Victus
Page 38
A young Pelt was charged with taking the city’s answer to Pópuli. Evidently from a good family, he appeared proud to have been given the job, and had dressed in his best attire. He received me with a smile. “I’m told you’ll be acting as my second,” he said. “Do you know the protocol?”
“Well, no.”
“I go first. You stay to my right, a pace behind. After you, the Bourbon messenger, and bringing up the rear, two standard-bearers, one with the royal standard, the other with parliament’s. Be sure to adhere to the conventions.”
“As you wish.”
“We’ll bow to their officers—amicably but never submissively. Remember, we’re at war!”
He was the one, it seemed to me, who had forgotten we were at war.
“And when exactly,” I said, “does bowing go from being amicable to submissive?”
“Don’t worry about that. All you have to do is, once we get there, hand me the missive. I unroll it, and I read it out.” This little Pelt was indeed proud to be leading the delegation. “I haven’t slept all night,” he said, beaming. “I’ve been working on memorizing a few immortal words to add to the government’s missive. Today, sir, we shall make history.”
The location of the Bourbon encampment, just out of range of the city’s artillery, meant it was quite a walk to get there. For my part, I was deep in thought the whole way, and not altogether happy thoughts.
We halted very close to their front line. There were thousands of soldiers working away on their ditches and barricades, all the way from Montjuïc to the mouth of the River Besòs. As far as the eye could see, men were chest-deep and shifting shovelfuls of earth.
The dimensions of the ditch, the sight of so many thousands of men working so systematically, intelligently, to bring about our destruction, left me feeling stricken. I’d been on the other side in Tortosa, so I hadn’t comprehended how distressing this all was from the point of view of the besieged.
A few minutes later, a podgy colonel came out to meet us, with four officers alongside. Coming a little way past the half-finished trench, this colonel addressed us brusquely: “You took your time.”
All the buggering about preparing for ceremony, and the Bourbons didn’t even bother to greet us.
“The reason for our lateness,” I said, stepping to the front, “is explained in the first paragraph. Here, read it for yourself.” I handed over the missive, somehow forgetting the protocol, and the Pelt’s immortal words.
The colonel, seeing that it was written in Catalan, thrust it back into my hands. “Tell us what it says in Castilian!”
The colonel and the men he had with him seemed cast from the same mold: dark eyes, pompous-looking mustaches, and a studied haughtiness to them all. I took a breath. There are a thousand ways to offend one’s enemy—now that I was going to have to read, I chose to do it in a chirpy tone, enunciating slowly as though reading to the village idiot—as if I doubted his ability to comprehend the civic composure of the people of Barcelona.
The enemy’s letter, delivered to this City by a messenger, required such attention that we considered it proper not to reply immediately.
I looked up from the sheet of paper. “Shall I go on?” I said. “Or do you already have an idea of what comes next?”
“Read on!”
I felt like I was breathing fire. This fat little colonel was really getting on my nerves with his self-important tone; I wasn’t there to take orders from him. I hesitated: to read or not to read? That was the question. I resolved to follow Don Antonio’s orders.
I filled my lungs so that the thousands of white uniformed soldiers digging the trenches would hear. Curious to know what was happening, they’d put down their picks and shovels to watch the scene. They viewed me thoughtfully, without any animosity. Their officers were so absorbed that they gave no order to go back to work. “Read it,” I said to myself, “like Jimmy announcing his own arrival at the gates of heaven.” I summoned my most stentorian voice:
This City will resist the enemy at its gates.
This City, and the whole Principality, innately loyal to its sovereign—whose charge it would be to declare peace—remains at war.
The unjust and extraordinary threats against us are not daunting, but rather give great heart to the vassals upholding their oft-stated oaths of allegiance.
And because this City is not accustomed to changing the terms of civility, it returns the messengers as safely as it received them. In view of this reply, the Duke of Pópuli should proceed as he judges best, for the City is resolved to oppose all invaders, as he is about to learn.
Barcelona, 29th July 1713
A long moment passed—longer than their execrable cordon—with the Army of the Two Crowns standing looking at us, as though le Mystère had turned us to stone. I lowered the paper brusquely, and only then did the greasy colonel turn indignant, or at least made a show of indignancy.
“What kind of farce do you call this?” he cried. “Do you know you are welcoming a siege?”
“What does it look like?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Think we’ve got cannons up on our bastions just to welcome you in with flowers?”
“Such folly can only be that of criminals who know they are guilty and are afraid of royal punishment.”
“Sir!” I said. “Show some respect.”
“Your ramparts are far from fit for war, and His Majesty’s army has forty thousand hardened soldiers!”
I raised my balled fists above my head. “And we have fifty thousand! Each and every city dweller, plus all the unfortunates who have fled to us seeking refuge!”
“Zuviría, please!” interrupted the Pelt, the first time he’d spoken.
