The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [200]
Rufino had a sort of wooden dagger in his hand. He saw him let go of Jurema, push her away, crouch down to attack. “What a wretched bastard you are, Gall,” he heard him say. “You talk a lot about the poor, but you betray a friend and dishonor the house where you’re given hospitality.”
He shut him up by throwing himself on him, blind with rage. They began hacking each other to pieces as Jurema watched in a daze, overcome with anguish and fatigue. The Dwarf doubled over in terror.
“I won’t die for my own wretchedness, Rufino,” Gall roared. “My life is worth more than a little semen, you miserable creature.”
They were rolling over and over together on the ground when the two soldiers appeared, running hard. On catching sight of them, they stopped short. Their uniforms were half torn away, and one of them had lost his boots, but they were holding their rifles at the ready.
The Dwarf hid his head. Jurema ran to them, stepped in their line of fire, and begged: “Don’t shoot! They’re not jagunços…”
But the soldiers fired point blank at the two adversaries and then threw themselves upon her, grunting, and dragged her into the dry underbrush. Badly wounded, the tracker and the phrenologist went on fighting.
“I should be happy, since this means that my bodily suffering will be over, that I shall see the Father and the Blessed Virgin,” Maria Quadrado thought. But she was transfixed with fear, though she tried her best not to let the women of the Sacred Choir see that she was. If they noticed, they, too, would be paralyzed by fear and the entire structure devoted to caring for the Counselor would collapse. And in the hours to come, she was certain, the Sacred Choir would be needed more than ever. She asked God’s forgiveness for her cowardice and tried to pray as she always had, and had taught the women to do, as the Counselor met with the apostles. But she found herself unable to concentrate on the Credo. Abbot João and Big João were no longer insisting on taking the Counselor to the refuge, but the Street Commander was endeavoring to dissuade him from making the rounds of the trenches: the battle might take you by surprise, out in the open, with no protection, Father.
The Counselor never argued, and he did not do so now. He gently removed the head of the Lion of Natuba from his knees and placed it on the floor without disturbing the Lion’s sleep. He rose to his feet and Abbot João and Big João also stood up. He had become thinner still in recent days and looked even taller now. A shiver ran down Maria Quadrado’s spine as she saw how greatly troubled he was: his eyes narrowed in a deep frown, his mouth half open in a grimace that was like a terrible premonition.
She decided then and there to accompany him. She did not always do so, especially in recent weeks when, because of the press of the crowds in the narrow streets, the Catholic Guard was obliged to form such an unyielding wall around the Counselor that it had been difficult for her and the women of the Choir to stay close to him. But now she suddenly felt it absolutely necessary to go with him. She gestured and the women of the Choir flocked to her side. They followed the men out, leaving the Lion of Natuba fast asleep in the Sanctuary.
The appearance of the Counselor in the doorway of the Sanctuary took the crowd gathered there by surprise, so much so that they did not have time to block his path. At a signal from Big João, the men with blue armbands stationed in the open space between the small Chapel of Santo Antônio and the Temple under construction, to keep order among the pilgrims who had just arrived, ran to surround the saint, who was already striding down the little Street of the Martyrs toward the path leading to As Umburanas. As she trotted