The War Of The End Of The World (16 page)

He was born with very short legs and an enormous head, so the inhabitants of Natuba thought it would be better for him and for his parents if the Blessed Jesus took him right away, since if he survived he would be crippled and a cretin. Only the first turned out to be so. Because, even though the youngest son of Celestino Pardinas, the horsebreaker, was never able to walk like other people, he had a keen intelligence, a mind eager to know everything and capable, once a piece of knowledge had gone into that massive head that made people laugh, of retaining it forever. Everything about him was unusual: the fact that he had been born deformed in a family as normal as the Pardinases; that despite being a feeble, ridiculous-looking child he did not die or suffer illnesses; that instead of going about on two feet like humans he went about on all fours; and that his head became so monstrously large that it seemed like a miracle that his frail little body could hold it up. But what caused the townspeople of Natuba to begin to murmur among themselves that he had not been fathered by the horsebreaker but by the Devil was the fact that he had learned to read and write without anyone having taught him.

Neither Celestino nor Dona Gaudência had taken the trouble—thinking, probably, that it would be useless—to take him to Dom Asênio, who, besides making bricks, taught Portuguese, a bit of Latin, and a smattering of religion. But it so happened that the post rider came one day and nailed up on the official announcement board in the main square a decree that he did not bother to read aloud, claiming that he still had to post it in ten other localities before the sun went down. The townspeople were trying to decipher the hieroglyphics when from underfoot they heard the Lion’s little piping voice: “It says that there’s an animal epidemic going round, that stables must be disinfected with creosote, all garbage burned, and water and milk boiled before drinking.” Dom Asênio confirmed that that was what it said. Pestered by the villagers to tell them who had taught him to read, the Lion gave an explanation that many of them found suspect: that he had learned by watching those who knew how, men such as Dom Asênio, Felisbelo the overseer, Dom Abelardo the healer, and Zózimo the tinsmith. None of them had given him lessons, but the four of them remembered having often seen the Lion’s huge head with its thick mane and his inquisitive eyes appear alongside the stool where they were reading aloud to someone in the town a letter that the person had received or writing one for him at his dictation. The fact is that the Lion had learned and from that time on he could be seen at any hour of the day hunched over in the shade of the blue jasmine trees of Natuba reading and rereading newspapers, prayer books, missals, edicts, and anything printed that he could lay his hands on. He became the person who wrote, with a goose quill he had sharpened himself and a tincture of cochineal and various plants, in large, flowing letters, the birthday greetings, announcements of births, deaths, weddings, news of sickness, or simple gossip that the townspeople of Natuba wanted to send to people in other towns and that the post rider came to collect once a week. The Lion also read aloud to the villagers the letters that were sent them. He served as scribe and reader for the others as a pastime, without charging them a cent, but sometimes he received presents for performing these services.

His real name was Felício, but as frequently happened in those parts, once the nickname took hold, it replaced his Christian name. They called him the Lion as a joke perhaps, a nickname undoubtedly brought to mind by his enormous head, but in time, as if to prove that the jokers hadn’t been far from the truth, it in fact came to be covered with a thick mane that hid his ears and tossed about as he moved. Or perhaps the name came from his way of walking, which was unquestionably animal-like, for he used both his feet and his hands to get about (protecting them with leather soles that served as hoofs, so to speak, or horseshoes), although his gait, what with his little short legs and his long arms that touched the ground every so often as he went along, was more like that of a simian than that of a feline predator. He was not doubled over like that all the time: he could stand erect for brief periods and take a few human steps on his ridiculous legs, but both these things were very tiring for him. Because of his peculiar manner of locomotion, he never wore pants, only long robes, like women, missionaries, or the penitents of the Blessed Jesus.

Despite the fact that he took care of their correspondence, the townspeople never completely accepted the Lion. If his own father and mother could scarcely hide their shame at being his procreators and at one time tried to give him away, how could the men and women of Natuba have been expected to look upon this creature as belonging to the same species as they? The dozen Pardinas offspring who were his brothers and sisters wanted nothing to do with him, and it was common knowledge that he did not eat with them at the same table but at a wooden crate by himself. Hence, he knew neither paternal nor fraternal love (although he apparently had glimpses of another sort of love) nor friendship, for youngsters his age were afraid of him at first and later on repelled by him. They threw stones at him, spat on him, insulted him if he dared come near them to watch them play. He, for his part, moreover, rarely attempted to do so. From a very early age, his intuition or his unfailing intelligence told him that others would always be creatures who shunned him or were disagreeable to him, and would often even be his torturers, so that he had best remain apart from everyone. And that was what he did, at least until what happened at the irrigation ditch, and people saw him always warily keeping his distance, even at festivals and market fairs. When a Holy Mission came to Natuba, the Lion listened to the sermons from the rooftop of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, like a cat. But even this strategy of withdrawal did not suffice to lay his fears to rest. The Gypsy’s Circus was the cause of one of his worst scares. It passed through Natuba twice a year with its caravan of monsters: acrobats, fortune-tellers,
cantadores
, clowns. On one of its visits, the Gypsy asked the horsebreaker and Dona Gaudência to let him take the Lion away with him as a circus hand. “My circus is the only place where he won’t attract attention, and he can make himself useful,” he told them. They agreed. The Gypsy took him off with him, but a week later the Lion had escaped and was back in Natuba. From that time on, every time the Gypsy’s Circus came to town, he was nowhere to be found.

