The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  They followed him with souls overcome with emotion, not so much because of what he had said to them, but because of the gentleness in his voice, which had always been severe and impersonal. It was hard work for some of them not to be left behind as he walked on with his great strides of a long-shanked wading bird, along the incredible path he chose for them this time, one that was a trail neither for pack animals nor for cangaceiros; he led them, rather, straight across a wild desert of cactus, tangled scrub brush, and rough stones. But he never hesitated as to what direction to take them in. During the first night’s halt, after offering the usual prayers of thanks and leading them in reciting the Rosary, he spoke to them of war, of countries that were killing each other over booty as hyenas fight over carrion, and in great distress commented that since Brazil was now a republic it, too, would act like other heretical nations. They heard him say that the Can must be rejoicing; they heard him say that the time had come to put down roots and build a Temple, which, when the end of the world came, would be what Noah’s Ark had been in the beginning.

  And where would they put down roots and build this Temple? They learned the answer after making their way across ravines, river shallows, sierras, scrub forests—days’ treks that were born and died with the sun—scaling an entire range of mountains and crossing a river that had very little water in it and was called the Vaza-Barris. Pointing to the cluster of cabins in the distance that had been peons’ huts and the broken-down mansion that had been the manor house when the place had been a hacienda, the Counselor said: “We shall settle there.” Some of them remembered that for years now in his nightly talks he had been prophesying that before the last days the Blessed Jesus’ elect would find refuge in a high and privileged land, where no one who was impure would enter. Those who had made the long climb to these heights could be certain of eternal rest. Had they reached, then, the land of salvation?

  Happy and tired, they followed along after their guide to Canudos, where the families of the Vilanova brothers, two merchants who had a general store there, and all the other inhabitants of the place, had turned out to watch them coming.

  The sun burns the backlands to a cinder, gleams on the greenish-black waters of the Itapicuru, reflects off the houses of Queimadas lining the right edge of the river, at the foot of gullies of reddish clay. Sparse trees cast their shadow over the rocky, rolling terrain stretching southeastward, in the direction of Riacho da Onça. The rider—boots, broad-brimmed hat, black frock coat—escorted by his shadow and that of his mule, heads unhurriedly toward a thicket of lead-colored bushes. Behind him, already far in the distance, the rooftops of Queimadas still glow like fire. To his left, several hundred meters away, a hut at the top of a rise can be seen. His thick locks spilling out from under his hat, his little red beard, and his clothes are full of dust; he is sweating heavily and every so often he wipes his forehead with his hand and runs his tongue over his parched lips. In the first clumps of underbrush in the thicket, he reins the mule in and his blue eyes eagerly search all about. Finally he makes out a man in sandals and a leather hat, drill trousers and a coarse cotton blouse, with a machete at his waist, kneeling a few feet away from him, exploring a trap.

  “Rufino?” he asks. “Rufino the guide from Queimadas?”

  The man turns halfway around, slowly, as though he had been aware of his presence for some time, and putting a finger to his lips signals him to be silent: shhh, shhh. At the same time he glances at him and for a second there is surprise in his dark eyes, perhaps because of the newcomer’s foreign accent in Portuguese, perhaps because of his funereal garb. Rufino—a young man, with a thin and supple body, an angular, beardless, weather-beaten face—draws his machete out of his belt, turns back to the trap hidden under the leaves, leans over it once again, and tugs on a net: he pulls out of the opening a confusion of croaking black feathers. It is a small vulture that cannot get off the ground because one of its feet is trapped in the net. There is a disappointed expression on the face of the guide, who frees the ugly bird from the net with the tip of the machete and watches it disappear in the blue air, desperately beating its wings.

  “One time a jaguar this big leapt out at me,” he murmurs, pointing to the trap. “He was half blind after being down in that hole for so many hours.”

  Galileo Gall nods. Rufino straightens up and takes two steps toward him.

  Now that he is free to talk, the stranger seems hesitant. “I went to your house looking for you,” he says, stalling for time. “Your wife sent me here.”