But that colonel had succeeded in irking me, and I let him have it: “And for you to call us criminals! When we occupied Madrid in 1710, the worst we did was to hand out a few bags of coins. And you thank us by setting fire to villages and cities, hanging women and old people, and now setting camp before our walls, ready to scorch us with thousands of pounds of gunpowder.”
“No one raises his voice to me, least of all a rebel to the king!” roared the colonel. “The only thing stopping me from teaching you a lesson is the hospitality required by the rules of war! It’s not too late for you to come to your senses. Do you really think you can resist the most noble duke of Pópuli? He has already covered himself in immortal battlefield glory and is a descendent of the most august Neapolitan families.”
A Neapolitan! Now, there was a way of pacifying me! Their commander in chief, Pópuli, Neapolitan! See how they get absolutely everywhere?
“Neapolitan, did you say?” Making a show of moderation before I exploded.
“From Naples, yes, and of its most distinguished stock.”
But before he could finish, I bellowed like a hippopotamus. “Know the real reason why your little Italian general hasn’t attacked yet? Because he’s scared stiff! His rectum is clenched so tight, a beetle’s antennae couldn’t fit up there!”
“Please, Lieutenant Colonel!” cried the scandalized Pelt, who had turned green and white, rather like a chard.
“We’re going to give Pópuli such a kicking that he’ll go flying, all the way over the Mediterranean and back to his Italian boot!” Then, turning to the officers alongside the corpulent colonel, I said: “As for you, come any closer and we’ll riddle your bodies so full of holes, you’ll end up more like cream sieves, you bunch of blockheads!”
It goes without saying that there ended the courtesies. The Pelt was so dismayed that he didn’t say a word during our walk back to the city. For my part, when Villarroel asked how it had gone, I merely replied: “Mission accomplished, Don Antonio.”
2
So began the long, cruel, and singular siege of the city of Barcelona. Within a few days, the Bourbons had closed their cordon, just about, from one side of the city to the other. Following that, they were so occupied in applying the finishing touches that they didn’t bother to begin firing at us.
Things were increasingly strained between the French and Spanish. The French accused their allies of being good for nothing, incapable of looking after their own allies in a siege. The Spaniards retorted by pointing out that the French navy was as good as pointless. (And right they were; the naval blockade was a constant source of embarrassment for the French, at least until Jimmy arrived.)
As an engineer, I couldn’t have been happier with the way the siege was going. Let me remind you that when a city was besieged selon les règles, even if everything went as well as it could for the attackers, they still had only thirty days. All an engineer in my position wanted, therefore, was to draw things out. What the government chose to do with that time wasn’t my concern: negotiate a respectable peace, bring in foreign reinforcements, or wait for other world powers to intercede with diplomacy. Any of these. If Barcelona’s cries were heard in the rest of Europe, sooner or later, someone would have to do something. Thus I reasoned, vaguely. Everyone did. Meanwhile, the months passed, and Pópuli never embarked on his Attack Trench, and so to us, every new dawn was like a victory.
A curious drôle de guerre, yes. Consider it: Most of us soldiers did a shift on the ramparts or in a bastion and would then go home for dinner or breakfast, often a stone’s throw from our battle post. I myself, within five minutes of being up on a bastion observing the Bourbons with the telescope, or directing defense works, would be back at my table with Anfán on my lap and Amelis putting a plate in front of me. “How was your day, darling?” “Great, sweetie, they sent out a patrol, and we dropped our breeches and showed them our bare behinds.”
People would go down to the seafront parade for aperitifs. Sometimes becoming the audience for exciting skirmishes between the two navies, our own ships sailing out into the bay to slip past the blockading French ships, who could do little to stop them. The crowds cheered and clapped, as though it were some kind of stage play on water going on, and not a siege.
News and provisions came into the city by boat. From what we could piece together, it sounded as though, outside the city, far bloodier fighting was taking place. The Red Pelts were also keen to hear any and all news—some of the boats bore Archduke Charles’s letters from Vienna. I believe I’ve already made mention of that swine having sold us out, but in his royal little letters, his message was always: Well done, my boys, keep it up, keep on smiling at your executioner.
Between the city and the enemy line, there were a few workers’ cottages, inns, and in the lanes near the city, brothels. Through the course of the siege, these gradually fell to pieces and were destroyed. By the artillery and, mainly, because both sides sent crews of foragers to bring back tiles, bricks and slabs. They needed anything they could lay their hands on to reinforce the cordon, and we, to bulk up the ramparts.
Usually, a patrol, one of ours or one of theirs, would occupy an abandoned building midway between us and the enemy. They’d dismantle anything of interest as quietly as they could and then, when the sun went down, return to their own side, arms or sacks full of whatever they’d plundered. If possible, we’d keep out of sight by making our way back along a dry riverbed or a disused irrigation channel. Logically enough, skirmishes were commonplace. Truth be told, they usually happened suddenly and confusedly more than out of any great desire to fight.
