The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [371]
He lets go and disappears into the maze around the churches and the Sanctuary. Without the hand that was holding him up, the Lion of Natuba falls to the ground in a heap. But he lies there for only a few brief moments, getting back into place those bones that seem to have been dislocated in the mad dash. It is as though the yank given him by the leader of the Catholic Guard had started up a secret motor inside him, for the Lion of Natuba begins trotting along again amid the filth and debris of what was once Campo Grande, the only passage between dwellings wide enough and straight enough to merit the name of street and now, like the others, nothing but an open space strewn with shell holes, rubble, and corpses. He sees nothing of what he is leaving behind, what he is dodging around, hugging the ground, not feeling the cuts and bruises from the shards of glass and the stones, for he is entirely absorbed in the task of getting to where he has been told to go, the little alleyways of Menino Jesus, Santo Elói, and São Pedro Mártir, that slender snake that zigzags up to Madre Igreja. He will be safe there, he will stay alive, he will endure. But on turning the third corner of Campo Grande, along what was once Menino Jesus and is now a crowded tunnel, he hears bursts of rifle fire and sees reddish-yellow flames and gray spirals rising in the sky. He stops and squats down next to an overturned cart and a picket fence that is all that is left of a dwelling. He hesitates. Does it make sense to go on toward those flames, those bullets? Isn’t it better to go back the way he came? Up ahead, where Menino Jesus leads into Madre Igreja, he can make out silhouettes, knots of people walking back and forth slowly, unhurriedly. So that must be where the barricade is. It’s best to make it up there, best to die where there are other people around.
But he is not as completely alone as he thinks he is, for as he goes up the steep incline of Menino Jesus, in little leaps, his name comes up out of the ground, shouted, cried out, to right and left: “Lion! Lion! Come here! Take cover, Lion! Hide, Lion!” Where, where? He can see no one and goes on toward the top, climbing over piles of dirt, ruins, debris, and dead bodies, some of them with their guts spilling out or gobs of flesh torn away by the shrapnel, left lying there for many hours, perhaps days now, to judge by the terrible stench all round him, which, together with the smoke blowing into his face, suffocates him and makes his eyes water. And then, all of a sudden, the soldiers are there. Six of them, three with torches that they keep dipping into a can, no doubt full of kerosene, which another is carrying, for after dipping them into it they light them and hurl them at the dwellings, as the others fire point-blank at these same houses. He is less than ten paces away from them, rooted to the spot where he has first caught sight of them, looking at them in a daze, half blinded, when shooting breaks out all around him. He falls flat on the ground, though he does not close those great eyes of his, which watch in fascination as the soldiers, hit by the hail of bullets, collapse, writhe in agony, roar with pain, drop their rifles. Where, where have the shots come from? One of the atheists rolls toward him, clutching his face. He sees him go suddenly limp and motionless, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
Where have the shots come from, where are the jagunços? He remains on the alert, watching the fallen dogs intently, his eyes leaping from one to the other, expecting