The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I’m not worthy, Little Blessed One,” the former slave said from the doorway, his voice choking. “Praised be the Blessed Jesus.”

  “I’ve prepared an oath for the Catholic Guard,” the Little Blessed One answered softly. “More solemn than the one taken by those who come to be saved. The Lion has written it out.” He handed Big João a piece of paper, which disappeared in his huge dark hands. “You are to learn it by heart and have each man you choose swear to obey it. Then, when the Catholic Guard is formed, they will all take it publicly in the Temple and we’ll have a procession.”

  Maria Quadrado, who had been standing in one corner of the room, came over to them with a cloth and a vessel full of water. “Sit down, João,” she said tenderly. “Have a drink first, and then let me wash you.”

  The black obeyed her. He was so tall that even sitting down he was the same height as the Mother Superior of the Sacred Choir. He drank thirstily. He was perturbed and drenched with sweat, and he closed his eyes as Maria Quadrado passed the cool damp cloth over his face, his neck, his kinky locks sprinkled with gray.

  Suddenly he reached out an arm and clung to her. “Help me, Mother Maria Quadrado,” he implored, transfixed with fear. “I’m not worthy of this honor.”

  “You’ve been the slave of one man,” she said, caressing him as though he were a child. “Will you not accept being the slave of the Blessed Jesus? He will help you, Big João.”

  “I swear that I have not been a republican, that I do not accept the expulsion of the Emperor or his replacement by the Antichrist,” the Little Blessed One recited with intense devotion. “That I do not accept civil marriage or the separation of Church and State or the metric system. That I will not answer the census questions. That I will never again steal or smoke or drink or make wagers or fornicate out of vice. And that I will give my life for my religion and the Blessed Jesus.”

  “I’ll learn it, Little Blessed One,” Big João stammered.

  At that moment the Counselor arrived, preceded by a great din. Once the tall, dark, gaunt figure entered the Sanctuary, followed by the little lamb, the Lion of Natuba—a vague four-footed shape that seemed to be leaping about—and the Sacred Choir, the impatient clamor of voices continued on the other side of the door. The little lamb came over and licked Maria Quadrado’s ankles. The women of the Choir squatted down, their backs against the wall. The Counselor walked over to Big João, who was on his knees with his eyes fixed on the floor. He appeared to be trembling from head to foot; he had been with the Counselor for fifteen years now, and yet each time he was in his presence he still suddenly felt like a worthless creature, a worthless thing almost.

  The Counselor took Big João’s two hands and obliged him to lift his head. The saint’s incandescent pupils stared into the depths of the ex-slave’s tear-filled eyes. “You are still suffering, Big João,” he said softly.

  “I’m not worthy to watch over you,” the black sobbed. “Order me to do anything else you like. Kill me, if need be. I don’t want anything to happen to you through any fault of mine. Remember, Father, I’ve had the Dog in my flesh.”

  “You will form the Catholic Guard,” the Counselor answered. “You will be in command of it. You have suffered a great deal, and you are suffering now. That is why you are worthy. The Father has said that the just man will wash his hands in the blood of the sinner. You are a just man now, Big João.”

  He allowed him to kiss his hand and with an absent look in his eyes waited till the black had left off weeping. A moment later, followed by all of them, he left the Sanctuary to mount to the tower once more to counsel the people of Belo Monte. Joining the multitude, Big João heard him offer a prayer and then tell of the miracle of the bronze serpent that, by order of the Father, Moses built in order that anyone who looked upon it might be cured should he be bitten by the snakes that were attacking the Jews, and then prophesy a new invasion of vipers that would come to Belo Monte to exterminate those who believed in God. But, he heard him say, those who kept the faith would survive the serpents’ bite. As people began to wend their way home, Big João’s heart was at peace. He remembered that years before, during the drought, the Counselor had told of this miracle for the first time, thereby bringing about another miracle in the sertão overrun by snakes. The memory reassured him.

