The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “It is an honor for us to place our experience in this region at the service of the most prestigious military leader of Brazil, sir.”

  Colonel Moreira César stares into the eyes of Febrônio de Brito, until the latter looks away in confusion.

  “Experience that was of no avail to you when you were confronted with a mere handful of bandits.” The colonel has not raised his voice, yet the hall of the railway station seems to be electrified, paralyzed. Scrutinizing the major as he would an insect, Moreira César points a finger at Pires Ferreira: “This officer was in command of no more than a company. But you had half a thousand men at your command and allowed yourself to be defeated like a tenderfoot. The two of you have cast discredit on the army and hence on the Republic. Your presence in the Seventh Regiment is not welcome. You are forbidden to enter combat. You will remain in the rear guard to take care of the sick and the animals. You are dismissed.”

  The two officers are deathly pale. Febrônio de Brito is sweating heavily. His lips part, as though about to say something, but then he decides merely to salute and withdraw with tottering footsteps. The lieutenant stands rooted to the spot, his eyes suddenly red. Moreira César walks by without looking at him, and the swarm of officers and orderlies go on with their duties. On a table maps and a pile of papers are laid out.

  “Let the correspondents come in, Cunha Matos,” the colonel orders.

  The major shows them in. They have come on the same train as the Seventh Regiment and they are plainly worn out from all the bumping and jolting. There are five of them, of different ages, dressed in leggings, caps, riding pants, and equipped with pencils and notebooks; one of them is carrying a bellows camera and a tripod. The one who most attracts people’s notice is the nearsighted young correspondent from the Jornal de Notícias. The sparse little goatee that he has grown is in keeping with his threadbare appearance, his extravagant portable writing desk, the inkwell tied to his sleeve, and the goose-quill pen that he nibbles on as the photographer sets up his camera. As he trips the shutter, there is a flash of powder in the pan that brings even louder screams of excitement from the youngsters crouching behind the windowpanes. Colonel Moreira César acknowledges the correspondents’ greeting with a slight nod.

  “It surprised many people that I did not receive the people of note in Salvador,” he says, without polite formulas or warmth, by way of salutation. “There is no mystery involved, sirs. It is a question of time. Every minute is precious, in view of the mission that has brought us to Bahia. We shall bring it to a successful conclusion. The Seventh Regiment is going to punish the rebels of Canudos, as it did the insurgents of the Fortress of Santa Cruz and of Laje, and the federalists of Santa Catarina. There will not be any further uprisings against the Republic.”

