“It serves you right that your side lost,” I said to Peret as we headed home. “Aren’t you ashamed of having sold your opinion?”
“No, lad, not at all,” he replied. “The Red Pelts paid me to join the claque in favor of submission, but they were foolish enough to pay up in advance.”
“In any case, they’re currently at two — zero,” I snorted as we made our way across a packed Plaza de Sant Jaume. “Priest and nobility, in favor of submitting. Tomorrow the people’s branch will follow the ruling from the nobles. It’s over.”
I have never been so wrong. We were still in the square when a spokesman came out onto the balcony and did indeed inform the crowd that the noble branch had voted for submission. It was as though a frozen downpour had fallen. No one objected. Of those thousand throats, not one rose up in an angry shout. But instead of going home, they continued to camp out where they were, there in the Plaza Sant Jaume!
In my opinion, that was the real turning point. Not an act of rebellion but a deaf noncompliance. The people down there were so disconcerted by what they had heard, just as the nobles up on the balcony were disconcerted by that mass stillness and silence. What could they do? They couldn’t expel all those people. Nobody would dare, nor did they have enough troops to try. Besides, an act of violence like that could lead to just the kinds of disturbance that the Red Pelts were trying so hard to avoid.
That whole night nobody moved from the packed square. The following day, the people’s branch of the parliament assembled. The atmosphere out on the street, and Ferrer’s speech, had so fired them up that their vote went in favor of resistance, and by an overwhelming majority. This time the Plaza Sant Jaume did react, with an explosion of joy: “Publish the Crida! Publish it!”
There was so much shouting, and it was so passionate, that they were no longer merely expressing a desire. It was a threat and an order; fail to comply and anything could happen. And more of the noblemen changed their votes! But it didn’t end there. The most intransigent of the Red Pelts placed a thousand legal obstacles in the way. They alleged that the branch of aristocrats had expressed the change in their intentions out in the corridor, not in a session that had been convened legally, and as such, it was not a binding decision. Their strategy, as it’s not hard to deduce, consisted in drawing out proceedings for so long that the people outside grew tired and went home. They did not succeed. Two days and nights had gone by and the Plaza de Sant Jaume was as full as ever, or fuller. Generosity always has this bitter side to it; those most willing to give everything are those with the least to gain by a victory and the most to lose from a defeat. Over the course of those two days, the debates ran aground.
On July 9, Peret wanted to go back to the Chamber of Sant Jordi.
“Again?” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe the pro-submission party has been so foolish as to pay out again to people who betrayed them at the last minute.”
“No, lad, no — you see, I gave such a convincing performance the other day that now those on the side of resistance have offered me a bit of money to yell even louder.”
“But the pro-submission party knows you; they’ll stop you from getting in!”
“No, they won’t, because I’ve informed the submitters about the offer from the resisters, and they promised me twice as much if we join the claque in favor of peace. I shall vote for submission. Long live peace! Want to come?”
When we went in, we found the Chamber of Sant Jordi a madhouse. The blessed altar of Catalan parliamentarianism transformed into a grocer’s store! As they were sitting in rows in front of one another, the yielders and the resisters were protesting, waving their hands before them like the tentacles of an octopus. Those in favor of fighting were shouting from their seats: “The constitutions and our freedom! Let’s draw up the Crida!”
“Peace and good sense!” came the reply from the other side.
Ha! As a spectator, I was getting irritated at the Red Pelts and their oafish sycophants. Hadn’t the vote gone for resistance despite all their schemings? Well then, if that was the freely expressed will of the people, the Crida would have to be drawn up. (As far as I was concerned, this would mean dashing out of the city as fast as I could go. No one needed to tell me, of all people, what a siege of such a big stronghold would mean!)
“Seny!” yelled those who favored submission. “Have you lost it? Seny!”
I should explain this seny business, the seny they were invoking. Isn’t that so, my dear vile Waltraud?
The Catalans are the world experts in useless spiritual inventions. You might describe seny as an attitude of calm, reasonableness, peacefulness. In theory, when faced with a serious problem, a man who is assenyat should react with a restraint altogether opposed to the chivalrous passion of the Castilians. The problem was, there was an army bearing down on us, and it was led by Castilian hidalgos. To their warrior mentality, seny was incomprehensible, a despicable trait of Jews and hucksters who sought to resolve their differences with words because they lacked the bravery to do it with swords.
As I said, the Chamber of Sant Jordi was overtaken by a cacophony of roaring. The Red Pelts had kept two coups de théâtre for that final day. They took the first one out of the grave.
An old nobleman, nearly blind, tottered into the chamber, one hand on a stick and the other leaning on the arm of his great-grandson. Did I say old? Ancient! He must have gotten up from bed at least four times a night to pass water; and just think, I get up three times myself.
His name was Carles de Fivaller. As with those old senators from the Roman republic, his moral potency came not so much from any position as from his experience and the respect he had earned over a long life of public service. Fivaller had an honorary seat in the chamber. Being such a wreck, he had not been present in any of the debates. But the Red Pelts had gone to fetch him out of bed, which he never left, to come in and advocate on behalf of seny.
There was something much more than a crooked old man entering the chamber. With Fivaller came Catalan parliamentarianism itself. Rather than taking his seat, Fivaller stopped in the exact center of the Chamber of Sant Jordi. Everybody knew his words would have a tremendous impact. Both sides stopped, reverent.
“My sons. The ruins of my age prevent me from being of use to my country,” said Fivaller, looking around in the way the blind do, at everyone and no one, his chin up. “Which is why I beg, I implore, this august chamber to grant one final wish, which I hope will be granted me.”
He had to stop to get his voice back. There was such silence that even the shameless Zuvi avoided swallowing so as not to make a sound.
Fivaller brought a trembling hand to his face to wipe away a tear and finally said: “Now that my hands can no longer bear the weight of a rifle, I ask you, please, in this fight we are forced into, to use my body to take the place of a fajina in the battle.”
Oh, the cry that went up then! Unexpected joys are the noisiest kind of all. Even some of the Red Pelts were moved, giving in. Perhaps Fivaller wasn’t quite so senile after all. Or so blind or so deaf. As he had crossed the Plaza de Sant Jaume, the square filled to bursting, he must have understood what was going on.