Victus

by Albert Sanchez Pinol

  When the Allied army disembarked at Barcelona in 1705, a great many municipalities declared themselves supporters of Charles. But it wasn’t unanimous. It wasn’t at all unusual for two neighboring towns to have opposing sympathies. Why? Because the priest had said God favored Little Philip? Not at all! They’d simply plump for whichever side their detested neighbors had not. Everyone must know stories about eternal disputes over rights to a well, or ownership of a windmill, anything. While Charles had been on the up, they’d kept quiet, said nothing. But now, with the Army of the Two Crowns occupying almost all of Catalonia, enthused, they took up arms and had no qualms about gutting one of their neighbors and using their political affiliation as an excuse.

  As for the peasants shooting at us from the hillside, they couldn’t have cared less about constitutions, Austrian monarchs, Bourbons, and the like. The global war gave them a chance to institutionalize local conflicts. Europe’s apocalypse, to these people, became a story on which to hang the one thing they did ardently believe: that the next town along was a pack of whoresons. Catalonia’s freedom, the future of the land, the necessity of shrugging off the yoke of foreign tyrants, all was secondary to the noble calling of going and bashing in your neighbor’s head and, while you were at it, his son’s as well.

  It’s as I say: War was the fire beneath the boiling pot, unleashing those atavistic fumes, pulling back that slight and insecure lid called civilization. Rousseau was right: Savagery isn’t without, it’s underneath; savagery isn’t to be found in far-off exotic places but in our own recondite depths. At the slightest excuse the savage in us will come storming to the fore, bowling down the civilized part like a cannonball.

  Not that Voltaire ever understood, that insufferable dandy!

  Deputy Berenguer was becoming less and less physically able. But his mental faculties were as good as ever: He could see that we hadn’t recruited very many men, certainly not enough to attack the Bourbon cordon with. But that didn’t stop him from sending letter after letter to Barcelona. Something about this made me sick. The Two Crowns army was closing in around us. To get through their net, we had to send some of our best riders—their loyalty had to be beyond question—and they’d be laying their lives on the line, trying to break through to the coast. Coordinating their arrival with that of a ship secretly sailed in from Barcelona made it triply dangerous. And what for? So Berenguer could send missives saying there was nothing to say.

  An impasse had been reached, impossibly disheartening. The 1705 insurrection had begun in a place called Vic, a little over thirty miles north of Barcelona. We had to overcome many obstacles and make many detours to reach it. Quite the saga, for the Bourbons pursuing us were growing daily in number, and it took considerable maneuvering to get our unit to its destination intact. At least we were sure to have a warm welcome, given that Vic had been the first place to rise up in support of Charles. That’s what I thought then—I laugh to remember it!

  They wanted nothing to do with us. Their elders urged us to turn around and leave the very same day, so as not to compromise them. “Bear in mind that, because we were the first to side with the emperor, we’re bound to receive the harshest punishments.”

  The deputy, always indulgent with his own, went easy on them. Not me. “Given that they were the first to go on the attack,” I said, “that ought to make them the last to quit the defenses.”

  Ordered to hold my tongue, I obeyed. It was pointless anyway. We still weren’t to know at that point, but it was the most futile of discussions. During the meeting, we later learned, Vic’s representatives had sent some namby-pamby local official, one Josep Pou, to ask for clemency from Little Philip’s army. Fabulous! The ones who had struck the match, accusing us of arson.

  In the end, it became as though all our to-ing and fro-ing was merely to keep Deputy Berenguer from falling into Bourbon hands. Coordinating ourselves with the other columns—which were moving around as constantly as we were—and with Barcelona, too, was no easy task. A large number of our messengers never came back. Each time one galloped away, I found it hard to hold back the tears. If they were caught, they’d be tortured to death—itself a useless act, as the messages were written in a code that only Berenguer knew. The one thing he could be praised for, the clod.

  It was a most ingenious code, with numbers standing in for letters or symbols. So, A was 11, M was 40, and E was 30. Other numbers stood in for whole things—70, for example, meant Barcelona; 100, bombs; 81, Philip V; 53, grenades; 54, Pópuli; and 87, Miquelets.

