The War Of The End Of The World (9 page)

Without realizing it, his attention has wandered from Rufino to the voice coming from outside: “Regional autonomy and decentralization are pretexts being used by Governor Viana, the Baron de Canabrava, and their henchmen in order to preserve their privileges and keep Bahia from becoming as modern as the other states of Brazil. Who are the Autonomists? Monarchists lying in ambush who, if it weren’t for us, would revive the corrupt Empire and kill the Republic! But Epaminondas Gonçalves’s Progressivist Republican Party will keep them from doing so…” The man speaking now is not the same one as before, this one is clearer, Galileo understands everything he says, and he even seems to have some idea in mind, whereas his predecessor merely shrieked and howled. Should he go take a look out the window? No, he doesn’t move from the bed; he is certain the spectacle is still the same: knots of curious bystanders wandering from one food and drink stand to another, listening to the
cantadores
reciting stories, or gathering round the man on stilts who is telling fortunes, and from time to time deigning to stop for a moment to gawk but not to listen in front of the small platform from which the Progressivist Republican Party is churning out its propaganda, protected by thugs with shotguns. “They’re wise to be so indifferent,” Galileo Gall thinks. What good is it for the people of Queimadas to know that the Baron de Canabrava’s Autonomist Party is against the centralist system of the Republican Party and to know that this latter is combatting the decentralism and the federalism advocated by its adversary? Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden? They are right to enjoy the festivities and pay no attention to what the politicos on the platform are saying. The evening before, Galileo has detected a certain excitement in Queimadas, not because of the festival organized by the Progressivist Republican Party but because people were wondering whether the Baron de Canabrava’s Autonomist Party would send thugs to wreck their enemies’ spectacle and there would be shooting, as had happened at other times in the past. It is mid-morning now, this hasn’t happened and no doubt will not happen. Why would they bother to break up a meeting so sadly lacking popular support? The thought occurs to Gall that the fiestas organized by the Autonomists must be exactly like the one taking place outside his window. No, this is not where the real politics of Bahia, of Brazil, is taking place. He thinks: “It is taking place up there, among those who are not even aware that they are the real politicians of this country.” Will he have to wait much longer? Galileo Gall sits down on the bed. He murmurs: “Science against impatience.” He opens the small valise lying on the floor, pushes aside clothing, a revolver, removes the little book in which he has taken notes on the tanneries of Queimadas, where he has idled away a few hours in these last eight days, and leafs through what he has written: “Brick buildings, roofs of round tiles, roughhewn columns. Scattered about everywhere, bundles of
angico
bark, scored through with the aid of a hammer and a knife. They toss the
angico
into tanks full of river water. After removing the hair from the hides they submerge them in the tanks and leave them to soak for eight days or so, the time required to tan them. The bark of the tree called
angico
gives off tannin, the substance that tans them. They then hang the hides in the shade till they dry, and scrape them with a knife to remove any residue left on them. They treat in this way the hides of cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, deer, foxes, and jaguars.
Angico
is blood-red, with a strong odor. The tanneries are primitive family enterprises in which the father, the mother, the sons, and dose relatives work. Rawhide is the principal wealth of Queimadas.” He puts the little notebook back in the valise. The tanners were friendly, explained to him how they went about their work. Why is it that they are so reluctant to talk about Canudos? Do they mistrust someone whose Portuguese they find it difficult to understand? He knows that Canudos and the Counselor are the main topic of conversation in Queimadas. Despite all his efforts, however, he has not been able to discuss the subject with anyone, not even Rufino and Jurema. In the tanneries, in the railway station, in the Our Lady of Grace boarding house, in the public square of Queimadas, the moment he has brought the subject up he has seen the same wary look in everyone’s eyes, the same silence has fallen, or the same evasive answers been offered. “They’re on their guard. They’re mistrustful,” he thinks. He thinks: “They know what they’re doing. They’re canny.”

He digs about among his clothes and the revolver once again and takes out the only book in the little valise. It is an old, dog-eared copy, whose vellum binding has turned dark, so that the name of Pierre Joseph Proudhon is scarcely legible now, but whose title,
Système des contradictions
, is still clear, as is the name of the city where it was printed: Lyons. Distracted by the hubbub of the fiesta and above all by his treacherous impatience, he does not manage to concentrate his mind for long on his reading. Clenching his teeth, he then forces himself to reflect on objective things. A man who is not interested in general problems or ideas lives cloistered in Particularity, which can be recognized by the curvature of two protruding, almost sharp-pointed little bones behind his ears. Did he feel them on Rufino’s head? Does Imaginativeness, perhaps, manifest itself in the strange sense of honor, in what might be called the ethical imagination, of the man who is about to take him to Canudos?

His first memories, which were to become the best ones and the ones that came back most readily as well, were neither of his mother, who abandoned him to run after a sergeant in the National Guard who passed through Custódia at the head of a flying brigade that was chasing
cangaceiros
, nor of his father, whom he never knew, nor of the aunt and uncle who took him in and brought him up—Zé Faustino and Dona Angela—nor of the thirty-some huts and sun-baked streets of Custódia, but of the wandering minstrels. They came to town every so often, to enliven wedding parties, or heading for the roundup-time fiesta at a hacienda or the festival with which a town celebrated its patron saint’s day, and for a few slugs of cane brandy and a plate of jerky and
farofa—
manioc flour toasted in olive oil—they told the stories of Olivier, of the Princess Maguelone, of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France. João listened to them open-eyed, his lips moving with the
cantadores
’. Afterward he had splendid dreams resounding with the clashing of lances of the knights doing battle to save Christianity from the pagan hordes.

