The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Has it stopped raining? The nearsighted journalist turns over onto his back, without opening his eyes. Yes, it is no longer pouring; that fine penetrating mist is being driven their way by the wind sweeping down the hillside. The cannon fire has also stopped and his mental image of the young sergeant is replaced by that of the elderly journalist who suffers from the cold: his straw-colored hair that had turned almost white, his kindly face that had taken on a sickly cast, his muffler, his fingernails that he so often contemplated as though they were an aid to meditation. Was he, too, hanging dead from a tree? Not long after the patrol has left, a messenger has come to tell the colonel that something is happening among the youngsters. The company of youngsters! he thinks. It’s all written down, it’s in the bottom of the pouch he’s lying on top of so as to protect it from the rain, four or five pages telling the story of those adolescents, barely past childhood, that the Seventh Regiment recruits without asking them how old they are. Why does it do that? Because, according to Moreira César, youngsters have a surer aim, steadier nerves than adults. He has seen, has spoken with these soldiers fourteen or fifteen years old who are known as the youngsters. Hence, when he hears the messenger say that something is happening among them, the nearsighted journalist follows the colonel to the rear guard. Half an hour later they come upon them.

  In the rain-drenched shadows, a shiver runs down his body from head to foot. The bugles and the bells ring out again, very loud now, but in the late-afternoon sun he continues to see the eight or nine soldier boys, squatting on their heels or lying exhausted on the gravelstrewn ground. The companies of the rear guard are leaving them behind. They are the youngest ones, they seem to be wearing masks, and are obviously dying of hunger and exhaustion. Dumfounded, the nearsighted journalist spies his colleague among them. A captain with a luxuriant mustache, who appears to be the victim of warring feelings—pity, anger, hesitation—greets the colonel: they refused to go any farther, sir. What should I do? The journalist does his best to spur his colleague on, to persuade him to get up, to pull himself together. “I needn’t have tried to reason with him,” he thinks. “If he’d had an ounce of strength left, he’d have gone on.” He remembers how his legs were all sprawled out, how pale his face was, how he lay there panting like a dog. One of the boys is whimpering: they’d rather you ordered them killed, sir, the blisters on their feet are infected, their heads are buzzing, they can’t go a single step farther. The youngster is sobbing, his hands joined as though in prayer, and little by little those who are not weeping also burst into tears, hiding their faces in their hands and curling up in a ball at the colonel’s feet.

  He remembers the look in Moreira César’s cold little eyes as they sweep back and forth over the group. “I thought that it would make real men of you sooner if I put you in the ranks. You’re going to miss out on the best part of all. You boys have disappointed me. To keep you from being carried on the rolls as deserters, I’m giving you your discharge. Hand over your rifles and your uniforms.”

  The nearsighted journalist gives half his water ration to his colleague, who immediately thanks him with a smile, as the youngsters, leaning weakly on each other, take off their high-buttoned tunics and kepis and hand their rifles over to the armorers.

  “Don’t stay here, it’s too open,” Moreira César says to them. “Try to get back to the rocky hilltop where we halted to rest this morning. Hide there till a patrol comes past. There isn’t much chance of that, however.”

  He turns on his heels and returns to the head of the column. As his farewell words to him, his colleague whispers to the journalist: “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, my young friend.” With his absurd muffler wound around his neck, the old man stays behind, sitting there like a class monitor amid half-naked, bawling kids. He thinks: “It rained back there, too.” He imagines the surprise, the happiness, the resurrection that this sudden downpour, sent by heaven seconds after it was hidden from sight by dark, lowering clouds, must have been for the old man and the youngsters. He imagines their disbelief, their smiles, their mouths opening greedily, joyously, their hands cupping to catch the drops; he imagines the boys rising to their feet, hugging each other, refreshed, encouraged, restored body and soul. Have they begun marching again, perhaps catching up with the rear guard? Hunching over till his chin is touching his knees, the nearsighted journalist tells himself that this isn’t so: their mental and physical states were such that not even the rain would have been capable of getting them on their feet again.

