Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Lightning and thunder. Off he went, while I fell asleep where I was, snoozing in the rainy mire. I was so broken, I didn’t have the energy to take off my helmet.

Next morning, I was awakened by a kick, and thus another day began, just the same as if I had enjoyed a refreshing sleep.

Drawing. What’s that ink stain? Slap. Pay attention, always pay attention , ma petite taupe, my little blind mole! Physics, mathematics, this, that, the other. Languages, a hateful subject, according to the Ducroix brothers, but essential, given that certain unfortunates hailing from England, Spain, Austria, and in general, the backwaters of the world, bizarre as it may have seemed, had yet to learn French. As ever in Bazoches, the titles of the disciplines had shades within them, because aside from English and German, they were also teaching me the language of engineers.

Among the Maganons there was a gestural code they could use to communicate secretly among themselves in public. They spoke using signs, and it was a language so elaborate that there was nothing, neither technical nor worldly, that it couldn’t be used to express. I was introduced to this unwillingly, not to say discontentedly, but later learned how useful it could be.

In the deafening clamor of battle, to be able to communicate with one’s hands is a very helpful thing. “Pull back,” “Ammunition!” “Get down, there’s a sniper to your left.” These, the Ducroix brothers told me, from small beginnings had become ever more sophisticated, developing into a great Maganon secret.

Now, gentle reader, picture an engineer about his work. His superior officer (an engineer) introduces him to the fortress commander. In public, the chief of engineers proclaims to the recent arrival: “General so-and-so, to whom not even Corbulo in his sieges of Armenian strongholds could have held a candle!” But at the same time, by moving his fingers and hands around, he is saying: “This man, here to my right, is nothing but a know-it-all. Pay him no mind. Any silly order he gives, agree to but be sure to disobey; come and ask me, and I’ll tell you what really must be done.”

I had to learn this sign language at a rate of twenty signs a day. This to begin with. Then it went up to thirty, forty, and even fifty. What was that? Still can’t make yourself understood in the arsenal? How are we going to make sure the artillery has what they need when munitions are running low? Slap! Wake up! Out to the field! Spherical Room.

I do not believe anything could be so enervating to a man as that systematic and uninterrupted combination of physical and mental exertion. And even if I shut my eyes, I had to be just as attentive at all hours. Take that! Back in the Spherical Room, open your eyes! Cadet Zuviría, when will you learn the simple thing that is to use your eyes! To the field! Allez! Allez! And so on, day after day after day.

The first month in Bazoches was like a nightmare I awoke into every day — I have no other way to describe it. You might ask: How did I bear it? My answer is, the best way to make the unbearable bearable is a combination of equal parts love, equal parts terror.

The terror, I barely need say, was provided by my father. That was his function; I never had the sensation of being treated as a son. As a child, I felt only aversion for him. When he was called away on business, farther into the interior of the Mediterranean, I couldn’t have been happier. I later came to learn the underlying reasons for his embittered character, and this softened my memories of him.

Peret (more on him later) said he had never seen a man so in love as my father had been with my mother. Hard for me to believe, for I knew the man in two moods only: irate and very irate. Always that dour face, taciturn, bearded, off elsewhere in his thoughts, especially if it was the two of us dining together in the meager candlelight. Such a miser he was, he even scrimped on wax.

When I arrived into the world, his life plummeted. Not because of me but because my mother died giving birth to me. He never forgot her. Bitterness was a ballast weighing him down inside — a visible tumor, constantly there. He took refuge in his work, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to carry on.

The port of Barcelona was a very active one and had trade links with the whole of the western Mediterranean. My father, a minor stockholder in a maritime company of twenty or thirty members, a widower and therefore with fewer familial responsibilities than the other associates, often sailed to finalize contracts and strengthen ties with their counterparts — in the Balearic Islands, and in Italy and its surrounding islands. In a business like his, in which client and stockist saw so little of each other in person, it was vital that ties of friendship and business be constantly maintained and renewed. (Everybody knows what Italians are like, forever prattling with their kisses, smiles, embraces, and feeble promises of eternal friendship.)

Let us simply say that, in legal terms, he put himself in a position of care toward me without ever having the slightest involvement with me as a human being. At least that was my experience. He beat me often, though for that I never blamed him; I deserved all those clouts, and many more besides. Curious, but a child will never complain so much about the beatings given as the embraces withheld. He embraced me only when it was my birthday — though I knew full well it wasn’t me he was drawing close to him but, rather, my mother. On that day he would become bestially drunk, would weep and squeeze me tight — like a bear mumbling her name — hers, never mine.

I shall say that, to his credit, in this world of illiterates, he spent everything he could on my education, though even the best schools in Barcelona were all a calamity. For professors, we had curmudgeonly priests who, in their own words, treated us pupils as “sinning, rot-destined sacks of flesh.”

My father spent half his time at the port or away on voyages, so he contracted the services of Peret to take care of me. The logical thing would have been for my father to find a buxom nurse for me and, since he was master, have his way with her every now and then. But it ended up being Peret, simply because no one cost less.

Even the Italians have sayings about the stinginess of the Catalans. But if my father were the measure of our nation’s stinginess, I can assure you, they didn’t know the half. I got a beating one day for throwing out a candle that had less than half a thumb’s length of wax remaining. Ah, and there was the time he learned of a ship that, because of issues with the cargo, had weighed anchor with six tenths of the hold empty — bluer than a duck egg he turned that day.

Peret was a scraggedy old wretch. Before I was born, he had worked as a stevedore at the port for my father and his associates. All he earned, he spent on drink. When he became too old to carry bulky things, they kicked him out of the shipping company for a layabout and a drunk. He had a long, wrinkled neck and a bald head, like a vulture’s. After leaving the company, he circulated the alleyways and lanes of Barcelona’s Ramblas, peddling knickknacks, his back so bent he gave the impression of being a mushroom forager. In return for a bare room and a miserable wage, my father brought him in to take charge of me and the household.

Poor Peret. I do not believe there can have been a human being more ill treated by a child. He’d go to bed and I’d fill up his shoes with dung; this he’d find out when he put them on the next morning. He had to wait to go out in the street before realizing I’d painted his enormous hooked nose red. If he ever threatened to hit me, I’d threaten to tell my father about him pilfering from the domestic allowance.