Victus

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  I stepped closer to his bed and leaned over it, resting my fists on the mattress. “But monsieur,” I said in a tone gentler and more respectful than for anything else I have ever said, “I have just recounted all that Bazoches has taught me.”

  It was as though Vauban were surrendering. He lifted a hand to his eyes. “No, you haven’t done it. You haven’t understood. Enough.” He took a heaving breath, not looking at me. “I cannot give you my blessing, my conscience will not allow it. Believe me, I am sorry. You are going to have to find a better teacher than I. I have failed you.” And he issued his judgment: “You are not fit.”

  I thought it was me death had come for, not him. He made a tired gesture with his hand, which then fell back onto the bed.

  “I have an audience now, one I cannot put off. Go.”

  I left the room white as plaster. The Ducroix brothers immediately understood what was happening and drew me apart, keeping me from the assembled carrion. I could hardly speak. I rolled up my sleeve in despair. “The fifth Point!” I said, looking at my forearm. “I have it etched into me, but it isn’t mine. Who will validate it now? Who?”

  As they brought me away, I whimpered like a small dog that had just received an unmerited beating. “But what word did the marquis want?” I said, sobbing. “What was the word?”

  I had gone to Paris to take the test, the most important test of my life. I would leave having learned a bitter, useless lesson: When can you tell all is lost? When even those who hold you dear say nothing. For the Ducroix brothers let out afflicted sighs, and the only solace they could offer was to remove me from the sight of others, taking me to the room that was farthest from everything in that death-visited house.

  Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban died on March 5, 1707. Of the rites and the funeral, all I am left with is an indistinct vertigo: “You are not fit.”

  I was the last creation to come out of Bazoches and, if I may be so bold, the best wrought. A machine made perfect over the course of two years of rigor and discipline. Toward the end of my training, I felt I could do anything; Constantinople had been besieged twenty-five times, and I felt confident I could defend it from twenty-five armies at once. Or to storm it myself, if serving another master. Fifteen days would be all I’d ask, time to make three parallels. And now I was nothing—a nothing that condemned me to life in limbo. “One word, just one.” But which? By that judgment, I had been turned into a monster, a stillborn unicorn.

  One of the endless numbers who attended the final farewell was Don Antoine Bardonenche, the infantry captain whose company Jeanne, her sister, and I had occasionally enjoyed, playing blind hen on the banks of streams or along the castle passageways at Bazoches. I was sitting on a bench with my hands forlornly folded in my lap, my mind empty except for the pain, when Bardonenche came over, svelte and sporting his white livery.

  “You, my good friend, are melancholy,” he said, jovial as ever in spite of being in the midst of a funeral. “They tell me you are seeking gainful employment.”

  I had not the energy to reply. Bardonenche continued: “Since engineering is your subject, you ought to put the knowledge you’ve acquired into practice. What would you say to joining a brigade of engineers as an adjutant? That way you’d gain practical experience. After a time be ratified as a member of the royal corps, I’m sure.”

  With the marquis’s death, Bazoches had become something quite different. Jeanne would be taking the reins. There was no way I could stay. I gave an absentminded nod. Bardonenche cheerfully punched his left fist into his right palm. “Rejoignez l’armée du roi!”

  Jeanne had been the anvil and Vauban the hammer. And I, a piece of brass crushed between the two. Nothing mattered. If a vacancy had opened in Anatolia, making fences for Turkish sheep, I would have said yes. As for Jeanne, my final conversation with her served only to further demolish my soul.

  “You were the one who let me in to Bazoches,” I reminded her. “You lied to your father. You said I knew his work best, which wasn’t true. Maybe it was a mistake; maybe we should never have met. We’d all be far happier now.”