  How many hours has it been raining now? It began at nightfall, as the vanguard was starting to take up positions on the heights of Canudos. There is an indescribable explosion of joy throughout the regiment; men from the ranks and officers leap about, clap each other on the back, drink out of their kepis, stand with outstretched arms beneath the deluge from the sky; the colonel’s white horse whinnies, shakes its mane, stamps its hoofs in the mud that is beginning to form. The nearsighted journalist manages only to raise his head, close his eyes, open his mouth, his nostrils, incredulous, sent into ecstasies by these drops that are pelting his very bones. He is so absorbed, so overjoyed that he hears neither the shots nor the cries of the soldier rolling about on the ground alongside him, moaning with pain and clutching his face. When he finally becomes aware of the chaos round about him, he stoops over, picks up the portable writing desk and the leather pouch, and puts them over his head. From this miserable refuge he sees Captain Olímpio de Castro shooting his revolver and soldiers running for shelter or flinging themselves face down in the mud. And between the muddy legs scissoring back and forth he sees—the image is frozen in his memory like a daguerreotype—Colonel Moreira César grabbing the reins of his horse, leaping into the saddle, and with saber unsheathed charging, not knowing if any of his men are following him, toward the patch of scrub from which the shots have come. “He was shouting ‘Long live the Republic,’ ‘Long live Brazil,’” he thinks to himself. In the lead-colored light, amid the pouring rain and the wind whipping the trees back and forth, officers and men break into a run, echoing the colonel’s shouts, and—forgetting the cold and his panic for a moment, the correspondent from the Jornal de Notícias laughs to himself, remembering—he suddenly finds himself running, too, right alongside them, toward the thicket, to confront the invisible enemy, too. He remembers thinking as he stumbled along how stupid he was to be running toward a battle that he was not going to fight. What would he have fought it with? His portable writing desk? The leather pouch containing his changes of clothes and his papers? His empty inkwell? But the enemy, naturally, never appears.

  “What did appear was worse,” he thinks, and another shiver runs down his spine, like a lizard. Once again he sees the landscape, in the ashen afternoon that is beginning to turn to dusk, become a phantasmagoria, with strange human fruit hanging from the umburanas and the thornbushes, and boots, scabbards, tunics, kepis dangling from the branches. Some of the corpses are already skeletons picked clean of eyes, bellies, buttocks, muscles, privates by vultures or rodents, and their nakedness stands out sharply against the spectral greenish-gray of the trees and the dark-colored earth. Standing rooted to the spot for an instant by the incredible sight, he then walks in a daze amid these remains of men and uniforms adorning the caatinga. Moreira César has dismounted and is surrounded by the officers and men who have followed him as he charged. They are petrified. The shouts and the mad dashes of a moment before have been succeeded by a deep silence, a tense motionlessness. They are all standing staring at the sight before them, and on their faces stupefaction, fear gradually give way to sadness, anger. The young fair-haired sergeant’s head is still intact—though the eyes are gone—and his body a mass of dark purple bruises and protruding bones, with swollen wounds that seem to be bleeding as the rain streams down. He sways back and forth, very slowly. From that moment on, even before being overcome with pity and horror, the nearsighted journalist has thought about what he cannot help thinking about, what is
gnawing at him this minute and preventing him from sleeping: the stroke of luck, the miracle that kept him from being there too, naked, hacked to pieces, castrated by the knives of the jagunços or the beaks of the vultures, hanging amid the cacti. Someone breaks into sobs. It is Captain Olímpio de Castro, who raises his arms to his face, his pistol still in his hand. In the half shadow, the nearsighted journalist sees that other officers and men are also weeping for the fair-haired sergeant and his patrol, whom they have begun taking down. Moreira César remains there, witnessing this operation that is taking place in the gathering dark, his face set in a stony expression he has never seen on it before. Wrapped in blankets, the corpses are buried immediately, side by side, by soldiers who present arms in the darkness and fire a rifle volley in their honor.6

  After the bugler has blown taps, Moreira César points with his sword at the mountainside before them and delivers a very short speech. “The murderers have not fled, men. They are there, awaiting punishment. I say no more now, in order that bayonets and rifles may speak.”