  The mule is pawing the dirt with its rear hoofs and Rufino grabs its head arid opens its mouth. As he examines its teeth with the look of a connoisseur, he appears to be thinking aloud: “The stationmaster at Jacobina knows my conditions. I’m a man of my word—anybody in Queimadas will tell you that. That’s tough work.”

  As Galileo Gall doesn’t answer, Rufino turns around to look at him. “Aren’t you from the railroad company?” he asks, speaking slowly since he has realized that the stranger is having difficulty understanding him.

  Galileo Gall tips his hat back and, pointing with his chin toward the desert hills all around them, murmurs: “I want to go to Canudos.” He pauses, blinks as though to conceal the excitement in his eyes, and adds: “I know that you’ve gone up there many times.”

  Rufino has a very serious look on his face. His eyes are scrutinizing him now with a distrust that he does not bother to hide. “I used to go to Canudos when it was a cattle ranch,” he says warily. “I haven’t been back since the Baron de Canabrava abandoned it.”

  “The way there is still the same,” Galileo Gall replies.

  They are standing very close together, observing each other, and the silent tension that has arisen seems to communicate itself to the mule, for it suddenly tosses its head and begins to back away.

  “Is it the Baron de Canabrava who’s sent you?” Rufino asks as he calms down the animal by patting its neck.

  Galileo Gall shakes his head and the guide does not pursue the matter. He runs his hand over one of the mule’s hind legs, forcing the animal to raise it, and squats down to examine its hoof.

  “There are things happening in Canudos,” he murmurs. “The people who have occupied the baron’s hacienda have attacked soldiers from the National Guard, in Uauá. They’re said to have killed several of them.”

  “Are you afraid they’ll kill you, too?” Galileo Gall grunts, with a smile. “Are you a soldier?”

  Rufino has finally found what he was looking for in the hoof: a thorn, perhaps, or a little pebble that is lost in his huge rough hands. He tosses it away and lets go of the animal.

  “Afraid? Not at all,” he answers mildly, with just the trace of a smile. “Canudos is a long way from here.”

  “I’ll pay you a fair price.” Stifling from the heat, Galileo Gall takes a deep breath; he removes his hat and shakes his curly red mane. “We’ll leave inside of a week or ten days at most. One thing is certain: we must be very cautious.”

  Rufino the guide looks at him without blinking an eye, without asking a single question.

  “Because of what happened in Uauá Galileo Gall adds, running his tongue over his lips. “No one must know that we’re going to Canudos.”

  Rufino points to the lone hut, made of mud and palings, half dissolved in the light at the top of the rise. “Come to my house and we’ll talk the matter over,” he says.

  They start walking, followed by the mule, which Galileo is leading along by the reins. The two men are of nearly the same height, but the outsider is stockier and his stride almost exaggeratedly vigorous, whereas the guide seems to be floating above the ground. It is midday and a few off-white clouds have appeared in the sky.

  The tracker’s voice fades away in the air as they walk off: “Who told you about me? And if I’m not prying, why is it you want to go such a long way? What is it you’ve lost up there in Canudos?”

  She appeared at daybreak one rainless morning, at the top of a hill on the r
oad from Quijingue, carrying a wooden cross on her back. She was twenty years old but had suffered so much that she looked ancient. She was a woman with a broad face, bruised feet, a shapeless body, and mouse-colored skin.

