Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

“What’s it look like?” he barked, looking at me with his one eye. “I’m giving her a rosewater bath, right? Are you going to stand there waiting your turn? Get out of here, blockhead!”

Was I going to be intimidated by this ruffian, this one-eyed lowlife, however oversize he may have been? Of course I was. I forgot all about my purse and ran down the stairs. “What a piece of work is a man,” I muttered to myself.

What happened next is harder to understand. I was on the last run of stairs when a little old woman appeared. She was carrying a pitcher much like the one I had offered to carry for Amelis.

“Allow me, my good woman, allow me,” I said, impeccably friendly. “I’ll take it up.”

I came into the room carrying the pitcher, which did indeed weigh a ton. Don’t ask me why I went back, because I do not know. I am no knight errant, and this girl was nothing but a thieving whore.

The one-eyed ogre was still going for it. Nor is it true that I am especially compassionate, but if you had heard the girl screaming! Although she was writhing between the sheets, trying to scratch out his one remaining eye, she was only a few punches from getting herself killed.

So there I was, me, her, and the ogre. And the pitcher filled with water in my hands. And — worth pointing out — the ogre had his back to me. Raising the pitcher high above my head, I hurled it with all my strength at the back of his neck.

The ogre toppled to one side, water and blood everywhere. His body subsided; there was a rushing noise like a landslide. He rolled over on the floor, coming to lie faceup. Amelis was soaked in blood and water, too, a pitiful sight, her lips cut and her hands shaking.

What came next was the sweetest conversation of my life.

Me: “Got anything heavy to hand?”

Her, hugging her knees and furious, as though she were still struggling with the Cyclops: “Do I look like a dockworker to you?”

Me (sarcastic): “Your little friend is waking up, and if I don’t do something, he’s going to rip us to shreds like a couple of heads of cabbage.”

Her, pointing at the four candles: “That, you idiot!”

Me (still more indignant): “It’s just a pile of wax! What am I supposed to do, make him swallow it so the poor baby gets a tummyache?”

Her, still with her arms around her knees, rolling her eyes like someone obliged to deal with an inveterate imbecile: “Noooo. . It’s not just wax — pick it up!”

The block of melted wax had a cannonball hidden inside it. God knows whether it was from the bombardment by the French fleet in 1691, the siege of 1697, the skirmishes that followed the landing of the Allies in 1705, or some other battle. Some person with a sense of humor had carried it up here and begun to use it for holding candles. The melted wax had wrapped itself around the ball like a solid shell, making it unrecognizable.

I picked up the iron projectile with both hands and approached the one-eyed ogre. His neck was twisted, his head in line with the wall.

Me: “Turn his neck! Don’t you see I can’t get a proper shot at this angle?”

“You can’t get what?”

“Turn his neck!”

Without leaving her mattress, Amelis grabbed the ogre by the hair and pulled. I stood astride the fallen body and raised the cannonball over my head. At exactly that moment, his one remaining eye opened.

“Wait!” cried Amelis.

Had she suddenly turned compassionate? She pointed at the bomb. “What if it explodes?”

Still half stunned, the ogre understood what was going on. He grabbed my ankle in one hand, his living eye wider than ever.

Well, his final sight of the world was to be a twenty-four-caliber projectile falling directly onto his face. That was too close. Whatever the strategists may tell you, the best tactic will always be a good heavy blow from behind.

I rubbed my hands to remove the wax. “Done. It was his head that did some good exploding, after all.”

From her bed, Amelis looked at the dead ogre, then at me, and said: “You aren’t planning on leaving me here with that, are you? If they find him, they’ll kill me!”

I save her life, and now she asks me to scrub the floor. Women!

“I didn’t come back to get friendly with your boyfriends,” I said. “My purse,” I added, holding out my hand for her to return what was mine.

She laughed and told me she had no purse. I could search as much as I wanted, she said, to prove her innocence, but I would not find it. On the whole, I do know when somebody is lying. And she was so sure of herself that I ruled out the possibility. What was more, in that barren room, there could be no little nooks or hiding places. If she was a thief, she was such a good one that she deserved my respect.

Sometimes you have to know when you’re beaten. I made as if to go. But when I was at the door, she said coldly: “Wait.”

She poured the water (which she’d been using to wash her cunt) out into the street. She wiped the blood off her face with a rag, got dressed, and the two of us left together. She went ahead of me without saying a word, surly as ever. And whom should we find but Nan and Anfán, sitting on the steps of the Pi church.

When they saw me, they started to run, but she gave a shepherd’s whistle and they stopped. We approached them, and Amelis rummaged through Anfán’s clothes till she had turned out my leather purse. She handed it over to me as if to say: “Now we’re even.”

They had planned the whole set piece. While gallant young men carried the heavy pitchers full of water, their arms raised, spellbound by the vision of this dark Helen of Troy, Nan and Anfán would relieve them of the contents of their pockets. If anything went awry, Amelis would intercede. Everyone surrendered to the entreaties of an eighteen-year-old angel as beautiful as she was: everyone except unscrupulous types like me. Those she’d take to the room in La Ribera. While they fucked, Nan would keep watch as Anfán crept into the room, silent as a lizard, to swipe the purse. You’ll recall that she placed my clothes on a stool beside the door, very easy to reach. I am sure that the loudest of her amorous wailing coincided with, and provided cover for, Anfán’s entrance. After, she could then maintain her blessed innocence, since the booty had gone and no trace of the crime could possibly be found. A fine trio.

The boy, the dwarf, and Amelis stayed in the half-basement in El Raval. They couldn’t be seen around La Ribera, at least until the death of the one-eyed ogre had been forgotten. As we learned subsequently, he was neither a procurer nor a criminal from the underworld but a depraved patrician who would occasionally carry Amelis’s pitcher and had gone mad with passion for her. Eventually, fed up with his pockets being picked, he’d come straight over to kill her.

They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, except for Amelis, who was carrying her one earthly possession in her arms: that strange box that played a tune, to which she was so attached. It was clear that she used her carillon à musique as a shield to protect herself against the sorrows of life. When she appeared, she had that sacred little box swaddled as though it were the baby Jesus Himself.

At first the whole thing was a real nuisance. Peret and I were already finding it a squeeze in that half-basement, and now we had to find room for another three bodies. Amelis and I shared the only bedroom. Peret and that other pair lay on straw mattresses in the room that served as kitchen and dining room. Peret could not abide them. He made my head throb with all his complaints, lamentations, and recriminations.

The dwarf, for example, had very queer ideas about domestic life. When he didn’t get his way, he’d express his frustration by shrieking like a speared boar, high-pitched and frantic enough to wake the dead. If he was ignored, he’d use his own head as a battering ram, butting doors and walls, racing around the house like a spinning top.