Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

For a few moments there was silence.

“Now!” one of the less drunk ones shouted at last. “Now they show up to lick our asses! Now that the Red Pelts find themselves with theirs suddenly on the line!”

I chose not to reply. Not least because he was right. They surrounded me — everyone but Ballester — screaming right up close to my face. One of them was telling me the story of a farm that was repossessed because of the high taxes; another showed me his back, striped with lash marks from the Red Pelts.

If you want to talk to mutineers, you need to be above them. And I’m not referring to a position of morality. I circled around a table, climbed upon it, and holding up the tube, said: “It may be that this was signed by the Red Pelts. But this”—grabbing hold of the front of my uniform—“is a principle that is higher than all of them. It was sewn by a woman in La Ribera for her husband, an officer in the Fourth Battalion. The man is a carpenter. Who was it that whipped you? The carpenters of Barcelona or agents of the government?”

“Go to hell, you and the fatherland!” they jeered, surrounding the table. “What did you do for us when we needed help? You sent us to the guards! Persecuted us! Put us to the rack!”

“Shameful wretches!” I yelled, and even I was impressed at my own audacity. “What kind of child, seeing his mother threatened, instead of defending her, reproaches her for a slap she gave him years earlier?” I shook my head as though a profound sadness had taken hold of me, but I made a joke. “It’s like they say: When a child falls down a well, his mother throws herself down after him. When it’s the mother who falls down, the child goes off to tell the neighbors.”

Incredible as it may sound, there were a few bursts of laughter. I didn’t wait for them to die out, and resumed my reproachful tone. “Well then, the bad news is that our neighbors are called Castile and France, and they are the ones who are trying to drown us in the darkness of that well.”

“And they’ve sent you here to tell us that? We are the ones with the least to lose when the French and Castilians dine on the constitutions with a side helping of turnips. Go to hell!”

“You can go to hell yourself!” I roared, beside myself. “Even you know it’s not really like that. If Barcelona falls, we all fall with her. What would happen if the Bourbons razed everything to the ground? Even if you’ve run away from your homes, I’m sure you have relatives and friends somewhere. Don’t you care about them? No more random ballots: The new mayors will be handpicked by Little Philip, and they will be confirmed botifleros . All young men will be forced to serve under his banner, including in that ghastly place they call America, for decades to come. Our judgments will depend on their judges, who may be no better than ours but are certainly farther away, and they hate us. And if the rates of taxes seem exorbitant to you now, wait till they’re set at the court in Madrid by our enemies, without the branches of our parliament having any sacred right to veto them.” I had gotten myself so worked up that I paused only to catch my breath. “Are you all blind? You should be the first to see that it’s the Red Pelts with the least to lose in the event of catastrophe. They’ll always rise back up to the top, whoever’s in charge. And if you truly are so indifferent to all this, tell me, why are you dancing with Bourbon corpses?”

They settled a bit. I was completely overtaken by my passion. How peculiar: Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized how closely my ideas tallied with my speech. I had gone there to persuade them, and in reality, I was the one being most persuaded.

Someone asked: “What kind of man is your commander?”

That was very typical of the Miquelets’ mentality; they cared less about the cause they were defending than the man who would lead them.

“You can work that out for yourself,” I replied with a bitter smile. “He was the one who ordered me into this den, and whom I did not hesitate a second in obeying.”

Up to that point, Ballester had not spoken a word. He got up off his broken sofa and said: “And what I believe is that if we go into Barcelona, we will never come out again. Tell these men if that isn’t so. Tell them!”

“No, I can’t tell them that,” I replied, weighing my words carefully. “That may well be the way things go. They will kill us all. All I can assure you,” I added, moderating my voice, “is that if that happens, I will not survive any longer than you will.”

Ballester gestured with his thumb toward a door at the back of the room. “Get in there.”

It was a rear patio enclosed by high walls. So I might feel more at ease, I was sharing the place with a couple of dead bodies in white uniforms. I tipped out their bags, which were full of letters between officers: They had been messengers for the Bourbons. I imagined what had happened. They’d been riding between units carrying messages when they saw this delightful-looking mansion on the way and came in for a little rest. Ballester was passing by and had the same idea. Bad luck.

Through the door, I could clearly hear the Miquelets’ arguments, which all happened at the top of their voices. Some wanted to accept the offer from the government; most were in favor of slitting my throat. Best not to listen to them.

It was strange the way my thoughts were going in those days. All the means I had acquired at Bazoches were still active. The siege had not even begun, and yet it was already shaping and guiding my mind. Martí Zuviría, Prince of the Cowards, was eclipsed when Engineer Zuviría was awakened. I remember that my only thought was: If they kill me, I have to make sure these letters get to Barcelona one way or another.

The door opened. I went back into the great hall. All the eyes of the men and women were on me. It would be best to take the initiative myself.

“It may be that you do not want to take part in the defense of Barcelona,” I said, holding out the letters to Ballester. “But I presume you are not against it, either. Please take these letters out to the man who brought me here.”

During a pause that went on forever, Ballester stared straight into my eyes without taking the papers I was holding out toward him. His men were even more expectant than I was, since I had at least prepared my share of resignation. Despite all my time at Bazoches, it took me a whole year to understand the full significance of that look of Ballester’s.

“Take them yourself,” he answered tersely, without the slightest trace of sympathy despite what he was saying. He went over to the table, picked up the tube holding his commission as captain of the volunteers, looked at it, and said sadly: “These lads are getting soft. Softer than the branch of a fig tree.”

Men and women all gave a roar of jubilation. As though the last person to make up his mind had been their leader and the final decision had depended on him. Today I’m sure that’s not how it was, that Ballester had been the first to favor that fateful option. That he had kept his opinions to himself so as not to interfere in the others’ judgment, not to seem too mild or force them into an act of suicide.

They were going into death and doing it gladly. Within a moment they had vanished, getting on their horses, the women clinging to their sides. The sounds of hooves and neighing seemed to disappear into the distance in a moment. Ballester moved more slowly; a leader does not run. We were left alone. He was very self-absorbed, far away from me, from everything. I noticed that he had the same expression from that day in Beceite, with his hands tied, awaiting death. We left the mansion. As we mounted up, his horse and mine were alongside but facing in opposite directions, the two riders face-to-face.