The Marquis of Bolibar

by Leo Perutz

  I had not seen Monjita again since the night we encountered our colonel at her father's house. It seemed that the priest, in response to a request from the colonel, had called on the humpbacked painter the following morning. Some hours later a calash had driven up and conveyed Monjita to the Marquis of Bolibar's town house. This building, which boasted two Saracens' heads over its portal and was situated in the Calle de los Carmelitas, had been chosen by the colonel as his headquarters. The ground floor was given over to the guard, the top floor to Eglofstein's orderly-room.

  The inhabitants of La Bisbal, modest, humble folk who earned their daily bread by cultivating olives or vines, dealing in grain or dressing coarse wool, were at first surprised and disconcerted by Monjita's change of abode. In the course of time, however, they welcomed it, feeling highly flattered and honoured that the choice of so senior an officer should have fallen on a neighbour's daughter known to them all since her childhood. Although there had previously been a few disaffected townsfolk who eyed us with contempt 'twixt cloak and hat-brim and secretly called us godless heretics whose extermination would be a meritorious act, all the faces we now encountered were amiable and contented or, at worst, simply curious. What was more, their priest assured them from the pulpit that the Spanish and German nations were on friendly terms — indeed, that they had, to their common renown, been allies since the time of Emperor Charles the Fifth.

  Donop and I rode up and down the Calle de los Carmelitas, evening after evening, showing off our horses' voltes and halts, but never once did we set eyes on Monjita. Nothing stirred behind the barred windows, and the Saracens' stone faces gazed mutely down on us from above the door.

  Toward noon on the Sunday after Christmas, Eglofstein came to my room to accompany me to dinner, for we were always invited to join our colonel's table when resting in quarters on the Sabbath.

  We went downstairs and out into the marketplace, which was thronged, as ever on Sundays, with market women trying to sell us eggs and cheese, bread and fowl, and beggars holding out the grimy effigies of sundry saints for us to kiss. The crowd thinned beyond the church of Maria del Pilar. Eglofstein was in the best of spirits.

  "All's well," he announced, slapping the side of his boot with his riding crop as he went. "Things are better, in fact, than I expected. Saracho has the patience and stupidity of a sheep. He hasn't budged — he's lying low and waiting for the signals. Well, he'll continue to wait for as long as I please."

  He chuckled softly to himself.

  "The house in the Calle de los Carmelitas is being closely guarded," he said, more to himself than to me. "That man Salignac knows his business. He stands guard there, peering at all who approach like the Devil sifting souls. If His Lordship the Marquis of Bolibar wishes to sneak inside and kindle his mouldy straw, he'll have to transform himself into a mouse or a sparrow."

  "The Marquis of Bolibar is dead," I broke in, "as I already told you."

  Eglofstein paused and turned to stare at me.

  "Jochberg," he said, "I credit you with more intelligence than most. How in God's name did you contrive to get drunk so early in the day?"

  "The Marquis of Bolibar is dead," I repeated, stung by his imputation, "and you yourself had him shot. We must have been blind not to recognize him at once on Christmas Eve."

  "You seriously expect me to believe," cried Eglofstein, "that that filthy Beelzebub of a muleteer, the one that stole Kümmel's thalers, was a cousin of the King of Spain?"

  "Yes, Captain, he was. He lies buried beneath the snow, and his dog still roams near the guard post and leaps up at me whenever I approach."

  Eglofstein paused again and knit his brow.

  "Jochberg," he said, "I know that it has always been a favourite pastime of yours to arouse my ire by contradicting me. You always know better than the rest. If someone says 'sweet', you say 'sour'. If I were to say 'sparrow', you would say 'finch'."

  He relapsed into sullen silence, and we walked on side by side for a while.

  "I interrupted you, Captain," I said at length, hoping to placate him. "You were about to tell me your plans."

  "Ah yes, my plans," he said, and his face brightened in an instant. "Well, as you know, we're expecting a consignment of powder, shot and shell. Our stock of ammunition has been depleted by these latest engagements — severely depleted, Jochberg — but the convoy has already passed the village of Zarayzago and will be here three or four days hence."

