Right, enough of this sentimental rot.
More often than I would have liked, Don Antonio called me to attend meetings of his staff officers. My main concern was the engineering works, so my presence at these meetings felt like a waste of time. The Bourbons were approaching, and I have described to you already the state in which our defenses found themselves. Normally, I didn’t say much. But one day the discussion turned to the troops and how few of them there were. Somebody—I do not recall who—suggested incorporating groups of Miquelets into the official soldiery. The government of Red Pelts was prepared, reluctantly, to grant permission. Ballester’s name was the first to crop up in this argument. My notional superior as head of the engineers was one Santa Cruz, a man well connected among the Red Pelts whom Don Antonio had no choice except to tolerate, but whom he ignored. Santa Cruz was radically opposed to raising Ballester up to the honorable state of a soldier. Don Antonio asked my opinion.
“No, I don’t believe Ballester is a mere bandit,” I said with certainty. “A fanatic, yes, and bloodthirsty. But deep down, he is a man of great nobility. It may be that he has kidnapped the odd Red Pelt—excuse me, the odd wealthy gentleman from the government—however, he is ruled not by a desire for profit but by hatred of the Bourbons, be they French or Spanish.”
“General . . . ,” Santa Cruz interrupted me, “seeing as we already have discipline problems among the Coronela men, what would happen when they have these people of such dissolute morals as their examples? And we all know how lenient I am when it comes to using those words, ‘dissolute morals.’ ”
“With Ballester or without him,” I argued, “discipline will never be the Coronela’s forte. And if Ballester agrees to join us, it will always be in his natural role as part of the light cavalry. We could use him as a link to the Miquelets on the outside, to reconnoiter the terrain or cause trouble for the enemy’s foragers. We will hardly see him, since he will be as little use to us posted on a bastion as a Coronela battalion on horseback.”
Don Antonio was staring into the void, saying nothing, lost in his ruminations. At that moment, I realized just how much good old Zuvi wanted Ballester brought in. My old arguments with him no longer meant anything; I could judge Ballester as he was, a shrewd, capable leader, whether in a uniform or not. And we were desperately short of men with experience.
It was an age before Villarroel pronounced his verdict. Finally, he passed judgment: “We’re so short on troops that we have nothing to lose by offering him the chance to join up to serve in the armed forces, and now with honor. If he turns down the offer, well, then it’s between him and his conscience.”
“Very well said, Don Antonio!” I cried.
His eyes drilled into me. It was very hard to bear that look of disapproval, severer than any words he could have spoken. Don Antonio needed to attend to some dispatches, and the rest of us officers turned to leave. I remember Santa Cruz shaking his head, disapproving.
“Zuviría.” Don Antonio stopped me when I had already reached the threshold. “One more thing: You are to take charge of making Ballester this offer yourself.”
I thought I was going to have a fit. “Me? But Don Antonio, that’s just not possible! I have a mountain of work to do, reinforcing the walls and bastions.”
“Well, I believe it is indeed possible,” he interrupted me. “Because I am your superior, and that is what I have ordered you to do, and because it has become clear that you are a great supporter of Ballester’s. Doubtless he will be more sensitive to your requests than anyone else’s.”
Sensitive to my requests? What I naturally could not tell him was that Ballester had laid siege to me in a masía, and that before that he had robbed me, he had stripped me naked and hanged me from a fig tree.
“Come on, fiyé, what’s that face for?” Villarroel said consolingly. “You think I’m going to risk losing an aide-de-camp when the enemy is just six days’ march away? I’ll make sure you are supplied with an adequate escort.”
The “escort” consisted of two gentlemen, one of them very thin on horseback and the other smaller and sitting on a mule. The one on the horse apparently knew more or less where the Bourbons’ advance guard had gotten to, and the one on the mule knew all the habitual hiding places used by Ballester and his villains. They were every bit as terrified as I was. The quartermaster’s store loaned me the uniform of an infantry lieutenant colonel. To make me more respected, according to Don Antonio. I doubted that very much. Ballester was perfectly happy slitting the gullets of officers, and he absolutely didn’t care which side they were on. What was more, the coat was so tight on me that I couldn’t do up the front. Still, this was hardly a time to start seeking out a good tailor.
We rode out of Barcelona, passing through a number of towns, finding nothing visibly changed. The countryfolk were on our side and gave us news about the advance of Philip’s army, then under the command of one duke of Pópuli. Pópuli! Another name to consign to the bonfires of history. And when I tell you why, I’m certain you will agree with me.
They had seen only a handful of Bourbon patrols on horseback, only fleetingly, no sign of the columns of infantry or convoys of artillery. They were moving at that slow pace because they wanted to secure all the towns as they went. The Crida notwithstanding, the Bourbons didn’t think the Barcelonans so crazy as to close their city walls to such an impressive army.
As for Ballester, finding him was easier than we had anticipated. He didn’t bother to hide. With the evacuation of the Allied troops, especially outside Barcelona’s walls, any last trace of authority had disappeared.
We found him in an opulent country mansion, a residence that had been abandoned by a notable botiflero. Through the windows, we could hear the sounds of a frenzied party. Men singing and shouting, wild laughter from the women, and the crash of bottles smashing against the floor or the walls.
