The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “You know you do not have a good reputation, Captain? I am not, of course, referring to your abilities as a sailor.”

  A long silence. Long enough for them to walk some twenty paces, side by side, as far as the little Plaza de San Agustín. What possessed me to say such a thing? Lolita Palma wonders, bemused. What right do I have? I barely recognize the silly fool talking in my stead, irritable and insolent with this man who has done me no wrong—a man I have met barely half a dozen times. A moment later, when they come to the Librería Salcedo, she stops suddenly and looks the corsair in the eye, confident and determined.

  “Some say you are not a gentleman.”

  She is intrigued to see he is neither embarrassed nor angered by her remark. Pépé Lobo stands stock-still, the package containing the Naval Gazetteer under one arm. His face is calm, but he is not smiling.

  “Whoever told you such a thing is quite right: I am not a gentleman, nor do I claim to be.”

  It is neither an apology nor a boast, but said with complete sincerity. He does not look away. Lolita tilts her head a little to one side, appraising.

  “What a curious thing to say. All men aspire to be gentlemen.”

  “Not all, as you can see …”

  “I am shocked by your cynicism … Is that what I should call it?”

  A quick blink. He seems surprised by this term. Cynicism. Perhaps he is not aware of it, she thinks; perhaps for him everything is straightforward. His life is so different from mine. A faint smile plays on the corsair’s lips.

  “Call it what you will, it has its advantages,” says Pépé Lobo. “These are not times for civilities such as ‘You fire first’… Not if a man wants to eat … even if it is only the worm-eaten hardtack, rancid bacon and watered-down wine we get aboard ship.”

  He falls silent and looks around: the church doorway beneath the statue of Saint Augustine, the pigeons pecking at the bare soil of the square, the windows of shops open for business, the bookcases on display outside the Salcedo bookshop, just like those nearby on Calle Hortal, Calle Murguía and Calle Navarro. He gazes at everything as though he were simply passing through, as though seeing them from a distance, as an outsider.

  “It is very pleasant talking with you, señora.”

  There is no sarcasm in his remark, something that surprises Lolita.

  “Why …? It can hardly be because of what I say, I fear …”

  “It is not what you say.”

  Lolita Palma stifles the urge to flick open her fan and cool herself vigorously.

  “Would you care …?” The corsair begins, but stops himself. Once again there is a silence—brief, this time.

  “I think perhaps it is time you went on your way, Captain.”

  Pépé Lobo nods, he seems distracted. Or preoccupied.

  “Of course.”

  He touches the brim of his hat, murmurs “By your leave …” and makes to depart. Lolita unfolds her fan and spends a moment or two fanning herself. Just as he is about to leave, Pépé Lobo glances at a picture of a landscape. She follows his gaze.

  “It is called a dragon tree,” she says. “Have you ever seen one?”

  The corsair stops, his head tilted slightly as if unsure he has heard her correctly.

  “There are two extraordinary specimens in Cádiz,” she adds. “In Latin it is Dracaena draco.”

  It is clear from his face he thinks she is mocking him. Seeing his expression—confusion, curiosity—Lolita feels the secret pleasure of drawing a man into a world of improbabilities.

  “One is on the Plaza de San Francisco, quite near my house … From time to time I visit it, as one might an old friend.”

  “What do you do when you get there?”

  “I sit on the bench opposite and look at it. And think.”

  Without taking his eyes off her, Pépé Lobo shifts the package to his other arm. For some minutes now, he has been studying her as though she were an enigma, and she notices how pleasurable it is to be looked at in this way. She is more in control of her actions, her words. It calms her. She feels the urge to smile, but restrains herself. Everything unfolds more easily this way.

  “Do you know much about trees?” he asks finally.

  “A little. I am interested in botany.”

  “Botany …” the corsair echoes in a barely audible whisper.

  “Exactly.”

  His inquisitive feline eyes are still gazing into hers.

  “Once …” Pépé Lobo ventures, “I took part in a botanical expedition.”

  “Really?”

  He nods, satisfied by the look of surprise on her face.

  “Back in ’eighty-eight, I was first mate on the ship that brought home a group of botanists, together with their pots and plants and seeds and so forth.” He pauses deliberately. “And do you know the strangest thing? Can you guess what the ship was called?”

