The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Until the new parish priest arrived in town. Father Joaquim was not a man to allow himself to be intimidated by an aura of sanctity or sorcery when it came to women. Alexandrinha was now past twenty. She was tall and slender, with the same curious nose and restless eyes, and still lived with her parents, unlike her four older sisters, who already had husbands and homes of their own. Because of the religious respect that she inspired and was unable to banish despite her simple, straightforward behavior, her life was a lonely one. Since this spinster daughter of the Correas seldom went out except to attend Sunday Mass, and since she was invited to very few private celebrations (people were afraid that her presence, contaminated as it was by an aura of the supernatural, would put a damper on the festivities), it was a long time before the new parish priest made her acquaintance.

  A romance must have begun very gradually, beneath the bushy-topped Malay apple trees of the church square, or in the narrow streets of Cumbe, where the little priest and the water divineress must necessarily have met and then continued on their way, as his impertinent, vivacious, provocative little eyes looked her up and down while at the same time the good-natured smile on his face made this inspection seem less rude. And he must have been the one who spoke first, perhaps asking her about the town festival, on the eighth of December, or why he hadn’t seen her at Rosaries or what that story about her and the water was all about. And she must have answered him in that quick, direct, straightforward way of hers, gazing at him unblushingly. And so one casual meeting must have followed upon another, then others less casual, conversations in which, besides chitchat about local happenings, bandits and flying brigades and quarrels and love affairs and exchanges of confidences, little by little guileful and daring remarks must also have entered the picture.

  The fact is that one fine day all of Cumbe began slyly commenting on the change in Alexandrinha, an indifferent parishioner who had suddenly become the most diligent one of all. She could be seen, early every morning, dusting the benches in the church, putting the altar to rights, sweeping the doorway. And she also began to be seen in the parish house, which, with the help of the townspeople, now had a roof, doors, and windows once again. That what there was between them was more than kissing and giggling became evident the day that Alexandrinha strode resolutely into the tavern where Father Joaquim had hidden out with a group of friends after a christening feast and was playing the guitar and drinking, happy as a lark. The moment she entered he fell silent. She marched over to him and said to him in a firm tone of voice: “You’re coming with me, right now, because you’ve had enough to drink.” Without a word, the little priest followed her out.

  The first time the saint came to Cumbe, Alexandrinha Correa had already been living for several years in the parish house. In the beginning she had installed herself there to take care of Father Joaquim after he had been wounded in the town of Rosário, where he’d been caught in the middle of a shootout between Satan João’s cangaço and the police brigade of Captain Geraldo Macedo, known as Bandit-Chaser, and afterward she had stayed on there. They had had three children, whom people referred to only as “Alexandrinha’s kids,” and she was spoken of as Dom Joaquim’s “caretaker.” By her very presence she had a calming effect on the priest’s life, although he did not change his habits in the slightest. The townspeople would summon her when, having drunk more than he should have, the little priest became a problem, and once she appeared he was always docile, even when he was drunk to the gills. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the townspeople tolerated their relationship without making too much of a fuss. When the saint came to Cumbe for the first time, Alexandrinha was so well accepted by the town that even her parents and her brothers and sisters visited her in the parish house and called her children “grandson,”

  “granddaughter,”

  “niece,”

  “nephew,” without feeling at all uncomfortable.

  Hence it was as though a bomb had gone off when, in his first sermon from the pulpit of the church in Cumbe, to which Father Joaquim, with an affable smile, had allowed him to ascend, the tall, gaunt man with flashing eyes and cascading Nazarene locks, dressed in a long flowing dark purple tunic, railed against bad shepherds. A sepulchral silence fell in the crowded nave. No one looked at Dom Joaquim, who had taken a place on the front bench. He had opened his eyes with a more or less violent start, and was sitting there not moving a muscle, staring straight ahead, at the crucifix or at his humiliation. Nor did the townspeople look at Alexandrinha Correa, who was sitting in the third row. Unlike Dom Joaquim, she was gravely contemplating the preacher, her face deathly pale. Apparently the saint had come to Cumbe after enemies of the couple had had a word with him. Solemn, unbending, with a voice that reverberated from the fragile walls and the concave ceiling, he said terrible things about those chosen by the Lord who, despite having been ordained and taken the habit, turned into Satan’s lackeys. He mercilessly vituperated all Father Joaquim’s sins: the shamefulness of pastors of the Lord’s flock who instead of setting an example of sobriety drank cane brandy to the point of delirium; the unseemliness of those who instead of fasting and being frugal stuffed themselves without stopping to think that they lived surrounded by people who had barely enough to eat; the scandal of those who forgot their vow of chastity and took their pleasure with women, whom they did not guide spiritually but instead doomed to perdition by delivering their poor souls over to the Dog of the domains of hell. When the townspeople finally dared to look at their priest out of the corner of their eyes, they saw him still sitting there, still staring straight ahead, his face beet-red.

