It couldn’t have gone any worse. Everything that Vauban foretold, all the possible things that can go wrong in a siege, came about. Another example: As a rule, commanders in the artillery tend to love blowing things up. At the first chance, with a childlike joy, they will commence firing. As happened in Tortosa. The first parallel had not even been dug, and our chief of artillery was already there, ordering fifteen cannons and six mortars be installed—at positions we had not even touched with pick or shovel. The problem being that the first parallel is at such a distance, nearly a mile from the ramparts, that cannonfire won’t land anywhere near. If the guns are accurate enough to land any shots on a rampart or bastion, that is. A great many hundredweights of gunpowder and ammunition for nothing. I objected; Monsieur Forgotten didn’t even hear. What did it matter to him? The artillery chief was one of his revelers par excellence, and in any case, neither of them would have to cough up for the powder.
The trench a little way advanced, we ran into some monumental rocks under the surface. It was almost as though some had been placed there by the enemy expressly to obstruct the trench. For the largest ones, we had to resort to explosives. But the blasting would also take out a large section of the trench, including the fajina parapets protecting us from enemy fire, which would then have to be reformed. And to think my superiors had laughed off a geological survey!
It was also in Tortosa that I had confirmation of another of Vauban’s teachings, one he’d told me about in person: Sappers are heavy drinkers; they become drunk before going and getting themselves killed. The front end of the trench moves forward by dint of the work of a small crew—eight or, at most, ten men. However grandiose the overall works, that is the most that can fit into the confines of a trench. The enemy knows this very well and concentrates fire on just that point.
Sappers suffer a disproportionately high number of casualties and deaths. However well they are paid, and though the crews are relieved every three or four hours, the tension will end up destroying their nerves. In order to bear it, they drink, and drink, then they drink some more.
For a young engineer such as myself, Tortosa brought home the gap between lessons and reality. Take the Mantelletta, for instance. If you look at any images of a siege, beside a sapper there will always be a barrow, a contraption with two wheels and a panel of wood. The sapper farthest forward uses this as a shield. Fine, well, you can forget about that—I can assure you the nitwit who drew those pictures has never been present at a siege in all his life. I can remember only one siege where a Mantelletta was used, and that was because some recently graduated dunderhead forced the sappers to take it. Sapper crews hated the Mantelletta—why? Because they enrage the enemy, who sees the head of the dragon and proceeds to rain down upon it all the fire they can.
But of all the gaps between theory and practice, perhaps the most surprising was something no one had referred to during my studies: the raft of people voluntarily inserting themselves into the battle situation.
In Vauban’s world, the spheres of civic and martial life were at once overlapping and separate. But the last thing I expected was, as the Attack Trench became a complex web of passageways and surface-level crypts, that it would also be invaded by civilians. Milling around as though the parallels were city boulevards, and the lines of communication streets and alleyways.
Naturally, as the trenches drew closer to the ramparts, and the enemy fire grew fiercer, you would see fewer and fewer non-troops. But even where the vanguard was most exposed, dozens of people who had no clear place there would be swarming around. Priests above all. Everyone with something to sell; the whores offering a quickie up against some outjutting trench corner, lying there with their legs akimbo, cunt in the air, lifting their skirt whenever anyone came by; peddlers offering morsels to eat, a break from the usual insipid gruel. The range of professions that descended into the trenches was nigh on infinite. Shoemakers, professional gamblers, barbers, people to delouse your clothing, cobblers, gypsies, prostitutes of all varieties, anything and everything. Bear in mind that Vauban never would have tolerated such a sorry spectacle—but Vauban had the kind of clout you don’t see very often. And Orléans was a Coehoornian who had little time for the idea of a siege being comprised of different facets. I think he initiated that trench only to give his cousin Monsieur Forgotten a chance to take the credit back at Versailles.
