Victus

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  “Ballester!” cried Peret, terrified. “Ballester’s coming!”

  Ballester! My old friend who had become one of the most notorious and cruel Miquelets—though I have already explained to you that in Catalonia, the word “Miquelet” could mean many things.

  The chocolatada, as I have said, took place on a high plateau. I climbed up on a rocky promontory and could see what would soon be upon us: a group of light cavalry, still some distance away. To judge by the dust raised by their hooves, there must have been a good dozen of them.

  Panic transforms people into a herd. Everybody was shouting and running. The wealthiest, who had come on their own horses, fled at a gallop, leaving their lovers behind (and most unscrupulously, indeed—ah, love!). The rest didn’t really know what to do; animal instinct sent them inside the abandoned masía. Nan and Anfán were running, holding Amelis’s hands. They, too, went into the masía, and I was right behind them.

  Inside, people were crushed together like cattle, because even though it was a spacious place, the partition walls had fallen in long ago. The women wept and hugged one another, the men tore their hair. I shouted for silence.

  “Anyone planning to do anything,” I yelled, “or should we just wait here to be sacrificed like little lambs?”

  A gallant in his best glad rags stepped forward. “What are you saying?” he said. “You with your baby face, and the man who’s coming for us is Ballester!”

  “I was pretty sure it wasn’t Saint Peter on horseback!” I replied, and turned to address the whole crowd: “So are we going to do something, or aren’t we?”

  “Listen to the big captain here!” The gallant was mocking me again. “These people bugger little boys like you for breakfast!”

  There was a rotten old table. I climbed up on it. “Listen to me, all of you: If you do everything I tell you, there’s a chance we might get out of this alive.”

  But again the gallant spoke up: “The men coming this way are professional killers, and they have an arsenal. All we’ve got here are women, children, and doddering old men. The house is in ruins, and you mean to defend it.” He pointed at the entrance. “There isn’t even a door!”

  Something flashed through my head. If I’d had the time to think, believe me, my answer would have been rather different. But the situation was so urgent, and at the same time so desperate, that I could not do it. Which was why I sighed and, emphasizing each word, said: “We are the door.”

  “They will slit our throats and rape the women!” the gallant insisted.

  “That’s precisely why we mean to fight, you dolt!” I shouted. “When they see that they can get neither booty nor ransom, nor steal any horses, they will slit a few throats for their amusement and go riding on our women.” I pointed to Amelis. “That’s my woman, and I swear no one will touch her. They shall not!”

  There are many different kinds of silence. The silence of desperation, the silence of reflection, the silence of peace: Every one is different, and that particular one reeked of doubt. Then somebody said, “They raped me once, a long time ago.”

  It was a little old woman, the kind who still crackled with energy. She looked at the gallant while pointing a finger my way. “And on that day I would have liked to have a ‘little boy’ like this one around.” Then, looking at me, she said: “I’m just an old bag, but if you tell me to, I will stone anyone who sets foot through that door. What have I got to lose?”

  Murmurs. That voice, humble but firm, was able to transform fear into anger. Peret came over to the table. He took hold of one of my ankles and said, petrified, “But Martí, lad, whatever do you think we poor wretches can possibly do?”

  “First of all, pile up all the weapons we have, here on this table,” I replied.

  I got down from the table, and the men who were carrying weapons brought them over. As usually happens, the most heavily armed are the most cowardly; the gallant took out two large pistols and a dagger. Altogether, we gathered six pistols and fifteen knives of varying sizes. The most pitiful of arsenals.

  “Superb!” I cried, giving a sterling performance. “You see? With all this, we could defend Sagunto itself.”

  As I’ve said, Catalan masías are designed like miniature fortresses, capable of repelling assaults from all four sides. Walls as thick as the ramparts of a city, windows as narrow as arrow-slits perpendicular to the ground, stone roofs that will not set fire: Even though it was falling into ruin, it remained a significant fortification.