  He hears the roar of the cannon again, closer this time, and gives a start, wide awake now. He remembers that in the last few days he has hardly sneezed once, not even in this rainy dampness, and he tells himself that the expedition will have been worthwhile to him for one reason at least: the nightmare of his life, the fits of sneezing that drove his fellow workers at the newspaper mad and often kept him awake all night long, have become less frequent, have perhaps disappeared altogether. He remembers that he began to smoke opium, not so much because he wanted to have the dreams it brings as because he wanted to sleep without sneezing, and he says to himself: “What a dull clod I am.” He turns over on his side and looks up at the sky: a black expanse without a spark of light. It is so dark he cannot make out the faces of the soldiers lying next to him, to his right and to his left. But he can hear their heavy breathing, the words that escape their lips. Every so often, some of them get up and others lie down as the former climb up to the top of the mountain to take their places. He thinks: “It’s going to be terrible.” Something that can never be faithfully reproduced in writing. He thinks: “They are filled with hatred, intoxicated by their desire for vengeance, the desire to make someone pay for their exhaustion, hunger, thirst, the horses and animals lost, and above all for the mutilated, outraged dead bodies of the comrades they saw leave a few short hours before to take Caracatá.” He thinks: “It was what they needed to reach a fever pitch. That hatred is what has enabled them to scale the rocky mountainsides at a frenetic pace, clenching their teeth, and what must be causing them to lie there unable to sleep now, clutching their weapons, looking down obsessively from the crest at the shadows below where their prey awaits them, hated in the beginning out of duty but hated intimately and personally now, like enemies from whom it is their duty to collect a debt of honor owed them.”

  Because of the mad cadence at which the Seventh Regiment stormed up the hillsides, he was unable to remain at the head of the column with the colonel, his staff officers, and his escort. He was prevented from doing so by the fading light, his constant stumbling and falling, his swollen feet, his heart that seemed to be about to burst, his pounding temples. What made him hold out, struggle back to his feet again and again, go on climbing? He thinks: fear of being left all by myself, curiosity as to what is going to happen. In one of his many falls he lost track of his portable writing desk, but a soldier with a bare scalp—they shave all the hair off those infested with lice—hands it to him a few minutes later. He has no use for it any more; his ink is all gone and his last goose-quill got broken the evening before. Now that the rain has stopped, he hears various sounds, a rattling of stones, and wonders if the companies are continuing to deploy in all directions during the night, if the cannons and machine guns are being hauled to a new emplacement, or if the vanguard has dashed down the mountainside without waiting for daybreak.

  He has not been left behind all by himself; he has arrived before many of the troops. He feels a childish joy, the elation of having won a wager. The featureless silhouettes are no longer advancing now; they are eagerly opening bundles of supplies, slipping off their knapsacks. Their fatigue, their anxiety disappear. He asks where the command post is, goes from one group of men to another, wanders back and forth till he comes upon a canvas shelter stretched between poles, lighted by a feeble oil lamp. It is now pitch-dark, it is still raining buckets, and the nearsighted journalist remembers the feeling of safety, of relief that came over him as he crawled to the tent and spied Moreira César. The latter is receiving reports, giving orders; an atmosphere of feverish activity reigns around the little table on which the oil lamp sputters. The nearsighted journalist collapses on the ground at the entrance, as he has on previous occasions, thinking that his position, his presence there are akin to a dog’s, and doubtless Colonel Moreira César associates him in his mind, first and foremost, with a dog. He sees mud-spattered officers go in and out, he hears Colonel Tamarindo discussing the situation with Major Cunha Matos, and Colonel Moreira César giving orders. The colonel is enveloped in a black cape and in the smoky light he looks strangely deformed. Has he had another attack of his mysterious malady? For at his side is Dr. Souza Ferreiro.

  “Order the artillery to open fire,” he hears him say. “Have the Krupps send them our visiting cards, so as to soften them up before we launch our attack.”

  As the officers begin to leave the tent, he is obliged to move aside to keep from being trampled underfoot.

  “Have the regimental call sounded,” the colonel says to Captain Olímpio de Castro.

  Shortly thereafter, the nearsighted journalist hears the long, lugubrious, macabre bugle call that he heard as the column marched off from Queimadas. Moreira César has risen to his feet and walks toward the door of the tent, half buried in his cape. He shakes hands with the officers who are leaving and wishes them good luck.

  “Well, well! So you managed to get to Canudos,” the colonel says as he catches sight of him. “I confess that I’m surprised. I never thought you’d be the only correspondent to accompany us this far.”

