The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Half an hour later, unable to bear the nervous tension, Father Joaquim confessed to him, trembling and sniveling, that Captain Macedo and his flying brigade were at the top of the mountain ridge, awaiting reinforcements so as to launch an attack. The priest had been ordered by Bandit-Chaser to delay João by using any trick he could think of. At that moment the first shots rang out from the direction of the plateau. They were surrounded. Amid all the confusion, João shouted to the cangaceiros to hold out as best they could till nightfall. But the bandits had had so much to drink that they couldn’t even tell where the shots were coming from. They presented easy targets for the Guardsmen with their Comblains and fell to the ground bellowing, amid a hail of gunfire punctuated by the screams of the women running this way and that, trying to escape the crossfire. When night came, there were only four cangaceiros still on their feet, and João, who was fighting with a bullet through his shoulder, fainted. His men wrapped him in a hammock litter and began climbing the mountain. Aided by a sudden torrential rain, they broke through the enemy encirclement. They took shelter in a cave, and four days later they entered Tepidó, where a healer brought João’s fever down and stanched his wound. They stayed there for two weeks, till Satan João was able to walk again. The night they left Tepidó they learned that Captain Macedo had decapitated the corpses of their comrades who had been killed in Rosário and carried off the heads in a barrel, salted down like jerky.

  They plunged back into their daily round of violence, without thinking too much about their lucky stars or about the unlucky stars of the others. Once more they walked, stole, fought, hid out, their lives continually hanging by a thread. Satan João still had an indefinable feeling in his breast, the certainty that at any moment now something was going to happen that he had been waiting for ever since he could remember.

  They came upon the hermitage, half fallen to ruins, along a turnoff of the trail leading to Cansanção. Standing before half a hundred people in rags and tatters, a tall, strikingly thin man, enveloped in a dark purple tunic, was speaking. He did not interrupt his peroration or even cast a glance at the newcomers. João had the dizzying feeling that something was boiling in his brain as he listened to what the saint was saying. He was telling the story of a sinner who, after having committed every evil deed under the sun, repented, lived a dog’s life, won God’s pardon, and went to heaven. When the man ended his story, he looked at the strangers. Without hesitating, he addressed João, who was standing there with his eyes lowered. “What is your name?” he asked him. “Satan João,” the cangaceiro murmured. “You had best call yourself Abbot João, that is to say, an apostle of the Blessed Jesus,” the hoarse voice said.

  Three days after having sent off the letter describing his visit to Brother João Evangelista de Monte Marciano to L’Etincelle de la révolte, Galileo Gall heard a knock on the door of the garret above the Livraria Catilina. The moment he set eyes on them, he knew the individuals were police underlings. They asked to see his papers, looked through his belongings, questioned him about his activities in Salvador. The following day the order expelling him from the country as an undesirable alien arrived. Old Jan van Rijsted pulled strings and Dr. José Batista de Sá Oliveira wrote to Governor Luiz Viana offering to be responsible for him, but the authorities obdurately notified Gall that he was to leave Brazil on the Marseillaise when it sailed for Europe a week later. He would be given, free of charge, a one-way ticket in third class. Gall told his friends that being driven out of a country—or thrown in jail or killed—is one of the vicissitudes endured by every revolutionary and that he had been living the life of one almost since the day he’d been born. He was certain that the British consul, or the French or the Spanish one, was behind the expulsion order, but, he assured them, none of the police of these three countries would get their hands on him, since he would make himself scarce if the Marseillaise made calls in African ports or in Lisbon. He did not appear to be alarmed.

