The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [356]
Shadows were running in all directions, terrifying screams rent the air, but the strange thing to Jurema, who had drawn her legs up and was leaning her head on the nearsighted journalist’s shoulder, was that along with the cries, the shrieks, the weeping and wailing, she could also hear loud bursts of laughter, cheers, songs, and now a single vibrant, martial song, being roared out by hundreds of voices.
“The Church of Santo Antônio,” the Dwarf said. “They’ve hit it, they’ve brought it tumbling down.”
She looked, and in the dim moonlight, up above, where the smoke that had been hiding it was slowly being blown away by a breeze from the river, she saw the looming, imposing outlines of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, but not those of the bell tower and roof of Santo Antônio. That was what the tremendous din had been. The screams and cries had come from those who had fallen with the church, from those crushed beneath its stones as it caved in, but not yet dead. With his arms about her, the nearsighted journalist kept shouting at the top of his lungs asking what was happening, what the laughing and singing were, and the Dwarf answered that it was the soldiers, beside themselves with joy. The soldiers! The soldiers shouting, singing! How could they be this close? The triumphant cheers were mingled in her ears with the moans, and sounded as though they were coming from even nearer at hand. On the other side of this barricade that she had helped to erect, a crowd of soldiers was milling about, singing, about to cross the space of just a few feet separating them from the three of them. “Father, may the three of us die together,” she prayed.
But curiously enough, instead of fanning the flames of war, the fall of Santo Antônio appeared to bring a lull in the fighting. Still not moving from their corner, they heard the cries of pain and of victory gradually grow fainter, and then, after that, there came a calm such as had not reigned for many a night. There was not a single cannon or rifle report to be heard, only sounds of weeping and moaning here and there, as though the combatants had agreed on a truce so as to rest. It seemed to her at times that she fell asleep, and when she awoke she had no idea whether a second or an hour had gone by. Each time she was still in the same place, sheltered between the nearsighted journalist and the Dwarf.
At one of these times, she spied a jagunço from the Catholic Guard walking away from them. What had he wanted? Father Joaquim was asking for them. “I told him you weren’t able to move,” the nearsighted man murmured. A moment later the curé of Cumbe came trotting along in the dark. “Why didn’t you come?” she heard him say, in an odd tone of voice, and she thought: “Pajeú.”
“Jurema is exhausted,” she heard the nearsighted journalist answer. “She’s fainted away several times.”
“She’ll have to stay here, then,” Father Joaquim answered, in the same strange voice, not angry, but broken, disheartened, sad. “You two come with me.”
“Stay here?” she heard the nearsighted journalist murmur, feeling him straighten up, his whole body tense.
“Be still,” the curé ordered. “Weren’t you the one who was so desperate to get away? Well, you’re going to have your chance now. But not a word out of you. Come along, you two.”
Father Joaquim began to walk off. Jurema was the first one on her feet, gathering her strength together and thus putting an end to the journalist’s stammering—“Jurema can’t…I…I…”—and demonstrating to him that indeed she could, that she was already on her feet, following along behind the curé’s shadow. Seconds later, she was running, the nearsighted man holding her by one hand and the Dwarf by the other, amid the ruins and the dead and injured of the Church of Santo Antônio, still not able to believe what she had heard.
She realized that the curé was leading them to the Sanctuary, through a labyrinth of galleries