The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  The Lion of Natuba does not answer: he is hearing, seeing the mountain of stones collapsing, the men with blue armbands and headcloths falling like a solid rain upon the multitude of sick, wounded, elderly, mothers in childbirth, newborn babies; he is seeing the women of the Sacred Choir crushed to death, Maria Quadrado reduced to a heap of flesh and broken bones.

  “The Mother of Men has been looking for you everywhere, Lion,” someone says, as though reading his thoughts.

  It is an emaciated “youngster,” a mere string of bones with skin stretched tight over them, wearing a pair of trousers in rags, who has just come in the door. The jagunços unload the canteens and ammunition pouches he has brought in on his back.

  The Lion of Natuba grabs him by one of his thin arms. “Maria Quadrado? You’ve seen her?”

  “She’s in Santo Elói, at the barricade,” the “youngster” answers. “She’s been asking everyone about you.”

  “Take me to where she is,” the Lion of Natuba says in an anxious, pleading voice.

  “The Little Blessed One went out to the dogs with a flag,” the “youngster” says to the Pyrotechnist, suddenly remembering.

  “Take me to where Maria Quadrado is, I beg you,” the Lion of Natuba cries, clinging to him and leaping up and down. Not knowing what to do, the lad looks toward the Pyrotechnist.

  “Take him with you,” the latter says. “Tell Abbot João that it’s quiet here now. And come back as quickly as you can, because I need you.” He has been handing out canteens to people and hands the Lion the one he is keeping for himself. “Have a swallow before you go.”

  The Lion of Natuba drinks from it and murmurs: “Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor.” He follows the boy out the door of the shack. Outside, he sees fires everywhere and men and women trying to put them out with bucketfuls of dirt. São Pedro Mártir has less rubble in it and the houses along it are full of people. Some of them call out to him and motion to him and several times they ask him if he saw the angels, if he was there when the Counselor went up to heaven. He does not answer, he does not stop. He has great difficulty making his way along, he hurts all over and can hardly bear to touch his hands to the ground. He shouts to the “youngster” not to go so fast, that he can’t keep up with him, and all at once—without crying out, without a word—the boy falls to the ground. The Lion of Natuba drags himself over to him but does not touch him, for where his eyes were there is now only blood, with something white in the middle of it, a bone perhaps, some other substance perhaps. Without trying to find out where the shot has come from, he begins to trot along more determinedly, thinking: “Mother Maria Quadrado, I want to see you, I want to die with you.” As he goes on, he encounters more and more smoke and flames and then all at once he is certain that he will not be able to go any farther: São Pedro Mártir ends in a wall of crackling flames that completely blocks the street. He stops, panting for breath, feeling the heat of the fire in his face.

  “Lion, Lion.”

  He turns round. He sees the shadow of a woman, a ghost with protruding bones and wrinkled skin, whose gaze is as sad as her voice. “You throw him into the fire, Lion,” she begs him. “I can’t, but you can. So they don’t devour him, the way they’re going to devour me.” The Lion of Natuba follows the dying woman’s gaze, and sees, almost at her side, a corpse that is bright red in the light of the fire, and a feast going on: many rats, dozens perhaps, running back and forth over the face and belly of someone no longer identifiable as either man or woman, young or old. “They’re coming out from everywhere because of the fires, or because the Devil has won the war now,” the woman says, speaking so slowly that each word seems to be her last. “Don’t let them eat him. He’s still an angel. Throw him on the fire, Little Lion. In the name of the Blessed Jesus.” The Lion of Natuba observes the feast: they have consumed the face and are hard at work on the belly, the thighs.

  “Yes, Mother,” he says, approaching on his four paws. Rising up on his hind limbs, he reaches over and gathers up the little wrapped bundle that the woman is holding in her lap and clasps it to his chest. And standing on his hind paws, his back hunched, he pants eagerly: “I’m taking him, I’m going with him. This fire has been awaiting me for twenty years now, Mother.”

  As he walks toward the flames, the woman hears him chanting with his last remaining strength a prayer that she has never heard, in which there is repeated several times the name of a saint she does not recognize either: Almudia.

