The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  As they waited for him, Antônio the Pyrotechnist prepared a fireworks display, and there was a procession. On the following day, many jagunços returned to the site of the battle. They stripped the soldiers and left their naked corpses to rot. Once back in Canudos, they burned the troops’ tunics and trousers and everything in the pockets: paper money issued by the Republic, cigars, illustrated cards, locks of hair of wives, sweethearts, daughters, keepsakes they frowned upon. But they put the rifles, the bayonets, the bullets aside, because Abbot João, Pajeú, the Vilanovas had asked them to and because they realized that they would be indispensable if they were attacked again. As some of the jagunços still insisted they should be destroyed, the Counselor himself had to ask them to place all the Mannlichers, Winchesters, revolvers, boxes of gunpowder, cartridge belts, cans of grease in the care of Antônio Vilanova. The two Krupp cannons were still at the foot of O Cambaio, in the emplacement from which they had bombarded the mountain. All the parts of them that could be burned—the wheels and the caissons—were set afire, and the steel barrels were hauled to Canudos by mule team so that the smiths could melt them down.

  In Rancho das Pedras, which had been Major Febrônio de Brito’s last camp, Pedrão’s men found six hungry, disheveled women who had followed the soldiers, cooking for them, washing their clothes, and sleeping with them. They took them to Canudos and the Little Blessed One made them leave, telling them that anyone who had freely chosen to serve the Antichrist could not remain in Belo Monte. But two half-breeds who had belonged to José Venâncio’s band and were disconsolate at his death caught one of them, who was pregnant, on the outskirts of Canudos, slit her belly open with a machete, ripped out the fetus, and put a live rooster in its place, convinced that they were thus doing their leader in the other world a favor.

  He hears the name Caifás, repeated two or three times, in between words that he doesn’t understand, and struggles to open his eyes, and there Rufino’s wife is, standing next to the hammock, all excited, moving her mouth, making noises, and it is broad daylight now and the sun is pouring into the cabin through the door and the chinks between the palings. The light hurts his eyes so much that he blinks and rubs his eyelids hard as he gets to his feet. Blurred images come to him through a milky water, and as his head clears and the world comes into focus, Galileo Gall’s mind and eyes discover that a metamorphosis has taken place in the room: it has been carefully put back in order; floor, walls, objects look bright and shining, as though everything had been scrubbed and polished. He understands now what Jurema is saying: Caifás is coming, Caifás is coming. He notices that the tracker’s wife has changed out of her tunic that he ripped open and is now wearing a dark blouse and skirt, that she is barefoot and frightened, and as he tries to remember where his revolver fell that morning, he tells himself that there is no need to be alarmed, that the man coming is the guide dressed in leather who took him to Epaminondas Gonçalves’s and brought him back here with the arms, precisely the person he needs most at this moment. There the revolver is, next to his small valise, at the foot of the print of the Virgin of Lapa hanging on a nail. He picks it up and as the thought occurs to him that there are no more bullets left in it he sees Caifás in the doorway of the cabin.

  “They tried to kill me,” he blurts out in English, and then, realizing his mistake, switches to Portuguese. “They tried to kill me. They’ve stolen the arms. I must go see Epaminondas Gonçalves, right away.”

  “Good morning,” Caifás says, raising two fingers to his sombrero with ornamental thongs round the brim without taking it off, addressing Jurema in what strikes Gall as an absurdly solemn manner. Then Caifás turns to him, makes the same gesture, and repeats: “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Gall answers, feeling suddenly ridiculous with the revolver in his hand. He tucks it away at his waist, between his trousers and his belly, and takes two steps toward Caifás, noticing the confusion, the abashment, the embarrassment that have come over Jurema on the guide’s arrival: she is standing there not moving, staring at the floor, not knowing what to do with her hands.

  Galileo points outside. “Did you see those two dead men out there? There was another one with them, the one who made away with the arms. I must talk to Epaminondas, I must warn him. Take me to him.”

  “I saw them,” Caifás says, not wasting words. And he turns to Jurema, who is still standing there with her head down, petrified, flexing her fingers as though she had a cramp in them. “Soldiers have come to Queimadas. Over five hundred of them. They’re looking for guides to take them to Canudos. Anyone who doesn’t want to hire on with them they take by force. I came to warn Rufino.”