  Lolita’s excitement is genuine. She almost claps her hands.

  “In ’eighty-eight? Of course I know; it was called the Dragon—like the tree.”

  “You see?” The corsair’s smile broadens. “It’s a small world.”

  She can hardly get over her surprise. The world is filled with strange twists of fate.

  “I can’t believe it … twenty-three years ago, you brought Don Hipólito Ruiz to Spain from El Callao!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember the names of the gentlemen aboard. But clearly you know all about it.”

  “Of course I do … That expedition to Chile and Peru was extremely important: those plants are now in the Botanical Gardens in Madrid. And I have several books at home by Don Hipólito and his partner Pavón … They even mention the name of the ship …”

  Once again, they consider each other in silence.

  “How interesting.” Her voice is calmer now. “You must tell me all about it, Captain. I would very much enjoy that.”

  Another pause. Short-lived this time. The fleeting glimmer in the corsair’s eyes. “Now?”

  “No, not now,” she says, shaking her head gently. “Some other day, perhaps … when you come back to port again.”

  SERIOUS, GRUFF, MASCULINE, three men are sitting on wicker chairs in the shade of the vine, passing a tobacco pouch from hand to hand, striking a flint to spark the tinder and light their cigarettes. The glass pitcher, half-full of wine, has already circulated several times.

  “That makes two thousand duros to be divided up,” says Curro Panizo.

  Panizo is a salter, a friend and neighbor of Felipe Mojarra, who is now looking at him thoughtfully. Tempted by the idea. They have been discussing the ins and outs of the matter for a while.

  “The nights are short, but there is time enough,” Panizo insists. “To get there, we simply need to swim along the channel quietly, like my son and I did the other night.”

  “How far did you get?”

  “As far as La Matilla, near the dock. We saw two other launches there, but further off. More difficult to steal.”

  Mojarra grabs the pitcher, throws his head back to take a long draft of red wine, then gives it to his brother-in-law Bartolo Cárdenas—a thin, wiry man with hands as gnarled as vines—who takes a drink and passes it on to Panizo. The sun shimmers on the still water of the nearby salt flats, and casts a haze over the distant pinewoods and the gentle slope that rises to Chiclana. Mojarra’s little cabin—a modest dwelling with two rooms and a patio with grapevines, geraniums and a small kitchen garden—lies outside the village in the Isla de Léon, near the tidal creek of Saporito, at the end of the long road that runs from the Plaza de las Tres Cruzes.

  “Explain it to me again,” says Mojarra. “In detail …”

  Panizo patiently recaps. A gunboat, about forty feet long. Moored in the Alcornocal channel near the mill at Santa Cruz. Guarded by a corporal and five soldiers who spend most of their time sleeping, because it’s a safe area for the gabachos. He and his son spotted the boat while on a reconnaissance mission to see if people were still taking sand to bu
ild fortifications. They spent all day hiding in the scrubland, staking out the area, planning the job. And it should be easy. Past the Camarón channel, through the swampland and the shallow tidal creeks to the main channel, taking care not to be spotted by the English gun batteries at San Pedro. From there, swim slowly to Alcornocal. Coming back should be easier, with an ebb tide and a pair of oars. If there’s a favorable wind, all the better.

  “Our officers won’t be happy,” protests Mojarra.

  “They haven’t got the guts to do it themselves. And even if they did, they’d keep the reward and not give us a real. It’s a lot of money, Felipe.”

  Mojarra knows that Curro Panizo is absolutely right. The Spanish authorities will pay a reward of 2,000 silver reales for the capture of a boat equipped with cannons or howitzers. They pay 10,000 reales for a boat with minor artillery, and 200 for every captured enemy sailor or soldier. And most important, in order to encourage such captures they pay promptly, in hard cash. At least that is what they say. In these straitened times—when most sailors and soldiers are owed twenty months’ back pay, and all claims are met with a blunt “we do not have the authority to help you”—to make two thousand duros in cash overnight would be a fortune. Especially for people as poor as this: Mojarra and Panizo are poachers and salters, and Mojarra’s brother-in-law Bartolo Cárdenas works as a ropemaker at a rigging plant in La Carraca.

