The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [332]
He puts the Pyrotechnist out of his mind and sets to work with his general staff. He dismisses the field officers, aides, or representatives of the assault corps, repeating the order to hold the positions already taken and not fall back a single step, and to strengthen the barricade, opposite the one that stopped them, which the troops had started to erect a few hours before when it became evident that the city was not going to fall. He decides that the Seventh Brigade, which has remained behind to protect the wounded on A Favela, will move forward to reinforce the “black line,” the new front, already well established in the heart of the rebellious city. In the cone of light from the oil lamp, he bends over the map drawn by Captain Teotônio Coriolano, his staff cartographer, on the basis of reports that he has received and his own observations of the situation. A fifth of Canudos has been taken, a triangle which extends from the line of trench works at Fazenda Velha, still in the hands of the jagunços, to the cemetery, which has been captured, thus allowing the patriot troops to occupy a position within less than eighty paces of the Church of Santo Antônio.
“The front is no more than fifteen hundred meters long at most,” Captain Guimarães says, making no attempt to conceal his disappointment. “We’re far from having them surrounded. We haven’t occupied even a quarter of the circumference. They can come and go and receive supplies.”
“We can’t extend the front until the reinforcements arrive,” Major Carrenho complains. “Why are they leaving us stranded like this, sir?”
General Oscar shrugs. Ever since the ambush, on the day they arrived in Canudos, as he has seen the death toll among his men mount, he has kept sending urgent, justified pleas for more troops, and has even gone so far as to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation. Why don’t his superiors send them?
“If there had been five thousand of us instead of three thousand, Canudos would be ours by now,” an officer says, thinking aloud.
The general forces them to change the subject by informing them that he is going to inspect the front and the new field hospital set up that morning along the ravines of the Vaza-Barris once the jagunços had been dislodged from there. Before leaving the Pyrotechnist’s shack, he drinks a cup of coffee, listening to the bells and the Ave Marias of the fanatics, so close by he can’t believe it.
Even at the age of fifty-three, he is a man of great energy, who rarely feels fatigue. He has followed the development of the attack in detail, watching through his field glasses since five this morning, when the corps began to leave A Favela, and he has marched with them, immediately behind the battalions of the vanguard, without halting to rest and without eating a single mouthful, contenting himself with a few sips from his canteen. Early in the afternoon, a stray bullet wounded a soldier who was marching directly alongside him. He leaves the shack. Night has fallen; there is not a star in the sky. The sound of the prayers is everywhere, like a magic spell, and drowns out the last bursts of rifle fire. He gives orders that no fires be lighted in the trench. Nonetheless, in the course of his slow tour of inspection via an itinerary full of twists and turns, escorted by four officers, at many points along the winding, labyrinthine barricade hastily thrown up by the soldiers, behind which they are lined up, their backs against the inner brick facing of the wall of debris, earth, stones, oil drums, and all manner of implements and objects, sleeping one against the other, some with enough high spirits still to be singing or poking their heads over the wall to insult the bandits—who must be crouching listening behind their own barricade, a mere five yards distant in some sections, ten in others, and in still others the two practically touching—General Oscar finds braziers around which knots of soldiers are making soup with scraps of meat, heating up chunks of jerky, or warming wounded men trembling with