Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

From time to time, our sentries would spy a group of enemy foragers in no-man’s-land. The alarm would be raised across the bastion tops and our cannons trained on the foragers. From the cordon, the Bourbons would use their longer-range artillery to provide cover, and an artillery exchange would commence.

I thought it the most ridiculous waste of ammunition. At that distance, our cannon fire almost never reached the besiegers’ positions, and vice versa. But so things go in war. Our chief gunner, a man named Costa, asked me to authorize returning fire. We were still well stocked with gunpowder, and his Mallorcans could use the chance to train the city gunners.

“Great that you’re back in one piece!” said Castellví, shouting to make himself heard over the detonations.

“Right, yes,” I said, otherwise occupied and as good as ignoring him. “Thanks.”

“And you look well. A little thinner, yes.”

“Haven’t you got a company of men to be looking out for?”

“No, not today. Today’s a rest day for us. I’m going around visiting friends.”

There I was, giving orders to the munitions carriers, verifying hits and misses, and keeping a close check on how much gunpowder was being used. And here was Castellví asking after my health.

Most of the enemy’s shots fell short. One or two would reach the walls, but so tired by that point that they’d bounce off the walls, to the rumbling, scraping sound of stones. Crrrack! The cannonballs would roll slowly back down the rampart walls, wreathed in smoke. Each army used the same caliber, which meant each could also use the other’s; the same cannonballs would end up going back and forth time after time. Some became airborne letters. Using chicken blood or carbon, the Bourbons would write, for instance, “Up yours, rebels.” To which our men would reply, on a different part of the cannonball: “Stick this up your Bourbon behinds.” That sort of thing, with pictures of cocks, anuses, and mouths to match.

“And you must be happy your little friend’s back, too!” persevered Castellví.

“Friend? What friend do you mean?”

“What friend do you think I mean? Ballester! Along with his men!”

“No!” I cried. “There must be some mistake! They stayed in Alella! We’ll never see them around these parts again!”

“It’s true, I tell you! They crossed the cordon in the night! On horseback, just before dawn, a few hours ago! They’re here in the city!”

“You’re wrong, I say! It can’t be him! Ballester will never forgive us for leaving them the way we did!”

The Mallorcans were shouting out orders, and what with their devilish accents, the noise of the cannons, and the commotion of the carriers, it was almost impossible to hear. We’d have lost our voices soon enough. Where were the Vaubanians to teach the Valencians sign language?

“It was Ballester!” Castellví insisted exasperatingly. “This war must be recounted afterward, down to the very last detail! And I am determined to do that!”

“Fine! Recount the war, off you go. I’m rather busy just now waging that war!” Before he left, I added: “But you’re wrong! Ballester hates us! What on earth could move him to risk his hide getting back into Barcelona?”

I stopped midsentence. Very often it’s the words themselves that clarify thought, and not the other way around.

“What’s wrong?” said Castellví. “You’ve gone completely white! Cannonballs frighten you?”

“Stand in for me, would you?” I shouted at the top of my voice. “I’ll owe you one!”

“But I’m infantry!” he protested. “I haven’t the first clue—”

And now I’m going to leave you to guess the reason for my haste and where I was headed. My dear vile Waltraud knows. But how clever you are, my lovely little buffalo!

There could be only one motive for Ballester to come back: to murder Berenguer. According to his Miquelet logic, the aberration at Alella wasn’t down to politics but to real individuals, and as such, the only answer could be to slit real throats.

I ran all the way to Berenguer’s home and arrived panting and just in time. Ballester and his men were coming around the corner of a thin street alongside the residence, and they had knives in their belts and sacks covering their heads. I stood between them and Berenguer’s home — the side street so thin, my body was enough to block the way.

“You don’t salute a superior?” I said to Ballester.

“Out of my way.”

Well, he did always make a virtue of concision.

“Think about what will happen if you knock down this door and go and kill Berenguer,” I said. “Think. He’ll be dead, and you’ll be hanged. The deputy of the military estate, and one of the city’s own heroes, killed by our own side. Just think of what it would do to morale — and how that plays into the enemy’s hands. They’ll say we’re devouring ourselves likes rats in a sack.”

Ballester tore his hood off in disgust. “Think I want to kill Berenguer? Do you really think that? No, I didn’t want to come back, I’m not one for risking life and limb to squash a cockroach.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of his men behind him. “But they did! I set out with nine men and came back with six. Want them just to forget? Fine, you tell them so!”

Men with blunt characters don’t know how to ask for help; pride prevents them. But, weighing Ballester’s words, I could see he was asking me to intercede.

I reminded them of all the sleepless nights, the marches and the skirmishes I’d been alongside them on, which was most of them. I made light of the day I enjoined them to leave Barcelona. A lot had happened since.

“Berenguer is a very old man,” I said. “He hasn’t got long left to live. To make that life slightly shorter, the price is your lives, plus putting the city in danger. Is that really what you want?”

I myself don’t know how I managed to get them to accompany me to a tavern. We found one of the few still open in the city. The alcohol cheered them up considerably, as though they’d never really wanted to kill. They laughed, sang songs, and drank until passing out — all except Ballester and me. From far ends of the table, we exchanged glances, sharing something beyond sadness or bitterness.

“You still haven’t suffered enough,” Don Antonio had said to me. And I swear I had set out on the expedition prepared to face whatever came, in order to strip away my soul’s resentment. But what I didn’t know was that pain always comes for us when least we expect it. I believed the expedition would be a chance to put my learning into action, and what really happened was that my ideas about the world came tumbling down. The worst thing was, in spite of that, in spite of the downheartedness that came with seeing that the rules governing us are feigning and false, I was no nearer to learning The Word. “You still haven’t suffered enough.” In that tavern I saw a look different from those on all the other fearful faces I’d seen. For if all the misfortunes, all the terrible sights during the expedition, hadn’t changed me sufficiently, what was I going to have to sacrifice in order to see my light?

That night, through jug after jug of wine, conversing silently with Ballester, I didn’t yet know the truly terrible, and at the same time unforeseen, thing: that the sky was just about to come crashing down on our heads.

Now, all these years later, I look back on Christmas 1713 with more affection than it merits. Being on duty up on the ramparts was freezing work. Below us, the icebound palisade stakes, and beyond them, the enemy cordon. Wind, rain, and, up above, a leaden sky, grayer than a mule’s belly. But when we were on guard on the bastions, high on their prowlike edges, there was always one thing we could do to lift our spirits, and that was to look back across the city we were defending.