The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [166]
Half an hour later he was in the dining room, with Estela at his right and Galileo at his left, the three of them seated in the high-backed “Austrian” chairs. Though darkness had not yet fallen, the servants had lighted the lamps. He watched Gall: he was spooning food into his mouth with no sign of enjoyment and had the usual tormented expression on his face. The baron had told him that if he so desired he could go outside to stretch his legs, but except for the moments he spent conversing with him, Gall had stayed in his room—the same one that Moreira César had occupied—busy writing. The baron had asked him for a written statement of everything that had happened to him since his meeting with Epaminondas Gonçalves. “If I do what you ask, will I be free again?” Gall had asked him. The baron shook his head. “You’re the best weapon I have against my enemies.” The revolutionary hadn’t said another word and the baron doubted that he was writing the confession he had asked him for. What could he be scribbling, then, night and day? In the midst of his depression, he was curious.
“An idealist?” Gall’s voice took him by surprise. “A man reputed to have committed so many atrocities?”
The baron realized that without warning the Scotsman was resuming the conversation they had been having in his study.
“Does it strike you as odd that Colonel Moreira César is an idealist?” he replied, in English. “He is one, there’s no doubt of that. He’s not interested in money or honors, and perhaps not even in power for himself. It’s abstract things that motivate him to act: an unhealthy nationalism, the worship of technical progress, the belief that only the army can impose order and save this country from chaos and corruption. An idealist of the same stamp as Robespierre…”
He fell silent as a servant cleared the table. He toyed with his napkin, thinking that the next night would find everything that surrounded him reduced to rubble and ashes. For the space of an instant, he wished that a miracle would occur, that the army of his enemy Moreira César would suddenly appear at Calumbi and prevent that crime from happening.
“As is the case with many idealists, he is implacable when it comes to realizing his dreams,” he added without his expression betraying what his real feelings were. His wife and Gall looked at him. “Do you know what he did at the Fortress of Anhato Mirim, at the time of the federalist revolt against Marshal Floriano? He executed one hundred eighty-five people. They had surrendered, but that made no difference to him. He wanted the mass execution to serve as an example.”
“He slit their throats,” the baroness said. She spoke English without the baron’s easy command of the language, slowly, pronouncing each syllable cautiously. “Do you know what the peasants call him? Throat-Slitter.”
The baron gave a little laugh; he was looking down at the plate that had just been served him without seeing it. “Just think what’s going to happen when that idealist has the monarchist, Anglophile insurgents of Canudos at his mercy,” he said in a gloomy voice. “He knows that they’re really neither one, but it’s useful to the Jacobin cause if that’s what they are, which amounts to the same thing. And why is he doing what he’s doing? For the good of Brazil, naturally. And he believes with all his heart and soul that that’s so.”
He swallowed with difficulty and thought of the flames that would destroy Calumbi. He could see them devouring everything, could hear them crackling.
“I know those poor devils in Canudos very well,” he said, feeling his palms grow moist. “They’re ignorant and superstitious, and a charlatan can convince them that the end of the world has come. But they’re also courageous, long-suffering people, with an unfailing, instinctive dignity. Isn’t it an absurd situation? They’re going to be put to death for being monarchists and Anglophiles, when the truth of the matter