“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 hi
s 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.
When he falls to the ground, because he stumbles or because his legs give way from fatigue, he has a curious feeling of relief. He leans his head on his arms, tries to force air into his lungs, listens to his heart beat. Better to die than keep on running. Little by little he recovers, feels the pounding in his temples slow down. He is sick to his stomach and retches, but does not vomit. He takes his glasses off and cleans them. He puts them back on. He is surrounded by people. He is not afraid, and nothing really matters. His exhaustion has freed him from fears, uncertainties, chimeras. Moreover, no one appears to be paying any attention to him. Men are gathering up the rifles, the ammunition, the bayonets, but his eyes are not deceived and from the first moment he knows that the groups of jagunços here, there, everywhere, are also beheading the corpses with their machetes, with the same diligence with which they decapitate oxen and goats, and throwing the heads in burlap bags, threading them on pikes and on the same bayonets that the dead were carrying to run jagunços through, or carrying them off by the hair, while others light fires where the headless corpses are already beginning to sizzle, crackle, curl up, burst open, char. One fire is very close by and he sees that men with blue headcloths are throwing other remains on top of the two bodies already roasting on it. “It’s my turn now,” he thinks. “They’ll come, cut my head off, carry it away on a pole, and toss my body in that fire.” He goes on drowsing, immunized against everything by his utter exhaustion. Even though the jagunços are talking, he doesn’t understand a word they are saying.
At that moment he spies Father Joaquim. He is not going but coming, he is not running but walking, in long strides, emerging from that cloud of wind-blown dirt that has already begun to produce that tickling in the journalist’s nostrils that precedes a sneezing fit, still making gestures, grimaces, signs, to anybody and everybody, including the dead that are roasting. He is spattered with mud, his clothes are in tatters, his hair disheveled. The nearsighted journalist rises up as the priest walks by him and says: “Don’t go, take me with you, don’t let them chop my head off, don’t let them burn me…” Does the curé of Cumbe hear him? He is talking to himself or with ghosts, repeating incomprehensible things, unrecognizable names, making sweeping gestures. He walks along at his side, very close to him, feeling his proximity revive him. He notes that the barefoot woman and the Dwarf are walking along with them on the right. Pale and wan, covered with dirt, worn out, they look to him like sleepwalkers.
Nothing of what he is seeing and hearing surprises him or frightens him or interests him. Is this what ecstasy is? He thinks: “Not even opium, in Salvador…” He sees as he passes by that jagunços are hanging kepis, tunics, canteens, capes, blankets, cartridge belts, boots on the thornbushes dotting both sides of the path, as though they were decorating Christmas trees, but the sight leaves him completely indifferent. And when, as they descend toward the sea of rooftops and rubble that is Canudos, he sees heads of dead soldiers lined up on either side of the trail, looking across at each other, being riddled by insects, his heart does not pound wildly, nor his fear return, nor his imagination race madly. Even when an absurd figure, one of those scarecrows that farmers place in sowed fields, blocks their path and he recognizes the naked, corpulent form impaled on a dry branch as the body and face of Colonel Tamarindo, he does not turn a hair. But a moment later he stops short, and with the serenity that he has attained, he takes a close look at one of the heads crawling with flies. There is no possible doubt: it is the head of Moreira César.
The fit of sneezing overtakes him so completely that he does not have time to raise his hands to his face, to hold his glasses on: they fly off, and as one burst of sneezes follows another and he doubles over, he is sure he hears them hit the pebbles underfoot. As soon as he is able to, he squats down and fumbles about. He finds them immediately. Now, yes, on running his fingers over them and feeling that the lenses are smashed to smithereens, the nightmare of last night, of this morning at dawn, of a few moments ago returns.
“Stop! Stop!” he shouts, putting the glasses on, looking out at a shattered, cracked, crazed world. “I can’t see anything. Please, I beg you.”
He feels in his right hand a hand that—from its size, from its pressure—can only be that of the barefoot woman. She pulls him along, without a word, guiding him in this world suddenly become inapprehensible, blind.
The first thing that surprised Epaminondas Gonçalves on entering the town house of the Baron de Canabrava, in which he had never before set foot, was the odor of vinegar and aromatic herbs that filled the rooms through which a black servant led him, lighting his way with an oil lamp. He showed him into a study with shelves full of books, illuminated by a lamp with green glass panels that lent a sylvan appearance to the oval writing desk, the easy chairs, and the little tables with bibelots. He was examining an old map, on which he managed to read the name Cal
umbi in ornate Gothic letters, when the baron entered the room. They shook hands without warmth, like two persons who scarcely know each other.
“I thank you for coming,” the baron said, offering him a chair. “Perhaps it would have been better to hold this meeting in a neutral place, but I took the liberty of proposing my house to you because my wife is not feeling well and I prefer not to go out.”
“I wish her a prompt recovery,” Epaminondas Gonçalves said, refusing a cigar from the box the baron held out to him. “All of Bahia hopes to see her very soon in as radiant health and as beautiful as ever.”
The baron looked much thinner and older, and the owner-publisher of the Jornal de Notícias wondered whether those wrinkles and that dejection were due to the ravages of time or of recent events.
“As a matter of fact, Estela is physically well; her body has recovered,” the baron said sharply. “It’s her mind that is still affected. The fire that destroyed Calumbi was a great shock to her.”
“A disaster that concerns all us Bahians,” Epaminondas murmured. He raised his eyes to follow the baron, who had risen to his feet and was pouring them two glasses of cognac. “I said as much in the Assembly and in the Jornal de Notícias. The destruction of property is a crime that affects all of us, allies and adversaries alike.”
The baron nodded. He handed Epaminondas his cognac and they clinked glasses in silence before drinking. Epaminondas set his glass down on the little table and the baron held his between his palms, warming the reddish liquid and swirling it about the glass. “I thought it would be a good idea for us to talk together,” he said slowly. “The success of the negotiations between the Republican Party and the Autonomist Party depends on the two of us reaching an agreement.”
The War of the End of the World Page 50
