I didn’t want to share a table with anyone that evening. I went up to my attic room furious, with a hunk of bread and some cheese. Zúñiga wasn’t there. Just as well. As I say, this wasn’t a day to be shared with anyone, friends even less than enemies. I sat down on my straw mattress. The cheese was dry. Since I had no knife, I started to rummage around in Zúñiga’s effects for one. Next to his straw mattress was his round leather bag. On a different day, I would have been more restrained with other people’s belongings, but I needed a knife, and besides, we were friends. I turned the bag upside down, tipping its contents onto the floor.
There was nothing solid inside, only sheets of paper. Hundreds of pamphlets, quarto sheets identical to the one I’d been given to read moments earlier in that tavern. I had a bunch of them in my hands when Zúñiga came in.
I had previously been friends with a man, a man called Diego Zúñiga, and through that door some other man came in, a stranger about whom I knew nothing, apart from his mission: to give his life for Philip V, the most loathsome man of the century. His watery nature now made sense, that way he had of looking without being seen, his discreet, almost insubstantial profile. Earlier images of Zúñiga flashed though my mind. In Almenar, I had caught him coming out of the little workers’ house where Verboom was hidden. He must have hidden the man there himself. Yes, until that moment it had never occurred to me: Some people are born spies.
I flung the handful of leaflets in his face and shouted: “This trash is yours!”
He didn’t bat an eyelid. This was Zúñiga, invisible Zúñiga, and he never let his passions betray him. He simply went about picking up the bits of paper, acting as though I weren’t there. I kept on at him.
“You ask me why I have served my king? Is that what you wish to know?” he replied at last. “Why I have risked my life, spent years and years hiding out among the enemy? Two words, I suppose: fidelity and sacrifice.”
“A king’s privilege is that we will uphold him, not hate for him,” I said. “Only a barbarian could wish to confront peoples and nations as though they were armies.”
He smiled. “When your government ministers violated their oath of fidelity to King Philip, who was it that set up the Catalan people on a collision course with their king? And what did you think would happen next? That Castile would look upon such a slight to their sovereign unmoved—a sovereign who, if we’re being quite accurate, is yours, too? That, after you had brought war to Spain and betrayed us, we’d just stand there, arms crossed, doing nothing? We have an empire to preserve, Martí, and in Barcelona, all they want is to bleed it dry. Castile has supported itself for three hundred years, while you people concerned yourselves with other matters, hidden beneath the skirts of your liberties and constitutions.”
“Oh empire, empire . . . What have you gained by conquering a world? The American Indians hate you; your European neighbors don’t envy you, just hold you in contempt, and maintaining that myriad of possessions overseas has ruined Castile’s exchequer. And you think you have the right to demand that other kingdoms take part in your excesses, and do so for the glory of Castile! I took you for an intelligent man, Diego.”
“I also hold myself as such,” he responded coolly. “Which is why I regret having been unable to comprehend the Catalan soul. Can you explain the reason for this unreasonableness? Why do you wish to destroy a mighty union that would make us powerful and well respected? Why do you so detest a common scheme that should have unified the peninsula centuries ago?”
“Because what you people call unity is in truth oppression! Tell me: Would you move the court to Barcelona? Would you allow Castile to be ruled by Catalan kings? Your ministers to be chosen from among Catalan government ministers alone? Would you like the idea of your villages and towns occupied by Catalan troops, having to bear them, take them into your homes, offer them up your wives?” I waved some pamphlets under his nose. “According to what I’ve read here, I imagine not!”
“Natural law dictates that big will consume small, the weak yield to the strong. Despite everything, that is not Castile’s position. You could be a privileged part of a whole, and instead you choose to be less than nothing. It’s incomprehensible.”
“Maybe what’s incomprehensible is measuring honor in terms of a hunger for war. That road has led you to nothing but defeat and bankruptcy. Every prosperous nation flows with money and sweat, not weapons and gunpowder. But you people insist on stubbornness, obtuse heroism. Every ship that is filled with cannons instead of barrels is one more ship lost to trade; every regiment trained and armed, an industry wasted. At least that is what my own fellow citizens feel.”
To Zúñiga’s credit, he knew how to listen, I’ll give him that.
