The War Of The End Of The World (66 page)

“How many?” the baron said in a low voice. He knew that the number would never be known, that, as with all the rest of history, the figure would be one that historians and politicians would increase and decrease in accordance with their doctrines and the advantage they could extract from it. But he could not help wondering nonetheless.

“I’ve tried to find out,” the journalist said, walking toward him with his usual unsteady gait and collapsing in the armchair. “No precise figure has been arrived at.”

“Three thousand? Five thousand dead?” the baron murmured, his eyes seeking his.

“Between twenty-five and thirty thousand.”

“Are you including the wounded, the sick, in that figure?” the baron muttered testily.

“I’m not talking about the army dead,” the journalist said. “There exists an exact accounting of them. Eight hundred twenty-three, including the victims of epidemics and accidents.”

A silence fell. The baron lowered his eyes. He poured himself a little fruit punch, but scarcely touched it because it had lost its chill and reminded him of lukewarm broth.

“There couldn’t have been thirty thousand souls living in Canudos,” he said. “No settlement in the
sertão
can house that many people.”

“It’s a relatively simple calculation,” the journalist answered. “General Oscar had a count made of the dwellings. You didn’t know that? The number has been published in the papers: five thousand seven hundred eighty-three. How many people lived in each one? Five or six at the very least. In other words, between twenty-five and thirty thousand dead.”

There was another silence, a long one, broken by the buzzing of bluebottle flies.

“There were no wounded in Canudos,” the journalist said. “The so-called survivors, those women and children that the Patriotic Committee organized by your friend Lélis Piedades parceled out all over Brazil, had not been in Canudos but in localities in the vicinity. Only seven people escaped from the siege.”

“Are you certain of that, too?” the baron said, raising his eyes.

“I was one of the seven,” the nearsighted journalist said. And as though to avoid a question, he quickly added: “It was a different statistic that was of greatest concern to the
jagunços
. How many of them would be killed by bullets and how many finished off by the knife.”

He remained silent for some time; he tossed his head to chase away an insect. “It’s a figure that it’s impossible to arrive at, naturally,” he continued, wringing his hands. “But there is someone who could give us a clue. An interesting individual, Baron. He was in Moreira César’s regiment and returned with the fourth expeditionary force as commanding officer of a company from Rio Grande do Sul. Second Lieutenant Maranhão.”

The baron looked at the journalist. He could almost guess what he was about to say.

“Did you know that slitting throats is a gaucho specialty? Second Lieutenant Maranhão and his men were specialists. It was something the lieutenant was both skilled at and greatly enjoyed doing. He would grab the
jagunço
by the nose with his left hand, lift his head up, and draw his knife across his throat. A fifteen-inch slash that cut through the carotid: the head fell off like a rag doll’s.”

“Are you trying to move me to pity?” the baron asked.

“If Second Lieutenant Maranhão told us how many
jagunços
he and his men slit the throats of, we’d be able to know how many
jagunços
went to heaven and how many to hell,” the journalist said with a sneeze. “That was another drawback of having one’s throat slit. The dead man’s soul apparently went straight to hell.”

