The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [374]
“The Mother of Men has been looking for you everywhere, Lion,” someone says, as though reading his thoughts.
It is an emaciated “youngster,” a mere string of bones with skin stretched tight over them, wearing a pair of trousers in rags, who has just come in the door. The jagunços unload the canteens and ammunition pouches he has brought in on his back.
The Lion of Natuba grabs him by one of his thin arms. “Maria Quadrado? You’ve seen her?”
“She’s in Santo Elói, at the barricade,” the “youngster” answers. “She’s been asking everyone about you.”
“Take me to where she is,” the Lion of Natuba says in an anxious, pleading voice.
“The Little Blessed One went out to the dogs with a flag,” the “youngster” says to the Pyrotechnist, suddenly remembering.
“Take me to where Maria Quadrado is, I beg you,” the Lion of Natuba cries, clinging to him and leaping up and down. Not knowing what to do, the lad looks toward the Pyrotechnist.
“Take him with you,” the latter says. “Tell Abbot João that it’s quiet here now. And come back as quickly as you can, because I need you.” He has been handing out canteens to people and hands the Lion the one he is keeping for himself. “Have a swallow before you go.”
The Lion of Natuba drinks from it and murmurs: “Praised be Blessed Jesus the Counselor.” He follows the boy out the door of the shack. Outside, he sees fires everywhere and men and women trying to put them out with bucketfuls of dirt. São Pedro Mártir has less rubble in it and the houses along it are full of people. Some of them call out to him and motion to him and several times they ask him if he saw the angels, if he was there when the Counselor went up to heaven. He does not answer, he does not stop. He has great difficulty making his way along, he hurts all over and can hardly bear to touch his hands to the ground. He shouts to the “youngster” not to go so fast, that he can’t keep up with him, and all at once—without crying out, without a word—the boy falls to the ground. The Lion of Natuba drags himself over to him but does not touch him, for where his eyes were there is now only blood, with something white in the middle of it, a bone perhaps, some other substance perhaps. Without trying to find out where the shot has come from, he begins to trot along more determinedly, thinking: “Mother Maria Quadrado, I want to see you, I want to die with you.” As he goes on, he encounters more and more smoke and flames and then all at once he is certain that he will not be able to go any farther: São Pedro Mártir ends in a wall of crackling flames that completely blocks the street. He stops, panting for breath, feeling the heat of the fire in his face.
“Lion, Lion.”
He turns round. He sees the shadow of a woman, a ghost with protruding bones and wrinkled skin, whose gaze is as sad as her voice. “You throw him into the fire, Lion,” she begs him. “I can’t, but you can. So they don’t devour him, the way they’re going to devour me.” The Lion of Natuba follows the dying woman’s gaze, and sees, almost at her side, a corpse that is bright red in the light of the fire, and a feast going on: many rats, dozens perhaps, running back and forth over the face and belly of someone no longer identifiable as either man or woman, young or old. “They’re coming out from everywhere because of the fires, or because the Devil has won the war now,” the woman says, speaking so slowly that each word seems to be her last. “Don’t let them eat him. He’s still an angel. Throw him on the fire, Little Lion. In the name of the Blessed Jesus.” The Lion of Natuba observes the feast: they have consumed the face and are hard at work on the belly, the thighs.
“Yes, Mother,” he says, approaching on his four paws. Rising up on his hind limbs, he reaches over and gathers up the little wrapped bundle that the woman is holding in her lap and clasps it to his chest. And standing on his hind paws, his back hunched, he pants eagerly: “I’m taking him, I’m going with