It was quite a lesson to me, seeing the way man exploits and usurps undergroun realms. And there in the trench at Tortosa, I met two creatures who caused me profound dismay, the closest thing imaginable to creatures from the underworld.
The child can have been no older than six or seven years. Even an animal would clothe itself in a more dignified way. Barefoot, and with tattered pantaloons that went down only as far as his knees, and a vest that might have been white once but was covered in gray from ash and adventures. And his hair, mother of God, his hair: So much grime and muck had accumulated in it that his sandy locks had turned into rough, ratty clumps. And then, dependent on this child, another being out of fable: a dwarf clothed in the attire of a traveling fairground. His face was squashed together, as though he were suffering some form of mental constipation, not uncommon among his kind. But his compulsive grimacing suggested he was unhinged in some way. Most extraordinary of all was the funnel crowning the dwarf’s head—a large round piece of metal, its pointed spout pointing proudly up. You couldn’t be sure whether the funnel suited the dwarf or vice versa. Both child and dwarf were the same height.
I will always remember the first words I said to the lad. I took him by the scruff of the neck and asked: “You? Where’s your father?”
Father? He looked at me as though I’d said something in Chinese. His Catalan was mixed together with a little Castilian Spanish and much French. As for the dwarf, his chosen form of communication was the grunt. The child was called Anfán, the dwarf Nan; their life stories were contained in these names. Anfán was no more than a spoken transcription of the French word for “child,” enfant. I assumed therefore that his life until then had been spent in French military encampments, where the men simply called this wayward little creature enfant. And “Nan” is simply Catalan for “dwarf.” Doubtless Anfán was an orphan with nowhere else to go. Catalonia had been in an almost perpetual state of war for decades. His parents having died of natural causes—or at the hands of some murderer—Anfán, like so many, fell by the wayside. As for the dwarf, his name represented a summary of his life as much as the mystery of it. How had he got there, and where from? No one would ever know. Neither his language, nor his mind, both deficient, would ever be able to express it. One thing was certain: The child loved the dwarf unreservedly, fiercely, absolutely. As he scurried around the trenches, Anfán was always sure to protect the dwarf and provide him with shelter, and on one occasion, when they lost each other, the boy rushed around in sheer desperation. He looked for Nan night and day, and when they were reunited, an outbreak of joyful weeping was heard all around.
I came across them one night, sleeping totally unprotected in their little den: a hole in the ground alongside the first parallel, full of a great number of empty munitions boxes as large as coffins. Seeing some shadows, I entered. And there they were. For a bed, some old rush matting hidden at the back of the rat hole, in among all the detritus. They slept hugging each other, far from the din of fighting without.
Anfán, mewling sweetly, held a protective arm across the dwarf’s chest. I got ready to give them the fright of their life—but something stopped me at the last moment: Anfán’s unshod feet. I held one of them lightly in my hand. I examined it with the same attention I had applied in the Spherical Room. The scars all over the soles spoke of the harshness of the life he’d led. I was overcome by emotion, something an engineer should always guard against. I did not want to grow attached to this sorry pair, but neither did I feel it in me to trouble them.
There is something sacrosanct in the breathing of sleeping children, as though a sign by nature
to say that anyone who harmed them would never be forgiven. I laid a sheet of munition wadding over them, that was all, and left.
We were yet to get as far as the third parallel. The majority of the civilian interlopers didn’t go any farther than the first. Even the greediest trader didn’t usually go as far as the second, at which point the enemy projectiles fell more accurately; light weapons were in range, too.
One day I found myself at the vanguard, making some calculations on a tablet, looking through my periscope. Ay, yes, the periscope. That Z-shaped lens-tube, so very useful for observing the ramparts from the trenches, the same reason it would always be targeted by enemy fire. The best way of concealing it was in a gap in the ground between two fajinas. Alas, there was some Allied whoreson, a Dutchman or a Portuguese, up on the ramparts with a telescope; he had it trained on the trench’s cautious advance and must have had a gift for spotting periscopes. Telescope versus periscope: This was trench warfare. Half my life I have spent fighting on the side of the periscope, half on that of the telescope. An enemy officer ordered a twenty-bore cannon to see if it could hit me.