  “If the Frenchies catch us, we’re done for.”

  Panizo smiles avariciously. He is thickset, his bald head tanned by the sun, his beard streaked with gray. He wears a butcher’s knife tucked into a broad belt—once black, now a faded gray—and a shirt that has been patched and darned, with calf-length breeches made of sailcloth. His bare feet are as callused as Mojarra’s.

  “For that amount of cash, let them try,” he says.

  “I’m in too,” chimes Cárdenas.

  “If you want to steal figs, you have to climb trees …”

  The three men smile gleefully, picturing it. They have never seen so much money all together—they have never seen so much money at all.

  “When will we do it?” asks Mojarra.

  An explosion rings out in the distance and all three look to the east, beyond the Saporito creek, toward Chiclana. It is unusual for the French to be shelling at this time of day, but you never know. In general, they shell the Isla de Léon, where there is heavy fighting along the front, and frequently at night. Many people live holed up in the basements of houses that have them. Mojarra’s house has no cellar, so when there is shelling his family has no choice but to seek refuge in the Carmelite convent, in San Francisco or in the local parish church, which has thick stone walls. But only when there is time. If the shelling comes out of the blue, all he and his wife can do is press themselves against the walls of the hut, hug their children and pray.

  Mojarra’s wife—hair in a bedraggled topknot, skin lined with wrinkles, breasts sagging beneath a coarse cotton blouse—also heard the distant boom. She appears in the doorway, drying her hands on her apron, and looks out toward Chiclana. Her expression is not one of fear, but of weariness and resignation. Her husband sends her back indoors with a glance.

  “We could do it five days from now,” whispers Curro Panizo. “There will be no moon, so it will be pitch dark.”

  “But they might have moved the gunboat by then.”

  “It’s permanently moored there, by a small jetty. It’s the gunboat they sail up the narrow waterways to fire on the English gun battery at San Pedro … I was told that by a deserter we captured; we found him hiding in the salt lake at La Pelona, waiting for darkness so he could swim across to the other side.”

  “And this boat has a cannon?”

  “A big one—we saw it with our own eyes. Six or eight pounds, the gabacho told us.”

  Smoke swirls from the hand-rolled cigarettes; the wine pitcher makes another round. The men look at each other gravely. They can all see the problem.

  “Three men won’t be enough.”

  “I’ll bring my lad along,” says Panizo.

  The boy is fourteen—named Francisco, like his father (they are known as Curro and Currito)—and is quick and agile as a squirrel. Though he is too young to enlist in the fusiliers, he sometimes goes on reconnaissance missions with his father. Just now, he is sitting on the bank of the Saporito thirty paces away, fishing line in hand, hoping to catch something. Panizo told him to stay put and not bother them until he was called. Tough and old enough to risk his life, he is not old enough for adult conversation. Or for cigarettes and wine.

  “Any more and we’re likely to be spotted,” interjects Mojarra’s brother-in-law. “We could get shelled by the English battery at San Pedro, or by our own troops as Maseda … or be caught by the gabachos on our way back.”

  “Four sounds about right,” agrees Mojarra. “The three of us and the stripling.”

  “That makes …” Panizo counts on his fingers, “… five hundred duros each.”

  Cárdenas looks sidelong at Mojarra, but his brother-in-law says nothing. It is only fair: the kid will be risking as much as any of them. Between him and Curro Panizo, compadre is more than just a word.

  “We should get away with it,” he says.

  They drained the carafe on the last round. Mojarra gets to his feet, grabs it by the neck and goes into the house for a refill. The wine is cheap, bitter, but it is all they have. It fires their bellies and stiffens their resolve. Next to the spent embers in the chimney breast his wife, Manuela Cárdenas, helped by a girl of eleven, is preparing food: a frugal gazpacho with a single clove of garlic, strips of dried pepper pounded with oil, vinegar and a little bread and water. Two other girls—one, eight, the other, five—are sitting on the floor playing with some blocks of wood and a ball of twine next to Mojarra’s elderly, crippled mother-in-law, who is dozing in a chair beside the rain barrel. Their eldest daughter, Mari Paz, is in Cádiz, working as a housemaid for the Palmas. With what she earns and the rations her father receives as a fusilier, the family have enough to eat and drink.

