The War Of The End Of The World (72 page)

All of a sudden, it strikes him as stupid to be talking about climbing up that ravine when he can’t even move a finger.

“They took all the supplies, and all the ammunition, too,” the little soldier whimpers. “It’s not my fault, sir. It’s Colonel Campelo’s fault.”

He hears him sob like a babe in arms and it occurs to him that he’s drunk. He feels hatred and anger toward this bastard who’s sniveling instead of pulling himself together and going to fetch help. The little soldier lifts his head and looks at him.

“Are you from the Second Infantry?” the sergeant asks him, noticing as he speaks how stiff his tongue feels. “From Colonel Silva Telles’s brigade?”

“No, sir,” the little soldier says, screwing up his face and weeping. “I’m from the Fifth Infantry of the Third Brigade. Colonel Olímpio da Silveira’s brigade.”

“Don’t cry, don’t be stupid, come over here and help me get this thing out of my belly,” the sergeant says. “Come here, you son of a bitch.”

But the little soldier buries his head in the dirt and weeps.

“In other words, you’re one of those we came to rescue from the English,” the sergeant says. “Come over here and save me now, you idiot.”

“They took everything we had away from us! They stole everything!” the little soldier whimpers. “I told Colonel Campelo that the convoy shouldn’t fall so far behind, that we could be cut off from the column. I told him, I told him! And that’s what happened, sir! They even stole my horse!”

“Forget the convoy they robbed you of, pull this thing out of me!” Frutuoso calls out. “Do you want us to die like dogs? Don’t be an idiot—think about it!”

“The porters double-crossed us! The guides double-crossed us!” the little soldier whines. “They were spies, sir, they fired on us with shotguns, too. Count things up for yourself. Twenty carts with ammunition, seven with salt, flour, sugar, cane brandy, alfalfa, forty sacks of maize. And they made off with more than a hundred head of cattle, sir! Do you see what an insane thing Colonel Campelo did? I warned him. I’m Captain Manuel and I never lie, sir: it was his fault.”

“You’re a captain?” Frutuoso Medrado stammers. “A thousand pardons, sir. Your gold braid isn’t showing.”

The reply is a death rattle. His neighbor is silent and motionless. “He’s dead,” Frutuoso Medrado thinks. He feels a shiver run down his spine. He thinks: “A captain! I took him for a raw recruit.” He, too, is going to die at any moment. The Englishmen got the better of you, Frutuoso. Those goddamned foreign bastards have killed you. And just then he sees two figures silhouetted on the edge of the ravine. The sweat running into his eyes keeps him from making out whether or not they are wearing uniforms, but he shouts “Help, help!” nonetheless. He tries to move, to twist about, so that they’ll see that he’s alive and come down. His big head is a brazier. The silhouettes leap down the side of the ravine and he feels that he is about to burst into tears when he realizes that they’re dressed in light blue and are wearing army boots. He tries to shout: “Pull this stick out of my belly, boys.”

“Do you recognize me, Sergeant? Do you know who I am?” says the soldier who, like an imbecile, instead of squatting down to unpin him, stands there resting the tip of his bayonet on his neck.

“Of course I recognize you, Coríntio,” he roars. “What did you think, you idiot? Pull this thing out of my belly! What are you doing, Coríntio? Coríntio!”

Florisa’s husband is plunging his bayonet into his neck beneath the revolted gaze of the other one, whom Frutuoso Medrado also recognizes: Argimiro. He manages to say to himself that Coríntio did know, after all.

“Why wouldn’t those who took to the streets to lynch monarchists have believed it, down there in Rio, in São Paulo, if those who were at the very gates of Canudos and could see the truth with their own eyes believed it?” the nearsighted journalist asked.

