634
PARTISAN REV IEW
THE GOOD SOLDIER
SERGEANT GETlJLlO.
By
Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro.
Houghton Mifflin.
$7.95.
CAPTAIN PANTOJA AND THE SPECIAL SERVICE.
By
Mario Vargas
Llosa.
Harper and Row. $10.95.
''I'm political," says Getulio, a sergeant of the military
police in Aracupe, Brazil ; " I don 't kill fo r no thing." On his chief 's
orders he has kill ed twenty people, probabl y more; h e h asn 't kept
careful count; there's no need . Na tional Democra t, Social Democrat,
Laborite, Fascist or Communist, they' re all the same for Getulio,
though " most Na tional Democra ts take a long time
to
di e, they h ang in
the air like a chameleon ." On orders he raids the Communist
newspaper-then hi s boss tell s him, " Get those Fascists, Getulio, so
they will learn not to burn other people's newspapers." But the central
action whi ch Getulio's monol ogu e covers is hi s a ttempt to bring in a
political prison er who has fl ed to the backcountry of northeastern
Brazil. Halfway back to Aracupe, Getuli o learns hi s pri soner, upon
whom he has perfo rmed some backyard dentistry with a p air of rusty
pliers to punish him for luring on a country girl , must be released . The
winds in Aracupe have shifted and the prisoner is no longer the
criminal he was a few days ago. But Getulio refu ses to hand over the
prisoner to the "weakn ess" o f troops sent for him. Goaded into
fi ghting, Getulio decapita tes the lieutenant in charge of the troops,
slings the head round and round a t the end of a rope, and sail s it into
the middl e of the "weakn ess," gravely disheartening them. Having
eaten as a child the same red clay from which are made the brilliantl y
colored bulls on displ ay on market days in villages, Getulio is imbued
with naive reverence fo r the mysterious fo rces moving in the land, so
separa te from the po liti cal fo rces vying in the cities, and a na tural and
graceful brutality. We sense in him the dangerous brooding of a milieu
in which mo rality is no t based on humane prin cipl es but politi cal
intrigue, and where issues are settl ed by hit men .
It
is the strength of
Ribeiro's novel that we see Getulio's awful nobility, the strength of a
humanity tragicall y expressing its love o f duty by executing with cold
facility orders tha t require great inhumanity. Getuli o is tremendously
human in Ribeiro's primiti vist portra it of the man of the earth , the
heroic pul se still strong in him, being hammered into a weap on by the
modern world. T ho ugh he is utterl y insane, Getuli o 's streng th is o ur
