The War Of The End Of The World Part 26

In a fit of madness, he decided to go look for them, and as he stumbled to the door he shouted: "I'm going to look for my friends. I want to die with my friends."

As he pushed the little door open, fresh, cool air hit his face and he sensed-mere blurred shapes in the cloud of dust-the figures of the men defending the Sanctuary sprawled out on the parapet.

"Can I leave? Can I please leave?" he begged. "I want to find my friends."

"Come ahead," a voice answered. "There's no shooting just now."

He took a few steps, leaning against the barricade, and almost immediately he stumbled over something soft. As he rose to his feet, he found himself in the arms of a thin, female form clutching him to her. From the warm odor of her, from the happiness that flooded over him, he knew who it was before he heard her voice. His terror turned to joy as he embraced this woman as desperately as she was embracing him. A pair of lips met his, clung to his, returned his kisses. "I love you," he stammered, "I love you, I love you. I don't care now if I die." And as he said again and again that he loved her, he asked her for news of the Dwarf.

"We've been looking for you all day long," the Dwarf said, his arms encircling the journalist's legs. "All day long. What a blessing that you're alive!"

"I don't care now if I die either," Jurema's lips said beneath his. "This is the house of the Pyrotechnist," General Artur Oscar suddenly exclaims. The officials who are reporting on the number of dead and wounded in the attack that he was given orders to halt look at him in bewilderment. The general points to some half-finished skyrockets, made of reeds and pegs held together with pita fiber, scattered about the dwelling. "He's the one who prepares their fireworks displays for them."

Of the eight blocks-if the jumbled piles of rubble can be called "blocks"-that the troops have taken in nearly twelve hours of fighting, this one-room hut, with a part.i.tion of wooden slats dividing it in two, is the only one that has been left standing, more or less. This is the reason why it has been chosen as general headquarters. The orderlies and officers surrounding the commandant of the expeditionary corps cannot understand why he is speaking of rockets just as the list of casualties after the hard day's battle is being read off to him. They do not know that fireworks are a secret weakness of General Oscar's, a powerful holdover from his childhood, and that in O Piaui he would seize on any sort of patriotic celebration as an excuse to order a fireworks display to be set off in the courtyard of the barracks. In the month and a half that he has been here, he has watched with envy, from the heights of A Favela, the cascades of lights in the sky above Canudos on certain nights when processions have been held. The man who prepares such displays is a master; he could earn himself a good living in any city in Brazil. Can the Pyrotechnist have died in today's battle? As the general ponders that question, he also pays close attention to the figures being read off by the colonels, majors, captains who enter and leave or remain in the tiny room already enveloped in darkness. An oil lamp is lit, and a detail of soldiers piles sandbags along the wall facing the enemy.

The general completes his calculations. "It's worse than I had supposed, gentlemen," he says to the fan of silhouettes. He has a tight feeling in his chest, and can sense how anxiously the officers are waiting. "One thousand twenty-seven casualties! A third of our forces! Twenty-three officers dead, among them Colonel Carlos Telles and Colonel Serra Martins. Do you realize what that means?"

No one answers, but the general knows that all of them are perfectly aware that such a large number of casualties is tantamount to a defeat. He sees how frustrated, angry, astonished his subordinates are; the eyes of a number of them glisten with tears.

"Going on with the attack would have meant being completely wiped out. Do you understand that now?"

Because when, alarmed by the jaguncos jaguncos' resistance and his intuition that casualties among the patriots were already heavy-along with the tremendous shock to him of the death of Telles and of Serra Martins-General Oscar ordered the troops to confine themselves to defending the positions they had already taken, the order was greeted with indignation by many of these officers, and the general feared that some of them might even disobey it. His own adjutant, First Lieutenant Pinto Souza, of the Third Infantry Corps, protested: "But victory is within our reach, sir!" It was not. A third of the troops hors de combat hors de combat. An extremely high percentage, catastrophic, despite the eight blocks captured and the damage inflicted on the fanatics.

He puts the Pyrotechnist out of his mind and sets to work with his general staff. He dismisses the field officers, aides, or representatives of the a.s.sault corps, repeating the order to hold the positions already taken and not fall back a single step, and to strengthen the barricade, opposite the one that stopped them, which the troops had started to erect a few hours before when it became evident that the city was not going to fall. He decides that the Seventh Brigade, which has remained behind to protect the wounded on A Favela, will move forward to reinforce the "black line," the new front, already well established in the heart of the rebellious city. In the cone of light from the oil lamp, he bends over the map drawn by Captain Teotonio Coriolano, his staff cartographer, on the basis of reports that he has received and his own observations of the situation. A fifth of Canudos has been taken, a triangle which extends from the line of trench works at Fazenda Velha, still in the hands of the jaguncos jaguncos, to the cemetery, which has been captured, thus allowing the patriot troops to occupy a position within less than eighty paces of the Church of Santo Antonio.

"The front is no more than fifteen hundred meters long at most," Captain Guimaraes says, making no attempt to conceal his disappointment. "We're far from having them surrounded. We haven't occupied even a quarter of the circ.u.mference. They can come and go and receive supplies."

"We can't extend the front until the reinforcements arrive," Major Carrenho complains. "Why are they leaving us stranded like this, sir?"

General Oscar shrugs. Ever since the ambush, on the day they arrived in Canudos, as he has seen the death toll among his men mount, he has kept sending urgent, justified pleas for more troops, and has even gone so far as to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation. Why don't his superiors send them?

"If there had been five thousand of us instead of three thousand, Canudos would be ours by now," an officer says, thinking aloud.

The general forces them to change the subject by informing them that he is going to inspect the front and the new field hospital set up that morning along the ravines of the Vaza-Barris once the jaguncos jaguncos had been dislodged from there. Before leaving the Pyrotechnist's shack, he drinks a cup of coffee, listening to the bells and the Ave Marias of the fanatics, so close by he can't believe it. had been dislodged from there. Before leaving the Pyrotechnist's shack, he drinks a cup of coffee, listening to the bells and the Ave Marias of the fanatics, so close by he can't believe it.

