The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [128]
The prisoners are tied back to back, and there are no torture marks either on their faces or on their torsos. Barefoot and bareheaded, they could be father and son, uncle and nephew, or two brothers, since the younger one’s features are exactly like the older one’s, and both have a similar look in their eyes as they gaze at the little camp table at which the tribunal that has just tried them has sat. Of the three army officers who acted as judges, two are now walking off, with the same haste with which they came and passed sentence on them, toward the companies that are continuing to arrive in Cansanção, in addition to those already camped in the town. Only Moreira César is still there, standing next to the incriminating evidence: two carbines, a box of bullets, a little pouch full of gunpowder. Besides concealing arms, the prisoners have attacked and wounded one of the soldiers who arrested them. The entire population of Cansanção—a few dozen peasants—is in the clearing, behind soldiers with fixed bayonets who are keeping them from coming any closer.
“It wasn’t worth the while for this junk.” The colonel’s boot brushes the carbines. There is not the slightest animosity in his voice. He turns to a sergeant standing next to him and, as though asking him the time, says to him: “Give them a swallow of brandy.”
Right next to the prisoners, bunched together in a little group, not saying a word, with a look of fear and stupefaction on their faces, are the correspondents. Those not wearing hats have covered their heads with their handkerchiefs to shield them from the blazing sun. Beyond the clearing, the usual sounds can be heard: the clump of heavy shoes and boots against the earth, the pawing and whinnying of horses, voices shouting orders, creaking noises, bursts of laughter. It would appear that the soldiers who are arriving or who are already there resting couldn’t care less about what is about to happen. The sergeant has uncorked a bottle and holds it up to the mouth of each of the prisoners in turn. Both take a long swallow.
“I want to be shot to death, Colonel,” the younger one suddenly pleads.
Moreira César shakes his head. “I don’t waste ammunition on traitors to the Republic,” he says. “Courage. Die like men.”
He gives a signal and two soldiers unsheathe the knives at their waist and step forward. They move briskly and precisely, their gestures identical: each of them grabs the hair of a prisoner with his left hand, thrusts his head abruptly backward, and slits his throat with a deep slash that cuts short the animal moan of the younger one and the cry of the older one: “Long live Blessed Jesus the Counselor! Long live Belo…”
The soldiers close ranks, as though to block the villagers’ path, though they haven’t budged. Some of the correspondents have averted their eyes, one of them looks on in utter dejection, and the nearsighted reporter from the Jornal de Notícias grimaces. Moreira César gazes at the bloodstained bodies lying on the ground.
“Leave them in plain sight at the foot of the posted order,” he says in a soft voice.
He then appears to put the execution entirely out of his mind. With nervous, rapid strides, he starts off across the clearing toward the hut where a hammock has been put up for him. The group of correspondents takes off after him and catches up. He walks on in their midst, grave, calm, not sweating a drop, unlike the reporters, whose faces are flushed from the heat and the shock of what they have just witnessed. They have not yet recovered from the sight of those throats being slit just a few steps away from them: the meaning of certain words—war, cruelty, suffering, fate—has left the abstract domain in which it dwelt and taken on a measurable, tangible, carnal materiality that has left them speechless. They reach the door of the hut. An orderly hands the colonel a washbasin, a towel. The commanding officer of the Seventh Regiment rinses his hands and pats his face with cool water.
The correspondent who always goes about all bundled up stammers: “May we send dispatches about this execution,