“What are you waiting for, compadre?” Honório says. “For them to see us?” Antônio shoots, and the next instant, like a multiple echo, earsplitting shots ring out, drowning out the drums and bugles. Thrown into confusion, the soldiers mill about amid the smoke and dust. Antônio squeezes off his shots slowly till his revolver is empty, aiming with one eye closed at the soldiers who have now turned tail and are running away as fast as their legs will carry them. He manages to make out four other corps which have crossed the ravines and are approaching in three, four different directions. The shooting stops.
“They haven’t seen us yet,” his brother says to him.
“They have the sun in their eyes,” he answers. “In an hour they won’t be able to see a thing.”
Both of them reload. They can hear scattered shots, from jagunços trying to finish off the wounded whom Antônio sees crawling over the stones, trying to reach the ravines. Heads, arms, bodies of soldiers keep emerging from these. The lines of soldiers curve, break up, scatter as they advance across the uneven, shifting terrain. The soldiers have begun to shoot, but Antônio has the impression that they still have not located the dugouts, that they are aiming above their heads, toward Canudos, believing that the hail of gunfire that mowed down the spearhead has come from the Temple of the Blessed Jesus. The shooting makes the cloud of dust and gunsmoke even denser and every so often earth-colored whirlwinds envelop and hide the atheists, who keep advancing, crouching over, bunched together, rifles raised and bayonets fixed, to the sound of drums rolling and bugles blaring and voices shouting out “Infantry! Advance!”
The former trader empties his revolver twice. It gets hot and burns his hand, so he puts it back in its holster and begins to use his Mannlicher. He aims and shoots, seeking out each time, amid the enemy troops, those who—because of their sabers, their gold braid, or their attitudes—appear to be the commanding officers. Suddenly, seeing these heretics and pharisees with their panicked faces who are falling by ones, by twos, by tens, struck by bullets that seem to be coming out of nowhere, he feels compassion. How can he possibly feel pity for men who are trying to destroy Belo Monte? Yes, at this moment, as he sees them fall to the ground, hears them moan, and aims at them and kills them, he does not hate them: he can sense their spiritual wretchedness, their sinful human nature, he knows they are victims, blind, stupid instruments, prisoners caught fast in the snares of the Evil One. Might that not have been the fate of all the jagunços? His, too—if, thanks to that chance meeting with the Counselor, he had not been brushed by the wings of the angel.
“To the left, compadre,” Honório says, nudging him in the ribs.
He looks that way and sees: cavalrymen with lances. Some two hundred of them, perhaps more. They have crossed the Vaza-Barris half a kilometer to his right and are grouping in squads to attack this flank, amid the frantic din of a bugle. They are outside the line of trenches. In a second, he sees what is going to happen. The lancers will cut across the rolling hillside to the cemetery, and since in that sector there is no line of trenches to stop them they will reach Belo Monte in just a few minutes. On seeing the way clear, the foot soldiers will follow them into the city. Neither Pedrão nor Big João nor Pajeú has had time yet to get back to Belo Monte to reinforce the jagunços behind the parapets on the rooftops and towers of Santo Antônio and the Temple of the Blessed Jesus and the Sanctuary. So, not knowing what exactly he is going to do, guided by the madness of the moment, he grabs his ammunition pouch and leaps out of the dugout, shouting to Honório: “We must stop them, follow me, follow me!” He breaks into a run, bending over, the Mannlicher in his right hand, the revolver in his left, the ammunition pouch slung over his shoulder; it is as though he were dreaming, or drunk. At that moment, the fear of death—which sometimes wakes him up at night drenched with sweat or makes his blood run cold in the middle of a trivial conversation—disappears and a proud scorn for the very thought that he might be wounded or disappear from among the living takes possession of him. As he runs straight toward the cavalrymen—who, grouped now in squads, are beginning to trot in a zigzag line, raising dust, whom he can see at one moment only to lose sight of them the next because of the dips and rises in the terrain—ideas, memories, images fly up in his head like sparks in a forge. He knows that these cavalrymen belong to the battalion of lancers from the South, gauchos, whom he has spied roaming about behind A Favela in search of cattle. He thinks that none of these horsemen will ever set foot in Canudos, that Big João and the Catholic Guard, the blacks of the Mocambo or the Cariri archers will kill their mounts, magnificent white horses that will make excellent targets. And he thinks of his wife and his sister-in-law, wondering if they and the other women have been able to get back to Belo Monte. Among these faces, hopes, fantasies, Assaré appears, his native village in the state of Ceará, to which he has not returned since he fled from it because of the plague. His town often comes to mind in moments like this, when he feels that he has reached a limit, that he is about to step over a line beyond which there lies nothing but a miracle or death.