Boom! The cannonball landed right between two large wicker baskets that were above me—orange light exploded all around me. I was saved by the fact that I was crouched down at that moment, leaning right forward and making notes on the distances. A nearby crew of sappers came and dug me out of the avalanche of mud, uprights, and rubble.
I was not the slightest bit just or thankful in the way I pushed my saviors off me—shouting and shoving them away. The periscope, a very expensive piece of equipment, was broken. This made me even more vexed. Finally, an old sapper managed to bring me back to my senses. He gave short shrift to my fit of pique. “Calm yourself, lad. You survived somehow. Now get yourself to the rear, get a strong drink inside you, and they’ll soon sew you back together.”
He was quite right, not that it stopped me from going away in a foul mood. In that humor, with my face darker than coal, I made my way to the rear. Which was when I saw that pair, Anfán and Nan, up to their tricks again.
You find a multitude of lateral openings in the overall circuit of an Attack Trench: spaces for storing ammunition and building materials, recesses begun in error and abandoned, drainage ditches, false branches to confuse the enemy watchmen, areas for men to fall back into and depositories, branches leading to the artillery platforms. In one of these I saw Anfán on his knees, facing a soldier who was in the process of unbuckling his belt.
What was it about the prospect of this act that so enraged me? All I know is that I howled at the man like a monkey. “Pig! I’m going to send you to the galleys!”
The soldier was startled—finding himself reprimanded by some frenzied stranger, eyes staring out from a soot- and red-mud-covered face. Then I noticed the dwarf was in there, too, behind the soldier. Hearing me, he shot out, followed by the boy. And they didn’t go away empty-handed.
“Imbecile!” I said to the soldier. “They’ve stolen your purse. The least you deserve!”
He ran out after Anfán and Nan—not, of course, that he was ever going to catch them.
Once the second parallel was under way, the mortars and cannons on either side bombarded one another twenty-four hours a day. The besieged sought to impede the forward progress of our trenches and destroy our artillery, we to destroy theirs and to create breaches in the ramparts. The firing from the city rained down on the fajina parapet like hail. Near misses would come flying at those of us behind.
For some unknown reason, summer in the south of Catalonia can be even more suffocating than down in Andalusia. Add to this the dozens of dead bodies situated foolhardily above the trench, which no one dared bury even at night, and you can imagine the clouds of pernicious insects that abounded. What a wonderful invention sign language is! We engineers had another way of communicating. Why? Well, because if you opened your mouth to speak any word longer than oui, twenty flies would be in there before you knew it.
As for Nan and Anfán, I chased after them day and night, in vain. They were impossible to catch. They scuttled like lizards on six feet and always knew the best fork in the trenches to vanish down.
I decided to try and make a pact with them. I came across them one day in a trench that was particularly long and straight, they at one end and I at the other. Before they ran away, I let them know it wasn’t my intention to trap them. I left a folded piece of paper on the floor. I shouted out that it was a pass so they could come into my tent—if they came, I’d reward them with chocolates. Then I withdrew so they could come and take the piece of paper.
It did not work. Perhaps they didn’t trust me, but most likely, their natural tendencies simply took over. They were trench rats, born to pilfering and dashing off.
A few days later, I finally got my hands on them. I was lucky enough to run into them on a sharp corner, and they didn’t have time to escape. The dwarf managed to evade me, but I got a good hold on Anfán. I lifted him up under my arm as he kicked and screamed.
“Quiet!” I said. “I’m going to make certain you’re never seen around here again.”
But he somehow wriggled free and dashed away, Longlegs Zuvi following after. I lunged and got him by the ankle. The two of us rolled around on the floor of the second parallel.
