The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [103]
“He’ll be along. Father Joaquim won’t let us down,” the Counselor answered. And he looked around for Alexandrinha Correa, who had been sitting with her head hunched over between her shoulders, visibly embarrassed, ever since the name of the parish priest of Cumbe had first been mentioned. “Come here to me. You mustn’t feel ashamed, my daughter.”
Alexandrinha Correa—with the years she had become thinner and her face grown more wrinkled, but she still had her turned-up nose and an intractable air about her that contrasted with her humble manner—crept over to the Counselor without daring to look at him.
Placing one hand on her head as he spoke, he said to her: “From that evil there came good, Alexandrinha. He was a bad shepherd, and because he had sinned, he suffered, repented, settled his accounts with heaven, and is now a good son of the Father. When all is said and done, you did him a service. And you did your brothers and sisters of Belo Monte one as well, for thanks to Dom Joaquim we are still able to hear Mass from time to time.”
There was sadness in his voice as he spoke these last words, and perhaps he did not notice that the former water divineress bent her head to kiss his tunic before retreating to her corner. In the early days at Canudos, a number of priests used to come to say Mass, baptize babies, and marry couples. But after that Holy Mission of the Capuchin missionary priests from Salvador which ended so badly, the Archbishop of Bahia had forbidden parish priests to offer the sacraments at Canudos. Father Joaquim was the only one who had continued to come nonetheless. He brought not only religious solace but also paper and ink for the Lion of Natuba, candles and incense for the Little Blessed One, and all sorts of things that Abbot João and the Vilanova brothers had asked him to procure for them. What impelled him to defy first the Church and now the civil authorities? Alexandrinha Correa perhaps, the mother of his children, with whom, each time he visited Canudos, he had an austere conversation in the Sanctuary or in the Chapel of Santo Antônio. Or the Counselor perhaps, in whose presence he was always visibly perturbed and seemingly moved to the depths of his soul. Or the hope perhaps (as many people suspected) that by coming he was paying a long-standing debt owed heaven and the people of the backlands.
The Little Blessed One had started to speak again, about the Triduum of the Precious Blood that was to begin that afternoon, when they heard a gentle knock on the door amid all the uproar outside. Maria Quadrado went to open it. With the sun shining brightly behind him and a multitude of heads trying to peek over his shoulders, the parish priest of Cumbe appeared in the doorway.
“Praised be Our Lord Jesus Christ,” the Counselor said, rising to his feet so quickly that the Lion of Natuba was obliged to step aside. “We were just speaking of you, and suddenly you appear.”
He walked to the door to meet Father Joaquim, whose cassock was covered with dust, as was his face. The saint bent down, took his hand, and kissed it. The humility and respect with which the Counselor always received him made the priest feel ill at ease, but today he was so perturbed that he did not appear to have even noticed.
“A telegram arrived,” he said, as the Little Blessed One, Abbot João, the Mother of Men, and the women of the Sacred Choir kissed his hand. “A regiment of the Federal Army is on its way here, from Rio. Its commanding officer is a famous figure, a hero who has won every war he’s ever led his troops in.”
“Thus far, nobody has ever won a war against the Father,” the Counselor said joyfully.
Crouching over his bench, the Lion of Natuba was writing swiftly.
Having finished the job in Itiúba that he had hired on for with the people from the railroad company in Jacobina, Rufino is now guiding a group of cowhands along the rugged back trails of