The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “And you…you were happy,” the baron said. Might this man not be even loonier than he had always seemed to him to be? Wasn’t all this most probably just a bunch of tall tales?

  “They saw them arriving, spreading out over the hills, occupying, one after the other, all the places by way of which they could slip in or out before. The cannons began to bombard them around the clock, from the north, the south, the east, the west. But as they were too close and might kill their own men, they limited themselves to firing on the towers. Because they still hadn’t fallen.”

  “Jurema? Jurema?” the baron exclaimed. “The little girl from Calumbi brought you happiness, made you a spiritual convert of the jagunços?”

  Behind the thick lenses, like fish in an aquarium, the myopic eyes became agitated, blinked. It was late, the baron had been here for many hours now, he ought to get up out of his chair and go to Estela, he had not been away from her this long since the tragedy. But he continued to sit there waiting, itching with impatience.

  “The explanation is that I had resigned myself,” the baron heard him say in a barely audible voice.

  “To dying?” he asked, knowing that it was not death that his visitor was thinking about.

  “To not loving, to not being loved by any woman,” he thought he heard him answer, for the words were spoken in an even less audible voice. “To being ugly, to being shy, to never holding a woman in my arms unless I’d paid her money to do so.”

  The baron sat there flabbergasted. The thought flashed through his mind that in this study of his, where so many secrets had come to light, so many plots been hatched, no one had ever made such an unexpected and surprising confession.

  “That is something you are unable to understand,” the nearsighted journalist said, as though the statement were an accusation. “Because you doubtless learned what love was at a very early age. Many women must have loved you, admired you, given themselves to you. You were doubtless able to choose your very beautiful wife from any number of other very beautiful women who were merely awaiting your consent to throw themselves in your arms. You are unable to understand what happens to those of us who are not handsome, charming, privileged, rich, as you were. You are unable to understand what it is to know that love and pleasure are not for you. That you are doomed to the company of whores.”

  “Love, pleasure,” the baron thought, disconcerted: two disturbing words, two meteorites in the dark night of his life. It struck him as a sacrilege that those beautiful, forgotten words should appear on the lips of this laughable creature sitting all hunched over in his chair, his legs as skinny as a heron’s twined one around the other. Wasn’t it comical, grotesque, that a little mongrel bitch from the backlands should be the woman who had brought such a man as this, who despite everything was a cultivated man, to speak of love and pleasure? Did those words not call to mind luxury, refinement, sensibility, elegance, the rites and the ripe wisdom of an imagination nourished by wide reading, travels, education? Were they not words completely at odds with Jurema of Calumbi? He thought of the baroness and a wound opened in his breast. He made an effort to turn his thoughts back to what the journalist was saying.

  In another of his abrupt transitions, he was talking once again of the war. “The drinking water gave out,” he was saying, and as always he seemed to be reprimanding him. “Every drop they drank in Canudos came from the source of supply at Fazenda Velha, a few wells along the Vaza-Barris. They had dug trenches there and defended them tooth and nail. But in the face of those five thousand fresh troops not even Pajeú could keep them from falling into the enemy’s hands. So there was no more water.”

  Pajeú? The baron shuddered. He saw before him that face with Indian features, that skin with a yellowish cast, the scar where the nose should have been, heard once more that voice calmly announcing to him that he had come to burn Calumbi down in the name of the Father. Pajeú—the individual who incarnated all the wickedness and all the stupidity of which Estela had been the victim.

  “That’s right, Pajeú,” the nearsighted visitor said. “I detested him. And feared him more than I feared the soldiers’ bullets. Because he was in love with Jurema and had only to lift his little finger to steal her from me and spirit her away.”

  He laughed once more, a nervous, strident little laugh that ended in wheezes and sneezes. The baron’s mind was elsewhere; he, too, was busy hating that fanatical brigand. What had become of the perpetrator of that inexpiable crime? He was too beside himself to ask, afraid that he would hear that he was safe and sound. The journalist was repeating the word “water.” It was an effort for the baron to turn his thoughts away from himself, to listen to what the man was saying. Yes, the waters of the Vaza-Barris. He knew what those wells were like; they lay alongside the riverbed, and the floodwaters that flowed into them supplied men, birds, goats, cows in the long months (and entire years sometimes) when the Vaza-Barris dried up. And what about Pajeú? What about Pajeú? Had he died in battle? Had he been captured? The question was on the tip of the baron’s tongue and yet he did not ask it.

