The War Of The End Of The World (48 page)

“I’ve seen many awful things in my life,” Baroness Estela said, gazing down at the chipped tiles of the living-room floor. “There in the country. Things that would terrify people in Salvador.” She looked at the baron, balancing back and forth in a rocking chair, unconsciously keeping time with old Colonel José Bernardo Murau, his host, as he swayed back and forth in his. “Do you remember the bull that went mad and charged the children as they were coming out of catechism? I didn’t fall into a faint, did I? I’m not a weak woman. During the great drought, for example, we saw dreadful things, isn’t that so?”

The baron nodded. José Bernardo Murau and Alberto de Gumúcio—the latter had come from Salvador to meet the baron and baroness at the Pedra Vermelha hacienda and had been with them barely two hours—were trying their best to act as though it were an entirely normal conversation, but they could not hide how uncomfortable they were at seeing the baroness’s agitation. That discreet woman, invisible behind her impeccable manners, whose smiles served as an impalpable wall between herself and others, was now rambling on and on, carrying on an endless monologue, as though she were suffering from some malady that had affected her speech. Even Sebastiana, who came from time to time to cool her forehead with eau de cologne, was unable to make her stop talking. And neither her husband nor her host nor Gumúcio had been able to persuade her to go to her room to rest.

“I’m prepared for terrible catastrophes,” she went on, her white hands reaching out toward them beseechingly. “Seeing Calumbi burn down was worse than seeing my mother die in agony, hearing her scream with pain, giving her with my own hands the doses of laudanum that slowly killed her. Those flames are still burning here inside me.” She touched her stomach and doubled over, trembling. “It was as though the children I lost when they were born were being burned to cinders.”

She looked in turn at the baron, Murau, Gumúcio, begging them to believe her. Adalberto de Gumúcio smiled at her. He had tried to change the subject, but each time the baroness brought the talk round again to the fire at Calumbi.

He tried once more to take her mind off this memory. “And yet, my dear Estela, one resigns oneself to the worst tragedies. Did I ever tell you what Adelinha Isabel’s murder at the hands of two slaves was like for me? What I felt when we found my sister’s badly decomposed body, with so many dagger wounds in it that it was unrecognizable?” He cleared his throat as he stirred restlessly in his chair. “That is why I prefer horses to blacks. There are depths of barbarism and infamy in inferior classes and races that give one vertigo. And yet, my dear Estela, in the end one accepts the will of God, resigns oneself, and discovers that, even with all its calvaries, life is full of beautiful things.”

The baroness’s right hand came to rest on Gumúcio’s arm. “I am so sorry to have brought back the memory of Adelinha Isabel,” she said tenderly. “Please pardon me.”

“You didn’t bring back the memory of her, because I never forget her.” Gumúcio smiled, taking the baroness’s hands in his. “Twenty years have gone by, and yet it’s as though it had been this morning. I’m talking to you about Adelinha Isabel so you’ll see that the destruction of Calumbi is a wound that will heal.”

The baroness tried to smile, but the smile turned into a pout, as though she were about to weep. At that moment Sebastiana came into the room, carrying the little vial of cologne. As she cooled the baroness’s forehead and cheeks, patting her skin very delicately with one hand, she smoothed her mistress’s ruffled hair with the other. “Between Calumbi and here she has ceased to be the beautiful, courageous young woman she was,” the baron thought to himself. She had dark circles under her eyes, a gloomy frown, her features had gone slack, and her eyes had lost the vivacity and self-possession that he had always seen in them. Had he asked too much of her? Had he sacrificed his wife to his political interests? He remembered that when he had decided to return to Calumbi, Luiz Viana and Adalberto de Gumúcio had advised him not to take Estela with him, because of the turmoil that Canudos was causing in the region. He felt extremely uneasy. Through his thoughtlessness and selfishness he had perhaps done irreparable harm to his wife, whom he loved more dearly than anyone else in the world. And yet, when Aristarco, who was riding at his side, alerted them: “Look, they’ve already set fire to Calumbi,” Estela had not lost her composure; on the contrary, she had remained incredibly calm. They were on the crest of a hill, where the baron used to halt when he was out hunting, to look out across his land, the place he took visitors to show them the hacienda, the lookout point that everybody flocked to after floods or plagues of insects to see how much damage had been done. Now, in the starry night with no wind, they could see the flames—red, blue, yellow—gleaming brightly, burning to the ground the manor house to which the lives of all those present were linked. The baron heard Sebastiana sobbing and saw Aristarco’s eyes brim with tears. But Estela did not weep, he was certain of that. She held herself very straight, gripping his arm, and at one moment he heard her murmur: “They’re burning not only the house but the stables, the horse barns, the storehouse.” The next morning she had begun talking about the fire, and since then there had been no way of calming her down. “I shall never forgive myself,” the baron thought.

