The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [183]
The caatinga round about him begins to stir. The men in hiding crawl out on all fours and stand up. He realizes that there are at least thirty of them. He follows them, breaking into a run, and overtakes the leader. “Is the woman who used to be my wife there?” he hears himself saying. “There’s a dwarf with her, isn’t that right?” Yes. “It must be her, then,” the jagunço says. At that moment a hail of bullets mows down the two soldiers guarding the door, immediately followed by shouts, screams, the sound of feet running, a shot from inside the shack. As he runs forward with the jagunços, Rufino draws his knife, the only weapon he has left, and sees soldiers at the doors and windows firing at them or trying to make their escape. They manage to take no more than a few steps before they are hit by arrows or bullets or thrown to the ground by the jagunços, who finish them off with their knives and machetes. Just then, Rufino slips and falls. As he gets to his feet again, he hears the piercing wail of the whistles and sees the jagunços tossing out one of the windows the bloody corpse of a soldier whose uniform they have ripped off. The naked body hits the ground with a dull thud.
When Rufino enters the shack, he is stunned by the violent spectacle that meets his eye. On the floor are dying soldiers, on whom knots of men and women are venting their fury with knives, clubs, stones, striking and pounding them without mercy, aided by jagunços who continue to pour into the shack. It is the women, four or five of them, who are screaming at the top of their lungs, and they who are ripping the uniforms off their dead or dying victims so as to insult them by baring their privates. There is blood, a terrible stench, and gaping holes between the floorboards where the jagunços must have been lying in wait for the patrol. Underneath a table is a woman with a head wound, writhing in pain and moaning.
As the jagunços strip the soldiers naked and grab their rifles and knapsacks, Rufino, certain now that what he is looking for is not in that room, makes his way toward the bedrooms. There are three of them, in a row. The door of the first one is open, but he sees no one inside. Through the cracks in the door of the second he spies a plank bed and a woman’s legs lying on the floor. He pushes the door open and sees Jurema. She is alive, and on catching sight of him, her face contorts in a deep frown and her entire body hunches over in shocked surprise. Huddled next to Jurema is the grotesquely terror-stricken, minuscule figure of the Dwarf, whom Rufino seems to have known as long as he can remember, and on the bed, the fair-haired sergeant. Despite the fact that he is lying there limp and lifeless, two jagunços are still plunging their knives into him, roaring with each blow and spattering Rufino with blood. Jurema, motionless, stares at him, her mouth gaping, her face fallen, the ridge of her nose standing out sharply, and her eyes full of panic and resignation. Rufino realizes that the barefoot jagunço with Indian features has entered the room and is helping the others hoist the sergeant off the bed and throw him out the window into the street. They leave the room, taking with them the dead man’s uniform, rifle, and knapsack. As he walks past Rufino, the leader mutters, pointing to Jurema: “You see? It was her.” The Dwarf begins to utter disjointed phrases that Rufino hears but fails to understand. He stands calmly in the doorway, his face once again expressionless. His heart quiets down, and the vertigo he has felt at first is succeeded by a feeling of complete serenity. Jurema is still lying on the floor, too drained of strength to get to her feet. Through the window the jagunços, both the men and the women, can be seen moving off into the caatinga.
“They