  “He’s not here,” Jurema stammers, without raising her head. “He’s gone to Jacobina.”

  “Soldiers?” Gall takes another step, bringing him so close to the newcomer that he is practically brushing against him. “Major Brito’s expedition is already here?”

  “There’s going to be a parade,” Caifás says, nodding. “They’re lined up in formation in the main square. They arrived on the morning train.”

  Gall wonders why the man doesn’t seem surprised by the dead bodies he saw outside the cabin when he arrived, why he’s not asking him any questions as to what’s happened, how it happened, why he’s still here, so calm, so impassive, so unexpressive, waiting—for what?—and he tells himself once more that the people in these parts are strange, impenetrable, inscrutable, reminding him of Chinese, of Hindustanis. Caifás is a very skinny, bony, bronze-skinned man with prominent cheekbones and wine-dark eyes that are disconcerting because they never blink, whose voice is quite unfamiliar to him, since he scarcely opened his mouth all during the trip back and forth that he made with him, sitting directly alongside him, and whose leather vest and pants, reinforced in the seat and the legs with strips of leather as well, and even his rope sandals appear to be part of his body, a tough additional skin, a crust. Why has his arrival so disconcerted Jurema? Is it because of what has happened between the two of them a few hours before? The little woolly dog appears from somewhere and leaps and gambols and plays about at Jurema’s feet, and at that moment Galileo Gall notices that the chickens in the room have all disappeared.

  “I saw only three of them. The one who escaped took the arms off with him,” he says, smoothing his disheveled red hair. “Epaminondas must be told of this as soon as possible; it might be dangerous for him. Can you take me to his hacienda?”

  “He’s not there any more,” Caifás says. “You heard him yesterday when he said he was about to leave for Bahia.”

  “That’s true,” Gall says. There is no getting round it; he, too, will be obliged to go back to Bahia. He thinks: “The soldiers are already here.” He thinks: “They’re going to come looking for Rufino, they’re going to find the dead men, they’re going to find me.” He simply must leave, shake off this lassitude, this drowsiness that has overcome him. But he doesn’t move.

  “Perhaps they were enemies of Epaminondas’s, Governor Luiz Viana’s people, the baron’s,” he murmurs, as though speaking to Caifás, though he is really talking to himself. “Why didn’t the National Guard come, then? Those three men weren’t gendarmes. They could have been brigands, who might have wanted the arms for their depredations, or in order to sell them.”

  Jurema is still standing motionless with her head down, and not three feet away from him is Caifás, still calm, quiet, impassive. The little dog leaps about, panting.

  “What’s more, there’s something strange about this whole thing,” Gall says, thinking aloud. And to himself: “I must hide out till the soldiers leave and then go back to Salvador”—reflecting at the same time that Major Brito’s expedition is already there, less than two kilometers away, that it will proceed to Canudos and no doubt put an end to this outbreak of rebellion in which he thought he saw, or fondly believed he saw, the seeds of a revolution. “They weren’t only after arms. They also were out to kill me, there’s no doubt of that. And that I don’t unders
tand at all. Who could possibly want to kill me here in Queimadas?”

  “I could, sir,” he hears Caifás say, in the same toneless voice, as he suddenly feels the knife edge at his throat, but his reflexes are, have always been, very fast, and he has managed to throw his head back, to step a few millimeters away just as the man dressed in leather has leapt upon him, and his knife, instead of burying itself in his throat, misses its mark and wounds him farther down, to the right, where his neck and his shoulder meet, producing in his body a sensation that is more one of cold and surprise than of pain. He has fallen to the floor and is touching the wound, noting that blood is pouring out between his fingers, his eyes opened wide, staring spellbound at the man with the biblical name dressed in leather, whose expression, even now, has not changed, except perhaps for the pupils of his eyes, opaque before and now gleaming brightly. He is holding the bloody knife in his right hand and a small pearl-handled revolver in his left. Leaning over him, he aims it at Galileo’s head, offering him more or less of an explanation as he does so: “I’m acting on orders from Colonel Epaminondas Gonçalves, sir. I was the one who rode off with the arms this morning; I’m the leader of the men you killed.”

