The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [127]
The baron was the first to recover from the shock. “A foreigner was trying to bring arms to Canudos?” The effort he was making to speak in a normal tone of voice made him sound even more surprised.
“That’s what he was trying to do, but he didn’t get there.” The mop of dirty hair nodded. Still with his head bowed respectfully, Rufino continued to gaze at the floor. “Colonel Epaminondas Gonçalves ordered him killed. And he thinks he’s dead. But he isn’t. Jurema saved him. And now he and Jurema are together.”
Gumúcio and the baron looked at each other dumfounded, and José Bernardo Murau struggled to get up out of his rocking chair, muttering something. The baron was pale and his hands were trembling. Even now the guide did not appear to be aware of how badly he had upset the three men by the story he had recounted.
“In other words, Galileo Gall is still alive,” Gumúcio finally managed to say, striking the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. “In other words, the corpse burned to a cinder, the severed head, and all the other acts of violence…”
“They didn’t cut his head off, sir,” Rufino interrupted him, and again an electric silence reigned in the untidy little sitting room. “They only cut off his long hair. The dead body was a madman who’d murdered his children. The foreigner is still alive.”
He fell silent, and though Adalberto de Gumúcio and José Bernardo Murau asked him several questions at once and pressed him for details and demanded that he answer, Rufino remained stubbornly silent. The baron knew the people from his land well enough to know that the guide had said what he had to say and that there was not anybody or anything that could get another word out of him.
“Is there anything else that you can tell us, godson?” He had put one hand on Rufino’s shoulder and was making no effort to conceal his emotion.
Rufino shook his head.
“I thank you for coming,” the baron said. “You’ve done me a great service, my son. You’ve done us all one. And the country, too, even though you don’t know it.”
Rufino spoke out once again, his voice more insistent than ever: “I want to break the promise I made you, godfather.”
The baron nodded, feeling greatly distressed. The thought crossed his mind that he was about to pronounce a death sentence upon someone who was perhaps innocent, or who had acted for compelling reasons, out of estimable motives, and that he was going to feel remorse, repugnance even, for what he was about to say, and yet he could not do otherwise.
“Do what your conscience bids you,” he murmured. “May God be with you and forgive you.”
Rufino raised his head, sighed. The baron saw that his little eyes were bloodshot and brimming with tears, and that the expression on his face was that of a man who had survived a terrible test. Rufino knelt, and the baron made the sign of the cross on his forehead and extended his hand for him to kiss again. The guide rose to his feet and left the room without so much as a glance at the other two persons in it.
Adalberto was the first to speak. “I bow to you in due apology,” he said, gazing at the shards of glass scattered all about at his feet. “Epaminondas is a man of great resources. I willingly concede that we are mistaken about him.”
“Too bad he’s not on our side,” the baron added. But despite the extraordinary discovery he had made, he was not thinking about Epaminondas Gonçalves, but about Jurema, the young woman whom Rufino was going to kill, and about how sorrow-stricken Estela would be if she learned of this.
[III]
“The order has been posted since yesterday,” Moreira César says, pointing with his whip to the official announcement ordering the civilian population to register all firearms in their possession with the Seventh Regiment. “And this morning, when the column arrived, it was read aloud publicly before the search. So you knew what you were risking, senhores.