  Both Jan van Rijsted and Dr. Oliveira had heard him speak with enthusiasm of his visit to the Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy, but both of them were thunderstruck when he announced to them that since he was being thrown out of Brazil, he intended to make “a gesture on behalf of the brothers of Canudos” before departing, inviting people to attend a public demonstration of solidarity with them. He would call upon all freedom lovers in Bahia to gather together and explain to them why he had done so: “In Canudos a revolution is coming into being, by spontaneous germination, and it is the duty of progressive-minded men to support it.” Jan van Rijsted and Dr. Oliveira did their best to dissuade him, telling him again and again that such a step was utter folly, but Gall nonetheless tried to get notice of the meeting published in the one opposition paper. His failure at the office of the Jornal de Notícias did not dishearten him. He was pondering the possibility of having leaflets printed that he himself would hand out in the streets, when something happened that made him write: “At last! I was living too peaceful a life and beginning to become dull-spirited.”

  It happened two days before he was due to sail, as dusk was falling. Jan van Rijsted came into the garret, with his late-afternoon pipe in his hand, to tell him that two persons were downstairs asking for him. “They’re capangas,” he warned him. Galileo knew that that was what men whom the powerful and the authorities used for underhanded business were called, and as a matter of fact the two of them did have a sinister look about them. But they were not armed and their manner toward him was respectful: there was someone who wanted to see him. Might he ask who? No. He was intrigued, and went along with them. They took him to the Praça da Basílica Cathedral first, through the upper town and after that through the lower one, and then through the outskirts. As they left paved streets behind in the darkness—the Rua Conselheiro Dantas, the Rua Portugal, the Rua das Princesas—and the markets of Santa Barbara and São João and turned into the carriageway that ran along the seafront to Barra, Galileo Gall wondered if the authorities hadn’t decided to murder him instead of expelling him from the country. But it was not a trap. At an inn lighted by a little kerosene lamp, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Jornal de Notícias was waiting for him.

  Epaminondas Gonçalves held out his hand to him and asked him to sit down. He came straight to the point. “Do you want to stay in Brazil despite the order of expulsion?”

  Galileo merely looked at him, without answering.

  “Are you genuinely enthusiastic about what’s going on up there in Canudos?” Epaminondas Gonçalves asked. They were alone in the room, and outside, the capangas could be heard talking together and waves steadily rolling in. The leader of the Progressivist Republican Party was watching him intently, with a very serious expression on his face, and nervously tapping his heels. He was dressed in the gray suit that Galileo had seen him wearing in his office at the Jornal de Notícias, but his face did not have the same nonchalant, slyly mocking look on it that it had had that day. He was tense, with a furrowed brow that made his youthful face look older.

  “I don’t like mysteries,” Gall said. “You’d best explain to me what this is all about.”

  “I’m trying to find out whether you want to go to Canudos to take arms to the rebels.”

  Galileo waited for a moment, not saying a word, looking the other man straight in the eye.

  “Two days ago you had no sympathy for the rebels,” he slowly commented. “Occupying other people’s land and living in promiscuity struck you as animal behavior.”

  “That is the opinion of the Progressivist Republican Party,” Epaminondas Gonçalves agreed. “And my own as well, naturally.”

  “But…” Gall said, helping him along, thrusting his head slightly forward.

  “But the enemies of our enemies are our friends,” Epaminondas Gonçalves declared, ceasing to tap his heels. “Bahia is a bulwark of retrograde landowners, whose hearts still lie with the monarchy, despite the fact that we’ve been a republic for eight years. If it is necessary to aid the bandits and the Sebastian
ists in the interior in order to put an end to the Baron de Canabrava’s dictatorial rule over Bahia, I shall do so. We’re falling farther and farther behind and becoming poorer and poorer. These people must be removed from power, at whatever cost, before it’s too late. If that business in Canudos continues, Luiz Viana’s government will be plunged into crisis and sooner or later the federal forces will step in. And the moment that Rio de Janeiro intervenes, Bahia will cease to be the fief of the Autonomists.”

  “And the reign of the Progressivist Republicans will begin,” Gall murmured.

  “We don’t believe in kings. We’re republicans to the very marrow of our bones,” Epaminondas Gonçalves corrected him. “Well, well, I see you understand me.”

  “I understand that part all right,” Galileo said. “But not the rest of it. If the Progressivist Republican Party wants to arm the jagunços, why through me?”

