The War Of The End Of The World (4 page)

Animal instinct, common sense, and centuries of experience made the townspeople realize immediately that this would perhaps be worse than the drought, that the tax collectors would be greedier than the vultures and the bandits. Perplexed, frightened, enraged, they nudged each other and communicated to each other their feelings of apprehension and wrath, in voices that mingled and blended into one, producing that belligerent music that was rising heavenward from Natuba as the Counselor and his shabby followers entered the town by way of the road from Cipó. People surrounded the man in the dark purple habit, blocking his way to the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição (repaired and painted by him several times in the last few decades), toward which he had been heading with his usual great long strides, in order to tell him the news. Looking past them with a grave expression on his face, he scarcely seemed to have heard them.

And yet, only seconds later, just time enough for a sort of inner explosion to set his eyes afire, he began to walk, to run through the crowd that stepped aside to let him through, toward the billboards where the decrees had been posted. He reached them and without even bothering to read them tore them down, his face distorted by an indignation that seemed to sum up that of all of them. Then he asked, in a vibrant voice, that these iniquities in writing be burned. And when, before the eyes of the dumfounded municipal councillors, the people did so, and moreover began to celebrate, setting off fireworks as on a feast day, and the fire reduced to smoke the decrees and the fear that they had aroused, the Counselor, before going to pray at the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, announced to the people of that remote corner of the world the grave tidings: the Antichrist was abroad in the world; his name was Republic.

“Whistles, that’s right, Senhor Commissioner,” Lieutenant Pires Ferreira repeats, surprised once again at what he has experienced and, no doubt, remembered and recounted many times. “They sounded very loud in the night—or rather, in the early dawn.”

The field hospital is a wooden shack with a palm-frond roof, hastily thrown together to house the wounded soldiers. It is on the outskirts of Juazeiro, whose streets parallel to the broad São Francisco River lined with houses that are either whitewashed or painted in various colors can be seen between the partitions, beneath the dusty tops of the trees that have given the city its name.

“It took us only twelve days from here to Uauá, which is practically at the gates of Canudos—quite a feat,” Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says. “My men were dead-tired, so I decided to camp there. And in just a few hours the whistles woke us up.”

There are sixteen wounded, lying in hammocks lined up in two rows facing each other: crude bandages, bloodstained heads, arms, and legs, naked and half-naked bodies, trousers and high-buttoned tunics in tatters. A recently arrived doctor in a white smock is inspecting the wounded, followed by a male nurse carrying a medical kit. There is a sharp contrast between the doctor’s healthy, urbane appearance and the soldiers’ dejected faces and hair matted down with sweat. At the far end of the shack, an anguished voice is asking about confession.

“Didn’t you post sentinels? Didn’t it occur to you that they might surprise you, Lieutenant?”

“There were four sentinels, Senhor Commissioner,” Pires Ferreira answers, holding up four emphatic fingers. “They didn’t surprise us. When we heard the whistles, every man in the entire company rose to his feet and prepared for combat.” He lowers his voice. “But what we saw coming toward us was not the enemy but a procession.”

From one corner of the hospital shack the little camp on the shore of the river, where boats loaded with watermelon ply back and forth, can be seen: the rest of the company, lying in the shade of some trees, rifles stacked up in groups of four, field tents. A flock of screeching parrots flies by.

“A
religious
procession, Lieutenant?” an intrusive, high-pitched, nasal voice asks in surprise.

The officer casts a quick glance at the person who has spoken and nods. “They came from the direction of Canudos,” he explains, still addressing the commissioner. “There were five hundred, six hundred, perhaps a thousand of them.”

The commissioner throws up his hands and his equally incredulous aide shakes his head. It is quite obvious that they are people from the city. They have arrived in Juazeiro that morning on the train from Salvador and are still dazed and battered from the jolting and jerking, uncomfortable in their jackets with wide sleeves, their baggy trousers and boots that have already gotten dirty, stifling from the heat, of a certainty annoyed at being there, surrounded by wounded flesh, by disease, and at having to investigate a defeat. As they talk with Lieutenant Pires Ferreira they proceed from hammock to hammock and the commissioner, a stern-faced man, leans over every so often to give one of the wounded a clap on the back. He is the only one who is listening to what the lieutenant is saying, but his aide takes notes, as does the other man who has just arrived, the one with the nasal voice who seems to have a head cold, the one who keeps constantly sneezing.

“Five hundred, a thousand?” the commissioner says sarcastically. “The Baron de Canabrava’s deposition came to my office and I am acquainted with it, Lieutenant. Those who invaded Canudos numbered two hundred, including the women and children. The baron ought to know—he’s the owner of the estate.”

“There were a thousand of them, thousands,” the wounded man in the nearest hammock murmurs, a light-skinned, kinky-haired mulatto with a bandaged shoulder. “I swear to it, sir.”

Lieutenant Pires Ferreira shuts him up with such a brusque gesture that his arm brushes against the leg of the wounded man behind him, who bellows in pain. The lieutenant is young, on the short side, with a little clipped mustache like those of the dandies who congregate, back in Salvador, in the pastry shops of the Rua Chile at teatime. But due to fatigue, frustration, nerves, this little French mustache is now set off by dark circles under his eyes, an ashen skin, and a grimace. The lieutenant is unshaven, his hair is badly mussed, his uniform is torn, and his right arm is in a sling. At the far end of the shack, the incoherent voice babbles on about confession and holy oils.

Pires Ferreira turns to the commissioner. “As a child, I lived on a cattle ranch and learned to size up the number of heads in a herd at a glance,” he murmurs. “I’m not exaggerating. There were more than five hundred of them, and perhaps a thousand.”

