It ended up being not one night but two, plus three entire days, shut up in that shabby little room. I didn’t even have a chance to shave. The artillery fire made the air in the room constantly thick with floating dust.
I worked harder on that Attack Trench than I ever had on anything, pushing my being to its very limit. Believe me when I say the brain is the most tiring muscle to use. Never, ever, not before then or since, have good old Zuvi’s talents been tested so hard. I felt like an architect stubbornly trying to turn a decaying shack into something Rome would bless as a cathedral. My quill attacked the inkwell as I made use of my Bazoches faculties, and every line said to me I’d been born for such a task; all the hours under Vauban’s tutelage would be justified in these damned plans. “The optimum defense” had been Vauban’s question. And perhaps — time would tell — here was the answer: “The optimum defense consists of an Attack Trench.”. . Because, as you might have guessed, I poured all my effort into jeopardizing, obstructing, and generally making the task of the Bourbon army impossible; to shaft the lot of them, from the wheels of their cannons to the toes of their press-ganged soldiers. My design had to seem brilliant on paper and be a disaster once executed. Verboom was a swine but no fool. He’d pick up on bad faith and obvious defects. So I wrought a very lovely lie, false but seductive, featuring elements that were genuine but, underneath, doomed to fail. It had to be sabotage, while seeming to better whatever Dupuy was going to come up with. To better Dupuy! And with Jimmy’s scrutiny to contend with as well! The very thought made my head spin.
Whatever happened, a trench was going to reach Barcelona’s ramparts. They had more than enough men, whom their tyrant leader looked upon as nothing but cannon fodder. But a defective trench would delay them, possibly add a week or two to proceedings. And in such a time, this trifling universe of ours could turn fully on its axis. Who was to say? The king of one nation might die, or the queen of another; alliances might change; anything.
Verboom, who went from impatient to extremely impatient, kept coming into the room. “Done yet? Berwick’s not far away. Hurry!”
I dragged the table over to the window and the steep, defined shaft of sunlight. Thousands of dust motes floated around, reminding me of jellyfish in crosscurrents. Come the third morning, I felt like my tired, stinging eyes were on the cusp of melting.
Verboom came in, slamming the door behind him and giving me a murderous glance. He’d run out of patience.
“This might settle our account,” I said before he could speak.
“Some job you must have done for it to be worth a man’s life,” he said, flattening out the plan on the table. “Especially yours.”
He took a long time looking over the plans, and was expressionless throughout. He read the notes, went back to the map. The eternal inspection. I had no way of knowing what his little grunts and groans meant.
In the end, I couldn’t contain myself. “Hopeful about our future trench?”
He didn’t answer, as though I weren’t there. He peered closely at the map, running a finger over it. Without deigning to look at me, he said: “What do you think?” He finally looked up, facing me. “If I weren’t, you’d be dead already.”
We spent the whole of the following day together, refining the plans. I was worn out; he oozed energy. He had a rough and limitless sort of strength. And my enemy was no dimwit, I’ll give him that. During those twenty-four hours, his attention didn’t stray from the table for one moment. My God, I thought, doesn’t he need to piss, to sleep, does he never eat? A bit of rusk cake and a bottle of port, and I could imagine him traversing whole deserts.
He harried me with questions. “Too close,” he said at one point. “You’ve got the first parallel starting far too close to the city. The day the work starts, the troops will be at risk of being fired on and destroyed.”
“Do you want Berwick to back this? Then give him want he wants. The closer we start, the less time we’ll need to reach the walls. Berwick won’t be able to resist.”
“The three parallels, and the channels between them, they’re so wide,” he objected. “Why? Digging out that much earth means more effort than is needed, and that way you lose time.”
“The width of the trench walls needs to be proportional to that of the defenders’ walls,” I argued. “For the attack itself, we’ll need considerable numbers. Where are you hoping the shock troops will go? And how do you expect soldiers and sappers to circulate in such thin channels? The traffic of men and matériel will all be bumping into each other. In trying to save time, you’ll waste it.”
“You’ve also aimed the trench much farther to the left,” he said, “closer to the sea.”
“The land in that area, if you remember, abounds with dykes and small streams. They’ll be dry in the summer. The men digging will be able to use the riverbeds that run parallel to the walls. They’ll only have to work the trench a little deeper than the ones naturally there from the watercourses.”
I’d done a good job in one sense: An enemy is harder to kill at close quarters. That twenty-four hours sharing such a small space, and the sham solidarity — but solidarity after all — had given me a glimpse of the man. He had a habit of scratching his fleshy cheeks with his ring finger, when it’s so much more usual for people to use their forefinger. Verboom ceased to be my mortal enemy and turned into a middle-aged man with a distinguishing characteristic: He scratched his face with his ring finger. Our shared enterprise generated something akin to camaraderie. You don’t wish your fellow oarsman dead — at least not until you’ve reached the shore.
Is it possible to honor one’s enemy? I began to question everything. What if, after all, the evil was not in him but in me? There was no way for me to contradict his account of our hostilities. In reality, what ill had Verboom done me? He had been showing off in front of a lady one day when a muddy “gardener” had launched into him. Anyone in his place would have cursed me, as he had. As we went on with our calculations of barrow loads, and as I kept going with my diversions and approximations, drainage depths, cavalry numbers, angles of counter-escarpments, I worked out that my dislike for Verboom was but a manifestation of my love for Jeanne Vauban. Perhaps I hated him only because that was easier than owning up to the truth: I’d lost Jeanne, and I was solely responsible. This new perspective unsettled me.
Understand my situation. Torn from my home, confined but still using my intellect to fight, in secret and against everyone, including my own side, who by now might consider me a deserter. Jimmy about to arrive, a presence to oppose that of Don Antonio. And The Word, drifting around somewhere in that corrupt, dust-filled atmosphere. The disquiet I underwent in those days made my hate for Verboom falter.
No, it isn’t that, no. I said I’d be sincere, and I will.
I’ll tell you why we hated each other from the moment we set eyes on each other, and why I hated him until I killed him, and why, to this very day, I hate Joris Prosperus van Verboom.
Because! Some things simply are, one doesn’t choose them, full stop. And to hell with Verboom!
End of chapter, damn it all.
Or not? Oh, my blond walrus suggests that it might be good to tie it up. Ah, yes, she says I should recount the rest of what happened that evening. Now you see what’s going on? You’ve become this book’s engineer, and I’ve been reduced to a poor sapper.
Once we’d finished the job, we were both utterly mentally exhausted. Verboom sent for drink. Port was his passion, and it was what relieved him. A bottle of that strong wine, he said, cost fortunes. Since the war had begun, Portugal had traded only with England, meaning his reserves had steadily diminished. And in spite of that, he shared it with me. Perhaps, as I say, after our shared endeavor, it was harder for him to show me bad manners that evening than he’d find it to have me killed the next morning.