The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [203]
It was dark now, and at the Cocorobó exit the Counselor drew a comparison between Eve, in whom curiosity and disobedience predominated, and Mary, all love and willing submission, who had never succumbed to the temptation of the forbidden fruit responsible for man’s Fall. In the faint light, Maria Quadrado saw the Counselor standing amid Abbot João, Big João, the Little Blessed One, the Vilanovas, and the thought came to her that, just like herself, Mary Magdalene, there in Judea, had seen the Blessed Jesus and his disciples, men as humble and good as these, and had thought, just as she was thinking at this moment, how generous it was of the Lord to elect, so that history might take a different direction, not rich landowners and capangas, but a handful of the humblest of men. She suddenly realized that the Lion of Natuba was not among the apostles. Her heart skipped a beat. Had he fallen and been trampled underfoot, was he lying on the muddy ground somewhere, with his tiny body like a child’s and his eyes of a wise man? She reproached herself for not having paid more attention to him and ordered the women of the Choir to go look for him. But they could scarcely move in the dense crowd.
On the way back, Maria Quadrado managed to make her way to Big João, and was telling him that he must find the Lion of Natuba when the first cannon report rang out. The multitude stopped to listen and many pairs of eyes scanned the heavens in consternation. At that moment there came another roar of cannon fire and they saw a dwelling in the cemetery section blow up, reduced to splinters and cinders. In the stampede that ensued round about her, Maria felt a shapeless body press against hers, seeking refuge. She recognized the Lion of Natuba by his great mane and his tiny frame. She put her arms around him, held him close, kissed him tenderly, as she murmured in his ear: “My son, my little son, I thought you were lost, your mother is happy, so happy.” A bugle call in the distance, long and lugubrious, spread more panic in the night. The Counselor strode on, at the same pace, toward the heart of Belo Monte. Trying to shield the Lion of Natuba from the pushing and shoving, Maria Quadrado did her best to stay as close as possible to the ring of men who, once the first moment of confusion was past, closed in around the Counselor again. But as the two of them made their way along, stumbling and falling, the crowd pushed and shoved its way past them, and by the time they finally reached the esplanade between the churches, it was filled with people. Drowning out the cries of people calling to each other or pleading for heaven’s protection, Abbot João’s great booming voice ordered all the lamps in Canudos extinguished. Soon the city was a pit of darkness in which Maria Quadrado could not even make out the scribe’s features.
“The fear has left me,” she thought. The war had begun; at any moment another shell might fall right here and turn her and the Lion into the shapeless heap of bone and muscle that the people who had lived in the destroyed house must now be. And yet she was no longer afraid. “Thank you, Father, Blessed Mother,” she prayed. Holding the scribe in her arms, she dropped to the ground, like the others. She listened for gunfire. But there were no shots. Why this darkness, then? She had spoken aloud, for the Lion’s voice sang out in answer: “So they can’t take aim at us, Mother.”
The bells of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus rang out and their metallic echo drowned out the blare of bugles with which the Dog was trying to terrorize Belo Monte. This pealing of bells, which was to go on all the rest of the night, was like a great gale of faith, of relief. “He’s up there in the bell tower,” Maria Quadrado said. There