The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [206]
It seems to her that she is waking up, that she is coming back from a very long journey, that no more than a few minutes have gone by since the soldiers fell upon her. What has become of Rufino, Gall, the Dwarf? As though it were a dream, she remembers the two men fighting, remembers the soldiers shooting at them. A few paces away, the soldier who had been on top of her is being interrogated by a short, sturdy caboclo well along in years, whose dull yellowish-gray features are cruelly mutilated by a scar running from his mouth to his eyes. She thinks: Pajeú. For the first time that day she feels afraid. A look of terror has come over the soldier’s face, he is answering every question he is asked as fast as he can get the words out, and is begging, pleading, with his eyes, mouth, hands, for as Pajeú interrogates him others are stripping him naked. They remove his tattered tunic, his frayed trousers, without manhandling him, and Jurema—feeling neither happy nor sad, as though she were still dreaming—sees the jagunços, once they have stripped him naked, at a simple gesture from that caboclo people tell such terrible stories about, plunge several knives into him, in the belly, in the back, in the neck, and sees the soldier topple over dead without even having had the time to scream. She sees one of the jagunços bend down, take hold of the soldier’s penis, soft and now very small, cut it off with one stroke of his knife and in the same motion stuff it into his mouth. He then wipes his knife on the corpse and thrusts it back into his belt. She feels neither joy nor sadness nor revulsion.
She realizes that the caboclo without a nose is speaking to her. “Are you on your way to Belo Monte alone or with other pilgrims?” He pronounces each word slowly, as though she might not understand him, hear him. “Where are you from?”
She finds it hard to speak. In a voice that seems to be another woman’s, she stammers that she has come from Queimadas.
“A long journey,” the caboclo says, looking her up and down, obviously curious. “And what’s more, by the same route the soldiers were following.”
Jurema nods. She ought to thank him, say something nice to him for having rescued her, but she is too terrified of this famous outlaw. All the other jagunços are standing round about her, and with their grass cloaks, their weapons, their whistles, they impress her as being not real live men but creatures out of a fairy tale or a nightmare.
“You can’t get to Belo Monte from this direction,” Pajeú tells her, with a grimace that must be his way of smiling. “There are Protestants all about in these hills. Go around them instead, till you get to the road from Jeremoabo. There aren’t any soldiers on that side.”
“My husband,” Jurema murmurs, pointing to the thicket.
Her voice catches in a sob. She hurries off, overcome with anxiety as the memory of what was happening when the soldiers arrived on the scene suddenly comes back to her and she recognizes the other one, the one who was watching as he waited for his turn: he is the naked, bloody corpse hanged by the neck from a tree, swaying back and forth alongside his uniform, which has also been hung up in the branches. Jurema knows which way to go, for she hears a noise to guide her, and indeed in just a few moments she comes upon Galileo Gall and Rufino, in the part of the caatinga decorated with uniforms. The two men have taken on the same color as the muddy earth, and must be dying, yet they are still fighting. They are tattered wrecks locked together, hitting out at each other with their heads, with their feet, biting and scratching each other, but so slowly it is as if they are playing. Jurema halts in front of them and the caboclo and the jagunços gather round in a circle to watch