Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

We spent the whole of the following day together, refining the plans. I was worn out; he oozed energy. He had a rough and limitless sort of strength. And my enemy was no dimwit, I’ll give him that. During those twenty-four hours, his attention didn’t stray from the table for one moment. My God, I thought, doesn’t he need to piss, to sleep, does he never eat? A bit of rusk cake and a bottle of port, and I could imagine him traversing whole deserts.

He harried me with questions. “Too close,” he said at one point. “You’ve got the first parallel starting far too close to the city. The day the work starts, the troops will be at risk of being fired on and destroyed.”

“Do you want Berwick to back this? Then give him want he wants. The closer we start, the less time we’ll need to reach the walls. Berwick won’t be able to resist.”

“The three parallels, and the channels between them, they’re so wide,” he objected. “Why? Digging out that much earth means more effort than is needed, and that way you lose time.”

“The width of the trench walls needs to be proportional to that of the defenders’ walls,” I argued. “For the attack itself, we’ll need considerable numbers. Where are you hoping the shock troops will go? And how do you expect soldiers and sappers to circulate in such thin channels? The traffic of men and matériel will all be bumping into each other. In trying to save time, you’ll waste it.”

“You’ve also aimed the trench much farther to the left,” he said, “closer to the sea.”

“The land in that area, if you remember, abounds with dykes and small streams. They’ll be dry in the summer. The men digging will be able to use the riverbeds that run parallel to the walls. They’ll only have to work the trench a little deeper than the ones naturally there from the watercourses.”

I’d done a good job in one sense: An enemy is harder to kill at close quarters. That twenty-four hours sharing such a small space, and the sham solidarity — but solidarity after all — had given me a glimpse of the man. He had a habit of scratching his fleshy cheeks with his ring finger, when it’s so much more usual for people to use their forefinger. Verboom ceased to be my mortal enemy and turned into a middle-aged man with a distinguishing characteristic: He scratched his face with his ring finger. Our shared enterprise generated something akin to camaraderie. You don’t wish your fellow oarsman dead — at least not until you’ve reached the shore.

Is it possible to honor one’s enemy? I began to question everything. What if, after all, the evil was not in him but in me? There was no way for me to contradict his account of our hostilities. In reality, what ill had Verboom done me? He had been showing off in front of a lady one day when a muddy “gardener” had launched into him. Anyone in his place would have cursed me, as he had. As we went on with our calculations of barrow loads, and as I kept going with my diversions and approximations, drainage depths, cavalry numbers, angles of counter-escarpments, I worked out that my dislike for Verboom was but a manifestation of my love for Jeanne Vauban. Perhaps I hated him only because that was easier than owning up to the truth: I’d lost Jeanne, and I was solely responsible. This new perspective unsettled me.

Understand my situation. Torn from my home, confined but still using my intellect to fight, in secret and against everyone, including my own side, who by now might consider me a deserter. Jimmy about to arrive, a presence to oppose that of Don Antonio. And The Word, drifting around somewhere in that corrupt, dust-filled atmosphere. The disquiet I underwent in those days made my hate for Verboom falter.

No, it isn’t that, no. I said I’d be sincere, and I will.

I’ll tell you why we hated each other from the moment we set eyes on each other, and why I hated him until I killed him, and why, to this very day, I hate Joris Prosperus van Verboom.

Because! Some things simply are, one doesn’t choose them, full stop. And to hell with Verboom!

End of chapter, damn it all.

Or not? Oh, my blond walrus suggests that it might be good to tie it up. Ah, yes, she says I should recount the rest of what happened that evening. Now you see what’s going on? You’ve become this book’s engineer, and I’ve been reduced to a poor sapper.

Once we’d finished the job, we were both utterly mentally exhausted. Verboom sent for drink. Port was his passion, and it was what relieved him. A bottle of that strong wine, he said, cost fortunes. Since the war had begun, Portugal had traded only with England, meaning his reserves had steadily diminished. And in spite of that, he shared it with me. Perhaps, as I say, after our shared endeavor, it was harder for him to show me bad manners that evening than he’d find it to have me killed the next morning.

As with all men when they drink (apart from Jimmy), our talk turned to women. Well, Verboom’s talk; I said nothing about how much I missed Amelis. During the time Verboom had been confined in Barcelona, the Red Pelts even let him receive visits from high-class courtesans.

“Well, just the one,” he said, as though it were nothing. “A harlot in pay of their magistrates.”

“Ha!” I said. “Just one woman to keep you company! Such an eminent hostage, and subjected to the torment of monotony? Doubtless they wanted to make it like being married for you.”

We were drunk enough by this point for him not to pick up on my sarcasm.

“Oh, but she knew all the tricks, that one. The first thing I plan to do when we enter the city is to have her found. A dark-haired beauty, a bit too thin. I like them with a bit more flesh on. My, could she wiggle those hips, though, and her tongue was a miracle worker.”

“Dark hair?”

“Yes, very dark, her hair, but not her skin,” he clarified, rapping the table with his knuckles. “And a body harder than oak. Although, the little slut, she was also stingy as can be.” He laughed. “She always came wearing the same dress, a violet one. No jewelry, never any new attire whatsoever. Oh, but do you want to know what the most unusual thing about her was?” As he spoke, he glanced around in the manner of a man reminiscing. The port had gone to his head, and he hadn’t noticed me looking at him like an animal. “For a woman, she had quite a brain on her. When I was at my lowest points, it was her, her! who came up with the way out of my hardships. ‘Joris, darling,’ she said, ‘if you want to get out of here, propose an exchange. Suggest they swap you for another big fish, someone at your level. Like that general, say, Villarroel, the one the Bourbons have captured. The only reason it hasn’t happened is because no one’s had the idea. Him to Barcelona, you to Madrid. Everyone happy.’ ” Verboom shook his big head in admiration, like a dog shaking water from its fur. “I just hadn’t imagined it would be so easy. I made exactly that suggestion. And here I am.”

How can I possibly begin to describe the pain? It was more than I could bear. The way he’d recounted the intimacy of her “Joris, darling. . ” We were drinking from clay cups. I didn’t realize I was crushing mine in my hand. Suddenly, it shattered into pieces, making a noise like a cracked nut.

This brought Verboom out of his drunken stupor. Looking at me, he saw it in my face. At which his lit up. “No,” he said, “it can’t be.”

I’m ninety-eight years old. And I could live to a thousand and ninety-eight, and still the way he laughed in that moment would resound in my ears as though it were yesterday.

Have any of you ever been dead? I have, several times. And such a benign state it is, such a pleasure to be in, that I can well understand why no one comes back from there. Death only kills desires and obligations. And without desires or obligations, why come back to the trifling circumference of this universe of ours?