The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [153]
Gall, Jurema, and the Dwarf chewed slowly, without gusto, spitting out the little twigs and roots once they had extracted the juice from them. At the feet of the revolutionary was something hard, lying half buried. Yes, it was a skull, yellowed and broken. Ever since he had been in the backlands, he had seen human bones along the roads. Someone had told him that some men in these parts dug up their enemies’ dead bodies and left them lying in the open as food for scavengers, because they believed that by so doing they were sending their souls to hell. He examined the skull, turning it this way and that in his hands.
“To my father, heads were books, mirrors,” he said nostalgically. “What would he think if he knew that I was here in this place, in the state that I’m in? The last time I saw him, I was seventeen years old. I disappointed him by telling him that action was more important than science. He was a rebel, too, though in his own way. Doctors made fun of him, and called him a sorcerer.”
The Dwarf looked at him, trying to understand, as did Jurema. Gall went on chewing and spitting, his face pensive.
“Why did you come here?” the Dwarf murmured. “Aren’t you afraid of dying so far from your homeland? You have no family here, no friends. Nobody will remember you.”
“You’re my family,” Gall answered. “And the jagunços, too.”
“You’re not a saint, you don’t pray, you don’t talk about God,” the Dwarf said. “Why are you so set on getting to Canudos?”
“I couldn’t live among foreigners,” Jurema said. “If you don’t have a fatherland, you’re an orphan.”
“Someday the word ‘fatherland’ is going to disappear,” Galileo immediately replied. “People will look back on us, shut up within frontiers, killing each other over lines on a map, and they’ll say: How stupid they were.”
The Dwarf and Jurema looked at each other and Gall had the feeling that they were thinking he was the one who was stupid. They chewed and spat, grimacing in disgust every so often.
“Do you believe what the apostle from Algodões said?” the Dwarf asked. “That one day there’ll be a world without evil, without sicknesses…”
“And without ugliness,” Gall added. He nodded his head several times. “I believe in that the way other people believe in God. For a long time now, a lot of people have given their lives so that that might be possible. That’s why I’m so doggedly determined to get to Canudos. Up there, in the very worst of cases, I’ll die for something that’s worth dying for.”
“You’re going to get killed by Rufino,” Jurema muttered, staring at the ground. Her voice rose: “Do you think he’s forgotten the affront to his honor? He’s searching for us and sooner or later he’ll take his revenge.”
Gall seized her by the arm. “You’re staying with me so as to see that revenge, isn’t that true?” he asked her. He shrugged. “Rufino couldn’t understand either. It wasn’t my intention to offend him. Desire sweeps everything before it: force of will, friendship. We’ve no control over it, it’s in our bones, in what other people call our souls.” He brought his face close to Jurema’s again. “I have no regrets, it was…instructive. What I believed was false. Carnal pleasure is not at odds with the ideal. We mustn’t be ashamed of the body, do you understand? No, you don’t understand.”
“In other words, it might be true?” the Dwarf interrupted, his voice breaking and an imploring look in his eyes. “People say that he’s made the blind see and the deaf hear, closed the wounds of lepers. If I say to him: ‘I’ve come because I know you’ll work the miracle,’ will he touch me and make me grow?”
Gall looked at him, disconcerted, and found no truth or lie to offer him in reply. At that moment the Bearded Lady burst into tears, out of pity for the Idiot. “He hasn’t an ounce of strength left,” she said. “He’s