The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [292]
Through eyelids sticky with sleep, in the flickering light of an oil lamp, he sees three people eating: the woman, the blind man, and the dwarf who came to Belo Monte with Father Joaquim. Night has fallen, there is no one left in the store, he has slept for hours. He feels such remorse that it brings him wide awake. “What’s happened?” he cries, leaping to his feet. The blind man drops a chunk of meat and he sees his fingers fumble all about on the floor for it.
“I told them they should let you sleep,” he hears Abbot João’s voice say and sees his sturdy silhouette emerge from the shadow. “Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor,” the former slave murmurs and starts to apologize, but the Street Commander cuts him short: “You needed sleep, Big João—nobody can live without sleeping.” He sits down on top of a barrel alongside the oil lamp, and the former slave sees that he is exhausted, his face deathly pale, his eyes sunken, his forehead deeply furrowed. “While I was lost in dreams of horses, you were out fighting, running, helping,” he thinks. He feels so guilty that he scarcely notices when the Dwarf comes over to them with a tinful of water. After he has drunk from it, Abbot João passes it to him.
The Counselor is safe and sound in the Sanctuary, and the atheists have not budged from A Favela; from time to time there is a burst of gunfire. There is a worried expression on Abbot João’s tired face. “What’s happening, João? Is there something I can do?” The Street Commander looks at him affectionately. Though they seldom talk together, the former slave has known, ever since their days of wandering all about with the Counselor, that the former cangaceiro esteems him: he has demonstrated the respect and admiration he feels for him many a time.
“Joaquim Macambira and his sons are going to climb to the top of A Favela to silence A Matadeira,” he says to him. The three persons sitting on the floor stop eating and the blind man cranes his neck, his right eye glued to that monocle of his that is a patchwork of slivers of glass glued together. “They’ll have trouble getting up there. But if they manage to, they can put it out of commission. It’s easy. All they have to do then is smash the detonating mechanism or blow up the chamber.”
“Can I go with them?” Big João breaks in. “I’ll ram powder down the barrel and blow it to pieces.”
“You can help the Macambiras get up there,” Abbot João answers. “But you can’t go all the way with them, Big João. Just help them get up there. It’s their plan, their decision. Come on, let’s go.”
As they are leaving, the Dwarf goes over to Abbot João and says to him in a sweet, fawning voice: “Whenever you’d like, I’ll recite the Terrible and Exemplary Story of Robert the Devil for you, Abbot João.” The former cangaceiro pushes him aside without answering.
Outside, it is pitch-dark and foggy. There is not one star in the sky. There is no gunfire to be heard, and not a soul in sight on Campo Grande. Nor a single light in any of the dwellings. The captured animals have been taken, once night fell, to pens behind the Mocambo. The narrow street of Espírito Santo reeks of butchered meat and dried blood, and as he listens to the Macambiras’ plan, Big João is aware of the countless flies hovering above the remains of the slaughtered animals that the dogs are poking through. They go up Campo Grande to the esplanade between the churches, fortified on all four sides with double and triple barriers of bricks, stones, large wooden boxes full of