The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [241]
“Did you really give Antônio Vilanova that message for me?” Abbot João asks, rousing himself from the warm drowsiness he feels as Catarina’s long slender fingers bury themselves in his mane, searching for nits.
“I don’t know what message he gave you,” Catarina answers, her fingers continuing to explore his head.
“She’s happy,” Abbot João thinks. He knows her well enough to sense, from furtive inflections of her voice or sparks in her dark eyes, when she is feeling unhappy. He is aware that people talk of Catarina’s mortal sadness, since no one has ever seen her laugh and very few have ever heard her say a word. But why try to show them that they’re wrong? He knows: he has seen her smile and laugh, though always as if in secret.
“That if I’m condemned to eternal damnation, you want to be, too,” he murmurs.
His wife’s fingers stop moving, just as they do each time they come across a louse nesting in his hair, whereupon she crushes it between her fingernails. After a moment, they go on with their task and João again immerses himself in the welcome peace of simply being where he is, without his shoes on, his torso bare, lying on the rush pallet of the tiny dwelling made of boards held together with mud, on the Rua do Menino Jesus, with his wife kneeling at his back, removing the lice from his hair. He feels pity for the blindness of others. Feeling no need to speak to each other, he and Catarina tell each other more things than the worst chatterboxes in Canudos. It is mid-morning and the sunlight filtering in through the cracks between the planks of the door and the tiny holes in the length of blue cloth covering the only window brightens the one room of the cabin. Outside, voices can be heard, the sound of children running about, the hustle and bustle of people going about their business, as though this were a world at peace, as though there had not been so many people killed that it took Canudos an entire week to bury its dead and carry off to the outskirts of town all the soldiers’ corpses so the vultures would devour them.
“It’s true,” Catarina says in his ear, her breath tickling it. “If you go to hell, I want to go there with you.”
João reaches out his arm, takes Catarina by the waist, and sits her on his knees. He does so with the greatest possible gentleness, as always when he touches her, for, because she is so thin or because he feels such remorse, he always has the distressing feeling that he is going to hurt her, and because the thought always crosses his mind that he must let go of her immediately since he will encounter that resistance that always is evident the moment he even tries to take her by the arm. He knows that she finds physical contact unbearable and he has learned to respect her feelings, fighting his own impulses, because he loves her. Although they have lived together for many years, they have very seldom made love together, or at least given themselves to each other completely, Abbot João thinks, without those interruptions on her part that leave him panting, bathed in sweat, his heart pounding. But this morning, to his surprise, Catarina does not push him away. On the contrary, she curls up on his lap and he feels her frail body, with its protruding ribs, its nearly nonexistent breasts, pressing against his.
“There in the Health House, I was afraid for you,” Catarina says. “As we were caring for the wounded, as we saw the soldiers passing by, shooting and throwing torches. I was afraid. For you.”
She does not say this in a fervent, passionate tone of voice, but rather in a cold, impersonal one, as though she were speaking of other people’s reactions. But Abbot João feels deeply moved, and then a sudden desire for her. He thrusts his hand beneath Catarina’s wrapper and caresses her back, her sides, her tiny nipples, as his mouth with all its front teeth missing brushes her neck, her cheek, seeking her lips. Catarina allows him to kiss her, but she does not open her mouth, and when João tries to