  “A truce?” Antônio Vilanova said.

  “That’s what that means,” the Pyrotechnist answered. “That’s what a white cloth on a stick means. I didn’t see him when he left, but many other people did. I saw it when he came back. He was still carrying that piece of white cloth.”

  “And why did the Little Blessed One do that?” Honório Vilanova asked.

  “He took pity on innocent people when he saw so many being burned to death,” the Pyrotechnist answered. “Children, old people, pregnant women. He went to ask the atheists to let them leave Belo Monte. He didn’t consult Abbot João or Pedrão or Big João, who were all at Santo Elói and at São Pedro Mártir. He made his flag and set out by way of Madre Igreja. The atheists let him through. We thought they’d killed him and were going to give him back to us the way they did Pajeú: with no eyes, tongue, or ears. But he came back, carrying his white cloth. And we had already barricaded Santo Elói and Menino Jesus and Madre Igreja. And put out lots of fires. He came back in two or three hours and during that time the atheists didn’t attack. That’s what a truce is. Father Joaquim explained it.”

  The Dwarf curled up next to Jurema. He was shivering from the cold. They were in a cave, where in the past goatherds used to spend the night, not far from the place where, before it burned down, the tiny village of Caçabu had stood, at a turnoff in the trail between Mirandela and Quijingue. They had been hiding out there for twelve days now. They made quick trips outside to bring back grass, roots, anything that could be chewed on, and water from a nearby spring. As the whole region round about was swarming with troops that were withdrawing, in small sections or in large battalions, toward Queimadas, they had decided to remain in hiding there for a while. The temperature went down very low at night, and since the Vilanovas did not allow a fire to be lit for fear that the light would attract a patrol, the Dwarf was dying of cold. Of the three of them, he was the one most sensitive to the cold because he was the smallest and the one who had grown thinnest. The nearsighted man and Jurema had him sleep between them, so as to warm him with their bodies. But, even so, the Dwarf dreaded seeing night fall, for, despite the warmth of his friends’ bodies, his teeth chattered and he felt frozen to the bone. He was sitting between them, listening to the Pyrotechnist, and every other minute his pudgy little hands motioned to Jurema and the nearsighted man to move even closer to him.

  “What happened to Father Joaquim?” he heard the nearsighted man ask. “Was he, too…?”

  “He wasn’t burned to death and they didn’t slit his throat,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist answered immediately in a reassuring tone of voice, as though he were happy to be able at last to tell them a piece of good news. “He died of a bullet wound on the barricade at Santo Elói. He was standing right near me. He also helped people die pious deaths.” Serafim the carpenter remarked that perhaps the Father did not look favorably upon his dying on the barricade like that. He wasn’t a jagunço but a priest, right? The Father might not look with favor on a man of the cloth dying with a rifle in his hand.

  “The Counselor no doubt explained to Him why Father Joaquim had a rifle in his hand,” one of the Sardelinha sisters said. “And the Father probably forgave him.”

  “There’s no doubt of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “The Father knows what He is about.”

  Even though there was no fire and the mouth of the cave was hidden beneath bushes and cacti uprooted whole from the ground round about, the clear light of the night—the Dwarf imagined a yellow moon and myriads of brig
ht stars looking down on the sertão in shocked surprise—filtered in to where they were sitting and he could see Antônio the Pyrotechnist’s face in profile, his pug nose, his sharply chiseled forehead and chin. He was a jagunço the Dwarf remembered very well, because he had seen him preparing, back there in Canudos, those fireworks displays that lit up the sky with sparkling arabesques on the nights when there were processions. He remembered his hands covered with powder burns, the scars on his arms, and how, once the war began, he had devoted all his time and effort to making up the dynamite sticks that the jagunços hurled over the barricades at the soldiers. The Dwarf had been the first to recognize him when he had appeared at the entrance to the cave that afternoon, and had called out that it was the Pyrotechnist, so the Vilanova brothers, pistols in hand, wouldn’t shoot.