  The clusters of humanity behind the windowpanes have fallen silent, straining to hear what the colonel is saying; officers and orderlies are standing stock-still, listening; and the five journalists are gazing at him with mingled fascination and incredulity. Yes, it is he, he is here at last, in person, just as he appears in caricatures of him: thin, frail, vibrant, with little eyes that flash or drill straight through the person he is addressing, and a forward thrust of his hand as he speaks that resembles the lunge of a fencer. Two days previously, they had been waiting for him in Salvador, with the same curiosity as hundreds of other Bahians, and he had left everyone frustrated, for he did not attend either the banquets or the ball that had been arranged, or the official receptions and ceremonies in his honor, and except for a brief visit to the Military Club and to Governor Luiz Viana, he spoke with no one, devoting all his time to supervising personally the disembarkation of his troops at the port and the transportation of equipment and supplies to the Calçada Station, so as to leave the following day on this train that has brought the regiment to the backlands. He had passed through the city of Salvador as though he were fleeing on the run, as though fearing that he would be infected by some dread disease, and it was only now that he was offering an explanation of his conduct: time. But the five journalists, who are closely watching his slightest gesture, are not thinking about what he is saying at this moment, but recalling what has been said and written about him, mentally comparing that mythical creature, both despised and deified, with the very small-statured, stern figure who is speaking to them as though they were not there. They are trying to imagine him, a youngster still, enrolling as a volunteer in the war against Paraguay, where he received wounds and medals in equal number, and his first years as an officer, in Rio de Janeiro, when his militant republicanism very nearly caused him to be thrown out of the army and sent to jail, or in the days when he was the leader of the conspiracies against the monarchy. Despite the energy transmitted by his eyes, his gestures, his voice, it is hard for them to imagine him killing that obscure journalist, in the Rua do Ouvidor in the capital, with five shots from his revolver, though it is not difficult, on the other hand, to imagine his voice declaring at his trial that he is proud to have done what he did and would do so again if he heard anyone insult the army. But above all they recall his public career, after his years of exile in the Mato Grosso and his return following the fall of the Empire. They remember how he turned into President Floriano Peixoto’s righthand man, crushing with an iron fist all the uprisings that took place in the first years of the Republic, and defending in O Jacobino, that incendiary paper, his arguments in favor of a Dictatorial Republic, without a parliament, without political parties, in which the army, like the Church in the past, would be the nerve center of a secular society frantically pursuing henceforth the goal of scientific progress. They are wondering whether it is true that on the death of Marshal Floriano Peixoto he was so overwrought that he fainted as he was reading the eulogy at the cemetery. People have said that with the coming to power of a civilian president, Prudente de Moraes, the political fate of Colonel Moreira César and the so-called Jacobins is sealed. But, they tell themselves, this must not be true, since, if it were, he would not be here in Queimadas, at the head of the most famous corps of the Brazilian Army, sent by the government itself to carry out a mission from which—who can possibly doubt it?—he will return to Rio with greatly enhanced prestige.

  “I have not come to Bahia to intervene in local political struggles,” he is saying, as without looking at them he points to the posters of the Republican Party and the Autonomist Party hanging from the ceiling. “The army is above factional quarrels, on the sidelines of political maneuvering. The Seventh Regiment is here to put down a monarchist conspiracy. For behind the brigands and fanatical madmen of Canudos is a plot against the Republic. Those poor devils are a mere tool of aristocrats who are unable to resign themselves to the loss of their privileges, who do not want Brazil to be a modern country. And of certain fanatical priests unable to resign themselves to the separation of Church and State because they do not want to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. And even of England, apparently, which wants to restore the corrupt Empire that allowed it to buy up the entire output of Brazilian sugar at ridiculously low prices. But they are mistaken. Neither aristocrats nor priests nor England will ever again lay down the law in Brazil. The army will not permit it.”

  He has raised his voice little by little and uttered the last sentences in an impassioned tone, with his right hand resting on the pistol suspended from his cartridge belt. As he falls silent there is a reverent hush of expectation in the station hall and the buzzing of insects can be heard as they circle round in mad frustration above the plates of food covered with cheesecloth. The most grizzled journalist, a man who, despite the stifling heat in the room, is still bundled up in a plaid jacket, timidly raises one hand to indicate that he wishes to make a comment or ask a question. But the colonel does not allow him to speak; he has just motioned with his hand to two of his orderlies. Coached beforehand, they lift a box off the floor, place it on the table, and open it: it is full of rifles.

  Moreira César begins slowly pacing back and forth in fron
t of the five journalists, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Captured in the backlands of Bahia, gentlemen,” he goes on to say in a sarcastic tone of voice, as though he were making mock of someone. “These rifles, at least, failed to reach Canudos. And where are they from? They didn’t even bother to remove the manufacturer’s label. Liverpool, no less! Rifles of this type have never turned up in Brazil before. Moreover, they’re equipped with a special device for shooting expanding bullets. That explains the gaping bullet holes that so surprised the army surgeons: wounds ten, twelve centimeters in diameter. They looked more like shrapnel wounds than bullet wounds. Is it likely that simple jagunços, mere cattle rustlers, would know about such European refinements as expanding bullets? And furthermore, what is the meaning behind the sudden appearance of so many people whose origins are a mystery? The corpse discovered in Ipupiará. The individual who turns up in Capim Grosso with a pocket full of pounds sterling who confesses to having guided a party of English-speaking horsemen. Foreigners trying to take shipments of provisions and gunpowder to Canudos have even been discovered in Belo Horizonte. Too many apparent coincidences not to point to a plot against the Republic as the source behind them. The enemies of the Republic refuse to give up. But their machinations are of no avail. They failed in Rio, they failed in Rio Grande do Sul, and they will also fail in Bahia, gentlemen.”

