Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

I was thinking about how to get myself out of the situation when something happened. Once he was free of the steel that held and tormented him, he staggered. His knees buckled. He scratched the wall with his nails as he fell. He began drooling like a slug and convulsing.

The convulsions were so violent that I thought to go for help. “Your Excellence, what is it?”

Still kneeling, he turned his head slowly. Something in his eyes was different. He was the private Berwick now, free of the need to be ostentatious. An organism pushed to inhuman limits, a creature lacking all affection.

That power brings with it an enormous public aspect is no secret. And Jimmy was obliged to push his army beyond all bounds. The slightest false move, even blinking at the wrong moment, could be taken as a sign of weakness. An out-of-place gesture and his authority would evaporate. A wrong decision and he’d lose an army. On the night preceding Almansa, he was less than a rag.

I felt for him. I know I may have been wrong to. I got my hands under his armpits and heaved him to his feet. He pushed me away, furious. “I’m fine!” he shouted.

“No, no, you aren’t,” I said. “Vauban spoke to me of the illness of those with power, and ways of treating them.”

He gave me a hateful glance.

“Tea with thyme in it,” I said. “And turn your back on the world.”

I found out for myself that day that the things I had learned at Bazoches would make me feel love for people more often than was desirable; my sight, my sense of touch, all my senses were too sharp not to see the man suffering underneath that triumphant uniform. That this man was so powerful, and at the same time so defenseless, and that he had to hide his inadequacies from the world, moved me to the point where I couldn’t help but take him in my arms. Jimmy, poor Jimmy, he never knew that my love for him was due not to his power but — oh, paradox! — his weaknesses, which made even him human, that demon who would one day annihilate us.

He did not let me accompany him the following day, which meant my experience of the battle of Almansa was from inside the town walls. I hardly lamented the fact; Zuvi wasn’t exactly spoiling for a fight. Plus, I had learned about sieges, not battles in open country. I watched the encounter from a window, which is one way of putting it, for the fog, smoke, and clouds of dust combined to form a curtain so opaque that all was reduced to the din of artillery and gunfire.

Against all expectations, Jimmy crushed the Allied army. He came back covered in dirt, worn out, dents all over his cuirass. And yet the demonic part of him was visible in the return, the part that kept him going. For battle had cured all his ills: Victory is the most marvelous elixir. He seemed a different man; more than merely cured, Jimmy was drunk on vitality, exultant, bursting with life.

Seeing me, he said, “You’re still here. Good.”

And so began an amity that, to put it one way, was far from straightforward. James Fitz-James, duke of Fitz-James, duke of Berwick, of Liria and Jérica, peer and marshal of the French realm, thanks to the victory at Almansa, knight of the Golden Fleece, et cetera, et cetera. Anything you like. Even so, never ceasing to be a bastard; son of James II of England, yes, but a bastard all the same.

Life pushed him into a race he could never win. However many armies he destroyed, fortresses stormed, services rendered, he would always be what he was: misbegotten, a social neuter. Any aristocrat of good blood who had notched up half the accomplishments of his short life would have been held up as more than Olympian. Not him. Son of an outcast king and illegitimate to boot. Hence his constant quest for legitimacy and royalty.

The strangest thing about him was that he was also absolutely clear-sighted. He knew he would never be given the one thing he sought. He garnered honors and praise, duchies, infinite wealth, all the claptrap awarded by kings, ceremonies with priests in attendance, and the singing of infantile hymns. In private, he scorned such affairs. I know he did. Certain of his supporters have said he made the most of his time on earth, emphasizing the ten children he had with his second wife. Ha! Don’t make me laugh. Where do they imagine a person like Jimmy would find time to lie down with his little wife (who, by the way, was uglier than a Barbary ape), even if we’re talking about only ten occasions? In 1708 alone, he took part in three different campaigns in the service of that dreadful monster of a king, Louis XIV — in Spain, France, and Germany. Do they want to try and convince me that he went a-wooing to her whenever he could? That he’d trot off to her abode, say, “Sweetie, here I am,” have a roll around with her, and then back to the action? I can assure them the only possibility is that he tasked someone else with such matters. On top of the fact that I was with him.

Fine, all right. I said I had set myself to be sincere, and that is what I shall be. I’m too old to care.

We fucked the whole night through. And the next day, we did not leave the room. Why would we? Where could be better than there? Plus, he could allow himself it. There were continual knocks at the door: “Your Excellence, the mayor of Almansa entreats an audience!” or “Your Excellence, urgent dispatch from Madrid!” or “Colonel so-and-so asks about lodgings for the prisoners.” At first the door knocker startled me, but when I jumped out of bed, sending the chamber pot flying, all Jimmy did was laugh. The world was at his feet, why should he bother to answer? He had earned the right not to let a door knocker importune him. That’s what power is, precisely that: The world seeks an audience with you, and you laugh at it from behind the door.

Now what? Why are you making that face?

I could have skipped this, but you asked for a love scene.

You didn’t like it?

I can see you did not.

For a good amount of time, I was very close to being happy. I felt sure le Mystère had delivered me into the arms of a teacher who might be a replacement for Vauban. Jimmy was perfectly suited to the role. He was sufficiently distinguished as a Maganon that, a full two years before, he had dared disagree with Vauban in his letter from Nice — and on the subject of a siege, no less. Further, Jimmy included in his criticism of the marquis the statement that it was all very well pontificating from the rearguard, passing judgment on those fighting up front. And this was precisely the thing I needed, the siege experience, the reality of combat, and of life, that would enable me to discover The Word.

Everything was fine to begin with, though little of note took place. Jimmy and the rest of the army had to recover from battle. I understood that. Then winter arrived, and naturally enough, the campaign was put on hold; since time immemorial, armies have never fought in winter.

Jimmy was one of the great personalities of his age. Daring but at the same time sound in judgment, an incongruous mix flowed in him: He was both an utter egoist and extremely generous and indulgent toward others. He was one of the few truly great figures of our century, this tortured and tortuous century, full of sagas epic and inane. But by the spring of 1708, we had been together for almost a year, and I was still to see any action. Some say the great Battle of Almansa was exceptional. For every one battle in open country, there were ten sieges of strongholds, large or small, and the issue for me was that I was missing out on them all. Attacking or defending, what did it matter to me? If I finally got to take part in a siege selon les règles , not merely as a theoretical exercise, I might be able to unveil The Word, that Word that had the kernel of knowledge trapped inside it. Validate my fifth Point. I wouldn’t let it go.