Even at the age of fifty-three, he is a man of great energy, who rarely feels fatigue. He has followed the development of the attack in detail, watching through his field gla.s.ses since five this morning, when the corps began to leave A Favela, and he has marched with them, immediately behind the battalions of the vanguard, without halting to rest and without eating a single mouthful, contenting himself with a few sips from his canteen. Early in the afternoon, a stray bullet wounded a soldier who was marching directly alongside him. He leaves the shack. Night has fallen; there is not a star in the sky. The sound of the prayers is everywhere, like a magic spell, and drowns out the last bursts of rifle fire. He gives orders that no fires be lighted in the trench. Nonetheless, in the course of his slow tour of inspection via an itinerary full of twists and turns, escorted by four officers, at many points along the winding, labyrinthine barricade hastily thrown up by the soldiers, behind which they are lined up, their backs against the inner brick facing of the wall of debris, earth, stones, oil drums, and all manner of implements and objects, sleeping one against the other, some with enough high spirits still to be singing or poking their heads over the wall to insult the bandits-who must be crouching listening behind their own barricade, a mere five yards distant in some sections, ten in others, and in still others the two practically touching-General Oscar finds braziers around which knots of soldiers are making soup with sc.r.a.ps of meat, heating up chunks of jerky, or warming wounded men trembling with fever who are in such bad shape that they cannot be evacuated to the field hospital.

He exchanges a few words with the leaders of companies, of battalions. They are exhausted, and he discovers in them the same desolation, mingled with stupefaction, that he feels in the face of the incomprehensible things that have happened in this accursed war. As he congratulates a young second lieutenant for his heroic conduct during the attack, he repeats to himself something that he has told himself many times before: "I curse the day I accepted this command."

While he was in Queimadas, struggling with the devilish problems of lack of transport, of draft animals, of carts for the provisions, which were to keep him stuck there for three months of mortal boredom, General Oscar learned that before the army and the office of the President of the Republic had offered him command of the expedition three generals on active duty had refused to accept it. He now understands why he was offered what he believed in his naivete to be a distinction, a command that would gloriously crown his career. As he shakes hands and exchanges impressions with officers and soldiers whose faces he is unable to see in the dark, he reflects on what an idiot he was to have believed that his superiors wanted to reward him by removing him from his post as commanding officer of the military district of O Piaui, where he had so peacefully put in his almost twenty years of service, so as to allow him, before retiring, to lead a glorious military campaign: crus.h.i.+ng the monarchist-restorationist rebellion in the backlands of the state of Bahia. No, he had not been entrusted with this command in order to compensate him for having been pa.s.sed over for promotion so many times and in order to recognize his merits at last-as he had told his wife when he announced the news to her-but in order to ensure, rather, that other high-ranking army officers would not get bogged down in a quagmire like this. Those three generals had been right, of course! Had he, a career officer, been prepared for this grotesque, absurd war, fought totally outside the rules and conventions of a real war?

At one end of the wall they are barbecuing a steer. General Oscar sits down to eat a few mouthfuls of grilled beef amid a group of officers. He chats with them about the bells of Canudos and those prayers that have just ended. The oddities of this war: those prayers, those processions, those pealing bells, those churches that the bandits defend so furiously. Once again he is overcome with uneasiness. It troubles him that those degenerate cannibals are, despite everything, Brazilians, that is to say, essentially the same as those attacking them. But what he-a devout believer who rigorously obeys the precepts of the Church and who suspects that one of the reasons he has not advanced more rapidly in his career is that he has always stubbornly refused to become a Freemason-finds most disturbing is the bandits' false claim that they are Catholics. Those evidences of faith-rosaries, processions, cries of "Long live the Blessed Jesus"-disconcert him and pain him, despite the fact that at every Ma.s.s in the field Father Lizzardo inveighs against those impious wretches, accusing them of being apostates, heretics, and profaners of the faith. Even so, General Oscar cannot keep from feeling ill at ease in the face of this enemy that has turned this war into something so different from what he was expecting, into a sort of religious conflict. But the fact that he is disturbed does not mean that he has ceased to hate this abnormal, unpredictable adversary, who, moreover, has humiliated him by not falling to pieces at the very first encounter, as he was convinced would happen when he accepted this mission.

During the night he comes to hate this enemy even more when, after having inspected the barricade from one end to the other, he crosses the stretch of open terrain beyond on his way to the field hospital alongside the Vaza-Barris. At the halfway point are the Krupp 7.5s which have accompanied the attack, firing round after round of sh.e.l.ls, without respite, at those towers from which the enemy causes so much damage to the troops. General Oscar chats for a moment with the artillerymen who, despite the lateness of the hour, are digging a trench with picks, reinforcing the cannon emplacement.

The visit to the field hospital, on the banks of the dry riverbed, stuns him; he must master himself so that the doctors, the medical aides, those who are dying will not notice. He is grateful that the visit is taking place in semidarkness, for the lanterns and campfires reveal only an insignificant part of the spectacle at his feet. The wounded are even more exposed to the elements than at A Favela, lying on the bare clay and gravel, still in the same groups in which they arrived, and the doctors explain to him that, as a crowning misfortune, all during the afternoon and part of the evening a strong wind has been blowing clouds of red dust into open wounds that they have no way of bandaging or disinfecting or suturing. On every hand he can hear screams, moans, weeping, delirious raving from fever. The stench is overpowering and Captain Coriolano, who is accompanying him, suddenly retches. He hears him burst into apologies. Every so often, the general stops to say a few affectionate words, to pat a wounded soldier on the back, to shake a hand. He congratulates them on their courage, thanks, them in the name of the Republic for their sacrifice. But he remains silent when they halt before the bodies of Colonel Carlos Telles and Colonel Serra Martins, who are to be buried tomorrow. The former received a fatal bullet wound in the chest at the very beginning of the attack, as he was crossing the river; the second was killed in hand-to-hand combat as darkness was falling, leading his men in a charge against the jaguncos jaguncos' barricade. He is told that the colonel's dead body, pierced through with dagger, lance, and machete wounds, was found with the genitals, ears, and nose lopped off. In moments such as this, when he hears that a valiant, outstanding officer has been mutilated in this way, General Oscar tells himself that the policy of slitting the throats of all Sebastianists taken prisoner is a just one. The justification for this policy, as he sees it in the light of his conscience, is twofold: in the first place, these are bandits, not soldiers whom honor would bid them respect; and secondly, the lack of provisions leaves no alternative, since it would be more cruel to starve them out and absurd to deprive the patriots of rations in order to feed monsters capable of doing what they have done to this colonel.

