The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [126]
“The entire plot against us is cheap, grotesque, and utterly vulgar,” Gumúcio said.
“But it’s brought him good results, up to now.” The baron glanced outside: yes, the horses were ready. He announced to his friends that he had best be off again, now that he’d achieved his objective: convincing the most stubborn landowner in all the state of Bahia. He was about to go see if Estela and Sebastiana were ready to leave, when José Bernardo Murau reminded him that a man who’d come from Queimadas had been waiting to see him for two hours. The baron had forgotten all about him. “That’s right, that’s right,” he muttered, and had word sent to him to come in.
A moment later Rufino’s silhouette appeared in the door. They saw him remove his straw sombrero, nod politely to the owner of the house and Gumúcio, walk over to the baron, bend down and kiss his hand.
“How glad I am to see you, godson,” the latter said to him, patting him affectionately on the back. “How good of you to come to see us. How is Jurema? Why didn’t you bring her with you? Estela would have been so pleased to see her.”
The baron noted that the guide was standing there before him with his head hanging, clutching his sombrero and looking extremely embarrassed. He immediately suspected what the reason for his former peon’s visit might be.
“Has something happened to your wife?” he asked. “Is Jurema ill?”
“Give me leave to break my promise, godfather,” Rufino blurted out. Gumúcio and Murau, whose attention had wandered, took a sudden interest in this conversation between the baron and this man who looked so shamefaced. In the tense, enigmatic silence that ensued, it took the baron some time to realize what those words might mean, to understand what it was that Rufino was asking of him.
“Jurema?” he said, blinking, stepping backward, searching his memory. “What’s she done to you? She hasn’t abandoned you, has she, Rufino? Do you mean to say that that’s what she’s done, that she’s gone off with another man?”
The head of straight, dirty hair that was before him nodded almost imperceptibly. The baron then understood why his godson was hiding his eyes from him and realized what an effort this was costing him, how much he was suffering. He felt compassion for him.
“Why are you asking that of me, Rufino?” he said with a pained gesture. “What good would that do you? You’d be bringing misfortune on yourself twice over instead of once. If she’s gone off, in a way she’s already dead, she’s killed herself without your having had a hand in it. Forget Jurema. Forget Queimadas for a while, too. You’ll find yourself another wife who’ll be faithful to you. Come with us to Calumbi, where you have so many friends.”
Their curiosity aroused, Gumúcio and José Bernardo Murau awaited Rufino’s answer. Gumúcio had poured himself a glass of punch and was holding it to his lips without drinking.
“Give me leave to break my promise, godfather,” the guide said at last, not raising his eyes.
A cordial smile of approval appeared on Adalberto de Gumúcio’s face as he continued to listen with bated breath to this conversation between the baron and his former servant. José Bernardo Murau, on the other hand, had started to yawn. The baron told himself that there was no use arguing, that he had to accept the inevitable and say either yes or no, rather than deluding himself that he could change Rufino’s mind.
Even so, he tried to stall for time. “Who stole her from you?” he murmured. “Who was it that she ran away with?”
Rufino paused a second before answering. “A foreigner who came to Queimadas,” he said. He paused once again, and then added, speaking very slowly: “They sent him to my house. He was trying to get to Canudos, to bring the jagunços arms.”
The glass fell from Adalberto de Gumúcio’s hand and smashed to pieces at his feet, but neither the sound of the glass breaking nor the spattering punch nor the shower of shards distracted the three men as they stared