The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  By sight, admits the innkeeper. One of them is staying at the Paco Peña guesthouse on Amoladores. A man named Taibilla. He wears a patch over his left eye and claims he was in the Army. He insists on being addressed as lieutenant, but the barman does not know if he really is one.

  “Does he have money?”

  “A little.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “Taibilla knows some people who bring foreigners in and out. Or maybe he organizes it himself … I don’t know.”

  “For example?”

  “A young Negro slave. A runaway. They’re looking for an English boat for him.”

  “For free?… I doubt it.”

  “I think he stole his master’s silverware.”

  “That makes more sense. Otherwise it seems a lot of effort for a Negro.”

  Tizón is making a mental note of everything. He is already aware of the affair—the Marqués de Torre Pacheco filed a report a week ago about a runaway slave who stole the silverware—but the information may prove useful. And profitable. One of his tricks is never to seem unusually interested in what he is being told. That only serves to make the information more expensive, and he likes to buy cheaply.

  “Give me something more. Come on.”

  The man looks at his wife, who is still busy at the sink. “There was something else,” he says in a low voice. “They talked about a family over in El Puerto de Santa María who want to come to Cádiz: a civil servant from Madrid with his wife and five children; they are happy to pay for the crossing and for the residency permits if they can get them.”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand reales or so, I think they said.”

  The comisario smiles to himself. He would have arranged things for the man for half that sum. He may well do so, if he can lay hands on him. One of Tizón’s many advantages over upstarts like the man with the eyepatch is that, compared with what such scum charge, his prices are a bargain. And they are officially endorsed, respectable, with a genuine seal, no forgeries. After all, it is Tizón’s job to certify such documents.

  “What else did they talk about?”

  “Not much. They mentioned a Mulatto.”

  “Well, well … It seems there was a lot of talk about darkies … What about this Mulatto?”

  “He’s someone else who comes and goes a lot. From what I heard, he regularly goes over to El Puerto.”

  Tizón notes this detail as he takes off his hat to mop his brow. He has heard of the Mulatto, who apparently owns his own boat running contraband, like many people, but not that he carries people. He decides to investigate the man further. Find out who he talks to and where he goes.

  “So what did they say?”

  The innkeeper makes a vague gesture.

  “Someone wants to visit their family on the far shore … I think they said he was a soldier.”

  “From Cádiz?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Soldier or officer?”

  “Officer, I think.”

  “Now that is something … Did you get a name?”

  “There you’ve got me.”

  Tizón strokes his mustache. An officer prepared to cross over to enemy territory is always a danger. He gets there, he talks a bit to ingratiate himself and it’s a short step from desertion to high treason. And although deserters fall under military jurisdiction, when it involves the passing of information or espionage, they also come under Tizón’s department. Especially these days, when people seem to see spies everywhere. In Cádiz and on the Isla de Léon, severe penalties have been introduced for boat owners who transport deserters and there is an absolute embargo on any immigrant landing without first passing through the Customs ship moored in the bay. On land, anyone who owns a hostel, boardingrooms or guesthouse must give details of any new guests; and everyone in the city is required to have an officially stamped residency card. Tizón knows that Governor Villavicencio has already prepared a more draconian law which calls for the death penalty in the case of grave infractions, though so far he has not enacted it. In the current circumstances, rigorously enforcing the law would mean executing half the population and jailing the other half.

  “Very well, my friend. If they should come back, listen carefully and tell me everything. Understood? In the meantime, close up when you are supposed to close. Mind your own business, and no card-playing.”

  “What about the fine?”

  “Today is your lucky day. We’ll say forty-eight reales.”

