Victus

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  It was the coldest night of the whole Retreat. A pitiless wind whipped at the thin canvas of the tent. I took off his boots and covered his body with the only blanket there was in the tent. I went out, stole a couple more blankets, and came back to wrap him more warmly. He was snoring. Before I left, I kissed his cheek. Just as well he was sleeping deeply. If he had realized, he would have struck me on the head for being a pansy. Then I went and got myself drunk on what was left in the bottle.

  Don Antonio. My battle-running general, my good Don Antonio de Villarroel Peláez, the most anonymous hero of our century. Things ended badly, very badly. Not many great men came out well from that war of ours. That leech In-a-Trice Stanhope was certainly one of the lucky ones.

  Owing to his high rank, the Bourbons treated him with kid gloves, and four days later, he returned to London like a greenhorn coming home from an outing. Without glory, but without dishonor, either. Instead of hanging him, the English exalted him, perhaps as a way of disguising the failure of their continental strategy. He married the daughter of the governor of Madras and thrived in politics. Some men are born covered in a patina of moral oil: Misfortune slips off them like water. But those same men stain everything they touch. A decade later, his government was foolish enough to give him the reins to the faltering English economy. I’ll wager anything you like that, as he took on the post, he exclaimed, “I’ll sort this out in a trice!”

  As we already know, England’s finances ended up the same way as their expeditionary forces: destroyed in a trice. It took him only two years to devastate trade with America and the savings of a million shareholders, and to bring half the country’s industries, banks, businesses, and warehouses to the point of bankruptcy in what has come to be known as the South Sea Bubble. From my own exile in England, I recall some delightful heads, such as Swift or Newton, a wise astronomer who looked like a libertine priest. Newton always had one eye on the heavens and another on his purse. During the crisis, he lost thousands of pounds in shares, and measured though he surely was, even he wanted to strangle Stanhope. I can still see him now, shouting, “It’s infinitely easier to predict the motion of a heavenly body than the lunacies of these secretaries of finance!”

  As for Marshal Vendôme, our enemy at Brihuega, in those last days of 1710, Little Philip named him governor-general of Catalonia. A premature title, you will agree, since at that point, most of Catalonia remained in the hands of the Generalitat. The truth was, he never got the chance to enjoy the post. In 1712, as he was travelling through one of our towns to the south, Vinaroz, he stopped—to everyone’s horror—to have dinner. To make him happy, they served him the local delicacy, fried prawns.

  “How good these prawns are!” Vendôme crowed.

  The people of Vinaroz were scared to death, naturally, so they just kept serving him trays and more trays of prawns. The glutton wolfed down sixty-four prawns. No one dared to tell him that they were served in their shell but that you eat them without. Vendôme was such an exalted aristocrat that it never would have occurred to him that a servant would bring him in a shell something that was eaten peeled, and that his noble little fingers were being smeared with grease from the sea.

  That very night he died of indigestion.

  In the days that followed Brihuega, we became intoxicated by a false sense of security. Since we’d left Toledo, the cry that had united the army had been “Return to Barcelona or die!” After the failure of the great Bourbon attempt to annihilate us, everybody let go a little.

  We were already on Aragon land, barren like the Castilian but at least an Allied kingdom. Don Antonio was in command of a motley troop made up of a few hundred Dutch, Portuguese, Palatines, Hessians, a real ragtag bunch. (Italian mercenaries, too! They were everywhere!) Most were ill or bore wounds from Brihuega, and we carried them in wagons that were full up and groaning heavily. So as not to be a burden on the march of the army, we took a parallel route.

  Although I didn’t like the idea at all, I went with Don Antonio. From the very first, I knew that looking after this little troop of invalids, riding apart from the main army, was a bad idea. I was anxious as I rode alongside my great general, asking myself what good old Zuvi was doing there. The answer, as you can imagine, is that I had grown to feel a loyalty for this man very similar to that which had bonded me to Vauban. The marquis taught me what I needed to do; Don Antonio went further, filling the work with moral meaning. That same day he would be practicing what he preached.

