Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

In truth, I approached his office with a mixture of contradictory feelings. My dear vile Waltraud asks me how it’s possible that I had never paid him a visit, given that he had been free for a year. The answer is very simple: because my joy at his return was combined with my shame at having abandoned him right before his capture.

He offered me a seat and was polite to me, too polite. In Don Antonio, this was not a good sign. Why? Well, because he was never, not ever, agreeable to those under his command.

“I am most grateful for your offer,” he said at last. “But I am going to turn it down.”

I stopped, frozen. Had we not shared the 1710 Retreat? Had I not proved my worth as an engineer? Within Barcelona’s walls, there were few qualified engineers. Did he not think me competent, as he had three years earlier, and then out in the open?

“Of course I do. Despite your youth, as an engineer, you have mastered techniques that are unprecedented and always effective.”

“But?”

He thought for a moment before answering in that booming voice of his: “I’m turning you down because you don’t have what you need to have.”

I wanted to throw some punches, to take it out on the walls. Naturally, I asked what he was referring to.

“Our last conversation, in Illueca,” he said. “I offered you the chance to leave, and you left.”

“That’s right, Don Antonio,” I replied, offended. “But it was you, as I recall, who offered me the chance to run away.”

“Indeed. And so you fled with no dishonor. But that’s just it. If you had stayed, your captivity would have been glorious.”

I saw red. “Oh, for the love of God, Don Antonio! What use would it have been if they’d captured me? I still think it was a mistake for you to allow yourself to be taken prisoner, thereby depriving the army of your skills as a commander.”

He smiled. “Come now, Zuviría, be honest with yourself. Your flight wasn’t motivated by rationality but selfishness. You weren’t driven by your love for life but your fear of death.”

“They were just a little band of cripples!” I protested. “And do you want to know something sad, Don Antonio? When I got back to Barcelona I went for help. Well, nobody wanted to listen to me, no one in the army even remembered the wagons that you and I had been escorting. The worst thing of all is that they might have been right: Four wagons of invalids were not going to win the war.”

“You see,” he interrupted me. “You served under my command, but you understood nothing, nothing at all.”

I was so hurt that I didn’t say a word. I got up and walked toward the door.

Looking back now, from so many years later, I think Don Antonio had set up the whole scene. Because when I already had my hand on the doorknob, he said: “One word. If you’d said just one word in Illueca, I would consider you an engineer.”

I stopped. One word. Perhaps on some binge, drunk on cheap booze, I had confessed my tragedy to Don Antonio. One word! In any case, that phrase set my insides on fire. I turned — furious — and banged my fists down on his oak table.

“Everyone in this city has gone mad!” I cried. “Everyone! Every person from the council down to the last beggar is supporting a defense that is idiotic! I’ve fought against the opinions of my family, of my friends, of my neighbors. And now that they’ve finally persuaded me to take part in this preposterous defense, here you are — you of all people — refusing to enlist me. No! You have no right to do this! This is my city, it’s my home, and you are going to let me into your fucking army whether you like it or not!”

He allowed me to vent for a while, and when I was out of breath from all those words, he said: “That’s already an improvement. At least it’s some progress.” After a pause, he added: “I told you in Illueca, son. The war is not yet over, and nor are your tribulations.”

That night, at home, we had a goodbye dinner to bid farewell to peace. At least to the fake peace the city had been living through over the past few years. When we reached dessert, I called for a minute of everyone’s attention.

“After some tough negotiating with Don Antonio, he has bestowed the rank of lieutenant colonel upon me. Did you hear that? You’re talking to a lieutenant colonel, so from now on, I’ll expect you to address me with appropriate respect! The youngest lieutenant colonel in the army! And that’s not all. My pay will increase by ten percent, because in addition, he has hired me as his own private aide-de-camp.” I couldn’t help a smile of triumph. “What do you think?”

“A lieutenant colonel!” cried Amelis. Though she then asked: “So what’s one of those?”

“You see, my love,” I explained between puffs on the cigar I was smoking, “in an army, the rank immediately below a general is a colonel, who leads a regiment. A lieutenant colonel is an officer pending the assignment of his own regiment. Do you understand?”

“So you don’t have your own regiment yet?”

“Well, no,” I confessed. “But what does that matter?”

Anfán was sitting beside me. He tugged on my sleeve and asked: “ Jefe , how many soldiers do you command?”

“None in particular,” I replied. “I will be taking charge of higher matters. The reality is that I will be working as an engineer. But Don Antonio, valuing me so highly, believed I ought to have a rank fitting with my authority, to carry more weight among the soldiery.”

“Well, I think it’s a pretty shitty rank if you aren’t commanding any soldiers, jefe ,” Anfán concluded.

“I’ll be earning twenty-six pesos a month!” I announced very proudly. “That’s without counting the extra ten percent as aide-de-camp.”

At this point Peret intervened: “So tell us, Martí, this aide-de-camp thing, what exactly does it mean?”

“I’ve told you, it means I’ll be completely available to Don Antonio for any crisis or anything that happens to come up. He values me very highly!”

“So you mean you’ll be Villarroel’s errand boy.” He burst out laughing. “You’ve allowed yourself to be duped. Your working day is going to be twice as long, if not more.”

“In exchange for which you’ve only got another ten percent,” Amelis pointed out. “Some negotiator you are!”

They had succeeded in casting gloom over my mood. “You’re right, maybe I’m not the best businessman in the world!” Like anyone who finds himself at a loss for an argument, I resorted to patriotism. “But when the enemy is approaching, we shouldn’t lower ourselves to pecuniary baseness.”

“What color will your uniform be?” asked Amelis.

“None. I won’t have one. In practice, as I said, I’ll be working as an engineer. And the engineer corps are not required to be in uniform.”

“Not required to be in uniform!” exclaimed Peret, laughing. “Have you ever heard of a general who is — as you put it— not required to wear a uniform? You haven’t even gotten them to pay for one of those for you!”

They were ruining my party, the lot of them. This wasn’t the triumphal march I had been expecting.

Peret asked: “And your name will be signed up to the lists of which regiment?”

“Signed up?”

“Yes, man, on the payroll of which regiment?”

I gave a dismissive wave of the hand holding my cigar and said: “Oh, I don’t need to be troubling myself with those little details. Don Antonio is the most honest man in the city. It’s inconceivable that he would not make sure I appear on somebody’s payroll.”

“Very well,” Peret insisted, “but in which regiment?”

“I don’t know!” I gave up, cornered and deep down rather annoyed at myself for not being able to give a different answer. “When I was in France, I learned to build, defend, and attack bastions. Nobody taught me what kind of bureaucratic paperwork is required by rearguard secretaries!”