The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [68]
Zózimo had a stake set up at the graveside and straw and dry branches brought to the site. The Pardinases remained prisoners in their house. The Lion was in the tinsmith’s animal pen, tied hand and foot. He spent the night there, listening to the prayers, the condolences, the litanies, the lamentations of the wake. The following morning, they hoisted him into a cart drawn by burros, and at a distance, as usual, he followed the funeral procession. When they arrived at the cemetery, as the coffin was lowered into the ground and more prayers were being said, in accordance with the tinsmith’s instructions two of the latter’s nephews tied him to the post and heaped around it the straw and branches that they were about to light to burn him to death. Nearly everyone in the town was there to witness his immolation.
At that moment the saint arrived. He must have set foot in Natuba the night before, or at dawn that morning, and someone must have informed him of what was about to happen. But this explanation was too logical for the townspeople, for whom the supernatural was more believable than the natural. They were later to say that his ability to foresee the future, or the Blessed Jesus, had brought him and his followers to this remote spot in the backlands of Bahia at this precise moment to correct a mistake, to prevent a crime, or simply to offer a proof of his power. He had not come alone, as he had the first time he preached in Natuba, years before, nor had he come accompanied by only two or three pilgrims, as on his second visit, when in addition to giving counsel he had rebuilt the chapel of the abandoned Jesuit convent on the town square. This time he was accompanied by some thirty people, as gaunt and poor as he was, but with eyes filled with happiness. As they followed after him, he made his way through the crowd to the grave just as the last shovelfuls of earth to fill it were raining down.
The man dressed in dark purple turned to Zózimo, standing with downcast eyes gazing at the freshly turned earth. “Have you buried her in her best dress, in a sturdy coffin?” he asked in an amiable though not affectionate tone of voice. Zózimo nodded, barely moving his head. “We will pray to the Father, so that He will receive her with rejoicing in the Kingdom of Heaven,” the Counselor said. And he and the penitents thereupon recited litanies and sang hymns at the graveside. Only then did the saint point to the stake to which the Lion had been tied. “What are you about to do with this boy, my brother?” he asked. “Burn him to death,” Zózimo replied. And he explained why, amid a silence that seemed to echo. The saint nodded, not blinking an eye. Then he turned to the Lion and gestured to the crowd to step back a bit. Everyone withdrew a few paces. The saint leaned down and spoke in the ear of the youngster tied to the stake and then brought his ear close to the Lion’s mouth to hear what he was saying. And thus, as the Counselor bent his head down toward the ear and the mouth of the other, the two of them held a secret conversation. No one moved, awaiting some extraordinary event.
And, in fact, what happened was as amazing as seeing a man frying to death on a funeral pyre. For when the two of them fell silent, the saint, with the serenity that never abandoned him, not moving from the spot, said: “Come, untie him!” The tinsmith raised his eyes and looked at him in amazement. “You must loosen his bonds yourself,” the man dressed in dark purple said, in a voice so deep it made people tremble. “Do you want your daughter to go to hell? Are the flames down there not hotter, more everlasting than the ones that you are seeking to ignite?” his voice roared once more, as though amazed at such stupidity. “You are filled with superstition, ungodly, a sinner,” he went on. “Repent of your intentions, come and loosen his bonds,