The War Of The End Of The World (56 page)

“Let’s get out of here this minute,” the Dwarf begged her. “Let’s go, Jurema, let’s go. Now that the cannons have stopped firing.”

Jurema had been sitting there, looking at Rufino and Gall, without realizing that the sun was tingeing the
caatinga
with gold, drying up the raindrops and evaporating the humidity in the air and the underbrush. The Dwarf shook her.

“Where are we going to go?” she answered, feeling great fatigue and a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach.

“To Cumbe, to Jeremoabo, anywhere,” the Dwarf insisted, tugging at her skirt.

“And which way is it to Cumbe, to Jeremoabo?” Jurema murmured. “Do we have any idea? Do you know?”

“It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!” the Dwarf yelped, pulling at her. “Didn’t you hear the
jagunços
? They’re going to fight here, there’s going to be shooting here, we’re going to be killed.”

Jurema rose to her feet and took a few steps toward the mantle of woven grass that the
jagunços
had put over her when they rescued her from the soldiers. It felt damp. She threw it over the corpses of the guide and the stranger, trying to cover the parts of their bodies that had been battered worst: their torsos and their heads. Then, suddenly determined to overcome her apathy, she set out in the direction that she remembered seeing Pajeú take off in. She immediately felt a chubby little hand in her right hand.

“Where are we going?” the Dwarf asked. “And what about the soldiers?”

She shrugged. The soldiers, the
jagunços
: what did she care? She had had enough of everything and everybody, and her one desire was to forget everything she’d seen. As they walked on, she gathered leaves and little twigs to suck the sap from them.

“Shots,” the Dwarf said. “Shots, shots.”

It was heavy fire. In a few seconds the din filled the dense, serpentine
caatinga
, which seemed to multiply the bursts and volleys. But not a single living creature was to be seen anywhere about: only rising ground covered with brambles and leaves torn off the trees by the rain, mud puddles, and thickets of
macambiras
with branches like claws and
mandacarus
and
xiquexiques
with sharp thorns. She had lost her sandals at some point during the night, and though she had gone about barefoot for a good part of her life, she could feel how badly cut and bruised her feet were. The hillside grew steeper and steeper. The sun shone full in her face and seemed to mend her limbs, to bring them back to life. She realized that something was up when the Dwarf’s fingernails dug into her flesh. Some four yards away a short-barreled, wide-mouthed blunderbuss was aimed straight at them, held in the hands of a man from the vegetable kingdom, with bark for skin, limbs that were branches, and hair that was tufts of grass.

“Clear out of here,” the
jagunço
said, poking his face out of his mantle. “Didn’t Pajeú tell you that you should go to the Jeremoabo entrance?”

“I don’t know how to get there,” Jurema answered.

“Shh, shhh,” she heard voices say at this moment, as though the bushes and the cacti had started to speak. Then she saw men’s heads appear amid the branches.

“Hide them,” she heard Pajeú order, without being able to tell where his voice was coming from, and felt herself being shoved to the ground, crushed beneath the body of a man who whispered to her as he enveloped her with his mantle of woven grasses: “Shhh, shhh.” She lay there motionless, with her eyes half closed, stealing cautious glances. She could feel the
jagunço
’s breath in her ear and wondered if the same thing had happened to the Dwarf as had happened to her. She spied the soldiers. Her heart skipped a beat on seeing how close they were. They were marching in a column, two abreast, in their trousers with red stripes and their blue tunics, their black boots and their rifles with naked bayonets. She held her breath, closed her eyes, waiting for the shots to ring out, but as nothing happened, she opened them again and the soldiers were still there, passing by them. She could see their eyes, feverish with anxiety or bloodshot from lack of sleep, their faces, undaunted or terrified, and make out a few scattered words of what they were saying. Wasn’t it incredible that so many soldiers should pass by without discovering that there were
jagunços
so close that they could almost touch them, so close that they were almost stepping on them?