As his tour of the field hospital is ending, he halts in front of a poor soldier whom two medical aides are holding down as they amputate one of his feet. The surgeon is squatting on his knees sawing, and the general hears him ask them to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. He must not be able to see much in any event, since the wind has come up again and is making the flames of the bonfire flicker. When the surgeon stands up, he recognizes Teotonio Leal Cavalcanti, the young man from Sao Paulo. They exchange greetings. As General Oscar starts back to his headquarters, the medical student's thin, tormented face accompanies him. A few days ago this young man, whom he did not know, presented himself before him, stood at attention, and said: "I've killed my best friend and wish to be punished." The general's adjutant, First Lieutenant Pinto Souza, was present at the interview, and on learning who the officer was whose suffering Teotonio, out of compa.s.sion, had ended by putting a bullet through his temple, the lieutenant had turned deathly pale. The scene made the general tremble with emotion. His voice breaking, Teotonio Leal Cavalcanti explained the state that First Lieutenant Pires Ferreira had been in-blind, his hands amputated, a broken man in body and spirit-the officer's pleas to be put out of his misery, and his own gnawing remorse at having done so. General Oscar has ordered him not to say one word about the matter and continue to perform his duties as though nothing had happened. Once the operations in the field are over, the general will decide his case.

Back at the Pyrotechnist's shack, he has already lain down in his hammock when Lieutenant Pinto Souza, who has just returned from A Favela, arrives with a message. The Seventh Brigade will be arriving at dawn to reinforce the "black line."

He sleeps for five hours, and the following morning he feels restored, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with energy as he drinks his coffee and eats a handful of the little cornmeal biscuits that are the treasure of his private rations. A strange silence reigns on the entire front. The battalions of the Seventh Brigade are about to arrive, and to cover their advance across the open terrain the general orders the gun crews of the Krupps to bombard the towers. Since the very first days, he has asked his superiors to send him, along with the reinforcements, those special steel-tipped 70 millimeter sh.e.l.ls that were manufactured in the Rio Mint to pierce the deck plating of the rebels' boats during the September 6 uprising. Why do they pay no attention to this request? He has explained to the High Command that shrapnel and gas grenades are not sufficient to destroy those d.a.m.ned towers carved out of living rock. Why do they keep turning a deaf ear?

The day goes by with only sporadic gunfire, and General Oscar spends it supervising the disposition of the fresh troops of the Seventh Brigade along the "black line." During a meeting with his staff, it is decided that another attack is definitely out of the question until the reinforcements arrive. They will fight a holding action, while trying to advance gradually on the enemy's right flank-which at first glance would appear to be Canudos's weakest-in small-scale attacks, without exposing all the men at once. It is also decided that an expedition will be sent to Monte Santo, to escort those wounded in good enough condition to withstand the march.

At midday, as they are burying Colonels Silva Telles and Serra Martins, down by the river, in a single grave with two wooden crosses, a piece of bad news is brought to the general: Colonel Neri has just been wounded in the hip by a stray bullet as he was answering a call of nature at a crossarm in the "black line."

That night the general is awakened by heavy gunfire. The jaguncos jaguncos are attacking the two Krupp 7.5 cannons in the field and the Thirty-second Infantry Battalion is hastening to reinforce the artillerymen. The are attacking the two Krupp 7.5 cannons in the field and the Thirty-second Infantry Battalion is hastening to reinforce the artillerymen. The jaguncos jaguncos breached the "black line" in the darkness, under the sentries' very noses. It is a hard-fought engagement for two hours, and casualties are high: there are seven dead and fifteen wounded, among them a second lieutenant. But the breached the "black line" in the darkness, under the sentries' very noses. It is a hard-fought engagement for two hours, and casualties are high: there are seven dead and fifteen wounded, among them a second lieutenant. But the jaguncos jaguncos have fifty dead and seventeen taken prisoner. The general goes to see them. have fifty dead and seventeen taken prisoner. The general goes to see them.

It is dawn; the hills stand out against a bluish iridescence. The wind is so cold that General Oscar wraps a blanket around him as he strides across the open terrain. Fortunately, the Krupps are intact. But the violence of the fighting and the number of their comrades left dead and wounded have so incensed the artillerymen and the foot soldiers that General Oscar finds the prisoners half dead from the blows dealt them. They are very young, some of them just children, and among them are two women; all of them are skeleton-thin. General Oscar thus sees firsthand evidence of what all the prisoners confess: the great scarcity of food among the bandits. The men explain that it was the women and the youngsters who were doing the shooting, for the jaguncos jaguncos' mission was to try to destroy the cannons with picks, maces, crowbars, and hammers, or to clog them with sand. A good sign: this is the second time that they have tried, so the Krupp 7.5s are doing them a great deal of damage. Both the women and the youngsters are wearing blue headcloths and armbands. The officers present are revolted by this unimaginable barbarism: that the jaguncos jaguncos sent women and children out to fight strikes them as the height of human degradation, a mockery of the art and ethics of war. As he is leaving the scene, General Oscar hears the prisoners shouting "Long live the Blessed Jesus" on learning that they are going to be put to death. Yes, the three generals who refused to come knew what they were doing; they had a premonition that waging a war against women and children who kill and who therefore must be killed, who die hailing the name of Jesus, is something that would not make any soldier happy. The general has a bitter taste in his mouth, as though he had been chewing tobacco. sent women and children out to fight strikes them as the height of human degradation, a mockery of the art and ethics of war. As he is leaving the scene, General Oscar hears the prisoners shouting "Long live the Blessed Jesus" on learning that they are going to be put to death. Yes, the three generals who refused to come knew what they were doing; they had a premonition that waging a war against women and children who kill and who therefore must be killed, who die hailing the name of Jesus, is something that would not make any soldier happy. The general has a bitter taste in his mouth, as though he had been chewing tobacco.

