The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Why was he so selfish? How could he fail to rejoice that the Counselor would be going to his rest, would ascend to heaven to receive his reward for what he had done on this earth? Shouldn’t he be singing hosannas? Of course he should be. But he is unable to; his soul is transfixed with grief. “We’ll be left orphans,” he thinks once again. At that moment, he is distracted by a little sound coming from the pallet, escaping from underneath the Counselor. It is a little sound that does not make the saint’s body stir even slightly, but already Mother Maria Quadrado and the devout women hurriedly surround the pallet, raise his habit, clean him, humbly collect what—the Little Blessed One thinks to himself—is not excrement, since excrement is dirty and impure and nothing that comes from his body can be that. How could that little watery trickle that has flowed continually from that poor body—for six, seven, ten days—be dirty, impure? Has the Counselor eaten a single mouthful in these days that would make his system have any impurities to evacuate? “It is his essence that is flowing out down there, it is part of his soul, something that he is leaving us.” He sensed this immediately, from the very first moment. There was something mysterious and sacred about that sudden, soft, prolonged breaking of wind, about those attacks that seemed never to end, always accompanied by the emission of that little trickle of water. He divined the secret meaning: “They are gifts, not excrement.” He understood very clearly that the Father, or the Divine Holy Spirit, or the Blessed Jesus, or Our Lady, or the Counselor himself wanted to put them to the test. In a sudden happy inspiration, he came forward, stretched his hand out between the women, wet his fingers in the trickle and raised them to his mouth, intoning: “Is this how you wish your slave to take Communion, Father? Is this not dew to me?” All the women of the Sacred Choir also took Communion, in the same way.

  Why was the Father subjecting the saint to such agony? Why did He want him to spend his last moment defecating, defecating, even though what flowed from his body was manna? The Lion of Natuba, Mother Maria Quadrado, and the women of the Choir do not understand this. The Little Blessed One has tried to explain it and prepare them: “The Father does not want him to fall into the hands of the dogs. If He takes him to Him, it is so that he will not be humiliated. But at the same time He does not want us to believe that He is freeing him from pain, from doing penance. That is why He is making him suffer, before giving him his recompense.” Father Joaquim has told him that he did well to prepare them; he, too, fears that the Counselor’s death will upset them, will wrest impious protests from their lips, reactions that are harmful to their souls. The Dog is lying in wait and would not miss an opportunity to seize upon this prey.

  He realizes that the shooting has begun again—a heavy, steady, circular fusillade—when the door of the Sanctuary is opened. Antônio Vilanova is standing there. With him are Abbot João, Pajeú, Big João, exhausted, sweaty, reeking of gunpowder, but with radiant faces: they have learned the news that he has spoken, that he is alive.

  “Here is Antônio Vilanova, Father,” the Lion of Natuba says, rising up on his hind limbs toward the Counselor.

  The Little Blessed One holds his breath. The men and women crowded into the room—they are so cramped for space that none of them can raise his or her arms without hitting a neighbor—are gazing in rapt suspense at that mouth without lips or teeth, that face that resembles a death mask. Is he going to speak, is he going to speak? Despite the noisy chatter of the guns outside, the Little Blessed One hears once again the unmistakable little trickling sound. Neither Maria Quadrado nor the women make a move to clean him. They all remain motionless, bending over the pallet, waiting.

  The Superior of the Sacred Choir brings her mouth down next to the ear covered with grizzled locks of hair and repeats: “Here is Antônio Vilanova, Father.”

  The Counselor’s eyelids flutter slightly and his mouth opens just a bit. The Little Blessed One realizes that he is trying to speak, that his weakness and his pain do not allow him to utter a single sound, and he begs the Father to grant the Counselor that grace, offering in return to suffer any torment himself, when he hears the beloved voice, so feeble now that every head in the room leans forward to listen: “Are you there, Antônio? Can you hear me?”

  The former trader falls to his knees, takes one of the Counselor’s hands in his, and kisses it reverently. “Yes, Father, yes, Father.” He is drenched with sweat, his face is puffy, he is panting for breath and trembling. The Little Blessed One feels envious of his friend. Why is Antônio the one who has been called, and not him? He reproaches himself for this thought and fears that the Counselor will make them all leave the room so as to speak to Antônio alone.