“Are you really planning to go into that den?” asked my escorts.
“There’s no need for you to come with me. If all goes well, we’ll see each other again soon. And if not . . . ” I gave a resigned sigh. “In that case, inform Barcelona.”
No sooner had I walked through the door than I found myself in a very spacious hall. Everything was turned upside down. And there, like a gang of drunken monks, were Ballester’s men. The drunkest of them was a great hulk of a man. Around his neck, he was wearing a curtain as though it were a cloak, and he had a chicken spitted on his sword. I can see it now, that chicken with its beak half-open, its eyes closed.
I counted five women and ten men. One of the men was in women’s clothing and was dancing with the body of a dead Bourbon soldier. The dead man’s head swung like a pendulum, falling backward or leaning forward onto the cross-dresser’s shoulder, and the man hugged him, lavishing caresses on his cheeks. Another fellow was suspended from the big chandelier on the ceiling, making howling noises. He must have been the joker of the group. His audience laughed, simultaneously reprimanding him and egging him on. Everyone but Ballester.
He was sitting in a corner, on a sofa that had been disemboweled by bayonets. On either side of him, a couple of tarts from the town had their arms around his neck, one of them laughing like a madwoman, the other, who was drunk, with her head resting on his chest. Ballester was the first to see me.
At that moment, the lamp gave in to the weight of the man who was swinging from it. Man and lamp fell together in a thundering of broken glass. The great roars of laughter stopped dead: The monkey man had landed right at my feet.
The hulk approached me with sword and chicken raised. He wanted to babble some kind of threat, but he was so drunk that he tripped on what was left of the lamp and he, too, fell flat on his face.
Ballester made a clicking sound with his lips, sarcastically. “What bad luck you seem to be having with me!” he said, not deigning to stand up. “You come here to rescue your little botiflero friends, and look who you find.”
“I have found,” I replied, “exactly the
person I was looking for.”
One of his men approached me, dagger drawn, to eliminate me without further ado. I held up the tube in which I was carrying the rolled-up documents, with the seal of the Generalitat on the outside. “This,” I announced, “is an official commission and in the interests of all those present. Would you like me to read it? I’m sure you would, because if you slit my throat, I don’t imagine anyone here can read.”
At least they hesitated long enough for me to add: “The government has decided to confer the rank of captain of a volunteer regiment to Señor Esteve Ballester. With uniform and remuneration as befits this position. In addition, Captain Ballester shall have the right to enlist whichsoever men he chooses, who will be admitted into service as honorable soldiers of the emperor and on a wage from the Generalitat.”
For a few moments there was silence.
“Now!” one of the less drunk ones shouted at last. “Now they show up to lick our asses! Now that the Red Pelts find themselves with theirs suddenly on the line!”
I chose not to reply. Not least because he was right. They surrounded me—everyone but Ballester—screaming right up close to my face. One of them was telling me the story of a farm that was repossessed because of the high taxes; another showed me his back, striped with lash marks from the Red Pelts.
If you want to talk to mutineers, you need to be above them. And I’m not referring to a position of morality. I circled around a table, climbed upon it, and holding up the tube, said: “It may be that this was signed by the Red Pelts. But this”—grabbing hold of the front of my uniform—“is a principle that is higher than all of them. It was sewn by a woman in La Ribera for her husband, an officer in the Fourth Battalion. The man is a carpenter. Who was it that whipped you? The carpenters of Barcelona or agents of the government?”
“Go to hell, you and the fatherland!” they jeered, surrounding the table. “What did you do for us when we needed help? You sent us to the guards! Persecuted us! Put us to the rack!”
“Shameful wretches!” I yelled, and even I was impressed at my own audacity. “What kind of child, seeing his mother threatened, instead of defending her, reproaches her for a slap she gave him years earlier?” I shook my head as though a profound sadness had taken hold of me, but I made a joke. “It’s like they say: When a child falls down a well, his mother throws herself down after him. When it’s the mother who falls down, the child goes off to tell the neighbors.”
Incredible as it may sound, there were a few bursts of laughter. I didn’t wait for them to die out, and resumed my reproachful tone. “Well then, the bad news is that our neighbors are called Castile and France, and they are the ones who are trying to drown us in the darkness of that well.”
“And they’ve sent you here to tell us that? We are the ones with the least to lose when the French and Castilians dine on the constitutions with a side helping of turnips. Go to hell!”
“You can go to hell yourself!” I roared, beside myself. “Even you know it’s not really like that. If Barcelona falls, we all fall with her. What would happen if the Bourbons razed everything to the ground? Even if you’ve run away from your homes, I’m sure you have relatives and friends somewhere. Don’t you care about them? No more random ballots: The new mayors will be handpicked by Little Philip, and they will be confirmed botifleros. All young men will be forced to serve under his banner, including in that ghastly place they call America, for decades to come. Our judgments will depend on their judges, who may be no better than ours but are certainly farther away, and they hate us. And if the rates of taxes seem exorbitant to you now, wait till they’re set at the court in Madrid by our enemies, without the branches of our parliament having any sacred right to veto them.” I had gotten myself so worked up that I paused only to catch my breath. “Are you all blind? You should be the first to see that it’s the Red Pelts with the least to lose in the event of catastrophe. They’ll always rise back up to the top, whoever’s in charge. And if you truly are so indifferent to all this, tell me, why are you dancing with Bourbon corpses?”