That day pa.s.ses uneventfully on the "black line," inside of which-the commanding officer of the expedition thinks to himself-it will be the usual routine till the reinforcements arrive: scattered gunfire from one or the other of the two dark, glowering barricades challenging each other, tourneys of insults flying back and forth above the walls without the objects of the insults ever seeing the insulters' faces, and the salvos of cannon fire against the churches and the Sanctuary, brief now because the sh.e.l.ls are running out. The troops' food supplies are nearly gone; there are barely ten animals left to butcher in the pen erected behind A Favela, and they are down to the last few sacks of coffee and grain. The general orders the troops' rations reduced by half, though they are already meager.

But late that afternoon General Oscar receives a surprising piece of news: a family of jaguncos jaguncos, numbering fourteen people, voluntarily surrenders at the camp on A Favela. This is the first time since the beginning of the campaign that such a thing has happened. The news raises his spirits tremendously. Despair and privation must be undermining the cannibals' morale. He himself interrogates these jaguncos jaguncos at the camp on A Favela. The family consists of three decrepit elders, an adult couple, and rachitic children with swollen bellies. They are from Ipueiras and according to them-their teeth chatter with fear as they answer his questions-they have been in Canudos only a month and a half; they took refuge there not out of devotion to the Counselor but out of panic on learning that a huge army was heading their way. They have made their escape from Canudos by leading the bandits to believe that they were going out to help dig trenches at the Cocorobo exit, which they in fact did do until evening, when, taking advantage of a moment when Pedrao wasn't watching, they slipped away. It has taken them a day to make their roundabout way to A Favela. They tell General Oscar everything they know about the situation in the bandits' lair and offer a somber picture of what is happening there, even worse than he had supposed-near-starvation, dead and wounded lying everywhere, widespread panic-and a.s.sure him that people would surrender if it weren't for at the camp on A Favela. The family consists of three decrepit elders, an adult couple, and rachitic children with swollen bellies. They are from Ipueiras and according to them-their teeth chatter with fear as they answer his questions-they have been in Canudos only a month and a half; they took refuge there not out of devotion to the Counselor but out of panic on learning that a huge army was heading their way. They have made their escape from Canudos by leading the bandits to believe that they were going out to help dig trenches at the Cocorobo exit, which they in fact did do until evening, when, taking advantage of a moment when Pedrao wasn't watching, they slipped away. It has taken them a day to make their roundabout way to A Favela. They tell General Oscar everything they know about the situation in the bandits' lair and offer a somber picture of what is happening there, even worse than he had supposed-near-starvation, dead and wounded lying everywhere, widespread panic-and a.s.sure him that people would surrender if it weren't for cangaceiros cangaceiros like Big Joao, Abbot Joao, Pajeu, and Pedrao, who have sworn to kill every last relative of anyone who deserts. The general nonetheless takes what they tell him with a grain of salt: they are so obviously frightened nearly to death that they would come up with any sort of lie to gain his sympathy. He gives orders for them to be shut up in the cattle pen. The lives of all those who, following this family's example, voluntarily give themselves up are to be spared. His officers are as optimistic as he is: some of them predict that the enemy redoubt will collapse from within before the army reinforcements arrive. like Big Joao, Abbot Joao, Pajeu, and Pedrao, who have sworn to kill every last relative of anyone who deserts. The general nonetheless takes what they tell him with a grain of salt: they are so obviously frightened nearly to death that they would come up with any sort of lie to gain his sympathy. He gives orders for them to be shut up in the cattle pen. The lives of all those who, following this family's example, voluntarily give themselves up are to be spared. His officers are as optimistic as he is: some of them predict that the enemy redoubt will collapse from within before the army reinforcements arrive.

But the following day the troops suffer a cruel reverse. A hundred and fifty head of cattle coming from Monte Santo fall into the hands of the jaguncos jaguncos in the most stupid way imaginable. Being overly cautious, in order to keep from falling into the trap of guides who have been conscripted into the army against their will in the in the most stupid way imaginable. Being overly cautious, in order to keep from falling into the trap of guides who have been conscripted into the army against their will in the sertao sertao and who almost always prove to be on the side of the enemy when the troops are ambushed, the company of lancers herding the cattle along have relied solely on the maps drawn up by the army engineers. Luck has not been with them. Instead of taking the road via Rosario and As Umburanas, which leads to A Favela, they have veered off down the trail via O Cambaio and O Taboleirinho and suddenly landed up in the middle of the and who almost always prove to be on the side of the enemy when the troops are ambushed, the company of lancers herding the cattle along have relied solely on the maps drawn up by the army engineers. Luck has not been with them. Instead of taking the road via Rosario and As Umburanas, which leads to A Favela, they have veered off down the trail via O Cambaio and O Taboleirinho and suddenly landed up in the middle of the jaguncos jaguncos' trenches. The lancers fight valiantly, keeping themselves from being wiped out, but they lose all the cattle, which the fanatics hasten to drive to Canudos with a heavy whip hand. From A Favela, General Oscar sees a surprising spectacle through his field gla.s.ses: the dust and the din raised by the little band of rustlers as they dash into Canudos amid the loud rejoicing of the degenerates. In an excess of fury that is not at all like him, he publicly dresses down the officers of the company that lost the cattle. This humiliating disaster will be a black mark on their service records! To punish the jaguncos jaguncos for the stroke of good luck that has brought them a hundred fifty head of cattle, the gunfire today is twice as heavy. for the stroke of good luck that has brought them a hundred fifty head of cattle, the gunfire today is twice as heavy.

