The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [42]
Someone once heard Satan João say that he had seen more people die from alcohol, which ruined men’s aims and made them knife each other for stupid reasons, than from sickness or drought. As though to prove him right, the day that Captain Geraldo Macedo and his flying brigade surprised him, the entire cangaço was drunk. The captain, who had been nicknamed Bandit-Chaser, had come out into the backlands to hunt João down after the latter had attacked a committee from the Bahia Autonomist Party, which had just held a meeting with the Baron de Canabrava on his hacienda in Calumbi. João ambushed the committee, sent its bodyguards running in all directions, and relieved the politicians of valises, horses, clothing, and money. The baron himself sent a message to Captain Macedo offering him a special reward for the cangaceiro’s head.
It happened in Rosário, a town of half a hundred dwellings where Satan João’s men turned up early one morning in February. A short time before, they had had a bloody encounter with a rival band, Pajeú’s cangaço, and merely wanted to rest. The townspeople agreed to give them food, and João paid for what they consumed, as well as for all the blunderbusses, shotguns, gunpowder, and bullets that he had been able to lay his hands on. The people of Rosário invited the cangaceiros to stay on for the feast they would be having, two days later, to celebrate the marriage of a cowboy and the daughter of a townsman. The chapel had been decorated with flowers and the local men and women were wearing their best clothes that noon when Father Joaquim arrived from Cumbe to officiate at the wedding. The little priest was so terrified at finding cangaceiros present that all of them burst out laughing as he stammered and stuttered and stumbled over his words. Before saying Mass, he heard confession from half the town, including several of the bandits. Then he attended the fireworks show and the open-air lunch, under an arbor, and drank toasts to the bride and groom along with the townspeople. But afterward he was so insistent on returning to Cumbe that João suddenly became suspicious. He forbade anyone to budge outside Rosário and he himself explored all the country round about, from the mountain side of the town to the one opposite, a bare plateau. He found no sign of danger. He returned to the wedding celebration, frowning. His men, drunk by now, were dancing and singing amid the townfolk.
Half an hour later, unable to bear the nervous tension, Father Joaquim confessed to him, trembling and sniveling, that Captain Macedo and his flying brigade were at the top of the mountain ridge, awaiting reinforcements so as to launch an attack. The priest had been ordered by Bandit-Chaser to delay João by using any trick he could think of. At that moment the first shots rang out from the direction of the plateau. They were surrounded. Amid all the confusion, João shouted to the cangaceiros to hold out as best they could till nightfall. But the bandits had had so much to drink that they couldn’t even tell where the shots were coming from. They presented easy targets for the Guardsmen with their Comblains and fell to the ground bellowing, amid a hail of gunfire punctuated by the screams of the women running this way and that, trying to escape the crossfire. When night came, there were only four cangaceiros still on their feet, and João, who was fighting with a bullet through his shoulder, fainted. His men wrapped him in a hammock litter and began climbing the mountain. Aided by a sudden torrential rain, they broke through the enemy encirclement. They took shelter in a cave, and four days later they entered Tepidó, where a healer brought João’s fever down and stanched his wound. They stayed there for two weeks, till Satan João