I finally understood the usefulness of all those hours in the Spherical Room. It was akin to living inside it, to serve under a commander like Don Antonio; oversights were not tolerated. When would the fortification works be complete on this part of the ramparts? Why that blunt angle on the Saint Père bastion? What’s that gap in the stockades doing there? How many bricks do we have in our provisions? My brain, along with every one of my muscles, was pushed to its limits. And this was even though the siege remained nothing but a series of small skirmishes.
Don Antonio would usually have a cohort of officers and assistants around him. But one chilly morning, he and I bumped into each other, just the two of us, up on the ramparts. Wrapped in a bedewed cape, looking out through a telescope, he resembled one more rock in our defenses.
“Don Antonio,” I said, breaking in on what he was doing. “Something’s been troubling me.” I took the fact that he didn’t shout at me as permission to speak. “You criticized me for not having what it takes,” I went on. “And yet you let me serve you.”
“Fiyé,” he said, still peering out through the telescope. “You had an education with the greatest engineer of our age, and I cannot do without such knowledge.”
“But I didn’t complete my studies. I didn’t pass the test.” I rolled up my sleeve. “See these tattoos. They tell my story — the fifth one, that I’m an imposter. There’s something I’m missing, Don Antonio, but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps you’re the person to tell me.”
Villarroel didn’t react. He continued scanning the enemy positions and said: “Let me ask you a question, my boy. If the entire Bourbon army were bearing down on your house, would you hold the last redoubt to the bitter end? Answer.”
“I would, sir,” I said, and not in the least enthusiastic tone of my life.
Notwithstanding, he replied: “We generals spend our whole lives hearing people saying ‘Yes, sir!’ And do you know what? The words I’ve just heard don’t fill me with great confidence.”
I said nothing. He lowered the telescope.
“Zuviría. Your learning is ample. In France, they taught you everything you need to know. What’s holding you back, what’s keeping you from what you’re looking for, is something else. A tremendously simple thing, in reality.”
Then a strange phenomenon took place. Something came over Don Antonio’s gaze, a sort of leniency or mildness, a look of compassion. Until that day I had seen such a look in the eyes of only two people, only two: Amelis and Ballester. And he said to me: “You haven’t suffered enough.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for that something to quit his body, and when he spoke again, he was the great general once more. “I’m going to notify the general staff of something tomorrow, the start of a crucial, potentially decisive maneuver. All our hope, more or less, lies in this play. And you’re going to participate in operations. Perhaps you’ll be able to resolve the doubt that lingers in your soul. That is,” he said grimly, “if you survive.”
I was about to take my leave when he caught sight of my bare belt. “One other thing,” he said. “An officer without a sword isn’t an officer. Find yourself one.”
The quartermaster was so tight, he wanted me to pay six pesos for a sword. I flat refused. That same night, while Peret was sleeping, I stole his. It had so many chips and nicks in it, it was more like a saw than a sword, which didn’t bother me, as it would be sheathed most of the time. Peret was deeply upset and badgered me all the way through the siege to give it back. I pretended not to hear. “Six pesos!” I said.
Don Antonio’s maneuver consisted of sending out some ships, well stocked and carrying a little more than a thousand men and companion cavalry, and disembarking behind the enemy’s rearguard. Their mission would then be to raise recruits throughout the land and, when the numbers were sufficient, to come in and attack the far side of the Bourbon cordon. This, coordinated with a charge by the Coronela, would pincer Pópuli.
Bazoches had taught me about all the possible ways out for a garrison under siege, and this must have been among the most audacious, imaginative, and well planned I’d come across. Or it would have been, if there did not exist on this earth a race of pernicious, gluttonous dilettantes known as the Red Pelts!
Waltraud beseeches me to calm down, to carry on, but I don’t want to calm down, I don’t have the slightest interest in calming down. For the French and Spanish — they had to be killed mercilessly — they were the enemy. But the Red Pelts, those lordlings with their powdered cheeks, turned everything we were fighting for into an empty husk. Deep down, they didn’t believe in Catalan liberties, or in our constitutions. In the end, they were faced with an enemy who sought to exterminate their people, something so unprecedented and ferocious that they did carry on fighting, but only because there was no choice. Out of earshot, their motto was: “Chaos before slavery.” I’ll describe everything that happened! How they hindered General Villarroel, how they managed to make defeat out of our victories. For until now, only the victor’s version has been told, or that of the complicit Catalan upper class: empty lies, the lot. And as everyone knows, an empty cup makes more noise than a full one.
Schnapps, bring me more schnapps. May the harshness of it strip our throats but never quench our hearts! Chin up, Martí!
Back to the story. Where were we? Ah, yes. The expedition.
The government wanted it led by the deputy of the military estate, the very noble, and also profoundly Pelt-y, Antoni Berenguer. Not the ideal man for such a complex and risky venture: In spite of his title, he was a politician, not a soldier, and he was also very old. He was confined to a wheelchair, complete with a chamber pot attached underneath. His lower eyelids hung down like wet bloody tongues. Yes, credit where it’s due, his white eyebrows and beard, cut by one of the city’s finest barbers, did confer upon him an air of venerability.
Deputy Berenguer had a retinue of upstanding citizens to underline the solemnity of his post. They were nothing more than a crew of bootlickers, and very quickly, our name for them—“Berenguer’s oafs”—stuck. There was no point to them unless they were with the deputy; away from him, they were nothing but a herd dressed in silk.
I wasn’t sure about Berenguer from the start. True, as deputy of the military estate, he was the institutional incarnation of the spirit of the struggle. He, and only he, had the sacred right to bear the silver mace symbolizing the Catalans’ right to oppose any invader. This was a large silver truncheon with baroque inlay, affectionately referred to by the people as “The Club.” Any neighborhood the deputy passed through with this in hand, all the local inhabitants over the age of sixteen were obliged to drop what they were doing, to leave their lives behind, and to give everything in defense of their country. But, so my thinking went, was it really necessary to put this sanctimonious old fart aboard a ship? And that isn’t a metaphor, by the way; his guts really were in poor order.
As for Colonel Sebastià Dalmau, who was also part of the expedition, words cannot describe the talents of that giant of a man. Of all the anonymous heroes of this century, Dalmau was one of the greatest.
He descended from one of Barcelona’s grandest families. When the Allies withdrew from Catalonia, he immediately came in on the Generalitat’s side. In fact, he was one of the few in the upper classes who responded to the Crida. His whole fortune went to underwriting the Catalan War, every last peso. The Sebastià Regiment was financed entirely by his family; the soldiers’ wages, weapons, provisions, and uniforms all came out of his pocket. The infantry on the expedition was to be formed of this regiment, which consisted of non-nobles and non-guild members. Tavern and brothel dwellers, scum — the government trusted them less than they would a converted Jew. From my point of view as an engineer, I didn’t judge them on where they came from or their prestige but on their military effectiveness, and in that respect, they struck me as an altogether magnificent unit. The Red Pelts worked by a different logic and were relieved to see the back of Dalmau’s troop. (Why risk decent young men when the dregs were offering themselves up?)