The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [256]
“Well, I see you’re ready to work for the Diário da Bahia,” the baron said jokingly. “You already know all about our adversaries’ vile deeds.”
“You aren’t any better than they are,” the nearsighted journalist muttered. “Have you forgotten that Epaminondas is your ally and that your former friends are members of the government?”
“You’re discovering a little too late that politics is a dirty business,” the baron said.
“Not for the Counselor,” the nearsighted journalist answered. “It was a clean and clear-cut one for him.”
“It was for poor Gentil de Castro, too.” The baron sighed.
On returning to Europe, he had found on his desk a letter sent from Rio several months before, in which Gentil de Castro himself had asked him, in his careful handwriting: “What is this Canudos affair all about, my dear Baron? What is happening there in your beloved lands in the Northeast? They are laying all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense at our doorstep, and we are not able even to defend ourselves because we haven’t the least idea what is going on. Who is Antônio Conselheiro? Does he even exist? Who are these Sebastianist despoilers with whom the Jacobins insist on linking us? I would be much obliged to you if you would enlighten me in this regard…” And now the elderly man whom the name of Gentil fit so well was dead because he had organized and financed a rebellion aimed at restoring the Empire and making Brazil the slave of England. Years before, when he had first begun receiving copies of A Gazeta de Notícias and A Liberdade, the Baron de Canabrava wrote to the Viscount de Ouro Preto, asking him what sort of absurd business all this was, putting out two papers nostalgically yearning for a return to the good old days of the monarchy, at a time when it was obvious to everyone that the Empire was forever dead and buried. “What can I tell you, my dear friend?…It wasn’t my idea, or João Alfredo’s, or any of your friends’ here; on the contrary, it was Colonel Gentil de Castro’s idea, and his alone. He’s decided to throw away his money by bringing out these publications in order to defend the names of those of us who served the Empire from the contumely to which we are subjected. We are all of the opinion that it is quite untimely to seek to restore the monarchy at this juncture, but how to put a damper on poor Gentil de Castro’s passionate enthusiasm? I don’t know if you remember him. A good man, but never an outstanding figure…”
“He wasn’t in Rio but in Petrópolis when the news arrived in the capital,” the viscount said. “I sent word to him through my son, Afonso Celso, that he shouldn’t even think of returning to Rio, that his newspaper offices had been burned to the ground and his house destroyed, and a mob in the Rua do Ouvidor and the Largo de São Francisco was demanding his death. That was enough to make Gentil de Castro decide to return.”
The baron pictured him, pink-cheeked, packing his valise and heading for the railway station, as meanwhile in Rio, in the Military Club, twenty officers or so mingled their blood before a square and compass and swore to avenge Moreira César, drawing up a list of traitors to be executed. The name heading it: Gentil de Castro.
“In Meriti Station, Afonso Celso bought him the daily papers,” the Viscount de Ouro Preto went on. “Gentil de Castro was able to read about everything that had happened the day before in the federal capital. The demonstrations, the closing of stores and theaters, the flags at half staff and the black crepe on the balconies, the attacks on newspaper offices, the assaults. And, naturally, the sensational news in A República: ‘The rifles found at A Gazeta de Notícias and A Liberdade are of the same manufacture and the same caliber as those in Canudos.’ And what do you think his reaction was?
“‘I have no choice save to send my seconds to Alcindo Guanabara,’ Colonel Gentil de Castro muttered, smoothing his white mustache.