  Being so far away from the army, we were easy prey. Nine out of ten of these wounded men couldn’t lift a rifle. If we were attacked by a decent-sized force, we would be condemned to disaster. I had a bad feeling about it all. I was constantly turning in my saddle, scanning the horizon, or racing up and down the short column of wagons chivvying the drivers. What we hoped was that the Bourbons would not pay any attention to these little crumbs of the army and we would be able to get ourselves lost on minor roads. We couldn’t.

  The Castilian warriors attacked us on both flanks at once. The diminished mounted escort charged—led by Don Antonio—then charged again, and a third time. The Bourbons avoided them like wolves escaping a shepherd, but they were soon back in pursuit of the defenseless flock, and there were more of them each time. Those in the wagons who were in a fit state had armed themselves and fired from where they were on the flatbed of the carts. Don Antonio gave the order to take refuge in the nearest settlement, a small place called Illueca that we could make out on the horizon.

  I was desperate. “Don Antonio! Please don’t do it! You know as well as I do what that order will mean. Please!”

  He didn’t answer. We entered Illueca like a mouse into a trap. Don Antonio’s logic was absolutely impeccable: The Bourbons exceeded us in number; if those of us on horseback fled, the injured in the wagons would be annihilated in the excitement of the fighting.

  As an engineer, I knew that Illueca was impossible to defend. We had neither the provisions nor the arms to defend it. And we knew, furthermore, that there was nobody to come to our rescue. But once we had dug ourselves in, when all the smoke had cleared and the siege begun, Don Antonio could agree to a reasonable settlement with someone in the Two Crowns’ command. At least they would have respect for the lives of the wounded. That was what duty and sacrifice meant to Don Antonio: to lose the warrior’s most sacred possession, freedom, if in doing so, he could save the lives of his men.

  But I could not forget two details that were crucial to my own interests: that good old Zuvi was neither ill nor wounded, and that the prospect of captivity was unbearable to me. I tried, exasperated, to reason with Don Antonio. As the gates to the town were closed and some improvised defenses set up, I asked him to reconsider: “Let’s flee while there is still time, leaving the command in the hands of some lame officer who can negotiate the terms of the surrender.” I had plenty of tactical reasons for this: he was a general, the finest commander under Karlangas. Was it worth the army losing his talent for some hundred invalids?

  Nothing doing. He would never abandon men under his command, never. I had escaped a razed Toledo, the cold Retreat, the battle of Brihuega. And now, because of a stupid question of honor, I was going to fall into the hands of an intransigent enemy. His example was an admirable one; more than that, it was heroic. But Longlegs Zuvi wasn’t yet ready to grasp The Word, as evidenced by the fact that I exploded in frustration.

  “You’re more stubborn than a deaf mule! You hear me? A fucking mule in a general’s sash! That’s what you are.”

  Anyone else would have had me hanged on the spot. But he didn’t do it. Why?

  He was fond of me, there was no other explanation. He and his adjutants just left me alone there, stamping on my tricorn hat in utter fury. After a while I was called into his presence. I had calmed down a little and I could recognize my insubordination. I went to meet him like a lamb to the slaughter.

  He was in the castle. I had to climb a spiral staircase to get to the top of a solitary
turret, whipped by the four winds. From there you could keep an eye on the whole landscape all the way to the horizon.

  Although I wish I could, I know I never shall forget that sight. Our good general standing alone, wrapped in a long, ragged, rat-colored cloak. He looked like a human échauguette, impassive at the gusts of wind that shook those heights. He was using his spyglass to watch the Bourbons’ movements. The warriors of Castile had already called for the French regular troops. Seen from where we stood, they looked like little white roaches. Soon they would have Illueca surrounded. Soon our sacrifice would come to a head.

  “What am I to do with you?” he said, still looking through his spyglass.

