The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [49]
“I can leave tomorrow morning,” Galileo Gall answers. “The guide is waiting. Have you brought the arms?”
Epaminondas offers Gall a cigar, which he refuses, shaking his head. They are sitting in wicker chairs on the ramshackle terrace of the manor of a hacienda somewhere between Queimadas and Jacobina, to which a horseman dressed all in leather, with a biblical name—Caifás—has guided him, taking him round and round the scrubland, as though trying to disorient him. It is dusk; beyond the wooden balustrade are a row of royal palms, a dovecote, several animal pens. The sun, a reddish ball, is setting the horizon on fire.
Epaminondas Gonçalves slowly puffs on his cigar. “Two dozen French rifles, good ones,” he murmurs, looking at Gall through the cigar smoke. “And ten thousand cartridges. Caifás will take you to the outskirts of Queimadas in the wagon. If you’re not too tired, it would be best to come back here with the arms tonight and then go straight on to Canudos tomorrow.”
Galileo Gall nods in agreement. He is tired, but all he needs is a few hours’ sleep to recuperate. There are so many flies on the terrace that he keeps one hand in front of his face to chase them away. Despite his fatigue, he is overjoyed; the wait was beginning to get on his nerves and he was afraid that Gonçalves might have changed his plans. This morning, when the horseman dressed all in leather came without warning to get him at the Our Lady of Grace boarding house and gave the proper password, he was so excited he even forgot to eat breakfast. He has made the journey here without having had a thing to eat or drink, with a scorching sun beating down all day.
“I’m sorry to have made you wait for so many days, but collecting the arms and getting them this far turned out to be a fairly complicated business,” Epaminondas Gonçalves says. “Did you see the campaigning going on for the municipal elections in any of the towns you passed through?”
“I saw that the Bahia Autonomist Party is spending more money on propaganda than you people are,” Gall says with a yawn.
“It has all it needs. Not only Viana’s money, but the government’s and the Bahia parliament’s as well. And above all, the baron’s.”
“The baron’s as rich as Croesus, isn’t that so?” Gall says, suddenly pricking up his ears. “An antediluvian character, an archaeological curiosity, there’s no doubt about it. I learned a number of things about him in Queimadas. From Rufino, the guide you recommended to me. His wife belonged to the baron. Yes, that’s the right word, she belonged to him, like a goat or a calf. He gave her to Rufino as a wife. Rufino himself speaks of the baron as though he, too, had always been property of his. Without resentment, with the gratitude of a faithful dog. Interesting, Senhor Gonçalves. It’s still the Middle Ages here.”
“That’s what we’re fighting against; that’s why we want to modernize this country,” Epaminondas says, blowing on the ash of his cigar. “That’s why the Empire fell, and that’s what the Republic is for.”
“It’s the jagunços, rather, who are fighting against the situation,” Galileo Gall mentally corrects him, feeling as though he is about to fall asleep from one moment to the next. Epaminondas Gonçalves rises to his feet. “What did you tell the guide?” he asks as he paces up and down the terrace. The crickets have started chirping and it is no longer stifling hot.
“The truth,” Gall says, and the owner and editor-in-chief of the Jornal de Notícias halts dead in his tracks. “I was careful not even to mention your name. I spoke only of myself. I told him I want to go to Canudos as a matter of principle. Out of ideological and moral solidarity.”
Epaminondas Gonçalves looks at him in silence and Galileo knows that the man is wondering whether he’s saying these