The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [382]
“What a waste of effort,” the colonel murmurs. His mouth is partway open beneath the handkerchief, and as always when he is deep in thought, he is licking at his gold tooth. He regretfully contemplates the vast expanse of rubble, stench, and carrion. Finally he shrugs. “Well, we’ll leave without ever knowing if he died or got away.”
Still holding his nose, he and his adjutant begin making their way back to the cantonment. Shortly thereafter, the dynamiting begins.
“Might I ask you a question, sir?” Lieutenant Soares twangs from beneath his handkerchief. Colonel Macedo nods his head. “Why is Abbot João’s corpse so important to you?”
“It’s a story that goes back a long way,” the colonel growls. His voice sounds twangy, too. His dark little eyes take a quick glance all about. “A story that I began, apparently. That’s what people say, anyway. Because I killed Abbot João’s father, some thirty years ago, at least. He was a coiteiro of Antônio Silvino’s in Custódia. They say that Abbot João became a cangaceiro to avenge his father. And afterward, well…” He looks at his adjutant and suddenly feels old. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two, sir.”
“So you wouldn’t know who Abbot João was,” Colonel Macedo growls.
“The military leader of Canudos, a heartless monster,” Lieutenant Soares says immediately.
“A heartless monster, all right,” Colonel Macedo agrees. “The fiercest outlaw in all Bahia. The one that always got away from me. I hunted him for ten years. I very nearly got my hands on him several times, but he always slipped through my fingers. They said he’d made a pact. He was known as Satan in those days.”
“I understand now why you want to find him.” Lieutenant Soares smiles. “To see with your own eyes that he didn’t get away from you this time.”
“I don’t really know why, to tell you the truth,” Colonel Macedo growls, shrugging his shoulders. “Because it brings back the days of my youth, maybe. Chasing bandits was better than this tedium.”
There is a series of explosions and Colonel Macedo can see thousands of people on the slopes and brows of the hills, standing watching as the last walls of Canudos are blown sky high. It is not a spectacle that interests him and he does not even bother to watch; he continues on toward the cantonment of the Bahia Volunteer Battalion at the foot of A Favela, immediately behind the trenches along the Vaza-Barris.
“I don’t mind telling you that there are certain things that would never enter a normal person’s head, no matter how big it might be,” he says, spitting out the bad taste left in his mouth by his aborted exploration. “First off, ordering a house count when there aren’t any houses left, only ruins. And now, ordering stones and bricks dynamited. Do you understand why that commission under the command of Colonel Dantas Barreto was out counting the houses?”
They had spent all morning amid the stinking, smoking ruins and determined that there were five thousand two hundred dwellings in Canudos.
“They had a terrible time. None of their figures came out right,” Lieutenant Soares scoffs. “They calculated that there were at least five inhabitants per dwelling. In other words, some thirty thousand jagunços. But Colonel Dantas Barreto’s commission was able to find only six hundred forty-seven corpses, no matter how hard they searched.”
“Because they only counted corpses that were intact,” Colonel Macedo growls. “They overlooked the hunks of flesh, the scattered bones, which is what most of the people of Canudos ended up as. To every madman his own cherished mania.”
Back in the camp, a drama awaits Colonel Geraldo Macedo, one of the many that have marked the presence of the Bahia police at the siege of Canudos. The officers are trying to calm the men, ordering them to disperse and to stop talking among themselves about what has happened. They have posted guards all around the perimeter of the cantonment, fearing that the Bahia volunteers will rush out en masse to give those who have provoked them what is coming to them.