  Her name was Maria Quadrado and she was making her way from Salvador to Monte Santo, on foot. She had been dragging the cross along on her back for three months and a day now. On the road that went through rocky gorges, scrub forests bristling with cactus, deserts where the wind raised howling dust devils, settlements that consisted of a single muddy street and three palm trees, and pestilential swamps in which cattle immersed themselves to escape the bats, Maria Quadrado had slept in the open, except for the very few times that some backwoodsman or shepherd who looked upon her as a saint offered to share his shelter with her. She had kept herself alive on pieces of raw brown sugar that charitable souls gave her and wild fruit plucked off trees and bushes when, after going without food for so long, her stomach growled. As she left Bahia, determined to make the pilgrimage to the miraculous Calvary of the Serra de Piquaraca, where two kilometers dug out of the sides of the mountain and dotted with chapels in memory of the Via Crucis of Our Lord led to the Church of the Holy Cross of Monte Santo, which she had vowed to journey to on foot as atonement for her sins, Maria Quadrado’s hair was done up in braids with a ribbon tied around them and she was wearing two skirts, a blue blouse, and rope-soled shoes. But along the way she had given her clothes to beggars, and in Palmeira dos Indios her shoes had been stolen from her, so that when she set eyes on Monte Santo that dawn she was barefoot and her only garment was an esparto-cloth sack with holes for her arms. Her head, with its clumsily lopped-off locks of hair and bare skull, called to mind the heads of the lunatics in the asylum in Salvador. She had cut all her hair off herself after being raped for the fourth time.

  For she had been raped four times since beginning her journey: by a constable, by a cowboy, by two deer hunters together, and by a goatherd who had given her shelter in his cave. The first three times, as they defiled her she had felt only repugnance for those beasts trembling on top of her as though attacked by Saint Vitus’s dance and had endured her trial praying to God that they would not leave her pregnant. But the fourth time she had felt a rush of pity for the youngster lying on top of her, who, after having beaten her to make her submit to him, was now stammering tender words in her ear. To punish herself for this compassion she had cropped her hair off and transformed herself into as grotesque a monster as the ones exhibited by the Gypsy’s Circus in the towns of the sertão.

  On reaching the top of the hill, from which she saw at last the reward for all her effort—the series of gray-and-white stone steps of the Via Sacra, winding between the conical roofs of the chapels up to the Calvary at the top, to which great throngs of people from all over the state of Bahia flocked each Holy Week, and down below, at the foot of the mountain, the little houses of Monte Santo crowded around a public square with two bushy-topped tamarind trees in which there were shadows that moved—Maria Quadrado fell face downward on the ground and kissed the earth. There it was, surrounded by a plain covered with a new growth of vegetation where herds of goats were grazing: the longed-for place whose name had spurred her on to undertake the journey and had helped her to endure fatigue, hunger, cold, heat, repeated rape. Kissing the planks that she herself had nailed together for her cross, the woman thanked God in a confused rush of words for having enabled her to fulfill her vow. And taking up the cross once more, she trotted toward Monte Santo like an animal whose sense of smell tells it that its prey or its lair is close at hand.

  She entered the town just as people were waking up, and from door to door, from window to window, she sowed curiosity in her wake. Amused faces, pitying faces poked out to look at her—squat, filthy, ugly, long-suffering—and as she started up the Rua dos Santos Passos, built above the ravine where the town’s garbage was burned and the town’s pigs were rooting about, the beginning of the Via Sacra, a huge procession followed her. She began to climb the mountain on her knees, surrounded by muleteers who had left off their work, by cobblers and bakers, by a swarm of little kids, by devout women who had torn themselves away from their morning novena. The townspeople, who, as she began the climb, regarded her as simply an odd sort, saw her make her way painfully upward, carrying the cross that must have weighed as much as she did, refusing to let anyone help her, and they saw her halt to pray in each of the twenty-four chapels and kiss with eyes full of love the feet of the statues in all the vaulted niches in the rock face, and they saw her hold up for hour after hour without eating a single mouthful or drinking a single drop of water, and by nightfall they revered her as a true saint. Maria Quadrado reached the mountaintop—a world apart, where it was always cold and orchids grew between the bluish stones—and still had enough remaining strength to thank God for her blessed lot before fainting dead away.

  Many inhabitants of Monte Santo, whose proverbial hospitality had not been diminished by the periodic invasion of pilgrims, offered Maria Quadrado lodgings. But she installed herself in a cave, halfway up the Via Sacra, where previously only birds and rodents had slept. It was a small hollow, with a ceiling so low that she was unable to stand upright in it, walls so damp from the dripping water that they were covered with moss, and a powdery sandstone floor that made her sneeze. The townspeople thought that this place would very soon be the end of her. But the force of will that had enabled Maria Quadrado to walk for three months with a heavy cross on her back also enabled her to live in that inhospitable grotto for all the years that she remained in Monte Santo.