  I asked the women to pile up some good-sized stones. The roof had partly fallen in; using the rubble and the remains of the furniture, the men improvised a way up to the top. From there they could shoot, or at least throw stones, at anyone who approached. Others used the rubble to build a barricade—though a more symbolic barrier than an actual one—blocking the door. I told the children to go search in the corners. I squatted down beside Anfán. “Look underneath the floorboards; you’re sure to find something.”

  And they did. Every masía has its own arsenal. In the floor of what must have been the main bedroom, Anfán and Nan found a dusty trapdoor. They opened it. Inside were four muskets. Rusty, two of them missing their stocks, but muskets all the same.

  “What do you want us to do with this junk?” someone asked.

  “Clean the barrels.”

  “They’re here!” It was one of the lookouts; the only thing we weren’t short of was eyes.

  For some time, the horsemen did not approach. They went round and round the masía, sniffing about, little more than that. I was running from one end to the other, asking the people stationed there: “What are they doing?”

  “Nothing. Just loitering and looking.”

  To the defenders, the time spent waiting for an attack is immeasurably worse than the attack itself; we needed to stop ourselves from imagining its horrors, at all costs. I decided to go outside. Amelis tried to hold me back.

  “Who do you think should go and speak for us, then?” I said. “That gallant? Peret? You can be sure that Nan and Anfán won’t be leaving your side.”

  “They’re bandits! They won’t be reasoned with.”

  She was weeping tears of rage, furious with me, as though I had just confessed to her that I had a lover. She pummeled my chest with both fists. “They’ll kill you! They’ll kill you!” She turned and walked away.

  You see? It is easier to reason with bandits than with women. And as for you, woman, don’t give me that look—just write down what I say.

  We moved the fragile barricade from the doorway, and I stepped outside.

  One of the bandits on horseback approached and then stopped about twenty feet away, scrutinizing me. I’d come up with no better idea than simply looking indifferent. I greeted him with a forced smile, touching the tip of my tricorn hat with my fingertips. He rode off. Then his boss appeared, escorted by four horsemen on either side. Ballester.

  He had changed since we’d met in Beceite and at the inn. He’d aged; he seemed more used to that life of assault and flight. I could see that his eyes were sunken, as though their sockets were twice as deep as most people’s. He was not especially ugly, since ferocity can have its appeals. But with those sunken eyes, his eyebrows solid and dark like rope, and a thick, incredibly black beard, he had the look of a man who cared little for age or such things. He sported a pair of pistols either side of his upper torso; in a sticky situation, he could cross his arms and draw them in a flash.

  I will always remember that look on Ballester’s face. His eyes had their own eloquence. And it was contradictory. They said, I’m going to kill you, and at the same time, they said, Let’s talk. Those who could not see the second fled.

  What I said was: “Good afternoon.”

  “It is, a very good afternoon,” he replied. His hands were on the pommel of his saddle, and he was looking up at the sky like a country philosopher. “A very good afternoon indeed.”

  “What can we do for you?” I asked.

  He took offense.
He rode his horse forward and circled me a few times, an act that was obviously most intimidating. I could almost hear people’s hearts pounding inside the masía. I raised my voice. “It’s rude addressing a person who is not mounted from on a horse, even for a gentleman.”

  Ballester addressed his men: “A gentleman! Did you hear that? I’m a proper gentleman now!”

  His fellow outlaws burst out laughing. Ballester made a gesture of mocking condescension and dismounted.

  He did not smell bad—a fact I found strange, because as the son of a seafaring trader who lived with his back to the inland places, I had been schooled in the belief that Miquelets were no better than the dregs and overspillings of the brimstone of hell. Ballester gave off a smell of clean ashes, of thyme, and of rosemary. As did his men.

  A year had passed since we had met, but he stated rather than asked: “We know each other.”

