The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [299]
His words were not tumbling out in a rush, he had not raised his voice, he was neither furious nor sad. Simply overwhelmed.
“It’s not that I’m stubborn or that I hate him,” the Dwarf heard Jurema say in the same firm tone of voice. “Even if it were someone else besides Pajeú, I wouldn’t say yes. I don’t want to marry again, Father.”
“Very well, I understand,” the curé of Cumbe sighed. “We’ll see that things turn out all right. You don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to, and you don’t have to kill yourself. I’m the one who marries people in Belo Monte; there’s no such thing as civil marriage here.” A faint smile crossed his lips and there was an impish little gleam in his eyes. “But we can’t break the news to him all at once. We mustn’t hurt his feelings. People like Pajeú are so sensitive that it’s like a terrible malady. Another thing that’s always amazed me about people like him is their touchy sense of honor. It’s as though they were one great open wound. They don’t have a thing to their names, but they possess a surpassing sense of honor. It’s their form of wealth. So then, we’ll start by telling him that you’ve been left a widow too recently to enter into another marriage just yet. We’ll make him wait. But there is one thing you can do. It’s important to him. Take him his food at Fazenda Velha. He’s talked to me about that. He needs to feel that a woman is taking care of him. It’s not much. Give him that pleasure. As for the rest, we’ll discourage him, little by little.”
The morning had been quiet; now they began to hear shots, scattered gunfire far in the distance.
“You’ve aroused a passion,” Father Joaquim added. “A great passion. He came to the Sanctuary last night to ask the Counselor’s permission to marry you. He also said that he would take in these two, since they’re your family, that he would take them to live with him…” He rose to his feet abruptly.
The nearsighted man went into a sneezing fit that made him shake all over and the Dwarf burst into joyous laughter, delighted at the idea of becoming Pajeú’s foster son: he would never lack for food again.
“I wouldn’t marry him for that reason or for any other,” Jurema said, as unyielding as ever. She added, however, lowering her eyes: “But if you think I should, I’ll bring his food to him.”
Father Joaquim nodded and had turned to leave when suddenly the nearsighted man leapt to his feet and grabbed his arm. On seeing the anxious expression on his face, the Dwarf guessed what he was about to say.
“You can help me,” he whispered, peering all about fearfully. “Do it because of what you believe in, Father. I have nothing at all to do with what is happening here. It’s by accident that I’m in Canudos; you know that I’m not a soldier or a spy, that I’m a nobody. Help me, I implore you.”
The curé of Cumbe looked at him with commiseration. “To get out of here?” he murmured.
“Yes, yes,” the nearsighted man stammered, nodding his head. “They’ve forbidden me to leave. It isn’t right…”
“You should have made your escape,” Father Joaquim whispered. “While it was still possible; when there weren’t soldiers all over everywhere.”
“Can’t you see the state I’m in?” the nearsighted man whined, pointing to his bulging, watery, unfocused red eyes. “Can’t you see that without my glasses I’m totally blind? Could I have escaped by myself, fumbling my way through the backlands?” His little