The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [132]
“Certainly,” the high-pitched voice says. “You know as well as I do that there’s one.”
“Apart from Calumbi, I mean,” Colonel Tamarindo corrects himself, ill at ease. “The colonel refused in no uncertain terms the baron’s invitation to quarter the regiment. It’s not the proper place to take him.”
“There isn’t any other,” the nearsighted journalist says trenchantly, gazing intently through the semidarkness at the field tent and the greenish glow coming from inside it. “Everything the eye can see between Cansanção and Canudos belongs to the Baron of Canabrava.”
The colonel looks at him in distress. At that moment Dr. Souza Ferreiro comes out of the tent, wiping his hands. He is a man with silver-gray temples and a receding hairline, dressed in an army uniform. The officers surround him, forgetting the journalist, who remains standing there nonetheless, brazenly staring at them with eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses.
“It’s the nervous and physical fatigue of the last few days,” the doctor says querulously, placing a cigarette between his lips. “Another attack, two years later, in the situation we’re in. Bad luck, a trick of the Devil—who can say? I’ve bled him, for the congestion. But he needs baths, massages, the whole treatment. You decide, gentlemen.”
Cunha Matos and Olímpio de Castro look at Colonel Tamarindo. The latter clears his throat but says nothing. “Do you insist that we take him to Calumbi, when you know the baron’s there?” he finally says.
“I didn’t say a word about Calumbi,” Souza Ferreiro shoots back. “I’m only talking about what the patient needs. And allow me to add one more thing. It’s foolhardy to keep him here in these conditions.”
“You know the colonel,” Cunha Matos interjects. “He’ll feel affronted, humiliated in the house of one of the leaders of the monarchist subversion.”
Dr. Souza Ferreiro shrugs. “I respect your decision. I’m your junior officer. I’ve fulfilled my responsibility.”
A commotion behind them causes the four officers and the journalist to turn around and look in the direction of the field tent. Moreira César is standing in the doorway, dimly visible in the feeble light from the lamp inside, roaring something they fail to understand. Naked to the waist, leaning on the canvas with his two hands, he has dark, motionless patches on his chest that must be leeches. He has the strength to remain on his feet for only a few seconds. They see him collapse, a querulous moan on his lips. The doctor kneels down to force his mouth open as the officers pick him up by the feet, the arms, the shoulders, to carry him back to the folding cot.
“I assume the responsibility of taking him to Calumbi, sir,” Captain Olímpio de Castro says.
“Very well,” Tamarindo replies. “Take an escort and accompany Souza Ferreiro. But the regiment will not go to the baron’s. It will camp here.”
“May I go with you, Captain?” the nearsighted journalist asks in his importunate voice. “I know the baron. I worked for his paper before I went over to the Jornal de Notícias.”
They stayed in Ipupiará ten days more, after the visit from the capangas on horseback, who took with them as their only booty a bright-red shock of hair. The stranger began to get better. One night the Bearded Lady heard him conversing, in labored Portuguese, with Jurema, asking her what country he was in, what month and day it was. The following evening he slid down off the wagon and managed to take a few tottering steps. And two nights later he was in the Ipupiará general store, his fever gone, thin as a rail but in good spirits, plying the storekeeper (who kept looking at his bare skull in amusement) with questions about Canudos and the war. Overcome with a sort of wild exhilaration, he made the man repeat several times that an army of half a thousand men, come from Bahia under the command of Major Febrônio, had been demolished at O Cambaio. The news excited