The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [240]
“How will you do that?” he said, for no particular reason, simply to fill the silence.
“In the only way in which things are preserved,” he heard his caller growl. “By writing of them.”
The baron nodded. “I remember that, too. You wanted to be a poet, a dramatist. And you’re going to write the story of Canudos that you didn’t see?”
“What fault of this poor devil is it that Estela is no longer that lucid, intelligent creature she once was?” the baron thought.
“As soon as I was able to get rid of the cheeky and curious strangers who besieged me, I started going to the Reading Room of the Academy of History,” the myopic journalist said. “To look through the papers, all the news items about Canudos. The Jornal da Notícias, the Diário de Bahia, O Republicano. I’ve read everything written about it, everything I wrote. It’s something…difficult to put into words. Too unreal, do you follow me? It seems like a conspiracy in which everyone played a role, a total misunderstanding on the part of all concerned, from beginning to end.”
“I don’t understand.” The baron had forgotten the chameleon and even Estela and was watching in fascination this person sitting all doubled over, his chin brushing his knee, as though he were straining to get his words out.
“Hordes of fanatics, bloodthirsty killers, cannibals of the backlands, racial mongrels, contemptible monsters, human scum, base lunatics, filicides, spiritual degenerates,” the visitor recited, lingering over each syllable. “Some of those terms were mine. I not only wrote them, I also believed them.”
“Are you going to pen an apology for Canudos?” the baron asked. “You always did strike me as being a bit crazy. But I find it hard to believe that you’re crazy enough to ask my help in such an undertaking. You’re aware of what Canudos cost me, are you not? That I lost half my possessions? That on account of Canudos the worst misfortune of all happened to me, since Estela…”
He could hear his voice quavering and fell silent. He looked out the window, searching for help. And he found it: the creature was still there, perfectly still, beautiful, prehistoric, eternal, halfway between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, serene in the radiant morning light.
“But those terms were preferable. They at least kept people thinking about Canudos,” the journalist said, as though he had not heard him. “And now, not a word. Is there talk of Canudos in the cafés on the Rua Chile, in the marketplaces, in the taverns? No, people are talking instead of the orphan girls deflowered by the director of the Santa Rita de Cássia hospice. Or of Dr. Silva Lima’s anti-syphilis pill or of the latest shipment of Russian soap and English shoes just arrived at Clark’s Department Store.” He looked the baron straight in the eye and the latter saw that there was fury and panic in those myopic orbs. “The last news item about Canudos appeared in the papers two days ago. Do you know what it was about?”
“I don’t read the papers now that I’ve left politics,” the baron said. “Not even my own.”
“The return to Rio de Janeiro of the commission sent by the Spiritualist Center of the capital to aid the forces of law and order, through the use of its mediumistic powers, to wipe out the jagunços. Well, the commission has now come back to Rio, on the steamer Rio Vermelho, with its ouija boards and its crystal balls and what have you. Since then, not a single line. And it hasn’t even been three months yet.”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” the baron said. “I’ve already told you that Canudos is a painful subject to me.”
“I need to know what you know,” the journalist interrupted him in a hurried, conspiratorial voice. “You know many things. You sent them flour and also cattle. You had contacts with them. You talked with Pajeú.”
Blackmail? Had he come to threaten him, to get money out of him? The baron was disappointed that