The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Roll up your sleeves and rub yourself with this disinfectant,” the doctor roars.

  He obeys as fast as he can in the daze that has come over him, and a moment later he finds himself kneeling on the ground soaking bandages with spurts of ether—a smell that brings back memories of carnival balls at Politeama—which he then places over Colonel Moreira César’s nose and mouth to keep him asleep while the doctor operates. “Don’t tremble, don’t be an idiot, keep the ether over his nose,” the doctor barks at him twice. He concentrates on his task—opening the flacon, wetting the cloth, placing it over that fine-drawn nose, those lips that are contorted in a grimace of interminable agony—and he thinks of the pain that this little man must be feeling as Dr. Souza Ferreiro bends over his belly as though he were about to sniff it or lick it. Every so often he takes a quick glance, despite himself, at the spatters of blood on the doctor’s hands and smock and uniform, the blanket on the bed, and his own pants. How much blood inside such a small body! The smell of ether dizzies him and makes him retch. He thinks: “I’ve nothing to throw up.” He thinks: “Why is it I’m not hungry or thirsty?” The wounded man’s eyes remain closed, but from time to time he stirs and then the doctor grumbles: “More ether, more ether.” But the last of the little flacons is almost empty now and he says so, feeling guilty.

  Orderlies enter, bringing steaming basins in which the doctor washes lancets, needles, sutures, scissors, with just one hand. Several times, as he applies the ether-soaked bandages, he hears Dr. Souza Ferreiro talking to himself, dirty words, insults, imprecations, curses on his own mother for ever having borne him. He becomes more and more drowsy and the doctor reprimands him severely: “Don’t be an idiot, this is no time to be napping.” He stammers an apology and the next time they bring the basin he begs them to get him a drink of water.

  He notes that they are no longer alone in the tent: the shadow that brings a canteen to his lips is Captain Olímpio de Castro. Colonel Tamarindo and Major Cunha Matos are there too, their backs leaning against the canvas, their faces grief-stricken, their uniforms in tatters. “More ether?” he says, and feels stupid, for the flacon has been empty for some time now. Dr. Souza Ferreiro bandages Moreira César and is now covering him with the blanket. He thinks in astonishment: “It’s nighttime already.” There are shadows round about them and someone hangs a lantern on one of the tent poles.

  “How is he?” Colonel Tamarindo says in a low voice.

  “His belly is ripped to shreds.” The doctor sighs. “I’m very much afraid that…”

  As he rolls down his shirtsleeves, the nearsighted journalist thinks: “If it was dawn, noon, just a moment ago, how is it possible for time to go by that fast?”

  “I doubt that he’ll even come to,” Souza Ferreiro adds.

  As though in answer to him, Colonel Moreira César begins to stir. All of them move to his bedside. Are his bandages comfortable? He blinks. The nearsighted journalist imagines him seeing silhouettes, hearing sounds, trying to understand, to remember, and he himself remembers, like something from another life, certain awakenings after a night’s peace induced by opium. The colonel’s return to reality must be just as slow, as difficult, as hazy. Moreira César’s eyes are open and he is gazing anxiously at Tamarindo, taking in his torn uniform, the deep scratches on his neck, his dejection.

  “Did we take Canudos?” he articulates in a hoarse voice.

  Colonel Tamarindo lowers his eyes and shakes his head. Moreira César’s eyes search the embarrassed faces of the major, the captain, of Dr. Souza Ferreiro, and the nearsighted journalist sees that he is also examining him, as though performing an autopsy on him.

  “We tried three times, sir,” Colonel Tamarindo stammers. “The men fought till their last ounce of strength was gone.”

  Colonel Moreira César sits up, his face even paler now than before, and angrily waves a clenched fist. “Another attack, Tamarindo. Immediately! That’s an order!”

  “There are heavy casualties, sir,” the colonel murmurs shamefacedly, as though everything were his fault. “Our position is untenable. We must retreat to a safe place and send for reinforcements…”

  “You will be court-martialed for this,” Moreira César interrupts him, raising his voice. “The Seventh Regiment retreat in the face of good-for-nothing rascals? Surrender your sword to Cunha Matos.”

