The War Of The End Of The World (10 page)

For João, a life then began that made a man of him in a very short time—“an evil man,” the people of the provinces that he traveled the length and breadth of in the next twenty years would add—as a hanger-on at first of parties of men whose clothes he washed, whose meals he prepared, whose buttons he sewed back on, or whose lice he picked, and later on as an accomplice of their villainy, then after that as the best marksman, tracker, knife fighter, coverer of ground, and strategist of the
cangaço
, and finally as lieutenant and then leader of it. Before he was twenty-five, his was the head with the highest price on it in the barracks of Bahia, Pernambuco, O Piauí, and Ceará. His miraculous luck, which saved him from ambushes in which his comrades were killed or captured and which seemed to immunize him against bullets despite his daring, caused the story to go round that he had a pact with the Devil. Be that as it may, it was quite true that, unlike other men in the
cangaço
, who went around loaded down with holy medals, made the sign of the cross whenever they chanced upon a wayside cross or calvary, and at least once a year slipped into some town so that the priest could put their consciences at peace with God, João (who in the beginning had been called João the Kid, then João Faster-than-Lightning, then João the Quiet One, and was now called Satan João) appeared to be scornful of religion and resigned to going to hell to pay for his countless heinous deeds.

An outlaw’s life, the nephew of Zé Faustino and Dona Angela might have said, consisted of walking, fighting, and stealing. But above all of walking. How many hundreds of leagues were covered in these years by the strong, muscular, restless legs of this man who could walk for twenty hours at a stretch without tiring? They had walked up and down the
sertão
in all directions, and no one knew better than they the folds in the hills, the tangles in the scrub, the meanders in the rivers, the caves in the mountains. These aimless wanderings across country in Indian file, trying to put distance between
cangaço
and real or imaginary pursuers from the National Guard or to confuse them, were, in João’s memory, a single, endless ramble through identical landscapes, disturbed now and again by the whine of bullets and the screams of the wounded, as they headed toward some vague place or obscure event that seemed to be awaiting them.

For a long time he thought that what lay in store for him was returning to Custódia to wreak his vengeance. Years after the death of his aunt and uncle, he stole into the hamlet of his childhood one moonlit night, leading a dozen men. Was this the journey’s end they had been heading for all during the long, bloody trek? Drought had driven many families out of Custódia, but there were still a few huts with people living in them, and despite the fact that among the faces of the inhabitants, gummy-eyed with sleep, whom his men drove out into the street there were a number that João did not recognize, he exempted no one from punishment. The womenfolk, even the little girls and the very old ladies, were forced to dance with the
cangaceiros
, who had already drunk up all the alcohol in Custódia, while the townspeople sang and played guitars. Every so often, the women and girls were dragged to the closest hut and raped. Finally, one of the menfolk began to cry, out of helplessness or terror. Satan João thereupon plunged his knife into him and slit him wide open, the way a butcher slaughters a steer. This bloodshed had the effect of an order, and shortly thereafter the
cangaceiros
, crazed with excitement, began to shoot off their blunderbusses, not stopping till they had turned the one street in Custódia into a graveyard. Even more than the wholesale killing, what contributed to the forging of the legend of Satan João was the fact that he humiliated each of the males personally after they were dead, cutting off their testicles and stuffing them into their mouths (this was his usual procedure with police informers). As they were leaving Custódia, he had one of the men in his band scribble on a wall the words: “My aunt and uncle have collected the debt that was owed them.”

How much truth was there in the stories of atrocities attributed to Satan João? For that many fires, kidnappings, sackings, tortures to have been committed would have required more lives and henchmen than João’s thirty years on this earth and the bands under his command, which never numbered as many as twenty men. What contributed to his fame was the fact that, unlike other leaders of
cangaços
, Pajeú for instance, who compensated for the blood they shed by sudden bursts of generosity—sharing booty they had just taken among the poor of the place, forcing a landowner to open his storerooms to the sharecroppers, handing over all of a ransom extorted from a victim to some parish priest so that he might build a chapel, or paying the expenses of the feast in honor of the patron saint of a town—no one had ever heard of João’s making such gestures with the intention of winning people’s sympathies or the blessings of heaven. Neither of these two things mattered to him.

