The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [385]
“Let’s try again and see if we have any better luck,” Geraldo Macedo says in the same tone of voice as before: neutral, impersonal, restrained, without a trace of animosity. “I want you personally to interrogate them.”
His little dark eyes, with crow’s-feet in the corners, do not leave the young officer’s surprised, mistrustful blue ones for a moment; they do not blink, nor do they move to the right or to the left. Colonel Macedo knows, because his ears or his intuition tells him so, that the eight soldiers on his left are standing there with every muscle tensed now, and that the lethargic gaze of all the women is upon him.
“I’ll interrogate them, then,” the lieutenant says, after a moment’s hesitation.
As the young officer, with a slowness that betrays how disconcerted he is by this order, unable to decide whether it has been given him because the colonel wants to try one last time to find out what has happened to the bandit, or whether he wants to make a show of his authority, makes his way through the sea of rags that parts, then closes again behind him as he passes asking about Abbot João, Geraldo Macedo does not look around even once at the gaucho soldiers. He deliberately keeps his back to them, and with his hands at his waist and his kepi tilted back, in a stance that is typical of him but also characteristic of any cowboy of the sertão, follows the lieutenant’s progress among the women prisoners. In the distance, beyond the hills round about, explosions can still be heard. Not a single voice answers the lieutenant’s questions; when he stops in front of a prisoner, stares her straight in the eye, and interrogates her, she merely shakes her head. Concentrating on what he has come there to do, his entire attention focused on the sounds coming from where the eight soldiers are standing, Colonel Macedo nonetheless has time to reflect that it is strange that such silence reigns among a crowd of women, that it is odd that not one of all those children is crying out of hunger or thirst or fear, and the thought occurs to him that many of those tiny skeletons must already be dead.
“As you can see, it’s pointless,” Lieutenant Maranhão says, halting in front of him. “None of them knows anything, just as I told you.”
“Too bad,” Colonel Macedo says in a thoughtful tone of voice. “I’ll leave here without ever finding out what happened to Abbot João.”
He stands there, his back still turned to the eight soldiers, staring into the lieutenant’s blue eyes and white face, whose expression betrays his nervousness.
“In what other way may I be of service to you?” he finally mutters.
“You come from a long way away from here, isn’t that so?” Colonel Macedo asks. “I’m quite certain, then, that you don’t know what the worst insult of all is in the eyes of people of the sertão.”
A very serious look comes over Second Lieutenant Maranhão’s face, he frowns, and the colonel realizes that he can’t wait any longer, for the young officer will end up pulling his pistol on him. With a lightning-quick, totally unexpected sweep of his open hand, he slaps that white face as hard as he can. The blow sends the lieutenant sprawling on the ground, and unable to rise to his feet, he remains there on all fours. Looking up at Colonel Macedo, who has taken one step so as to place himself directly alongside him, and now warns him: “If you get up, you’re dead. And also if you try to reach for your pistol.”
He looks him coldly in the eye, and even now his tone of voice has not changed in the slightest. He sees the hesitation in the lieutenant’s reddened face there at his feet, and is certain now that the Southerner will not get to his feet or try to reach for his pistol. He has not drawn his own, moreover; he has merely raised his right hand to his waist and placed it just a fraction of an inch away from his cartridge belt. But in reality his mind