Backlands (70 page)

When they reached the pools, the
sertanejos
found bullets hailing down all around them.

They approached and fell, at times one behind the other, at other times all together.

Some were killed before they reached the dry flood ponds, now nothing but muddy holes. Some were shot as they lay facedown, sucking up the filthy brackish liquid; others at the end of their errand when they were running back with full pouches. They were replaced by other companions who desperately faced the fire and ran to their deaths. What usually happened was that they would wait until the firing had died down and they thought the soldiers were no longer paying attention. The troops were now wise to the
jagunços’
ways. They knew that they would come back. They waited for them, their weapons pointed, ears tuned to the slightest sound, eyes steadily scanning the darkness, like hunters waiting for their prey.

They would in fact catch sight of them after a few minutes. They were indistinct shadows on the opposite bank, fading into the dark. They could see them slithering slowly, slowly down the bank, flat on the ground, in a serpentine movement of great silent saurians. Then they would see them below, crawling along the sandy riverbed.

They cocked their rifles. They let them approach and reach the stagnant pools that were the only decoy in this terrible manhunt.

Then the rifles suddenly blazed. They blasted them. Fifteen yards ahead, lacerating cries of anger and pain would pierce the air. Two or three bodies writhed next to the wells. The others ran off, some limping and wounded. Others, running up the bank and jumping over their dying companions, would abandon all caution—swift, terrible, and defiant under the infernal barrage of bullets.

One or another sometimes escaped at a run. He would leap up the bank and then disappear from sight into the rubble. He would bring his companions a few liters of water that had cost lives. And it was a contaminated, stinking liquid, full of organic debris and the poison of ptomaine and phosphates from the rotting corpses that had been lying unburied all along the edge of the river.

These incidents were the culminating acts of backlands heroism. Their adversaries, in the end, were profoundly touched by it.

Occasionally, when the entire northern line was lit up with sustained fire that was so constant it was impossible to distinguish the sound of individual gunshots, there was an intense rumble that was like an opening floodgate, compounded by the noise of the artillery on the hill. At these times the fighters of the central line would, at risk of being hit by a stray bullet, become spectators of an amazing drama.

Many came to sincerely admire these valiant martyrs. They did not disguise their feelings. The scene before their eyes immortalized the defeated
sertanejos.
Every time they witnessed it, they were awed.

The sinister church was a hulking silhouette against the ruined huts. Impassive before the bullets coming at them from every direction, their figures were backlit by the rifle fire. These resilient fellow citizens glided up the walls and over the mounds of garbage, climbing up the towers or dropping from them, clinging to the swaying blocks of stone like Titans being struck by lightning as they were illuminated in a flash of white light.

Hour by hour it was becoming obvious that the enemy was completely exhausted.

During the day the silent settlement wasted away in the stagnation of the blockade. There was not even the occasional attack. On September 28 the
jagunços
declined to reciprocate the salvo of twenty-one guns that greeted them every morning and evening. That beautiful date marks the end of one of the manliest episodes in our history. The end had come.

In the camp the men were preparing for their return home. The bugles sounded freely; the men had free run of the camp; the daily supply and mail trains went back and forth, bearing greetings and expressions of longing to distant homes from the triumphant troops. Careless bands wandered around. They held impromptu banquets. In the evenings musicians played martial tunes in front of the headquarters of the various command centers.

The entire settlement was accessible and it was possible to walk freely through it.

On the twenty-ninth the commander in chief and the commander of the second column decided to inspect the settlement with their respective staffs. At first they traveled along the hilltops above the right section of the camp, then turned left and came down a winding ravine that was covered with wide strips of foliage so that it had the appearance of a tunnel. They advanced until they reached the outlying houses. There, lying in mounds of burned beams, rafters, and other remnants, they came upon the first unburied corpses. The scene resembled an ancient necropolis that had risen out of the ground at their feet. The ruins compounded the disarray of the tiny dwellings, built so hastily, facing each other across lanes that were not even a yard wide and were strewn with the debris of the clay roofs that had fallen there. They had to make long, complicated detours. With each step they took, past huts that were still standing but precarious and ready to fall, the terrible life the inmates of these hovels must have endured became more and more evident to them.

The nakedness of the corpses was one sign of this. They lay in every possible position: flat on their backs, face heavenward, wearing the medals of their favorite saints. There were some who were bent double in the agonies of death; others could hardly be seen under the piles of charred wood. Others yet were crouched in their trenches where death had surprised them. All of these emaciated, still forms and the rags that covered them spoke of the lack they had suffered. Some were being slowly cremated by the fire, although there were no flames, just smoke. Others had already been incinerated and reduced to mounds of white ashes that contrasted with the dust gray of the earth. They were like huge caricatures drawn in chalk.

As they moved on, it became more difficult to climb over the many heaps of refuse in this hellish dunghill. When they had searched the houses, the soldiers tossed everything in them into the alleys, blocking them with junk. There were broken bits of furniture, small cedarwood chests, stools and benches, food cages, shredded hammocks, cradles and hampers made of liana stalks and
taquara
cane, casks with no bottoms, torn cotton clothing faded to an indistinct color, battered iron cooking utensils, broken dishware and glasses, portable altars of all sizes and shapes, suitcases made of raw leather, broken sandals, bent oil lamps, exploded shotgun barrels, blunted knives, and broken cattle prongs and wagon bars.

