The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [163]
On the terrace surrounding the manor house, beneath the imperial palms and the tamarinds, in addition to peons going back and forth to the stables, storehouses, and servants’ quarters, there are armed men. The blinds at the window are lowered. Rufino walks slowly toward the capangas, watching them carefully. Without any sort of order, without a word to each other, they step forward to meet him. There are no shouts, no threats, not even an exchange of questions and answers between them and Rufino. When the tracker reaches them, they take hold of him and pin his arms down. They do not hit him or take his carbine or his machete or his knife away from him, and try not to be brutal with him. They simply block his way. At the same time, they clap him on the back, say hello to him, tell him not to be pigheaded and to listen to reason. The tracker’s face is drenched with sweat. He does not hit them either, but he tries to get away. When he gets loose from two of them and takes a step forward, two others immediately force him to step back. This sort of game goes on for quite some time. Rufino finally gives up and hangs his head. The men let go of him. He looks at the two-story building, the round roof tiles, the window of the baron’s study. He takes a step forward and immediately the men bar his way again.
The door of the manor house opens and someone he knows comes out: Aristarco, the overseer, the one who gives the capangas their orders. “If you want to see the baron, he’ll receive you this minute,” he says to him amicably.
Rufino’s chest heaves. “Is he going to hand the stranger over to me?”
Aristarco shakes his head. “He’s going to hand him over to the army. The army will avenge you.”
“That guy’s mine,” Rufino murmurs. “The baron knows that.”
“He’s not yours to kill, and the baron’s not going to hand him over to you,” Aristarco repeats. “Do you want him to explain to you himself?”
His face livid, Rufino answers no. The veins at his temples and neck have swelled, his eyes are bulging, and he is sweating heavily. “Tell the baron he’s not my godfather any more,” he says, his voice breaking. “And tell that other one that I’m going off to kill the woman he stole from me.”
He spits, turns around, and walks off the way he came.
Through the window of the study, the Baron de Canabrava and Galileo Gall saw Rufino leave and the guards and peons return to their places. Galileo had bathed and been given a shirt and a pair of trousers in better condition than the ones he had on. The baron went back over to his desk, beneath a collection of knives and whips hanging on the wall. There was a cup of steaming-hot coffee on it and he took a sip, with a faraway look in his eye. Then he examined Gall once again, like an entomologist fascinated by a rare species. He had been scrutinizing Gall in that way ever since he had seen him being brought into his study, worn out and famished, by Aristarco and his capangas, and, more intently still, ever since he had first heard him speak.
“Would you have ordered them to kill Rufino?” Gall asked, in English. “If he had insisted on coming inside, if he had become insolent? Yes, I’m certain of it, you’d have ordered him killed.”
“One can’t kill dead men, Mr. Gall,” the baron answered. “Rufino is already dead. You killed him when you stole Jurema from him. If I had ordered him killed I’d have been doing him a favor. I’d have freed him of the anguish of having been dishonored. There is no worse torment for a sertanejo.”
He opened a box of cigars and as he lighted one he imagined a headline in the Jornal de Notícias: ENGLISH AGENT GUIDED BY BARON’S HENCHMAN. It had been a clever plan to have Rufino serve Gall as a guide: what better proof that he, the baron, was a co-conspirator of the foreigner’s?
“The only thing I didn’t understand was what pretext Epaminondas