And at this moment a great blinding flash of exploding gunpowder filled the
caatinga
, reminding her for a second of the fiesta of Santo Antônio, in Queimadas, when the circus came to town and fireworks were set off. Amid the fusillade, she caught sight of a rain of silhouettes dressed in grass cloaks falling or flinging themselves upon the men dressed in uniforms, and amid the smoke and the roar of gunfire she found herself free of the weight of the
jagunço
pinning her down, lifted up, dragged along, as voices said to her: “Crouch down, crouch down.” She obeyed, hunching over, tucking her head between her shoulders, and ran as fast as her legs would carry her, expecting at any moment to feel the smack of bullets hitting her in the back, almost wishing that that would happen. The dash left her dripping with sweat and feeling as though she were about to spit up her heart.

Just then she spied the
caboclo
without a nose standing alongside her, looking at her with gentle mockery in his eyes: “Who won the fight? Your husband or the lunatic?”

“The two of them killed each other,” she panted.

“All the better for you,” Pajeú commented with a smile. “You can look for another husband now, in Belo Monte.”

The Dwarf was at her side, gasping for breath, too. She caught a glimpse of Canudos. It was spread out there in front of her, the entire length and breadth of it, shaken by explosions, licked by tongues of fire, drifted over with scattered clouds of smoke, as overhead a clear blue sky belied this disorder and a bright sun beat down. Her eyes filled with tears and she felt a sudden hatred against that city and those men, killing each other in those narrow little streets like burrows. Her misfortunes had begun because of this place; the stranger had come to her house because of Canudos, and that had been the start of the misadventures that had left her without anything or anybody in the world, lost in the midst of a war. She wished with all her heart for a miracle, for nothing to have happened, for Rufino and her to be as they had been before, back, in Queimadas.

“Don’t cry, girl,” the
caboclo
said to her. “Don’t you know the dead are going to be brought back to life? Haven’t you heard? There’s such a thing as the resurrection of the flesh.”

His voice was calm, as though he and his men had not just had a gunfight with the soldiers. She dried her tears with her hand and looked around, reconnoitering the place. It was a shortcut between the hills, a sort of tunnel. To her left was an overhanging wall of stones and rocks without vegetation that hid the mountain from view, and to her right the somewhat sparse
caatinga
descended till it gave way to a rocky stretch of ground which, beyond a broad river, was transformed into a jumble of little jerry-built dwellings with reddish roofs. Pajeú placed something in her hand, and without looking to see what it was, she raised it to her mouth. She ate the soft, sour fruit in little bites. The men in the grass mantles were gradually scattering, hugging the bushes, disappearing in hiding places dug in the ground. Again the chubby little hand sought hers. She felt pity and tenderness toward this familiar presence. “Hide in here,” Pajeú ordered, pushing aside some branches. Once the two of them had crouched down in the ditch, he explained to them, pointing to the rocks: “The dogs are up there.” In the hole was another
jagunço
, a toothless man who hunched up to make room for them. He had a crossbow and a quiver full of arrows.

“What’s going to happen?” the Dwarf whispered.

“Be still,” the
jagunço
said. “Didn’t you hear? the heretics are right above us.”

Jurema peeked out through the branches. The shots continued, sparse and intermittent now, followed by puffs of smoke and the flames of fires, but from their hiding place she could not see the little uniformed figures she’d spied crossing the river and disappearing into the town. “Don’t move,” the
jagunço
said, and for the second time that day soldiers appeared out of nowhere. This time they were cavalrymen, two abreast, mounted on whinnying brown, black, bay, speckled horses, who suddenly emerged, incredibly close at hand, below the rock wall on her left and galloped on toward the river. They appeared to be about to roll down the almost vertical slope, but the animals kept their balance, and she saw them pass swiftly by, using their hind legs to brake themselves. She was dizzied by the succession of cavalrymen’s faces flashing by and the sabers that the officers were brandishing to point the way, when suddenly there was a stir in the
caatinga
. The men in grass mantles emerged from the holes, the branches, and fired their shotguns, or, like the
jagunço
who had been with them and was now creeping downhill, riddled them with arrows that hissed like snakes. She heard, very distinctly, Pajeú’s voice: “Go after the horses, those of you who have machetes.” She could no longer see the cavalrymen, but she imagined them splashing in the river—amid a fusillade and a distant pealing of bells she could hear whinnying—and being struck in the back, without knowing where they were coming from, by those arrows and bullets that she could see and hear the
jagunços
scattered about her shooting. Some of them, standing upright, were steadying their carbines or crossbows on branches of the
mandacarus
. The
caboclo
with the nose missing was not shooting. He was standing directing his men to the right or to the left. At that moment the Dwarf clutched her belly so tightly that she could barely breathe. She could feel him trembling, put her two arms round him, and rocked him back and forth: “They’ve passed now, they’re gone, look!” But when she looked herself, there was another cavalryman there, on a white horse, its mane ruffled by the wind as it galloped down the slope. The little officer riding it was holding its reins with one hand and brandishing a saber in the other. He was so close that she could see his frowning face, his burning eyes, and a moment later she saw him hunch over, his face suddenly blank. Pajeú had his carbine aimed at him and she thought that he was the one who had shot at him. She saw the white horse caracole, wheel about in one of those pirouettes that cowboys put their mounts through to impress the crowds at fairs, and saw it climb back up the slope with its rider clinging to its neck. As it disappeared from sight, she saw Pajeú aiming once again and doubtless getting off another shot.