  “Epaminondas Gonçalves?” Galileo Gall roars, and now the pain in his throat is agonizing.

  “He needs an English corpse,” Caifás says in what sounds like a more or less apologetic tone of voice as he squeezes the trigger, and Gall, who has automatically tilted his head to one side, feels a burning sensation in his jaw and in his hair and another that feels as though his ear is being ripped off.

  “I’m a Scotsman and I hate the English,” he manages to murmur, thinking that the second shot will hit him in the forehead, the mouth, or the heart and he will lose consciousness and die, for the man dressed in leather is raising his hand with the revolver again, but instead what he sees is a meteor, a commotion, as Jurema lunges at Caifás, grabs him, and trips him, and then he stops thinking, and discovering strength within himself he no longer knows he possesses, he rises to his feet and also flings himself upon Caifás, vaguely aware that he is bleeding and burning with pain, and before he can think again or try to understand what has happened, what has saved him, he is hitting with the butt of his revolver, with every last ounce of his strength, the man in leather, whom Jurema is still hanging on to. Before seeing him fall senseless, he realizes that Caifás is not looking at him as he defends himself from the blows of his revolver, but at Jurema, and that there is no hatred or anger but only an immeasurable stupefaction in his dark wine-colored pupils, as though he is unable to comprehend what she has done, as though the fact that she has been the one who has flung herself upon him and deflected his arm, thereby permitting his victim to rise to his feet, was something he could not have imagined, could never have dreamed of. But when Caifás, his body going limp, his face swollen from the blows, covered with his own blood or Gall’s, lets go of the knife and his miniature revolver and Gall grabs it and is about to shoot him, it is again Jurema who stops him, grabbing his hand, just as she had seized Caifás’s before, screaming hysterically.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Gall says in English, with no strength left to fight. “I must clear out of here; the soldiers will be coming. Help me onto the mule, woman.”

  He opens and closes his mouth several times, certain that he is about to collapse alongside Caifás, who appears to be stirring. His face contorted from the effort, noting that the burning sensation in his neck has grown worse and that now his bones, his fingernails, his hair hurt him too, he walks across the cabin, bumping into the trunks and the furniture, toward the blaze of white light that is the door, thinking: “Epaminondas Gonçalves,” thinking: “I’m an English corpse.”

  The new parish priest in Cumbe, Dom Joaquim, arrived in the town—no skyrockets were set off, no bells pealed—one cloudy afternoon with a storm threatening. He appeared in an oxcart, with a battered valise and a little umbrella to keep off the rain and the sun. He had had a long journey, from Bengalas, in Pernambuco, where he had been the parish priest for two years. In the months to come, the story was to go round that his bishop had sent him away because he had taken liberties with a girl who was a minor.

  The townspeople he met at the entrance to Cumbe took him to the church square and showed him the tumbledown parish house where the priest had lived at the time when Cumbe still had a priest. The dwelling was now a hollow shell with walls but no roof that served as a garbage dump and a refuge for stray animals. Dom Joaquim went into the little Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, and by putting the usable benches together made himself a bed and stretched out on it to sleep, just as he was.

  He was a young man, short and slightly stoop-shouldered, with a little potbelly and a jovial air about him that made people take a liking to him from the very beginning. If it hadn’t been for his habit and his tonsure, no one would have taken him to be a man in active commerce with the world of the spirit, for it sufficed to be in his company just once on some social occasion to realize that he cared about the things of this world (women in particular) just as much, or perhaps more. On the very day that he arrived he showed Cumbe that he was capable of rubbing elbows with people in the town as though he were one of them and that his presence would not interfere in any substantial way with the habits and customs of the population. Nearly every family in Cumbe had gathered in the church square to welcome him when he opened his eyes after sleeping for a fair number of hours. Night had fallen, it had rained and stopped raining, and in the warm damp crickets were chirping and there were myriad stars in the sky. The introductions began, a long line of women filing past who kissed his hand and men who removed their sombreros as they came by, murmuring their names. After only a short time Father Joaquim interrupted the hand-kissing, explaining that he was dying of hunger and thirst. A ceremony then took place that was somewhat reminiscent of the stations of the cross during Holy Week, as the priest dropped in at one house after the other and was offered the choicest viands the householder could provide. Dawn found him still awake, in one of the two taverns of Cumbe, drinking brandy with sour cherries and having a ballad contest with the caboclo Matias de Tavares.

