Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The world: this answerless question. And inhabiting its trifling circumference, the fools who seek the answer. All for nothing.

And yet the doubt remains. The fact is, all those men and women did not have to go up the ramparts. They could have stayed in their houses, let the tyrant in. Resign themselves to it, get down on their knees, beg for their lives. But they didn’t. They fought. Knowing full well how slim their chances were, they held out for thirteen months of inexorable terror. Dying for the sake of a word, dying so their children could say for the rest of time, even if only under their breath: “My father defended our bastions.” This was the way Ballester — all the Ballesters — thought.

After Ballester’s death, I drifted, neither dead nor alive. For how long, and along which streets, I do not know. The gunfire was an innocuous murmur, not worthy of attention. Then someone was beckoning me: “Don Antonio’s calling everyone together,” the person said. Images, voids, morasses in the memory. But the words “Don Antonio” could bring the dead back to life.

Suddenly, I find myself in Plaza Born, the square at Barcelona’s very center. Not heeding the gunfire, Don Antonio is gathering a troop on the cobblestones. And what a troop. The remaining few. Remnants of the Coronela, wounded men dragged from hospital beds, young boys, some women. A couple of priests.

Don Antonio was about to launch the second counterattack, aimed at retaking the ramparts. An absurdity, given that the Bourbons had reached the far side of Plaza Born. There, thousands of white uniforms had gathered, and the first rank was kneeling. For the rest, aside from Don Antonio’s steed, I do not believe there were more than a few dozen cavalrymen. The others were lining up like infantry, with one or two officers trying to introduce order to the ranking.

Don Antonio, up on his horse at the front, made a brief speech. But the din was too great for us to hear him. And it made no difference what he had to say. The odd bullet grazed his body, and then one bounced off his saber. Out of the thousands and thousands of shots fired that day, the sound of that one bullet has stayed with me, metal on metal. Don Antonio’s response was to raise his saber even higher. I looked at him. And shall I tell you what? He was illuminated.

No, the word “happiness” doesn’t fit him. Don Antonio was never happy, just as fish may not see the sun until being torn from the ocean depths. He was about other things. He was going to surpass a threshold that was particular to him, and he had found the opportunity to do so without compromising his honor. That day — finally — it wouldn’t be him asking the impossible of his men but the other way around. Joyfully, he led them on their mad sortie.

And The Word? It’s ironic, because I began this book prepared to reveal it, and now, after all these pages, this word — this unique word — doesn’t matter. Because when it came to that final charge, we were beyond words.

This was The Word. These children, these women, these men from a hundred different places. All united behind Don Antonio’s horse. Lining up higgledy-piggledy, about to set out on a cavalry charge without any horses. Fewer than a thousand versus fifty thousand. And yet The Word may be reflected in the dictionaries. A pale reflection, very pale, but a reflection after all.

We attacked, shrieking like the savages who sacked Rome. The Bourbons were in perfect formation on the far side of the square. Their ranks, well stocked with men, reaching a long way back, thousands of rifles pointing straight at us. We were peppered with bullets. Volley after volley, perfectly coordinated. Their officers calling out, Feu, feu, feu! My companions falling left and right. The sounds of weeping, wailing, repentance. Don Antonio, like a commander out of antiquity, leading from the front, sheer madness, galloping forward with saber pointed. They shot him down, of course.

His steed was knocked onto its right flank, its huge frame crushing Don Antonio underneath. His knee ended up trapped between the saddle and the Plaza Born cobblestones, his bones snapping like twigs.

The horse thrashed about as though it had been placed over a campfire. It contorted its neck and let out a stream of dung. Goodness knows why, but its whinnying and its shitting remain firmly fixed in my memory. I was the first to go and kneel down next to Don Antonio. I grabbed him under his arms and heaved him out from under the beast. It took me a few moments to notice the look that was in his eye.

It was as though Don Antonio didn’t want to be rescued. He just lay there on the ground, half his body trapped beneath the horse. Then I felt one of his large hands grab me by the lapel of my uniform. He gave a violent tug, bringing my face close to his, and then spoke the closest thing to The Word that I would ever hear. And it was spoken not by an emperor in his most august hour but by a general defeated, fallen; I did not hear The Word from the mouth of my own captain but from a man who had crossed over from enemy latitudes, a man who had left everything to join the ranks of the weak and shelterless, the accursed few, and to lay down his life for them.

Don Antonio whispered into my ear: “You must give your whole self.”

My head was so empty, my body so detached from my being, that to be quite honest, my memory is a jumble now. I’ve gone back over this particular moment — everyone galloping forward in the pendulum of death, Don Antonio down on the Plaza Born cobblestones, his steed shitting in death, thousands of bullets zinging past our ears — and perhaps, only perhaps, memory alters what it was that Don Antonio said.

Because sometimes, when I am strolling through autumn fields, I find myself overcome by a burst of memories that are not so bitter. And then I see Don Antonio’s large hand on my lapel and hear him speaking incredibly kindly: “Give yourself, fiyé .” At other times, when I can afford to buy myself a little of that syrupy schnapps, the words I read on Don Antonio’s lips are more martial: “Always give yourself, Zuviría, always; that’s what matters.” At other times, when I am desensitized by foul-smelling liquor, very drunk indeed, the face I see down on the ground of the Plaza Born is not Don Antonio’s at all but Vauban’s. And it is the marquis who pulls me close, and he says: “Cadet, you have passed.”

Yes, I no longer have any sense of who said what or how. All these decades and decades that have gone by, all those many turns around the sun. But what difference does it make, ultimately? Vauban said, “You must know”; Don Antonio said, “Give yourself.” And there, in that city square, the detritus of war all around, The Word crumbled under the weight of its own paradox: “You cannot know until you give yourself, and you cannot give yourself until you know.”

A number of officers came over to try and help the maimed commander. Don Antonio did finally get up, his splintered leg bone protruding through his breeches, and he started pushing everyone away.

“Don’t stop the charge!” he bellowed in his resounding Castilian voice. “Don’t stop! No falling back, not as long as I still draw breath. You sons of bitches — no one!”

Dear Don Antonio. How fate scorned him. Even when it came to that September 11, the glorious death he’d hoped for was denied him. Knocked from his horse and severely wounded, he was dragged off to the hospital by his aides. I can still see him struggling to shake off the men who were helping him, as though they were his enemies. Those of us who remained resumed the charge.

During life’s worst moments, it is incredible how calm one’s thoughts can be. Rightly, perhaps, because once you find yourself on the summit, the mountainsides no longer matter — you’ll never be going down them again. As I charged, all I thought was: Very well, at least that Fifth Point is mine now.