The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [112]
The atmosphere was very tense and everyone wanted to ask questions, to reply to these remarks. But the baron deemed that this was not the proper time to discuss the matter further. After they had eaten and drunk throughout the afternoon and into the night, it would be easier to make them forget their doubts, their scruples.
“Let us join the ladies and have lunch,” he proposed, rising to his feet. We’ll talk afterward. Politics shouldn’t be everything in life. Pleasant things ought to have their place too.”
[II]
Transformed into a camp, Queimadas is a beehive of activity in the strong wind that covers it with dust: orders are barked out and troops hurriedly fall into formation amid cavalrymen with drawn sabers who are shouting and gesticulating. Suddenly bugle calls cleave the dawn and the curious bystanders run along the bank of the Itapicuru to watch the stretch of bone-dry caatinga that disappears on the horizon in the direction of Monte Santo: the first corps of the Seventh Regiment are setting out and the wind carries away the marching song that the soldiers are singing at the tops of their lungs.
Inside the railroad station, since first light, Colonel Moreira César has been studying topographical maps, giving instructions, signing dispatches, and receiving the duty reports of the various battalions. The drowsy correspondents are harnessing their mules and horses and loading the baggage cart outside the door of the station—all of them except the scrawny reporter from the Jornal de Notícias, who, with his portable desk beneath his arm and his inkwell fastened to his sleeve, is prowling about the place trying to make his way to the colonel’s side. Despite the early hour, the six members of the Municipal Council are on hand to bid the commander of the Seventh Regiment farewell. They are sitting waiting on a bench, and the swarm of officers and aides coming and going around them is paying no more attention to them than to the huge posters of the Progressivist Republican Party and the Bahia Autonomist Party that are still hanging from the ceiling. But they are amused as they watch the scarecrow-thin journalist, who, taking advantage of a moment of calm, has finally managed to approach Moreira César.
“May I ask you a question, Colonel?” he says in his thin, nasal voice.
“The press conference was yesterday,” the officer answers, examining him from head to foot as though he were a being from another planet. But the creature’s outlandish appearance or his audacity causes the colonel to relent: “All right, then. What’s your question?”
“It’s about the prisoners,” the reporter murmurs, both his squint eyes fixed on him. “It has come to my attention that you are taking thieves and murderers into the regiment. I went down to the jail last night with the two lieutenants, and saw them enlist seven of the inmates.”
“That’s correct,” Moreira César says, looking him up and down inquisitively. “But what’s your question?”
“The question is: Why? What’s the reason for promising those criminals their freedom?”
“They know how to fight,” Colonel Moreira César says. And then, after a pause: “A criminal is a case of excessive human energy that flows in the wrong direction. War can channel it in the right one. They know why they’re fighting, and that makes them brave, even heroic at times. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And you’ll see it, too, if you get to Canudos. Because”—he inspects him from head to foot once again—“from the looks of you, you’re likely not to last one day in the backlands.”
“I’ll try my best to hold up, Colonel.” The nearsighted journalist withdraws and Colonel Tamarindo and Major Cunha Matos, who were standing waiting behind him, step forward.
“The vanguard has just moved out,” Colonel Tamarindo says.