The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [386]
“It’s slapping a man in the face, the way I slapped yours,” he says, as he opens his trouser fly, swiftly flips out his penis, and watches the clear little stream of urine splash down on the seat of Lieutenant Maranhão’s trousers. “But pissing on him is an even worse one.”
As he tucks his penis back into his fly and buttons up, his ears still listening intently to what is going on behind him, he sees that the lieutenant has begun to tremble all over, like a man with tertian fever, that tears are welling up in his eyes, that he is all at sea, body and soul.
“It doesn’t bother me a bit if I’m called Bandit-Chaser, because that’s what I’ve been,” he finally says, seeing the lieutenant rise to his feet, weeping and trembling still, knowing how much he hates him and also knowing that he will not reach for his pistol now. “But my men don’t like being called traitors to the Republic, because it isn’t true. They’re as much republicans and patriots as anybody else.”
He licks his gold tooth, with a rapid flick of his tongue. “You have three choices left to you now, Lieutenant,” he concludes. “The first is to present a formal complaint to the General Staff, accusing me of abuse of authority. I might be demoted and even thrown out of the service. It wouldn’t matter to me all that much, since as long as there are bandits I can always earn myself a living chasing them. The second is to come ask me for satisfaction, whereupon you and I will settle this matter man to man, taking off our officer’s braid, with revolvers or knives or whatever other weapon you like. And the third is to try to kill me from behind. So then, what’s your choice?”
He raises his hand to his kepi and gives a mock salute. This last quick glance tells him that his victim will opt for the first, or perhaps the second, but not the third choice, at least not right now. He walks off, not deigning to look at the eight gaucho soldiers, who still haven’t moved a muscle.
As he is picking his way among the skeletons in rags on his way back to his camp, two thin grappling hooks take hold of his boot. It is an old woman with no hair, as tiny as a child, looking up at him through her gummy eyelashes. “Do you want to know what happened to Abbot João?” her toothless mouth stammers.
“Yes, I do.” Colonel Macedo nods. “Did you see him die?”
The little old woman shakes her head and clacks her tongue, as though sucking on something.
“He got away, then?”
The little old woman shakes her head again, encircled by the eyes of the women prisoners.
“Archangels took him up to heaven,” she says, clacking her tongue. “I saw them.”
Also by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Cubs and Other Stories
A Writer’s Reality
The Time of the Hero
The Green House
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
Conversation in the Cathedral
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
The Perpetual Orgy
Who Killed Palomino Molero?
The Storyteller
In Praise of the Stepmother
A Fish in the Water
Death in the Andes
Making Waves
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
The Feast of the Goat
Letters to a Young Novelist
The Language of Passion
The Way to Paradise
The Bad Girl
THE WAR OF THE END OF THE WORLD. Copyright © 1981 by Mario Vargas Llosa. Translation copyright © 1984 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010.
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ISBN: 978-0-312-42798-6
Originally published in Spanish as La Guerra del fin del mundo by Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., Spain