The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [378]
“And what happened then?” he heard the nearsighted journalist ask. “After Abbot João, after you and others…”
He fell silent and the Sardelinha sisters, who had stopped crying in their surprise at this intrusion, began weeping again.
“There wasn’t any ‘after,’” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said. “The atheists thought we were shooting at them. They were enraged at seeing us take this prey that they thought was theirs away from them.” He fell silent, then his voice echoed through the cave: “‘Traitors,’ they shouted. We’d broken the truce and were going to pay for it. They came at us from all directions. Thousands of atheists. That was a piece of luck.”
“A piece of luck?” Antônio Vilanova said.
The Dwarf had understood. A piece of luck to have that torrent of uniforms advancing with rifles and torches to shoot at again, a piece of luck not to have to go on killing innocents to save them from dishonor. He understood, and in the midst of his fever and chills, he saw it. He saw how the exhausted jagunços, who had been sending people to merciful deaths, rubbed their blistered, burned hands in glee, happy to have before them once again a clear, definite, flagrant, unquestionable enemy. He could see that fury advancing, killing everything not yet killed, burning everything left to burn.
“But I’m sure he didn’t weep even at that moment,” one of the Sardelinhas said, and the Dwarf could not tell whether it was Honório’s wife or Antônio’s. “I can imagine Big João, Father Joaquim weeping because they had to do that to those innocents. But him? Did he weep?”
“I’m certain of that,” Antônio the Pyrotechnist said softly. “Even though I didn’t see him.”
“I never once saw Abbot João weep,” the same Sardelinha sister said.
“You never liked him,” Antônio Vilanova muttered bitterly, and the Dwarf knew then which of the two sisters was speaking: Antônia.
“Never,” she admitted, making no effort to hide her enmity. “And even less now. Now that I know that he ended up not as Abbot João but as Satan João. The one who killed to be killing, robbed to be robbing, and took pleasure in making people suffer.”
There was a deep silence and the Dwarf could feel that the nearsighted man was frightened. He waited, every nerve tense.
“I don’t ever want to hear you say that again,” Antônio Vilanova said slowly. “You’ve been my wife for years, forever. We’ve gone through everything together. But if I ever hear you say that again, it’s all over between us. And it will be the end of you, too.”
Trembling, sweating, counting the seconds, the Dwarf waited.
“I swear by the Blessed Jesus that I will never say that again,” Antônia Sardelinha stammered.
“I saw Abbot João weep once,” the Dwarf said then. His teeth were chattering and his words came out in spurts, well chewed. He spoke with his face pressed against Jurema’s bosom. “Don’t you remember, didn’t I tell you? When he heard the Terrible and Exemplary Story of Robert the Devil.”
“He was the son of a king and his mother’s hair was already white when he was born,” Abbot João remembered. “He was born through a miracle, if the work of the Devil can also be called a miracle. She had made a pact so as to give birth to Robert. Isn’t that how it begins?”
“No,” the Dwarf said, with a certainty that came from having told this story all his life, one he had known for so long he couldn’t remember where or when he had learned it, one he had taken about from village to village, told hundreds, thousands of times, making it longer, making it shorter, making it sadder or happier or more dramatic to fit the mood of his ever-changing audience. Not even Abbot João could tell him how it really began. His mother was old and barren and had to make a pact so as to give birth to Robert, yes. But he wasn’t the son of a king. He was the son of a duke.
“Of the Duke of Normandy,” Abbot João agreed. “Go