  He began his priestly functions immediately, saying Masses, baptizing newborn babes, confessing the adults, administering the last rites to the dying, and marrying newly betrothed couples or those who were already living together and wanted to appear upright in the sight of God. As he had a vast territory to look after, he traveled about a great deal. He was active and even self-abnegating when it came to fulfilling his duties as priest of the parish. The fees he asked for many of his services were modest, he didn’t mind if people put off paying him or didn’t pay at all, for, of the capital vices, the one that he was definitely free of was avarice. Of the others, no, but at least he indulged in all of them without discrimination. He accepted the succulent roast kid offered him by the owner of a hacienda with the same warm thanks and rejoicing as the mouthful of raw sugar that a poor peasant invited him to share, and his throat made no distinction between aged brandy and the throat-scalding raw rum toned down with water that was the usual drink in times of scarcity. As far as women were concerned, nothing seemed to put him off: gummy-eyed crones, silly girls who hadn’t yet reached puberty, women punished by nature with warts, harelips, or feeblemindedness. He never tired of flattering them and flirting with them and insisting that they come round to decorate the altar of the church. He would have boisterous romps with them, his face would grow flushed, and he would paw them as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The fact that he was a man of the cloth made fathers, husbands, brothers look upon him as sexless, and they resignedly put up with these audacities on the part of the priest of the parish; had any other male made so bold, they would have had their knives out instantly. Nonetheless, they heaved a sigh of relief when Father Joaquim established a permanent relationship with Alexandrinha Correa, the girl who had remained a spinster because she was a water divineress.

  L
egend had it that Alexandrinha’s miraculous ability came to light when she was still a little girl, the year of the great drought, as the townspeople of Cumbe, desperate because of the lack of water, were going about digging wells everywhere. They had divided up into crews and from dawn on, each day, excavated everywhere where there had once been thick vegetation, thinking that this was an indication of water below ground. The women and children were doing their share of this exhausting work. But the earth that was brought up showed no sign of moisture, and the only thing found at the bottom of the holes was more layers of blackish sand or unbreakable rock. Until one day Alexandrinha, speaking in a vehement rush of words, as though they were being dictated to her with barely enough time for her to get them out, interrupted her father’s crew to tell them that instead of digging where they were they should do so farther up, at the beginning of the trail leading to Massacará. No one paid any attention to her. But the little girl kept insisting, drumming her feet on the ground and waving her hands as though inspired. “All right then, we’ll dig just one more hole,” her father said. They went off to put her inspiration to the test, on the flat stretch of yellowish pebbles where the trails to Carnaíba and Massacará fork off. On the second day of digging, after they had brought up nothing but dry clods of earth and stones, the subsoil began to turn a darker color, to show signs of moisture, and finally, amid everyone’s excitement, drops of water appeared. Three more wells were found close by, thanks to which Cumbe was less hard hit than other towns by those two years of misery and wholesale death.

  From that day on, Alexandrinha Correa became an object of reverence and curiosity. And in the eyes of her parents something else besides: a creature whose intuition they tried to profit from, charging the settlements and the inhabitants round about a fee for divining the place where they should dig to find water. Alexandrinha’s talents, however, did not lend themselves to being bought and sold. The little girl was wrong more often than she was right, and many times, after sniffling all about her with her little turned-up nose, she would say: “I don’t know; nothing comes to me.” But neither these blanks of hers nor her mistakes, which were always effaced by the memory of her successes, dimmed the reputation that surrounded her as she grew up. Her talents as a water divineress made her famous but not happy. Once it became known that she possessed this power, a wall went up round about her that isolated her from people. The other youngsters did not feel at ease with her and adults did not treat her as though she were just an ordinary little girl. They stared at her, they asked her strange questions about the future or life after death and brought her to kneel at the bedside of sick people to try to cure them with the powers of her mind. Her efforts to be simply a woman like all the others were of no avail. Men always respectfully kept their distance. They didn’t ask her to dance at fiestas or serenade her, and none of them would ever have dreamed of taking her for a wife. It was as though falling in love with her would have been a profanation.