  “One has to understand these things,” the journalist was now saying, wholeheartedly, vehemently, angrily. “I was barely able to see them, naturally. But I was unable to understand them either.”

  “Of whom are you speaking?” the baron asked. “My mind was elsewhere; I’ve lost the thread.”

  “Of the women and the youngsters,” the nearsighted journalist muttered. “That’s what they called them. The ‘youngsters.’ When the soldiers captured the water supply, they went out with the women at night to try to fill tin drums full of water so that the jagunços could go on fighting. Just the women and the children, nobody else. And they also tried to steal the soldiers’ unspeakable garbage that meant food for them. Do you follow me?”

  “Ought I to be surprised?” the baron said. “To be amazed?”

  “You ought to try to understand,” the nearsighted journalist murmured. “Who gave those orders? The Counselor? Abbot João? Antônio Vilanova? Who was it who decided that only women and children would crawl to Fazenda Velha to steal water, knowing that soldiers were lying in wait for them at the wells so as to shoot them point-blank, knowing that out of every ten only one or two would get back alive? Who was it who decided that the combatants shouldn’t risk that lesser suicide since their lot was to risk the superior form of suicide that dying fighting represented?” The baron saw the journalist’s eyes seek his in anguish once again. “I suspect that it was neither the Counselor nor the leaders. It was spontaneous, simultaneous, anonymous decisions. Otherwise, they would not have obeyed, they would not have gone to the slaughter with such conviction.”

  “They were fanatics,” the baron said, aware of the scorn in his voice. “Fanaticism impels people to act in that way. It is not always lofty, sublime motives that best explain heroism. There is also prejudice, narrow-mindedness, the most stupid ideas imaginable.”

  The nearsighted journalist sat there staring at him; his forehead was dripping with sweat and he appeared to be searching for a cutting answer. The baron thought that he would venture some insolent remark. But he saw him merely nod his head, as though to avoid argument.

  “That was great sport for the soldiers of course, a diversion in the midst of their boring life from day to day,” he said. “Posting themselves at Fazenda Velha and waiting for the light of the moon to reveal the shadows creeping up to get water. We could hear the shots, the sound when a bullet pierced the tin drum, the container, the earthenware jug. In the morning the ground around the wells was strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. But, but…”

  “But you didn’t see any of this,” the baron broke in. His visitor’s agitation vastly annoyed him.

  “Jurema and the Dwarf saw them,” the nearsighted journalist answered. “I heard them. I heard the women and the youngsters as they left for Fazenda Velha with their tin drums, canteens, pitchers, bottles, bidding their husbands or their parents farewell, exchanging blessings, prom
ising each other that they would meet in heaven. And I heard what happened when they managed to get back alive. The tin drum, the bucket, the pitcher was not offered to dying oldsters, to babies frantic from thirst. No. It was taken straight to the trenches, so that those who could still hold a rifle could hold one for a few hours or minutes more.”

  “And what about you?” the baron asked, scarcely able to contain his growing annoyance at this mixture of reverence and terror with which the nearsighted journalist spoke of the jagunços. “Why is it you didn’t die of thirst? You weren’t a combatant, were you?”

  “I wonder myself why I didn’t,” the journalist answered. “If there were any logic to this story, there are any number of times when I should have died in Canudos.”

  “Love doesn’t quench thirst,” the baron said, trying to wound his feelings.

  “No, it doesn’t quench it,” he agreed. “But it gives one strength to endure it. Moreover, we had a little something to drink. What we could get by sucking or chewing. The blood of birds, even black vultures. And leaves, stems, roots, anything that had juice. And urine, of coarse.” His eyes sought the baron’s and again the latter thought: “As though to accuse me.”

