The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [286]
“He went out to bring food back till the very end,” the nearsighted journalist went on, paying no attention to what the baron had said. “He would steal off, taking just a few men with him. They would make their way through the enemy lines, attack the supply trains. I know how they did that. They would set up an infernal racket with their blunderbusses so as to make the animals stampede. In the chaos that ensued, they would drive ten, fifteen of the bullocks to Canudos. So that those who were about to give their lives for the Blessed Jesus could fight on for a little while more.”
“Do you know where those animals came from?” the baron interrupted him.
“From the convoys that the army was sending out from Monte Santo to A Favela,” the nearsighted journalist said. “The same place the jagunços’ arms and ammunition came from. That was one of the oddities of this war: the army provided the supplies both for its own forces and for the enemy.”
“What the jagunços stole was stolen property,” the baron sighed. “Many of those cattle and goats were once mine. Very few of them had been bought from me. Almost always they’d been cut out of my herds by gaucho rustlers hired on by the army. I have a friend who owns a hacienda, old Murau, who has filed suit against the state for the cows and sheep that the army troops ate. He’s asking for seventy contos in compensation, no less.”
In his half sleep, Big João smells the sea. A warm sensation steals over him, something that feels to him like happiness. In these years in which, thanks to the Counselor, he has found relief for that painful boiling in his soul from the days when he served the Devil, there is only one thing he sometimes misses. How many years is it now that he has not seen, smelled, heard the sea in his body? He has no idea, but he knows that it has been a long, long time since he last saw it, on that high promontory amid cane fields where Mistress Adelinha Isabel de Gumúcio used to come to see sunsets. Scattered shots remind him that the battle is not yet over, but he is not troubled: his consciousness tells him that even if he were wide awake it would make no difference, since neither he nor any of the men in the Catholic Guard huddled in the trenches round about him have a single Mannlicher bullet left, not one load of shotgun pellets, not one grain of powder to set off the explosive devices manufactured by the blacksmiths of Canudos whom necessity has turned into armorers.
So why are they staying, then, in these caves on the heights, in the ravine at the foot of A Favela where the dogs are waiting, crowded one atop the other? They are following Abbot João’s orders. After making sure that all the units of the first column have arrived at A Favela and are now pinned down by the fire from the jagunço sharpshooters who are all around on the mountainsides and are raining bullets down on them from their parapets, their trenches, their hiding places, Abbot João has gone off to try to capture the soldiers’ convoy of ammunition, supplies, cattle and goats which, thanks to the topography and the harassment from Pajeú and his men, has fallen far behind. Hoping to take the convoy by surprise at As Umburanas and divert it to Canudos, Abbot João has asked Big João to see to it that the Catholic Guard, at whatever cost, keeps the regiments at A Favela from retreating. In his half sleep, the former slave tells himself that the dogs must be stupid or must have lost many men, since thus far not a single patrol has tried to make its way back to As Umburanas to see what has happened to the convoy. The Catholic Guards know that if the soldiers make the slightest move to abandon A Favela, they must fling themselves upon them and bar their way, with knives, machetes, bayonets, tooth and nail. Old Joaquim Macambira and his men, hiding in ambush on the other side of the trail cleared for the infantry and the wagons and cannons to advance on A Favela, will do likewise. The soldiers won’t try to retreat; they are too intent on answering the fire in front of them and on their flanks,