The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [95]
“It surprised many people that I did not receive the people of note in Salvador,” he says, without polite formulas or warmth, by way of salutation. “There is no mystery involved, sirs. It is a question of time. Every minute is precious, in view of the mission that has brought us to Bahia. We shall bring it to a successful conclusion. The Seventh Regiment is going to punish the rebels of Canudos, as it did the insurgents of the Fortress of Santa Cruz and of Laje, and the federalists of Santa Catarina. There will not be any further uprisings against the Republic.”
The clusters of humanity behind the windowpanes have fallen silent, straining to hear what the colonel is saying; officers and orderlies are standing stock-still, listening; and the five journalists are gazing at him with mingled fascination and incredulity. Yes, it is he, he is here at last, in person, just as he appears in caricatures of him: thin, frail, vibrant, with little eyes that flash or drill straight through the person he is addressing, and a forward thrust of his hand as he speaks that resembles the lunge of a fencer. Two days previously, they had been waiting for him in Salvador, with the same curiosity as hundreds of other Bahians, and he had left everyone frustrated, for he did not attend either the banquets or the ball that had been arranged, or the official receptions and ceremonies in his honor, and except for a brief visit to the Military Club and to Governor Luiz Viana, he spoke with no one, devoting all his time to supervising personally the disembarkation of his troops at the port and the transportation of equipment and supplies to the Calçada Station, so as to leave the following day on this train that has brought the regiment to the backlands. He had passed through the city of Salvador as though he were fleeing on the run, as though fearing that he would be infected by some dread disease, and it was only now that he was offering an explanation of his conduct: time. But the five journalists, who are closely watching his slightest gesture, are not thinking about what he is saying at this moment, but recalling what has been said and written about him, mentally comparing that mythical creature, both despised and deified, with the very small-statured, stern figure who is speaking to them as though they were not there. They are trying to imagine him, a youngster still, enrolling as a volunteer in the war against Paraguay, where he received wounds and medals in equal number, and his first years as an officer, in Rio de Janeiro, when his militant republicanism very nearly caused him to be thrown out of the army and sent to jail, or in the days when he was the leader of the conspiracies against the monarchy. Despite the energy transmitted by his eyes, his gestures, his voice, it is hard for them to imagine him killing that obscure journalist, in the Rua do Ouvidor in the capital, with five shots from his revolver, though it is not difficult, on the other hand, to imagine his voice declaring at his trial that he is proud to have done what he did and would do so again if he heard anyone insult the army. But above all they recall his public career, after his years of exile in the Mato Grosso and his return following the fall of the Empire. They remember how he turned into President Floriano Peixoto’s righthand man, crushing with an iron fist all the uprisings that took place in the first years of the Republic, and defending in O Jacobino, that incendiary paper, his arguments in favor of a Dictatorial Republic, without a parliament, without political parties, in which