  “And why did the Little Blessed One come back?” Antônio Vilanova asked after a while. He was almost the only one who kept asking questions, the one who had quizzed Antônio the Pyrotechnist all afternoon and evening, once they, too, had recognized him and embraced him. “Had he taken leave of his senses?”

  “I’m certain of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said.

  The Dwarf tried to picture the scene in his mind, the tiny pale-faced figure with the burning eyes returning to the little redoubt with his white flag, making his way amid the dead, the rubble, the wounded, the combatants, the burned-out dwellings, the rats which, according to the Pyrotechnist, had suddenly appeared everywhere to feast voraciously on the dead bodies.

  “They have agreed,” the Little Blessed One said. “You can surrender now.”

  “We were to come out one by one, with no weapons, with our hands on our heads,” the Pyrotechnist explained, in the tone of voice of someone recounting the wildest story or of a drunk babbling nonsense. “We would be considered prisoners and would not be killed.”

  The Dwarf heard him heave a sigh. He heard one of the Vilanova brothers sigh too, and thought he heard one of the Sardelinha sisters weeping. It was odd: the Vilanova brothers’ wives, the two of whom the Dwarf often confused, never burst into tears at the same time. One of them would begin to cry and then the other. But they had not shed a single tear until Antônio the Pyrotechnist had started answering Antônio Vilanova’s questions that afternoon; all during the flight from Belo Monte and the days that they had been hiding out here, he had never seen them cry. He was trembling so badly that Jurema put her arm around his shoulders and rubbed him briskly up and down. Was he shivering from the cold here at Caçabu, or because he had fallen ill from hunger, or was it what the Pyrotechnist was recounting that was making him tremble like that?

  “Little Blessed One, Little Blessed One, do you realize what you’re saying?” Big João moaned. “Do you realize what it is you’re asking? Do you really want us to lay down our arms, to go out with our hands on our heads to surrender to the Freemasons? Is that what you want, Little Blessed One?”

  “Not you,” the voice that always seemed to be praying answered. “The innocent victims. The youngsters, the women about to give birth, the aged. May their lives be spared. You can’t decide their fate for them. If you don’t allow them to escape with their lives, it’s as though you killed them. The fault will be yours, there will be innocent blood on your hands, Big João. It’s a sin against heaven to let innocent people die. They aren’t able to defend themselves, Big João.”

  “He said that the Counselor spoke through his mouth,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist added. “That he had inspired him, that he had ordered him to save them.”

  “And Abbot João?” Antônio Vilanova asked.

  “He wasn’t there,” the Pyrotechnist explained. “The Little Blessed One came back to Belo Monte by way of the barricade at Madre Igreja. And Abbot João was at Santo Elói. They told him the Little Blessed One had come back, but he couldn’t get there right away. He was busy reinforcing that barricade, the weakest one. By the time he arrived, they had already begun to go off with the Little Blessed One. Women, children, the aged, the sick dragging themselves along.”

  “And nobody stopped them?” Antônio Vilanova asked.

  “Nobody dared,” the Pyrotechnist said. “He was the Little Blessed One, the Little Blessed One. Not just anyone like you or me, but one who had been with the Counselor from the very beginning. He was the Little Blessed One. Would you have told him that he’d taken leave of his senses, that he didn’t know what he was doing? Big João didn’t dare to, nor I nor anyone else.”

  “But Abbot João dared to,” Antônio Vilanova murmured.

  “There’s no doubt of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “Abbot João dared to.”

  The Dwarf felt frozen to the bone and his forehead was burning hot. He could easily picture the scene: the tall, supple, sturdy figure of the former cangaceiro appearing there, his knife and machete tucked in his belt, his rifle slung over his shoulder, the bandoleers around his neck, so tired he was past feeling tired. There he was, seeing the unbelievable file of pregnant women, children, old people, invalids, all those people come back to life, walking toward the soldiers with their hands on their heads. He wasn’t imagining it: he could see it, with the clearness and the color of one of the performances of the Gypsy’s Circus, the ones back in the good old days, when it was a big, prosperous circus. He was seeing Abbot João: his stupefaction, his bewilderment, his anger.

