The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [199]
“Opinionated fool! Madman! Conceited, pigheaded bastard!” he shouted, choking with rage. “I’m not your enemy, your enemies are the men who are blowing those bugles. Can’t you hear them? That’s more important than my semen, than your wife’s cunt, where you’ve placed your honor, like a stupid bourgeois.”
He realized that, once again, he’d spoken in English. With an effort he rose to his feet. It was raining buckets and the water that fell into his open mouth felt good. Limping because he’d hurt his leg, perhaps when he fell into the pit, perhaps in the fight, he walked on through the caatinga, feeling his way through the branches and sharp thorns of the trees, stumbling. He tried to take his bearings from the slow, sad, funereal call of the bugles or the solemn peal of the bells, but the sounds seemed to keep shifting direction. And at that moment something grabbed his feet and sent him rolling on the ground, feeling mud between his teeth. He kicked, trying to free himself, and heard the Dwarf moan.
Clinging to him in terror, the Dwarf cried in his shrill voice: “Don’t abandon me, Gall, don’t leave me by myself. Don’t you hear those whooshing sounds? Don’t you see what they are, Gall?”
Once again he experienced that sensation that it was all a nightmare, unreal, absurd. He remembered that the Dwarf could see in the dark and that sometimes the Bearded Lady called him “cat” and “owl.” He was so exhausted that he continued to lie there, letting the Dwarf cling to him, listening to him whimper over and over that he didn’t want to die. He raised a hand to his shoulder and rubbed it as he strained his ears to hear. There was no doubt about it: they were cannon reports. He had been hearing them at intervals for some time now, thinking that they were deep drumrolls, but now he was certain that they were artillery fire. From cannons, no doubt small ones, or perhaps only mortars, but even so they were enough to blow Canudos sky-high. He was so worn out that he either fainted or fell dead asleep.
The next thing he knew, he was trembling with cold in the feeblest of first light. He heard the Dwarf’s teeth chattering and saw his big eyes rolling in terror. The little fellow must have slept propped up on Gall’s right leg, for it had gone numb. He gradually roused himself, blinked, looked around: hanging from the trees were bits and pieces of uniforms, kepis, field boots, greatcoats, canteens, knapsacks, saber and bayonet scabbards, and a few crude crosses. It was these tattered objects hanging from the trees that the Dwarf was staring at spellbound, as though he were not seeing these belongings but the ghosts of those who had worn them. “At least they defeated these men,” he thought.
He listened. Yes, more cannon fire. It had stopped raining a good many hours before, since everything around him was dry by now, but the cold gnawed his very bones. Weak and aching all over, he managed to struggle to his feet. He spied the knife in his belt and thought to himself that it had never crossed his mind to use it as he was fighting with Rufino. Why had he not tried to kill him this second time either? He heard yet another cannonade, very distinctly now, and a din of bugles, that lugubrious call that sounded like funeral taps. As though in a dream, he saw Rufino and Jurema appear from between the trees. The tracker was badly hurt, or exhausted, for he was leaning on her for support, and Gall knew intuitively that Rufino had spent the night tirelessly searching for him in the darkness of the thicket. He felt hatred for the man’s obstinacy, for his single-minded, unshakable determination to kill him.
They looked each other straight in the eye and Gall felt himself tremble.