What he feared, above all else, were drunks, those bands of cowhands who returned to town after a day’s work herding, branding, gelding, or cropping, dismounted, and hurried to Dona Epifânia’s tavern to quench their thirst. They would come out arm in arm, singing, staggering, happy at times, in a rage at others, and would go looking for him in the narrow back streets to amuse themselves at his expense or let off steam. He had developed an unusually acute sense of hearing and could tell from a long way away, from their boisterous laughter and their swear words, that they were coming, and then, hugging the walls and the façades of buildings so they wouldn’t catch sight of him, he would hop on home as fast as he could, or, if he was far from home, he would hide in the brush or on a rooftop till the danger was past. He didn’t always manage to escape them. Sometimes, by resorting to a trick—sending someone to tell him, for instance, that So-and-so was asking for him because he needed to draft a petition to be presented to the town magistrate—they would manage to trap him. And they would then torment him for hours, stripping him naked to see if he had other monstrosities hidden underneath his tunic in addition to the ones that were plainly visible, mounting him on a horse, or trying to mate him with a she-goat to see what sort of offspring this cross-breeding would produce.

As a point of honor rather than out of affection, Celestino Pardinas and other members of the family would intervene if they heard about what was happening and threaten the pranksters, and one time his older brothers lashed out with knives and shovels to rescue the scribe from a band of townspeople roaring drunk on cane brandy who had poured molasses over him, rolled him over and over in a garbage heap, and were leading him through the streets at the end of a rope as though he were an animal of an unknown species. But the relatives had had more than enough of these incidents that they found themselves involved in because of this member of the family. The Lion knew this better than anyone else and hence no one ever heard him denounce his tormentors.

The fate of Celestino Pardinas’s youngest son took a decided turn for the worse the day that the tinsmith Zózimo’s young daughter, Almudia, the only one of his six children to have survived, the others having been stillborn or died within a few days of their birth, fell sick, with a high fever and vomiting. Dom Abelardo’s remedies and spells, like her parents’ prayers, had proved to be of no avail. The healer solemnly delivered himself of the opinion that the girl was a victim of the evil eye and that any antidote would be ineffective so long as the person who had put the evil eye upon her remained unknown. In despair at the fate that threatened this daughter who was the light of their lives, Zózimo and his wife Eufrásia made the rounds of the huts of Natuba, seeking information. And thus it was that they heard, from the mouths of three persons, the rumor that the girl had been seen in the company of the Lion, in a strange meeting on the bank of the irrigation ditch leading to the Mirândola hacienda. On being questioned, the sick girl confessed, half delirious, that on that particular morning, as she passed by the irrigation ditch on her way to the house of her godfather, Dom Náutilo, the Lion had asked her if he might sing a song that he had composed for her. And he had done so, before Almudia could take to her heels. It was the one time he had ever spoken to her, although before that she had noticed that, as if by chance, she often came across the Lion as she went about the town, and something about the way he hunched over as she passed made her surmise that he wanted to talk to her.

Zózimo grabbed up his shotgun and, accompanied by nephews, brothers-in-law, and
compadres
, also armed, and followed by a crowd of people, went to the Pardinases’ house, cornered the Lion, pointed the shotgun straight between his eyes, and demanded that he repeat the song so that Dom Abelardo could exorcise it. The Lion, struck dumb, stared at him wide-eyed, distraught. After repeating several times that if he did not reveal the magic spell he would blow his big ugly head off, the tinsmith cocked his gun. For the space of a second the Lion’s big intelligent eyes gleamed in utter panic. “If you kill me, you’ll never learn the magic spell and Almudia will die,” his little piping voice murmured, so terrified it was unrecognizable. A total silence ensued. Zózimo was sweating heavily. His relatives kept Celestino Pardinas and his sons at bay with their shotguns. “Will you let me go if I tell you what it was?” they heard the piping voice of the monster say. Zózimo nodded. Then, choking up, his voice breaking like an adolescent’s, the Lion began to sing. He sang—as the townspeople of Natuba who were present and those who were not but swore that they had been reported, remembered, recounted far and wide—a love song, in which Almudia’s name was mentioned. When he finished singing, the Lion’s eyes were filled with embarrassment. “Let me go now,” he roared. “I’ll let you go when my daughter is cured,” the tinsmith answered dully. “And if she is not cured, I’ll burn you to death at her graveside. I swear it on my soul.” He looked round at the Pardinases—father, mother, brothers frozen motionless by the shotguns—and added in a tone of voice that left no doubt in their minds as to his resolve: “I’ll burn you alive even if my family and yours will then be forced to kill each other for centuries on end.”

Almudia died that same night, after vomiting up blood. The townspeople thought that Zózimo would weep, tear out his hair, curse God, or drink cane brandy till he fell into a stupor. But he did no such thing. His reckless behavior of recent days gave way to cold determination as he planned, at one and the same time, his daughter’s funeral and the death of the sorcerer who had cast his spell over her. He had never been a wicked man or a cruel or violent one, but rather a kindly, helpful neighbor. Hence, everyone pitied him, forgave him in advance for what he was about to do, and there were even those who approved of what he intended to do.

Zózimo had a stake set up at the graveside and straw and dry branches brought to the site. The Pardinases remained prisoners in their house. The Lion was in the tinsmith’s animal pen, tied hand and foot. He spent the night there, listening to the prayers, the condolences, the litanies, the lamentations of the wake. The following morning, they hoisted him into a cart drawn by burros, and at a distance, as usual, he followed the funeral procession. When they arrived at the cemetery, as the coffin was lowered into the ground and more prayers were being said, in accordance with the tinsmith’s instructions two of the latter’s nephews tied him to the post and heaped around it the straw and branches that they were about to light to burn him to death. Nearly everyone in the town was there to witness his immolation.