  And then, immediately losing all interest in him, he turns to Colonel Tamarindo. The call to charge and slit throats echoes back in the rain from different directions. As a silence falls, the nearsighted journalist suddenly hears bells pealing wildly. He remembers thinking what all the others were no doubt thinking: “The jagunços’ answer.”

  “Tomorrow we will lunch in Canudos,” he hears the colonel say. He feels his heart skip a beat, for tomorrow is already today.

  He was awakened by a painful burning sensation: lines of ants were running up both his arms, leaving a trail of red marks on his skin. He slapped them dead with his hand as he shook his drowsy head. Studying the gray sky, the light growing fainter and fainter, Galileo Gall tried to guess what time it was. He had always envied Rufino, Jurema, the Bearded Lady, all the people in these parts for the certainty with which, after a mere glance at the sun or the stars, they could tell precisely what hour of the day or night it was. How long had he slept? Not long, since Ulpino hadn’t come back yet. When he saw the first stars appear he gave a start. Could something have happened? Could Ulpino have lighted out, afraid to take him all the way to Canudos? He suddenly felt cold, a sensation it seemed to him he hadn’t felt for ages.

  A few hours later, in the clear night, he was certain that Ulpino was not going to come back. He rose to his feet and, with no idea where he was heading, started off in the direction indicated on a wooden sign that said Caracatá. The little trail disappeared amid a labyrinth of thorny bushes that scratched him. He went back to the clearing. He managed to fall asleep, overcome with anxiety, and had nightmares that he remembered vaguely on awaking the next morning. He was so hungry that he forgot all about the guide for a good while and spent a fair time chewing on grasses till he had calmed the empty feeling in his belly. Then he explored his surroundings, convinced that the only solution was to find his own way. After all, it s
hould not be all that difficult: all he needed to do was find a group of pilgrims and follow them. But where were they to be found? The thought that Ulpino had deliberately gotten him lost upset him so much that the moment this suspicion crossed his mind he instantly rejected it. In order to clear a path through the vegetation he had a stout branch; his double saddlebag was slung over his shoulder. Suddenly it began to rain. Drunk with elation, he was licking the drops falling on his face when he caught sight of figures amid the trees. He shouted to them and ran toward them, splashing through the water, muttering “At last” to himself, when he recognized Jurema. And Rufino. He stopped dead in his tracks. Through a curtain of water, he saw the calm expression on the tracker’s face and noted that he was leading Jurema along by a rope tied around her neck, like an animal. He saw him let go of the rope and spied the terrified face of the Dwarf. The three of them looked at him and he suddenly felt totally disconcerted, unreal. Rufino had a knife in his hand; his eyes were gleaming like burning coals.

  “If it had been you, you wouldn’t have come to defend your wife,” he heard him say to him, with more scorn than rage. “You have no honor, Gall.”

  His feeling of unreality grew even more intense. He raised his free hand and made a peaceable, friendly gesture. “There’s no time for this, Rufino. I can explain to you what happened. There’s something that’s much more urgent now. There are thousands of men and women who risk being killed because of a handful of ambitious politicians. It’s your duty…”

  But he realized he was speaking in English. Rufino was coming toward him and Galileo began to step back. The ground between them was a sea of mud. Behind Rufino, the Dwarf was trying to untie Jurema. “I’m not going to kill you yet,” he thought he heard Rufino say, and apparently he added that he was going to slap him full in the face to dishonor him. Galileo felt like laughing. The distance between the two of them was growing shorter by the moment and he thought: “He’s deaf to reason and he always will be.” Hatred, like desire, canceled out intelligence and reduced man to a creature of sheer instinct. Was he about to die on account of such a stupid thing as a woman’s cunt? He continued to make pacifying gestures and assumed a fearful, pleading expression. At the same time, he calculated the distance, and when Rufino was almost upon him, he suddenly lashed out at him with the stout stick he was clutching in his fist. The guide fell to the ground. He heard Jurema scream, but by the time she reached his side, he had already hit Rufino over the head twice more; the latter, stunned, had let go of his knife, which Gall picked up. He held Jurema off, indicating with a wave of his hand that he was not going to kill Rufino.