In all of these trash piles there was not a single object that did not speak of a primitive, miserable existence. There were rosaries of all kinds, from the most modest polychrome glass beads to the most ornate, fashioned from
uricuri
coconut shells. There were also spindles and distaffs, tools of the ancestral craft of backlands women, which they tenaciously continued to practice, as they did many other customs. In addition to all of these objects, there were countless others: religious cards and holy relics, charms sewn into little bags, tattered catechisms, grimy pictures of miracle-working saints, crosses and crucifixes, amulets and dirty scapulars.

Occasionally the officers would come to a clearing, ground that had been swept to keep the fire from reaching the trenches. From here they could approach the mass of huts for a closer look. They approached a sentinel who said in a low voice that they should move cautiously because a
jagunço
was just three yards away at the other side of the stockade.

The officers, from the generals and colonels to the last man in the ranks, dropped to a squatting position and, in a comic display of heroism, they ran as fast as they could until they had passed the danger zone. After moving through two or three more alleys they found another trench. Soldiers waited motionlessly, either silent or talking in whispers. The same scene was again repeated. The visitors ran with their hearts in their mouths to the next trench, where again they found silent, cautious guards lying stretched on the ground with their rifles trained on the breastworks.

After about fifteen hundred yards, they turned left, leaving Red Houses behind. They were surprised to find a long street, the only one with a name, Monte Alegre, that ran all the way across the village to the square. It was wider than the rest and along it were the better houses, a few made of brick and wood frame. Antônio Villa Nova had lived here, and it was here that the soldiers had found the munitions seized from the Moreira César column.

Traveling down this sloping street, they could see a piece of the ruined church wall on the square. They were brought up short by another trench where a larger number of fighters were gathered. This was the last one before the church. It would have been suicide to approach it. The entire sector of the settlement ahead of them and to the right was still controlled by the
jagunços.

The enemies were now rubbing elbows with each other. Through the mud walls of the huts came the muffled noises of the people burrowed there, hurried whispers, scraping furniture, footsteps, cries, groans, and occasionally the dramatic shouts, tears, and laughter of small children.

At this point they turned back, following a path to the left between the rows of huts that had been recently taken. Then their visit began to become terrifying. In recent weeks, in advancing to this point the soldiers had not destroyed the dwellings. They had just removed their inner partitions and roof beams. The mud roofs therefore took on the shape of a long barracks. The battalions were lined up behind the barricade of beams and joists, broken furniture, and other detritus. This wall wound along for a long way and disappeared into the shadows. On one side were the soldiers who guarded it. In dark corners were the bodies of
jagunços
who had been killed in the last few days. It was dangerous to burn them with all the rags and woodpiles lying around.

The air had the acrid smell of a cave. It took some resolve to continue through the dark passage. In the distance a pale glow of light could be seen. Parallel to it, on the other side of the jagged walls, was the invisible enemy trench. A careless move or glance over the barricade would exact a heavy price. The truth was that each side was now acting in the same way, each consumed with the same emotions of fear and hatred. As the conflict wound down to its grim conclusion, each held the other in fear and both were anxious to avoid combat. Instead they lured each other on, making a wily show of inactivity. Facing each other off, idle most of the time, they both seemed to suffer from exhaustion. Their major activity was to spy on each other. There could be no better setting than this manure pile of rags and corpses, submerged in a dark cave, to reveal to the army soldiers and the
sertanejos
alike the ugly side of heroism.

The officers moved quietly down this morbid passageway. Soldiers were about. They were ragged and unwashed, without uniforms or caps, wearing straw or leather hats and worn-out sandals. They were dressed like the enemy. It was easy to believe that a
jagunço
could pass unnoticed through this area and take his place with the soldiers to escape the horrors of the siege. This would have been easy because these were mixed detachments, comprising men from several different battalions. Lack of mil- itary training would not have been an issue because all discipline had been let go. There were no more reviews, formations, bugle calls, or orders. As soon as the cartridges were distributed, each one took his place at that wall made of junk and dead bodies, and prepared for what might come.

Rations were abundant now. When they were distributed, each man made his own meal as he could. Here and there at the back of the line or on small improvised shelves, kettles boiled for coffee, cooking pots sat on a fire, and huge sides of beef roasted over the braziers. Groups of fighters squatted with rifles in hand, preparing their lunch or dinner. Occasionally the sound of firing interrupted their meal. Bullets whined overhead, splintered the overhead beams, shattered walls, overturned the cook pots, and scattered the soldiers. They would jump up, toss aside their jugs of
jacuba
juice and their slices of beef, and run for the stockade. A quick reply would come from the other side of the barricade. Those already positioned there would fire at the opposite side, from wherever the attack had originated. A spasm shook the tunnel from one side to the other as a furious battle began between opponents who could not see each other.

There were a number of killed or wounded, two or three more huts were taken, and the trench of junk extended the line. The fighters who had pursued the enemy returned to their original positions, and a formidable silence fell again on the scene. Still figures waited expectantly along the sinister hunting field, while in back around the braziers their companions consumed a light meal in the tragic company of their dead comrades and enemies.

They now left this segment of the siege line, which cordoned off almost the entire northern quarter of the settlement, and continued their inspection in daylight. They passed sad-looking kitchen gardens with fallen enclosures and trampled beds. There was not a blossom in sight and garbage was everywhere. On these piles were more bodies, some with their legs sticking straight up in the air, bare arms in attitudes of anguish, palms flat or twisted and clutching like animal claws. They were frightening hands that seemed to gesture both threats and appeals.

They encountered some forms of life in the shape of emaciated dogs that sniffed and scraped at the piles like jackals. Some of them were feasting on their own masters. Most of these dogs ran off as the officers approached but a few ferocious curs, big bony animals, slunk off with threatening growls. They had caught scent of the enemy, the hated invader.