The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [246]
Abbot João nods. No one speaks. They all appear to be concentrating on the buzzing of the flies and the acrobatics of a wasp that finally lands on Big João’s knee. The black removes it with a flick of his finger. Abbot Jo$$$o is surprised all of a sudden at the chatter of the Vilanovas’ parrot.
“I also met with Dr. Águiar do Nascimento,” Father Joaquim adds. “He said to tell you that the only thing you could do was to disperse people and send them back to their villages before all that armory gets here.” He pauses and takes a fearful sidelong glance at the seven men looking at him respectfully and attentively. “But that if, despite everything, you are going to fight it out with the soldiers, then, yes, he has something to offer you.” He lowers his head, as though fatigue or fear will permit him to say no more.
“A hundred Comblain rifles and twenty-five cases of ammunition,” Antônio Vilanova says. “From the army, brand-new and in their factory cases. They can be brought via Uauá and Bendengó, the road is clear.” He is sweating heavily and wipes his forehead as he speaks. “But there aren’t enough hides or oxen or goats in Canudos to pay the price he’s asking.”
“There are silver and gold jewels,” Abbot João says, reading in the merchant’s eyes what he must have said or thought already, before he arrived.
“They belong to the Virgin and her Son,” Father Joaquim says in an almost inaudible voice. “Isn’t that sacrilege?”
“The Counselor will know whether it is or not,” Abbot João says. “We must ask him.”
“It is always possible to feel even more afraid,” the nearsighted journalist thought. That was the great lesson of these days without hours, of figures without faces, of lights veiled with clouds that his eyes struggled to penetrate until they burned so badly that it was necessary for him to close them and remain in the dark for a while, overcome with despair: discovering what a coward he was. What would his colleagues on the staff of the Jornal de Notícias, the Diário da Bahia, O Republicano say if they knew that? He had won the reputation among them of being a fearless reporter, ever in search of new experiences: he had been one of the first to attend candomblé rites—voodoo ceremonies—in whatever out-of-the-way back street or hamlet they might be held, in an era in which the religious practices of blacks aroused only fear or disgust among the whites of Bahia, a dogged frequenter of sorcerers and witches, and one of the first to take up smoking opium. Had it not been his spirit of adventure that had led him to volunteer to go to Juazeiro to interview the survivors of Lieutenant Pires Ferreira’s military expedition, was it not he himself who had proposed to Epaminondas Gonçalves that he accompany Moreira César? “I’m the greatest coward in the whole world,” he thought. The Dwarf went on recounting the adventures, the misadventures, the gallant deeds of Olivier and Fierabras. The vague shapes—he was unable to make out whether they were men or women—stood there, not moving, and it was evident that the recital of the tale held them spellbound, outside of time and outside of Canudos. How was it possible that here, at the very end of the world, he was hearing, recited by a dwarf who no doubt did not know how to read, a romance from the Round Table cycle brought here centuries before by some sailor or some young graduate of Coimbra? What other surprises did the sertão hold in store for him?
His stomach growled and he wondered whether the audience would give them enough money for a meal. That was another discovery he had made in these days that had taught him so many lessons: the fact that food could be a primary concern, capable of occupying all his thoughts for hours on end, and at times a greater source of anxiety than the semi-blindness in which the breaking of his glasses had plunged him, that state in which he stumbled over everything and everyone, which left his body full of