  “How can he move, how can he writhe about like that with his belly slit wide open?” the nearsighted journalist thinks. In the prolonged silence that follows, Colonel Tamarindo looks at the other officers, wordlessly pleading for their help. Cunha Matos steps closer to the camp cot.

  “There are many deserters, sir; the regiment has fallen apart. If the jagunços attack, they’ll take the camp. Order a retreat.”

  Peering past the doctor and the captain, the nearsighted journalist sees Moreira César’s shoulders fall back onto the cot. “You’re a traitor, too?” he murmurs in desperation. “You all know how important this campaign is to our cause. Do you mean to tell me that I have compromised my honor in vain?”

  “We’ve all compromised our honor, sir,” Colonel Tamarindo says.

  “You know that I had to resign myself to conspiring with corrupt petty politicians.” Moreira César’s voice rises and falls abruptly, absurdly. “Do you mean to tell me that we’ve lied to the country in vain?”

  “Listen to what’s happening outside, sir,” Major Cunha Matos says in a shrill voice, and the nearsighted Journalist tells himself that he has been hearing that cacophony, that clamor, those running feet, that confusion for some time, but has refused to realize what it means, so as not to feel more frightened still. “It’s a rout. They may finish off the entire regiment if we don’t make an orderly retreat.”

  The nearsighted journalist makes out the sound of the cane whistles and the little bells amid the running footfalls and the voices. Colonel Moreira César looks at them one by one, his face contorted, his mouth agape. He says something that no one hears. The nearsighted journalist realizes that the flashing eyes in that livid face are fixed on him. “You there, you,” he hears. “Paper and pen, you hear? I want to dictate a statement concerning this infamy. Come, scribe, are you ready?”

  At that moment the nearsighted journalist suddenly remembers his portable writing desk, his leather pouch, and as though bitten by a snake frantically searches all about for them. With the sensation that he has lost part of his body, an amulet that protected him, he recalls that he did not have them when he ran up the mountainside, they are still lying on the slope down below, but he can think no further because Olímpio de Castro, his eyes full of tears, thrusts some paper and a pencil into his hand, and Major Souza Ferreiro holds the lantern above him to give him light.

  “I’m ready,” he says, thinking that he won’t be able to write, that his hands will tremble.

  “I, Colonel Moreira César, commanding officer of the Seventh Regiment, being in possession of all my faculties, hereby state that the retreat from the siege of Canudos is a decision that is being taken against my will, by subordinates who are not capable of assuming their responsibility in the face of history.” Moreira César sits up on the camp cot for a moment and then falls back once more. “Future generations will judge. I am confident that there will be republicans to defend me. My entire conduct has been aimed at the defense of the Republic, which must make its authority felt in every corner of the country if it wishes it to progress.”

  When the voice, so low that he can scarcely hear it, stops speaking, it takes him a moment to realize this, for he has fallen behind as he takes down the dictation. Writing, that manual labor, like that of placing cloths soaked in ether over the wounded man’s nose, is a boon to him, for it has kept him from torturing himself with questions as to how it can have happened that the Seventh Regiment failed to take Canudos and must now beat a retreat. When he raises his eyes, the doctor has put his ear to the colonel’s chest and is taking his pulse. He straightens up and makes a gesture fraught with mea
ning. Chaos immediately ensues, and Cunha Matos and Tamarindo begin to argue in loud voices as Olímpio de Castro tells Souza Ferreiro that the colonel’s remains must not be desecrated.

  “A retreat now, in darkness, is insane,” Tamarindo shouts. “Where to? Which way? How can I ask any more of exhausted men who have fought for an entire day? Tomorrow…”

  “Tomorrow not even the dead will still be around down there,” Cunha Matos says with a wave of his hand. “Don’t you see that the regiment is disintegrating, that there’s no one in command, that if the men aren’t regrouped now they’ll be hunted down like rabbits?”

  “Regroup them, do whatever you like. I’m staying here till dawn, to carry out a retreat in good and proper order.” Colonel Tamarindo turns to Olímpio de Castro. “Try to reach the artillery. Those four cannons must not fall into the enemy’s hands. Have Salomão da Rocha destroy them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain and Cunha Matos leave the tent together and the nearsighted journalist follows them like an automaton. He hears what they are saying and cannot believe his ears.