  A rumor went around among the men that Deputy Berenguer kept the message hidden deep inside. The Bourbons would never decipher the code, because the numbers and letters were all nothing but a ruse. In fact, Deputy Berenguer would fart holding a cylinder to his behind. The implement didn’t, in reality, decipher written signs but, rather, the whistling sounds made when the cylinder’s top lifted.

  Well, mob humor never has been that refined.

  One day, early in the morning, the sentries sounded the alarm. Everyone scrabbled to arm himself, thinking it was a dawn attack by the Bourbons. No. To our relief, it turned out to be compatriots of ours—Ballester and his men, to be precise.

  The sight of Ballester returning to us was one of the few happy ones during the whole expedition. I ran over and embraced him. I’m sure now that Ballester did appreciate my effusiveness, even though he couldn’t show it at the time. I put my arms around him; his stayed pinned to his sides. I didn’t mind. I could tell by his bewildered expression that he was having feelings he had no way to express.

  Looking him in the eye, taking him by the shoulders, I said: “I knew you wouldn’t abandon us. I knew it.”

  He pushed me away. “You were the ones who abandoned us. Don’t you remember?”

  Looking around, I saw that only seven of his nine men were with him. “What about Jacint and Indaleci?” I asked.

  “What do you think?”

  We both fell silent for a moment. I was the next to speak. “And in spite of everything, you’ve come back?”

  “It’s you who have come back,” he said, pointing behind him. The Miquelets had been scouting ahead of a far larger body of men: Dalmau’s whole troop. Plus three thousand men newly joined! Dalmau had recruited them himself, addressing the matter very differently to Deputy Berenguer. Not so strange, if you think about it. They were two poles: Deputy Berenguer’s apathetic moralizing and Dalmau’s levelheaded enthusiasm couldn’t have been more different. For Deputy Berenguer, the homeland meant the past, and protocols; for Dalmau, the future, and people’s rights.

  A war council was held. Dalmau wanted to put forward some ideas he’d formed while expeditioning alone.

  All told we could bring together five thousand men now. He wanted to proceed in line with the original plan: Attack the Bourbon cordon at Barcelona and raise the blockade. The disparity in numbers meant outright victory would be impossible. To start with, we were surrounded by thousands of Bourbons who had been deployed throughout the area. If they realized where we were marching, they would simply form a wall between us and Barcelona.

  “But if we were to evade them,” suggested Dalmau, “we’d be in a position to attack the cordon’s right wing.” He spread a map out on the table. Everyone present came closer in.

  “The Bourbons have divided the cordon into three sectors,” Dalmau explained. “The right wing is made up of Spanish troops, and the area they’re positioned on is swampland. We’d be at an advantage attacking there. Spanish troops are less well trained than the French. And on such uneven terrain, our Miquelets would move around far better than regiments accustomed to fighting in formation.” He rubbed his eyes. “Coordinating the attack with the troops inside the city will be no easy task. Particularly if we decide to strike at night, which we’d need to do to compensate for our lack of numbers—use the element of surprise. But if we do our part and Villarroel does his—no doubt he will—I don’t see why we shouldn’t succeed.”

  Well,
this was the point of the expedition, to free Barcelona from the Bourbon siege. Everyone agreed that it was risky but not impossible. There was still the issue of the deputy: an attack by night, among five thousand men in swampy terrain, would be too much for old Berenguer. It would be fraught with danger. In the tumult of battle, and in the dark, anything might happen. That Deputy Berenguer was a good-for-nothing blackguard didn’t make him any less important a personage. He’d be quite a prize for the Bourbons, and it would be a heavy blow to the Catalans to lose him. No, he wouldn’t be killed. But they’d be in a position to mount him on a donkey and ride him around with a cylinder on his head.

  Berenguer put his hands to his face and, in a pitiful performance, said the last thing he wanted was to be an obstacle for the fatherland. Finally, he had realized that’s what he was. The attempt must be made, he said. All he required was four trustworthy soldiers to be his bodyguards. If the situation became ugly, these four would have the blessed job of slitting his throat before the enemy kidnapped him.

