The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  The tanners, the sharecroppers, the healers, the peddlers, the laundresses, the midwives, and the beggar women who had reached Canudos after many days and nights of journeying, with their worldly goods in a canvas-covered cart or on the back of a burro, and who were there now, squatting in the dark, listening and wanting to believe, felt their eyes grow damp. They prayed and sang with the same conviction as the Counselor’s earliest followers; those who did not know them very soon learned the prayers, the hymns, the truths. Antônio Vilanova, the storekeeper of Canudos, was one of the ones most eager to learn; at night he took long walks along the banks of the river or past the newly sown fields with the Little Blessed One, who patiently explained the commandments and prohibitions of religion, which Antônio then taught to his brother Honório, his wife Antônia, his sister-in-law Assunção, and the children of the two couples.

  There was no shortage of food. They had grain, vegetables, meat, and since there was water in the Vaza-Barris they could plant crops. Those who arrived brought provisions with them and other towns often sent them poultry, rabbits, pigs, feed, goats. The Counselor asked Antônio Vilanova to store the food and see to it that it was distributed fairly among the destitute. Without specific directives, but in accordance with the Counselor’s teachings, life in Canudos was gradually becoming organized, though not without snags. The Little Blessed One took charge of instructing the pilgrims who arrived and receiving their donations, provided they were not donations of money. If they wanted to donate reis of the Republic, they were obliged to go to Cumbe or Juazeiro, escorted by Abbot João or Pajeú, who knew how to fight and could protect them, to spend them on things for the Temple: shovels, stonecutters, hammers, plumb lines, high-quality timber, statues of saints, and crucifixes. Mother Maria Quadrado placed in a glass case the rings, earrings, brooches, necklaces, combs, old coins, or simple clay or bone ornaments that the pilgrims offered, and this treasure was exhibited in the Church of Santo Antônio each time that Father Joaquim, from Cumbe, or another parish priest from the region, came to say Mass, confess, baptize, and marry people in Canudos. These were always times for celebration. Two fugitives from justice, Big João and Pedrão, the strongest men in Canudos, bossed the gangs that hauled stones for the Temple from nearby quarries. Catarina, Abbot João’s wife, and Alexandrinha Correa, a woman from Cumbe who, it was said, had worked miracles, prepared the food for the construction workers. Life was far from being perfect, with no complications. Even though the Counselor preached against gambling, tobacco, and alcohol, there were those who gambled, smoked, and drank cane brandy, and when Canudos began to grow, there were rights over women, thefts, drinking bouts, and even knifings. But these things were much less of a problem here than elsewhere and happened on the periphery of the active, fraternal, fervent, ascetic center constituted by the Counselor and his disciples.

  The Counselor had not forbidden the womenfolk to adorn themselves, but he said countless times that any woman who cared a great deal about her body might well neglect to care for her soul, and that, as with Lucifer, a beautiful outward appearance might well hide a filthy and loathsome spirit: the colors of the dresses of young women and old alike gradually became more and more drab; little by little the hemlines reached ankle length, the necklines climbed higher and higher, and they became looser and looser, so that finally they looked like nuns’ habits. Along with low necklines, adornments and even ribbons to tie back their hair disappeared; the women now wore it loose or hidden beneath large kerchiefs. On occasion there was trouble involving “the magdalenes,” those lost women who, despite having come to Canudos at the cost of many sacrifices and having kissed the Counselor’s feet begging for forgiveness, were harassed by intolerant women who wanted to make them wear combs of thorns as proof that they had repented.

  But, in general, life was peaceful and a spirit of collaboration reigned among the inhabitants. One source of problems was the ban against money of the Republic: anyone caught using it for any transaction had all of it he possessed taken away from him by the Counselor’s men, who then forced him to leave Canudos. Trade was carried on with coins bearing the effigy of the Emperor Dom Pedro or of his daughter, Princess Isabel, but since they were scarce the bartering of products and services became the general rule. Raw brown sugar was exchanged for rope sandals, chickens for herb cures, manioc flour for horseshoes, roof tiles for lengths of cloth, hammocks for machetes, and work, in the fields, in dwellings, in animal pens, was repaid with work. No one charged for the time and labor spent for the Blessed Jesus. Besides the Temple, dwellings were constructed that later came to be known as the Health Houses, where lodging, food, and care began to be given to the sick, to old people, and to orphaned children. Maria Quadrado was in charge of this task at first, but once the Sanctuary was built—a little two-room mud hut with a straw roof—so that the Counselor could have just a few hours’ respite from the pilgrims who hounded him night and day, and the Mother of Men devoted all her time to him, the Health Houses were run by the Sardelinha sisters, Antônia and Assunção, the wives of the Vilanova brothers. There were quarrels over the tillable plots of land along the Vaza-Barris, which were gradually occupied by the pilgrims who settled in Canudos and which others disputed their right to. Antônia Vilanova, the storekeeper, settled all such questions. By order of the Counselor, it was he who gave out parcels of land for newcomers to build their dwellings on and set aside land for pens for the animals that believers sent or brought as gifts, and he who acted as judge when quarrels over goods and property arose. There were not very many such quarrels, in fact, since people who came to Canudos had not been drawn there by greed or by the idea of material prosperity. The life of the community was devoted to spiritual activities: prayers, funerals, fasts, processions, the building of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, and above all the evening counsels that often lasted until far into the night. During those everything else in Canudos came to a halt.