  He was another person when he knocked on Antônio Vilanova’s door. Assunção Sardelinha, Honôrio’s wife, let him in, and João found the storekeeper, his wife, and various children and helpers of the two brothers sitting at the counter eating. They made room for him, and handed him a steaming plateful of food that he downed without even noticing what it was that he was eating, with the feeling that he was wasting precious time. He barely listened as Antônio told him that, rather than taking gunpowder with him, Pajeú had chosen to go off with cane whistles and crossbows and poisoned arrows, his idea being that that would be a better way of harassing the soldiers who were coming. The black chewed and swallowed, paying no attention, his mind entirely occupied by his mission.

  Once the meal was over, the others went off to bed in the adjoining rooms or trundled off to their hammocks, pallets, or blankets laid down amid the crates and shelves around them. Then, by the light of an oil lamp, João and Antônio talked. They talked for a long time, in low voices at times and much louder ones at others, in perfect accord at times and at others furious with each other. Meanwhile, little by little, fireflies invaded the store, glowing in all the corners. From time to time Antônio opened one of the large ledgers in which he was in the habit of recording the arrivals of pilgrims, births, and deaths, and mentioned certain names. But still João did not allow the storekeeper to go off for his night’s rest. After carefully smoothing out a crumpled bit of paper that he had been clutching in his hand, he held it out to him and had him read it over several times until he had memorized the words written on it. As sleep overcame the ex-slave, who had bedded down in a vacant space underneath the counter, so tired he hadn’t even taken off his boots, Antônio Vilanova heard him repeating the oath composed by the Little Blessed One for the Catholic Guard.

  The next morning, the Vilanova brothers’ children and helpers went all about Belo Monte, announcing, whenever they came upon a group of people, that any person not afraid to give his or her life for the Counselor might aspire to become a member of the Catholic Guard. Soon so many candidates gathered in front of the former steward’s house of the hacienda that they blocked Campo Grande, the only straight street in Canudos. Sitting on a crate of merchandise, Big João and Antônio received them one by one. The storekeeper checked the name and date of arrival of each one against his ledger, and João asked them one by one if they were willing to give away everything they possessed and abandon their families as Christ’s apostles had done for His sake, and subject themselves to a baptism by resistance. All of them fervently consented.

  Those who had fought at Uauá and O Cambaio were given preference, and those incapable of reaming out a rifle, loading a blunderbuss, or cooling an overheated musket were eliminated. The very old and very young were also eliminated, as were those unfit for combat; lunatics and pregnant women, for instance. No one who had ever been a guide for the police flying brigades or a tax collector or a census taker was accepted. Every so often, Big João would take those who had passed all these tests to a vacant lot and order them to attack him as though he were an enemy. Those who hesitated were turned down. He had the rest fight hand to hand with each other to test their bravery. By nightfall, the Catholic Guard had eighteen members, one of whom was a woman who had belonged to Pedrão’s band. Big João administered the oath to them in the store, then told them to return to their homes to bid their families farewell, for from the following day on they had only one obligation: to protect the Counselor.

  The second day the selection was more rapid, for those already chosen helped Big João test those who presented themselves as candidates and kept order amid all the chaos that ensued. The Sardelinha sisters had meanwhile hu
nted about and found enough blue cloth to make armbands or kerchiefs for all those chosen. João swore in thirty more on the second day, fifty on the third day, and at the end of the week he had nearly four hundred guards to rely on.

  The following Sunday, the Catholic Guard marched through the streets of Canudos, lined on either side by people who applauded them and envied them. The procession began at midday, and as in all the great celebrations, statues from the Church of Santo Antônio and the Temple under construction were carried through the streets, the townspeople brought out those in their houses, skyrockets were shot off, and the air was filled with incense and prayers. As night was falling, in the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, still without a roof, beneath a sky thick with stars that seemed to have come out early so as to witness the joyous ceremony, the members of the Catholic Guard repeated in chorus the oath composed by the Little Blessed One.

  And at dawn the following morning a messenger sent by Pajeú came to tell Abbot João that the Can’s army numbered one thousand two hundred men, that it had several cannons, and that the colonel in command was known as Throat-Slitter.