He had slid out of the leather armchair and was now sitting on the floor with his knees doubled up and his chin resting on one of them, speaking as though the baron weren’t there. It was early in the afternoon and the study was filled with sunlight, so warm it made one drowsy, filtering through the lace curtains of the window overlooking the garden. The baron had become used to the journalist’s habit of suddenly changing the subject without warning, in obedience to his own urgent inner promptings, and was no longer bothered by a conversation with him that proceeded by fits and starts, intense and sparkling for a time, then bogged down in the long empty periods that ensued when he, or the journalist, or both, lapsed into silence to reflect or remember.

“The press correspondents,” the nearsighted journalist explained, contorting himself in one of his unpredictable movements that made his skeleton-like frame shake all over and appeared to make each one of his vertebrae shudder. His eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses. “They could see and yet they didn’t see. All they saw was what they’d come to see. Even if there was no such thing there. It wasn’t just one or two of them. They all found glaring proof of a British-monarchist conspiracy. How to explain that?”

“People’s credulity, their hunger for fantasy, for illusion,” the baron said. “There had to be some explanation for the inconceivable fact that bands of peasants and vagabonds routed three army expeditions, that they resisted the armed forces of this country for months on end. The conspiracy had to exist: that’s why they invented it and why they believed it.”

“You should read the dispatches my replacement sent back to the
Jornal de Notícias
,” the nearsighted journalist said. “The one sent up there as a correspondent when Epaminondas Gonçalves thought I was dead. A good man. Honest, with no imagination, no passionate biases, no convictions. The ideal man to provide an impassive, objective version of what happened up there.”

“They were dying and killing on both sides,” the baron murmured, gazing at him with pity. “Are impassivity and objectivity possible in a war?”

“In his first dispatch, the officers of General Oscar’s column come upon four fair-haired observers in well-cut suits mingled with the
jagunços
,” the journalist said slowly. “In the second, General Savaget’s column finds among the dead
jagunços
an individual with white skin, blond hair, an officer’s leather shoulder belt, and a hand-knitted cap. No one can identify his uniform, which has never been worn by any of this country’s military units.”

“One of Her Gracious Majesty’s officers, no doubt?” The baron smiled.

“And in the third dispatch he quotes the text of a letter, found in the pocket of a
jagunço
taken prisoner, which is unsigned but written in an unmistakably aristocratic hand,” the journalist went on, not even hearing his question. “Addressed to the Counselor, explaining to him why it is necessary to reestablish a conservative, God-fearing monarchy. Everything points to the fact that the person who wrote that letter was you.”

“Were you really so naïve as to believe everything you read in the papers?” the baron asked him. “You, a journalist?”

“And there is also the dispatch of his about signaling with lights,” the nearsighted journalist went on, without answering him. “Thanks to such signals, the
jagunços
were able to communicate with each other at night over great distances. The mysterious lights blinked on and off, transmitting a code so clever that army signal corps technicians were never able to decipher the messages.”

Yes, there was no doubt about it, despite his bohemian pranks, despite the opium, the ether, the
candomblés
, there was something ingenuous and angelic about him. This was not strange; it was often the case with intellectuals and artists. Canudos had changed him, naturally. What had it made of him? An embittered man? A skeptic? A fanatic, perhaps? The myopic eyes stared at him intently from behind the thick lenses.

“The important thing in these dispatches are the intimations,” the metallic, incisive, high-pitched voice said. “Not what they say but what they suggest, what’s left to the reader’s imagination. They went to Canudos to see English officers. And they saw them. I talked with my replacement for an entire afternoon. He never once lied deliberately, he just didn’t realize he was lying. The simple fact is that he didn’t write what he saw but what he felt and believed, what those all around him felt and believed. That’s how that whole tangled web of false stories and humbug got woven, becoming so intricate that there is now no way to disentangle it. How is anybody ever going to know the story of Canudos?”

“As you yourself see, the best thing to do is forget it,” the baron said. “It isn’t worth wasting your time over it.”