  THE SUFFOCATING HEAT of the city feels no better in the sunshine, Tizón realizes, as he steps out into the street and crosses the Plaza San Juan de Dios on the way to his office at the Comisaría de Barrios, an old building with iron railings next to the convent of Santa María near the Royal Jail. Though the morning is already well advanced, crowds of people are milling around the fruit and vegetable stalls and the fishmongers beneath the awnings that stretch from the Town Hall to El Boquete and down to the docks. Swarms of flies buzz, drawn by all this exposed food. Tizón loosens the tie that is pinching his throat and fans himself with his hat. With some relief, he takes off his jacket, so he is in waistcoat and shirtsleeves—though made of fine linen, the shirt is already soaked with sweat—but there are some things that a gentleman and a comisario cannot permit himself. A gentleman he is not (nor does he claim to be), but being a comisario entails a certain level of decorum. Not everything about his position is an advantage.

  As he turns the corner by the stone gate of Santa María, Rogelio Tizón spots his deputy, Cadalso, in the distance, accompanied by his secretary. They have clearly been waiting for some time, because they hurry to meet him looking as though they have important news. The news must be grave, the comisario thinks, for his secretary—an office rat and self-professed enemy of sunlight—to come outside on such a hot day.

  “What’s happened?” he asks, as they reach him.

  They quickly bring him up to speed. The body of a dead girl has been found. Tizón feels all the heat drain from him. When he can eventually bring himself to speak, his lips feel frozen.

  “How did she die?”

  “She was gagged, Señor Comisario, and her back was flayed open with a whip.”

  He looks at them, bewildered, attempting to digest this information. It is impossible. He tries to think quickly but he cannot; his mind is deluged with ideas.

  “Where was she found?”

  “Not far from here. In the patio of a ruined house at the end of the Calle del Viento, next to the corner … She was discovered by some children who were playing nearby.”

  “Impossible.”

  The secretary and the deputy stare at their boss curiously. One of them adjusts his spectacles while the other knits his obtuse brow.

  “There’s no doubt about it,” says Cadalso. “She was eighteen, and lived in the area … Her family had been looking for her since last night.”

  Tizón shakes his head, though he does not quite know why. The murmur of the sea lapping at the nearby ramparts suddenly seems deafening, as though the waves were directly beneath the boots so recently shined by Pimporro. It makes him all the more confused. A strange chill creeps into every part of his body, into the very marrow of his bones.

  “I’m telling you it’s impossible.”

  He is shivering, and realizes that his subordinates have noticed. Suddenly he feels the need to sit down somewhere. To think things through slowly. Alone.

  “You are sure she was killed in the same manner as the others?”

  “Exactly the same,” Cadalso confirms. “I’ve seen the body. I’ve been looking for you for some time … I posted a guard and told him not to let anyone near and to allow no one to touch the body.”

  Tizón is no longer listening. Impossible, he mutters under his breath. Absolutely impossible. Cadalso is staring at him, puzzled.

  “Why do you keep saying that, Comisario?”

  “Because no bomb has fallen there.”

  He bl
urts out the words as though in protest. And, of course, they sound ridiculous, even to his ears. So he is not surprised to see Cadalso and the secretary exchange a worried glance.

  “In fact,” he adds, “no bombs have fallen in the city for weeks now.”

  THE LITTLE CONVOY, four gray carts drawn by donkeys, clatters across the second pontoon bridge and moves along the left bank of the San Pedro River heading for the Trocadero. Sitting in the back of the last cart—the only one with a canopy to protect travelers from the sun—legs hanging over the side, his sword between them and a kerchief pressed to his face to avoid having to breathe the dust kicked up by the mules, Captain Desfosseux watches as the white houses of El Puerto de Santa María vanish into the distance. The trail curves round, following the line of the coast between the wasteland that adjoins the river and the shore at low tide, a wide expanse of mud and moss with the sandbar of San Pedro in the foreground and, in the background, retrenched behind its ramparts and the still blue of the sea, Cádiz.

  Simon Desfosseux is reasonably satisfied. The carts are carrying the cargo he had hoped for; moreover, he has just spent two peaceful days in El Puerto enjoying some of the comforts of the rearguard—a cozy bed and decent food instead of his usual daily ration of black bread, half a pound of stringy meat and half a liter of sour wine—while waiting for the convoy to make its slow way from Seville, escorted by a detachment of dragoons and infantry. The latter did nothing to prevent it being attacked twice by guerrillas: once at the inn run by the Biscayan in the foothills of the Sierra de Gibalbín and the second time in Jerez, as they forded the Valadejo River. Eventually, the carts arrived yesterday having suffered minor losses, one dead and two wounded, though the death was all the sadder since the victim was a young bugle boy who disappeared on his way to fill canteens from a nearby brook and turned up naked and lashed to a tree, looking as though he had taken rather too long to die.

