Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Ballester understood what was happening and responded in typical fashion: He inserted his pistol into the opening at the end of the enemy line and pulled the trigger. We heard cries. Ballester’s bullet had doubtless hit the enemy sapper in the eye. Perhaps now my chicken-head movements will make sense. Indignation among the dead man’s colleagues, shouts, insults. I decided to skip the niceties: “Back, back!” I cried. “Get out, before they smoke us out!”

I by no means ordered the retreat for the sake of it. On top of my habitual cowardice, there was what I’d been taught at Bazoches.

When a brigade of miners locates the opponent’s gallery, it will proceed to drill a small trou , that is, a hole. Into this hole, a bolus of pine needles will be introduced — the size of a cannonball, smeared with pitch and on fire — and stuffed all the way through. Innocuous it might seem, but far from it. In such narrow spaces, smoke becomes a lethal weapon. In under a minute, all breathable air will have been consumed; the men will pass out and die from suffocation. And if the lack of air doesn’t kill them, the enemy will, breaking into the gallery as soon as the smoke has cleared and knifing the fallen bodies.

The French miners had far more expertise than the Miquelets in such matters; they’d be sure to drill a smoke hole far more quickly than we would. And as it says in the manual of good old Zuvi, if you cannot win a race, best to run in the opposite direction. And be quick about it!

We shuffled out of there like centipedes, reaching the ladder just in time. As soon as we were back above earth, the mine shaft began to vomit black smoke, like an underground chimney.

All I said to Ballester was: “How did you know it’s standard procedure to shoot your pistol along an enemy sounding line like that?”

“I didn’t.”

Feeling ever bleaker, I went and sat in the corner of the abandoned house, head in hands. The Miquelets, not understanding my despondency, tried to console me. I let out a bitter laugh. “You’ll soon get it,” I said.

Los Cucs soon showed up, and their captain asked me how it had gone.

“What?” he cried. “You’ve given away the whereabouts of one of our galleries? And they smoked you out?” He looked despairing. “Do you know what it took for us to make that tunnel? All that work, ruined in half an hour! How am I supposed to lead my men down into a gallery that the enemy has detected? We’ll have to block it up and start a whole new one! What kind of imbeciles has the government sent me?”

The final days down in the mine comprised unutterable horrors. Worst of all were the reproachful glances I got from the leader of Los Cucs (his name is still a blank!) when we went back down the shaft.

Above, ramparts that might succumb at any moment; below, a hidden deposit of gunpowder, tons of it, that might blow before we found it. One day when we were about to go underground again, I told Ballester’s men to wait: There were voices rising up out of the mine, distorted by how far underground they were, but clearly not belonging to Los Cucs . The Miquelets pointed their guns down into the shaft.

Everyone was silent. I placed my ear to the entrance of the shaft. Whispers in French and Catalan. The Bourbons had plenty of botifleros in their service, so it would make sense to use some of them in the mines.

The Miquelets’ fingers were on their triggers, guns encircling the shaft entrance. Then a head appeared, and it had fair and very knotty hair. He looked up at me and said in a happy voice: “Hello, jefe ! What are you doing here?”

Behind Anfán came Nan, and behind them several Cucs . I was speechless. Their leader explained. “The boy and the dwarf save us all kinds of work. They’re so small and agile, we can send them into the tiniest shafts and have them listen for enemies. You know them? Why are you looking at me like that?”

This sparked the final fight between Amelis and me. Dashing to the beach with long Zuvi strides, I found her in line at the camp mess.

The only free food provided by the government was a bland fish soup. The line was strictly regimented — the Red Pelts had posted a guard to see that no one got too much — a couple of ladlefuls was the maximum. Amelis ignored me totally. She was so exhausted that her eyes were violet-red, and all her attention was focused on the back of the person in front of her. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the line. Then she came to life, thrashing around desperately, trying to get clear of me. Her scrawny body felt light as a feather.

Amelis’s place in the line was taken immediately by the unscrupulous woman behind her. When Amelis saw she’d lost her place, her legs gave way. She fell to her knees on the sand and wept, her skirts spread out around her like the petals of an open flower.

“Anfán!” I cried. “How could you have let him enlist?”

“ Déu meu, Déu meu, ” she sobbed.

“He’s joined up!” I went on. “He’ll be killed down in those mines!”

She looked up at me, her face wet with tears. “Want to know how long I’ve been in line? Since midday yesterday!”

“We took him away from war, from being a trench rat!” I replied. “And all for him to end up dead from an explosion or from a bullet in the head. The French sappers aren’t playing games down there!”

She threw her metal bowl in my face. “I was here all yesterday, all last night, and all this morning. And you come and yank me out of the line! What are we supposed to eat? Tell me that!”

It was pointless trying to reason with her — it was the hunger speaking, not Amelis. She barely had the energy to argue. She hung her head like a small dying animal.

Half of the soup rations was apportioned to the wounded and sick in the hospital. It was becoming more watered down daily, and they were using fresh water from the last irrigation canal still coming into the city. The Bourbons had dammed all but one, and that they’d been polluting by placing dead bodies upstream. But the poor gulped it down like nectar — anything to avoid the husk torta .

While we’d been arguing, the crowds of people had ebbed away. The woman who had taken Amelis’s place in line was the last to be given soup. The people behind her were all protesting. There was uproar, but only in a minor way: The people were so depleted that a couple of blows from the guards dispersed them. Amelis’s sobbing gave way to a torrent of tears.

I’d have to take it up with Anfán himself. I ought to point out how much time had passed since I’d encountered him at Tortosa: That was in 1708, and it was now 1714. I roughly estimated that he’d been born at the turn of the century, and that the eight-year-old was now fourteen. He wasn’t a child any longer.

When Anfán appeared out of the mineshaft, I begged the leader of the Cucs to discharge him. I could hardly blame him for his response, which was one of surprise: “We’re so short on troops, why would we turn away anyone of military age?”

Fourteen was the age when a Catalan could legally bear arms. After the years he’d spent under our roof, when we’d taken good care of him and taught him manners, Anfán had turned into quite an impressive young man. I kick myself for not having noticed sooner. If you stare at the grass day after day, you’ll miss the fact it’s growing. After all, parents always see their children as the babies they once were.

A frontal assault would have been pointless, so I came at him another way, with conversation and affection. We had a long discussion about the mining operation. Anfán filled me in at length: Los Cucs had been saving time by creating diminutive tunnels on either side of the main mines and sending Nan and Anfán down them. Whenever they found one of the Bourbon galleries, they’d drill through to it, starting overhead and angling the fist-width cavity downward, and then roll two or three grenades in with the fuses lit, before crawling quickly back the way they’d come.