He was a robust man, taller than the average in the
sertão
, with burnished skin, prominent cheekbones, slanted eyes, a broad forehead, laconic, a fatalist, who had pals and subordinates but no friends. He did have a woman, a girl from Quixeramobim whom he had met because she washed clothes in the house of a hacienda owner who served as
coiteiro
for the band. Her name was Leopoldina, and she was round-faced, with expressive eyes and a firm, ample body. She lived with João during the time he remained in hiding at the hacienda and when he took off again she left with him. But she did not accompany him for long, because João would not allow women in the band. He installed her in Aracati, where he came to see her every so often. He did not marry her, so that when people found out that Leopoldina had run away from Aracati to Jeremoabo with a judge, they thought that the offense to João was not as serious as it would have been if she were his wife. João avenged himself as though she were. He went to Quixeramobim, cut off her ears, branded Leopoldina’s two brothers, and carried her thirteen-year-old sister, Mariquinha, off with him. The girl appeared early one morning in the streets of Jeremoabo with her face branded with the initials S and J. She was pregnant and there was a sign around her neck explaining that all the men of the band were, collectively, the baby’s father.

Other bandits dreamed of getting together enough reis to buy themselves some land in a remote township where they could live for the rest of their lives under another name. João was never one to put money aside or make plans for the future. When the
cangaço
attacked a general store or a hamlet or obtained a good ransom for somebody it had kidnapped, after setting aside the share of the spoils that he would hand over to the
coiteiros
he’d commissioned to buy him weapons, ammunition, and medicines, João would divide the rest into equal shares for himself and each of his comrades. This largesse, his cleverness at setting up ambushes for the flying brigades or escaping from those that were set up for him, his courage and his ability to impose discipline made his men as faithful as hound dogs to him. They felt safe with him, and fairly treated. Even though he never forced them to face any risk that he himself did not confront, he did not coddle them in the slightest. If they fell asleep on guard duty, lagged behind on a march, or stole from a comrade, he flogged them. If one of them retreated when he had given orders to stand and fight, he marked him with his initials or lopped off one of his ears. He administered all punishments himself, coldly. And he was also the one who castrated traitors.

Though they feared him, his men also seemed to love him, perhaps because João had never left a comrade behind after an armed encounter. The wounded were carried off to some hideout in a hammock litter suspended from a tree trunk even when such an operation exposed the band to danger. João himself took care of them, and, if necessary, had a male nurse brought to the hideout by force to attend to the victim. The dead were also removed from the scene of combat so as to bury them in a spot where their bodies would not be profaned by the Guardsmen or by birds of prey. This and the infallible intuition with which he led his men in combat, breaking them up into separate groups that ran every which way so as to confuse the adversary, while others circled round and fell upon the enemy’s rear guard, or the ruses he came up with to break out when the band found itself encircled, enhanced his authority; he never found it difficult to recruit new members for his
cangaço
.

His subordinates were intrigued by this taciturn, withdrawn leader different from themselves. He wore the same sombrero and the same sandals as they, but did not share their fondness for brilliantine and perfume—the very first thing they pounced on in the stores—nor did he wear rings on every finger or cover his chest with medals. His knapsacks had fewer decorations than those of the rawest recruit. His one weakness was wandering
cantadores
, whom he never allowed his men to mistreat. He looked after their needs with great deference, asked them to recite something, and listened to them very gravely, never interrupting them in the middle of a story. Whenever he ran into the Gypsy’s Circus he had them give a performance for him and sent them on their way with presents.

Someone once heard Satan João say that he had seen more people die from alcohol, which ruined men’s aims and made them knife each other for stupid reasons, than from sickness or drought. As though to prove him right, the day that Captain Geraldo Macedo and his flying brigade surprised him, the entire
cangaço
was drunk. The captain, who had been nicknamed Bandit-Chaser, had come out into the backlands to hunt João down after the latter had attacked a committee from the Bahia Autonomist Party, which had just held a meeting with the Baron de Canabrava on his hacienda in Calumbi. João ambushed the committee, sent its bodyguards running in all directions, and relieved the politicians of valises, horses, clothing, and money. The baron himself sent a message to Captain Macedo offering him a special reward for the
cangaceiro
’s head.