  "Unless Saracho . . ."I began.

  We had come to the "Blood of Christ" inn. Standing outside its door in the wintry sunlight, dripping with melted snow, was a carved wooden figure of St Antony, a saint much revered in Spain and more often invoked there than all twelve Apostles put together. Eglofstein paused with his hand on the latch and turned to me.

  "The Tanner's Tub?" he said. "He'll have to let the convoy pass, for he mustn't make a move before the Marquis of Bolibar signals to him by kindling that straw. I myself shall give the said signal in three or four days' time. Once the convoy is safe within these walls, I shall lure Saracho and his men out of their holes as village boys lure crickets, and that'll be the end of the guerrillas in this part of the world."

  He flung open the door and shouted into the tap-room.

  "Brockendorf! Günther! Are you coming? You know the colonel: keep him waiting for his dinner and he'll confine you to quarters."

  Brockendorf and Günther emerged red in the face, one with wine, the other with a gambler's excitement. Günther was cock-a-hoop, Brockendorf as phlegmatic as he always was when not actually drunk.

  "Well," said Eglofstein, "which of you won the other's boots? What did you play, 'Thirty-One'?"

  "We played 'Lansquenet'," Günther replied, "and I won."

  St Antony was holding a slip of paper in his hand, a printed announcement to the effect that Mary had been truly immaculate when she conceived Our Lord. Günther, having removed this, gave him the knave of diamonds to hold instead, and the saint, as forbearing and longsuffering in effigy as he had been in his lifetime, retained the playing card between his fingers.

  "Günther," Brockendorf said in his measured way, "at Barcelona, where some felons were marched to work past my billet each morning, I once saw a card-sharper whose face bore a strong resemblance to yours."

  "And I," Günther retorted hotly, "saw a thief dangling from a gibbet in Kassel whose nose was as flat as your own."

  "Sometimes," said Eglofstein, quite straight-faced, "Nature indulges in the strangest whims."

  The four of us set off together.

  "He had the king of spades in his hand," Günther pursued, as hotly as ever. "He played it, thinking himself sure to win, and said 'Take that!' And so it went on, thrust and parry, queen of hearts, knave of hearts, back and forth. In the end I played the ace of hearts, called 'Trounced!', and he was beaten."

  He turned to Brockendorf and bellowed the word exultantly in his face.

  "Trounced, Brockendorf, did you hear? Trounced!"

  "Be first with her by all means," Brockendorf growled as he strode along. "She'll notice soon enough that you're not the man for her. Your slow-match peters out too soon, my lad."

  Eglofstein looked at the pair of them and whistled softly to himself.

  "What did you play for?"

  "For the right to be first with Monjita," Brockendorf replied.

  "I thought as much," said Eglofstein, chuckling.

  "Brockendorf met her in the street this morning," Günther announced. "She made an assignation with him for tomorrow, after Mass, but he lacks the necessary belair - he would have choked the well for the rest of us. Now I shall go in his place. I know how the women hereabouts should be courted in Spanish."

  Eglofstein turned to Brockendorf, his eyes alight with curiosity.

  "Is it true you spoke with her?"

  "Yes, and at some length," said Brockendorf, smiting himself on the chest.

  "What did you say to her?"

  "I told her point-blank that I was
in love with her, and that she alone could help me in my hour of need."

  "And she? What was her answer?"

  "She could not converse with me in the street, she said, because that would be thought unseemly in La Bisbal, but I was to call on her tomorrow after Mass. She had pins and lye in plenty at home."

  "Pins and lye?"

  "Yes, I had vowed to eat pins and drink lye for love of her."

  "Tomorrow, when the colonel has gone riding," said Günther, "I shall pay her a visit."

  "Do that!" Brockendorf gave a thunderous laugh. "Go by all means. Swallow the pins and lye yourself!"

  "Günther," said Eglofstein, "you and Brockendorf may fancy yourselves the only players in this game, but have a care: I, too, hold some trumps in my hand."