  “I do believe we’ve met,” I said coolly. “We engaged in a commercial transaction. I came away with nothing, and you with everything.”

  He ignored my words, gesturing at the masía. “Why have you shut yourselves inside there?”

  “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Oh, dear—and what reputation would that be?”

  Since we had decided to defend ourselves, I stood my ground. “They say Esteve Ballester is a murderous brute, a criminal. That he uses the excuse of fighting for the Catalan fatherland to attack poor defenseless travelers. He robs and kidnaps. If the ransom does not arrive in time, he burns his victim’s feet. And that’s when he’s in a good mood.”

  He chose to ignore the provocation. “Really?” he said. “And you believe everything people say?”

  “I myself happen to know that some people, he strips naked, hangs, and leaves for dead.”

  He gave a guffaw. “To the best of my knowledge, I have never taken anything of yours.” He paused, then said, his voice graver: “And as for you, botiflero, you dare to call me a thief?”

  If I wanted to bargain with him, it was not good to have him talk down to me like this. Ballester and I were halfway between his men and the masía. I took off my hat. It was the sign for all the firearms to be poked out of the door, the windows and the roof, including the barrels of the rusty muskets, which the women had polished up with rags and spit.

  “Señor, I have twenty rifles pointing directly at your head,” I lied. “Our riders have galloped off to notify the guard. They’ll be along any moment. You know we are poor citizens; there’s no booty to be had here. If this has to be resolved with firearms, there will be no one but you to blame for it.”

  I had shouted these words so that everyone could hear. It was a simple calculation: If the prospect of raiding the house didn’t seem profitable, they would leave. And even if they believed only half of my lies, that was enough to give them good cause for doubt. Unfortunately, the proximity of violence changed Ballester. So it is with all men, but in him it was as though something inside snapped. His deep eyes sank deeper. The blue vein across his right temple swelled and throbbed. Years later, I would discover the small things in him that signaled murderous intent: When he was ready to kill, you could smell that sweating of his, incredibly intense.

  His voice hissed horribly, the blue vein as thick as a worm: “If your people kill me, mine will kill you, too, you fool.”

  “Indeed,” I replied, also whispering. “All in all, it’s a draw.”

  Then we heard something: the cries of a terrified child.

  One of the horsemen approached with Anfán under his arm. The boy was struggling. When he saw me, he reached out his hands toward me, his fingers splayed open, and began to squeal even more desperately.

  Ballester must have seen something change in my expression, because he gave a bit of a grimace, though not a smile, and said: “So it seems that draw of yours has just gone to hell.”

  We all have dreams in our childhood in which we are swallowed up in a deep tentacle-filled pit. But to Anfán, this was now reality. He was thirty feet away, and those thirty feet were as insuperable as a whole world.

  The boy had been with me for a year. I had clothed and fed him. He slept with me and my woman. I had scolded and corrected him more times than I could count, and he was a little better now than when I had first met him. Just a little, but now, for the first time, I saw tears in his eyes that were not false.

  I felt a red curtain drop down over my eyes, descending. I didn’t recognize my own voice as I said: “You are going to release him! Now! Or I swear by my blessed mother that I will kill you. You and that animal who’s holding him.” And I added, so quiet as to be almost imperceptible, “I swear it.”

  For a single, endless moment, Ballester stared into my eyes. Anfán was squirming around, and I was about to lose my mind completely. Perhaps Ballester understood: You can’t negotiate with a madman. With a flick of his head—as though the business were nothing to do with him—he gestured for the rider to put Anfán down.

  The lad started running, so quickly that he fell and got up and fell again. Even though he was petrified, running with his straw-colored braids in the wind, when he was a safe distance from the horseman, he stopped, stuck out his tongue, and gave him a bras d’honneur. Then he was whimpering and running again, and he didn’t stop till his arms were clinging tightly around my waist.

  Ballester moved away from me. It was an odd moment, because it clearly meant something that, though the barrels of a thousand guns were pointing at him, nobody had fired yet. He walked up and down in front of the barricaded doorway, rage in his eyes.