  “Waiting is madness, Olímpio. We must retreat now or by morning there won’t be anybody left alive.”

  “I’m going to try to get to the artillery,” Olímpio de Castro cuts him short. “It’s madness perhaps, but it is my duty to obey the new commanding officer.”

  The nearsighted journalist tugs at the captain’s arm, muttering: “Your canteen, I’m dying of thirst.”

  He drinks avidly, choking, as the captain advises him: “Don’t stay with us. The major is right. Things are going to end badly. Clear out.”

  Clear out? Take off by himself, through the caatinga, in the dark? Olímpio de Castro and Cunha Matos disappear, leaving him confused, afraid, petrified. Around him are men running or walking very fast. He takes a few steps in one direction, then another, starts toward the tent, but someone gives him a shove that sends him off in another direction. “Let me come with you, don’t go away,” he cries, and without turning around, one soldier urges him on: “Run, run, they’re coming up the mountainside right now. Can’t you hear the whistles?” Yes, he hears them. He starts running behind them, but he trips and falls several times and is left behind. He leans against a shadow that appears to be a tree, but the moment he touches it he feels it moving. “Untie me, for the love of God,” he hears a voice say. And he recognizes it as that of the parish priest of Cumbe, the same voice in which he answered when he was interrogated by Moreira César, yelping now with the same panic: “Untie me, untie me, the ants are eating me alive.”

  “Yes, yes,” the nearsighted journalist stammers, joyous at having found company. “I’ll untie you, I’ll untie you.”

  “Let’s get out of here this minute,” the Dwarf begged her. “Let’s go, Jurema, let’s go. Now that the cannons have stopped firing.”

  Jurema had been sitting there, looking at Rufino and Gall, without realizing that the sun was tingeing the caatinga with gold, drying up the raindrops and evaporating the humidity in the air and the underbrush. The Dwarf shook her.

  “Where are we going to go?” she answered, feeling great fatigue and a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach.

  “To Cumbe, to Jeremoabo, anywhere,” the Dwarf insisted, tugging at her skirt.

  “And which way is it to Cumbe, to Jeremoabo?” Jurema murmured. “Do we have any idea? Do you know?”

  “It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!” the Dwarf yelped, pulling at her. “Didn’t you hear the jagunços? They’re going to fight here, there’s going to be shooting here, we’re going to be killed.”

  Jurema rose to her feet and took a few steps toward the mantle of woven grass that the jagunços had put over her when they rescued her from the soldiers. It felt damp. She threw it over the corpses of the guide and the stranger, trying to cover the parts of their bodies that had been battered worst: their torsos and their heads. Then, suddenly determined to overcome her apathy, she set out in the direction that she remembered seeing Pajeú take off in. She immediately felt a chubby little hand in her right hand.

  “Where are we going?” the Dwarf asked. “And what about the soldiers?”

  She shrugged. The soldiers, the jagunços: what did she care? She had had enough of everything and everybody, and her one desire was to forget everything she’d seen. As they walked on, she gathered leaves and little twigs to suck the sap from them.

  “Shots,” the Dwarf said. “Shots, shots.”

  It was heavy fire. In a few seconds the din filled the dense, serpentine caatinga, which seemed to multiply the bursts and volleys. But not a single living creature was to be seen anywhere about: only rising ground covered with brambles and leaves torn off the trees by the rain, mud puddles, and thickets of macambiras with branches like claws and mandacarus and xiquexiques with sharp thorns. She had lost her sandals at some point during the night, and though she had gone about barefoot for a good part of her life, she could feel how badly cut and bruised her feet were. The hillside grew steeper and steeper. The sun shone full in her face and seemed to mend her limbs, to bring them back to life. She realized that something was up when the Dwarf’s fingernails dug into her flesh. Some four yards away a short-barreled, wide-mouthed blunderbuss was aimed straight at them, held in the hands of a man from the vegetable kingdom, with bark for skin, limbs that were branches, and hair that was tufts of grass.

  “Clear out of here,” the jagunço said, poking his face out of his mantle. “Didn’t Pajeú tell you that you should go to the Jeremoabo entrance?”

  “I don’t know how to get there,” Jurema answered.

