Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Though she was at my side, she made it clear she wanted to get away from me as soon as possible. “I don’t have any friends,” she said. “And even if I did, who are you to criticize? What does war have to do with the poor?”

“It’s possible to be poor and not a savage,” I said.

“At least they don’t go around raping their enemies’ women!”

“Neither do I!” I said, defending myself. “And, so you know, I’m an engineer. We professionals , engineers or soldiers, we serve the person who has contracted our services, whichever king it happens to be, and for the duration of the contract, and that’s all. Birth does not tie us to any particular sovereign, and therein lies our privilege. I might serve France today, Sweden or Prussia tomorrow, and no one could call me disloyal or a deserter, just as no one would be surprised to see a spider crossing the river by jumping from rock to rock.”

“To the Miquelets, you are a Bourbon,” she said. “And if the Bourbons go around hanging their parents and children, is it so surprising they want to kill you?”

“I am paid to carry out engineering works. To be honest with you, I couldn’t care less either way, Bourbon or pro-Austrian, one side or the other.”

Suddenly, she stopped. She looked around, smiling, and said: “Do you not hear that?”

The abrupt change of subject surprised me, but I answered: “You’re quite right, it’s very annoying having to walk in a pine forest. I supposed it would be pointless to ask you to stop stepping on pinecones; they crunch so loudly, you can hear them a mile off.”

“No, engineer,” she said, cutting me off, straining to hear. “I mean the music.”

Music? There were, of course, only the sounds of the forest at night. Had she lost her mind? The summer moon lent her pale complexion an unreal tone. I thought for a moment that she might have been referring to the two of us; we’d gotten off on the wrong foot, but the forest at night was making everything sweeter. Or perhaps not: I reached an arm around her waist, but she got away from me immediately.

As she went, she left me with an almost sad sigh. “No, you do not hear it,” she said. “Farewell, then, great engineer.”

She had disappeared, but the scent of her lingered in the forest air for a moment. And know something else? I wasn’t certain whether she had taken me for a ride or there was something more.

I walked all night to try and put as much distance as I could between me and that Miquelet warren. At first light, I positioned myself on top of one of the large boulders you see throughout that region. From up there, lying on my front, I could see the path without being seen. I had a decent amount of time to think things through. In such moments, the infinite superiority of love over any horror becomes clear, because my mind turned again and again to that girl: Amelis, averting the images of death, Amelis.

After Jeanne, no beauty had moved me as much. And you’ll agree when I say that Amelis was at a disadvantage, seeing as Jeanne always had recourse to upper-class cosmetics, whereas when I met Amelis, she was wearing a laughable head wrap and had disguised herself with a pretend disease. Where could she have gone? Her parting words could have meant anything, even that she was a spy, possibly for both sides. . She would end up hanged, that was for sure.

At midmorning I made out a dust cloud on the horizon. This was the first time in my life, and the last, I believe, that I was happy to see a detachment of Bourbon cavalry. At least they wouldn’t treat me as the Miquelets might have done! I signaled to them with my hat from the top of the boulder and came down to ground level.

At their head was a captain in a dust-covered uniform, the white of it altogether gray now. Without dismounting, he asked me: “Spanish or French?”

“Alive is what I am, and it’s a miracle!” I cried, scurrying over to them. “Get me away from here, damn it!”

The army set to attack Tortosa was led by the duke of Orléans, nephew to the Beast himself. Orléans had twenty-five thousand men under his command, and a lavishly stocked artillery train.

Thus, after so many twists and turns, I was going to take part in a proper siege. I won’t deny that my spirits picked up. Perhaps I would manage to overcome my Bazoches disaster, restore myself, become an engineer. I’d spent two years, the most interesting years of my short life thus far, deep in the task of becoming a Maganon, absorbing both the science and the necessary morals. Twenty-four months, if you think about it, is a considerable portion of the life of a sixteen-year-old. So whenever I was feeling doubtful, I would roll up my right sleeve. I meditated on my five Points, contemplating them in many different lights, in the glowing dawn, or by that of a full moon, when midday embraced us or in the soft violet twilight. My God, I found my tattoos full of beauty, those five sacred Points. I couldn’t give up. Tortosa meant the chance to discover a Word that would bathe me in light.

The Bourbon army had pitched tents outside Tortosa on June 12, and I arrived the next day. I joined the engineers’ brigade as an aide-de-camp. I could make myself additionally useful with my French and Catalan, and there was a chance that I might be used to liaise between the French and Spanish contingents.

Family ties are even more important in France’s army than in Europe’s other armies, and the engineers’ brigade had been given to the duke of Orléans’s cousin to command. He was an innocuous man, phlegmatic rather than lackadaisical, of slender build and cheerful, a daydreamer. He had effeminate tastes, which reflected in the way he carried himself, and indeed his pretty looks, though they were no indication of his carnal preferences. He spent his days inside his splendid field tent, in which Darius of Persia would have been quite at home; its fabric was decorated with large cashmere depictions, and the roof was in the shape of an onion bulb, like orthodox church domes. Spacious and sumptuous — an entire orchestra could have fit inside — it featured nocturnal carousings with throngs of people, the only thing restraining them being his cousin’s warnings. This pleasure seeking of his was regularly excessive; one of the things he liked most was to recruit, en masse, whores from the towns through which the army passed, along with a few elderly nuns. The Spanish priests complained to Orléans, who, wanting to avoid a scandal, promptly tried reining his cousin in. Wigs and perfume were his great weakness; he loved to stand before a mirror trying on dozens of different hairstyles. As for perfumes, he had them sent in especially. Always overpoweringly strong. His arrival would be preceded by a great wave of Asiatic smells.

His mind was on Versailles, and he put up with this southern sojourn with an air of ironic resignation. He hoped to go back to Paris saying he’d served dans l’armée royale . As for his relationship with the engineers, let us say it was the same as that of a pet fish with its elements: That it inhabits a pond does not mean it understands water. The gravity of the man was such that I have entirely forgotten his name. Let’s call him Monsieur Forgotten.

Something good about Monsieur Forgotten, I admit, was that one could be sincere and speak the truth with him, by no means the usual way with French aristocracy. Granted, the impulse behind his tolerance of me was not all that lofty. Why did he put up with me when I criticized and made suggestions and even accusations? Because I was a nobody, less than a nobody. To him I was a fly of the kind constantly buzzing around us in the relentless summer heat, and he treated me as such.