“Had it been my hacienda, I’d be there now: dead,” José Bernardo Murau suddenly said. “They would have had to burn me, too.”

Sebastiana left the room, murmuring, “Please excuse me.” The baron thought to himself that the old man’s fits of rage must have been terrible, worse than Adalberto’s, and that before emancipation, he had undoubtedly tortured disobedient and runaway slaves.

“Not that Pedra Vermelha is worth all that much any more,” he grumbled, looking at the peeling walls of his living room. “I’ve sometimes thought of burning it down myself, seeing all the grief it’s causing me. A person has the right to destroy his own property if he feels like it. But I’d never have allowed a band of infamous, demented thieves to tell me that they were going to burn my land so it could have a rest, because it had worked hard. They would have had to kill me.”

“They wouldn’t have given you any choice in the matter. They’d have burned you to death before they set fire to the hacienda,” the baron said, trying to make a joke of it.

“They’re like scorpions,” he thought. “Burning down haciendas is like stinging themselves with their own tails to cheat death. But to whom are they offering this sacrifice of themselves, of all of us?” He was pleased to note that the baroness was yawning. Ah, if only she could sleep, it would be the best possible thing to quiet her nerves. Estela hadn’t slept a wink in these last few days. When they had stopped over in Monte Santo, she had refused even to stretch out on the bed in the parish house and had sat weeping in Sebastiana’s arms all night long. That was when the baron began to be alarmed, for Estela was not a woman given to weeping.

“It’s curious,” Murau said, exchanging a look of relief with the baron and Gumúcio, for the baroness had closed her eyes. “When you came by here on your way to Calumbi, my hatred was principally directed against Moreira César. But now I almost feel sorry for him. I have a more violent hatred of the
jagunços
than I ever had of Epaminondas and the Jacobins.” When he was very upset, he moved his hands in a circle and scratched his chin: the baron was waiting for him to do so. But the old man just sat there with his arms crossed in a hieratic posture. “What they’ve done to Calumbi, to Poço da Pedra, to Suçurana, to Juá and Curral Novo, to Penedo and Lagoa is heinous, beyond belief! Destroying the haciendas that provide them with food, the centers of civilization of the entire region! God will not forgive such a thing. It’s the work of details, of monsters.”

“Well, at last,” the baron thought: Murau had finally made his usual gesture. A swift circle traced in the air with his gnarled hand and his outstretched index finger, and now he was furiously scratching his goatee.

“Don’t raise your voice like that, José Bernardo,” Gumúcio interrupted him, pointing to the baroness. “Shall we carry her to her bedroom?”

“When she’s sleeping more soundly,” the baron answered. He had risen to his feet and was arranging the cushion so that his wife could lie back against it. He then knelt and put her feet up on a footstool.

“I thought the best thing would be to take her back to Salvador as quickly as possible,” Adalberto de Gumúcio said in a low voice. “But I wonder if it’s not imprudent to subject her to another long journey.”

“We’ll see how she feels when she wakes up in the morning.” The baron had sat back down and synchronized the swaying of his rocking chair with that of his host.

