The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [124]
“True,” Rufino says.
“I don’t understand why the two of them didn’t kill me,” Caifás says. “I asked Jurema why, in Ipupiará, and she couldn’t tell me. That foreigner is a strange one.”
“That he is,” Rufino agrees.
Among the people at the market are a number of soldiers. They are what is left of Major Febrônio de Brito’s expedition, troops who have stayed in town waiting, they say, for an army that is to arrive. Their uniforms are in rags, they wander about like lost souls; they sleep in the main square, in the train station, in the gorges of the river. They are here too now, roaming aimlessly about amid the stalls, by twos, by fours, looking longingly at the women, the food, the drinks all round them. The townspeople make it a point not to speak to them, not to listen to them, not to take any note of them.
“Promises tie your hands, don’t they?” Rufino says timidly, a deep frown furrowing his forehead.
“That they do,” Caifás concedes. “How can a person go back on a promise made to the Blessed Jesus or the Virgin?”
“Or to the baron?” Rufino says, thrusting his head forward.
“The baron can release you from one made to him,” Caifás says. He fills their glasses again and they drink. Amid all the hubbub of the market, a violent argument breaks out somewhere in the distance and ends in a chorus of laughter. The sky has clouded over, as though it is about to rain.
“I know how you feel,” Caifás suddenly says. “I know that you can’t sleep, that everything in life is over for you. That even when you’re with other people, the way you’re with me right now, you’re wreaking your vengeance. That’s how it is, Rufino. That’s how it is when a man values his honor.”
A line of ants heads across the table, detouring around the bottle of cachaça that is now empty. Rufino watches them advance and disappear. His hand, still holding the glass, clenches it tightly.
“There’s something you ought to keep in mind,” Caifás adds. “Death isn’t enough. It doesn’t remove the stain. But a slap, a whiplash, square in the face, does. Because a man’s face is as sacred as his mother or his wife.”
Rufino stands up. The woman who owns the place hurries over and Caifás reaches toward his pocket, but the tracker stops him and pays the bill himself. They wait for her to bring the change, neither of them saying a word, each lost in his own thoughts.
“Is it true your mother’s gone to Canudos?” Caifás asks. And, as Rufino nods: “Lots of people are going there. Epaminondas is enlisting more men in the Rural Police. An army’s coming and he wants to give it a hand. I have kinfolk who are with the saint, too. It’s hard to wage war against a person’s own family, isn’t that so, Rufino?”
“I’ve another war to wage,” Rufino murmurs, pocketing the coins the woman hands him.
“I hope you find him, that he hasn’t died of illness,” Caifás says.
Their silhouettes disappear amid the tumult of the Queimadas market.
“There’s something I don’t understand, Baron,” Colonel José Bernardo Murau repeated, relaxing in the rocking chair in which he was swaying slowly back and forth, pushing it with his foot. “Colonel Moreira César hates us and we hate him. His coming to Bahia is a great victory for Epaminondas and a defeat for the principle we’ve always upheld: that Rio is not to interfere in our affairs. Yet the Autonomist Party gives him a hero’s welcome in Salvador, and now we’re competing with Epaminondas to see which party will help Throat-Slitter the most.”
The cool, whitewashed sitting room of the old manor house looked untidy and run-down: the bouquet of flowers in a large copper vase was faded, there were cracks in the wall, and the floor was chipped. Through the windows the cane field could be seen, burning-hot in the sun, and just outside the house a group of servants were hitching