  Maria Quadrado’s cave became a shrine, and along with the Calvary, the place most frequently visited by pilgrims. As the months went by, she began little by little to decorate it. She made different-colored paints from the juice of plants, mineral powders, and the blood of cochineal insects (used by tailors to dye garments). Against a blue background meant to represent the firmament, she painted the objects associated with Christ’s Passion: the nails driven into the palms of His hands and His feet; the cross He bore on His back and on which He died; the crown of thorns that pierced His temples; the tunic of His martyrdom; the centurion’s lance that penetrated His flesh; the hammer with which the nails were driven in; the lash that whipped Him; the sponge from which He drank the sour wine; the dice with which the impious soldiers played at His feet; and the purse with the pieces of silver that Judas was given as payment for His betrayal. She also painted the star that guided the Three Kings and the shepherds to Bethlehem and a Sacred Heart transpierced by a sword. And she made an altar and a cupboard to store veils for the use of the penitents and give them a place to hang ex-votos. She slept at the foot of the altar on a straw pallet.

  Her goodness and devotion made her beloved of the townspeople of Monte Santo, who adopted her as though she had lived there all her life. Soon children began to call her godmother and dogs commenced to allow her to enter houses and yards without barking at her. Her life was devoted to God and serving others. She spent hours at the bedside of the sick, bathing their foreheads with water and praying for them. She helped midwives care for women in childbirth and watched over the little ones of neighbor women obliged to be absent from their homes. She willingly offered to do the most thankless tasks, such as aiding old people too helpless to attend to calls of nature by themselves. Girls of marriageable age asked her advice about their suitors, and boys courting a girl begged her to intercede with their sweetheart’s parents if the latter were reluctant to consent to the marriage. She reconciled estranged couples, and women whose husbands tried to beat them because they were lazy or to kill them because they’d committed adultery hastened to take shelter in her cave, knowing that with her as their protectress no man in Monte Santo would dare lay a finger on them. She ate whatever was given her out of charity, so little that the food left in her grotto by the faithful was always more than enough, and each afternoon found her sharing what was left over with the poor. She also divided among them the cloth
es that had been given her, and in fair weather and foul no one ever saw her wearing anything but the esparto-cloth sack full of holes in which she had arrived.

  Her relationship, on the other hand, with the missionaries of the Massacará mission, who came to Monte Santo to celebrate Mass in the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was not a warm one. They kept warning people against the wrong sort of religiosity, the sort that escaped the control of the Church, pointing out as an example the Pedras Encantadas, in the region of As Flores, in Pernambuco, where the heretic João Ferreira and a group of proselytes had sprinkled the aforementioned stones with the blood of dozens of persons (among them hers), believing that in this way they would break the spell that had been cast upon King Dom Sebastião, a ruler of Portugal who had mysteriously disappeared while on crusade against the Moors, who would bring back to life those who had met their death in the final battle and lead their way to heaven. To the missionaries of Massacará, Maria Quadrado represented a borderline case, verging on heresy. She for her part knelt as the missionaries passed and kissed their hands and asked for their blessing, but she was not known to have ever maintained with these Fathers in bell-shaped habits, with long beards and a manner of speaking often difficult to understand, the sort of intimate and heartfelt ties that united her and the people of Monte Santo.

  In their sermons, the missionaries also put the faithful on their guard against wolves who stole into the fold in sheep’s clothing so as to devour the entire flock: that is to say, those false prophets that Monte Santo attracted as honey attracts flies. They appeared in its narrow streets dressed in sheepskins like John the Baptist or in tunics that imitated habits, climbed up to the Calvary, and immediately launched into fiery and incomprehensible sermons. They were a great source of entertainment for the entire town, exactly like the itinerant storytellers or Pedrim the Giant, the Bearded Lady, or the Man without Bones of the Gypsy’s Circus. But Maria Quadrado never went near the groups of disciples that formed about these outlandish preachers.