The War Of The End Of The World (49 page)

“You’re mistaken,” Gumúcio said. “They’re just waiting for Moreira César and the Seventh Regiment to enter Bahia with the Counselor’s head to turn Viana out of office, close down parliament, and begin the witch-hunt against us.”

“Has Epaminondas Gonçalves lost anything at the hands of the monarchist restorationists?” The baron smiled. “In addition to Canudos, I for my part have lost Calumbi, the oldest and most prosperous hacienda in the interior. I have more reasons than he does to welcome Moreira César as our savior.”

“Nonetheless, none of this explains why you allowed the English corpse to escape your grasp in such cavalier fashion,” José Bernardo said. The baron realized what a great effort it was costing the old man to utter these phrases. “Wasn’t he living proof of Epaminondas’s lack of scruples? Wasn’t he a prize witness to bring forward to testify to that ambitious man’s scorn for Brazil?”

“In theory, yes,” the baron agreed. “In the realm of hypotheses.”

“We would have paraded him in the same places that they paraded his famous mop of red hair,” Gumúcio murmured in an equally severe, hurt tone of voice.

“But not in practice,” the baron went on. “Gall is not a normal madman. No, don’t laugh. He’s a special type of madman: a fanatic. He would not have testified in our favor but against us. He would have confirmed Epaminondas’s accusations, and made us appear utterly ridiculous.”

“I must contradict you again, I regret to say,” Gumúcio said. “There are any number of ways to get the truth out of both sane men and madmen.”

“Not out of fanatics,” the baron shot back. “Not out of those whose beliefs are stronger than their fear of dying. Torture would have no effect on Gall; it would merely reinforce his convictions. The history of religion provides many examples…”

“In that case, it would have been preferable to put a bullet through him and deliver his dead body,” Murau muttered. “But simply to let him go…”

“I’m curious to know what happened to him,” the baron said. “To know who killed him. The guide, so as not to take him to Canudos? The
jagunços
, so as to rob him? Or Moreira César?”

“The guide?” Gumúcio’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “In addition to everything else, you gave him a guide?”

“And a horse.” The baron nodded. “I had a weak spot in my heart for him. I felt compassion, sympathy for him.”

“Compassion? Sympathy?” José Bernardo Murau repeated, rocking furiously in his chair. “For an anarchist who dreams of setting the world on fire, of wholesale bloodshed?”

“One who’s already left a number of dead bodies in his wake, to judge from his papers,” the baron said. “Unless they’re fake, which is also possible. The poor fellow was convinced that Canudos represents universal brotherhood, a materialist paradise. He spoke of the
jagunços
as though they were his political comrades, fellow believers. It was impossible not to feel affection for him.”

He noted that his friends were staring at him in greater and greater stupefaction.

“I have his testament,” he told them. “Difficult reading, full of all sorts of nonsense, but interesting. It includes a detailed account of the plot cooked up by Epaminondas: how the latter hired him, then tried to kill him, and so on.”

“It would have been better if he’d told his story publicly, in person,” Adalberto de Gumúcio said indignantly.

“Nobody would have believed him,” the baron replied. “The story dreamed up by Epaminondas Gonçalves, with its secret agents and arms smugglers, is more believable than the real one. I’ll translate a few paragraphs from it for you, after dinner. It’s in English, naturally.” He paused for a few seconds as he looked over at the baroness, who had sighed in her sleep. “Do you know why he gave me that testament? So I’d send it on to some anarchist rag in Lyons. Just think, I’m no longer conspiring with the British Crown but with French terrorists fighting for world revolution.”

He laughed as he watched his friends’ rage mounting by the second.

“As you see, we are unable to share your good humor,” Gumúcio said.

“I find that amusing, too, since it’s my property that’s been burned down.”

“Never mind your bad jokes, and explain to us once and for all what you’re up to,” Murau said reprovingly.

“It’s no longer important to do Epaminondas any harm whatsoever. He’s a boor, a country bumpkin,” the Baron de Canabrava said. “What’s important now is to reach an accommodation with the republicans. The war between us is over; circumstances have put an end to it. It’s not possible to wage two wars at the same time. The Scotsman was of no use to us, and in the long run he would only have complicated matters.”

“An accommodation with the Progressivist Republicans, you said?” Gumúcio stared at him in stupefaction.

