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 doubt 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.