As the problem of provisions takes on critical proportions, General Oscar and his staff send out the gaucho lancers-who have never belied their fame as great cowboys-and the Twenty-seventh Infantry Battalion to get food "wherever and however you can," for hunger is both sapping the troops' strength and undermining their morale. The lancers return at nightfall with twenty head of cattle, and the general forbears to ask them where they got them; they are immediately butchered and the meat is distributed among the men at A Favela and in the "black line." The general and his adjutants order steps to be taken to improve communications between the two camps and the front. Safe routes are laid out with sentry posts all along them and the barricade is further reinforced. With his customary energy, the general also prepares to evacuate the wounded. Stretchers and crutches are made, the ambulance wagons are repaired, and a list of those who are to be evacuated is drawn up.

He sleeps that night in his hut on A Favela. The following morning, as he is taking his breakfast coffee and cornmeal biscuits, he realizes that it is raining. Dumfounded, he observes the miracle. It is a torrential rain, accompanied by a howling wind that drives the swirling downpour of muddy water this way and that. When he goes out with heartfelt rejoicing to get himself soaked to the skin, he sees that the entire camp is out splas.h.i.+ng about in the rain and the mud, in wild excitement. It is the first rain in many months, a real blessing after these weeks of infernal heat and thirst. All the corps are storing the precious liquid in every container they can lay their hands on. He tries to see through his field gla.s.ses what is happening in Canudos, but there is a heavy fog and he is unable to make out even the towers. The downpour doesn't last long; a few minutes later a dust-filled wind is blowing once more. He has thought many times that, when this is all over, he will always have an indelible memory of these continuous, depressing winds that constrict one's temples. As he removes his boots so that his orderly can sc.r.a.pe the mud off them, he compares the dreariness of this landscape, without a bit of green, without a single flowering bush or shrub, with the luxuriant vegetation that surrounded him in O Piaui.

"Who would ever have thought that I'd miss my garden?" he confesses to Lieutenant Pinto Souza, who is drawing up the order of the day. "I never understood my wife's pa.s.sion for flowers. She would cut them back and water them all day long. It struck me as a form of sickness to be that fond of a garden. But now, in the face of this desolation, I understand."

All the rest of the morning, as he hears reports from various subordinates and a.s.signs them their duties, his mind is constantly on the blinding, suffocating dust. It is impossible to escape this torture even inside the barracks. "When you don't eat dust with your barbecued meat, you eat your barbecued meat with dust. And always seasoned with flies," he thinks.

A fusillade at dusk rouses him from his philosophical reverie. A band of jaguncos- jaguncos-popping up out of the ground as though they had tunneled under the "black line"-suddenly rushes a crossarm of the barricade, intending to cut it off. The attack takes the soldiers by surprise and they abandon their position, but an hour later the jaguncos jaguncos are driven out, with heavy losses. General Oscar and the officers conclude that the object of this attack was to protect the trenches at Fazenda Velha. All the officers therefore propose that they be occupied, by any possible means: this will hasten the surrender of this are driven out, with heavy losses. General Oscar and the officers conclude that the object of this attack was to protect the trenches at Fazenda Velha. All the officers therefore propose that they be occupied, by any possible means: this will hasten the surrender of this jagunco jagunco redoubt. General Oscar has three machine guns brought down from A Favela to the "black line." redoubt. General Oscar has three machine guns brought down from A Favela to the "black line."

That day the gaucho lancers return to camp with thirty head of cattle. The troops have a great feast, which puts everyone in a better humor. General Oscar inspects the two field hospitals, where final preparations are being made to evacuate the sick and wounded. In order to avoid long, heartrending farewell scenes, he has decided not to announce the names of those who will be making the journey till the very last moment, just as they are about to depart.

That afternoon, the artillerymen show him, in jubilation, four boxes full of sh.e.l.ls for the Krupp 7.5s that a patrol has found along the road from As Umburanas. The projectiles are in perfect condition, and General Oscar authorizes what First Lieutenant Macedo Soares, the officer in charge of the cannons at A Favela, calls a "fireworks display." Sitting right next to the cannon, with his ears stopped up with cotton, like the servers of the pieces, the general witnesses the firing of sixty sh.e.l.ls, all of them aimed at the heart of the traitors' resistance. Amid the great cloud of dust that the explosions raise, he anxiously observes the tall, ma.s.sive towers that he knows are swarming with fanatics. Though they are chipped and full of gaping holes, they have not given way. How can the bell tower of the Church of Santo Antonio, which looks like a sieve and is leaning worse than the famous Tower of Pisa, still be standing? All during the bombardment, he eagerly hopes to see that tower reduced to ruins. G.o.d ought to grant him this favor, so as to help raise his spirits a bit. But the tower does not fall.

The next morning, he is up at dawn to see the wounded off. Sixty officers and four hundred eighty men are going back to Monte Santo, all those the doctors believe strong enough to survive the journey. Among them is the commander of the second column, General Savaget, whose wound in the abdomen has kept him out of action ever since his arrival at A Favela. General Oscar is happy to see him leave, for though their relations are cordial, he feels uncomfortable in the presence of this general without whose aid, he is certain, the first column would have been wiped out. The fact that the bandits were capable of luring him into this sort of abattoir through the use of extremely clever tactics has left General Oscar still convinced, despite the lack of any further proof, that the jaguncos jaguncos may have monarchist officers, or even English ones, advising them. This possibility is no longer mentioned, however, at staff meetings. may have monarchist officers, or even English ones, advising them. This possibility is no longer mentioned, however, at staff meetings.

The farewell between the wounded who are leaving and those who are remaining behind is not a heartrending scene, with tears and protests, as he had feared, but a sober, solemn one. Those departing and those staying embrace each other in silence, exchange messages, and the ones who are weeping try to hide their tears. He had planned to give those leaving enough rations for four days, but the lack of supplies forces him to reduce this to one day's rations. The battalion of gaucho lancers, who will scour up food for the wounded on the journey, leaves with them. They are also escorted by the Thirty-third Infantry Battalion. As he sees them move slowly off in the early dawn light, miserable, half starved, their uniforms in tatters, many of them barefoot, he tells himself that when they arrive in Monte Santo-those who do not succ.u.mb along the way-they will be in an even worse state than they are now: perhaps his superiors will then understand how critical the situation is and send the reinforcements.

