The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [147]
Only then does the messenger report the earthshaking news. “We have two prisoners, sir. One of them is wounded, but the other one is able to talk.”
In the silence that ensues, Moreira César, Tamarindo, and Olímpio de Castro exchange looks. The young officer goes on to explain that three patrols stand ready at all times to scour the countryside the minute the whistles are heard, that two hours before, when the whistling started, the three of them headed off in different directions before the arrows started falling, and that one of them spied the archers just as they slipped away behind some rocks. The patrol had given chase, caught up with them, and tried to take them alive, but one of them attacked and was wounded. Moreira César immediately gallops off in the direction of the rear guard, followed by the correspondents, who are wildly excited at the thought of seeing the enemy’s face at last. They are not to see it for some time. When they reach the rear guard an hour later, the prisoners are shut up in a hut guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets who do not allow them to come anywhere near it. They prowl about the vicinity, watch the officers bustling back and forth, receive evasive answers from those of them who have seen the prisoners. Two or perhaps three hours later Moreira César appears, on his way back to his place at the head of the column. They finally learn a little about what was gone on.
“One of them is in rather bad shape,” the colonel tells them. “He may not last till we get to Monte Santo. A pity. They should be executed there, so that their death might serve as an example. It would be pointless here.”
When the veteran journalist who always goes about all bundled up as though he were recovering from a cold asks if the prisoners have provided any useful information, the colonel shrugs skeptically. “The usual rigamarole about God, the Antichrist, the end of the world. They’re willing to talk endlessly about all that. But not a word out of them about accomplices or instigators. It may well be that they don’t know very much, the poor devils. They belong to a band led by a cangaceiro named Pajeú.”
The column immediately marches off again, at a hellish pace, and enters Monte Santo as night is falling. There things take a different turn from what they have in other towns, where the regiment has merely made a rapid search for arms. Here, as the correspondents are still dismounting in the town square beneath the tamarinds, at the foot of the mountainside lined with chapels, surrounded by women, children, and old men with looks in their eyes that they have already learned to recognize—apathetic, mistrustful, distant, stubbornly feigning stupidity and total ignorance of what is going on—they see the troops running, by twos and threes, toward the mud huts and entering them with their rifles at the ready, as though expecting to encounter resistance. Alongside them, in front of them, everywhere, as orders and shouts ring out, the patrols kick in doors and windows and force them open with blows of their rifle butts, and the correspondents soon begin to see lines of townspeople being herded into four enclosures guarded by sentinels. There they are interrogated. From where the journalists are standing they can hear insults, protests, bellows of pain, along with the wails and screams of women outside struggling to get past the sentinels. A few short minutes suffice to turn all of Monte Santo into the scene of a strange battle, without charges or exchanges of fire.