“I understand now,” he said. “Greatness doesn’t move you, only riches. Not glory but wealth. You detest the Spartans for the same reason you love the Sybarites.” He took a step toward me. “But tell me, Martí, what’s the point of a life bereft of epic desires, shorn of exploits to pass down to the next generation? Your scheme for life is no different from that of an earthworm. No light and no dreams, always under the earth, never rising above your times. Better to lose your life in battle than waste it in some tawdry backwater.” He concluded with this pronouncement: “Mediocrity of spirit, that’s what’s wrong with you.”
“And what’s wrong with you,” I replied, “is that you are drunk on books of chivalry. The bad ones!”
The little laugh he let out was as powerful as it was contemptuous. He had hidden from me his role as a spy, even used me as camouflage. Who would have suspected such a thing from the companion of a harmless libertine like Longlegs Zuvi? I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him up against the wall.
“Someone scribbles this shit, off in some unseen corner, and then, before you know it, the forests are full of hanged men,” I said. “I’ve seen it! A pile of falsehoods like this gets written down, and the next day, people who have nothing to do with writing have their throats slit and their bodies thrown off cliffs. Just tell me you don’t believe the travesties written in these pamphlets. Tell me!”
I looked him in the eye and, in that same moment, understood something terrifying. I cursed my blindness, for his smile told me that he, my good friend Diego Zúñiga, had written or dictated those words.
“Castile has conquered a whole world,” he said. “And now four bloodsuckers show up from Barcelona, shielding themselves behind Archduke Charles, and want to take everything our forefathers died for. Never. And believe you me, Martí: A lot of people are going to pay. The king’s power may not extend as far as Vienna or London, but you can be sure every last corner of Spain is within his reach.”
I let him go. Good old Zuvi never liked things to be too definitive, but my voice has rarely been firmer than when I said: “Diego, you and I are no longer friends.”
That really was not my best day in Madrid. I spent the night going from tavern to tavern, not to find new whores but to drink. Very well, I’ll tell you the truth: What I really wanted was to bash someone’s face in. I’m no great brawler, but I would never deny the value of a good fight. When everything is going wrong, the best thing a man can do is throw a few punches, if possible in the face of someone who deserves them. And if not, well, then the next fellow who happens to be passing. Man against man. It hardly matters who gives and who receives: Venting your anger is ample.
I felt guilty, too, very guilty. I had accompanied the army in the hope that something bad, a war, would do me good, bring me a teacher, but how was I to find Maganons in Madrid? In my drunken madness, I started rolling up people’s right sleeves in search of Points. Unfortunately, the tavern patrons gave me a wide berth. With my Barcelona accent and my cursing of Philip V, they took me for an agent playing drunk in order to flush out Bourbons. Even the most foolish believed I was a pro-Austrian provocateur. I could find nobody to comfort me, nor to confront me. I can still see myself there, slumped against the penultimate bar, drunk, alone, and shouting: “H
ow can it be that in the whole of Madrid, I cannot find one single friend, nor one single enemy?”
It was already the early hours of the morning when I found my way to a dive full of rowdy drinkers. If I couldn’t get a beating there, I never would. I was so far gone, I could barely stand. The place was packed, not a single seat free. I saw five men sitting squashed around a table. The one in charge was in his fifties, a big fellow, authoritative-looking. At any other time I would have recognized him at once, but wine is no friend to memory, may the Ducroix brothers forgive me.
I grabbed the smallest of the five by the neck and yanked him from his seat. I sat down on it, put my feet up on the table, and said to that man in his fifties: “Mind if I join you?”
He didn’t rise to the provocation. Instead of throwing the first punch, he nodded to his men to ignore me. They were arguing about military matters, and one of them made reference to something defensive.
“What you have just said, señor,” I interrupted him, “is utter nonsense. Sticking stakes in glacis only gives your attackers steps to use. Well, idiots speak idiocies, I suppose that’s no surprise.”
The man in his fifties must have had considerable authority, because even after that, he managed to rein in the man I’d offended. Looking at me, he said: “Before you find yourself trading blows with Rodrigo, who, by the way, will demolish you, it would be interesting to hear you back up your insults with argument.”