The departure of the expedition leaves behind an atmosphere of gloom and sadness among the men on A Favela and in the "black line." The morale of the troops has deteriorated because of the lack of food. The men are now eating the snakes and dogs they catch and are even toasting ants and swallowing them down to appease their hunger.

The war is now a matter of a few scattered shots from one side or the other of the two barricades. The combatants limit themselves to spying on each other from their respective positions; when they glimpse a profile, a head, an arm, there is a sudden burst of fire that lasts only a few seconds. Then silence sets in once again; it, too, brings on a numbing, hypnotic torpor, disturbed only by random shots from the towers and the Sanctuary, aimed at no precise target, but rather in the general direction of the dwelling in ruins occupied by the soldiers: the bullets pierce the thin walls of wooden pickets and mud and often wound or kill soldiers inside who are sleeping or dressing.

That evening, in the Pyrotechnist's shack, General Oscar plays cards with Lieutenant Pinto Souza, Colonel Neri (who is recovering from his wound), and two captains on his staff. They play on crates, by the light of an oil lamp. Suddenly they find themselves in the midst of a lively argument about Antonio Conselheiro and the bandits. One of the captains, who is from Rio, maintains that the explanation for Canudos is mixed blood, the mingling of Negro, Indian, and Portuguese stock that has slowly caused the race to degenerate to the point that it has now produced an inferior mentality, given to superst.i.tion and fanaticism. This view is vehemently countered by Colonel Neri. Haven't there been racial mixtures in other parts of Brazil which have produced no similar phenomena in those regions? Like Colonel Moreira Cesar, whom he admires and practically idolizes, he is persuaded that Canudos is the work of the enemies of the Republic, the monarchists out to restore the Empire, the former rich slaveowners and the privileged elite who have incited these poor uneducated wretches to rebel and confused them by instilling in them a hatred of progress. "The explanation of Canudos does not lie in race but in ignorance," he declares.

General Oscar, who has followed this exchange with interest, is still perplexed and hesitates when they ask him his opinion. Yes, he finally says, ignorance allows aristocrats to turn these miserable wretches into fanatics and spur them on to attack what threatens the interests of the rich and powerful, for the Republic guarantees the equality of all men, thereby doing away with the privileges that are a right by birth under an aristocratic regime. But inwardly he is not at all convinced of what he is saying. When the others leave, he lies in his hammock thinking. What is the explanation of Canudos? Hereditary defects of people of mixed blood? Lack of education? A predisposition toward barbarism on the part of men who are accustomed to violence and who resist civilization out of atavism? Something to do with religion, with G.o.d? He finds none of these explanations satisfactory.

The next day, as he is shaving, without soap or a mirror, with a barber's razor that he himself sharpens on a whetstone, he hears galloping hoofbeats. He has given orders that all movements back and forth between A Favela and the "black line" are to be made on foot, since men on horseback are too easy a target for the sharpshooters in the towers, and he therefore goes out to reprehend the disobedient riders. He hears cheers and hurrahs. The newcomers, three cavalrymen, cross the open terrain unharmed. The first lieutenant who dismounts at his side and clicks his heels identifies himself as the officer in charge of the platoon of advance scouts from General Girard's brigade of reinforcements, the vanguard of which will be arriving within the next two hours. The lieutenant adds that the four thousand five hundred soldiers and officers of General Girard's twelve battalions are impatient to place themselves at his command in order to annihilate the enemies of the Republic. At last, at long last, the nightmare of Canudos is about to end for him and for Brazil.

[V].

"Jurema?" the baron said in surprise. "Jurema from Calumbi?"

"It happened during the terrible month of August," the nearsighted journalist said, looking away. "In July, the jaguncos jaguncos had stopped the soldiers, right there inside the city. But in August the Girard Brigade arrived. Five thousand more men, twelve more battalions, thousands of additional weapons, dozens of additional cannons. And food in abundance. What hope was there for the had stopped the soldiers, right there inside the city. But in August the Girard Brigade arrived. Five thousand more men, twelve more battalions, thousands of additional weapons, dozens of additional cannons. And food in abundance. What hope was there for the jaguncos jaguncos then?" then?"

But the baron didn't hear him.

"Jurema?" he said again. He could see the visitor's glee, the delight he took in avoiding answering him. And he also noted that his joy, his happiness was due to the fact that he had mentioned her name, thereby attracting the baron's interest, so that now the baron would be the one who would oblige his visitor to speak of her. "The wife of Rufino, the guide from Queimadas?"

The nearsighted journalist didn't answer him this time either. "In August, moreover, the Minister of War, Marshal Carlos Machado Bittencourt, came in person from Rio to put an end to the campaign," he went on, amused at the baron's impatience. "We didn't know that in Canudos. That Marshal Bittencourt had installed himself in Monte Santo, organizing the transport, the provisioning, the hospitals. We didn't know that army volunteer doctors, volunteer medical aides, were pouring into Queimadas and Monte Santo. That it was the marshal himself who had sent the Girard Brigade. All that, in August. It was as though the heavens had opened to send a cataclysm down on Canudos."

"And in the middle of this cataclysm you were happy," the baron murmured, for those were the words his nearsighted visitor had used. "Is that the Jurema you mean?"

"Yes." The baron noted that his visitor was making no secret of his happiness now; his voice was filled with it, and it was making his words come pouring out. "It's only right that you should remember her. Because she often remembers you and your wife. With admiration, with affection."