  He has paced back and forth in front of the five journalists two, three times, taking short, rapid, nervous steps. He has now returned to the same place as before, alongside the table with the maps. As he addresses them once again, his tone of voice becomes imperious, threatening.

  “I have agreed to allow you to accompany the Seventh Regiment, but you will be obliged to obey certain rules. The dispatches that you telegraph from here must first have been approved by Major Cunha Matos or by Colonel Tamarindo. The same is true of any reports you send via messengers during the campaign. I must warn you that if any one of you tries to send off an article that has not been approved by my aides, this will be regarded as a serious offense. I hope you understand the situation: any slip, error, imprudence risks serving the enemy’s cause. Don’t forget that we are at war. May your stay with the regiment be a pleasant one. That is all, gentlemen.”

  He turns to his staff officers, who surround him forthwith, and immediately, as though a magic spell had been broken, the hustle and bustle, the din, the milling back and forth begin again in the Queimadas station. But the five journalists stand there looking at each other, disconcerted, dazed, disappointed, unable to understand why Colonel Moreira César is treating them as though they were his potential enemies, why he has not allowed them to ask a single question, why he has not shown them the slightest sign of warmth or at least politeness. The circle surrounding the colonel breaks up as each of his officers, obeying his instructions, clicks his heels and heads off in a different direction. Once he is alone, the colonel gazes all about him, and for a second the five journalists have the impression that he is about to approach them, but they are mistaken. He is looking, as though he had just become aware of them, at the dark, miserable, famished faces pressing against the doors and windows. He observes them with an expression impossible to define, scowling, his lower lip thrust forward. Suddenly he strides resolutely to the nearest door. He flings it wide open and opens his arms to welcome the swarm of men, women, children, oldsters dressed in almost nothing but rags, many of them barefoot, who gaze at him with respect, fear, or admiration. With imperious gestures, he motions to them to come inside, pulls them, drags them in, encourages them, pointing out to them the long table where, beneath clouds of greedy insects, the drinks and viands that the Municipal Council of Queimadas has set out to honor him are sitting untouched.

  “Come on in, come on in,” he says, leading them to the table, pushing them, removing with his own hand the pieces of cheesecloth covering the viands. “You’re the guests of the Seventh Regiment. Come on, don’t be afraid. All this is for you. You need it more than we do. Drink, eat, and may you enjoy it.”

  And now there is no need to urge them on; they have fallen ecstatically, greedily, incredulously, on the plates, glasses, platters, pitchers, and are elbowing each other aside, crowding round, pushing and shoving, fighting with each other for the food and drink, before the colonel’s saddened gaze. The journalists stand there, openmouthed. A little old woman, holding a morsel of food that she has grabbed and already bitten into, backs away from the table and stops alongside Moreira César, her face beaming with gratitude.

  “May the Blessed Lady protect you, Colonel,” she murmurs, making the sign of the cross in the air.

  “This is the lady that protects me,” the journalists hear him answer as he touches his sword.

  In its better days, the Gypsy’s Circus had included twenty persons, if one could call persons creatures such as the Bearded Lady, the Dwarf, the Spider Man, Pedrim the Giant, and Julião, swallower of live toads. In those days the circus went about in a wagon painted red, with posters of trapeze artists on the side, drawn by the four horses on which the French Brothers did acrobatic tricks. It also had a small menagerie, a counterpart of the collection of human curiosities that the Gypsy had collected in his wanderings: a five-legged sheep, a little two-headed monkey, a cobra (a normal one) which had to be fed small birds, and a goat with three rows of teeth, which Pedrim displayed to the public by opening its mouth with his huge hands. They never had a tent. Performances were given in the main squares of towns, on holidays or the local patron saint’s day.