  The cheek of the man! For the duration of the expedition he’d been cowering, and now he wanted to make himself out as the hero. It was the height of imposture, and that in an era when heroism was the commonest currency. Men like Villarroel and Dalmau, warriors like Ballester and Busquets, would never make proclamations about their willingness to lay down their lives: They took it for granted, and would do it without a second’s hesitation. And there we had Deputy Berenguer, measuring his every word for its epic qualities, for how it would sound in the annals.

  I stepped forward. “Oh, don’t worry about four men to slit your throat, Your Excellence. One would be sufficient. Me.”

  “Zuviría!” he cried. “I’ve had enough of your insolence. Think you’re the army joker, don’t you? When we get back, the first thing I’m going to do is have you thrown in the Pi dungeons!”

  Next, one of Berenguer’s oafs made a proposal: Try and reach the coast, and from there send the deputy off in a ship somewhere, before tackling the cordon. Everyone was happy—Dalmau because it meant being free from Berenguer, and Berenguer because it meant he’d be out of harm’s way.

  Ballester and his light cavalry were sent ahead as an advance party, as usual, to be sure the nearby paths and trails were clear of Bourbons, and that the deputy could therefore be evacuated. I went with them. We reached a place called Alella by nightfall; to avoid unpleasant surprises, we chose to camp on the beach rather than trying at a house in the town.

  During the ride, Ballester had seemed more on guard than usual. I put my sleeping mat next to his, the sand for a mattress. We bedded down a stone’s throw from the sea. The day had been clear, and the stars shone in the sky above. Like that poetic detail, my dear Waltraud? Pish, I say! If it was night, and there weren’t any clouds, why on earth wouldn’t the stars be shining? Anyway, you can keep it in—it will help give an idea of our melancholy mood that night. We were engaged in a cruel war, but the gentle cadence of the waves and the sound of the crickets cradled us for one peaceful moment: a feeling that moved me to speak.

  “I want you to know something. I thought Mataró was an outrage as well.”

  Ballester didn’t answer. Offended by his silence, I protested: “I’m trying to apologize! Though I’m hardly to blame.”

  “Your Cannae went to the dogs,” he said finally.

  “True. And the way we’re headed, there’s more bloodshed to come. Even if things go according to plan,” I lamented, looking up at the sky, “thousands will die. If only Vauban were alive . . . ”

  “What are you complaining about? It’s a war, people die. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be war.”

  I decided to change the subject. “Are you married, Ballester?” I asked.

  “No, I have some women, but none of them are my wives. You?”

  “There’s one who’s as good as my wife. I think she was a whore before me. Something like that.”

  “Are you being serious?” said Ballester, taken aback—and not much could surprise that man.

  “Whore, mischief maker, thief . . . What does it matter? Needs must, these days. I live in a house along with her, an old man, a dwarf, and a young boy. You’ve met the boy.”

  “I have?” he said, again surprised.

  “Yes, when you laid siege to us in that masía.”

  Ballester pulled his blanket over himself. “I only remember,” he said, yawning, “that I’d never seen such a soft lad.”

  “You’re right there,” I said, and with the thought of Anfán, a daft feeling of happiness rose up my neck. “Though I’m not his father.”

  “But you treat him as a son,” Ballester pointed out, yawning again.

  “Well, let’s just say that, to him, I’m the one who makes the rules. That’s all.”

  We were both tired, and Ballester’s eyes began to fall shut, but I pushed his arm again. “Do you have children, Ballester?”

  Opening his eyes again, he looked up at the stars. “I think so. Maybe one or two. Difficult to know for certain. Women are always claiming I’m the father, though all they really want is the leader’s money.”

  “But you’re not bringing them up.”

  He sneered. “How could I? Their mothers don’t want for anything. I take care of all that.”

  I tugged on his sleeve again, more earnestly still. “Ballester, I want to ask you something. Something between you and me.”