“I said accommodation, but what I was thinking of was an alliance, a pact,” the baron answered. “It’s difficult to understand, and even more difficult to bring off, but there’s no other way. Well then, I think we may carry Estela to her room now.”

Drenched to the skin, curled up on a blanket indistinguishable from the mud, the nearsighted correspondent from the
Jornal de Notícias
hears the cannons roar. Partly because of the rain and partly because battle is imminent, no one is asleep. He pricks up his ears: are the bells of Canudos still pealing in the darkness? All he can hear is the cannons firing at intervals and bugles blowing the call to charge and slit throats. Have the
jagunços
also given a name to the symphony of whistles with which they have tortured the Seventh Regiment ever since Monte Santo? He is overcome with anxiety, frightened, shivering from the cold. He is soaked to his very bones from the rain. He thinks of his colleague, the elderly journalist who feels the cold so badly; on being left in the rear with the half-naked soldier boys, he said to him: “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, my young friend.” Is he dead? Have he and those youngsters met the same fate as the fair-haired sergeant and the soldiers of his patrol whose corpses they came upon late yesterday afternoon in the foothills of this mountain range? At that very moment the bells down below answer the bugles of the regiment, a dialogue in the dark, rainy shadows that are a prelude to the one that will take place between shotguns and rifles as soon as day breaks.

He might well have shared the fate that befell the fair-haired sergeant and his patrol: he had been about to agree when Moreira César suggested that he accompany them. Was it his fatigue that had saved him? A presentiment? Chance? That was just yesterday, but in his memory it seems a very long time ago, because all during the day just past, Canudos seemed like somewhere they would never reach. The head of the column stops and the nearsighted journalist remembers that his ears were ringing, that his legs were trembling, that his lips were chapped. The colonel is leading his horse by the reins and the officers are indistinguishable from the soldiers and the guides, for they all look the same on foot. He notes the fatigue, the dirt, the deprivation all around him. A dozen soldiers break ranks, step swiftly forward, and stand at attention before the colonel and Major Cunha Matos. The one who is to lead the patrol is the young sergeant who brought the parish priest of Cumbe in as a prisoner.

He hears him click his heels, repeat his orders. “Take up a commanding position at Caracatá close off the ravine with cross fire once the assault has begun.” The sergeant has the same resolute, healthy, optimistic spirit that he has noted in him at all times during the march. “Have no fear, sir, no outlaw is going to escape by way of Caracatá.”

Was the guide who lined up alongside the sergeant the same one who accompanied the patrols that went out to search for water? It was their guide at any rate who led the sergeant and his men into the ambush, and the nearsighted journalist thinks to himself that it is only by a sheer miracle that he is here, his mind in a daze. Colonel Moreira César spies him sitting on the ground, completely worn out, stiff and aching all over, with his portable writing desk on his knees. “Do you want to go with the patrol? You’ll be safer in Caracatá than you will be with us.”

What had made him say no, after a few seconds’ hesitation? He remembers that the young sergeant and he had talked together a number of times: he had asked him questions about the
Jornal de Notícias
and his work; Colonel Moreira César was the person he admired most in the world—“even more than Marshal Floriano”—and like the colonel, he believed that civilian politicians were a catastrophe for the Republic, a source of corruption and divisiveness, and that only men bearing swords and uniforms were capable of regenerating the Fatherland debased by monarchical rule.

Has it stopped raining? The nearsighted journalist turns over onto his back, without opening his eyes. Yes, it is no longer pouring; that fine penetrating mist is being driven their way by the wind sweeping down the hillside. The cannon fire has also stopped and his mental image of the young sergeant is replaced by that of the elderly journalist who suffers from the cold: his straw-colored hair that had turned almost white, his kindly face that had taken on a sickly cast, his muffler, his fingernails that he so often contemplated as though they were an aid to meditation. Was he, too, hanging dead from a tree? Not long after the patrol has left, a messenger has come to tell the colonel that something is happening among the youngsters. The company of youngsters! he thinks. It’s all written down, it’s in the bottom of the pouch he’s lying on top of so as to protect it from the rain, four or five pages telling the story of those adolescents, barely past childhood, that the Seventh Regiment recruits without asking them how old they are. Why does it do that? Because, according to Moreira César, youngsters have a surer aim, steadier nerves than adults. He has seen, has spoken with these soldiers fourteen or fifteen years old who are known as the youngsters. Hence, when he hears the messenger say that something is happening among them, the nearsighted journalist follows the colonel to the rear guard. Half an hour later they come upon them.

