The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [290]
He does so by following a meandering branch of the Vaza-Barris, which fills up only during big floods. Walking in the stony riverbed with only a trickle of water in it, João feels the chill morning air grow warmer. He works his way to the rear, checks how many dead there are, foreseeing how sad the Counselor, the Little Blessed One, the Mother of Men will be when they learn that those brothers’ bodies will rot in the open air. It pains him to remember those boys, many of whom he taught to shoot a rifle, to know that they will turn into food for vultures, without a burial or a prayer over their graves. But how could they have rescued their mortal remains?
All the way back they hear shots, coming from the direction of A Favela. One jagunço says that it seems odd that Pajeú, Mané Quadrado, and Taramela, who are firing on the dogs from that front, should be doing so much shooting. Big João reminds him that when the ammunition was divided up, most of it was given to the men posted in those trenches forming a bulwark between Belo Monte and A Favela. And that even the blacksmiths went out there with their anvils and their bellows so as to go on melting lead for bullets right alongside the combatants. However, the moment they spy Canudos beneath little clouds of smoke which must be grenades exploding—the sun is now high in the sky and the towers of the Temple and the whitewashed dwellings are giving off dazzling reflections—Big João suddenly guesses the good news. He blinks, looks, calculates, compares. Yes, they are firing continuous rounds from the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, from the Church of Santo Antônio, from the parapets at the cemetery, as well as from the ravines of the Vaza-Barris and the Fazenda Velha. Where has all that ammunition come from? Moments later, a “youngster” brings him a message from Abbot João.
“So he got back to Canudos!” the former slave exclaims.
“With more than a hundred head of cattle and loads of guns,” the lad says enthusiastically. “And cases of rifle cartridges and grenades, and big drums of gunpowder. He stole all that from the dogs, and now everyone in Belo Monte is eating meat.”
Big João places one of his huge paws on the youngster’s head and contains his emotion. Abbot João wants the Catholic Guard to go to the Fazenda Velha to reinforce Pajeú, and the former slave to meet him at the Vilanovas’. Big João guides his men past the line of shacks along the Vaza-Barris, a dead angle that will protect them from the gunfire from A Favela, to the Fazenda Velha, a maze of trenches and dugouts a kilometer long, constructed by taking advantage of the twists and turns and accidents of the terrain, that is the first line of defense of Belo Monte, barely fifty yards away from the soldiers. Since his return, the caboclo Pajeú has been in command on this front.
When he arrives back in Belo Monte, Big João can hardly see a thing because of the dense cloud of dust that blurs everything. The gunfire is very heavy, and he hears not only the deafening rifle reports but also the sound of roof tiles breaking, walls collapsing, and sheets of corrugated tin clanging. The “youngster” takes him by the hand: he knows where there are no bullets falling. In these two days of fusillades and cannonades people have learned the geography of safety and go back and forth only along certain streets and certain angles of each street so as to be sheltered from the heavy fire. The cattle that Abbot João has brought in are being butchered in the narrow Rua do Espírito Santo, which has been