The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [192]
In the rain-drenched shadows, a shiver runs down his body from head to foot. The bugles and the bells ring out again, very loud now, but in the late-afternoon sun he continues to see the eight or nine soldier boys, squatting on their heels or lying exhausted on the gravelstrewn ground. The companies of the rear guard are leaving them behind. They are the youngest ones, they seem to be wearing masks, and are obviously dying of hunger and exhaustion. Dumfounded, the nearsighted journalist spies his colleague among them. A captain with a luxuriant mustache, who appears to be the victim of warring feelings—pity, anger, hesitation—greets the colonel: they refused to go any farther, sir. What should I do? The journalist does his best to spur his colleague on, to persuade him to get up, to pull himself together. “I needn’t have tried to reason with him,” he thinks. “If he’d had an ounce of strength left, he’d have gone on.” He remembers how his legs were all sprawled out, how pale his face was, how he lay there panting like a dog. One of the boys is whimpering: they’d rather you ordered them killed, sir, the blisters on their feet are infected, their heads are buzzing, they can’t go a single step farther. The youngster is sobbing, his hands joined as though in prayer, and little by little those who are not weeping also burst into tears, hiding their faces in their hands and curling up in a ball at the colonel’s feet.
He remembers the look in Moreira César’s cold little eyes as they sweep back and forth over the group. “I thought that it would make real men of you sooner if I put you in the ranks. You’re going to miss out on the best part of all. You boys have disappointed me. To keep you from being carried on the rolls as deserters, I’m giving you your discharge. Hand over your rifles and your uniforms.”
The nearsighted journalist gives half his water ration to his colleague, who immediately thanks him with a smile, as the youngsters, leaning weakly on each other, take off their high-buttoned tunics and kepis and hand their rifles over to the armorers.
“Don’t stay here, it’s too open,” Moreira César says to them. “Try to get back to the rocky hilltop where we halted to rest this morning. Hide there till a patrol comes past. There isn’t much chance of that, however.”
He turns on his heels and returns to the head of the column. As his farewell words to him, his colleague whispers to the journalist: “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, my young friend.” With his absurd muffler wound around his neck, the old man stays behind, sitting there like a class monitor amid half-naked, bawling kids. He thinks: “It rained back there, too.” He imagines the surprise, the happiness, the resurrection that this sudden downpour, sent by heaven seconds after it was hidden from sight by dark, lowering clouds, must have been for the old man and the youngsters. He imagines their disbelief, their smiles, their mouths opening greedily, joyously, their hands cupping to catch the drops; he imagines the boys rising to their feet, hugging each other, refreshed, encouraged, restored body and soul. Have they begun marching again, perhaps catching up with the rear guard? Hunching over till his chin is touching his knees, the nearsighted journalist tells himself that this isn’t so: their mental and physical states were such that not even the rain would have been