In the rain-drenched shadows, a shiver runs down his body from head to foot. The bugles and the bells ring out again, very loud now, but in the late-afternoon sun he continues to see the eight or nine soldier boys, squatting on their heels or lying exhausted on the gravelstrewn ground. The companies of the rear guard are leaving them behind. They are the youngest ones, they seem to be wearing masks, and are obviously dying of hunger and exhaustion. Dumfounded, the nearsighted journalist spies his colleague among them. A captain with a luxuriant mustache, who appears to be the victim of warring feelings—pity, anger, hesitation—greets the colonel: they refused to go any farther, sir. What should I do? The journalist does his best to spur his colleague on, to persuade him to get up, to pull himself together. “I needn’t have tried to reason with him,” he thinks. “If he’d had an ounce of strength left, he’d have gone on.” He remembers how his legs were all sprawled out, how pale his face was, how he lay there panting like a dog. One of the boys is whimpering: they’d rather you ordered them killed, sir, the blisters on their feet are infected, their heads are buzzing, they can’t go a single step farther. The youngster is sobbing, his hands joined as though in prayer, and little by little those who are not weeping also burst into tears, hiding their faces in their hands and curling up in a ball at the colonel’s feet.

He remembers the look in Moreira César’s cold little eyes as they sweep back and forth over the group. “I thought that it would make real men of you sooner if I put you in the ranks. You’re going to miss out on the best part of all. You boys have disappointed me. To keep you from being carried on the rolls as deserters, I’m giving you your discharge. Hand over your rifles and your uniforms.”

The nearsighted journalist gives half his water ration to his colleague, who immediately thanks him with a smile, as the youngsters, leaning weakly on each other, take off their high-buttoned tunics and kepis and hand their rifles over to the armorers.

“Don’t stay here, it’s too open,” Moreira César says to them. “Try to get back to the rocky hilltop where we halted to rest this morning. Hide there till a patrol comes past. There isn’t much chance of that, however.”

He turns on his heels and returns to the head of the column. As his farewell words to him, his colleague whispers to the journalist: “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, my young friend.” With his absurd muffler wound around his neck, the old man stays behind, sitting there like a class monitor amid half-naked, bawling kids. He thinks: “It rained back there, too.” He imagines the surprise, the happiness, the resurrection that this sudden downpour, sent by heaven seconds after it was hidden from sight by dark, lowering clouds, must have been for the old man and the youngsters. He imagines their disbelief, their smiles, their mouths opening greedily, joyously, their hands cupping to catch the drops; he imagines the boys rising to their feet, hugging each other, refreshed, encouraged, restored body and soul. Have they begun marching again, perhaps catching up with the rear guard? Hunching over till his chin is touching his knees, the nearsighted journalist tells himself that this isn’t so: their mental and physical states were such that not even the rain would have been capable of getting them on their feet again.

How many hours has it been raining now? It began at nightfall, as the vanguard was starting to take up positions on the heights of Canudos. There is an indescribable explosion of joy throughout the regiment; men from the ranks and officers leap about, clap each other on the back, drink out of their kepis, stand with outstretched arms beneath the deluge from the sky; the colonel’s white horse whinnies, shakes its mane, stamps its hoofs in the mud that is beginning to form. The nearsighted journalist manages only to raise his head, close his eyes, open his mouth, his nostrils, incredulous, sent into ecstasies by these drops that are pelting his very bones. He is so absorbed, so overjoyed that he hears neither the shots nor the cries of the soldier rolling about on the ground alongside him, moaning with pain and clutching his face. When he finally becomes aware of the chaos round about him, he stoops over, picks up the portable writing desk and the leather pouch, and puts them over his head. From this miserable refuge he sees Captain Olímpio de Castro shooting his revolver and soldiers running for shelter or flinging themselves face down in the mud. And between the muddy legs scissoring back and forth he sees—the image is frozen in his memory like a daguerreotype—Colonel Moreira César grabbing the reins of his horse, leaping into the saddle, and with saber unsheathed charging, not knowing if any of his men are following him, toward the patch of scrub from which the shots have come. “He was shouting ‘Long live the Republic,’ ‘Long live Brazil,’” he thinks to himself. In the lead-colored light, amid the pouring rain and the wind whipping the trees back and forth, officers and men break into a run, echoing the colonel’s shouts, and—forgetting the cold and his panic for a moment, the correspondent from the
Jornal de Notícias
laughs to himself, remembering—he suddenly finds himself running, too, right alongside them, toward the thicket, to confront the invisible enemy, too. He remembers thinking as he stumbled along how stupid he was to be running toward a battle that he was not going to fight. What would he have fought it with? His portable writing desk? The leather pouch containing his changes of clothes and his papers? His empty inkwell? But the enemy, naturally, never appears.