They settled a bit. I was completely overtaken by my passion. How peculiar: Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized how closely my ideas tallied with my speech. I had gone there to persuade them, and in reality, I was the one being most persuaded.
Someone asked: “What kind of man is your commander?”
That was very typical of the Miquelets’ mentality; they cared less about the cause they were defending than the man who would lead them.
“You can work that out for yourself,” I replied with a bitter smile. “He was the one who ordered me into this den, and whom I did not hesitate a second in obeying.”
Up to that point, Ballester had not spoken a word. He got up off his broken sofa and said: “And what I believe is that if we go into Barcelona, we will never come out again. Tell these men if that isn’t so. Tell them!”
“No, I can’t tell them that,” I replied, weighing my words carefully. “That may well be the way things go. They will kill us all. All I can assure you,” I added, moderating my voice, “is that if that happens, I will not survive any longer than you will.”
Ballester gestured with his thumb toward a door at the back of the room. “Get in there.”
It was a rear patio enclosed by high walls. So I might feel more at ease, I was sharing the place with a couple of dead bodies in white uniforms. I tipped out their bags, which were full of letters between officers: They had been messengers for the Bourbons. I imagined what had happened. They’d been riding between units carrying messages when they saw this delightful-looking mansion on the way and came in for a little rest. Ballester was passing by and had the same idea. Bad luck.
Through the door, I could clearly hear the Miquelets’ arguments, which all happened at the top of their voices. Some wanted to accept the offer from the government; most were in favor of slitting my throat. Best not to listen to them.
It was strange the way my thoughts were going in those days. All the means I had acquired at Bazoches were still active. The siege had not even begun, and yet it was already shaping and guiding my mind. Martí Zuviría, Prince of the Cowards, was eclipsed when Engineer Zuviría was awakened. I remember that my only thought was: If they kill me, I have to make sure these letters get to Barcelona one way or another.
The door opened. I went back into the great hall. All the eyes of the men and women were on me. It would be best to take the initiative myself.
“It may be that you do not want to take part in the defense of Barcelona,” I said, holding out the letters to Ballester. “But I presume you are not against it, either. Please take these letters out to the man who brought me here.”
During a pause that went on forever, Ballester stared straight into my eyes without taking the papers I was holding out toward him. His men were even more expectant than I was, since I had at least prepared my share of resignation. Despite all my time at Bazoches, it took me a whole year to understand the full significance of that look of Ballester’s.
“Take them yourself,” he answered tersely, without the slightest trace of sympathy despite what he was saying. He went over to the table, picked up the tube holding his commission as captain of the volunteers, looked at it, and said sadly: “These lads are getting soft. Softer than the branch of a fig tree.”
Men and women all gave a roar of jubilation. As though the last person to make up his mind had been their leader and the final decision had depended on him. Today I’m sure that’s not how it was, that Ballester had been the first to favor that fateful option. That he had kept his opinions to himself so as not to interfere in the others’ judgment, not to seem too mild or force them into an act of suicide.
They were going into death and doing it gladly. Within a moment they had vanished, getting on their horses, the women clinging to their sides. The sounds of hooves and neighing seemed to disappear into the distance in a moment. Ballester moved more slowly; a leader does not run. We were left alone. He wa
s very self-absorbed, far away from me, from everything. I noticed that he had the same expression from that day in Beceite, with his hands tied, awaiting death. We left the mansion. As we mounted up, his horse and mine were alongside but facing in opposite directions, the two riders face-to-face.
“One other thing,” I said. “If you agree to subordinate yourself to the imperial army, from this moment you have a duty to rank and to discipline. I am a lieutenant colonel and the aide-de-camp to our commander in chief, and you must obey any orders you are given. Without exception.”
He gave a little smile, which always looked ghoulish in that face with such a thick beard and such black bushy eyebrows. “I said to you in that masía that if we met again, I would send you flying.”
He closed his hand into a fist and brought it with all his strength into the middle of my chest. I hadn’t yet put my feet into the stirrups, so I was flung from the saddle and landed on my back. It was just as well that I fell on some tall rosemary bushes that cushioned my landing. All the same, it was quite a punch.
When I looked up, Ballester and his men had already gone. Out of the undergrowth came the skinny gentleman and the tiny one, who helped me to my feet.
“Holy Mother of God!” they exclaimed, while my hands tried to alleviate the pain in my kidneys. “You’re alive. And Ballester on his way to Barcelona. What did you have to give him?”
“Something those people have always been denied,” I replied. “The truth.” They looked at me, hoping for more details, and I added: “I gave them my word that we were all going to be killed.”
And so we come to July 25, 1713. The enemy will be arriving any day now. The work of building and repairing the city walls was not finished, very far from it. After talking to Don Antonio, we decided to stop it all, apart from the work on the palisade.
Victus Page 36