  “The Progressivist Republican Party does not wish to aid or to have the slightest contact with people who rebel against the law,” Epaminondas Gonçalves said, pronouncing each syllable slowly and distinctly.

  “The Honorable Deputy Epaminondas Gonçalves cannot aid rebels,” the owner and editor-in-chief of the Jornal de Notícias said, again lingering over every syllable. “Nor can anyone connected with him, either closely or remotely. The Honorable Deputy is fighting an uphill battle for republican and democratic ideals in this autocratic enclave of powerful enemies, and cannot take such a risk.” He smiled, and Gall saw that he had a gleaming white, voracious set of teeth. “Then you entered the picture. The plan I’m proposing would never have occurred to me if it hadn’t been for that strange visit of yours day before yesterday. That was what gave me the idea, what made me think: ‘If he’s mad enough to call a public meeting in support of the rebels, he’ll be mad enough to take them rifles.’” He stopped smiling and spoke sternly. “In cases such as this, frankness is the best policy. You’re the only person who, if you’re discovered or captured, could in no way compromise me and my political friends.”

  “Are you warning me that if I were captured I wouldn’t be able to count on you for help?”

  “This time you’ve understood my meaning exactly,” Epaminondas Gonçalves said slowly and distinctly. “If your answer is no, I bid you good night, and forget that you’ve seen me. If it’s yes, let us discuss the fee.”

  The Scotsman shifted position on his seat, a little wooden bench that creaked. “The fee?” he murmured, blinking.

  “As I see it, you’re performing a service,” Epaminondas Gonçalves said. “I’ll pay you well for it, and promptly, I promise you, the moment you’re about to leave the country. But if you prefer to render this service ad honorem, out of idealism, that’s your business.”

  “I’m going to take a stroll outside,” Galileo Gall said, rising to his feet. “I think better when I’m by myself. I won’t be long.”

  On stepping outside the inn, he thought at first that it was raining, but it was merely spray from the waves. The capangas stepped aside to let him pass, and he smelled the strong, acrid odor of their pipes. There was a moon, and the sea, looking as though it were effervescent, was giving off a pleasant, salty smell that penetrated to his very vitals. Galileo Gall walked, amid the sand and the lonely boulders, to a little fort with a cannon aimed at the horizon. He thought to himself: “The Republic has as little strength in Bahia as the King of England beyond the Aberfoyle Pass in the days of Rob Roy Macgregor.” Faithful to his habit despite the chaotic pounding of his blood, he tried to view the situation objectively. Was it ethical for a revolutionary to conspire with a petty-bourgeois politician? Yes, if the conspiracy aided the jagunços. Could he be of help to the people in Canudos? Without false modesty, one who was a battle-hardened veteran of political struggles and had dedicated his life to revolution could help them when certain decisions had to be made and once the time came when they would be forced to fight. And, finally, the experience would be valuable if he passed it on to the world’s revolutionaries. It might well be that he would leave his bones to molder there in Canudos, but wasn’t such an end preferable to dying of illness or of old age? He walked back to the inn and, standing on the threshold of the room, said to Epaminondas Gonçalves: “I’m mad enough to do it.”

  “Wonderful!” the politician answered Galileo Gall in English, caught up by his fervor, his eyes gleaming.

  [V]

  In his sermons, the Counselor had so often foretold how the forces of the Dog would come to seize him and put the city to the sword that no one in Canudos was surprised when it was learned, from pilgrims come on horseback from Juazeiro, that a company of the Ninth Infantry Battalion from Bahia had arrived in the vicinity, charged with the mission of capturing the saint.

  Prophecies were beginning to come true, words becoming facts. The news had a tonic effect, mobilizing old people, young people, men, women. Shotguns and carbines, flintlocks that had to be muzzle-loaded were immediately taken up and bandoleers threaded with the proper ammunition, as at the same time knives and daggers appeared, tucked into waistbands as if by magic, and in people’s hands sickles, machetes, pikes, awls, slings and hunting crossbows, clubs, stones.