  Resigned, I allowed my gaze to follow the direction of the spyglass and just answered: “I suppose it doesn’t much matter, Don Antonio.” I sighed. “We are going to fall into their hands.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  “I think so.”

  He lowered the spyglass. “You think so?” he boomed. “Either you have a family or you don’t!”

  “I do.” I hadn’t the slightest idea what he wanted.

  “I need a messenger to tell the king what has happened,” he said. “I have served under the Bourbon flag. It might be thought that I took advantage of the situation to commit treason.”

  “But anyone thinking that, Don Antonio, would be an idi—” I shut up, suddenly understanding that this was just an excuse he had dreamed up to spare me from captivity. “Forgive me, Don Antonio.”

  “General! Address me according to my rank.”

  “Yes, General.”

  He went back to his spyglass and said: “Take saddlebags filled with plentiful provisions. And my horse. It’s in the best condition. I don’t want it to end up with some French fop.”

  I wanted to thank him, dizzy with delight, but he prevented me with a shout: “Now get out of my sight before I change my mind!”

  I withdrew. All the same, when I reached the staircase, something made me turn. I couldn’t go just like that.

  “Don Antonio, I want you to know that I have been thinking a lot about what you said that night. I don’t have the courage to take on that invisible border which God has put in front of us. And you, what’s more, you seek it out with tireless tenacity.”

  He looked me up and down. He noticed how moved I was. “What are you talking about? When did we have that conversation?”

  “A few nights ago, Don Antonio. In your tent.”

  He didn’t remember.

  “For me, you’re a teacher who has come to replace the person I have most admired in this world,” I went on. “From the first day you have made me a gift of your example. And today you have given me freedom.”

  Don Antonio didn’t expect me to fall to my knees, nor that, my shoulder leaning against an old battlement, I would confess: “For the second time in my life, I have failed in a decisive test. In the first, I didn’t have the heart to understand what was being asked of me. In this second, I haven’t the courage to take it on.”

  I couldn’t hold back my tears. I cried so much that my hands, covering my face, were wet as sponges. I cried so much, hugging that cold Aragon battlement, that for a moment I forgot what we were doing there.

  Villarroel looked through his spyglass once again and immediately said, in a gentle reprimand, “They’ve nearly completed the siege. Stand up.”

  I got up on my long legs, and as I was leaving, ashamed, he was the one who stopped me for a moment. On that cold, windy day, in that distant place, Don Antonio’s eyes took on the brilliance of Vauban’s.

  “Zuviría,” he said, “don’t be mistaken. You will be able to run away today. But for good or for ill, this doesn’t end here. Neither the war nor the tribulations of your soul. Now go.”

  I fled at a speed that was meteoric, if not very heroic. Villarroel’s horse was every bit as reluctant to be taken prisoner as good old Zuvi. What was more, my body was lighter than his master’s, and within moments we had become accomplices in our flight. And just in time! Once we were out of Illueca, we came across the enemy troops as they closed the siege and had to drop behind some bushes to hide. I lay down on the animal’s body and covered its mouth with my hand. It was very docile.

  As chance would have it, the Spanish irregular forces were beginning to be relieved by French soldiers and officers. And knowing how much Don Antonio liked the Frog-eaters—and now he would have to negotiate the surrender with them! But it was for the best. The French would be satisfied with taking the garrison prisoner without any executions. While the Bourbons kept their eyes trained on the city walls, I—behind them—took advantage of the moment to head off in the opposite direction.

  Free, in flight, on horseback. And yet the joy of the survivor remained outside me. Because of what I had left behind and what was yet to come. I crossed places where rejoicing and happiness had no reason to be. Poor old Zuvi on an animal’s sore back, his clothes filthy, his tricorn and scarf in tatters. Across every hill, natural cones of earth as low as Moghul tombs. I was whipped by a constant wind that cut my lips. In those few moments when the wind fell silent, it felt as though rider and mount would be turned to stone then and there. And always, at any time when there was some light, that enormous sky covering my head and out toward infinity. Blue, a limpid, huge blue, vaster than the whole Spanish empire. I couldn’t stop thinking about Don Antonio.

