The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [154]
A day and a half later they arrived in Santo Antônio, a tiny spa on the banks of the greenish Massacará. The circus people had been in the town, years before, and remembered how many people came to cure their skin diseases in the bubbling, fetid mineral springs. Santo Antônio had also been the constant victim of attacks by bandits, who came to rob the sick people. Today it appeared to be deserted. They did not come across a single washerwoman down by the river, and in the narrow cobblestone streets lined with coconut palms, ficus, and cactus there was not a living creature—human, dog, or bird—to be seen. Despite this, the Dwarf’s mood had suddenly brightened. He grabbed a cornet, put it to his lips and produced a comic blare, and began his spiel about the performance they would give. The Bearded Lady burst out laughing, and even the Idiot, weak as he was, tried to push the wagon along faster, with his shoulders, his hands, his head; his mouth was gaping open and long trickles of saliva were dribbling out of it. They finally spied an ugly, misshapen little old man who was fastening an eyebolt to a door. He looked at them as though he didn’t see them, but when the Bearded Lady threw him a kiss he smiled.
The circus people parked the wagon in a little square with climbing vines; doors and windows started flying open and faces of the townspeople, attracted by the blaring of the cornet, began peeking out of them. The Dwarf, the Bearded Lady, and the Idiot rummaged through their bits of cloth and odds and ends, and a moment later they were busily daubing paint on their faces, blackening them, decking themselves out in bright costumes, and in their hands there appeared the last few remains of a set of props: the cobra cage, hoops, magic wands, a paper concertina. The Dwarf blew furiously into his cornet and shouted: “The show is about to begin!” Gradually, an audience straight out of a nightmare began to crowd round them. Human skeletons, of indefinable age and sex, most of them with faces, arms, and legs pitted with gangrene sores, abscesses, rashes, pockmarks, came out of the dwellings, and overcoming their initial apprehension, leaning on each other, crawling on all fours, or dragging themselves along, came to swell the circle. “They don’t look like people who are dying,” Gall thought. “They look like people who’ve been dead for some time.” All of them, the children in particular, seemed very old. Some of them smiled at the Bearded Lady, who was coiling the cobra round her, kissing it on the mouth, and making it writhe in and out of her arms. The Dwarf grabbed the Idiot and mimicked the number that the Bearded Lady was performing with the snake: he made him dance, contort himself, tie himself in knots. The townspeople and the sick of Santo Antônio watched, grave-faced or smiling, nodding their heads in approval and bursting into applause now and again. Some of them turned around to look at Gall and Jurema, as though wondering when they would put on their act. The revolutionary watched them, fascinated, as Jurema’s face contorted in a grimace of repulsion. She did her best to contain her feelings, but soon she whispered that she couldn’t bear the sight of them and wanted to leave. Galileo did not calm her down. His eyes had begun to redden and he was deeply shaken. Health, like love, like wealth and power, was selfish: it shut one up within oneself, it abolished all thought of others. Yes, it was better not to have anything, not to love, but how to give up one’s health in order to be as one with those