The War Of The End Of The World (59 page)

In that dreaming that is and is not, a dozing that blurs the borderline between waking and sleeping and that reminds him of certain opium nights in his disorderly little house in Salvador, the nearsighted correspondent from the
Jornal de Notícias
has the sensation that he has not slept but has spoken and listened, told those faceless presences that are sharing the
caatinga
, hunger, and uncertainty with him that for him the worst part is not being lost, with no idea of what will happen when day breaks, but having lost his big leather pouch and the rolls of paper covered with his scribbling that he has wrapped up in his few clean clothes. He is certain that he has also told them things that he is ashamed of: that two days before, when his ink was all gone and his last goose-quill pen broken, he had a fit of weeping, as though a member of his family had died. And he is certain—certain in the uncertain, disjointed, cottony way in which everything happens, is said, or is received in the world of opium—that all night long he has chewed, without repulsion, the handfuls of grasses, leaves, little twigs, insects perhaps, the unidentifiable bits of matter, dry or moist, viscous or solid, that he and his companions have passed from hand to hand. And he is certain that he has listened to as many intimate confessions as he believes that he himself has made. “Except for her, all of us are immensely afraid,” he thinks. Father Joaquim, whom he has served as a pillow and who in turn has served as his, has acknowledged as much: that he discovered what real fear was only the day before, tied to that tree over there, waiting for a soldier to come slit his throat, hearing the shooting, watching the goings and comings, the arrival of the wounded, a fear infinitely greater than he had ever felt before, of anything or anybody, including the Devil and hell. Did the curé say those things, moaning and every so often begging God’s forgiveness for having said them? But the one who is more frightened still is the one she has said is a dwarf. Because, in a shrill little voice as deformed as his body must be, he has not stopped whimpering and rambling on about bearded women, gypsies, strong men, and a boneless man who could tie himself in knots. What can the Dwarf look like? Can she be his mother? What are the two of them doing here? How can she possibly not be afraid? What is she feeling that’s worse than fear? For the nearsighted journalist has noted something even more destructive, disastrous, distressing in the woman’s soft-spoken voice, in the sporadic murmur in which she has never once spoken of the one thing that has any meaning, the fear of dying, but only of the stubbornness of someone who is dead, left unburied, getting soaked, freezing, being devoured by all sorts of creatures. Can she be a madwoman, someone who is no longer afraid because she was once so afraid that she went mad?

He feels someone shaking him. He thinks: “My glasses.” He sees a faint greenish light, moving shadows. And as he pats his body, feels all about him, he hears Father Joaquim: “Wake up, it’s already light, let’s try to find the road to Cumbe.” He finally locates them, between his legs, unbroken. He cleans them, stands up, stammers “All right, all right,” and as he puts his glasses on and the world comes into focus he sees the Dwarf: a real one, as small as a ten-year-old boy but with a face furrowed with wrinkles. He is holding the hand of a woman of indeterminate age, with her hair falling round her shoulders, so thin she seems nothing but skin and bones. Both of them are covered with mud, their clothes are in tatters, and the nearsighted journalist wonders whether he too, like the two of them and the robust little curé who has begun walking determinedly in the direction of the rising sun, gives the same impression of disarray, forlornness, vulnerability. “We’re on the other side of A Favela,” Father Joaquim says. “If we go this way we should come out onto the trail to Bendengó. God grant there won’t be any soldiers…”

“But there will be,” the nearsighted journalist thinks. “Or else
jagunços
. We’re not anything. We’re in neither the one camp nor the other. We’re going to be killed.” He walks along, surprised that he isn’t tired, seeing in front of him the woman’s scrawny silhouette and the Dwarf hopping along after her so as not to fall behind. They go on for a long time in that order, not exchanging a word. In the sunny dawn they hear birds singing, insects buzzing, and a confusion of many sounds, indistinct, dissimilar, growing louder and louder: isolated shots, bells, the wail of a bugle, an explosion perhaps, human voices perhaps. The little priest wanders neither right nor left; he appears to know where he is going. The
caatinga
begins to thin out, dwindling down to brambles and cacti, and eventually turns into steep, open country. They walk along parallel to a rocky ridge that blocks their view on their right. Half an hour later they reach the crest line of this rocky outcropping and at one and the same time the nearsighted journalist hears the curé’s exclamation and sees the cause of it: soldiers, almost on top of them, and behind them, in front of them, on either side of them,
jagunços
. “Thousands,” the nearsighted journalist murmurs. He feels like sitting down, closing his eyes, forgetting everything. “Jurema, look, look!” the Dwarf screeches. To make himself less visible against the horizon, the priest falls to his knees, and his companions also squat down. “We’ve ended up right in the middle of the battle,” the Dwarf whispers. “It’s not a battle,” the nearsighted journalist thinks. “It’s a rout.” The spectacle unfolding on the hillside below makes him forget his fear. So they didn’t heed Major Cunha Matos’s advice; they didn’t retreat last night and are doing so only now, as Colonel Tamarindo wished.