“Let’s get out of here, let’s get out of here. We’re in the midst of the battle,” the Dwarf whimpered, huddling up next to her again.

“Shut up, you stupid idiot, you coward,” Jurema insulted him. The Dwarf fell silent, drew away, and stared at her in terror, his eyes begging forgiveness. The din of explosions, gunfire, bugle calls, pealing bells continued and the men in grass mantles disappeared, running or crawling down the wooded slope that descended in the distance to the river and Canudos. She looked around for Pajeú and he, too, was no longer there. The two of them were all alone now. What should she do? Stay where she was? Follow the
jagunços
? Look for a trail that would lead her away from Canudos? She felt dead tired, a stiffness in her every joint and muscle, as though her body were protesting against the mere idea of budging from the spot. She leaned her back against the damp side of the pit and closed her eyes. She felt herself drifting, falling into sleep.

When awakened by the Dwarf shaking her, murmuring apologies for rousing her, she found herself barely able to move. Her bones ached and she was obliged to massage the nape of her neck. Darkness was already falling, to judge from the slanting shadows and the fading light. The deafening din that assailed her ears was not a dream. “What’s happening?” she asked, her tongue feeling parched and swollen. “They’re coming this way. Can’t you hear them?” the Dwarf murmured, pointing down the slope. “We must go have a look,” Jurema said. The Dwarf clung to her, trying to hold her back, but when she climbed out of the pit, he followed her on all fours. She walked down to the rocks and brambles where Pajeú had disappeared from sight, and squatted on her heels. Despite the cloud of dust, she spied a swarm of dark ants moving about on the foothills below her and thought it was more soldiers descending to the river, but she soon realized that they were not moving downward but upward, that they were fleeing from Canudos. Yes, there was no doubt of it, they were emerging from the river, on the run, making for the heights, and on the far side of it she saw groups of men shooting and chasing after isolated soldiers who ran out from between the huts, trying to reach the riverbank. Yes, the soldiers were fleeing, and it was the
jagunços
now who were pursuing them. “They’re coming this way,” the Dwarf whined, and her blood froze as she noticed that because she had been watching the hillsides opposite, she had not realized that there was a battle going on at her feet as well, on both banks of the Vaza-Barris. That was where the uproar that she had thought she’d dreamed had been coming from.

She glimpsed—in a dizzying confusion, half blotted out by the dust and the smoke that deformed bodies, faces—horses that had fallen and been stranded on the riverbanks, some of them dying, for they were moving their long necks as though asking for help to get themselves out of that muddy water in which they were about to drown or bleed to death. A riderless horse with only three legs was wheeling about, maddened with pain, trying to bite its tail, amid soldiers who were fording the river with their rifles over their heads, as others appeared, running and screaming from amid the walls of Canudos. They burst out by twos and threes, some of them running backward like scorpions, and plunged into the water, trying to reach the slope where she and the Dwarf were. They were being shot at from somewhere, because some of them fell, howling, wailing, but others of those in uniform were beginning to clamber up the rocks.