The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [344]
“So the war wasn’t the explanation.” The journalist looked up at him, as though remembering that he was there. “He’d become a saint, don’t you see? That’s how people in Canudos put it: he became a saint, the angel kissed him, the angel brushed him with its wings, the angel touched him.” He nodded his head several times. “Perhaps that’s it. He didn’t want to take her by force. That’s the other explanation. More farfetched, doubtless, but perhaps. So that everything would be done in accordance with God’s will. According to the dictates of religion. Marrying her. I heard him ask her. Perhaps.”
“What became of him?” the baron repeated slowly, emphasizing each word.
The nearsighted journalist looked at him intently. And the baron noted how surprised he looked.
“He burned Calumbi down,” he explained slowly. “He was the one who…Did he die? How did he die?”
“I suppose he’s dead,” the nearsighted journalist said. “Why wouldn’t he be? Why wouldn’t he and Abbot João and Big João—all of them—be dead?”
“You didn’t die, and according to what you’ve told me, Vilanova didn’t die either. Was he able to escape?”
“They didn’t want to escape,” the journalist said sadly. “They wanted to get in, to stay there, to die there. What happened to Vilanova was exceptional. He didn’t want to leave either. They ordered him to.”
So he wasn’t absolutely certain that Pajeú was dead. The baron imagined him, taking up his old life again, free again, at the head of a cangaço he’d gotten together again, with malefactors from all over, adding endless terrible misdeeds to his legend, in Ceará, in Pernambuco, in regions more distant still. He felt his head go round and round.
“Antônio Vilanova,” the Counselor murmurs, producing a sort of electrical discharge in the Sanctuary. “He’s spoken, he’s spoken,” the Little Blessed One thinks, so awestruck he has gooseflesh all over. “Praised be the Father, praised be the Blessed Jesus.” He steps toward the rush pallet at the same time as Maria Quadrado, the Lion of Natuba, Father Joaquim, and the women of the Sacred Choir; in the gloomy light of dusk, all eyes are riveted on the long, dark, motionless face with eyelids still tightly closed. It is not a hallucination: he has spoken.
The Little Blessed One sees that beloved mouth, grown so emaciated that the lips have disappeared, open to repeat: “Antônio Vilanova.” They react, say “Yes, yes, Father,” rush to the door of the Sanctuary to tell the Catholic Guard to go fetch Antônio Vilanova. Several men leave on the run, hurriedly making their way between the stones and sandbags of the parapet. At that moment, there is no shooting. The Little Blessed One goes back to the Counselor’s bedside; he is again lying there silent, his bones protruding from the dark purple tunic whose folds betray here and there how frightfully thin he is. “He is more spirit than flesh now,” the Little Blessed One thinks. The Superior of the Sacred Choir, encouraged at hearing the Counselor speak, comes toward him with a bowl containing a little milk. He hears her say softly, in a voice full of devotion and hope: “Would you like a little something to drink, Father?” He has heard her ask the same question many times in these last days. But this time, unlike the others, when the Counselor lay there without answering, the skeleton-like head with long disheveled gray hair drooping down from it shakes from one side to the other: no. A wave of happiness mounts within the Little Blessed One. He is alive, he is going to live. Because in these recent days, even though Father Joaquim came to the Counselor’s bedside every so often to take his pulse and listen to his heart to assure them that he was breathing, and even though that little trickle of water kept constantly flowing out of him, the Little Blessed One could not help thinking, as he saw him lying there, so silent and so still, that the Counselor’s soul had gone up to heaven.