  “We’re talking about five thousand reales,” Mojarra whispers, standing next to his wife.

  He knows she has overheard. She turns her weary eyes to him and stares at him in silence. Her wizened skin and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth attest to the ravages of time, the daily grind of chores, the unremitting poverty; to seven pregnancies in a few short years, three of which ended in miscarriages. As Mojarra refills the wine pitcher from a wicker-covered demijohn, he can read the words left unspoken in his wife’s eyes: It is a long way to go, husband; with the gabachos there, it might as well be the ends of the earth, and who will pay us if they kill you? There will be no one to provide food if you are lying dead in the canals. You already risk too much every day, why tempt fate?

  “Five thousand reales,” he insists.

  She turns away, expressionless. Fatalistic as the times, as her situation, as her downtrodden sex. Her brother Cárdenas, who was taught to read and to count, has already worked out the sums: 3,000 two-pound loaves of bread; 250 pairs of shoes; 300 pounds of meat; 800 pounds of ground coffee; 2,500 cuartillos of wine … These are just some of the things they could buy if Felipe Mojarra were somehow—by hauling, rowing, or by God’s help—able to transport the French gunboat from Santa Cruz through half a league of shallow tidal creeks, salt marshes and no man’s land. Food; lamp oil; firewood to cook with and to heat the hut in winter; clothes for the girls who run around half-naked; a new roof for the house; new blankets for the straw mattress in the bedroom with its smoke-grimed walls where they all sleep together, parents and children. A respite from this abject poverty relieved only by a fish caught in the creek, or a bird shot over the salt flats—something that has become more difficult because even poaching, the only thing that helped them get by, has gone to hell since the war, with a whole army entrenched on the Isla de Léon.

  Mojarra goes back outside, squinting into the glare of sunlight reflected on the still water
s of the creeks and salt marshes. He hands the pitcher to his friend and his brother-in-law, who throw their heads back and let the stream of wine pour down their throats. They click their tongues contentedly. With long blades they cut tobacco into their callused palms and roll more cigars. The long line of prisoners returning from work on the Gallineras fortifications is framed against the sunlight, escorted by marines, shuffling slowly along the path by Saporito Creek that leads back to the arsenal at La Caracca.

  “We leave here in five days,” says Mojarra, “as soon as it’s dark.”

  FROM THE DOCK of the Jarcia de Puerto Real, Simon Desfosseux observes the nearby enemy coastline. His expert eye, accustomed to gauging distances, whether actual or on a map, functions with the meticulous precision of a rangefinder: three miles exactly to Punta Cantera, one and six-tenths to the headland at Clica, one and a half to Carraca and the formidable gun battery located in the former prison barracks in the northeast corner of the Santa Lucía arsenal, heavily defended by the Spanish with twenty field guns, including 24-pound cannons and 9-inch howitzers. This extensive deployment, with angles of fire crossing those of other gun emplacements, makes this section of the enemy front line unassailable, protecting as it does the channels by which French vessels might launch an attack and providing cover for the gunboats that periodically harass the imperial forces. This happened some three days ago when a flotilla anchored close to the dock at Puerto Real was attacked by gunboats that had sailed under cover of darkness from the enemy coast. By daybreak there were ten gunboats, four more with howitzers and three bombers which, while the seas remained favorable, fired more than twenty grenades and two hundred round shots, causing considerable damages to ships, equipment and buildings near the port. Indeed, there were eleven separate hits on the building next to the quay known as the Casa Grenada or the Casa de las Rosas, a provisions store and guardhouse. All in all, a minor disaster, with many dead and wounded. As a result, Marshal Victor, fuming from every curl of his sideburns, bawled at General Menier, de facto commander of the division responsible for Puerto Real, dismissing him as a complete imbecile. Simon Desfosseux was sent posthaste from the Trocadero, with full authority and orders to analyze the situation and ensure—to quote the Marshal’s words verbatim—that such a bloody stupid cock-up would never happen again.