The masses of soldiers swarming over a wide area down below, in no order or formation, bunched together in places and in others spread far apart, in utter chaos, dragging the carts of the medical corps behind them and carrying stretchers, with their rifles slung over their shoulders any which way, or using them as canes and crutches, bear no resemblance whatsoever to the Seventh Regiment of Colonel Moreira César that he remembers, that highly disciplined corps, scrupulous in dress and demeanor. Have they buried the colonel up there on the heights behind them? Are they bringing his mortal remains down on one of those stretchers, one of those carts?

“Can they have made their peace with each other?” the curé murmurs at his side. “An armistice perhaps?”

The idea of a reconciliation strikes him as unthinkable, but it is quite true that something bizarre is happening down there below: there is no fighting. And yet soldiers and
jagunços
are very close to each other, closer and closer by the moment. His myopic, avid gaze leaps, as in some wild dream, from one group of
jagunços
to another, that indescribable mass of humanity in outlandish dress, armed with shotguns, carbines, clubs, machetes, rakes, hunting crossbows, stones, with bits of cloth tied round their heads, that seems to be the embodiment of disorder, of confusion, like those whom they are pursuing, or rather, escorting, accompanying.

“Can the soldiers have surrendered?” Father Joaquim says. “Can they be taking them prisoner?”

The large groups of
jagunços
are mounting the slopes, on either side of the drunkenly meandering current of soldiers, pressing in upon them, closer and closer. But there are no shots. Not, in any event, the sort of gunfire there had been the day before in Canudos, heavy fusillades and bursting shells, though scattered reports reach his ears now and then. And echoes of insults and imprecations: what else could those snatches of voices be? The nearsighted journalist suddenly recognizes Captain Salomão da Rocha in the rear guard of the wretched column. The little group of soldiers tagging along far behind the rest, with four cannons drawn by mules that they are pitilessly whipping, finds itself completely isolated when suddenly a group of
jagunços
descends upon it from the flanks and cuts it off from the other troops. The cannons stop dead and the nearsighted journalist is certain that the officer in command—he has a saber and a pistol, runs from one of his men to the next as they huddle against the mule teams and the cannons, doubtless giving them orders, urging them on, as the
jagunços
close in on them—is Salomão da Rocha. He remembers his little clipped mustache—his fellow officers called him the Fashion Plate—and his incessant talk about the technical advances announced in the Comblain catalogues, the precision of Krupp artillery pieces and of the cannons to which he has given a name and surname. On seeing little puffs of smoke, the nearsighted journalist realizes that they are firing at each other, at point-blank range, even though he and the others are unable to hear the rifle reports because the wind is blowing in another direction. “They’ve been shooting at each other, killing each other, hurling insults at each other all this time, and we haven’t heard a thing,” he thinks, and then stops thinking, for the group of soldiers and cannons is suddenly lost from view as the
jagunços
surrounding it descend upon it. Blinking his eyes, batting his eyelids, his mouth gaping open, the nearsighted journalist sees the officer with the saber withstand for the space of a few seconds the attack of clubs, pikes, hoes, sickles, machetes, or whatever else those dark objects might be, before disappearing from sight, like his men, beneath the hordes of assailants now leaping upon them, no doubt with shouts that do not reach his ears. He does hear, however, the braying of the mules, though they, too, are lost from sight.

He realizes that he has been left all by himself on the rocky ledge at the crest line from which he has seen the capture of the artillery corps of the Seventh Regiment and the certain death of the soldiers and the officer serving in it. The parish priest of Cumbe is trotting down the slope, some twenty or thirty yards farther below, followed by the woman and the Dwarf, heading straight toward the
jagunços
. He hesitates to the depths of his being. But the fear of remaining there all by himself is worse, and he scrambles to his feet and begins running down the slope after them. He stumbles, slips, falls, gets up again, tries to keep his balance. Many
jagunços
have seen them, there are faces tipped back, raised toward the slope as he comes down it, feeling ridiculous at being so clumsy and unsteady on his feet. The curé of Cumbe, ten yards in front of him now, says something, shouts, makes signs and gestures at the
jagunços
. Is he betraying him, denouncing him? In order to curry favor with them, will he tell them that he’s a soldier, will he…? And he starts to roll downhill again, in a spectacular fashion. He somersaults, turns over and over like a barrel, feeling neither pain nor shame, his one thought being his eyeglasses, which by some miracle remain firmly hooked over his ears when he finally stops and tries to stand up. But he is so battered and bruised, so stunned and terrified that he cannot manage to do so until several pairs of arms lift him up bodily. “Thanks,” he murmurs, and sees Father Joaquim being clapped on the back, embraced, kissed on the hand by smiling, surprised, excited
jagunços
. “They know him,” he thinks. “If he asks them not to, they won’t kill me.”