The night he leaves Canudos, at the head of three hundred armed men—many more than he has ever been in command of before—Pajeú orders himself not to think about the woman. He knows how important his mission is, as do his comrades, chosen from among the best walkers in Canudos (because they are going to have to go a long way on foot). As they pass the foot of A Favela they halt for a time. Pointing to the spurs of the mountainside, barely visible in the darkness alive with crickets and frogs, Pajeú reminds them that it is up there that the soldiers are to be drawn, driven, surrounded, so that Abbot João and Big João and all those who have not headed off to Jeremoabo with Pedrão and the Vilanovas to meet the troops coming from that direction can shoot at them from the neighboring hills and plateaus, where the
jagunços
have already taken up their positions in trenches full of ammunition. Abbot João is right; that is the way to deal that accursed brood a mortal blow: push them toward this bare slope. “Either the soldiers fall in the trap and we tear them to pieces, or we fall,” the Street Commander has said. “Because if they surround Belo Monte we won’t have either the men or the arms to keep them from entering. It depends on you, boys.” Pajeú advises the men to hoard the ammunition, to aim always at those dogs who have stripes on their sleeves, or have sabers and are mounted on horseback, and to keep out of sight. He divides them up into four groups and arranges for everyone to meet the following day at dusk, at Lagoa da Laje, not far from Serra de Aracati, where, he calculates, the avant-garde that left Monte Santo yesterday will be arriving about then. None of the groups must fight if they run into enemy patrols; they must hide, let them go on, and at most have a tracker follow them. No one, nothing must make them forget their one responsibility: drawing the dogs to A Favela.

The group of eighty men that remains with him is the last to set out again. Headed for war again. He has gone off in the night like this so many times since he reached the age of reason, hiding out so as to pounce or keep from being pounced on, that he is no more apprehensive this time than he was the others. To Pajeú that is what life is: fleeing an enemy or going out to meet one, knowing that before and behind, in space and in time, there are, and always will be, bullets, wounded, and dead.

The woman’s face steals once again—stubbornly, intrusively—into his mind. The
caboclo
tries his best to banish the image of her pale cheeks, her resigned eyes, her lank hair dangling down to her shoulders, and anxiously searches for something different to think about. At his side is Taramela, a short, energetic little man, chewing on something, happy to be marching along with him, as in the days of the
cangaço
. He suddenly asks him if he has with him that egg-yolk poultice that is the best remedy against snake bite. Taramela reminds him that when they were separated from the other groups he himself handed round a bit of it to Joaquim Macambira, Mané Quadrado, and Felício. “That’s right, I did,” Pajeú says. And as Taramela looks at him, saying nothing, Pajeú wonders aloud whether the other groups will have enough
tigelinhas
, those little clay lamps that will allow them to signal to each other at a distance at night if need be. Taramela laughs and reminds him that he himself has supervised the distribution of
tigelinhas
at the Vilanovas’ store. Pajeú growls that his forgetfulness is a sign that he’s getting old. “Or that you’re falling in love,” Taramela teases. Pajeú feels his cheeks burn, and the memory of the woman’s face, which he has managed to drive out of his mind, comes back again. Feeling oddly abashed, he thinks: “I don’t know her name, or where she’s from.” When he gets back to Belo Monte, he’ll ask her.

The eighty
jagunços
walk behind him and Taramela in silence, or talking so quietly that the sound of their voices is drowned out by the crunching of little stones and the rhythmic shuffle of sandals and espadrilles. Among these eighty are some who were with him in his
cangaço
, along with others who were marauders in Abbot João’s band or Pedrão’s, old pals who once served in the police flying brigades, and even onetime rural guards and infantrymen who deserted. That men who were once irreconcilable enemies are now marching together is the work of the Father, up there in heaven, and of the Counselor, here below. They’ve worked the miracle of reconciling Cains, turning the hatred that reigned in the backlands into brotherhood.

Pajeú steps up the pace and keeps it brisk all night long. When, at dawn, they reach the Serra de Caxamango and halt to eat, with a palisade of
xiquexiques
and
mandacarus
for cover, all of them are stiff and sore.

Taramela awakens Pajeú some four hours later. Two trackers have arrived, both of them very young. Their voices choke as they speak and one of them massages his swollen feet as they explain to Pajeú that they have followed the troops all the way from Monte Santo. It’s true: there are thousands of soldiers. Divided into nine corps, they are advancing very slowly because of the difficulty they are having dragging along their arms, their carts, their portable field huts, and because of the enormous hindrance represented by a very long cannon they are bringing, which keeps getting stuck in the sand and obliges them to widen the trail as they go along. It is being drawn by no less than forty oxen. They are making, at most, five leagues a day. Pajeú interrupts them: what interests him is not how many of them there are but where they are. The youngster rubbing his feet reports that they made a halt at Rio Pequeno and bivouacked at Caldeirão Grande. Then they headed for Gitirana, where they halted, and finally, after many hitches, they arrived at Juá, where they encamped for the night.