“Cynicism is no solution, either,” the nearsighted journalist said. “Moreover, I can scarcely believe that this attitude of yours, this proud disdain for what really happened, is sincere.”

“It is indifference, not disdain,” the baron corrected him. The thought of Estela had been far from his mind for some time, but it was there again now and with it the pain, as mordant as acid, that turned him into a completely crushed, cowed being. “I’ve already told you that what happened at Canudos doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.”

“It does matter to you, Baron,” the vibrant voice of the nearsighted journalist interjected. “For the same reason it matters to me: because Canudos changed your life. Because of Canudos your wife lost her mind, because of Canudos you lost a large part of your fortune and your power. Of course it matters to you. It’s for that reason that you haven’t thrown me out, for that reason that we’ve been talking together for so many hours now…”

Yes, perhaps he was right. The Baron de Canabrava was suddenly aware of a bitter taste in his mouth; although he had had more than enough of the man and there was no reason to prolong the conversation, he found himself unable to dismiss him. What was keeping him from it? He finally admitted the truth to himself: it was the idea of being left all alone, alone with Estela, alone with that terrible tragedy.

“But they didn’t merely see what didn’t exist,” the nearsighted journalist went on. “Besides that, none of them saw what was really there.”

“Phrenologists?” the baron murmured. “Scottish anarchists?”

“Priests,” the nearsighted journalist said. “Nobody mentions them. And there they were, spying for the
jagunços
or fighting shoulder to shoulder with them. Relaying information or bringing medicine, smuggling in saltpeter and sulfur to make explosives. Isn’t that surprising? Wasn’t that of any importance?”

“Are you certain of that?” the baron said, pricking up his ears.

“I knew one of those priests. I might even go so far as to say that we became friends,” the nearsighted journalist said, nodding his head. “Father Joaquim, the parish priest of Cumbe.”

The baron looked closely at his caller. “That little curé who’s fathered a whole pack of kids? That toper who regularly commits all the seven capital sins was in Canudos?”

“It’s an excellent index of the Counselor’s powers of persuasion,” the journalist asserted, nodding again. “He not only turned thieves and murderers into saints; he also catechized the corrupt and simoniacal priests of the
sertão
. A disquieting man, wouldn’t you say?”

That episode from years back seemed to leap to the baron’s mind from the depths of time. He and Estela, escorted by a small band of armed
capangas
, had just entered Cumbe and had headed immediately for the church on hearing the bells ring summoning people to Sunday Mass. Try as he might, the notorious Father Joaquim was unable to hide the traces of what must have been a night of debauchery—guitars, cane brandy, womanizing—without a wink of sleep. The baron remembered how vexed the baroness had been on seeing the priest stumble over the liturgy and make mistakes, begin to retch violently right in the middle of Mass, and dash from the altar to go vomit outside. He could even see vividly once again in his mind’s eye the face of the curé’s concubine: wasn’t it the young woman whom people called “the water divineress” because she knew how to detect unsuspected underground wells? So that rake of a curé had also become one of the Counselor’s faithful followers, had he?

“Yes, one of his faithful followers, and also something of a hero.” The journalist broke into one of those bursts of laughter that sounded like light stones sliding down his throat; as usually happened, this time, too, his laughter turned into a fit of sneezing.

“He was a sinful curé but he wasn’t an idiot,” the baron reflected. “When he was sober, one could have a decent conversation with him. A man with a lively mind and one who was even fairly well read. I find it difficult to believe that he, too, would fall under the spell of a charlatan, like the unlettered people of the backlands…”

“Culture, intelligence, books have nothing to do with the story of the Counselor,” the nearsighted journalist said. “But that’s the least of it. The surprising thing is not that Father Joaquim became a
jagunço
. It’s that the Counselor made a brave man of him, when before he’d been a coward.” He blinked in stupefaction. “That’s the most difficult, the most miraculous conversion of all. I can personally testify to that, for I know what fear is. And the little curé of Cumbe was a man with enough imagination to know what it’s like to be seized with panic, to live in terror. And yet…”

His voice grew hollow, emptied of substance, and the expression on his face became a grimace. What had happened to him all of a sudden? The baron saw that his caller was doing his utmost to calm down, to break through something that was holding him back. He tried to help him go on. “And yet…?” he said encouragingly.