“It’s really me, João,” Father Joaquim says to a tall, sturdy, mud-stained man with weathered skin standing in the middle of a group of men with bandoleers about their necks who have flocked round him. “Me in the flesh, not my ghost. They didn’t kill me—I escaped. I want to go to Cumbe, Abbot João, I want to get out of here. Help me…”

“Impossible, Father, it’s dangerous. Can’t you see that there’s shooting on all sides?” the man answers. “Go to Belo Monte till the war is over.”

“Abbot João?” the nearsighted journalist thinks. “Abbot João’s in Canudos, too?” He hears sudden loud rifle reports from every direction and his blood runs cold. “Who’s that four-eyes?” he hears Abbot João say, pointing to him. “Ah, yes, he’s a journalist, he helped me escape, he’s not a soldier. And this woman and this…” But the curé is unable to end his sentence because of the gunfire. “Go to Belo Monte, Father, we’ve cleared them out of there,” Abbot João says as he starts down the slope at a run, followed by the
jagunços
who have been standing round him. The nearsighted, journalist suddenly spies Colonel Tamarindo in the distance, clutching his head in his hands in the midst of a stampede of soldiers. There is total disorder and confusion: the column appears to be scattered all over, to have completely disintegrated. The soldiers are dashing about helter-skelter, their pursuers close behind. From the ground, his mouth full of mud, the nearsighted journalist sees the troops, spreading like a stain, dividing, mingling, figures falling, struggling, and his eyes return again and again to the spot where old Tamarindo has fallen. Several
jagunços
are bending down—killing him? But they linger too long for that, squatting there on their heels, and the nearsighted journalist, his eyes burning from straining so hard to make out what is happening, finally sees that they are stripping him naked.

He is suddenly aware of a bitter taste in his mouth, begins to choke, and realizes that, like an automaton, he is chewing the dirt that got into his mouth when he threw himself to the ground. He spits, not taking his eyes off the rout of the soldiers, amid a terrific wind that has risen. They are scattering in all directions, some of them shooting, others tossing weapons, boxes of ammunition, stretchers onto the ground, into the air, and though they are now a long way off, he can nonetheless see that in their frantic, panic-stricken retreat they are also tossing away their kepis, their tunics, their bandoleers, their chest belts. Why are they, too, stripping naked, what sort of madness is this that he is witnessing? He intuits that they are ridding themselves of anything that might identify them as soldiers, that they are hoping to pass themselves off as
jagunços
in the melee. Father Joaquim gets to his feet and, just as he had a moment before, begins to run again. In a strange fashion this time, moving his head, waving his hands, speaking and shouting to pursued and pursuers alike. “He’s going down there amid all the shooting, the knifing, the killing,” the journalist thinks. His eyes meet the woman’s. She looks back at him in terror, mutely pleading for his counsel. And then he too, obeying an impulse, stands up, shouting to her: “We must stay with him. He’s the only one who can help us.” She gets to her feet and starts running, dragging the Dwarf along with her, his eyes bulging, his face covered with dirt, screeching as he runs. The nearsighted journalist soon loses sight of them, for his long legs or his fear give him an advantage over them. He runs swiftly, bent over, his hips jerking grotesquely back and forth, his head down, thinking hypnotically that one of those red-hot bullets whistling past has his name written on it, that he is running directly toward it, and that one of those knives, sickles, machetes, bayonets that he glimpses is waiting for him in order to put an end to his mad dash. But he keeps running amid clouds of dust, glimpsing now and again the robust little figure of the curé of Cumbe, his arms and legs whirling like windmill blades, losing him from sight, spying him again. Suddenly he loses sight of him altogether. As he curses and rages, he thinks: “Where is he going, why is he running like that, why does he want to get himself killed and get us killed?” Though he is completely out of breath—he runs along with his tongue hanging out, swallowing dust, almost unable to see because his glasses are now covered with dirt—he goes on running for all he is worth; the little strength he has left tells him that his life depends on Father Joaquim.