  He lifted himself half up, suspecting some trick, his usual forest animal cautiousness. But all I wanted to know was: “Why do you fight?”

  He meditated for a few moments, taking a fistful of sand and letting it drain away. As a prompt, I said, “I don’t need a long speech, you can keep it short,” before adding: “A word, please, just a word. It’s all I ask.”

  But to my disappointment, he lay down again and, with a sigh, said simply: “If you haven’t understood it yet, what would be the point of telling you now?”

  4

  Perhaps I should not have been so surprised by the aberration that next took place. The full extent of Red Pelts’ mad legalism, the false emptiness of their patriotism—which was about to become apparent on the beach at Alella—anyone would have been hard pushed to surmise. My only thought at the time was that, finally, we were about to be rid of Deputy Berenguer and his clot-headed retinue.

  The body of the army arrived early in the morning, without incident. Meanwhile, Ballester and I negotiated with some locals over requisitioning a boat, one of a decent size but light and swift. The plan was for Deputy Berenguer and his advisers and assistants to depart at twilight, and sail away under cover of dark.

  The old man kicked into life for once. He ordered a security perimeter be established, with the men positioned at the high points that dominated the bay. Five thousand men on guard struck me as excessive, but I shrugged and got on with it. All Pelts esteemed protocol very highly, and I just thought Deputy Berenguer wanted to make a show of his eminence.

  Ballester and his men were the only ones exempt from guard duty. While the rest of the army took up positions on hilltops and where any paths entered the area, they hunkered down in a fisherman’s tavern in Alella, on the outskirts of the town and about a hundred yards away from the beach. I could see what they were about, but I was supposed to be taking part in seeing Berenguer off.

  “Don’t forget to pay for what you drink,” was all I said. “We’re not Bourbons.”

  Coming back to camp, I found Berenguer sprawled in his chair with five or six of his officers around him, Dalmau and Shitson included. They’d begun without me, the babe of the expedition. Dalmau was making a florid farewell speech.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” said Berenguer as I came in. “But I ought to point out, you and all the rest of the senior officers will also be setting sail with me.”

  I was standing behind Dalmau and, like him, was stupefied by this.

  “Pardon me?” said Dalmau, as though he’d misheard. “How can we come with you? If I and the other
officers aren’t here, who’s going to give orders to the men?”

  “Everyone from lieutenant colonel up,” Berenguer said. “All are to return with me to Barcelona. It’s an order. No discussions.”

  Abandon five thousand men! Not carry out the attack on the cordon! All these months of hardship and sacrifice for nothing! We found this injustice, this monumental lunacy, so hard to digest that neither Dalmau nor any of the other officers reacted.

  “But Your Excellence,” Dalmau finally said, extremely disconcerted, “this isn’t possible. Who will lead the attack on the cordon?”

  “I believe we have a commander eager to gain his stripes in war,” said Berenguer. “The troops will be in good hands.”

  He meant Shitson! It was tantamount to discharging the troops. There hadn’t been time for the new recruits to forge bonds with their leaders by taking part in any conflict. Now, if their leaders abandoned them, they were also sure to go back on their promises. Dalmau’s regiment would disintegrate; since they were light on veterans, personal ties were extremely important to them (as they are in any army, to be fair). What would they do if their commander left them on some beach in the middle of nowhere, without any explanations, and now to take orders from some reprobate? We might as well hand them straight over to the Bourbons.

  The other officers, though speechless, complied, following Berenguer and his oafs aboard. Not Dalmau. He stood where the gangway touched down on the beach, refusing to go aboard, and becoming increasingly vocal in his opposition to the decision. One of the men who’d already gone aboard rebuked Dalmau. An order was an order. Did he think he was the only one who felt this to be an affront to his dignity?

  “Not at all,” said Dalmau. “But again, it isn’t just or reasonable to leave my regiment, as well as other equally dignified officers, at the orders of a man who has shown himself to be anything but.”

  While Dalmau and Berenguer continued to argue, I ran back up to the tavern, barging open the door. Seeing me in such a state, Ballester thought we were under attack. If only that had been so!