Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

“Martí!” I heard my name being called. “Well, if it isn’t you, Zuviría’s son!”

It was Joaquim Nadal, the richest investor in my father’s company. When he saw me, he ordered his coachmen to stop his carriage. He opened the door and leaned halfway out and said: “What are you still doing here? Come on, get in! You can see my carriage is the last. What luck I spotted you, lad!”

When he saw that I was hesitating, he looked at me, confused. Carrots and turnips bounced off the roof of the vehicle. “ Botifleros, botifleros! ” cried the crowd. “ Foteu el camp! Bugger off!”

Nadal insisted: “Come on, kid! What’s up with you? This is your last chance. Come with me, or you’re staying here at the mercy of this rabble.”

I excused myself and said politely: “But this isn’t rabble, Señor Nadal. They are the same people they always were; they’re our neighbors.”

He stared at me as though I were a lunatic. “I see,” he said thoughtfully, as vegetables continued to rain down, and after a moment he said again, “I see.” He closed the door and told the coachmen to drive on.

That night, at home, Peret spent dinner praising the new battalions and their banners, which had been blessed in church. Some of the units were in blue uniforms, while others wore the most beautiful garnet. There were even some as yellow as lemons. When he started talking wonders about the works that had been carried out on the city walls, I could no longer contain myself. I interrupted him so sharply that he did indeed shut up.

“Has the entire city lost its mind?” I protested to him and Amelis. “Dreamers like you haven’t the slightest idea of what’s happening on the other side of the Pyrenees. None at all!” I banged the table. “How many Catalans are there in the world? Half a million, give or take a few. There are more people living in Paris alone. The French are born with a bayonet under their arm; they are the most aggressive people in the world. And they’re heading this way, the army of the Spanish empire reinforced by battalions from France. And we have been abandoned by all our allies — all of them! Oh, well, that’s just splendid!” I exclaimed, applauding my own sarcasm. “So, now tell me: If the city arms itself and closes the door, can you imagine for one moment what the consequences of such lunacy would be? Spain can devastate the city by land and France by sea, but I’m not going to let them destroy my house.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. I didn’t expect Amelis to be the one to speak. Quietly, in a voice that for her was unusually subdued, she asked: “And if the city were to give itself up, would everything be all right then?”

I rubbed the back of my neck and answered: “I don’t know. No one can know. That’s why we’re going to go. The five of us. You, me, Nan, Anfán, and Peret. We’ll come back when things have calmed down. It’s decided.”

I expected an argument, shouting, but they offered neither dissent nor agreement. Amelis shut herself up in the bedroom. Peret wandered over toward the fireplace, rekindled the fire, and started to roast peppers. Their docile behavior made me feel empty inside, as though I were throwing punches at the air. I followed Amelis and closed the bedroom door behind me.

“Anfán’s only a boy,” I said. “Nan is such a troubled little fellow. Peret has only ever left the city to go out on chocolatadas . But you know as well as I do what the advance of the Bourbon army really means. You’ve seen the woods filled with hanged men, the outrages perpetrated in the occupied towns. If I enlist, you know what difference there’ll be between your destiny and mine?” Before she could answer, I announced, “I’ll just be killed.”

If she had only resisted or replied. Whenever that particular sadness of hers took her over, I was rendered speechless. It was as though she were crying on the inside and I could not dry her tears.

She walked over to the music box and opened it. She looked up at the sky through our glass skylight and said: “Very well, you’re in charge. We’ll go. But tell me, Martí—where? The whole country’s at war. Are we going to set sail for Naples? And once we get there, what then? There’s war in Italy, too. Are we going to Turkey? Farther still?”

“No,” I replied, “there’s no need. We just have to get to Mataró. It’s not two days’ walk from here.”

“With the botifleros ?”

There was no recrimination in her tone, but that didn’t stop me from feeling insulted. “With people who want nothing to do with any of this!” I replied.

“And how do you know they won’t attack Mataró? The pro-Austrians, the Bourbons, the Miquelets. And if, somehow or other, pro-Austrians do win the war, how will we come back to Barcelona then? Every finger will point at us and call us traitors.” Her gaze still fixed on the skylight, Amelis went on: “I told you I used to live by following armies on the march. I lied. It’s the armies who have always followed me. I lost my virginity to a French soldier when I was thirteen. I bled for eight days. On the ninth, there was a Spanish captain. The ones who came afterward, I don’t remember too well, I don’t want to. A lot of Miquelets. At least they would give me something to eat after doing it. After that, I just wandered.” She looked around her. “I’ve never had a home.”

For the first time since I’d come into the room, she looked at me, very sad. “Let’s go, then, Martí. But just tell me: Where? Where?”

I couldn’t bear that she agreed with me: Whenever she did, it disarmed me. As for me, the question I was asking myself was a different one. What right did a king have to change my life? Anyway, what did I really care about in this insignificant life, this paltry crumb of le Mystère ?

The thing I most loved in the world was the sight of Amelis getting out of bed every morning, naked, squatting down over the washbasin to clean herself. Her black hair fell as far as her nipples. She always parted her knees wide. And she used a lot of water, perhaps because the place between her legs was the refuge for a thick black bush. From bed I would watch her, and we’d exchange a smile. Despite all my woes and all my impudence, nobody had the right to interrupt that sequence of everyday actions that allowed me to recognize happiness. Nobody.

A sigh. I raised four fingers till the tips touched the glass of the skylight. What would Ten Points have said? “Once you have grazed this sky with your fingers, you will never want to pull your hands back again.” There are moments when life positions us in just the right place where morality and necessity converge. Why would anyone decide to tackle a fight that would be desperate and fatal? For eternal glory? For the perpetual comfort of the human race? No, my friend, not that. Le Mystère has already told me.

People allow themselves to be killed at Thermopylae for an apartment with a skylight.

Having served under Don Antonio, I didn’t find it hard to secure an audience with him. Because, unbelievable though it may sound, the Red Pelts had chosen him as commander in chief of our forces. An unexpected decision. There were two other candidates from older families who were, thank God, rejected. They were Catalans, they had no shortage of military experience, and naturally, their titles in the nobility surpassed Don Antonio’s — he was, as we know, a Castilian national, born to our sworn enemies. Why, then, did they choose Villarroel? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps, out-and-out defeatists that they were, the Red Pelts were not all that optimistic and wanted to avoid one of their own being responsible for the disgrace of the inevitable disaster. Or perhaps the reason was simply that he was the best of the best, and having the option to choose such a competent general, even they could not deny him the position.