“They were carrying a wooden cross, an enormous one, and a banner of the Divine Holy Spirit,” someone adds from one of the hammocks.

And before the lieutenant can cut them short, others hastily join in, telling how it was: they also had saints’ statues, rosaries, they were all blowing those whistles or chanting Kyrie Eleisons and acclaiming St. John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, the Blessed Lord Jesus, and the Counselor. They have sat up in their hammocks and are having a shouting match till the lieutenant orders them to knock it off.

“And all of a sudden they were right on top of us,” he goes on, amid the silence. “They looked so peaceful, like a Holy Week procession—how could I have given the order to attack them? And then suddenly they began to shout, Down with this and that, and opened fire on us at point-blank range. We were one against eight, one against ten.”

“To shout, Down with this and that, you say?” the insolent high-pitched voice interrupts him.

“Down with the Republic,” Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says. “Down with the Antichrist.” He turns to the commissioner again: “I have nothing to reproach myself for. My men fought bravely. We held out for more than four hours, sir. I did not order a retreat until we had no ammunition left. You’re familiar with the problems that we’ve had with the Mannlichers. Thanks to the troops’ disciplined behavior, we were able to get back here in only ten days.”

“The march back took less time than the march out,” the commissioner growls.

“Come over here and have a look at this!” the doctor in the white smock calls to them from one corner.

The group of civilians and the lieutenant walk down the line of hammocks to him. The doctor is wearing an indigo-blue army uniform underneath his smock. He has removed the bandage of a soldier with Indian features who is writhing in pain, and is contemplating the man’s belly with intense interest. He points to it as though it were a rare, precious object: at the man’s groin is a purulent hole the size of a fist, with coagulated blood at the edges and pulsing flesh in the middle.

“An explosive bullet!” the doctor exclaims enthusiastically, dusting the swollen wound with a fine white powder. “On penetrating the body, it explodes like shrapnel, destroys the tissue, and produces a gaping wound like this. The only time I’ve ever come across such a thing is in the British Army Manual. How is it possible that those wretched devils possess such modern weapons? Even the Brazilian Army is not equipped with them.”

“See that, Senhor Commissioner?” Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says triumphantly. “They were armed to the teeth. They had rifles, carbines, long-barreled muskets, machetes, daggers, clubs. As for us, on the other hand, our Mannlichers jammed and…”

But the man who has been babbling in delirium about confession and holy oils is now shouting at the top of his voice and raving about sacred images, the banner of the Divine, the whistles. He does not appear to be wounded; he is tied to a post, in a uniform with fewer signs of wear and tear than the lieutenant’s. As he sees the doctor and the civilians approaching, he implores them with tears in his eyes: “Confession, sirs! I beg you! I beg you!”

“Is he the medical officer of your company, Dr. Antônio Alves dos Santos?” the doctor in the white smock asks. “Why have you tied him up like that?”

“He tried to kill himself, sir,” Pires Ferreira stammers. “He attempted to put a bullet through his head and by some miracle he missed. He’s been like that since the encounter at Uauá, and I was at a loss as to how to deal with him. Instead of being a help to us, he turned into one more problem, especially during the retreat.”

“Kindly withdraw if you will, sirs,” the doctor in the white smock says. “Leave me alone with him, and I’ll calm him down.”

As the lieutenant and the civilians obey his wishes, the high-pitched, inquisitive, peremptory voice of the man who has interrupted the explanations several times is again heard: “How many dead and wounded were there in all, Lieutenant? In your company and among the outlaws?”

“Ten dead and sixteen wounded among my men,” Pires Ferreira replies with an impatient gesture. “The enemy had at least a hundred casualties. All this is noted in the report that I gave you, sir.”

“I’m not a member of the commission. I’m a reporter from the
Jornal de Notícias
, in Bahia,” the man says.

He does not resemble the government officials or the doctor in the white smock with whom he has come here. Young, nearsighted, with thick eyeglasses. He does not take notes with a pencil but with a goose-quill pen. He is dressed in a pair of trousers coming apart at the seams, an off-white jacket, a cap with a visor, and all of his apparel seems fake, wrong, out of place on his awkward body. He is holding a clipboard with a number of sheets of paper and dips his goose-quill pen in an inkwell, with the cork of a wine bottle for a cap, that is fastened to the sleeve of his jacket. He looks more or less like a scarecrow.

“I have traveled six hundred kilometers merely to ask you these questions, Lieutenant Pires Ferreira,” he says. And he sneezes.

Big João was born near the sea, on a sugarcane plantation in Recôncavo, the owner of which, Sir Adalberto de Gumúcio, was a great lover of horses. He boasted of possessing the most spirited sorrels and the mares with the most finely turned ankles in all of Bahia and of having produced these specimens of first-rate horseflesh without any need of English studs, thanks to astute matings which he himself supervised. He prided himself less (in public) on having achieved the same happy result with the blacks of his slave quarters, so as not to further stir the troubled waters of the quarrels that this had aroused with the Baron de Canabrava and with the Church, but the truth of the matter was that he dealt with his slaves in exactly the same way that he had dealt with his horses. His method was ruled by his eye and by his inspiration. It consisted of selecting the most lively and most shapely young black girls and giving them as concubines to the males that he regarded as the purest because of their harmonious features and even-colored skins. The best couples were given special food and work privileges so as to produce as many offspring as possible. The chaplain, the missionaries, and the hierarchy of Salvador had repeatedly reproved him for throwing blacks together in this fashion, “making them live together like animals,” but instead of putting an end to such practices, these reprimands resulted only in his engaging in them more discreetly.