  What had happened—an event that remained the talk of the town for many days—did not prevent the Counselor from continuing to preach in the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição during his stay in Cumbe, or again when, months later, he returned accompanied by a retinue of the elect, or on other occasions in the years that followed. The difference was that Father Joaquim usually was absent when these subsequent sermons were delivered. Alexandrinha, however, was not. She was always there, in the third row, with her turned-up nose, listening to the saint’s admonishments against worldly wealth and excesses, his defense of austere habits, and his exhortations to prepare the soul for death through sacrifice and prayer. The former water divineress began to show signs of growing religious fervor. She lighted candles in the vaulted niches along the streets, she spent a great deal of time on her knees before the altar in an attitude of profound concentration, she organized acts of thanksgiving, public prayers, Rosaries, novenas. One day she appeared with her head covered with a black kerchief and an amulet with the image of the Blessed Jesus on her breast. Rumor had it that, though they continued to live under the same roof, nothing that would offend God happened now between Father Joaquim and her. When the townspeople dared to ask Dom Joaquim about Alexandrinha, he would change the subject. He seemed bewildered. Although he continued to lead a happy life, his relations with the woman who shared his house and was the mother of his children changed. In public at least, they were as perfectly polite to each other as two people who scarcely knew each other. The Counselor aroused indefinable feelings in the parish priest. Did he fear, respect, envy, pity him? The fact was that every time the saint came to town Father Joaquim opened the church to him, confessed him, gave him Communion, and during his stay in Cumbe was a model of temperance and devotion.

  When, on the saint’s last visit, Alexandrinha Correa took off with him among his followers, abandoning everything she had, Father Joaquim was the only person in town who did not appear to be surprised.

  He thought that he had never feared death and that he didn’t fear it now. But his hands trembled, shivers ran up and down his spine, and he kept moving closer and closer to the fire to warm his ice-cold insides. Yet he was sweating. He thought: “You’re dying of fear, Gall.” Those great beads of sweat, those shivers, that icy feeling, that trembling were the panic of one who has a premonition of death. “You don’t know yourself at
all well, old pal.” Or had he changed? For he was certain that he had never felt anything like this as a young man, in the jail in Paris when he was waiting to be shot to death by a firing squad, or in Barcelona in the infirmary, while the stupid bourgeois were curing him so that he would be in good health when they executed him by tying him to a post and strangling him with an iron collar. He was about to die: your hour has come, Galileo.

  Would his penis get hard at the supreme moment, as was said to happen to men who drowned or were beheaded? That belief straight out of a horror show concealed some tortuous truth, some mysterious affinity between sex and the awareness of death. If such a thing did not exist, what had happened early this morning and what had happened a little while ago would not have occurred. A little while ago? Hours, rather. Night had fallen and there were countless stars in the sky. He remembered that as he was waiting in the boarding house in Queimadas, he had planned to write a letter to L’Etincelle de la révolte explaining that the skyscape in this region was infinitely more varied than the landscape, and that this no doubt had a determining influence on the inhabitants’ religious bent. He could hear Jurema’s breathing, mingled with the crackling of the dying fire. Yes, it had been sniffing death close at hand that had made him fall upon this woman and take her with his stiff penis, twice in the same day. “A strange relationship based on fear and semen and nothing else,” he thought. Why had she saved his life, by interceding just as Caifás was about to give him the coup de grâce? Why had she helped him onto the mule, gone with him, cured him, brought him here? Why was she behaving like this toward someone she must hate?

  Fascinated, he recalled that sudden, pressing, uncontrollable urgency, when the animal fell as it was trotting along at full clip, throwing both of them to the ground. “Its heart must have burst open like a ripe fruit,” he thought. How far were they from Queimadas? Was the little stream where he’d washed and bandaged himself the Rio do Peixe? Had they detoured round Riacho da Onça, leaving it behind, or had they not yet reached it? A host of questions were running riot in his head, but his fear had vanished. Had he been badly frightened when the mule collapsed and he realized that he was falling off, that he was rolling on the ground? Yes. That was the explanation: fear. The instant suspicion that the animal had died not of exhaustion but of a shot through the heart fired by the hired assassins who were following him to turn him into an English cadaver. And it must have been because he was instinctively seeking protection that he had leapt on top of the woman, who had fallen off and was rolling on the ground with him. Had Jurema thought him a madman, or the Devil perhaps? Taking her in such circumstances, at that moment, in that state. Ah, the dismay in the woman’s eyes, her trepidation when she realized, from the way that Gall’s hands were pawing at her clothes, what he wanted from her. She had not put up any resistance this time, but neither had she hidden her disgust, or, rather, her indifference. Ah, that quiet resignation of her body, which had remained impressed on Gall’s mind as he lay on the ground, confused, stunned, overwhelmed with something that might be desire, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, or a blind denial of the trap in which he found himself. Through a mist of sweat, with the wounds in his shoulder and neck hurting as though they had reopened and his life were draining away through them, he saw Jurema in the gathering darkness, examining the mule, opening its eyes and mouth. Still lying on the ground, he then saw her collect branches and leaves and light a fire. And without her saying a word to him, he saw her take out the knife tucked in her belt, slice off strips of flesh from the animal’s flanks, thread them on a stick, and put them over the fire to roast. She gave the impression that she was merely performing a routine domestic task, as though nothing out of the way had happened, as though the events of that day had not completely changed her life. He thought: “They’re the most enigmatic people on this planet.” He thought: “Fatalists, brought up to accept whatever life brings them, whether good, bad, or horrendous.” He thought: “For her you’re the horrendous.”

