Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Though at exorbitant prices, the Barcelonans had still been able to buy food until that moment. To be clear, a Catalan peso was divided into twenty sueldos, and a typical worker’s daily wage was two sueldos. Since January 1714, one liter of wine had cost eight sueldos, and the same amount of liquor, fifteen. A couple of hen eggs (people kept coops on their disintegrating balconies), three sueldos. All meat, from the moment the siege began, had been prohibitively expensive: A couple of hens would set you back two pesos; half a pound of meat, one Catalan peso. A Catalan peso would get you ten pounds of barley or fifteen of corn. To bake a loaf of bread had become a serious challenge.

The first goods to disappear during a siege would be combustibles: firewood and coal. The winter of 1713–1714 had been a cold one, and the reserves had been depleted. People had resorted to burning furniture. As if that weren’t enough, rampart defenses also required wood, just as much as they did stone. Things got so dire that we had to dismantle the bridges, or recs , that crossed the city canals. Two hundred and five trees once lined the Ramblas, and even they were victim to the voracious efforts of the engineers. The dear Ramblas, that lovely avenue: new trees planted along it after every siege, only to be felled again at the beginning of the next. While I’d been in the Bourbon encampment, the famine had spread. I came back into the city at the beginning of August, when the blockade was at its peak, and at that point even paying astronomical prices wouldn’t get you any of the now nonexistent stuffs. What little there was got apportioned to those fighting — so what did the people eat?

In the summer of 1714, the only thing available was a kind of torta baked with the husks of beans. The dregs from the storehouse floors, so putrid and foul-smelling that it’s hard to believe we managed to swallow that soggy, fetid wheat paste. In Jimmy’s company, I’d eaten fillet steaks three times a day. The change of diet was so abrupt that it took me three days to resign myself to it — though, in the end, there being no other option, I did exactly that. The stomach is master to all. Francesc Castellví, our Valencian captain, recounted an experiment he’d carried out using a crust of this husk torta : He broke off a little and tried feeding it to one of the few dogs left in the city, only for the dog to run away in disgust.

My thoughts were all of Amelis and Anfán once I entered the city. They’d felt so far away, and it had seemed so unlikely I’d ever see them again, that it had felt like achieving the impossible when I managed to think of anything else. And now, knowing they were close by, I was overcome by the need to take them in my arms. Such are the emotions surrounding a reunion: The closer our loved ones become, the more we fear we’re going to lose them.

I found them in the rearguard immediately inside the ramparts, helping with the defense works. Instead of running and embracing them, I watched them from the corner for a few moments. In such abject conditions, you’re only too aware of how brief and scarce the good moments are, and it tends to make you content with far less. We were in the midst of the century’s most devastating war; we were on the receiving end of it, trapped inside a condemned city. But we were still alive. Our very existence defied the powers that were prevailing, and simply seeing Amelis and Anfán again, I almost broke down and wept.

I was so absorbed in the two of them that it took me a while to comprehend the nature of their task. There were brigades attaching heavy chains to the support beams of buildings, and when the order was given, lines of men and women heaved on these. The houses came crashing down, a great peal of dislodged stone and clouds of masonry. And I saw one of the wrecked houses was ours! I finally went over to them. The recompense was Amelis’s face when she saw me — I’d never seen her so happy.

Certain embraces mark out stages in our lives. I’d returned, I was with them again, and as we clasped each other, it was like sealing a bond that even two kings had not been able to break asunder. I could also feel how thin she’d become, her ribs jutting into my fingers.

“For the love of God,” I said, “you’re pulling out the rubble of our own home.”

“Well, there wasn’t much left of it anyway,” said Peret, who was with them. “We were hit by two cannonballs not long after you were captured.”

They were working, as it turned out, on building a “cutting.” A draconian measure, I learned, that had been imposed by the government.

When the walls of a sieged city suffer irreparable breaches, there’s one emergency course of action: the cutting. Its name comes from what it’s intended to do — cut the advance of the besieging army after they’ve taken control of the ramparts. The idea being to create a zigzag parapet just inside and running parallel with the ramparts. It wants to be as tall as possible, with a ditch dug along it to effectively increase that height. Just as the invaders think they’re through, there’s one more obstacle for them to get over.

At Bazoches, cuttings were given short shrift. Why? Because they’re useless. In all my many days, I’ve yet to see one fend off any large-scale assault. If Herculean bastions hadn’t done the job, why on earth would a puny barricade like that? Before my capture, I’d argued vehemently against the project. And my reasons were many.

First: the adverse effect of a cutting on morale. Knowing there’s one more place where they might shelter, the troops manning the rampart have a tendency to submit rather than fight to the death. Second: This second line of defense is less effective, and the invaders, emboldened by having vaulted the first hurdle, will overrun it easily. Third: The way Barcelona was set out meant that our cutting was situated on a plain directly beneath the bastions. The victorious Bourbons would be firing down on us from above, with all the advantages that signifies. Fourth and most important: This terrain also had lots of buildings in it, when what was needed was a clear shot; Barcelona was such a dense urban agglomeration that the buildings virtually hugged the inside of the rampart walls. Whole streets would have to be flattened. And the inhabitants would hardly be thrilled at the government demolishing their homes.

Though as it turned out, at least regarding the last point, I was mistaken. The people living in the houses weren’t opposed to the demolitions; they supported them, in the name of saving the city. They were all there, half-starved men and women helping to pull down the roofs beneath which they’d always lived. I couldn’t make sense of it. In order to defend their homes, the people of Barcelona were prepared to destroy them.

My Bazoches eyes detected something half buried in the ruins of our building. I went over. It was Amelis’s carillon à musique . I cradled it like a baby, cleaning off the dirt and muck. It was broken, unsurprisingly — I opened it, but no music came out. I later learned that Peret, who feared thieves more than going hungry, had taken it back to the house when Amelis wasn’t looking, thinking that the bolts on our door would be a better protection than the canvas walls at the beach. He seemed to have missed the fact that cannonballs can do slightly more harm than any robber. I took the music box back to Amelis. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll find someone to fix it.”

I felt somewhat guilty. I’d been taught how to build or repair monumental walls but was helpless in the face of a small box that played music when opened. You could never tell if Amelis was being serious when it came to the box, because what she said was: “No matter.”