  That night, the night of the beginning of the end of the world, all Canudos gathered round about the Temple of the Good Lord Jesus—a two-story skeleton, with towers that were growing taller and walls that were being filled in—to listen to the Counselor’s words. The fervor of the elect filled the air. The Counselor, on the other hand, appeared to be more withdrawn than ever. Once the pilgrims from Juazeiro told him the news, he did not make the slightest comment and went on supervising the gathering of building stones, the tamping of the ground, and the mixing of sand and pebbles for the Temple with such total concentration that no one dared ask him any questions. Nonetheless, as they prepared for battle, they all felt that that ascetic figure approved of what they were doing. And all of them knew, as they oiled their crossbows, cleaned the bore of their muskets and blunderbusses, and dried their gunpowder, that this night the Father, through the mouth of the Counselor, would tell them what to do.

  The saint’s voice resounded beneath the stars, in the air without a breath of wind in which his words seemed to linger, an atmosphere so serene that it banished all fear. Before speaking of the war, he spoke of peace, of the life to come, in which sin and pain would disappear. Once the Devil was overthrown, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit would be established, the last era of the world before Judgment Day. Would Canudos be the capital of this Kingdom? If the Blessed Jesus so willed it. Then the wicked laws of the Republic would be repealed and the priests would return, as in the very earliest days, to be selfless shepherds of their flocks. The backlands would grow verdant from the rain, there would be an abundance of maize and cattle, everyone would have enough to eat, and each family would be able to bury its dead in coffins padded with velvet. But, before that, the Antichrist had to be overthrown. It was necessary to make a cross and a banner with the image of the Divine on it so that the enemy would know what side true religion was on. And it was necessary to go into battle as the Crusaders had when they set out to deliver Jerusalem: singing, praying, acclaiming the Virgin and Our Lord. And as the Crusaders had vanquished their enemy, so too would the crusaders of the Blessed Jesus vanquish the Republic.

  No one in Canudos slept that night. Everyone stayed up, some of them praying, others preparing for battle, as diligent hands nailed the cross together and sewed the banner. They were ready before dawn. The cross was three yards tall and two yards wide, and the banner was four bedsheets sewn together, on which the Little Blessed One painted a white dove with outspread wings, and the Lion of Natuba wrote, in his calligraphic hand, an ejaculatory prayer. Save for a handful of people designated by Antônio Vilanova to remain in Canudos so that the building of the Temple would not be interrupted (work on it went on day and night, except for Sundays), everyone else in the settlement left at first light, heading in the direction of Bendengó and Juazeiro, to prove
to the chieftains of evil that good still had its defenders on this earth. The Counselor did not see them leave, for he was in the little Church of Santo Antônio praying for them.

  They were obliged to march ten leagues to meet the soldiers. They made the march singing, praying, and acclaiming God and the Counselor. They halted to rest only once, after passing Monte Cambaio. Those who felt a call of nature left the crooked lines of marchers, slipped behind a boulder, and then caught up with the rest farther down the road. Traversing the flat, dry stretch of terrain took them a day and a night, without a single soul asking for another halt to rest. They had no battle plan. The rare travelers who met them on the road were amazed to learn that they were marching to war. They looked like a crowd heading for a fiesta; a number of them were dressed in their fanciest clothes. They were carrying weapons and shouted, “Death to the Devil and to the Republic,” but even at such moments the joyous expression on their faces softened the effect of the hatred in their voices. The cross and the banner headed the procession, carried respectively by the ex-bandit Pedrão and the ex-slave Big João, and behind them came Maria Quadrado and Alexandrinha Correa carrying the glass case with the image of the Good Lord Jesus painted on cloth by the Little Blessed One, and behind that, ghostly apparitions enveloped in a cloud of dust, came the elect. Many accompanied the litanies by blowing on lengths of sugarcane that in bygone days had served as pipes for smoking tobacco; with holes pierced in them, they could also be made into shepherd’s pipes.