The War Of The End Of The World by Mario Vargas Llosa

bought provisions to take with them as they went into the sertão , with the hope of joining one or another of the bands of fugitive slaves who, as many stories had it, were everywhere in the scrublands of the interior. They lived on the run, avoiding the towns and getting food to eat by begging or by petty thefts. Only once did João the Kid try to get Big João to talk about what had happened. They were lying underneath a tree, smoking cigars, and in a sudden fit of boldness he asked him point-blank: “Why did you kill the mistress?”
    “Because I’ve got the Dog in me,” Big João answered immediately. “Don’t talk to me about that any more.” The Kid thought that his companion had told him the truth.
    He was growing more and more afraid of this companion of his since childhood, for after the murder of their mistress, Big João became less and less like his former self. He scarcely said a word to him, and, on the other hand, he continually surprised him by talking to himself in a low voice, his eyes bloodshot. One night he heard him call the Devil “Father” and ask him to come to his aid. “Haven’t I done enough already, Father?” he stammered, his body writhing. “What more do you want me to do?” The Kid became convinced that Big João had made a pact with the Evil One and feared that, in order to continue accumulating merit, he would sacrifice him as he had their mistress. He decided to beat him to it. He planned everything, but the night that he crawled over to him, all set to plunge his knife into him, he was trembling so violently that Big João opened his eyes before he could do the deed. Big João saw him leaning over him with the blade quivering in his hand. His intention was unmistakable, but Big João didn’t turn a hair. “Kill me, Kid,” he heard him say. He ran off as fast as his legs could carry him, feeling that devils were pursuing him.
    The Kid was hanged in the prison in Salvador and Senhorita Adelinha’s remains were transferred to the neoclassic chapel of the plantation, but her murderer was not found, despite the fact that the Gumúcio family periodically raised the reward for his capture. And yet, after the Kid had run off, Big João had made no attempt to hide himself. A towering giant, half naked, miserable, eating what fell into the animal traps he set or the fruit he plucked from trees, he roamed the byways like a ghost. He went through the towns in broad daylight, asking for food, and the suffering in his face so moved people that they would usually toss him a few scraps.
    One day, at a crossroads on the outskirts of Pombal, he came upon a handful of people who were listening to the words of a gaunt man, enveloped in a deep-purple tunic, whose hair came down to his shoulders and whose eyes looked like burning coals. As it happened, he was speaking at that very moment of the Devil, whom he called Lucifer, the Dog, Can, and Beelzebub, of the catastrophes and crimes that he caused in the world, and of what men who wanted to be saved must do. His voice was persuasive; it reached a person’s soul without passing by way of his head, and even to a being as addlebrained as Big João, it seemed like a balm that healed old and terrible wounds. João stood there listening to him, rooted to the spot, not even blinking, moved to his very bones by what he was hearing and by the music of the voice uttering those words. The figure of the saint was blurred at times by the tears that welled up in João’s eyes. When the man went on his way, he began to follow him at a distance, like a timid animal.

    The two persons who came to know Galileo best in the city of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos (called simply Bahia or Salvador) were a smuggler and a doctor; they were also the first to explain the country to him, even though neither of them would have shared the opinions of Brazil that the revolutionary expressed in his letters to L’Etincelle de la révolte (frequent ones during