When his legs refuse to move a step farther, he sinks to the ground, and stretching out flat, without seeking cover, he steadies his rifle in the hollow of his shoulders and begins to shoot. He will not have time to reload, and therefore he aims carefully each time. He has covered half the distance separating him from the cavalrymen. They pass in front of him, in a cloud of dust, and he wonders how they can have failed to see him when he has come running across open terrain and is now shooting at them. Yet none of the lancers even looks his way. Now, however, as though his thought of a moment before has alerted them, the lead squad suddenly veers to the left. He sees a cavalryman make a circular motion with his dress sword, as though calling to him, as though saluting him, and then sees the dozen lancers gallop in his direction. His rifle is empty. He grabs his revolver in his two hands, leaning on his elbows, determined to save these last bullets till the horses are right on top of him. There the faces of the devils are, contorted with rage, their spurs digging cruelly into the flanks of their mounts, their long lances quivering, their balloon pants billowing in the wind. He shoots one, two, three bullets at the one with the saber without hitting him, thinking that nothing will save him from being run through by those lances, from being crushed to death by those hoofs pounding on the stones. But something happens, and again he senses the presence of the supernatural. Many figures suddenly appear from behind him, shooting, brandishing machetes, knives, hammers; they fling themselves upon the animals and their riders, shooting at them, knifing them, hacking at them, in a dizzying whirlwind. He sees jagunços hanging on to the cavalrymen’s lances and legs and cutting the reins; he sees horses roll over onto the ground and hears roars of pain, whinnies, curses, shots. At least two lancers ride across him without trampling him before he manages to rise to his feet and join the fray. He shoots the last two bullets in his revolver, and using the Mannlicher as a club, he runs toward the nearest atheists and jagunços fighting hand to hand on the ground. He swings the rifle butt at a soldier who has a jagunço pinned to the ground and lashes out at him till he topples over and stops moving. He helps the jagunço to his feet and the two of them rush to rescue Honório, who is being pursued by a cavalryman with his lance outstretched. When he sees them coming toward him, the gaucho puts spurs to his mount and gallops off in the direction of Belo Monte. For some time, Antônio runs from one place to another amid the cloud of dust, helping those who have fallen to their feet, loading and emptying his revolver. Some of his comrades are badly wounded and others dead, run through with lances. One of them is bleeding profusely from a deep saber cut. He sees himself, as though in a dream, bludgeoning unhorsed gauchos to death with the butt of his rifle, as others are doing with their machetes. When the hand-to-hand combat ends for lack of enemies and the jagunços regroup, Antônio tells them they must go back to the dugouts, but as he is saying that he notices, when the clouds of reddish dust part for a moment, that the spot where the
y were lying in ambush before is now being overrun by companies of Freemasons, spread out in formation as far as the eye can see.
There are not more than fifty men around him. What about the others? Those who were able to drag themselves about have gone back to Belo Monte. “But there weren’t many of them,” a toothless jagunço, Zózimo the tinsmith, growls. Antônio is surprised to see him among the combatants, when his age and his infirmities should have kept him in Belo Monte putting out fires and helping to bring the wounded to the Health Houses. There is no sense in staying here where they are; a new cavalry charge would be the end of them.
“We’re going to go give Big João a hand,” he tells them.