  “Go out into the world to bear witness, Antônio, and do not cross inside the circle again. I shall stay here with the flock. You are to go out there beyond the circle. You are a man who is acquainted with the world. Go, teach those who have forgotten their lessons how to count. May the Divine guide you and the Father bless you.”

  The ex-trader’s face screws up, contorts into a grimace as he bursts into sobs. “It is the Counselor’s testament,” the Little Blessed One thinks. He is perfectly aware what a solemn, transcendent moment this is. What he is seeing and hearing will be recalled down through the years, the centuries, among thousands and thousands of men of every tongue, of every race, in every corner of the globe; it will be recalled by countless human beings not yet born. Antônio Vilanova’s broken voice is begging the Counselor not to send him forth, as he desperately kisses the dark bony hands with the long fingernails. He should intervene, remind Antônio that at this moment he may not oppose a desire of the Counselor’s. He draws closer, places one hand on his friend’s shoulder; the affectionate pressure is enough to calm him. Vilanova looks at him with eyes brimming with tears, begging him for help, for some sort of explanation. The Counselor remains silent. Is he about to hear his voice once more? He hears, twice in a row, the soft little sound. He has often asked himself whether each time he hears it, the Counselor is experiencing writhing, stabbing, wrenching pains, terrible cramps, whether the Dog has its fangs in his belly. He now knows that it does. He has only to glimpse that very slight grimace on the emaciated face each time the saint quietly breaks wind to know that the sound is accompanied by flames and knives that are sheer martyrdom.

  “Take your family with you, so that you won’t be alone,” the Counselor whispers. “And take the strangers who are friends of Father Joaquim’s with you. Let each one gain salvation through his own effort. As you are doing, my son.”

  Despite the hypnotic attention with which he is listening to the Counselor’s words, the Little Blessed One catches a glimpse of the grimace contorting Pajeú’s face: the scar appears to swell up and split open, and his mouth flies open to ask a question or perhaps to protest, beside himself at the prospect that the woman he wishes to marry will be leaving Belo Monte. In utter amazement, the Little Blessed One suddenly understands why the Counselor, in this supreme moment, has remembered the strangers whom Father Joaquim has taken under his wing. So as to save an apostle! So as to save Pajeú from the fall that this woman might mean for him! Or does he simply wish to test the caboclo? Or give him the opportunity to gain pardon for his sins through suffering? Pajeú’s olive face is again a blank, serene, untroubled, respectful, as he stands looking down at the pallet with his leather hat in his hand.

  The Little Blessed One is certain now that the saint’s mouth will not open again. “Only his other mouth is speaking,” he thinks. What is the message of that stomach that has been giving off wind and leaking water for six, seven, ten days now? It torments him to think that in that wind and that water there is a message addressed to him, which he might misinterpret, might not hear. He knows that nothing is accidental, that there is no such thing as sheer chance, that everything has a profound meaning, a root whose ramifications always lead to the Father, and that if one is holy enough he may glimpse the miraculous, secret order that God has instituted in the world.

  The C
ounselor is mute once again, as though he had never spoken. Standing at one corner of the pallet, Father Joaquim moves his lips, praying in silence. Everyone’s eyes glisten. No one has moved, even though all of them sense that the saint has spoken his last. The eleventh hour. The Little Blessed One has suspected that the end was at hand ever since the little white lamb was killed by a stray bullet as Alexandrinha Correa was holding it one evening, accompanying the Counselor back to the Sanctuary after the counsels. That was one of the last times that the Counselor had left the Sanctuary. “His voice was no longer heard, he was already in the Garden of Olives.” Making a superhuman effort, he still left the Sanctuary every day to climb up the scaffolding, pray, and give counsels. But his voice was a mere whisper, barely understandable even to those who were at his side. The Little Blessed One himself, who remained inside the living wall of Catholic Guards, could catch only a few words now and again. When Mother Maria Quadrado asked the Counselor whether he wanted this little animal sanctified by his caresses to be buried in the Sanctuary, he answered no and directed that it be used to feed the Catholic Guard.