  Lieutenant Bertoldi, traveling in the first cart, appears by the side of the road, buttoning his fly, having just relieved himself in a clump of bushes. Wearing neither hat nor sword, jacket and waistcoat open to reveal his belly, he is panting from the heat. His skin is as tanned as a redskin on the American prairies.

  “Climb up and keep me company,” says Desfosseux.

  He reaches down and helps Bertoldi into the shade in the back of the cart. Having thanked him, the lieutenant covers his nose and mouth with the filthy kerchief he has been wearing around his neck.

  “We look like highwaymen,” says the captain, his voice muffled by his own kerchief.

  Bertoldi laughs. “In Spain,” he says, “they all look like highwaymen.”

  Longingly, he looks back toward the rearguard camp where he enjoyed two wanton days of enforced idleness. His presence had been unnecessary, but Desfosseux had insisted on bringing him along, knowing that the lieutenant would benefit from a break away from Spanish cannonfire in a place where his only worry would be having to walk in a straight line with several bottles inside him. And from what he has heard, this is exactly how it was. Of the two nights, Bertoldi spent one drinking in a wine cellar and the other in a brothel recently opened for officers on the Plaza del Embarcadero.

  “Those Spanish women,” he says wistfully. “ ‘You French son of a bitch,’ they say while they’re taking their clothes off, like they want to gouge your eyes out. So exotic, don’t you think? So primitive, with their fans and their rosary beads. They look like gypsies, but they charge you like they’re princesses. Bloody whores …”

  Desfosseux is looking dispassionately at the scenery. Thinking about his own problems. From time to time, in the kind of affectionate gesture a mother hen might give her favorite chicks, he half-turns to contemplate the cargo in the back of the cart, covered with tarpaulins, and carefully packed in straw inside wooden crates. His adjutant peers inside, smiling beneath his kerchief.

  “All things come to he who waits,” he says.

  Desfosseux nods. The wait has been worthwhile—at least, he believes it will have been worthwhile. The convoy is transporting fifty-two special bombs from the Seville Foundry made specifically for Fanfan: spherical projectiles for a 10-inch Villantroys-Ruty howitzer with no handles or eyebolts, perfectly calibrated and polished to create two different models, named Alpha and Beta. Each cart is carrying eighteen of the first type and thirty-four of the second. The Alpha is a conventional bomb like a grenade weighing 72 pounds, with a hole for a fuse and filled with a carefully balanced mixture of lead and gunpowder. The Beta, which is totally spherical and has no fuse or powder charge, simply contains inert lead packed with sand—which causes it to fragment on impact—bringing its weight to 80 pounds. These new bombs are the result of the trials and experiments Desfosseux has been carrying out for several months in the gun battery at Cabezuela, the fruit of lengthy observations, sleepless nights, failures and partial successes; this is the cargo being carried by the convoy, together with five new 10-inch howitzers which were cast in Seville, like Fanfan, though with a number of technical improvements.

  “We should use powder that is slightly damp,” says the captain, out of the blue.

  Bertoldi looks at him, surprised. “Do you never stop thinking?”

  Desfosseux points to the dusty road. This is how he came up with the idea. He pulls down his kerchief, and is smiling from ear to ear.

  “It was foolish of me not to think of it sooner.”

  His assistant knits his brow, considering the idea. “It makes sense,” he concludes.

  “Of course it does,” says the captain. “It entails increasing the initial thrust of the explosion within the eight feet of the cannon’s bore. If the barrel were shorter, it would not make much difference; in fact dry powder might work better. But with long-bore, high-caliber howitzers cast in bronze, like Fanfan and his new brothers, the less violent combustion of slightly damp powder might increase the thrust of the projectile.”