  "But the lead is still mine," Günther drawled spitefully. The pair of them, Eglofstein and Günther, eyed one another with the cold and hostile air of duellists preparing to settle matters at dawn.

  By now we had reached the colonel's residence. Outside the door we saw Captain de Salignac furiously engaged in driving away a number of beggars who, it being Sunday, had gathered at the Marquis of Bolibar's house to get their customary dole of soup and peas cooked in oil.

  "What are you doing here, you rogues, you scoundrels, you drunken wine-bibbers?" Salignac roared at them. "Be off with you! I'll let none of you past this door!"

  "Alms, sir!" the beggars cried in a ragged chorus. "Alms, if you yourself hope to receive God's mercy! Have pity on the poor! Glory to God on high! Feed the hungry!"

  "You see?" said one of the wretches, thrusting his mutilated arm in Salignac's face. "Like you, I have been afflicted with a divine misfortune."

  Salignac retreated a step and called out the guard. At once, two dragoons emerged from the doorway and put the beggars to flight with a shower of blows. Even as he ran, one of the fugitives turned and called over his shoulder.

  "I know you, cruel man!" he cried. "Christ has already punished you once for your hardness of heart. You have no more hope of eternal bliss than the beasts of the field!"

  The captain watched him go without expression. Then he turned to me.

  "Lieutenant Jochberg," he said, "you are the only one of us to have seen the Marquis of Bolibar. Did you recognize him in one of those wastrels? I think it very likely that he will endeavour to steal back into his house in some such disguise."

  I strove to explain that the beggars had merely come for their Sunday alms, but he did not hear me out. Instead, he began to lay about a peasant who, half hidden behind a mule laden with firewood, had been gazing into his face with mingled curiosity and fear.

  "What are you doing here, you stubborn rogue?"

  Trembling all over, the peasant put a hand to his brow, lips and breast in turn.

  "Leave me be, Jew," he entreated. "Acknowledge the Cross!"

  We laughed despite ourselves on hearing the captain called a Jew, but Salignac seemed not to have heard. He fixed the man with a menacing, suspicious gaze.

  "Who are you? What's your business here? Who sent for you?

  "I bring firewood from the forest for the Seiïor Marques, Your Eternity," the peasant said haltingly, crossing himself again and again as he bestowed this singular title on the captain.

  "Take your firewood and go to the Devil - let him stoke the fires of hell with it!" Salignac roared, and the peasant turned and ran off down the street, terrified out of his wits, with the mule cavorting madly after him.

  Salignac drew a deep breath and rejoined us.

  "An arduous spell of duty, this. It has been the same since daybreak. You, Eglofstein, sitting snug in your orderly-room, can count yourself lucky —"

  He broke off, for just then a peasant drove up with a waggon- load of maize straw, and Salignac, suspecting him to be another Marquis of Bolibar in disguise, showered the unfortunate man with curses and imprecations.

  We left them to it and set off up the stairs.

  In the dining-room above we found Donop in conversation with the priest and the alcalde, who had likewise been invited to dinner. Donop was dressed to the nines: he wore his best breeches, his boots were carefully polished, and the black stock at his throat was knotted in keeping with the latest fashion.

  "She will be at table," he announced, walking over to us with an air of mystery.

  "I doubt it," Günther retorted. "Our Colonel Vinegar-Jug keeps her tethered like a nanny-goat."

  "I met her on the stairs," said Donop, "and she was wearing a gown of Françoise-Marie's, the white muslin 'à la Minerve'. I felt I was looking at a tombstone come to life."

  "She wears Françoise-Marie's clothes every day," Eglofstein told us. "The colonel wishes her to resemble his first wife in each and every respect. Believe it or not, she has had to learn to distinguish between all the vins de liqueur - to tell a Rosalis from a St Laurens, for example. Now he's busy teaching her to play cards: ombre, piquet, petite prime, summa summarum."