  “Stop! Stop!” he shouted, beside himself, looking all about, motioning to those who were surrendering, trying to make them come back. “Have you gone out of your minds? Stop! Stop!”

  “We explained to him,” the Pyrotechnist said. “Big João, who was crying and felt responsible, explained to him. Pedrão came too, and Father Joaquim, and others. It took only a few words from them for Abbot João to understand exactly what was going on.”

  “It’s not that they’re going to kill them,” he said, raising his voice, loading his rifle, trying to take aim at those who had already crossed the lines and were heading on. “They’re going to kill all of us. They’re going to humiliate them, they’re going to outrage their dignity like they did with Pajeú. We can’t let that happen, precisely because they’re innocent. We can’t let the atheists slit their throats. We can’t let them dishonor them!”

  “He was already shooting,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “We were all shooting. Pedrão, Big João, Father Joaquim, me.” The Dwarf noted that his voice, steady until then, was beginning to quaver. “Did we do the wrong thing? Did I do the wrong thing, Antônio Vilanova? Was it wrong of Abbot João to make us shoot?”

  “You did the right thing,” Antônio Vilanova answered immediately. “They died a merciful death. The heretics would have slit their throats, done what they did to Pajeú. I would have shot, too.”

  “I don’t know,” the Pyrotechnist said. “I’m tormented by it. Does the Counselor approve? I’m going to be asking myself that question for the rest of my life, trying to decide whether, after having been with the Counselor for ten years, I’ll be eternally damned for making a mistake at the last moment. Sometimes…”

  He fell silent and the Dwarf realized that the Sardelinha sisters were crying—at the same time now—one of them with loud, indelicate sobs, the other softly, with little hiccups.

  “Sometimes…?” Antônio Vilanova said.

  “Sometimes I think that the Father, the Blessed Jesus, or Our Lady wrought the miracle of saving me from among the dead so that I may redeem myself for those shots,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “I don’t know. Once again, I don’t know anything. In Belo Monte everything seemed clear to me, day was day and night night. Until that moment, until we began firing on the innocent and on the Little Blessed One. Now everything’s hard to decide again.”

  He sighed and remained silent, listening, as the Dwarf and the others were, to the Sardelinha sisters weeping for those innocents whom the jagunços had sent to a merciful death.

  “Because maybe the Father wanted them to go to heaven as martyrs,” the Pyrotechnist added.


  “I’m sweating,” the Dwarf thought. Or was he bleeding? “I’m dying,” he thought. Drops were running down his forehead, sliding down into his eyebrows and eyelashes, blinding his eyes. But even though he was sweating, the cold was freezing his insides. Every so often Jurema wiped his face.

  “And what happened then?” he heard the nearsighted journalist ask. “After Abbot João, after you and others…”

  He fell silent and the Sardelinha sisters, who had stopped crying in their surprise at this intrusion, began weeping again.

  “There wasn’t any ‘after,’” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “The atheists thought we were shooting at them. They were enraged at seeing us take this prey that they thought was theirs away from them.” He fell silent, then his voice echoed through the cave: “‘Traitors,’ they shouted. We’d broken the truce and were going to pay for it. They came at us from all directions. Thousands of atheists. That was a piece of luck.”

  “A piece of luck?” Antônio Vilanova said.

  The Dwarf had understood. A piece of luck to have that torrent of uniforms advancing with rifles and torches to shoot at again, a piece of luck not to have to go on killing innocents to save them from dishonor. He understood, and in the midst of his fever and chills, he saw it. He saw how the exhausted jagunços, who had been sending people to merciful deaths, rubbed their blistered, burned hands in glee, happy to have before them once again a clear, definite, flagrant, unquestionable enemy. He could see that fury advancing, killing everything not yet killed, burning everything left to burn.

  “But I’m sure he didn’t weep even at that moment,” one of the Sardelinhas said, and the Dwarf could not tell whether it was Honório’s wife or Antônio’s. “I can imagine Big João, Father Joaquim weeping because they had to do that to those innocents. But him? Did he weep?”

  “I’m certain of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said softly. “Even though I didn’t see him.”

  “I never once saw Abbot João weep,” the same Sardelinha sister said.