“What did appear was worse,” he thinks, and another shiver runs down his spine, like a lizard. Once again he sees the landscape, in the ashen afternoon that is beginning to turn to dusk, become a phantasmagoria, with strange human fruit hanging from the
umburanas
and the thornbushes, and boots, scabbards, tunics, kepis dangling from the branches. Some of the corpses are already skeletons picked clean of eyes, bellies, buttocks, muscles, privates by vultures or rodents, and their nakedness stands out sharply against the spectral greenish-gray of the trees and the dark-colored earth. Standing rooted to the spot for an instant by the incredible sight, he then walks in a daze amid these remains of men and uniforms adorning the
caatinga
. Moreira César has dismounted and is surrounded by the officers and men who have followed him as he charged. They are petrified. The shouts and the mad dashes of a moment before have been succeeded by a deep silence, a tense motionlessness. They are all standing staring at the sight before them, and on their faces stupefaction, fear gradually give way to sadness, anger. The young fair-haired sergeant’s head is still intact—though the eyes are gone—and his body a mass of dark purple bruises and protruding bones, with swollen wounds that seem to be bleeding as the rain streams down. He sways back and forth, very slowly. From that moment on, even before being overcome with pity and horror, the nearsighted journalist has thought about what he cannot help thinking about, what is gnawing at him this minute and preventing him from sleeping: the stroke of luck, the miracle that kept him from being there too, naked, hacked to pieces, castrated by the knives of the
jagunços
or the beaks of the vultures, hanging amid the cacti. Someone breaks into sobs. It is Captain Olímpio de Castro, who raises his arms to his face, his pistol still in his hand. In the half shadow, the nearsighted journalist sees that other officers and men are also weeping for the fair-haired sergeant and his patrol, whom they have begun taking down. Moreira César remains there, witnessing this operation that is taking place in the gathering dark, his face set in a stony expression he has never seen on it before. Wrapped in blankets, the corpses are buried immediately, side by side, by soldiers who present arms in the darkness and fire a rifle volley in their honor.6

After the bugler has blown taps, Moreira César points with his sword at the mountainside before them and delivers a very short speech. “The murderers have not fled, men. They are there, awaiting punishment. I say no more now, in order that bayonets and rifles may speak.”

He hears the roar of the cannon again, closer this time, and gives a start, wide awake now. He remembers that in the last few days he has hardly sneezed once, not even in this rainy dampness, and he tells himself that the expedition will have been worthwhile to him for one reason at least: the nightmare of his life, the fits of sneezing that drove his fellow workers at the newspaper mad and often kept him awake all night long, have become less frequent, have perhaps disappeared altogether. He remembers that he began to smoke opium, not so much because he wanted to have the dreams it brings as because he wanted to sleep without sneezing, and he says to himself: “What a dull clod I am.” He turns over on his side and looks up at the sky: a black expanse without a spark of light. It is so dark he cannot make out the faces of the soldiers lying next to him, to his right and to his left. But he can hear their heavy breathing, the words that escape their lips. Every so often, some of them get up and others lie down as the former climb up to the top of the mountain to take their places. He thinks: “It’s going to be terrible.” Something that can never be faithfully reproduced in writing. He thinks: “They are filled with hatred, intoxicated by their desire for vengeance, the desire to make someone pay for their exhaustion, hunger, thirst, the horses and animals lost, and above all for the mutilated, outraged dead bodies of the comrades they saw leave a few short hours before to take Caracatá.” He thinks: “It was what they needed to reach a fever pitch. That hatred is what has enabled them to scale the rocky mountainsides at a frenetic pace, clenching their teeth, and what must be causing them to lie there unable to sleep now, clutching their weapons, looking down obsessively from the crest at the shadows below where their prey awaits them, hated in the beginning out of duty but hated intimately and personally now, like enemies from whom it is their duty to collect a debt of honor owed them.”