“And yet he spent months, years perhaps, going all about the villages, the haciendas, the mines, buying gunpowder, dynamite, fuses. Making up elaborate lies to justify these purchases that must have attracted a great deal of attention. And when the
sertão
began to swarm with soldiers, do you know how he risked his neck? By hiding powder kegs in his coffer containing the sacred objects of worship, the tabernacle, the ciborium with the consecrated Hosts, the crucifix, the chasuble, the vestments that he carried about to say Mass. And smuggling them into Canudos right under the noses of the National Guard, of the army. Can you have any idea of what that means when you’re a coward, trembling from head to foot, bathed in cold sweat? Can you have any idea of how strong a conviction that takes?”

“The catechism is full of stories like that, my friend,” the baron murmured. “Martyrs pierced with arrows, devoured by lions, crucified…But, I grant you, it is difficult for me to imagine Father Joaquim doing things like that for the Counselor.”

“It requires total conviction,” the journalist repeated. “Profound, complete certainty, a faith that doubtless you have never felt. Nor I…”

He shook his head once more like a restless hen and hoisted himself into the armchair with his long, bony arms. He played with his hands for a few seconds, focusing all his attention on them, and then went on. “The Church has formally condemned the Counselor as a heretic, a believer in superstition, a disseminator of unrest, and a disturber of the conscience of the faithful. The Archbishop of Bahia has forbidden parish priests to allow him to preach in their pulpits. If one is a priest, it takes absolute faith in the Counselor to disobey the Church and one’s own archbishop and run the risk of being condemned for helping him.”

“What is it you find so distressing?” the baron asked. “The suspicion that the Counselor was really another Christ, come for the second time to redeem men?”

He said this without thinking, and the minute the words were out of his mouth he felt uncomfortable. Had he been trying to make a joke? Neither he nor the nearsighted journalist smiled, however. He saw the latter shake his head, which might have been a reply in the negative or a gesture to chase a fly away.

“I’ve thought about that, too,” the nearsighted journalist said. “If it was God, if God sent him, if God existed…I don’t know. In any event, this time there were no disciples left to spread the myth and bring the good news to the pagans. There was only one left, as far as I know; I doubt that that’s sufficient…”

He burst out laughing again and the ensuing sneezes occupied him for some time. When he had finished, his nose and eyes were badly irritated.

“But more than of his possible divinity, I thought of the spirit of solidarity, of fraternity, of the unbreakable bond that he was able to forge among those people,” the nearsighted journalist said in a pathetic tone of voice. “Amazing. Moving. After July 18, the only trails left open were the ones to Chorrochó and Riacho Seco. What would have been the logical thing to do? For people to try to get away, to escape along those trails, isn’t that true? But exactly the opposite happened. People tried to come to Canudos, they kept flocking in from all over, in a desperate hurry to get inside the rat trap, the hell, before the soldiers completely encircled Canudos. Do you see? Nothing was normal there…”

“You spoke of priests in the plural,” the baron interrupted him. This subject, the
jagunços
’ solidarity and their collective will to sacrifice themselves, was disturbing to him. It had turned up several times in the conversation, and each time he had skirted it, as he did again now.

“I didn’t know the other ones,” the journalist replied, as though he, too, were relieved at having been obliged to change the subject. “But they existed. Father Joaquim received information and help from them. And at the end they, too, may very well have been there, scattered about, lost among the multitudes of
jagunços
. Someone told me of a certain Father Martinez. Do you know who it was? Someone you knew, a long time ago, many years ago. The filicide of Salvador—does that mean anything to you?”