  “You people have such a quiet, happy life,” he began. “You think the world is nothing more than chocolatadas and fucking. Fools! The sky is going to fall on our heads when you least expect it.”

  To demonstrate his prophet’s disdain, he risked slapping away the barrel of one of the rifles pointed at him. I didn’t react. I made a gesture to the people in the masía, downplaying Ballester’s audacity; better that he give his little speech and then leave. After everything that had happened, it was obvious that at this point, all he wanted was not to look bad in front of his men, with a bit of braggart talk.

  “You people all believe the Generalitat’s lies merely because they’re published in official documents. How many poor people do you know to whom I owe anything? I have paid for hundreds of masses, for the upkeep of orphanages . . . The only people who need fear me are the botifleros and the Red Pelts.” He was referring to the ministers of the Generalitat, because of their red velvet clothing and hats.

  I’ve told you this already? Oh, damn it all.

  From inside the masía came an anonymous voice: “You raped my son-in-law’s cousin, ill-born swine! They ought to tear you limb from limb up on the fifth gallows!”

  “Slander!” replied Ballester, turning toward the voice. “People have been carrying out attacks and claiming to be acting in my name. Or does anyone really believe that Ballester needs to use payment or force in order for a woman to join him in bed?”

  The lively old lady poked her head out through the doorway. She had half-climbed onto the heap of rubble with a rock in her hand, threatening to hurl it at him. “You or any other Miquelets . . . what difference does it make? You think you’re so big and strong just because you sleep around a campfire and dine on the venison you’ve hunted. You fight for your own benefit, attacking peaceful people, and now you want to persuade us you’re some kind of mountain saint because every once in a while you happen to kill a drunk Bourbon? Get hanged!”

  Ballester waved a finger at her threateningly, but his voice was more restrained. “Mestressa, do not be mistaken. I have killed more Frenchmen and Castilians in this war than any of the king’s regiments.”

  At this point I intervened, Anfán in my arms, his legs around my hips like a little monkey, and clinging so tightly to my neck that he was almost choking me. “If you’re so passionate about defending the country, why not join King Charles’s army?”

  “Becaus
e both armies are the same, even if they’re wearing different uniforms; flames burn all the same, blue or red.”

  I thought he was leaving, but he turned back toward us. He whispered in my ear: “I can swear, too. Now listen to me: If I see you again, I’m going to send you flying. Understand?”

  Anfán leaned in toward Ballester’s face, puffed up his cheeks, pressed his lips together, and let rip with a huge raspberry blown in his ear. I think it was the first and last time I ever saw Ballester laugh healthily.

  “And tell your little braided monkey here that if he doesn’t learn some manners, I shall come back and take him.” He opened his eyes wide, staring at Anfán without blinking, made his lips into an O, and went “Boo!”

  Anfán clung even harder to my neck, squealing with fear, his back to Ballester, kicking against my hips. Ballester mounted his horse amid laughter from his men, and before leaving, he announced as he turned his mount, raising his hat in greeting: “Ladies! Gentlemen! You have had a good day today.” And he offered a polite gesture to the old woman who had accused him: “Iaia, t’estimo.” Grandmother, my regards.

  He spurred on his horse, and away they went.

  Anfán spotted something on the ground. Ballester had dropped his riding whip. Anfán climbed down my body as if it were a tree and handed me the trophy.

  I shall carry the happiness on that boy’s face with me till the day I die, his satisfaction at offering me Ballester’s whip. It was not a gift; it was something that cannot be expressed fully in words. He had been born a thief, and the fact he was now sharing his booty said it all.

  I snatched the whip away. “You! I told you to stay by Amelis’s skirts and not to move!”

  The day wasn’t over. Though you may find this hard to believe, the real heroism of the day was yet to come. After dinner, I confronted Anfán.