The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [162]
They are sitting more or less in a circle eating. They do not appear to be at all surprised by his arrival, as though they were expecting him. The tracker raises his hand to his straw sombrero: “Good afternoon.” Some of the men go on eating, others nod, and one of them murmurs with his mouth full: “Praised be the Blessed Jesus.” He is a husky Indian half-breed with an olive complexion and a scar that has left him with almost no nose at all. “That’s Pajeú,” Rufino thinks. “He’s going to kill me.” This makes him feel sad, for he’ll die without having struck in the face the man who dishonored him. Pajeú begins to question him. Without animosity, without even asking him to hand over his weapons: where he’s from, who he is working for, where he’s going, whom he’s seen. Rufino answers without hesitation, falling silent only when he is interrupted by another question. The other men go on eating; only when Rufino explains what it is he’s looking for and why, do they turn their heads and scrutinize him from head to foot. Pajeú makes him say again how many times he has guided the flying brigades that hunt down cangaceiros, to see if he’ll contradict himself. But since Rufino has decided from the beginning to tell the truth, he doesn’t give any wrong answers. Did he know that one of those flying brigades was hunting for Pajeú? Yes, he knew that. The former outlaw then says that he remembers that brigade led by Captain Geraldo Macedo, Bandit-Chaser, because he had a hard time shaking it. “You were a good tracker,” he says. “I still am,” Rufino answers. “But your trackers are better. I couldn’t get rid of them.” From time to time a silent figure emerges from the brush, comes over to Pajeú to tell him something, and then melts back into the brush like a ghost. Without becoming impatient, without asking what his fate is to be, Rufino watches them finish eating. The jagunços rise to their feet, bury the coals of their fire, rub out the traces of their presence with icó branches. Pajeú looks at him. “Don’t you want to save your soul?” he asks him. “I must save my honor first,” Rufino answers. No one laughs. Pajeú hesitates for a few seconds. “The stranger you’re looking for has been taken to Calumbi, to the Baron de Canabrava’s,” he mutters. The next moment he rides off with his men. Rufino sees the albino girl, still sitting on the ground, and two black vultures at the top of an imbuzeiro, clearing their throats like hoarse old men.
He leaves the clearing immediately and walks on, but before half an hour has gone by, a paralysis overtakes his body, an utter exhaustion that causes him to collapse on the spot. When he awakens, his face, neck, and arms are full of insect bites. For the first time since leaving Queimadas, he feels bitterly discouraged, convinced that what he is doing is all in vain. He sets out again, in the opposite direction. But now, despite the fact that he is passing through an area that he has been back and forth across countless times since the day when he first learned to walk, in which he knows where all the shortcuts are and where to look for water and which are the best places to set traps, the day’s journey seems interminable and at each and every moment he must fight off his feeling of dejection. Very often, something that he has dreamed that afternoon comes back to him again: the earth is a thin crust that may split open and swallow him up at any moment. He cautiously fords the river just before Monte Santo, and from there it takes him less than ten hours to reach Calumbi. All through the night, he has not stopped to rest, and at times he has broken into a run. As he crosses the hacienda on which he was born and spent his childhood, he does not notice how overgrown with weeds