  "I can think of other games I should like to teach her," said Günther. He began to laugh, but at that moment the door opened and Monjita herself came in with the colonel at her heels.

  We fell silent and bowed - all save the priest and the alcalde, who were standing at the window with their backs to the door, unaware of the colonel's arrival. They continued their conversation, and the alcalde's voice could plainly be heard in the general hush.

  "My grandfather met him here in this very town, fifty years ago, and he's just as the old man described him: for ever vehement and choleric, his face the colour of death and his brow encircled by a bandage that conceals the fiery cross."

  "His portrait hangs in the cathedral at Cordoba," said the priest, "and beneath it are the words: Tu enim, stulte Hebrœe, tuum deum non cognovisti, which is to say, 'Thou foolish Jew, thou didst not —'"

  He, too, became aware of the colonel's presence and fell silent. After a general exchange of salutations we all took our places at table, I between Donop and the priest.

  Monjita, recognizing Captain Brockendorf as the man with whom she had spoken that morning, smiled at him, and I, as I watched her sitting beside the colonel in the white, high- necked muslin gown we all knew so well, was truly tempted to believe, if only for a moment, that she was the Françoise-Marie whose memory I had never been able to banish.

  Donop seemed to feel as I did, for he left his plate untouched and never took his eyes off her.

  "Donop," the colonel called across the table as he tempered his Chambertin with water, "you or Eglofstein must play us something on the pianoforte after dinner. Your health, Señor Cura!"

  "Donop," I whispered to my day-dreaming table companion, "the colonel was addressing you." He gave a start and sighed.

  "Ah, Boethius!" he said softly. "Ah, Seneca! Great philosophers though you were, how little have all your writings availed me!"

  The meal proceeded, and I remember its course as if it were yesterday. The lofty windows facing me afforded an extensive view of snow-mantled hills on which isolated bushes stood out like dark shadows. Jackdaws and ravens fluttered across the fields, and in the distance a peasant woman rode her donkey toward the town, a basket on her head and a child on her lap. None of us guessed what a transformation would overtake the peaceful countryside that very day, nor could we know that we were enjoying the last harmonious hour we were ever to be granted within the walls of La Bisbal.

  Günther, seated beside the alcalde, regaled him with a loud and boastful account of his feats of arms and his travels in France and Spain. My neighbour on the right, the priest, while applying himself with alacrity to the food and wine, lectured me on matters of which he assumed me to be ignorant — for instance, that the region was very hot in summer, that the countryside abounded in figs and grapes, and that fish, too, were plentiful by reason of the sea's proximity.

  All of a sudden Brockendorf sniffed the air several times, smote the table with his hand, and let out an exultant cry.

  "The dish has conceived and brought for
th a roast goose — I can smell it from here!"

  "Damnation," said the colonel, "you guessed it. Very perceptive of you."

  "It comes at a blessed hour, does the goose," Brockendorf declared, brandishing his fork. "Let us greet it with a Con quibus or a Salue regina! "

  "Hush, Brockendorf," said Donop, as embarrassed on the priest's account as the rest of us. "Forms of worship are no fit subject for mockery."

  "Keep your homilies to yourself, Donop," Brockendorf growled. "You're no theologian, God knows." The priest, however, had understood none of this but "Salue regina".

  "The Bishop of Plasencia," he said, helping himself to a drumstick from the dish, "the Most Reverend Don Juan Manrique de Lara, grants forty days' worth of indulgences to all who say a Salue regina before Our Lady's statue."

  "Don't stint yourself, sir," Brockendorf benevolently urged the alcalde. "When one dish is empty, another will be brought."

  "Our beloved Maria del Pilar," pursued the priest, "is admired and revered throughout the world, having accomplished as many miracles as the Maria de Guadalupe or the Virgin of Montserrat. Why, only last year ..."

  The words stuck in his throat, together with a morsel of roast goose, and his startled eyes sought those of the alcalde.

  Both men stared in alarm at the door. Following the direction of their gaze, I gathered that the cause of their sudden consternation was Captain de Salignac, who had just entered the room.