Pillaging is generally associated with an outbreak of savage brutality when, really, methodically taking apart a building is one of the most tedious tasks known to man—particularly, say, when you’re charged with leading a certain Ballester and his men in the operation. (This fell to me, of course; other officers declined such a great honor.) To begin with, rather than keeping their heads down, the Miquelets tried to provoke the enemy. They couldn’t, or didn’t want to, understand that we’d gone to that abandoned farmhouse, or that stable, to gather matériel for our side, and to keep it out of Bourbon hands. I became incensed, seeing them wasting time—pulling women’s clothing out of trunks and japing around in it. And instead of staying silent, it would be a noisy jamboree, with petticoats for scarves. Good old Zuvi—he was like a hen trying to order a dozen wolves about. And more often than not, they simply found my orders incomprehensible.
“The frames! Pull the window frames out!”
“Why the cojones do you want us to take wooden window frames with us?”
“Do as you’re told!”
“You engineers have very strange ideas when it comes to war.”
We’d fall back, and always, always, one or two of them would have a petticoat draped around his neck. With six or seven large window frames weighing them down, they’d run along at a stoop.
I brought the scrapping schedule forward. To try and get in before the Bourbon crews, and because if we went out later in the day, the Miquelets were sure to be drunk. Not that I could stop them from coming back drunk; in the early days of the siege in particular, wine and liquor were still being found in abandoned larders.
I was sometimes less harsh with them when they seemed downcast. Those rooms, now empty, had been occupied not long before by people like them. Or at least the people they’d been before joining the Miquelets. Their thoughts were plain: If we’re here to defend a city, what are we doing destroying its houses, outside the walls though they may be?
It fell to me to teach them a few things. “Your life is no longer your own! It belongs to the city now, and it is for the city to decide what you do and when you shall give your life. As long as the siege lasts, we cease to exist as individuals. Accept it!”
Ballester would come back with some retort, and we’d have an altercation. A very isocratic form of command, of course, though that didn’t make it any less tiring. I felt snared—Ballester closing on me from below and Don Antonio from above.
I finally understood the usefulness of all those hours in the Spherical Room. It was akin to living inside it, to serve under a commander like Don Antonio; oversights were not tolerated. When would the fortification works be complete on this part of the ramparts? Why that blunt angle on the Saint Père bastion? What’s that gap in the stockades doing there? How many bricks do we have in our provisions? My brain, along with every one of my muscles, was pushed to its limits. And this was even though the siege remained nothing but a series of small skirmishes.
Don Antonio would usually have a cohort of officers and assistants around him. But one chilly morning, he and I bumped into each other, just the two of us, up on the ramparts. Wrapped in a bedewed cape, looking out through a telescope, he resembled one more rock in our defenses.
“Don Antonio,” I said, breaking in on what he was doing. “Something’s been troubling me.” I took the fact that he didn’t shout at me as permission to speak. “You criticized me for not having what it takes,” I went on. “And yet you let me serve you.”
“Fiyé,” he said, still peering out through the telescope. “You had an education with the greatest engineer of our age, and I cannot do without such knowledge.”
“But I didn’t complete my studies. I didn’t pass the test.” I rolled up my sleeve. “See these tattoos. They tell my story—the fifth one, that I’m an imposter. There’s something I’m missing, Don Antonio, but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps you’re the person to tell me.”
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Villarroel didn’t react. He continued scanning the enemy positions and said: “Let me ask you a question, my boy. If the entire Bourbon army were bearing down on your house, would you hold the last redoubt to the bitter end? Answer.”
“I would, sir,” I said, and not in the least enthusiastic tone of my life.
Notwithstanding, he replied: “We generals spend our whole lives hearing people saying ‘Yes, sir!’ And do you know what? The words I’ve just heard don’t fill me with great confidence.”
I said nothing. He lowered the telescope.
“Zuviría. Your learning is ample. In France, they taught you everything you need to know. What’s holding you back, what’s keeping you from what you’re looking for, is something else. A tremendously simple thing, in reality.”
Then a strange phenomenon took place. Something came over Don Antonio’s gaze, a sort of leniency or mildness, a look of compassion. Until that day I had seen such a look in the eyes of only two people, only two: Amelis and Ballester. And he said to me: “You haven’t suffered enough.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for that something to quit his body, and when he spoke again, he was the great general once more. “I’m going to notify the general staff of something tomorrow, the start of a crucial, potentially decisive maneuver. All our hope, more or less, lies in this play. And you’re going to participate in operations. Perhaps you’ll be able to resolve the doubt that lingers in your soul. That is,” he said grimly, “if you survive.”
I was about to take my leave when he caught sight of my bare belt. “One other thing,” he said. “An officer without a sword isn’t an officer. Find yourself one.”
The quartermaster was so tight, he wanted me to pay six pesos for a sword. I flat refused. That same night, while Peret was sleeping, I stole his. It had so many chips and nicks in it, it was more like a saw than a sword, which didn’t bother me, as it would be sheathed most of the time. Peret was deeply upset and badgered me all the way through the siege to give it back. I pretended not to hear. “Six pesos!” I said.