  At that moment the Counselor’s right hand moves, searching for something; his gnarled fingers rise and fall on the straw mattress, reach out, contract. What is he looking for, what is it he wants? The Little Blessed One sees his own distress mirrored in the eyes of Maria Quadrado, Big João, Pajeú, the women of the Sacred Choir.

  “Lion, are you there?”

  He feels a knife thrust in his breast. He would have given anything for the Counselor to have uttered his name, for his hand to have sought him out. The Lion of Natuba rises up and thrusts his huge shaggy head toward that hand to kiss it. But the hand does not give him time, for the moment it senses that that face is close it runs rapidly along it and the fingers sink deep into the thick tangled locks. What is happening is hidden from the Little Blessed One’s eyes by a veil of tears. But he does not need to see: he knows that the Counselor is scratching, delousing, stroking with his last strength, as he has seen him do down through the many long years, the head of the Lion of Natuba.

  The tremendous roar that shakes the Sanctuary forces him to close his eyes, to crouch down, to raise his hands to protect himself from what appears to be an avalanche of stones. Blind, he hears the uproar, the shouts, the running footsteps, wonders if he is dead and if it is his soul that is trembling. Finally he hears Abbot João: “The bell tower of Santo Antônio has fallen.” He opens his eyes. The Sanctuary has filled with dust and everyone has changed places. He makes his way to the pallet, knowing what awaits him. Amid the cloud of dust he makes out the hand quietly resting on the head of the Lion of Natuba, who is still kneeling in the same position. And he sees Father Joaquim, his ear glued to the thin chest.

  After a moment, the priest rises to his feet, his face pale and drawn. “He has given his soul up to God,” he stammers, and for those present the phrase is more deafening than the din outside.

  No one weeps and wails, no one falls to his knees. They all stand there as if turned to stone. They avoid each other’s eyes, as though if they were to meet they would see all the filth in the other’s soul, as though in this supreme moment all their most intimate dirty secrets were welling up through them. Dust is raining down from the ceiling, from the walls, and the Little Blessed One’s ears, as though they were someone else’s, continue to hear from outside, both close at hand and very far away, screams, moans, feet running, walls creaking and collapsing, and the shouts of joy with which the soldiers who have taken the trenches of what were once the streets of São Pedro and São Cipriano and the old cemetery are hailing the fall of the tower of the church that they have been bombarding for so long. And the Little Blessed One’s mind, as though it were someone else’s, pictures the dozens of Catholic Guards who have fallen along with the bell tower, and the dozens of sick, wounded, disabled, women in labor, newborn babies, centenarians who at this moment must be lying crushed to death, smashed to pieces, ground to bits beneath the adobe bricks, the stones, the beams, saved now, glorious bodies now, climbing up the golden stairs of martyrs to the Father’s throne, or perhaps still dying in terrible pain amid smoking rubble. But in reality the Little Blessed One is neither hearing nor seeing nor thinking: there is nothing left of the world, he is no longer a creature of flesh and bone, he is a feather drifting helplessly in a whirlpool at the bottom of a precipice. As though through the eyes of another, he sees Father Joaquim remove the Counselor’s hand from the mane of the Lion of Natuba and place it alongside the other, atop his body.

  The Little Blessed One then begins to speak, in the solemn, deep voice in which he chants in the church and in processions. “We shall bear him to the Temple that he ordered built and we shall keep a death watch over him for three days and three nights, in order that every man and woman may adore him. And we shall bear him in procession amid all the houses, through all the streets of Belo Monte in order that his body may for the last time purify the city of the wickedness of the Can. And we shall bury him beneath the main altar of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus and place on his tomb the wooden cross that he made with his own hands in the desert.”

  He crosses himself devoutly and all the others do likewise, without taking their eyes off the pallet. The first sobs that the Little Blessed One hears are those of the Lion of Natuba; his entire little hunchbacked, asymmetrical body contorts as he weeps. The Little Blessed One kneels and the others follow suit; he can now hear others sobbing. But it is Father Joaquim’s voice, praying in Latin, that takes possession of the Sanctuary, and for a fair time drowns out the sounds from outside. As he prays, with joined hands, slowly coming to, recovering his hearing, his sight, his body, the earthly life that he seemed to have lost, the Little Blessed One feels that boundless despair that he has not felt since, as a youngster, he heard Father Moraes tell him that he could not be a priest because he had been born a bastard child. “Why are you abandoning us in these moments, Father?”

