The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [174]
Reveille sounds from the other end of the camp, signaling that the column is to move on.
The casualties resulting from the ambush are not very heavy—two dead and three wounded—and though the patrols who take out after the jagunços do not catch them, they bring back a dozen sheep that are a welcome addition to their scanty rations. But perhaps because of the growing difficulties in securing food and water, perhaps because they are now so close to Canudos, the troops’ reaction to the ambush betrays a nervousness of which there has been no sign up until now. The soldiers of the company to which the victims belong ask that the prisoner be executed in reprisal. The nearsighted journalist notes the change in attitude of the men who have crowded round the white horse of the commander of the Seventh Regiment: contorted faces, eyes filled with hate. The colonel gives them permission to speak, listens to them, nods, as they all talk at once. He finally explains to them that this prisoner is not just another jagunço but someone whose knowledge will be precious to the regiment once they are in Canudos.
“You’ll get your revenge,” he tells them. “And very soon now. Save your rage for later: don’t waste it.”
That noon, however, the soldiers have the revenge they are so eager for. The regiment is marching past a rocky promontory, on which there can be seen—a frequent sight—the head and carcass of a cow that black vultures have stripped of everything edible. A sudden intuition causes one of the soldiers to remark that the dead animal is a blind for a lookout post. He has barely gotten the words out when several men break ranks, run over, and, shrieking with excitement, watch as a jagunço who is a little more than skin and bones crawls out from his hiding place underneath the cow. The soldiers fall on him, sink their knives, their bayonets into him. They decapitate him and carry the head back to Moreira César to show it to him. They tell him that they are going to load it into a cannon and send it flying into Canudos so the rebels will see the fate that awaits them. The colonel remarks to the nearsighted journalist that the troops are in fine fettle for combat.
Although he had ridden all night, Galileo Gall did not feel sleepy. The mounts were old and skinny, but showed no signs of tiring till after daylight. Communication with Ulpino, the guide, a man with a roughhewn face and copper-colored skin who chewed tobacco, was not easy. They barely said a word to each other till midday, when they halted to eat. How long would it take them to get to Canudos? Spitting out the wad he was chewing on, the guide gave him a roundabout answer. If the horses held up, two or three days. But that was in normal times, not in times like this…They would not be heading for Canudos in a straight line, they’d be backtracking every so often so as to keep out of the way of both the jagunços and the soldiers, since either would make off with their horses. Gall suddenly felt very tired, and fell asleep almost immediately.
A few hours later, they rode off again. Shortly thereafter, they were able to cool off a bit in a tiny rivulet of brackish water. As they rode on amid stony hillsides and level stretches of ground bristling with prickly pears and thistles, Gall was beside himself with impatience. He remembered that dawn in Queimadas when he might well have died and the stirrings of sex had flooded back into his life. Everything was lost now in the depths of his memory. He discovered to his astonishment that he had no idea what the date was: neither the day nor the month. Only the year: it was probably still 1897. It was as though in this region that he kept continually journeying through, bouncing back and forth, time had been abolished, or was a different time, with its own rhythm. He tried to remember how the sense of chronology had revealed itself in the heads that he had palpated here. Was there such a thing