The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [342]
Pajeú? The baron shuddered. He saw before him that face with Indian features, that skin with a yellowish cast, the scar where the nose should have been, heard once more that voice calmly announcing to him that he had come to burn Calumbi down in the name of the Father. Pajeú—the individual who incarnated all the wickedness and all the stupidity of which Estela had been the victim.
“That’s right, Pajeú,” the nearsighted visitor said. “I detested him. And feared him more than I feared the soldiers’ bullets. Because he was in love with Jurema and had only to lift his little finger to steal her from me and spirit her away.”
He laughed once more, a nervous, strident little laugh that ended in wheezes and sneezes. The baron’s mind was elsewhere; he, too, was busy hating that fanatical brigand. What had become of the perpetrator of that inexpiable crime? He was too beside himself to ask, afraid that he would hear that he was safe and sound. The journalist was repeating the word “water.” It was an effort for the baron to turn his thoughts away from himself, to listen to what the man was saying. Yes, the waters of the Vaza-Barris. He knew what those wells were like; they lay alongside the riverbed, and the floodwaters that flowed into them supplied men, birds, goats, cows in the long months (and entire years sometimes) when the Vaza-Barris dried up. And what about Pajeú? What about Pajeú? Had he died in battle? Had he been captured? The question was on the tip of the baron’s tongue and yet he did not ask it.
“One has to understand these things,” the journalist was now saying, wholeheartedly, vehemently, angrily. “I was barely able to see them, naturally. But I was unable to understand them either.”
“Of whom are you speaking?” the baron asked. “My mind was elsewhere; I’ve lost the thread.”
“Of the women and the youngsters,” the nearsighted journalist muttered. “That’s what they called them. The ‘youngsters.’ When the soldiers captured the water supply, they went out with the women at night to try to fill tin drums full of water so that the jagunços could go on fighting. Just the women and the children, nobody else. And they also tried to steal the soldiers’ unspeakable garbage that meant food for them. Do you follow me?”
“Ought I to be surprised?” the baron said. “To be amazed?”
“You ought to try to understand,” the nearsighted journalist murmured. “Who gave those orders? The Counselor? Abbot João? Antônio Vilanova? Who was it who decided that only women and children would crawl to Fazenda Velha to steal water, knowing that soldiers were lying in wait for them at the wells so as to shoot them point-blank, knowing that out of every ten only one or two would get back alive? Who was it who decided that the combatants shouldn’t risk that lesser suicide since their lot was to risk the superior form of suicide that dying fighting represented?” The baron saw the journalist’s eyes seek his in anguish once again. “I suspect that it was neither the Counselor nor the leaders. It was spontaneous, simultaneous, anonymous decisions. Otherwise, they would not have obeyed, they would not have gone to the slaughter with such conviction.”
“They were fanatics,” the baron said, aware of the scorn in his voice. “Fanaticism impels people to act in that way. It is not always lofty, sublime motives that best explain heroism. There is also prejudice, narrow-mindedness, the most stupid ideas imaginable.”
The nearsighted journalist sat there staring at him; his forehead was dripping with sweat and he appeared to be searching for a cutting answer. The baron thought that he would venture some insolent