Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The dwarf was in there, tied to a beam, his mouth gagged with straw and a rag tied around him. Anfán was seated on an old chair, bound tight at his ankles and wrists. Gagged, too, and with a black hood that came down over half his body. The French soldier had an accomplice, and he was kneeling down finishing tying Anfán’s binds. Even the flies had fled that place. Nan looked at me in utter terror. They’d stumbled into an atrocious situation, one of these small hells you’ll always find in or near a war, just as cobwebs always inhabit corners.

My first thought was to recover my belongings and get out of there. This perverted pair of maniacs disgusted me, of course. But we were in a time of widespread indiscriminate killing. The sooner I could get away, the better.

There was a small detail, though, something otherwise quite minor, that made me more upset than I ordinarily might have been. Want to know what this trivial thing was? A bead, a bead of sweat, running down the cheek of one of those swine. This little drop betrayed foul desires, a soul gone rancid. His mouth hung half open, and he was staring intently at Anfán, who was desperately trying to free himself on the chair. Like all scavengers, he had large gaps between his teeth, which made him all the more repulsive. Sometimes it’s trivial details that spur us into action. It had been a bad day, and someone was going to have to pay for it.

There was a thick, rusty chain hanging from the ceiling. I picked a large stone up off the floor and, stowing this under one arm, reached up and took down the chain with my free hand. I took a step toward the soldier at the door. “Mind holding this stone for a moment?”

“All right,” he said, putting away his knife and holding out his hands. “But what do you want me to hold it for?”

The answer was very simple: so he would have his hands full as I brought the chain down across his head, knocking him to the floor. The other man was too much of a coward to take me on. Seeing me coming toward him with the chain, he curled up in a ball, protecting his head with his hands. I’d scared him witless, and I left it at that. Dropping the chain, fed up with Tortosa, with war, with the world, I untied the boy and the dwarf, gathered my belongings, and left the hut.

Anfán and the dwarf followed me out. “Monsieur, monsieur!”

Any hostility I’d felt toward them had faded. I’d recovered my money and my effects, and if you have saved a person’s life, you do not then give him a hiding. Which isn’t to say I cared what happened to them, not in the slightest. Without breaking stride, I said scornfully back to them, “Go and get back in the trench. Turns out you might have been right: With what’s going on at the moment, it might be the safest place for you.”

They swarmed around me like butterflies.

“Get out of here!” I said again. “You ought to be hanged, you little thieves. Luckily for you, I myself am in too much of a hurry to get back to Barcelona.”

But the mention of Barcelona only made them more excited.

“ Monsieur! ” cried Anfán. “We’ve wanted to go to Barcelona for so long! We’ve been saving up to do exactly that.”

Saving up! What my father would have said of this pair’s ideas about work! I was about to give them a farewell thrashing when I heard the snorting of animals.

A cavalry squadron in the near distance. The rearguard of the besieging army was protected by these mounted patrols. They would escort foragers, ward off Miquelet attacks, as well as rounding up deserters. I could have spoken with them but was too much the fugitive by this point. My first impulse was to dash into a small forest that stood nearby and looked dense enough to make it difficult for horses to enter.

“No, monsieur !” said Anfán. “You won’t make it in time. Follow us!” They turned in to an abandoned vineyard, Anfán gesturing for me to follow. “Run! Quick!”

The vines were a little above knee height. In such open country, cavalry would trap us easily. They were insane, these two. But do you know what? I followed them anyway.

The patrol came after us. We made a desperate dash, me weighed down with the two sacks, sweating. I cursed myself. But when the horses reached the edge of the vineyard, they pulled up as though obstructed by some invisible force. The riders didn’t attempt to spur them on.

Anfán laughed, very pleased with himself indeed. “Horses hate vineyards — they break their legs on the vines.”

The riders fired a few shots our way, with no great intent. By the time they went around this vineyard, which was extensive, we’d be well into the forest. They decided against following us.

“Saved your life, monsieur . You owe us one,” said Anfán when we finally stopped to rest among the trees.

I laughed. “Surely it’s I who saved the two of you — from something awful — and you who owe me.”

“Let’s make a deal!” said the child. “We get you a vehicle, and you take us to Barcelona.”

“Vehicle? What vehicle?” I said, intrigued. I’d escaped so unplanned, I hadn’t even thought about the next leg of the journey.

“Follow us!” They led me along a small hidden path, the woods and undergrowth becoming ever thicker around us.

“Here,” said Anfán after a short time, bringing me through an opening between some trees.

There, nestled against a wall of vegetation, stood a two-horse carriage. The driver was still in his seat. Dead.

There were thousands of Miquelets in this area, harassing the siege army’s rearguard; the driver must have made a harebrained attempt to flee from some small skirmish. There was a bullet wound in his back, the dried blood blackening his white uniform. His last effort must have been to try hiding away from the road, and this was where he’d ended up.

In the seat, with his chin on his chest, the dead driver looked as though he were sleeping. Taking hold of him by the shoulder, I pushed him somewhat unceremoniously to the ground. The horses, sensing a living human, brightened up, seemed pleased. Consequently, they were very obedient during the tricky maneuver of turning them around and going back to the road.

“We’re going to Barcelona?” asked a gleeful Anfán.

He had such hungry eyes, this child — hungrier-seeming than his stomach itself. I examined the horses. One had a bullet in its right haunch; the other’s mane had been singed. Fine, I thought: They needed only to be able to cover the distance to Barcelona, a hundred or so miles. I climbed onto the bay of the carriage, which was full of sacks. Opening one, I found biscuits in it. I lobbed a couple to Nan and Anfán, who gobbled them down, even though the biscuits were the size of discuses, if not bigger. But there was an assortment of things. When I went to open another sack, cylindrical and six feet tall, it fell over, loosing its contents all over the floor of the bay.

Bullets, lead bullets. A torrent of little round bullets that went everywhere. Nan and Anfán, beside themselves with excitement, got down and began gathering them up. What a small thing a bullet is, a tiny globe, apparently so inoffensive. And yet, properly directed, it will kill soldiers and generals, kings and paupers alike. Not that any of this entered Anfán’s thoughts. He and the dwarf began playing marbles with them. He was still a child — an accomplished survivor, perhaps, but a child first and foremost. Standing watching them in the carriage bay, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia.

It was the first natural silence I’d heard in twenty days, the time I’d been in the trenches. Twenty days and nights, putting up with the thundering cannons and the insidious sound of the sappers’ picks. And now nothing but forest around me, the trill of birds, and the air clear of artillery smoke and resounding trumpets. Plus a child, and a dwarf with a funnel on his head, playing marbles with the instruments of death. Yes, infancy will always be our time of subversion.