The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [30]
It was the Baron de Canabrava’s petty lawyer himself who arranged for the interview, in the belief that I have been interested for years in the subject of religious superstition (this, as a matter of fact, is true). It took place in the refectory of the monastery, a room whose walls were covered with paintings of saints and martyrs, adjoining a small tiled cloister, with a cistern to which hooded monks in brown habits girdled with white cords came every so often to draw pails of water. The monk forgave all my questions and turned out to be very talkative on discovering that we were able to converse in Italian, his native tongue. A southerner who is still young, short-statured, plump, thick-bearded, he has a very broad forehead that betrays that he is a day-dreamer, and the hollows at his temples and the thickness of his neck a nature that is spiteful, petty, and touchy. And, in point of fact, in the course of the conversation I noted that he is filled with hatred against Canudos because of the failure of the mission that took him there and because of the fear that he no doubt experienced there among the “heretics.” But, once allowances are made for the exaggeration and rancor evident in his testimony, the residuum of truth in it is, as you will see, most impressive.
What I heard from his lips would provide material for many issues of L’Etincelle de la révolte. The heart of the matter is that the interview confirmed my suspicions that in Canudos humble and inexperienced people, by the sheer powers of instinct and imagination, are carrying out in practice many of the things that we European revolutionaries know are necessary in order to institute a reign of justice on this earth. Judge for yourselves. Brother João Evangelista spent just one week in Canudos, accompanied by two men of the cloth: another Capuchin from Bahia and the parish priest of a town neighboring Canudos, a certain Dom Joaquim, whom, let me say in passing, Brother João detests (he accuses him of being a toper, of being unchaste, and of arousing people’s sympathies for outlaws). Before arriving in Canudos—after an arduous journey of eighteen days—they noted “signs of insubordination and anarchy,” since no guide was willing to take them there and when they were three leagues away from the hacienda they met up with a patrol of men with long-barreled muskets and machetes who confronted them in a hostile mood and allowed them to pass thanks only to the intervention of Dom Joaquim, whom they knew. In Canudos they encountered a multitude of emaciated, cadaverous creatures, crowded one on top of the other in huts of mud and straw and armed to the teeth “so as to protect the Counselor, whom the authorities have already tried to kill.” The frightened words of the Capuchin as he recalled his impression on seeing so many weapons are still ringing in my ears. “They put them down neither to eat nor to pray, for they are proud of being armed with blunderbusses, carbines, pistols, knives, and cartridge belts, as though they were about to wage war.” (I was unable to make him see the light, though I explained to him that they had found it necessary to wage this war ever since they had occupied the baron’s land by force.) He assured me that among those men were criminals famous for their outrages, and mentioned one of them in particular, Satan João, “known far and wide for his cruelty,” who had come to