The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [74]
From dawn on, that morning, the Counselor never left the Temple, remaining there praying, surrounded by the women of the Sacred Choir, Maria Quadrado, the Little Blessed One, the Lion of Natuba, and a great crowd of the faithful, who also prayed, while at the same time keeping their ears trained on the din, very distinct at times, borne to Canudos on the north wind. Pedrão, the Vilanova brothers, Joaquim Macambira, and the others who had stayed behind readying the city for the attack, were deployed along the Vaza-Barris. They had brought down to its banks all the firearms, powder, and projectiles they were able to find. When old Macambira caught sight of the jagunços returning from Monte Cambaio, he murmured that the Blessed Jesus apparently wanted the dogs to enter Jerusalem. None of his sons noticed that he had mixed up the names of the two cities.
But they did not enter. The outcome of the battle was decided that very day, before nightfall, on the plain of O Taboleirinho, where at that moment the troops of Major Febrônio de Brito’s three columns were stretching out on the ground, dizzy with fatigue and joy, after seeing the jagunços flee from the last spurs of the mountain and being almost able to make out from there the heterogeneous geography of straw rooftops and the two lofty stone towers of what they already regarded as the prize that their victory had won them, less than half a league’s distance away. As the jagunços still left alive were entering Canudos—their arrival gave rise to anxiety, to agitated conversations, weeping and wailing, shouts, prayers recited at the top of people’s lungs—the soldiers were collapsing to the ground, opening their red-and-blue, green-and-blue tunics, removing their leggings, so exhausted that they were not even able to tell each other how overjoyed they were at having defeated the enemy. Meeting in a war council, Major Febrônio and his fourteen officers decided to camp on that bare mountain plateau, alongside a nonexistent lagoon which their maps showed under the name Cipó—Liana—and which, from that day forward, they would show as Lagoa do Sangue—Lagoon of Blood. The following morning, at first light, they would attack the fanatics’ lair.
But, before an hour was out, as lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals were still inspecting the benumbed companies and drawing up lists of the dead, wounded, and missing, and soldiers of the rear guard were still arriving, picking their way between the rocks, they were attacked. Sick and healthy, men and women, youngsters and oldsters, all the elect able to fight fell on them like an avalanche. Abbot João had convinced them that they should attack then and there, all of them together, since there wasn’t going to be any “later on” if they didn’t do so. The tumultuous mob had followed after him, crossing the plateau like a cattle stampede. They came armed with all the images of the Blessed Jesus, of the Virgin, of the Divine to be found in the city, they were clutching all the cudgels, clubs, sickles, pitchforks, knives, and machetes in Canudos, along with blunderbusses, shotguns, carbines, muskets, and the Mannlichers captured in Uauá, and as they shot off bullets, pieces of metal, spikes, arrows, stones, they let out war cries, possessed by that reckless courage that was the very air that people of the sertão breathed from the day they were born, multiplied in them now by the love of God and the hatred of the Prince of Darkness that the saint had contrived to instill in them. They did not give the soldiers time to recover from their stupefaction at suddenly seeing that yelling, shouting horde of men and women running across the plain toward them as though they had not already been defeated. When fear brought them to, jolted them awake, propelled them to their feet, and they finally grabbed their guns, it was too late.