The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [173]
The colonel looks at him as though he had not noticed his presence in the room until that very moment. “That priest will be useful to us in Canudos,” he answers. “Moreover, it will be worthwhile to let the word get around that the Church’s adherence to the Republic is not as sincere as some people believe.”
The nearsighted journalist leaves the tent. Night has fallen, and the camp is bathed in the light of the big yellow moon. As he walks toward the hut that he shares with the old journalist who is always chilly, the mess call is heard. The sound of the bugle echoes in the distance. Fires have been lighted here and there, and he passes among groups of soldiers heading over to them to get their meager evening rations. He finds his colleague in the hut. As usual, he has his muffler wound round his neck. As they stand in line for their food, the correspondent from the Jornal de Notícias tells him everything he has seen and heard in the colonel’s tent. Their rations that night are a thick substance with a vague taste of manioc, a little flour, and two lumps of sugar. They are also given coffee that tastes wonderful to them.
“What is it that’s impressed you so?” his colleague asks him.
“We don’t understand what’s happening in Canudos,” he replies. “It’s more complicated, more confused than I’d thought.”
“Well, I for one never thought there were emissaries of Her Britannic Majesty running around in the backlands, if that’s what you mean,” the old journalist growls. “But neither am I prepared to believe that little priest’s story that the only thing behind all this is love of God. Too many rifles, too many skirmishes, tactics far too well planned for all of this to be the work of illiterate Sebastianists.”
The nearsighted journalist says nothing. They go back to their hut, and the veteran correspondent immediately bundles up and drops off to sleep. But his colleague stays up, writing by the light of a candle, with his portable desk on his knees. He collapses on his blanket when he hears taps sounded. In his mind’s eye he can see the troops who are sleeping in the open, fully dressed, with their rifles, stacked by fours, at their feet, and the horses in their corral alongside the artillery pieces. He lies awake for a long time, thinking of the sentries making their rounds at the edge of camp, who will signal to each other all night long by blowing whistles. But, at the same time, something else is preying on his mind, below the surface: the priest taken prisoner, his stammerings, the words he has spoken. Are his colleague and the colonel right? Can Canudos be explained in terms of the familiar concepts of conspiracy, rebellion, subversion, intrigues of politicians out to restore the monarchy? Listening to that terrified little priest today, he has had the certainty that all that is not the explanation. Something more diffuse, timeless, extraordinary, something that his skepticism prevents him from calling divine or diabolical or simply spiritual. What is it, then? He runs his tongue across the mouth of his empty canteen and a few moments later falls asleep.
When first light appears on the horizon, the tinkling of little bells and bleating are heard at one end of the camp, and a little clump of bushes begins to stir. A few heads are raised, in the company covering that flank of the regiment. The sentry who has just passed by swiftly retraces his steps. Those who have been awakened by the noise strain their eyes, cup their hands behind their ears. Yes, bleating, bells tinkling. A look of joyous anticipation comes over their sleepy, hungry, thirsty faces. They rub their eyes, signal to each other not to make a sound, rise cautiously to their feet, and run toward the bushes, from which the bleating, tinkling noises are still coming. The first men to reach the thicket spy the sheep, an off-white blur in the deep shadow tinged with blue: baaa, baaa…They have just caught one of the animals when