  “What will we do without you, Father?” He remembers the wire that the Counselor placed around his waist, in Pombal, that he is still wearing, all rusted and twisted, become flesh of his flesh now, and he tells himself that it is a precious relic, as is everything else that the saint has touched, seen, or said during his stay on earth.

  “We can’t do it, Little Blessed One,” Abbot João declares.

  The Street Commander is kneeling next to him; his eyes are bloodshot and his voice filled with emotion. But he says, with authority: “We can’t take him to the Temple of the Blessed Jesus or bury him the way you want to. We can’t do that to people, Little Blessed One! Do you want to plunge a knife in their backs? Are you going to tell those who are fighting, even though they’ve no ammunition or food left, that the one they’re fighting for has died? Are you capable of such an act of cruelty? Wouldn’t that be worse than the Freemasons’ evil deeds?”

  “He’s right, Little Blessed One,” Pajeú says. “We can’t tell them that he’s died. Not now, not at this point. Everything would fall to pieces, it would be chaos, people would go crazy. We must keep it a secret if we want them to go on fighting.”

  “That’s not the only reason,” Big João says, and this is the voice that astonishes him most, for since when has this timid giant, whose every word must be dragged out of him by force, ever voluntarily opened his mouth to venture an opinion? “Won’t the dogs look for his remains with all the hatred in the world so as to desecrate them? Nobody must know where he is buried. Do you want the heretics to find his body, Little Blessed One?”

  The Little Blessed One feels his teeth chatter, as though he were having an attack of fever. It is true, quite true; in his eagerness to render homage to his beloved master, to give him a wake and a burial worthy of his majesty, he has forgotten that the dogs are only a few steps away and that they would be bound to vent their fury on his remains like rapacious wolves. Yes, he understands now—it is as though the roof had opened and a blinding light, with the Divine in the center, had illuminated
him—why the Father has taken their master to His bosom at this very moment, and what the obligation of the apostles is: to preserve his remains, to keep the demon from defiling them.

  “You’re right, you’re right!” he exclaims vehemently, contritely. “Forgive me; grief clouded my mind, or the Evil One perhaps. I know now; I understand now. We won’t tell the others that he’s dead. We’ll hold his wake here, we’ll bury him here. We’ll dig his grave and nobody except us will know where. That is the Father’s will.”

  A moment before, he had felt resentment toward Abbot João, Pajeú, and Big João for opposing the funeral ceremony. Now, however, he feels gratitude toward them for having helped him to decipher the message. Thin, frail, delicate, full of energy, impatient, he moves in and out among the women of the Choir and the apostles, pushing them, urging them to stop weeping, to overcome their paralysis that is a trap of the Devil, imploring them to get to their feet, to get moving, to bring picks, shovels to dig with. “There’s no time left, there’s no time,” he says to frighten them.

  And so he manages to communicate his sense of energy: they rise to their feet, dry their eyes, take courage, look at each other, nod, prod each other into moving. It is Abbot João, with that sense of practicality that never forsakes him, who makes up the white lie to tell the men on the parapets protecting the Sanctuary: they are going to dig a tunnel, of the sort found everywhere in Belo Monte these days to permit free passage between houses and trenches, in case the dogs block off the Sanctuary. Big João goes out and comes back with shovels. They immediately begin digging, next to the pallet, taking turns by fours, and on handing their shovels over to the next man, they kneel down to pray till it is their turn again. They go on in this way for hours, not noticing that darkness has fallen, that the Mother of Men has lighted an oil lamp, and that, outside, the shooting, the hate-filled shouts, and the cheers have begun again, stopped again, started yet again. Each time someone standing next to the pyramid of earth that has grown higher and higher as the hole has become deeper and deeper asks, the Little Blessed One’s answer is: “Deeper, deeper.”