  “But Martí,” she said, “I told him no lies. I related to him exactly the three candidates’ answers, yours included. ‘A stone flower’ was how you described his best fortress. To which my father said, ‘This one will be my student, it could be that this one has the heart of an engineer.’ ”

  Vauban was buried at Bazoches. The heart, separate from the body, in an urn. A lover of order, he did not want to oppose the conventions of his time. But for any who knew how to look, it was all there: his body to the priests, his heart for le Mystère. For those believers among you, know that, of all the human beings who have ever lived, Vauban is the only one I would dare say with certainty made it to heaven. I’d wager anything—anything you like—that on seeing him approach, they opened the gates, opened them wide, not a word. Either that or Saint Peter would run the risk of him coming back with a regiment of sappers. Heaven—I’d bet he’d have taken it in seven days. Well, let us not be impious, even if only so as not to offend the One those gulls believe made this dung heap of a world; eight, let’s say.

  10

  Of the journey from France to the depths of Spain, all I can recall is my feet, so downcast was I the whole way. Nothing mattered to me anymore. My body was a limp piece of hide, untouched even by the abominable jolting of the carriages. Le Mystère had abandoned me. The day before Vauban died I had felt full with it; the next, it had evaporated. As many pages as I might dictate, I would never be able to explain the simultaneous horror and apathy this emptiness came with.

  I am a human desert, I know it. Every day of my life, a grain of sand is added to the dunes. So much time has passed, so very much, that in my contemplation of the boy Martí Zuviría, it is as though I see another person. I am not indulgent with him, I swear it. But I am able to feel a certain amount of compassion for him. His future, his love, his hopes, those who guided and taught him . . . It had all vanished, suddenly and at once. Who would have emerged unscathed from such a thing? And all for a word, The Word.

  I am ninety-eight years old now, so in 1707 I would have been . . . Help me out, oh, sweet swine . . . Yes, sixteen. Bardonenche’s regiment crossed the border of Navarra as a column many miles long, on foot, and once in Spain made a hard southerly march for three days. I was allowed to ride in one of the many carriages that brought up the tail of the convoy, and not on foot, like the rugged infantry. We were to join the main body of the army, at which point I would be incorporated into the engineering staff.

  If you ever had to partake in those endless marches, day after day, you would understand how fortunate I was in this. The soldiers advanced two abreast, and from sunup to sundown, with the carriages bringing up the rear. The marching pace of the French army was one of the swiftest in all of Europe, a pace taken every second: left, right, left, right . . . En route, mauvaise troupe! A week after crossing the border, men began to fall by the wayside, exhausted. The sweeper carriages gathered them up. To pay for this, come the end of the day, they had to see to the tasks around camp. Since these were just as punishing and far more humiliating, only those who genuinely could not go on would allow themselves to drop.

  Bardonenche went on a splendid horse, riding up and down, checking the formation of the line. I have already made mention of his pleasant nature. He frequently came alongside my carriage, which was toward the back, and directed a few spirited words at me beside the driver. Navarra was damp, and even when we came down into northern Castile, it was predominantly lush. But the moment we set foot on the southern steppes, it became dry and dusty, and the heat suffocating, though it was still only springtime.

  Bardonenche was the most formidable swordsman. In fact, aside from his mania for swordplay, all there was in him was nonsense. As to sword philosophy, he declared: “What the devil is there to say? Strike before you are struck.” And he was profoundly disdainful when it came to any weapon propelled by gunpowder, sparks, and fl
int. “Bullets fly any which way, the tip of my sword at one target only: the enemy’s heart.”

  In some of my lessons at Bazoches, I had noticed likenesses between swordplay and engineering. Certain Maganons aspired to the perfect fortress. I asked Bardonenche if he had ever thought about the existence of the perfect sword, the perfect deathblow, or the perfect swordsman.

  He looked at me as though I were some prattler who had just asked about the mystery of the Holy Trinity. “All my fights have been perfect,” was his indignant response. “As proved by the fact that I’m here to talk about my nineteen duels, which is more than can be said for my opponents.”

  At any event, I had the consolation that we were on the same side, so I’d never have to face the ire of his blade.

  We knew we were drawing closer to the Spanish-French army by the detritus that began to line the route. Difficult to credit the amount of dross left in the wake of a large troop. Unusable pots and pans, pieces of timber, broken carriage axles, pouches riddled with holes, dead mules, tattered apparel, frayed rope, horseshoes. The sun beat down on all manner of things.