  “Didn’t you know that? Even though a person doesn’t drink any liquids, he continues to urinate. That was an important discovery, there in Canudos.”

  “Tell me about Pajeú, if you will,” the baron said. “What became of him?”

  The nearsighted journalist suddenly slid down onto the floor. He had done so several times in the course of the conversation, and the baron wondered whether these changes of position were due to inner turmoil or to numbness in his limbs.

  “Did I hear you say that he was in love with Jurema?” the baron pressed him. He suddenly had the absurd feeling that the former maidservant of Calumbi was the only woman in the sertão, a female under whose fateful spell all the men with any sort of connection to Canudos unconsciously fell sooner or later. “Why didn’t he carry her off with him?”

  “Because of the war, perhaps,” the nearsighted journalist answered. “He was one of the leaders. As the enemy began to close the ring, he had less time. And less inclination, I imagine.”

  He burst into such painful laughter that the baron deduced that this time it would end in a fit not of sneezing but of weeping. But neither sneezes nor tears were forthcoming.

  “As a result, I found myself wishing at times that the war would go on and even that the fighting would get worse so that it would keep Pajeú occupied.” He took a deep breath. “Wishing that he’d get killed in the war or some other way.”

  “What became of him?” the baron said insistently. The journalist paid no attention.

  “But despite the war, he might very well have carried her off with him and taken her for his woman,” he said, lost in thought or in fantasy, his eyes fixed on the floor. “Didn’t other jagunços do that? Didn’t I hear them, in the midst of all the shooting, day or night, mounting their women in hammocks, or pallets, or on the floors of their houses?”

  The baron felt his face turn beet-red. He had never allowed certain subjects, which so often come up among men when they are alone together, to be discussed in his presence, not even when he was with his closest friends. If his visitor went any further, he would shut him up.

  “So the war wasn’t the explanation.” The journalist looked up at him, as though remembering that he was there. “He’d become a saint, don’t you see? That’s how people in Canudos put it: he became a saint, the angel kissed him, the angel brushed him with its wings, the angel touched him.” He nodded his head several times. “Perhaps that’s it. He didn’t want to take her by force. That’s the other explanation. More farfetched, doubtless, but perhaps. So that everything would be done in accordance with God’s will. According to the dictates of religion. Marrying her. I heard him ask her. Perhaps.”

  “What became of him?” the baron repeated slowly, emphasizing each word.

  The nearsighted journalist looked at him intently. And the baron noted how surprised he looked.

  “He burned Calumbi down,” he explained slowly. “He was the one who…Did he die? How did he die?”

  “I suppose he’s dead,” the nearsighted journalist said. “Why wouldn’t he be? Why wouldn’t he and Abbot João and Big João—all of them—be dead?”

  “You didn’t die, and according to what you’ve told me, Vilanova didn’t die either. Was he able to escape?”

  “They didn’t want to escape,” the journalist said sadly. “They wanted to get in, to stay there, to die there. What happened to Vilanova was exceptional. He didn’t want to leave either. They ordered him to.”

  So he wasn’t absolutely certain that Pajeú was dead. The baron imagined him, taking up his old life again, free again, at the head of a cangaço he’d gotten together again, with malefactors from all over, adding endless terrible misdeeds to his legend, in Ceará, in Pernambuco, in regions more distant still. He felt his head go round and round.

  “Antônio Vilanova,” the Counselor murmurs, producing a sort of electrical discharge in the Sanctuary. “He’s spoken, he’s spoken,” the Little Blessed One thinks, so awestruck he has gooseflesh all over. “Praised be the Father, praised be the Blessed Jesus.” He steps toward the rush pallet at the same time as Maria Quadrado, the Lion of Natuba, Father Joaquim, and the women of the Sacred Choir; in the gloomy light of dusk, all eyes are riveted on the long, dark, motionless face with eyelids still tightly closed. It is not a hallucination: he has spoken.