They break up into groups of three or four, and offering those who are limping an arm to lean on, taking cover in folds in the terrain, they start back to Belo Monte. Antônio falls to the rear, alongside Honório and Zózimo. Perhaps the great clouds of dust, perhaps the sun’s rays, perhaps the enemy’s eagerness to invade Canudos, suffice to explain why neither the troops advancing on their left nor the lancers they spy on their right come to finish them off. Since they can manage to see the dogs now and again, it is not possible that the dogs do not see them, too, now and again. He asks Honório about the Sardelinha sisters. Honório answers that before leaving the dugouts he sent word to all the women to leave. They still have a thousand paces to go before they reach the nearest dwellings. It will be difficult, with the slow progress that they are making, to get there safe and sound. But his trembling legs and his pounding heart tell him that neither he nor any of the other survivors is in any condition to walk faster. Seized by a momentary dizzy spell, old Zózimo is staggering. Antônio gives him a reassuring pat on the back and helps him along. Can it be true that before the angel’s wing brushed him this old man was once about to burn the Lion of Natuba alive?
“Look over by Antônio the Pyrotechnist’s hut, compadre.”
A heavy, deafening fusillade is coming from the jumble of dwellings across from the old cemetery, a section whose narrow little streets, as difficult as a labyrinth to wind one’s way through, are the only ones in Canudos not named after saints but after minstrels’ stories: Queen Maguelone, Robert the Devi, Silvaninha, Charlemagne, Peers of France. The new pilgrims are all grouped together in this district. Are they the ones who are shooting like that at the atheists? Rooftops, doorways, street entrances are spitting fire at the soldiers. All of a sudden, amid the jagunços lying flat on the ground, standing, or squatting, he spies an unmistakable figure, Pedrão, leaping from one spot to another with his musketoon, and he is certain he can distinguish, amid the deafening din of all the firearms, the loud boom of the giant mulatto’s ancient weapon. Pedrão has always refused to exchange this old piece of his, dating back to his days as a bandit, for a Mannlicher or a Mauser repeating rifle, despite the fact that these guns can fire five shots in a row and can be very quickly reloaded, whereas every time he fires his musketoon he is obliged to sponge the barrel, pour powder down it, and ram it in before shooting off one of the absurd missiles he loads it with: bits of iron, limonite, glass, wax, and even stone. But Pedrão is amazingly dexterous and performs this entire operation so fast it seems like magic, as does his incredible marksmanship.
It makes him happy to see him there. If Pedrão and his men have had time to get back, so have Abbot João and Pajeú, and hence Belo Monte is well defended. They have now less than two hundred paces to go before reaching the first dwellings, and the jagunços who are in the lead are waving their arms and shouting out their names so the defenders won’t shoot at them. Some of them are running; he and Honório start running too, then slow down again because old Zózimo is unable to keep up with them. They each grab an arm and drag him along between them, staggering along all hunched over beneath a rain of gunfire that seems to Antônio to be aimed straight at the three of them. They finally reach what was once the entrance to a street and is now a wall of stones, tin drums filled with sand, planks, roof tiles, bricks, and all manner of objects, on top of which Antônio spies a solid line of sharpshooters. Many hands reach out to help them climb up. Antônio feels himself being lifted up bodily, lowered down, deposited on the other side of the barricade. He sits down in the trench to rest. Someone hands him a leather canteen full of water, which he drinks in little sips with his eyes closed, feeling mingled pain and pleasure as the liquid wets his tongue, his palate, his throat, which seem to be made of sandpaper. The ringing in his ears stops for a moment every so often and he can then hear the gunfire and the shouts of “Death to the Republic and the atheists!” and “Long live the Counselor and the Blessed Jesus!” But at one of these moments—his tremendous fatigue is going away little by little, and soon he’ll be able to get to his feet—he realizes that it can’t be the jagunços who are yelling: “Long live the Republic!”
“Long live Marshal Floriano!”
“Death to traitors!”
