The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [105]
At dawn the following morning the silhouette of the guide stands out against the light on a hill from which his cabin can be seen. He walks through the little copse dotted with boulders and bushes where he first met Galileo Gall and makes his way toward the rise on which his dwelling stands, at his usual pace, a quick trot halfway between walking and running. His face bears the traces of his long journey, of the troubles he has come up against, of the bad news he has had the night before: tense and rigid, the features stand out more sharply, the lines and hollows more deeply etched. The only thing he has with him is the knife that he has borrowed from the Blessed Jesus. Approaching within a few yards of his cabin, he gazes warily about. The gate of the animal pen is open, and it is empty. But what Rufino stands staring at with eyes at once grave, curious, and dumfounded is not the animal pen but the open space in front of the house, where there are now two crosses that were not there before, propped up by two piles of little stones. On entering the cabin, he spies the oil lamp, the casks and jars, the pallet, the hammock, the trunk, the print of the Virgin of Lapa, the cooking pots and the bowls, and the pile of firewood. There doesn’t seem to be anything missing, and what is more, the cabin appears to have been carefully tidied up, each thing in its proper place. Rufino looks around again, slowly, as though trying to wrench from these objects the secret of what has happened in his absence. He can hear the silence: no dog barking, no cackling hens, no sheep bells tinkling, no voice of his wife. He finally begins walking about the room, closely examining everything. By the time he finishes, his eyes are red. He leaves the cabin, closing the door gently behind him.
He heads toward Queimadas, gleaming brightly in the distance beneath a sun that is now directly overhead. Rufino’s silhouette disappears around a bend of the promontory, then reappears, trotting amid the lead-colored stones, cacti, yellowish brush, the sharp-pointed palisade fence round a corral. Half an hour later he enters the town by way of Avenida Itapicuru and walks up along it to the main square. The sun reflects like quicksilver off the little whitewashed houses with blue or green doors. The soldiers who have beaten a retreat after the defeat at O Cambaio have begun to straggle into town, ragged strangers who can be seen standing about on the street corners, sleeping underneath the trees, or bathing in the river. The guide walks past them without looking at them, perhaps without even seeing them, thinking only of the townspeople: cowhands with tanned, weather-beaten faces, women nursing their babies, horsemen riding off, oldsters sunning themselves, children running about. They bid him good day or call out to him by name, and he knows that after he has passed by, they turn round and stare at him, point a finger at him, and begin to whisper among themselves. He returns their greetings with a nod of his head, looking straight ahead without smiling so as to discourage anyone from trying to have a word with him. He crosses the main square—a dense mass of sunlight, dogs, hustle and bustle—bowing to left and right, aware of the murmurs, the stares, the gestures, the thoughts he arouses. He does not stop till he reaches a little shop with candles and religious images hanging outside, opposite the little Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary. He removes his sombrero, takes a deep breath as though he were about to dive into water, and goes inside. On catching sight of him, the tiny old woman who is handing a package to a customer opens her eyes wide and her face lights up. But she waits until the buyer has left before