So it was the same one, that slender, olive-skinned girl who had grown up in Calumbi, in Estela's service, whom the two of them had married to the honest, persevering worker that Rufino had been at that time. He couldn't get over it. That little half-tamed creature, that simple country girl who could only have changed for the worse since leaving Estela's service, had also played a role in the destiny of the man before him. Because the journalist's literal words, inconceivably enough, had been: "But, in fact, it was when the world began to fall apart and the horror had reached its height that, incredible as it may seem, I began to be happy." Once again the baron was overcome by the feeling that it was all unreal, a dream, a fiction, which always took possession of him at the very thought of Canudos. All these happenstances, coincidences, fortuitous encounters, made him feel as though he were on tenterhooks. Did the journalist know that Galileo Gall had raped Jurema? He didn't ask him, staggered as he was at the thought of the strange geography of chance, the secret order, the unfathomable law of the history of peoples and individuals that capriciously brought them together, separated them, made them enemies or allies. And he told himself that it was impossible for that poor little creature of the backlands of Bahia even to suspect that she had been the instrument of so many upheavals in the lives of such dissimilar people: Rufino, Galileo Gall, this scarecrow who was now smiling blissfully at the memory of her. The baron felt a desire to see Jurema again; perhaps it would do the baroness good to see this girl toward whom she had shown such affection in bygone days. He remembered that Sebastiana had felt a veiled resentment toward her for that very reason, and recalled how relieved she had been to see her go off to Queimadas with Rufino.

"To tell the truth, I didn't expect to hear you speak of love and happiness at this point," the baron murmured, stirring restlessly in his chair. "Certainly not with regard to Jurema."

The journalist had begun talking about the war again. "Isn't it curious that it should be called the Girard Brigade? Because, as I now learn, General Girard never set foot in Canudos. One more curious thing in this most curious of wars. August began with the appearance of those twelve fresh battalions. More new people still kept arriving in Canudos, in great haste, because they knew that now, with the new army on the way, the city was certain to be encircled. And that they would no longer be able to get in!" The baron heard him give one of his absurd, exotic, forced cackles, and heard him repeat: "Not that they wouldn't be able to get out, mind you, but that they wouldn't be able to get in. That was their problem. They didn't care if they died, so long as they died inside Canudos."

"And you...you were happy," the baron said. Might this man not be even loonier than he had always seemed to him to be? Wasn't all this most probably just a bunch of tall tales?

"They saw them arriving, spreading out over the hills, occupying, one after the other, all the places by way of which they could slip in or out before. The cannons began to bombard them around the clock, from the north, the south, the east, the west. But as they were too close and might kill their own men, they limited themselves to firing on the towers. Because they still hadn't fallen."

"Jurema? Jurema?" the baron exclaimed. "The little girl from Calumbi brought you happiness, made you a spiritual convert of the jaguncos? jaguncos?"

Behind the thick lenses, like fish in an aquarium, the myopic eyes became agitated, blinked. It was late, the baron had been here for many hours now, he ought to get up out of his chair and go to Estela, he had not been away from her this long since the tragedy. But he continued to sit there waiting, itching with impatience.

"The explanation is that I had resigned myself," the baron heard him say in a barely audible voice.

"To dying?" he asked, knowing that it was not death that his visitor was thinking about.

"To not loving, to not being loved by any woman," he thought he heard him answer, for the words were spoken in an even less audible voice. "To being ugly, to being shy, to never holding a woman in my arms unless I'd paid her money to do so."

The baron sat there flabbergasted. The thought flashed through his mind that in this study of his, where so many secrets had come to light, so many plots been hatched, no one had ever made such an unexpected and surprising confession.

"That is something you are unable to understand," the nearsighted journalist said, as though the statement were an accusation. "Because you doubtless learned what love was at a very early age. Many women must have loved you, admired you, given themselves to you. You were doubtless able to choose your very beautiful wife from any number of other very beautiful women who were merely awaiting your consent to throw themselves in your arms. You are unable to understand what happens to those of us who are not handsome, charming, privileged, rich, as you were. You are unable to understand what it is to know that love and pleasure are not for you. That you are doomed to the company of wh.o.r.es."

"Love, pleasure," the baron thought, disconcerted: two disturbing words, two meteorites in the dark night of his life. It struck him as a sacrilege that those beautiful, forgotten words should appear on the lips of this laughable creature sitting all hunched over in his chair, his legs as skinny as a heron's twined one around the other. Wasn't it comical, grotesque, that a little mongrel b.i.t.c.h from the backlands should be the woman who had brought such a man as this, who despite everything was a cultivated man, to speak of love and pleasure? Did those words not call to mind luxury, refinement, sensibility, elegance, the rites and the ripe wisdom of an imagination nourished by wide reading, travels, education? Were they not words completely at odds with Jurema of Calumbi? He thought of the baroness and a wound opened in his breast. He made an effort to turn his thoughts back to what the journalist was saying.

In another of his abrupt transitions, he was talking once again of the war. "The drinking water gave out," he was saying, and as always he seemed to be reprimanding him. "Every drop they drank in Canudos came from the source of supply at Fazenda Velha, a few wells along the Vaza-Barris. They had dug trenches there and defended them tooth and nail. But in the face of those five thousand fresh troops not even Pajeu could keep them from falling into the enemy's hands. So there was no more water."

Pajeu? The baron shuddered. He saw before him that face with Indian features, that skin with a yellowish cast, the scar where the nose should have been, heard once more that voice calmly announcing to him that he had come to burn Calumbi down in the name of the Father. Pajeu-the individual who incarnated all the wickedness and all the stupidity of which Estela had been the victim.

"That's right, Pajeu," the nearsighted visitor said. "I detested him. And feared him more than I feared the soldiers' bullets. Because he was in love with Jurema and had only to lift his little finger to steal her from me and spirit her away."

He laughed once more, a nervous, strident little laugh that ended in wheezes and sneezes. The baron's mind was elsewhere; he, too, was busy hating that fanatical brigand. What had become of the perpetrator of that inexpiable crime? He was too beside himself to ask, afraid that he would hear that he was safe and sound. The journalist was repeating the word "water." It was an effort for the baron to turn his thoughts away from himself, to listen to what the man was saying. Yes, the waters of the Vaza-Barris. He knew what those wells were like; they lay alongside the riverbed, and the floodwaters that flowed into them supplied men, birds, goats, cows in the long months (and entire years sometimes) when the Vaza-Barris dried up. And what about Pajeu? What about Pajeu? Had he died in battle? Had he been captured? The question was on the tip of the baron's tongue and yet he did not ask it.

"One has to understand these things," the journalist was now saying, wholeheartedly, vehemently, angrily. "I was barely able to see them, naturally. But I was unable to understand them either."

