Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

“If you’re talking to a French general, you have to stand up really straight. Like this,” I said, standing to attention, arms parallel to my body and my chin up, “as though you’ve swallowed a broom. And whatever nonsense they say, you have to click your heels — like this! — and reply with a shout: ‘ Mes devoirs, mon général! ’ Then they order you to attack a given position. You reply, even louder: ‘ À vos ordres, mon général! ’ and in the middle of the commotion, you race off in any direction other than the one they sent you in.”

“And is that the same with Spanish generals?”

“Oh no, with the Spanish ones, it’s completely different!” I exclaimed. “With them, you have to cry ‘ A su servicio, mi general! ’ and run off in exactly the opposite direction than the one they’ve told you to go in.”

They must have been growing up, because they took this as a joke, while I was being entirely serious.

“Well,” I said, acknowledging the truth, “I did serve under the command of two great men whom I would have obeyed blindly, whatever madness they ordered me to do. Not because they were great generals but because they were great teachers.”

“And of those two great men,” asked the dwarf, “which was the greater?”

To Anfán, the greater was the one who had taught me to survive, because if you’re dead, you can’t learn any more secrets. To the dwarf, who had great lucidity in that little frame of his, the greater was the one who had taught me secrets, “because if you don’t know the secrets of life, you can’t survive,” he said.

We walked on, and Anfán climbed a fence that was surrounding a small cottage and a kitchen garden. All he wanted was to examine the cedar that rose up at one end of the fence. I had been talking to them about the qualities of different kinds of wood, and the fact that cedar is one of the most valued by various kinds of artisan. Anfán wanted to see what it felt like and climbed up the trunk like a monkey.

“The same tree is used to make both fiddles and rifle butts,” I said. “Strange, isn’t it? At this moment, inside there, you can find both a fiddle and a rifle. If it were up to you, which of the two would—”

I was interrupted by a yell from the gardener’s cottage, and it sounded furious with Anfán: “Oi, you! You bunch of petty thieves! Scram, or you’ll see what’s what!”

“I haven’t stolen anything!” said Anfán, defending himself with uncommon vehemence because just this once it happened to be true.

But the young man — who was brandishing a stick — came over the fence accompanied by a little dog, which hurled itself at the dwarf. I let the four of them battle it out for a bit. Then I stepped in. “All right, all right, that’s enough now.”

I talked to the young man courteously. I admired his fruit trees and how well kept the garden was. His attitude changed. His father appeared. We chatted, and he ended up giving us a string of garlic and a few ripe tomatoes.

“You see how being honorable can do you good?” I said to Anfán as we walked home, arms full.

“Good?” he protested, rubbing his face, which was still red from the blows he had received. “I don’t see any good in it at all! The one time I’m not stealing, and I get attacked by a great beanpole like that. So much for being honorable!”

“Then you’re quite wrong,” I replied. “What’s the first thing you do after you’ve stolen something?”

“What do you think? Race off like a cannonball!”

“Exactly. Meanwhile, today you were attacked by a fellow five years older than you, armed with a stick and a dog, and instead of running away, you defended yourself.”

My rhetorical flourish must have had some impact on him, because he was listening closely.

“Honesty lubricates the muscles of your soul,” I went on. “It protects us in the face of injustice and strengthens our will to fight. You were the weaker party, and you were unarmed. But you were right, and you knew it. That was why you stood your ground.

“On the other hand, righteous souls are complemented by calm speech. Look at this garlic and these tomatoes I’m carrying. Free and obtained in simple good faith, which is hard to find nowadays. And why? I didn’t steal them; I didn’t even have to lie. When I was admiring this good man’s vegetable garden, I was telling him a great truth: that his noble work transforms the world, and that puts food on his table. And he, to repay me for this precise flattery, wanted to share his food with some total strangers. Why settle for an exchange of bad things when you can exchange good ones? He’s given us much more than we would have been able to get ourselves by stealing!”

A good speech, don’t you think? As a teacher, I was never much of a Rousseau, but not bad for an amateur.

As we approached the city gates, I saw a strange group of people. Five men, four of them armed with rifles over their shoulders. And the fifth was him — it was him! The Antwerp butcher!

Joris Prosperus van Verboom. Under escort, happily walking about outside the city, making his way around the foot of the city walls. I knew he was a prisoner of the government (I’d captured him myself, remember?), but I hadn’t realized he was here in Barcelona. I left Nan and Anfán, made straight for him, got my hands around his neck, and tried to strangle him. The guard intervened and parted us.

“Hey there, just take it easy,” said the captain understandingly. “I can tell you don’t like the big fish of the Bourbons, but we’ve all got to be civilized about it. We have to treat our enemies nobly until it’s time for them to be exchanged.”

“Exchanged?” I screamed. “What are you talking about? This scum can’t be exchanged! And now you’ve been stupid enough to let him go for a walk! He mustn’t be allowed out of the city again till the war is over! Leave him to me.”

Most men get to their deathbeds without ever understanding that war is not a matter of brute force. That the outcome of a conflict is settled in a higher sphere made up of ink and volumes and calculations. Verboom was a Points Bearer. No doubt he’d suggested the walk in order to examine our defenses, our precious bastions. It was quite clear that Verboom would be calculating information that would be worth a score of regiments. I at least had to rebel against the idiocy of the government and its good manners.

There he was, not even in chains, measuring out the distances between the walls, their thickness and height and the depth of the moat. The best place for a huge, threatening Attack Trench. Verboom was the spy who took the fewest risks in all of history — they couldn’t arrest him because he was arrested already; he was living as his enemies’ guest, and they were blithely showing him whatever he wanted to see. We were right at the foot of the Saint Clara bastion. Only a few dozen meters away was my home, the home I shared with the kids, with Amelis.

I hurled myself against the Antwerp butcher one more time. This time I was restrained less subtly. I was so furious that I smashed in two or three noses. Eventually, they knocked me down with their rifle butts, to the laughter of Verboom, who spoke in French so that the guards should not understand him: “ L’homme avisé est toujours sur ses gardes même quand il se trouve emprisonné .” A watchful man is on his guard even when he is a prisoner.

It was a line from Livy, I think, often cited in Bazoches, I’m sure, in which the word “asleep” had been changed to “a prisoner.” My own side was beating me, and he had the luxury of standing there laughing. Always the same, going around in spirals like a Venetian dream: Whenever I confronted the Dutch sausage-maker, there would be a screen of authority figures stepping between us who were entirely incapable of understanding why it was necessary to eradicate him from the world.