  With rapid, spare gestures, Rufino makes the final preparations for yet another journey, its outcome more uncertain this time. He has changed out of the pants and shirt he had worn to go see the baron at the Pedra Vermelha hacienda, into identical ones, and he is taking with him a machete, a carbine, two knives, and a knapsack. He takes a look around the cabin: the bowls, the hammock, the benches, the image of Our Lady of Lapa. His features are drawn and his eyes blink continuously. But after a moment his angular face is again set in an inscrutable expression. With precise movements, he makes a few last preparations. When he has finished, he takes the lighted wick of the oil lamp and sets fire to objects that he has set in different places about the room. The shack begins to go up in flames. He walks unhurriedly to the door, taking with him only the weapons and the knapsack. Once outside, he squats down next to the empty animal pen and from there watches a gentle breeze fan the flames that are devouring his home. The cloud of smoke drifts his way and makes him cough. He rises to his feet. He slings the carbine over his shoulder, tucks the machete into his belt next to the knives, and hoists the knapsack onto his back. He turns around and walks off, knowing that he will never return to Queimadas. As he goes past the station, he does not even notice that people are putting up banners and posters to welcome the Seventh Regiment and Colonel Moreira César.

  Five days later, as night is falling, his lean, supple, dusty silhouette can be seen entering Ipupiará. He has made a detour to return the knife that he borrowed from the Blessed Jesus and has walked an average of ten hours a day, taking time out to rest during those moments when it is hottest and darkest. Except for just one day, when he paid for his food, he has trapped or shot everything that he has eaten. Sitting at the door of the general store are a handful of old men who look exactly alike, puffing on identical pipes. The tracker walks over to them, removes his sombrero, greets them. They must know him, for they ask him about Queimadas and all of them want to know if he has seen soldiers and what news he has of the war. Sitting down beside them, he tells them everything he knows, and asks about people in Ipupiará. Some of them have died, others have left for the South to make their fortune, and two families have just gone off to Canudos. When darkness has fallen, Rufino and the old men go into the store to have a little glass of cachaça. The stifling heat has now died down to a pleasant warmth. With the appropriate circumlocutions, Rufino now broaches the subject that they all knew the conversation would lead to sooner or later. He employs the most impersonal turns of speech to question them. The old men listen to him without feigning surprise. They all nod their heads and speak in turn. Yes, it has passed this way, more a ghost of a circus than a real one, so wretched-looking it was hard to believe that once upon a time it had been that sumptuous caravan led by the Gypsy. Rufino listens respectfully as they recall the circus shows of the old days. Finally, when there is a pause, he leads the conversation back round to where it began, and this time, as though they had decided that the proprieties had now been observed, they tell him what he has come to learn or confirm: how long it camped just outside the town, how the Bearded Lady, the Dwarf, and the Idiot earned their daily bread by telling fortunes, reciting stories, and putting on clown acts, how the stranger went around asking wild questions about the jagunços, how a band of capangas had come to cut off his red hair and steal the corpse of the father who had killed his children. He does not ask, nor do they mention the other person who was neither a circus performer nor a stranger. But this eminently present absent person haunts the conversation each time someone touches on the subject of how the wounded stranger was cared for and fed. Are they aware that this specter is Rufino’s wife? They surely know or sense this, as they know or sense what can be said and what must be left unsaid. At the end of the conversation, almost by chance, Rufino finds out which direction the circus people were headed when they left. He sleeps in the store that night, on a pallet that the owner offers him, and leaves at dawn at his steady trot.

  Neither picking up nor slowing his pace, Rufino traverses a landscape where the only shadow is that of his body, following him at first and then preceding him. With a set expression on his face and half-closed eyes, he makes his way along without hesitating, despite the fact that drifting sand has covered the trail over in places. Night is falling as he arrives at a hut overlooking a sowed field. The tenant farmer, his wife and half-naked kids welcome him as though he were an old friend. He eats and drinks with them, giving them news of Queimadas, Ipupiará, and other places. They talk of the war and the fears it arouses, of the pilgrims who pass by on their way to Canudos, and speculate on the possibility that the world is coming to an end. Only then does Rufino ask them about the circus and the stranger with all his hair lopped off. Yes, they passed by there and headed on toward the Serra de Olhos D’Agua on their way to Monte Santo. The wife remembers best of all the skinny man with no hair and yellowish eyes, who moved like an animal without bones and kept bursting out laughing for no reason at all. The couple find Rufino a hammock to sleep in and the next morning they fill his knapsack, refusing to accept payment.