"Of whom are you speaking?" the baron asked. "My mind was elsewhere; I've lost the thread."

"Of the women and the youngsters," the nearsighted journalist muttered. "That's what they called them. The 'youngsters.' When the soldiers captured the water supply, they went out with the women at night to try to fill tin drums full of water so that the jaguncos jaguncos could go on fighting. Just the women and the children, n.o.body else. And they also tried to steal the soldiers' unspeakable garbage that meant food for them. Do you follow me?" could go on fighting. Just the women and the children, n.o.body else. And they also tried to steal the soldiers' unspeakable garbage that meant food for them. Do you follow me?"

"Ought I to be surprised?" the baron said. "To be amazed?"

"You ought to try to understand," the nearsighted journalist murmured. "Who gave those orders? The Counselor? Abbot Joao? Antonio Vilanova? Who was it who decided that only women and children would crawl to Fazenda Velha to steal water, knowing that soldiers were lying in wait for them at the wells so as to shoot them point-blank, knowing that out of every ten only one or two would get back alive? Who was it who decided that the combatants shouldn't risk that lesser suicide since their lot was to risk the superior form of suicide that dying fighting represented?" The baron saw the journalist's eyes seek his in anguish once again. "I suspect that it was neither the Counselor nor the leaders. It was spontaneous, simultaneous, anonymous decisions. Otherwise, they would not have obeyed, they would not have gone to the slaughter with such conviction."

"They were fanatics," the baron said, aware of the scorn in his voice. "Fanaticism impels people to act in that way. It is not always lofty, sublime motives that best explain heroism. There is also prejudice, narrow-mindedness, the most stupid ideas imaginable."

The nearsighted journalist sat there staring at him; his forehead was dripping with sweat and he appeared to be searching for a cutting answer. The baron thought that he would venture some insolent remark. But he saw him merely nod his head, as though to avoid argument.

"That was great sport for the soldiers of course, a diversion in the midst of their boring life from day to day," he said. "Posting themselves at Fazenda Velha and waiting for the light of the moon to reveal the shadows creeping up to get water. We could hear the shots, the sound when a bullet pierced the tin drum, the container, the earthenware jug. In the morning the ground around the wells was strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. But, but..."

"But you didn't see any of this," the baron broke in. His visitor's agitation vastly annoyed him.

"Jurema and the Dwarf saw them," the nearsighted journalist answered. "I heard them. I heard the women and the youngsters as they left for Fazenda Velha with their tin drums, canteens, pitchers, bottles, bidding their husbands or their parents farewell, exchanging blessings, promising each other that they would meet in heaven. And I heard what happened when they managed to get back alive. The tin drum, the bucket, the pitcher was not offered to dying oldsters, to babies frantic from thirst. No. It was taken straight to the trenches, so that those who could still hold a rifle could hold one for a few hours or minutes more."

"And what about you?" the baron asked, scarcely able to contain his growing annoyance at this mixture of reverence and terror with which the nearsighted journalist spoke of the jaguncos jaguncos. "Why is it you didn't die of thirst? You weren't a combatant, were you?"

"I wonder myself why I didn't," the journalist answered. "If there were any logic to this story, there are any number of times when I should have died in Canudos."

"Love doesn't quench thirst," the baron said, trying to wound his feelings.

"No, it doesn't quench it," he agreed. "But it gives one strength to endure it. Moreover, we had a little something to drink. What we could get by sucking or chewing. The blood of birds, even black vultures. And leaves, stems, roots, anything that had juice. And urine, of coa.r.s.e." His eyes sought the baron's and again the latter thought: "As though to accuse me."

"Didn't you know that? Even though a person doesn't drink any liquids, he continues to urinate. That was an important discovery, there in Canudos."

"Tell me about Pajeu, if you will," the baron said. "What became of him?"

The nearsighted journalist suddenly slid down onto the floor. He had done so several times in the course of the conversation, and the baron wondered whether these changes of position were due to inner turmoil or to numbness in his limbs.

"Did I hear you say that he was in love with Jurema?" the baron pressed him. He suddenly had the absurd feeling that the former maidservant of Calumbi was the only woman in the sertao sertao, a female under whose fateful spell all the men with any sort of connection to Canudos unconsciously fell sooner or later. "Why didn't he carry her off with him?"

"Because of the war, perhaps," the nearsighted journalist answered. "He was one of the leaders. As the enemy began to close the ring, he had less time. And less inclination, I imagine."

He burst into such painful laughter that the baron deduced that this time it would end in a fit not of sneezing but of weeping. But neither sneezes nor tears were forthcoming.

"As a result, I found myself wis.h.i.+ng at times that the war would go on and even that the fighting would get worse so that it would keep Pajeu occupied." He took a deep breath. "Wis.h.i.+ng that he'd get killed in the war or some other way."

"What became of him?" the baron said insistently. The journalist paid no attention.

"But despite the war, he might very well have carried her off with him and taken her for his woman," he said, lost in thought or in fantasy, his eyes fixed on the floor. "Didn't other jaguncos jaguncos do that? Didn't I hear them, in the midst of all the shooting, day or night, mounting their women in hammocks, or pallets, or on the floors of their houses?" do that? Didn't I hear them, in the midst of all the shooting, day or night, mounting their women in hammocks, or pallets, or on the floors of their houses?"

The baron felt his face turn beet-red. He had never allowed certain subjects, which so often come up among men when they are alone together, to be discussed in his presence, not even when he was with his closest friends. If his visitor went any further, he would shut him up.

"So the war wasn't the explanation." The journalist looked up at him, as though remembering that he was there. "He'd become a saint, don't you see? That's how people in Canudos put it: he became a saint, the angel kissed him, the angel brushed him with its wings, the angel touched him." He nodded his head several times. "Perhaps that's it. He didn't want to take her by force. That's the other explanation. More farfetched, doubtless, but perhaps. So that everything would be done in accordance with G.o.d's will. According to the dictates of religion. Marrying her. I heard him ask her. Perhaps."

"What became of him?" the baron repeated slowly, emphasizing each word.