The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [358]
“Lots and lots of noise, so they’ll think there are more of us,” their leader says. “And above all, get them all confused, so they don’t know whether they’re coming or going, so they don’t have the time or the inclination to look toward the river.”
“In other words, Pajeú, you mean really whoop it up,” another voice says.
“Pajeú!” Queluz thinks. Pajeú’s there. Lying there in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by jagunços who will finish him off in short order if they discover him, on realizing that in the shadows, within reach of his hand, is one of the fiercest bandits in all Canudos, a choice prize, Queluz has an impulse which very nearly brings him bounding to his feet, to grab his rifle and blow the monster to bits. This would win him the admiration of one and all, of Colonel Medeiros, of General Oscar. They would give him the corporal’s stripes he has coming to him. Because even though his length of service and his behavior under fire should have long since earned him a promotion, they keep turning him down for one on the stupid pretext that he’s been caned too often for inducing recruits to commit with him what Father Lizzardo calls “the abominable sin.” He turns his head, and in the light of the clear night he sees the silhouettes: twenty, thirty of them. How have they happened not to step on him? By what miracle have they failed to see him? Moving just his eyes, he tries to make out the famous scar on one of those faces that are a mere blur. It is Pajeú who is speaking, he is certain, reminding the others that they should set off dynamite sticks rather than shoot their rifles because that way they’ll make a bigger racket, and warning all of them again that nobody is to blow his whistle before he does. He hears him bid them goodbye in a way that makes him laugh: Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor. The group breaks up into shadows that disappear in the direction of the regiment’s camp.
He hesitates no longer. He scrambles to his feet, grabs his rifle, cocks it, aims it in the direction in which the jagunços are disappearing, and fires. But the trigger doesn’t budge, though he squeezes it with all his might. He curses, spits, trembles with rage at the death of his buddy, and as he murmurs “Leopoldinho, are you there?” he cocks his piece again and tries once more to fire a shot to alert the regiment. He is shaking the rifle to make it behave, to get across to it that it can’t jam now, when he hears several explosions. Damn: they’ve gotten into the camp. It’s his fault. They’re setting off dynamite sticks to blow up his sleeping buddies. Damn: the sons of bitches, the fiends, they’re butchering his buddies. And it’s his fault.
Confused, infuriated, he doesn’t know what to do. How have they managed to get this far without being discovered? Because—there’s no doubt about it, since Pajeú is with them—these are jagunços who have come out of Canudos and made their way through the patriots’ trenches so as to attack the camp from the rear. What in the world can have made Pajeú attack a camp of five hundred soldiers with just twenty or thirty men? All over the sector occupied by the Fifth Infantry Regiment there are people running this way and that, shots, a tremendous uproar. He is desperate. What is going to become of him? What explanation is he going to give when they ask him why he didn’t give the alert, why he didn’t shoot, shout, or do anything at all when they killed Leopoldinho? Who is there to deliver him from a new round of canings?
He grips the rifle hard, in a blind rage, and it goes off. The bullet brushes past his nose, giving him a red-hot whiff of gunpowder. It cheers him that his piece works, it restores his optimism, which,