  For a good part of the day, Rufino trots along without seeing anyone, in a landscape cooled by thickets full of flocks of jabbering parrots. That afternoon he begins to come across goatherds, with whom he stops to talk from time to time. A little beyond the Sítio das Flores—the Flower Place, a name that strikes him as a joke since there is nothing to be found there but stones and sun-baked earth—he turns off and heads for a wayside cross fashioned from tree trunks that is surrounded by ex-votos in the form of little carved wooden figurines. A legless woman is keeping vigil at the foot of the cross, lying stretched out on the ground like a snake. Rufino kneels and the woman blesses him. The tracker gives her something to eat and they talk. She hasn’t heard of them; she hasn’t seen them. Before continuing on his way, Rufino lights a candle and bows his head before the cross.

  For three days he loses their trail. He questions peasants and cowherds and concludes that instead of going on to Monte Santo the circus has turned off somewhere or gone back the way it came. Looking for a market being held, perhaps, so as to take in enough to eat? He goes all about the countryside round Sítio das Flores, in ever-widening circles, asking questions about each one of the people with the circus. Has anyone seen a woman with hair on her face? A dwarf three feet tall? An idiot with a body like rubber? A stranger with reddish fuzz on his skull who speaks in a language that’s hard to understand? The answer is always no. Lying in shelters that he has chanced upon, he makes conjectures. Can they have already killed him? Could he have died of his wounds? He goes down to Tanquinho and comes up-country again, without picking up their trail. One afternoon when he has stretched out on the ground exhausted, to sleep for a while, a band of armed men creep up on him, as silent as ghosts. A rope sandal planted on his chest awakens him. He sees that, in addition to carbines, the men are
equipped with machetes, cane whistles, bandoleers, and are not bandits, or at any rate no longer bandits. He has difficulty convincing them that he is not a guide who has hired on with the army, that he hasn’t seen a single soldier since leaving Queimadas. He shows such a lack of interest in the war that they think he’s lying, and at one point one of them puts his knife to his throat. Finally the interrogation turns into a friendly conversation. Rufino spends the night in their company, listening to them talk of the Antichrist, the Blessed Jesus, the Counselor, Belo Monte. He gathers that they have kidnapped, murdered, stolen, and lived on the run from the law, but that now they are saints. They explain to him that an army is advancing like a plague, confiscating people’s arms, conscripting men, and plunging knives in the throats of all those who refuse to spit on a crucifix and curse Christ. When they ask him if he wants to join them, Rufino answers no. He explains why and they understand.

  The following morning, he arrives in Cansanção at almost the same time as the soldiers. Rufino goes round to see the blacksmith, whom he knows. Standing next to the forge that is throwing out red-hot sparks, drenched in sweat, the man advises him to get out of town as fast as he can because the devils are conscripting all guides. When Rufino explains to him, he, too, understands. Yes, he can help him. Toughbeard has passed that way just a short time before; he’d run into the people Rufino was asking about, and had talked about meeting up with the stranger who reads heads. Where did he run into them? The blacksmith explains and the tracker stays there in the shop chatting with him until nightfall. Then he leaves the village without the sentinels spying him, and two hours later he is back with the apostles from Belo Monte. He tells them that, sure enough, the war has reached Cansanção.

  Dr. Souza Ferreiro dipped the cupping glasses in alcohol and handed them one by one to Baroness Estela, who had placed a handkerchief over her head as a coif. She set each glass aflame and skillfully applied it to the colonel’s back. The latter was lying so quietly that the sheets were scarcely wrinkled.