The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [231]
“It’s really me, João,” Father Joaquim says to a tall, sturdy, mud-stained man with weathered skin standing in the middle of a group of men with bandoleers about their necks who have flocked round him. “Me in the flesh, not my ghost. They didn’t kill me—I escaped. I want to go to Cumbe, Abbot João, I want to get out of here. Help me…”
“Impossible, Father, it’s dangerous. Can’t you see that there’s shooting on all sides?” the man answers. “Go to Belo Monte till the war is over.”
“Abbot João?” the nearsighted journalist thinks. “Abbot João’s in Canudos, too?” He hears sudden loud rifle reports from every direction and his blood runs cold. “Who’s that four-eyes?” he hears Abbot João say, pointing to him. “Ah, yes, he’s a journalist, he helped me escape, he’s not a soldier. And this woman and this…” But the curé is unable to end his sentence because of the gunfire. “Go to Belo Monte, Father, we’ve cleared them out of there,” Abbot João says as he starts down the slope at a run, followed by the jagunços who have been standing round him. The nearsighted, journalist suddenly spies Colonel Tamarindo in the distance, clutching his head in his hands in the midst of a stampede of soldiers. There is total disorder and confusion: the column appears to be scattered all over, to have completely disintegrated. The soldiers are dashing about helter-skelter, their pursuers close behind. From the ground, his mouth full of mud, the nearsighted journalist sees the troops, spreading like a stain, dividing, mingling, figures falling, struggling, and his eyes return again and again to the spot where old Tamarindo has fallen. Several jagunços are bending down—killing him? But they linger too long for that, squatting there on their heels, and the nearsighted journalist, his eyes burning from straining so hard to make out what is happening, finally sees that they are stripping him naked.
He is suddenly aware of a bitter taste in his mouth, begins to choke, and realizes that, like an automaton, he is chewing the dirt that got into his mouth when he threw himself to the ground. He spits, not taking his eyes off the rout of the soldiers, amid a terrific wind that has risen. They are scattering in all directions, some of them shooting, others tossing weapons, boxes of ammunition, stretchers onto the ground, into the air, and though they are now a long way off, he can nonetheless see that in their frantic, panic-stricken retreat they are also tossing away their kepis, their tunics, their bandoleers, their chest belts. Why are they, too, stripping naked, what sort of madness is this that he is witnessing? He intuits that they are ridding themselves of anything that might identify them as soldiers, that they are hoping to pass themselves off as jagunços in the melee. Father Joaquim gets to his feet and, just as he had a moment before, begins to run again. In a strange fashion this time, moving his head, waving his hands, speaking and shouting to pursued and pursuers alike. “He’s going down there amid all the shooting, the knifing, the killing,” the journalist thinks. His eyes meet the woman’s. She looks back at him in terror, mutely pleading for his counsel. And then he too, obeying an impulse, stands up, shouting to her: “We must stay with him. He’s the only one who can help us.” She gets to her feet and starts running, dragging the Dwarf along with her, his eyes bulging, his face covered with dirt, screeching as he runs. The nearsighted journalist soon loses sight of them, for his long legs or his fear give him an advantage over them. He runs swiftly, bent over, his hips jerking grotesquely back and forth, his head down, thinking hypnotically that one of those red-hot bullets whistling past has his name written on it, that he is running directly toward it, and that one of those knives, sickles, machetes, bayonets