The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [350]
“You’re right, you’re right!” he exclaims vehemently, contritely. “Forgive me; grief clouded my mind, or the Evil One perhaps. I know now; I understand now. We won’t tell the others that he’s dead. We’ll hold his wake here, we’ll bury him here. We’ll dig his grave and nobody except us will know where. That is the Father’s will.”
A moment before, he had felt resentment toward Abbot João, Pajeú, and Big João for opposing the funeral ceremony. Now, however, he feels gratitude toward them for having helped him to decipher the message. Thin, frail, delicate, full of energy, impatient, he moves in and out among the women of the Choir and the apostles, pushing them, urging them to stop weeping, to overcome their paralysis that is a trap of the Devil, imploring them to get to their feet, to get moving, to bring picks, shovels to dig with. “There’s no time left, there’s no time,” he says to frighten them.
And so he manages to communicate his sense of energy: they rise to their feet, dry their eyes, take courage, look at each other, nod, prod each other into moving. It is Abbot João, with that sense of practicality that never forsakes him, who makes up the white lie to tell the men on the parapets protecting the Sanctuary: they are going to dig a tunnel, of the sort found everywhere in Belo Monte these days to permit free passage between houses and trenches, in case the dogs block off the Sanctuary. Big João goes out and comes back with shovels. They immediately begin digging, next to the pallet, taking turns by fours, and on handing their shovels over to the next man, they kneel down to pray till it is their turn again. They go on in this way for hours, not noticing that darkness has fallen, that the Mother of Men has lighted an oil lamp, and that, outside, the shooting, the hate-filled shouts, and the cheers have begun again, stopped again, started yet again. Each time someone standing next to the pyramid of earth that has grown higher and higher as the hole has become deeper and deeper asks, the Little Blessed One’s answer is: “Deeper, deeper.”
When inspiration tells him that it is deep enough, all of them, beginning with himself, are exhausted, their hair and skin encrusted with dirt. The Little Blessed One has the sensation that the moments that follow are a dream, as he takes the head, Mother Maria Quadrado one of the legs, Pajeú the other, Big João one of the arms, Father Joaquim the other, and together they lift up the Counselor’s body so that the women of the Sacred Choir may place beneath it the little straw mat that will be his shroud. Once the body is in place, Maria Quadrado places on his chest the metal crucifix that was the sole object decorating the walls of the Sanctuary and the rosary with dark beads that he has never been without so long as any of them can remember. They lift up the remains, wrapped in the straw mat, once again, and hand them down to Abbot João and Pajeú, standing at the bottom of the grave. As Father Joaquim prays in Latin, they again work by turns, accompanying the shovelfuls of dirt with prayers. Amid his strange feeling that all of this is a dream, a sensation heightened by the dim light, the Little Blessed One sees that even the Lion of Natuba, hopping in and out between the legs of the others, is helping to fill the grave. As he works, he contains his grief. He tells himself that this humble vigil and this poor grave on which no inscription or cross will be placed is something that the poor and humble man the Counselor was in life would surely have asked for himself. But when it is all over and the Sanctuary is exactly as it has always been—except that the pallet is empty—the Little Blessed One bursts into tears. In the midst of his weeping, he hears the others weeping, too. Then after a while he gets hold of himself and in a subdued voice asks them all