The route the dogs have taken surprises Pajeú. It is not that of any of the previous expeditions. Do they intend to come via Rosário, instead of via Bendengó, O Cambaio, or the Serra de Canabrava? If that is their plan, everything will be easier, for with a few skirmishes and ruses on the part of the
jagunços
, this route will take them to A Favela.

He sends a tracker to Belo Monte, to repeat what he has just been told to Abbot João, and they begin marching again. They go on without stopping till dusk, through stretches of scrub that are a tangle of
mangabeiras, cipós
, and thickets of
macambiras
. The groups led by Mané Quadrado, Macambira, and Felício are already at Lagoa da Laje. Mané Quadrado’s has run into a mounted patrol that was scouting the trail from Aracati to Jueté. Squatting down behind a hedge of cacti, they saw them go by, and then come back that way a couple of hours later. There is no question, then: if they are sending patrols out toward Jueté it means that they’ve chosen to take the Rosário road. Old Macambira scratches his head: why choose the longest way round? Why take this indirect route that will mean a march fourteen or fifteen leagues longer?

“Because it’s flatter,” Taramela says. “There are almost no uphill or downhill stretches if they go that way. It’ll be easier for them to get their cannons and wagons through.”

They agree that that is the most likely reason. As the others rest, Pajeú, Taramela, Mané Quadrado, Macambira, and Felício exchange opinions. As it is almost certain that the troop will be coming via Rosário, they decide that Mané Quadrado and Joaquim Macambira will go post themselves there. Pajeú and Felício will track them from Serra de Aracati on.

At dawn, Macambira and Mané Quadrado take off with half the men. Pajeú asks Felício to go ahead of him with his seventy
jagunços
to Aracati, posting them along the half-league stretch of road so as to scout the movements of the battalions in detail. He will remain where they are now.

Lagoa da Laje is not a lagoon—though it may have been one in the very distant past—but a damp ravine where maize, cassava, and beans used to grow, as Pajeú remembers very well from having spent many a night in one or other of the little farmhouses now burned to the ground. There is only one with the façade still intact and a complete roof. One of his
jagunços
, a man with Indian features, points to it and says that the roof tiles could be used for the Temple of the Blessed Jesus. No roof tiles are being turned out in Belo Monte these days because all the kilns are being used to make bullets. Pajeú nods and orders the tiles taken down. He stations his men all round the house. He is giving instructions to the tracker that he is about to send to Canudos when he hears hoofbeats and a whinny. He drops to the ground and slips away among the rocks. Once under cover, he sees that the men have had time to take cover, too, before the patrol appeared—all of them except the ones removing the tiles from the roof of the little house. He sees a dozen troopers pursuing three
jagunços
who are running off in a zigzag line in different directions. They disappear amid the rocks, apparently without being wounded. But the fourth one does not have time to leap down from the roof. Pajeú tries to see who it is: no, he can’t, he is too far away. After looking down for a few moments at the cavalrymen aiming their rifles at him, the man raises his hands to his head as though he were surrendering. But all of a sudden he leaps down on top of one of the cavalrymen. Was he trying to get possession of the horse and gallop off to safety? If so, his trick doesn’t come off, for the cavalryman drags him to the ground with him. The
jagunço
hits out right and left till the squad leader fires at him point-blank. It is obvious that he is annoyed at having had to kill him, that he would rather have taken a prisoner to bring in to his superiors. The patrol rides off, followed by the eyes of those hiding in the brush. Pajeú tells himself, in satisfaction, that the men have resisted the temptation to kill that bunch of dogs.