  We crossed La Mancha, turning west. We stopped for a couple of days in Albacete, a cold and unlovely place, and again set off. We camped for a night in one village, a thousand miles from anywhere, a hundred thousand fleas to every soul inhabiting it. I got drunk on a wine so contaminated that the bottom of the bottle had become a cemetery for insects. I swallowed them down and all. The following morning, when I was sleeping it off, Bardonenche came and woke me.

  Before we set out, there was a local he wanted to speak with, and I was to act as translator. Where precisely was the Franco-Spanish Army of the Two Crowns? I asked, rubbing my eyes and not in the slightest bit interested.

  “About to have quite a battle,” he said. “Marshal Berwick is in pursuit of the Allies, and the Allies are in pursuit of Berwick.” He pointed west. In the distance was a hill presided over by an old castle, and a settlement at the foot.

  “What is the place called?” I asked, removing sleep from my eyes.

  “Almansa.”

  Thus Martí Zuviría, brazen Martí Zuviría, became involved in the greatest imbroglio of the age, the War of Spanish Succession. The largest war the world has ever known. Dozens of countries were drawn into it; it lasted a quarter of a century and had several continents as its theater. I’m no historian—I wouldn’t pontificate as to its causes—but it was certainly so vast, and its influence on my life so decisive, that I must at least sketch a general outline. To save your suffering, I’ll be brief.

  In the year 1700, Spain’s Emperor Carlos II died. The man had been an aberration of nature, a slathering burden who, had he not been king, would have spent his days locked up in some monastery. His Castilian subjects called him “the Bewitched.” I’m not so pious, so what say we leave it at “the Loon”? He died childless—how was he supposed to go about begetting them? His mind was so far gone, he probably didn’t know that the radish between his legs had uses other than for pissing.

  All monarchs are, by definition, loony—or end up that way. The only question is whether their subjects prefer the rule of someone with very limited mental functions or that of a nasty whoreson. When I was young, I erred on the side of the former, for at least they content themselves with eating pheasant and leave the people in peace. The Loon, for example, was heartily lamented in Castile but wildly popular in Catalonia. Why? Because he did nothing. His atrophied brain was a reflection of Castile and its congealed empire. The Catalans loved it. The less a monarch governs, and the farther away he stays, the better.

  It was clear, long before he died, that this human offal of a king wouldn’t be leaving behind any heirs. Naturally, all Europe’s ears pricked up—all the carrion. A number of years afterward, I met a nobleman who had served in the Spanish embassy in Madrid at that time. He told me the court was so infested with spies, they even “looked into” the king’s undergarments! Tests proved conclusive: Carlos never ejaculated. And as the laws of nature state, where there is no semen, nor will there be any progeny.

  For the French, it was a golden opportunity. If they could place one of their own on the Spanish throne after the Loon died, two historical objectives would be dealt with at a stroke: creating an alliance with their eternal enemy south of the Pyrenees; and indirectly, the main prize, bringing under its own aegis the decayed Spanish empire, stretching across Italy, the Americas, and a thousand far-flung places across the globe. That monster Louis XIV must have been rubbing his hands together with glee.

  But as the saying goes, one thing leads to another. The Loon was part of the Austrian dynasty, the Hapsburgs, and they were there, too, circling the dying king with the same intentions as the French vultures.

  By the time Carlos the Loon gave up the ghost with an unhappy gurgle, things were already well and truly a mess. The Beast put forward his grandson, Philip of Anjou, and Austria’s Emperor Leopold proposed his son, Archduke Charles, as the future Carlos III of Spain.

  Anjou made the English and the Dutch extremely uneasy. If Spain and France joined together (for Little Philip obviously would be nothing more than a puppet controlled by the Beast), the balance of power would tilt. The Spanish empire was something akin to a dying man covered in pustules, and France the local braggart. The Beast had turned France into an autocratic tyranny with a huge stockpile of armaments, unprecedented in the modern world; it did not bother to hide its goal of world domination. Which led England, Holland, and of course, the German empire to declare war on France. The fact that Portugal and the House of Savoy also formed an alliance showed the Beast’s menace—the only reason China didn’t send regiments to get involved was because it was a long way to travel, and hiring a boat rather expensive.