It happened in Rosário, a town of half a hundred dwellings where Satan João’s men turned up early one morning in February. A short time before, they had had a bloody encounter with a rival band, Pajeú’s
cangaço
, and merely wanted to rest. The townspeople agreed to give them food, and João paid for what they consumed, as well as for all the blunderbusses, shotguns, gunpowder, and bullets that he had been able to lay his hands on. The people of Rosário invited the
cangaceiros
to stay on for the feast they would be having, two days later, to celebrate the marriage of a cowboy and the daughter of a townsman. The chapel had been decorated with flowers and the local men and women were wearing their best clothes that noon when Father Joaquim arrived from Cumbe to officiate at the wedding. The little priest was so terrified at finding
cangaceiros
present that all of them burst out laughing as he stammered and stuttered and stumbled over his words. Before saying Mass, he heard confession from half the town, including several of the bandits. Then he attended the fireworks show and the open-air lunch, under an arbor, and drank toasts to the bride and groom along with the townspeople. But afterward he was so insistent on returning to Cumbe that João suddenly became suspicious. He forbade anyone to budge outside Rosário and he himself explored all the country round about, from the mountain side of the town to the one opposite, a bare plateau. He found no sign of danger. He returned to the wedding celebration, frowning. His men, drunk by now, were dancing and singing amid the townfolk.

Half an hour later, unable to bear the nervous tension, Father Joaquim confessed to him, trembling and sniveling, that Captain Macedo and his flying brigade were at the top of the mountain ridge, awaiting reinforcements so as to launch an attack. The priest had been ordered by Bandit-Chaser to delay João by using any trick he could think of. At that moment the first shots rang out from the direction of the plateau. They were surrounded. Amid all the confusion, João shouted to the
cangaceiros
to hold out as best they could till nightfall. But the bandits had had so much to drink that they couldn’t even tell where the shots were coming from. They presented easy targets for the Guardsmen with their Comblains and fell to the ground bellowing, amid a hail of gunfire punctuated by the screams of the women running this way and that, trying to escape the crossfire. When night came, there were only four
cangaceiros
still on their feet, and João, who was fighting with a bullet through his shoulder, fainted. His men wrapped him in a hammock litter and began climbing the mountain. Aided by a sudden torrential rain, they broke through the enemy encirclement. They took shelter in a cave, and four days later they entered Tepidó, where a healer brought João’s fever down and stanched his wound. They stayed there for two weeks, till Satan João was able to walk again. The night they left Tepidó they learned that Captain Macedo had decapitated the corpses of their comrades who had been killed in Rosário and carried off the heads in a barrel, salted down like jerky.

They plunged back into their daily round of violence, without thinking too much about their lucky stars or about the unlucky stars of the others. Once more they walked, stole, fought, hid out, their lives continually hanging by a thread. Satan João still had an indefinable feeling in his breast, the certainty that at any moment now something was going to happen that he had been waiting for ever since he could remember.

They came upon the hermitage, half fallen to ruins, along a turnoff of the trail leading to Cansanção. Standing before half a hundred people in rags and tatters, a tall, strikingly thin man, enveloped in a dark purple tunic, was speaking. He did not interrupt his peroration or even cast a glance at the newcomers. João had the dizzying feeling that something was boiling in his brain as he listened to what the saint was saying. He was telling the story of a sinner who, after having committed every evil deed under the sun, repented, lived a dog’s life, won God’s pardon, and went to heaven. When the man ended his story, he looked at the strangers. Without hesitating, he addressed João, who was standing there with his eyes lowered. “What is your name?” he asked him. “Satan João,” the
cangaceiro
murmured. “You had best call yourself Abbot João, that is to say, an apostle of the Blessed Jesus,” the hoarse voice said.