The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [281]
“As you yourself see, the best thing to do is forget it,” the baron said. “It isn’t worth wasting your time over it.”
“Cynicism is no solution, either,” the nearsighted journalist said. “Moreover, I can scarcely believe that this attitude of yours, this proud disdain for what really happened, is sincere.”
“It is indifference, not disdain,” the baron corrected him. The thought of Estela had been far from his mind for some time, but it was there again now and with it the pain, as mordant as acid, that turned him into a completely crushed, cowed being. “I’ve already told you that what happened at Canudos doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.”
“It does matter to you, Baron,” the vibrant voice of the nearsighted journalist interjected. “For the same reason it matters to me: because Canudos changed your life. Because of Canudos your wife lost her mind, because of Canudos you lost a large part of your fortune and your power. Of course it matters to you. It’s for that reason that you haven’t thrown me out, for that reason that we’ve been talking together for so many hours now…”
Yes, perhaps he was right. The Baron de Canabrava was suddenly aware of a bitter taste in his mouth; although he had had more than enough of the man and there was no reason to prolong the conversation, he found himself unable to dismiss him. What was keeping him from it? He finally admitted the truth to himself: it was the idea of being left all alone, alone with Estela, alone with that terrible tragedy.
“But they didn’t merely see what didn’t exist,” the nearsighted journalist went on. “Besides that, none of them saw what was really there.”
“Phrenologists?” the baron murmured. “Scottish anarchists?”
“Priests,” the nearsighted journalist said. “Nobody mentions them. And there they were, spying for the jagunços or fighting shoulder to shoulder with them. Relaying information or bringing medicine, smuggling in saltpeter and sulfur to make explosives. Isn’t that surprising? Wasn’t that of any importance?”
“Are you certain of that?” the baron said, pricking up his ears.
“I knew one of those priests. I might even go so far as to say that we became friends,” the nearsighted journalist said, nodding his head. “Father Joaquim, the parish priest of Cumbe.”
The baron looked closely at his caller. “That little curé who’s fathered a whole pack of kids? That toper who regularly commits all the seven capital sins was in Canudos?”
“It’s an excellent index of the Counselor’s powers of persuasion,” the journalist asserted, nodding again. “He not only turned thieves and murderers into saints; he also catechized the corrupt and simoniacal priests of the sertão. A disquieting man, wouldn’t you say?”
That episode from years back seemed to leap to the baron’s mind from the depths of time. He and Estela, escorted by a small band of armed capangas, had just entered Cumbe and had headed immediately for the church on hearing the bells ring summoning people to Sunday Mass. Try as he might, the notorious Father Joaquim was unable to hide the traces of what must have been a night of debauchery—guitars, cane brandy, womanizing—without a wink of sleep. The baron remembered how vexed the baroness had been on seeing the priest stumble over the liturgy and make mistakes, begin to retch violently right in the middle of Mass, and dash from the altar to go vomit outside. He could even see vividly once again in his mind’s eye the face of the curé’s concubine: wasn’t it the young woman whom people