  My hopes of finding The Word in the lands of Castile had died there. How would I find it in a country that tolerated only empty spaces? Indeed: I had found a teacher capable of taking Vauban’s place, and what was more, a man of Castilian origin. But that same land had taken him captive, had trapped him inside, perhaps forever. I owed him my liberty, perhaps my life. I could have shared in his luck, and I didn’t, while he made the teacher’s supreme sacrifice: to give his life for his student’s. Thanks to Don Antonio, I could return to Anfán and Amelis. Wretched but free. I cried like a baby, big, slow tears that slipped down my cheeks.

  Illueca, for anyone interested in historical trivia, is the resting place of a pope, Pope Luna, a dramatic type who, in the fourteenth century, challenged Rome. After Don Antonio capitulated, the French soldiery demolished the man’s tomb in the hope of finding great treasures. They found nothing in the casket but bones, and the Frog-eaters took this badly. They dismantled the mummified body, played football with the skull, and ended up hurling it out of a window.

  9

  As to what happened between my return from the Allied offensive in 1710, to settle back in Barcelona, and the vile summer of 1713, it’s not worth the telling.

  We owed a great deal of money from the purchase of the house in La Ribera. Amelis and I argued about the debts, we argued about her poor skill in cooking (great lovers do not tend to be good cooks), about a thousand silly things. When the subject of the debt came up in conversation, and its generous twenty percent interest, it was like the rolling of thunder that precedes a storm. Peret, Nan, and Anfán would vanish down the stairs. Then I would scold her for having bought the fifth-storey apartment in La Ribera. She would laugh at my scruples. Amelis didn’t know how to read, she didn’t know how to add, she knew just one thing: You survive in this world only if you can learn to walk on broken glass. Any of you husbands reading this, however good-natured, will be asking yourselves an extremely reasonable question: Why didn’t I just give her a good hiding? Look, it all came down to two things: If I wouldn’t use violence when in service and against people I didn’t know, how could I with her? And the second reason: I loved her.

  It wasn’t hard to find out that she had gone back to selling herself. I had been schooled in Bazoches, after all. When things were particularly tight, bags filled with money would appear. She thought she could keep it a secret from me because she was very skillful at measuring out the flow of the money. Besides, she didn’t spend much time renting out her body. I noticed that when she disappeared, her violet-colored Sunday dress was also missing from the closet. I had no doub
t whatsoever: She was the luxury whore of some Red Pelt who paid her well for her attentions. I kept quiet.

  That’s enough for today. Pass me the cat and the bottle. And go.

  For lack of anything else to occupy my time, I took on the role of home teacher to Nan and Anfán. To my surprise, the dwarf turned out to be very good with numbers, although sitting still was not his forte; after a while he would start squirming as though the chair were covered in nails. At this point, I ought to mention something that makes me sad. My lessons had one unpredictable effect, and a deplorable one. The brotherhood between Nan and Anfán began to break down. I can remember one particularly pitiful day.

  I had given Nan a big spinning top that had numbers all over its surface. Anfán came into the little room I sometimes used as workroom and saw Nan with the top in front of him spinning. They argued. The dwarf clasped hold of the top, unwilling to give it up. Anfán was offended and cried: “You and those numbers! Have you lost count of how many crusts of bread I brought you when we were sleeping in those tarts’ hovels? Have you forgotten that already? Nan merdós!”

  That he should aim such a strong insult at Nan was so unusual, so unthinkable, that I didn’t even respond. The dwarf did. He chased after the boy, crying with remorse and kicking him out of sheer helplessness. To try and console him, Nan gave him the big spinning top. Anfán tried its weight, hesitated, and ended up throwing it out the window. A bit farther and he would have killed a knife sharpener who was outside on the street.

  Anfán understood somehow that a comfortable life, modern education, all that, was destroying the fundamental bond that held them together. They were reconciled, but it wasn’t like before.