Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Nowadays Robespierre and his Paris popinjays have invented the levée en masse —murder en masse, more like. Armies currently stand ten or a hundred times larger than they were in my day. They can leave a number of regiments blockading a fortress, and send the others off ahead; they need not bother taking the fortress. This was why, in my day, there were twenty sieges to every pitched battle, and the majority of the latter were in order to force the lifting of a siege — or to prevent another. Now battles have become little more than tossing rank after rank against rifle and cannon, like feeding firewood into the flames. He with the biggest woodpile wins. The science of modern warfare brought us to this. Viva progress!

As for the mystery of the Points, in the world of Bazoches, these were a way of recognizing progress.

At a time when a polite greeting took the form of a light nod of the head, it was the engineers who were the first to go back to the Roman handshake. On clasping hands, they would turn the wrist very slightly, inconspicuously. Each would see the other’s Points and, in this way, work out where the other was positioned in an already decided hierarchy, saving much long-windedness, dispute, and misunderstanding. And believe me when I say how important this was when laying siege to or defending a stronghold. No matter the rankings doled out by the army, a Three Points was always subordinate to a Four Points, and so on. Career officers would perceive something amiss, but in general the Point Bearers were so practical and inscrutable, and military men such dullards, that the latter never cottoned on. Or it did not matter to them.

The Point Bearers’ hierarchy formed a core universal brotherhood. What a wonder, how galvanizing to the spirit, to stumble upon a complete stranger in Berlin or Paris, in the vast dales of Hungary or up in the Andean peaks scourged by blizzards, and suddenly, all this way from home, feel, with a simple turn of the wrist, as though by some magic, all that distance melt: two men joined by a mutual recognition. No thing in this world can replace that unique glance of complicity.

Do you know of what I speak, my dear vile Waltraud? No, of course you do not. But it isn’t complicated. Behind you sits my cat, enthralled by the fire. See the way he glances at me? That’s it.

And yet I did not fully comprehend the value of my tattoos. The Ducroix brothers gave me my second Point for counting chickpeas. Don’t laugh. I was fed up with the Spherical Room. To the back teeth! So much that I had not even realized the progress I’d made.

You have succeeded in becoming truly alert when, even as you are distracted, you remain alert. Do you take my meaning? Of course not. Nor, at one time, did I. It has to be internalized. At a certain point, you’ll think your mind wanders, but the alertness mechanisms are still on, keeping close track of things.

For lunch one day, I was given a plate of chickpeas. The Ducroix brothers were eating with me that day, and they noticed the second my mind began to wander. (They were right: I was thinking how the down on Jeanne’s cunt was exactly the same color as these chickpeas.)

Armand whacked me on the forehead with a ladle. “Cadet Zuviría! How many chickpeas on the plate? Answer immediately!”

I quickly ate a spoonful before answering: “There were ninety-one. Now, eighty-one.”

They were delighted. And I hadn’t made it up. I myself was not aware that I knew the answer — until they put the question to me. The mouthful I ate was to vex them, and to demonstrate that I was now being observant continuously, not just from time to time in isolated moments.

Each time I exited the Spherical Room, the question was always the same: “Cadet Zuviría, what was in the room?”

As much detail as I went into about the objects I’d seen hanging up, their distances from the floor, the gaps between them, the verdict would almost always be: “Pass, but not perfect.”

Eventually, one day, at the conclusion of my list, I paused and then added: “And myself as well.”

They had told me a thousand times that the observer forms a part of what is being observed. To my chagrin, it had taken me months to grasp that I also was one of the things in the room. Maybe this will seem a simple lesson in humility or even a not tremendously witty play on words. However, it was anything but.

As the enemy prepared to attack my bastion, I had to see everything, enumerate everything. Our rifles, theirs; the condition of our defenses, the number of cannons, the lengths and width of their parallels; and my fear. Nothing in the world distorts reality like a dose of terror. If I was unconscious of my fear, the fear would look instead of me. Or, as the Ducroix brothers would say: “Fear will cloud your sight, then it will be doing the looking instead of your own eyes.” The world is a killer; men die storming or defending ramparts. But in fact, the whole thing is no more than a minuscule white sphere, lost in some corner of the universe, indifferent to our troubles and pains. Herein, le Mystère .

I became a Three Points upon completing my long trench.

“Congratulations, Cadet Zuviría. You have earned your third Point,” Armand informed me. “Permit us, however, to qualify the value of the task you’ve completed. Having reached the edge of the field, you continued to dig the trench and place out the fajinas . This was well done, even though it meant the destruction of the bordering hedge. We gave no instructions for you to stop, and an engineer must always be obedient and resolute. Even so, didn’t you notice that the next field had been sowed for corn?”

“I did.”

“Correct. Someone digging a trench in private property, outside his own land, would never be punished — on a war footing, all land is in contention. But when the line of your trench met with the donkey pushing the plow, and the goodly man behind it — who, by the way, protested very vehemently at the incursion — did it not occur to you that the exercise was by now exceeding its teaching objectives?”

“No.”

“Correct. Orders are there to be obeyed, not questioned. Nonetheless, when this noble worker insulted you, did you really think it was the right thing to hit him with your shovel and throw him in the trench?”

“I did. The blow merely knocked the man out. To argue with him, I reasoned, would be to waste time. I also did it to keep him safe from the flying bullets. An engineer’s work is to protect the king’s subjects.” I sighed. “I dared do nothing for the donkey; I could, of course, have knocked it over as well with a strong blow to the head, but that would have been to put myself in the line of fire. I also could not have been sure it would fit inside the trench, it being very bulky and the trench narrow. My assessment was that the life of an engineer is worth more than that of a donkey, and so I left it to its fate.”

Armand and Zeno looked at each other doubtfully. I added: “The donkey appeared indifferent on the matter.”

The fourth Point was given to me after a session in the hayloft, one of the best moments in my long career — well, making hay while the sun shines, as they say.

One Sunday afternoon Jeanne and I were in the hayloft after making love, unclothed, and the rain was falling steadily, languidly, without. Jeanne, eyes closed, was dozing. Here was beauty. Her roseate skin, her red locks, reclining on a mattress of straw. . a vision in the sweet gray half-light of Burgundy. From out of my mound of clothes, I took a folder.

“I have written you some poems,” I said, and placed before her a sheaf of papers.

She opened her eyes, and her face lit up. Be a woman noble and high-ranking, or be she stinking peasantry, like my dear vile Waltraud, it is all one; someone says he has written a poem for her, she’s automatically over the moon.