  The Little Blessed One sees that beloved mouth, grown so emaciated that the lips have disappeared, open to repeat: “Antônio Vilanova.” They react, say “Yes, yes, Father,” rush to the door of the Sanctuary to tell the Catholic Guard to go fetch Antônio Vilanova. Several men leave on the run, hurriedly making their way between the stones and sandbags of the parapet. At that moment, there is no shooting. The Little Blessed One goes back to the Counselor’s bedside; he is again lying there silent, his bones protruding from the dark purple tunic whose folds betray here and there how frightfully thin he is. “He is more spirit than flesh now,” the Little Blessed One thinks. The Superior of the Sacred Choir, encouraged at hearing the Counselor speak, comes toward him with a bowl containing a little milk. He hears her say softly, in a voice full of devotion and hope: “Would you like a little something to drink, Father?” He has heard her ask the same question many times in these last days. But this time, unlike the others, when the Counselor lay there without answering, the skeleton-like head with long disheveled gray hair drooping down from it shakes from one side to the other: no. A wave of happiness mounts within the Little Blessed One. He is alive, he is going to live. Because in these recent days, even though Father Joaquim came to the Counselor’s bedside every so often to take his pulse and listen to his heart to assure them that he was breathing, and even though that little trickle of water kept constantly flowing out of him, the Little Blessed One could not help thinking, as he saw him lying there, so silent and so still, that the Counselor’s soul had gone up to heaven.

  A hand tugs at him from the floor. He looks down and sees the Lion of Natuba’s huge, anxious, bright eyes gazing up at him from amid a jungle of long, tangled locks. “Is he going to live, Little Blessed One?” There is so much anguish in the voice of the scribe of Belo Monte that the Little Blessed One feels like crying.

  “Yes, yes, Lion, he’s going to live for us, he’s going to live a long time still.”

  But he knows that this is not true; something deep inside him tells him that these are the last days, perhaps the last hours, of the man who changed his life and those of all who are in the Sanctuary, of all who are giving their lives there outside, fighting and dying in the maze of caves and trenches that Belo Monte has now turned into. He knows this is the end. He has known it ever since he learned, simultaneously, that Fazenda Velha had fallen and that the Counselor had fainted dead away in the Sanctuary. The Little Blessed One knows how to decipher the symbols, t
o interpret the secret message of the coincidences, accidents, apparent happenstances that pass unnoticed by the others; he has powers of intuition that enable him to recognize instantly, beneath the innocent and the trivial, the deeply hidden presence of the beyond. On that day he had been in the Church of Santo Antônio, turned since the beginning of the war into a clinic, leading the sick, the wounded, the women in labor, the orphans there in the recitation of the Rosary, raising his voice so that this suffering, bleeding, purulent, half-dead humanity could hear his Ave Marias and Pater Nosters amid the din of the rifle volleys and the cannon salvos. And just then he had seen a “youngster” and Alexandrinha Correa come running in at the same time, leaping over the bodies lying one atop the other.

  The young boy spoke first. “The dogs have entered Fazenda Velha, Little Blessed One. Abbot João says that a wall has to be erected on the corner of Mártires, because the atheists can now pass that way freely.”

  And the “youngster” had barely turned around to leave when the former water divineress, in a voice even more upset than the expression on her face, whispered another piece of news in his ear which he immediately sensed was far more serious still: “The Counselor has been taken ill.”

  His legs tremble, his mouth goes dry, his heart sinks, just as on that morning—how long ago now? Six, seven, ten days? He had to struggle to make his feet obey him and run after Alexandrinha Correa. When he arrived at the Sanctuary, the Counselor had been lifted up onto his pallet and had opened his eyes again and gazed reassuringly at the distraught women of the Choir and the Lion of Natuba. It had happened when he rose to his feet after praying for several hours, lying face down on the floor with his arms outstretched, as always. The women, the Lion of Natuba, Mother Maria Quadrado noted how difficult it was for him to get up, first putting one knee on the floor and helping himself with one hand and then the other, and how pale he turned from the effort or the pain of remaining on his feet. Then suddenly he sank to the floor once again, like a sack of bones. At that moment—was it six, seven, ten days ago?—the Little Blessed One had a revelation: the eleventh hour had come for the Counselor.