But the story that came to be the flesh of his flesh was that of Robert the Devil, the son of the Duke of Normandy who, after committing all manner of evil deeds, repented and went about on all fours, barking instead of speaking, and sleeping with the animals, until, having been granted the mercy of the Blessed Jesus, he saved the Emperor from attack by the Moors and married the Queen of Brazil. The youngster insisted that the
cantadores
tell it without omitting a single detail: how, in his days of wickedness, Robert the Devil had plunged his knife with the curved blade into countless throats of damsels and hermits simply for the pleasure of seeing them suffer, and how, in his days as a servant of God, he wandered far and wide in search of his victims’ kin, kissing their feet when he found them and begging them to torture him. The townspeople of Custódia thought that João would one day be a backlands minstrel, going from town to town with his guitar on his shoulder, bringing messages and making people happy with his songs and tales.

João helped Zé Faustino in his store, which supplied the whole countryside round about with cloth, grain, things to drink, farm tools, sweets, and trinkets. Zé Faustino traveled about a great deal, taking merchandise to the haciendas or going to the city to buy it, and in his absence Dona Angela minded the store, a hut of kneaded mud with a poultry yard. The woman had made her nephew the object of all the affection that she was unable to give the children she had not had. She had made João promise that he would take her to Salvador someday so that she might throw herself at the feet of the miraculous statue of O Senhor de Bonfim, of whom she had a collection of colored prints pinned above the head of her bed.

As much as drought and epidemics, the inhabitants of Custódia feared two other calamities that impoverished the town:
cangaceiros
and flying brigades of the National Guard. In the beginning the former had been bands gotten together from among their peons and kinfolk by the “colonels” who owned haciendas, to settle by force the quarrels that broke out among them over property boundaries, water rights, and grazing lands, or over conflicting political ambitions, but as time went by, many of these bands armed with blunderbusses and machetes had freed themselves from the “colonels” who had organized them and had begun running about loose, living by killing, robbing, and plundering. The flying brigades had come into being in order to combat them.
Cangaceiros
and flying brigades alike ate up the provisions of the townspeople of Custódia, got drunk on their cane brandy, and tried to rape their women. Before he even reached the age of reason, João had learned that the moment the warning shout was given all the bottles, food, and merchandise in the store had to be stowed away immediately in the hiding places that Zé Faustino had readied. The rumor went around that the storekeeper was a
coiteiro—
a man who did business with the bandits and provided them with information and hiding places. He was furious. Hadn’t people seen how they robbed his store? Didn’t they make off with clothes and tobacco without paying a cent? João heard his uncle complain many times about these stupid stories that the people of Custódia made up about him, out of envy. “If they keep on, they’re going to get me into trouble,” he would mutter. And that was exactly what happened.

One morning a flying brigade of thirty guards arrived in Custódia, under the command of Second Lieutenant Geraldo Macedo, a young Indian half-breed known far and wide for his bloodthirstiness. They were chasing down Antônia Silvino’s gang of outlaws. The
cangaceiros
had not passed through Custódia, but the lieutenant stubbornly insisted that they had. He was tall and solidly built, slightly cross-eyed, and forever licking a gold tooth that he had. It was said that he chased down bandits so mercilessly because they had raped a sweetheart of his. As his men searched the huts, the lieutenant personally interrogated everyone in town. As night was falling, he strode into the store, beaming in triumph, and ordered Zé Faustina to take him to Silvino’s hideout. Before the storekeeper could answer, he cuffed him so hard he sent him sprawling. “I know everything, you Christian dog. People have informed on you.” Neither Zé Faustino’s protestations of innocence nor Dona Angela’s pleas were of any avail. Lieutenant Macedo said that as a warning to
coiteiros
he’d shoot Zé Faustino at dawn if he didn’t reveal Silvino’s whereabouts. The storekeeper finally appeared to agree to do so. At dawn the next morning they left Custódia, with Zé Faustino leading the way, followed by Macedo’s thirty men, who were certain that they were going to take the bandits by surprise. But Zé Faustino managed to shake them after a few hours’ march and hurried back to Custódia to get Dona Angela and João and take them off with him, fearing that they would be made the target of reprisals. The lieutenant caught him as he was still packing a few things. He may have intended to kill only him, but he also shot Dona Angela to death when she tried to intervene. He grabbed João by the legs and knocked him out with one blow across the head with the barrel of his pistol. When João came to, he saw that the townspeople of Custódia were there, holding a wake over two coffins, with looks of remorse on their faces. He turned a deaf ear to their words of affection, and as he rubbed his hand over his bleeding face he told them, in a voice that suddenly was that of an adult—he was only twelve years old at the time—that he would come back someday to avenge his aunt and uncle, since those who were mourning them were their real murderers.

The thought of vengeance helped him survive the weeks he spent wandering aimlessly about a desert wasteland bristling with
mandacarus
. He could see black vultures circling overhead, waiting for him to collapse so as to fly down and tear him to bits. It was January, and not a drop of rain had fallen. João gathered dried fruits, sucked the sap of palm trees, and even ate a dead armadillo he found. Finally help was forthcoming from a goatherd who came upon him lying alongside a dry riverbed in a delirium, raving about lances, horses, and O Senhor de Bonfim. He revived him with a big cupful of milk and a few handfuls of raw brown sugar lumps that the youngster sucked. They journeyed on together for several days, heading for the high plateau of Angostura, where the goatherd was taking his flock. But, before they reached it, they were surprised late one afternoon by a party of men who could not be mistaken for anything but outlaws, with leather hats, cartridge belts made of jaguar skin, knapsacks embroidered with beads, blunderbusses slung over their shoulders, and machetes that hung down to their knees. There were six of them, and the leader, a
cafuzo
with kinky hair and a red bandanna around his neck, laughingly asked João, who had fallen to his knees and was begging him to take him with him, why he wanted to be a
cangaceiro
. “To kill National Guardsmen,” the youngster answered.