The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [187]
The baroness’s right hand came to rest on Gumúcio’s arm. “I am so sorry to have brought back the memory of Adelinha Isabel,” she said tenderly. “Please pardon me.”
“You didn’t bring back the memory of her, because I never forget her.” Gumúcio smiled, taking the baroness’s hands in his. “Twenty years have gone by, and yet it’s as though it had been this morning. I’m talking to you about Adelinha Isabel so you’ll see that the destruction of Calumbi is a wound that will heal.”
The baroness tried to smile, but the smile turned into a pout, as though she were about to weep. At that moment Sebastiana came into the room, carrying the little vial of cologne. As she cooled the baroness’s forehead and cheeks, patting her skin very delicately with one hand, she smoothed her mistress’s ruffled hair with the other. “Between Calumbi and here she has ceased to be the beautiful, courageous young woman she was,” the baron thought to himself. She had dark circles under her eyes, a gloomy frown, her features had gone slack, and her eyes had lost the vivacity and self-possession that he had always seen in them. Had he asked too much of her? Had he sacrificed his wife to his political interests? He remembered that when he had decided to return to Calumbi, Luiz Viana and Adalberto de Gumúcio had advised him not to take Estela with him, because of the turmoil that Canudos was causing in the region. He felt extremely uneasy. Through his thoughtlessness and selfishness he had perhaps done irreparable harm to his wife, whom he loved more dearly than anyone else in the world. And yet, when Aristarco, who was riding at his side, alerted them: “Look, they’ve already set fire to Calumbi,” Estela had not lost her composure; on the contrary, she had remained incredibly calm. They were on the crest of a hill, where the baron used to halt when he was out hunting, to look out across his land, the place he took visitors to show them the hacienda, the lookout point that everybody flocked to after floods or plagues of insects to see how much damage had been done. Now, in the starry night with no wind, they could see the flames—red, blue, yellow—gleaming brightly, burning to the ground the manor house to which the lives of all those present were linked. The baron heard Sebastiana sobbing and saw Aristarco’s eyes brim with tears. But Estela did not weep, he was certain of that. She held herself very straight, gripping his arm, and at one moment he heard her murmur: “They’re burning not only the house but the stables, the horse barns, the storehouse.” The next morning she had begun talking about the fire, and since then there had been no way of calming her down. “I shall never forgive myself,” the baron thought.
“Had it been my hacienda, I’d be there now: dead,” José Bernardo Murau suddenly said. “They would have had to burn me, too.”
Sebastiana left the room, murmuring, “Please excuse me.” The baron thought to himself that the old man’s fits of rage must have been terrible, worse than Adalberto’s, and that before emancipation, he had undoubtedly tortured disobedient and runaway slaves.
“Not that Pedra Vermelha is worth all that much any more,” he grumbled, looking at the peeling walls of his living room. “I’ve sometimes thought of burning it down myself, seeing all the grief it’s causing me. A person has the right to destroy his own property if he feels like it. But I’d never have allowed a band of infamous, demented thieves to tell me that they were going to burn my land so it could have a rest, because it had worked hard. They would have had to kill me.”
“They wouldn’t have given you any choice in the matter. They’d have burned you to death before they set fire to the hacienda,” the baron said, trying to make a joke of it.
“They’re like scorpions,” he thought. “Burning down haciendas is like stinging themselves with their own tails to