  As I said, the greatest imbroglio of the century, and all because of some unsoiled undergarments. How did it not occur to anyone to send a stud into the queen’s room one night and let them go at it, then decree that the child was the Loon’s? What that would have saved us, caray!

  So, as I said, all the armies of Europe joined the fray. On the borders of Germany, the French and Dutch were going at it hammer and tongs. And in Spain, what truly caused the dispute?

  Before I continue, a necessary but brief digression to explain the Spanish Affair, which has a complicated aspect for foreigners like you, my dear vile Waltraud. That aspect simply being: There was no such thing as Spain.

  If Caesar described Gaul as divisible into three parts, he might have said of the Hispania existing after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire that it was divided into three strips, each stretching north to south.

  One of these vertical strips is Portugal, occupying the Atlantic portion, as any map will show you. The widest strip is Castile, in the center. And then there is one more strip of land, invisible on the maps of today, along the Mediterranean coast. This, more or less, is the Catalan crown. (Or was; nowadays we are nothing).

  Though all these kingdoms were Christian, each had distinct dynasties, languages, and cultures. Histories of their own. The mutual suspicion was such that they were constantly at war. No strange thing. Catalonia and Castile had opposed mentalities. Apart from Saints’ Days, they had nothing in common. Castile was rain-fed; Catalonia, on the Mediterranean coast. Castile, aristocratic and rural; Catalonia, middle-class and shipowning. The Castilian landscape had produced oppressive signories—there is an anecdote from medieval times that I can half remember, possibly apocryphal, but which explains the thing well.

  There is a little princess from Castile, and she marries a little prince from Catalonia. She goes to live in Barcelona, and on the second day, a servant talks back to her. The girl asked for a glass of water, or where they kept the chamber pot, something, and the servant told her to go and look for herself. Naturally, the Castilian princess appeals to her husband: The foulmouth must have a flogging. The prince shrugs: “My lady, I am sorry,” he says, “I cannot comply.” She, going wild, inquires why. “Here, unlike in Castile,”
says the husband with a heavy heart, “the people are free.”

  In the year 1450, more or less, the two kingdoms were joined by a royal intermarriage. Anyone could have seen that, as a marriage, it would end badly, very badly. I compare the union of the two crowns to a marriage that is going badly because the discrepancies that lay in the years to come were very much like those between two individuals who marry wanting different things. The Catalans wanted a union between equals; Castile, as time passed, gradually forgot this founding principle.

  All was well in the first couple of centuries because the two kingdoms continued as they always had been, each with its back to the other. Catalonia, governed by the Generalitat (the Catalan government), paying tribute to the common crown more symbolically than anything. Then the Hispanic monarchy, which had been itinerant in the Middle Ages, settled in Madrid. The seat of power shifted to Castile.

  According to one of our oldest constitutions, the Catalans were obliged to fight for the king only “in the case of an attack on, and in defense of, Catalonia.” In other words, Madrid was not allowed to recruit cannon fodder for its wars in Flanders, the plains of Patagonia, or any one of the fetid corners of Florida. As for taxation, the amount paid by Catalans had to be approved by its own court. Accustomed as they were to their despotic ways, the monarchs now based in Madrid found it intolerable, scandalous, that the peninsula’s most prosperous area should not give up anything when there was a war on—against half the world.

  Ludicrous! The crowns had joined together in the fifteenth century, not the kingdoms; the same king for all, never the same government, and never under the yoke of Castile. That had been the agreement. In Castile, this independence was always seen as a nuisance, and later a betrayal. Remember what I said about a marriage going wrong? One side had forgotten its promises, the other was feeling increasingly stifled.

  In the year 1640, the Catalans had had enough, and the entire country rose up in rebellion. Mobs of angry peasants entered Barcelona. The Spanish viceroy was apprehended when he tried to flee. They didn’t treat him well, it’s fair to say. The largest piece left of him would have fit inside a vase.