  “Shh, shhh,” she heard voices say at this moment, as though the bushes and the cacti had started to speak. Then she saw men’s heads appear amid the branches.

  “Hide them,” she heard Pajeú order, without being able to tell where his voice was coming from, and felt herself being shoved to the ground, crushed beneath the body of a man who whispered to her as he enveloped her with his mantle of woven grasses: “Shhh, shhh.” She lay there motionless, with her eyes half closed, stealing cautious glances. She could feel the jagunço’s breath in her ear and wondered if the same thing had happened to the Dwarf as had happened to her. She spied the soldiers. Her heart skipped a beat on seeing how close they were. They were marching in a column, two abreast, in their trousers with red stripes and their blue tunics, their black boots and their rifles with naked bayonets. She held her breath, closed her eyes, waiting for the shots to ring out, but as nothing happened, she opened them again and the soldiers were still there, passing by them. She could see their eyes, feverish with anxiety or bloodshot from lack of sleep, their faces, undaunted or terrified, and make out a few scattered words of what they were saying. Wasn’t it incredible that so many soldiers should pass by without discovering that there were jagunços so close that they could almost touch them, so close that they were almost stepping on them?

  And at this moment a great blinding flash of exploding gunpowder filled the caatinga, reminding her for a second of the fiesta of Santo Antônio, in Queimadas, when the circus came to town and fireworks were set off. Amid the fusillade, she caught sight of a rain of silhouettes dressed in grass cloaks falling or flinging themselves upon the men dressed in uniforms, and amid the smoke and the roar of gunfire she found herself free of the weight of the jagunço pinning her down, lifted up, dragged along, as voices said to her: “Crouch down, crouch down.” She obeyed, hunching over, tucking her head between her shoulders, and ran as fast as her legs would carry her, expecting at any moment to feel the smack of bullets hitting her in the back, almost wishing that that would happen. The dash left her dripping with sweat and feeling as though she were about to spit up her heart.

  Just then she spied the caboclo without a nose standing alongside her, looking at her with gentle mockery in his eyes: “Who won the fight? Your husband or the lunatic?”

  “The two of them killed each other,” she panted.

  “All the b
etter for you,” Pajeú commented with a smile. “You can look for another husband now, in Belo Monte.”

  The Dwarf was at her side, gasping for breath, too. She caught a glimpse of Canudos. It was spread out there in front of her, the entire length and breadth of it, shaken by explosions, licked by tongues of fire, drifted over with scattered clouds of smoke, as overhead a clear blue sky belied this disorder and a bright sun beat down. Her eyes filled with tears and she felt a sudden hatred against that city and those men, killing each other in those narrow little streets like burrows. Her misfortunes had begun because of this place; the stranger had come to her house because of Canudos, and that had been the start of the misadventures that had left her without anything or anybody in the world, lost in the midst of a war. She wished with all her heart for a miracle, for nothing to have happened, for Rufino and her to be as they had been before, back, in Queimadas.

  “Don’t cry, girl,” the caboclo said to her. “Don’t you know the dead are going to be brought back to life? Haven’t you heard? There’s such a thing as the resurrection of the flesh.”

  His voice was calm, as though he and his men had not just had a gunfight with the soldiers. She dried her tears with her hand and looked around, reconnoitering the place. It was a shortcut between the hills, a sort of tunnel. To her left was an overhanging wall of stones and rocks without vegetation that hid the mountain from view, and to her right the somewhat sparse caatinga descended till it gave way to a rocky stretch of ground which, beyond a broad river, was transformed into a jumble of little jerry-built dwellings with reddish roofs. Pajeú placed something in her hand, and without looking to see what it was, she raised it to her mouth. She ate the soft, sour fruit in little bites. The men in the grass mantles were gradually scattering, hugging the bushes, disappearing in hiding places dug in the ground. Again the chubby little hand sought hers. She felt pity and tenderness toward this familiar presence. “Hide in here,” Pajeú ordered, pushing aside some branches. Once the two of them had crouched down in the ditch, he explained to them, pointing to the rocks: “The dogs are up there.” In the hole was another jagunço, a toothless man who hunched up to make room for them. He had a crossbow and a quiver full of arrows.