  “It’s just a matter of proving it, surely? Since they won’t give us mortars, we will use damp powder.”

  They laugh like schoolboys behind a master’s back. No one will ever succeed in convincing Simon Desfosseux that they would not get better results with mortars rather than howitzers, extending their range to cover the whole of Cádiz. But the word mortar may not be uttered among Marshal Victor’s general staff. And yet the captain knows that in order to achieve what is asked of him, he requires a larger caliber than any howitzer. He is tired of reiterating that a dozen 14-inch mortars with cylindrical breeches and an equal number of 40-pound cannons would allow him to raze Cádiz to the ground, terrify the populace and force the insurgent government to seek refuge elsewhere. With such means at his disposal, he would be prepared to sign any harebrained guarantee that within a month he would plow the city and sow it with bombs. And with grenades as God ordained them, fitted with fuses that explode when they reach their target. But no one will listen to him. Marshal Victor, on the direct orders of the Emperor and the drones at Imperial High Command, cannot bring himself to argue with Napoleon over the least whim or idea, and insists on using howitzers against Cádiz. Which, as the marshal repeats every time the subject is raised, means projectiles must reach the city by whatever means, regardless of whether or not they explode. All this in order to generate a convenient story for the newspapers in Madrid or Paris—Our cannons have the center of Cádiz under constant bombardment, or something like that; the Duc de Belluno continues to prefer a lot of noise to little effect. Simon Desfosseux, whose only concern in life is to trace parabolas with projectiles, suspects that even the noise is not guaranteed. Nor is he convinced that Fanfan and his brothers, even if they were loaded with the Greek alphabet from Alpha to Omega, would be enough to satisfy his superiors. Even with this new equipment from Seville, it will be difficult to attain a range of 3,000 toises. The captain calculates that, with a strong east wind, the right temperature and all other conditions being favorable, he might make four-fifths that distance. Reaching the center of Cádiz would be a
miracle. Fanfan’s location relative to that of the church steeple on the Plaza de San Antonio is precisely 2,870 toises, a distance that Desfosseux calculated on the map and is now etched onto his brain.

  ROGELIO TIZÓN LOOKS like a man possessed. He has been pacing up and down for some time, stopping now and then only to retrace his steps. He examines every doorway, every corner, every inch of this street he has been searching now for hours. His apparent indecisiveness is like that of a man who, having lost something, searches everywhere, checking and rechecking pockets and drawers, constantly returning to the same place convinced he will find some trace of what was lost, or remember how he came to lose it. The sun has almost set and the Calle del Viento has begun to fill with shadows. Half a dozen cats are lying on a pile of rubble in front of a house on which an armorial shield, eroded by the weather, can be seen behind the laundry hanging from the upper windows. This is a poor fishermen’s neighborhood, situated on the highest point, in the oldest part of the city near the Puerta de Tierra. There is barely a trace of its former magnificence: a few merchants and a number of ancestral houses which have been converted into tenements inhabited by poor families with too many children, and, since the French siege began, by soldiers and immigrants of slender means.

  The building where the dead girl was found is slightly beyond the bend in the street, almost on the corner of a little square which opens out at the far end, near the Calle de Santa María and the walls of the convent that bears the same name. Tizón slowly retraces his steps, glancing left and right. All his certainties have fallen apart, and he is finding it impossible to reorganize his thoughts. He spent half the afternoon verifying the terrible truth: no bomb has ever fallen here. The most recent bomb sites are at least three hundred yards away on the Calle del Torno and next to the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Merced. This time, even twisting the facts, it is impossible to find a connection between the girl’s death and the point of impact of the French bombs. Which is hardly surprising, he thinks bitterly. When all is said and done, there was never any solid evidence that such a connection existed. Nothing but footprints in the sand. The flights of an imagination playing tricks on him. Drivel. Tizón thinks about Hipólito Barrull and this serves only to irritate him further. His chess partner at the Café del Correo will laugh when he tells him.