  After a while he had been able to sit up, to drink a few swallows of water, and, with a great effort because of the burning pain in his throat, to chew. The pieces of meat seemed like an exquisite delicacy. As they ate, presuming that Jurema was no doubt bewildered by everything that had happened, he had tried to explain everything to her: who Epaminondas Gonçalves was, his proposal regarding the arms, how Gonçalves had been the one who had planned the attack at Rufino’s house so as to steal the rifles he himself had bought and have him, Galileo, killed because he needed a corpse with light skin and red hair. But he realized that she wasn’t at all interested in what he was telling her. As she listened, she nibbled the meat with her tiny, even teeth and chased the flies away, without nodding to show she understood or asking a single question, meeting his gaze every so often with eyes that were gradually being swallowed up by the darkness and that were making him feel stupid. He thought: “I am stupid.” That was true; he had amply proved that fact. He had the moral and political obligation to be mistrustful, to suspect that an ambitious bourgeois, capable of mounting a conspiracy against his enemies such as the one involving the arms, was equally capable of mounting another one against him. An English corpse! In other words, what Gonçalves had said about the rifles had not been a mistake, a slip of the tongue: he had told him that they were French, knowing full well that they were English. Galileo had discovered this on arriving at Rufino’s cabin, as he was loading the cases in the wagon. The factory mark on the butt leapt to his eye: “Liverpool, 1891.” The discovery had made him joke to himself: “France hasn’t yet invaded England, as far as I know. These are English rifles, not French ones.” English rifles, an English corpse. What was Gonçalves up to? He could well imagine: his idea was a cold, cruel, daring one, and mayhap even a brilliant one. His chest tightened with anxiety once again and he thought: “He’ll kill me.” This was unknown territory to him, he was wounded, he was an outsider whose trail could easily be pointed out by anyone and everyone in the region. Where was he going to be able to hide out? “In Canudos.” Yes, of course. He would be safe there, or at least he would not die there with the rueful feeling that he had been stupid. The thought came to him: “Canudos will justify you, comrade.”

  He was shivering from the cold, and his shoulder, his neck, his head hurt. To take his mind off his wounds, he tried to turn his thoughts to the troops under the command of Major Febrônio de Brito. Had they already left Queimadas and headed for Monte Santo? Would they wipe out that hypothetical refuge before he reached it? He thought: “The bullet isn’t lodged in my body, it didn’t break the skin, its red-hot fire barely grazed it. The bullet, moreover, must have been very small caliber, like the revolver, meant for killing sparrows.” The serious wound was not the one from the bullet but from the knife thrust: it had penetrated deeply, severing veins, nerves, and that was the source of the burning, stabbing pains mounting to his ear, his eyes, the nape of his neck. Hot and cold shivers were making him shake from head to foot. Are you about to die, Gall? All of a sudden he remembered the snowfalls in Europe, its landscape so thoroughly domesticated by comparison with this untamed nature. He thought: “Is there geography anywhere in Europe as hostile as this?” In the south of Spain, in Turkey surely, in Russia. He remembered Bakunin’s escape, after being chained to the wall of a prison for eleven months. His father had sat him on his lap and told him the story of it: the epic journey across Siberia, the Amur River, California, then back to Europe, and on his arrival in London, the burning question: “Are there oysters in this country?” He remembered the inns scattered along the roadsides of Europe, where there was always a fire smoking on the hearth, hot soup, and other travelers to smoke a pipe with and share the events of the day’s journey. He thought: “Nostalgia is an act of cowardice, Gall.”

  He was allowing himself to be overcome by self-pity and melancholy. Shame on you, Gall! Haven’t you even learned yet to die with dignity? What did it matter if it was in Europe, Brazil, or any other bit of ground on this earth
! Wouldn’t the result be precisely the same? He thought: “Disintegration, decomposition, the rotting place, the worm brood, and if hungry scavengers don’t play their role, a frail frame of yellowish bones covered with a dried-out skin.” He thought: “You’re burning up and dying of cold and that is what is known as fever.” It was not fear, nor the pellet for killing birds, nor the knife wound: it was a sickness. Because he had begun to feel that something was wrong with him even before the attack by the man dressed in leather, when he was on that hacienda with Epaminondas Gonçalves; whatever it was had been secretly eating away at some organ and spreading through the rest of his body. He was ill, not badly wounded. Something else new in your life, old pal. He thought: “Fate wants to complete your education before you die by subjecting you to experiences you’ve never had before.” First a rapist and then sick! Because he could not recall ever having been ill, even in earliest childhood. Wounded, yes, a number of times, seriously so that time in Barcelona. But sick: never. He had the feeling that he was about to fall into a faint at any moment. Why this senseless effort to go on thinking? Why this intuition that as long as he kept thinking he would remain alive? He was suddenly aware that Jurema had gone. He listened, terrified: he could still hear the sound of her breathing, to his right. He could no longer see her because the fire had gone out altogether.