Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The forward part of the trenches became a sewer. At points, the water was chest-deep. A whole day was spent by the enemy bailing out that putrid water. One day, which for us meant one more day in the world of the living. A victory, however brief. Though inside the city, we were so weary, we didn’t even have the energy to celebrate it.

While the Bourbons wallowed in the mud, I went and found Costa. I’d never seen him looking so downcast. Francesc Costa, a man who needed nothing but his sprig of parsley to be content.

“Come, Costa,” I said, trying to cheer him up. “We’ve come too far to give up. Prepare guns and munitions.”

But he was sitting down, letting the rain fall on his uncovered head, soaked through and hugging himself as though he had a fever. “Munitions. Munitions, you say?” he spat sarcastically. “I haven’t even got parsley left to chew. That trench was it for us.”

This reference to my handiwork pained me. “The cannons!” I suddenly shouted, and leaving aside all formalities, I went on: “Place them behind the breaches and forget everything else!”

When things become desperate, rumors have the power to displace hope. Dreams. People began saying that an English fleet was on the way and that Charles had sent a German legion. All lies. The anguished multitudes rushed to Plaza del Born, at the center of the city, praying for Barcelona to be saved. Inanities. Deep down, those of us manning the breaches didn’t believe in anything, we just fought.

And a good thing that Jimmy’s artillery volcano had been extinguished. As I’ve said, the damp gunpowder prevented them from shelling us for a short time. In place of projectiles, they hurled taunts and threats our way. They were positioned at the crown of the ditch, and their shouts carried across that short distance. They could not have been more than a hundred feet from what remained of the ramparts.

The boldest among them peeked their heads over the tops of the “gentlemen,” at the trench’s most forward point, and made throat-slitting gestures or waved their fists. And said to us, in grimmest tones: “ Ça va être votre fête!”

On the night of September 10, I did not sleep. Could not. You didn’t need great powers of intuition to guess the final assault would begin at any moment. One of the things we’d done in anticipation was to pull back a number of the most exposed positions. It would be suicide to have groups of men so close to the Bourbon “gentlemen.” In the most devastated areas, we chose to create a retreat space for the men who would be receiving the first wave. So that night there was a kind of dead space between our lines and Jimmy’s.

I’ve seen a large number of bombarded landscapes in my time, and the exceptional thing about this one was the outline of the ruins. Even the heaviest artillery usually only pierces rooftops and smashes ramparts, leaving sharp and pointed silhouettes. But when a barrage is so intense and has been carried out over such a long time, the edges take on an undulating bluntness, as though eroded over thousands of years. A very fine drizzle continued to fall over that labyrinth of ruins. The night was black, the moon hidden behind the weeping clouds. My feet slipped among smashed gun carriages, broken rifles, half-buried fajina baskets, their wicker mouths gawping ominously from the earth like the faces of drowned people. And thousands of our spiked bats, scattered everywhere. This was a place of such silence, sadness, and ghostliness that even my science was dispelled by its powers.

And then, for no apparent reason, I was overcome by a desire to go back to our tent on the beach.

Amelis was sleeping, unclothed. I awoke her. “Where’s Anfán?”

She was subsumed in a drowsiness that was more hunger and exhaustion than sleep. She opened her eyes, those enormous black eyes. I remember being there, in the dark of night, in that meager tent on the beach. Her on the mattress, naked, covered in sweat, while I knelt down and embraced her, less out of love than an urge to protect. She was feverish. I’d woken her from a nightmare. Feeling my hand reaching around her back, she smiled, as though this were some long-awaited reunion. “Martí,” she whispered, “you’re here.”

It was a subdued and queasy feeling of joy.

“For the love of God, Amelis! Where’s Anfán?”

If Nan and Anfán were killed, all would have been for absolutely nothing. They’d been part of my household for seven years now, seven. What truly joined us all together were not the transcendent acts but an accumulation of everyday things. There is nothing so significant as a million nothings all joined together.

We were interrupted by an outbreak of shelling, the reverberations of which shook the tent so hard I thought it might take to the air. That could mean only one thing: the general assault being declared. I put my tricorn on my head and made to leave the tent. As I started to duck under the flap, Amelis said something, I don’t remember what precisely. Something about Beceite. A very faraway Beceite, that small town in Aragon where we’d met, among rapist Bourbons and murderous Miquelets. Her hunger was making her delirious. Running her finger along her cheek, she begged me in a distant voice: “Martí, it’s only mashed raspberry. Don’t go, please. It’s only raspberry.”

She spread her arms wide to me. Duty called, but at the same time here was this woman who had never asked anyone for anything, saying, like a cat mewling the words, “ Si us plau, si us plau. ” I went to her.

I embraced her carefully, she was so thin. Otherwise, no exaggeration, I’d have snapped her ribs. Her face was bathed in sweat. The most distressing thing was being able to do nothing to ease her pain. She asked me to get the broken music box. I found it and handed it to her. When she opened it, of course no sound came out. But, smiling, she said: “Do you hear? My father invented this box, he put music in a box. And this was the song he chose. Isn’t it lovely?”

I’ve never liked the idea of lying to the sick. “We’ll get it fixed, you’ll see.”

“Martí!” she cried, her fever going up a notch. “Say you can hear it!”

No, I could not hear it. It was nothing but a broken box, one small scrap among countless objects consigned to oblivion by the enemy bombardment. I said nothing, just sighed. She knew; a high fever can sometimes bring about considerable lucidity. Those vast eyes of hers found mine.

“Shall I tell you something, Martí? The fact that you can’t hear the music is what makes you you. This is your great strong point and, at the same time, the thing that limits you. If you wanted to hear our music, you’d hear it. But you can’t, because you don’t believe in it. You don’t even try.” She added: “You’ve heard this music a thousand times. Why not now? The box is only a box — one day it was bound to break.”

I made her look me in the eye once more. “One thing, Amelis: You’re not to leave this beach. Whatever should come to pass, don’t go anywhere! If you find yourself walking on anything that isn’t sand, you’re to turn back.”

“ Jefe , I’ll look after her.”

Anfán was behind me in the tent, with Nan beside him.

“Where have you been?” I cried. Anfán groaned, impish and reluctant. “For once in your life, pay attention!” I shouted. “Tonight and tomorrow, no one must leave this beach. Not you, not Nan, not Amelis. And it’s your job to make sure that’s what happens! Understood?” Screaming at Anfán was a waste of time. I changed tack. “Did you know your mother?”

“You know I didn’t.”

I gestured to Amelis, who was asleep again, or, rather, unconscious, consumed by the fever, delirious. “If you had all the mothers in the world to choose between, is there another you could possibly rather have?”