“You should know, señor, that it was not I who spoke,” I said, defending myself, “but the great Vauban, who speaks through me.”
“Oh, damn,” said the big man sarcastically. “So you’re in the habit of breakfasting with French marquises of a morning?”
“I was,” I replied, to his disbelief, and qualified it: “Sometimes.”
Now that the argument was between him and me, I could take him in more fully and, despite the wine, did at last recognize him. “Wait a moment, I know you! Since I saw you, it’s been going round and round in my head; I was confused by your lack of uniform, but I’ve remembered at last.” I waved a finger toward his nose. “Tortosa! Yes, that’s right, Tortosa! You’re General Rumpkicker! You sent me flying back down the glacis!” I got to my feet and challenged him, circling my fists in front of his face. “Come on, then, seeing as you’re so brave. See if you dare to give me a kick now that you’re not in your general’s uniform!”
The old man looked at me as an old dog looks at a bluebottle.
“Shall we shut him up once and for all, Don Antonio?” his men intervened.
“Just try it!” I laughed. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Madrid has been occupied by the Allies. I just have to step outside and whistle. The Guard will be delighted to arrest our friend the general, especially bearing in mind what happened at Tortosa, added to the fact that the Guard is made up of Catalans.”
The whole group gave a laugh so unanimous that everyone else in the place stopped and looked over. What was funny? I didn’t understand it at all. Quite unnerved, I dropped my fists and scratched the back of my neck.
“I’d be very happy to take you down a peg or two,” said this general. “But first, sit beside me and tell me what you made of that siege.”
I did. Maybe it was a way of letting off steam, as useful as coming to blows. I spent a long hour drinking and discoursing on the flaws and defects of the Tortosa siege. That Attack Trench, an incomplete joke. Our rushed, shallow digging. Inadequate materials, inadequately applied. An Attack Trench en règle is a more sophisticated construction than a pyramid! And that one was no better than an absurd collection of galleries going nowhere, walls braced with green pine instead of proper uprights. The earth that should have been compacted kept spilling down. And what did it lead to? All those unnecessary deaths. Thousands of lads murdered, but it was politics that killed them, not the enemy, cojones. The trench only had to make it as far as the city walls. The English commander, a sensible man, would have surrendered. But, oh no, that pig Orléans wanted glory in a hurry. What did a few thousand deaths matter to him? I say again, cojones!
I was incredibly drunk. Once I had vented all this, I looked at the general. The wine was coming out of my ears. “And as if that wasn’t enough, you gave me a kick on my behind!”
I wanted to use my hand to pick up my glass. But my eyes could no longer calculate distances, and my fingers passed through it as though it were a ghost-thing. I was seeing triple: Three generals sat before me now.
My disquisitions on Tortosa were of some interest to him, because he grabbed me by the lapels and, shaking me hard, asked: “Where did you learn all this? And why did you mention the French engineer?”
The alcohol had defeated me. I looked at him. I opened my lips, very slowly, to tell him something about Bazoches. I gave up, couldn’t, didn’t want to. And what was more, why should I have? My mouth all furred up, I moved closer to the general’s ear and moaned sadly: “Tell me something, I beg you. Do you know The Word?”
He looked at me with a frown, his mouth open. “Word? What damn word?”
He went on asking me questions. But in my condition, I was beyond any authority. I said: “It’s a load of shit, all of it.”
My head sagged as though I were a rag doll. My forehead was dropping onto the table like a neck under the executioner’s ax.
Some hours later, I was awakened. I’d been left on my own, and the place was closing. My right cheek was glued to the table, stuck there with dried wine. I left reeling. A patrol that was going past saw me having trouble.
“Hey, lads,” they said to each other in Catalan, “let’s have a bit of a laugh with that drunken sot.” They surrounded me and pressed me to shout the much repeated “Long live Carlos III!”
“Long live Madrileño stew!” I shouted.
“Huh? Show a bit more respect for your king!”
“Respect? Kings are all the same! Self-centered child-snatchers! And now that I think of it, how have you managed to get yourself lost in Madrid? Go home and stop fucking with good drinkers.”
