. He felt hatred for the man’s obstinacy, for his single-minded, unshakable determination to kill him.
They looked each other straight in the eye and Gall felt himself tremble. He pulled the knife out of his belt and pointed in the direction from which the bugle calls were coming. “Do you hear that?” he said in a slow, deliberate voice. “Your brothers are under artillery fire, they’re dying like flies. You kept me from going to join them and dying with them. You’ve made a stupid clown of me…”
Rufino had a sort of wooden dagger in his hand. He saw him let go of Jurema, push her away, crouch down to attack. “What a wretched bastard you are, Gall,” he heard him say. “You talk a lot about the poor, but you betray a friend and dishonor the house where you’re given hospitality.”
He shut him up by throwing himself on him, blind with rage. They began hacking each other to pieces as Jurema watched in a daze, overcome with anguish and fatigue. The Dwarf doubled over in terror.
“I won’t die for my own wretchedness, Rufino,” Gall roared. “My life is worth more than a little semen, you miserable creature.”
They were rolling over and over together on the ground when the two soldiers appeared, running hard. On catching sight of them, they stopped short. Their uniforms were half torn away, and one of them had lost his boots, but they were holding their rifles at the ready.
The Dwarf hid his head. Jurema ran to them, stepped in their line of fire, and begged: “Don’t shoot! They’re not jagunços…”
But the soldiers fired point blank at the two adversaries and then threw themselves upon her, grunting, and dragged her into the dry underbrush. Badly wounded, the tracker and the phrenologist went on fighting.
“I should be happy, since this means that my bodily suffering will be over, that I shall see the Father and the Blessed Virgin,” Maria Quadrado thought. But she was transfixed with fear, though she tried her best not to let the women of the Sacred Choir see that she was. If they noticed, they, too, would be paralyzed by fear and the entire structure devoted to caring for the Counselor would collapse. And in the hours to come, she was certain, the Sacred Choir would be needed more than ever. She asked God’s forgiveness for her cowardice and tried to pray as she always had, and had taught the women to do, as the Counselor met with the apostles. But she found herself unable to concentrate on the Credo. Abbot João and Big João were no longer insisting on taking the Counselor to the refuge, but the Street Commander was endeavoring to dissuade him from making the rounds of the trenches: the battle might take you by surprise, out in the open, with no protection, Father.
The Counselor never argued, and he did not do so now. He gently removed the head of the Lion of Natuba from his knees and placed it on the floor without disturbing the Lion’s sleep. He rose to his feet and Abbot João and Big João also stood up. He had become thinner still in recent days and looked even taller now. A shiver ran down Maria Quadrado’s spine as she saw how greatly troubled he was: his eyes narrowed in a deep frown, his mouth half open in a grimace that was like a terrible premonition.
She decided then and there to accompany him. She did not always do so, especially in recent weeks when, because of the press of the crowds in the narrow streets, the Catholic Guard was obliged to form such an unyielding wall around the Counselor that it had been difficult for her and the women of the Choir to stay close to him. But now she suddenly felt it absolutely necessary to go with him. She gestured and the women of the Choir flocked to her side. They followed the men out, leaving the Lion of Natuba fast asleep in the Sanctuary.
The appearance of the Counselor in the doorway of the Sanctuary took the crowd gathered there by surprise, so much so that they did not have time to block his path. At a signal from Big João, the men with blue armbands stationed in the open space between the small Chapel of Santo Antônio and the Temple under construction, to keep order among the pilgrims who had just arrived, ran to surround the saint, who was already s
She realized that amid the cries of “Long live the Counselor” there were voices calling her by name—“Mother Maria Quadrado! Mother of Men!”—seeking her out, pointing her out. This popularity seemed to her to be a trap set by the Devil. In the beginning, she had told herself that those who sought her intercession were pilgrims from Monte Santo who had known her there. But in the end she realized that she owed the veneration of which she was the object to the many years that she had devoted to serving the Counselor, that people believed that he had thereby imbued her with his own saintliness.