Thus, when an enormous man appeared nearby, the two of us were tangled up, tearing at each other like schoolboys. Anfán thrashed around, but I was getting the better of him and didn’t pay much mind to the man.
“You!” he growled. “Does no one in this army salute a general?” He pointed to the band on his belt indicating his rank. He must have been around fifty years old, with thick, substantial cheeks. From where I was, like a worm on the ground, he blotted out the sun. I got to my feet. If I had known then how important this man was going to be in my life, I can assure you I wouldn’t have given such a wishy-washy answer.
“Apologies, General, I didn’t see you. Now, if you’ll allow, I’m trying to bring a bit of order to this trench.”
I had been in contact almost exclusively with French personnel, and I must admit I had taken on many of their prejudices, and the way they looked down on their Spanish allies. They considered them an army of poorly organized, poorly directed beggars. And they were right. This general wasn’t happy about being brushed aside. Obviously, faced with a French general, I would have shown an altogether different attitude, and he knew it.
I made to head off with Anfán by the neck, but the general stopped me, putting his hand on my chest. He’d encountered me tangled up with this whimpering boy, the boy resisting and trying to get away. What could he think? Our eyes met, and then I knew. He got me by my shirt and slammed me against the trench wall. Keeping a hold on me, he brought his face right up to mine. “I know your kind very well! Like abusing trench orphans, isn’t that it?”
“Me?” I said as his large hands pinned me back. “I must be the only person in the entire army trying to stop such abuses!”
To make things worse, Anfán began weeping like a widow. He was so convincing that even I, in another moment, would have been moved. He spoke his mix of Catalan, French, and a little Castilian, but you didn’t need to know languages to understand what he was saying: that I was an underground letch, that I’d made him suck my pito, the whole thing. Kneeling now, in a memorable final flourish, he lifted his eyes to the heavens, two tears running down his mud-smeared face, and begged the Almighty to free him from this life of sorrow. Even his sandy locks seemed pitiful. At six years of age, not even the rascal Martí Zuviría was quite so accomplished! I of course protested, but the Spanish general grabbed me by the neck with bull-like strength.
“That’s enough out of you, you swine! How can such a vile specimen as you even exist? Abusing children is like sacrilege!” he cried, and with a swipe of the hand, he delivered his judgment. “What is there left to say? I’ve heard enough.”
He was a hefty, well-built man, and in the confines of the trench, his figure blocked out his e
ntourage of Spanish assistants. Within seconds, they all piled on top of me, and I was under arrest.
“Before this day is out,” he growled, wagging a finger in front of my nose, “you’ll be swinging from a tree.”
He meant it; there was no point in my protesting or appealing. My only chance was if the French generalship interceded, but it was clear that this Spanish general had little sympathy with the French. Anfán was very pleased about the turn of events. As three men dragged me away, he followed after, skipping and jumping around me and my captors. His hands by his nose, wiggling his fingers, he mocked me: “What fun!” he said, then went on in Catalan so my captors wouldn’t understand. “Don’t you want me to clear off? Well, for once I’m going to listen to you. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, you getting hanged, stupid old mule!”
Then, by some miracle, someone shouted out: “General! General! Look! Up there!”
Sure enough, something came into sight up above Tortosa: Through the hazy gunsmoke, we saw flares going up. Obviously something other than the usual shooting and grapeshot. Little flashing red and yellow puffs of smoke, against the blue of the summer sky, and the pure white of the clouds, forming a beautiful five-colored painting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.
“Red and yellow flares, red and yellow!” called out the general’s assistant, in high excitement. “The Allies are using the red and the yellow!”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” ordered the general. “Follow me!”
And he led the way to headquarters. He had one of these Castilian voices custom-built for telling others what to do, so forceful that they brook no reply. When someone like this general said “Follow me,” it meant “Follow me,” and everything else ceased to matter. The men who had a hold on me immediately let go and simply trotted after their leader.
Victus Page 16
