Free The War Of The End Of The World by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

hill, from which she saw at last the reward for all her effort—the series of gray-and-white stone steps of the Via Sacra, winding between the conical roofs of the chapels up to the Calvary at the top, to which great throngs of people from all over the state of Bahia flocked each Holy Week, and down below, at the foot of the mountain, the little houses of Monte Santo crowded around a public square with two bushy-topped tamarind trees in which there were shadows that moved—Maria Quadrado fell face downward on the ground and kissed the earth. There it was, surrounded by a plain covered with a new growth of vegetation where herds of goats were grazing: the longed-for place whose name had spurred her on to undertake the journey and had helped her to endure fatigue, hunger, cold, heat, repeated rape. Kissing the planks that she herself had nailed together for her cross, the woman thanked God in a confused rush of words for having enabled her to fulfill her vow. And taking up the cross once more, she trotted toward Monte Santo like an animal whose sense of smell tells it that its prey or its lair is close at hand.
    She entered the town just as people were waking up, and from door to door, from window to window, she sowed curiosity in her wake. Amused faces, pitying faces poked out to look at her—squat, filthy, ugly, long-suffering—and as she started up the Rua dos Santos Passos, built above the ravine where the town’s garbage was burned and the town’s pigs were rooting about, the beginning of the Via Sacra, a huge procession followed her. She began to climb the mountain on her knees, surrounded by muleteers who had left off their work, by cobblers and bakers, by a swarm of little kids, by devout women who had torn themselves away from their morning novena. The townspeople, who, as she began the climb, regarded her as simply an odd sort, saw her make her way painfully upward, carrying the cross that must have weighed as much as she did, refusing to let anyone help her, and they saw her halt to pray in each of the twenty-four chapels and kiss with eyes full of love the feet of the statues in all the vaulted niches in the rock face, and they saw her hold up for hour after hour without eating a single mouthful or drinking a single drop of water, and by nightfall they revered her as a true saint. Maria Quadrado reached the mountaintop—a world apart, where it was always cold and orchids grew between the bluish stones—and still had enough remaining strength to thank God for her blessed lot before fainting dead away.
    Many inhabitants of Monte Santo, whose proverbial hospitality had not been diminished by the periodic invasion of pilgrims, offered Maria Quadrado lodgings. But she installed herself in a cave, halfway up the Via Sacra, where previously only birds and rodents had slept. It was a small hollow, with a ceiling so low that she was unable to stand upright in it, walls so damp from the dripping water that they were covered with moss, and a powdery sandstone floor that made her sneeze. The townspeople thought that this place would very soon be the end of her. But the force of will that had enabled Maria Quadrado to walk for three months with a heavy cross on her back also enabled her to live in that inhospitable grotto for all the years that she remained in Monte Santo.
    Maria Quadrado’s cave became a shrine, and along with the Calvary, the place most frequently visited by pilgrims. As the months went by, she began little by little to decorate it. She made different-colored paints from the juice of plants, mineral powders, and the blood of cochineal insects (used by tailors to dye garments). Against a blue background meant to represent the firmament, she painted the objects associated with Christ’s Passion: the nails driven into the palms of His hands and His feet; the cross He bore on His back and on which He died; the crown of thorns that pierced His temples; the tunic of His martyrdom; the centurion’s lance