“Burning down Calumbi! People who owe you so much!” Murau again traced one of his circles in the air and scratched his chin. “I hope that Moreira César makes them pay dearly for it. I’d like to be there when he starts slitting throats.”

“Isn’t there any news of him yet?” Gumúcio interrupted him. “He should have finished off Canudos some time ago.”

“Yes, I’ve been making calculations,” the baron said, nodding. “Even with lead in his feet, he must have reached Canudos many days ago. Unless…” He noted that his friends were looking at him, intrigued. “I mean to say, another attack, like the one that forced him to seek refuge in Calumbi. Perhaps he’s had yet another one.”

“That’s all we need—to have Moreira César die of illness before he’s put an end to this iniquity,” José Bernardo Murau growled.

“It’s also possible that there aren’t any telegraph lines left in the region,” Gumúcio said. “If the
jagunços
burn the fields so as to let them have a little nap, they doubtless destroy the telegraph wires and the poles so as to keep them from having headaches. The colonel may have no way of getting a message out.”

The baron gave a labored smile. The last time they had been gathered together here, Moreira César’s arrival had seemed like the death announcement of the Bahia Autonomist Party.

And now they were consumed with impatience to learn the details of the colonel’s victory against those whom he was trying his best to pass off as restorationists and agents of the English Crown. The baron reflected on all this without taking his eyes off the sleeping baroness: she was pale, but the expression on her face was calm.

“Agents of the English Crown?” he suddenly exclaimed. “Horsemen who burn down haciendas so that the earth may have a rest! I heard it and still don’t believe it. A
cangaceiro
like Pajeú, a murderer, a rapist, a thief, a man who cuts off people’s ears, who sacks towns, suddenly become a religious crusader! I saw him with my own eyes. It’s hard to believe I was born in these parts, and spent a good many years of my life here. It’s a strange land to me now. These people aren’t the same ones I’ve known as long as I can remember. Maybe that Scottish anarchist understands them better than I do. Or the Counselor. It’s quite possible that only madmen understand other madmen…” He gestured in despair and left his sentence unfinished.

“Speaking of the Scottish anarchist,” Gumúcio said. The baron felt intensely uneasy: he knew the question would be asked, and had been expecting it for two hours now. “You surely know that I have never doubted your good judgment when it comes to politics. But I fail to understand why you would let the Scotsman go like that. He was a valuable prisoner, the best weapon we had against our number-one enemy.” He looked at the baron, his eyes blinking. “Isn’t that so?”

“Our number-one enemy is no longer Epaminondas, or any other Jacobin,” the baron murmured dispiritedly. “It’s the
jagunços
. The economic breakdown of Bahia. That’s what’s going to happen if there’s not a stop put to this madness. The lands will remain uncultivatable, and everything’s going to go to hell. The livestock is being eaten, the cattle are disappearing. And what’s worse still, a region where the lack of manpower has always been a problem is going to be depopulated. People are leaving in droves and we aren’t going to be able to bring them back. We must halt at any price the ruin that Canudos is bringing down upon our heads.”

He saw Gumúcio’s and José Bernardo’s surprised and reproving looks and felt uncomfortable. “I know I haven’t answered your question about Galileo Gall,” he murmured. “By the way, that isn’t even his real name. Why did I let him go? Perhaps it’s another sign of the madness of the times, my contribution to the general folly.” Without noticing, he traced a circle like Murau’s with his hand. “I doubt that he would have been of any use to us, even if our war with Epaminondas goes on…”

“Goes on?” Gumúcio growled. “It hasn’t let up for a second, as far as I know. With the arrival of Moreira César, the Jacobins in Salvador have become more arrogant than ever. The
Jornal de Notícias
is demanding that parliament try Viana and appoint a special tribunal to judge our conspiracies and shady deals.”

“I haven’t forgotten the harm done us by the Progressivist Republicans,” the baron interrupted him. “But at the moment things have taken a different turn.”