“Down with the English!” Is it possible that the dogs are so close that he can hear their voices? The bugle commands are right in his ears. Still sitting there, he places five bullets in the cylinder of his revolver. As he loads the Mannlicher, he sees that he is down to his last ammunition pouch. Making an effort that he feels in his every bone, he gets to his feet and, helping himself up with his knees and elbows, climbs to the top of the barricade. The others make room for him. Less than twenty yards away, countless soldiers, rank upon rank of them, in close order, are charging. Without aiming, without seeking out officers, he fires off all the bullets in the revolver and then all the ones in the Mannlicher, feeling a sharp pain in his shoulder each time the rifle butt recoils. As he hurriedly reloads the revolver he looks around. The Freemasons are attacking on all sides, and in Pedrão’s sector they are even closer than here; a few bayonets are already within reach of the barricades and jagunços armed with clubs and knives suddenly spring up, dealing the attackers furious blows. He does not see Pedrão. To his right, in a giant cloud of dust, the wave upon wave of uniforms advance upon Espírito Santo, Santa Ana, São José, Santo Tomás, Santa Rita, São Joaquim. If they take any of these streets, in a matter of minutes they will reach São Pedro or Campo Grande, the heart of Belo Monte, and will be able to launch an attack on Santo Antônio, the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, and the Sanctuary. Someone tugs on his leg. A very young man shouts to him that the Street Commander wants to see him, at São Pedro. The young man takes his place on the barricade.
As he goes up the steep incline of São Crispim, he sees women on both sides of the street filling buckets and crates with sand and carrying them away on their shoulders. All round him are people running, dust, chaos, amid dwellings with the roofs caved in, façades riddled with bullet holes and blackened from smoke, and others that have collapsed or been gutted by fire. The frantic hustle and bustle has a center, he discovers on reaching São Pedro, the street parallel to Campo Grande that cuts through Belo Monte from the Vaza-Barris to the cemetery. The Street Commander is there, with two carbines slung over his shoulders, erecting barricades to close off the area on all the corners facing the river. Abbot João shakes hands with him and without preamble—but also, Antônio thinks, without undue haste, so calmly and deliberately that he will understand precisely—he asks him to take charge of closing off the side streets that lead into São Pedro, using all the men available.
“Wouldn’t it be better to reinforce the defenses down below?” Antônio Vilanova asks, pointing to the place he has just come from.
“We won’t be able to hold out very long down there. It’s open terrain,” the Street Commander replies. “Up here they won’t know which way to go and will get in each other’s way. It’s going to have to be a real wall, a good solid high one.”
“Don’t worry, Abbot João. Carry on, and I’ll take care of it.” But as Abbot João turns away, he adds: “What’s with Pajeú?”
“He’s still alive,” João answers without turning around. “He’s at Fazenda Velha.”
“Defending t
he water supply,” Vilanova thinks. If they’re driven out of there, Canudos will be left without a drop of water. After the churches and the Sanctuary, that is what matters most if they are to survive: water. The former cangaceiro disappears in the cloud of dust, striding down the slope leading to the river. Antônio turns his eyes toward the towers of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus. Out of a superstitious fear that they might no longer be there in their place, he has not looked that way since returning to Belo Monte. And there they are, chipped but still standing, their solid stone armature having withstood the dogs, bullets, shells, dynamite. The jagunços perched in the bell tower, on the rooftops, on the scaffolding are keeping up a steady fire, and others, squatting on their heels or sitting, are doing the same from the rooftop and the bell tower of Santo Antônio. Amid the little groups of sharpshooters of the Catholic Guard firing from the barricades surrounding the Sanctuary, he spies Big João. All that suddenly uplifts his heart, fills him with faith, banishes the panic that has mounted from the soles of his feet on hearing Abbot João say that the soldiers are bound to get through the trenches down below, that there is no hope of stopping them there. Without losing any more time, he shouts to the swarms of women, children, and old men, ordering them to begin tearing down all the dwellings on the corners of São Crispim, São Joaquim, Santa Rita, Santo Tomás, Espírito Santo, Santa Ana, São José, so as to turn all that section of Belo Monte into an inextricable maze. He takes the lead, using his rifle butt as a battering ram. Making trenches, erecting barricades means constructing, organizing, and those are things that Antônio Vilanova is better at than making war.
The War of the End of the World Page 69