  There were feats of strength and balancing acts, magic tricks and mind reading, Solimão the Black swallowed swords, in nothing flat the Spider Man glided up to the top of the greased pole and then offered a fabulous milreis piece to anyone who could do the same, Pedrim the Giant broke chains, the Bearded Lady danced with the cobra and kissed it on the mouth, and all of them, made up as clowns with burnt cork and rice powder, bent the Idiot, who seemed to have no bones, in two, in four, in six. But the star performer was the Dwarf, who recounted tales, with great sensitivity, vehemence, tender feeling, and imagination: the story of Princess Maguelone, the daughter of the King of Naples, who is abducted by Sir Pierre the knight and whose jewels are found by a sailor in the belly of a fish; the story of the Beautiful Silvaninha, whose own father, no less, wished to marry her; the story of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France; the story of the barren duchess with whom the Devil fornicated, who then gave birth to Robert the Devil; the story of Olivier and Fierabras. His turn was last because it put the audience in a generous mood.

  The Gypsy must have been in trouble with the police on the coast, for even in periods of drought he never went down there. He was a violent man; on the slightest pretext, his fists would shoot out and he would mercilessly beat up any creature who annoyed him, be it man, woman, or animal. Despite his mistreatment of them, however, none of the circus people would have dreamed of leaving him. He was the soul of the circus, he was the one who had created it, collecting from all over those beings who, in their towns and their families, were objects of derision, freaks whom others looked upon as punishments from God and mistakes of the species. All of them, the Dwarf, the Bearded Lady, the Giant, the Spider Man, even the Idiot (who could feel these things even though he wasn’t able to understand them), had found in the traveling circus a more hospitable home than the one they had come from. In the caravan that went up and down and around the burning-hot backlands, they ceased to live a life filled with fear and shame and shared an abnormality that made them feel that they were normal.

  Hence, none of them could understand the behavior of the youngster from Natuba with long tangled locks, lively dark eyes, and practically no legs at all, who trotted around on all fours. When they gave their show in his town, they noticed that he’d caught the Gypsy’s eye, that he watched the boy all during the performance. Because there was no getting around the fact that freaks of nature—human or animal—fascinated him for some more profound reason than the m
oney he could make by exhibiting them. Perhaps he felt more normal, more complete, more perfect in the society of misfits and oddities. In any event, when the show was over, he asked people where the youngster lived, found the house, introduced himself to his parents, and persuaded them to give the boy to him so as to make a circus performer of him. The thing the others found incomprehensible was that, a week later, this creature who got about on all fours escaped from the circus, just as the Gypsy had started teaching him a turn as an animal tamer.

  Their bad luck began with the great drought, on account of the Gypsy’s obdurate refusal to go down to the coast as the circus people begged him to do. They found deserted towns and haciendas that had turned into charnel houses; they realized that they might die of thirst. But the Gypsy was as stubborn as a mule, and one night he said to them: “I’m giving you your freedom. Clear out if you want to. But if you don’t go, I don’t want anybody ever to tell me again where the circus should head next.” Nobody took off, no doubt because all of them feared other people more than they feared catastrophe. In Caatinga do Moura, Dádiva, the Gypsy’s wife, took sick with fevers that made her delirious, and they had to bury her in Taquarandi. They were forced to begin eating the circus animals. When the rains came again, a year and a half later, Julião and his wife Sabina, Solimão the Black, Pedrim the Giant, the Spider Man, and the Little Star had died. They had lost the wagon with the posters of trapeze artists on the sides and were now hauling their belongings about in two carts that they pulled themselves, until people, water, life returned to the backlands and the Gypsy was able to buy two draft mules.