I think it was the most comprehensive thrashing I have ever received. I was so flattened that when they were done, there was little difference between good old Zuvi and a Ceuta rug. Once they were done, they also stole my boots.
At first light, I was rescued by the patriotic innkeeper. He was walking past on his way to open up the tavern. He saw me stretched out in the road and carried me, one of my arms over his shoulder.
“But for God’s sake, man, I did warn you!” he scolded me. “Whatever made you get mixed up with those Catalans?”
6
I was so shattered that even two days later, I still couldn’t get up from my straw mattress. My only joy was to see that Zúñiga had left the attic. Many years later, we would meet again, and he would spend decades pursuing me across three continents. He never stopped hating me. But that’s another story.
I got to my feet, all my bones aching, and dressed. In an inside pocket, I found a passport that must have been put there on the general’s behalf by his men:
Please go to Toledo and report at once to General Don Antonio de Villarroel.
As soon as I had read it, I understood a number of things. No wonder they laughed at me when I threatened to turn them in to the Guard! Despite Little Philip’s threats and coercion, some Castilians had taken advantage of the 1710 occupation to switch sides. This General Villarroel was evidently one of them. Those men around him must have been his staff officers. Most likely, they were in the tavern to celebrate Charles having allowed them into the pro-Austrian army with full pay and rank.
And so I headed for Toledo. To be honest, I wasn’t sure why my legs were taking me there. To be interviewed by that general? The same one who, back in Tortosa, had sent me rolling down the glacis with a kick in the behind? Anyone could see that the fellow had the nature of a resentful mule, that he was clearly one of those military types who swallows hammers and shits out nails. What business could good old Zuvi have with someone like him? Well, s
hall I tell you something? I did go to Toledo, and I went more directly than the flight of an Indian’s arrow.
I found Villarroel in the Toledo citadel, in an extremely somber-looking study. He got right down to business. He was indeed serving as a general in the pro-Austrian army, and he wanted to have an expert in siege warfare among his staff officers. He was no fool: He’d picked up on my comments about Vauban and knew at once that this kid was much more than a hopeless drunk. We started to haggle over the terms of my recruitment, though the money was the least of my interests.
Call it intuition, call it le Mystère, call it what you like. As we negotiated, I took advantage of the opportunity to examine that man’s inner recesses, bringing all my Bazoches faculties to bear.
There was something about him, though I could not have told you what exactly that something was. “If you need a teacher, you will find him, whether he is a Points Bearer or not.” Still, would he be the man to continue the teachings of Vauban? Not an engineer but a military man, and a Castilian to boot, while I was a Catalan? “Well, and why not?” I said to myself. “Did the Marquis de Vauban not take me in despite the French hatred for the Catalans?”
I resolved the conflict between my head and my heart by means of a compromise: I would give the general a chance. If he showed himself worthy of Vauban, I would follow him. If he let me down, I would desert him at the earliest possible opportunity.
As usual, my dear, extremely vile Waltraud stops the narrative with an ignorant inquiry. First she asks whether my plan to desert at the earliest opportunity wasn’t dangerous. I answer yes, it was, but much less than it might seem. In my day, such a large proportion of men deserted, and from every army, that one might rather ask the opposite question: Why were there any men who didn’t? Some clever-clogs soldiers used it as a way to make a living, the fraudulent practice of enlisting in those armies that paid best and then deserting. The result was such a bloodletting that recently formed armies would sometimes reach the front reduced to half their number. That’s as far as the troops were concerned. As for the generals, my fat Waltraud is surprised that Villarroel had begun the war on one side only to switch halfway through. Well, we should make it clear there was nothing unusual about that. Times change. Nowadays the French army is made up of Frenchmen, and the English army of Englishmen. It wasn’t like that in my day. A career soldier was a qualified professional not much different from, say, a medical specialist. A French doctor could be employed by an English king, and no Frenchman in his right mind would criticize him for treating a foreigner. And so any sovereign might hire soldiers of any origin, and what gave a soldier his distinction was meeting the terms of the contract, not whose contract it was. In 1710 Villarroel rescinded the contract that bound him to Little Philip, leaving him perfectly free to serve any other sovereign who might make him a good offer. Is that clear now, my blond walrus? Let’s go on, then.
Victus Page 26
