“And how do you know they won’t attack Mataró? The pro-Austrians, the Bourbons, the Miquelets. And if, somehow or other, pro-Austrians do win the war, how will we come back to Barcelona then? Every finger will point at us and call us traitors.” Her gaze still fixed on the skylight, Amelis went on: “I told you I used to live by following armies on the march. I lied. It’s the armies who have always followed me. I lost my virginity to a French soldier when I was thirteen. I bled for eight days. On the ninth, there was a Spanish captain. The ones who came afterward, I don’t remember too well, I don’t want to. A lot of Miquelets. At least they would give me something to eat after doing it. After that, I just wandered.” She looked around her. “I’ve never had a home.”
For the first time since I’d come into the room, she looked at me, very sad. “Let’s go, then, Martí. But just tell me: Where? Where?”
I couldn’t bear that she agreed with me: Whenever she did, it disarmed me. As for me, the question I was asking myself was a different one. What right did a king have to change my life? Anyway, what did I really care about in this insignificant life, this paltry crumb of le Mystère?
The thing I most loved in the world was the sight of Amelis getting out of bed every morning, naked, squatting down over the washbasin to clean herself. Her black hair fell as far as her nipples. She always parted her knees wide. And she used a lot of water, perhaps because the place between her legs was the refuge for a thick black bush. From bed I would watch her, and we’d exchange a smile. Despite all my woes and all my impudence, nobody had the right to interrupt that sequence of everyday actions that allowed me to recognize happiness. Nobody.
A sigh. I raised four fingers till the tips touched the glass of the skylight. What would Ten Points have said? “Once you have grazed this sky with your fingers, you will never want to pull your hands back again.” There are moments when life positions us in just the right place where morality and necessity converge. Why would anyone decide to tackle a fight that would be desperate and fatal? For eternal glory? For the perpetual comfort of the human race? No, my friend, not that. Le Mystère has already told me.
People allow themselves to be killed at Thermopylae for an apartment with a skylight.
Having served under Don Antonio, I didn’t find it hard to secure an audience with him. Because, unbelievable though it may sound, the Red Pelts had chosen him as commander in chief of our forces. An unexpected decision. There were two other candidates from older families who were, thank God, rejected. They were Catalans, they had no shortage of military experience, and naturally, their titles in the nobility surpassed Don Antonio’s — he was, as we know, a Castilian national, born to our sworn enemies. Why, then, did they choose Villarroel? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps, out-and-out defeatists that they were, the Red Pelts were not all that optimistic and wanted to avoid one of their own being responsible for the disgrace of the inevitable disaster. Or perhaps the reason was simply that he was the best of the best, and having the option to choose such a competent general, even they could not deny him the position.
In truth, I approached his office with a mixture of contradictory feelings. My dear vile Waltraud asks me how it’s possible that I had never paid him a visit, given that he had been free for a year. The answer is very simple: because my joy at his return was combined with my shame at having abandoned him right before his capture.
He offered me a seat and was polite to me, too polite. In Don Antonio, this was not a good sign. Why? Well, because he was never, not ever, agreeable to those under his command.
“I am most grateful for your offer,” he said at last. “But I am going to turn it down.”
I stopped, frozen. Had we not shared the 1710 Retreat? Had I not proved my worth as an engineer? Within Barcelona’s walls, there were few qualified engineers. Did he not think me competent, as he had three years earlier, and then out in the open?
“Of course I do. Despite your youth, as an engineer, you have mastered techniques that are unprecedented and always effective.”
“But?”
He thought for a moment before answering in that booming voice of his: “I’m turning you down because you don’t have what you need to have.”
I wanted to throw some punches, to take it out on the walls. Naturally, I asked what he was referring to.
“Our last conversation, in Illueca,” he said. “I offered you the chance to leave, and you left.”
“That’s right, Don Antonio,” I replied, offended. “But it was you, as I recall, who offered me the chance to run away.”
“Indeed. And so you fled with no dishonor. But that’s just it. If you had stayed, your captivity would have been glorious.”
I saw red. “Oh, for the love of God, Don Antonio! What use would it have been if they’d captured me? I still think it was a mistake for you to allow yourself to be taken prisoner, thereby depriving the army of your skills as a commander.”
He smiled. “Come now, Zuviría, be honest with yourself. Your flight wasn’t motivated by rationality but selfishness. You weren’t driven by your love for life but your fear of death.”
“They were just a little band of cripples!” I protested. “And do you want to know something sad, Don Antonio? When I got back to Barcelona I went for help. Well, nobody wanted to listen to me, no one in the army even remembered the wagons that you and I had been escorting. The worst thing of all is that they might have been right: Four wagons of invalids were not going to win the war.”
“You see,” he interrupted me. “You served under my command, but you understood nothing, nothing at all.”
I was so hurt that I didn’t say a word. I got up and walked toward the door.
Looking back now, from so many years later, I think Don Antonio had set up the whole scene. Because when I already had my hand on the doorknob, he said: “One word. If you’d said just one word in Illueca, I would consider you an engineer.”
I stopped. One word. Perhaps on some binge, drunk on cheap booze, I had confessed my tragedy to Don Antonio. One word! In any case, that phrase set my insides on fire. I turned — furious — and banged my fists down on his oak table.
“Everyone in this city has gone mad!” I cried. “Everyone! Every person from the council down to the last beggar is supporting a defense that is idiotic! I’ve fought against the opinions of my family, of my friends, of my neighbors. And now that they’ve finally persuaded me to take part in this preposterous defense, here you are — you of all people — refusing to enlist me. No! You have no right to do this! This is my city, it’s my home, and you are going to let me into your fucking army whether you like it or not!”
He allowed me to vent for a while, and when I was out of breath from all those words, he said: “That’s already an improvement. At least it’s some progress.” After a pause, he added: “I told you in Illueca, son. The war is not yet over, and nor are your tribulations.”
That night, at home, we had a goodbye dinner to bid farewell to peace. At least to the fake peace the city had been living through over the past few years. When we reached dessert, I called for a minute of everyone’s attention.
“After some tough negotiating with Don Antonio, he has bestowed the rank of lieutenant colonel upon me. Did you hear that? You’re talking to a lieutenant colonel, so from now on, I’ll expect you to address me with appropriate respect! The youngest lieutenant colonel in the army! And that’s not all. My pay will increase by ten percent, because in addition, he has hired me as his own private aide-de-camp.” I couldn’t help a smile of triumph. “What do you think?”