  To publicize the fiesta it has organized, the Progressivist Republican Party has plastered the walls of Queimadas with posters reading A UNITED BRAZIL, A STRONG NATION and with the name of Epaminondas Gonçalves. But in his room in the Our Lady of Grace boarding house, Galileo Gall is not thinking of the political celebration taking place outside with great pomp and ceremony in the stifling heat of midday, but of the contradictory aptitudes that he has discovered in Rufino. “It’s a most unusual combination,” he thinks. Orientation and Concentration are closely akin, naturally, and it would be quite usual to find them in someone who spends his life wandering all over this immense region, guiding travelers, hunters, convoys, serving as a courier, or tracking down lost cattle. But what about Imaginativeness? How to account for the propensity for fantasy, delirium, unreality, typical of artists and impractical people, in an individual in whom everything points to the materialist, to the man with his feet on the ground, to the pragmatist? Nonetheless, that is what his bones indicate: Orientivity and Concentrativity, Imaginativeness. Galileo Gall discovered it almost the very first moment that he was able to palpate the guide. He thinks: “It’s an absurd, incompatible combination. How can a person be at one and the same time the soul of modesty and an exhibitionist, miserly and prodigal?”

  He is leaning over a pail washing his face, between partition walls covered with graffiti, newspaper clippings with pictures of an opera performance, and a broken mirror. Coffee-colored cockroaches appear and disappear through the cracks in the floor and there is a little petrified lizard on the ceiling. The only furniture is a broken-down bed with no sheets. The festive atmosphere enters the room through a latticed window: voices amplified by a loudspeaker, clashes of cymbals, drumrolls, and the jabbering of kids flying kites. Someone is alternating attacks on the Bahia Autonomist Party, Governor Luiz Viana, the Baron de Canabrava, and praise for Epaminondas Gonçalves and the Progressivist Republican Party.

  Galileo Gall goes on washing himself, indifferent to the hubbub outside. Once he has finished, he dries his face with his shirt and collapses
on the bed, face up, with one arm under his head for a pillow. He looks at the cockroaches, the lizard. He thinks: “Silence against impatience.” He has been in Queimadas for eight days now, and although he is a man who knows how to wait, he has begun to feel a certain anxiety: that is what has led him to ask Rufino to let him palpate his head. It was not easy to talk him into it, for the guide is a mistrustful sort and Gall remembers that he could feel as he palpated him how tense the man was, all ready to leap on him. They have seen each other every day, understand each other without difficulty now, and to pass the time as he is waiting, Galileo has studied his behavior, taking notes on him: “He reads the sky, the trees, the earth, as though they were a book; he is a man of simple, inflexible ideas, with a strict code of honor and a morality whose source has been his commerce with nature and with men, not book learning, since he does not know how to read, or religion, since he does not appear to be a very firm believer.” All of this coincides with what his fingers have felt, except for the Imaginativeness. In what way does it manifest itself, why has he failed to notice any of its signs in Rufino in these eight days, either while he was making a deal with him to guide him to Canudos, or in Rufino’s shack on the outskirts of town, or in the railway station having a cool drink together, or walking from one tannery to another along the banks of the Itapicuru? In Jurema, the guide’s wife, on the other hand, this pernicious, anti-scientific inclination—to leave the domain of experience to immerse oneself in phantasmagoria, in daydreaming—is obvious. For despite the fact that she is very reserved in his presence, Galileo has heard Jurema tell the story of the wooden statue of St. Anthony that is on the main altar of the church in Queimadas. “It was found in a cave, years ago, and taken to the church. The next day it disappeared and turned up again in the grotto. It was tied to the altar so that it wouldn’t make its escape, but it managed nonetheless to go back to the cave. And things went on like that, with the statue going back and forth, till a Holy Mission with four Capuchin Fathers and the archbishop came to Queimadas, dedicated the church to St. Anthony, and renamed the town Santo Antônio das Queimadas in honor of the saint. It was only then that the image stayed quietly on the altar, where people today light candles to it.” Galileo Gall remembers that when he asked Rufino if he believed the story that his wife had told, the tracker shrugged and smiled skeptically. Jurema, however, believed it. Galileo would have liked to palpate her head too, but he didn’t even try to do so; he is certain that the mere idea of a stranger touching his wife’s head must be inconceivable to Rufino. Yes, Rufino is beyond question a suspicious man. It has been hard work getting him to agree to take him to Canudos. He has haggled over the price, raised objections, hesitated, and though he has finally given in, Galileo has noted that he is ill at ease when he talks to him about the Counselor and the jagunços.

  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.